Do Mantras work? I’ve tried a couple and I see no difference. Anyways, how can saying a bunch of words make any difference?
Have you heard this? You may have even thought it. So here is how mantras work
Science says that the entire world is a bunch of vibrations. Let’s say that we had the special ability to tweak, improve or decrease an existing vibration, wouldn’t you take it? Sure, you would! There are several innovations/ inventions that extend the charge of a battery, increase potency of drugs or even accentuate performance of a person.
Mantras work differently on different lips, in different heads and in different bodies. Let us say that again. The same set of mantras will behave differently on different lips, locations and even climates. Is that Confusing?
Let us simplify it.
Take a look at an echo chamber in a lab. The size of the chamber, materials used, thickness of the walls, all make a difference in the quality, potency & intensity of the echoes. Now take a look at the human skull. The eye sockets, cranial cavity, tympanic membranes, nasal passages and sinus cavities form the right echo chamber for vachika japa (Spoken chant)
Many of us have been told that mental chanting is better than voicing a chant. So why are we concerned with this? Good or bad is only a perspective. In our culture, we never categorized processes as good or bad. We experienced a process and figured whether it works for the individual or not. When it worked, we fine-tuned it to get the best out of the system. One good example of vachika japa in the last century was Bhagwan Ramana Maharishi's disciple, Kavyakantha Ganapati Muni. His sadhana was so intense, that if you held a slab of butter half feet above his head, it would melt with just the heat produced in the Muni's body.
Anyone who has studied bathymetry or depth sounding using echoes will tell you that echo quality changes with the presence of liquid. The cerebral fluid, tymphanic fluid, saliva and the lachrymal glands produce the right amount of fluid in the cranial chamber to ensure that a chant that originates in the lower belly, is subjected to the right number of echo/ vibrations so that the benefit of the mantra is doubled, tripled, quadrupled etc. Just the human body by itself is quite optimally built for mantra sadhana. Tantriks and Siddhas went a few steps further to create caves chambers, temple chambers or holes in the ground, to use the density of earth to intensify the chant emanated within it.
If a man lived to 80 years, half of that went away in sleep. A quarter of the remaining went away with eating, working for existence and procreation. So with the active 10-20 years that a man had for working on his sadhana, it was important to amplify every action and to intensify the number of chants. Using Hata yoga to tone musculature and bone density for sadhana also significantly increases quality and quantity of numbers.
Why the difference in numbers? The difference of whether you can double, triple etc depends on a couple of physical aspects which we will cover at a later stage. For now, it should be understood that the human body is best suited for mantra. (Even tantra &yantra which we will cover in another article). Even alien skulls do not have the finesse of the human skull that has evolved over many millenia.
We are blessed.