"Is Ignorance really bliss?" (Part 5): Essay on VII.15 of Bhagavath-gita

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(Continued from Part 4)

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Type 3: "mAyaya-apahruta-gnyAna"

 

The 3rd type of Ignorant Man is

"mAyaya-apahruta-gnyAni". He is worse than the "mUda"

or the "narAdhama". If Ignorance is evil, as the Gita

tells us, and the "mUda" and "narAdhama" are victims

of such evil, then the "mAyaya-apahruta-gnyAna" is a

perpetrator of the same evil.

 

The "mAyaya-apahruta-gnyAni" (for convenience, let us

refer to him as "mpg") is a knowing man indeed --

often he is a deep thinker, an erudite intellectual,

an inspired ideologue, a gifted orator... Though the

"mpg" is a knowing man, the knowledge he possesses is

of a grievously flawed, even perverted kind. It is

knowledge that may be said to have been abducted by

("apahruta") or held hostage by the power of Delusion

("mAya"). Sri Ramanuja calls it "vipareeta-gnyAna" --

the product of a mind clouded by delusion... a mind

that has metamorphosed into a freak.

 

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What is delusion? When Ignorance goes around

masquerading as Truth, it is said to be Delusion. The

Deluded Man is very often successful in leading the

world at large into believing that his nescience is

great science.

 

History is full of instances of Deluded Man appearing

to be inspired, gifted, even prophetic... The ideas he

espoused had seemed so original, so different and

electrifying! The masses were simply swayed, and the

young especially were totally mesmerized by it all.

The Deluded Man, the "mpg", indeed, often entered upon

the stage of the world as some new messiah with a new

message that soon became a great new "-ism" taking the

world by storm...

 

When Karl Marx first propounded his great new ideology

of 'Communism' it took more than half the world

entirely by storm. For the next 100 odd years or so --

the better part of the 19th and 20th century --

millions of people in the world willingly replaced,

inside the shrine of their hearts, the Bible, Koran,

Torah or the Gita with a copy of "The Communist

Manifesto"! Marxism became a universal creed of the

masses -- the last word on Truth ever spoken on earth.

Communism became the new faith of the people. Its

system of philosophy was infallible and

all-comprehensive; its doctrines were so humane and

profound. At the core of this faith was the clear

conviction: "There is no God; God withers away and it

is the State that substitutes Him".

 

It seemed as though in Communism the world had finally

found a credo with answers to all the questions and

problems of life! It was the heady new 'religion' --

the new "vEda-sAstrA"! And so deeply indoctrinated

into this new 'religion' had the masses become, for

well over a century after Marx passed away,

generations of young men all across Europe, Russia,

Asia and Latin America, were easily led into believing

that all revealed religion was nothing but "opium of

the masses"; the church, the synagogoue, the temple

and mosque were all to be consigned to the dustbin of

history and forgotten forever...

 

Thereafter, there was much Marxian revolution in the

affairs of 20th-century Man... much more in number,

and far more socially convulsive, than any other ever

caused by older traditional religions such as Hinduism

or Buddhism... It took more than a century of

revolutions, strife, bloodshed and a terrible Cold-war

fought over three generations, before Prophet Marx was

found to have had feet of clay and that the Communist

God had failed, and failed badly too!

 

Sometimes it takes that long, and it takes that heavy

and tragic a toll on the world, before people even

begin to realize that some new "-ism", a so-called

'religion', is actually nothing but an ideology of the

Deluded, for the Deluded and by the Deluded... It is

nothing but empty, God-less religion... In other

words, it is nothing but "vipareeta-gnyAna" -- the

remarkable phrase of Sri Ramanujacharya describing the

real nature of "mAyaya-apahruta-gnyAna".

 

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(to be continued)

 

Regards,

 

dAsan,

Sudarshan

 

 

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