“Japa – Power of the Divine Name” | Swami Sarvapriyananda

[Music] [Music] s [Music] all right uh so welcome back to this session this is on on japa the power of the Divine name and if I may I would like to flag this session as the most important one which among all the ones which I've been doing um not that anybody ask but if you did ask one takeaway recommendation action point what do I do after this especially on the path of devotion I would say this one that you go ahead and pick up a japa practice especially I would give a specific recommendation get initiated

if you have not and if you are initiated then Double Down focus on the japa practice all right so what is japa and how do you do it what are the benefits we'll look at that over the next half an hour and then we have questions and answers um japa is basically repetition of a mantra what's a mantra what what kind of reputation what does it do we'll see later um one can pick Pi up a mantra and start repeating it and that would be japa but um it Al usually in our tradition especially and

many other Traditions it involves initiation into the Mantra the guru the the spiritual master who initiates you will give you a mantra to repeat and will show you how to do it what to focus on and what to expect so all of that that will be given to you by the guru that's called initiation in Sanskrit it's called diksha and many people here I'm sure if not the majority at least a large number of people here myself included we have all been initiated so we know what we are talking about this is what we're talking

about but before I begin um as a way of seguing into it let's take a look at initiation at its um you know spectacular highest this Mantra japa what it the practice um at its highest an example of that so SRI ramak Krishna initiates one of his monastic disciples niranjan who became Swami nanan Anand and what happened to him what was the initiation like and what happened to him afterwards in his own words and I'm going to read this out just as an example because there are numerous such examples in Sri ramak krishna's life so

this is Mantra japa in the life of Swami niranjanananda his initiation and what happened subsequently nanan was initiated by the master with a mantra he later described this experience I'm reading from this wonderful volume God lived with them which is the life stories of the monastic Disciples of Sri ramak Krishna so I'm reading from the chapter called Swami nanan he later described his experience I was then working in an office one day I went to visit SRI ramakrishna at dakshineshwar he wrote a mantra on my tongue and asked me to repeat it what an experience

after returning home even when my eyes were closed I began to see innumerable fireflies in my room the Mantra was vibrating in my head and in every limb of my body I I wanted to sleep but I could not stop the reputation of japa I had previously been unaware of this phenomenon I became scared and thought I would go out of my mind after 3 days I returned to dakshineswar and said to the master sir what have you done to me after listening to my story he laughed and withdrew the power of the Mantra he

said it is called a jaapa japam the repetition of the japa effortlessly and unceasingly so that's one example and there are numerous if you have read the life of Sri ramak Krishna and his disciples there are numerous such examples this is this is one very special kind of initiation in um for example in Kashmir shiism in Tantra this is called shambhavi dsha so conventionally the guru initiates Us by telling us what is our chosen deity and what is the Mantra how to repeat it and how to meditate and that's it and then we start practicing

it's a verbal transmission an oral transmission but this is a direct transmission of spiritual power so even the strange way of initiating he writes with his fingers he he would ask the person to stick his tongue out and write uh on the tongue with his fingers and then he would explain the Mantra to him tell him this is the Mantra now go and repeat it he would show you how to repeat it and then this tremendous experience which Swami Nan had he says it started repeating itself and he couldn't stop it was there was no

volition of his own even when he was not trying to repeat the Mantra repeating the Mantra is called japa so the japa was going on and he says it was vibrating in my head it was vibrating very interesting every limb of the the body and with eyes open and eyes closed he saw a strange Luminosity even sitting alone in the dark room it was full of these dots of light floating around everywhere these experiences have been replicated by other practitioners also but the result was not very good so the result was he couldn't take it

he couldn't bear it and then he got scared and he rushed to Sri ramakrishna and said what have you done and S ramak Krishna laughed and he said this is called a Jaa japa this is the one of the highest states of japa which we would uh hopefully attain to someday if we really really practiced hard where it becomes spontaneous like effortless breathing the japa also becomes effortless more effortless than that continuously it goes on but he got it from the very beginning so this is the power of the of Sri ramak Krishna so right

from the beginning he starts out at the top now s ramak Krishna withdrew that power so Nan janji did not feel that anymore more and so he could take a you know the scenic route he went straight to the top and so the route we are walking on is the scenic route we go slowly um and these things will come hopefully to us one day it you know it also answers this question If s ramakrishna had this power why didn't you do it for more people or for everybody and that's it we would have all

been enlightened well he did try it's not his fault he did try he gave it to when he was uh you know importunate entries there a number of seekers who wanted it genuinely they tried they asked besched him for it and in many cases he did respond he actually did transmit this power almost always um they couldn't bear it and almost always they asked him to U take it back and you know they felt that let's let me take things at my own pace this is too much you know so I want to be enlightened

but not right now so um so yes so this is uh the Mantra this is the power of repetition of the Mantra this is the initiation and this is the Guru at the highest level the guru power power of the Guru at the highest level however now when we come down to our level um let's to make a beginning what we generally do is if I want to be initiated into the practice of japa uh I would approach a guru uru the one who has was authorized to initiate in our order there are specific senior

swamis who have this authorization for example I do not initiate but there are other swamis m g knows Swami sadanand G he comes and initiates in for example in Dallas in in the Dallas vant society and other places so there are number of other swamis in in America and in India also and that's just our tradition there are also many other Traditions which give initiation all Traditions do not give initiation into the Mantra so when you would approach the guru and if the guru agrees to uh give us it's not a done deal it's not

that you apply and it's you can't it's like not like going to Costco and purchasing a mantra you can't do that it's uh it's a very great great privilege and we are blessed to be initiated into the Mantra the guru would would give you the Mantra teach you how to repeat it and would design desate a particular form of God it could be Krishna it could be Rama it could be ramak Krishna um and show you how to meditate and so from that time onwards that becomes your own practice like it answers the question what

do I do after this you shouldn't ask now what do I do no you have been told what to do do it now um now you know who your Guru is and now you belong to this particular lineage so the Mantra does many things at once now I'm going to talk a little bit about nitty-gritties of this Mantra first of all the big picture what is a mantra the Sanskrit word Mantra comes from man and or two words man means to think mind to think man man means to citate or think over something and Trana

means to liberate from bondage to liberate from bondage to free us so Mantra is that word it's a word always or set of Words which if we repeat uh it will ultimately free you from worldly bondage take you to Liberation so it is said man by constantly pondering upon dwelling upon which which translates into repeating the Mantra attentively it will ultimately free us free us from samsara a wider picture let us not forget in Hinduism and Buddhism jines wherever the mantras are used the Mantra is not just used for enlightenment and spirituality that's the way

we are talking about it now and that's the way we use it in in our tradition and all spiritual Traditions use it for that for enlightenment for God realization however in general um if you see Hindu culture mantras are used for all four goals of human life dharm motion so people want desired objectives in life somebody wants a lot of money or somebody wants something or the other they will repeat a particular mantra for a long time and they expect the results of that so worldly goals and spiritual goals there's a wider definition of a

mantra Amant of the four aims of life four aims of life um K the things which are desired success power wealth um Dharma a moral ethical life and finally what we are talking about here we are not talking about those three what we are talking about here is MOA Liberation God realization Enlightenment freedom from samsara all four however are invited by the Mantra man it says Amant it literally means Mantra also means to invite these four goals which we considered to be goals of human life anyway that's the big picture the background um let me

just talk a little bit before getting into technicalities let me talk a little bit about the nitties of Mantra practice and here I want to say that I am not one someone who initiates other Central practice of Mantra so what I'm going to say is that uh is based on my experience and my reading that's it but I am not uh authorized or trained to give a mantra to somebody else so reading and my own experience of being an initiated devote from that experience I'm saying this all right now what do you what what can

you expect in initiation and practice later on um when you go to the guru the guru will U um there'll be some preliminaries the guru might ask you to read something might probably you there will an interview um why do you want the Mantra to make sure that you are familiar with with the traditions of this order some kind of familiarity that your goal is indeed a spiritual goal and then the guru will initiate you on a particular day usually it's uh early in the morning um and it's usually in a temple again usually there

are variations usually in a temple uh the guru might perform uh ritualistic worship of the deity before for initiating you then you're called for initiation it could be single it could be in a small group it could be in a larger group and then the guru gives you the Mantra the Mantra is private it is to that group but it's private to you your Mantra is private to you although it may be the same for all the other people it usually it's the same for everybody in that particular group but it's your own so you're

not supposed to talk about it with anybody else except the guru or people in the or the successors to the guru in that lineage not even all monks not even other practitioners it's very private so your Mantra the Mantra is the name and the form of God which you are now going to focus on for the rest of your life that is called Isa deata Isa means desired deata means the form of God or that particular God or form of God somebody's Isa might be R somebody's Isa Sak krishna's Isa was Kali um somebody's Isa

might be Shiva somebody's Isa might be SRI Rak Krishna as the guru initiates you in our order you would typically expect it expect to be initiated into a mantra of Sri Rak Krishna or into a mantra of sharada Dei there are cases again this is all from what I've heard from practitioners and initiated devotees there are um exceptional cases of being initiated into two mantras of two deities there are cases of being initiated by gurus in our tradition of not the Mantra of Sri ramak Krishna or Shara Dei but of of Rama of Krishna even

Jesus um of and of a number of other deities so those are very special cases which the guru might decide for you particularly and then what do you do how are you supposed to practice it um so typically again all of these have exceptions so for example some gurus will ask you to practice repeat the Mantra a minimum number of times in a day some will say morning and evening and a minimum number of times each time so you at particular time in the morning as far as possible you might have a set of clothes

set aside hopefully or at least clean clothes um and often in a hot climate like India or even New York I think now in summer you you would might take a refreshing shower first put on nice clothes and then you would have a particular place for the uh meditation maybe a corner in your room or you could even sit on your bed and do it if that's your that's the only option available but typically you would have a corner to meditate in then you would have a seat an ASA meditation mat which is meant only

for mantra practice so the dress you will use usually not always you will put on only for the Mantra practice this that ASA is you will sit for only for mantra practice not for anything else you're not going to sit there and watch Netflix or or even read a scriptural book no just for the Mantra practice and then a procedure you would go through a procedure uh this procedure would be a calming you know sit down and calm down the mind for some time there'll be a set of affirmations and prayers then you would pray

to the guru visualize the guru Guru in a particular chakra Center as the guru would indicate to you I'm not going into the details then you would uh typically in the heart uh Center visualize the form of the deity which has been given to you by the guru you would you know how to visualize the description would have been given you would try your best and um almost always make a poor job of it and it will be a very vague flickering image but you would still try to generate that image in your heart um

offer a kind of mental worship to that visualized deity the worship which you offer with flowers and incense and offered food all of that you would do mentally U and offer it to the deity and then you would um you know generate the Mantra in your mind and repeat it there are ways of keeping track of the Mantra the guru will teach you how to do it with the hands the guru will teach you how to do it with the rosary um these are the usual days you would repeat the Mantra typically silently at most

your lips might move but you would not speak it out loud so when you repeat it uh it is recommended that you repeat it silently in your m in your mind and or your lips might move a little bit that's all you would sit posture is important you would sit in a maybe some particular yogic posture at the very least sitting straight is it's very very important important um so with your chest uh spine and waist and neck and head in a more or less balanced and straight line you would also typically keep your eyes

closed um because that helps in the focus and then you would repeat the Mantra the minimum number of times you were supposed to repeat is a cycle of 108 times and don't ask why 108 you can Google it there are huge implications of that number in all across Hinduism in bism shaktism and shiism but also in Buddhism in jism in Sikhism uh and um I was seeing in the Chinese martial arts in ayurveda so the number it's some it's a very sacred very profound kind of number so anyway you repeat the Mantra in cycles of

108 what that means is at least 108 times again all of these are subject to the teachings of the guru or you can go 10 times you know you can repeat it a th80 times or you can go multiples of that and you would keep track of the number and then you would if if you're meditation if your repetition of the Mantra is deep and profound it will um naturally segue into meditation what would meditation be like it would be the deity have been initiated into the bright image of the deity on your heart chakra

you would sit and meditate the presence of God in your heart that would be the meditation usually after a set number of repetitions of the Mantra one you would try you would be asked to try to meditate um or if it if it really goes well you will find yourself sliding gliding naturally into meditation the Mantra would seiz and you would sit still in the Luminous presence of God when I say luminous presence of God that's imagination we are obviously visualizing but this is different from um Imagination you know it's not like imagining Superman or

Batman this is an imagination of something that exists but we are unable to see right now um so this is called bhavana a grasp on the reality which is as yet unseen so we are using our faculties of Mind imagination to grasp that but it's there after some time it will become it will not be up to your effort anymore just like nanan he for him it was effortless in fact not only effortless he couldn't stop it it was just like um I am seeing this book now this does is not my effort it's not

a choice if I have eyes and the book is existing I'll see it similarly uh in the culmination of our Mantra practice the presence of God in the heart chakra the Luminous presence of God is no longer imagination it's no longer up to us I have heard one of our senior Swami is telling me about Swami gambhir Anand G who was the 11th president of our order long before he became the president of our order somebody asked him about his realization and he said quite casually whenever I close my eyes the Luminous living form of

the ISA blazes forth in my heart effortlessly so without Mantra without meditation without any kind of spiritual practice he has reached that state where just like I open my eyes and I see you he looks inwards and he sees God and of course and the interesting thing is Swami gamand followed this up by saying is that all is that all he literally repeated twice is that all one still has to see Brahman in all beings the you know the one Limitless God existing in all beings that yet has to be realized so such levels of

realization have been attained by people are being attained I can say this I'm not about myself people think that oh he's indicating his own spiritual realizations how great he must be I'm making it clear it's I'm not talking about myself but I know I know uh of monks whom I have spoken with and till this day they are getting the same realization they say it is it is possible so and by the scenic row not by the shambhavi initiation by somebody touching you and you and you explode like a volcano not like that but by

the SC ground by by a long systematic sincere effort over many years of practice it happens so this would be the progress uh from visualization and repetion of the Mantra to luminous presence living presence no longer a imagination no longer an imagination presence of God in your heart to ultimately the one the realization of the one Divine in all beings so this is the the the progress now I've got some time um I'll go into a little bit of the technicalities there is something called the the Mantra here I'm delicately entering into forbidden territory because

there are certain things one cannot discuss certainly not on a public platform like this and certainly not by me because I'm not authorized to do so but only what's there in the book I'll tell you the Mantra usually again usually not always usually will have om in it and om as you know is the most important Mantra in Hinduism and also jism and Sikhism Buddhism um it has profound meanings in vant and the whole manduk upanishad is based on the OM it's om I just say that once you want a little further explanation you go

to the manduk upanishad 12 mantras will explain the whole meaning of om it has these sounds uh o so if you pronounce them together it becomes but by the rules of Sanskrit grammar when you put a and u together it becomes o so that's when you if you pronounce it om you are pronouncing it correctly that's how it should be pronounced in Sanskrit om M oh um the three sounds mean the waking State the the dream state and the Deep Sleep state all of which we are experiencing every day the gross or physical state the

subtle State and the causal State and when you chant them together you're supposed to see them all in one Consciousness and you know that you are the one Consciousness in which they appear play around and disappear basically our entire world what's our world our waking world this is our world and our dreams and the quietness of deep sleep all three are appearing and disappearing in one Consciousness anyway that's the vedantic meaning but but not for japa let's be clear that's I'm here I'm intruding into I'm changing I'm intruding into Swami atar this Lane but back

to my Lane what does om do here in japa it is um the symbol of the Divine and the word symbol of the Divine and you're repeating it as part of the name of the Divine part of the Mantra given to you by the guru then there will be and this is e even much more secret and much more forbidden territory than om uh there's something called a Bea Mantra often most cases but again not always after OM there will be Guru will include a beja mantra and this is from the tantric tradition these are

words of power um I will read out something technical just to get it right because it's very technical I don't want to paraphrase it be Mantra there there are varieties of Bea mantras in the tanric tradition which you'll find in your own Mantra also um there is a ring King so these are Bea mantras and they are associated with different deities so depending upon the deity you have been initiated into you will be given a beja mantra the beja Mantra is connected with that particular deity it's a word of power you said you but you

might say but you just said oh covers basically everything yes it does it is Brahman it's the absolute the Ultimate Reality but remember you're not meditating on the Ultimate Reality you are now that Ultimate Reality in a particular form in a particular deity my Rama my Krishna my Shiva my my Kali or my Dura in that particular form you're meditating so there is a word of power associated with that particular form of the Divine so that's the Bea Mantra and these mantras have power associated with them when we do Puja for example daily worship for

example there is something called prar that means the worshipper visualizes that um he scatters water the Sanctified water around in a circle if you watch the the priest carefully he does this he scatters the water around in a circle and visualizes Flames being en encircled By Flames um so protecting the sanctity and and purity of the worship space and when he does that you will not hear it or you might if the worshipper utters it uh there's a Bea Mantra of fire called rang and this rang is uttered with another Mantra and you visualize is

surrounded by fire this is an example why I'm giving this example is it's mentioned in the life of Sri ramakrishna when he would perform the Puja and utter this Mantra and Scatter water around he would see five leaping up he would actually see that no no longer visualization nobody else would see it but a kind of mystical flame being surrounded by it so these are not just visualizations visualization is our practice but this will be transformed into actual Visions later on um there is um so this is when you breathe in and out when you

breathe in you think this is associated with the sound H or hung and when you breathe out associate it in your mind with the sound s so it becomes H like that and so every breath is repeating soam or H it's the same Mantra it means I am that I'm not initiating you into the SW Mantra by the way again disclaimer this is just an example now let me get into the actual technical details this is from a wonderful little volume called meditation by the monkss of the ramakrishna order and this is an essay on

the Mantra by the science of the Mantra by Swami gananda G he was the Swami in charge of the vanta center in burand in in UK in the United Kingdom many many decades ago in the 50s and 60s and those who have seen him there's a wonderful reminiscence of him left by Swami yogesan six lighted Windows they all say that he was an extremely psychic person very powerful person you could feel it like a blast When you entered his presence so anyway so this is a person who um literally knew and practice what he's writing

about so let me just read out a little bit about the beja Mantra and then I'll stop I think they've gone over time what are known as NAD and Bindu exist in all beja mantras so the beja Mantra has NAD and Bindu what is this NADA literally means sound a mystical sound Bindu means a DOT etymologically NADA means sound and and is a technical term in the science of Mantra it is the more subtle aspect of sound known as shabda in Sanskrit and is the first putting forth of K Shakti power of will literally the

term Bindu means a drop or a point such as okay I will not read that it is a point not a mathematical point which has no magnitude but the diffusive with neither magnitude nor position it is the one in which the many are implicitly contained it is represented diagrammatically by the central indivisible point of the double triangle the um shuta yantra regard as the symbol of creation sometimes this point is set in a sphere Bindu can be conceived by us only as a point infinitely small and subtle into which is extended the manifested UN into

which the extended manifested universe is withdrawn but really it is an accept it's an aspect of Shakti Bea mantras are written with Bindu above and the N below each deat this is important each deat so the D which you will meditate upon has his or her own be because daes can be male or female the primary Mantra in the worship of any daa or Davi is known as the mola Mantra every letter syllable is then a form of Brahman and so is the image and so are the lines of the yantra all right this is

the thing these three are connected the visual depiction of the deity which you see in art like Shiva or Shakti or you know like Kali or Dura that's the U form of the deity then second is the name the Mantra of the deity and third there is some a diagram these are technical diagrams called yantas and all three mean the same thing all letters are forms of Shakti the shti of which they are a manifestation is the living energy which project itself into the form of the universe the Mantra of a deity is the deity

the rhythmical vibrations of its sound so the Mantra of the deity is the deity Swami Tapas g a vice president of our order used to say to those who initiated he he said it um when you have been given the Mantra you have been given God in a seed form the Mantra of of the deity is the deity the rhythmical vibrations of its sounds transforms the worshipper by regulating the unsteady vibrations of his sheets physical vital mental intellectual and causal sheets there there's a harmonizing influence on the body mind when you repeat the Mantra internally

silently internally through the power of sadhana of the worshipper there arises the form of the deity which the Mantra is the meaning of a beer is the deata itself or the deity itself I didn't want to paraphrase that because it's very precise and very technical but you can look look look it up yourself this book by the way is a wonderful set of articles by very senior monks of the order which I would you know in my casual way I I would uh unhesitatingly say that this is book on meditation by people I guess I

would claim all of them are enlightened so look it up all right I am done we have run out of time and we can have a few question answers so me the first question is I'm on hospice how do I approach a teacher for initiation if you're in hospice you can write to um Swami you can write to Mai he'll put you in touch with the Swami usually um you need to go to a teacher but in certain cases I've seen the teacher give a mantra over a telephone or sometimes go to you and give

the Mantra I've I've seen that happen also but it depends on whether it's practically possible or not another thing you could do right now is um take up a mantra I don't know what your tradition is but something like omash om B if you are a shite Shiva Mantra or a d or a Davi Mantra or a Vishnu mantra take up one there's no harm in choosing one yourself and starting a practice right away but it's good to get initiated because you'll know much more and you see initiation does something else more than information it

does many many things it fixes the Mind see if I take up a mantra right now one year later I might change it or one month later I might change it my mind decided I can undecide I I wrote something I can delete it but once you have been initiated it's a life long commitment no longer you are not not the only party in it anymore so that's one thing it does it makes it makes us commit many people especially in this country have a fear of commitment in all aspects of their life so especially

in spiritual life it is um it is good to explore there are lots of westerners who go to India with the backpack and backpacking in the Himalayas and looking for a guru that's great they're looking for a guru but if I meet you 10 10 years later and you're still backpacking in the Himalayas and what are you doing looking for a guru then there's something wrong because what what's going on in my mind is I am so great that my I have to my Guru has to be equally great you know one of um a

gentlemen who got initiated many decades of he told me he's to encounter with his Guru one of the swamis in our tradition he went to the guru and asked him like you know um Narin Narendra asked SRI ramak Krishna sir have you seen God the guru said well I am not ramak Krishna and neither are you vianda we at one point we have to start practice it's Guru hunting is not a very particularly Advanced stage of spiritual life it's very very preliminary uh is a subtle ego working in us that um my Guru has absolutely

has to be has all these qualities has to be perfect enlightened being has to be you know um like a Buddha or something like that no no no no no as long as he belongs to a genuine tradition and is a good person a holy person a person who is dedicated to spirituality all his or her life good you can go ahead and take a mantra yes SOI what would you say would be the benefit of having a guru rather than taking a mantra for oneself oh this as I was saying it fixes your practice

so then now you know if you take a mantra for yourself you could if you want if you are enthusiastic about starting the practice right away start the practice right away um pick up a mantra and start the practice right away but if you take a guru it fixes the this becomes your practice for the rest of your life till the end of this life this is my Mantra and this is the deity I shall focus on anytime see any time in the day anytime in the months and years ahead he what do I do

tell me something simple which I can do now you already have it the guru has told you something very simple and you it's been transmitted to it do it don't keep on window shopping for more and more techniques and more and more philosophies and teachers and books those you can explore all very good but your own practice is your own practice it does many other things second thing it does is it makes you part of a lineage so if you're initiated by somebody in the guru in the ramak Krishna Vanda lineage you become part of

the ramak Krishna Shara vianda family so this becomes your spiritual tradition and this is this from through SRI ramakrishna it's traced back to ADI Shankar aara and through that back to the upanishad it's the most ancient living spiritual Heritage lineage in the world today so you become part of that um and there is an esoteric part of it just as you know it's it's a transmission of mystical energy into you it's a guru Shakti that's very important most people at the point of initiation most people you'll all feel it you'll feel it more or less

depending on our the purity of my our Readiness we'll feel it if it's a very powerful Guru and a very pure disciple like what happened with ramak Krishna and nanan and many other disciples Sak Krishna you will have immediate consequences straight away initiation and the vision of God straight away it follows straight away holy mother masar when she would initiate the simplest of initiations she would initiate just like that very simple minimalistic initiation often the initiated disciple would get a vision of the chosen deity straight away she would say my child here is the form

of God here is God see and he he or she would see actually see maybe for the only time in their lives and then they would go back and they would be expected to work on it hopefully somewhere in in their lives later on they will complete the course you know the whole Scenic rout so it's a transmission of mystical energy most people will feel it Swami how do we keep our Jaa from becoming mechanical uh it there's a chance of it becoming mechanical even mechanically it's good to do it but the fact is that

quality is more important than quantity and doing it with love and attention is far far better than doing it mechanically sometimes you are exhausted sometimes you're tired and um you're just filling in that mental space with something holy so even mechanical you can't help being mechanical at times it becomes mechanical for me also it's still okay it's still okay but when we sit down for japa morning and evening when you are at your best calm down the Mind gather all your psychic forces and pour yourself into the japa you know light up the Mantra with

your love with your attention yes what is the end goal for japa yes God realization selfrealization and specifically it would be the vision actual living vision of the deity into whose Mantra you have been initiated so I'm assuming that the Mantra is repeated with devotion and attent mention does the power of the Mantra diminish if the pronunciation even mentally of the Sanskrit words are not accurate and if so can its power be restored by visualizing the Sanskrit letters while repeating the Mantra yes and no notice the pronunciation the accurate Sanskrit pronunciation is important U especially

um this is of course I'm talking about Mantra initiation in our tradition but for example if you go back to the original Vic mantras in Sanskrit there the emphasis on pronunciation was all important so you would have to be very careful there but the mantras which we are doing even here those who use the mantras for worldly purposes not our subject today we are not going to do that but those who use it for worldly purposes do they want something in this world they want God to make this happen in that case you want us

to be very careful about the pronunciation however in our case we we love God and we want nothing other than God and therefore we get a lot of leeway with affection and love when we pronounce even if you're making some errors in pronunciation it's not a big deal if you know you're making an error in pronunciation try to correct it that's all don't be over concerned about that rather do the Mantra and the mantras are not so difficult to pronounce since you'll be repeating it thousands of times um you have enough scope for correction yeah

is a mantra given in a mass initiation right for initiation yes yes the Mantra has its own power and the main thing is it has to come through the guru who is authorized in a particular lineage in our lineage you have specific people and Swami senior swamis The Shard they have senior Mai from whom you can be initiated that comes from this lineage that's important does one have input about one's chosen ideal or does the guru decide the guru usually decides but you can ask you can go and ask if you have a spec specific

leaning but don't try to develop a specific leaning in order to ask for something no if you don't have a specific leaning it's I I always feel it's best to surrender to the guru but if you have been practicing something you belong to a particular tradition it's good to tell that to the guru and the guru might consider giving you a mantra in that tradition that answers the next question maybe can we take initiation from the ramakrishna order if we belong to another tradition yes another tradition even another religion all Hindu orders will not do

that if you belong to other religions but in the ramak Krishna order it's fine there are Christians who have been initiated into mantras by gurus in this tradition and who consider consider themselves Christians yet that's fine there are Muslims who have been initiated into mantras in our tradition and still they consider themselves to be Muslim that's also fine so that tremendous liberality you find in the ramakrishna vivean sharada tradition if one is engaged in pranayama to Rouse the Kundalini what is the role of japa yes I I did not mention that um often when I

talked about the procedure of japa many gurus will give you a little small instruction of pranayamas many will many will not um so using the pranayama to raise the Kundalini that's part of ha yoga or patanjali yoga yoga specifically that's not what I'm talking about SRI ramakrishna said it's much safer to do it through japa japa itself will raise the Kundalini awaken the sleeping spiritual power within us Sami how can we overcome the struggle to visualize the deity during japa ask um I mean have to ask somebody who is far more advanced in japa than

me I have the same question it's difficult it's difficult but it's slowly over time it gets easier okay one very technical question is it okay to synchronize the guru Mantra with breathing while repeating ask the guru I don't do it myself but ask the guru your Guru so some gurus I've seen give instructions of synchronizing with breath others tell you specifically not to synchronize with the breath Swami it is said at the right time the guru comes to one would you what would you say about that yes it is a well-known saying I say just

the opposite go ahead and get your Guru Chase your Guru down don't take no for an answer uh let me see I'm running out of time here let me see um what does one do if one was initiated in childhood but does not remember the ITA given you can always take another another initiation tell the guru that this is what happened and I would like to sometimes people change Traditions that's also allowed though in our tradition we generally don't encourage that we say all of these initiated mantras if they are from genuine religious Traditions that's

fine you should continue that but there are many cases of people they said that we want to be initiated in this tradition belong to this tradition from now on then you have to approach the guru and explain it and sometimes if you have another Guru a living Guru then your Guru will ask you to go to that Guru and take permission for this initiation um or if the guru is not living or not accessible then um it again depends on the guru whether he will permit you to do that or not how important is initiation

for Gana yoga Seekers we feel more connected to the achara than the Mantra Guru yes yes I wanted to say something about that but this question gives me an opportunity to say this you know there's something interesting the goal in the mant japa is to have a living experience of the deity you meditating Upon This is called savikalpa samadi that's the goal however interestingly that might not happen in your case I have actually known of cases where the practitioner was doing japa was initiating into a deity and was doing japa as instructed by the guru

but did not have the vision of the deity instead realized I am Brahma brahmas the N realization came so that's very interesting we uh which means it's not as neat as we think it is also it's not really in our hands there's something else going on beyond our power so it might be it might be that that person was a non-dist in past lives a practitioner so that this practice of japa right now A those samsaras and led to Enlightenment it literally Nel Enlightenment followed so the person was not doing D via inquiry into the

five sheets into pure Consciousness all pervading you know I'm not the body not the Mind none of that was just sitting in a mountain hut and repeating the Mantra of the deity as instructed by the guru hours and hours and hours day after day week after week month after month suddenly the realization comes but not the realization of the deity the realization of the nonuel Brahma me this will be the last question even though we're going over time many times I feel depressed and have negative thoughts how can the Mantra help with this very well

it it really works you see the this beautiful thing about the mind is this little secret the mind is a limitation it can catch hold of only one thing at a time and that's great because that gives us the key to controlling the mind you only have to control what you are thinking of right now you only have to control what you're thinking of the next second don't worry about what the mind will do later in the day or tomorrow so right now I want to repeat the Mantra there I did it next the Mantra

and next the Mantra take this decision moment to moment to moment ask yourself this question our monks sometimes do that this thought which is coming to me this feeling this anxiety this worry this and that any of that is it more valuable than the Mantra given by the guru that thought which thought is more valuable sometimes there are Urgent thoughts to be thought an urgent work to be done that's all but most of the time it's garbage the mind is just churning on and on and on that's wonderful replace that churning with the Mantra fill

it with masses of the Mantra and this mind will be transformed I tell you