[quote=Raj;24905]Thank you Gordon! I found it here omsakthi dot org/worship/mantra.html and thought of sharing with people.
I like your suggestions to people. I wish you were in Vancouver, BC so that I could come to your classes 
-Raj[/quote]
Brad Waites is a certified Purna Yoga? teacher in Vancouver and he’s an excellent teacher.
gk
Very interesting reading about AUM chanting. Would like to add some more information.
Basically, AUM is a primordial sound. “A” when the lips part to let the air in or out, “M” when the lips close again and “U” the whole trajectory in between. So simple, yet takes lifetime to really understand. The many benefits of AUM-chanting have already been mentioned in the posts.
Let us also know that one can begin there but can take AUM to much greater heights. Chanting it is relaxing and invigorating; listening to it is thousand times more so. AUM is a cosmic vibration that resonates in each cell, molecule and atom of our being. Listening to AUM from our entire being takes us in a meditative mode and at the feet of the inner guru. That’s why the association with the Ajna chakra.
Talking of higher octave or lower pitch to chant AUM, each has its effect on gross or subtle bodies. In Vedas, the sound frequency of extremely high vibrations of the fourth state (turiya) is called para-naad. That of the third, causal body, is 25% of it and called pashyanti-naad. That of the second, astral body, is 25% of pashyanti and called madhyama-naad and that of the first, physical body, is 25% of madhyama, and called vaikheri-naad. When we chant aloud, our whole range of sound is this vaikheri. We can only imagine what para-naad could be; but listening to AUM gives us some access to subtle levels. Yoga Masters say that when the inner guru starts teaching, AUM is the first topic.
Suhas, you have done it again…thank you…I really didn’t know this about the other 3 octaves of significance…and just as a point to what you have written. I have just this minute realised that my experimentation with aum was at the time the inner guru was visually active…I had been to a function in London on Mongolian chanting,it wasn’t my idea to go, I had accompanied a friend who had tickets this was where the Aum experimentation started (as a singing interest) I didn’t put the two together (the inner guru and couldnt at the time because I was completely innocent in knowledge during that time…I knew nothing while he was with me, quite simple, etc. So he was communicating this to me somehow and I didn’t realise it? How fascinating!!
And yes it was highly uplifting to hear this chanting, Ive heard Buddhists do it as well, when you are present it has an unusual affect on you. The Mongolian ones were higher, by the way.
Thank you Suhas I think today is my day for knowledge and you have been the instrument.to deliver it
Basically, AUM is a primordial sound. “A” when the lips part to let the air in or out, “M” when the lips close again and “U” the whole trajectory in between(Chanting)
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Listening to AUM from our entire being takes us in a meditative mode and at the feet of the inner guru. That’s why the association with the Ajna chakra.
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Yoga Masters say that when the inner guru starts teaching, AUM is the first topic.
Another facinating contribution by Suhas Tambe…
My chanting experience is minimal as i said. But I can tell you that when i intone a mantra silently and i talked about the devotional attitide, i was mainly thinking of the surrender aspect.One surrenders to the flow of the divine or the spiritual within us.A combination of doing & non-doing, one of yoga’s paradoxes.We’re gently nudging the nervous system,both gross & the subtle, along to gradually open.I know that when i go into “meditative mode” or state my eyes freq. automatically pull up like in sambhavi mudra like an auto-reflex although i have been recently trying to relax this neuro-biological reflex,as it were , as i have noticed that the eye on my ida side/the left side, the side that stimulates pingala tends to be favoured, i.e the pull is stronger, or over-stimulated as invariably i tend to get more activity in the left-brain hemisphere.It is i’m pretyy sure third-eye activity.Of course the objective is to balance ida & pingala so both sides are activated and balanced(hence paving the way for sushumna awakening and the big openings that typically accompany that).
So it’s like -when we surrender we let-go.I do that in deep mantra meditation.We may intone a mantra and absorb the vibrations and the reverberations.If there’s alistening component it’s part & parcel of that receptivity,the surrender aspect…So the option 3 i suggested may let the sounds reverberate and lend direction to that.You could call it a divne intelligence;from a prana-standpoint it knows where and how it flows.
I wonder if the letting-go aspect is also part of chanting.It might be fair to say though this may take it beyond being just a mechanical action and process and make it a spiritual one.
The effects come as much from the resonance of the sound as it reverberates through out every atom and cell like was said.But the resonance is affected byt the attitude of surrender,the non-doing, and thus invariably the degree and state of relaxation in the participant.
Where it may become theoretically unclear to me is where the listening and the willfull directed chanting,verbal or subtler still, become fudged.I think it’s abit like a two-way process.I’m thinking here of a conductor and orchestra, with the conductor being inner guru or guiding light; i don’t know if that’s an appropriate analogy.The instrument(“I” or Consciousness) & listener(God)also comes to mind.Like working together; one helping to orchestrate and lead the other.Symbiotic?
The devotional attitude is of course part of bhakti yoga, (the yoga of devotion), which in the [I]Bhagavad Gita[/I] says is one of the four (main)yogas,the other 3 being karma yoga,raja yoga(which here includes hatha) & jnana yoga(the yoga of experiential knowledge or wisdom) I never could understand that book when i first read it, how it could be applied to one’s living.Your bhakti is the seed,the germ of your spiritual desire.And once cultivated it obviously grows.I hesitate to say this,given it might be a point of philosophical controversy & debate for some, but some might call it religion.
Not to wander into other territory, but folk that may say they don’t need Hinduism, because philosphically they’ve got Christianity or atheism or anything else other, might be suggesting they’ve got the bhakti yoga “base” covered. My own hunch is that any ‘snugly woven belief systems’ [I]are [/I]in danger of being rigidly dogmatic.And attaching to dogma permanently makes us less open to change or self-transformation.Like drawing circles around our potential, our limits…I know personally i can definitely say that my beliefs and perceptions have allways changed over time especially in the light of new experiences rather than something say i intellectually imagined i had worked out… I think the experience of yoga is often having some of our preconceptions we might have harboured challenged about what religion and more specifically spirituality is & means.I think yoga can strengthen any faith you like and tends to endeavour to be anti-dogmatic.Experience is not dependent on belief but can obviously be influenced by it.
My main point here is I think that by letting-go,or actively surrendering(the hardest part in yoga i would have thought,dependent on your bhakti), you can open yourself up to inner guru and potentially circumnavigate alot of otherwise potential obstacles in yoga.The letting go aspect might appear to figure the most in option 3 but could straddle potentially all 3 ways i’ve listed of saying the mantra AUM…The listening component,becoming the vibration,the meditation,dhyana etc,also seems to be covered in option 3.
Hoping that makes some sense.