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The Ancient Power of Sanskrit Mantra and Ceremony,
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Background of Vedic Ceremonies
For thousands of years before the first Western religious
ceremony was ever performed. Before the Christ or the Buddha appeared. While
mainstream Judaism was centered around scholars and prophets, (although the
Kabbalah was being taught in Jewish mystical circles) the ancient devotional and
spiritual science of puja (poo-jah) was being practiced in India. Its roots go
back well-before the advent of writing to when the oral tradition was in full
flower.
It is useful for us to remember that during the period
during which the oral tradition flourished, people's brains were wired
differently than ours are today. Most of us would be lost without our Day Runner
organizers notebooks or our Palm handheld computerized address and schedule
holders. Our minds cannot remember all the details of our busy lives with its
soccer practices, organization meetings, business activities, and hundreds of
addresses and telephone numbers. Although we scarcely used such things only two
decades ago, we have grown completely dependent upon them. They leave our mind
free to pursue abstract thought
as well as the practical labyrinths we must sometimes traverse in our business
activities.
But thousands of years ago daily life was not so complex as it is today. Our
mental adaptability took routes to efficiency that are different than the ones
we routinely use today. For the most part, people remembered what they heard.
And they remembered it verbatim. That seems strange to us today, since if we
want that kind of accuracy we just record it on tape or disc. But since there
were no such technologies in those days, the brain used its fantastic
adaptability to wire itself for memory in different ways than we use today.
People could remember entire conversation from months or
weeks past. The knowledge of the village was passed on through oral instruction
that
was easily remembered by students because that's the way their brains
were wired and that's the way the society was constructed. So when one or two
from among their number answered an inner mystical call, went up out of the
village and into the foothills and began to chant in their native language about
"this great being of which we are all a part." Those who heard them
down in the village went to investigate, to listen, and to record those
revelations that were coming through these pioneer mystics ? early spiritual
geniuses that God seemed to tap on the shoulder while saying "Come let me
instruct you."
The only records we have of those early mystical lessons
were faithfully recorded in memory by the people of those villages. Some of the
chanted verses were hundreds of couplets long ? yet they were all remembered in
perfect detail. Because our brains are wired differently today, it is difficult
for us to fathom how these early people could achieve this remarkable ability,
just as they would marvel at the buildings, machinery and computers we have
created today. Different brain wiring patterns produce different kinds of
society.
We have scriptures today, some of them very long, that we
can trace back four, six, even eight thousand years before we can no longer
accept their reliability, at least in terms of when they were composed. Since
modern scholarship depends upon verifiable records, many of the orally kept
records by in the priest class concerning when certain shlokas or verses were
composed, are dismissed. This does not mean that the priests are wrong. It
simply means that we cannot verify what they present to us today as the accurate
timeline for scriptural compositions.
Unlike modern scholars, I am not so quick to
dismiss the records of the priest class. Maybe that's because I am a trained
Vedic Priest myself. But when I read the old scriptures, it all makes sense to
me somehow. I get visuals in my meditations of those days long gone by. I get a
sense of a culture that lasted thousands of years; that far more stable than
anything we have today. And I feel the mystical vibrations resonating within as
I read the translations of those oral records. I feel them even more when I
chant the ancient verses.
One of the foundation scriptures of Vedic
Hinduism is the Purusha Suktam (Hymn to the Transcendental Overself) whatever
that means. But reading this hymn's translation, one gets a sense of the time it
was composed thousands of years before writing changed our societies and our
lives. This hymn is also one of the foundations of Vedic worship. Many, if not
all, pujas use this hymn as part of the worship service.
There are a variety of translations of this
hymn, but most of them present the same ideas in almost the same way. Here is a
translation of that hymn.
The Purusha Suktam
(Hymn to the Transcendental Oversoul or Self)
"Om. The Primal Person has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand
feet. Pervading the entire universe, He transcends everything (is twenty
finger-widths above, which means transcendental)
All this is that Supreme Person that which was and that which will be. He is the
Lord of immortality. He shows himself as if growing like the food we eat.
The existence of the universe in all three periods of time is the manifestation
of the glory of this primal person. Not only that, He is beyond and greater than
the universe.
All this is that Supreme Person ? that which
was and that which will be. He is the Lord of immortality. He shows himself as
if growing like the food we eat.
Three-fourths of this Cosmic Reality is established in the spheres of light
above. Only one-fourth of His effulgence appears and disappears here as our
reality. In this manifesting one-fourth power, this Primal Person is pervading
in all living things
The universe of varied forms emerged from the Primal Person. Holding this cosmos
as His body the Supreme Being manifested. He created the celestials, animals and
human beings as well as the earth by His own Power, though he was always
Transcendental. Later, to propitiate this cosmic Truth, the celestials made a
symbolic mental fire sacrifice. To this fire sacrifice, spring became the
oblation, summer became the holy grass, and the rainy season became the main
offering.
They installed the Cosmic Person over the holy grass and invoked Him there, the
One who was before the creation and the object of the great fire sacrifice.
Thus the celestials and the perfected beings
joining together performed the mental fire sacrifice; the great meditation,
keeping Him as the main oblation.
There emerged a curd that contained the ghee (clarified butter) from the altar
of the fire sacrifice in which the Cosmic Being himself was the highest
oblation. Later birds that fly, animals of the forest, and the animals that move
in the village were created.
All mantras known as Rik, Yajur, Sama and
Gayatri emerged out of that altar in which the Self of all the selves was the
main oblation.
Horses, animals having two-lined teeth, cows,
goats and sheep and the like were born of this cosmic sacrifice.
Into how many parts did they divine this
cosmic being when they decided to pour Him as the oblation? Which is His face?
Which are His arms? His thighs and feet?
Brahmins (priests) emerged from the mouth,
Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers) from the arms, Vaishyas (tradespeople) from his
thighs, Shudra (people of service to the rest) from the feet of this Cosmic
Person.
From His mind emerged the moon, sun from his eyes, Indra (Lord of the first
heaven) and Agni (god of fire) from his mouth, and the cosmic breath, Vayu (the
air) emerged from his breath (prana).
Atmosphere emerged out from his navel, sphere
of light (Dyuloka) from his head, earth from his feet, directions from his ears.
Thus the celestials (devas) created all Spheres( lokas) from His cosmic body.
Thus the gods worshipped the God of Gods
mentally through Sacrifice. The techniques used in the Yajna (sacrifice) became
the law of life. The meditation on this "Cosmic Prayer of the Cosmic Form
of God" leads the devotees to the highest heaven where the angels and
masters dwell.
For this sacrifice seven meters are the boundaries.
Twenty-one principles are the oblations. To this sacrificial pillar the gods
bound the Cosmic Truth itself by the cord of mantra for their realization."
You can see how staggering this scripture must have
sounded the first time someone started chanting it from a place in the local
foothills. Some person known to the local inhabitants left one day and a bit
later these phrases started resounding through the countryside.
Start of Ritual Worship
From this hymn came the beginning of ritual worship that quickly evolved into
the Hindu pujas that we know today. It is not an exaggeration to state that they
have been done in nearly exactly the same way for literally thousands of years.
In my other books I have spoken of some of the problems that emerged from the
priest class. But here I wish to extol their virtues for keeping intact the
majesty and power of the Sanskrit rituals for thousands upon thousands of years.
Their service in this task is monumental, and I salute them for it.
Technological advances notwithstanding, cultural shifts of many kinds
notwithstanding, invasions from various factions notwithstanding, they have kept
the mantras, pujas and yajnas intact and pure for millennia after millennia.
As I have written in other places, the power of both
mantra and ceremony soon became evident. The following is taken from my book Mantras
of the Goddess:
The more the mystics investigated through expanded means
of subtle perception, the more they understood what was happening. They saw that
we are surrounded by energy all the time, spiritual energy. They also saw
that when the Sanskrit formulas were chanted, that is, as the petals on the
chakras vibrated in mystical resonances, a tiny amount of this spiritual energy
was actually pulled into the subtle body. The chakras were accessing and drawing
in energy that is around us all the time. One may say by way of analogy that our
chakras were little TV sets that instead of pulling in television signals,
pulled in spiritual energy. Continuing this analogy, the various chakras are the
different channels. By the chanting of the Sanskrit formulas, people were
experiencing a net gain not just in energy, but in usable spiritual energy.
Over months and years of such activity, the energy gains
were amazing. People who previously had no noticeable aura, now had one. Among
those who had seemed quite ordinary, some became healers, while others seemed to
grow wise and mysteriously tap into realms of spiritual knowledge and
understanding. The total amount of energy in the body was increasing as chanting
continued over time, because the chakras were accessing, pulling in and
processing new energy constantly. So astonished were these early seers
that they acted just like the CIA of today. They immediately clamped a lid on
the spread of this knowledge even as they continued to study it. As the years
rolled by, the sages noticed that continuous practice of chanting led to
spiritual abilities, such as clairvoyance (mystical seeing), clairaudience
(mystical hearing), and others. The subtle body, as it grew, became able to work
with the laws of the universe in ways that seem like science fiction today.
These outcomes were carefully written down (after the advent of writing) and can
be found today in The Vedas, the Upanishads, and most recently the Yoga Sutras
of Patanjali.
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