College and Brahmo Samaj
College and Brahmo Samaj
Vivekananda was an inveterate student of religious thought. He made it a point to study Western logic, Western philosophy, and the history of European nations. His research included the writings of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Baruch Spinoza, Georg W. F. Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, and even Charles Darwin. He became fascinated with the early theorists in evolution and in the works of Herbert Spencer, so much so that he translated Spencer’s book Education into Bengali and published it.
Alongside his study of Western philosophers, Vivekananda was thoroughly acquainted with the Indian Sanskrit scriptures and with many other writings in his native Bengali tongue. He was considered a prodigy by his professors. Dr. William Hastie, the principal of Scottish Church College, where Vivekananda studied during 1881–1884, described him as a genius, a student the likes of which he had never before encountered even in the European universities in which he had taught.
Vivekananda’s initial beliefs were shaped by Brahmo concepts, which are against the worship of idols and include a belief in a formless God. Becoming a Freemason, he was part of a breakaway faction from the Brahmo Samaj led by Keshab Chunder Sen. He was never satisfied with his knowledge of philosophy, and began to wonder if God and religion could be internalized through meditation. He was even known to go about Calcutta asking prominent residents whether they had ever come “face-to-face with God,” but he never received an answer that was convincing to him. (One can readily see a blueprint here for Chopra’s thinking. I will get deeper into that.)
The major turning point for Vivekananda was his introduction to Ramakrishna Paramahamsa in 1881. The subject of a college literature lecture in college was William Wordsworth’s poem “The Excursion” and the poet’s affinity to nature-mysticism. In the course of trying to explain the word trance in the poem, the professor told his students that if they wanted to really understand the word, they should visit Ramakrishna of Dakshineswar. After his hours of reflection and fascination with the wandering holy men, Vivekananda decided to meet Ramakrishna. It is from this point that we trace the theological views of Vivekananda. About that day, Vivekananda himself later said:
He looked just like an ordinary man, with nothing remarkable about him. He used the most simple language, and I thought “Can this man be a great teacher?” [I] crept near to him and asked him the question which I had been asking others all my life: “Do you believe in God, Sir?” “Yes,” he replied. “Can you prove it, Sir?” “Yes.” “How?” “Because I see Him just as I see you here, only in a much intenser sense.” That impressed me at once… I began to go to that man, day after day, and I actually saw that religion could be given. One touch, one glance, can change a whole life.1
As can be seen, Vivekananda did not initially accept Ramakrishna as his teacher. He was not sympathetic toward Ramakrisha’s visions, ecstasies, and dreams, which he considered to be mere figments of the imagination or hallucinations. Also, as a member of Brahmo Samaj, he revolted against Ramakrishna’s practice of idol worship and belief in polytheism, in particular his worship of Kali, an especially dark and bloodthirsty goddess in the Hindu pantheon. He often ridiculed Ramakrishna’s belief in identity with the Absolute (Advaitist Vedantism) as blasphemy and sheer nonsense.
But over the course of the next five years, Vivekananda came to totally accept Ramakrishna as his teacher, and the teacher’s beliefs became fully his own as he declared himself ready to renounce everything else in his quest for “God-realization.” As he himself said,
The magic touch of the Master… brought a wonderful change over my mind. I was astounded to find that really there was nothing in the universe but God!… Everything I saw appeared to be Brahman… I realized that I must have had a glimpse of the Advaita state. Then it struck me that the words of the scriptures were not false. Thenceforth I could not deny the conclusions of the Advaita [identity with the Absolute] philosophy.2
This belief in identity with the Absolute is at the core of Chopra’s philosophy as well. It is the seedbed of the spirituality that the West has imbibed now, albeit without understanding the fuller text or the context. It is a brilliant philosophical move of believing in the divine and of being divine, of reflecting and being the reflector, of being both the subject and the object of one’s meditation. We’re back to wondering whether we are the dream or the dreamer.
In 1885 Ramakrishna was stricken with throat cancer. There was no Ayurvedic cure here, I’m afraid, and not long afterward, he died. None of his disciplines and pristine practices were able to spare him this terrible ordeal. But during his last days of instruction to Vivekananda, Vivekananda reportedly experienced Nirvikalpa Samadhi (a thought- and concept-free bliss), and along with other disciples, he received the ochre monastic robes from Ramakrishna, and became part of the first monastic order of Ramakrishna.
Just before he died, Ramakrishna asked Vivekananda to take care of the other monastic disciples and asked them to accept Vivekananda as their leader. Ramakrishna’s condition worsened gradually and he died in the early morning hours of August 16, 1886. According to his disciples, he had reached Mahasamadhi, the ultimate attainment of oneness with the Absolute.
Vivekananda was not just a mystic. He was a strong proponent of education and of giving the Indian his rightful place in the world. He protested vigorously against British dominance and encouraged India to develop a more militant mind-set in order to resist the British. Attacking the glorification of poverty and what he felt was an overemphasis on spiritualism on the part of most Indians, he asked why it was necessary for three hundred million people to be sunk in savagery and starvation in order to make it possible for a hundred thousand to reach true spirituality. He was not interested in a God, he said, who would give him eternal bliss in heaven but who could not give him bread here. No, India was to be raised, the poor were to be fed, education was to be made available to all, and the “evil” of priestcraft was to be removed. In short, no priestcraft would mean no social tyranny; more bread would mean more opportunity for everyone.
Vivekananda was aware that his speeches and writings were seditious and wondered why the British never arrested him. He was prepared to go to any length to usher in the revolution he felt was necessary, and at times he even expressed a great longing that he would be arrested and shot; he thought it would be the beginning of the end for British rule in India as news of his death ran through the land like wildfire. It is very clear that though he had renounced the world and become a monk, he could not sit by and watch his country being “raped” by invaders. His immediate task, he felt, was to overthrow British rule. In this attempt he advocated aggression—spiritual, material, and even physical if it became necessary. A study of his correspondence shows that although he was laying the groundwork for a revolution through peaceful means, he was not opposed to using militant methods and was prepared to use force if the need arose. In Swami Vivekananda, Patriot Prophet, Bhupendranath Datta writes that after his second tour of the West, Vivekananda told an Indian professor, “What India needs today is a bomb.”3
From Surendra Nath Sen’s private diary we learn that when it was pointed out to Vivekananda that perhaps, instead of aggressive force, he ought to consider the course of “radha” (love) advocated by Chaitanya, he retorted:
Look at this nation and see what has been the outcome of such an attempt! Through the preaching of that love… the whole nation has become effeminate… The whole of Orissa has been turned into a land of cowards; and Bengal, running after the Radha-prema, these past four hundred years, has almost lost all sense of manliness!4
Arriving at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1893, he characteristically fired the first volley. His speech on that occasion, from which follows an excerpt, permanently changed religious dialogue in the West:
Brothers and sisters, we who come from the East have sat here on the platform day after day and have been told in a patronizing way that we ought to accept Christianity because Christian nations are the most prosperous. We look about us and we see England, the most prosperous Christian nation in the world, with her foot on the neck of 250,000,000 Asiatics. We look back into history and see that the prosperity began with the invasion of Mexico. Christianity wins its prosperity by cutting the throats of its fellowmen. At such a price, the Hindu will not have prosperity. I have sat here today and I have heard the height of intolerance. I have heard the creeds of the Moslem applauded when today the Moslem sword is carrying destruction into India. Blood and sword are not for the Hindu, whose religion is based on the laws of love.5
“Weastern” Spirituality had arrived. The doors of the West swung wide open for him. If Oprah had been in vogue then, Vivekananda would have been a household name in minutes. Guaranteed. He would have become her guru. I suspect he would have taken the West by a tsunami, not just by storm, if he had had access to television.