Japasutram The Science of Creative Sound

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Fact or live actual experience is a seamless whole, which is (a) unbounded in the sense that it cannot, as a whole, be contained within any specifically assigned limits; (b) alogical in the sense that it cannot, as a whole, be comprehended and understood by any logical form or category; (c) absolute in the sense that, though analytically involving a manifold of relations, it cannot be, as a live whole, and apart from such analytic operation, coverable by any assigned relation; (d) unusable in the sense that as a live entire whole, it is not amenable to, and treatable by, any usage and convention, theoretical or practical; (e) mutable, not in the sense that, as a live entire whole (i.e., as FACT) it change as regards the four essential features given above, but in the sense that its internal ensemble of features and postures present a picture of continual flux and change, ceaseless renewing and reforming. It is immutable as foundational Being-Consciousness (which is also foundational Joy-Consciousness); it is also immutable as regards the above four basic characters that pertain to it as (alogical, absolute, integral and unusable) Fact; but it is mutable (expanding and contracting etc.) as regards its internal composition and disposition of features and postures, and, if we so put it, its domestic economy of both “production and distribution” of material.

If this be the basic posture or nature of the Fact as experience, it is evident that, for usage and convention (both theoretical and practical). The live entire whole must be ab initio analytically treated, by innate urge or by intelligent motive, so that we get “ready at hand” suitably usable packets and parcels of fact-segments with appropriate labels and numbers so to say, for “indoor use” as well as for “outdoor commerce.”

However diversely and suitably we may deal in these labeled and numbered parcels of the Integral Fact, it is never to be forgotten and ignored that in real and vital appreciation of the live, entire experience, its liveness and entireness never abdicate their basic prerogative to subsist, and sustain all that we may “piecemeal” and dress up for “home consumption” or for mutual bargaining.

Now, Japa or any other form of “spiritual effort” or sadhana for that matter, looks like a customary home “commodity” parceled out to us, which we may “use” without an anxious enquiry into the credentials and essentials of the validity and value assigned to it, without, in other words, questioning how far or near it is affiliated to the “live. Lucid, entire” Fact as Experience. We usually call in belief to show us the way and lead but, oftener than not, belief gropes with its eyes too tight-bandaged, and, so mostly, misleads, miscarries ! (See An Ode to Belief).

So, a Factual Background, comprehensive and luminous enough for both realizing intuition and “vision”, and rational understanding and appreciation, must be firmly laid for the sadhaka (aspirant) to move forward with the courage of conviction, with adequate outflow of both real urge and ardour, accession of both positive light and delight.

So, Japa is not a “handy” job that we can do in improvised corner seclusion severed from the wider and larger setting and context of fundamental cosmic verities, its life and behaviour as an integrated, rationalized whole. As we have said elsewhere (in a book of poems)-Japa has to be done with its channels of inflow and outflow kept open to draw upon-“the unbounded unfathomed Sea of Significance where both star and straw their import receive and commerce carry.”

Be it also borne in mind that in that “unbounded unfathomed Sea of Significance.” There are no natural or normal boundary lines; no real or rigid demarcations that separate one realm mapped out or charted from another. So the Absolute Experience Whole (Brahman or Mahamaya as we call it) is never, except in our pragmatic thought and convention, divided and partitioned as physical and metaphysical, material and spiritual, “scientific” and “non-scientific.” Not even as real and ideal, thing and thought, known and knower. Such distinctions do not affect the immutable integrity of the Fact, but arise in our habitual review and report thereof, and our pragmatic reactions thereto.

Against this “live and entire” setting, integral and all-inclusive as it is, the principles and practices of Japa, as a way of realization. Intrinsically allied to a concourse of other ways and methods of sadhana such as Yoga etc., as a component of accordance and concordance in the Integral Harmony Divine, have been presented in our original Six-Volume Japasutra, of which this is a modest-sized one-volume digest in English. It is an amplification and, to some extent, an exposition of the small book in English (Japasutram) published some years back. The smaller text also goes in entire in this enlarged edition.

Preface to the First Edition

When starting to write this book we entertained a hope that it might be possible to prepare a fairly good-sized compendious volume dealing in a broad, systematic way with the basic concepts, principles and their widely varied practical application in the Japasutram. But that hope has not materialized. The book begins in a discursive and “dramatic” way, and in a manner which seems to be inclined to “metaphorical and pictorial thinking. “After proceeding more than half-way. Leisurely and ramblingly, like that, it perceives that its journey’s end cannot be put so far off as it hoped or imagined it could, that the finish of its “opening Act” will now have to be sudden, laconic and cryptic. It may be hoped, nevertheless, that the pictures and imageries, and a peep also into side galleries of the Show which the present small book open will be suggestive of the manner in which such things have been sought to be understood in Japasutram, and the rigid cast of the last portion may be indicative of the terse, compact way in which the subject has been treated in the last two volumes of that Book. The present small book tells especially of vak and prana, of varnamala or the “Creative Exponents”, of nada, bindu, kala, and ardhamatra, in very general terms. This, it is hoped, may stimulate an interest for a closer and deeper study as amplified and illustrated in Japasutram The method of varna analysis here is also typical of what may be found in the bigger Book.

If this small book can not promise to offer much easily understandable matter, it has luckily gained the advantage of incorporating two separate articles by two esteemed friends both of whom have closely studied the Japasutram. One is from Prof. Charu Chandra Chatterji, who has written a short but engagingly readable appreciative summary of the more salient points and features of the Book Considering the manner how the “thing” has come to us, personal appreciation, high or low, does not tell much either way. Praise or thanks-giving goes where it is due. The other article is from Justice P.B. Mukharji of the Calcutta High Court. It is a deep and closely-argued, original article first delivered as a lecture at the Ramakrishna Culture Institute, and subsequently published in its Bulletin. It is called “The Metaphysics of Sound” – an illuminating paper that not only fully meets the challenge of the Physics of Sound, but carries Sound beyond its gross or physical dimension (which “metaphysics” literally implies), and explores into its higher dimensions of madhyama, pasyanti and para. It is these higher dimensions that make vak realize its fundamental and total significance as Creative Cosmic Life, as Revealing Supernal light, and as Basic, Original Joy (Anandam) which is the Causa Sui, the Magnum Matrix (as we have called it) of whatever is and becomes.

A compendium volume in English dealing with the subject-matter of Japasutram in a compact, rounded and systematic way remains to be written. But until the curtain that veils is rung up, we do not see-when it will be, and who its “instrument” or Yantram.