As the population of the ancient cities rose, so great was the din that it kept Enlil awake all night. Exasperated, he convinced the gods to thin out the cities with a visitation of plague. Fortunately, a wise man named Utnapishtim or Atrahasis realized that everything was not well with the cities. He consulted Enki, the god of wisdom and the waters, and learnt about the impending disaster. Utnapishtim warned the other citizens, who responded by keeping quiet and propitiating Namtar, the plague god, with offerings. The measures were effective and the plague was averted.

Human memory, however, is short. The noise level rose again and this time Enlil ravaged the cities with drought. Enki bailed out the populace again by sending fish along the rivers and canals for people to feed upon. But when Enlil finally devastated the land with storm and flood, only the creatures that Utnapishtim had managed to take aboard a special ship survived.

Does the above tale sound familiar? It reminds us of Manu and Noah, for one. The existence of similar mythical matrices in different geographical locations and cultures points to our shared humanity. If we differ as individuals and as ethnic communities, we also share mental traits and ways of thinking, hopes and aspirations, beliefs and fears.

The predicament of the Mesopotamian cities is also uncannily our own: Noise pollution, drought, and flood; containment measures-both secular and religious-that are never quite adequate; and devastation, which only the wise, the prepared, and the lucky escape. This contemporaneity is the unique feature of Puranic myths. Though unimaginably old, they are ever new, pura api nava. The Ramayana tale was an old story even in ancient India; but listening to it, or seeing it enacted, is always a fresh experience.

Going through the Ramayana is not merely an aesthetic experience. True myths supply clues to our own nature, illumine the dark recesses of our mind harbouring desires and conflicts, bring interpersonal and inter-communal relations into focus-playing up the subtleties and tensions underlying human behaviour, and the ethics and casuistry underpinning it-provide access to spiritual verities, and hold up morals and ideals as no human preacher could do.

The ideal society of the Ramayana, Sister Nivedita points out, is based on dharma. In the society that Valmiki contemplates, 'the severity of social discipline increases towards the summit: those who have the greatest power must practise the greatest self-restraint, partly because of noblesse oblige, partly because such austere discipline is the necessary condition without which power would rapidly melt away'.

Over against this human world of the silver age is drawn the sinful and inhuman world of the rakshasas, where greed and lust and violence and deceit replace generosity and self-restraint and gentleness and truth. But these evil passions are outwardly directed against men and gods and all those who are, for the rakshasas, aliens: amongst themselves there are filial affection and the uttermost of wifely devotion, there are indomitable courage and the truest loyalty. The city of the rakshasas is pre-eminently fair, built by Vishvakarman himself; they practise all the arts; they worship the gods, and by austerity and penance win great gifts of them: in other words, they flourish like the bay-tree, and if they are evil, at least they are not ignoble. Amongst them are found some, like Vibhishana, not evil at all. After all, then, these rakshasas are not inhuman at all, but their estate is the image of the adharmic, unrighteous, aspect of human society-an allegory which we should all understand were it presented to us today for the first time, like the Penguins of Anatole France.

Though we might have gone through the Ramayana many times over, it still comes as a surprise that many of our ideals and aspirations are indeed asuric, demoniac, not very different in nature from those cherished by the cultured rakshasas of Lanka. The Bhagavadgita paints a graphic picture of such aspirations: 'This I have gained today, and that longing I shall fulfil. This wealth is mine, and that also shall be mine in future. That enemy I have slain, and others too I shall slay. I am the lord of all; I enjoy; I am prosperous, mighty, and happy. I am rich; I am of high birth. Who else is equal to me? I will offer sacrifice, I will give, I will rejoice.' 'Ostentation, arrogance, and self-conceit; anger, rudeness, and ignorance' characterize the asuric mind, and these are fostered by a supportive world view: 'The world is devoid of truth, without a moral basis, and without a God. It is brought about by the union of the male and the female, and lust alone is its cause: what else?'

It is only against this background that the higher human values represented by Rama and his companions stand out as exceptional. In Rama, power is not vitiated by arrogance or conceit, strength is not manifested through anger, nor does lust masquerade as chivalry. For Sita, suffering is not weakening or demeaning, and in Hanuman, obedience is not servile. Such attitudes are born of a concordant world view which sees the human being as essentially divine and the Atman as deathless, which apprehends all knowledge and power as being inherent in the human soul and has access to the means to tap it. The Ramayana provides us direct entry into this world view. 'In these [the Ramayana and the Mahabharata]', Lin Yutang observes, 'we are brought closer to the atmosphere, ideals and customs of ancient Hindu life than by a hundred volumes of commentary on the Upanishads.'

Can legendary personages and mythical ideals really have a lasting impact today? This question keeps haunting us because we take myths to be mere tales or a dated way of viewing the world. On the contrary, all human thought has a mythical dimension to it because 'myth is that which is taken for granted when thought begins'. Myths 'reflect, express, and explore' a people's self-image. Edward Conze notes: 'Polytheism is very much alive even among us. But where formerly Athene, Baal, Astarte, Isis, Sarasvati, Kwan Yin, etc., excited the popular imagination, it is nowadays inflamed by such words as Democracy, Progress, Civilization, Equality, Liberty, Reason, Science, etc. A multitude of personal beings have given way to a multitude of abstract nouns.'

The paradigms of science are also analogous to myths; they are likely to be replaced with advancement of knowledge. Discussions on issues bordering on the limits of our scientific knowledge-about the origin, nature, and locus of consciousness, or about the boundaries of our universe, for instance-are also bound to have a mythical character.

The ideals represented by Rama, Sita, and Hanuman are not mere intellectual concepts. 'You partake of the nature of him on whom you meditate,' Sri Ramakrishna observed. 'By worshipping Shiva you acquire the nature of Shiva.' More important, these personalities are spiritual entities that can be directly accessed and which determine and direct our spiritual being: 'A true Shaiva has some of the characteristics of Shiva; … He who is a true Vaishnava is endowed with some of the elements of Nara-yana.' It would be a pity if we chose to ignore these ideals. In doing so, we would be negating the very core of our being.