In the spirit of collaboration between the sciences and religions, two Indian scientists have tuned their laboratory to the sacred mantra, OM. Their paper,"Time-Frequency Analysis of Chanting Sanskrit Divine Sound “OM” Mantra", published in the International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security (IJCSNS) starts in auspicious fashion.

"Our attentiveness and our concentration are pilfered from us by the proceedings take place around us in the world in recent times. Different challenges and impediments are faced by the people work in the software industries. It is tough to handle the stress some times. Therefore, to come out of the aforementioned troubles, Meditation is essential for all human beings. In the same way, for psychological stress, Speech signal is uttered to be a considerable indicator. In the direction of mediating human subject, ‘OM’ is a spiritual mantra, outstanding to fetch peace and calm. The entire psychological pressure and worldly thoughts are taken away by the chanting of OM mantra."

OK, the English is appalling but maybe - just maybe - there is a scientific gem amid the linguistic gibberish. The IJCSNS is published in Korea and scanning the whole editorial board I am pressed to find one name where English is likely to be their mother tongue; they are in serious need of an English sub-editor.

Notwithstanding that, let's look at the paper's content. OM (or, more precisely, AUM) is the most basic and primordial mantra in Hinduism (as well as in Buddhism) and is used as one method to focus the mind during meditation. If you've never been given a specific mantra by a teacher then you can be safe with chanting OM. The aim of the researchers was to find whether chanting this mantra instilled a sense of mental calmness. The theory is that the steadier the tone of the chant the steadier the mind. They put the signal of people chanting through a time-frequency analyser. The graphs they present have no scales to them and there is no indication as to how many people were tested or any raw data whatsoever.

Just looking at the graphs we are told that as people practised their OM chanting and became more proficient at it, so the analysed signal appeared to be steadier. "We have concluded that OM chanting affords steadiness in the mind scientifically. This provides calm and peace too to the stressed mind. The mental stress of a person gets reduced while the mind reaches steadiness. As a final point, we have confirmed scientifically the accomplishments of OM chanting in reducing the stress from the human mind." Mmmm... hopefully someone will do a better job in the future.

I'm not sure if this warrants a stiff drink or some deep meditation... with or without a mantra.


* Good karma to Improbable Research.