"In the 1800s in India, there was a great Saint named Rama Krishna Paramahansa. You might’ve heard of the book that was written about him called, “The gospel of Ramakrishna.” That was one of the first books that I read about this stuff and it blew my mind. In the book, well, I don’t even know if it’s in that book, but I saw a quote from him about the practice of the repetition of the name, which is what my Guru, Neem Karoli Baba, always encouraged us to do. Love everyone, serve everyone, and repeat the name. Remember God.
So, Rama Krishna said that every repetition of one of these names is a seed and, you know, the seed of an Oak tree is very, very small, but inside of that seed, there is extraordinary potential. So, inside these seeds that we plant of the repetition of the name is extraordinary potential, and he says that, the seeds of the repetition of the name may get caught by the wind and blown around, and they may get caught on the roof, land on the roof of an old house, in the middle of the jungle. And in those days, the roofs were made sometimes from clay tiles that were baked in the sun, and the seeds of the repetition of the names that we do get caught between those tiles, and then over time and seasons, rain, wind, snow, sun, those tiles begin to break down and they get soft, and at that point, the seeds of the repetition of the names start to take root, and the roots begin to grow, and they grow and they grow and they destroy the roof of this house, and they keep growing and they destroy the walls of the house. Ramakrishna says, that old house is who we think we are, our conventional sense of who we think we are, of our self, our ego, our small “s” self.
Now, that house was built for certain reasons, and one of the things that it does, having been built is, it separates the inside from the outside. There’s an outside and an inside. There’s me and there’s everything else. When those walls are broken down, there’s only presence and being, reality, truth, consciousness, bliss. There’s no longer the temporary ego, which was created out of desire and craving.
So, you notice what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “Well, when you’re repeating the name, it’ll feel like this, or it might feel like this, or this might happen, or that might happen.”
Why doesn’t he say that? Because it’s not about that. It does not matter what you experience."
- KD