Aghori: The Renegade Sadhus

Aghori: The Renegade Sadhus

Aghora (literally, “non-terrifying”) is the spiritual path that seeks to negate all that is ghora (“terrible, terrifying”) in life, therefore “Aghora” means Light, absence of obscurity and fear, awareness. It also symbolizes a style of life where a person of the Aghori tradition doesn’t have intense or deep feelings, seems to be indifferent to the various stories of the life. The ghora encompasses all those experiences that most people find intolerable, for almost everyone is as ready to enjoy life’s pleasures as they are to avoid misery.

Most spiritual advisers admonish their devotees to shy away from the ghora, but aghoris (practitioners of Aghora) embrace the ghora fervidly, for what most terrifies an aghori is the prospect of becoming mired in duality. Aghoris go so far into the ghora that the ghora becomes tolerable to them; diving deeply into darkness, an aghori finally surfaces into light. No means to awakening is too disgusting or frightening for an aghori, for Aghora is the Path of the Shadow of Death, the path that forcibly separates an individual from attachment to every ordinary self-descriptor.

It is said that Aghoris drink liqueurs, smoke ganja, eat meat (in some rites also human meat and also rotten food, food from the dumps, the animal faeces, animal urine.); they use a human skull as a bowl, wears the shroud of corpses – if they are dressed at all –, cover themselves in cremation-ashes and their hair grows matted. They wander among the funeral pyres, meditate at night and don’t have any sex inhibition.

They perform extreme rites to attain the highest level in aghoratva, the enlightenment. This path seems to be detached completely from hinduist philosophies and it deceives the true nature of this little known reality in the indian sadhus (ascetics) panorama. The ritual practices of the Aghori are symbols of their non-dualistic beliefs. The corpse upon which they meditate is a symbol of their own body and transcendence of the lower self and realization of the Supreme Self. They follow the simple rule that the universe resides in them and they try to attain enlightenment by self realization.

“There is no evil, everything is emanated from ‘Brahman’, so how could anything in this universe be impure”? This is the kind of philosophy the aghori babas follow. According to them anything in this universe is the manifestation of god itself, so everything is as pure as god and is god like, so abandoning anything is like abandoning god itself.

The aghori mainly worship lord Shiva, according to the sect every human is a ‘shava’(dead body) with emotions and they should try to become ‘Shiva’ by denying the human pleasures and involving in the aghori rituals.

Aghora’s temple is the smashan (cremation ground), where aghoris worship death, the Great Transformer, with a savage, all-consuming love. And many of the aghoris roam around naked, representing the true humans and their detachment from this world of mortals who live in the world of illusion. By this they transcend beyond human feelings of love, hatred, jealousy, pride etc. There are many aghoris walking the streets of northern India drinking from a kapala (skull cup).

They are also known for their knowledge of magic arts; many people believe they owns magic powers and it is not difficult to hear histories of miraculous recoveries, but even though they possess this kind of powers they will not use it, for the basic rule of aghori itself is to deny human pleasure. Among the people, the word Aghori always arouses a mixture between respect and suspect; anyway they also have many devotees among the various religion present in India.

Those who are enslaved by their cravings think aghoris mad for displaying such ferocity in their quest for knowing. They condemn Aghora’s outwardly repugnant practices because they cannot see beneath their ritual skin. If they could but peep into an aghori’s heart they would find there an ache for Reality so fierce that no means could be too extreme to achieve it. This ache drives the divine fury, the passionately unrestrained non-attachment to absolutely everything, that is Aghora’s hallmark. They understand that opposition is the illusion. Hence, they embrace pollution through various and profound tamasic practices to induce the trance of the realization of non-duality (Advaita) and, transcending taboos, they get rid of the phantasms of categories.

Aghoris earn their illumination by incinerating themselves moment by moment in their own internal fires, laughingly consuming any substance and performing any activity that might further enkindle their awareness. They seize every moment of life that God offers to them, even a trip to the toilet, as a fresh opportunity to surrender to the One. Good aghoris takes their temples with them as they wander the world, ceaselessly amazed to witness the universe consuming itself in the fires of an ongoing cosmic cremation.

Aghora like alchemy substitutes for a set recipe of self-development an outline whose details differ for each practitioner. Each aghori and his customs are unique, and in truth all one aghori has in common with another is their degree of intensity and determination. Aghoris become so desperate in their quests that they channel their every thought and feeling into a super-obsession, a single-minded quest to achieve the Beloved. They endeavor eternally to dismember their restricted selves fully, that God may have a free hand to re-member them completely. They die day by day while they are still alive, that by dying to their limitations they can be reborn into the eternal life of Reality.

They achieve laser-like focus by learning to awaken and cultivate that evolutionary power that the Tantras call Kundalini. Vimalananda comments, “Ahamkara, your ‘I-creating’ faculty, continuously remembers you by self-identifying with all the cells in your body and all the facets of your personality. Ahamkara is your personal shakti (power); she integrates the many parts of you into the individual that you are. You develop spiritually when you can cause ahamkara to realize, little by little, that she is actually She: the Kundalini Shakti. This growing realization gradually awakens Kundalini, and as She awakens She forgets to self-identify with your limited human personality. Then She is ready to recollect something new.”

The death’s theme, so recurrent among the Aghoris, constantly remembers us our mortality but it is also a challenge to transcend the duality between life and death. Breaking every mental scheme, going over every taboo makes aware of the illusion of this world and becomes a path toward the liberation (moksha), the realization of the itself with the absolute one. Also the conventional Hindu distinction among pure and impure for the Aghoris is nothing, but illusion.