Tourist vs. Traveler

"All knowledge ultimately means self knowledge"

                                                            - Bruce Lee

"India is like Hotel California, you can check out but you can never leave". This is what 21-year old Sarah told us when she went to India the first time, maybe it's because she was traumatized with how everything worked in India or maybe it's because she went with a tourist set of mind instead of opening herself to a traveler state of mind. For me, that is the only part of the book in which Sarah directly talks with a "tourist tone", the other being when she was in her apartment and she is questioned on why she doesn't treat her servants like servants and why didn't she lived like what she was, filthy rich, and lived like the queen she could live like, using all her servants without being so nice, just like the majority of tourists do. For the rest of the book Sarah is traveling, she travels a lot phisically but she travels even more spiritually, we can see her inner Journey, from that foolish, uptight girl who quits her dream job in the aussie ABC to move to India for love.

I really don't know if I believe in God because of how religions put him as being an almighty being with "all-forgiving patience" and "all-knowing knowledge", since I was little I've never liked that definition and never will, if you were really almighty you would be having a good cup of wine and loads of great sex. The fact that I don't belive in a God per se doesn't mean I don't believe in human spirituality and the journeys the soul sometimes needs or takes. Sarah was a self called atheist who was brought up in atheist family and when she went to India she discovered a whole lot of religion and religion driven life, she tries to soak up all the knowledge she can soak up by studying diverse religions. That is very, very cool, for me she did it to gain knowledge and to gain self-knowledge by doing so, she could see how she related to every single religion, for example she admired how in Kashmir the Muslims could sacrifice so much for faith, which is very similar to what she did of moving and sacrificing her carreer for the love of Jonathan.

By being the kind of journey in which you can better know yourself and how you think and react to certain situations the journey will ultimately lead you to inner peace which is what she really wanted, to find her inner Holy Cow, to find that place within her that she could just stop doing whatever it is she is doing and just "be". She doesn't necessarily have to believe in a God, like me, she just needs to believe in herself and know what to take and make of every experience or encounter life will throw at her. Her Holy Cow was found in India, where she experienced and lived Hinduism, Judaism, Buddism, and took what she needed to little by little get to know herself and make peace with herself, it is as if she needed to get through hell to get to heaven's gates. India made Sarah an internal traveler, which made her be a complete person, it made her find her Holy Cow.

May the force be with you all.

Elvis has left the building!!