1. Swami Vivekananda’s Pre-monastic name was Narendra Nath Datta. He was born with a temperament of yogis and used to meditate at a very early age.
2. Swami Vivekananda’s birthplace was Kolkata (previously known as Calcutta) and he was born on January 12, 1863. He died on July 4, 1902, in Kolkata.
3. Swami Vivekananda’s father died suddenly when he was young. This broke the financial backbone of his family and the whole family was pushed into poverty.
4. Swami Vivekananda used to ask for a job from door to door. When he failed to get a job, he gradually turned into an atheist and would openly say that there was no such thing as god.
5. Swami Vivekananda went through a phase of spiritual crisis when he was unemployed. That’s when he was introduced to the name ‘Shri Ramkrishna Paramhansa’ by one of his English professors. In 1881, Narendra Nath met with Shri Ramkrishna at Dakshineshwar’s Kali temple.
6. It was Shri Ramakrishna who managed to remove all the doubts young Narendra Nath had and showed him the path of spiritual clarity and he became Ramkrishna’s disciple.
7. After meeting with Shri Ramkrishna, Swami Vivekananda literally worshipped women but weirdly enough, no woman was ever allowed inside his monastery. He even became furious on his own disciples once when they allowed his mother to enter after he fell ill.
8. Swami Vivekananda has amazing concentration power. He was a voracious reader and would borrow many books from the library and return them on the very next day.
