For
organisational work to grow, Mananeeya Eknathji has given us chatusutri. The
base of chatusutri is contacts, lokasampark. The broader the base of chatusutri, more trained karyakartas we ultimately get for our
work at the fourth stage called lokavyavastha. The utsava of universal
brotherhood day is more for reaching out to new contacts and renewing the
earlier contacts and involving them in our work. We celebrate Universal
Brotherhood Day to test our strength as a team as to how many people can we
bring together for a function and also to reach out to the people effectively
with the message of Swami Vivekananda.
This
time to organise the universal brotherhood day, sit together to think at your
own Nagar level as to what all the ways should we adopt to make the function
attractive, very solemn, impressive and in what all ways can you reach out and
get maximum number of people. As we have completed 50 years as an organization,
can we think and get the strength of minimum 500 as audience? How that can be
achieved? Let all the Karyakartas in Nagar think, plan and execute it together.
After the function is over, you can report in activity group in Telegram about
how you worked to get more than 500 audience.
This
whole function is to be organized to give the message of Universal Brotherhood
properly. We have to see to it that proper understanding of the message of
Swami Vivekananda given on 11 September 1893 takes place through our entire program
- the speech by the chief guest, the geet, the demonstration of Yogasana, a
Pathanatya, the introduction of the Kendra activities, etc. The uniqueness of
the message of Swami Vivekananda and its relevance of the Universal Brotherhood
- is to be presented and projected very effectively.
The
Parliament of Religions was organized at Chicago in 1893 to proclaim how
Christianity alone was a true religion. In Parliament of Religions, everyone
while addressing was stressing as to how his religion alone is the only true
religion. This exclusive approach has led to clashes and violence in the
history of mankind. Therefore, the whole history of exclusive religions is
written in blood and extermination of communities all over the world. The
terror attack on WTC on 11 September 2001 also proved the same thing in recent
years. The world is diverse. No two men or two leaves of the same tree are
exactly the same. The mental, attitudinal growth of each person is different so
there cannot be only one path to pray to God.
Swami
Vivekananda stressed that peace for world is ensured with the approach, which
says that each religion is valid for its followers. This approach is the
inclusive approach. It is inclusive because it understands the creation as the
manifestation of One and everything in it as its parts. Therefore, each nation
or religion, man or woman, family or community should accept others (not just
tolerate) and contribute for the well-being of all. Each soul is potentially
divine. Getting rooted in one’s own divine nature makes a person realize the
Oneness of existence and brotherhood of human society. This is a message that
Sanatana Dharma has given to the world and has to continue to give to the
world. It is to remind ourselves of this mission of India and also to give this
message, that we celebrate Universal Brotherhood Day.
But
India had forgotten her mission. To awaken us to our ordained mission Sri
Ramakrishna took birth in 1836, exactly in the year when Macaulay introduced
his ‘Minutes on Education’ to enslave our minds completely and permanently. The
Macaulay education was deliberately designed to ridicule certain aspects of our
Dharma like
●
Hindus are idol
worshippers,
●
They worship
devils,
●
Their languages
are very crude and unless they learn English they cannot develop,
● India can be
saved only if Hindus give up their Dharma and accept Jesus as the only son of
God and Christianity as the only true religion.
Sri
Ramakrishna's life was exactly to show the fallacy in each of this point.
● Sri Ramakrishna's
whole spiritual Sadhana starts with ‘idol' worship. He showed through his
Sadhana that we Hindus do not worship idols but worship God and realize Him
through these idols as other religions do through one or other symbols. Thus,
in all his Sadhanas, he saw Only God everywhere and even after the highest
realisation his worship through idols continued. The worship of God in idols is
the necessity of the beginner and is also the understanding of the realized.
Because once the Truth is realized, one finds God in all that is around.
●
The chosen deity
of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa for the ‘idol’ worship was Kali whose terrible
form may appear as devil for those who are in the nursery of spirituality. But
he, by his Sadhana, realized She as Mother of the Universe.
● Sri Ramakrishna
did not know English and yet the educated scholars like Keshava Chandra Sen,
Narendranath Dutta sat at his feet to get the knowledge. He showed that
ultimate knowledge to be acquired is beyond senses and languages, beyond Nama
and Roopa or beyond time and space.
●
Sri Ramakrishna
practiced various sadhanas including praying to Jesus and Allah and yet he
remained in the Hindu Dharma nurtured by the Rishi tradition. He realized by
his spiritual practices that Jesus was a son of God but not the only son of
God. By his Sadhana of these exclusive religions he proved that the exclusive
claims of Christians and Muslims are incorrect. After undergoing all types of
spiritual practices he said, "The Hindu religion alone is the Sanatana Dharma.
The various creeds you hear nowadays have come into existence through the will
of God and will disappear again through His will. They will not last forever.
Therefore, I say, "I bow down at the feet of even the modern
devotees." The Hindu religion has always existed and will always
exist." (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna 6 Ed, P. 610) Sanatana Dharma is not about many Gods or
One God but is based on the vision that there is only God. The whole creation
is only an expression of God and God alone. This vision leads to inclusive and
universal approach as everything becomes sacred and divine.
Swami Vivekananda was a disciple of such a person.
Therefore, it was very natural that when Swami Vivekananda went to America to
participate in the Parliament of Religions he stressed that all religions are
valid. The whole Sadhana of Sri Ramakrishna was behind his words. And,
therefore, it created such an everlasting impact on Western audience.
Romain
Rolland puts the effect in the following words. " On Monday, September 11,
1893, the first session of the Parliament was opened...but it was the young man
(Vivekananda) who represented nothing – and everything – the man belonging to
no sect, but rather to India as a whole, who drew the glance of the assembled
thousands...his speech was like a tongue of flame, it fired the souls of the
listening throng.... Each of the other orators had spoken of his God, of the
God of his sect. He – he alone – spoke of all their Gods, and embraced them all
in the Universal Being. It was the breath of Ramakrishna, breaking down the
barriers through the mouth of his great disciple... During the ensuing days he
spoke again ten or twelve times. Each time he repeated with new arguments but
with the same force of conviction his thesis of a universal religion without
limit of time or space, uniting the whole Credo of human spirit from the
enslaved fetishism of the savage to the most liberal creative affirmations of
modern science. He harmonised them into a magnificent synthesis, which...helped
all hopes to grow and flourish according to their own proper nature. There was to be no other dogma but the
divinity inherent in man and his capacity of indefinite evolution...
The effect of these mighty words was immense. Over the heads of the official
representatives of the Parliament they were addressed to all and appealed to
outside thought. Vivekananda's fame at once spread abroad, and India as a whole
benefited..."
Swami
Vivekananda, who completely surrendered himself to his most wonderful Master
Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, could have easily given in to the temptation of
talking about him. But then he was there to represent all Hindus, the whole
Rishi tradition. So in the true spirit of a Hindu, his speech gave the common
principles of Hindus of all sects. In Sister Nivedita's words, "Of the
Swami's address before the Parliament of Religions, it may be said that when he
began to speak it was of 'the religious ideas of the Hindus', but when he
ended, Hinduism was created…. For it was no experience of his own that rose to
the lips of the Swami Vivekananda there. He did not even take advantage of the
occasion to tell the story of his Master. Instead of either of these, it was
the religious consciousness of India that spoke through him, the message of his
whole people, as determined by their whole past...Others stood beside the Swami
Vivekananda, on the same platform as he, as apostles of particular creeds and
churches. But it was his glory that he came to preach a religion to which each
of these was, in his own words, 'only a traveling, a coming up, of different
men, and women, through various conditions and circumstances to the same
goal".
Swamiji
who was proud of his religion and nation, which he unequivocally proclaimed
there, could have stressed the greatness of his religion alone. But then he was
there to represent the 'inclusive' and therefore, the universal aspects of
Hindu Dharma so as to guide all other religions on the path of Universality.
Though he never mentioned the name of Sri Ramakrishna or any other Rishi in his
speech, it was only their teachings that he spoke. In one of his letters he
wrote, "But there is one thing to know: Great sages come with special
messages for the world, and not for name; but their followers throw their
teachings overboard and fight over their names-this is verily the history of
the world. I do not take into any consideration whether people accept his name
or not, but I am ready to lay down my life to help his teachings, his life, and
his message spread all over the world."
Thus,
if anyone insists on the specific name and form of God as the only true name
and only true form then it would lead to clashes. The insistence on name and
form brings divisions. If we stress on the ‘message’ alone then Brotherhood is
possible, because any realized soul is inclusive and therefore, Universal in
approach. A really spiritual person has to be inclusive. If someone claims
spiritual status but is exclusive in his religious approach, then his claim of
spirituality is false.
To make whole celebration meaningful and looking
forward, we can focus on the message of Swami Vivekananda which Romain Rolland
quotes as 'the divinity inherent in man and his capacity of indefinite
evolution… ' What does it mean? To explain it in Sri Aurobindo’s terminology –
it is the inner centre that holds each individuals highest evolutionary
calling. It is the seat of what he called ‘true being’, and it is from here, he
maintained, that a power and wisdom arises that sees perfectly in every
instance what is, what must be done, and by what means to realise it's
ultimate purpose. These cues, he says, are typically muffled in layers of ego,
conditioning, and negative tendencies. But through persistent aspiration and
effort one can encounter the presence of true being and increasingly dwell in
it to evolve further.’
For
India to rise and even after rising, more and more Bharatiyas have to be rooted
in one's true being. In deeper layers of meditation, when we are rooted in the
inner being we feel one with it and that strengthens the basis of brotherhood.
Can our celebrations of Universal brotherhood day, focus on these both aspects?
Outwardly, clarity of thought and inwardly rooted in Atman which frees us from
our petty ego.
Nivedita Raghunath Bhide
(Vice-President)
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