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Hinduism · Yoga · Bhakti · Advaita Vedanta

Swami Vivekananda

স্বামী বিবেকানন্দ · নরেন্দ্রনাথ দত্ত · स्वामी विवेकानन्द

1863 – 1902Historically documented person

Bengali monk, chief disciple of Ramakrishna and founder of the Ramakrishna Order and Mission. His address to the Chicago Parliament of Religions (1893) made him the first great interpreter of Hinduism to the West. In barely nine years of public teaching he formulated a practical Vedanta—the four yogas, the potential divinity of every soul, service to human beings as worship—that shaped modern yoga, Indian nationalism and interreligious dialogue. He died at thirty-nine.

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Swami Vivekananda en Chicago, septiembre de 1893 (con dedicatoria autógrafa)

Swami Vivekananda en Chicago, septiembre de 1893 (con dedicatoria autógrafa) · Public domain

In their words

«Sisters and Brothers of America,»

Discurso de bienvenida, Parlamento Mundial de las Religiones, Chicago, 11 de septiembre de 1893 (Complete Works, vol. 1, «Response to Welcome»)

Raja Yoga — Swami Vivekananda

Their central idea

The four yogas: Vivekananda organised Hindu spiritual practice into four paths corresponding to four temperaments: karma yoga, for the active, purifies through work done without attachment; bhakti yoga, for the emotional, transforms love into devotion to God; raja yoga, for the contemplative, controls the mind through concentration and meditation; jnana yoga, for the intellectual, attains freedom through discrimination between the real and the unreal.

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Biography

5 min read

A young man from Calcutta who wanted proof

Narendranath Datta was born on 12 January 1863 in Calcutta, into a prosperous kayastha family of the Simla quarter. His father, Vishwanath Datta, was an attorney of the High Court, a man of cosmopolitan tastes and a reader of Persian poetry; his mother, Bhuvaneswari Devi, gave him the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Narendra was a brilliant and irregular student: classical music, gymnastics, Western logic, Mill, Spencer and Hume at the General Assembly's Institution (now Scottish Church College), from which he graduated in 1884. Like many young men of the Bengali elite he frequented the Brahmo Samaj, the reform movement that had replaced idols with a rational theism. Sermons were not enough for him. According to the account he himself repeated years later, recorded by his biographers, he went around asking the religious teachers of Calcutta whether they had seen God. None said yes.

Dakshineswar

Towards the end of 1881 he met Ramakrishna, the ecstatic priest of the Kali temple at Dakshineswar on the Ganges. To the same question this almost unlettered man answered that he had, that he saw God as he saw Narendra, only more intensely. Their relationship, documented in Mahendranath Gupta's diaries (Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita), was for five years a contest between the disciple's scepticism and the master's certainty. Narendra mocked idolatry and the Advaita doctrine that "all is Brahman"; Ramakrishna treated him as one chosen. His father's sudden death in 1884 left the family ruined and brought him face to face with hunger; the story that, sent by Ramakrishna to ask the goddess for material relief, he could only ask her for discrimination and renunciation comes from the Order's tradition and should be read as such. When Ramakrishna died at Cossipore in August 1886, Narendra was already the centre of a small group of young men who, at the end of that year, formed a monastic community in a dilapidated house at Baranagar.

The wandering monk

Between 1888 and 1893 he crossed India on foot and by train under changing monastic names, sleeping in the palaces of maharajas and in the huts of outcastes. Those years—unevenly documented by letters and by testimonies collected decades later—gave him direct experience of rural poverty and of the degradation of caste that would feed his social criticism. In December 1892 he reached Kanyakumari, the southern tip of the subcontinent, and meditated on a rock off the coast; there, as he later wrote in his letters, he conceived the idea of seeking in the West the means to raise the masses of India. The name Vivekananda, "the bliss of discrimination", was settled shortly before the voyage, in the circle of the Maharaja of Khetri, who paid part of his passage.

Chicago, 1893

He reached Chicago in July 1893 with no credentials from any organisation. A Harvard professor of Greek, John Henry Wright, eased his way into the World's Parliament of Religions, held as part of the Columbian Exposition. On 11 September he opened his brief address with the words "Sisters and Brothers of America", which according to the reports gathered by John Henry Barrows drew a long ovation. In the following days he presented a Hinduism without caste or idols, centred on the divinity of the soul—"the Hindu refuses to call you sinners"—and on the harmony of all religions. The press made him the figure of the Parliament.

Teacher in the West

For more than three years he lectured in the United States and England. In 1894 he founded the Vedanta Society of New York; in the summer of 1895 he taught a small group at Thousand Island Park (the Inspired Talks); in London he met Margaret Noble, the future Sister Nivedita; in Oxford he visited Max Müller and in Kiel Paul Deussen. From those classes came the four books that fixed his system: Karma Yoga and Raja Yoga (1896), Bhakti Yoga and, posthumously, the lectures collected as Jnana Yoga. Raja Yoga, with its annotated translation of Patañjali's Yoga Sutras, was for decades the Western reader's gateway to yoga; the historian Elizabeth De Michelis regards it as the founding text of "modern yoga", with its psychological and experimental reading of meditation.

Returning to serve

In January 1897 he landed at Colombo and travelled through southern India to Almora amid huge receptions; the lectures of that journey, Lectures from Colombo to Almora, are the core of his message to Indians: strength, faith in oneself, education of the masses, unsparing criticism of untouchability and ritualism. On 1 May 1897 he founded in Calcutta the Ramakrishna Mission Association, which joined monastic life to social service; in December 1898 the monastery at Belur was consecrated, and in 1899 Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati. His formula, attributed in origin to Ramakrishna, was to serve human beings as God himself (shiva jnane jiva seva). In 1899–1900 he made a second journey to the West—California, New York, the Congress of the History of Religions in Paris—already gravely ill with diabetes and asthma.

Death at thirty-nine

He died at Belur Math on 4 July 1902, in the evening, during meditation, after a day his companions described as ordinary. He was thirty-nine; his disciples recalled that he had predicted he would not reach forty. He was cremated beside the Ganges, opposite the spot where his master's body had burned sixteen years earlier.

What is documented and what is transmitted

For Vivekananda we have an exceptional body of primary sources: lectures taken down in shorthand, letters, articles and conversations, gathered in the nine volumes of the Complete Works. The years of wandering and many episodes of his relationship with Ramakrishna, by contrast, are known mainly through the official biography by his disciples (1912–1918) and through late testimonies, with the hagiographic bias of the genre. Marie Louise Burke's research in the American press made it possible to reconstruct the American years precisely and to correct more than one legend. No sound recording of his voice survives: the recordings circulating as such are later readings.

Legacy

The Ramakrishna Order and Mission, headquartered at Belur, today run hundreds of centres, hospitals and schools. His reading of Vedanta—experience as the proof of religion, the unity of religions, Hinduism as a universal faith—has been criticised by scholars such as Anantanand Rambachan and Wilhelm Halbfass for projecting Western categories onto the tradition, and appropriated by Hindu nationalism in ways he did not foresee. Gandhi, Tagore, Aurobindo and Subhas Chandra Bose acknowledged his influence, and India celebrates his birthday as National Youth Day. Outside India, the arrival in the West of yoga, of Vedanta and of the very idea of a universal spirituality cannot be understood without him.

Sources: Vivekananda, Swami. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Mayavati Memorial Edition, 9 vols. Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1907–1997 (vol. 9 añadido en 1997). · His Eastern and Western Disciples. The Life of Swami Vivekananda. 2 vols. Mayavati / Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1912–1918; 6.ª ed. revisada, 1979–1981. · Nikhilananda, Swami. Vivekananda: A Biography. Nueva York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1953. · Burke, Marie Louise. Swami Vivekananda in the West: New Discoveries. 6 vols. Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1983–1987 (1.ª ed. en un volumen, 1958). · Barrows, John Henry (ed.). The World's Parliament of Religions. 2 vols. Chicago: The Parliament Publishing Company, 1893.

Timeline

A life, year by year

Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.

  1. January 12, 1863 · age 0

    Birth of Narendranath Datta

    Born at the family home in Gourmohan Mukherjee Street, son of the attorney Vishwanath Datta and Bhuvaneswari Devi.

    Documented

  2. 1881 · age 18

    First meeting with Ramakrishna

    Ramakrishna hears him sing at Surendranath Mitra's house (November 1881, according to the official biography) and he soon visits Dakshineswar, where he asks whether he has seen God.

    Probable

  3. 1884 · age 21

    Degree and father's death

    He graduates (B.A.) from Calcutta University. His father's sudden death leaves the family in debt and poverty.

    Documented

  4. August 16, 1886 · age 23

    Death of Ramakrishna

    Ramakrishna dies of throat cancer at the Cossipore garden house, where Narendra and other young men had nursed him for months.

    Documented

  5. December 1886 · age 23

    Birth of the monastic community

    The young disciples settle in a house at Baranagar—the Order's first monastery—and at Antpur on Christmas Eve take the vow of renunciation; formal ordination (viraja homa) follows early in 1887.

    Documented

  6. 1888 – 1893 · age 25

    Years of wandering

    He travels India as a wandering monk until 1893, in contact with maharajas, pandits and peasants.

    Documented

  7. December 1892 · age 29

    The rock at Kanyakumari

    He meditates on a rock off Cape Comorin; in his letters he places there the decision to seek help for India's masses. The rock now holds the Vivekananda Rock Memorial (1970).

    Documented

  8. May 31, 1893 · age 30

    Sails for America

    He sails from Bombay via Ceylon, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Vancouver, reaching Chicago at the end of July.

    Documented

  9. September 11, 1893 · age 30

    Welcome address at the Parliament of Religions

    'Sisters and Brothers of America.' Until 27 September he speaks several times, the 'Paper on Hinduism' (19 September) being the central text.

    Documented

  10. November 1894 · age 31

    Vedanta Society of New York

    He founds the first Vedanta society in the West, still active.

    Documented

  11. June 1895 · age 32

    The Thousand Island Park talks

    Seven weeks of teaching a small group of disciples; Sarah Ellen Waldo's notes will be published as Inspired Talks (1908).

    Documented

  12. November 1895 · age 32

    Meeting Margaret Noble

    The Irish educator, the future Sister Nivedita, hears him in a West End drawing room.

    Documented

  13. 1896 · age 33

    Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga and meetings with Max Müller and Deussen

    Longmans publishes Raja Yoga in London; Karma Yoga and Bhakti Yoga appear. He visits Max Müller in Oxford (May) and Paul Deussen in Kiel (September).

    Documented

  14. January 15, 1897 · age 34

    Triumphant return to India

    He lands at Colombo and travels north to Calcutta and Almora; his speeches form Lectures from Colombo to Almora.

    Documented

  15. May 1, 1897 · age 34

    Founding of the Ramakrishna Mission

    He establishes the Ramakrishna Mission Association, joining monastic renunciation to social service.

    Documented

  16. December 9, 1898 · age 35

    Consecration of Belur Math

    He installs Ramakrishna's relics in the new monastery on the Ganges, the Order's headquarters.

    Documented

  17. June 20, 1899 – 1900 · age 36

    Second journey to the West

    He leaves with Turiyananda and Nivedita; teaches in New York and California (Shanti Ashrama) and in 1900 attends the Congress of the History of Religions in Paris.

    Documented

  18. July 4, 1902 · age 39

    Death

    He dies in the evening in his room, during meditation; the monks speak of mahasamadhi. He is cremated the next day on the bank of the Ganges.

    Documented

  19. 1907

    First Complete Works

    Advaita Ashrama begins publishing the Complete Works (Mayavati Memorial Edition), which will reach nine volumes in 1997.

    Documented

  20. 1984

    National Youth Day

    The Government of India declares 12 January, his birthday, National Youth Day (observed since 1985).

    Documented

Works

Essential works

The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.

Raja Yoga — Swami Vivekananda

Published lectures · 1896

Raja Yoga

Raja Yoga, or Conquering the Internal Nature

The exposition of meditative yoga that most influenced the West for half a century. It presents raja yoga as an experimental science of the mind—posture, control of prana, withdrawal of the senses, concentration, meditation and samadhi—without prior faith. The second part translates and comments on Patañjali's aphorisms. Its language of energy, psychology and method, and its syncretism with notions of the time, were decisive in making yoga understood in the West as a universal technique; Elizabeth De Michelis regards it as the founding text of modern yoga.

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8 editions · amazon.com

Karma Yoga — Swami Vivekananda

Published lectures · 1896

Karma Yoga

Karma-Yoga

The yoga of action: how work done without attachment to its fruits purifies the mind and leads to freedom. Drawing on the Bhagavad Gita, Vivekananda develops an ethic of duty relative to each person ('each is great in his own place'), the idea that in helping the world we help ourselves, and the ideal of work for work's sake. It is the doctrinal foundation of the Ramakrishna Mission and of social service as spiritual practice.

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7 editions · amazon.com

Bhakti Yoga — Swami Vivekananda

Published lectures · c. 1896

Bhakti Yoga

Bhakti-Yoga

The path of love for God. Vivekananda defines bhakti as 'a real, genuine search after the Lord' that begins, continues and ends in love, and follows it from preparatory devotion—with symbols, images, names and the need for a teacher—to supreme devotion, in which lover, love and beloved merge. He defends image worship as a legitimate step against reformist critics and reconciles it with non-dual Vedanta.

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6 editions · amazon.com

Jnana Yoga — Swami Vivekananda

Published lectures · c. 1899

Jnana Yoga

Jnana-Yoga

The path of knowledge according to Advaita Vedanta: the necessity of religion, maya as a statement of facts rather than a theory, the personal and impersonal God, the unity of existence and the realisation of the Self. It is his most philosophical exposition: a defence of monism as the rational culmination of religion, in dialogue with the science and agnosticism of his time, and the basis of his thesis that all religions lead to the same unity.

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8 editions · amazon.com

Complete works (55)

See all 55 works in the library

Quotations

Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.

Sisters and Brothers of America,

VerifiedDiscurso de bienvenida, Parlamento Mundial de las Religiones, Chicago, 11 de septiembre de 1893 (Complete Works, vol. 1, «Response to Welcome»)

1 / 15
Apocryphal quotes or disputed attributions (3)

  • «'Talk to yourself once in a day, otherwise you may miss meeting an excellent person in this world.'»

    It circulates massively on social media and posters under his name, but it does not appear in any of the nine volumes of the Complete Works (search of the full Wikisource text, 2026-10-23). Neither its style nor its vocabulary is Vivekananda's.

  • «'In a day, when you don't come across any problems – you can be sure that you are travelling in a wrong path.'»

    Not located in the Complete Works (Wikisource search, 2026-10-23). It belongs to the self-help sayings attributed online without a source.

  • «The audio recordings circulating as 'the voice of Swami Vivekananda' delivering the Chicago address.»

    No sound recording of Vivekananda survives. The recordings presented as his 'own voice' are modern readings; neither the Ramakrishna Order nor Marie Louise Burke's research on his American stay mentions any recording.

Last words

There are no verifiable records of their last words.

His disciples' official biography (The Life of Swami Vivekananda, 1912–1918) describes 4 July 1902 in detail—three hours of meditation in the morning, a Sanskrit grammar class, a walk, talk of a planned Vedic college—and says that around seven in the evening he withdrew to meditate and died at about nine; sources differ on the time (9:10 or 9:20). It records no words spoken at the moment of death. A remark he supposedly made that day, overheard by a brother monk, that only 'another Vivekananda' would understand what Vivekananda had done, circulates widely; it could not be checked against the primary source and is in any case not his last words.

Source: His Eastern and Western Disciples. The Life of Swami Vivekananda. 2 vols. Mayavati / Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1912–1918; 6.ª ed. revisada, 1979–1981.

Ask

What their work answers

Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.

  • What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

    The personal God is the Absolute as read by the human mind

    Both personal and impersonalStated explicitly

    Swami Vivekananda, disciple of Ramakrishna, defends Advaita Vedanta without disdaining devotion. In his Jnana Yoga lectures he holds that the only reality is the impersonal Brahman, existence, consciousness and bliss, and that the human soul is identical with it. In Bhakti Yoga, in the chapter on the philosophy of Ishvara, he explains that the personal God is that same Absolute as perceived by the human mind: not an illusion to be discarded but the highest reading of the Absolute available to one who still feels himself an individual. Hence his claim that dualism, qualified non-dualism and non-dualism are stages of one path. For Vivekananda, the divine has a face that is loved and a formless ground with which, ultimately, one is identified.

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  • Who am I? Is there a true self?

    Each soul is potentially divine; the real man is the infinite Atman

    The Self is the AbsoluteStated explicitly

    Swami Vivekananda distinguishes, in the lecture «The Real and the Apparent Man» collected in Jnana Yoga, between the limited individual we believe ourselves to be and the real man, the Atman, infinite, immortal and one with Brahman. The apparent man is a passing manifestation of that Atman through body and mind; everything that limits us belongs to the level of appearance. Hence his motto, which heads his exposition of Raja Yoga: each soul is potentially divine, and the goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal, through work, devotion, psychic control or philosophy. Vivekananda stresses the ethical consequences: if we are all the same Self, serving another is serving God. The true self is not a part of the Absolute but the Absolute itself.

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  • Why do we suffer?

    Maya always mixes pleasure and pain; only the Atman is free of both

    Ignorance of what we areStated explicitly

    Swami Vivekananda treats suffering in his lectures on maya, collected in Jnana Yoga. Maya is not for him a theory of illusion but a statement of the contradiction in which we live: every pleasure drags its pain, every good its evil, and no worldly progress will remove that mixture, because it belongs to the nature of the relative world. Whoever seeks complete happiness in the finite is condemned to frustration. The root of suffering is ignorance of our true nature: we identify with body and mind, subject to contradiction, rather than with the Atman, which lies beyond it. Vivekananda does not draw indifference from this: in Karma Yoga he proposes working to relieve the pain of others without attachment to results, as a way of purifying oneself and of serving God in every being.

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  • What happens after death?

    The Atman is immortal; bodies change, are reborn and are finally known as illusory

    What I am is never born and never diesStated explicitly

    Vivekananda sets out the question of death from Vedanta in lectures such as «Immortality», included in Jnana Yoga. He denies that the soul is created or can die: what has a beginning has an end, and the Atman, which is Brahman, has none. On the relative plane he accepts reincarnation: the subtle mind, laden with impressions (samskaras), leaves the body and seeks another in accordance with its karma, and Vivekananda defends it as a more rational explanation of the differences between beings than the creation of new souls at each birth. But on the ultimate plane, that of non-duality, the soul never came and never went: the same infinite Self appears under names and forms. The goal is not an eternal life in a heaven, which would be another form of birth, but to recognise that one was never born.

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  • How is liberation or salvation attained?

    Manifest the inner divinity through work, devotion, mental control or knowledge

    Through disciplined practiceStated explicitly

    Swami Vivekananda sums up his position in the preface to Raja Yoga: each soul is potentially divine and the goal is to manifest that divinity by controlling nature, external and internal, whether by work, by worship, by psychic control or by philosophy, by one, several or all of these means. The other elements of religion (doctrines, rites, books or temples) are secondary details. He devoted a book to each path: Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Raja Yoga and Jnana Yoga. His originality lies in presenting them as verifiable, almost experimental methods suited to different temperaments, and in joining them to service of others, whom he asked people to see as manifestations of the divine. The ultimate horizon is the Advaitic realisation of identity with Brahman.

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  • Is a teacher necessary?

    Spiritual impulse passes from soul to soul: a true guru is needed

    IndispensableStated explicitly

    In Bhakti Yoga, Swami Vivekananda devotes chapters to the need for a guru and to the qualities of the aspirant and the teacher. He holds that books alone do not awaken the soul: the spiritual impulse must come from another, already awakened soul, and the one who transmits it is the guru. He asks much of the teacher: he must know the spirit of the scriptures, be free from sin and not teach for money or fame. And he asks of the disciple purity, thirst for knowledge and perseverance. His own life illustrates this position: he attributed everything he was to his master Ramakrishna. At the same time, Vivekananda rejected credulity and asked that teaching be examined; the guru is necessary, but not just anyone is one.

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  • Is the world real?

    Maya is not a theory: it is a description of the world as it is

    Appearance over the one realityStated explicitly

    In the lectures collected in Jnana Yoga, Swami Vivekananda devotes several talks to maya and warns against understanding it as a claim that the world does not exist. Maya is, for him, a description of facts: the world is a contradictory mixture of good and evil, pleasure and pain, life and death, which cannot be resolved within itself. It is neither simply unreal nor real in the ultimate sense: it is the appearance the Absolute takes on through time, space and causality. Behind that appearance stands Brahman, the only reality, which is also the Self of each person. Hence his practical emphasis: seeing the divine in the beings one serves.

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  • What is love?

    Love for love's sake, without asking or fearing, leads to union

    Longing and unionStated explicitly

    Vivekananda devoted one of his four yogas to love. In Bhakti Yoga he defines devotion as the search for God through love and describes its culmination, supreme devotion (para-bhakti), through what he calls the triangle of love: love asks nothing in return, knows no fear and has no other object than love itself, which is its own ideal. He goes through the forms the relationship with God takes — as Father, as Mother, as friend, as beloved — and holds that all human love, even the most limited, is a reflection of divine love. At its height, the lover, love and the beloved become one, and devotion flows into the same non-duality that knowledge reaches. At the same time, Vivekananda joins love of God with service: to serve the human being is to serve God present in him.

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  • Are we free, or is everything determined?

    We are what our acts have made us, and we can remake ourselves

    Karma and choiceStated explicitly

    Vivekananda stresses human responsibility with almost programmatic vigour: in *Karma Yoga* (1896) he holds that each person is the sum of his past thoughts and actions, and therefore holds in his own hands what he will become. His critique of the fatalism of the India of his day is explicit: weakness, not destiny, is the cause of misery. But as a Vedantin he distinguishes levels. In his *Jnana Yoga* lectures he explains that the will, as a phenomenon of the world of *māyā*, is subject to cause and effect and is not free in an absolute sense; what is free is the Ātman, beyond the causal chain. Practice consists in using conditioned action to reach that freedom which does not depend on choosing.

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  • Why meditate or pray?

    Concentrating the mind until the soul knows itself in samadhi

    Returning to the source of the IStated explicitly

    In *Raja Yoga* (1896), his commentary on Patañjali's *Yoga Sutras*, Vivekananda presents meditation as an experimental science: just as the chemist focuses his instruments on matter, the yogi focuses the mind on itself. His ladder runs from ethics and posture through breath control, withdrawal of the senses, concentration and meditation up to *samādhi*, a superconscious state in which the soul recognises itself as free and independent of nature. He does not deny the value of devotion, to which he devotes *Bhakti Yoga*, nor of selfless action, but for him the end of meditative practice is realisation of the Ātman, identical with Brahman, not petition to a separate God.

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  • Can reason know the ultimate?

    Religion must withstand reason's scrutiny and culminate in superconsciousness

    Faith and reason help each otherStated explicitly

    Vivekananda claims for religion the same rational scrutiny applied to science: in his lecture «Reason and Religion» he holds that a religion unable to defend itself before reason does not deserve to survive, and presents Vedānta as the most rational of doctrines. But in *Raja Yoga* (ch. 7, «Dhyāna and Samādhi») he sets out a scale of knowledge: instinct, reason and superconsciousness. Reason surpasses instinct but moves within a limited circle; beyond it is *samādhi*, in which truths are known that reason cannot reach, though they never contradict it. The statements of sages and scriptures, he insists, must be verified in one's own experience.

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  • Withdraw from the world or transform it?

    Serving the human being is worshipping God: a practical Vedanta

    Engage with the worldStated explicitly

    Swami Vivekananda, a renunciant monk, set out to bring Vedanta out of the forests and caves and into daily life. In his lectures on Practical Vedanta, delivered in London in 1896, he holds that the unity of all beings in the Ātman is not an idea for isolated contemplation but the foundation of an ethic of service: if God is in every human being, serving the poor, the sick or the ignorant is worshipping God. He takes up his master Ramakrishna's teaching of serving beings by seeing them as Shiva, and in 1897 founds the Ramakrishna Mission, which joins monastic life with hospitals, schools and relief in famines and epidemics. In Karma Yoga he presents selfless action as a path to liberation. He harshly criticised a religiosity concerned with rites while the people of India went hungry.

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Affinities & tensions

Affinities and tensions

Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.

They clash onApparent contradiction

Swami Vivekananda · Adi Shankara

The sage who renounces and the sage who serves: two readings of the same Advaita

Adi Shankara holds in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita (introduction and 3.1) that knowledge and action are incompatible in the same subject, and assigns renunciation to the one who knows: the wandering, propertyless life of the monk. Swami Vivekananda, himself an Advaita monk, set out to bring Vedanta out of the forests and caves: in his lectures on Practical Vedanta (London, 1896) he makes unity in the atman the foundation of an ethics of service, and in 1897 he founded the Ramakrishna Mission, with hospitals, schools and famine relief. One withdraws the sage from the world; the other sends him into it. Yet they agree on the essential: the goal is the realisation of identity with Brahman, and no action produces it. For both, selfless work purifies the mind.

Why: The contradiction is largely apparent. Shankara does not condemn action: he regards it as the purifying duty of those who do not yet know, and Vivekananda presents karma yoga precisely as a path of purification towards a knowledge that remains, for him, the summit. What changes is audience and era. Shankara writes for renunciants, in a scholastic dispute with those who combined ritual and knowledge; Vivekananda, who saw himself as heir to Advaita, speaks to a colonised and impoverished India and to a Western public, and turns service into worship of the divine in every being. A real difference of emphasis remains: in Shankara the liberated one ceases to act; in Vivekananda, he goes on serving.

They clash onFundamental disagreement

Swami Vivekananda · Annie Besant

Chicago, 1893: the wisdom of the hidden Masters versus a Vedanta to be verified

Both carried Indian spirituality to the West and both claimed an almost scientific method for it. Besant presents in The Ancient Wisdom a doctrine transmitted by the Masters of an occult Hierarchy and verifiable through the development of higher faculties; her path of discipleship culminates in initiations under those Masters. Vivekananda holds in his lecture Reason and Religion that a religion unable to withstand rational examination does not deserve to survive, and in Raja Yoga (ch. 7) places above reason the superconsciousness of samadhi, which never contradicts it; he demands that everything be verified in one's own experience and credits his formation to a flesh-and-blood master, Ramakrishna. They share a horizon; they clash over the source of authority: invisible Masters, or Vedanta and verifiable experience.

Why: The relationship is historical: both spoke at the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago, which launched Vivekananda, and they later competed to represent India's wisdom before the West. Vivekananda publicly distanced himself from the Theosophical Society and its doctrine of the Mahatmas, which he regarded as foreign to the Vedantic tradition. The tension is not only one of rivalry: Besant inherits from Blavatsky a wisdom presented as hidden and revealed to initiates; Vivekananda, from Ramakrishna and Vedanta, a public teaching anyone can test through practice. Both wanted to reconcile religion and science; they differed over the place they left for secrecy.

They agree on

Swami Vivekananda · The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso)

A religion that accepts examination: the monk of Chicago and the monk of Nalanda

Both ask that religion undergo the same examination applied to science. Vivekananda holds in his lecture Reason and Religion that a religion unable to defend itself before reason does not deserve to survive. The Dalai Lama writes in The Universe in a Single Atom that if scientific investigation conclusively showed a Buddhist claim to be false, it should be abandoned, and recalls the advice to examine the Buddha's teaching as a goldsmith tests gold. Both give reason a preparatory role and contemplative experience the final one: the superconsciousness of samadhi, which never contradicts reason, in Raja Yoga (ch. 7); the meditation that turns what analysis has understood into direct experience, in the Dalai Lama. And both reject credulity, towards the master too.

Why: The convergence is explained by context: both present an Asian tradition before a West shaped by modern science and by the critique of religion, and both want to show that their tradition does not fear that examination. Each also draws on resources specific to his tradition: Vivekananda, on the experimental reading of yoga and on Vedanta; the Dalai Lama, on the logic and epistemology of Nalanda. They differ on the goal: for Vivekananda experience culminates in identity with Brahman; for the Dalai Lama, in the understanding of emptiness, which denies precisely a permanent Self. No relationship between them is documented.

Anecdotes and stories

Anecdotes and stories

Testimony1881–1882

'Have you seen God?'

In the early 1880s the young Narendranath, trained in Mill's logic and in the rational theism of the Brahmo Samaj, was looking for someone who could answer a single question. According to the account he himself later gave his disciples, he put it to several respected Calcutta teachers, Debendranath Tagore among them, and none gave him a straight answer. At Dakshineswar the priest of the Kali temple whom people called Ramakrishna answered without hesitation that he had: that he saw God as he saw Narendra, only far more intensely, and that he could show God to him. Narendra left convinced that he had met either a madman or a saint, and for years went on testing the man. The episode became central to the Order's memory because it condenses its programme: religion as verifiable experience, not inherited belief.

Origin of the story: Vivekananda's own account transmitted by his disciples: The Life of Swami Vivekananda (1912–1918) and Nikhilananda, Vivekananda: A Biography (1953). Ramakrishna left his own version of the first meetings in the conversations recorded by M. in the Kathamrita.

Source: His Eastern and Western Disciples. The Life of Swami Vivekananda. 2 vols. Mayavati / Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1912–1918; 6.ª ed. revisada, 1979–1981.

Hagiographic account1884–1885

The prayer before the goddess

After his father's death in 1884, Narendra's family was burdened with debts and he could find no work. According to the Order's tradition, he asked Ramakrishna to pray to the goddess for his mother and siblings; the master told him to go to the temple himself that night, a Tuesday, and ask for whatever he wanted. Narendra entered, prostrated himself before the image of Kali and, carried away, could ask only for discrimination, renunciation, knowledge and devotion. He went back twice more intending to ask for money and both times the same thing happened. Ramakrishna then assured him that his family would never lack the basics. For the young man who mocked image worship, the episode marked, in his biographers' telling, the acceptance of Kali as the Mother.

Origin of the story: It comes from the disciples' biography (The Life…) and Swami Saradananda's Sri Ramakrishna Lilaprasanga (1909–1919), which present it as Vivekananda's own recollection. There is no independent contemporary testimony.

Source: His Eastern and Western Disciples. The Life of Swami Vivekananda. 2 vols. Mayavati / Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1912–1918; 6.ª ed. revisada, 1979–1981.

Testimonyc. 1888–1890

'Face the brutes'

In a lecture given in the West, Vivekananda told an episode from his wandering years. He was walking in Varanasi along a road with a large tank of water on one side and a high wall on the other, in an area full of monkeys, which there are big and sometimes surly. The animals decided not to let him pass and began to chase him; he ran, and the faster he ran the closer they came, biting at him. When escape seemed impossible a stranger called out to him: 'Face the brutes.' He turned and faced them, and the monkeys fell back and fled. Vivekananda drew from it a lesson for the whole of life: the evils of existence must be faced bravely, not run from. The story has become one of the most repeated parables of his teaching on strength.

Origin of the story: Autobiographical account in the lecture 'What Is Religion?', Complete Works, vol. 1 (Lectures and Discourses). There are no witnesses; it is his own recollection used as a moral example.

Source: Vivekananda, Swami. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Mayavati Memorial Edition, 9 vols. Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1907–1997 (vol. 9 añadido en 1997).

DocumentedDiciembre de 1892

The rock at Kanyakumari

In December 1892, after nearly five years of wandering, Vivekananda reached Kanyakumari, the cape where the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean meet. Off the temple of the virgin goddess lie two rocky islets. The Order's tradition says that, with no money to pay a boatman, he swam to the larger one and spent several days there meditating on India. What is documented is what he himself wrote in March 1894 to his brother monk Ramakrishnananda: that at Cape Comorin, sitting in Mother Kumari's temple, 'on the last bit of Indian rock', he hit upon a plan for the wandering monks—to go from village to village teaching and serving the poor—and the idea of seeking in America the means to carry it out. The Vivekananda Rock Memorial was inaugurated on the rock in 1970.

Origin of the story: The plan conceived at Kanyakumari is documented in his letter to Ramakrishnananda of 19 March 1894 (Complete Works, vol. 6). The swim and the length of the meditation come from the Order's oral tradition recorded in The Life…, with no direct testimony.

Source: Vivekananda, Swami. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Mayavati Memorial Edition, 9 vols. Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1907–1997 (vol. 9 añadido en 1997).

TestimonySeptiembre de 1893

The night in the freight car

In September 1893, a few days before the Parliament opened, Vivekananda returned to Chicago from Massachusetts and found he had lost the address of the committee that was to house the delegates. He knew no one, was not fluent in the language of the street and, according to the story, no one would give him directions. He spent the night in a large empty box in a railway freight yard. The next morning, walking along a fashionable avenue and begging from door to door like a mendicant monk, he was turned away several times until he sat down, exhausted, on the pavement. A lady living opposite, Belle Hale, saw him, asked whether he was a delegate to the Parliament and took him to the offices. The Hale family became his American home, and his letters to Mary Hale are among the liveliest in his correspondence.

Origin of the story: Account transmitted by the disciples' biography from Vivekananda's own recollections and those of the Hale family; Marie Louise Burke (Swami Vivekananda in the West: New Discoveries) checked the chronology against the Chicago press and confirms the Hales' role, though the details of the night rest on the protagonist's account.

Source: His Eastern and Western Disciples. The Life of Swami Vivekananda. 2 vols. Mayavati / Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1912–1918; 6.ª ed. revisada, 1979–1981.

Oral tradition1891 o 1893

The singer of Khetri

During his stay at the court of the Maharaja of Khetri in Rajputana, the monk was invited to a recital by a court singer. True to his idea of renunciation, he refused to attend a performance by a woman of that status and rose to leave. The singer then sang a bhajan attributed to the poet Surdas: 'Lord, look not upon my faults; Thou art called the one who sees all as equal.' The song says that the same iron serves for the butcher's knife and for the temple image, and that the philosopher's stone turns both to gold. According to his disciples' biography, Vivekananda stayed, moved, and later acknowledged that the episode taught him that no one is impure in the eyes of one who has grasped the unity of all. Tradition presents it as a lesson he received rather than one he gave.

Origin of the story: It comes from The Life of Swami Vivekananda, which attributes it to Vivekananda's own recollections; the date (first visit to Khetri in 1891 or that of 1893) and the singer's name vary between versions. No contemporary source.

Source: His Eastern and Western Disciples. The Life of Swami Vivekananda. 2 vols. Mayavati / Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1912–1918; 6.ª ed. revisada, 1979–1981.

Teachings

Teachings

The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.

The four yogasfour-yogas
Vivekananda organised Hindu spiritual practice into four paths corresponding to four temperaments: karma yoga, for the active, purifies through work done without attachment; bhakti yoga, for the emotional, transforms love into devotion to God; raja yoga, for the contemplative, controls the mind through concentration and meditation; jnana yoga, for the intellectual, attains freedom through discrimination between the real and the unreal. All four lead to the same goal—realisation of the soul's divinity—and the ideal is to combine them in a balanced personality. The classification is rooted in the Bhagavad Gita, but its formulation as a fourfold system and its presentation in four independent books are his own, and became the framework through which the West understood 'yoga' well into the twentieth century.

Karma Yoga, Raja Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and Jnana Yoga (1896–1907); Complete Works, vols. 1–3. On its role in modern yoga: De Michelis (2004).

Source: De Michelis, Elizabeth. A History of Modern Yoga: Patañjali and Western Esotericism. Londres / Nueva York: Continuum, 2004.

The potential divinity of the soulpotential-divinity
'Each soul is potentially divine': Raja Yoga opens with this sentence, which sums up his anthropology. Following Advaita Vedanta, the atman of every being is identical to Brahman, absolute reality; ignorance (avidya) conceals that identity, and religion consists in manifesting it. Several characteristic theses follow: rejection of the idea of original sin ('the Hindu refuses to call you sinners'), trust in inner strength with weakness as the only real sin, the radical equality of all human beings, and the definition of education as the manifestation of the perfection already in man. The formula translates Advaita metaphysics into a moral and psychological language accessible to a modern audience, and is probably his most quoted idea.

Raja Yoga (1896); 'Paper on Hinduism' (1893); writings on education collected in the Complete Works.

Source: Vivekananda, Swami. Raja Yoga, or Conquering the Internal Nature. Londres / Nueva York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1896.

Practical Vedantapractical-vedanta
For Vivekananda non-dual Vedanta was not a doctrine for secluded ascetics but a principle that had to transform ordinary life: if the same Self dwells in all, exploitation, untouchability and contempt for the poor are practical denials of metaphysical truth. In the London lectures of 1896 he proposed that each person see the divine in others and act accordingly, at work, in the family and in politics. This move from metaphysics to social ethics is the core of his originality and also of academic objections: Paul Hacker, Wilhelm Halbfass and Anantanand Rambachan have pointed out that he reinterprets Shankara's Advaita with Western categories—experience, active ethics, science—that the classical tradition lacked. His defenders reply that such adaptation was precisely his aim.

Practical Vedanta (London, 1896); Lectures from Colombo to Almora (1897). Critiques: Halbfass (1988), Rambachan (1994).

Source: Halbfass, Wilhelm. India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988.

Serving human beings as God (shiva jnane jiva seva)service-as-worship
The Bengali-Sanskrit expression shiva jnane jiva seva, 'serving living beings knowing them to be Shiva', is traced to a saying of Ramakrishna that, according to the official biography, Narendra heard at Dakshineswar and turned into a programme. Instead of compassion (daya), which implies the giver's superiority, he proposed service as worship: the poor, the sick and the ignorant are forms of God, and serving them is a spiritual practice as valid as meditation. On this idea he founded the Ramakrishna Mission in 1897, which combines monastic life with hospitals, schools and disaster relief, and he coined the expression daridra narayana, 'God in the poor', later popularised by Gandhi. The Order's motto, atmano mokshartham jagad hitaya cha, 'for one's own liberation and the good of the world', sums up this twofold orientation.

Founding of the Ramakrishna Mission (1897); letters of 1894–1897; Lectures from Colombo to Almora.

Source: His Eastern and Western Disciples. The Life of Swami Vivekananda. 2 vols. Mayavati / Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1912–1918; 6.ª ed. revisada, 1979–1981.

Universal acceptance of religionsharmony-of-religions
At Chicago Vivekananda distinguished between tolerating other religions and accepting them as true, and argued for the latter. In his model, inherited from Ramakrishna, religions are different paths to the same goal, suited to different temperaments and cultures, like the rivers flowing into the same sea in the hymn he quoted on 11 September. Hence his rejection of proselytism—the Christian is not to become a Hindu nor the Hindu a Christian, but each must assimilate the spirit of the other—and his idea of a universal religion that would not be a new faith but the recognition of unity beneath diversity. The thesis, enormously influential in interreligious dialogue, has been criticised for presupposing that the common goal is that of Vedanta, so that other religions become stages of a truth Hinduism formulates better.

Chicago addresses (1893), especially 'Response to Welcome' and 'Address at the Final Session'; lectures on universal religion (Complete Works, vol. 2).

Source: Barrows, John Henry (ed.). The World's Parliament of Religions. 2 vols. Chicago: The Parliament Publishing Company, 1893.

Maya as a statement of factsmaya-statement-of-facts
In his Jnana Yoga lectures Vivekananda rejected the usual reading of maya as an 'illusion' denying the reality of the world. Maya, he said, is not a theory to explain the world but a simple statement of what we are and what we see: a world of contradictions in which good and evil, life and death, pleasure and pain always go together and neither can be separated from the other. Recognising this condition leads not to pessimism or flight but to seeking what lies beyond the opposites—the Self—without ceasing to act in the world. This existential reinterpretation of a technical Advaita concept is characteristic of his way of translating classical philosophy into modern experience.

Jnana Yoga, lectures 'Maya and Illusion' and 'Maya and the Evolution of the Conception of God' (London, 1896; Complete Works, vol. 2).

Source: Vivekananda, Swami. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Mayavati Memorial Edition, 9 vols. Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1907–1997 (vol. 9 añadido en 1997).

Retreats

Retreats and centres

Places and gatherings linked to their teaching. We put you in touch with the organisers.

  • Belur, Howrah (junto a Calcuta), Bengala Occidental · India

    Belur Math, headquarters of the Ramakrishna Order

    Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission

    Belur Math, on the banks of the Ganges, is the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Order that Swami Vivekananda founded on his return from the West, and the place where he died in 1902. The grounds hold the Sri Ramakrishna temple, whose architecture Vivekananda conceived to bring together motifs from different religions, the temples of Sarada Devi and of Vivekananda himself, the room where he lived and a museum. The institution describes it as a place of pilgrimage for people of all faiths. It has a guest house for pilgrims, and its branch centres worldwide share the same spirit of service and study.

    Request information

  • Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu · India

    Vivekananda Rock Memorial and Vivekananda Kendra, Kanyakumari

    Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra

    At the southern tip of India, on a rock off Kanyakumari, Vivekananda meditated in December 1892 before setting out for the West; the Vivekananda Rock Memorial now stands there. Its sister organisation, Vivekananda Kendra, is based at Vivekanandapuram on the mainland and describes itself as a spiritually oriented service mission working in education, health and rural development. As well as receiving the pilgrims who visit the memorial, it runs residential yoga camps, certificate courses and spiritual retreats, taught mainly in English and Hindi, under the motto that they alone live who live for others.

    Request information

  • Nueva York (Upper West Side) · Estados Unidos

    Vedanta Society of New York

    Vedanta Society of New York (Orden de Ramakrishna)

    The Vedanta Society of New York is the first Vedanta society in the West: Swami Vivekananda founded it in 1894, during his first stay in the United States, and it belongs to the Ramakrishna Order. From its home on West 71st Street it offers Sunday lectures, weekday discussions on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and other texts, and daily vesper services. Its talks, particularly those of its current minister, are published openly as videos and podcasts, which has made it one of the most accessible sources for studying Advaita Vedanta in Vivekananda's line from anywhere in the world.

    Request information
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Videos

Videos

Recordings, interviews and documentaries. Videos play from YouTube; they are not hosted here.

  • Swami Vivekananda in Chicago 1893: A short film

    Documentary· EN· 24 min

    Ramakrishna Math & Ramakrishna Mission, Belur MathOfficial channel

  • Vivekananda By Vivekananda (película biográfica, versión inglesa)

    Documentary· EN· 128 min

    Sri Ramakrishna Math ChennaiOfficial channel

  • स्वामी विवेकानंद की आत्मकथा (Vivekananda Ki Atmakatha), versión hindi

    Documentary· HI· 127 min

    Sri Ramakrishna Math ChennaiOfficial channel

  • A Documentary on Swami Vivekananda's Swadesh Chetana

    Documentary· EN· 38 min

    Ramakrishna Math & Ramakrishna Mission, Belur MathOfficial channel

  • The Life and Message of Swami Vivekananda / स्वामी विवेकानंद का जीवन और संदेश

    Documentary· EN· 71 min

    Films DivisionOfficial channel

  • BELUR MATH: The heart of Ramakrishna Movement (documental completo)

    Documentary· EN· 54 min

    Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama, NarendrapurOfficial channel

  • Swami Ranganathananda – Swami Vivekananda at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago 1893

    Lecture· EN· 40 min

    Vedanta Video

  • Karma Yoga: The Path of Action (Part 1) | Swami Sarvapriyananda

    Lecture· EN· 68 min

    Vedanta Society of New YorkOfficial channel

  • Swami Vivekananda en Chicago, 1893 | Serie de Discursos Famosos | Audio en Español

    Third-party recording· ES· 9 min

    Moksha Life

  • Swami Vivekananda's 1893 Speech at the World's Parliament of Religions

    Third-party recording· EN· 4 min

    Satchidananda Ashram – Yogaville

  • Swami Vivekananda – Die vier Stufen des Yoga

    Analysis· DE· 10 min

    Neue Akropolis – Schule der Philosophie

  • Swami Vivekananda's Chicago Address | Chicago Addresses | English Speech

    Watch on YouTube

    This video cannot be embedded; it opens on YouTube.

    Swami Vivekananda's Chicago Address | Chicago Addresses | English Speech

    Third-party recording· EN· 4 min

    Udbodhan – Ramakrishna Math BaghbazarOfficial channel

Gallery

Gallery

Images with verified licences. Each keeps its authorship and attribution.

Connections

Connections

Influences, discipleships and affinities. Documented relations are distinguished from similarities identified by analysis.

  • Disciple of

    Ramakrishna

    Chief disciple from 1881–82 until the master's death in 1886; organised his disciples into a monastic order and spread his message.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced by

    Adi Shankara

    His jnana yoga starts from Shankara's Advaita, which he often quotes and discusses, while reinterpreting it in a practical, universalist key.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced by

    Patañjali

    He translated and commented on the Yoga Sutras in the second part of Raja Yoga (1896).

    Documented relation

  • Teacher of

    Sister Nivedita (Margaret Noble)

    He met her in London in 1895 and initiated her as a brahmacharini in Calcutta in 1898; she left the portrait The Master as I Saw Him (1910).

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Sri Aurobindo

    Aurobindo wrote that during his imprisonment at Alipore (1908–09) he felt Vivekananda's presence guiding his meditation for a fortnight; they never met.

    Documented relation

  • Contemporary of

    Annie Besant

    Both spoke at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago (1893). Vivekananda later criticised the Theosophical Society in his 1897 speeches.

    Documented relation

  • Ideas akin to

    Paramahansa Yogananda

    Two successive generations of Bengali monks who founded lasting organisations in the United States to teach yoga and Vedanta and presented meditation as a universal science. Similarity identified by the editors, with no personal relationship (Yogananda was nine when Vivekananda died).

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Sri Aurobindo

    Both join Vedantic spirituality to India's national regeneration and conceive spiritual realisation as transforming life in the world.

    Similarity identified by analysis

Linked from other profiles

Sources

Sources

Bibliography and catalogues consulted for this profile.

  1. Vivekananda, Swami. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Mayavati Memorial Edition, 9 vols. Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1907–1997 (vol. 9 añadido en 1997).
  2. His Eastern and Western Disciples. The Life of Swami Vivekananda. 2 vols. Mayavati / Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1912–1918; 6.ª ed. revisada, 1979–1981.
  3. Nikhilananda, Swami. Vivekananda: A Biography. Nueva York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1953.
  4. Burke, Marie Louise. Swami Vivekananda in the West: New Discoveries. 6 vols. Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1983–1987 (1.ª ed. en un volumen, 1958).
  5. Barrows, John Henry (ed.). The World's Parliament of Religions. 2 vols. Chicago: The Parliament Publishing Company, 1893.
  6. De Michelis, Elizabeth. A History of Modern Yoga: Patañjali and Western Esotericism. Londres / Nueva York: Continuum, 2004.
  7. Wikidata, «Swami Vivekananda» (Q47478): nacimiento 12-01-1863, muerte 04-07-1902, 138 enlaces entre wikis.
  8. Gupta, Mahendranath («M.»). The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Trad. de Swami Nikhilananda. Nueva York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1942 (original bengalí: Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita, 1902–1932).
  9. Sen, Amiya P. Swami Vivekananda. Nueva Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000.
  10. Rambachan, Anantanand. The Limits of Scripture: Vivekananda's Reinterpretation of the Vedas. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994.
  11. Nivedita, Sister (Margaret E. Noble). The Master as I Saw Him: Being Pages from the Life of the Swami Vivekananda. Londres / Nueva York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1910.
  12. Ramakrishna Math & Ramakrishna Mission, Belur Math. Sitio oficial (historia de la Orden, Swami Vivekananda).
  13. Advaita Ashrama (Mayavati), departamento de publicaciones de la Orden Ramakrishna. Sitio oficial y tienda en línea.
  14. Open Library, registros de ediciones de Swami Vivekananda (consultados por ISBN).
  15. Halbfass, Wilhelm. India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988.
  16. Wikimedia Commons, metadatos de licencia de las fotografías de Swami Vivekananda (API imageinfo).
  17. Vivekananda, Swami. Raja Yoga, or Conquering the Internal Nature. Londres / Nueva York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1896.
  18. Aurobindo, Sri. Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1953 (ed. ampliada en Collected Works, vol. 26, 1972).
  19. Rolland, Romain. La vie de Vivekananda et l'évangile universel. París: Stock, 1930.
  20. Wikipedia (en). «Swami Vivekananda», sección Works/Publications (lista de obras publicadas en vida y póstumas, con referencias a Chattopadhyaya 1999).
  21. Wikipedia (en), «National Youth Day (India)»: el Gobierno de la India declaró en 1984 el 12 de enero, aniversario del nacimiento de Vivekananda, Día Nacional de la Juventud, celebrado desde 1985; consultada el 2026-10-25.
  22. Ramakrishna Math & Ramakrishna Mission, Belur Math, «Fact Check and Clarifications»: la voz de Vivekananda se grabó un par de veces en vida, pero esas grabaciones no se han localizado; los vídeos que dicen contener su «voz original» son falsos. Consultada el 2026-10-25.
Rights holder
Dominio público (fallecido en 1902; toda su obra publicada antes de 1929 está en dominio público). Las traducciones, compilaciones y aparato editorial modernos pertenecen a sus editores, principalmente Advaita Ashrama (Ramakrishna Math, Belur), titular de la edición de referencia de las Complete Works.
Official site
belurmath.org/

Pending confirmation

What this profile has not yet been able to settle. We would rather say so than fill it in.

  • Cotejar en The Life of Swami Vivekananda (ed. 1979-1981) la frase atribuida a Vivekananda el 4 de julio de 1902 sobre «otro Vivekananda» y quién la oyó (se suele citar a Swami Premananda).
  • Hora exacta de la muerte (9:10 o 9:20 p. m.) y diagnóstico: las fuentes de la Orden difieren.
  • Resuelto (2026-10-25): Fecha y editorial de la primera edición en libro de Jnana Yoga (conferencias de Londres, 1896): el prefacio de 1907 dice que apareció «varios años antes»; no localizada. → localizada la edición de 1902 (Nueva York, The Vedânta Society; Internet Archive vedaantaphilosop00viveuoft), añadida a las ediciones.
  • Ediciones con ISBN en alemán, italiano y ruso de Raja Yoga y Jnana Yoga publicadas por editoriales establecidas: Open Library solo registra ediciones antiguas sin ISBN o autoediciones.
  • Ediciones bengalíes de Udbodhan Karyalaya (Bani o Rachana, 10 vols.) con ISBN: no localizadas en Open Library.
  • Los cuatro primeros títulos de Kier (Raja, Karma, Gnana, Bhakti) figuran sin año en algunos registros; confirmar en el catálogo de la editorial.
  • Las fotografías subidas a Commons en 2025 por «RKM Archives» llevan licencia CC BY-SA 2.5 aunque son de 1886-1899 (dominio público por antigüedad): confirmar la procedencia del escaneo.
  • Identificar al fotógrafo del retrato de Chicago de septiembre de 1893 (la ficha de Commons solo nombra al usuario que lo subió).
  • Obras (2026-10-25): se añadieron 26 obras (libro de 1887, folletos de conferencias de 1896-1900 publicados en vida, colecciones de Natesan y antologías de la Orden Ramakrishna). Quedan fuera, por ser folletos sueltos o extractos ya incluidos en otras obras: Six Lessons on Raja Yoga, Work and Its Secret, Is Vedanta the Future Religion?, Immortality, Powers of the Mind, Personality Development, Thus Spake Vivekananda, Ramakrishna and His Message, My India the India Eternal, Para-Bhakti, Addresses on Bhakti-Yoga, la traducción de los Narada Bhakti Sutras y decenas de antologías en lenguas indias (Open Library registra unos 550 títulos bajo su nombre, mayoritariamente ediciones y selecciones).
  • Sangeet Kalpataru (1887): localizar una edición (original bengalí o reimpresión moderna) con editorial y año; no figura en Open Library.
  • Bhavbar Katha (ensayos bengalíes) y Pavhari Baba: confirmar si circularon como libros independientes antes de integrarse en The Complete Works.
  • Fechas de primera edición de las antologías de la Orden (Thoughts on Vedanta, Realisation and Its Methods, Teachings, To the Youth of India, Our Women, etc.): las de Open Library pueden ser reimpresiones; se marcaron como aproximadas.
  • Sala de lectura (2026-10-25): confirmar la fecha y el traductor de las versiones inglesas de Bartaman Bharat (Modern India), Prachya o Paschatya (The East and the West) y Parivrajak (Memoirs of European Travel) que transcribe Wikisource; mientras tanto van con caution.
  • Sala de lectura: confirmar la primera publicación de «Is Vedanta the Future Religion?» (vol. 8 de las Complete Works); si es posterior a 1930, puede no ser dominio público en EE. UU. (va con caution).
  • Sala de lectura: no se ha localizado ninguna traducción española de Vivekananda en dominio público (las de Kier y otras editoriales son modernas); solo se registran textos en inglés.
  • Obras (2026-10-25): añadidas 11 (Para-Bhakti, Addresses on Bhakti-Yoga, Narada-Bhakti-Sutras, Work and Its Secret, The Powers of the Mind, Is Vedanta the Future Religion?, Ramakrishna and His Message, Thus Spake Vivekananda, Personality Development, My India: The India Eternal, Living at the Source). Siguen fuera Six Lessons on Raja Yoga e Immortality (sin edición independiente localizada en Open Library) y la biografía de Pavhari Baba (artículo sin edición independiente localizada).

Researched on 2026-10-23