Investigating Spirituality and Travel in Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity

Religion accounts as the core and key element of human life and as a traveling organizer, it has played an important role in tourism from past to present. The link between religion and tourism is pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is a physical and spiritual journey in search for spirituality to a holy place, so that in pre-Islamic religions - Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity - an emphasis can be seen on pilgrimages focusing on spiritual aspects. Spirituality is a mental quality that is more than religious belief and motivates the human. It triggers feelings such as understanding God’s awe-inspiring and respect for God s creation in the person. This study concerns the idea of spirituality in travel based on perspective of pre-Islam religions. The design of this qualitative research was descriptive and analytical, and it was conducted from May to November 2015 through individual interviews, using open questions method, with a total of 50 instructors, leaders and followers of the three religions, i.e. Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. The findings of this study indicates that, pilgrimage, in the mentioned religions, are very similar to each other from the standpoint of customs, but only pilgrimages was referred in their holy books . In fact, scholars of religions of Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity believe that when a person is forced on a journey to meditate and travel makes him close to God, a spiritual event is occurred. Although minor differences can be seen between opinions of mentioned scholars, but in general, all of them believe that traveling can be a spiritual event and non-religious travels can have spiritual effects as well. To sum up the wrap, it can be noted that all the three mentioned religions believe in spirituality in the travel and consider it as the ultimate achievement of traveling.

Keywords:

Tourism , Spirituality , Religion , Travel , Zoroastrianism , Judaism , Christianity