Superstition has a way of releasing the power of imagination and raising human hopes beyond the restrictive field of misapprehended reason. Hence it abides as such a universal phenomenon in human affairs where men pin their hopes on impossibles to gain comfort in a world of fragile dreams before the rude shocks of reality remove their refuge and sink them low in the dark dungeon of death whence they freshly arise in renewed attire to hold on to the desperate dreams yet again. But through all this travail of life and death, birth and rebirth, is stocked up experience and distilled out of it is wisdom that trusts not superstition anymore nor reposes faith in a releasing reason -- for it binds as well in fetters of the mind -- but seeks a wholesomeness in attempting to leap across the ocean of ignorance, the limitations of the senses, to the realm of a realisation transcendent that abides beyond the pale of darkness. Such is the Indian ideal of Moksha, Mukti, Nirvana, Brahmajnana, Atmajnana, to call it by so many names but all meaning the same infinite freedom beyond the least vestige of material contamination either in the flesh or in the mind, pure existence of the Spirit that is the indescribable essence of transcendent knowledge and bliss.
Written by Sugata Bose
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