With God as our tour guide there is no end to the delight He takes in surprising and delighting us in our journey. We had some practical tasks we had to take care of on our first day in India, and then we thought we would take a car and driver for half the day while we are in Delhi.
Operating on about three hours of sleep but desirous to reset our body clocks to the 12 and a half hour time difference, we asked at the hotel about going to see the large Hanuman figure and temple here in Delhi. A dozen years ago we had the darshan of this monkey-king and foremost devotee of Ram in the form of this gigantic statue; he is covered in red and stands about 40 feet tall; an impressive divine image. However, no one here knew of this temple. The travel guide had a different idea, pointing to a map that indicated a newer temple complex about 15 k. away; I somehow felt an attraction to going.
We hired the car and driver for about 5 dollars an hour and set off on a Ram adventure. The large temple complex loomed ahead as we drove on an elevated freeway, one of the many differences that have occurred in the last 15 years I have been coming to India; the elevated freeway a stark contrast to the potholed roads where wandering cows were a regular feature.
The name of the mandir complex is Swaminarayan Akshardham. Now, many of you will be familiar with Swami Narayan through the DVD we played at Loon Lake Retreat this past month, entitled Mystic India. Unbeknownst to us when looking at the map along with the travel guide, we were being directed to the mandir of the very same saint.
The temple complex is breathtaking, and its creation is equally remarkable. In five years, from November 2000 to November 2005, Swami Maharaj (Swamishri) led the effort to transform 100 acres of desolation into a manicured park with the largest Mandir in India, complete with 300,000 carved stones to create the entire complex. The work is not only numerous, but the workmanship is also exquisite.
The architecture and artisanship are outstanding, but this work is not merely an empty shell of piled stones as has been the case with other temples I have had the opportunity to see. Inside the mandir stand the carved images of Rama, Sita and Hanuman, the likenesses of Krishna and Radha, Pavarti and Mahadev Shiva, and all manifest a strong life-force that brings devotion to the heart and soul.
How can 300 million man hours be so purely dedicated to a higher ideal? It must mean that it was truly a labor of love. This stands as a challenge to each of us to do better, strive for more and to manifest divine beauty in all that we do. It was remarkable that this vast temple complex was done in 5 years; as Satish Gujaral, an internationally known architect, opined, “It would have taken 50 years to build such a thing.” [For images you can see here: http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=chrc-comodo&va=swaminarayan+akshardham]
It seems that God has taken an interest in connecting us with this saint, Swami Narayan, to whom this Temple is dedicated and who was the subject of the Mystic India film that I had watched with interest a few times. At the center of the large and extensively beautiful mandir is a statue of the saint, eleven feet tall and glowing in gold.
If you have seen Mystic India you may remember the shots taken at a temple with ornate figures carved in the pillars; I can tell you many of these scenes were definitely filmed on location here and that even though the Imax film is most beautifully crafted, still it does not do full justice to how exquisite the art really is.
There is ride on a boat that is part of the Temple complex that is reminiscent of Disney Land’s Pirates of the Caribbean, in that you float in a boat through a tunnel complex filled with 800 life-like statues that depicts 10,000 years of India’s history and her contributions to the world. We first saw an ancient Vedic village, then the world’s first university that was in existence for 1300 years, India’s contributions to astronomy, mathematics including the invention of the number zero, the world’s first hospital, and many interesting advancements including India’s most important contribution, the philosophy and practical techniques of Yoga for advancing the evolution of man, dating back at least five thousand years.
But what stands out to both Carla and I from our time at Swami Narayan’s Temple complex is the feeling of purity when moving through the sacred sites of the mandir. Surely some great souls have been involved in its creation. We pronamed in reverence to these divine images of Rama, Krishna, and Shiva and their divine consorts, and we felt blessed for being taken to a place of honor for Swami Narayan.
One additional travel note: As we were completing our “in-air travel” of twenty hours, flying over Varanasi we were witness to an extraordinary occurrence. Looking south out of the window I glimpsed some flashes of light. Thinking at first that it was the planes flashing light reflect off the clouds, I then looked closer; the clouds were too far away to be reflecting the plane’s lights.
The intensity of the bright flashes grew, along with the rapidity of succession of the flashing. The clouds that lit up were at a great distance, and even though they looked about even with us, I think they must have been lower in altitude as we were at about 35,000 feet at the time. It became clear that these were cloud to cloud lightning strikes at some distance, and stretched as far left and right to each side as we could see.
If you could imagine a dangling jelly fish thousands of feet high that suddenly was so brilliantly illumined within that all that remained, other than an incredibly bright light, are the gray and black outlines of the edges of the jelly fish, or in this case thunder heads, then you can imagine the terrifying beauty of this display.
The flashes were too fast to count and lit up vast regions of space. From left to right, in the center and then spasmodically back to the right and so on, the lightning working at a furious pace that left us speechless with wonder; and yet the plane was totally unaffected by this violent storm. It was one of the most awe inspiring sights of nature to which I have been a witness. Carla and I were the only ones with our window open and may have been the only ones, except the pilots, to see this incredible display of Mother Nature! This was our welcome back to India, the place of wonders and glories from time immemorial, and still is.