do, fired by an intense love of his motherland flings his challenge at the British Empire. Remember, he announces: Macaulay's victims have become devotees of Sri Ramakrishna!
Speaking to a large audience at Mahajan Wadi, Bombay on 19th January, 1908, Sri Aurobindo said quietly that if one had faith in God, God will find a way to speak to our heart: 'It is to the heart that God speaks, it is in the heart that God resides.' Some of the highly educated men of Bengal had not ceased to believe in God and when the time came, it was easy for them to recognize the voice of God.
'One of them, the man (Sri Ramakrishna) who had the greatest influence and has done the most to regenerate Bengal, could not read and write a single word. He was a man who had been what they call absolutely useless to the world. But he had this one divine faculty in him, that he had more than faith and had realized God.'
There were the scoffers who did say such men were 'useless to society'. What is the use of a temple priest who can only intone some ritualistic mantras? Even in our own times we have such myopic men who dismiss him as no more than a frenzied priest of a Kali temple. Did he know Kant? Did he invent any technological instrument? Would he have been able to handle the keys of a Remington typewriter that was on the market in his time? But in his own time, Sri Ramakrishna was recognized as a man of God by eminent intellectuals as well.
Sri Aurobindo writes of those times:
'But God knew what he was doing. He sent that man to Bengal and set him in the temple of Dakshineshwar in Calcutta, and from North and South and East and West, the educated men, men who were the pride of the university, who had studied all that the Europe can teach, came to fall at the feet of this young ascetic. The work of salvation, the work of raising India was begun.'
What the youth needed was faith in sanatana dharma which taught selflessness and courage, the needs of the hour. For Indians, faith in God has always meant a faith in sanatana dharma which is a faith in the glory and good that is man. Countless are the times when racial experience distilled thus has been brought to us as the Religion of Man with the refrain, esha dharmah sanatanah ' this dharma is eternal.
India's Eternal Search for Truth
This constant search for human perfection and the alignment of the individual and the community moving in tune with each other, is what is known as the sanatana dharma. In this very act of garnering the wisdom of the ages as the Ancient Way, we have been gifted with innumerable icons that suit individual characters and aspirations. There are plenty of Ideals and Icons in our culture that help us achieve a good life. What we need is faith in these Ideals that have an undeniable transforming power to make the today's youth ambassadors of the peerless Indian culture to teach others the significance of the word 'civilization'.
A hundred years ago Sri Aurobindo found such ambassadors who taught the whole nation how to rise against oppression and the debilitating effects of the Western civilization. He saw that the inspiration set in motion by the presence of Sri Ramakrishna and given an active thrust by Swami Vivekananda taught the youth of Bengal to have faith and gain the strength that faith gives to suffer for the good of the nation.
Why should the youth be worried that things seem to be bad all around? In truth, it is not so. Dharma continues to thrive among the common people and that is why mankind continues to move forward. To recognize this and push onwards, one needs along with faith and selflessness, courage. In fact Sri Aurobindo finds selflessness and courage to be extensions of one's faith. So he addresses the youth of his time (and the youth of all times):
'When you believe in God, when you believe that God is guiding you, believe that God is doing all and that you are doing nothing, -- what is there to fear?' What is there that you can fear when you are conscious of him who is within you? Courage is then a necessity, courage is natural and courage is inevitable.'
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