Mother's Laughter

Mother’s Laughter

The Great Mother smiles at our weaknesses and our fealties. Indulgently helps us when we fall in our blind, unconscious or conscious struggle to be free. She even plays tricks and pokes fun at us in her ever-mischievous ways. But there are times when She laughs at us - times when we are blind with our pride and the pomp of our passions. It is a deep roaring laughter at our ignorance of our limitedness. We know for sure from Sri Ramakrishna that She laughs at least on two circumstances.

In the simple and clear words of  Sri Ramakrishna “God laughs on two occasions. She laughs when the physician says to the patient’s mother ‘Don’t be afraid, mother I shall certainly cure your boy’. God laughs, saying to herself, ‘I am going to take his life, and this man says he will save it!’. The physician thinks he is the master, forgetting that God is the master. God laughs again when two brothers divide their land with a string, saying to each other ‘This side is mine and that side is yours’. She laughs and says to Herself, the whole universe belongs to Me, but they say they own this portion or that portion.”¹

Ramkrishna had stressed this atleast twice, in the Gospel. Once on his visit to Vidyasagar on 5^th August 1882 while discussing the bondage of me and mine. And again during his last visit to Keshab Sen on 28^th  November 1883, he had said this to Keshab’s mother, after asking her to pray to the Divine Mother - the bestower of all bliss, when she had tearfully asked him to bless Keshab that he might be cured of his illness.

The first occasion is when we institutionalize me and mine and second is when we are all at some point or other confronted with the inevitability of death.

Medical practice and Spiritual pursuit       

“Mother, Thou workest Thine own work; men only call it theirs.” – Sri Ramakrishna

There is a principle of indeterminacy involved in the relation between medicinal science and the phenomenon of disease and death. It is the acceptance of powerlessness in front of God’s playfulness. Howsoever confident one is with the knowledge of medicine, there remains an element of randomness. Perhaps medical science  awaits its Heisenberg and his Uncertainty principle!  Saints say one should always remember the inevitability of death, which makes one realize the transitoriness of this world and its pleasure, pains and sorrows.

Philosophers of Science of various ages down to our own times have had tried to develop a criterion to demarcate science from non-science. For many this problem of demarcation is one of the most fundamental problems of the theory of scientific knowledge. Karl R. Popper one of the most important philosopher of science of the 20^th century found it very difficult to keep Medical Science on the side of science using his own rigorous criterion of demarcation. Neither is Popper alone nor is he the last who reached the same conclusion. In spite of the immense growth in medical knowledge it is perhaps the element of Mother’s laughter that has brought unpredictability in the whole process of cure.

                                                                                  

Mother’s laughter perhaps is more mysterious and a bit deeper. For instance, we may choose to consider the mortality rate among Christian Scientists who do not accept artificial medical help and only wish to be healed by God. The interesting thing is that their mortality rate is not perceptibly higher.²

The body is much more than a machine.  Vedanta posits that it is divinity expressing itself  through this body-mind complex. Mother plays with this cage of flesh, expressing herself in degrees. These are manifold expressions of the all inclusive subject in its quest to realize its own free and blissfull nature. It has the sacredness of a temple and more - it is ‘the Taj Mahal of temples’. It is the best temple there is.

The ills plaguing medical practice and hospitals are perhaps solely due to the pervasive objectification of the human body.  The sacred is categorized as profane and more – as so many commodities in the market. Reverential love is displaced by arrogant instrumentality. Hospitals have turned into huge wealth producing machines, depersonalized and even dehumanized - “ivory towers of disease”. Investments flow in and wealth is accrued at the expense of the ill, helpless and the suffering. On one side iatrogenic maladies, drug induced or doctor induced sickness arising due to medical intervention, multiply; and on the other the underprivileged, not affording medical treatment, learn to live with hopelessness. 

Sri Ramakrishna has set an ideal for medical practitioners, “the physician is undoubtedly a noble man if he treats his patient free, out of compassion and moved by their suffering. Then his work may be called very uplifting. But a physician becomes cruel and callous if he carries on his profession for money. …. like the business man carrying on his trade.”  Humanity needs to attempt at approximating this ideal.

The warning of Mother’s laughter and tenets of Vedanta together warrants a reverential and worshipful attitude towards the ill and ailing. It all requires an attitudinal correction - an attitude of reverence, worship and service. Nobody can deny the hugely beneficent role of medicine, but this attitudinal correction can transform hospital into centers of service and physicians into seekers of spiritual truth. It would internalize both the sole active agency of God and the accumulated store of medicinal knowledge. It is the acknowledgment of our limitedness and tentativeness of our knowledge inspite of our immense edifice of medical science.                 

Exemplifiers

The Vedantic tradition has many a time presented personified ideals of enlightenment through service - Swamis Kalyananda, Nischayananda, Subhananda, Achalananda and many others. One such who passed away some years back was Ban Baba. Swami Muktananda, endearingly called Ban Bihari Maharaj, did dressings of the patients, considering them as Gods, for more than sixty years in the Ramakrishna Mission Sevashrama at Varanasi. After early morning meditation and prayer at the banks of the Ganges he would reach the dressing room at 8 a.m., put on an apron over his ochre robe and gloves in the hands and do dressing of the wounds – accidental or surgical – till 2 p.m. or till all the cases were attended. He would again come in the afternoon to boil, wash and dry the linen, bandages, etc. Ban Baba would do the cleaning, packing and dressing of the wounds as if he were worshipping a God. The simple dressing room gained an aura of a shrine room. Ban Bihari Baba developed miraculous healing powers. Most difficult and unyielding wounds healed by his touch and even senior surgeons brought their own cases with deep and chronic wounds to him for dressing.

Ban Baba would reverentially dress and heal ‘roadside’ patient with multiple putrid wound kept in isolation ward or wounded mad patient or any ‘narayanas’ (Gods) that were admitted in the Sevashram. In later years, when his legs had become stiff due to standing for long hours continuously every day for more than sixty years, he would go to the dressing room on a specially designed wheel chair to do the dressings. The dressing room had turned him into a saint. ³

The road of Ban Baba is the path to sainthood, where we can all laugh with Mother. Or else Mother laughs at us and our arrogant ignorance.

Me and Mine – a wicked delusion

‘I’ and ‘mine’ - these constitute ignorance. ‘My house’, ‘my wealth’, ‘my learning’, ‘my possessions’ - the attitude that prompts one to say such things comes of ignorance.” – Sri Ramakrishna

When we look at ourselves we discern so many walls that we have constructed around ourselves. The walls that separates our ‘I’ from others. The separateness encompasses biological human/animal, man/ woman, and social like family, language, colour, caste, city, country, religion and so many others. All these walls constrict and intern. These are fetters that bind down our spiritual self. We hold ourselves free but are driven like slaves, slaves to our senses, our property, our family, our religion, our country and so on.

All our toil, pains and tears are for realizing more and more freedom. And struggle we must - for freedom is the song of the soul. Our infinite nature cannot be satisfied with finite things. In our own ways and means we are searching for freedom - material, mental and spiritual.  Vedanta posits that ultimate freedom can be realized only when we realize a union with our transcendental Self - beyond our little egos and our body-mind.   Our real nature is the oneness of Existence absolute - knowledge absolute and bliss absolute. The realized souls have asserted time and again that this oneness is just not an intellectual construct - it can be experientially realized, it has been realized and there are methods for its realization.

Each person has a unique station in the spiritual journey to seek the universal, our real individuality. Each is a unique ray to the infinite center working its way through work, worship, psychic control or philosophy or one or more of all these. The greatest obstacle is realizing our true nature is this tenacious clinging to our ego our little ‘me and mine’. Renunciation of ‘me and mine’ is the sin-qua-non of realizing freedom and bliss. One has to renounce the animal for the human and human for the divine. The animal snatches, the human gives and takes, and the divine unconditionally gives. One travels from instinct to reason to inspiration.

Philosophically, whether dualist or qualified monist or monist in all cases the renunciation of lower nature to be one with one’s ideal is a commonality. To see one’s ideal everywhere is the end. This oneness is perhaps the only rational explanation of selflessness, which we all cherish, and are inspired by. When “in me all me's I have; I cannot hate, I cannot shun,  Myself from me, I can but love.”  Loving thy neighbor as thyself has a rational basis.

The bonds of the transient world are the cause of our miseries. Our “I” and “mine” is the principle which forges the chains and keeps us bound. The apparent individuality forming our egos are akin the ephemeral eddies in an onrushing stream. In the words of Vivekananda “Our bodies are small little whirlpools in one unbroken ocean of matter. So are our minds and spirit. Just as a rushing stream there may be millions of whirlpools, the water in each of which is different every moment, turning round and round for a few seconds, and then passing out, replaced by a fresh quantity, so the whole universe is one constantly changing mass of matter, in which all forms of existence  are so many whirlpools. A mass of matter enters into one whirlpool, say a human body, stays there for a period, becomes changed, and goes out into another, say an animal body this time, from which again after few years, it enters into another whirlpool, called a lump of mineral. It is constant change. (CW v. 1, p. 150-151)

“This mind is a part of the universal mind. Each mind is connected with every other mind. And each mind, wherever it is located, is in actual communication with the whole world. (CW, v.2, p.13)

“The world is one, it is one physically, mentally and in consciousness.  .. It is sort of tapering existence; the thickest part is here, it tapers and becomes finer and finer. The finest is what we call spirit; the grossest the body. (CW, v.2, p.16)

“This is one great theme of the Vedanta, this Oneness of life, this oneness of everything. … it demonstrates that all our misery comes through ignorance, and this ignorance is the obsession with manifoldness, the separation between man and man, between nation and nation, between earth and moon, between moon and sun. Out of this idea of separation comes all misery. But, the Vedanta says, this separation, does not exist, it is not real. It is merely apparent, the limitations imposed by the five instruments of knowledge man is bound with - the five sensory organs. In the heart of things, there is Unity still. And that Unity is God.” (CW, v.2, p. 153)

We know today that many scientists and scientific writers are converging to this oneness. Scientist term it is as ‘unbroken wholeness’ or ‘implicate nature’ or ‘Universe is one individual’ or ‘Atman = Brahma postulate’. Many scientists toy with the idea that though the sensory world appears to be diverse and distinct, the fine perhaps is mere forms in a continuum of space and time.

This oneness has manifested itself throughout human civilization, in bits and spurts, in thought, word and deed. It is more so perhaps in the present than ever before. Vivekananda had prophetically asserted more than a century ago  “The problem of life is becoming deeper and broader every day as the world moves on. ……. One atom in this universe cannot move without dragging the whole world along with it. There cannot be any progress without the whole world following in the wake, and it is becoming every day clearer that the solution of any problem can never be attained on racial, or national, or narrow grounds. Every idea has to become broad till it covers the whole of this world, every aspiration must go on increasing till it has engulfed the whole of humanity, nay, the whole of life, within its scope.” (CW, v.3, p.269)

This impersonal, non-sectarian boundlessness is to Vivekananda a grand foundation of global spiritual fraternity - “If there is ever to be universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place and time; … It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognize divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be centred in aiding humanity to realize its own true divine nature.” (CW, v.1, p.19)

The Alternatives

The greatest of possibilities beckons us and ironically at a time when the most devastating conflagration chase us.  The greatest of expansion of human spirit is possible when the most virulent hatreds are contracting the human heart.

Life itself is a struggle of the free being to express itself under circumstances that tries to press it down. Jumping out of the little selves is the road to freedom, all the snares of our little selves, our attachments, hatred, jealousies, selfishness are the road to slavery and bondage. Slaves to our lower nature - we continuously throw ropes around ourselves and designate them me and mine. Only slaves injure and kill and oppress. The free love and help and serve without distinction. Expansion is life and contraction is death. The ‘I’ does not go so easy. Saints say the best way is to keep the ‘I’ as servant of God or to reverential serve the deified world.

In our ignorance we sometimes idolize and institutionalize the differences and boundaries and in our conceit and arrogance we fight and kill over them. The more we create and sanctify borders and boundaries the more we are forging fetters that bind us down. Denial of the oneness of the universe results in the movement of civilization ‘red in tooth and claw’. As a phenomenon humanity, or the universe, is manifold and diverse, but in essence it is one. Unity in Diversity is the plan of nature. Today’s world perhaps is more than ever in need of this gestalt switch of diversity and unity.

In Jayramabati at the end of December 1918, in front of the Holy Mother, Sri Sarada Devi, her two brothers started having a heated altercation regarding a fencing put up by one to demarcate the boundary of his part of the family land. A scuffle was about to ensue and the Mother rushed to pacify them. Her intervention stopped them from coming to blows. Nevertheless she could not stop them from exchanging hot words. The monks came to her rescue, and the brothers walked away cursing each other. The Mother was excited but the very next moment she burst into a fit of laughter that lasted pretty long and she said ‘What a maya (magic/delusion) is this of the Mahamaya (Conjuror)! There stretches the infinite earth, and these possessions, too, will be left behind. Can’t man understand this simple fact ? ⁴

Man has yet not internalized this simple fact. And today we hear her laughter all around much more than perhaps ever before. Ramakrishna’s two instances of the Mother’s laughter manifests today in multiple forms. The present is a violent, ferocious and barbaric dance of tortured humanity around ‘me’ and ‘mine’ and of  ‘we’ and ‘they’. We hear her laughter ring and reverberate through the corridors of hospitals that look like five star hotels, around the helpless stares of the poor in front of dazzling dispensaries for the rich and the powerful, through the electrified barbed wire fences and the mine fields, over the spiked boundary walls, through the fortress like colonies enclosing out the ghettos and the homeless, around the armed gendarmes and soldiers facing each other on the political boundaries, and around all the tussles and violence of our egos and identities - individual, social, cultural, national and religious. Or perhaps She laughs with ecstasy at humanity’s arrogant desire to fragment the whole. For possibly through this tumult humanity, at its own peril, will understand the ‘simple fact’ of oneness of the universe and the Mother’s eternal play.  It was perhaps truly said She has rapture for torture and passion and pain and delights in our sorrow and drives us to weeping and lures with her joy and beauty again. 

                                                                                                                                 

The gentle way of transcending the barriers of the other and me, is Sarada Devi’s final benediction “If you want peace, don’t find fault with others, but find fault rather with yourself.  Learn to make the world your own. Nobody is a stranger, my dear; the world is yours.”  This applies of course if one desires peace. And the Nazarene has promised that blessed are the peace makers for they shall be called the children of God. From the tranquil beatitude in the depths of this wholeness of God we can sing with Swami Vivekananda:

They know not truth who dream such vacant dreams

as father, mother, children, wife or friend.

The sexless self whose father he whose child,

whose friend whose foe is he who is but one,

the self is all in all  and none else exist,

and thou art that, sannyasin bold, say Om Tat Sat Om.

1. Swami Nikhilananda's traslation of Kathamrita uses the masculine gendre for God in this quote but from the bengali original the traslation can as well be feminine.

2. For and Against Method, Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerbend, p. 26, University of Chicago Press, 1999.  

3. Much of the material on Swami Muktananda is from “Health, Medicine and Religion” by Swami Brahmeshananda, Sri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, 2004.

4. ‘Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi’ by Swami Gambhirananda, p 308-309. Sri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, 2001

Science and Religion in Swami Vivekananda

Science and Religion in Swami Vivekananda

 “Search for the final unity which is alike the goal of science and religion.”

“I want the ‘why’ of everything and leave the how to children.”

Swami Vivekananda was a multifaceted personality and presented varied persona to various people – a spiritual giant, a prophet of universal religion, the foremost apostle of Sri Ramakrishna, a dynamic thinker, a philosopher and to some even a patriot saint. In him coalesced action and contemplation, east and west, science and spirituality, and poetry and philosophy. Swamiji was fundamentally a man of God with a unique capacity to traverse the whole range of reality from the subtle realms of the mystics to the struggle, trials and tribulations of the world.  His was a fearless, all embracing and dynamic religion. His stress was always   for that universality where reason and intuition, science and religion will go hand in hand.

“Science and religion will meet and shake hands. Poetry and philosophy will become friends. This will be the religion of the future, and if we can work it out, we may be sure that it will be for all times and peoples. This is the one way that will prove acceptable to modern science, for it has almost come to it."

“Science and religion are both attempts to help us out of the bondage; only religion is the more ancient, and we have the superstition that it is the more holy. In a way it is, because it makes morality a vital point, and science does not.”

Swamiji with a conviction firmly based on realization knew that an earnest search for truth by whatever means is bound to fructify over time. Science as long as it is a search for the verities of our universe and not just mere problem solving is bound to have some parallelism with the spiritual endeavor.

Swamiji accepted and honored or rather embodied the spirit of the age demanding a rationalistic and scientific approach. “Materialism prevails .. today. You may pray for the salvation of the modern skeptics, but they do not yield, they want reason. The salvation .. depends on a rationalistic religion, and Advaita -- the non - duality, the Oneness, the idea of the Impersonal God -- is the only religion that can have any hold on any intellectual people.”

It is the age of reason, skepticism and experimentation. Perhaps Swamiji knew about it more than anyone else, for in his own language he had “fought every inch of the way”. Religion has to submit itself to scientific enquiry, “If a religion is destroyed by such investigations, it was then all the time useless, unworthy superstition; and the sooner it goes the better. I am thoroughly convinced that its destruction would be the best thing that could happen. All that is dross will be taken off, no doubt, but the essential parts of religion will emerge triumphant out of this investigation. Not only will it be made scientific -- as scientific, at least, as any of the conclusions of physics or chemistry -- but will have greater strength, because physics or chemistry has no internal mandate to vouch for its truth, which religion has.”

Swamiji’s stress on science can be delineated within three broad area.

1. The sources of knowledge – similar to science and spirituality
2. The final destination of all enquiry/knowledge
3. Word of caution against orthodoxy and fundamentalism on both sides.

 The sources of knowledge

Swami Vivekananda had stressed that all sources of knowledge be it science or religion has similar ontology. All knowledge needs to be rationalised under three principles, the principles of induction, principle of explanation from its own nature and the principle of evolution.

"The particulars are to be referred to the general, the general to the more general, and everything at last to the universal, the last concept that we have, the most universal -- that of existence. Existence is the most universal concept."

"A second explanation of knowledge is that the explanation of a thing must come from inside and not from outside. There had been the belief that, when a man threw up a stone and it fell, some demon dragged it down. Many occurrences which are really natural phenomena are attributed by people to unnatural beings. That a ghost dragged down the stone was an explanation that was not in the thing itself, it was an explanation from outside; but the second explanation of gravitation is something in the nature of the stone; the explanation is coming from inside. This tendency you will find throughout modern thought; in one word, what is meant by science is that the explanations of things are in their own nature, and that no external beings or existences are required to explain what is going on in the universe. The chemist never requires demons, or ghosts, or anything of that sort, to explain his phenomena. The physicist never requires anyone of these to explain the things he knows, nor does any other scientist. And this is one of the features of science which I mean to apply to religion. In this religions are found wanting and that is why they are crumbling into pieces. Every science wants its explanations from inside, from the very nature of things; and the religions are not able to supply this."

"What is the difference between science and common knowledge? Go out into the streets in the dark, and if something unusual is happening there, ask one of the passers - by what is the cause of it. It is ten to one that he will tell you it is a ghost causing the phenomenon. He is always going after ghosts and spirits outside, because it is the nature of ignorance to seek for causes outside of effects. If a stone falls, it has been thrown by a devil or a ghost, says the ignorant man, but the scientific man says it is the law of nature, the law of gravitation."

"What is the fight between science and religion everywhere? Religions are encumbered with such a mass of explanations which come from outside -- one angel is in charge of the sun, another of the moon, and so on ad infinitum. Every change is caused by a spirit, the one common point of agreement being that they are all outside the thing. Science means that the cause of a thing is sought out by the nature of the thing itself. As step by step science is progressing, it has taken the explanation of natural phenomena out of the hands of spirits and angels. Because Advaitism has done likewise in spiritual matters, it is the most scientific religion. This universe has not been created by any extra - cosmic God, nor is it the work of any outside genius. It is self - creating, self - dissolving, self - manifesting, One Infinite Existence, the Brahman. Tattvamasi Shvetaketo --"That thou art, O Shvetaketu!"

"Another idea connected with this, the manifestation of the same principle, that the explanation of everything comes from inside it, is the modern law of evolution. The whole meaning of evolution is simply that the nature of a thing is reproduced, that the effect is nothing but the cause in another form, that all the potentialities of the effect were present in the cause, that the whole of creation is but an evolution and not a creation. That is to say, every effect is a reproduction of a preceding cause, changed only by the circumstances, and thus it is going on throughout the universe, and we need not go outside the universe to seek the causes of these changes; they are within."

"Now there are two principles of knowledge. The one principle is that we know by referring the particular to the general, and the general to the universal; and the second is that anything of which the explanation is sought is to be explained so far as possible from its own nature."

"All human knowledge proceeds out of experience; we cannot know anything except by experience. All our reasoning is based upon generalised experience, all our knowledge is but harmonised experience. Looking around us, what do we find? A continuous change. The plant comes out of the seed, grows into the tree, completes the circles, and comes back to the seed. The animal comes, lives a certain time, dies, and completes the circle. So does man. The mountains slowly but surely crumble away, the rivers slowly but surely dry up, rains come out of the sea, and go back to the sea. Everywhere circles are being completed, birth, growth, development, and decay following each other with mathematical precision. This is our everyday experience. Inside of it all, behind all this vast mass of what we call life, of millions of forms and shapes, millions upon millions of varieties, beginning from the lowest atom to the highest spiritualised man, we find existing a certain unity. Every day we find that the wall that was thought to be dividing one thing and another is being broken down, and all matter is coming to be recognised by modern science as one substance, manifesting in different ways and in various forms; the one life that runs through all like a continuous chain, of which all these various forms represent the links, link after link, extending almost infinitely, but of the same one chain. This is what is called evolution."

And then to him Advaita was the only substratum acceptable to the rationalist and the scientist. The foundation of oneness or wholeness can be only glue that will cement together the infinite variety of spiritual search and practice. “Thus you see that this, and this alone, and none else, can be the only scientific religion. And with all the prattle about science that is going on daily at the present time in modern half - educated India, with all the talk about rationalism and reason that I hear every day, I expect that whole sects of you will come over and dare to be Advaitists, and dare to preach it to the world in the words of Buddha, [Sanskrit]--"For the good of many, for the happiness of many." If you do not, I take you for cowards. If you cannot get over your cowardice, if your fear is your excuse, allow the same liberty to others, do not try to break up the poor idol - worshipper, do not call him a devil, do not go about preaching to every man that does not agree entirely with you. Know first, that you are cowards yourselves, and if society frightens you, if your own superstitions of the past frighten you so much, how much more will these superstitions frighten and bind down those who are ignorant? That is the Advaita position. Have mercy on others. Would to God that the whole world were Advaitists tomorrow, not only in theory, but in realisation. But if that cannot be, let us do the next best thing; let us take the ignorant by the hand, lead them always step by step just as they can go, and know that every step in all religious growth in India has been progressive. It is not from bad to good, but from good to better.”

"When the scientific teacher asserts that all things are the manifestation of one force, does it not remind you of the God of whom you hear in the Upanishads: "As the one fire entering into the universe expresses Itself in various forms, even so that One Soul is expressing Itself in every soul and yet is infinitely more besides?" Do you not see whither science is tending? ….. We find that searching through the mind we at last come to that Oneness, that Universal One, the Internal Soul of everything, the Essence and Reality of everything, the Ever - free, the Ever - blissful, the Ever - existing. Through material science we come to the same Oneness. Science today is telling us that all things are but the manifestation of one energy which is the sum total of everything which exists, and the trend of humanity is towards freedom and not towards bondage. Why should men be moral? Because through morality is the path towards freedom, and immorality leads to bondage.”

Then why religion?

"This universe of ours, the universe of the senses, the rational, the intellectual, is bounded on both sides by the illimitable, the unknowable, the ever unknown. Herein is the search, herein are the inquiries, here are the facts; from this comes the light which is known to the world as religion. Essentially, however, religion belongs to the supersensuous and not to the sense plane. It is beyond all reasoning and is not on the plane of intellect. It is a vision, an inspiration, a plunge into the unknown and unknowable, making the unknowable more than the known, for it can never be "known". This search has been in human mind, as I believe, from the very beginning of humanity. There cannot have been human reasoning and intellect in any period of the world's history without this struggle, this search beyond."

"Take anything before you, the most material thing -- take one of the most material sciences, as chemistry or physics, astronomy or biology -- study it, push the study forward and forward, and the gross forms will begin to melt and become finer and finer, until they come to a point where you are bound to make a tremendous leap from these material things into the immaterial. The gross melts into the fine, physics into metaphysics, in every department of knowledge."

"Life will be a desert, human life will be vain, if we cannot know the beyond. …. It does not consist in the amount of money in your pocket, or the dress you wear, or the house you live in, but in the wealth of spiritual thought in your brain. That is what makes for human progress, that is the source of all material and intellectual progress, the motive power behind, the enthusiasm that pushes mankind forward."

The final destination of all enquiry/knowledge

The final goal to all mystics is to realize the wholeness, to lose oneself into a transcendental ‘I’ or put simply to break the thralldom of the senses and go beyond its field of operation. The route is from instinct to reason to inspiration, subconscious to conscious to superconscious.  The senses and reason is the tool albeit a necessary one, but not the end. “The senses cheat you day and night. Vedanta found that out ages ago; modern science is just discovering the same fact.”

“The sun reflected from millions of globules of water appears to be millions of suns, and in each globule is a miniature picture of the sun - form; so all these souls are but reflections and not real. They are not the real "I" which is the God of this universe, the one undivided Being of the universe. And all these little different beings, men and animal etc. are but reflections, and not real. They are simply illusory reflections upon Nature. There is but one Infinite Being in the universe, and that Being appears as you and I; but this appearance of divisions is after all a delusion. He has not been divided, but only appears to be divided. This apparent division is caused by looking at Him through the network of time, space, and causation. When I look at God through the network of time, space, and causation, I see Him as the material world. When I look at Him from a little higher plane, yet through the same network, I see Him as an animal, a little higher as a man, a little higher as a god, but yet He is the One Infinite Being of the universe, and that Being we are. I am That, and you are That. Not parts of It, but the whole of It..... You cannot see your own face except in a mirror, and so the Self cannot see Its own nature until It is reflected, and this whole universe therefore is the Self trying to realise Itself. This reflection is thrown back first from the protoplasm, then from plants and animals, and so on and on from better and better reflectors, until the best reflector, the perfect man, is reached -- just as a man who, wanting to see his face, looks first in a little pool of muddy water, and sees just an outline; then he comes to clear water, and sees a better image; then to a piece of shining metal, and sees a still better image; and at last to a looking - glass, and sees himself reflected as he is. Therefore the perfect man is the highest reflection on that Being who is both subject and object. You now find why man instinctively worships everything, and how perfect men are instinctively worshipped as God in every country. You may talk as you like, but it is they who are bound to be worshipped. That is why men worship Incarnations, such as Christ or Buddha. They are the most perfect manifestations of the eternal Self. They are much higher than all the conceptions of God that you or I can make. A perfect man is much higher than such conceptions. In him the circle becomes complete; the subject and the object become one."

“We find that searching through the mind we at last come to that Oneness, that Universal One, the Internal Soul of everything, the Essence and Reality of everything, the Ever - free, the Ever - blissful, the Ever - existing. Through material science we come to the same Oneness. Science today is telling us that all things are but the manifestation of one energy which is the sum total of everything which exists, and the trend of humanity is towards freedom and not towards bondage.”

"What is the goal? Nowadays it is asserted that man is infinitely progressing, forward and forward, and there is no goal of perfection to attain to. Ever approaching, never attaining, whatever that may mean and however wonderful it may be, it is absurd on the face of it. Is there any motion in a straight line? A straight line infinitely projected becomes a circle, it returns to the starting point. You must end where you begin; and you began in God, you must go back to God. What remains? Detail work. Through eternity you have to do the detail work."

"Are we to discover new truths of religion as we go on? Yea and nay. In the first place, we cannot know anything more of religion, it has all been known. In all religions of the world you will find it claimed that there is a unity within us. Being one with divinity, there cannot be any further progress in that sense. Knowledge means finding this unity. I see you as men and women, and this is variety. It becomes scientific knowledge when I group you together and call you human beings. Take the science of chemistry, for instance. Chemists are seeking to resolve all known substances into their original elements, and if possible, to find the one element from which all these are derived. The time may come when they will find one element that is the source of all other elements. Reaching that, they can go further; the science of chemistry will have become perfect. So it is with the science of religion. If we can discover this perfect unity, there cannot be any further progress."

"Can such a unity be found? In India the attempt has been made from the earliest times to reach a science of religion and philosophy .... We regard religion and philosophy as but two aspects of one thing which must equally be grounded in reason and scientific truth."

"When a kettle of water is coming to the boil, if you watch the phenomena, you find first one bubble rising, and then another and so on, until at last they all join, and a tremendous commotion takes place. This world is very similar. Each individual is like a bubble, and the nations, resemble many bubbles. Gradually these nations are joining, and I am sure the day will come when separation will vanish and that Oneness to which we are all going will become manifest. A time must come when every man will be as intensely practical in the scientific world as in the spiritual, and then that Oneness, the harmony of Oneness, will pervade the whole world. The whole of mankind will become Jivanmuktas -- free whilst living. We are all struggling towards that one end through our jealousies and hatreds, through our love and co - operation. A tremendous stream is flowing towards the ocean carrying us all along with it; and though like straws and scraps of paper we may at times float aimlessly about, in the long run we are sure to join the Ocean of Life and Bliss."

Word of caution against orthodoxy and fundamentalism

Swamiji had cautioned against the two extremes, superstition and scientific Church and its necessary concomitant inquisition. For the religious seekers his voice was that of a fearless and robust explorer.

“Stick to your reason until you reach something higher; and you will know it to be higher, because it will not jar with reason. The stage beyond consciousness is inspiration (Samadhi); but never mistake hysterical trances for the real thing. It is a terrible thing to claim this inspiration falsely, to mistake instinct for inspiration. There is no external test for inspiration, we know it ourselves; our guardian against mistake is negative -- the voice of reason. All religion is going beyond reason, but reason is the only guide to get there. Instinct is like ice, reason is the water, and inspiration is the subtlest form or vapour; one follows the other."

"Religion is above reason, supernatural. Faith is not belief, it is the grasp on the Ultimate, an illumination. First hear, then reason and find out all that reason can give about the Atman; let the flood of reason flow over It, then take what remains. If nothing remains, thank God you have escaped a superstition."

From the scientists and rationalist he expected curiosity, wonder and expansion and the fearlessness of not resting till the restless striving reaches its culmination. He shuddered at the greed, regimentation, heartlessness and cold instrumentality of the machine based desire inebriated civilization. He thundered against all supercilious derision of modernity.

"If people should laugh at religion because most religions declare that men must believe in mythologies taught by such and such a prophet, they ought to laugh more at these moderns. In modern times, if a man quotes a Moses or a Buddha or a Christ, he is laughed at; but let him give the name of a Huxley, a Tyndall, or a Darwin, and it is swallowed without salt. "Huxley has said it", that is enough for many. We are free from superstitions indeed! That was a religious superstition, and this is a scientific superstition; only, in and through that superstition came life - giving ideas of spirituality; in and through this modern superstition come lust and greed. That superstition was worship of God, and this superstition is worship of filthy lucre, of fame and power. That is the difference."

"In place of ancient superstitions they have erected modern superstitions, in place of the old Popes of religion they have installed modern Popes of science."

Intuitive Leaps

All philosophers of science would agree with Swami Vivekananda when he stresses that we cannot know the outer or inner world with the instrumentation of the mind. We discover laws or certain order in repetitive events.   Swamiji would ofcourse go further and add we cannot know, for the mind itself is in the relative plane but we can be. Spirituality is being and becoming, it is realisation.

The act of discovery of new truths,  of new laws is poorly understood till date. Most agree that these are flashes of illuminations or intuitive leaps. Swami Vivekananda was a robust and bold thinker. A pure mind it is said reflects the universe in its pure form. His interpretation of Ramakrishna’s thought, exegesis of ancient scriptures and expiration of his own realizations have left behind many startling views whose veracity science was to arrive at a much later date. These flashes of intuition warrants a lot of research.  

Matter, energy, velocity and mass

Vivekananda had arrived at the matter energy equivalence through the ancient categories of Akasha and Prana. Akasha being the sum total of all energy/matter and Akasha being the sum total of all forces.  It would not be out place to narrate an interesting episode.

One of the foremost scientist of his day a living legend Nicola Tesla used to attend his classes in New York and was “charmed to hear about the Vedantic Prana and Akasha and the Kalpas, which according to him are the only theories modern science can entertain."

"Mr. Tesla thinks he can demonstrate mathematically that force and matter are reducible to potential energy," Swamiji wrote to Mr. Sturdy on February 13. "I am going to see him next week, to get this new mathematical demonstration. In that case, the Vedantic cosmology will be placed on the surest of foundations. I am working a good deal now upon the cosmology and eschatology of Vedanta. I clearly see their perfect unison with modern science." It is highly probable that he met with disappointment.

Nikola Tesla was of the firm conviction that matter and energy were two entirely and eternally distinct entities. Like all nineteenth century physicists, he believed that atoms were, as Newton had said, "solid, hard, impenetrable and unbreakable." He believed, further, that electricity was a force that acted upon the atom from the outside, thereby producing electric currents. He did not believe and did not want to believe that force and matter were interchangeable and that both were "reducible to potential energy." Swamiji was far ahead of him.

Just the same, Nikola Tesla was, as Swamiji said, charmed with the ideas of Vedantic cosmology and, up to a point, was surely in accord with them; nor did he ever forget them. In the last years of his life, when he had finally conceded that mass could be converted into energy, he wrote a paper on the incalculable power at the command of man. In this paper, a portion of which was published for the first time in his biography, Prodigal Genius, by John J. O'Neill, he said:

"Long ago [Man] recognized that all perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or a tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the Akasha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life - giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never ending cycles, all things and phenomena. The primary substance, thrown into infinitesimal whirls of prodigious velocity, becomes gross matter; the force subsiding, the motion ceases and matter disappears, reverting to the primary substance.

             Can Man control this grandest, most awe - inspiring of all processes in nature?.. If he could do this, he would have powers almost unlimited and supernatural.... He could cause planets to collide and produce his suns and stars, his heat and light. He could originate and develop life in all its infinite forms. (Such powers] would place him beside, his Creator, make him fulfill his ultimate destiny."

Swamiji again had stressed “When you look at the universe, remember that we can reduce it to matter or to force. If we increase the velocity, the mass decreases. ...On the other hand, we can increase the mass and decrease the velocity. ...We may almost come to a point where all the mass will entirely disappear.”

“Solidity, hardness, or any other state of matter can be proved to be the result of motion. Increase of vortex motion imparted to fluids gives them the force of solids. A mass of air in vortex motion, as in a tornado, becomes solid - like and by its impact breaks or cuts through solids. A thread of a spider's web, if it could be moved at almost infinite velocity, would be as strong as an iron chain and would cut through an oak tree. Looking at it in this way, it would be easier to prove that what we call matter does not exist. But the other way cannot be proved.”

Big bang and big crunch

Here is what Swamiji had to say much before big bang and the expanding universe and big crunch. “So this universe will go back to its causes, and again its materials will come together and take form, like the wave that goes down, rises again, and takes shape. The acts of going back to causes and coming out again, taking form, are called in Sanskrit Sankocha and Vikasha, which mean shrinking and expanding. The whole universe, as it were, shrinks, and then it expands again. To use the more accepted words of modern science, they are involved and evolved.” He also had added interestingly that he was'nt sure whether it is one universe exapnasion and contraction or simultaneous multiple expansions and contraction in different universes.

The spherical universe and Minkowski geometry

The modern concept of the spherical nature of the universe was enigmatically hinted at by Swamiji "A straight line infinitely projected becomes a circle, it returns to the starting point. You must end where you begin". Many have found stunning similarity with the idea of space - time continuum of Hermann Minkowski in Vivekananda's idea of space time causation network. Minkowski's continuum it may be mentioned have played a very significant role in Relativity theory.

The relativity of space-time

Swamiji had firmly stressed the relativity of time space and causation. Einstein and the theory of relativity came much later, though ofcourse Einstein denied the relativity of causation.  Einstein in his last days was working on the hypothesis of the  universe as names and forms in the web of space-time continuum. Maya it may be mentioned as per Swamiji is time-space and causation it is Nama-Rupa i.e. Name and form. Interestingly modern quantum physics is putting a big question mark on strict causality. Schrödinger was to speculate much later than Swamiji about the Atman=Brahma postulate as the closest acceptable to quantum physics.

Swamiji's statement that we are all vibrations or 'spandan' in different frequencies in the web of time-space-causation sounds uncannily similar to the concept wave particle duality which came much later in quantum physics.

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny

Swamiji has many a time asserted that a yogi who realizes the ultimate passes through the whole history of the race in his lifetime. This has remarkable similarity with the much later principle of paleontology which states ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

The conception of wholeness or oneness in material, mental and spiritual plane inspires and explains perhaps with much more beauty and simplicity than the mathematical formulations of the modern physics. The simplicity and clarity and the power of the poetry of the advaitic oneness can only perhaps be brought forth in Swami Vivekananda's language,  "Existence showing us the manifoldness of the universe; in substance, this universe is one. So long as any one thinks that there are two ultimate realities, he is mistaken. When he has come to know that there is but one, he is right. This is what is being proved to us every day, on the physical plane, on the mental plane, and also on the spiritual plane. Today it has been demonstrated that you and I, the sun, the moon, and the stars are but the different names of different spots in the same ocean of matter, and that this matter is continuously changing in its configuration. This particle of energy that was in the sun several months ago may be in the human being now; tomorrow it may be in an animal, the day after tomorrow it may be in a plant. It is ever coming and going. It is all one unbroken, infinite mass of matter, only differentiated by names and forms. One point is called the sun; another, the moon; another, the stars; another, man; another, animal; another, plant; and so on. And all these names are fictitious; they have no reality, because the whole is a continuously changing mass of matter. This very same universe, from another standpoint, is an ocean of thought, where each one of us is a point called a particular mind. You are a mind, I am a mind, everyone is a mind; and the very same universe viewed from the standpoint of knowledge, when the eyes have been cleared of delusions, when the mind has become pure, appears to be the unbroken Absolute Being, the ever pure, the unchangeable, the immortal."

Spirituality is also a field of empirical and experimental knowledge or rather supersensuous experience. It transcends the senses and reason but firmly basing itself on these. Perhaps scientific spirituality and spiritualised science will converge, where science will no more have its heartless instrumentality and objectivity in looking at human beings and spirituality will lose its long accumulated package of superstition and weakness - a convergence which will result in a  Godward passion and a man ward love. Swamiji lived to make it a reality and in his own words will not rest  till the world is one with God.

His Call Beckons

Joyesh

In Swamiji, the soul heard, as it were, its own voice calling to itself. Marie Louise Burke

The century we live in is characterized by the unprecedentedly painful dualities of unimaginable affluence and mind numbing poverty, centralised autocratic power and hopeless powerlessness, surreal flights of knowledge and abject ignorance, hypertrophy at one end and atrophy at the other. This pain is accentuated further by the cold indifference that world shows towards amelioration of these and instead propagates ruthless and heartless steps towards ‘managing’ the conflicts that arise from these. Furthermore to satisfy the insatiable lust for wealth and power the rich and the powerful are incessantly developing devious and despicable ways of self aggrandizement at the expense of the helpless majority.  

The century is also pregnant with possibilities. Perhaps greater than ever before the world has affirmed Swami Vivekananda’s keen insight that the problem of life is becoming deeper and broader every day as the world moves on highlighting the solidarity of all life. There cannot be any progress without the whole world following in the wake, and it is becoming every day clearer that the solution of any problem can never be attained on racial, or national, or narrow grounds. Every idea has to become broad till it covers the whole of this world, every aspiration must go on increasing till it has engulfed the whole of humanity¹. On the one hand globalised networks have enabled the slow permeation of the vedantic principles to give rise to the varied New Age movements. On the other hand recent history has proved that technology assisted anonymous networks of concerned courageous individuals, can amalgamate to engender social waves that bring supposedly invincible tyrannies to their knees and weave dreams of freedom and liberty.

Amidst the pleasure and pain, struggle and resistance, exuberance, chaos and volatile expression of life  that world witnesses, an either-or is slowly taking shape – either spiritualise or descend into barbarism. Swami Vivekanada’s agenda of spiritualization of whole human race is gradually occupying an urgent and prominent space in the mental sphere of humanity. Either the world discovers an unshakable, deep-lying and permanent basis and support for the democratic and libertarian ideals honed over the ages or those ideals will inevitably degenerate, just as do all things in this world that are nor rooted in and nourished by spiritual truth.

The life and teachings of Swami Vivekananda have been illuminating the paths of innumerable souls, giving a new meaning to their lives. Renunciation and service were the twin glowing ideals that Vivekananda placed before humanity. The power behind his persona is slowly uncoiling itself in the world stage over the last century. Countless people have attempted to mould their lives in their own way and as per their own readings of the ideal of Swamiji and as a process  have silently moulded the 20^th century leaving behind their mark in diverse fields of human activity – in spirituality, monasticism, service, culture, art, politics, philosophy, literature, science and many others.  However, a practical question faces all those who struggle to express in their lives the ideals presented by Swamiji. Standing in the inception of the 21^st century how does one translate one’s life in light of Swamiji’s call. Responding to the call one develops an intense desire to realize the truth and yet one has to live in the world of anguish, suffering and resistance. To live with an intense inward search and the pain of the outward social existence is a challenge for all spiritual seekers.

Characteristic of the age

The world presents a scenario of clashing ideals and aims in life where scientific knowledge and technology have accumulated immense power in the hands of a few which however are widely being used for narrow sectarian, nationalistic ends at the expense of humanity. Lived experience has led to the keen disappointment of the realization that happiness and peace does not accompany affluence and material prosperity. Humanity’s cold technical knowledge has outstripped humanity’s expansiveness for warmly embracing the world. The mind has raced way beyond the heart.

However this is also the age of ‘Man’. Everywhere in the world the common man – the laboring classes, the lower classes, are struggling to assert their inherent rights as human beings to a decent and dignified way of life : the right to live with dignity, to work, to play, and to grow. Man is, indeed asserting his birthright to be a man. Swamiji is the prophet of this upward surge of humanity – the struggle to manifest the blissful divine in each and every one of us. 

The past century has been the century of politico-centric activity with its political ideals and political solutions. The twentieth century history has shown the pitfalls and the limits of this political centrality and reiterated Swamiji again and again that humanity cannot cling to the belief that political and social changes are the only panacea for the evils that confront us. No amount of political and social manipulation of human conditions can cure the evils of life. No amount of force, or government, or legislative cruelty will change the conditions – but it is spiritual culture.² Spirituality and spiritual life encompass far greater field of human life than political doctrines can ever envisage.

Swami Vivekananda’s call

It is our divine nature that propels us towards freedom. ‘It  is God  within your own self that is propelling you to seek for Him, to realize Him’³. Our lives are a struggle to manifest the being under circumstances, external and internal, that tries to press it down. We are born rebels – rebellion against the thralldom of the senses to break free and realize absolute freedom. Consciously or unconsciously we are all seeking  this freedom and this human essence is the reef on which all the mighty and powerful, all tyrants and institutionalized tyrannies have foundered.

Swamiji’s ideal was not that of a permanent spiritual recluse and his heart ached for human misery and degradation on every level – physical, mental, emotional, intellectual, political, of course spiritual. He cried for the ignorant, for the bereaved, for the suppressed, for the miserable of all nations and creeds. His clarion call was the embodied voice of a faint echo from the distant past – that each soul is potentially divine and the goal is to manifest that divinity within. His message was a song of freedom for the essence of the goal is freedom – material, mental and spiritual.

With pain and passion he had declared “Him I call a Mahatman (great soul) whose heart bleeds for the poor, otherwise he is a Duratman (wicked soul). Let us unite our wills in continued prayer for their good. We may die unknown, unpitied, unbewailed, without accomplishing anything -- but not one thought will be lost. It will take effect, sooner or later. So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them!”⁴

And again warning against those cold and indifferent supposed spiritual seekers he had admonished ‘Do you think that a man who does not exert himself at all, who only takes the name of Hari, shutting himself up in a room, who remains quiet and indifferent even when seeing a huge amount of wrong and violence done to others before his very eyes, possesses the quality of Sattva? Nothing of the kind, he is only enshrouded in dark Tamas.’⁵ To engage with the world selflessly, constructively, courageously , with empathy and with ‘manliness’ is the ideal which Swamiji presented for the modern age.

Manliness

Vivekananda laid immense stress on ‘Manliness’ as the most important quality for spiritual seekers of the age. Manliness is one of the first expressions in the body, mind, heart and will of the manifestation of the divine, the self – which is an ocean whose shores are defined by infinite bliss, knowledge and existence. To have the quality of manliness was to be established in the Self, to rejoice in the Self, to want nothing, to fear nothing, to dislike nothing, to serve all. Free and strong men and women thinking their own thoughts, speaking their words and hewing their own route to the infinite are the ones who will be able to make the future which Swamiji envisioned. “Perfect sincerity, holiness, gigantic intellect and an all-conquering will. Let only a handful of men work with these, the whole world will be revolutionized … It is patient upbuilding of character, the intense struggle to realize the truth, which alone will tell in the future.⁶ [Vol. iii p.335]

Be a man; be free; be strong! Only spiritually free and strong men and women, taking their stand on the Self – the Atman – can truly deify this world, can truly revere it and work in it tirelessly, without desire or fear, motivated by love alone. And only such men and women can meet the unprecedentedly terrible challenge of this age. Only such men and women will have the mental strength and will power to renounce and serve without the desire for wealth and name and fame that is required for the realization of the divine and welfare of the world.       

Renunciation

Ramakrishna – Vivekananda tradition has emphatically reiterated that renunciation is the most important foundation of all spiritual disciplines. Though it is one clean thread that runs through the spiritual history of mankind nevertheless it runs counter to the modernist and post modernist thought currents of the world. However, Swamiji was categorical that renunciation, is the flag and the banner of the civilization of India, floating over the world, the one undying thought which India sends again and again as a warning to dying races, as a warning to all tyranny, as a warning to wickedness in the world. Renunciation is the necessary category and fact of life that all sincere seekers sooner or later stumble upon in their journey to the divine. In Swamiji’s words ‘The absolute or the Infinite is trying to express itself in the finite, but there will come a time when it will find that it is impossible and it will then have to beat a retreat, which is the real beginning of religion … Renounce and give up”⁷. Give up the world as we think of it, as we know it, as it appears to us – know what it really is – Deify it, it is God alone.

If one oneself is divine, all others are equally that same infinite and adorable being  … one’s every action becomes service and that service is worship. Material goods and facilities at once take a subordinate place in the society. They become a festival of offerings wherein every man, woman and child is being worshipped and served  - that is all.

                                              

The ideal of renunciation also works to solve how little a man needs to have in contrast to the modern ever receding horizon of how much a man can possess. It presents an ideal of simplified joyous and expansive life at play with the divine as a riposte to the unsustainable society of affluence with its contracted, insecure and alienated lives. 

This man making religion of renunciation and freedom is Swamiji’s antidote to the thick brew of problems – economic, political, social, spiritual – cooking in the world today.

The cult of Nobodies

One has to incessantly work to purify the mind from all selfish desires to give oneself away without any expectation of return and bereft of any hankering for wealth, name or fame with complete self abnegation as the ideal. A difficult or rather an almost impossible ideal it may appear, but whether ones likes it or not it has to be attempted for the benefit of oneself and the world. The nameless but bold, brave and the fearless have to clear the road for the others to follow. Swamiji in his clear vision had forecasted “Sacrifice in the past has been the Law; it will be, alas, for ages to come. The earth’s bravest and best will have to sacrifice themselves for the good of many, for the welfare of all. Budhas by  the hundred are necessary with eternal love and pity.”⁸

One has to stand on one’s own strength and struggle on in bad time and good through drear and painful road for inscrutably that is the divine order of things. The anonymous, humble and poor but bold, brave and free are the ones who are most likely to change themselves and the world. Swamiji had been emphatic “Trust not to the so - called rich, they are more dead than alive. The hope lies in you -- in the meek, the lowly, but the faithful. Have faith in the Lord; no policy, it is nothing. Feel for the miserable and look up for help -- it shall come.”⁹ And again “We are poor, my brothers, we are nobodies, but such have been always the instruments of the Most High.”¹⁰

As a part of spiritual discipline one has to undertake activity as spiritual practice, but have no eye to its results. Giving up the fruits of work means not to perform work for the good of one's own body or mind  i.e. not for seeking one’s own happiness. One works for the welfare of others with self abnegation as the end. Whatever work he does without attachment for its fruits brings only good to the world -- it is all "for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many".

One works in pursuance of one’s professional life – in the realm of necessity - where one’s freedom to a large extent is constrained. One also involves in activity beyond one’s professional life – in the realm of freedom so to say – where one has opportunity to give full play in working out one’s spiritual disciplines. However, in both the cases ones endeavour as spiritual seeker remains to work like the sincere maidservant with one’s mind constantly on one’s real home – one’s divine aim. The promise of the prophets is that if the yearning is sincere and strong then one looses all capacity to do evil and using Ramakrishna’s metaphor one does not sing out of tune or dance out of steps.

The world is in dire need of courageous and constructive work towards material amelioration, knowledge sharing and spiritual unfoldment. The principle of raising positive waves to attenuate the negative tendencies of the mind effectively applied in the microcosm is bound to be also effective in the macrocosm – the social world. Steadily albeit silently, gently and imperceptibly gigantic waves of constructive thought, word and deed will have to be generated that will inundate the world drowning all wickedness, hatred, inhumanity and uncharitable thought, word and actions. Constructive energies have to be channelized through lines of least resistance with activity fundamentally premised on the principles of indifference to evil, rejoicing with the happy, mercy for the sad and afflicted. The transformation of oneself and of the world – materially and spiritually – is the ideal which Swamiji embodied and presented.

Spiritualisation of the human race

History has stamped each civilization with its distinct signature – a civilisational ideal or a unique note in the grand symphony of the human civilization. Each civilization so to say provides its inimitable fragrance in the bouquet that is formed by the accumulated life experiences of humanity. As per Swami Vivekananda for good or for bad India’s uniqueness has been stamped long back in history and that her main note remains her spirituality - waxing and waning in intensity through the ups and downs of her fortune. It is her task to nurture its expansive religious acceptance, its ideal of oneness and the grand solidarity of life, its renunciation and also the myriad different routes for the realization of the ideals. History has entrusted the responsibility of gifting these ideals to the world as her own distinctive note in the grand orchestra. Not only this, there is an associated urgency too – for the world needs it and eagerly awaits this gift. In Swamiji’s words “This is the great ideal before us, and every one must be ready for it -- the conquest of the whole world by India -- nothing less than that, and we must all get ready for it, strain every nerve for it. …… Up, India, and conquer the world with your spirituality! Ay, as has been declared on this soil first, love must conquer hatred, hatred cannot conquer itself. Materialism and all its miseries can never be conquered by materialism. Armies when they attempt to conquer armies only multiply and make brutes of humanity. ……….  The world wants it; without it the world will be destroyed. The whole of the Western world is on a volcano which may burst tomorrow, go to pieces tomorrow. ….. We must go out, we must conquer the world through our spirituality and philosophy. There is no other alternative, we must do it or die.”¹¹

The vedantic ideals which were the exclusive possession of a select few need to be disseminated far and wide in thought, word and deed for the good of humanity at home and abroad. In Swamiji’s words  “To become broad, to go out, to amalgamate, to universalise, is the end of our aims… the more you go out and travel among the nations of the world, the better for you and for your country. .. . The first manifest effect of life is expansion. You must expand if you want to live. The moment you have ceased to expand, death is upon you, danger is ahead.”¹²

The process of permeation has to be slow, silent, unperceived without disturbing even the ‘roadside dust’. It is on a par with everything in India. The one characteristic of Indian thought is its silence, its calmness. At the same time the tremendous power that is behind it is never expressed by violence. It is always the silent mesmerism of Indian thought.¹³ However there are several dangers in the way which need to ruthlessly shunned. One is that of the extreme conception that we are the  people in the world and rest are inferior to us. The other is that in the guise of spirituality all kinds of pervasive superstitions, mystery mongering, magic have taken deep roots and these have to be weeded out and thrown aside, so that they may die for ever. Instead of reasoned out spiritual disciplines debates have raged on ‘momentous’ questions of touchableness and untouchableness, and dress, and food and loads of other crystallized superstitions in our conduct and minds. Conquest of the world by spiritual thought is the sending out of life - giving principles, not the hundreds of superstitions that we have been hugging to our breasts for centuries. Swamiji had warned that “I would rather see every one of you rank atheists than superstitious fools, for the atheist is alive and you can make something out of him. But if superstition enters, the brain is gone, the brain is softening, degradation has seized upon the life.”¹⁴

Swamiji was categorical that “Every system, … which weakens the mind, makes one superstitious, makes one mope, makes one desire all sorts of wild impossibilities, mysteries, and superstitions, I do not like, because its effect is dangerous. Such systems never bring any good; such things create morbidity in the mind, make it weak, so weak that in course of time it will be almost impossible to receive truth or live up to it. Strength, therefore, is the one thing needful. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease. Strength is the medicine which the poor must have when tyrannised over by the rich. Strength is the medicine that the ignorant must have when oppressed by the learned; and it is the medicine that sinners must have when tyrannised over by other sinners”.¹⁵

Incessant Practice

As a strange mystical law the infinite – the essence of our own souls – at times embodies to adjust and present the route of ascension suited for the age. In Ramakrishna – Vivekananda the soul as it were embodied itself to call forth the soul within us all to realize its divinity. It is well known that Swamiji’s, indeed Sri Ramakrishna’s, ideal of a well rounded personality was  the integration of the four yogas of work, devotion, psychic control and philosophy. They have also vivified that life is much more than mere conformity with the rules of self preservation and aggrandizement but is an incessant struggle, internal and external, to manifest the divine.  Intense and sincere practice of spiritual disciplines internally and continuation of spiritual practice by selfless engagement with the world outside is the ideal which they established.

Swamiji or the rather the whole Ramakrishna movement he represented stands for actual practice and realization of the spiritual truths and not mere intellectual assent to doctrines and dogmas. Religions is not parroting thoughts of others but is being and becoming – it is realization. The world is a gymnasium where one has to live and work to transcend ones desire and ego to joyfully act and play in the divine unfolding. One has to be akin to a candle that burns from two ends – to intensely pursue spiritual disciple internally and externally to work in the world informed by spiritual discipline. When the two ends coalesce – the world is deified and one dissolves into the blissful play of the Mother.

1 : The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, v.3, p. 269.

2:  CW, v.3, p.182.

3:  CW, v.2, p. 81

4:  CW, v.5, p.58

5:  CW, v.5, p.352

6:  CW, v.6. p.335

7:  CW, v.2, p.99

8:  CW, v.7, p.501

9:  CW, v.5, p.16

10:  CW, v.5, p.58

11: CW, v.3, p.277

12:  CW, v.3, p.272

13: 3, 274

14: 3, 278

15: 2, 201