GURUDEV 6

The Guru has a personal side to him and an impersonal side too. As personality he is identified with God and as the impersonal being he is the absolute principle. It is difficult to repose faith in a human Guru and look upon him as God but that is the spiritual condition laid on the relation between the preceptor and the disciple that it should be so for the effective and rapid spiritual evolution of the latter. No less an authority than Sri Ramakrishna has enjoined upon the spiritual aspirant to behold his spiritual master as God incarnate and there can be no dispute about that, therefore, to my reckoning, although rationalisation on the Ramakrishna viewpoint can easily be adequately done to validate the argument. This then is how the Guru stands in the estimation of the true disciple and in the absence of such veneration it may only be said that the disciple's hour of spiritual reckoning has not yet arrived and it will be some meandering that he will be subject to before he finds his bearings along the royal avenue of God.

The sensory experiences not having been gone through sufficiently for comprehending their inadequacy in fulfilling the aspirant's cravings of the soul, the tortuous paths of Maya bewitch the disciple yet again even as the upward tug towards the supreme spiritual goal eggs him on. In this battle of the opposite modes of Nature the befuddled soul forgets its moorings sometimes and hesitates to follow the Guru implicitly. He, thus, delays his spiritual progress and of his own volition brings unnecessary hardship along the way which it takes the grace of the Guru to overcome against the current of the disciple's desirous mind. But however the disciple may rebel along his way to the goal, his initiation into the spiritual fold inevitably brings him to the blessed feet of the Guru in the fullness of time when he realises the enormous patience, acceptance and grace of his Guru and succumbs to his divine love. Then the twain are united in a renewal of the journey along the royal avenue of godhead and the summit arises before their vision which the disciple will scale by the grace of his Master. Jai Gurudev !

WHY THE JEWS?

Why were the Jews persecuted everywhere throughout history? Was it because they did not have a homeland and so were distributed thinly everywhere without the numeral strength to solidify their position anywhere? Or was it because they outwitted indigenous populations with their superior skill and intelligence to earn the resulting wrath of the locals? How far did the narrative that they had crucified Christ play them into the hands of their Christian persecutors and brought retribution on their heads? Did the Jews, because of their superior attributes of intelligence born out of their culture which highly values learning, somehow refuse everywhere to integrate into local societies in their bid to preserve their culture which in turn singled them out for consistent persecution? But then history records the Jews as having been denied access to most professions in their lands of settlement and been relegated to serving only some selected trades and professions. This had naturally isolated them and not allowed them room for integration into local societies. Therefore, this argument falls flat and the cause of their persecution eludes the integration theory. Then why, for heaven's sake, throughout history have the Jews been segregated for sustained persecution whose climax was reached at Treblinka, Sobibor and Auschwitz?

WHITHER THE NATIONALISTIC FERVOUR?

Our national discourse is so fractured between the apologists to Britain and the real revolutionaries that with the passage of over 70 years since independence, the fire to live and die for the motherland does not inspire many anymore. The younger generations seem to be bereft of the nationalistic fervour that had prompted the youth of the pre-independence days to take up arms against the British and free the motherland from foreign yoke. They are content to lead the good life themselves while the millions suffer deprived of the basic necessities of life. When they attempt to lead us on to the path of wisdom they ought to take stock of their own credentials before hazarding opinion.

Character which is the bedrock of all social change and all national transformation must be first built on the secure foundation of renunciation of the ephemeral pleasures of life. It is only then that humility born out of wisdom will show them the path to achieving real good for themselves and the nation. Till then they ought to work on their own self-evolution and keep away from posing to be omniscient repositories of the truth about our great revolutionaries like Netaji and restrain themselves from making hazardous and laughable comments about the so-called personal lives of these redoubtable ones without furnishing an iota of evidence to back up their claims.

The problem is that in these days of quick attention-seeking and thoughtless repartee, the seeker of truth is rare and a cursory course in any historical episode makes one in utter ignorance of the real facts of a case, nonetheless, in self-estimation and in peer appreciation, the apostle of truth and knowledge about the stated case. This is, of course, our national disease, this superficiality about everything and the consequent exhibition of ignorance in articulate terms.

One more thing. It is indeed regrettable that in the absence of knowledge of the true facts of the freedom struggle, thanks to successive governments that have derived benefit out of such sacrilege, the youth are devoid of the fire in their belly that would have made them manifest a bit more of virility and made the prospects of our national life that much better. But, alas, that is not to be in this age of gross and coarse culture where the delights of the senses have blinded them to the higher aspiration of the spirit founded on renunciation and sacrifice. Governed thus by the more mundane elements of nature, they naturally find it difficult to comprehend the glory of continence and can unhesitatingly commit even a personality extraordinaire like Netaji to carnal connections liking the same to soft romantic dalliance so very natural to fallible man.

So far as feeling for the nation in blood-boiling terms, in great national pride and in the sense of belonging to the motherland, experiencing her pain in one's very nerve-centre and exhilarating in her attainments, those days when such virile sons and daughters were born who donned the colours of her revolutionary march to freedom are gone, blown into the wilderness of a remote past with which these novices of today have no bearing or kinship. Yet, they reserve for themselves the audacity to preach words of wisdom to us who have bled in every fibre of our being for the well-being of our only mother, our beloved motherland. Suffice unto the day is the evil thereof and it may be redressed only by rewriting the entire narrative of the freedom struggle for men of the morrow to know that we did not win our freedom by spinning yarn but by the blood and toil of our revolutionaries and their deathless defiance in the teeth of terrible tyranny that drove the enemy out of our own terrain. Many a feather will be ruffled by such disclosure, so a marooned nation says, "Let the sleeping dogs sleep while we ruminate how the Mahatma walked us, nay, cake-walked us to freedom." Jai Hind!

THEY YET SURVIVE TO CONQUER

The Jews are the most brilliant people on earth and they have been the most persecuted in history. What reserves of life-force they have had that they have survived till this day and yet prosper to be a dominant force on earth! 

COMPROMISE NOT WITH EVIL

We should never cooperate with evil. Those who stand against the fundamental tenets of humanity must be dealt with a firm hand by all of civilised humanity for civilisation to last and the good of life achieved. Evolution demands that evil be eliminated for good to subsist and there is no point vainly philosophising about it that, after all, these are relativistic aberrations that must be merely discarded through discrimination and overlooked thereafter. No, the vast mass of humanity are not philosophers and it is their right to live as well lives of dignity where furtherance of the evolutionary cause may be effected and the beauty of terrestrial life despite its inevitable end in individual death achieved. Evil cannot be allowed to hold sway like the way it does now the world over where a handful who have climbed the steps to power wield it in a manner that the masses are cattle-fodder for them and they are the sovereign gods whose will the multitude must subscribe to in a servile  manner casting culture and civilisation to the winds. This must not be the rule, no, no more must it be allowed to thus paralyse good men into inaction and reduce human life to destitution and despair. Humanity must prevail and it will do so when the power for perpetrating evil is met by the power of goodness armed in superior strength with all the wiles aiding its execution as evil resorts to. Mere pleas, petitions and prayers, as the saying goes, will not work but strength and opposition to villainy through spiritual, moral, intellectual and physical force must carry the day and eliminate all that is nefarious in life, all that is debasing to living.

Citizens, unite! Now no hour to rest but now is the day of reckoning when the common man and the woman and the child must act to determine their divine destiny and cast off the vermin of human society that threaten to disrupt life and honour on earth. Awake, my friends, awake!

GAHANANANDA TWEETS

1. He was love incarnate. This was our Gurudev, is our Gurudev, ever will remain so.

INDECISION

Indecision and vacillation born out of lack of firmness of character lend itself often to terrible catastrophe when things go completely out of hand. Then the forces rule the roost and the wild dogs of destruction wreak havoc as ethics takes to flight and primitive barbarism replaces age-old values that have held civilisation together.