Mantras

WHAT do we know about Nature behind her veil? Everything in Nature has its keynote, and if we use the proper invocation we receive an immediate response. Place two pianos in a room, strike the G string of one and the other will vibrate in harmony. This is one of the secrets of Nature’s magic: when one gains a response from a thing one is attuned to its consciousness. In this manner Nature operates and we relate our mind to her thought. The murmur of brooks, the sounds of winds and spray, are classed as sound-waves of a similar notation, and before we hear those sounds we will hear Nature’s keynote. When we use her magic we first tune ourselves to this note, and this will unite us with that particular stream or waterfall we wish to hear though it may be far away. This is another example of the determinative energy of Nature preceding sound as it precedes thought.

To wait upon a Master is to be his disciple, and to be his disciple is to become an instrument of his energy. The law of the magician is not easy to learn; for it is very exacting and no one can gain such knowledge without careful and difficult training.

Just as we aspire to become the instrument for the Dayspring of Youth and manifest in its intelligence, so must the magician be immersed in his own individual Dayspring of Youth before he can make anything obey his direction. That is, he must do two things: be a ruler in Nature’s consciousness and still remain her pupil. In everything in this science there is a definite bridge to be crossed before one can gain the approval of any power.

Masters of the Masters of magic renounce everything and retreat from humanity. Then they fast and curb their desires until they are conquered. They no longer impress their wishes upon their navel tract, for in it lies the instrument for magic, and the strength of the entire system is drawn from it. There is also an element that can be used for the greatest evil as well as the greatest good, and the magician has to choose between these two principles. The good hastens us to our godlike destination, whereas evil hastens us into the depths of our Secret Enemy where we become its instrument. If we wish to develop our magical powers we place ourselves within this energy and use its governing force as we direct it: be it for good or evil. The object in magic is to overcome any force that opposes us. People who aspire to their Innermost are not greatly interested in phenomena of this kind; for they realise that such manifestations do not hasten them on their Path to their Innermost.

In our central system we observe a thin membrane covering the organs that intermittently registers the finer currents of Nature that pass through them during day and night. These organs are sounding boards held together by their atomic structures. Each one registers a different wave-length and their vibrations emit an audible sound. Our different physical nerve cells are similar to these and are also attuned to receive certain vibrations. To evoke the activity of our latent atomic centres we use the seven vowels of Nature, called mantras.

In the future the physician will use these in place of his usual pharmacopoeia. We begin by sounding our note in Nature, and learn to vibrate each centre within us. For instance: if our atmosphere is dormant and sluggish we awaken the centre at the base of the throat, and feel a big inrush of atoms that clarifies the atmosphere and places us in contact with the elemental Lords of the Mind. This is a form of physical culture for the mind’s atmosphere, and the most insensitive person should sense this clarification of his atmosphere. Sometimes an actor, when unconsciously liberating this force, will succeed in attuning his audience to his mind. This is what he calls “Getting over the foot-lights.”

These mantras are secret and taught only to the sincere seeker. After calling up a centre by sound invocation, we listen-in, and, if our aspiration is pure, our Watchman or Advocate links us to that centre we wish to contact. All the different spheres of elemental nature are called up by this method. We can also evoke any condition of a lower nature much more easily than the higher; because it is easier for us to think outwardly than inwardly.

We cleanse our mental atmospheres by sound mantras; also when we leave our bodies on a mental flight we bathe our atmosphere in Nature’s finer element, and this cleanses us as water cleanses our physical body.

No matter how great the tumult about a Yogi, he can easily shut off all outside communications by listening-in.

The primitive man understood these mantras and some of the Indian tribes of America chant the same mantric sounds that we hear in the East. The Zuni Indians use the same Eastern mantric chants to the Sun.

At a certain period in a student’s development he is given a sacred word to meditate upon and sound its invocation, though this would be useless if written down. There comes a time when a student is given his real name. This is his key to his attained states of consciousness and unlocks to him his lost possessions in Nature that, through magic, he has sealed up before incarnating and which was to be opened on his return to his consciousness in his secondary system.

When the sincere seeker after truth passes over, he gravitates to his own higher level and his great recreation is to reopen his lost possessions in Nature. He collects this material and seals it by magic so that no one can tap his treasure save himself. Knowing of its great worth to humanity, he seeks, during his next incarnation, to contact his inner spheres and reveal these treasures to the world. It is by the use of this key—his real name—that he unlocks these.

When the student wishes to vibrate his physical, secondary, and central system, he calls upon the super-Solar force—the determinative principle in Nature—Sol our physical sun, and upon Mercury—the Lords of the Mind—by sounding their notes. This harmonises his bodies to receive their streams of atomic energy and the vibrations of his Innermost.

The Early Mass in the Roman Church was supposed to do this, but, if you asked the Church authorities, they would reply that as far as they knew the celebration of this was in memory of events that happened in the past. Singing in churches is but the reflection of an ancient ceremony of mantric invocation.

When entering a village compound the Yogi generally produces some phenomena to attract the crowd. He chants a mantra to vibrate the physical, psychic, and mental bodies of his audience, then expounds some simple text from one of his sacred books. Vibrating, his body vibrates the bodies of his audience and allows their higher selves to be impressed by his discourse; thus his hearers will remember what he has said.

When we enter our secondary system we hear Nature’s note: a theurgic wave of sound inaudible to normal senses. This is called upon when the adept wishes to produce natural phenomena; for if we take an energy into ourselves, and entwine it about our own wave-length, we have a keynote that may only be used as Nature wishes it.

Nature’s notes increase and decrease during the day and our centres respond and change over in harmony with them.

Viewing the world from an inner state man sees this world as an illusion of his own creation. Change the mind into Nature’s vibration, and Earth will be seen as a vapour. The hills and mountains disappear; the surface of the world passes away and through this mental change Nature reveals her secrets and we seek to obey her laws.

The reader might say: “But how I would hate to lose the beauty of this world.” Nature’s recompense is threefold, giving us three attributes that are so much more wonderful that we shudder when we return to her outer veil. These three attributes are: wisdom, virtue, understanding. Not the wisdom, the virtue, or the understanding of this world, but their higher counterparts.

When we enter our secondary system we are told to sense what we have gained from our objective education. Passing through life to life and re-experiencing them on this plane, we find that only that which we have experienced and learned to GOVERN in ourselves was our true education. Later, when we enter our Transformation period, we REMEMBER the wisdom gained from each individual life and see how often we missed the true experience for which we had incarnated. We witness our failures and see how difficult it was to regain that experience we had determined upon when incarnating. Certain well-known figures in history remembered their past lives and places they lived in. Pythagoras is a good example.

Knowing some of the incarnations of a friend, a man of great distinction, I took him to an out-of-the-way place in Paris and stood him over the floor of a dungeon wherein he had been confined and died in another life. I then asked him if he received any sensation, and he suddenly burst out crying; for the remembrance of this past life returned and he re-experienced his torment.

It is not pleasant to go through such experiences, such as remembering having been burned at the stake. One sees the excited mob, and the mind travels across the river to the palace where the despot lived who gave the order for this execution, that one knew was watching from his terrace, and the buildings loom up again as they did in the past.

Students are sometimes taught a process of ordeal by fire, so that later they no longer fear it. This is used by the Zend priests of Japan for the cure of disease. The fighting classes of Japan are also trained to endure pain, and this is why the West wonders over their fighting qualities.

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We do not believe that the real knowledge regarding reincarnation will be given forth for some time, though it has become common talk among occultists and students of Buddhist philosophy. The Sufis, beside other mystics, understood this; but did not dwell very lengthily upon this subject. Later we hope to publish a pamphlet upon the esoteric side of it.

There are questions man has never asked himself; secret questions that the Innermost could solve. Like children in a dark night of existence, we wander about seeking to find for ourselves a way out of this darkness. Yet we never ask ourselves those questions that would bring a response from our Innermost. It is generally towards the end of one’s life that one asks a CERTAIN question which, if put in youth, would have been the means of changing one’s entire life, and one realises how many years of fruitless effort one could have been saved had this been done.

How many people in meditation have ever asked themselves questions as though speaking to their Innermost? They will ask the Reality—God—for things, and they speak to Him; but do they ever receive a direct reply? The way to the Reality is through our Innermost—that part of the Reality within us—and if we aspire, and ask a certain question, when our Innermost replies a problem every serious seeker asks will be solved. This is symbolised in Wagner’s Parsifal.