{"id":2842,"date":"2013-07-13T01:44:08","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2842"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:44:08","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:08","slug":"207-bande-mataram-28-3-08-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/06-07-bande-mataram\/207-bande-mataram-28-3-08-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","title":{"rendered":"-207_Bande Mataram 28-3-08.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\tBande Mataram<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t
\n\t{
\n\tCALCUTTA, March 28th, 1908 } <\/b> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nSpirituality and Nationalism
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nMankind have a natural inclination to hero-worship and the great men who have done wonders for human civilisation will
\nalways be the inspiration of future ages. We are Hindus and naturally spiritual in our temperament, because the work which
\nwe have to do for humanity is a work which no other nation can accomplish, the spiritualisation of the race; so the men whom
\nwe worship are those who have helped the spiritual progress of mankind. Without being sceptical no spiritual progress is
\npossible, for blind adoration is only the first stage in the spiritual development of the soul. We are wont to be spiritually sceptical,
\nto hesitate to acknowledge to ourselves anything we have not actually experienced by the process of silent communion with
\nGod, so that the great sages of antiquity were as sceptical as any modern rationalist. They did away with all preconceived
\nnotions drawn from the religion of the Vedas, plunged into the void of absolute scepticism and tried to find there the Truth.
\nThey doubted everything, the evidence of the senses, the reality of the world, the reality of their own existence, and even the
\nreality of God. This scepticism reached its culmination in the teachings of Buddha, who would admit nothing, presuppose
\nnothing, declare nothing dogmatically, and insisted only on self-discipline, self-communion, self-realisation as the only way to
\nescape from the entanglement of the intellect and the senses. When scepticism had reached its height, the time had come for
\nspirituality to assert itself and establish the reality of the world as a manifestation of the spirit, the secret of the confusion created
\nby the senses, the magnificent possibilities of man and the ineffable beatitude of God. This is the work whose consummation Sri
\n    <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 977<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tRamakrishna came to begin and all the development of the previous two thousand years and more since Buddha appeared has been a preparation for the harmonization of spiritual teaching
\nand experience by the avatar <\/i>of Dakshineshwar. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe long ages of discipline which India underwent, are now
\ndrawing to an end. A great light is dawning on the East, a light whose first heralding glimpses are already seen on the horizon;
\na new day is about to break, so glorious that even the last of the avatars
\n<\/i>cannot be sufficient to explain it, although without him
\nit would not have come. The perfect expression of Hindu spirituality was the signal for the resurgence of the East. Mankind has
\nlong been experimenting with various kinds of thought, different principles of ethics, strange dreams of a perfection to be gained
\nby material means, impossible millenniums and humanitarian hopes. Nowhere has it succeeded in realising the ultimate secret
\nof life. Nowhere has it found satisfaction. No scheme of society or politics has helped it to escape from the necessity of sorrow,
\npoverty, strife, dissatisfaction from which it strives for an outlet; for whoever is trying to find one by material means must inevitably fail. The East alone has some knowledge of the truth, the East alone can teach the West, the East alone can save mankind.
\nThrough all these ages Asia has been seeking for a light within, and whenever she has been blessed with a glimpse of what she
\nseeks a great religion has been born, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Mahomedanism with all their countless sects. But
\nthe grand workshop of spiritual experiment, the laboratory of the soul has been India, where thousands of great spirits have
\nbeen born in every generation who were content to work quietly in their own souls, perfect their knowledge, hand down the
\nresults of their experiments to a few disciples and leave the rest to others to complete. They did not hasten to proselytise, were
\nin no way eager to proclaim themselves, but merely added their quota of experience and returned to the source from which they
\nhad come. The immense reservoir of spiritual energy stored up by the self-repression was the condition of this birth of
\navatars<\/i>, of men so full of God that they could not be satisfied with
\n\tsilent bliss, but poured it out on the world, not with the idea  <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 978<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tof proselytising but because they wished to communicate their
\nown ecstasy of realisation to others who were fit to receive it either by previous
\ntapasya <\/i>or by the purity of their desires. Of
\nall these souls Sri Ramakrishna was the last and greatest, for while others felt God in a single or limited aspect, he felt Him in
\nHis illimitable unity as the sum of an illimitable variety. In him the spiritual experiences of the millions of saints who had gone
\nbefore were renewed and united. Sri Ramakrishna gave to India the final message of Hinduism to the world. A new era dates from
\nhis birth, an era in which the peoples of the earth will be lifted for a while into communion with God and spirituality become
\nthe dominant note of human life. What Christianity failed to do, what Mahomedanism strove to accomplish in times as yet
\nunripe, what Buddhism half-accomplished for a brief period and among a limited number of men, Hinduism as summed up in the
\nlife of Sri Ramakrishna has to attempt for all the world. This is the reason of India’s resurgence, this is why God has breathed
\nlife into her once more, why great souls are at work to bring about her salvation, why a sudden change is coming over the
\nhearts of her sons. The movement of which the first outbreak was political, will end in a spiritual consummation.
\n   
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 979<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, March 28th, 1908 }   Spirituality and Nationalism   Mankind have a natural inclination to hero-worship and the great men who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-06-07-bande-mataram","wpcat-54-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2842\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}