The advantages of japa are innumerable. At the start, it is important to know the logic and purpose of japa so that one understands and values japa. With such understanding, the student can undertake and handle the discipline of japa. At any given time, a human being has a given thought. Each thought has a form, it has an object, and that which is going to be the next thought is generally not under one’s control. A person is not sure what the next thought will be. But when the next thought occurs, it occurs because of some connection. There is no thought without a certain connection - sometimes a vague connection, sometimes very clear and logical. Still, it is never predictable what thought is going to arise the next moment. Even what one is going to say is not predictable. Yet what comes does have a logic of its own reason.

Suppose a person sees a car, a sportster which draws his attention. The car has a peculiar look or is brand new, and it catches his eye. His thinking may go like this: “How can this guy who has it afford it? That car costs more than I make in two years. Maybe his wife has money. I wish I had married like that. When I got married, I thought life was full of flowers. Our only wealth was long hair. But hair did not get us jobs, so I got a crewcut. I’m still a clerk thanks to the boss, that idiot. And now my wife wants to quit her job. I thought long hair would be enough. Our marriage was between two bunches of hair. She cut hers too. Now we have nothing.” The chain of thought all started by seeing the car, and it has a logical progression.

Though the thinking is sequential, step by step, the person does not see the whole thing. From thought to thought, there is connection - first a syntactical connection within a sentence, then a thought connection. The linkage may be weak or a leap-frog jump which is not clear. There is a mystical movement from thought to thought. In the ‘sportster thinking’, anything goes. It is a listless movement, and the sky is the limit. It meanders, loses direction, and goes all over. Still, there is a logic. All a person can say is that at a given time he has a thought in mind, and what is next he does not know. Even in deliberate thinking this is so.

But with japa, one knows what one is going to. Only in japa does a person know what is going to be next. A syllable, a long chant, even a song, can be a mantra - because each is always in the same form. The person knows what is next. He knows if a part is missing. As he repeats a word or short phrase, he is sure what is next. If it does not come, he knows he is drifting. In listless, ‘sportster thinking’, the thoughts are not out of order. But it is without a method to learn about the mind. The person gets into a reverie, and he can be surprised back into the present. Something disturbs his listless thought and he comes back. This thought life is the individual’s life. What else is there? What in a person’s normal thought life helps him to know his thinking or himself? If the person is lucky, he has gained some intellectual discipline. Maybe mathematics or grammar gave him some logical thinking skills, but he has not learned it as a technique to discipline the mind.

The exercise of choice is important in japa. The student chooses to chant a certain phrase or word and repeats it as long as he wants to do it. This gives him a technique to see what happens to his mind. When he begins, he may see strange things coming from nowhere; otherwise, they would not seem strange. He learns in this process how to dismiss from his thoughts that which he does not want. This is one important result. As a technique, any syllable or phrase will work; it need not be spiritual or God’s name. The technique will give the student a tool to dismiss that which he chooses not to think of. A person can buy a meaningless mantra from a franchised group. For such groups, mantra means a meaningless sound which, when repeated regularly, quiets and liberates. A meaningless sound that costs money will be chosen for the person. It works, too, for a hundred dollars or so.

Swami Dayananda has a story that goes as follows. There was this fellow who bought a mantra, and he was told he would have one hundred per cent spiritual and material success. He was told his marriage would work out too. The fellow did the mantra in the morning, quietly repeating this unspoken sound. His wife, who was a businessperson and took care of the house too, came to him and asked him what he was up to. He said that he was meditating, that he did a chant to relieve his stress.

She said, “What stress? I work and do the shopping, the dishes, the bookkeeping and everything else.”

He said, “I have my own stress.”

She asked, “What is the chant you do?”

“It is my mantra, a meaningless sound specially chosen for me.”

“Who chose it? Did you pay for it? One hundred dollars, for a meaningless sound! Give me ten dollars, and I will give you ten of them. You will not even buy me a new vacuum cleaner. So, what is this sound?”

“I cannot tell you. It is a secret I have vowed not to tell.”

“You cannot tell your wife?” she said. She was furious, packed her suitcase, and stormed out the door saying, “I am leaving for good. Let’s see if your meaningless sound fixes your dinner.”

He opened his eyes and said, “My God, the mantra works!”

In fact, it worked for both of them. She got rid of this fool who paid a hundred dollars for a sound, and he got rid of her and the stress.

Japa works because the practitioner knows when the mantra does not come. It is a conscious discipline, and it is called japa because it destroys all obstructions. It indirectly puts an end to this birth and death cycle that is samsara. Japa should be seen as more than a disciplining technique. The person learns to direct the mind for a length of time, and it may help give a certain depth of concentration. Generally, the chant is always short enough that one does not need memory. Mind, manas, which vacillates, is not needed because the mantra has already been chosen. Buddhi, intellect, is involved only if one concentrates on the meaning of the chant. Memory, citta, only functions when there are successive sentences, and for japa, memory has been dismissed. What functions is the antah karana - the mind functions converted into a single unit with one occupation which is repetition.

The advantage of this repetition is that the person can appreciate the interval between two successive thoughts of the mind. In ‘sportster thinking’, the mind moves with its own logic, and there are many ways it can go. ‘Sportster thinking’ is like picking up noodles - the person cannot get just one. Between any two thoughts there is an interval. With japa, the student sees the interval and avoids the connecting of ensuing thoughts. Between the chant and the next repetition, there is no connection of thought units - each one is a complete unit. It is chant, period, chant, period.... There is completion with each repetition, and the whole thing becomes one. Even a longer chant becomes automatic when practiced this way. Between chants, the interval is available for the student to comprehend.

What obtains in the interval between two thoughts? No given thought is there. There is shantavrtti. It is silence or peace: a shantavrtti with no form or thought. For that time, there is no particular or specific attribute for the antah karana, no thinking of this or that. This shanti is not an acquired embellishment of the mind. One does not add it or bring it to the mind. Inquiry shows shanti to be the natural state, requiring nothing. For ashanti, for restlessness or agitation, one has to do some work. For shanti what should one do? Without a buildup, a person can never be restless. But the buildup is not conscious; it just happens. It begins when the person is a child, and no one has a say over it. The helplessness is amazing. Something triggers it: hormones, indigestion, weather, a friend’s glance, a few gray hairs, anything may do it. An event one does not accept is all that is required to provoke the response of one’s self-image.

Ashanti requires a buildup the person is not party to, but he sees the resulting agitation as part of himself. He thinks he has to do something about it, and he gets involved in it. The thought-by-thought buildup prevents him from keeping track of the thinking itself. The noodle thinking, ‘sportster thinking’, cannot be nipped in the bud because it is part of a whole jungle. The beginning itself is the mistaken identification with ‘I’, and the mechanical thought comes from a source with no real source - one’s childhood, one’s parents, their parents, and so on back. There is no question of taking care of the first thought because the first thought has become oneself. Trying to nip it in the bud creates frustration and more guilt.

To break or negate the continuity of chain thinking is a highly meaningful occupation. Shanti, the nature of the interval that obtains between two thoughts, reveals that any amount of logical thinking is inadequate for that negation. As in psychotherapy, a certain understanding, an emotional insight, is needed. Shanti is a human being’s natural condition and requires nothing to be established or available. Ashanti is the buildup a person creates because he has the habit of choosing to continue thought patterns that are judgmental or indiscreet. But in japa, the person dictates the terms. He becomes the author of a given thought. This thought, carefully chosen, allows the uncreated ensuing interval to be a base, like a dramatic stage that is lighted. The interval is a stage that is unoccupied while lighted rather than a lighted stage that is occupied. The light is neither enjoyer of the space nor occupant of the space. The light only illumines: there is no motive, action or sensation involved. The student sees that the empty space is lighted as well as the busy one. When one has an authored thought that leaves, the lighted space remains empty. One silently witnesses the lighted stage. The absence of thought is looked upon as shanti.

Isolating or negating the cittavrtti, the successive thoughts, is a yogic objective gained by an outside means, by a practice such as regulation of the breath - pranayama. The whole of yogic discipline is for vrttinirodha, cessation of thought. With japa, the student is interested only in that which is the nature of vrtti, of the thought form. In japa, one sanctions the vrtti. A deliberate vrtti is used to observe the absence of vrtti. Shanti is to be understood as non-different from caitanya, awareness. The silence is not separate from awareness. The silence one is aware of between two thoughts is not really absence of thought, for thoughts are in fact there. Thought was, and again thought will be. The mind, in japa, is filled with the chosen thought, so it is not really free from thought. But with the end of every thought, there is silence. If one sees the silence, should one take oneself to be the thought or the silence? Thought comes and thought goes. Before and after the thought, the practitioner is silence. First, he is silence; last, he is silence. The middle does not make any difference - it is an appearance only. What is it that one arrives at? In spite of thoughts, one is silenct. This is not just understood - the person sees it. The student creates an occasion where he understands. The practice of japa does not give one understanding; nothing new is accomplished. But there is a recognition.

Unless ‘I am silence’ is very clear, there is no way of solving the basic problem, the mistake as to what is ‘I’. Without that clarity, only the grave might bring silence, and that may not be true anyway. If one’s thinking is a problem, it is a permanent nightmare, and the person is the nightmare, and he cannot get rid of it. Whatever one does is in keeping with what one learns - it cannot be outside what one knows. The clear recognition of oneself, atma, as the silence between two thoughts and as the underlying reality of any thought, is what japa can do. What is understood is atma being shanti, the self being silence. By japa one learns how to nip the bud of thought. The student pulls up the thought after looking at it, like dealing with poison oak or poison ivy. He gains a capacity to eliminate jumpy ‘sportster thinking’. Like a monkey, the mind is used to endlessly jumping from subject to subject. Japa is neither control nor suppression. It is an awareness that gives one understanding of the way of thinking. In japa, the person gets to the base of thinking immediately. He chants and comes down, chants and comes down. What is important is being aware of the interval as well as the chant.

For one who practices japa regularly, the mind, when unfettered, goes to japa like rainwater flowing into a channel. A time comes when there is a certain composure. Distraction and agitation are possible, but the person with the skill of japa does not come under their spell. The practitioner catches the mind first. A certain serene depth comes too. Japa, in combination with this teaching, is very effective. It gives the student something to hold onto. In other forms of thinking, a person is not sure what comes next - so anything is proper. With japa, what is improper becomes clear; distraction, vikshepa, is easy to spot. The student can negate that which is not chosen. In all stages of Indian life, japa is invariable, while all else changes. All religions and all sects and systems practice japa.

There are texts dealing with bija mantra, the syllabic mantras that invoke a given deity. One may say that any sound will give the same effects as the mantras in the texts. As long as it is used for japa, it will do good. A swami, if he is guiding students in japa, will chant a bija mantra to invoke the Lord and to keep the students from wondering about what word he is using. The swamis do not like to do meaningless things. Why should one not chant a known word with a meaning - like ‘artichoke’ or ‘cookie’? Meaningless words bring nothing to mind; ‘cookie’ brings cookie to mind; but a mantra brings the whole creation to mind. The mantra is not a given object but all objects. All objects are the form of the Lord, and the meaningful chant becomes all inclusive.

Any word that, for the student, in his mind, stands for everything is a mantra. He is related to that word, to that name for all, as a devotee - as one who recognizes the Lord in a given name. Whether the word is given to him within the tradition or created by himself, the word creates a bridge between him and the Lord, the whole. The word and the meaning get connected in his head. The devotee is the fundamental person, the one who emphasizes that his primary relationship is to the whole. The jiva is the individual, and he carves out an identity from the total, insisting on his separateness. The jiva is the tree who, in his appreciation of himself, does not include the forest. But the devotee sees the forest and the tree. The jiva has further relationships as son, friend, husband, employee, and so on. But as devotee, the jiva recognizes and confirms the basic individual-total relationship. As a devotee one assumes the changing roles of life, but one is always a devotee. The attitude of a devotee becomes fundamental to the person, and he is related to the meaning of the mantra as wholeness. He is the one who does all things with devotion, with recognition of the Lord. In the recognition that japa brings, is a self-recognition of oneself as the devotee. It is the devotee who has acceptance, self-acceptance, as habit and priority. Japa creates the composed mind which is prepared for atma jnana, self-knowledge. Japa removes all problems and obstacles in preparation for moksha. Japa is not an ordinary thing. It is said that nothing else is more efficacious.