The life of Swami Vivekananda

Prof. Pon. SAKTHIVEL

PERSONALITY: When the Parliament opened on the morning of 11th September, Vivekananda immediately attracted notice as one of the most striking figures seated on the platform, with his splendid robe, yellow turban and handsome bronze face.

In his photographs, one is struck by the largeness of his features.

Though powerfully built, vivekananda was about medium height, but he seems always to have created the effect of bigness.

It was said of him that, despite his size, he moved with a natural masculine grace “like a great cat” as one lady expressed it. In America he was frequently taken for an Indian Prince or aristocrat.

Others commented on his look of being only pleased; he seemed able to draw upon inner reserves of strength at all times and there was a humorous, watchful gleam in his eyes which suggested calm, amused detachment of spirit, everyone responded to the extraordinarily deep, bell like beauty of his voice; certain of it vibrations caused a mysterious psychic excitement among his hearers.

And no doubt this had something to do with the astonishing reaction of the audience to Vivekananda’s first speech.

During that first morning session, Vivekananda’s turn came to speak; but he excused himself and asked for more time. Later in a letter to friends in India, he confessed that he had been suffering from stage fright. All the other delegates had prepared addresses; he had none. However, this hesitation only increased the general interest in him.

At length, during the afternoon, Vivekananda rose to his feet. In his deep voice, he begin, “Sisters and Brothers of America” and the entire audience, many hundred people clapped and cheered widely for two whole minutes, hitherto, the audience had certainly been well disposed: some of the speakers had been greeted enthusiastically and all of them with sufficient, politeness.

But nothing like this demonstration had taken place. No doubt the vast majority of those present hardly knew why they had been so powerfully moved.

A large gathering has its own strange kind of subconscious telepathy, and this one must have been somehow aware that it was in the presence of that most unusual of all beings a man whose words express exactly what he is.

When Vivekananda said “sisters and brothers, he actually meant that he regard the American women and men before him as his sisters and brothers the well-worn oratorical phrase became simple truth.

As soon as they would let him, the Swami continued his speech. It was quite a short one, pleading for universal tolerance, and stressing the common basis at all religions. when it was over there was more thunderous applause.

A lady who was present recalled later, “I saw scores of women walking over the beaches to get near him and I said to myself, “well my lad, if you can resist that onslaught you are indeed a God! such onslaughts were to become a part of the daily discipline of Vivekanda’s life in America.

He made several more speeches during the days that followed, including an important statement of the nature and ideals of Hinduism. By the time the Parliament had come to an end, he was beyond comparison.

He had his pick of social invitation. A Lecture Bureau offered to organise a tour for him and he accepted.

Vivekanada had come to America to speak for his native land. He wanted to tell Americans about Indian poverty and appeal for their help. But he also had a message to the West. He asked his hearers to forsake their materialism and learn from the ancient spirituality of the Hindus.

Yet he offended many by his outspokenness. “In New York, he used to say smilingly, “I have emptied entire halls”, and no wonder! to the ears of rigid fundamentalists his teaching of man’s essential divinity must have sounded utterly blasphemous, especially as it was presented in his Picturesque, Serio Cornic phrases His favourite story was of a lion who imagined himself to be a sheep, until another life showed him his reflection in a Poot! And you are lions”, he would tell his hearers, “you are pure, infuriate and perfect souls...he for whom you have been weeping and praying in church and temples....is your own self” He was the prophet of self-reliance of individual search and effort.

Vivekananda was a very great devotee but he did not proclaim his devotion to all comers.

He said “If I had preached, the personality of Ramakrishna, I might have converted half the world, but that kind of conversion is short-lived, So instead I preached Ramakrishna’s Principles. If people accept the Principles they will eventually accept the personality.

Suwami Vivekananda had been born in Calcutta on 12th January 1863. The name of his family was Batla. And his parents gave him the name Narendrnath, Naren for short.

As a monk, he had wandered about in India under various names. He assumed the name of Vivekanenda only just before embarking for the United States at the suggestion of the Maharajah of Khetri, who with the Maharajah of Mysore paid the expenses of his journey.

Viveka is a sanskrit word meaning discrimination more particularly in the philosophic sense of discrimination between the real (God) and unreal (the phenomena recognised by our sense perceptions. Ananda means divine bliss or the peace which is to be obtained through enlightenment; it is a frequently used suffix to any name which is assumed by a monk.

Vivekananda landed in Ceylon in the middle of January 1897. from there on his journey to Calcutta was a triumphal progress. His countrymen had followed the accounts of his American lectures in the newspapers.

perhaps Vivekananda’s success had sometimes been exaggerated. But they quite rightly regarded his visit to the west as a symbolic victory for exceeding in its proportion the mere amount of money he had collected for his cause or the number of disciples he had made. Indeed one may claim that no Indian before Vivekananda had ever made Americans and Englishmen accept him on such terms.

In June 1899, Vivekananda sailed for a second visit in the Western world taking with him Nivedita and Swami Turiyananda, his brother monks. This time, he went by way of Europe and England but he spent most of the next year in America.

By the time he returned to India, Vivekananda was a very sick man, he had said that he did not expect to live much longer.

Yet he was happy and calm, it seemed, to feel a release from the anxious energy which had driven him through his earlier years. Now he longed only for the peace of contemplation just before leaving America, he wrote a beautiful and remarkably self-revealing letter to a friend.

I am glad I was born, glad I suffered so, glad I did make big blunder glad to enter peace. Whether this body will fall and release me or enter into freedom in the body. The old man is gone, gone for ever never come to back again! Behind my work was ambition, behind my love was personality, behind my purity was fear.

Vivekananda was the last person in the world to worry about formal consistency. He almost always spoke extempore, fired by the circumstances of the moment, addressing himself to the condition of a particular group of hearers, reacting to the intent of a certain question.

That was his nature and he was supremely indifferent if his words of today seemed to contradict those of yesterday.

As a man of enlightenment he knew that the truth is never contained an arrangement of sentences.

It is within the speaker himself. If what he is true? then words are unimportant. In this sense Vivekananda is incapable of self-contradiction.