In The Meaning of India, Raja Rao declares, ‘India is not a country (desa); it is a perspective (darsana).’ (10) The word ‘darsana’, incidentally, is the Hindu word for philosophy; it means seeing, experience, vision, perception, standpoint, insight and outlook. But what darsana does India embody? Absolute, non-dual consciousness, according to Rao. Even if there was no India in a physical, material sense, India as an idea would always exist. As Rao puts it, ‘India has no enemies. She only has adversaries’ (48), and she ‘has to turn defeat into victory’ (50).

The entire universe, sentient and non-sentient, in its own infinitely rich and diverse ways, also seeks the Absolute. That, I think, is what the Buddha meant when he said that the whole universe is on fire: ‘“What does not disappear does not exist.” For every sense perception is afire. “Look, the universe is burning!”’ (189) Again, to quote Rao, “There can be no world without duality, yet there can be no peace in duality.’ (82) Duality is primordial unhappiness. That is why everything that exists experiences this dukkha, which is the very essence of duality. Duality, two-ness, implies separation from the source. Whatever has individuality is therefore separated, ego-bound, vibhakt (divided), and therefore seeks self-transcendence—in dissolution or union—as the means to regain its lost wholeness.

But if everyone and everything seeks the same ‘thing’ that India seeks, what makes her different?

The difference is that it is in India where this seeking has become self-conscious, reiterated generation after generation, down the centuries. Not just that, one might even say that India has not only sought but found the Absolute. There is a prevalent Buddhist belief that if the world is to be saved from destruction, the inspiration for the radical transformation in consciousness must come from India.

Rao also states this position quite unequivocally:

There are, it seems to me, only two possible perspectives on human understanding: the horizontal and (or) the vertical. They could also be named the anthropomorphic and the abhuman. The vertical movement is the sheer upward thrust towards the unnamable, the unutterable, the very source of wholeness. The horizontal is the human condition expressing itself, in terms of concern for man as one’s neighbour—biological and social, the predicament of one who knows how to say, I and you.

The vertical rises slowly, desperately, to move from the I to the non-I, as non-dual Vedanta would say. It is the move towards the impersonal, the universal (though there is no universe there, so to say) reaching out to ultimate being, where there are no two entities, no you and I.

The horizontal again, on its long, arduous and confused pathways, will reach the same ultimacy by stripping the I of its many vestments, through concern and compassion for the other . . .The vertical then is the inherent reality in the horizontal . . .

(139–140)

Or again: