Pilgrimage or Sight-Seeing?

Why is so much sanctity attached to a pilgrimage, and not to a mere sight-seeing trip or an official tour?


Swami Sivananda, "It is because the very idea of 'going on a pilgrimage' prepares your mind to be in a highly receptive mood, in a highly prayerful mood. It shuts out the worldly grooves in the mind. You leave the cloak of your official life in your office room. You abandon the cumbersome apparel of social life when you leave your town or city. Even if you travel with your family, you gradually begin to look upon the family members as co-pilgrims and not so much as personal relations. If you are alone, perhaps you live completely in a spiritual world of your own, with little or no family cares, worries and anxieties. This is the mental condition that is most conducive to the greatest reception of the spiritual vibrations that surround you on all sides in holy regions like Uttarakhand. The pilgrim who goes as a pilgrim is conscious that he is engaged upon a sacred mission of gathering spiritual impressions and will therefore gain the greatest blessings by a pilgrimage. He will be a thoroughly changed man when he returns from the Yatra."