Did he think of making the Entire Earthly life Divine? Upto which point did he think?ย Where did he leave this to Sri Aurobindo to carry further? In case he didn’t fully conceive.
He did not speak anything about the evolution of the human race into a future divine race. Like all Vedantins, he spoke about the evolution of the human soul through the cycle of births until it is ready to shed its ignorance. Once the ignorance is shed and the soul recovers its true divine nature, it withdraws into Moksha. There is nobody in the entire spiritual history of mankind who ever thought, let alone worked upon, the collective higher spiritual evolution of the race. Individual Moksha has been the highest so far and of course, the help given by realised beings to others still in ignorance. Swami Vivekananda stood on the plane of the Intuitive mind from where he pointed the way further towards the Overmind and possibly the Supermind to Sri Aurobindo. It is doubtful however, if he himself realised them. His Master Sri Ramakrishna does seem to have had the Overmind realisation as one can see from the efforts to synthesise different religions and different sides of the One Reality. But the synthesis between the spiritual and the material was neither foreseen nor attempted.
These comparisons are not to belittle the great efforts of these Masters, especially Swami Vivekananda, in awakening people towards true spirituality. It is only to point out the difference between the traditional Vedanta and Sri Aurobindo in response to your question.
[Follow-up Question:]ย
Isn’t it that Swami Vivekananda believe in the Mayavada Theory, and the illusion of the world?
Yes, ultimately it ended up with Mayavada and Moksha.ย
[Follow-up Question:]ย
If so, how close are his thoughts to Sri Aurobindo?
They are not except upto the point that all Vedantic thought has in common, that is to say that there is but One Supreme Reality that can be called by different names and approached in different ways. There are other things common to all spiritual seeking, such as getting rid of ego, ignorance and desire. But the comparison ends there. The only scripture that comes closest to Sri Aurobindo’s thought are the Vedas, the Gita and the Isha Upanishad.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
