The Sacred And The Secular-Part II

A successful revolution always nourishes a suicidal courage in the revolutionaries and unless it is properly guided in its mounting passions, it can destroy the very goal of the revolution. Such a tragedy seems to have happened to materialism in the West. From under the loads of its heavy superstitions and suffocating shackles of religious fanaticism, the healthy intellect of the West rightly revolted, and emerged spectacularly, to fight for, vanquish, and rule over the realms of science.

In this silent revolt they had no masterly guide to lead them properly and, therefore, intoxicated with their freedom, the majority of the masses have come today to believe that their scientific progress is because of their revolt against the sacred religious discipline. To them, therefore, today, to be against the 'Sacred'

is to be assured of progress in the secular.

Without any chastening philosophy, without any inspiring ideology, without any moral goal, without any softening devotion, spanner in hand and machine gun on its shoulders, onward marches the Western civilization ready to start a war at any moment for raw material or for the market. They claim themselves to be a greater generation because they know how to wield the monkey-spanner!

In short, fanatic religion is as dangerous to the world as fanatic secularism. If the medieval era inaugurated a Dark Age, our own is an age which is also stormy. This is the problem that man is facing today in the world. Naturally the obvious solution seems to be in a harmonious blending of the "sacred" and the "secular"- the temple and the factory, the pooja and the ploughing: The hand with which we use the spanner and the screw-driver must also be trained to offer, devotedly soft flowers and succulent fruits at the alter of the eternal Truth. The secular sanctifies the state, the Sacred softens the self. Man alone cannot live; the state alone is not prosperity.

Healthy man living in a progressive state alone can bring about a prosperity that can waft the fragrance of peace and happiness. This harmonious orchestra played between the within and without of man is the true 'Sreyas' of the world.

In Geeta we have this scheme of life vividly painted. This sacred Scripture of man in its concluding stanza declares openly this truth; "Where the Sacred Krishna and the dynamic Arjuna are together, there alone is peaceful prosperity, dynamic progress, enduring welfare". The Sacred and the secular can be blended; they should be integrated if man is to be saved - if the world is to be saved - if the world is to be redeemed from its self-destruction.

About the author

Swami Chinmayananda

Swami Chinmayananda the great master's lectures were an outpour of wisdom. He introduced the Geetha Gnana Yagna. He wrote a lot of books on spirituality, commentaries to Vedantic texts, children books etc. He then started spreading His teachings globally.....