"You may be right," I said to Indira. "My knowledge of India is far too limited for me to add anything."

      "What I am referring to is not really specific to India," said Indira. "It might be true that many of the great principles were discovered and developed here where civilization is deemed to have begun, but they are more specific to humanity as a whole than to any one country or region. And yes, some of those too are far from being acknowledged today, especially the spiritual ones."

      "And what might one of these be?" I interjected.

      "A lot of spiritual advances that were rooted in Hinduism became lost. Hinduism is the world's oldest spiritual force. It is a spiritual force more than a religion, a force that has stood the test of time for 8,500 years. It is a practical force. Hinduism simply teaches people to live in harmony with themselves, with one-another, and with their world and all life in nature. It values a person's service for the welfare of others as a great virtue. It values love, forgiveness, sacrifice, tolerance, and so on. They became recognized as the principles of civilization, the principles that made a civilization possible. The Hindu belief is that by living a perfect life people can be freed from the limitations of the material world and join with the eternal for a richer life right here on earth, a kind of blending that uplifts the material world with a human touch that is rooted in the spiritual. Of course it is no secret that the Hindu spiritual force, or religion if you want to call it that, has been perverted and sadly abused for 2,500 years during the Vedic and Brahmanic dark ages that arose out of the Aryan invasion of India 3,500 years ago. But the gentle Hinduism itself was never defeated. It lived on. It survived across the dark ages and flourished again in the early stages of the Islamic Renaissance that had also spread into India. But I belief it was the spiritual force of Hinduism by which the dark ages came to a close, and not the Islamic invasion as some people suggest. The spiritual revival of the heart of Hinduism created had created a bridge across the dark ages. The temples of Khajuraho were the result of that revival of the Hindu spiritual force. A religion can be perverted, but not a spiritual force. A spiritual force can be hidden and at the worst be smothered in the shadow of imperial tyranny. The Islamic invasion had that kind of effect. But the Hindu force survived. The latest great revival in the 19th Century is most profoundly exemplified, if not rooted in the famous journey of an eleven year old boy, a boy yogi, who undertook a journey across India in the search for knowledge to rediscover the secrets of the Hindu spiritual heritage that came alive again in India. He was a yogi. The practice of yoga goes all the way back to the very early civilization that began in the Indus valley and has remained a spiritual force ever since. The boy-yogi became a sage of this spiritual force. He started a journey of discovery that also unfolded an inner discovery. His journey would span 7 years and a 12,000 Km trail traveled on foot across a land that was still moved in the background by the Hindu spiritual force. He set out in 1792, close to a millennium after the first temples of Khajuraho were built. He set out to explore the light that had been lost over time but still existed thinly in some places. And that happened just in time before rising shadow of the Colonial Dark Age of the British Imperial Period would smother the spiritual scene once again. In this sense the great personal achievements of the boy-yogi constructed a bridge forward, a profound bridge that would bridge across the Imperial Dark Age in India to the modern period. He became a spiritual pioneer of great stature who is revered in India to the present day. But even now as his achievements are brought back to the foreground we are far from implementing the teachings that he based on his experiences. Nevertheless, I believe that these historic teachings in which the spark of another Hindu renaissance can be seen holds the key to India's contribution for a rich future for mankind, the kind of future that we must have in order to be able to survive on this planet. I also believe, Peter, that India's contribution has the potential to be far greater than what is generally acknowledged about it, or even we may realize. India is a country of 100 nations and cultures all rolled into one, comprising many religions. But there exists only one truth. We are a country that extends across a cultural landscape of 18 languages with 1600 dialects, with which people communicate and express this one truth in the most profound sense they are able. That's an incredibly rich background for spiritual development, isn't it?"

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Stories about  Love from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche