Thanks. Go for it.
Asuri,
"There are a few billion Hindus and Buddhists who would disagree with Amir’s statement. You do not hear them chanting “Amir” or “Fred”. "
Even if the whole world had done it, that does not mean the whole world is correct. In the Way, it is not a matter of strength with numbers or conforming to a certain pattern of thinking. While there are many working towards the Way, very few ever come to it’s realization simply because they are far too entangled in their own discipline, clinging to their belief systems, religions, and philosophies. And being part of a tradition, before you even enter into the search for Truth, your mind has already become prejudiced.
Yes, any symbol which represents the divine can be used as a means towards one’s enlightenment, concentration upon “Om” is not the only method. For the Hindu, it may be Shiva or Krishna, for the Zen disciple it may be word “Mu” - which is the essence of the whole training of Zen, for the Pure Land Buddhist it is the Nembutsu - the name of Amitabha Buddha, for the Sufi it may be Allah, for the Qabalist it may be the divine name Eheieh (I am), which is the highest divine name in their system, and you can go on and on finding as many different approaches towards the same phenomenon. And that is just with mantra yoga, one is not considering any of the other approaches. In bakhti yoga, again, any object of devotion will do - it does not have to be the symbol “Om”.
“It signifies or symbolizes or expresses something very specific, and has a particular resonance.”
It does. But it is not the only approach.
“The yantras and tantric deities used for visualization also have specific meanings.”
They will mean whatever one wants them to mean, they are just a skillful means. In Tibet, you will not find a shadow of any of the Hindu deities left, and their methods work perfectly well. Whether you are using a deity of some particular tradition is not the essential phenomenon. You can even invent your own, and in fact in tantra there is a whole science as to how to create your own thought and energy forms which can function independently of one’s own consciousness.
“They are not a substitute for “Om”.”
They can be.
“Likewise, the imaginations of our own mind are not a substitute for real knowledge.”
Knowledge by it’s very nature is relative. And the moment you cling to knowledge as though it were the ultimate, you are already suffering from your own hallucinations.
The bija mantras, of which OM is one(ajana), are not words or names, they are simply sounds. Sounds which have no meaning. These are said to be root sounds that the chakras make and hence why they are intonated to vibrate a particular chakra. If this is true, then it does not matter if you are Hindu, Buddhist, Christian or Muslim, you will hear those sounds.
There is probably a lot of validity behind this, because bear in mind Sanskrit is the only language where the letters are classified by what area of the body they are produced from, but in Panini grammar this is mostly the face region. I did, however, notice some remarkable observations myself when playing with the bija mantras one day. I noticed OM was naturally produced when keeping the mouth gaping wide open and breathing to make a sound, then gradually closing it. The sound made is as follows: Ahhhhh oooouuu mmmmmm. I also found it very interesting that the mmmmm sound at end vibrates exactly the part it is suppose to vibrate: the ajana.
I have tested the other bija mantras and have indeed found that they vibrate the area of the body they are suppose to vibrate. Ham vibrates the vishudda. Apparently, it is common knowledge in professional singing, that different sounds come from different areas of the body.
What makes my body truly vibrate has always been Mozart’s Requiem, C minor Great Mass, and Bach’s Organ work Fantasie in Gminor, Bruckner’s 4th symphony… I get my out of body experience and elevation via these sort of classical pieces. These sort of musical pieces activate incredible amounts of spiritual energy in me, believe it or not!
That’s not quite right. They are syllables, not words, so they don’t have meaning in the same sense that words have meaning. But they are symbolic, they are symbols of something. The short passage that I quoted from Tripura Tapini explains the symbolism of both “hrim” and “Om”. A large portion of that Upanishad is devoted to explaining the symbolism of a sixteen syllable mantra that it contains. Every syllable means something. You don’t have to believe me, you can read it for yourself.
You continue to convince me that you don’t really know what you’re talking about. There are many tantric deities used in Tibertan Buddhism that have Hindu counterparts. And there is a definite symbolism connected with each one. In the Sri Vidya school, there are nearly a hundred deities. Each one represents a particular aspect of the goddess. They definitely do not mean whatever you want them to mean.
In Tibetan Buddhism, they have a concept of a Yidam deity, which is one that you choose because it has particular qualities that you would like to develop in yourself. The Yidam deity is a mental construction, and has no real existence outside of your own mind. This kind of practice is different than contemplating the pranava.
For someone who is supposed to be realized, you seem to have a cynical attitude toward these things.
I have recently become a lot more relaxed in my views regarding personal gods(Saguna Brahman) and mythology(puranas) after discovering a flaw in my reasoning that Nirguna Brahman is the real Brahman and Sadguna Brahman is pure imagination, that even Nirguna Brahman is based on a linguistic definitions like self, essence, being, infinite, absolute, so why are they anymore valid than personal definitions like creator, preserver, destroyer, almighty, god, father, mother, son, daughter, teacher, friend, lover.
I have also realised that Saguna Brahman is not completely arbitrary at all. That it refers to actual roles and functions that exist in reality. There is definitely a creation principle, a preserving principle, and destroying principle. There is definitely something that has a fatherly aspect, a motherly aspect, a son aspect, a daughter aspect, teacher aspect, friend aspect and even love aspect. Otherwise, they would not exist. Thus my understanding of the ultimate divine reality has grown to encompass personality as well, and thereby also relaxed my attitudes on bhakti and the mythology that bhakti demands.
I now maintain that bhakti, jnana, karma, raja and kriya are all essential on the path of ones holistic spiritual development.
That’s good. I noticed the change. Seems like a more healthy way to go. I don’t know why you have to maintain anything.
Asuri,
“There are many tantric deities used in Tibertan Buddhism that have Hindu counterparts.”
If you want, you can find counterparts everywhere, not just in the East.
“And there is a definite symbolism connected with each one”
There is, and each one is a skillful means, just as all symbols are skillful means - a finger pointing to the moon.
“In the Sri Vidya school, there are nearly a hundred deities. Each one represents a particular aspect of the goddess. They definitely do not mean whatever you want them to mean.”
As all of these are human invention - created as devices to access certain aspects of the energy of nature, they will mean whatever you want them to mean because it is the mind which has given them meaning. You can even invent your own, and with the proper spirit flowing through the discipline, one will find them to be just as effective.
“For someone who is supposed to be realized, you seem to have a cynical attitude toward these things”
Most of the problems lie not in the methods, but in the disciple.
“The Yidam deity is a mental construction, and has no real existence outside of your own mind. This kind of practice is different than contemplating the pranava.”
I would question this.
You could invent your own internal combustion engine too, but chances are you would make every mistake that’s already been made for the past 100 years or so. And you would be foolish to attempt it unless you already know everything there is to know about existing internal combustion engines, and maybe you could make some improvement. I’m not an expert in Buddhist and Hindu tantric deities, but I’ve had contacts with people who are, and Amir Mourad is not one of them. If you have some questions about Yidam deities, you should consult the book, Dakini Teachings.
I have read somewhere that the church bells are meant to imitate the sound Aum.
Asuri,
“I’m not an expert in Buddhist and Hindu tantric deities, but I’ve had contacts with people who are”
Most of the people whom you have come into contact are perhaps far too attached to their own belief system and their own philosophies. Otherwise, it would remain impossible to continue clinging to these “deities” as though they are realities in themselves. They are just gateways to access certain dimensions of existence. If one really believes that Shiva, blue skin, has three eyes and wears a necklace of skulls, then one is simply being foolish. Neither is there anything magical about any mantra, not that certain mantras do not possess certain energies in themselves, but it is the qualities of one’s own mind which bring life to the mantra. The symbols for the chakras, they too are just skillful means. That is why if you look in certain traditions, the correspondences are different. In some traditions, sahasrara is white, in other traditions it is violet. In some traditions, ajna is blue, in others - it is orange. In some traditions - the descriptions of the pathways of the nadis are different, there are as many different perspectives on the matter as one can imagine.
You do not have to use the hindu or Buddhist deities as the means towards triggering certain energies within or without oneself. In the system of the Qabalah, they have totally different correspondences, and their methods work just as well. Rather than chanting Sanskrit, they are using Hebrew - and if you think the essential matter is whether you are chanting in Hebrew or Sanskrit, you have missed it.
Hebrew is not a sound based language, as Sanskrit is. This is why Sanskrit mantras have certain potenecies.
Nobody claimed Shiva has blue skin, has three eyes and wears a necklace of skulls. So who are you responding to?
You kids are playing with a snake. Very slippery. Fun for a few kicks but mostly worthless.
[QUOTE=YogiDiva;50475]From an article by Sol Luckman: “One school of thought insists that humans are actually made of sound and that DNA itself may be a form of sound. After conducting meticulously documented research, Harvard-trained Leonard Horowitz expertly demonstrates that DNA emits and receives both phonons and photons, or electromagnetic waves of sound and light. In the 1990s, according to Dr. Horowitz, “three Nobel laureates in medicine advanced research that revealed the primary function of DNA lies not in protein synthesis … but in the realm of bioacoustic and bioelectric signaling.” In recent years a new artistic field called DNA music has even begun to flourish. It therefore seems appropriate, at the very least, to compare DNA to a keyboard with a number of keys that produce the music of life.”[/QUOTE]
I don’t know if we are made of sound, but it’s not surprising that there is an aural component to our being. A few months ago, during a Taoist Meditation circle of pretty heavy intensity, I kept hearing the pranav (Om) echoing in my inner ear and the vibrations would rise to a crescendo and fade with the flow of energy…everything is energy and sound is energy…(a simplistic approach perhaps but it’s verifiable experientially)
How is sound energy?
[QUOTE=The Scales;53475]How is sound energy?[/QUOTE]
Hmm…how indeed? Perhaps because it is a mechanical waveform that travels through various media? Affects the medium as well as that which it acts upon?
I suppose you wanted just a basic understanding of sound energy? Or did you want to get deeper into the physics of it?
Surya,
“Hebrew is not a sound based language, as Sanskrit is.”
According to the Jews, much of it is. Particularly for mystic Qabalists, not only is it sound based, but it is a multidimensional language. I know because I have been initiated into mystery schools which deal with in part with the Qabalah. Every letter of Hebrew from Aleph to Tau is not just a sound - but every sound is a word, and every word is also a number - all of which are different forms of vibration. The sounds of the letters are not just sounds, they are supposed to contain mystic properties. That is why one practice of the Qabalists is something called Gematria - converting a word into numerical values. Gematria is used by them to reduce the whole Torah into numbers and try to decode the scripture, connecting words together which have the same numerical value.
According to these Qabalists, Hebrew is a divine language from the angels of God. Like the process of nyasa in tantra yoga - where the letters of Sanskrit are to be vibrated and visualized in different corresponding parts of the body - the same is the case in the Qabalah. The system of the yogic sciences is not the only approach which has made use of various energy centers in the body. Just as there are the chakras in yoga, there are the Sephirahs in the Qabalah, and the Lataif Al Sitta (the six subtleties) in Sufism. But unlike yoga, in the Qabalistic system the energy centers in the body of man have no place either for the muladhara at the base of the spine, or the ajna chakra in between the eyebrows.
The letters of the alphabet of Hebrew for the Qabalists have specific frequencies of vibration, just as it is the case in yoga. There is one well known text called the Sepher Yetzirah, the so called Book of Formation, which speaks of the evolution of the cosmos as Sephirahs emenating from the source of existence, as well as various different techniques of concentration and visualization to awaken certain state of consciousness. Each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet represents a particular force of the energy of existence - the so called “Three Mothers” represent the elements of Fire, Water, and Air, the “Seven Doubles” represent the forces of the seven planets, and the so called “Twelve Singles” correspond to the constallations of space. One technique in the Qabalah is simply the repetition of the letter Mem as a mantra and the visualization of its form as the yantra - the technique is basically not different than the tantric methods of concentration. The energy and sound of the letter Mem is said to correspond with the element of Water, the letter itself means water.
And like this - there is a whole system not just for the expansion of consciousness, but as a kind of model to have an intellectual understanding of the whole existence. So these letters of the Hebrew alphabet are supposed to be not just ordinary letters - they are divine. The same is the case with those who have been clinging to the idea that Sanskrit is divine, they are just as convinced that their alphabet is not an ordinary, human language, it is a language which has come from Brahman himself.
Sorry, I don’t buy these newage interpretations. I have a few friends who are Kabbalists and I tell them the same. To me it just nonsensical number crunching, Herbrew scholars do not agree with new-age Kabbalh interpretretations.
Take this letter, convert it to its number, find where it corresponds on the tree of life diagram and find some mystical meaning.
I think it is highly dishonest to force meanings on texts. The original writers of the OT did not write it with a code in mind, it was just a random collection of writings by different authors. Not the work of some esoteric mystery lodge who encoded in the bible great teaching about chakras etc. Besides, why encode it anyway? The Vedic literature does not encode information, it simply gives literal descriptions.
Only new-age people buy into this ancient and secret code and meaning in the bible crap.