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the limbs of the animals. That was how I learnt the art. If you are ready to do the same -- standing beside me, sometimes handing over the axe to me and then putting it back, sometimes simply sitting and watching -- then perhaps you will learn the art. But I cannot teach it to you."
Science can be taught, but art has to be imbibed.
All these mantras have no meaning, but they have pragmatic value and we have made our children absorb them at a very early age. They used to learn the use of the temple without ever even being aware of what they had learnt. They would learn the art of entering a temple, how to sit there and how to make use of the sacred precincts. Whenever there was an emergency or any difficulties, they would run to the temple and then return home, having regained a balance and tranquility. Each morning they would go to the temple, because what they got there was not possible to find anywhere else. But all of this was not taught to them, they incorporated it at a very early stage in childhood. It was not taught to them but imbibed by them. Wherever there is art, it cannot be taught.
The effects of sound in the temple, and the temple itself, was an arrangement for experimentation. As long as the effect of the sound of a word was not understood, the whole experiment was meaningless.
For example, it was a convention that a mantra should only be given to a disciple by a master. The emphasis was on the mantra being recited by the master in the disciple's ear. You might have known the mantra for a long time, but still the master would whisper it in your ear.
You might wonder, "What is new in this? Couldn't I have done it without the master? Everybody knows how to repeat a mantra, and still this master has whispered it to me as if it is a great secret!" But what is to be understood is that when the master says it in the disciple's ear, he does it in a particular way, so as to emphasize certain sounds -- something which is not known to all. As a matter of fact there are various phonetic variations of "Ram" that have different effects.
We know the story of the sage Valmiki, but this tale has now lost its true significance
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