Broadly there are two categories of people. The first are people who follow the society, and the second are people whom the society follows. Narendranath Dutta (or Swami Vivekananda as the world better knows him today) was one such person, undoubtedly belonging to the second category. From being a wandering monk on the dusty streets of India to a representative of the prestigious Parliament of Religions held in Chicago, what he accomplished in mere nine years of public life will stand accursed as a testament of his iron will power for the coming nine centuries. He was the warrior monk, the grateful son of India whose sole purpose in life was to help bestride his fallen motherland. His years of public life are today well known all over the world, and especially in his homeland where his life is a source of countless parables. His childhood, however, is little talked of. The purpose of this article is to shed some light upon his childhood, which was in no way less eventful than his adulthood.
Born in a bourgeoisie Bengali family in Calcutta, Naren took birth on the 12th of January, 1885. In a household of six sisters and three brothers, Naren was preferably the apple of the eyes of his parents. It is said that his mother, Bhubaneshwari Devi observed several fasts and other rituals in expectations of giving birth to a wonder-child. What she gave birth to in reality, was quite contrary to her expectations. Naren was far from being serene and timid. He was lively and mischievous. He often had this notion of being a sage in his past life who was banished from heaven by Lord Shiva. This proposition found favour with his other family members who, upon being surfeited by his impishness, remarked from time to time that Naren was indeed a little devil who had been sent to then in place of the angel in whose expectations they had observed fasts. Yet he was innocent in the true sense of the term. His face had that radiating innocence which later attracted thousands of disciples.
Naren was a good student. Upon the arrival of his domestic teacher, Naren was in the habit of instructing him towards the subjects to be studied on that particular day and the chapters to be covered. He then would simply lie down and listen to the teacher who would read out aloud from the book. His mind synchronized all that his teacher read and thus he would learn in this way. Naren had a religious bent ever since his formative years, yet he was always rational and was never in the habit of blindly believing something without circumspection. Once in his schooling days, Naren developed an enmity with a fellow burly classmate who had by force flinched with his tiffin allotment. At the height of his anger, Naren had thought of various diabolical ways to punish the boy. But later on, realization dawned upon him that such things are but insignificant trifles in the long run. Later their enmity gave way and they both became good friends.
While trying to sleep, Naren was accustomed to see an effulgent orb of golden light playing before his eyes. The orb would take various shapes and sizes, and would finally lull him into his sleep. Naren was also in the habit of meditating from a very early age. It happened thus, that while meditating nocturnally behind closed doors, he lost track of time. Just then, through the walls of that very room entered a brilliant radiant light, behind which stood a revered sage, with the serene look on his face which at first startled Naren. The latter gazed fixedly at the sage, thinking him to be an embodiment of god, with the deep ocean that was in his eyes, the bright saffron that was his attire. Before he could actually comprehend the situation, Naren saw himself opening the door and running out of fear. In the days that followed, Naren patiently waited for the sage to reappear, but that never happened. Later in life, Swami Vivekananda concluded that it was perhaps Buddha himself who had paid him a visit in the form of that sage.
Often in life, Naren had rather amazing encounters with past life encounters. For instance, upon visiting a certain place or talking to certain people, it often occurred to him that perhaps he had visited those places before and had even talked to them people somewhere back in time. Such occurrences of Déjà vu (the name by which we know such occurrences today) were but uncommon back in his day.
Stepping into his youth, Naren’s questioning attitude became all the more concrete. Being a student of Western Philosophy and a member of the Brahmo Samaj, his opinions were always firmly based upon rational thinking and he often reprimanded his family members for blindly giving in to superstitions. He frequently visited the prominent lecturers of his day. In course of their long drawn conversations, Naren would almost inevitably ask them, “Have you seen God?” to which most of them would get bewildered and reply in the negative. It was only Shri Ramakrishna who answered him by saying, “Yes, I have seen God, and you can see him too.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (Volume 1 – 8)
The Beautifully Grotesque 