SWAMI VIVEKANANDA’S EARLY DEATH

Vivekananda was one of the greatest teachers of Vedanta since Shankaracharya.  Like Shankaracharya, however, Vivekananda also did not live long, leaving his physical body at the early age of 39.  Shankaracharya did so at age 32.
 
Now, Swamiji, as Vivekananda was called, suffered from certain ailments, in his case diabetes and asthma, but at the time of his passing he was in good health and spirits, reportedly.  So what caused him to die so young? 
 
Six years before his passing, in August 1896, Vivekananda confided to Abhedananda, a fellow disciple of Ramakrishna’s, that he, Vivekananda, was only going to live five or six more years.

When Abhedananda protested, saying a young man like him should not think of death, Vivekananda replied, “You do not understand.  My soul is getting bigger and bigger everyday, so much so that my body can hardly contain it.  Any day it may burst this cage of flesh and bone.”

What did Swamiji mean when he said his soul was getting bigger?  As Vedanta explains it, the soul is pure consciousness, so what Vivekananda meant was that his consciousness was expanding so far beyond the realm of ordinary human consciousness, to the domain of super-consciousness, in fact, that his body was proving inadequate to contain it.  It would soon therefore have to be let go.

How accurate was Vivekananda’s prediction?  He passed away on July 4^th 1902, indeed six years from his disclosing it to Abhedananda.