Shuddhaanandaa Brahmachari
Below are few thoughts from Prabuddha Bharata Magazine April 2012 Editorial
Humankind has progressed stupendously through the discovery and application of many scientific principles. Unfortunately, humankind has still not learnt to fully apply these principles to solve problems related to the inner world. We are still, to a certain degree, the old savages we once were, and a little scratch unleashes that savagery.
Ancient myths had the capacity to elevate human minds, while modern myths tend to degrade it.
Beauty is the nature of life, and whatever is devoid of it becomes ugly and loathsome. Beauty is one of life’s higher dimensions. If we are alive to this dimension, life with all its myriad manifestations will become beautiful. Alas, we run after skin-deep beauty because our conception of life is skin deep. Those who can understand this law of life are lifted from sordidness and loneliness and become capable of connecting to beauty all around.
When life becomes narrow and selfish the world correspondingly transforms into a nauseating place. Such a life becomes a long-drawn trial.
Love nurtures life and seeks its continuity binding us to other forms of life. Without love and beauty everything in the world would be insipid and meaningless. People who do not experience life’s essence are miserable and psychologically dead, and the extremely miserable commit suicide. Life bereft of beauty and love remains merely on the biological level, driven by selfish genetic impulses. No progress in civilization and knowledge is possible without love. Every living being is subject to this glorious law.
Still higher and most evident than love is the law of truth. Life never thrives without truth, and that is the reason why nature does not create anything that is untrue. One needs no special training to detect truth from untruth, as truth is innate in every being. In individual lives whatever is false and counterfeit is opposite to the laws of life, and those who live by falsehood are most sorrowful. The whole of nature works against such lives by crippling and destroying them. Many learn to hide falsehood from others, but their bodies react violently against this, proving that falsehood is not consonant with nature. The mind that harbors untruth is a conflagration destroying peace, prosperity, and finally the personality. Sanity, fortitude, courage, altruism, fearlessness, and all the other virtues that make life worth living are derived from truth.