Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta

 

RAMMOHAN, Bankimchandra, Vivekananda – these three personalities represent the three steps in the process of evolution in modern Bengal. Like the three strides of Vishnu these three great souls have occupied three stages of the evolving consciousness of Bengal. The soul of modern Bengal awoke in Rammohan, and then its mind blossomed in Bankim, subsequently its life-energy burst forth in Vivekananda.

In fact we may generalise that all disciplines and ways of creation proceed in the same order. The truth that is to manifest in the material world in a concrete physical form appears at first in an apperception of the inner heart, hrdi pratisya. The mind then seizes upon it and gives a manifest form, manasa abhiklapta. Next it takes a step ahead and becomes more distinct and secures vitality and leaving the core it starts revealing itself without. Finally, it incarnates in a body, possesses a gross physical form, becomes concrete and real.

In the stirring of the Soul, in the intuition of the psychic being, the truth, in its dynamic expression, takes birth; there is its seed-form, its essential being. In the mind, the diverse lines of growth are first sketched out, the play, the kaleidoscope of myriad possibilities. In the vital it becomes living and forceful with a definite mould. At last it brings down into the body its material shape.

First then the awakening of the psychic Person. When this central being of a man becomes conscious, when it is 

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awakened from slumber or trance or from self-absorption, it opens its eyes to the outside world and its manifest organisation and demands its due right and fulfilment. In common parlance, it is then said that the call has come to the man or his time is ripe. But the truth is that at the profound depth of the consciousness, in the inmost subtle world, there has been this awakening. The awakened force or the truth of the Soul-Reality begins to work as though from behind a veil or a curtain. Normally it is not always possible for man to apprehend its full influence and motive in his normal consciousness.

Thus, in Rammohan is visible the primal stage of the consciousness of Bengal. It is he who may be called in this sense the psychic being or the causal being of modern Bengal. He alone before all others has brought forward the consciousness of Bengal to the free air and light of the modern era from the antiquity, the mediaevalism of the past. He has initiated the country into the religion of the new era. In him sprouted the first seeds of all future creations. Each flash of consciousness, intense with a deep and pregnant meaning, that sprung in his intuition gradually blossomed into a lush of foliage and flowers and fruits. He brought a new birth, a new life and a new' creation everywhere in all the fields of the collective life of state, society, religion, culture, literature and language. He made the fundamental scheme, the blue-print for the future fulfilment of the country. It is he who laid down the first principles. The future architects have made a new and solid structure on these as their basis. Rammohan was indeed the soul in the heart. The Upanishad says that the nerves of the body-vessel are assembled in this heart-centre and from here they go out everywhere in all directions. Likewise in Rammohan too a new orientation in the mind and life of the nation, the modern consciousness in all its branches of culture has centred and from him all flow out into activities and enterprises of a new achievement. 

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When the truth takes birth and grows considerably in the soul then only it can reveal itself in the mental plane. Reason and intelligence seize on h and apprehend it to know its meaning and endeavour to bring it to the fore of the critical perception of an enlightened intelligence.

We have already said that the mental being (Manomaya Purusha) of the country awoke in Bankimchandra. It is he who gave a fluent expression, in thought and in an outer attractive language, to her hopes, aspirations and inner feelings. And it is in him that the first revelation of a new curiosity, inquisitiveness and sensitiveness is to be found. His was the inspiration and channel for an unceasing quest, a many-sided research through mental seeking and logic and argument which inundated the entire country like a flood. Many are the lines of investigation and imaginative display that bear testimony to the mind's manifold inquisitiveness. A deep longing, a luminous perception of the Soul developed and expanded in hundred branches. The mind's business is to manifest and apply a soul-intuition in as many fields and forms, in as many directions as possible and one form through which mind finds expression is literature.

In the literature of Bankim the mind of modern Bengal has begun to take a definite shape. If there is in the Bengali race a capacity to understand and appreciate readily and easily modern thoughts and new ideas, if there is in the Bengalis a keen earnestness to discover and follow revolutionary principles and ideals, then that found an adequate instrument and initiation in Bankim. An alert and capable mind, an intellect shot with lucid humour, not dryly arguing, but inspired with an intuition – dynamic ideas that demand fulfilment, be it in the practical field or in the realm of imagination, by giving a shape to their beauty – this is the domain created by Bankim, this his great gift to the consciousness of modern Bengal.

Now for the next stage, whatever has thus become manifest and taken form in the mind, becomes living, dynamic 

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and concrete when it descends into the vital. Vivekananda is the living embodiment of the life-energy of modern Bengal. Not simply in the world of mental imagination, not in the mere sport of thought, but in the flesh and blood of life, to make the truth dynamic is the arduous tapasya of Vivekananda. It is from Vivekananda that the life-force, the vitality of the nation has taken a new turn, a fresh and full-flooded stream – the light of a new achievement has glimmered into the people's daily practical life. What was in Rammohan a recondite and deep realisation of the Soul became a dream, imagination, hope and ideal in Bankim and culminated in Vivekananda as an unavoidable necessity of life, as an object to be realised, as a supremely desirable material asset.

If we look into the personal history of many a Bengali youth of the modern age, we would find almost everywhere an initial inspiration and the influence from Vivekananda. True, not all are influenced or likely to be influenced by this colossal soul so as to follow him solely in the field of religion and spirituality. But it was his ups oaring vitality that quickens the ideal into a reality for which Vivekananda was so dear to one and all. 

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