MEMORABLE SHIVARATRI

Naren (Swami Vivekananda) was now becoming aware of the spiritual power within him. There were moments when he, as it were, touched divinity and became almost physically conscious of Reality by the spiritual transmutation of the internal faculties of sense. His thought became a sweeping power.

On one occasion he displayed it: It was on Shivaratri (the Night of Shiva) in March 1886. Naren was seated with three or four brother-disciples in a room in the compound of the Cossipore garden-house. They had fasted the whole day and intended to spend the night in meditation, worship and prayer. A mild shower of rain fell in the evening and the starlit sky was in parts fleeced with clouds. After finishing the worship, Japa and meditation proper to the first quarter of the night, Naren was resting and conversing with others, sitting on the worshipper's seat. One of the brother disciples went out to prepare a smoke for him and another went to the main residence on a piece of work. Just then a feeling of divine power came to Naren. He wanted to test it out that night, and said to Kali (later Swami Abhedananda) who was sitting close to him, "Just touch me after a while." When the brother¬ disciple who had gone to prepare tobacco entered the room, he saw Naren sitting motionless in meditation and Kali, with his eyes shut, touching Naren's right knee with his right hand. He noticed that Kali's hand was trembling. After a minute or two Naren opened his eyes and said, "That is enough. How did you feel?" Kali answered, "I felt a shock as though from an electric battery. My hand was shaking all the while." The brother disciple asked Kali, "Was your hand trembling because you were touching Naren?" Kali answered, "Yes, I could not keep it steady, though I tried."

A little later the young men applied themselves to the worship and meditation proper to the second quarter of the night. Kali entered into deep meditation at that time. He was never seen to enter into such deep meditation before. His whole body became stiff, with his neck and head inclined slightly forward. Consciousness of the outer world seemed to have completely left him for some time. Everyone present thought that he was having such meditation as a result of having touched Naren a little while previously. Naren also noticed that state and indicated it to a companion by a sign.

After the last quarter's worship was over at four in the morning, Shashi came to the worship-room and said to Naren, "The Master wants you." Naren went upstairs with Shashi to the Master. No sooner had the Master seen Naren than he said, "What is this? Spending with hardly anything accumulated! Allow it first to accumulate sufficiently in your-self; then you will know where and how to spend it. Mother Herself will teach you. Don't you see what harm you have done to him by injecting your attitude of mind into him? He has been progressing till now with a particular mental attitude, the whole of which has now been destroyed, like a miscarriage during the sixth month of pregnancy. What's done is done. Don't act so thoughtlessly from now on. The boy, however, is lucky that greater harm has not befallen him." Naren said afterwards, "I was completely flabbergasted. The Master was able to know whatever we did at the time of worship. What else could I do but keep silent when he scolded me like that!"


SOURCE: LIFE OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA,
                    BY EASTERN & WESTERN DISCIPLES

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