God Is Mind Blowing

I don't think there's any schoolchild in the state of Bengal who doesn't know the rest of the story.

Naren was sitting on the floor when he posed his challenge to the temple priest. Ramakrishna lifted his foot and brushed Naren's forehead with his toe. Remember in Chapter 8, " Turning on Your Inner Light", when I told you about shaktipat, the shot of energy some disciples get from their gurus? Well, Naren got a dose of shaktipat. A massive dose. He was pitched into cosmic consciousness, his awareness merging into the living universe all around him. It was ecstatic!

Then, Naren suddenly remembered his poor widowed mother, who should starve if he wasn't there to support her. In that moment, his consciousness imploded back into his body. He was Naren Datta again. Or rather, he had just become the man history would remember as Swami Vivekananda, the leading disciple of one of the greatest Hindu masters of recent centuries, Ramakrishna Paramahansa.

Naren- called Swami Vivekananda after he took the vows of a Hindu renunciate- would turn the tables on his schoolmasters. He would be the first swami in modern times to visit Europe and America, teaching the Santana Dharma, the eternal religion of Hinduism. He would met with spectacular success abroad, introducing tens of thousands of eager Western students to yoga and meditation.

But for our purpose here we need to understand exactly what happened in that extraordinary moment when the master touched Naren's forehead. And to do that we need to understand Ramakrishna's own spiritual history.