Swami Vivekananda was born in 1863 in Calcutta (now Kolkata) as Narendranath Dutt. He is considered one of the most influential Indian spiritual leaders and religious reformers. He was a Hindu monk and the chief disciple of yogi and mystic Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. He is considered the first spiritual guru from India to introduce Indian concepts of Yoga and Vedanta to Western countries.
He was also an Indian nationalist whose work strengthened the fight against British rule in India during the 19th century. His spiritual philosophies urged people to work towards ‘self-perfection’ to become their higher, more spiritually-evolved selves. Such an endeavor would ultimately help make the world a better, more compassionate, and all-inclusive place for everyone on the planet.
In his childhood, Vivekananda was exposed to both the rationalist approach of his attorney father and the religious temperament of his mother. His grandfather, a Sanskrit and Persian scholar, was also a spiritual seeker who left home to become a monk at the age of 25. From an early age, Vivekananda too had an inclination towards spirituality as he used to meditate for hours in front of images of deities like Shiva and Rama.
As part of his education, Vivekananda studied history, philosophy, arts, social studies, literature, Indian classical music, Western philosophy, European history, sports, and ancient Indian scriptures, including the Vedas Upanishads and the Puranas. He is believed to be ‘Shrutidhara,’ with a prodigious memory. His ability to speed reading was also considered to be of superhuman proportions.
In 1881, Vivekananda met Ramakrishna for the first time. Initially, he rebelled against Ramakrishna’s ideas. He thought his spiritual ecstasies and visions were mere hallucinations or imaginations. Still, gradually he accepted him as his spiritual guru and even agreed to renounce the material world to become a monk. After Ramakrishna died in 1886, Vivekananda and a small group of disciples established the first ‘Math’ of the Ramakrishna Order at Baranagar in West Bengal.
In 1888, Vivekananda left the Baranagar Math as a ‘Parivrajaka’ or a wandering monk without any worldly attachments to travel across India. For the next 5 years, he traveled to various parts of the country solely depending on ‘Bhiksha’ (alms given by strangers) and visited all kinds of places and met all kinds of people, from kings to peasants. In 1893, he accepted the invitation to represent Hinduism at the Chicago Parliament of the World’s Religions, where he effortlessly won everyone’s heart with his heartwarming yet powerful speech and instantly became a world-known personality. He spent the next few years spreading his guru’s philosophies in Europe and America in ways that are acceptable to the Western audience. He founded several spiritual centers in various parts of the world and returned to India in 1897 to establish Ramakrishna Mission in Kolkata. In 1902, he attained ‘Mahasamadhi’ and left the world.