In any event, when we chant a mantra such as the Gayatri mantra, we are not asking any supernatural being to help us. Instead, we are invoking our own latent energy; we are invoking the power within us. Associating it with a deity of some kind is a matter of meditation; of better focus, visualization and manifestation.
Anyway, I was telling you about this sadhaka in Canada who devoutly meditated on Gayatri. He told me some of the things he was doing for people to help them. Many people began approaching him to fulfill their material objectives.
“Don’t you think,” I said to him, “that using the power of Gayatri mantra only to fulfill material desires is misusing it? Today you will make somebody happy, but tomorrow they will come to you with another problem, followed by another and another.”
“I am using the energy while it’s working for me,” he said.
“Well, if there was a way to make somebody happy eternally, we would gladly do that, but this doesn’t exist,” I said to him, “using a mantra in this manner is like making a toilet brush out of a large inheritance of gold.”
Now fast-forward seven years, when I saw him again, I could not even recognize him. He looked like a mango that had been sucked dry and cast aside. He had lost his radiance and spiritual potency. The power in his voice had diminished noticeably, the charisma had disappeared. It was as if Mother Gayatri had decided, “I don’t want to live in you anymore.”
I spoke with him, and we talked about what had come about. We had known each other for years and he believed in me a great deal because one, many a time in the past I’d done his astrological charts and two, I was a practitioner of mantras myself. Many a time, we even compared our sadhana notes.
“How can I regain my lost power?” he asked me.
“Stop meeting people,” I told him. “And if you cannot stop seeing people, then don’t just say to them that Mother Divine would grant their wish, instead simply pray to Mother to do whatever is right for them. Because fulfilling their desires is not helping people. They don’t know what’s right for them, do they?”
Consider this for a moment: Do we always know what we really want? And when we get it, are we ever any happier? Usually not. After a short time, we are back to feeling the way we felt before.
So this sadhaka completely stopped granting people’s wishes, and believe it or not, in another 14 years, he started looking radiant again. But he no longer blesses people the way he used to.
It is the duty of every sadhaka to bless, though, because we don’t earn everything for ourselves. We are not performing a mantra just to benefit ourselves – that’s a very limited view. Of course, we have to help others, but we need to know how to help. We cannot say, “Okay, nothing bad will happen to you.” Or, at least, we should very rarely say that. I say that to less than 0.05 percent of the people I meet.
Mostly, what comes from me is this: Mother Divine, you know what’s going on, and you know everything, so you decide – you decide what your grace is. This person is thinking, if I have my way, that is grace, but usually, this is not the case.
In fact, a good prayer would be, “God, please don’t listen to me. I think I am very smart, I think I’ve got it all figured out, but that’s really not the truth. So please, if you will, don’t listen to me.” I think this is the greatest prayer. You can’t go wrong then.
At any rate, after what he went through, this sadhaka changed his prayer to, “O God! O Mother, please live in my mind, live in my consciousness, then I will not feel anything negative.” That means I will not think anything negative;
I will not contemplate anything negative – therefore, I won’t do anything negative. If I don’t do anything negative, I won’t have to suffer anything adverse. It is as simple as that. This is a much better, more beneficial prayer in my view.
Getting back to the Gayatri mantra, the reason I have taken the time to give you a background of the mantra and mantra science is because by following a certain discipline, day in, day out, some of you – maybe 5 or 10 percent of you – are actually going to achieve success with the mantra. You will then be able to help yourself and others. If, at that time, you already understand what you have tapped into, and know the power of what you have, you will use it wisely and judiciously.
Gayatri mantra is considered the seed of all Vedic mantras in the sense that on the path of mantra yoga, no mantra can be invoked until we first perform the invocation of Vedmata Gayatri, which is done by chanting the Gayatri mantra a night prior to starting any purushcharana . It is the method of seeking her permission. Savitur or Savitri, the presiding deity of the Gayatri mantra, is called ‘Vedmata’, the Mother of all Vedas.
The structure of this mantra is referred to as Chatushpadi : chatush means four and padi means limbs, which corresponds to the four Vedas and four pauses in the mantra. Of the four pauses in the Gayatri mantra, the one in the Vedas starts with “Tat-savitur-varenyama bhargo …” But the sages of yore invoked it with the three prefixes of bhu, bhuvah, svah. So the complete mantra becomes:
“Om Bhurbhuvah Svah,” first pause,
“Tatsaviturvarenyama,” second pause,
“Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi,” third pause,
“Dhiyo Yo Nah, Pracodayata,” fourth pause.
Bhur-bhuvah Svah are three planes of existence, three types of consciousness, three modes of material nature: sattva, rajas and tamas – the modes of goodness, passion and ignorance. Tat is that, savitur means something that’s radiant; it is also the name of the sun, and radiant, divine energy. Varenyam is something that is of the colour saffron, or something that is fit to be worshipped.
There are all kinds of energies which may be invoked from all kinds of prayers or mantras, but not every deity is fit to be worshipped. You are going to derive your strength, inspiration, energy and radiance from your object of faith; from whomever you invest your faith in.
You see many tantrics, for example, who start to look like the deities they worship. I have heard that after many years of marriage, husbands and wives begin to look like brother and sister. The similarities become so pronounced that they even start to sound the same.
Bhargo means radiant, effulgent; devasya is divine; dhimahi is to meditate upon. Dhiyo means intellect; yo means which; na means our, and pracodayata is to put in motion. This mantra means we are now meditating upon the one who alone is fit to be worshipped. May that divine radiance, that divine energy which is full of light, guide our intellects. May it put our intellects in motion, so we have a certain wealth of wisdom to put to use. This is the basis of the Gayatri mantra.
In the beginning, when you chant this mantra, you follow a strict discipline, so to speak. You might only sit down and then chant. But as you progress, chanting becomes a part of your life, and you can chant 24/7.