Swami Vivekananda’s  meeting with John Rockefeller is one of the lesser known facts about his stay in Chicago . The meeting has been documented although neither Vivekananda nor Rockefeller has written or apparently spoken , at least in public,  about it.  The impact of that meeting can only be inferred from subsequent actions.

It is  said that opposites attract each other and that  pairs of opposites produce great results. One could not have imagined a pair more unlike each other   than Swami Vivekananda  and John  and Rockefeller in temperament, life style and social and cultural backgrounds. Rockefeller had brought up Standard Oil and  was considered the  richest man in the world and had all the  material comforts he could have wished for. Vivekananada, on the other hand, was a penniless sanyasin  who had renounced all material comfort  but was in a position to give  great   spiritual  energy  to anyone who met or heard him.

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