Swami Vivekananda: Prophet and Pathfinder

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

I have all wish for my salvation. I never wanted earthly enjoyment. I must see my machine in strong working order and then knowing sure that I have put in a lever for the good of humanity in India at least which no power can drive back I will sleep without caring what will be next and may I be born again and again and suffer thousands of miseries so that I may worship the only god that exists the only god I believe in the sum total of all souls and above all my god the wicked my god the miserable my god the poor of all races of all species is the special object of my worship

The fourth edition of Swami Vivekananda; Prophet and Pathfinder, revised and enlarged and illustrated, is now published from Shri Ramakrishna Ashrama, Rajkot.

The first edition of the book with nine chapters was printed in 1984 from Shri Ramakrishna Kutir, Kothagudem A.P. The second edition with fifteen chapters was printer in 1985 under the kind encouragement of Rev. Swami Tapasyanandaji Maharaj, from Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madras. The third edition from Rajkot which came out after a gap of thirteen years in 1998 is blessed to have a fore word by Rev. Swami Ranganathanandaji Maharaj, President, Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission.

We are grateful to Rev. President Maharaj for this valuable foreword. The fourth edition is coming out with another chapter (chapter 21) and 286 photographs of Swami Vivekananda and places and persons associated with his life and works.

Since the last two decades, history has seen many upheavals like the fall of Euro-communism, the economic boom in South-East Asia, and the rise of India as a recognized politico-economic superpower in the world scene. More and more of the prophecies made by Swami Vivekananda have turned true. Entangled in the maze of a growingly materialistic and fundamentalistic culture, the world is finding in Vivekananda words the paths for human survival, and about all the ways to create a civilization which will be based on the essential divinity in man, and the essential unity of all religions. This will be the fulfillment of humanity’s dream for ages.

A hundred years have passed since Swamiji has passed away. His global impact is being felt more and more every day. This fourth edition is a humble attempt to show how at the dawn of the 21st century, Vivekanada’s message will help us enter along with all the wonder or super-computer-techno science, into a super-industrial, spiritual, and holistic culture for the creation of a global civilization.

We are grateful to all friends and scholars who helped us to complete and print this illustrated, revised and enlarged edition. Our special gratitude goes to Swami Sarvasthananda who was inspired to bring this enlarged and illustrated edition and who put months of hard labor to this end, Br. Sheshraja, Br. Tamal and specially to Venkatesh and Yagnesh, who worked very hard in various ways.

We shall feel blessed if the book helps to bring more inspiration to the devotees of Swami Vivekananda as the Saviour Prophet of our civilization.

I am glad to write this foreword to this revised and enlarged edition of Swami Jitamananda’s book, Swami Vivekananda: prophet and pathfinder, Romain Rolland, in the preface to his book, Life of Ramakrishna, “To my Western readers’ refers to Ramakrishna and Vivekananda in these words:

“I have chosen two men, who have won my regard because with incomparable charm and power they have realized this splendid symphony of the Universal Soul; they are, if one may say so, its Mozart and its Beethoven- Pater Seraphicus and Jove the Thunderer-Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.”

India’s comprehensive Advaita Vedanta Philosophy and spirituality which is a science of the human being in depth and which, as biologist Sir Julian Huxley desires modern Western physical science to develop into as a ‘science of human possibilities’, found its comprehensive manifestation in Ramakrishna and Vivekananda in the modern age; and this Advaita Vedanta found its practical application on a global scale through Swami Vivekananda who is described by post Rabindranath Tagore as a harmony of East and West. The is further amplified by the remark of Romain Rolland in his Life of Vivekananda at the beginning of his 4th chapter civets: The city of Mankind:

“In the two words equilibrium and synthesis Vivekananda’s constructive may be summed up. He embraced all the paths of the spirit: the four Yoga’s in their entirety and action, from the most spiritual to the most practical. Each of the ways that he taught had its own limits, but he himself had been through them all, and embraced them all. As in a quadriga, he held the reins of all the four ways of truth, and he traveled towards Unity along them all simultaneously. He was the personification of the harmony of all human energy.”

The Sandusky Upanishad Karika of Gaudapada of the 8th century A.D., Who was Sankaracarya’s teachers teacher, describes the universal scope and global blessing coming out this Advaita in the clearest terms in one verse.

“I salute this great yoga of non-touch (Advaita) which conduces to the happiness and welfare of all beings and which is free all disputation and contradiction.”

The Indian sages, with a scientific precision, called this philosophy and spirituality as A-dvaita, not two, and did not call it monism and Gaudapada calls it Asparsa Yoga. The Many have come from the one, exists in the One and goes back to the One at the time of cosmic dissolution. That one is the infinite Pure Consciousness, Called Brahman or Atman, saying that these names are only for reference, and that Pure Consciousness exists in all beings, unmanifest in matter and manifest in all living beings. The organism evolves from the living call to the human species and this evolution is of the organism and not of Consciousness. Consciousness does evolve. Consciousness, like space cannot be divided. Says the nuclear physicist Erwin Schrodinger on the nature of consciousness :

‘Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular…Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown; that there is only thing and that, what seems to be a plurality, is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing, produced by a deception (the Indian Maya).

This Pure Consciousness manifests more and more as the organism evolves and the uniqueness of the human being is that he or she has the organic capacity to realise Brahman- Brahmavalokadhisanam- as the Srimad Bhagvatam says in its eleventh book- in this very life and that realization is the goal of human evolution, says Vedanta.

It is this symphony of the Universal Soul with its diverse applications to human problems both of East and West exemplified in the life Swami Vivekananda that Swami Jitamananda has presented in this book. Our present sensate and consumerist civilization first developed in the West but is invading the rest of the world as well. It is the fruit of the modern West’s utter ignorance of the higher dimensions of human nature beyond the physical and the sensory. It will go the way of slow decay and death like the earlier sensate civilizations such as the powerful Roman Empire unless these profound ideas and ideals of Swami Vivekananda’s Vedanta reach the people in both East and West. I wish this book a wide circulation.