Songs of the Mist - Back to the root

Year 1986: The Civil Engineering survey camp of our Batch, had a stopover at Rishikesh and I spent two days walking bare foot in the cold october weather, on the holy Ganges Bank, sitting hours together after cold morning bath in the river, thinking about my childhood dreams, experiences and beliefs. Coming from a Brahmin Family, spiritual belief was easy to adhere to but the clarity with those crystal clear ripples, playing with morning sunrise and the idea of the book was born. 

Year 2016: It gave me immense pleasure that after almost two decades I could go back to the Deva Bhoomi and offer my   gratitude for the blessings and the strength to bring the book "Songs of the Mist" out and unveil at the most pious place among the vedic chant at Parmaarth Ashram, with the blessings of H H Swami Chidanand Muni ji.

H H Swami Chidanand Muni said as he unvield the book, "It is Shashi Sharma's - an engineer's book of inner engineering. We should not only sing songs - aarti to Ganga Ma, but we should also be silent some time, sit on the banks of holy river and listen to her whispers as She flows by because it is most beautiful and heavenly song- the Songs of the Mist."

What a wonderful way to unveil my book. I am honoured. 

Now let me take you on a journey of those days at Rishikesh, where me, Raghwesh, Sreenivas and Vipul spent an incredible time. We reached Rajaji National park late in the night, and after haggling with the gate keepers, who were intent on not allowing us in the forest due to the Elephant threat in the night, we could be on the way after crossing the barrier. It was 10 PM in the night and the forest was dark and silent, with its usual nocturnal sounds. Every bend had the imminent danger of walking into the path of elephants but we reached safely at the Chilla forest guest house.

As usual, I could not sleep much over the night and was waiting for the sun to rise in the morning to have a look around the place. It was lovely sunrise over the Dam, where Ganges was in full flow...

The next few hours we got ready to move to Rishikesh...

Raghwesh with his morning Mantra Chant, in front of the cottage..

Early morning tea...

And we reached to our new location at Shivpuri, 22kms away from Rishikesh, which is owned by Sreenivas's friend. It is in the middle of the valley, where the holy river Ganges flows serenely by...

When we reached Rishikesh back, the first order of the day was to offer the book to the Sivananda Ashram that has seen this book being manifested through out the decades. I have had been visiting this ashram over the years and the "Song of the Mist" was seeded in...

I learned from the Swami Sivananda's words read in the library, during my many stays in the ashram. And I feel the most important was what the Monk says in my book "Songs of the Mist"

"The more mind has the knowledge of self, the more power it has to correct its course. The more cohesive it becomes with the life outside the more it can control itself from doing useless things, which only brings suffering in the end." - The Monk in the Book "Songs of the Mist"

The return journey through the boat was beautiful as the cold water of the river splashed on the sides of the boat, has a musical overtones that kept me remind of the various nights, spent on these banks, or in the Guru Nivas, overlooking the river. This has been captured in my book as Sanjana Ma, prepares to play the music into the night...

The boat ride to Parmaarth Ashram...

As the crowd gathered for the world famous Ganga Aarti, the sun silently descended into the river, making it sparkle like gold...

The international crowd of devotees had started gathering for the Ganga Aarti and in time, H H Swami Chidananda Muni reached the venue. There was an hour of devotional song and finally my long cherished dream to offer my labour of love and devotion to Holy Ganges. I have been blessed with friends, family and a sense of devotion that has taken deep roots in me and have flowered this book, that I intended to be a guide to the young generation to fight their own Mahabharata in their day to day life through the teachings of Lord Krishna from the most practical book Bhagwat Gita....

Now I leave you with images from the place and may Lord Shiva Bless you with peace, serenity and bliss.

The next day, it was an exhilarating morning, walking on the banks of Holy River Ganges, reflecting on the spiritual journey that I have had undertaken for almost two decades to culminate at this pious place...

The book is available at the following channels, please check it out.

Amazon.in || Amazon.com || Amazon.UK || Flipkart || Google Play || Kindle ||

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Shashi 

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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On the banks of Holy River Ganges            Book Reading

TALKING POINT: Satan's 'Letters from Earth' and spirituality

Recently I have spent some time at Patanjali Yogpeeth Haridwar, where Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev teaches yoga to thousands of practitioners residing there. I met many devotees and then on my visit to Har Ki Pauri and Rishikesh, met some of the pilgrims and discussed about their religious beliefs and spirituality. During my stay I started thinking what it really means ... and here are some of my thoughts and some of the images that I have had taken in these places...

What Spirituality means?

Let me begin by sharing some lines from “Letters from Earth” - a book written by Mark Twain in 1909 about the Creator, who created the universe and then the earth and put the man along with all the animals on it.

Satan asked the Divine One, "What are they for?”

“They are an experiment in Morals and Conduct. Observe them, and be instructed." … Man is an experiment; the other animals are another experiment. Time will show whether they were worth the trouble. The exhibition is over; you may take your leave, my lords."

 

Christ showing the way to the pilgrims at Vagamon in Kerala

Several days passed by. This stands for a long stretch of (our) time, since in heaven a day is as a thousand years… Satan had been making admiring remarks about certain of the Creator's sparkling industries -- remarks which, being read between the lines, were sarcasms … and in the end, Satan is banished to Earth and privately reports back to St. Michael and St. Gabriel (through his letters from Earth)

Satan's Letter – a very small excerpts

“This (Earth) is a strange place, and extraordinary place, and interesting... Moreover… man thinks he is the Creator's pet. He believes the Creator is proud of him; he even believes the Creator loves him... He prays to Him, and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea? Fills his prayers with crude and bald and florid flatteries of Him, and thinks He (the creator) sits and purrs over these extravagancies and enjoys them. He prays for help, and favor, and protection, every day; and does it with hopefulness and confidence, too, although no prayer of his has ever been answered. The daily affronts, the daily defeat, do not discourage him, he goes on praying just the same. There is something almost fine about this perseverance…”

– Mark Twain in his book “Letters From The Earth” (1909)

 

A sadhu praying on the Triveni Ghat - Rishikesh

Now according to Charles Darwin, the father of Evolution, the survival of human beings as dominant species is quite a curious phenomenon as humans are not very formidable physical beings. But here we are, thriving and surviving, 6.2 billions of us. Even surviving the bottleneck about 3 to 4 millions of years ago, when our count was reduced to only 2000 to 3000 on the planet earth.

The evolutionary scientists agree that one of the reasons for our survival those days, was due to the fact that we could work together and hunt in groups. We were the social animals on the planet. As our ancestors migrated towards various landmass of Earth, evolved into various classes. Many among these classes did not survive e.g. the Neanderthals. They became extinct due to their inability to change, develop and adapt to new things; learn new way of hunting and doing things together. The class, which finally survived and became ancestors to the modern mankind, were not only social animals but also developed further tools like language, to efficiently communicate with each other, to form better hunting parties etc. They could think forward into the future, devise strategies to hunt, farm and store food for survival.

 

A girl walking across the suspension bridge in Rishikesh

As the history progressed, certain men among them rose to become the leaders of the various tribes and clans spread across the face of earth. These leaders, in order to keep their growing groups in certain cohesive control, devised the most potent tool of controlling masses - Religion in its structured form. And till today, its proving to be the most effective tool for controlling diverse people in large groups.

Krishna explaining the Divine Song 'Bhagwat Gita' to Arjuna - Triveni Ghat Rishikesh

The word religion derives from the Latin word ‘Religure’ which means ‘to bind’, but religion slowly, in its modern avatar, has become something that divides. More and more people do more and more different things based on their individual diverse religious beliefs, faiths and practices. For some it has even become a farce as Mark Twain’s Satan says in his ‘Letters from Earth’, “More men go to church than want to”.

 

Trying to capture the essence of religion -Shiva Ashram Rishikesh

When I travel to various places across India in my own spiritual search, I find various people flocking around temples, holy places and filling up ashrams along the riverbanks. I wonder about the reasons they are there. Sometimes, I try to talk to them to find whether they are looking for something or just escaping from the rigors of living. I hear the usual rhetoric of God and His guidance to find Him. Some even go through their convoluted philosophy of being enlightened and how they have transformed their lives from the penury of peace to the wealth of happiness. I find most of them begging in the garb of religion. Almost always in the end, they want to have something from me, of me. They are not happy with what they have and do not want to be happy by being true to themselves, just wander from one place to another, even though I doubt if they have gained anything in their wanderings. 

A sadhu in his full regalia on the banks of Holy River Ganges - Triveni Ghat

Some even try to show their siddhi (A power, attained through rituals, penance and practice, with which they can supposedly do miraculous things) but usually it turns out to be a performance of deception, guile or guesswork. And it drives me out of these places to solitude, nature and to search within, thinking.

But I am not here to talk about Religion, as there are far better people than me to talk about it. Instead I will share some of my thoughts on spirituality that I have had on my recent journey to Patanjali Yogapeetha, Haridwar and Rishikesh.

A sadhu wandering on the banks of Ganges - Rishikesh

“Spirituality is not a temple, pilgrimage or an escape to wilderness of nature, but a workshop where you work with your inner self to find the right path to be happy, content and attuned to the universal consciousness. As a human being, it’s our deepest desire to connect with who we are and why we are here. Spirituality is the factory floor where we weave our living with universal fabric to become an integral part of the cosmic design. Remember, being what you are is the only path to becoming our own supreme self and in bliss; otherwise our life is just an aberration – a wrong stitch in time.” – V.E.D (From Thought Of the Week)

The Spiritual Spark

In the beginning there was a spark (some people call it The Big Bang) and the universe came into existence. There was another spark and from inert molecules like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen etc. a living cell formed in the deepest depth of ocean, millions of years ago. Now here onwards for the journey of mankind on earth, the ‘Theory of Evolution’ takes the credit.  Yet I believe that behind the evolution from the first living cell to modern mankind, there were few more sparks. For example the spark, which pushed a living organism out of the ocean to the dry grounds. Another such spark gave development of mind a boost towards developing larger brain and the frontal lobe. Neanderthals did not survive the onslaught of the ‘survival of the fittest’, as they probably did not get that spark of change, but our ancestors did. So here we are, as a result of many pushes through the catalytic sparks in being what we are today.  

At Triveni Ghat - Rishikesh

Though these mysterious sparks are not defined or explained by the Scientists or by the ‘theory of evolution’, still we cannot jump on to the bandwagon of creationists too (who believe that everything was created by a Creator). It will, inevitably, lead to the question of ‘who created the Creator’. But one thing I am getting close to accepting is that there has to be something beyond our genes, DNA and our conscious and logical mind.

 

Chaos across the river of life - Rishikesh

There is some reason for all this to happen in such timed perfection. There is a reason for us to be here. There is some cosmic design to fulfill. There is some way it’s all connected. And we feel it, every time we experience a moment of blissful happiness. We feel that connection, every time we do something good for people around us. We feel it every time we hug our kids, friends, family, or fall in love.  Reaching out to that fleeting connection and sustaining it for longer duration within your inner self, is what I believe is being spiritual.

The beauty of this connection is that it’s not ‘one-way’ street. If the search within is strong enough and sustained, you also receive happiness, insights, enlightenment and your ‘reason for being’, from the collective source of universal consciousness that is all around us. That I believe is my spirituality in a nutshell.

 

There are many ways to cross the river of life, but we do need to find
the right way... Ganges in Rishikesh

SørenKierkegaard, a great philosopher said once, “People are so smart that we actually come to realize that we exist”. The problem with this kind of “being smart” is that we bind ourselves with logic and reason, whereas there are things around life, truth, reality, beauty and us; for which we really don’t have the tools to understand yet. We are still not smart enough to understand things beyond time, big bang, quantum particles likes Higgs boson, speed of light etc. We are still groping in the dark about things hidden within our own physical mind like our own consciousness. And I believe, given the lack of scientific understanding in our present generation, spirituality can be a better tool to understand things like ‘who am I’, ‘Why we are here’, ‘The supreme consciousness’ etc.

Some yoginis at Paatanjali Yogpeeth Ashram - Haridwar

We just need to open ourselves to connect within to reach out to that universal cloud computing resource and download the road map to happiness.

Hope you have enjoyed this long discussion and the images I have captured across the spiritual landscape. Do let me know if you have some thoughts about it.

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Shashi

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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