Is It Possible to Ignite Something Using Mantras?

Essentially, all that we can sense, we can feel through our sensory organs — ears, eyes, nose, tongue, and skin — are vibrations.

But when we say vibrations, we instantly connect with sound. It is how we connect stillness to peace and noise to unrest. It is more in the mind.

The same water — you are sitting near an unperturbed lake, still lake, and meditating. You feel peace. The still water conveys peace to you. But when you hear waves near an ocean, then it is not peace. You can meditate on the sound of waves also, but that is like meditating with a mantra or omkara. The earlier one is blank, still.

But then, all these are vibrations. Why do we connect vibrations to sound, naturally? Because sound comes and hits your ears. When you see a scenery — a distant mountain — you don’t feel this hitting your eyes, unless it is a flash of light or lightning, which is very powerful. The regular light waves or vibrations that come to the eyes are not so powerful, like what you see when you are sitting in a room — the furniture.

Taste also — unless it is pungent or very harsh — you don’t really notice. Your own saliva, for example — it has a taste, but you don’t recognize it. But sound waves for us, based on the impact they create on the sensory organ called ears, is much more powerful.

There may be another reason. Eyes — whatever is in line with the eyes, in front of the eyes — that only you have to see. You will naturally get your attention towards whatever is in the line of the eyes. Nose — whatever smell reaches your nostrils only, you have to smell. A flower inside a glass box — you won’t be able to smell it. Taste — whatever is inside your mouth, that only you have to taste. Skin — whatever comes in contact with your skin, that only you have to feel.

But ear — the sound need not be in line with the opening of the ear. You have to respond to sound coming from the backside, above, below. You have to get an idea about how far it is coming from and the direction. So sensitivity of the ears towards sound is much more refined than the sensitivity of the other sensory organs.

Is it possible to ignite something, make something catch fire, using mantras or sound waves?

Today we have ultrasonic cutters, ultrasonic welding machines — yes, sound can produce heat. If you use sound waves in the range of 15 to 70 kHz, it can produce heat, cause melting and joining of two surfaces together.

See, our audible range of sound is 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Under laboratory conditions, this can be even as low as 12 Hz and as high as 28 kHz. But can we produce also sounds in this frequency? No. What you can hear — the audible range — is much more than what you can produce. For example, the maximum frequency that you can produce on an average, what a human can produce, is roughly 3 kHz as compared to 20 or 28 kHz that you can hear. On the lower end, this is about 85 Hz as against 20 Hz.

But through training, this can be improved. For example, the American singer Tim Storms could produce sound waves as low as 0.189 Hz.

Isn’t this what we are doing when practising mantras?

This is why it is said — chant mantras hundreds of thousands of times. Then only it works. Then your sound producing mechanism — the physical mechanism — goes on improving. Like how a singer trains himself or herself through constant practice. Then only they can hit the exact notes with accuracy.

This is why mantras are to be chanted lakhs of times. Then only you can produce those exact frequencies to produce the required effect.

Ram is agni beeja. If your chanting of agni beeja is perfect — this is not pronunciation — if your speech organs, through training, through repeated chanting, can produce the exact frequency of this beejakshara, then you can set something on fire by merely chanting this mantra.

Similarly, if your chanting of vam beeja — the jala beeja — is perfect, then you can extinguish fire by merely chanting this beejakshara.

You don’t need to chant it lakhs of times — that is for training. If you are trained, then saying 'ram' or 'vam' even once would be sufficient.

This is how our mantras are designed — to produce effects at various levels, physical, mental, or some other level.

There are two more points to be noted here.

This — we are talking about sound waves your speech organs can produce and ears can hear. But mantras are more powerful when chanted mentally.

So, we are not just talking about vibrations you can physically make with your speech organs and hear with ears. Mantra shastra involves frequencies much beyond the range that you can make and hear.

When you mentally chant a mantra also, there are vibrations that are produced within the body. The effects of these vibrations are much, much beyond. So, mantra shastra is not just about sounds that you can make and hear. The sounds that you can make and hear are just a minuscule part of mantra shastra — maybe 1%.

It is sounds or vibrations that you produce inside, for which no corresponding sounds are heard outside. The vibrations which are transmitted out of the body — not exactly dependent on a medium — mantra shastra deals in such vibrations.

So when you chant 'ram' aloud and set something on fire, these vibrations are produced inside. It works both ways — it works even when you chant aloud, it works even when you chant mentally.

You must be knowing about radium. Radium produces heat on its own. This is an internal vibration. If you put 100 grams of radium and 100 grams of ice together in a closed chamber, in 100 hours, it would produce so much heat that it can melt the entire ice.

These are vibrations, produced inside radium, transmitted through some medium to the piece of ice, and producing an effect there.

Same is the case with mantras.

We will be seeing more of these principles.

Ramaswamy Sastry and Vighnesh Ghanapaathi