The birth of language was the birth of humanity. Each word was the sound-equivalent of an experience, connected with an internal or external stimulus. A tremendous creative effort was involved in this process, which must have extended over a vast period of time; and it is due to this effort that man was able to rise above the animal.If art can be called the re-creation and formal expression of reality through the medium of human experience, then the creation of language may be called the greatest achievement of art. Each word originally was a focus of energies, in which the transformation of reality into the vibration of the human voice - the vital expression of the human soul - took place. Through these vocal creations man took possession of the world - and more than that: he discovered a new dimension, a world within himself, opening upon the vista of a higher form of life, which is as much beyond the present state of humanity as the consciousness of a civilized man is above that of the animal.
Mantra AvalokiteshvaraThe presentiment of the higher state of existence is connected with certain experiences, which are so fundamental, that they can neither be explained nor described. They are so subtle that there is nothing to which they can be compared, nothing to which thought or imagination can cling. And yet, such experiences are more real than anything else we can see, think of, touch, taste, hear or smell - because they are concerned with that which precedes and includes all other sensations, and which for that reason cannot be identified with any of them. It is, therefore, only by means of symbols that such experiences may be hinted at, and these symbols again are not invented arbitrarily, but are spontaneous expressions, breaking through the deepest regions of the human mind.
The forms of divine life in the universe and in nature break forth from the seer as vision, from the singer as sound, and are there in the spell of vision and sound, pure and undisguised. Their existence is the characteristic of the priestly power of the seer-poet (of the kavi, who is drashtar). What sounds from his mouth, is not the ordinary word, the shabda, of which speech is composed. It is mantra, the compulsion to create a mental image, power over which IS, to be as it really is in its pure essence. Thus it is knowledge. It is the truth of being, beyond right and wrong; it is real being beyond thinking and reflecting. It is "knowledge" pure and simple, knowledge of the Essential, Veda (Greek "oida", Germean "wissen", to know). It is the direct simultaneous awareness of the knower and the known. Just as it was a kind of spiritual compulsion with which the seer-poet was over-powered by the vision and word, thus, for all times, wherever there are men who know how to use mantra-words, they will possess the magic power to conjure up immediate reality - be it in the form of gods or in the play of forces.
In the word mantra the root man = "to think" (in Greek "menos," Latin "mens") is combined with the element tra, which forms tool-words. Thus mantra is a "tool for thinking", a "thing which creates a mental picture." With its sound it calls forth its content into a state of immediate reality. Mantra is power, not merely speech which the mind can contradict or evade. What the mantra expresses by its sound, exists, comes to pass. Here, if anywhere, words are deeds, acting immediately. It is the peculiarity of the true poet that his word creates actuality, calls forth and unveils something real. His word does not talk - it acts!
OMThus, the word in the hour of its birth was a centre of force and reality, and only habit has stereotyped it into a mere conventional medium of expression. The mantra escaped this fate to a certain extent, because it has not concrete meaning and could therefore not be made to subserve utilitarian ends.But while the mantras have survived, their tradition has almost died out, and there are but a few nowadays who know how to use them. Modern humanity is not even able to imagine how profoundly the magic of word and speech was experienced in ancient civilizations and the enormous influence it had on the entire life, especially in its religious aspects.
Mount KailashIn this age of broadcasting and newspapers, in which the spoken and the written word is multiplied a millionfold and is indiscriminately thrown at the public, its value has reached such a low standard, that it is difficult to give even a faint idea of the reverence with which people of more spiritual times or more religious civilizations approached the word, which to them was the vehicle of a hallowed tradition and the embodiment of the spirit.
The seer, the poet and singer, the spiritually creative, the psychically receptive and sensitive, the saint: they all know about the essentiality of form in word and sound, in the visible and the tangible. They do not despise what appears small or insignificant, because they can see the great in the small. Through them the word becomes mantra, and the sounds and signs of which it is formed, become the vehicle of mysterious forces. Through them the visible takes on the nature of symbols the tangible becomes a creative tool of spirit, and life becomes a deep stream, flowing from eternity to eternity. "
by Lama Anagarika Govinda
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