Sri Ramakrishna
and Swami Vivekananda

From Chapter One,
by Carolyn Lee, PhD

Narendra Nath Datta, later Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), was a unique individual who combined in his personality the saint, the skeptic, the rebel, the reformer, the prophet, the orator, the sage.

While his being was steeped in the ancient spirituality of India, he was also a graduate in law from Kolkata University, schooled as much in Western philosophy and literature as in the Sanskrit classics. Swami Vivekananda was a child of his time.

As a university student, he would not accept anything as true without direct personal experience. Thus, when he first approached Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda was in the mood of testing the Master's Spiritual Realization, only to be caught unawares by the undeniable reality of Ramakrishna's Transmission of Spiritual power.

Later in their relationship, Ramakrishna fell into a spontaneous rapture, recognizing the deeper self of his new disciple. He saw in Swami Vivekananda his Spiritual companion of past lifetimes, a sage of the highest Realization, voluntarily re-appearing now for the sake of a great work.

When Ramakrishna told Swami Vivekananda of this vision, the young man was stunned, and thought that the Master must be mad.

It was not the moment for Ramakrishna's new disciple to comprehend what the Master alone could see. Indeed, as Ramakrishna confided to his other disciples, "Naren must not find out who he is, for when he does, he will die."

Shortly before Ramakrishna passed out of the body, he made the great sacrifice of his life. He poured the Spiritual force of his being entirely into his beloved disciple Swami Vivekananda, in an act of Transmission and relinquishment that deeply awed those who witnessed it. Afterward, Ramakrishna remarked, "Now I am just an empty fakir."

Such an "emptying" of one Master's Spirit-force into another combines the virtue of both in the receiver. Thus, when the Spiritual Transmission of Ramakrishna entered into Swami Vivekananda, the two became one force, one person, at the level of the deeper self.

And what did that deeper self represent? Eons of Masters of the highest order, carrying, through reincarnation, the current of spirituality from time immemorial.

In the years following Ramakrishna's own death, Swami Vivekananda wandered the length and breadth of India, in a life-and-death quest to resolve the purpose of his life. Finally, in 1893, fulfilling a prophecy of Ramakrishna that he would one day take the jewels of Indian spirituality to the West, Swami Vivekananda sailed for America.

The overwhelming acclaim with which the young Hindu monk was greeted in Chicago at the World's Parliament of Religions made headlines across the country. His maiden speech in the West had touched a nerve in his audience, who were moved in a way that they had never before experienced.

This dark-skinned man, clad in sannyasin orange, was calling his listeners beyond the presumptions and prejudices of their religion and culture to embrace and enact a gospel of unity, tolerance, and peace for all humankind. And this was no merely social message. It was delivered with a Spiritual power and authority that no one in the West could emulate.

Swami Vivekananda had a greater impulse than simply lecturing to the crowds that flocked to hear him after his triumph in Chicago. He wanted to initiate a profound change in the world.

It was obvious to him that sectarianism, godlessness, and violence were set to destroy civilization unless a greater wisdom could take possession of the soul of humanity. And he was certain that this greater wisdom must take root and flower in the West, for the West was making the future of humankind.

Swami Vivekananda appeared like a sudden, luminous comet in the night sky of the Western world that was becoming dangerously confused by its own cleverness, and approaching the darkest century of its history.

However, after two sojourns in America and Europe, Swami Vivekananda saw that his purpose could not possibly be fulfilled in his lifetime. His impact in the West could only go so far, for he was a foreigner, a celibate monk, a native of a conquered people.

Broken in health, Swami Vivekananda retired in 1900 to Belur Math on the Ganges, telling his brother monks that he would not see forty. And on July 4, 1902, Swami Vivekananda departed the body by means of an intentional yogic process. He was thirty-nine.

It is the nature of a comet not only to make a brief appearance, but to return. From remarks that Swami Vivekananda made in his later years, it is clear that he not only knew who he was, but he knew what must occur.

The work for humanity to which he had dedicated himself required a gesture unthinkable to a traditional Indian. It required a submission to be re-born in the West.

And, so, in his travels in America and Europe, and in his association with the Western friends and disciples who came to him, Swami Vivekananda freely allowed unbreakable bonds of love and heart-sympathy to develop, bonds that would surely draw him back to a Western birth. He even intimated enigmatically to those closest to him that this was his intention.

Next: A Spontaneous Prophecy from Upasani Baba