Badri Kedarnath is no more a sacred place: Osho

Kedarnath: old view

 What makes a place sacred? The pure energy which surrounds the place and second, the love and devotion of people who visit it. There was a deep significance in creating these energy-fields called temples in the remote, inaccessible mountains. Now people have "developed" the surrounding area and have destroyed the wildness, insecurity and risk involved in visiting such places. Now the quantity of visitors has increased but the quality has decreased," says  Osho.
" In India, for centuries people have traveled on foot to Badri Kedarnath. The Himalaya is so virgin, so pure, so unpolluted by man and his stupidities. And there was a suggestion that because so many people go -- and it is dangerous, the footpath is narrow and many have died and never returned -- it would be better to make a road.
Now the road has been made. People don't go on foot, they travel by bus. At each stop, there is a restaurant, tea shops, vendors of all kinds of things. They have destroyed the beauty. Now Badri Kedarnath is no more the same sacred place it used to be. Because it is not the place that is sacred. It is the heart full of love -- so full of love that it is even ready to die -- that makes the place a sacred place.


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" Now going in a bus, with all the facilities available by the side of the road... one beautiful phenomenon has been corrupted. And the people who have corrupted it think they are serving God because now more people can go there. Now Badri Kedarnath is always crowded. These are not the right people. Their only qualification is that they can afford a ticket for the bus. But the people who used to go on foot were given a farewell by the whole town, because there was not much possibility of their returning. The path was dangerous, the height was dangerous, but they had heard some call, and they were ready to sacrifice their lives for it. They were brave people.

" Then, in the silence and eternal peace of the Himalayan peaks, Badri Kedarnath was a totally different phenomenon. It was a temple. Now it is not even a home. It is just a house surrounded by all kinds of business people, shops. Whatever you want you can get. It has become a bazaar. Now only idiots go there, or tourists, which means the same. It used to be a spiritual pilgrimage because of its risk, because you had to put yourself aside -- all your fears of death, you had to drop."
Reflections on Khalil Gibran's The Prophet