SELF-RELIANCE, THE SOUL OF SPIRITUALITY ... 1

SELF-RELIANCE, THE SOUL OF SPIRITUALITY ... 1

We do every bit of thing for ourselves by self-effort to improve our personal prospects but whenever it comes to working for the welfare of the world we are apt to quoting how everything depends on the will of the Lord and that our service is quite inconsequential to bringing about the desired change in the world order. This sort of a hiding under philosophy may suit the insincere person who is not really concerned about world welfare but does not quite adorn the committed worker for the cause with grace. Such a one relentlessly carries on with his work of awaking sleeping humanity with his clarion call of self-reliance and action devoid of this servitude to selfishness masquerading as messianic wisdom, if even in the garb of the devotee's pretentious intellectual adherence to philosophical principles.

This sort of debility has brought India to her knees and owes its origin to a gross misrepresentation of the textual import of the Hindu scriptures. Inaction to rise and fight can never find sufficient justification in our scriptures and all this talk of the Divine Will mandating the mismanagement of the world, where in truth human ignorance is clearly the cause of the chaos that abounds, is the sign of a debilitated constitution that is incapable of apprehending the virile message of the Upanishads and the Geeta and that of the Works of the sage of our age in the volcanic Vivekananda.

This has been the bane of our nation that dualism of an ulterior derivation has struck deep roots in the degenerate mind of the selfish man that prompts him to make copious quotes of all that allows his conscience acquiescence in the anomalies of the times in the name of philosophy while seeing to it that his personal prospects are kept well secure through tremendous self-effort, even engineering dubious devices to secure ends, a method that would not be deemed ethical or spiritually sound. This is hypocrisy, downright distortion of the sublime principles of the Vedanta which call for self-reliance and action and not such degenerate sectional dependence on the Lord who, incidentally, Himself has none to rely on.

End of Part 1

To be serialised ...

Written by Sugata Bose