May 2, 2025
Japa is silently repeating a mantra. What does the word mantra mean? The definition is given:
mananat trayate iti mantrah
The word ‘mananat’ is difficult to translate. It is mentation which is not thinking about it, but is it. For example, if you take OM for your mantra, you don't think of what all the philosophers have said about OM, but your thinking becomes OM. Mentation (mañana) is to saturate the mind with it, to let the mind be it.
Mantra is that which, when this happens, redeems (trayate) you. If you can sit here, forgetting everything else, and let the mind become completely saturated with the mantra, then you are saved from all problems. It's as simple as that! But we don't do it. We doubt: “Is this going to solve all my problems and business worries?" That doubt is the problem. We value only treatment which is complicated and difficult. Our mind is so complicated that it rebels against anything simple.
I have a doctor friend who has many wealthy patients who are often on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He is very sympathetic, and he realizes that although there is nothing wrong with them, they feel sick. He gives them an injection of double-distilled water with great care and attention, and the miracle of it is, it works! If he told them that there was nothing wrong with them, it wouldn't work, because it was too simple. We feel that all the solutions must be complicated, because our life is so complicated. Japa is an extremely simple solution to all our problems.
That is what my Master Swami Sivananda prescribed for thousands of people with problems. Sit down, let the whole mind be saturated with the mantra. Then the problem that is outside you may remain, but you are not involved in the problem, you do not create or complicate the problem. By saturating the mind with the mantra you are strengthening your inner spiritual resources, so that when you get up from the japa the problem is dissolved.