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Yes, it's the physical mind. The japa is made precisely to control the physical mind.

page 433 , Mother's Agenda , volume - 1, 11th Oct. 1960

I'm going to tell you what I saw - it's very interesting. First, emanating from here (Mother indicates the chest), a florescence of every color like a peacock's tail spread wide; but it was made of light, and it was very, very delicate, very fine, like this (gesture). Then it rose up and formed what truly seemed like a luminous peacock, up above, and it remained like that. Then, from here (the chest), what looked like a sword of white light climbed straight up. It went up very high and formed a kind of expanse, a very vast expanse, which was like a call - this lasted the longest. And then, in response, a veritable rain, like ... (no, it was much finer than drops) a golden light - white and golden - with various shades, at times more towards white, at times more golden, at times with a tinge of pink. And all this was descending, descending into you. And here (the chest), it changed into this same deep blue light, with a powdering of green light inside it - emerald green. And at that moment, when it reached here (the level of the heart), a number of little divinities of living gold - a deep, living gold - came, like this, and then looked at you. And just as they looked at you, there was the image of the Mother right at the very center of you - not as she is commonly portrayed but as she is in the Indian consciousness ... Very serene and pure and luminous. And then that changed into a temple, and inside the temple there seemed to be an image of Sri Aurobindo and an image of me - but living images in a powdering of light. Then it grew into a magnificent edifice and settled in with an extraordinary power. And it remained motionless. That is the representation of your japa.

It's beautiful.

I had to stop because there is something like time that exists here - what a shame!

page 447 , Mother's Agenda , volume - 1, 22nd Oct. 1960

I remained perfectly tranquil, there was nothing else to do; I knew it meant a battle. I was perfectly tranquil, but I could no longer eat, I could no longer rest, do japa [[Japa: the continuous repetition of a mantra. Mother's mantra is a song of the cells, the sole material or physical process used by her for awakening the cells and stabilizing the Supramental Force in her body. ]] or walk, and my head felt as though it would burst. I could only abandon myself (Mother opens her arms in a gesture of surrender), enter into a very, very deep trance, a very deep samadhi - this is something one can always do. But that was the only thing left to me. Ideas were just as clear as ever (all that is above and doesn't budge), but my body was in a very bad way. It was a fight, a fight at each second. The least thing, just to walk a step, was a struggle, an awful battle!

page 34 , Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 22nd Jan. 1961

This japa, you know, didn't at all come from here (Mother points to her head). It's something I received fully formed, and to such an extent that I couldn't even change the place of a single thing - a will seemed to oppose any change. [256] It's a long series unfolding according to a law that probably corresponds to what is needed to develop this consciousness and the work it has to do (I suppose - I don't really know and I haven't tried to know). But a sort of law makes it impossible to change the position of even a single word, because these are not words - they are fully formed states of consciousness. And the whole series culminates with:

'Manifest Your Love.'

This is the highest summit of the possibility of manifestation.

That's what I wanted to say.

page 256 - Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 12th July - 1961

For some time now I have been running into difficulties with my morning japa. It's complex. I won't go into details, but certain things seemed to be trying to interfere, either preventing me from going on to the end, or plunging me into a kind of trance that brought everything to a halt. So I began wondering what it was and why. A very, very long curve was involved, but the result of my observations is the following. (All this is purely from the body's standpoint; I mean it doesn't concern the conscious, living, independent being that would remain the same even without the body - to be exact, the being whose life, consciousness, freedom and action do not depend on the body. I am speaking here of that which needs the body for its manifestation; that alone was in question.)

page 68 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 3rd Feb. 1962

There has been a kind of perception of a variety of bodily activities, a whole series of them, having to do exclusively (or so it seems) with the maintenance of the body. Some are on the borderline - sleep, for instance: one portion of it is necessary for good maintenance of the body, and another portion puts it in contact with other parts and activities of the being; but one portion of sleep is exclusively for maintaining the body's balance. Then there is food, keeping clean, a whole range of things. And according to Sri Aurobindo, spiritual life shouldn't suppress those things; whatever is indispensable for the body's well-being must be kept up. For ordinary people, all other bodily activities are used for personal pleasure and benefit. The spiritual man, on the other hand, has given his body to serve the Divine, so that the Divine may use it for His work and perhaps, as Sri Aurobindo said, for His joy - although given the present state of Matter and the body, that seems to me unlikely or at best very intermittent and partial, because this body is much more a field of misery than a field of joy. (None of this is based on speculation, but on personal experience - I am
relating my personal experience.) But with work, it's different: when the body is at work, it's in full swing. That's its joy, its need - to exist only to serve Him. To exist only to serve. And of course, to reduce maintenance to a bare minimum while trying to find a way for the Divine to participate in the very restricted, limited and meager possibilities of joy this maintenance may give. To associate the Divine with all those movements and things, like keeping clean, sleeping (although sleep is different, it's already a lot more interesting); but especially with personal hygiene, eating and other absolutely indispensable things, the attempt is to associate them with the Divine Presence so that they may be as much an expression of divine joy as possible. (This is realized to a certain extent.)

Now where does japa fit into all this?

Japa, like meditation, is a procedure - apparently the most active and effective procedure - for joining, as much as possible, the Divine Presence to the bodily substance. It is the magic of sound, you see.

Naturally, if there's also an awareness of the idea behind it, if one does japa as a very active CONSCIOUS invocation, then its effects are greatly multiplied. But the basis is the magic of sound. This is a fact of experience, and it's absolutely true. The sound OM, for instance, awakens very special vibrations (there are other such sounds as well, but of course that one is the most powerful of all).

It is an attempt to divinize material substance.

From another, almost identical point of view, it fills the physical atmosphere with the Divine Presence. So time spent in japa is time consecrated to helping the material substance enter into more intimate rapport with the Divine.

And if one adds to this, as I do, a mantric program, that is, a sort of prayer or invocation, a program for both personal development and helping the collective, then it becomes a truly active work. Then there's also what I call "external" work: contact with others, reading and answering letters, seeing and speaking to people, and finally all the activities having to do with the organization and running of the Ashram (in meditation this work becomes worldwide, but physically, materially, it is limited for the moment to the Ashram).

page 69 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 3rd Feb. 1962

Now, I think that doing japa with the will and the idea of getting something out of it spoils it a little. You spoil it. I don't much like it when somebody says, "Do this and you will get that." It's true - it's true, but it's a bit like baiting a fish. I don't much like it.

Let it be your own manner of serving the Divine, of relating to Him, loving Him, of joining Him to your physical life, being close to Him and drawing Him close to you - that way it's beautiful. Each time you say the Word, let it be an invocation, let it be like the recitation of a word of love; then it's beautiful.

That's how I see it.

page 70 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 3rd Feb. 1962

For me, you know, japa means a moment when all physical life is EXCLUSIVELY for the Divine. A moment when nothing but the Divine exists - every single cell of the body, each second, is EXCLUSIVELY for the Divine, there is nothing but the Divine. When you succeed in doing that, it's good.

Japa shouldn't become so exclusive that it's done twenty-four hours out of twenty-four, because then it's equivalent to asceticism - but there should be a good dose of it.

It's almost the one luxury of life - that's how it feels to me. The luxury of That alone, nothing but that divine vibration around you, within you, everywhere. Nothing but the divine vibration.

Now, that's luxury.

page 71 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 3rd Feb. 1962

But one has to.... Look, it's the same as for japa. Your japa is given to you, isn't it? You receive it (unless you find it on your own, but that's harder and already requires another level of realization); you receive your japa along with the power to do it - but you have to learn how to do it, right? For a long while you don't fully succeed; all sorts of things happen - you forget it right in the middle or fall asleep or grow tired, get a headache, all sorts of things; or even outer circumstances interfere and disturb you. Well, here it's the same: you tell yourself, "I'll do it," and you will do it, even if.... You have to go at it just like a mule: everything blocks the way but you keep going. You said you'd do it and you will do it. There are no results - I don't care. Everything is against me - I don't care. I said I'd do it and I will ... I said I'd do it and I will. And you keep on going like that.

page 337 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 5th Sept 1962.

I made an experiment: writing the letter OM. When you have written it four, five, six times, it becomes excellent!

I wanted to know why you were asked to do that work and what you could draw from it. So I sat down to write your yantram, and it became very living, I could see it in front of me - I kept seeing it all the while. "But then," I thought, "the VERY FACT of writing must have an effect." Then I started writing the letter OM carefully.... Well, when I came to the fourth, the fifth, it became excellent - excellent, as though it were creating a vibration. That's the power it has, an external power. But then it was very amusing (the body is like a child - really a child), suddenly it said, "Oh, what a lovely game! To be sitting like this and writing, oh, how amusing! If I had the time, it would be great fun to write and write, lots and lots and lots of times." I saw that in the body - in the body's cells. Then I understood.

Basically, these are almost methods for children (children from the spiritual viewpoint), young souls - child-souls. They are methods for child-souls.

I used to write my whole japa fluently like that, in Sanskrit, [[ Satprem has entire pages written and rewritten in Sanskrit by Mother. ]] now I have forgotten everything again.

page 187 - Mother's Agenda , volume 4 , 26th June 1963

On the material level, japa is very good for that. When your head is tired and you are a little weary of forever contradicting that pessimism, you just have to repeat your japa, and automatically you make contact. To make contact. That's something the cells value a lot. A lot. It's a very good way, because it's a way that isn't mental, it's a mechanical way, it's a question of vibration.

There, mon petit, we must endure.

page 232 , Mother's Agenda , volume 5 , 10th Oct - 1964