Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Our Motherland

dec 31st, 2008

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: H

Namaskar

A quote that touches the depth of my being each time that I read it, so I thought I should share it with you all.

Have a most wonderful day.

V

 

 Our Motherland

 

Whosoever stands on this sacred land, whether alien or child of the soil, feels himself surrounded –unless his soul is degraded to the level of brute animals-by the living thoughts of the earth's best and purest sons, who have been working to raise the animal to the divine through centuries, whose beginning history fails to trace.

 

Here and here alone the human heart expanded till it included not only the human, but birds, beasts, and plants: from the highest gods to grains of sand, the highest and the lowest, all find a place in the heart of man, grown great and infinite. And here alone, the human soul studied the universe as one unbroken unity whose every pulse was his own pulse.

 

We all hear so much about the degradation of India. There was a time when I also believed in it. But today standing on the vantage –ground of experience, with eyes cleared of obstructive predispositions and above all, of the highly coloured pictures of many other countries toned down to their proper shade and light by contact, I confess, in all humility I was wrong. Thou blessed land of  Bharat, thou was never degraded. Sceptres have been broken and thrown away, the ball of power has passed from hand to hand, but in India, courts and kings always touched only a few: the vast mass of people, from the highest to the lowest, has been left to pursue its own inevitable course, the current national life flowing at times slow and half conscious, at others, strong awakened. I stand in awe before the unbroken procession of scores of shining centuries, with here and there a dim link in the chain, only to flare up with added briallance in the next, and there she is walking with her own majestic steps- my Motherland-to fulfil her glorious destiny, which no power on earth or in heaven can check- the regeneration of man the brute into man the God.                                 Swami Vivekananda

 


1 comment:

JS said...

I have never read Swami Vivekananda before. Like you say, it is very uplifting, atleast gives a temp boost. Coming down to earth, we need to do a lot of work to protect this motherland from current onslaught of psecs and their partners.