Three Techniques in Tāntrik Pūja | External Rituals, Substitution & Interiorization

Aug 14, 2025

A deep dive into external ritual practices and how lighting, incense, costume, and fire shape sacred atmosphere. Exploration of mental worship and visualization as a portable inner practice. Discussion of substituting transgressive offerings with symbolic items and performing them mentally. Practical tips on integrating mantra, gesture, and feeling to train imagination and cultivate inner sovereignty.

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INSIGHT

How External Rituals Shape Inner State

External ritual elements like lamps, incense, lighting and cleanliness materially reshape the mind and create a sacred atmosphere.
Nishanth Selvalingam illustrates with cinema, clubs and temple lamps how light and smell immediately change psychological immersion and safety.

ADVICE

Practice Puja With Action Word Feeling And Knowledge

Do learn the puja kriya, mantra, bhava and jnana together so body, speech and mind align during worship.
Nishanth gives the Shiva flower-offering example and stresses matching feeling (bhava) to meaning for sincere puja.

ANECDOTE

Aghori Asked For Symbolic Meanings During Puja

A visiting aghori asked Nishanth to explain the symbolic meaning of each puja item, showing curiosity despite his cremation-ground lifestyle.
The aghori's question highlighted that even sadhus value the philosophical significance behind ritual elements.

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As part our our How To Do Tāntrik Pūjā lecture series, we've recently been exploring the topic of mānasa pūjā, or Mental Worship vs External Worship by looking at theMantra for Mental Worship | Mānasa Pūjā which if you recall, is the mantra we used in this talk How To Worship Mā Kālī Mentally (Mānasa Pūjā)!

Now, I often argue that cultivating of our inner world through techniques such as mānasā pūjā (which is part of a broader practice in the Tāntrik tradition called bhāvanā orcreative, dynamic visualization) is The Most Important Spiritual Resource. The quality of our so-called "external reality" is wholly determined by our inner state since the world is nothing but an appearance within Consciousness! As such, interiorized practices like this are so wonderful for refining our inner state and aligning it with the Absolute.

But Mānasa-pūjā is also very helpful in the context of Kālī sādhana for doing things like Substituting the Pañcamakāras, Forbidden Offerings & also for Substituting Animal Sacrifice & Other Transgressive Offerings in Kālī Worship for those whose temperament might not lean this way and who might still want to participate somehow in these more vīra-bhāva-esque practices that come with the territory.

So having given so many lectures now on the beauty and importance of mānasa-pūjā, I wanted to spend a little time in this talk reminding us why external rituals are also so important! After all, Tantra is essentially, ritualism!

Often, when we understand something of interior worship, we might become very quick to dismiss external forms! And in truth, this is also a valid approach and this what the Samaya-marga or "right hand path" in Tantra tries to do. And in one sense, the Kaula marga is more likely to emphasize externals since in the Kaula view, the "external" is nothing but God embodied!

And since we tend to lean towards the latter approach in our community, I first present some arguments for the importance of externals before presenting two very important techniques in tantra that complement external worship: substitution and interiorization!

Jai Mā!

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