What Place Does Mantras Have in Energy Work

[TransPersonal]

Personally the only thing I have ever found that remotely brings about energy sensations in my body to be tactile imaging. But I hear people say from time to time about using mantra as part of energy work. Frankly I don’t understand this one bit. Unless you believe there is some inherent power in a mantra (which I don’t) how else would mantras help? Besides even if there were some supernatural power resident in a mantra I read unless one receives them directly from his/her guru, that if one takes them from books they are completely useless. My understanding of mantras is that they are useful as a focus for meditation to dispel unwanted thoughts. How can they help in raising and directing energy? I know to engage in energy work requires deep relaxation for which meditation can be helpful (among other things) but some people claim that mantra in itself helps in raising vaster amounts of energy and registering it more easily, unfortunately they never gave a detailed explanation. So I wish to know what part exactly does mantra have to play in the direct manipulation of energies? Does anyone here use mantras as part of their practice? If so how exactly? Any feedback is appreciated.

[soul elevation]

i think some mantras, depending on how you say it (the tonality or pitch) helps to create a vibration or help to vibrate the area of the body you're focusing on as you say it and as a result channels energy to you or awaken energy within you.

[Tom]

It isn't that simple. It is nice that there are many tools available because what works really well for some people might be useless for you. Even something that has been helpful in the past may stop working for you from time to time. It is possible that mantra isn't a particularly good route for you, or maybe you just haven't found the right one.

Each of the chakras has a number of petals with it, and each petal has a letter of the Sanskrit alphabet on it. The number of petals matches the number of letters in the Sanskrit alphabet.

A while back I was given (for free) a zip archive with mantras and a file with the Sanskrit alphabet and a chant in english. There was a Lama involved in the recording. Since I was given the recording just for being on a mailing list, I'm thinking it is probably okay to pass it on - I don't recall the way the e-mail was worded, but I'm almost positive they even said I could forward the original download link. I saved the file to my box.net account:

http://www.box.net/shared/static/rbr3g2ffzr.zip

FYI it was http://www.mymonkbuddy.com/ who sent it to me. They have something similar to Centerpointe's holosync levels, but I'm finding the first level of the program even works better for me than holosync did.

[White Wolf]

Setting aside matras for a moment, and think about what happens with you commit sound with your vocal cords. Your cord resolated with the varied tension placed upon them by your throat mussles. The whole thoat, mouth, head, and neck vibrate with varying resolances throughout the whole region, which gives rise to the differences in voice. These sensations produced by the vibrations can quite easily be felt with a minimal amount of awareness.

Now let us imagine that if you are very still, and very perceptive, you can feel that these vibrations resonate in other parts of your body as well. You'll quickly find that indeed it does, and it changes with pitch.

A bit more investigation will tell you that you can increase the sensations of these vibrations by relaxing your body even more and you find a direct correspndance. The more you relax, the more and deeper you feel the vibrations throughout your who body. Indeed, you may even relize that it is a relaxation aid.

Mantras do the same thing with the inclusion of rhythm and word accosiation to get your body to respond on cue by conditioning. Also, by varying pitch and increasing relaxation, you can target areas of your body for more stimulation simply from the vibrations of your vocal cords. The process helps highlight areas of problem (they don't vibrate like they should and could indicate muscle tension, possibly from energetic blockages) or increase awareness that can be used in conjuntion with other techniques like tactile imaging and/or traditional imaging/visualization.

[TransPersonal]

Each of the chakras has a number of petals with it, and each petal has a letter of the Sanskrit alphabet on it. The number of petals matches the number of letters in the Sanskrit alphabet.

I have also read that in many of my yoga books but do you take that literally. Because I think most of this esoteric stuff is meant to be interpreted metaphorically. I know yogis and Buddhists still partake of meditations where they visualize letters and petals on their chakras but I think this may be because its easier to keep concentration on those areas when you have such colorful and interesting visualizations to maintain. So I think this may be for the purpose of convenience more than anything else. I think the focus itself is what is responsible for the actual stimulation and activation of chakras. I have a hard time believing the chakras have actual letter shapes and petals in them. And if so then why Sanskrit letters or in the Tibetan tradition, Tibetan characters? Why not some equally ancient alphabet like Hebrew or Arabic or even modern English. So yeah, I don’t know if this is so on a literal level but then again never having seen a chakra clairvoyantly I could just as easily be wrong. However the authorities still maintain that certain chakras have certain “beej” or seed mantras like you said. I think the theory behind that is when the chakras vibrate they issue certain humming sounds and this is the particular mantra to the particular chakra and that by chanting this mantra you in turn activate that chakra.

I fully agree with what you said about different people finding different things useful and other things useless. However I remember earlier on when I thought a certain skill wasn’t for me just because I was unable to do it effectively. But since then have come to learn it through trial and error. I guess if I disregarded it then and there I would have never gotten okay at it. I am thinking of mantras in a similar way. I have always found their use completely ineffective and even irrational but from all the wonderful feedback I hear from people I’m hoping I can accomplish the same feats as well through mantra use. I don’t know, maybe I should seriously take up mantras for a while in a controlled manner for a certain period and judging by whether this causes any improvements or not, decide to keep or not keep going. I guess it’s the potential which intrigues me.

By the way thank you for the audio files but unfortunately my computer has a broken sound card, maybe if I ever get it fixed or when I buy a new computer I would take a listen.

[Tom]

It sounds like you have made up your mind about it. I used to feel the same way.

[MysticSage816]

Imo, he was just asking if that's what you meant. Even if you could see letters on these petals clairvoyantly, it wouldn't be like a medical examiner could see them :) That was a little quick to judge on your part, the way I see it. Instead of answering his question about what you meant, you assumed that he assumed the answer :? Anyway, I'm not writing to put anyone down, I'm just interested myself in getting a little bit of clarification on the petal thing because I've never heard of it before :) Thanks!

James

[Tom]

Going from base chakra to crown chakra ...

http://www.zentrajapan.com/chakra-mooladhara.html

http://www.zentrajapan.com/chackra/muladhara-3.jpg

http://www.zentrajapan.com/chakra-swadhisthana.html

http://www.zentrajapan.com/chackra/svadhisthana-2.jpg

http://www.zentrajapan.com/chakra-manipura.html

http://www.zentrajapan.com/chackra/manipura-2.jpg

http://www.zentrajapan.com/chakra-anahata.html

http://www.zentrajapan.com/chackra/anahata-4.jpg

http://www.zentrajapan.com/chakra-vishudhi.html

http://www.zentrajapan.com/chackra/visudha-sounds.jpg

http://www.zentrajapan.com/chakra-ajna.html

http://www.zentrajapan.com/chackra/ajna-1.jpg

http://www.zentrajapan.com/chakra-sahasrara.html

http://www.zentrajapan.com/chackra/Sahasraramed.png

The crown chakra has 1000 petals.

If you really want to know, Why Sanskrit and not Tibetan or English ... ? it is because Sanskrit was built to serve a purpose for meditation and energy work. The energy work came first and Sanskrit revolves around it, not the other way around.

If you really want to go into it in painful detail,
http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/english/trika_overview/tattvasanskrit.html

[TransPersonal]

Ok, I think now I’m beginning to see that mantra use has a place in energy work dealing with the chakras. For example if you are engaged in a meditation where you are imagining your chakras bursting and overflowing with energies and then moving down your arms and between your hands, etc. That in such work you can chant a mantra to first activate a chakra from which you are borrowing energy from. But what about mantra use in energy work which does not utilize the "chakral system"? For instance in those exercises when you directly draw in the energy from the cosmos and into some area of your body which does not contain a chakra. In that type of energy work is mantra practice applicable? and if so how exactly does it help? I guess this is what I'm asking.

[Tom]

It is believed that through mantra jaap, the devotee attains concentration and focus on the chosen deity or the main idea of the mantra. One can attain peace of mind quickly by chanting mantra. With prolonged and constant practice, the inherent power of the Mantra (Mantra-Shakti) will be awakened, which will fill your very existence with the Divinity of the Mantra.

You do not borrow energy to give to a mantra; the mantra itself is energy and that is why you do not translate a mantra. The meaning of a mantra is its energy and not the meaning of the words themselves. It is typical to repeat a mantra a great many times - one person who works with mantras told me that a good guideline is 125,000 repetitions for every syllable in the mantra. You might want to do several thousand every day to get that in in a couple of years, and at that rate, you can expect to start seeing results in your life after 6 to 8 weeks.

The only reason why I don't work with mantra is that I don't have a good way to keep count of my repetitions, and I need to keep count to keep myself focussed on the task. It is easy to become drowsy when you repeat the same mantra over and over and over and over .... and every time you say the mantra it has to be a quality repetition with awareness.

[MysticSage816]

ok, thanks for explaining Tom. I just have one more question, it's usually on the astral plane that you can see these letters? I guess so since that's when you can see your chakras :P Sorry if I seemed a little rude earlier, but it's hard to get your meaning across without the spoken word sometimes ><

[Tom]

ok, thanks for explaining Tom. I just have one more question, it's usually on the astral plane that you can see these letters? I guess so since that's when you can see your chakras :P Sorry if I seemed a little rude earlier, but it's hard to get your meaning across without the spoken word sometimes ><

If you hadn't said something I probably wouldn't have looked up which petals go where on which chakras. I really don't know how they decided how many petals go on each of the chakras and if they really actually saw the written letters for a reason. My clairvoyance is nowhere near that good. It can be a bit frustrating because some authors will go so far as to tell you that you need to memorize all the Sanskrit letters and be able to visualize them to be able to properly work with your chakras and others will tell you that you just need to be able to visualize a bit of white light at each of them. The important thing is that every time you speak Sanskrit for any purpose at all, especially chanting a mantra, you are guaranteed to be stimulating your chakras.