Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Sarada Devi

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
Swami Vivekananda (12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902),
was an Indian Hindu monk, a chief disciple of the 19th-century
Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the
introduction of the Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to
the Western world and is credited with raising interfaith
awareness, bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world
religion during the late 19th century. He was a major force in the
revival of Hinduism in India, and contributed to the concept of
nationalism in colonial India. Vivekananda founded the
Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission.
Swami Vivekananda was born Narendranath Dutta, into an affluent Bengali family in
Calcutta, Vivekananda was one of the eight children of Vishwanath Dutta and Bhuvaneshwari
Devi. He was born on January 12, 1863, on the occasion of Makar Sankranti.
Swami Vivekananda’s inspiring personality was well known both in India and in
America during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth.
The unknown monk of India suddenly leapt into fame at the Parliament of Religions held in
Chicago in 1893, at which he represented Hinduism. His vast knowledge of Eastern and
Western culture as well as his deep spiritual insight, brilliant conversation, broad human
sympathy, colorful personality, and handsome figure made an irresistible appeal to the many
types of Americans who came in contact with him. People who saw or heard Vivekananda even
once still cherish his memory after a lapse of more than half a century.
In America, Vivekananda's mission was the interpretation of India's spiritual culture,
especially in its Vedantic setting. He also tried to enrich the religious consciousness of the
Americans through the rational and humanistic teachings of the Vedanta philosophy.
In India, Vivekananda is regarded as the patriot saint of modern India and an inspirer
of her dormant national consciousness. To the Hindus he preached the ideal of a strength-giving
and man-making religion. Service to man as the visible manifestation of the Godhead was the
special form of worship he advocated for the Indians, devoted as they were to the rituals and
myths of their ancient faith. Many political leaders of India have publicly acknowledged their
indebtedness to Swami Vivekananda.
The Swami's mission was both national and international. A lover of mankind, he strove
to promote peace and human brotherhood on the spiritual foundation of the Vedantic Oneness

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 Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Sarada Devi

of existence. A mystic of the highest order, Vivekananda had a direct and intuitive experience
of Reality.
The natural tendency of Vivekananda's mind, like that of his
Master, Ramakrishna, was to soar above the world and forget itself in
contemplation of the Absolute. Vivekananda returned to India in 1897
after a series of lectures across the country and founded the
Ramakrishna Mission on May 1, 1897 at Belur Math near Calcutta. The
goals of the Ramakrishna Mission were based on the ideals of Karma
Yoga and its primary objective was to serve the poor and distressed
population of the country. The Ramakrishna Mission undertook various forms of social service
like establishing and running school, collages and hospitals, propagation of practical tenets of
Vedanta through conference, seminars and workshops, initiating relief and rehabilitation work
across the country.
Swami Vivekananda was a prominent nationalist, and had the overall welfare of his
countrymen topmost in his mind. He urged his fellow countrymen to “Arise, awake and stop
not till the goal is reached”.
On July 4, 1902, he went about his days’ work at the Belur Math, teaching Sanskrit
grammar to the pupils. He returned to his room in the evening and died during meditation. He
is said to have attained ‘Mahasamadhi’ and the great saint was cremated on the Banks of river
Ganga.
In the course of a short life of thirty-nine years (1863-1902), of which only ten were
devoted to public activities-and those, too, in the midst of acute physical suffering-he left for
posterity his four classics: Jnana-Yoga, Bhakti-Yoga, Karma-Yoga, and Raja-Yoga, all of
which are outstanding treatises on Hindu philosophy. In addition, he delivered innumerable
lectures, wrote inspired letters in his own hand to his many friends and disciples, composed
numerous poems, and acted as spiritual guide to the many seekers, who came to him for
instruction. He also organized the Ramakrishna Order of monks, which is the most outstanding
religious organization of modern India. It is devoted to the propagation of the Hindu spiritual
culture not only in the Swami's native land, but also in America and in other parts of the world.

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 Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Sarada Devi

RAMAKRISHNA PARAMAHAMSA
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (18 February 1836 – 16
August 1886), was an Indian mystic and yogi during the 19th
century. Ramakrishna was given to spiritual ecstacies from a
young age, and was influenced by several religious traditions,
including devotion toward the goddess Kali, Tantra, Vaishnava
bhakti, and Advaita Vedanta.
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was born in a poor Brahmin
family in 1836, in a small town near Calcutta, West Bengal. As
a young man, he was artistic and a popular storyteller and actor.
His parents were religious, and prone to visions and spiritual dreams. Ramakrishna's father had
a vision of the god Gadadhara (Vishnu) while on a religious pilgrimage. In the vision, the god
told him that he would be born into the family as a son.
Sri Ramakrishna, represents the very core of the spiritual realizations of the seers and
sages of India. His whole life was literally an uninterrupted contemplation of God. He reached
a depth of God-consciousness that transcends all time and place and has a universal appeal.
Seekers of God of all religions feel irresistibly drawn to his life and teachings.
Sri Ramakrishna, as a silent force, influences the spiritual thought currents of our time.
He is a figure of recent history and his life and teachings have not yet been obscured by loving
legends and doubtful myths. Through his God-intoxicated life Sri Ramakrishna proved that the
revelation of God takes place at all times and that God-realization is not the monopoly of any
particular age, country, or people. In him, deepest spirituality and broadest catholicity stood
side by side. The God-man of nineteenth-century India did not found any cult, nor did he show
a new path to salvation. His message was his God-consciousness. When God-consciousness
falls short, traditions become dogmatic and oppressive and religious teachings lose their
transforming power.
At a time when the very foundation of religion, faith in God, was crumbling under the
relentless blows of materialism and skepticism, Sri Ramakrishna, through his burning spiritual
realizations, demonstrated beyond doubt the reality of God and the validity of the time-honored
teachings of all the prophets and saviors of the past, and thus restored the falling edifice of
religion on a secure foundation.
Drawn by the magnetism of Sri Ramakrishna's divine personality, people flocked to
him from far and near -- men and women, young and old, philosophers and theologians,

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philanthropists and humanists, atheists and agnostics, Hindus, Christians and Muslims, seekers
of truth of all races, creeds and castes. His small room in the Dakshineswar temple garden on
the outskirts of the city of Calcutta became a veritable parliament of religions. Everyone who
came to him felt uplifted by his profound God-consciousness, boundless love, and universal
outlook. Each seeker saw in him the highest manifestation of his own ideal. By coming near
him the impure became pure, the pure became purer, and the sinner was transformed into a
saint.
Ramakrishna died of cancer of the throat in 1886, leaving his wife Sarada Devi who
was considered a saint in her own right to take charge of his disciples and carry on his message.
The greatest contribution of Sri Ramakrishna to the modern world is his message of the
harmony of religions. To Sri Ramakrishna all religions are the revelation of God in His diverse
aspects to satisfy the manifold demands of human minds. Like different photographs of a
building taken from different angles, different religions give us the pictures of one truth from
different standpoints. They are not contradictory but complementary. Sri Ramakrishna
faithfully practiced the spiritual disciplines of different religions and came to the realization
that all of them lead to the same goal. Thus he declared, "As many faiths, so many paths." The
paths vary, but the goal remains the same. Harmony of religions is not uniformity; it is unity in
diversity.

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SRI SARADA DEVI

Sarada Devi (22 December 1853 – 21 July 1920),
born Saradamani Mukhopadhyay, was the wife and
spiritual counterpart of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, a
nineteenth-century mystic of Bengal. Sarada Devi is also
reverentially addressed as the “Holy Mother” (Sri Maa)
by the followers of the Ramakrishna monastic order.
Sarada Devi or Sri Sri Ma is one of the notable woman
saints and mystics of the nineteenth century. She paved
the way for the future generation of women to take up
monasticity as the means and end of life. In fact Sri Sarada
Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission situated at Dakshineshwar is based on the ideals and
life of Sri Sri Ma. Sarada Devi played an important role in the growth of the Ramakrishna
Movement.
Sri Sarada Devi, was born on 22 December 1853 in a poor Brahmin family in
Jayrambati, a village adjoining Kamarpukur in West Bengal. Her father, Ramachandra
Mukhopadhyay, was a pious and kind-hearted person, and her mother, Shyama Sundari Devi,
was a loving and hard-working woman. At the age of five she was betrothed to Ramakrishna,
whom she joined at Dakshineswar Kali temple when she was in her late teens. According to
her traditional biographers, both lived lives of unbroken continence, showing the ideals of a
householder and of the monastic ways of life.
When Holy Mother came to Dakshineswar at the age of sixteen, Sri Ramakrishna asked
her whether she had come to pull him down to a worldly life. Without hesitation she said, "No,
I am here to help you realize your Chosen Ideal." From then on, Holy Mother lived with Sri
Ramakrishna as his spiritual companion, devoted wife, disciple, and always the nun. She was
the embodiment of purity. Her mind was never sullied by the faintest breath of worldliness,
though she lived with Sri Ramakrishna for the greater part of fourteen years. She never missed
communion with God, whom she described as lying in the palm of her hand, though she was
engaged day and night in various activities.
Holy Mother was an unusual awakener of souls. With her disciples she served as
teacher, dissolving their doubts, as mother, who through love and compassion won their hearts,
and as the Divinity, who assured them of liberation. Herself nearly illiterate, through simple
words she taught them the most profound truths. Her affectionate maternal love tamed their

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rebellious spirits; but her great power lay in her solicitude for all. Often she said, "I am the
Mother, who will look after them if not I?" She encouraged them when they were depressed
because of slow spiritual progress, and she took upon herself their sins and iniquities, suffering
on that account.
Holy Mother was conscious of her divine nature, but she rarely expressed this awareness. For
many years Sri Ramakrishna practiced great austerities and formally renounced the world, but
Holy Mother lived as a simple householder, surrounded by quarrelsome and greedy relatives.
As a teacher she taught the realization of God alone is real, and everything else, impermanent.
The human body so treasured by most people, survives cremations as only three pounds of
ashes. Holy Mother -- humility itself -- claimed that she was in no way different from other
devotees of the Master. Her disciples felt awed and uplifted when she blessed them by touching
their head with the same hand which had touched the feet of God. She was fully aware of her
disciples' present limitations and their future possibilities. No one went away from her with a
downcast heart.
After Ramakrishna's death, Sarada Devi stayed most of the time either at Jayrambati or
at the Udbodhan office, Calcutta. The disciples of Ramakrishna regarded her as their own
mother, and after their guru's death looked to her for advice and encouragement. The followers
of the Ramakrishna movement and a large section of devotees across the world worship Sri Sri
Ma Sarada Devi as an incarnation of the Adi Parashakti or the Divine Mother.
Under the strain of constant physical work and self-denial and repeated attacks of
malaria, her health deteriorated in the closing years of her life, and she left the mortal world on
21 July 1920.
The outstanding virtues of Indian womanhood are courage, serenity, self-control,
sweetness, compassion, wisdom, and an intuitive relationship with God. Holy Mother
possessed all these virtues. Since the acquisition of such gifts is the dream of all women, Holy
Mother may aptly be seen as the symbol of aspiration of women everywhere.

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