Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Ganges floods, the entire area north of Ramnagar is a swamp. Yet
the effect is odd, haunting: this swarming city of some one and a
half million souls confined to one side of the river, daily watching
the sun rise over the deserted eastern bank. And the population can
swell to five million or more during major religious festivals.
Mataji was an ethereal presence. She said little, and expected the
same from her guests. I had a spartan room: charpoy, table, chair.
There was no charge, and food was my business. I ate out, or, if
invited, ate with other guests. An atmosphere of stillness, of inner
concentration, reigned. People came and went. We all accepted that
what we were doing was only our concern. If it wasn't, we should
question why we were doing it. It was as close to a truly monastic
life as I have ever come. Much like the Brahmachari Vedic schools
where I spent my days studying: an austere yet loving existence. I
feel fortunate to have known such days from another age and to have
been able to study Vedic philosophy and Sanskrit under such
conditions. I cannot image studying such knowledge under any
other.
By 1992, however, I had changed. I felt truly submerged in matter
as I checked in at the Taj Ganges Hotel, not Mataji's. It was nowhere
near the Ganges, as it turned out, which disappointed me until I
realised why: the floods, the ceaseless noise. For this Indian city,
more than any other, can shock the fragile sensibilities of the
Westernised traveller. It's not poverty you find here - it's the absolute
core of a living faith so alien to Westernised minds that it can seem
terrifying.
Demonic
is an expression I have often heard employed to describe
Hinduism. The first Christian missionaries used it when they
encountered outlandish customs and ceremonies that reminded
them of those abominations Jehovah wiped from the face of the
earth in the Bible. Idolatry. Strange gods. Golden calves. Yet the
First Commandment does not say there
are
no other gods - merely
that 'thou shalt have no other gods before me.' Nietzsche noted that
the old gods laughed themselves to death when a god proclaimed
there was only one God.
To outsiders, pagan evil flourishes in all its vileness and wanton
perversity in India: worship of the phallus, of animals, of sensuous
