Living the inner life

By Mukul Sharma

Do we really need to know the private lives of the great or even very-well-known people? Consider, for instance, the allegation that Jesus Christ had an affair with Mary Magdalene. Author Dan Brown was not the only, or first, person to claim in his book The Da Vinci Code that the Son of God was not only married to Ms Magdalene but that their bloodline was still extant in France and organised amongst themselves to protect the secret.

Since the best-seller sold over 80 million copies and the film based on it grossed almost $750 million worldwide, we can say the question needs to be reframed as: do we really want to know the private lives of great people? The answer: a thundering yes. And the reason for that is the reigning caucus of the cause for which the great lived feel we shouldn’t. Fictive or not, we shouldn’t even be allowed to speculate on such things.

Similarly, consider Swami Vivekananda. Yes, he was a smoker from a very young age and although exhorted often enough later by peers and friends alike, was never able to kick the habit throughout his life. In time, he regarded his critics as such fanatics that he once gave alecture “On Fanaticism” where he declared, “Some think that if men gave up smoking cigars, the world would arrive at the millennium.” Yet, the prevailing understanding is this is not to be mentioned.

What the powers that always want to be don’t realise is things like the Sermon on the Mount or Vivekananda’s speech at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago aren’t instantly degraded by a knowledge of the lives of the men who made them.