Vivekananda and his love for humanity - part 4

Do we not find the echo of the same love in Narendranath? Of course, else how the same love could be magnified in Swami Vivekananda’s personality? From taking care of an injured soldier, to giving his new clothes to mendicants, to making sure that a friend is able to sit for the examination, his love was probably more channelized before coming out in a torrent or gush in the later period.

How do we forget the memorable character in The Gospels of Sri Ramakrishna, of Hazra, whom probably only young Narendra sympathized with, knowing very well that Hazra was somewhat devious in nature. This same love enabled him to carry the shoes of Swami Sadananda, then Sarat Chandra Gupta, on his head, when the latter was unable to walk wearing them and yet was unwilling to leave them behind. Swami Sadananda never forgot that incident.

In his later days, when he returned to India, the young Brahmacharins and Sannyasins and his own disciples like Sarat Chandra Chakravarty, the author of the Diary of a Disciple, received the taste of the bliss of the love of the great soul. Many times his sevaks and other disciples were admonished by him, often severely, and many times his own brother disciples were subjected to such anguish. But they never complained, for they had tasted that fountain of bliss which his unbounded and undiminished love offered to them, even unwanted and uncalled for.

His love took various forms, for the weak and oppressed, for outcasts, for women of India who were fallen in a pitiable condition, for the poor who suffered silently and bore the life’s burden like a bull with a heavy yoke, as also for the ignorant masses who were crushed under the boots of foreign tyranny and exploitation. The roar of the injured lion of Vedanta often found expression in his exhortations to the youth of India, whom he loved above everybody else, to arise and work for the future glory that awaited India, to work selflessly and unveil the Self.

Swami Vivekananda suffered from many physical ailments, betrayals of his trusted aides, vicious attack from missionaries as well as the orthodox section of his own countrymen, misunderstandings of some of his own folks, and yet, in the midst of all this, he never lost that essential quality, his love for humanity. Like Shiva he voluntarily drank the terrible poison Kalkut which resulted from the churning of the ocean while the rest drank the nectar that the churning produced in the end, in the form of his immortal teachings and accomplishments. To an American friend he mentions ruefully, “I may have to be born again because I have fallen in love with man.” His other comments, bear a testimony to the fact that love was considered by him as the supreme trait of a spiritual and enlightened soul and that love is the motive for all work. In His own words, “When you serve a Jiva with the idea that he is a Jiva, it is a Daya (compassion) and not Prema (love); but when you serve him with the idea that he is the Self, that is Prema. That Atman is one object of love is known from Shruti, Smriti and direct perception. This notion of Jiva as distinct from God is the cause of bondage. Our principle, therefore, should be love, and not compassion.”

To quote Bhagavad Gita on the same line of thought–

"Sarvabhutastham Atmanam Sarvabhutani Cha' atmani Ikshate Yogayuktatma Sarvatra Samadarshanah"

- The person who is ever united with God consciousness sees the Atman or Self in every being and the Self or Atman as every being, therefore that person treats every being equally

His life’s philosophy is so beautifully engraved in one of his poems, “To a Friend” –

Let go your vain reliance on knowledge,   Let go your prayers, offerings, and strength, 

For Love selfless is the only resource      Lo, the insects teach, embracing the flame!

Ending the same poem with -

From highest Brahman to the yonder worm,    And to the very minutest atom,

 Everywhere is the same God, the All-Love;     Friend, offer thy mind, soul, body, at their feet.

These are His manifold forms before thee,     Rejecting them, where seekest thou for God? 

Who loves all beings without distinction,         He indeed is worshiping best his God.

Can there indeed be any better representation of the true feelings of one who is ever united with all pervading grand cosmic consciousness that has become the world of the manifold? The sage who began his journey coaxed by the loving embrace of the divine principle who is all and who is in all, never let the effect of that embrace go, and in every man he encountered, he saw that same divine child reflected, the same consciousness pervaded and the same love manifested.