Swami Sri Atmananda

Omm Namo Bhagavate

Chanting is the quickest, easiest and most powerful way of yoga.  What takes several years to achieve through normal meditation can be achieved within a couple of months through chanting.  That is why, in the Vedic period, sadhana was simply remaining in the house of the guru and only practicing swadhyaya.  Chanting is called swadhyaya.  When you do swadhyaya, who listens to it?  The soul listens.  You are chanting for yourself, for the Self.

If you are deep asleep in your room and I go and stand in front of your door and call your name, you respond when your mind receives it.  Mind responds to meaning.  If that word has no meaning, you will not respond, so even if you hear something you will not respond.  Vital responds to feeling and body responds to pressure or force.

The psychic responds to vibration, and the soul responds to rhythm.  That is called mantra.  When a mantra is chanted it has a rhythm, or chanda.  Now we are chanting the Veda each morning.  First sukta of the Veda is Gayatri chanda.  There are different types of Gayatri.  This one is called Tripada Gayatri, meaning “three steps”: first it will smash our gross thoughts of the physical world; second step, it overpowers all our vital relationships; third step it will smash our ego, so that the soul comes out.  So when you are chanting Gayatri continuously with proper rhythm, the attachment and the clinging and the ego are smashed.  What comes out is the soul.  That is why swadhyaya of the scriptures is performed, and the mother of all scripture is Veda.  Veda was there before god was there, because sabda is brahma, sound is brahma.  God is a discovery of human mind.  Veda pervades the whole creation, so Veda is the mother of all scriptures.  When you chant Veda you invoke the Mother force, and Gayatri is the mother of all chandas. Krishna, the supreme Lord also says this in Verse 407 of Gita: gäyatrï   chhandasämaham, ‘Among the chandas I am Gayatri.’

When you are chanting the Veda, you are invoking the supreme mother, the all-pervading prakriti, which vibrates the rhythm.  How far your force will go depends on how deep is your breath; how deep your breath goes depends on how many mantras you are able to chant without releasing your breath.  The longer is your prana, the greater is your control over your mind.  The deeper is your prana, the greater is your command over your vital.

In ashrams, there is no material activity, that is, any activity that is undertaken to expand matter for self-gain.  Any activity that is undertaken, not to expand matter for self-gain but to expand matter for manifestation of spirit, is not material activity.  What makes it yoga and what makes it bhoga, or enjoyment, is the attitude with which an action is performed.  If you do yoga, you are heading towards liberation; if you do bhoga you are heading towards disease, sickness, sorrow.  Bhoga brings roga, or diseases.  Yoga brings mukti, liberation.  Any action that is done for the purpose of manifestation or liberation is called yoga.  Any action that is done for self-gain is called bhoga, that is, samsara.

When you chant, your breathing is expanded and the prana is expanded.  A person who is only leading a very ordinary life, who has a human body but is actually an animal, the nature of his breath is very frequent and very short.  When you start doing yoga, your breath goes deeper.  To what extent you will breathe, whether to the first, second, third, fourth or fifth chakra, only the guru can tell you because the guru can see your system fully.  The guidance differs from person to person and each has the potential to grow from it.  First they overcome greed, then lust, fear and anger, because their sadhana is proceeding under the watchful eye of a seer who is guiding those individuals as per their system’s limitation.  But a child cannot do it, nor can one who is not leading a yogic life.

When you practice chanting like this your breath becomes deeper, and the deeper the prana goes, the more the apana comes out.  The seat of apana is at the muladhara, the first chakra.  Apana wants to come out, but it cannot come without prana going down.  When you hold the breath the apana joins with prana.  Apana brings out all the toxins from the body, from every cell.  Impurities are released through urine and stool, but the impurities of negative vibrations, negative thoughts and negative samskaras are stored up in every cell.  Only apana can bring them out, but apana cannot release it.  When apana joins with prana some of these toxins are released by prana.  Then when prana is released it is gone.  This is the secret: Pränäpäna  samäyuktah   pachämyannam  chaturvidham.  (Verse 564).

Someone came from another ashram a few years back.  He remained here for some time.  After eight or ten days he said, “Swamiji, I am feeling terrible difficulty for sadhana here.  My sadhana is not proceeding.”

I said, “I know that.”

“Swamiji, you know that?  Horrible thoughts are coming.”

I said, “Yes, I also know that.”

“Swamiji, what am I going to do?”

I said, “You have to go out of this ashram.  That’s the best thing for you.”

“I am staying in an ashram for twenty years, doing that yoga, but I have not attained what your people have attained here.  Why?”

I said, “Because you are doing yoga by reading a book.  They are doing yoga by following a master.”

His problem was, the moment he closed his eyes all his lustful thoughts were coming up; all lustful dreams were coming in the night.

“Why?”  He asked me.

I said, “Because you are living among celibates, you are living with brahmacharis, so the force they release is bringing up your hidden samskara.  There is no householder here, no lover nor beloved.  Brahmacharis radiate one type of energy that brings out the hidden energy.  Are you having that problem?”

“Yes, Swamiji.  What am I going to do?  Shall I meditate more?”

I said, “You cannot meditate.  Meditation requires that when you close your eyes, very quickly you should reach a thoughtless zone.  But you cannot go to the thoughtless zone because your breathing is short.”

Thought comes from the mind, and mind is the child of prana, so first control your prana, and the quickest sadhana for this is to chant the mantras.  When you are chanting, Dharmakshetre  kurukshetre samavetä yuyutsavah, you cannot release your breath.  You have to hold your breath to chant so if you are chanting four lines at a time, the breath is held.  See how easy is yoga.

Dharmakshetre kurukshetre samavetä  yuyutsavah, drishtwätu pändavänïkam, you continue.  First break it to small, small pieces.  When you don’t chant, your breathing goes its own way, and its own way is the monkey’s way, but when you chant, even if it is for half an hour, that half hour means pranayam.   Ayam means regulation, control; prana means life force.

In this chanting, now you are doing the third, fourth and fifth line in one breath, but no one is able to go to the sixth line.  When you are able to do that, your prana is going right to your manipuraka.  Then it goes deeper.  The longer the breath, the deeper is the force.

When you practice like this, and then you just sit, thought cannot come until you want it to.  If I sit hours and hours and hours thought will not come unless I invite it.  Awareness of a person will come, but thought of the person will not.  Awareness means no thought but you are conscious of the presence.

We are having awareness of God but no thought of God.  When thought of God will come, your life is divine.  When God will be in your thought, you achieved a great thing.  Mayyeva manädhatsva, God is in your thought, God is in your feeling, God is in your awareness.  Life is becoming divine.

[From a 2010 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai]