Vyasa, the great commentator of Yogadadana, does somewhat better. He tells us that mind has five habitual states or planes (bhumis): mudha (dull or i… - Ram Swarup

The fact is that Christian art failed at a deeper level. It failed not in execution but in conception and vision, and this failure was at bottom failure of Christian theology in which mysticism is rudimentary and peripheral. Christian theology has no concept of transcendence, non-attachment, recollectedness, equality (samatâ), liberation (moksha), the vast (bhûmâ) and the infinite (ananta), compassion (kurunâ), of cosmic action emanating from restfulness at the centre; therefore, it felt no call to try to convey them in its art-forms. A deeper iconography needed the support of a deeper theology and vision. This explains why Christian art has no equivalents of Far Eastern Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as Huxley notices. The Eastern tradition was shaped by Hindu religious thinking and sensibility. Hindu art tried to portray the inner man: the Man behind the man, the Eye behind the eye, the Seeing behind the seeing, man's inner prânika or life-currents, the nodal points in his subtle body where the individual meets the cosmic. It portrayed man's inner physiognomy. .... But they portrayed the external man; there was no portrayal of the inner man, the luminous man, the transcendental man.

He visited India to meet its wise men. He met one Iarchus and was deeply satisfied. The latter asked him: "What knowledge do you think we have that you lack?" Apollonious replied: "It is my opinion that your ways are wiser and much more godly. But if I were to find among you nothing that I do not know, I would also have learned that there is nothing further for me to learn." Iarchus told him: "You, our visitor, have (already) a share of this wisdom, but yet not all of it." Then the teaching began but what it was and about its nature nothing is said. The biographer, however, relates many anecdotes and throws interesting sidelights. He tells us that in their very first meeting, Iarchus told Apollonius everything about him, his ancestry on his father's and mother's side, his journey and the people he met and talks he had with them. Apollonius was amazed. Iarchus also told him about Apollonius' nature and said: "We discern every kind of soul, and have countless clues to discover them." "Ask me whatever you like, since you have come among men who know everything," said the chief of the Indian wise men to his distinguished visitor. He in turn asked the Indians if they knew themselves, expecting them to be like the Greeks in thinking it is difficult to know oneself. But to his surprise, Iarchus replied: "We know everything because we begin by knowing ourselves. None of us would approach our kind of philosophy without knowing himself first." Apollonius had no difficulty in accepting this statement for it was also his own belief. He asked Iarchus what they thought they were, and the latter replied: "Gods." And why? "Because we are good men," Iarchus said (p. 80). Later on in his life when he used this doctrine before the Emperor of Rome when he was being tried for instigating treason, he also told him that Iarchus and Phraotes, the two Indians, "are the only humans whom I consider Gods and worthy of being called so".

Hindu thought also exerted a great influence on ancient Greek thought as M.E. Pococke shows in his India in Greece. It is believed that Pythagoras visited Indian and learnt the doctrine of transmigration and many ascetic practices from here. One meets many parallel ideas in the Upanishads and Plato. These similarities are not fortuitous but they emanated from a common deeper vision and life-philosophy. Apollonius the "wise man of Tyana", perhaps the greatest saint of the Hellenistic world, a contemporary of Jesus, visited the wise men of India and was highly satisfied. Later on, he also visited Ethiopia to meet her naked ascetics, who, he believed, had borrowed their spirituality from India. But, as he already suspected, he did not find them worthy pupils of India.