jabdakhata

A series of articles appeared in the Jayashree magazine by a certain penname called Charanik, which created some flutter in the later 1960s and 1970s. The writings were abstruse and cryptic and depicting the teachings of a certain spiritual person named Mahakaal who used to call himself a Mrito Bhoot or dead ghost. The narrations were based on journals and notes of the disciples of the aforementioned Mahakaal. Some of the intelligent mind however could ascertain the person behind Mahakaal, but the way the articles were written, they never gave away the names and the locations. Seasoned journalists like Barun Sengupta however sensed that there were more behind these articles and conjectured whether they pertained to Netaji. The articles only provided the activities, the viewpoints - both political and spiritual and some form of after life of a super human who was dead to the society. Since then, the articles have been republished by Jayashree in a book titled Oi Mahamanab Ase. The boo...

Swami Ashokananda - many people have not heard the name. Who is he, they may be asking. He incidentally was named as one of the best intellects of India by an Indian PM to the president of America in the 1950s. Swami Ashokananda was daring enough to attack Gandhiji and his ideals in 1930 in his editorials in Prabuddha Bharat when Gandhiji's popularity was in the zenith and his weird socialist ideals were lapped up by almost every leader true to his salt. Ashokananda ventured into a debate with Gandhiji on his assertions and emerged triumphant. But even his brother monks did not like it, so was the power of Gandhiji at that time. However how prophetic he was. Gandhian ideals were incompatible for India, he wanted the message of strength for India, not weakness of Ahimsa. Years later, he told ruefully to his disciple, "Gandhi was a holy man, but a stupid man. He had his pert hobby, Ahimsa and he put his hobby above his country's interest." He claimed himself to be a d...

The great poet shared a unique relationship with Ramakrishna. He made repeated demands to him that he be born as his son. Ramakrishna refused saying that his father was a pious brahmin. Girish, in a  drunken state abused him profusely for this refusal, but at times while abusing he prostrated on the dirty ground and made pranaam. When Ramakrishna visited his house the next day, Girish was dejected thinking about the colossal blunder that he did. But Sri Ramakrishna's lack of ego made him exclaim that Ramakrishna was nothing but God. That reinforced his belief. Sri Ramakrishna also told him that he would become purer day by day, people would be amazed by his transformation. Exactly that happened. In his later days people used to visit Girish just to hear about Sri Rmakrishna for hours. He was never tired of speaking about his guru. He used to take dip in Ganga during the Dasahara festival saying that he was not doing it to become pure and get absolved from his sins as others do. H...

Girish Ghosh was a Bohemian, in every sense. In his young days he destroyed a Durga idol that was mischievously put in his house by some people to embarrass the family. He chased an astrologer and a pretentious sannyasin away when he discovered their falsehoods. He flaunted his atheism to anybody and everybody. Nobody could argue with him as they were sure to get defeated by his tremendous intellectual acumen. But Girish also had a large heart. He collected a group of young boys and helped anybody who was in need - like takings the unwanted corpse for cremation, providing health care to the sick, providing financial help to the poor and needy and many such selfless activities. He first set up his theater, the National Theater, as an amateur actor and  produced Sadhabar Ekadashi, a satire written by Michael Madhusudan Datta, the famous poet, and Neeldarpan, based on the novel of the same name written by Dinabandhu Mitra against the brutal tyranny and oppression of the indigo plant...

Very few people in India outside Bengal know of Girish Chandra Ghosh, the prolific play writer, the father of theatre in Bengal and in India who was once widely regarded as Shakespeare of Bengal and Garrick of Bengali stage. Girish Ghosh was a playwright, a director, an actor, a poet, all moulded into one. He was a versatile genius. He was a lion among men and like a lion he dominated everything that he did. He never cared for conventions. He did not tolerate hypocrisy. He ensured decent living for many women who were otherwise considered "fallen" by the society. He led an intemperate life in a rebellious spirit for sometime, till he met the ultimate man whom he was searching for throughout his life. Girish was appreciated by many eminent personalities, actor and intellectual Utpal Datta being one one of them. In his book Girish Mahima (Greatness of Girish), Utpal Datta was full of praise for him. Recently veteran actor Soumitra Chatterjee enacted as a solo actor in one of ...

Another problem that atheism fails to resolve is that of the life of the great teachers, sages and saints who have led a completely unselfish life devoted to the welfare of the others. These set of great figures in history, called great teachers or incarnations, appear only once in say about 500 years, Buddha, Christ, Sankara, Ramanuja, Chaitanya, Nanak, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda-Sarada Devi being some of them who made a huge impact. If we study their lives carefully we find that these lives are remarkable. They devote considerable amount of time in preparing themselves for their roles and then once they have entered the stage of teaching they devote themselves wholeheartedly to it, setting new ideas and principles. They often bring huge, earth shattering changes in their wakes, changes which are felt quite a few years after they have left their mortal coils. They lead a life of purity, truthfulness, simplicity and attract hundreds during their lifetime and thousands, may be millions, ...

One of the key points of contention between Theism and Atheism may be around the problem of evil. Suffering exists, that's  a natural phenomena of life. How does suffering come to haunt an otherwise placid life is a big riddle. Theists in various cultures have tried to explain it in various ways, and atheists have no explanation. Atheists have taken the existence of evil and the suffering as a natural phenomena, may be linked to desires, may be to the circumstances, buts always explicable through a pure materialistic view point - of inherent tendencies of men, of accidents, of natural deaths and destruction and so on. Every sorrowful event can be explained as one causing problem and suffering but there is no reason to find a meaning in them. One question that atheists tend to ignore are why are there so much varied conditions in life? Why are some born with silver spoon in their mouth while others are born in thatched huts or probably on streets. Why people are born poor and die ...

One of the numerous whatspp post that I received had been something like this: A Friend: I have stopped believing in God, I think, God & Religion are all created to hoodwink people. These are like Narcotics. Now the friend has an absolute right to become an atheist and state his personal beliefs, perhaps with an intention of instigating some of the non atheists for a debate. But the word "narcotics" is a very strong statement and here his hidden intentions are revealed. Quite sometime ago Marx had called religion to be an opium of the masses. It became a catchy phrase with the communists worldwide. This is also popular among the so called atheists and agnostics. However when a believer may turn unto them and speak out her mind saying that, may be, its just a may be, that their obsession with the world and the worldliness, the materialistic and pure sensual pleasures, is some kind of an addiction too as they are not really able to come out of it for a purposeful life, ...

Sara Bull had one daughter, Olea Vaughan, who although not in the scale of Holy Mother’s Radhu, nevertheless was a constant source of her worldly tribulation. Devoid of her father at a very early age Olea perhaps was too submissive to her dominant mother during her early days, but grew to be a rebel during her later stages. There is a pattern here. Both Radhu and Olea were sickly. Both of them suffered from chronic depression and would often react violently. Like Radhu Olea lost her father early enough, like Radhu she was of a rebellious streak, like Radhu she was a source of many troubles to her mother, like Radhu she had many opportunities and open doors to a spiritual life and like Radhu she suffered for her worldly actions and died of tuberculosis. Like Radhu who had Bonobihari who died soon after Holy Mother left her body, Olea had a child Edwina who died young. Their husbands neglected and even mistreated them. But the similarities end there. Radhu was perhaps more unfortunate...

Another facet of the Holy mother Sri Sarada Devi was that she was immensely practical in all matters, esp. the worldly. To her there was no distinction between the sacred and secular. While it is true that some of her grooming in the practical and worldly matter were done in her early days by Sri Sri Thakur himself, it would not be unfair to claim that her second nature was practicality. Sri Ramakrishna acknowledged it many times, like the occasion when she did not travel with him to the religious festival in Panihati. When Sara Bull had asked her whether Guru’s directives should be obeyed in non-spiritual matters, Holy Mother said that in matters of the world sometimes Guru’s directives can be disobeyed if done in an unselfish way and if personal judgment finds other, more favourable courses. Sara Bull was sometimes overbearing and controlling, esp. in her dealings with Swami Vivekananda in her earlier days when she tried to teach him in some ways of dealing with people in the soci...

The Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi was the very backbone, nay even the foundation and pillar of the Ramakrishna movement. Holy Mother and Sri Ramakrishna are regarded as one and the same by all the direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. Sri Ramakrishna Himself has proclaimed that he was in her and she was in him – as Shiva and Shakti. So to classify her as spiritual consort of Sri Ramakrishna as many of the scholars and academicians have done, would be singularly wrong because a consortium is an association of two or more individuals for a common purpose. Ramakrishna and the Holy Mother are one and inseparable, not two individuals in spiritual sense. After Sri Ramakrishna left His body it was left on Holy Mother to carry on the mission in a different way, through the practical demonstration of the motherhood of God. She took the reins of a fledgling organization indirectly, without imposing herself in any way. Yet the Holy Mother’s words were final in all matters. One of the reasons for...

Interwoven Parallel Threads in the Seemingly Independent Universes If we follow the lives of Sara and Ma Sarada closely we see that there are many interesting parallels in the lives of them. This could be classified into three distinct themes. 1)       Marriage: Sara Bull married an extra ordinary musician, who was intellectually perhaps the best of his time. She could only live about ten years with him. He was much older than her, the age difference being about forty years. The Holy Mother on the other hand was the Shakti of the avatara or the divine incarnation for the present age. It is to be noted that Sri Ramakrishna was an artist per excellence. He excelled in painting, music, clay modelling and fine arts. He went into Samadhi by listening to the Veena recital of Mahesh Veenkar in Varanasi. So he would probably have highly appreciated the compositions of Ole Bull. Moreover both shared a distaste for worldliness, although in different ways, Sri Ra...

Sara’s Life in Brief Let us first get to know Sara Chapman Bull. She, as we have already mentioned, born in a wealthy business and socialite family of Thorps.  (Prabuddhaprana, 2002) She was married at the age of nineteen to Ole Bull, the famous Norwegian violinist, and one of the greatest musicians of that time, who was then sixty years old. The couple had one daughter Olea (later Olea Vaughan). Sara spent ten happy years of marriage with Ole Bull, organized his concerts, helped the spendthrift and out-worldly man in his financial affairs, became an ardent admirer of his music and was also the inspiration behind his compositions. Ole Bull and Sara spent several years travelling between Europe and America till the death of Ole Bull in 1878. Sara was a pianist and often she would spend lovely evenings with her husband accompanying him on creating divine music. They had an interesting social life with leading intelligentsia, artists and philosophers like George Santayana, Willi...

The Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi and Sara Chapman Bull are two very important personalities in the whole history of Ramakrishna Movement. Although Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi is perhaps the larger figure in comparison being the embodied divine mother Herself, Sara Bull nonetheless had a very important role to play, esp. in the mission of Swami Vivekananda in the West. Sara Bull was probably four or five years older than Sarada, being born in 1850. She was born in a wealthy and influential family in the pre-civil war America, Sara’s father Joseph Thorp being a senator and a businessman while mother Amelia being a noted Socialite. Sarada, on the other hand, was born to a poor village priest Ramchandra Mukherjee and his wife Shyamsundari in the remote hamlet of Jairambati, under British East India Company’s hegemony, just a few years before the mutiny of 1857. Sarada had learnt to respect the Queen Victoria who through a royal proclamation took India under her sovereign crown post 1857. ...

Now let us come to one of the most important and also controversial episode of Krishna’s life, one which has been maligned by many, understood by few and appreciated by fewer – The Raas Leela or the Autumn Dance festival. Swami Vivekananda had said that one having body consciousness can never understand the true spiritual significance of the Raas Leela. Only people who have achieved transcendental love can understand the Raas Leela and what it meant to a bunch of women who were mad with divine love, divine fervor. The story goes on like this – The Hemant season was the harbinger of the winter. On a lovely day the young maidens, the gopikas took a bath and went to the temple of local goddess Katyayani and almost all of them prayed privately for having Krishna as their husband. On a lovely moonlit autumn night Krishna was desirous of playing with the folks and he started playing on his flute. Hearing that ethereal music, full of bliss and joy, none of the gopikas could remain in the...

Vivekananda is worshiped nowadays as a patriot prophet. But was he truly concerned about India as a patriot would? Also did Vivekananda stood for Hinduism only? Was he himself sectarian, a term that he despised strongly and criticized vehemently? If we buy into the opinion of today's politicians and the so called secular liberals and some off the other detractors of Vivekananda these seem to be the case. They portray him as the champion of Brahminical Hinduism, militant Hinduism and aggressive Nationalism. He is given at best the status of a social reformer and a militant nationalist. He is also clubbed in the same bracket as a humanitarian. So how much true are these assessments? Let me make a bold claim here. Only Vivekananda's disciples and ardent devotees who follow his principles know him truly, rest are mere blind men seeing a part of the elephant and mistaking it as a whole. Two stories come to our mind, both narrated by Vivekananda as part of his lectures, one bei...