Thirdly, there is a beauty and a divinity inherent in the art of combining these letters, so that the blending of these letters in a consecutive way produces a new effect altogether. That blending, that combination, that arrangement of letters in a particular manner, in a mantra, is called chandas - meter. Meter here means the method by which the words have been selected and combined with certain other letters to produce the desired result.

So, there is the rishi or the seer of the mantra, and the combination of the letters, which produces some chemical effect; then, there is the chandas, or the meter; and there is the thought of the ideal which is in your mind during the recitation of the mantra. The ideal is the divinity thereof. The mantra is a verbal form of the pattern of divinity which you are conceiving in your mind.

Certain scientists who are familiar with this word formation and the geometrical effect that is produced by the utterance of certain names have discovered that the particular form of the div­inity that you are thinking of in your mind can be seen as automatically engraved even on a pattern of sand spread over the ground, or even on the water in front of you. It will make a pattern of the particular divinity, provided that your chanting is perfectly articulate and scientific. The mantra should not be chanted hurriedly, or very slowly. It should be a moderate, sonorous, loving articulation.

Apart from all this, there is the strength of your own thought. It is called sadhana shakti. There is rishi shakti, chandas shakti, devata shakti, and the sadhana shakti of the person who recites the chant. All these combine to produce a tremendous effect, due to which many people have taken to japa sadhana as the sole way of attaining freedom.

In the Bhagavadgita we are told that japa is the greatest of all the spiritual sacrifices that one can think of. Yajnanam japayajno'smi: That is what the Lord has declared. Why do you want so many yajnas and sacrifices with material, with ghee, and pundits, and all that? Mere thought expressed in the form of this articulation of a mantra will bring you the benefit of all the sacrifices or yajnas that you can think of in your mind.

Finally, it all amounts to saying that mantra japa is the art of summoning God into yourself. You will summon that kind of form or characteristic of God which you are entertaining in your mind. Everyone has an idea of God; that idea determines the nature and the form in which God will manifest Himself.

In the manner the sculptor chisels marble, in that manner only the form of the statue will come out. The thought of the sculptor is the form that the material takes in sculpture. So, God's form is nothing but the form of your own thought. As you think He is, so He is. As you would like Him to respond, in that way He will respond, because your mind is the miniature receiver-set of the great force that emanates from the Cosmic Being which, by Itself, has no form. It has every form.

In a block of marble, you can imagine any form of statue inside. The block of stone is impersonal, but the personality of the form of the particular statue will depend upon the thought of the sculptor. From the block of marble you can carve out a god or a devil, a horse, an elephant, or a lion. Anything you want can emerge from that block of marble.

All forms are hidden inside the formless Being. You can say, in one way, God has no form, in the same way as a block of stone, by itself, has no shape. But you can carve any shape out of it; infinite varieties of forms can come out from that otherwise impersonal, formless block of stone.

Likewise, with the totally detached, universal pervading fea­tureless Existence, any form can come out. Thus, it is up to you to choose what form it is that you are expecting. The more complete is your concept of the form of God, the better for you, and the quicker is the result. The more incomplete is your concept of God, the lesser is the effect that you get. God may take no time to come to you, or He may take a lot of time, according to your concept of the form of God.

If you think that God is distant, He will take time to come, because you have already decided He is far away. He will take you by the letter and the spirit. If God is in one place only, natu­rally He will take time to travel. If He is far away in heaven, it will certainly take time to come, and He will take as much time as is necessary to travel that distance.

But if we can accept the fact that distance is abolished in the all-pervasive Existence, then immediate action will take place. As time and space do not exist in God, there is no distance that He has to cover, and no time that He has to take. It is instantaneous, here and now, provided the heart of a person will ask in this manner. But, if we are prejudiced in any way, and we have idiosyn­crasies of our own, and think in terms of the distracted forms of the world to which we are affiliated, and carry this prejudice even to God, then the reaction will not be so intense.

Previously I mentioned that the only quality, the only requirement, and the only discipline that the sadhaka has to develop is wanting it. If we want a thing, it has to come. Many a time, even if we want a thing, it does not come because firstly, we may want it wrongly, or we may not want it, really. Really we cannot want anything, because we have other wants. The presence of other wants prevents the reality and the intensity of the want of a particular thing. The mind is its own good psychologist. It knows itself very well, and we cannot play hanky-panky with it. If there are two objectives before the mind, and if one of them is desired for the purpose of materialisation, there will be only a fifty per cent effect of the system of materialisation. It will not be a hundred per cent, because fifty per cent of our mind is subconsciously directed towards another object, which also we would like to have. If we like two things, or three things, or a hundred things, then we will get only one hundredth of the benefit that we require.

God is not a fraction. He is inclusiveness, in the sense that whatever we want in this world will be found there also. There is a fear in the heart of people that when God comes we will lose the world - lose our family, lose our money, lose all connection - all the beauties and glories of the world will vanish completely when God comes. This is a frightening situation for us. Are we going to lose the whole world because God should come? This doubt will persist even in the mind of a very advanced seeker, because it is hard for anyone to appreciate that the whole world is contained in God.

So, we are not abandoning the world. The idea of rejecting the world does not arise in spiritual practice. It is an inclusion of the world in the ultimate ideal that we are actually trying to meditate upon. The world is a reflection of its own original that we can find in the Absolute. Even we, ourselves, as people seated here, are shadows of our true nature, which is in heaven.

Can you imagine what all this means? You are even now in the highest heaven, and that reality of your personality which is in the heaven is summoning you up, and making you restless in this world. You are not pleased with your own self. You feel wretched. Why should you not? Your real nature is somewhere else. It is pulling you up. So, you will not be satisfied with anything in this world unless you get your own true nature, the archetype, as they call it .

This is a duplicate that we are seeing in the world. All things in the world are shadows of the originals that are in the highest heaven, including our own selves. We are not the ultimate realities. Our own true self is parading in its highest glory in the heavens above, in any loka - you may call it Brahma-loka. We are in all the worlds just now, but we think we are only in one place.

Our higher nature is commensurate with the higher natures of all things, as the waters of the ocean are commensurate with every part of that water. All the water is everywhere, and we cannot say that it is segregated in one place.

So entering into God is not a rejection of things in the world - throwing out the father and mother, all our wealth and bank balance. "Everything is gone! What a tragedy!" You will be thinking like that. No. Your bank balance, in its originality, will be found there. This is only a shadow that you are operating. You yourself are a shadow. It is fluctuating; as the shadow is moving, we feel restlessness in ourselves.

Our original is in God, and we are seeing only the duplicate of it, the shadow of it. It is not even a duplicate; it is only a shadow. It has no substance in it. The world is a shadow of God, not even a true manifestation in the real sense. It is a topsy-turvy perception of the very God Himself. We, in this personality, are only the topsy-turvy of our original. That is why we have wretchedness in our feelings, and an inability to be pleased with anything in this world. Nothing can satisfy us in this world, because all things are originally somewhere else. So, they are pulling us, without knowing what is actually happening to us.

So, never imagine that you are losing the world when you reach God. You will get the world in its real form. The whole world will lift itself. When you wake up from your dream world, have you lost the treasures of the dream? You might have been an emperor, for instance. You have been a king in dream, or an emperor of Rome. You had all the treasures you can conceive. You had a huge army, a retinue, all friends, whatever you wanted. You were a big emperor in dream. You have woken up. Have you lost the kingdom completely? Can you say, "What a wretchedness! I have come to the waking condition, where all the emperorship and the glory, and everything has gone." It has not gone, because that was a shadow of the mind that has now woken up. All the treasures, all the glories, entire space-time, and even the emperorship has gone into your mind, which is in a waking condition. So, in waking, you are not losing the glory of the dream world. You are only happy that you have woken up from the nightmare.

So is the case with another waking into the consciousness of the Absolute Being, wherein the idea that you have lost the world is meaningless. The emperorship of the world, the glory of humanity, and all the beauties and grandeurs that you see in this world are similar to the dream world. Just as when you wake up from the dream, you do not feel that you have lost the empire that you were ruling, in a similar manner, when you reach the Absolute, you will not feel that you have lost anything. You will find everything there. Whatever you see here, you will find its original there. Can there be a greater joy than that? Why are you worrying?

But the mind is so stupid. Like a pig, it will think only like a pig, and you cannot make it think like a saint. It is impossible. It requires great chastening, satsanga, the company of great people. You must always meet great people and discuss with them. Tadbuddhayastad-atmanastannisthastatparayanah; gacchantyapunara-vrttim jnananirdhutakalmasah. Speak only this: tadkathanam. What should you think? Tadbuddhaya: Your mind should be always thinking that, like a person who has lost his property thinks only that: "How will I get it? Millions I have lost. I cannot sleep. When will I get it?" Tadatmanaha: Engrossed in that only and wanting nothing else. Tannisthaha: Established in the desire to have that only. Tatparayanaha: Always talking about that only. Gacchantyapunaravrttim: Engrossed in that only and wanting nothing else, established in the desire to have that only, always talking about that only, you will never come back to this miserable world afterwards.

Similarly, we are told of what is called the practice of the presence of God. It is called brahmabhyasa. Tadchintanam, tadkathanam, anyonam tatprabhodanam etad eva parasmin cha brahmabhyasa kurutah. When you think, you will think only that which you have lost. Actually, what have you lost? You have lost God Himself. The Creator of the universe you have lost. So, the heart should cry for it: "Oh, I have lost the great beauty!" Tatkathanam: If you see anybody, you talk only that. Suppose you lost ten million; you will go on telling everybody, "Oh, I have lost so much!" In the marketplace you will be yelling, "I have lost so much, I have lost so much!" You tell that now.

We have to reach the Great Being. You can find everything there. It is not there, it is here. The idea of 'there' also is redundant, because there is no space in God.

It is difficult to think like this. We are bound by the spatial distance and temporal succession, so we cannot think that God is here. "How is it possible, because He is far away?" the space tells you. Tadchintanam: thinking that only; tadkathanam: talking to people on that subject; anyonam tatprabhodanam: just as students in a college or a school discuss a subject on which they have an exam tomorrow. "Oh, how is it? How are you getting on? What is the matter? This subject - have you understood? What is the answer to this ques­tion?" They mutually sit and discuss before the exam takes place.

In a similar manner, you must sit together and discuss: "How can we go? What is your difficulty? Tell me. My difficulty is like this. Can you find a solution for it? What are your difficulties?" Mutually discuss among yourselves. "I am unable to think properly. This is the trouble with me. What can I say?" This is called anyonam tatprabhodanam atat aka paratvam cha. It is sinking your being only into that. That is your greatest treasure, your great succour, your immortal friend.

Suhrdam sarva-bhutanam jnatva mam santim rcchati: "Remember, I am your friend. At the time of distress, I will come and help you." But we have many friends who will desert us at any moment. They will turn their back to you at the least event that takes place. But "I am the friend of all beings; remember that. I shall come to your succour and give you whatever you want, if you only remember me. I want nothing from you." Every friend expects something from you, but here is a friend who wants nothing from you. He wants only your love, and He will come to you at your beck and call.

If this concept of God has entered your mind, you are a real sadhaka, and nothing can be more blessed than to be devoted to God in this manner - honestly and sincerely, not because you wish to be called a sadhaka and have a certificate that you have attended the Sadhana Week programmes. Let the Great Being know what you are. If He knows you, that is sufficient for you. If the whole world praises you and the Almighty ignores you, you are nowhere. Let there be no friends; let Him become your friend. One friend is sufficient, as the sea becomes your friend. Sri Krishna was an ocean. He was the friend of Arjuna, and one Being was sufficient. The army of the Kauravas could not stand before this one person, because the army constituted of millions were like drops in the ocean, whereas here is the ocean itself.

That was the mistake Duryodhana made in choosing millions of drops, whereas Arjuna chose the ocean itself, which nobody could understand. So, the ocean defied the activity of all the drops in one second.

So, we have drops of beauty and greatness and wealth in this world. Like Duryodhana, we are asking for the drops of beauty, wealth, and possession in this world, and the ocean is somewhere else. We have forgotten it.

It is up to us to sit quietly and think over our true welfare, and not waste our energy in going to the marketplace, chatting, and going on running here and there in the name of pilgrimage, sightseeing, and picnicking. Your time is wasted in this manner. You need not go anywhere. Sit in one place, and you will find that you will get what you want here itself, because that which you seek is just here, under your nose.