Number of words: 405

As a man grows to maturity he is not entirely engrossed in, or satisfied with, the external objective world. He seeks also some inner meaning, some psychological and physical satisfactions.

So also with peoples and civilizations as they mature and grow adult. Every civilization and ?very people exhibit these parallel streams of an external life and an internal life. Where they meet

or keep close to each other, there is an equilibrium and stability. When they diverge conflict arises and the crises that torture the mind and spirit.
We see from the period of the Rig Veda hymns onwards the development of both these streams of life and thought. The early ones are full of the external world, of the beauty and mystery of nature, of joy in life and an overflowing vitality. The gods and goddesses, like those of Olympus, are very human;

they are supposed to come down and mix with men and women there is no hard and fast line dividing the two. Then thought comes and the spirit of inquiry and the mystery of a transcendental world deepens. Life still continues in abundant measure, but there is also a turning away from its outward manifestations and a spirit of detachment grows as the eyes are turned to things invisible, which cannot be seen or heard or felt in the ordinary way. What is the object of it all? Is there a purpose in the universe? And, if so, how can man’s life be put in harmony with it? Can we bring about a harmonious relation between the visible and invisible worlds, and thus find out the right conduct of life?
So we find in India, as elsewhere, these two streams of thought and action—the acceptance of life and the abstention from it— developing side by side, with the emphasis on the one or the other

varying in different periods.  Yet the basic background of that culture was not one of other-worldliness or world-worthlessness. Even when, in philosophical language, it discussed the world

as maya, or what is popularly believed to be illusion, that very conception was not an absolute one but relative to what was thought of as ultimate reality (something like Plato’s shadow of reality), and it took the world as it is and tried to live its life and enjoy its manifold beauty.

Excerpted from pages 78-79 of ‘Jawaharlal Nehru The Discovery of India ’ by Jawaharlal Nehru