What is a Mantra ?

Mantras were created by the enlightened minds of the Masters spirituality and you can only understand their essential nature by putting them into practice and discovering their extraordinary effects.

The Mantra is the simplest means of understanding the cosmic energies and making them work for you. A Mantra consists of a series of magic syllables which together make up a ‘code’. So this is a code formed of different sounds.

Everyone knows that sounds have an influence on the psyche. The sound of a very high noise can cause a kind of physical pain: people lower their heads and put their hands over their ears.

In the same way, the sound of chalk squeaking on a blackboard makes most people shiver or sets their teeth on edge.

Conversely, deep, low sounds have a soothing, calming effect; we need only listen carefully to television adverts to see proof of this. When the ad-makers want to create an atmosphere of pleasure and seduction, the voice on the soundtrack is always deep and low and speaks very slowly.

People have always understood the incantatory magic of sounds. Remember the story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin who bewitched animals and children with the tunes he played on his flute?

In many folk tales and legends we find a fairy who utters magic words (usually also waving a wand) when she wants to cast a spell. An example of this is the famous incantation:‘A-BRA-CA-DA-BRA’, which is a special kind of Mantra.

In relation to this, the music of opera also has a remarkable effect. Of course it’s often quite hard to see the singers on stage as the gods or heroes they are supposed to be playing. Yet, when they start to sing, a subtle magic invades our senses and our whole being begins to vibrate in tune... as long, that is, as we have been able to let go and to open ourselves up to the sound. For that is the key!

In the martial arts there is much talk of the Kiaï, which is known as the ‘shout that kills’. If it is given with the ‘spirit’ it causes a kind of momentary short-circuit in the nervous system.

People who train in the martial arts practice giving the Kiaï, not so that they can use it to kill, but because this sound cannot be correctly made unless the person’s entire being is concentrated in the spirit: when this happens the Kiaï becomes the expression of an inner strength which draws on cosmic energy itself.

In a quite different field, the Western esoteric tradition has given us the Gregorian chant, whose aim is to raise us up to higher states of consciousness.

Furthermore, it’s no coincidence that cathedrals were built with high vaulted ceilings, giving a greater resonance and power to the sounds within. All these deep, subtle vibrations would penetrate the psyches of the congregation, taking them into a ‘mystic’ state in which ordinary thoughts are silent, leaving the way open to the experience, in other words the sensation, of pure perception.