THE peace or distraction, calm or anxiety that one gets is the product of one's thoughts and deeds. It is dependent on one's attitude and behaviour to oneself and others. There are many who take up the process of dhyana or regular meditation on the Name and Form of God, who are able to quieten the agitations of the heart and open the way to inner realisation. But, dhyana should not be vacillating or wavering from one ideal to another. It should not be reduced to a mere mechanical text-book formula, a rigid time-table of breathing through alternate nostrils, a meaningless stare at the tip of the nose. It is a rigorous discipline of the senses, the nervous current, and the wings of imagination. That is why it is said, the dhyana is the valley of peace that lies on the other side of a huge mountain range, with the peaks named the Six Foes. These are lust, anger, greed, attachment, pride and envy. One has to climb over the range and reach the plain beyond. One has to rend the veils, befor...
MANTHRA i s not a mere collection of words. It is a compounded set of words pregnant with enormous significance. It emanates from the inner power of man. Filled with such power, the manthra (sacred formula), when it is pronounced properly, brings out the Divine power in man. The vibrations produced by the utterance of the manthra, uniting with the Cosmic nadha (primal sound) in the Universe, become one with the Universal Consciousness. It is these Cosmic vibrations which assumed the form of the Veda (sacred revelations of spiritual knowledge). For all the manthras, the primary manthra, which enshrines the attributeless, Omniself, is the Omkara. The Omkara embodies in the form of sound the Supreme Brahman. For this sound, the presiding deity is Saraswathi. In common parlance Saraswathi is regarded as the consort of Brahma (Demi God of Creation). It is the union of Brahma and Saraswathi that accounts for all the knowledge in the world. Who is Brahma and who is Saraswathi? Sarasw...
