RAMAKRISHNA-VIVEKANANDA REVISITED 4/1

In  this age of rampant capitalism, in this age of unbridled consumerist culture, when the soul of man is sold for gold, when the high-water mark of civilisation seems to be the riches amassed by the world's billionaires, when wealth wields its sovereign power over human affairs the world over, when speeding limousines unheeding go past the destitute children of God sleeping their nights off on their footpath beds, when the very fabric of society is built on the fragile foundation of financial markets and human values catalogued like commodities, it is worthwhile remembering that only the other day, on the bank of the Ganga at Dakshineshwar, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa lived and preached a gospel diametrically opposed to the prevailing world culture.

The Paramahamsa's sublime renunciation of materialism was given finality of formulation by his pronouncement, "Money is mud, mud money" as he cast coins into the Ganga after having deliberated on the relative values of gold and mud and discerned the essential indistinctness of the two. Thus, the Prophet of Dakshineshwar set into motion the Wheel of Dharma (Virtue) in a world vitiated by the debasing use of money. The caged bird of the human spirit was set free to soar to ethereal heights whence it would bring home the message of the other world to slake the thirst of parched throats seeking succour in the desert-sand of life.

Many years later, on September 19, 1893, at the World Parliament Of Religions held at Chicago to celebrate the quatercentenary of Christopher Columbus' landing on American soil, the Paramahamsa's protege Vivekananda once more gave utterance to his Master's message when he thundered : "Come up O lions and shake off the delusion that ye are sheep; ye are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; ye are not matter, ye are not bodies; matter is thy servant, not ye the servant of matter." The West stirred in her slumber, thousands awoke from their dreadful sleep, America discovered her sleeping self. Vivekananda raged like a cyclone through the vast landmass of the Northern Continent, scattering the seeds of spirituality broadcast from the shores of the Atlantic to the Pacific, and so, quickened the spiritual life of this, the youngest of the world's republics.

Vivekananda discovered the soul of America. The Vedanta Movement had begun. Indian thought would now percolate through the psyche of the West, slowly and imperceptibly, till the whole of the Western mind would be permeated by the pristine philosophy of the Vedas, the freedom of the Self of man.