Yoga Chanting as a Path to Spiritual Goals in India

The centerpiece of Hinduism, the dominant religion of India, is the transmigration of the soul-that is, the passage of the soul from one body to another after death-as determined by the force, called karma, of one's actions in life. Liberation-that is, release from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth-can be achieved by working out karmic residues.

Throughout all forms of Hinduism, sound (including its heightened form, music) plays an important role in the quest for liberation. Sound comes in two forms. That which is heard is "struck" or "manifested" sound. But it cannot exist without its ideal counterpart, "unstruck" or "unmanifested" sound.

Unmanifested sound is identical with Brahman (the creative principle of the universe and the ultimate ground of all being) and is immanent as a divine sonic presence in every human. Each individual must find a way to realize the connection between manifested sound and the sacred unmanifested sound within, thus coming into direct contact with Brahman and achieving the goal of liberation.

One means to that end is music. "The right kind of music...serves to break the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth." (Bake, 196)

Yoga Chanting
Chanting, widely practiced throughout India, is an important expression of the Indian belief in the spiritual power of sound. Most Hindu spiritual aspirants, regardless of their religious preferences or philosophical beliefs, accept the discipline of Yoga, and central to the efficacy of Yoga is chanting.

The Sanskrit word yoga means "yoking" and, by extension, "discipline." Yoga is a method or a set of practices by which one can insure that one produces no further karmic residues to cause future rebirths.

The system consists of an eightfold path through progressively more abstract concepts, during which the Yogi enters higher and higher meditation states, culminating in the contentless trance that constitutes liberation. That is, the Yogi gradually suppresses all activity of the body, the mind, and the will till the innermost self realizes its distinction from them and attains liberation.

A primary tenet of Yoga, as of Hinduism itself, is that at the core of one's innermost being is a divine sonic substance, and the emanation of vocal sound from deep within the body is a kind of bringing forth of that divine sonic substance. That substance is nada, which is Brahman conceived as the cosmic, primordial sound underlying all phenomena. Nada is the unstruck, unmanifested sound that reverberates everywhere at all times. Through Yoga vocalizing, one can withdraw from the gross human senses and become aware of the nada reverberating in the central channel of one's own subtle body.

One method of classification divides the nada within the human form into nine levels associated with different psychic-energy centers called chakras (Sanskrit cakra means literally "wheel" or "circle"). At the eighth level one realizes the true self, and at the ninth level one realizes the divine within oneself.

Mantra
To attune themselves to the divine sonic substance within their bodies, Yogis use a technique called a mantra (Sanskrit, "sacred formula"). In Hinduism (as well as Buddhism) a mantra is a mystical syllable, word, phrase, sentence, or verse used during ritual or meditation.

Each mantra is believed to have a deep affinity with a particular deity or spiritual force. By chanting the mantra, the devotee becomes linked with that deity or force.

Some Hindus use mantras for magic. They believe that by chanting a mantra they interiorize the divine energies associated with its deity or spiritual force. The accumulation of such energies leads to magic power. The efficacy of the mantras is said to come from an innate power in the holy language of Sanskrit. The language is held to be not a historical tongue of convention but rather an emanation of Being in sound. Mantras based on those sacred Sanskrit sounds touch the essence of ultimate truth and are thus able to work magic.

However, mantras also serve in the mystical quest for personal liberation. A mantra often initiates a period of meditation, focuses attention, removes karmic ignorance or impurities from the self, and stores up spiritual energy within the seeker.

Some mantras are sacred verses from the Vedas, but any Sanskrit word or syllable, or combination of words or syllables, may be used as a mantra. Chanting Vedic mantras is believed to produce spiritual effects that benefit not only the self but also the entire cosmos.

Om
Mantras having no semantic value but great efficacy in spiritual quests are called bija-mantras ("seed-sounds"), the best known and most powerful being om. Om is the mantra par excellence because it is regarded as the immanent, manifested form of the divine unmanifested sound-that is, Brahman, the creative principle of the universe. The sacred nature of the syllable is described in the original Vedas, in the Upanishads, and in later Hindu texts.

The syllable is usually spelled om in English because it is so spelled in transliterated Sanskrit. However, in Sanskrit the vowel o is constitutionally a diphthong, contracted from a and u. Therefore, om is actually pronounced more like aum.

The conception of om, or aum, as the inward-dwelling immanent Brahman has a physiological basis. The correct pronunciation of the syllable requires a comprehensive use of one's breathing and voice-production system. In the innermost reaches of the diaphragm is generated the ah sound. It passes through the throat and narrows into the oo sound in the mouth. Finally the sound is cut off by the lips with an mm. Thus are fully utilized the basic forms of articulation: the guttural ah, the labial oo, and the nasal mm. (Holroyde, 58-59)

According to the Hindu philosopher Swami Vivekananda, "these three letters A, U, M, pronounced in combination as Om, may well be the generalized symbol of all possible sounds." (Prabhavananda, 232)

Brahman, then, is represented by one's most comprehensive sound from within. Moreover, Yogis say that through meditation one may hear om vibrating through the universe. (Prabhavananda, 233)

Musicomystical Cosmos
Uniquely among the higher civilizations, India created-and still maintains-a music system that is probably the one most thoroughly imbued with a musicomystical conception of the cosmos and of the ultimate reality underlying it.

The basic premise is that Brahman, the supreme essence and creative principle of the universe, is pure sound. The manifest universe, including each human, is a streaming forth of awakening sound that takes the form of "dancing" (vibrating) matter. As each human body is part of the continuum of all matter, so each human soul is an emanation of the universal divine spirit.

Therefore, the individual soul, called Atman (the ultimate as discovered introspectively), is identical with the universal essence of soul, Brahman (the ultimate as discovered objectively). "Endless change without, and at the heart of the change an abiding reality-Brahman. Endless change within, and at the heart of the change an abiding reality-Atman....Brahman and Atman are one and the same." (Prabhavananda, 55)

The Hindu's ultimate goal is to break the cycle of existence (birth-death-rebirth) by reabsorbing the individual soul (Atman) into the sonic sea of divinity (Brahman) whence it came. The goal is achieved when the seeker reaches the supreme state of consciousness, realizes the truth about the identity of the soul and the Absolute, and becomes one with Brahman.

This spiritual epiphany is conceived of sometimes as a state of knowledge (not intellectual knowledge but "an immediate, direct illumination in one's own soul" of the Atman and Brahman) and sometimes as a state of liberation (freedom not only from imperfections and limitations but also from the cycle of existence). (Prabhavananda, 61-62, 245)

At the heart of this spiritual quest lies sound and its heightened form, music. Through Yoga chanting, humans can discover the divine unmanifested sound (Brahman) that vibrates within themselves and can thus become mystically reabsorbed into the music of the universe.
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