Everything that we sense through all the five sensory organs are vibrations.

The nerves pick up vibrations only.

Sound, touch, vision, taste, and smell.

But among these, sound is the most powerful.

You watch a movie sitting in a cinema hall.

The light doesn't hit your eyes as hard as the sound hits your ears.

For any kind of stimulus for the sensory organs at its source is a vibration.

The most powerful among all vibrations is sound.

Not only that, specific frequencies, specific tones of sound can produce specific effects, even in inorganic matter.

Ernst Chladni was an 18th century German scientist.

He did an experiment.

He took a metal plate, fixed its centre firmly, put particles such as sand on it, and excited its side with a bow string.

When the vibrations from the bowstring matched the natural frequency of the plate, the particles started arranging themselves into specific patterns on the surface of the plate.

Specific vibration producing specific pattern.

Waves have got nodes and antinodes.

The lowest points are nodes, the highest are antinodes.

When you hold a particular node on the plate and play the bow on antinode it would produce a certain pattern.

Specific vibrations producing specific effects.

This is the concept of mantras.

Mantras are based on Chhandas or meters such as Gayatri, Ushnik, Anushtup, Trishtup; there are so many of them.

Even within each Chhandas there are variations like निचृद्गायत्री, पथ्यापङ्क्ति, ककुम्मती अनुष्टुप्.

Each Chhandas is a particular pattern of vibrations capable of producing specific effects.

That's how Rishis give us mantras.

It is like radiation therapy.

High energy radiation is used to target cancer cells and destroy them.

Vibrations and targeting,both are required to produce effects.

This is there in mantras also.

Every mantra comes with a viniyoga.

A statement of what purpose it is being used for.

Sometimes, specific targeting is there built into the mantra itself.

For example the Narasimha mantra- Ugram veeram mahavishnum.

In that mantra, the term mrityu mrityum namamyaham is there.

Mrityu Mrityu means killer of death.

When you chant like this, the mantra becomes protective.

But in the place of the first mrityu if you put a person's name like- Kamsa Mrityum namamyaham, Ravana Mrityum namamyaham, then the mantra becomes death for that person.

In Veda mantra also such specific targeting is there- अमुष्यायणा अमुष्याः पुत्रः.

Taking the gotra name and the mother's name of the person being targeted.

But this power to produce specific effects is not there in ordinary speech.

Ordinary speech does not have the power to manifest.

Ordinary speech can at best produce emotions.

Can prompt you into action.

But ordinary speech will not be able to manifest.

It doesn't have the power to manifest because ordinary speech does not conform to Chhandas or meter.