Visit to Israel

I visited Israel in February of 1995 as part of an international Yoga conference where I was teaching. The trip helped me better understand Western religions. I found Israel to be a fascinating country with a deep and ancient spirit that reflected the formlessness and austerity of the  surrounding desert. In some ways it reminded me of South India. Strangely perhaps, given my Catholic background, the religion that most interested me while in Israel was Judaism, which I felt most acutely while visiting the Wailing Wall. I had long admired the Jewish people for their intellectual achievements and viewed their religion in a different light than Christianity or Islam. Unlike its offshoots, the Jewish religion never set itself up as the one true faith that needed to conquer the world. It accepted that different peoples had other religious traditions, which might not be the same as theirs. It also had great traditions of learning, mysticism and the use of a spiritual language that were almost Brahmanical in nature. Some Jewish groups also accept rebirth or reincarnation.

The Bible is mainly the cultural record of the Jewish people, coming from various Jewish leaders over many centuries compiled to deal with the issues of their community, not only spiritual but also mundane.

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