Creation and Criticism

Swami Mukundananda writes: “Certainly, there is no purifier in this world like knowledge. He who is himself perfected in YOGA finds it in the Self in time.”

Knowledge is power. It is a purifier which purifies a human being from within. It removes the darkness and brings light. Accumulating facts is not the true knowledge. There is no pleasure in living if one devotes his life only in accumulation of facts. A. G. Gardener believes that “the pleasure of living is in healthy feeling rather than in the accumulation of facts.” Knowledge leads to wisdom and makes man better for living life for self and for others. What he gets as a part of knowledge is useless and worthless if it is not used for the society. Knowledge, if it is gained with the right intention and for the right purpose, makes him a fruitful citizen for the society, the nation and the world. The National Education Policy 2020 is designed with this intention. Its proper application will decide its future. Future is in the hands of gurus and teachers who have to guide students and show them the right path which certainly is not to make them merely successful persons, but to make them successful human beings. The balance of materialism and spiritualism is the need of the hour. True yoga is to develop knowledge in every student so that he may develop an understanding of life.

Knowledge leads to the path of understanding, not to the path of facts. It purifies and connects a man with self, family, society, world, and the Divine. A man comes in the world to go. Between ‘come’ and ‘go’ lies life. The world remembers only those who play their roles on the stage of life successfully and creatively. Jayanta Mahapatra, the Sahitya Akademi award winner for Relationship, is one of them. Death took him away to his kingdom on 27 August, 2023 from this world. In his later life, he also realises that true knowledge is neither in living in the past nor in the future but living in the present. He writes in a poem “A Self Portrait” which appears in his poetry collection Hesitant Light:

I was torn between

the desire to know, and fear of knowing.

I didn’t realize I had to live in the future

in order to face the sleepless nights of the present. (38)

Dear friends, it is the high time for all including creative authors, researchers and critics who can perform their pious duties in spreading the light of knowledge everywhere.

All the best!

Happy reading…

Sudhir K Arora

Editor-in-Chief