Understanding the Spirituality,

All the orthodox systems of Indian philosophy have one goal in view, the liberation of the soul through perfection. The method is by Yog or (Yoga). The word Yoga covers an immense ground, but both the Sankhya and the Vedantist Schools point to Yoga in some form or other. The practice of Raja Yoga will lead to the acquisition of the more subtle perceptions.

Swami Vivekananda  said, each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within, by controlling nature, external and internal. This he said can be done - achieved either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy, by one, or more, or all of these—and be free.

Swami Vivekananda, the Indian spiritual teacher and social reformer was active in both India and the West in the eighteen nineties and early nineteen hundreds.

Vivekananda and his spiritual teacher Ramakrishna are well known in the West and they are considered by some of the best minds in India and the West to be spiritual adepts and thinkers of the highest order as well as dynamic contributors to a multitude of disciplines.

Since the beginning of history, various extraordinary phenomena have been recorded as happening amongst human beings. There is no supernatural, but there are in nature gross manifestations and subtle manifestations. The subtle are the causes, the gross the effects. The gross can be easily perceived by the senses; not so the subtle.

Scientists, unable to explain the various extraordinary mental phenomena, strive to ignore their very existence. They are, therefore, more culpable than those who think that their prayers are answered by a being, or beings, above the clouds, or than those who believe that their petitions will make such being’s change the course of the universe. The latter have the excuse of ignorance, or at least of a false system of education in their childhood, which has taught them to depend upon such beings for help, and this dependence has now become a part of their degenerate nature. The former have no such excuse.

For thousands of years such phenomena have been investigated, studied, and generalised, the whole ground of the religious faculties of man has been analysed, and the practical result is the science of Raja Yoga.

Raja Yoga does not, after the unpardonable manner of some modern scientists, deny the existence of facts which are very difficult to explain; on the other hand, it gently, yet in no uncertain terms, tells the superstitious that miracles and answers to prayers, and powers of faith, though true as facts, are not rendered comprehensible through the superstitious explanation of attributing them to the agency of a being, or beings, above the clouds. It declares to mankind that each being is only a conduit for the infinite ocean of knowledge and power that lies behind. It teaches that desires and wants are in man, that the power of supply is also in man; and that wherever and whenever a desire, a want, a prayer, has been fulfilled, it was out of this infinite magazine that the supply came, and not from any supernatural being. The idea of supernatural beings may rouse to a certain extent the power of action in man, but it also brings spiritual decay.

It brings dependence; it brings fear; it brings superstition. It degenerates into a horrible belief in the natural weakness of man.

At the end of the eighteenth century European involvement in the East opened the door to translations of the religious and spiritual texts of India and elsewhere. This influence made itself felt particularly in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in the appeal the Indian Upanishads had for Goethe (1749-1832), Johann G. von Herder (1744-1803), and the philosophers Johann G. Fichte (1762-1814), Georg W. F. Hegel (1770- 1831), F.W.J. Schelling (1775-1854), and Arthur Schopenhauer (1778-1860). According to Clarke (1997, p.63), these great German thinkers related to the Vedantic belief that:

All things are, in the final analysis, one single whole, and that this oneness arises from the fundamentally spiritual nature of reality, the multiplicity of things being an illusion of our finite senses. This enthusiasm spread to America and the writings of Ralph W. Emerson (1803- 1882) and Henry D. Thoreau (1817-1862), who explored some of the implications of this philosophy in everyday life. But it was not until the founding of the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875 by Helena P. Blavatsky (1831-1891) (who had been involved in spiritualism in Russia and was in touch with movements such as mesmerism and the new psychology in the West) that a program was proposed, among other things, to “investigate unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man” (Hanegraaff, 1998, p.448). This was to be done through an attempt to “cultivate one’s will, increase one’s knowledge, and eventually to master the higher powers and faculties that lie latent in everyone” (Hanegraaff, 1998, p.450), according to the general occultist plan of evolution of humanity towards divinity (Hanegraaff, 1998, p.452).

In 1893 The World’s Parliament of Religions convened in Chicago and the West was exposed for the first time on Western soil to living exemplars of Asian philosophy and religion, many of them adepts in the practices which traditionally supported them, as well as able to communicate in English with the West.

Among these was Swami Vivekananda, then thirty years old. He was the foremost disciple of Ramakrishna, recognized in India as a premier spiritual teacher, whose work with Vivekananda had rendered the latter an acknowledged master of the realm of the spirit.

Vivekananda’s advent at the Parliament was on account of popular acclaim in India and the support of a number of influential Indian rajas.

Vivekananda remained in America from 1893 till 1896, when he returned to India, founded the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, and began teaching a contemporary version of Vedanta that, unlike the preceding form of classical Vedanta, integrated the physical world into its purview and therefore included a program intended to remove social injustices in his homeland.

In America and in England (which he visited in 1896), the swami taught the basic teachings of both classical Vedanta and the contemporary version he had learned from Ramakrishna that integrated with the deep poetic worldview of India the importance of the physical world. The physical world was, to most Westerners, the acid test of reality; but they also wanted to experience it more deeply, and gladly accepted the spiritual practices proffered by Vivekananda by which they might experience for themselves their own deeper meaning and cogency.

Prof (Dr.) Kanayalal Raina specializes in spiritual teaching besides providing management consultancy services. His strategic plans are being used for obtaining funding to run various programs conducted by NFP nonprofit and business organizations. He strengthens NFP and business organizations through education, empowerment of leadership and mentoring, personal growth and strategic counselling. Areas of expertise are Govt. funding and preparation of Business Plans, Strategic Plans, Marketing plans, Sales and Pricing Plans, Balanced Scorecard, and Business Performance Management.