The key to a free mind

[1]

Amrit Sadhana [1]

Mantras have been very popular in the spiritual world. Maybe because mantra is one of the easiest form of meditation. But the way mantras are chanted these days doesn’t effect any transformation or spiritual development. Mantras have to be brewed and perfected inside.
The word “man-tra” is derived from two Sanskrit words. The first is “manas” or “mind”, the second syllable is drawn from “trai” meaning to “protect” or to “free from”. So mantra is that key which frees one from the mind. If it is repeated with intensity and totality, it explodes into the sound vibrations which help the mind dissolve. But it can only happen when a mantra is chanted methodically. The method is specified by Osho. He says, intone the sound loudly, then by and by, feel attunement with the sound. Be filled with it, forget everything else, become the sound. It is very easy to become the sound because sound can vibrate through your body, through your mind, through the whole nervous system.
Intoning is also “in-tuning”. Tune yourself to the sound, and then, as you feel a deep harmony between you and the sound, intone a sound audibly and then less audibly till it enters the soundless space.
And when you begin to feel harmonious with it, you can drop intoning loudly. Then close your lips and intone it inwardly, also try it loudly. Intone inwardly, but loudly, so that the sound spreads all over your body, touches every part, every cell of your body. You will feel vitalised by it, you will feel rejuvenated, you will feel a new life entering you — because your body is a musical instrument.
The third step is to stop this soundless chanting and feel the vibrations spread inside and outside. Now you are delving deeper. You are entering the vast ocean of sound waves that constitute the universe.
Physicists say that the universe is an immense sound track which is played on space and time. Creation consists of vibrations at various frequencies and amplitudes giving rise to the phenomena of the world. But we cannot hear them because our hearing range is limited.
When is the chanting complete? Here is an Osho insight: “Crude, coarse sounds cannot enter your heart. They can enter your ears, but they cannot enter your heart. The passage is very narrow, and the heart is so delicate that only very slow, rhythmic, atomic sounds are allowed to enter it. And unless a sound enters your heart, the mantra is incomplete. The mantra is complete only when the sound enters your heart — the deepest, most central core of your being.”

Amrit Sadhana is in the management team of Osho International Meditation Resort, Pune