Listen to Fr John as he describes the stages of sounding the mantra in our hearts. He says:
This could be described as like pushing a pendulum that needs only a slight stimulus to set it swinging in a calm and steady rhythm.
We could say here we move into this rhythm of calm and steady ticking almost of the mantra, like a pendulum, in a rhythm. It is at this moment Fr John says that our meditation is really beginning. We are really beginning to concentrate away from ourselves. Because from now on, instead of either saying, or sounding the mantra, we begin to listen to it, wrapped in ever deepening attention. When he described this stage of meditation, my teacher used to say that from this moment on, it is as though the mantra is sounding in the valley below us while we are toiling up the mountainside, while we are climbing the mountainside. So here we are, from base camp you start saying the mantra. Gradually, we start sounding the mantra. And at a certain point, we are listening to it. But we’re listening to it as if it were being sounded and said at a very deep level in the valley below us.
