Surya Green speaks in Kolkata, India at
International Seminar Focused on Total Human Development
Few of us will live 100 years. Even fewer of us will have our 100th birth anniversary
commemorated by a program held in our honor. Srimat Swami Ranganathananda Maharaj of
India, who passed on in 2005 at age 96, will receive such a mark of respect in December 2008.
Scholars, researchers, and spiritual leaders will convene at the Ramakrishna Mission
Institute of Culture in Kolkata on 14 December to participate in an International Seminar: “Total
Human Development in the Light of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda-Vedanta Tradition.” The
Seminar is a special session of the Swami Ranganathananda Chair, set up at the Ramakrishna
Mission Institute of Culture in 2005 to honor the memory of Swami Ranganathananda. The
Swami Ranganathananda Birth Centenary Celebration, organized by devotees of Swami
Ranganathananda, will take place on 15 December at Science City in Kolkata.
Swami Ranganathananda, esteemed spiritual teacher, sage, and savant, served as the 13th
President of the Ramakrishna Order. Since its official registration in 1899, the India-
headquartered Ramakrishna Order has become a pre-eminent, highly respected religious
monastic institution with 170 centers worldwide. The inspirational impulse behind the Order‘s
founding traces back to the 19th century spiritual genius Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa (1836-
1886).
The mission of fostering human spiritualization and unity begun by Sri Ramakrishna and
his disciple Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) has been continued over the past 100 years by the
thousands of monks and nuns belonging to the Ramakrishna Order. Of them, only one has earned
the honorary title: “the second Vivekananda.” That great distinction belongs to Swami
Ranganathananda, regarded as the greatest transmitter of Sri Ramakrishna’s message since the
inspired and inspiring Swami Vivekananda himself. Swami Ranganathananda brought Sri
Ramakrishna’s inter-denominational, inter-cultural message to more people in more countries
than any other swami of the Ramakrishna Order.
Sri Ramakrishna’s teachings are, in fact, a re-vitalization of India’s ancient spiritual
philosophy of Vedanta. Called after a Sanskrit word combining Veda (knowledge) and Anta
(end), Vedanta is a system of thought based mainly on the end portion of the Veda, India’s
ancient scripture containing a mass of eternal truths. The Veda’s end, or “knowledge section,”
outlines the evolutionary journey of the Soul in the collection of revelatory texts called the
Upanishads. As the Rig Veda declares: Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti: “Truth is One; sages
call It by various names.” Vedanta teaches that every human being contains within him-or-
herself an unquenchable spark of divinity that can be fanned into spiritual realization.
“Vedanta and Human Enlightenment” is the subject Surya Green will address at the
International Seminar paying tribute to Swami Ranganathananda.
In 2004, one year before his passing, Surya Green had the good fortune to interview
Swami Ranganathananda in India on various topics, including advice for spiritual seekers, his
own spiritual attainment, his deteriorating physical state, his eventual passing, and death itself.
It turned out to be the last of their meetings which began in 1975, when Swami Ranganathananda
gave one of his annual teaching weeks in the Netherlands, among other countries. Since that first
encounter, Surya Green had additional opportunities to spend time with Swami
Ranganathananda, both in the Netherlands and a number of times in India during the six years
she lived in Asia in the 1980s. When she wrote a book that included some of her earliest
encounters with spiritual leaders, there flowed into it a chapter entitled “Swami
Ranganathananda and the Tradition of Sri Ramakrishna.” (The Call of the Sun)
Surya Green describes her last meetings with Swami Ranganathananda in her article, “Grateful to
Have Known Swami Ranganathananda,” published in Nectar: A Journal of Universal Religious and
Philosophical Teachings, Hawaii, USA, # 19, Summer 2005. The article also appears in an anthology
of reminiscences, A Monk without Frontiers--Reminiscences of Swami Ranganathananda, to be
released during the Swami Ranganathananda Birth Centenary celebration (published by the Swami
Ranganathananda Birth Centenary Committee). A version of the article appears in December 2008
in the German magazine Visionen.
Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata, will release two books by Swami Ranganathananda: The Message of
Vivekachudamani as well as Vivekananda and the Erasing of the Dividing Line. The
Department of Posts, Government of India, is issuing a commemorative stamp of Swami
Ranganathananda. The swami won the first Indira Gandhi National Integration Award (1986),
and was popularly known as “India’s Goodwill Ambassador,” “India’s Spiritual
Ambassador,” and “the traveling swami.”
Swami Ranganathananda Seminar and Centenary:
International Seminar at Ramakrishna Institute of Culture on 14 December 2008
Swami Ranganathananda Centenary on 15 December 2008
©Surya Green 2010