To be inspired is to be filled and led by something beyond the self. It is to let something higher, something from beyond, into oneself to be continually guided, enabled and shaped by it. We can exist by ourselves, but we cannot be fully and vitally alive by ourselves. No man, as an English poet said, is an island entire by itself.
The one symbol that fascinated Swami Agnivesh most was ‘fire’. Saffron would not do for him. He clad himself in flaming saffron. In him saffron caught fire. He became fire. So, he chose to be Agnivesh; one who is clad in fire.
In Swami Agnivesh spiritual fire radiated as the light of social spirituality. Jesus came to preach the Good News to the poor. The very same mission became, in Swamiji’s lifelong mission, an unrelenting pursuit of social justice. Lord Ram inspired him as the icon of righteousness. Swamiji was, hence, pained and angered by Lord Ram’s degradation into a mascot of communal politics. Prophet Mohammad unfurled the gospel of universal brotherhood. Swamiji mirrored this in his personality as a global citizen, a human being without borders. Swamiji transplanted Lord Buddha’s karuna, or compassion, into the socio-political domain and made it the power of liberation and rehabilitation.
The authentic evidence that one is divinely inspired is that one’s life is inspiring, as Swamiji’s was. Of course, he was limited by the incapacity of his contemporaries to be inspired. As John Milton said, ‘One can only take a horse to water, but not force it to drink’. So, judged by the scale of changes he wrought, Swami Agnivesh would rank only with personages like Jesus Christ, who died seemingly defeated. It is not by the immediacy of their success that souls like Swami Agnivesh should be evaluated, but by the spiritual freedom they exemplified and their willingness to pay the ultimate price for what they held to be the purpose of their life.
The one thing he asked of me, on the very day he was hospitalised for liver transplant, was to write out the essence of the many discussions we shared regarding the need to shift from religion to spirituality. He desired earnestly that a global debate on the need to shift from religion to spirituality be initiated. He was greatly worried that communal hate, weaponised by devious demagogues and potential dictators, was a serious hindrance to peace and harmony. To his last breath he maintained a quality and vigour of thinking that I have not encountered in anyone else. I dedicated my recent book tilted Thoughts for Trying Times to Swamiji describing him as ‘A lighting in the mind!’
I am glad to say that the book titled Beyond Religion: Imaging a New Humanity, written by me but inspired and approved by Swamiji, is now under print. It is likely to be released in October this year. I hope it will keep alive the fire of this unique spiritual activist, who breathed in love, and exhaled it as righteous indignation against all that is vile and wicked in the world that we love.
