Page 23 - All India Magazine Sep-2026

the heart center. When one applies a certain enthusiasm, when
each word is said with a warmth of aspiration, then everything
changes. I could feel this difference in myself, in my own japa.
In fact, when I walk back and forth in my room, I don't cut
myself off from the rest of the world — although it would be
so much more convenient! ... All kinds of things come to me —
suggestions, wills, aspirations. But automatically I make a move-
ment of offering: things come to me and just as they are about
to touch my head, I turn them upwards and offer them to the
Light. They don't enter into me. For example, if someone speaks
to me while I am saying my japa, I hear quite well what is being
said, I may even answer, but the words remain a little outside, at
a certain distance from the head. And yet sometimes, there are
things that insist, more defined wills that present themselves
to me, so then I have to do a little work, but all that without a
pause in the japa. If that happens, there is sometimes a change
in the quality of my japa, and instead of being fully the power,
fully the light, it is certainly something that produces results,
but results more or less sure, more or less long to fructify; it
becomes uncertain, as with all things of this physical world.
Yet the difference between the two japas is imperceptible; it's
not a difference between saying the japa in a more or less
mechanical way and saying it consciously, because even while
I work I remain fully conscious of the japa — I continue to
repeat it putting the full meaning into each syllable. But never-
theless, there is a difference. One is the all-powerful japa; the
other, an almost ordinary japa ... There is a difference in the
inner attitude. Perhaps for the japa to become true, a kind of
joy, an elation, a warmth of enthusiasm has to be added — but
especially joy. Then everything changes.
The Mother: Conversation with a Disciple, October 6, 1959

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