O Lord! You have given us many names of Yours to chant, investing them with all Your transcendental power, and there are no strict regulations as to when to chant or remember these names. Such is Your mercy, O Lord, but I am so unfortunate that I have not taste for this chanting.
Śrī Śikṣāṣṭakam, Verse 2
The Vedic story of the cosmic birth tells that at its creation the universe takes the form of sound. The purest energy of sound was not created and will never perish. It is an eternal vibration. It precedes the creation and will forever outlast it. The Truth of the universe is this sound vibration. Not because it is a message of truth about what is already there. But because this sonic energy, this Truth, is reality itself.
According to the Vedic story, the ancient ṛṣis, the enlightened seers and seekers of the Vedic tradition, entered into states of profound meditation, tuned their souls to the vibrations of the cosmos and heard these eternal sounds.
What they heard was the Vedas, the sacred wisdom or knowledge of the universe. Since this divine knowledge was directly perceived—or rather, directly heard—it would become known as śruti: ‘that which is heard’.
These divine revelations were not just heard as we would hear a sound with our physical ears as the vibration of air travelling across space. Rather, they were ‘heard’ in spiritual terms, with the innermost ‘ears’ of our being, the doors that open to the deepest meditations of the ṛṣis. This is the original message of Vedic wisdom.
The tradition of Gaudiya Vaishnavism is deeply rooted in this message, but by the mercy of Caitanya Mahāprabhu it goes one step further.
It asks: if the ancient ṛṣis performed such immense austerities in order to receive the sacred sounds of the universe, what inclined them to it? What inspired or motivated them? What attracted them?
The answer is that the desire of the ṛṣis to discover the truth of the universe was exactly that: a desire. Even before the truth of the universe was revealed to them in the śruti, they experienced a taste for this truth, a taste for it, an inclination, or an attraction. In short, a kind of attraction, a kind of love, comes before Truth. Love makes Truth possible.
This means that the only path to the Divine, is by realising love for the Divine, by realising our taste for it, our attraction to it, our desire for it.
God is not an idea, God is a feeling.
This gives meaning to the principle that is so very important in Bhakti, and which flows from the Verse 2 of Śrī Śikṣāṣṭakam: The name of God and God are non-different (nāma-nāmi abheda).
Chanting the name of God makes God present. Or more exactly, the name of God is already God. The sound made when letting the name of God pass over our lips is not only a material sound that can be heard by the ears of the others, it is a spiritual vibration that can be heard and felt by the souls of all.
God is a vibration of divine energy. God is a chant. God is a song that gives pleasure and satisfaction to all the mouths that have taste for chanting. That cosmic sounds that first gave satisfaction to the ears of the ṛṣis, is the Divine chant that gives pleasure to our mouths that sing.
This is why the first and most simple instruction that Caitanya Mahāprabhu gives, the instruction already stated in Śrīmad Bhāgavatam (1.5.11), is: Chanting the holy name of the Lord destroys all spiritual impurity.
To chant, to become absorbed in chanting is not a mechanical exercise, it is not an intellectual practice, it is an engagement in the pleasure of the soul, a pleasure which is the spark of the highest spiritual experience: the relishing of the pleasure of God.
It is in the nature of the jīva that singing brings pleasure. Singing or chanting erases sadness. Singing the name of God erases the sadness, impurities, of the soul.
It is said, rightly, that Īṣṭa-deva is our chosen deity. But this choice is not made with the mind, it is made with the heart. In other words, it is not a choice at all. Īṣṭa-deva means the ‘beloved’ deity, the one my soul is attracted to, the one my soul desires, the one my heart wants to sing to.
The nāma sankīrtana taught in words and actions by Mahāprabhu means, of course, singing-the-name. But it also means that the name—the divine in us—is singing.