VIVEKANANDA: HIS LIFE-MISSION AND

PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDANTA

DR RAM CHANDRA GUPTA

Principal, I. K. Degree College, Indore

Swami Vivekananda did not seem to belong to this world but appeared to be a radiant being descended from another and higher sphere for a definite purpose. He was a seer, an illumined soul, very much different from the ordinary run of mankind. His mind was luminous; he had that supreme knowledge of which the Gita speaks and which results from the realization of oneness with the Supreme Being. Besides, he had within himself a fountain of energy to carry his message not only to the different parts of India but to the West also. He never prepared his speeches and addresses, but poured forth the deepest spiritual truths in words of imperishable beauty. Once Sri Ramakrishna said about his young disciple, Narendra, who is known to the world as Swami Vivekananda: “He is not a pond, he is a reservoir. He is not a pitcher or a jug, he is a veritable barrel. He is not a minnow or sardine, he is a huge red-eyed carp. He is not an ordinary sixteen-petalled lotus, he is a glorious lotus with a thousand petals”.¹ The master also said on another occasion: “Narendra is not a twig floating in a river–a twig that links even if a bird alights upon it. Rather is he a great tree-trunk carrying men, beasts and merchandise upon its chest”. ²

This beautiful summing up of Vivekananda’s personality suggests about his strength, vigour and endurance. A strong athlete, a Herculean figure having broad face spotted with large eyes and vast forehead, he bore in himself a storehouse of power and strength, granite faith and rock of self-confidence, immeasurable passion of a warrior and the Napoleonic ambition for a world conquest. At the same time, he possessed a burning desire for renunciation of all earthly empires and for casting off all his chains and roaming like a wandering unknown pilgrim, sheltering under a tree or meditating alone in a lonely cave in the Himalayas. “I long, oh, I long for my rags, my shaven head, my sleep under the trees, and my food for begging…” (January 1895)

If one word can speak out and signify the life and mission of Swami Vivekananda, the patriot and prophet of modern India, it is strength. A lion among men he roared and thundered forth rousing the leviathan of the sleeping nation from century-old slumber and mental stupor, to rise on its feet and march on freely. He wanted in us the sleeping divinity to awaken that austere elevation of spirit which rouses heroism. “Never forget the glory of human nature! We are the greatest God that ever was or ever will be. Christs and Buddhas are but waves on the boundless ocean which I am.” (1895, in an interview at the Thousand Island Park, U. S. A.) Vivekananda found the essence of the Upanishads and religious scriptures in one word ‘manliness.’ It was due to his message of courage and fearlessness that he was described as a ‘tamer of souls.’ Delegates at the Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in 1893, were left spellbound after having heard him and referred to him as the ‘cyclonic monk from India.’ Wherever he went, he carried an air or kingliness and power.

Vivekananda, whose real name was Narendranath Dutta, was born in an aristocratic Kshatriya family of Calcutta on the twelfth of January, 1863. He was blessed with a sound constitution and grew up into a healthy and vigorous youth. As a college student, he made his mark in many fields and became popular as a debator and conversationalist. But he also had a meditative strain that often made him appear aloof and indifferent.

Vivekananda came under the influence of rationalist thought of his time. He was much impressed by European science, liberalism and the democratic pattern of Western society as expressed in political and sociological literature. He studied the ideas of J. S. Mill, the philosophers of the French Revolution, Kant and Hegel. He even entered into correspondence with Herbert Spencer and offered criticism of some of his ideas. Vivekananda’s studies were confined not only to Western thought, but he was also drawn towards India’s religious and philosophical heritage through the writings of Brahmo Samaj leaders.

On account of his varied, though somewhat unsystematic, studies and enthusiasm for reason, Vivekananda developed an agnostic, even sceptical, outlook on life. But his meeting with the Ramakrishna in November, 1881 and his close association with his the master for about five years brought a turning point in his life. His aggressive faith in logic was toned down, and he was made to be understand the value of personal realization as distinct from intellectual conviction. The master carried him by easy stages into his own spiritual realm and led him, step by step, to the highest pinnacle of inward experience. ³

Ramakrishna’s death in August, 1886 again brought a change in Vivekananda’s life. After the death of his master, he embarked upon extensive travels from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin with an urge to spread the message of Ramakrishna and see the natural beauty of the Motherland, and visited all the important centres of Indian culture. For years no body knew what had happened to him. He allowed himself to be completely ‘swallowed up in the immensity that is India’. Through his travels, he not only saw India’s cultural wealth, the strength of her traditions, her assimilative powers and her latent spiritual energy, but he also saw her grinding poverty, her social backwardness and her mental inertia into which she had fallen. Although he wandered without any plan, wherever he went he learnt something new and gained new experiences. During his stay at Ahmedabad he was attracted towards Jain and Islamic traditions; and while at Alwar in Rajasthan he developed a keen interest in History and expressed the necessity of a school of Indian historians, steeped in modern scientific methods. He had thus a fair knowledge of both the Western thought and India’s religious and philosophical heritage and her manifold problems. His visit to America and Europe developed in him a good deal of admiration for the West. The dynamism, social awareness, spirit of adventure, capacity for hard work and concern for practical values that he saw in America and Europe made a deep impression upon him. Although he saw the triumph of human spirit in the achievement of science, he also became aware of the limitations of Western civilization. On his second journey to the West in 1899, he was left disillusioned in many ways. ⁴

Before he had gone to the West a second time. Vivekananda had undertaken a whirlwind tour in India, carrying the message of resurgent Indian spirituality to every part of her. The messages, which he delivered at different places, were later published under the title, Lectures from Colombo to Almora. These messages did much to restore the self-confidence of Indian intellectuals, and to stimulate the study of Indian philosophy and religion. In 1897, he established the Ramakrishna Mission at Belur, near Calcutta. He died on the 4th July, 1902 before he had attained fortieth year of his life. Although he died long ago, his great voice is still present to fill the sky.

It should now be amply clear from the preceding short account of Vivekananda’s life that he came to this earth with a mission and was fully conscious of it. That mission was to make India aware of the role which religion had played in her life from time immemorial. He often reminded his Indian listeners that religion alone constituted the real life of the people and that they, as a nation, would cease to exist, if they forgot their religion. In his reply to the address of welcome, presented to him at Ramnad, he commented: “Remember, if you give up that spirituality, leaving it aside to go after the materialistic civilization of the West, the result will be that in three generations you will be an extinct race; because the backbone of the nation will be broken, the foundation upon which the national edifice has been built will be undermined, and the result will be annihilation all round”. ⁵

It must be noted that Vivekananda did not like any kind of orthodoxy in matters of religion, in spite of his strong faith in the indispensability of religion in the life of a nation. He advised his co-religionists to avoid the old orthodoxy, which he condemned as ‘kitchen religion’ and ‘don’t touchism’. But he preferred it as against the trend towards Westernisation, for he thought that the orthodox man had at least the necessary strength to stand on his feet and stick to his position, which the Westernized person had no such strength and was simply shifting his ground again and again. At Madurai, he stated in his address that India had been constantly supplying spirituality to the world throughout her long history. He spoke: “She contributed it long before the rising of the Persian Empire; the second time was during the Persian Empire; for the third time during the ascendancy of the English, she is going to fulfil the same destiny once more”. ⁶

Vivekananda did not agree with those, who held religion responsible for the social backwardness and political subjugation of India. Although he admitted that the rigidity of caste system, its social exclusiveness, the spirit of fatalism and other factors, which had come to be accepted as essentials of Hinduism, greatly contributed to her decline, he was of the view that it was not the fault of Hinduism but of the people, who misunderstood it and failed to translate its fine principles into practice. According to him, India declined because “she narrowed herself, went into her shell, as the oyster does, and refused to give the life-giving truths to thirsting nations outside the Aryan fold.” He urged his countrymen to break through the walls or that social exclusiveness, and to go out and give to others what they possessed. He argued that the secret of life was to give and take. India can learn mechanism and scientific devices from the West and, in return, can give to it the spiritual message of Hinduism.

Vivekananda drew the essence of Hinduism from the Upanishads, the Gita and the Sutras of Vyasa. He used the term ‘Vedanta’ to cover the systems of thought expounded by Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Chaitanya and others. In other words, Vedanta includes the Advaita, Visishtadvaita and the dualist systems of thought. Vivekananda maintained that there was no incompatibility between the various systems of thought. The human mind begins with dualism, rises to qualified dualism and ultimately reaches the qualified monism or Advaita, which proclaims the highest truth: Tat Twam Asi (Thou Art That). Thus Vedanta, according to him, is an attempt to find out the ultimate unity of things.

The phrase Tat Twam Asi implies that man is not as he appears to be. He is neither the body nor the mind and intellect. But he is the Soul or Atman, which cannot be pierced into or cut by a dagger or a sword, burnt by fire or made wet by water. It does not perish at all. In other words, it is birthless, deathless and changeless; it is infinite and eternal. Because of these qualities, it is a part and parcel of the Parmaatman or the Universal Soul. From this conception of man as Atman, certain conclusions may be drawn. First, man is not inherently bad or a sinner as is taught by some religions. He is inherently and essentially pure, divine, and partakes of the nature of Sat-chit-ananda. It is wrong to think that man is weak, evil and sinful. Hence Vivekananda urged the people to cast off this wrong notion and to believe in the divinity of man. Secondly, if each one of us is divine and a part and parcel of Parmaatman, all of us become one. This also leads to the concepts of equality of man and the unity of mankind. If the same God is present in all of us, there can be no other relationship between man and man than that of love and service. Vedanta thus preaches the message of universal love and service. As love and service demand the spirit of sacrifice and renunciation, the message of Vedanta also insists upon it. As a strong believer in the philosophy of Vedanta, Vivekananda also found the real essence of India’s religion and spirituality in the observance of love, service and sacrifice and renunciation. According to him, the religion of India, which may also be called as religion of the Vedanta, is a man-making religion, a religion of strength the observance of which would make any people brave, courageous and pure. No nation becomes great just by making material progress and enacting good laws. It is the strength of character of her people, which makes her great and strong. As the Vedanta wants to raise or improve the quality of men by infusing in them the strength of character, it goes to the very root of the matter. That is why Vivekananda wanted to give to the West the message of Vedanta in exchange for the means to improve the conditions of the poor in India. He thought that the whole world needed the help of India; her spiritual treasures could not be allowed to be destroyed as the treasures of several other civilizations had been. The people of India, he thought, were also to be reminded of their own rich spiritual traditions, which they had forgotten partly due to their long subjection to foreign rule and partly due to their own ignorance and inertia. India could not afford to loose anchorage to her age-old tradition of spiritualism. Vivekananda’s life-mission was to open the door of spirituality to everyone. He felt that religion was bound up with India’s destiny. “For good or for evil,” he said, “religious ideal has been flowing in India for thousands of years. It has permeated the atmosphere, has entered our very blood, tinged with every drop in our veins, but become one with our constitution, has become the very vitality of our lives. Can we give it up without rousing the same energy in reaction, without filling the channel which that mighty river has cut for itself in the course of millennia? Do you want that the Ganges should go back to its own bed and begin a new course”? ⁷

Vivekananda was, however, realistic enough to realize that the truths of Vedanta would have little appeal for a hungry man. He recalled the words of his master that religion was not for empty stomachs. Spiritual message would melt in the air before the wrath of hunger, the penury and sad spectacle of the poor, demoralised and degenerated mass of people, devoured by senseless credulity and fetishism. Vivekananda in his compassion for the downtrodden said: “...but the crying evil in the East is not religion–they have religion enough–but it is bread that suffering millions of burning India cry out for with parched throat. It is an insult to a starving man to teach him metaphysics”.⁸ What right have we to speak on religion, metaphysics or high moral principles to poor millions if we fail in our primary task to give a morsel of food to hungry stomachs, and elevate them from the dark, dingy hovels to bright sunshine and the glimmering surface of life?

Vivekananda dedicated his life to the service of the unhappy masses. He thought of seeking material help from the West for the amelioration of conditions of the poor in exchange for the Gospel of Vedanta. He told his countrymen that there were many things which they could learn from the Western nations, such as their great concern for their masses, their ideal of social service and their technique of production and economic organization.

Vivekananda was highly impressed by the material brilliance of the Western civilization, when he first saw it in the city of Chicago. But gradually its darker side also began to be revealed to his keen vision. He discovered the love of lucre, the spirit of greed, and the ferocious struggle for supremacy which lay at its basis. In a letter to Sister Nivedita. written at a later date, he explained his mind: “Social life in the West is like a peal of laughter; but underneath it is a wail. It ends in a sob. The fun and frivolity are all on the surface; really it is full of tragic intensity... Here (in India) it is sad and gloomy on the surface, but underneath are carelessness and merriment”. ⁹

Vivekananda thought that what the West needed was the great spiritual truths, enumerated by the Vedanta. He told his Western audience that there was a nobler aim than accumulating wealth and conquering external nature, and that materialism could never permanently satisfy the soul of man. He further told them that the man is Atman and that the chief aim of life is to realize the divinity latent in man.

Thus Vivekananda advised both the Indian and the Westerners. He advised Indians to learn from the West the great ideals of social service, hard labour and economic organization, while his message to his Western friends was to follow the spiritual truths of India, contained in the Vedanta.

Vivekananda placed before the mankind some important facts about religion. First of all, he told that the origin of religion lay in the innate struggle of human mind to transcend the limitations of human senses, and not in nature-worship or ancestor-worship. The second important fact that he explained about religion is that it is neither word nor doctrine; it is realization. “It is not hearing accepting. It is being and becoming.” It is possible to realize God in one’s lifetime. This realization is open to everyone. The important fact about religion, according to him, is that renunciation is an indispensable pre-requisite of a true religious or spiritual life. The Idea of renunciation is an old one, and it was neither discovered by Sri Ramakrishna nor by Swami Vivekananda. But the stress on service, which Vivekananda laid, was something new. He was not satisfied with the idea of personal salvation to be reached by Jnana (knowledge). He, therefore, dedicated his entire life to the service of the poor. The Ramakrishna Mission is the outstanding monument to this ideal. The fourth important idea about religion, which Vivekananda placed before us, is that of Universal Religion. He struck the first note about it, when he said in his opening speech in the Parliament of Religions that he was proud of belonging to a religion “which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance.” He made it clear that the Hindus ‘believe not only in universal toleration’, but also ‘accept all religions as true’. In support of his claim, he cited the famous teaching of the Gita. Lord Krishna says in the Gita. “...In that way in which they worship Me, I give them fruit accordingly. O Paartha! whichever path is followed, a man ultimately comes and joins into My path”. ¹⁰ Vivekananda spoke some ten or eleven times during the session of the Parliament of Religions, and each time he advocated the idea of Universal Religion in which all men could be united without limits of space and time. He stated that the same truths could be found in every religion, and that good and perfect men had been produced by every creed. He maintained that every religion consisted of three parts–its philosophy and ideals, its mythology and its rituals. The last two varied from one religion to another, but there was an essential identity in regard, to the first.

Vivekananda’s exposition and defence of Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions led the “New York Herald” to remark that the Swami was the greatest figure in the Parliament. It further added: “After hearing him we feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned land.”

Vivekananda also explained his mind regarding the usefulness of image-worship. Although he conceded that the worship of an image could not lead a man directly to Mukti, he did not disregard its usefulness. He considered it necessary for a common man to prepare his mind for the realization of God. He regarded it as a preliminary stage in our spiritual unfoldment. Image worship is as necessary for the realization of God as infancy and childhood are for the maturity and wisdom of an old age. Idolatry can be wrong only if childhood or youth is a sin. But he was also conscious of the fact that mystery-mongering cult, so-called Yogism or magic had crept in the soil of India for long. He considered it responsible for the spiritual and social downfall of the Indian people. Likewise, as of the view that dogmatism in any realm–life or letters, idea or belief, theory or practice–is the sure enemy of progress. It stifles our souls, regiments our thoughts and trims our creative adventures into narrow groups of slavish minds.

Hence, Vivekananda strongly pleaded for adopting a free and rational attitude towards religion. According to him, freedom is the keynote of spiritual life. Religion consists soley in inner spiritual urges. Wherever religion is estranged or cut off from its vital spring, spiritualism, it is degenerated into dry formalism or dull mechanised drilling, a routine affair of life. True or dynamic religion lifts us out or our ruts. It is also “the function of philosophy to provide us with a spiritual rallying centre, ‘a synoptic vision’ as Plato loved to call it, a Samanvaya as the Hindu thinkers put it, a philosophy which will serve as a spiritual concordant, which will free the spirit of religion from the disintegration of doubt and make the warfare of creeds and sects a thing of the past”.¹¹ Vivekananda declared in the Parliament of Religions with all the emphasis that he could command: “The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve his individuality and grow according to the law of growth….. If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world, it is this…. ‘Help and not fight’, ‘assimilation, and not destruction’, ‘harmony and peace and not dissension’.”

Thus religion, according to Vivekananda, does not consist in subscribing to a particular creed or faith but in spiritual realization. The divinity within must be brought to one’s perpetual level. Vivekananda believed that in spiritualism lies India’s real greatness. This spirituality does not mean the changing manners and customs but the idea of “oneness of all, the infinite, the idea of the impersonal, the wonderful idea of the eternal soul of man, of the unbroken continuity in the march of beings, and the infinity of the universe”. ¹² This is what the Vedanta tells us, and that was the reason that Vivekananda accepted its sound metaphysics and universality.

The Vedanta fulfils the objectivity of all religious quest. It, according to Vivekananda, consists of eternal principles which stand upon their own foundations, without depending upon the authority of persons or incarnations. It alone can be regarded as Universal Religion, for it teaches principles, not persons. No religion built upon the authority of a person of persons can be universally accepted by all the races of mankind. “The sanction of the Vedanta is the eternal nature of man, already existing, already attained”.¹³ As it kindles the fire of spiritualism in man, it sets the foundations of a new world, free from all kinds of creeds and dogmas. It thus aims at serving the whole of mankind and creating world-brotherhood.

Swami Vivekananda was a great nationalist of India, who wanted to revitalize the nation through the vitality or religion. He believed that religion constituted the “centre, the keynote of the whole music of national life of India”. In him the Hindu renaissance became “self-conscious and adolescent.” He was born at such a critical period in the history of India, when all the higher impulses were overborne by the onrushing tide of materialism. The educated people were imitating foreign habits as they felt that the real solution to the problems of India and her progress lay in the acceptance of the Western methods and institutions. Vivekananda tried to stem this tide, and placed before his countrymen the splendid and invigorating message of the Vedanta which combined the spirituality of the East with the spirit of social service and organisational capacity of the West. This is what his philosophy of neo-Vedantism stands for, and which he used to effect a synthesis of cultures of the East and the West and thereby to find out the real salvation of humanity.

¹ The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madras (1964), p. 793.

² Ibid., p.542.

³ Vivekananda described his ascent to Nirvikalpa Samadhi under Ramakrishna’s guidance as the most important landmark in his own spiritual development.

⁴ He felt that Indian mysticism had become a new kind of ‘appetiser’ for the jaded intellectual palate of the West.

⁵ Vivekananda, Lectures from Colombo to Almora, Advaita Ashram, Calcutta (1963, 7th impression), p. 68.

⁶ Ibid. p. 92.

⁷ Ibid. p. 86.

⁸ The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. VII, Advaita Ashram, Calcutta (1964). Hereinafter it is cited as C. W.

⁹ Romain Rolland, Prophets of New India, Advaita Ashram, Calcutta, p. 353.

¹⁰ Gita, Chap. 4, Shloka 11.

¹¹ S. Radhakrishnan, An Idealist View of Life, George Allen and Unwin, London (1951), p. 65.

¹² C. W., Vo1. I, p. 167.

¹³ Loc. Cit.

Back