Thoughts on Discipline and the Sound-Brahman

By Brahmachari Aadi

While working on our mind's discipline, the progress seems slow at times, but just look at the heights covered by that ideal of discipline! Ah, it's hard to see all the way up there. The mountain breaches the cloud's mist and extends onwards and upwards. An electrifying silence touches the onlooker.

That Mount Meru (the mythical high mountain mentioned in Puranas) is difficult to measure. How to know if one will summit it in this life? We cannot know, but we can surely determine what the next steps are and proceed methodically. Then we will not lose our footing. Swami Brahmananda says, "Follow your routine." Before climbing El Capitan without a harness, the renowned climber Alex Honnold visualized himself climbing the entire route, which extends 3,000 feet up through dozens of subsections that the body must be meticulously maneuvered through. Honnold completed this mental working out of his path and exact movements over the course of about a year, and in the month before the climb, he removed all social media from his phone and stopped responding to emails so that nothing would vie for his attention. By the time he was to begin the ascent, every movement had been memorized through his disciplined visualization.

Rakhal's (future Swami Brahmananda’s) mind was highly disciplined, like an obedient and friendly dog. A bloodhound can even follow instructions to take a sign in the form of scent and locate its source. One day, the Master (Sri Ramakrishna) told Rakhal about the manifestation of Brahman as sound. Rakhal's mind took the scent of this idea, and during his next meditation he took the idea as his subject of contemplation. In the course of this one meditation the sound-Brahman was revealed to him. No further elaboration on this event given in "Teachings of Swami Brahmananda." It is for us to ascend to those regions and see for ourselves.

In "Bhakti Yoga," Swami Vivekananda identifies Brahman's sound-manifestation as the Sphota or Logos. This is the only place where Swamiji mentions the Sphota. This Sphota is eternal and unmanifest at the level of names and forms. It is the manifester itself, which first expresses at the universal level as Brahmā, or Hiranyagarbha, or the cosmic Mahat. And each of these sources the manifold manifest names and forms. They are delineated in Vedantasara as isvara at the causal level, hiranyagarbha at the subtle level, and vaisvanara at the gross level. These three universal forms are identical with the microcosmic causal, subtle, and gross bodies, just as the space enclosed by a forest is identical with the space enclosed by a tree. Yet, when the scriptures tell us "Thou Art That," they are not implying that we are identical with the macrocosmic aggregates, but that our only identity is Brahman, the unassociated consciousness behind them.

Many are the paths by which one can reach God. The field of dharma is like a mountain with many paths winding up it. At the base, the travelers at different corners cannot see each other or each other's paths, but as they approach the peak some paths merge, and some travelers may cross over to meet those on other paths. In that ascended realm, paths are still winding around the tippy top of the mountain but have mostly lost their individuality or need for it; one can still proceed a bit further up, but the vantage point already yields a vast view of the surrounding lands. Just so, the Sphota which is heard in manifold sounds and is identified as between Brahman and manifestation; It is Truth without a second and Infinite.