Most of us make a mockery of our scriptures because we are surface personalities who cannot quite comprehend the depth of the content of these ancient texts. Casual quotation of scriptural verses without comprehension of their deeper import, as if the Rishis were commonplace fools who have left behind playthings for children, has reduced the social discourse on religion to a basement market of common commodity where gems are being priced at ginger's value. Everybody is now a philosopher, anybody with a sprinkling of knowledge of the Upanishads, unrealised though they may be in their hearts and minds, is today to be deemed a modern Rishi. Whether their lives correspond to their articulations matters not. They are all the guardians of our spiritual heritage, the propounders of spiritual thought and, in consequence, the destroyers of all that is sublime in our ancient civilisation. And I mean this to include the common man of uncommon self-aggrandisement, exceeding self-estimation, the wave of the river that now assumes to invert equations to becoming the river of the wave. Perhaps, this is why Swamiji desisted from preaching the Vedanta here in his motherland and instead exhorted his brethren to go for building Belur Math into a grand university which he foresaw as an inevitable outcome of the future.
Education, thus, holds the key to training the polity into becoming efficient thinkers who will then alone evolve to be worthy recipients of a glorious heritage in spiritual thinking which they right now are not. Perhaps, a course in material science would help. That would improve intellectual ability and deepen perception. Hence, I keep on saying that we need to go scientific even to preserve our ancient spiritual culture and to prevent it from falling into frivolous abuse.
Written by Sugata Bose
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