Even now a hundred years after the birth of Narendranath Datta, who later became Swami Vivekananda, it is very difficult to evaluate his importance in the scale of world history. It is certainly far greater than any Western historian or most Indian historians would have suggested at the time of his death................
A striking figure, clad in yellow and orange, shining like the sun of India in the midst of the heavy atmosphere of Chicago, a lion head, piercing eyes, mobile lips, movements swift and abrupt - such was my first impression of Swami Vivekananda, as I met him in one of the rooms set apart for the use of the delegates to the Parliament of Religions...........
I have come under no greater influence than the influence of the life and teachings of Swami Vivekananda. ... I have spoken of that life and have testified to the great influence that that life has had on the generation which immediately succeeded the premature departure of the Swamiji from this world...........
It is doubtful if there is any Hindu who does not know the name of Sri Vivekananda Swami. There has been extraordinary advancement of material science in the nineteenth century. Under the circumstances, to present the spiritual science prevailing in India for thousands of years by wonderful exposition and then to kindle admiration and respect among theWestern scholars, and, at the same time, to create a sympathetic attitude for India, the mother of spiritual science, can only be an achievement of superhuman power...........
If we look upon Ramakrishna as the Buddha of our time, Vivekananda may pass for one or other of the great apostles of yore, say, the scholar Ràhula, the constitutional authority Upàli, the devoted lieutenant ânanda, the sage Sàriputta, or that master of discourses, Mahàkachchàyana. One can almost say that Vivekananda was all these great Buddhist preacherorganizers boiled down into one personality..............
Vivekananda, however, does not stand alone. He is indissolubly bound up with his Master, Paramahansa Ramakrishna. The two stand almost organically bound up, so far as the modern man, not only in India but in the larger world of our day, is concerned. The modern man can only understand Paramahansa in and through Vivekananda, even as Vivekananda can be understood only in the light of the life of his Master...........
When I first met Vivekananda in 1881, we were fellowstudents of Principal William Hastie, scholar, metaphysician, and poet, at the General Assembly’s College. ... I saw and recognized in him a high, ardent and pure nature, vibrant and resonant with impassioned sensibilities.............
I would refer in the first place to that greater word Advaitam. The word Advaitam really means, the occasions of all spiritual life, to see (as the Upanishads tells us)..........
Swami Vivekananda...was a democratic saint. He revived for us the idea of nationhood. He was the first of those, who made it possible to think of India as a whole irrespective of the existing differences of class, creed, colour and custom...............
Vivekananda was, as I said, profoundly moved by the realization of India’s poverty and the state of her oppression under the British colonial rule. And he proposed a revolution. The spirit of this revolution enormously influenced Gandhi and influences Indian political thought to this day.......... E. P. CHELISHEV Reading and re-reading the works of Vivekananda each time I find in them something new that helps deeper to understand India, its philosophy, the way of the life and customs of the people in the past and the present, their dreams of the future. ... I think that Vivekananda’s greatest service is the development in his teaching of the lofty ideals of humanism which incorporate the finest features of Indian culture...........
