The Mountain Logs Day 5 - Immersion At The Source

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 5  Mountain Logs - A journey into the void

Immersion At The Source

The Call Of The Knowledge Of The River Of Our Shared Origin

Where .. where do we go from here 

A question .. without an answer 

Where there’s no teaching to adhere 

No end to this messy quagmire  

Where .. where to find happiness 

Scores of voices disturb the mind

Life was fine being rudderless 

Until hope put us in a hopeless bind 

Why .. why this endless struggle 

This mad desire for authenticity  

In giving up being predictable 

In wanting release from uncertainty 

Why .. why this mindless surrender

To nature’s brazen show of will

 “No need for armor” .. says the ‘mother’

“You’re being prepared for the kill” 

How .. how does fear move ahead 

Through this relentless maze of suffering 

Through grief .. guilt .. hurt .. and hatred 

That arises .. at the imminence of a beheading 

“Go .. go back in reverse instead 

Involute to the womb of creation  

Struggle not in vain .. immerse the head  

In the amnion of your hoary inception 

Dip .. dip in the mud-melt of the glaciers 

Of the ice of our ego dominance 

Water crystals are but carriers 

Of the essence of our transcendence  

“Dip .. dip in the river of acceptance 

Beyond the confines of transience  

This is the way of the ancients 

Of awakening into the depths of silence

Listen .. Listen .. beyond the holy glacier 

To a cool ..  remote celestial din 

Hear the call of the knowledge river 

Of our shared origin .. our shared origin

Dear Friends

6 AM, early morning light, muted by gray clouds, the sound of Ganga playing in the lap of magnificent Himalaya, chirping of birds, light green leaves. It’s so inspiring. We will dip in these waters later in the day but much closer to its source.

Send a message to all,  “today there will be lots of learning. We will explore the breath body, lots needs to be taught and we have the right programme. Time is the constraint. So let's start to read and learn all about our breath. I would humbly request you all to put the audio blog in your cars and hear it. Those who love to read I am sending the write-up too. My purpose is to be your guide to this legendary mountain, the Himalaya”.

AWAKENING THE BREATH BODY 

Through the day, we move with our legs. We work with our hands, our lungs contract and expand to help us take more than twenty thousand breaths in a day. Our heart beats around a hundred and ten thousand times in a day.

But this is not all the movement we do.

Through all the different activities we perform in a day, our minds too travel through different states and these changes of state correspond to specific changes in our breathing pattern. Internally, the mind travels on the vehicle of the breath.

The ancients researched this and found that if we learnt to work with the breath, we can consciously access the mind. We can also spend more time in a state called happiness.

BREATHLESS IS A MOMENT OF IMMERSION 

When we immerse or dive into water, we hold our breath. If we look at its subtle meaning, immersion itself is a word we use when we want to delve into some subject at work or in our personal lives.

The Latin roots of the word immersion is ‘im’ plus ‘mergere’; ‘im’ means ‘into’ and ‘mergere’ means ‘to dip’, ‘to be swallowed up’, ‘to lose identity’, ‘to disappear into something else’. Every time we truly immerse, we can disappear into any subject and this is the knowledge process, the process behind the great insights, ideas, inventions and discoveries, immersion.

Taking a dip is also about stillness and stillness is a state where there is no struggle. A state that is free of the constraints of identity.

Immersion in the river Ganga symbolizes this immersion in the knowledge stream into a timeless state of insight and healing.

But this profound contact with the Himalayan river is not just about the subtle. It has well researched concrete healing effects too.

IN THE AGE OF ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE 

From around the 1940s, antibiotics have been used to treat bacterial infections. At that time antibiotics seemed to be wonder medicines but over the years the bacteria have evolved. Today we have superbugs in the air in ICUs and many patients the world over die because they get infected by these bacteria which are immune to all antibiotics.

So now the medical fraternity is seriously researching an old and abandoned 

non-antibiotic method of treating bacterial infections through the therapeutic use of macrophages.

Macrophages are forms of virus that can kill bacterial infections. The discovery of the antibacterial properties of macrophages is connected with the Ganga.

For thousands of years, the people of the Indian subcontinent have regarded the waters of Ganga as a powerful healer of diseases, protector and sanctifier. In 1896, Ernest Hanbury Hankin, a British bacteriologist working with the Government of India published a research paper in the Annals of the Pasteur Institute of France that the waters from the rivers Ganga and Yamuna contained a biological presence that destroyed cultures of cholera-inducing bacteria. This inspired many European scientists to research the ability of macrophages to treat bacterial infections. These researches were abandoned due to lack of funding in the wake of the discovery of antibiotics.

HEALING WATERS

In 2009, Dr. Chandra Shekar Nautiyal of the CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute, a highly respected and much feted scientist found that bacteria could not survive for more than 3 days in an 8 year old sample of water from Ganga whereas it took up to 30 days for the same to happen in a bottled water sample.

Dr.  Shanmugam Mayilraj, Senior Principal Scientist at the CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh in a paper published in 2016 stated that in the waters of Ganga there are more than twenty strains of virus  which can be used for treatment of diseases like tuberculosis, typhoid, pneumonia and many more. 

Dr. Devendra Swaroop Bhargava of the Roorkee University published a paper in 2018 stating that the waters of Ganga absorbed greater levels of oxygen and organic matter than other rivers. He also noted that there have never been any outbreaks of epidemics along the Ganga in spite of it having one of the highest density of populations in the world.

Nature is a source in many ways. Here bacteriologists tried to grow macrophages like they grew in Ganga. The effect of Ganga on the psyche is more difficult to test and validate because of the subjective nature of the exercise but it can easily be experienced and this becomes the personal knowledge of the one who experiences it.

2.00 PM, many had tears in their eyes after the dip. Everyone is hungry. Let’s have some food.

BLESSINGS FOR THE SKIN

7.00 PM. We take another dip. This time in the hot springs of Gangnani falls, the waters here have a high level of sulfur. These waters are said to be very therapeutic for skin conditions such as dryness, itchiness, eczema and has a gentle healing effect on acne and soothes inflammatory skin conditions such as rosacea.

Our body needs sulfur to produce collagen. The substance in our skin that helps it remain elastic. So these springs are considered good to make your skin look younger because they have a high concentration of sulfur in the waters.

We then visited a monk. It was great sitting with him around his dhuna. It's always an inexplicable feeling sitting with a living legend.

We may know a little about the immersion in Ganga but at any time, we will never know all there is to know like why it feels so nice to sit with this adept or why it felt so cathartic for many when they immersed in the waters at Gangotri.

As much as it is science to research a subject and prove and validate a hypothesis, it is also a science, a different kind of science to be able to immerse into a subject and let it overwhelm you and learn about it not analytically but directly.

Feel like closing with a prayer.

O great mountains 

From your vast vessel of silence 

Your eternal heart of presence 

Give us a sip deep inside our hearts

So as to forge a centre immovable

O great rivers 

From your flowing tumbling song 

Your power and ferocity 

Give us a dip deep inside our hearts 

So as to forge a flowing with life 

Lots of love 

Bharat Thakur