Kumbha Mela – A Celebration Like No Other

Kumbha Mela – A Celebration Like No Other

[00:45] A Contained Celebration

In India, there is, every so often at very scheduled times, a phenomenon known as Kumbha Mela, Kumbha, K-U-M-B-H-A, but very often that final A is elided, which means it’s kind of swallowed.

In Sanskrit language, if there’s a soft A, a short A, on the end of a word, more frequently than not, that A is elided.

So Kumbha becomes Kumbh. Kumbh, K-U-M-B-H. And Mela, separate word, M-E-L-A, Mela. Mela in Sanskrit is expressive of a celebration, like a party, on a small scale, or a massive community celebration on a large scale, Mela.

Kumbha. Kumbh is the word for a container, a thing that is the container of the celebration. Kumbha Mela. The Mela that sits in the container.

And in most cases it is depicting, or it is expressive of, a phenomenon that happens once every 12 years in the city that today has had its name restored to its ancient Sanskrit name in India, Prayagraj. Prayag, P-R-A-Y-A-G, Prayag. In Sanskrit, it means a confluence, typically of rivers, where two flows, two flow streams unite, is a Prayag.

Prayagraj. Raj means royal, the monarch, Raj. Prayagraj, the Raj of the Prayags. The place, the great confluence. The great confluence. And this is a city in India, known after the invasion of Moghuls, Prayagraj was renamed Allahabad, the city of Allah, Allahabad. But today it’s returned to its original Sanskrit name, Prayagraj.

Prayagraj is a city which, typically, during non-Kumbha Mela times, might have a few million living in it.

[03:25] Triveni – Where Three Sacred Rivers Meet

But once-every-12-years, an enormous gathering of people happens there, typically in January and early February, for about one month, at the place where three rivers meet: Ganga, which in English we say the Ganges River.

Ganga, the most sacred river of India. Yamuna, sometimes in English said Jumna because it might be spelled J-U-M-N-A, but its proper spelling is Y-A-M-U-N-A. Yamuna. Yamuna. And a subterranean river, sometimes referred to as mythical, but in fact, it’s physical, a subterranean river known as Saraswati. Saraswati.

Ganga, Yamuna, and Saraswati rivers all conflow at a certain point in the city of Prayagraj, and where this confluence of rivers happens, there’s a beautiful like, what we would call a boil, that means a bulge of water that rises up.

The cold, cold water of the Sarasvati coming from underneath and coming from the subterranean regions, the Yamuna, which has one particular kind of color, a kind of a chalky, silty color, and the Ganga, Ganges River, which, up until that point, is greenish. These three rivers all meet at a place called the Triveni.

Tri means three. Veni means veins, like blood vessels, veins that you have in your body. The Triveni Triveni, T-R-I-V-E-N-I. Triveni. The Triveni Sangham, S-A-N-G-H-A-M, Triveni Sangham. Sangham means togetherness. Triveni, where the three veins, the three rivers meet.

Triveni Sangham is that place where the boil is, and these three rivers then turn into one river, which from that point on is referred to as Ganga. Ganga ends up getting the naming rights after the confluence of the three, and it continues from there on down to the city of Kashi or Varanasi.

[06:03] Maha Kumbha Mela

So, Prayagraj, once-every-12-years in the wintertime, is the Kumbha Mela, the Maha. Maha means great in Sanskrit. Maha Kumbha Mela, once-every-12-years, held at that site, and, the purpose of it, the main purpose, is that there are auspicious bathing times.

Auspicious times, set by the positions of the planets and the stars, where it’s considered that if you take a dip at the Triveni Sangham, then you will have all kinds of wondrous things happen for you.Great good fortune, the removal of attachment to negativity, and so on and so on and so on.

It’s also a time where, traditionally, and for thousands of years, this Kumbha Mela ceremony has gone on every 12 years, for thousands of years, it has happened, that there is a gathering of spiritual teachers, and it’s considered to be incumbent upon anyone who has something to teach, to come to Kumbha Mela and to set up maybe a stall, or even just to sit quietly on a little tuft of grass and await, but largely to make themselves available as teachers to anyone who comes and presents with worthy inquiry.

It’s considered to be incumbent upon anyone in India who is a teacher to make what it is they know relevant socially, social relevance of a spiritual experience or teaching. And so let’s think of the providers of that kind of knowledge, numbering in the tens of thousands, who are the first to arrive at the Kumbha Mela in January once every 12 years when the Maha Kumbha Mela happens.

[08:10] Diversity of the Mela

The providers might be anywhere between 40 and 50,000 yogis, saints, masters, male, female. Some of them from the traditional Sanatana Dharma of India, what outsiders refer to as “Hinduism,” an English word, Hinduism.

Sanatana Dharma is the proper Sanskrit way of describing the multiple practices of India. Buddhists, Islamists, Sufis, Zoroastrians, Jains, Sikhs, people from every kind of spiritual calling arrive there and set up and prepare.

And then comes the masses who wish to partake of some of these teachings and to see if they can also get a dip at the Triveni Sangham during one of the auspicious windows of time, there might be a five-hour window, and these people arrive in the tens of millions.

There is a satellite, geostationary satellite, positioned straight above Prayagraj by the Indian government, to photograph the size of the crowd, and typically, when the crowd reaches somewhere in the 20 million in size, as seen from outer space looking down, then the government will begin to shut down the roads, the railways, and so on, but the people continue coming.

They come on foot. In many cases, they walk even hundreds of miles to get to the Kumbha Mela in time for the targeted dip that they wish to have sometime during the holy month that the Kumbha Mela is held.

[10:05] Millions at Kumbha Mela

And at its peak, Kumbha Mela, most recently, has had, estimates vary, but somewhere between 50 million and 70 million people gathering, on certain peak days, all at once in this area. By far the largest gathering of human beings on earth ever. Larger than any city. Larger than a combination of the world’s two or three largest cities, all there in this one place. And it’s really something amazing to witness. It goes on for a month.

Some days of the month there may be merely 10, 15, or 20 million people there. Other days of that same month there might be 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 million present. People camp out in whatever way they can, sometimes just curl up under the stars. It’s quite chilly, not snow-freezing chilly, but kind of chilly weather in the winter with cool breezes and cool nights, never quite reaching this freezing point, but getting down in temperature.

 And so government provides millions of tents for the Kapilvasis. A Kapilvasi is somebody who has a pilgrimage once-every-12-years, makes a resolution to come and spend the entire month. Kapilvasi, K-A-P-I-L-V-A-S-I, Kapilvasi. Kapilvasi is someone who goes to the Kumbha Mela and stays the entire month for it and attempts to do all the different dips.

And so millions of little pup tents are provided by the Indian government.The army shows up en masse, something on the order of half a million members of the Indian army go there just to try to give some semblance of order to the proceedings to make sure that there’s no tramplings. The crowd moves all at once, then it can be dangerous.

And so the army is there, about half a million soldiers, women and men, not armed but there to help, and in uniform, to keep order at the Kumbha Mela.

[12:41] Ardh Kumbha Mela

And then all of the major gurus, from the Shankaracharya, the king of the yogis, with whom I’m associated and affiliated deeply, all the way down to some master who lived in silence way up in the Himalayas, but realized his or her responsibility to walk to the Kumbha Mela, and to sit quietly, and see, “Would anybody like to learn anything from me.”

And so this massive gathering of people. And I’ve attended in my lifetime at least 20 of the Kumbha Melas that have happened

There’s a thing called an Ardh—A-R-D-H. In Sanskrit means half—a half Kumbha Mela that happens in another city, the Ganga, on the Ganges River, further upstream in the city of Haridwar. The half Kumbha Mela happens once every six years, as opposed to the Maha Kumbha Mela that happens once-every-12-years.

And then there is the one quarter Kumbha Mela in Nasik and Ujjain, host, in alternate years,  quarter Kumbha Melas, so that’s once every three years.  Once every six years, Haridwar.  And then once every twelve years, the Maha Kumbha Mela at  Prayagraj. 

[14:50] Kumbha Mela 2025

So this coming January 2025 will be the full Maha Kumbha Mela, commencing in early January and moving on into February, and it’s predicted that somewhere on the order of 70 million people will be attending the Kumbha Mela.

It’s a place and a time that is in the minds and hearts of all Indians, including in the Indian diaspora, the diaspora means that group of people who live outside the core country of a culture. There are 1.3 billion Indians living in the subcontinent of India and there are roughly a hundred and fifty million Indians living outside of India, all over the world.

Indians will be coming from everywhere, from all over India, the subcontinent, and from all over the world, to attend the Kumbha Mela in January of 2025. And I will also be there. I’ll be a tiny, tiny little dot in the middle of tens of millions of people enjoying the sacred dips and enjoying the Kumbha Mela.

I’d love to say, “See you there,” but it’s highly unlikely that I’ll see you. It’s a mass of bodies that is hard to believe. 

[16:29] Maintaining Order and Safety

I remember the first time I went to Kumbha Mela, in the early 1970s, or perhaps it was the late 60s. I’m an old man, my memory is getting a little shaky. I’ll give you a few vignettes.

As I came over a rise, 50 miles from the Triveni, five zero miles from the Triveni, that’s 80 kilometers, all the way out to 80 kilometers, 50 miles. That was the start of the crowd. And then you made your way through that crowd over a period of days to get to the Triveni.

And there are hills all around the city of Prayagraj as far as the eye can see, over every piece of land, as far as the eye can see, are people. People walking, moving, singing, cooking outside, millions upon millions of tents set up.

And in the night, it’s a sparkling, glittering ocean of human consciousness because people light little campfires and candles and whatnot in order to either cook, or to see what they’re doing, or to stay warm.

And then there’ll be these mass movements where, with three or four hours of notice, people begin moving toward the sacred bathing site, en masse, to see if they can be channeled into the water.

What happens is the army will set up a line, a line of soldiers who will allow people to approach the sacred site in an orderly fashion, one at a time, making sure that nobody trips or falls.

The army people are on either side, like a wall of soldiers, left and right, going all the way down to the water, probably four or five miles of soldiers, and you enter into this queue and you move one at a time up toward the water, and you have your dip.

And there are certain soldiers who are down in the water who help people take a dip and dunk under, and then move them on because they’ve had their dip, the next person needs to come.

And there are millions who want to go in and have that dip. It’s quite fun actually and it’s very, very, good-hearted, warm-hearted.

[18:52] Om Namah Shivaya

And one of the scenes that I can tell you about: one night when the sacred time for dipping was at one in the morning or so, I remember standing in amongst this massive group of millions of people that were packed into this space, chest to back, shoulder to shoulder, that kind of packed in, and somebody way over on the other side of this mass of people began a chant, that was a chant to Shiva, “Om Namah.” That was over on one side of the valley, and from our side of the valley came, “Shivaya.”

And then both sides in unison, “Ommm” a call-and-answer chant with tens of millions of voices in the middle of the night.

And so from the other side came again, “Namah.” Millions and millions of voices singing it in unison. And then from our side, “Shivaya.” And then 30 million all together. “Ommm.”

[20:37] A Once-in-a-Lifetime Experience

As the millions moved step-by-step in the direction of the water, the full moon was shining over the entire crowd, and the millions of smiles that were on the faces, and you could see, as people smiled, you could see millions of sets of teeth reflecting the moonlight.

Everyone smiling, everyone singing, moving, as one, toward the rivers and eventually making your way down and then eventually getting your chance to take the dip. And just you know an amazing thing moving with millions of people for three, four and five hours at a time until you finally got your dip. One of the most magnificent experiences of my lifetime I believe. 

So, Kumbha Mela, really quite something, and far be it for me to say you’re invited. I have no control over it. There’ll be 50, 60, 70 million people.

If you care to go, look it up, and don’t try to find me, I’ll be a speck. It’ll be like trying to find one grain of sand in an entire beach of sand. But, it’s there, and one of those experiences that I believe somebody should have at least once in their lifetime. 

Jai Guru Deva.