"Vibratory Healing" by Paramahansa Yogananda

EAST WEST May—June, 1927 VOL. 2—4 [Paramahansa Yogananda]

Human life can be likened unto a house fitted with three windows ....of the Body, Mind and Soul. Thru these openings come pouring forth the three kinds of divergent perfect light of God—known as Health Rays, Faculty Rays, Wisdom Rays. These triune Rays are responsible for the perfect health, mental equanimity and enlightenment of the soul of man. That is why man is spoken of as being created in the image of God. But then arises the question, if man is made after God’s likeness why does he suffer in so many ways? The answer is, man —a Divine Child— shares the independence of the Divine Being. Man essentially was made as a God—but as such ...he has the privilege and free choice of God to eclipse that image with error, or to keep it unobscured and dazzling ....with rays of health, power and peace.

Man has the peculiar independence and free power to live in the house of life with its health, strength and light-giving windows ...open or closed. Thus it is that when he closes the windows of life, the Ultra Violet Conscious Cosmic Rays are shut out and he lives in the darkness of physical disease, mental disquietude or abysmal soul-ignorance. Most people have one or more of their windows of life ...shut and jammed for years. That is why they suffer from chronic maladies. Their rescue lies in the knowledge of the law by which they may open their windows themselves and bask once more in the all-healing Conscious Cosmic Rays.

Man wants instantaneous healing by God’s power but he fails to understand that the work of healing lies within himself and that God never wanted him to be sick in the first place. God gave man the original privilege and free choice to receive Rays or shut them out. God cannot change His law arbitrarily just by the bribery of special ceremonies or blind prayer or partiality. He can be moved only by law and love. Love is law. When man closes the health-power-and-light-giving windows of life and keeps them closed indefinitely, he must himself make the effort to open those windows again to let the freely-willing-to-help, knocking-to-enter, Light in. Hence, all physical diseases, psychological inharmonies and soul maladies born of ignorance ...come from man’s own fault of shutting out the Rays of God. And the logical, lawful conclusion is, whether knowingly or unknowingly he shut the breath-giving windows of life, he must open them again by self-effort. Ignorance of law cannot be an excuse for escaping the effects of a law which is broken. There are many ways of opening the three jammed windows of life. Those ways can be generally named as Healing.

And Healing in general can be classified as Physical Healing, Psychological Healing of worries, fears, nervousness, etc., and Spiritual Healing of soul-ignorance. There are many kinds of healing, each of which can be used in healing physical, mental or spiritual diseases. Of the different kinds of healing by medicine, injection, affirmation, massage, nerve or vertebral adjustment, by imagination or will or faith, Vibratory Healing is of great importance. Vibratory Healing consists in creating and sending vibrations to diseased individuals, internally by energy charged by will-power or externally by super-consciously-impregnated chants, intonations of the human voice, enlivening words, phrases and affirmations. The methods of internal vibrations of energy can only be done by a system of spiritual exercises such as Yogoda offers. Willingness and determination keep the blood vitalized with pep and life-energy. If even the layman can keep his mental initiative, willing-to-work attitude all the time, he will find his blood charged with life-current, making it immune against the invasion of bacteria.

Keeping yourself smiling from within, pulsating with joy, and in ever-readiness to act, spiritually ambitious in helping others, all these not only are good exercises for the mind but keep the body constantly supplied with Fresh Cosmic Energy descending into the body thru the door of the Medulla Oblongata. Strong Will pulls energy from the Conscious Cosmic Rays surrounding the body through the door of the Medulla Oblongata. Man shall not live by bread (food chemicals) alone but by every word (vibratory life-energy) which flows (into the body of man) thru the mouth of God (i.e. the opening of the Medulla thru which the Conscious Cosmic Life Principle enters the body of man). Hence strengthen your Will and determination in everything. Your body shall be internally vibrating with life current. A man of strong Will, by his highly vibrating mind, can shake out disease, failure and ignorance. But the Will vibration must be stronger than the vibration of physical or inner disease. 

The more chronic the disease is, the stronger, steadier and more unflinching should be the determination, faith and effort of the Will to get well. In connection with singing, chanting or intoning away physical disease or worry or spiritual ignorance, one must know the law of intonation, from high to low, low to whisper, whisper to mental, sub-conscious to super-conscious ...Chanting. This is the method of converting loud meaningful words into realized experiences--assimilating the truth of a word or words by chanting loudly and mentally until they become a part of the soul’s realization. Or one must induce the super-conscious, peaceful state first and from that stage chant mentally or whisperingly or loudly as he pleases. But in all cases the intonations whether mental or physical (i.e. audible) must be injected with super-conscious mentality, faith and steadiness in the beginning or at the end, to be effective in accomplishing a specific healing. Mental chanting is best for individuals, loud chanting ranging from low to high or vice versa is good in congregations.

Before chanting, the law of repetition should be understood or explained. Some western minds often fail to grasp the changing depths of conviction in Hindu chantings and see only a monotonous repetition of a word or words. Of course repetition of words without understanding their meaning with deep and deeper feelings and realization is useless. That is what the Bible meant by saying, "Take not the name of the Lord thy God in vain," that is, do not say, "O God, O God" without attention or while thinking of other things or while the mind is wandering. Long intellectual prayers full of word-jugglery may satisfy the intellectually hungry but they are only the empty noises of a victrola without the soul in them. It is better to say just one phrase as "O Father, heal me," or "I am well for Thou art in me" extemporaneously (as it comes) repeating it vigorously from low to high or high to whisper and lastly from a whisper to mental affirmations until one feels what he is saying, i.e., repeating a phrase with varying depth of soul-feeling until one realizes the meaning of his utterance in every fiber of his being.

This is At-onement with one’s own affirmations through loud and mental chanting. And the moment the phrase reaches the super-consciousness and the inner conviction ...a volley of energy will shoot down and vibrate and heal the diseased tissues of the body, mind and soul, electrocuting physical bacteria, paralyzing mental fears and conflagrating ignorance into ashes. In our Hindu Tantra (Hymnal) Scriptures we find the advice that all mystic incantations, seed words, have to be revivified in the soul of the chanter, vitalized and specifically intoned or changed in order to produce the desired results. Mere repetition ...without deep feeling of mantras or incantations —does not produce results. It is a fact that if a born and universally-known coward says loudly, "On, ye brave, march on with me to glory or the grave," it would have very little effect in rousing courage in people.

Healing affirmations like "The Father is in Thee, be Thou well," in order to be efficient must be uttered only by him who has felt the Father in Himself. The police commissioner of Chicago declared recently in a bulletin that if the sounds of vehicles, etc., could be cut down, city people would live ten years longer. In other words, inharmonious noise affects the nervous system of people, weakening this medium through which vital energy is supplied to all the principal organs of the body, the circulatory system, brain, etc. With the deterioration of the nervous system, the energy and thermal supply of the blood becomes low, making it a fit home for bacteria of disease. On the contrary, harmonious sounds, chants impregnated with Super-Conscious Soul-force, Will-Power and Faith, awaken the drooping tissues of the nervous system by rousing Vital Energy in them. Hence the external method of vibrating the voice according to the aforesaid methods can heal all inharmonious conditions of the Body, Mind and Soul. A sincere kind word, an inspired song, a soul-solacing voice of wisdom have dispelled many sorrows and inflamed into many the light of lasting joy.