By Niranjan Matanich
Normally, where does your mind lead you? Does your mind lead you to identify with your inherent divinity? Most people find their mind keeps them spinning in the mundane world, sometimes giving pleasure and sometimes creating misery and pain.
When you focus your mind on mantra, you experience something else. What you experience isn’t fleeting and it doesn’t end in misery. You experience your Self, your own never-ending and unchanging essence. Your Self is the inner source from which joy, love and bliss arise. Mantra gives you that experience quickly.
I received a mantra from my Guru almost 20 years ago. I wasn’t really sure what a Guru is or what a mantra is, but I recognized the power of the mantra quickly because I couldn’t stop thinking of it. I was drawn to it.
The mantra given by a Shaktipat Guru is the direct route to experiencing your Self. Your real Self, not the self you normally identify with. Like thinking you are your body, or you are your thoughts, or you are your job and any of the other multitudes of selves that you identify yourself as being. Your real Self is beyond all of those roles you play in this world. The mantra that given by a Shaktipat Guru will give you an experience of your Self.
I forget about this from time to time. I am typically overly serious, tending towards dark moods. Sometimes I get so far into those moods that I forget about mantra. Recently I had not been focusing on mantra, and had begun to slip into my darker state of mind. It was making me really depressed and withdrawn.
Then I remembered my mantra. I made a decision to repeat it out loud for 15 minutes and see what happens. Immediately I could feel a deeper sense of Self coming from a deeper dimension of my being. It was powerful and tangible, the difference I felt right away. It was still powerful the next morning — I was present, I was cheerful and I was even smiling! It’s truly miraculous. The mantra is the super highway to the Self. But you have to repeat the mantra to find what is hidden in it.
This is explained in the yoga texts:
Cittam mantra.h — Shiva Sutras 2:1
By intensive awareness of one’s identity with the Highest Reality enshrined in a mantra and thus becoming identical with that Reality, the mind itself becomes mantra. — Jaidev Singh
The sutra spells it out. The highest Reality (the Self, your Self) is enshrined in the mantra given by a Master. After receiving the mantra, you find what’s enshrined by repeating it; it’s like unwrapping a gift to see what’s inside. Once you find what’s enshrined in the mantra, you know yourself as the Self. Beyond that, the sutra promises your mind itself will become mantra, a major upgrade.
Swami Nirmalananda says, “To gain yoga’s promise, simply do what the sages tell you to do. For your mind to become mantra, simply repeat mantra enough times that your mind vibrates at a higher frequency. How many times is enough? It is different for every person, but it exceeds the number of times you review your worries. Which will serve you better, repeating your worries or repeating mantra?”
The average person thinks around 65,000 thoughts a day, with most of those thoughts creating your worldly identities. Yet you can repeat mantra silently for the classical 108 times in only 1 minute. How many repetitions before you become identified with the Self that is enshrined in the mantra? I don’t have the answer for you but I can guarantee you won’t regret finding it out for yourself.
Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati is a Shaktipat Guru, who can give you a mantra that reveals your Self to you. It works because of the blessings of the Masters in her lineage, each of whom found the Self by using the mantra. The experience of Self is enshrined in the mantra. Because of that, you will also be able to find what’s inside you, deeper within, beyond your mind. You are more than you think you are.
OM svaroopa svasvabhavah namo namah
To your Inherent Divinity again and again I bow.
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