Abhayam

|| योग: कर्मसु कौशलम् ||

Mananeeya Ekanthji harps upon another important quality of fearlessness to which Bhagavan Sri Krishna also has given first number while talking about Daivi Sampat : ABHAYAM. With this quality, our forefathers went across the oceans and conquered the world with their fearlessness. He therefore, says : Fearlessness is another superb quality which we have lost. Such enormous youth power we have, but it is wasted as our youths are chicken-hearted. They become homesick when they are away from home. There is no sense of adventure. We are terribly afraid of death. The Gita chanting and the Upanishadic recitations that we do are only a remnant of the past glory. We speak of high principle but live just the contrary. Our concepts, beliefs and faiths move in one direction and our stream of life flows just in the opposite direction.

Swami Vivekananda, the fearless lion monk of ours said : Advance, forward, O ye brave souls, to set free those that are in fetters, to lessen the burden of woe of the miserable, and to illumine the abysmal darkness of ignorant hearts! Look, how the Vedanta proclaims by beat of drums, "Be fearless!" May that solemn sound remove the heart's knot of all denizens of the earth.

Let us proclaim to every soul: Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached. Arise, awake! Awake from this hypnotism of weakness. None is really weak; the soul is infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient. Stand up, assert yourself, proclaim the God within you, do not deny Him! Too much of inactivity, too much of weakness, too much of hypnotism has been and is upon our race.

O ye modern Hindus, de-hypnotise yourselves. The way to do that is found in your own sacred books. Teach yourselves, teach everyone his real nature, call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come, and everything that is excellent will come when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity.

Ekanthji concludes : It was a very brave and fearless philosophy of our ancients, but we have forgotten it, and live a pitiable life. We must remember the glorious past of our ancients and must make bold to revive all those ideal virtues and values of life which we have lost and forgotten.

Be A Nachiketâ

|| योग: कर्मसु कौशलम् ||

We have a large number of gods and we can borrow as many more gods if required but that will not make us theists. We have to revive that potentiality and self-confidence.

Swamiji very beautifully says : He is an atheist who does not believe in himself. Those of you who have studied that most beautiful Of all the Upanishads, the Katha, will remember how the king was going to make a great sacrifice, and, instead of giving away things that were of any worth, he was giving away cows and horses that were not of any use, and the book says that at that time Shraddhâ entered into the heart of his son Nachiketâ. I would not translate this word Shraddha to you, it would be a mistake; it is a wonderful word to understand, and much depends on it; we will see how it works, for immediately we find Nachiketa telling himself, "I am superior to many, I am inferior to few, but nowhere am I the last, I can also do something." And this boldness increased, and the boy wanted to solve the problem which was in his mind, the problem of death. The solution could only be got by going to the house of Death, and the boy went. There he was, brave Nachiketa waiting at the house of Death for three days, and you know how he obtained what he desired.

This Shraddha must enter into you. Whatever of material power you see manifested by the Western races is the outcome of this Shraddha, because they believe in their muscles and if you believe in your spirit, how much more will it work!

This Shraddha is what I want, and what all of us here want, this faith in ourselves, and before you is the great task to get that faith. Give up the awful disease that is creeping into our national blood, that idea of ridiculing everything, that loss of seriousness. Give that up. Be strong and have this Shraddha, and everything else is bound to follow.

This is how each one needs to stand on one's own legs and work with confidence so that one can start further reviving the national ideals which are forgotten.

You are the maker of your own destiny

|| योग: कर्मसु कौशलम् ||

Having told about the necessity of regaining what was lost, Mananeeya Ekanthji says : We can mould our future.

Swamiji had said : You are the maker of your own destiny.

It all means, everything is in your hand. If you think positively, you will become positive, you will contribute positively. Hence, to make or mar is in your hand. Now that we have this national work in our hand, we need to take the things positively and work. Mananeeya Eknathji further says :  The ancient seers developed the theory of 'reap as you sow' and therefore, the future of every individual, was not the idiosyncrasy and the fanciful will of any superior master or overlord, but it was in his hands. But we have lost that. If anybody, by this efforts and firm will achieve greatness, we immediately attribute the same to his being a superhuman being, because we have lost all self-confidence in ourselves and we want to conceal the inferiority complex and the diffidence. The great man is immediately turned into an avatara and we try to escape the responsibility of emulating the outstanding and ideal qualities of the person.

In this regard, we have the incident in the life of Eknathji itself. It goes....The nation was full of grief over the demise of Lokamanya Tilak, the moving spirit behind the freedom movement. His work for the freedom and regeneration of India was immense. The awakening he brought to the people of India and his voluminous work, the Gitarahasya, were unparalleled.

The appreciation, admiration and the devotion of the people of India for his work were reflected in the huge cutout at the exhibition held during the Congress Conference at Nagpur in 1920. He was shown with four hands carrying Shankh, Chakra, Gada and Padma. Many visited the exhibition. A young six-year-old boy amongst them alone was puzzled by the huge cutout.
"Who is he?" he asked his mother.
"Lokamanya Tilak", she said.
"Why does he have four hands?" asked the boy.
"He did a lot of work for our country".
"But is he a God?"
"He worked like a God for our country".
"But is he an incarnation of Vishnu?" the boy persisted referring
to Shankh, Chakra, Gada and Padma in the four hands of
Lokamanya Tilak.
"God's power is there in all of us".
"That is true, but is he a God or man?"
"Of course, he was a man like us, but he worked a lot for our
Motherland…"
"But then why should he be shown with four hands?"
"As I said earlier, because he has done a lot of work."
"But did he actually have four hands?"
"Nath, I have already told you that he was a man like us. He did
a lot for our country and so the people have depicted him as
God", said the exasperated mother.
"But when he was a man, why four hands are…?"
"Nath, how many times should I repeat the same thing? If a
man works very hard he can work like God."

Though Nath kept quiet, he never forgot the incident. Though it intrigued him, he learnt two lessons from it. If an ordinary person works for the country very hard, then he could work like a God. By calling such a person a God or an incarnation of God, people shirk the responsibility of raising themselves to that level. The incident became a landmark in the life of young Nath. His life is a journey from the ordinary to the extraordinary, seeking inspiration from great persons instead of considering them as incarnations. It was at this young and impressionable age that he came in contact with the fiery patriotic personality, Dr. Hedgewar.