God as Mother : 19. Sri Swami Chidananda.

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Thursday, June  23,  2022. 6:00. AM.

Essence of Devi Mahatmyam

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FIFTH NIGHT -

19. The Foremost Duty of National Leaders

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It will do well for all the leaders of men in whichever country or nation they may be and to

all social leaders and administrators, to bear in mind that the increase and the preservation of these

aspects of Lakshmi in society is not only one of the primary concerns and duties, but also to

preserve and increase all these factors contained in it the seeds of enduring welfare and happiness of

all people. 

Thus, as long as man was still conscious of the reality of this world, as long as he felt the

reality of these external things, it was his duty to see that he did not neglect any of these factors. A

false assimilation of the Hindu religion, and wrong conception of man’s duty or rather an

indigestion of the Vedantic food from the Upanishads, had led to an unfortunate neglect of this

factor of realism in the Hindu race in centuries gone by so that having half-assimilated notions of

Vairagya, of God-realisation and of the unreality of the world, the Indians as a whole became

apathetic towards the preservation of these aspects of Mahalakshmi, thinking that all these things

were only in the realm of Maya and they were not worthwhile giving one’s attention to; and to turn

away from them in a sort of so-called lofty otherworldliness was the acme of philosophic life of

wisdom. 

The Hindu nation had to pay a terrible price for having this sort of apathy towards Mother

in Her aspects of Lakshmi in this external world and the price was losing Her in some of Her most

precious aspects, viz., freedom, prosperity and national self-respect. Thus, Lakshmi left the Hindu

nation when their mistaken notions of philosophy made the majority of people neglect Her and

discard Her worship in the form of a robust realism and in the form of a practical idealism in this

external life. 

Therefore, education was neglected and all these social works were neglected as

something belonging to the realm of ignorance which it was not worthwhile to pursue; and even

while man was firmly bound up in body-consciousness upon the gross plane, he shut his eyes to the

realities of this physical world and tried to dispense with all these things with the declaration that

they were all only transitory and evanescent. Thus, a state of Tamas supervened which was opposed

to Lakshmi and therefore two centuries of slavery was the result—slavery to those who were better

worshipers of Lakshmi in the real sense of the term in the external world. They, the British people,

were able to propitiate Her and thus all that was best in Bharatavarsha, all the prosperity-giving

elements went over to the West where, though they were materialists yet they worshiped Lakshmi.

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When saints and great thinkers of modern India realised that it was the neglect of Lakshmi

through a succumbing to Tamas that was at the root of the Indian problem, they at once gave a

dynamic social philosophy to the Hindu nation. 

The clarion call for the Hindu nation to wake up -

from its slumber of Tamo-Guna and to plunge into selfless service and to vigorously take life with a

realistic attitude and point of view was sounded by these great modern saviours of India. Thus a

revival came about and the half-assimilated and wrong notions of philosophy were driven out from

the heads of the people and they were taught how one has to be a dynamic worshiper as long as his

body is still a very real thing to him and as long as he has not risen to that state of consciousness, of

spiritual evolution, when he would be able to actually feel within the heart of hearts that the world is

but a passing dream and that the unmanifest alone is the actual reality. 

This is a mistake which it is -

very easy to fall into, to think that one has risen very high upon the spiritual plane and to neglect the

things which ought not to be neglected in the beginning stages of one’s evolution. In the beginning

these things which may later on have to be renounced and given up, themselves form the first

stepping-stones upon which one has to rise higher and higher. 

Thus the apathy due to Tamas which -

was mistakenly considered to be a sort of philosophy and resignation was pointed out and ended

and now we are experiencing an era of practical Rajo-Guna where the nation and the Hindu society

is being shaken up into wakefulness, into a state of vigorous activity for the good of one and all.

This is very happy sign and if this is understood and persisted in the right spirit without allowing the

Avidya-Maya of Lakshmi to overshadow our perception and intelligence, it will certainly lead on to

the ultimate spiritual evolution which is the real goal of the Hindu nation.

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Next - A Stern Warning

To be continued ......

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