>From a friend on Purusha:
Dear Friends far and wide, Our ashram is at 6900 feet elevation, and the other Uttarkashi Purusha ashram is at 5000 feet, many kilometers south of us. The selection of these two pieces of land and the construction of the buildings took place over several years and was the focus of much attention on the part of Maharishi. Sometime after the first men arrived to occupy the ashram Maharishi told someone, “No one should live above 5000 feet”. This might seem a frivolous or even incomprehensible remark, considering the time and cost involved in creating our home. After all, there were other sites at lower altitudes where we could have built. Why here? Only last month did it finally make sense to me what was going on. Our ashram receives much more rain during monsoon than the other ashram; sometimes it seems all the clouds from the Bay of Bengal to the Himalayas stop, and dump rain, at our doorstep. This results in great and small problems for residents, staff and management. Supplies are often delayed due to roads and mule trails being washed away. The stupendous monsoon flooding of the Asi Ganga river in August this year resulted our being highly isolated for two months without electricity or cooking gas. And our winter is considerably more cold than the other ashram, a real problem when electricity is cut for hours or even days at a time. But if you were to take a walk up a steep trail to the meadow about 1300 feet above us, a walk of from 50 to 60 minutes, you would no doubt notice the dancing energy of that place. High meadows like this are called in the Himalayas, ‘’bugyals’’ (pronounced boog-yaal). Everyone who goes there discovers that our bugyal is a spiritual power spot. The whole of this bugyal carries that sweet vibration, but in one corner is the presence most strong. At one time it was farmed and you can see the terraced fields which are now fully overgrown with grass. More than half of the land is open fields, and the rest is forest. Villagers bring their mules, cows and water buffaloes for a day or more to graze there until snow covers it. And a band of wandering Muslim herders— entire families— called Gujars, camp out each year for the whole of monsoon. They graze their herd and the men run down the mountain every morning after milking to sell the milk in the town of Uttarkashi. One sadhu moved into a hut there a few years ago and he stays most of the year. I take a three-hour hike in the mountains every week and one of my favorite destinations is the bugyal. Being much higher than our ashram the view from there is much larger. You can see grand peaks far away as you walk on the novelty of broad flat sod. Beneath one bordering cliff there is a fine waterfall to sit under in the summer. I usually bring my lunch and slip off to the corner where all the power radiates from, sit among the trees and feel the presence of God and breathe the silence in the air. Our ashram is within the ‘’sacred region’’ of Uttarkashi, mentioned in various Hindu scriptures. This is the land bound by the Asi Ganga river upstream of the town of Uttarkashi, and the Varana river, downstream. Both rivers merge with the holy Ganga river. In India, where two rivers converge is called sangam. Any river convergence with the Ganga is a holy spot itself, and I can attest to the spiritual energy that hangs at the sangams of both these rivers. At one of them I held a traditional first anniversary yagya for my departed friend, Charlie Johanson. This sacred precinct of Uttarkashi is the core of why this is called the ‘’Valley of the Saints’’. At one time Maharishi even declared that ‘’millions’’ of people had become enlightened in the Uttarkashi Valley area. Was he peering back millennia? Were ancient ashrams right here on the land we now occupy? Or up at the bugyal? So when Maharishi described our ashram elevation as undesirable he was only voicing the practical concerns. But he put his time and money into capturing the spiritual ideal for us. He once said of our life here, ‘’Even Indra is envious of you!”. I wish you joy and peace.
