Swami Vivekananda

Key ideas

1. The soul is potentially divine. In the preface to Raja-Yoga he sums up his message: “Each soul is potentially divine.” The aim of life is to manifest that divinity by controlling nature, outer and inner, through work, worship, psychic control or philosophy, by one or more or all of these.
2. Advaita with a personal God. He took Advaita Vedānta, the oneness of the self and Brahman, to be the essence of Hinduism, while holding with Ramakrishna that the Absolute is both transcendent and immanent. Scholars call the result Neo-Vedānta, though how new it was is disputed.
3. Practical Vedānta. Vedānta must be carried into every part of life, for it teaches, in his words, “oneness — one life throughout”. If all are one, serving other people is a form of worship, a teaching he received from Ramakrishna.
4. The four yogas. He presented four routes to one goal: karma-yoga (action), bhakti-yoga (devotion), jñāna-yoga (knowledge) and rāja-yoga (psychic control). His Raja Yoga of 1896, an adaptation of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras, was highly influential in the Western understanding of yoga.
5. Universal religion. Religions are different paths to one goal. At Chicago in 1893 he spoke of a religion that had taught the world “tolerance and universal acceptance”, and told the story of the frog in the well, which takes its well for the whole world.
6. Service and national awakening. In India he spoke on poverty, caste, education and colonial rule, and held that relieving poverty was a precondition of national awakening. The Ramakrishna Mission, founded in 1897 on the ideal of karma-yoga, undertook education, relief and social service.

Swami Vivekananda (born Narendranath Datta, 1863–1902) was a Bengali monk, the chief disciple of Ramakrishna, and a major figure in bringing Vedānta and yoga to the West in the 1890s. In India he is remembered also for his call to social service. His central teaching is that the soul is potentially divine, and that this can be realised in work, devotion, meditation or knowledge.

What was his life?

He was born in Calcutta to a Kayastha family, studied Western logic and philosophy at the General Assembly’s Institution (now the Scottish Church College), and read Hume, Kant, Hegel, Mill and Herbert Spencer, with whom he corresponded. He first met Ramakrishna around 1881. At first he resisted him: he was then a Brahmo, and rejected the Advaita teaching that the self is identical with the Absolute as blasphemy. After his father’s death in 1884 left the family penniless he turned to Ramakrishna more, and after Ramakrishna’s death in 1886 he took monastic vows with other disciples.

He then wandered India as a monk for five years, and took the name Vivekananda. In 1893 he travelled to Chicago without credentials from any organisation; a Harvard professor and the Brahmo Samaj’s representative helped him gain a place at the Parliament of the World’s Religions. He lectured in the United States and Britain, founded the Vedanta Society of New York in 1894 and declined academic chairs offered to him. Returning to India in 1897, he founded the Ramakrishna Mission on 1 May. He died at Belur Math on 4 July 1902, aged thirty-nine.

What did he teach?

His summary is in the preface to Raja-Yoga: “Each soul is potentially divine.” The goal is to manifest that divinity, by work, worship, psychic control or philosophy. Out of this he built a “four yogas” scheme: karma-yoga, devotion, knowledge, and the discipline of the mind he took from Patañjali, whose text the library has as the Yoga Sūtras.

He thought that the Advaita Vedānta of Śaṅkara best expressed the essence of Hinduism: ātman and Brahman are one. With Ramakrishna, however, he held that the Absolute is both beyond qualities and personal, and he gave devotion a real place beside knowledge.

What is practical Vedānta?

It is the claim that Vedānta must change how we live. In London in November 1896 he said that the Vedānta “teaches oneness — one life throughout”, and that the supposed gap between religion and the life of the world must vanish. The ethical consequence, which he drew from Ramakrishna, is service: other people are manifestations of the divine. From India he wrote to a brother monk that nothing good would come of sitting idle and invoking Ramakrishna unless he did some good to the poor. The Ramakrishna Mission was meant to carry that into practice. The library has Practical Vedanta.

What did he say about other religions?

At Chicago he said that Hindus accept all religions as true. In “Why we disagree”, four days later, he told the story of a frog in a well who dismisses a visitor from the sea as a liar, and applied it to Hindus, Christians and Muslims alike. The frog in the well is a parable about the limits of one’s own standpoint. He told American audiences that he came not to convert them but to help each live their own faith more fully.

How new was his Vedānta?

Scholars disagree. Elizabeth de Michelis argues that the Brahmo Samaj and Western esoteric currents shaped him more than Ramakrishna did, and that his Raja Yoga marks the beginning of modern yoga. Swami Medhananda replies that meeting Ramakrishna turned him from Brahmoism. James Madaio cautions that features often called Neo-Vedāntic, such as the stress on experience over scripture, already appear in medieval Advaita.

What was his influence?

Aurobindo regarded him as the one who awakened India spiritually, and Gandhi counted him among the Hindu reformers who had cleared away dead wood. Tagore advised reading Vivekananda to understand India. His birthday, 12 January, is National Youth Day in India.

How should you start reading Vivekananda?

Begin with the Chicago address and “Why we disagree”, which are both short, then read Practical Vedanta and Karma-Yoga. Raja-Yoga is best read next to the Yoga Sūtras it adapts. UGC NET Unit 5 lists him under practical Vedānta, universal religion, religious experience and religious rituals; see the UGC NET guide and the page on modern Indian philosophy.