ETERNAL AND INCREDIBLE INDIA

"This is the ancient land where wisdom made it home before it went in to any other country , the same India whose influx of spirituality is represented as it were , on the material plane by rolling rivers like oceans , where the eternal Himalayas rising tier above tier with their snow-caps , look as it were in to the mysteries of heaven. Here the same India whose soil has been trodden by the feet of the greatest sages that ever lived. Here first sprang the inquiries in to the nature of man and in to the internal world. Here first arose the doctrines of the immortality of the soul, the existence of a supervising God, and immanent God in nature and in man and here the highest ideals of religion and philosophy have attained their culminating points. This is the land from whence like the tidal waves, spirituality and philosophy have again and again rushed out and deluged the world, and this is the land from whence once more such tides must proceed in order to bring life and vigor in to the decaying races of mankind. It is the same India which has withstood the shocks of centuries of hundreds of foreign invasions, of hundreds of upheavals of manners and customs It is the same land which stands firmer than any rock in the world, with its undying vigor, indestructible life . Its life is of the same nature as the soul without beginning and without end , immortal and we are the children of such a country ."

-Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)