BACK TO RAMAKRISHNA ... 2

BACK TO RAMAKRISHNA ... 2

Long back Swamiji had said, "Religions of the world have become lifeless mockeries. What the world wants is character." Today we are faced with a similar predicament. There is hardly anybody of repute in the spiritual scene who can genuinely inspire sincere seekers. It seems history has come full circle and we are facing a grave spiritual vacuum today which can only be filled with a great reawakening, perhaps, the advent of the Avatar. The world is going through an unprecedented crisis in every way and, if not now, then when? Either the divine incarnation manifests again in his mortal garb and raises humanity or the world sinks for good. It remains to be seen how things unfold.

The Master did prophesy his revisit to planet earth in a hundred years time and, alternatively, in two hundred years time. Accounts differ on this. While Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi and Swami Vijnanananda have vouched for hundred years as the lapse time from the last incarnation, Swami Saradananda and Girish Chandra Ghosh have vouched for two hundred. But Mother was herself told the details of the next visit by the Master and, so, her account ought to be considered authentic. In such a case we may already be having unknowingly in our midst the Master. But the Ramakrishna Mission downplays this possibility to avoid the proliferation of fraudulent people masquerading as the Master.

The situation is grim, though. There is an utter ideological vacuum as politics has taken over spiritual organisations everywhere in lesser or greater degree and the thinking youth are getting increasingly disenchanted and alienated from the these bodies. Commercialism is on the rise in these orders which were originally founded on the sublime principles of absolute renunciation, and truth in every phase is being compromised to accommodate organisational exigencies. Mere quotation from the founder's life does not quench the thirst of the seeking soul, for life comes from life and not from empty words which the speaker himself cannot repose faith in. It is in this context that we need to revisit Ramakrishna irrespective of whether he revisits us now or not.

Ramakrishna remains the one hope for the world. This is the statement of one who has studied world history with the expert's eye and has come to the above conclusion. The gentleman is Professor Arnold Toynbee. Scholars like him and savants like Romain Rolland have pinned their faith in India's spirituality as the panacea for human problems across the world and it is for us, Indians, to take the lead and show the world the way how men may activate Ramakrishna-Vivekananda in their individual and collective lives to achieve a better world order.

Written by Sugata Bose