Post 50: SWAMI VIVEKANANDA BIOGRAPHY OF A MIGHTY SAINT - By Prabhu Datta & Venu Murthy As we know well, Naren was now fourteen. It was the year 1877. Naren’s father had to shift to Raipur at this time, in present day Chhattisgarh state. During those days it was called Central provinces of India. Vishwanatha Datta had taken up a court case in Raipur. He had to remain there for a long time. So he decided to bring his family also to Raipur. There were no railways then and no road transport. The only way to reach Raipur was to travel by bullock cart for at least fifteen days through plains, rivers, hills and forests. Vishwanatha knew his son’s maturity, capacity and leadership qualities well by this time, so he gave him the responsibility of bringing the safely family to Raipur. Naren rose up to the occasion and managed everything admirably. He hired a few bullock carts to carry the luggage and his immediate family members to Raipur city in central province. His friends helped him in packing and loading the luggage. Apart from his immediate family members there were bullock cart drivers and guards for security of the caravan as well in the party. Naren sat alone in one of the carts with some important luggage. The journey was indeed long and hard. There were some unexpected problems, but the travellers went on overcoming them well in time and marched ahead. Naren loved to be alone in his cart in his own divine moods in between all this wonderful scenery along the way. His mind was that of a dhyana siddha, an adept in meditation, he had experienced very deep spiritual moods and had many mystic visions by this time. His mind remained in a high spiritual plane always though strangely and admirably he could excel in maintaining a balance in the day to day interaction of the work-a-day world! The scenery was amazingly beautiful. By looking at it his mind merged in the greatness of the creator of all this. His heart was filled with immense love of God and as he pondered over the Lord’s glory oblivious of everything else. Naren’s mind went deeper and deeper within and at last he merged in Samadhi. This was the first known Samadhi experience he had at the tender age of fourteen! We do not know about the unknown experiences he might have had prior to this. Later Swami Vivekananda himself described this particular experience in these words: “What I saw and felt while going through the forests of central India has forever remained firmly imprinted in my memory, particularly a certain event of one day. We had to travel by the foot of Vindhya Mountains that day. The peaks of the mountain range on both sides of our path rose very high in the sky; innumerable kinds of trees and creepers bending under the weight of fruits and flowers produced wonderful beauty on the mountainsides. Birds of various colours, flying from tree to tree, filled the quarters with their sweet musical notes. I saw all this beauty scattered everywhere and felt an extraordinary divine peace in my mind. “Now the caravan of slow moving bullock carts arrived at a place where two mountain peaks, coming forward as though in divine love of the infinitely loving Bhagavan and his love mad Bhakta, locked themselves over the narrow forest path. Observing carefully below the meeting points, I saw that there was a very big cleft from the crest to the foot of the mountain on one side of the path; and filling that cleft, there was hanging in it an enormous honeycomb, the result of the bees’ labour for ages. Filled with wonder, as I was pondering over the beginning and end of that kingdom of bees, my mind became so much absorbed in the thought of the infinite power of God and his glory, the controller of the three worlds, that I completely lost my consciousness of the external world in Samadhi. “I do not remember how long I was lying in the bullock cart in Samadhi. When I regained normal consciousness, I found that we had crossed that place and come far away. As I was alone in the cart, no one could know anything about it.”
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 00:41:24 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015