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A Glimpse of Swami Brahmananda SWAMI KAILASANANDA
We shall understand the profound significance of this piece of Swami
February 2021
P
eople wondered: who might be this stately young man in saffron standing at the palace-gate with a garland in his hands? Presently there arose a t u m u l t u o u s u p ro a r, ‘ V i c t o r y t o S r i Ramakrishna!, Victory to Swami Vivekananda!’ With green laurels on his forehead the victor had just returned to his home-city Calcutta. The seething crowd ran mad in trying to snatch a glimpse of that wonderful man, Vivekananda. The decorated coach stopped at the gate. Extricating himself somehow from the heap of flowers and garlands under which he was almost buried, Swami Vivekananda alighted from the coach. The first thing he did after being garlanded by the young man at the gate was to prostrate himself at his feet with the words, “Unto the son of the Guru as to the Guru!” In his turn the young man prostrated himself at the feet of Vivekananda with the words, “Unto the elder brother as to the Father!” People wondered the more; who could be this young man at whose feet the great Swami Vivekananda, at whose feet millions bow wherever he goes, prostrates? This was Swami Brahmananda, popularly known as ‘Maharaj’ in the Ramakrishna Order.
11 The Vedanta Kesari
PA G E S P O N S O R : S R I M A N I S H S H U K L A , PA LG H A R
This month we are celebrating the Janma Tithi Puja of Swami Brahmananda, the first President of the Ramakrishna Order. We are presenting from our archive, the Editorial of Feb 1949 which gives an excellent introduction to this special disciple of Sri Ramakrishna. The author is Swami Kailasananda, the then head of Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai, who later became one of the Vice-Presidents of the Ramakrishna Order.
Vivekananda’s behaviour, as we go back to the idyllic days of Sri Ramakrishna’s spiritual ministrations at Dakshineswar. “...no man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son and he to whom the Son will reveal him.”
Sri Ramakrishna had finished the sadhana period of his life. The Divine Mother had asked him to remain in Bhava-mukha, on the borderline of the Absolute and the Relative with free access to both, for the good of the world. But how was he to do that? The mind had become so vertical in its tendency! There was nothing
