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Then there was a period of intellectual abuse. The Intellect of man
tried to get a supremacy over the established order of things: Ravana
sought to make Nature subservient to his own purposes. The uni-
verse existed for man, and not man for nature. This was the perverse
idea that guided the people of the Atlantean Continent. The intel-
lectual giants, maddened by this material grandeur, did not look
for any world beyond the one they lived in. They cared not for
Svarga, nor for the sacrifices that led to Svarga. The flow of evolu-
tion, the breath of fshvara seemed to stand still for a time as it were.
The human will tried to override the divine will. There was chaos
and disorder, which tended to cause dissolution in the universe.
Hence R^vana was a Rakshasa. The TSmasic Kumbhakarna with
his six-monthly sleep was the back ground of Ravana.
The spiritual forces that were called forth to put an end to this
state of things were equal to the occasion. The great Atlantean Con-
tinent was washed away by the sea. The sacred Ganga came rushing
forward from the heights of the Himalayas, and eventually R^ma ap-
peared to give a finishing stroke to the evolutionary work of the time.
Vishv ??mitra and others had paved the way for the great work
undertaken by R ??ma. They propounded the Karma Knda of the
Vedas.
Men who knew nothing but the joys and sorrows of this short
span of earthly life, and whose ideas and aspirations were all confined
to that life, made a great advance when they were taught of an existence
after death. When they further knew that life in Svarga was infi-
nitely happier and far more lasting than what they called life on this
earth, they made the beginning of a really spiritual life. The Vedic
Devas are permanent dwellers in Svarga, and the Vedic Sacrifices
establish communion with them by means of Apurva, a spiritual force
generated by the performance of sacrifices, and life in Svarga becomes
prolonged for a very very long period. People took time to under-
stand this truth, but in time they accepted the performance of Vedic
Sacrifices as the only religion for man.
There was however a re-action. The intellectual giants, called
Rakshasas, looked down upon Vedic Sacrifices, and they did not care for
any life after death. They were the worst enemies of the Vedic Rishis.
Vishv^mitra took the help of Rclma in protecting the Rishis in
the peaceful performance of Yajnas:
But people had grown old in their ideas about Vedic sacrifices.
The first seceders were some Kshatriyas. They did not understand
why Vedic Sacrifices should be the monopoly of Brahmanas, and
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