SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

Swami Vivekananda was born in an aristocratic Bengali Kayastha family of Calcutta on 12 January 1863. He was named Narendranath Datta by his parents Vishwanath Datta and Bhuvaneshwari Devi. Swamijis grandfather Durgacharan and Vivekanandas parents influenced his thinkinghis father by his rationality and his mother by her religious temperament. From his childhood, he showed an inclination towards spirituality and God realization. His guru, Ramakrishna, taught him Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism); that all religions are true and that service to man was the most effective worship of God. After the Mahasamadhi of his guru, Vivekananda became a wandering monk, touring the Indian subcontinent and acquiring first-hand knowledge of conditions in India. He later travelled to Chicago and represented India as a delegate in the 1893 Parliament of World Religions. He conducted hundreds of public and private lectures and classes, disseminating Vedanta and Yoga in America, England and Europe. He also established the Vedanta societies in America and England. Swami Vivekananda believed a country's future depends on its people, so he mainly stressed on man, "man-making is my mission", that's how he described his teaching. He wanted to set in motion machinery which will bring noblest ideas to the doorstep of even the poorest and the meanest. Swami Vivekananda believed that the essence of Hinduism was best expressed in the Vedanta philosophy, based on the interpretation of Adi Shankara. He summarized the Vedanta's teachings as follows,

Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this Divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or mental discipline, or philosophyby one, or more, or all of theseand be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details.

Vivekananda advised his followers to be holy, unselfish and have faith. He encouraged the practice of Brahmacharya. In one of the conversations with his childhood friend Priya Nath Sinha he attributes his physical and mental strengths, and eloquence to the practice of Brahmacharya. Swami Vivekananda remains the most influential figure in modern Hinduism. He revitalized the religion within and outside India. Vivekananda was the principal reason behind the enthusiastic reception of yoga, transcendental meditation and other forms of Indian spiritual self-improvement in the West. The Swami's intrepid patriotism gave a new color to the national movement throughout India. More than any other single individual of that period Vivekananda had made his contribution to the new awakening of India. Vivekananda drew the attention towards the prevalence of poverty in the country, and maintained that addressing such poverty was prerequisite for the national awakening. His nationalistic thoughts influenced scores of Indian thinkers and leaders. Vivekananda "is the maker of modern India. Vivekananda's influence increased his "love for his country a thousand fold." Swami Vivekananda is widely considered to have inspired India's freedom struggle movement. His writings inspired a whole generation of freedom fighters including Subhash Chandra Bose, Aurobindo Ghose, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bagha Jatin. At the Belur Math. Mahatma Gandhi said that his whole life was an effort to bring into actions the ideas of Vivekananda. Many years later, after Vivekanandas death Rabindranath Tagore said that if you want to know India, study Vivekananda Jamshedji Tata was influenced by Vivekananda to establish the Indian Institute of Science one of India's well known research universityduring their conversation as fellow travelers on a ship from Japan to Chicago in 1893. National Youth Day in India is held on his birthday, January 12. He is projected as a role model for youth by the Indian government as well as non-government organizations and personalities. Swami Vivekananda laid the foundation of the Ramakrishna brotherhood. In 1890, he travelled throughout the country trying to understand it better. In July 1890 he left for the Himalayas to be in solitude. He kept on wandering through the country where the ancient glory of India came before his eyes as he also saw the poverty of the masses.

Having reached the end of his journey at Kanyakumari he prostrated himself with great feeling before the image of Mother Kumari at a temple there. Then he swam across the sea to a rock off the south coast and sitting there for the whole night went into deep meditation. It was then that he took the decision to go to the West. He reached Chicago for The Parliament of Religions. The hall had 7,000 learned people. He had never addressed such a large gathering and was nervous. When his turn came he mentally bowed down to Saraswati, the goddess of learning and then began. Sisters and Brothers of America. Immediately there was thunderous applause for two minutes. While every speaker spoke about his own religion he spoke of a religion that was as vast as the sky and deep as the ocean. Having made a deep impact there he was in demand. What followed was days of hectic lecturing throughout the U.S. After that he visited England, Italy and reached India at the end of 1896. Swamiji received a warm welcome. From Madras he moved on to Calcutta where the Ramakrishna Mission was formed in 1897. In July 1897, he visited the Amarnath shrine wearing only lion cloth, his body besmeared with ashes. His whole frame was trembling with emotion, a great mystical experience came over him, of which he never spoke, beyond saying that Siva himself appeared before him. Swamiji left India in June 1899. He said to sister Nivedita Social life in the West is like a peal of laughter, but underneath, it is wail. In India it is sad and gloomy on the surface, but underneath are carelessness and merriment. The West has much to learn from the East and the East from the West. He passed away on 4 July 1902 at the age of 39.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, which was a new religious sect in nineteenth-century Bengal and which attempted a revival of the ultimate monistic basis of Hinduism as laid down in the Upanishads. He was educated at home; and although at seventeen he was sent to England for formal schooling, he did not finish his studies there. In his mature years, in addition to his many-sided literary activities, he managed the family estates, a project which brought him into close touch with common humanity and increased his interest in social reforms. He also started an experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his Upanishad ideals of education. From time to time he participated in the Indian nationalist movement, though in his own nonsentimental and visionary way; and Gandhi, the political father of modern India, was his devoted friend. Tagore was knighted by the ruling British Government in 1915, but within a few years he resigned the honor as a protest against British policies in India. Rabindranath Tagore was an Indian Bengali and the author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual; his seemingly mesmeric personality, flowing hair, and other-worldly dress earned him a prophet-like reputation in the West. His "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal. Most of his work was written at Santiniketan (Abode of Peace), the small town that grew around the school he founded in Bengal in 1901, and he not only conceived there an imaginative and innovative system of education, but through his writings and his influence on students and teachers, he was able to use the school as a base from which he could take a major part in India's social, political, and cultural movements. The profoundly original writer, whose elegant prose and magical poetry Bengali readers know well, is not the sermonizing spiritual guru admiredand then rejectedin London. Tagore was

not only an immensely versatile poet; he was also a great short story writer, novelist, playwright, essayist, and composer of songs, as well as a talented painter whose pictures, with their mixture of representation and abstraction, are only now beginning to receive the acclaim that they have long deserved. His essays, moreover, ranged over literature, politics, culture, social change, religious beliefs, philosophical analysis, international relations, and much more. Apart from the three remarkable Englishmen who were Tagores collaborators, namely C. F. Andrews, William Pearson and Leonard Elmhirst, numerous other scholars came to Santiniketan at the poets invitation to participate in the teaching programmes. Tagore disowned being influenced by any of the well-known educationists. It was not any new theory of education but the memory of his schooldays that led him to establish his residential schools. I established my institution in a beautiful spot away from the town where the children had the greatest freedom possible under the shade of ancient trees. Through contact with nature, he wanted to make them aware of community relations and with the help of literature, festivals and religious teaching, he tried to develop the souls of his children. His views were linked with the development of his own mind and spirit, and his profound understanding of Indias traditional educational experience and philosophy. His activityoriented school for village children appears to have inspired Gandhis ideas on basic education. In Tagores view, the higher aim of education was the same as that of a persons life, that is, to achieve fulfillment and completeness. There was a lesser aim that of providing the individual with a satisfactory means of livelihood, without which a person would not be able to satisfy his/her, basic requirements and thus fail to achieve either of these two aims. Tagore also imagined that the limitless development of man is possible only in an environment free from any kind of bondage. In his view, education was not intellectual development alone. It should also develop a students aesthetic nature and creativity. The quest for knowledge and physical activity in an agreeable environment were integral parts of the process. Freedom and creativity are linked in Tagores thought, one conditioning the other. The more people go beyond the limitations of their animal nature, the closer they come to humanism, freedom and unity and are then able to develop their creativity. This quest alone gives a meaning to life, and education is an effort to make life meaningful. Tagore put great emphasis on the use of a national language as the vehicle of education at all stages of education. He wanted Indian universities to integrate themselves with society and make an effort to educate people living in the countryside. He did not want education to remain confined to the cities and to particular classes of society. He was very much concerned with womens education. His educational institutions have almost always been co-educational and the number of female students is conspicuously large at Santiniketan. He wanted women and men to be offered similar theoretical courses with separate practical courses for women, since their roles in life differed from those of men. Tagore considered teachers to be very important in any scheme of education. He wanted teachers to help young children to grow on their own as a gardener helps the young plants to grow. He wanted to use education as an instrument of change to make Indian young men and women more

rational and less subject to meaningless social and individual rituals. Tagore wanted his students to acquire a scientific temper; in other words, he wanted teachers to stimulate constructive doubt, the love of mental adventure, the courage and longing to conquer the world by enterprise and boldness in thought and in action. These were the virtues cultivation of which had made the West forge ahead. Tagore was against any form of corporal punishment to impose discipline. He wanted discipline to come from within, from the pursuit of noble and high ambitions in life. Discipline would follow naturally when minor impulses and desires were willingly forgone to pursue grand creative desires. He wanted his students to think in terms of the whole of mankind. He wanted them to become universal men and women like himself and to overcome feelings of narrow nationalism in order that the world could live and grow in peace and fellowship. The poet passed away in 1941. But one can see that Tagores memory still dominates in everybodies life. The following poem from Gitanjali [Song offerings] brings together the ideals the poet kept before the nation, before mankind, and before his educational institutions.

Where the mind is without fear, and the heart is held high, Where the world is not broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls, Where the words came out from the depths of truth, Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habits, Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, My father let my country awake.

RISHI AUROBINDO GHOSH

Sri Aurobindo (15 August 1872 5 December 1950), was an Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru, and poet. He joined the Indian movement for freedom from British rule and for duration became one of its most important leaders, before developing his own vision of human progress and spiritual evolution. He was also one of the famous Radical leaders of India during the Indian National Movement. Aurobindo was an accomplished scholar in Greek. He got high distinction in Latin. He learnt French very well and picked up a little of German and Italian to study Goethe and Dante in the original. He was steeped in the lore of our ancient Vedic scriptures. Sri Aurobindo was a genius in history and poetry, a scholar in English and Latin. He was in England for fourteen years. When he was only seven years of age, Dr. K.D. Ghosh sent him to England to be steeped in Western education. That early age was chosen deliberately in order that Aurobindo might forget the native touch and learn to adopt the Western forms instead. The famous Alipore Bomb Case was the turning point in Sri Aurobindos life. For a year Aurobindo was an under trial prisoner in solitary confinement in the Alipore Central Jail. It was in a dingy cell of the Alipore Jail that he dreamt the dream of his future life, the divine mission ordained for him by God. Aurobindo bore the rigours of the imprisonment, the bad food, the inadequate clothes, the lack of light and free air, the strain of boredom and the creeping solitariness of the gloomy cell. He utilized this period of incarceration for an intense study and practice of the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. Chittaranjan Das defended Sri Aurobindo, who was acquitted after a memorable trial. Sri Aurobindos philosophy is in a sense practical. It is based on facts, experience and personal realizations and on having the vision of a seer or Rishi. Aurobindos spirituality is inseparably united with reason. The goal aimed at by Sri Aurobindo is not merely the liberation of the individual from the chain that fetters him, but "to work out the will of the Divine in the

world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down the divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity". "A fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and a Supreme Grace that answers from above are two powers which in their conjunction can affect this. If the transformation is to be integral, integral should be the rejection of all that withstands it" says the Master Sri Aurobindo. "The call upon us" says Sri Aurobindo "is to grow into the image of God, to dwell in Him and with Him and be a channel of His joy and might and an instrument of His works. Purified from all that is Asubha (Evil), we have to act in the world as dynamos of that Divine Electricity and send it thrilling and radiating through mankind, so that wherever one of us stands, hundreds around may become full of His light and force, full of God and full of Ananda. Churches, theologies, philosophies have failed to save mankind because they have busied themselves with intellectual creeds and institutions....as if these could save mankind, and have neglected the one thing needful, the power and purification of the soul". Aurobindos Life Divine is, and will always remain, a force guiding the thoughts of men all over the world. Sri Aurobindo's solution to Unity and development of our country is to adopt Sanatana dharma as the Dharma of India. To quote his words, "We speak often of the Hindu religion, of the Sanatana Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. Other religions are preponderating religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatana Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has not so much to be believed as lived. This is the dharma that for the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from of old. It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great. He (the Inner voice / Inner God) said to me, "This is the young generation, the new and mighty nation that is arising at my command. They are greater than yourself. What have you to fear? If you stood aside or slept, the work would still be done. If you were cast aside tomorrow, here are the young men who will take up your work and do it more mightily than you have ever done. You have only got some strength from me to speak a word to this nation which will help to raise it." Sri Aurobindo had earlier had the experience of spiritual liberation (moksha) but he did not accept that as his final course or goal. The Divine's intention for him lies elsewhere. It intended Sri Aurobindo to become a pure instrument that would hasten the descent of the Divine. Sri Aurobindo suggests that when we consider the creation as a whole, the lower part consists of matter, life, and mind, while the higher part consists of Spirit. In the lower 'hemisphere" energy formulates into matter, evolves to life, and further evolves to mind. Mind itself is also capable of rising to spiritual mind -- where e.g. knowledge enters the mind through sudden descents of knowledge without the need for thought -- and then further to overmind, the highest state of this lower hemisphere where division of the Spiritual consciousness first takes shape.

In the upper hemisphere is the pure Spiritual Reality taking shape in three forms of Existence, Conscious- Force, and Delight -- otherwise known as Sat-Chit-Ananda. Together, they can be called (in western terms) the Absolute, or (in Indian terms) Brahman. Between the lower hemisphere's highest reach -- overmind -- and the spiritual worlds of the Absolute lies a zone which was known to the ancient spiritual seekers called rishis, and which Sri Aurobindo called "Truth Consciousness;" or to use his own phraseology, the plane of "Supermind." The Mother was of the opinion that the power of the overmental world would serve the aim of their yoga -- namely the abolition of falsehood, suffering, and death in life. Sri Aurobindo explained to her that in the overmental world Truth was not self-existent; i.e. it had the beginnings of the negative side. Thus, overmind could build a partial world of truth uniting all available truths, but would not include overcoming the ignorance. Should the power of this world descend on earth, a great transformation would occur, but it would still leave a base of ignorance -- which means the body and life of Man would still be left untouched. In Supermind however, Truth is self-existent. The Truth of Supermind can also penetrate ignorance and reach its basis of truth and unite all such truths and build upon them. . In 1950, he had offered his own body to the descending supramental light as a fit receptacle. At the time he left his body, the Golden Light invaded it and remained there for three full days. All the other yogic powers he had gathered within, he deposited in The Mother before he withdrew from his body. In six years, Sri Aurobindo's work prepared the Earth Consciousness as a whole to receive the supramental force, power and light. Sri Aurobindo worked for spiritual transformation, human unity, and Divine life on earth. Sri Aurobindo was born on the day of Indian independence. He worked his whole life, especially inwardly, toward that goal. His birthday also marks the end of the WWII in Asia, the birth date of Napoleon, and the commencement of the Woodstock festival of 1969. Sri Aurobindo was more than an Avatar. He was the closest thing to giving voice to the makeup and being of the Infinite Consciousness. In that sense he qualifies as Divine incarnate; as the living Mind of God. I.e. he embodied the Infinite through intuition and supramental vision of the Supreme.

MAHATMA GANDHI

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 30 January 1948) was the prominent leader of Indian nationalism in British rule in India. Employing non-violent, civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for non-violence, civil rights and freedom across the world. Born and raised in a Hindu community in coastal Gujarat, and trained in law at the Inner Temple in London, Gandhi first employed non-violent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights. Gandhism designates the ideas and principles Gandhi promoted. Of central importance is nonviolent resistance. A Gandhian can mean either an individual who follows, or a specific philosophy which is attributed to, Gandhism. It is an effort not to systematize wisdom but to transform society and is based on an undying faith in the goodness of human nature. However Gandhi himself did not approve of the notion of "Gandhism". He explained in 1936: Gandhi's thought evolved over time, with his early ideas becoming the core or scaffolding for his mature philosophy. In London he committed himself to truthfulness, temperance, chastity, and vegetarianism. His return to India to work as a lawyer was a failure, so he went to Sought Africa for a quarter century, where he absorbed ideas from many sources, most of them nonIndian. While Gandhi was born a Hindu, he grew up in an eclectic religious atmosphere and throughout his life searched for insights from many religious traditions. He was exposed to Jain ideas through his mother who was a devout Jain and was in contact with Jain leaders. Themes from Jainism that Gandhi absorbed included ascetism; compassion for all forms of life; the importance of vows for self discipline; vegetarianism; fasting for self-purification; mutual

tolerance among people of different creeds; and "syadvad," the idea that all views of truth are partial, a doctrine that lies at the root of Satyagraha. Gandhi's London experience provided a solid philosophical base focused on truthfulness, temperance, chastity, and vegetarianism. When he returned to India in 1891, his outlook was parochial and he could not make a living as a lawyer. This challenged his belief that practicality and morality necessarily coincided. By moving in 1893 to South Africa he found a solution to this problem and developed the central concepts of his mature philosophy. Gandhi was influenced by the reforms and teachings of Swaminarayan, stating "Close parallels do exist in programs of social reform based on non-violence, truth-telling, cleanliness, temperance and uplifltment of the masses." It is claimed that Vallabhbhai Patel, who grew up in a Swaminarayan household was attracted to Gandhi due to this aspect of Gandhi's doctrine. Gandhi's ethical thinking was heavily influenced by a handful of books, which he repeatedly meditated upon. They included especially Plato's Apology, (which he translated into his native Gujarati); William Salter's Ethical Religion (1889); Henry David Thoreau's On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1847); Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1893); and John Ruskin's Unto this Last (1862), which he also translated into Gujarati, Ruskin inspired his decision to live an austere life on a commune, at first on the Phoenix Farm in Natal and then on the Tolstoy Farm just outside Johannesburg, South Africa. Balkrishna Gokhale argues that Gandhi took his philosophy of history from Hinduism and Jainism, supplemented by selected Christian traditions and ideas of Tolstoy and Ruskin. Hinduism provided central concepts of God's role in history, of man as the battleground of forces of virtue and sin, and of the potential of love as an historical force. From Jainism, Gandhi took the idea of applying nonviolence to human situations and the theory that Absolute Reality can be comprehended only relatively in human affairs. Gandhi influenced important leaders and political movements. Leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States, including Martin Luther King and James Lawson, drew from the writings of Gandhi in the development of their own theories about non-violence. In his early years, the former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela was a follower of the non-violent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. Gandhi's life and teachings inspired many who specifically referred to Gandhi as their mentor or who dedicated their lives to spreading Gandhi's ideas. Mahatma Gandhi's life achievement stands unique in political history. He has invented a completely new and human means for the liberation war of an oppressed country, and practiced it with greatest energy and devotion. The moral influence he had on the consciously thinking human being of the entire civilized world will probably be much more lasting than it seems in our time with its overestimation of brutal violent forces. Because lasting will only be the work of such statesmen who wake up and strengthen the moral power of their people through their example and educational works. We may all be happy and grateful that destiny gifted us with such an enlightened contemporary, a role model for the generations to come.

In his last year, unhappy at the partition of India, Gandhi chose to ignore the widespread celebrations of independence, and strove instead to stop the carnage between Hindus and Muslims that had accompanied the partition. He was assassinated on 30 January 1948 by Nathuram Godse; a Hindu nationalist who felt resentful at what he perceived was Gandhi's sympathy for India's Muslims. January 30 is observed as Martyrs' Day in India.