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

The speaker opens by saying that new SadhakOne who undertakes a sadhana; the practitioner as distinct from the ordinary worshipper.s especially tell their experiences to people a great deal, and shout out the question — I had this experience, what does it mean? In sadhana groups, he says, when someone posts about a sadhana, anyone who has done the same one comments below: I did this sadhana for so many days, I had these experiences, what do they mean? People, he says, hang their whole life on 'experience and its meaning'. He says he will look at the matter technically and deeply, and also decide what one should do and why certain things are forbidden. Experience, he says, is a thing that makes a person a trishanku. The sadhak neither becomes a proper, complete sadhak nor stays at an ordinary level; he goes off into a fantasy world and remains stuck entirely in a state in between. He calls experience a nasha, an intoxication: once it starts arriving, the person wants it always. If the experience does not come he goes from place to place asking — earlier I used to have this experience, now it is not happening; earlier such a thing happened, now it does not. He keeps asking this question again and again. That, the speaker says, is why the subject of telling one's experiences becomes so important.

The speaker takes the case of a completely new person starting sadhana, one on whom no Abhichara-type prayog is operating, and says he will carry both conditions along. How does such a person begin? Suddenly something happens — he hears something somewhere, a satsang, another person — and when a little Punya rises, the thought comes that he too should do seva and puja. The mind clicks at one point, and sadhana starts there. Ordinary people, he says, begin with the ChalisaA devotional hymn of forty verses addressed to a deity, recited as a daily or vowed path. of their Ishta Devata. Someone who wishes to serve Bhagavati Mahakali starts the Mahakali chalisa; someone drawn to Shiva starts the Shiva chalisa. It is done regularly, even if only five minutes are given: bathing in the morning, decorating Bhagavati nicely with flowers, offering bhog, sitting comfortably and reading the chalisa for five, ten or fifteen minutes, reading along with it whatever stotra or mantra the chalisa carries, and then doing the 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.. A Hanuman devotee does the Hanuman Chalisa, bajrang-baan, Hanuman Ashtak and the Ramavatar path of Ram ji, and the Durga Chalisa may be added too. Everyone, he says, makes this much of a rule. When this goes on in sequence, by rule, morning and evening — three months, six months, a year, two years — a time comes. Slowly, slowly, Tapo-bala keeps forming; a pot fills drop by drop, he says, but it does fill. And a time comes when the person begins to pass through a phase of experiences.

How do experiences begin? The speaker says the first experience to start is that a person begins to feel some divine things in dreams (Swapna). He starts seeing something; he comes to know that in two or four days something is going to happen, and he gets the sense of it in the dream. It happens, and he relates it back — this is what I saw in the dream. After seeing this two times, four times, ten times, when it keeps happening in a repeating mode, the SadhakOne who undertakes a sadhana; the practitioner as distinct from the ordinary worshipper. somewhere begins to believe that yes, the Kripa of whatever shakti he is worshipping is now upon him. And this thing that for so many days had been going on secretly, or in an ordinary, orderly way — we were doing puja-path — begins, the speaker says, to change a little from here.

The speaker says that even ordinary people who have no experiences at all, if they do not keep things secret, end up hitting the same point as the one who has them: pradarshan, display. Why does display start? Because when one does puja for three months, six months, a confidence rises in the mind — we are sevaks, pujaris, SadhakOne who undertakes a sadhana; the practitioner as distinct from the ordinary worshipper.s, we are doing this, so the supreme shakti's Kripa is with us, nothing bad happens to us, whatever we say comes true. Experiences of this indirect kind form anyway; and when something actually happens, if even a chhatank of the shakti's grace comes along, it gets enlarged and presented, enlarged, before people. A mandali sits, he says, and there is talk. Man or woman, someone shares — I saw this in a dream, I saw such-and-such Hanuman temple. The person who has been on the sadhana road and reached this stage, who is having experiences, tells his own — yes, I too was shown this and this. Two or four curious people ask what happened and how, and then it is told with salt and chilli added. The ordinary ones too say: we do only this much and got such a result; we told so-and-so this would happen to him, he did not listen, and see, it went wrong for him; he did me wrong and look what happened to him. These things start from there. When secrecy leaves you and your experiences go before people, he says, they grow. One tells a second, the second a third, and your fame begins. A class of people forms who honour you to your face — you do puja-path, you are pure, of sattvik nature, the kripa of Bhagavati, of your ishta, is with you — and they make small children bow to you. The sense of doership that starts within, the aham that enters — this, the speaker says, is Mahamaya's maya; here the Ishta Devata's examination is going on. Now you are gripped by that ahankar — I have this shakti, I have their kripa. It is at a very small level yet, only two or three years, before any big talk — and already aham has begun, and you are telling people your experiences.

The first way, the speaker says, is the ahankar that grows through telling. The second way is that from the very start we believe in displaying our things as much as possible. We do puja-path and put it on Facebook, in the status. We dress Bal Gopal, Laddu Gopal, and put him on exhibition — ten, twelve, twenty photos in the status: today our Bal Gopal looks like this, today he had such a shringar. Every single picture connected with our puja place, decorated and edited, keeps going onto Facebook and the status. We did a Havan and put the whole thing in the status — look, today we did this havan — showing everything. Why show it? Because, he says, our aham gets satisfaction here: seeing it, people say wah, you do so much puja, you are a bhakt, you are quite great. This satisfaction of the ego — you are such a big pujari, such a big SadhakOne who undertakes a sadhana; the practitioner as distinct from the ordinary worshipper., you are this and that — keeps hollowing you out from inside. Why? Because in both these conditions, he says, your Tapo-bala, your Punya, all of it, is being carried off by all the people to whom you tell these things. That is why the instruction to observe gopaniyata, secrecy, was given — the instruction to keep one's experiences limited to oneself.

This, the speaker says, is why in earlier times the rishi-munis said again and again that the mantra is to be kept secret, any sadhana of yours is to be kept secret, the puja-sthan is to be kept secret, and which puja you are doing is not to be told to anyone. Only with your marg-darshak and Guru-jan are you to take counsel — I had these experiences, I do not understand what I should do. When you are wandering somewhere, then you should ask one qualified person, one who has risen above these situations, not one who, hearing your things, starts giving you wrong suggestions. There should be one mature person with whom you share. Not every third person, he says — the way it happens on Facebook, in a group: you read someone's post, feel this fellow is very mature, and go and tell him your whole experience. That person may help you today and tomorrow give you some upside-down suggestion, and everything of yours gets spoiled; he may tell ten people. So that such things do not happen, experiences are to be told only after placing trust in a qualified person. Remember this, he says: telling an experience makes it decrease. The more you keep an experience secret, the more your Tapo-bala grows; the more you stay away from display, hiding your puja-path, the more it grows. Later he returns to the point: by telling experiences, whatever shakti was going to bestow Kripa on you becomes feeble somewhere, it starts decreasing, tapobal starts waning. So an experience is not to be told — only to one's marg-darshak, one's guru, or some such qualified SadhakOne who undertakes a sadhana; the practitioner as distinct from the ordinary worshipper., to share it and move forward, not to gain honour and respect or to show oneself big — we are such a great bhakt, did this much, did that much. The plain thing to say, he says, is: brother, we do nothing; we go to the temple, ring the bell, light a lamp and come back. It is to be shown only to a qualified person.

Wearing a tilak is not display, the speaker says — be at ease. If, as soon as you apply it, someone says — oh, you wear such a big Tripundra, babaji is speaking — the answer is: not a babaji, it is Sanatan, it is culture, brother, we wear it, you wear it too, what is your problem? That much is to be said. There is no difficulty in saying we wear a tripundra, we adorn our forehead, we like it. Puja-path is not to be spoken of; if someone asks, say — fine, we do not do much, there is not that much puja-path, but yes, we go to God and the tilak that is applied at his feet, we apply on our forehead. That is all; there is no problem in it. But, he says, now someone remarks that you have worn a tilak, very good, what puja did you do? And you answer — yes, today we completed Bhagavati's work with the sahasranamavali. Now he asks, sahasranamavali, what is that? And you explain the whole thing — look, this is what a SahasranamaA recitation of a deity's thousand names — a devotional text genre used across many deities, not one single fixed composition. is, like this. Whether that person is qualified, whether there is shraddha in his mind toward it, you do not know — yet you keep telling him. Why tell? Leave it, he says; why tell such a person at all? Why show him that you do puja-path and have great bhakti within? No — keep these things secret, do not tell. To the unqualified, certainly not. The day their punyas rise, their Punya-udaya comes, they will come on their own and that kind of situation will form by itself. But you are not to tell it at every place.

A second thing, the speaker says, is that people will say — fine, we will not tell our experiences, but we can at least suggest to a person in distress that he do puja-path. Who has forbidden you from saying that? But why are you telling your own puja-path? Why say: we do such-and-such, we do this Havan, we are doing this much Japa of this mantra, I have this Mala and made it Siddha this way, I had such a darshan in a dream when I did this particular sadhana? Why blurt all that anywhere? Do not, he says — keep these things to yourself. If you must tell someone — brother, do sadhana, do puja-path — give him that kind of suggestion, calmly, a general suggestion. Suppose someone says — you do puja-path, bhaiya, tell us a little; or bhaiya-ji, bhabhi-ji, didi-ji, I have such trouble, what should I do? Then, according to their situation, tell them: read the Shiv Chalisa, read Shiva's 108 names, read the Rudrashtak; how to read the Rudrashtak, listen on YouTube and learn it. That is how you may speak. Not: we recite the Shiva Tandava Stotra by this and this method, Samput-ed with a bija-mantra, you do it too. Whether the other person is at that level of qualification you do not know, so why tell him your things? Counsel may be given to any person according to his level, he says, but one's own end — one's own depth — is not to be given. Take special care of this.

Whom is one to show experiences and such things to? The speaker says: suppose there is a person whose trust in God is wavering somewhere. He is qualified, does good sadhana, his mano-bala is good, he has shraddha toward God — but there is suffering in his life and he is wavering. In that situation, to motivate him, tell a little, he says. Say a little, motivate him, tell him a katha or story, charge him up — brother, do it, do not be afraid, do not run away. Or tell a little of your own: look, such an experience once happened to me, then I did this and this, this happened, you do it too. That, he says, is fine.

But, the speaker says, if you lay open the whole chittha, the whole pitara of your experiences — we did this sadhana and Bhagavati's lion came into our dream — that is another matter. He gives the example: I was quite ill, I slept after invoking Bhagavati, and her lion came and licked me all over, my whole body became wet, and my fever came down. This experience you went and blurted to someone — and it truly had happened to you. Now, he says, it is not going to happen again in your life. Never. And if it does happen, take it that a time will come when you beat your head till you die and the experience simply will not come — because you have got stuck at that very place. So his rule: where you get stuck in experience (Swapna or any other), you have strayed from the sadhana path. Neither get stuck in experience nor stray from the path; walk on, devoted to your Ishta Devata. Those experiences are being given to you as Kripa-PrasadWhat returns from the deity after an offering, and is then eaten rather than discarded. — fine, Bhagavati is with you, your ishta, your devata is with you, giving guidance — not for you to gain honour and respect, so that people look and satisfy your aham: I am a very great bhakt, I have so much of Bhagavati's kripa, I am so-and-so. He closes hoping the listener will understand this and observe secrecy, so that the thing is used the right way.