It is with great pleasure that I share with you a report on our most recent pilgrimage to India. Each year, as we reflect on our experiences upon our return, we realize more and more that it is the sense of community that develops around this pilgrimage that truly defines the scope of our experience. This sense of community is the true hallmark of Journey to Find the Other Half of the Soul. Indeed, it is an extraordinary group of individuals who make this journey with us and each year we are repeatedly astonished at the spiritual depth and beauty each person brings to this experience. Furthermore, of equal note is the tremendous love and joy that they share with others while traveling, and, when they leave India, the empowerment of spirit that they take back with them to the west is truly inspiring. This is no exaggeration! In fact, it is this cyclical process that makes the whole effort so enduring for us as facilitators.

Thousands of people travel to India each year, and we come across several groups and individuals as we travel. The more we conduct this experience, the more it is clear to us that the energy and focus of our pilgrimage makes us stand out in a very distinctive way. This January, when we were having lunch at a hotel one afternoon, a European man came up to one of our pilgrims and asked, “What is the name of your group? You look like the sort of people I'd like to travel with!” In another situation, when we were up north in Fat-e-pur Shikri, a few of us were huddled together with a bunch of Quwali singers who were ecstatically making music at the shrine of the renowned Sufi saint, Salim Chisti. In the heat of the moment, I felt a tug at my shirt sleeves and turned around to find a smiling American asking me: “You are from California aren't you? I regularly bring groups to India and would love to have you guide my groups. Will you?” I thanked him for his interest but declined the offer, explaining that I only do this once a year for a select group of people who spend a significant amount of time preparing specially for such a journey. In fact, the journey is so involved and demanding for us as facilitators that, despite repeated requests, we have rarely ventured beyond Tamilnadu. We broke the rule this year and took a small portion of our group to Northern India, particularly since we had so many returning pilgrims on this trip, some of them three to five times.

Another interesting parameter that has shaped our annual pilgrimages is that we have limited it to participants from North America although we receive a significant amount of interest from Australians, Europeans, and, even Indians. The reason for this is that each culture is unique and has unique responses to India. Since we have lived in North America for 17 years, we feel that we understand this culture and can guide our participants well. It also makes it easy for the group to gel and bond with strong cultural similarities and interests.

My wife and I consider it a sacred privilege to journey with our group of pilgrims in India each year and share with them the rich spiritual heritage of our native country, its temples, its rituals, the charm of its villages, and most of all its knowledge of the power of sacred sound to transform human consciousness, both personal and collective. One major component of our pilgrimage that distinguishes us from other groups is our intention to explore the deep dialog between Hinduism and Christianity. We are not there as “Indophiles” nor are we there are “foreigners” or, God forbid, “tourists”. Every single one of our pilgrims arrives in India with a heart that is wide open to the deep exchanges between cultures and traditions. Furthermore, each pilgrim spends a significant amount of time preparing mentally and spiritually, not as tourists, but as pilgrims.

We have often been pleasantly surprised to overhear Indians observing our group (especially in the temples) and passing comments in their native language. They are quick to notice that there is something very sincere about us. One common remark is, “See how dedicated these Westerners are!” or, on a couple of occasions: “It is hard to come across Indians who have this devotion”. What they mean by this is that we have combined understanding with our devotion. In other words, we are not taking the process for granted (as though we know what it is all about) nor are we mechanical in our gestures: instead, we are mindful and conscientious about everything we do and conduct ourselves with the utmost reverence in these settings that are sacrosanct to the Hindu.

I also think that our presence in India as a group of devout pilgrims serves as a type of cultural and religious ambassadorship, healing the wounds of prejudice and affirming the impressive spiritual diversity of our species. Almost half a millennium of aggressive Christian missionary activity in India condemned Hindus to hell and rejected their profound religious symbolism while ignorant of its deeper meaning. Most Christian missionaries never even bothered to study ancient Hindu scriptures or its extraordinary philosophies (India had developed six major schools of philosophy as early as 500 B.C.). It was my mentor, Bede Griffiths, and his immediate predecessors, Henri Le Saux and Jules Monchanin, who were pioneers of Hindu-Christian inculturation. They took up a life-style that was in keeping with the ancient Indian way of religious life and studied the Vedas and the Upanisads side-by-side with the Bible and the great Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart and Julian of Norwich. Unlike Roberto di Nobli, a Jesuit priest in the 1700s, who studied the Hindu scriptures intending to convert Hindus to Christianity, Griffiths and his contemporaries studied, and more importantly “lived”, the Indian spiritual tradition in order to deepen their own Christian faith and to explore more fully the tremendous mystery that we call “God”.

In our present world crises, in the midst of so much hatred and prejudice, it is indeed noble to venture out as cultural ambassadors, traveling in a spirit of peace and humility, and allowing the One Spirit to shine brightly through us as we journey in foreign lands. This year will mark Bede Griffiths’ 100^th year were he alive. Bede was an extraordinary cultural ambassador and it is our intention to use him as a model as we prepare for our pilgrimage in January 2007.

This January 2006, we offered a special extension in North India. It was quite an extraordinary journey to the magnificent Taj Mahal, the holy river Ganges, and Sarnath, where the Buddha lived and taught during the winter months. We managed to catch an elaborate fire ceremony on the banks of the Ganges at night and took a boat ride in the early hours of the morning, chanting ancient Shiva mantras as we placed our votive offerings in the sacred river. At Sarnath, we circled and touched a direct relative to the very same Bodhi tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment. The flow of energy from this tree was unmistakably powerful. We felt equally powerful vibrations when we chanted and meditated in the deer park where the Buddha preached his first sermon. Among some of the fun things we did was take an elephant ride up a steep, cobbled stone road that wound its way up to Ajmer Fort in Rajasthan. At the end of the ride, the elephants placed their trunks on the dismounting area and allowed us to pet them.

See picture gallery of our North Indian extension in 2006.