CHARAIVETI (ONWARD) ... 1

Power is lodged in the soul and the object is to manifest it to clear up the clogged path towards God-realization. Concentration is the means to do so and purity is the pre-condition to acquisition of concentration. This is high-energy spirituality and every ounce of energy must be conserved to upgrade and activate the system till the highest and the subtlest level of perception is reached when understanding becomes complete in realization, absolute and immediate. The least distraction of desire plays truant with the system and renders it sterile for Self-realization. Thus, the mind must be moderated in its modifications, the body baptised in the blessedness of brahmacharya (continence) and the spirit sublimated with liberating thoughts and suppression of base impressions before freedom from phenomena is reached. And, remember, freedom is the goal, freedom from the thraldom of the senses, freedom from finity.

FOR THOSE THAT CARE TO THINK

1. If leaders lack in literacy, how on earth do you expect followers not to follow suit?

2. In an age of general cultural decline one wonders how refined the fine arts will remain?

3. Divisiveness in the name of diversity is detrimental to the nation. What is needed is a robust philosophy of integration, enlightened and nationalistic.

4. Pseudo-intellectuality is ruining the nation. The need of the hour is a mind that clearly sees, a heart that truly feels and hands that willingly serve in a spirit of worship.

5. Who will lead when the leader is not fit enough to follow?

6. Today, the blind are leading the blind. How prophetic seems the Upanishad that first apprehended it?

7. So long as this sense of separateness of oneself from one's neighbour exists, so long as this urge to fulfil oneself to the exclusion of others remains, this steady decline into anarchy cannot be arrested despite protestations and pleas.

8. Do you wish to serve humanity? Then cultivate humanity within yourself first. Be pure and self-cultured before you venture forth.

9. Civility of speech and expression must replace the coarse culture of histrionics and theatricals before leadership may even be contemplated, much less provided.

10. Leaders have forgotten even that they will have to account for their karma in the High Court of Time. Beware!

RANGANATHANANDA, EK BISMOYKAR JEEBON

Swami Ranganathanandaji chhilen ek ashcharya pratibha. Jeno janmechhileni Thakur-Swamijir kaajer jonyo, jake bole ek mahabroto niye. Keralar kon sudur Thrikkur gramey janma ar kothay Belur Math? Kintu Thakurer emon e amogh niyom je kshetra prastut holei Tnar taan anubhab korbe bhaktajon. Ei niyomer anugaami hoyei ekdin balak Shankaraner hatey eshey porlo Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamriter ingreji sanskaran, 'The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna'. 13 bochhorer Shankaran porte shuru korlen kintu thamte parlen na nagarey 100 pata porjyonta na pore. Ek biplab ghote gelo onr jiboney, ek akosmat jabanika paton holo jarojagater opor ar ek adhyatmojagater sandhan pelen tini ja tnake tene niye gelo Ramakrishnacharaney achirei. Matra 15 bochhor boyoshe tini Ramakrishna sanghe jog dewar jonyo abedon korlen kartripoksher kachhe. Kintu manjur holo na. Phalato tini bidyalayer probeshika parikshay uttirna howar abyabohito porei Mysore Ramakrishna Mission Ashramey jogdaan korar jonyo agroho prakash koren. Tokhon tnar 17 bochhor boyosh. Mysore Ashramer tokhon ekti adhik brahmacharike sthaan dewar moto byabostha ba rasod konotai chhilo na kintu ekti pachoker bodoi proyojon chhilo. Tai balak Shankaranke shei bhumikatei jogdaan korte bola holo.

BARRY RICHARDS --- WIZARD IN THE WILDERNESS

Barry Richards was arguably the greatest opening batsman the world has ever seen with no less than Sir Donald Bradman vouching for his excellence. A gifted South African of that mercurial team of Ali Bacher, Barry Richards could showcase his formidable talent in only four Test matches played against the touring Australian team in 1970 when he scored two scintillating centuries to secure the appreciation of critics worldwide. Then came the ban on South African cricket for the government's policy of apartheid and Richards fell into the shade of county cricket in England and for a season Sheffield Shield cricket in Australia while lesser mortals kept playing the game and getting accolades. But the legend of Barry Richards kept building up as he kept on producing brilliant hundreds and double and triple hundreds against quality opposition, be it the visiting cricketing nations in England or the strong county sides replete with foreign acquisition to bolster their ranks, when Richards produced his masterful knocks against them to cement his place in cricketing history. But the best was yet to be. Finally, Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket in Australia gave him the opportunity to test his mettle alongside the best players of the world, albeit a trifle late, for Barry Richards was now well past his prime. But as usual, the mercurial South African was at his best when the occasion demanded and produced a string of scintillating knocks yet again, and for the last time, to carve out for himself a permanent niche in the hearts of fans and a luminous place in the history of cricket. After Don Bradman's death in 1999 the dream team that had earlier been selected by him which was dubbed 'Bradman's Best' was found to have named Barry Richards as one of the opening batsmen with Arthur Morris his opening partner. The Don had evidently chosen a left-right combination and had given pride of place to Barry Richards as his choice of his right-handed opener. What more needs to be said about Barry Richards than that he was, in the estimation of Sir Donald, the numero uno opening batsman with his rare blend of aggression, an immaculate defence, a perfect technique and the natural ability to score fast and dominate the bowling?

There is then Barry Richards for us, the legendary South African batsman with his repertoire of strokes and tales which never saw the light of day but which remain embedded in the hearts and minds of those who were privileged enough to witness his batting, a veritable virtuoso of batsmanship who will remain etched in our memory as the genius that walked not the cricket green as often as his merit warranted and who had to live with this terrible sense of denial and devastation. Glory unto Graeme Pollock, Eddie Barlow, Mike Proctor and Barry Richards. But for you cricket would have been poorer and with you too the politics of the times made cricket the poorer for it. Hail batsmanship at its highest, thou never did witness the maestro in full flow, what a tragedy, what a shame!

IN RESPONSE TO DEBKANTI MOITRA'S REVERENTIAL DIFFERENCE OF OPINION REGARDING THE STATUS OF THE SANGHA GURU

I have merely stated what Premesh Maharaj had said about this issue and what has been a traditional way among devotees in their regard for the Sangha Guru. This is not my assertion, therefore. No one literally asserts that anyone other than Thakur is Thakur. So, the said difference between our opinions does not arise after all. Moreover, the direct disciples were of one mind that Swami Vivekananda was Sri Ramakrishna spiritually re-incarnated after the latter's demise. Swami Brahmananda, too, was widely regarded as being one with Thakur. Sri Ramakrishna himself had repeatedly affirmed Narendranath's spiritual identity with him. So, this statement of the essay you have referred to has to be seen in the light of what may be termed 'bhava' and ought not to be literally taken in the so-called scientific sense. That the Presidents of the Order are one with Thakur in their total absorption in him is the purport of Premeshanandaji's epic observation and what a grand perception it was of this doyen of the Ramakrishna Movement. Also, if you read the essay observantly, your doubts will be dispelled for there is ample clarification about this stupendous statement in the very first paragraph itself where the idea has been well amplified. After all, why seek differences between the Sangha Guru and Thakur in this way when Sri Ramakrishna himself has famously said, ''He who looks upon the guru as God shall see the light and he who does not shall scarce advance''? These are subtle ideas seen by seers through the spiritual eye of their awakened selves and we may best believe or deliberate and doubt but may never come to a supreme sense of certitude till we have had similar realizations. Glory unto you for reading the piece, and perceptively too, in your own way and therein lies the glory of man that he can cogitate the constitutional principles of life. May this response be deemed a friendly fruition of a seasoned deliberation and not as a coarse collision of ideas! Jai Ramakrishna!

PRESIDENT IN PAIN ... MAHARAJ PASSES AWAY

Long ago Swami Premeshananda had made this epic observation that each and every abbot of the Belur Math, that is, the President of the Ramakrishna Order or the President Maharaj, is the embodiment of Sri Ramakrishna in much the same way as every year's image of Mother Durga is the representation of the Universal Mother. In keeping with this statement which was veritably an utterance profound, it is now common tradition to look upon the President Maharaj as Ramakrishna-incarnate or, as some would like to rationalize it down, the highest representation of the Master on earth. President Maharaj is, thus, the living form of Thakur, his will made flesh, his spirit infused into the corporeal frame of a realized soul of the highest order, the instrument of the Divine.

And, today, he suffers. Swami Atmasthananda, the 15th President of the Ramakrishna Order, disciple of Swami Vijnanananda who was a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, is battling with life. As the nonagenarian sage suffers in his intensive care unit bed and hangs on to physical life on our behalf through the slender means of a ventilator, we may only pray for his recovery if Thakur so wills it, or else, pray that he should be relieved of pain. On the 15th of this month he visited Belur Math to bestow sannyas to aspirants who had become eligible and returned the following day with the rigours of the exertion. Chest and urinary infection followed and the 97 year old monk took upon himself the karmic onslaught of initiation into monasticism of these blessed ones even as the latter have, by his supreme sacrifice, been directed towards God-realization. One is reminded of Dadhichi Muni (the sage Dadhichi) who had sacrificed his bones for the making of the 'vajra' (the divine thunder weapon) of Indra (king of the gods) with which he proposed to kill the demons who were usurping power and creating chaos in the ordered world of the gods. Today, Atmasthanandaji has been a living testimony to this ancient tale of India as he has set up on their spiritual feet so many of the future sages of the Ramakrishna Order in a gesture of supreme sacrifice. Who would have ever imagined that the Swami, bed-ridden totally for over a year with so many ailments besetting him, would venture to engage himself perhaps for the last time to give initiation to would-be monks? Verily, it may be said that Swami Atmasthananda has attained to the fullness of his being as he has drained the last vestiges of his spiritual power into the blossoming buds of his monastic brotherhood. Now, his work is over it seems as he lingers on in his terrestrial existence to exhaust the traces of his good karma that cling to him as so much benediction for fallen humanity. And, through this all, he suffers! He suffers for us just as the Master did in his final illness at Kashipur. Let us pray for the assuaging of his pain and may he feel comforted that we shall not let him down! We shall continue to strive to usher in the age of truth and enlightenment which, verily, is the mission of the Master and which our beloved President Maharaj has ever held so close to his heart and given his everything to realise.

A final thought. Dear devotees, let us all join hands in serving the Mission which is so dear to our President Maharaj and, in so doing, we shall offer our sincere salutations at his hallowed feet. May he, who has given us so much peace throughout his blessed life, find perennial peace in Thakur! Om!

P.S. This essay was written on 28 April, 2016. Today is 18 June, 2017 and President Maharaj is no more. Or, shall we say, he has come ever so close to us in the sanctum sanctorum of our very hearts? Jai Ramakrishna!     

D.G. Bradman, the greatest batsman that ever strode the cricket field, universally heralded as the greatest sporting personality that has ever been.

S.R. Tendulkar, batsmanship at its best. His range of stroke-play and perfection of the science of batting has been unprecedented.

I.V.A.Richards, the greatest batsman of all time in the estimation of Ian Botham, certainly one of the most devastating. His destructive batting was scarring for the opposition bowlers. His range of stroke-play, exquisite timing and sheer power made him the most feared batsman of his era.

Garfield Sobers, the greatest all-rounder the game has seen and certainly one of the greatest batsmen that has trodden the cricket green. His first Test century was the world-record score then of 365 not out.

Graeme Pollock holds the second-highest Test batting average of 60.97 and, perhaps, rightly so, for many would consider this Springbok southpaw batting genius to be the greatest batsman after Bradman. Had his career not been cut short by apartheid when he was in his prime, who knows what might have been the final fruition of this bating maestro? The cricketing world was rendered poorer for the banishment of these South African legends from the game.

BOSE---AN INDIAN SAMURAI by MAJ GEN GAGANDEEP BAKSHI

At last it seems an unapologetic account of the true history of India's armed struggle for freedom will be out in the public domain for people to read and learn from. Maj Gen Gagandeep Bakshi is doing yeoman's service to the cause of historical research in this phase of the lost years of India's freedom struggle, attempting to dispel doubts and the deliberate darkness effected by successive Congress governments at the Centre and, in so doing, enlivening fresh research into the subject of Netaji and his INA's contribution to the liberation of India and the subsequent mysterious disappearance of the hero post 18 August, 1945. A lot of the mist may clear, a lot may remain unsolved still, but the endeavour of our Maj Gen Gagandeep Bakshi is commendable as is his peerless patriotism which shines through the ardour of his discussions on the subject, be they verbal or through the pen. I eagerly await the release of this seminal work on Netaji and the Indian National Army and exhort all my countrymen here and abroad, especially in East Asia, to give the book a rousing welcome by purchasing it and reading it. A last word and that is to you, Maj Gen Gagandeep Bakshiji, --- salutations to you for your undiluted love for the nation in these times of the general erosion of patriotic values! May Sri Ramakrishna bless you with a long, healthy and happy life in his service which, in your case, is eminently the service of the nation! May Netaji shower his blessings on you and take you into his leading! May the sceptical youth of the day learn lessons of valorous love for the motherland from a septuagenarian like you! May your research into the hero's life and times illumine our way as we grope through the darkness of our national life today unto the springtime of a brighter morrow!

Vande Mataram! Jai Hind!

FEARLESS FLUTTERS THE FLAG OF THE LAND, UNFETTERED FLOWS THE SOUL

India is indestructible. The land of the Rishis is impregnated by the realizations of the Rishis, its very fabric is inter-penetrated by the thoughts and meditative vibrations of sages and saints and incarnations of the Divine such that it is invincible. If any nation attempts to thwart this evolutionary process of the people of India, any religion that tries to convert and subvert the culture of the Vedas, it will be death to that nation, destruction to that religion for India is held secure by God whose habitat she is, the sacred soil of the Self. This land which has given birth to all that is holy and pure, the noblest ideals of man, is internally held by ethereal vibrations of the realized souls who have down the ages trodden the surface of this land rendering it holy. Chaste are the women of India, purer than snow, women whose visages liken them to the fair faces of the goddesses that fill the pages of the life-story of our land, whose very breath is like the sprightly springtime air laden with the scented promise of the flora in the offing. Such are our girls, glorious mothers in the making, epitome of sacrifice, gentle, pure, forgiving, bashful, humanity at its highest holding the ancient civilization intact. And out of her womb is born the man of power who spells out the law of the land, the code of moral conduct, the principles of the pristine philosophy of life and living, nature and God, truth and reality, the Veda which is an ever-revealing divine text that has no beginning nor end like the God it proclaims. This spirituality is the soul of India and beware! Should anybody stand in the way of this flow of the Divine, prophet or patriarch, woe unto him, woe unto his endeavour to misdirect the flow of the thought-current of the land, for his is an impossible hope doomed to terrible failure and Hindus need not over-worry about their safety and security regarding such foreign attack, be it form outside the landmass of India or from within. The nation has been given fundamental structural form and the substance of the edifice is being filled in. Now, nothing, no insurgency, no China, no Pakistan, no Britain or America, no Christianity or Islam or Communism may prevent the growth of our motherland for blessed is she in her awakening to mature consciousness as no other land on the face of this earth is. Ours is a land whose very air is holy, whose very water is the blood of life, whose every particle of trodden soil is full of the impulse of the divine, the inspiration of the eventual end of blissful life. Impregnable is her defence for it is the land of the gods, the sanctum sanctorum of the goddesses, the hermitage of the Rishis and the habitat of the incarnation of the Most High who manifests Himself in every Age unfailingly to protect the virtuous, destroy the vicious and establish the religion of the Age for humanity to resurrect itself and flourish. With this in mind let us meditate on the mission of India which is the enlightenment of the whole of humanity, the freeing of the soul of man from the shackles of superstition and sensuousness. Om! Shanti! Shanti! Shanti! 

MY SISTERS, MY BROTHERS, DO READ THIS ... AN APPEAL FOR RAMAKRISHNA MISSION, JAMMU

How I wish that devotees will come forward to liberally contribute towards the completion of the Minor Operation Theatre in Ramakrishna Mission, Jammu which is budgeted at around 4-5 lakh rupees! So many of our sisters and brothers will thereby be benefited and our able monks of the Ramakrishna Order will not have to sit in patient expectation of the hand of Providence to send them help in the fullness of time. This sort of debilitating wait to build anything worthwhile in our country is a pernicious evil and must be done away with forthwith if we are to consider ourselves true devotees of Thakur-Ma-Swamiji. Like we become active to redress any fault-lines in our home economics, so must we activate our resources to the utmost to quickly dissolve any bottleneck anywhere in our Master's Mission. Right now it is imperative that we quickly raise this small sum of money and help build the said Operation Theatre at the earliest. Already the deadline has been missed owing to paucity of funds and it is a shame that it should be so when we consider ourselves valorous workers for the cause of Thakur. My dear friends, devotees and generous sisters and brothers, my heart breaks to see the plight of millions of our countrymen silently suffering the rigours of life, here in Jammu for want of a suitable Minor Operation Theatre, there in Bundelkhand for want of food better than grass chapatis and worst of all, how in the Premananda Ward at the Ramakrishna Mission Seva Pratishthan in Kolkata, the old ailing monks suffer the heat of the summer now in a room huddled with 14 of them with not much comfort that we as devotees have provided for them although they have given their lives for us. I await your response and shall be glad to give all relevant information regarding the proposed donations.

With love to all and prostrations at the feet of our beloved and revered Swamis of the Order,
I remain ever in Thakur-Ma,
Your very own,
Sugata Bose

P.S.: Here are the account no. etc:

Account name: Ramakrishna Mission, Jammu
Account no.: 10250097182
Bank: SBI, Talab Tillo br.
IFSC No.: SBIN0002494

http://www.belurmath.org/centres/display_centre.php…

Ramakrishna Mission, Jammu

Ramakrishna Mission
Ramakrishna Vihar,Udhowala
PO Udhowala
Jammu, Jammu & Kashmir 180018
India
Phone : 0191- 2505 115
Email : jammu@rkmm.org, rmjammu@gmail.com

Please provide the following details, along with your donation, by means of email and / or hard-copy letter in CAPS / BLOCK LETTERS :

NAME OF DONOR :

MAILING ADDRESS OF DONOR WHERE THE MONEY RECEIPT FOR THE DONATION AMOUNT MAY BE SENT :

EMAIL ID :

MOBILE NO. AND / OR TELEPHONE NO. :

PAN :

DONATION AMOUNT :

PURPOSE OF DONATION : FOR MINOR OPERATION THEATRE

LIVING THE INNER LIFE

LIVING THE INNER LIFE

Spirituality is living the inner life. The outer life of the senses draws the mind without while the Spirit hearkens to the call within. This titanic tussle between the outer and the inner world of the non-self and the Self constitutes the core of asceticism whose final fruition is the realisation of the beloved within, enthroned in the centre of the spiritual heart.

But the process is long and arduous, the path a steep ascent along a razor's edge and a single misadventure results in a precipitous fall to ruination. But good never breeds evil and the path brightens up for the fallen yogi in a fresh attempt to scale the peak in a new incarnation. Even in the old body all is not lost. A thousand falls may be overcome by a thousand and one rises and this is the source of hope that may sustain us in our struggle to reach spiritual perfection through the vicissitudes of life.

We are essentially divine but the consciousness of this divinity has got clouded somehow, covered up by the incessant flow of sensory dreams, the phenomenal phases of life. Yet, through it gleam the stellar beams that herald the birth of dawn, the onrush of the awakening sun. Nothing can obliterate the Atman for it sure sustains all, no power can long suppress the quickening soul of man for all power is lodged in the soul, no force may hold down the rising spirit of man for the spirit ever triumphs over aught of earth.

Thus, the Vedanta offers hope for all, for the sage and the sinner, for none is so vile as may not be saved, none so bent as virtue may not straighten. The Vedanta alone in trumpet voice affirms the fundamental divinity, the inherent freedom, the essential spirituality of the externally bound man as his permanent state and his bondage to the eight fetters as so much vain imagination that will pass into nothingness in the fullness of time when the sun of the Atman will shine through the coarse cover of material darkness.

Here is idealism of the highest order but intensely practical for it covers the whole ground of man’s terrestrial existence and makes no artificial distinction between secular and spiritual. In fact, the Vedanta is the study of man in all his phases, physical, mental and spiritual. It leaves no segment of life out but fills it up with the Spirit. Nothing is profane save to say that man is a mere mortal, limited to his outer frame with no hope beyond the sufferance of an eventual termination of his earthly existence in death. And nothing is more blasphemous as to say that man is merely a finite being subject to the four-fold misery of birth, growth, decay and death where the terminal line is drawn. This is rank materialism and has nothing in common with the pristine philosophy of the Vedas which while accepting the outer man’s aforesaid four-fold terrestrial predicament of birth, growth, decay and death, nonetheless, extends the domain of man to the world beyond, the realm of the Spirit, the transcendental plane that eludes the grasp of matter.

Herein lies hope and herein lies the call to struggle for perfection, the realisation of the infinitude of the Self, the Self which is the substance of this void we call the universe, the Self which is the Void which lies at the heart of the substance of the universe. The Self in me is the Self in you, is the Self in all. This is the democracy of the spiritual world discovered by the ancient rishis of Vedic India where no absolutist culture of the personal God to the exclusion of the impersonal principle behind is admitted and where the royal avenue to freedom is ever open to all irrespective of social station or privilege of birth. God is sameness and through sameness must be reached. All forms of distinction must be given up in the perception of the essential oneness of things, all privilege forsaken, all desires eschewed from the system before samesightedness is reached.

The Vedanta is the only thought-system in the world which has no personal God but which allows everyone to have his own personal God, nay, even to become in the highest his own personal God, which has no holy text that must be revered as such but which considers all texts that pertain to truth as carrying in germ the principles of truth, which has nothing sacrilegious, blasphemous or heretical about it for it considers truth as impersonal and inviolable by any human agency. This Vedanta is the hope for humanity as it struggles through the resolution of past karma through violence and bloodshed.

As the world is educated in science and reason, the Vedanta shall stand out to be the only rational philosophical system which is also spiritual in its essence and future humanity, which will reject the superstition of past ages obtaining and accruing in the major world religions, will accept it as its spiritual life-line and the highest ideal to strive for. For the Vedanta, like science, has oneness as its highest end, is impersonal, grounded in rational rigour and is fearless of investigation and scrutiny. It is the spiritual counterpart of science, being itself the science of the inner world.

And that brings us back to where we had begun --- the inner world. Spirituality is concerned about the conquest of this inner world, about gaining equanimity of mind amidst the vicissitudes of life, about training oneself to never react to a situation out of compulsion but to do so, if the need arises, out of a conscious choice, a determined decision.

The surface mind is turbulent but the mind deep beneath is calm and almost free of vibration. At the core of consciousness no distraction reaches and there sits the Self of man in all its resplendence. These are not mere affirmations of Vedantic texts but are facts of experience of countless sages and spirituality lies in the re-living of these experiences and thereby re-confirming their validity.

Acceptance of the principles of the Vedanta must be based on actual experience and never blind belief for there is nothing in the Vedanta that you may believe in but there is a lot that you may choose to scrutinise, investigate and experience by following the methodology for attaining to such spiritual states. Mere articulation of scriptural principles amounts to nothing. It is the life of renunciation that must be lived to attain to the perception of the subtler workings of the mind before one is equipped with a mind that is refined enough to apprehend the most glorious truth of all, the ‘satyasya satyam’ (the truth of truths), the Atman (the Self of man) which is also the Brahman (the Self of the cosmos).

In this age of deliberate distraction when Mammon is worshipped shamelessly, when God has been reduced largely to being a giver of wealth and a satisfier of earthly necessities, it is pertinent to remember that Ramakrishna and his children have set in a movement to the contrary which is working for the spiritualisation of humanity. Right from the days of the Master and his superhuman austerities at Dakshineshwar the emphasis has been on spiritual practice and realisation of the truth of the Self. The supernal lives of Ramakrishna and his disciples and the great tradition of austere spirituality and worshipful service thereafter have been a bulwark against the decadence of the age which even today threatens to sink humanity into oblivion.

But the moot point is that the movement of Ramakrishna is founded on spiritual austerity and will weaken if this spirit is not kept up. It is, therefore, the duty of every devotee to take up the cross of the Mission and start living the inner life for in it lies true devotion to Thakur who is seated in the sanctum sanctorum of the devotee’s heart. Let us chant the name of Ramakrishna with our every breath, let us contemplate his terrestrial play, his spiritual states of blissfulness and freedom, and let us meditate on his mission on earth for which we remain accountable to him if indeed we deem ourselves to be his children.

May Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi and Sri Ramakrishna bless all of you is my ardent prayer at their lotus feet! May all of you remain in the blissfulness of contemplation of Thakur! Jai Ramakrishna! Jai Ma!

Written by Sugata Bose

FOR WHO YOU VOTE

Declining standards in public life, lack of scruples, wholesale subversion of democracy, appeasement of the minorities for the sake of collecting votes, nefarious negation of constitutional principles, pilferage, pillaging and plundering of the nation's wealth, breaking promises made in election manifestos to the public while remaining true to one's own self-interest---these are the pre-eminent characteristics of the bulk of the politicians of the day who have made the national coffers their private ownership and the nation's destiny their plaything. But India is greater than these petty politicians of the hour who like bubbles have arisen and will like bubbles burst. India cannot be held to ransom by these vile practitioners of the democratic process who twist and turn every loophole in the system to their vicious advantage while the masses groan in agony under their despicable tyranny using every trick of the trade. 

Gone are the feudal lords and the conquering warlords, tyrants who for ages had subjected the masses to inhuman brutality rendering their divine forms to being mere beasts of burden whose earthly existence was solely for the purpose of enslavement at the hands of their malevolent masters, to do their bidding as the call arose and to work themselves to death to fill up the lax lives of these indolent sensuous beings with every pleasure possible, to satisfy their every whim and fancy such that life on earth was a veritable hell for the multitude and death the great deliverer. 

Such violent times are no more in the general throughout the civilized world and where they do exist, they are a fall-back upon olden times of scriptural barbarism often in reaction doubtlessly to geo-political tyrannical conditions thrust upon the offender but sometimes on account of a relapse of medieval malevolence as well. On the whole, though, democracy is on the rise and so is the influence of science and reason. 

Yet, ancient barbarism persists and the tyranny of capital has replaced the torment of the sword. A slow suction is ever on, of wealth being drained upwards from all and sundry in a vicious scientific manner they call the economic mode, reducing billions to penury to fill up the coffers of a handful of tycoons who ironically become billionaires thus. This is valid capitalism supported by democratic governments everywhere and such legitimacy afforded to exorbitant pricing and excessive profit-making at the cost of the general well-being of the masses who continue under a variant garb to live like beggars, is violent to its very core and is the seed of all corruption that thrives on greed and self-aggrandizement. 

And, today, we are in the midst of this new phenomenon of coarse capitalism coursing its way through the bloodstream of the nascent nation that is India. Politicians, O they are the siblings of these pecuniary perverts, cousins-in-arms whose sole purpose is self-gratification of the most abominable kind to the destitution of millions. The lower classes are being ground to the dust under the twin tyranny of the capitalist and the politician while the middle class is slowly but surely sliding into poverty. Only the upper class enjoys life on earth as if this beautiful earth belongs solely to it while the rest toil to humour it lest His Majesty’s hour on earth be spoiled even though he despoils all of bare earthly necessities.

Such then is the predicament facing us as we trudge along the precipitous path of terrestrial survival. Greed is the rich man’s god and perverse power the politician’s. The twain have made a common cause in looting the nation while time broods on in silence upon revolution. The masses will rise and things will change but only after history has taken its toll. For who can buy such a precious thing as equality without paying its price?             

VEDANTA, THE LIFELINE FOR THE PRESENT, THE HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

The propagation of Vedanta is the only way today of defusing the atmosphere of fanatical intolerance that is on the rise in the world.

The Vedanta allows sufficient space to all religions and ideological systems by laying down the ground rules for harmonious co-existence.

The climactic evolution of Vedic thought forms the body of the Vedanta, also called the Upanishads. It is purely a rational philosophical system.

The Vedanta is not merely intellect-based. It is founded on transcendental experience. The rationality lies in the explanation thereof.

The Vedanta accepts nothing phenomenal as ultimately true. It rejects the senses as effective modes of transmitting truth. It accepts none.

The universe and the ego are the dual phases of a single dream, says the Vedanta. Even God is termed eventually as unreal. Only the Self abides as true.

EN ROUTE TO THE COSMIC DRAIN OR SHALL BETTER SENSE PREVAIL?

Truth will triumph eventually and all the fabrications and falsities of religion and irrational faith-systems will be swept aside by the tide of times to make way for truth pure and simple, impersonal and democratic. Personalized versions of absolute truth, ever a contradiction in terms, will not bear much weight in the current age when scientific scrutiny will expose the inadequacies of reasoning embedded therein. Truth to be truth must be de-localized for it is universal in essence and in its sweep. It can never be culturally born as is the case with the Semitic religions, archaic and absolute, irrational and autocratic, with quaint ideas of godhead and transcendence that make neither scientific sense nor are evidence-based save in the peculiar claims of specific revelations received by unique individuals who are termed prophets and who have exclusive rights, therefore, to dictate terms to the rest of humanity as to what they should believe in and how they should behave. Such arrant nonsense handed down by cultural relay through the centuries by fear-stricken, brainwashed, superstitious and ignorant believers, and imposed on millions by decree and death have long overseen the victory of vice over virtue and falsity over truth. But their day is done and the sledgehammer blows of science are now going to loosen the stranglehold of these irrational cults as the world wakes up to reason and future generations will increasingly be sceptical of dogma and doctrine and demand for evidence, tangible and reasonable, before they pitch in their lot with such theories. In all probability, much of religion that is mythical and scientifically or historically untenable will be relegated to the waste-bin and only such portions as tally with scientific findings of matter and the mind will survive to see a brighter day, reinforced by invigorating rational rigour of science. But much of the cherished dreams, false and foolish, to which humankind clings to with fanatical fervour, will be laid aside and out of the debris of old superstition will spring a new enlightenment, a fresh awakening that truly hearkens to the soul of man and not to his political outer self that masquerades as spiritual. The future is bright for science, not so for the Semitic religions as they will find themselves increasingly on the back-foot trying to defend the indefensible till eventually they capitulate and either are obliterated form the face of the earth or are reformed to fit in with the findings of modern science. The picture is bleak for these religions when one envisions future humanity as rationally trained not to accept unique personal statements as prophetic pronouncements and demanding concrete evidence for every article of faith. Will these religions survive or will they then have to run to the Vedanta of the Hindus for providing them a basis for escape from extinction? Well, that seems to be the likely fate of the Semitic religions. They will have to suffer reform in a big way such that their very identities will change for good and they will have to borrow the ideas of the Vedanta, God knows how though, to be able to grapple with the death-blows of logic hurled at them by science. Intriguing seems the fate of these religions and inspiring seems to be the future of the Vedanta. For the present we may only conjecture as to the future but what lies ahead will surely play up as time unfolds, revealing its cards to pull the final shot. May truth prevail!

IN RESPONSE TO MRITYUNJOY DUTTA'S PITIFUL REMONSTRANCE AGAINST THE APPALLING CONDITION OF HEALTH-CARE IN OUR CITY

I sympathize with your suffering sister and your family and consider it a reprehensible practice to harass citizens seeking service. This is not the way a vibrant democracy works and all must conjointly raise their voices against this malady that runs through the very fibre of our decadent society. Gone is the ideal of service and instead the twin demons of capital and corruption are running the roost. May your sister soon get well is my earnest prayer to Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi and I can assure you that with courage and fortitude if you continue to battle on, on behalf of your ailing sister, Thakur will be on your side and eventual victory will be yours. Thank you for bringing this feature of our national life to the light of day and I sincerely hope that with more and more people taking to the ideals of Thakur, Ma and Swamiji, the situation will improve over due course of time and a renascent India will emerge where citizens will give their dues and, in turn, get their dues as well and life in general will be more bearable, especially, in times of trials and tribulations as your sister and you are now undergoing. To such a happy day I look forward to Mrityunjoy Babu and I wish on behalf of all facebook followers and friends of mine a speedy and happy recovery of your sister who is no less our sister as well. May Thakur grace your every step in life is my prayer unto him who never lets his devotees down even if they do forget him in the thoroughfare of life!

ADDRESS TO THE YOUTH OF INDIA

It is an imperative today that you all should take upon your shoulders the burden of India and take her on to higher levels of excellence through your dedicated service to her cause. Swamiji's TRIPLE 'H' FORMULA should be your guide---'H' FOR HEART, 'H' FOR HEAD AND 'H' FOR HAND. Feel for your countrymen with all your heart, feel their misery, their suffering and their pain intensely, then seek out solutions with your head to address these issues and finally, having attained to an understanding of the problems and having discovered their possible solutions, devote yourselves heart and soul to executing action programmes to put these into effect. Then and then alone will you be fit to be called Swamiji's children. 

O youth of India, do you not see that youthful energy and enthusiasm alone can override the Himalayan hurdles that thwart the progress of your motherland? Will you not stand up as heroes to deliver death blows to all that impede the growth of India? Must you not defend the sovereignty and integrity of India and set her up on the perennial path of peace and prosperity which is her age-old rightful status, and, even beyond that, will you fail to imbibe the glorious spirituality that is your national inheritance and for which you stand as trustees to the wide world athirst for such knowledge as has been in the safekeeping of India for ages? Youth of India, answer. 

But for the shouldering of all these heavy responsibilities you need to broaden your shoulders a bit through character-building and practice of continence. Purity preserves vitality and builds one up to becoming a dynamo of spiritual power. This purity you must attain to by reading THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA and THE LIFE OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA BY HIS EASTERN AND WESTERN DISCIPLES. Purity, selflessness and love for the nation will make ideal women and men out of you. 'Then will come power' and you will work wonders for your motherland. 

To such a dawn, my friends,

I send these lines tonight,

They waft through the starry skies

To welcome you with the light.

THE CHARADE OF CAMPAIGNING AGAIN

The plight of the politicians, especially, the leading ones who are in the fray for notching the top posts in the government post-elections, whichever way the pendulum swings, the utter lack of conviction in their pronouncements and promises, their spiritless articulations full of comic relief for the audience replete as they are with low-quality theatricals, and, above all, their shameless self-exposition devoid of substance for hollowness of character cannot be hid behind stupid stage performances however artfully managed in a decadent world of declining culture, fills one with abhorrence when one in contrast recalls the sacrifices of the countless heroes who fell for the freedom of the motherland only for these future predators to prey upon the liberated people’s descendants. Not that corrupt politicians were in scarcity before since the days of Independence but that they had some sort of civic decorum, a modicum of culture clinging to them like a natural garb and a fair bit of education and character as well in a large proportion of them who aspired for representation of the people’s cause. Now it is the assemblage of a host of unprincipled people that goes to form the body of a political party with an ignorant leader quite often at the helm of affairs. When some such assume office born of popular mandate, one is constitutionally bound to be respectful to such authority in deference to popular sovereignty but one inwardly feels a revulsion to live under the tyranny of unscrupulous manipulators of men masquerading as representatives of the people in a democracy.

Character is a forgotten element in the Indian polity today. It is the vilest tamas (darkness/inertia) that pervades the political scene and semi-literate leaders rule the roost in the legislative bodies across the land with a curious blend of comedy and cockiness and plain irrational irreverence to the general well-being of the masses. Predatory these politicians are whose primary aim is to plunder the wealth of the people in dubious alliance with the barbarous business barons who are reducing the land of Annapurna (Goddess who is the giver of food) to a famished land where children eat grass bread as drought parches the farmer’s precious possession driving many to the desperation of self-destruction. Farmer suicides have now become so common that they no longer evoke much of a response from people or politician. The Bundelkhand children have been accepted by most as grass-eaters for we hear no hue and cry over this terrible tragedy that has befallen the people there. Latur suffers from such an acute water shortage that life itself has got paralysed there even as the Indian Premier League in Maharashtra continues to command the requisitioning of 50,000 litres of water per cricket match. And all this at the behest of mass leaders whose paeans of praise I have sung above.

The average citizen suffers in India from the conjoint tyranny of the State and the capital. This unholy nexus between the two is draining the resources of the country to fill up the coffers of a few billionaire businessmen who stash up their ill-begotten wealth in Swiss banks to the ruination of the nation. The politician provides the space for such exploitation while the economist creates the tool for such scientific suction. The common man suffers anyway. His is the cross of society to bear and he is eventually the crucified one. Thus, through ages he has been suffering patiently for his turn to come when he will also partake of the rightful share of the fruit of his labour and not be robbed of the entire amount by corrupt capitalists aided by perverse politicians. But mass inertia is not easily overcome and historical imperatives alone create opportunities when such socio-economic transformation takes place in a rapid revolutionary change. Global conditions create national victories and the march of man is either accelerated by congenial conditions or thwarted by cramping ones to the delight or the despair of the socialist movement.

Enlightenment there is none as the nation struggles along with half-baked individuals devoid of scruples, character or culture leading the way in much the same way as the Upanishad describes the blind leading the blind. Yet, the Upanishads are there as the surest guide to the nation, nay, to all of humanity. But then, who cares for the guidance of the sages when each politician has become the self-appointed saviour of the people with grandiloquent terms gleaned from the vocabulary to lend credence to their dubious claims? Our motherland, today, is under the resolution of two opposite forces, the thousand year inertia of foreign subjugation and the modern resurgence ushered in by the stalwarts of the Indian Renaissance. The diverse elements of this ancient land are awaking to their freedom with conflicting claims as a nation is being synthesized out of this pandemonium. Raucous politicians are having their field–day as the nation is being bled to its re-birth. But their day is done and, before long, the generations of the future will seize control of the reins of the nation and set to order the house of their mother. Till then, let us endure, even enjoy if we can, or, if not, abhor what seems to be the penchant of these street-actors and field-entertainers of the new-wave declining democracy, the histrionics and theatricals of buffoons alternately bragging and begging for votes so that they may persist in all sincerity in the tyranny of the masses while making good the promises they have made to their vicious dastardly selves.

AN OPEN LETTER TO DEVOTEES

Dear devotees of Thakur-Ma-Swamiji,

Please save Rs. 20 a day and help the Ramakrishna Mission with your total savings of Rs. 600 every month. There are many welfare projects of the Mission which require regular financial assistance. Kindly contribute in this simple way Rs. 600 a month and Rs. 7300 a year to help the advancement and eventual fruition of these projects. Alone I can scarce raise such vast sums as are necessary but together we can easily achieve success in doing so. I look forward to your help for the Mission. Any help you need in terms of information about the projects etc. I can provide. Feel free to interact here and look up the relevant websites provided by me in due course of time before you contribute your mite.

Let us build a vibrant India with the help and guidance of the Ramakrishna Mission and let us serve the Mission to the best of our considerable ability for united we are potent enough to work wonders.

Thanking you,
Yours in Thakur-Ma-Swamiji,
Sugata Bose.

MONASTICS AND THE LAITY UNITE IN LOVE OF THAKUR FOR THE MISSION DEMANDS IT

Hierarchical high-handedness notwithstanding, devotees must ever strive to serve the Mission of the Master to the best of their ability for the Mission is as much theirs as such authority’s. When Swami Vivekananda had established his Master’s Poor Man’s Trust in his blessed name, he had eminently done so in the hope that his Master’s lay devotees would run it in conjunction with his monastic disciples for in those days they were all bonded in a fraternal love for each other in the Master despite some very sharp differences of opinion between a section of the lay and the monastic disciples regarding the functioning of the Order. But such differences never stood in the way of their essential love for each other and the Mission was an integrated whole, fuelled by the inspiration that came from the recollection of the Master’s divine life. 

Since then over a century has rolled by and the Movement of the Master has expanded in breadth and volume, gathering momentum as it has spread across the face of the earth, affecting the lives of millions for whom it has stood as a beacon in this dark world of material madness, bringing succour to the poor and the powerless and hope to the lost and lonesome. But expansion brings in its wake added interaction with the world and problems galore of a worldly kind crop up which are difficult for men of renunciation to tackle or to solve on their own exclusively and require closer cooperation with the laity. In this regard the householder devotees have for various historical and administrative compulsions lagged sadly behind and there is an unfortunate lack of co-operative cohesion between the monastic brotherhood and the laity in the Order. The day-to-day functioning of the burgeoning Order requires such an intense involvement of the monks, few in number relative to the magnitude of the work attended to, that it leaves hardly any time for them to devote to this aspect of giving a great deal of patient hearing to suggestions offered by well-meaning devotees who wish to render valuable service to the Master’s Mission. The natural corollary of such ultra-busyness coupled with possible irritation at the so-to-say ‘stupidity’ of the stray devotee is that there is a clear disconnectedness between the monastic brotherhood and the laity in so far as co-operative cohesion in running the Mission is concerned. Sure enough, a large part of the blame for this lack of co-operative efficiency attaches itself to the lack of enthusiasm in the general among the lay devotees to go beyond the run of their routine rigmarole of life to thinking more of the national necessities attended to by the Mission, notwithstanding the fact that the Mission runs beautifully still everywhere on the twin shoulders of the aforesaid two institutions of the laity and the monastic. 

The time has now come to redress these issues and since some decades a movement is on under the auspices of the Mission which is catering to the nurturing of this element of private help to the cause. In line with this vision hundreds of Private Ashramas have sprung up in different parts of India which are run by devotees under the guidance of the Mission following the same ideals as are fundamental to the Master’s Movement. Many of these Ashramas have grown in size and quality to merit absorption into the Order proper and have become legalized as branch centres of the same. This movement is gathering momentum too and augurs well for the future of the Master’s divine cause on earth.

But in an increasingly complex world situation where annihilation of the human species looms large and millions periodically get slaughtered by the malefic hand of primeval ignorance, there is scarce any room for any feeling of self-sufficiency or laxity of purpose or intent unless, of course, one cites bogus philosophical assertions of supposed detachment that calls for such a laid-back attitude while the masses suffer their daily deaths. It is here that it becomes pertinent that there be more room for involvement of the lay devotees in the work of the Mission for it to remain connected to the heart-beat of humanity. Else, the work of the Mission will progressively get sidelined to become but a footnote of history despite tall protestations by all and sundry that, after all, such a fate can never befall the Mission in whose every fibre runs the vitality of Vivekananda and into which the Master and the Mother have breathed in their life-force. So be it and so shall it be that the Mission shall flourish through the tide of times for over a millennium in grand glory but only after necessary adjustments have been made to enlist the support of the masses for whom it stands and who it leads unto perfection. Idle assertions as have become the penchant in podiums that the work of the Mission will by the prophetic power of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda run through the millennium do no good to the cause of making such a possibility a reality. In fact, such an averment runs contrary to the very spirit of the leonine Swami who had breathed life into the Mission. Time it is then, indeed, to brood deep on this nagging issue of organizational help that may accrue from closer co-operation between the monastic order and the laity, the two wings of the Mission’s flight unto freedom.

A certain brusqueness of manner on the part of authority, stemming from psychological superiority and the hangover of a decadent feudal culture, and the consequent servility of the common man faced with the prospect of a possible rebuff to his intent of the hour, is the bane of organizational well-being for it cuts out popular sympathy for the movement and creates artificial distinctions and distances where none need be there. Such an air of superiority deals a death-blow to a movement that is, by definition, intended for the masses whose understanding is poor and requires sympathetic nurturing. Where humility ought to be the hallmark of the great and sympathetic understanding of the problems of the common man the necessary virtue of the high-minded, impatience and the inability to hear through the articulation of the ordinary is a disease that needs to be treated before other remedial measures may be effective in countering the growing sense of alienation of a large section of society from involvement in the Mission’s welfare work.

The eye of the needle must pass the thread that will bind all in a common love for the Master. And this necessitates that it be free from any dross that may block the passage of the binding cord of love. For love is the soul of the Ramakrishna Movement, its binding force and its propelling power. Egotism or a supposed sense of superiority runs completely contrary to the tenor of the Movement. And this holds true equally for all, be one a lay devotee or be one a monk. What is needed is an acceptance of the fact that devotees ought to be treated as veritable divinities even as monks ought to be revered as belonging to the holy body of Sri Ramakrishna. Such a high ideal needs to be perpetually practised for it to cement relations between the laity and the monastic and the consequent smooth functioning of the Mission. Such a stance taken in one’s everyday life renders the hour holy, lubricates the labour of love and sanctifies service as the befitting offering to the Master in whom humility shone like a gem of inestimable worth. After all, at the end of the day, what is all this humbug of duty and work resolved unto? Pure crystallized unalloyed love. So, let love be the keynote in ideal and practice in our daily lives and let us harmonize, monk and man, as we traverse the path of Ramakrishna en route to Ramakrishna. He who is the way and the end of our terrestrial evolution, may he guide us unto him! May the Mother take us all into her arms and so lead us to liberation from this ceaseless strife we call life! Jai Ramakrishna! Jai Ma!