The Second Quality of a Mantra: Incantative

The second quality is incantative. The mantra must have a certain sound, a certain vibrational pattern so that when it is chanted internally, it will elevate the individual's own vibration, or "entitative rhythm."

Each entity of this creation has its own particular entitative rhythm, its own note in the universal harmony. From pulsing quasars to osculating electrons - from the ultrasonic melody of mountain ranges to the ceaseless reverberation of the creatures, singing and drumming, whirring and clicking, laughing and crying - all the notes are orchestrated in a vast cosmic concert.

The source of this ceaseless rhythmic movement is the Infinite Consciousness, soundless and still, the ocean of peace. Undisturbed by any vibration, it flows in an infinite straight line through eternity.

The ancient sages, who had merged their minds in this sea of unexpressed Consciousness, realized that the universe is a vibrational play of varied waves with different wavelengths. By their intuitional powers, they came to understand the laws of universal harmonics governing this vibrational flow, and they developed a subtle science of sound to affect the rhythms of creation - without any mechanical apparatus.

Nepalese music, developed by the great yoga, master, Shiva, over seven thousand years ago, was one branch of that science. The classical ragas, or musical scales, are so subtly attuned to the rhythms of nature that each raga is to be played or sung only in a certain season and at a certain time of the day, to produce a specific emotional effect in the musician and audience. One raga is played only at dawn in the spring, to evoke the mood of universal love; another is sung only during the evening in summer, to arouse compassion; still another only during midday in the rainy season, to summon courage.

It is said that the masters of music had control over not only human emotions, but all natural manifestations as well: they could produce heat and rainfall at will, and the vibrations of their voices alone would cause finely-tuned musical instruments to resonate in accompaniment! Historical documents describe the remarkable powers possessed by Tansen, the 16th Century court musician of Akbar the Great. Commanded by the Emperor to sing a night raga while the sun was overhead. Tansen's vibrational song instantly caused the whole palace to become enveloped in darkness.

But the subtlest of all these sciences of sound was the science of mantra. The masters knew that each individual's entitative rhythm vibrates at a particular frequency. Like many instruments is a symphony playing in harmony, the combination of all the various "bio-rhythms" of mind and body (psychic waves, heart-beat, metabolic rate, etc) produces the individual's particular slower frequencies, it ultimately becomes infinite - and the mind merges in boundless Cosmic Consciousness.

Through long inner experimentation, the yogis developed a series of powerful sounds or mantras which, when chanted internally, resonate with the individual's entitative rhythm and gradually transform it into the infinite straight line of supreme peace.

These sounds originated from inside their own bodies, and were systematized into the oldest alphabet and language on earth- Sanskrit.