If you feel excessive heat in your body when you chant the Gayatri mantra, it is important to lie down on your right side for a little while because when you lie down on your right side, your left channel, which is your lunar channel, will be activated. You will start to breathe from your left nostril and when you breathe from your left, you will cool down somewhat.
Next time you are angry or agitated, check if you are breathing from the left or right. In meditation, when you experience restlessness or aggressive thoughts, make sure you are breathing from the left – you will feel a calming sensation within a few minutes. If you are feeling lazy, breathe from the right nostril and this will invigorate you.
Invoking the Gayatri mantra in a structured manner will help you build a reservoir of divine energy. Let me go over that.
The Specifics of Gayatri Sadhana
How Long Does It Take?
There are many ways to accumulate the energy of the Gayatri mantra in your consciousness. How long it takes for you to complete the sadhana depends on what kind of purushcharana you undertake. At the end of the day, the idea is quite simple: the more you gather, the more you have available for use at a later date. However, not everyone has the time or inclination to undertake a long purushcharana . Irrespective of how little or much you do, the important thing to bear in mind is that the quantity of japa should be the same every day throughout your purushcharana .
Laghu Purushcharana (Mini Invocation)
3–9 days
Mini invocation is done over a minimum period of three days to a maximum of nine. Many people do it for nine days during the Navaratras, for example. When undertaking laghu purushcharana , you are required to do a minimum chanting of 1000 every day. The more the better, as long as you maintain the same quantity every day. Doing it during the Navaratras is particularly auspicious and you can consult panchangam online or ask any Vedic scholar about the dates of the Navaratras that change every year.
Sadharana Purushcharana (Standard Invocation)
40–120 days
This is the ordinary kind of purushcharana. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have an impact – it does. More than the first one and less than the next one. It is called ordinary or standard purushcharana because this is the bare minimum you need to do before you can start accumulating the energy of the Gayatri mantra. In the standard invocation, you chant the mantra a minimum of 100,000 times. Ideally, this should be done over a period of 40 days, which means you could chant approximately 2500 times every day for 40 days. If you are not doing yajna or the other post-japa rituals, then it is recommended to chant 3000 times every day for 40 days. It is also permissible to do this over 60, 90 or 120 days depending on how much time you are able to devote on a daily basis.
I would like to remind you that the vow to do a purushcharana is taken before you begin one. Therefore, you maintain the same quantity every day. If you decide to do a 60-day purushcharana and chant 2000 times on the first day, that consistency then must be maintained for the remaining 59 days. You can’t change your 60-day purushcharana to a 120-day or a 40-day one once you’ve begun it.
Asadharana Purushcharana (Extraordinary Invocation)
18–24 months
Very few people undertake this kind of purushcharana . In fact, over the last three decades, I’ve met only three people who have done this kind. It involves chanting the Gayatri mantra 2,400,000 (24 lacs) times over a period of 18 or 24 months.
The japa is pegged at 24 lacs because the Gayatri mantra has what we call 24 varnas . Those are: tat, sa, vi, tur, va, re, na, yam, bhar, go, de, va, sya, dhi, ma, hi, dhi, yo, yo, na, pra, cho, da and yat. Mantra science dictates that to really invoke the energy of a mantra, you have to chant as many lacs of times as there are varnas in a mantra – not letters, but varnas, which roughly equate to syllables.
Maha Purushcharana (Grand Invocation)
24–32 months
This is the ultimate form of purushcharana and I’ve only known one person who did this 19 times in his life. Shriram Sharma of Shanti Kunj, Haridwar, was said to have done Gayatri Maha Purushcharana multiple times. The story I wrote in the chapter ‘The Power of Gayatri Mantra’ was of a direct disciple of Shriram Sharma.
In Maha Purushcharana , the Gayatri mantra is chanted 32 lacs or 3,200,000 times because when we add Om-bhur- bhuva-svaha to the original Gayatri mantra found in the Rig Veda (3.62.10), the complete mantra has 24 varnas . They are 24 as explained earlier plus a , u , m (for Om ), bhu , bhu , va , sva and ha .
The maximum period allowed to do a Maha Purushcharana is 32 months. There is no relaxation of rules for the longer purushcharana. The same principles of diet, abstinence and conduct apply to all four types. I must remind you here that just reckless or mindless chanting has no place or respect in mantra yoga. Your chanting must be done with devotion and mindfulness. I cannot stress this point enough. When you sit down to chant, do so patiently and mindfully, listening to your own voice, every word, every letter of your mantra. It will get tiring at times, but keep going if you care to go till the end.
The one who does 32 lakhs of japa of the Gayatri mantra is bound to have the grace of Devi in immeasurable, inexplicable ways. New dimensions of consciousness, new ways of thinking and new areas of knowledge and wisdom opens up to anyone who does this purushcharana , and if you do so with devotion, you will also attain what we call vak siddhi . Vak siddhi means when you say something from your heart, it becomes the truth; indeed, everything you say from your heart becomes the truth. That’s how our sages achieved an exalted state in their own lifetimes.
When Can You Start This Sadhana
You can start Gayatri sadhana on any full moon day. You can carry out the routine in the morning or at night. Praying to the Divine Mother in the form of Gayatri in the morning is the Vedic worship while the exact same routine, when undertaken at night, becomes Her tantric method of worship. The main thing is to be consistent. If you start a purushcharana by doing just one session of chanting in the morning, follow that till you complete the purushcharana . If you start your sadhana by chanting only in the evening, stick to that till the end. It is also perfectly fine to split your session into morning and evenings. Once again, if you do that, make sure you follow the same routine till you finish your purushcharana . Please note that at the beginning of every session, you’ve to do purification, nyasa and all the other steps as specified later in this chapter. Of course, you only have to perform the seven steps if you choose the brief invocation over comprehensive invocation. The idea is to train your mind by doing the same thing at precisely the same time for the same amount of minutes or hours every day for a certain length of duration.