Children: Humanity's Greatest Assets

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Born in the village of Trikkur. Kerala State, on December 15, 1908, Swami Ranganathananda joined the Ramakrishna Order, the international spiritual and cultural movement founded by Swami Vivekananda, at its branch in Mysore in 1926. He was formally initiated into Sannyasa in 1933 by Swami Shivananda, one of the eminent disciples of Sri Ramakrishna and the second President of the Order. After spending the first twelve years in the Order's branches in Mysore and Bangalore, the first six years of which as cook, dish-washer and house-keeper and later as warden of student's hostel, he worked as Secretary and librarian at the Ramakrishna Mission branch at Rangoon from 1939 to 1942, and thereafter as President of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, Karachi, from 1942 to 1948.

From 1949 to 1962, he worked as the Secretary of the New Delhi branch of the Mission, and from 1962 to 1967, he was the Secretary of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Culcutta, Director of its School of Humanistic and Cultural Studies, and Editor of its monthly journal.

From 1973 to 1993 he was President of Ramakrishna Math, Hyderabad. From 1994 to 1998 he was Vice-President of World-Wide Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission and became its President in 1998. He stayed at Belur Math, till his passing away on April 25, 2005.

He has undertaken extensive lecture tours from 1946 to 1972 covering 50 countries. From 1973 to 1986 he visited annually Austraila, U.S.A.. Holland and Germany.

In 1986 he was awarded the first Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration.

He has a versatile and facile pen, and has to his credit a number of publications, chief amongst which are: The Message of the Upanisads, A Pilgrim Looks at the World, Vols. I and II; Four Volumes of Eternal Values for a Changing Society Vol. 1: Philosophy and Spirituality, Vol. 2: Great Spiritual Teachers, Vol. 3: Education for Human Excellence and Vol. 4: Democracy for Total Human Fulfilment: (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's publications); Human Being in Depth (State University of New York publication) Practical Vedanta and Science of Values (Advaita Ashram publication), 28 video-tapes expounding the entire Gita sloka by sloka. 60 titles of audio tapes expounding the ideas of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and Vedanta.

I have been visiting many countries round the world every year. One of the things that has im- pressed me most everywhere is children beautiful, simple, energetic, intelligent children in all these countries, including African countries like Zambia. In Zambia, I addressed several high schools, where the audiences of intelligent, alert, and lovable child- ren impressed me. These children are humanity's greatest assets. All over the world, all children five-year olds to twelve-year olds have a rare beauty, innocence, simplicity, and charm; they im- press us as angels. They are heavenly age of twelve. up to the But after the age of 12, something not desir- able, happens to some of them; that simplicity and angelic quality depart, and they get psychically dis- torted by the forces of our modern society. We find some of them becoming so distorted as to become juvenile delinquents or drug addicts, turning all that beauty into ugliness. The problem has become serious because their number is not stationary or de- creasing, but actually increasing, year by year.

What shall we do to help these children to main- tain their angelic qualities even as they grow up in- to mature men and women? That is the most serious problem that faces all modern societies every- where.