Vivekananda and his love for humanity - part 1

This is a part of an article written for a magazine and is depicted here in several parts.

In Ramakrishna the Great Master, by Swami Saradananda, Sri Ramakrishna’s vision about his foremost disciple is depicted vividly. He had this vision even before Narendra came to Daksineswar. In that vision his mind was going up on a luminous path in Samadhi, going beyond the gross world of manifestations into the subtle world of ideas and even beyond the world of deities. Finally it arrived in the realm of indivisible which was difficult to enter even for gods and deities with forms. There it saw seven sages whose bodies were composed only of divine light, engrossed in Samadhi. In virtue and love and renunciation they were far greater than even the deities. Then a part of that abstract undifferentiated divine light became transformed into a divine child who came and embraced one of those sages and tried waking him up from Samadhi with his nectar like words. The sage was full of love and bliss as if the divine child was his very heart’s treasure. The divine child expressed great joy and told him that he was going and the sage must come with him. The sage’s loving eyes gave his approval and a part of his body and mind came down in the form of a divine light to the earth. Thus the sage from the undifferentiated, awakened by the touch of the divine child, came down accompanying that child for fulfillment of a divine purpose.

One thing that instantly strikes a chord is the nature of the relationship between the divine child and the sage and the description around their meeting. It was one of intense love and joy, as if they had known each other since time immemorial and the sage’s expression revealed that the child was his heart’s treasure. The other aspect is that the seven heavenly sages in the realm of abstract and undivided were so advanced in spirituality, love, renunciation, piety and virtue that they were the denizens of a realm which was not reachable even for the gods and goddesses. The embrace of the divine child was the beginning of a journey undertaken by one of the greatest souls in the history of mankind, a descent from the highest realms to that of the concrete, from being immersed in the ocean of Brahman to entering the world of Maya and accepting all the trials, tribulations, miseries and suffering offered by it, for the redemption of humanity from centuries of oppression, superstitions and ignorance. Only the greatest of the sages, who is love and bliss personified, established in the knowledge of the grand unity pervading all which exists in that realm of undivided, could have undertaken such a tedious journey for the love of that divine child from whom the universe projected. He accepted the pains, sorrows and miseries of an embodied spirit for becoming the teacher of mankind and remover of the ignorance.

The divine mission is oft repeated, the same spiritual energy flows through various channels in various ages, being always driven by love and compassion for the suffering of the ignorant, to continue playing in a new role in a new drama enacted by the divine child. However one thing that stands apart from all other rasa or bhava in this divine play is the unrequited and superhuman love for all and sundry, even for those who are not worthy of that love and compassion. It is this love that binds the devotees and disciples and gives them courage and strength under duress. This is the great unearthly love that the sage brought down from his realm to the earth. This is the same loving embrace that bound him to his divine child teacher in a human body, Sri Ramakrishna. It made him tied by bonds of affection to his many disciples and friends, and it led him to establish a great organization for worshipping divinity in human form through seva, the selfless love and devotion to gods in human forms. The lofty plane of idealism in which he placed himself and which secured his place in the hearts of millions of devotees is unreachable even by the many Gods in the pantheon of Hinduism and very rightly he is often compared to Shiva, the only God who, like him, is molded in the patterns of knowledge, love and renunciation and whose compassion for the devotees, even the meanest of them, is beyond comparison. Every other aspect of Swamiji pales in comparison to the two principal traits in his life, love and compassion for all, and renunciation.