A Search in Secret India

“SACRED INDIA” would be as apt a title for this book. For it is a quest for that India which is only secret because it is so sacred. The holiest things in life are not bruited abroad in public. The sure instinct of the human soul is to keep them withdrawn in the inmost recesses accessible to few perhaps to none. Certainly only to those who care for spiritual things. And with a country as with an individual. The most sacred things a country keeps secret. The most sacred part of India is the most secret. Now secret things require much searching for: but those who seek will find. Those who seek with their whole heart and with the real determination to find will at last discover the secret. Mr. Brunton had that determination, and he did in the end find.

Remote from the haunts of men, deep in the jungles to which or to the Himalayas the holiest men in India always return. Mr. Brunton found the very embodiment of all that India holds most sacred. The Maharishi the Great Sage was the man who made most appeal to Mr. Brunton. He is not the only one of his kind. Up and down India others, not many, but a very, very few may be found. They represent the true genius of India, and it is through them that the mighty genius of the Universe manifest Himself in peculiar degree. They, therefore, are among the objects most worth searching for on this earth. And in this book we have the results of one such quest.

This book is titled secret India because it tells of an India which has been hidden form prying eyes for thousand of years, which has kept itself so exclusive that today only its rapidly disappearing remnants are left. The manner in which the Yogis kept their knowledge so esoteric may appear selfish to us in these democratic days, but it helps to account for their gradual disappearance from visible history.