16. The combination of goodness can thwart evil to a large extent. This is the classical war between the gods and the demons which the gods must win. But the scales are tilted now as then against the gods. It will require the descent of the Divine again in our midst to set the rudder right. The layman and the monastic have both lost their spiritual bearing and we are living in times of a great spiritual vacuum when people are frantically searching for an ideal but cannot find one that will quench their thirst and lead them on to peace and blessedness. The ideal is there in our scriptures and in the manifested personalities of our sages and saints, our Avatars and Acharyas, but men and women are seeking a fresher articulation in a seminal being whose life will be shorn of self-interest of any kind, cleared of the dross of political contamination or personal alliance with the prosperous even if for the fruition of a wider social objective, one who ill stand barely on Truth and nothing else. Such a one will fresh inspire the youth of the land and in every land this time, and will bring about a renaissance of the dormant human spirit to meet the challenges of the times. The past movements are all compromised more or less and one sadly once more recalls Swami Vivekananda's words to Miss Margaret Elizabeth Noble, later, Sister Nivedita : 'Religions of the world have become lifeless mockeries. What the world wants is character.'