Message of Kanyakumari -4

Swami Ranganathananda ji on 16 Sep 1970 addressed the people on the Message of Kanyakumari. He said :

THE JUNCTION OF TWO SPIRITUAL STREAMS

     This is what Swami Vivekananda presented to the people of India as practical religion and practical politics in one, the twin aspects of his philosophy of Practical Vedanta. He used to quote his Master's pungent words relating to religion as static worldly piety or piety-fringed worldliness: "Religion is not for empty bellies." We need the religion of work, the discipline of intelligent, co-operative, team work, to destroy the demon of hunger. This is the yoga of the Bhagavad-Gita, with its message of dynamic spirituality conveyed in three words: Yogah karmasu kausalam – "Yoga is efficiency, dexterity, in action." In contemporary post-independence India, where the unhealthy politics of the sheer pursuit of power has ousted the healthy polities of service, we need a new dictum to complement that dictum of Sri Ramakrishna, namely, "Politics is not for empty bellies." The Problems of poverty and general backwardness can be successfully tackled only by a politics of service; and such politics is what is inspired by a sense of national vision and dedication. "God and truth are the only politics in the world all else is trash," says Vivekananda.  Our nation has to infuse this sense of dedication for the service of the common man in our politics and administration. This is the spirituality of politics; and the other is the spirituality of practical religion. These two rivers of spirituality need to flow together today to fertilize the life of our people in a fundamental way. Our people need healthy political education. Their awakened political sense will be the perennial strength of our infant democratic State. 

     It is in such life and work that we shall manifest the spirit of Vivekananda. It is by such work that we shall pay our tribute to the memory of this great teacher, this lover of man, who lives in spirit in the hearts of our millions, in the hearts of millions in all parts of the world. There is no greater work for us today than to inspire ourselves with that vision of Vivekananda, the vision of India's greatness and glory, and with the resolve to translate that vision into our special experiment and experience. This is the way by which we can endow our nation with a healthy body-politic; this is the guarantee of the steady moral and spiritual uplift of not only our own people, but of the rest of the world as well.

     India has always exercised a fascination for all contemporary civilizations during the millennia of her history. There is much hunger today in the rest of the world for that bread of spirituality which India has always manufactured and accumulated for the good of mankind. It is true that when we look around us today we don't see evidences of that spirituality on the surface of our national life. That surface greets us with much that is unspiritual, much that is distressing and depressing. But in the depths of our national consciousness Vivekananda experienced the tangible pulsations of the spiritual energy resources of our nation. We need to master and apply the technical know-how of bringing these spiritual energy resources to the surface of life in order to become available to our people so as to overcome the spiritual and moral malnutrition of our nation, side by side with our mastering and applying the technical know-how of bringing to the surface the physical energy resources of our nation to overcome our material backwardness.

     This technical know-how of the science of spirituality teaches us that it can be mastered and applied by every citizen in every field of life – in the fields and factories, in the home and offices, everywhere. None need to go to a forest or a cave to become spiritual, except to intensify the spirituality gained in life and work; for this science teaches us that spirituality is the birth right of one and all, that the Atman is our true nature, that the kingdom of heaven is within  us, and that life and action are the field, the Kurukshetra, for the culture of our spiritual awareness.  This is the great message of Practical Vedanta of Swami Vivekananda, the perennial message of dynamic and comprehensive spirituality of the Bhagavad-Gita.