Japa Yoga for relief

In our land there is a science of worship called the Japa Yoga. It is a curious Science. The practitioners of this system believe that by the repetition of certain mantras or holy words one can bring about a transformation to the mind and achieve certain goals. The origin of the system is in the Tantra Sastra... This is the easiest of all the practices of Yoga and is said to be as effective as others. One drawback of this Yoga technique is that it relies on initiation from a Guru to start one on his practice. We will be examining if this is really necessary It is believed that the Guru can transfer certain hidden powers with the initiation to the disciples. But there is also a practice of reciting the holy names commonly used in the land to refer to various gods and goddesses to achieve the aims sought. For this practice no initiation is necessary. What is required is your perseverance and belief.
Well what is the Japa Yoga? Can it be used elsewhere in the world and for purposes of obtaining relief from pain and suffering? Is it effective as it is thought to be? Who is the authorized person to engage in the practice? Well we will try to find out in this article. As the primary aim of this article is to provide some help to those afflicted by bodily and psychically debilitating conditions a detailed explanation of the philosophy behind the system is not intended here. For those who are after that there could be any number of available sources. Yet most of the major points of the system are looked into for helping the reader with the practice.
First of all, the system is not as simple as it looks. Most of the mantras used in it are sort of codes for describing a particular nature of energy. This energy is often pictorially represented in reliefs or idols and in certain higher practices in Yantras, in front of which you practice the discipline. The Indian Gods and Goddesses would look bizarre to the western mind. Some of them have many heads and numerous hands, some have the faces of an elephant or lion attached to a normal body, some sit on lotuses and some on thrones, some have several companions and carries strange and weird instruments and weapons in their hands.
All this is the result of a colorful imagination of the people and is far from the reality if one may say so. As I mentioned above they are just pictorial representations of energy states and they are etched so with the intention of driving certain points into the minds of the practitioners. When repeating the mantra the practitioner needs to visualize the representation of the deity and think about the meaning of the mantra. The constant effort at visualization and thinking about the meaning of the mantra and its Deveta (deity) creates a subtle force. This force is considered as the child of the practitioner and is not the same as any other practitioner’s conception of the same deity. Some Tantriks say that the coming together of your lips to form the word/mantra could be compared to copulation. It produces an offspring which is your own. In fact this force is so individual in the sense that it is entirely created by your own efforts and is wholly dependant on you for manifestation. If the same god or goddess is worshipped by two people in this manner the result would be two such forces and not one and same force appearing before two different practitioners.
One definition of Tantra is that it saves your physical self (Tan= Tanu = Body, Tra= save) from troubles. There are other definitions too. We may not go into them here. Tantra is a very practical science. It believes that certain practices or efforts would bring about certain results. It is wholly humanistic in this sense. The Mantra’s are the focal point of Tantra. Nothing can be accomplished without Mantras. I had provided a definition of Mantra in one of my previous posts. Yet I would give it here once more. The word has two parts “Man” = thought, and “Tra”= save. If the Tantra is the science of saving your body the Mantra is the science of being saved by the process of thinking.
Armed with this information you can start on a practice of Japa Yoga to alleviate your troubles. Accept some holy man / women of your land or culture as the model for your devata and infuse them with all properties that you want for a particular cause. For instance if you want relief from mental torture imagine that this deity has the potential to eliminate this affliction. Next you need a Mantra. You can take the name of the holy man/women as the mantra. Say, you want relief from electronic harassment, stalking, and so on. Look at those words and ideas and form a single expression which would contain all these elements with the solution for them. Attach this to the Holy name you found, like “Jesus, reliever of all pains”. I know that this is being done even now. But there is an important difference in this practice I am suggesting to you. This Jesus the reliever would be your own, the child of your mind and would have no reference to the historical Jesus other than in the name. I am not suggesting that you should use this particular name. It could be St Francis or St Augustine, or Anal Haq the sufi or any one who captures your interest. As far as possible you might select a personality for the purpose you have in mind. A holy personage known for healing the sick would be more to the purpose here than one who has been practicing asceticism.
You need not be a believer to do this. And you do not need a Guru to do this. What we are doing here is creating a physical force to help us, with the power of our thoughts. This is thought force. Once you have selected the entity and infused it with all the properties that you want, you go into intense practice. You visualize this saint and repeat the name internally while imagining that the saint is removing all your pains and is in constant contact with you repelling all attacks on you and so on. If you are preserving enough it would happen even without the sacred words. Let me tell you repeating OM a billion times would not save you if you do not think constantly of its meaning and visualizing its sphere of activity. Mere repetition would get you no where, at the same time purposeful meditation on the name with its internal recitation would become soon effective.
Try this if you are resourceful.