2. Vasana Daha Tantra Sadhana
Daha means to burn, a tantra is a method, and vasanas are deep-seated subconscious tendencies that shape one’s attitudes and motivations. Vasanas can be either positive or negative.§
One of the best methods for resolving difficulties in life, of dissolving troublesome vasanas, the vasana daha tantra is the practice of burning confessions, or even long letters to loved ones or acquaintances, describing pains, expressing confusions and registering complaints and long-held hurts.§
Writing down problems and burning them in any ordinary fire brings them from the subconscious into the external mind, releasing the suppressed emotion as the fire consumes the paper. This is a magical healing process.§
Write in detail, in one or more pages, your experiences and difficulties. When finished, burn it up. Watch Agni, the God of Fire, destroy the dross of your deep subconscious mind. Experience freedom from emotional burdens you have been carrying. Release the past. Enter a glorious new future. §
At the entrance to the monastery there is an urn in the six-sided pavilion where you can write and burn your pages. Please ask to determine what additional places can be used for burning these pages. §
Quote from Gurudeva§
My devotees succeed by remolding subconscious magnetic forces. They purge the dross through vasana daha tantra—writing and burning past transgressions and current problems—then use positive affirmations.§
Supplementary Reading §
Living with Śiva, Lesson 122: The Esoterics of Penance§
The inner process of relieving unwanted karmic burdens occurs in this order: remorse and shame; confession (of which apology is one form); repentance; and finally reconciliation, which is making the situation right, so that good feelings abide all around. Therefore, each individual admission of a subconscious burden too heavy to carry must have its own reconciliation to clear the inner aura of negative samskaras and vasanas and replenish the inner bodies for the struggle the devotee will have to endure in unwinding from the coils of the lower, instinctive mind which block the intellect and obscure spiritual values. When no longer protected by its ignorance, the soul longs for release and cries out for solace. Prayashchitta, penance, is then the solution to dissolve the agony and bring shanti. §
The guru has to know the devotee and his family karma over a long period of time before prayashchitta is given. Otherwise, it may have the wrong effect. Penance is for religious people, people who practice daily, know the philosophy and have a spiritual head of their family, people who genuinely want to reach a state of purity and grace. It is not for nonreligious people. Just as in the Catholic Church, penance, to be most effective, is given to you by the spiritual preceptor. It is not a “do-it-yourself,” New-Age kind of thing. Those who try to do it alone may overdo it. It takes a certain amount of talking and counseling to gain an understanding of what is involved. Before undertaking any of the physical prayashchittas, I have devotees do the maha vasana daha tantra—“great purification of the subconscious by fire”—writing down and then burning ten pages of memories, called samskaras, good and bad, for each year of their life to the present day. §
Anything can be written down that concerns you: friends, home, family, relatives, sports, TV shows, vacations, work, pastimes, indulgences, anything that is in your mind. This may automatically clear up events of the past. The idea is to remove the emotions from the experience and bring yourself to the eternal now. Forgetting the past, concern yourself with the now, move with life day to day and create a glorious future for yourself and others. Also, I’ve experienced that sometimes just making the confession to the satguru is a sufficient prayashchitta and nothing else is necessary. What the troubled conscience thought was bad may not have been bad at all, just normal happenings, but the conscience suffers until that fact is known.§
It is important to note that the vasana daha tantra must be done by hand, with pen and paper. Various devotees have tried it on the computer and found it not effective. Writing is uniquely effective because in the process the prana from the memory flows from your subconscious through your hand, through the pen and is embedded in the paper, bringing the memory out in the open to be understood, defused and released when the paper is burned. Some devotees have also tried sitting and pondering the past, meditating on it and even visualizing themselves writing down their recollections and burning them. This often does more harm than good, as it only stirs up the past.§
Additional Resources§
Living with Śiva, Chapter 18: The Power of Penance§
