The Divine cocoon

A few days back, a friend wanted to visit the Ramakrishna Math book stall inside the railway station. Now, the railway station is the place that hosts the sleepwalking aspect of most humans. People from all walks of life, in the thousands, day-in and day-out pass through this space almost as in trance. It takes a great deal to stay alive in an atmosphere like this. So, a shop in the middle of this place, which was not new to me, since I traveled nearly four years to college and about an year to work in trains, was as invisible like any other entity in vicinity.

But that particular day's visit was revealing. It was as if we had stepped into another world. A work of ingenuity - the shopkeeper had done two things that created a different kind of ambiance there. One was the use of fragrance (incense and ash) and the other was the use of a very mild chant in the background. Either the Math trained the shopkeeper to do this, or he did this out of awareness of the situation at the place. But it was like watching the outside world in video alone, without the situational aspect, from the comfort of distant observation.

It was a great lesson. This is how we must live. A divine cocoon must envelop us at all times when we tread the world. Like fire that turns everything it takes in to itself, so is the divine. Except that, it needs an alchemical process that makes it so. Most masters call it awareness.

It is not training or conditioning or learning to smile in the face of adversity. Rather, it is un-training or un-conditioning or knowing that adversity is on the surface while the center remains untouched. If you have a Sadhana that helps you with it, you're luckier. We need more people who carry this cocoon both to show what is possible and to transmit to others.