O my mind let us go home – Why do you roam

The earth, that foreign land

And wear its alien garb?

These senses, these elements

Are strangers; none is your own …

Why do you forget yourself

Falling in love with strangers?

O my mind, why do you

Forget your own?

Sri Ramakrishna and his group

Sri Ramakrishna began to mould his torchbearers who later crystallized and embodied his insights and teachings, going out into the materialistic world and bringing to it a special brand of activism bred of deep spiritual insights. He yearned for a spiritual heir who would challenge and question his realizations, who would be fired with that special zeal. Before his true disciples arrived and before he trained them to spread his mission far and wide, Ramakrishna himself encountered people with different viewpoints, who too believed in serving the ailing humanity, but had different methods of doing so. Ramakrishna had a unique method and approach which was more sustainable in the long run.

Through his life, Ramakrishna came into contact with a number of people whose scholarship or wealth brought them respect everywhere they went. But few had the divine spark that he searched for. When he met Devendranath Tagore, famous all over Bengal for his wealth, scholarship, saintly character and social position, he was disappointed, for Sri Ramakrishna had expected to meet a saint who had completely renounced the world. Instead, he found that Devendranath combined his saintliness with a life of enjoyment. He also met the great poet, Michael Madhusudan, who had embraced Christianity ‘for the sake of his stomach’. To him, the Master could not impart any instruction, for the Divine Mother ‘pressed his tongue’ when he tried to do so. In addition, he met Maharaja Jatindra Mohan Tagore, a titled aristocrat of Bengal; Kristodas Pal, editor, social reformer and a patriot; Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, the noted philanthropist and educator; Pandit Shashadhar, a great champion of Hindu orthodoxy; Aswini Kumar Dutta, a headmaster, moralist and a leader of Indian nationalism; and Bankim Chandra Chatterji, a deputy magistrate, novelist and essayist. A pandit without discrimination, he regarded them as mere straws. He searched people’s hearts for the light of God and if that was missing he did not have anything further to do with them.

The Europeanized Kristodas Pal did not approve of the Master’s emphasis on renunciation and said: ‘Sir, this concept of renunciation has almost ruined the country. It is for this reason that the Indians are a subject nation today. Doing good to others, bringing education to the door of the ignorant and, above all, improving the material conditions of the country – these should be our duty now. Religion and renunciation would, on the contrary, only weaken us. You should advise the young men of Bengal to resort only to such acts as will uplift the country.’

Sri Ramakrishna gave him a searching look and found no divine light within him.

You dare to slight renunciation and piety in these terms, when our scriptures describe them as the greatest of all virtues! After reading two pages of English you think you know the world! You appear to think you are omniscient. Well, have you seen those tiny crabs that are born in the Ganga just when the rains set in? In this big universe, you are even less significant than one of those small creatures. How dare you talk of helping the world? The Lord will look to that. You haven’t the power in you to do it.

After a pause the Master continued:

Can you explain to me how you can work for others? I know what you mean by helping them. To feed a number of people, to treat them when they are sick, to construct a road or dig a well – isn’t that all? These are good deeds, no doubt, but how trifling compared with the vastness of the universe! How far can a man advance along this line? How many people can you save from famine? Malaria has ruined a whole province; what could you do to stop its onslaught? God alone looks after the world. Let a man first realize Him. Let a man get the authority from God and be endowed with His power; then, and then alone, may he think of doing good to others. A man should first be purged of all egotism. Then alone will the blissful Mother ask him to work for the world.

Sri Ramakrishna mistrusted philanthropy that presumed to pose as charity. He warned people against it. He saw in most acts of philanthropy nothing but egotism, vanity, a desire for glory, a barren excitement to kill the boredom of life, or an attempt to soothe a guilty conscience. True charity, he taught, is the result of love of God – service to man in a spirit of worship.

The day the Master met Narendranath Datta was the most cataclysmic moment in the lives of Sri Ramakrishna and Naren, as he was lovingly called. This meeting did not promise smooth sailing for either. Both had to tread a difficult path together and individually, in accepting each other. If it was not for the Master’s unconditional love for Naren and the direction that he constantly got from the Divine Mother, it would not have been the great Master–student relationship as Ramakrishna and Vivekananda that the world knows today.

When the Master first saw Naren, he was singing a bhajan in a deep haunting voice. The guests assembled were from the upper strata of society and Naren was dressed carelessly with his hair tousled, but he was in a deep state of concentration. Sri Ramakrishna was deeply moved by the singing and nodded his head in approval.

Swami Vivekananda

It was not that Naren had not heard of Sri Ramakrishna; he simply was not interested in him. The principal of Naren’s college, W.W. Hastie, one of the few Englishmen who had a profound understanding of India’s culture, had urged Naren to go to Dakshineswar. ‘To understand the nature-mysticism of Wordsworth,’ he said ‘you must understand states of deep meditation, such as that I have witnessed Sri Ramakrishna experience.’

To spread his message to the four corners of the earth, Sri Ramakrishna needed a strong instrument. With his frail body and delicate limbs, he knew that he could not make great journeys across wide spaces. And he found such an instrument in his beloved Naren, who was later known to the world as Swami Vivekananda. Even before meeting Naren, the Master had seen him in his visions when he was immersed in the meditation of the Absolute. He saw him in the form of a sage, who at Sri Ramakrishna’s request, agreed to take human birth to assist him in his work.

Narendranath was born in Calcutta on 12 January 1863, of an aristocratic Kayastha family. His mother was steeped in the great Hindu epics and his father, a distinguished attorney of the Calcutta High Court, was agnostic about religion, a friend of the poor, and a mocker of social conventions. Even in his boyhood and teens, Narendra possessed great physical courage and presence of mind, a vivid imagination, deep power of thought, keen intelligence, an extraordinary memory, love of truth, passion for purity, spirit of independence and, above all, a tender heart. An expert musician, he also acquired proficiency in physics, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, history and literature. He grew up to be an extremely handsome young man. Even as a child, he practised meditation and showed great powers of concentration. Though free and passionate in word and action, he took the vow of austere religious chastity and never allowed the fire of purity to be extinguished by the slightest defilement of body or soul.

As his college studies progressed, the rationalistic Western philosophers of the nineteenth century unsettled his boyhood faith in God and religion. He never accepted religion on mere ‘faith’. He wanted some kind of demonstration of God. But very soon his passionate nature discovered that mere universal reason was cold and bloodless. His emotional nature, dissatisfied with a mere abstraction, required concrete support to help him in times of temptation. He wanted an external power, a guru, who by embodying perfection in the flesh would still the commotion of his soul. Attracted by Keshab’s magnetic personality, he joined the Brahmo Samaj and became a singer in its choir. But within the Samaj, he did not come across a single person or find the guru whom he was desperately seeking, who could say that he had seen God.

During the first meeting of Ramakrishna and Naren, Ramakrishna was immensely impressed and looked at his face intently. Naren was uncomfortable and embarrassed by this close scrutiny. Sri Ramakrishna questioned him, but Naren answered in a distant manner.

Talented, sporty, energetic, restless, aggressively independent, disciplined – Narendranath was a natural leader, unconventional in outlook, careless of social sanction, and with an iron will. At eighteen, struggling with the nature of creation and death and the presence of evil, he challenged the existence of God and found himself heading in the only direction that pure reason untempered by intuition could take him – towards agnosticism.

One day Ramachandra Dutta, who was related to Naren, told him, ‘I hear you turned down that marriage proposal again. Your parents are terrified you’re going to remain celibate and become a sadhu like your grandfather.’ Naren replied, ‘When I was a child, I thought sadhus were the very embodiment of heroic freedom, they were giants forging their own way through the world, heedless of the views of society, slaves to no man.’ The curious Ramachandra Dutta asked, ‘And now?’ Naren shrugged wryly and replied, ‘I wonder – does the Divine not come out of the creative imagination of man’s long childhood?’ Ramachandra Dutta unbelievingly said, ‘Uh huh! You won’t find spiritual life at the Brahmo Samaj, Naren. You must accept Sri Ramakrishna’s invitation. I’ll take you to Dakshineswar myself.’

‘After my exams,’ Naren replied, as he did not like being pressured. Ramachandra Dutta acknowledged the evasion and agreed.

It was not that Naren had not searched for God. He yearned for a faith he could embrace with his whole being, a faith stretching far beyond the narrow circle of reason, a faith wide enough to encompass the universe. Once, while listening to Devendranath Tagore speaking eloquently of God, Naren asked him point-blank, ‘But Sir, have you seen Him?’ The erudite leader of the Brahmo Samaj had not, and none of those who preached of God had either. Preachers cited earlier preachers, who cited earlier preachers. And their sermons were collections of lifeless quotations out of books; nothing they said seemed to come out of lived experience.

‘If God actually exists,’ Naren reasoned, ‘there must be irrefutable evidence. Somewhere there must be those who put Him to the test and proved Him in the laboratories of their own experience as plainly and as unsentimentally as Western scientists proved the laws of nature.’ Four days after Naren met Sri Ramakrishna at Surendranath Mitra’s residence, he arrived at Dakshineswar with Ramachandra Dutta. When they got there, Ramakrishna was in his room with a group of devotees, meditating. Sri Ramakrishna was told about the arrival of the new guests. He opened his eyes, showed great delight and gestured Naren to sit on the mat. He asked, ‘Do you know any Bengali songs? You sing so well.’ Naren began to sing.

O my mind let us go home – Why do you roam
The earth, that foreign land
And wear its alien garb?
These senses, these elements
Are strangers; none is your own …
Why do you forget yourself
Falling in love with strangers?
O my mind, why do you
Forget your own?

On hearing the song, Ramakrishna went into samadhi. Naren was startled and felt uneasy. To add to his discomfiture, Ramakrishna grabbed him by his hand, drew him out to the veranda and wept, saying, ‘What took you so long? Could you not have guessed how much I’ve been waiting for you? My ears are burned off listening to the talk of these worldly people! I thought I should burst not having anyone to tell how I really felt.’

Naren was astonished beyond words and could hardly get over the initial shock when Ramakrishna continued, ‘I know you, my lord. You are the Rishi Nara, the incarnation of Narayana. You’ve come to remove the miseries and sufferings of humanity.’ Naren, who continued to be stunned, held himself back and suddenly Ramakrishna said, ‘Wait a moment.’ He went into the room, returned with a dish of sweets and fed Naren. He fed him mouthful after mouthful and said, ‘Promise me you will come again … alone.’

Naren was doubtful, but Ramakrishna was earnest. Naren was polite yet hesitant to promise, but against his will said, ‘Yes … all right, I will.’ Delighted and relieved as a child, Ramakrishna then took Naren back to the room and spoke to the devotees with great inspiration, ‘God can be seen and spoken to just as I am speaking to you. But who wants to speak to God? People grieve and shed enough tears to fill many pots because their wives or sons are dead, or because they’ve lost their money and estates. But who weeps because he hasn’t seen God?’

Naren listened to the Master’s words and suddenly, with great intensity, asked, ‘Sir, have you seen God?’ And Ramakrishna spontaneously replied, ‘I have seen Him just as I see you. I have spoken to Him as I am speaking to you. If a man truly desires to see God and calls upon Him with a longing heart, He surely reveals himself.’

‘Is it the same man?’ Naren thought looking at Sri Ramakrishna who seemed normal again after that bizarre scene in the veranda. ‘He’s not like all those other preachers full of poetic bombast … Well, he may be a monomaniac, but it is a great soul who can undertake such renunciation. Yes, he is mad. But how pure! And what renunciation!’

Naren went up to Sri Ramakrishna and touched his feet and took leave of him. Sri Ramakrishna was left with a longing for him to come back. But Naren did not return for a month. The meeting with Sri Ramakrishna disturbed him violently – as it had Keshab Chandra Sen and Ramachandra Dutta. But more than others Naren feared Sri Ramakrishna’s possible influence over himself.

Although he was dissatisfied with the spiritual life of the Brahmo Samaj, he was enthusiastic about its reformist ideals. He was critical of the traditional Hinduism for which Sri Ramakrishna stood. He believed in reason rather than intuition, in discrimination rather than devotion.

As Naren walked back to Calcutta he told himself that Sri Ramakrishna was crazy. Yet, in spite of himself he felt almost ready to follow him. But no! How could he become a disciple to a mad man? Sri Ramakrishna must be mad.

Sri Ramakrishna eluded judgement. He did not fit ordinary categories. He was a challenge and a riddle in every sense. His devotion challenged Naren’s sense of propriety, his serenity challenged Naren’s restlessness. Despite his reservations towards him, Naren was drawn to Sri Ramakrishna and he went back to Dakshineswar. When he arrived the Master was meditating in his room. Naren sat in front of him. The Master opened his eyes and looked at Naren neutrally, muttered something and put his foot on him. Naren felt the whole room whirling and he cried out, ‘What are you doing to me? Don’t you know I have parents at home?’ Ramakrishna removed his foot and said, ‘All right, let it stop now. It need not all be done at once. It will happen in its own good time.’ Naren struggled with this experience as he had with the first. Had he been hypnotized? But he prided himself on his strong mind. Besides, the experience he had when Sri Ramakrishna touched him was hardly that of a hypnotic stupor. He decided to be on guard the next time.

But the next time Sri Ramakrishna touched Naren, he fell unconscious instantly. Sri Ramakrishna said, later, that during this time he questioned Naren closely on his past lives and ascertained that he was indeed the reincarnation of the sage Nara. But all that Naren was convinced of was that he was in the presence of a being with a far greater will than his own. To that he would not submit; it was wrong to surrender his freedom of judgement to another.

Had Sri Ramakrishna not been, at the same time, a trusting, open and naive child, undoubtedly Naren would never have returned a third time, for there is nothing more repugnant than being manipulated by a hard, adult personality who is stronger than you. Yet Naren returned again and again. He had decided he would test Sri Ramakrishna at every stage.

The violence of Naren’s struggle against his Master made him the most reliable witness to Sri Ramakrishna’s greatness. ‘Let none regret,’ Naren said later to hesitant disciples, ‘that they were difficult to convince. I fought my Master for six long years, with the result that I now know every inch of the way.’

One day, Naren was walking with Rakhal in the temple courtyard towards the Kali temple when he sarcastically said, ‘The Master’s had me reading texts on advaita. Rakhal, this non-dualism is nonsense. “I’m God you’re God, everything that is born and dies is God!” The authors of these books must have been mad. How can a created soul think of itself as the creator? Advaita muddles everything together in a formless, tasteless, cosmic soup.’

Rakhal smiled tolerantly and moved off to the temple and Naren asked, ‘Where are you going?’ Rakhal teasingly replied, ‘To worship Kali. Most dualistically. You should approve.’ This irritated Naren and he said, ‘Now you’re going to prostrate yourself before a hunk of stone! For heaven’s sake, Rakhal, where are your brains?’

The philosophic dialectic of the West is analytical. The intellect struggles to make sharp distinctions between things, to untangle knotted strands and trace pathways, to make order out of the seeming chaos of the universe. It works by dividing and conquering, by breaking up the universe into logically manageable chunks and manipulating them to the dictates of the intellect. The price paid for this way of thinking (as we have seen to our cost) is that we forget that things are whole to begin with. We see ourselves and objects and events as loosely bound independent units, whose fundamental truth consists in separateness and not in unity with the cosmos.

One day, as Naren sat with the group of devotees in the courtyard, he said sarcastically, ‘Can it be that this water pot is God? Or this jug? Is it God? And everything we see is God? And you are God?’ Some devotees laughed genuinely and some hesitatingly when Sri Ramakrishna asked, ‘What are you laughing about?’ He gently touched Naren’s shoulder. Suddenly, Naren saw with wonder, light emanating from the jug and water pot. It was the same light that emanated from the jug that also emanated from the water pot and it blinded Naren. The same light surrounded the temple courtyard, trees and everywhere that Naren looked.

Words were Naren’s native element. He swam in conceptualization as a fish in water. He used his intellect as a sharp blade to cleave the true from the false. Sri Ramakrishna said, ‘Knowledge can get you to God’s living room. But it is love that will take you into his inner apartment.’ Refusing to battle Naren on his terms with endless argument, Sri Ramakrishna showed him, wordlessly, with a touch, the reality of advaita.

This was Naren who was to become Swami Vivekananda, Sri Ramakrishna’s foremost disciple, his mouthpiece to the world. It was not for nothing that Romain Rolland said years later that Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda displayed together ‘the splendid symphony of the universal soul’.

As Naren’s training continued over the years, other disciples came to Sri Ramakrishna and eventually became part of his inner circle. Six of them Sri Ramakrishna called Ishwarkotis, beings who had always been liberated from the enjoyments of worldly objects, therefore, free from the bondage of the results of karma, but had allowed themselves to be born to serve mankind and live in a loving relation with God. Foremost amongst Sri Ramakrishna’s Ishwarkotis were Naren and Rakhal.