GeeVees - 01.2: Early Experiences with Chanting

My early experiences with japa, or chanting Hare Krishna in this particular case, were in fact rather fascinating. It was only a decade later that I came to rediscover some of the same substance I touched on back then, substance soon lost in the depths of a missionary organization, and it was only then that I came to see a broader context for that particular segment of my early spiritual journey.

Bhakta Oskari, 15 years of age, posing for the temple magazine.

Japa Beginnings

The first vivid memory of my history with the Hare Krishna mantra is from one of those 40-minute bus rides to my mother's place I used to take every other weekend. It was a serene day, and as the bus kept humming its tranquil hymn and drove along the road, I closed my eyes as usual to contemplate on whatever it was that I used to ponder those days. Then, wholly out of the blue, it dawned to me that meditating on this mantra might be a cool thing to do.

It was only a matter of time before the occasional contemplation turned into loud melodic chantings of Hare Krishna as I wandered the forests of the neighborhood. There was no source to the discovery I'd have known of, if not for a cautionary video shown in school some years back, featured along with Satanism and Scientology by our back-then religion teacher, a staunch Christian and a priest of many years, whose generally less exciting presentations we weren't in the habit of paying much attention to.

Of course I did eventually meet a Hare Krishna book distributor, a Czech lady it was if memory serves, downtown Helsinki, buying a copy of Bhaktivedanta's "Life Comes from Life" to study; I had been tremendously interested in all things occult, oriental and esoteric. It was after a few weeks into visiting the weekly Sunday Love Feast at the local Krishna temple that I decided to purchase a set of japa-beads and start the mantra the way the devotees chanted, with some daily volume in the practice. My one regret with following their method is in ditching mental japa for some seven more years to come — for one was supposed to chant audibly in ISKCON.

Spring of Ecstasy

I believe it was autumn at this point. With the first day off with but four rounds of japa, the next day I kicked off with sixteen, as that seemed to be a standard number of sorts held in the temple. While I understood that many devotees held reservations over chanting near outsiders, I was not in the least worried; for it was only cool if someone spotted you engaged in something obscure and puzzling! My purple bead-bag with a Jagannath design, tagging along wherever I went, drew quite a few curious looks, yet few questions.

The practically endless pine forests in my neighborhood, in particular, provided a wonderful field for aimless solitary wanderings with the mantra rolling on. I remember deriving tremendous enjoyment from the practice. In fact, I remember being so thrilled at times that I had to sit down to let my system balance before moving on; a trait particularly inconvenient when moving around downtown, chanting. What I felt rather constantly as a result of chanting was an overwhelming surge of energy within my body, thrilling my limbs and warming up my face to a glow hitherto unknown to me. I suppose the almost forcibly manifest grin was the most visible of part of it all.

I only ever mentioned to one devotee of this. He was a new devotee as well, though already living in the ashram. A casual conversation on all things spiritual and sundry made for a perfect context to drop in my version of esoteric experience; it met with a puzzled shrug of shoulders, and then nothing. And for a reason: For it was believed that trembling of the body, grinning and laughing, dancing and the such were only manifest on the advanced stages of devotion, realms that were for the most part taboo, and were certainly not to be imitated under any circumstances.

This went on for a fair while, as I still lived home and kept going to school — and with tremendous effort at that, I might add, and with many a boring lesson chanted through. And good times they were; I was still buzzing at the height of discovery, for I had tapped into a whole new world to be explored, a magical world transcending the everyday reality I saw the surrounding society embrace and adore; it was a hollow world to me, the nine-to-five cycle of existence.

Covered Over

At this point, with the intensity of my experiences combined with my acquaintance with a couple of really cool temple devotees, it should come as a small surprise that I decided to join the temple after finishing my compulsory studies. I was in business with the chanting now, and the venture deserved to be seen through. After a bit of haggling with my parents, I secured a signed permission for becoming a resident of the temple, allowing me to "stay permanently" as I had promptly formed the agreement clause.

It didn't take too long for the magic of chanting to wane in the hectic temple environment, however. Constant traveling around and selling books and CDs took its toll, and hours spent chanting too early in the morning in too tired a state eventually led to a dramatic decrease in looking forward to the chanting experience, and subsequently in my interest in the practice itself. I did keep it going, of course, as a matter of obligation, but I had come a long way — and in the wrong direction — by abiding with the defunct modus operandi of the local temple and its hectic missionary spirit.

The standard explanation, of course, was an offensive attitude; there were ten offenses against the holy name that were taught of, and one way or another one could always imagine being guilty of at least one or the other. Then, as one might well expect, instead of biting into the root distractor in the way of inappropriate environment and circumstances, the offense-watching became a convenient facade for a failure to reach substantial levels of experience in chanting. And then, of course, it was supposed to be done for Krishna's pleasure, not mine, so I was wrong to seek bliss and euphoria in the practice in any case to begin with.

Rediscovering the Experience

It was only in 2005 that I began to explore the yogic arts deeper, still a staunch devotee, seeking to improve my sadhana. It so happened that one of our teachers, now at Radha-kunda, had also had a bit of a training in yoga, and had employed certain asanas or yogic sitting postures to support his chanting. (This, of course, is how you are actually supposed to be doing it, as any proper manual of sadhana ought to inform.) Mental japa combined with proper asanas and breathing techniques gave a substantial boost to my practice; it was as if all that preceded had not really amounted to much at all.

Incidentally, as I went further with my own studies of yogic meditation aids, I chanced upon the writings of late Swami Sivananda, an illustrious teacher of Yoga and Vedanta from Rishikesh, who called his way the Yoga of Synthesis and employed all relevant aspects of the four yogic paths, namely karma, jnana, astanga and bhakti-yogas. He was a big fan of devotion and chanting, and especially of sankirtan-styled chanting of Hare Krishna among other chants.

His perspective on diverse paths leading through a similar evolution towards the same goal put me first thinking, both curious and suspicious about practices comparable with my chanting experience. It was a text on kundalini-yoga that first depicted rather aptly symptoms akin to my early experience; parallels between bhava-bhakti and early kundalini-awakening were too evident to be ignored. In later solitary chanting sessions combined with pranayama I came to experience quite exactly the same as I had in my early days, and as I now was wiser on kundalini the unity of experiences became all too evident.

When I first embarked on studying the Buddhist theory of meditation, it became all too clear for me that we were dealing with universals. The Buddhist model for samadhi-oriented meditation featured a system of a whole hierarchy of meditation objects, and a general course of progress over which concentration grows and awakens certain states of mind. The first jhana, or meditative absorption, features the rising of an abundance of rapture and joy and is born of withdrawal arising from single-minded application of thought on the meditation object. In the second jhana, the experience springs from composure and unified awareness, and so forth — regardless of the object of meditation.

Conclusions

As to whether there is a certain hidden chamber in the mantra, yielding an abundance of extraordinary and transcendental relish and euphoria directly from the energy and presence of the rustic deity Krishna, or whether similar states of mind can be attained with diverse stimuli, I cannot say with any level of certainty. Though I did have my fair share of experiences one could call esoteric or deep, I suspect with a sufficient level of practice with a different object one could attain well comparable states of fascination and esoteric emotional turmoil.

Chanting Hare Krishna, or any mantra for that matter, when properly practiced in a conducive environment, can lead to a substantial level of concentration and inner mastery. While I no longer share a fascination for verbal meditation objects, I have no complaints of the process itself in principle, when practiced properly and in a balanced manner. However, excessive concentration endeavor is counter-productive, for with the rise of hectic concentration every surfacing negative mental pattern gains momentum.

Practiced in a distracting environment and under pressure, especially over filling daily quotas, japa becomes but a cruel means of beating the mind and sapping it out of its last vital juices. It should not, under any circumstances, be recommended to mend mental problems, lest they escalate as the wheels of the mind grind tighter and tighter. Contemplative methods such as vipassana hold much more therapeutic value for those seeking to first set straight the rudimentary inner landscape.