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Myths and legends have a speciality of
embellishment as well as a spiritedness which raises human feeling into a
visualisation of a blend of glory and power associated with the nature of human
instincts as well as the finer aspirations. There is an idealisation of a
perception of things as they ought to be, as far as the basic longings of man
are concerned, in which internalised ideal perception the mind seems to come in
direct contact with a kingdom of values, a world of heroes and divinities,
wherein idea finds its fulfilment. Take for instance the grand descriptions of
personages in the epics of both the East and the West. In every one of them the
authors make it their avowed objective to stimulate human feeling and
imagination to a point of perfection where the visualisation of the ideas so
portrayed lifts human thought from the frailties and limitations of earthly
possibilities and enables the mind to rove freely in that pictured world of
expected attainment. The gigantic strength of Rama which could with the
power of the toe of the feet lift and throw off the mountainous skeleton of a
dead demon, or his superhuman archery that could fell down seven trees
simultaneously with one arrow, apart from its diviner side of being able to
reach up even to the heavens by its flaming march; the intelligence-motivated
action of the discus of Krishna which could rush from Dvaraka to
Varanasi and return to Dvaraka after setting the city to flames, or his feat of
demonstrating the whole cosmos within himself several times during his life;
the wielding by Arjuna of such weapons as embody the invincibility of
gods as Brahma and Rudra; Homer's description of the charge of
the Greek heroes under the blessings of their Olympian gods in the Trojan war,
and the mystifying exploits of Ulysses during the Odyssey of his
return home; the bright and poignant descriptions of heaven and hell in Milton's
Paradise Lost; the journey through the three worlds of Inferno,
Purgatory and Paradise adumbrated by Dante; all illustrative of the
epic magnificence rooting itself in historical grounds and rising above the
circumstances of the earth to regions of the ruling gods, are not mythology in
the sense of substanceless conceptualisations, but portrayals of the deep
possibilities and profundities of which the human soul is capable and which
height of majesty and power and chivalry the soul is able to attain during its
sojourn in the region between the lowest earth and the highest kingdom of
heaven.
Superhuman picturisations which are the
content of epic and heroic poetry transmute and transform for the time being
the consciousness of man into the very substance of the vision that is
presented through the saga of such elevating poetry. Man is just what he thinks
and no thought of his can be merely a flight of empty imagination. There is no
thought or aspiration which cannot be fulfilled if only it is sincere and
strong enough, and the mythological glories of the epic personalities are
intended to foreshadow man's ascending achievements in the process of the
higher evolution of consciousness to the full expression of its inherent
potentialities. The myths of religion, therefore, constitute active meditations
of the religious consciousness on the higher realities of life, and even fables
and fairy tales which we enjoy in leisurely readings cannot be considered as
empty of some realistic content, because vacuous ideas cannot arise from the
mind, all ideas being ultimately rooted in a vivid or faint expression of some
degree or percentage of reality. This is the reason why stories with
superphysical significance and epic marches of gods on earth charge our
feelings, pull them out from the cave of their hibernation and cast them up
into the empyrean of ecstatic appreciation, creating deeper and deeper
empathies and unknown longings in the mind. The more these exploits are read or
heard, the more do they thrill. Their repeated narrations, which form the
festive pride of the nations where they have originated, have the power to
rebuild vigorously the national spirit of countries and reinforce the love of
their culture, as if epic, history and drama are the very diet of the hungering
spirit of mankind. Cultures would die if their heroes were not to live before
them as paragons not only of an eternal past but also of an eternal future and
a glorious present.
Ideas move the world. Thought precedes
every action. Events take place first in the realms above physical phenomena
and descend gradually through the layers of space-time to the earth of human
history, even as outer projects are manifestations of inner contemplations and
basic needs essential to human nature. Religion is a comprehensive grasp of all
reality in all its forms, degrees and stages effectively bridging the gulf
between man and Nature, and between Nature and God.
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