Important Incidents from the Life of Swami Vivekananda

Bhuvaneshwari Devi was deeply religious and raised her children according to the ancient spiritual traditions of India. She taught Narendra: “Remain pure all your life; guard your own honour and never transgress the honour of others. Be very tranquil, but when necessary, harden your heart.”

Sri Ramakrishna said about him: “Narendra is a great soul — perfect in meditation. He cuts the veils of maya to pieces with the sword of knowledge. Inscrutable maya can never bring him under her control.”

Ramakrishna gave love and freedom to his disciples so that they could grow in their own way. Throughout the rest of his life, Narendra would frequently say: “Ever since our first meeting, it was the Master alone who always had faith in me — no one else, not even my own mother and brothers. That faith and that love of his have bound me to him forever. The Master was the only one who knew how to love and who really loved. Worldly people only feign love to gratify their own self-interest.”

Many years later, Narendra said to one of his disciples: “One eye shed tears of grief when I left home, because I hated to leave my mother, grandmother, brothers, and sisters; and the other eye shed tears of joy for my ideal.” Luxury and too many material possessions take the mind away from God. That is why most mystics remove themselves from family ties and worldly possessions. This is one of the initial tests of a spiritual journey. God embraces those souls and makes everything favourable for them who are endowed with purity and renunciation, poverty and humility, devotion and longing.

In the middle of 1895, when Swamiji was exhausted from lecturing in New York, Mr. Leggett invited him to his retreat cottage at Camp Percy, New Hampshire. On 7 June 1895, Vivekananda wrote to a friend about his visit to the camp: “It gives me a new lease on life to be here. I go into the forest alone and read my Gita and am quite happy.”

Vedanta was never an organized religion; it has been practised by mendicants all through the ages. However, Vivekananda felt the need of a monastic order that would carry the message of Vedanta all over the world, although he knew the pros and cons of organized religion. While he was in America this thought came to his mind: “To organize or not to organize? If I organize, the spirit will diminish. If I do not organize, the message will not spread.”

In Lahore the swami gave a number of lectures, and brought harmony between the Arya Samajists and the orthodox Hindus, two antagonistic sects. Swamiji was very much against religious dogmatism, fanaticism, and personality cults; he knew that a personality cult grows speedily and dies quickly. Vivekananda preached the eternal, universal principles of Vedanta. One day at Lahore when Lala Hansaraj, the leader of the Arya Samaj, was defending his orthodox view about the Vedas, Swamiji said to him: “Sir, you emphasize that there can be only one interpretation of the Vedas, which I consider a kind of fanaticism. I know it helps to spread a sect rapidly. Again a personality cult spreads faster than scriptural dogma. I have the power to bring one-third of the population of the world under the banner of Sri Ramakrishna, but I have no intention of doing that, because that will counteract my guru’s great message of harmony, ‘As many faiths so many paths,’ and a new sect will originate in India.”

Another day, the swami said to Nivedita: “Social life in the West is like a peal of laughter, but underneath, it is a wail. It ends in a sob. The fun and frivolity are all on the surface: really, it is full of tragic intensity. Now here [India], it is sad and gloomy on the outside, but underneath are carelessness and merriment.”

Miss MacLeod wrote in her reminiscences: “In the evening, sitting around the great fire in the hall of Ridgely Manor, he would talk, and once after he came out with some of his thoughts a lady said, ‘Swami, I don’t agree with you there.’ ‘No? Then it is not for you,’ he answered. Someone else said, ‘O, but that is where I find you true.’ ‘Ah, then it was for you,’ he said showing that utter respect for the other man’s views. One evening he was so eloquent, about a dozen people listening, his voice becoming so soft and seemingly far away; when the evening was over, we all separated without even saying goodnight to each other. Such a holy quality pervaded. My sister, Mrs. Leggett, had occasion to go to one of the rooms afterward. There she found one of the guests, an agnostic, weeping. ‘What do you mean?’ my sister asked, and the lady said, ‘That man has given me eternal life. I never wish to hear him again.’”

Another day the swami asked Ralph, Mrs. Wyckoff ’s son, “Can you see your own eyes?” Ralph answered that he could not, except in a mirror. “God is like that,” the swami told him. “He is as close as your own eyes. He is your own, even though you can’t see Him.”

Mrs. Edith Allan wrote in her reminiscences: “Although I attended all Swamiji’s public lectures both in San Francisco and Alameda, it was … close contact with Swamiji that I most deeply cherish. Once after being quiet for some time Swamiji said: ‘Madame, be broadminded, always see two ways. When I am on the Heights, I say “I am He,” and when I have a stomachache, I say “Mother, have mercy on me.” Always see two ways.’ On another occasion he said: ‘Learn to be the witness. If there are two dogs fighting on the street and I go out there, I get mixed up in the fight; but if I stay quietly in my room, I witness the fight from the window. So learn to be the witness.’”

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