Only the feather-brained believe in the sleight of hand of supposed god-men and mortgage their rationality to such, allowing them their divine status. The true spiritual seeker would neither subscribe to gaudily-robed Guru, claiming 'seeking' as his forte, nor to materialising Baba producing ash, necklace and ring of dimensions of manageable proportions but would be content to pursue principles in his bid to arrive at the truth. Spirituality in the hands of these charlatans has taken a severe beating and the need of the hour is to go back to the rational principles of sadhana enshrined in our scriptures which have nothing to do with weakness-mongering faith in pretentious 'pious' men of otherwise dubious spiritual standards.
Spirituality has everything to do with the spirit and nothing whatsoever to do with matter that would warrant the proving of divinity of supposed saints and sages on the basis of mystery-mongering and miracle-making. That there are so many takers of such arrant nonsense doing the rounds in our polity today indicates the sharp decline in our spiritual culture and the sooner we rise up against all such pretentious piety, the better. Better by far would be to become self-dependent, self-respecting atheists instead of being such foolish subscribers to irrational and even infra-rational faith that becomes the barbarian better than citizens of this ancient nation of pristine spirituality and culture. In believing in these quacks and god-men we are shaming our forefathers of indisputable intellectual brilliance, of matchless spiritual excellence.
Let us take stock of ourselves and 'shake off this sterile curse' that has sadly befallen our nation in its nadir of cultural decay. If we do not, we shall be culpable then to the propping up of these charlatans to seek personal advantage out of the same, impelled as we are by superstition, cunning and craftiness of every kind. These men of pronounced material interests benefit by our indulgence and the sooner we stop patronising them, the sooner our country will rise to power and glory in the comity of nations, for these Gurus and Swamis and Babas represent but the symptoms of a disease which has its tentacles spread out deep in the psyche of the nation, preventing its proper fruition despite the advances of material science. As for spirituality, we may seek refuge in our classical scriptures for light and knowledge instead of seeking distorted and refracted stuff from these semi-literates who masquerade as messiahs of men despite pronounced protestations to the contrary.
May sanity prevail ! May good culture restore the health of the polity ! May this disease of mystery-mongering, materialisation and mumbo jumbo philosophising be eradicated once and for all so that the people of this land grow to health, light and love on the firm basis of self-help rather than degenerate dependence on some self-declared deliverer !
Vande Mataram !
Written by Sugata Bose
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