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Mantra Compilation (view source)

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=Importance of Mantra=

If rightly done, the mantra is a means of opening to the light and knowledge etc. from above and it ceases as soon as that is done. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/mantra-and-japa#p7</ref>

When one repeats a mantra regularly, very often it begins to repeat itself within, which means that it is taken up by the inner being. In that way it is more effective. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/mantra-and-japa#p5</ref>

...it can do its natural function of creating the right consciousness—for that is what the japa is intended to do. It first changes the vibrations of the consciousness, brings into it the right state and the right responses and then brings in the power or the presence of the Deity. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/mantra-and-japa#p33</ref>

In fact, you can immediately see the difference between those who have a mantra and those who don't. With those who have no mantra, even if they have a strong habit of meditation or concentration, something around them remains hazy and vague. Whereas the japa imparts to those who practice it a kind of precision, a kind of solidity: an armature. They become galvanized, as it were. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/01/may-19-1959#p7</ref>

...what we affirm strongly gets power to persist in the consciousness and experience and calls circumstances to its support, what we deny and reject and refuse to support by the power of the Word, tends, after a time and some resistance, to lose force in the consciousness and the circumstances and movements that support it tend also to recur less often and finally disappear. It is fundamentally the principle of the mantra. A constant affirmation from within on the other side—of that which is to be realised—brings always in the end a response from above. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/illness-and-health#p42</ref>

The knowledge of our inner subliminal and psychic nature, of the powers and presences and influences there and the capacity of communication with other planes and their powers and beings can also be used for a higher than any mental or mundane object, for the possession and mastering of our whole nature and the overpassing of the intermediate planes on the way to the supreme spiritual heights of being. But the most direct spiritual use of the psychic consciousness is to make it an instrument of contact, communication and union with the Divine. A world of psycho-spiritual symbols is readily opened up, illuminating and potent and living forms and instruments, which can be made a revelation of spiritual significances, a support for our spiritual growth and the evolution of spiritual capacity and experience, a means towards spiritual power, knowledge or Ananda. The mantra is one of these psycho-spiritual means, at once a symbol, an instrument and a sound body for the divine manifestation, and of the same kind are the images of the Godhead and of its personalities or powers used in meditation or for adoration in Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-supramental-sense#p23</ref>

==For Silencing the Mind ==

… the mind, accustomed to run about from object to object, shall fix on one alone, and that one must be something which represents the idea of the Divine. It is usually a name or a form or a mantra by which the thought can be fixed in the sole knowledge or adoration of the Lord. By this concentration on the idea the mind enters from the idea into its reality, into which it sinks silent, absorbed, unified. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/rajayoga#p8</ref>

The japa is made precisely to control the physical mind. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/01/october-11-1960#p15</ref>

==For Dealing with Difficulties==

But that's why I say it has to be YOUR mantra, not something you received from whomever—the mantra that arose spontaneously from your deeper being (''gesture to the heart''), from your inner guide. That's what holds out. When you don't know, when you don't understand, when you don't want to let the mind intervene and you are... THAT is there; the mantra is there; and it helps you to get through. It helps to get through. It saves the situation at critical moments, it's a considerable support, considerable. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/05/september-23-1964#p31</ref>

==For Making the Body Conscious==

I have also come to realize that for this sadhana of the body, the mantra is essential. Sri Aurobindo gave none; he said that one should be able to do all the work without having to resort to external means. Had he reached the point where we are now, he would have seen that the purely psychological method is inadequate and that a japa is necessary, because only japa has a direct action on the body. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/01/may-19-1959#p5</ref>

It's an almost physical discipline. Moreover, I have seen that the japa has an organizing effect on the subconscient, on the inconscient, on matter, on the body's cells—it takes time, but by persistently repeating it, in the long run it has an effect. It is the same principle as doing daily exercises on the piano, for example. You keep mechanically repeating them, and in the end your hands are filled with consciousness—it fills the body with consciousness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/01/september-20-1960#p22</ref>

..it is good to repeat a mantra, a word, a prayer before going into sleep. But there must be a life in the words; I do not mean an intellectual significance, nothing of that kind, but a vibration. And its effect on the body is extraordinary: it begins to vibrate, vibrate, vibrate... and quietly you let yourself go, as though you wanted to go to sleep. The body vibrates more and more, more and more, more and more, and away you go. That is the cure for tamas. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/4-june-1960#p6</ref>

Naturally, if there’s also an awareness of the idea behind it, if one does japa as a very active CONSCIOUS invocation, then its effects are greatly multiplied. But the basis is the magic of sound. This is a fact of experience, and it’s absolutely true. The sound OM, for instance, awakens very special vibrations (there are other such sounds as well, but of course that one is the most powerful of all).

It is an attempt to divinize material substance.

From another, almost identical point of view, it fills the physical atmosphere with the Divine Presence. So time spent in japa is time consecrated to helping the material substance enter into more intimate rapport with the Divine.

And if one adds to this, as I do, a mantric program, that is, a sort of prayer or invocation, a program for both personal development and helping the collective, then it becomes a truly active work. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/agenda/03/february-3-1962#p64,p65,p66,p67</ref>

On the material level, japa is very good for that. When your head is tired and you are a little weary of forever contradicting that pessimism, you just have to repeat your japa, and automatically you make contact. To make contact. That's something the cells value a lot. A lot. It's a very good way, because it's a way that isn't mental, it's a mechanical way, it's a question of vibration. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/05/october-10-1964#p48</ref>

I do not believe a mantra can change the physical consciousness. What it does, if it is effective, is to open the consciousness and to bring into it the power of that which the mantra represents.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/mantra-and-japa#p8</ref>

===Mother’s Experience with Mantra===

You know, it isn't a perception, it isn't a sensation, it is... a LIVED FAITH in the existence of the Supreme alone—you know, a faith that it's the only Reality and the only Existence. Just that, and everything seems to swell up, as if all these cells were swelling up with such joy!... Only, it doesn't take the form of a feeling, not even of a sensation, even less of a thought; so if you aren't very attentive, you don't notice it. But, for instance, when I repeat the mantra, it's repeated by that famous physical mind, which is so stupid (the mantra is the only thing that can keep a rein on it), and now it has become so identified that the mantra is its whole life, it is like a pulsation of its being; but then when I come to the invocation (there is a series of invocations: each one has its own effect on the body), when I come to "Manifest Your Love," I see a sort of twinkling of a golden light, which represents an intense joy in all the cells. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/05/november-21-1964#p28</ref>

To begin with, the japa, the mantra, for instance, was taken as a discipline; then from the state of discipline it changed into a state of satisfaction (but still with the sense of a duty to be done); then from that it changed into a sort of state of constant satisfaction, with the desire (not "desire," but a will or an aspiration) for it to be more frequent, more constant, more exclusive. Then there was a sort of repugnance to and rejection of all that comes and disturbs, mixed with a sense of duty towards work, people and so on, and all that made a muddle and a great confusion. And it always ended in the transfer to the Supreme along with the aspiration for things to change. A long process of development. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/06/august-7-1965#p22</ref>

And in the beginning, during the first months that I was doing the japa, I felt them ... I had an almost detailed awareness of these myriads of cells opening to this vibration; the vibration of the first sound is an absolutely special vibration (you see, above, there is the light and all that, but beyond this light there is the original vibration), and this vibration was entering into all the cells and was reproduced in them. It went on for months in this way.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/01/october-11-1960#p18</ref>

It is this mind of the cells which seizes upon a mantra or a japa and eventually repeats it automatically, and with what persistence! That is to say, CONTINUALLY. That's what Sri Aurobindo means when he says it can be a help: it keeps at things indefinitely (''Mother clenches her fist in an unwavering gesture'')...

I heard it—I heard THE CELLS repeating the mantra. Automatically, in the difficulty (there was a difficulty), they were repeating the mantra. Like a choir, an immense choir in a church, it was very odd. As if there were lots of little voices, innumerable little voices repeating and repeating the same sound. It gave me the impression of a church choir, but with lots and lots and lots of choirboys—tiny little voices. Yet the sound was very clear, I was dumbfounded: very clear. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/04/june-3-1963#p9,p12</ref>

But this body feels so strongly that it exists ONLY because the divine Power is in it. And constantly, for the least thing, it has only one remedy (it doesn't think of resting, of not doing this or that, of taking medicine), its sole remedy is to call and call the Supreme—it goes on repeating its mantra. And as soon as it quietly repeats its mantra, it is perfectly content. Perfectly content. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/02/february-11-1961#p28</ref>

It is similar with this japa: an imperceptible little change, and one ~~can~~ c<center>~</center>an pass from a more or less mechanical, more or less efficient and real japa, to the true japa full of power and light. I even wondered if this difference is what the tantrics call the 'power' of the japa. For example, the other day I was down with a cold. Each time I opened my mouth, there was a spasm in the throat and I coughed and coughed. Then a fever came. So I looked, I saw where it was coming from, and I decided that it had to stop. I got up to do my japa as usual, and I started walking back and forth in my room. I had to apply a certain will. Of course, I could do my japa in trance, I could walk in trance while repeating the japa, because then you feel nothing, none of all the body's drawbacks. But the work has to be done in the body! So I got up and started doing my japa. Then, with each word pronounced—the Light, the full Power. A power that heals everything. I began the japa tired, ill, and I came out of it refreshed, rested, cured. So those who tell me they come out of it exhausted, contracted, emptied, it means that they are not doing it in the true way. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/01/october-6-1959#p11</ref><center>~</center>

This is the main reason for my japa. There's a power in the sound itself, and by forcing the body to repeat the sound, you force it to receive the vibration at the same time. But I've noticed that if something in the body's working gets disturbed (a pain or disorder, the onset of some illness) and I repeat my mantra in a certain way—still the same words, the same mantra, but said with a certain purpose and above all in a movement of ''surrender'', surrender of the pain, the disorder, and a call, like an opening—it has a marvelous effect. The mantra acts in just the right way, in this way and in no other. And after a while everything is put back in order. And simultaneously, of course, the precise knowledge of what lies behind the disorder and what I must do to set it right comes to me. But quite apart from this, the mantra acts directly upon the pain itself. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/01/june-4-1960#p4</ref>

=How to do Japa?=

For me, you know, japa means a moment when all physical life is EXCLUSIVELY for the Divine. A moment when nothing but the Divine exists—every single cell of the body, each second, is EXCLUSIVELY for the Divine, there is nothing but the Divine. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/03/february-3-1962#p75</ref>

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