And it’s a lot of fun to see this. I was learning in school, probably, in science class [Laughs]. Atoms and protons and neutrons and all these things vibrating and moving around. So, so-called matter is not what we think it is in one sense, because it’s also vibrating. It’s also moving, and there’s a lot of space in there, whatever. So, this is just like a superficial view of reality, you see it’s made up of all these little particles moving around, negative, positive, neutral, whatever, moving around.
So we get the atoms, and then the atoms form into molecules. And they’re bonded together in certain ways, like this, and they’re also vibrating at certain rates. So this makes up different substances we have in the material world. Some of these substances turn into our body. And then we get parts of our body, like kidneys, and the liver, intestines, the stomach, heart, bone, and blood, and all these things. We get all these different types of organs in our body. They’re also vibrating.
So, in the early 20th century, some scientists began to investigate this, and they discovered that the organs of your body vibrate at certain rates. Everything is vibrating, but when you get an organ, it also has this particular frequency of vibration. So each organ of your body can be detected according to the vibration. And we have healthy vibration, so that’s one thing. And then, if your organ is not healthy, it vibrates differently. So therefore, by looking at the vibration of your organs, you can see if those organs are healthy or not [Laughs]. This is called vibrational medicine. And there’s like a certain range where it’s healthy, and then when it goes beyond that range, too high or too low, then it becomes unhealthy. So there’s a way of detecting disease through detecting your vibration. Yeah, vibrational therapy. So that’s being developed in the modern world more and more. We’ve got more sensitive instruments.
Devotee : Because blood tests don’t work that well, do they?
HHBSM : Yeah, there’s a very, very sophisticated technique for figuring out what’s wrong with your body without these gross type of things in it. So, like this, you can just see the…
Devotee : And light as well. They use light as…
HHBSM : Yeah, yeah. So we get all these, like, vibrations like this. These are just a little bit primitive, but based on that, they’ve developed all sorts of modern instruments based on that. Now, once they detect your body is irregular, how to cure the vibration? By beaming the right vibration back, the healthy vibration back, and then your organ begins to vibrate at the right rate. So that’s the cure.
Vibration is also the cure [Laughs]. So this is the type of interesting medicine that’s been developed in the modern world. It’s called biofeedback, and Dr. Rife was one of the early persons, and he had several machines he invented to discover the vibrations and try to correct the vibrations. And they’ve been able to treat asthma, colitis, diabetes, eczema. And so many diseases can’t even be treated by modern medicine. It’s like eczema. They don’t actually know how to treat it [Laughs]. So it can help. People are going to the doctor and they can’t find a cure. Maybe they should go to some other thing. Maybe it’ll work. We don’t know, but maybe it’ll work [Laughs]. It’s just alternative medicine in the modern world.
But there are some serious people. Like in Russia, they’ve got this whole computerised system where they get all the vibrations of everything in your body, from your brain cells to your veins and your arteries and your kidneys and your chromosomes and everything. They take all sorts of measurements like this, and they figure out where the weak spots are in your body.
Devotee : MRI functions with radioactive…
HHBSM : Radioactive stuff. It’s like an x-ray kind of thing. So that detects the gross aspect of the shape of the thing to see if there’s a growth here, a growth there, like that. So this is like a more invisible… It goes inside your cells and whatever and figures out what’s irregular there simply by vibration. So it’s a very advanced technique.
There are a few people that do this in Australia now also. And they can detect all these other things in your nose and your body and everything like that. It’s a very, very far-off technique. And then they can also give you medicine based on the vibration to try to cure these types of things like that.
So this is just some new type of medicine, future medicine. These people that have this machine, this is the future of medicine they’re saying. Because it’s a different way to cure without being intrusive on the body and without disturbing the body with chemicals and stuff which also disturb your body [Laughs]. So it’s very interesting. This is a new type of thing.
So that’s just one aspect. Your body is vibrating. The organs are vibrating. But your brain is also vibrating. And it’s commonly known that you have these different waves. You have the alpha waves and the delta waves and the gamma waves, etc. All different frequencies. Now the waking state, this is the waking state. The beta wave. The alpha state is a famous one because that’s the meditational state. It’s kind of before sleep and also the meditation state which is when you get open to creative ideas and things like that. So that’s considered a very good state to be in. But normally people in the modern world are mostly in the beta state.
Devotee : You can dip in and out of alpha, can’t you?
HHBSM : Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, if you meditate, you try to get into the alpha more permanently. Like 10 minutes, 20 minutes, like that. Then you go into a trance state or whatever. But most people can’t do that. They’re in the beta state all the time.
Devotee : [Audio is not clear] into alpha when they go through sleep dip as well, right?
HHBSM : Yeah. It’s the half-sleep state. And then you may go into deeper sleep, like deep sleep and delta sleep, like real slow waves. So there’s all these types of waves going on in your brain.
Devotee : And which state is best for health?
HHBSM : Well, you need all four [Laughs]. You need them all, but you have to have a balance. If you don’t have some of these states, you can’t sleep at night, for instance.
Okay. So if you don’t go through the alpha and get up to the delta, you can’t go to sleep. You’re too much beta. Your mind is too active. So you have to have a balance of these states, and your body otherwise is very unhealthy. Your brain is not functioning properly.
Devotee : Okay.
HHBSM : Yeah. So that’s just one aspect. Your brain has waves of vibrations going through it. But another thing is that—
Devotee : But you can eliminate the beta zone, can’t you?
HHBSM : That’s our waking state. Well, we have to be aware of something. We’d be in a coma state, and then we won’t have any beta [Laughs]. But nobody wants to be in a coma state.
Devotee : Yeah, but to remove elation, which is also like meditative state, it requires decreasing beta.
HHBSM : Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. But we can’t always be in beta because we have to come to external consciousness and, you know, eat and sleep.
Devotee : Oh, yeah, conscious society. But in solitude, it’s not necessary.
HHBSM : Yeah, yeah then you go into the alpha state. So anyway, that’s one aspect. The other aspect is your thoughts are also waves [Laughs]. So in the modern world with computers, they figured out how to read your thoughts [Laughs]. You can read your brain waves and say, oh, he’s thinking this, or whatever like that. So they have a—like decode your waves of your brain and figure out what you’re thinking [Laughs]. And then the opposite is true. They can feed messages back into your brain with waves, and they can make you think things [Laughs].
Devotee : What are those threads at the side?
HHBSM : Oh, that’s the frequency of the brain. So they do have machines now to read your thoughts and to make you think things. Mind control [Laughs]. Like that. So very, very dangerous also it could be. But they do have modern machines like that that can detect your thoughts. This is all waves again. Now, it’s not so uncommon because we do know that in yoga, people can read your thoughts.
How do they read your thoughts? Because they’re picking up those waves, and they can figure out what they are. And also the people that can, you know, black magic, they can make you do things and think things [Laughs]. It’s all the same thing.
They can project their waves into your brain and make you do certain things.
Devotee : [Laughs]
HHBSM : So it’s something that’s been done in ancient times like the sorcerers and things like the witches, whenever you do this stuff.
Okay. So this is our brain and whatever is vibrating. Our body is vibrating. Our organs are vibrating. Yeah and they use sound to cure your body. Earth is also vibrating. It’s got a natural frequency called 7.83 hertz. This is the Schumann resonance. So this is your natural [Laughs] vibration, the natural vibration of the Earth. And it’s the scientists, they know about it. Interesting enough, this 7.83 hertz is also the alpha state. So when you’re in a very relaxed state, you’re kind of in harmony with the natural vibration of the Earth.
Sounds nice. Very nice [Laughs]. Of course, now the Earth is all disturbed [Laughs].
And we have all sorts of, you know, pollution and this and that going on, digging up the Earth for mining, whatever, chopping down everything. So Earth is not quite vibrating at a proper rate. But it’s a natural state.
Very, very good. So it seems that in ancient times, people were sensitive to the vibrations of the Earth. And they even found the good places. So this is what we call sacred sites. Around the world, since prehistoric times, they figured out these spots are very special. And thus they have stonehenge and other huge monuments where people that are so primitive, they didn’t even have metal, they would be dragging these huge stones around [Laughs] the country and building these huge monuments for some reason all over the place.
Not just stonehenge, but all over England, all over Europe, North America also, they have these huge mounds everywhere. Of course, you have the pyramids and all this. So because these places were very special. And at these places, their minds were in sync with the Earth and meditation, whatever. So they have sacred sites around the world for that reason. So we should not, you know, think of the ancient people as so primitive after all, because they were very sensitive to the nature of the Earth. So, that’s the Earth vibrating.
Now when we come to the human beings, the human beings, since a long, long time, have had music. And they find that even the cavemen had music [Laughs].
Devotee : [Laughs]
They have flutes and things like that, you know, and conch shells, they blow conch shells. So they were very interested in vibrations also. And of course we know that even the animals have certain cries like that. And even the notes of the Indian scale are named after different animals. So the fifth note, which we would say is like G, would be the cuckoo. And one is the elephant. Another is the peacock. So each note of the scale is identified with the cry of a different animal [Laughs]. So it’s related to nature, the sounds of the scale. So anyway, in many cultures of the world, we have the scales. And out of this, we get music. And the vibrations are very particular.
They have to relate to each other in a certain mathematical proportion of frequencies. And if you’re not at the right frequency, it’s out of tune. So that’s why some people are very good singers because they get exactly the proper relationship of their vibrations when they’re singing the notes. Other people don’t do it so nicely, so they’re out of tune. So very, very exact, these vibrations like that. But what they figured out also in the modern world is that – of course, in the ancient world probably that’s the same also.
But these are also associated with your chakras. So we have your chakras or the yoga things on your body, these things. And they are associated with the notes, different notes and certain vibrations. So each chakra is stimulated and made proper into harmony by a certain note of the scale here. So if you have problems in your body, it’s reflected not only in your gross organs but in your chakra as well. So let’s say you have a heart problem. That means your heart chakra is also not vibrating at the proper rate [Laughs]. So to get it back, you put the right vibration, the right note, the heart chakra vibration in there. And then you can bring the heart back to its – the chakra back to its natural function. And then your physical heart can also function naturally. So this is sound therapy. So some people are experimenting with that in the modern world also, using sound to cure your chakras, etc., like that.
When we get the notes of the scale in a certain progression, a certain rhythm, it becomes music. You have the notes of the scale but it has a different meaning. When you put it in a certain sequence with rhythm, then it becomes pleasing music. So music is very interesting because we think maybe human beings appreciate music.
But scientists have discovered that plants like music also. And they don’t have brains. They don’t have nervous systems. They don’t have ears [Laughs]. But they like certain types of music like classical music, like ragas and stuff like that. And they don’t like heavy rock music, dissonant music, too much rhythm. They don’t like that. If they grow nicely, that means they like the music and they’ll go towards the source of the music. If they don’t like it, they don’t grow. So plants are very, very sensitive to different types of music.
They’ve experimented with animals, mice. [Laughs] They do an operation on the mice and then they see how fast they cure. So if you have the soft music, they cure quicker. If you have the violent music, they don’t cure. So in other words, the music will help healing as well in mice, I guess. So this is done in Tokyo. They did experiments with the mice.
And so sound is – music especially – very, very influential even on little animals. And they found that if you have all this heavy – well, one thing is that they found the brain got better when they heard the classical music. The mice [Laughs], higher IQ in the mice. They could figure out things much quicker when they had this nice soft classical music. And when they got the opposite music, opposite, brains deteriorated. So if you have heavy rock music and loud, dissonant music, they did this for like two weeks. And the mice turned into cannibals.
They went crazy. They started eating each other up. Went crazy.
Just by music. Different types of music [Laughs]. That’s the influence.
Devotee : So that’s just genre, not necessarily like pitch, tone.
HHBSM : No, yeah. It’s the genre.
Devotee : Because you can still get quite high-pitched classical music that’s quite sharp.
HHBSM : Yeah. Some of them can be too exciting also. So it generates the softer music and more melodious stuff. When it gets all dissonant and loud and a lot of heavy rhythms, that’s when it agitates the systems of the animals.
And, of course, obviously human beings are going to be affected by music also [Laughs]. So they found that the actual effect was if you had the soft music or the classical music, it lowered the cortisol in your body. It’s a chemical hormone. And if they had this loud music, it increased the cortisol. So cortisol is an exciting type of hormone. When you’re in a fright mode or overexcited or you’re trying to flee [Laughs], whatever, in an alarmed state, you get this cortisol coming up.
Devotee : Does it come up with adrenaline? Something like that, yeah.
HHBSM : But it kind of excites you. So it’s good for situations where you have to meet conflict or whatever, like war, for instance. Good. You can run away. You can run away [Laughs]. Yeah. It’s dangerous, so you can immediately do something. But it’s not good to have constant exposure to cortisol because it starts destroying your cells. So that’s the bad part of it. So that’s if you have the soft music, very good. It fuels your system, etc.
And that’s why when we have huge crowds of sports events, they generally have a band, and they’re banging away like this [Laughs]. It gets people excited more and more. And when you have an army, they have a band and all these marching bands and the bagpipes and all this. That’s to get your soldiers all excited. So it’s good for fighting. And even the Romans had all this. They had drums and whatever to get the soldiers marching down the road. So it’s good for conflict, fighting, all that. But long term, it destroys your system, very, very bad for your health. So we have to be very careful how much we expose ourselves to this too much exciting music and whatever. Unfortunately, what happens is you get addicted to it because you get addicted to the cortisol [Laughs]. So you want more of that loud music, like that. So we have people that are addicted to going to discos and all these sort of things, loud music, playing all night [Laughs].
But it’s ultimately destructive to your system.
Devotee : And this will drop you into the beta. Huh?
HHBSM : Beta state, yeah. You’re in the beta state. You’re in the alpha state [Laughs]. Yeah. So in this way, we see that music and sound in general has a very profound effect on a human being.
It can also be used as a weapon [Laughs]. So most governments have invested in research, and they’ve developed weapons to make you sink, to make you paralyse, to make you faint, or whatever. All sorts of dangerous weapons like that just use sound vibrations to make people panic [Laughs]. So this is the problem. This is all related, of course, to the gunas.
In the Bhagavad Gita, it is said that everything in the material world can be classed according to guna. And it may be a mixture of gunas, everything, but something may be prominent in sattva, rajas, or tamas. Sattva is preservative, calm, healing. Rajas is passionate, active, creative. Tamas is destructive [Laughs], dark, ignorant.
So everything in the material world you can class. You can class your music, your art, your food into sattva, rajas and tamas. Sometimes it’s a mixture. So everything in the material world in the Bhagavad Gita is classed. So you can have food, which is sattvic, which will preserve your health and your system, make you calm in mind. You’ll have food in the rajasic mode, agitating food, which is like animal, vegetable mixture. And then you’ll get tamasic food, which just really makes your mind into ignorance, sleep, drugs, and all this sort of hallucination, whatever like that. And similarly music can be of that. So we find this loud, heavy, loud music will be in the tamasic and rajasic mode. And the peaceful music will be in the sattvic music. So everything we can choose very carefully in the material world to change our body and change our mind, etc, by the type of music, food, environment, exercise, whatever that we partake in.
In the modern world, they also found that sound has a form. Usually It’s something that goes in your ear. But they have a little somatic instrument here. They connect a plate here that vibrates to note the keyboard. And when you play a note, it’ll vibrate at a certain rate. And then they see some white sand on top of the black surface, and each note develops into a different pattern. So each note of the scale not only has a sound, it also has a pattern to go with it.
So it’s a two-dimensional, or ultimately three-dimensional, but each note of the scale has got a distinct pattern to it. So when you hear music, you’re actually hearing a changing pattern as well. Or you could see a changing pattern if you could see it. So music is not just sound like that. It’s multidimensional [Laughs]. So very, very interesting. Sound has a form. Whatever.
Devotees : [Laughs].
HHBSM : This was one strange note. It came out of nowhere [Laughs]. Yeah, let’s [Audio not clear] . I think it was a G-sharp or something.
Devotees : If you’re playing different music with water or something, the water changes shape. I’ve seen that. Is that right?
HHBSM : Yeah, yeah. You can do it in water. I think these are water shapes here [Laughs] like this. Some people have developed little instruments also where they play home music, and it will show all the changing patterns that are going on when their music is going on.
So in India, they have mantras, which are sound. And then to represent that visually on a 2D thing, they have a yantra. So the yantra is a two-dimensional representation of sound, a mantra, a particular mantra. So again, we get sound taking a shape. So we have different shapes like this. And there’s so many of these yantras in India.
But we’ll notice one thing about the yantras is that they have circles and squares, basically, and triangles, whatever. It’s all very symmetrical. Everything is, you know, I would say, in harmony [Laughs]. And also, this is actually – the yantra represents the universe, east, west, north, south. These are the gates of the universe, so the direction is like this.
You see this one also? East, west, north, south there. So it also represents the whole universe.
And this is interesting because it shows that the conception there is that the universe is symmetrical. Everything operates mathematically perfect [Laughs]. So we see that, of course, you know, there’s a pine cone and a seashell and the whole galaxy. They operate in the same mathematical principles for some reason. And when you go smaller than that, you will see that everything is very, very symmetrical. So the whole universe is operating on a very logical mathematical principle of some sort.
In Indian classical music, they have ragas, which are a combination of the notes of the scale. It could be 5 notes, 6 notes, 7 notes. Some could be sharp, some could be flat or whatever like that. And you get all sorts of different ragas. But that does not make the raga, actually. That’s the notes of the raga. The raga has to – you take the notes and you combine them in a certain way, and that will produce the spirit of the raga. In other words, it’s just the notes of the scale, like in the western scale, seventh scale. Just playing those notes doesn’t mean anything. You combine them and put them in a certain way, then you get a certain melody which has a certain mood to it [Laughs]. So each of these ragas will have a certain mood, which is the actual mood of the raga. So that’s defined by a little verse which goes with each raga. And besides learning the notes of that raga, you have to learn that little verse. And that verse will describe the form of the raga. And what is the form? It’s a person [Laughs]. So it may be a man, it may be a woman, it may be black, white, yellow, green, whatever like that. They can have two arms, four arms, six arms, eight arms or whatever and do different activities. So the raga has a form. And when you learn the raga, you have to meditate on that particular form. And when you sing the raga or play the raga, if you’re expert, then that form will manifest. That’s the expertise of the raga [Laughs]. Suddenly that form of the raga will manifest to you. So then sound in its combined form also has a form.
Sound for us is important because of words. A human being has a huge vocabulary of words. I think chimpanzees maybe get 22 words maximum or something in their life, which is very limited. And some primitive tribes will have less words. And more civilised people will have more words or whatever. But anyway, words are a way in which we can communicate at a more complex level because we combine the words into sentences. And the sentences turn into paragraphs. And then we can express ideas. So in this way, knowledge gets transmitted through words. And this is very important for the human being. So in the modern world, this is as much a sound that goes in your ear like this. You can see your ear [Audio not clear]. It’s a vibration, again, but through the air. But in the Vedic literature, sound is different. It doesn’t go through the air at all. It goes through something called ether or akash,
Devotee : Wow.
HHBSM : Which we say is space, but it’s not actually space. Also because it’s a material element [Laughs]. It’s a substance also. So the sound is also not just any sound. It’s sound that carries information, sound with meaning. And that goes through the ether and goes into your brain. Somehow you get your message that way. So it’s a little bit of a different, more subtle concept of sound than we have in the modern world. So that’s what’s said in the Bhagavatam.
But the real interest in sound in the Vedas is that sound actually has spiritual significance. Sound actually has a spiritual origin. And it comes ultimately from Supreme Lord Vishnu [Laughs]. He breathes out, and the Vedas form, and all the syllables form, all the words form out of the breathing of Maha Vishnu.
We know, of course, that this syllable, Om, is a very famous syllable. So that’s said to be the essence of the Vedas. One sound, but it contains all the Vedas, which are millions of words [Laughs]. One little sound [Laughs], and it contains everything. And it also represents Vishnu. So therefore that Om sound is very important. You see all the yogis are chanting Om all the time.
So it represents the whole of the Vedas. It represents Supreme Lord Vishnu also. So, and, of course, Vishnu is spiritual. The material world is here, which is different.
But somehow that Vishnu and Om also permeate the whole material world at the same time. So they enter into the material world.
So anyway, in the creation itself, we find that sound is important. In Bhagavatam it’s described how the Supreme Lord Vishnu creates the material world by relaxing, etc., I guess. And also in that, sound is important.
When Brahma starts creating the, tries to create everything, he can’t do it. So then he hears the Gayatri Mantra, which is the expansion of Om from Krishna’s flute, and he gets those into his mind. And then he’s able to create the material world, all the universes, and all the worlds, and the living entities, all the bodies for the living entities, etc.
So creation takes place through sound. So that’s Brahma.
In the modern world, of course, even those who are in Big Bang theory [Laughs], they also say that sound was the beginning of the universe about 30,000 years ago after the Big Bang matter collapsed around dense seas of dark matter. Outward pressure from photons caused collapsing matter to rebound, creating acoustic waves of sound [Laughs]. And they rippled like this throughout the universe. So sound was also important in the beginning of the universe. Now this, of course, is dealing with matter.
We are more interested in spiritual sound. Mantra. So mantra itself, man means, stands for manas. Manas means the mind. Tra is a verb form, which means trayate, that which delivers or saves. So mantra is sound which saves your mind [Laughs] from all this beta waves [Laughs] material thoughts, etc. Takes you out of the material realm and gets you to the spiritual realm. So how can it do that? Because mantra looks like a sound, like normal sound, you know, the molecules vibrating, etc.
What’s so special about that sound? So the answer in the scripture is that, no, this is not material sound. It comes from the spiritual universe. It enters into the material universe as spiritual sound. But how can we access spiritual sound because our ears are for material sound?
So then there’s a process by which this takes place. The original sound is called para. That’s the spiritual sound. Then it takes on the coverage so you can kind of detect it with your mind that there’s something there. And when you can actually start analysing, oh, this is a word. It means house or it means whatever. Intellectual level. And then finally you can say it. Ah, that’s a house. And you can verbalise it and you can hear it. So in other words, it becomes accessible to our material senses at a certain point. But its origin is actually spiritual. But it takes on forms by which your mind and intellect and then your senses can grasp it. So we can deal with it in the material world. So that’s how sound, I would say, manifests in the material world.
And that’s also associated with your chakras. From your muladhara chakra up to your throat chakra and then you can say it and then you can hear it.
So you hear the mantra and it still has the spiritual sound in it. So you’re hearing the material aspect because we’re accustomed to the material sound, but we also get the spiritual essence there as well. So that’s how the mantra works.
So then that spiritual essence goes backwards. We hear it and it goes back and it starts influencing the atma or the jiva, the spirit soul, and that takes the spirit soul into the spiritual realm. So in other words, spiritual sound enters into the material world, grabs us, and takes us back to the spiritual realm. So this is why the mantras are very, very special.
So it’s difficult to measure anything spiritual. We cannot, in science, detect the soul or anything. They try, but they can’t detect the soul [Laughs]. You cannot photograph God or whatever like that with a camera. It doesn’t work. But we can get other effects. So mantras have material effects also. So they discovered, you know, chanting Gayatri Mantra and some Sanskrit mantras, you actually improve your health. You can change your DNA, so to speak [Laughs]. Alter your DNA so it unwinds and becomes healthier simply by mantra. Now normal sound doesn’t do that, but somehow the mantra does that. So you get a different effect, a different type of sound. That’s because it’s got that spiritual essence in it. It’s doing something else, affecting the material aspect of your body.
Some years ago, after they discovered DNA and all that, they discovered on your chromosomes you’ve got little things called telomeres, little caps, little socks on the end of your chromosomes [Laughs]. And when you’re young and healthy, you have big socks, big tips. And as you get older, they get smaller and smaller and smaller like this. So therefore they were wondering, well, how can we increase the length of the telomeres to make people healthy again? Because if they get smaller and smaller, you end up with all sorts of diseases and lack of immunity, etc. So how to keep those telomeres strong and long, big? So the person who discovered the telomeres, she said, well, let’s experiment. And she did one thing. She said, I’ll walk every day [Laughs]. So she walked every day, 20 minutes, 30 minutes every day. And what happened? their telomeres increased.
So just exercise helps increase your telomeres, and thus your health increases like that. So they were excited, and they tried different things. So then they tried, okay, let’s try yoga.
So they tried yoga, and also 5% increase. They tried Qigong, which is a Chinese type of yoga. And it also worked, but a little difficult for people to learn. They tried vegetarian food. Good. And also 5% increase because it’s healthier for them. They tried meditation, simple meditation techniques. Some of you get alpha state, a little bit of alpha state. And that also helped them get like 5%. They tried music. They saw that soft music was good again. And that also worked, like 5% or whatever. And they also tried just coming in a group and talking [Laughs], socialising [Laughs]. That also helped [Laughs]. So all these different things had a little bit of an effect.
Then they tried kirtan. I don’t know how they chose kirtan. They chose kirtan [Laughs], singing mantra [Laughs]. And they got 43% increase. So of course it involves all these things. We have people together, we have music, we have mantra, we have vegetarian food, all this together, and people associating that. It had a very, very strong effect. So very, very interesting. But of course it’s a material effect, it’s not spiritual. It’s a material effect. Even positive material effects are there, like mantra and kirtan. Very, very interesting [Laughs].
So of course not only the body. They found that if you use the mantra, especially the subtle body of your mind, and everything like that, you can get a calmer state, that your breathing becomes normal, etc. through this.
We’re more interested in the spiritual effect, but that we cannot measure by science. But we go to the scriptures, and they’ll say, what is the effect of mantra? Mantra actually represents a form. This says we have the notes of the scale at certain forms, and the ragas at certain forms. So the mantra has a form. It’s a form of the deity. So we chant Krishna mantra, that’s Krishna form [Laughs]. So the result of the mantra is we realise the form. When you sing the raga, you realise the form of the raga. So when you chant the mantra, Krishna’s name, you realise the form of Krishna. That’s the ultimate effect. So the sound and the object it represents become non-different.
So interestingly enough, we don’t just chant Krishna’s name, we say Hare Krishna [Laughs]. So Hare actually represents Radharani. So we have Krishna, who’s the male form, we have Radharani, the female form. So we realise not just Krishna, but Radha. Radha and Krishna. That’s what we have in our temple, we have Radha-Krishna deities.
So, what is the result of realising Radha and Krishna? Of course, the goal for everybody is eternal love and bliss. Everybody who wants love, everyone wants bliss. But nobody will say they don’t want that [Laughs]. So, Krishna, just scripturally, Krishna means he who is the source of everything and the source of bliss. So he is the Supreme Lord, but he is the source of all bliss. So the word Krishna, if you realise him, will give all bliss.
We also say Hare Rama. So Rama means the one who gives bliss, again. And Hare, as I said, Radha, and who is Radha, she is the personification of bliss also. It’s called Hladini Shakti. So we have three words, Hare, Krishna, and Rama, all representing bliss. So when we realise Radha and Krishna, then we realise ultimate bliss. Spiritual bliss, eternal bliss, not material bliss. So that’s the ultimate goal, realise these supreme forms, and then experience the highest bliss. So that’s what mantra does.
So we see that mantra can, we can find the physical effects of mantra, we can see that to some degree on the body and the mind, but words can then make an effect on the Atma, or the soul. That is where we get spiritual bliss, we realise the spiritual form of the Lord.
So the mantra can have all these effects. So, mantra is sound, but it’s a special sound. It’s impregnated with that spiritual essence which is all over the Supreme Lord. And through that, we can get the highest bliss. So that’s why we chant mantra.
By this we enter the spiritual universe, and we get it. We go to the spiritual world.
Okay, any questions? Yeah, just one question.
Q & A
1) Does music alter the DNA?
HHBSM : Yeah, some do.
Devotee : Or is it not the only thing that can? Yeah, I think all these possible things, the music will do it, like the telomeres, you do the soft music, any soft classical music, it will start doing it. You do the opposite music, it’s the opposite. It’s just if you’re going to convert from, say, like if you have meat-eating DNA, I can’t remember, is it A+, and then you go vegetarian, you would say that your DNA is altered, right?
HHBSM : Yeah.
Devotee : When you know that you can function without it. Yeah. It’s not as easy.
2) So in Nepal, how they have those, I don’t know what it’s called, but they have that steel bowl with the sounding thing. So that’s like a healing instrument, right? The sound bowl?
HHBSM : The bowl, the singing bowl. That’s sound again, so you’re getting a certain vibration there which affects your body [Laughs]. I think they have the different ones for the different chakras even for that, so you get your chakras in harmony with the house or health and purify your body. The other thing is that people are interested in crystals, so the thing about crystals, they also absorb vibration [Laughs], and they can radiate vibration also, so that’s why they’re important, they’re like resonators[Laughs].
Devotee : I love the ionic crystals.
3) How has sound affected you in your life?
Well, I was interested in Buddhism and philosophy and things like that, but then I couldn’t really find anybody who was teaching any of that. I was in Japan at the time. And then I met some devotees, Hare Krishna [Laughs], on the street [Laughs]. So the sound was there, and I got attracted to that sound [Laughs]. I didn’t know what it meant, but I was attracted to that sound, and so then I started hearing it more and more, and that’s how I got into it [Laughs].
So it’s the sound that attracted me.
Devotee : That’s so funny. I love that two-string Tibetan violin. I’ve heard that on the streets before, too, and I literally have been staying there for so long [Laughs].
4) I’m just curious, how do you chant the mantra, and what volume do you chant?
The thing about the mantra, the Hare Krishna mantra, is that you can do it in three ways. Loudly, as we do in kirtan, very effective. You can do it audibly, semi-audibly for yourself, that’s like japa, whatever. It’s also very good. Or you can do it silently in the mind, also good [Laughs]. So it works at all levels. You can do that. So for meditation, you can do silent or very soft, and for if you want to meditate all the time, then you do kirtan. It has equally good effect. So all forms are good. That’s kind of the advantage of the Hare Krishna mantra, because you can do it in a very waking state with the loud one, or you can do it in a very awful state, whatever, like that as well, and you’re relaxed and meditative as well. You can do it both ways. For most mantras, you have to do it silently. So this has the advantage you can do it loudly, publicly, whatever, and it still has very good effect.
5) But you think optimum healing is going to be silent meditation?
Well, actually, they say the best one is the kirtan [Laughs]. As you saw here, even the physical effects was 43% just by the kirtan [Laughs]. It’s surprising because we can always meditate better, but here the kirtan was stronger.
6) So you’re talking about vibration because of that , that’s a healing effect. So what is the point of dancing in that effect? Because it’s a result of the vibration or is it like that?
Well, of course, we just saw that exercise was good [Laughs]. You can do yoga, you can walk, you can do this and that. So then dancing also would be exercise also. So that’s the good exercise when you’re doing the kirtan [Laughs], you can do that. And that can also stimulate your, let’s say, on a physical level, stimulate your telomers or whatever. But the other idea is that we can engage our ear, our nose, our taste, our eyes, whatever, and spiritual things. We can also engage the whole body in serving the Lord. So that’s dancing. So in India they developed a whole thing. They had Bharatanatyam dancing, classical dancing, and other forms of dancing in different states, which is all, therefore, depicting the actions and stories of the Supreme Lord. So it’s all spiritual. So you’re spiritualising your body by enacting the Lord’s pastimes. So it’s also dancing.
7) I’m curious, what music do you listen to?
HHBSM : Music?
Devotee : Yes.
HHBSM : Well, we have kirtan and soft music [Laughs], not the loud stuff [Laughs]. You know, there’s this stuff, techno and all this, but I just can’t figure out what it is. Strange sounds, you know [Laughs]? I don’t think it’s really good for your subtle body [Laughs], your chakras [Laughs] or whatever [Laughs].
8) Can you mention more about the process of realisation for the maha-mantra, realising the result of it?
Oh, yeah. So chanting the Hare Krishna mantra, we also go through stages. What we call sadhana, that’s our practise, and gradually we can concentrate more, because usually our mind is all splayed out. Chanting, we can concentrate more and more. And what this does, as I said, it stimulates the atma. The atma becomes more devotional in that whole process.
And at a certain stage, then we get the revelation of Supreme Lord Krishna will manifest. Because we’re saying Krishna, Krishna will manifest to us. That’s called bhava state.
So first the form manifest. Then we’ll get qualities of the Lord manifesting. Then we get activities of the Lord manifesting. Then we participate in the activities [Laughs] and we get rasa, which is called relationship with the Lord, and we get the bliss. That’s prema, that’s the state of prema. So gradually more absorption in the Lord, and we realise the Lord, and we realise the intimate relationship with the Lord, and we experience bliss.
9) You can say that because all sound, or everything, actually emanates from the source of everything or God. So in one sense, people might say, then what’s the difference between this sound and the mantra? It’s all emanating from the same source. But is it just because when you chant the mantra, you’re addressing the source directly? Or what is it?
But that’s one aspect. The answer is directed to the Lord. The other, of course, is the mantra which comes from the spiritual world [Laughs]. The normal sound is a product of the material world. We have this whole theory of elements coming out, sound coming out, senses coming out, everything like that. It’s all material. And we get material sound, material form, etc. Whereas the mantra actually is spiritual sound with spiritual form, coming into the material world, looking like material form, but actually not [Laughs]. So it grabs us because it looks like it’s a material sound and we can hear it, but actually it’s spiritual. And then it begins to affect our soul.
Devotee : And we can say that that effect is healing, right?
HHBSM : Yeah, definitely.
10) Devotee : There are different mantras, right? So finding the accurate one to – say if you’re trying to heal a spiritual melody inside of a broken soul, how do you know what type of sound or frequency you’re going to work with to get the right result?
HHBSM : So there are so many different mantras, and for so many different forms of the Lord, and even for Devatas and others. But it gets a little confusing, like which one are we going to use [Laughs]? So the solution to that is we should gradually go to the higher, and the higher, and the more powerful, and the more powerful, until we get to the supreme, most powerful form of all. Yeah, that’s the logic of it. So who is the most powerful form? So if we go to the Bhagavatam and Bhagavad Gita, Krishna is the highest form. So he includes all the other forms within him. So whatever they can cure you or give you good results, it’s also included in Krishna. So therefore it’s effective for everybody, because it includes all results, all the different results that all the other forms can give, that all the mantras can give, are included in Krishna himself.
So that’s why it’s like the universal medicine [Laughs], medicine to cure all the diseases.
11 ) So we can’t say that one’s senses are solely responsible for the type of healing that’s needed inside of the soul?
HHBSM : Well, as I said, it’s like in material medicine. We have different medicines for different diseases, etc. But it’s like partial, you know? So ultimately we have to get behind the cause of that. There’s also psychological causes. We have to cure that [Laughs]. And behind that, also ultimately we get to the atma. That’s the ultimate cause of everything [Laughs]. It’s the cause of your sickness and the cause of your getting cured also.
So we can deal on superficial level, material level. We can deal on the mental level, psychological level, psychiatric level. And then we can deal with the atma level, the soul.
So it’s the mantra that will go to the soul and create that. So then it will start to radiate all over the body, your mind, and your body can get cured as a result of that. So cure the soul, that’s the idea behind the mantra.
Devotee : Chant and be Happy. [Devotee aside Laughs]
HHBSM : It’s a very simple statement, but actually it’s the highest level [Laughs].
12)So actually taking that spiritual medicine and taking it into the silent realm, is that like a transitional phase when you’re getting into that atma?
HHBSM : You can do it either way.
Devotee : If you’ve tried the other two, and they’re not working.
HHBSM : Yeah, so you can do it anyway. Any way that’s preferable for you or works for you, you do it. Because it’s flexible. Loud or soft or silent, it doesn’t matter. As long as it gives you the right effect.
13) Could you talk about why it’s important to distinguish between which material sounds benefit you, or like a negative towards you, and which ones have a positive effect towards you?
Well, of course you can just experiment on yourself [Laughs]. Take notes on your moods change, the music you do, you’re more calm with some and more agitated with others. So that music which will put you in a more peaceful state, that’s obviously better for you, because it’s also better for your body. So that is one measure. But in general, for all people, we say that the sattvic music, or the music which is peaceful and harmonious, would be good music. And that which is exciting and agitating, that would be the bad music [Laughs]. Of course there’s like mixtures also in between. Some are kind of stimulated, but also peaceful or whatever. And some are completely, almost completely, agitate your system like anything. So those are the ones we have to look for.
14) Yeah. I thought you were talking about even all the material sounds is the one sound.
HHBSM : Yeah.
Devotee : So distinguishing between good and bad.
HHBSM : Yeah, it’s ultimately material [Laughs]. Yeah. It’s all material ultimately, but one is preferable as far as your health and your body is concerned, that’s all. But ultimately it’s all material, so we have to go to spiritual ultimately. Beyond that, beyond good and bad.
15) Is it, all of the seven different chakras, is it possible that the body can need healing of different vibrations in those different chakras? Like not only music as well?
Well there are different things you can do with the chakras, not just music. Just meditating on them. And if you meditate on it properly, then it gets it rotating in proper vibration or whatever. Also you can do it that way, but maybe a little more difficult for many people because they don’t know how to meditate. So the sound is like easier because it just starts affecting their chakra.
16) They say you can’t administer healing to yourself though, right?
HHBSM : Well they can. I think like in Reiki [Laughs], they do the physical healing on yourself even. Not only on other people, you do it on yourself. You can do that on yourself. Okay. But for spiritual things, it’s basically the self. We have to cure ourselves. So we have to meditate, we have to chant, we have to do kirtan, we have to… So it’s the self type of thing you do. You don’t depend on somebody else to do it.
Okay.
Devotees : [Clap] Thank you so much for coming Maharaj.