82. Survive your daily cyclones🔗

Constantly, so many cyclones are happening inside of you. Actually, just like a CNN weather channel, you need an internal weather channel! ‘Today, there may be three tornados, two tsunamis and ten earthquakes.’ That is what is happening inside you. Look in - how many tsunamis, how many earthquakes, how many Katrinas happen inside you every day? You need constant positive abhyasa to handle even this weather. Positive abhyasas is the safe shelter where you are neither touched nor affected by the tornados, the tsunamis, the outer disturbances. You need to know: positive abhyasa is the ultimate shelter, ultimate resort you can create for yourself. Only then the ultimate Truth can happen to you.

Negative abhyasa is so powerful that it can shake any positive glimpse, it will shake. Let me share my experience but my own negative abhyasa. I think that will give you an opening. When I had the enlightenment experience which I mentioned, it completely shook me; all my ideas about enlightenment disappeared - just like how, when you meet me, all your ideas about an enlightened master will disappear! If you are fortunate, you see me in a class and go away. No, really! If you spend a little time around me, all your ideas about an enlightened master will disappear. So alive, so spontaneous, unimaginable, mind-boggling, impossible to comprehend, impossible to put inside your frame! Naturally, you will feel shaken.

All my ideas about enlightenment disappeared. And I was there in that field, maybe it took two and a half days. But it looked like two and a half hours, or two and a half years! Chronologically, we cannot count days during such an experience. When I started settling down, the first thing that happened to me was - I thought some ghost had possessed me! I thought some ghost had possessed me, because I never knew about enlightenment, so I never knew that enlightenment would be like this!

I went back and spoke to my mentor Mataji Vibhootananda Puri, the elderly lady who was teaching me Vedanta. I asked her, ‘Am I possessed by a ghost?’ She just laughed and said, ‘No! You are possessed by God.’ Then she told me, ‘Just be around me for few days; nothing else is required. I will cook and give you the right food that you should eat at this time.’

Because the mental groove was not able to hold that experience, because the mind was not mature enough to hold that experience, negative abhyasa started taking over. One part of my mind started telling me, ‘Don’t go to that place again!’ I started thinking that the place where I had the experience was haunted by some ghost! I decided that I should never go to that place again. That is the way I am supposed to take to my school - but I decided that will never go that way.

But just eating that food and being around her, suddenly, I saw that my body was picking up the courage to live that enlightenment. My brain was creating the new grooves needed to live that enlightenment. My system was falling in tune to live that enlightenment, to live that joy, to radiate that joy.

Negative abhyasa is so powerful that it can shake any positive glimpse.