The ancient world contained many spiritual wonders, magnificent temples, great pyramids, secret knowledge and enlightened sages. It was not the primitive era that our history books proclaim but reflected  a profound culture connected to a higher consciousness. Though the ancients may not have achieved as much as modern culture in terms of  technology, they possessed a greater awareness of the sacred nature of existence. Their cultures  were imbued with religion as a quest for meaning and integration with all life.

My study of the Vedas in the original Sanskrit revealed that Vedic culture was advanced and sophisticated, as much as ancient Egypt or Sumeria. It was a maritime  culture that traveled, traded and colonized by sea. It was an urban culture with numerous  towns and small kingdoms like classical India. It had a sophistication of arts and crafts,  agriculture, science and language. It had a great mythos, a profound ritual and time-honored customs.

The Rig Veda was a synthetic text produced by a number of different groups over a long period of time  and covering a large region of geography. It was the record of a great civilization that found a spiritual unity among the diverse  cultures, ethnic and linguistic groups of a vast subcontinent. This is revealed by the many Vedic  Gods and Goddesses that each can represent the All as the  Supreme Deity as well as having its own unique characteristics. I found  the existent history book account of the Aryan Invasion, which portrayed the Vedic people as primitive  nomads, to be quite erroneous, if not absurd. It had little to do with the Vedic texts and required ignoring or distorting them to fit in with its preconceptions.

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