High Thinking

There is no end to the wants of man. They go on multiplying. The entire effort of man, therefore, is directed towards the satisfaction of these wants. The result is that the common man remains common and has not the time or the energy to devote to the higher pursuits which make the world better and happier.

Who has not heard of the story of Newton, the greatest mathematical genius of the 17th century the man who in five years gave more to the world than what others gave in a life time of theory of gravitation, the composition of light, the differential calculus, work that revolutionized the thought of mankind. And this man of high thinking lived in a modest dwelling and on a very humble fare. He would sometimes miss his meal and not know it; such was his absorption in high thinking.

Lincoln was the great American President who welded the states into the single entity know as the United States of America. He succeeded in the almost impossible task of abolition of slavery. But during several years of his President ship he wore the same coat that he had used when he was a barrister some ten years before.

And in our own days Gandhi, the naked fakir, carried on the tradition of simple living and high thinking. He lived the life of a mendicant but such was his influence that he shook the foundations of a mighty empire.

Simple Living & High Thinking

There is no end to the wants of man. They go on multiplying. The entire effort of man, therefore, is directed towards the satisfaction of these wants. The result is that the common man remains common and has not the time or the energy to devote to the higher pursuits which make the world better and happier. He takes more out of the world than he could give.

It is not these common men, preoccupied with their daily routine of existence who have changed the face of the earth. That credit goes to men like Socrates, Christs, Gandhi, St. Augustin, Newton, Lincoln and Einstein who believed in simple living and high thinking. These people reduced their wants to the minimum so that they should devote themselves better to the pursuit of the noble task in hand. Dressed in a loose flowing simple garment, Socrates would go about the streets of Athens, questioning young men on the problems of the day and in so doing influencing their views and judgments. But this simple looking noble man became a terror to the government of the day. His dialogues were so forceful that the government of the day. His dialogues were so forceful that the government of the day manoeuvred his death. He died but his thought still lives to influence us.