An example of mantram art: writing the mantram to fill in the page, or design.
Thanks to each of you for sharing your striving with the mantram over these weeks. It has been wonderful to strive together. For the final week of Mantram Month, we invite you think creatively about your current mantram habits.
Is there a time recently when you used the mantram in a new way? What was it? How did you remember it?
Have you ever been surprised by a time that you remembered to use the mantram? Is there a way you could extend that?
Or, if you could choose any time at all during your regular daily routine that you’d like to say the mantram more, when would it be? Is there something you can do to help you remember, or work towards this time?
We’d love to hear your ideas about creating a new mantram moment, or any general reflections you have about Mantram Month.
This is an excerpt from The Mantram Handbook by Easwaran.
All spiritual disciplines converge by the time we reach this state, just as all the great religions converge for those who have realized God in their own consciousness. At this stage – but only at this stage – there is very little difference between repetition of the mantram and meditation and total concentration on something outside, because our consciousness is unified from the surface to the very depths. Then concentration is our natural state, and it becomes effortless and natural to focus our complete attention on anything we are doing. When we are talking to someone, we see no one but him, hear no one but her; and when we give our complete attention like this, people cannot help but respond. We can turn our attention to any problem and penetrate to the heart of it, which is the secret of genius in any field. Now, however, we will see only the unity of life, and all our energy will be directed to solving the biggest problems the world faces today – violence, the despoliation of the environment, the disintegration of the family.
Sri Ramakrishna tells us that being established in the mantram is like receiving a pension after many years of faithful service. When a professor retires as professor emeritus, his pay is sent regularly to his home. He still has a little pigeon-hole on the campus where his mail comes, but he doesn’t have to do any work if he doesn’t want to, like grading examinations or sitting on committees. In my university days in India, I knew a few of these professors emeriti who were more regular than many of the regular professors. When you are a regular professor, you sometimes feel a little reluctant to go to the campus or sit down to work, because you know that you have got to do it. But when you become professor emeritus there is no one to compel you to work, so you are free to work just for the joy of it. You come in regularly, you get your pay, you get your privileges and your honors, but you don’t have any responsibilities. Similarly, when you become established in the mantram, the Self, whose employees we all are, says, “You have been working all these years, repeating the mantram and observing the other disciplines from nine to five and at night and on weekends too. You can sit back now, and I will repeat the mantram for you.”
Of course, like the professor emeritus, you can still repeat the mantram consciously if you like; the Self will not dock your pay. Shankara, a great mystic of medieval India, says that when you repeat the mantram consciously like this after becoming established in it, when you have nothing further to gain for yourself, the mantram is credited to those to whom you want the credit to go. You repeat your mantram, and those around you will find themselves a little more selfless, a little more secure.”
Of course, these marvelous developments do not take place overnight. They take a long time, but the mantram begins its work of purifying our consciousness long before we reach the unitive state. At first, most of the work goes into trying to open the door of our mind a little so that the mantram can slip in. Once it gets in under the surface level, it can go on with its work of purification even when we are not consciously repeating it. But at first, it is all we can do to open the door of the mind even a little crack. All the time that we are repeating the mantram at the post office, while walking, while washing dishes, while falling asleep, we are working away at opening that door to our consciousness. When we can use the mantram to overcome likes and dislikes or to change old habits, we are beginning to open the door just a little, and when we learn to repeat the mantram to transform fear and anger and greed, we are not only opening the door but turning on the porch light and putting out the welcome mat too.
Once the mantram gets its foot in the door, it looks around inside and sees what a messy housekeeper the ego doesn’t dust, it doesn’t sweep, and it can’t stand to throw anything out, so our consciousness is bulging with photo albums, old projects we lost interest in halfway through, tapes of agitated conversations with our friends twelve years ago, even old childhood toys. The mantram slips inside and begins to straighten up the living room; it clears out the cobwebs, throws out the old magazines, and opens up all the windows to let in a little fresh air. Compared to this, those stables Hercules had to clean were like the house beautiful, but gradually the mantram will go through everything room by room. Only when the entire house is spotless from cellar to attic is it ready for its rightful owner: your real Self.