Prayers and Mantras
(excerpts from Paul Brunton's Notebooks)
“Mantra in Sanskrit means hymn, prayer, invocation, formula for magic, secret, charm, lines of prayer to a divinity. It is something that creates loving devotion to God. The mantra uttered and the divinity called upon are identical. Hence the reverence for it and the importance of its being correctly spoken, and the danger of its being misused for selfish purpose. It should not be spoken, but sung.”
The purposes, benefits,
and results of this practice are several:
- By repeating the same words in the same rhythm frequently during the day, the week, and the year, the mind's resistance to the idea enshrined in those words is slowly worn down. A time comes when not only do the words repeat themselves without conscious effort, but also their meaning impresses itself deeply.
- The constant repetition has a mesmeric effect: it lulls the senses and thoughts into semi-inactivity and sets the attention free to pass inward toward the soul and eventually induces the contemplative mood.
- It develops an acute, growing self-consciousness of the right sort, a constant obsessive suggestion that there is a higher self.
- It leads to the necessary concentration, which is a door to inner consciousness.
- Its rhythmic activity aligns and then integrates the different parts of the personality. It also removes their restlessness.
- It gradually establishes subconscious orientation towards the higher self, which keeps on breaking into the conscious field to the detriment of the lower self; thus it gives direction to thought and purification to character. It enables the seeker, therefore, to go on with everyday external living, knowing that God is working in him internally.
- It becomes a focus for continuous concentration during active life, even whilst engaged in work, pleasure, or walking. Forgetfulness of the quest, or of the Overself, besets most aspirants. Here is a valuable remedy. It brings the chosen goal, or the revered ideal, constantly back to their attention.
- It uses one thought in order to transcend all thoughts, a single vibration of the mind in order to attain a stillness never ordinarily known by the mind.
- This repetition-method may seem somewhat primitive and crude to the sophisticated or educated modern mind, and quite needlessly redundant. But it is based on sound psychological practice. It is an appeal to the subconscious, not to the logical mind. Its kindred is the lullaby which a mother sings and with which she soothes her child to sleep.
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Indian and Tibetan yogis particularly value and use the Om mantra
because they are taught, and believe, that its sound was the first one
in the world creation and that its repetition will bring the mind back
to the stillness which existed before that creation.
*
When the incantatory words of a mantra by constant practice become
fully activated, the mantra becomes fully automatic and circles round
and round inside the head or the heart just like a revolving wheel. At
this deep stage, he is not concerned with its translated or verbal
meaning but only with the kind of consciousness it produces. For now it
is not a matter of what he is doing but of what is being done to him.
The mantra has brought him into a region of released forces which are
very active in him.
*
It has done its duty and served its purpose if the invocation or
affirmation ceases of itself and in the ensuing silence a mysterious
power rises and takes possession of him.
*
A single word like "God" or a simple phrase like "God in me" must be
spoken with the lips without intermission, or repeated in the mind with
intensive concentration.
*
Only experience and use can show its worth in rhythmically directing
awareness to a certain fixed point, and keeping it there. The word,
phrase, name, invocation, sentence, or image provides him with a
certain power of concentration.
