A Holika-Night Ritual to Restore an Ineffective Mantra

The speaker says that people who come into sadhana keep trying to awaken many mantras — through YouTube or any other medium — and especially Sabar Mantras, or other kinds of mantras. Sometimes, he says, through one's own mistake or because of a malicious person, such a mantra stops working and becomes ineffective. He explains the mechanism: a person of tantric bent may use some keelan-type preparation to bind the capacity of your mantra. In reality, he says, a mantra cannot be bound. What is done is that some bond or obstruction is placed between your Aura and the mantra's own energy. Because of that, the mantra becomes ineffective for you: you cannot use it, or whenever you do japa of it, you yourself start suffering, and it gives no effect although earlier it gave a lot. He says this can be any mantra — a mantra of the mahashaktis, a Kamya PrayogaThe application of a mantra for worldly or material desire fulfillment — an Ekakshari Guru Mantra, for instance, may be used to awaken other mantras but should not be employed for this purpose directly. mantra, a sabari mantra and so on. The remedy he offers is a Prayoga to be done on Holika night, so that a mantra that has become dosha-ridden is freed of every Dosha and every bond and becomes fully chaitanya for the practitioner again. On who should do it: he says that if you have any doubt at all that some error or dosha has crept into your mantra through your own carelessness, do this prayoga — do it without fail. At the end he adds that if you have been doing japa of a mantra for a long time and it still gives no effect whenever you use it — whether a kamya prayoga or a sabar-related mantra — you should do this same prayoga so that the mantra becomes effective and gives results when used.

The speaker says that after we have made a mantra siddha, we go on to use it, and it is in this phase of use that we make many mistakes which leave the mantra ineffective. He gives an example. Suppose you have made a Sabar Mantra of Hanuman siddha. Now you give a Jhada with it — quite ordinarily, to someone in your own household. You are a man, and a woman of your own family is in bodily distress, and at that moment she is menstruating, and you put a jhada on her with the Hanuman mantra. In such a case, he says, your mantra will somewhere become ineffective and dosha-ridden, and you too will incur Dosha. He says this is one cause; there can be very many such causes, and so a mantra should be used only after taking in all the relevant knowledge. Whenever, unknowingly or knowingly, some act of yours of this kind has brought incapacity into the mantra — that is, its working power has diminished — that, he says, is when you should do the Holika-night vidhan.

The speaker says the prayoga is done on Holika night, in the evening. Materials: make at least nine vadas of urad dal — the dahi vada that is anyway made at Holi, from soaked and swollen urad dal — and keep dahi ready; nine dahi vadas are needed. For plates, a sal-tree leaf is the very best; failing that, the small leaf plates and donas sold in the market, nine of them; failing that, small clay vessels will also do, though leaf is far better. A banana leaf also works — cut one leaf into nine pieces, each big enough to hold one dahi vada. On timing he says: check the hour of Holika Dahan and start this prayoga enough before it, according to your mantra — a Sabar Mantra will be long, so choose the time accordingly. Before starting, do the Guru and Ganesha smaran and whatever daily worship you do. Since the prayoga is in the evening, he says it is very good if you can avoid garlic, onion and the like all that day. The procedure: place a large thali, set nine leaves (sal, banana or dona-pattal) on it, put one vada on each, pour dahi well over all of them, and then put a little GudJaggery, offered on its own or with til and ghee. on top of each. Then, if your mantra is a sabar mantra, lift one whole leaf with its dahi vada in your hand and speak the mantra over it at least nine times — if it is a very long mantra, three or five times will do — and set it down. Do this for every leaf in turn: lift, speak the mantra, set down. If instead it is an Ekakshari mantra, or a mantra of a deity or mahashakti that you used to use and which no longer gives effect, then do one Mala per dahi vada, nine malas in all: take the leaf in the left hand, do one mala of japa with the right hand, set it down, take the next, and so on through nine. After the japa, he says, take a large sal or banana leaf that covers everything well, carry the offerings under it to the place where Holika is to be burned, and say there: "O Narayan, through you I offer this mantra that I made siddha as Havya into this holy fire. O Narayan, kindly make this mantra fully effective, so that whenever I use it, it becomes fully chaitanya and accomplishes my work." Saying this, offer it there and come home. The next day's deity-specific worship completes the prayoga.

The speaker says one more thing has to be done from the next day, on the day of Holi — and this must be done: take the flower or leaf dear to the deity the mantra belongs to, and offer it with the mantra. His examples: if it is a Bhairava mantra, take a BilvaThe sacred Bael tree associated with Lord Shiva — sadhana is undertaken beneath it, its wood is used as fuel for Havan offerings of ghee and sesame seeds during a release ritual, and its trifoliate leaf (Bilvapatra) is the offering proper to Him. leaf, read the mantra nine times holding the leaf, and offer it to Bhairav; also do Bhairav's puja and so on. If the mantra is related to Hanuman, offer a Tulsi leaf to Hanuman after reading the same mantra nine times over it, and give puja at a Hanuman temple. If it is a Durga mantra, take a bilva leaf, read the Durga mantra over it and offer it to her at home, and go and give her puja at a temple — and in that puja, he says, be sure to include shringar. Once this is done, he says, when you again use that mantra by whatever method you used before, it will once more give you its effect.