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Pujya Dr. K.C. Varadachari
- Volume -2 |
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INTRODUCTORY |
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On an occasion like this I feel profoundly
thankful to the Syndicate of the University of
Madras and its illustrious Vice¬Chancellor, who
has been at the Helm for more than quarter of a
century, for having chosen me to fill the
Vivekananda Chair of Comparitive Religion,
Ethics and Philosophy as the first incumbent. It
fills me with a sense of humility and
responsibility. I am fully aware that there are
great scholars and exponents of Svami
Vivekananda’s universally beneficent teaching,
who have made it their life-study. However, an
approach to the problems of religion which is in
the making towards universal upsurgence and
emancipation of humanity from the narrow walls
which have tended to confine it, from the point
of view of Eastern insights, has been found
necessary to counteract, if not to supplement,
the Western approaches to them. Our Vice
Chancellor is deeply imbued with piety and
understanding, as well as wide knowledge and
penetrative insight into such problems. I have
been humble working in these fields of religion
during the past few decades, and have laboured
to understand and practise the methods of
spirituality in order to have a glimpse of the
dimensions of spirituality, both eastern and
western. My approach has been threefold:
primarily a spiritual awakening of the
consciousness in religion and through religion;
secondly, it has been synthetical in the sense
that no religion is, as such, out of place in
the scheme of spirituality and realisation;
lastly, the goal of universal religion is
spirituality which is the sense of consciousness
of the One Eternal Reality integrally present in
each individual, and sustaining the diversity or
manyness uniquely. In India, where we have many
of the world problems in miniature, and in the
individual, in whom we have an image of the
Ultimate, we shall meet with problems of
universal concern.
Though Religion as such includes philosophy,
ethics, mythology and symbolism, yet it is
spirituality that brings meaning to each one of
them. We understand them through spiritual
awareness or Experience, lacking which they
become just inane and empty forms which carry
the fragrance of spirituality but are not that
at all. In these lectures I shall mainly try to
draw out the spiritual and universal elements of
religion, and leave the other problems for the
next series if I am given the opportunity to
deal with them.
I am deeply obliged to the revered
Dharmasikhamani K. Balasubramanya Aiyer whose
encouragement has not a little made me undertake
this task. He was kind enough to chalk out the
general lines of my lectures. He is a vast mine
of erudition and catholicity in matters
pertaining to Hinduism and its traditions and I
am sincerely greatful to him
My debt of gratitude to Dr. T.M.P.Mahadevan,
Head of the Department of Philosophy and
Director of the Centre for Advanced Research, is
great and so too my obligations to Professor
Dr.V.A.Devasenapathi. Both of them have helped
me with their invaluable suggestions.
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