The Mountain Logs Day 4A - Prayer, An Intimate of Happiness

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 4  Mountain Logs - a journey into the void

Prayer - An Intimate Of Happiness 

A hymn for healing

Gather .. gather .. every little passion 

Affirming even the little shy one 

Let them all burn .. as a single emotion

lighting the flame .. of the aware one

Tether .. tether gently .. your ageing horses 

With a special place for the oldest one 

Goad them into joining their forces 

With the omni-potency .. of the mighty one

Water .. water the roots of all inclinations 

Even the terrible one .. the disturbed one 

Trust them to flower into blessed revelations   

Of the nameless one .. the faceless one  

Nurture .. nurture each thirst .. every hunger

Not denying even the embarrassing one 

Feed .. fast .. attend diligently to the gut fire 

Till it transforms into the eternal one 

Prayer .. prayer .. an intimate of happiness

A great connector .. a one on one 

Meditate .. alchemise the path .. the process

Find in this very body .. the ageless one 

Dear Friends 

We woke up on the banks of river Yamuna in Barkot. It was a little cloudy, the light greens on the fields and hills, the cool breeze was so refreshing. All of us gathered, we sketched, we shared.

The Yamunotri walk was rough for some. Amma was in her sixties and yet, she decided to walk but she had to take help because she had not had enough water and was dehydrated.

We now move towards the Ganga. On our way to Uttarkashi, let's make a stop every one hour to replenish ourselves with fluids because all the dham are at heights of above 3000 meters. Keeping yourself hydrated is most important at these heights.

We stopped by at a dhaba, a small shack for a snack break. We had lots of apples with us but here we got some local cucumbers. They were very refreshing. People got into a mood for some Maggi, happy to see the whole group so involved in making it. We could see the tour incharge was getting into a master chef act. It was fun. The Nepali couple who served us were so sweet. Ah! what unforeseen gifts, we felt so much at home. The hills are not just the rock, they are also the human beings who live there in harmony.

HAVAN - THE SCIENCE OF EUPHORIA  

Hope everyone is soaking in the mountains, sitting in their cars. We had a small session in the morning where we said, “your time in the car, look around, observe and absorb. These are frequencies, the mountains, the beach, the rivers, be aware of these things. Many times we are not aware of the powers we have, spirituality is all about awareness. We listen from both ears”.

Our place of stay in Uttarkashi is along the banks of Ganga and across the river were the mountains. They are tall and magnificent, we are nestling in their lap.

There is a kind of euphoria, such is life in the Himalaya. It’s normal to feel like this here.

Let’s end the day with a ‘havan’.

The havan is an ancient science of purification, in which the five elements are invoked. Different kinds of herbs, grain and minerals are offered to the fire with the chanting of mantra or seed sounds according to a particular protocol.

The ancients called it ‘agnihotra’, an offering to fire. The logic of the havan is “heal the atmosphere or the environment around you and the environment will heal you back manifold”.

A MEDITATION 

We can appreciate what the havan is by doing this small meditation.

Just close your eyes and feel the physical body from head to toe, skin, blood, muscles, glands, bones, breath, thoughts, awareness, our entire composition. Now forget about the words skin, blood and so on but just feel them as nameless, different substances.

Next, become aware of the atmosphere all around. The space up to the skies, the ground, the stones, mud, trees, bark, root, leaves, the animals, birds, just forget the images and just feel them as substances. 

Do this a few times back and forth. First become aware of the internal and then the environment. All wordlessly without any image, just the feel and we can gradually realize as an experience that all substances are one. If we go a little deeper, we will lose our sense of boundaries between ‘this is me’ and ‘that is the environment’.

The vision of ‘agnihotra’ is that healing itself is never for just oneself because the whole universe is a web. When I heal, the world around me is healed and when the environment has healing energies, I heal. So in this kind of a healing process, we don’t analyse our pain areas and fears, we just empty out.

A lot of research needs to be done to scientifically validate the effects of a Havan but initial studies have shown that it has a beneficial impact on the nervous system.

INVOKING THE HEALER  

The autonomous nervous system which connects us to the outside world, operates directly based on what the sensory receptors pick up by-passing our sense of judgment.

When we come to the mountains, even if we are in love with their beauty, the cues that the nervous system often gets is one of danger. When we are exposed to some massive formations like snow capped peaks, a roaring waterfall, deep gorges, the fear response automatically sets in. Even as we are enjoying the scenery, that’s just the way the organism is and this  triggers off many internal events. We may project a lot of our fears outward and panic or get into a shell. It’s just the limbic system response.

The havan triggers off certain beneficial reactions in the body. Our body makes its own pharmaceuticals both elixirs and poisons. As we invoke the protection of the fire, in turn the havan awakens our in-house physician and we begin to experience euphoric feelings as the happy hormones get released into the bloodstream.

The havan is the creation of a specific archetypal situation embedded in our psyche. It soothes the reptilian brain and gives the nervous system cues of a deep sense of belongingness and safety even in wilderness making us more open to life changing experiences and deep insights.

KAYA KALPA - DEVELOPING A VISION FOR OUR BODIES 

Fear comes in many forms but one of the deepest and most intense is the fear of aging.

Comparing ourselves to a fitter or younger person, the loss of someone of our age or just becoming acutely aware of the pounding of the heart and breathlessness can cause panic.

The real experience of aging is when the quality of life, the quality of our fitness and health is low and when we experience constant stress and feel unable to do something about it.

The clarity here is to realize that what we really seek is not to live longer but extend the period of disease-free life and be happier and this has traditionally been the goal of age reversal techniques called ‘kaya kalpa’.

Here in the mountains, each drop of water merges somewhere into a larger stream and that larger stream into a still larger stream till it becomes the river.

GATHERING EVERY VIBRATION 

Youthfulness is about gathering every vibration of the body and mind and merging them into our awareness so that there is complete non dissipation. This internal process is one of the most significant steps in the science of age reversal because its impact is felt right down to the level of our genes.

This is a well researched subject in 2009. The Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine went to the scientist Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Geider and Jack Szostak for having discovered the enzyme telomerase that protects cells from aging.

Blackburn had a passion for research. As a little kid she liked to explore life. She says how she used to pick up small creatures like jellyfish and play with them, sing to them. She is made like a classic researcher curious about the fundamental building blocks of life.

She got interested in structures called ‘telomeres’ which are found at the end of each chromosome and protects them from degradation.

THE ANTI AGING FACTOR IN OUR GENES  

It’s fascinating to understand how aging happens and this curiosity about ourselves itself is very healing. So let's see what the structure telomere is and how the anti-aging enzyme telomerase works.

Our body has many different kinds of cells like neurons, blood cells, lung cells  but their basic structure is the same.

Inside every cell in our body, there is a nucleus and in the nucleus we have 23 pairs of chromosomes.

Chromosomes are made up of long strands of proteins called DNA. Imagine a ladder and we twist it. The DNA is shaped like that. It is called the double helix.

The steps of the ladder are made of four bases; A, T, G and C and these combine in different ways and different combinations of these bases called genes, determine whether we are a human or an orange. Every structure and function in our bodies like the color of your hair, skin, eyes and so on can be traced to a different sequence of these genes.

So the basic building blocks and the very blueprint of our bodies are in these chromosomes.

Each of us have got this blueprint through the first set of chromosomes we inherited from our parents, in the first cell.

GROWTH BY CELL DIVISION 

Our life began when this single cell divided into two and those two divided into four and four became eight and this went on till as adults. Each one of us is a commune of around two hundred thousand thousand billion cells, all working in harmony.

In due course of life, some of our cells have divided over a thousand times and every time a cell divides, all the genes, the coding of the DNA inside the chromosomes have to be copied exactly for us to maintain our features and functions because all operational instructions from the heart beat to the functioning of the immune system are coded in the gene sequences.

OUR PROTECTOR AND SAVIOR IS SO MIGHTY, AND TINY. 

Now these chromosomes have something called telomeres which bind the ends. It is like the cap that is there at the end of our shoelaces which prevents the threads from fraying at the edges. If this ‘cap’ were to come off, the ends of the chromosomes start fraying and that would mean that during cell division, the genetic material will not be perfectly copied causing anarchy so the body has these telomeres to prevent that from happening.

Every time a cell divides, the telomere shortens a little, till a time is reached when the telomere wears out completely and when this happens, the worn out telomere sends a signal to the cell saying, “it is time to die”. 

HOW AGING SETS IN 

Now when this happens at a rapid pace, aging begins to set in because a lot of these cells are dying. So the skin gets wrinkled, bones go brittle, the heart becomes less efficient, the brain slows down, we begin to feel, look and act older.

So the question Blackburn asked was how does nature make sure we can keep the chromosomes, the blueprint of life intact.

So Blackburn investigated a single celled organism whose telomeres never shortened and when they investigated why, they found that it was because of the abundant presence of an enzyme they called telomerase. When they removed this enzyme, the organism got old and eventually died.

Then they did the same research on human chromosomes and found that the signs of aging are because of shortening of telomeres. Alzheimer’s, cancers and diabetes can all be traced back to the shortening of telomeres.

Those who’re youthful have longer telomeres and have lower risk of those diseases.

IF YOU WANT TO STAY YOUNG 

Blackwell conducted another four year study and found that among mothers who are taking care of a chronically ill child, the longer the mother has been in the situation, the shorter were her telomeres and faster was her aging .. 

But she also found that those mothers, who were not stressed by the situation, who had taken it up as a challenge, positively, their telomeres were longer, their telomerase levels were higher and their vital organs were much healthier. They looked much younger.

THE ELIXIR 

The key was to not experience the situation as a threat.

Because experiencing the situation as a threat over long periods keeps the stress hormone cortisol levels high and cortisol inhibits the enzyme telomerase resulting in rapid aging.

On the other hand, a challenge creates what is called eustress, a positive and temporary burst of cortisol which actually is experienced as a boost of energy which helps you meet the challenges.

Data from the same study which she did in the University of California showed that just 12 minutes of meditation daily over a period of two months kept the levels of telomerase high and prevented premature shortening of telomeres.

These data have been confirmed by thousands of researches and based on these studies, Anti-aging is being defined not as increasing overall lifespan but as increasing the health span, the number of years of your life you are free of disease, are healthy and productive and not sick or infirm.

When a scientist asks, what is nature’s plan to keep the chromosomes intact for the next generation. It's like a child trying to figure out its mothers moves. The ancients spoke to Ganga in this way too as a source, as the essence of nature.

Let’s see what she has in store for us.

Sharing with you our blogs on Gangotri, the second dham.

Lots of love 

Bharat Thakur