Dear Babaji,
I’ve just returned from three days in Honolulu attending our annual conservation conference. It was a good conference. As usual there was a lot of disturbing information being shared about the plight of Hawaii’s native species. So many are critically endangered or have already gone extinct. It’s pretty alarming.
As you may recall in September, we received a call for help from the Ramakrishna Headquarters, Belur Math, regarding a devastating flood in the western part of India. Sanga members contributed to this fund in answer to the plea for food, supplies, and medical relief. The following letter was sent to us upon receiving our donation.
Greetings to all the devotees, students, and participants of SRV Association’s movement and its events – and aloha from Hawaii:
In the wake of our previous gathering in October, and in anticipation of our next meeting over Christmas and New Year’s, I hereupon take this welcome opportunity to write words of both appreciation and encouragement to all of you. Here in our world, in Saradaramakrishna Loka, we are fortunate to be able to live an extraordinary life of sadhana and service, each of these accomplished selflessly and meticulously under the Brahman-banner of dharma and its incomparable tenets. What a great and gracious boon this is! It has been conferred upon us by the Mother of the Universe Herself, She who came to earth again as Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother, gracing the world of name and form as recently as the 1920’s. And She came as both the Universal Mother in Her own right, and as the consort of the Avatar, Sri Ramakrishna, Himself an incarnation of Mother Kali and the manifestation of Ram and Krishna conjoined. To quote Swami Vivekananda, a paragon of Truth and truthfulness himself:
Nectar of Non-dual TruthA Journal of Universal Religious and Philosophical Teachings
Welcoming the new Nectar!
Nectar has entered a whole new phase. As we send out this newsletter, our small staff is preparing issue number 24, coming out this Winter, which will be almost twice the size of prior issues. This alone — the opportunity to offer so many inspiring articles in the spirit of true Universalism — is the cause of very high spirits!
“The True Gift”
The year 2013 signals the 150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda. Swamiji, as he is affectionately and reverently called among the devotees of Sri Ramakrishna, changed the course of Indian and western society in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. It is not possible to overestimate the impact that his two visits to the U.S. and Europe had on the …