How to Practice Yoga With The Power of Mantra
Video Transcript: The Power of Mantra
The Gayatri Mantra is one of the most powerful mantras in all of the Vedas. Normally when you receive a mantra you have to receive it from a Guru, from a teacher, or from someone who has been authorized.
There are some students who seek mantra and teachers who give them mantras.
You can go and learn any mantra, but the potency of the mantra really comes from the teacher that gives it to you.
Several thousand of years ago the Himalayan sages, the masters yogis had their own version of a yoga conference somewhere in the Himalayan mountains and they started to realize that the mantras which represented the culture and the Vedic tradition were being lost.
What they decided to do is that they released two mantras, well, really three but particularly three, that anybody could learn them, pick them up and receive their full benefits.
They had a big initiation, and they wanted for anybody to be able to access these mantras and receive the full power and blessings of the Himalayan tradition.
One of these mantras is the Gayatri mantra.
One of my own teachers, Swadi Rama, used to be the spiritual teacher for the Himalayan institute and he was first initiated to the Gayatri mantra. His teacher told him to go to the banks, on the Gange near Varanasi. He had to draw a circle on the ground and put his little tach house there and build a fire, keep it going, and practice this mantra.
Keep in mind we are reciting the mantra for 5 minutes every morning, but in the actual tradition you are supposed to do it 2.4 million times.
He was almost to the end of his practice so at this point he had been doing it for almost 8 months.
So he was doing as he was told by his teacher in India continuing his practice on his tach house. By then in India anyone could shave their head, wear an orange robe, meditate an everyone would think they are in samadhi and start giving them money and ask them questions and want things from them.
This is what happened to him, all these people started to congregate and one day he got really angry and literally pushed somebody away.
That day he got a telegram from his teacher that said “Rama, start your practice again”
So, he gets back on his practice, and about 8 months later he starts to get visited by this little dwarf. The dwarf sits on the outside of the circle, and Swadi Rama invites him into the circle.
Overtime the dwarf started to bring him sweets.
And Swadi Rama asks himself:” why is this little dwarf coming here at two in the morning and bringing me sweets?”
So he decides to ask the dwarf if there are any bakeries open or where did he decide to get these things but the dwarf wouldn’t answer him, he would just sit there.
So he reaches out to grab the dwarf and throttle him and and the dwarf disappears.
The next day he gets a telegram from his teacher:” Rama, start your practice again”
So he goes back and does the practice, when he finishes it then his masters says :”now you are cured of all of your impatience and all of your sanskaras, your tendencies towards anger”
In other words, Mantras are a really powerful practice.
These mantras don’t just have the power to transform ourselves but they can actually transform the world.
