Once society abandons the concept of śabda — revealed truth — everything becomes relative.

In the Vedic view, truth is not manufactured by human intellect or social consensus; it is received from higher, realized authority — guru, sādhu, and śāstra.
In the modern view, truth is something to be constructed, negotiated, or even manipulated by power.

Now that media and AI can fabricate anything — voices, faces, even memories — our pramāṇa (means of knowing or ascertaining truth) collapses.
The result? Mass confusion, cynicism, and an inability to discern the real from the unreal — the textbook definition of māyā.

The Machinery of Desire

Add to that the excesses of capitalism.
Capitalism itself isn’t inherently evil, but when fueled by human greed, it easily becomes distorted. When profit must endlessly grow while natural human needs stay relatively stable, the system starts manufacturing wants.

Thus, propaganda becomes not an accident but a necessity.
If your society runs on consumption, you must keep people desiring endlessly.

The more the senses are artificially stimulated, the duller the ātmā-buddhi (the soul’s intelligence) becomes.
Modern technologies — algorithms, ads, entertainment, even social media — are now optimized to hijack the jīva’s innate rasa-seeking impulse and redirect it toward material substitutes.

At some point, the requirements of big business cross from being merely annoying (“innocent” TV ads) into shaping the very structure of society.
Enter lobbying, compromised governments, and citizens who feel powerless — because in truth, they are.
Their desires no longer align with what the powerful want them to want, yet they also don’t know what else to desire — not until we reconnect with śabda-brahman, the eternal source of guidance and purpose.

Sound familiar?

Rediscovering Śabda — The Word as Light

Let’s look at the possible solution hinted above.

What is śabda, revealed truth?

It is the Word of God — the original vibration from which meaning, reality, and order emanate.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
— John 1:1

śabdaḥ pramāṇam anādi-nidhanatvāt
“Sound is a means of valid knowledge, being beginningless and eternal.”

In other words, śabda is like the user manual from the manufacturer.
Few care to read it — until something breaks.
Then, suddenly, it becomes essential.

The Vedic knowledge works the same way. Humanity faces countless problems, and while many individuals intuitively turn to prayer or faith, collectively we still hope to “figure it out” on our own — without consulting the manual.

The Problem with Human Knowledge

Humans are prone to error.
Even with the best intentions, our perception is limited, our motives mixed, and our understanding incomplete.
We sincerely try to make life better — that joy-seeking drive in us is natural — yet, being imperfect, we fix one problem only to create two new ones.

Just look around:

• Plastic solved packaging and hygiene problems — and gave us oceans filled with microplastics, infiltrating even unborn children.
• Antibiotics saved millions of lives — and spawned resistant “superbugs” that now threaten modern medicine.
• Social media promised connection — and left society lonelier, more anxious, and divided than ever.
• AI offers convenience — yet it blurs reality itself, making truth a matter of algorithmic consensus.

Our cleverness outpaces our wisdom.

Human, empirical knowledge is therefore faulty.
The Vedas, on the other hand, are apauruṣeya — “not of human origin.”
They are believed — and experienced — to be of divine origin.

And yes, belief is the key word here. Faith is built into the design of this world. God gives us everything we need — sunlight, air, water, knowledge — but He does so indirectly. He remains hidden, giving us space to choose whether to turn toward or away from Him.
Because love must be a choice; if it were forced, it would not be love but manipulation.

Thus, divine knowledge doesn’t impose itself. It waits to be wanted.

When Knowledge Became a Book

For thousands of years — until quite recently by world-historical measure — Vedic knowledge wasn’t written down.
People had strong memories and, more importantly, purified hearts. They could hear a truth once, realize it, and pass it on with full integrity to a qualified listener.

There was a reason for this.
When knowledge is passed by śruti — direct aural transmission — the teacher (guru) knows exactly how much the disciple is ready to receive.
When written down, knowledge becomes publicly accessible — and thus vulnerable to misunderstanding and misuse.

That’s why what we mostly deal with today is information, not knowledge in the Vedic sense.
True knowledge (vidyā) transforms consciousness. It changes who we are.

Brahmā heard the sound “Oṁ” — and created the universe.
Arjuna heard the Bhagavad-gītā — and found perfect clarity of identity, duty, and purpose.

Such transmission depends on two things:

• the realization and purity of the speaker, and
• the receptivity of the listener.

When both are aligned, divine knowledge descends — it’s not fabricated.

The Trident of Truth

In Kali-yuga, people’s memories and inner receptivity are weak, so the scriptures were mercifully written down. Yet the original system still holds:
Truth is confirmed by at least two of the three — guru, sādhu, and śāstra.
That harmony is called pramāṇa — the means of knowing truth.

A book alone may leave room for speculation.
A teacher alone can err without scriptural grounding.

The sādhu principle bridges the two. A sādhu is not just a kind person or a moral leader — but one who has realized the knowledge in their own heart through practice and divine grace. Such a person can reconcile the “book” knowledge with living experience and demonstrate how eternal truths apply in the shifting realities of life.

Not all sādhus are the same — just as lamps vary in brightness, each carries different depth and realization — yet all draw from the same divine current of śabda. When a genuine guru is present, he or she represents this living current directly, transmitting knowledge as it has descended through an unbroken paramparā (disciplic succession).

This lineage still flows today, unchanged through thousands of years — from Lord Brahmā himself down through great teachers like Madhvācārya, Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, and their followers in the Brahma–Madhva–Gaudiya sampradāya.

Thus, śabda remains alive — not frozen in scripture, but breathing through realized souls who live and share it.

Closing Thought

Perhaps humanity’s crisis today isn’t just political, economic, or technological.
It’s epistemic — a crisis of knowing.
We’ve lost the tuning fork that tells us when something rings true.

The Vedic system offers a way back — not by rejecting reason or progress, but by restoring revelation to its rightful place at the top of the hierarchy of knowledge.

When the Word is forgotten, the world unravels.
When the Word is heard again, everything finds its harmony.