Before me stood a youth. `Who are you?" said I. He answered, "I'm a seeker of the spirit. " I said, "How is it your forehead is lined with worry?" He said, - Because of the many complications that have arisen in my search." I said, `Spiritual science is the way to resolve all complications. Why should the seeker of the spirit be caught `m contradiction? Why should worry ever sit on his visage? This is not right It is a fact, nevertheless, `, he said, `I entered this field in order to resolve my confusion, but I find myself all the more confused." I then asked, "How did it come about?" He said, `I have been a student of science. I entered the spiritual field with the hope that my life would become more interesting and beautiful. But as I read one tome after another, I found myself submerged in drab particulars. I found these tomes full of monotonous exhortations. I read Uttaradhyayan, which said, "Beware of taking rich foods!" I read Mahabharata, the burden of whose song is that a yogi's power derives itself from ascetism, from taking insipid foods. I read Mahatma Gandhi, who repeatedly lays stress on renunciation of tasty foods.

I thought that Manonushasanam is a new book, a book of modern times and I hoped to find in it the optimistic note of a happier living, the secret of a vigorous and adventurous life. I therefore read it with concentrated attention. However, the burden of this book was no different. It also emphasized the importance of not being absorbed by the temptations of the senses; it also laid stress on sense purification. After food-purification, one must seek to purify the senses, it said. In thus emphasizing the discipline of the senses, all the religious books grow to be monotonous, and because of this monotony I am quite fed up with spiritualism itself I came here to resolve my problems, but I find myself caught in never problems. I want a life, which is altogether problem less, a life in which there is vigour, enthusiasm and joy. For today's youth, ascetism is quite outdated. In the modern world of scientific progress, renunciation is totally unacceptable. "Don't see; don't hear; don't cat; don't drink; don't speak; don't touch or smell; don't do this or that! This negativism has extracted all juice out of life and has rendered it tasteless; life has become dry like the juiceless husk of sugarcane. The sayings of the spiritual masters have left me in utter despair. And you ask, Why these creases on your brow? Why these signs of confusion on your face? What else do you expect? Will not inner complexities come to the fore? This entrance into the world of spiritualism has caused me great anguish. All my expectations have been frustrated; all my fond hopes lie buried. What more shall I say? Will you kindly show me the way?" I said, -"Dear sir, why get so entangled?

Since it causes you so much anguish, why not let go spiritualism, give it up entirely? Just as a snake casts off its skin, you could also bid good-bye to spiritualism forever." He protested, "How can that be? I cannot abandon it either it was the realisation of the insipidity of all material enjoyments which pushed me into the field of spiritualism. If I give this up, where do I stand? I can't go back to where I came from. Material things give me no lasting pleasure. On the contrary, they are a source of deep mental disquiet. Driven by inner dissatisfactions, I came to the spiritual field in search of peace. But I have not found peace. So, both the material and the spiritual world have failed me What am I to do?" I said, `you don't understand! Neither spiritualism, nor Uttaradhyayan, nor Mahabharata, nor Manonushasanam. To understand is not easy. Without experience, without tradition, nothing is intelligible. A participant in one of the dhyana-shivirs (meditation camps) told me how he had been practising meditation on his own for the last two years. But he had not achieved anything However, ten days of dhyana-process in the camp made all the difference: he began to feel that something was happening Which goes to prove that understanding does not come of itself; there is a method to it. Without the key, the lock would not open. In an Ayurvedic book I read about some ways of cooling water. One of these was the technique of cooling water through the use of a piece of cloth. ` "If water is strained through a piece of cloth, it gets cooler," it said. I was surprised to read this and knew at once that the translator had made a queer mistake. The translation was faulty because the translator was not acquainted with the technique. We, the munis, (monks) are acquainted with it.

During hot summers travelling under a scorching sun, we get only warm water, which we are obliged to cool before we can drink it. And it is possible to make this warm water almost ice cold. One might strain water through a piece of cloth twenty times (as given by the translator) ` it would get no cooler. The real technique of cooling is this: take a vessel full of warm water. Dip a piece of cloth in it. Fold this piece of cloth once or twice. Catch hold of it by its two corners and dip it into the water; then bring it up; dip it again, and bring it up again, and so on until the water gets cool to the required degree. The water is siphoned out by the cloth and is cooled by evaporation. Another method is to keep the vessel full of warm water on a higher level. A strip of cloth is put into this water, with one end of the strip left hanging into an empty vessel below. Through this strip, the water from the upper vessel would fall drop by drop into the vessel below. The strip of cloth would be subject to the action of evaporation and the water in being strained from the top to the lower vessel would get cooler. That is the technique of cooling water through a strip of cloth.

However learned the speaker may be, the responsibility of understanding what he says lies on the bearer, on how thoroughly the listener grasps what the learned speaker is saying. Many people think, "The Gita contains Lord Krishna's utterance, and we know it. Dhampad contains Lord Buddha's sayings, and we know these. Or Uttaradhyayan contains Lord Mahavir's speech, and we understand it." The important thing for the moment is not what Lord Krishna, Lord Buddha or Lord Mahavir has said, but how deeply does a particular reader understand the Lord's saying. If even the words of the text are not fully intelligible, how is one to grasp their hidden meaning. So, innumerable wrong interpretations are the consequence. In the spiritual field too, this kind of misinterpretation goes on. Spiritual truths come to be most flagrantly twisted, and a great deal of experimentation is based upon these distorted versions. Because of these distortions, the spiritual texts appear to be uninteresting and dull. For spiritualism itself never makes for a dull life. On the contrary, it is spiritualism alone that brings to the fore life's profound significance. No other way except spiritualism can make life endlessly fascinating. All material pleasures are transitory. They last for a little while and ultimately wither away. Take for instance spicy food in hot weather. After consuming it, one feels thirsty. And the first glass of water tastes ambrosial. With the second glass, the keenness of the thirst is much lessened and the taste of water is not so sweet as before. A third glass of water results in complete extinction of thirst. Any further consumption causes nausea; now water has no taste. Why fill the belly with such tasteless stuff? No more, please!

From the first to the last, the taste of water undergoes a gradual transformation. As the thirst gets slaked, water appears to be more and more insipid, till its utility is reduced to a vanishing point. That is the characteristic of all material things. At first, a thing gives great pleasure. Its progressive use, however, renders it less and less sweet. And this is the case not only with water and food, but also with clothes and other things as well. If we go into this characteristic attribute of things we shall find that the joy a particular matter gives us for the first time is never repeated, whether it is marriage, or union with a friend, or any other kind of relationship. In order to ensure a rupture between two friends, force them to live together! The nearer to each other they live. The farther shall they drift? The farther they keep, the more enduring their affection for each other would be.

Even the husband and the wife who live always together, lose affection for each other. The members of a joint family, who live in a limited space, seldom love one another. Their love for one another undergoes strange vicissitudes. Now it seems very deep, the next moment it is just not there. The relationship with a friend, with the beloved - all demand the maintenance of a particular distance. If the requisite distance is maintained, love continues otherwise it diminishes. The nearer in vicinity, the greater the disenchantment and the consequent rupture. Friendship cools down. Does the accumulation of material things make life joyful?. Never.
Everything gives us a taste of pleasure for the first time. With the passage of time, however, that pleasure evaporates. In the course of time the staleness of custom would lower the value of any position, however much prizec in the beginning. There was a monk. His fame grew far and wide ill it reached the king's ears. The king invited the monk to his Palace. The monk went there and sat on a wooden dais. In the course of his talk with the king, the monk said, "Sir, the most valuable thing in life is the soul." The king, being an atheist, was surprised to hear this. He objected, "How can that be? The soul is something, which cannot be seen. It has no shape or form; it has no tangibility, and matter alone is valuable." The monk said, "Sir, if the soul has no value, do you consider your own empire to be valuable?" The king replied with contemptuous laughter, `Yes, Sir, my kingdom is of great value. Do you not see the magnificence in which I live? My palace and my treasury- how full they are! All people desire what I have. They think that to be a king is something highly estimable. You will hardly find a man "ho does not want to be a king. If it were not valuable, would men desire it?" The monk said, `All your kingdom is not worth more than two glasses of water. So how can it be considered valuable?" "Worthy Sir, explain yourself." "Well, Sir, imagine you go out to a forest on a hunting trip. You lose your way. It is daytime. Terribly hot! You feel thirsty- terrible thirst! If you do not get water, you die. Here is a question of life and death. At such a time, if someone were to offer you a glass of water, how would you reward him?" "O, Sir, I would offer him one half of my kingdom." "Well, Sir, now imagine because of extreme heat, your urine-duct is blocked, causing you intense, intolerable pain, to the extent that you feel you are going to expire. If at that time, an expert physician were to mix some life-saving drug in a glass of water and offer it to you, what would you give him?" "Sir, I'll give half of my kingdom to this life-saver. After all, what is a kingdom as compared to life itself?" "So, you see Sir, your kingdom is not worth more than two glasses of water. That is not much, is it? One half of your kingdom goes in exchange for a glass of water to be let in; the other half goes in exchange for a glass of water to be let out. The whole kingdom gone for two glasses of water!"