This freedom or
Moksha is not a material quantity as in the West today, which is bound by outer
circumstances, but an inner state beyond external desires, the internal fulfillment in
conscious awareness. Bharata was a region of both perpetual spiritual and cultural
renaissance that served to sustain each other in unfolding the soul. However, this great ancient land of Bharata declined through
centuries of foreign rule that began about a thousand years ago, as well as through
various factors of internal decay that occurred through societal divisions of caste and
clan. Yet even during this Dark Age of the country Bharata never disappeared or lost its
vitality, and maintained its ability to produce great spiritual teachers and yogis.
Inwardly Bharata survived, though outwardly it at times appeared to all but pass away. In the nineteenth century a new awakening occurred in India leading
to independence from foreign rule. The aspiration of ancient Bharata began to stir anew
and seemed poised to once more flower and flourish. Today it is more than fifty years
since India regained its independence and threw off the yoke of foreign domination that
had dominated the country for so many centuries. This was a remarkable and unparalleled
reemergence of a world civilization and one that many people in the world, particularly
the spiritually minded, looked to with great hope that it might create a higher model of
culture for the rest of humanity to follow in this otherwise dark materialistic age.
India's independence was heralded by a great freedom
movement and a Hindu renaissance of extraordinary proportions brought about by monumental
saints and sages including Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi, Rama
Tirtha, Swami Shiva Nanda, and dozens of others who together established perhaps the
clearest and most complete spiritual teachings the world has ever known. Would India, or
Bharata, land not only of spiritual but of cultural and material glory of past ages, rise
again and lead the world once more?
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