Mansik Yajna (Part-2)

In the previous part, we learnt about mansik yajna – what it is, why it’s important and how it can be done. In this part, we’ll go through some tips you’ll find useful in making your mansik yajna even more effective.

My Secret Touch Method

IN the previous part, I mentioned a problem of limited visuals in my imagination due to visual impairment. I compensate it with feeling the activity with the sense of touch. Purification with water, Lighting the lamp/firewood, offering ahutis – most of the yajna’s activities involved use of hands when you do a physical yajna.

During visualization, in addition to whatever details I’m visualizing in my inner eye, I also attempt to feel the same. For example, while visualizing picking up of samagri using my fingers and thumb, I also recall simultaneously the sensory input of touch experienced through the fingers.

This is how visualization becomes more engrossing, more interactive for my mind because it now has two inner senses at play: sight and touch.

Preliminary Chanting

Even though you’re present mentally on some other place, you can still chant out loud the preliminary shlokas related to steps like lighting the lamp, Ganesha stuti, svasti vachan, etc.

Earlier I used to chant them mentally. However, for some time I’ve shifted to the spoken method. I find myself going into deeper bhava during singing of these shlokas.

I continue to visualize things while singing as if you’d do during a physical yajna, like putting ghee in the lamp, lighting it with a matchstick etc.

While invoking Ganesha or meditating on Guru, it’s perfectly fine to visualize those deities. This means that your imagined yajna world is no longer there. You can do this transition as if your Avatara inside the yajna world has just closed his eyes (as you’d do during the physical yajna) and visualizing the deities. Once done, it’d open its eyes and can see the yajna world.

Preliminary Offerings

Again, you can chant the mantras related to preliminary offerings out loud.

Main Offerings

I don’t recommend chanting out loud main offering mantras for couple of reasons:

1. Don’t reveal rule: AN important rule of mantra sadhana is to not reveal your mantra or sadhana to others. If you chant out loud, you risk of doing that especially when you’re at home. Note: this rule doesn’t apply when you’re doing yajna with others publicly I believe.
2. Exhaustion: Chanting out loud hundreds of offerings can exhaust your energies quickly. Since you need to visualize each offering mentally, you need to preserve the energies till the end.

Concentration

At some point in time while visualizing hundreds of ahutis I find my brain getting exhausted. I experience a stiffness like feeling in the forehead which makes it almost impossible to visualize any more similar activity.

To handle this problem, I keep making a tiny change in the activity once in a while, as follows:

1. Imagine your ahutis sometimes containing raisins, sometimes cashew nut, or sometimes almonds etc.
2. Pour ghee in between to renew the dying fire. In the physical yajna, we switch to offer ghee once in a while to reinvigorate the dying flames, the same helps in the mansik yajna to reinvigorate the mind going dull/tired.
3. Refill your plate from the bigger samagri vessel. Using a small bowel, pick and drop more samagri in the plate once you’ve almost exhausted the samagri.
4. You can also adjust/add wood sticks in the kunda.
5. I also find it useful to shift to different directions of the kund to offer ahutis – sometimes from the front, sometimes from the right side. Just like you do during physical yajna.

Timer

When doing a yajna as part of a sadhana, you either choose to offer specific amount of ahutis for the mantra or, for specific amount of time. I personally choose the latter option so I don’t have to worry about counting.

I use Tabata Timer app to perform ahutis for the specific amount of time. I’ve setup a work item with multiple steps each having duration I’d need. I also include a break interval (of about 20/30 seconds) if there are multiple mantras (as in Nav Durga Sadhana).

Once started, the app can make announcement after each step (if you turn on the TTS option) in addition to the different ring sounds.

Because of my visual impairment, I anyway work on devices using a screen reader software so I don’t have to open my eyes to operate my mobile. You need to find if there’s anything similar possible, or else you’d need to open your eyes to start the timer once you’re on the main mantra ahutis step.

A Sublime Experience

It was morning of 17th September 2022. I had just finished a 40-day sadhana on the previous evening.

My sankalpa was to do japa in the morning and evening. Hence, I didn’t commit on performing yajna daily.

However, I had an urge during the latter part of the sadhana to perform a yajna at the end of the sadhana. This had also happened with me in the past. Since Swamiji has highlighted the importance of yajna during sadhana, with an option to at least perform a yajna on the last day, I end up performing a yajna upon completion even for sadhanas I didn’t commit on daily yajna.

The mansik yajna was to take about an hour and 20-25 minutes or so. The main mantra ahutis part was of 25-30 minutes duration, if I recall correctly.

While I was engrossed in offering the main ahutis, I experienced rising of some blissful cold energy.

I’ve experienced rising of blissful warm energy on my back countless times during meditation on form/mantra. But, rising of cold energy was perhaps happening for the first time, at least with this magnitude. I could feel it in back as well as in ears.

It continued to happen for quite some time, and I kept on performing the ahutis while enjoying the experience. Interestingly, the ahutis duration of about half an hour, passed quicker than I expected. It’s a sign of deep concentration during a lucid session of meditation when the time passes quickly.

As per my understanding, the warm energy is associated with the feminine aspect of existence. Since I only had warm energy experiences previously, I wondered that Kundalini in me being feminine in nature, would only give warm energy experience while rising.

The cold energy was a pleasant surprise. It was a sadhana of devata (male deity). Therefore, an experience of the cold (masculine) energy was justified.

The experience also meant that my sadhana, which had posed various challenges including with my posture and I even thought of abandoning it multiple times during the first half, had been accepted by the divine.

Neither before or after that mansik yajna I have received a similar level of cold energy experience.

Reason for sharing this experience is to confirm that the mansik yajna isn’t just your imagination; the divine does accept it as a real yajna. So, if you can’t perform a physical yajna, you should at least perform it mentally.

Concluding Thoughts

In my experience, mansik yajna is indeed an effective way of performing yajna, when physical one isn’t possible. In fact, it could be a superior form of yajna, when your physical yajna is likely to experience disturbances from people etc.

This writeup was originally written as an answer to this question.

I’ve shared my method in the writeup. You’re free to follow it, modify it and make it your own. 

Sriman Narayan

Featured image attribution: Wikimedia Commons