As I walked this morning with my dog, feeling the cool breeze that passed through the winter worn trees, with its crackling song, I also had a song going on. I used to think that I would get a song or Mantra in my head. But more often now I am feeling that it is reverberating throughout my whole body, not just in my head. This morning, and many mornings it has been the Mantra Waah Yantee.
This Mantra feels important for these times, when we are being asked to find creative and new ways to relate to ourselves, each other, our families, our work, and to this reality that we are all in. There are so many incredible modalities for wholistic healing available to us. For those who understand these modalities, I believe now is the time to incorporate what you know into your life and share with others your knowledge. It will take great creativity to move past our old ways of separation based on political, cultural, religious and economic divides, so that we can truly take care of each other. It will take the energy of the heart, big time. So, because this Mantra vibrated in my heart on my walk this morning, I have faith that it’s capacity to bring forth our own creativity is what is being called for at this time. I invite you to read an excerpt about this Mantra from my book Original Light,and see what it can do for you. I’ll be teaching about it in our upcoming Mantra and Meditation class, Saturday April 11, 2020 at 1pm east coast time. You can sign up for this class and others here.
--Excerpt from Original Light, by Snatam Kaur--
waah yantee, kar yantee, jag dut patee, aadak it waahaa,
brahmaaday trayshaa guru, it waaheguru
Great Macroself, Creative Self.
All that is creative through time, all that is the Great One.
Three aspects of God: Brahma (Generator), Vishnu (Organizer), Shiva (Deliverer)
That is Waaheguru.
waah yantee: Great Macroself; how cosmic energy and ecstasy is contained within the Inner Self and all-encompassing Cosmic Self
waah: ecstasy; the Great Macroself; the larger, unbounded ecstasy
yantee: from yantar; instrument; it is the yantee, which is the mystical diagram that connects our Inner Self with the allencompassing Cosmic Self of the Universe
kar yantee: Creative Self (kar: to do, to make; that which does, makes, or creates; yantee: see above)
jag dut patee: all that is creative through time (jag: world; dut: messenger, envoy, angel of death; pati: husband, Lord, Master)
aadak it waahaa: all that is the Great One (aad/aadak: etc., so on, and others [adverb]; it: in or with this world; waahaa:manifestation of ecstatic consciousness)
brahmaaday trayshaa guru: three aspects of God — Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh (Shiva); (brahamaad: Brahma and the other gods; trayshaa guru: the three-part Guru, the three aspects of God: Generator, Organizer, and Destroyer)
it waaheguru: that is Waaheguru
This Mantra, Waah Yantee, opens the way for creativity and cosmic energy. When I sit down to play the music for this Mantra, several different tunes flow through me. Rishi Patanjali offered this Sanskrit Mantra over three thousand years ago; it describes the experience of Waaheguru. Also called the Gur Mantra, I have always found Waaheguru an incredible Mantra of transformation, the kind that works so well on the spot when all else has failed. So, in Patanjali’s beautiful exploration of Waaheguru, we essentially get two Mantras in one!
In the first part of this Mantra, Patanjali tells us what “waahaa” means — essentially, “waah” — ecstasy and expansion, the willingness to go beyond the inner Self and dive into the reality that is the Greater Cosmic Self of the Universe. Additionally, this acts as the key to connect with the “yantee” — the instrument, or cosmic diagram, that sets in place the relationship of the inner Self and the Cosmic Self. The relationship between them has always been there, just perhaps not connected from top to bottom, left and right. We come into alignment once again when we chant these words. In alignment, we feel the expansion of the cosmic Self and experience the capacity to live and remain in Love no matter what. We see everything as the activity and will of the Divine, the One Creator, within and around us all — this is the “kar.” Seeing everything this way keeps us in harmony with the Doer, and we accept the Will of the Divine, the flow of the day, and even a simple thing like the direction of a particular conversation. We come to realize how much this God, this beautiful God of ours, loves us so much, and we understand that day after day God sends us lessons to learn and grow, as well as opportunities to burn off our Karma and live in our Dharma. Once we realize this, we have experienced “kar yantee,” — the way the Divine works and flows within us and the Cosmos.
Then we come to “jag dut patee.” We experience a beginning and an end to this life; we are subject to the laws of time and space, time
and time again. “Jag” is the world, and “dut” means the messenger of death. However, this Mantra gives us liberation in this cycle of birth and death with the term “patee.” With each passing moment, we remain in the hands of the Divine Husband Lord “Patee,” and he takes us into His Heart and His Love. This is how the saintly martyrs of the human race face death — with love, devotion, and even exaltation. Think of Jesus on the cross. Think of Guru Arjan on the hot plate. Think of yourself and the last time you stood up for truth without any hesitation or fear.
So, “waahaa” means this capacity to expand into “waah” and feel the action of the Divine in “kar,” all through the mechanism of the “yantee” that connects our inner Self with the cosmic Self, throughout time and space, or “jag dut patee.”
Now for the second part of the Mantra. Even after the death of a great saint and martyr and the awakening that comes from tremendous acts of sacrifice, we continue on as mere humans, falling back into the spinning motion of our minds. How could we do anything else? We are made of spinning atoms! So we spin, every day. One thousand thoughts generated in the blink of an eye! And yet even in this chaos we still try, grow, love, search, and find union with the Divine. How do we do it? How do we know that God is real? How do we rise above the anxiety of time and space in the chaos of all this spinning? The answer lies in “brahmaaday trayshaa guru.”
“Brahmaaday” is a way of saying “Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva.” Brahma generates, Vishnu experiences or organizes, and Shiva delivers; that is our G.O.D., God. Everything must take birth, everything must experience, and everything must be delivered. Once we understand this, we can experience each lesson with purity, grace, and — ultimately — victory. It doesn’t really matter what happens, where you live, who did what, who said what, and on and on. What matters is you. What matters is how you generated truth, organized it, and delivered it. What matters is how you let your attachments go and simply exist in the flow of the Will of the Divine. To experience this capacity requires the Trayshaa Guru, the Guru of these three qualities: generation, organization, and delivery. And that is Waaheguru; that is exactly what Waaheguru does. Or, as the Mantra says, “it waaheguru.”
--Excerpt from Original Light, by Snatam Kaur--