Gayatri Mantra- Esoteric Interpretation given to us by Theosophist CW Leadbeater

 

This is a short esoteric Interpretation of Gayatri Mantra given to us by Theosophist CW Leadbeater: 

“The Gayatri is perhaps the greatest and most beautiful of all the ancient mantras. It has been chanted all over India from time immemorial, and the Deva kingdom has learnt to understand it and respond to it in a very striking manner– a manner which is in itself most significant, as showing that, in an antiquity so remote that the very memory of it has been forgotten, the altruistic use of such mantras was fully comprehended and practiced. It begins always with the sacred word Om, and with the enumeration of the planes upon which its action is desired– the three worlds in which man lives, the physical, the astral and the mental; and as each plane is mentioned, the Devas belonging to that plane flock round the singer with joyous enthusiasm to do the work which by the recitation of the mantra he is about to give them. Students will remember that in India Shiva is sometimes called Nilakantha, the Blue-Throated, and that there is a legend connected with that title. It is interesting to note that some of the Angels who respond when the Gayatri is chanted bear that characteristic of the blue throat, and are clearly first-ray in type.

 

531. This wonderful mantra is an invocation to the Sun– of course really to the Solar Logos, who stands behind that grandest of all symbols; and the great shaft of light which immediately pours down upon and into the reciter comes as though from the physical Sun, in whatever direction that Sun may happen to be. This shaft of light is white tinged with gold, and shot with that electric blue which is so often seen in connection with any manifestation of the power of the first Ray; but when it has filled the very soul of the reciter it promptly shoots from him again in seven great rays or cones having the colours of the spectrum. It is as though the singer acts as a prism; yet the colour-rays which dart forth are of a shape the reverse of what we usually find in such cases. Commonly when we send out rays of spiritual force they spring forth from a point in the body– the heart, the brain, or some other centre; and as they shoot out they steadily broaden fanwise, as do those shining from a lighthouse. But these rays start from a basis wider than the man himself– a basis which is the circumference of his aura; and instead of widening out they decrease to a point, just as do the rays of a conventional star except that they are of course cones of light instead of mere triangles.

 

532. Another remarkable feature is that these seven rays do not radiate in a circle in all directions, but only in a semi-circle in the direction which the reciter is facing. Furthermore these rays have a curious appearance of solidifying as they grow narrower, until they end in a point of blinding light. And a still more curious phenomenon is that these points act as though they were living; if a man happens to come in the way of one of them, that point curves with incredible rapidity and touches his heart and his brain, causing them to glow momentarily in response. Each ray appears to be able to produce this result on an indefinite number of people in succession; in testing it on a closely-packed crowd we found that the rays apparently divide the crowd between them, each acting on the section that happened to be in front of it, and not interfering with any other section.”

 

– C.W Leadbeater

The Masters and the Path