I urge you not to think that the absence of a guru mantra means you will not succeed. Gurus are important, but not indispensable. It’s entirely in your hands. Please don’t go looking for gurus – you will be disappointed. And please don’t think, for example, that if you are fascinated with Devi worship and you get initiated in Sri Vidya, your progress will be assured. There are many people who would initiate you for 50 rupees. You may go to them for the first time, and say, “Initiate me,” and they might say, “All right, take a seat.”
Those initiations have nothing to offer. You are the maker of your destiny; you know the path, you know the science behind it. Just stick to your routine, do your practice and you will get there.
Step Twelve
In this step, we pay obeisance to all the siddhas . Your lineage may have different adepts that your guru may tell you to pay obeisance to, but if you don’t belong to a lineage; if you haven’t been initiated into Gayatri sadhana, you can simply say Om Divyog Namah, Om Sidhyog Namah, Om Manavog Namah: I offer my obeisance to all siddhas who are in divine, ethereal and human bodies.
The idea is to do each of these steps with humility in your heart.
Step Thirteen
Ishta generally means desired. Ishta-devata is the deity or the form of God you generally pray to. Your current sadhana may well be to invoke your ishta or it may be to attain mantra siddhi or some other divine entity. For example, on your usual days you may be praying to Krishna, etc., but now you are trying to invoke goddess Gayatri. In this case, your ishta is Krishna, whereas the deity of your mantra is Gayatri. Before you can awaken the mantra of your deity, an aspirant is required to meditate on his ishta-devata as well. If, however, the deity you are trying to invoke is your ishta-devata , simply meditate on the form of your ishta .
Your ishta-devata could be any god, goddess from any religion for that matter. Religion is not important in sadhana, for sadhana is a religion in its own right. If you pray to a specific god, pray to that deity now or simply meditate on Mother Goddess Gayatri using the mantra below.
Om balam vidyam tu gayatrim lohitam chaturananam,
raktambaradvayopetamakshasutrakaram tatha.
kamandaludharam devi hamsvahanasamsthitam,
brahmani brahmadaivatyam brahmalokanivasinim.
mantrenavahayeddevimayanti suryamandalat.
Step Fourteen
Chant the mantra of the deity you visualized in the preceding step. Please note that this is not your main mantra. But, if your ishta-devata is the same as the deity of your mantra then, of course, you’ll chant the same mantra. Ishta-mantra is to be chanted 11, 21 or 31 times.
Step Fifteen
Now we pray to Mother Earth by performing prithvi puja. It is important because we are sitting on the earth. In all forms of classical dances of India, we offer respects to earth before beginning with the main performance. I’ve known Ganesh, a Bharatanatyam dancer, for nearly five years now and when I watched him perform for the first time, I saw that before starting, he offered flowers to Mother Earth and sought forgiveness: that dear mother, I will be stomping on you and I might be causing you hurt by doing this, so please forgive me. It’s such a beautiful sentiment – even dance becomes sadhana. This act of artistic expression becomes a spiritual activity because the sentiment behind it is, I want to pray and express my gratitude. Rather than chanting, somebody might offer his worship with dance; someone else might do it with painting, for example.
The usual way you perform prithvi puja is to take the water in a vessel, dip your ring finger in the water, and draw one line on the ground in front of you. You then draw another line, then another line to form an inward-pointing triangle. The same way, you take water once more and put a dot in the middle of this triangle.
The drawing on the ground, done with water will look as follows:
So you have taken water four times. That becomes a symbol of Devi, of Adhaar Shakti. Adhaar means foundation, the foundation energy. When we place the dot in the middle of the triangle, we chant the mantra Hrim Adhaar Shakteya Namah. It means, I am offering my obeisance to Mother Earth, the foundation energy, and I am going to start my sadhana.
Take a moment to mentally express your gratitude to Mother Nature, Mother Earth, for blessing you with the privilege and that ground where you are able to sit now and invoke divine energies.
Step Sixteen
This is the one step that’s performed only on the first day and is not repeated on any other day throughout your sadhana. Now, we take a sankalpa , a vow. When you take a sankalpa , you make a commitment with the universe that you are undertaking a certain practice with a particular intention. This is done only on the first day of the purushcharana .
When you take a vow and fulfill it, it boosts your willpower. To take a sankalpa , just pour a little water from your vessel into your right palm. If you have a flower, put the flower with it, a bit of rice if you have it – if you don’t have rice, no problem. With your utmost sentiment, say to the Divine: “I, such-and-such person (if your guru has given you a name, this is the moment to use that name, because that will identify you with the lineage to which you belong), am taking a vow of chanting ‘x’ number of mantras over the next ‘n’ number of days. I’m doing this for the Grace of Vedmata Gayatri.”
Or, if you have taken a sankalpa of chanting, let’s say, one hour every day or 50 minutes every day, then you will say, “I, so-and-so, will chant the Gayatri mantra for ‘x’ minutes/ hours every day for the next ‘n’ number of days. I’m doing this for the Grace of Vedmata Gayatri.”
Your sankalpa may be that, “I will chant the mantra of Vedmata Gayatri or the Gayatri mantra ‘x’ number of times, over the next ‘y’ number of days. And I am doing so because
I want ‘z’.” The best thing to say is, “I am doing so for Devi’s grace,” because in the beginning, you should accumulate the energy of the mantra. Don’t say, “I am doing it because I want to win the lotto,” or whatever. Accumulate the energy, because once you have enough, you can do kamya prayoga – you can actually use it for application.
When you violate your sankalpa , your sadhana is compromised and you must either start from the beginning or seek a remedial measure from your guru. For example, if in your sankalpa , you state that you will chant 4,000 mantras every day for the next 40 days but you miss one day or chant less one day, this compromises your sadhana. You must reset the counter and start all over again.
To do the sankalpa , simply take water in your right palm, put a few grains of rice and a flower and say it in any language you know. Fill in the blanks:
I … (your full name) … born in … (state your gotra. If you don’t know your gotra, simply say Narayana gotra for everyone is a child of the Divine) … on … (state your date of birth) hereby vow to do a purushcharana of … (the name of your mantra, like Gayatri, Sri Suktam, Guru Mantra, etc.) … over the next … (state the number of days you’ll be chanting the mantra over, for example, 40, 90, 100, 300 and so on) days … so I may become a worthy recipient of your grace and attain the desired outcome.