OH, CITIZENS OF THE WORLD ! [EDITED]

OH, CITIZENS OF THE WORLD ! [EDITED]

I am everywhere. If this be the consciousness or that my beloved Lord is all around in the myriad guises of distressed humanity, then I can scarce eat or drink or sleep till I have alleviated their misery. This problem of universal sorrow moved the Buddha and this again moved the leonine Swami Vivekananda.

The fact that we worship Mammon and not God is amply testified by our day-to-day dealings with brother man which is what prompted a Karl Marx, an ardent student of life and the material forces that govern it, to hazard such a damaging statement as 'Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the opium of the people.' Lenin further said, 'Government is the organ of class rule.' Both these statements have held sway for a protracted period of time over a vast mass of humanity, not merely by imposed force but by rationalised conviction in many as well. While it may be argued that these were statements made in reaction to existent inequities in human society society then, they merit our attention nonetheless in terms of the human content they carry, if not for the revolutionary powder they supply, for always the status quo is what the privileged prefer.

Existent philosophies are dubiously interpreted as always to suit the selfish ends of the mighty and the rich who squeeze their wealth out of the life-blood of the suffering mute millions. The clergy and the cleric, the monk and the man, on the average are all for the status quo and quote the scriptures fractionally to support what in Hegelian dialectical terms has been dubbed the thesis (of oppression) under the garb of pseudo-religiosity. This is in no way an aspersion cast on the heroic souls who give up home and hearth to serve God in the human form but is a statement of fact about the lethargy of the establishment in redressing the poverty situation of the country and the world at large, the sheer apathy for the poor children of God and the self-satisfaction of the privileged in doling out a pittance for the less fortunate ones, thereby feeling a false sense of spiritual security and ease of conscience. If religious philosophy comes to the aid of these in supporting their niggardly ideas of God and Truth and service to sentience, then such quotations are rendered noxious when they are in exclusion of the opposite modes of philosophical thinking that abound as well in all of spiritual literature and more so in the bleeding hearts of a Buddha or a Christ, a Vivekananda or a Ramakrishna.

It is because of this violent apathy to the prevailing human condition that the masses have been reduced to beasts of burden, eking out an earthly existence barely worth the name while the rich roll on the lap of luxury, though inexorably sinking in the morass of material 'necessities'. It is ignorance everywhere !

But falsifying philosophy will not do nor will tailoring it to suit one's dubious desires, for there are the reactions coming, the Advaita gaining ground, seeking utterance from a soft whisper to the mighty roar of the lion, and all will be swept away in a tidal wave of spirituality with oneness the enforcing principle and the masses the diverse stuff of focal integration. 

Aristocracy has dug its own grave and if the piteous calls of the bleeding gods and goddesses of the land do not melt the frozen hearts of the business barons of the day, theirs will be a worse festering death, for the hour cometh when the shudras (proletariats) of the world will rise in open rebellion against the existing order that has for ages ground them to dust, and out of the dust shall they arise to reshape their destiny which no God or man ever did it for them.

Revolution is a recurring phenomenon in human history and is ever the result of apathetic human inaction to the plight of the people, nay, it so often is the consequence of antipathy of the privileged classes towards the well-being of the dispossessed people whose very labour is the foundation of the material joys of life they hold dear, joys that never visit even casually the homes of the very makers of them, the teeming millions who are the salt of the earth.

Thus did Swami Vivekananda forewarn the upper classes to take cognisance of this, the age-old exploitation of the masses, and himself with a bleeding heart, that escaped no pulsation of the poor and the hapless, set to founding the mother organisation for the poor of India and the spiritually ignorant of the world, the 'Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission'. It is Swamiji's trust for the poor and the helpless.

Come ye all and sink your ploughshare in this desert-sand of life and transform it into an oasis of love by your heart's ardour. Ramakrishna watches us ever. Shall we fail Him ? No, never.

Written by Sugata Bose