At the present moment you have excommunicated ethics and murdered morality in the name of modernism. Fraud and falsehood have acquired the status of fashionable fine-arts. People make out a polished pretence of purity and truth but there remains just a travesty. Fraud flourishes in all the four quarters of the globe. Politics has degenerated into a mere game of fraud. Broken pledges, discarded promises, dishonoured contracts once solemnly made, hypocritical avowals and assertions, and deliberately misleading and falsified statements—these are the kind that you meet with everywhere you turn.

Enter a house, talk to the family therein and enquire about its affairs; then this will be the story you will hear. Analyse the internal affairs of a nation; then too the same story greets your ears. And behold the state of international affairs in this world; once again a similar tale you hear.

Therefore I emphasise upon these two great ideals—the sublime ideal of Purity and the lofty ideal of Truth. Sri Rama was the embodiment of both. The entire Ramayana was the outcome of his burning desire to uphold the promise of his father made to Kaikeyi, the queen. An illustrious prince, Sri Rama voluntarily subjected himself to untold hardships for fourteen years of forest life amidst fierce beasts and Asuras just to keep up a promise, and that too, a promise not made or given by him but by another even before he was born. What an ideal of highest purity is his life-long vow of Eka Patnivrata. How dire is the need now of adopting this ideal in life when the solemn contract of sacred matrimony and its sanctity are outraged and scandalised all over the world.

Ramayana is permeated with the spirit of these two ideals. Dasaratha sticks to truth even though it costs him his very life. Grief breaks his heart and shatters his body to death, yet the word to Kaikeyi is kept. Then, take Sri Rama. He loves Bharata more than his life-breath—yet, having given his word to his step-mother, not even the most poignant entreaty of the beloved Bharata could make him deviate an inch from his resolve. What a proof of the strength of truth! In every man's heart should ring today the grand and most memorable declaration of Sri Rama "Fire may abandon its heat, ice its coolness, jasmine its fragrance, but I never break the promise made to my father."

Remember again the heroic adherence to truth that Bharata exemplifies with grand, superhuman resolution for fourteen tedious years. Bharata stuck to his lofty vow and to the little village of Nandi­gram, bowing with folded hands and bent head before the royal sandals of Sri Rama. And at the end of the period, had but Sri Rama delayed a moment more, then true to his word, Bharata would have cast himself into the burning pit of a blazing fire. Such is the stuff of Truth—Truth that makes man immortal. And this precious human body is given to thee to strive to attain immortality. Therefore, blessed selves, embrace this Truth and inherit the life immortal.

Then comes the marvellous fidelity of Sita in the grove of the Asokavana! What unforgettable adher­ence to the vow once taken! What adamantine steadiness in the midst of the severest trials and temptations! How Ravana tempted Sita, how he tries to convince her that Sri Rama is dead even by producing an exact likeness of his severed head before the shocked and agonised gaze of Sita. But all through this we note the unwavering constancy of Sita. She was Truth personified. For what is Pativrata if not being absolutely true to one's chosen Lord. And such truth is indeed of the very form of the highest Purity.

Therefore, blessed selves, men and women, young and old, great and small, O ye Adhyatmic warriors, all take up this trident of Truth with its threefold prongs of truthful thought, speech and deed! Deal the death-blow to all untruth and falsehood with this invincible weapon of Truth. This is the Maha Astra, the real Rama-Bana that I give unto you today.