On the Himalayas - Swami Ashokananda
Swami Ashokananda, one of the preeminent monks of the Ramakrishna Order was the editor of their journal, the Prabuddha Bharata in the 1920s before he went to San Francisco where he lived the rest of his life at the monastery there.
In the editorial of the January 1927, he has a wonderful passage on the Himalayas which evokes not only the beauty of the mountains but the spiritual significance it has for Hindus no matter where they live. He writes:
As we write these lines, the snows are falling, falling steadily around us in the midst of a preternatural silence. The hills have become all white and the plants are covered and overladen with white flakes. There is not the slightest breath of wind, and the silence is so profoundly deep that we seem almost to hear the whispers of the gods, and to gaze on the effulgent white form of the Great God Shiva in the inner-most depths of meditation. We are no longer on the earth, we seem transported into the very heart of the Absolute! Wonderful these Himalayas, sublime and transcendent! How we wish our readers could be with us at this moment to drink deep of this supremely spiritual experience! For, verily the Himalayas are a symbol, a symbol of the secret essence of India!
Where indeed is a place more sacred than these sacred mountains where the Lord of Eternity dwells for ever? “This is the land in which was born Parvati, the Mother of India. This is the holy land, where every ardent soul in India wants to come at the end of his life, and to close the last chapter of its mortal career. On the tops of its mountains, in the depths of its caves, or the banks of its rushing torrents, have been thought out the most wonderful thoughts, a little bit of which has drawn so much admiration even from foreigners and which has been pronounced by the most competent judges to be incomparable. This is the land where rishis lived and philosophy was born.” Yea, every inch of these mountains is holy. The very air is surcharged with spirituality which even the most obtuse mind can tangibly feel. The attractions of the chequered plains seem insipid before the soul-enthralling beauties of this Abode of Shiva. What sojourner in these mountains has not felt the calming influence of their sublime grandeur? Even the most turbulent heart softens at their unseen touch and feels as it has nowhere felt the truth and reality of things spiritual.
It is impossible to describe adequately the variegated charms of these great mountains upon whose crests, “exultant, bold and free, is stamped the imprint of eternity.” There is no end to their beauty by day or by night. One described these hills once as the very person of Shiva enwrapped in the beatific vision of the Eternal. So indeed one perceived them in a moment of transcendental vision. The premier poet of India called the Himalayas devataima, “God-souled.”
Verily we seem, as we look on their sky-kissing crests rising tier after tier, calm and majestic, and breathe their cool and fragrant air, almost to sense God. The forests of pines and deodars ; the seasons of flowers, with their feasts of rhododendrons, cosmos blossoms and roses ; the infinite number of song-birds, one of which comes every summer to our Ashrama to remind us of our wasted hours by reiterating in an unwearied song, tumi kee kachcho goh—“what are you doing” ; the placid view of fleecy clouds sleeping in the mornings among the blue mountains, sometimes shrouding the hills and defiles in grey mists and again falling in continuous torrents for hours, till innumerable cataracts flow in booming waters from every summit and the hills echo Har Har Om, Har Har Om; then the sudden coming of the autumn, which the Vedic rishis evidently dwelling in the Himalayas declared of yore to be the queen of seasons, for, verily then the sky is suddenly cleared of all clouds, the blue assumes its gladdest tint, the sun becomes golden, and all nature laughs in the serene content of leafy luxuriance, and flowers of variegated hues bloom in millions and the hill-sides look like the embroidered scarf of the queen of the year ; by and by the deepening of cold with the searing and falling of leaves and the hills appearing splashed all over with green, yellow, russet and red ; and at last the advent of the grim winter with its cutting blasts and freezing sleets, its hails and snow-falls subjecting the mountains to austere restraint and ascetic discipline ; and the return of the spring with its warming breath and song and flowers ;—all these and many more, who can ever do proper justice to their beauties ? They make one their willing captive and the throbbing heart is thrown under their magic spell. Yet the seen is but a fraction of the unseen, and the unseen can be felt only in the silence of the soul.
The long range of snows, spread before our window for a continuous three hundred miles, is a magic field of colors. Scarcely does the dawn peep through the dark upon our side of the mortal world when the snow-mountains flush light pink. And lo ! in a few moments the pointed crest of Trisul, white and burnished like a silver tabernacle, is shot with dazzling fire, and in a trice the whole range is flooded with gold. Then as the sun rises high, the snows grow whiter and whiter, looking the very emblem of Divine purity and majesty against the deep blue of the sky. By and by the day declines and the evening sun enwraps them with its golden rays and the golden mountains hang between heaven and earth like a mystic dream become real.
Yea, this golden vision is not of this earth. It is the symbol of the Divine in His serene and playful moods. To the ancient seers as they looked on it, and to those who have heard the call of the Eternal, it is the vision of Shiva eternally united with His Divine Consort, Parvati. The austere and pure white—this is Shiva, and the golden flush that animates it is Parvati Herself. And our soul kneels in adoration before the beatific revelation of our Eternal Father and Eternal Mother, and we sing with the great Sankara:
O Mother, thou grantest refuge to thy hapless sons,
Thy person, O Mother, is of the hue of the golden champak,
Thy hair, O Mother, is black like the darkest cloud, thy body, O Father, is smeared with white ashes.
and thou, O Father, art the eternal companion of Shivâ.
O ye Inseparables, to ye our salutations, our salutations!”
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