It is the personality of a preacher that touches the audience and not so much what he speaks, for few are able to separate the message from the man. This inability of the ordinary mind to distinguish principle from personality makes it binding that the Mission commissions men of realisation to preach and does not allow anybody and everybody to speak at its festivals and functions and, so, sully the message that in the lips of a realised soul would have set the spirit of the audience on fire. Householders of poor spiritual perception but with pronounced power of articulation must not be allowed to take the podium despite perceived erudition in the facts and figures of the movement, neither monks who are woefully lacking in both power of expression and erudition must be made to gain experience in public speaking before they are ready for the exercise.
Every time a speaker rises and takes his position at the rostrum, he is being afforded the rare opportunity to kindle the latent divinity of the audience with the fire of his words fraught with the realisations of his spiritual life. But if a speaker is merely a surface intellectual and has never plumbed the depths of the soul, he ought not to disturb the ignorance of the masses further with his ill-conceived notions and interpretations of truth, his circuitous way of arriving at core issues of the spirit for want of confidence in the absence of his experience of the truth he verbally delivers, and his cover of assumed humility that reeks of his evident ignorance of the principles he preaches but whose perception he clearly lacks. Such speakers do more harm than good to the spiritual cause in making abstruse philosophy child's play, the sublimity of sages look like every aspirant's easy achievement and the gravity of the spiritual process appear as the layman's exercise in levity.
Thus, it is meet that men of realisation alone speak from the depths of their soul in so far as the podium of the Mission is concerned. If that means lectures shall be scarce, so be it. But let not dilution of the spirit of the movement in the name of the Master any further be for it threatens the very extinguishing of the fire lit up by Ramakrishna-Vivekananda. May the monks meditate more to be empowered to speak eloquently before the world at large and rightfully represent the cause of the Master at whose lotus feet they dwell! May all those who are pretenders to preaching step aside to make room for the children of light who ought to adorn the stage of God! And if laymen must lay claim to the podium, let them lead strictly spiritual lives on the basis of absolute continence and the observance of every detail of spiritual living.
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : Swami Abhedananda
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