SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ... HIS LIFE AND LEGACY 3

The child was intelligent, restless and abounding in energy. Two nannies had to be appointed to look after him. When he became totally unmanageable, Bhuvaneshwari would warn him that Shiva would not let him into Kailash ever again unless he sobered down and then she would bathe him under a current of cold water which would at once calm him down.

Narendra loved the company of mendicant monks who would come to his door-step and he would give away whatever he could lay his hands on to them. To contain him Bhuvaneshwari would lock him up in an attic but he would manage to throw down his father's clothes through the window to monks passing by.

Often, Narendra would playfully engage in meditation with his mates but would soon be so absorbed in it that he would be totally unconscious of the outer world. Once, a cobra stood with outspread hood in front of the meditative Narendra. His friends fled but he remained motionless, mute in ecstatic bliss of meditation, oblivious of circumstance. The cobra soon slid away without harming the boy.