A tirtha, a sacred place of pilgrimage, is a unique invention, very deep and symbolic, made by an ancient civilization. But our present civilization has lost all knowledge about the significance of such places. Today visiting a place of pilgrimage is just a dead ritual for us. We just tolerate them, without knowing why places of pilgrimage were established, what their use was and who made them.
Whatever can be seen from the surface is not everything. There are some hidden meanings which are not visible from the outside. We should understand first that our civilization has lost the purpose and meaning of the sacred place of pilgrimage and so today people who go on a pilgrimage waste their time. Those who oppose the idea are also wasting their time, however right they seem to be, because they know nothing about such places. Neither the people who visit the places of pilgrimage, nor those who oppose the idea know the purpose of them, so let us understand a few things about them....
There is a famous place of pilgrimage for Jainas known as Samved Shikhar. Twenty-two out of the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas have died there, have left their bodies there. It all seems to have been pre-arranged; otherwise it is impossible that out of twenty-four, twenty-two should happen to die, with long periods of time between them, in the same place. If we believe the Jainas there is a gap of one hundred thousand years between the first and the twenty-fourth tirthankara. That twenty-two of them died in the same place is worth thinking about.
The place of pilgrimage for Moslems is the Kaaba. Until the time of Mohammed, there were three hundred and sixty-five idols in Kaaba – a different idol for each day of the year. All these idols were removed or destroyed, but the central stone which was the center of the temple was not removed.
The Kaaba is more ancient than the Muslims’ religion. The history of Islam is only about fourteen hundred years old, but that black stone in the Kaaba is hundreds of thousands of years old. Another interesting fact is that the stone does not seem to belong to our earth. How did it come to earth? The only hypothesis we have is that it is part of a meteor. Within twenty-four hours of the disintegration of a meteor, thousands of stone fragments fall to the earth. Many of these are burnt up before they reach the earth. At night when we see stars falling – these are not stars but meteors. Sometimes even huge stones manage to reach the earth; these stones are of a different composition. The stone at Kaaba is such a stone.
But some people who have gone deeper into this feel that such big stones could have been brought to earth and left here, just as our astronauts have left a few things from earth on the moon. Whatever the astronauts have left on the moon will remain there safely, even if there is a nuclear war and life on this earth is destroyed. If ever some civilization reaches the moon, they will be very surprised to see those things we have left there.
So the stone at Kaaba may not be part of a meteorite but may have been left by some inhabitants of another planet. Perhaps it was once possible to establish a connection with those inhabitants through the medium of that stone. But now, only the worship of it has remained. The science of how it might have been used as a means of communication is lost.
An unmanned Russian spaceship became lost because its radio contact with the earth broke, so it was not possible to trace it. Whether it was burnt up, destroyed, or is still somewhere in space is not known. But if it has landed on some planet, and if the inhabitants of that planet could repair the radio they could re-establish contact with the earth. Otherwise they might break it up, or store it in their museum. They may even be afraid of it, may wonder at it or they may even start to worship it.
The Kaaba stone may be one such instrument sent out by spacemen from some other planet to establish contact with the earth.
I am telling you this only as an illustration to explain that a sacred place of pilgrimage was a means to establish contact, not with any living beings in space but with enlightened souls who once lived on this earth.
A very deep and intense experiment on Samved Shikhar was made by the twenty-two tirthankaras, just as they were leaving their bodies. On that mountain they tried to intensify and multiply the vibrations of their developed consciousness so that it would be easier for us to communicate with them. It was thought that if so many souls of such consciousness left their body from the same place, a path between that place and another plane could be laid. And such a path has existed.
The rainfall is not the same everywhere on earth: there are some areas of heavy rain, where it rains as much as five hundred inches, and desert areas where there is no rain or it is very scarce. Similarly there are places which are very cold, where there is nothing but snow everywhere; and there are areas so hot that it is difficult to make ice. In the same way on the earth there are places with high density consciousness and low density consciousness. Conscious attempts have been made to create areas of high consciousness, fields charged with human consciousness. They do not happen automatically, but are a result of the consciousnesses of powerful individuals.
Twenty-two tirthankaras traveling to that one mountain, entering samadhi and leaving their bodies there, created a highly charged field of consciousness, in some special sense, at Samved Shikhar. It was intended that if someone sits there, chanting the special mantras given by those twenty-two tirthankaras, his journey in out-of-the-body experiences will immediately begin. This is as scientific an experiment as any which takes place in a laboratory.
The only reason for creating the places for pilgrimage was to experiment with creating powerfully charged fields of conscious energies, so that anyone could easily begin their inner journey.
Hidden Mysteries
Osho
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