The Giants Who Fail Us

We should think that if we scrutinized the works of great writers, scientists and artists, they would help us conquer these miseries. But as we consult our great thinkers, we find they do not have the solution. Socrates, Shakespeare, Freud or the latest Nobel Prize winning scientists may be giants in their fields, but reading their works cannot free one from death or old age. Scientists, of course, are well-known for what they supposedly will do in the future. Those called gerontologists even profess to be on the verge of discovering how to stop aging and death. But according to a recent report in Newsweek, "they have not reached anything even resembling an elixir of youth." In any case, aside from hopes that some heroic scientist may rescue us from our problems, the miseries of birth, death, old age and disease have no solution. No one wants them, but no one is free from them,

Even humanity's greatest scientists and philosophers cannot solve the problems of life because everyone born into the material world is conditioned by four basic imperfections. First, we are prone to make mistakes-"to err is human." In India, for instance, Mahatma Gandhi was supposed to have been a very great person, but he too committed mistakes. Five minutes before he came to the meeting at which he was killed, his confidential associates warned him not to go, but nevertheless he persisted. Another imperfection is that we fall into illusion, mistaking one thing for another. We are also imperfect in that we are prone to cheat. For example, I must admit that I sometimes make mistakes and sometimes fall into illusion. But if nevertheless I write a book claiming to be the truth, is that not cheating? How can one subject to so many imperfections claim to be a teacher? And another imperfection is that we have limited senses. With our limited ears we can hear only a certain range of sounds, and with our eyes we observe the huge sun in the sky to be no bigger than a half dollar. These conditions of material nature, imposed upon one and all, limit man in his knowledge.