VEDANTA, THE WAY AHEAD ... 1

The uncertainty of life and the inevitability of death makes the pursuit of God and Truth an imperative. So long as death stalks this earth, the search for the ultimate meaning of life will haunt man and he cannot get away from his quest somehow. Religion is this quest of man for the ultimate answers, for the final solution to this problem of existence and for the possible harmony of the disparate forces that plague this terrestrial life. The word has got tainted, though, for the abuse of centuries centred on religion has darkened the connotation of an otherwise bright term whose purpose from definition was supposed to have been to integrate humanity and not drive wedges through it 'sending civilizations to despair'. However, God and religion, in the highest sense, still awaken the sublimity of the soul like none else does, even as the baneful influence of the twain continues to divide humanity into warring units threatening extinction of the human race, given the availability of weapons of mass-destruction now. These horrific forces of fanaticism are all derivatives of archaic absolutist monotheistic cults, though, and may effectively be countered by the propagation of the benign spiritual movements of India which hold humanity as a family and all spiritual paths as equally valid means for the realization of the underlying divinity of man and sentience.