Question: You said we can increase our purity by repeating AUM five hundred times a day. But for me to repeat AUM five hundred times a day is very difficult. Can you advise me what to do?

Sri Chinmoy: If it is difficult for you to do it at one stretch, then you can do it in pieces. You can do it ten times; each time you will repeat it only fifty times. You know that during the day you want to drink ten glasses of water. But if you drink all ten glasses of water at once, you are afraid it will upset your stomach; so you won’t drink them all at once. But if you drink one glass now and then after an interval of an hour or two, another glass, easily you can drink ten glasses of water. So here also, instead of chanting AUM five hundred times all at once, early in the morning you can repeat it fifty times. Then, in an hour’s time, you try another fifty. So each hour if you repeat AUM fifty times, each time it won’t take you more than a minute or two. Since you can easily spend two minutes in an hour, you can do it. If you have a mantra or incantation of your own, you can easily do it fifty times an hour. It cannot take more than two or three minutes, and everyone can offer three minutes to God. It is not how many hours you can do it at a time that is important, but how soulfully you can do it.

When you chant AUM, please feel that life-energy, divine energy, is entering into you through your crown centre. The breath that you breathe in through the nose is very limited; but if you can imagine that there is a big hole in the top of your head and that life-energy, cosmic energy, is entering into your body through that big hole, then naturally you will be able to accelerate your purification and increase your aspiration and hunger for God, Truth, Light and Bliss.