Can mantra chanting help us to access all the knowledge that was known to humanity in the past?
And these questions are there I will try to rephrase the question you can correct me I didn't get it properly you are saying that I mentioned that meditation enables us to access higher levels of consciousness so is it that past knowledge or past skills can those also be accessed through the chanting of mantras and can they also become accessible for practical use in the world is that the question yeah now there are two different points in biology there is something called as inherited skills and there is inherited habits and there is something called as learned skills learned skills so inherited skills are largely genetic they are determined by the kind of genes they have and if you consider the various species that exist in nature the higher species have a greater proportion of learned skills as compared to inherited skills so for example say amoeba or trees for example whatever is in their genetic makeup that's how they grow some small adaptations happen but the capacity for re-learning that is very little whereas the higher we go on the evolutionary scale we find that the capacity for learned skills is much greater so what differentiates humans from the subhuman species is this much higher capacity for learned skills as compared to inherited skills now this applies to both material and spiritual aspects now when we talk about say material skills is it that suppose I want to learn German so is it that by chanting of mantra suddenly the German manifests in my consciousness not necessarily all of us we are not infinite even when we link with the infinite we still remain finite so the finite doesn't become infinite in the sense of merging but the finite links with the infinite through doubt so in that sense it's not that mantra chanting is a replacement for material skill building but it can act as a complement a complement in the sense that any skill building that we have learned that requires a culture of discipline that requires dedication and such dedication is much more easily developed when we have a ethos of finding inner satisfaction so the mantra chanting by giving us inner satisfaction creates an ethos that is very conducive for learning a personal ethos that helps us discipline us like in one of my books which I had written in 2007-2008 and then I mentioned that how from the 1920s onwards researchers have been trying to find a correlation between personal behaviour and spiritual commitment spiritual commitment can be expressed in different kinds of spiritual activities but spiritually committed individuals and their individual behaviour what is the correlation between them so consistently what has been found is that younger children who have some kind of spiritual culture they are usually less impulsive less rash and they have a greater learning pulse not just young children this is observed even among older people there was a book published by the Oxford University called the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Health and there they found that the positive spiritual activities they brought about mental and physical well-being much more than those who did not have these activities so the point which I am making here is that our chanting of mantras can help us develop skills which we may not have that's one aspect but along with that there is another component of wisdom of humility, of kindness of gentleness of wisdom, of desiring qualities we are in our core pure consciousness and as pure consciousness we all have desirable qualities but these desirable qualities are covered over it's like pure water contaminated so our consciousness is contaminated the mantra chanting can bring about the purification of consciousness by which the qualities that are unique to our nature our core spiritual nature they become manifest so to summarize we humans have a capacity to learn much more than other species and that capacity to learn can be tapped through mantras so if I use broad differentiation there are qualities and there are skills so skills refer to more external things like learning a language or playing an instrument or doing some physical training the skills mantra chanting is not a replacement but it's a component it creates a foundation by which we can have the discipline to develop those things but along with that more important is that people can have abilities but if they don't they don't have qualities corresponding qualities those abilities can become destroyed there is a doctor who has the ability to cut and stitch the body, a surgeon who has the ability to cut and stitch the body effectively it's a very good ability but if that surgeon does not have the quality of compassion of caring for the patients let's say a doctor may cut the body and instead of healing the organ, steal the organ from the body so for performance in this world we don't require non-systemic means but also qualities so in the building of skills the development of abilities in the building of skills mantra chanting can act as a complement in the case of manifesting qualities mantra chanting itself delivers it's not that we are developing we are just acquiring them from outside the consciousness at our core is pure and mantra chanting cleanses the consciousness so that the only purity of our spiritual side becomes manifest so.