Talks Excerpt 565. Swamiji shares a powerful Sri Hanumanji mantra, and asks: Why may a mantra sometimes NOT work?

From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji.

So why does the mantra not work sometimes? Because we have come to think of it as an ordinary word, an ordinary mantra. We have no faith. Now is the time to awaken this faith. Sri Ramakrishna has awakened the mantras.

The gurus have told us that these are awakened mantras, they are mantras that will direct every force that you want directed. They must work.

Om Hanumate namah, Om Hanumate namah, Om Hanumate namah. You say the mantra three times and you clap your hands each time. It is a sattvic mantra and it will protect the devotee. Now when you clap you may think that it is just an ordinary clap. It is not. As far as the sound travels, so far the vibration goes and no vice can enter that particular area.

Sri Ramakrishna’s mantra: Om aim sarva deva devi swaroopaya Sri Ramakrishnaya namah, is an awakened mantra. But every day we do it mechanically. You must have implicit faith in it and know that it is Master’s mantra. Know that the Rishis have given it. Know that the gurus have told us that this is an awakened mantra. It must work.

How is it that Sri Ramakrishna just touched a man’s chest and said, ‘Awake Mother, awake,’ and the man got into an ecstatic mood? Christ just said, ‘Behold’ and the man had the Lord’s vision. God is there, but you and I can go on shouting ‘Behold’ from now until doomsday; nothing happens. Why? Because we have not got that faith, we are treating it as an ordinary thing.

The same words can have tremendous power when you say the mantra with faith, belief and purity. It must happen, it has to happen.

Sometimes we say the mantra while we are thinking about other things, or while we are looking at other people; that is why it does not work. If you want to do it properly, close your eyes, see the Deity and say the mantra to that particular Deity. That Deity is the embodiment of all the things that the scriptures talk of. It is a Veda on its own. Your Deity’s body is made out of Satchidananda.

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These recordings or the excerpts from them, were made from the early 1970s onward, by Mother Radha, a close devotee of Swamiji’s and edited for uploading here by our gurubhai and her son, Brother Tim. Please be mindful that what Swamiji was saying may have been specific to an individual or a group of people with him, at the time.