All's quiet on the freedom front? If the soldiers sleep, who will defend? But the Lord never sleeps, so says the Geeta. Were He to do so, this universe and the countless others that follow in its wake, would all fall apart.
When night fell and the watchman called, "Jagte raho!" in the dead of the night, the boy Basanta would sit up in his bed, thrilled to his soul with the clarion call that would carry to his heart a message he could not then decipher but which made him restless seeking for something other, (hethaa noy, hethaa noy, aar konokhaney) not hither, not hither but thither, where he knew not. Basanta blossomed into springtime soon and followed the footsteps of Swami Vivekananda to become his youngest disciple, Swami Paramananda.
When the Master comes, he comes with his entourage. Has he come yet again? I wonder. How else may the maladies of the world be cured, how else may the inebriation of humanity be overcome and wakefulness to the urgency of the times restored?
The world is on the edge of a volcano, so said Swami Vivekananda exactly 15 years before the First World War. He had also said the the whole of Europe was like a vast military camp and unless the volatility of the political situation out there was defused by a deluge of spirituality, Europe would be up in flames. In a prophetic mood on another day the Swami had said, "The world will rise, but, oh! at what a cost! at what a cost! at what a cost!" Did the Swami foresee three cataclysmic world wars of which two have already happened and a third one is waiting in the wings, gathering potential energy before it erupts? If so, what will remain once the holocaust is over? Rocks, stones and dust? Will humanity survive the fire? Will life on earth cease completely except for microorganisms, perhaps, whence the karmic cycle will begin afresh? It is horrifying even to contemplate how humanity in folly is ushering in its destruction.
When the world goes wrong such that a higher adjustment, a deeper balancing becomes imperative, for the focal point of life has mightily shifted from its origin, then the Lord out of His infinite compassion manifests in human clay and remoulds humanity which is His manifold terrestrial form for earthly evolution, for divine sport. A wave of spirituality then floods the world, counteracting tamas with sattva, and the resolving rajas becomes creative in building up civilisation, not terminating it.
The real work of the Avatar and his apostles is at a depth and is not visible on the surface for men to see. I have used these words unconsciously and have unwittingly but duly paid my homage to the great sage, Sri Aurobindo, who had used the selfsame words when he was informed by a follower of his that some such author was writing a biography of his. Sri Aurobindo had mused, "My life has not been on the surface for men to see."
It is this depth-work, this plumbing the subliminal consciousness of humanity and re-tuning its frequencies, this re-channelising the thought currents of humankind and, so, restoring the lost links to the divine that is the purpose of the divine descent.
I am a humble devotee, perhaps with a tinge of rustic bearing in my ardent assumptions, in my hopes and aspirations about the possible advent of the Divine at a moment of crystallisation of terrestrial forces that seek a new adjustment which the inertia of the putrid past will not permit. In my myopic vision, you might argue, I cannot quite find out the fault lines that afflict society and, so, in a fit of irrational impulse, invoke the Divine to resolve issues human that are, perhaps, in your rational estimation, so very antithetical to the whole discussion. But the age-old conversation in India has been this, the interplay of the divine and the human in a world where demarcations cease and a seamless transition from one to the other pervades the whole of national life. In such a scenario to invoke the Divine to intercede in human affairs is but a natural course for one steeped in the spiritual tradition of his country. Who can in his senses deny the grand prophecy of Sri Krishna regarding the periodic decline of virtue, the rise of vice, the erosion of human values and the resurrection of the moribund society by the descent of the Divine?
Will there be a descent then of the Divine or has there already been one? If one is to go by Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi's assertion, Sri Ramakrishna is due to appear after a hundred years, but after when? A hundred years from the date of his birth in 1836, from the date of his making this statement to whosoever he made it or from the date of his death in 1886? In all three cases the date of appearance is overdue. This view of the reincarnation of Sri Sri Thakur after 100 years is corroborated by Brahmachari Akshaychaitanya in his biography of the Master. Even Swami Vijnanananda is of the same view that Thakur will reincarnate after a century. But the ambiguity about the date persists as there is no clarity regarding the reference date of pronouncement from which date the computation must be made. There is again a second view. And this is aired by Swami Saradananda in his magnum opus on the Master, 'Sri Sri Ramakrishna Leelaprasanga' or in its translated version in English, 'Sri Ramakrishna and His Divine Play' where the author states that he has secondary evidence of Thakur having prophesied his return to earth in 200 years, but again the date of pronouncement being not known, the computation of the exact year of reincarnation is not possible. Even Swami Vivekananda may be said to have concurred on this when he affirmed before a group of intimate disciples in America one day privately that he would have to come back to the earthly plane in 200 years as part of the entourage of the Master who would then reincarnate. Thus, both these versions having prominent personalities pronouncing them, have gained equal currency and one cannot be sure as to the veracity of one or the other. Holy Mother, however, has given graphic details of the Master's whereabouts, his appearance and his manners and modes and his
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