Skip to content

AYP Wiki

A living encyclopedia of AYP

Mantra

A specific thought used as a vehicle in deep meditation for going beyond thinking to abiding inner silence. In AYP the starting mantra is I AM.

I AM

  • Pronounced internally as … I AM …, easily and effortlessly, without forcing clear pronunciation.
  • Used for its sound, not its meaning. Whatever sacred meaning "I AM" carries in the Judeo-Christian tradition (and similar sounds in other traditions) is irrelevant during practice. The vibratory quality of the sound in the depths of the nervous system is what matters. Addition 13.1.
  • The spelling AYAM is equivalent — same pronunciation, no English meaning. If "I AM" feels distracting, use AYAM. Or forget spelling altogether.
  • Discussed further in Lessons 115, 117, and 188.

How the mantra is used

The procedure is in deep meditation. Key points specific to the mantra itself:

  • Favor it, don't grip it. Pick it up easily when you notice you're off it. Don't force clarity; don't try to hold it.
  • Let it refine. As you go deeper, the mantra naturally becomes faint, fuzzy, or disappears entirely. This is the mechanism — the gap when the mantra dissolves is transcendence.
  • Dimensional → dimensionless. At first the mantra appears as a "dimensional" mental object somewhere in 3D mental space. With practice, the same mantra becomes present without being located — a dimensionless subjective experience that is just here, outside of time and space. Attention is carried with it. This shift is a felt sign that the fifth dimension of consciousness is opening in everyday experience. Addition 36.2.
  • It's a vehicle, not a battering ram. Beginners often weaponize the mantra against thoughts. Drop that. There is no fight with the mind; just easy favoring.
  • Mantra in the background is fine. If "I AM" is rolling under other thoughts, that counts as being on it. Addition 13.3.

Why mantra over emptying the mind

Trying to "empty the mind" by intention is an act of mind — and as long as you're in effort and meaning, you're stuck in mind. The mantra is effortless mental sound; it bypasses meaning and effort entirely, which is why mantra meditation can go deeper than passive emptying. Addition 13.4, Addition 19.2.

I AM vs OM — linear vs circular, Father vs Mother

Lesson 59 distinguishes I AM from OM in a specific way that matters for long-term practice:

  • OM is circular. It has no polarity. In AYP's framing, OM is the sound of kundalini moving through the body as the nervous system enlivens — "the sound of Mother Nature in us, and she is ecstatic bliss."
  • I AM is both circular and linear. "I" carries the linear quality; "AM" carries the circular quality. It has polarity built in: "I" is the Father vibration and "AM" is the Mother vibration.

Lesson 59: "Using I AM as mantra, we are cultivating pure bliss consciousness fully through the nervous system, permeating the natural polarity that exists within us. We are enlivening both divine masculine and divine feminine qualities within us at the same time."

The practical upshot: I AM produces a global, balanced purification across the nervous system, while OM alone tends to produce more localized, energetic responses that are premature for most beginners. Addition 59.4 specifically recommends not starting with OM — it is much more likely to cause energy overload as a beginner mantra. OM shows up in later AYP mantra enhancements at Lesson 369, after silence is established.

This polarity balance is the same principle at work in spinal breathing pranayama — balancing masculine and feminine energies in the spinal nerve so kundalini can awaken smoothly. Without that balance, Lesson 63 warns, "kundalini can go a little crazy when she can't find her husband." I AM + SBP together are the core polarity-balancing tools in AYP.

AYAM is the same mantra spelled without English meaning. Addition 59.1: it has meaning in both English and Sanskrit, but neither is used — the mantra is used for sound, not meaning. The sound and its effect in the subtle neurobiology is what counts.

Bija (seed) mantras

AYP deep meditation is not a bija-mantra / chakra-focused system. Addition 59.5: bija mantras are primarily for systems that meditate on individual chakras, which AYP explicitly does not do (see chakras and spinal breathing pranayama). Using a bija mantra in place of I AM is not recommended — the system is designed to produce global rather than localized effects.

Don't chant the mantra

Lesson 59: chanting I AM (externally, aloud) is not recommended if you are using it for deep meditation. The reason: meditation uses the mantra for going inward, and chanting trains the habit of going outward. The habit is what matters — you want your nervous system to dive inward at the drop of the mantra, and chanting trains the opposite reflex.

Group chanting and devotional chanting are fine activities on their own, just not with the mantra you use for DM. Pick a different chant for that.

Don't use the mantra during the day or in pranayama

  • During activity — don't think the mantra while working, commuting, driving. "When you are in the world, be in the world. When you are in meditation, be in meditation." Activity is where the silence stabilizes into the nervous system; keeping the mantra going during activity disrupts that integration. Lesson 59.
  • During spinal breathing pranayama — pranayama already has its own procedure (tracing the sushumna). Mixing the mantra into it divides attention and undermines both. AYP does pranayama first, meditation second, never overlapping. This is also why AYP skips breathing mantras like So-Ham. Lesson 59.
  • At bedtime — OK if you want, but "keep it inside." Be aware that I AM can be stimulating, especially as kundalini wakes up, and can keep you awake. Lesson 59.

Repetition, rhythm, and refinement

The mantra has no fixed rhythm, clarity, or location — it refines naturally as purification deepens, and the discipline is to favor it (proactively, not by passively listening for it) at whatever level it's found, including once it has refined into a subtle vibration or feeling beyond thought. This mechanics of favoring — as distinct from gripping, forcing a rhythm, or resting in stillness instead of returning to the mantra — is covered in full in favoring the mantra, based on Lesson 79 and its additions.

Don't translate the mantra

Lesson 115 addresses non-English-native practitioners (and applies to everyone): don't translate "I AM" into your own language for use in meditation. The mantra is sound, not language. The natural vibrational qualities in the human nervous system are universal and not determined by what language any given form happens to belong to.

If "I AM" is distracting because of its English meaning, use AYAM — the same sound spelled with no English meaning. Same effect. The point isn't to import a meaning from any tradition; it's to use a particular sound vibration in a particular way for going inward.

Lesson 115: "Let there be one sound in our life that does not have a worldly connection. Let it be the mantra. The mantra should mean only one thing — it is our ticket to ride to the infinite. Let us use it for that, and for that alone when we are meditating."

"Meaningless" is in the way of use, not the sound itself

Lesson 117 addresses a related question: every sound has some meaning in some language, so how can the mantra be "meaningless"?

Yogani's clarification: meaning or absence of meaning is in the context of use, not in the sound itself. "AM" has dozens of meanings in English (and meanings in other languages, and shows up in countless words like ham, lamb, sham, cram). Do those meanings come up when you think the sound AM? No — because of context. The mantra has its own context: a specific way of favoring sound for going to inner stillness. In that context, the sound has no meaning. The procedure of meditation handles meaning automatically — meanings just become like any other thoughts that arise, and you easily come back to the sound.

Lesson 117: "Whatever particular sound we use as mantra in meditation has no meaning by virtue of the way it is being used."

Mantra enhancements

Lesson 116 introduces the first mantra enhancement — adding syllables to the basic I AM after months or years of stable practice. The car-transmission analogy: I AM is first gear; once you have momentum, you can shift to second gear (a wider mantra) without bogging down.

The first enhancement: SHREE SHREE I AM I AM (or equivalently SHREE AYAM SHREE AYAM).

Used the same way as I AM — same procedure of easy favoring. Once you make the change, this becomes your mantra from then on.

What changes:

  • The mantra has a "wider footprint" in the nervous system — broader sweep through the subtle neurobiology with each pass.
  • Going into stillness is slower; coming out is also slower. The mind goes deep less quickly, but the slowed traversal makes pure bliss consciousness "stick more" in the nervous system.
  • The result is more abiding inner silence in daily activity, not necessarily better-feeling sessions. Some practitioners initially find the enhanced mantra harder to use because the sessions feel less deep — but the measure is daily life, not session experience. Addition 116.1.

Lesson 116: "A mantra with few syllables goes through more quickly, clearing out obstructions easily a little bit at a time. Then it gets to the point when we can use a 'wider' mantra and cover a bigger area as we go in and out through the subconscious, clearing out more obstructions with each pass through."

When to enhance. Wait until you have smoothness and good depth in meditation with I AM. Could be a few months, could be a few years. Some practitioners never need to enhance — the entire journey can be made with I AM alone, "nothing is missing." Self-pacing applies. Don't enhance prematurely; you'll bog down (the equivalent of shifting into second gear at too low a speed).

There is also an alternate approach to mantra enhancements in Lesson 369 for a smoother progression — see below.

"We are That"

Addition 115.1 — "That" in AYP usage refers to absolute bliss consciousness, sat-chit-ananda, the destination the mantra is pointing toward. See abiding inner silence for the full treatment, including the Upanishadic affirmation "I am That. You are That. All this is That."

"Becoming" the mantra — a journey from here to here

Lesson 282 addresses a related experience: as bhakti intensifies, some practitioners feel they are "becoming" the mantra — the ego sense dissolving as attention refines and merges into expanding stillness. Whether this is real or illusory depends on point of view, not on what is actually happening:

Lesson 282: "If I am out here in ego and go in on the mantra, I may appear to become the mantra as it and my egoic sense dissolve into stillness, which is my self. If I am in there already as resident inner silence, the witness, looking from the inside out, then there is no becoming as the mantra makes the same journey. The process is the same. Only the point of view is different. … We are becoming That, even though we already are That. I guess that is why they call it 'realization' — realizing something that is already. It is a becoming — a journey from here to here."

The practical point: the "becoming" experience is neither to be grasped nor interpreted during meditation — it's scenery, observed from whichever point of view the nervous system currently occupies, not an imposition on the easy favoring of the mantra itself.

⚠️ Don't double up with mantra japa during the day

A specific failure mode addressed in Addition 86.2 and Addition 86.3. Some traditions use mantra japa (continuous mantra repetition during daily activity, often counted with mala beads) as a regular practice. AYP does not — and combining AYP DM with another tradition's japa during the day produces "doubling up" effects:

  • Extra purification and opening on top of what twice-daily DM already produces.
  • Symptoms: restlessness, irritability, tiredness, sometimes more dramatic effects.
  • The grounding effect of being fully engaged in daily activity (without running a mantra in the background) is what AYP relies on for integration. Japa during the day undermines that.

AYP does not teach mantra japa during the day. Addition 86.2 suggests instead going out to "live fully in daily activity" — that is what integrates the inner silence, purification and opening produced in the sittings.

If you have a strong existing japa practice and want to add AYP, you'll need to choose one as primary and self-pace the other carefully — see AYP and other traditions.

Malas and counting

Lesson 86: mala beads originally serve to count mantra repetitions — a function AYP replaces with the clock, since counting ties the mantra to an outer activity (ticking off beads) that restricts how naturally it can refine to the moment's purification need.

Lesson 86: "The mala is for measuring how much we do in practices. In these lessons we use the clock for that. That's the difference."

Wearing a mala for sentimental or devotional reasons, apart from counting, is a different matter — see ishta for that use, and the section above for why AYP avoids combining mala-counted japa with deep meditation.

Alternate mantra enhancement track

Lesson 369 offers an alternate progression for those who have experienced instability on the original track. The destination is the same (third enhancement); only the intermediate steps are modified for a smoother ride:

Step Original Alternate
Base I AM I AM (unchanged)
First SHREE SHREE I AM I AM SHREE I AM NAMAH
Second SHREE OM SHREE OM I AM I AM NAMAH SHREE SHREE I AM I AM NAMAH NAMAH
Third SHREE OM SHREE OM I AM I AM NAMAH NAMAH SHREE OM SHREE OM I AM I AM NAMAH NAMAH (same)

The alternate track slows down upper-region components (SHREE, OM) while speeding up the lower-region component (NAMAH), producing a more balanced progression of purification in the nervous system. The OM syllable appears only in the third enhancement on the alternate track — for practitioners who find OM's intensity (even in the original second enhancement) too much.

The original track remains valid for practitioners using it with good results. The alternate is not a correction; it is an option for discerning self-direction. Both arrive at the same third enhancement mantra.

Lesson 369: "There is no exactly correct mantra, or progression of mantra enhancement. If the mantra we are using is providing good results for us in daily activity, then that is the right mantra for us."

One thing at a time: solar centering (Lesson 368) can also be the "next step" instead of a mantra enhancement, for established meditators wanting to add stability and radiance. Don't take on solar centering and a mantra enhancement simultaneously — months to years between any enhancements. See solar centering enhancement.

Second enhancement of the mantra

Lesson 186 introduces the second and final mantra shift:

SHREE OM SHREE OM I AM I AM NAMAH

This is a considerably longer mantra than the first enhancement (SHREE SHREE I AM I AM). It adds OM — which AYP considers too progressive and unstable for a beginning or even intermediate mantra — and NAMAH at the end. The rationale for the delayed introduction of OM:

Lesson 186: "If we had started with OM for deep meditation we would have had a progressive beginning mantra also, but not such a balanced and stable one deep in the nervous system. In fact, OM can wreak havoc deep in the nervous system if prerequisite housecleaning has not been done. OM is not a good beginning mantra for this reason."

The build-up sequence has structural logic:

  1. I AM — balanced, stable, progressive. The root polarity: linear "I" (Father/Shiva) + circular "AM" (Mother/Shakti). Safe to start from scratch.
  2. SHREE SHREE I AM I AM — adds a new dimension of inner polarity (SHREE) while keeping I AM as the core. Stable expansion.
  3. SHREE OM SHREE OM I AM I AM NAMAH — now that SHREE has been established and the nervous system has cleared enough, OM can be safely introduced as part of a broader vehicle that contains and balances it.

The gear-shift analogy (revisited)

The same driving analogy from the first enhancement applies with even more force:

  • Don't shift up prematurely. If your current mantra is producing lots of thoughts and sensations without much silence, that means heavy purification is underway — not the time to shift. "Imagine you are driving up a steep hill in your car, and your engine is doing okay in the present gear, but not having power to spare either. Would you up-shift at that time?"
  • If you shifted too early, shift back down. Slogging through mud, bogging down, poor results in daily life = you up-shifted too soon. Go back to your previous mantra and stay there for a few more months.
  • Don't switch mantras often. Each shift takes time to settle in the deep mind. Switching back and forth wastes that settling time. "We want to be going deep with our mantra in one place."

OM is fine for chanting — just not for DM

An important caveat from Lesson 186: this restricted use of OM applies specifically to silent sitting meditation. OM is perfectly fine for traditional chanting, kirtans, and devotional singing, which don't go as deep into the nervous system as DM does. The risk is specifically in the deep-dive context where OM's vibrational angle can produce upheaval if the nervous system isn't prepared.

Third enhancement of the mantra

Addition 188.1 adds one more step, once the second enhancement is fully digested:

SHREE OM SHREE OM I AM I AM NAMAH NAMAH

This adds a second NAMAH — further broadening the mantra's footprint in awareness, making "a wider cleansing stroke through the mind and nervous system" on each repetition. The same gear-shift rules apply: don't shift until meditation with the previous mantra is smooth for several months; shift back if you're bogging down.

Mantra design — the resonance map

Lesson 188 ("Mantra Design 101") gives Yogani's most complete explanation of why the AYP mantras are built the way they are. Each syllable is a "tuning fork" that resonates in a specific part of the nervous system — and the sequence of syllables determines the path of purification.

The resonance map (from Lesson 188):

Syllable Resonates in Function
I Head / center of brow Shiva component — reaches out through the third eye
AM Down through body to root Shakti component — goes down the spinal nerve from brow to perineum
SHREE Crown (sahasrar) Goes straight up from the center of the head to the crown / corona radiata
OM Medulla oblongata (brain stem) Spreads everywhere through the nervous system — "the mother of all mantras"
NAMAH Heart Cultivates bhakti; purifying effect throughout the nervous system

Lesson 188: "Mantra syllables are like tuning forks in the nervous system. Each vibration resonates in a different part of our inner circuitry. This is true with or without ecstatic conductivity previously awakened."

Don't try to localize the mantra. The tuning-fork effect works automatically — the nervous system already knows where each syllable resonates. Deliberately placing the mantra in a specific body location interferes with the natural resonance rather than helping it. The information above is for intellectual understanding (and bhakti fuel), not for use during practice.

Why the build-up matters

The sequence of enhancements follows the same safe ordering as the rest of AYP:

  1. I AM first — the dual-pole mantra that purifies the full spinal nerve from third eye to root. Safe, balanced, progressive.
  2. SHREE added — begins direct purification of the crown. This is only safe after the third-eye-to-root nerve is substantially purified, because going to the crown prematurely causes the kundalini problems documented in kundalini imbalances. By the time a practitioner is ready for the first enhancement, the crown has already been partially opened "by osmosis" from the third-eye work.
  3. OM added — "devastating ecstasy" in deep meditation, resonating from the medulla throughout the nervous system. Too powerful for beginners. Only safe after I AM and SHREE have done their clearing work.
  4. NAMAH added — heart resonance, bhakti cultivation. A traditional transition syllable.

Lesson 188: "OM lives up to its reputation of being the 'mother of all mantras.' It is the deeply ecstatic primordial sound of what we are, manifesting from pure bliss consciousness. … Under the best of circumstances, OM is 'devastating ecstasy' in deep meditation, especially once ecstatic conductivity is coming up. It will be too much for anyone who goes to the second enhancement prematurely."

Why SHREE OM and not OM SHREE

A detail from Lesson 188: SHREE OM in that order means the vibration is "coming into the body" — crown → medulla → spreading out. OM SHREE would mean "leaving the body" — spreading out → crown → away. The difference is noticeable through the inner senses of ecstatic conductivity. The inward direction supports purification; the outward direction dissipates.

The crown is now addressed directly

Lesson 188 also names the strategic moment where AYP finally moves from indirect crown work (via the third eye) to direct crown work (via SHREE in the enhanced mantras, and later via pranayama adjustments covered in future lessons). The logic:

Lesson 188: "We never intended to avoid the crown forever — only until the time is right. … The crown, the sahasrar (the thousand-petaled lotus) is like our roof, and once we open it up, we are easily dissolved into the divine. There is some control in this, but no where near the control we have working through the third eye. By the time we have purified the crown, both indirectly through the third eye, and directly later on by going straight up, we are ready to surrender ourselves on the altar of our crown."

See chakras and kundalini imbalances for the premature-crown-opening risk that this ordering avoids.

Not required

As with the first enhancement: the entire journey can be made with I AM alone, or with the first enhancement, if that is the practitioner's preference. The enhancements are options, not requirements. Some practitioners never shift beyond I AM and reach the same destination.

Don't over-analyze the source

Addition 59.3: the source of AYAM has been endlessly debated in the AYP community, "those discussions eventually wore themselves out, as excessive intellectual analysis has a way of undermining the simplicity of deep meditation practice and its results." AYAM is ancient, found in various traditions, and rooted in the subtle human nervous system — but knowing its origin has nothing to do with practicing it effectively. Yogani's analogy: "If the shoe fits, wear it. Studying the origins of the shoe has little to do with wearing it."

Source lessons