We walked through the old part of Varanasi near the river Ganga. The hundreds of criss-crossing lanes contain houses, shops and thousands of temples in close proximity. The temples are large and small, sometimes only a depression in the wall containing a statue marked with vermillion. As people walk by these temples, they press their hands together and bow in a gesture of humility to the invisible powers, the gods, their own mysterious depths.

Varanasi is a very old city. In Vedic times (1500 BCE) it was known as Kashi, and even then known as the abode of the gods. The gods are installed in the numerous temples, serving as continual reminders of the enormity of the unseen depths.

What is a god? It is a word signifying the invisible power behind all that is visible. Invisible to the eyes, unreachable by thought....sensorily and cognitively distant but existentially intimate. We are, even to ourselves, mostly invisible and unthinkable, as is the world around us. How to reach the gods then?

Abhinavagupta (10 Century, India) writes that consciousness has two qualities: 1) It lights things up, and 2) It seeks to light up its own source. So when consciousness is diverted from sensory objects and thought is curtailed, then consciousness (our mind) naturally seeks, finds and merges with its own source. This merging is, in  Yoga known as Samadhi. Samadhi is the aim of Yoga. Vyasa (7th Century, India) writes "Yoga is Samadhi."