Ten years or more ago I was struggling to learn the subject of mantras There are no courses you can take in mantras, and no teachers. I had studied the Vedas a little after reading Sri Aurobindo’s classic book, Secret of the Vedas. But when I tried to learn mantras I realised very quickly that most of the mantras were secret, not translated, unavailable or impossible to find.
For years I collected all the books I could, took notes, brushed up my Hindi so that I could read texts not yet in English, took the help of friends and asked questions wherever I could. After years of work it still made little sense. The mantra texts all say that you need a guru and without a guru the mantras are of no use. But you cant just look up gurus in the yellow pages.
I looked for them. I met a few. One very bad tempered old man kept grousing about modern day evils like the Internet and the disrespect shown by the terrible modern generation. Others were not interested in sharing their knowledge especially not to a woman, god forbid, what has the world come to ?
Ultimately I did experiments on my own, with a small group to discover the effects of mantra. We met once a week and tried out various mantras. A friend helped me source out the Hindi texts, some of which are hard to find. So many of the old Sanskrit texts are just not available in English. Over the years I collected a large library of books.
Traditionally they say there were seven crore mantras, and those only the Sanskrit ones. Of course we do not have so many. When India went through its dark ages around the 11th century much was lost. Entire university townships like Takshashila and Nalanda were completely destroyed, all the texts burned. Fortunately enough remains to keep anyone busy for a lifetime.
One of the reasons I wrote the book is that most people do not know these things. The ancient knowledge remains in ashrams but has not been modernised to be relevant to a new age. The old texts on mantras have instructions like go to a river at 3 a.m., and pick fresh bel leaves and meditate till the sun rises. I live in Mumbai city where rivers and bel trees are both very hard to find.
The main problem with doing mantras is that the mind wanders all over the place. What’s the use of doing a mantra and thinking of dinner or watching TV ? I created my own methods of visualisation which I tried out with groups when I did mantra workshops. Over the years I learned what works and what does not.
Whenever I gave talks or workshops with my unique methods people asked me, which book can I buy ? And that put me in a fix because there are so few books around, little that I can recommend. And I had to explain that no book will have my methods, my explanations or my visualisations. Eventually I decided to write my own.
I knew what I wanted. Only Sanskrit mantras. I do not work with non Sanskrit mantras. There are mantras in many languages, plenty in Hindi, in colloquial languages, in every dialect and I even have a book of something similar in Arabic. But I am only interested in the Sanskrit ones. I feel that, for mantras, there is just no language as effective as Sanskrit which was created as a mantric language.
Finding the mantras was a difficult task. I had decided on a structure of 108 sections covering every area of life. Most of the other books were just a random collections. I wanted my book to be very comprehensive and I didn’t discover what a task that was until I had started looking. Initially I had intended a small book, but I found so many mantras that it kept expanding until I put an end to it when I reached over 400.
Sourcing the mantras was another problem. Many of the original texts are not available. I only took mantras which I could verify. If I found mantras in which either the Sanskrit or the mantra itself was doubtful even if it was very interesting, I left it out. Sanskrit itself is a complex language and even the published texts are often full of mistakes. I had to check and double check everything.
The research never seemed to end. Sometimes I got so fed up I put away the unfinished file deciding to waste no more time on it. But after a while someone in a workshop would ask me, have you finished your book ? That, and the fascination with mantras always drew me back and I finally put my mind to finishing it.
I wrote the book for several reasons. I wanted people to know the wealth of mantras available. My methods have worked very well in workshops, I wanted to put them in a book. I wanted a modern book, devoid of mindless rituals, which is compatible with a fast paced city life style today, in modern language that a lay person can understand. I also wanted to put in some of the very beautiful Vedic mantras which are usually ignored.
I put in chapters on the meaning of the Indian calendar and the meaning of festivals which many are unaware of in today’s world. I have tried to make the book as complete as possible with all the well known mantras and plenty of little known ones.
Last and very important, most of the old texts are extremely male chauvinistic and I wanted to make it clear that women can do mantras just as well as men. Most of the bias has been added over the centuries and is part of a power game and was not originally the case.
Most of today’s workshops are attended by women and this one question is asked over and over. Can I do mantras ? Are you sure ? I wanted the answers to be very clear and very encouraging to women. If any of those purposes have been achieved, or even just one, I will feel that the whole long and complicated effort has been worthwhile.
Rohini Gupta's Blog 