Internal equilibrium is the basis and the ground for the higher illumination..1

Life on earth is the means of self-perfection..2

“I LOVE INDIA, not because I cultivate the idolatry of geography, not because I have had the chance to be born in her soil, but because she had saved through tumultuous ages the living words that have issued from the illuminated consciousness of her great sons…” 

Written by Rabindranath Tagore, greatest writer in modern Indian literature, who won Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.(1)

It is not that every Indian all the time was a philosopher or a man of spirit. But there seems to be something in her very soil and air which makes a man at some stage or other in his life realize the futility of finite ends and seek for righteousness and therethrough release from finitude. (1)

Prof. Max Müller, the great German Sanskrit scholar wrote – “If I were to ask myself from what literature, we here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans...... may draw that corrective, which is most wanted, in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life – again, I should point to India”. (2)

©Nick Eakins

©Nick Eakins

In India, nature was free with her gifts and every prospect was pleasing. The Himalayas, (Himalya - a Sanskrit word meaning "the Abode of Snow") with their immense range and elevation on one side and the sea on the others, helped to keep India free from invasion for a long time… (2)  

Click each photo for full-size

Present map of India 

(Source= cia.gov)

©Nick Eakins

" the above three beautiful photographs of the Himalayas and some below were taken by Nick Eakins, a professional photographer specializing in South and South East Asia. 

To see more of his wonderful photos visit his website by clicking on the 

following link www.photographs-asia.com "

The Indians never felt that the world was a field of battle where men struggled for power, wealth and domination. When we do not need to waste our energies on problems of life on earth, exploiting nature and controlling the forces of the world, we begin to think of the higher life, how to live more perfectly in the spirit… (2)

The huge forests with their wide leafy avenues afforded great opportunities for the devout soul to wander peacefully through them, dream strange dreams and burst forth into joyous songs… 

Philosophy in India is essentially spiritual. It is the intense spirituality of India, and not any great political structure or social organisation that it has developed, that has enabled it to resist the ravages of time and accidents of history. 

External invasion and internal dissensions came very near crushing its civilization many times in its history. The history of Indian thought illustrates the endless quest of the mind, ever old, ever new. (2)

(Photo: Source: www.peakware.com Photo Credit: Jussi Isoaho)

It was in the asramas (the word asrama derived from the root meaning “to toil” – the Indians realized that suffering was incidental to all progress) and tapovanas or forest hermitages that the thinking men of India meditated on the deeper problems of existence.

Photo: Source: www.peakware.com Photo Credit: Phillip Noth)

The security of life, the wealth of natural resources, the freedom from worry, 

the detachment from the cares of existence, and the absence of a tyrannous practical interest, stimulated the higher life of India, with the result that we find from the beginnings of history an impatience of spirit, a love of wisdom and a passion for the saner pursuits of the mind. (2)  

(Photo: Source: www.peakware.com Photo Credit: Dean Lofquist)

Indian mind always wanted to know the inner truth and the law of all sides of human activity. (2)

Indian thinkers meditated on the deeper problems of existence. They were struck by the immensity of the universe and the inexhaustible mystery of life.

They kept asking themselves: 

Who is it that by knowing it you will know the unknown? (2)

(Photo: Source: www.peakware.com 

Photo Credit: Nelson Chenkin)

(Photo: Source: www.peakware.com 

Photo Credit: Luna Films)