We live in a world of awakened illusion and heightened contradictions where there is poverty in the midst of plenty, unemployment and closing down of factories exist side by side, because ends have been forgotten and the means themselves have become ends.
In this jet civilization and machine age, we delegate to the machines the very function of living.
Modern man intensely needs today the vision of life given by the teachings of seers, sages and mystics, if the achievements of science and technology are not to lead him to greater and greater destruction - but to sublime and majestic heights of creative living.
They have proclaimed that the external world is only a projection of our own internal state. Without knowing the subjective, the knowledge of the objective is incomplete and inadequate. Knowledge is meant only to make “darkness visible” and wisdom begins where the mind becomes aware of the falseness of the knowledge that it has acquired.
When the intellect of man is illumined by the light of intelligence realized through this ancient wisdom, only then can he be really free for then nothing can ever bind him. In this realization lies bliss eternal for man and only such inwardly free man can bring about not only a free India but also a free world.

—Sri Sri Jagadguru Shankaracharya Mahasamstanam Dakshinamnaya, 
Sri Sharada peetam, 
Sringeri