Shivananda

Swami Shivananda was a personality of great force, rich in distinctive colour and individual quality. His leonine stature and dauntless vigour, his stolid indifference to praise or blame, his spontaneous moods and his profound serenity in times of storms and stress, invested with a singular appropriateness his monastic name that recalls the classical attributes of Lord Shiva.

Born in a respectable and deeply religious family of Barasat, Bengal, his pre-monastic name was Tarak Nath Ghosal. From his early boyhood Tarak showed unmistakable signs of what the future was to unfold. There was something in him that marked him out from his associates. A vague longing gnawed at his heart and made him forget himself from time to time and be lost in flights of reverie. From an early age he became drawn to meditative practices. As days went by his mind gravitated increasingly deeper towards the vast inner world of spirit. 

When he was working in Calcutta in an English firm, he got an opportunity of seeing Shri Ramakrishna about whom he had already heard. Later he went to meet Shri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar. The Master’s practiced eye judged the new comer’s mettle and asked him to frequently repeat his visits to gain anything of lasting advantage. Thereafter with each subsequent visit, Tarak’s intimacy with the Master deepened. From the very first meeting with Shri Ramakrishna, Tarak felt in his inmost heart that he had at last found one who could guide his steps to the doors of the Infinite. The Master appeared to him as the consummation of all religions. To know him was to know God. With the growth of this conviction his devotion to the Master increased hundredfold. The Master also made him his own by his immeasurable love. Tarak felt that parental love was nothing in comparison. Association with the Master sharpened his hunger for spiritual experiences. On receiving the Master’s grace he became more and more absorbed in spiritual practices and deep meditation. He was often in a state of divine emotion. Tarak had something of the Transcendental Verity in him. The Master had once remarked, “His ‘home’ is that high Power from which proceed name and form.”

Even though he was forced into marriage owning to family circumstances, the perfect purity of his married life earned for him the popular name of Mahapurush (great soul) from Swami Vivekananda, and was subsequently popularly known as ‘Mahapurush Maharaj’.

Tarak was the first among the Master’s monastic disciples to join the monastery at Baranagore, after the demise of the Master, and became ‘Swami Shivananda’ while receiving the monastic orders. Like his brother disciples, with void in his heart and practicing severe austerities and intense spiritual practices he spent a few years as an itinerant monk. He had a natural slant towards the orthodox and austere path of knowledge, which placed little value on popular religious attitudes. He avoided ceremonious observances and disregarded emotional approaches to religion. He keyed up his mind to the formless aspect of the Divine. This stern development to Jnana continued for some time. Deep down in his heart, however, was his boundless love for the Master that nothing could affect for a moment. In later years, with the broadening of experience, his heart opened to the infinite beauties of spiritual emotion.

With the return of Swami Vivekananda from the West in 1897, Mahapurush Maharaj’s days as a wandering monk came to an end and a period of intense activity began. For some time he was in Ceylon, Sri Lanka, preaching Vedanta at the behest of Swamiji. He also took a leading part in the first plague relief work of the Ramakrishna Mission, in 1899. He laid the foundation of a monastery at Almora and also started the Ashrama at Varanasi.

But the most memorable part of his life was during his stewardship of the Ramakrishna Mission as the President from 1922 till the end of his life, when he blessed a large number of people and brought spiritual solace and mental peace to thousands of devotees. Wherever he went he carried an atmosphere of delight around him.

Age, which diminishes our physical and mental vigour, serves only to heighten the force and charm of a spiritual personality. The last years of Swami Shivananda’s life were days of the real majesty of a spiritual sovereign. The assumption of the vast spiritual responsibilities of the great office tore off the austere mask of reserve and rugged taciturnity, which so long hid his tender heart and broad sympathy. All these years thousands and thousands came to him, men and women, young and old, rich and poor, high and low, homeless and the outcast, men battered by faith and reeling under the thousand and one miseries to which man is prey, and went back lifted in spirits. A kind look, a cheering word, and an impalpable something that was nevertheless most real, put new hope and energy into persons whose lives had almost been blasted away by frustrations and despair. He cheerfully bore all discomfort and hardship in the service of the helpless and the needy.

During his term in office the work of the Mission steadily expanded, to different parts of India as well as abroad. He was no sectarian with limited feelings. All kinds of work, social, national, or religious, every movement where good was being done, received his blessings. His was an essentially modern mind keenly aware of the sufferings of the poor and the downtrodden. He was ever eager in making the lot of the common man happy and cheerful. His kindness flowed in a steady stream to scores of persons groaning under poverty. When news of any natural calamity reached him, he became anxious for the helpless victims and would not rest till relief had been organized.

Though all kinds of good work found him sympathetic, he never failed to stress the spirit that should be at the back of all activities. One who witnesses the drama of life from the summit of realization views its acts in a light denied to common understanding. Our toils and strivings, our joys and delights, our woes and tears are seen in their true proportion from the vast perspective of the Eternal. Work yoked to true understanding is a means for the unravelling of the divine within man. So his advice was always: Behind work there should be meditation; without meditation, work cannot be performed in a way that conduces to spiritual growth. Nor is work nicely performed without having a spiritual background. He would say, “Fill your mind in the morning so much with the thoughts of God that one point of the compass of your mind will always be towards God though you are engaged in various distracting activities.” His own life was a commentary on what he preached. Though he soared on the heights of spiritual wisdom he was to the last rigid in attending to the customary devotions for which he had scarcely any need for himself.

His love for the Master, his monastery, and his devotees knew no bounds. Everything belonging to the Master received his complete attention. His door remained ever open to the monks and devotees, inquiring about everybody and watching over the welfare of his vast brood. His special care was for the shrine room. He was attentive to the daily offerings made to Shri Ramakrishna. He could never partake of anything without having first offered it to the Master. The first duty for anyone entering the monastery was to offer his salutations at the shrine.

His numerous children, who felt secure in his affectionate care, went about their duties full of the delight of living. One night, after the meal, some of the members of the monastery at Belur were joyously laughing loudly in the inner verandah of the ground floor of the main Math building. The noise of laughter rose up and could be heard in Mahapurushji’s room. He smiled a little and said softly: “The boys are laughing much and seem to be happy. They have left their hearth and home in search of bliss. Master! Make them blissful.” What an amount of feeling lay behind these few tender words of prayer!

The real is that which is an object of experience. To Swami Shivananda God and religion were not vague words or distant ideals, but living realities. Lives like his light up the dark recesses of history and point to the divine goal towards which humanity can travel only with growing knowledge and wisdom.