BRAVE, BOLD
MEN, THESE ARE
WHAT WE WANT
Swami Rasajnanananda
Earlier Swami Vivekananda was quoted as saying to India: ‘Up, India, and conquer the world with your spirituality!’ What did he mean by conquering the world with spirituality-sending out of India the life-giving principles or the thousand and one superstitions we have been hugging to our breasts for centuries? Ever the former and never the latter. These superstitions have to be weeded out even on this soil and thrown aside, so that they may die here itself, because these are the causes of the degradation of the race and have certainly ended in the softening of the brain. Woe to that brain which cannot think high and noble thoughts, which has lost all power of originality, and which has become, in a word, brainless! Woe to that brain which is always poisoning itself with all sorts of superstitions in the name of religion and spirituality! This is how we were enfeebled and the end result was sheer slavery for one thousand years under foreign rule-a very sad and shameful chapter of Indian history, indeed. We should never more let this happen.
Two
kinds of dangers are facing us-Scylla of rank materialism and Charybdis of
arrant superstition, its opposite. As
for the first sort, there are Indians who, having drunk the cup of Western
wisdom of rank materialism, think that there is nothing more to be known. So they simply laugh at the ancient sages;
all Hindu thoughts, to such persons, are arrant trash. On the other hand, we have a class of men, a
sort of monomaniacs, who though educated run to the other extreme, interpreting
this omen and that in philosophical, metaphysical, and Lord knows what other
puerile language. Every little village
superstition, or its peculiar godly superstition, is to them a mandate of the
Vedas; they would leave no stone unturned to act up to these superstition for
what they consider to be their national cause.
Seeing
these dangers in our countrymen, Swamiji warned forcefully: ‘I would rather see
every one of you rank atheists than superstitions fools, for the atheist is
alive and you can make something out of him.
But if superstition enters, the brain is gone, the brain is softening,
degradation has seized upon the life.
Avoid these two.’ Again: ‘Brave,
bold men, these are what we want. What
we want is vigour in the blood, strength in the nerves, iron muscles and nerves
of steel, not softening namby-pamby ideas.’
Another
thing Swamiji advised us against was mystery, secret. In religion and spirituality there is no mystery at all. Do you find it in the Vedanta, or in the
Vedas, or in the Samhitas, or in the Puranas?
What secret societies did the sages of yore establish to preach their
religion? Mystery-monitoring and
superstitions are always signs of weakness.
That
is why Swamiji urged us to be strong and stand on our own feet. Thus alone our spirituality and our national
life will shine in all their glory and shed real lustre on the world abroad.
- Based on the discourse by Swami Rasajnanananda
on Swami Vivekananda’s Lectures