Swami Vivekananda was the most forceful spiritual presence India had in the 19th century though the full impact of his work was not visible until well into the twentieth. Seldom has a man solely concerned with the spiritual life managed to impact the destiny of a nation in the manner that he did. In a life lasting less than forty years he swept over India like the cyclone he was often compared to and by his death he had the satisfaction of seeing that he had brought about irrevocable changes for the better. He was born on January 12th, 1863 a member of a warrior caste, the Dattas, to an extremely traditional devout mother and a freethinking agnostic father who lived in Calcutta. The first two names that the baby received were almost prophetic in their relation to his future course of action. He was first called Vireshwara, the heroic one, an epithet of Shiva the god his mother had prayed to for the birth of the much-desired son. After a few days for some obscure reason his name was formally changed to Narendranath, which means Leader or Lord of Men. At one stroke the two dominant qualities in his personality were intuited. Always he would be utterly fearless and always he had to be the foremost. His superiority was taken to be a natural order of things by most who came into contact with him. Vivekananda had this uncanny ability to leave a lasting impression by a few seconds of personal contact. So powerful was his personality in later life that while wandering in the Himalayas an unwary pilgrim who had come upon him thought that he had seen the great god Shiva himself! That he was also the severest critic of his own self was therefore perhaps a good thing. As a child he took full advantage of the opportunities given him because of his father's affluence. He learnt every form of martial arts that a fearful British would allow the Indian, sometimes trampling upon caste rules to learn from the low caste and the Muslim. He also became a first class musician and singer and indeed is one of India's first commentators and critics of classical music, a fact about him that is usually overlooked. He also learnt to write in an elegant and forceful style all his own and his contributions to the creation of the modern Bengali language are second only to Rabindranath Tagore. The young Naren, as he was known then, was a veritable Elephant's child, full of insatiable curiosity. Above all he was utterly fearless. He would take no nonsense from anybody and he never quite lost the attitude of not suffering fools gladly. He was also immensely strong physically, an attribute he never lost till his death. In fact he used to say that the most important word in the Upanishads is Strength and that he has never preached anything else. Physical strength for him was an external manifestation of a healthy soul; it was not any silly might is right equation. More than once he used to shock the pious by winding up deep philosophical discussions with a bout of wrestling or quarter-staff play rather like Robin Hood. Everybody recognized early on that he needed a great mission to dedicate himself to, or else his superabundance of energy would burn him up. In his teens a spiritual crisis came upon him. It was the old dilemma. Why does evil exist and what is God doing about it? Reading J.S.Mill did not help nor did the standard theistic texts. He was unable to commit himself either way and decided to be an agnostic till he could get somebody who could answer his burning questions. He used to make a nuisance of himself to people who had a reputation for spiritual attainment by asking them a simple and devastating question. " Sir, have you seen God?" He was heartily sick of all the evasive replies he used to get till he finally asked the same question to the great Ramkrishna Paramahansa. Without any hesitation the answer came that not only had he seen God, anybody could do so provided they cared enough. If men would desire God with the same force that they desired money or sex, they could all attain Him. The famous first meeting between the two has been well documented by a host of writers. Ramkrishna saw in the fiery young man the synthesis of India's religious ideas, the new path that the country need to take to cope with modernity that was insisting on crashing through the pretended barriers of indifference. Himself one of the last great saints of the pre-modern traditional culture of India, he was astute enough to recognize in Naren the type of personality that could spread the new inclusive version of faith that he had come to recognize was the truth. Naren did not give in so easily. The guru may have appeared but this disciple was by no means ready! He was an English educated agnostic, Ramkrishna an illiterate. Naren soon realized however that this strange man was by no means uneducated or unintelligent. He too had a powerful personality that attracted and while Naren maintained an attitude of doubt, he was gradually coming under the spell of the great saint. Naren's father died and the family were in dire straits. The torments inflicted by the world upon the formerly affluent left him with a deep understanding of what it means to suffer and why people go under. His spiritual practices under the guidance of Ramkrishna were giving him extraordinary experiences and he was transforming into something irresistible. At this juncture he was the recipient of an extraordinary proposal from a rich woman that he alleviate the family misery by becoming her personal gigolo! He was a very handsome man and all his life was pursued by offers of marriage but this insult probably saved him. His spirit flared up and he let them know in no uncertain terms that he would never violate his chastity. In all other matters the swami was tolerant, but he was absolutely rigid about chastity, attributing his photographic memory to its unbroken practice. The family stabilized a bit, when a new misfortune came upon Naren. His guru began a slow decline with a cancer of the throat. The last few months were intense periods of training for Naren and his fellow disciples, as they became firmly established in the philosophy of the Vedanta and most of them became worshipers of the divine mother in the form of Kali too. Ramkrishna chose to transmit his spiritual energies to Naren before his death. After his death a few of his disciples, 12 in fact, got together to practice austerities and meditations at a dilapidated house in Baranagar. This was yet another period of accelerated spiritual growth. The great Swami himself once said that so intense were their austerities that even demons would have run away at the sight! The great Indian tradition of the parivrajaka, the wandering monk, proved to be too strong for them however and they began their separate wanderings after a while. Naren was by now a spiritual giant, and instantly acknowledged as such by all that saw him though he was still only in his twenties. The constant wanderings across the country gave him a first hand knowledge of the miseries of his fellow countrymen as well as provided him with an unshakable conviction that the true life of India lay in religion. His aristocratic contempt for all who fell from his high standards was gradually rubbed off as his soul grew ever more vast and accepting. A polyandrous family in Nepal taught him about the relativity of moral standards. To his remonstrance about such vice they said that to keep a woman exclusively to oneself where they are scarce is the height of selfishness! A dancing girl's song went to his heart as he realized that for all his spiritual attainments, he was still incapable of seeing the same Atman in all, preferring to judge people on their external actions. Like Gandhi in South Africa he had the experience of running up against a racist who objected to sharing this railway compartment with a "colored" man. Unlike Gandhi he did not submit to this insult but grabbed the European and heaved him out of the train! At a time white people could literally get away with murder where natives were concerned, this was an act of unthinkable courage. And wherever he saw an opportunity to learn, to grow he halted and humbly learnt. Kings were his host one day, and the meanest village the next. To him they were all the same. continue>> Archive