Biography

Swami Vivekananda's inspiring personality was well known both in India and in America during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth. The unknown monk of India suddenly leapt into fame at the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893, at which he represented Hinduism. His vast knowledge of Eastern and Western culture as well as his deep spiritual insight, fervid eloquence, brilliant conversation, broad human sympathy, colourful personality, and handsome figure made an irresistible appeal to the many types of Americans who came in contact with him. People who saw or heard Vivekananda even once still cherish his memory after a lapse of more than half a century.

In America Vivekananda's mission was the interpretation of India's spiritual culture, especially in its Vedantic setting. He also tried to enrich the religious consciousness of the Americans through the rational and humanistic teachings of the Vedanta philosophy. In America he became India's spiritual ambassador and pleaded eloquently for better understanding between India and the New World in order to create a healthy synthesis of East and West, of religion and science.

In his own motherland Vivekananda is regarded as the patriot saint of modern India and an inspirer of her dormant national consciousness. To the Hindus he preached the ideal of a strength-giving and man-making religion. Service to man as the visible manifestation of the Godhead was the special form of worship he advocated for the Indians, devoted as they were to the rituals and myths of their ancient faith. Many political leaders of India have publicly acknowledged their indebtedness to Swami Vivekananda.

The Swami's mission was both national and international. A lover of mankind, he strove to promote peace and human brotherhood on the spiritual foundation of the Vedantic Oneness of existence. A mystic of the highest order, Vivekananda had a direct and intuitive experience of Reality. He derived his ideas from that unfailing source of wisdom and often presented them in the soul-stirring language of poetry.

The natural tendency of Vivekananda's mind, like that of his Master, Ramakrishna, was to soar above the world and forget itself in contemplation of the Absolute. But another part of his personality bled at the sight of human suffering in East and West alike. It might appear that his mind seldom found a point of rest in its oscillation between contemplation of God and service to man. Be that as it may, he chose, in obedience to a higher call, service to man as his mission on earth; and this choice has endeared him to people in the West, Americans in particular.

In the course of a short life of thirty-nine years (1863-1902), of which only ten were devoted to public activities — and those, too, in the midst of acute physical suffering — he left for posterity his four classics: Jnana-Yoga, Bhakti-Yoga, Karma-Yoga, and Raja-Yoga, all of which are outstanding treatises on Hindu philosophy. In addition, he delivered innumerable lectures, wrote inspired letters in his own hand to his many friends and disciples, composed numerous poems, and acted as spiritual guide to the many seekers who came to him for instruction. He also organized the Ramakrishna Order of monks, which is the most outstanding religious organization of modern India. It is devoted to the propagation of the Hindu spiritual culture not only in the Swami's native land, but also in America and in other parts of the world.

Swami Vivekananda once spoke of himself as a 'condensed India.' His life and teachings are of inestimable value to the West for an understanding of the mind of Asia. William James, the Harvard philosopher, called the Swami the 'paragon of Vedantists.' Max Müller and Paul Deussen, the famous Orientalists of the nineteenth century, held him in genuine respect and affection. 'His words,' writes Romain Rolland, 'are great music, phrases in the style of Beethoven, stirring rhythms like the march of Handel choruses. I cannot touch these sayings of his, scattered as they are through the pages of books, at thirty years' distance, without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. And what shocks, what transports, must have been produced when in burning words they issued from the lips of the hero!'

Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda in Chicago, 1893 On the photo, Vivekananda has written in Bengali, and in English: “One infinite pure and holy—beyond thought beyond qualities I bow down to thee” - Swami Vivekananda
Date of Birth	12 January 1863(1863-01-12)
Place of birth	Calcutta, Bengal, India
Birth	Narendranath Dutta
Date of death	4 July 1902 (aged 39)
Place of death	Belur Math near Kolkata
Guru/Teacher	Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
Quote	Arise, awake; and stop not till the goal is reached.

Gallery

Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear.

Quote's

Who dares misery love, And hug the form of death, Dance in the destruction's dance, To him the Mother comes.


Know that talking ill of others in private is a sin. You must wholly avoid it. Many things may occur to the mind, but it gradually makes a mountain of a molehill if you try to express them. Everything is ended if you forgive and forget."

Swami Vivekananda Quotes

• Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve.

You don't have to have a college degree to serve.

You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve.

You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

• Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.

  Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

• Take the first step in faith.

  You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

• Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

• We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

• Oh, the worst of all tragedies is not to die young,
  but to live until I am seventy-five and yet not ever truly to have lived.

• In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies,
  but the silence of our friends.

• History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of
  social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people,
  but the appalling silence of the good people.

• All the powers in the universe are already ours.
  It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
  Know that there is no darkness around us.
  Take the hands away and there is the light which was from the beginning.
  Darkness never existed, weakness never existed.
  We who are fools cry that we are weak; we who are fools cry that we are impure.

• No bad action goes unchecked with impunity.
  A bath in the holy river Ganges purifies one, but the impurities turn out to
  be more clever than us. Sri Ramakrishna says that the ghosts of lust,
  greed, etc. in persons taking a bath in the Ganges disembark and wait on the
  trees on the bank, to resettle on their shoulders after they have finished
  their holy Ganges-bath! Nothing will be of any help unless we have purified
  our own mind from the dross of ancient fear, medieval hatred and modern greed.