Today, the problem is that there is hardly a spiritual person in the public domain who can inspire a potential spiritual aspirant. Too much of levity while preaching or holding a class might humour the students but robs the lecture or the class of its core content in concentration. Preachers from India in America who suffer from such frivolity in public address or in private class must take cognisance of this unspoken response as well that they must be drawing from serious seekers attending the lecture or the class.
Sri Ramakrishna used to draw peals of laughter with his jokes, true, but he also said that overmuch of levity is not conducive to spiritual attainment. A balance must be sought so that the tension of concentration of the audience is not lost while seeing to it that there is comic relief at times, but only at times, so that assimilation of the message becomes easy. This is a delicate act of dramatic perfection and one may study Shakespeare to see how he manages to pull off this perfect balance between dramatic tension and the intermediate easing of nerves of his viewers, audience or readers as the case may be.
As of now it is hard for me at least to go through many a lecture on YouTube of a famous speaker from India in America, simply because overmuch of frivolous allusions to habitually humour his audience and himself that this speaker resorts to leaves me dry on the sands of the ocean each time, though, the dip into the waters has been made through mention of a mantra or a passage from the Vedanta scriptures. This alternate gravity and levity fast following each other destroys discourse and this is very much a regrettable affair. May Sri Ramakrishna guide this preacher with a better sense of spiritual balance so that the result of his lectures and classes do not eventually become puerile pastimes as right now they so often tend to be !
Written by Sugata Bose
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