The Rebirth of Vivekananda
One day in the late 1960's, when my wife Iris and I were sitting alone in a room with Sai Baba at one of His ashrams, He said in what seemed a casual manner, "Vivekananda has been reborn in Sri Lanka. When his education and training are complete, he will help me with my mission." Remembering the scene from over twenty-five years' distance, I don't think I really appreciated how blessed we both were that Bhagavan should impart this great news to us. Not that I knew a great deal about Vivekananda at that time but I did know that he was the acknowledged leader of a number of monks who took Paramahansa Ramakrishna's pure spiritual message to the western world.
Now Swami was telling us that Vivekananda had come to earth again from the highest spiritual realms, to take part in the Sai mission to mankind. What a mighty mission it must be with three incarnations of the Sai avatar and the great sage Vivekananda to help! Was this news exclusive to us, I wondered at the time. But, no. A young American friend of ours, Andrew Schartz, told us later that Swami had made the same announcement to him and a few of his friends. Naturally, word of such an event soon spread among Baba's followers, and Iris and I thought it was time we learnt more about this world-teacher who had left his body at the early age of thirty-nine in 1902 and who was now destined to playa part in the Sai movement.
In our search for material, we later came across a large volume called The Gospel According to Ramakrishna. This is an on-the spot, almost day-to-day account of the great master's teachings to the group of young disciples who came daily to sit at his feet at Dakshineswar on the banks of the Ganges, not far from Calcutta. In my opinion, this book, written in a kind of diary form, by one of the disciples who modestly call himself 'M', is a spiritual classic. In its pages We found a truly fascinating account of how the being later known as Vivekananda, incarnated in the sixth decade of the nineteenth century to head the team of monks who would carry the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna to the four corners of the earth.
Considering the master's frail physical body and the strenuous nature of travel that it involved at the time, Ramakrishna was not able to do this work of spreading his gospel himself. Vivekananda, with the help of other dedicated monks, did this for him after his death in 1886. The vision that Ramakrishna related to his young followers came to him when he was in Samadhi and is a vision of a past event, the important event of how his mission to mankind began and how Vivekananda was drawn into it. This memory vision of the past, we are told, took him above many celestial realms, some of them even inhabited by gods and goddesses, in fact, above the whole manifest of universe into an eternal realm that knows no dissolution.
There he saw seven holy men sitting in a group, absorbed in deep contemplation of Brahman. Next it seemed to him that a portion of the Absolute became a divine child. The child went and sat on the knee of one of the holy men. At the child's tender touch, the holy man opened his eyes and looked at the child with great affection. The child said that he would soon assume a human body and asked if the holy man would come down to assist him in his mission for the redemption of mankind. The holy man agreed. Sri Ramakrishna said that the holy man was Narendra and he himself was the divine child.
Although in the physical body of his incarnation the child Ramakrishna grew to manhood, at heart a child he remained to the end of his life. He was aware when the holy sage was born on earth in a Calcutta suburb, but the latter had such a thick veil of Maya around him that he was completely unaware of his own identity. He was named Narendra, and as he grew to manhood he showed himself to be a young man of remarkable character traits. He possessed great physical courage and presence of mind, a vivid imagination, deep power of thought, keen intelligence and an extraordinary memory. He had a love of truth and a passion for purity, a spirit of independence and a tender heart. He was an expert MUSICIAN, and during his education, acquired a proficiency in physics, astronomy mathematics, philosophy, history and literature. Even as a child he practiced meditation and showed a great power of concentration.
In due course, Narendra came to Sri Ramakrishna's feet, guided, of course, by the inner-knowledge of his purpose in life that lay deep within him. Ramakrishna, knowing that his beloved Naren, as he called him, was in reality a great sage, was afraid that if the young man broke through the Maya and came to know his 'true identity he may in an act of true yoga leave his body and return to his spiritual home. The master set off to train Narendra in the non-dualistic vedantic philosophy, but Narendra, because of his religious training during his boyhood and early youth, considered it wholly blasphemous to look on man as one with his Creator.
One day in the temple garden he laughingly said to a friend, "How silly, this jug is God! This cup is God! Whatever we see is God, and we too are God! Nothing could be more absurd." That was what he thought of his master's teaching on Advaita. Then Sri Ramakrishna came out of his room and gently touched him. The effect was that Narendra immediately perceived that everything was indeed God. A new universe opened around him. Returning home in a dazed state, he found there too that the food, the plates, the eater himself, and the people around him were all God. When he walked in the street he saw that the cabs, the horses, the streams of people, the buildings were all Brahman, or the Absolute God.
Naren could hardly go about his daily affairs. His parents became anxious, thinking that he was ill. And when the intensity of this experience abated a little, Narendra saw that all around him was a dream. It took him some days to return to a state of the dualism necessary for normal operations in life. But he had a foretaste of a great experience yet to come, and realised that the words of non-dualistic Vedanta were the truth. It was a very rich and significant experience. He also realised that in the relative world the need of a personal God was imperative.
Sri Ramakrishna was over-joyed by the conversion. It is hardly surprising that the favourite pupil, in view of what he had been before his birth, became the leading pupi1. And, after the death of the master, when all the unmarried students, which was the vast majority, decided to carry the master's teachings into wider fields, they all adopted spiritual names, Narendra becoming Vivekananda and the leader of the great mission.
Having gained this concept of his spiritual and intellectual greatness and his inspiring powers of leadership, and having read a good deal of Vivekananda's teachings that are now available in print, I was very eager to discover what his reincarnation would be like. Of course, he may not have the handsome body and brilliant mental powers of his earlier incarnation but he would be equipped with whatever faculties and powers were necessary for his work in the Sai mission. I, no doubt like many others, awaited his appearance at Sai Baba's ashram. But the years passed and we heard no more.
When in the year 1987 the young man from Sri Lanka did make his debut at 'Prashanti Nilayam' in India, I was away in Australia. It was in March of that year that he came, along with a group of people from his own country. Of course, wrapped in the veils of Maya he would be completely unaware of his true identity, as Narendra had been over a hundred years before. What a great shock was in store for him!
As it happened, a good friend of ours, an Australian by the name of Elvin Gates, was in the interview room with the group from Sri Lanka, Vivekananda in cognito among them. Elvin Gates told us all that he had witnessed, which unfortunately was not much because the great revelation had been made in the private interview room when the young man concerned, along with a male friend, were alone with Swami. But after the interview, the news quickly spread throughout the ashram, with the result that crowds began to follow the young man wherever he went and even waited outside his door in one of the round-houses. This became such art inconvenience that Swami directed that the young man should move from the round house to the students' hostel outside the walls of the ashram.
Some two years later in 1989, I was fortunate enough to hear something of the young Sri Lankan and get a partial report on what happened in the inner-room during the two interviews that had taken place on two successive days in March, 1987. This came about because during our time with Swami in 1989 we went with Him to his Brindavan ashram and were graciously given accommodation in His hostel inside the enclosure near His mandir. Fellow-guests for several weeks were Ravi Jai Warden and his wife Penny. We four became very good friends. We discovered that they knew the young Sri Lankan, personally.
While they had lived in Colombo, Sri Lanka, the young man, concerned, whose name was Nalin Sedera, lived with his parents, two brothers and one sister just outside the city. While Nalin was not a close acquaintance of theirs, they knew that he was not worldly young man but was on the spiritual path. He seemed to study a great deal and spent much of his time in meditation. In this way, at least, Nalin was like his previous incarnation, Narendra.
Later when Ravi learned that I was writing this chapter on the 'Vivekananda phenomenon', he was kind enough to approach Nalin and seek information, letting the young man know that I was planning to use any information he gave. Nalin Sedera agreed after considering and perhaps meditating on the matter. While he certainly did not describe all that had taken place at the two interviews where the great revelation of his identity was made to him, what he did tell us was of considerable interest and is revealing to those who seek the inner view of words and events.
One thing he said was that before coming to Sai Baba the first time, and still quite unaware of whom he was, he had had a dream in which Swami, dressed in a white robe, had shown him an old couple, telling him that these had been his parents in a former birth. The dream intrigued Nalin very much and he longed to know more about these parents and his earlier birth. Perhaps the dream was a precognition and preparation for the staggering revelation that he was soon to have at 'Prashanthi Nilayam'. When, however, the youth asked Swami to tell him more about his former parents, Swami's reply was, "Forget about that. I am your father and your mother," meaning, of course, his spiritual father and mother. The other parents were simply instruments of a former birth, and it was not important for Nalin to know anymore about them.
***** Then Swami asked the youth, "What is your name?" It is strange that Swami often asks people to state their name, though he knows it full well. The youth replied, "Nalin." Swami said, "You are not Nalin, you are Naren."
This was the name that Ramakrishna always used for his beloved disciple Narendra. Then Swami told him, "In your previous birth you were a great saint. Do you know who Narendra was?" Nalin replied, "No, Swami, I don't." Sai Baba went on, "Narendra was the name of Vivekananda."
From the sketchy notes that Nalin had made from his memory of the interview, it would seem that Swami eased him gradually and gently into the knowledge of his identity. Nalin does not say what his inner-reaction was, but he does say that he cried a great deal during this first interview, as he had, of course, every right to do. At one stage Swami put to him the question that he puts to everybody. "What do you want?" Nalin's reply was, "First I want you, Swami, and I want your love and also I want a job." "Why do you want a job?" the Lord asked him. "For money," he answered. "Why do you want money?" Swami asked him, and there seems to have been no answer.
Two things said at one of the two interviews give food for much thought. One was when Swami asked him when he was coming to live at the ashram, and Nalin replied, "In the year 2021." This is the year in which Swami has announced he will leave his Sathya Sai body to be reborn one year later as Prema Sai. But, of course, it would be some years before the newborn Prema Sai would be old enough to lead the Sai mission. Does this mean, one wonders, that Nalin, speaking with the knowledge and wisdom of the great sage who was his true Higher Self, knew that his work would begin when Sathya Sai passed away - as it did, incidentally, when Ramakrishna left his body, and that his work on earth for mankind was to fill the gap between Sathya Sai and Prema Sai? That is, to fill the gap until Prema Sai becomes active as a spiritual leader. One could estimate that this could be about twenty years between 2021 and 2041. This is, at least, a reasonable speculation.
The other interesting, and somewhat surprising remark, was when Swami told the youth, "I have been waiting for you for eighty-five years." As Vivekananda left his previous body in 1902, the interview that Sai Baba gave to Nalin was eighty-five years later in 1987. But in 1902 Sai Baba was active in his Shirdi body, so it must mean that Sai Baba had expected the return of the great sage from the end of his former life as Narendra.
But God does not command a sage or a saint anymore than He commands us, His younger children. "In patience he stands waiting," as the poem says. I have heard, incidentally, from one who knows his face well, that Nalin Sedera has been back to the ashram secretly and in cognito more than once. In view of what happened to him on his first visit, when he was so pestered by the curiosity of the crowds, he needs secrecy of movement in order to enjoy the presence and imbibe the love and grace of the great Avatar. This, along with the privacy of study and meditation will, no doubt, be part of his necessary training for the great divine work that awaits him in future.
(Courtesy : “Inner views” by Howard Murphet, Chapter 11- page 59 to 65)
