India: Her consciousness and light

What is India's inner message to the world at large? Spirituality. What is spirituality? It is the natural way of truth that successfully communes with the Beyond here on earth.

What is India's absolutely distinctive possession? Her soul. She lives in the soul, she lives from the soul and she lives for the soul.

Where can the world find the real nature of India? In the ever-wakeful domain of the Spirit.

What has made the history of India unique? A most surprising and unusual continuity in the line of her spiritual seekers and Masters.

What does Indian spirituality teach? It teaches the world to conquer the evil of the lower nature and to go beyond the good of the higher nature.

What is Mother India's desire? It is to transcend the human way once and for all, through radical self-transmutation, and to enter into the ever-dynamic way of God.

Religion, however mighty it may be, is not and cannot be the message of India. Her message is Self-realisation.

The perfect truth of India's religion lies in its outer and inner realisation of the One that is, of the One that is in the process of becoming.

O world, as you march on towards the deepest recesses of your heart, to your amazement, you will find Mother India to be anything but God-fearing. What then is she? She is God-loving: the God-loving soul in God's all-dreaming and all-manifesting Truth.

The soul of India feels that to be satisfied with intellectual speculation is to remain satisfied with only half the food that is actually needed for health. It is realisation that gives one a full meal. And if one seeks realisation, meditation and concentration are of paramount importance.

Indian philosophy, in its sublimest sense, is nothing short of the practical realisation of the Truth.

There is no more than a hyphen between the Vision of the Vedic seers and the soul of India, and between India's spirituality and the final spiritual liberation of the world.

They say that India long ago lost the Milky Way of greatness. But we know that she has now a colossal hope that the overcast sky will clear at last, revealing again the myriad points of light.

What were the chief causes of India's downfall? She neglected the body-consciousness and eschewed the material life. She narrowed her outlook and sealed herself up in the outworn rituals of the past. She clung to the festering shell of her ancient culture while killing its living, growing spirit. And India's doom was sealed the day she started these practises.

India began to rise the day she turned away from these tendencies and accepted life in all its dynamic aspects.

India will rise fully the day she becomes self-reliant. She knows well that she cannot achieve her goal if she has to depend permanently on alien help. Self-help is the best help. Self-help is God's own help in disguise.

India has within her a voice that is the selfsame, all-fulfilling Voice of God. That Voice she simply must hear and obey.

What is actually meant by the emancipation of the Indian woman? It means that she must no longer be alienated from education. She must have free access to the worldwide knowledge of the present day, in addition to the sacred lore of past centuries. True education helps us to live in the integral perfection which is the very backbone of our existence on earth. The Indian woman must be given a full opportunity to develop and manifest this perfection.

The emancipation of the Indian woman also means that she must not be suppressed and dominated by man. She must be free to be herself, independent in her own right, strong and confident, a true partner and companion of man and not his drudge and serf. She must become again what she was in Vedic India, a respected and equal citizen, a glorious complement to man.

Today's India is poverty-stricken. But tomorrow's India will be prosperous. She will be a mighty wave of hope and faith. Her very thought will be stirred with a new vision. Infinite will be the possibilities on her horizon. Her sacrifice will build a more durable foundation for mankind. She will contain within herself nationalism and internationalism, becoming the true symbol of spirituality in action.

India with her spiritual power will wield a tremendous influence on future generations. This is no imagination, but vision in operation.

India and India alone is the nerve centre of the aspiring world.

India's strength is not in her arms, but in her heart. More so, it is in her seer-vision.

India tells the world that the realisation of unity is the only strength which can conquer the world.

India is the seeker of the Absolute. The summum bonum of life is the ideal of God-realisation. In her heart there is a burning love of God; in her mind, the service of unawakened humanity.

Consumed with desires and temptations, Europe rushed towards India to acquire her fabulous wealth. That is true. But it is equally and absolutely true that Europe's soul came to India with a spiritual seeking and an occult urge to discover what India was actually like.

India has three world-conquering weapons: Non-violence, Peace and the Wisdom which tells that she is in All as All is in her.

India's choice is character. But she must feel that she needs personality as well.

Mother India's fear is not of atomic bombs but of her children's self-forgetful amnesia.

Unbelievably, India has perfectly reconciled in herself the two worst antagonists: renunciation and epicurianism.

Perfection was the choice of the Greeks. Proportion was the choice of the Romans. Universality is the choice of the Indians.

India is the voice that never falters. Hers is the truth that cannot be silenced by the threatening darkness of centuries. Hers is the heart that sings perpetually of the unity of mankind.

India is the vault of an ancient eternal wisdom that has a universal appeal. She is also the universal reserve bank of an ever-growing wisdom, and she is destined to be the hub and dynamo of world transformation.