For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

In one sense, Śiva means the impersonal absolute Consciousness which is the very essence of the Self (as we pointed out in this video What Is "Shiva"? and also in The Secret Teaching of Bhairava) but in another sense, that which is the formless impersonal Godhead is also, by virtue of His vimarśa-śakti (i.e God's reflexive ability), the personal God who creates, maintains and destroys the universe and who can, at will, manifest as many different forms to suit different occasions and bhāvas (moods).

In other words, as the Personal God (Saguna Brahman), Shiva can both be seen as Formless (Saguna Nirākara) and also as having Form (Saguna Sākara) and in the latter sense, as many different forms!

In our pūjā-paddhati which we are studying as part of our How To Do Tantrik Ritual series, we encounter some of these different forms and their worship. We discuss some of these in this talk!

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To celebrate today's occasion, we took the opportunity to look at the importance of divine immanence as well as the power and pervasiveness and superstition: first, we discussed the Norse and Biblical origins of the Western fear of the number 13, and the fear of Friday as being Venus' day, a day of decadence, sense indulgence and beauty, which are things that all feared and avoided by transcendelist "father sky only" type traditions.

We discuss the two types of reclamation: first, by practitioners in the Goddess tradition who are reframing this day at the celebration of the Divine Mother and Femininity since there are 13 lunar cycles & usually 13 or so menstruation cycles as well Friday being associated to Freya, that is, Laxmī/Aphrodite/Venus etc. and second, by the horror movie buffs who want to celebrate the macabre elements of life! 

This was a wonderful time for me! Thank you all who came live!

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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
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Today is a very auspicious day for us since this full moon in the month of Jyeshta is the Snāna Yatra, the day when Lord Jagannath in Puri is brought out for a bath: on this occassion, in 1855, Mā Bhavatārinī Kālī (Jagadishwari Thakur Rani) was ritually awakened through prāna-pratishta! at the Dakshineshwar temple, where Sri Ramakrishna lived and taught.

Like the Phalahārinī Kālī Pūjā when Sri Ramakrishna worshipped Ma Sarada, this event too is a singularity in the ministry of the Motherhood of God. In one sense, all that is happening here now can be traced back to that moment in 1855 when Ma Bhavatarini opened her eyes and made her presence known in this world so directly! We gave this talk some time ago discussing the significance of this day:
Ramakrishna & Ma Bhavatārini Kālī at Dakshineshwar 

To honor today's full moon, here's another little chat about its significance followed by some light postural yoga practice which you can practice here. 

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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
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These past few weeks, we've been reflecting a lot on where we've been as a lineage, on our roots and origins. We discussed all of this in talks like Where Did Kālī Come From? | A Brief Herstory, What's Our Lineage? and Our Tantrik Lineage. And of course, while it is important to discuss where we're going (which we'll cover in the next talk), it is equally important to ask where we are now!

As such, I want to reflect a little bit on our ideals and values as a spiritual community. 

To do this, I thought it would be good to read from Swami Vivekananda's reflections on his guru, Sri Ramakrishna (which appear in Volume IV of the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda under the title "My Master") since our lineage (and necessarily also our community) is founded upon the life and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and because we aspire to live up to the ideals we saw embodied in his example! 

In reading this reflection, we can come to understand a lot about the perils of spiritual communities not just in the new age context but throughout time. These perils mainly revolve around sex, money and power and in this talk, we explain why that should be so.

This talk was first given on Monday night but since the internet gave out towards the end, I wasn't able to complete the last bit of the reading I wanted to share or to make some concluding remarks. So I picked up the thread from where we left off at our Friday evening satsangh and then just tagged that unto the back of the first recording. The result is a rather long video! Forgive me! And thank you for your patience while I develop some of these ideas throughout the talk! 

May we always inspire one another to live up to the highest ideals of spiritual life always. 

Jai Swamiji! Jai Thakur! Jai Ma!

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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
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Recently, we've been reflecting a lot on Is There Free Will? and also How To Really Worship Kālī | Free Will vs Determinism to explain Sri Ramakrishna's very subtle position on the issue: God alone is the Doer ("not even a leaf moves but by the will of God") and yet there arises in us by God's will the "feeling" of free will which makes our decisions meaningful! But ultimately, we realize
(a) God only has been doing everything and playing all the roles (absolute determinism on the level of the individual) but also
(b) you are God (absolute free-will and voluntarism on the level of the true identity)

But while the "free will vs determinism" discussion is a supremely important theme in our personal spiritual lives, another equally important and very related theme is that of "self-effort vs grace"! In this talk, we explain why

(a) grace is the only factor in spiritual life and
(b) grace can never be caused by anything since that would contradict God's freedom of which grace is an expression and yet
(c) we should still do intense spiritual practices anyway since
c.i. the very fact that we want to do spiritual practices (and that we have a guru to show us how) is itself a function of grace and
c.ii. spiritual practices are worth doing in and of themselves, just for fun and without any desire for outcome!

Of course, since we gave this talk as part of our Paramārthasāra of Abhinava Gupta series (which meets on zoom every Friday at 11am PST via the house link here), we use three verses from our text to substantiate our claims on grace:

आदर्शे मलरहिते यद्वद्वदनं विभाति तद्वदयम्।
शिवशक्तिपातविमले धीतत्त्वे भाति भारूपः॥९॥

Just like a face  shines in a mirror free of impurities, exactly like this, this Shining One (śiva/Self) shines resplendently in that intellect which has been made spotless by Lord Shiva’s grace.

परमं यत् स्वातन्त्र्यं दुर्घटसम्पादनं महेशस्य।
देवी मायाशक्तिः स्वात्मावरणं शिवस्यैतत्॥१५॥

The Goddess Māyāśakti is the Supreme Freedom of the Great Lord  to accomplish (sampādanam) that which is impossible/inconceivable (durghata): the covering (āvarana) of his very own self (svātma).

एकस्मिन्घटगगने रजसा व्याप्ते भवन्ति नान्यानि।
मलिनानि तद्वदेते जीवाः सुखदुःखभेदजुषः॥३७॥

If the space within one pot is filled with dust, the space within other pots is not stained. Just like that are these individual beings who experience the duality of pleasure and pain/happiness and sorrow.

We also gave these two talks on grace some time ago:
Śaktipāta & The Role of Grace In Tantra | Vijñāna-Bhairava Tantra and also
How To Receive God's Grace | Śaktipāta in Kashmir Shaivism

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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
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Last year, on this auspicious occasion of Dhūmāvatī Devī Jayanti (which is the 8th day after the New Moon of Vaiśakh) we gave a series on talks on this very mysterious and often feared phase of Mā's personality (Who is Mā Dhūmāvatī? & Worshipping Mā Dhūmāvatī) where we explored Her origin story, Her symbology and Her significance in theory and practice.

This year, we decided to go further and ask: "given that Dhūmāvatī Devī is associated to alaxmī, inauspiciousness and given that she favors widows, widowers, the lonely, outcastes, mendicants and those who live in cremation grounds, why would a householder in a happy marriage or a person interested in success and auspicious (which is arguably most of us) ever want to approach her?! Wouldn't doing so only invite calamity?!

In response to this important question, we present about 4 reasons why everyone should consider worshipping this often misunderstood and under-represented form of Mā! You'll find a playlist of all our videos on the Mahāvidyās here. 

Here is the dhyāna-śloka (meditation mantra) we used in the talk: 

vivarṇā cañcalā ruṣṭā dirghā ca malināmbarā ।
vivarṇakuntalā rūkṣā vidhavā viraladvijā ॥
kākadhvajarathārūḍhā vilambitapayodharā।
śūrpahastātirūkṣākṣī dhṛtahastā varānvitā॥
pravṛddhaghoṇā tu bhṛśaṃ kuṭilā kuṭilekṣaṇā ।
kṣutpipāsārditā nityaṃ bhayadā kalahapriyā ॥

Pale and restless, irritable and old
Clad in soiled garments
Pale-haired, dry-skinned
A widow with few teeth|
Mounted atop a chariot whose flag is a crow
With drooping breasts and surpassingly cruel eyes
Who holds a winnowing basket
Who shows the boon bestowing gesture
A crone with crooked nose and crooked eyes
Who is always hungry and thirsty, quarrelsome and fearsome.

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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
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First, we present a rendition of Swami Vivekananda's profound and stirring song in Sanskrit to Shiva, the Great God along with an English translation by Swami Prabhavananda. I am especially fond of this song! We then make a few comments about why the days of the week are so significant and how to do a daily chanting practice based on the deity that is exalted on each day. Then, after a brief commentary on the Shiva Stotram and its origins and meaning, I make a case for music as a spiritual practice!

Here is a playlist of all the kirtanas, bhajanas and musical performances in our community over the years!

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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
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In this talk, we develop some the ideas from the Is There Free Will? lecture: if there is no free will, then, what's the point exactly? Isn't spiritual life all about freedom? If freedom is the goal, can such a freedom ever be articulated on the level of the embodied individual if after all, as we claimed last week, there is no freedom in a real sense for the embodied individual since Mother alone is doing everything? What then is "moksha", liberation, exactly?

To answer all of these important questions, we take up Thakur Sri Ramakrishna's definition of jīvanmukti. embodied liberation while in the body and mind (i.e anytime we are not in nirvikalpa samādhi) and also consider what this mukti, liberation looks like in a "videha" sense, when we are fully identified with Mā who is not only Free but is Freedom Itself.

In this talk, we especially focus on God's freedom and why it is an absolute given. We argue for how God's freedom implies Her absolute non-duality. And if I am God, (as indeed I must be since no second reality exists apart from that) then, am I not also free, as God? What then to make of the hard deterministic position we were arguing for in Is There Free Will?

But mainly, this is a talk about surrendering totally to Kālī, having understood her Absolute Freedom. Mā always gets Her way, so like Shiva, one can only smile and watch Her dance!

Hit Me Up x

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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
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After giving two talks establishing God (Proof for God & What is God in Tantra?) a in response to various objections from non-theistic traditions like scientific materialism, Buddhism, Sāmkhya & Advaita Vedanta, we are now left with an interesting question: what about the Problem of Evil?

The usual response to this dilemma from the theistic position is to assert free-will. God is indeed all-powerful and all-good and because of that goodness, God cannot be a tyrant and so affords each individual the dignity of free-will; the reason there is any evil in the world at all then is because individuals abuse this free will to harm one and another and God, tragically, will not intervene since to do so would be to rob each individual soul of its most basic dignity, its freedom to choose. 

 In his 1893 world-famous "Paper on Hinduism", which he delivered at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago, Swami Vivekananda also points out that without the theory of karma, God would be quite despicable. Why are some people born cripples and others healthy? If there are no past lives, then God is the cause for one person being born poor and another rich. Would this not be a capricious God who arbitrarily decides what each embodied soul's starting point will be, putting some further ahead on the track and others further back? 

No, a better explanation is that God is not inflicting these things upon us but that we ourselves, with our actions good and bad in past lives have ourselves created the chain of cause and effect that have led to our current predicament, for better or for worse. It is up to us to take responsibility for our karmic predicament, without blaming the all-good, all-powerful God and to seize upon our free will to make better choices, in thought, word and deed that don't only create better karmic situations for us in the future but ideally, that take us beyond the wheel of karma entirely! 

However, here is a complexity: there is no free will (as I will try to show in the talk).

Yes, there might be the illusory feeling of free will that God creates in the soul but ultimately, if God is to be all powerful then she is also Absolute, and absolutely non-dual. She it is who plays the role of the individual, she is the world in which the individual has its being, She it is who is pulling the strings the whole time! Not even a leaf moves but by the will of God! 

But philosophically, look what has happened! If we say ultimately souls don't have free will and that Mother is doing everything, then, free will is no longer available to us a defense against the problem of evil! Now, we have to accept that God is all-good but also...all-bad and somehow, beyond both good and bad! In short, we have to accept the theology of Kali, the Worship of the Terrible, the highest calling of the non-dual theist. Enter only those who dare misery love. 

TLDR: in this talk I present my favorite view which is Absolute Theism leading to determinism on the individual level to maintain Absolute Freedom on the Divine level which invites a whole new kind of challenging theodicy! 

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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
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In Verse 104, of the Vijñāna-Bhairava Tantra, we come across a profound teaching:

विहाय निजदेहस्थं सर्वत्रास्मीति भावयन्।

दृढेन मनसा दृष्ट्या नान्येक्षिण्या सुखी भवेत्॥ १०४॥

vihāya nijadehasthaṁ sarvatrāsmīti bhāvayan |

dṛḍhena manasā dṛṣṭyā nānyekṣiṇyā sukhī bhavet || 104 ||

"By abandoning the sense that the self abides only in one’s own body, and by contemplating with a firm mind that “I am everywhere”, without any other kind of seeing (through a-paroksha-anubhūti, direct mystic experience), one becomes happy (i.e enlightened)!"

I felt that this verse captured the very essence of spiritual life and spelled out the whole journey from start to finish which is a journey from limitation to absolute freedom, from jīva (limited individuality) to śīva (all inclusive one-ness), from selfishness to selflessness. 

We explore this idea using the Tantrik & Hatha Yoga languaging around Kula Kundalinī, our own power of identification and how she moves from the mūlādhāra (where she identifies only with the limited mind-body complex) to the sahasrāra (where she unites with śiva in super-sensuous bliss!) through the various chakras in the sushumnā nādi. 

I was especially moved by emphasis on direct, immediate spiritual experience (aparokshanubhūti) as the necessary condition of realization that appears in the second half of the verse! As Swami Vivekananda defined it, "religion is realization", not frothy talk or belief!

This is indeed the goal, but how do we get there?

This verse not only tells us the mechanism of spiritual life, and the final outcome but also presents the means: dṛḍhena manasā , through unrelenting, firm, consistent and constant practice! 

We talk about what practice really means and discuss the role of grace and make a case for the importance of prayer, which Sri Ramakrishna very much emphasized. 

This lecture is part of our weekly Vijñāna-Bhairava Tantra class series which meets live every Thursday at 7:30pm (ish) here. You'll find our lecture directory for the course here. 

Hit Me Up x

Support the show

Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
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For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
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To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM