Netaji had never taken spiritual initiation from any, although, he considered Swami Vivekananda as his spiritual preceptor of sorts without having ever come in contact with him. He followed his teachings and tried to give them shape in his life and in his patriotic action for his motherland.
But there was a problem that Subhas faced early on as he grappled with the philosophical principles of the different systems of thought. He found especial difficulty in accepting Advaita Vedanta which declares the phenomenal world to be a delusion of the senses and the senses to be delusion as well. Here Subhas was in a quandary as to how he could proceed in his patriotic activity to drive the British away from his motherland when the motherland and her slavery as well as the colonial occupiers of her territory were all in the realm of Maya and had no substantial reality in them after all.
This problem was never philosophically solved by Subhas but he bypassed it in practical terms and resorted to his own interpretation of Vivekananda as applied to the cause of national welfare, which in his case turned out to be the ideal of gaining political freedom from the British. Philosophy had to be lived out in the concrete world, reckoned Subhas, and with Swamiji as his beacon in the dark world of dependence, he embarked on his meteoric career in politics that saw the emergence of India's premier patriot who, like his spiritual mentor, traversed the gamut of Indian culture to be the synthesis of all that was best and brightest in the Indian ethos.
But there was a problem that Subhas faced early on as he grappled with the philosophical principles of the different systems of thought. He found especial difficulty in accepting Advaita Vedanta which declares the phenomenal world to be a delusion of the senses and the senses to be delusion as well. Here Subhas was in a quandary as to how he could proceed in his patriotic activity to drive the British away from his motherland when the motherland and her slavery as well as the colonial occupiers of her territory were all in the realm of Maya and had no substantial reality in them after all.
This problem was never philosophically solved by Subhas but he bypassed it in practical terms and resorted to his own interpretation of Vivekananda as applied to the cause of national welfare, which in his case turned out to be the ideal of gaining political freedom from the British. Philosophy had to be lived out in the concrete world, reckoned Subhas, and with Swamiji as his beacon in the dark world of dependence, he embarked on his meteoric career in politics that saw the emergence of India's premier patriot who, like his spiritual mentor, traversed the gamut of Indian culture to be the synthesis of all that was best and brightest in the Indian ethos.
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