Family and Nation

Author(s): Mahapragna Acharya, A P J Abdulkalam
Publisher: Harper Publications India

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THE FAMILY AND THE NATION
and Ares. According to Empedocles, all matter periodically contracts and expands. Under the power of Love, everything unites until there is only The One-a divine and homogeneous sphere. Then the sphere dissolves under the rising power of Strife and the world is established in a series of stages until it reaches a state of complete dissolution. History then reverses itself, and the Universe gradually returns to the state of the irreducible sphere. This cosmic cycle rolls on repeatedly without beginning and without end.
The search for God was abandoned and humanity pressed forward on a new road called need. At the end of this road lay power and wealth. Those who did not desire these things and chose to search for something greater were blinded by religion and forced to believe in a God of man's own creationa God personified with the best and worst of human traits and emotions. This was a God who was capable of love, but was equally capable of hate, judgment, condemnation, need, and desire. As these civilizations began to grow and conquer one another, they began to separate themselves from the Earth as well. There were no more thanks for bountiful harvests or a sense of reverence for the Earth or for the spirits of Nature. Oil was greedily sucked out from the depths of the Earth to fuel purposeless wandering. Man took but no longer gave.
History is full of instances when people connected to the land were destroyed with swords. Thousands of native cultures were lost to time in this pursuit of power, wealth and glory. Cultures which revered the land and lived in harmony with the Earth were destroyed with callous disregard for their ways of life. These were people who understood that they were linked to the land and if one was affected by suffering, pain or death, it inevitably affected the other. They understood and respected this age-old symbiotic relationship. But this sacred knowledge was all but lost through the centuries. The