Anirban Ganguly anirbangan@gmail.com
Swarajya and Samrajya – the inner as well as the outer mastery cannot be achieved by the pampered and the faint hearted. A radical aspiration, a radical will, a radical tenacity, a radical faith in a radical vision has been the hallmark of those who have undertaken the conquest of the world and the spirit. The youth who dream and yearn to achieve an integral perfection in their lives and in the nation have to be ready and consenting to take an unconditional plunge towards a great radical adventure. The first step is the breaking of worn out bonds and past barriers, as the Master’s clarion call to the youth rings out, for according to Him it is they
‘who must be the builders of the new world – not those who accept the competitive individualism, the capitalism or the materialistic communism of the West as India’s future ideal, nor those who are enslaved to old religious formulas and cannot believe in the acceptance and transformation of life by the spirit, but all who are free in mind and heart to accept a completer truth and labour for a greater ideal…’
This then we shall treat as the first charter for the youth seeking an integral perfection and action and shall strive to establish it permanently in our minds and hearts. For it is accepted that no lasting structure, no great movement or creation can be envisaged without a mandatory cleansing process preceding them. A thorough rejection of the old and the constricted is required for absorbing the new light and this can still be done by the youth.
The old, the ancient can be distinctly separated into the momentary and the eternal, the form and the spirit, the structure and the ideal and a discerning vision can always extract the essence and let the appendage drop. It is when the essence, the spirit, the core-truth and teaching is assimilated that one can build on it. This is what is meant by the past shaping by its inner-spirit and influence a greater future. This then shall lead us to the second charter before the integral youth as enunciated by the Master and which needs to be worked upon if a steady and lasting foundation is to be built based on the inner-strength, ‘…Materially you are nothing, spiritually you are everything. It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice everything. First therefore become Indians. Recover the patrimony of your forefather. Recover the Aryan thought, the Aryan discipline, the Aryan character, the Aryan life. Recover the Vedanta, the Gita, the Yoga. Recover them not only in intellect or sentiment but in your lives. Live them and you will be great and strong, mighty, invincible and fearless. Neither life nor death will have any terrors for you. Difficulty and impossibility will vanish from your vocabularies…’
It is the youth which inspires and drives the rebirth of a nation and a race, it is they who eagerly pluck and devour a radical thought or a novel vision till then neglected or abandoned by the old order. An inner impulse gives rise to an outer spirit of resolute action which brings about the age of liberation and new creation. But for any movement of regeneration to be thorough and all encompassing a deeper inspiration and identification have to be the constant guides, a shallow, impulsive, surface-motivated vital movement can never be sure to usher in a lasting and a radically new phase. The third charter then for the integral youth demands that this deeper source – the identification of the Mother in the nation - be touched and be allowed to regenerate the whole outer structure as well as the inner fields and one must unreservedly subordinate oneself to this influence, ‘…it is in the spirit that strength is eternal and you must win back the kingdom of yourselves, the inner Swaraj, before you can win back the outer empire. There the Mother dwells and She waits for worship that She may give strength. Believe in Her, serve Her, lose your wills in Hers, your egoism in the greater ego of the country, your separate selfishness in the service of humanity. Recover the source of all strength in yourselves and all else will be added to you, social soundness, intellectual pre-eminence, political freedom, the mastery of human thought, the hegemony of the world.’
One of the first essential conditions for the regeneration of the collective life, the race and the nation, its growth and well-being – the establishment of the samrajya – is the fulfillment of the swarajya – inner liberation and mastery. This, as we have said earlier, is a radical demand and necessity. Since the integral youth cannot follow beaten tracks taken by previous half attempts at regeneration they have to necessarily follow the hardest but surest route to success. The fourth charter then placed before the youth of the integral life is the demand and necessity of ‘a yoga of self-purification’ which as it progressively unfolds in the individual creates transformative ripples in the collectivity, there is no other way, no short cuts or fast relief and this demand is of the Mother, ‘The world will be made better only in proportion as we make ourselves better. The Vedantic truth that the world is only a projection – a function – of our consciousness is as pragmatically true as it is spiritually true. The ills that humanity suffers from – collectively and individually – stem from the errors that lie at the root of our ignorant nature. We must be cleaned of these evils – individually first of all – if we ever hope to see a clean world outside. A yoga of self-purification is the condition precedent to a yoga of perfection…’ The demand is mighty and the attitude must be that of an uncompromising self-abandonment which we believe must also be a principle trait of the integral youth.
Such is the path of the beginning set before the youth who dream of a greater perfection, harmony and progress and such are the charters as given by our Masters to act as signposts guiding towards that great and true destiny which awaits us and for which ‘a great inner as well as outer liberation and change, a vast inner and outer progress is needed’. - Anirban Youth is Progress matrimandir-habra.org/Progress/240407
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