An interest in spirituality and meditation has been present in me for a very long time. I was never really interested in religion. That always seemed too stuffy. For me, spirituality includes science in its definition. The leap from an interest in spirituality to an interest in India is an obvious one. Most people in our western culture think of India as being a sort of motherland for spirituality. The numerous yoga studios in the west is the best example of this.  
        About three years ago I heard about a festival in India called the Kumbha Mela. This festival happens once every three years, each year at one of four different cities along the Ganga River. The Maha (great) Kumbh Mela happens every twelve years near the city of Allahabad. Here the three great holy rivers of India come to a meeting place. The Yamuna, Ganga and Saraswati. Indian legend goes that one of the Devas (demigods) was flying through the air on the way back to heaven with a pot of the nectar of immortality, Amrita. He was attacked mid flight by demons and ended up spilling a few drops amrita. A few of these drops fell in the water at the confluence of these three rivers, called the Sangam. Some believe that by bathing in the water at the Sangam they will attain freedom from the necessity of reincarnation.
        Others view this meeting point as a representation of the spiritual eye and the three rivers as a representation of the three spiritual pathways in the spine. These pathways are called the Ida, Pingala and Sushumna. Ida and Pingala on either side of the Sushumna represent the Ganga and Yamuna. These two pathways are less subtle and easier to concentrate on. The meditator focuses on these currents in order to find the more subtle Sushumna, represented by Saraswati. The Saraswati river makes it’s appearance at the Sangam by bubbling up from the ground. Legend has it  that Saraswati was cursed to flow underground because she was making too much noise. When one jumps in the Sangam he could say that he is swimming in the Spiritual Eye of the World.
        I did not know any of this before going to the Kumbh Mela. All I knew was the summary of Indian Spirituality could be found there. I don’t know this as a fact. This is what I was told and what seemed to be the case. Walking down the comparatively neat rows of tents, comparatively for India (most of India is strewn about with trash, cows, dogs, farmers selling vegetables and children) I saw hundreds, out of the hundreds of thousands of different spiritual organizations, methods and individuals. If not all of India, at least most of it was represented at the Kumbh Mela.
        My journey in India started with three different ashrams connected with an organization I am a member of called Yogoda Satsanga Society (Self Realization Fellowship in the USA) These ashrams gave me a shelter from the storm of Indian street life. I was on a mission to explore Indian Spirituality and at first I did not see anything spiritual outside of these ashrams. Inside the ashram walls all was clean and orderly. Hoards of older women with straw brooms walked about sweeping the few leaves that fell on the cobblestone pathways that wove through groves of fruit trees and flower beds. Every morning and evening a mediation was conducted by a resident swami, clothed in the traditional orange blankets (yellow if they had not yet taken the final vows of the swami order) Three times a day everyone visiting the ashram would file into the kitchen and sit, men on the left women on the right, waiting to be served curry, rice, dal, sabji, yogurt, chapatis and chai. Once you finished one type of food there was immediately someone there to refill your plate. This was my safety and my spiritual environment.
        When I went outside the fortress walls, it really was like a fortress there were guards at all the gates, the sound descended on my sensitive ears. No traffic laws are obeyed on the streets. The bigger the car or motorcycle and the more guts the diver had meant they had the right of way, always. It really is a miracle how few accidents there are. In one month the only serious collision I saw was a young man being hit by a bicycle. I heard someone say that India is just one big family. This must be how things work out so well. How the trash and cow manure piled on the side of the road finds a final destination away from the city chaos, how the farmer with five cows living next to the seamster living next to the candy salesman all within six meters of each other can get along. I could not be in the city for longer than a few hours without getting a headache or feeling completely stressed out.

I could not help comparing the Indian culture with my own. How sanitary and quite  my world is compared to India. I normally try and meditate morning and night. At the Kumbh Mela a peaceful mediation was impossible. There were loudspeakers from plays, chanting and speeches happening literally all day and all night. Over the several miles that the camp stretched along the rivers the sound gradually built upon itself until there really was nowhere quite to hide. I tried earplugs under a blanket wrapped around my head under a sleeping bag and still the noise was almost unbearable. I spent six nights at the Kumbh Mela. Around the fifth night I realized that the best way to deal with the chaos and noise was simply to deal with it. This is what I feel the Indians do naturally all the time.  The Indian mentality seems to be “God will take care it” And God must take care of them, guiding those huge trucks carrying several tons of gravel only a meter away from kids playing on the street going twenty miles an hour. That truck had an image of baby Krishna drinking milk from a cow painted on its side.

        Pop culture exists in India. Plenty of people only think about money, try to wear the most impressive designer clothing they can afford and listen to suggestive music. But, for all these people an orange clad swami carrying a trident indicating his faith in Lord Shiva is just as common. Maybe the reason so many people have such a natural deep faith in India is because of the intense poverty. Not seeing material wealth every day a person can become easily disillusioned by the world and be inspired to seek something more internal. As a final test to see which country was more prosperous in the inner wealth of happiness I looked and counted the smiles I saw. The verdict was that it’s the same as the west. Some people are kind and happy some are mean and grumpy. I can imagine a changed and better world if each culture took the strong point from the other - India taking the material efficiency of the west to fill their time and space up with beauty. The US taking the natural spiritual faith of India and using that make connections and a feeling of a national world family.