If You Want to Know India, Read Swami Vivekananda -
The late 19th century witnessed a mighty spiritual resurgence in Bengal. Swami Vivekananda, the illustrious disciple of Shri Ramakrishna Paramhansa, played the leading role in spreading the message of his master all over India and abroad. To the teeming masses of India, Swamiji is known primarily as a great social reformer. He sought to eradicate the social evils born of bigotry and narrow-mindedness and to inculcate fellow-feeling among man. This mission was in consonance with his ideal of universal brotherhood and humanity. But Swamiji had a philosophic message too along with his social mission, and these were an inseparable part of his total outlook of man's life and destiny. His philosophy was essentially a philosophy of religion, its theme being man's quest for the divine. He says that man is a compound of animality, humanity and divinity. It is his mission to raise the brute-man to the level of man, and man to the level of God. So, religion is an evolutionary process through which man may rise from the lowest to the highest level of existence. And in this unfolding process man must make conscious efforts, efforts at making the latent divinity in him patent. Man should ever strive for greater manifestation of the divine that is inherent in him. It is this godward progress of Man that Swamiji calls religion. When Swamiji attended the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, it was not as an official delegate of any particular religious organization. He stood for something larger. He came as an exponent of the ancient Indian Upanisadic philosophy of Universal brotherhood and of the universality of spiritual truths. The Upanisadic philosophy of Religion transcends all dogmas and rituals which vary from religion to religion. It is the dogmas and rituals, which constitute the outer coat of a religion, that breed intolerance, hatred and conflict. Once these divisive forces are surpassed, it will be found that all religions do, in their essence, uphold the same spiritual values. The conflicts of religion will then be resolved into a harmony. This Universal Religion is not conditioned by time, place and circumstances. And, the different religions are but different facets of this Universal Religion. The diversity of paths characterizes not only religions but also different sects within the same religion. The different paths ultimately all boil down to four main paths for the realization of divinity - the path of Work, of Devotion, of Psychic control and of Knowledge. Any one of these paths or any combinations of these paths can lead man on to the divine goal. The path of Work, or Karma Yoga, is the path particularly suited to a man of active temperament, that is, a man with the rajo guna dominant in him. This path requires that the work should be selfless work, work done in a spirit of duty without any expectation of reward, leaving the result to God's will. It must be "nishkama karma". But this path also enjoins that the work done must be in the spirit of service to man. In the constant effort to do good to others in a selfless manner, we are also helping ourselves to be good. It should be a self-effacing disinterested service of man, and service rendered in this spirit will count as service to God. Karma Yoga destroys the ego, helps promote a feeling of brotherhood, and gradually purifies a man for the blossoming of divinity within him. The path of Devotion, or Bhakti Yoga, demands loves for God with the same strong attachment that one usually has for worldly things. This path operates on the plane of emotions, feelings and passionate ecstasies. Here is involved the heart, not the intellect or the rational faulty. God is here treated as master, child, sweetheart and so on. Thus, Hanumanji's relationship to Rama is that of servant and master. Yashoda's relationship to Krishna is that of mother and child. Radha's relationship to Krishna is that of a married woman and her paramour. In Radha's love there is a total surrender of her being to Krishna, heedless of all consequences. Radha had the "Madhurabhava", an unrestrained lawless love for the Lord in total forgetfulness of shame or honour. This state is recognized as the highest state of love in Bhakti yoga. Incidentally, in Christianity we find adoration of Christ as a child and even as a beloved. Further, the God the Christians seek is a Personal God, as in Bhakti yoga. The third path, the path of Mind-control or Raja yoga, believes in realizing the divine through a graded sadhana (practice), which includes Asana, Pranayama and Dhyana. It progresses form the physical to the mental, and from the mental to the spiritual. The last stage, Samadhi, is the stage of superconsciousness, a transcendent state where there is a direct perception of spiritual truths. The fourth path is the path of Knowledge or Jnana Yoga. Its approach is intellectual, proceeding along the lines of reasoning, self-questioning, and rational analysis. In this sadhana, we should first find out what we are not. This "neti, neti" or negative approach will be followed by the positive approach of asserting what we really are - we should assert that we are Brahman, whose essence is Being, Consciousness and Bliss or Satchidananda. This we should meditate upon till we achieve oneness with Brahman - brahman which is eternal, unchanging and all-pervading. This path has been followed by a number of Upanisadic seers. The four paths have been brought together and harmonized in the emblem of the Ramakrishna Order. Swmaiji is concerned with the essentials, not the accidentals, in religion, and it is no wonder that, in its universality and loftiness- it has a lasting appeal for us all. By Bhaskar Banerjee.