The literal meaning of Gayatri is ‘that which frees the senses’. The literal meaning of Gayatri is not a goddess, not an angel, not a lady or God. The literal meaning of Gayatri is ‘that which liberates or makes the senses free’. You know the senses: the eyes, the nose, the tongue, the ears, the skin. These are the sense organs.
There are ten senses, five responsible for karma or action, five responsible for feeling, knowledge. Using the feet, you walk, using the hands you do so many things. These are called karmendriyas. Karmendriyas means the senses through which you are able to make movements and work. Then there are five jnanendriyas, the senses of knowledge, through which you know. Through the eyes you know form, through the nose you know smell, through the ears you know sounds, through the skin you know touch, and through the tongue you know taste. These are the five jnanendriyas. These ten indriyas must be made free from their respective experiences and duties. You can achieve that through the Gayatri mantra.
The mantra occurs in an ancient book called the Rig Veda. This is considered to be the most ancient book in the library of mankind. This book has been studied by many great scholars – Max Müller, Will Durant, Wilson, Griffith, Brunton and many others have done a lot of study on the Rig Veda and on the history of ancient civilizations. Within the Rig Veda is the Gayatri mantra, which contains 24 syllables:
Om bhur bhuvah svaha tat savitur varenyam Bhargo devasya dhimahe dhiyo yo naha prachodayat
There is a special way of chanting this. Many people who have studied the Vedas say that this mantra should be chanted, not just mentally repeated as you do with your mantra. This mantra is intended for chanting.
Usually mantras do not have a meaning at all; they are considered to be the creators and transmitters of vibrations, energy vibrations or sound frequencies. This mantra has meaning, and its meaning is that consciousness is realized or consciousness exists on three planes: the physical plane, the astral plane and the causal plane. Consciousness exists and survives on all the three planes, and it is more real on the higher plane than on the inferior plane. That is to say, your consciousness is more powerful on the astral plane than it is on the physical plane, and it is more powerful on the causal plane than on the astral plane.
Consciousness is like the sun, which rises from the east in the early morning. Before sunrise, there is darkness every- where. Although the stars are shining, twinkling, and the sky is beautiful, there is total darkness everywhere. You cannot decipher the figures of men, women, animals, trees and objects. You know they are there but you cannot see them. As dawn comes, you can see the beams of the sun flashing through on the eastern horizon, and you can acquire the knowledge and experience of the objects that are there and which you could not see. When the sun rises, everything is clear.
The Gayatri mantra is like the rising sun on the horizon of man’s consciousness, illuminating not only the external world, but also the inner world. Our inner world has many beautiful things but we do not know them, we cannot see them. We have knowledge about them because we read the books of scholars, but we do not really see them. We cannot see them unless there is light there. The Gayatri mantra flashes the light on the different realms of your consciousness and makes you realize that things do not merely exist on the external plane, this plane; they also exist on the intermediate plane and the internal or higher plane as well. This is the meaning of the Gayatri mantra.
In India, amongst Hindus, the Gayatri mantra was tradition- ally ordained to a child at the age of seven or eight. Even now it is done, but now most of our children are western-minded. They follow this ritual because Hindu people are very strict people, but they do not care as they do not really know what it is. In the last ten or fifteen years, I have been telling them the effects and the positive benefits of the Gayatri mantra on their hormones, on their body and mind, on their character, their faculties and memory, and children have started taking it up.
At the age of seven or eight, Indian children used to be initiated into the Gayatri mantra, and side by side with the Gayatri mantra, they were taught pranayama. This was important. The pranayama was nadi shodhana and they were taught to practise Gayatri with this pranayama. You inhale for the duration of one Gayatri, repeating it mentally. You stop for one Gayatri. You exhale for two Gayatris. Then you retain for one Gayatri. Meditation will take place at once. Pranayama combined with Gayatri mantra becomes a very powerful tool to transform the qualities of the mind.
6 February 1983, Manchester, UK