Listening to the Soundless
Every sound you make, every sound you hear, every sound you experience comes from the silence within. Every sound resonates, then returns back to silence.
We are all influenced by repetitive mind mantras but aren’t aware of them. What is a mantra? A mantra is a method of concentration, which isn’t the same as meditation. A mantra can prepare the ground for meditation, but it isn’t meditation. There’s nothing wrong with a mantra if you use it with awareness. There’s nothing wrong with thoughts and words if you use them with awareness. Use words to slip into silence. Be aware and leave the words behind, leave the thoughts, leave the mind. Just jump into the abyss.
Through a mantra the mind is narrowed to a fixed point. All the energy passes through the one lens, which produces a certain relief by dulling your state of being, eventually leading to a sleep state. Through mantras the mind is distracted from its own anxiety. But the relief you experience isn’t enlightenment.
A mantra is a mental noise tranquilizer, which is nothing like transformation. When we repeatedly use a mantra unwisely, we renounce life and become just mind. For example, if you chant a name for God, or any conceptual or non-conceptual words, for hours and hours, the mind creates a certain melody that’s soothing and calming. How long can you stay in such an artificial silence? When you stop repeating the mantra, the same mind anxiety will be back.
When the mind isn’t narrowed—isn’t flowing only in one direction, but energy is flowing in all directions, as an overflowing of the attention that comes from consciousness, so that there are no objects, no points, no lenses, but just spaceless, unmotivated movement—you become aware of the divine.
For those who are still using a mantra, I have one piece of advice. A mantra has to be used with full attention, full alertness, full awareness, and you have to be careful not to fall asleep. If you use a mantra but don’t go into meditation beyond it, the mantra becomes a sort of slumber to your consciousness.
When the mind simply repeats the same word again and again in a monotonous way, the mind slows down, narrowing its entrance, ready to go to sleep. Bring full awareness to the mantra and full alertness to the moment, then jump into spacelessness. Stop repeating the mantra, otherwise you’ll miss the target and fall asleep.
If you are going to use a mantra, it’s a good idea to repeat the mantra standing or walking, rather than sitting or lying down, so you don’t fall asleep. You can go on sitting with closed eyes and repeat the mantra all your life, but you won’t get out of your mind. The mantra is moving in the mind, and your consciousness isn’t involved. Involve consciousness and you’ll go beyond the mind.
Words have a corresponding object and meaning to go with that word. If you hear the word “tree,” then the concept arises in your mind. Some specific tree will come to mind, big or small, a favorite tree, or an imagined tree.
When the word “hum” or “OM” is heard, what’s the concept and object that comes to mind? What is that thing that goes along with the word OM? There’s no concept, but the mind might build one out of its imagination. It might appeal to the concept of the entirety of the universe, as a single unit, including All-That-Is, both manifest and unmanifest. Or it may imagine a humming sound from the wholeness.
Can you imagine spacelessness? No, you can’t. The mind is a fool and can invent foolish things. Be aware of the mind’s mechanisms. The point of jumping into the abyss is to go beyond the objective and subjective, dissolving all concepts into the non-conceptual spaceless reality of this moment right now.