Sonic technology awakens our potential
By Chaitanya Charan das
Question: In the Vedic tradition, there seems to be a lot of emphasis on
sound, on hearing from a spiritual master. Why this emphasis?
Answer: Sonic technology is central to the Vedic program of spiritual
redemption.
The Vedic texts explain that all of us are afflicted by spiritual amnesia.
As spiritual beings, we are eternal and indestructible. But due to
forgetting our spiritual identity, we live in anxiety and fear caused by the
fragility and mortality of our material bodies. As parts of God, we share in
his joyful nature, but due to having forgotten the treasure of happiness
within our own hearts, we struggle for paltry pleasures in the external
world. Overall, our spiritual forgetfulness causes us to be shackled by
trivial desires and fears, thus making us live far below our potentials.
The guru is like an expert doctor who can cure our spiritual amnesia. When
the guru is himself a devotee dedicated to the service of the Lord and when
he repeats the message of God as given in the scriptures, then his words of
wisdom have a special spiritual potency. Those words, called as shabda
brahma (God manifested as sound vibration), penetrate all the material
coverings on the soul and revive the soul's lost memory. Thus the words of
the guru stand in marked contrast to all other ordinary words, which simply
get incorporated into and increase the layers of forgetfulness that cover
the soul.
As we have been living in spiritual forgetfulness for many, many lifetimes,
reviving our spiritual memory may take some time, just as curing a chronic
disease may take some time. But the result we get on being cured - to become
free from the limitations of our bodies and minds, and to rejoice in the
life of freedom and love that is the nature of the soul - is well-worth the
effort and the patience.
The Ramayana describes real events that took place in remote history, and
these events also signify timeless, universal truths. In the Ramayana, the
simian-hero, Hanuman, plays a relatively minor role till being spiritually
aroused by the words of wisdom of the veteran-warrior, Jambavan, who acts
like a spiritual master. Thereafter Hanuman's profile changes dramatically,
with he doing astounding feats in the service of Rama. Similarly, whatever
be our achievements - minor or major - before we hear the words of wisdom
from a guru, all those achievements will pale into insignificance as we rise
to new levels of fulfillment and accomplishment in our real life of
devotional service to the Lord and all his children.
The author is associate-editor of ISKCON's global magazine, Back to Godhead
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