The Nine-Day Ram Katha of Pujya Morari Bapu
Tromsø, Norway · 6–14 July 2024
Under the far-northern light of Tromsø, across nine days, Morari Bapu unfolded a katha he named for a discovery hidden in plain sight: the Ramcharitmanas is not merely a poem about the Divine but a treasury of mantra. Manas Mantrashtak — the eight sacred, sattvik mantras woven through Tulsidas's verse: the Ram Mantra foremost, the Shiva Mantra, the twelve-syllable Vaishnava mantra, the Shabar Mantra, the Bija Mantra, and the Manas itself as Mahamantra. If a single conviction bound the nine days, it was this: the Name is greater than the named, and the shortest of names — Ram — is the great liberating mantra of the age. Everything else in the katha, from forgiveness to trust to dialogue to the care of the earth, grew as branches from that single root.
Bapu read each of the seven sopans of the Manas by its inner nature — Balkand as mantratmak, Ayodhya satyatmak, Aranya sutratmak, Kishkindha snehatmak, Sundar sevatmak, Lanka shastratmak, Uttar smaranatmak — and from this frame drew out the Mantra Ashtak day by day. His governing teaching was that mantra is medicine, an aushadh: the whole Ramcharitmanas is one great mantra, every chaupai a mantra, to be taken from an expert as prescribed. Mother is medicine, father is medicine, the whole creation is medicine. He mapped the science of jap through its three shastric stages — Manasi, Upanshu, and Vachik — mirrored, he noted, in Einstein's account of an idea forming first in silence, then spoken to oneself, then made public, and flowering at last into Chaitanya's sankirtan. Mantras are of three kinds — yantra-based (rajogun), tantric (tamogun), and the sattvic Naam-mantras: He Ram, He Krishna, He Shiv, He Maa Durga, He Ganesh, He Hanuman, He Vishnu, He Hari — eight, and therefore an Ashtak. Above all he pressed the glory of the *param laghu mantra*, the supremely small mantra: never reckon the radiant as small, for by its sway even Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh are governed, and the seeker is carried from *adhi, vyadhi, upadhi* all the way to *samadhi*. Ram and Omkara alone, he affirmed, are the two truly param-laghu mantras.
Bapu framed the whole katha as a *kshama yatra* — a pilgrimage of forgiveness. Our life's journey, he said, leaves us filled with glani for offenses knowing and unknowing against the many Buddha Purush and Mahapurush who have laboured for the world's welfare, not only in dharma but in every field. This was the seventh of seven such kathas offered as prayers for forgiveness, and Bapu was glad it fell in Norway — reading the name as "Norvel," the herb the mongoose runs to smell when the serpent's venom overcomes it, returning recharged to win. Samsara is the *bhujang* forever biting away our gyan; let this katha be the Norvel we smell each day to become alert and awakened.
If mantra is the medicine, trust is the prescription Bapu pressed hardest. Reading *bharosa* letter by letter, he found Bharat's trust, Ram's trust and Sita's trust — a prasthanatrayi of prem, satya and karuna. He named five faces of trust: in one's parents, in the Buddha Purush or Guru, in the Guru-given mantra, in the Guru-given holy book, and in the Guru-given Ishta. He told of Dr. Vijaliwala's tribal mother whose mute son Somla spoke "Ma" after a month — trust healing where mantra and miracle could not. Bhajan itself, he said, is trust. The Bija Mantra's very root is shraddha: a seed cannot sprout on dry ground but needs soaked, drenched shraddha as its bhumi. Bound to this was his luminous meditation on *maun* — the mind's continuous joy, *man prasad saumya*, through whose stages the outer noise, then the inner voice, and at last both fall still.
Asked which of the Veda's suktas the present age most needs, Bapu answered without hesitation: the *sukta of samvad*, the mantra of dialogue. Scripture itself is born in dialogue — the Upanishad, the Gita, and the Manas held in its four samvads. There must be dialogue between brothers, husband and wife, neighbours, nations — and with the rivers, the moon, the flowers. His anchor was Vishwamitra, who crossed the flooded Beas and Sutlej not by burning them with tapas but by humble conversation; inwardly those two rivers are raga and dvesha, crossed not by force but by samvad. This flowed into a steady plea running through the katha: the self-absorbed human vritti has become the enemy of Prakriti. Recalling the child who carried water drop by drop to a dying fawn, the forest fires of Uttarakhand, and ISRO's warning of a meteor's threat, he urged that adhyatma must support science as thrust lifts a rocket — *nanya pantha vidyate*, there is no other path — and begged that three things be saved: jiva, trees and water.
The tenderest correction of the katha was this: the scriptures never called us sinners. Shankaracharya sang *shuddho'si buddho'si niranjano'si* — you are pure, awakened, stainless — and the Upanishads never frightened; they said *tamaso ma jyotir gamaya*. Any sadhu who frightens you with darkness is only selling his torch to keep his shop running. So listen with a *prasanna chitta*, for cheerfulness itself is the door to Paramatma's darshan. Bound to this was maryada, the Lakshman Rekha: Sita is happiness, joy and peace — step beyond your limits and some Ravan will steal her. And Bapu insisted on living in the present, not endlessly excavating the past, for the greatest calamity, Hanuman tells the Lord, is to forget Him.
Through it all Bapu unmade his own pedestal. The true Guru, he said, knows himself the smallest of all; he is not a Guru but a man like us. He told of stopping the Guru Purnima utsav, of asking only for *samit* for the yagna, of returning a car worth a crore and forty lakh — for this Ramdas there is no give and take. A sadhu is known not by tilak or saffron but by five lakshans: shil, sankoch, a saral chitt, sneha for all, and kripa upon the whole cosmos. Fittingly, when Ram was born at midday on Chaitra Shukla Navami and Avadh drowned in anand, and when the final two days arrived, the katha dissolved into pure chant — the mantra no longer explained but voiced, turned over on the tongue until the word itself became the seat of Ram.
- Bhava bhujang Tulsi Nakul dasat gyan hari le — samsara is a serpent forever biting away our wisdom; the Name is the herb that restores it. - Mantra param laghu jaas bas bidhi hari har sur sarba — a mantra most small, by whose sway even Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh are governed. - Ek bharos ek bal ek aas vishwas — one trust, one strength, one hope, one faith. - Shuddho'si buddho'si niranjano'si — you are pure, you are awakened, you are stainless. - Chidananda rupa shivoham — I am consciousness and bliss, I am Shiva; even the name at last fading toward the subtle.
From the far north, a katha of the small mantra brought to its vishram in song — Ram, Ram, Ram borne on breath alone.