THE RETURN OF RAMAKRISHNA ... 1

THE RETURN OF RAMAKRISHNA ... 1

A new spiritual organisation will soon emerge to save the Sanatan Dharma as the Lord manifests yet again. His hour is due. May be He is amongst us already and we are as yet unaware. But the Master's words will not fail. 100 years have elapsed since his last advent, his disappearance and his prophetic utterance about his reincarnation. Human society is in ruins. Decadence is rampant. Money has become the modern God both among the laity and the monastic orders. Sri Ramakrishna's ideals have been cast into the waste-bin despite the tallest of pretensions to the contrary. Monk meets minister -- this is the modern culture instead of it being the reverse as of yore. Ethics are in tatters. Toilet charge, prasad charge and what not? 'Money is mud, mud money' -- oh, no, no. It is now : 'Money is honey, honey for money.' How long will God tolerate such neglect of His ideals? He will manifest again to set the wheel right.

Private Gods are also mushrooming. The capital-clergy connection is at its worst as deprivation ruins the masses. Privilege and power are the dual divinities as people perish of poverty. Coarse commercialism has become the order of the day as men groan under the tyranny of rising price and falling values. Humanity is on auction as the modern derivation of slave trade of the 'free market' rules the roost. As the struggling householder walks to save so that he can serve the monastic order, his donation serves to buy the renunciate the air-conditioned car which he can ride to save him from a bus-ride. The same holds for the train-aeroplane analogy.

Ideals, O Lord, are so compromised! Now the youth have nowhere to go save the sensuous arms of the beloved. Renunciates are hollow men now. The masses are fools. Rogues are politicians. The intelligentsia are sold out. Goons are the arms of the leaders. The common man is the sacrificial lamb. Untruth prevails. Will You not come at this hour and set things right, at least reaffirm the ideals which have themselves been sacrificed?

Written by Sugata Bose