After you have made your sankalpa, keep the water that you have in your palm, with your flower and rice, in a small plate in front of you and on that very day pour it on the base of any tree or plant. As I have written, avoid cactus – all other plants are fine.
Step Seventeen
Mantra shvasa is very simple: You breathe in while you are chanting your mantra, and you breathe out while chanting. On the first day, I recommend doing 21 times in the case of doing the small invocation, 1 round if you are doing the standard invocation, 3 rounds if you happen to perform the extraordinary invocation and 7 rounds in case you are doing the grand invocation. Remember that one round is 108 times. That’s not chanting three times – it’s three rounds.
On all subsequent days, do only 3, 11, 21 or 31 times for small, standard, extraordinary and grand invocations respectively.
While inhaling, you obviously cannot chant aloud. When you are inhaling, you can do one chant and while exhaling you can chant as well. This is called mantra shvasa . The counting mentioned in the earlier paragraph is not per shvasa but per chant. So 7 times means 4 exhalations and 3 inhalations. One exhalation is extra because you always start with exhalation.
It is possible to do an entire sadhana on just mantra shvasa . If you are used to mantra shvasa , or let’s say, all you wish to do in your sadhana is mantra shvasa , then you take a vow like, “For the next ‘x’ days I am going to do mantra shvasa , ‘y’ rounds every day.” You could be practicing it while walking, commuting or doing any other activity where you may do it with mindfulness. Mantra shvasa is a very effective practice, because you are chanting your mantra in your daily life. The more you chant with feeling, the more energy you accumulate. Bear in mind that it’s like doing shift work: The more shifts you work, the more money you make. It will tire you out, but you will get used to mantra shvasa and you will continue to accumulate energy.
Step Eighteen
We’ll now do viniyoga , means the application of the mantra. Sankalpa is done only once on the first day whereas viniyoga is done every day throughout your purushcharana . Here’s the mantra for Gayatri viniyoga :
Saptavyahratinam jamadagni, bharadvaja, atri-gautama,
kasyapa, visvamitra, vasistha rshayah,
Gayatryusniganustubbrhati-pamk
tistristubjagatyaschandadamsi,
Agni-vayu-surya-brhspati-varunendra-visvedeva devatah,
Sarvapapaksayarte Jape Viniyogah.
Now don’t be alarmed – you don’t have to chant it. There is a simple way to do it: Take water in your palm and say, “O the sages who have existed before me who have invoked Vedmata Gayatri, I am chanting this to purge myself of all the bad karma I might have done, to cleanse myself of all the negative emotions I carry in my heart.” After you have said this, just pour the water from your palm on the ground in front of you.
Step Nineteen
Now we come to the purification of the hands, which is called kara shuddhi . There’s an old bhajan that says, “Vadan diya hari gun gaane ko aur haath diye kar daan re …” That we have been blessed with a mouth so we may sing His glories and hands so we may engage in charitable acts. But often in our lives we end up doing things with our hands that don’t befit us. Before our hands perform mudras (handlocks) or nyasa (placement of letters of the mantra on our body), we need to purify our hands. The rationale is quite simple: can’t wash off dirt with dirty water; we can’t purify our body with impure hands.
Purification ritual is performed by chanting “Om bhurbhuva svaha ” and washing your hands while you chant it. Three times the hands are washed and three times the same mantra is chanted.
Once again, you wash your hands by taking a bit of water in the right hand and then symbolically washing both hands with it to your left side. You can keep a small towel with you to wipe your hands every time you use water. This is completely at your discretion.
Now, chant the following mantras and show the appropriate mudras to perform purification of the hands.
Aing Anushthabhyam Namah.
Hring Tarjanabhyam Namah.
Shring Madhyamabhyam Namah.
Aing Anamkiabhyam Namah.
Hring Kanishkabhyam Namah.
Shring Kartakishtabhyam Namah.
We have placed little mantras on our hands. Now the feeling, the sentiment is that these are the hands of Devi – that Devi alone is fit to worship Herself.
Step Twenty
Two steps are of great importance when doing mantra sadhana. One is nyasa and the other mudras . Nyasa is the method by which you no longer remain a body, but become a mantra. The idea behind this is not simply purification of your body, mind and soul, but to become at par with the object of worship.
Let’s say you invite a beggar into your home and tell him, “Please sit next to me at the dining table.” This would likely make the beggar feel very uncomfortable. You might also feel awkward; you would feel more comfortable speaking to somebody on a similar wavelength. It would be easier to communicate; to spend time with that person.
So it is with chanting. With our petty thinking, our limited minds, we can’t be at one with the object of our worship, our mantra, with our deity. This requires us to rise above the limited tendencies of the mind – our self- centredness, selfishness, jealousy, hatred, negativity and so on. This is invariably done while you are chanting the mantra, by nyasa , in which you place various letters of the mantra on your body. This way, the mantra is done with awareness, consciousness and devotion; through the nyasa , you become the mantra.
There are many kinds of nyasas . There is rishyadi nyasa, in which we pay homage to all the rishis, the sages of the lineage in our mantra who have invoked it in the past. Then we have the varna nyasa or nyasa on the syllables of the mantra, followed by matrika nyasa, which is in a Sanskrit script called Devanagari. (An ancient form of Sanskrit script was called Brahmi, which had more letters than Devanagari).
Since we did the purification of our hands in the previous step, we are now ready to invite the energy of the deity into your body. The mantras of the nyasa are covered in the appendix.
Then we do what is called the pranava nyasa . The sound ‘Om’ is called pranava, from the original prana , the life force that has evolved. It is done as follows: