Swami Vivekananda made it clear that Monism, the soul of the philosophy of Shankara, was his ideological base. The Swami and Shankara are compared by many as the two towering spiritual giants were similar in many things. Both died early, in the prime of their cyclonic lives; Shankara died at 32 and Vivekananda at 39. Their activities spanned barely 12/13 years. Both wandered from Kanyakumari to Almora, draped in the saffron. However, as the time of Vivekananda was different he swept through the world extensively, embodying the Vedantic soul of India.
Shankara is a champion of Mayavada- Illusionism that extols Brahma as the only reality, reducing all in the universe to a delusion. The only way of escape is through merging oneself in Brahma, shunting out the sensory and the visible from the vista of an individual’s mind.
Many debunked Mayavada and subjected other Hindu scriptures, deemed infallible till the other day, to critical scrutiny. In his letter to lord Amherst in 1823, Raja Rammohun Roy denounced Mayavada as ‘imaginary learning’. He was for scrutinising Vedas, Upanishads and Gita against the yardstick of empirical rationality. Vidyasagar was much stronger in criticism. He wrote in 1853 that Vedanta and Shankha were false systems of philosophy. Rabindranath Tagore wrote sarcastically, "The philosophical gospel propagated by the Gita is one such aeroplane. It took Arjuna’s merciful mind to such a distant land that viewing from there it did not matter who is killing and who is dying-who is my own and who is not. Man has in his armoury many such philosophical aeroplanes which effectively make us forget reality. Those on whom death descends from philosophical heights have one consolation -only the body dies; the soul is indestructible."
Subhas Chandra whose birth anniversary we would celebrate on January 23 remained perplexed for a long time regarding the truth behind Mayavada. He could neither accommodate himself to it fully nor could he reject it fully. Swami Vivekananda stormed into him when he was barely 15. Since then, the process of transforming him into the mould destiny cut out for him started. He found in the Swami’s works the alchemy that slaked his spiritual quest and steeled his zeal for the freedom of India.
While studying Philosophy, the Western Philosophy, steeped in scepticism and rationalism, profoundly influenced him. He started subjecting the precepts of the Hindu philosophy, even Upanishads and Gita, against the new-found light of Occidental rationalism.
While chatting with his friend, Dilip Kumar Roy during their college days, he affirmed that the Indians must develop the habit of subjecting everything, even the old scriptures, to a critical scrutiny.
Roy turned up an astonished face on his friend. He invoked Ramakrishna, according to whom the Truth cannot be realised by ratiocination. Bose sounded adamant. He said he did not care.
His views, however, kept on changing with time. He took deep interest in what Sri Aurobindo wrote on the evolutionary nature of life. The life Divine, his magnum opus, is considered a robust negation of Shankara’s Mayavada. In his autobiography ‘An Indian Pilgrim’ written in 1939 in Austria, Subhas Chandra wrote, "Vivekananda had no doubt spoken of the need of knowledge, devotion and selfless action in developing an all-round character, but there was something original and unique in Aurobindo’s conception of a synthesis. It was so refreshing, so inspiring to read Aurobindo’s writings as a contrast to the denunciation of knowledge and action by the later-day Bengal Vaishnavas."
In a letter written to one who was floundering then in the mazes of confusion over Shankara’s Mayavada, Sri Aurobindo wrote: "The Shankara knowledge is only one side of the Truth; it is the knowledge of the Supreme as realised by the spiritual mind through the static silence of the pure Existence.
It was because he went by this side only that Shankara was unable to accept or explain the origin of the universe except as illusion, a creation of Maya. Unless one realises the Supreme on the dynamic as well as the static side, one cannot experience the true origin of things and the equal reality of the active Brahman. Whatever verbal or ideative logic one may bring to support it, this way of seeing the universe explains nothing; it only erects a mental formula of the inexplicable."
When cloistered in seclusion, Subhas Chandra sounded much deeper. But once caught in the tumults of politics, he fell to the spell of activism. His view then was that remaining withdrawn in secluded and silent contemplation from time to time, and on occasions, for a long spell, was a necessity, but remaining cut-off for far too long from the tides of life and society would atrophy the active side of man.
It seems he considered spiritualism just as a motivation, a prop to active life but not as an end in itself. This was natural though, for he was destined to sacrifice everything on the altar of India’s freedom. The deeper quest was thus thwarted.