<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
	<META HTTP-EQUIV="CONTENT-TYPE" CONTENT="text/html; charset=utf-8">
	<TITLE></TITLE>
	<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Namo WebEditor v4.0">
	<META NAME="CREATED" CONTENT="20040109;84800">
	<META NAME="CHANGED" CONTENT="20040217;21224100">
	<STYLE>
	<!--
		@page { size: 21.59cm 27.94cm; margin-left: 1.08cm; margin-right: 2.51cm; margin-top: 2.54cm; margin-bottom: 2.54cm }
		P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm }
	-->
	</STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY LANG="en-US">
<div align="center">
	<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
		<tr>
			<td>
<p align="center" style="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-weight:700"><font size="4">The
Spiritual Genius of India</font></span><font size="4"><BR>
</font></p>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">WHAT is it that we precisely mean when we say that </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">India
is spiritual? </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">For, that is how we are accustomed to express
India's special genius – her backbone, as Vivekananda puts it –
the fundamental note of her cultute and nature, which distinguishes
her from the rest of the world. What then are the distinguishing
marks of spirituality? How does a spiritual collectivity live and
</span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">move – kim &acirc;sita</span><FONT FACE="Times New Roman Baltic, serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;">
vrajeta kim? </span></FONT></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">And do we find its characteristic gait and
feature exclusively or even chiefly in India?</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">Was not Europe also in her theocratic and mediaeval ages
as largely spiritual and as fundamentally religious as India?
Churches and cathedrals and monasteries grew like mushrooms in every
nook and corner, in all the countries of Europe; it was the clergy
who, with their almost unbounded influence and power, moulded and
guided the life and aspiration of the people; devotion to God and
love of prayer and pilgrimage were as much in the nature of the
average European of those times as they are in any Indian of today;
every family con&shy;sidered it a duty and an honour to rear up one
child at least to be consecrated to the service of God and the
Church. The internal as well as the external life of the men of
mediaeval Europe was steeped through and through in a religious
atmosphere. .</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">The whole world, in fact, was more or less religious in
the early stages of its evolution; for it is characteristic of the
primitive nature of man to be god-fearing and addicted to religious
rite and ceremony. And Europe too, when she entered on a new cycle of
life and began to reconstruct herself after the ruin of the
Gr&aelig;co-Latin culture, started with the religion of the Christ
and experimented with it during a long period of</span></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page –
154</span></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><span style="font-size:12pt;">time.
But that is what was – </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Troja fuit. </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Europe has outgrown her
nonage and for a century and a half, since the mighty upheaval of the
French Revolution, she has been rapidly shaking off the last vestiges
of her mediaevalism. Today she stands clean shorn of all
superstition, which she only euphemistically calls religion or
spirituality. Not Theology but Science, not Revelation but Reason,
not Magic but Logic, not Fiction but Fact, governs her thoughts and
guides her activities. Only India, in part under the stress of her
own conservative nature, in part under compelling circumstances,
still clings to her things of the past, darknesses that have been
discarded by the modern illumination. Indian spirituality is nothing
but consolidated mediaevalism; it has its companion shibboleth in the
cry, &quot;Back to the village&quot; or &quot;Back to the
bullock-cart&quot;! One of the main reasons, if not the one reason
why India has today no place in the comity of nations, why she is not
in the vanguard of civilisation, is precisely this obstinate atavism,
this persistent survival of a spirit subversive of all that is modern
and progressive.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">It is not my purpose here to take up the cause of
spirituality and defend it against materialism. Taking it for granted
that real spirituality embodies a truth and power by far higher and
mightier than anything materialism can offer, and that man's supreme
ideal lies there, let us throw a comparing glance on the two types of
spirituality, – the one that India knows and the other that Europe
knew in the Middle Ages.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">To say that Europe was once as religious and spiritual
as India herself is not precisely incorrect, but it is to view the
matter from too general a stand-point, almost, we may say, </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">grosso
modo. </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">In</span><B><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></B><span style="font-size:12pt;">order to arrive at an accurate and precise
estima&shy;tion, and to find out the most significant truths, we have
to look a little more closely, observe differences in shade and
stress, make certain distinctions. For the things that the ordinary
mind indiscriminately designates as religion, spiri&shy;tuality and
the like, do not always fall in the same category. These names are
often applied to distinct realities, each with its particular </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">dharma,
</span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">norm and form, wide apart from each other, although to the common
eye they may appear to be of the same mould and substance.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">Thus Religion and Spirituality, two fundamental
categories</span></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page –
155</span></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">that
form one realm when held up in opposition to Materialism, are, when
considered by themselves, really very different things and may be
even contradictory to and destructive of each other. What then is
Religion? and what, on the other hand, is Spirituality? Religion
starts from and usually ends with a mental and emotional approach to
realities beyond the mind; Spirituality goes straight forward to
direct vision and communion with the Beyond. Religion labours to
experience and express the world of Spirit in and through a turn,
often a twist, given by the mental
</span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">being – manu – in </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">man;
it bases itself upon the demands of the mental, the vital and the
physical complex – the triple nexus that forms the ordinary human
personality and seeks to satisfy them under a holier garb.
Spirituality knows the demands of the Spirit alone; it lives in a
realm where the body, the life and the mind stand uplifted and
transmuted into their utter realities. Religion is the human way of
approaching and enjoying the Divine; Spirituality is the divine way
of meeting the Divine. Religion, as it is usually practised, is a
special art, one – the highest it may be, still only one – among
many other pursuits that man looks to for his enjoyment and
fulfilment; but spirituality is nothing if it does not swallow up the
entire man, take in his each and every preoccupation and new-create
it into an inevitable expression of its own master truth. Religion
gives us a moral discipline for the internal consciousness, and for
the external life, a code of conduct based upon a system of rules and
rites and ceremonies; spirituality aims at a revolution in the
consciousness and in the being.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">Keeping this difference in view, we may at once point
out that Europe, when she is non-materialist, is primarily religious
and only secondarily spiritual, but India is always primarily
spiritual and only secondarily religious. The vein of real
spirituality in European culture runs underground and follows narrow
and circuitous by-paths; rarely does it appear on the top in sudden
and momentary flashes and even then only to dive back again into its
subterranean hiding-place; upon the collective life and culture it
acts more as an indirect influence, an auxiliary leaven than as. a
direct and dynamic Force. In India there is an abundance, a
superfluity even, of religious paraphernalia, but it is the note of
spirituality that</span></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page –
156</span></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><span style="font-size:12pt;">rings
clear and high above all lesser tones and wields a power vivid and
manifest. We could say in terms of modern Biology that spirituality
tends to be a </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">recessive </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">character in European culture, while
in India, it is </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">dominant.</span></I></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">But when we say that India is spiritual, we do not mean
that all or most Indians, or even a very large minority among them,
are adepts in spirituality, or that the attachment to life, the
passion for earthly possessions, the sway of the six </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">ripus </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">are
in any way less prevalent in the Indian character. On the contrary,
it may well seem to the casual onlooker whose eyes are occupied with
the surface actualities of the situation, that the Indian nature, as
it is today, shut out from this world's larger spaces, cut off from
its deeper channels and movements of greater magnitude, has been
given over more and more to petty worldlinesses that hardly fill the
same space even in the life of peoples who are notorious for their
worldly and un&shy;spiritual temperament.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">It is not so much a question of concrete realisation, of
attain&shy;ment and achievement arrived at by the Indian people in
their work-a-day life, but primarily and above all a question of
ultimate valuation, of what they hold as the supreme ideal, of what
they cherish in their heart of hearts, and of the extent to which
that standard has obtained general currency among them. It is not a
</span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">fact </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">with which we are concerned, but the </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">force </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">behind
the fact, and the special nature and purpose of that force. It is the
power that we discover in the general atmosphere, or that emerges in
the stress and rhythm of the cultural life of the people, in the
level of its inner consciousness, in the expression of its highest
and most wide-spread aspira&shy;tions, in the particular stamp of its
soul.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">The psychological atmosphere in India is of a luminous
tenuity. Here, it appears, the veil between this world and the other
has so thinned away that the two meet and interpenetrate easily and
freely; immersed in one, you can at the same time bathe in the other.
Owing to the cumulative effect of the </span><I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman Baltic, serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;">sadhana
</span></FONT></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">of her saints and sages who appeared in countless number
down countless ages, or, perhaps, owing to the grace of a descent
into her consciousness, or some immanence there, of the breath and
light of a Superior World, India has developed and possesses, already
prepared, a magnetic field,</span></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page –
157</span></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">a
luminous zone of spiritual consciousness; and to enter into it the
Indian has only to turn aside, to go round a corner, to take one step
forward. However thick and hard the crust of the Ignorance may lie
upon the Indian soul, once that soul awakes and is upon the path, it
finds itself on a familiar ground; it is in a domain which it has the
impression of having frequented often and anon and for long.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">But in Europe the division between this world and the
other, in the inner consciousness of the people, is more rigorous, a
thick wall divides the two and to pass from the one to the other
demands a violent break, a total revolution; and even when the
Rubicon is crossed, one feels oneself in unfamiliar surroundings,
moving in a shadowy world, and with the uncertain and faltering steps
of a child.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">The average European has a strong basis of the
earth-nature in him; he is heavily enclosed in his physical sheath
and firmly placed upon the material world. Therefore he keeps a very
stable terrestrial equilibrium and is not easily ousted from his
earthly footing; his is not a nature easily upset from its poise, or
disturbed by the currents and forces that play about him. But the
Indian, both physically and psychically, has a more delicate frame
and his footing upon earth is less secure. The balance in his
consciousness between the different forces – especially between
those of this world and the other – is delicately held; and the
adjustment that obtains at a given moment is liable to be disturbed
by the least change, either in the inner consciousness, or in the
outer conditions.</span></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">In other words, when we speak of the spirituality of the
Indian people, it is to the </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">disposition </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">of their psychic
elements that we refer, to the tone and temper of the soul they
possess and to a constant nearness of latent spiritual possibilities,
that may at any time materialise, and the consequent possibilities of
a spiritual impulse, that may at any time awaken.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">Other peoples have other and more concrete virtues to be
proud of; but the Indian has his soul as his most characteristic
possession.</span></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">That is not to say that other peoples of the world are
soulless, and that India alone may claim to possess the treasure. But
no other people has lived so much in and from the soul, none other
has sacrificed so much for the sake of this one thing needful. The</span></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page –
158</span></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">soul-consciousness
in other nations lies veiled behind the more pressing activities and
immediate occupations of the external nature; at the most, what is
characteristic in them is the soul, not in its pure and fundamental
</span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">being, </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">but expressed, and therefore encased and limited,
within some particular mode of </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">becoming. </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">In India, on the
other hand, the external activities and operations have never
altogether swamped or clouded this soul-consciousness; they have been
either subjugated to it as minor auxiliaries or totally sacrificed as
obstacles. The Indian's soul is not imbedded in some far-off region
of his unconscious nature; he has succeeded in raising it up and
bringing it forward to the level of his waking consciousness – &shy;as
the gold-tusked Divine Boar lifted the Earth out of the dark depths
of the primeval deluge to the light of the Day.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">The French, for example, have developed as a people a
special characteristic and mental turn that has set its pervading
impress upon their culture and civilisation, upon their creations and
activities; that which distinguishes them is a fine, clear and
subtle, rational, logical, artistic and literary mind. France, it has
often been said, is the head of modern Europe. The Indians are not in
the same way a predominantly intellectual race, in spite of the
mighty giants of intellect India has always produced, and still
produces. Nor are they a literary race, although a rich and grandiose
literature, unrivalled in its own great qualities, is their
patrimony. It was the few, a small minority, almost a closed circle,
that formed in India the </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">elite </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">whose interest and achievement
lay in this field; the characteristic power, the main life-current of
the nation, did not flow this way, but followed a different channel.
Among the ancients the Greeks, and among the moderns the French
alone, can rightfully claim as their special genius, as the hallmark
of their corporate life, a high intellectual and literary culture. It
is to this treasure, – a serene and yet vigorous and organized
rational mind, coupled with a wonderful felicity of expression in
speech, – that one turns when one thinks of the special gift that
modern France and ancient Greece have brought to the heritage of
mankind.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">Again, the Japanese, as a people, have developed to a
consummate degree the sense of beauty, especially as applied to life
and living. No other people, not even the old-world Greeks, 
</span></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page –
159</span></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">possessed
almost to a man, as do these children of the Rising Sun, so fine and
infallible an &aelig;sthetic sensibility, – not static or abstract,
but of the dynamic kind – uniformly successful in making out of
their work-a-day life, even to its smallest accessories, a flawless
object of art. It is a wonder to see in japan how, even an unlettered
peasant, away in his rustic environment, chooses with unerring taste
the site of his house, builds it to the best advantage, arranges
everything about it in a faultless rhythm. The whole motion of the
life of a Japanese is almost Art incarnate.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">Or take again the example of the British people. The
practical, successful life instinct, one might even call it the
business instinct, of the Anglo-Saxon races is, in its general
diffusion, something that borders on the miraculous. Even their
Shakespeare is reputed to have been very largely endowed with this
national virtue. It is a faculty which has very little to do with
calculation, or with much or close thinking, Of with any laborious or
subtle mental operation – a quick Of active mind is perhaps the
last thing with which the British people can be accredited; this
instinct of theirs is something spontaneous, almost aboriginal,
moving with the sureness, the ruthlessness of nature's unconscious
movements, – it is a </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">tact, </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">native to the force that is life.
It</span><B><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></B><span style="font-size:12pt;">is this attribute which the Englishman draws from the
collective genius of his race that marks him </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">out </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">from among
all others; this is his </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">forte, </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">it is this which has created
his nation and made it great and strong.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">All other nations have this one, or that other, line of
self-expression, special to each; but it is India's characteristic
not to have had any such single and definite </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">modus vivendi –
what </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">was single and definite in her case was a mode not of </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">living
</span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">but of being. India looked above all to the very self in things;
and in all her life-expression it was the soul </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">per se </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">which
mattered to her, – even as the-great Yajnavalkya said to his wife
Maitreyi,</span><I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman Baltic, serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;"> atmanastu
kamaya sarvam priyam bhavati. </span></FONT></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">The expressions of the self
had no intrinsic value of their own and mattered only so far as they
symbolised or embodied or pointed to the secret reality of the Atman.
And perhaps it was on this account that India's creative activities,
even in external life, were once upon a time so rich and varied, so
stupendous and, full of marvel. Because she was attached and limited
to no one</span></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; text-indent:0.03cm; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page –
160</span></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><span style="font-size:12pt;">dominating
power of life, she could create infinite forms, so many channels of
power for the soul whose realisation was her end and aim.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">There was no department of life or culture in which it
could be said of India that she was not great, or even, in a way,
supreme. From hard practical politics touching our earth, to the
nebulous regions of abstract metaphysics, everywhere India expressed
the power of her genius equally well. And yet none of these, neither
severally nor collectively, constituted her specific genius; none
showed the full height to which she could raise herself, none
compassed the veritable amplitude of her innermost reality. It is
when we come to the domain of the Spirit, of God-realisation that we
find the real nature and stature and genius of the Indian people; it
is here that India lives and moves as in her own home of Truth. The
greatest and the most popular names in Indian history are not names
of warriors or statesmen, nor of poets who were only poets, nor of
mere intellectual philosophers, however great they might be, but of
Rishis, who saw and lived the Truth and commu&shy;ned with the gods,
of Avataras who brought down and incarnated here below something of
the supreme realities beyond.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">The most significant fact in the history of India is the
unbroken continuity of the line of her spiritual masters who never
ceased to appear even in the midst of her - most dark and distressing
ages. Even in a decadent and fast disintegrating India, when the
whole of her external life was a mass of ruins, when her political
and economical and even her cultural life was brought to stagnation
and very near to decomposition, this undying Fire in her secret heart
was ever alight and called in the inevitable rebirth and
rejuvenation. Ramakrishna, with Vivekananda as his emanation in life
dynamic and material, symbolises this great secret of India's
evolution. The promise that the Divine held out in the </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Gila </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">to
Bharata's descendant finds a ready fulfilment in India, in Bharata's
land, more perhaps than anywhere else in the world; for in India has
the. Divine taken birth over and over again to save the pure in
heart, to destroy the evil-doer and to establish the Right Law of
life.</span></P>
			<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
&nbsp;</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">Other peoples may be the arms and the feet and the head
of</span></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><SPAN STYLE="font-size:12pt; background: transparent">Page
– 161</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Humanity,
but India is its heart, its soul – for she cherishes always within
her the Truth that lives for ever, the flaming God-head, the Immortal
awake in mortality, as say the Vedas, </span><I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman Baltic, serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;">amrto
martyesu rtava. </span></FONT></I></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page –
162</span></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN="right" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">
<a title="Home" href="-00_-Content"><img src="/Nolini/Volume-1/_Gif_Image/house01_green.gif" width="28" height="23" border="0" alt="house06_white.gif"></a></P>
<div align="right"> 
	<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"> </div>
			</td>
		</tr>
	</table>
</div>
</BODY>
</HTML>