ON ANOTHER LEVEL, the Manu-Nauka story beautifully reflects a fundamental tenet of the Sanatana ethos — that all creative endeavours are futile unless they culminate in giving life. In other words, creative work attains fruition in actual creation and not abortion.
We observe and experience how this principle operates in our sculptures, classical performing arts and literature.
A partially completed Murti is not fit for consecration notwithstanding its beauty.
There is no such thing as half an Avadhana.
The exposition of the Raga has to return to Shadja.
The Talam (beat) has to complete its cycle.
All these evoke within us infinite possibilities of the existence of an exalted world. That world may not be “real” but its possibility exists. Our Puranas furnish the raw material to conceive such worlds because they themselves have created those worlds and more.
In his Mahatraya trilogy (Mahabrahmana, Mahakshatriya and Mahadarshana), Devudu Narasimha Sastri literally recreates Vedic Bharatavarsha solely through the power of words, and the reader progressively becomes a participant in the story instead of merely remaining a connoisseur. In fact, a talented painter will never run out of material if he properly mines the trilogy.
Devudu could scale this artistic Everest because the inexhaustible inheritance of our Itishasas and Puranas gave plumes to his imagination and wings to his creativity.
We observe these principles even on the mundane plane.
Raw rice becomes Akshata by the simple addition of haridra (turmeric powder) or kumkuma (vermillion). To my mind, the person who first conceived this idea is a creative artist of the profoundest sort. So is the one who gave it its nomenclature: Akshata — that which cannot be destroyed.
Food becomes Naivedya the moment it is offered to our Devatas and then it becomes Prasadam after the Devatas eat it. This too, is one of the most touching and practical expressions of creativity. Indeed, the compelling nature of the emotion — transformed into unshakeable faith — that our Devatas will actually eat our Naivedya is one of the keys that will unlock the vital secrets of our culture.
Likewise, the same flowers that we plucked become sanctified once they are offered to our Devatas.
And then there is the plane of the instinct.
Unless the raw, instinct-driven act of copulation culminates in creating new life, it devours itself and the person through bestiality.
As timeless wisdom informs us, Kama (sexual desire) should be elevated to Shringara (beauty) and both should culminate in Srshti (creation). When the whole process is regarded as Srishti Yajna it becomes sanctified. From rice to sex, the inherent principle, which becomes a brilliant motif in art, remains the same and remains unchangeable.
Indeed, only the notion of beauty and sanctity is the fence that separates us from animals — else, incest, like in the animal world, would have become commonplace. Shringara is a Rasa while Kama is included both in the Purusharthas and Arishadvargas. Samskara is what enables a person to put it in its proper place — as a Purushartha.
The unbeatable delineation of this sublime philosophy is found in Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhavam in which the visible Kama as Manmatha, is literally burnt to ashes and becomes invisible thereafter. After this, both Shiva and Parvati engage in Tapas… Kumara or Karthikeya is the outcome of this Tapas. Had Shiva succumbed to Manmatha’s temptation, the primacy of Kama as a Purushartha would have not been upheld.
We return to the same point: Kalidasa’s genius wouldn’t have attained its full bloom sans our epic and Puranic tradition, which he further enhanced and enriched and gravelled the path for future poets and writers.
WHEN YOU BURGLE A CULTURE of all such symbols and metaphors, you regress towards multiple forms of societal lunacy. It is an insanity that inbreeds and mutates until the whole society looks like a sprawling wreckage of pathology-induced holocaust.
Today, it is known as the Woke phenomenon. Tomorrow, an even more devious variant of it.
We’ve plummeted so deep into the abyss that the terms “woke” and “culture” are used together as if it has a concrete definition.
“Woke” is what you get through the deliberate desiccation of culture.
This is a desiccation premised on and implemented by legitimising and mainstreaming perversions by legislating them.
Arguably, Wokeism couldn’t have arisen without the invention and the indiscriminate advocacy of contraceptives. A condensed account of the recent history of Western societies reveals that the rise of “sex education” in schools occurred roughly around the same time that contraceptives began to gain currency.
To put this in perspective, we can look at some detailed excerpts from a fine essay written by the British child psychologist, Louise Eickhoff in the September 19, 1970 issue of The Guardian.
"In all countries where sex education has been introduced, the same corruptive pattern of social change has been observed: increased illegitimacy and venereal disease, promiscuity and amateur prostitution, sexually symbolic or sexually aggressive crimes and the substitute satisfactions of smoking, drinking, and drug-taking, and a lowering of the age of those involved.
There has been an upsurge in wanton, destructive aggression in the community and public displays of filth, heard on streets, on public transport, and seen on walls, even in the "ladies," [toilet] emanating from the lips and hands of children...
America began its school programmes in the early 1920s. By the mid-thirties…brazen behaviour was observed in the young adolescent, inculcated girls; by the early 1940s social workers were discussing the good and ill of sexual experimenting in the 8-10-year group… all involved were sexually sophisticated, and children reported that the unhappy behaviour of their companions had followed sex instruction in schools...
Sex indoctrination, far from leading to greater stability…has led to increased sexual dissatisfaction, interchange of marital partners, and sexual excesses…whereas America's crime rate continued on its astronomical course (148 per cent in nine years), the birth rate dropped… a recent report in a professional journal details the harm done by the depraved practices on young children by their parents, themselves the second generation of sex indoctrination.
All but a few had had full sex instruction with V.D., contraception, abortion, and even perversions thrown in…Of those examined, 52 had been set on their delinquent course by sex education directly.
Sex education, apart from parents, in school is dangerous, for it destroys the inbuilt natural safety devices of personal, private, intimate, love connection that protect the individual from society…
Sex education programmes are wrong because they take the vehicle straight from the showroom to the motorway, leaving it in the charge of one who has studied a general handbook but had no driving practice.
Are we surprised that fifty-three years after such acute warnings were studiously ignored, schools in the West today have “lessons” in masturbation taught to kids in the six - ten age bracket?
This was clearly no accident but the planned outcome of a diabolical operation.
To be continued
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