Dedicated to Sri Sarada Devi

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"Holy Mother" painted by Swami Tadatmananda

Used courtesy of the Vedanta Society of Southern California

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Dedicated to Sri Sarada Devi
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Taking Root in the Divine Ground

Here is one more Leaf of an Ashrama by Swami Vidytmananda

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A book that caused a stir in America and in several European countries some years ago, and subsequently served as the basis for a TV series, is Roots by Alex Haley. Roots was written by an American black who wanted to trace his ancestry back, through the penury of his parents and the slave conditions of his grandparents, to the happier existence of his forefathers in Africa. This he attempted to do by examining the memories of his parents, consulting such documents as existed, and visiting the village in Africa from which it seemed his ancestors had come. By talking to old people there Haley learned about traditions and tribal ideas which had affected him all his life without his having been aware of the source. This was an exercise, Haley felt, in finding out who he was by understanding what he had come from and what had formed him.

Eventually the book proved to be more an exercise in fiction than in fact. Insufficient records exist to allow most blacks to trace their ancestry with any degree of precision. The bulk of the text, although interesting, was felt to be more an imaginative account rather than serious social history.

We would criticize the project from another standpoint. Vedanta says that we are not so much formed by our physical ancestors; rather we choose them as appropriate vehicles for expressing the karmas which our subtle body has acquired and would express. Physically, of course, heredity has an effect. Bodily characteristics are dictated by our ancestry, and everyday habits and responses by the family environment; but an examination of the characters of our two parents, of our four grandparents, and of our sixteen great grandparents — supposing that this could be done — would never result in our knowing ourselves. How many of us could even supply the names and birthplaces of these twenty-two individuals, let alone know what they were really like? How could we possibly apply such data to ourselves, if discovered?

Indeed, it is all this baggage from the past which we, as devotees and ashrama members, are trying to rid ourselves of: the prejudices and fears; the anxieties and preoccupations that make up our everyday personalities, as they must have made up the personalities of our forbears.

That which we are basically has very little to do with our physical roots. This is what Vedanta teaches, and thank God that this is the case, for who would like to feel that he can rise no higher in his character than the average of that of the score or two of the persons immediately behind him, even if they might have been Boston brahmins, British aristocrats, or members of the Académie Francaise?

No, the roots which interest us are those which find their sustenance in what has been called the Divine Ground of all Being. When we speak of finding out who we are, we mean this, to be able to say from experience what Sri Shankara said in his Nirvanadasaka: "I am neither white nor black, neither red nor yellow, neither bent nor stout, neither short nor lean. I am formless, of the nature of the self-resplendent consciousness. I am the ultimate Truth, the all-pervading Self, the One without a second."

The roots which give this flowering are the roots which we want to trace and nourish.

Location: Wilmslow, U.K.