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India - A land of intense spirituality and religious faith reflected in the profusion of temples present in this
subcontinent.
When you visit the temples of India, you are not seeing relics of an ancient but extinct society, such as you find when
visiting the Egyptian pyramids or ancient temples of the Mayan and Incas in Central and South America. The temples of India
present a living culture. In other words, the religious practice of the people, the festivals, and the rituals in the temples
are the same as they were thousands of years ago. They still offer fruits and nicely cooked preparations, beautiful dresses,
sandalwood paste, flowers and garlands, ghee and camphor lamps, incense and perfumes to the temple Deities just as they have
done throughout the ages.
Spiritually, the temples are like launching pads where one performs those activities that assist in reaching higher
dimensions. They are the doorways to more advanced realms and where pilgrims and devotees go to make an outward display of
their devotion to their Deities. Though God is within us all, and religion or yoga is very often an inward process, God can
manifest externally as the Deity, the arca-vigraha incarnation, through which He accepts the devotee's service while he or
she is in the material realm. These devotional activities, such as simple darshan (seeing the Deity and being seen by the
Deity), are considered purifying for one's life and consciousness. The goal is to continue on this path until one's thoughts
are purified to the point where one sheds his or her materialistic consciousness and can enter the spiritual realm, at least
by the time of death if not before. Thus, everyone tries to visit the nearest temple a few times a day, or tries to make
pilgrimages to the famous holy places.
After you have travelled through India, and have been able to connect with the spiritual side of it, the experience will
certainly influence you in a special way. In fact, on some level you will never be the same. If you have travelled with a
seeker's humility and a quest for higher experiences, then some of you who take these journeys will have attained glimpses
into the visions of the sages and viewed similar levels of higher reality. The effects and memories of such encounters will
stay with you forever and, thus, change your lives. This is priceless experience.
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