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VII THE POWER OF MANTRA The Power of Mantra.
'WE HAVE SAID that the secret of Speech as a power is Rhythm, because rhythm is the central unifying element which gathers together all the perfection achieved; or it is by our sense of rhythm that it has been possible to bring all the other factors effectively together for a single harmonious purpose.
Page-67 In all speech expression, and especially with poetry and all poetic expression, rhythm is the first thing we look for because it is the sound-movement which carries on the sound-image, the thought-substance and the idea, carries the sense to a higher status, to the intellectually inexpressible. What do we mean when we say, " the power of mantra"? Is it not imagined that some magic or mysterious words are intoned by an adept to bring about some magic or mysterious result? Or some sadhu or yogi utters secret words to set in motion powers of the occult. Such is, I think, the popular conception of Mantra. There was a time in the history of seeking-man when the power of mantra was held as a guarded secret and a sacred attribute. It is no longer a guarded secret but it is still a sacred attribute. It was a guarded secret from Vedic times up to perhaps the time of the Buddha and even beyond. But as man "grew" into the mental age of his civilisation it has become no longer necessary to guard the secret, because man in general (through the necessary growth of mind) has become less pure, more sophisticated, and mind at its present stage of evolution, actually protects man from the occult workings of nature-man and the universe.
Secret is the word to those who will not hear. The secret of Mantra Power lies safe in the pure in
Page-68 heart, for only with such does it become truly manifest. Behind the heart-centre and in close contact with our emotional being is the source in us of the inner voice-power. It is often first through the emotions, beginning with love and adoration, rising on a living force of concrete experience, that this power is evoked or partially manifested. When the thought-image has gone beyond its object to a higher intensity of love and adoration, where worship enters into an entire self-giving and this becomes the one imperative, then one enters into the Great Peace, dynamic with power and understanding, passing beyond to an all-love and an all-knowledge; receiving all or reflecting all and when made manifest becoming a voice as of one having authority. Sri Aurobindo, the one certain Rishi of our age, says that the Vedic Seers " relied entirely upon intuition and spiritual experience " .1Man has today developed into a more complex and in consequence (for the time being) a less pure individual, and until he recovers that reliance of the Vedic Seers and their simplicity towards Truth, through his sufferings and ignorance or through a disciplined purification of his life, he will not get back that power of speech of inner authority which is his inherent birthright as a man.
Page-69 This power has not only an outward expressive movement, but it has too the spontaneous faculty of absorbing knowledge when not dictated to by a tyrant ego-mentality. I have, over a period of the past thirty years, been intimate with several cases of students in India, mostly adults, who have learned English through the heart-centre and the psychic understanding. We only truly learn what we truly experience, and for some people it is more direct for them to learn through the heart-centre than through the mental process of reasoning and analysis. Our present educational systems barely take into account the value of any psychological experience or training in the most important formative years of a student's life. Actually all our experience is psychological, since what we receive through the outer senses has no value or meaning until it is translated into terms of mental and emotional understanding : that in Indian terminology, is called "Manas".
If our only concern is to educate or develop the senses, then we have no need to pursue our subject further; we would then be satisfied with a superficial expression perfect only in its technical excellence but without the spirit, without the essence of the word of authority which is the
Page-70 one element of speech that makes the auditor experience and remember. Neither the intellect, the imagination nor the ear receive the impact of the mantic word, as also neither intellect, imagination nor voice are its creators, for the true creator of mantra is the soul. In mantra, both sound and sense have separately and together a soul-value. It is certainly true that the excellence of technique plays an important part in bringing this into being, especially in the early stages, but once the inherent sincerity soars up behind the sense and the word, it passes beyond all limitations of mechanical form, for the technique is then seen to be the scaffolding, the launching ramp of a nuclear guided-missile reaching to the stars. Sri Aurobindo, the one Rishi-Poet of our age, says in "The Future Poetry" :
Page-71 within him. " 1 The true poet does not try to. explain but rather he expresses in word and sound that which he experiences within himself. He obeys the law of his inner being to give utterance to that which must be expressed, the inevitable word. For the purpose of clear and effective speech, the kind of speech that is to be heard, understood and remembered, some understanding of this Power of Mantra is essential. It may fairly easily be accepted by the student in theory, but I would suggest that the student go further; to go as far as to make it an ideal to be achieved, certainly not an immediate goal, but to have it always there as a greater possibility to be achieved, to be striven after no matter what the obstacles or failures on the way. The high ideal of Speech, this sacred Word, this divine utterance has only to be believed-in to be approached, for it is that which in everything is sincere, that which is always striving for perfection, and that which looks for the essential truth in things : the All-Beautiful, the All-Blissful, the All-Knowledge, the All-True. About a hundred years ago, in the year 1854 to be precise, Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish
Page-72 thinker and philosopher wrote , " The imagination is what providence uses in order to get men into reality, into existence, to get them far enough out, or in, or down in existence. And when imagination has helped them as far out as they are meant to go—that is where reality, properly speaking, begins." Later in his "Journals" he says : " .., it is out of love that God gave man the gift of speech, and thereby made it possible for everyone really to grasp the highest. Oh, with what sorrow must God look upon the result. " This " Law" 1, the Power of Mantra, was understood and used in man's earliest beginnings. It probably reached a high intensity in Vedic times in India and during the times of the builder-kings of ancient Egypt. It was again understood by Kierkegaard over a hundred years ago as the "gift of speech " from God, and " possible for everyone to grasp the highest"; and in our day Sri Aurobindo says in "The Future Poetry", "The Mantra, poetic expression of the deepest spiritual reality, is only possible when three highest intensities of poetic speech meet and become indissolubly one, a highest intensity of rhythmic
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