Questioner: Namaskaram Sadhguru. What is the significance of the Kalabhairava Shanti process? Could you talk about the difference between Kalabhairava Karma and Kalabhairava Shanti?
Sadhguru: See, Kalabhairava Karma is of one nature, Kalabhairava Shanti is of a different nature.
If we’re talking about people who’ve been long dead, long dead means, dead for more than 48 days or 90 days they’re dead, or let’s say more than 9 months they’re dead. So, they are long dead – 1 year, 2 years, 10 years – not much difference. Beyond 12 years, beyond 11 and a half years, beyond 4,356 days there is a difference. Within that, if a person died – see, the problem is this: that one must understand, socially here for us, death is death – how they died doesn’t matter. The person is missing, that’s all we know being here. But death is not the same thing for all, as life is not the same thing for all.
So many millions of children are born every day; do all of them play out the life the same way? Similarly, so many million people die every day, or hundreds of thousands of people die every day, death does not play out the same way, because death is just another dimension of life. As life does not play out the same way for every person, death does not play out the same way for every being – it all depends on how.
So, Shanti is done more as a kind of an effort. If any help is needed, we want to provide that for our ancestors, for our forefathers, or our grandfathers, or fathers, or mothers, or whoever. What is the help that we are trying to provide? What can we do? It is like this – I’m continuing to use this analogy for quite some time, because I think that’s the best analogy we have found yet – it’s like a bubble.
See, in my personal experience, when you leave the body, depending upon what level of evolution you are in, how thin or thick your casing is, accordingly things happen. If something is, let us say, your casing, or your bubble, is too thick, it cannot break – it will go to the river, and bounce back. What is the river? The river is a stream of energy, a kind of energy which is neither life nor death, but a completely different kind of energy, which for lack of words, we can say a kind of a energy which saves you, dissolves you, so it is called as vaitharani in Indian tradition. Vaitharani means, it is a savior, one who is good at saving you. So, what is the saving? It is not a physical river, it’s a metaphorical expression, but there is a stream of energy.
When disembodiment happens, naturally every being moves towards this river. Some will bounce back, some will soak in it, some will easily cross it, some just dissolve right there. So, if somebody crossed the river, or somebody bounced back, these two people you can help. If they have bounced back, or if they’ve still not crossed the river – let’s not say bounced back – they’ve still not crossed the river, now you do Kalabhairava Karma.
Now, they might have, you don’t know for sure, they might have crossed the river, but still, because of the thickness of their shell, and their own attitudes, they may be going through this in a unpleasant manner. You want to bring some pleasantness, you want to bring some Shanti to them. So, you want to shave-off one layer of their nonsense, whatever. Maybe some unpleasantness will go away, and pleasantness will happen – this is all the effort that you’re making. If they’re already pleasant, you still want to shave-off one layer, so that they will cease altogether.
Pleasantness is also a bondage. As unpleasantness is a bondage, pleasantness is also a bondage. Unfortunately, with pleasantness people take more time to realize that it’s a bondage. With unpleasantness, very easily you realize it’s a bondage. So, you’re trying to bring some pleasantness, but for sure you don’t know – maybe your grandfather, or whoever else, has already dissolved. Maybe there is nothing to do, you don’t know. But you still do as a duty, so that in case he needs it, in case somebody else – see, this is once you do this work, this is not only individual, because there is a certain runanubandha which connects people.
Suppose you do Kalabhairava Shanti for your grandfather, but he doesn’t need it, he’s already gone. Now, your grandfather’s brother may be there, whom you don’t care about, but he may benefit. I hope it’s okay with you! Because your granduncle benefited – maybe you didn’t like him, I don’t know what’s the situation – but he may get helped. So, people connected with that kind of runanubandha may get helped. Somebody else who is not even your relative may get helped. So, this has been kept as a culture that you must keep doing Kalabhairava Shanti. It doesn’t matter whether your ancestors are hanging around there or not, we don’t know. Maybe they have dissolved, maybe they have attained to mukti, maybe they have come back and reborn again, it doesn’t matter what, you keep doing it so that all the related people will benefit from that.
Pitru Paksha means – pitru means, doesn’t just mean your father, or your grandfather. Everybody who’s the source of our existence is our pitru. So, you want that to happen to all the people connected. It doesn’t matter we liked them, we didn’t like them, we knew them, we did not know them, but all related people to whom we can do something, we do something.
