Hinduism is so varied, and we have studied it assiduously for more than three-and-a-half decades. One of our gifts is to introduce our pilgrims to an experience that is rich in devotion.

While forms of prayer exist in every culture, there is an unmistakable elegance within Hinduism's variety of expression. While it is easy to be seduced by the outward forms of gods and goddesses, we teach our pilgrims how the external can draw us inward. The reason: we need to discover our own interior spaces rich with divine presence and mystery.

As a result, our pilgrims do not become dependent on the external signs and symbols but the internal references that will always be available to them, wherever they are. Nevertheless, the outer serves to awaken the inner. That's why we take them to India: to discover the other half of their soul.

Mark Twain referred to India as "the country of a thousand nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods."

He called her "the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, grandmother of legend, and great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the moldering antiquities of the rest of the nations.

India is for us as she was for Twain: "the one land that all desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined."

People who return from India remark on the manic energy they encountered there. That is a fact! However, when we take our pilgrims to India, we teach them how to cultivate a deep calm in the soul. 

Everything about our pilgrimage is different from being on a spiritual tour or vacation. The practices we teach, coupled with the environments we conduct our courses, facilitate an expansive openness and depth. The experience our pilgrims have with us in India seems to have no known equivalent to what we typically experience in our everyday lives here in the West. The numerous video testimonials on our pilgrimage web pages attest to this.

We take our pilgrims to India due to neglecting the sacred half of our soul with mundane preoccupations of what passes for "life" in the West. But we know, somewhere deep in our hearts, that this is not life, indeed not the life of the soul. It is, most often, an existence. Or only a way of getting through life. 

In India, we help our pilgrims discover a quality within life, an awakening within self-awareness, a presence within consciousness. We prepare our pilgrims well for this journey, both mentally and spiritually, some almost a whole year.

What is this other half of the soul? Or, for that matter, what is the soul? For those who believe, the soul is undeniably the most intimate part of our being. We might call it our true self, the atman of the Bhagavad Gita, or our divine image from the opening of Genesis in the Bible.

Why should we need to travel 15,000 miles to find one half of it, and if at all it is an aspect of our self, our nature? The answer lies in the dichotomy between body and soul prevalent in much of the West's education systems and societal structures. 

We know from living most of our lives in America that modern life's social, economic, and technological structures do not support wholeness. 

It is for this reason that we focus our pilgrimage in rural India. There is a timeless closeness to nature preserved for thousands of years in India's village culture and farmland. We know how to tap into this wholesome environment to heal our malaise, this fragmentation of our wholeness. 

What is it about life in the West that places so much pressure upon us? "It is the insanity of psychological time," claims brilliant spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle in his book The Power of Now. Psychological time, we might say, is our ego attunement to the clock. 

In Yoga and Samkhya philosophy, the manas, the measuring mind, most categorizes the ego, the "I Maker." We always measure how much time we have for various activities—the chronological clock rules our "life." Many in the West rightly envisage freedom as having more time for what one values.

For decades now, we have proved to our pilgrims that there is a different notion of time entirely. We construct our pilgrimage in India to reveal this other kind of time, not a concept but an elastic experience that stretches our consciousness. As a result, the few weeks we spend in India are the equivalent of months in the West. However, it is the combination of the practices and mindset we establish that facilitates such an experience. And we replicate this on our pilgrimages year after year.

The Gnostic gospel of Thomas states something profound that appealed greatly to Western mystical sensitivities. This appeal is due to the typical black or white, either-or mentality of the Western world. Here's what it says:

"When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer, and the outer as the inner, and the above as the below, and when you make the male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female will not be female…, then you shall enter the Kingdom."

There are undoubtedly advantages to the either-or mindset. We enjoy clear boundaries and a well-organized society in the West as a result. Spiritually, though, this mindset can inhibit our forays into deeper levels of consciousness that require the dissolution of rigid boundaries. It is one of the reasons why spiritual seekers have journeyed to India.

However, the lack of boundaries in India can have the opposite effect upon the Westerner. The fluidity that fuses and confuses boundaries can be quite disorienting for someone without guidance, which is where our skills as pilgrimage facilitators step in.

We prepare our pilgrims to embrace contrasts by developing a type of spiritual elasticity. This specialized mindset draws from our consummate knowledge of Tantric meditation practices that many of our students study in our online Yogic Mystery School year-round.  

While not all of the pilgrims who travel with us are familiar with our esoteric teachings, we do our best while in India to introduce newcomers to our considerable knowledge. We offer daily presentations, education, and meditations throughout our pilgrimage. And some of these presentations and practices take place in ancient stone temples.

We offer a progressive vision on our pilgrimage that integrates both Eastern and Western mystical and esoteric traditions. And our engagement dissolves the inner and outer boundaries in ways that avoid emulating the superficial glossing over New Age thinkers' approach. 

Despite its technological progress, India maintains a sense of time that is cyclic rather than linear. This cyclical sense of time is also in India's "both-and" approach, a sharp contrast to the West's "either-or" mentality. 

As a result, India's spiritual vision can be indiscriminately inclusive rather than discriminatingly exclusive. However, such an approach can be frustrating to the Westerner who grows up learning to exercise discernment and exercise conscious choice.

When we facilitate our pilgrimage in India, we are not oblivious to India's shortcomings. On the contrary, we are acutely aware of them, as much as we are aware of the West's limitations. We've lived in the West for over three decades, which is most of our adult lives.

Our approach to pilgrimage is not to compare the shadow of one culture with the light of another. We educate our pilgrims so that they learn to extract and value the spiritual gifts of both cultures. Our world-class ability to educate and enlighten is another reason that draws our pilgrims to return with us repeatedly for this experience.

While in India, we help our pilgrims discover freedom from psychological time, the ability to respect many paths, and a sense of rootedness in "being" rather than in "doing." 

India has drawn spiritual seekers to her from all over the world in quest of an inner, more permanent reality through her meditation methods. Our teaching curriculum spans an impressive swath of Indian spirituality, including Yoga, Tantra, Mantra, and Meditation.

Without making excuses for India's shadow side, we still feel that she is entitled to be called the world's spiritual capital. Despite the complete unpredictability and overwhelming sensory detail, India forces us to remain always in the Now. India can be challenging for westerners, which is why we make sense as facilitators for this pilgrimage. We know both East and West in ways that very few people do.

Besides our considerable knowledge of culture and spirituality, we lovingly care for you throughout your journey with us. For most of our pilgrims, this is perhaps the most nurturing aspect of what we provide. You have spent your adult life caring for others and being responsible for others. Wouldn't it feel great to have someone else care for you for a change? 

To be clear, we are not offering an immature concept of freedom from all responsibility. However, we understand how important it is to have rest and rejuvenation that is physical and emotional. When you travel with us, you travel with a group of spiritually mature individuals who become valuable members of your spiritual circle.