SWAMI VIVEKANANDA WRITES ON HIS MASTER: `....Today the name of Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa is known all over India to its millions of people. Nay, the power of that man has spread beyond India: and if there has ever been a word of truth, a word of spirituality, that I have spoken anywhere in the world, I owe it to my Master; only the mistakes are mine. This is the message of Shri Ramakrishna to the modern world: “Do not care for the doctrines, do not care for dogmas, or sects, or churches, or temples; they count for little compared with the essence of existence in each man, the more powerful is he for good. Earn that first, acquire that, and criticise no one, for all doctrines and creeds have some good in them. Show by your lives that religion does not mean words, or names, or sects, but that it means spiritual realisation. Only those can understand who have felt. Only those who have attained to spirituality can communicate it to others, can be great teachers of mankind. They alone are the powers of light.” The more such men are produced in a country, the more that country will be raised; and that country where such men absolutely do not exist is simply doomed, nothing can save it. Therefore my Master’s message to mankind is: “Be spiritual and realise truth for yourself.” He would have you give up for the sake of your fellow beings. He would have you cease talking about your brother, and to work to prove your words. The time has come for renunciation, for realisation; and then you will see the harmony in all the religions of the world. You will know that there is no need for any quarrel. And then only will you be ready to help humanity. To proclaim and make clear the fundamental unity underlying all religions was the mission of my Master. Other teachers have taught special religions which bear their names, but this great teacher of the nineteenth century made no claim for himself. He left every religion undisturbed because he had realised that in reality they are all part and parcel of the one eternal religion. ...That Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was God incarnate, I have not the least doubt; but then you must let people find out for themselves what he used to teach—you cannot thrust these things upon them –this is my only objection. ...Without studying Ramakrishna Paramahamsa first, one can never understand the real import of the Vedas, the Vedanta, of the Bhagavata and the other Puranas. His life is a searchlight of infinite power thrown upon the whole mass of Indian religious thought. He was the living commentary to the Vedas and to their aim. He had lived in one life the whole cycle of national religious existence in India. Whether Bhagavan Shri Krishna was born at all we are not sure; and Avataras like Buddha and Chaitanya are monotonous; Ramakrishna Paramahamsa is the latest and the most perfect—the concentrated embodiment of knowledge, love, renunciation, catholicity, and the desire to serve mankind. So where is anyone to compare with him? He must have been born in vain who cannot appreciate him. My supreme good fortune is that I am his servant through life after life. A single word of his is to me far weightier than the Vedas and the Vedanta. ..Oh, I am the servant of the servants of his servants. But narrow bigotry militates against his principles, and this makes me cross. Rather let his name be drowned in oblivion, and his teachings bear fruit instead! Why, was he a slave to fame? Certain fishermen and illiterate people called Jesus Christ a God, but the literate people killed him. Buddha was honoured in his lifetime by a number of merchants and cowherds. But Ramakrishna has been worshipped in his lifetime –towards the end of this nineteenth century—by the demons and giants of the university as God incarnate....Only a few things have been jotted down in the books about them (Krishna, Buddha, Christ, etc.). “One must be a wonderful housekeeper with whom we have never yet lived”, so the Bengali proverb goes. But here is a man in whose company we have been day and night and yet consider him to be a far greater personality than any of them. ...While I am on earth, Shri Ramakrishna is working through me... So long as you believe in this, there is no danger of any evil for you. ...Whatever the Vedas, the Vedanta, and all other Incarnation have done in the past, Shri Ramakrishna lived to practise in the course of a single life. One cannot understand the Vedas, the Vedanta, the Incarnations, and so forth, without understanding his life. For he was the explanation....Whoever—man or woman—will worship Shri Ramakrishna, be he or she ever so low, will be then and there converted into the very highest.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:57:43 +0000
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