Tirtha Yatra – Visiting Sacred Sites.

The Spirit Of a Place.

ಯಾವ ಮೋಹನ ಮುರಳಿ ಕರೆಯಿತು ದೂರ ತೀರಕೆ ನಿನ್ನನು
ಯಾವ್ ಬೃಂದಾವನವು ಚಾಚಿತು ತನ್ನ ಮಿಂಚಿನ ಕೈಯನು?

What enchanting music is it that draws you to distant shores?

which entycing land is that beckons you?– a favorite poem of mine

Selva, like many people, he had visions he was embarrassed to share  with  others, until the other day when he visited a remote village in Rajasthan and he felt immense joy and relief. My own experience when I saw the demolished fort at Raichur there was a feeling of a job completed. Norma Ellis in her book  the “Invoking the Scribes of Ancient Egypt: The Initiatory Path of Spiritual Journaling “(English) says that visiting a sacred site can be a useful tool to open something within us that has remained inaccessible, this quite sounds feasible.

Tirtha, according to one of the scholars that I met at the Udupi temple, meant people who have traversed or crossed over. They were the everywhere in different stages of spiritual evolution. And crossing over to certain destination was Tirtha Yatra.

From time immemorial, the hands of men and women have built sites guided by both the earth’s life force and benevolent beings of light.  These sites are deemed sacred because they have served as repositories of wisdom, energy and illumination that can be accessed by all.  the needs that inspire seekers to converge upon sites known to be sacred vary with the individuals. Some crave spiritual fulfilment while others draw on the sites energy for the purpose of enlightenment, healing or deep meditation, awareness and knowledge of the people long gone. Christopher Doyle in book The Mahabharata Key has used this concept as a mountain that bestows knowledge, in reality it is a library.

Each city has an intrinsic quality that it can bestow, this appears insignificant  unless we can open ourselves to the concept of living earth. These sites provide us a link to the unified consciousness that involves the living and the dead, infinite cultures, the physical plane and the spiritual world.

There are locales like Serpent Mound in Ohio, whose purpose is unclear, but is believed to be a conduit through which cosmic energies flow into the earth. The same goes for the sites of Jyothirlinga’s, these are believed by many spiritual scientist to be conduit where the universal energy could flow into the earth. Though there are people who call them natural nuclear reactor points.

These sacred sites that call to us from afar capturing our imagination and resonate deep within our soul are the ones that help us to forge a deeper connection with the divine energy that sustains all life. While on a TirthaYatra we need to create an intention to accept whatever gifts are conveyed to us through the sites, we may need to reaffirm our intention. Our receptiveness help us establish a lasting relationship with these sites so that we can draw upon their peace and power from where ever we are.

Wendell Berry is summed it up beautifully  in Given as “There is no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”