The teachings of the Mother Mantra originate from the ancient tradition of Shamanic Yoga. Selene Calloni W. was initiated to the path of shamanic yoga more than 30 years ago in Sri Lanka by her teacher Michael Williams, who, despite his English name, was a Tamil, a yoga and shamanism scholar. In 2003, in Switzerland, Selene Calloni W. created Anima Mundi, an association through which she started spreading the tradition of the Mother Mantra throughout Europe. Some disciples have now become helping professionals and they are contributing to the transmission of the Mother Mantra teachings.
The Mother Mantra is a very ancient tradition which aims to the “reabsorption of reality” or “withdrawal of projections”. What do we mean by these two concepts? We mean “soul making” and “deep ecology”, namely taking all those objects, people and feelings that we have met in the course of our life back to their original state of image, dream, projection.
We live in a universe which is not substantial (it is not made of its own substance), but symbolic. This perfectly matches the Buddhist concept of the Samsara wheel, otherwise known as the “wheel of illusions”; it is therefore “chitta maya”, or “deceit of our conscience”. The same concept exists in Hinduism too; the existence is Shiva’s dance who, dancing, awakens matter and produces pulsating waves. This is poetry, but it’s also science; it reminds us, in fact, of quantum physics, where matter is seen as “waves pulsating in the void”. Matter is impermanent; in the tradition of the Mother Mantra we say it’s like lightning: it appears and disappears. It does not last, it is unsubstantial. Our minds must be deceiving us when we see reality as permanent and substantial. This deceit is, in truth, a cage, wherein we suffocate and suffer, since, if events are considered as objective, they cannot be modeled by our ability to imagine. This is how a person ends up being a victim of events rather than their creator or lover.
Why should we live as victims when we can free ourselves from this deceit? The Mother Mantra is an instrument to reach freedom from this trap. The Mother Mantra, as instrument, does not pass through the thinking mind, since the thinking mind itself holds us in this bondage, but it passes through the body, since it is a vibration which connects with what Sri Aurobindo, the father of integral yoga, defined as “the mind of cells”. “The mind of cells” is a form of vibrational consciousness; the continuous repetition of a mantra leads the body’s consciousness to appropriating the mantra’s vibration and begins to independently repeat it automatically. This is what Aurobindo called “automatic power”. It happens therefore that a person wakes up in the middle of night to find that something within him is repeating the mantra. When this happens, when the body appropriates the vibration of a mantra, then the energy which the mantra carries is released. So, what intention does the Mother Mantra carry? It aims at awakening from the illusion of objectivity and reabsorbing reality, thus regaining our ability to imagine all events.
This imaginative process can only be carried out in a relationship between two entities. Images, which constitute all events we experience in life, are created in a relationship between two elements which we can call “visible” and “invisible”. We could alternatively define them as the “human” and the “divine”, the latter to be understood as a single part within a multitude and a multitude within a single part. Thus we can see divinity, (that is the anima mundi, or world soul, or the invisible aspect of all people and things) in a polytheistic multiplicity, as gods, which are “eidola”, images; all the images which we can experience and live through. Therefore, events come about due to an erotic, creative interplay between the human and the divine. In this relationship neither man nor God exist in their separate reality, the only thing which actually exists is their relationship. This relationship is a constant giving of oneself to the other; in other words, it is love: only love exists.
When somebody manages to lead all events back to their original nature, which is love, then suffering ends. The ability of creating with love, for love, in love is the point which we are able to reach through the morning and evening spiritual exercises and the healing practices known in the Mother Mantra tradition. In fact, within the Mother Mantra tradition, we encounter many rituals which aim to an awakening. The outcome of the various challenges we face in our life depends on the daily rituals that we enact. Introducing in your daily life some rituals from the Mother Mantra is in itself a big step towards freedom. For example, through daily rituals of the Mother Mantra we are able to bless all the images which we encounter and within which we live. Blessing means finding what is positive in all those people and situations which we encounter. The ability of blessing everything and everyone allows you to function in harmony with the abundance of nature. It leads you to true richness, which is not just material wealth, but it’s the ability of being inspired, of welcoming ideas, the gods, and thus have the right idea at the right moment, be accompanied by a good spiritual guide, a good daimon. This is eudaemonia.
The other great result that can be achieved by a daily practice of the Mother Mantra rituals is the absence of effort, another key to success. The ability of living effortlessly can be obtained by understanding what is the true quality of what we are relating-to in every situation of our life. If every person and object that we deal with is nothing but an image, a mask, an illusion, then what we are actually dealing with in any occasion is the divine. Once this has been grasped, all actions will result effortless since in this magical relationship with the divine everything is given to you before you even have the need for it. When personal effort ceases to be, we enter a condition of constant and incessant inspiration: we are inspired. Even a scientist, when discovering something exceptional, has to give up the need of controlling everything and surrender to a relationship with the mysterious, with the divine, whence one gets the right idea at the right moment. This condition is known as “mystic marriage”, or for alchemists, “alchemic wedding”. This is a concept found in all of the spiritual traditions in the world. Think of Hinduism and the partnership between Shiva and Parvati, the latter being the creative force. Think of the esoteric Buddha: in esoteric Buddhism the main point of reference is not Gautama Siddhartha (the historic Buddha), but the so called Vajra Dara, that is the Buddha depicted in an erotic union with his companion. Think of esoteric Christianity, Gnosticism, where we hear about the union between Christ and Sophia. Think of the Song of Songs which tells of the love between Solomon and his bride, and then think of esoteric Islam, of Sufism with poets such as Rumi, who praises the carnal love between human and divine.
Entering into a mystic marriage means to be in the company of a good daimon, which we can call guardian angel or spiritual guide. It is basically the representative of the divine. We can also call it mystery, invisible, or, to say it with Jung’s words, shade. A shade is the whole of our possibilities and repressed energies. It is all that we do not know, but whence our consciousness gets energy to exist. In order to consciously get more energy from the shade one must be able to go through a process which, in depth psychology, we can call transvaluation, whilst Buddhists define as “nourishing the demons”. This, initially, involves coming to the realization that our pains, worries and problems are actually our greatest wealth. Then, one must learn to feed one’s demons with the food they most like: conscious attention. One must listen to the demons’ call, respond to them, ask them why they’re there, what their goal is, and listen to their responses trustingly, knowing that their function, in the wider picture, is that of pushing us forward, making us evolve. A well-fed demon, in fact, always turns into our closest ally. If you are able to transform your demons into your closest allies, then you are free, since you are not dependent anymore on some external help, and so you cannot be manipulated.
The daily ritual practices from the Mother Mantra are also a path towards “deep ecology”. Nature is not a material object, but a symbol. We project what we have inside and inhabit our own images.
To understand nature and our own body, we should try to look at them through their own eyes, not through the eyes of mind. Not only do we have two eyes looking at the outside world, we also have an eye looking inwards. It is through this eye that we can behold the truth of nature and our body and through which we can awake from the illusion that creates suffering. In order to open the inward-looking eye we need to go beyond mental judgment. Nature’s perspective is horizontal, not vertical like the mind’s. The mind judges from a vertical perspective, through a vertical world axis (or Axis Mundi) which separates good from bad, true from false, advantage from disadvantage. In nature, instead, the perspective is horizontal: it consists of beauty, which does not have an opposite; ugliness, in fact, does not exist in nature. Beauty is poesy, passion, willingness to surrender, love.
To say it with the Gnostics, the world of materialism, of deception and suffering finds its origin in the separation of Sophia from Christ, of wisdom from love.
To open your inward-looking eye means to gain access to a supramental vision in which wisdom and love are inseparable. Through this kind of true wisdom only is it possible to practice deep ecology and soul making.
Ritual practices from the Mother Mantra work on three levels simultaneously: visual, emotional and bodily. Working with one’s body is always central. The body is, after all, the main dimension in which we live. A real change in consciousness transforms our relationship with images, thus changing the meaning that we confer to these images and the way in which we process them.
Let’s now see, in detail, how it is possible to bring into daily practice some of the fundamental rituals which will allow us to achieve our objectives.
1) Reaching the first objective: how to intensify my state of eudaimonia.
This involves developing an ever more conscious relationship with your daimon, your spiritual guide, known as “invisible lover” in the Mother Mantra tradition.
This is achieved by maintaining a good level of energy in the body: I am able to feel the presence of my accompanying daimon and of the ideas which it inspires only if there is healthy, balanced energy in my body. Thus, the Mother Mantra offers some practices aimed at raising our energy levels by body movement and breath control. A healthy diet is also fundamental. Various practices and guidance for a correct lifestyle can be found in the book “Mother Mantra”.
Daily rituals are essential to keep a high energetic level. The Mother Mantra provides both the rituals and the motivation to support you in this daily path.
The Mother Mantra also includes some formulas through which it is possible to kindle a dialogue with one’s invisible lover.
To begin with, you could address your spiritual guide every night, and ask it to lead you, during your sleep, to those places of the underworld, to those regions of the psyche which need to be healed or awakened.
Every morning you may ask your spiritual guide to stand by you and give you inspiration to face the day with the best ideas, promising your daimon that at no point during the day will you forget that you are loved. This can be reinforced during the course of the day by repeating the so-called “Mystic and Mantra”.
2) Reaching the second objective: how to find the positive aspect of each person and event through the blessings pronounced with the Mother Mantra.
This can be achieved by maintaining a high level of pleasure in the body. When a high level of pleasure (which is also a state of calm, serenity, peace) is present in our organs we are led to behave positively and bless existence, people, places, and all that we encounter in our life path. When the body feels pleasure we live in a state of enthusiasm (the origin of the word, “entheos” means, to be in God, or possessed by a god).
In order to keep a high level of pleasure in our body we need to get into the habit of blessing our organs daily. The well-known psychoanalyst C. G. Jung used to say that organs are like gods. Blessing our organs is a fundamental practice that must become part of our daily habits.
Keeping a high level of pleasure in our body is also linked with always acting creatively. When we do something uncreative, something repetitive, which reiterates well-known patterns, the level of pleasure and enthusiasm in our life drops drastically.
This, in shamanic-tantric yoga, is represented by the non-dispersion of seed (the so called “rasa”), the liquid of male and female pleasure, our creative principle.
Our union with the divinity is erotic, and therefore creative. When we do something uncreative, when we repeat previous patterns, we are not acting in union with divinity, but just with our mind, with what is already known, with what the mind has learned. Hence, we disperse our seed, our creative principle.
This is why in shamanic-tantric yoga we say that the seed shouldn’t be dispersed during intercourse, but should rise up to the forehead where it may encounter and melt a pearl of light, known as Tig Le, which in turn, dropping through the body, stimulates pleasure and beatitude. When pleasure is present in their organs, people are able to carry out positive actions that allow them to acquire positive karma and make their way towards awakening and freedom.
In order to work towards the second objective remember to bless your organs various times a day and abstain from uncreative actions which don’t give you pleasure. All that you do during the span of a day should be creative, and you should ensure that every time you carry out a task it would be like the first time. Do not repeat yourself, do not act on the basis of what’s known, express all that’s still unknown within you.
3) Reaching the third objective: how to act effortlessly and be inspired.
In order to reach the third objective, imagine, during the day, your daimon in the form of an animal. Simply imagine your animal spirit being situated just above your head before your forehead. Let your animal spirit, from that position, devour all mental doubts before your mind even get the chance to process them fully. Maintain a condition of mental silence by silently repeating, to no-one and nothing, “I believe”, allow your invisible lover to inspire you with the best ideas. Ideas come immediately when you manage to create a mental void.
Then try to be in contact with nature for as much as possible and welcome the spirits of nature in you. Anytime you see something beautiful, be it a mountain, a tree, a lake, a cloud, a flower, ask the spirit of the place or of the tree to come with you. Simply say “Come with me!” Shamans believe that people struggle through life because they live disconnected from their wild soul; the best way to connect again is by re-establishing a union with the spirits of nature, which represent beauty.
Beyond that, the Mother Mantra tradition presents many practices that are aimed at reaching high levels of inspiration. They are called “morning and evening spiritual exercises”.
4) Reaching the fourth objective: how to transvalue, or how to feed one’s daimons.
Every time you feel a sensation in your body, be it discomfort, pain or pleasure, delve into the sensation by mentally saying to the part of the body concerned, “I believe in you”. On top of that, meditate in order to heal your memories. Let the impressions of your childhood, your youth, your adult age come back to you, and mentally repeat to your inner child, your inner adolescent or your inner adult “I believe in you!” Equally, visualize for yourself a great future by evoking impressions of your old age and even of your death, and repeat to the image of your old or dying self “I believe in you!”
From the Mother Mantra tradition we get many organs and memory healing practices. They are called healing spiritual practices.
It is also very important to become aware of one’s life ideal, understand one’s mission, the reason why our soul is here. When we are aware of our life ideal, we live all difficult moments as a descent into the underworld, searching for the tools essentially needed to fulfill our life’s mission.
5) Reaching the fifth objective: opening the inward-looking eye and developing supramental vision.
To this end the Mother Mantra tradition offers a truly vast array of practices.
Beyond fear, the rituals of the Mother Mantra will be able to lead you, by day and night, towards a freer and aware life.