Flashes from Swami Vivekananda - 3

Need for knowledge to mature into wisdom

Today, the whole world is seeking for, is in need of, this kind of spiritual growth which releases that type of divine energy resource to match with, and to digest, the energy resources released by modern physical science and technology. The latter has annihilated physical distances between man and man, but the problem of annihilating the mental and emotional distances remains to be solved. On the other hand, that mental distance is increasing, not diminishing, in spite of scientific knowledge and technical power. This is revealed in the ever-increasing violence, crime and delinquency, even juvenile delinquency in all parts of the world.

What is the reason for highly disturbing social phenomena? Certainly, these are not physical maladies. Modern man has better physical bodies and health than in past ages, thanks to his knowledge of science of nutrition and his vastly improved techniques for increased food production. He is also immensely nourished mentally and intellectually compared to his predecessors, thanks to the explosive output of scientific knowledge; and yet, we find modern man getting increasingly alienated both from himself and from others. He is unhappy, tense, without peace, given often to inflicting violence on others or suicide on himself.

Swami Vivekananda spent four intense years in the West preaching Vedanta and helping to broaden and deepen its religion and inner-human relations. He saw the above tragic situation developing in his time, towards the end of the last century; and he warned of its intensification in the decades ahead, and emphasized the need of modern civilization to change its direction from human sensuality to human spirituality. And he preached the philosophy of Vedantic humanism, with the vision of infinite divine possibilities in man, and man's organic capacity to realize these in life. This is wisdom, this is the knowledge maturing into wisdom, that India developed in her ancient Upnishads and the Bhagvad Gita, which got retested and re-authenticated in succeeding ages by Buddha, Shankaracharya, Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda and many other luminous sages, possessed of briliiant intellects and universal hearts. They never thought or taught in narrow terms of sects, creeds, nationalities or races. They saw man as man, saw his divine possibilities.

Extracted from Swami Vivekananda, his humanism: Moscow University Lecture by Swami Ranganathanandana