Mystic Mantra: The power of conscience

The modern man has all the affluence and luxuries of life, has surrounded himself with the most sophisticated gadgets to build a world as dazzling as that of Aladdin and his genies. But loneliness and despair continue to gnaw his heart. To remember Goethe: “Epochs of faith are epochs of fruitfulness but epochs of unbelief, however, glittering, are barren of all permanent good.” What other force on earth, except faith, could restore to man his precious sanity?

Tolstoy says there are two principles that work in a person. They are the law of love and the law of aggression. The law of love is present in each of us. It is possible to reach out for it in others. Equally present in man, but not certainly as hard as the other, is the law of aggression. By extension, man is carrier of dual attributes: wild passions so characteristic of animals and noble impulses attributable to angels. These two divergent traits and urges can seldom be fully reconciled; but we find in our lives, the combined spirit always ministers to assist in subjecting the flesh more and more to the power of the spirit if our conscience is pure and virgin.

Norman Cousins reckoned: “The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.” It is only when we plumb the depths of our spiritual aquifers that we get the power to weld these discordant traits into a coherent blueprint and allow our spiritual and moral personality to prevail. Till then we have to keep reconciling to the devilish instincts of man that are wreaking havoc on civilisation.”