"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."