The Use of Mantras

A mantra is a mechanical way of checking vibration. Rather than using the powers of the will and of imagination, you save these for other purposes, and use the mechanical resource of a mantra. A mantra is a definite succession of sounds.

Those sounds, repeated rhythmically again and again again in succession, synchronise the vibrations of the vehicles into unity with themselves. Thus a mantra can't be interpreted ; interpretation changes the sounds. Not only in Hinduism, but in Buddhism, in Roman Catholicism, in Islam, and among the Parsis, mantras are found, and they are never interpreted, for when you have modified the succession and order of the sounds, the chant ceases to be a mantra. If you interpret the words, you could have a particularly gorgeous prayer, but not a mantra. Your interpretation could be pretty impressed poetry, but it isn't a living mantra. It will not harmonise the vibrations of the encircling sheaths, and therefore enable the consciousness to become still. The poetry, the electrified prayer, these are mentally translatable. But a mantra is unique and untranslatable. Poetry is a great thing : it is sometimes an inspirer of the soul, it gives gratification to the ear, and it could be sublime and handsome, but it's not a mantra. Attention Let us consider concentration. You ask a person if he will concentrate.

He at once claims : "Oh! It is extraordinarily tricky. I have regularly attempted and failed." But put the same query in an other way, and ask him : "Can you focus on a thing?" he'll at once say : "Yes, I will do that." Concentration is attention. The fixed angle of attention, that is concentration. If you focus on what you do, your mind will be concentrated. Many sit down for meditation and wonder why they don't succeed. How can you suspect that 30 minutes of meditation and twenty- 3 and a half hours of scattering of thought during the day and night, will permit you to focus in the half hour? You have undone in the nighttime and daytime what you probably did in the morning, as Penelope unravelled the web she wove.