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Whatever I have spoken to you for the last two days is so important, if it has actually entered your mind it should be considered as the very foundation of spiritual practice, upon which the superstructure of further developments in sadhana is to be built. Whatever I spoke to you in the first two days was a little hard substance because I introduced you to a new way of thinking altogether, totally different from the manner in which human beings usually think.

Today I shall speak to you something much easier, though not less important - namely, the art of calling God into your own self. When you call anybody towards yourself, what method do you adopt? You call a dog with some gestures. You call a cat; it comes near you. You hold a little grass in front of a cow, and it comes near you. You gesticulate in a friendly manner with a person, and that person comes to you as a friend.

Can you also call God? Whenever you summon something, you call that something by a name. People who fondle dogs give a name to the dog. They call the dog by that name. Elephant drivers, mahouts, give a name to the elephant, and when they mention that name, the elephant stops. "Lift your trunk!" It lifts it. "Move!" It moves. "Stop!" It stops. The elephants are taught the art of recognising their own names that they are given.

When your name is uttered, you suddenly get identified with the name. So much is the intensity of the identification of oneself with the name that even if you are fast asleep, you will wake up only if one summons you by your real name. If John is sleeping, you must use his name: "John, please get up." But if you say "Joseph" he will not get up. It is not the sound that you make that makes a person wake; it is the summoning of what one identifies oneself with. So intense is this identification that it persists even in deep sleep; otherwise, when you are totally unconscious in sleep, how is it that you are remembering your name, and when somebody shouts your name, you wake up?

God also is summoned by a name. In ordinary parlance, this art of summoning the Almighty Creator is done by the recitation of a name that we associate with God's nature. The name of God is a description of the characteristic of God. According to Indian traditional parlance, when a name is given to a person at the time of birth, it is not that you just give any name that you like, as in modern days; considering the stars, the planets, and the day on which the child is born, a particular name is chosen indicating the influence exerted upon that child by the entire stellar and planetary system. So, the name suggests the actual characteristic and nature of the person. Nowadays, we call a person by any name, as a plant or a tree, or a twig, or any such thing. There is no significance in all these names.

God also can be summoned by a name, provided that the name chosen, with which you summon, indicates the might and the majesty, and the affection God has for you. The mantra that people chant in japa sadhana, for instance, is supposed to be an indicator of the name of God. The mantra that you chant, into which you are supposed to be initiated, is the modus operandi adopted to create in one's own mind a suggestion of the nature of the God whom one worships and adores. In the Vishnu Sahasranama recited just now, the thousand names are a thousand different characteristics of the Supreme Being, and they are not just anything and everything.

There are infinite ways of calling God, inasmuch as there are infinite qualities that we can associate with God. You can call Him by any name, provided it is in consonance with His nature. What are His qualities? They are immense capacity, and indomitable power; Almighty He is called. He is the greatest power you can think of, before which nothing can stand; this is one quality of God. And He is the greatest beauty, enchanting, stunning, filling you with joy, making you feel as if you are drinking nectar; it is utter beauty, incomparable, the kind of which you cannot see in the world.

There are little, beautiful things in the world, and you cannot know which is more beautiful than the other. On account of the fickleness of our mind, different things look beautiful at different times, but you have never seen beauty as such. Beauty, as such, cannot be seen because you are accustomed to see things through the sense organs. The sense organs can see only forms; they cannot appreciate abstract things. Mathematics, gravitation, and equations, for instance, are thoughts which cannot become objects of the sense organs. You cannot see mathematics or gravitation, etc., but the understanding of these principles gives you satisfaction. The solution of an algebraic equation brings joy, not because it is an object sitting in front of you; it is an intellectual beauty that has brought you satisfaction.

There are varieties of beauty in this world. The crudest of all forms of beauty is architectural beauty. The Taj Mahal is architecturally beautiful. St. Paul's cathedral and St. Peter's dome in Rome are beautiful. You look at them and feel enamoured at the majesty and the structural super-abundance of the material that has been used for the architectural edifice. What a beautiful thing!

Go to Madurai, in southern India, and see the temple of divine Minakshi. The Minakshi temple of Madurai and the temple of Rameswaram are some of the examples of majesty of architecture. You would like to go on looking at them, but it is the crudest form of beauty, because it requires heavy material. The greater the quantity of material that is necessary in order to make a thing beautiful, the more crude it is in its formation.

Sculpture is a subtler form of beauty. Sculptural beauty is another beauty, using materials of marble, stone, etc. There, the material that is used is less in quantum than what you have to use in a big architectural edifice. If you have seen a piece of sculpture anywhere, you would like to go on looking at it. What are you looking at? Are you looking at the marble, or the stone? You are seeing the beauty of the pattern into which the material is cast. There also, you have seen beauty.

Painting is a still subtler form of beauty. The material used there is much less than even in sculpture. You can be stunned by a beautiful painting. Paintings of Ravi Varma, the great artist of Travankore, the paintings of Michelangelo - you would not like to take your eyes away from them. They can create stunning attraction by the arrangement of ink and pattern of presentation, by the art of painting.

Subtler still than painting is music. Music does not require any material; it is only a sound. So, you can be enchanted by the beauty of music much more than by your perception of painting, sculpture, or architecture. You can simply melt if you listen to beautiful music, because sound is the subtlest of the elements that you can think of in the world. Painting requires canvas and ink; sculpture and architecture require actual material; music does not require any material. It is the subtlest medium that you can adopt in enjoying beauty. Music is beautiful; it is beautiful to the ears, whereas painting, sculpture, and architecture are beautiful to the eyes. One is visible beauty, and another is audible beauty.

A third beauty is that which is intellectual beauty. That is the beauty of literature. You will be enraptured by the study of classic literature. Here, even sound is not necessary. Sound is one of the five elements, so some amount of grossness is present even in sound, whereas in intellectual activity, that element of grossness also is removed. You are in the empyrean of mere thought. Merely by thinking, you can become happy. Your thought becomes beautiful at that time. When thought becomes beautiful, it is literature, a dramatic presentation, and you cannot stop reading a book of that kind of literature unless you complete it.

There are classics in every language. We have Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti in Sanskrit literature. If anyone knows Sanskrit, just read the literature of Kalidasa. You will not put the book aside. You will go on reading it because of the beauty, the sonorous way in which the words are arranged, and the beautiful ideas that are generated in your mind by the method of expression.

There are orators who can speak before a large audience. You will be stunned by listening to them. They are only communicating ideas to you. When a majestic idea is presented before you, your mind also rises to a great height of majesty. Majesty also is beauty.

We have got the beauty of the great Tamil poet Kamban, or the great poet who wrote Tamil's classic called Shilappadikaram. Those who do not know Tamil will not know what I am talking about. They are masterpieces of literature. There are masterpieces in Telugu, in Malayalam, in Kannada, in Hindi, and in all languages, but to appreciate this masterpiece of literature, we must know the language.

So, what I mean to say is, there are varieties of beauty, and God is beautiful, and the beauty of God is not like the beauty of architecture, sculpture, music, painting, and literature. It is something quite different. It is the beauty of your own soul. That is why you love yourself so much. You are a beautiful person, inside. The beauty of yours is not in your face. Sometimes the beauty of the soul that is inside you gets reflected in your face; then the person looks beautiful. When there is a harmony of the spirit inside, the person also feels the manifestation of that beauty in oneself.

There are troubled souls, composed souls, happy souls, disturbed souls, and wretched souls. Anything is possible, but the soul is really, basically, a perfection. The beauty that you perceive in anything in this world is a reflection of the symmetry of your own soul. The soul of a person is a highly systematised presentation, a symmetry. When you think chaotic thoughts, and observe objects which are scattered in a confused manner, the soul's beauty is not manifest fully, because it is something like seeing an object with broken spectacles, or a concave or convex lens - not seeing properly.

Beauty is a reflection of the spirit inside. Because you have got the greatest beauty inside you, you love yourself better than anybody else. You cannot love anybody so much as you love yourself, because the greatest beauty is hidden inside you.

The greatest beauty that is hidden inside you is nothing but a ray of the Almighty beauty that is pervading everywhere. So, call God as a great beauty, a great wonder, a great art, a great perfection, a great power, and enchanting. The Srimad Bhagavata mentions Sri Krishna's personality as sakshat manmatha manmatha - one who enchants even Cupid himself, and Cupid has to hang his head in shame.

Beautiful things, whether they are visual, audio, or intellectual beauty, are forms of the absolute beauty of the Supreme Being. The perfection of the universe is so complete that if you see things in a complete fashion, everything looks beautiful. People heap wooden logs here and there in marketplaces. The logs of wood do not look beautiful. But when they are hewn properly and arranged in the pattern of a beautifully carved table or chair, the very same ugly log that was lying on the roadside, which you did not want to look at, looks beautiful. What a beautiful carved table or chair! The ugly log of wood has become a beautiful piece of furniture because of the pattern into which it is arranged.

So, beauty is a pattern of perfection, and the highest pattern of inclusiveness is God Almighty. Can you feel the beauty of the utter inclusiveness of God? You can call Him as a great power, as I mentioned. That kind of devotion in which you summon God as indomitable power is called aishvarya-pradhana-bhakti. Examples are like Bhishma, who considered Bhagavan Sri Krishna as the ultimate power you can think of anywhere. He was incomparable strength, but he was also beauty.

Sri Krishna's body was described as having adamantine strength, like vajra, as if his whole body was made up of diamond, or it was a beautifully chiseled perfection of art. If it is only an incarnation that is described like that, the original must be much greater.

God is sweetness, also - not merely power and beauty. We do not know what sweetness is, except as we see it in things of the world, like sugar and honey. Honey may be regarded as the sweetest of things in the world, so there are some saints who call God "Honey". The great Tamil saint Ramalinga Swami used to call God "Honey": "Oh Honey, oh Honey, please come! Honey of bliss, come!" He could not call God by any other name, except Honey. Can you imagine honey dropping everywhere? You will taste it. Oh, what a joy!

You will see It as beauty; you will hear It as beauty; you will understand It as a great power, and you taste It, also. For every sense organ, It is a beauty: It is the softest; It is the most musical; It is the most beautiful; It is the most intellectually appreciable classical masterpiece that you can think of.

This is the art of bhakti yoga, calling God as the Supreme Father in heaven, wherein the aishvarya or the glory and majesty of God is emphasised more. Or, you love him as your beloved of the heart, inseparable. You cry, "I cannot exist without You." The chanting of the mantra, called japa sadhana particularly, is the art of choosing a particular characteristic of God, and therefore, when you are initiated into a mantra, you must know what your pre­dilection, your inclination, and your liking is. You should not take up japa mantras that are not suitable, whose meaning you cannot understand. It is the duty of the Guru to select the proper mantra or formula for your recitation.

Actually, a mantra is a formula. It is a kind of arrangement of words which, in a cohesive manner, produces an effect on its own. According to the Indian tradition of mantrashastra, the system of the arrangement of words in a mantra is described in a highly interesting manner. The mantra is not an ordinary name, like a tree or a stone. It is not like that. The words are so selected in the formation of the particular formula called the mantra that when they are juxtaposed and recited consecutively, they produce an action and reaction among themselves, like the chemical action taking place among chemical elements when they are juxtaposed or mixed together. An element of force or energy arises out of the mixing together of the different words, which constitutes the whole name called the mantra. So, the word itself has a power, like chem­ical power, or strength that is generated by the combination of different chemical elements.

Secondly, the mantra is supposed to be a thought generated in the mind of a great seer, called a rishi. Every mantra has a rishi, or a seer. When you recite or chant a mantra, first of all remember the name of the rishi who actually visualised this mantra. It is said that you should always respect the author before you read a book. You see who the author of the book is; then only you read the book. It is not that suddenly you open a book and start reading. That gives scant respect to the person who wrote the book. So, the author has to be respected. "Oh, here is the person; this is the author. He must be a great man to write such a majestic book."

The author of the mantra is a rishi. You have to revere him, mentally prostrate yourself before him and seek his blessings, because the thought of the rishi is in the form of the verbal manifestation of the mantra. The thought of a person immediately brings you in contact with the mind of that person. Similarly, the thought of a particular rishi comes to you as a blessing by the very thought process of the rishi. Think of a thing; immediately it blesses you. You can contact even the stars by thought, even Brah­ma-loka. So, whenever you sit for japa sadhana, you firstly remember the rishi or the great sage to whom this mantra was revealed.