The Mountain Logs Day 9B - Road to Badrinath

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.  

Episodes

1. Day 0 .. Rishikesh … A Little About Yatra
2. Day 1 .. Breaking The Trance ..
3. Day 2 .. Night at Barkot .. A Lovely Day, An Uncertain Night … Initiation Into The Yatra 
4. Day 2 blog: Legends of Yamunotri
5. Day 3 … Trek to Yamunotri .. Night at Barkot .. Living The Mountain Life ..
6. Day 4 .. Travel to Uttarkashi .. Prayer .. An Intimate Of Happiness .. 
7. Day 4 blog: River of life .. 
8. Day 4 blog: We go to Gangotri next
9. Day 5 .. Gangotri Darshan and back to Uttarkashi .. Immersion At The Source
10. Day 6 .. Travel to Guptkashi .. The Critical Period .. 
11. Day 6 blog:  Yamunotri to Kedarnath 
12. Day 7 .. Trek to Kedarnath .. Crossing The Threshold ..
13. Day 8 .. Kedarnath Darshan .. The Thawing Of The Glacier .. trek back and travel to Gupt Kashi .. 
14. Day 8 blog: Kedar .. The Field
15. Day 9 .. Travel to Gurudwara .. The Pause .. 
16. Day 9 Blog: Road to Badrinath
17. Day 10 .. Darshan of Badrinath .. Arriving At The horizon .. 
18. Day 10 Blog: Nar Narayan … The Ancient Archetype Of The Student

Transcript

Day 9 Blog: Road to Badrinath. Awaken The Seer  

It’s time to enjoy the mountains. Yes, the mountains on the way to Badrinath will take you to another world. We can experience how geometry is magnified by gravity due to the sheer size and density of the rock. How they can inspire, awe and overwhelm.

Language takes you close to experience, well expressed words can help you drop your barriers. They can rouse you. Words can even create a great appetite for experience, but in the end, you have to look at the mountains like you were born to do that and that you live to do just that, breathe them in, with words we speak of the concepts of sight, touch, sound,  taste,  feeling but the experience of these are not separate. 

The eyes, ears and skin are just windows. No different from the camera, the radio or the touch pad. The one who experiences sight, sound and touch is undivided. The experience of all of these is one. It’s just something we feel somewhere near the heart, near the navel.

There is a point on the journey, where one feels awe and that was Kedar. Now is the time to go further, to be overwhelmed and this is about sitting back and letting it happen.

Badri is the point where there is only the mountains, just like how we can feel something, looking at a beautiful flower.

The mountains are more than what we see through the gates of our thoughts.

A perspective is the creation of a thought process. When there is thought, there is perspective. When we freeze the image of that beautiful ‘trishul like’ peak in Guptkashi. We are capturing it within the perspective of the camera lens, visually. We have learnt to appreciate it. That’s what we get to see in the painting of a classic landscape. Cezanne the artist was trying to break that in his paintings. He wanted to capture the whole reality of what his eyes see.

Our physical eyes have many parts. One is the iris which is the opening through which the light enters. There is the lens, which refracts the image on to the retina, the screen which registers the image like the cinema screen. Our ears have the lobes which pull the sound in, the sensitive mid ear which begins with the eardrum which registers the sound, a structure that transfers the sound to the inner ear which amplifies the sound. These are the structures of our sense organs which are no different from a camera or a recorder.

When we look at a baby and smile, in a genuine smile. The edges of the lips crinkle up the face so that the outer edges of the eyes also crinkle and this affects the mid ear also in such a way that you sensitizes you to pick up a whole different range of sounds which you would not normally pick up.

The eyes, the muscles of the face that get engaged in a smile, the mid ear are all connected to different branches of the vagus nerve. All these branches get stimulated when we smile and when this happens. The vagus nerve sends signals to the heart and from there to the brain and the stomach, a whole different biochemistry is set off. In Yoga, practices like Bhramari Pranayam and Shanmukhi Mudra work on stimulating the vagus nerve in this way.

When we relax on a weekend and stay in bed, it is part of an animal instinct to hibernate. It helps put us in a deep state of relaxation; the brain and all vital organs start healing, creativity starts flourishing.

Cezanne was not being crazy when he said he wanted to capture on a 2 dimensional canvas what he could see as a spherical vision. Our eyes don't see in perspective. Our brains have been trained to capture what we see according to how we have trained it and many of us see like we see through a camera lens, that is perspective and that is the result of thought process.

For an artist like Cezanne, who had mastered perspective, he was interested in what the ‘seer’ saw and felt looking at the mountain he adored in the french countryside. Cezanne hand painted this mountain more times than he had painted any other subject. He was not crazy to think like that because, what the ‘seer’ sees is much more than what we register through the sense organs and that is not just visual not even just what the five senses register. It is whole, complete and like what a smile or the ‘Bhramari Pranayam’, the ‘Shanmukhi Mudra’ can trigger off in the body. The sheer sight of the mountains can trigger off a whole set of reactions in the mind, the brain, the heart and the gut and when this happens, the whole body is the eye and the eye itself feels, hears just like our surround sound system.

As we approach Badrinath, feel the surrounded-ness, feel the mountains as an embrace. Badrinath is about getting ready to be overwhelmed. Yes! Once we become empty, we have the capacity to let something huge overwhelm us on the road to Badrinath, the structure of the mountains are such that they can overwhelm. These are some of the most geologically active areas of the world, where you can feel the earth’s energy in a constant flux. As we approach the dham, specially after Chopta, you will see the shapes, the formation are so unusual, like it is the work of a giant sculptor and so many angular, finely formed giant formations in the mountains. We can see how the elements interact  very differently here. Let’s not forget that size too matters, the Himalayas are not only 2,400 kilometers long. They are 120 kms wide and in the area around Badri, you can easily feel the powerful presence of this huge entity. The vastness can be felt here and when we feel vastness, it is not just the mountains, it is the vastness of being.

At Badrinath Dham itself, the shapes of the peaks become so angular and unique. You sometimes feel like you are in an exhibition of cosmic art, such fine beauty and lets not see it with the eyes alone. Let’s see it with our hearts because the heart is the eye of the spirit. All we need to do is to let it overwhelm us. We are developing the capacity to be awed, to appreciate something so completely that we don’t exist any more. Just that beauty exists, just the fragrance, just the whisper, just the hint. Let the meditation take over, let us all disappear in a hug that frees you even as it overwhelms you

Bharat Thakur