The wonder that was India

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 Once upon a time, philosophers-- men and women alike-- observed systems of interacting elements, and noted that the system as a whole, can be in different "states of being." They also noted that some states of being are more "stable" and "sustain" against perturbations. It is in these sustainable states, we can nurture life. The entire ecosystem of our planet, they noted, is just a sustainable state of being.

They called this phenomenon of sustainability against perturbations, as "dharma".
Sustainability is not a binary. Some states are more sustainable than others. They also noted that regardless of how sustainable was a state of being, every physical system eventually collapsed. Nothing in this physical world, they noted, is in a state of eternal dharma.
This prompted them to embark on a quest for "eternal sustainability" which is called "Sanatana dharma".
Physical systems are trivially not eternally sustainable. They hence called physical reality as "Maya." Eternal sustainability, if it exists, needs to be in the realm of prajna or consciousness, they noted. Even here, they saw that not every element of data, information and knowledge, represented eternally sustainable assertions. For example, an assertion that "summer is hotter than winters" is mostly true, except when there have been exceptions.
They then noted that, as long as assertions connected with physical reality, they can't be eternally sustainable. But then they saw that no matter how much they tried to go meta, some connection to physical reality remained. But some of them managed to get into a state of consciousness, that was completely unconstrained by physical reality.
They called this, the universal consciousness or Reality or Brahman.
They then went on to create a vibrant civilization that was based on this quest for experiencing the state of eternal sustainability. They saw that, when the core inquiry of the population is on eternal sustainability, we can derive notions of ethics, fairness, harmony, freedom, and other elements of humanities, fairly easily.
This in a nutshell, was the wonder that was India. Not the drivel meted out by Indology experts in high citadels today.

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