Rampuri, The Mother Goddess, Sacred Landscapes, and New York City

[Guest guest]

From an interview with Naga Baba Rampuri

By Claudia Turnbull

From Namarupa magazine, Spring 2007

 

[At this point in the interview, Turnbull and Rampuri are

discussing sacred landscapes.]

 

CT: Do you feel that there is something about the

landscape in India that enriches Vedic practices? Is there

something key in being in the landscape of India rather

than somewhere else?

 

R: The sacred landscape is what I would describe as

signatures of nature, and this is extremely significant. In

India it is very much part of reading the text of the world

and it is very much pan of the tradition there. Now,

curiously enough, this also makes things very, very local

as opposed to universal. What we would love to do,

especially in the West, especially in what I might

describe as the Christian West, although there could be

the Christian, the Jewish, the Muslim, or even the

Buddhist, West; they would love to universalize things.

They love to work with universal principals, which I

don't relate to at all. I relate to local things and local

geography and local knowledge and local deities and

local spirits and local people and local language.

Everything local. Sacred landscape or signatures of

nature are really localized.

 

[....]

What I have found is that I come to Europe and go to

some of these cities and places; I look around and I see

all sorts of sacred landscape. I say to people, " My god,

you live in a sacred place. " How do I know? Look at all

these signs, look at these marks, and look at these flags

on your world, on your earth, in this place. And look at

what that must indicate. Look what it marks just under

the surface, just below the concrete. Look at this mirror.

 

I find the value of my experience is to take it like a giant

mirror bring it into your space and hold it up to you to

look into and see the sacred landscape in your own

location. Understand how your own location is sacred

and what there is to connect with, how to use that to

make your life and other lives more prosperous and

more wonderful.

 

[....] If we can use this mirror of India, not to go to

India, and not to look at India, and not necessarily to

follow Indian philosophy or Indian thinking, but just

strictly as a mirror to look at our own world, our own

location, and our own lives and find the sacred, and the

sacred feminine as well, there, then I would say that my

pilgrimage has brought some fruit. [....]

 

CT: So pilgrimage then would extend to any country in

a variety of locations?

 

R: Well, of course it would. In fact the strongest

pilgrimage is to find those genuinely sacred places in

your own town or city. Go to those genuinely sacred

places, not because people tell you that they're sacred, or

you read it in a book, or because that is where the

American Indians went, but because you see the signs

and the marks. Fortunately one of the gifts that I have

been given from my tradition is the ability to recognize

some of those signs and marks; they are sort of obvious

to me, but I am sure that other people can see them as

well. Go to those signatures of the Mother Goddess and

offer respect and communicate with those spirits.

 

You don't have to go to the mountains and you don't

have to go to the seashore. In most cities it's there and it

is obvious, because if it weren't there, there wouldn't be

a city there. Cities are because of prosperity. Every city

is built on prosperity. Every place where there is a city

there is a Mother Goddess that is just below the surface

who makes her presence known. We can go to that

Mother Goddess and offer our respect and see her

reflection in people and awaken the spirits that are

buried under the concrete and connect with them.

 

CT: Taking it more specifically ...

 

R: How specific do you want to get?

 

CT: Say, for instance. New York City. How would you

recognize the sacred beneath those mammoth structures?

 

R: Well, the Brooklyn Bridge, what's that, the East

River that it goes over?

 

CT: Right.

 

R: Without the East River, there wouldn't be a New

York City because it is the fresh waters that created the

original agriculture and the ability for a civilization or a

culture to exist there. The meeting of the East River with

the ocean, which gave rise to commerce and

immigration, is a great sangam (confluence). That is like

the sangam where the Yamuna, the Ganga and the

Sarasvati rivers meet in India. Or where the Ganga

meets the Bay of Bengal in Eastern India.

 

I would look at the East River as a goddess; the goddess

of prosperity. Not the water of the East River, but the

spirit of the East River that we recognize by seeing the

water. Then the next thing that I would look at, or think

about, is all these huge phallic buildings that house

banks because New York is the banking capital of the

universe. Those banks in New York are housed in these

huge Siva lingams, and wherever there are Siva lingams

that are hiding wealth, you know that the Mother

Goddess is just below the surface, because the name of

the Mother Goddess is prosperity. Whether that

prosperity is mango trees laden with ripe fruit or fields

of wheat or fluorescent green rice patties or treasure

chests of gold coins, the name of the Mother Goddess is

prosperity. She gives life and nourishment and

sustenance as her nature. In those places where life,

nourishment, and sustenance are concentrated, that is

where the signatures of the Mother Goddess lie, and

that's where great prosperity is possible.

 

[...] In this way New York City is probably one of the

most sacred places on earth! That doesn't make it a good

place, that doesn't make it a nice place, that doesn't mean

that you go there and get rich. You can die of starvation

on the street. But that doesn't take away from the fact

that this is a very, very powerful place of abundance and

prosperity, which is the nature of the Mother Goddess.

 

One other thing that I might mention is that in India all

the deities have an animal, sort of a totemic animal, as

their vehicle or as their companion. Ganesa is the

elephant god who has got this big belly, who is the lord

of obstacles because he is the lord of all those earth

spirits that hide the wealth of the earth. Ganesa, who is

also connected with prosperity and success, has as his

companion vehicle the rat. What does the rat mark? The

rat always marks abundance and prosperity. Why?

Because wherever you have food and especially lots of

food or abundance of food you have rats and mice to

come and eat that food. So if you have rats and mice

around, you know that there is abundant food because

otherwise they wouldn't be there. [....] [T]hey mark

abundance, wealth, and prosperity. So

that is why New York is a holy place.

 

CT: I like it.

 

R: Quite contrarian. I may be the only person on the

planet who is saying that.

[Guest guest]

Yes, that's beautiful. I decided to order his book because it sounds

interesting.

 

Some places where Dharma doesn't reside so much the rats take over. Like

Louisiana, and now the whole USA. How does Ma take to that? I ask Shri Devi

to show patience please and give us a chance for Dharma to grow.

 

Sometimes so many Shiva Lingas makes for destruction.

 

But if New York City survives another thousand years then someday it could

have a skytram to the moon. The possibilities on Earth are endless.

 

If Dharma grows. Though what is Dharma I am always asking. Now

 

In the US people always want an Honest Abe,

but then they just kill him when he's in office.

The dishonest win two terms and seem like space aliens.

This is no Kurukshetra here.

 

-

" msbauju " <msbauju

 

Friday, September 21, 2007 10:53 PM

Rampuri, The Mother Goddess, Sacred Landscapes,

and New York City

 

 

> From an interview with Naga Baba Rampuri

> By Claudia Turnbull

> From Namarupa magazine, Spring 2007

>