It is unnecessary to popularise the Vedanta by pandering to the vanities of the audience and constantly spicing up talk with instances full of levity. The attention of the audience need not be drawn thus for it is the responsibility of the aspirant to concentrate his forces as much as it is the duty of the speaker to lead him along the right channels of discrimination that will facilitate his comprehension of the abstruse philosophical concepts of the subject.
Constant cross-references distract the serious seeker from the focal point of the talk and bring about disorientation of the mental mechanisms that he employs to get clarity of conception. The preacher of the Vedanta must also avoid unnecessary textual references and must speak from his realisation of the Atman. Then and then alone will the truth of the Vedanta hit the audience with a telling effect and not so if mere scriptural quotations are brought in to embellish the talk. The idea is that the audience must be drawn up to a higher level of consciousness and made to dwell there by the power of the words emanating from the speaker and this concentrated state will reveal the secrets of the Self that mere words sprayed about in a spirit full of levity cannot.
It is, thus, imperative that a certain degree of dignity be maintained during deliberations on the Vedanta so that the majesty of the Self manifests in the imagination of the audience. The speaker's ojas ought to convey better the message than a myriad references to diverse texts which only tend to disperse the attention of the audience. After all, it is the life of the preacher that speaks more eloquently than his words and carries home the message best.
Written by Sugata Bose
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