Page 5 - All India Magazine Sep-2026

Japa
A general introduction

Japa as a religious exercise
Sweet Mother, are religious exercises very important for those
who have an ordinary consciousness?

Religious exercises? I don't know! What do you mean by reli-
gious exercises?

Japa, etc.
Oh, those things! If it helps you, it is all right. If it doesn't
help you, it is just... This is one of those altogether relative
things. It is altogether relative. Its value lies only in the effect it
has on you and the extent to which you believe in it. If it helps
you to concentrate, it is good. The ordinary consciousness al-
ways does it just through superstition, with the idea that "If I
do this, if I go to the temple or church once a week, if I offer
prayers, something very fine will happen to me." This is super-
stition, spread all over the world, but it has no value at all from
the spiritual point of view.
CWM 6: 193 The Mother

Usefulness of methods
Any method sincerely and persistently followed can end by
bringing the opening. You yourself chose the method of prayer
and japa because you believed in that, and I acquiesced be-
cause it does prepare something in the consciousness and, if
done with persistent faith and bhakti, it can open all the doors.
Another method is concentration and aspiration in the heart
which opens the inner emotional being. Another is the con-
centration in the head of which I spoke which opens the inner
mind or opens the passage through the Brahmarandhra to the

All India Magazine, September 2026 5