Jiří Vacek - duchovní učitel

Jiří Vacek

During the communist regime it was not possible to publish spiritual articles. So I started to write such articles in English for Indian magazines. At first for The Call Divine which was in a way a predecessor to the Ramanashramam´s magazine. The Call Divine ceased to exist when The Mountain Path journal appeared. Then I continued sending my articles there. It was not easy to communicate with editors due to the long distance and it was time-consuming too.

I wrote most of the articles in English directly. I think that it was so until the article about Maharishi´s spiritual influence which I wrote in Czech and some of my friends translated that for me because I was fully occupied with other things.

The magazine´s editor himself decided to state my name under those articles. Once he even published my full address there without any previous discussion with me. When I protested, the ashram deeply apologized. Fortunately, the communist state police did not notice that. Three articles are signed by a pseudonym “Czech devotee”. These are replies addressed to Mr. Shivpuri, who had stayed in Czechoslovakia for some time and then from India he wrote me for advice concerning his spiritual life.

The former, quite spiritual, management of Ramanashram appreciated my articles very much and also the ashram´s new president Sri Ramanan evaluated them as very good. That is why I consider very strange that he later believed to anonymous slanderers who claimed that I misinterpreted Maharshi´s teaching. Or could be just a convenient excuse for something else? It is therefore for me suprising that the magazine lost interest in my articles when Mr. Ramanan was appointed the President of Ramanashram. In July 2005 I sent there the last article which was called The Essence of Atmavichara. It was not published so I stopped sending my articles there.

With Sri Ramanan being appointed a head of Ramanashram a negative tendency in the management occurred. They mostly concentrate on devotion of Sri Ramana Maharshi and the practice of Self-enquiry is shifted to a side track. The ashram also separates itself from other spiritual paths and their representatives. This tendency is clearly visible in the contents of the ashram´s magazine. In the times passed there were published articles about various masters, saints and spiritual paths, today you won´t find there anything similar. It is a pity. Today, according to the information of the Ramanashram itself there are respected only the saints and sages who have been dead for at least 50 years… So, nobody who really practices atmavichara and is not satisfied with single devotion has a chance to write there. This way the management of Ramanashram acts directly against the words of Sri Ramana himself, because he praised atmavichara when compared to devotion. It seems the people in Ramanashram think that Maharshi´s statement: “Atmavichara (Self-enquiry) is the path from the beginning to the end” does not apply to them.

Below there is a list of my earlier English articles with details concerning their publishing. However, I do not claim that the list is complete.

The last mentioned "unpublished" article together with several new ones are included in my first English book called "Handful of Gems".