India is not just geography or history. It is not
only a nation, a country, a mere piece of land. It
is something more: it is a metaphor, poetry,
something invisible but very tangible. It is
vibrating with certain energy fields which no
other country can claim.
For almost ten thousand years, thousands of
people have reached to the ultimate explosion of
consciousness. Their vibration is still alive, their
impact is in the very air; you just need a certain
perceptivity, a certain capacity to receive the
invisible that surrounds this strange land.
It is strange because it has renounced everything
for a single search, the search for the truth. It has
not produced great philosophers - you will be
surprised to know it - no Plato, no Aristotle, no
Thomas Aquinas, no Kant, no Hegel, no Bradley,
no Bertrand Russell. The whole history of India
has not produced a single philosopher - and they
have been searching for truth!
Certainly their search was very different from
the search that has been done in other countries.
In other countries people were thinking about
truth; in India, people were not thinking about
truth - because how can you think about truth?
Either you know it, or you don't; thinking is
impossible, philosophy is impossible. It is
absolutely an absurd and futile exercise. It is just
like a blind man thinking about light - what can
he think? He may be a great genius, may be a
great logician - it is not going to help. Neither
logic is needed nor genius is needed; what is
needed is eyes to see.
Light can be seen but cannot be thought. Truth
can be seen, but cannot be thought; hence we
don't have a parallel word in India for
`philosophy'. The search for truth we call
darshan, and darshan means seeing.
Philosophy means thinking, and thinking is
circular - about and about, it never reaches to the
point of experiencing.
India is the only land in the whole world,
strangely, which has devoted all its talents in a
concentrated effort to see the truth and to be the
truth.
You cannot find a great scientist in the whole
history of India. It is not that there were not
talented people, it is not that there were not
geniuses. Mathematics was founded in India, but
it did not produce Albert Einstein. The whole
country, in a miraculous way, was not interested
in any objective research. To know the other has
not been the goal here, but to know oneself.
For ten thousand years millions of people
persistently making a single effort, sacrificing
everything for it - science, technological
development, riches - accepting poverty,
sickness, disease, death, but not dropping the
search at any cost... it has created a certain
noosphere, a certain ocean of vibrations around
you.
If you come here with a little bit of a meditative
mind, you will come in contact with it. If you
come here just as a tourist, you will miss it. You
will see the ruins, the palaces, the Taj Mahal, the
temples, Khajuraho, the Himalayas, but you will
not see India - you will have passed through
India without meeting it. It was everywhere, but
you were not sensitive, you were not receptive.
You will have come here to see something which
is not truly India but only its skeleton - not its
soul. And you will have photographs of its
skeleton and you will make albums of its
skeleton, and you will think that you have been
to India and you know India, and you are simply
deceiving yourself.
There is a spiritual part. Your cameras cannot
photograph it; your training, your education
cannot capture it.
You can go to any country, and you are perfectly
capable of meeting the people, the country, its
history, its past - in Germany, in Italy, in France,
in England. But you cannot do the same as far as
India is concerned. If you try to categorize it
with other countries, you have already missed
the point, because those countries don't have
that spiritual aura. They have not produced a
Gautam Buddha, a Mahaviraa, a Neminatha, an
Adinatha. They have not produced a Kabir, a
Farid, a Dadu. They have produced scientists,
they have produced poets, they have produced
great artists, they have produced painters, they
have produced all kinds of talented people. But
the mystic is India's monopoly; at least up to
now it has been so.
And the mystic is a totally different kind of
human being. He's not simply a genius, he is not
simply a great painter or a great poet - he is a
vehicle of the divine, a provocation, an invitation
for the divine. He opens the doors for the divine
to come in. And for thousands of years, millions
of people have opened the doors for the divine
to fill the atmosphere of this country. To me, that
atmosphere is the REAL India. But to know it,
you will have to be in a certain state of mind.
When you are meditating, trying to be silent,
you are allowing the real India to come in
contact with you. Yes, you are right; the way you
can find truth in this poor country you cannot
find anywhere else. It is utterly poor, and yet
spiritually it has such a rich heritage that if you
can open your eyes and see that heritage you
will be surprised. Perhaps this is the only
country which has been deeply concerned with
the evolution of consciousness and nothing else.
Every other country has been concerned with a
thousand other things. But this country has been
one-pointed, a single goal: how human
consciousness can be evolved to a point where it
meets with the divine; how to bring the human
and the divine closer.
And it is not a question of one person but
millions of people; not a question of a day or a
month or a year, but thousands of years.
Naturally, it has created a tremendous energy
field around the country. It is all over the place,
you just have to be ready.
It is not coincidental that whenever anybody is
thirsty for truth, suddenly he has become
interested in India, suddenly he has started
moving towards the East. And it is not only
today, it is as old as there are records.
Pythagoras, twenty-five centuries ago, came to
India in search of truth. Jesus Christ came to
India….
…And down the centuries, seekers have been
coming to this land from all over the world. The
country is poor, the country has nothing to offer,
but to those who are sensitive it is the richest
place on the earth. But the richness is of the
inner. This poor country can give you the
greatest treasure that is possible for human
beings.
