Indra’s “Demonic” Turn and the Tied Horse: What the Symbols Really Mean

Question

Sister, this thing about Indra taking on a demonic form, stealing that sacred horse, and—rather than keeping it with himself—tying it up at Kapila Muni’s hermitage… Could you please repeat your symbolic explanation of this physical storyline?

Answer

Kapila Muni means practice-based knowledge—that our knowledge should be lived, applied. That’s the sense of Kapila: something that shakes us—shakes us out of our old ways. Theoretical knowledge doesn’t shake us; practice is what truly shakes and transforms life. If I’m used to lying and I actually start speaking the truth, that will shake up my life. That is Kapila Muni.

The horse stands for the pure mind. Say I decide, “From today I’ll speak the truth.” But when it comes to real life, at the very moment I should tell the truth, I fail and lie instead. This happens to us all the time in small ways: we promise ourselves we’ll be truthful, and then we end up lying. When we do that, the story puts it symbolically as Indra taking on a demonic form. Our pure mind doesn’t remain pure; the moment it enters transactions, it slips into falsehood. That’s what “Indra becoming a demon” means here: the pure mind turning impure.

We had discussed that “Indra” has multiple meanings in the scriptures—sometimes it means the pure mind, sometimes the impure mind, sometimes the Supreme, and sometimes the mind as the king of the senses. In this story, Indra is used to mean the pure mind. If the pure mind becomes impure, that is “Indra taking a demonic form.”

When we repeatedly act impurely—keep speaking untruth—our purity sinks into the subconscious and just sits there. That sinking of purity into the subconscious is what the story calls the sacrificial horse standing in Rasātala: Indra (now in demonic form) leads the yajña horse down to Rasātala and leaves it there. And Kapila Muni’s hermitage is there as well—meaning that when we fail to live in purity and keep slipping in behavior, our purity withdraws into the subconscious, and within that subconscious both kinds of impressions are present: pure and impure. Our task is to bring out the pure impressions.

Take what I’ve said and chew on it inwardly. When we ruminate on it at a spiritual level, the gist will rise up clearly within.