"John Bush has a unique and inspired vision of the art of documentary film”
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Himalayan Foothills, Uttarakhand
INTO THE HEART OF INDIA
is an immersive journey to ancient sites - a cultural portrait offering
an experience of openness and interconnection
Tanvi Palav - Katak Dancer
”My dance is for Vishnu alone - my anklet bells ring only for Vishnu.”
Andal - Woman Poet - Dancer - 9th Century
Bodhgaya The Bodhi Tree
"May all beings be happy.
May all beings be safe.
May all beings be free from suffering.
May all beings live with ease."
The Buddha
Nanda Devi - Himalayas (25,643 ft) / (7816 m)
Landscape & Scope
Traveling over 2,500 miles—from the snows of the Himalayas to the temple-dotted shores of India’s southern tip—INTO THE HEART OF INDIA offers a rare view of the nation’s sacred geography. The series becomes a cinematic pilgrimage, honoring the beauty of India’s spiritual terrain. What unfolds is a radiant tapestry of landscape, tradition, and the human heart.
John Bush Amarmath Kashmir 1971 Filmmaker returns
In 1970, John Bush—then a young anti-war artist—left behind the turbulence of America in search of something more enduring. His journey led him to India, where he found a world of living tradition, deep hospitality, and timeless beauty.
For two years, he lived within the rhythms of sacred India—practicing yoga, devotional chant, and meditation under the spiritual guidance of revered Neem Karoli Baba. He walked pilgrimage routes that wound through mountain paths, temple towns, and ancient forests—absorbing a culture where the sacred and the everyday still move side by side.
Now, five decades later, he returns as a filmmaker. Into the Heart of India is the result: a six-part cinematic journey created in close collaboration with Indian film professionals, shaped by experience, respect, and wonder.
Whether drawn by spiritual longing, cultural richness, or the sheer pull of the unknown, viewers are invited into a world where ancient pathways still call—offering a passage through place and spirit alike.
Rishikesh
Origins & Relevance
INTO THE HEART OF INDIA brings ancient wisdom into the rhythm of modern life, offering a journey that moves both inward and across cherished land. Yoga, meditation, and mindfulness—now embraced around the world—arose in India as paths not of escape, but of return. They lead one into presence, into stillness, into the quiet unfolding of the heart. This cinematic journey brings one to their source -to the forests, rivers, and temples where breath became prayer, movement became offering, and silence became knowing.
John Bush Amarmath Kashmir 1971 Filmmaker returns
Neem Karoli Baba (1900 - 1973) Himalayas to Silicon Valley
John Bush - “Into the Heart of India” - my offering to him
Many of the themes in this series trace back to my two years with Neem Karoli Baba,a revered Hindu sage, a presence of love and awareness we called Maharajji. I was thankful to find myself with him in the early 1970s, along with a small group of Western seekers. It was a time of quiet depth, easy openness, and unexpected joy that has gently shaped my life and creative path ever since. He was to me an embodiment of the sacred world of India and I offer this work to him in gratitude.
The year after I left, Steve Jobs journeyed to India in search of him. Though Maharaj-ji had just passed, Jobs remained at the ashram for a few months. He later described it as a turning point, an experience that helped form his vision of human connection, eventually leading to the creation of the iPhone.
As this story has spread, Maharajji’s presence has quietly grown—especially among a new generation of Indian technologists and creatives, drawn to a wisdom that feels both ancient and contemporary.
That link—from a remote Himalayan ashram to the heart of Silicon Valley—reminds us that the search for meaning is not bound by time or culture. Some truths don’t fade; they simply take new forms, waiting to be seen in the light of each new age.
Neem Karoli Baba (1900 - 1973) Himalayas to Silicon Valley
Yoginis - 18th Century Miniature Painting
“As large as the universe is, so large is the space within the heart. Both heaven and earth are contained within it, both fire and air, sun and moon, lightning and stars.”
The Chandogya Upanishad
Radha & Krishna 17th century miniature painting
”When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others,
as if they were their own, they have attained
the highest state of spiritual union.”
The Bhagavad Gita
Varanasi - Crossing the Ganges
Varanasi - Crossing the Ganges
John Bush - Director’s Statement
Into the Heart of India is a six-part cinematic journey through a land that has shaped the rhythm of my life. It was filmed over five passages across six years—over a year in total—always with the same devoted Indian professionals. What began as a working relationship deepened into something more: we became fellow pilgrims, bound not just by craft, but by a shared reverence for the path itself.
These are not places we simply passed through—many are paths that I once walked as a young seeker and also later. Paths that still hum with meaning, still carry echoes of the eternal.
I belong to no religion. But what I found in India nourished something elemental: a stillness beneath thought, a kindness without agenda, a reminder that life offers more than what the world urges us to pursue.
This series is not a persuasion. It’s an offering. Not a teaching, but an invitation to slow down—to walk, to listen, to witness a culture where the ancient is still alive: in foot steps and incense, in stone and silence, in the eyes of those who carry the flame forward.
Director’s Statement continued
India reveals a paradox at every turn: the sacred woven through the ordinary, the invisible shining through the visible. Pilgrimage here is less a journey toward something, than a gentle dissolving—of edges, of names, of the illusion that we are separate from the whole.
Into the Heart of India moves across miles, yes—but also inward, where memory stirs. In the dust of temple paths, in the gaze of strangers, something whispers back to us what we’ve always known.
For in walking these pathways—we begin to see: the journey did not begin, and will not end. It is already unfolding. And somehow, we are already walking it - together.
Director’s Statement continued
India reveals a paradox at every turn: the sacred woven through the ordinary, the invisible shining through the visible. Pilgrimage here is less a journey toward something, than a gentle dissolving—of edges, of names, of the illusion that we are separate from the whole.
Into the Heart of India moves across miles, yes—but also inward, where memory stirs. In the dust of temple paths, in the gaze of strangers, something whispers back to us what we’ve always known.
For in walking these pathways—we begin to see: the journey did not begin, and will not end. It is already unfolding. And somehow, we are already walking it - together.
