Birthday of Indian monk and philosopher Swami Vivekananda Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) was one of India’s greatest spiritual leaders and thinkers who introduced Indian philosophy to the modern world. Born as Narendranath Datta on 12 January 1863 in Kolkata, he was deeply influenced by Indian scriptures and Western philosophy. His life changed after meeting his guru Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, who taught him that service to humanity is service to God. Swami Vivekananda gained worldwide fame at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1893, where his opening words, “Sisters and Brothers of America,” won a standing ovation. He spoke about Vedanta, yoga, tolerance, and universal brotherhood, presenting India’s spiritual wisdom to the West. In 1897, he founded the Ramakrishna Mission, dedicated to spiritual growth, education, and social service. Vivekananda emphasized strength, self-confidence, character-building, and youth empowerment. He passed away on 4 July 1902 at Belur Math, leaving behind a powerful legacy. Today, he is remembered as a symbol of national pride, spiritual awakening, and fearless thought. Osho says, “VIVEKANANDA went to Ramkrishna. He wanted a proof for God, and Ramkrishna started laughing in his mad way. And suddenly, he touched Vivekananda's heart with his feet. Vivekananda fell into a swoon, a trance. The friends that had come with Vivekananda were all worried: "What has happened?" And Vivekananda was not the sort to fall easily into a trance. He was an intellectual, atheistic, skeptical, well trained in logic and philosophy. What had happened? What had this man done? And when Vivekananda came back, he was a totally different man. Then Vivekananda tried in thousands of ways to escape from this man Ramkrishna, but it was impossible. It was as if a great magnet was pulling him. He would escape for a few days and then come back, almost against his will. One day he would again find himself sitting before Ramkrishna, and he would tell Ramkrishna, "Leave me alone. Why are you haunting me?" Ramkrishna said, "What can I do? You asked,'Is there any God, is there any proof?' I don't know any proof. All that I know is that He is in me, so I allowed Him to touch you. What else can I do? Now it is for you to decide whether God is or not."”<div class="raw-html-embed"><div style="width:100%;height:1px;background:#00000036;margin:10px 0;"></div></div>Buddha has said that when you are saved, the only thing to do is save others. When YOU have attained the only thing to do is to spread it to others, because everybody is struggling. Everybody is on the path stumbling, everybody is moving knowingly, unknowingly, and you have attained. Help others. And that is a necessity also, an inner necessity of energies, because a man who has become enlightened will have to live a few years, because enlightenment is not a destiny; it is not fixed, it is not caused. When it happens it is not necessarily at the moment when the body dies. There is no necessity for these two happenings to be together. Really, it is almost impossible, because enlightenment is a sudden uncaused phenomenon. You work for it but it never happens through your work. Your work helps to create the situation but it happens through something else -- that something else is called grace. It is a gift from God, it is not a byproduct of your efforts; they don't cause it. Of course they create a situation: I open the door and the light enters. But the light is a gift from the sun. I cannot create light just by opening the door. Opening of the door is not a cause to it. Non-opening of the door was a hindrance but opening of the door is not a cause -- I cannot cause. If you open the door and it is night, light will not enter. Opening the door is not creating light, but by closing the door you hinder. So all the efforts that you make towards realization are just to open the door. Light comes when it comes. You have to remain with an open door so whenever it comes, whenever it knocks at your door, it finds you there and the door is open so it can enter. It is always a gift -- and it has to be so, because if you can attain the ultimate through your efforts it will be an absurdity. A limited mind making efforts -- how can it find the infinite? A finite mind making efforts -- all efforts will be finite. How can the infinite happen through finite efforts? The ignorant mind is making efforts -- those efforts are made in ignorance; how can they change, transform into enlightenment? No, it is not possible. You make efforts; they are necessary, they prepare you, they open the door -- but the happening happens when it happens. You remain available. God knocks many times at your door, the sun rises every day. And remember, nowhere else is it said what I would like to say to you, although it will be a help. It is not said because if you misunderstand it can become a hindrance. There is a day for God and there is a night also. If you open the door in the night, the door will remain open but God will not come. There is a day -- if you open the door in the right moment, immediately God comes. And it has to be so, because the whole of existence has opposites. God is also in a rest period when he sleeps. If you open the door then he will not come. There is a moment when he is awake, when he is moving -- it has to be so because every energy moves through two opposites, rest and movement, and God is infinite energy! He has movements and he has a rest. That's why a master is needed. If you do it on your own you may be working hard and nothing is happening, because you are not working at the right moment. You are working in the night; you open the door and only darkness enters. Afraid, you close it again. You open the door and there is nothing but vast emptiness all around. You become afraid, you close it again, and once you see that emptiness, you will never forget it -- and you will be so afraid that it will take many years for you to gather courage again to open it. ... Because once you see the infinite abyss, when God is asleep, when God is in rest, if you see that moment of infinite negativity and abyss and darkness, you will be scared -- so much so that for many years you will not make another attempt. And I feel people are afraid, they are afraid of going into meditation -- and I know that somewhere in their past life they have made some effort and they had a glimpse of the abyss at the wrong moment. They may not know it but unconsciously it is there, so whenever they come near the door and they put their hand on the knob and it becomes possible to open the door, they become afraid. They come back exactly from that moment, run back -- they don't open it. An unconscious fear grips. It has to be so, because for many lives you have been struggling and striving. Hence the necessity of the master who knows, who has attained, and who knows the right moment. He will tell you to make all the efforts when it is the night of God. And he will not tell you to open the door. He will tell you to prepare in the night, prepare as much as you can, be ready, and when the morning strikes and the first rays have entered he will tell you to open the door. Sudden illumination! Then it is totally different because when the light is there it IS totally different. When God is awake then the emptiness is not there. It is a fulfillment; it is perfect fulfillment. Everything is full, more than full -- it is overflowing perfection. It is the peak, not the abyss. If you open the door in the wrong moment, it is the abyss. You will get dizzy, so dizzy that for many lives together you will never attempt it. But only one who knows, only one who has become one with God, only one who knows when the night is, and when the day, can help, because now they happen in him also -- he has a night, he has a day. Hindus had a glimpse of this and they have a beautiful hypothesis: they call it Brahma's day, God's day. When the creation is there they call it God's day -- but the creation has a time limit, and the creation dissolves and Brahma's night, God's night, starts. Twelve hours of Brahma's day is the whole creation. Then, tired, the whole existence disappears into nonexistence. Then for twelve hours it is Brahma's night. For us it is millions and millions of years, for God it is twelve hours -- his day. Christians also had a theory, or a hypothesis -- because I call all religious theories hypotheses, for nothing is proved, nothing can be proved by the very nature of the thing. They say God created the world in six days, then on the seventh day he rested. That's why Sunday is a rest day, a holiday. Six days he created, and on the seventh day he rested. They had a glimpse that even God must rest. These are both hypotheses, both beautiful, but you have to find the essence of it. The essence is that every day God also has a night and a day. And every day there is a right moment to enter and a wrong moment; in the wrong moment you will be against the wall, in the right moment you simply enter. Because of this those who have knocked at the wrong moment say that to attain enlightenment is a gradual thing, you attain it by degrees; and those who have come to the door in the right moment say enlightenment is sudden, it happens in a moment. A master is needed to decide when is the right moment. It is reported that Vivekananda started his disciplehood and then one day he attained the first glimpse. You can call it SATORI, the zen word for SAMADHI, because it is a GLIMPSE, not a permanent thing. It is just as if clouds are not there in the sky -- the sky is clear and from a distance of one thousand miles you have a glimpse of Everest in all its glory, but then the sky becomes cloudy and the glimpse is again lost. It is not attainment, you have not reached Everest, you have not reached the top; from thousands of miles you had a glimpse -- that is satori. Satori is a glimpse of samadhi. Vivekananda had a satori. In Ramakrishna's ashram there were many people, many people were working. One man, his name was Kalu, a very simple man, a very innocent man, was also working in his own way -- and Ramakrishna accepted EVERY way. He was a rare man; he accepted every technique, every method, and he said everybody has to find his own way, there is no superway. And this is good, otherwise there would be such a traffic jam! So it is good, you can walk on your own path. Nobody else is there to create any trouble or make it crowded. That Kalu was a very simple man. He had at least one hundred gods -- as Hindus are lovers of many gods, one is not enough for them. So they will put in their worship place this god, that god, whatsoever they can find; they will even put calendars there. There is nothing wrong in it; if you love it, it is okay. But Vivekananda was a logician, a very keen intellect. He always argued with this innocent man and he could not answer. Vivekananda said, 'Why this nonsense? One is enough, and the scriptures say that he is one, so why these one hundred and one gods?' And they were all sorts of shapes, and Kalu had to work with these gods at least three hours in the morning and three in the evening -- the whole day was gone, because with every god he had to work, and however fast he worked it took three hours in the morning and three in the evening. But he was a very very silent man and Ramakrishna loved him. Vivekananda always argued, 'Throw these gods!' When he had a glimpse of satori he felt very powerful. Suddenly the idea came to him that in this power, if he simply sent a telepathic message to Kalu -- he was worshipping in his room, this was time for worship -- to take all his gods to the Ganges and throw them, it would happen. He simply sent a message. Kalu was really a simple man. He gathered all his gods into a bed sheet and carried them towards the Ganges. From the Ganges Ramakrishna was coming, and he said, 'Wait! This is not you who is going to throw them. Go back to your room and put them in their place.' But Kalu said, 'Enough! Finished!' Ramakrishna said, 'Wait and come with me!' He knocked at Vivekananda's door. Vivekananda opened the door and Ramakrishna said, 'What have you done? This is not good and this is not the right moment for you. So I will take your key of meditation and will keep it with me. When the right moment comes I will give it to you.' And for his whole life Vivekananda tried in millions of ways to attain, but he couldn't get that glimpse again. Just before he died, three days before, Ramakrishna appeared in a dream and he gave him the key. He said, 'Now you can take the key. Now the right moment is here and you can open the door.' And the next day in the morning he had the second glimpse. A master knows when it is the right time. He helps you, prepares you for the right moment, and he will give you the key when the right moment is there; then you simply open the door and the divine enters -- because if you open the door and darkness enters it will look like death, not like life. Nothing is wrong in this but you will get scared, and you can get so scared that you may carry that fear for ever and ever. Buddha says that whenever you attain, start helping others, because all your energies that were moving into desire... now that door is finished, that travel is no more, that trip is no more; now let all your energies which were moving in desiring, VASANA, become compassion, let them become KARUNA. And there is only one compassion -- how to help the other to attain the ultimate, because there is nothing else to be attained. All else is rubbish. Only the divine is worth attaining. If you attain that you have attained all; if you miss that you have missed all. When one becomes enlightened he lives for a few years before the body completes its circle. Buddha lived on for forty years because the body had got a momentum: from the parents the body had got chromosomes, from his own past karma the body had got a life circle. He was to live eighty years, enlightened or not. If enlightenment became possible or if it happened, then too he had to live eighty years. It happened nearabout when he was forty; he lived forty years more. What to do with the energies now? Now there is no desire, no ambition. And you have infinite energies flowing. What to do with those energies? They can be moved into compassion. Now there is no need for meditation either; you have attained, you are overflowing -- now you can share. Now you can share with millions, you can give it to them. So Buddha has made this a part of his basic teaching. He calls the first part DHYANA, meditation, and the second part PRAJNA, wisdom attainment. Through meditation you reach to prajna. These are your inward phenomena, two parts: you meditated, now you have attained. Now to balance it with the outer -- because a man of enlightenment is always balanced. Outside, when there was no meditation inside, there was desire. Now there is wisdom inside, there should be compassion. The outer energies should become compassion; the inner energies have become wisdom, enlightenment. Enlightenment inside, compassion outside. The perfect man is always balanced. So Buddha says go on and on and help to save people. Source: Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link. Discourse Series: <a href="/and-the-flowers-showerd-09">And The Flowers Showered, Chapter #9</a> Chapter title: Deaf, dumb and blind 8 November 1974 am in Buddha Hall References: Osho has spoken on notable Psychologists and philosophers like Adler, Jung, Sigmund Freud, Assagioli, Wilhelm Reich, Aristotle, Berkeley, Confucius, Descartes, Feuerbach, Hegel, Heidegger, Heraclitus, Huxley, Jaspers, Kant, Kierkegaard, Laing, Marx, Moore, Nietzsche, Plato, Pythagoras, Russell, Sartre, Socrates, Wittgenstein and many others in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses: 1. The Hidden Splendour&nbsp; 2. The Wild Geese and the Water 3. This, This, A Thousand Times This: The Very Essence of Zen 4. Nirvana: The Last Nightmare&nbsp; 5. Beyond Enlightenment 6. Beyond Psychology 7. Dang Dang Doko Dang 8. The Discipline of Transcendence 9. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha 10. From Bondage to Freedom 11. From Darkness to Light 12. From Ignorance to Innocence 13. The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1 14. From Personality to Individuality 15. I Celebrate Myself: God Is No Where, Life Is Now Here 16. Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 4 17. Zen: The Path of Parad &nbsp;