Jyotirmaya Sharma - Cosmic Love and Human Apathy: Swami Vivekanandas Restatement of Religion

In 1901, Swami Vivekananda narrates a very significant story about himself and Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. The conversation, recorded in the diary It was this power, concludes Vivekananda, that constantly directed him to keep on working.

To say that the story of Kali entering Vivekanandas body, his trance, a weeping Ramakrishnas passing on his powers to him is dramatic would be a gross understatement. Coming directly from Vivekananda, it bears the unmistaken imprimatur of legitimacy. But it also serves to establish clearly the line of succession from Master to chosen disciple. Words and phrases such as works and worlds good, crucially embedded in the story, also seek to establish the credibility of the future improvisation of the Masters faith that Vivekananda would eventually undertake. For the devout and the faithful, this account stands beyond doubt and reproach. Swami Nikhilananda follows this path of devotion and fidelity to a fault. In the introduction to the English translation of Mahendranath Guptas Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathmrita, he reproduces Vivekanandas version of the story verbatim. Ironically, the volume for which he writes the introduction has a less dramatic account of the same story. The narrator of the story in this instance is also Vivekananda but the listener is Mahendranath Gupta himself, who not only records the conversation but also directly participates in it.

The date of the conversation between Vivekananda and Mahendranath is 9 April 1887. Ramakrishna had died in August the previous year. After dinner, the two men, sitting in the garden of the Baranagore Math, began to reminisce about Ramakrishna. At one point in the conversation, Vivekananda says to Mahendranath that at Cossipore he [Ramakrishna] transmitted his power to me. His interlocutor is already aware of the story and indicates so. What follows in the course of the exchange between the two is crucial:

Narendra: Yes. One day, while meditating, I asked Kali to hold my hand. Kali said to me, When I touched your body I felt something like an electric shock coming to my body.
But you must not tell this to anybody here. Give me your promise.
M: There is a special purpose in his transmission of power to you. He will accomplish much work through you. One day the Master wrote on a piece of paper, Naren will teach people.
Narendra: But I said to him, I wont do any such thing. Thereupon he said, Your very bones will do it.

Three elements stand out in this version of the story, a narrative separated from its 1901 telling by fourteen years. There is no mention, whatsoever, of Goddess Kali entering Vivekanandas body. The Kali in the story is Kaliprasad Chandra, later known as Swami Abhedananda, a disciple of Ramakrishna. Neither are any details of the actual transmission of Ramakrishnas powers offered. In an earlier conversation with Mahendranath on 25 March 1887, Vivekananda mentions Ramakrishna offering to exercise his occult powers through him and his refusal to accept any such thing. Between the conversations on 25 March and 9 April, an instance of Vivekananda going into deep meditation and samadhi is mentioned, but in both instances no direct transmission of occult powers occurs between Master and the chosen disciple. In fact, the burden of the 9 April dialogue shifts primarily to questions of Vivekananda teaching people and doing work.

While Ramakrishna had contempt for the idea of work in the sense Vivekananda later sought to define and convey, a more detailed analysis of this tension between the two regarding the worth of work appears in the next chapter. What is equally intriguing, however, is Ramakrishnas offer to exercise occult powers through Vivekananda. Ramakrishna consistently believed that people who sought siddhis or occult powers were small-minded people. To possess occult powers was troublesome. Once Hriday, Ramakrishnas nephew, egged him on to pray to Kali for bestowing Ramakrishna some occult powers. In his childlike gullibility, Ramakrishna did exactly that. Here is his account of the consequences of the prayer:

The Divine Mother at once showed me a vision. A middle-aged prostitute, about forty years old, appeared and sat with her back to me. She had large hips and wore a black-bordered sri. Soon she was covered with filth. The Mother showed me that occult powers are as abominable as the filth of that prostitute.

Ramakrishna resolved to pray henceforth only for pure love, not occult powers, a love that does not seek any return.

Totapuri, the renunciate who had initiated Ramakrishna into sanyasa, taught him of the perils of possessing and holding siddhis through a couple of stories. A man in possession of occult powers was sitting on the seashore watching a great storm rising in front of him. This caused him great discomfort and so he decided to use his powers to quell the storm. A ship going full sail before the wind sank as a consequence of the storms abrupt end. All the passengers on the ship died and the sin of causing their death fell upon him, resulting in loss of his occult powers. In another instance, God disguised as a holy man comes to a sage who has occult powers. God first encourages the sadhu to kill an elephant and then asks him to bring the elephant back to life. The sadhu manages to do both with the help of his siddhis. At this point, God, still in disguise, asks the sadhu what this act of killing and reviving the elephant had done for him. Was he uplifted by it? Did the act manage to help him realize God?

Having narrated these stories, Ramakrishna comes to the conclusion that occult powers lead to pride and pride makes an individual forget God. A true seeker prays only for pure love of God, just as Radha did and just as the gopis did. There is no motive or desire for possessing occult powers beyond pure love of God. In a subtle restatement of the idea of acquiring and possessing occult powers, Ramakrishna plays with the conventional meaning of the words siddhi and siddha. For him, siddhi was not one of the normally understood eight occult powers that one could acquire but attainment of ones spiritual goal.

If occult powers were instrumental in leading a true aspirant away from God and were comparable to the filth of a prostitute, it is incomprehensible why Ramakrishna would want to transfer his occult powers to Vivekananda. But the story of the transfer of Ramakrishnas powers to Vivekananda has acquired an indelible mystique in the popular imagination, especially so because the more familiar version of the story comes from Vivekananda himself. To quibble over its authenticity leads nowhere. But as a story, about Vivekananda and his Master, told directly to a disciple, and believed, absorbed and disseminated by other disciples and devotees, it remains a singularly important moment in the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda corpus. And it is crucial in understanding the manner in which Vivekananda distanced himself from the central core of Ramakrishnas teachings, remodelled Ramakrishna and then sought to build his model of Hinduism on the basis of his radical restatement of Ramakrishna.

Every element that constituted Vivekanandas creation of Hinduism as religion lies embedded in this narrative and requires careful unscrambling. Firstly, there is the element of Vivekanandas tortured, ambiguous and fraught relationship with the figure of Kali. While Kali was central to Ramakrishnas conception of what constituted faith and his ideal of bhakti, Vivekanandas attitude towards her iconic status remained ambivalent. Next, there is the emphasis on work, and more significantly, the importance of work for a sanyasi. Here, the sanyasi must not remain quiet and must not look to his personal comforts. Vivekananda not only seeks to restate the ideal of renunciation, but also attempts to redefine the role of religion in relation to the world. Another significant element is Vivekanandas unquestioned acceptance of the instance of Kali entering his body. As someone who rejected the prophetic and revelatory traditions within other religions and heralded his reading of Ramakrishnas Hinduism as scientific, this ready acceptance of Kalis entry into his body is surprising. While it is no surprise that Ramakrishna looked at him steadfastly and fell into a trance, Vivekananda losing outward consciousness is unusual; Vivekananda had little sympathy for Ramakrishnas trances and often termed them as hallucinations. Also, having stated that She whom Ramakrishna used to call Kali entered his body, he does not actually directly acknowledge Kali entering his body but equates that experience to a subtle force like an electric shock. Equally puzzling is why Ramakrishna, who was a sanyasi, would feel like a beggar after having given his all to Vivekananda. And having given his all, would Ramakrishna exhort Vivekananda to do many works for the worlds good, especially when he consistently rejected even the slightest suggestion that a spiritual seeker and a sanyasi ought to have any role in directly alleviating misery in the world? Some of these questions require careful consideration for a better understanding of Vivekanandas definition of religion and his fashioning of Hinduism as religion.