English Articles

Vedantavani

November 2025

The Master taught me much. Sometimes he deliberately sent me to Loren (Naren. Swami Vivekananda’s pre-monastic name was Narendra, or simply Naren) so that I would hear from him about many things. Often the Master arranged a debate between Girish Ghosh and Loren, but Loren was forceful and not afraid to challenge anyone. He argued a lot, and I reported it all to the Master. Now and then the Master tested me. Once he asked, “Naren said all this and you remained silent?”

“What do I know?” was my answer. “How can I compete with Loren?”

The Master said, “You’ve heard so many things here (meaning himself) and you said nothing? You should tell him that if God didn’t create this world, who did?” “Loren says this creation is a natural process,” I replied.

“Is it possible for nature to create?” the Master asked. “If there is an effect, there must be a cause that preceded it. There is a powerful Being behind this creation. Did you know that the Master tore me from the strings of the world? I was an orphan. He showered me with love and affection. If he hadn’t accepted me, I would have been like an animal and worked like a slave all my days. My life would have been worthless. I am an uneducated man.” He used to tell me, “Always keep your mind spotless. Don’t allow impure thoughts to enter it. If you find such desires tormenting you, pray to God and chant His name. He will protect you. If the mind still won’t remain calm, go to the Mother’s temple and sit before Her. Or else come here (pointing to himself).”

Once a devotee in Dakshineswar was behaving very badly, and I found it impossible to contain my irritation. I scolded him, and he felt very hurt. The Master knew how much the devotee had suffered, and after he left, he said to me, “It is not good to speak harshly to those who come here.” They are tormented by worldly difficulties. If they come here and are scolded for their shortcomings, where will they go? In the presence of holy company, never use harsh words against anyone, and never say anything that will hurt anyone.

Do you know what he told me about that? Go to this man tomorrow and speak to him in such a way that he will forget what you said to him today. So the next day I visited him. My pride was humble. I spoke to him with kind words. When I returned, the Master simply asked, “Did you give him my greetings?” Surprised at his words, I said that I had not. Then he said, “Go to him again and offer him my greetings.”

So I went to that man again and gave the Master his greetings.

At this, the devotee burst into tears. I was touched to see him crying.

When I returned this time, the Master said, “Now your crime is forgiven.”

One day, Girish Gosh greeted the Master by bringing his folded hands to his forehead. The Master immediately responded to the greetings by bowing down from the waist. Girish greeted the Master again. The Master greeted Girish Babu with an even deeper bow. Finally, as Girish bowed down before him, flat on the ground, the Master blessed him. Later, Girish Babu would say, “At this time the Lord has come to conquer the world by bowing down. In His incarnations as Krishna, it was the flute; as Chaitanya, the Naam. But the weapon of His powerful Incarnation at this time is the greeting.” The Master used to say, “Be humble. That way the ego is removed.”

[from: Sri Ramakrishna as They Saw Him]

Selection from the book by Mary Saaleman

Stardust

Kees Boukema

“STARDUST ARE US” (Querido, Amsterdam, 2025) is a spiritual autobiography. It chronicles a search for answers to questions such as: Who am I? Does life have meaning? Does God exist? Why does evil exist? Is there life after death? For the author, Margot Brouwer, who struggled with the fear of death even as a child, these were tormenting questions. Could natural science, particularly astronomy, provide answers to these “life questions”? Understanding the natural laws of the world could also provide a “grip” on existence.

Margot Brouwer describes in easy-to-read Dutch what natural science has taught her. How our worldview has dramatically expanded over the centuries. Initially, the image was of a small Earth surrounded by water, under a dome of air. The later image: An Earth held together with other planets by the sun’s gravity. The sun turned out to be a star at the edge of the Milky Way: a rotating disk of stars, held together by its own gravity. And then came the insight that not one, but multiple galaxies exist within the observable universe: a sphere with a radius of 46 billion light-years [p. 33]. The science journal Nature recently published a photograph of the birth of a new solar system (HOPS-315), which had occurred 1300 light-years from Earth (Trouw, July 18, 2025).

At every point in our history, the universe has proven to be many times larger than what we could have imagined at the time, writes Brouwer. And there are strong indications that, in addition to the observable universe, multiple universes exist. We would not live in one finite universe, but in an infinite multiverse, in which everything conceivable exists. The author refers here to the discovery of the very first light, the so-called “cosmic microwave background radiation,” which occurred relatively shortly (379 thousand years!) after the moment of creation, the “Big Bang” 13.7 billion years ago. The discovery of this “microwave background radiation” not only answered existing questions but also opened new perspectives: Parts of the universe were said to be expanding, others to have come to a standstill, and parallel universes to have emerged.

All these awe-inspiring insights compelled Brouwer to look at the world differently, realizing the insignificance of his own existence. The gap between familiar faith and scientific knowledge seemed unbridgeable. Increasing doubt about the existence of God and heaven led the author to a fear bordering on panic of losing faith in his own continued existence in an “afterlife.”

During this period of upheaval, the author accidentally discovered the philosophy of the 17th-century philosopher Benedict de Spinoza and his radically different concept of God. According to Spinoza, God is not above or outside the universe, but coincides with the eternal universe: ‘Deus sive Natura’, ‘God, or Nature’. Everything that exists is a manifestation or mode of God. It is this concept of God that another physicist, Albert Einstein, was referring to in 1919 when asked, ‘Do you believe in God?’: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of existence, not in a God concerned with the fate and behavior of people.”

Mathematics and natural science had opened the author’s eyes to Spinoza’s philosophy. Brouwer calls it a “new path through the wilderness.” His philosophy is not so much a faith or belief, but a “path.” A difficult path, Spinoza wrote at the end of his Ethics: “It cannot be otherwise; something that is so rarely found is difficult. For if salvation were within everyone’s grasp, how is it that it is ignored by almost everyone?”

[to be continued]

Mr Kees Boukema is a scholar in Vedanta and Comparative philosophy. His brilliant and thorough-going articles on various philosophical and spiritual subjects are being published since the first issue of the magazine. His latest work is De Beoefening van Meditatie.

 

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With the hat in hand

People are kind. That was the conclusion of my friend upon returning from his trip. For eleven weeks, he and another big Dutch guy rode a motorcycle to Mongolia. They were invited to people’s homes to eat, sleep, receive help, taste honey, and even received a bag of groceries when they arrived at their tent. Russian agents wanted to have their picture taken with them, and in Kazakhstan, someone spent half a day helping them get started with an E-SIM.

“With hat in hand, one can travel the whole country,” a colleague reflected when I told her about the conclusion of my friend’s expedition. A beautiful proverb that emphasizes the importance of kindness and a respectful attitude in dealing with others. The key to progress. (In my eyes…)

Being kind. A beautiful starting point, a beautiful way of life. Something we can live by, so that others can follow suit. Something that should be promoted in children’s books, TV series, at school, and at sports clubs. Being kind, showing consideration for others, caring for the vulnerable should be self-evident and normal.

I saw a popular post on Instagram with tips for being happy. (Unfortunately, I can’t find it.) One of those tips was: trust no one until proven otherwise. I’d like to turn that around and recommend trusting everyone until proven otherwise. That makes your worldview and your life much brighter. As a chaotic person, I often get my “forgotten” things back. “Is this your phone, bag, or jacket?” Even money I left in the ATM a few years ago—when I still used my debit card—was returned to me.

Interacting kindly with a stranger, standing up for someone else, requires trust. Trust in yourself, in the other person, and in the world around you. I try to do that because I want to, because I’ve been taught to do so, and because I find it makes me feel good. I don’t want bars on my windows, as a police officer suggested after two burglaries. I don’t believe in more rules, punishments, and restrictions.

You can go out of your way to attach caps to bottles and install soda vending machines, but you can also teach people to care for our environment. We can ban begging, but we can also ensure everyone has something to eat by making it normal to care for one another. We can try to limit street aggression with cameras, curfews, or stricter penalties, but we can also teach each other not to assault, harass, or hit others. With a hat in hand, you not only travel far, it also brings you closer.

Writer: Fook Hali

Contributed by Francis Schaik

From The Optmist

 

About the Historical Jesus

Paulo J. S. Bittencourt
Professor of the History Course at UFFS – Erechim Campus

“Read to live.” The expression is by Gustave Flaubert. I first encountered it as an epigraph to the book “A History of Reading,” by Alberto Manguel.
The concept of “living well” has already received the forceful reflection of Alberto Acosta, in “Living Well: An Opportunity to Imagine Other Worlds.” Starting, above all, in the first decade of this century, the notion derived from popular mobilizations and rebellions, mainly from the Ecuadorian and Bolivian indigenous worlds. It presents itself “as an opportunity to collectively build a new way of life.” “Living well” would essentially constitute “a process originating from the community matrix of peoples who live in harmony with Nature.” It is a paradigm whose worldview is in direct opposition to the Western “living better,” to the “dolce vita,” to predatory capitalism, which “exploits the maximum of available resources until it exhausts the basic sources of life.”
I believe that the practice of reading constitutes a fruitful path to a good life. I am not referring only to bookish reading. We are almost always referred to bookish reading when the subject comes up. But I am referring to reading in its broadest sense, which is not only the most inclusive, but perhaps the most fundamental, and illuminates the very act of reading books. In this case, every worldview updated and remembered through collective life experiences, or every interpretation of the worlds of life and their multiple phenomenal expressions, is always a broad and viscerally profound horizon. It does not matter whether human intelligence is conceived as stemming from strictly logical principles or from a magical order.
Indeed, the constitution of meaningful worlds of life is almost always found against two backdrops. Albert Camus formulated the dilemma in forceful terms. Either “the world has a higher meaning that transcends its agitations, or only these agitations are true.” But, between Dostoevsky and Camus, it is necessary to live. It seems certain that, since ancient times, human experiences have sought, at all costs, to maintain the ever-fragile and precarious balance between the cosmic forces of stability and the chaotic forces of instability. Nancy Huston establishes that this irresistible movement on our part in favor of the world’s coherence stems from the fact that we are the “fabulating species.” In this case, the “hard drug” that feeds us is “meaning.” Another opportune reference to what is said here comes from the experience of music. Indeed, in “Sound and Meaning: Another History of Music,” José Miguel Wisnik points out: “Music is originally described as the very extraction of ordered and periodic sound from the turbulent medium of noises.” Does everything seem to make sense? Caution is necessary.

In the name of obsession with the Ionic foundation, namely, the conception of the single principle that orders everything, we can marginalize the dissonances of the world, the chaotic nature of the unpredictable, the transgression of noise. Yes, the clamor for the world’s coherence is a demand for a map of life. Coherence, here, is far from meaning a sugar-coated picture of the world. Maps allow us to situate ourselves in a network permeated by interrelationships, enabling us to safely navigate paths that were previously unknown, even if the connected elements seem devoid of any harmonious associations.
The readings that we experience online, or even the libraries that we spatially organize, are, at the very least, these mental maps of the world. There will always be, of course, the risk of mistaking the map for the world, even though the map is also the world. At least in intelligible terms, we will hardly arrive at a world that is not formulated by maps, at least in comprehensive terms. Whether through the global intuition of the contemplator or the logical chaining of the verbal discourser, the sharing of the possible meanings of life and the world will necessarily imply the creation of maps.
I chose, for myself, a map: the map of reading books. But it is not about “the way, the truth, and the life,” without which one cannot reach the “Father” or the “Mother.” It may be, in my view, a most noble map; otherwise, I would not choose it. However, it is “a” map, not “the” map. I here make my own the ecumenical motto of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, who, in opposing the intolerance of Christians in the Roman Empire at the end of the 4th century, declared that one cannot “reach such a great mystery by a single path.”
The question, therefore, that I see in reading as a path to a good life, is the constitution of an existential map, that is, an organized reference to situate oneself before the sphere of the unpredictable, in the case of a world ontologically devoid of purpose or not. The interesting thing in the making of this map is the dialogical interrelation that is established between the reader and the multiple voices of the authors, beyond my time and my space, and the community of readers. In this sense, reading will never be a solitary practice. But of course, there will always be the risk.

The reader’s role is to create, through their practice, an opaque bubble in the face of the world’s chaos. It is prudent to remember that chaos is never lost, but always transformed, and the oracular practices of all times and places, despite seemingly following the reverse order of reading, carry with them a salutary directive. Through contemplation of the “data” of chaotic randomness, they weave coherent plots that guide more conscious action.

I therefore read the myriad narratives of the universal library to weave a thread that leads me to the exit of the labyrinth. We are, in the end, Ariadne and Theseus. Like everyone else in their own way, I forge a meaningful map that allows me, with “amor fati,” to tread the paths of the “great hinterland” of what does not depend on my will. If it is necessary to live, let us seek to live well, without the mutilating haste of the world in which we live, weaving a thread that justifies existence.

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Professor Paulo Bittencourt teaches History at the UFFS, Erchim Campus, Rio Grande de Sul. “Federal University of Southern Frontier” [UFFS] is one of the best universities of Brasil with highly qualified professors at the helm. Professor Bittencourt never rejects our request for articles, though he is very busy.

 

 

 

या निशा सर्वभूतानां तस्यां जागर्ति संयमी |
यस्यां जाग्रति भूतानि सा निशा पश्यतो मुने: || 2:69||

yā niśhā sarva-bhūtānāṁ tasyāṁ jāgarti sanyamī
yasyāṁ jāgrati bhūtāni sā niśhā paśhyato muneḥ

Millions upon millions are running after darkness, thinking that it is light. They do everything possible for getting that darkness. They fight, wage wars, kill, burn, harm others, everything possible to be in that darkness and get more and more of it. However, after all it is just darkness. The wise are very few on the earth. They know that darkness is misery.  They are in Light. They seek light through prayer, meditation, service, and so on. That is the path. This confusion of darkness as light is the hold of evil on life.

 

Sri Ramakrishna: Why should that be so ? I have heard of a deputy magistrate named Pratap Singh. He is a great man. He has many virtues: compassion and devotion to God. He meditates on God. Once he sent for me. Certainly there are people like him.

The practice of discipline is absolutely necessary. Why shouldn’t a person succeed if he or she practises sadhana ? But he doesn’t have to work hard if he has real faith in his guru’s words.

Once Vyasa was about to cross the Jamuna, when the gopis also arrived there, wishing to go to the other side. But no ferry boat was in sight. They said to Vyasa, ‘Revered sir, what shall we do now ?’  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Vyasa. ‘I will take you across. But I am very hungry. Have you anything for me to eat?’ The gopis had plenty of milk, cream, and butter with them. Vyasa ate it all. Then the gopis asked, ‘Well, sir, what about crossing the river?’ Vyasa stood on the bank of the Jamuna and said, ‘O Jamuna, if I have not eaten anything today, then may your waters part so that we may all walk to the other side.’ No sooner did the sage utter these words than the waters of the Jamuna parted. The gopis were speechless with wonder. ‘He ate so much just now’, they said to themselves, ‘and he says, “If I have not eaten anything . . !” ’ Vyasa had the firm conviction that it was not he, but the Narayana who dwelt in his heart that had partaken of the food.