SHASHI RAM, BLESSED CHILD OF THAKUR-MA

Blessed indeed Shashi you are and blessed is your work of propagating the message of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda. Your earnest writings will draw many a soul to the path of the Divine Duo and bless their lives with the fruition of spiritual love as well. May Thakur-Ma-Swamiji ever guide your steps as you tread the razor's edge up unto the summit of realization which is the abode of peace, bliss and beatitude! And all this is coupled with an utter self-effacement on your part which renders your work holy and spiritually efficacious. May Thakur-Ma grace you with strength and inspiration to carry on with your wonderful work whose far-flung effect in awakening the dormant spirituality of receptive souls you scarce realize but which surely the Master is getting you to do in His infinite grace that you may be ready to rid yourself of the shackles of Maya in the fullness of time and return to Him who is your source, course and estuary!

MASS MEDIOCRITY, THE BANE OF CULTURE ... 1

Mass literacy is welcome, is a necessity, an absolute blessing, but may it be attended with diffusion of culture as well. The mere spread of diluted education does not conduce to the well-being of the nation as it offers neither a strong information base nor does it train the intellectual faculties well enough to equip them to explore the realms of knowledge in depth. Moreover, knowledge divorced from character-building and refinement of culture serves not the national cause well enough as run-of-the-mill graduates and undergraduates throng the national scene filling it with the fruition of mass mediocrity. This is counter-productive for the development of the nation as it significantly stifles the creativity of the talented minority who suffocate in the inert atmosphere of the proliferating popular culture devoid of substance or merit. The net result is the lowering of academic standards throughout the country, absence of good research and the lowering of the culture of the nation as well. This is hardly the progress we as a free nation seek. Our independence has been hard fought and it will be a travesty of the sacrifice of our martyrs if we cannot arrest this decadent trend in our national life which is eating into the vitals of our culture and rendering it sterile. The advancing tide of gross materialism must be stemmed and the national current must be re-oriented towards its pristine heritage of spirituality and wisdom that is the hallmark of the Indian civilisation.

And how may this be achieved?

To begin with, the curriculum in schools and colleges must include the study of Sanskrit as a mandatory academic discipline. Thus, within a short span of time an entire generation will be well-versed in Sanskrit and be privy to the grand spiritual, intellectual and cultural treasures contained in the vast body of Sanskrit literature. Today, we as a nation are not even well-aware of the vast resources of thought embedded, nay, enshrined in our sacred books merely because of our ignorance of Sanskrit, the language of our illustrious ancestors. Sanskrit literature is a mine of intellectual and spiritual thinking, the vast reservoir of noble ideas and ideals which once nourished the nation and has the potential of re-vitalising her. The Upanishads comprise the sublimest spiritual literature wherein lie the seeds of civilisation and knowledge of the Supreme Self, inspiration divine that can recharge the depleted resources of our vast population and set them up on the royal avenue of quickened national evolution. The study of Sanskrit will re-connect Indians to their glorious spiritual and material past and make them conscious and proud of their heritage. Only then may patriotism be fruitful in the reshaping of India’s destiny and may go beyond frothy emotionalism amounting to nothing. Sanskrit is the lifeline of India as it holds in its ambit the highest aspirations of humanity, the subtlest discoveries of the spiritual laws governing the universe and the blueprint of our national evolution as envisaged and activated by our rishis (seers of Truth) of yore. Only if its study be made mandatory and its research encouraged by the State may we as a nation hope to regain our lost bearings and begin afresh our ascent along the line of our innate national development.

End of Part 1...to be continued.   

MUST GREED BE YOUR GOD, O MAN?

Character is a quality in absence today among businessmen in the bulk and I include here all those who are making money at the cost of the disadvantaged position of the consumer or the client or the patient or the student to fill up their own coffers without caring even once to ponder the hapless condition of these thereby. Doctors charge inordinately high fees for treatment and for operations. Lawyers reduce clients to penury when litigation lingers long. Public schools, colleges and universities charge tuition fees post-admission and capitation fees for admission quite beyond the paying capacity of ordinary people though they may deserve to study there by dint of merit. And what to speak of businessmen enmasse? They have lost their morality and are mere slaves to the third vice of the human system, greed. Capitalism for all its pretensions is fuelled by greed and charity of the rich is the biggest eye-wash of all for, oftener than not, one is charitable only when one has earlier siphoned money out of the economic system by foul play of prohibitive profit-making in the name of law-abiding business and about that, too, there are significant causes for worry, for who does not know that tycoons hoard wealth by not merely ‘fair’ means permitted by law?

Law. Whose law? The law of the land? The people’s law? The law that looks after the well-being of all? Or the law that caters to the accumulation of wealth for a few at the expense of the life-blood of the many? The Father of the Nation had rebelled against the inequities of British Indian law and had staged the Civil Disobedience Movement. The British have gone. We are a free nation. Then why are these extreme inequities of wealth being allowed to proliferate in the name of national development? After all, whose development are we talking of? The masses? Their condition is growing worse by the day as prices of commodities soar and they must perforce be purchased still for sheer survival necessity. Add to it the constant brainwashing done by advertisement of all sorts to induce desire into the human system for acquisition of commodities not necessarily a necessity for living but an imperative after the signal sent into the nervous system grips the desirous mind of the hapless potential consumer. This rapacious capitalism is ruining the character of humankind across the globe and reducing man to an economic animal. It has greed, I reiterate, as its fuelling force and basis, and, gluttonous acquisition of unlawful and ‘lawful’ wealth as its goal. This worship of Mammon cannot but spell the doom for human civilisation at no distant a date and, therefore, it is time to retrace our steps and return to the path of righteous living founded on the principles of ethics and morality, of spirituality and virtue. Only then may we call ourselves ‘human beings’ when our lives are governed principally by humanistic impulses. Till then we are no better than savages that feast on each other impelled by cannibalistic impulses. Watch out, O you mercenaries among men, you insensitive souls who have strayed from the path of God and righteousness. Return to God. Return to Man.      

THE SIREN SOUNDS, SHUT DOWN SHUTTERS

When the real history of man will be chronicled, it shall be written in letters of blood how the sufferings of countless souls down the ages had sustained civilization that a few enjoyed and a fewer still so often destroyed, how the aspirations of millions were crushed to the dust as the chariot wheels of conquerors enslaved their subject masses reducing them to mere beasts of burden and the saga continues to this day as the hopes of humanity enmasse lie in the clutches of a handful of gluttonous capitalists heaping horrendous misery on the defenceless destitute they call their brother man. Natural disaster is one and one may come to terms with it physically and psychologically but when disaster is the pernicious product of prohibitive profit-making, it is ruinous at all ends and demands a complete overhauling of the exploitative machinery that has lasted in human society for ages, to be finally replaced by a more equitable system where all get a fair share of the resources of the Earth to be equipped to lead decent lives with dignity and distinction. Human life is so precious and such a monumental waste of human resources on account of man-inflicted poverty is a barbarous crime against God and Man and must be stopped by all means in the name of all that is just and good in the mind of man. The masses suffer daily deaths dealt them by the diabolic designs of these mercenaries among men, the silent scientific life-crushers that masquerade as merciful merchants but are mere marauders masking motives for gain. This age-old tyranny of the rich and the powerful must be put an end to and the masses must be saved from their octopus-hold. Else a violent revolution will set in a train of cataclysmic changes once the critical mass of hunger and hopelessness has been reached which will perforce make its way to set into motion a new order of human existence, the rule of the proletariat. This is the philosophy of hunger, the politics of sheer survival necessity, the religion of revolution. Lest such a day soon comes to pass, capitalists beware! Your extortion in all measure is measuring out the future guillotine hanging above your vicious head so drunk heavy with the wine of your ill-begotten wealth. Take care while there is time to spare for the wrath of the masses waits for aeons to mature but not a moment more when the heat is on. Beware businessmen, beware! Take no more away from the people or the tide turns soon, watch out. Hark! Hear the footsteps of the masses marching down the marts. Now whose profit who will earn friend? All will be gone, all, all! Before such an hour befalls you all, give up greed and share, care friend, care.   

SPARE A THOUGHT, O NOBLE ONE

When we suffer the miseries of life, we pray to Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Ma Sarada Devi for succour. There are so many monks and nuns of the Order of Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada Devi who are right now ailing and are in severe physical distress. May we not pray for their recovery as well? Remember they have left their home and hearth for the welfare of the world at Swami Vivekananda’s bidding, at Sri Ramakrishna’s call from the roof-top of the Kuthi Bari at the Dakshineswar Kali Temple Complex. They have left behind the comfort of domestic life to embrace the rigours of the life of the renunciate. Must we forsake them who have given up their all for us? May we not spare a few moments a day in contemplating the good of those who are ever contemplating our good? May we not integrate our vibrations with the holy vibrations of these chosen children of the Lord that the Mission of Ramakrishna may be nourished better for the betterment of the world? Send brothers a prayer a day to the Master, a fervent appeal to Mother that they may look after our monastic sisters and brothers and keep them from hunger, sickness and bondage of any sort that may beset their spiritual lives. For sure the Master and Mother are looking after them but our prayers will only ennoble us and integrate us with the Cause of the Master, spiritually nourish us and who knows, may help the nuns and the monks in their distress as well for did not the Swami Vivekananda exhort us to send holy mental vibrations in all directions and did he not speak of the potency of such thoughts to awaken the latent spirituality in receptive souls even at a far-off distance? Let us then turn on a new leaf in our lives and start living in unison with the renunciates of the Order that the movement of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda may be bolstered by our effective participation and a fresher current of spiritual love may deepen our fraternal bonds to give the movement added strength and purpose and our lives a fulfilment transcending the terrestrial terrain. May Mother give vision to all who care for her children! May the Master live radiant in the hearts of all who love the lonesome and the lost in life’s solitary sojourn! Jai Ramakrishna! Jai Ma!

WHITHER CHARITY? WHEREFORE CHARITY?

Is it possible to sit pretty watching the plight of millions of our brethren living lives of abject poverty inflicted on them by an economic system that caters to the scientific exploitation of the masses by a handful of gluttonous capitalists who drain the very life-blood of the people who are the sustenance of this world, the proletariat, the teeming millions who by their labour, sweat and toil grind out such ill-begotten profit for their unscrupulous masters that masquerades as bleeding charity to stifle the soul of man? Is it charity then that draws water from the Ganga by the gallons only to later sprinkle it in measured drops to the waters again while the wide world applauds unthinkingly the magnanimity of the philanthropist? Is it rightful ownership of the world’s resources denying the basic rights thereby of decent survival of the masses solely on the basis of superior manipulation of means for ulterior ends of exploitative profit that leaves the consumer bereft of means and means the death of humanity? What worship of Mammon is worse than this that obtains this day, what pitiless profit that crushes the hopes of hungry hearts seeking succour in the desert of life? I ask ye all, do reflect awhile and see thyself, thy mirrored self in the glass within and come to terms again with life that all may live with a free, fair share of all that is in Nature’s care. 

AWAKE, O SOULFUL ONE ... 1

The sesquicentennial celebrations of the advent of Swami Vivekananda are well and soundly over but the mission of the great Swami of the complete spiritual transformation of the world remains largely unaccomplished as yet although some advances towards the same have been already achieved which give us cause for hope. But we must accelerate the process of propagation of the great message of peace and harmony as espoused by Ramakrishna-Vivekananda in which alone the world may find a safe harbour as it steers its way through the turbulent ocean of delusion that has well nigh driven it to the brink of disaster, the very edge of a precipice whence there may be no return. What a waste of human life is resulting from the villainy of crony capitalism against which Vivekananda had so categorically warned and had attempted to thus reduce future pain of the masses by setting up the twin institutions of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission as spiritual and welfare bodies that would in Ramakrishna's name look after his children, spread as they were throughout the wide world! This then is the task before us, a work whole and holy, a mission of man and God, to raise the consciousness of mortal man that he may hearken to the call within. Come ye all and join in the march of the Swami's grand army as we storm the citadels of heaven and earth to veritably 'unhinge the world' as he was wont to saying and so set free the clouded consciousness of man unto its divine habitat which is inherently its own domain. May Swamiji bless all who participate in this noble endeavour, this invigorating enterprise, this labour of love for afflicted humanity! Jay Ramakrishna!

Visible above is the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University, Belur Math, an institution he had dreamed of and had prophesied as one that would be the focal point of the harmony of all that was grand and great in the Indian tradition down the ages and whence all life-giving ideas would spread to the remotest corners of the world in a massive tidal wave of spirituality that would deluge the world in course of the centuries to come.