Everything about Swami Vivekananda totally explained
Swami Vivekananda (
Svāmi Vivekānanda) (
January 12,
1863 –
July 4,
1902), whose pre-monastic name was
Narendranath Dutta (
Narendranath Dut-tta), was one of the most famous and influential spiritual leaders of the philosophies of
Vedanta and
Yoga. He was the chief disciple of
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and the founder of
Ramakrishna Math and
Ramakrishna Mission. He is a major figure in the history of the
Hindu reform movements.
While he's widely credited with having uplifted his own nation, India, he simultaneously introduced
Yoga and
Vedanta to America and England with his seminal lectures and private discourses on
Vedanta philosophy. Vivekananda was the first known
Hindu Sage to come to the West, where he introduced Eastern thought at the
World's Parliament of Religions, in connection with the
World's Fair in Chicago, in
1893. Here, his first lecture, which started with this line "Sisters and Brothers of America," (
(External Link
) - not his voice) made the audience clap for two minutes just to the address, for prior to this seminal speech, the audience was always used to this opening address: "Ladies and Gentlemen". It was this speech that catapulted him to fame by his wide audiences in Chicago and then later everywhere else in America, including far-flung places such as
Memphis,
Boston,
San Francisco,
New York,
Los Angeles, and
St. Louis.
Biography
Birth and early life
Narendranath Dutta was born in Shimla Pally,
Kolkata,
India on
January 12,
1863 as the son of Viswanath Dutta and Bhuvaneswari Devi. Even as he was young, he showed a precocious mind and keen memory. He practiced
meditation from a very early age. While at school, he was recognized early on as an academic genius, and showed excellence in games of various kinds. He had a photographic memory, displaying the power to read entire books in mere minutes. He organized an amateur theatrical company and a
gymnasium and took lessons in
fencing,
wrestling, rowing and other sports. He also studied instrumental and
vocal music. Even when he was young, he questioned the validity of superstitious customs and discrimination based on
caste and religion.
In 1879, Narendra entered the
Presidency College, Calcutta for higher studies. After one year, he joined the
Scottish Church College, Calcutta and studied
philosophy. During the course, he studied western
logic,
western philosophy and
history of European nations.
With Ramakrishna
Narendra met Ramakrishna for the first time in November 1881. He asked Ramakrishna the same question he'd so often asked of others,
"Mahashaya (Venerable Sir), have you seen god?" The instantaneous answer from Ramakrishna was,
"Yes, I see God, just as I see you here, only in a much intenser sense. God can be realized," he went on, "one can see and talk to Him as I'm seeing and talking to you. But who cares? People shed torrents of tears for their wife and children, for wealth or property, but who does so for the sake of God? If one weeps sincerely for Him, he surely manifests Himself." Narendra was astounded and puzzled. He could feel the man's words were honest and uttered from a deep experience. He started visiting Ramakrishna frequently. At first he didn't believe that such a plain man could have seen God, but gradually he started having faith in what Ramkrishna said.
Though Narendra couldn't accept Ramakrishna and his visions, he couldn't neglect him. It had always been in Narendra's nature to test something thoroughly before he could accept it. He tested Ramakrishna to the maximum, but the master was patient, forgiving, humorous, and full of love. He never asked Narendra to abandon reason, and he faced all of Narendra's arguments and examinations with patience. In time, Narendra accepted Ramakrishna, and when he accepted, his acceptance was whole-hearted. While Ramakrishna predominantly taught duality and
Bhakti to his other disciples, he taught Narendra the
Advaita Vedanta, the philosophy of non-dualism.
During the course of five years of his training under Ramakrishna, Narendra was transformed from a restless, puzzled, impatient youth to a mature man who was ready to renounce everything for the sake of God-realization. In August 1886, Ramakrishna's end came in the form of
throat cancer. After this Narendra and a core group of Ramakrishna's disciples took vows to become monks and renounce everything, and started living in a supposedly haunted house in
Baranagore. They took alms to satisfy their hunger and their other needs were taken care of by Ramakrishna's richer householder disciples.
Wanderings in India
Soon, the young monk of Baranagore wanted to live the life of a wandering monk with rags and a begging bowl and no other possessions. On July 1890, Vivekananda set out for a long journey, without knowing where the journey would take him. The journey that followed took him to the length and breadth of the
Indian subcontinent. During these days, Vivekananda assumed various names like Vividishananda (in
Sanskrit,
Vividisha means "the desire to know" and
Ananda means "bliss"), Satchidananda, etc. It is said that the
Maharaja of
Khetri, Ajit Singh, suggested to him the name
Vivekananda because of his discernment of things, good and bad.
Viveka or discrimination between the eternal and the transient was highly valued by the Swami, who, recollecting that
Keshab Chandra Sen used to call him by that name, accepted it.
During these wandering days, Vivekananda stayed in kings' palaces, as well as the huts of the poor. He came in close contact with the culture of different regions of India and various classes of people in India. Vivekananda observed the imbalance in society and tyranny in the name of caste. He realised the need for a national rejuvenation if India was to survive at all. He reached
Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of the Indian subcontinent on
24 December 1892. There, he swam across the sea and started meditating on a lone rock. He thus meditated for three days and said later that he meditated about the past, present and future of India. The rock went on to become the
Vivekananda memorial at Kanyakumari.
Vivekananda went to
Madras and spoke about his plans for India and Hinduism to the young men of Madras. They were impressed by the monk and urged him to go to the
United States and represent
Hinduism in the World Parliament of Religions. The Raja of Ramnad, who was originally invited for the conference, promoted Vivekananda as the right person to represent the views of Hinduism in the Parliament. Thus, helped by his friends at Chennai, Bhaskara Sethupathi, Raja of Ramnad and Maharajas of
Mysore and Khetri, Vivekananda set out on his journey to the USA.
In one of his lectures in California, the swami described about his condition during wandering days as follows:
In the West
Vivekananda was encouraged by
J.H. Wright, a professor of Greek at
Harvard University, to represent Hinduism in the 1893
World Parliament of Religions in
Chicago. When he expressed reservations saying he'd no credentials, the professor replied, "To ask you, Swami, for your credentials is like asking the sun about its right to shine." He wrote about Vivekananda to the chairman of the committee on selection of delegates, "Here is a man more learned than all our learned professors put together."
Vivekananda was received well at the Parliament of Religions, where he delivered a series of lectures. The audience arose in their seats and applauded loudly (for two minutes) when he started
his first address with the famous words,
"Sisters and brothers of America." When the applause subsided the Swami began his speech by thanking the young nation "in the name of the most ancient monastic order in the world, the Vedic order of sannyasins." A newspaper account described him as "an orator by divine right and undoubtedly the greatest figure at the Parliament." Vivekananda's arrival in the USA has been identified by many to mark the beginning of western interest in
Hinduism not as merely an exotic eastern oddity, but as a vital religious and philosophical tradition that might actually have something important to teach the West.
Vivekananda successfully introduced yoga and Vedanta to the West and lectured around America introducing the topics (1894-6). He taught hundreds of students privately in free classes held in his own room beginning in New York in 1895. Later, he started Vedantic centers in
New York City and
London, lectured at major universities and generally kindled western interest in Hinduism. His success wasn't without controversy, much of it from Christian missionaries of whom he was fiercely critical. After four years of constant touring, lecturing and retreats in the West, he came back to India in the year 1897.
Back in India
Admirers and devotees of Vivekananda gave him an enthusiastic reception on his return to India. In India, he delivered a series of lectures, and this set of lectures known as "Lectures from Colombo to Almora" is considered to have uplifted the morale of the then downtrodden Indian society. He founded one of the world's largest charitable relief missions, the
Ramakrishna Mission and reorganized the ancient Swami order by founding one of the most significant and largest monastic orders in India, the
Ramakrishna Math.
However, he'd to bear great criticism from other orthodox Hindus for having traveled in the West. In his day there was hardly a Hindu in America and he received criticism for crossing the ocean, at that time a cause for "outcasting." Vivekananda scoffed at these critiques from the orthodox saying "I can't be outcast - As a monk, I'm beyond caste." His contemporaries also questioned his motives, wondering whether the fame and glory of his Hindu evangelism compromised his original monastic vows. His enthusiasm for America and Britain, and his spiritual devotion to his motherland, caused significant tension in his last years.
He once again toured the west from January 1899 to December 1900. He inculcated a spirit of respect and good will for exchanges between the East and the West. He had American disciples whom he brought to India and initiated as Swamis and brought Indian Swamis to America where they and their successors have been ever since.
Death
On
July 4 1902 in
Belur Math near
Calcutta, he passed away. In the morning he taught
Vedanta philosophy to some pupils. He then walked with
Swami Premananda, a brother-disciple, and gave him instructions concerning the future of the Ramakrishna Math. He dies in the evening after a prayer session at Belur Math. He was 39. Doctors pronounced that the death was due to
apoplexy, but the monks were convinced that he'd attained
mahasamadhi, as Sri Ramakrishna had predicted. Vivekananda had fulfilled his own prophecy of not living to be forty-years old.
Principles and philosophy
Vivekananda was a renowned thinker in his own right. One of his most important contributions was to demonstrate how
Advaitin thinking isn't merely philosophically far-reaching, but how it also has social, even political, consequences. One important lesson he claimed to receive from Ramakrishna was that "Jiva is Shiva " (each individual is divinity itself). This became his
Mantra, and he coined the concept of
daridra narayana seva - the service of God in and through (poor) human beings.
If there truly is the unity of Brahman underlying all phenomena, then on what basis do we regard ourselves as better or worse, or even as better-off or worse-off, than others? - This was the question he posed to himself. Ultimately, he concluded that these distinctions fade into nothingness in the light of the oneness that the devotee experiences in
Moksha. What arises then is compassion for those "individuals" who remain unaware of this
oneness and a determination to help them.
Swami Vivekananda belonged to that branch of
Vedanta that held that no one can be truly free until all of us are. Even the desire for personal salvation has to be given up, and only tireless work for the salvation of others is the true mark of the
enlightened person. He founded the
Sri Ramakrishna Math and Mission on the principle of
Atmano Mokshartham Jagad-hitaya cha (आत्मनॊ मोक्षार्थम् जगद्धिताय च) (for one's own salvation and for the welfare of the World).
However, Vivekananda also pleaded for a strict separation between religion and government ("church and state") a value found in
Freemasonry which as a Freemason he'd been exposed to. Although social customs had been formed in the past with religious sanction, it wasn't now the business of religion to interfere with matters such as marriage, inheritance and so on. The ideal society would be a mixture of
Brahmin knowledge,
Kshatriya culture,
Vaisya efficiency and the egalitarian
Shudra ethos. Domination by any one led to different sorts of lopsided societies. Vivekananda didn't feel that religion, nor, any force for that matter, should be used forcefully to bring about an ideal society, since this was something that would evolve naturally by individualistic change when the conditions were right.
Vivekananda made a strict demarcation between the two classes of Hindu scriptures : the Sruti and the Smritis. The Sruti, by which is meant the Vedas, consist of eternally and universally valid spiritual truths. The Smritis on the other hand, are the dos and donts of religions, applicable to society and subject to revision from time to time. Vivekananda felt that existing Hindu smritis had to be revised for modern times. But the Srutis of course are eternal - they may only be re-interpreted.
Vivekananda advised his followers to be holy, unselfish and have
shraddha (faith). He encouraged the practise of
Brahmacharya (
Celibacy). In one of the conversations with his childhood friend
Sri Priya Nath Sinha he attributes his physical and mental strengths,
eloquence to the practice of
Brahmacharya.
Vivekananda didn't advocate the emerging area of
parapsychology,
astrology (one instance can be found in his speech
Man the Maker of his Destiny,
Complete-Works, Volume 8, Notes of Class Talks and Lectures) saying that this form of curiosity doesn't help in spiritual progress but actually hinders it.
Influence
Every one of the 20th century Indian leaders of note have acknowledged his influence, from
Gandhi to
Subhas Chandra Bose. The first governor general of independent India,
Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, once observed that "Vivekananda saved Hinduism." According to
Subhas Chandra Bose, Vivekananda "is the maker of modern India" and for
Mohandas Gandhi, Vivekananda's influence increased his "love for his country a thousandfold." Gandhi, who also strived for a lot of reform in
Hinduism himself, said:
Swami Vivekananda's writings need no introduction from anybody. They make their own irresistible appeal. Many years after his death,
Rabindranath Tagore (a prominent member of the
Brahmo Samaj) had said:
If you want to know India, study Vivekananda. In him everything is positive and nothing negative.
National Youth Day in India is held on his birthday,
January 12, to commemorate him. This was a most fitting gesture as much of Swami Vivekananda's writings concerned the Indian youth and how they should strive to uphold their ancient values whilst fully participating in the modern world.
Swami Vivekananda is widely considered to have inspired
India's freedom struggle movement. His writings inspired a whole generation of freedom fighters including
Aurobindo Ghose and
Bagha Jatin. Vivekananda was the brother of the extremist revolutionary, Shri
Bhupendranath Dutta.
Subhash Chandra Bose one of the most prominent figures in Indian independence movement said,
» I can't write about Vivekananda without going into raptures. Few indeed could comprehend or fathom him even among those who had the privilege of becoming intimate with him. His personality was rich, profound and complex... Reckless in his sacrifice, unceasing in his activity, boundless in his love, profound and versatile in his wisdom, exuberant in his emotions, merciless in his attacks but yet simple as a child, he was a rare personality in this world of ours
Aurobindo Ghosh considered Vivekananda as his spiritual mentor.
» Vivekananda was a soul of puissance if ever there was one, a very lion among men, but the definitive work he's left behind is quite incommensurate with our impression of his creative might and energy. We perceive his influence still working gigantically, we know not well how, we know not well where, in something that isn't yet formed, something leonine, grand, intuitive, upheaving that has entered the soul of India and we say, "Behold, Vivekananda still lives in the soul of his Mother and in the souls of her children. --Sri Aurobindo--1915 in Vedic Magazine.
Vivekananda inspired
Jamshedji Tata to set up
Indian Institute of Science, one of
India's finest Institutions. Abroad, he'd some interactions with
Max Mueller.
Nikola Tesla was one of those influenced by the Vedic philosophy teachings of the Swami Vivekananda.
Above all Swami Vivekananda helped restore a sense of pride amongst the Hindus, presenting the ancient teachings of India in its purest form to a Western audience, free from the propaganda spread by British colonial administrators and Christian missionaries, of Hinduism being a caste-ridden, misogynistic idolatrous faith. Indeed his early foray into the West would set the path for subsequent Indian religious teachers to make their own marks on the world, as well herald the entry of Hindus and their religious traditions into the Western world.
Swami Vivekananda's ideas have had a great influence on the Indian youth. In many institutes, students have come together and formed organizations meant for promoting discussion of spiritual ideas and the practice of such high principles. Many of such organizations have adopted the name
Vivekananda Study Circle. One such group also exists at
IIT Madras and is popularly known as
(VSC). Additionally, Swami Vivekananda's ideas and teachings have carried on globally, being practiced in institutions all over the world.
Vivekananda and science
In his book
Raja Yoga, Vivekananda writes that practice of Raja Yoga can confer
psychic powers such as 'reading another's thoughts', 'controlling all the forces of nature', become 'almost all-knowing', 'live without breathing', 'control the bodies of others' and levitation. He also explains traditional eastern spiritual concepts like
kundalini and spiritual energy centres.
However, Vivekananda himself says in the book,
He further says in the introduction of the book that one should take up the practice and verify these things for themselves, and that there shouldn't be blind belief.
Vivekananda (
1895) rejected
ether theory before
Einstein (
1905), stating that it can't explain the space itself.
The great electrical scientist,
Nikola Tesla, after listening to Vivekananda's speech on
Sankhya Philosophy, was much interested in its
cosmogony and its rational theories of the
Kalpas (cycles),
Prana and
Akasha. His notion based on the vedanta led him to think that matter is a manifestation of energy . After attending a lecture on vedanta by Vivekananda Tesla also concluded that, modern science can look for the solution of cosmological problems in Sankhya philosophy, and he could prove that mass can be reduced to potential energy mathematically.
Works
Vivekananda left a body of philosophical works (see Vivekananda's complete works) which Vedic scholar
Frank Parlato has called, "the greatest comprehensive work in philosophy ever published." His books (compiled from lectures given around the world) on the four
Yogas (
Raja Yoga,
Karma Yoga,
Bhakti Yoga,
Jnana Yoga) are very influential and still seen as fundamental texts for anyone interested in the Hindu practice of Yoga. His letters are of great literary and spiritual value. He was also considered a very good singer and a poet. He had composed many songs including his favorite
Kali the Mother. He used humor for his teachings and was also an excellent cook. His language is very free flowing. His own Bengali writings stand testimony to the fact that he believed that words - spoken or written should be for making things easier to understand rather than show off the speaker or writer's knowledge.
Books on and by Swami Vivekananda
Miscellaneous
The
turban that Vivekananda used to wear is believed to be suggested by the Maharaja of
Khetri.
It is also said that while he was a child, he was impressed by the turban of the horse cab driver, who used to ferry his father on his daily work.
Further Information
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