Spirituality In Modern Literature

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About the Book Fictional literature, when enkindled with spiritual ideas, creates an appeal that transcends time and place. This has been the case with many literary works produced in India and other parts of the world, and this is so even in our modern times characterized by consumerist culture that hardly sees below the surface of things.

This book presents to the readers, through a series of articles, a systematic record of some of those writers who added the spiritual dimension to their fictional works in India and the Americas.

Preface The One becomes the many, and the many, or parts of it, attempt to become one again. And this is happening constantly. This principle of the Vedanta philosophy was realised by Sri Ramakrishna, who concluded that the One and the many are two aspects of the same Reality. Sri Ramakrishna's disciple Swami Vivekananda would further explain: "The many and the One are the same Reality, perceived by the mind at different times and in different attitudes:' Swami Vivekananda's disciple Sister Nivedita adds: "If the many and the One be indeed the same Reality, then it is not all modes of worship alone, but equally all modes of work, all modes of struggle, all modes of creation, which are paths of realisation." All these paths of realisation, these attempts of the many to become one again, and the actual realisation of Oneness, is what can be defined as spirituality from a Vedantic point of view.

The arts-music, painting, sculpture, literature, architecture, etc.-are, of course, different ways of expressing the Ultimate Truth, which is Oneness. In Swami Vivekananda's words: "Art, science, and religion are but three different ways of expressing a single truth. But in order to understand this we must have the theory of Advaita." The theory of Advaita means, in this context, the philosophy that maintains the oneness of existence.

And we end from where we started, in the realm of spiritual ideas, which gets expressed through literary works worldwide. To cite again Mrs Devita: "It is interesting to observe how the literary world develops a network, a subtle thread that inter-relates and identifies those authors who obtain with their works an impact over a great part of humankind. Maybe without knowing it, they belong to the few who can better render the Publish rays of the Atman and can better formulate the transcendental questions that agitate all of us."

India has a great tradition of spiritual ideas, which did not stop finding a channel through modern literature. And the new nations of the Americas-both North and South America-have translated and incorporated some of those ideas in their incipient modern cultures. This compilation of articles, published originally in Prabuddha Bharata, an English journal of the Ramakrishna Order, offers a glimpse of some authors who have included in their literary works the ideas of the perennial Spiritual Vedanta philosophy and their modern actualization through Hindi I the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. The Pro, articles cover the major official languages of India and the main three of the Americas.

Achieve almost all the quotes in this preface belong to the main body of the book. This was the editorial style of Prabuddha Bharata when these articles were published. To introduce every Spiritual issue, the editor would rather give a prominent voice to the writers of the articles by quoting them. Three editorials lead the first three chapters of this book.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages