Swami Veda has provided us with audio files to support the New Mantra. Right click on the files below, individually, one-at-a-time to download to your computer for your personal use. Be sure to click on “Save Target As” to assure proper downloading.
You can download a recording of the lecture and mantra practice from:
Username: swamiji
Password: Progress! (with a capital P + exclamationmark)
STABILIZING THE SPIRITUAL MINDFIELD
Swami Veda Bharati assigns spiritual practices for the next three years
26 Feb 2007 at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama at the end of a month of the Satsang of Love
Gurudeva Swami Rama started pretending to be absent ten years ago. For the past nine years we have undertaken special mantra practices for the entire initiate community.
First we did several years of this Saumya Mantra.
Today we are completing what you all have been doing for the last 3 years. 500 people were asked worldwide to do the Mrtunjaya mantra --Tryambhakam yajaamahe for the last 3 years. Today we are completing that yajna, the sacred offering, and this has been your most beautiful gift to me. Now that you have granted me a longer life by Guru’s grace, next step is stabilizing. If the individual minds are not stabilized, the individual lives do not become stabilized.
If there are instabilities in life, they are so, not because your circumstances are unstable, but because your minds are unstable. With a stable mind, you can stabilize all external circumstances.
So the chain is as follows:
When you stabilize your personal mind,
your personal lives become stabilized.
People thus stabilized become part of a larger mindfield,
a mindfield thus stabilized is called an organisation or a sangha.
Let us not use the word organization. Let us use the word sangha, the term used for the monastic community. Even though you are not monks, you are aspiring. Let us use the word community.
A community is a single mindfield in which the stabilized personal minds, the stabilized lives of individuals, are as soft, gentle ripples in the calm lake.
Our next task, our next undertaking, is stabilizing the mindfield of the Community, our sangha. Then the Community and its mission and its work will be stabilized.
So, for the next 3 years, today, we are embarking on a new mantra, just as for the last 3 years, the mantra was tryambakam yajaamahe. Before that, the Community’s mantra was the Saumya mantra, from 1997 onward, to give the mind a moonlike peace that was much needed at that time, and it is still needed.
Do bear the following rules in mind.
First read the booklet titled ‘Special Mantras’.
Those who are already doing a purashcharana, the special mantras as their personal practice, continue to do so. If they can comfortably do so, they may add a mala a day of the new mantra. Otherwise, just add 3, 5, 7, 11 or 21 mental recitations of the new mantra per day.
Do continue with your regular meditations. The normal rule also is that all the mantras you have done before, in each meditation sitting, you do 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, or 21 mental recitations of all your previous mantras, such as Gaayatri or Mrtunjaaya or Saumya and so forth. That is not much.
In addition to your regular practice, unless you are doing a purashcharana already, you do one maala, one round of 108 mental remembrances each day. I repeat, if you are already doing a purashcharana, for example, 125,000 Gaayatris or 2,400,000 Gaayatris and so on, then you do this new mantra only a few times until that purashcharana is over.
The mantras do not go by their literal meaning.
Do read again Swami Rama’s writings on mantra. Also svb’s. The literal meaning is not a meaning at all. There is a hidden force in the mantra.
Any number of people can do the practice. They don’t always have to be initiates. Do read the writings of Swami Rama and myself on the meaning of the mantra. A mantra does not go by its literal meaning. It has a hidden power. It is the whole composition. It is the sound, and a deeper realization that comes from that mantra. My hope is that 500 people, minimum, doing the maala, one maala, one round of 108 per day for 3 years, will complete 50 million recitations in 3 years. 50 million.
When you begin the practice, already from the beginning, surrender the fruits of this particular practice that,
may through this mantra, my mind be so stabilized,
that my emotions and consequently the relationships be stabilized,
thereby the entire mindfield of my spiritual community becomes stabilized.
So surrender the fruits of the mantra to stabilize our spiritual community’s mindfield.
Pronunciation
ity-uktaa saa tadaa devee
gambheeraantah-smitaa jagau,
durgaa bhagavatee bhadraa
yayedam dhaaryate jagat.
Transliteration into Roman
ity-uktaì saì tadaì deviì
gambhiìraìnta+-smitaì jagau,
durgaì bhagavatiì bhadraì
yayeda= dhaìryate jagat.
As I said, the mantras do not go by literal translation, but I’ll give you a literal translation anyway, word by word and then, we have to put it together.
Iti, Thus
uktaa, addressed
saa, She, That One
tadaa, then
Devee, Divine Mother
Gambheera, deep
antah, interior
smitaa, smiling
jagau, sang and said
Durgaa, She who is difficult to attain
Bhagavatee, the Blessed Lady, full of bene, (the sense in which it occurs in words like benevolent, beneficent), she who is bene, beautiful, auspicious, lovely, bringing a blessing
bhadraa, bene
yayaa, by whom
idam, this
dhaaryate, is sustained and upheld
jagat, the world
Thus addressed, then She, the Divine Mother, who is difficult to reach, who is the blessed one with all blessing, who is the very embodiment of bene, with a deep interior smile, with a smile in her deep interior, singingly said.
Who said? She by whom this whole world, whole universe, is upheld and sustained. What she said--- is not mentioned in this mantra. What she says to you inside --- you have to listen.
Now which Divine Lady is it being referred to?
There is only one in the universe. Some know her as Sarasvati, the lady of wisdom, knowledge, music, inspiration.
Some know her as Laxmi, the lady of wealth and good fortune and so on. Some know her as Taara, she who takes us across. Some know her as Dolma, in Tibetan, some know her as Kwan Yin, some know her as Kwannon, some know her as Mother Maria, some knew her as Isis, some knew her as Athena.
It is the same One. So whichever form of Her you prefer, you may address the mantra, that is, dedication of your mind to that form.
[At this point in the session svb asked everyone to be in silence for two or three minutes. He then initiated the group into the mantra. He advised: (relax your entire body. Forget the body for 2-3 minutes, simply feel the breath flow. When I recite, listen to the mantra especially in your right ear.) Then svb recited the mantra a few times and again advised: (For now, simply feel the breath flow in your nostrils with your personal mantra. Those who do not have a personal mantra may ask for initiation).]
[long silence]
ommm.
The official date for starting is between 19-27 March, but you can get started with a few recitations from today. Make sure to secure a copy of the booklet ‘Special Mantras’.
Do arrange to send this information to those who are not present.
Those who are not regular initiates may ask for personal initiation into their personal mantra.
More than all the organizational discussions [repeats 3 times], more than your contributions of finance or labor [repeats 3 times], your true contribution is in repeating the homework that you were asked to do before coming here [repeats 3 times] and practicing this mantra and surrendering its fruits for the stabilization of the Spiritual Community’s mindfield [repeats 3 times]
In meditation, your practice is to pay more attention to your exhalations till you reach the ratio of 1:2, that is, if you have inhalation to the count of 4, your exhalation to the count of 8, or 5 and 10 or whatever--- not by forcing the body or breath, but simply by paying attention to your exhalations.
Keep your regular meditation time. In addition to that, you may sit at other times in the day.
Do not forget to take 2 minutes, 3 minute breaks, for breath awareness many, many times in the day.
The closing fire ceremonies will be from 16 to 24 March, 2010 as part of a longer International Festival of Meditational Cultures.
May God and Guru bless us all.
God bless you. May Gurudev bless us all.