Swami Tathagatananda (15 February 1923 - 25 June 2016) associated with Ramakrishna Mission.
Truth is not a closed book.
Our internal dissensions, selfishness, mutual jealousy and
hatred were among the principal causes of our degeneration.
The spiritual ideal is for life, and life must be lived
truly and well in all its spheres – private, social and international.
The universe, being nothing but God, hence is looked upon by
the Hindu mind as a temple or body of God. It is divine and sacred. This
ultimate truth, the oneness of God, man, all animate and inanimate and the universe, has been revealed to
Hindu mystics down the age.
Spiritual truth, being the goal of human fulfillment, can
never be attained without moral perfection. Morality is not an end in itself,
nor ultimate good, yet without morality, a person cannot realize the supreme harmony
within as well as without.
Hinduism may also be thought of as the spiritual and philosophical result of a powerful, eternal, vivifying force of inspiration that has immortal vitality.
– Swami Tathagatananda
Hinduism may also be thought of as the spiritual and philosophical result of a powerful, eternal, vivifying force of inspiration that has immortal vitality.
The human mind normally gravitates to the material plane.
Ordinary people nurtured in secular, sensate cultures find it impossible to
fathom the spiritual stature of Holy Mother. Barely can they appreciate, much
less understand, such a divine character of immaculate purity. The veil
covering Sri Sarada Devi’s face was actually a curtain concealing the supernal
splendour of her inner life.
Creation proceeded out of the Vedas. … Veda means the sum
total of eternal truths; the Vedic Rishis experienced those truths; they can be
experienced only by seers of the super sensuous. … Veda is of the nature of
Shabda or of idea. It is but the sum total of ideas. Shabda, according to the
old Vedic meaning of the term, is the subtle idea, which reveals itself by
taking the gross form later on. So owing to the dissolution of the creation the
subtle seeds of the future creation become involved in the Veda. … All the
created objects began to take concrete shape out of the Shabdas or ideas in the
Veda. For in Shabda or idea, all gross objects have their subtle forms.
Creation had proceeded in the same way in all previous cycles or Kalpas. This
you find in the Sandhya Mantra of the Vedas: 'The Creator projected the sun,
the moon, the earth, the atmosphere, the heaven, and the upper spheres in the
same manner and process as in previous cycles.
No
other culture has approached the sublime nature and speculations
of Hindu thought. Humanity continues to live in the endless
wake of a huge swell of curiosity on the part of the ancient
Aryans. They were impelled with an irrepressible spiritual
urge to discover that which gives rise to existence and meaning
to life's endeavours. They were equally impelled to disseminate
abroad the truths that were revealed to them in their inner
search. Hindu cultural expansion took place not by conquest
but by assimilation and inclusiveness based on the spirit
of harmony.
– Swami Tathagatananda