Combine forces, my friends, in spreading the invigorating words of Swamiji. Therein lies our great hope of a national and a world regeneration. When Arnold Toynbee thinks that Ramakrishna is the way for future humanity, he must be right for his is a stockpile of the world's historical knowledge. The gentleman who has scanned the world's historical development thus far and arrived at this conclusion must have some substance to his realisations and his utterance thereof.
The West has failed civilisation badly as, despite its rational advances since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment that followed, it has failed to give up the brutal attributes that characterised its barbaric past as it groped in the forests prior to its days in the sunshine of modern civilisation. Consequently, it has brought into civilisation itself a curious mix of enlightened discoveries and predatory impulses that seek to subvert other civilisations that have flourished for ages and since long before the West had seen the light of civilised life. Whatever is western is being thrust on the rest of humanity in the name of globalisation and this inevitably is causing 'a clash of civilisations', to quote from Samuel Huntington.
Inscrutable are the ways of the Lord, so goes the saying. And it would not be stretching things too far to state that western civilisation is largely the culture of Mammon, what we would in Hindu parlance call 'the realm of Avidya (cosmic nescience)'. The West offers man the world of earthly enjoyment and consequent suffering and seeks to provide the rationale for life in terms of material cravings, their insufficient satisfactions and tribulations on transgressions that are as despicable in their alleged nuances as is the vilification in consequence that exposes the debilitated state of human morality and loss of civility and sympathy, empathy whatever you choose to call this crass concern for collective welfare in the absence of enlightening spirituality. And it is here that Ramakrishna-Vivekananda must step in to fill the void that is reducing humans by the hordes to primeval elements devoid of elemental ethical attributes.
Man has stockpiled weapons of mass destruction and may blow up civilisation for good tomorrow. Yet, we, devotees, must indulge in vain talk and idle idolising of our spiritual heroes while refusing to contribute our ploughshare in this seminal work of world regeneration that form the body politic of their mission on earth. Is this devotion? Is this what our spiritual masters expect of us? Is this the right response to Swamiji's clarion call from Chicago and Madras?
The message is there but the masters are gone and it is up to us what we do with the glorious words, the words of fire that they have left us with, words bequeathed to us for their safekeeping, not merely for preservation but for constant propagation, interpretation in the light of shifting earthly exigencies and realisation of their essential import. Herein lies our seminal task for the Mother's mission that demands not just a bit of our life and energy to be devoted to it but our whole-soul dedication to the cause. Who is ready, my friend? Come and share the load with me and we shall between the twain raise a revolution of ideas that will yet deluge the world with the vibrations of the masters as they bless us in our endeavour for sure. May Mother guide our steps! May the Master and his protege ever be our inspiration in this exercise of labour and love! Om!
Written by Sugata Bose
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