The Mountain Logs Day 3 - Living The Mountain Life

The Char Dham means “The Four Stations”. Why “The Four Stations” is because it is not just a reference to the four places in Geography. It is also a reference to the four stations of artha, kama, dharma and moksha. The four stations of a well lived life namely acquiring of prosperity or means, fulfillment of desires and passions, living a life of coherence with Nature, Nature out there and one’s own nature, and finally the station of transcendence where you get established in your own sense of being. 

On this pilgrimage, the four geographical stations of Gangotrti, Yamunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath, the pilgrimage seeks to get insight into the truth of these four stations of life through a combination of physical and mental effort, emotional aliveness, openness to the spirit and surrender to Nature. 

It’s quite beautiful, profound, intense and transforming. It’s unique as a pilgrimage, as an experience and breathtaking in its conception. 

In the following Episodes, Dr. Bharat Thakur takes you along this pilgrimage over 10 days, sharing the daily logs and some insightful blogs that will have you want to experience the Yatra for yourself.  

Transcript

Day 3  Mountain Logs - a journey into the void .

 Living The Mountain Life

Cleansed were the eyes gazing upon the rivers 

Uplifted was the heart gazing upon the peaks 

Unburdened was the soul when the gazing ceased 

And we found the self disappearing in the valleys 

Dear Friends 

We know all our stops for each of the eleven days and yet, each day is completely fresh.

Today, we would do the first of our four Dham; Yamunotri. It will be a 6 km trek. We will do it slowly with many stops as the journey itself is as important as reaching the dham. This is a Yatra, every minute, every small incident adds up.

On our drive to Janki Chatti from where the trek starts, stopped for tea, a local lady who worked here got us some freshly plucked apple from an orchard nearby, felt like blessings of the mountains.

Must say, we have a soft corner for the classic mountain people, how easily they laugh and they are so soulful just like the mountains. They don’t need words, just their movements say it all.

One has to ‘tune in’ to connect to this journey. When we want to connect to a baby, nobody is taught how to do it. We start making different kinds of sounds, trying to copy what the baby does, we match our frequencies and we connect.

Let’s get everyone walking sticks. They will enjoy more. It is not about whether someone needs it, some of us will enjoy the rhythm of using it.

EVERYTHING IS FREQUENCY 

The word ‘Rhythm’ comes from the Sanskrit word ‘ritam’. In daily parlance we use ‘ritu’ to mean seasons or cycles but what it really means is rhythm, frequency.

According to the ancients and many quantum physicists alike, everything is frequency.

Green is different from red because their frequencies are different.

A piece of stone, steel or glass does not seem to vibrate yet, they have a particular frequency called the characteristic frequency.

When an aircraft flies close by, the window panes vibrate because the roar of the aircraft engine has the same frequency as the characteristic frequency of the glass in the window, this is called resonance.

Our hearts beats to a rhythm and so we can tune in to another’s heart.

Blood flows to a rhythm, brain waves are rhythms, the peristaltic movements of the gut are also rhythms. We can connect to all of these and through them, connect to many phenomena.

Today’s trek will allow the body’s rhythms to emerge through the exhaustion, the exhilaration, the silence. Once rhythm begins to dominate our beings, we can easily tune in to Nature.

TUNING IN 

The Yoga Sutra call this process as ‘Samyama’ and when it is mastered, we can connect with any thing in the universe by resonating with its frequency.

Samyama is defined as the three stages of involution  ‘dharana’, ‘dhyaana’ and ‘samadhi’ together.

Dharana is fixing the mind on one object.

Dhyaana is when that object is present in the mind continuously without interruption.

Samadhi is, when the meditator disappears and only the object shines.

Dharana, Dhyaana and Samadhi together is Samyama.

Samyama is the original idea of ‘communing with the deity’. It is not how the word ‘worship’ is used now.

The deity is an essence of some phenomenon of nature or an energy field. It is about tuning in to that portal, that segment of knowledge.

CATHRARSIS   

For some, the walk was their first time in the Himalaya. First time is always special because this too is a love affair.

To be able to just rest the eyes on a path, on rocks, on a mule, on foliage to let the sounds enter, to hear your own heartbeat, to let the heart take it all in, to just experience gratitude.

We stopped at an old temple en route Yamunotri, had a cup of tea. It was eventful. Fear, guilt, grief are not easy to deal with because they are very deep and embedded. One of us was grieving the loss of someone dear.

Here’s where it’s nice to have the babas with us. Some babas are expressive. They reach out and it’s spontaneous. We could see how they blessed her at the temple, it was a special place for them.

NATURE THE LAB, LIFE THE EXPERIMENT

Some babas are quiet but the deep search can be experienced in the eyes of such researchers. There is no other way to know them but to simply spend time with them, tune in to them because theirs is not an analytical tradition of knowledge where they are concerned with articulation, explanation, proof and validation but they have given up everything to be on it. It is their research methodology, where the whole of nature is their lab and their lives are the experiment.

Some of them get so detached that they just feel, “I am a research material. Let’s see what happens if I do this”.

Being around someone who is so single pointed and committed, who wants no other give and take in life, for whom the quest for truth is lived as a life and death thing can itself be very enriching and healing.

But before that, we could see how she was fearful of the babas and it probably was not because of the way they looked Or maybe it was, their aura, their vibes.

Spending time with these detached souls can force you to confront your own life. It’s probably the unease you feel before purging a catharsis.

The dip in the hot waters in Yamunotri had a huge impact on many.

And we could see, the person who walked up to Yamunotri, she seems to have vanished on the walk down. I am sure the same path, the same streams, the same turns, the same chai would have felt very different on the way down.

Among the many methods the Yoga Sutra talk about to reach to the states of happiness and clarity called samadhi, is “by making one who has gone beyond passion as the object of the mind, we can overcome the obstacles to Samadhi”.

This is one of the core artistic processes too to drink in the subject and let it enter you and make you over into itself, so that it is the subject that expresses itself through the artists art.

THE COLOUR PALETTE OF AN EVENT   

One of our studies when we are on the move  is looking at the pictures and while studying the pictures, seeing naturally what colours look beautiful together.

This is one of ‘my things’ of studying an event  and then trying to understand, can I find the unique colour palette of this event which may look beautiful and perfect. The unique colour palette of an event would reflects its truth, its rhythm.

That is what we are trying to do in tuning in to the mountains, your colour palette will change, you will see differently, if you tune in.

If you remain aloof and don’t make those efforts to connect, the baby will lose interest in you the mountains will remain elusive.

We are just tuning forks and antennae trying to catch the rhythm of nature at this moment.

As we tune in to the rhythms of nature, they will start creating the situations for us. No incident is by chance, everything has a logic why it happens that logic too deep down is part of a rhythm.

Like you hold a rope and start creating ripples by shaking it up and down rhythmically,  as the rhythm of your thoughts gain momentum, they begin to travel out

Let’s allow the Himalaya to set the rhythm for our Yatra.

GETTING BACK INTO THE RHYTHM, THE CIRCADIAN CLOCK 

Now coming to one of the most significant rhythm cycles of our own body, the ‘Circadian rhythm’.

The body has its own rhythm which is called the Circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm is responsible for maintaining our sleep and wake up cycles and set the clock for all automatic functions of the body like the completion of one cycle somewhere between 23 and a half to 24 and a half hours.

As the sun rises, we too have our own sunrise. When the two rhythms are connected, our bodies rise along with the sun. We become active for the first half of the day and towards sunset, our bodies too begin to relax.

But the two clocks are not one and the same and they needn’t be synced in this way.

Our internal bio-rhythm is controlled by a master clock that is called the ’Supra Chiasmic Node’ or the SCN which is located in the hypothalamus of the brain. There are smaller clocks in many organs throughout the body which has similar nodes that regulate the cycles of vital organs such as the kidneys, liver and so on. New research indicate that every cell might have its own circadian clock and they have an oscillating pattern for cyclical events that occur in them.

A stressful and habitual lifestyle can affect our body clocks and we experience so many symptoms from insomnia to irregular cycles, tuning in helps us set the clock back.

The night too is really important to set the body clocks right, specially the pitch darkness that we experience in this remoteness because one of the most important substances which regulate this rhythm is the hormone melatonin.

Melatonin is produced as a result of low light levels. It not only helps us sleep but also allows the body to adapt to darkness.

The Yatra is also about learning certain arts. One among them is to learn the art of tuning in so that this can become a journey of exploration.

Sharing a poem.

The scientist strives to inspect Space-time 

Seeking matter to further dissect

A mathematician immerses in evaluations 

Each theory bound by calculations 

The empirical tactics but small
For a geometry contained in all

The musician in his symphony
Or the poet in an epiphany
The actor in her remoulding
A painter in colours unfolding
Catch a glimpse of the uncoloured 

Beyond the clutches of space-time  

While a seeker of truth strikes at his core
Where these forces.. space-time .. he invokes 

When meditation unbinds his soul 

To be freed by the eternal now 

Revived .. awakened by the whole. 

On this exploration .. to each his own 

As for the tender-hearted .. fret not 

Fall and be and rise in love 

Taste the tremors of time 

In loss ..pain and separation 

Until freed from such tides  

Consumed in love .. time falls apart 

Like the sand from a broken hourglass
What starts as an eternity 

In your longing to meet the One 

Disappears in the intoxication of being no one 

As for space ..oneness knows no bounds 
The beloved’s embrace so close 

Closer than your breath is He 

Reposed in the heart of heart 

Forever engulfing you .. never apart

Knowing thus .. in a teardrop 

Or in the blink of an eye 
Be cleansed by a stream of light 

They say .. the seeker .. the scientist 

Being an artist or a longing lover 

But a doorway to the Beloved 

Throbbing in each and all 

Lots of Love  

Bharat Thakur