79. Enter the virtuous cycle🔗

The other day someone was asking me, 'Why do you put so much of silk and jewels on these deities? Why is so much of decoration done for the deities, and even for the seat on which you are sitting? After all you teaching the ultimate enlightenment, so why don't you keep your temple empty, formless?' In the bar, people want all the decoration necessary to create negative abhyasa, but in the temple, they want everything to be empty. What kind of a mental set up is that? Unfortunately, the whole of modern civilization is based on negative Understand what kind of mental setup?

Forget about spirituality – even to integrate yourself as a man, you need abhyasa. Without abhyasa, you are just a liquid. Any thought can come and overpower you at any time. In the morning you think of something as your life purpose and start walking towards it. By evening, some other thought, some other situation, will come, and all your ideas of life and pain and joy disappear, and you are entangled in something else. So never miss a chance to be around the Buddha, to be around the sangha. Never miss a chance! I can say, that is the ultimate thing that can happen in you. So many negative abhyasas inside you which you may not even know about will disappear.

People come and tell me, 'Swamiji, I just come and stayed here for a few days and did volunteer work and went back home. I don't know how, but my life is transformed after that! I did not work directly on solving my problems, but suddenly I am out of so many problems, so many struggles, so many disturbances — even in crisis situations! If the same situation had happened a few years earlier in my life, I would have been shaken. Now I’m so strong. How come? How is it happening?’

Understand, the sangha it drills the positive abhyasa into your deeper layers. See, your conscious mind is just one layer; your unconscious mind is nine layers! Below your mind is your body, which is completely unconscious. Anything done continuously by the conscious part of you gets engraved in your unconscious. Same way, anything continuously repeated unconsciously gets inside your body and becomes a physical habit.

You need to understand the word ‘habit’. H-A-B-I-T. If you remove H, still A BIT will be there! If you remove A also, still BIT will be there. If you remove B also, still IT will be there. Only when you remove the I, the identity, it will die. If you understand and practice it consciously, positive abhaya will also go into unconscious. If you live around the people who are practicing this truth, who are living this truth, suddenly you will see that your bio-memory is picking up the truth.

Now don’t start thinking and doubting, ‘Oh, who knows if it will happen? I can believe that I will pick up unconscious abhyasa, but who knows if I will pick up positive abhyasa even if I spend time around the master and sangha?’ Understand, you are not that intelligent as to question every idea! First two or three ideas you may question it; after a few days you will pick up the roots from them directly. That is why I tell people, in the initial level, have patience. Give yourself a chance to enter into the virtuous cycle of positive abhyasa. Give yourself the time you need for this. You will see the results.

CONTEMPLATION

When I live around people who are practicing the truth, who are living the truth, my bio-memory will pick up the truth.