The Power of Pilgrimage
“No man is rich enough to buy back his past”. This quote, attributed to Oscar Wilde, is one of several aphorisms adorning the wall of my dental clinic here in Kochi. The poignant truth of it is undeniable. As with another also Victorian poetic rendition by the translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward Fitzgerald:
“The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on. Nor all thy piety not wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.” (1)
In eastern theological understanding your past loosely equates to your karma, with the belief that people’s souls (loosely equating to the Hindu or Sanskrit concept of atma) accrue either a positive or negative charge associated with their life doings, and that many reincarnations may be required to atone for the debt of a negative karma (see 2. In the Spirit ‘Road to Salvation’) And you will commonly hear people say that they are trying to do good things in order to build good karma for themselves, itself debatable given that doing good works merely to achieve good karma is not pure in purpose!
All major religions address this in one way or another. The Christian redemptive message is to have Jesus neutralise your karma at the end of your life through the one time sacrifice made through his crucifixion. The deal is you must believe in this and keep his commandments. It is most certainly not just a get out jail free card in the way it is often presented. For the majority who die still firmly attached to their karma, a long journey through purgatory ensues which the saying of prayers and the making of offerings, either by the deceased before death or by friends and relatives afterwards can reduce the time required.
In the several different Hindu traditions, karma is generally addressed through complex pujas, especially by relatives of the dead. Importantly, even good karma will bind you, which is to say bind the atma back to the world to be reincarnated again, after that good karma itself eventually expires, rather as credit in a bank account does. Anything that attaches you to the world has the power to bind you to it. The aim is to transcend the limitations of the human condition that draws its associations from the world. One of the reasons that many eastern theological traditions work to eradicate the dominion of the ego is because it operates almost exclusively within the human generated set of conditions which taken together constitute the world. Undertaking Pilgrimage, in Hindu traditions generally known as yatra (3), to one or more of several sacred sites can also neutralise karma. Muktinath in Mustang, Nepal is acknowledged in both Hindu and Buddhist traditions to have the power to expunge karma and prepare the soul for death, especially if the pilgrim bathes in the sacred spring waters there.
Multiple lives and incarnations aside and keeping it more simply to the present life underway, it is nevertheless a truth that that past will have acquired its own positive and negative charges which may throughout the life course return to haunt you in the form of nostalgic memories, regrets, disappointment and so forth. Some of the experiences we have had, more especially whilst young, may well have been unavoidable, yet nevertheless cast their shadow over the maturing self through the life course. These don’t in any way have to be ‘evil deeds’, simply our rather inevitable involvement in life’s complexities as we gain experience and navigate the expectations that the world sets upon us, as well as ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune'(4). How do we deal with this, especially with experiences which have been particularly dark or difficult? How do we somehow stop the past from its long reach into our present?
Leaving aside any of the more deeply felt and private directives for undertaking the Pilgrimage, discussed elsewhere in other posts (5), and the kinds of personal strengths required during the journey that may require taking upon ourselves a kind of alter ego for the journey (6) I will reaffirm that a major directive was always that given by Jesus in his exhortation to give up everything and follow him on the sacred journey. This being the only way to gain the pearl of great price (Matthew 13.45-46). This inward directive was strong enough to be felt by me many years earlier and I endeavoured to achieve this several times before finally the time was right to attempt it.
In giving up all I had and committing myself to the unknown in the way I did, with no prior plan excepting the inner guidance of the Higher Self, I disengaged from my past, be it I was still and indeed still am, a product of that past. Some of my experiences and adventures have been documented in the blog series In the Spirit (7), although many have not. The Pilgrimage allowed me to go deeply into my past, and address and lay to rest the troubled spirits I found there. itself a way of disconnecting from old karma. But in the end the Pilgrimage Cycles, across that four year period they were conducted, effectively drew a line between the me that carried them out and the me of my past. They relaid my personal foundations. Although I most certainly still remember my former life and most of its experiences, that life and those experiences no longer have any significant power over me. In that I have effectively bought back my past and bought it back with all that I had. This is something that any pauper or even billionaire can do. As stressed in a former post ‘Come Buy, Come Buy’ here (8) you always have enough for moksha, because it’s whatever you have. That is the power of Pilgrimage.
1. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Translation by Edward Fitzgerald. Many editions.
2.https://elizabethcurrie.info/2021/10/14/the-road-to-salvation-ascent/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yatra
4. From the speech by Hamlet “To be or not to be, that is the question”. ‘Hamlet’ by William Shakespeare. Many editions.
5.https://turbulentpriest.net/2024/02/03/the-price-of-enlightenment/
6. https://turbulentpriest.net/2024/07/14/in-the-shadow/
7. https://elizabethcurrie.info/blog/
8. https://turbulentpriest.net/2024/02/17/come-buy-come-buy/
For further information and discussion about the 2019-2022 Pilgrimage and what was involved going into it, see ‘Pilgrimage. A very personal journey’. https://elizabethcurrie.info/a-pilgrimage-of-the-heart/
