Do you know about the Aghoris? They are the yogis and yoginis in India who meditate in cremation grounds and drink booze from human skulls etc. They do practices where they embrace transgressive energies and “horrible” things for the sake of getting free from the snares of illusion.

If you are Aghori—please don’t take offense to this article. I have great respect for your traditions.

Too Much?

Lots of post modern “middle way” spiritual folks look at the Aghoris and feel like they are “too much”. The middle path says we don’t need to pierce our flesh or go to such extremes for the sake of our spiritual evolution.

I kind of agree, but for a totally different reason. I have no problem with the extremity. I think we need extreme means in these days of extreme delusion and distraction. I just think that the Aghori’s displays are a little misplaced today.

The root of Aghori in Sanskrit is ghora—which we can translate as horror. It sounds like our word gore. So a-ghora is the negation of that horror. Dead bodies are horrible to the normal person, to the Aghori they are not. A pius Hindu will avoid alcohol and also anything unclean or inauspicious like human remains. The Aghori will drink alcohol from a human skull, not just as a demonstration, but as a transgressive practice. We can talk about transgressive practices another time.

I want to talk about something one of my Natha siblings wrote about recently. A yogi with clear perception doesn’t need charnal grounds or painful practices. If we have the right eyes to see we can see that this world IS a charnal ground. Living in this fractured world itself is a practice of self-mortification.

If we have a subtle practice, we can leverage the horrors that are all around us to take us deeper into love and humility and connection with Grace.

Nityānanda Baba was a master of subtle inquiry. He was a supreme renunciate and a wielder of great supernatural abilities, and also made zero display of his powers. One of his main teachings was about this—about what he called sukshma vichāra, or subtle inquiry. His way is about transforming our eyes and hearts to be able to see the Divine in everything and everything in the Divine.

Compared with this vision, we are living in a charnel ground, we are living in horror. We don’t smear ashes on our bodies, we smear deodorant and eyeshadow. We don’t need to sit before burning corpses by the river, we need just to sit by the screen and watch the burning world.

Our next online course is all about him. We’ll get into his teachings and do practices to connect with him. But most of all, we will get into the flow of his Grace.

July 6-27

We have spots open for both the group class and the private mentoring options.

Course Details Here

Below is a guided meditation for moments of horror and great pain and suffering.

It’s worth subscribing for.