714 THE SCIENCE OF SELF-REALIZATION
homage to the feet of the Acadryadeva will enable us to be favored with
the capacity for assimilating the transcendental knowledge so kindly
transmitted by him to all persons, without distinction.

Gentlemen, we are all more or less proud of our past Indian civiliza-
tion, but we actually do not know the real nature of that civilization. We
cannot be proud of our past material civilization, which is now a thou-
sand times greater than in days gone by. It is said that we are passing
through the age of darkness, the Kali-yuga. What is this darkness? The
darkness cannot be due to backwardness in material knowledge, because
we now have more of it than formerly. If not we ourselves, our neighbors
at any rate have plenty of it. Therefore, we must conclude that the dark-
ness of the present age is not due to a lack of material advancement, but
that we have lost the clue to our spiritual advancement, which is the

, prime necessity of human life and the criterion of the highest type of
human civilization. Throwing of bombs from airplanes is no advance-
; ment of civilization from the primitive, uncivilized practice of dropping
big stones on the heads of enemies from the tops of hills. Improvement
of the art of killing our neighbors by means of machine guns and
poisonous gases is certainly no advancement from primitive barbarism,
which prided itself on its art of killing by bows and arrows. Nor does the
development of a sense of pampered selfishness prove anything more
than intellectual animalism. True human civilization is very different
from all these states, and therefore in the Katha Upanisad {1.3.14] there
is the emphatic call:
uttisthata jdgrata
prapya varan nibodhata
ksurasya dhara nisita duratyaya
durgam pathas tat kavayo vadanti
“*Please wake up and try to understand the boon which you now have in
this human form of life. The path of spiritual realization is very difficult;
it is sharp like a razor’s edge. That is the opinion of learned transcenden-
tal scholars.”

Thus, while others were yet in the womb of historical oblivion, the
sages of India had developed a different kind of civilization, which
enabled them to know themselves. They had discovered that we are not
at all material entities, but that we are all spiritual, permanent, and in-
destructible servants of the Absolute. But because we have, against our
