Swami Rama the Fact and the Difference It Makes

                   Swami Rama the Fact and the Difference It Makes

         This essay assumes some familiarity either in person or in writings with Swami Rama’s life. Also the use of referring to him as the ‘fact’ will become clearer. In this writing, connect the facts.

         To propose a study of Swami Rama as an intriguing fact sounds strange, even impertinent. Yet to scrutinize his entire life in an empirical and empathetic factual manner may yield critical insights and implications about humanity that can’t be disclosed any other way. Unorthodox at first, this pursuit would, over time, involve absorbing, assimilating, testing, ruminating and weighing the objectivity of his factual history while subjectively and, as far as one can, equivalently entering into pertinent factual phases of the evolution of his person and career.

         Plainly, we seek and assess the practical implications of what the business of his life and viewpoint portents for exploiting human nature. This last part invites enormous reflection which people may evade. To put it crudely, engage Swami Rama  as both the map and the terrain, always  grounded  in the context of daily living, and go prospecting for treasures therein.

         No doubt his life and published works inspire, but we venture  that unless you grow into evaluating  Swami Rama  along the lines in the aforesaid fashion, you miss the most enriching benefits of the encounter. Admiration from afar may be comforting for students. Many remain myth-makers, cheering and rehearsing stories on the sidelines, always ready with a quote. That’s it.

         At the outset, let me propose that the fact of his unique existence far exceeds the common understanding of human potentials. Scientists and pedestrians are astonished by his proven credentials. Then they just leave those exceptional incidences stored in the record book. They cite them as information  but don’t get the facts.

         Based upon a broad survey of his factual history, our intent is to process him more as a primary fact of the actual possibilities of human wellbeing that exceed contemporary paradigms about human development. In no way does this assertion diminish the individual attainments and social  advances by women and men throughout the same period. Simply, his life and words  rendered a boost of understanding to us so that we can likewise access the bountiful resources of human existence that far exceed previous endeavors. Strangely, many fear to make the attempt.

         Moreover, the only way, it seems to me, to garner the abundance of this fact of human potentiality for all its worth  is to learn from his whole person with its factual  implications for human living. We make the concrete fact of his reality available to our scrutiny as much as possible. His life becomes, as it were, our critical polestar.  His individuality and admonitions supply the evidence, the human data, upon which we, in turn, delve, explore,  and  conduct our factual experiments upon  our own nature. The irony of our involvement in participating  in  these  facts in this manner finds us actually assimilating an infusion of  optimal living. Our life proves it. Now we are getting the fact.

         The event of his being illuminates more about human nature and its destiny than all the scriptures and commentaries in India or China. When you take a moment to ponder the power of  him for the individual fact that he is, that pause alone eliminates forever any hint of ‘so what’.

         In closing, our  ambition  is not to admire and revere him as a memorial, as we honor historical figures. Neither is mimicry nor cloning the point. You don’t have to learn Sanskrit or become a Swami. Imitation is not flattery here. Rather, getting the real fact means to become the unique individual that we, in fact, decide for ourselves. To know and love our nature, as he did, is not that what it’s all about?                                                                

 Then we become compos sui.