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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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. 

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When we say this Universe is internal to consciousness, as we do in Non-Dual Philosophy, are we making a solipsistic claim? In this Q&A discussion after our Friday morning discussion on Turning Non-Dual Teachings into Non-Dual Practices | Paramārthasāra, Verse 37 we discuss so many wonderful things!

Sri Devi asks beautiful questions about idealism and in response, we show why Advaita, Non-Duality is not solipsism! From this, we come to understand the role of śakti on Non-Dual Tantra as the raw potential that actualizes all possibilities from moment to moment! We then present a yardstick for figuring out whether or not we've really understood Advaita, Non-Duality.

Then Gretchen Devi tells us about the Holographic Universe and we present the non-dual claim that you are Shiva, Pure Consciousness and also Shakti, the dynamic dance of the Universe that shines in Consciousness as an expression of radical freedom and joy!

Paola Devi makes a case for the dynamic aspect of Awareness, Shakti which is Becoming grounded in the static aspect, Shiva, which is Being. As such, we can say Shiva-Shakti is Being-Becoming! As an aside, I make a rebuttal to Buddhism to establish Time, Kālī as the Absolute Reality!

Then, Jaimie Devi makes a defense of the new Matrix movie and opens up a beautiful discussion about the Problem of Evil and coming to terms with both macrocosmic and microcosmic suffering through the worship of Kālī!

Finally, Allistairji shares his Mother's reflections on how Kālī worship is the panacea for the dualities of Good vs Evil/Spirit vs Matter which has haunted religion and the human psyche for far too long!

Here is a playlist of our Q&A discussions over the years!

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Perhaps one of the reasons all the various religions in the world are fighting and killing each other is because they never took the time to clarify to one another what, precisely, they meant by the term "God"? 

Often when atheists criticize religion, they only conceive of God along Abrahamic lines, and poorly at that. But the Abrahamic notions of God (while also being more diverse than many realize), are but a small part of the discourse. In India, during the course of our 9000 year (or so, by conservation estimates) civilization in which we have focused the main efforts of cultural life on spirituality, many very subtle and refined notions of God were realized! For example:

1. Nirguna Nirākara, God who is Impersonal and Formless like what the Buddhist and the Advaita Vedantin proposes
2. Saguna Nirākara, God who is Personal but Formless like we find in Abrahamic religion 
3. Saguna Sākara, God who is both Personal and with Form (like Kālī, Krishna etc.) 
4. The Avatāra, God as an incarnation on earth (Rāma, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Chaitanya, Ramakrishna)
To name a few! 

Some traditions on the subcontinent favor one of these over the others. Some take an exclusive view, some prefer a more hierarchical, inclusive approach and yet others, like our tradition, maintain a pluralistic position: all these conceptions (and in fact all conceptions of God) are all equally valid since God, the Absolute Reality, can never be limited! There is no end to what we can discover in Her, no end to what She can reveal to us! 

Having said that, what is the Tāntrik view on God? Since Tantra is largely a theistic tradition (oriented around the idea of God), in this lecture, we track some of the various concepts of God that have emerged over the years. 

This is part of an introductory series of lectures on the foundational ideas of Tantra. You can watch the other videos in this series here.

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As part our How To Do Tantrik Pūjā, we now start discussing the next moment in our puja-krama, sequence of worship: Gaṇeśa puja! This a bit like a talk we gave some time back called

We'll go over the necessary nyāsa, dhyāna, pūjā and pranāmah mantras in the next class for a more detailed worship but in this talk, I just wanted to say a few things about Pauranic vs Vedic Gaṇeśa and discuss Tantrik Gaṇeśawith reference to Mūlādhāra Chakra and our embodied being to contextualize why its so important to get his blessing before beginning any Tāntrik sādhanās. Mainly, we go over the importance of the body in spiritual life, and the symbology of Gaṇeśa's meditation mantra: 

oṁ kharvaṁ sthūlatanuṁ gajendra-vadanaṁ lambodaraṁ sundaraṁ
prasyandan-mada-gandha-lubdha-madhupa-vyālola-gaṇḍa-sthalam।
dantāghāta-vidāritāri-rudhiraiḥ sindūra-śobhākaraṁ
vande śailasutāsutaṁ gaṇapatiṁ siddhipradaṁ kāmadam॥

OM, I pray to Gaṇapati, Lord of the Gaṇas, Pārvatī's son, the giver of all perfecton and fulfiller of all desires, who is short and stout of build with a large belly, the beautiful elephant-faced king of the elephants surrounded by bess intoxicated by his fragrance (streaming fluids), whose cheeks are quivering with the blood of enemies torn asunder by the striking of his tusks, making him beautiful (as if) annointed with vermillion!

After chanting this mantra, you can worship Gaṇeśa internally, in your heart using your imagination (māsana-pūjā) and/or you can offer a simple red flower at the feet of your picture, statue or lamp with the following mantra:
oṁ gaṁ ētē gandhapuṣpē gaṇeśāya namaḥ

And then, you can conclude by chanting these prayer mantras:

oṁ devendramaulimandāramakarandakaṇāruṇāḥ
vighnaṁ harantu heramba-caraṇāmbuja-reṇavaḥ

May the red dust of the lotus like feet of Heramba Gaṇeśa, the Lord of the Gods, whose crown is adorned with the red nectar of the mandāra flower remove all obstacles!

oṁ ekadantaṁ mahākāyaṁ lambodaraṁ gajānanam
vighnanāśakaraṁ devaṁ herambaṁ praṇamāmyaham

I bow to the divine elephant-faced, single-tusked Heramba Gaṇeśa with a large body and big belly who destroys all obstacle!

oṁ sarvavighnavināśāya sarvakalyāṇahetave
pārvatīpriyaputrāya gaṇeśāya namo Namah

I salute that Gaṇeśa the beloved son of Pārvatī, the destroyer of all obstacles and the cause of all auspiciousness.

Jai Śrī Heramba Gaṇeśa Ki Jai!

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The krishna-ekadaśi (11th day of the waning moon) right before Phalahārinī Pūjā is known as the Apara-ekadaśi and it coincides with Bhadrakālī Jayanti, the celebration of Mā in her "auspicious" form. While the word "Bhadra" (which can be both a noun and an adjective) means something like "auspicious", "noble", "protectress" etc. we have to ask: what does that really mean? Is this a gentle (saumya) form of Kālī as contrasted with how She is usually depicted in Her smaśāna/ghora (cremation ground/fierce) form? Or do we just have to update our understanding of the word "auspicious" to include even those aspects of life that the mind rejects? In this talk, we read excerpts from Swami Vivekananda's Bengali poem to Kālĩ "And Let Shyāma Dance There" we we learn about the Worship of the Terrible and Mā's Non-Dual, All-Inclusive Form which will radically change the way we understand "auspicious"-ness in the context of spiritual life.

Also, we tell some stories from the Puranas to make the case that Vīra-bhadra, in the well-known immolation of Sati/destrcution of Daksha's sacrifice story can be seen as synonymous with Bhadrakālī.
Of course, I make a case as to why the latter, female version is better, theologically.

This will help us understand why Mā in many of her sahasranāmas stotravalis (thousand names hymns) is called "Daksha-yajña-vināśinī", the one who destroys Daksha's sacrifice.

May this be an offering to Her, the auspicious one, who destroys all false ideas and tears down all pretense!

PS: here is a playlist (our signature series, our flagship course), all of our talks on Mā.

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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and Friday 10am PST and again Friday at 6pm PST.
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I wanted to explore the relationship between spiritual wellbeing and physical health to make the somewhat surprising claim: intense spiritual practice can sometimes compromise health! This is because, in the course of intense sādhana, Kula Kundalinī, our personal

Shakti, progressively loosens its hold on the physical body. As such, in this talk I argue for the importance of Hatha Yoga practice to purify the prāna, to purify the blood and to fortify the nerves to account for this strain on the system sketched out above.

Many "spiritual emergencies" might come down to just this: experiences have occured in a body ill equipped to whitstand the electrical shock of realization So we must prepare the body!

I want to share with you our Kaula heritage of Hatha Yoga as articulated by the Nath Sampradāya and I want to tell you the story of Kukuripa and the black dog, arguing for the power of mantra and the allyship of Kula Kundalini.

We read a little bit from the "Life of Swami Vivekananda by His Eastern and Western Disciples" towards the end!

I pray this conversation inspires you to take up the study and practice of Hatha Yoga in a systematic and dedicated way!

Here is our full playlist of our Hatha Yoga classes over the years. We meet live on zoom for practice every Wednesday at 11am PST and again on Friday at 5pm PST via the house link here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7028380815
And Kuleśvarī Mā teaches Mondays at 5pm PST, Tuesdays at 3pmPST and Thursdays at 5pm PST, before the evening talks.

Image from https://mydattatreya.com/matsyendranath/

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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and Friday 10am PST and again Friday at 6pm PST.
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This was a fire Questions & Answers discussion! 

After our Monday evening talk earlier this week, we explore some of the ecological, economical, political & sociological implications of Kālī sādhana. I make a case for overcoming all guilt and shame in the quest of personal self-expression, especially for women who are so often socialized to feel that their every impulse and desire is morally and culturally problematic. We discuss what it would be like to remove all barriers to a woman's being and, for lack of a better word, wild-ness and how Kālī sādhana demands just this. 

Along the same lines, we discuss the "taboo of menses": can I woman enter a temple and do sādhana during the time of her month? is there any reason behind this idea? We explore the reverence that Kaula Marga has for menses as the most potent and magical substances, with a reference to Mā' yoni in Kamakhya, Assam and Ambuvachi, when Mā bleeds. And then we compare this to the Dakshina marga or Brahmanical orthodox view that blood of all kinds is an impure and polluting substances to have a more well-rounded view of the issue across the entire spectrum of the tradition! 

Such wonderful questions and rich reflections. Thank you all for coming and participating! 

Jai Mā Kālī!

And here is a playlist (our signature series, our flagship course), all of our talks on Mā.

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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and Friday 10am PST and again Friday at 6pm PST.
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Here is a brief and exultant sketch of Mā Kālī's journey from ancient pre-history into the most esoteric and elite Tantrik circles and into the mainstream Bhakti movement of Bengal and from there into the hearts and homes of people all over the world! 

Without all of those who have come before us (and I was only able to mention so few of them in this talk), who have each given their entire lives to the work of making Mā accessible to all sincere devotees, we quite literally would not be here all together, enjoying each other's holy company and talking Tantra for hours on end week after week, year after year. 

I am so grateful to all of them. 
I am so grateful to all of you. 
I am so happy. 

Here's to many more years together playing in Mā's playground! May all of this be an offering to Mā Kālī who comes to me in the form of all of you. May I have no God but you, O Mā who appears as all of these people! May I worship you in them with all of these words, which are offered as so many flowers to you in the form of this sangha! I love you, I love you, I love you. I am mad with love for you! I give you my life! 

Jai Mā! Jai Mā! Jai Mā Kālī! Jai Thakur! Jai SwamijI! Jai Gurudeva! 

Relevant References:

And here is a playlist (our signature series, our flagship course), all of our talks on Mā.

Some of the material from this talk is fleshed out a little more in talks like Ramprasad Sen, Mā Kālī's Mystic Poet, Ramakrishna & Ma Bhavatārini Kālī at Dakshineshwar and What Does Kali Actually Look Like? which is all about the dhyāna-mantra (visualization chant) that we offered in beginning.

Usha Harding's pivotal book which I mentioned in the video is called "Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineshwar." Do check out Usha Mā's documentary "A Day at the Dakshineswar Temple" which you can watch here.

Here is all the music and pūjā recordings from the early Kali Mandir Laguna Beach pūjās which I mentioned in the talk. You can hear Sri Haradhanji's unique chanting voice!

And importantly, I only briefly mentioned it, but here is Uma Sanasrayan's important documentary about our Hollywood Kali Puja tradition. Uma is the one who has been making the murtis for Mā for our annual Hollywood temple Shyama Kali Puja. 

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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and Friday 10am PST and again Friday at 6pm PST.
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Yesterday, on the new moon in the Vedic month of Vaishakh (Jyeshtha by Purnimanta calendar), we celebrated a most auspicious occasion: the Phalaharini Kali Puja. It is an especially significant day for our lineage and so in this short talk, we discuss why. 

We tell the story of Sri Ramakrishna's culminating puja which punctuates his 12-year period of intense of spiritual practice!

Here is a short pūjā that we did for the online community to mark the occasion! And here is a playlist on all of our talks on Mā. 

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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and Friday 10am PST and again Friday at 6pm PST.
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