Swami Vivekananda Sees God Everywhere | Steve Beckow

By Steve Beckow, May 30, 2021

(Golden Age of Gaia)

For an article I was writing I was trying to find a description of Swami Vivekananda as one of the transcendent Seven Sages. I haven’t been able to find it but I always unearth the most interesting things in the process.

This is not a description of an ascended state, but probably one of Brahmajnana, God Realization, or seventh-chakra enlightenment, one stage below. Swami Vivekananda found himself in it at the touch of his master, Sri Ramakrishna.

As a result, Vivekananda enters a temporary experience of seeing God everywhere.

Remember that Vivekananda was one of the Seven Sages or Elohim. (1)

Swami Vivekenanda in Christopher Isherwood, Ramakrishna and His Disciples. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965; c1959, 206-7. Taken from https://tinyurl.com/yuxvk25n

At the marvellous touch of the Master [Sri Ramakrishna], my mind underwent a complete revolution. I was aghast to realize that there really was nothing whatever in the entire universe but God. I remained silent, wondering how long this state of mind would continue. It didn’t pass off all day.

I got back home, and I felt just the same there; everything I saw was God. I sat down to eat, and I saw that everything — the plate, the food, my mother who was serving it and I myself — everything was God and nothing else but God.

I swallowed a couple of mouthfuls and then sat still without speaking. My mother asked me lovingly, “Why are you so quiet? Why don’t you eat?” That brought me back to everyday consciousness, and I began eating again.

But, from then on, I kept having the same experience, no matter what I was doing — eating, drinking, sitting, lying down, going to college, strolling along the street. It was a kind of intoxication; I can’t describe it.

If I was crossing a street and saw a carriage coming towards me I didn’t have the urge, as I would ordinarily, to get out of its way for fear of being run over. For I said to myself, “I am that carriage. There’s no difference between it and me.”

During that time I had no sensation in my hands or feet. When I ate food, I felt no satisfaction from it; it was as if someone else was eating.

Sometimes I would lie down in the middle of a meal, and then get up again after a few minutes and go on eating; thus it happened that on those days I would eat far more than usual, but this never upset me. My mother became alarmed; she thought I was suffering from some terrible disease. “He won’t live long,” she’d say.

When that first intoxication lost part of its power, I began to see the world as though it were in a dream. When I went for a walk around Cornwallis Square, I used to knock my head against the iron railings to find out if they were only dream-railings or real ones. The loss of feeling in my hands and feet made me afraid that I was going to be paralyzed.

When I did at last return to normal consciousness I felt convinced that the state I had been in was a revelation of non-dualistic experience. (2) So then I knew that what is written in the Scriptures about this experience is all true.

Footnotes

(1) It doesn’t mean that there are only seven Elohim. It relates to the seven rays. Each of the Elohim holds one of the seven rays for a quadrant of the universe. See “Who are the Elohim? – Part 1/3” August 31, 2014, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2014/08/31/who-are-the-elohim-part-13/

Of him, Sri Ramakrishna said:

“Narendra [Swami Vivekananda] and people of his type belong to the class of the ever-free. They are never entangled in the world. When they grow a little older they feel the awakening of inner consciousness and go directly towards God. They come to the world only to teach others. They never care for anything of the world.” (Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Nikhilananda, Swami, trans. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942. , 88.)

(2) This was most likely a seventh-chakra experience of Brahmajnana or God Realization. If it had been Ascension, I’d expect Vivekananda to have left his master, which he never did. In fact Ramakrishna gave Vivekananda higher experiences but then locked them away, so to speak, until the latter completed his mission, saying:

“Now the Mother has shown you everything. But this revelation will remain under lock and key, and I shall keep the key. When you have accomplished the Mother’s work you will find the treasure again.” (PR in GSR, 72.)

This sounds similar to a truncated experience.