The Indian sadhu who marks his forehead with a bond of ashes, or smears his scalp with them, or covers his whole body under them, is symbolically reminding himself that everything is destroyed in the end. This is supposed to help him abandon desires and free himself from attachments. If the same mental attitude can be developed without using ashes, why give them more importance than they deserve? It is not clear enough that what really matters are the thoughts, and that by proper education they can be trained to understand, appreciate, and hold spiritual values without resort to ash-smearing--a messy affair anyway since they have first to be prepared and then mixed with butter and lime-juice. A further supposition for the existence of this religious custom is that God himself, being depicted with three lines of ash on his forehead, is brought to mind by the custom when followed, as recommended, by ordinary laymen, and thus they are better strengthened to bear their troubles. Why then is this custom fast vanishing from India along with several others which were inaugurated in the childhood of the race? There are several reasons for this disappearance. One of them is that the higher level of intellectual education is creating a habit of questioning what is old and anachronistic. If nuclear physics is leading more and more to the superior image of God as Universal Mind and Power rather than as glorified Man, if knowledge of meditation as a help to calm the mind when suffering is present is rippling over into the masses, the latter will exchange more and more these indirect primitive helps for direct and more advanced ones. Even Emerson, a former clergyman, predicted well over a hundred years ago that the religion of the future would be, and have to be, more intellectual to keep pace with the growth of mankind.
-- Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 7 : Beyond Religion As We Know It > # 50
