In this episode of “5 Minutes,” Dr. Robert Svoboda explores the spiritual value of singing and the relationship between speech, mantra, and karma.

This is a phrase I learned from Swami Jnananda, who was born in Switzerland but lived for more than sixty years in India as a sadhu. He used to sing kirtan every evening, and he would often say, “You have to pay for every word you speak, but singing is free.”

The reason he said this relates to the four levels of speech. The first level is para, which is intention. The second level is pashyanti, visual speech, where you see what you want to say. The third level is madhyama, where you explain it to yourself. The fourth level is vaikhari, where you actually express it into the world.

Everything that you express into the world creates karma. The karmas are created through body, mind, and speech. Therefore, every word that you speak carries a consequence.

But the beauty of singing, and Swami Jnananda was not talking about ordinary songs, but spiritual songs, is that when you sing them they are mantras. A mantra is the verbal incarnation of a deity. When you sing a mantra, you are allowing that deity to manifest through you into the external world.

Yes, you have chosen to invite that deity into yourself, but that deity is then responsible for expressing itself outward into the world. In that sense, the karma of the expression belongs to the deity rather than being created only by your individual intention.

Swami Jnananda, who taught me Jaya Hanuman, was very fond of speaking less and singing more. This is also connected with why some yogis practice mauna, silence, even if they may still communicate by writing on a chalkboard or in another way.

One reason is that they are restraining one of the senses of action, the karmendriyas, and this helps keep some of the prana within. Another reason is that they reduce the amount of karma created by externalizing words through the voice.

Speaking words aloud naturally involves a greater investment of prana than simply writing them down. The voice carries energy outward in a more powerful way.

So when you feel the urge to speak, it can be useful to ask yourself whether what you are about to say is valuable, kind, and useful. You might even sing a few lines of something sacred to yourself and then ask whether it is really necessary to say what you were originally thinking of saying.