BIOGRAPHY OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

would say to his friends: 'I shall certainly become a sannyasin. A palmist haspredicted it.'As Narendra grew into adolescence, his temperament showed a marked change.He became keen about intellectual matters, read serious books on history andliterature, devoured newspapers, and attended public meetings. Music was hisfavourite pastime. He insisted that it should express a lofty idea and arouse thefeelings of the musician.At the age of fifteen he experienced his first spiritual ecstasy. The family wasjourneying to Raipur in the Central Provinces, and part of the trip had to bemade in a bullock cart. On that particular day the air was crisp and clear; thetrees and creepers were covered with green leaves and many-coloured blossoms;birds of brilliant plumage warbled in the woods. The cart was moving along anarrow pass where the lofty peaks rising on the two sides almost touched eachother. Narendra's eyes spied a large bee-hive in the cleft of a giant cliff, andsuddenly his mind was filled with awe and reverence for the Divine Providence.He lost outer consciousness and lay thus in the cart for a long time. Even afterreturning to the sense-perceived world he radiated joy.Another interesting mental phenomenon may be mentioned here; for it was oneoften experienced by Narendranath. From boyhood, on first beholding certainpeople or places, he would feel that he had known them before; but how longbefore he could never remember. One day he and some of his companions were ina room in a friend's house, where they were discussing various topics. Somethingwas mentioned, and Narendra felt at once that he had on a previous occasiontalked about the same subject with the selfsame friends in that very house. Heeven correctly described every nook and corner of the building, which he had notseen before. He tried at first to explain this singular phenomenon by the doctrineof reincarnation, thinking that perhaps he had lived in that house in a previouslife. But he dismissed the idea as improbable. Later he concluded that before hisbirth he must have had previsions of the people, places, and events that he wasto experience in his present incarnation; that was why, he thought, he couldrecognize them as soon as they presented themselves to him.At Raipur Narendra was encouraged by his father to meet notable scholars anddiscuss with them various intellectual topics usually considered too abstruse forboys of his age. On such occasions he exhibited great mental power. From hisfather, Narendra had learnt the art of grasping the essentials of things, seeingtruth from the widest and most comprehensive standpoints, and holding to thereal issue under discussion.In 1879 the family returned to Calcutta, and Narendra within a short timegraduated from high school in the first division. In the meantime he had read a