By Swami Chinmayananda

Wear and tear is natural for everything that is constantly in use. Even mountains must erode and crumble to the level of the earth as the fleeting steps of time march down its slopes. Not only gross substances in the outer world suffer thus from change but even our inner emotions must slowly decay. The law of diminishing utility in economics amply explains this phenomenon of erosion even in our mental life and this is not all.

Even the ideas and ideals have a knack of fading away as they wade through the dusty storms and tussles of history. What was conceived as a glorious tradition, as unquestionable faith, a perfect ideal, an incontrovertible theory, a scientific conclusion or a logical fact in the past, gets itself slowly spoilt to be a bundle of superstitions, a meaningless show, a dry exhibition, a purposeless belief, an idle hope or even a logical absurdity, in the context of the changed factors of more recent and modern times.

Cultural ideas in circulation are a religion, and from time to time a religion’s needs must change. They must put on fresh robes and reappear on the stage of life to serve mankind. But the values they preach are always the same, be they through text books written in Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit or Pali. These new arrivals were not destructive revolutions but they were only constructive revivals.