The war-drum beats. Any moment now the fighting may begin. The immortal sons of the earth are marching forward, torch in hand, toward the smoldering fire. They will not stop till everything is massacred. No death, no pain, no tears, no pleas can turn them from their course. They are bent on their desires. Have they dried-up their hearts? Are none willing to hear the call?-
“Immortal sons of earth! Men of heaven!
Hear me, hear me ! I have seen the lustrous man
Who is above this worldly game.
To know him is to be deathless-
our way to immortality.” -Setaswar Rishi.
Where is that lustrous man? He is very close. Noone is closer than he. There is no need to seek him in the church, mosque, temple or solitary wood. He is in the mind of man. How to realize him? The same Rishi that said the above has answered :
“As the oil of sesame comes out
by crushing the seed,
As ghee comes out by churning curd,
As water comes out by digging the earth,
and as fire comes out of the rubbed stones,
So men can realize that lustrous one
by meditation and self-control.”
– Setaswar Rishi
The second world war is going on. Already it has engulfed Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is in Australia’s backyard. So far America has escaped, but the United States is willing for a fight. Seven big countries are in battle; perhaps the world has never seen the like before. People know who have made the war, but they don’t know who will make the peace. Have they not a right to know how love, peace, broad-mindedness, purity will come? Do they not long for eternal becoming? Do they not like to be immortal sons, as the upanishad called them?
Why the war? Is it the Versailles Treaty and the placement of Danzig in the Polish corridor? Is it the reaction of small countries to the man-handling of them by big ones? Who will say?
War is due to complex. The craving for worldly power is complex, and it grows by and by. The evil things in men’s minds are stored away and heaped up with the years until they burst out in war.
Millions of people have already died. The report is that five million Russians and nine million Germans have died so far. The Russian ambassador in London has disclosed that on an average 7,000 Russians die every day. How severely cruel war is! The heart fails to contemplate it. We have heard that Verdun was greater than Smolensk. Now we hear that Stalingrad has seen more dead than Verdun. And these are not all. There have been more, plenty more, in our history. Were there not battles in China, Libya, and the Solomon Islands? Did we want them? Were there not naval clashes in the Mediterranean, Pacific, and Atlantic? Did we want to destroy our created ports, mills, factories, railways, palaces, crops and theatres? All that we build we destroy. We witness the ruins in the Philippines, Malaya, Burma, Europe, China, Russia, and where not?
We suppose our lives became barren for lack of love, affection, and duty, and were swallowed up by anger and malice. Is it so? But did we not want to live? And do we not have such feelings in our heart that all evil things there can be broken in a trice? We have such strength, We have more. The bomb has an incalculable strength. but we have more in our minds. And this strength does not want to do evil; it wants being and becoming; it wants to roam from fine to finer and be immortal because it has sprung from the immortal.
Is there any man in the world who can give us peace? Is there anyone to guide us and make us kind- hearted? Can anyone say, ‘I have seen the man who is above all darkness, who is untinged with worldly affairs.?” If you have a urge for him, you can have him. He will come to you. Until you wish for peace, it will not come to you.