About

Once a Pilgrim

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‘I am the slave of this Spirit of the quest.’ (Kabir ”O Friend’)

Once a Pilgrim, always a Pilgrim. My life is the Road, in some ways I am the Road, inasmuch as I only feel fully alive whilst pursuing this spiritual quest, which for me has ever meant journeying of one form or another.  Now this has all coalesced into one goal: the highest goal of Self Realisation.

In November 2019 I left my life in the UK working as an academic, and travelled to India, leaving my old life behind me. I took with me just one small cabin bag size suitcase and a small rucksack and everything else that had represented my life until then I had given away to family, friends or charity. All I kept was what could be packed into those two small bags.  What followed was an extraordinary journey that I called my Pilgrimage, where I travelled from Northern Indian to the South and back again, spending nearly eight months in Rishikesh throughout the long Indian lockdown during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. During this time I studied Indian theology and deepened my knowledge of western mystic traditions. With the gradual ending of the lockdown, I made three separate inspirational journeys to the high altitude temples of Gangotri, Badrinath and Kedarnath, where I had my first significant ‘enlightenment’ experiences. My first website In the Spirit is the outcome of much that I studied and experienced during this time, drawing upon a lifetime of acute observation of the world and my work within the disciplines of anthropology, psychology and comparative religion.