VIVEKANANDA AT KAKRIGHAT (KUMAON HILLS)

VIVEKANANDA IN KUMAON

(THE HOARY HEADED HIMALAYAS FROM MY HOUSE)

(Vivekananda -Enroute to Almora)

(KAKRIGHAT  ASHRAM)

(KAKRIGHAT ASHRAM-ANOTHER VIEW)

(THE PEEPAL TREE)

 

(THE KOSI RIVER)

After his experience of the macrocosm within the microcosm while absorbed in meditation under the 'peepul' tree at Kakrighat, in 1890, Swami Vivekananda jotted down in Bengali fragments of his realization in his notebook.

The microcosm and the macrocosm are built on the same plan. Just as the individual soul is encased in the living body, so is the universal Soul in the Living Prakriti [Nature] — the objective universe. Shivâ [i.e. Kâli] is embracing Shiva: this is not a fancy. This covering of the one [Soul] by the other [Nature] is analogous to the relation between an idea and the word expressing it: they are one and the same; and it is only by a mental abstraction that one can distinguish them. Thought is impossible without words. 

This dual aspect of the Universal Soul is eternal. So what we perceive or feel is this combination of the Eternally Formed and the Eternally Formless.

"For a man who traversed the subcontinent in his 20s, won unprecedented recognition for Hindu spiritualism in the West at 30, set up a Mission for social and educational work somewhere along the way, spoke aggressively against sloth and ‘don’t touchism’ when he wasn’t holding discourses on the Vedanta or inspiring others with his exhortations, it’s quite in order to be given the status of an Übermensch for whom an enslaved people yearned."