Kailasa (also called Kailash) is believed to be the home of Lord Shiva by Hindus, and is a pilgrimage site. It is located in the Himalayas in Tibet, and is about 6,700 m high. It lies near the sources of the Sutlej, Indus and Brahmaputra rivers.
Although all of the caves at Ellora are stunning architectural feats, the Hindu Kailasa Temple is the jewel in the crown.
Kailasa in western Tibet and Kataragama in the far south of Sri Lanka form a near-perfect analog to the axis mundi or susumna nadi of yogic lore.
In their view, Kailasa is homologized or equated to the thousand-petalled sahasrara cakra, the goal of yogic practice, while Kataragama corresponds to the muladhara cakra, the point of entry for the vertical flight to higher cakras or lokas, subtle worlds superior to our world of physical sense perception.
Figure 1: Mount Kailasa in western Tibet and Kataragama in the far south of Sri Lanka form a near-perfect analog to the axis mundi or susumna nadi of yogic lore.
This striking feature of a virtual North-South axis or geographic alignment between Kailasa and Kataragama is well-known to Kataragama swamis and yogins, who regard it as a macrocosmic analog to the microcosmic susumna nadi or subtle central nerve channel envisaged in kundalini yoga.
Center of the universe in pan-Indian lore, Mount Kailasa in western Tibet (above) is the cosmographical analog to the sahasrara cakra ('thousand-petaled lotus crown') in Kundalini Yoga and to heaven or moksha ('liberation') in soteriological terms.
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