If God is nameless, how to continuously recite His name?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: Pranaam Acharya Ji. Nitnem continuously says that the way to reach God is to continuously recite his name. But, as God is nameless and formless, is not Silence, what we need to practice? Please shed some light on the name of the Lord.

Can physical recitation of mantras like ‘Ek Onkar‘, or ‘Om Namah Shivaay‘, or ‘Raam‘, lead us to the Real God? If yes, how should it be practiced?

Thank you. Love and Gratitude.

Acharya Prashant (AP):

You need to continuously utter the ‘name’ of God, both in speech and in mind, because you are what you are. You are not the Silent one. Are you?

Had you been already Silent, no Sage would have advised you any jaapa, any recitation, any mantra.

Who are you?

You are the restless one, you are the loquacious one.

You are the talkative one.

Who are you? You are the one who just loves to ‘Yak, yak, yak’. You are the one who is always busy talking.

If there is no other person to talk to, then you indulge yourself in some internal dialogue. You start talking to yourself. Don’t you?

You are always in a conversation — a conversation in which only you are there, obviously, the other doesn’t exist.

That’s the kind of conversation we have.

Our dialogues are all soliloquies — me talking to myself. The other is there just as a prop. Look carefully at how people converse. Are they really listening? This one is talking, and the other one is talking, and there is no relationship between the two talks. On the surface, it looks as if one is responding to the other. Well, no. One is merely using the words of the other to further one’s own argument.

The ego is so insecure, that it keeps asserting itself. In fact, man’s entire life is spent in self-assertion.

Man’s entire life is spent convincing himself that he exists.

Man is so insecure.