Poosalar was a mystic, a great devotee but very poor. Lives, begging for his food, these are poverty by choice.
The king of that kingdom, a great emperor, took enormous pains to build a large Shiva temple using thousands of men and enormous material. He built a huge temple and he fixed the consecration and the opening ceremony for the temple on a certain day. The previous night, when he went to sleep, in his dream Shiva appeared and said, “I am sorry, I will not be able to attend the opening of your temple because I have to go to Poosalar’s temple.”
The king woke up with a start, and he couldn’t believe that Shiva comes and tells him that he cannot come to his temple, when he has built the greatest possible temple, and he is going to some Poosalar’s temple, which is better than his. So, he wanted to go and see. So, he went looking for Poosalar. Just outside the town, in a small hut, Poosalar was sitting with his eyes closed. The king walked in and brought Poosalar out and he said, “Where is your temple? Shiva himself appeared and said your temple is greater than mine, and he is going to your temple, not mine. If he is going there, even I wish to go there, where is your temple?”
Poosalar looked embarrassed. He said, “Oh, my temple? No, it is not of stone and brick. I have just been building this temple in my heart. Yes, it is true that Shiva promised me that he will enter my temple tomorrow, but how did you know?”
Now, what this incident is about is, that if you create a structure in the heart of your mind, and empower it with your energies, or even better if you empower it with the fundamental consciousness which makes you alive, then it is more real than temples of stone – what you build with stone and brick, what the physical realities that we are building around us, it’s far more real than that.
