Yagya results - what to expect.
October 21, 2008
The reasons that people do yagyas and the benefits that they experience are widely varied. Some people have very specific experiences during the day, during meditation, etc. Others feel a general sense of support and protection. Some people find that they notice nothing much, although over time it seems that nothing goes wrong! Or things don’t go as wrong as they are used to. It is really all over the map.
In some ways I think it is also like my own practice of meditation. I have been doing my practice for so long that if you asked me what the benefits were I would be stuck because, for me, it is all about moving towards enlightenment (the big picture). As you well know, people can start a spiritual practice for such minor reasons as to sleep better or just relax, but then over time the experience and emphasis changes. It is like that with yagyas as well.
In the simplest terms, the yagyas are an upwelling of sattwa, and the more “pure” our awareness the fewer the problems, and when the problems arise they are easier to solve or are less overshadowing. My experience is that during a yagya “papas” the Sanskrit word for seeds of bad karma, are being roasted….so they can’t sprout into misfortune. The thing is that we can’t really know how much bad karma there is waiting for us. So, it seems to me that the “results” from a yagya show up when we have made a dent in the karmas that we have.
That is why I see the yagyas as a part of a “process” very much like the old analogy of watering the root so that the entire tree is nourished; roots, trunk, leaves, etc. All in proper proportion.
I frequently joke that my children seem to be the primary beneficiary of the yagyas. Even in spite of my fatherly blindness that makes them close to perfect, I realize that they have been spared so many of the troubles that their peers are going through. Certainly something is there that is beyond my “skill” as a parent. I see huge benefits from the yagyas, but that doesn’t mean that my son won’t suffer when his girlfriend breaks up with him, or that my younger son won’t be stuck in the “World of Warcraft” game for days on end. They have a life to live and some things we can change and some we can’t.
The questions that most people have about yagyas and results are very understandable. Everyone wants to “feel something”, to have some feedback or a sign that the yagyas are doing something. Some people…or I would say that most people do have experiences that encourage them to continue. Sometime the experiences are very dramatic and sometimes it is sense of support or protection. Given time, it seems to be rather consistent.
Of course, all that we can do is to make certain that the yagyas are performed in the most proper traditional manner possible. The results, as the priests say, are up to the Divine.