What does one mean when we say sound has lost its value.

Like everything else th at loses its energy when over used, sound is no exception to the rule. If the en vironment didnt have so much din reverberating through space, a curse spoken out might possibly have worked but in our times, even collective curses dont seem t o take effect.

Imagine these examples... people died because they sounded like a deer drinking water and were subjected to the arrows of Kings who went out hunting. Kalidasa w as initially a dumb guy till Ma Kali blessed him with the gift of Ma Saraswati s eated on his tongue. The great astras used in battle were not special weapons bu t a series of powerful mantras strung together and uttered at the right time to take maximum effect. The 1008 mantras for any given diety are not just a set of names but they define the very nature of the celestial being.

===================================================== "Tat tvam asi" That thou art, or who we are, is possibly the most mysterious line ever. Our kno wledge about the world, the universe, the people around definitely superceeds th e knowledge we have about ourselves. Yes we know who we are on paper, our defini tion arises from how we have illusioned our being to be, a part of a lineage, a caste/creed, a language/state, an occupation, by our achievements if any of cred ibility, or by a scandal. Today, this is how we define ourselves reducing the me aning of "Tat tvam asi" to just a profound noise which has no meaning in our liv es, leave alone an impact. So who am I really? Does the phrase "Tat tvam asi" have more meaning than what I am as a definition? Can the thought of "Tat tvam asi" transform my existing cha racter into something more tangible and capable if i attempt to contemplate on i t long hours to really figure out? The closest proximity we can feel with aatman is when we are able to hear the primordial sound OM within ourselves. If we blo ck our ears and close all the other orifices, we come in touch with a faint vibr ation within ourselves. In fact while swimming when the ears are below water, it s the perfect way to sense it. It mutes out all the other sounds and what remain s is just a resonating sound within us. Its similar to the sound we can hear in a shell picked up from the sea shore. It just drives home the point that we have a source of sound within us and its not our vocal cords. Here is the irony of the story. The scriptures, the sacred texts, the spiritual path, all of them indicate oneness with this sound. All indicate that we need to silence ourselves and try to listen to the powers within us and channelize them . In the earlier yugas, the external noise was far less, and communication was a profound levels. People didnt need to talk much, the power of the word was so s trong that once uttered it couldn't be taken back. Elitist languages like Sanskr it had multifold natures, not just to communicate but more to empower. They were single sentenses but their value was ten fold purely for the limited usage. And since communication was so limited, the need to communicate [like we do toda y] was not over used, the power of the word grew. Sound has been given a lot of value in Hinduism, from the sweetness of words falling into reality and being he ard and imbibed as an experience of Ma Saraswati being seated on one's tongue pu rifying words as they roll out of a devotee's mouth to the pain being felt when one is rolled over the double edged sword of an angry rishi's curse. There was s

o much meaning to praises and curses in the previous yugas. I just look at a day go by, with social media and facebook and three news channe ls yelling out the same news, there is enough noise to deafen our minds with the atrocities around us. The biggest difference between kali yuga and earlier yuga s possibly was the lack of noise in earlier eras. Lack of noise directly transla tes to the power of sound. The unfortunate reality of these times is that there is so much noise that it has lost its value.But in our land of noise and din, wh ere a moment's silence is hard to get, where a said word or promise doesnt mean anything and can easily be broken, where responsible people take the path or lie s and mislead people, where we have a crumbling society that stands on the groun ds of deceipt and indecency, where respect is defined by money power and not int ellect... who am I now? How can we explain the profound meaning of Tat Tvam Asi to our children in this age of madness, in this living hell? The sure result of the damage excessive sound has made to the environment is in the reduced effect of it. Great mantras, once said delivered on the powers assi gned to them, but in today's word, mere recital 108 times fetches no results. In the ancient times, bhava mattered, love and pure bhakti were easy to identify w ith and the resultant mantras bloomed within the person making them super human and God like, but today, with a lot of bhakti thrown in, and severe repetitions yields results, but it is slow, and leaves us wondering about the effects of its powers. People dont have the patience to wait that long, and in an era of immed iate results, we are destroying what was once a great faith that had the enduran ce to fight the effects of time. Today, that same belief is questioned and witho ut a miracle, nothing will work anymore.

the effect of sound has been reduced so much that even the most profound mantras have to be recited several times to attain the desired effect, which in earlier yugas would possibly have been far easier to attain.