ANCESTRY :- Coming from afar are the voices of the Silence. Rarely are they heard, save by mystics & sages. And when one of these voices becomes embodied as sound audible to mortal hearing, blessed is the time & blessed are those who hear. Formless is the Spirit & subjective is the vision thereof; dense is the illusion that hangs as the cosmic veil before Reality! How divine, therefore, must be the personality that makes objective the vision of the Spirit! How priceless the history of the who has lifted even a fringe of the veil! The illusion becomes transparent in the effulgence of such a spiritual personality. Verily, the Spirit Itself becomes revealed; & those who see are brought face to face with Reality! BIRTH & CHILDHOOD:- Whoever knows the longing of a mother that a son should be born to her, enters into the world of Bhuvaneshwari, the wife of Vishwanath Datta. Though she had been blessed with motherhood at an early age, her first child, a son & her second, a daughter, had died in their childhood. Her next three children were all daughters—Haramohini (also called Haramoni), Swarnamayi, & another who also died in childhood. So, she longed for a son to carry on the family tradition, to be the link, forged out of the materials of love & suffering, between the past & the future. It has been the practice of Hindu woman down the ages to their wants & complaints before the household Deity, & to practice austerities while wairing to receive the blessing of the Lord. Thus, as Bhuvaneshwari went about her daily tasks, she prayed ailently that her desire might be fulfilled. Now, it was customary in those days—and still is—for one dire need, or anxious that some special event should come to pass, to make offerings & sacrifices to Shiva in Varanasi. Those who lived a long distance from that holy city make could make their offerings through a relative or friend who might be resident there. Accordingly, Bhuvaneshwari Devi wrote to an old aunt of the Datta family in Varanasi, asking her to make the necessary offerings & prayers to Varanasi Shiva that a son might be born to her. It was arranged that on Mondays the aunt would offer worship to Vireshwar Shiva, while Bhuvaneshwari would practice special austerities on those same days. It is said that by observing a vow of this for one year, one is blessed with a son. Thus bhuvaneshwari was content to wait in perfect assurance that her prayers would be answered. She observed fasts & intensified her many other austerities, her whole soul given over to constant recollectedness, her heart fixed in love on the Lord Shiva. EARLY EDUCATION & GLIMPASES OF SPIRITUALITY:-In 1871, when Narendranath was eight years old, he entered the ninth class (equivalent to the present primary class two), in the English Department of Pandit Ishwarchana Vidyasagar’s Metropolition, Institution, then situated on Sukia Street. Vidyasagar’s school was famous at the time, & so it was that boys of Naren’s family used to be students there. During the first days of Naren’s attendance at the Metropolitan Instiution his father dressed him in trousers, but every day they got torn owing to his high spirits. He was unusual in his restlessness. At school he never really managed to sit at his desk. It was a sort of compromise between sitting & standing with frequent change of position. When he played furiously. Among the games were marbles, jumping, running, boxing & crickt, at the last of which he had been proficient from his early youth. It was left to him to arrange the play-programme for the following day. Quarrels often arose as they do among boys; & it was to Naren that the other for settlement. He disliked quarrelling; above all, could not bear to witness a physical fight.