People have been traveling to Kashi from across the world for thousands of years. Gautama came here to give his first teaching. The Chinese travelled here after Gautama’s arrival. Nalanda University – which is recognized as the greatest place of learning – is just a small drop of knowledge that fell out of Kashi. All the people that you hear of, like Aryabhata and so many others, came from this region, all generated by the culture that was alive in Kashi.
When the yogis saw the nature of the cosmos – as to how it is evolving from within itself, and how its ability to evolve is quite limitless – they were tempted to make their own. In Kashi, they built a kind of instrument in the form of a city that brings a union between the micro and the macro. This little human being can have a phenomenal possibility of uniting with the cosmic reality, and knowing the pleasure, ecstasy and beauty of becoming one with the cosmic nature. Geometrically, Kashi is a perfect manifestation of how the cosmos, or the macrocosm and the microcosm, can meet. There have been many instruments like this in the country, but to create a city like Kashi is a mad ambition. And they did it thousands of years ago. There were 72,000 shrines – the number of nadis in the human body. The whole process is like a manifestation of a mega human body to make contact with a larger cosmic body. It is because of this that the whole tradition came up: “If you go to Kashi, that is it.” You don’t want to leave the place because when you get connected to the cosmic nature, why would you want to go anywhere else?
The legend of Kashi goes one hundred percent by the fundamental that Shiva himself lived here. This was his winter place. There are stories about how he sent people to Kashi, one after another, and they never came back because it was so fantastic. But maybe the story is saying that he sent people to build it, and they took a long time. After it was built, he came and he liked it, and decided to stay.
In the last few centuries, Kashi was razed to the ground thrice. How much of it is alive today is a question mark, but definitely something is still on – it is not all gone. It is a misfortune that we were not alive when it was in full glory. It must have been the most phenomenal place to have drawn people from across the world.
We have survived the past, but the question is, will we survive the future? When I say “we,” I am not talking about a particular religion. I am talking about those populations on the planet who are willing to look at life the way it is, not trying to impose their opinion on someone else. The world does not need dogma, philosophies or belief systems. What it needs is for human ability to be able to perceive something that is right now considered “beyond.” This is the only way a human being will know. This is the only way human consciousness will expand. This is the only way a human being will evolve beyond the narrow divisions that have happened in human societies.