High-octane materialism created a void in our lives, and now high-octane spirituality has come along to fill it. Take an inner journey to an outer destination, find a guru, learn to meditate

Here we are in a shiny new millennium, and whatever we want is out there for the taking: salaries ending with strings of noughts, toy boys, cosmetically-enhanced women from Venus, 100% mortgages, dog psychiatrists, virtual reality haute couture supermarkets, house husbands who lunch, gastrodomes for the worship of llama pecorino. But what about inner peace? In this new age of consumerism, have we sold our souls down the Swanee?

Remember, we are the Prozac generation. Nothing is so bad that it cannot be salved. High-octane materialism created a void in our lives, and now high-octane spirituality has come along to fill it. Take an inner journey to an outer destination, find a guru, learn to meditate. Climb a sacred mountain and plant a prayer flag to get over the divorce, swim with dolphins to kick the anti-depressant habit, learn yoga under a mango tree for stress management, talk out the whole death thing with a monk in ochre robes, have your aura massaged into shape beside the Arabian Sea. Take control of your life, preferably in a beautiful place and beside still waters. The era of the spiritual holiday is upon us. There is a whole subcontinent of them out there in India and they are shucking off the happy-clappy Hare Krishna image of the 60s.

The Yoga Ashram Scenario
The days of psychedelic flares and mung bean mantras in hippie ashrams are gone. Ashrams have evolved into places of retreat, where the total beginner and the advanced yoga contortionist can come together to be still and lick their wounds. The latterday yoga ashrams are strung across the exotic holiday locations of the world, from Scotland to the Bahamas, but it is in India that the ashram was born and has now been honed for a new, exhausted generation.

Yoga is not about sitting around inspecting your navel and waiting to see bright lights. It is a decision that suits some people who want to change something in their lives. It is an ancient scientific method that gives you a discipline to control that areas of your life that might have run amok. There is a school of yoga to suit every type of personality: Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga for the physically driven, Lyengar for the classicists of the form, Kundalini for harrassed executives, the softer approach of the Sivananda method for those who want to take their yoga with lots of relaxation and rests thrown in.

At one of the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres in India I was taught to do headstands beside a lake. In the distance we could hear the sound of lions roaring in the jungles of the Cardamom Hills. We were taught hymns and chants sitting under papaya trees, while the fruit bats whirred overhead. A Swami from Rome with a rolling Italian accent taught us about the theory of yoga. He compared the destructive nature of desire to his beloved Italian icecream and cappuccinos: the more you want them, the more you eat and drink them; then you get fat and sad and want more. The more you give in to desire the more you desire – and so the wicked vortex spirals down.

Life on the ashram is peaceful, ordered and highly disciplined. It is a 5.30am to 10pm day, the intensity alleviated by a delicious Ayurvedic diet. This diet is the food of the Hatha Yoga system, which is far removed from the horrors of a brown rice-with-everything-detoxifying diet. Ashram retreats are about exploration of self, about finding the ability to look yourself in the eye and think that you are happy with this transient life.

The Sivananda Yoga Vendanta Centres come highly recommended, especially for beginners. They have been singled out after a long vetting process because of the all-round support that they offer to the retreatee. There are other centres in Trivandrum, Madras, New Delhi and Rishikesh.

The Buddhist Pilgrimage
At the moment Buddhism is spreading into the West at the equivalent rate to the spread of Christianity through the Roman Empire in the first century AD. His Holiness the Dalai Lama holds a position of international unity that seems to transcend all social barriers, linking him to Hollywood stars and Tibetan torture victims alike. With this resurgence of Buddhism comes a new pilgrimage. ‘In The Footsteps of Buddha’ takes the passionate convert from Bihar, the rawest of India’s desert states, through Bodh Gaya, where the Buddha attained Enlightenment, to the ancient capitals of Nalanda and Rajgir, and to the Ajanta and Ellora Caves that house some of the greatest Buddhist carvings and wall paintings. Then on to Sarnath and to the most sacred burning ghats of the Hindus in Varanasi, where Buddha gave his first teachings. On up into the mountains to Lumbini in Nepal, birthplace of Buddha. Despite their importance as centres of Buddhist pilgrimage, these places are very still and uncommercial. Your meditations are not likely to be disturbed by someone trying to sell bottled bits of The Lord Buddha’s anatomy.

The monasteries in the clouds
Tibetan Buddhist monasteries (or ‘gompas’) in the satellite areas of the Tibetan Border are on the same theme. Here the culture of Tibet survives in a series of mini-states and kingdoms that have preserved the culture so effectively bulldozed by the Chinese in Tibet. You can find these microcosms of Tibetan Buddhism in exile all the way down the Northeast Frontier of India. Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Zanskar, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan are home to the whitewashed monasteries with their dancing prayer flags and young, shaven-headed boys in ochre robes. Here it is possible to just stay with the monks and discuss life, the universe and the advantages of the latest model Mercedes as against the BMW – after all, monks can dream too.

There is something fragile and extraordinary about talking with a man in a simple robe about how to confront the fear of death. This is especially so when you know that the man has survived every mental and physical violation possible in a torture camp in Tibet. It is a powerful exercise in re-aligning your priorities.

Lying down
Massage is another method but with this route you give your rubbish to someone else to dispose of, or rather, to wrestle out of your jaded body. I found a place beside the Arabian Sea where a man with a polished torso walked up and down my back, supporting himself from a rope, resolving my inner restlessness with the pressure of his big toes. This man trained as an Ayurvedic masseur and doctor for 25 years, learning from his father how to mix the herbs of the Keralan hills in Southern-most India. Ayurveda is the ancient medicine of this part of India. Like homeopathy, it treats the whole person rather than just the ailment. If you’d rather walk on than be walked on, you can enroll at the Ayurveda college in the Keralan capital of Trivandrum and be taught by the most respected teachers in India.

Finding a guru… and a rosary… and a prayer wheel…
The path to a good guru is paved with charlatans and creeps. The people to listen to and respect are the ones who do not seek you out. They are often attached to universities, well-established ashrams or any of the host of Indian royal families. (The royal families had the pick of the best holy men, astrologers and gurus and bagged them early. During the Indian general election last April, the voters were more guided by the words of seers and astrologers than they were by the pictures of crying lions on billboards, or the party leaders’ promises about no taxes increases.

Of course, there are all manner of spiritual accessories to help you on the journey. Buddhist prayer rosaries pre-date the Christian ones and have 108 beads to give you 108 chances with your choosen mantra to get into a state mindful meditation. They come in all varieties from crystal to bone, though there is a certain vagueness about whose bones were used. They are very soothing to play with in traffic jams. Prayer wheels are the spiritual equivalent of football rattles, though the motivation is not quite the same. The gentle spin of the wheel is supposed to concentrate the mind in order to meditate. There now seems to be a rash of shops opening with the full range of spiritual paraphanelia. There is only really one way to use it all. If you find that you want a bit of it in your life, then go and get it – but don’t let anyone give you the hard sell on the spiritual package. We are all ready for different bits of it at different times.

Originally published on Travel Intelligence