WHEN IGNORANCE GRIPS THE DESCENDANTS OF THE SAGES

WHEN IGNORANCE GRIPS THE DESCENDANTS OF THE SAGES

Ignorance leads to intolerance. The enlightened are neither exclusive nor intolerant. Fanaticism is the outflow of a flawed understanding of life.

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo : Rishi Yajnavalkya who like other enlightened sages of yore was the epitome of the universal spiritual culture that embraced the whole of humanity, nay, the whole of sentience within its ambit.

These luminaries of the Spirit wrote the first pages of the recorded history of humanity in glowing terms that quickened civilisation in India and the world. India sent emissaries across the then known world to fertilise its diverse races with the real catholicity, never doctrinaire but that of the realised oneness of all that exists.

The inner essence of phenomena is the one transcendental Reality that is beyond space, time and causality and is the supreme unifying link and impulse of the conflicting elements of Nature.

The Upanishads declare the divinity of man in trumpet voice and it is to these ancient texts of hoary India that we must once more resort to in order to reset our national course and in turn help humanity at large to overcome the problems of exclusive religious and ideological culture. The problem of Christian and Islamic proselytising can also be then best tackled as men well versed in the thought of the Vedanta reject the narrow sectarian outlook.

Universality is the key and the Upanishads hold the key to it.

May the Word of the Veda diffuse through human society to usher in a renaissance of all that is true, good and beautiful !

GURUDEV ... 4

GURUDEV ... 4

Initiation is an imperative in spiritual life. The Guru quickens the spirit of the disciple through the power he infuses at the time of initiation. He sets the disciple on the royal road to Truth.

The disciple has only to follow the instructions of the Guru to the letter to progress fast along the spiritual path. He must have utmost reverence for the Guru, knowing him to be none other than God-incarnate. The disciple must on no count have human ideas about his Guru but must regard him ever as one with his Chosen Ideal (Ishta Devata). Such reverence will help manifest his own divinity and make his spiritual progress faster.

There must be great purity and perseverance in the pupil. Chanting the holy mantra will help manifest these traits. The preceptor must be an adept in spiritual realizations and must be utterly holy and devoid of the desire of gain. His must be a free gift of initiation for his disciple born out of compassion for the latter, a benediction, a selfless act of divine love that seeks no return.

Such then is the relation between the Guru and the shishya (disciple), a bond eternal and undying, selfless and sublime that defies human description and can only be called ethereal, divine.

Jai Gurudev ! Jai Ramakrishna !

Written by Sugata Bose

CROSS-CURRENTS ... 2

CROSS-CURRENTS ... 2

Devotees, it is time to dedicate ourselves to the cause of nation-building by following the dynamic teachings of Swami Vivekananda in an equally dynamic way, the way Swamiji would have liked it. Passive piety will no longer do. It has had its dubious day. Now we must be off to action.

Brahmacharya (continence and contemplation) shall be the base of our movement for we have to energise our system with refined thoughts to deal the death-blow to tamas (inertia) that has so beset our nation. Swamiji is our general and we are his soldiers of the soul. We must seek inspiration from his writings and lectures, study deep his life and message and mould our lives in the divine direction that we may effectively give shape to his plans and programmes which he has left behind for us to fulfil.

We, as a nation, must have solidarity. We must combine the forces of good to strengthen the national will, the national resolve to higher attainment. Weakening, debilitating, hypocritical anti-national stance in the name of higher humanity will not do, for unless a man learns to love his own mother, it is puerile to imagine he will love the world at large.

Instead of indiscriminate condemnation of our Hindu religion and culture from a cursory glance through its contents, it will be worthwhile studying the system deep before hazarding derogatory opinion. The ancient texts are there for their study. Let us with open mind study them, think critically, contemplate deeply their philosophical and social import, and then come to conclusions about their relevance today. Till then let us not be judgemental foolishly and through false propaganda cause damage to our heritage and history. Let our enquiry establish fact, not our prejudices and preconceptions.

The nation is rising and the shudras will have their say at last. It is futile making furtive efforts to deny them their rights for the time has come when through sheer numbers they will wrest control of the national affairs. Now the upper castes will find it prudent to share the resources of the nation with them, else, a billion-strong proletariat will crush the very life of all that stand in the way of their first coming to life, for the history of the world has till now seen only the brutal repression of these so-called human savages who, though veritable divinities on earth, have forever been denied basic rights of living by the priests, the privileged and the aristocrats, and now, even worse, by the cunning capitalist who deals them the death-blow by his perfidious profit-making, reducing the shudra to such penury that life itself becomes a veritable hell.

But their hour is come and nothing can resist the might of the awakening masses, the vast body of the visible God. Hence, help usher in the Shudra Yuga (the Age of the Proletariat), for the power-balance is fast shifting to the side of the shudra and, in the interests of preservation of culture, it is imperative that the shudra be raised to the level of the braahman through ample education and exposure to culture. Else, it will be an erosion of all that was glorious and great in erstwhile civilisation and the resulting decadence will vaunt as the popular culture to be.

Written by Sugata Bose

THE ENTREPRENEUR AND THE EXPLOITER -- A NEW ARRIVAL

THE ENTREPRENEUR AND THE EXPLOITER -- A NEW ARRIVAL

A new class of commercial elite is being created whose income is exploitative, interests colonial and culture camouflaged. Beware of these indigenous disruptors of national life, these sugar-coated poison-pills in the name of neo-entrepreneurs who are creating a new economic super class-divide in much the same way as Marx had predicted.

This posing to be pious before God, smiling sweetly in affable cordiality and then proceeding to extract the juice out of the sugarcane with mechanical efficiency while all along putting up the nationalistic pretence, does not detract from the brutal fact that these are the very agencies of exploitation against whom we must fight to preserve our socioeconomic structural solidarity on an equitable basis and our heritage on the grand principles of the Sanatan Dharma, the latter, not merely in grandiloquent affirmations but in equal practice as well.

May public resistance to neo-colonialism, progressive westernisation despite protestations to the contrary by the very agencies of such corruption keep us on the right track of genuine nationalism and not a mere show of it ! May we implement in our lives the principles of spirituality we so vehemently espouse in clamorous social conversation and, so, resist this cancerous commercial corruption of our country's corporeal form ! Let enlightenment consist in rejection of crass consumerism and acceptance of genuine socioeconomic advance that is geared to lifting a billion of our brethren from poverty to a decency of human living !

Written by Sugata Bose

THE TERM IS 'SECULAR' AND NOT ITS SICKLY DEGENERATE SIBLING OF SORTS

THE TERM IS 'SECULAR' AND NOT ITS SICKLY DEGENERATE SIBLING OF SORTS

Secularism, as understood in our political lexicon, is the most glorious feature of our nationalism. Hence, criticising the secular person as 'sickular' ought also to be deemed anti-national in these days of self-styled nationalism. How about such a damnation of these damning individuals who have sullied the soil of this nation of the most beautiful cross-fertilisation of cultures? How about showing these fanatics their faces in the mirror of life's realisation by creating the cross-current of cultured conversation among ourselves whose beneficial influence must surely fall on those who have lost their civic direction in the melee of malicious campaigning that attempts to make a mockery of national advance?

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo : Swami Vivekananda who had anticipated the degenerate developments of the ensuing age and written his prescription for the treatment of such maladies. We have but to study deep his works and those of his leonine protégés in Nivedita and Netaji to be able to arrive at a synthetic understanding of what our foremost nation-builders thought about the contentious issues of the day and of the days to come. Let us arise from our indolence and strike our roots in the study of the life-work of these titanic beings and then, quickened by the current of higher comprehension, proceed to shape our collective destiny as a nation in the divine direction.

SHAME ON US !

SHAME ON US !

When, alas, when did we become so constricted that we reduced ourselves to becoming fanatical critics of Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa?

Critical appraisal is welcome but assertions based on assumptions, flawed logic and prejudiced preconditioning surely ought not to gather public support. Let truth see the light of day and people will judge for themselves.

Distortion of facts or over-emphasis on certain facets to tilt public opinion in a specified direction is not how seminal figures ought to be projected. Their essential greatness in all its sublimity and human failing will best shine in the statement of fact about their lives, and editing or mis-stating such is neither necessary nor proper.

But to be able to criticise them constructively and not unduly, one must raise oneself to a semblance of their heights of human excellence. Else, one will merely manifest one's meanness and ignorance born of such lowly grovelling in the mire of material existence. Hence, self-evolution is the key to the attainment of such spiritual and intellectual altitude wherefrom correct criticism of such luminaries among men may be made for a balanced understanding of their attainments and failings.

Written by Sugata Bose

A REQUEST TO MEMBERS IN THE INTEREST OF THE GROUP

A REQUEST TO MEMBERS IN THE INTEREST OF THE GROUP

Dear Members,

Please make direct posts in this group. Do not share from other groups or from personal profiles in general. Such posts may or may not be approved, depending on the shifting requirements of this group.

Try and help the group along with direct posts here. Such posts also gather greater attention of the members as they call in wider notification which allows them better scope to respond to the pertinent posts. Do understand and comply with this request.

Thanking you,
Yours sincerely,
Sugata Bose (Administrator).