SWAMI VIVEKANANDA --- HIS LIFE AND LEGACY 1

July 4, 1902, 9:10 p.m., Belur Math. Swami Vivekananda lay in his last sleep. Long ago, Sri Ramakrishna had prophesied that the day his beloved Naren would get to know his real identity, he would give up his body by an act of will. And so he did. The doctor certified his death as having been caused by apoplexy but his brother disciples maintained that the great Swami had willed his own death once he felt his work on Earth was over.

The next day he was cremated on the hallowed ground of Belur Math. Today, a memorial shrine stands over the exact spot where Vivekananda was cremated. A bas-relief of the Swami was inlaid on a wall of the shrine by Betty Sturges, an American devotee of the Swami. Countless pilgrims daily offer their obeisance to Swamiji there even as they did unwittingly on the first day, that hallowed morn of his advent on Earth, January 12, 1863, the day of the Makar Sankranti.