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Vol: 68 No: 19
May 15, 2022
Sri Ramakrishna did not accept the modern cant of social service in preference to religion and renunciation. According to him, “Man can work for others by feeding a number of persons, by treating them when they are sick, by constructing a road or digging a well—isn’t that all? These are good deeds, no doubt, but how trifling in comparison with the vastness of the Universe! How far can a man advance in this line? How many people can you save from famine?”
Sri Ramakrishna believed that “God alone can look after the world.” He added, “Let man get the authority and be endowed with His power; then and then alone, he can think of doing good to others. A man should first be purged of all egoism. Then alone will the blissful Mother ask him to work for the world.”
5. Sri Ramakrishna warns us against some of the immature teachings of those who have not found God. He disapproves of those who always say that this world is a dark miserable place, or that it is a dense forest. He said that on the contrary, to those who cling to God in weal and woe, it is a mansion of joy.
Swami Vivekananda briefly sums up
the message of his Master Sri Ramakrishna to the modern world thus: “Do not care for 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 which is spirituality, and the more that this is developed in a 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 that have attained spirituality can communicate it to others, and can be great teachers of mankind. They alone are the powers of light.” (The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda)
Swami Vivekananda adds that his Master’s message to mankind is, therefore, “Be spiritual and realise truth for yourself.”
Emphasising the uniqueness of his Master, Vivekananda remarks that other teachers have taught special religions which bear their names, but this great teacher of the nineteenth century made no claim
Bhavan's Journal,May 15, 2022∎ 22
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