ARISE! AWAKE! ... 3 (Morning edition, 17 July, 2025)

ARISE! AWAKE! ... 3

(Morning edition, 17 July, 2025)

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Editorial 

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Swamiji's clarion call, "Arise! Awake!", resounded to the depths of the boy Basanta as he kept up every night in expectation of the nightwatchman's call, "Jāgtey raho!" ("Keep awake!"), sounded to his fellow watchman as they jointly guarded the streets in the dead of night. In the latter years of his adolescence these early impressions quickened the lad's renunciation as he quit hearth and home to follow his Master to the ends of the earth to distant America. 

America and India are strangely tied in a common knot by the Sage of the Age, Swami Vivekananda. Basanta became Paramānanda and accompanied Swami Abhedānanda to America to nurture the sapling of the Vedanta planted there by Swamiji. Many swamis preached in the West, notably, Abhedānanda who propagated the Vedanta for a full 25 years before he took up permanent residence in motherland India, Turiyānanda who founded the Shānti Āshrama in North California, Sāradānanda who after a brief stint in the West came back to bear the mantle of the General Secretary of the Order, Trigunātitānanda who after starting 'Udbodhan', the Bengali monthly organ of the Ramakrishna Mission, went over to USA and built the first ever Hindu temple in the West at San Francisco. Swami Nirmalānanda, another direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, also went over to Brooklyn, I am told, and served there for a few years before returning to India. 

Thereafter, the second and third generation monks of the Order in Paramānanda, Ashokānanda who became the Guru of Marie Louise Burke, the authoress of 'Swami Vivekananda in the West---New Discoveries', Prabhavānanda who became the Guru of Christopher Isherwood, the celebrated author and biographer of Ramakrishna, Nikhilānanda who translated into English 'Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathāmrita', dubbing it 'The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna', Pavitrānanda, Bodhānanda, Vividishānanda, Satprakāshānanda, Asheshānanda, Swāhānanda, Sarvagatānanda, Akhilānanda, Tathāgatānanda, Chetanānanda, the author of umpteen books on the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda movement, Tyāgānanda and others have nurtured the sapling unto the plant that it is today. But the Vedanta work has never quite taken off as it did during Swamiji's time when he literally stormed the citadels of heaven, so to say, and released the fountain of supernal bliss and knowledge transcendental unto the children of the Occident, weary of the material life and athirst for a sublimation of their sensate lives. 

The world has moved on and despite the proliferation of cheaper forms of Indian yoga especially in USA, there has been not significant growth of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda-Vedanta movement in the West, although organisations like ISKCON have flourished among the commoners. This is where we stand and I guess this has partly to do with the relative lack of awareness about Ramakrishna-Vivekananda among the western masses that the progress of the said movement has slackened. Here work needs to be done, and it is with this intent that a handful of us have taken upon us the onerous task of bearing to the world the sublime message of the divine duo, an integrated being in Niveditā's estimation, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda. 🕉 

Yours in the Lord,

Sugata Bose