Why Sharing Sadhana Experiences Drains Tapobal — Secrecy, the Guru Exception, and the One Sadhak Worth Motivating

The speaker opens by noting that new sadhaks especially are quick to announce their experiences to others, asking loudly what a given experience means. In sadhana groups, he says, whenever someone describes a sadhana, others who have done the same practice will comment underneath describing their own experiences and asking what they signify — and in this way people's lives get stuck on "experience and its meaning." He says this deserves a careful, deep look, because experience (anubhav) is a thing that leaves a person a trishanku — neither a complete sadhak nor able to remain at an ordinary level. It carries the sadhak off into a fantasy world and traps him in a state caught in between the two. He compares it to an intoxication: once a person begins to receive experiences, he always craves them, and if they stop coming he goes about asking everyone why the experience he used to get is no longer happening. This, the speaker says, is why the subject of sharing one's experiences becomes so important.

Whenever an ordinary new person takes up sadhana, the speaker asks, how does he actually begin? He frames the case as a completely new person on whom no Abhichara-type prayog is operating, saying he will carry both conditions along. Some incident occurs — hearing a satsang, hearing another person's account — and when Punya arises even a little, the thought comes that one too should do seva and puja; the mind clicks at one point and the practice starts there. Such people, he says, begin with the chalisa-path of their Ishta Devata: someone wishing to serve Bhagavati Mahakali starts her chalisa-path, someone drawn to Shiva starts the Shiva chalisa. This is done regularly, even if only for five, ten or fifteen minutes — bathing in the morning, decorating the deity with flowers, offering bhog, and sitting comfortably to read the chalisa along with whatever stotra or mantra accompanies it, followed by an AartiA ritual of waving a lit lamp or flame before a deity's image, performed here at the close of Deepdan once the lamps begin to burn down.. Devotees of Hanuman similarly do the Hanuman Chalisa, Bajrang Baan, Hanuman Ashtak and the Ramavatar path, and the Durga Chalisa may be added alongside. This order continues morning and evening, by rule, for three months, six months, a year, two years. Slowly, drop by drop, Tapo-bala accumulates — a pot fills one drop at a time, he says — until a time comes when the person begins to pass through a phase of experiences.

The speaker says the very first experience usually to appear is that a person starts feeling divine things in dreams (Swapna). He begins to see things; he senses that something is going to happen a few days ahead, and it does — and he relates it back, realising he had already seen it in the dream. After this happens two, four, even ten times, repeating again and again, the sadhak begins to believe within himself that the grace of whatever shakti he is worshipping is now falling upon him. It is at exactly this point, the speaker says, that the practice — which until now had been going on quietly, in an ordinary, orderly way — starts to change.

Some sadhaks, the speaker says, get no real experiences at all, and yet they too fail to keep their practice private — and both cases, the one who has experiences and the one who simply talks, arrive at the same place: pradarshan, display. After three or six months of regular puja, he says, a confidence builds in the mind — that one is a sevak, a pujari, a sadhak, and that because of this the supreme shakti's Kripa is with him, that nothing ill will befall him, that whatever he says comes true. Experiences of this indirect kind form on their own; and whenever something does genuinely occur, even a small measure of grace, it gets exaggerated and presented to others. A circle of fellow sadhaks gathers and talks; a man or woman will share what they saw in a dream — perhaps a particular temple — and the sadhak who has reached this stage will describe his own visions too. Curious listeners ask what happened and how, and the account gets seasoned further in the telling — even to the point of saying, "I warned so-and-so and he didn't listen, and see what happened to him." As this secrecy is given up and the experiences reach other people, they multiply — one person tells another, that person tells a third, and the sadhak's reputation begins to spread. A section of people forms who show him respect from the outside — that he does puja, is pure, of a sattvik disposition, that the deity's grace is upon him — even having small children bow to him. Within, the speaker says, this is exactly where the sense of doership and the ego begins to creep in — and this, he says, is Mahamaya's own maya; it is here that the Ishta Devata is actually testing the sadhak. Even at this very small stage — only two or three years in — the ego has already begun, and the sadhak starts telling people about his experiences.

The second pattern, the speaker says, is that from the very start a sadhak believes in displaying his practice as much as possible — puja photos, the decoration of Bal Gopal, carefully staged and edited pictures of the worship space, a Havan — all of it posted on Facebook, put up as a status, ten, twelve, twenty images at a time. This is done, he says, because it satisfies the ego: people who see it say "wah, you do so much puja, you're a great devotee, you're a great soul," and that satisfaction of the ego keeps hollowing the person out from within. The reason, he explains, is that in both these situations — the ahankar that grows from being respected in person, and the satisfaction sought through social-media display — the Tapo-bala and Punya earned through the practice is carried away by every single person to whom it is told or shown. This, he says, is exactly why secrecy has been enjoined, and why the instruction is to keep one's experiences limited to oneself.

This is exactly why, the speaker says, in earlier times the rishi-munis kept repeating that the mantra must be kept secret, one's sadhana must be kept secret, the place of worship must be kept secret, and that no one is to be told which puja one is doing. He says the only people one should consult are one's marg-darshak and Guru — telling them, "I have had this experience, I don't understand what to do." If a sadhak is genuinely at a loss, he should ask a single qualified person, one who has risen above these situations, rather than someone who starts giving wrong suggestions after merely hearing his account. That confidant should be a mature person with whom one shares, he says — not every third stranger whose Facebook post one has read and judged to be mature enough to be told the whole experience. The person one confides in may help today, and tomorrow give some wrong or twisted suggestion in return, and may go on to tell ten other people. To avoid this, one should share an experience only with someone trustworthy and qualified. He asks the listener to remember this: telling one's experience causes it to diminish. The more an experience is kept secret, the more Tapo-bala grows; the more one stays away from display, hiding one's puja-path from view, the more it grows.

Wearing a tilak is not display, the speaker reassures — if someone remarks on a Tripundra, it is enough to say that this is Sanatan culture, that one applies it out of devotion and likes doing so; there is nothing wrong with simply saying one goes before the deity and applies the tilak at the forehead. If someone presses about one's puja-path, he says, it is fine to answer that one does not really do much. But if that same person, impressed by the tilak, asks what puja was done and the sadhak answers that he completed Bhagavati's ArchanaA short worship offering flowers or Tulsi leaves while reciting a deity's names — such as Their 108 names, taking only two to three minutes. today by the sahasranamavali, and then goes on to explain in full what a sahasranamavali is — the speaker asks why this needs to be told at all. Whether the listener is qualified, whether he holds genuine shraddha, is unknown; yet the sadhak goes on explaining anyway. There is no need to show such a person that one practises and carries deep devotion within. His instruction is to keep these things secret and not tell them — certainly not to an unqualified person. When such a person's own punya ripens, he says, they will arrive on their own and the right circumstances will form themselves; until then, one need not go about announcing it everywhere.

No one has forbidden suggesting to a person in distress that he take up puja-path, the speaker clarifies — that much may certainly be said. What should not be said is one's own practice: that "I do such-and-such havan, I do this much Japa of this mantra, I have this Mala and I have siddha'd it this way, I had such-and-such darshan in a dream when I did this particular sadhana." None of this, he says, needs to be spoken about to anyone. If someone asks for help because of suffering, the sadhak may respond according to that person's situation with a general suggestion — read the Shiv Chalisa, read Shiva's 108 names, read the Rudrashtak, and learn how to recite the Rudrashtak from YouTube if needed. What should not be said is the manner in which the sadhak himself recites the Shiv Tandav Stotra, Samput-ed with a bija mantra, along with an instruction to the other person to do the same. Whether the other person is even at that level of qualification is unknown, so there is no reason to reveal one's own methods to him. Guidance suited to the other person's own level may certainly be given to anyone, but one's own "end" — the depth of one's own practice — should never be revealed.

Whatever shakti is inclined to show grace upon a sadhak, the speaker says, weakens the moment the experience behind it is disclosed — it diminishes, and the accumulated Tapo-bala begins to wane. For this reason, an experience should not be told at large; it should be shared only with one's marg-darshak, one's own Guru, or with some other qualified fellow sadhak, and even then only in order to progress further in one's own sadhana — never for the sake of gaining respect and honour, or to present oneself as a great devotee who has "done so much and so much." The right posture toward others, he says, is closer to simply saying, "we don't really do anything, we just go to the temple, ring the bell, light a lamp and come away" — rather than volunteering that one is a great devotee with immense grace of the deity upon him.

The speaker gives the one case in which sharing is appropriate: suppose a person is otherwise qualified, does good sadhana, has a strong will and real shraddha toward the deity, but suffering in his life is making his faith waver. In such a case, he says, a little may be told to motivate him — a story, an anecdote — enough to keep him from being afraid and from running away. Even sharing that "such an experience once happened to me, and this is what I then did, you should too" is acceptable in that context. But laying open the entire treasure-chest of one's experiences is another matter. He gives an example: suppose during an illness a sadhak invoked Bhagavati before sleeping, and in the dream (Swapna) her lion came and pressed against him until his whole body turned damp, and his fever broke. If this specific experience is told to others, he warns, it will not happen again in that sadhak's life — perhaps never again — and even if it eventually does recur, a time will come when, however much the sadhak beats his head against the wall, the experience simply will not come, because he has become fixated on that very spot. This is why, he says, wherever one gets fixated on an experience, one has strayed from the path of sadhana. Neither should one get fixated on an experience nor stray from the sadhana path — the right course is to remain devoted to one's Ishta Devata and continue walking the path. Experiences, he closes, are given as grace-prasad, simply to show that the deity is with the sadhak and is guiding him — not so that the sadhak may gain respect and honour, or satisfy his ego by declaring himself a great devotee who has accomplished so much.