Enhancing the Efficacy of Mantra

 There are well known ways to enhance the efficacy of the mantra.  Instead of using a japamala (rosary) of 108 beads to do a round use your hands. Count 9 with your thumb on the right hand using just the joints of the fourth to the index finger.  Count 12 on the left hand with your thumb using the joints and the tips of the fourth to the index finger.  Pause on each joint and finger tip while you move through the joints on the right hand.   That’s 108 repetitions.  In finger symbolism the index is the jiva (individual) and the thumb is Brahman.  When the round is finished jiva and Brahman are joined in the jnana mudra.

Breath in on OM and out on the rest of the mantra while focusing on a chakra.

The Efficacy of Mantra

 In the one short string we can cover the whole of the seeker’s aim to bring together the immanent and the transcendent.  The components will have OM and the chosen form of divinity brought together as in Om namah Shivaya or Om Sri Ram or Om Namo Narayayana.  The efficacy of mantras is due to the shrinking of the mind down to that restricted compass: apparently restricted compass.   The reality of consciousness shines more in the minute than the extended.  An expatiating mind quickly loses its aim, drifting into reveries and ego enhancing internal dialogue.  In fact though, the nature of consciousness does not change whatever the contents of consciousness may be.

“Everything shines according as He (Brahman) does so; by His light all this shines diversely”

(Mundaka Upanisad II.ii.10)

The reflection of the Self in the intellect becomes regarded as the Self but just as the reflection in the mirror is not the person and yet would not exist without the person in front of it we can claim an intimate connection between them.

“Just as the reflection of a face, which makes a mirror appear like it, is the face itself, so the  reflection of the Self in the mirror of the ego making it appear like the Self (is the Self).  So (the meaning of the sentence,) ‘I am Brahman’ is reasonable.” (para. 109: Chap.  XVIII. Upadesa Sahasri by Shankaracarya)

To emphasise the point: it is the Self that makes the intellect seem to be the Self.  You know the Self in the intellect and in each state of awareness.  Note the contrast between this non-difference and illusionism that is sometimes presented which would say that the Jiva is utterly unreal.

Mantra shelters in this knowledge.