Divine Human Mystery School, Part 1: Benares

Psyche & Co. presents · Divine Human Mystery School · Part 1 of 7

Opening the journey in Kabir's city, where the Ganges holds both life and death.

Psyche & Co. presents the first part of the Divine Human Mystery School with Andrew Harvey: a week in Benares, the ancient city also called Varanasi and Kashi. It opens a seven-part journey across India into the Divine Human, the birth of divine awareness within an ordinary, embodied life.

There is no gentler or fiercer place to begin. Benares does not hide death or sweeten devotion; it sets them side by side on the same riverbank. For Andrew, who has translated Kabir, the city's great weaver-poet, it is where the mystical path stops being an idea and becomes something you breathe, smell and walk through.

The place

Benares is Shiva's city. The Kashi Vishwanath Temple holds one of the twelve jyotirlingas, and tradition remembers Varanasi as the place where Shiva first appeared as a column of light. Along the Ganges the ghats step down into the water. At Dashashwamedh Ghat, where the Puranas say Brahma performed ten horse sacrifices, priests offer the Ganga aarti each evening after sunset, waving lamps to devotional song before a gathered crowd. Upstream, Manikarnika Ghat is one of the holiest cremation grounds in India, where Hindus believe that those cremated attain moksha, release from the cycle of rebirth.

Kabir was born in Varanasi, and his family is believed to have lived in the locality now called Kabir Chaura. Raised by a Muslim weaver and his wife, he became one of India's most loved mystic poets, honoured by Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs alike, and his searing, tender verses still sound through the city.

The teachings

• Kabir's path: the weaver-poet's insistence that the divine is found not in rituals or doctrines but in the naked, awakened heart.
• Engoldenment: Andrew's reading of Kabir's language for the transfiguration of the whole self, body included, by divine love.
• Life and death at Manikarnika: facing mortality with open eyes as a doorway to freedom rather than dread.
• Devotion as fire: what the evening aarti at Dashashwamedh can teach about praise, attention and surrender.
• Shiva's city: the dance of destruction and renewal as a lens on personal and collective crisis.
• An overview of the seven-part Divine Human journey and how each place opens a different facet of it.

A sketch of the days

1. ArrivalGathering in Benares, an opening circle and an introduction to the seven-part journey. A sketch of the days; the final programme will be confirmed.
2. Days 2–3Kabir: teachings, readings and practice on the weaver-poet's path of love, with time in the old city.
3. Days 4–5The river: dawn on the Ganges, the evening aarti at Dashashwamedh Ghat, and contemplation on devotion.
4. Day 6Manikarnika: a respectful encounter with death and release, held in silence and reflection.
5. Days 7–8Integration and closing: gathering what Benares has opened, and preparing for the journey onward.

This is an outline to give you a feel for the days. The final programme, teachers and timings will be confirmed with the dates.

What you'll take home

• A living connection with Kabir's poetry and the path of the awakened heart.
• A steadier, less fearful relationship with death, loss and endings.
• Simple devotional and contemplative practices to sustain you at home.
• A clear sense of the Divine Human journey and the foundations laid for the parts to come.
• For practitioners, fresh ways of sitting with grief and mortality alongside clients.

Who it's for

This first part is for psychotherapists, psychologists and others who accompany people through suffering, and for thoughtful laypeople drawn to the mystics. You do not need to know Kabir or Hindu tradition beforehand. It can be taken on its own, or as the opening of the full seven-part journey. Dates are to be confirmed; register your interest to hear first.

Photographs via Wikimedia Commons: Jay.Jarosz (CC BY-SA 4.0); Marcin Białek (CC BY-SA 3.0); Jorge Royan (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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