October 2011 - Advaita Ashrama

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awoke at the mystic touch of the sun of knowledge
and opened to the glories and mysteries of
life, existence, and reality. The first response of
the Indian mind to this mystic awakening took
the form of hymns and rituals, which formed the
early part of the Vedas. This formed the primordial
thesis of Indian culture. Soon there developed
parallel lines of thinking based on reason
and intuitive enquiry, which served as the antithesis.
Out of a synthesis of these two approaches to
Reality there emerged the Upanishads.
Next a new spiritual stream known as Bhagavata-dharma
centred on the cult of Vasudeva
Krishna developed. The synthesis of the jnana
of the Upanishads and the bhakti of this cult
gave rise to the Bhagavadgita, a marvel of spiritual
harmony and synthesis. Then arose Buddhism,
which flourished as a parallel stream
for a thousand years until the Mahayana logic
was integrated into the Vedantic tradition by
Acharya Shankara in the eighth century ce. The
result of this synthesis was the Advaita Vedanta,
considered by scholars to represent the highest
pinnacle of philosophy attained by humanity.
Several traditions of yoga—such as the Shaiva,
the Patanjala, and the Hatha—which arose at
different periods, were finally synthesized with
Vedanta to give rise to the Shakta tradition.
When the influx of Islam took place in the
eleventh and subsequent centuries, there arose in
different parts of the country saints like Nanak
and Kabir who attempted to integrate some of
the good aspects of Islam into Indian culture—
for various historical reasons this process of integration
has perhaps not attained completion.
The greatest antithesis that Indian culture
had to face was Western culture, which began
to spread through the channels of education and
missionary activity in the nineteenth century.
Western culture introduced three main elements:
materialistic science and reason, the idea
620
Prabuddha Bharata
of an open society, and the new concept of God
as the saviour of sinners, the poor, and the social
outcaste. It was then that Sri Ramakrishna and
Swami Vivekananda appeared and harmonized
these elements with Indian culture.
Their main work, however, was to re-establish
the spiritual ideal, unify the different streams of
spiritual life, and rejuvenate the spiritual foundations
of Indian culture. This led to a general
awakening of the collective mind of the Indian
people, a flowering of the spiritual aspirations of
the people, which has been described as a ‘spiritual
renaissance’. The re-establishment of the
spiritual ideal had taken place in India on earlier
occasions also, but the re-establishment of the
spiritual ideal and the phenomenon of spiritual
renaissance brought about by Sri Ramakrishna
has certain unique features, some of which are
mentioned below.
Unique Features of
the Spiritual Renaissance
1. Universal Significance · We have seen that
Indian culture has been able to sustain more
than four thousand years of growth and development
because of its inherent capacity to harmonize
diverse thought currents and social forces in
a peaceful way, and by re-establishing the spiritual
ideal at different periods. The significance of
these events remained confined to India till the
time of Sri Ramakrishna. But with Sri Ramakrishna
the re-establishment of the spiritual ideal
began to assume global significance.
There are two reasons for this. In the first
place the British occupation of India ended the
country’s political isolation from the rest of the
world, and the work of Western orientalists and
Swami Vivekananda’s work of spreading Vedanta
in the West ended the country’s cultural isolation.
As a result Indian culture has been drawn
into the mainstream of world culture.
PB October 2011