("From the very date that Sri Ramakrishna was born, has sprung the
Satya Yuga. Henceforth there is an end to all sorts of distinctions and
everyone down to the Chandala will be a sharer in the divine love . .... .In this Satya Yuga the tidal wal'e of Sri Ramakrishna's love has
unified all," wrote Swami Vivekananda. Swami Brahmeshananda of the Ramakrishna Mission Home of Service,
Varanasi, attempts in this note an elucidation of what Swamiji meant by Satya
Yuga.)
"FOR the protection
of the righteous and the destruction of the wicked, and for the establishment of
religion, I incarnate Myself from age to age". Thus spake the Lord in the
Gita. Let us see how He did this in His various Incarnations.
As Parasurama, the Lord
killed the wicked Kshatriyas to protect the virtuous Brahmanas. During the Rama
incarnation the Rakshasas, headed by Ravana represented the wicked faction of society. With the exception of Vali
among Vanaras (monkeys) and Vibhishana among Rakshasas, the righteous and the wicked
were sharply demarcated. Hence the task before Rama was to destroy the
Rakshasas only. It is said that after the Rama-Ravana war, when at the request
of Rama, Indra, the king of gods
showered nectar on the battlefield, even the dead Vanaras of
Rama's army regained their lives.
As the Yuga changed from
Treta to Dwapara the demarcations between the virtuous and the wicked ceased to
remain clear-cut, and by the time Krishna incarnated, evil had become so
pervasive that the establishment of religion necessitated the total destruction
not only of the Kurus, but also of the Pandavas (except the Five Brothers) and even of the Yadavas of Sri Krishna's own
clan.
But in the Ramakrishna
incarnation none was destroyed or punished even a little. No curse was uttered,
none was denounced, something which even the Buddha and the Christ could not
desist from doing.
The reason for this
unconditional acceptance of sinners and even confirmed criminals is that in the
present iron-age (Kali-Yuga) not only are the virtuous and the wicked not class
or caste-bound, but virtue and vice, good and evil, wickedness and
righteousness no more remain diametrically opposite absolute entities but have
assumed relative values. Each soul is divine and the difference between man and
man is not of kind but of degree, of the relative thickness of ignorance
covering the divinity. And man progresses 'not from error to truth, but from
truth to truth, from lower
truth to higher truth.'
Therefore Sri Ramakrishna established
righteousness by rejecting the very concept of evil, by erasing the words sin
and wickedness from the religious vocabulary. In this incarnation none was considered
enemy or stranger. Sri Ramakrishna lifted everyone from where he or she was, to
the level of Brahmanahood. Is it not the ushering in of the Satya-Yuga, the
golden age?
