continually making Japa thousands of times, one's mind automatically gets steadied and absorbed in meditation and one's Kundalini (spiritual power) is ultimately roused. When a pure mind performs Japa, the Holy Word bubbles itself up spontaneously from within without any effort on its part. One who reaches this state attains success in Japa.
Along with the practice of Japa and meditation, she advocated the importance of healthy altruistic works. For, men ordinarily cannot do spiritual practices all the twenty-four hours of the day. So work performed with a spiritual motive is the best thing to fill up the gap. Without that there is even positive danger: for, an idle mind is proverbially the devil's workshop. So she favoured the type of altruistic activities undertaken by the monks of the Ramakrishna Order.
She always advised spiritual atpirants to be patient in times of difficulties and troubles. For misery, she said, is the symbol of God's compassion. Instead of getting worried, an aspirant should pray to the Divine with tears in his eyes when he wants illumination, or finds himself faced with doubts and difficulties. She impressed on all aspirants, whether householder or Sannyasin, the need of being continent - if they were realIy serious about their spiritual life. For to have non-attachment to the body and its pleasure is the
sine qua non of spiritual life. 'Today the human body is, tomorrow it is not; and even its short span of life is beset with pain and misery' - discriminating thus, one should cultivate a spirit of dispassion and renunciation, and then the true love of God dawns in one's mind. She