At this critical juncture of human history when much of what we cherish as higher human values seems to be lost and society the world over seems to plummet into rank material culture, it is worthwhile recalling the splendour of the twin souls that appeared only the other day bearing the names Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, two personages of supreme spiritual leaning and light, men who strove to revive the ancient culture of the Self of man in a darkening world of strife and chaos. In an age that has seen the worst destruction of man and manhood in two cataclysmic World Wars, when an entire mass of humanity was almost annihilated in the Holocaust by mass barbarism of a nation, when political ideologies with the promise of freedom of man have swept away populations with their mass atrocities, when religious fanaticism has denied man his essential dignity and freedom, in such an age these two beings of light, as it were, descended into our midst to show us the perennial path of peace and enlightenment.
This path is the Way of the Soul. Scientific scepticism notwithstanding, man is not mere matter. There is a field of consciousness beyond the gross world of the senses where the sovereign soul reigns, a domain of infinite peace and tranquillity whence is born all of confused phenomena. Order has not been built out of chaos. Rather, it is order that has progressively degenerated into a mass of mechanical meanderings, meaningless material modes leading nowhere, a fruitless exercise which cosmic life seems to be, devoid of destiny or purpose. In such a scenario it is puerile to expect harmonious co-existence of the peoples of the world, blinded as they are by material purposelessness for such is the material inheritance of man. Global summits on peace and international understanding notwithstanding, world bodies espousing the noblest ideals of humanism notwithstanding, humanity seems hell-bent on self-annihilation for such is the ignorance of the material man. Into this storm-stricken, fever-lain world strode Ramakrishna and Vivekananda to set up the links that had been sundered between matter and spirit, the outer world of war and strife and the inner world of peace and bliss.
1836, the birth year of Ramakrishna, thus marks the beginning of a momentous chapter in human history, the advent of a new age. 27 years later the spiritual firmament was lit up once more by the birth of his protégé Vivekananda, an event whose estimation of historical significance eludes us even today separated though we are from that day by a century and a half, for the effulgence of this spiritual duo is so sharply in contrast with the prevailing dark all around that our set systems of evaluation and understanding take a beating as we attempt to comprehend their lives and teachings. But comprehend we must these heroes of the human heart for there is left open to us only one path of terrestrial survival, not ‘The Way of all Flesh’ but the path of the Spirit. This is the imperative of the age, the survival mechanism, the operational mode, the means of harmonic co-existence of all that inhabit this planet and the surest way of a quickened spiritual evolution of the human species.
The descent of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda signifies that the ascent of man is at hand. The floodgates of spirituality have once more been opened. Come ye all and and cleanse thyself in the advancing tide of their love that ye may enter into the realm of immortality whence there is no return to this dark dungeon of the world, or, shouldst thou return, then be it thy blessing to lead fallen man, thy brother, to that abode of peace and bliss which it is his divine inheritance, his final repose, his field of eternal sport with his Beloved.
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