Adonis Diaries

Maha Kumbh Mela: “A mystic trip” by Ilija Trojanow

Ilija Trojanow participated in 2001 to the pilgrimage of Maha Kumbh Mela in India where over 70 million pilgrims joined the event to get immersed in the River Ganges 4 times a day for three-week.

It is said that whoever gets immersed in the Ganges at a definite hour of a day, for a particular alignment of the sun, moon, and Jupiter, will be liberated from the reincarnation cycle, him and his descendents for 88 generations.

This event may be unique because people from all religious denominations in India and around the world can participate.  The principle is that people come with enough respect for other faiths in order to profit of the sacred rituals.

Ilija Trojanow participated in many pilgrimage sites such as in India, Cashmere, Africa, Cairo, and pushed forward to the Antarctic.  He writes about his experiences; “A mystic trip” was translated from German to French and talks about the pilgrimage to Al Kaaba (Mecca) and the Maya Kumbh Mela in India.

The Maha Kumbh Mela sacred ceremony  is celebrated every 12 years in one of four cities Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain, and Nasik and the event is rotated among these cities.  The four cities are located on the confluence of the Gange, Yamuna, and the Saraswati (no longer flowing); this area is called Pra-Yah or the “best place for offering a sacrifice”.

Kumbh means pot, Mela means nectar of immortality.  The four immersions are Makar Sankranti, Mauni Amavasya, Basant Panchami, and Magh Purima.

In the Hindu treatise Aitareya Brahmana, it is written:

“Who never takes a trip cannot be happy.  The feet of the traveller are like a flower:  His soul grows and gather fruits; his efforts consume the sins.  Thus, leave!  When you stop, your benedictions also stops and they rise when you get back on the road.  God is the friend of the traveller on foot.  Thus, leave!”

History abound with accounts of famous pilgrims, Sufis, dervishes, and sadhu who kept on the march most of their active life and never slept more than once in one location.  The voyage is the ritual that must lead to a life experience and illumination; the trip to discovering other fellow people:  their faith in their God can transform our lives.

The pilgrims are not to drink alcohol, eat eggs, or meat.  Every camping ground is organized by an ashram and a guru is selected to administer the invocations; the guru can be a schoolmaster, a chaman, or a confessor.

There are gurus for all tastes and social classes.  Muniji is delivering his lesson:

“The darkness we are chasing out are ignorance, egocentric, and duality.  Our world is made of illusions focusing on our ego, separating the You from the Me.  It is time to paying off your debts to the poor and the suffering, and aiding them with opportunities that you had.”

All the ascetic sects and yogi schools existing in India are represented at the Maha Kumbh Mela:  It is a moment for discovering the self in order to surmounting the “I”.  Musicians make the rounds of tents and sing frenetic “bhajans”.

People from Chattisgarth in the Rajasthan sing a mantra “Sitaram, sitaram, sitaram ramram” 24 hours a day; thus, they come in groups so that 3 people will maintain the mantra for two hours.  The other mantra bawled the strongest is “Shan-ti…. Ooooom” for peace and silence.

In India medieval age, horses were the preferred sacrificial animal (ashwamedha) because horses symbolized the sovereign power of the king; thus, the priests were translating the humiliation of the vanquished into the glorification of the victor.

Most of the sadhu have no spiritual vocation:  They might be fleeing the poverty of their villages, the police, or are plainly mentally ill.  Once they are converted to sadhu they know that they don’t have to worry about all their previous problems and difficulties with the law.  They can go around begging for their food and not remaining in the same location.

Seven of the 13 kinds of “akharas” or ashram welcome naga sadhu or hermits.  A thousand years ago, akharas were grouped in military formations as reinforcement troops; thus, they trained manipulating and handling arms (shastra) and teaching the sacred writings (shaastra).

The grand tradition of the Veda instructed that the more you use your soul, the vaster it grows:  It is the power of enchantment.  Nowadays, the little tradition of the Hindu priests is to teaching by commandments of “do that, don’t do this, offer sacrifices…” and that trend lead to the 1991 catastrophe:  The World Hindu Organization (VHP) destroyed the Moslem mosque in Ayodhya in order to replace it with a temple dedicated to Ram.

Those extremists and ignorant Hindu followers figured out that if they reverse the course of history then, history would change accordingly.  It is the same behavior and ideology applied by the Wahhabi sect in Saudi Arabia and the Zionist Jews.

Ilija Trojanow wrote: “You may try all religions and have faith in one, at least once.  It is a great experience to be at the confluence of all traditions and be transformed.  It is proper to discover a fragment of the Divine in every ritual.  There is this sacred mount of Shatrunjaya in the Gujarat province in India near the main location of the Jain sect in the city of Palitana; you have to climb 15,000 steps.  At the summit, you discover 867 temples and tens of thousand of marble columns richly decorated.  You feel transformed.  God is but the cumulative fantasy of all living mankind”

Note:  Ilija Trojanow is born in Sofia (Bulgaria) and immigrated to Germany and was raised in Kenya.  He travels with a German passport and participated in many pilgrimage sites and described the events.