This book of Yogananda's spiritualized chants has the power to bring devotion and inspiration into the chanter's experience.
Chant traditions from many cultures are being recognized today not only for their intrinsic beauty but also for their spiritual power. Sri Yogananda, a pioneer in introducing India’s art of devotional chanting to the West, explains how it helps to quiet and focus the mind in preparation for meditation. This book contains words and music to more than 50 of his original chants.
Songs or chants are usually inspired through sentiment or passing interests. But a song which is born out of the depth of true devotion to God and which is continuously chanted, audibly or mentally, with ever-increasing deep devotion until response is consciously received from Him in the form of communion, ecstasy and boundless joy, is a spiritualized song.
Such songs like live marches produce the fire of God-contact whenever they are struck on the foundation-stone of devotion. Ordinary songs are like wet matches which do not produce any spark of God-contact.
Each of the Cosmic Chants in this book has been spiritualized, that is, each song has been sung aloud and mentally until it has found actual response from God. It is hoped that each reader will take these chants, not as ordinary music to please the ear or the emotions, but as soul-saturated chants to be used to produce the divine contact.