Reviving the Maha Kumbha Mela

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Reviving the Maha Kumbha Mela

About transforming or about reviving this Maha Kumbh as a knowledge base, as a place and a time that people, large number of people, will seek as a source of inspiration, healing, and transformation which is what it has been for thousands of years. Maybe in the last five, six, or 10 decades in a century, it could have, to some extent, lost its relevance and its significance simply because while the nation has not been in our own hands.

Reviving this, what this means? Why is this? What is so significant about taking a bath once in 12 years? It’s not about that. This comes from our fundamental dimension of yoga which is referred to as bhuta shuddhi which means to cleanse the five elements in our system. Everything in the universe; this body, this planet, the solar system, the universe, and the cosmos, everything is just a play of five elements. The entire universe is just a mischief of five elements; not five million, just five. This shows the brilliance behind creation, the trillions and trillions of forms that life has taken. All this only with five ingredients.

The yoga, the fundamental form of yoga is bhuta shuddhi where it is understood that if you gain some mastery over this five elements, your health, well-well being, prosperity, access to the universe, all these dimensions are taken care of if only you take charge of this fundamental ingredients which make you who you are right now, which makes everything what it is right now. This body, the elemental composition of this body is such that 72% of this body is water, 12% is earth, 6% is air, 4% is fire. For one to live well here, water plays the most important role because 72% of this body is water, 72% of the planet is water.

The Kumbh or the signs of making use of the confluence of rivers at certain latitudes came not because of belief, not because of some blind faith, this came because of keen observation of how life and the different forces around us function and how we can ride that, how we can make use of that. The modern science is beginning to open its eyes to this, that between equator that is the 0° latitude to 33° latitude, the centrifugal force that the planet generates because of its spin largely works in an vertical manner. As you go further north, it becomes tangential, but here, it works in a vertical manner. Eleven degrees is one place where it is perfectly vertical, so after much search within myself, we established the Isha Yoga Center at 11° latitude because if one is doing sadhana, the maximum benefit it happens here because the Earth’s centrifugal force is pushing everything upward in a vertical manner rather than in a tangential manner.

From 0 to 33°, this was known as the sacred land on the planet because spiritual sadhana are found at most results or maximum results happened in this region for whatever sadhana that an individual person does. Within this latitude, we identified many spots where at different times of the year and different times of the solar year which last for 12 and a quarter years, the forces are working in a certain way and those places were identified as places to be on that particular day or that particular period.

Wherever two water bodies are meeting with a certain force, it creates a churning of water. This body being over 72% water, being there at that particular time, when it is in a particular nakshatra in the solar cycle, the maximum benefit happens to the body. In the ancient times, everybody understood that this mandala of 48 days, if you stay at the Kumbh and everyday you are in that water with the appropriate sadhana attached to it, you could transform. Your physical body, your psychological framework, your energy framework, and more will find enormous spiritual growth within you within a span of one mandala which is 48 days, but today slowly, it has become more just a quick visit, half-a-day visit, where you take a simply one dip and you’re out.

Maybe in today’s world, we can’t get all of you for 48 days at the Kumbh, but I was talking to the chief and he said it’s important that we set at least 40 days of sadhana for everybody wherever they may be. Everyday, 10 to 12 minutes of sadhana in their own home for 40 days, then come and take a dip. This will make a huge difference because the importance of it is at a certain place, if a certain volume of energy is happening, do you have the ability to receive it? Do you have the ability to perceive it? If you cannot perceive, no matter where you are, everything will go waste.

The whole science of why the Kumbh, why of certain latitudes, why the confluence of water bodies are happening, there’s an elaborate sense about it. I don’t want to go into the entire process now, but essentially, this is what it is; because if the water within you does not respond to the water outside of you, now the water that is here, how this water behaves within you will determine the nature of your health and well being in a big way. How will it behave? It will behave the way you treat it in the sense.

Today, modern science has come to this and recorded various expert through various series of experiments. They have come to this, that water has enormous memory within itself. They’re calling water as fluid computer because the volume of memory and intelligence which is there in the water is so phenomenal. This is something we need to understand. Water is not a commodity. It’s a life-making material. The water that you drink is not just going whichever way. It is taking the form of a human being. It has the necessary memory and intelligence. Only if you treat it well, it tends to behave well. If you treat it badly, it tends to behave badly. There is a whole science culturally established in this country as to how to treat the water that you drink.

These aspects have been largely lost because we are becoming a very economy-driven cultures. Economics is only about our survival, about procurement of this and that, what we need. Economics is not the guidepoint of our lives. The interest of mystical dimensions or the spiritual sciences have always been what are the lost which govern the inner nature? Towards this goal, many things were created; many, many dimensions, many, many aspects, many, many tools, and many, many methods as to how to get there. Among all these things, bhuta shuddhi is one of the most powerful processes. The Kumbh Mela is an offshoot of this bhuta shuddhi process. It’s my intention and my risk that this Kumbh Mela should not become just one more ritual where a huge number of people gather. This should become a transformative process.

I’m telling you, we as Indians, if we display a different level of equanimity within us, you believe me, in the next 25 years, we will be the most valued nation because this will be the biggest challenge for the rest of the world. The rest of the world wants to know how to be. They know how to do, but they don’t know how to be. This is something that we can offer to the world because when it comes to the inner mechanics of a human being, I’m not saying this with the prejudice of being Indian, when it comes to the inner mechanics of the human being, no culture has ever looked at the inner dimension of the human being with the profoundness that this culture is explored.

As Mark Twain once said after his visit, he even came to the Kumbh Mela, and he said, “Anything that can ever be done by either God or man has been done in this land.” That is the impression we created. That is the impression we need to create tomorrow for the rest of the world, that anything that can be explored doing the subjective dimension, we have explored this, and fortunately, the presentation has lost its way, and it has become a ridiculous presentation. We have become cow worshiping, snake charming, and whatever, whatever kind of nation, and now, we are shifting it to IT. All these is fine, but the important thing is we know how to be no matter what is around us.

Within us, we know how to be which will be the most valuable thing on the planet in the coming years because everybody will get many comforts that modern technology will offer. After it comes, when they don’t have it, they think if they have it everything will be fixed. The moment they have it, they know nothing in life is settled. That is when the whole world will become seekers one way or the other, or as I said earlier, of the first time, human intellect is evolving like never before. Every human being slowly is able to think for himself. Right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, but he is beginning to think. Once he’s beginning to think, you transporting him to heaven for well being is not going to work. You have to offer it here.

You telling him the softness of the cushion on the sofa is going to make your life well is not going to work because everybody would have sat on it and it means nothing. Only because people are deprived, these kind of philosophies have worked because people have been deprived for a long period. If you just tell them you can eat well, that looks like heaven. The whole description of heaven is that you can eat well or you can do something well. All the people are deprived of, it’s up there, but these things will not work in future.

People will look for real solutions. When the look for real solutions, believe me, nowhere else in the world can people offer profound solutions as India can offer because this is something that we have invested our time, life, and energies for almost 10,000 years and we have gleaned this knowledge. Not something that we believe, not something that we made up as philosophies, something that we observed and noted down, and made tools as to how to excess this.

It’s my wish and my blessing that this Kumbh Mela should become a huge step in a direction to awaken the world to this possibility.