 Kashi literally means to be luminous or more particularly a tower of light. So this beam of light is the symbolism of Kashi because it is a machine, it is a yantra created. It's a cosmogenic effort to bring cosmos to you. Kashi is an effort to bring union to the microcosm and the macrocosm, to the limited and the unlimited, to physical manifestations and limitless dimension of existence. Mukti means liberation. So liberation means essentially to become free from yourself because you are the only nuisance in your life. So the significance of being in Kashi, the word Kashi literally means to be luminous or more particularly a tower of light. You know the story about how Shiva manipulated. He asked Parvati to drop her earrings and she dropped and it fell, sank into the earth. Vishnu being a lady's man, yeah, has to be Shiva-less. See, I was like, Vishnu is very… he has to show his Shiva-ry. So he went to pick up the earring. Well, as he dug deeper and deeper and deeper because of this labor and he started sweating so much, it's gathered in a pool which became the Manikarnika. Manikarnika was actually a pool or a kund. On the banks of it, people were doing cremation also. So this pool got merged with the river. It is said that when the Manikarnika pool was formed, there was no Ganga. Ganga came later when she came, the kund merged with the Ganga. When they looked up, Shiva looked like a tower of light. You must understand this, you ever flashed a powerful torch into the sky. You tried it at least in the night and you saw a tower of light going up if the thing was powerful. You don't know where it ends. Nobody really know where it actually ends. It looked like it went forever. So this beam of light just went unstopped by anything. So this beam of light is the symbolism of Kashi because it is a machine. It is a yantra created. It's a cosmogenic effort to bring cosmos to you. Because fortunately, every tiny bit of this cosmos from an atom to an amoeba to a single-celled animal to everything else in the universe and the larger cosmos are essentially made to the same design. Kashi is an effort to bring union to the microcosm and the macrocosm to the limited and the unlimited to physical manifestations and limitless dimension of existence. It is not that we have to bring union, it is already in union. We have to reorient ourselves from our survival mode to transcend our survival mode and look at the existence. For this we needed tools. If you perceive the nature of the cosmos, suddenly the way you operate, the way you relate to the existence in which you live is totally, totally different. Do you have to be in Kashi to do this? No, not necessarily. But see you can achieve health anywhere. But a lot of people go to the hospital when they are ill because it's a common place where certain tools and facilities and medicines and expertise is available in one place. So Kashi is that kind of place where there was a whole system, there was knowledge, there was mechanisms for that, there are methods for that, variety of capabilities, everything, every kind of specialist lived here at one time. The most important thing in human life is to know the limitations of your body. Yesterday you were born, tomorrow you will be buried, only today is there to live. This is the nature of the existence. And before death becomes today, tch, life needs to blossom. So every possible mechanism that we could use, we set it up across the country. There are many mechanisms like this, most of them unfortunately broken, including this one which is largely disturbed, but the energetic part of it is still, if not absolutely pretty alive because always when we consecrated spaces of this nature, including dhyanalinga, it is not in the structure, structure is only a scaffolding. Kashi is generally said by legend it is said that it is on top of Shiva's Trishu, it is not on the ground. What I am seeing in my experiences, approximately the real structure of Kashi is about thirty-three feet above the ground. If we had any sense, we should not have built anything beyond thirty-three feet. What do we have? Because sense has always been scarce, yes? It's been a very scarce material in the world. And by geometrical calculations, it could be up to seventy-two or seven-thousand two-hundred feet, the energetic structure is made like that. So this is why they called it a tower of light, because those who had eyes to see saw that it is a very tall structure and it did not stop there, it gave you excess to what is beyond. The idea is to achieve something that a human being could achieve within himself or herself through an organized mechanism which comes from distilled essence of thousands of years of realization of many, many people. If you have to realize things by yourself, it's like reinventing the wheel, unnecessarily going through whole lot of painful processes. But if you have to realize through others knowing, then you must have humility, you must bend down and go. So this arrangement was done so that a lot of people could be transported. So people came and did, they set up all kinds of methods and mechanisms. Well, at one time there were over twenty-six thousand shrines. Each one of them had a method of its own as to how a human being can attain. At least twenty-six thousand shrines, developed satellites or many angles of the temple became small, small shrines of its own and went up to seventy-two thousand shrines at one time. When it's in full glory, seventy-two thousand shrines across this mechanism called Kashi. And this did not happen overnight. The basic structure happened at a certain period, nobody knows when. They said even Sunira came here looking for something. Sunira is dated as something like forty-thousand years ago. By then already it was a flourishing city. Mark Twain puts it in perspective saying that it is older than the legend. In terms of antiquity, nobody knows exactly when. People came here because the city was so beautiful and he wanted to come. So before he came, it was already a phenomenal city. Just about two years ago they discovered three layers of temples which were all closed down for a long period of time. This means the city has sunk over a period of time and again and again it's been rebuilt one and top of the other. There are three to five layers of the city because over period of time, the earth kind of recycles itself. It has been ravaged for six, seven centuries continuously. In spite of that, still if you're little sensitive, this is a fantastic place. Well, can we put it back into full glory? I don't think so. One thing is too much disturbance has happened. Another thing is building back something like that is the fool's paradise. It has been ravaged many, many times but because the energy body of Kashi was thirty-three feet above the ground, it is still alive with some damage, substantial damage but still a phenomenal place because if you want to look at it this way, this one way to interpret, it's a home with seventy-two thousand rooms, more than three thousand are alive in the energy form. For every dimension of life, for every quality of a human being they built a linger. This is how these temples came. For every aspect one linger, some extreme, some very much socially acceptable, some beyond all social acceptance, all kinds of things existed in parallel. Nobody found fault with anything. Anybody could do what they want as long as they're seeking mukti. As long as they're seeking liberation and they're sincere about it, they could do whatever they want. That is how significant mukti was considered to be. You must attain in this life. So the entire process of seeking mukti comes from this point that they want to clear this. They call this karma, tch, a cloud of memory and imagination playing up and deceiving you to believe so many things which are not true, which you will see as you sit here. The only damn thing that you have is life. Rest is all your imagination. Mukti means liberation. So liberation means essentially to become free from yourself because you are the only nuisance in your life.