BRAHMO SAMAJ

Both Ramakrishna and Vivekananda were associated with Brahmo Samaj at one point in their lives. Brahmo Samaj, or the Society of Brahma (Society of God) was a Bengali movement founded in 1829 by Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), a Bengali brahmin. The movement was based upon a unitarian approach to God. Roy, who was raised in Patna, then a center of Muslim learning, was influenced by Islamic teachings that rejected images, although, for him, some images for people who needed them were acceptable. Later, in Calcutta, he was exposed to Christianity where, drawing upon certain aspects of the Gospels, he sought a purified way, free of superstition and idolatry. At the same time he did not want to abandon his own Hinduism. A remarkable scholar, he not only knew Bengali, Sanskrit, and other Indian tongues, but also Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and, in his search for unifying doctrines, he read many of the world's scriptures in the original tongues. What he was looking for, though, he found in his own background, the eighth-century B.C. Upanishads, which contained many unitarian teachings. But he did not rely completely upon the past. He advocated that Indians learn Western sciences, such as mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, and anatomy. A few years after his death his work was taken over by the young Devandranath Tagore (1817-1905), a saintly man who reorganized the now dispirited Samaj. Tagore did not accept the Vedas, the Upanishads, and other texts as infallible, and he rejected Christian doctrines as compromising the transcendence of God. The Hindu books were guides, he felt, but the primary authorities should be reason and conscience. A crisis came to the Samaj in 1865 when a young member, Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-84), objecting to certain conservative practices of Tagore's, led a schism of the majority of the members and founded Brahmo Samaj of India. The original group now called itself Adi Samaj, or Original Society, and became increasingly conservative. It was Keshab who "discovered" Ramakrishna. Keshab introduced not only readings from other religions but also certain Hindu folk practices, such as devotional singing and dancing. He also campaigned for the education of women and their emancipation, and against child marriages and for intercaste marriages. However, to the dismay of his followers, his daughter, then thirteen, was married, with his blessing, to the prince Cooch Behar in an orthodox rite. This led to still another schism, the founding of the Sadharan (universal) Brahmo Samaj, while Keshab's group was renamed the Church of the New Dispensation. The Sadharan Brahmo Samaj was run not by a single figure but by an elected group of one hundred members, who chose their directors. Since then, the entire movement has declined considerably in influence, with more schisms and offshoots in various parts of India. It has almost always been confined to the upper castes and classes of Bengalis and rarely included the general population. But its legacy has been a large number of educated, intelligent, progressive Bengalis who are open to new ideas and who generally eschew the barriers of caste and national group. They often marry outside their community, and are active in their country.

VIVEKANANDA

Born Narendranath Datta, Vivekananda (1863-1902) was a Bengali intellectual educated in English schools in Calcutta. Although an agnostic, he joined the reformist Brahmo Samaj, and was introduced to the Bengali mystic Ramakrishna. He soon attached himself as a disciple to Ramakrishna. When the saint died in 1886, Swami Vivekananda took sannyasa (spiritual withdrawal) and with some disciples spent six years on pilgrimage in India. In 1893 he attended the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, soon gaining an American following. He increased his Western flock of disciples in London, where he spent much time. Back in India in 1897, he made a triumphal tour of Colombo (Sri Lanka), Madras, and Calcutta. In the same year he organized the Ramakrishna Mission, which was to be highly successful in promulgating Vivekananda's version of the saint's teachings. A second trip to the United States and England brought more fame and success. He died at Belur, Bengal, at the math or ashram he had founded there in 1898. His teachings were a streamlined, modernized Vedanta that rejected past superstitions and reactionary tendencies and added a layer of Western social reform. However, some of his ideas show a morbidity unacceptable to positive-thinking foreigners. He was a fervent devotee of Kali, and saw life in terms of her negative aspects. "There are some who scoff at the existence of Kali," he said. "Who can say that God does not manifest Himself as Evil as well as Good? But only the Hindu dares to worship him in the evil." He also said, "I worship the terrible! It is a mistake to hold that with all men pleasure is the motive. Quite as many are born to seek after pain. Let us worship the Terror for Its own sake...How few have dared to worship Death, or Kali! Let us worship Death!" Like others of the neoHindu revival, he saw Hinduism and India as the world Savior, and that, as a disciple reported, "the East must come to the West, not as sycophant, not as servant, but as Guru and teacher."

One of the Swami's early and most important converts was the Irishwoman Margaret E. Noble, who followed him from London to India in 1898. He called her Nivedita (the Dedicated One), the name by which she has been known since. Nivedita became his biographer, the collector of his sayings, and the editor of his writings. Her own works are a reflection of Vivekananda's ideas. The Ramakrishna Mission is a paragon of unselfish devotion and hard work on behalf of the Indian poor, transcending caste and racial barriers. The group maintains a number of centers outside India, including one in New York. Orthodox Hindus find the Mission's version of Hinduism inauthentic and too Westernized, even as it thrives.

RAMAKRISHNA PARAMAHAMSA

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-86) was a Bengali mystic, about whom much mythification has accreted, including elements from the life of Jesus. Ramakrishna was born of a brahmin family in rural Bengal, his father being the village priest. Ramakrishna received virtually no education, but from childhood was known for the depths of his spirituality. At the age of seven he experienced his first divine ecstasy. When he was sixteen he joined his brother in Calcutta in doing priestly work for private families. In 1855 Ramakrishna was appointed temple priest at the newly founded Kali shrine at Dakshineswar, on the banks of the Hooghly, a branch of the Ganges. He began to experience visions of Kali, Sita, and other forms of the Divine Mother, as well as of Rama, Krishna, Muhammad, and Jesus, all of whom were God in a variety of manifestations. He easily fell into samadhi, being moved by such prosaic and diverse sights as that of a lion in a zoo or a prostitute on a street. He gained the reputation of being somewhat pagal (mad). At the age of twenty-three his family married him to a six-year-old girl named Sarada, who, however, did not come to live with him for another thirteen years. Meanwhile he experimented with a range of ecstatic and devotional sects; in 1861 he joined a tantric Vaishnava group under the guidance of a brahmin woman; he also joined in Vedanta sadhana (spiritual practice) and a melange of bhakti (devotional) practices, including Sufism. His ecstasies and samadhis became constant: "When I reached the state of continuous ecstasy, I gave up all external forms of worship," he said. Sarada joined him in 1872, the couple, much devoted one to the other, living in continence. Three years later Keshab Sen, one of the leaders of the elitist Brahmo Samaj, "discovered" Ramakrishna, and Dakshineswar became a center of devotion for Westernized and educated Bengalis who joined the numerous village people who crowded around Ramakrishna. Among such new followers was the agnostic Narendranath Datta, later known as Vivekananda, who in 1884 placed himself under the saint's spiritual guidance. Ramakrishna died in 1886, a simple, unsophisticated, deeply religious soul. He was regarded as a saint, and today he is considered an avatar, but, in the opinion of certain disciples, he would sooner or later have rejected the cult, as developed in part by Vivekananda, that grew up around his name. A number of books have been published by his disciples, both biographies of the saint and collections of his sayings; some factual and doctrinal distortion has developed. An acceptable work is Christopher Isherwood's Ramakrishna and His Disciples (1965).

Eastern Definitions, Anchor Books 1980, by Edward Rice.

MORE ON SWAMI PRABHAVANANDA

In his book My Guru and His Disciple (1980), Christopher Isherwood provides the following biography of Swami Prabhavananda:

He was born on December 26, 1893, at Surmanagar, a village in Bengal near the town of Bankura, northwest of Calcutta. His name, during the first twenty years of his life, was Abanindra Nath Ghosh.

Abanindra's parents were normally devout Hindus. He accepted their religious beliefs, but he wasn't a deeply meditative or reclusive boy. He liked playing football and other games, and had plenty of friends.

However, by the time he was fourteen, he had read about Ramakrishna, the holy man already regarded by some as an avatar. Ramakrishna had been born in a village not very far away, and had spent his adult life at a temple just outside Calcutta. Abanindra had also read about Ramakrishna's chief disciples, Vivekananda and Brahmananda, who had founded the Ramakrishna Order of monks after Ramakrishna's death in 1886. He felt a mysterious power of attraction in their names.

Then one day, by seeming chance, Abanindra met Sarada Devi. She had been Ramakrishna's wife and was now regarded by his disciples as their spiritual mother--"Holy Mother," they called her. One of her attendants told Abanindra who she was; otherwise, he would have taken her for an ordinary countrywoman, sitting barefooted, without the slightest air of self-importance, outside a village inn. When he approached and bowed down to touch her feet in reverence, she said, "Son, haven't I seen you before?"

When Abanindra was eighteen and a student in Calcutta, he visited the Belur Math, the chief monastery of the Ramakrishna Order, which is beside the Ganges, on the outskirts of the city. He wanted to see the room in which Vivekananda used to stay; since his death in 1902, it had been maintained as a public shrine. When Abanindra left the Vivekananda Room, he found himself for the first time face to face with Brahmananda. And Brahmananda said to him, "Haven't I seen you before?"

The effect of this encounter upon Abanindra was far too powerful and subtle to be described in a few words. He longed to meet Brahmananda again. So, a few months later, he impulsively spent the money he had been given for tuition fees on a ticket to Hardwar, because he knew that Brahmananda was visiting the monastery there. He arrived in the middle of the night, unannounced, but Brahmananda didn't seem at all surprised to see him. He allowed Abanindra to stay a month, accepted him formally as his disciple, and then sent him back to Calcutta to continue his education.

Although Abanindra felt such devotion to Brahmananda, he wasn't yet intending to become a monk. At college he came under another strong influence. Organized militant opposition to British rule was now growing, and many students were involved. Abanindra decided that his first duty was patriotic. He must devote himself to the cause of India's freedom; in order to be able to do this single-mindedly, he vowed not to marry until it was won. He joined a revolutionary organization and wrote pamphlets for it, which were secretly distributed. Because he looked so boyish and innocent, his comrades entrusted him with some revolvers which had been stolen from a British storehouse; he hid them in his room. These young men were mostly untrained--they were risking their lives just as much as the veterans of the movement. One of them threw a bomb at the Viceroy and had to escape from the country. Another, who was Abanindra's close friend, was arrested and died in prison, probably as the result of being tortured. The authorities called it suicide.

Abanindra was now studying philosophy. He began coming regularly to the Belur Math because one of the swamis there could instruct him in the teachings of Shankara. His instructor kept urging him to become a monk, but Abanindra would argue with him, saying that the monastic life was escapist, a refusal to accept one's political responsibilities.

During the Christmas vacation, Abanindra stayed at the Math (monastery) for a few days. It was then that another extraordinary incident took place. Here is Abanindra's account of it, written many years later. ("Maharaj" was the name by which Brahmananda was known familiarly in the Order; its approximate meaning is "Master.")

One morning, as usual, I went to prostrate before Maharaj. An old man was also in the room. Suddenly he asked Maharaj, "When is this boy going to become a monk?" Maharaj looked me up and down, and his eyes had an unforgettable sweetness as he answered quietly, "When the Lord wills." That was the end of my political plans and ambitions. I remained at the monastery.

During the years which followed, Abanindra was at the Ramakrishna monastery in Madras. He attended Brahmananda whenever he was allowed to, which was not often, because Brahmananda had to travel from one monastery to another in the course of his duties as Head of the Order. However, Brahmananda was present when, in the autumn of 1921, Abanindra took his final vows (sannyas) and became Swami Prabhavananda. (Prabhavananda means "one who finds bliss within the Source of all creation"; ananda, meaning "bliss" or "peace," is the suffix usually added to a swami's given name.)

In 1922, Brahmananda died. In 1923, Prabhavananda was told by his seniors that an assistant swami was needed at the center in San Francisco and that they wished him to go there. (There were already several such centers, founded by Vivekananda during his second visit to the United States, 1899-1900. These centers were often called Vedanta societies, meaning that they were dedicated to the study and practice of the philosophy which is taught in the Vedas, the most ancient of the Hindu scriptures.)

Since Brahmananda's death, Prabhavananda had been hoping to be permitted to lead a contemplative life, practicing intensive meditation, at a monastery in the Himalayan foothills. He felt quite unfitted to teach anybody. In his own words, "I was barely thirty, I looked like twenty, and I felt even younger than that." But his seniors rebuked him for his lack of confidence. How could he presume to imagine that success or failure depended on his own efforts? Had he no faith that Brahmananda would help him? "How dare you say you cannot teach? You have known the Son of God!"

When Prabhavananda lectured for the second time at the San Francisco Center, he was suddenly at a loss for words and had to excuse himself and walk out of the room. But this was only beginner's stage fright. He soon became an effective speaker, as well as an efficient assistant to the swami in charge. Within two years he was sent to Portland, Oregon, to open a center there.

While he was living in Portland, Prabhavananda was invited to Los Angeles, to give a series of lectures on Vedanta philosophy. It was then that he got to know Mrs. Carrie Mead Wyckoff. Thirty years earlier, as a young woman, Mrs. Wyckoff had met Vivekananda while he was in California. Later she had become a disciple of Swami Turiyanada, another of Ramakrishna's direct disciples, and he had given her the monastic name Sister Lalita--Lalita was one of the handmaidens of Krishna. Henceforth, people usually called her "Sister."

Sister was now a widow and she had just lost her only son--it seemed natural for the elderly lady and the youthful swami to form a kind of adoptive relationship. Sister returned with him to Portland and kept house for him at the center. Then, in 1929, she offered him her home, 1946 Ivar Avenue, to be the center of a future Vedanta Society of Southern California. They moved into it as soon as arrangements to carry on the work in Portland had been made.

At first the Society was very small. The living room of the house was easily able to hold Prabhavananda's congregation. An Englishwoman whom they called Amiya came to live with them; later they were joined by two or three other women. They had barely enough money to live on.

Then, around 1936, the congregation began to expand. Prabhavananda had become well known locally as a speaker. It was now only rarely that anyone would telephone to ask if the Swami would draw up a horoscope or give a public demonstration of psychic powers. In fact, word had got about that he wasn't a swami in the usual California sense but a teacher of religion whose title had the same significance as "Father" in the Catholic Church.

And then donors appeared with enough money to pay for the building of a temple; there was room for one in Sister's garden. It was finished and dedicated in July 1938.