Art, Culture and Spirituality

Prabuddha Bharata, an English monthly journal of the Ramakrishna Order, has trodden a long and arduous path for the last hundred years. Throughout this past century it has gathered many treasures within its covers. On those pages some of the brightest minds of the century struggled with the problems of the world and placed before humanity their insights and solutions. For the readers who do not have ready access to all the volumes of Prabuddha Bharata, few of the priceless gems contained in those pages have been anthologised here, in this publication by Advaita Ashrama, a publication house of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math, India.

A study of this anthology is a study of life—of science, art, psychology, philosophy, etc., as the titles show. As you will see in the following pages, many of the articles draw the reader into another milieu—a milieu that was the precursor of today’s. There we discern the hopes, fears, and anxieties that moved powerful minds. And there we find the solutions they proposed and the hopes they cherished regarding humanity’s future. We see a recent past through some of the clearest eyes of that period, and we also get a glimpse of the world they thought would soon emerge. Thus we are able to compare all that with the present, understand better what is happening now, and ponder over the future.