“It is an undisputed fact that Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo and Maharishi Ramana did immense sadhana to uplift India and free her from the slavery of the British Rule. With their arduous and intense Tapasya (meditation) these sages heated up the subtle realm, i.e. the realm of the Universal Mind in which all our individual minds are contained, so that many surprising events took place.
One of these events was that numerous great leaders of high moral caliber, intellect and political acumen rose up in India, and took the country to freedom. In no other country in the world, and at no other time in history, do we find the existence of so many nationalistic leaders – men and women, who rose up from the ordinary masses, and came together to accomplish such a big task.
The freedom that had looked utterly impossible for a greatly weakened India, became possible within just a few decades due to the intense sadhana of these sages.” (A translation from Pandit Shriram Sharma Acharya’s Hindi essay published in the Akhand Jyoti Magazine in March 1969.)
It was only due to the intense Tapasya of Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo and Maharishi Ramana, that the Divine Shakti (Power) was able to go forth and enter into people, and uplift them from the Tamsic state of weakness, fear and subservience into which their minds had fallen; and rouse up within their minds courage, persistence, foresight and other divine qualities, essential to accomplishing this impossible task.
It was as a gift to Sri Aurobindo, for his immense efforts, that the Divine freed India on August 15th, the date of Sri Aurobindo’s birthday. About this Divine gift, Sri Aurobindo noted in a speech broadcast on the eve of India’s independence:
“August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition. Indeed, on this day I can watch almost all the world movements which I hoped to see fulfilled in my lifetime, though then they looked like impracticable dreams, arriving at fruition or on their way to achievement.”
The Divine’s seal has thus been firmly placed on India’s destiny, for she has been freed not for achieving any selfish aims of becoming a world power who dominates and exploits others politically, economically or militarily; rather India has been freed for doing the spiritual work of uniting and uplifting the whole world, towards an era of peace, freedom and truth, towards a descent of Satyug.
India has been specially chosen for this task, for only within her is preserved the pure nectar of the Vedantic Sanatan Dharma – the Eternal and Universal religion which embraces and welcomes all others. As Sri Aurobindo has said in his Uttarpara Address:
“If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose. But the Sanatan Dharma is the one religion which impresses on mankind the closeness of God to us and embraces in its compass all the possible means (and religions) by which man can approach God. This is also the one religion that can triumph over materialism by including and anticipating the discoveries of science and the speculations of philosophy.”
So this work of uniting the whole world into an era of peace, prosperity and truth is now before us. The work of bringing down Satyug (peace and truth), has already been achieved in the subtle realm by the great Avatar, Pandit Shriram Sharma Acharya, and now it is our task to help manifest it in the physical world. It is towards this goal that we must all struggle, by become perfect instruments of the Divine.
