After Navratri: Preserving What Nine Days of Sadhana Accumulated

The speaker answers a question left over from a previous session, taking the cases in order. After birth or death Sutak, whatever is worn on the body: if it is on a thread, the thread is to be changed. If the Kavach is in copper, it is immersed. If it is in silver but worn on a thread, only the thread is changed. The japa mala and the GomukhiA cloth rosary bag, shaped like a cow's face, used to conceal the hand and rosary while chanting mantras in public. are washed. The mala is bathed with Panchagavya or Panchamrita and with Gangajal, then scented with Tri-Agaru and sandal water, and after that given Agni Sparsh — contact with fire, which holds the boon that whatever it touches becomes pure. The method: on a copper plate or in a copper vessel, kindle pure Bhimseni camphor; invoking Agni Devata and Bhagavati SwahaThe closing utterance for an oblation offered into fire for the devas, as distinct from Swadha, used for the pitrs. and meditating on them, pass the bathed mala very rapidly through the middle of that flame, right across. It should not burn. Even once done rapidly is enough, but it should be done three or five times. That contact makes the mala fully pure and destroys any Patak or Ashaucha fault present in it. He notes when this becomes especially necessary: where the place of worship is not separate — where the same room everyone comes and goes through holds the worship space, so that someone's body may have touched it. On the thread itself he is permissive: there is no need to cut the whole thread apart, remove every knot and have it restrung. Do that when it actually breaks. And whenever a mala breaks and is restrung, Prana Pratishtha should be performed again — he points listeners to the channel's earliest videos, where the full Prana Pratishtha procedure was given.

The speaker gives the SankalpaA formal ritual resolution spoken aloud before an offering or observance, declaring its intent and dedicating its merit. formula he tells listeners to use whenever they undertake an AnushthanaAn extended ritual observance — such as 108 recitations of a scripture — carrying its own strict rules. on his advice. Always take the Sankalp for obtaining the grace of whoever you are performing the Anushthan for; and if you are additionally taking a Sankalp for mantra Siddhi, add this too — that whenever we apply this mantra after its accomplishment, its full effect should be obtained by us at the time of application. He gives the form as it would run for a Mahabhairav mantra, and notes immediately that an ordinary Hindi Sankalp serves just as well. His reason for pressing self-performed Anushthan generally: even if Brahma himself were acting as your priest, it remains necessary that you perform the Anushthan yourself.

The speaker distinguishes shortfall from negligence. Some more, some less — we are human. But where you have the capacity and knowingly create a deficiency, that becomes your offence. His reading of the reasoning people use is unsparing. Where a person with financial and physical capacity thinks that it is not really necessary to offer Bhog or NaivedyaThe food offering (Bhog) presented to a deity during worship, accompanied by water offerings and dedicatory mantras. or a betel leaf today, that the Mother is pleased by Bhava alone, it means one thing only: through laziness and negligence he deliberately does not wish to complete the worship. Disgust is entering it. He is thinking, who will do all this — let us do it short. He grants the forgiveness and then places it precisely. BhagavatiThe Goddess addressed by her honorific, used across these talks for whichever form is under discussion. will certainly forgive that negligence, but remember that it will serve you in the next world; it will not serve in this one. He works the point through the case of a demon taking refuge at the moment of his death: the Goddess will still slay him, and having taken refuge at the end, his onward motion afterwards will be divine and he will be worshipped among her Ganas — but he will not receive material happiness in this life for taking her name at the end. Applied back: a person who has the capacity for a thousand deceits, who knows how to practise deceit professionally in an office, who has the intelligence for office politics and for oppressing juniors and troubling seniors, becomes clever before Bhagavati alone and offers Bhava in place of substance. Where you create a deficiency in material substance, he says, there will certainly be a deficiency in your material life.

The speaker warns against reading present comfort as proof that shortfall costs nothing. Do not think that we created so much deficiency and still have plenty — that is prior karma, still standing. The offence you are committing now knowingly, through negligence, will be borne by you and by your descendants. His accounting is generational. Your forefathers worshipped well and you received the fruit of it. However lavishly they performed their Archan and Pujan with flowers, leaves, sweets and Prasad, in that same measure the Goddess is giving you comfort and capability today. That merit will not decay so quickly. But when the fruit of your forefathers' effort is exhausted, when the fruit of their Devi worship is finished and yours begins, then it will give fruit according to you — as much shortfall as you created, that much shortfall will come into your life. He is direct about who supplies the reasoning. The offence is committed under the influence of some wicked and base person who deliberately plants such subjects in your mind, telling you to create shortfall in worship. That is what he wants; that is his intention. Kalanemi-type people, who repeatedly say that before the Mother it is not like that — who commit every offence while saying Ma, Ma, Ma. Their punishment will fall on them; the speaker names them Mundis and points to the Tripura chapter of the Shiv Mahapuran (Shiv Puran), saying these are the incarnation of those Mundis. Whichever follower of Sanatana Dharma they may be, Vaishnav, ShaktaBelonging to the stream that takes the Goddess as the supreme principle. or Shaiva, they are the same. And the Bhava-only argument he places once more: the fruit of the Bhava with which you worshipped will certainly be received by you in the next world — the excellent enjoyment and the excellent birth after death. What was an unseen thing, he says, will be obtained in the unseen world; for you and me that is a matter of a different dimension, so it is unseen. The desire you are making here is not that.

The speaker sets the exemption against the case he has just condemned. If a person is not capable — if the poor man simply has no money, if Jagadamba has not made him materially capable — the matter is different. A destitute practitioner who performs even a Manas Stuti from the heart with Bhava satisfies every one of them: his household deities, his family deities, and Ma Jagadamba. The fruit of mental worship, he says, has always been held the highest; and it is said alongside that where a person is not capable, if he performs mental worship its fruit is the best of all. He adds a rule that applies even to those performing full physical worship: whatever Upachara you use — ShodashopacharaThe full sixteen-item worship sequence for a deity, more elaborate than the basic five-item [[panchopachara]] offering., Rajopachara — a PanchopacharaThe basic five-item worship sequence — incense, lamp, fragrance, flower, and food — performed for a deity after the opening rites of a sadhana. worship must also be performed mentally within it. No worship at all is held complete without Manasopachara. He is careful not to alarm anyone: do not think that because you have not been doing this, something is wrong; as you advance in the subject, these things become known to you of themselves.

The speaker describes the second exempt case. A practitioner who through physical worship has moved towards Advaita now sees no difference between Shiva, Vishnu, Jagadamba, Narayana and Ganapati. His mental strength has become so firm that wherever he sits, his Jagadamba is seated there. He has no desire for material substance and does not want wealth or a car or anything else — he is satisfied. Whether he is a millionaire, a billionaire or beyond, the three PurusharthaA practitioner's own intense, sustained effort — the one thing within their control, since the fruit (Phala) of Sadhana itself is not.s of Dharma, Artha and Kama have been obtained and his desires are fulfilled. If he sits and performs Manasopachara worship, both fruits will come to him: he has no material desire remaining, the Mother has already given him material comfort, and the unseen category of worship he is performing is enough to carry him onward. No fault attaches to him, he says, because he is not performing ostentation — a capable man performing no ostentation.

The speaker's caution is that people take up the endpoint and skip the road. Know the whole subject before following divine persons. His examples are specific. You cannot follow Ramakrishna Paramahamsa — you are going to imitate his divinity directly, and that will not happen for you. Vama Khepa is being imitated after he had already become a divine person; that is not possible. Why, he asks, do you not want to imitate his early period, when he was performing sadhana? He would sit continuously for two and four days at a stretch under a Semal tree without rising, and lie in the cremation ground for days without getting up — and it was not theatre. It was the condition that came upon him from that, the speaker says, that got him named Khepa Baba, and later Vama Khepa. Do you have the capacity to sit and perform japa and austerity that long? On Ramakrishna he is blunter still: people today do not discuss the excellent Vamachara sadhana he performed. Does anyone have the capacity to do it? They look only at his having become Paramahamsa, at his cutting Kali with a sword — divinity like that will not be accomplished for you. Before that there was his full Panchamakara Kaula sadhana, which nobody discusses, and before that his early Dakshinachara sadhana — how he used to worship with his brother, how Bhagavati used to enter his body. Discuss those and people stand up at once — but it is not ostentation and not hypocrisy, he says; it is the actual subject. You simply do not have the capacity to digest it, which is why nobody puts it in front of you. Whoever wishes to walk truly, he says, should get into these subjects, look, know, understand, and then increase progressively. And the same applies to the matter of mental worship: carry the worship in accordance with whatever your own stage is, and do not create shortfall or excess.

Having condemned deliberate skimping at length, the speaker draws the boundary on the other side. Do not create shortfall or excess — but if, in the course of doing it, some deficiency comes into our capability, that is a different matter. Where we are performing the service and worship, where we are trying that no shortfall occurs, and by mistake something was left out — something we had brought and could not offer, some element that remained undone — there is no difficulty at all in it. His reason is that it is already covered by the closing prayer: in the Kshama PrarthanaThe plea for pardon made at the close of a rite for whatever was done wrongly or left out. we do say that Mother, if anything more or less has happened through negligence, forgive it. That will certainly be forgiven, because you have not done it knowingly. Bear this in mind, he says. He then closes the whole first section by returning to the sequence itself: proceeding in this way with Sankalp and sadhana, the nine-day fast is completed, Havan and the rest are performed at the completion, Kanya Pujan is performed, and after that you take the ParanThe formal breaking of a vrat at its appointed time, without which the observance is held incomplete. and perform the Visarjan — everything is complete.

The speaker marks the transition. When the nine-day fast is complete, the Havan performed, the Kanya Pujan done, the Paran taken and the Visarjan finished — everything complete — then from the day after you broke the fast, a rule should be established for you, permanently. That rule, he says, is what will preserve this nine-day Navratri sadhana. The merit and the energy that the japa, the austerity, the Havan and the recitation are about to yield will not merely be preserved for a long period; it will be increased, progressively increased, and along with it the divine experiences will come and what is called the piercing of secrets will be obtained. He contrasts the two outcomes he sees. Many ordinary practitioners obtain various kinds of divinity and reach the secrets. And how many practitioners perform worship with a great deal of noise and display — everything present — and the matter becomes hollow from inside. The reason, he says, is that it remains a mere nine-day show, where a status has to be maintained: look how loudly worship is performed at our house. After that, the matter is finished.

The speaker names the first offence and works through what the fast actually did. A fast is above all the renunciation of taste. In Navratri the state is such that the organs within the body also go into fast: they have to work as little as possible. A person takes a little sherbet, a little juice, as much liquid diet as possible — by which the body's toxicity is also removed — and alongside it a very little fruit according to the body's capacity, or where even that is not possible, one meal of ordinary grain such as a kuttu flour roti, just enough to keep things moving. He interrupts himself to exclude the people this does not apply to: those who prepare various kinds of delicacies and eat them, and those who during the fast eat fruit until the stomach is full and they are belching — for them the fast has no meaning and the worship is pointless anyway. The mistake, then: as soon as Navratri is complete you begin eating a great deal of grain at once, reasoning that the diet must be maintained or the body will weaken. Even that, he allows, is acceptable — but there you were taking Satvik food, and here, if you begin eating onion and garlic immediately, saying that today the Dashami Paran has happened and you must have onion pakoras today, that becomes a problem.

The speaker gives the mechanism behind the dietary rule. Ours is the Annamaya Kosha, the sheath made of food. In Navratri you purified it. Only when the Annamaya Kosha is purified does the presence of our aura become white in colour. When it is white, the quantity of Satvik energies within it rises — and however many lesser or negative or un-white powers there may be in the world, whether emerged from divine elements, separated from them, or dwelling under their shelter, none of them can ever establish dominance over such a person. The more your whiteness increases and the more Satvik energy your subtle body holds, the more radiant you become. He asks the listener to check it directly. After Navratri, once you have broken the fast, slept a night and let the body relax for a day or two, look at your own aura. You will be fully satisfied; the mind will be entirely at peace; the face will look bright. That divinity of the days during and after Navratri is different. The conclusion is practical: this is the thing to be maintained, and eating a great deal of grain at once immediately disturbs the Koshas. Follow a limit and a diet; do not tamper with it heavily. Increase gradually and come back to your original diet by around Purnima.

The speaker names the second renunciation the nine days involved: BrahmacharyaStrict celibacy required through an extended ritual observance. observed mentally and physically throughout Navratri. The mistake is ending it the moment the fast does. Now that Navratri is over, going straight back to household relations; those with partners going at once to meet them. It should not be so, he says — this becomes the greatest mistake of all. To take energy and merit collected with that much effort and spend it in that way is not proper. His rule: first of all, Brahmacharya should certainly be observed up to Purnima. There should not be that much fire. He anticipates the reaction and does not soften it. Many people will feel badly about this, he knows; there are followers who find these subjects difficult, and to them he says in advance not to listen, because otherwise it will trouble them and gnaw at them from within. You have received a human life — bring humanity within. You have not received the life of a dog, to go putting your mouth about on this side of the road and that. If that is your condition, he asks, why perform Navratri at all. He fences the rule by tradition: you are a householder walking the Dakshinachara path, you are not a Kaula, you are not a Shakta, you have had no initiation of the kind where Shakti worship must be performed by that route.

The speaker puts the case in plain terms of cost. Gradually, through however much japa and austerity you performed — perhaps a SavalakhOne hundred and twenty-five thousand — the count a purascharana of many mantras is reckoned in. japa, perhaps more — you did the tenth-part Havan. Your time went into it. Your energy was spent. Your money was spent. And after that you take these ten days of effort and spend them at once. That is your own loss, he says. What is going from me in this? Nothing of mine is going; it is yours that is going. And he adds that he would never want effort of that kind to go to waste — so let it be preserved. He attaches a warning to the self-declared: if your condition is such that none of this applies to you, then you are divine and have no need to listen to this channel — self-declared people in particular.

This is the core of the session's practical instruction. The best way to preserve it, the speaker says, is that some portion of the japa and the recitation you performed during Navratri should continue — of whatever you accomplished. He rejects the alternative flatly: it is not that we performed japa and austerity for ten days and now sit free of it. That should not happen; you cannot sit free. The counts he gives: whether you performed the Chakra-method recitation of the 32 NamavaliA written list of a deity's names — such as Durga's 108 names written out separately for ease of offering individual Havan oblations to each. of Bhagavati Durga with Havan, or 11,000 or 1,100 japa, or 11,000 of the Jayanti Mangala, or the japa of the second mantra of Vindhyavasini's Ratri Sukta — from Ekadashi at least, you should continue a minimum of one mala. At most, do ten if you can. Where the mantra is long, do one mala only. Where you performed an Ekakshari, a Panchakshari or a Navakshari, eight to ten malas should certainly be done — with less than ten malas, he asks, what will really come of it. For Bhagavan Datta's Ekakshari and the like, ten malas should certainly run. And alongside the mantra, the Kavach: both the Kavach and the mantra should continue together.

The speaker adds one observance to the daily japa. Those who are performing japa in this way should, on the day of Purnima, perform a light Havan once again. He sets the scale deliberately low so that it is not skipped: not a very extensive one — even of a single mala, that is fine — but that Havan should certainly be performed.

The speaker calls this a pointed matter and asks the listener to hold it separately from their ordinary troubles — debt, disease, family conflict, police cases, land disputes all remain where they are. What happened in the nine days is separate: through the fast, the method, the worship, the japa and the Havan, a whiteness came to be present in the body, an abode of auspicious powers came to be present in the subtle body and the aura, and the divinity of the mantra came to be present. And which power, he asks, is most attracted by that? Negative energy, soonest of all. Because you are now positive — so why would negative come towards you? It will come saying: give me too my onward motion; or, we are hungry, feed us, you have the capacity, you are a capable practitioner. It does not care in the least what Siddhi you hold, he says. It sees only one thing — and it is able to see. These energies are capable of seeing. You and I may not be, but it can see that this person has performed japa and austerity, that he has the capacity of the mantra, that he has energy.

The speaker asks how your energy will remain in that condition. As soon as you broke the fast after ten days you dropped everything: you are not doing the Kavach, not doing japa, not doing even a small Havan, not doing any special worship — you have become entirely carefree, thinking, fine, we performed Navratri. Now these things will dominate you, he says, and that is why you will see practitioners who were doing very well during Navratri falling ill two or four days after it. Some begin to be possessed. It was fine during Navratri — what happened now? Then comes the conclusion that the Navratri worship went to waste, that so much was done and nothing came of it. His explanation is the reverse. This is happening precisely because you took the whole treasure you were holding and left it out to be looted, all at once. It is not to be dropped like that. He presses the reader to look at it as a science rather than a fright: this is Para Vigyan, understand it. You cannot drop it like that. You have not acquired the mastery to bind that energy in proportion at once, to filter it at once, to put an obstruction on it at once — you do not know that technique yet, you are entirely raw. And the raw practitioner, the unripe one, is in the greatest difficulty of all.

The speaker names what he considers the biggest single hazard for a raw practitioner. The greatest difficulty, he says, is the ten people who dispense knowledge; they are the cause of the greatest difficulty. His reading of the motive: ninety-nine percent of people do not want to practise themselves and also want that others should not. So the knowledge they give will be exactly of the kind by which harm comes to those others, by which their decay follows.

The speaker states the exposure plainly: as soon as you drop the worship abruptly after Navratri, every Preta and Pishachik power — whether of your own house, from outside, from the neighbourhood, from a lover's side or from a wife's maternal family — will cling to you the moment it gets the chance. This is not a matter for fear, he says; look at the technique, and understand properly the Para Vigyan and the whole secret behind it. Why does it happen? Because the entire treasure of Navratri is lying accumulated with you. Even if you did ten malas of japa a day, consider what its energy is when the whole atmosphere is one of divinity — everyone charged with energy, performing japa and austerity, a Puja pandal set up near you, mantras being heard, mantra sounds running, Havan happening in place after place, and you performing Havan in it too. You have become auspicious mentally by that alone; your aura has become pure by that alone. He notes it works both ways. Even those who do nothing gain a good deal of positivity during Navratri. And those who are negative persons, upon whom the possession of negative powers is very heavy, go into very deep depression at that time and remain far more miserable. Both things happen. So when you raise positive energy that much, its flow through your body increases fully and your whiteness increases — and then, all at once, you have collected the whole sum. Spiritually this is the entire wealth of sadhana; you gathered the whole property. And after that there is no cordon: you went straight and stood at the crossroads saying, yes, I have it, who will do anything. Those who will, he says, are present in abundance and will begin at once. The easiest way to escape it: daily worship, daily Sandhya. Whatever sadhana you performed there — the Ashtottara Shatanam, the Argala mantra, some mantra of Bhagavati — continue it here. Whichever other channel you listen to, whoever's instruction you took the sadhana from, they too will certainly have told you to do one mala or five malas after Navratri. Do as much as you can; if five are not possible, do one. But the japa of the mantra should continue along with the Kavach. He adds a limit to the whole instruction: we are speaking of divine mantras. The mantras of Bhoot, Preta and Pishach and all that are not what is being discussed here — he is addressing the people of this channel, and does not know what others have done.

The speaker turns to the mistake he treats as costliest: having just completed the japa, beginning at once to apply the mantra — for exorcism, against enemies, for any desired end. He describes the case he means. You had been performing japa of the 32 Namavali, you completed it, everything is done. Today someone in your neighbourhood has a Pishachik possession, and you blow the mantra straight into water, consecrate it, and dispense it. The spirit fled — fine. But your energy has also been spent. What you do not know, he says, is how much was spent. If you had done 11,000 japa, who knows how much of it went there. That depends on which energy is on the other body and how much merit that person has left — theirs and yours both. His correction of the underlying assumption is direct: do not remain under the illusion that you obtained inexhaustible energy. You did not. Merit is what will be inexhaustible; and merit too is being reduced — that fruit you will receive in the next world, as discussed at the start. Here you will have difficulty. He distinguishes the case that does not cost: Nishkama application is not really an application at all — for BhagavatiThe Goddess addressed by her honorific, used across these talks for whichever form is under discussion.'s pleasure, for grace, for increase in the mantra's own capacity, that is increase rather than expenditure. But where you take a Sankalp that the negative power upon someone should be destroyed and throw consecrated water at it, what you performed as japa is what goes.

The speaker gives the second reason for not applying a mantra immediately. You also do not know what level of energy is upon the person in front of you — what its metaphysics is, at what velocity and from what level it will strike at you. And where it cannot reach you, it will act on the other members of your household: on your brother, your sister, your parents, your wife, your husband, your children — on anyone at all. His reasoning is that you are protected by the mantra's energy and the rest are not. Even if you have made them wear a Kavach, their level cannot be what yours is, because they have not done for themselves what you have. So it will leave you and trouble them. Avoid these mistakes, he says.

The speaker gives the schedule he wants followed before any Kama Prayoga is attempted. Before applying, at minimum let the Purashcharana you performed in one Navratri be repeated across four Navratris — whether Gupt, Prakat or others — and let five Navratris pass. Perform surrender at a Shakti Peeth. Between those, the practice does not stop: 11 malas, 21 malas of that mantra should keep running in the remaining time, and at every festival period both repetition of that mantra and Havan should keep happening. He gives a worked example for a longer festival: in the five-day Diwali period in the month of Kartik, take up a five-day Anushthan. If you have the capacity, perform 250 malas a day — 1,250 malas makes a sava-lakh. Offer 25 malas of oblations each day, so 250 malas of japa with 25 malas of Havan, and do three malas of Tarpan with 30 MarjanThe purificatory sprinkling of consecrated water that completes the Havan-Tarpan-Marjan ritual triad.. His condition on all of it is physical: if you have the capacity, then bring capability into the body — eating, drinking, sitting and rising, exercise, yoga. If you feel you absolutely must apply the mantra, then strengthen yourself in this way first. Jagadamba's own powers will make you experience whether that capability is within you or not. His closing line on the subject is deliberately flat: application is your own private matter, nobody's inheritance, and you are yourself responsible for gain and loss — at your own risk, exactly as the mutual fund disclaimer runs.

Continuing on Prayoga, the speaker lists what a person actually has to know before applying: how much is to be given, what the quantity should be, and how any offence that does form will be resolved. If you do not do this, there will be difficulty. If it lands well, there is no difficulty at all; if it goes wrong, look at the stories running across the whole world — a great deal is going on underneath. His reading of the present moment: a phase is running in which people are firing one mantra and another indiscriminately, everywhere, saying they will do this and they will do that. Nobody is looking at what back damage or back loss is going to follow. He does not forbid it to everyone. Fine, do it, try that too, let every Tantric examine his own subject — there is no difficulty. But if every enlightened person began following him, what would become of the world? So his particular request is to the people who listen to him: apply within very strict limits and after much thought. He gives them strength for Anushthan far more often than for Prayoga, and says he has shared with them several times, in accounts of experience, that things get destroyed even before the application is made.

The speaker separates the certainty from the schedule. A permanent solution is a separate subject and depends on what your case is — but know for sure, he says, that however much japa and austerity you perform, however much you keep increasing the Purashcharana, whatever your Prarabdha may be, it will be cut and you will certainly get past it. What he will not do is put a date on it. It has never happened, he says, that he told anyone it would take a year or six months. Every case is different and its fruit is correspondingly different: some resolve in three months, some in three years — and he notes cases of his own that took five. There are practitioners who became practitioners after twelve or fifteen years of sadhana. He adds the consequence of impatience: if you feel it should happen today or tomorrow and then sit and abuse, the decay from that is yours. Nothing of mine goes in it; my work is to state the correct thing, and to accept or not accept is your wish.

The speaker mentions in passing that if, while performing this Anushthan, the need or the occasion arises and you get the opportunity to go to a Shakti Peeth, there are rules for how a Shakti Peeth Anushthan is to be performed — and a live video on exactly that already exists. He makes a claim about the channel's coverage: he thinks the complete subject is available on it for a person who wants to become a practitioner and walk the path properly. Get deeply into each thing, listen, know, then understand it with your own guru as well, and you can do it correctly. On the guru question itself he draws a line. For the limited sadhanas — those that go up to a certain limit, for obtaining Bhagavati's grace and the like — there is no issue here even without a guru. But for Pratyakshikaran and for Siddhi and Buddhi, he always says the same thing: you need an embodied person, if what you want is to accomplish a Mundi-katwa.

The speaker recounts a phone call from a practitioner in Ranchi received shortly before the previous Navratri. The man had gone to Vindhyachal for the Mother's darshan, met some practitioner there, and had a Siddhi performed for him on the bank of the Ganga — of a Gangaram Aghori Baba whose name he had never heard in his life and whose sadhana he had never performed. He was told this Aghori would protect his house, and that he must give a stream of liquor and similar offerings at home. The speaker's questions are rhetorical and pointed. Were the Bhairavs of Vindhyachal not capable of protecting? There are so many Bhairavs there — eight Mahabhairavs present in the eight directions; a sadhana of any one of them could have been performed. Was Bhagavati Vindhyavasini not all-capable, that she would protect your household? Was there a deficiency in her capability, or a deficiency in your faith in her, that you went to the bank of the Ganga to perform Aghori sadhana?

The speaker gives what he considers the real explanation of these encounters. It is destiny, he says; she is Mahamaya. At Vindhyachal it is the Manidvipa, the earth's Manidvipa, and she is seated at Aravind Achal. If everyone were to go to her and she were to grant grace upon all, that too, he says truthfully, she will not allow. So what she does is this: whether living at Vindhyachal or at whichever pilgrimage region, the Maya that spreads confusion is spread all around the principal Vigraha and the principal temple. If she granted the piercing of it to everybody, how would the Kali age run? So she does not grant that piercing — and she is doing right, he says. People's destiny is such, and they go off to perform Aghori sadhana, cremation sadhana, taking a Masan and giving it beedi and liquor. He is careful to de-personalise the case he told: do not take it upon yourself, you are not alone, there are thousands of people. He did not name the caller in any event, and seven or eight people from Ranchi alone have telephoned him having done this — the last of them being the one he raised, because that man's situation had become very bad from it.

The speaker begins with the site itself: when you go to a Shakti Peeth you will be tempted. Whoever you worship and serve, whatever devotee you are — of Bhagavati, or of some other divine power — when you go there there will be an examination of how firm you are towards your own Ishta. How great a Shiva devotee are you. How great a devotee of the Goddess. And there the morale slackens: your guru has told you only about the Masani, and you have more trust in Preta and Pishach. From there he names the reversal he thinks underlies the whole pattern: nobody credits Hanuman's capability, while everybody credits the capability of Pretas and Pishachas. He reports the exchange as he has heard it, and says listeners will have heard it too rather than his inventing it: this is Muslim Tantra, Hanuman will not work in it. Then who will? Kali Mai will work in it. How will Kali Mai work — a black cockerel will have to be offered. Where is Kali Mai, at the temple? No, not to be offered there; it must be offered at our own place. And at his own place, he says, the man is sitting having worshipped a Dakini Tradition. There are many such people who leave twisted comments about this Mata and that; and who is their Mata? Some kind of Pishachini. He draws a general test from it. Whatever kind of power a person worships and serves will show in his eyes, in the bearing of his body and face, and in the thinking he holds towards others. People of Pishachik thinking will worship Pishachik powers and become like them; it will be fully visible in their character. Under the name of public welfare, he says, a great deal of knife-in-the-back work goes on and is displayed daily as proof that such things happen — go inside and you will find out what kind of sadhana people are seated on, and you will see there what is truly called pretence and ostentation.

The speaker presses on what is actually being worshipped and at what level. Pishachik things, when they seize a person, put on the pretence of being deities — I am a goddess, I am such-and-such goddess. He is not unsympathetic to the person caught in it. What is the man's fault either? It means he will not be able to accept the truth even when it comes. He has become helpless — because the power is giving him enjoyment, he is giving it worship, and his work is getting done. When work is getting done he will say it is a deity, and it is also his compulsion: how is he to accept it is a Preta or Pishach? Not until he sinks entirely into the pit. Right now he is enjoying himself — buying a house, buying a car, taking women around, enjoying. He puts the logic from the power's own side. Nobody is going to do anything; if it did not let him live it up, how would its name spread — that I am such-and-such goddess? It has become a goddess, so first it will make him live well for five years, ten years, twenty years. But the day it becomes satisfied at its real standing, when it comes to its real standing and begins to take, then people will say, how can such a thing happen.

The speaker sets out the mechanism he returns to at the end of the session, noting he has already made videos on it: all this talk that Kali Mata was deployed in a Marana, that such-and-such goddess was deployed in a Marana — would Kali herself go about in Marana, has she become so cheap? Powers accomplished by a deity's own mantras, or the deity's own female practitioners, who through some wrong conduct or wrong sadhana came to a bad end and to an untimely death, take on that same form — they bear that element. But because the original quality cannot come to them, they remain suspended in the middle. They become Pishachik powers and take the name of Kali, of one goddess or another, of one Bhavani or another. There are fifty kinds of such powers, and they are something else. He extends the same reading to Bhairav, citing the Durga Kavach: it is said there that by reciting it, Bhairav, Kushmanda Graha and the rest are destroyed — so how, he asks, would Bhairav be destroyed, who is eternally with Bhagavati. The answer he gives is that practitioners performing any kind of sadhana connected with Bhairav who go into a base form of it and accept a lesser station meet an untimely death through their own fault, or are destroyed by Bhairav himself. He connects it to something listeners will have heard: that such-and-such a man was performing Masan sadhana and his severed head was found in the cremation ground. They do not die like that, he says — they die from their own mistakes. And these are the same people who say the Mother is pleased by Bhava alone, and then think Bhairav is their father and will be pleased by Bhava too. A father is a father, he says, and does not delay in delivering a kick. Such powers have no capacity to come before a person who recites the Kavach.

The speaker first explains why the worshippers of such powers never skimp. The base kind of Tantric accomplishes exactly these and says that Bhairav is accomplished — Bhairav Siddhi in one night. These are that sort of Bhairav, and their servers do not create the slightest deficiency in offerings and service. Those who worship the original Bhairav may create shortfall; these people never will. Why? Because the more they give it, the more fiercely it will increase them. But a human being's greatest characteristic is that he does become satisfied — somewhere along the line he will be pleased that he has got boundless wealth, the beauty he wanted, the lover, the wife, the children, all of it. And where he becomes satisfied, there he will certainly make the mistake. From there he draws the practical distinction between the two kinds of power. You can create shortfall even in the worship of deities, and there you will not receive punishment of that kind — it will not happen that because you did not worship today, or worshipped half-heartedly because you did not feel like it, the deities will hold it against you for a day. No such matter will arise, because a deity is a deity. With the Preta and Pishachik powers seated in the form of sub-deities under the name of Upadevata — this Mata and that Mata, however many there are — commit even a single day's offence and take the punishment. He notes who else is caught by this: the genuine practitioners who accomplish such powers for the purpose of public welfare. They are ground like the chaff with the wheat. Taking on someone's work, the offering has to reach the power through the hand of the person whose work it was — and once his work is done he runs off and does not make the offering, so the practitioner starts paying out of his own pocket to keep the power quiet. And those who skim the cream in these powers' names, he says, are mostly the ones who very cleanly eat the khichdi from the sides and leave the middle. The day that method turns back on them and the khichdi bursts, it tears everything of theirs apart.

The speaker generalises from Vindhyachal: Maya is everywhere, at Vindhyachal or wherever you go. Go to any place at all — Kamakhya has its own, which he sets aside for a later discussion and a video still to be made, where the question of whether Maya operates there too will be taken up. And when that deception happens with you, it is not a deception at all: in reality it is an examination taken in order to test the depth of your surrender. How deep are you, how surrendered are you. He gives the answer he wants a practitioner to make, plainly: what will I take this for, what is going to come of it — crores of Bhoot, Preta and Pishach want to go beneath the nails of her feet, want her to touch them and grant grace so their onward motion may happen; what will I do with one of them. I want Ma Bhavani. I want Ma Jagadamba. I want the love of her feet. Suffering will remain either way. Show your depth and your surrender there, he says. Pass that examination, and then Bhavani will grant grace. He names the pattern at other sites too: come to Tarapith, we will grant you Tara Mai's darshan — look, Tara Mai has come, this is her form, now offer the Dakshina here — and it is a stream of liquor that is producing the darshan. You will find this kind of thing everywhere.

The speaker recounts a case from Gujarat: a listener without children, connected for a long time and performing sadhana, who had been fully convinced by a local Bhagatwal practitioner that if he performed the sadhana of deities his ancestors would be troubled, and that troubled ancestors would never let him have a child. His answer is a straight refusal of the premise. Why on earth would the ancestors be troubled by the worship of deities? The trouble will go to the Pishachas who are not present in the Pitru Kul — and if such a presence is not present in the Pitru Kul, then what kind of ancestor is it. He works it through as an address to such a presence: if your Sapindan has not been performed and you are in the Preta state — suppose you were born in our lineage and died, and we are alive and have bodies, and you have not been admitted among the family ancestors for whatever reason, my forebears may not have done it, fine, we accept all of that — then right now you are a Bhoot. And a Bhoot's home is not here. This place is set aside for the Pitrs, whose stations the deities determined; live where you belong. We will perform the service and worship proper to the householder's Ashrama, and with the capability that results we will cause the ancestors' satisfaction through Shradh and the rest — or, if you declare yourself plainly and name yourself, we will cross-check that you were born in this lineage and have your Sapindan performed, and then come or stay as you will. When the ancestors are genuinely troubled, he says, is when an Abhicharik thing is present and your Pitrus are in bondage: that Abhicharik thing gives them the trouble, your mantra troubles the Abhicharik thing, and through that the ancestors suffer.

The speaker gives this as his standing remedy, one he says he has been calling out for three years, for the case where Preta and Pishach are present alongside the family ancestors and the Pitrus are defiled. The preparation: a copper pot — copper only — filled with pure water, with Gangajal mixed in. Put Kusha in it. Make a broom of Kusha: cut eleven or twenty-one stalks, or buy it ready if you are not in a village and cannot find it, and bind it with MauliThe red-and-yellow thread tied on the wrist or around a kalash. thread. Add Tulsi leaves into the pot. The recitation: remember Bhagavan Ganapati, and your guru — or where there is no guru, Bhagavan Datta, since Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh are directly present in his three forms; or Dakshinamurti, or Shiva, or Narayana, whoever you wish to remember in the form of the guru. Then remembering Krishna, ArjunaThe Pandava warrior-prince to whom Krishna delivered the Bhagavad Gita's teaching, on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. and Nara-Narayana, recite the eleventh chapter of the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita. If you cannot manage Sanskrit, do it in Hindi; if the trouble is severe, learn the Sanskrit pronunciation from YouTube — a literate person who looks at one verse ten times will learn it in a month or two. Afterwards: no blowing into the pot. Keep it quietly before Narayana — before his photograph or image, or where you have placed his name — on a yellow cloth, never directly on the ground. Then take the pot, put the Kusha broom in it with the Tulsi leaves, and sprinkle that water through the whole house, saying Shri Krishnaya Namah or Radha Krishnaya Namah. Five splashes on the threshold as well. Whatever water remains, every member of the family drinks. Duration is set by severity: forty-one days, a fortnight, 108 days, a year — the greater the problem, the longer you continue. One recitation takes half an hour, and less once you are practised. Morning is best and the earlier the better, but midday will do and evening will do. One practical constraint he gives on the Tulsi: leaves are not to be plucked on a Sunday, on Ekadashi or Dwadashi, on Amavasya, or on a Tuesday. So look ahead and pluck in advance — if today is Dwadashi, tomorrow Tuesday, and Ekadashi and Sunday came before, that is three days you cannot pluck, so pluck on the Friday that has passed and keep them. Those Tulsi leaves will run four days. Keep four or five extra leaves plucked beforehand and soaked in water so they do not wilt, and let nobody eat or consume that leaf; it must remain present. He says he is telling it this practically and this deeply on purpose — it is not a surface subject but an entirely practical one, if you wish to do it.

The speaker refuses the premise that worshipping one deity excludes faith in another. He says flatly that the remedy just given will not work if there is no faith in Krishna — and then asks why there is no faith. It means you are then not a Sanatani. It cannot be that because we worship Shiva alone we will hold no faith in Krishna. His evidence is textual and he names the edition: read the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, the Gita Press one, and right at the beginning you will find it written that in a former age Bhagavan Shiva himself first recited the Gita and discussed it; later Nara-Narayana obtained it, and then Krishna gave it again to Nara, that is to Arjuna. Many such passages will be found. His diagnosis: the breaking of your faith happens only when you do not have information about the subjects. That is when you make distinctions — that Durga is greater and Krishna lesser, or that Krishna is the Supreme and Durga lesser. He connects it to Shankaracharya's work of bringing the five deities together, which he says was done for exactly this reason: so that you would not create shortfall between them. In the present time it has started again, and the first move is to point a finger at Shankaracharya himself, so that a person without the knowledge of how these matters work now points a finger at him too.

The speaker raises this over people he says are initiated by a Shankaracharya's line and yet call themselves Aghoris — an initiation, he notes, that they were never given and an authority they were never granted for such base acts. He says he is astonished to see this happening to the tradition of Bhagavan Shankaracharya and to the Maharaj who recently attained Brahmalina. His general rule follows from it: whoever is not his own guru's will never be yours; it is never going to happen. The deities may forgive one who betrays a father, but one who betrays a guru never receives forgiveness, and this offence carries no Prayashchitta at all — a thing to bear in mind before committing Guru Droha. He attaches a condition to it. Had the guru been wrong, the matter would be different — but a Shankaracharya cannot be wrong. If you are misusing his name and through that misuse attempting to draw Sanatani people away from their own Ishta, then, he says, no baser creature than you is to be found in this whole world.

The speaker introduces a category of fault distinct from Kama Prayoga: Kshetra Ullanghan, the crossing of a region. He is precise that it is not merely going from one region to another — it means crossing a river. He acknowledges the modern difficulty: it is not now possible for someone to swim across a river or touch it with their feet. So it is held that Siddhi loss occurs from crossing a river, and where you have performed a sava-lakh Purashcharana or more, the fault incurred by crossing should be expiated. The expiation he gives is deliberately light, because a householder cannot go deep into Karmakanda: of the mantra whose Purashcharana you performed, if you do ten malas daily, do one mala as Prayashchitta. The Sankalp is separate and he gives its sense in full — that if we have committed any act, known or unknown, connected with loss of the mantra's Siddhi, then for its expiation we are performing this one mala of japa, so that my Siddhi remains and no Graha, curse or other fault attaches to me and no loss to the mantra's Siddhi occurs. Say that, do one mala, and offer it — and you will remain protected. It may be taken in Sanskrit or in Hindi as you prefer.

The speaker addresses this as the modern case: those wealthy enough to travel by air. Going by the air route, many kinds of Tirtha, rivers and stations of deities are crossed and all of them come beneath our feet — from which loss of Siddhi occurs. The remedy is a Sankalp covering the span of the journey. Look at the whole region from where you travel to where you are going. His illustration: suppose we are seated between two Peeths — Kamakhya to the east, Vindhyachal to the west, and we are seated at Tarapith in the middle. Then the Sankalp would be that for whatever fault arises from crossing all the Dev Khandas, divine powers, rivers, mountains and hills falling between those two Peeths, and in expiation of it, we are performing and offering 11 malas of this japa. The timing is on both sides: offer it beforehand, before the journey, and once again after completing it. He notes there is a full procedure beyond this — those who obtained the capacity to fly used to perform their own — but since the capacity now rests on money and anyone can fly, this is what to do. On where it is discussed, he points to the Mantra Upanishad material and the Patalas, where it is treated indicatively after the Siddhi Patala, in the Mantra Siddhi Patala.

The speaker sets the threshold and then the condition, noting that in present circumstances this obligation exists even without Siddhi. Those who complete more than a sava-lakh japa of some mantra, or more than 10,000 or 11,000 of an independent Saptashati mantra where Siddhi was set at a thousand — grace is bound to come. It cannot be that grace does not come. He distinguishes what he means by grace: if by grace you understand manifesting Bhagavati directly before you, that is a different matter. What is under discussion is what a guru's instruction, learned people and the Tantric scriptures state — that at a thousand this mantra is to be held awakened — and accordingly that deity's grace is now upon you. From that point the obligation shifts to observance. Now you have to obey the rules. If you do not follow them, its effect will not arise in your life; faults will accumulate, and that Siddhi too will be lost. And you will feel that the mantra did nothing at all, that your whole sadhana and austerity went to waste. His reason for raising it: you will certainly have worked this hard, so let your effort be meaningful and let no offence be formed. Eleven malas of japa, he says, is not a very great matter if you are doing it this way. Give it the time.

The speaker treats this as a distinct offence and is unusually direct about its source: do not, carried away by emotion, ever donate your merit to anyone — do not make this mistake from watching television serials and films. What you may do instead he states positively. Where a person is undergoing suffering equal to death, or someone's life is about to go, and you feel their life might be preserved by merit, then take a Sankalp connected with the japa, austerity and merit you hold, and for their sake perform japa of your accomplished mantra — five or ten malas, eleven, a hundred, a thousand, a sava-lakh. If your feeling is that strong, that will serve. The distinction is between spending capital and doing fresh work. Donating merit will neither save their life nor is that capability in you — but what you had will go too, and the Uchchatan that follows is a separate matter again. After that you will not be able to obtain that much a second time. It happens with many practitioners, he says, which is why this mistake should never be made.

The speaker turns to the physical remains of the observance. The Kalash and everything within it — the sandalwood, the gold, silver or copper coin, and whatever other materials were placed inside — belong to this category. The Asana on which you performed the sava-lakh or the 11,000 japa, or the Navadurga recitation, is to be preserved. The cloth you wore while performing the japa, austerity and Havan is to be preserved. Even after that cloth tears, it should be used by you; no one else should use it, and as far as possible use it yourself. On the Asana he is emphatic. Use it yourself. It is not to be distributed about — not passed around saying you take a share and you take a share. And if it tears in any way, you may use it in the bedding you sleep on, or if you wish to immerse it, immerse it in a river, in flowing water. His one prohibition here is stated as a grave offence: the Asana is not to be burnt. It is a very great offence — do not make the mistake of burning it because it had torn.

The speaker adds this as a mala matter that new practitioners especially should note. The japa mala should not be touched by anyone else. And the worn mala: sometimes, out of great pleasure, you put the mala from your own neck onto someone else. All these offences, he says, then become the cause of loss of your Siddhi. Do not make these mistakes.

The speaker announces the next observance, two days after the recording. For Sharad Purnima, full effort is being made to arrange an Anushthan connected with Bhagavati Dhanada Lakshmi and the eight Mahalakshmis together with Swarnakarshan Bhairav. Confirmation would come by the following evening; the main question was whether the Swarnakarshan Bhairav practitioners would attend, and if they did it would be most divine. His instruction to previous participants is about restraint rather than participation. Those who were present in the earlier Dhanada Lakshmi and Swarnakarshan Bhairav Anushthans should not fill any form that involves obtaining a Yantra again — keep it to the ordinary Sankalp only, since it is a single-night Anushthan. New people who have nothing may take the one that includes a Yantra. There is absolutely no need to do it two or three times over; do not make that mistake. Where a family member lives elsewhere and needs one, that is a different matter. On the night itself: those who have previously performed the Anushthan of the Lakshmi Mala mantra or the Dhanada Kavach will perform its Purashcharana that night too. Those who have done none of it may perform the Purashcharana of whatever Anushthan they undertook during Navratri.

The speaker answers a listener asking whether a Sankalp with 11,000 recitations of the Mahamrityunjaya Stotram could change a woman's Gotra after a second marriage. His answer is that a girl's marriage happens once. Once her Gotra Daan has taken place, then whether you perform it with a Mahamrityunjaya Sankalp or by whatever else you wish to do, her Gotra is never going to change. Whatever her Gotra was when the first marriage took place, that Gotra remains for all time. He separates the ritual fact from the social one deliberately. Once the Kanyadaan has occurred and she has become the cause of increase for someone's lineage, has become the daughter-in-law of some family, then if in present circumstances she leaves that household for whatever reason, you may arrange a second marriage according to today's times — that is your wish and your own private matter. But on what is actually being asked, the truth is that the Gotra does not change.

A listener writes that they feel intense loneliness and emptiness and asks whether some mistake is being made in the sadhana. The speaker separates the two halves. The feeling of emptiness is one matter. But as you advance in sadhana, what happens follows your own wish: if you want solitude, Bhagavati will certainly begin to give you solitude. And the truth, he says, is that the more you come near your Ishta, the further you go from the world. If the distance is grating on you, if you feel there ought to be people around, then take your Sankalp accordingly and perform the sadhana that way. Look at what is and is not in the mantra japa you are doing. He adds a specific diagnosis: speaking plainly, if you are performing japa of Bhagavan Shiva's Panchakshari with the Pranava, all of this arises — something he says he has clarified several times before. Bear it in mind, he says, and this is exactly why it is said not to disregard the capacity of a mantra.

A listener who completed a full recitation of the Shakradi Stuti over nine days, twelve times daily, asks how often to continue it now. The speaker's answer is brief: certainly do it once each in the morning and evening. And alongside it, perform one mala each of the mantra asking for a pleasing wife, morning and evening — so that the marriage happens soon. He identifies the verse as the last one of the Argala.

The speaker answers a run of shorter questions in the closing stretch. On Abhimantran, the method differs by case: as with the eleventh chapter recitation described earlier, consecration also happens that way; mustard may be taken in the fist and consecrated; water may be kept in a vessel. Where it concerns a Sabar mantra, then a breath has to be blown — and it is blown in such a manner that no spittle emerges. On Havan timing, a householder may perform Havan on both days, Amavasya and Purnima. On temple Havan ash: the BhasmaSacred ash, used as a substitute for milk in a Shivling's abhishekam when milk isn't available. from a Saraswati Havan performed at a temple may be put into a Kavach and worn, if you hold that faith — but take permission from those who performed the Havan before removing it, and certainly offer eleven or twenty-one rupees as Dakshina there beside the Havan Kund. On Vibhuti received as Prasad: it may be applied to the forehead, or a pinch eaten on an empty stomach if there is some bodily trouble; otherwise apply it to the forehead daily, mixing it with Ashwagandha and applying after worship. On a Tara Kavach: it may be purified at a Shiva temple, but many things in it should not be done by an uninitiated person, so think it over.

The speaker answers a listener's question about the Gorakhnath and Kali story with a careful separation of what is true from what is being claimed. His first move is to ask what the story would require. Is it possible in the Kali age that Bhagavati Kali manifested directly in the manner shown? And would Gorakhnath Baba, being directly of Shiva's form, do such a thing as to hold Bhagavati Kali in his belly? In a former age, when divine powers used to manifest directly, Mahadeva came beneath Bhagavati Kali's feet — would he today keep her in his stomach? Never possible. He puts the parallel case too: the Goddess who swallowed Shiva himself and took the Dhuma form — is her swallowing him possible? These, he says, are manifestations made to demonstrate the capability of Yoga, as when Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh went as infants to prove Sati AnasuyaThe Pativrata sage-wife of Maharishi Atri, revered as the mother of Lord Dattatreya.'s chastity. So the account is right, he says, but the Kali whom Gorakhnath took into himself is not the original Bhagavati Kali — she is one of the disruptive powers described earlier, which bear Kali's element. He gives a worked example. Suppose a woman practitioner, initiated, performing lakhs of japa of Bhagavati Kali's BeejaksharThe seed syllable within a mantra, the part that carries its power. — a thousand malas a day — attempting a formidable Siddhi, and perhaps receiving the Goddess's full grace. Through destiny she later comes to a bad end and an untimely death. In whatever birth she goes to, she will bear the formidable elements of Bhagavati Kali. A Tantric of that region or elsewhere, knowing such a woman died in that way, awakens her through his Tantric Siddhis, establishes a Mundasana and seats her upon it. Now, bearing Kali's element, she is Kali; whatever her own name had been. And the longer she is worshipped — ten years, twenty, fifty, a hundred, four hundred, five hundred, with Bali offered, worship performed, Navratri observed, Chandi Path done — the more formidable that Dakini power becomes as a power of Kali. If she then becomes disruptive, and a Siddh person like Gorakhnath goes there and does not honour her, knowing she is not the original power, she will make trouble to show her capability — and he will finish the story. He closes it without hedging: this is the subject; believe it or do not; if anyone's sentiments are hurt, let them be; the truth is this.

The speaker closes the session with a set of short answers. On the raisins: the 108 raisins kept at the time of counting can absolutely be eaten. On pomegranate and the like: if it is not possible to have it eaten by anyone, immerse it — in the Ganga, or whatever river there is, or a clean lake or similar body of water. On Havan during Sutak, asked by a listener after a birth in the family: you will not perform Havan during Sutak. Let the Sutak pass. It happens only after its conclusion and after the purification; there is no compulsion that a Havan must be performed regardless. On honey: fill honey in the Khappar, in a silver vessel. If Bhagavati is with a Khappar, if a Khappar is placed there, then give the honey in the Khappar. You may also place it in her hand, or place it before her in a silver vessel or the like. He also notes that a Sharad Purnima Abhishek would be explained separately and more clearly the following day, and points a listener to the Narasimha Mala mantra videos already on the channel — two or three of them in full detail, including one on experience, more than a year old.