Much in advance of his brother disciples, lay and monastic, Vivekananda became thoroughly convinced about the potential divinity of human beings, specially after a mystic intuition as a result of a deep meditation near the Himalayan town of Almora. He discerned two kinds of misery-the abject poverty of millions of his countrymen and the alienation from spirituality in the modern Western culture wedded to a reckless materialism. He wanted to apply his intuition to alleviate these two different kinds of sufferings. Propelled by an urge fortified by mystic signs, he set out on a voyage to USA in 1893 to attend the Parliament of Religions at Chicago. He was immensely successful in USA. In his message in USA and in England, one finds the catholicity of Sri Ramakrishna’s spirit, his insight into the religions and cultures of mankind, his idea of give-and-take between the best of the cultures, his way of intra-yoga harmony and harmony between religion and modern science, and above all his vision of the potentiality of the human race to realize the ultimate verity i.e. the unicity of existence.
Vivekananda returned to India in 1897 and was hailed in the cities of India as a national hero. He created a new structure, an organization called the Ramakrishna Mission Association on the first of May, 1897 which would include both monks and householders. This was a realization of his dream to have a stable machine which would constantly be engaged in the alleviation of suffering , an engagement which is more than philanthropy and one of the ways to realize the ultimate verity.
Vivekananda died at the age of 39. On the day of his passing away there were six centres in India (some of them in their germinal stage) and two centres in the USA where the monastic members of the nascent order were working. That he was much ahead of his times is attested by the fact that Mr Mayor, the then director of the UNESCO, said in 1997 that the vision of the UNESCO had been there in the charter of the Ramakrishna Mission created almost half a century earlier. One can find in the Mission a shadow of the blending of the seemingly incompatible ways of the lay devotees and of the renunciative-one finds it demonstrated in the life of Sri Ramakrishna and more so in the life of his consort Sri Sarada Devi.
No wonder, after the founding of the order Sri Sarada Devi , a simple village lady who did not hold any formal post, was hailed as the de-facto supreme of it and remained so till her passing away in 1920.This is something unprecedented in the history of religions.
In India, the Ramakrishna Math (monastery) was registered as a trust in 1901and a society called Ramakrishna Mission was registered in 1909. We quote below from the latest general report of the order:” Though the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission with their respective branches, are distinct legal entities, they are closely related, inasmuch as the Governing Body of the Mission is made up of the Trustees of the Math; the administrative work of the Mission is mostly in the hands of the monks of the Ramakrishna Math, and both have their Headquarters at Belur Math. The Math organization is constituted under a trust with well-defined rules of procedure. The Mission is a registered society…. the former lays emphasis on religion and preaching, while the latter is wedded mainly to welfare services undertaken with a spiritual outlook.”
