![]() The kapalikas were originally miscreants who had been sentenced to a twelve-year term of penance for the crime of inadvertently killing a Brahmin. The form of the Buddhist khatvanga derived from the emblematic staff of the early Indian Shaivite yogins, known as kapalikas or 'skull-bearers'. ![]() This ideal example serves as a prototype for other Aghor practices, both left and right, in ritual and in daily life. ![]() When this sādhanā takes the form of shmashān sādhanā, the Aghori faces death as a very young child, simultaneously meditating on the totality of life at its two extremes. In this sense, Aghor sādhanā is a process of unlearning deeply internalized cultural models. ![]() They come to fear their mortality and then palliate this fear by finding ways to deny it altogether. Children become increasingly aware of their mortality as they bump their heads and fall to the ground. Children become progressively discriminating as they grow older and learn the culturally specific attachments and aversions of their parents. Hari Baba has said on several occasions that human babies of all societies are without discrimination, that they will play as much in their own filth as with the toys around them. They believe that all human beings are natural-born Aghori. The gurus and disciples of Aghor believe their state to be primordial and universal.
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