The 7 Rivers Civilization- Sapta Sindhu: The Civilization Without Ego

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In January 2018, I started the translation of the Rig Veda. I had heard about it and read several books about it, including "The Secret of the Veda" by Sri Aurobindo.

By chance, one evening, some time before, while zapping on my television, I had come across a documentary on Arte'. It presented, very succinctly, the so-called Indus civilization which had moved me deeply.

This documentary took me back forty-five years, when I went to India, like thousands of young Westerners. I had gone there after five years of hitch- hiking around the world, penniless, including three years in Africa.

My goal in coming to India was not to find a guru or to seek any spiritual liberation, that was already done.

In 1970, after I had been on the road for over two years, I had this spiritual experience that cannot be described or properly named. So I went to India to live the life of a sadhu, a renunciate. That is what I did for almost a year. I lived with them the life of a naga baba, a category of sadhus who go almost naked, covered in ashes, from temple to temple², owning only what they can carry. I never spoke of the Veda with them, but the life I led made me understand many things..

I am not an intellectual. I hated school and dropped out in the second year of high school. I took a vocational certificate as a projectionist and worked in a cinema in Brittany for six months, plus two more in a post-synchronization studio in Paris, before setting off on the road in 1967 with my last pay- check.