Japa in a prayer room performed in all intensity, and training oneself to repeat mentally His names constantly during the wakeful hours, are the sure ways of developing devotion (bhakti). It is always the repetition of thinking that brings about the fastness in all attachments.
The less one thinks of a thing, the less one gets attached to it. The opposite is also equally true: the more one thinks of a thing the more one gets attached to it.
The supreme reality is experienced through meditation alone. But the boat to reach the goal, namely, meditation, is rigged with the practice of devotion through japa. In meditation one is wingless if one has not acquired a decent share of concentration power and a perfect knowledge of how to fix one’s mind at will, at a single point, for some length of time.
Meditation is keeping the mind hitched on to one line of thought, to the complete exclusion of all other dissimilar thought currents. To succeed in this, we must learn to stop at will all other dissimilar thought currents. This mental capacity is gained through japa when intelligently practised along with a regulation of the normal life lived.