Saturday, February 25, 2006

Mystic Mountains

One of the major items on my to-do itinerary is exploring the Himalayas. Exploring- as in trekking, climbing and camping for extended stretches in the higher mountains. So far, have only made it to a riverside beach beyond Rishikesh where 4 of us went for river-rafting on the Ganges a couple of years back (except some places in the Sahyadris, and half a day spent in a guided tour at Jungfraujoch in the Swiss Alps- so called rooftop of Europe… tourist spots don’t count). These were only the foothills, and yet the magic was palpable. I’ve been hearing tales of power from Vikrant for more than a decade now. His brother and a bunch of their pals are regular trekkers, and Vikrant had promised me a sponsored introductory camping trip which hasn’t materialized in 15 years. And since the bastard has gone and gotten himself married last year, is unlikely to happen ever.
Mountains, forests, deserts, rivers- untamed nature- are necessary experiences for a life to be even approach anything near completion.


The following are excerpts from a book called “I Was Carlos Castaneda” by Martin Goodman. The author isn’t associated with the major commercial industry which sprang up around Castaneda’s legend, and claims he’d only ever read one of the 9 CC books in his youth and wasn’t particularly impressed. I haven’t read anything else about or by this guy. About the only credentials he had for a meeting with CC’s shade was his expedition into the Amazon where he participated in an Ayahuasca ceremony with a bona fide shaman as guide. Then, while living alone in the French Pyrenees, he’s visited by a presence who claims to be Carlos Castaneda- 5 yrs. After the latter’s recorded death from liver cancer. Excerpts-

1. “You know what paying attention does? It makes you God! It’s the power of creation; the power of giving life. Fail to notice something and its no longer there. It fades from existence. Be a man. Find the quality in what surrounds you. Hen you’ll see how reciprocal life is. Then, you’ll no longer be half-dead, for the qualities in you will come to life. Be that kind of man, then be a Writer.”

2. “Where do our myths start? The Garden of Eden, a place where 4 mighty rivers find their source, therefore obviously located up a mountain? Or after the flood where Noah leads man and beast down the slopes of Ararat? Does Judaism hail from the moment Moses receives the 10 Commandments on Mt. Sinai? Or maybe it’s when Abraham’s spared the slaughter of his son Isaac on the summit of Mt. Moriah when the lord of thatmountain promises to secure the future of Judaism through Abraham’s descendents. When the new Messiah arrives, of course he must make his appearance on Mt. Zion andhonor the prophecies that herald him. Jesus is born on the heights of Bethelham. The devil leads him to a mountain-top for the last of his trials in the desert, and on suchhomeground, Jesus had the power to resist. His disciples learn his worth after climbing with him to witness his transformation on the summit of Mt. Tabor, his face flushed with light as Moses appears to him there and God speaks out of the clouds. He’s crucified on a hilltop, on Calvary, and after his resurrection, appears to his disciples on a mountain side in Galilea.Centuries pass and the Archangel Gabriel arrives to a man sitting in a cave in the side of Mt. Hira. The man is Mohammed, and its in this mountainside that he first hears the words of the Quran. From the summit of Mt. Moriah, where Abraham was pledged to obedience, Mohammed is later whisked on a night journey to the heavens.Jews, hristians, Muslims, they struggle through the centuries, slay each other in thousands, for the right to lay claim to the heights of Jerusalem. In the name of God, Jews & Arabs, Christians & Muslims, Catholics & Protestants, regularly slaughter each other. Our planet stinks of religious massacres.

1 thing to know before giving your heart to mountains. They’re powerfully jealous of each other. Pledge loyalty to one and it expects you to be faithful. Followers of religion think they’re following the One God. They’re wrong. History says they’re wrong, the Bible tells them that they’re wrong, but they’re slaves to their partial understanding and believe what they want to believe.

Devotees of religions worship the Lord of a mountain. They’re the mountain’s cohorts and will battle the world to proclaim his domination over the earth. They’re all mountain religions. Don’t think mountains have let people go. Never think that. They’ve roused us with their prophets, stirred us with their myths, hidden themselves in our religions, the way they hide themselves in cloud. They divide the people of the world among each other and set them at each others’ throats.”

“Buddhism?”
“The 1 religion without a god. You’re right. The Buddha found his enlightenment under a tree. That doesn’t mean mountains haven’t done their best to take Buddhism over. Mountains of the far East and Tibet are dotted with Buddhist shrines.…….until the new American churches based around Ayahuasca, no religion ever came out of a jungle. You can’t separate jungle religions from their trees.”

3. “It doesn’t matter whether you live for a day or 120 yrs. In eternity, length doesn’t matter. We’re all immortal. What’s unique is the opportunity to watch ourselves blaze and die. Do you think God is dead? Never. He’s incapable of it. Appreciation of death is unique to human life. There’s no need to pay attention in eternity. What goes around comes around. Miss it once and the opportunity will come round again. Such is limbo, such is hell.In life, no moment repeats itself. Understand that, and you see the moment’s value. Life is finite, thus each moment has eternity wrapped in it. Seeing that is enlightenment. Bringing awareness to the passage of life, that is enlightenment. Seeing the end within the beginning of everything, caring for that fragility of the life we all share, this is the way to eternal life. And eternal life isn’t a hell of repetition but a life filled with awareness & appreciation.”

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Now was that a new take on religion or what! How come no one noticed this in all this time? Mt. meru, Mt. Kailash, Mt. Olympus, besides the Religions of the Book- they're central to all our myths.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mountains are my passion too. I have a collection of some great pictures from webshot. Nice write up.

Anonymous said...

Wow, great stuff asusual.
The closest I have come to being anywhere near the moutains (I am a sea person myself, you see...) is when I was in Shimla for 2 days. There is something about mountains that makes you see how small you are and how alone you are and makes you look inward for spiritual guidance. No wonder religious thought everywhere seems to be intrinsically linked to mountains.
Looking at the snow capped mountains around in the quietness of early morning, it seemed that if Gods lived anywhere it must be around there. Had seen pictures of Kailash and realised why our ancestors decided that Shiva Lived there.

"In life, no moment repeats itself. Understand that, and you see the moment’s value. Life is finite, thus each moment has eternity wrapped in it."
Wow, Great stuff. If only you wouldn't be so lazy and write more! Anyway, great beginning.

A.R.Malik said...

ell, that IS the problem, ush. The great stuff ain't mine... its the excerpts. My output's pretty much run-of-the-mill. Re the mystique of mountains, yes, that's exactly what they do- provide a perspective about your own significance in the cosmic scale of things.

In Doulas Adams' HGTTG, there's this torture chamber which no one EVER emrges from with sanity intact- coz what it does is give the subject the sensation of what interstellar distances and numbers really are all about. Y'know what they say about it being beyond the human imagination to even bgin to comprehend the scale of things- the billions and trillions of light-years and aeons of time....after the impact of a microsecond of the delivery of that magnitude, no mind can retain its illusions about its own importance in the scheme of things. (That is, until 2-headed Zaphod Beeblebrox trots around, and emerges whistling cheerfully, STILL convinced he's the king of the universe, which in a convoluted way, he is).

Ok, digression over. But point I was trying to make was- the whole point of junta living alone in the mountains is the cahnge in perspective of one's self-importance.

Hiren, thanks. Will check out your collection of snaps, but I guess nothing can make up for the actual experience.