Meditation Blog - July 2007

If you have difficulty learning to meditate I strongly recommend the use of mantra. A mantra is a certain discipline which helps to create a meditative consciousness. When we repeat a mantra many times we seek to purify the mind and also gain inspiration from the quality of the mantra.

"If you repeat the mantra out loud, you will get physical purity. If you repeat the mantra in silence, you will get purity in your inner existence. Without inner purity, you will make no spiritual progress. "

- Sri Chinmoy [1]

One useful mantra exercise is to choose a word like "Aum" or Supreme" and repeat it 500 times in a day. The repetitions need not be long, we can repeat them relatively quickly, otherwise it will take too long. On the next day we increase the number of mantra repetitions to 600. The following day we can increase the number by another 100. At the end of the week we will be repeating the mantra 1200 times. On reaching 1200, the next day we should reduce the number by a 100 and go back down to 500. After this 2 week period, we should repeat the exercise going upto 1200 before returning to 500. The whole exercise, therefore, takes 1 month. If we follow the exercise properly we will definitely feel a real improvement in our meditation. The exercise is most effective because it forces us to be concentrated and disciplined. The mind cannot wander and we also benefit from the spiritual vibration of the mantra we choose.