Varanasi (ancient Kāśī), also known as Banaras, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world (see: Eck, Diana L. 1982. Banaras: City of Light. Princeton: Princeton University Press). The archaeological layers associated with the area of the modern city are reliably dated to the 9th or 8th century BCE, although there are indications that this location was a cult center as early as the early Vedic period, dated between 1200 and 1000 BCE (see: Singh, Rana P. B. 2009. Banaras: Making of India’s Heritage City. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing). According to the available archaeological findings, the urban structure of Varanasi originally emerged from a cluster of sacred ghats located on the banks of the river Ganges, serving as sacrificial sites, and the initially small settlements in their vicinity along the river. A higher concentration of material traces comes from layers associated with the so-called Northern Black Polished Ware (N.B.P.W.), widespread from approximately 700 to 500 BCE, which chronologically coincides with the expansion of Brahmanical ritual orthodoxy and the early forms of Upaniṣadic thought (see: Allchin, F. Raymond. 1995. The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Thus, even then, Kāśī existed as a tīrtha—that is, as a sacralized location, a physical place of crossing between worlds, according to belief (see: Eck, Diana L. 1982. Banaras: City of Light. Princeton: Princeton University Press; also: Bharati, Agehananda. 1963. The Tantric Tradition. London: Rider).

The belief that death in Varanasi liberates one from the cycle of reincarnation (saṃsāra) is therefore not merely a religious and social manifestation, but actually contains a crucial conception of a theological and hermeneutically deep-rooted substrate linked to the idea of mokṣa, or liberation through “knowledge in death.” Tradition holds that the god Śiva himself whispers the Tāraka mantra into the ear of the dying person, which literally means “the mantra that carries across” (see: Eck, Diana L. 1982. Banaras: City of Light. Princeton, Princeton University Press). The term Tāraka is etymologically derived from the root tṛ, meaning “to cross / to bridge” (see: Monier-Williams, Monier. 1899. A Sanskrit-English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press). Therefore, it is not an “exclusion” from existence in the Western perception, but a transition into what, in the Advaita tradition, could conditionally be interpreted as “post-physical knowledge,” i.e., the state of Brahman in which Ātman is freed from all karmic bonds. This conception actually rests on several layers of belief:

1. Cosmological layer – Varanasi lies on the “axis of the world” (Axis Mundi) and, according to Puranic tradition, the god Śiva himself holds the city on the tip of his trident (Triśula). (see: Eck, Diana L. 1982. Banaras: City of Light. Princeton: Princeton University Press; also compare with: Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane. New York: Harcourt Brace). Thus, Kāśī becomes the “city between worlds,” where time does not apply in its full cyclical sense.

2. Ritual-theological layer – Cremation at Manikarnika Ghat or Harishchandra Ghat serves as the final rite in which karma is burned along with the body. The smoke of the burned body, metaphorically, becomes the “evaporation of attachment.”

3. Epistemological layer – Knowledge (vidyā) at the moment of death possesses transformative power. The Kaivalya Upaniṣad and the Kashi Khanda (part of the Skanda Purāṇa) state that the jīva (individual consciousness) in Varanasi does not return to the cycle of rebirth because it has realized that everything is Māyā, or illusion, and has thus merged with the Absolute (see: Olivelle, Patrick. 1996. Upaniṣads. Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Thus, dying in Varanasi is not a “disappearance” but a transition from the phenomenal to the noumenal, from the karmic to the non-karmic state of existence. We could simply say that the individual does not “cease” to exist in the Western sense, but merely ceases to be “individual.” This process is perceived as very concrete even in the contemporary context, given the existence of the Mahasmasana, the “great cremation ground,” where it is believed that Śiva himself still performs this “metaphysical service of liberation” (see: Parry, Jonathan. 1994. Death in Banaras. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Individuals, especially the elderly from all over the world, come to Varanasi to special accommodations located around Manikarnika to “wait for death,” believing that mukta-mṛtyu, or “liberating death,” is available only at this location (see: Parry, Jonathan. 1994. Death in Banaras. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ; also: Eck, Diana L. 1982. Banaras: City of Light. Princeton, Princeton University Press). In an epistemological sense, it could be stated that Varanasi becomes – in the context of a symbolic and real location – “spatialized soteriology,” a unique physical space that, by its very existence, “participates” in salvation, as the boundary between the empirical and the transcendental is erased not only in abstraction but also in the concreteness of the reception of death itself as a biological phenomenon. Varanasi therefore represents a unique sacred location without parallel in the intensity and continuity of its soteriological function, both in the context of the continuum of duration of a specific belief and the entire range of ritual practices associated with the Ganges, the “sacred river” which is in an absolute multidimensional bond with its ghats and temple complexes. According to Indian tradition, Varanasi is considered a space where every return path ceases, and therefore it is not only a place of death (the “city of death” in a practical everyday sense), but also a specific symbolic threshold where, according to belief, the circle of permanent birth ends.

Sanctuaries reconstructed for centuries on the same site, in a symbolic-sacred sense, as concrete architectural structures, mark crucial “holy places” where, according to belief, the idea of infinity is sought to be preserved through matter. The belief that one who dies in Varanasi no longer enters the cycle of rebirth does not stem from a constructed dogma (in the Western reception of that term), but from a deeply epistemological insight, extremely difficult for anyone not born and raised in that social, spatial, and religious context to understand. The death of an individual in Varanasi and the ritual with their mortal remains (cremation on one of the ghats) represent the moment when the jīva (individual consciousness) “burns” illusion (Māyā), thereby merging with the Absolute because it has recognized that it was never separate from it. From a Western perspective of observation, or more concisely, outside the Indian horizon of thought, this premise certainly seems paradoxical, as the question arises: how can consciousness persist if it dissolves into that which is devoid of all individuality!? However, it is precisely in this premise that the difference between ontological and phenomenological nihilism begins. For the Hindu horizon, “disappearance” is not annihilation; it is merely the cancellation of the error of existence. This perception of the error of existence is akin to the reception of the absurd, but in a different layer of interpretation, freed from Western postulates of absurdism, although it essentially contains the crucial and identical premise in its core, but conceived and presented in a completely different way. In other words, the absurd in this sense does not represent a logical contradiction but a truth beyond the linguistic concept, adequate to Indian thought. In Advaita Vedanta – systematized by the Hindu philosopher considered a saint – Śaṅkara (c. 788–820 CE), the apophatic Absolute (a rough Western terminological parallel), i.e., Brahman, does not act, since all action belongs to the illusory horizon of manifestation (see: Potter, Karl H. 1981. Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Vol. III: Advaita Vedānta. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass; also: Deutsch, Eliot. 1969. Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press). That is, “all that is” already represents an emanation of its non-activity, and this perception in the Indian-Hindu substrate, however, does not signify powerlessness but – paradoxically – a form of negative omnipotence in which action and the need for it are lost, since there is nothing to be achieved through it! Western theism, tied to the linear idea of creation and a morally purposeful god, could never absorb this form of silence. A god who does not act, in the Semitic and generally in the broader Western tradition, represents – dogmatically speaking – a god who does not exist. In India, conversely, this non-activity of the Absolute, i.e., Brahman, is precisely proof of its existence. In other words, Brahman does not create the world because it would thereby become its prisoner (see: Deussen, Paul. 1906. The Philosophy of the Upanishads. Edinburgh, T&T Clark). On the contrary, it is “the world as such,” but freed from any need to be recognized within it (see: Puligandla, Ramakrishna. 1975. Fundamentals of Indian Philosophy. Nashville: Abingdon Press.) Death in Varanasi, in this sense, is not the end of an individual’s existence but the end of an epistemological error—the error that this individual ever existed at all. It is the moment when it is realized that “subject” and “object” never existed as separate entities (see: Sharma, Chandradhar. 1962. A Critical Survey of Indian Philosophy. London: Rider; also: Deutsch, Eliot. 1969. Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press). In this reception, biological death simultaneously means that knowledge ceases to be “knowledge of something” and becomes that knowledge which no longer has anyone to possess it (see: Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli. 1953. The Principal Upanishads. London: Allen and Unwin; also: Deutsch, Eliot. 1969. Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press).

A Personal Note

From the foregoing also stems the essential difference of this system from Western thought, because while in the dominant Occidental rationalist traditions silence can signify a fundamental capitulation, in Indian thought it most often becomes proof of understanding. Certainly, the aforementioned statement is extremely generalized, and I present it here as a form of simplification, acknowledging the strong echoes of Western apophatic theology on the one hand, but also different perceptions of the “concept of silence” in the Western tradition present in various modalities from Plotinus, through Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa, all the way to Wittgenstein, for whom silence is not capitulation but the pinnacle of possible understanding. In the same context, the “Indian philosophical horizon” cannot be fully perceived in a general way either, that is, through an indisputable degree of generalization and “civilizational homogenization,” i.e., monolithically. Therefore, the claim that silence in the Hindu substrate should be understood as “confirmation of liberation” by no means represents an unquestionable and explicit assertion. The sacred dimension of Varanasi, along with its physical-spatial segment in the context of this city as a real space, imposes that an observer visiting it from outside the Hindu and Indian spatial and cultural context likely remains astonished by the degree of their own separation from any “understanding” of this location, regardless of whether they are delighted or horrified by it. In other words, I simply doubt that a “central value position” regarding Varanasi can exist. After all, the category of a “neutral observer” when it comes to the perception of Varanasi in this context cannot exist either, because this urban entity represents a rare location where a dimension has been constructed that could conditionally be defined as a multi-significant space where millions converge, both to exit the cycle of repetition of the meaninglessness of human existence, and to escape the absurdity of existence—regardless of whether they perceive this “crossing” in a strictly religious-soteriological sphere or partially outside it, merely as a hypothetical possibility that physical death in this urban structure—a city that “lives death”—would, if they were to die there, enable a “permanent shutdown,” i.e., preventively avert the potential “danger” of being reborn.

For P.U.L.S.E. Magazine, Kristijan Obšust

NOTE: This text originated in the context of work on entry XIX, i.e., essay no. 7 (“Outlines of the Indian Mythological, Religious, and Philosophical Substrate”) within the unit “Subjective Writings on Theodicy, Religion, and the Problematics of Faith,” which form an integral part of the gradually emerging publication “Absurd Considerations: A Meaningless Search for Answers on (Meaninglessness)”. Intentionally, this text was not published within that unit but was extracted as a separate piece and prepared for P.U.L.S.E. Magazine.

  India, Kristijan Obšust, Religion, Society, Varanasi