Sarvlokhiteishini Bharatiyata ...The One who aspires and designs things for welfare of everyone

Sarvalokhiteshini: aim at welfare of all A model of everyone’s development ‘Abhyudaya’ and emancipation ‘Nishreyasa’: ____________________________________ Swami Vivekananda once said that the east wants every bit of social power through spirituality, thus modern reformer saw no way to reform but by crushing out religion of India. They tried and failed. Why? Because few of them studied their own religion and none ever underwent the training necessary to understand the Mother of all religions. I claim no destruction of religion is necessary to improve Hindu society. This stage according to him exists because religion is not applied to society properly. The present Hindu society is organized only for spiritual men and hopelessly crushes out everybody else. Where shall they go who want to enjoy life with all its frivolities? Just as our religion takes all, society also should take all. This is to be worked out by first understanding the true principles of our religion and then applying them to society. This is slow but sure work to be done. He also said that his whole ambition in life is to set in motion a machinery which will bring noble thoughts to the doorsteps of everybody. Then let men and women settle their own fate. We are to put the chemicals together, the crystallization will take place by Nature’s own laws according to Swami Vivekananda. He asked whether we can elevate the masses without injuring their religion, to give them back their lost individuality without making them to lose their innate spirituality. This indeed is the challenge. His plan, in fact, was to take advantage of sect and yet have broadness of a universal religion, and then proper application of such combination to our society. In a letter to his disciple, Alasinga in 1896 AD, Swamiji wrote, ‘To put Hindu ideas in English and then to make out of dry philosophy, intricate mythology and queer startling psychology a religion which shall be easy, simple, popular and at the same time meet requirements of the highest minds.’ He wanted it to transform … From dry Advaita to poetic everyday life stories Hopelessly intricate mythology to concrete moral forms Bewildering yogism to scientific and practical psychology … This was his vision of remoulding Sanatana dharma In fact in history this has been done by genius of India when the luminous seed of Veda and Upanishads was developed into Puranas, Ehihasa, Tantra, Bhakti cults, etc. Development of novel idea forms from the seed of original thinking, further widening and fathoming of psychic and spiritual experiences, it was rather an effort successful to a large measure to open general mind of people to a higher and deeper range of inner truth, experience and feeling according to Sri Aurobindo. In another letter by him, Swami Vivekananda explained the most abstract idea in a language which even a child can grasp. He then explained the structure as follows: Neither social inequality, nor equality, but every being has same rights, insist on freedom of thought and action in every day. Neither Theist nor Atheist, condition is modelling of character at once broadest and most intense. Nor do we insist on particular codes of morality as to conduct, character, eating, drinking, except so far as it injures others. Whatever retards onward progress or helps downward fall is vice, whatever helps in coming up and getting harmonized is virtue. We leave everybody free to know, select, follow, whatever suits and helps him. Thus eating meat helps one, eating fruits may help other, marriage may help one, and no marriage may help other. Each is welcome to his own peculiarity but he has no right to criticize conduct of others. Swamiji wrote to the Hindu’s of Madras from America in 1894 AD that Veda are the only scriptures which teach absolute god, of which all other ideas are but minimized and limited visions. As Sarvalokhiteshini (Welfarer of all) Shruti takes a devotee gently by hand and leads him from one stage to another through all the stages that he has to cross to reach the goal. And all the other religions and paths are but stages on this journey. They are included in the one nameless, formless, limitless, eternal Vedic religion. To quote Sri Aurobindo, ‘Value of Indian conception for life must depend on the relations and gradations by which it connects this distant and difficult perfection of every human being with our normal living and present everyday nature. For high unattainable ideal or detached remote passion of few exceptional spirits, it never discouraged the springs of natural life, by too great a contrast between spiritual being and own imperfect nature. We should not be misled by extreme tendencies or the overemphasis put upon them in the period of decline. Indian culture did not deface nor impoverish the richness of the grand game of life. It never depressed or mutilated the activities of our nature. On the contrary subject to a certain principle of harmony and government, it allowed them their full, often their extreme value. Indian mind, whether in government of life or in a discipline of spirituality kept always in sight two main truths of our existence: Our being in its growth has stages through which it has to pass. Life is complex and nature of man is complex, in each life man has to figure certain sum of his complexity and put that into some kind of order.’