WHO'S IGNORANT AFTER ALL AND WHO'S KNOWLEDGABLE ?

WHO'S IGNORANT AFTER ALL AND WHO'S KNOWLEDGABLE ?

Ignorance is the massive enemy of man, and mass ignorance, the destroyer of civilisation. Fortunately, knowledge does not entirely depend upon what is taught by human agencies but it is the spontaneous outflow of fundamental inner awareness born out of the essential divinity of man. Else, even the first steps to acquired knowledge and its dissemination in early civilisation could not have been possible.

The entire edifice of human knowledge, secular or sacred, stands on the indestructible foundation of fertile awareness, what has been called the field of the trinity, existence-consciousness-bliss. It is out of the repulsive field of this foundational reality that the manifold drama of relative phenomenal existence flows out in unending streams. All such events are not man-made -- man, as we understand the surface organic being to be, that is -- and they simply subsist in a complex network of fundamental possibilities. Thus, even the evolutionary drive is controlled much by these inner impulses over which we are trying to exert our mastery, succeeding sometimes, failing at other times, but progressing, -- or, so it seems -- nonetheless, in a fast or a faltering pace.

The point being stressed here is that the educated need not believe that the uneducated are unaware and are way behind their erudite selves in the civilisation of the spirit, for often the reverse is true. Facts and figures artificially gleaned and left unassimilated in the system do not conduce to real knowledge and its progeny, civilisation. Rather, the natural approach of a direct communion with the elements and the inner impulses, controlled and given fruitful direction, raises the constitution of man to a higher order of awareness and response which is largely the lot of the civilised illiterate man. The question then arises as to who is educated and who is not, who is civilised and who is not, who, after all, requires spiritual evolution more and who does not. This was the question raised by Satyajit Ray in his last film 'Agantuk' as well but with a different emphasis. I am raising the same question in the light of the Vedanta and its unfailing unfolding that is the rightful heritage of man.

Written by Sugata Bose