APOSTLE TO THE SOUTH

APOSTLE TO THE SOUTH

What a massive personality ! Swami Ramakrishnananda (Shashi Maharaj) who Swami Vivekananda had commissioned to preach the message of the Master in South India where he in accordance sowed the spiritual seeds of the Vedanta which has left southerners in perpetual indebtedness to him which is why he is venerated there even today as an spiritual soul of the highest order. Shashi Maharaj was an Aadhikaarik Purush who had but joined the ranks of Ramakrishna's proteges as a young lad but matured to become a spiritual stalwart the like of whom there are few in the annals of human history.

When Swami was wandering the face of India as an itinerant monk, he had come across the superstition and rigidity or orthodox Hindu society and he underwent his experience nowhere as much as he did in Southern India. Here was a society cast in age-old brahmanical ritualistic rigidity which often seemed like a stranglehold on the habitants there. And yet this society had to be liberalised in the Ramakrishna Way which was a slow transformation along the very grain in which it had been set through ages of habitual, repetitive action. Violent reform was always counter-productive and ended up defeating the very end intended. Those were the early days of Swamiji's ministration on earth prior to his historic visit to the West and much needed to be done to resurrect the motherland. But first the flight to the West.

After his triumphant return from the West Swamiji set to the unfinished task of setting India right. He now remembered those itinerant days of his as a mendicant monk begging his way across the dusty plains of the Indian subcontinent and he remembered South India that had given him recognition and help. Yes, it was caste-ridden orthodox South India, home to Shankaracharya, Ramanujacharya and countless other acharyas that now beckoned him again and he sent his beloved brother disciple Shashi there as the exemplar of brahmanical attributes.

Shashi Maharaj was a highly orthodox Hindu. A brilliant student who stood fifth in the Matriculation Examinations, he was what is called asana-siddha (perfected in yogic posture) and could sit at a stretch for full 24 hours almost immobile which was a feat indeed and indicative of great spiritual concentration which made him oblivious of body once set in the meditative mode. Cousin to Sharat Maharaj (Swami Saradananada), they both visited Sri Ramakrishna in Dakshineshwar whereupon the Master recognised them to be the disciples of Christ. So it was that they came to him and got illumined by his divine touch and wish and when the Master in mahasamadhi parted from them on 16 August, 1886, the bereft Shashi took to serving the remains of the Master in a copper urn (Atma Ramer kouta) as his palpable form with utmost devotion.

Such was the devotion of Shashi to Sriji (Sri Ramakrishna post mortem in the copper urn) that his whole day and night revolved round serving him who he now beheld a palpable reality far more alive in his being than when he was in his earthly embodiment. In point of fact, so great was the devotion of Shashi Maharaj to his Guru in spiritual presence now in disembodied being that Swamiji made a devastating comment about him in a letter from the West to his brethren in Alambazar Math that what he most feared was Shashi's 'Thakur Ghar' (the shrine) for he was up to that old-fashioned nonsense yet again. Obviously, Swamiji was not against his brother disciple's devotion to their common preceptor but wished to broaden their spiritual horizons to include in its ambit the worship of Man. However, Shashi's devotion continued unabated and it was only after Swamiji's return from the West in 1896-97 that he was commissioned by Swamiji to go to South India as the perfect illustration of what even orthodox brahmanical attributes ought to be when in the rightful spiritual mode. There Shashi Maharaj lived and served Thakur in the image, in reality and in the moving mass of humanity around, the Apostle of the Avatar in this Age and earned the veneration of the devotees who looked upon him as a sage of supernal spiritual attributes.

Written by Sugata Bose