Since February 2007 our Community has undertaken a special practice of the Ity-uktaa mantra. The goal set by Swami Veda is: 500 people doing one mala (108 repetitions) per day for 3 years, to complete 50 million recitations in 3 years.

Three years of this mantra practice will be completed in February 2010. The sacred fire-offerings will take place 1– 12 February.

Swamiji encourages you to join us. “Those who have not practiced are also welcome; they will benefit immensely.”

At that time, the initiation for the next set of practices will be given. Be here in person to receive them!

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The following notes are from a lecture given by Swami Veda 26th February 2007 at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama

Gurudeva Swami Rama started pretending to be absent ten years ago. For the past nine years we have undertaken special mantra practices for the entire initiate community.

First, for three years from 1997, we did the Saumya Mantra to give the mind a moonlike peace that was much needed at that time, and it is still needed.

Today we are completing what you all have been doing for the last three years, the Mrtunjaya mantra – Tryambhakam yajaamahe. That yajna, the sacred offering, has been your most beautiful gift to me. Now that you have granted me a longer life by Guru’s grace, the next step is stabilizing.

If the individual minds are not stabilized, the individual lives do not become stabilized. If there are instabilities in life, they are so, not because your circumstances are unstable, but because your minds are unstable. With a stable mind, you can stabilize all external circumstances.

So the chain is as follows:

• When you stabilize your personal mind,
• Your personal lives become stabilized.
• People thus stabilized become part of a larger mindfield,
• A mindfield thus stabilized is called a Spiritual Community or a sangha.

A community is a single mindfield in which the stabilized personal minds, the stabilized lives of individuals, are as soft, gentle ripples in the calm lake.

Our next task, our next undertaking, is stabilizing the mindfield of the Community, our sangha. The Community and its mission and its work will be stabilized.

So, for the next three years, today, we are embarking on a new mantra, the     Ity-uktaa mantra, for that purpose.

When you begin the practice, surrender the fruits of this particular practice that,

• May through this mantra, my mind be so stabilized,
• That my emotions and consequently the relationships be stabilized,
• Thereby the entire mindfield of my spiritual community becomes stabilized.

So surrender the fruits of the mantra to stabilize our spiritual community’s mindfield.

A mantra does not go by its literal meaning. It has a hidden power. It is the whole composition. It is the sound, and a deeper realization that comes from that mantra. Do read booklet titled “Special Mantras” and again the writings of Swami Rama and myself on the meaning of the mantra.

Although mantras do not go by literal translation, I will give you a literal translation anyway, word by word and then, we have to put it together.

To download and hear the correct pronounciation of this Mantra, click this audio link of Swami Veda.