... the Upanishads speak of jyotir brahma, the Light that is Brahman. Very often the sadhak feels a flow of Light upon him or around him or a flow of Light invading his centres or even his whole being and body, penetrating and illumining every cell and in that Light there grows the spiritual consciousness and one becomes open to all or many of its workings and realisations. Appositely I have a review of a book of Ramdas (of the Vision) before me in which is described such an experience got by the repetition of the Rama mantra, but, if I understand rightly, after a long and rigorous self-discipline. "The mantra having stopped automatically, he beheld a small circular light before his mental vision. This yielded him thrills of delight. This experience having continued for some days, he felt a dazzling light like lightning, flashing before his eyes, which ultimately permeated and absorbed him. Now an inexpressible transport of bliss filled every pore of his physical frame." It does not always come like that—very often it comes by stages or at long intervals, at first, working on the consciousness till it is ready. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/bhakti-yoga-and-vaishnavism#p48</ref>
=Vedic Mantras=
==Process Of The Vedic Mantra ==
The process of the Vedic mantra involves three movements, corresponding to three psychological activities necessary to the act of meditation or realisation, a movement from soul into mind, a movement from mind into speech, & the movement of speech itself reacting on mind and soul. In all forms there is the soul or [.....] partially expressed in the two primary constituents [.....] & temperament sometimes called manyu or more widely mati, and [an] intellectual part, usually termed dhí or maníshá. The maníshá first brought out the Nama out of the soul in which all things are latent into the heart where the general bháva (character, temperament, sense & feeling) of the Nama manifested itself to the sensationally perceiving mind & then raised it by distinct concept into the thinking mind. The mind by dwelling on the vák brings out the thing defined by Nama into being in the experience of the thinker & there establishes it as a living & acting presence. The mantra then, when it is thought of as operating to bring out the ukthyam, the thing desired & to be expressed, out of the soul into the mind state, mati, is called brahma orángúsham brahma or, briefly, ángúsham; when it is thought of as mentalising the ukthyam, it is called manma or mantra, when it is thought of as expressing by speech the ukthyam in the thinker's practical experience it is called vachas or gir. Moreover, the vachas may be either of the nature of prayer or praise; as prayer, it is called uktha; as praise it has two functions, the expression in the sádhaka of the divine activity, when it is termed shansa, and the confirmation or firm establishment of the activity once expressed, when it is termed stoma. All these expressions, brahma, manma, vachas, shansa, stoma, stava or stavas, can be and are often used to express the effect of the mantra no less than the mantra itself,—brahma then means the soul-movement or soul-state expressed in the heart or temperament, manma the mental realisation, vachas the expression of the god or his divine activities in the mortal nature, shansa the expression of the man's higher being which is brought about by the mantra, stoma the firm established condition of the manifest god in the man. …By the mantra the god, entering into the speech and the thought, the soul-state, takes possession of his seat in man & makes manifest there his activities. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/16/rv-v-dot-10#p23</ref>
==Sruti And Smriti==
This free & great movement of illumination descending from above to us below and not like our thought here which climbs painfully up the mountain peaks of thought only to find at the summit that it is yet far removed from the skies to which it aspires, this winged & mighty descent of Truth is what we call Sruti or revelation. There are three words which are used of illumined thought, drishti, sruti & smriti, sight, hearing and remembrance. The direct vision or experience of a truth or the thought-substance of a truth is called drishti, and because they had that direct vision or experience, that pratyaksha not of the senses, but of the liberated soul, the Rishis are called drashtas. But besides the truth and its artha or thought-substance in which it is represented to the mind, there is the vak or sound symbol, the inevitable word in which the truth is naturally enshrined & revealed & not as in ordinary speech half concealed or only suggested. The revelation of the vak is sruti. The revealed word is also revelatory and whoever has taken it into his soul, though the mind may not understand it, has the Truth ready prepared in the higher or sushupta reaches of his being from whence it must inevitably descend at a future date or in another life to his lower & darkened consciousness in order to liberate & illumine. It is this psychological truth which is the foundation of the Hindu's trust in the Name of God, the vibrations of the mantra and the sound of the Veda. For the vak carries, in the right state of the soul, an illumination with it of the truth which it holds, an inspiration of its force of satyam which is less than drishti but must in the end lead to drishti. A still more indirect action of the vijnana is smriti; when the truth is presented to the soul and its truth immediately & directly recognised by a movement resembling memory—a perception that this was always true and already known to the higher consciousness. It is smriti that is nearest to intellect action and forms the link between vijnanam & prajnanam, ideal thought & intellectual thought, by leading to the higher forms of intellectual activity, such as intuitive reason, inspiration, insight & prophetic revelation, the equipment of the man of genius. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/18/a-fragmentary-chapter-for-a-work-on-vedanta#p8</ref>
==Symbology Of The Mantra==
The symbol of the Sun is constantly associated with the higher Light and the Truth: it is in the Truth concealed by an inferior Truth that are unyoked the horses of the Sun, it is the Sun in its highest light that is called upon in the great Gayatri Mantra to impel our thoughts. So too the enemies in the Veda are spoken of as robbers, dasyus, who steal the cows, or Vritras and are taken literally as human enemies in the ordinary interpretation, but Vritra is a demon who covers and holds back the Light and the waters and the Vritras are his forces fulfilling that function. The Dasyus, robbers or destroyers, are the powers of darkness, adversaries of the seekers of Light and the Truth. Always there are indications that lead us from the outward and exoteric to an inner and esoteric sense.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/16/foreword#p15</ref>
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Many of the lines, many whole hymns even of the Veda bear on their face a mystic meaning; they are evidently an occult form of speech, have an inner meaning. When the seer speaks of Agni as "the luminous guardian of the Truth shining out in his own home", or of Mitra and Varuna or other gods as "in touch with the Truth and making the Truth grow" or as "born in the Truth", these are words of a mystic poet, who is thinking of that inner Truth behind things of which the early sages were the seekers. He is not thinking of the Nature-Power presiding over the outer element of fire or of the fire of the ceremonial sacrifice. Or he speaks of Saraswati as one who impels the words of Truth and awakes to right thinkings or as one opulent with the thought: Saraswati awakes to consciousness or makes us conscious of the "Great Ocean and illumines all our thoughts." It is surely not the River Goddess whom he is thus hymning but the Power, the River if you will, of inspiration, the word of the Truth, bringing its light into our thoughts, building up in us that Truth, an inner knowledge. The Gods constantly stand out in their psychological functions; the sacrifice is the outer symbol of an inner work, an inner interchange between the gods and men,—man giving what he has, the gods giving in return the horses of power, the herds of light, the heroes of Strength to be his retinue, winning for him victory in his battle with the hosts of Darkness, Vritras, Dasyus, Panis. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/16/foreword#p13</ref>
==Mantra and The Deities ==
The sons of the Infinite have a twofold birth. They are born above in the divine Truth as creators of the worlds and guardians of the divine Law; they are born also here in the world itself and in man as cosmic and human powers of the Divine. In the visible world they are the male and female powers and energies of the universe and it is this external aspect of them as gods of the Sun, Fire, Air, Waters, Earth, Ether, the conscious-forces ever present in material being which gives us the external or psycho-physical side of the Aryan worship. The antique view of the world as a psycho-physical and not merely a material reality is at the root of the ancient ideas about the efficacy of the mantra and the relation of the gods to the external life of man; hence the force of prayer, worship, sacrifice for material ends; hence the use of them for worldly life and in so-called magic rites which comes out prominently in the Atharva Veda and is behind much of the symbolism of the Brahmanas. But in man himself the gods are conscious psychological powers. "Will-powers, they do the works of will; they are the thinkings in our hearts; they are the lords of delight who take delight; they travel in all the directions of the thought." Without them the soul of man cannot distinguish its right nor its left, what is in front of it nor what is behind, the things of foolishness or the things of wisdom; only if led by them can it reach and enjoy "the fearless Light". <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/15/the-guardians-of-the-light#p46</ref>
==The Sanskrit Language And The Mantra==
The Sanscrit language is the devabhasha or original language spoken by men in Uttara Meru at the beginning of the Manwantara; but in its purity it is not the Sanscrit of the Dwapara or the Kali, it is the language of the Satyayuga based on the true and perfect relation of vak and artha. Every one of its vowels and consonants has a particular and inalienable force which exists by the nature of things and not by development or human choice; these are the fundamental sounds which lie at the basis of the Tantric bijamantras and constitute the efficacy of the mantra itself. Every vowel and every consonant in the original language had certain primary meanings which arose out of this essential shakti or force and were the basis of other derivative meanings. By combination with the vowels, the consonants, and, without any combination, the vowels themselves formed a number of primary roots, out of which secondary roots were developed by the addition of other consonants. All words were formed from these roots, simple words by the addition again of pure or mixed vowel and consonant terminations with or without modification of the root and more complex words by the principle of composition. This language increasingly corrupted in sense and sound becomes the later Sanscrit of the Treta, Dwapara and Kali Yuga, being sometimes partly purified and again corrupted and again partly purified so that it never loses all apparent relation to its original form and structure. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/16/rv-i-dot-1-1-3#p25</ref>
==Origin of Chants==
The Angirases are at once the divine seers who assist in the cosmic and human workings of the gods and their earthly representatives, the ancient fathers who first found the wisdom of which the Vedic hymns are a chant and memory and renewal in experience. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/15/summary-of-conclusions#p3</ref>
Viswamitra has offered the supreme sacrifice of the Ananda to the gods; he prays that as a result the power of divine speech by which men chant the Vedic knowledge in these inspired poems may grow in him; for it is so that men have always prevailed (ishuh) to sing the Veda in the past. They have given the activities of their being to the divine & infinite Force of God as its fuel, they have submitted themselves devoutly to that Force not interfering by the lower egoistic personal effort, then has it worked in them & done its miracles; then they have taught to mankind those realisations of the ideal planes which have been revealed in or from the pure heaven of mind to the Vedic sages and have had power to express them in divine song for the soul which hungers after the Vedic knowledge and has the force to receive and assimilate it. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/16/rv-iii-dot-1-1-12#p18</ref>
=Mantra And The Guru=