MESSAGES GALORE ... 24

MESSAGES GALORE ... 24

1. You believe in recycling, do you not? Then why not rebirth which is basically the recycling of human matter?

2. Humanity is progressing slowly through the murky ways of archaic belief-systems which are patently false in their description of Life, Nature and Truth. Superstition and fear hold humanity yet in their deathly grip. But the God of Heaven and Hell is soon seeking self-exile before rational man en masse banishes Him for good.

3. God is human, man divine.

4. If you are under the power of a book, you are a slave, not a free man.

5. Must I submit to God? No, I must not. Let Him prove that He exists before even the conversation can begin. I do not subscribe to suppositions. Hence, submission? Out of the question.

6. Children who feel offended by every counter offered to their belief-system ought to grow up fast. Freedom of speech cannot wait in the wings of their immaturity.

7. One book must not be allowed to dominate over all other books and destroy democratic discourse by citing offence.

8. If you incriminate straight talk about regressive religion, language will seek its meandering course to critique it. Prefer it that way?

9. How I wish religion could work its way out independent of science which it so holds antithetical to its archaic interests of irrational herd-holding!

10. The house of God should be built by the book of belief rather than by the use of science. How about it? Any success there?

11. Enough of adulation, blind and blinding. Now read Vivekananda in a rational light.

12.

Ignorance attributes to Marx less than pass marks by way of a less than even passing acquaintance with his works. Read Marx before sitting in judgement over him. The ignoranus cannot claim jurisdiction over a philosopher's works.

13. The wider and more varied the approach to appreciating life, the deeper the understanding of it. Hinduism with its multifold spiritual approach is a veritable genius in this regard.

14.

As I mature, the greatness of my parents shines like the silver focus in the periphery of the monsoon cloud of my consciousness till dazzling autumn breaks out with its fragrant flora and fair fruition lighting up my passage to the succeeding season, the genetic flow continuing course till another springtime of a fairer upsurge.

15.

The private pain today is the public apathy towards anything of high culture. In a world of declining sensibilities the finer arts are being banished as worthless relics of the past and coarser grain becoming course for public consumption. If practicality and utility must thus rule civic life and beauty banished to mere outlining forms, the days are not far when body will rule the mind and animality retrace the savage past that humanity with all its inventive genius has forsaken ages ago.

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo : Leonardo da Vinci (top), the boy Mozart at age 14 (bottom).

16. It is so difficult to get out of traditional trappings. Superstition will have its 'pound of flesh' before you can get your release.

17. If you are a Hindu, manifest character.

18. Wish to realise God? Then depth-read Hinduism.

19. Very few want freedom. Most love bondage to a tyrant God who rewards and punishes.

20. An active, aggressive practice of Hinduism with the Vivekananda-enunciated service and renunciation as its twin motto is the call of the hour, not passive piety.

21. A leftist is one who resists the exploitation of labour and a rightist is one who facilitates it.

22. So long as capitalist exploitation abounds, left movements will proliferate.

23.

Religion is invariably party to capitalist exploitation. To raise donations and then deny employees decent salary is an offence against humanity. Where is spirituality in it that is so much professed by these decadent organisations that shamelessly raise money thus for capital-building while their workers suffer economic exploitation and hardship that goes with it? Swamiji was a socialist but his message is heeded no more by even those who vouch in his name all the time. 

24.

Dualism has its weakness. At its best (Madhur Bhava) it is almost heightened to the level of the non-dual absolute consciousness but at its worst it is sectarian and fanatical to a fault. Thus, it catches the imagination of the herd of humanity and progresses along its retrogressive path spreading the seeds of superstition and irrationality at its lower end while sublimating the passions of enlightened humanity at the other.

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo : courtesy, Christian Jansen

25. Brush twice a day. Maintain dental health.

26. 

Chess was invented in India. India ought to dominate the game. Let the Government of India popularise the game by declaring five time World Chess Champion Vishwanathan Anand Bharat Ratna.

27. Second-rate heroes we celebrate. The greatest live, work and die unseen. Our homage is to those that truly loved, those rare blossoms of humanity.

28. The rough intercourse of daily life makes our intelligence gross. The dewy dawn is thus lost in the scorchng rays of the morning sun. Just look around once in a while and you will see there is more to it. The fairest flowers yet bloom, the fragrance even now spreads. Only tarry awhile to sense it.

29. খোসা নিয়েই মারামারি, গভীরে কেউ গেল না |

30. Religion has an experiential truth, its erroneous explanations of Nature notwithstanding. It has more to do with biology than physics.

31. The distraction of deed takes the perception of peace away.

32. গুণের মর্যাদা দিন | নইলে অপগুণের প্রাবল্য সমাজে বাড়তেই থাকবে |

33. অপসংস্কৃতির জন্য আমি দায়ী, আপনি দায়ী, আর কেউ নয় |

34. ওরা-আমরা দুই নয়, এক, অভিন্ন | দেখার দোষ কারণ দর্শন দুষ্ট |

35. Drink deep of the past but do not drown in it.

36. Do not glorify the Shrutis. They denounce themselves for their incapacity to lead one to the transcendental Truth. In it they are truthful and, so, self-glorified. 'Naymatma pravachanena labhya, na medhaya na bahuna shrutena.' ('Not by aphorisms, intellect or scripture, this Atman may be realised.')

37. Idle glorification of the Shrutis without studying them in-depth and leading the life luminous whereby such scriptural truths become apparent has become the malady of the mediocre man. To listen to lectures on scripture by every Tom, Dick and Harry has made the Hari within take to depth-flight whereby relocating oneself in Him will be more problematic. Democracy has brought its massive distracting dialogue that deals with surface garbage and cares not to dive within. The fault is one's own for who can blame the other without first having opened unto him? Therefore, my soul, stay self-contained even while reaching out.

38. The educated are more violent than the illiterate for they have raw data at their beck and call, unillumined and inciting them unto roguish responses couched cleverly in so-to-say civilised talk when the pretence of it is all too apparent and the vile motive that impels. Man is yet emerging from primeval barbarism, his outer being of the body and the mind having merely advanced through the findings of science, his rationality having been roughly attuned to such temporal discoveries while the vast vistas of his inner being remain unexplored to the great dismay of culture and civilisation that may be termed grand and great.

39. এত তাড়া কিসের? ধৈর্য বলেও তো বস্তু আছে | তাকে নির্বাসনে পাঠাবেন না |

Increase your attention span. Develop patience.

"Why this indecent hurry?'' (Quoted words within inverted commas by Swami Vivekananda)

40. 

দিবারাত্র মানুষকে অপমান আর মূর্তিকে উদ্দেশ্য করে প্রণাম -- এর থেকে দার্শনিক বিভ্রান্তি আর কিছু আছে কি?

41.

মানুষের মধ্যে ভগবান প্রচ্ছন্ন | তাই তাঁর অদর্শনে মানুষের প্রতি এত ঘৃণা, এত লাঞ্ছনা, এত অপমান, অশ্রদ্ধা, অন্যায়, অবিচার | সনাতন ধর্ম মানুষকে দেবতার আসন দিয়েছে কিন্তু তার প্রয়োগ প্রয়োজন | নচেৎ তা নিছক বাগাড়ম্বর মাত্র |

42. 

দুর্বলের বল যিনি, সবলের বন্ধু যিনি, নিপীড়িতের রক্ষক যিনি, নিঃসহায়ের সম্বল যিনি, সমস্ত শুভ শক্তির উদ্বোধক যিনি, সেই শ্রীভগবানের চরণে প্রণাম | সেই পরমাচার্যের আশ্রয়ে নিশ্চিন্ত হলাম |

43. 

"সর্বধর্ম পরিত্যাগপূর্বক আমাতে শরণ নাও | আমি তোমার সর্বপাপ ক্ষালন করে তোমায় মোক্ষমার্গে উপনীত করব |" -- শ্রীমদ্ভগবদ্গীতা

44. This universe is the ever-updating published version of God. Space is the auditorium in this cosmic spectacle of things, time the beat-keeper, and cause and effect the progenitor and progeny in alternate terms in this genealogical universal order of existence.

45. It is necessary to be better informed about absolutist ideologies, be they political or religious, before sympathising with them. Else, danger lurks in the alleyways that seem so inviting. Beware before you take the plunge!

46. Do not hurt your own ears and others' hearts by your loud drumming music using the latest amplifiers. Community peace ought not to be thus disturbed.

47. All this linguistic flow will come to nothing when this form falls and is reduced to ashes.

48. Every hour makes man a mockery of his former self.

49. Archimedes said, "Let me have a lever long enough and I can lift the earth." And I say, "Let me have a sword of discrimination sharp enough and I rip the universal veil off the face of Brahman."

50. Leading lights of the spiritual world are unfortunate in one respect in that their followers within generations of their passing away distort the message of their life and resort to economic exploitation of their goodwill.

51. The unprintable has been cast in print, codified as inviolable precept and law, and made binding on all adherents of the faith. Those that remain outside its pale are to be subdued and brought within the fold. Such unreason, such superstition, such horrendous heresy of the fundamental freedom of the human soul has for over a millennium plunged the world in darkness and despair. It is time to redress this intolerable scheme of things, the subjugation of the best elements of humanity, the conditioned coercion into compliance, the throttling of independent inquiry, of scepticism, dissent and the breaking of umbilical links with this absolutist ideology for which death lurks in every alleyway as its roguish reward.

52. Ignorance makes common cause with superstition. Depth of consciousness is mistaken to be the existence of an arbitrary extracosmic God. Greater discernment disallows such supposition. God is banished from the brains of thinking people and consciousness takes its place. From the objective aspect one is led to the subjective aspect of things. This is the domain of the Upanishads, the realm of real religion as opposed to kindergarten ones where toddlers play their puerile sport.

53. Hypnotised men carrying out scriptural strictures post lifelong brain conditioning till the faculties have been well nigh paralysed and critical thinking virtually suspended.

54. Create poverty, then practise charity. This is the self-aggrandising profession and pastime of the perniciously prosperous.

55. Must ideals be watered down to suit convenience? Then you've had it. Commerce is corrupting even spiritual organisations, what to speak of the laity.

56. The popularity of a post need not be visible. There are subterranean currents supporting it.

57. Society meanders its way through the labyrinth of unfolding consciousness unto fresher dispositions. The path is perplexing as reactions complicate matters even as they resolve into higher appreciations of truth and life. Rationality is never isolated from emotional interflow as the compound man evolves. This sets up an intricate network to navigate which is the course of social evolution. It is a continuous process of minuscule adjustments punctuated by infrequent revolutionary changes when man leaps into a radically altered understanding of things. But the reactions invariably set in as the triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis play out their respective roles claiming martyred messages and men till a new order of existence comes into being.

58. Silencing speech and expression has never been ultimately productive of the end aspired for by theocratic orders. It has inevitably led to their demise.

59. We honour our heroes more than they perhaps deserve because in us there is this propensity to deify the individual at the expense of the collective. This stems from an age-old feudal mindset where royalty and its associates in the nobility and the clergy have enjoyed preeminent status while the masses have grovelled at their feet in abject surrender. 

60. Shun faith. Embrace reason. Then dive deep into the inner recesses of your consciousness. Realisation will follow as to life's reality which myths mystify.

61. These words, they seem to have their own life. They spring from nowhere, come into being, stay vibrating on my surface consciousness as they are recorded before they bid adieu for good even as the next generation of ideas takes hold.

62. To create a MAN takes a million years and there are eight billion of them who are bearing that form but who are yet to be.

63. The greats are lonely people whose works men care not to read and ponder on but are content to eulogise idly using hackneyed expressions of veneration.

64. Do not indoctrinate your children in religious irrationality from infancy till they are held hostage to such doctrinaire dictates. Education in science in schools and colleges is rendered fruitless in the face of such infertile enforcement in the nursery of life itself at home. To thereafter keep a population in servility here and in fear of the hereafter is to retard human progress and cater to the regressive forces of darkness and despair. Spare humanity such a deathly deal.

65. কোন আলোচনা যদি নিছক গলাবাজী দিয়ে সম্পাদন করতে হয় তো তা পণ্ডশ্রমমাত্র |

66. ঘরে ঘরে এত বর্বরতা, অথচ প্রত্যেকেই গবেষণারত সমাজের এই অধঃপতনের কারণ কি |

67. When someone speaks a complex sentence that begins with an adverbial subordinate clause of condition, do hear him through the following principal clause before violently responding that halts him midway through the sentence and attempts to draw him into a verbal brawl. Civilised discourse deems this a precondition to its future survival. Be it in the domestic sphere or in the public domain, be civilised enough to attentively listen to the speaker before charting out your legitimate response along equally civilised lines.

68. Rogues fight against each other but are united against civilisation nonetheless.

69. If you are efficient, you will never be busy. Busyness is the signature of the inefficient.

70. There is no point in educating children in good schools if at home you are going to school them in uncouth ways.

71. People pray to intensify their feelings, love, hatred et al. The vital self is strengthened through ritual austerities which aided by fanatical theological leanings lead to frenzied outbursts on the streets the world over, baying for the blood of perceived artistic offenders, blasphemers who dare cause religious outrage proscribed in the scriptures for which death is the only prescription. 

72. I am recalling to life long-lost loves like Dr. Mannette from a Bastille-born dream. Seems this cyclical run is at an end. Experience has taken a U-turn at last.

73. বিশ্বাস না বিজ্ঞান? ভরসা করবেন বুদ্ধিকে না মগজধোলাইকে, নিজেকে না কল্পিত পুরুষ অথবা মহাপুরুষকে? নিজের সহায় নিজে হবেন নাকি অন্ধতার দণ্ডে ভর দিয়ে হাঁটবেন?

74. কখনও দেখেছেন বৈজ্ঞানিকরা রাস্তায় নেমে গুণ্ডাবাজী করছেন তাঁদের বিজ্ঞানতত্ত্বের বিরুদ্ধে কেউ ঘোর আপত্তিজনক কথা বললেও?

75. If it is blasphemous to criticise a religion allegorically in a book, how much more so must it be to burn effigies of the offender and to kill his associates before attempting to kill him in person decades later!

76.

বৃদ্ধি এবং ক্ষয়

একই সাথে হয় |

77. The ordinary brain is flat and fails to perceive deeper meanings. There is a core connotation to every crust term that eludes common comprehension.

78. The spreading of the Vedanta must become a mass movement for India's future good.

79. We must counter Islamic Dawah with Hindu Hawah. 🕉

80. Shed fear and stand firm in defence of the Dharma. That is patriotism. That itself is humanity in its highest manifestation. 🕉

81. This is the colour of radiant renunciation. 🕉

82. We must practise our religion to be able to defend it. We must extend the frontiers of the Dharma to embrace vast humanity with its loving arms. 🕉

83. How many Hindus are aware that by keeping themselves divided among petty parties and puerile politics they are being traitorous to their civilisational cause and instrumental in bringing about their own demise at the hands of pernicious proselytism arising out of alien lands? 🕉 

84.

Vedanta brain = the philosophy of the Sanatan Dharma.

Islam body = solidarity of the Hindu race devoid of artificial distinctions and divisions.

This is what Swamiji meant when he used these words to denote India's future. 🕉 

85. India is invincible if she holds onto the Sanatan Dharma. 🕉

86. Spend some time studying Swamiji in your leisure hours instead of idling away watching silly serials.

87. 

How little of Swamiji do we know! Little of his lectures were recorded, the vast sum of it buried beneath the sands of time. And yet he shines a stellar being, the Pole Star of our awakening consciousness, a beacon for humanity tossing turbulent on the tempestuous tide of times.

88. A religion that holds literature and art to ransom and stifles free speech by the sword may be rightfully deemed a regressive political dispensation of sorts but certainly not an enlightened spiritual one at all.

89. They use democracy to subvert democracy. Liberal fools allow such proselytising perfidy.

90. Do not waste your energy pursuing idle epithets but do something worthwhile to protect Hindu interests. Every ounce of energy must be saved, every bit of it spent to save the Hindu civilisation and help disseminate its grand message among the civilised nations of the world. 🕉

91.

Will you leave the legacy of these great ones and convert to Islam or Christianity? Be proud to be a Hindu. 🕉

92. লেখার থেকে ছবি ভাল লাগে? বৌদ্ধরা তাহলে ঠিকই ধরেছিল | মানুষের চোখ চায় আগে তৃপ্তি, পরে বুদ্ধিকে নাহয় খাটানো যাবে | কি বলেন? কিন্তু যাবে কি?

93.

Swami Vivekananda, the leonine monk, the majestic master of the senses.

Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda, the divine duo who altered the course of Hindu history and ushered in a new age of spiritual consciousness which the world in due course will come to comprehend.

Swami Vivekananda in his wandering days as an itinerant monk across the face of India.

Swami Vivekananda in meditative mood.

Swami Vivekananda in samadhi, London 1895/96.

Swami Vivekananda, home again, the magazine of powder bursting across India.

Swami Vivekananda, discoverer of the soul of America.

Swami Vivekananda, in sportive mood while camping in the woods in America with his disciples.

Swami Vivekananda, the seer supreme, looking into the ages ahead.

Aurobindo Ghosh, the revolutionary renunciate, in his days of divine transition.

Maharshi Yajnavalkya, the Upanishadic seer.

Adi Shankaracharya, the bridge between Vedic India and modernity.

Swami Pranavananda, uncompromising articulate, propounder of nationalistic Hinduism.

Abhaycharanarabinda Bhaktivedanta Srila Praphupada, propagator of the Sanatan Dharma world-wide whose seminal works have spread the message of the Rishis to every nook and corner of the globe and made the Bhagavadgeeta a household name in the West.

Swami Virajananda, a worthy disciple of Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, sixth President of the Ramakrishna Order, seer, sage, compiler of 'The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda' and author of 'The Life of Swami Vivekananda by his Eastern and Western Disciples'.

Rama and Krishna reborn in synthetic form. The Avatar of Dakshineshwar, Sri Ramakrishna, the hope of humanity, its refuge and safe haven.

Bankimchandra Chatterjee, the author of Ananda Math, the seer of the mantra 'Vande Mataram', the awakener of Hindu nationalism, a master craftsman whose works inspired an entire generation unto liberating the motherland from colonial shackles.

Swami Gahanananda, fourteenth President of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, karma yogi of the highest order, virtual architect of the Seva Pratishthan, Guru of 142,241 disciples whose lives he has transformed to infuse society in general with the sattvik current of the sage.

The mother of all from angel to ant, demon to god, the mother of sleeping humanity, the Divine Mother Sri Sarada Devi, eternal consort of Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna.

Krishnastu Bhagavan svayam. The flautist perennial blowing his harmonic notes that cascade through the universe and thrill the stars unto shedding light. The light of the world, charioteer of he who cares to ride the vehicle of Dharma, humanity's source, course  estuary, final refuge of the seeker of peace and bliss, Sri Krishna, the Lord of love, of light, of subliminal and sublime consciousness.

Ideal son, ideal brother, ideal husband, ideal friend, ideal king, Maryada Purushottam Sri Ramachandra, the God of India, the son of the soil whose heart's pulsations have got intermingled with the life current of the motherland.

Swami Brahmananda, spiritual son of Sri Ramakrishna, cowherd boy of Vrindavan in a former incarnation, in the words of Sri Ramakrishna, first President of the Ramakrishna Order, a dynamo of spirituality, one whose one blessing changed the course of the boy Subhas' life and galvanised him unto becoming the premier patriot we celebrate as the Netaji, beloved brother disciple of Swamiji who gave him the epithet Raja which he bore lifelong as the Raja Maharaj of all devotees of Sri Ramakrishna.

Swami Madhavananda, ninth President of the Ramakrishna Order, about whom Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi had upon introduction said that he was the tusker's tusk rimmed in gold. A brilliant student who stood second in his Matriculation Examination, an erudite par excellence, Swami Madhavananda's was the ringing voice that exhorted the Hindus of Noakhali to take up arms in self-defence against the murderous Muslims at a time when Gandhiji was exhorting them to die game at the hands of the enemy.

Mohendranath Dutta, second brother of Swami Vivekananda. A globe trotter, a versatile author, a polyglot, a sage and a seminal man of phenomenal creativity, he had an outstanding memory which he used to delight his few followers with accounts of his adventurous experiences across the world some of which he has chronicled in multiple books of his.

Swami Nirmalananda, the forgotten apostle of Sri Ramakrishna, neglected by Belur Math to this day following a legal feud that broke out between them over possession of the Bangalore Ashrama. A brilliant organiser who set up over a dozen Ashramas in South India where he preached Neo-Vedanra, Tulsi Maharaj is the tragic hero of the Ramakrishna tradition whose exclusion from the pantheon of the direct disciples of the Master has cost the Order deep and will continue to do so, although they scarce realise it.

The embodiment of brahmanical high spirituality, brother disciple of Swami Vivekananda, who set up the Shanti Ashrama in U.S.A. and exemplified through his lifelong austerity the classical sage of the Sanatan Dharma. Swami Turiyananda (Hari Maharaj) was a veritable magazine of spiritual power and a perennial fount of inspiration for succeeding generations of monks of the Ramakrishna Order.

Swami Trigunatitananda (Sarada Maharaj) who started Udbodhan, the Bengali journal of the Ramakrishna Order at the behest of Swamiji. A monk of phenomenal energy and executive power, he was the builder of the first Hindu Temple in the West at San Francisco where he died after being wounded by an explosive attack on his person by a disbalanced devotee. A worthy son of Sri Ramakrishna who when he preached from the pulpit could palpably see the Divine Mother standing in front of him.

Swami Abhedananda, a singular soul among the luminaries that lit up the early years of the Master's movement, founder of the Ramakrishna Vedanta Math, propagator of the Vedanta for twenty five years in America at the behest of Swamiji, orator, author, researcher, philosopher, a monk of rare attainments and one whose fame was second only to Swamiji's among the direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna.

Biographer of Sri Ramakrishna, author of the magnum opus 'Sri Sri Ramakrishna Leelaprasanga', first General Secretary of the Ramakrishna Order appointed by none other than Swamiji himself, Swami Saradananda devoted his life to serving the Holy Mother and making her earthly sojourn comfortable to a point. Administrator par excellence, cool as a cucumber who alone could face Swamiji when he was in his Shiva-like vexed mood, Saradanandaji remains the bedrock upon which which Sri Ramakrishna built his spiritual order much like Christ built his church upon Peter, the Rock. It is current among Ramakrishna tradition that Swami Saradananda was Saint Peter in a former incarnation and, as if by confirmation, he fell into samadhi upon first witnessing Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.

94. That universal music is playing through us, each one of us, and that is what we call our individual lives.

95. It is a spiritual crime to convert a Hindu to Islam or Christianity. You do not demote a student from PhD level to Montessori, do you?

96. The Abrahamic religions are forced to borrow philosophical ideas from the Greeks to justify their theological assumptions which they pass off as divine reality. The Hindus do not need to beg of others to validate their spiritual realisations. They have their own elaborate systems of philosophy which are the profoundest in the world and rationalise to perfection the transcendental truths that the Sanatan Dharma espouses.

97. Burning effigies after hanging them from the scaffold in open avenues of the world for perceived blasphemy against Muslim religious sentiments - how much of a blasphemy is that against humanity itself?

98. Do not fear. Face the brute. You do not deserve to be called a Hindu if you are afraid to stand up for truth.

99. The free world must defend freedom of speech and expression. It is the first principle of liberty. We cannot be ruled by rogues who will decree by the sword a ban on free speech.

100. If you are civilised, you will not cower in fear before the uncivilised who settle things by the sword. This is the 21st century and it requires better behaviour from people. Those who cannot must return to the primeval roots where they belong. Urban living is not for them.