Meditation
The article: Meditation
Chapter 3
Material science cannot give people primary help in their mental crises
However divine the benefits given to people by material science, these benefits have not been able to achieve such phenomena as could stabilise and secure for mankind an existence free from ill health and sorrow, just as they have not been able to free mankind from the hell and terror of war, the processes of death and mutilation. Indeed, materialistic science actually supports and stabilises the capacity for war by increasing people's ability to kill and destroy with its many ingenious murder-machines, rockets and nuclear weapons. Is the world not studded with reactor plants and nuclear weapons installations? They know nothing of the living spirit existing behind all living beings. They reckon only on the physical body and believe that this constitutes the living being. Many people of this century have therefore no real spiritual anchorage. They have more or less abandoned Christianity, which was previously their spiritual anchorage. They deny the very Godhead and, by and large, everything spiritual. They cannot therefore experience any really perfectly stable life. They experience ill health not only in their physical body but also to a great extent in their spiritual or mental structure. They may be haunted by grief, melancholy, depression, jealousy and envy. They may hate or feel vindictive towards those whom they consider to blame for their misfortunes. Likewise, they may have great misgivings about the future, or the next day. They may have religious scruples or crises. They may have pangs of conscience. It is no help in any of these situations that one is a great materialistic scientist. Nor is it helpful in these mental crises if one knows the speed of light or the orbit of the earth in space. Nor is it helpful if one has great knowledge about atoms or other micro-areas. Nor is it helpful when faced with people's unfortunate fates if one knows the distance to the sun and the moon. Nor can material science remove the fear that almost all people have of death. We see here that it is not enough to have great knowledge about material, inanimate things, machines, devices and instruments to help with material life. They cannot possibly free people from their mental suffering. And as long as people find themselves in this unfinished condition, then ill health, wars, unnatural death, hatred and hostility, persecution and slander will be more or less prevailing phenomena in their daily lives.