Page 32 - All India Magazine Sep-2026

power of the mantra or name in itself, but then one has to go
on till that power has sufficiently impressed its vibrations on
the inner being to make it at a given moment suddenly open
to the Presence or the Touch. But if there is a struggling or
insistence for the result, then this effect which needs a quiet
receptivity in the mind is impeded. That is why I insisted so
much on mental quietude and on not too much straining or
effort — to give time to allow the psychic and the mind to
develop the necessary condition of receptivity — a receptivity
as natural as when one receives an inspiration for poetry and
music. It is also why I do not want you to discontinue your po-
etry — it helps and does not hinder the preparation because it
is a means of developing the right position of receptivity and
bringing out the bhakti which is there in the inner being. To
spend all the energy on japa or meditation is a strain which
even those who are accustomed to successful meditation find
it difficult to do — unless in periods when there is an uninter-
rupted flow of experiences from above.
*
It is very good news that you got rid of the attack and it was
the japa that helped you to do it. This and past experience
also shows that if you can overcome the old association of
the japa with sterility and sorrow, it can do its natural func-
tion 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. Several times before you wrote to me that by doing
japa you got rid of the old impulse and recovered calm and
the right turn of the consciousness and now it has helped
you to get rid of the invasion of sorrow and despondency. Let
us hope that this last will also soon lose its strength like the

32 All India Magazine, September 2026