Nisargadatta

 “When you are initiated into a spiritual discipline with a sacred name, it means that it represents your ‘Ultimate True Nature’. Be one with the sacred name completely, then it will give you all the mystical knowledge necessary for your spiritual evolution. It will awaken you into your ‘Eternal Awareness’. This is the mystic key-word of the Navanath Sampradaya, the traditional order of the nine Gurus.

Before the emanation of any words ‘I’ already exists: later I say mentally ‘I am’. The word free and the thought-free state is the Atman. The Atman per se is self-sufficient but when it clings to the body, ‘treatments’ such as mental and physical recreation or occupation are necessary, without which the Atman cannot be tolerated by a person.

For spiritual evolution, which is a requisite in the detachment of Atman from body identity, various disciplines have been recommended; the best is ‘Namasmarana’ – recitation of a holy name of God.

But here God means the indwelling principle within you – the Atman, which is given various names. These represent the ‘inner God’ who will respond no matter which name of God you chant. Japa (using beads of rosary) is an occupation to the hands but it is the inner God you are supposed to invoke. The keynote of recitation is to confirm this ‘I-am-ness’ within itself. The merging of beingness within itself is the very fount of bliss.”