For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

By now it's probably quite obvious that our spiritual community is like the Protestant church you grew up in. Although all of our content on the internet is listed as "adult-content", often I have overestimated the maturity of our audience because I am only just now starting to understand how deep seated our preconceptions can be regarding hierarchies of power and institutions of authority, what to say about these things in the spiritual world. The thing is: we tend to always look outside ourselves for answers and more often, we tend to hold everyone and everything responsible for choices that we fear to own up to ourselves. But in the world of Vāmācāra/Kaula-mārga, the so-called "left hand path" of Tantra, there is no substitute for real discernment, grit and maturity. It really isn't for everybody because we're all of us different and so we'll all need different things to make spiritual progress/we'll all find different things spiritually nourishing. But how will we know if it's for us?To help with discernment and to provide a "CAUTION:HOT" disclaimer for our stuff, we put together a little playlist called Community Safety + Guidelines to help audiences get the most of our community starting with Dream Initiation | & Are We A Legitimate Tāntrik Lineage? where we ask some serious questions about lineage authority and then in How To Practice Tantra & Guru Yoga Responsibly we laid out the traditional safeguards for interacting with spiritual teachers and their communities and in Can You Learn Tantra From Books | & Am I A Tāntrik Guru? we lay out our principles and commitments as a community so you can know what to expect and what to watch out for. In this next installment, Who Should You Learn Tantra From? we offer some very important disclaimers regarding risk appetite and bhāva (spiritual predisposition) not only to carefully explain the bhāva of our community but more importantly to make the case that everyone is valid, each according to their own disposition. There is room for us all!Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Because it was the close of the eclipse portal with the lunar eclipse on śrāvana pūrnimā (pisces full moon) tonight, we were all in a reflective and contemplative mood and so in this talk, we discuss some of the tensions, paradoxes and contradictions inherent in the transmission of Tantra throughout the ages with the early sadhus in the Vedic era to the Śaiva Siddhantins to Ramakrishna to Vivekananda and to us in the modern context, before plunging into some practices from the Kāmakalā-Vilāsa & the japa krama from our vāmācāra paddhathi. Here is a playlist of all our lectures on Tantra over the years. Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

On the auspicious occasion of Nāga Pañcamī, the sacred day for worshipping dragons, I was inspired to give a slightly more dynamic and comparative talk this time compared to our talk last year (Snakes, Dragons & Nāgas in Tantra) which focused more on the āvatāras of the nāgas (Patañjalī, Abhinavagupta etc.). In this second talk on the subject, we explored the concept of the Dragon (a more literal reading of Nāga) as a personification of wildness and primordial chaos, tracking the idea in the Campbellian Hero's Journey (to make an exciting claim about merging the princess, a symbol for the lost anima with the dragon, which also symbolizes both the shadow and the anima, to use Jungian terms) with comparisons to Tiamat from Mesopotamian myth, Apep or Apopohis/Typhon in the Ancient Egyptian tradition and of course tracing it into its corollaries in the Vedic/Hindu world with reference to Indra's battle with Vrtta, the earliest "dragon" to appear in the tradition. I make an exciting claim comparing Patañjali, the Serpent (whose name literally means "fallen offering", or rather, "fallen angel) to Lucifer in the Garden of Eden and an even more exciting claim about why we should not try to slay the dragon, but rather learn from Her and even become Her. Here are some of the mantras we referenced in the class:अनंतं वासुकीं शेषं पद्मनाभं च कंबलम् शंखपालं धृतराष्ट्रं च तक्षकं कालियं तथा एतानि नव नामानि नागानाम् च महात्मन: सायंकाले पठेन्नित्यं प्रात:काले विशेषत: तस्य विषभयं नास्ति सर्वत्र विजयी भवेत् anaṃtaṃ vāsukīṃ śeṣaṃ padmanābhaṃ ca kaṃbalam śaṃkhapālaṃ dhṛtarāṣṭraṃ ca takṣakaṃ kāliyaṃ tathā etāni nava nāmāni nāgānām ca mahātmanah: sāyaṃkāle paṭhennityaṃ prātakāle viśeṣatah: tasya viṣabhayaṃ nāsti sarvatra vijayī bhavet “Ananta, Vāsukī, Śesha, Padmanābha and Kambala Śankhapāla, Drstarāshtra and Takshaka and Kāliya: These are the 9 great Serepents: I bow to them all! If (this mantra) is recited always, especially in the morning and in the evening, all poisons and fear will be destroyed and one becomes victorious everywhere!” If you can, feed some snakes today with hard boiled eggs and milk! That is to say: leave out a bowl of milk and a hard boiled egg under a tree somewhere! And here is a mantra for invoking and worshipping Patañjali: योगेन चित्तस्य पदेन वाचां । मलं शरीरस्य च वैद्यकेन ॥ योऽपाकरोत्तमं प्रवरं मुनीनां । पतञ्जलिं प्राञ्जलिरानतोऽस्मि ॥ आबहु पुरुषाकारं। शङ्खचक्रासि धारिणं॥ सहस्र शीरसं श्वेतं। प्रनमामि पतञ्जलिम्॥ yogena cittasya padena vācāṁ । malaṁ śarīrasya ca vaidyakena ॥ yo’pākarottamaṁ pravaraṁ munīnāṁ । patañjaliṁ prāñjalirānato’smi ॥ ābahu puruṣākāraṁ śaṅkha cakrāsi dhāriṇaṁ sahasra śīrasaṁ śvetaṁpranamāmi patañjalim Yoga, for the mind Grammar, for the speech, Medicine for the impurities of the body, I bow to that great sage Patañjali who has given all these! Pure spirit incarnate in form, Holding the conch, discuss and sword I bow to Patanjali, that thousand headed white (cobra)!Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

A nuanced and radical question in then singularity that is the modern experience of Tantrik transmission and education on the internet in post-modernist late-state capitalism! This lecture is part of a series on not only how to interact with spirituality as a whole but particularly with regards to how to interface with our community. PS: Here's a playlist of all our community guidelines+ safetyHit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

We gave this talk in the lobby of a hotel in Seattle, discussing a few traditional safe guards around approaching Tantra and finding teachers/lineages/institutions that suit your predispositions. These three-fold safeguard (sat tarka, guru, āgama) becomes especially important when approach Kaula or Vama (i.e "left hand") type traditions and so in many ways, these ideas are foundational not only to spirituality as a whole but certainly to interacting with our community. Inadvertently, this talk ended up becoming guide of like a sort of "community guidelines" for us!Jai Mā!Here's a playlist of all our community guidelines+ safetyHit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

A lot of the recent controversy had to do with an event that happened in Seattle where one of our friends left the retreat and many felt that I was wrong for letting her walk off into the night as she did. Anyway, since then, many actors with various motives have used said friend and spoken for her as part of their virtue signaling, misguided activism & gofundme grifts. All is fair in love and war so no love lost but I thought it was rather special to be able to finally hear from said friend and see what she thinks and has to say about all this. She also just dropped a poetry book chronicling her journey and her insights and I think its wonderfully written and an important piece of revolutionary literature, a singularity even in our understanding of care, mental "illness", institutionalism & Tāntrik communities. You can pick up the book here and check out Ruma's stuff here.  This feels like the best book launch marketing campaign ever tbh, we might inadvertent marketing genuises...Maybe one day they'll study us in a college business program or at the very least an abnormal Khan academy psychology course..Anyway, this recording is from our discussion immediately following my statement re: recent allegations which you can watch hereHit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Gang, let’s get back to work. Last night, I started lecturing again, and in light of recent events, I thought it would be good to address: 1. White knights and neocolonialism2. The projection of disempowering narratives into marginalized groups especially women in the name of “protecting them from themselves” 3. The weaponizing of those narratives of disempowerment for a consumer capitalism obsession with internet controversy at the expense of truth for the currency of attention and acclaim 4. The Reagan-esque virtue signaling and explicit hypocrisy 5. Ineffectual fear based anger driven activism. Live weekly classes are back: Monday 7pm PST, Thursday 7pm PST & Friday 11am PST here. Jai Mā! Satyam Eva Jayate, truth alone triumphs. Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Okay wow. What a week. There’s so much value in our coming together to discuss grievances, clear up misunderstandings, ask questions & clarify our roles and relationships to one another, especially in the wake of the out of control narratives on the internet that has me guilty of everything and anything including human sacrifice. For this, the public forum/open discussion style satsangh we did last week is ideal. So we did another one tonight, as we had planned last week.Although we’ve decided Jvalamukhī (albeit coming from an ultimately good, if not a tad misaligned, place) as moderator is not the way forward, we still value the role of a neutral 3rd party moderation team to facilitate our forum discussions. To that end, I’m so grateful that Vera Devī was moderating this discussion!We met at the regular zoom link at our Monday night satsangh hashed it out for a few hours together and here's the complete recording. Satyam Eva Jayate, the truth alone triumphs. Jai Mā!Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

We gave this talk on a special occasion: the amāvasyā (the new moon) that opens the gupta navarātrī period (the 9 nights of the summer goddess festival) and so to celebrate, we reflect upon dīkshā, spiritual initiation & the systems of accountability to ensure the credibility of Tāntrik lineages so that we can better contextualize our place as a community in the midst of all of that. Mainly, I want to revisit the validity of intrapersonal mystical experiences like dreams and intuitions as reliable metric for religious authenticity even beyond texts and institutions and to substantiate this claim, we consider 4 important cases: 1. Vasugupta & the Śiva Sutra2. Maheśvarānanda & the Mahartha Mañjarī, 3. Rāni Rasmani & the Dakshineshwar Temple, 4. Swami Ashokananda's "śaktopaya dīkshā" (to borrow Swami Turiyananda's phrase here) from Swami Vivekananda in meditation & dream experience Here is a playlist of talks on our guru-paramparā & thoughts on lineage. And here are some videos on our mission, ideals, manifesto etc. Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

To celebrate the Gupta Navarātrī (Summer Goddess Festival) this year, we got together in Portland and decided to take up a new text, the Saundarya Laharī, an exceedingly beautiful Śrī Vidyā primary source & primer attributed to Ādi Śankarācarya to study alongside the Yoginī Hṛdāya which we started studying together last week. In this first of many talks on the Saundarya Laharī (follow along with this lecture series here), after a little introduction & discussion featuring Mahadevaji (which you can watch here), I jump in to introduce some foundational & preliminary ideas about Tāntrik Goddess worship starting with the Aṣṭarasā (अष्टरसा) (the “8 flavors of consciousness”) model and the Aṣṭamātṛkās (the 8 fierce yoginīs that correspond to the 8 sets of the Sanskrit alphabet) to which these rasas are often mapped. Here are some citations & resources:From Bhārati’s classical source:शृङ्गारहास्यकरुणरौद्रवीरभयानकाः । बीभत्साद्भुतसंज्ञौ चेत्यष्टौ नाटये रसाः स्मृताः śṛṅgārahāsyakaruṇaraudravīrabhayānakāḥ | bībhatsādbhutasaṃjñau cetyaṣṭau nāṭaye rasāḥ smṛtāḥ || Śṛṅgāra (erotic love) Hāsya (comedy) Karuṇa (compassion/grief) Bhayānaka (terror) Bībhatsa (disgust) Vīra (heroic) Adbhuta (amazement) Raudra (anger)And the bonus +1 from Abhinava: Śānta (quiescent/transcendent/spritiual)note: Aṣṭarasā (8 flavors) is the classical list; Abhinava adds the 9th to make “navarasa” (9 flavors).The source for these is Abhinava Bhārati, Abhinava’s commentary on the Nātya Śāshtra of Bharati but also for the “9th”, see Abhinava’s Dhvanyaloka Locana, his commentary on Anandavardhana’s “dhvani” idea (what makes poetry poetic)Here are the 8 sets (mātrikā-Varga/Mātrika Kula) of Sanskrit letters:स्वर (vowels)अ (a), आ (ā), इ (i), ई (ī), उ (u), ऊ (ū), ऋ (ṛ), ॠ (ṝ), ऌ (ḷ), ॡ (ḹ), ए (e), ऐ (ai), ओ (o), औ (au), अं (aṃ), अः (aḥ)कण्ठ्य (gutturals)क (ka), ख (kha), ग (ga), घ (gha), ङ (ṅa).तालव्य (palatals)च (ca), छ (cha), ज (ja), झ (jha), ञ (ña).मूर्धन्य (retroflex)ट (ṭa), ठ (ṭha), ड (ḍa), ढ (ḍha), ण (ṇa).दन्त्य (dentals)त (ta), थ (tha), द (da), ध (dha), न (na).ओष्ठ्य (labials)प (pa), फ (pha), ब (ba), भ (bha), म (ma).अन्तस्थ (semivowels/liquids)य (ya), र (ra), ल (la), व (va)ऊष्मन् (sibilants + aspirant)श (śa), ष (ṣa), स (sa), ह (ha).In the next class, we’ll look at another set of 8 (the 8 shadows/pāśās) to complete our understanding of today's material! Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

We ended our last conversation (What Is The Śrī Cakra? | Yoginī Hṛdāya, Verses 1-18) with an invitation to start chanting regularly the Devī Khaḍgamālā which you can learn more about here: A Simple Way To Worship The Srī Yantra | Khaḍgamālā Stotram if this text is new to you. It is perhaps the best introduction to the practice of Śrī Vidyā because until we understand the names of all the deities (emanations of the one deity, Tripurā), we will likely not be able to map them on to the cakra, which is just the sort of thing visualization and worship requires. So before we can start performing the daily pūjā or take up any practices, and to supplement our understanding of the philosophical principles of the cakra as the auto-erotic, blissful expansion of the ever-free, self-willed Goddess, we often recommend just chanting this hymn every day until you have it down by memory! You'll find all our talks on Śrī Vidyā here.Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Since we recently took up a concerted study of a rather high level text in the non-dual śākta tradition, the Yoginī Hṛdāya (the last 3 chapters of a much larger work in the Śrī Vidyā tradition, Vāmakeśvarīmatatantra in 8 chapters) at our weekly Thursday evening text study, I thought I'd share this little voice recording from the other night after our Kālāshtamī pūjā where we offer a brief run through of the first of three chapters of this text with some loose commentary. I'll drop the videos for this class moving forward in this playlist.Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Tantra has often been considered a closed tradition because its texts and the teachings transmitted in them on maṇḍala/cakra (geometric diagrams representing the retinue of deities as emanations of the central deity/ a philosophical presentation of the Absolute nature of reality), mantra (a sacred sound formula which is synonymous with the Deity/Absolute Reality as a vibrational pattern) and pūjā (ritual procedures detailing the employment of mantras to contact and assimilate the energies of the maṇḍala)  have been given most often in the strictest secrecy and most reverent ritual settings. We've often stressed that unless these things are received directly from the mouth of one to whom it was similarly given, even if we were to learn these things ourselves on the internet or from books, they might not work for us with the same power and aliveness compared to if we had received it from a living lineage. Often, inspired by ideals of accessibility and out of an enthusiasm for this material, I've tended to ignore some of those disclaimers around who should be let in and let out, and I'm starting to understand more now why those disclaimers can be helpful and why in my zeal, my mass distribution of some of the more esoteric material might not always be as compassionate or as helpful as I had hoped.Still, I can't help but to want to make as accessible as possible to all who are sincerely seeking these ideas and practices that have meant so much to me over the years. Perhaps the most responsible thing to do then is to really emphasize the traditional safeguards and disclaimers which are often presented in the beginning of any primary source in our tradition so that viewers can be maximally discerning about whether or not they want to opt in! In this talk, as a sort of preamble to our class on the Yoginī Hṛdāya, one of the central texts of the Śrī Vidyā tradition, we take up the first 5 or so verses of the text which, like many texts in the Sanskritic spiritual tradition, carefully explains:1. adhikari (the intended audience of the transmission, i.e who will benefit from hearing this)2. prayojana (the goal that the text outlines for study and practice)3. artha (the contents of the text, in this case as mentioned above cakra, mantra & pūja9)4. prayojana-artha sambandha (the relationship between the content and the goal) with an emphasis on the 1st of these 4 things. We continue this discussion in the next video where we take up a study of the Yoginī Hṛdāya in a serious way, having established some of these disclaimers around adhikari, competency. We'll drop all our classes on this text and other Śrī Vidyā adjacent material here. Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Because we are all of us different, naturally, we want different things out of life and out of spirituality and we so all come to it with different expectations and values and backgrounds. Often, this means we're going to have different (and equally valid) ideas about “Tantra”, “Guru” & most importantly “Dīkshā”, spiritual initiation. In Indic spiritual traditions, we tend to value texts (śāstra) to substantiate our claims and this is especially true of Tantra which is in a large part a textual transmission (without dispensing with the importance of human to human spiritual transmission, through living lineages, of course.) And in the name of integrity and transparency, as is the responsibility of all acāryas, śaiva or otherwise, it's important to be accountable to our textual tradition, to cite our sources and innovate within the parameters of tradition. But the thing is, we might just all be reading different texts and have different ways of interpreting and evaluating the legitimacy of those texts themselves! We should first acknowledge that there are different interpretations of these things and they are all valid even if they differ from one another because our traditions are so vast and diverse. Also, each person is entitled to going about things and understand things in their own way since, again, we are each of us different; what works for one person might not for another. Now, a lot of the time, people conflate what we're doing with what others might be doing and judge us by standards or values that we might not share. All too often, our detractors feel that we are illegitimate (and again, everyone is entitled to their opinion and this is perfectly alright) but in response we say: just because it doesn't work for you, does not mean it isn't valuable to another or rather; just because it doesn't match your standards of legitimacy, doesn't mean it is inherently illegitimate. Perhaps the Indic traditions are just more diverse and more inclusive than we're willing to allow for? As such, I want to be clearer about my definitions and understanding of terms like “tantra”, “guru” and most of all, “dīksha” moving forward so that you can better evaluate whether or not this material (and my interpretation and presentation of it) is spiritually nourishing for you! In that direction, here’s a little excerpt from a conversation I was having in the car re: dīksha, in particular. Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Earlier this year, on Vivekananda Jayanti, I gave a talk on the early days of the Vedanta movement in America, when a few enthusiastic Americans in New York in 1895 gathered in a one bedroom apartment to hear this strange man from India with strange and exciting new ideas talk for hours on end. This is an especially exciting story if you are participating in yoga in any capacity and even more exciting and inspiring if you are, or are aspiring to be, a teacher of yoga, vedanta, tantra or any other Eastern spiritual tradition that emerged in America since then. Mainly though, this talk shows us that times now are not that different from how they were then. This talk is meant to, in looking back, inspire us to look forward and pick up where Swami Vivekananda left. Let's get to it then... Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

We gave this talk on Swami Vivekananda's birthday in January of 2026. Today, in 1902, Swamiji kicked his mortal body with great triumph. So I felt it was fitting to post this now, given that it is perhaps one of my most experimental and radical talks! May this be an offering to Swamiji and to this manifest universe, to all animate and inanimate beings, to the sum total of all souls, the one God Swamiji taught us to worship! May we live up to his ideal. Jai Mā! Jai Guru! Jai Swamiji! Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Some time ago we gave a talk on  How To Turn Every Word Into A Mantra where we explored the phonemic foundations of Tāntrik mantras, to work out how every word in every language can be empowered (i.e "mantricized) to create change in the world within and without. In this talk, we take some of those ideas to their logical extreme to articulate a mantra for Mother Kālī in her pure void aspect, before whom even Śrī Arjuna trembled in fear in Chapter XI of the Bhagavad Gītā! In this talk, we see how Mā in this aspect is not scary at all but when approached in this way, is actually thrilling, exciting and empowering. This might be my most ambitious and exciting lecture yet since this idea is something I've been just chewing on and playing with for a few days and I don't think any idea has quite excited me as much as this one! Jai Mā!Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

A full moon (Kabir Jayanti) special lecture on the ecstatic devotional poetry of medieval India talking Bhakti, Tantra and the liminality of both as my offering at the feet of the baddies of this world, Mira & also Emma Goldman, whose birthday it happened to be that day!Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Recently, we've been having some discussions around the finer, more esoteric ideas around mantra sādhanā from the very refined manuals and exegetical works of the 10th and 11th masters of classical Tantra like Maheśvarānanda & Abhinava Gupta and others. In How Mantra Works & My Favorite Śakti Mantra we explained mantra-sādhanā in a properly śaktādvaita (non-dual) context and then extended from there in Kālī Gāyatrī Mantra | & How To Use Mantras to consider how the mantra can then be applied in a more traditional ritualistic, contemplative and meditative context (which Abhinavācharya might call "ānavopaya" or what we might recognize as more exoteric, mainstream Tāntrik sādhanā). In this class, we turn to an even finer and subtler approach regarding mantra which considers the phonemic foundations to make a claim about how bījā mantras are formed. Most of this material appears in Abhinava's Chapter III of the Tantrāloka & Tantrasāra but the precedent for this is in primary sources like the Nandikeśvara Tantra and even the Maheśvara Sutras from Pāninī which offer very early analysis on Sanskrit phonemes and the logic around how mantras arise and how they work. Once we do this kind of deconstruction (or rather, once we understand things at this level of resolution which arguable is the closest zoom in to mantra sādhana we've ever done together) we should be able to see how all sounds are mantras and how all words, in all languages can not just be empowered as mantras and used accordingly but also how they can be recognized to be inherent mantra whose meaning is Consciousness, i.e You.Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

An important talk looking at some key ideas from a very esoteric, advanced Tāntrik text from the Non-Dual Kaula Śākta (left hand path) tradition to completely revolutionize how we see pūjā, ceremonial worship (by investigating the meaning of the Sanskrit word for "flower", the central offering in pūjā) and how we see spiritual life as a whole. This talk slaps, you guys, if I may say so myself... Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

My work on the internet has been polarizing for various reasons but one feature that regularly comes up is individuals questioning whether we have a right to share what we tend to share publicly and freely, given that a lot of this material is usually kept quite secret in institutional hierarchies that carefully curate distribution and access. (not to mention of course that I'm young and cute and spiritual teachers are apparently supposed to be old and grumpy and serious and virtuous or something...) Now, when some of my friends started posting their own content on the internet, along the lines of what I had been sharing with them, the backlash they got was twice as fierce! I suspect this is because as an Indian man, it's bad enough that I'm talking so freely and recklessly about guarded topics, what to say about the rancor when someone who is not Indian tries to do something like this? Anyway, I was proud of my friends who kept posting about what they loved despite the hate, harassment and death threats and inspired by them, I did this little bit on why I think people have such a problem and what I think we ought to do about it, if anything. (This talk was given right when we got home to LA after the Punk Rock Tantra/ Kentucky Fried Tantra retreat so it reviews some of the material from those talks too.) Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Right after Punk Rock Tantra/Kentucky Fried Tantra retreat where we gave a series of fiery talks with revolutionary fervor about the effort os redistributing esoteric spiritual knowledge to one and all along the highest standards of accessibility while remaining sensitive to the subtle nuances that make secrecy important and unavoidable to some extent in the Tāntrik world, we were all crashing out together at Bhairavī Tārā Ma's and I gave this little spiel about how there is a clear precedent both classical and contemporary for sharing secret teachings like we are doing. Also, we talked a little about why what exactly we mean by "secrets". And maybe most importantly, we start the talk with the important question: "why Tantra at all?" Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

It is very, very easy even in a community centered around anti-establishment revolutionary values for hierarchies to emerge spontaneously: its usually the weirdest, most eccentric clown that rises to the status of outcast king of the clowns in a circus gathering of weirdo outcasts that we call "sangha". And after all, what is a spiritual community but a gathering of weirdo outcastes for whom community and sense of belonging have been withheld by mainstream society?Its this very need to belong, this very human craving for connection that is often leveraged against you to stay in communities that you should have long since left. The point of school is to graduate but we often don't want to because it means entering into a world that once harmed us and rejected us and because it would of course, naturally, be safer to stay in the supposed safety of the school yard. The point of a community is to make us all individuals and yet how often do we sacrifice that sovereign individuality in order just to fit in? As a consequence, spiritual communities, even those with high ideals reacting to the problems of society, become micro societies with the exact same problems (and because of their insular nature, often much more exaggerated versions of the same problems). To this we say, lovingly: fuck all that. Let's be self aware, vigilant, ruthlessly independent and unafraid of entering and (more importantly) leaving spiritual spaces and communities that no longer serve us. Here's a somewhat self-aware talk about protecting autonomy & sovereignty. We will not "animal farm" up in this bitch, okay?! Here are the talks from the retreat + some other talks we gave immediately before and after the retreat that are related:https://www.patreon.com/collection/2206631Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

The ephemeral and fleeting nature of Māyā (the manifest world) leads many traditions (who are all of them totally valid by the way because different strokes for different folks) to the conclusion that the world of a void, an illusion and a trickster out to get you and rob you of your true inheritance: joy, bliss, peace, blessedness etc. Even in Eastern traditions that don't have room for the Devil, we tend to make a devil out the world; we demonize its dynamism because we haven't understood it or how to worship it & we cherish (often times escapist and life-negating) views that fetishize silence and stillness. In this talk, as per our somewhat provocative title, we say that Kālī does indeed lie and trick but as part of a game, as part of an art project (the idea of art as "artifice) and as part of her feminine power of concealment, veiling and secrecy which do not detract from, but add to her beauty. We contemplate the role of the "veil" and the use of magic, make up and subtlety of speech in our idea of the Divine Feminine to argue that all the things that we tend to problematize in the world are actually to the credit and glory of this Divine Enchantress and Mistress of Magic. Also, I just offer some anecdotes from my own dating situation to show how this understanding of Kālī shows up in my romantic preferences haha! You'll find all the lectures for this retreat here + some other talks we gave immediately before and after the retreat that are related here:https://www.patreon.com/collection/2206631Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

When you feel an interest arising in you to learn and practice Tantra, you will very soon encounter vitriolic gate keeping (by those who are themselves often outside the gates). You will come up against established hierarchies and rigid "traditions". People, often internet strangers, will almost always have something to say about your practice and as if they were the highest authorities on the subject, offer their opinions (whether asked or unasked) about what you can or cannot do. What human being is allowed to have power over any human being, though? When did we accept that as natural and alright and when did we decide to give away our power to those who claim to know better. If there's anything to learn, we must learn for ourselves following our svadharma, our inherent nature and the inclinations of our own heart, which is often (and this is sometimes scary to hear) wholly unique and wholly different from anyone else. What you have to do in your own journey has never been and will be never done. What model then exists to guide you but your own inspiration and whimsy? Everyone is valid and everyone's truth is true in their own context, given their own predilections, but just because something is true before and is true for someone else does not mean it is true now or true for you. Why do we cling to the way things used to be? The ideas of 10th and 11th CE India (and a lot of the times these are distorted by 700 years of Mogul rule and after that a wave of Christian apologetics during the British Rāj, e.g the Brāhmo and Arya Samāj movements of 19th CE ) are like beautiful but antiquated coins. They worked before for different people in a different time but they have no currency now. We are now, and we are different and so these ideas need to be re-evalutated, re-interpreted and re-contextualized, to preserve the best and incinerate the rest!You are a sovereign being! You can do whatever the fuck you want. And because you value radical freedom in yourself, you will by nature value it in others and be perfectly ethical, peaceful and loving, giving others the space to express themselves the way you express yourself freely. It is only when you deprive yourself the right to radical, authentic expression that you start to judge others and feel negatively towards them. Unethical action comes from repression and fear. Stop letting people suppress you! Stop letting the fear mongering and superstition on the internet scare you away from doing the things you love. You see, when you come to Tantra, out of genuine love and curiosity, especially when you have an interest in the "darker" side of our tradition (the left hand path, fierce Goddesses like Kālī, the radical world-affirming and life-embracing Advaita of the Mahārtha, i.e Śākta tradition), you will sooner or later come up against established hierarchies and self-appointed pontiffs telling you what you can or cannot do, keeping a gate closed to a city they have often themselves never entered.To this, we say, lovingly: fuck all that. Lets storm the gates, loot the city and redistribute the wealth (esoteric wisdom) which is the common property of every being everywhere regardless of race, nationality, religion, caste, gender, sexual-orientation, life-style choices etc. But what would such an anti-establishment, punk-rock, outlaw Tantra look like? We try to articulate what such a revolution would take n this first installment from our "Kentucky Fried Tantra" retreat of 2026.No masters, no leaders, no rules. Take back what's yours. Reclaim your power. Do what you want and leave others to do what they want. Freedom! Radical freedom! We will settle for nothing else, we who are the rabid ganas and Bhutan of our Lord and Lady, Shiva and Kali, who are the themselves Revolution Incarnate. You'll find all the lectures for this retreat here.Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Because we gave this talk on May 4th, we start by exploring the relationships between Star Wars, Jospeh Campbell & Ramakrishna's Tāntrik philosophy. We then map this comparative mythology to the Tarot, to deities across the Indo-European world and also, interestingly, Marxism to see how this Ramakrishnan approach is the necessary response to a post-modern, post-truth increasingly relativist world in which many are lapsing into nihilism, atheism or conversely, religious fanaticism. Because May 1st is the day the Ramakrishna Math & Mission was founded, we spend some time reflecting on what institutionalization means for Swami Vivekananda's mission of making available to everyone esoteric spiritual knowledge which gains especial nuance and complexity when it comes to Tantra given its emphasis on secrecy, lineage, mantra-dīksha (initiation into the mantra) and the human gurus. A lot of this talk is my personal reflection on how our community fits into the very complex socio-political marketplace of ideas that is the modern internet-age. In a somewhat candid fashion, I reflect on my place in the Ramakrishna lineage and how I'm navigating the complexity of teaching this stuff in the face of some backlash and misunderstanding while trying to stay true to my understanding of what Vivekananda & Ramakrishna were all about.May this be an offering to all rebels, in the Star Wars universe and beyond!Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Over the years, we've done quite a few lectures on Mā Chinnamastakā, one of the most mysterious and often among the most feared from of Mā with a very complex rasa-profile, at least as far as Her iconography is concerned. In 2024, in Goddess Worship in Tantrik Buddhism | The Buddhist Chinnamastā we looked at a Tibetan Buddhist tantra for Vajrayoginī & compared it to a "Hindu" tantra for Chinnamastakā to demonstrate that the Goddess tradition is the same across sectarian lines! Then, in 2025 we did How To Decapitate Yourself | Chinnamastā Jayanti a thrilling inquiry in the motif of decapitation that is pretty ubiquitous with Mā in many of Her representations. This lecture was like a hand grenade to destroy all vikalpas, differentiating thought constructs (the head) that obscure the mad joy of non-dual experience (headlessness) to allow the blood (bliss and power) to flow and imbue all aspects of life, now understood correctly in the light on non-duality. Going off the previous year's lecture, we engage a lot of Buddhist void and mind-only philosophers like Nagarjuna and Vasubandha alongside Gaudapada and more extreme non-dual masters like that. Now, I want to consider the two streams of blood to the left and right and by comparing them to the Idā, moon-channel and Pingalā, sun-channel and by comparing that in turn to the image of Kāmadeva and Rati making love on the horizontal plane, the seat of the rising Kundalinīin the Sushumnā nādi, I think we can say a few exciting things about why its important to still hold your head (maintain rational, grounded, controlled thinking, i.e jñāna) after decapitation, the mad ecstasy of devotion, i.,e bhakti! Here are all our videos on the Mahāvidyās over the years. Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

We start with a little review of rasa vada, the theory of aesthetic "flavors of Consciousness" that are very much emphasized in our Tāntrik iconography & poetics before presenting Mātangī Devī as a a radical invitation to reclaim those rasas, or "flavors" which are commonly rejected as impure or unspiritual or unwholesome in the name of a deeper, more inclusive & capacious non-dual understanding. And to discuss the ucchistā approach (the spirituality of impurity/trangression), we need to say more about śānta-bhāva, Abhinavagupta's 9th meta-flavor that imbues all the other flavors (even the "unspiritual" or disturbing ones) with poetic and aesthetic (read also: spiritual) meaning. The discussions around śānta-bhāva which engage Bharata and Anandavardhana, two important aesthetic philosophers that influence Abhinava's Tāntrik exegesis, present a new understanding of "sattva" as that luminosity inherent in consciousness itself and not just a feature of the mind nourished by food purity, yogic disciplines & spiritual practices. The thesis then is as follows: contemplating Mātangī and the spirituality of impurity is contingent upon an understanding of the meta-flavor of Śānta-bhāva which itself present a sort of meta-sattva that does not negate rajas, agitation or tamas, inertia but rather includes them and exalts them! As such, I can say that all spirituality (and Vāmacāra is no exception) is about sattva maxing only in this lecture, I want to refine our understanding of just what it is we mean by "sattva", as per the interpretations of Kaula masters like Somananda, Abhinava & others. Also, we indulge in a long digression at the top of the lecture on the nature of bhoga, enjoyment, the Vedic orientation toward bhoga and the age old question of is bhoga mutually exclusive with yoga, spirituality? Here's a playlist of all our videos on the daśamahavidyās with a Śri Vidyā orientation. Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Isn't interesting that around the same time that the narrative of the quintessential serpentine representation of the divine, dark feminine, chaos embodied, Tiamat's evisceration by Marduk, the male storm God par excellence gained mythological dominance, Hammurabi hammers the "law" into his stone, thus enshrining the role of the conscious, analytic, externally-oriented & physicalist mind as more important or "holier" than the feminine, subconscious, interiorized, symbolic & archetypical mind? Isn't also interesting that after this mythological narrative gained dominance, and after this major historical event, the religious traditions of the late neolithic era and up the present day have been shifting further and further away from Goddess worship (i.e an immanence-oriented, world embracing, embodied approach to religion) in favor of the more transcendentalist, world hating, body-denying, struggle-oriented "father sky" idea? In this talk, after we explore some ideas about Sanskrit as a gendered language and the widespread implications of that, and after we make a few claims about shifting our discussions on gender to a more interiorized, psychological place, and certainly after some long digressions on feminist theories of the 19th century (Virginia Woolf, Vivekananda etc.), we turn to one of the most important things we could ever discuss as a śākta (I.e, goddess oriented) community: what is a woman? And more importantly: in what sense is God a woman?Really, this lecture is just three hours of us unpacking the rishikā, Ariana Grande's mahavākya: God Is A Woman.Hit Me Up xSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM