Exoteric and esoteric are two terms I rarely if ever use. They basically split everything into external and internal. While in the UK recently, I met up with a dear friend from the ashram. He said that Baba taught both exoteric and esoteric practice, and that most people went to the ashram for exoteric practice, thinking and believing it was esoteric. My friend knew I had not gone to Baba for anything exoteric because I had already been immersed in the external and knew its limitations.
As I have been focusing on making sure everyone who studies with me understands the internal practice that Baba taught, I have been wondering why more people do not practice it.
At the ashram, many people believed that shaktipat was the esoteric, internal practice; they thought that once they got shaktipat, then as long as they did the outside dharma of chanting and meditating and selfless service everything would move along internally. I knew this was not the case from my practice of Tai Chi Chuan. No matter how much I practiced the form, even after my kundalini was awakened, when I stopped and did something else as simple as eating, walking, or anything in ordinary life, all was lost.
Baba appeared in my life because I was looking for someone who could teach me how to have that inner experience all the time, not just when I was doing an external ritual or practice. Baba was and is a realized being who gave people the experience of Witness Consciousness. I knew in my heart of hearts that he could teach me the practice that would allow me to be me all the time, not just in glimpses. So I gave up everything that did not matter to follow him.
Baba knew what I wanted, and I was emphatic that I was going to learn from him, that he was going to teach me. From the outside I must have appeared arrogant and pushy, but I never cared. I was on a mission. I knew Baba had what I wanted, and I was going to make him give it to me. Aggressive, persistent and one pointed. Friends and lifestyle were not my goals; the practice, devoid of anything external, of trappings of any kind, was what I longed for.
Baba was full of Love and gave each of us what we wanted. His kindness to me through all the years as I had to strip away the trappings of emotion, personality, and ideas showed me the level of compassion he had for each of us.
Now, so many years since that day my Guru, who gave me what I wanted, left his body, I wonder why so many are so focused on the exoteric. Baba used to call me naïve, and he was so right. I thought everyone wanted what I wanted, everyone knew the esoteric practice he so willingly taught. I realize now that people got distracted by the outside practices.
My manner of teaching is not popular. I am extremely boring in that I keep pointing to the Heart. I drive into all my students the practice of attention, of the will directed into the Heart. Boring into the Heart and resting there: the gift Baba gave us. So many people think they are in the Heart—but thinking they are in the Heart doesn’t make it so. I realize now that most people practice being in the Heart in their heads. In other words, practice for most is just a really nice idea.
No—the internal practice uses the will, not the head, not ideas. The esoteric practice is literal, the Heart is actual. God is Real. God is. In order to know that, then rather than just believe it, we have to practice the internal practice that every tradition has at its core: the practice that Muktananda offered to all of us.
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