What Can Fast Chanting Do?

1 week ago By Yogi Anoop

Can Fast Chanting Lead to Moksha?

In any activity where the mind gets little rest and much tension, fatigue of mind and brain is bound to arise. Whether or not that fatigue shows up as some visible effect, fatigue is itself a disease. Often, from childhood itself, a person falls into the habit of keeping himself in a restless state for years. Then the brain and its cells become accustomed and habituated to it. But this by no means implies that moksha will be attained through it. The very meaning of moksha is to let go. It is the dropping of everything. Where the measure of grasping is greater and the measure of letting go is less, there the practice of letting go has not happened at all. Attention has not even reached there.

Take an example. Repeating the word "Ram-Ram" two hundred times in a minute, versus only five times in a minute. Observe the difference between the two. The one who did it two hundred times did it with such haste and hurry that his attention remained only on the doing. It did not rest on letting go or on pausing. Yet repetition contains both doing and not-doing, both action and inaction. But his mind stayed on the doing alone. He did not experience even the briefest moment of that not-doing.

For the one who repeated it five times, the measure of pausing in his chanting increased. Only when the duration for which the mind rests anywhere increases will there be a sense of the mind's stillness. If the mind keeps gripping the words and keeps driving them very fast, how will it experience the minimal emptiness between two words at that speed? When the mind speeds up the words, experiencing that place of pause between them is not possible. If the aim is to step out of that motion, to go beyond it, then rapid repetition of words cannot achieve it. It becomes possible only when the words stop, because as long as the mind is moving and in motion, it cannot perceive the state of rest and stillness. The basic meaning of this is that it is circling round and round on the circumference.

There is another point worth understanding. In those five repetitions, even if the mind does not experience the pause after the words, or the letting go, the brain and the senses will still certainly get rest. Take the resting in the heart's rhythm. We do not experience it directly, yet when the heart's rate falls by a certain number, it is beneficial for the mind, the brain and the heart itself. In the same way, when the mind is made to chant any name-word slowly and gently, even if it does not directly experience rest, the subtle organs will certainly receive ease and rest.

If the habit of pausing between words arises in the moments of repetition, and in it the feeling of wordlessness comes, this is precisely the mind's stepping outside the cycle of words. If he realizes that the state of rest after the word "Ram" is a glimpse of moksha, a glimpse of sthitaprajna (steady wisdom), he will be able to experience it. For in words there is nothing except feelings. Words are produced by the mind.

Now the question is: what is the goal of name-chanting? If the fundamental purpose of repeating any word is to be established in the state of wordlessness and to experience the producer of words, then my principle applies there. But if the purpose is to attain the form of that word, it does not apply. That is, if the intent behind the repeated utterance of "Ram" is the darshan of Lord Ram, then the tendency to repeat will spontaneously intensify. You cannot stop it, because through the word you wish to see its form. Chanting done with this resolve increases impatience, and the speed of the words naturally keeps rising. As the speed of the words rises, the impatience of the one speeding them rises. And in this impatience, even if there is no bodily disease, impatience is itself a mental disease.

Now consider another aspect. Many people who chant with impatience and haste could live, and have lived, beyond a hundred years. But remember too that in villages many people have been found to pass beyond a hundred years even while chewing surti-tobacco. Indeed, many live past ninety without any religious practice. And there are many who, though they practised meditation, lived few years, and some even suffered terrible diseases. What must be realized here is that the length of life does not depend one hundred percent on the speed or slowness of the mind alone. The external environment also has its effect. A wandering guru who repeatedly endures changes of environment and food suffers the ill effects of that too.

One more example helps here. In the spiritual world there was Adi Shankaracharya, who stood on the highest peak of knowledge, yet lived only a few years. Surely the attainment and experience of the supreme state of knowledge did not come through hurrying with words. For his very short life it is possible that being an itinerant, with frequent changes of environment and food, often takes its toll on the body.

Another aspect must also be attended to: God is not in motion. Motion is the nature of Prakriti. When the mind is set in motion through words, the experience of the Supreme is not possible in it. Through that motion situated in Prakriti, the Purusha gains the realization of his own stillness. The fundamental nature of Purusha is stillness. Only if he realizes stillness through words is the experience of the supreme principle possible. Otherwise it is merely getting trapped in a web of feelings: words create form, and form creates color, shape and so on.

Ultimately, the subject of my research cannot be to criticize or disparage any other subject. That is not possible for me. My concern is only this: how can life be made the best it can be, so that the mind stays healthy and the body and senses stay healthy too? The body that nature has given runs by the universal laws of nature. The more the mind understands nature and becomes calm and still, the more it will make the body, and the mind itself, free of disease. The mind must understand this: in restless activity there is no health, that is, no stillness.

Therefore the seeker should always observe whether what he is doing increases his understanding or not. Whether neutrality is truly taking place or not. Whether he is experiencing wordlessness or not. Whether self-realization is happening or not.

Note this: where words drop away and silence descends, there alone can the realization of the producer of words happen.

— Yogi Anoop

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