“Do you believe,” the visitor inquired, “that repeating Gayatri is a good thing?"
“I do smashan sadhana,” Vimalananda replied, “because I am fit for it,
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and because it is fit for the age we live in. Some people, though, still try to perform sadhanas that were more appropriate for Satya Yuga. There are many people who claim to repeat the Gayatri Mantra, and claim to obtain all manner of believable and unbelievable benefits from it. They babble on about how ‘A man who achieves success with the Gayatri Mantra attains to supreme realization, and whatnot. But do they know that the mantra that they are reciting as Gayatri is not really the Gayatri Mantra? And that the form which they visualize as they do their japa (repetition of mantra) is not the real form of Gayatri?
“And do they know what will happen if they do too much japa of Gayatri? If you think I’m trying to be funny just try it sometime; your head will become overheated. Once a man came to me to learn the Gayatri mantra. I told him, ‘Gayatri is certainly one of the most ancient and powerful of our mantras, but the mantra which is printed in the books is not the real Gayatri; it is the Savitri. You are not in a position to know the real Gayatri, so please don’t try to do it. It is only meant for Rishis, not for you.’
“When he insisted, I gave him only one syllable of the real Gayatri and told him, ‘You should not even try to do this, but because you insist I will give you a fragment of the real thing. You are not strong enough to handle the whole mantra.’ I told him to repeat it only eleven times a day.
“Because he had already done plenty of sadhana he thought he was far beyond such a beginner’s limit and he overdid it; he repeated it one hun dred and eight times the first morning. That evening he suddenly told his wife, ‘I am Narayana and you are my Lakshmi. Massage my legs!’ As she did he repeated slowly, ‘All in one, one in all.’ Then he walked into the bath room, complaining of a headache.
“When he didn’t come out of the bathroom for quite a long time his wife panicked and called the neighbors to break down the door. They found him sitting with his head under the tap, trying to cool down the tremendous heat which had been created in his head. He did not survive long after that; he realized himself and threw off his earthly shackles.’
“Gayatri must always be performed in water. Since Gayatri is the power of the sun, the Surya Nadi works more strongly when it is repeated. It is not healthy for only one nadi to function continuously, so water, which is ruled by the moon, is recommended in order to encourage the Chandra Nadi to counteract any ill-effects of excessive solar influence. This keeps the sun and moon in equilibrium. If this man had repeated that single syllable only eleven times as he had been told to do, that excess of fire which did him in would never have happened.”
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MULLA
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A Gayatri Yantra
I thought again of Pandit Gopi Krishna and the sufferings his Surya Nadi caused him when it functioned continuously.
“When I first met my Junior Guru Maharaj he told me to repeat Gayatri, and to do it in water. I thought I would be clever and do it in my bathtub in the comfort of my own home, but he vetoed that idea and insisted that I do it in the ocean. Every night for more than three and a half years I would go down to the Arabian Sea around midnight and would finish by dawn. The currents would carry me several miles south during the night, and the waves were sometimes several meters high during the monsoon. But Smashan Tara was holding me in the palm of Her hand at all times and I never came to the least harm-not even a fish bite. I got into the routine so well that Guru Maharaj had to return to Bombay and order me to stop doing it. He didn’t
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want me to go too far too fast.
“As for the benefits of doing Gayatri, well, you get the power of the sun. Let me put it this way: the great saint Samartha Ram Das, who lived right here in Maharashtra, did Gayatri for twelve years, and he could raise the dead. My Junior Guru Maharaj has been doing Gayatri for more than sixty years, a lot more. Think of what he must be able to do. He also worships the fire, but without any ostentation; he is too shrewd for that. He doesn’t want anyone to know what he can do, or for that matter what he is doing.
“Gayatri is the only mantra repeated in Satya Yuga. As the Yugas advance all the other inferior mantras arise. Gayatri is the mother of all the Vedas. Only the Rishis, and no one else, know everything there is to know about Gayatri. There are twenty-eight types of Gayatri, and each Rishi specialized in one type; that is his special knowledge, his vijnana. For example, only one Rishi knows the full form of the Gayatri for creation, the Brahma Gayatri. The Rishis obtain the power of the sun all because they repeat the Gayatri Mantra.
“I think you can see now that the Rishis were very advanced indeed in the spiritual line. A Rishi actually ‘sees’ the Truth. This perception of Truth spontaneously manifests in the form of mantras. Only a part of the Truth can ever be manifested here in our world, the World of Death, where things are imperfect and have to be imperfect in order to remain here. Each aspect of Truth has its own phonetic value, which is expressed in the vowels, con sonants, rhythm, pitch, and intonation of the mantra. The mantras which were perceived in this way were collected in a coherent way to form the Vedas.
“They say that the Rishi Vasishtha composed a good number of mantras of the Rg Veda, and that Angiras composed so many for the Atharva Veda, and so on, but I do not believe that the Vedas are the product of many Rishis. I think that each Veda must be the product of only one Rishi. How could there be complete coherence in their subject matter if there were many different Rishis responsible for them, each of whom has his own indi vidual vijnana, his own unique Gayatri? There must have originally been a Veda for every Rishi, because each Veda was an exposition of his own knowledge.
“What I am trying to make you understand is the essence of the Vedas and their fundamental teachings. The Vedas are a labyrinth to those who don’t know the inner meanings of the mantras, and only a select few people know this now, or ever did. That is why certain junior Rishis had the duty to write Upanishads, as explanations of that essence. When people can no
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longer understand Truth directly, religions spring up to explain Truth to them. Some people then take advantage of the situation and become priests to extract benefits for themselves.
“A priest will not tell you that his purpose is to maintain control over the people, but he will tell you that he is an authorized intermediary between you and God, which is the same thing. When people have to go through priests to get to God, naturally the priests will become powerful. But that is all bull. You must forget all about priests and go looking for God on your own; you must carve out your own niche.
“But if you take on yourself the responsibility of carving out your own niche you have to follow the directions of your teacher to the letter. What happens when you don’t follow instructions is what happened to this man to whom I taught Gayatri. I knew how much he could safely take, but he did not. Now he is happy, no doubt. Not happy-blissful! He is one with Narayana. But what about the weeping wife he left behind? Who is respon sible for having made her a widow? I am. Now I no longer give people man tras. If people knew how dangerous it is to give out mantras they would think a hundred times before they ever did it.
“This applies to even ‘harmless’ mantras, like the one to control snakes, or the one for Svapneshvari, the goddess of dreams. Even Svapneshvari can be abused. You might send her to trouble someone else needlessly in their dreams, or you might tell her, ‘Now I want to see Marilyn Monroe.’ You will see her, but then if you say, “Now I want to see her labia minora,’ you will certainly see those too, but that will not be good for you in the end. A man tra is not a thing to use frivolously.
“Used properly, though, mantras can work wonders. For this we have the Rishis to thank, since all methods of sadhana have originated from them. You see, each Rishi is a scientist, with his own researches to conduct, and when he succeeds in his research the result is beneficial in so many different ways, like ’three-in-one oil.’
“For example, snakes possess different types of poisons. One poison par alyzes the nerves. Another thins out the blood so that internal hemorrhages occur. Some poison thickens the blood; it coagulates, clots form and the tis sues are not properly nourished. Sometimes a clot might cause an embo lism, which could kill the patient.
“Now, the ordinary man who learns a mantra against snakebite will use it only against snakebite. Maybe every year or two he will have a chance to use it and save someone’s life. But someone whose intelligence is awakened will examine the mantra and discern its more general purpose. He may find that
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a particular mantra for snakebite thins out the blood and makes it rush through the blood vessels. Then he will realize that the same mantra can be used in every case where that effect is needed, such as an embolism, arterio sclerosis, and the like. And how many people suffer from these diseases? Millions.
“Such a man will be able to cure thousands of people with that mantra, whereas the ordinary man may help only ten or twenty in his entire life. This is the true knowledge of the mantra. If you know it, wherever you go you can hold your own against anyone, thanks to the Rishi who ‘saw’ the man tra.”
He fell silent for a moment, and then turned to me.
“You know, Robby, all this mantra and tantra is very nice, but it is limited. There are things far beyond mantra, things the tongue cannot speak. And when you get to that point, there is no need for mantra. When you realize those things, you realize that mantra is just a toy. When you have the power of the sun at your beck and call, will you ever bother to use an Eveready bat tery? No, you won’t, and the comparison is the same here. On the one hand, Gayatri and the power of the sun, the lore of the Rishis; on the other, Aghora.”
“But until we get to that stage, we have to make use of mantra,” I piped up.
“You have no choice,” replied Vimalananda, and we all began to laugh.
VU
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Treasure Vase
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wiaravanas
The Five Elements Earth (square); Water (circle); Fire (triangle); Air (crescent); Space (moon).
Shiva Linga
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