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Eternal India
encyclopedia
RELIGIONS
the side (
Kirpan
) and a tight pair of shorts around the loins (
Kachha
).
The Guru then knelt before them and asked them to initiate him into the
Khalsa Panth in the same way as he had done them.
Guru Gobind Singh passed away in 1708. Suniti Kumar Chatter-
jee has summed up his life and work in these words: "Prophet, poet,
soldier, philosopher, prince and recluse, Guru Gobind Singh is lovingly
remembered for the intense humanity, and compassion of the ministry
he introduced into the world. He carried out within the brief span of 42
years a wide diversity of roles with extraordinary resources and pur-
posefulness.
Over the years he has become a symbol of all that is virile and
positive in our religious tradition................(This symbol) is the centre of the
Sikh's memories of their origin and tradition, and a perennial source of
inspiration for them. It still stimulates among them a peculiar kind of
spiritual upsurge and they have always felt the presence of the master-
soul among them. In the crucial moments of their recent history, the
Lord of the White Hawk was as tangibly their hero and guiding spirit
as he had always been since the time of his earthly existence."
RAMAKRISHNA PARAMAHAMSA (1836
-
1886
)
Was bom as Gadadhar Chattopadhyay on 18th February 1836 in
the village of Kamarapkur in the Hooghly District of West Bengal.
When he was 17, he was taken to Calcutta by his brother and put in the
primary school he had opened there. When he showed no aptitude f6r
studies, his brother got him appointed as a priest in the Kali Temple at
Dakshineswar so that he might earn the bread for his family. Here he
turned into a mystic, seeing in the image of Kali the divine mother her-
self.
Alarmed at these strange ways and
mystic moods, his old mother and
brother married him to a girl of six, Sri
Sarada Devi. It remained a marriage of
souls without any carnal taint. After
his vision of Kali the Mother,
Ramakrishna practised every form of
Indian religion and Christianity as well.
In this he is unique because no other
religious leader in India or elsewhere
has undergone this kind of comprehen-
sive religious experience.
He practised the Tantrik disciplines experiencing the upward
march of the
Kundalini
shakti. He next practised all the five modes of
Vaishnava worship. He then practised the Advaita non-dualistic disci-
pline in which the Brahman of the
Vedanta,
the pure Being without
form or attributes, is meditated upon and realised.
He then practised Islam, receiving initiation as a Muslim in 1866
from a Sufi who came to Dakshineswar. He dressed as a Muslim,
recited Namaz regularly and repeated the name of Allah. During the
period of this discipline he did not step inside the Kali Temple but lived
in the quarters outside its compound.
In 1874, he realised God through the religion of Jesus Christ. He
had a vision of Christ in which he embraced Ramakrishna and became
merged in him.
Ramakrishna taught that all religions are true, they being simply
different paths to the same goal of superconsciousness. He used to liken
the various forms of worship to varieties of food. "The mother so
arranges the food for her childem that each one gets what agrees with
him. If she has five children and she gets a big fish to cook, she makes
different dishes out of it and gives each one of them what suits him
exactly. One is given rich pilau with fish, another of weak digestion
only a little soup, others again exactly what agrees with them."
Sri Ramakrishna passed away in the early hours of the 16th of
August 1886.
SWAMIVIVEKANANDA (1863 -1902)
Born on January 12, 1863, as Narendra Nath, sixth child of
Vishwanath Datta, a rich attorney of Calcutta and Bhuvaneswari
Devi. He grew up to be a precocious boy interested in many activities
-
athletics, wrestling, swimming - in all of which he excelled. He was
attracted by Keshab Chandra Sen to whose Brahmo Samaj he fre-
quently went. He had some love for the Brahmo Samaj and agreed with
the Brahmos in their denunciation of caste, polytheism, image worship
and their advocacy of freedom for women. But his soul craved for
something positive. His mind grappled with the problem "Does God
Exist?" He asked everybody who was in a position to answer, "Have
you seen God?"
Towards the end of 1881 when Narendra had finished his First Arts
Examination he was persuaded by a relative to visit Dakshineswar. He
was mystified when Ramkrishna drew him aside in his room and said
to him with folded hands, "Lord, I know you are that ancient sage, Nara
—
the incarnation of Narayana — bom on the earth to remove the
miseries of mankind." Narendra sat for his BA.Examination in 1884.
Soon after his father passed away. Although Vishwanath Datta had
earned much he had spent liberally so
that after his death the family was in dire
straits. Narendra went around Calcutta
looking for employment but without
success.
He
approached
Shri
Ramakrishna to intercede with the
Divine Mother on his behalf. Narendra
became his disciple after Ramakrishna
said, "All right, your people at home
will never be in want of plain food and
clothing."
After the passing of Ramakrishna on August 16, 1886 the respon-
sibility of organising his brother disciples into a monastic order fell
upon Narendra. The first monastery of the order was started at Bava-
nagore. (After a few shifts of location the place now known as Belur
Math on the western bank of the Ganges opposite Calcutta became the
headquarters of the Ramakrishna order). But he did not want to be
cooped up within the four walls of a monastery. He wanted to study
India at first hand. He travelled all over northern and western India
before turning south.
During the course of his travels, the idea of going to the West to
collect funds for India and spread a true knowledge of her culture and
religion and combat the slander perpetrated against her had formed in
his mind. He had heard of the Parliament of Religions to be held in
Chicago in 1893. At Mysore, the Maharaja to whom he unburdened his
mind offered to bear the expenses. At Cape Comorin (Kanya Kumari)
he sat in meditation in December 1892 on a rock out in the sea - almost
the last bit of India. He was to describe this later in a letter he wrote
from Chicago in 1894: "At Cape Comorin sitting in Mother Kumari's
temple, on the last bit of Indian rock, I hit upon a plan. We have to give
back to the nation its lost individuality and raise the masses........ Therefore