THE REAL AND THE IMAGINED

THE REAL AND THE IMAGINED

People achieve greatness in their lives but their figures are amplified postmortem by adulation unto superhuman stature. That is a historical falsity which an advanced civilisation should avoid for it belies the very purpose of their lives, to raise men unto greatness. By holding a venerated one as spiritually sacrosanct and, so, absolved of all critical scrutiny is to sound the death-knell of progress and damn succeeding generations to spiritual stuntedness which invariably degenerates a people.

Setting the lives of the great ones in their proper historical setting and studying them thus may not seem immediately appealing to the vast mass of lazy minds who are professed devotees, who in irrational unhistorical adulation receive imaginary earthly and heavenly benefits from them, but it would serve humanity more enduring benefits and help it trudge along better through the uncharted spaces of the unfolding future where the torchbearers will be the lives of those great ones who have preceded it. A historical understanding is, thus, an exercise in truth and not in fanciful falsity that is counterproductive from the progressive perspective.

May history prevail over the hysteria of fanatical adulation that has so come to beset the religious world!

Written by Sugata Bose