LIVE THE LIFE 15 ... WORK, A NEW APPROACH 2 ... A TRIBUTE TO KETAKI MAHARAJ

Indian society is constricted today. Although the sledgehammer blows of globalization are breaking through the citadels of caste-ridden constrictions, Indian society remains immured in age-old customs and social accretions that have stifled the life of her people and thwarted their natural growth into a dynamic race as in days of yore when India rose to the pinnacle of power and glory, culture and civilization. Ours is a predominantly rural population subsisting on agriculture within a feudal set-up although politically we are a democratic republic. The mind-set of our people is still feudal and the result is that in vast areas of the country even today, the rule of the village elders is the governing principle with a patriarchal feudal mind-set with all its concomitant evils. Education and real democracy are yet to penetrate Indian society in a tangible way and economic inequities are so large that it is a permanent state of depression for millions even today with basic amenities of life an unaffordable luxury and beyond the reach of the vast mass of the population that live in the hundreds of thousands of villages across India. Water, sanitation, toilet facilities, electricity, hospitals, schools and colleges---well, none of these fundamental requirements for decent human living are available to the masses who have merely the franchise to elect their representatives periodically to loot the coffers of the nation and perpetuate their misery. Such then is the predicament the Motherland faces, social and cultural incrustation, huge inequities in the living standards of the urban and the rural populations and of the rich and the poor, and the onslaught of western modes and manners of a decadent, immoral type that threaten to widely pollute the culture and character of the urban youth by the millions. Capitalistic inroads are also loosening morals as monetary necessity is being coupled with the greed for gold. Advertisement of commodities is wreaking havoc on mass psychology and creating artificial desires which is destroying the age-old values of contentment and simplicity of living and making life unduly complex and unhappy. The traditional Indian way of living is being affected for the worse and competition, conflict and corruption in corporate and political life is becoming the order of the day.

It is here that we today need a new philosophy of living, a new culture of work and a totally new approach to the building of our nation. A new work ethic is needed, a dynamic and socially beneficial attitude to work whose mainspring of inspiration is the soul within and the soul-mates without whose service is the pre-eminent objective and not individual profit or pleasure. Such a work-culture may only be built on the adamantine foundation of the Vedanta which declares the oneness of existence and therefore the oneness of all of humanity. But for all this, the primary pre-requisite is the building up of character what in modern management parlance is called 'the integrated personality'. Swamiji had in trumpet voice declared,"Men, men these are wanted, everything else will be ready, but strong vigorous, believing young men, sincere to the backbone, are wanted. A hundred such and the world becomes revolutionized." Where are these men my friends? Why do you not give yourself to Swamiji's Cause of nation-building? Your lives will be sanctified and India will rise on your shoulders. What greater joy can there be than in the sacrifice of your blossoming youth for the regeneration of the Motherland? Perfect purity will work wonders and an iron will that will overcome all obstacles, the heart to feel intensely the misery of the masses, the head to comprehend the problems and conceive solutions and the hands to set to the task of executing them, these are the prime necessities today.

Swamiji worked himself to death, so did many a valiant monk of the Ramakrishna Order in the earlier days when resources were scarce, facilities meagre but commitment to the Cause total. One such was Ketaki Maharaj (Swami Prabhananda Senior) who literally laboured to death to build up several Ashramas in the north-east of India, Shella, Cherrapunjee and Shillong. For ten long years he worked among the Khasis in mountainous terrain to set up schools for the education of their children before he was laid to rest with muscular atrophy at the early age of 37. Swamiji had once said to his disciples, "I love you all so much, yet I wish to see you all die labouring for the Cause." Ketaki Maharaj did not let Swamiji down. He bled his way to death to awaken the Khasis to self-consciousness, their children to knowledge of the wide world and the Ramakrishna Order to the divine ideal of all-sacrificing service to the visible God that is Man. Here, my friends, is the new philosophy of work, a way as ancient as the the Himalayas, as sacred as the Vedas and as fluid as the life-transfusion of Swamiji and Ketaki Maharaj into the immobile masses of the Motherland. Jai Swamiji! Jai Ketaki Maharaj!      

LIVE THE LIFE 14 ... WORK, A NEW APPROACH 1

The culture of work in India must change. We vaunt ourselves as the most spiritual nation in the world with a civilization dating back to more than 5000 years and yet in practical terms today we are nowhere in the comity of nations as a leader guiding the world towards higher spiritual living. A great deal of this has to deal with our slavery to alien powers for over seven centuries ever since the onset of Muslim rule in 1192 when free expression of our spiritual culture was largely restricted by widespread fanatical tyranny of the doctrinaire cult of Islam as espoused by barbarian Afghan-Mughal invaders with the notable exception of Akbar and Dara Shukoh. Later, European tyranny of the capital and Christianity and the most inhuman form of colonial exploitation conducted by the corrupt British imperial power systematically transported India's resources to London to build its vaunted empire across the world where the sun never ever set. India in the process was made to bleed, her coffers emptied and her culture offended by aggressive proselytization, the same offence committed for ages by the marauding Muslim invaders who despoiled the ancient culture of the Hindus by desecration of their temples, forced conversion to the Islamic faith, imposition of religious taxes like the Jizya and the creation of an environment of overall antipathy to Hindu religious culture. The Britishers followed suit only in a far more vicious way, the scientific looting of our national wealth which left India a famished country at the time they left us in 1947, a nation partitioned by their Machiavellian designs and its population reduced to a mass of marooned millions mutilating each other across the borders. So much for the weakness of Gandhi and his vaunted non-violence! He literally played himself into the hands of the British and the Muslim League led by Jinnah by his misreading of history and misinterpretation of Hindu philosophy, and by his impractical idealism and often political deceitfulness as evident in his foul play with Subhas Chandra Bose, later Netaji. Had Bose been allowed to function within the ambit of the Indian National Congress as he rightfully ought to have, having been democratically elected the President of the Congress in 1939 at Tripuri, had he then not been forced to resign from his post by the undemocratic, utterly unlawful designs of the Mahatma who forced the Congress Working Committee to resign, the fate of the Motherland would have changed, Partition could have been averted and a glorious chapter in Indian, nay, world history would have begun with the renascence of undivided free India. Gandhi realized his mistake when it was too late. Then none, not even Nehru, was listening to him as Jinnah, Nehru and Mountbatten made common cause to split India along communal lines thereby bringing to historical fruition the old British policy of 'divide and rule' on the grandest scale they could have ever conceived of. Non-violence had paid its debt among the bloodbath and the carnage that stretched from Lahore to Noakhali and the peoples of new India and Pakistan had been born among the terrible labour pains of the Ancient Mother India. Does Great Britain realize the magnitude of her sin? The original sin of Christian theology may be washed off by baptism in the waters of the Jordan but what will wash off this Himalayan sin of dividing Punyabhumi Bharatvarsha (India, the Holy Land) that like the fabled albatross is hanging on the neck of Great Britain? And Mr. Jinnah, where has your myopic vision of fractured politics led your own Muslim brethren beyond the horrors of the dictatorship of the Army and the conjoined mischief of religious clerics and, worst of all, the political slavery to the United States of America? Has it made the life of our millions of erstwhile Indians and their descendants across the border any better? Nay, we all know, it is an emphatic 'no'.

This then is the backdrop of the work-culture prevailing now in India where politicians and industrialists have joined hands to re-loot India whose wealth never seems to get exhausted, such is the grace of Mother Lakshmi and Mother Annapurna on her, but whose children remain enslaved now ever more to the capital and all its concomitant evils. A new approach to work is the urgent need of the hour if we are to save our people from the ravages of all that is the unlawful heir to industrial avarice. Remember, when unscrupulous politicians indulge in scams, it is the industrialist devoid of principles who whets his appetite for money for his own equally unscrupulous business ends. Now you decide who is more culpable. The problems have been set before you with their historical background. The solutions will be laid before as well soon with further analysis of past historical mistakes and future visions of the Rishis of yore whose climactic evolution is the spiritual duo Ramakrishna-Vivekananda in whom we shall seek solutions as well. Jai Hind!

LIVE THE LIFE 13

Dualism at a lower level is terrible weakness. All sense of separation, disintegration of the superstructure of things, break-up of an integrated mass into miniscule units is the handiwork of primeval ignorance quite antithetical to spiritual strength which stands on the bedrock of oneness, the essential basis of existence. All ideas of fragmented individuality, partitioned personality spring from the erroneous reading of the Absolute through the prism of Maya, of the spaceless, timeless, unconditioned Brahman through the filter of space, time and causality, and render magically, as though, the transcendent Being into this panoramic phenomena. And this is the cause of all the mischief which collectively may be dubbed human weakness in this terrestrial drama of existence, this spectacle of life which is and which is not.

Egocentrism is the bane of the world and has its genesis in this fractured view of life which is the product of the misapprehension of Reality. Units of self-centred beings do not make for a totality of social coherence and hence the myriad miseries to which man finds himself heir to. No wonder Swami Vivekananda had warned his followers about this mischief-monger, the ego, and had exhorted them to make a bundle of it and throw it overboard into the sea before they set themselves to the mighty mission of nation-building. The problems of earthly living begin with the false idea of separateness from, so to say, others and will end only when this artificial distinction goes off from the mind of man. Love, service, worship, peace, all have this consciousness of oneness as their basis. Who do you love or serve when you do so to your neighbour? Why, you yourself disguised as your neighbour. And this neighbourhood runs to the ends of the earth encompassing all, excluding none. Such is the perception of oneness that is necessary for doing the work of the Lord, such all-embracing love that can overcome all opposition and by force of character establish that which is good and wholesome, beneficial and blessed, elevating and ethereal.

Character is the basis of all great work and its utter deficiency in public life today is the cause of much of the misery of the masses. And then, of course, the eye-wash of the capitalist progress model which essentially is a life-sucker of the many for the few for you do not profit exorbitantly from your own ones and did I not just say that you and your neighbour are one? Eye-brows will be raised in pockets with vested interests but is it not inhuman to prosper at the expense of others who are your very own, nay, yourselves, and so impoverish them and thwart their very aspirations for a decent human living? And to talk of charity! Raising gallons from the Ganga and spraying faint showers on the river itself by way of magnanimous charity! Whither the good sense of people, whither morality and fairness, whither values O Lord in this age of rampant corruption, in these times of shameless greed? The world will rise on the shoulders of women and men of character and never forsooth on the coffers of the corrupt. Let a handful of young women and men yet come forward and meditate on the life and aspirations of Swamiji and so build character to translate his vision into bold deeds of national achievement. Let schools, hospitals, laboratories and universities spring up in his name who bled his very soul for the redemption of the teeming millions of India and the survival of the entire human race. He is not dead, he is with us, inspiring and invigorating us and inventing real men of lightning strength out of soft unformed matter, in his words, transforming us from our 'jelly-fish existence'.

These are tall proposals and may sound fairly far-fetched, the reactions of a radical mind to the terrible inequities of the times, but friends, just look around to discover that these projects are already afoot, courtesy the RAMAKRISHNA MATH and RAMAKRISHNA MISSION, but are getting derailed or indefinitely delayed by our niggardly status vis-a-vis social charity. Our devotions are selfish in that they cater to our well-being first and then the world but the Lord cannot be fooled. He who is the wisest of souls cannot be hoodwinked by demonstrative devotions or pretentious piety. He must see total self-effacement and complete dispossession of personal property in the light that everything belongs to Him and Him alone. Then friends, why delay? Be up and doing for the multifarious welfare projects of the Ramakrishna Mission and labour out of love for the reconstruction of the Motherland along the lines laid down by the Rishis (seers of truth) of yore who had envisioned the golden future of our beloved country ages ago. Will you not set your home aright? Then why tarry? 'Arise , awake and stop not till the goal is reached.'

LIVE THE LIFE 12 ... HELP RAMAKRISHNA MISSION SEVASHRAMA, MUZAFFARPUR EYE HOSPITAL

The poor of Muzaffarpur, Bihar are suffering from extreme medical neglect owing to lack of medical facilities in much of North Bihar. Ramakrishna Mission Sevashrama, Muzaffarpur Eye Hospital has been doing yoeman's service for eradication of blindness in the remote areas of North Bihar but is currently facing an extreme shortage of fund and equipment to successfully carry on medical service of a high order of excellence. At present there is an acute need of 2 MEDICAL MOBILE VANS which will cost a total of INR 102 lakh, a PHACO MACHINE which will cost INR 36 lakh and other equipment which will cost INR 12 lakh, that is, there is an immediate need of INR 150 lakh or 1.5 crore. We earnestly urge all to come forward and help us acquire the funds that we may serve these living goddesses and gods of North Bihar well and try and eradicate uncalled-for blindness in these areas for good.

The Eye Hospital  is also in the process of being built on a bigger scale and needs active support of philanthropists and corporate houses for its successful completion. We invite the corporate houses to come forward with help under the CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY SCHEME that we may quickly raise the necessary funds to arrest the medical decadence here in North Bihar. Kindly follow the instructions given below:

 http://www.rkmmuzaffarpur.org/donations.html

Donors are requested to provide the following along with their donation in a COVERING LETTER or EMAIL or BOTH :

NAME OF DONOR :

ADDRESS OF DONOR :

PERMANENT ACCOUNT NUMBER ( PAN ) IN CASE OF DONATION OF INR 10,000 OR MORE :

EMAIL ID :

MOBILE NO.:

DONATION AMOUNT :

MODE OF SENDING DONATION : ONLINE TRANSFER / CHEQUE (CHECK) PAYMENT / BANK DRAFT

DONATION PURPOSE : PURCHASE OF MEDICAL MOBILE VAN / PHACO / OTHER EQUIPMENT / HOSPITAL CONSTRUCTION

http://www.rkmmuzaffarpur.org/donations.html

All these details sent will help make the entire process of donation giving and donation receiving smooth. Kindly comply with the aforesaid request.

With sincere hopes of garnering support for this noblest of causes,
I remain your humble servant,
Ever in the Holy Trinity of Thakur-Ma-Swamiji,
Sugata Bose

P.S.: Kindly go through the following WEBSITE carefully before sending your donation. All relevant details such as the address of the Ramakrishna Mission Sevashrama, Muzaffarpur and their activities are available here.
http://www.rkmmuzaffarpur.org/donations.html

LIVE THE LIFE 11 ... BIRTHDAY AND BEYOND

Birthday of Sri Ramakrishna over, now what do we do? Why, dedicate ourselves to propagating his message and helping in the funding of his many welfare projects conducted by his Order. True it is that Swami Vivekananda had set up the Ramakrishna Math for spreading the divine message of his spiritual Master and the Ramakrishna Mission primarily for rescuing India's teeming millions from the yoke of crushing poverty inflicted on them by the alien British occupiers and the oppressive social machinery run by the upper castes in India. It was a herculean task taken up by the Swami and apparently impossible of achievement in the then socio-political environment obtaining in India but such was the Swami's personality and power, such his charisma and nobility of being that the entire nation was awakened by the clarion call he gave from Colombo to Almora on his return from the West in 1897. Vivekananda had shaken up the western world by his divine oratory and he now shook his Motherland out of her age-old slumber. Thousands of heroes gave up their lives in his name and freely bled to free India from foreign yoke. All our national leaders from Tilak to Gandhi, Nehru to Netaji and Aurobindo to Bagha Jatin were inspired by the message of manhood preached by Swamiji although some of these leaders did let him down by their subsequent cowardice and abject capitulation to the Machiavellian British that led to the devastation of the Partition of the Motherland. The influence of Swamiji, however, drove the British out of India as Gandhiji and Netaji, both supremely inspired, nay, empowered by Swamiji, evicted the occupiers from the Motherland along apparently diametrically opposite ways, that of so-called non-violence and that of so-called violence, both misnomers for they were eminently revolutionary methods and righteous enough to deserve no such limiting epithets. Swamiji's personality loomed over the freedom movement and eventually set India free.

But what sort of freedom have we achieved? Has it made all our citizens happy with the basic amenities of life available to and affordable by all? Now it is the tyranny of the free market economy and capitalistic greed that is consuming the life of millions. What would Swamiji or Thakur say to us if they were to confront us today? Would they praise us for our petty selfishness and total disregard of moral values in our national living? Would they commend us on our utter passivity in redressing the chaotic national condition? Or, would they be effusive at our pretentious piety oblivious of our greater national duties, our devotion devoid of commitment towards raising the lot of our sinking masses? I wonder.

Who was Ramakrishna and who Vivekananda? They were, they are and they will ever remain our spiritual guardians. And who was Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi? Why, we all call her Mother, do we not? And yet, how convenient of us to just forget millions of her children in utter destitution for, after all, we have to first ourselves survive well, do we not? We, Bengalis, have coined a beautiful adage, 'Chacha, aapon pran bnacha' (Uncle, save your own skin) and that is now national property, so infectious is this hollow selfishness of the modern 'free' man. Swamiji used to detest this saying and upbraided it in no uncertain terms. He thought that such sayings were symptomatic of the national disease that was eating into the vitals of our people, the total lack of a sense of charity and mutual help which is the backbone of any civilized society.

Now, Vivekananda is history for most of us, Shiva for many more but a living ideal to be emulated for only a handful. At the very outset I salute these very few people who truly represent the Swami and, as I always say, I make no distinction between the monastic and the laity here but pay my reverence to any who has given his heart to the realization of the dream that was Vivekananda, the rejuvenation of the ancient Motherland. I await the birth of the great ones Swamiji had prophesied who would raise India to the pinnacle of spiritual and cultural glory and I suffer daily the pangs of the millions who mutely suffer their lot too. Poor am I in temporal means to redress the situation and fervently appeal to all who love our beloved Motherland to come forward with the hand of help that we may conjointly do something worthwhile in addressing the poverty situation that persists which is sapping the very vitality of millions who are in the flower of their youth, nipping the lives out of millions of innocent babes and extinguishing the flickering flame of life from millions of our aged people. Tell me, brothers, with what face shall we face Swamiji if we cannot fulfil his fondest dream, that of protecting the poor of India from the ravages of social inflictions.

And yet there is a way out of this predicament and Swamiji himself has shown the way. He has left behind two golden institutions in the form of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission as trustees of the poor of India and spiritual trustees of the wide world beyond. For long the monks of the Ramakrishna Order have inspired us with life-giving messages, exemplary living and life-altering spiritual initiation selflessly out of their unbounded love for all. Time it is that we for a while reverse the roles and start inspiring the monks for a change by readily giving our all for the fruition of the many welfare projects the Order runs in its bid to reconstruct the nation. Let us freely give as we have so far freely received and let us hold such giving merely as service to Ramakrishna's Mission, as worship of his children, as fulfilment of his grand pronouncement 'Shiva jnaney jiva seva' (Service to living beings knowing them to be God-incarnate). I exhort all to join me in this massive movement where the lay devotees will sacrifice their all like brave children of Thakur-Ma and bring to fruition the grand ideal of the Ramakrishna Mission which Swamiji had established with the fond hope that the lay devotees of Ramakrishna would work in unison with the monks to bring about the golden transformation of India followed by her spiritual conquest of the world. So, sisters and brothers, let us LIVE THE LIFE.              

LIVE THE LIFE 10 ... 179TH BIRTH ANNIVERSARY OF SRI RAMAKRISHNA AND HIS 180TH BIRTHDAY

Once more we are celebrating Sri Ramakrishna's birth anniversary. Once more festivities are on as we rejoice over the coming of the Master in our midst. He who is birthless has to assume a human form to conduct his terrestrial play with devotees and at a deeper level to set right the lost balance of of forces in this theatre of human action. One wonders how the Master's birthday may have been celebrated by his family in his boyhood but it is a recorded fact, however, that his disciples and devotees did celebrate it with great devotion at Dakshineswar in his final years on Earth and thereafter even after his passage from the terrestrial domain. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna gives vivid description of the joyous celebrations of the Master's birthday, how he used to be clad in new attire and how the Temple Garden of Dakshineswar became a veritable mart of joy as devotees through the day sang and danced centering the Master in ecstatic delight and the Master, brimful with bliss, now in outer conscious, now immersed in samadhi, savoured each moment of it like a bonny child. Thus was set the golden tradition of the celebration of the Master's birthday and it continues even today when the Belur Math and its numerous branch centres throughout the world send cascades of spiritual bliss rolling through the consciousness of the multitude and awakening the spiritual potentiality of man. Such a day is today, the 180th birthday of Sri Ramakrishna. We pray to the Master that millions may be drawn to him today for their eternal good and that thousands of souls may be quickened into spiritual consciousness by the gracious touch of this holy day when the Lord did make his advent on Earth 179 years ago.

The significance of Sri Ramakrishna's birth is gradually dawning on man. Two World Wars and countless confrontations of the global powers for political and ideological supremacy in the world have left humanity mauled and scarred with no peace whatsoever. The world is at the crossroads of its development, civilization is suspended over an abyss by a slender thread and humanity is facing the spectre of an eventual doom too soon for comfort. If the world is to survive, it will have to follow the message of Ramakrishna, his universalism, his catholicity, his all-encompassing compassion, his great civilization of spirit. Herein lies the historical significance of Ramakrishna and the importance of stirring up enthusiasm in his name on his birthday so that millions may be pulled into his ambit amidst the gaiety of the day. Swami Vivekananda was strongly in favour of celebration of the Ramakrishna birthday for this very reason. His idea was that even if people took the name of Ramakrishna and remembered him for this one day of the year, his birthday, and participated in the proceedings, cultural and spiritual, at the Ramakrishna monasteries, it would do them a world of good, so strongly was Swamiji convinced of the efficacy of festivity in the name of his divine Master.

Our own devotion found efflorescence on these delightful days in our youth when we frequented Belur Math from morning 7 till evening 7, savouring every bit of the celebration and filling our hearts and minds brimful with spiritual joy. True it is that, today, as we go down memory lane, the chorus of joyous school children marching with the band and singing songs of praise to Thakur strike distant chords so reminiscent of the brightest days of our lives. And we remember how Bharat Maharaj, then 97, came down to listen to the discourse given by Swami Lokeswarananda in the afternoon at 3, a rare occasion indeed for devotees to witness when the gods assembled to hear the Brahmajnani speak. And what a swirling crowd, a veritable sea of devotees, rushed to gather the dust of Swami Lokeswaranandaji's feet after the then Assistant General Secretary of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, Swami Atmasthananda, had fallen at the Swami's feet. What a wave it was, a swirling mass of humanity coursing through towards the Swami towering over all of them and blessing them with upraised undulating hands even as he pacified their rising enthusiasm! The scene has remained etched in my memory and all this happened in front of the Main Temple of Sri Ramakrishna as Swami Lokeswaranandaji made his way towards the lecture podium on the lawn beside on this very day, the birth anniversary of Thakur in the year 1985.

Such then is the way Thakur's birthday has gripped my memory, that of early morning procession of school children with their bands, worship, homa, devotional songs, the multitude of devotees lined up for sacramental food (prasad), afternoon plays and spiritual discourses, and the riot of the ochre flushing spiritual emotions in devotees like us. And who can forget the unforgettable fervour of the vesper service as Swamiji's composition 'Khandana bhava bandhana' rolled across the Ganga towards Kashipur and Dakshineswar where the Master had sported in his earthly sojourn just the other day?

This is Belur Math for you, home of the sages, the abode of peace, refuge of devotees and the parlour of God for who else is seated on the thousand-petalled lotus of the sanctum sanctorum of the temple therein but the peerless Paramahamsa, the prophet of the times, the incarnation divine, the source of all beatitude.

Come ye brethren and join in the rush for the divine on this hallowed morn and make your lives a pilgrimage on this heaven of Bharatbhumi (the landmass of India) where the spiritual currents of the universe have met their confluence and an inundation of the world has sprung forth with the ethereal vibrations of the Vedas. May ye all bathe in its cleansing current and rise rejuvenated 'children of immortal bliss'!

Pranam Thakur. Jai Sri Ramakrishna! Jai Ma! Jai Swamiji Maharaj! Jai Ganga Mayee!  

LIVE THE LIFE 9

The centre of the Ramakrishna Movement is the Master himself. His unprecedented austerity, matchless renunciation and catholicity of spiritual experience is the cornerstone of the great mission he came to represent whose manifestation is transforming the consciousness of the wide world, uplifting the thought-currents and value-systems of humanity almost imperceptibly but with a slow certitude.

The mission of Ramakrishna was to set aright the lost balance of the world, redirect humanity along the spiritual path from which it had strayed and to fine-tune the terrestrial evolutionary programme at a time when mankind was sinking in the quagmire of materialism that threatened an eventual destruction of civilization. And the beauty of the entire movement is that its initiator did not wait for others to come to his aid before he began the salvage work but rather manfully set himself to the stupendous task of the resuscitation of sinking humanity, alone and single-handedly. It is a tribute to our inertia that we, the inheritors of this divine legacy of the Master, find it so convenient to evade responsibility of the rapid furtherance of his work under the pretext of this or that limitation of ours, man-power or material-power, and yet seek superficial solace in pious prostrations at his hallowed feet oblivious of the hypocrisy so indulged in and reducing piety to an exercise in futility and our manhood to a sham. No wonder the Master ever brings forth from his ethereal abode his entourage to carry forward his mission for he is fully conversant with human sloth and its unwillingness to look beyond the close confines of its conditioned self. Also, how convenient is our escape of duty as a collective anthropic entity towards our own well-being and what an utter sense of irresponsibility towards the furtherance of our own terrestrial evolution when we devise so-called spiritual modes of deification of these seminal beings in the unconscious bid to avoid bearing the cross ourselves in a bold and manful way that befits our claims to pre-eminence in the domain of terrestrial existence. If a Ramakrishna alone can achieve so much, how much more ought we to collectively achieve in his name as his followers and how little space there is for us to cite inadequacies of circumstance or means to defer his mission of the rapid transformation of the human condition indefinitely. Such inertia is unspiritual, such lethargy of approach by no means the steadiness vouched by the Swami Vivekananda who, for all intents and purposes, was, nonetheless, in the then immensely more rigid human environment, the cyclonic monk who shook the world to its foundations and expected his followers to be a hundred times more potent than he ever was. Therefore, no shirking of responsibility please in the holy name of this heroic duo Ramakrishna-Vivekananda unless, of course, it is an open submission by the concerned parties that they have failed them after all. Then cease from citing the scripture and taking cover under the umbrella of these luminous beings when the world goes to pieces and Ramakrishna stirs uneasy in his ethereal abode but his devotees happily do the devotional rounds for the fire as yet does not singe them.

Awake, my friends, awake. It is not yet too late to deluge the land with the Spirit of the Master for he leads us yet out of his infinite mercy and will not tarry awhile any more for his children suffer and the Mother cannot bear their misery. Can you bear the misery of your dear ones my friends? Then delay no longer. Set yourselves to the task of nation-building and carry the Ramakrishna flame to distant lands where our sisters and brothers, children of our Mother, expectantly await us for ages. Slake this great thirst of the world and then proudly proclaim, "We are the children of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, we are the children of our beloved Mother."