THE SPIRITUAL PATH AHEAD ... 1
Ramakrishna is the way. He must be preached heavily to promote harmonious development of human society. In him lies the future fulfilment of humanity.
The misery of the masses, the plight of the people, the woes of women have been much reduced, their grief much assuaged, the human condition much improved thanks to societal evolution consequent on the spread of education and the development of science and technology. But Ramakrishna's world where all live in harmony is still a far cry. Human society is still hugely fractured along divisive lines of petty individual and collective self-interest. And this must go in the name of Ramakrishna, this ought to be the pledge of every adherent of his name and message.
Vivekananda is a modern messiah in the mould of the Buddha. He is one with the masses and his mission, his divine Master's mission, remains to awaken the latent divinity in one and all 'till the world knows that it is one with God.' The task is an onerous one but one that the Swami considered worth attempting. The plunge has been taken and there is no going back on every step that has been moved in the direction ahead. Come ye, O ye followers of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda and help advance this Wheel of Dharma of the Age, the Yugadharmachakra.
It is a task sublime and stupendous. Great are the challenges that face its fulfilment for human society is a curious complex of antiquated notions about God and man and the most modern ideas of material science, a composition of thought currents conservative and liberal that have to interact and resolve out a reasonable future order of human existence here on earth.
All changes are resisted by the existent order and so will this Vedantic influx of spiritual ideas that runs contrary to the limited ideas of sectarian religion that hold humanity to this day. Vast masses are under the thraldom of prophetic pronouncements, messianic messages that limit the soul of man and thwart its free evolution. These will have to be rescued from their ideological citadels and brought on to the mainstream of modern life.
And there will be resistance, mighty resistance, for the mind of man, despite its enormous possibilities of evolution, is organically conservative and resistant to change. Inertia seems to be the dominant theme of not only matter but also of all life that subsists in a material environment. The tussle between spirit and matter must see the eventual victory of the spirit of the age, the fast fulfilment of the freedom mission of the Vedanta as enunciated by its brilliant evangelist, Swami Vivekananda.
Ramakrishna is the embodied ideal of this abstract essence of the Vedanta that seeks in him and in kindred souls a conduit for manifestation in terrestrial terms to lead vaster humanity upward along the path of the Spirit. And Vivekananda is the fiery apostle like Paul of Christ who shall disseminate the message of the Master across the wide world even as a disembodied being now. For, did not the Swami prior to his death write to a Western devotee thus : “It may be that I shall find it good to get outside my body, to cast it off like a worn out garment. But I shall not cease to work. I shall inspire men everywhere until the whole world shall know that it is one with God.”?
Yes, the path ahead is tortuous, treacherous and laden with mines but to reach the cherished goal of collective human freedom from the ancient tribal culture that has so stunted human progress a million lives may have to given up but the ideal cannot be forsaken for sure.
It is an ideal born in the human heart ages ago in India in the high Himalayas, along the river banks of the Ganga, the Sindhu (Indus) and the Saraswati and in the forests deep where sages mediated and discovered the principles of the Spirit that they enshrined in their forest treatises in the Aranyakas, and it is an ideal brewed, distilled and preserved for millenia in ancient manuscripts and in the oral traditions of the Gurukul to be handed down eventually to us in the modern age. Must we fail to receive it in grace and fulfil its cherished objective? We ought not to. The rest only the future will tell. Upon us lies the responsibility for its safekeeping and dissemination and upon us depends the spiritual survival of the whole human race, for another Vedic India will not be come by in millenia if this inheritance of the one that has been goes by unattended and allowed to sink into oblivion. May the idea prevail and the ideal triumph despite the odds of the times!
Written by Sugata Bose
Ramakrishna is the way. He must be preached heavily to promote harmonious development of human society. In him lies the future fulfilment of humanity.
The misery of the masses, the plight of the people, the woes of women have been much reduced, their grief much assuaged, the human condition much improved thanks to societal evolution consequent on the spread of education and the development of science and technology. But Ramakrishna's world where all live in harmony is still a far cry. Human society is still hugely fractured along divisive lines of petty individual and collective self-interest. And this must go in the name of Ramakrishna, this ought to be the pledge of every adherent of his name and message.
Vivekananda is a modern messiah in the mould of the Buddha. He is one with the masses and his mission, his divine Master's mission, remains to awaken the latent divinity in one and all 'till the world knows that it is one with God.' The task is an onerous one but one that the Swami considered worth attempting. The plunge has been taken and there is no going back on every step that has been moved in the direction ahead. Come ye, O ye followers of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda and help advance this Wheel of Dharma of the Age, the Yugadharmachakra.
It is a task sublime and stupendous. Great are the challenges that face its fulfilment for human society is a curious complex of antiquated notions about God and man and the most modern ideas of material science, a composition of thought currents conservative and liberal that have to interact and resolve out a reasonable future order of human existence here on earth.
All changes are resisted by the existent order and so will this Vedantic influx of spiritual ideas that runs contrary to the limited ideas of sectarian religion that hold humanity to this day. Vast masses are under the thraldom of prophetic pronouncements, messianic messages that limit the soul of man and thwart its free evolution. These will have to be rescued from their ideological citadels and brought on to the mainstream of modern life.
And there will be resistance, mighty resistance, for the mind of man, despite its enormous possibilities of evolution, is organically conservative and resistant to change. Inertia seems to be the dominant theme of not only matter but also of all life that subsists in a material environment. The tussle between spirit and matter must see the eventual victory of the spirit of the age, the fast fulfilment of the freedom mission of the Vedanta as enunciated by its brilliant evangelist, Swami Vivekananda.
Ramakrishna is the embodied ideal of this abstract essence of the Vedanta that seeks in him and in kindred souls a conduit for manifestation in terrestrial terms to lead vaster humanity upward along the path of the Spirit. And Vivekananda is the fiery apostle like Paul of Christ who shall disseminate the message of the Master across the wide world even as a disembodied being now. For, did not the Swami prior to his death write to a Western devotee thus : “It may be that I shall find it good to get outside my body, to cast it off like a worn out garment. But I shall not cease to work. I shall inspire men everywhere until the whole world shall know that it is one with God.”?
Yes, the path ahead is tortuous, treacherous and laden with mines but to reach the cherished goal of collective human freedom from the ancient tribal culture that has so stunted human progress a million lives may have to given up but the ideal cannot be forsaken for sure.
It is an ideal born in the human heart ages ago in India in the high Himalayas, along the river banks of the Ganga, the Sindhu (Indus) and the Saraswati and in the forests deep where sages mediated and discovered the principles of the Spirit that they enshrined in their forest treatises in the Aranyakas, and it is an ideal brewed, distilled and preserved for millenia in ancient manuscripts and in the oral traditions of the Gurukul to be handed down eventually to us in the modern age. Must we fail to receive it in grace and fulfil its cherished objective? We ought not to. The rest only the future will tell. Upon us lies the responsibility for its safekeeping and dissemination and upon us depends the spiritual survival of the whole human race, for another Vedic India will not be come by in millenia if this inheritance of the one that has been goes by unattended and allowed to sink into oblivion. May the idea prevail and the ideal triumph despite the odds of the times!
Written by Sugata Bose
No comments:
Post a Comment