Only when the ‘thought’ is compartmentalized into graded layers of reality, sub-realities, pseudo spirituality, religions, creeds, sects, Matts (sectarian religious seats, segregated from the mother religions) ), and Gurudom or in so many other nomenclatures, the value of components gets degraded and derided at. Whenever or wherever, the balance between ‘thought’ and matter is in equilibrium, the society becomes an ideal state, which gives rise to a flourishing civilization. But that equilibrium is very sensitive and always tilts in favor of the matter and materialism. Though matter can never be exclusive of ‘thought’, as it is through ‘thought’ that the matter gets itself transformed from inorganic to organic, and from inert to live! Again it is through ‘thought’, that the material progress is attained. But a willful distinction is made between the two as if the ‘body’ can survive without ‘life’!
The cause or causes that lead to the fall of a civilization becomes the subject matter of the so-called historians, anthropologists, scholars, littérateurs or the modern Janis. Lust, greed, power, indolence, corruption, violence, war, internal strife, declining values, immortality---are some of the prognosis through which these experts find their escape routes. This is very hypothetical proposition, which is, in itself a contradiction. To make a man civilized is to bring him out of barbarism – to enlighten, to refine him. This transformation is not brought within months or years. From the cave man to today’s ‘civilized’ (!) man, it took many eras. Similarly each civilization went through the same process. The very factors which labeled man as barbaric and had gradually been shed off, through the regimentation of a system that made him civilized, can’t be the cause of his downfall! Or perhaps, some genes of his barbaric past are still left in him, which remain in hibernation and sprout only at a time, when their supporting factors are in their best of elements! Or the man is still uncivilized: as since the recorded history he has fought over 5500 major wars and in the process, might have butchered hundred of billions of his kin. Only during the last two world wars some hundred million people were killed. Thus the above prognosis is too preposterous.
The present-day’s man is considered an epitome of his creed; highly advanced, not only in scientific and technological fields, but also in every branch of nature. Even other planets in the solar system are now within his reach. He is on the threshold of establishing his suzerainty on the far off planets. He is on the verge of---as he proclaims, discovering the basic cell and the particles, which ushered life and the Creation. Thus the ingredients that made him civilized cannot be laid latent in a trice and replaced with those baser traits, from which it took him aeons to emerge, and again behave and deport like a barbarian.
There is not a single instance in history, when material advancement was at its peak and ‘thought’ enlightenment was lagging behind, or vice versa. If it is not out of context to state here, the genesis of each civilization is primarily the ‘thought’, though its maturity into a full blooming civilization takes thousands of years. Anthropologists and historians may find archeological relics, ancient ruins, artifacts, as easy material for the study of a civilization’s real worth. However actual parameters that determine the real worth is not the material affluence---which anyway is the obvious outcome---but the legacy that each subsequent civilization inherits from the preceding one. It is this legacy that is the interlinking factor, which besides acting, as a bridge passes on its heritage to the succeeding age; which in due course also evolves into another civilization. This inheritance is in the form of literature. Literature here does not represent one branch of knowledge, but the sum total of intelligence of a period of history, which is composite of all aspects of the civilization!..............cont
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