Sadhus and Kumbh melas. Their value and place in the perennial Indian spiritual Civilisation, with a film on the Kumbha Mela at the end.

                                     

Everyone who has been in the great ocean of religions and holy people and places of India will never forget some of the meetings with remarkable beings who wander most of the time of their lives through all areas, but specially mountains and banks of rivers, of this so vast and rich subcontinent.  

                                      

These sadhus, and some are women, the sadhvi, are renunciants, or vairagis, ascets, sannyasins, or monks, or babas, or beggars, saints, or fools of God, and live alone or in small groups, practising their own sadhanas (spiritual pratices), with many of them smoking also cannabis, in order to attain more knowdlege, or liberation from ignorance and attachments, or to reach union with their spirit (atman) or even God, and we can meet  them more in some special religious places, where plenty of temples and worshipers give them opportunity to give their satsangas or teachings, and receive food or even some other retribuitions for their presence, darshan (blessing by being seen) or teachings.

Most of them have renounced to everything (notably the arthas or objectives of life, and the castes), use the ocre or orange robe that signals that liberation, and have some alegiance or relation with one of the orders akharas of sannyasins, mostly coming from Adi Shankara (VIII century), but there is also many independent ones, related to some others traditions, like the tantriks, the nagas, the goraka nath, the aghori, although all have received an initiation (diksa) from some guru (master), swami (monk) or sadhu, and beyond the orders or akharas, they are also divided in the Shaivas (with their tridents, as in the engraving down, fecit in 1809) who are devotees or yogis of Shiva-Shakti, and the Vaishanavas, devotees or bhaktas of Vishnu, normally in his avatars Radha - Krishna and Sita - Rama.

                                   

From twelve to twelve years, in accordance with Jupiter's cycle,  thousands, of the half million of them, get together in one of the four sacred places, near rivers or on the confluence of them (tirthas, auspicious places): Allahabad, Hardwar, Nashik and Ujjain, and meet, dialogue, meditate, sang, teach and are listened, followed or even worshiped by thousands or millions of beings coming from all corners of the world, but mostly from India, in what is called the Kumbh mela, meaning: getting together around a sacred water or river, as the ethimological senses are Kumbh, a jar or pot of the imortality liquid (amrita), already in the Vedas, and mela, unite or coming together. So, it is really the great moment of life for thousands...

                                            

The Sanata  Dharma, the eternal perennial Order, that constitutes the essence of Indian Religion, coming from Vedas and of some older pre-indo-europeans  cults, matriarchal and of ascets (the shramanas), has been developed, lived and expounded by many great beings for thousands of years, making India insuperable in that richness, but still the mysteries exists about who is the human being, body, soul and spirit, how to live in harmony, who is God-Godess, how to relate to Him-Her, or what are the paths or sadhanas to attain the gnosis, the inner light, peace and love.
So these sadhus are and can become gurus for some persons, as in India that spiritual relation is still considered to be almost indispensable in the path of spiritual realization. And so normally each indian  has his guru (meaning a dispeller of darkness) who has given him some mantra, or meditation or even suggested a ishta devata, a personal form of God, in a initiation cerimony or process, and that gives counsels, protection, blessings and inspiration.
Even some portuguese and western missionaries in the XVI and XVII centuries were impressed by these guru and learn from them and even copy them, like Roberto de Nobili (1577-1656), a pioneer in aculturation, shown here in the modern painting of Angelo da Fonseca, in the collection of the Heras Institute, Bombay.

Surely there is some sadhus who have not attained great realization, or have blown a bit their minds with so much cannabis (and that coud be done less), but many, by their penances and austerities (when is not a self-destructive fakirism), detachment and silence, aspiration and meditation, have become really holders of the sacred discernment and knowdlege (viveka and jnana), bearers of the inner light (jyoti) or even of the connection with the Divine and its Avatars and so to be with them can be a joyous moment of dialogue, learning or meditation, becoming an inspiration, a source of empowerment, a grace.
I was in two of the places of kumbh melas, but not at the exact time when we meet there millions of pilgrims and sadhus, still gurus and sadhus are there all the time. Surely I was sometimes with sadhus in my twenty eight months in India, and I will share one day that experiences, in fact already written in an unpublished Pilgrim's Diary, but recently a read some parts of book of Arthur Milles,  Shiva Cult, in the french translation Le Culte de Çiva. Superstitions, Perversions et horreurs de l'Hindouisme. Paris, 1935, whose title induces in error, as just some pages treat Shivaism, the majority being about the different castes and showing in them how much he was against the religions, cults and sadhus of India, and their richeness af pratices, ritual, believes, for him mostly superstitions. Still as a work of anthropology  is valuable as it contains many related cases of believes, pratices, magic that he encountered in India, although  without inner, subtle or esoteric sensibility and so he couldn't understood  the occult reasons for them, as an exemple, an araati, or ritual, done to a weakened horse, providing him with some pranic or subtle energies.
The twelve pages consecrated to Magic tell us about some events, with unexplicable actions coming from the invisible, but share also his hate against the sadhus, and after a story of one of them helping a girl to be cleaned from an disturbing spirit, he says: «These sadhus are a torture, a pest for the authorities and for the ones that don't bother to be troubled in almost all corners of the streets by their brahamanic theories and teachings. Almost naked, and with an incredible dirtness, they are a menace to the health and public decency; and they litteraly clog the streets of Bombay in June after their return from the festival of Nassik, where they descend, as flies, from all parts of India. How people still live under the mortal fear of the magik powers of this unhealty beggars, behold what surpasses the imagination of a mortal being.»

This almost humoristic way of Arthur Milles describe just by their external aspect so many sadhus in transit from the Nassik kumbh mela, some of them surely with much wisdom about the Vedas, the Puranas, the Upanishads, and with the capacity to convey the oral tradition and their inner knowlegde to everyone they meet or feed them. Or as the Kumbh melas are great moments for  sincronic and meaningful encounters, it is a bit pittful that this author could not go beyond apparences and realize the inner aspects of these dirty fools and lovers of God, whom,  with their extatic songs and dances, or discourses and satsangas, can awaken the bhava and prema, the sentiments and the love for the Divine, and also the essential Sat Chit Ananda, Being, Consciousness and Joy, that is the kernel or nucleus of everyone, and that we should realize more...

                                 

India is really a  living museum of all religions and pratices, creeds and magic, visions and paths, and these sadhus, the ashrams or centers where some gurus or sadhus live and teach, the temples where sannyasins and brahmanic priests do their swadharma, their own duty of praying, purifying, teaching, worshiping, or even search and enter in the moksha or kaivalyam (salvation and liberation)´, and the great Kumbh melas where millions of people mix in joyful fraternity, and many having done hard pilgrimages to arrive, and wash their bodies and souls in a purifiying vision, and meet the sadhus and sadhvi, the ones in search of the enlightnemnt, of the wisdom, the peace, the spirit, God, or the few ones who have already attained great levels of spiritual or divine consciousness... 

Kavi Yogi Shuddhanda Bharati, a enlightened pilgrim, with whom I lived two months.

And so some strong intensification and awareness of remarkable meetings, expanded states of consciousness, enlighetened visions of the being or self, the Nature and  the sacred Feminine and Masculine in nature, in persons and in the Divine.  May we all also find these satsangas, this kumbh melas within our relations, our souls, our countries or, better, still in their original source, India....  Now follows an interesting film documentary on them, Kumbh mela: Eternal Journey of Indian Civilization...