Kul Yogini Darshan through a Dattatreya Yaga — Inherited Ancestral Shaktis, the Anushthan Vidhan, and the Test at Paran

The speaker opens with a situation he says is found in many families. Some ancestor — a father, grandfather, grandmother or other elder of the kul — used to do some form of tantra sadhana, or did the work of seeing and hearing (ojhaiti-sokhaiti). In the course of time they could not pass those vidyas on to their descendants while alive: perhaps they met an untimely death, perhaps they failed to preserve the vidya properly or never explained the balanced vidhan of it, or some other cause intervened. The result, he says, is that the present descendants have no knowledge of these vidyas and shaktis — which energy, which shakti, what its vidhan is, what the rule of its worship is — and this ignorance is somewhere the fruit of the elders' mistakes. So when a descendant of today falls into some trouble and begins any sadhana or upasana, those shaktis come and begin to wreak havoc. He says one will see this arise in the lives of a great many people. He adds that even if one assumes the great-grandfather's deeds were good ones, some human error may have meant not everything was told, something was left out, or the Visarjan was never done. The shaktis involved may be shmashan shaktis, siddha Yoginis, kul yoginis, lok yoginis, other kinds of chetak shaktis, or the whole group of shaktis that run on a chain or on one's chauki — a deeh group — known by different names in different regions.

The speaker says the full and correct knowledge of such shaktis could only have come from the person who did their seva-puja and held siddhi over them. He gives an example. Suppose a grandfather was one of four brothers, each with their own family now into the third or fourth generation, and you are in the third generation. If among all four families you are the one in the greatest distress and you begin sadhana, while the other three did no special puja-seva even if they too suffered, then you will have the most trouble. The reason, he says, is that the shaktis look at capacity: this is the one who can do puja-seva, this child has the strength to satisfy us. So they trouble you indirectly, demanding their due through dreams and the like, and the person becomes frightened. It is genuinely a matter for fear, he adds, because the gap of a generation or more without seva-puja has made those shaktis fierce, and the person has to bear their anger as well.

The speaker explains why the affected family in his case story could never get the matter properly examined — how many shaktis there were, what was there and what was not. If you live in an ancestral house, he says, no sokha or ojha keeps every shakti seated at his own home. Many shaktis are kept at his place of worship; some are on the deeh, that is, with the Kshetrapal; when he needs them he goes there, gives puja and bhog, and comes back. Some are kept in a worshipped PeepalA sacred fig tree dedicated to Lord Dattatreya — Pitru Tarpan performed beneath it calms agitated ancestral spirits causing domestic unrest. tree; if there are veer-type shaktis they may be placed at the root of a fire. Each practitioner keeps them in his own way, according to his own cunning, and uses them from time to time.

The speaker says that once you have awakened a shakti in your own name, its name is joined with yours — you are the one giving it bhog. You are now bound and committed to it by sankalpa. Either, while you are alive, that sankalpa is released — the shakti freed from that place, to stay or go as it pleases, so that no dosha attaches to you — or, if you neither did that nor told anyone else about it, then your wealth, property and lineage, whatever it may be, will all be troubled by these things somewhere along the line. This, he says, is exactly what was happening to the sadhak in the story.

The speaker says the family's problem was never fully understood — anyone who looked would find half of it and miss the other half. Whenever a Kshetrapala NikariA dispersal ritual offered to the territorial guardian Kshetrapala — requesting protection and the pacification of malevolent entities (Dakinis, Shakinis, Bhutas, Pretas, Pishachas, Vetals) residing in the territory, clearing domestic malevolent energies across the threshold for at least 24 hours. was done in particular, since the shaktis had been worshipped in the house, the Kshetrapal would take them all away to keep the honour of the rite. But he says he always tells people this: if some malevolent shakti is present in your house — one that was brought across the threshold and seated there by a family member, kept with bali and the like — a Kshetrapal nikari removes such things for just 24 hours. Those 24 hours are yours to keel and bind the house, or otherwise arrange matters so that it cannot re-enter. When such a nikari is done, for a day or so the house feels very peaceful and gentle, but after 24 hours the same disturbances start again and the troubles return. For a sadhak, he adds, getting full sleep becomes very difficult.

The speaker says the more sadhana a person does in such a house, the more these shaktis will block the road to siddhi — before the sadhak can complete the japa through which siddhi is to be attained, and especially when it is being done at home. The reason is that one is doing a high-order sadhana; in this case the sadhak was doing japa of Bhagwan Datta's Ekakshari and Mala Mantra. Then, when the japa and the rest reach completion, its full effect would not come.

Only when the japa reaches completion, the speaker says, does its full effect come: your PrarabdhaThe portion of destiny already set in motion by past actions — spiritual practice and good deeds can lessen its severity, but not eliminate it. is cut, energy is built, punya-bal accumulates, and then you are protected. Ordinarily, he says, if you do japa in the morning you are protected until evening. But if you are doing japa merely to be used for some task — saying outright that we do this japa for protection, or for binding these shaktis — then no Punya gathers in one place at all. It is spent as it is made. That, he says, was the constant situation here.

The speaker says one thing should always be remembered: in every family where the ancestors did Bhagatvaal work, there is surely one shakti that acts as a master key. If she becomes awakened and comes into her full fierceness, she can take every other shakti under complete control. And at the same time she is the most gracious of all towards her bhakt-sadhak — whichever sokha or ojha awakened her went to her when he was losing against all the other shaktis. But, he says, because she is the most root of all, she is kept entirely secret, the way one keeps a secret. She is told to one person only, and that one person is held back; everyone else is given everything else, but not her. Even if everything you have is lost, if she remains she will bring it all back — that is how powerful such a shakti is. In the sadhak's family, he says, such a presence existed, and he was greatly troubled by it.

The speaker says that in such a situation his advice is always: do not do it at home. The sadhak's difficulty was that when he went out to do japa-tapa, village people kept interrupting — is he becoming a sokha, is he learning ojhaiti, he is doing some siddhi, don't do it here, people come and go at the temple. So the speaker told him to arrange to go and stay somewhere else for a while; after a year or two of discussion he did, and was given two things to do japa of there.

The speaker says the sadhak was told to take up the sadhana-puja of Bhagwan Datta because, from the beginning, he had always said that he had never seen or heard of Bhagwan Dattatreya being worshipped in his home, yet in dreams he had many times seen things connected with Datta's form, though he knew nothing of it and there was not even a name for it in his house. When the sadhak said that he always saw that form, the speaker told him: make your beginning right here.

The speaker says it is quite true of the region: from Madhya Pradesh through Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Odisha hardly anyone knows Bhagwan Dattatreya. Ask someone for Bhagwan Datta's picture or his vigraha and he will ask which deity that is; one has to show him. His form is worshipped mostly in Maharashtra and the South. In these parts people simply do not know of him, and the speaker says he has already explained elsewhere what the agenda was and how the harm was done. Yet, he says, it was in Kashmir that Bhagwan Datta's most prominent form existed — the form the speaker's tradition calls the three-fold (tribhar) form, worshipped in tantra in that form, which closely resembles Datta — and at one time he was most worshipped there, in the Shaiva sampradaya.

The speaker says the sadhak was told to begin with the Dev Deeksha vidhan. He performed it beneath a PeepalA sacred fig tree dedicated to Lord Dattatreya — Pitru Tarpan performed beneath it calms agitated ancestral spirits causing domestic unrest. tree in a very auspicious muhurat — Guru Pushya Nakshatra, in the shukla paksha. From the start, whenever he did seva-puja of Bhagwan Datta he received some measure of protection, so the speaker told him: complete this very path.

When he went to live at the other place, the speaker says, the sadhak was given four lakh japa of Bhagwan Datta's Ekakshari, and separately Bhagwan Datta's Vajra Panjara Kavach — the speaker says he told him at least 11,000, and on no account fewer — followed by 11,000 of the Datta Mala Mantra. Within three months he completed all of it very well. The vidhi for the havan and so on had been explained to him.

The speaker asks listeners to note one detail of the Havan in this case: it was performed together with Bhagavati Anagha Lakshmi, and the kund used was a Shakti kund. This was because the sadhak's household matter was somewhat different from the usual. The family's root shakti was somewhere a form of Bhagavati, and Bhagwan Dattatreya, he says, must have been the chief power holding control over all of them here, or related to their sampradaya, and was extending his grace. He adds that there were many experiences along the way which he is skipping, to be discussed at length in a live session some time — the sadhak had very good experiences.

The speaker explains what a Shakti kund means. As everyone knows, he says, the four-cornered, square agni kund — the Havan kund — is for the fulfilment of all desires. The circular kund, on the other hand, is the one meant for Bhagavati. That is why a Shakti kund was used in this case, where the family's root shakti was a form of Bhagavati.

The speaker says that when you choose a place for sadhana, that place has a very great effect. In a place already full of bhoot, pret and pishach who are all burning with resentment against you — you have not given us puja for two years, you have not given us puja for twenty-five years — how will they let you do sadhana? They will not even let you have proper experiences. Yes, if a veer sadhak, a fierce sadhak who has done sadhana before sits there, then for him that place is gold; he will take experience after experience and wring it out of them — but that is a different matter that most people will not understand. For new sadhaks it becomes a disturbing thing.

The sadhak in this story, the speaker says, sat at a place where worship connected with Bhagwan Dattatreya had been done in the past. It was a very old spot, a temple only in name, dilapidated; people rarely came except at Shivratri and the like, and otherwise a single pujari did his own puja and slept after smoking ganja, with no interest in anything. When the sadhak arrived, the pujari said: the puja is your responsibility now, you do it. There was a very old vigraha of Bhagwan Dattatreya, so worn that it was hard to tell it was Datta's; the sadhak did its abhishekaA ceremonial bathing of a deity’s image or symbol, usually with water and other prescribed substances. and puja every day, along with Bhagwan Shiva's — it was a shrine of the two — and did his japa there beneath a banyan tree.

The speaker says the effect of sitting at that place was so divine that the sadhak's own kul Yogini shakti — the shakti of his kul — became fiercely awakened. First he began to have darshan and experiences in dreams; he would report what he was seeing, and the speaker told him it was fine, keep going calmly for now. As he completed the Purnahuti of each AnushthanaAn extended ritual observance — such as 108 recitations of a scripture — carrying its own strict rules. one by one, his experiences grew more and more divine.

The most intense experience of all, the speaker says, came at the time of ParanThe formal breaking of a vrat at its appointed time, without which the observance is held incomplete.. In his view this is the most precious time in a sadhak's life: when you have completed an anushthan and are about to do paran, and at that moment of paran some deva shakti comes and asks something of you. It is a time thick with maya — maya lies spread over everything and the person cannot understand what is going on. He explains with Navratri: those who keep the nine days will know that on the ninth day, after Kanya Pujan, with paran due on the tenth, the mind is already saying — if only I could get a puri and some halwa today, tomorrow I will eat like this and like that. Those who do sadhana feel great hunger on the final day, and the moment paran arrives it is all — at last, food. It was at exactly such a moment, after he had completed the 11,000 Datta mala mantra and was about to do paran, that this happened to the sadhak.

The speaker describes the discipline the sadhak kept. He was swapaki, cooking his own food. Through the day he stayed on PhalaharThe fruit-only diet kept during a vrat in place of grain., and at night he took one meal of havishya anna — food made without salt. He kept the whole niyam just as it ought to be kept in the field of sadhana. This is not possible for everyone, the speaker says, yet he is putting the experience forward because it is true: if at some point in life Bhagavati gives you the opportunity, do sadhana in this manner and the shaktis will truly show grace.

When the time to eat came, the speaker says, the sadhak fried puris and cooked whatever he knew how to make, offered NaivedyaThe food offering (Bhog) presented to a deity during worship, accompanied by water offerings and dedicatory mantras. at both places — the Datta vigraha and the Shiva shrine — and offered some to the pujari baba as well, who told him to eat first and that he would eat later. So he sat down to eat. The spot was a little removed from where people lived, a kilometre or two in; apart from those grazing cattle, goats and sheep, very few people came that way. No sooner had he sat down with his food than an old woman appeared — in the speaker's words, Kali Mai had arrived in the guise of an old woman, come to take her share. Just as he raised a morsel to eat, she said at once in Bhojpuri: eating alone, will you not give me a little? I am hungry too, and in this heat there is not even water to be had. The sadhak later told the speaker that at that moment a great anger rose in him of its own accord. This, the speaker says, is what maya is. The sadhak said he had never felt anger in all his sadhana, yet just as the food was about to touch his tongue she asked for it. Where she had come from, how and when, he never saw, because he was blind with hunger. There was no other food; he had cooked with difficulty, reckoning ten puris — a few for the baba, five or six for himself. Now she stood very close, looking at him: a thin, frail old woman in the ordinary clothes village women wear. When she asked him to give, he answered: Mai, I have not made it jhootha — I have not touched it. She said, then give it. So he pushed the whole thali towards her — in anger, saying: there, eat it all then — and set down water as well. She received it with great love. He did not understand this, the speaker says, because hunger and thirst, and the anger on top of them, had unbalanced his mind — and this was the real hour of the test.

The speaker continues: the old woman ate everything and drank the water, then said — one more puri. The sadhak said there were no more. Then she said — give me a little kheer, the kheer is very good, it was a joy to eat. He said only a little was left; she said, then give me that little; what will it cost you, you are young, you can make more. So, grumbling, he went in to fetch it. And here, the speaker says, the play unfolded. Inside, it was as if Annapurna had filled the place with food: the kheer vessel was full of KheerRice cooked in milk, offered as naivedya in many vidhis., puris lay fried and hot as though someone had just taken them from the pan, fresh sabzi — everything filled to exactly the measure of his own meal, in his own vessels. He scratched his head — I made only so much, I did not carry it in, and it is hot. He turned to look behind him: the field was clear, Mata ji had already departed. Only from that point, the speaker says, did the maya begin to fold back and the mind return to its senses — what have I just seen? He ran out at once; the place was open and deserted on both sides, the path so bare that anyone running would be seen easily. He came out and stood stunned. He tried to rouse the ganja-smoking baba, who mumbled Bam Bhole and went back to sleep. He searched for some minutes — anyone would be shaken by such an event — unable to believe it, and then tears streamed from his eyes: Bhagavati, you came, and I committed an offence. He remembered Bhagavati Van DurgaDurga of the forest, whose nine names are used in kavach practice. — Ma, if it was you, a Van Devi, the devi of this place, whoever you were — and wept a great deal. He would not take food and would not do ParanThe formal breaking of a vrat at its appointed time, without which the observance is held incomplete. unless he had darshan again.

The speaker says a second darshan in visible form did not come. But an AveshThe entry of an outside being into a person, whether invited onto a medium or suffered as affliction. came over the sadhak's body, a heaviness settled on him, and what is described as the very first, beginning stage of trinetra jagran — the awakening of the third eye — took shape. In that state she gave him darshan and said: I am pleased with you; do your paran without anxiety, do not worry. Only then did he do ParanThe formal breaking of a vrat at its appointed time, without which the observance is held incomplete., and his body remained heavy the whole day. He phoned the speaker to tell him what had happened, and was told there was nothing to worry about. The speaker says he is placing this experience before listeners now because the sadhak's present life has changed a great deal — by Bhagavati's grace much has been received — and it is at the sadhak's own urging that this true account is being shared.

People ask, the speaker says, how God gives darshan. His answer is that devi-devatas absolutely do give darshan. But they will never give it directly in the Vedic form, or in the dhyana form in which we meditate on them — a four-armed goddess mounted on a lion will not appear before us, because we do not have the capacity for that. They give darshan in an ordinary form, like a breeze that passes, and go. That, he says, is the kind of darshan this sadhak received; grace descended on him, and today, by the grace of Bhagavati and of Bhagwan Dattatreya, he lives a very contented life.

The speaker closes by saying he hopes the account will encourage those sadhaks who wish to practise sadhana in life with discipline. For those without discipline, he says, it will only ever be a feeling — God will come. But for the one who binds himself to a strict discipline and daily routine and lives by it, it is simply not true that God is not with him: for such a person the devi-devatas and Bhagwan certainly do manifest, because they also take a test. Walking with discipline, he says, is not within everyone's power. But whoever does walk that way — however great the difficulty in his life, however great the daivik obstacle — it is the Devi herself who appears, bestows direct grace, and goes. He adds that the level of that darshan back then and the sadhak's level now are as far apart as earth and sky. The sadhak lives a very ekantik life — meaning he never discusses these matters before anyone, never says that he has attained this or that; only his own seva-puja, and the life ahead as Bhagavati wills.