School of Humans.

It was easier to deal with poverty and death in India than the lack of spirituality in America.

This is a quote from Albanian Indian, Roman Catholic nun and missionary, Mother Teresa, who spent most of her life in India.

In this quote, she points out why many Americans, including myself, are drawn to India.

Its deep religious roots and sacred rites and rituals give India a spiritual relevance that's lacking in the States,

which as an American is the only Western experience I can speak to firsthand.

Like I've said before, for spiritual seekers,

India is what K2 is for extreme mountaineers.

It's a place people go when they want more spiritually,

whether that's pushing some sort of edge or finding and connecting to a deeper part of themselves.

It's the extreme.

The disappearances covered in this podcast could have happened anywhere.

People going missing is not an eastern phenomenon. In America in 2020 alone, 543,018 people went missing, according to the FBI's National

Crime Information Center. So for me, it's not about sensationalizing India as a place where people vanish, but about examining

stories allegedly tied to spiritual quests so that these personal stories shed light on the thin

line between healing and harm and spirituality, and more closely examine the cost of enlightenment. These are all stories I

chose to live with for the past year because of my own connection and curiosity around this thin line.

So I didn't choose India as a setting because I want to vilify it. I chose it because, as a spiritual

seeker, I revere it. In America, we don't possess

India's spiritual depth and history, but there are parallels between the $4.5 trillion

new age wellness spiritual industry in the States and the influence gurus in their empires

hold in India, which, as we've reported,

...