Sacred Geography of the Mouth part 5

Babaji:  So I will leave you with one more thought before we go on, and that is basically how the vargas are broken down.  That in the first syllable of a varga you are going to have the most dense of the syllables in that line, which is the simple striking, the simple sparsha of, the simple specific striking of that syllable, so that in the first syllable of the ka varga, we have ka as the first syllable.  The second one, we are going to perform our first operation on the sparsha, which is this operation of breath.  We’re going to aspirate as we say “ka” and the result will be “kha.”  We have simple “ka” and then we have, with the breath, with aspiration, “kha.” And if you want to test to see if you are doing this properly, put your hand in front of your mouth, and when you pronounce “ka” you should feel no air, no breath on your hand. When you pronounce “kha,” you should feel a blast of air on your hand.

[People start to pronounce the syllables]

OK?  You get that difference.  And remember that the difference between “ka” and “kha” is as great as the difference between “a” and “b.” Ok?

Michelle:  Babaji?

Babaji:  Yes.

Michelle:  Because it’s “ka” and then aspirated, is that again the same as a visarga because the kind of ‘ha”

Babaji:  No.  If we had “ka” with a visarga, it would sound like this, “KaHa”

We’re not saying, “KaHa,” we’re saying “kha”.  This is a distinct syllable from Ka, where “KaHa” is not a distinct syllable from “Ka.”

Ok.  The third in the line, is – whereas with “ka” we have a contraction of the voice, It is a very specific precise striking without any echo or reverberation it is simple “ka”.  But the third syllable in this line, we are going to expand our voice as we say “ka,” and the result with be “ga”.  Now to test yourself on this, you can put your hand on your throat, and when you say “ka” you should feel no big vibration; it’s just a simple striking.  But when you expand your throat and say, “ga,” you can feel the richness, the vibration, the expansion of your throat when you say that.

[People start to say “ga”]

Michelle:  Babaji?

Babaji:  Yes.

Michelle:  I must be doing it wrong, because I don’t just feel expansion, I feel like my tongue is pausing a little bit in the same point.  Instead of hitting it, striking it really hard, its like a soft roll almost, it stays there longer, my tongue kind of goes up to that same place and is there for…. Like when I say “Ka” and “Ga”  if I slow “Ga” down it’s almost like there’s, I don’t know I am trying to explain it, almost, not a nasal, but there’s a… 

Babaji:  It’s a voicing.

Michelle:  A voicing?

Babaji:  Yes, this is another way that people describe it.  Is that the difference between “Ka” and “Ga” is the difference between unvoiced “Ka” and voiced “Ga.”

Kailash:  It is same as the difference between “Pī” and “Bī”

Babaji:  That’s exactly right. 

Michelle:  But even when I do “Pī” and “Bī” at the labial, at the lips, it is because I slow the movement down. 

Babaji:  No.  It’s not because you slow the movement down.

Kailash:  It is because your vocal chords are vibrating in one, and not in the other.

Babaji:  Exactly right.  Exactly right. When the vocal chords.  I don’t really want to get into the more scientific paradigm, but the way you can relate the vocal chords coming into operation is you have an expansion, right.  You can think of it as hot and cold.  That with “Ka”, it’s a very cold striking.  But now, the room has warmed up, it is summer, everything has expanded and that hard “Ka” now becomes the much softer, more expansive, voiced, “Ga.” “Ka” “Ga.” “Ka” “Ga.”  Don’t make any effort.  Don’t make any effort with the “Ga,” aside from relaxing, and therefore expanding the striking, the voice.

And now the fifth element in this first line, is very, very tricky for most non-Indian speakers because it’s a nasal.  Now instead of shooting the articulation through our mouth, we are going to reroute it through our nose. So, if we say the same thing, if we say “ka” except pronounce it through our nose, it becomes rna.

I am not aware…

Kailash:  So the condensation of this one is

Babaji:  So this is the most dense of the first line.  You can say it is the most condensed of the first line.  Condensed.  It is not the fact of the nose.  It’s the fact of the articulation.  I am sorry.  Did I say most dense?  I did, didn’t I.  It’s not the most dense.   It’s the least dense. It’s the least dense.

Hari:  Yeh, Ok.

Babaji:  I am terribly sorry for that.  It’s the least dense of the articulation.  The most dense would be the simple striking of the “ka”.  What we’re going to do is, we are going to see how this works with all the rest of the syllables.  That this applies all the way down the line.  These five spaces, that we can we refer to as vargas, I don’t want to over emphasize any kind of Sanskrit terminology because I think Sanskrit terminology is much overused in the West today, but there are certain points that make it easier for us to discuss these things.  So we will refer to these five spaces as five vargas.

Michelle: You were talking about densities, and when I say “ka” and I add breath to it, “kha” and then ga, the third, could you talk about how that is connected to fire.

Babaji:  We don’t have the context yet, to really talk about that.  I think we will have the context by the next or the following session, because if we start making these connections before we know why we are making these connections, if we start making these connections before we are actually discovering them, on our own, then we are superimposing and we’re creating a structure and a paradigm that is part of a belief system and an ideology rather than an exploration and a discovery of our own speech.

Michelle:  OK, thank you.

Hari:  Babaji, the vowels, like the “a” and the “i” is there one for each of the five, kind of mirroring the vargas?  What was the vowel connection of the “Ka” and the “Cha”, the “Ta” “Ta” “Pa.”

Babaji: the vowel connection of “Ka” is “a”.

Hari:  There is one for each.

Babaji:  Yeh.  It’s not that… Don’t think of it just in terms of one for each.  Think of it more in terms of spaces that you have to go to.  These are.  I think of this as sort of sacred geography of the mouth.  And that we can make a pilgrimage to these different spaces in the mouth.  And when we visit those temples, in those spaces, then we have options of silent prayer, or ringing the bells, or beating the drum. There are various analogies that we can start invoking when we make these pilgrimages in the sacred geography of our mouths. 

Hari:  OK.

Babaji: I hope I am not getting too technical.

Hari:  No, No.

Babaji:  Good, good.  Because if we continue to look at these things as metaphors and analogies and maps, then we can make this little trip in the astral realm together.

1. I think our time is up now. Send me any questions on our Google + community that we have, and I would be happy to do my best to answer them.   I really do appreciate….

Goodess bless you all.  I look forward to seeing you next week.   And I wish you the best.  OM NAMO NARAYANA.

[Others respond, OM NAMO NARAYANA]