This piece of writing is intended for those who have received Samaya Dīkṣā.
The mind is undisciplined. By now, as you have begun observing yourself, you must have realised at least one thing: how much of what you do is simply out of habit, not because you actually want to do it. How 90% of what you say is meaningless, or worse, an obstacle in the way of reaching your goals. How 90% of what you do is equally useless, or worse, an obstacle in the way of reaching your goals.
It is obvious, then, that you will never be able to live life on your own terms this way. Your destiny, in a sense, has already been written.
Imagine a chariot pulled by ten horses. If only one horse, the one under your control, wishes to move towards the destination, while the other nine refuse to support it and instead work against it, the chariot will never reach its destination.
And then you will say, “Fate did not favour me. My destiny was ill-fated.”
It sounds wonderful when people say, “Let the mind be free.” There will always be spiritual teachers telling you not to restrain the mind, to let it roam freely. Don’t control it, they say. Let go of control. But these spiritual teachers will not take responsibility for the state you eventually find yourself in. “Don’t control it”, “let go of control” can be wonderful tools for liberation, but that comes in the highest form of yoga, when you can catch any impulse of the mind the moment it arises and realise its true nature as a projection of consciousness, of the same nature as consciousness itself. In doing so, you remain established in your true Self.
For such a person, it does not matter where they go. They may go into a gutter or to hell; they least care. For them, ten lashes on their back are the same as being hugged by their beloved from behind.
If you can abide in that non-dual awareness, by all means, follow the teaching. But if you cannot, then take your life into your own hands.
You are riding a horse. Forget ten horses; let’s consider just one. When you learn to ride a horse, you first have to tame it. Why would the horse follow your commands? It has its own idea of where it wants to go. And before you know it, you might find yourself in a wild grassland.
Taming a horse is frightening at first. You have to remain alert. Can you learn to ride a horse without fear, without being alert? Won’t you feel any tension?
You will have to remain alert every moment, careful not to lose your balance, throughout your waking hours whenever you are riding that horse, whenever you are using your thoughts. It applies to everything you do with your mind. You must always remain alert. Otherwise, the horse will throw you off or take you somewhere else entirely. You might set out in the northern direction, doze off for a moment, and find yourself travelling south without even realising it.
You have to develop such harmony with the horse that you and the horse become one. For an expert rider, the horse becomes like their own body. They think of going right, and the horse turns right, responding to the subtlest movements of their body. The horse becomes so well trained.
But your own body and mind have become the horse—a wild, untrained horse. And you believe that every desire of the horse is your own desire. Wherever the horse is going, you want to go there too. That is why you feel free.
In such a state, there is no need for alertness, fear, or tension, not at least when it comes to controlling the horse. Of course, there will be plenty of tension and fear when you discover where the horse is taking you, into what ravine or wilderness. But that comes later. For now, there is no fear, no tension involved in controlling the horse, because you have mistaken the horse for yourself.
Yes, once you become an expert, there is no more tension. When you are just learning to drive, that is when you feel alert and maybe paranoid. But once you have learned, you no longer feel that way. The same is true of riding a horse, and the same is true of the mind. Gradually, these rules of discipline will become second nature to you.
Understand this: these rules of discipline are a declaration of revolution. They are a rebellion, an insurrection against the mind’s absolute tyranny, against the order that has prevailed for so long. You have to change the course of a river that has been flowing in one direction. You have to change what has become a custom, a tradition. You have to bring about reform.
And in the beginning, of course, you will feel a certain paranoia. You will have to remain constantly alert, wondering whether you are making a mistake, whether something is being left undone or overlooked. There will always be fear. But that is necessary. Your life, at least in the beginning, will resemble the life of revolutionaries.
Only then can freedom be won. Only then can revolution be brought about, only then can reform be achieved.
Many practitioners start becoming afraid of the Yogini. They say, “I used to enjoy doing the practices, but now after Diksha I fear the Yogini. What if she punishes me?”
Understand this. When we read randomly or research a topic, say, Indian history, we enjoy it. We keep reading on ChatGPT or Google, watching YouTube videos, and occasionally even picking up books, all out of sheer passion and curiosity. But why is it that the moment we have to study the same subject for an exam, we become afraid?
Because now something is at stake, and deep down, you know you aren’t doing it well enough. If your random, curiosity-driven, passionate studying were put to the test in a civil services examination, you would realise how much of it is substance and how much is fluff. You know this yourself.
If something is at stake and you’re feeling afraid, anxious, or burdened, it means you already know that you weren’t really doing it properly. You weren’t truly serious about it when nothing was at stake.
So, if you want to do something serious, if you want to put knowledge to some serious, practical use, you will have to stop fooling yourself and become genuinely dedicated. This superficial spirituality is something everyone can do. Watch YouTube videos, practise a little here and there, not even completing the practice every day, and spend the rest of the day unconscious, repeating the same old habits and thinking that a few minutes of practice will somehow change everything. Nothing is going to happen that way.
Bringing any kind of knowledge into practice in a way that truly transforms you is not easy. You have to be serious about it.
Getting into a relationship is easy, especially when it’s new. It’s exciting, it’s fun. But once you commit, once you get married, it isn’t always fun anymore, because now there is responsibility. You have to discipline your mind. The novelty wears off, and now we don’t want to deal with it. It feels scary, anxious, and burdensome.
We must not become spiritual tourists who have just come to visit Kailash Mansarovar. We have to become inhabitants of Kailash. We have to stay here, live here, make this place our home. Only then can something meaningful actually happen.
And that isn’t easy. You have to endure the cold here every single day. You have to endure every aspect of life here. You have to take responsibility. You have to have something at stake.
There is another thing you need to understand: the Yogini understands. She isn’t a fool. She knows how incompetent you are, and she understands that you won’t be able to follow all the rules perfectly so soon. The patterns you have developed over time take time to break. And she doesn’t have much faith in you yet, either. Earlier, you didn’t even exist for her; now you do, but only barely. She doesn’t have any particular expectations of you..
We try to change people when we have some hope for them. We reprimand them, explain things to them, or try to correct them because we expect something from them. We don’t even bother making that effort with people we have no expectations of.
Right now, that is more or less where you stand in her eyes. So, if you give up and stop following the samayāchāra, she will simply give up on you, too. And then you will become non-existent to her again.
Yes, if you deliberately disrespect the samayāchāra, insult the Tantras, or create problems, there will be consequences. If you do it intentionally, she won’t let it go.
And then there are certain gentlemen who deliberately, or simply out of laziness, never follow the rules in the first place. They haven’t even tried. Yet they wonder, “Why, I haven’t been punished yet?”
Good grief! Have you fallen so low that you’re asking why no policeman has come along to beat you with a baton when you’re busy stealing? Are you waiting for someone to whip you from behind before you start working? Do you always need someone to push you forward? Do you have no free will of your own?
If you’re waiting for the Yogini to make your life hell, inflict suffering upon you, and punish you before you do anything right, then yours is a miserable existence indeed. A life of slavery, a life like that of an animal, like a donkey that only moves forward after being whipped.
Move forward of your own free will.
The Yogini regards such people as mere paśus and simply ignores them.
If you are genuinely making an effort, the Yogini gradually begins to trust you and becomes invested in you. Even then, you don’t need to fear punishment. If you try to correct your mistakes and perform prāyaścitta, the Yogini will not harm you.
The Yoginis punish those who deliberately do wrong, or those individuals in whom they see potential and who have already advanced considerably, perhaps even as far as the Vāmācāra and Kaulācāra paths, but then become arrogant. They start making mistakes deliberately, repeat them over and over again, and refuse to perform prāyaścitta.
Those who follow samayācāra are generally dealt with rather leniently. The real influence of the Yoginis becomes apparent in Vāmācāra and Kaulācāra, where the extreme forms of punishment I mentioned can occur.
Think about it: when someone cares about you, they are sometimes the very people who exercise authority over you and compel you to change.
The Yoginis’ punishment is not like imprisonment. When we commit a crime, we may be sent to prison or even sentenced to death. This is done to protect others from us when we cannot control ourselves. We are confined within four walls, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, so that others remain safe from us. Punishment can also serve as a deterrent, setting an example for others of what happens to those who behave in such ways.
Generally, however, this is not the Yoginis’ intention. They want to change you, to bring you back onto the right path by confronting you directly with the very problems you need to address.
In rare cases, they may also make an example of someone for the sake of others, showing them what not to become and what the consequences of such behaviour can be.
And if you use Tantra to harm fellow practitioners, for instance, by pretending to be a more advanced practitioner so that others will follow you or obey you, even if this is just your hidden intention, the Yogini becomes wrathful.
Similarly, if you seek to have sexual relations with a woman in the name of Tantra, exploiting her trust and manipulating her faith in the process, the situation is different altogether. You have become a potential danger to others. In such cases, the Yogini’s punishment is less about reforming you and more about ensuring that you no longer pose a threat to other practitioners and become an example.
The point is that beginners shouldn’t be afraid of the Yogini. They should be afraid of their own actions, of the life they have been living until now.
That life of slavery, that life of constantly needing to be whipped before you do anything, of moving forward only when someone beats you with a stick. That zombie-like existence, consumed by unconscious attachments and aversions, where your intellect and capacity for discernment have withered away, where you can no longer make decisions through reason and discernment, where you cannot even act consciously.
That is the life you should fear. That itself is the punishment.
Don’t sit around waiting for the Yogini to come and slap you. Look at your own hellish existence. Isn’t that punishment enough? Aren’t you already living in hell?
Isn’t that reason enough to start following the rules of samayācāra and begin living consciously?
Take your life into your own hands. Live by principles. Don’t live like dogs, blindly driven by nature’s impulses, running after whatever catches their attention, like a dog chasing a car.
