Om Ānandamayi

Craving is not a wrong desire. It is the desire for delight, looked for in a place that cannot hold it. The body learnt once where delight was, and keeps going back to the same door.

Nothing here asks him to stop wanting. This mantra begins where the wanting begins, with आनन्द, Delight, and goes on to name what Delight is in itself: consciousness, truth, the supreme. The wanting is not cut off. It is given its true address.

That reading is ours, and it is only the placing. The words of the mantra are Sri Aurobindo's, and its meaning is the Mother's, given above as she wrote it.

The complications it serves: Craving

Where it comes from: Written by Sri Aurobindo, about 1927, among the notations connected with his Record of Yoga (CWSA vol. 11, p. 1352); printed among his mantras in Letters on Himself and the Ashram (CWSA vol. 35); first published as a message in November 1955. He left the transliteration unfinished and the Mother completed it in her own hand.

The Mother's translation, in her own hand, reproduced by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry (motherandsriaurobindo.in, Sri Aurobindo's mantras). In the facsimile the first line reads "Om - She, the Delight"; the hyphen only parts Om from the rest, so it is set as a line of its own.

Padaccheda, checked against the Devanāgarī of CWSA 35 (sri-aurobindo.co.in, fragment 9634) and the Ashram's facsimile (motherandsriaurobindo.in).
ॐ आनन्द-मयि चैतन्य-मयि सत्य-मयि परमे

वाचिक: Said out loud, at the length of one out-breath. The syllables light as you say them. उपांशु: The lips move, the breath carries it, nobody across the room can hear it. The light goes through each line in its colour, as it does aloud. मानस: Nothing is said. The words grow faint, the light still goes through them, and their sense stays, with the breath and the beads. अन्तर्यात्रा: One mālā that goes inwards by itself. The first third aloud, the second in a whisper, the last in the mind. The voice leaves the room without you deciding when.