Indian culture is the most
complex and colorful culture on the planet. You will see, the way people look,
their language and food, their way of dressing, music and dance, everything is
different every 50 or 100 kilometers in the country. One place where you can
really see the complexity of this culture is the Kumbha Mela.
During the Maha Kumbha Mela in
2001, 60 million people gathered in Allahabad. I have never had a longing to go
to such places, but there was so much talk happening, so, to see a grand event
of unimaginable scale, I decided to drive there from Coimbatore.
It is one the most incredible
sights in the world. I went there at around 2AM and all kinds of people from
different parts of the country were there sitting around. They had no place to
sleep, so they had little fires going with their own song and dance, culture
and language. The worst and the best of humanity landed up there – every kind
of crook who wants to try his hand, but also many yogis of great
accomplishment. People have been meeting like this for thousands of years. It
is a tradition and a culture that you cannot kill, and it has a certain social
relevance. But it also has a certain spiritual strength.
The earth and moon journey in
cycles. Everybody is subject to these cycles, but these cycles can remain
cycles of bondage, or they can become a means of transcendence – from one cycle
of life to another. One who is longing for liberation is constantly seeking how
to become free from the cycles one has created. There are various kinds of
cycles, the longest being 144 years; once in 144 years, distinctive occurrences
happen in the solar system for which we have a Maha Kumbha Mela, which last
happened in 2001.
The Kumbha Melas
are held at specific spots in the country around which a whole energy system
was created. Because the planet is spinning, it creates a centrifugal force.
From 0 to 33 degrees latitude, this force is largely working in a vertical
manner in your system, and particularly at 11 degrees,
the energies are shooting straight up. So, the ancients calculated and marked
out points on the planet where there is a supportive influence on people. Many
points happen to be confluences of rivers and there is a benefit to bathing in
those areas. If one is at that spot on a particular day, rare possibilities
become available, so people moved there to make use of these situations. Many
of these people are peasants and illiterate people who travel long distances
with meagre resources, just wanting to be there, longing for mukti. Nowhere else on the planet does an
entire population long for liberation with such intensity.
Most Indians are unaware of the
depth of mysticism and spiritual process that has happened and continues to
happen in India. This land has always been known as the spiritual capital of
the world, simply because no other culture has looked at the inner sciences
with as much understanding. Here, liberation or mukti has been the highest
goal, and even God is considered just a stepping stone towards that.
Unfortunately, the spiritual
culture we see today has in many ways been broken by invasions, and distorted
by long spells of poverty. Still, the basic ethos of the spiritual process is
not destroyed, nor can it be destroyed. It is time that we reap the benefits of
this profound tradition in its full glory.
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