A fundamental, unique, and distinguishing element of Yogananda’s teachings are his Cosmic Chants, which he asked (and asks) his devotees to sing regularly and in a very specific manner. In his book Cosmic Chants he advises:
“Each devotee should set aside a regular time for singing these songs. Chant first aloud, then whisperingly, then mentally. A group, gathered together in the name of God, can take one of these chants, singing it together loudly, with piano or organ accompaniment, then more slowly, then singing in a whisper without any accompaniment, and finally mentally only. In this way deep God-perception can be reached singly or together.”
There are three main reasons why chanting the Cosmic Chants are a powerful tool on our journey to Self-realization.
1) Spiritualized chants
Yogananda writes at the beginning of his Cosmic Chants book: “Each of the Cosmic Chants in this book has been spiritualized, that is, each song has been sung aloud and mentally until it has found actual response from God.” He further explains: “Such songs like live matches produce the fire of God-contact whenever they are struck on the foundation-stone of devotion. Ordinary songs are like wet matches which do not produce any spark of God-contact.”
Music in general is a powerful vehicle for transmitting vibrations, moods, and even states of consciousness. When we sing Yogananda’s spiritualized Cosmic Chants, they directly transmit to us his illumined, God-united consciousness. Singing them, we enter more easily into that same blissful inner state of union.
To sing his spiritualized chants, particularly while inwardly attuning with him, is also a powerful means of attracting his living presence, grace, and blessings.
As we shall see, many of his Cosmic Chants have an ancient Bengali origin. However, the Western melody Yogananda created, as well as the English wording he chose, is so strikingly different from the original Indian song that each of these chants must be considered his own handiwork, his personal composition. Each one uniquely bears his signature, transmitting his specific vibration.
2) “Chanting is half the battle.”
Yogananda’s devotees are all aware of how strongly he emphasizes the importance of the heart’s love on the spiritual path: “You must make love to God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul,” he taught. Singing is one of the best ways to do this: “God loves the gentle songs coming from our hearts.”
He explains: “Devotion is the one offering that tempts God. He is not moved by all the rich gifts and promises that are made to Him. But into the garden of a life redolent with sweet devotion God is tempted to come. When the fragrance of your devotion oozes forth unceasingly from the rose of your heart, the mighty Deity must come to you.”
Without devotion, as Sri Yukteswar wisely said, one cannot set one foot before the other on the path to God.
Yogananda adds: “The Lord watches the heart. If in your heart there is love for God, Christ, and the Gurus, you will find it easy to reach them. The Father is not hiding from you; you are hiding from Him.” God always responds to love, never to correct definitions.
The Master tells us: “When will you find God? When all your desires for other things are finished. When you realize that the only thing worth having is Him. When every thought, every feeling is drenched with the love of God.”
Therefore he inspires us to increase our devotion: “How should you love God? Love him as the miser loves money; as the drowning man yearns for breath; as the desert wanderer craves water. Love Him with the first love of true lovers. When you have learned to love Him with all your heart, you will have Him. You will then be a yogi – one who is united with God.”
This is exactly why Yogananda often said, “Chanting is half the battle.” Chanting the Cosmic Chants stimulates that deep God-love in our heart.
The Guru wrote a special poem (published in East-West, Nov.1929) entitled, What Is Love? It begins like this:
Love is the scent with the lotus born.
It is the silent choirs of petals,
Singing the winter’s harmony of uniform beauty.
Love is the song of the soul, singing to God.
In his Praecepta Lessons he teaches us how to sing: “You must sing to God with your heart and with your soul, that you may, by the divine fervor of your heart, behold His face everywhere, ever more. Let us offer unto the Divine the bouquet of our devotion. Our hearts must unite before we can know God.” And: “When you sing to God, do not let your thoughts run away; let your words follow your thoughts in greatest devotion.”
On the recording Songs of My Heart, he shares a further trick of chanting: “Sing to His listening presence”. In other words, we sing to Someone who is present, who is listening to us, as we talk with Him/Her from our heart, through song.
If we sing with such sincere fervor and devotion, worldly people may consider us slightly crazy or fanatical. If they do, we are in good company as Yogananda had that very same experience: “When I entered this path, everyone thought I was crazy. I used to sing my songs of devotion to God, and some in my family lamented that I had gone wrong.” (The Divine Romance)
3) Chanting Cosmic Chants attunes us to AUM
But there is an even deeper and esoteric purpose for devotional chanting. Yogananda points out in his Cosmic Chants book: “Sound or vibration is the most powerful force in the universe. Music is a divine art, to be used not only for pleasure but as a path to God-realization.”
This is the esoteric and yogic element in it: “Vibrations resulting from devotional singing lead to attunement with the Cosmic Vibration or the Word.” That Cosmic Vibration is AUM. Only through God’s name (AUM) can He be found.
The very first words in his Cosmic Chants book are therefore: “Train my ears to listen to Thine unheard song.”
How can we reach AUM through chanting? Yogananda answers that question: superconscious chanting leads to AUM. His “scientific” five stages of chanting are:
1. Chanting aloud
2. Whisper chanting
3. Mental chanting
4. Subconscious chanting
5. Superconscious chanting
What is “subconscious chanting”? It is when the chant repeats itself spontaneously in our mind, during daily life. It is when “chanting becomes automatic, with internal consciousness only, when the mind effortlessly repeats a chant in the background of one’s thoughts and activities.”
What, then, is “superconscious chanting”? It is when chanting permeates all levels of our consciousness and leads our interiorized attention to AUM: “Superconscious chanting is when the deep internal chanting vibrations are converted into realization and are established in the superconscious, subconscious, and conscious minds. Holding the attention unbrokenly on the real Cosmic Vibration, AUM, not on any imaginary sound, is the beginning of real superconscious chanting.”
In other words, chanting becomes listening. Swami Kriyananda puts tit like this: “The higher aspect of chanting involves listening to the mighty sound of AUM, and becoming absorbed in it.”
This is why we read in the Autobiography of a Yogi:
“The deeper aim of the early rishi-musicians was to blend the singer with the Cosmic Song [AUM] which can be heard through the awakening of man’s occult spinal centers [chakras]… Because man himself is an expression of the Creative Word [AUM], sound has the most potent and immediate effect on him, offering a way to remembrance of his divine origin.”
AUM is reached only through very deep interiorization.
Durga Mata explains this yogic chanting method: “Sometimes [Yogananda’s] chant was appealing and sorrowful. Sometimes it’s a joyous chant. And sometimes it was a chant that goes into the spine, because Master says that the spine and the brain are the altar of God. And that is how we have to reach God: through the spine… When you go through the spine you go through the altar of God and then you find the Infinite. He said we have to interiorize our mind. This chanting is another method to help us interiorize our mind.”
Yogananda explains this interiorization in his Praecepta Lessons: “Followers of the path of devotion, meditation, chanting, and praying, must remember that they should so deeply follow their methods that the mind becomes so engrossed within (pratyahara) that it forgets sensations or restless thoughts.”
Durga Mata shared what could be a mystical guideline for chanting Yogananda’s Cosmic Chants: “I find a way to put every chant into the deep spine.”
Yogananda’s technique of chanting, in fact, is highly interiorizing: first singing loudly, then in a whisper, then mentally.
But to be effective, that interiorization must be devotional, prayerful, filled with our heart’s desire: “Chanting,” Durga Mata explains, is “when you really feel what you are singing: it becomes a prayer, because everything that you are really feeling is a prayer.”
In his Cosmic Chants book, Yogananda explains the effect of deep devotional chanting: “These chants properly repeated [loud to mental, with devotion, with many repetitions] will bring God-communion and ecstatic joy, and through these the healing of body, mind and soul.”
Swami Kriyananda marvellously explains Yogananda’s method of chanting, speaking from his own experience:
When to chant which Cosmic Chant?
Each Cosmic Chant has a specific purpose, vibration, and power. At the beginning of the Cosmic Chant book, Yogananda specifies the purpose for most of his Cosmic Chants: “When To Use These Songs”. For example: do you feel far away from God and want to strengthen your inner tie with Him? Then chant I Will Never Forget Thee (Listen, listen, listen).
The specific purpose for each Cosmic Chant will be given for each single Cosmic Chant.