Visit to Tirupathi - The Temple Experience

A question that I get asked "When you're a non believer, why would you go to Tirupathi?"

I don't like the term non believer. Because truth is, I believe in anything and everything......known and unknown, science and metaphysical, man, ghosts, spirits, energy, love, karma, thought, teleportation, mind body unification, positivity,  thought, telepathy, anything....

What I don't adhere to is structured religion, religion based on a personalized god, one that functions through ritual and fear and divisiveness, all those man made constructs. That doesn't make me a non believer, see. 

And tirupathi is a whole different experience. It's just so powerful and intense. 

It epitomizes sthanabhalam. Such a powerful energy center (for lack of a better word)

A long time ago, I'd read a plaque in a museum in Tirupathi, which so beautifully described the sanctum sanctorium experience, in just this one line:

" a suspended moment of expanded consciousness".

And that's exactly it..... that moment where you feel transported into something larger than you, where you seemingly drop all boundaries with body, let go identification with self and merge into the beyond. It's so hard to describe. It's overwhelming, and leaves you with just awe.

I've had that experience maybe a handful of times, mostly only in deep meditation. It's quite an experience. Something you don't want to come back from.

And it's for that, that one gets drawn back, again and again.

The rest of trip in pictures:

Mom, at Tirupathi airport. It's the first time I felt like being welcomed into Andhra Pradesh as another state. Not nice feeling :)

Kapileshwaram temple, which we just wandered into in the evening.

A pretty location, almost etched into the mountain

This was interesting. On the way up to Tirumala, we stopped to see this phenomenon, apparently a new discovery. A mountain edge that looks like the profile of Sri Venkateshwara Swamy. At first you don't even see it, but once you do, it's just so visible. Like a Gestalt picture.

A zoomed in picture...click on the picture and then look at the leftmost top edge of the mountain

Day 2, the two of us waiting before darshan

Mom noticed this tree sitting there....how it seemed like sliced in half, growing and blooming only one side....fascinating

Coffee in-between the wait

A view of Tirupathi town as we come down the hill

Harinath, and Sridhar our guide and driver for the trip.

Tirupathi airport, such picturesque surrounds....though I wished it had a more temple feel

That ends another of the many many trips to Tirupathi......with joy and gratitude for having been able to visit.