150th Birth Anniversary of Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda  (12 January 1863–4 July 1902, born as Narendra Nath Datta)  was an Indian Hindu monk. He was a key figure in the introduction of Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the western world, and was credited with raising interfaith awareness, bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion in the late 19th century. He was a major force in the revival of Hinduism in India, and contributed to the notion of nationalism in colonial India. He was the chief disciple of the 19th century saint Ramakrishna and the founder of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission. He is perhaps best known for his inspiring speech beginning with "Sisters and Brothers of America," through which he introduced Hinduism at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicagoin 1893.
Swami Vivekananda was born Narendranath Dutta, son of a well-known lawyer in Calcutta, Biswanath Dutta, and a very intelligent and pious lady, Bhuvaneswari Devi, in the year 1863.

Naren's father traveled to central and northern India in connection with his work. In 1877, when Naren was fourteen years old, his father went to Raipur in the Central Provinces. Knowing that he would have to live there for an extended time, his father, Vishwanath, had his family brought there shortly thereafter. Raipur was not connected by railway then; travelers had to go by slow-moving bullock-carts for more than two weeks along narrow forest paths cut through the dense tropical forests of central India. 
Naren, as the eldest son among the male children of Biswanath Dutta, was responsible for the manly duty of protecting and guarding his family as they journeyed there. 
He recalled an experience he had while traveling on the bullock cart:
What I saw and felt when going through the forest has for ever remained firmly imprinted in my memory, particularly a certain event of one day. We had to travel by the foot of the Vindhya mountains that day. The peaks of the ranges on both sides of the road rose very high in the sky; various kinds of trees and creepers bending under the weight of fruits and flowers produced wonderful beauty on the mountainsides. Birds of various colours, flying from tree to tree, filled the quarters with sweet notes. I saw all these and felt an extraordinary peace in my mind. The slow-moving bullock-carts arrived at a place where two mountain peaks, coming forward as though in love, locked themselves in an embrace over the narrow forest path. Observing carefully below the meeting-points I saw that there was a very big cleft from the crest to the foot of the mountain on one side of the path; and filling that cleft, there was hanging in it an enormous honeycomb, the result of the bees labour for ages. Filled with wonder, as I was pondering over the  beginning and the end of that kingdom of bees, my mind became so much absorbed in the thought of the infinite power of God, the Controller of the three worlds, that I completely lost my consciousness of the external world for some time. I do not remember how long I was lying in the bullock-cart in that condition. When I regained normal consciousness, I found that we had crossed that place and come far away. As I was alone in the cart, no one could know anything about it.