Biography of Swami Vivekananda - Vedanta in America
After the meetings of the Parliament of Religions were concluded, Swami Vivekananda, as already noted, under took a series of apostolic campaigns in order to sow the seed of the Vedantic truths in the ready soil of America. Soon he discovered that the lecture bureau was exploiting him. Further, he did not like its method of advertisement. He was treated as if he were the chief attraction of a circus. The prospectus included his portrait, with the inscription, proclaiming his cardinal virtues: 'An Orator by Divine Right; a Model Representative of his Race; a Perfect master of the English Language; the Sensation of the World's Fair Parliament.' It also described his physical bearing, his height, the colour of his skin, and his clothing. The Swami felt disgusted at being treated like a patent medicine or an elephant in a show. So he severed his relationship with the bureau and arranged his own lectures himself. He accepted invitation from churches, clubs, and private gatherings, and travelled extensively through the Eastern and Midwestern states of America, delivering twelve to fourteen or more lectures a week.
People came in hundreds and in thousands. And what an assorted audience he had to face! There came to his meetings professors from universities, ladies of fine breeding, seekers of truth, and devotees of God with childlike faith. But mixed with these were charlatans, curiosity-seekers, idlers, and vagabonds. It is not true that he met everywhere with favourable conditions. Leon Landsberg, one of the Swami's American disciples, thus described Vivekananda's tribulations of those days:
The Americans are a receptive nation. That is why the country is a hotbed of all kinds of religious and irreligious monstrosities. There is no theory so absurd, no doctrine so irrational, no claim so extravagant, no fraud so transparent, but can find their numerous believers and a ready market. To satisfy this craving, to feed the credulity of the people, hundreds of societies and sects are born for the salvation of the world, and to enable the prophets to pocket $25 to $100 initiation fees. Hobgoblins, spooks, mahatmas, and new prophets were rising every day. In this bedlam of religious cranks, the Swami appeared to teach the lofty religion of the Vedas, the profound philosophy of Vedanta, the sublime wisdom of the ancient rishis. The most unfavourable environment for such a task!
The Swami met with all kinds of obstacles. The opposition of fanatical Christian missionaries was, of course, one of these. They promised him help if he only would preach their brand of Christianity. When the Swami refused, they circulated all sorts of filthy stories about him, and even succeeded in persuading some of the Americans who had previously invited him to be their guest, to cancel the invitations. But Vivekananda continued to preach the religion of love, renunciation, and truth as taught by Christ, and so show him the highest veneration as a Saviour of mankind. How significant were his words: 'It is well to be born in a church, but it is terrible to die there!' Needless to say, he meant by the word church all organized religious institutions. How like a thunderbolt the words fell upon the ears of his audience when one day he exclaimed: 'Christ, Buddha, and Krishna are but waves in the Ocean of Infinite Consciousness that I am!'
Then there were the leaders of the cranky, selfish, and fraudulent organizations, who tried to induce the Swami to embrace their cause, first by promises of support, and then by threats of injuring him if he refused to ally himself with them. But he could be neither bought nor frightened — 'the sickle had hit on a stone,' as the Polish proverb says. To all these propositions his only answer was: 'I stand for Truth. Truth will never ally itself with falsehood. Even if all the world should be against me, Truth must prevail in the end.'
But the more powerful enemies he had to face were among the so-called free-thinkers, embracing the atheists, materialists, agnostics, rationalists, and others of similar breed who opposed anything associated with God or religion. Thinking that they would easily crush his ancient faith by arguments drawn from Western philosophy and science, they organized a meeting in New York and invited the Swami to present his views.
'I shall never forget that memorable evening' wrote an American disciple, 'when the Swami appeared single-handed to face the forces of materialism, arrayed in the heaviest armour of law, and reason, and logic, and common sense, of matter, and force, and heredity, and all the stock phrases calculated to awe and terrify the ignorant. Imagine their surprise when they found that far from being intimidated by these big words, he proved himself a master in wielding their own weapons, and as familiar with the arguments of materialism as with those of Advaita philosophy. He showed them that their much vaunted Western science could not answer the most vital questions of life and being, that their immutable laws, so much talked of, had no outside existence apart from the human mind, that the very idea of matter was a metaphysical conception, and that it was much despised metaphysics upon which ultimately rested the very basis of their materialism. With an irresistible logic he demonstrated that their knowledge proved itself incorrect, not by comparison with that which was true, but by the very laws upon which it depended for its basis; that pure reason could not help admitting its own limitations and pointed to something beyond reason; and that rationalism, when carried to its last consequences, must ultimately land us at something which is above matter, above force, above sense, above thought, and even consciousness, and of which all these are but manifestations.'
As a result of his explaining the limitations of science, a number of people from the group of free-thinkers attended the Swami's meeting the next day and listened to his uplifting utterances on God and religion.
What an uphill work it was for Swami Vivekananda to remove the ignorance, superstition, and perverted ideas about religion in general and Hinduism in particular! No wonder he sometimes felt depressed. In one of these moods he wrote from Detroit, on March 15, 1894, to the Hale sisters in Chicago:
People came in hundreds and in thousands. And what an assorted audience he had to face! There came to his meetings professors from universities, ladies of fine breeding, seekers of truth, and devotees of God with childlike faith. But mixed with these were charlatans, curiosity-seekers, idlers, and vagabonds. It is not true that he met everywhere with favourable conditions. Leon Landsberg, one of the Swami's American disciples, thus described Vivekananda's tribulations of those days:
The Americans are a receptive nation. That is why the country is a hotbed of all kinds of religious and irreligious monstrosities. There is no theory so absurd, no doctrine so irrational, no claim so extravagant, no fraud so transparent, but can find their numerous believers and a ready market. To satisfy this craving, to feed the credulity of the people, hundreds of societies and sects are born for the salvation of the world, and to enable the prophets to pocket $25 to $100 initiation fees. Hobgoblins, spooks, mahatmas, and new prophets were rising every day. In this bedlam of religious cranks, the Swami appeared to teach the lofty religion of the Vedas, the profound philosophy of Vedanta, the sublime wisdom of the ancient rishis. The most unfavourable environment for such a task!
The Swami met with all kinds of obstacles. The opposition of fanatical Christian missionaries was, of course, one of these. They promised him help if he only would preach their brand of Christianity. When the Swami refused, they circulated all sorts of filthy stories about him, and even succeeded in persuading some of the Americans who had previously invited him to be their guest, to cancel the invitations. But Vivekananda continued to preach the religion of love, renunciation, and truth as taught by Christ, and so show him the highest veneration as a Saviour of mankind. How significant were his words: 'It is well to be born in a church, but it is terrible to die there!' Needless to say, he meant by the word church all organized religious institutions. How like a thunderbolt the words fell upon the ears of his audience when one day he exclaimed: 'Christ, Buddha, and Krishna are but waves in the Ocean of Infinite Consciousness that I am!'
Then there were the leaders of the cranky, selfish, and fraudulent organizations, who tried to induce the Swami to embrace their cause, first by promises of support, and then by threats of injuring him if he refused to ally himself with them. But he could be neither bought nor frightened — 'the sickle had hit on a stone,' as the Polish proverb says. To all these propositions his only answer was: 'I stand for Truth. Truth will never ally itself with falsehood. Even if all the world should be against me, Truth must prevail in the end.'
But the more powerful enemies he had to face were among the so-called free-thinkers, embracing the atheists, materialists, agnostics, rationalists, and others of similar breed who opposed anything associated with God or religion. Thinking that they would easily crush his ancient faith by arguments drawn from Western philosophy and science, they organized a meeting in New York and invited the Swami to present his views.
'I shall never forget that memorable evening' wrote an American disciple, 'when the Swami appeared single-handed to face the forces of materialism, arrayed in the heaviest armour of law, and reason, and logic, and common sense, of matter, and force, and heredity, and all the stock phrases calculated to awe and terrify the ignorant. Imagine their surprise when they found that far from being intimidated by these big words, he proved himself a master in wielding their own weapons, and as familiar with the arguments of materialism as with those of Advaita philosophy. He showed them that their much vaunted Western science could not answer the most vital questions of life and being, that their immutable laws, so much talked of, had no outside existence apart from the human mind, that the very idea of matter was a metaphysical conception, and that it was much despised metaphysics upon which ultimately rested the very basis of their materialism. With an irresistible logic he demonstrated that their knowledge proved itself incorrect, not by comparison with that which was true, but by the very laws upon which it depended for its basis; that pure reason could not help admitting its own limitations and pointed to something beyond reason; and that rationalism, when carried to its last consequences, must ultimately land us at something which is above matter, above force, above sense, above thought, and even consciousness, and of which all these are but manifestations.'
As a result of his explaining the limitations of science, a number of people from the group of free-thinkers attended the Swami's meeting the next day and listened to his uplifting utterances on God and religion.
What an uphill work it was for Swami Vivekananda to remove the ignorance, superstition, and perverted ideas about religion in general and Hinduism in particular! No wonder he sometimes felt depressed. In one of these moods he wrote from Detroit, on March 15, 1894, to the Hale sisters in Chicago:
But I do not know — I have become very sad in my heart since I am here. I do not know why. I am wearied of lecturing and all that nonsense. This mixing with hundreds of human animals, male and female, has disturbed me. I will tell you what is to my taste. I cannot write — cannot speak — but I can think deep, and when I am heated can speak fire. But it should be to a select few — a very select few. And let them carry and sow my ideas broadcast if they will — not I. It is only a just division of labour. The same man never succeeded in thinking and in casting his thoughts all around. Such thoughts are not worth a penny. ... I am really not 'cyclonic' at all — far from it. What I want is not here — nor can I longer bear this cyclonic atmosphere. Calm, cool, nice, deep, penetrating, independent, searching thought — a few noble pure mirrors which will reflect it back, catch it until all of them sound in unison. Let others throw it to the outside world if they will. This is the way to perfection — to be prefect, to make perfect a few men and women. My idea of doing good is this — to evolve a few giants, and not to strew pearls to the swine and lose time, breath, and energy. ... Well, I do not care for lecturing any more. It is too disgusting to bring me to suit anybody's or any audience's fad.
Swami Vivekananda became sick of what he termed 'the nonsense of public life and newspaper blazoning.'
The Swami had sincere admirers and devotees among the Americans, who looked after his comforts, gave him money when he lacked it, and followed his instructions. He was particularly grateful to American women, and wrote many letters to his friends in India paying high praise to their virtues.
In one letter he wrote:
'Nowhere in the world are women like those of this country. How pure, independent, self-relying, and kind-hearted! It is the women who are the life and soul of this country. All learning and culture are centred in them.'
In another letter:
'[Americans] look with veneration upon women, who play a most prominent part in their lives. Here this form of worship has attained its perfection — this is the long and short of it. I am almost at my wit's end to see the women of this country. They are Lakshmi, the Goddess of Fortune, in beauty, and Sarasvati, the Goddess of Learning, in virtues — they are the Divine Mother incarnate. If I can raise a thousand such Madonnas — incarnations of the Divine Mother — in our country before I die, I shall die in peace. Then only will our countrymen become worthy of their name.'
Perhaps his admiration reached its highest pitch in a letter to the Maharaja of Khetri, which he wrote in 1894:
American women! A hundred lives would not be sufficient to pay my deep debt of gratitude to you! Last year I came to this country in summer, a wandering preacher of a far distant country, without name, fame, wealth, or learning to recommend me — friendless, helpless, almost in a state of destitution; and American women befriended me, gave me shelter and food, took me to their homes, and treated me as their own son, their own brother. They stood as my friends even when their own priests were trying to persuade them to give up the 'dangerous heathen' — even when, day after day, their best friends had told them not to stand by this 'unknown foreigner, maybe of dangerous character.' But they are better judges of character and soul — for it is the pure mirror that catches the reflection.
And how many beautiful homes I have seen, how many mothers whose purity of character, whose unselfish love for their children, are beyond expression, how many daughters and pure maidens, 'pure as the icicle on Diana's temple' — and withal much culture, education, and spirituality in the highest sense! Is America, then, only full of wingless angels in the shape of women? There are good and bad everywhere, true — but a nation is not to be judged by its weaklings, called the wicked, for they are only the weeds which lag behind, but by the good, the noble and the pure, who indicate the national life-current to be flowing clear and vigorous.
And how many beautiful homes I have seen, how many mothers whose purity of character, whose unselfish love for their children, are beyond expression, how many daughters and pure maidens, 'pure as the icicle on Diana's temple' — and withal much culture, education, and spirituality in the highest sense! Is America, then, only full of wingless angels in the shape of women? There are good and bad everywhere, true — but a nation is not to be judged by its weaklings, called the wicked, for they are only the weeds which lag behind, but by the good, the noble and the pure, who indicate the national life-current to be flowing clear and vigorous.
And how bitter the Swami felt when he remembered the sad plight of the women of India! He particularly recalled the tragic circumstances under which one of his own sisters had committed suicide. He often thought that the misery of India was largely due to the ill-treatment the Hindus meted out to their womenfolk. Part of the money earned by his lectures was sent to a foundation for Hindu widows at Baranagore. He also conceived the idea of sending to India women teachers from the West for the intellectual regeneration of Hindu women.
Swami Vivekananda showed great respect for the fundamentals of American culture. He studied the country's economic policy, industrial organizations, public instruction, and its museums and art galleries, and wrote to India enthusiastically about them. He praised highly the progress of science, hygiene, institutions, and social welfare work. He realized that such noble concepts as the divinity of the soul and the brotherhood of men were mere academic theories in present-day India, whereas America showed how to apply them in life. He felt indignant when he compared the generosity and liberality of the wealthy men of America in the cause of social service, with the apathy of the Indians as far as their own people were concerned.
'No religion on earth,' he wrote angrily, 'preaches the dignity of humanity in such a lofty strain as Hinduism, and no religion on earth treads upon the necks of the poor and the low in such a fashion as Hinduism. Religion is not at fault, but it is the Pharisees and Sadducees.'
How poignant must have been his feelings when he remembered the iniquities of the caste-system! 'India's doom was sealed,' he wrote, 'the very day they invented the word mlechcha* and stopped from communion with others.' When he saw in New York a millionaire woman sitting side by side in a tram-car with a negress with a wash-basket on her lap, he was impressed with the democratic spirit of the Americans. He wanted in India 'an organization that will teach the Hindus mutual help and appreciation' after the pattern of Western democracies.
Incessantly he wrote to his Indian devotees about the regeneration of the masses. In a letter dated 1894 he said:
Let each one of us pray, day and night, for the downtrodden millions in India, who are held fast by poverty, priestcraft, and tyranny — pray day and night for them. I care more to preach religion to them than to the high and the rich. I am no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor, I love the poor.... Who feels in India for the three hundred millions of men and women sunken for ever in poverty and ignorance? Where is the way out? Who feels for them? Let these people be your God — think of them, work for them, pray for them incessantly — the Lord will show you the way. Him I call a mahatma, a noble soul, whose heart bleeds for the poor; otherwise he is a duratma, a wicked soul.... So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them.... We are poor, my brothers we are nobodies, but such have always been the instruments of the Most High.
Never did he forget, in the midst of the comforts and luxuries of America, even when he was borne on the wings of triumph from one city to another, the cause of the Indian masses, whose miseries he had witnessed while wandering as an unknown monk from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. The prosperity of the new continent only stirred up in his soul deeper commiseration for his own people. He saw with his own eyes what human efforts, intelligence, and earnestness could accomplish to banish from society poverty, superstition, squalor, disease, and other handicaps of human well-being. On August 20, 1893, he wrote to instil courage into the depressed hearts of his devotees in India:
Gird up your loins, my boys! I am called by the Lord for this.... The hope lies in you — in the meek, the lowly, but the faithful. Feel for the miserable and look up for help — it shall come. I have travelled twelve years with this load in my heart and this idea in my head. I have gone from door to door of the so-called 'rich and great.' With a bleeding heart I have crossed half the world to this strange land, seeking help. The Lord is great. I know He will help me. I may perish of cold and hunger in this land, but I bequeath to you young men this sympathy, this struggle for the poor, the ignorant, the oppressed.... Go down on your faces before Him and make a great sacrifice, the sacrifice of the whole life for them, for whom He comes from time to time, whom He loves above all — the poor, the lowly, the oppressed. Vow, then, to devote your whole lives to the cause of these three hundred millions, going down and down every day. Glory unto the Lord! We will succeed. Hundreds will fall in the struggle — hundreds will be ready to take it up. Faith — sympathy, fiery faith and fiery sympathy! Life is nothing, death is nothing — hunger nothing, cold nothing. Glory unto the Lord! March on, the Lord is our General. Do not look back to see who falls — forward — onward!
Swami Vivekananda was thoroughly convinced by his intimate knowledge of the Indian people that the life-current of the nation, far from being extinct, was only submerged under the dead weight of ignorance and poverty. India still produced great saints whose message of the Spirit was sorely needed by the Western world. But the precious jewels of spirituality discovered by them were hidden, in the absence of a jewel-box, in a heap of filth. The West had created the jewel-box, in the form of a healthy society, but it did not have the jewels. Further, it took him no long time to understand that a materialistic culture contained within it the seeds of its own destruction. Again and again he warned the West of its impending danger. The bright glow on the Western horizon might not be the harbinger of a new dawn; it might very well be the red flames of a huge funeral pyre. The Western world was caught in the maze of its incessant activity — interminable movement without any goal. The hankering for material comforts, without a higher spiritual goal and a feeling of universal sympathy, might flare up among the nations of the West into jealousy and hatred, which in the end would bring about their own destruction.
Swami Vivekananda was a lover of humanity. Man is the highest manifestation of God, and this God was being crucified in different ways in the East and the West. Thus he had a double mission to perform in America. He wanted to obtain from the Americans money, scientific knowledge, and technical help for the regeneration of the Indian masses, and, in turn, to give to the Americans the knowledge of the Eternal Spirit to endow their material progress with significance. No false pride could prevent him from learning from America the many features of her social superiority; he also exhorted the Americans not to allow racial arrogance to prevent them from accepting the gift of spirituality from India. Through this policy of acceptance and mutual respect he dreamt of creating a healthy human society for the ultimate welfare of man's body and soul.
The year following the Parliament of Religions the Swami devoted to addressing meetings in the vast area spreading from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. In Detroit he spent six weeks, first as a guest of Mrs. John Bagley, widow of the former Governor of Michigan, and then of Thomas W. Palmer, President of the World's Fair Commission, formerly a United States Senator and American Minister to Spain. Mrs. Bagley spoke of the Swami's presence at her house as a 'continual benediction.' It was in Detroit that Miss Greenstidel first heard him speak. She later became, under the name of Sister Christine, one of the most devoted disciples of the Swami and a collaborator of Sister Nivedita in her work in Calcutta for the educational advancement of Indian women.
After Detroit, he divided his time between Chicago, New York, and Boston, and during the summer of 1894 addressed, by invitation, several meetings of the 'Humane Conference' held at Greenacre, Massachusetts. Christian Scientists, spiritualists, faith-healers, and groups representing similar views participated in the Conference.
The Swami in the course of a letter to the Hale sisters of Chicago, wrote on July 31, 1894, with his usual humour about the people who attended the meetings:
They have a lively time and sometimes all of them wear what you call your scientific dress the whole day. They have lectures almost every day. One Mr. Colville from Boston is here. He speaks every day, it is said, under spirit control. The editor of the Universal Truth from the top floor of Jimmy Mills has settled herself down here. She is conducting religious services and holding classes to heal all manner of diseases, and very soon I expect them to be giving eyes to the blind, etc., etc. After all, it is a queer gathering. They do not care much about social laws and are quite free and happy....
There is a Mr. Wood of Boston here, who is one of the great lights of your sect. But he objects to belonging to the sect of Mrs. Whirlpool.* So he calls himself a mental healer of metaphysical, chemico, physical-religioso, what-not, etc.
Yesterday there was a tremendous cyclone which gave a good 'treatment' to the tents. The big tent under which they held the lectures developed so much spirituality under the treatment that it entirely disappeared from mortal gaze, and about two hundred chairs were dancing about the grounds under spiritual ecstasy. Mrs. Figs of Mills Company gives a class every morning, and Mrs. Mills is jumping all about the place. They are all in high spirits. I am especially glad for Cora, for she suffered a good deal last winter and a little hilarity would do her good. You would be astounded with the liberty they enjoy in the camps, but they are very good and pure people — a little erratic, that is all.
There is a Mr. Wood of Boston here, who is one of the great lights of your sect. But he objects to belonging to the sect of Mrs. Whirlpool.* So he calls himself a mental healer of metaphysical, chemico, physical-religioso, what-not, etc.
Yesterday there was a tremendous cyclone which gave a good 'treatment' to the tents. The big tent under which they held the lectures developed so much spirituality under the treatment that it entirely disappeared from mortal gaze, and about two hundred chairs were dancing about the grounds under spiritual ecstasy. Mrs. Figs of Mills Company gives a class every morning, and Mrs. Mills is jumping all about the place. They are all in high spirits. I am especially glad for Cora, for she suffered a good deal last winter and a little hilarity would do her good. You would be astounded with the liberty they enjoy in the camps, but they are very good and pure people — a little erratic, that is all.
Regarding his own work at Greenacre, the Swami wrote in the same letter:
The other night the camp people all went to sleep under a pine tree under which I sit every morning a la India and talk to them. Of course I went with them and we had a nice night under the stars, sleeping on the lap of Mother Earth, and I enjoyed every bit of it. I cannot describe to you that night's glories — after the year of brutal life that I have led, to sleep on the ground, to mediate under the tree in the forest! The inn people are more or less well-to-do, and the camp people are healthy, young, sincere, and holy men and women. I teach them all Sivoham, Sivoham—'I am Siva, I am Siva' — and they all repeat it, innocent and pure as they are, and brave beyond all bounds, and I am so happy and glorified.
Thank God for making me poor! Thank God for making these children in the tents poor! The dudes and dudines are in the hotel, but iron-bound nerves, souls of triple steel, and spirits of fire are in the camp. If you had seen them yesterday, when the rain was falling in torrents and the cyclone was overturning everything — hanging on to their tent-strings to keep them from being blown off, and standing on the majesty of their souls, these brave ones — it would have done your hearts good. I would go a hundred miles to see the like of them. Lord bless them!...
Never be anxious for me for a moment. I will be taken care of, and if not, I shall know my time has come — and pass out.... Now good dreams, good thoughts for you. You are good and noble. Instead of materializing the spirit, i.e. dragging the spiritual to the material plane as these fellers do, convert matter into spirit — catch a glimpse at least, every day, of that world of infinite beauty and peace and purity, the spiritual, and try to live in it day and night. Seek not, touch not with your toes, anything which is uncanny. Let your souls ascend day and night like an unbroken string unto the feet of the Beloved, whose throne is in your own heart, and let the rest take care of themselves, i.e. the body and everything else. Life is an evanescent, floating dream; youth and beauty fade. Say day and night: 'Thou art my father, my mother, my husband, my love, my Lord, my God — I want nothing but Thee, nothing but Thee, nothing but Thee. Thou in me, I in Thee — I am Thee, Thou art me.' Wealth goes, beauty vanishes, life flies, powers fly — but the Lord abideth for ever, love abideth for ever. If there is glory in keeping the machine in good trim, it is more glorious to withhold the soul from suffering with the body. That is the only demonstration of your being 'not matter' — by letting matter alone.
Stick to God. Who cares what comes, in the body or anywhere? Through the terrors of evil, say, 'My God, my Love!' Through the pangs of death, say, 'My God, my Love!' Through all the evils under the sun, say: 'My God, my Love! Thou art here, I see Thee. Thou art with me, I feel Thee. I am Thine, take me. I am not the world's but Thine — leave Thou not me.' Do not go for glass beads, leaving the mine of diamonds. This life is a great chance. What! Seekest thou the pleasures of this world? He is the fountain of all bliss. Seek the highest, aim for the highest, and you shall reach the highest.
Thank God for making me poor! Thank God for making these children in the tents poor! The dudes and dudines are in the hotel, but iron-bound nerves, souls of triple steel, and spirits of fire are in the camp. If you had seen them yesterday, when the rain was falling in torrents and the cyclone was overturning everything — hanging on to their tent-strings to keep them from being blown off, and standing on the majesty of their souls, these brave ones — it would have done your hearts good. I would go a hundred miles to see the like of them. Lord bless them!...
Never be anxious for me for a moment. I will be taken care of, and if not, I shall know my time has come — and pass out.... Now good dreams, good thoughts for you. You are good and noble. Instead of materializing the spirit, i.e. dragging the spiritual to the material plane as these fellers do, convert matter into spirit — catch a glimpse at least, every day, of that world of infinite beauty and peace and purity, the spiritual, and try to live in it day and night. Seek not, touch not with your toes, anything which is uncanny. Let your souls ascend day and night like an unbroken string unto the feet of the Beloved, whose throne is in your own heart, and let the rest take care of themselves, i.e. the body and everything else. Life is an evanescent, floating dream; youth and beauty fade. Say day and night: 'Thou art my father, my mother, my husband, my love, my Lord, my God — I want nothing but Thee, nothing but Thee, nothing but Thee. Thou in me, I in Thee — I am Thee, Thou art me.' Wealth goes, beauty vanishes, life flies, powers fly — but the Lord abideth for ever, love abideth for ever. If there is glory in keeping the machine in good trim, it is more glorious to withhold the soul from suffering with the body. That is the only demonstration of your being 'not matter' — by letting matter alone.
Stick to God. Who cares what comes, in the body or anywhere? Through the terrors of evil, say, 'My God, my Love!' Through the pangs of death, say, 'My God, my Love!' Through all the evils under the sun, say: 'My God, my Love! Thou art here, I see Thee. Thou art with me, I feel Thee. I am Thine, take me. I am not the world's but Thine — leave Thou not me.' Do not go for glass beads, leaving the mine of diamonds. This life is a great chance. What! Seekest thou the pleasures of this world? He is the fountain of all bliss. Seek the highest, aim for the highest, and you shall reach the highest.
At Greenacre the Swami became a friend of Dr. Lewis G. Janes, Director of the School of Comparative Religions organized by the Greenacre Conference, and President of the Brooklyn Ethical Association. The following autumn he lectured in Baltimore and Washington.
During the Swami's visit in New York he was the guest of friends, mostly rich ladies of the metropolitan city. He had not yet started any serious work there. Soon he began to feel a sort of restraint put upon his movements. Very few of his wealthy friends understood the true import of his message; they were interested in him as a novelty from India. Also to them he was the man of the hour. They wanted him to mix with only the exclusive society of 'the right people.' He chafed under their domination and one day cried: 'Siva! Siva! Has it ever come to pass that a great work has been grown by the rich? It is brain and heart that create, and not purse.' He wanted to break away from their power and devote himself to the training of some serious students in the spiritual life. He was fed up with public lectures; now he became eager to mould silently the characters of individuals. He could no longer bear the yoke of money and all the botheration that came in its train. He would live simply and give freely, like the holy men of India. Soon an opportunity presented itself.
Dr. Lewis Janes invited the Swami to give a series of lectures on the Hindu religion before the Brooklyn Ethical Association. On the evening of December 31, 1894, he gave his first lecture, and according to the report of the Brooklyn Standard, the enthusiastic audience, consisting of doctors and lawyers and judges and teachers, remained spellbound by his eloquent defence of the religion of India. They all acknowledged that Vivekananda was even greater than his fame. At the end of the meeting they made an insistent demand for regular classes in Brooklyn, to which the Swami agreed. A series of class meetings was held and several public lectures were given at the Pouch Mansion, where the Ethical Association held its meetings. These lectures constituted the beginning of the permanent work in America which the Swami secretly desired.
Soon after, several poor but earnest students rented for the Swami some unfurnished rooms in a poor section of New York City. He lived in one of them. An ordinary room on the second floor of the lodging-house was used for the lectures and classes. The Swami when conducting the meetings sat on the floor, while the ever more numerous auditors seated themselves as best they could, utilizing the marble-topped dresser, the arms of the sofa, and even the corner wash-stand. The door was left open and the overflow filled the hall and sat on the stairs. The Swami, like a typical religious teacher in India, felt himself in his own element. The students, forgetting all the inconveniences, hung upon every word uttered from the teacher's deep personal experiences or his wide range of knowledge.
The lectures, given every morning and several evenings a week, were free. The rent was paid by the voluntary subscriptions of the students, and the deficit was met by the Swami himself, through the money he earned by giving secular lectures on India. Soon the meeting-place had to be removed downstairs to occupy an entire parlour floor.
He began to instruct several chosen disciples in jnana-yoga in order to clarify their intellects regarding the subtle truths of Vedanta, and also in raja-yoga to teach them the science of self-control, concentration, and meditation. He was immensely happy with the result of his concentrated work. He enjoined upon these students to follow strict disciplines regarding food, choosing only the simplest. The necessity of chastity was emphasized, and they were warned against psychic and occult power. At the same time he broadened their intellectual horizon through the teachings of Vedantic universality. Daily he meditated with the serious students. Often he would lose all bodily consciousness and, like Sri Ramakrishna, had to be brought back to the knowledge of the world through the repetition of certain holy words that he had taught his disciples.
It was sometime about June 1895 when Swami Vivekananda finished writing his famous book Raja-Yoga, which attracted the attention of the Harvard philosopher William James and was later to rouse the enthusiasm of Tolstoy. The book is a translation of Patanjali's Yoga aphorisms, the Swami adding his own explanations; the introductory chapters written by him are especially illuminating. Patanjali expounded, through these aphorisms, the philosophy of Yoga, the main purpose of which is to show the way of the soul's attaining freedom from the bondage of matter. Various methods of concentrations are discussed. The book well served two purposes. First, the Swami demonstrated that religious experiences could stand on the same footing as scientific truths, being based on experimentation, observation, and verification. Therefore genuine spiritual experiences must not be dogmatically discarded as lacking rational evidence. Secondly, the Swami explained lucidly various disciplines of concentration, with the warning, however, that they should not be pursued without the help of a qualified teacher.
Miss S. Ellen Waldo of Brooklyn, a disciple of the Swami, was his amanuensis. She thus described the manner in which he dictated the book:
'In delivering his commentaries on the aphorisms, he would leave me waiting while he entered into deep states of meditation or self-contemplation, to emerge therefrom with some luminous interpretation. I had always to keep the pen dipped in the ink. He might be absorbed for long periods of time, and then suddenly his silence would be broken by some eager expression or some long, deliberate teaching.'
By the middle of the year 1895 the Swami was completely exhausted. The numerous classes and lectures, the private instruction, the increasing correspondence, and the writing of Raja-Yoga had tired him both physically and mentally. It was a herculean task to spread the message of Hinduism in an alien land and at the same time to mould the lives of individuals according to the highest ideal of renunciation. Besides, there were annoyances from zealous but well-meaning friends, especially women. Some suggested that he should take elocution lessons, some urged him to dress fashionably in order to influence society people, other admonished him against mixing with all sorts of people. At time he would be indignant and say: 'Why should I be bound down with all this nonsense? I am a monk who has realized the vanity of all earthly nonsense! I have no time to give my manners a finish. I cannot find time enough to give my message. I will give it after my own fashion. Shall I be dragged down into the narrow limits of your conventional life? Never!' Again, he wrote to a devotee: 'I long, oh, I long for my rags, my shaven head, my sleep under the trees, and my food from begging.'
The Swami needed rest from his strenuous work, and accepted the invitation of his devoted friend Francis H. Leggett to come to his summer camp at Percy, New Hampshire, and rest in the silence of the pine woods. In the meantime Miss Elizabeth Dutcher, one of his students in New York, cordially asked the Swami to take a vacation in her summer cottage at Thousand Island Park on the St. Lawrence River. The Swami gratefully accepted both invitations.
About his life at the camp, he wrote to a friend on June 7, 1895: 'It gives me a new lease of life to be here. I go into the forest alone and read my Gita and am quite happy.' After a short visit at Percy, he arrived in June at Thousand Island Park, where he spent seven weeks. This proved to be a momentous period in his life in the Western world.
When the students who had been attending Swami Vivekananda's classes in New York heard of Miss Dutcher's proposal, they were immensely pleased, because they did not want any interruption of their lessons. The Swami, too, after two years' extensive work in America, had become eager to mould the spiritual life of individual students and to train a group that would carry on his work in America in the future. He wrote to one of his friends that he intended to manufacture 'a few yogis' from the materials of the classes. He wanted only those to follow him to Thousand Island Park who were completely earnest in their practice of spiritual disciplines, and he said that he would gladly recognize these as his disciples.
By a singular coincidence just twelve disciples were taught by him at the summer retreat, though all were not there the full seven weeks; ten was the largest number present at any one time. Two, Mme. Marie Louise and Mr. Leon Landsberg, were initiated at Thousand Island Park into the monastic life. The former, French by birth but a naturalized American, a materialist and socialist, a fearless, progressive woman worker known to the press and platform, was given the name Abhayananda. The latter, a Russian Jew and member of the staff of a prominent New York newspaper, became known as Kripananda. Both took the vows of poverty and chastity.
In many respects the sojourn in Miss Dutcher's cottage was ideal for the Swami's purpose. Here, to this intimate group, he revealed brilliant flashes of illumination, lofty flights of eloquence, and outpourings of the most profound wisdom. The whole experience was reminiscent of the Dakshineswar days when the Swami, as the young Narendra, had been initiated into the mysteries of the spiritual life at the feet of his Master Ramakrishna.
Thousand Island Park, near the western tip of Wellesley Island, the second largest of the seventeen hundred islands in the St. Lawrence River, has for its setting one of the scenic show-places of America. A prosperous village during the last part of the nineteenth century, it was, at the time of the Swami's visit, a stronghold of orthodox Methodist Christianity. The local tabernacle, where celebrated preachers were invited to conduct the divine service on Sunday mornings, attracted people from the neighbouring islands. Since secular activities were not allowed on the Sabbath, the visitors would arrive at Thousand Island Park the previous day and spend the night camping out. No such profanities as public drinking, gambling, or dancing were allowed in the summer resort — a rule that is still enforced half a century later. Only people of serious mind went there for their vacation.
Miss Dutcher's cottage* was ideally located on a hill, which on the north and west sloped down towards the river. It commanded a grand view of many distant islands, the town of Clayton on the American mainland and the Canadian shores to the north. At night the houses and hotels were brightly illuminated by Chinese lanterns.
Miss Dutcher, an artist, had built her cottage literally 'on a rock,' with huge boulders lying all around. It was surrounded by rock-gardens with bright-coloured flowers. At that time the tress at the base of the hill had not grown high; people from the village often visited the upstairs porch to survey the magnificent sweep of the river.
After inviting the Swami, Miss Dutcher, added a new wing to the cottage for his accommodation. This wing, three storeys high, stood on a steep slope of rock, like a great lantern-tower with windows on three sides. The room at the top was set apart exclusively for the Swami's use; the lowest room was occupied by a student; the room between, with large windows, and several doors opening on the main part of the house, was used as the Swami's classroom. Miss Dutcher thoughtfully added an outside stairway to the Swami's room so that he might go in and out without being noticed by the others.
On the roofed-in porch upstairs, extending along the west side of the cottage, the students met the Swami for his evening talks. There, at one end, close to the door of his room, he would take his seat and commune with his pupils both in silence and through the spoken word. In the evening the cottage was bathed in perfect stillness except for the murmur of insects and the whisper of the wind through the leaves. The house being situated, as it were, among the tree-tops, a breeze always relieved the summer heat. The centre of the village was only a five minutes' walk from the cottage, and yet, on account of the woods around it, not a single house could be seen. Many of the islands that dotted the river were visible in the distance and, especially in the evening, appeared like a picture. The glow of the sunset on the St. Lawrence was breathtaking in its beauty, and the moon at night was mirrored in the shining waters beneath.
In this ideal retreat, 'the world forgetting, by the world forgot,' the devoted students spent seven weeks with their beloved teacher, listening to his words of wisdom and receiving his silent benediction. Immediately after the evening meal they would assemble on the upstairs porch. Soon the Swami would come from his room and take his seat. Two hours and often much longer would be spent together. One night, when the moon was almost full, he talked to them until it set below the western horizon, both the teacher and the students being unaware of the passage of time. During these seven weeks the Swami's whole heart was in his work and he taught like one inspired.
Miss Dutcher, his hostess, was a conscientious little woman and a staunch Methodist. When the Swami arrived at the house, he saw on the walls of his living quarters scrolls bearing the words 'Welcome to Vivekananda' painted in bold letters. But as the teaching began, Miss Dutcher often felt distressed by the Swami's revolutionary ideas. All her ideals, her values of life, her concepts of religion, were, it seemed to her, being destroyed. Sometimes she did not appear for two or three days. 'Don't you see?' the Swami said. 'This is not an ordinary illness. It is the reaction of the body against the chaos that is going on in her mind. She cannot bear it.'
The most violent attack came one day after a timid protest on her part against something he had told them in the class. 'The idea of duty is the midday sun of misery, scorching the very soul,' he had said. 'Is it not our duty — ' she had begun, but got no farther. For once the great free soul broke all bounds in his rebellion against the idea that anyone should dare bind with fetters the soul of man. Miss Dutcher was not seen for some days.
Referring to the students who had gathered around the Swami, a village shopkeeper said to a new arrival who inquired for the cottage, 'Yes, there are some queer people living up on the hill; among them there is a foreign-looking gentleman.' A young girl of sixteen, living with her family at the foot of the hill, one day expressed the desire to talk to the Swami. 'Don't go near him,' her mother said sternly. 'He is a heathen.' Mr. Tom Mitchell, a carpenter who helped to restore the cottage for the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Centre in 1948, and had originally built the Swami's quarters in 1895, told the present writer that he had read the Swami's lectures in Chicago from the newspapers long before his arrival at the island.
The students wanted, at first, to live as a community without servants, each doing a share of the work. Nearly all of them, however, were unaccustomed to housework and found it uncongenial. The result was amusing; as time went on it threatened to become disastrous. When the tension became too great, the Swami would say with utmost sweetness, 'Today, I shall cook for you.' At this Landsberg would ejaculate, in an aside, 'Heaven save us!' By way of explanation he declared that in New York, whenever the Swami cooked, he, Landsberg, would tear his hair, because it meant that afterwards every dish in the house required washing. After a few days an outsider was engaged to help with the housework.
Swami Vivekananda started his class at Thousand Island Park on Wednesday, June 19. Not all the students had arrived. But his heart was set on his work; so he commenced at once with the three or four who were with him. After a short meditation, he opened with the Gospel according to Saint John, from the Bible, saying that since the students were all Christians, it was proper that he should begin with the Christian scriptures. As the classes went on, he taught from the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Vedanta Sutras, the Bhakti Sutras of Narada, and other Hindu scriptures. He discussed Vedanta in its three aspects: the non-dualism of Sankara, the qualified non-dualism of Ramanuja, and the dualism of Madhva. Since the subtleties of Sankara appeared difficult to the students, Ramanuja remained the favourite among them. The Swami also spoke at length about Sri Ramakrishna, of his own daily life with the Master, and of his struggles with the tendency to unbelief and agnosticism. He told stories from the inexhaustible storehouse of Hindu mythology to illustrate his abstruse thoughts.
The ever recurring theme of his teaching was God-realization. He would always come back to the one, fundamental, vital point: 'Find God. Nothing else matters.' He emphasized morality as the basis of the spiritual life. Without truth, non-injury, continence, non-stealing, cleanliness, and austerity, he repeated, there could be no spirituality. The subject of continence always stirred him deeply. Walking up and down the room, getting more and more excited, he would stop before someone as if there were no one else present. 'Don't you see,' he would say eagerly, 'there is a reason why chastity is insisted on in all monastic orders? Spiritual giants are produced only where the vow of chastity is observed. Don't you see there must be a reason? There is a connexion between chastity and spirituality. The explanation is that through prayer and meditation the saints have transmuted the most vital force in the body into spiritual energy. In India this is well understood and yogis do it consciously. The force so transmuted is called ojas, and it is stored up in the brain. It has been lifted from the lowest centre to the highest. "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me."' He would plead with the students as if to beg them to act upon this teaching as something most precious. Further, they could not be the disciples he required if they were not established in chastity. He demanded a conscious transmutation. 'The man who has no temper has nothing to control,' he said. 'I want a few, five or six, who are in the flower of their youth.'
He would frequently exhort the students to attain freedom. As the words came in torrents from the depths of his soul, the atmosphere would be charged with the yearning to break free from the bondage of the body, a degrading humiliation. As he touched upon 'this indecent clinging to life,' the students would feel as if the curtain that hid the region beyond life and death were lifted for them, and they would long for that glorious freedom. 'Azad! Azad! the Free! the Free!' he would cry, pacing back and forth like a caged lion; but for him the bars of the cage were not of iron, but of bamboo. 'Let us not be caught this time,' would be his refrain on other occasions.
Some of these precious talks were noted down by his disciple Miss S. Ellen Waldo and later published as Inspired Talks. Students of Swami Vivekananda will for ever remain indebted to her for faithfully preserving his immortal words, and the title of this book was well chosen, for they were indeed inspired. One day Miss Waldo was reading her notes to some tardy arrivals in the cottage while the Swami strode up and down the floor, apparently unconscious of what was going on. After the travellers had left the room, the Swami turned to Miss Waldo and said: 'How could you have caught my thought and words so perfectly? It was as if I heard myself speaking.'
During these seven weeks of teaching the Swami was most gentle and lovable. He taught his disciples as Sri Ramakrishna had taught him at Dakshineswar: the teaching was the outpouring of his own spirit in communion with himself. The Swami said later that he was at his best at Thousand Island Park. The ideas he cherished and expressed there grew, during the years that followed, into institutions, both in India and abroad.
The Swami's one consuming passion, during this time, was to show his students the way to freedom. 'Ah,' he said one day, with touching pathos, 'if I could only set you free with a touch!' Two students, Mrs. Funke and Miss Greenstidel, arrived at the Park one dark and rainy night. One of them said, 'We have come to you as we would go to Jesus if he were still on the earth and ask him to teach us.' The Swami looked at them kindly and gently said, 'If I only possessed the power of the Christ to set you free!' No wonder that Miss Waldo one day exclaimed, 'What have we ever done to deserve all this?' And so felt the others also.
One cannot but be amazed at the manifestation of Swami Vivekananda's spiritual power at Thousand Island Park. Outwardly he was a young man of thirty-two. All his disciples at the cottage, except one, were older than himself. Yet everyone looked upon him as a father or mother. He had attained an unbelievable maturity. Some marvelled at his purity, some at his power, some at his intellectuality, some at his serenity, which was like the depths of the ocean, unperturbed by the waves of applause or contumely. When had he acquired all these virtues which had made him at thirty, a teacher of men? From the foregoing pages the reader will have formed an idea of him as a stormy person, struggling, in early youth, against poverty and spiritual unbelief. Afterwards he is seen wandering from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, raging against the grievances and sufferings of the Indian masses. During his first two years in America he had had to fight tooth and nail against malicious critics in order to establish his reputation as a religious teacher. When had he, then, tapped the secret spring of inner calmness and assurance without which a teacher cannot transmit spirituality to his disciples?
One must not forget that Vivekananda, as Ramakrishna has said, was not an ordinary man, but a nityasiddha, perfect even before birth, an Isvarakoti, or special messenger of God born on earth to fulfil a divine mission. The silent but powerful influence of the guru always guided his feet. The outer world saw only the struggles and restlessness of his wandering days, but not the inner transformation brought about through the practice of purity, detachment, self-control, and meditation. The veil of maya, without which no physical embodiment is possible, and which in him was very thin, was rent through the spiritual struggle of a few years. People were astonished to see his blossoming forth at Thousand Island Park.
At Dakshineswar, though Sri Ramakrishna had offered young Naren various supernatural powers of Yoga as a help for his future work, the disciple had refused to accept them, as being possible impediments to spiritual progress. But later these powers began to manifest themselves as the natural fruit of his spiritual realizations. Thus one sees him at Thousand Island Park reading the inmost soul of his followers before giving them initiation, and foretelling their future careers. He prophesied for Sister Christine extensive travels in Oriental countries and work in India. He explained that his method of foresight was simple, at least in the telling. He first thought of space — vast, blue, and extending everywhere. As he meditated on that space intently, pictures appeared, and he then gave interpretations of them which would indicate the future life of the person concerned.
Even before his arrival at Thousand Island Park the Swami had had other manifestations of such Yoga powers. For instance, while busy with his lecture tour, sometimes giving twelve or fourteen speeches a week, he would feel great physical and mental strain and often wonder what he would speak of the next day. Then he would hear, at dead of night, a voice shouting at him the very thoughts he was to present. Sometimes it would come from a long distance and then draw nearer and nearer, or again, it would be like someone delivering a lecture beside him as he lay listening in bed. At other times two voices would argue before him, discussing at great length ideas, some of which he had never before consciously heard or thought of, which he would find himself repeating the following day from the pulpit or the platform.
Sometimes people sleeping in the adjoining rooms would ask him in the morning: 'Swami, with whom were you talking last night? We heard you talking loudly and enthusiastically and we were wondering.' The Swami often explained these manifestations as the powers and potentialities of the soul generally called inspiration. He denied that they were miracles.
At that time he experienced the power of changing a person's life by a touch, or clearly seeing things happening at a great distance. But he seldom used these and the other powers he had acquired through Yoga. One day, much later, Swami Turiyananda entered Swami Vivekananda's room while the Swami was lying on his bed, and beheld, in place of his physical body, a mass of radiance. It is no wonder that today in America, half a century later, one meets men and women who saw or heard Swami Vivekananda perhaps once, and still remember him vividly.
But it must not be thought that the Swami did not show his lighter mood at Thousand Island Park. He unfailingly discovered the little idiosyncrasies of the students and raised gales of laughter at the dinner-table, with some quip or jest — but never in sarcasm or malice. Dr. Wright of Cambridge, a very cultured man, was one of the inmates of the Dutcher Cottage. He became so absorbed in the class talks that at the end of every discourse the tense professor would invariably ask the teacher: 'Well, Swami, it all amounts to this in the end, doesn't it? — I am Brahman, I am the Absolute.' The Swami would smile indulgently and answer gently, 'Yes, Dockie, you are Brahman, you are the Absolute, in the real essence of your being.' Later, when the learned doctor came to the table a trifle late, the Swami, with the utmost gravity but with a merry twinkle in his eyes, would say, 'Here comes Brahman' or 'Here is the Absolute.'
Sometimes he would say, 'Now I am going to cook for you, "brethren".' The food he cooked would be delicious, but too hot for Western tastes. The students, however, made up their minds to eat it even if it strangled them. After the meal was cooked, the Swami would stand in the door with a white napkin draped over his arm, in the fashion of the negro waiters in a dining-car, and intone in perfect imitation their call for dinner: 'Last call fo' the dining cah. Dinner served.' And the students would rock with laughter.
One day he was telling the disciples the story of Sita and of the pure womanhood of India. The question flashed in the mind of one of the women as to how some of the beautiful society queens would appear to him, especially those versed in the art of allurement. Even before the thought was expressed, the Swami said gravely, 'If the most beautiful woman in the world were to look at me in an immodest or unwomanly way, she would immediately turn into a hideous green frog, and one does not, of course, admire frogs.'
At last the day of the Swami's departure from Thousand Island Park arrived. It was Wednesday, August 7, 1895. In the morning he, Mrs. Funke, and Sister Christine went for a walk. They strolled about half a mile up the hill, where all was forest and solitude, and sat under a low-branched tree. The Swami suddenly said to them: 'Now we shall meditate. We shall be like Buddha under the Bo-tree.' He became still as a bronze statue. A thunderstorm came up and it poured; but the Swami did not notice anything. Mrs. Funke raised her umbrella and protected him as much as possible. When it was time to return, the Swami opened his eyes and said, 'I feel once more I am in Calcutta in the rains.' It is reported that one day, at Thousand Island Park he experienced nirvikalpa samadhi.
At nine o'clock in the evening the Swami boarded the steamer for Clayton, where he was to catch the train for New York. While taking leave of the Island he said, 'I bless these Thousand Islands.' As the steamer moved away, he boyishly and joyously waved his hat to the disciples still standing at the pier.
Some of his devotees thought that the Swami had planned at Thousand Island Park to start an organization. But they were mistaken. He wrote to a disciple:
We have no organization, nor want to build any. Each one is quite independent to teach, quite free to teach, whatever he or she likes. If you have the spirit within, you will never fail to attract others.... Individuality is my motto. I have no ambition beyond training individuals. I know very little; that little I teach without reserve; where I am ignorant I confess it.... I am a sannyasin. As such I hold myself as a servant, not as a master, in this world.
Vivekananda, the awakener of souls, was indeed too great to be crammed within the confines of a narrow organization. He had had a unique experience of inner freedom at Thousand Island Park, which he expressed eloquently in his poem 'The Song of the Sannyasin.' He wrote from there to a friend: 'I am free, my bonds are cut, what do I care whether this body goes or does not go? I have a truth to teach — I, the child of God. And He that gave me the truth will send me fellow workers from earth's bravest and best.'
A month after his return from Thousand Island Park, Swami Vivekananda sailed for Europe. Before we take up that important chapter of his life, however, it will be well to describe some of his interesting experiences in America, especially his meeting with noted personalities.
Robert Ingersoll, the famous orator and agnostic, and Swami Vivekananda had several conversations on religion and philosophy. Ingersoll, with a fatherly solicitude, asked the young enthusiast not to be too bold in the expression of his views, on account of people's intolerance of all alien religious ideas. 'Forty years ago,' he said, 'you would have been hanged if you had come to preach in this country, or you would have been burnt alive. You would have been stoned out of the villages if you had come even much later.' The Swami was surprised. But Ingersoll did not realize that the Indian monk, unlike him, respected all religions and prophets, and that he wanted to broaden the views of the Christians about Christ's teachings.
One day, in the course of a discussion, Ingersoll said to the Swami, 'I believe in making the most of this world, in squeezing the orange dry, because this world is all we are sure of.' He would have nothing to do with God, soul, or hereafter, which he considered as meaningless jargon. 'I know a better way to squeeze the orange of this world than you do,' the Swami replied, 'and I get more out of it. I know I cannot die, so I am not in a hurry. I know that there is no fear, so I enjoy the squeezing. I have no duty, no bondage of wife and children and property, so I can love all men and women. Everyone is God to me. Think of the joy of loving man as God! Squeeze your orange my way, and you will get every single drop!' Ingersoll, it is reported, asked the Swami not to be impatient with his views, adding that his own unrelenting fight against traditional religions had shaken men's faith in theological dogmas and creeds, and thus helped to pave the way for the Swami's success in America.
Nikola Tesla, the great scientist who specialized in the field of electricity, was much impressed to hear from the Swami his explanation of the Samkhya cosmogony and the theory of cycles given by the Hindus. He was particularly struck by the resemblance between the Samkhya theory of matter and energy and that of modern physics. The Swami also met Sir William Thomson (afterwards Lord Kelvin) and Professor Helmholtz, two leading representatives of Western science. Sarah Bernhardt, the famous French actress, had an interview with the Swami and greatly admired his teachings.
Madame Emma Calve, the well-known prima donna, described the Swami as one who 'truly walked with God.' She came to see him in a state of physical and mental depression. The Swami, who did not at that time know even her name, talked to her about her worries and various personal problems. It was clear that he was familiar with them, even though she had never revealed them to him or to anyone else. When Madame Calve expressed surprise, the Swami assured her that no one had talked to him about her. 'Do you think that is necessary?' he asked. 'I read you as I would an open book.' He gave her this parting advice: 'You must forget. Be gay and happy again. Do not dwell in silence upon your sorrows. Transmute your emotions into some form of eternal expression. Your spiritual health requires it. Your art demands it.'
Madame Calve later said: 'I left him, deeply impressed by his words and his personality. He seemed to have emptied my brain of all its feverish complexities and placed there instead his clean and calming thoughts. I became once again vivacious and cheerful, thanks to the effect of his powerful will. He used no hypnosis, no mesmerism — nothing of that sort at all. It was the strength of his character, the purity and intensity of his purpose, that carried conviction. It seemed to me, when I came to know him better, that he lulled one's chaotic thoughts into a state of peaceful acquiesences, so that one could give complete and undivided attention to his words.'
Like many people, Madame Calve could not accept the Vedantic doctrine of the individual soul's total absorption in the Godhead at the time of final liberation. 'I cannot bear the idea,' she said. 'I cling to my individuality — unimportant though it may be. I don't want to be absorbed into an eternal unity.' To this the Swami answered: 'One day a drop of water fell into the vast ocean. Finding itself there, it began to weep and complain, just as you are doing. The giant ocean laughed at the drop of water. "Why do you weep?" it asked. "I do not understand. When you join me, you join all your brothers and sisters, the other drops of water of which I am made. You become the ocean itself. If you wish to leave me you have only to rise up on a sunbeam into the clouds. From there you can descend again, little drop of water, a blessing and a benediction to the thirsty earth."'
Did not the Swami thus explain his own individuality? Before his present embodiment, he had remained absorbed in communion with the Absolute. Then he accepted the form of an individual to help humanity in its spiritual struggle. A giant soul like his is not content to remain eternally absorbed in the Absolute. Such also was the thought of Buddha.
In the company of great men and women, the Swami revealed his intellectual and spiritual power. But one sees his human side especially in his contact with humble people. In America he was often taken to be a negro. One day, as he alighted from a train in a town where he was to deliver a lecture, he was given a welcome by the reception committee. The most prominent townspeople were all there. A negro porter came up to him and said that he had heard how one of his own people had become great and asked the privilege of shaking hands with him. Warmly the Swami shook his hand, saying 'Thank you! Thank you, brother!' He never resented being mistaken for a negro. It happened many times, especially in the South, that he was refused admittance to a hotel, a barber shop, or a restaurant, because of his dark skin. When the Swami related these incidents to a Western disciple, he was promptly asked why he did not tell people that he was not a negro but a Hindu. 'What!' the Swami replied indignantly. 'Rise at the expense of another? I did not come to earth for that.'
Swami Vivekananda was proud of his race and his dark complexion. 'He was scornful,' wrote Sister Nivedita, 'in his repudiation of the pseudo-ethnology of privileged races. "If I am grateful to my white-skinned Aryan ancestors," he said, "I am far more so to my yellow-skinned Mongolian ancestors, and most of all to the black-skinned negroids." He was immensely proud of his physiognomy, especially of what he called his "Mongolian jaw," regarding it as a sign of "bulldog tenacity of purpose." Referring to this particular racial characteristic, which is believed to be behind every Aryan people, he one day exclaimed: "Don't you see? The Tartar is the wine of the race! He gives energy and power to every blood."'
Biography of Swami Vivekananda - Experiences in the West
For some time Swami Vivekananda had been planning a visit to London. He wished to sow the seed of Vedanta in the capital of the mighty British Empire. Miss Henrietta Müller had extended to him a cordial invitation to come to London, and Mr. E.T. Sturdy had requested him to stay at his home there. Mr. Leggett, too, had invited the Swami to come to Paris as his guest.
Mr. Francis H. Leggett, whose hospitality the Swami had already enjoyed at Percy, was a wealthy business man of New York. He and two ladies of his acquaintance, Mrs. William Sturges and Miss Josephine MacLeod (who were sisters), had attended the Swami's lectures in New York during the previous winter. They were all impressed by the Swami's personality and his message, and Mr. Leggett remarked, one day, that the teacher was a man of 'great common sense.' An intimate relationship gradually developed between the Swami, the two sisters, and Mr. Leggett. Mrs. Sturges, who was a widow, and Mr. Leggett became engaged and announced their engagement at the summer camp at Percy. They decided to be married in Paris, and Mr. Leggett invited the Swami to be a witness at the ceremony.
This invitation, coming at the same time as Miss Müller's and Mr. Sturdy's seemed to the Swami, as he described it in a letter, a 'divine call.' The Swami's New York friends thought that a sea voyage would be most beneficial for his weary body and mind. At this time the Swami began to feel a premonition of his approaching end. One day he even said, 'My day is done.' But the awareness of his unfulfilled mission made him forget his body.
The Swami and Mr. Leggett sailed from New York about the middle of August 1895, reaching Paris by the end of the month. The French metropolis with its museums, churches, cathedrals, palaces, and art galleries impressed him as the centre of European culture, and he was introduced to a number of enlightened French people.
When Swami Vivekananda arrived in London he was enthusiastically greeted by Miss Müller, who had already met him in America, and Mr. Sturdy, who had studied Sanskrit and had to a certain degree practised asceticism in the Himalayas. The Swami's mind, one can imagine, was filled with tumultuous thoughts as he arrived in the great city. He was eager to test his ability as an interpreter of the spiritual culture of India in the very citadel of the English-speaking nations. He also knew that he belonged to a subject race, which had been under the imperialistic domination of England for almost one hundred and forty years. He attributed India's suffering, at least in part, to this alien rule. He was not unaware of the arrogance of the British ruling class in India, to whom India was a benighted country steeped in superstition. Would the Britishers give a patient hearing to the religion and philosophy of his ancestors, of which he was so proud? Would they not rather think that nothing good could ever come 'out of Nazareth'? He did not, as we learn from his own confession, set foot on English soil with the friendliest of feelings. But how he felt when he left England after his short visit will be presently described.
After a few days' rest the Swami quietly began his work. Through friends he was gradually introduced to people who were likely to be interested in his thoughts; he also devoted part of his time to visiting places of historical interest. Within three weeks of his arrival he was already engaged in strenuous activity. A class was started and soon the hall was found inadequate to accommodate the students. Newspapers interviewed him and called him the 'Hindu yogi.' Lady Isabel Margesson and several other members of the nobility became attracted to the Swami's teachings. His first public lecture was attended by many educated and thoughtful people; some of the leading newspapers were enthusiastic about it. The Standard compared his moral stature with that of Rammohan Roy and Keshab Chandra Sen. The London Daily Chronicle wrote that he reminded people of Buddha. Even the heads of churches showed their warm appreciation.
But the Swami's greatest acquisition in London was Miss Margaret E. Noble, who later became his disciple, consecrating her life to women's education in India. She also espoused the cause of India's political freedom and inspired many of its leaders with her written and spoken words.
Miss Noble, the fourth child of Samuel Noble, was born in Northern Ireland in 1867. Both her grandfather and her father were Protestant ministers in the Wesleyan church and took active part in the political agitation for the freedom of Ireland. Her grandmother and her father gave her instruction in the Bible. Her father, who died at the age of thirty-four, had a premonition of his daughter's future calling. One of the last things he whispered to his wife was about Margaret. 'When God calls her,' he said, 'let her go. She will spread her wings. She will do great things.'
After finishing her college education, Margaret took the position of a teacher at Keswick, in the English Lake District, where contact with the High Church stirred her religious emotions. Next she taught in an orphanage in Rugby, where she shared the manual labour of the pupils. At twenty-one, Miss Noble was appointed as mistress at the secondary school in Wrexham, a large mining centre, and participated in the welfare activities of the town, visiting slum households and looking for waifs and strays. Next she went to Chester and taught a class of eighteen-year-old girls. Here she delved into the educational systems of Pestalozzi and Froebel. And finally she came to London, where, in the autumn of 1895, she opened her own school, the Ruskin School, in Wimbledon.
The metropolis of the British Empire offered Miss Noble unlimited opportunities for the realization of her many latent desires — political, literary, and educational. Here she joined the 'Free Ireland' group, working for Ireland's home rule. She was also cordially received at Lady Ripon's exclusive salon, where art and literature were regularly discussed. This salon later developed into the Sesame Club, with rooms in Dover Street, where Bernard Shaw, T.H. Huxley, and other men of literature and science discussed highly intellectual subjects. Margaret Noble became the secretary of the club, and lectured on 'The Psychology of the Child' and 'The Rights of Women.' Thus even before she met Swami Vivekananda she was unconsciously preparing the ground for her future activities in India.
At this time Margaret suffered a cruel blow. She was deeply in love with a man and had even set the wedding date. But another woman suddenly snatched him away. A few years before, another young man, to whom she was about to be engaged, had died of tuberculosis. These experiences shocked her profoundly, and she began to take a more serious interest in religion. She was very fond of a simple prayer by Thomas à Kempis: 'Be what thou prayest to be made.'
One day her art teacher, Ebenezer Cook, said to Margaret: 'Lady Isabel Margesson is inviting a few friends to her house to hear a Hindu Swami speak. Will you come?' Swami Vivekananda had already been a topic of discussion among certain members of the Sesame Club. Mr. E.T. Sturdy and Miss Henrietta Müller had told of his extraordinary success in America as a preacher and orator.
Miss Noble first met Swami Vivekananda on a Sunday evening in the drawing-room of Lady Isabel Margesson, situated in the fashionable West End of London. He was to address a group of people on Hindu thought. Miss Noble was one of the last to arrive. Fifteen people sat in the room in absolute silence. She nervously felt as if all eyes were turned on her, and as she took the first vacant chair, she gathered her skirt to sit down without making any noise. The Swami sat facing her. A coal fire burnt on the hearth behind him. She noticed that he was tall and well built and possessed an air of deep serenity. The effect of his long practice of meditation was visible in the gentleness and loftiness of his look, which, as she was to write later, 'Raphael has perhaps painted for us on the brow of the Sistine Child.'
The Swami looked at Lady Isabel with a sweet smile, as she said: 'Swamiji, all our friends are here.' He chanted some Sanskrit verses. Miss Noble was impressed by his melodious voice. She heard the Swami say, among other things: 'All our struggle is for freedom. We seek neither misery nor happiness, but freedom, freedom alone.'
It was at first difficult for Miss Noble to accept Swami Vivekananda's views. But before he left London she had begun to address him as 'Master.'
Recalling those first meetings in London, and their decisive influence on her life, Nivedita wrote in 1904 to a friend: 'Suppose he had not come to London that time! Life would have been like a headless dream, for I always knew that I was waiting for something. I always said that a call would come. And it did. But if I had known more of life, I doubt whether, when the time came, I should certainly have recognized it. Fortunately, I knew little and was spared that torture....Always I had this burning voice within, but nothing to utter. How often and often I sat down, pen in hand, to speak, and there was no speech! And now there is no end to it! As surely I am fitted to my world, so surely is my world in need of me, waiting — ready. The arrow has found its place in the bow. But if he had not come! If he had meditated, on the Himalayan peaks!...I, for one, had never been here.'
Swami Vivekananda and Mr. Sturdy soon began an English translation of the Bhakti aphorisms of Narada. At this time the idea came to the Swami's mind that a religion could not have permanent hold upon people without organization and rituals. A mere loose system of philosophy, he realized, soon lost its appeal. He saw the need, therefore, of formulating rituals, on the basis of the Upanishadic truths, which would serve a person from birth to death — rituals that would prepare for the ultimate realization of the supramental Absolute.
His stay in England was very short, but his insight enabled him to appraise the English character with considerable accuracy. He wrote to a devotee on November 18, 1895: 'In England my work is really splendid. I am astonished myself at it. The English do not talk much in the newspapers, but they work silently. I am sure of having done more work in England than in America.' And in another letter, written on November 13, to a brother disciple in India: 'Every enterprise in this country takes some time to get started. But once John Bull sets his hand to a thing, he will never let it go. The Americans are quick, but they are somewhat like straw on fire, ready to be extinguished.'
The Swami had been receiving letters from American devotees asking him to come back; a rich lady from Boston promised to support his work in New York throughout the winter. Before leaving England, however, he arranged that Mr. Sturdy should conduct the classes in London till the arrival of a new Swami from India, about the need of whom he was writing constantly to his brother disciples at the Baranagore monastery.
On December 6, 1895, Swami Vivekananda returned to New York, after his two months' stay in England, in excellent health and spirits. During his absence abroad, regular classes had been carried on by his American disciples Kripananda, Abhayananda, and Miss Waldo, who taught raja-yoga in both its practical and its theoretical aspects.
Together with Kripananda he took up new quarters, consisting of two spacious rooms, which could accommodate one hundred and fifty persons. The Swami at once plunged into activity and gave a series of talks on work as a spiritual discipline. These talks were subsequently published as Karma-Yoga, which is considered one of his best books. In the meantime the devotees of the Swami had been feeling the need of a stenographer to take down his talks in the classes and on public platforms. Many of his precious speeches had already been lost because there had been no reporter to record them. Fortunately there appeared on the scene an Englishman, J.J. Goodwin, who was at first employed as a professional stenographer; in a few days, however, he was so impressed by the Swami's life and message that he became his disciple and offered his services free, with the remark that if the teacher could give his whole life to help mankind, he, the disciple, could at least give his services as an offering of love. Goodwin followed the Swami like a shadow in America, Europe, and India; he recorded many of the public utterances of Vivekananda, now preserved in published books, and thereby earned the everlasting gratitude of countless men and women.
The Swami spent Christmas of 1895 with Mr. and Mrs. Leggett at their country home, Ridgely Manor, which he frequently visited in order to enjoy a respite from his hard work in New York. But even there he would give exalted spiritual discourses, as will be evident from the following excerpt from a letter written by Mr. Leggett on January 10, 1896, to Miss MacLeod:
Mr. Francis H. Leggett, whose hospitality the Swami had already enjoyed at Percy, was a wealthy business man of New York. He and two ladies of his acquaintance, Mrs. William Sturges and Miss Josephine MacLeod (who were sisters), had attended the Swami's lectures in New York during the previous winter. They were all impressed by the Swami's personality and his message, and Mr. Leggett remarked, one day, that the teacher was a man of 'great common sense.' An intimate relationship gradually developed between the Swami, the two sisters, and Mr. Leggett. Mrs. Sturges, who was a widow, and Mr. Leggett became engaged and announced their engagement at the summer camp at Percy. They decided to be married in Paris, and Mr. Leggett invited the Swami to be a witness at the ceremony.
This invitation, coming at the same time as Miss Müller's and Mr. Sturdy's seemed to the Swami, as he described it in a letter, a 'divine call.' The Swami's New York friends thought that a sea voyage would be most beneficial for his weary body and mind. At this time the Swami began to feel a premonition of his approaching end. One day he even said, 'My day is done.' But the awareness of his unfulfilled mission made him forget his body.
The Swami and Mr. Leggett sailed from New York about the middle of August 1895, reaching Paris by the end of the month. The French metropolis with its museums, churches, cathedrals, palaces, and art galleries impressed him as the centre of European culture, and he was introduced to a number of enlightened French people.
When Swami Vivekananda arrived in London he was enthusiastically greeted by Miss Müller, who had already met him in America, and Mr. Sturdy, who had studied Sanskrit and had to a certain degree practised asceticism in the Himalayas. The Swami's mind, one can imagine, was filled with tumultuous thoughts as he arrived in the great city. He was eager to test his ability as an interpreter of the spiritual culture of India in the very citadel of the English-speaking nations. He also knew that he belonged to a subject race, which had been under the imperialistic domination of England for almost one hundred and forty years. He attributed India's suffering, at least in part, to this alien rule. He was not unaware of the arrogance of the British ruling class in India, to whom India was a benighted country steeped in superstition. Would the Britishers give a patient hearing to the religion and philosophy of his ancestors, of which he was so proud? Would they not rather think that nothing good could ever come 'out of Nazareth'? He did not, as we learn from his own confession, set foot on English soil with the friendliest of feelings. But how he felt when he left England after his short visit will be presently described.
After a few days' rest the Swami quietly began his work. Through friends he was gradually introduced to people who were likely to be interested in his thoughts; he also devoted part of his time to visiting places of historical interest. Within three weeks of his arrival he was already engaged in strenuous activity. A class was started and soon the hall was found inadequate to accommodate the students. Newspapers interviewed him and called him the 'Hindu yogi.' Lady Isabel Margesson and several other members of the nobility became attracted to the Swami's teachings. His first public lecture was attended by many educated and thoughtful people; some of the leading newspapers were enthusiastic about it. The Standard compared his moral stature with that of Rammohan Roy and Keshab Chandra Sen. The London Daily Chronicle wrote that he reminded people of Buddha. Even the heads of churches showed their warm appreciation.
But the Swami's greatest acquisition in London was Miss Margaret E. Noble, who later became his disciple, consecrating her life to women's education in India. She also espoused the cause of India's political freedom and inspired many of its leaders with her written and spoken words.
Miss Noble, the fourth child of Samuel Noble, was born in Northern Ireland in 1867. Both her grandfather and her father were Protestant ministers in the Wesleyan church and took active part in the political agitation for the freedom of Ireland. Her grandmother and her father gave her instruction in the Bible. Her father, who died at the age of thirty-four, had a premonition of his daughter's future calling. One of the last things he whispered to his wife was about Margaret. 'When God calls her,' he said, 'let her go. She will spread her wings. She will do great things.'
After finishing her college education, Margaret took the position of a teacher at Keswick, in the English Lake District, where contact with the High Church stirred her religious emotions. Next she taught in an orphanage in Rugby, where she shared the manual labour of the pupils. At twenty-one, Miss Noble was appointed as mistress at the secondary school in Wrexham, a large mining centre, and participated in the welfare activities of the town, visiting slum households and looking for waifs and strays. Next she went to Chester and taught a class of eighteen-year-old girls. Here she delved into the educational systems of Pestalozzi and Froebel. And finally she came to London, where, in the autumn of 1895, she opened her own school, the Ruskin School, in Wimbledon.
The metropolis of the British Empire offered Miss Noble unlimited opportunities for the realization of her many latent desires — political, literary, and educational. Here she joined the 'Free Ireland' group, working for Ireland's home rule. She was also cordially received at Lady Ripon's exclusive salon, where art and literature were regularly discussed. This salon later developed into the Sesame Club, with rooms in Dover Street, where Bernard Shaw, T.H. Huxley, and other men of literature and science discussed highly intellectual subjects. Margaret Noble became the secretary of the club, and lectured on 'The Psychology of the Child' and 'The Rights of Women.' Thus even before she met Swami Vivekananda she was unconsciously preparing the ground for her future activities in India.
At this time Margaret suffered a cruel blow. She was deeply in love with a man and had even set the wedding date. But another woman suddenly snatched him away. A few years before, another young man, to whom she was about to be engaged, had died of tuberculosis. These experiences shocked her profoundly, and she began to take a more serious interest in religion. She was very fond of a simple prayer by Thomas à Kempis: 'Be what thou prayest to be made.'
One day her art teacher, Ebenezer Cook, said to Margaret: 'Lady Isabel Margesson is inviting a few friends to her house to hear a Hindu Swami speak. Will you come?' Swami Vivekananda had already been a topic of discussion among certain members of the Sesame Club. Mr. E.T. Sturdy and Miss Henrietta Müller had told of his extraordinary success in America as a preacher and orator.
Miss Noble first met Swami Vivekananda on a Sunday evening in the drawing-room of Lady Isabel Margesson, situated in the fashionable West End of London. He was to address a group of people on Hindu thought. Miss Noble was one of the last to arrive. Fifteen people sat in the room in absolute silence. She nervously felt as if all eyes were turned on her, and as she took the first vacant chair, she gathered her skirt to sit down without making any noise. The Swami sat facing her. A coal fire burnt on the hearth behind him. She noticed that he was tall and well built and possessed an air of deep serenity. The effect of his long practice of meditation was visible in the gentleness and loftiness of his look, which, as she was to write later, 'Raphael has perhaps painted for us on the brow of the Sistine Child.'
The Swami looked at Lady Isabel with a sweet smile, as she said: 'Swamiji, all our friends are here.' He chanted some Sanskrit verses. Miss Noble was impressed by his melodious voice. She heard the Swami say, among other things: 'All our struggle is for freedom. We seek neither misery nor happiness, but freedom, freedom alone.'
It was at first difficult for Miss Noble to accept Swami Vivekananda's views. But before he left London she had begun to address him as 'Master.'
Recalling those first meetings in London, and their decisive influence on her life, Nivedita wrote in 1904 to a friend: 'Suppose he had not come to London that time! Life would have been like a headless dream, for I always knew that I was waiting for something. I always said that a call would come. And it did. But if I had known more of life, I doubt whether, when the time came, I should certainly have recognized it. Fortunately, I knew little and was spared that torture....Always I had this burning voice within, but nothing to utter. How often and often I sat down, pen in hand, to speak, and there was no speech! And now there is no end to it! As surely I am fitted to my world, so surely is my world in need of me, waiting — ready. The arrow has found its place in the bow. But if he had not come! If he had meditated, on the Himalayan peaks!...I, for one, had never been here.'
Swami Vivekananda and Mr. Sturdy soon began an English translation of the Bhakti aphorisms of Narada. At this time the idea came to the Swami's mind that a religion could not have permanent hold upon people without organization and rituals. A mere loose system of philosophy, he realized, soon lost its appeal. He saw the need, therefore, of formulating rituals, on the basis of the Upanishadic truths, which would serve a person from birth to death — rituals that would prepare for the ultimate realization of the supramental Absolute.
His stay in England was very short, but his insight enabled him to appraise the English character with considerable accuracy. He wrote to a devotee on November 18, 1895: 'In England my work is really splendid. I am astonished myself at it. The English do not talk much in the newspapers, but they work silently. I am sure of having done more work in England than in America.' And in another letter, written on November 13, to a brother disciple in India: 'Every enterprise in this country takes some time to get started. But once John Bull sets his hand to a thing, he will never let it go. The Americans are quick, but they are somewhat like straw on fire, ready to be extinguished.'
The Swami had been receiving letters from American devotees asking him to come back; a rich lady from Boston promised to support his work in New York throughout the winter. Before leaving England, however, he arranged that Mr. Sturdy should conduct the classes in London till the arrival of a new Swami from India, about the need of whom he was writing constantly to his brother disciples at the Baranagore monastery.
On December 6, 1895, Swami Vivekananda returned to New York, after his two months' stay in England, in excellent health and spirits. During his absence abroad, regular classes had been carried on by his American disciples Kripananda, Abhayananda, and Miss Waldo, who taught raja-yoga in both its practical and its theoretical aspects.
Together with Kripananda he took up new quarters, consisting of two spacious rooms, which could accommodate one hundred and fifty persons. The Swami at once plunged into activity and gave a series of talks on work as a spiritual discipline. These talks were subsequently published as Karma-Yoga, which is considered one of his best books. In the meantime the devotees of the Swami had been feeling the need of a stenographer to take down his talks in the classes and on public platforms. Many of his precious speeches had already been lost because there had been no reporter to record them. Fortunately there appeared on the scene an Englishman, J.J. Goodwin, who was at first employed as a professional stenographer; in a few days, however, he was so impressed by the Swami's life and message that he became his disciple and offered his services free, with the remark that if the teacher could give his whole life to help mankind, he, the disciple, could at least give his services as an offering of love. Goodwin followed the Swami like a shadow in America, Europe, and India; he recorded many of the public utterances of Vivekananda, now preserved in published books, and thereby earned the everlasting gratitude of countless men and women.
The Swami spent Christmas of 1895 with Mr. and Mrs. Leggett at their country home, Ridgely Manor, which he frequently visited in order to enjoy a respite from his hard work in New York. But even there he would give exalted spiritual discourses, as will be evident from the following excerpt from a letter written by Mr. Leggett on January 10, 1896, to Miss MacLeod:
One night at Ridgely we were all spellbound by his eloquence. Such thought I have never heard expressed by mortal man — such as he uttered for two and a half hours. We were all deeply affected. And I would give a hundred dollars for a typewritten verbatim report of it. Swami was inspired to a degree that I have never seen before or since. He leaves us soon and perhaps we shall never see him again, but he will leave an ineffaceable impress on our hearts that will comfort us to the end of our earthly careers.
After a short visit to Boston as the guest of Mrs. Ole Bull, the Swami commenced a series of public lectures in New York at Hardeman Hall, the People's Church, and later at Madison Square Garden, which had a seating capacity of fifteen hundred people. In the last mentioned place he gave his famous lectures on love as a spiritual discipline, which were subsequently published as Bhakti-Yoga. Both the lectures of the Swami and his personality received favourable comment from the newspapers. He initiated into monastic life Dr. Street, who assumed the name of Yogananda.
Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, one of the founders of the New Thought movement in America, spoke highly of the Swami's teachings. She and her husband first went to hear him out of curiosity, and what happened afterwards may be told in her own words:
Before we had been ten minutes in the audience, we felt ourselves lifted up into an atmosphere so rarefied, so vital, so wonderful, that we sat spellbound and almost breathless to the end of that lecture. When it was over we went out with new courage, new hope, new strength, new faith, to meet life's daily vicissitudes.... It was that terrible winter of financial disasters, when banks failed and stocks went down like broken balloons, and business men walked through the dark valleys of despair, and the whole world seemed topsy-turvy. Sometimes after sleepless nights of worry and anxiety, my husband would go with me to hear the Swami lecture, and then he would come out into the winter gloom and walk down the street smiling and say: 'It is all right. There is nothing to worry over.' And I would go back to my own duties and pleasures with the same uplifted sense of soul and enlarged vision.... 'I do not come to convert you to a new belief,' he said. 'I want you to keep your own belief; I want to make the Methodist a better Methodist, the Presbyterian a better Presbyterian, the Unitarian a better Unitarian. I want to teach you to live the truth, to reveal the light within your own soul.' He gave the message that strengthened the man of business, that caused the frivolous society woman to pause and think; that gave the artist new aspirations; that imbued the wife and mother, the husband and father, with a larger and a holier comprehension of duty.
Having finished his work in New York, the Swami, accompanied by Goodwin, left for Detroit. The main theme of his lectures and class talks there was bhakti, or love of God. At that time he was all love. A kind of divine madness seemed to have taken possession of him, as if his heart would burst with longing for the beloved Mother. He gave his last public lecture at Temple Beth-El, of which Rabbi Louis Grossman, an ardent admirer of the Swami, was the leader. The Swami cast a spell, as it were, over the whole audience. 'Never,' wrote Mrs. Funke, 'had I seen the Master look as he looked that night. There was something in his beauty not of earth. It was as if the spirit had almost burst the bonds of flesh, and it was then that I saw a foreshadowing of the end. He was much exhausted from the years of overwork, and it was even then to be seen that he was not long for this world. I tried to close my eyes to it, but in my heart I knew the truth. He had needed rest but felt that he must go on.'
The idea that his years were numbered came to Swami Vivekananda again and again. He would often say at this time, 'Oh, the body is a terrible bondage!' or 'How I wish that I could hide myself for ever!' The note-book that he had carried during his wanderings in India contained these significant words: 'Now to seek a corner and lay myself down to die!' In a letter to a friend, he quoted these words and said: 'Yet all this karma remained. I hope I have now worked it out. It appears like a hallucination that I was in these childish dreams of doing this and doing that. I am getting out of them.... Perhaps these mad desires were necessary to bring me over to this country. And I thank the Lord for the experience.'
On March 25, 1896, he delivered his famous lecture on 'The Philosophy of Vedanta' before the graduate students of the philosophy department of Harvard University. It produced such an impression that he was offered the Chair of Eastern Philosophy in the university. Later a similar offer came from Columbia University. But he declined both on the ground that he was a sannyasin.
In 1894 Swami Vivekananda had established the Vedanta Society of New York as a non-sectarian organization with the aim of preaching the universal principles of Vedanta. It became better organized in 1896. Tolerance and religious universalism formed its motto, and its members generally came to be known as 'Vedantins.'
In the meantime the Swami's great works Raja-Yoga, Bhakti-Yoga, and Karma-Yoga were receiving marked attention from many thoughtful people of the country. The Swami was serious about organizing Hinduism on a sound, universal, ethical, and rational basis so that it would appeal to earnest thinkers in all parts of the world. He wanted to reinterpret, in keeping with the methods of modern science, the Hindu view of the soul, the Godhead, the relationship between matter and energy, and cosmology. Further, he wanted to classify the apparently contradictory passages of the Upanishads bearing on the doctrines of dualism, qualified non-dualism, and absolute non-dualism, and show their ultimate reconciliation. In order to achieve this end, he asked his devotees in India to send him the Upanishads and the Vedanta Sutras with their commentaries by the leading acharyas, and also the Brahmana portions of the Vedas, and the Puranas. He himself wanted to write this Maximum Testamentum, this Universal Gospel, in order to translate Hindu thought into Western language. He expressed his objective in a letter written to one of his disciples on February 17, 1896:
To put the Hindu ideas into English and then make out of dry philosophy and intricate mythology and queer, startling psychology, a religion which shall be easy, simple, popular, and at the same time meet the requirements of the highest minds, is a task which only those can understand who have attempted it. The abstract Advaita must become living — poetic — in everyday life; and out of bewildering yogism must come the most scientific and practical psychology — and all this must be put into such a form that a child may grasp it. That is my life's work. The Lord only knows how far I shall succeed. To work we have the right, not to the fruits thereof.
The Swami always wanted a healthy interchange of ideas between East and West; this was one of the aims of the Vedanta Society of New York. He felt the need of centres of vital and continual communication between the two worlds to make 'open doors, as it were, through which the East and the West could pass freely back and forth, without a feeling of strangeness, as from one home to another.' Already he had thought of bringing to America some of his brother disciples as preachers of Vedanta. He also wanted to send some of his American and English disciples to India to teach science, industry, technology, economics, applied sociology, and other practical things which the Indians needed in order to improve their social conditions and raise their standard of living. He often told his American disciples of his vision that the time would come when the lines of demarcation between East and West would be obliterated. From England he had already written to Swami Saradananda to prepare to come to the West.
In the spring of 1896 letters began to pour in from England beseeching Swami Vivekananda to return there and continue his activities. The Swami felt the need of concentrating on the work in both London and New York, the two great metropolises of the Western world. Therefore he made arrangements with Miss Waldo and other qualified disciples to continue his program in America during his absence. Mr. Francis Leggett was made the president of the Vedanta Society.
The Swami had also been receiving letters from his friends in India begging for his return. He said he would come as soon as possible, but he encouraged them to organize the work, warning them against the formation of any new cult around the person of Sri Ramakrishna, who, to the Swami, was the demonstration of the eternal principles of Hinduism. On April 14, 1896, he wrote to India:
'That Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was God — and all that sort of thing — has no go in countries like this. M—_ has a tendency to put that stuff down everybody's throat; but that will make our movement a little sect. You keep separate from such attempts; at the same time, if people worship him as God, no harm. Neither encourage nor discourage. The masses will always have the person; the higher ones, the principle. We want both. But principles are universal, not persons. Therefore stick to the principles he taught, and let people think whatever they like of his person.'
The Swami now made definite arrangements to leave for London on April 15, and, after carrying out his plans there, to sail for his motherland.
It should be apparent to readers of Swami Vivekananda's life that he worked under great pressure, from a fraction of which a lesser person would have collapsed in no time. Naturally he spent his few spare moments in fun and joking. He would read a copy of Punch or some other comic paper, and laugh till tears rolled down his cheeks. He loved to tell the story of a Christian missionary who was sent to preach to the cannibals. The new arrival proceeded to the chief of the tribe and asked him, 'Well, how did you like my predecessor?' The cannibal replied, smacking his lips, 'Simply de-li-cious!'
Another was the story of a 'darky' clergyman who, while explaining the creation, shouted to his congregation: 'You see, God was a-makin' Adam, and He was a-makin' him out o' mud. And when He got him made, He stuck him up agin a fence to dry. And den—' 'Hold on, dar, preacher!' suddenly cried out a learned listener. 'What's dat about dis 'ere fence? Who's made dis fence?' The preacher replied sharply: 'Now you listen 'ere, Sam Jones. Don't you be askin' sich questions. You'll be a-smashin' up all theology!'
By way of relaxation he would often cook an Indian meal at a friend's house. On such occasions he brought out from his pockets tiny packets of finely ground spices. He would make hot dishes which his Western disciples could hardly eat without burning their tongues. They were, no doubt, soothing to his high-strung temperament.
But the Swami's brain was seething with new ideas all the time. He very much wanted to build a 'Temple Universal' where people of all faiths would gather to worship the Godhead through the symbol Om, representing the undifferentiated Absolute. At another time, in the beginning of the year 1895, he wrote to Mrs. Bull about buying one hundred and eight acres of land in the Catskill Mountains where his students would build camps and practise meditation and other disciplines during the summer holidays.
A touching incident, which occurred in 1894, may be told here; it shows the high respect in which some of the ladies of Cambridge, Massachusetts, held the Swami and his mother. The Swami one day spoke to them about 'the Ideals of Indian Women,' particularly stressing the ideal of Indian motherhood. They were greatly moved. The following Christmas they sent the Swami's mother in India a letter together with a beautiful picture of the Child Jesus on the lap of the Virgin Mary. They wrote in the letter: 'At this Christmastide, when the gift of Mary's son to the world is celebrated and rejoiced over with us, it would seem the time of remembrance. We, who have your son in our midst, send you greetings. His generous service to men, women, and children in our midst was laid at your feet by him, in an address he gave us the other day on the Ideals of Motherhood in India. The worship of his mother will be to all who heard him an inspiration and an uplift.'
The Swami often spoke to his disciples about his mother's wonderful self-control, and how on one occasion she had gone without food for fourteen days. He acknowledged that her character was a constant inspiration to his life and work.
The love and adoration in which the Swami was held by his Western disciples can hardly be over-emphasized. Some described him as the 'lordly monk,' and some as a 'grand seigneur.' Mrs. Leggett said that in all her experience she had met only two celebrated personages who could make one feel perfectly at ease without for an instant losing their own dignity, and one of them was Swami Vivekananda. Sister Nivedita described him aptly as a Plato in thought and a modern Savonarola in his fearless outspokenness. William James of Harvard addressed him as 'Master' and referred to him in Varieties of Religious Experience as the 'paragon of Vedantists.'
A pleasant surprise awaited Swami Vivekananda on his arrival in London. Swami Saradananda had already come and was staying as the guest of Mr. Sturdy. The two Swamis had not seen each other in a very long time. Swami Vivekananda was told all the news of his spiritual brothers at the Alambazar monastery and their activities in India. It was a most happy occasion.
Swami Vivekananda soon plunged into a whirlwind of activity. From the beginning of May he conducted five classes a week and a Friday session for open discussion. He gave a series of three Sunday lectures in one of the galleries of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours, in Piccadilly, and also lectured at Princes' Hall and the Lodge of Annie Besant, in addition to speaking at many clubs, and in educational institutions and drawing-rooms. His audiences consisted mostly of intellectual and serious-minded people. His speeches on jnana-yoga, containing the essence of the Vedanta philosophy, were mostly given in England. Canon Wilberforce held a reception in the Swami's honour, to which he invited many distinguished people.
At one of the meetings, at the close of his address, a white-haired and well-known philosopher said to the Swami: 'You have spoken splendidly, sir, but you have told us nothing new.' Quick came the Swami's reply: 'Sir, I have told you the Truth. That, the Truth is as old as the immemorial hills, as old as humanity, as old as creation, as old as the Great God. If I have told you in such words as will make you think, make you live up to your thinking, do I not do well in telling it?' Loud applause greeted him at the end of these remarks.
The Swami was quick in repartee. During the question period a man who happened to be a native of Scotland, asked, 'What is the difference between a baboo and a baboon?* 'Oh, not much,' was the instantaneous reply of the Swami. 'It is like the difference between a sot and a Scot — just the difference of a letter.'
In one of his public lectures in England he paid the most touching tribute to his master, Sri Ramakrishna. He said that he had not one little word of his own to utter, not one infinitesimal thought of his own to unfold; everything, every single thing, all that he was himself, all that he could be to others, all that he might do for the world, came from that single source, from that pure soul, from that illimitable inspiration, from him who, seated 'there in my beloved India, had solved the tremendous secret, and bestowed the solution on all, ungrudgingly and with divine prodigality.' The Swami's own self was utterly forgotten, altogether ignored. 'I am what I am, and what I am is always due to him; whatever in me or in my words is good and true and eternal came to me from his mouth, his heart, his soul. Sri Ramakrishna is the spring of this phase of the earth's religious life, of its impulses and activities. If I can show the world one glimpse of my Master, I shall not have lived in vain.'
It was Ramakrishna who brought him in contact with Max Müller, the great German Sanskritist and Indologist, who had been impressed by the eloquence of Keshab Chandra Sen and his religious fervour, and had also come to know of the influence that Sri Ramakrishna had exerted in the development of Keshab's life. From the information that he had been able to gather from India, Max Müller had already published an article on Ramakrishna in the Nineteenth Century, entitled 'A Real Mahatman.' Now he was eager to meet a direct disciple of the Master, and invited Swami Vivekananda to lunch with him in Oxford on May 28, 1896.
The Swami was delighted to meet the savant. When the name of Ramakrishna was mentioned, the Swami said, 'He is worshipped by thousands today, Professor.'
'To whom else shall worship be accorded, if not to such?' was Max Müller's reply.
Regarding Max Müller and his wife, the Swami later wrote:
The visit was really a revelation to me. That little white house, its setting in a beautiful garden, the silver-haired sage, with a face calm and benign, and forehead smooth as a child's in spite of seventy winters, and every line in that face speaking of a deep-seated mine of spirituality somewhere behind; that noble wife, the helpmate of his life through his long and arduous task of exciting interest, overriding opposition and contempt, and at last creating a respect for the thoughts of the sages of ancient India — the trees, the flowers, the calmness, and the clear sky — all these sent me back in imagination to the glorious days of ancient India, the days of our brahmarshis* and rajarshis,* the days of the great vanaprasthas,* the days of Arundhatis and Vasishthas.* It was neither the philologist nor the scholar that I saw, but a soul that is every day realizing its oneness with the universe.
The Swami was deeply affected to see Max Müller's love for India. 'I wish,' he wrote enthusiastically, 'I had a hundredth part of that love for my motherland. Endowed with an extraordinary, and at the same time an intensely active mind, he has lived and moved in the world of Indian thought for fifty years or more, and watched the sharp interchange of light and shade in the interminable forest of Sanskrit literature with deep interest and heartfelt love, till they have sunk into his very soul and coloured his whole being.'
The Swami asked Max Müller: 'When are you coming to India? All men there would welcome one who has done so much to place the thoughts of their ancestors in a true light.'
The face of the aged sage brightened up; there was almost a tear in his eye, a gentle nodding of the head, and slowly the words came out: 'I would not return then; you would have to cremate me there.'
Further questions on the Swami's part seemed an unwarranted intrusion into realms wherein were stored the holy secrets of a man's heart.
Max Müller asked the Swami, 'What are you doing to make Sri Ramakrishna known to the world?' He himself was eager to write a fuller biography of the Master if he could only procure the necessary materials. At the Swami's request, Swami Saradananda wrote down the sayings of Sri Ramakrishna and the facts of his life. Later Max Müller embodied these in his book The Life and Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna.
One day Saradananda asked the Swami why he himself had not written about the Master's life for Max Müller. He answered: 'I have such deep feeling for the Master that it is impossible for me to write about him for the public. If I had written the article Max Müller wanted, then I would have proved, quoting from philosophies, the scriptures and even the holy books of the Christians, that Ramakrishna was the greatest of all prophets born in this world. That would have been too much for the old man. You have not thought so deeply about the Master as I have; hence you could write in a way that would satisfy Max Müller. Therefore I asked you to write.'
Max Müller showed the Swami several colleges in Oxford and the Bodleian Library, and at last accompanied him to the railroad station. To the Swami's protest that the professor should not take such trouble, the latter said, 'It is not every day that one meets with a disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.'
Besides doing intensive public work in England, the Swami made there some important personal contacts. The names of Goodwin, Henrietta Müller, Margaret Noble, and Sturdy have already been mentioned. These knew him intimately during his second visit and had become his disciples. Now came the turn of Captain and Mrs. Sevier. The captain was a retired officer of the English army, forty-nine years old, and had served for many years in India. Both were earnest students of religion and had sought the highest truth in various sects and creeds, but had not found it anywhere. When they heard Swami Vivekananda, they intuitively realized that his teachings were what they had so long sought. They were deeply impressed by the non-dualistic philosophy of India and the Swami's personality.
Coming out of one of the Swami's lectures, Captain Sevier asked Miss MacLeod, who had already known the Swami in America: 'You know this young man? Is he what he seems?'
'Yes.'
'In that case one must follow him and with him find God.'
The Captain went to his wife and said, 'Will you let me become the Swami's disciple?'
'Yes,' she replied.
She asked him, 'Will you let me become the Swami's disciple?'
He replied with affectionate humour, 'I am not so sure!'
The very first time the Swami met Mrs. Sevier in private he addressed her as 'Mother' and asked her if she would not like to come to India, adding, 'I will give you my best realizations.'
A very affectionate relationship sprang up between the Swami and the Seviers, and the latter regarded him as their son. They became his intimate companions and offered him all their savings. But the Swami, anxious about their future worldly security, persuaded them to keep the greater portion of their fortune. Captain and Mrs. Sevier, together with Miss Noble and Goodwin, were the choicest among the followers that Swami Vivekananda gathered in England and all of them remained faithful to him and his work till the last days of their lives.
Through the generosity of the Seviers, the Swami, as will be seen, established the Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati, an almost inaccessible place in the Himalayas, for the training of the disciples, both Eastern and Western, in the contemplation of the Impersonal Godhead. After Captain Sevier's death at Mayavati Mrs. Sevier lived there for fifteen years busying herself with the education of the children of the neighbouring hills. Once Miss MacLeod asked her, 'Do you not get bored?' 'I think of him,' she replied, referring to Swami Vivekananda.
Though preoccupied with various activities in England, the Swami never for one moment forgot his work in India. After all, it was his intense desire to find means to ameliorate the condition of his countrymen that had brought him to the West. That hope he always cherished in a corner of his mind, both in Europe and in America. He had to train his brother disciples as future workers in India. And so he is seen writing to them in detail regarding the organization of the monastery at Alambazar, where they had been living for some time.
On April 27, 1896, he sent instructions about the daily life of the monks, their food and clothing, their intercourse with the public, and about the provision of a spacious library at the monastery, a smaller room for interviews, a big hall for religious discussions with the devotees, a small room for an office, another for smoking and so forth and so on. He advised them to furnish the rooms in the simplest manner and to keep an eye on the water for drinking and cooking. The monastery, he suggested, should be under the management of a President and a Secretary to be elected by turns by vote. Study, preaching, and religious practices should be important items among the duties of the inmates. He also desired to establish a math for women directly under the control of the Holy Mother. The monks were not to visit the women's quarters. In conclusion, he recommended Swami Brahmananda as the first President of the math, and said: 'He who is the servant of all is their true master. He never becomes a leader in whose love there is a consideration of high or low. He whose love knows no end and never stops to consider high or low has the whole world lying at his feet.' For his workers the Swami wanted men with 'muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells a mind of the same material as that of which the thunderbolt is made.'
To quote the Swami's words again: 'I want strength, manhood, kshatravirya, or the virility of a warrior, and brahma-teja, or the radiance of a brahmin.... These men will stand aside from the world, give their lives, and be ready to fight the battle of Truth, marching on from country to country. One blow struck outside of India is equal to a hundred thousand struck within. Well, all will come if the Lord wills it.'
The Swami was exhausted by his strenuous work in England. Three of his intimate disciples, the Seviers and Henrietta Müller, proposed a holiday tour on the continent. He was 'as delighted as a child' at the prospect. 'Oh! I long to see the snows and wander on the mountain paths,' he said. He recalled his travels in the Himalayas. On July 31, 1896, the Swami, in the company of his friends, left for Switzerland. They visited Geneva, Mer-de-Glace, Montreux, Chillon, Chamounix, the St. Bernard, Lucerne, the Rigi, Zermatt, and Schaffhausen. The Swami felt exhilarated by his walks in the Alps. He wanted to climb Mont Blanc, but gave up the idea when told of the difficulty of the ascent. He found that Swiss peasant life and its manners and customs resembled those of the people who dwelt in the Himalayas.
In a little village at the foot of the Alps between Mont Blanc and the Little St. Bernard, he conceived the idea of founding a monastery in the Himalayas. He said to his companions: 'Oh, I long for a monastery in the Himalayas, where I can retire from the labours of my life and spend the rest of my days in meditation. It will be a centre for work and meditation, where my Indian and Western disciples can live together, and I shall train them as workers. The former will go out as preachers of Vedanta to the West, and the latter will devote their lives to the good of India.' Mr. Sevier speaking for himself and his wife, said: 'How nice it would be, Swami, if this could be done. We must have such a monastery.'
The dream was fulfilled through the Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati, which commands a magnificent view of the eternal snows of the Himalayas.
In the Alps the Swami enjoyed some of the most lucid and radiant moments of his spiritual life. Sometimes he would walk alone, absorbed in thought, the disciples keeping themselves at a discreet distance. One of the disciples said: 'There seemed to be a great light about him, and a great stillness and peace. Never have I seen the Swami to such advantage. He seemed to communicate spirituality by a look or with a touch. One could almost read his thoughts which were of the highest, so transfigured had his personality become.'
While still wandering in the Alps, the Swami received a letter from the famous orientalist, Paul Deussen, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kiel. The professor urgently invited the Swami to visit him. The Swami accepted the invitation and changed his itinerary. He arrived at Kiel after visiting Heidelberg, Coblenz, Cologne, and Berlin. He was impressed by the material power and the great culture of Germany.
Professor Deussen was well versed in Sanskrit, and was perhaps the only scholar in Europe who could speak that language fluently. A disciple of Schopenhauer and follower of Kant, Deussen could easily appreciate the high flights of Sankaracharya's philosophy. He believed that the system of Vedanta, as founded on the Upanishads and the Vedanta Sutras, is one of the 'most majestic structures and valuable products of the genius of man in his search for Truth, and that the highest and purest morality is the immediate consequence of Vedanta.'
The Swami and the Seviers were cordially received by the German scholar. In the course of the conversation Deussen said that a movement was being made back towards the fountainhead of spirituality, a movement that would in the future probably make India the spiritual leader of the nations, the highest and the greatest spiritual influence on earth. He also found in the Swami a vivid demonstration of concentration and control of the mind. On one occasion he saw his guest turning over the pages of a poetical work and did not receive any response to a query. Afterwards the Swami apologized, saying that he had been so absorbed in the book that he did not hear the professor. Then he repeated the verses from the book. The conversation soon turned to the power of concentration as developed in the Yoga philosophy. One of the purpose of Deussen's meeting the Swami, it is said was his desire to learn from the latter the secrets of the Yoga powers.
Deussen showed the Swami the city of Kiel. Thereafter the Swami wished to leave immediately for England, though the professor insisted that he should stay at Kiel a few days more. As that was not possible, Deussen joined the party in Hamburg and they travelled together in Holland. After spending three days in Amsterdam all arrived in London, and for two weeks Deussen met with the Swami daily. The Swami also visited Max Müller again at Oxford.
Swami Vivekananda spent another two months in England, giving lectures and seeing important men of their day, such as Edward Carpenter, Frederick Myers, Canon Wilberforce, and Moncure D. Conway. The most notable lectures he gave at this time were those on maya, about which he spoke on three occasions, dealing with its various aspects. It is said that some members of the British royal family attended these lectures incognito. He created such an intense atmosphere during these talks that the whole audience was transported into a realm of ecstatic consciousness, and some burst into tears. The lectures were the most learned and eloquent among his speeches on non-dualistic Vedanta.
Swami Abhedananda arrived from India, and Vivekananda was immensely pleased to have his brother disciple assist him in his foreign work. The maiden speech of Abhedananda at a club in Bloomsbury Square on October 27, was highly appreciated by all, and the Swami said about his spiritual brother, 'Even if I perish on this plane, my message will be sounded through these dear lips, and the world will hear it.' The report of the continued popularity of Swami Saradananda, who had in the meantime gone to New York, likewise gratified him.
Despite the rush of his European work Swami Vivekananda maintained his contact with America. He took a personal interest in the spiritual development of his students. The affectionate relationship of the Swami with the Hale family of Chicago has been mentioned before, especially with the four unmarried girls. Hearing of the proposed marriage of Harriet, he wrote to her on September 17, 1896, 'Marriage is the truest goal for ninety-nine per cent of the human race, and they will live the happiest life as soon as they have learnt and are ready to abide by the eternal lesson — that we are bound to bear and forbear and that to everyone life must be a compromise.' He sent the young lady his blessings in these terms: 'May you always enjoy the undivided love of your husband, helping him in attaining all that is desirable in this life, and when you have seen your children's children, and the drama of life is nearing its end, may you help each other in reaching that infinite ocean of Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss, at the touch of whose waters all distinctions melt away and we all become One.'
But Mary Hale could not make a decision between marriage and lifelong celibacy. She was full of idealism and the spirit of independence; but she was warm in her affection. Swami Vivekananda was particularly fond of Mary. On the day he wrote to Harriet he also wrote to Mary, congratulating Harriet for her discrimination, and prophesying for her a life of joy and sweetness, since she was 'not so imaginative and sentimental as to make a fool of herself and has enough of common sense and gentleness to soften the hard points of life which must come to everyone.' But he wanted to tell Mary 'the truth, and my language is plain.' He wrote:
My dear Mary, I will tell you a great lesson I have learnt in this life. It is this: 'The higher your ideal is, the more miserable you are,' for such a thing as an ideal cannot be attained in the world — or in this life, even. He who wants perfection in the world is a madman — for it cannot be. How can you find the infinite in the finite?
You, Mary, are like a mettlesome Arab — grand, splendid. You would make a splendid queen — physically, mentally — you would shine alongside of a dashing, bold, adventurous, heroic husband. But, my dear sister, you will make one of the worst wives. You will take the life out of our easy-going, practical, plodding husbands of the everyday world. Mind, my sister, although it is true that there is much more romance in actual life than in any novel, yet it is few and far between. Therefore my advice to you is that until you bring down your ideals to a more practical level, you ought not to marry. If you do, the result will be misery for both of you. In a few months you will lose all regard for a commonplace, good, nice young man, and then life will become insipid....
There are two sorts of persons in the world — the one strong-nerved, quiet, yielding to nature, not given to much imagination, yet good, kind, sweet, etc. For such is this world — they alone are born to be happy. There are others, again, with high-strung nerves, tremendously imaginative, with intense feeling — always going high, and coming down the next moment. For them there is no happiness. The first class will have almost an even tenor of happiness. The second will have to run between ecstasy and misery. But of these alone what we call geniuses are made. There is some truth in a recent theory that genius is 'a sort of madness.'
Now persons of this class, if they want to be great, must fight to be so — clear the deck for battle. No encumbrance — no marriage — no children, no undue attachment to anything except the one idea, and live and die for that. I am a person of this sort. I have taken up the one idea of 'Vedanta,' and I have 'cleared the deck for action.' You and Isabel are made of this metal — but let me tell you, though it is hard, you are spoiling your lives in vain. Either take up one idea, clear the deck, and to it dedicate the life, or be contented and practical, lower the ideal, marry, and have a happy life. Either 'bhoga' or 'yoga' — either enjoy this life or give up and be a yogi. None can have both in one. Now or never — select quick. 'He who is very particular gets nothing,' says the proverb. Now sincerely and really and for ever determine to 'clear the deck for the fight,' take up anything — philosophy or science or religion or literature — and let that be your God for the rest of your life. Achieve happiness or achieve greatness. I have no sympathy with you and Isabel — you are neither for this nor for that. I wish to see you happy, as Harriet is, or great. Eating, drinking, dressing, and society nonsense are not things to throw away a life upon — especially for you, Mary. You are rusting away a splendid brain and abilities for which there is not the least excuse. You must have ambition to be great. I know you will take these rather harsh remarks from me in the right spirit, knowing I like you really as much as or more than what I call you, my sister. I had long had a mind to tell you this and as experience is gathering I feel like telling you. The joyful news from Harriet urged me to tell you this. I will be overjoyed to hear that you are married also, and happy so far as happiness can be had here, or would like to hear of your doing great deeds.
Mary Hale later married a gentleman from Florence, and became known as Mme. Matteini.
For some time the Swami had been feeling an inner urge to return to India. From Switzerland he wrote to friends in India: 'Do not be afraid. Great things are going to be done, my children. Take heart....In the winter I am going back to India and will try to set things on their feet there. Work on, brave hearts fail not — no saying nay; work on — the Lord is behind the work. Mahasakti, the Great Power, is with you.'
On November 29, 1896, he wrote to a disciple in India about his proposed Himalayan monastery. He further said that his present plan was to start two centres, one in Madras and the other in Calcutta, and later others in Bombay and Allahabad. He was pleased to see that the magazine Brahmavadin, published in English in Madras, was disseminating his ideas; he was planning to start similar magazines in the vernaculars also. He also intended to start a paper, under the management of writers from all nations, in order to spread his ideas to every corner of the globe. 'You must not forget,' he wrote, 'that my interests are international and not Indian alone.'
Swami Vivekananda could no longer resist the voice of India calling him back. Sometime during the middle of November, after a class lecture, he called Mrs. Sevier aside and quietly asked her to purchase four tickets for India. He planned to take with him the Seviers and Mr. Goodwin. Reservations were accordingly made on the 'Prinz Regent Luitpold,' of the North German Llyod Steamship Line, sailing from Naples for Ceylon on December 16, 1896. The Seviers wanted to lead a retired life in India, practising spiritual disciplines and helping the Swami in carrying out the idea of building a monastery in the Himalayas. Faithful Goodwin, who had already taken the vows of a brahmacharin, would work as the Swami's stenographer. It was also planned that Miss Müller and Miss Noble would follow the party some time after, the latter to devote her life to the cause of women's education in India.
The Swami was given a magnificent farewell by his English friends, devotees, and admirers on December 13 at the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, in Piccadilly. There were about five hundred people present. Many were silent, tongue-tied and sad at heart. Tears were very near in some eyes. But the Swami, after his farewell address, walked among the assembled friends and repeated over and over again, 'Yes, yes we shall meet again, we shall.' It was decided that Swami Abhedananda would continue the work after the Swami's departure.
Of the impressions left by the Swami's teachings in England, Margaret Noble writes:
To not a few of us the words of Swami Vivekananda came as living water to men perishing of thirst. Many of us have been conscious for years past of that growing uncertainty and despair, with regard to religion, which has beset the intellectual life of Europe for half a century. Belief in the dogmas of Christianity has become impossible for us, and we had no tool, such as now we hold, by which to cut away the doctrinal shell from the kernel of Reality, in our faith. To these, the Vedanta has given intellectual confirmation and philosophical expression of their own mistrusted intuitions. 'The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.'... It was the Swami's I am God that came as something always known, only never said before.... Yet again, it was the Unity of Man that was the touch needed to rationalize all previous experiences and give logical sanction to the thirst for absolute service, never boldly avowed in the past. Some by one gate, and some by another, we have all entered into a great heritage, and we know it.
The practical Englishman saw in the Swami's life the demonstration of fearlessness which was the necessary corollary of his teaching regarding the divinity of the soul. It was revealed in many incidents.
One in particular illustrates this. He was one day walking with Miss Müller and an English friend across some fields when a mad bull came tearing towards them. The Englishman frankly ran, and reached the other side of the hill in safety. Miss Müller ran as far as she could, and then sank to the ground, incapable of further effort. Seeing this and unable to aid her, the Swami — thinking, 'So this is the end, after all' — took up his stand in front of her, with folded arms.
He told afterwards how his mind was occupied with a mathematical calculation as to how far the bull would be able to throw him. But the animal suddenly stopped a few paces off, and then, raising its head, retreated sullenly. The Englishman felt ashamed of his cowardly retreat and of having left the Swami alone to face the bull. Miss Müller asked the Swami how he could muster courage in such a dangerous situation. He said that in the face of danger and death he felt — and he took two pebbles in his hands and struck the one against the other — as strong as flint, for 'I have touched the feet of God.' He had shown a like courage in his early boyhood, when he quickly stepped up to drag away a child who was about to be trampled under a horse's feet in a street of Calcutta.
Regarding his experience and work in England, he told the Hale sisters, in a letter, that it was a roaring success. To another American friend he wrote that he believed in the power of the English to assimilate great ideas, and that though the process of assimilation might be slow, it would be all the more sure and abiding. He believed that the time would come when distinguished ecclesiastics of the Church of England, imbued with the idealism of Vedanta, would form a liberal community within the Anglican Church itself, supporting the universality of religion both in vision and in practice.
But what he admired most in England was the character of the English people — their steadiness, thoroughness, loyalty, devotion to the ideal, and perseverance to finish any work that they undertook. His preconceived idea about the English was thoroughly changed when he came to know them intimately. 'No one,' he said later, addressing the Hindus of Calcutta, 'ever landed on English soil feeling more hatred in his heart for a race than I did for the English. [The iniquities of the colonial rule in India were deeply impressed in his mind.]...There is none among you who loves the English people more than I do.'
He wrote to the Hale sisters on November 28, 1896: 'The English are not so bright as the Americans, but once you touch their heart it is yours for ever....I now understand why the Lord has blessed them above all other races — steady, sincere to the backbone, with great depths of feeling, only with a crust of stoicism on the surface. If that is broken you have your man.' In another letter: 'You know, of course, the steadiness of the English; they are, of all nations,least jealous of each other and that is why they dominate the world. They have solved the secret of obedience without slavish cringing — great freedom with law-abidingness.' On still another occasion he called the English 'a nation of heroes, the true kshatriyas....Their education is to hide their feelings and never to show them. If you know how to reach the English heart, he is your friend for ever. If he has once an idea put into his brain, it never comes out; and the immense practicality and energy of the race makes it sprout up and immediately bear fruit.'
The Swami felt that the finger of God had brought about the contact between India and England. The impact created by the aggressive British rule, on the one hand, awakened the Hindu race from its slumber of ages, and on the other hand, offered India opportunities to spread her spiritual message throughout the Western world.
He wrote to Mr. Leggett on July 6, 1896:
The British Empire with all its evils is the greatest machine that ever existed for the dissemination of ideas. I mean to put my ideas in the centre of this machine, and it will spread them all over the world. Of course, all great work is slow and the difficulties are too many, especially as we Hindus are a conquered race. Yet that is the very reason why it is bound to work, for spiritual ideals have always come from the downtrodden. The downtrodden Jews overwhelmed the Roman Empire with their spiritual ideals. You will be pleased to learn that I am also learning my lesson every day in patience and above all in sympathy. I think I am beginning to see the Divine even inside the bullying Anglo-Indians. I think I am slowly approaching to that state when I would be able to love the very 'Devil' himself, if there were any.
Though Swami Vivekananda himself spoke highly of the effect of his teachings in England, he did not start any organized work there as he did in the United States of America. From his letters and conversations one learns that he was growing weary of the world. Though he was at the peak of his success as far as public activity was concerned, he began to feel a longing for the peace that comes from total absorption in the Supreme Spirit. He sensed that his earthly mission was over. On August 23, 1896, he wrote to a friend, from Lucerne:
'I have begun the work, let others work it out. So you see, to set the work going I had to defile myself by touching money and property for a time.* Now I am sure my part of the work has been done, and I have no more interest in Vedanta or any philosophy in the world or in the work itself. I am getting ready to depart, to return no more to this hell, this world.... Even its religious utility is beginning to pall on me.... These works and doing good, and so forth, are just a little exercise to cleanse the mind. I have had enough of it.'* He was losing interest even in the American programme, which he himself had organized.
In the letter quoted above, the Swami wrote: 'If New York or Boston or any other place in the U.S. needs Vedanta teachers, they must receive them, keep them, and provide for them. As for me, I am as good as retired. I have played my part in the world.' To Swami Abhedananda he confided one day, about this time, that he was going to live for five or six years at the most. The brother disciple
Biography of Swami Vivekananda - Return to India
There were on the boat, among other passengers, two Christian missionaries who, in the course of a heated discussion with the Swami, lost their tempers and savagely criticized the Hindu religion. The Swami walked to one of them, seized him by the collar, and said menacingly, 'If you abuse my religion again, I will throw you overboard.'
'Let me go, sir,' the frightened missionary apologized; 'I'll never do it again.'
Later, in the course of a conversation with a disciple in Calcutta, he asked, 'What would you do if someone insulted your mother?' The disciple answered, 'I would fall upon him, sir, and teach him a good lesson.'
'Bravo!' said the Swami. 'Now, if you had the same positive feeling for your religion, your true mother, you could never see any Hindu brother converted to Christianity. Yet you see this occurring every day, and you are quite indifferent. Where is your faith? Where is your patriotism? Every day Christian missionaries abuse Hinduism to your face, and yet how many are there amongst you whose blood boils with righteous indignation and who will stand up in its defense?'
When the boat stopped at Aden, the party went ashore and visited the places of interest. The Swami saw from a distance a Hindusthani betel-leaf seller smoking his hookah, or hubble-bubble. He had not enjoyed this Indian way of smoking for the past three years. Going up to him, the Swami said, 'Brother, do give me your pipe.' Soon he was puffing at it with great joy and talking to him as to an intimate friend.
Mr. Sevier later on said to Swamiji teasingly: 'Now we see! It was this pipe that made you run away from us so abruptly!' Speaking of this incident, the Swami's companions said later: 'The shopkeeper could not have resisted him; for he had such an endearing way about him, when asking for anything, that he was simply irresistible. We shall never forget that ingenuous look on his face when he said to the shopkeeper, with childlike sweetness, "Brother, do give me your pipe."'
In the early morning of January 15, 1897, the coast of Ceylon with its majestic coco palms and gold-coloured beach was seen at a distance. The Swami's heart leapt with joy; and his disciples caught his excitement as the boat approached the beautiful harbour of Colombo. But no one in the party had the slightest idea of what they were to witness while disembarking.
Since the day of his success at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, which had filled with joy and pride the hearts of his countrymen, especially of his disciples and brother monks at the Baranagore Math, Swami Vivekananda had been inspiring his faithful followers to lay down their lives for the uplift of the masses of India, and in particular to help the hungry and illiterate. In his heart of hearts he felt that India would not be able to resist his appeal. Many months before, while discussing with some of his disciples in Detroit the great difficulties that he had encountered in presenting Hinduism to bigoted Christians in America, he had said: 'But India shall listen to me. I will shake India to her foundations. I will send an electric thrill through her veins. Wait! You will see how India receives me. It is India, my own India, that knows truly how to appreciate what I have given so freely here, and with my life's blood. India will receive me in triumph.'
When the news of Swami Vivekananda's departure from Europe reached India, the hearts of the people were stirred. The spiritual ambassador of their ancient land was coming back after fulfilling his mission. They must give a regal welcome to this great crusader. In big towns committees were formed for his reception. His brother disciples and friends were impatient. Swami Shivananda came ahead of time to Madras and Swami Niranjanananda to Colombo; so also many of his disciples from Bengal and the Northern Provinces came to Madras to await his arrival. The newspapers published articles eulogizing his personality and work.
A gaily decorated steam launch carried the Swami and his party from the ship to the harbour. When the monk with his yellow robe and luminous eyes came ashore, a mighty shout arose from the human throng crowding the quays. Thousands flung themselves on the ground to touch his feet. A deputation of the notables of Ceylon welcomed him, and he was taken in a huge procession through many triumphal arches. Flags were unfurled, religious hymns chanted; an Indian band played. Rosewater and the sacred water of the Ganga were sprinkled before him, and flowers were strewn in his path. Incense was burnt before the houses as he passed. Fruit and other offerings were brought by hundreds of visitors.
Swami Vivekananda accepted all these honours without losing his poise. He was not the man to flee from triumph any more than from battle. He regarded the tributes paid to him, a penniless beggar, as tributes paid to the spiritual ideal of India. In the course of his reply to the address of welcome given in Colombo, he said, 'The spirituality of the Hindus is revealed by the princely reception which they have given to a beggar sannyasin.' He pointed out that though he was not a military general, not a prince nor a wealthy man, yet men great in the transitory possessions of the world and much respected by society had nevertheless come to honour him, a homeless monk. 'This,' he exclaimed, 'is one of the highest expressions of spirituality.' He disclaimed any personal glory in the welcome he received, insisting that it was but the recognition of a principle.
Swami Vivekananda's progress from Colombo to Madras and the welcomes he received at Kandy, Anuradhapuram, Jaffna, Pamban, Rameswaram, Ramnad, Paramakkudi, Madurai, Trichinopoly, and Kumbakonam demonstrated how deeply he had endeared himself to the men and women of India. At Anuradhapuram a band of fanatical Buddhists tried to break up the meeting, but did not succeed. At Rameswaram the Swami exhorted the people to 'worship Siva in the poor, the diseased, and the weak'.
He received a touching welcome there from the Raja of Ramnad, his disciple, who had encouraged him to go to America and had helped him materially for that purpose. At Ramnad the horses were unhitched from the carriage bearing the Swami, and the people themselves, the Raja among them, drew it. At Rameswaram the Raja erected, in the Swami's honour, a victory column forty feet high with a suitable inscription. He also gave a liberal donation to the Madras famine-relief fund to commemorate the home-coming of the Swami.
At a small railroad station near Madras, hundreds of people gathered for a glimpse of Vivekananda. The stationmaster did not want to delay the train since no stop was scheduled. But the crowd of admirers flung themselves on the track, and the train had to be halted. The Swami was visibly moved and blessed the multitude.
The enthusiasm of the people reached its peak in Madras, where extensive preparations had been made for the Swami's reception. It was Madras that had first recognized the greatness of Vivekananda and equipped him for the journey to Chicago. At that time, when he had first come there, he had been, in effect, only an obscure individual. He had spent some two months in an unknown bungalow at San Thome, holding conversations on Hinduism. Yet even then a few educated young men of keen foresight had predicted that there was something in the man, a 'power' that would lift him above all others and enable him to be a leader of men. These youths, who had been ridiculed as 'misguided enthusiasts' and 'dreamy revivalists,' now, four years later, had the supreme satisfaction of seeing 'our Swami,' as they loved to call him, return to them a famous personage in both Europe and America.
The streets and thoroughfares of Madras were profusely decorated; seventeen triumphal arches were erected. The Swami's name was on everybody's lips. Thousands jammed the railway station, and as the train steamed in, he was received with thundering shouts of applause. An elaborate procession was formed, and he was taken to 'Castle Kernan,' the palatial home of Billigiri Iyengar, where arrangements had been made for his stay in the city.
On the third day after his arrival Swami Vivekananda was honoured in a public meeting on behalf of the people of Madras. As Victoria Hall, chosen for the purpose, was too small to hold the large crowd, the people cried for an open-air gathering. The Swami came out and addressed them from the top of a coach; it was, as it were, Sri Krishna, standing in the chariot, exhorting Arjuna to give up his unmanliness and measure up to his Aryan heritage. In a brief speech he told the people how India, through her love of God, had expanded the limited love of the family into love of country and of humanity. He urged them to maintain their enthusiasm and to give him all the help he required to do great things for India.
During his short stay in Madras, Swami Vivekananda gave four public lectures, his subjects being, 'My Plan of Campaign,' 'The Sages of India,' 'Vedanta in Its Application to Indian Life,' and 'The Future of India.' In these lectures he reminded the Indians of both their greatness and their weakness, and urged them to be proud of their past and hopeful for their future.
While speaking on 'My Plan of Campaign,' the Swami exposed the meanness of some of the Theosophists, who had tried their utmost to injure his work in America but later claimed that they had paved the way for his success in the New World. He told the audience that when, in desperation, he had cabled to India for money, the Theosophists had come to know about it and one of them had written to a member of the Society in India: 'Now the devil is going to die. God bless us all!' But it must be said that there were many among the Theosophists, especially in India, who were his genuine well-wishers.
Swami Vivekananda had hardly a moment's respite during his nine days in Madras. When asked by a disciple how he found the strength for such incessant activity, he answered, 'Spiritual work never tires one in India.' But he would lose patience if asked about matters that had no bearing on practical life. One day a pandit asked him to state clearly whether he was a dualist or a non-dualist. The Swami said: 'As long as I have this body I am a dualist, but not otherwise. This incarnation of mine is to help put an end to useless and mischievous quarrels, which only distract the mind and make men weary of life, and even turn them into sceptics and atheists.'
Meanwhile heart-warming letters had been arriving from America informing the Swami of the progress of the Vedanta work in the New World under the leadership of Swami Saradananda, and also in appreciation of his own achievements. One letter was signed by Lewis G. Janes, President of the Brooklyn Ethical Association; C. C. Everett, Dean of the Harvard Divinity School; William James and Josiah Royce, both professors of philosophy at Harvard University; Mrs. Sara C. Bull of Boston, and others. It said: 'We believe that such expositions as have been given by yourself mere speculative interest and utility — that they are of great ethical value in cementing the ties of friendship and brotherhood between distant peoples, and in helping us to realize that solidarity of human relationship and interests which has been affirmed by all the great religions of the world. We earnestly hope that your work in India may be blessed in further promoting this noble end, and that you may return to us again with assurances of fraternal regard from our distant brothers of the great Aryan family, and the ripe wisdom that comes from reflection and added experience and further contact with the life and thought of your people.'
Another letter from Detroit, signed by forty-two of his friends, said in part: 'We Western Aryans have been so long separated from our Eastern brothers that we had almost forgotten our identity of origin, until you came and with your beautiful presence and matchless eloquence rekindled within our hearts the knowledge that we of America and you of India are one.'
Swami Vivekananda, after his strenuous work in South India, needed rest. On the advice of friends, he decided to travel to Calcutta by steamer. Monday, February 15, was the date of his sailing. Several devotees boarded the steamer to see him off, and one of them, Professor Sundararama Iyer, asked the Swami if his mission had achieved lasting good in America and Europe. The Swami said: 'Not much. I hope that here and there I have sown a seed which in time may grow and benefit some at least.'
Swami Vivekananda's lectures delivered during his progress from Colombo to Madras were inspiring and enthusiastic. He yearned to awaken the masses of India from the slumber of ages. He had seen the dynamic life of the West; he now felt more deeply the personality of India, which only needed his fiery exhortation to assert itself once more among the nations of the world. Again one is reminded of Krishna's admonition to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra: 'In this crisis, O Arjuna, whence comes such lowness of spirit, unbecoming to an Aryan, dishonourable, and an obstacle to the attaining of heaven? Do not yield to unmanliness, O Arjuna. It does not become you. Shake off this base faint-heartedness and arise, O scorcher of enemies!'
In his famous lecture 'My Plan of Campaign,' delivered in Madras, he called upon the people to assert their soul-force:
My India, arise! Where is your vital force? In your Immortal Soul. Each nation, like each individual, has one theme in this life, which is its centre, the principal note round which every other note comes to form the harmony. If any nation attempts to throw off its national vitality, the direction which has become its own through the transmission of centuries, that nation dies....In one nation political power is its vitality, as in England. Artistic life, in another, and so on. In India religious life forms the centre, the keynote of the whole music of the national life. And therefore, if you succeed in the attempt to throw off your religion and take up either politics or society, the result will be that you will become extinct. Social reform and politics have to be preached through the vitality of your religion.... Every man has to make his own choice; so has every nation. We made our choice ages ago. And it is the faith in an Immortal Soul. I challenge anyone to give it up. How can you change your nature?
What was this new faith, this word that the world was awaiting?
The other great idea that the world wants from us today — more perhaps the lower classes than the higher, more the uneducated than the educated, more the weak than the strong — is that eternal, grand idea of the spiritual oneness of the whole universe, the only Infinite Reality, that exists in you and in me and in all, in the self, in the soul. The infinite oneness of the soul — that you and I are not only brothers, but are really one — is the eternal sanction of all morality. Europe wants it today just as much as our downtrodden races do, and this great principle is even now unconsciously forming the basis of all the latest social and political aspirations that are coming up in England, in Germany, in France and in America. (Extracts from the lecture 'The Mission of the Vedanta.')
I heard once the complaint made that I was preaching too much of Advaita, absolute non-dualism, and too little of dualism. Ay, I know what grandeur, what oceans of love, what infinite, ecstatic blessings and joy there are in dualistic religion. I know it all. But this is not the time for us to weep, even in joy; we have had weeping enough; no more is this the time for us to become soft. This softness has been with us till we have become like masses of cotton. What our country now wants is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, gigantic will, which nothing can resist, which will accomplish their purpose in any fashion, even if it means going down to the bottom of the ocean and meeting death face to face. That is what we want, and that can only be created, established, and strengthened by understanding and realizing the ideal of Advaita, that ideal of the oneness of all. Faith, faith, faith in ourselves! … If you have faith in the three hundred and thirty millions of your mythological gods, and in all the gods which foreigners have introduced into your midst, and still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you. Have faith in yourselves and stand upon that faith. Why is it that we three hundred and thirty millions of people have been ruled for the last thousand years by any and every handful of foreigners? Because they had faith in themselves and we had not. I read in the newspapers how, when one of our poor fellows is murdered or ill-treated by an Englishman, howls go up all over the country; I read and I weep, and the next moment comes to my mind the question of who is responsible for it all. Not the English; it is we who are responsible for all our degradation. Our aristocratic ancestors went on treading the common masses of our country underfoot till they became helpless, till under this torment the poor, poor people nearly forgot that they were human beings. They have been compelled to be merely hewers of wood and drawers of water for centuries, so that they are made to believe that they are born as slaves, born as hewers of wood and drawers of water. (Extracts from 'The Mission of the Vedanta.')
'Feel, therefore, my would-be reformers, my would-be patriots! Do you feel? Do you feel that millions and millions of the descendants of gods and of sages have become next-door neighbours to brutes? Do you feel that millions are starving today and millions have been starving for ages? Do you feel that ignorance has come over the land as a dark cloud? Does it make you restless? Does it make you sleepless? Has it made you almost mad? Are you seized with that one idea of the misery of ruin, and have you forgotten all about your name, your fame, your wives, your children, your property, even your own bodies? If so, that is the first step to becoming a patriot. For centuries people have been taught theories of degradation. They have been told that they are nothing. The masses have been told all over the world that they are not human beings. They have been so frightened for centuries that they have nearly become animals. Never were they allowed to hear of the Atman. Let them hear of the Atman — that even the lowest of the low have the Atman within, who never dies and never is born — Him whom the sword cannot pierce, nor the fire burn, nor the air dry, immortal, without beginning or end, the all-pure, omnipotent, and omnipresent Atman. ('Extracts from 'My Plan of Campaign.')
'Ay, let every man and woman and child, without respect of caste or birth, weakness or strength, hear and learn that behind the strong and the weak, behind the high and the low, behind everyone, there is that Infinite Soul, assuring all the infinite possibility and the infinite capacity to become great and good. Let us proclaim to every soul: Arise, arise, awake! Awake from this hypnotism of weakness. None is really weak; the soul is infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient. Stand up, assert yourself, proclaim the God within you, do not deny Him!' (Extracts from 'The Mission of the Vedanta.')
'It is a man-making religion that we want. It is a man-making education all round that we want. It is man-making theories that we want. And here is the test of truth: Anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually, and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in it, it cannot be true. Truth is strengthening. Truth is purity, truth is all knowledge. Truth must be strengthening, must be enlightening, must be invigorating. Give up these weakening mysticisms and be strong. The greatest truths are the simplest things in the world, simple as your own existence.
'Therefore my plan is to start institutions in India to train our young men as preachers of the truths of our scriptures in India and outside India. Men, men — these are wanted : everything else will be ready; but strong, vigorous, believing young men, sincere to the backbone, are wanted. A hundred such and the world becomes revolutionized. The will is stronger than anything else. Everything must go down before the will, for that comes from God: a pure and strong will is omnipotent.' (Extracts from 'My Plan of Campaign.')
'If the brahmin has more aptitude for learning on the grounds of heredity than the pariah, spend no more money on the brahmin's education, but spend all on the pariah. Give to the weak, for there all the gift is needed. If the brahmin is born clever, he can educate himself without help. This is justice and reason as I understand it.' (From 'The Mission of the Vedanta.')
'For the next fifty years let all other vain Gods disappear from our minds. This is the only God that is awake: our own race — everywhere His hands, everywhere His feet, everywhere His ears, He covers everything. All other Gods are sleeping. Why should we vainly go after them, when we can worship the God that we see all around us, the Virat? The first of all worships is the worship of the Virat, of those all around us. These are all our Gods — men and animals; and the first Gods we have to worship are our own countrymen.' (From 'The Future of India.')
'Ay, let every man and woman and child, without respect of caste or birth, weakness or strength, hear and learn that behind the strong and the weak, behind the high and the low, behind everyone, there is that Infinite Soul, assuring all the infinite possibility and the infinite capacity to become great and good. Let us proclaim to every soul: Arise, arise, awake! Awake from this hypnotism of weakness. None is really weak; the soul is infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient. Stand up, assert yourself, proclaim the God within you, do not deny Him!' (Extracts from 'The Mission of the Vedanta.')
'It is a man-making religion that we want. It is a man-making education all round that we want. It is man-making theories that we want. And here is the test of truth: Anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually, and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in it, it cannot be true. Truth is strengthening. Truth is purity, truth is all knowledge. Truth must be strengthening, must be enlightening, must be invigorating. Give up these weakening mysticisms and be strong. The greatest truths are the simplest things in the world, simple as your own existence.
'Therefore my plan is to start institutions in India to train our young men as preachers of the truths of our scriptures in India and outside India. Men, men — these are wanted : everything else will be ready; but strong, vigorous, believing young men, sincere to the backbone, are wanted. A hundred such and the world becomes revolutionized. The will is stronger than anything else. Everything must go down before the will, for that comes from God: a pure and strong will is omnipotent.' (Extracts from 'My Plan of Campaign.')
'If the brahmin has more aptitude for learning on the grounds of heredity than the pariah, spend no more money on the brahmin's education, but spend all on the pariah. Give to the weak, for there all the gift is needed. If the brahmin is born clever, he can educate himself without help. This is justice and reason as I understand it.' (From 'The Mission of the Vedanta.')
'For the next fifty years let all other vain Gods disappear from our minds. This is the only God that is awake: our own race — everywhere His hands, everywhere His feet, everywhere His ears, He covers everything. All other Gods are sleeping. Why should we vainly go after them, when we can worship the God that we see all around us, the Virat? The first of all worships is the worship of the Virat, of those all around us. These are all our Gods — men and animals; and the first Gods we have to worship are our own countrymen.' (From 'The Future of India.')
These stirring words did not fall on deaf ears. The spirit of India vibrated to the Swami's call. India became aware of the power of the soul — of God sleeping in man and of His illimitable possibilities. Ramakrishna and Vivekananda were the first awakeners of India's national consciousness; they were India's first nationalist leaders in the true sense of the term. Ramakrishna was the power and Vivekananda the voice. The movement for India's liberation started from Dakshineswar. The subsequent political leaders of the country, consciously or unconsciously, received their inspiration from Vivekananda's message, and some of them openly acknowledged it. The Bengal revolutionaries were ardent readers of Vivekananda's books, some of which were frowned upon by the British Government. The uplift of the masses, the chief plank in Gandhi's platforms was Vivekananda's legacy.
Yet the militant Vivekananda was not a politician. 'Let no political significance ever be attached falsely to my writings or sayings. What nonsense!' — he had said as early as September 1894. A year later he wrote: 'I will have nothing to do with political nonsense. I do not believe in politics. God and Truth are the only politics in the world. Everything else is trash.'
Swami Vivekananda longed for India's political freedom; but he thought of a free India in relation to her service to humanity. A free India would take her rightful place in the assembly of nations and make a vital contribution towards bringing peace and goodwill to mankind. His message was both national and international.
While Swami Vivekananda was enjoying the restful boat trip from Madras to Calcutta, a reception committee was busy preparing for him a fitting welcome in the metropolis of India, the city of his birth. The steamer docked at Budge Budge, and the Swami and his party arrived by train in Calcutta on February 19, 1897. The reception was magnificent, with an enthusiastic crowd at the railroad station, triumphal arches, the unharnessed carriage drawn by students, and a huge procession with music and religious songs. A princely residence on the bank of the Ganga was placed at the Swami's disposal.
On February 28, 1897, he was given a public reception. Raja Benoy Krishna Deb presided, and five thousand people jammed the meeting. As usual, the Swami asked the people to go back to the perennial philosophy of the Upanishads. He also paid a touching tribute to Ramakrishna, 'my teacher, my master, my hero, my ideal, my God in life.' 'If there has been anything achieved by me,' he said with deep feeling, 'by thoughts or words or deeds, if from my lips has ever fallen one word that has ever helped anyone in the world, I lay no claim to it; it was his. But if there have been curses falling from my lips, if there has been hatred coming out of me, it is all mine, and not his. All that has been weak has been mine; all that has been life-giving, strengthening, pure, and holy has been his inspiration, his words, and he himself. Yes, my friends, the world has yet to know that man.' A few days after, he gave another public lecture on 'Vedanta in All Its Phases.'
Shortly after the Swami's arrival in Calcutta the anniversary of Sri Ramakrishna's birth was celebrated at Dakshineswar. Accompanied by his brother disciples, the Swami joined the festival. He walked barefoot in the holy grounds. Deep emotions were stirred up as he visited the temples, the Master's room, the Panchavati, and other spots associated with the memory of Sri Ramakrishna. The place was a sea of human heads.
The Swami said to Girish, a beloved disciple of the Master, 'Well, what a difference between those days and these!'
'I know,' replied Girish, 'but I have the desire to see more.'
For a little while the Swami spent his days at the palatial house on the river; nights, however, he spent with his spiritual brothers at the Alambazar monastery. He had hardly any rest. People streamed in at all times to pay him their respects or to hear his exposition of Vedanta, or just to see him. There were also people who came to argue with him on scriptural matters and to test his knowledge.
But the Swami's heart was with the educated, unmarried youths whom he could train for his future work. He longed to infuse into their hearts some of his own burning enthusiasm. He wanted them to become the preachers of his 'man-making religion.' The Swami deplored the physical weakness of Indian youths, denounced their early marriage, and reproached them for their lack of faith in themselves and in their national ideals.
One day a young man complained to the Swami that he could not make progress in spiritual life. He had worshipped images, following the advice of one teacher, and had tried to make his mind void according to the instruction of another, but all had been fruitless.
'Sir,' the young man said, 'I sit still in meditation, shutting the door of my room, and keep my eyes closed as long as I can, but I do not find peace of mind. Can you show me the way?'
'My boy,' replied the Swami in a voice full of loving sympathy, 'if you take my word, you will have first of all to open the door of your room and look around, instead of closing your eyes. There are hundreds of poor and helpless people in your neighbourhood; you have to serve them to the best of your ability. You will have to nurse and procure food and medicine for the sick. You will have to feed those who have nothing to eat. You will have to teach the ignorant. My advice to you is that if you want peace of mind, you shall have to serve others to the best of your ability.'
Another day a well-known college professor, who was a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, said to the Swami: 'You are talking of service, charity, and doing good to the world; these, after all, belong to the domain of maya. Vedanta says that the goal of man is the attainment of mukti, liberation, through breaking the chain of maya. What is the use of preaching about things which keep one's mind on mundane matters?'
The Swami replied: 'Is not the idea of mukti in the domain of maya? Does not Vedanta teach that the Atman is ever free? Why should It, then, strive for mukti?'
He said on another occasion: 'When I used to roam about all over India, practising spiritual disciplines. I passed day after day in caves absorbed in meditation. Many a time I decided to starve myself to death because I could not attain mukti. Now I have no desire for mukti. I do not care for it as long as a single individual in the universe remains in bondage.'
Swami Vivekananda often used to say that different forms of spiritual discipline were especially efficacious for different ages. At one period it was the practice of austerities, at another period, the cultivation of divine love; and at a third period, it was philosophical discrimination accompanied by renunciation. But in modern times, he emphasized, unselfish service of others, karma-yoga, would quickly bring spiritual results. Therefore he advocated the discipline of selfless action. He particularly advocated this discipline for the Indians because they were under the spell of tamas, inertia. The Swami realized that only after cultivating rajas would they be able to acquire sattva and attain liberations. As regards himself, the Swami had already known mukti through the realization of oneness with Brahman in nirvikalpa samadhi. But by the will of God he had brought himself down to consciousness of the phenomenal world, and lived like a bodhisattva, devoting himself to the welfare of humanity.
Swami Vivekananda found it most difficult to convert some of his own brother disciples to his new conception of religion and its discipline and method. These brother disciples were individualists, eager for their personal salvation. They wanted to practise austerities and penances, enjoy peaceful meditation, and lead a quiet life of detachment from the world. To them God was first, and next the world. At least that was the way they understood Sri Ramakrishna's teachings. These young monks thought that for one who had taken the monastic vows the world was maya; therefore all activities, including the charitable and philanthropic, ultimately entangled one in worldly life.
But Vivekananda's thought flowed through a different channel. Sri Ramakrishna had once admonished him to commune with God with eyes open, that is to say, through the service of the poor, the sick, the hungry, and the ignorant. During his days of wandering the Swami had seen with his own eyes the suffering of the people and had felt the voiceless appeal of India for his help. In America and Europe he had witnessed the material prosperity of the people, the dynamic social life, and the general progress made through science, technology, and organized action. Time and again he remembered the words of Ramakrishna: 'Religion is not for empty stomachs.'
To his brother disciples, therefore, he pointed out that the idea of personal liberation was unworthy of those who called themselves disciples of Ramakrishna, an Incarnation of God. The very fact that they had received the grace of a Saviour should have convinced them of their sure salvation. Their duty, he emphasized, was to serve others as the visible manifestations of God. He said that he wanted to create a new band of monks, who would take not only the traditional vow of personal salvation, but also a new vow of service to humanity.
The brother disciples, who respected the superior spirituality of Vivekananda and bore him great love as the one especially chosen by the Master to carry on his work, obeyed him without always agreeing with him wholeheartedly. Thus at his behest Swami Ramakrishnananda — who had been the keeper of Sri Ramakrishna's shrine for twelve long years after the passing away of the Master, regarding his worship as the supreme spiritual discipline, and had not been absent even for a single day from the monasteries at Baranagore and Alambazar — left for Madras to found a centre for the propagation of Vedanta in South India. Swami Akhandananda went to Murshidabad to carry on relief work among the famine-stricken people there. Swamis Abhedananda and Saradananda had already gone to America.
As for himself, Swami Vivekananda was constantly talking to people, instructing them in the Upanishads, and enjoining them to cultivate the inner strength that comes from the knowledge of God residing in all human hearts. The strain of work and the heat of the plains soon told upon his health. At the advice of physicians he went for a short change to Darjeeling, in the Himalayas, and felt somewhat refreshed. Returning to Calcutta he again devoted himself to the work of teaching.
Several young men, inspired by the Swami's fiery words, joined the Order. Four others, who had been practising disciplines in the monastery under the guidance of the older Swamis while Vivekananda was abroad, were now eager to receive the monastic initiation formally from their great leader. His brother disciples expressed hesitation about one of them, because of some incidents of his past life.
This aroused Swami Vivekananda's emotion. 'What is this?' he said. 'If we shrink from sinners, who else will save them? Besides, the very fact that someone has taken refuge at the monastery, in his desire to lead a better life, shows that his intentions are good, and we must help him. Suppose a man is bad and perverted; if you cannot change his character, why then have you put on the ochre robe of a monk? Why have you assumed the role of teachers?' All four received their monastic initiation.
On the day previous to this sacred ceremony the Swami spoke to them only about the glories of renunciation and service. He said: 'Remember, for the salvation of his soul and for the good and happiness of many, a sannyasin is born in the world. To sacrifice his own life for others, to alleviate the misery of millions rending the air with their cries, to wipe away tears from the eyes of widows, to console the hearts of bereaved mothers, to provide the ignorant and depressed masses with ways and means for the struggle for existence and make them stand on their own feet, to broadcast the teachings of the scriptures to one and all, without distinction, for their spiritual and material welfare, to rouse the sleeping lion of Brahman in the hearts of all beings by the knowledge of Vedanta — a sannyasin is born in the world.' Turning to his brother disciples the Swami said: 'Remember, it is for the consummation of this purpose in life that we have taken birth, and we shall lay down our lives for it. Arise and awake, arouse and awaken others, fulfil your mission in life, and you will reach the highest goal.' Then addressing the aspirants for the monastic life he said: 'You must renounce everything. You must not seek comfort or pleasure for yourself. You must look upon gold and objects of lust as poison, name and fame as the vilest filth, worldly glory as a terrible hell, pride of birth or of social position as "sinful as drinking spirituous liquor." In order to be teachers of your fellow men, and for the good of the world, you will have to attain freedom through the knowledge of the Self.'
From the following incident one can learn the depths of the Swami's compassion. Many inmates of the Math thought that he was not very discriminating in the choice of his disciples. Almost anyone could obtain spiritual initiation from him after a little supplication, and some of them were found later to indulge in wicked actions. One of his own monastic disciples, Swami Nirmalananda, spoke to him about his lack of proper judgement and his inability to understand human nature. The Swami's face became red with emotion. He exclaimed: 'What did you say? You think that I do not understand human nature? About these unfortunate people I know not only all they have done in their present lives, but also what they did in their previous ones. I am fully aware of what they will do in the future. Then why do I show kindness to them? These hapless people have knocked at many doors for peace of mind and a word of encouragement, but everywhere have been repulsed. If I turn them down they will have no place to go.'
Another incident indicating the tender and compassionate heart of Swami Vivekananda may be mentioned here. One day he was engaged in teaching a disciple the Vedas, with the abstruse commentary of Sayanacharya, when Girish Chandra Ghosh, the great playwright of Bengal and an intimate disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, arrived. By way of teasing him, the Swami said, addressing him by his familiar name: 'Well, G. C., you have spent your whole life with Krishna and Vishnu.* You are quite innocent of the Vedas and other scriptures.'
Girish Chandra admitted his ignorance of the scriptures and said, 'Hail Sri Ramakrishna, the very embodiment of the Vedas!'
An adept in the knowledge of human nature, Girish was well aware that Swami Vivekananda, in spite of his preaching the austere philosophy of Vedanta, had a heart that was tender in the extreme. He wanted to reveal that side of the Swami's nature before the disciple, and began to paint, in his usual poetic language, a heart-rending picture of the afflictions of the Indian people — the starvation of the masses, the humiliation of Hindu women, the ill-health and general suffering of the people everywhere. Suddenly, addressing the Swami, he said, 'Now please tell me, do your Vedas teach us how to remedy this state of affairs?'
As the Swami listened to his friend's words, he could hardly suppress his emotion. At last it broke all bounds and he burst into tears.
Drawing the attention of the Swami's disciple to the great leader, Girish Chandra said: 'Perhaps you have always admired your teacher's intellect. Now you see his great heart.'
On May 1, 1897, Swami Vivekananda called a meeting of the monastic and lay devotees of Sri Ramakrishna at the house of the Master's intimate disciple Balaram Bose, for the purpose of establishing his work on an organized basis. He told them that by contrasting Hindu society with American society, he was convinced that lack of an organizing spirit was one of the great shortcomings of the Hindu character. Much of the intelligence and energy of the Hindus was being expended without producing any fruitful result. He also recalled how Buddhism had spread both in India and abroad through Buddhist organizations. Therefore he asked the co-operation of the monastic and householder disciples of Sri Ramakrishna in order to organize the educational, philanthropic, and religious activities which he had already inaugurated, but which had hitherto been carried out in an unsystematic way. Further, the Swami declared that in a country like India, in its then current state of development, it would not be wise to form an organization on a democratic basis, where each member had an equal voice and decisions were made according to the vote of the majority. Democratic principles could be followed later, when, with the spread of education, people would learn to sacrifice individual interests and personal prejudices for the public weal. Therefore, said the Swami, the organization for the time being should be under the leadership of a 'dictator,' whose authority everybody must obey. In the fullness of time, it would come to be guided by the opinion and consent of others. Moreover, he himself was only acting in the capacity of a servant of the common Master, as were they all.*
Swami Vivekananda proposed to the members present that the Association should 'bear the name of him in whose name we have become sannyasins, taking whom as your ideal you are leading the life of householders, and whose holy name, influence, and teachings have, within twelve years of his passing away, spread in such an unthought-of way both in the East and in the West.' All the members enthusiastically approved of the Swami's proposal, and the Ramakrishna Mission Association came into existence.
The aim of the Association was to spread the truths that Ramakrishna, for the good of humanity, had preached and taught through the example of his own life, and to help others to put them into practice for their physical, mental, and spiritual advancement.
The duty of the Association was to direct, in the right spirit, the activities of the movement inaugurated by Sri Ramakrishna for the establishment of fellowship among the followers of different religions, knowing them all to be so many forms of one undying Eternal Religion.
While Swami Vivekananda was enjoying the restful boat trip from Madras to Calcutta, a reception committee was busy preparing for him a fitting welcome in the metropolis of India, the city of his birth. The steamer docked at Budge Budge, and the Swami and his party arrived by train in Calcutta on February 19, 1897. The reception was magnificent, with an enthusiastic crowd at the railroad station, triumphal arches, the unharnessed carriage drawn by students, and a huge procession with music and religious songs. A princely residence on the bank of the Ganga was placed at the Swami's disposal.
On February 28, 1897, he was given a public reception. Raja Benoy Krishna Deb presided, and five thousand people jammed the meeting. As usual, the Swami asked the people to go back to the perennial philosophy of the Upanishads. He also paid a touching tribute to Ramakrishna, 'my teacher, my master, my hero, my ideal, my God in life.' 'If there has been anything achieved by me,' he said with deep feeling, 'by thoughts or words or deeds, if from my lips has ever fallen one word that has ever helped anyone in the world, I lay no claim to it; it was his. But if there have been curses falling from my lips, if there has been hatred coming out of me, it is all mine, and not his. All that has been weak has been mine; all that has been life-giving, strengthening, pure, and holy has been his inspiration, his words, and he himself. Yes, my friends, the world has yet to know that man.' A few days after, he gave another public lecture on 'Vedanta in All Its Phases.'
Shortly after the Swami's arrival in Calcutta the anniversary of Sri Ramakrishna's birth was celebrated at Dakshineswar. Accompanied by his brother disciples, the Swami joined the festival. He walked barefoot in the holy grounds. Deep emotions were stirred up as he visited the temples, the Master's room, the Panchavati, and other spots associated with the memory of Sri Ramakrishna. The place was a sea of human heads.
The Swami said to Girish, a beloved disciple of the Master, 'Well, what a difference between those days and these!'
'I know,' replied Girish, 'but I have the desire to see more.'
For a little while the Swami spent his days at the palatial house on the river; nights, however, he spent with his spiritual brothers at the Alambazar monastery. He had hardly any rest. People streamed in at all times to pay him their respects or to hear his exposition of Vedanta, or just to see him. There were also people who came to argue with him on scriptural matters and to test his knowledge.
But the Swami's heart was with the educated, unmarried youths whom he could train for his future work. He longed to infuse into their hearts some of his own burning enthusiasm. He wanted them to become the preachers of his 'man-making religion.' The Swami deplored the physical weakness of Indian youths, denounced their early marriage, and reproached them for their lack of faith in themselves and in their national ideals.
One day a young man complained to the Swami that he could not make progress in spiritual life. He had worshipped images, following the advice of one teacher, and had tried to make his mind void according to the instruction of another, but all had been fruitless.
'Sir,' the young man said, 'I sit still in meditation, shutting the door of my room, and keep my eyes closed as long as I can, but I do not find peace of mind. Can you show me the way?'
'My boy,' replied the Swami in a voice full of loving sympathy, 'if you take my word, you will have first of all to open the door of your room and look around, instead of closing your eyes. There are hundreds of poor and helpless people in your neighbourhood; you have to serve them to the best of your ability. You will have to nurse and procure food and medicine for the sick. You will have to feed those who have nothing to eat. You will have to teach the ignorant. My advice to you is that if you want peace of mind, you shall have to serve others to the best of your ability.'
Another day a well-known college professor, who was a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, said to the Swami: 'You are talking of service, charity, and doing good to the world; these, after all, belong to the domain of maya. Vedanta says that the goal of man is the attainment of mukti, liberation, through breaking the chain of maya. What is the use of preaching about things which keep one's mind on mundane matters?'
The Swami replied: 'Is not the idea of mukti in the domain of maya? Does not Vedanta teach that the Atman is ever free? Why should It, then, strive for mukti?'
He said on another occasion: 'When I used to roam about all over India, practising spiritual disciplines. I passed day after day in caves absorbed in meditation. Many a time I decided to starve myself to death because I could not attain mukti. Now I have no desire for mukti. I do not care for it as long as a single individual in the universe remains in bondage.'
Swami Vivekananda often used to say that different forms of spiritual discipline were especially efficacious for different ages. At one period it was the practice of austerities, at another period, the cultivation of divine love; and at a third period, it was philosophical discrimination accompanied by renunciation. But in modern times, he emphasized, unselfish service of others, karma-yoga, would quickly bring spiritual results. Therefore he advocated the discipline of selfless action. He particularly advocated this discipline for the Indians because they were under the spell of tamas, inertia. The Swami realized that only after cultivating rajas would they be able to acquire sattva and attain liberations. As regards himself, the Swami had already known mukti through the realization of oneness with Brahman in nirvikalpa samadhi. But by the will of God he had brought himself down to consciousness of the phenomenal world, and lived like a bodhisattva, devoting himself to the welfare of humanity.
Swami Vivekananda found it most difficult to convert some of his own brother disciples to his new conception of religion and its discipline and method. These brother disciples were individualists, eager for their personal salvation. They wanted to practise austerities and penances, enjoy peaceful meditation, and lead a quiet life of detachment from the world. To them God was first, and next the world. At least that was the way they understood Sri Ramakrishna's teachings. These young monks thought that for one who had taken the monastic vows the world was maya; therefore all activities, including the charitable and philanthropic, ultimately entangled one in worldly life.
But Vivekananda's thought flowed through a different channel. Sri Ramakrishna had once admonished him to commune with God with eyes open, that is to say, through the service of the poor, the sick, the hungry, and the ignorant. During his days of wandering the Swami had seen with his own eyes the suffering of the people and had felt the voiceless appeal of India for his help. In America and Europe he had witnessed the material prosperity of the people, the dynamic social life, and the general progress made through science, technology, and organized action. Time and again he remembered the words of Ramakrishna: 'Religion is not for empty stomachs.'
To his brother disciples, therefore, he pointed out that the idea of personal liberation was unworthy of those who called themselves disciples of Ramakrishna, an Incarnation of God. The very fact that they had received the grace of a Saviour should have convinced them of their sure salvation. Their duty, he emphasized, was to serve others as the visible manifestations of God. He said that he wanted to create a new band of monks, who would take not only the traditional vow of personal salvation, but also a new vow of service to humanity.
The brother disciples, who respected the superior spirituality of Vivekananda and bore him great love as the one especially chosen by the Master to carry on his work, obeyed him without always agreeing with him wholeheartedly. Thus at his behest Swami Ramakrishnananda — who had been the keeper of Sri Ramakrishna's shrine for twelve long years after the passing away of the Master, regarding his worship as the supreme spiritual discipline, and had not been absent even for a single day from the monasteries at Baranagore and Alambazar — left for Madras to found a centre for the propagation of Vedanta in South India. Swami Akhandananda went to Murshidabad to carry on relief work among the famine-stricken people there. Swamis Abhedananda and Saradananda had already gone to America.
As for himself, Swami Vivekananda was constantly talking to people, instructing them in the Upanishads, and enjoining them to cultivate the inner strength that comes from the knowledge of God residing in all human hearts. The strain of work and the heat of the plains soon told upon his health. At the advice of physicians he went for a short change to Darjeeling, in the Himalayas, and felt somewhat refreshed. Returning to Calcutta he again devoted himself to the work of teaching.
Several young men, inspired by the Swami's fiery words, joined the Order. Four others, who had been practising disciplines in the monastery under the guidance of the older Swamis while Vivekananda was abroad, were now eager to receive the monastic initiation formally from their great leader. His brother disciples expressed hesitation about one of them, because of some incidents of his past life.
This aroused Swami Vivekananda's emotion. 'What is this?' he said. 'If we shrink from sinners, who else will save them? Besides, the very fact that someone has taken refuge at the monastery, in his desire to lead a better life, shows that his intentions are good, and we must help him. Suppose a man is bad and perverted; if you cannot change his character, why then have you put on the ochre robe of a monk? Why have you assumed the role of teachers?' All four received their monastic initiation.
On the day previous to this sacred ceremony the Swami spoke to them only about the glories of renunciation and service. He said: 'Remember, for the salvation of his soul and for the good and happiness of many, a sannyasin is born in the world. To sacrifice his own life for others, to alleviate the misery of millions rending the air with their cries, to wipe away tears from the eyes of widows, to console the hearts of bereaved mothers, to provide the ignorant and depressed masses with ways and means for the struggle for existence and make them stand on their own feet, to broadcast the teachings of the scriptures to one and all, without distinction, for their spiritual and material welfare, to rouse the sleeping lion of Brahman in the hearts of all beings by the knowledge of Vedanta — a sannyasin is born in the world.' Turning to his brother disciples the Swami said: 'Remember, it is for the consummation of this purpose in life that we have taken birth, and we shall lay down our lives for it. Arise and awake, arouse and awaken others, fulfil your mission in life, and you will reach the highest goal.' Then addressing the aspirants for the monastic life he said: 'You must renounce everything. You must not seek comfort or pleasure for yourself. You must look upon gold and objects of lust as poison, name and fame as the vilest filth, worldly glory as a terrible hell, pride of birth or of social position as "sinful as drinking spirituous liquor." In order to be teachers of your fellow men, and for the good of the world, you will have to attain freedom through the knowledge of the Self.'
From the following incident one can learn the depths of the Swami's compassion. Many inmates of the Math thought that he was not very discriminating in the choice of his disciples. Almost anyone could obtain spiritual initiation from him after a little supplication, and some of them were found later to indulge in wicked actions. One of his own monastic disciples, Swami Nirmalananda, spoke to him about his lack of proper judgement and his inability to understand human nature. The Swami's face became red with emotion. He exclaimed: 'What did you say? You think that I do not understand human nature? About these unfortunate people I know not only all they have done in their present lives, but also what they did in their previous ones. I am fully aware of what they will do in the future. Then why do I show kindness to them? These hapless people have knocked at many doors for peace of mind and a word of encouragement, but everywhere have been repulsed. If I turn them down they will have no place to go.'
Another incident indicating the tender and compassionate heart of Swami Vivekananda may be mentioned here. One day he was engaged in teaching a disciple the Vedas, with the abstruse commentary of Sayanacharya, when Girish Chandra Ghosh, the great playwright of Bengal and an intimate disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, arrived. By way of teasing him, the Swami said, addressing him by his familiar name: 'Well, G. C., you have spent your whole life with Krishna and Vishnu.* You are quite innocent of the Vedas and other scriptures.'
Girish Chandra admitted his ignorance of the scriptures and said, 'Hail Sri Ramakrishna, the very embodiment of the Vedas!'
An adept in the knowledge of human nature, Girish was well aware that Swami Vivekananda, in spite of his preaching the austere philosophy of Vedanta, had a heart that was tender in the extreme. He wanted to reveal that side of the Swami's nature before the disciple, and began to paint, in his usual poetic language, a heart-rending picture of the afflictions of the Indian people — the starvation of the masses, the humiliation of Hindu women, the ill-health and general suffering of the people everywhere. Suddenly, addressing the Swami, he said, 'Now please tell me, do your Vedas teach us how to remedy this state of affairs?'
As the Swami listened to his friend's words, he could hardly suppress his emotion. At last it broke all bounds and he burst into tears.
Drawing the attention of the Swami's disciple to the great leader, Girish Chandra said: 'Perhaps you have always admired your teacher's intellect. Now you see his great heart.'
On May 1, 1897, Swami Vivekananda called a meeting of the monastic and lay devotees of Sri Ramakrishna at the house of the Master's intimate disciple Balaram Bose, for the purpose of establishing his work on an organized basis. He told them that by contrasting Hindu society with American society, he was convinced that lack of an organizing spirit was one of the great shortcomings of the Hindu character. Much of the intelligence and energy of the Hindus was being expended without producing any fruitful result. He also recalled how Buddhism had spread both in India and abroad through Buddhist organizations. Therefore he asked the co-operation of the monastic and householder disciples of Sri Ramakrishna in order to organize the educational, philanthropic, and religious activities which he had already inaugurated, but which had hitherto been carried out in an unsystematic way. Further, the Swami declared that in a country like India, in its then current state of development, it would not be wise to form an organization on a democratic basis, where each member had an equal voice and decisions were made according to the vote of the majority. Democratic principles could be followed later, when, with the spread of education, people would learn to sacrifice individual interests and personal prejudices for the public weal. Therefore, said the Swami, the organization for the time being should be under the leadership of a 'dictator,' whose authority everybody must obey. In the fullness of time, it would come to be guided by the opinion and consent of others. Moreover, he himself was only acting in the capacity of a servant of the common Master, as were they all.*
Swami Vivekananda proposed to the members present that the Association should 'bear the name of him in whose name we have become sannyasins, taking whom as your ideal you are leading the life of householders, and whose holy name, influence, and teachings have, within twelve years of his passing away, spread in such an unthought-of way both in the East and in the West.' All the members enthusiastically approved of the Swami's proposal, and the Ramakrishna Mission Association came into existence.
The aim of the Association was to spread the truths that Ramakrishna, for the good of humanity, had preached and taught through the example of his own life, and to help others to put them into practice for their physical, mental, and spiritual advancement.
The duty of the Association was to direct, in the right spirit, the activities of the movement inaugurated by Sri Ramakrishna for the establishment of fellowship among the followers of different religions, knowing them all to be so many forms of one undying Eternal Religion.
Its methods of action were to be: (a) to train men so as to make them competent to teach such knowledge and sciences as are conducive to the material and spiritual welfare of the masses; (b) to promote and encourage arts and industries; (c) to introduce and spread among the people in general Vedantic and other ideas as elucidated in the life of Sri Ramakrishna.
The Ramakrishna Mission Association was to have two departments of action: Indian and foreign. The former, through retreats and monasteries established in different parts of India, would train such monks and householders as might be willing to devote their lives to the teaching of others. The latter would send trained members of the Order to countries outside India to start centres there for the preaching of Vedanta in order to bring about a closer relationship and better understanding between India and foreign countries.
The aims and ideals of the Ramakrishna Mission Association, being purely spiritual and humanitarian, were to have no connexion with politics.
Swami Vivekananda must have felt a great inner satisfaction after the establishment of the Association. His vision of employing religion, through head, heart, and hands, for the welfare of man was realized. He found no essential conflict among science, religion, art, and industry. All could be used for the worship of God. God could be served as well through His diverse manifestations as through the contemplation of His non-dual aspect. Further, as the great heart of Ramakrishna had embraced all of mankind with its love, so also the Ramakrishna Mission was pledged to promote brotherhood among different faiths, since their harmony constituted the Eternal Religion.
Swami Vivekananda, the General President, made Brahmananda and Yogananda the President and the Vice-president of the Calcutta centre. Weekly meetings were organized at Balaram's house to discuss the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedanta scriptures, and religious subjects in general.*
Even now Swami Vivekananda could not completely convince some of his brother disciples about his new conception of religion, namely, the worship of God through the service of man. They had heard Sri Ramakrishna speak time and again against preaching, excessive study of the scriptures, and charitable activities, and exhort aspirants to intensify their love of God through prayer and meditation in solitude. Therefore they regarded Vivekananda's activities in the West as out of harmony with the Master's teachings. One of them said bluntly to the Swami, 'You did not preach our Master in America; you only preached yourself.' The Swami retorted with equal bluntness, 'Let people understand me first; then they will understand Sri Ramakrishna.'The Ramakrishna Mission Association was to have two departments of action: Indian and foreign. The former, through retreats and monasteries established in different parts of India, would train such monks and householders as might be willing to devote their lives to the teaching of others. The latter would send trained members of the Order to countries outside India to start centres there for the preaching of Vedanta in order to bring about a closer relationship and better understanding between India and foreign countries.
The aims and ideals of the Ramakrishna Mission Association, being purely spiritual and humanitarian, were to have no connexion with politics.
Swami Vivekananda must have felt a great inner satisfaction after the establishment of the Association. His vision of employing religion, through head, heart, and hands, for the welfare of man was realized. He found no essential conflict among science, religion, art, and industry. All could be used for the worship of God. God could be served as well through His diverse manifestations as through the contemplation of His non-dual aspect. Further, as the great heart of Ramakrishna had embraced all of mankind with its love, so also the Ramakrishna Mission was pledged to promote brotherhood among different faiths, since their harmony constituted the Eternal Religion.
Swami Vivekananda, the General President, made Brahmananda and Yogananda the President and the Vice-president of the Calcutta centre. Weekly meetings were organized at Balaram's house to discuss the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedanta scriptures, and religious subjects in general.*
On one occasion Swami Vivekananda felt that some of these brother disciples wanted to create a narrow sect in the name of Ramakrishna and turn the Ramakrishna Math into a cult of the Temple, where the religious activities would centre around devotional music, worship, and prayer alone. His words burst upon them like a bomb-shell. He asked them how they knew that his ideas were not in keeping with those of Sri Ramakrishna. 'Do you want,' he said, 'to shut Sri Ramakrishna, the embodiment of infinite ideas, within your own limits? I shall break these limits and scatter his ideas broadcast all over the world. He never enjoined me to introduce his worship and the like.'
Had it not been demonstrated to Vivekananda time and again that Sri Ramakrishna was behind him in all his actions? He knew that through the Master's grace alone he had come out triumphant from all ordeals, whether in the wilderness of India or in the busy streets of Chicago.
'Sri Ramakrishna,' the Swami continued, 'is far greater than the disciples understand him to be. He is the embodiment of infinite spiritual ideas capable of development in infinite ways....One glance of his gracious eyes can create a hundred thousand Vivekanandas at this instant. If he chooses now, instead, to work through me, making me his instrument, I can only bow to his will.'
Vivekananda took great care lest sentimentalism and narrowness in one form or another should creep in, for he detested these from the bottom of his heart.
But things came to a climax one day at Balaram's house in Calcutta, when Swami Yogananda, a brother disciple whom Sri Ramakrishna had pointed out as belonging to his 'inner circle' of devotees, said that the Master had emphasized bhakti alone for spiritual seekers and that philanthropic activities, organizations, homes of service for the public good, and patriotic work were the Swami's own peculiar ideas, the result of his Western education and travel in Europe and America.
The Swami at first retorted to his brother with a sort of rough humour. He said: 'What do you know? You are an ignorant man....What do you understand of religion? You are only good at praying with folded hands: "O Lord! how beautiful is Your nose! How sweet are Your eyes!" and all such nonsense....And you think your salvation is secured and Sri Ramakrishna will come at the final hour and take you by the hand to the highest heaven! Study, public preaching, and doing humanitarian works are, according to you, maya, because he said to someone, "Seek and find God first; doing good to the world is a presumption!" As if God is such an easy thing to be achieved! As if He is such a fool as to make Himself a plaything in the hands of an imbecile!
'You think you have understood Sri Ramakrishna better than myself! You think jnana is dry knowledge to be attained by a desert path, killing out the tenderest faculties of the heart! Your bhakti is sentimental nonsense which makes one impotent. You want to preach Sri Ramakrishna as you have understood him, which is mighty little! Hands off! Who cares for your Ramakrishna? Who cares for your bhakti and mukti? Who cares what your scriptures say? I will go into a thousand hells cheerfully if I can rouse my countrymen, immersed in tamas, to stand on their own feet and be men inspired with the spirit of karma-yoga. I am not a follower of Ramakrishna or anyone, but of him only who serves and helps others without caring for his own bhakti and mukti!'
The Swami's voice was choked with emotion, his body shook, and his eyes flashed fire. Quickly he went to the next room. A few moments later some of his brother disciples entered the room and found him absorbed in meditation, tears flowing from his half-closed eyes. After nearly an hour the Swami got up, washed his face, and joined his spiritual brothers in the drawing-room. His features still showed traces of the violent storm through which he had just passed; but he had recovered his calmness. He said to them softly:
'When a man attains bhakti, his heart and nerves become so soft and delicate that he cannot bear even the touch of a flower!...I cannot think or talk of Sri Ramakrishna long without being overwhelmed. So I am always trying to bind myself with the iron chains of jnana, for still my work for my motherland is unfinished and my message to the world not fully delivered. So as soon as I find that those feelings of bhakti are trying to come up and sweep me off my feet, I give a hard knock to them and make myself firm and adamant by bringing up austere jnana. Oh, I have work to do! I am a slave of Ramakrishna, who left his work to be done by me and will not give me rest till I have finished it. And oh, how shall I speak of him? Oh, his love for me!'
He was again about to enter into an ecstatic mood, when Swami Yogananda and the others changed the conversation, took him on the roof for a stroll, and tried to divert his mind by small talk. They felt that Vivekananda's inmost soul had been aroused, and they remembered the Master's saying that the day Naren knew who he was, he would not live in this body. So from that day the brother disciples did not again criticize the Swami's method, knowing fully well that the Master alone was working through him.
From this incident one sees how Vivekananda, in his inmost heart, relished bhakti, the love of God. But in his public utterances he urged the Indians to keep their emotionalism under control; he emphasized the study of Vedanta, because he saw in it a sovereign tonic to revivify them. He further prescribed for his countrymen both manual and spiritual work, scientific research, and service to men. Vivekananda's mission was to infuse energy and faith into a nation of 'dyspeptics' held under the spell of their own sentimentality. He wished in all fields of activity to awaken that austere elevation of spirit which arouses heroism.
As with his Master, the natural tendency of Vivekananda's mind was to be absorbed in contemplation of the Absolute. Again, like Sri Ramakrishna, he had to bring down his mind forcibly to the consciousness of the world in order to render service to men. Thus he kept a balance between the burning love of the Absolute and the irresistible appeal of suffering humanity. And what makes Swami Vivekananda the patriot saint of modern India and at the same time endears him so much to the West is that at the times when he had to make a choice between the two, it was always the appeal of suffering humanity that won the day. He cheerfully sacrificed the bliss of samadhi to the amelioration of the suffering of men. The Swami's spirit acted like a contagion upon his brother disciples. One of them, Akhandananda, as stated before, fed and nursed the sufferers from famine at Murshidabad, in Bengal; another, Trigunatita, in 1897 opened a famine-relief centre at Dinajpur. Other centres were established at Deoghar, Dakshineswar and Calcutta.
Swami Vivekananda was overjoyed to see the happy beginning of his work in India. To Mary Hale he wrote on July 9, 1897:
Only one idea was burning in my brain — to start the machine for elevating the Indian masses, and that I have succeeded in doing to a certain extent.
It would have made your heart glad to see how my boys are working in the midst of famine and disease and misery — nursing by the mat-bed of the cholera-stricken pariah and feeding the starving chandala, and the Lord sends help to me, to them, to all....He is with me, the Beloved, and He was when I was in America, in England, when I was roaming about unknown from place to place in India. What do I care about what they say?* The babies — they do not know any better. What? I, who have realized the Spirit, and the vanity of all earthly nonsense, to be swerved from my path by babies' prattle? Do I look like that?...I feel my task is done — at most three or four years more of life are left....I have lost all wish for my salvation. I never wanted earthly enjoyments. I must see my machine in strong working order, and then, knowing for sure that I have put in a lever for the good of humanity, in India at least which no power can drive back, I will sleep without caring what will be next.
And may I be born again and again, and suffer thousands of miseries, so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all souls. And above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all species, is the especial object of my worship.
It would have made your heart glad to see how my boys are working in the midst of famine and disease and misery — nursing by the mat-bed of the cholera-stricken pariah and feeding the starving chandala, and the Lord sends help to me, to them, to all....He is with me, the Beloved, and He was when I was in America, in England, when I was roaming about unknown from place to place in India. What do I care about what they say?* The babies — they do not know any better. What? I, who have realized the Spirit, and the vanity of all earthly nonsense, to be swerved from my path by babies' prattle? Do I look like that?...I feel my task is done — at most three or four years more of life are left....I have lost all wish for my salvation. I never wanted earthly enjoyments. I must see my machine in strong working order, and then, knowing for sure that I have put in a lever for the good of humanity, in India at least which no power can drive back, I will sleep without caring what will be next.
And may I be born again and again, and suffer thousands of miseries, so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all souls. And above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all species, is the especial object of my worship.
Biography of Swami Vivekananda - In Northern India
From May 1897 to the end of that year, the Swami travelled and lectured extensively in Northern India. The physicians had advised him to go as soon as possible to Almora, where the air was dry and cool, and he had been invited by prominent people in Northern India to give discourses on Hinduism. Accompanied by some of his brother disciples and his own disciples, he left Calcutta, and he was joined later by the Seviers, Miss Müller, and Goodwin.
In Lucknow he was given a cordial welcome. The sight of the Himalayas in Almora brought him inner peace and filled his mind with the spirit of detachment and exaltation of which these great mountains are the symbol. But his peace was disturbed for a moment when he received letters from American disciples about the malicious reports against his character spread by Christian missionaries, including Dr. Barrows of the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. Evidently they had become jealous of the Swami's popularity in India. Dr. Barrows told the Americans that the report of the Swami's reception in India was greatly exaggerated. He accused the Swami of being a liar and remarked: "I could never tell whether to take him seriously or not. He struck me as being a Hindu Mark Twain. He is a man of genius and has some following, though only temporary."
The Swami was grieved. At his request the people of Madras had given Dr. Barrows a big reception, but the missionary, lacking religious universalism, had not made much of an impression.
In a mood of weariness the Swami wrote to a friend on June 3, 1897:
As for myself, I am quite content. I have roused a good many of our people, and that was all I wanted. Let things have their course and karma its sway. I have no bonds here below. I have seen life, and it is all self — life is for self, love is for self, honour for self, everything for self. I look back and scarcely find any action I have done for self — even my wicked deeds were not for self. So I am content — not that I feel I have done anything especially good or great, but the world is so little, life so mean a thing, existence so, so servile, that I wonder and smile that human beings, rational souls, should be running after this self — so mean and detestable a prize.
This is the truth. We are caught in a trap, and the sooner one gets out the better for one. I have seen the truth — let the body float up or down, who cares?...
I was born for the life of a scholar — retired, quiet, poring over my books. But the Mother dispensed otherwise. Yet the tendency is there.
In Almora the Swamiji's health improved greatly. On May 29 he wrote to a friend: 'I began to take a lot of exercise on horseback, both morning and evening. Since then I have been very much better indeed....I really began to feel that it was a pleasure to have a body. Every movement made me conscious of strength — every movement of the muscles was pleasurable....You ought to see me, Doctor, when I sit meditating in front of the beautiful snow-peaks and repeat from the Upanishads: "He has neither disease, nor decay, nor death; for verily, he has obtained a body full of the fire of yoga."'
He was delighted to get the report that his disciples and spiritual brothers were plunging heart and soul into various philanthropic and missionary activities.
From Almora he went on a whirlwind tour of the Punjab and Kashmir, sowing everywhere the seeds of rejuvenated Hinduism. In Bareilly he encouraged the students to organize themselves to carry on the work of practical Vedanta. In Ambala he was happy to see his beloved disciples Mr. and Mrs. Sevier. After spending a few days in Amritsar, Dharamsala, and Murree, he went to Kashmir.
In Jammu the Swami had a long interview with the Maharaja and discussed with him the possibility of founding in Kashmir a monastery for giving young people training in non-dualism. In the course of the conversation he sadly remarked how the present-day Hindus had deviated from the ideals of their forefathers, and how people were clinging to various superstitions in the name of religion. He said that in olden days people were not outcasted even when they committed such real sins as adultery, and the like; whereas nowadays one became untouchable simply by violating the rules about food.
On the same topic he said a few months later, at Khetri: 'The people are neither Hindus nor Vedantins — they are merely "don't touchists"; the kitchen is their temple and cooking-pots are their objects of worship. This state of things must go. The sooner it is given up, the better for our religion. Let the Upanishads shine in their glory, and at the same time let not quarrels exist among different sects.'
In Lahore the Swami gave a number of lectures, among which was his famous speech on the Vedanta philosophy, lasting over two hours. He urged the students of Lahore to cultivate faith in man as a preparation for faith in God. He asked them to form an organization, purely non-sectarian in character, to teach hygiene to the poor, spread education among them, and nurse the sick. One of his missions in the Punjab was to establish harmony among people belonging to different sects, such as the Arya Samajists and the orthodox Hindus. It was in Lahore that the Swami met Mr. Tirtha Ram Goswami, then a professor of mathematics, who eventually gained wide recognition as Swami Ram Tirtha. The professor became an ardent admirer of Swami Vivekananda.
Next the Swami travelled to Dehra-Dun, where, for the first ten days, he lived a rather quiet life. But soon he organized a daily class on the Hindu scriptures for his disciples and companions, which he continued to conduct during the whole trip. At the earnest invitation of his beloved disciple the Raja of Khetri, he visited his capital, stopping on the way at Delhi and Alwar, which were familiar to him from his days of wandering prior to his going to America. Everywhere he met old friends and disciples and treated them with marked affection. The Raja of Khetri lavished great honours upon him and also gave him a handsome donation for the Belur Math, which was being built at that time.
Before returning to Calcutta, he visited Kishengarh, Ajmer, Jodhpur, Indore, and Khandwa and thus finished his lecture tour in North India. During this tour he explained to his fellow countrymen the salient features of Hinduism and told them that they would have a glorious future if they followed the heritage of their past. He emphasized that the resurgent nationalism of India must be based on her spiritual ideals, but that healthy scientific and technological knowledge from the West, also, had to be assimilated in the process of growth. The fundamental problem of India, he pointed out, was to organize the whole country around religious ideals. By religion the Swami meant not local customs which served only a contemporary purpose, but the eternal principles taught in the Vedas.
Wherever the Swami went he never wearied of trying to rebuild individual character in India, pointing out that the strength of the whole nation depended upon the strength of the individual. Therefore each individual, he urged, whatever might be his occupation, should try, if he desired the good of the nation as a whole, to build up his character and acquire such virtues as courage, strength, self-respect, love, and service of others. To the young men, especially, he held out renunciation and service as the hightest ideal. He preached the necessity of spreading a real knowledge of Sanskrit, without which a Hindu would remain an alien to his own rich culture. To promote unity among the Hindus, he encouraged intermarriage between castes and sub-castes, and wanted to reorganize the Indian universities so that they might produce real patriots, rather than clerks, lawyers, diplomats, and Government officials.
Swami Vivekananda's keen intellect saw the need of uniting the Hindus and Moslems on the basis of the Advaita philosophy, which teaches the oneness of all. One June 10, 1898, he wrote to a Moslem gentleman at Nainital:
The Hindus may get the credit for arriving at Advaitism earlier than other races, they being an older race than either the Hebrew or the Arab; yet practical Advaitism, which looks upon and behaves towards all mankind as one's own soul, is yet to be developed among the Hindus universally. On the other hand, our experience is that if ever the followers of any religion approach to this equality in an appreciable degree on the plane of practical work-a-day life — it may be quite unconscious generally of the deeper meaning and the underlying principle of such conduct, which the Hindus as a rule so clearly perceive — it is those of Islam and Islam alone.
Therefore we are firmly persuaded that without the help of practical Islam, the theories of Vedantism, however fine and wonderful they may be, are entierely valuless to the vast mass of mankind. We want to lead mankind to the place where there is neither the Vedas nor the Bible nor the Koran; yet this has to be done by harmonizing the Vedas, the Bible, and the Koran. Mankind ought to be taught that religions are but the varied expressions of the Religion which is Oneness, so that each may choose the path that suits him best.
For our own motherland a junction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islam — Vedantic brain and Islamic body — is the only hope. I see in my mind's eye the future perfect India rising out of this chaos and strife, glorious and invincible, with Vedantic brain and Islamic body.
For the regeneration of India, in the Swami's view, the help of the West was indispensable. The thought of India had been uppermost in his mind when he had journeyed to America. On April 6, 1897, the Swami, in the course of a letter to the lady editor of an Indian magazine, had written: 'It has been for the good of India that religious preaching in the West has been done and will be done. It has ever been my conviction that we shall not be able to rise unless the Western countries come to our help. In India no appreciation of merit can be found, no financial support, and what is most lamentable of all, there is not a bit of practicality.'
The year 1898 was chiefly devoted to the training of Vivekananda's disciples, both Indian and Western, and to the consolidation of the work already started. During this period he also made trips to Darjeeling, Almora, and Kashmir.
In February 1898, the monastery was removed from Alambazar to Nilambar Mukherjee's garden house in the village of Belur, on the west bank of the Ganga. The Swami, while in Calcutta, lived at Balaram Bose's house, which had been a favourite haunt of Shri Ramakrishna's during his lifetime. But he had no rest either in the monastery or in Calcutta, where streams of visitors came to him daily. Moreover, conducting a heavy correspondence consumed much of his time and energy; one can not but be amazed at the hundreds of letters the Swami wrote with his own hand to friends and disciples. Most of these reveal his intense thinking, and some his superb wit.
While at the monastery, he paid especial attention to the training of the sannyasins and the brahmacharins, who, inspired by his message, had renounced home and dedicated themselves to the realization of God and the service of humanity. Besides conducting regular classes on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the physical sciences, and the history of the nations, he would spend hours with the students in meditation and devotional singing. Spiritual practices were intensified on holy days.
In the early part of 1898, the site of the Belur Math, the present Headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, was purchased with the help of a generous donation from Miss Müller, the devoted admirer of the Swami. Mrs. Ole Bull gave another handsome gift to complete the construction, and the shrine at the Belur Math was consecrated, as we shall see, on December 9, 1898. Sometime during this period the Swami initiated into the monastic life Swami Swarupananda, whom he considered to be a real 'acquisition.' This qualified aspirant was given initiation after only a few days' stay at the monastery, contrary to the general rule of the Ramakrishna Order. Later he became editor of the monthly magazine Prabuddha Bharata, and first president of the Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati, in the Himalayas, founded on March 19, 1899.
Among the Western devotees who lived with Swami Vivekananda at this time were Mr. and Mrs. Sevier, Mrs. Ole Bull, Miss Henrietta F. Müller, Miss Josephine MacLeod, and Miss Margaret E. Noble, all of whom travelled with him at various times in Northern India. The Seviers identified themselves completely with the work at the Mayavati Advaita Ashrama. Mrs. Ole Bull, the wife of the famous Norwegian violinist, and a lady of social position, great culture, and large heart, had been an ardent admirer of the Swami during his American trip. Miss Müller, who knew the Swami in both England and America and had helped defray, together with the Seviers and Mr. Sturdy, the expenses of his work in England, had come to India to organize an educational institution for Indian women.
Miss MacLeod had attended Swami Vivekananda's classes in New York, and for months at a time he had been the guest of her relatives at their country home, Ridgely Manor. She became his lifelong friend and admirer and cherished his memory till the last day of her life, but though she was devoted to him, she never renounced her independence nor did he demand that she should. By way of spiritual instruction, the Swami had once asked Miss MacLeod to meditate on Om for a week and report to him afterwards. When the teacher inquired how she felt, she said that 'it was like a glow in the heart.' He encouraged her and said: 'Good, keep on.' Many years later she told her friends that the Swami made her realize that she was in eternity. 'Always remember,' the Swami had admonished her, 'you are incidentally an American and a woman, but always a child of God. Tell yourself day and night who you are. Never forget it.' To her brother-in-law, Francis H. Leggett, the Swami had written, on July 16, 1896, in appreciation of Miss MacLeod: 'I simply admire Joe Joe in her tact and quiet ways. She is a feminine statesman. She could wield a kingdom. I have seldom seen such strong yet good common sense in a human being.'
When Miss MacLeod asked the Swami's permission to come to India, he wrote on a postcard: 'Do come by all means, only you must remember this: The Europeans and Indians live as oil and water. Even to speak of living with the natives is damning, even at the capitals. You will have to bear with people who wear only a loin-cloth; you will see me with only a loin-cloth about me. Dirt and filth everywhere, and brown people. But you will have plenty of men to talk philosophy to you.' He also wrote to her that she must not come to India if she expected anything else, for the Indians could not 'bear one more word of criticism'.
On one occasion, while travelling in Kashmir with the Swami and his party, she happened to make a laughing remark about one of his South Indian disciples with the caste-mark of the brahmins of his sect on his forehead. This appeared grotesque to her. The Swami turned upon her 'like a lion, withered her with a glance, and cried: "Hands off! Who are you? What have you ever done?"'
Miss MacLeod was crestfallen. But later she learnt that the same poor brahmin had been one of those who, by begging, had collected the money that had made it possible for the Swami to undertake his trip to America.
'How can I best help you,' she asked the Swami when she arrived in India. 'Love India,' was his reply.
One day Swami Vivekananda told Miss MacLeod that since his return to India he had had no personal money. She at once promised to pay him fifty dollars a month as long as he lived and immediately gave him three hundred dollars for six months in advance. The Swami asked jokingly if it would be enough for him. 'Not if you take heavy cream every day!' she said.
The Swami gave the money to Swami Trigunatita to defray the initial expenses of the newly started Bengali magazine, the Udbodhan.
But of all Swami Vivekananda's Western disciples, the most remarkable was Margaret E Noble, who was truly his spiritual daughter. She had attended the Swami's classes and lectures in London and resolved to dedicate her life to his work in India. When she expressed to him her desire to come to India, the Swami wrote to her, on July 29, 1897:
'Let me tell you frankly that I am now convinced that you have a great future in the work for India. What was wanted was not a man but a woman, a real lioness, to work for the Indians — women especially. India cannot yet produce great women, she must borrow them from other nations. Your education, sincerity, purity, immense love, determination, and above all, your Celtic blood, makes you just the woman wanted.
'Yet the difficulties are many. You cannot form any idea of the misery, the superstition, and the slavery that are here. You will be in the midst of a mass of half-naked men and women with quaint ideas of caste and isolation, shunning the white-skins through fear or hatred and hated by them intensely. On the other hand, you will be looked upon by the white as a crank, and every one of your movements will be watched with suspicion.
'Then the climate is fearfully hot, our winter in most places being like your summer, and in the south it is always blazing. Not one European comfort is to be had in places out of the cities. If in spite of all this you dare venture into the work, you are welcome, a hundred times welcome. As for me, I am nobody here as elsewhere, but what little influence I have shall be devoted to your service.
'You must think well before you plunge in, and afterwards if you fail in this or get disgusted, on my part I promise you I will stand by you unto death, whether you work for India or not, whether you give up Vedanta or remain in it. "The tusks of the elephant come out but never go back" — so are the words of a man never retracted. I promise you that.'
He further asked her to stand on her own feet and never seek help from his other Western women devotees.
Miss Noble came to India on January 28, 1898, to work with Miss Müller for the education of Indian women. The Swami warmly introduced her to the public of Calcutta as a 'gift of England to India,' and in March made her take the vow of brahmacharya, that is to say, the life of a religious celibate devoted to the realization of God. He also gave her the name of Nivedita, the 'Dedicated,' by which she has ever since been cherished by the Indians with deep respect and affection. The ceremony was performed in the chapel of the monastery. He first taught her how to worship Siva and then made the whole ceremony culminate in an offering at the feet of Buddha.
'Go thou,' he said, 'and follow him who was born and gave his life for others five hundred times before he attained the vision of the Buddha.'
The Swami now engaged himself in the training of Sister Nivedita along with the other Western disciples. And certainly it was a most arduous task. They were asked to associate intimately with the Holy Mother, the widow of Sri Ramakrishna, who at once adopted them as her 'children.' Then the Swami would visit them almost daily to reveal to them the deep secrets of the Indian world — its history, folklore, customs, and traditions. Mercilessly he tried to uproot from their minds all preconceived notions and wrong ideas about India. He wanted them to love India as she was at the present time, with her poverty, ignorance, and backwardness, and not the India of yore, when she had produced great philosophies, epics, dramas, and religious systems.
It was not always easy for the Western disciples to understand the religious ideals and forms of worship of the Hindus. For instance, one day in the great Kali temple of Calcutta, one Western lady shuddered at the sight of the blood of the goats sacrificed before the Deity, and exclaimed, 'Why is there blood before the Goddess?' Quickly the Swami retorted, 'Why not a little blood to complete the picture?'
The disciples had been brought up in the tradition of Protestant Christianity, in which the Godhead was associated only with what was benign and beautiful, and Satan with the opposite.
With a view to Hinduizing their minds, the Swami asked his Western disciples to visit Hindu ladies at their homes and to observe their dress, food, and customs, which were radically different from their own. Thus he put to a severe test their love for Vedanta and India. In the West they had regarded the Swami as a prophet showing them the path of liberation, and as a teacher of the universal religion. But in India he appeared before them, in addition, in the role of a patriot, an indefatigable worker for the regeneration of his motherland.
The Swami began to teach Nivedita to lose herself completely in the Indian consciousness. She gradually adopted the food, clothes, language, and general habits of the Hindus.
'You have to set yourself,' he said to her, 'to Hinduize your thoughts, your needs, your conceptions, your habits. Your life, internal and external, has to become all that an orthodox brahmin brahmacharini's ought to be. The method will come to you if you only desire it sufficiently. But you have to forget your past and cause it to be forgotten.' He wanted her to address the Hindus 'in terms of their own orthodoxy.'
Swami Vivekananda would not tolerate in his Western disciples any trace of chauvinism, any patronizing attitude or stupid criticism of the Indian way of life. They could serve India only if they loved India, and they could love India only if they knew India, her past glories and her present problems. Thus later he took them on his trip to Northern India, including Almora and Kashmir, and told them of the sanctity of Varanasi and the magnificence of Agra and Delhi; he related to them the history of the Moghul Emperors and the Rajput heroes, and also described the peasant's life, the duties of a farm housewife, and the hospitality of poor villagers to wandering monks. The teacher and his disciples saw together the sacred rivers, the dense forests, the lofty mountains, the sun-baked plains, the hot sands of the desert, and the gravel beds of the rivers, all of which had played their parts in the creation of Indian culture. And the Swami told them that in India custom and culture were one. The visible manifestations of the culture were the system of caste, the duties determined by the different stages of life, the respect of parents as incarnate gods, the appointed hours of religious service, the shrine used for daily worship, the chanting of the Vedas by the brahmin children, the eating of food with the right hand and its use in worship and japa, the austerities of Hindu widows, the kneeling in prayer of the Moslems wherever the time of prayer might find them, and the ideal of equality practised by the followers of Mohammed.
Nivedita possessed an aggressively Occidental and intensely, English outlook. It was not easy for her to eradicate instinctive national loyalties and strong personal likes and dislikes. A clash between the teacher and the disciple was inevitable. Ruthlessly the Swami crushed her pride in her English upbringing. Perhaps, at the same time, he wanted to protect her against the passionate adoration she had for him. Nivedita suffered bitter anguish.
The whole thing reached its climax while they were travelling together, some time after, in the Himalayas. One day Miss MacLeod thought that Nivedita could no longer bear the strain, and interceded kindly and gravely with the Swami. 'He listened,' Sister Nivedita wrote later, 'and went away. At evening, however, he returned, and finding us together on the veranda, he turned to her (Miss MacLeod) and said with the simplicity of a child: "You were right. There must be a change. I am going away to the forests to be alone, and when I come back I shall bring peace." Then he turned away and saw that above us the moon was new, and a sudden exaltation came into his voice as he said: "See, the Mohammedans think much of the new moon. Let us also, with the new moon, begin a new life."' As he said these words, he lifted his hand and blessed his rebellious disciple, who by this time was kneeling before him. It was assuredly a moment of wonderful sweetness of reconciliation. That evening in meditation Nivedita found herself gazing deep into an Infinite Good, to the recognition of which no egotistic reasoning had led her. 'And,' she wrote, 'I understood for the first time that the greatest teachers may destroy in us a personal relation only in order to bestow the Impersonal Vision in its place.'
To resume our story, on March 30, 1898, the Swami left for Darjeeling, for he badly needed a change to the cool air of the Himalayas. Hardly had he begun to feel the improvement in his health, when he had to come down to Calcutta, where an outbreak of plague was striking terror.
Immediately he made plans for relief work with the help of the members of the monastery and volunteers from Calcutta.
When a brother disciple asked him where he would get funds, the Swami replied: 'Why, we shall sell if necessary the land which has just been purchased for the monastery. We are sannyasins; we must be ready to sleep under the trees and live on alms as we did before. Must we care for the monastery and possessions when by disposing of them we could relieve thousands of helpless people suffering before our own eyes?' Fortunately this extreme step was not necessary; the public gave him money for the relief work.
The Swami worked hard to assuage the suffering of the afflicted people. Their love and admiration for him knew no bounds as they saw this practical application of Vedanta at a time of human need.
The plague having been brought under control, the Swami left Calcutta for Nainital on May 11, accompanied by, among others, his Western disciples. From there the party went to Almora where they met the Seviers. During this tour the Swami never ceased instructing his disciples. For his Western companions it was a rare opportunity to learn Indian history, religion, and philosophy direct from one who was an incarnation of the spirit of India. Some of the talks the Swami gave were recorded by Sister Nivedita in her charming book Notes of Some Wanderings with the Swami Vivekananda.
In Almora the Swami received news of the deaths of Pavhari Baba and Mr. Goodwin. He had been closely drawn to the former during his days of wandering. Goodwin died on June 2. Hearing of this irreparable loss, the Swami exclaimed in bitter grief, 'My right hand is gone!' To Goodwin's mother he wrote a letter of condolence in which he said: 'The debt of gratitude I owe him can never be repaid, and those who think they have been helped by any thought of mine ought to know that almost every word of it was published through the untiring and most unselfish exertions of Mr. Goodwin. In him I have lost a friend true as steel, a disciple of never-failing devotion, a worker who knew not what tiring was, and the world is less rich by the passing away of one of those few who are born, as it were, to live only for others.'
The Swami also sent her the following poem, which he had written in memory of Goodwin, bearing witness to the affection of the teacher for the disciple:
REQUIESCAT IN PACE
Speed forth, O soul! upon thy star-strewn path;
Speed, blissful one! where thought is ever free,
Where time and space no longer mist the view;
Eternal peace and blessings be with thee!
Thy service true, complete thy sacrifice;
Thy home the heart of love transcendent find!
Remembrance sweet, that kills all space and time,
Like altar roses, fill thy place behind!
Thy bonds are broke, thy quest in bliss is found,
And one with That which comes as death and life,
Thou helpful one! unselfish e'er on earth,
Ahead, still help with love this world of strife!
Before the Swami left Almora, he arranged to start again the monthly magazine Prabuddha Bharata, which had ceased publication with the death of its gifted editor, B. R. Rajam Iyer. Swami Swarupananda became its new editor, and Captain Sevier, the manager. The magazine began its new career at Almora. Then, on June 11, the Swami, in the company of his Western disciples, left for Kashmir as the guest of Mrs. Ole Bull.
The trip to Kashmir was an unforgettable experience for the Westerners. The natural beauty of the country, with its snow-capped mountains reflected in the water of the lakes, its verdant forests, multi-coloured flowers, and stately poplar and chennar trees, make the valley of Kashmir a paradise on earth. Throughout the journey the Swami poured out his heart and soul to his disciples. At first he was almost obsessed with the ideal of Siva, whom he had worshipped since boyhood, and for days he told the disciples legends relating to the great God of renunciation. The party spent a few days in house-boats, and in the afternoons the Swami would take his companions for long walks across the fields. The conversations were always stimulating. One day he spoke of Genghis Khan and declared that he was not a vulgar aggressor; he compared the Mongol Emperor to Napoleon and Alexander, saying that they all wanted to unify the world and that it was perhaps the same soul that had incarnated itself three times in the hope of bringing about human unity through political conquest. In the same way, he said, one Soul might have come again and again as Krishna, Buddha, and Christ, to bring about the unity of mankind through religion.
In Kashmir the Swami pined for solitude. The desire for the solitary life of a monk became irresistible; and he would often break away from the little party to roam alone. After his return he would make some such remark as: 'It is a sin to think of the body,' 'It is wrong to manifest power,' or 'Things do not grow better; they remain as they are. It is we who grow better, by the changes we make in ourselves.' Often he seemed to be drifting without any plan, and the disciples noticed his strange detachment. 'At no time,' Sister Nivedita wrote, 'would it have surprised us had someone told us that today or tomorrow he would be gone for ever, that we were listening to his voice for the last time.'
This planlessness was observed in him more and more as his earthly existence drew towards its end. Two years later, when Sister Nivedita gave him a bit of worldly advice, the Swami exclaimed in indignation: 'Plans! Plans! That is why you Western people can never create a religion! If any of you ever did, it was only a few Catholic saints who had no plans. Religion was never, never preached by planners!' About solitude as a spiritual discipline, the Swami said one day that an Indian could not expect to know himself till he had been alone for twenty years, whereas from the Western standpoint a man could not live alone for twenty years and remain quite sane. On the Fourth of July the Swami gave a surprise to his American disciples by arranging for its celebration in an appropriate manner. An American flag was made with the help of a brahmin tailor, and the Swami composed the following poem:
TO THE FOURTH OF JULY
Behold, the dark clouds melt away
That gathered thick at night and hung
So like a gloomy pall above the earth!
Before thy magic touch the world
Awakes. The birds in chorus sing.
The flowers raise their star-like crowns,
Dew-set, and wave thee welcome fair.
The lakes are opening wide, in love
Their hundred thousand lotus-eyes
To welcome thee with all their depth.
All hail to thee, thou lord of light!
A welcome new to thee today,
O sun! Today thou sheddest liberty!
Bethink thee how the world did wait
And search for thee, through time and clime!
Some gave up home and love of friends
And went in quest of thee, self-banished,
Through dreary oceans, through primeval forests,
Each step a struggle for their life or death;
Then came the day when work bore fruit,
And worship, love, and sacrifice,
Fulfilled, accepted, and complete.
Then thou, propitious, rose to shed
The light of freedom on mankind.
Move on, O lord, in thy resistless path,
Till thy high noon o'erspreads the world,
Till every land reflects thy light,
Till men and women, with uplifted head,
Behold their shackles broken and know
In springing joy their life renewed!
As the Swami's mood changed he spoke of renunciation. He showed scorn for the worldly life and said: 'As is the difference between a fire-fly and the blazing sun, between a little pond and the infinite ocean, a mustard seed and the mountain of Meru, such is the difference between the householder and the sannyasin.' Had it not been for the ochre robe, the emblem of monasticism, he pointed out, luxury and worldliness would have robbed man of his manliness.
Thus the party spent their time on the river, the teacher providing a veritable university for the education of his disciples. The conversation touched upon all subjects — Vedic rituals, Roman Catholic doctrine, Christ, St. Paul, the growth of Christianity, Buddha.
Of Buddha, the Swami said that he was the greatest man that ever lived. 'Above all, he never claimed worship. Buddha said: "Buddha is not a man, but a state. I have found the way. Enter all of you!"'
Then the talk would drift to the conception of sin among the Egyptian, Semitic, and Aryan races. According to the Vedic conception, the Swami said, the Devil is the Lord of Anger, and with Buddhists he is Mara, the Lord of Lust. Whereas in the Bible the creation was under the dual control of God and Satan, in Hinduism Satan represented defilement, never duality.
Next the Swami would speak about the chief characteristics of the different nations. 'You are so morbid, you Westerners', he said one day. 'You worship sorrow! All through your country I found that. Social life in the West is like a peal of laughter, but underneath it is a wail. The whole thing ends in a sob. The fun and frivolity are all on the surface; really, it is full of tragic intensity. Here it is sad and gloomy on the outside, but underneath are detachment and merriment.'
Once, at Islamabad, as the group sat round him on the grass in an apple orchard, the Swami repeated what he had said in England after facing a mad bull. Picking up two pebbles in his hand, he said: 'Whenever death approaches me all weakness vanishes. I have neither fear nor doubt nor thought of the external. I simply busy myself making ready to die. I am as hard as that' — and the stones struck each other in his hand — 'for I have touched the feet of God!'
At Islamabad the Swami announced his desire to make a pilgrimage to the great image of Siva in the cave of Amarnath in the glacial valley of the Western Himalayas. He asked Nivedita to accompany him so that she, a future worker, might have direct knowledge of the Hindu pilgrim's life. They became a part of a crowd of thousands of pilgrims, who formed at each halting-place a whole town of tents.
A sudden change came over the Swami. He became one of the pilgrims, scrupulously observing the most humble practices demanded by custom. He ate one meal a day, cooked in the orthodox fashion, and sought solitude as far as possible to tell his beads and practise meditation. In order to reach the destination, he had to climb up rocky slopes along dangerous paths, cross several miles of glacier, and bathe in the icy water of sacred streams.
On August 2 the party arrived at the enormous cavern, large enough to contain a vast cathedral. At the back of the cave, in a niche of deepest shadow, stood the image of Siva, all ice. The Swami, who had fallen behind, entered the cave, his whole frame shaking with emotion. His naked body was smeared with ashes, and his face radiant with devotion. Then he prostrated himself in the darkness of the cave before that glittering whiteness.
A song of praise from hundreds of throats echoed in the cavern. The Swami almost fainted. He had a vision of Siva Himself. The details of the experience he never told anyone, except that he had been granted the grace of Amarnath, the Lord of Immortality, not to die until he himself willed it.
The effect of the experience shattered his nerves. When he emerged from the grotto, there was a clot of blood in his left eye; his heart was dilated and never regained its normal condition. For days he spoke of nothing but Siva. He said: 'The image was the Lord Himself. It was all worship there. I have never seen anything so beautiful, so inspiring.'
On August 8 the party arrived at Srinagar, where they remained until September 30. During this period the Swami felt an intense desire for meditation and solitude. The Maharaja of Kashmir treated him with the utmost respect and wanted him to choose a tract of land for the establishment of a monastery and a Sanskrit college. The land was selected and the proposal sent to the British Resident for approval. But the British Agent refused to grant the land. The Swami accepted the whole thing philosophically.
A month later his devotion was directed to Kali, the Divine Mother, whom Ramakrishna had called affectionately 'my Mother.'
A unique symbol of the Godhead, Kali represents the totality of the universe: creation and destruction, life and death, good and evil, pain and pleasure, and all the pairs of opposites. She seems to be black when viewed from a distance, like the water of the ocean; but to the intimate observer She is without colour, being one with Brahman, whose creative energy She represents.
In one aspect She appears terrible, with a garland of human skulls, a girdle of human hands, her tongue dripping blood, a decapitated human head in one hand and a shining sword in the other, surrounded by jackals that haunt the cremation ground — a veritable picture of terror. The other side is benign and gracious, ready to confer upon Her devotees the boon of immortality. She reels as if drunk: who could have created this mad world except in a fit of drunkenness? Kali stands on the bosom of Her Divine Consort, Siva, the symbol of Brahman; for Kali, or Nature, cannot work unless energized by the touch of the Absolute. And in reality Brahman and Kali, the Absolute and Its Creative Energy, are identical, like fire and its power to burn.
The Hindu mind does not make a sweepingly moralistic distinction between good and evil. Both are facts of the phenomenal world and are perceived to exist when maya hides the Absolute, which is beyond good and evil. Ramakrishna emphasized the benign aspect of the Divine Mother Kali and propitiated Her to obtain the vision of the Absolute. Swami Vivekananda suddenly felt the appeal of Her destructive side. But is there really any difference between the process of creation and destruction? Is not the one without the other an illusion of the mind?
Vivekananda realized that the Divine Mother is omnipresent. Wherever he turned, he was conscious of the presence of the Mother, 'as if She were a person in the room.' He felt that it was She 'whose hands are clasped with my own and who leads me as though I were a child.' It was touching to see him worship the four-year-old daughter of his Mohammedan boatman as the symbol of the Divine Mother.
His meditation on Kali became intense, and one day he had a most vivid experience. He centred 'his whole attention on the dark, the painful, and the inscrutable' aspect of Reality, with a determination to reach by this particular path the Non-duality behind phenomena. His whole frame trembled, as if from an electric shock. He had a vision of Kali, the mighty Destructress lurking behind the veil of life, the Terrible One, hidden by the dust of the living who pass by, and all the appearances raised by their feet. In a fever, he groped in the dark for pencil and paper and wrote his famous poem 'Kali the Mother'; then he fell exhausted:
The stars are blotted out,
The clouds are covering clouds,
It is darkness, vibrant, sonant;
In the roaring, whirling wind
Are the souls of a million lunatics,
Just loose from the prison-house,
Wrenching trees by the roots,
Sweeping all from the path.
The sea has joined the fray
And swirls up mountain-waves
To reach the pitchy sky.
The flash of lurid light
Reveals on every side
A thousand thousand shades
Of death, begrimed and black.
Scattering plagues and sorrows,
Dancing mad with joy,
Come, Mother, come!
For terror is Thy name,
Death is in Thy breath,
And every shaking step
Destroys a world for e'er.
Thou Time, the All-destroyer,
Come, O Mother, come!
Who dares misery love,
And hug the form of death,
Dance in Destruction's dance —
To him the Mother comes.
The Swami now talked to his disciples only about Kali, the Mother, describing Her as 'time, change, and ceaseless energy.' He would say with the great Psalmist: 'Though Thou slay me, yet I will trust in Thee.'
'It is a mistake,' the Swami said, 'to hold that with all men pleasure is the motive. Quite as many are born to seek pain. There can be bliss in torture, too. Let us worship terror for its own sake.
'Learn to recognize the Mother as instinctively in evil, terror, sorrow, and annihilation as in that which makes for sweetness and joy!
'Only by the worship of the Terrible can the Terrible itself be overcome, and immortality gained. Meditate on death! Meditate on death! Worship the Terrible, the Terrible, the Terrible! And the Mother Herself is Brahman! Even Her curse is a blessing. The heart must become a cremation ground — pride, selfishness, and desire all burnt to ashes. Then, and then alone, will the Mother come.'
The Western disciples, brought up in a Western faith which taught them to see good, order, comfort, and beauty alone in the creation of a wise Providence, were shaken by the typhoon of a Cosmic Reality invoked by the Hindu visionary. Sister Nivedita writes:
And as he spoke, the underlying egoism of worship that is devoted to the kind God, to Providence, the consoling Deity, without a heart for God in the earthquake or God in the volcano, overwhelmed the listener. One saw that such worship was at bottom, as the Hindu calls it, merely 'shopkeeping,' and one realized the infinitely greater boldness and truth of teaching that God manifests through evil as well as through good. One saw that the true attitude for the mind and will that are not to be baffled by the personal self, was in fact that determination, in the stern words of Swami Vivekananda, 'to seek death, not life, to hurl oneself upon the sword's point, to become one with the Terrible for evermore.'
Heroism, to Vivekananda, was the soul of action. He wanted to see Ultimate Truth in all its terrible nakedness, and refused to soften it in any shape or manner. His love of Truth expected nothing in return; he scorned the bargain of 'giving to get in return' and all its promise of paradise.
But the gentle Ramakrishna, though aware of the Godhead in all its aspects, had emphasized Its benign side. One day several men had been arguing before him about the attributes of God, attempting to find out, by reason, their meaning. Sri Ramakrishna stopped them, saying: 'Enough, enough! What is the use of disputing whether the divine attributes are reasonable or not?...You say that God is good: can you convince me of His goodness by this reasoning? Look at the flood that has just caused the death of thousands. How can you prove that a benevolent God ordered it? You will perhaps reply that the same flood swept away uncleanliness and watered the earth, and so on. But could not a good God do that without drowning thousands of innocent men, women, and children?'
Thereupon one of the disputants said, 'Then ought we to believe that God is cruel?'
'O idiot,' cried Ramakrishna, 'who said that? Fold your hands and say humbly, "O God, we are too feeble and too weak to understand Thy nature and Thy deeds. Deign to enlighten us!" Do not argue. Love!' God is no doubt Good, True, and Beautiful; but these attributes are utterly different from their counterparts in the relative world.
The Swami, during these days, taught his disciples to worship God like heroes. He would say: 'There must be no fear, no begging, but demanding — demanding the Highest. The true devotees of the Mother are as hard, as adamant and as fearless as lions. They are not in the least upset if the whole universe suddenly crumbles into dust at their feet. Make Her listen to you. None of that cringing to Mother! Remember, She is all-powerful; She can make heroes out of stones.'
On September 30 Swami Vivekananda retired to a temple of the Divine Mother, where he stayed alone for a week. There he worshipped the Deity, known as Kshirbhavani, following the time-honoured ritual, praying and meditating like a humble pilgrim. Every morning he also worshipped a brahmin's little daughter as the symbol of the Divine Virgin. And he was blessed with deep experiences, some of which were most remarkable and indicated to him that his mission on earth was finished.
He had a vision of the Goddess and found Her a living Deity. But the temple had been destroyed by the Moslem invaders, and the image placed in a niche surrounded by ruins. Surveying this desecration, the Swami felt distressed at heart and said to himself: 'How could the people have permitted such sacrilege without offering strenuous resistance? If I had been here then, I would never have allowed such a thing. I would have laid down my life to protect the Mother.' Thereupon he heard the voice of the Goddess saying: 'What if unbelievers should enter My temple and defile My image? What is that to you? Do you protect Me, or do I protect you?' Referring to this experience after his return, he said to his disciples: 'All my patriotism is gone. Everything is gone. Now it is only "Mother! Mother!" I have been very wrong...I am only a little child.' He wanted to say more, but could not; he declared that it was not fitting that he should go on. Significantly, he added that spiritually he was no longer bound to the world.
Another day, in the course of his worship, the thought flashed through the Swami's mind that he should try to build a new temple in the place of the present dilapidated one, just as he had built a monastery and temple at Belur to Sri Ramakrishna. He even thought of trying to raise funds from his wealthy American disciples and friends. At once the Mother said to him: 'My child! If I so wish I can have innumerable temples and monastic centres. I can even this moment raise a seven-storied golden temple on this very spot.'
'Since I heard that divine voice,' the Swami said to a disciple in Calcutta much later, 'I have ceased making any more plans. Let these things be as Mother wills.'
Sri Ramakrishna had said long ago that Narendranath would live in the physical body to do the Mother's work and that as soon as this work was finished, he would cast off his body by his own will. Were the visions at the temple of Kshirbhavani a premonition of the approaching dissolution?
When the Swami rejoined his disciples at Srinagar, he was an altogether different person. He raised his hand in benediction and then placed some marigolds, which he had offered to the Deity, on the head of every one of his disciples. 'No more "Hari Om!"' he said. 'It is all "Mother" now!' Though he lived with them, the disciples saw very little of him. For hours he would stroll in the woods beside the river, absorbed within himself. One day he appeared before them with shaven head, dressed as the simplest sannyasin and with a look of unapproachable austerity on his face. He repeated his own poem 'Kali the Mother' and said, 'It all came true, every word of it; and I have proved it, for I have hugged the form of death.'
Sister Nivedita writes: 'The physical ebb of the great experience through which he had just passed — for even suffering becomes impossible when a given point of weariness is reached; and similarly, the body refuses to harbour a certain intensity of the spiritual life for an indefinite period — was leaving him, doubtless, more exhausted than he himself suspected. All this contributed, one imagines, to a feeling that none of us knew for how long a time we might now be parting.'
The party left Kashmir on October 11 and came down to Lahore. The Western disciples went to Agra, Delhi, and the other principal cities of Northern India for sightseeing, and the Swami, accompanied by his disciple Sadananda, arrived at Belur on October 18. His brother disciples saw that he was very pallid and ill. He suffered from suffocating attacks of asthma; when he emerged from its painful fits, his face looked blue, like that of a drowning man. But in spite of all, he plunged headlong into numerous activities.
On November 13, 1898, the day of the worship of Kali, the Nivedita Girls' School was opened in Calcutta. At the end of the inaugural ceremony the Holy Mother, Sri Ramakrishna's consort, 'prayed that the blessing of the Great Mother of the universe might be upon the school and that the girls it should train might be ideal girls.' Nivedita, who witnessed the ceremony with the Swamis of the Order, said: 'I cannot imagine a grander omen than her blessing spoken over the educated Hindu womanhood of the future.'
The dedication of the school was the beginning of Nivedita's work in India. The Swami gave her complete freedom about the way to run it. He told her that she was free from her collaborators if she so chose; and that she might, if she wished, give the work a 'definite religious colour' or even make it sectarian. Then he added, 'You may wish through a sect to rise beyond all sects.'
On December 9, 1898, the Ramakrishna Monastery at Belur was formally consecrated by the Swami with the installation of the Master's image in the chapel. The plot of land, as already stated, had been purchased in the beginning of the year and had been consecrated with proper religious ceremony in March that year. The Swami himself had performed the worship on that occasion at the rented house and afterwards had carried on his shoulder the copper vessel containing the Master's sacred relics. While bearing it he said to a disciple: 'The Master once told me, "I will go and live wherever you take me, carrying me on your shoulder, be it under a tree or in the humblest cottage." With faith in that gracious promise I myself am now carrying him to the site of our future Math. Know for certain, my boy, that so long as his name inspires his followers with the ideal of purity, holiness, and charity for all men, even so long shall he, the Master, sanctify this place with his presence.'
Of the glorious future he saw for the monastery the Swami said: 'It will be a centre in which will be recognized and practised a grand harmony of all creeds and faiths as exemplified in the life of Sri Ramakrishna, and religion in its universal aspect, alone, will be preached. And from this centre of universal toleration will go forth the shining message of goodwill, peace, and harmony to deluge the whole world.' He warned all of the danger of sectarianism's creeping in if they became careless.
After the ceremony, he addressed the assembled monks, brahmacharins, and lay devotees as follows: 'Do you all, my brothers, pray to the Lord with all your heart and soul that He, the Divine Incarnation of the age, may bless this place with his hallowed presence for ever and ever, and make it a unique centre, a holy land, of harmony of different religions and sects, for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many.'
Swami Vivekananda was in an ecstatic mood. He had accomplished the great task of finding a permanent place on which to build a temple for the Master, with a monastery for his brother disciples and the monks of the future that should serve as the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Order for the propagation of Sri Ramakrishna's teachings. He felt as if the heavy responsibility that he had carried on his shoulders for the past twelve years had been lifted. He wanted the monastery at Belur to be a finished university where Indian mystical wisdom and Western practical science would be taught side by side. And he spoke of the threefold activities of the monastery: annadana, the gift of food; vidyadana, the gift of intellectual knowledge; and jnanadana, the gift of spiritual wisdom. These three, properly balanced, would, in the Swami's opinion, make a complete man. The inmates of the monastery, through unselfish service of men, would purify their minds and thus qualify themselves for the supreme knowledge of Brahman.
Swami Vivekananda in his vivid imagination saw the different sections of the monastery allotted to different functions — the free kitchen for the distribution of food to the hungry, the university for the imparting of knowledge, the quarters for devotees from Europe and America, and so forth and so on. The spiritual ideals emanating from the Belur Math, he once said to Miss MacLeod, would influence the thought-currents of the world for eleven hundred years.
'All these visions are rising before me' — these were his very words.
The ceremony over, the sacred vessel was brought back to the rented house by his disciple Sarat Chandra Chakravarty, as the Swami did not want to carry back the Master from the monastery where he had just installed him.
It was a few months before the buildings of the new monastery were completed and the monastery was finally removed to its present site. The date of the momentous occasion was January 2, 1899. The Bengali monthly magazine, the Udbodhan, was first published on January 14 of the same year, and regarding its policy, the Swami declared that nothing but positive ideas for the physical, mental, and spiritual improvement of the race should find a place in it; that instead of criticizing the thoughts and aspirations of ancient and modern man, as embodied in literature, philosophy, poetry, and the arts, the magazine should indicate the way in which those thoughts and aspirations might be made conducive to progress; and finally that the magazine should stand for universal harmony as preached by Sri Ramakrishna, and disseminate his ideals of love, purity, and renunciation.
The Swami was happy to watch the steady expansion of the varied activities of the Order. At his request Swami Saradananda had returned from America to assist in the organization of the Belur Math. Together with Swami Turiyananda, he conducted regular classes at the Math for the study of Sanskrit and of Eastern and Western philosophy. Somewhat later the two Swamis were sent on a preaching mission to Gujarat, in Western India, and for the same purpose two of the Swami's own disciples were sent to East Bengal. Swami Shivananda was deputed to Ceylon to preach Vedanta. Reports of the excellent work done by Swamis Ramakrishnananda and Abhedananda in Madras and America were received at the Math. Swami Akhandananda's work for the educational uplift of the villages and also in establishing a home for the orphans elicited praise from the Government.
One of the most remarkable institutions founded by Swami Vivekananda was the Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati in the Himalayas. Ever since his visit to the Alps in Switzerland, the Swami had been cherishing the desire to establish a monastery in the solitude of the Himalayas where non-dualism would be taught and practised in its purest form. Captain and Mrs. Sevier took up the idea, and the Ashrama was established at Mayavati, at an altitude of 6500 feet. Before it there shone, day and night, the eternal snow-range of the Himalayas for an extent of some two hundred miles, with Nanda Devi rising to a height of more than 25,000 feet. Spiritual seekers, irrespective of creed and race, were welcome at the monastery at Mayavati. No external worship of any kind was permitted within its boundaries. Even the formal worship of Sri Ramakrishna was excluded. It was required of the inmates and guests always to keep before their minds the vision of the nameless and formless Spirit.
Swami Vivekananda in the following lines laid down the ideals and principles of this Himalayan ashrama:
'In Whom is the Universe, Who is in the Universe, Who is the Universe; in Whom is the Soul, Who is in the Soul, Who is the Soul of man; to know Him, and therefore the Universe, as our Self, alone extinguishes all fear, brings an end to misery, and leads to infinite freedom. Wherever there has been expansion in love or progress in well-being of individuals or numbers, it has been through the perception, realization, and the practicalization of the Eternal Truth — the Oneness of All Beings. "Dependence is misery. Independence is happiness." The Advaita is the only system which gives unto man complete possession of himself and takes off all dependence and its associated superstitions, thus making us brave to suffer, brave to do, and in the long run to attain to Absolute Freedom.
'Hitherto it has not been possible to preach this Noble Truth entirely free from the settings of dualistic weakness; this alone, we are convinced, explains why it has not been more operative and useful to mankind at large.
'To give this One Truth a freer and fuller scope in elevating the lives of individuals and leavening the mass of mankind, we start this Advaita Ashrama on the Himalayan heights, the land of its first formulation.
'Here it is hoped to keep Advaita free from all superstitions and weakening contaminations. Here will be taught and practised nothing but the Doctrine of Unity, pure and simple; and though in entire sympathy with all other systems, this Ashrama is dedicated to Advaita and Advaita alone.'
After the Swami's return from Kashmir his health had begun to deteriorate visibly. His asthma caused him great suffering. But his zeal for work increased many times.
'Ever since I went to Amarnath,' he said one day, 'Siva Himself has entered into my brain. He will not go.'
At the earnest request of the brother monks, he visited Calcutta frequently for treatment; yet even there he had no respite from work. Visitors thronged about him for religious instruction from morning till night, and his large heart could not say no to them. When the brother monks pressed him to receive people only at appointed hours, he replied: 'They take so much trouble to come, walking all the way from their homes, and can I, sitting here, not speak a few words to them, merely because I risk my health a little?'
His words sounded so much like those of Sri Ramakrishna during the latter's critical illness, no wonder that Swami Premananda said to him one day, 'We do not see any difference between Sri Ramakrishna
In Lucknow he was given a cordial welcome. The sight of the Himalayas in Almora brought him inner peace and filled his mind with the spirit of detachment and exaltation of which these great mountains are the symbol. But his peace was disturbed for a moment when he received letters from American disciples about the malicious reports against his character spread by Christian missionaries, including Dr. Barrows of the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. Evidently they had become jealous of the Swami's popularity in India. Dr. Barrows told the Americans that the report of the Swami's reception in India was greatly exaggerated. He accused the Swami of being a liar and remarked: "I could never tell whether to take him seriously or not. He struck me as being a Hindu Mark Twain. He is a man of genius and has some following, though only temporary."
The Swami was grieved. At his request the people of Madras had given Dr. Barrows a big reception, but the missionary, lacking religious universalism, had not made much of an impression.
In a mood of weariness the Swami wrote to a friend on June 3, 1897:
As for myself, I am quite content. I have roused a good many of our people, and that was all I wanted. Let things have their course and karma its sway. I have no bonds here below. I have seen life, and it is all self — life is for self, love is for self, honour for self, everything for self. I look back and scarcely find any action I have done for self — even my wicked deeds were not for self. So I am content — not that I feel I have done anything especially good or great, but the world is so little, life so mean a thing, existence so, so servile, that I wonder and smile that human beings, rational souls, should be running after this self — so mean and detestable a prize.
This is the truth. We are caught in a trap, and the sooner one gets out the better for one. I have seen the truth — let the body float up or down, who cares?...
I was born for the life of a scholar — retired, quiet, poring over my books. But the Mother dispensed otherwise. Yet the tendency is there.
In Almora the Swamiji's health improved greatly. On May 29 he wrote to a friend: 'I began to take a lot of exercise on horseback, both morning and evening. Since then I have been very much better indeed....I really began to feel that it was a pleasure to have a body. Every movement made me conscious of strength — every movement of the muscles was pleasurable....You ought to see me, Doctor, when I sit meditating in front of the beautiful snow-peaks and repeat from the Upanishads: "He has neither disease, nor decay, nor death; for verily, he has obtained a body full of the fire of yoga."'
He was delighted to get the report that his disciples and spiritual brothers were plunging heart and soul into various philanthropic and missionary activities.
From Almora he went on a whirlwind tour of the Punjab and Kashmir, sowing everywhere the seeds of rejuvenated Hinduism. In Bareilly he encouraged the students to organize themselves to carry on the work of practical Vedanta. In Ambala he was happy to see his beloved disciples Mr. and Mrs. Sevier. After spending a few days in Amritsar, Dharamsala, and Murree, he went to Kashmir.
In Jammu the Swami had a long interview with the Maharaja and discussed with him the possibility of founding in Kashmir a monastery for giving young people training in non-dualism. In the course of the conversation he sadly remarked how the present-day Hindus had deviated from the ideals of their forefathers, and how people were clinging to various superstitions in the name of religion. He said that in olden days people were not outcasted even when they committed such real sins as adultery, and the like; whereas nowadays one became untouchable simply by violating the rules about food.
On the same topic he said a few months later, at Khetri: 'The people are neither Hindus nor Vedantins — they are merely "don't touchists"; the kitchen is their temple and cooking-pots are their objects of worship. This state of things must go. The sooner it is given up, the better for our religion. Let the Upanishads shine in their glory, and at the same time let not quarrels exist among different sects.'
In Lahore the Swami gave a number of lectures, among which was his famous speech on the Vedanta philosophy, lasting over two hours. He urged the students of Lahore to cultivate faith in man as a preparation for faith in God. He asked them to form an organization, purely non-sectarian in character, to teach hygiene to the poor, spread education among them, and nurse the sick. One of his missions in the Punjab was to establish harmony among people belonging to different sects, such as the Arya Samajists and the orthodox Hindus. It was in Lahore that the Swami met Mr. Tirtha Ram Goswami, then a professor of mathematics, who eventually gained wide recognition as Swami Ram Tirtha. The professor became an ardent admirer of Swami Vivekananda.
Next the Swami travelled to Dehra-Dun, where, for the first ten days, he lived a rather quiet life. But soon he organized a daily class on the Hindu scriptures for his disciples and companions, which he continued to conduct during the whole trip. At the earnest invitation of his beloved disciple the Raja of Khetri, he visited his capital, stopping on the way at Delhi and Alwar, which were familiar to him from his days of wandering prior to his going to America. Everywhere he met old friends and disciples and treated them with marked affection. The Raja of Khetri lavished great honours upon him and also gave him a handsome donation for the Belur Math, which was being built at that time.
Before returning to Calcutta, he visited Kishengarh, Ajmer, Jodhpur, Indore, and Khandwa and thus finished his lecture tour in North India. During this tour he explained to his fellow countrymen the salient features of Hinduism and told them that they would have a glorious future if they followed the heritage of their past. He emphasized that the resurgent nationalism of India must be based on her spiritual ideals, but that healthy scientific and technological knowledge from the West, also, had to be assimilated in the process of growth. The fundamental problem of India, he pointed out, was to organize the whole country around religious ideals. By religion the Swami meant not local customs which served only a contemporary purpose, but the eternal principles taught in the Vedas.
Wherever the Swami went he never wearied of trying to rebuild individual character in India, pointing out that the strength of the whole nation depended upon the strength of the individual. Therefore each individual, he urged, whatever might be his occupation, should try, if he desired the good of the nation as a whole, to build up his character and acquire such virtues as courage, strength, self-respect, love, and service of others. To the young men, especially, he held out renunciation and service as the hightest ideal. He preached the necessity of spreading a real knowledge of Sanskrit, without which a Hindu would remain an alien to his own rich culture. To promote unity among the Hindus, he encouraged intermarriage between castes and sub-castes, and wanted to reorganize the Indian universities so that they might produce real patriots, rather than clerks, lawyers, diplomats, and Government officials.
Swami Vivekananda's keen intellect saw the need of uniting the Hindus and Moslems on the basis of the Advaita philosophy, which teaches the oneness of all. One June 10, 1898, he wrote to a Moslem gentleman at Nainital:
The Hindus may get the credit for arriving at Advaitism earlier than other races, they being an older race than either the Hebrew or the Arab; yet practical Advaitism, which looks upon and behaves towards all mankind as one's own soul, is yet to be developed among the Hindus universally. On the other hand, our experience is that if ever the followers of any religion approach to this equality in an appreciable degree on the plane of practical work-a-day life — it may be quite unconscious generally of the deeper meaning and the underlying principle of such conduct, which the Hindus as a rule so clearly perceive — it is those of Islam and Islam alone.
Therefore we are firmly persuaded that without the help of practical Islam, the theories of Vedantism, however fine and wonderful they may be, are entierely valuless to the vast mass of mankind. We want to lead mankind to the place where there is neither the Vedas nor the Bible nor the Koran; yet this has to be done by harmonizing the Vedas, the Bible, and the Koran. Mankind ought to be taught that religions are but the varied expressions of the Religion which is Oneness, so that each may choose the path that suits him best.
For our own motherland a junction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islam — Vedantic brain and Islamic body — is the only hope. I see in my mind's eye the future perfect India rising out of this chaos and strife, glorious and invincible, with Vedantic brain and Islamic body.
For the regeneration of India, in the Swami's view, the help of the West was indispensable. The thought of India had been uppermost in his mind when he had journeyed to America. On April 6, 1897, the Swami, in the course of a letter to the lady editor of an Indian magazine, had written: 'It has been for the good of India that religious preaching in the West has been done and will be done. It has ever been my conviction that we shall not be able to rise unless the Western countries come to our help. In India no appreciation of merit can be found, no financial support, and what is most lamentable of all, there is not a bit of practicality.'
The year 1898 was chiefly devoted to the training of Vivekananda's disciples, both Indian and Western, and to the consolidation of the work already started. During this period he also made trips to Darjeeling, Almora, and Kashmir.
In February 1898, the monastery was removed from Alambazar to Nilambar Mukherjee's garden house in the village of Belur, on the west bank of the Ganga. The Swami, while in Calcutta, lived at Balaram Bose's house, which had been a favourite haunt of Shri Ramakrishna's during his lifetime. But he had no rest either in the monastery or in Calcutta, where streams of visitors came to him daily. Moreover, conducting a heavy correspondence consumed much of his time and energy; one can not but be amazed at the hundreds of letters the Swami wrote with his own hand to friends and disciples. Most of these reveal his intense thinking, and some his superb wit.
While at the monastery, he paid especial attention to the training of the sannyasins and the brahmacharins, who, inspired by his message, had renounced home and dedicated themselves to the realization of God and the service of humanity. Besides conducting regular classes on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the physical sciences, and the history of the nations, he would spend hours with the students in meditation and devotional singing. Spiritual practices were intensified on holy days.
In the early part of 1898, the site of the Belur Math, the present Headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, was purchased with the help of a generous donation from Miss Müller, the devoted admirer of the Swami. Mrs. Ole Bull gave another handsome gift to complete the construction, and the shrine at the Belur Math was consecrated, as we shall see, on December 9, 1898. Sometime during this period the Swami initiated into the monastic life Swami Swarupananda, whom he considered to be a real 'acquisition.' This qualified aspirant was given initiation after only a few days' stay at the monastery, contrary to the general rule of the Ramakrishna Order. Later he became editor of the monthly magazine Prabuddha Bharata, and first president of the Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati, in the Himalayas, founded on March 19, 1899.
Among the Western devotees who lived with Swami Vivekananda at this time were Mr. and Mrs. Sevier, Mrs. Ole Bull, Miss Henrietta F. Müller, Miss Josephine MacLeod, and Miss Margaret E. Noble, all of whom travelled with him at various times in Northern India. The Seviers identified themselves completely with the work at the Mayavati Advaita Ashrama. Mrs. Ole Bull, the wife of the famous Norwegian violinist, and a lady of social position, great culture, and large heart, had been an ardent admirer of the Swami during his American trip. Miss Müller, who knew the Swami in both England and America and had helped defray, together with the Seviers and Mr. Sturdy, the expenses of his work in England, had come to India to organize an educational institution for Indian women.
Miss MacLeod had attended Swami Vivekananda's classes in New York, and for months at a time he had been the guest of her relatives at their country home, Ridgely Manor. She became his lifelong friend and admirer and cherished his memory till the last day of her life, but though she was devoted to him, she never renounced her independence nor did he demand that she should. By way of spiritual instruction, the Swami had once asked Miss MacLeod to meditate on Om for a week and report to him afterwards. When the teacher inquired how she felt, she said that 'it was like a glow in the heart.' He encouraged her and said: 'Good, keep on.' Many years later she told her friends that the Swami made her realize that she was in eternity. 'Always remember,' the Swami had admonished her, 'you are incidentally an American and a woman, but always a child of God. Tell yourself day and night who you are. Never forget it.' To her brother-in-law, Francis H. Leggett, the Swami had written, on July 16, 1896, in appreciation of Miss MacLeod: 'I simply admire Joe Joe in her tact and quiet ways. She is a feminine statesman. She could wield a kingdom. I have seldom seen such strong yet good common sense in a human being.'
When Miss MacLeod asked the Swami's permission to come to India, he wrote on a postcard: 'Do come by all means, only you must remember this: The Europeans and Indians live as oil and water. Even to speak of living with the natives is damning, even at the capitals. You will have to bear with people who wear only a loin-cloth; you will see me with only a loin-cloth about me. Dirt and filth everywhere, and brown people. But you will have plenty of men to talk philosophy to you.' He also wrote to her that she must not come to India if she expected anything else, for the Indians could not 'bear one more word of criticism'.
On one occasion, while travelling in Kashmir with the Swami and his party, she happened to make a laughing remark about one of his South Indian disciples with the caste-mark of the brahmins of his sect on his forehead. This appeared grotesque to her. The Swami turned upon her 'like a lion, withered her with a glance, and cried: "Hands off! Who are you? What have you ever done?"'
Miss MacLeod was crestfallen. But later she learnt that the same poor brahmin had been one of those who, by begging, had collected the money that had made it possible for the Swami to undertake his trip to America.
'How can I best help you,' she asked the Swami when she arrived in India. 'Love India,' was his reply.
One day Swami Vivekananda told Miss MacLeod that since his return to India he had had no personal money. She at once promised to pay him fifty dollars a month as long as he lived and immediately gave him three hundred dollars for six months in advance. The Swami asked jokingly if it would be enough for him. 'Not if you take heavy cream every day!' she said.
The Swami gave the money to Swami Trigunatita to defray the initial expenses of the newly started Bengali magazine, the Udbodhan.
But of all Swami Vivekananda's Western disciples, the most remarkable was Margaret E Noble, who was truly his spiritual daughter. She had attended the Swami's classes and lectures in London and resolved to dedicate her life to his work in India. When she expressed to him her desire to come to India, the Swami wrote to her, on July 29, 1897:
'Let me tell you frankly that I am now convinced that you have a great future in the work for India. What was wanted was not a man but a woman, a real lioness, to work for the Indians — women especially. India cannot yet produce great women, she must borrow them from other nations. Your education, sincerity, purity, immense love, determination, and above all, your Celtic blood, makes you just the woman wanted.
'Yet the difficulties are many. You cannot form any idea of the misery, the superstition, and the slavery that are here. You will be in the midst of a mass of half-naked men and women with quaint ideas of caste and isolation, shunning the white-skins through fear or hatred and hated by them intensely. On the other hand, you will be looked upon by the white as a crank, and every one of your movements will be watched with suspicion.
'Then the climate is fearfully hot, our winter in most places being like your summer, and in the south it is always blazing. Not one European comfort is to be had in places out of the cities. If in spite of all this you dare venture into the work, you are welcome, a hundred times welcome. As for me, I am nobody here as elsewhere, but what little influence I have shall be devoted to your service.
'You must think well before you plunge in, and afterwards if you fail in this or get disgusted, on my part I promise you I will stand by you unto death, whether you work for India or not, whether you give up Vedanta or remain in it. "The tusks of the elephant come out but never go back" — so are the words of a man never retracted. I promise you that.'
He further asked her to stand on her own feet and never seek help from his other Western women devotees.
Miss Noble came to India on January 28, 1898, to work with Miss Müller for the education of Indian women. The Swami warmly introduced her to the public of Calcutta as a 'gift of England to India,' and in March made her take the vow of brahmacharya, that is to say, the life of a religious celibate devoted to the realization of God. He also gave her the name of Nivedita, the 'Dedicated,' by which she has ever since been cherished by the Indians with deep respect and affection. The ceremony was performed in the chapel of the monastery. He first taught her how to worship Siva and then made the whole ceremony culminate in an offering at the feet of Buddha.
'Go thou,' he said, 'and follow him who was born and gave his life for others five hundred times before he attained the vision of the Buddha.'
The Swami now engaged himself in the training of Sister Nivedita along with the other Western disciples. And certainly it was a most arduous task. They were asked to associate intimately with the Holy Mother, the widow of Sri Ramakrishna, who at once adopted them as her 'children.' Then the Swami would visit them almost daily to reveal to them the deep secrets of the Indian world — its history, folklore, customs, and traditions. Mercilessly he tried to uproot from their minds all preconceived notions and wrong ideas about India. He wanted them to love India as she was at the present time, with her poverty, ignorance, and backwardness, and not the India of yore, when she had produced great philosophies, epics, dramas, and religious systems.
It was not always easy for the Western disciples to understand the religious ideals and forms of worship of the Hindus. For instance, one day in the great Kali temple of Calcutta, one Western lady shuddered at the sight of the blood of the goats sacrificed before the Deity, and exclaimed, 'Why is there blood before the Goddess?' Quickly the Swami retorted, 'Why not a little blood to complete the picture?'
The disciples had been brought up in the tradition of Protestant Christianity, in which the Godhead was associated only with what was benign and beautiful, and Satan with the opposite.
With a view to Hinduizing their minds, the Swami asked his Western disciples to visit Hindu ladies at their homes and to observe their dress, food, and customs, which were radically different from their own. Thus he put to a severe test their love for Vedanta and India. In the West they had regarded the Swami as a prophet showing them the path of liberation, and as a teacher of the universal religion. But in India he appeared before them, in addition, in the role of a patriot, an indefatigable worker for the regeneration of his motherland.
The Swami began to teach Nivedita to lose herself completely in the Indian consciousness. She gradually adopted the food, clothes, language, and general habits of the Hindus.
'You have to set yourself,' he said to her, 'to Hinduize your thoughts, your needs, your conceptions, your habits. Your life, internal and external, has to become all that an orthodox brahmin brahmacharini's ought to be. The method will come to you if you only desire it sufficiently. But you have to forget your past and cause it to be forgotten.' He wanted her to address the Hindus 'in terms of their own orthodoxy.'
Swami Vivekananda would not tolerate in his Western disciples any trace of chauvinism, any patronizing attitude or stupid criticism of the Indian way of life. They could serve India only if they loved India, and they could love India only if they knew India, her past glories and her present problems. Thus later he took them on his trip to Northern India, including Almora and Kashmir, and told them of the sanctity of Varanasi and the magnificence of Agra and Delhi; he related to them the history of the Moghul Emperors and the Rajput heroes, and also described the peasant's life, the duties of a farm housewife, and the hospitality of poor villagers to wandering monks. The teacher and his disciples saw together the sacred rivers, the dense forests, the lofty mountains, the sun-baked plains, the hot sands of the desert, and the gravel beds of the rivers, all of which had played their parts in the creation of Indian culture. And the Swami told them that in India custom and culture were one. The visible manifestations of the culture were the system of caste, the duties determined by the different stages of life, the respect of parents as incarnate gods, the appointed hours of religious service, the shrine used for daily worship, the chanting of the Vedas by the brahmin children, the eating of food with the right hand and its use in worship and japa, the austerities of Hindu widows, the kneeling in prayer of the Moslems wherever the time of prayer might find them, and the ideal of equality practised by the followers of Mohammed.
Nivedita possessed an aggressively Occidental and intensely, English outlook. It was not easy for her to eradicate instinctive national loyalties and strong personal likes and dislikes. A clash between the teacher and the disciple was inevitable. Ruthlessly the Swami crushed her pride in her English upbringing. Perhaps, at the same time, he wanted to protect her against the passionate adoration she had for him. Nivedita suffered bitter anguish.
The whole thing reached its climax while they were travelling together, some time after, in the Himalayas. One day Miss MacLeod thought that Nivedita could no longer bear the strain, and interceded kindly and gravely with the Swami. 'He listened,' Sister Nivedita wrote later, 'and went away. At evening, however, he returned, and finding us together on the veranda, he turned to her (Miss MacLeod) and said with the simplicity of a child: "You were right. There must be a change. I am going away to the forests to be alone, and when I come back I shall bring peace." Then he turned away and saw that above us the moon was new, and a sudden exaltation came into his voice as he said: "See, the Mohammedans think much of the new moon. Let us also, with the new moon, begin a new life."' As he said these words, he lifted his hand and blessed his rebellious disciple, who by this time was kneeling before him. It was assuredly a moment of wonderful sweetness of reconciliation. That evening in meditation Nivedita found herself gazing deep into an Infinite Good, to the recognition of which no egotistic reasoning had led her. 'And,' she wrote, 'I understood for the first time that the greatest teachers may destroy in us a personal relation only in order to bestow the Impersonal Vision in its place.'
To resume our story, on March 30, 1898, the Swami left for Darjeeling, for he badly needed a change to the cool air of the Himalayas. Hardly had he begun to feel the improvement in his health, when he had to come down to Calcutta, where an outbreak of plague was striking terror.
Immediately he made plans for relief work with the help of the members of the monastery and volunteers from Calcutta.
When a brother disciple asked him where he would get funds, the Swami replied: 'Why, we shall sell if necessary the land which has just been purchased for the monastery. We are sannyasins; we must be ready to sleep under the trees and live on alms as we did before. Must we care for the monastery and possessions when by disposing of them we could relieve thousands of helpless people suffering before our own eyes?' Fortunately this extreme step was not necessary; the public gave him money for the relief work.
The Swami worked hard to assuage the suffering of the afflicted people. Their love and admiration for him knew no bounds as they saw this practical application of Vedanta at a time of human need.
The plague having been brought under control, the Swami left Calcutta for Nainital on May 11, accompanied by, among others, his Western disciples. From there the party went to Almora where they met the Seviers. During this tour the Swami never ceased instructing his disciples. For his Western companions it was a rare opportunity to learn Indian history, religion, and philosophy direct from one who was an incarnation of the spirit of India. Some of the talks the Swami gave were recorded by Sister Nivedita in her charming book Notes of Some Wanderings with the Swami Vivekananda.
In Almora the Swami received news of the deaths of Pavhari Baba and Mr. Goodwin. He had been closely drawn to the former during his days of wandering. Goodwin died on June 2. Hearing of this irreparable loss, the Swami exclaimed in bitter grief, 'My right hand is gone!' To Goodwin's mother he wrote a letter of condolence in which he said: 'The debt of gratitude I owe him can never be repaid, and those who think they have been helped by any thought of mine ought to know that almost every word of it was published through the untiring and most unselfish exertions of Mr. Goodwin. In him I have lost a friend true as steel, a disciple of never-failing devotion, a worker who knew not what tiring was, and the world is less rich by the passing away of one of those few who are born, as it were, to live only for others.'
The Swami also sent her the following poem, which he had written in memory of Goodwin, bearing witness to the affection of the teacher for the disciple:
REQUIESCAT IN PACE
Speed forth, O soul! upon thy star-strewn path;
Speed, blissful one! where thought is ever free,
Where time and space no longer mist the view;
Eternal peace and blessings be with thee!
Thy service true, complete thy sacrifice;
Thy home the heart of love transcendent find!
Remembrance sweet, that kills all space and time,
Like altar roses, fill thy place behind!
Thy bonds are broke, thy quest in bliss is found,
And one with That which comes as death and life,
Thou helpful one! unselfish e'er on earth,
Ahead, still help with love this world of strife!
Before the Swami left Almora, he arranged to start again the monthly magazine Prabuddha Bharata, which had ceased publication with the death of its gifted editor, B. R. Rajam Iyer. Swami Swarupananda became its new editor, and Captain Sevier, the manager. The magazine began its new career at Almora. Then, on June 11, the Swami, in the company of his Western disciples, left for Kashmir as the guest of Mrs. Ole Bull.
The trip to Kashmir was an unforgettable experience for the Westerners. The natural beauty of the country, with its snow-capped mountains reflected in the water of the lakes, its verdant forests, multi-coloured flowers, and stately poplar and chennar trees, make the valley of Kashmir a paradise on earth. Throughout the journey the Swami poured out his heart and soul to his disciples. At first he was almost obsessed with the ideal of Siva, whom he had worshipped since boyhood, and for days he told the disciples legends relating to the great God of renunciation. The party spent a few days in house-boats, and in the afternoons the Swami would take his companions for long walks across the fields. The conversations were always stimulating. One day he spoke of Genghis Khan and declared that he was not a vulgar aggressor; he compared the Mongol Emperor to Napoleon and Alexander, saying that they all wanted to unify the world and that it was perhaps the same soul that had incarnated itself three times in the hope of bringing about human unity through political conquest. In the same way, he said, one Soul might have come again and again as Krishna, Buddha, and Christ, to bring about the unity of mankind through religion.
In Kashmir the Swami pined for solitude. The desire for the solitary life of a monk became irresistible; and he would often break away from the little party to roam alone. After his return he would make some such remark as: 'It is a sin to think of the body,' 'It is wrong to manifest power,' or 'Things do not grow better; they remain as they are. It is we who grow better, by the changes we make in ourselves.' Often he seemed to be drifting without any plan, and the disciples noticed his strange detachment. 'At no time,' Sister Nivedita wrote, 'would it have surprised us had someone told us that today or tomorrow he would be gone for ever, that we were listening to his voice for the last time.'
This planlessness was observed in him more and more as his earthly existence drew towards its end. Two years later, when Sister Nivedita gave him a bit of worldly advice, the Swami exclaimed in indignation: 'Plans! Plans! That is why you Western people can never create a religion! If any of you ever did, it was only a few Catholic saints who had no plans. Religion was never, never preached by planners!' About solitude as a spiritual discipline, the Swami said one day that an Indian could not expect to know himself till he had been alone for twenty years, whereas from the Western standpoint a man could not live alone for twenty years and remain quite sane. On the Fourth of July the Swami gave a surprise to his American disciples by arranging for its celebration in an appropriate manner. An American flag was made with the help of a brahmin tailor, and the Swami composed the following poem:
TO THE FOURTH OF JULY
Behold, the dark clouds melt away
That gathered thick at night and hung
So like a gloomy pall above the earth!
Before thy magic touch the world
Awakes. The birds in chorus sing.
The flowers raise their star-like crowns,
Dew-set, and wave thee welcome fair.
The lakes are opening wide, in love
Their hundred thousand lotus-eyes
To welcome thee with all their depth.
All hail to thee, thou lord of light!
A welcome new to thee today,
O sun! Today thou sheddest liberty!
Bethink thee how the world did wait
And search for thee, through time and clime!
Some gave up home and love of friends
And went in quest of thee, self-banished,
Through dreary oceans, through primeval forests,
Each step a struggle for their life or death;
Then came the day when work bore fruit,
And worship, love, and sacrifice,
Fulfilled, accepted, and complete.
Then thou, propitious, rose to shed
The light of freedom on mankind.
Move on, O lord, in thy resistless path,
Till thy high noon o'erspreads the world,
Till every land reflects thy light,
Till men and women, with uplifted head,
Behold their shackles broken and know
In springing joy their life renewed!
As the Swami's mood changed he spoke of renunciation. He showed scorn for the worldly life and said: 'As is the difference between a fire-fly and the blazing sun, between a little pond and the infinite ocean, a mustard seed and the mountain of Meru, such is the difference between the householder and the sannyasin.' Had it not been for the ochre robe, the emblem of monasticism, he pointed out, luxury and worldliness would have robbed man of his manliness.
Thus the party spent their time on the river, the teacher providing a veritable university for the education of his disciples. The conversation touched upon all subjects — Vedic rituals, Roman Catholic doctrine, Christ, St. Paul, the growth of Christianity, Buddha.
Of Buddha, the Swami said that he was the greatest man that ever lived. 'Above all, he never claimed worship. Buddha said: "Buddha is not a man, but a state. I have found the way. Enter all of you!"'
Then the talk would drift to the conception of sin among the Egyptian, Semitic, and Aryan races. According to the Vedic conception, the Swami said, the Devil is the Lord of Anger, and with Buddhists he is Mara, the Lord of Lust. Whereas in the Bible the creation was under the dual control of God and Satan, in Hinduism Satan represented defilement, never duality.
Next the Swami would speak about the chief characteristics of the different nations. 'You are so morbid, you Westerners', he said one day. 'You worship sorrow! All through your country I found that. Social life in the West is like a peal of laughter, but underneath it is a wail. The whole thing ends in a sob. The fun and frivolity are all on the surface; really, it is full of tragic intensity. Here it is sad and gloomy on the outside, but underneath are detachment and merriment.'
Once, at Islamabad, as the group sat round him on the grass in an apple orchard, the Swami repeated what he had said in England after facing a mad bull. Picking up two pebbles in his hand, he said: 'Whenever death approaches me all weakness vanishes. I have neither fear nor doubt nor thought of the external. I simply busy myself making ready to die. I am as hard as that' — and the stones struck each other in his hand — 'for I have touched the feet of God!'
At Islamabad the Swami announced his desire to make a pilgrimage to the great image of Siva in the cave of Amarnath in the glacial valley of the Western Himalayas. He asked Nivedita to accompany him so that she, a future worker, might have direct knowledge of the Hindu pilgrim's life. They became a part of a crowd of thousands of pilgrims, who formed at each halting-place a whole town of tents.
A sudden change came over the Swami. He became one of the pilgrims, scrupulously observing the most humble practices demanded by custom. He ate one meal a day, cooked in the orthodox fashion, and sought solitude as far as possible to tell his beads and practise meditation. In order to reach the destination, he had to climb up rocky slopes along dangerous paths, cross several miles of glacier, and bathe in the icy water of sacred streams.
On August 2 the party arrived at the enormous cavern, large enough to contain a vast cathedral. At the back of the cave, in a niche of deepest shadow, stood the image of Siva, all ice. The Swami, who had fallen behind, entered the cave, his whole frame shaking with emotion. His naked body was smeared with ashes, and his face radiant with devotion. Then he prostrated himself in the darkness of the cave before that glittering whiteness.
A song of praise from hundreds of throats echoed in the cavern. The Swami almost fainted. He had a vision of Siva Himself. The details of the experience he never told anyone, except that he had been granted the grace of Amarnath, the Lord of Immortality, not to die until he himself willed it.
The effect of the experience shattered his nerves. When he emerged from the grotto, there was a clot of blood in his left eye; his heart was dilated and never regained its normal condition. For days he spoke of nothing but Siva. He said: 'The image was the Lord Himself. It was all worship there. I have never seen anything so beautiful, so inspiring.'
On August 8 the party arrived at Srinagar, where they remained until September 30. During this period the Swami felt an intense desire for meditation and solitude. The Maharaja of Kashmir treated him with the utmost respect and wanted him to choose a tract of land for the establishment of a monastery and a Sanskrit college. The land was selected and the proposal sent to the British Resident for approval. But the British Agent refused to grant the land. The Swami accepted the whole thing philosophically.
A month later his devotion was directed to Kali, the Divine Mother, whom Ramakrishna had called affectionately 'my Mother.'
A unique symbol of the Godhead, Kali represents the totality of the universe: creation and destruction, life and death, good and evil, pain and pleasure, and all the pairs of opposites. She seems to be black when viewed from a distance, like the water of the ocean; but to the intimate observer She is without colour, being one with Brahman, whose creative energy She represents.
In one aspect She appears terrible, with a garland of human skulls, a girdle of human hands, her tongue dripping blood, a decapitated human head in one hand and a shining sword in the other, surrounded by jackals that haunt the cremation ground — a veritable picture of terror. The other side is benign and gracious, ready to confer upon Her devotees the boon of immortality. She reels as if drunk: who could have created this mad world except in a fit of drunkenness? Kali stands on the bosom of Her Divine Consort, Siva, the symbol of Brahman; for Kali, or Nature, cannot work unless energized by the touch of the Absolute. And in reality Brahman and Kali, the Absolute and Its Creative Energy, are identical, like fire and its power to burn.
The Hindu mind does not make a sweepingly moralistic distinction between good and evil. Both are facts of the phenomenal world and are perceived to exist when maya hides the Absolute, which is beyond good and evil. Ramakrishna emphasized the benign aspect of the Divine Mother Kali and propitiated Her to obtain the vision of the Absolute. Swami Vivekananda suddenly felt the appeal of Her destructive side. But is there really any difference between the process of creation and destruction? Is not the one without the other an illusion of the mind?
Vivekananda realized that the Divine Mother is omnipresent. Wherever he turned, he was conscious of the presence of the Mother, 'as if She were a person in the room.' He felt that it was She 'whose hands are clasped with my own and who leads me as though I were a child.' It was touching to see him worship the four-year-old daughter of his Mohammedan boatman as the symbol of the Divine Mother.
His meditation on Kali became intense, and one day he had a most vivid experience. He centred 'his whole attention on the dark, the painful, and the inscrutable' aspect of Reality, with a determination to reach by this particular path the Non-duality behind phenomena. His whole frame trembled, as if from an electric shock. He had a vision of Kali, the mighty Destructress lurking behind the veil of life, the Terrible One, hidden by the dust of the living who pass by, and all the appearances raised by their feet. In a fever, he groped in the dark for pencil and paper and wrote his famous poem 'Kali the Mother'; then he fell exhausted:
The stars are blotted out,
The clouds are covering clouds,
It is darkness, vibrant, sonant;
In the roaring, whirling wind
Are the souls of a million lunatics,
Just loose from the prison-house,
Wrenching trees by the roots,
Sweeping all from the path.
The sea has joined the fray
And swirls up mountain-waves
To reach the pitchy sky.
The flash of lurid light
Reveals on every side
A thousand thousand shades
Of death, begrimed and black.
Scattering plagues and sorrows,
Dancing mad with joy,
Come, Mother, come!
For terror is Thy name,
Death is in Thy breath,
And every shaking step
Destroys a world for e'er.
Thou Time, the All-destroyer,
Come, O Mother, come!
Who dares misery love,
And hug the form of death,
Dance in Destruction's dance —
To him the Mother comes.
The Swami now talked to his disciples only about Kali, the Mother, describing Her as 'time, change, and ceaseless energy.' He would say with the great Psalmist: 'Though Thou slay me, yet I will trust in Thee.'
'It is a mistake,' the Swami said, 'to hold that with all men pleasure is the motive. Quite as many are born to seek pain. There can be bliss in torture, too. Let us worship terror for its own sake.
'Learn to recognize the Mother as instinctively in evil, terror, sorrow, and annihilation as in that which makes for sweetness and joy!
'Only by the worship of the Terrible can the Terrible itself be overcome, and immortality gained. Meditate on death! Meditate on death! Worship the Terrible, the Terrible, the Terrible! And the Mother Herself is Brahman! Even Her curse is a blessing. The heart must become a cremation ground — pride, selfishness, and desire all burnt to ashes. Then, and then alone, will the Mother come.'
The Western disciples, brought up in a Western faith which taught them to see good, order, comfort, and beauty alone in the creation of a wise Providence, were shaken by the typhoon of a Cosmic Reality invoked by the Hindu visionary. Sister Nivedita writes:
And as he spoke, the underlying egoism of worship that is devoted to the kind God, to Providence, the consoling Deity, without a heart for God in the earthquake or God in the volcano, overwhelmed the listener. One saw that such worship was at bottom, as the Hindu calls it, merely 'shopkeeping,' and one realized the infinitely greater boldness and truth of teaching that God manifests through evil as well as through good. One saw that the true attitude for the mind and will that are not to be baffled by the personal self, was in fact that determination, in the stern words of Swami Vivekananda, 'to seek death, not life, to hurl oneself upon the sword's point, to become one with the Terrible for evermore.'
Heroism, to Vivekananda, was the soul of action. He wanted to see Ultimate Truth in all its terrible nakedness, and refused to soften it in any shape or manner. His love of Truth expected nothing in return; he scorned the bargain of 'giving to get in return' and all its promise of paradise.
But the gentle Ramakrishna, though aware of the Godhead in all its aspects, had emphasized Its benign side. One day several men had been arguing before him about the attributes of God, attempting to find out, by reason, their meaning. Sri Ramakrishna stopped them, saying: 'Enough, enough! What is the use of disputing whether the divine attributes are reasonable or not?...You say that God is good: can you convince me of His goodness by this reasoning? Look at the flood that has just caused the death of thousands. How can you prove that a benevolent God ordered it? You will perhaps reply that the same flood swept away uncleanliness and watered the earth, and so on. But could not a good God do that without drowning thousands of innocent men, women, and children?'
Thereupon one of the disputants said, 'Then ought we to believe that God is cruel?'
'O idiot,' cried Ramakrishna, 'who said that? Fold your hands and say humbly, "O God, we are too feeble and too weak to understand Thy nature and Thy deeds. Deign to enlighten us!" Do not argue. Love!' God is no doubt Good, True, and Beautiful; but these attributes are utterly different from their counterparts in the relative world.
The Swami, during these days, taught his disciples to worship God like heroes. He would say: 'There must be no fear, no begging, but demanding — demanding the Highest. The true devotees of the Mother are as hard, as adamant and as fearless as lions. They are not in the least upset if the whole universe suddenly crumbles into dust at their feet. Make Her listen to you. None of that cringing to Mother! Remember, She is all-powerful; She can make heroes out of stones.'
On September 30 Swami Vivekananda retired to a temple of the Divine Mother, where he stayed alone for a week. There he worshipped the Deity, known as Kshirbhavani, following the time-honoured ritual, praying and meditating like a humble pilgrim. Every morning he also worshipped a brahmin's little daughter as the symbol of the Divine Virgin. And he was blessed with deep experiences, some of which were most remarkable and indicated to him that his mission on earth was finished.
He had a vision of the Goddess and found Her a living Deity. But the temple had been destroyed by the Moslem invaders, and the image placed in a niche surrounded by ruins. Surveying this desecration, the Swami felt distressed at heart and said to himself: 'How could the people have permitted such sacrilege without offering strenuous resistance? If I had been here then, I would never have allowed such a thing. I would have laid down my life to protect the Mother.' Thereupon he heard the voice of the Goddess saying: 'What if unbelievers should enter My temple and defile My image? What is that to you? Do you protect Me, or do I protect you?' Referring to this experience after his return, he said to his disciples: 'All my patriotism is gone. Everything is gone. Now it is only "Mother! Mother!" I have been very wrong...I am only a little child.' He wanted to say more, but could not; he declared that it was not fitting that he should go on. Significantly, he added that spiritually he was no longer bound to the world.
Another day, in the course of his worship, the thought flashed through the Swami's mind that he should try to build a new temple in the place of the present dilapidated one, just as he had built a monastery and temple at Belur to Sri Ramakrishna. He even thought of trying to raise funds from his wealthy American disciples and friends. At once the Mother said to him: 'My child! If I so wish I can have innumerable temples and monastic centres. I can even this moment raise a seven-storied golden temple on this very spot.'
'Since I heard that divine voice,' the Swami said to a disciple in Calcutta much later, 'I have ceased making any more plans. Let these things be as Mother wills.'
Sri Ramakrishna had said long ago that Narendranath would live in the physical body to do the Mother's work and that as soon as this work was finished, he would cast off his body by his own will. Were the visions at the temple of Kshirbhavani a premonition of the approaching dissolution?
When the Swami rejoined his disciples at Srinagar, he was an altogether different person. He raised his hand in benediction and then placed some marigolds, which he had offered to the Deity, on the head of every one of his disciples. 'No more "Hari Om!"' he said. 'It is all "Mother" now!' Though he lived with them, the disciples saw very little of him. For hours he would stroll in the woods beside the river, absorbed within himself. One day he appeared before them with shaven head, dressed as the simplest sannyasin and with a look of unapproachable austerity on his face. He repeated his own poem 'Kali the Mother' and said, 'It all came true, every word of it; and I have proved it, for I have hugged the form of death.'
Sister Nivedita writes: 'The physical ebb of the great experience through which he had just passed — for even suffering becomes impossible when a given point of weariness is reached; and similarly, the body refuses to harbour a certain intensity of the spiritual life for an indefinite period — was leaving him, doubtless, more exhausted than he himself suspected. All this contributed, one imagines, to a feeling that none of us knew for how long a time we might now be parting.'
The party left Kashmir on October 11 and came down to Lahore. The Western disciples went to Agra, Delhi, and the other principal cities of Northern India for sightseeing, and the Swami, accompanied by his disciple Sadananda, arrived at Belur on October 18. His brother disciples saw that he was very pallid and ill. He suffered from suffocating attacks of asthma; when he emerged from its painful fits, his face looked blue, like that of a drowning man. But in spite of all, he plunged headlong into numerous activities.
On November 13, 1898, the day of the worship of Kali, the Nivedita Girls' School was opened in Calcutta. At the end of the inaugural ceremony the Holy Mother, Sri Ramakrishna's consort, 'prayed that the blessing of the Great Mother of the universe might be upon the school and that the girls it should train might be ideal girls.' Nivedita, who witnessed the ceremony with the Swamis of the Order, said: 'I cannot imagine a grander omen than her blessing spoken over the educated Hindu womanhood of the future.'
The dedication of the school was the beginning of Nivedita's work in India. The Swami gave her complete freedom about the way to run it. He told her that she was free from her collaborators if she so chose; and that she might, if she wished, give the work a 'definite religious colour' or even make it sectarian. Then he added, 'You may wish through a sect to rise beyond all sects.'
On December 9, 1898, the Ramakrishna Monastery at Belur was formally consecrated by the Swami with the installation of the Master's image in the chapel. The plot of land, as already stated, had been purchased in the beginning of the year and had been consecrated with proper religious ceremony in March that year. The Swami himself had performed the worship on that occasion at the rented house and afterwards had carried on his shoulder the copper vessel containing the Master's sacred relics. While bearing it he said to a disciple: 'The Master once told me, "I will go and live wherever you take me, carrying me on your shoulder, be it under a tree or in the humblest cottage." With faith in that gracious promise I myself am now carrying him to the site of our future Math. Know for certain, my boy, that so long as his name inspires his followers with the ideal of purity, holiness, and charity for all men, even so long shall he, the Master, sanctify this place with his presence.'
Of the glorious future he saw for the monastery the Swami said: 'It will be a centre in which will be recognized and practised a grand harmony of all creeds and faiths as exemplified in the life of Sri Ramakrishna, and religion in its universal aspect, alone, will be preached. And from this centre of universal toleration will go forth the shining message of goodwill, peace, and harmony to deluge the whole world.' He warned all of the danger of sectarianism's creeping in if they became careless.
After the ceremony, he addressed the assembled monks, brahmacharins, and lay devotees as follows: 'Do you all, my brothers, pray to the Lord with all your heart and soul that He, the Divine Incarnation of the age, may bless this place with his hallowed presence for ever and ever, and make it a unique centre, a holy land, of harmony of different religions and sects, for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many.'
Swami Vivekananda was in an ecstatic mood. He had accomplished the great task of finding a permanent place on which to build a temple for the Master, with a monastery for his brother disciples and the monks of the future that should serve as the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Order for the propagation of Sri Ramakrishna's teachings. He felt as if the heavy responsibility that he had carried on his shoulders for the past twelve years had been lifted. He wanted the monastery at Belur to be a finished university where Indian mystical wisdom and Western practical science would be taught side by side. And he spoke of the threefold activities of the monastery: annadana, the gift of food; vidyadana, the gift of intellectual knowledge; and jnanadana, the gift of spiritual wisdom. These three, properly balanced, would, in the Swami's opinion, make a complete man. The inmates of the monastery, through unselfish service of men, would purify their minds and thus qualify themselves for the supreme knowledge of Brahman.
Swami Vivekananda in his vivid imagination saw the different sections of the monastery allotted to different functions — the free kitchen for the distribution of food to the hungry, the university for the imparting of knowledge, the quarters for devotees from Europe and America, and so forth and so on. The spiritual ideals emanating from the Belur Math, he once said to Miss MacLeod, would influence the thought-currents of the world for eleven hundred years.
'All these visions are rising before me' — these were his very words.
The ceremony over, the sacred vessel was brought back to the rented house by his disciple Sarat Chandra Chakravarty, as the Swami did not want to carry back the Master from the monastery where he had just installed him.
It was a few months before the buildings of the new monastery were completed and the monastery was finally removed to its present site. The date of the momentous occasion was January 2, 1899. The Bengali monthly magazine, the Udbodhan, was first published on January 14 of the same year, and regarding its policy, the Swami declared that nothing but positive ideas for the physical, mental, and spiritual improvement of the race should find a place in it; that instead of criticizing the thoughts and aspirations of ancient and modern man, as embodied in literature, philosophy, poetry, and the arts, the magazine should indicate the way in which those thoughts and aspirations might be made conducive to progress; and finally that the magazine should stand for universal harmony as preached by Sri Ramakrishna, and disseminate his ideals of love, purity, and renunciation.
The Swami was happy to watch the steady expansion of the varied activities of the Order. At his request Swami Saradananda had returned from America to assist in the organization of the Belur Math. Together with Swami Turiyananda, he conducted regular classes at the Math for the study of Sanskrit and of Eastern and Western philosophy. Somewhat later the two Swamis were sent on a preaching mission to Gujarat, in Western India, and for the same purpose two of the Swami's own disciples were sent to East Bengal. Swami Shivananda was deputed to Ceylon to preach Vedanta. Reports of the excellent work done by Swamis Ramakrishnananda and Abhedananda in Madras and America were received at the Math. Swami Akhandananda's work for the educational uplift of the villages and also in establishing a home for the orphans elicited praise from the Government.
One of the most remarkable institutions founded by Swami Vivekananda was the Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati in the Himalayas. Ever since his visit to the Alps in Switzerland, the Swami had been cherishing the desire to establish a monastery in the solitude of the Himalayas where non-dualism would be taught and practised in its purest form. Captain and Mrs. Sevier took up the idea, and the Ashrama was established at Mayavati, at an altitude of 6500 feet. Before it there shone, day and night, the eternal snow-range of the Himalayas for an extent of some two hundred miles, with Nanda Devi rising to a height of more than 25,000 feet. Spiritual seekers, irrespective of creed and race, were welcome at the monastery at Mayavati. No external worship of any kind was permitted within its boundaries. Even the formal worship of Sri Ramakrishna was excluded. It was required of the inmates and guests always to keep before their minds the vision of the nameless and formless Spirit.
Swami Vivekananda in the following lines laid down the ideals and principles of this Himalayan ashrama:
'In Whom is the Universe, Who is in the Universe, Who is the Universe; in Whom is the Soul, Who is in the Soul, Who is the Soul of man; to know Him, and therefore the Universe, as our Self, alone extinguishes all fear, brings an end to misery, and leads to infinite freedom. Wherever there has been expansion in love or progress in well-being of individuals or numbers, it has been through the perception, realization, and the practicalization of the Eternal Truth — the Oneness of All Beings. "Dependence is misery. Independence is happiness." The Advaita is the only system which gives unto man complete possession of himself and takes off all dependence and its associated superstitions, thus making us brave to suffer, brave to do, and in the long run to attain to Absolute Freedom.
'Hitherto it has not been possible to preach this Noble Truth entirely free from the settings of dualistic weakness; this alone, we are convinced, explains why it has not been more operative and useful to mankind at large.
'To give this One Truth a freer and fuller scope in elevating the lives of individuals and leavening the mass of mankind, we start this Advaita Ashrama on the Himalayan heights, the land of its first formulation.
'Here it is hoped to keep Advaita free from all superstitions and weakening contaminations. Here will be taught and practised nothing but the Doctrine of Unity, pure and simple; and though in entire sympathy with all other systems, this Ashrama is dedicated to Advaita and Advaita alone.'
After the Swami's return from Kashmir his health had begun to deteriorate visibly. His asthma caused him great suffering. But his zeal for work increased many times.
'Ever since I went to Amarnath,' he said one day, 'Siva Himself has entered into my brain. He will not go.'
At the earnest request of the brother monks, he visited Calcutta frequently for treatment; yet even there he had no respite from work. Visitors thronged about him for religious instruction from morning till night, and his large heart could not say no to them. When the brother monks pressed him to receive people only at appointed hours, he replied: 'They take so much trouble to come, walking all the way from their homes, and can I, sitting here, not speak a few words to them, merely because I risk my health a little?'
His words sounded so much like those of Sri Ramakrishna during the latter's critical illness, no wonder that Swami Premananda said to him one day, 'We do not see any difference between Sri Ramakrishna
Biography of Swami Vivekananda - Second Visit to the West
On December 16, 1898, Swami Vivekananda announced his plan to go to the West to inspect the work he had founded and to fan the flame. The devotees and friends welcomed the idea since they thought the sea voyage would restore his failing health. He planned to take with him Sister Nivedita and Swami Turiyananda.
Versed in the scriptures, Turiyananda had spent most of his life in meditation and was averse to public work. Failing to persuade him by words to accompany him to America, Vivekananda put his arms round his brother disciple's neck and wept like a child, saying: 'Dear brother, don't you see how I am laying down my life inch by inch in fulfilling the mission of my Master? Now I have come to the verge of death! Can you look on without trying to relieve part of my great burden?'
Swami Turiyananda was deeply moved and offered to follow the Swami wherever he wanted to go. When he asked if he should take with him some Vedanta scriptures, Vivekananda said: 'Oh, they have had enough of learning and books! The last time they saw a warrior;* now I want to show them a brahmin.'
June 20, 1899, was fixed as their date of sailing from Calcutta. On the night of the 19th a meeting was held at the Belur Math at which the junior members of the monastery presented addresses to the two Swamis. The next day the Holy Mother entertained them and other monks with a sumptuous feast.
The steamship 'Golconda,' carrying the Swami and his two companions, touched Madras, but the passengers were not allowed to land on account of the plague in Calcutta. This was a great disappointment to Swami Vivekananda's South Indian friends. The ship continued to Colombo, Aden, Naples, and Marseilles, finally arriving in London on July 31.
The voyage in the company of the Swami was an education for Turiyananda and Nivedita. From beginning to end a vivid flow of thought and stories went on. One never knew what moment would bring the flash of intuition and the ringing utterance of some fresh truth. That encyclopaedic mind touched all subjects: Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Ramakrishna, folklore, the history of India and Europe, the degradation of Hindu society and the assurance of its coming greatness, different philosophical and religious systems, and many themes more. All was later admirably recorded by Sister Nivedita in The Master as I Saw Him, from which the following fragments may be cited.
'Yes,' the Swami said one day, 'the older I grow, the more everything seems to me to lie in manliness. This is my new gospel. Do even evil like a man! Be wicked, if you must, on a grand scale!' Some time before, Nivedita had complimented India on the infrequency of crime; on that occasion the Swami said in sorrowful protest: 'Would to God it were otherwise in my land! For this is verily the virtuousness of death.' Evidently, according to him, the vilest crime was not to act, to do nothing at all.
Regarding conservative and liberal ideas he said: 'The conservative's whole ideal is submission. Your ideal is struggle. Consequently it is we who enjoy life, and never you! You are always striving to change yours to something better, and before a millionth part of the change is carried out, you die. The Western ideal is to be doing; the Eastern, to be suffering. The perfect life would be a wonderful harmony between doing and suffering. But that can never be.'
To him selfishness was the greatest barrier to spiritual progress:
'It is selfishness that we must seek to eliminate. I find that whenever I have made a mistake in my life, it has always been because self entered into the calculation. Where self has not been involved, my judgement has gone straight to the mark.'
'You are quite wrong,' he said again, 'when you think that fighting is the sign of growth. It is not so at all. Absorption is the sign. Hinduism is the very genius of absorption. We have never cared for fighting. Of course, we struck a blow now and then in defence of our homes. That was right. But we never cared for fighting for its own sake. Everyone had to learn that. So let these races of new-comers whirl on! They all will be taken into Hinduism in the end.'
In another mood, the theme of his conversation would be Kali, and the worship of the Terrible. Then he would say: 'I love terror for its own sake, despair for its own sake, misery for its own sake. Fight always. Fight and fight on, though always in defeat. That's the ideal! That's the ideal!' Again: 'Worship the Terrible! Worship Death! All else is vain. All struggle is vain. This is the last lesson. Yet this is not the coward's love of death, not the love of the weak or the suicide. It is the welcome of the strong man, who has sounded everything to the depths and knows that there is no alternative.' And who is Kali, whose will is irresistible? 'The totality of all souls, not the human alone, is the Personal God. The will of the totality nothing can resist. It is what we know as Law. And this is what we mean by Siva and Kali and so on.'
Concerning true greatness: 'As I grow older I find that I look more and more for greatness in little things. I want to know what a great man eats and wears, and how he speaks to his servants. I want to find a Sir Philip Sidney greatness. Few men would remember to think of others in the moment of death.
'But anyone will be great in a great position! Even the coward will grow brave in the glow of the footlights. The world looks on. Whose heart will not throb? Whose pulse will not quicken, till he can do his best? More and more the true greatness seems to me that of the worm, doing its duty silently, steadily, from moment to moment and hour to hour.'
Regarding the points of difference between his own schemes for the regeneration of India and those preached by others: 'I disagree with those who are for giving their superstitions back to my people. Like the Egyptologist's interest in Egypt, it is easy to feel an interest in India that is purely selfish. One may desire to see again the India of one's books, one's studies, one's dreams. My hope is to see the strong points of that India, reinforced by the strong points of this age, only in a natural way. The new state of things must be a growth from within. So I preach only the Upanishads. If you look you will find that I have never quoted anything but the Upanishads. And of the Upanishads, it is only that one idea — strength. The quintessence of the Vedas and Vedanta and all, lies in that one word. Buddha's teaching was of non-resistance or non-injury. But I think ours is a better way of teaching the same thing. For behind that non-injury lay a dreadful weakness — the weakness that conceives the idea of resistance. But I do not think of punishing or escaping from a drop of sea-spray. It is nothing to me. Yet to the mosquito it would be serious. Now, I will make all injury like that. Strength and fearlessness. My own ideal is that giant of a saint whom they killed in the Sepoy Mutiny, and who broke his silence, when stabbed to the heart, to say — "And thou also art He."'
About India and Europe the Swami said: 'I see that India is a young and living organism. Europe is also young and living. Neither has arrived at such a stage of development that we can safely criticize its institutions. They are two great experiments, neither of which is yet complete.' They ought to be mutually helpful, he went on, but at the same time each should respect the free development of the other. They ought to grow hand in hand.
Thus time passed till the boat arrived at Tilbury Dock, where the party was met by the Swami's disciples and friends, among whom were two American ladies who had come all the way to London to meet their teacher. It was the off-season for London, and so the two Swamis sailed for New York on August 16.
The trip was beneficial to the Swami's health; the sea was smooth and at night the moonlight was enchanting. One evening as the Swami paced up and down the deck enjoying the beauty of nature, he suddenly exclaimed, 'And if all this maya is so beautiful, think of the wondrous beauty of the Reality behind it!' Another evening, when the moon was full, he pointed to the sea and sky, and said, 'Why recite poetry when there is the very essence of poetry?'
The afternoon that Swami Vivekananda arrived in New York, he and his brother disciple went with Mr. and Mrs. Leggett to the latter's country home, Ridgely Manor, at Stone Ridge in the Catskill Mountains, Swami Abhedananda being at that time absent from New York on a lecture tour. A month later Nivedita came to Ridgely, and on September 21, when she decided to assume the nun's garb, the Swami wrote for her his beautiful poem 'Peace.' The rest and good climate were improving his health, and he was entertaining all with his usual fun and merriment.
One day Miss MacLeod asked him how he liked their home-grown strawberries, and he answered that he had not tasted any. Miss MacLeod was surprised and said, 'Why Swami, we have been serving you strawberries with cream and sugar every day for the past week.' 'Ah,' the Swami replied, with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, 'I am tasting only cream and sugar. Even tacks taste sweet that way.'
In November the Swami returned to New York and was greeted by his old friends and disciples. He was pleased to see how the work had expanded under the able guidance of Swami Abhedananda. Swami Vivekananda gave some talks and conducted classes.
At one of the public meetings in New York, after addressing a tense audience for about fifteen minutes, the Swami suddenly made a formal bow and retired. The meeting broke up and the people went away greatly disappointed. A friend asked him, when he was returning home, why he had cut short the lecture in that manner, just when both he and the audience were warming up. Had he forgotten his points? Had he become nervous? The Swami answered that at the meeting he had felt that he had too much power. He had noticed that the members of the audience were becoming so absorbed in his ideas that they were losing their own individualities. He had felt that they had become like soft clay and that he could give them any shape he wanted. That, however, was contrary to his philosophy. He wished every man and woman to grow according to his or her own inner law. He did not wish to change or destroy anyone's individuality. That was why he had had to stop.
Swami Turiyananda started work at Montclair, New Jersey, a short distance from New York, and began to teach children the stories and folklore of India. He also lectured regularly at the Vedanta Society of New York: His paper on Sankaracharya, read before the Cambridge Conference, was highly praised by the Harvard professors.
One day, while the Swami was staying at Ridgely Manor, Miss MacLeod had received a telegram informing her that her only brother was dangerously ill in Los Angeles. As she was leaving for the West coast, the Swami uttered a Sanskrit benediction and told her that he would soon meet her there. She proceeded straight to the home of Mrs. S. K. Blodgett, where her brother was staying, and after spending a few minutes with the patient, asked Mrs. Blodgett whether her brother might be permitted to die in the room in which he was then lying; for she had found a large picture of Vivekananda, hanging on the wall at the foot of the patient's bed. Miss MacLeod told her hostess of her surprise on seeing the picture, and Mrs. Blodgett replied that she had heard Vivekananda at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago and thought that if ever there was a God on earth, it was that man. (See) Miss MacLeod told her that she had just left the Swami at Ridgely Manor, and further, that he had expressed the desire to come to Los Angeles. The brother died within a few days, and the Swami started for the West Coast on November 22. He broke his trip in Chicago to visit his old friends, and upon his arrival in Los Angeles became the guest of Mrs. Blodgett, whom he described in a letter to Mary Hale as 'fat, old, extremely witty, and very motherly.'
The impression the Swami left in the mind of this good woman can be gathered from the following lines of a letter written by her to Miss MacLeod after Swamiji's passing away:
Versed in the scriptures, Turiyananda had spent most of his life in meditation and was averse to public work. Failing to persuade him by words to accompany him to America, Vivekananda put his arms round his brother disciple's neck and wept like a child, saying: 'Dear brother, don't you see how I am laying down my life inch by inch in fulfilling the mission of my Master? Now I have come to the verge of death! Can you look on without trying to relieve part of my great burden?'
Swami Turiyananda was deeply moved and offered to follow the Swami wherever he wanted to go. When he asked if he should take with him some Vedanta scriptures, Vivekananda said: 'Oh, they have had enough of learning and books! The last time they saw a warrior;* now I want to show them a brahmin.'
June 20, 1899, was fixed as their date of sailing from Calcutta. On the night of the 19th a meeting was held at the Belur Math at which the junior members of the monastery presented addresses to the two Swamis. The next day the Holy Mother entertained them and other monks with a sumptuous feast.
The steamship 'Golconda,' carrying the Swami and his two companions, touched Madras, but the passengers were not allowed to land on account of the plague in Calcutta. This was a great disappointment to Swami Vivekananda's South Indian friends. The ship continued to Colombo, Aden, Naples, and Marseilles, finally arriving in London on July 31.
The voyage in the company of the Swami was an education for Turiyananda and Nivedita. From beginning to end a vivid flow of thought and stories went on. One never knew what moment would bring the flash of intuition and the ringing utterance of some fresh truth. That encyclopaedic mind touched all subjects: Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Ramakrishna, folklore, the history of India and Europe, the degradation of Hindu society and the assurance of its coming greatness, different philosophical and religious systems, and many themes more. All was later admirably recorded by Sister Nivedita in The Master as I Saw Him, from which the following fragments may be cited.
'Yes,' the Swami said one day, 'the older I grow, the more everything seems to me to lie in manliness. This is my new gospel. Do even evil like a man! Be wicked, if you must, on a grand scale!' Some time before, Nivedita had complimented India on the infrequency of crime; on that occasion the Swami said in sorrowful protest: 'Would to God it were otherwise in my land! For this is verily the virtuousness of death.' Evidently, according to him, the vilest crime was not to act, to do nothing at all.
Regarding conservative and liberal ideas he said: 'The conservative's whole ideal is submission. Your ideal is struggle. Consequently it is we who enjoy life, and never you! You are always striving to change yours to something better, and before a millionth part of the change is carried out, you die. The Western ideal is to be doing; the Eastern, to be suffering. The perfect life would be a wonderful harmony between doing and suffering. But that can never be.'
To him selfishness was the greatest barrier to spiritual progress:
'It is selfishness that we must seek to eliminate. I find that whenever I have made a mistake in my life, it has always been because self entered into the calculation. Where self has not been involved, my judgement has gone straight to the mark.'
'You are quite wrong,' he said again, 'when you think that fighting is the sign of growth. It is not so at all. Absorption is the sign. Hinduism is the very genius of absorption. We have never cared for fighting. Of course, we struck a blow now and then in defence of our homes. That was right. But we never cared for fighting for its own sake. Everyone had to learn that. So let these races of new-comers whirl on! They all will be taken into Hinduism in the end.'
In another mood, the theme of his conversation would be Kali, and the worship of the Terrible. Then he would say: 'I love terror for its own sake, despair for its own sake, misery for its own sake. Fight always. Fight and fight on, though always in defeat. That's the ideal! That's the ideal!' Again: 'Worship the Terrible! Worship Death! All else is vain. All struggle is vain. This is the last lesson. Yet this is not the coward's love of death, not the love of the weak or the suicide. It is the welcome of the strong man, who has sounded everything to the depths and knows that there is no alternative.' And who is Kali, whose will is irresistible? 'The totality of all souls, not the human alone, is the Personal God. The will of the totality nothing can resist. It is what we know as Law. And this is what we mean by Siva and Kali and so on.'
Concerning true greatness: 'As I grow older I find that I look more and more for greatness in little things. I want to know what a great man eats and wears, and how he speaks to his servants. I want to find a Sir Philip Sidney greatness. Few men would remember to think of others in the moment of death.
'But anyone will be great in a great position! Even the coward will grow brave in the glow of the footlights. The world looks on. Whose heart will not throb? Whose pulse will not quicken, till he can do his best? More and more the true greatness seems to me that of the worm, doing its duty silently, steadily, from moment to moment and hour to hour.'
Regarding the points of difference between his own schemes for the regeneration of India and those preached by others: 'I disagree with those who are for giving their superstitions back to my people. Like the Egyptologist's interest in Egypt, it is easy to feel an interest in India that is purely selfish. One may desire to see again the India of one's books, one's studies, one's dreams. My hope is to see the strong points of that India, reinforced by the strong points of this age, only in a natural way. The new state of things must be a growth from within. So I preach only the Upanishads. If you look you will find that I have never quoted anything but the Upanishads. And of the Upanishads, it is only that one idea — strength. The quintessence of the Vedas and Vedanta and all, lies in that one word. Buddha's teaching was of non-resistance or non-injury. But I think ours is a better way of teaching the same thing. For behind that non-injury lay a dreadful weakness — the weakness that conceives the idea of resistance. But I do not think of punishing or escaping from a drop of sea-spray. It is nothing to me. Yet to the mosquito it would be serious. Now, I will make all injury like that. Strength and fearlessness. My own ideal is that giant of a saint whom they killed in the Sepoy Mutiny, and who broke his silence, when stabbed to the heart, to say — "And thou also art He."'
About India and Europe the Swami said: 'I see that India is a young and living organism. Europe is also young and living. Neither has arrived at such a stage of development that we can safely criticize its institutions. They are two great experiments, neither of which is yet complete.' They ought to be mutually helpful, he went on, but at the same time each should respect the free development of the other. They ought to grow hand in hand.
Thus time passed till the boat arrived at Tilbury Dock, where the party was met by the Swami's disciples and friends, among whom were two American ladies who had come all the way to London to meet their teacher. It was the off-season for London, and so the two Swamis sailed for New York on August 16.
The trip was beneficial to the Swami's health; the sea was smooth and at night the moonlight was enchanting. One evening as the Swami paced up and down the deck enjoying the beauty of nature, he suddenly exclaimed, 'And if all this maya is so beautiful, think of the wondrous beauty of the Reality behind it!' Another evening, when the moon was full, he pointed to the sea and sky, and said, 'Why recite poetry when there is the very essence of poetry?'
The afternoon that Swami Vivekananda arrived in New York, he and his brother disciple went with Mr. and Mrs. Leggett to the latter's country home, Ridgely Manor, at Stone Ridge in the Catskill Mountains, Swami Abhedananda being at that time absent from New York on a lecture tour. A month later Nivedita came to Ridgely, and on September 21, when she decided to assume the nun's garb, the Swami wrote for her his beautiful poem 'Peace.' The rest and good climate were improving his health, and he was entertaining all with his usual fun and merriment.
One day Miss MacLeod asked him how he liked their home-grown strawberries, and he answered that he had not tasted any. Miss MacLeod was surprised and said, 'Why Swami, we have been serving you strawberries with cream and sugar every day for the past week.' 'Ah,' the Swami replied, with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, 'I am tasting only cream and sugar. Even tacks taste sweet that way.'
In November the Swami returned to New York and was greeted by his old friends and disciples. He was pleased to see how the work had expanded under the able guidance of Swami Abhedananda. Swami Vivekananda gave some talks and conducted classes.
At one of the public meetings in New York, after addressing a tense audience for about fifteen minutes, the Swami suddenly made a formal bow and retired. The meeting broke up and the people went away greatly disappointed. A friend asked him, when he was returning home, why he had cut short the lecture in that manner, just when both he and the audience were warming up. Had he forgotten his points? Had he become nervous? The Swami answered that at the meeting he had felt that he had too much power. He had noticed that the members of the audience were becoming so absorbed in his ideas that they were losing their own individualities. He had felt that they had become like soft clay and that he could give them any shape he wanted. That, however, was contrary to his philosophy. He wished every man and woman to grow according to his or her own inner law. He did not wish to change or destroy anyone's individuality. That was why he had had to stop.
Swami Turiyananda started work at Montclair, New Jersey, a short distance from New York, and began to teach children the stories and folklore of India. He also lectured regularly at the Vedanta Society of New York: His paper on Sankaracharya, read before the Cambridge Conference, was highly praised by the Harvard professors.
One day, while the Swami was staying at Ridgely Manor, Miss MacLeod had received a telegram informing her that her only brother was dangerously ill in Los Angeles. As she was leaving for the West coast, the Swami uttered a Sanskrit benediction and told her that he would soon meet her there. She proceeded straight to the home of Mrs. S. K. Blodgett, where her brother was staying, and after spending a few minutes with the patient, asked Mrs. Blodgett whether her brother might be permitted to die in the room in which he was then lying; for she had found a large picture of Vivekananda, hanging on the wall at the foot of the patient's bed. Miss MacLeod told her hostess of her surprise on seeing the picture, and Mrs. Blodgett replied that she had heard Vivekananda at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago and thought that if ever there was a God on earth, it was that man. (See) Miss MacLeod told her that she had just left the Swami at Ridgely Manor, and further, that he had expressed the desire to come to Los Angeles. The brother died within a few days, and the Swami started for the West Coast on November 22. He broke his trip in Chicago to visit his old friends, and upon his arrival in Los Angeles became the guest of Mrs. Blodgett, whom he described in a letter to Mary Hale as 'fat, old, extremely witty, and very motherly.'
The impression the Swami left in the mind of this good woman can be gathered from the following lines of a letter written by her to Miss MacLeod after Swamiji's passing away:
I am ever recalling those swift, bright days in that never-to-be-forgotten winter, lived in simple freedom and kindliness. We could not choose but to be happy and good....I knew him personally but a short time, yet in that time I could see in a hundred ways the child side of Swamiji's character, which was a constant appeal to the mother quality in all good women....He would come home from a lecture, where he had been compelled to break away from his audience — so eagerly would they gather around him — and rush into the kitchen like a boy released from school, with 'Now we will cook!' Presently Joe would appear and discover the culprit among the pots and pans, and in his fine dress, who was by thrifty, watchful Joe admonished to change to his home garments....In the homely, old-fashioned kitchen, you and I have seen Swamiji at his best.
Swami Vivekananda gave many lectures before large audiences in Los Angeles and Pasadena; but alas! there was no Goodwin to record them, and most of what he said was consequently lost. Only a little has been preserved in the fragmentary notes of his disciples.
At the Universalist Church of Pasadena he gave his famous lecture 'Christ, the Messenger'; and this was the only time, Miss MacLeod said later, that she saw him enveloped in a halo. The Swami, after the lecture, was returning home wrapped in thought, and Miss MacLeod was following at a little distance, when suddenly she heard him say, 'I know it, I know it!'
'What do you know?' asked Miss MacLeod.
'How they make it.'
'How they make what?'
'Mulligatawny soup. They put in a dash of bay leaf for flavour.' And then he burst into a laugh.
The Swami spent about a month at the headquarters of the 'Home of Truth' in Los Angeles, conducted regular classes, and gave several public lectures, each of which was attended by over a thousand people. He spoke many times on the different aspects of raja-yoga, a subject in which Californians seemed to be especially interested.
The Swami endeared himself to the members of the Home of Truth by his simple manner, his great intellect, and his spiritual wisdom. Unity, the magazine of the organization, said of him: 'There is a combination in the Swami Vivekananda of the learning of a university president, the dignity of an archbishop, with the grace and winsomeness of a free and natural child. Getting upon the platform, without a moment's preparation, he would soon be in the midst of his subject, sometimes becoming almost tragic as his mind would wander from deep metaphysics to the prevailing conditions in Christian countries of today, whose people go and seek to reform the Filipinos with the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other, or in South Africa allow children of the same Father to cut each other to pieces. In contrast to this condition of things, he described what took place during the last great famine in India, where men would die of starvation beside their cows rather than stretch forth a hand to kill.'
The members of the Home of Truth were not permitted to smoke. One evening the Swami was invited for dinner by a member of the organization along with several other friends who were all opposed to the use of tobacco. After dinner the hostess was absent from the room for a few minutes, when the Swami, perhaps due to his ignorance of the rule about tobacco, took out his pipe, filled it up, and began to puff. The guests were aghast, but kept quiet. When the hostess returned, she flew into a rage and asked the Swami if God intended men to smoke, adding that in that case He would have furnished the human head with a chimney for the smoke to go out.
'But He has given us the brain to invent a pipe,' the Swami said with a smile.
Everybody laughed, and the Swami was given freedom to smoke while living as a guest in the Home of Truth.
Swami Vivekananda journeyed to Oakland as the guest of Dr. Benjamin Fay Mills, the minister of the First Unitarian Church, and there gave eight lectures to crowded audiences which often numbered as high as two thousand. He also gave many public lectures in San Francisco and Alameda. People had already read his Raja-Yoga. Impressed by his lectures, they started a centre in San Francisco. The Swami was also offered a gift of land, measuring a hundred and sixty acres, in the southern part of the San Antone valley; surrounded by forest and hills, and situated at an altitude of 2500 feet, the property was only twelve miles from the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton. He at once thought of Swami Turiyananda, who could be given charge of the place to train earnest students in meditation.
During his trip back to New York, across the American continent, the Swami was very much fatigued. He stopped in Chicago and Detroit on the way. In Chicago he was the guest of the Hale family, and many old reminiscences were exchanged. On the morning of his departure, Mary came to the Swami's room and found him sad. His bed appeared to have been untouched, and on being asked the reason, he confessed that he had spent the whole night without sleep. 'Oh,' he said, almost in a whisper, 'it is so difficult to break human bonds!' He knew that this was the last time he was to visit these devoted friends.
In New York the Swami gave a few lectures at the Vedanta Society, which by this time had enlisted the active co-operation of several professors of Harvard and Columbia University. At the earliest opportunity he spoke to Turiyananda about the proposed gift of land in northern California, but the latter hesitated to accept any responsibility. The Swami said, 'It is the will of the Mother that you should take charge of the work there.'
Swami Turiyananda was amused and said with good humour: 'Rather say it is your will. Certainly you have not heard the Mother communicate Her will to you in that way. How can you hear the words of the Mother?'
'Yes, brother,' the Swami said with great emotion. 'Yes, the words of the Mother can be heard as clearly as we hear one another. But one requires a fine nerve to hear Mother's words.'
Swami Vivekananda made this statement with such fervour that his brother disciple felt convinced that the Divine Mother was speaking through him. He cheerfully agreed, therefore, to take charge of Santi Ashrama, the Peace Retreat, as the new place was called.
In parting, the Swami said to Turiyananda: 'Go and establish the Ashrama in California. Hoist the flag of Vedanta there; from this moment destroy even the memory of India! Above all, lead the life and Mother will see to the rest.'
The Swami visited Detroit again for a week and on July 20 sailed for Paris.
Before continuing the thread of Swami Vivekananda's life, it will be interesting for the reader to get a glimpse of his state of mind. During the past two years, the Swami wrote to his friends, he had gone through great mental anguish. His message, to be sure, had begun to reach an ever-increasing number of people both in India and in America, and naturally he had been made happy by this fact; yet he had suffered intensely on account of 'poverty, treachery, and my own foolishness,' as he wrote to Mary Hale on February 20, 1900. Though his outward appearance was that of a stern non-dualist, he possessed a tender heart that was often bruised by the blows of the world. To Margaret Noble he wrote on December 6, 1899: 'Some people are made that way — to love being miserable. If I did not break my heart over the people I was born amongst, I would do it for somebody else. I am sure of that. This is the way of some — I am coming to see it. We are all after happiness, true, but some are only happy in being unhappy — queer, is it not?'
How sensitive he was to the sufferings of men! 'I went years ago to the Himalayas,' he wrote to an American friend on December 12, 1899, 'never to come back — and my sister committed suicide, the news reached me there, and that weak heart flung me off from the prospect of peace! It is the weak heart that has driven me out of India to seek some help for those I love, and here I am! Peace have I sought, but the heart, that seat of bhakti, would not allow me to find it. Struggle and torture, torture and struggle! Well, so be it then, since it is my fate; and the quicker it is over, the better.'
His health had been indifferent even before he had left for the West. 'This sort of nervous body,' he wrote on November 15, 1899, 'is just an instrument to play great music at times, and at times to moan in darkness.' While in America, he was under the treatment of an osteopath and a 'magnetic healer,' but received no lasting benefit. At Los Angeles he got the news of the serious illness of his brother disciple Niranjan. Mr. Sturdy, his beloved English disciple, had given up the Swami because he felt that the teacher was not living in the West the life of an ascetic. Miss Henrietta Müller, who had helped him financially to buy the Belur Math, left him on account of his illness; she could not associate sickness with holiness. One of the objects of the Swami's visit to California was to raise money to promote his various activities in India: people came to his meetings in large numbers, but of money he received very little. He suffered a bereavement in the passing away of his devoted friend Mr. George Hale of Chicago. Reports about the work in New York caused him much anxiety. Swami Abhedananda was not getting on well with some of Vivekananda's disciples, and Mr. Leggett severed his relationship with the Society. All these things, like so many claws, pierced Vivekananda's heart. Further, perhaps he now felt that his mission on earth was over. He began to lose interest in work. The arrow, however, was still flying, carried, by its original impetus; but it was approaching the end, when it would fall to the ground.
The Swami longed to return to India. On January 17, 1900, he wrote to Mrs. Ole Bull that he wanted to build a hut on the bank of the Ganga and spend the rest of his life there with his mother: 'She has suffered much through me. I must try to smooth her last days. Do you know, this was just exactly what the great Sankaracharya himself had to do. He had to go back to his mother in the last few days of her life. I accept it. I am resigned.'
In the same letter to Mrs. Ole Bull he wrote: 'I am but a child; what work have I to do? My powers I passed over to you. I see it. I cannot any more tell from the platform. Don't tell it to anyone — not even to Joe. I am glad. I want rest; not that I am tired, but the next phase will be the miraculous touch and not the tongue — like Ramakrishna's. The word has gone to you and the boys, and to Margot.' (Referring to Sister Nivedita.)
He was fast losing interest in active work. On April 7, 1900, he wrote to a friend:
'My boat is nearing the calm harbour from which it is never more to be driven out. Glory, glory unto Mother! (Referring to the Divine Mother of the Universe.) I have no wish, no ambition now. Blessed be Mother! I am the servant of Ramakrishna. I am merely a machine. I know nothing else. Nor do I want to know.'
To another friend he wrote, on April 12, in similar vein:
Work always brings dirt with it. I paid for the accumulated dirt with bad health. I am glad my mind is all the better for it. There is a mellowness and a calmness in life now, which never was before. I am learning now how to be attached as well as detached — and mentally becoming my own master.... Mother is doing Her own work. I do not worry much now. Moths like me die by the thousands every minute. Her work goes on all the same. Glory unto Mother!...For me — alone and drifting about in the will-current of the Mother has been my life. The moment I have tried to break it, that moment I was hurt. Her will be done....I am happy, at peace with myself, and more of the sannyasin than I ever was. The love for my own kith and kin is growing less every day — for Mother, increasing. Memories of long nights of vigil with Sri Ramakrishna, under the Dakshineswar banyan tree, are waking up once more. And work? What is work? Whose work? Whom to work for? I am free. I am Mother's child. She works, She plays. Why should I plan? What shall I plan? Things came and went, just as She liked, without my planning, in spite of my planning. We are Her automata. She is the wire-puller.
With the approaching end of his mission and earthly life, he realized ever more clearly how like a stage this world is. In August 1899 he wrote to Miss Marie Halboister: 'This toy world would not be here, this play could not go on, if we were knowing players. We must play blindfolded. Some of us have taken the part of the rogue of the play; some, of the hero — never mind, it is all play. This is the only consolation. There are demons and lions and tigers and what not on the stage, but they are all muzzled. They snap but cannot bite. The world cannot touch our souls. If you want, even if the body be torn and bleeding, you may enjoy the greatest peace in your mind. And the way to that is to attain hopelessness. Do you know that? Not the imbecile attitude of despair, but the contempt of the conqueror for the things he has attained, for the things he has struggled for and then thrown aside as beneath his worth.'
To Mary Hale, who 'has been always the sweetest note in my jarring and clashing life,' he wrote on March 26,1900:
This is to let you know 'I am very happy.' Not that I am getting into a shadowy optimism, but my power of suffering is increasing. I am being lifted up above the pestilential miasma of this world's joys and sorrows. They are losing their meaning. It is a land of dreams. It does not matter whether one enjoys or weeps — they are but dreams, and as such must break sooner or later....I am attaining peace that passeth understanding — which is neither joy nor sorrow, but something above them both. Tell Mother (Referring to Mrs. Hale) that. My passing through the valley of death — physical, mental — these last two years, has helped me in this. Now I am nearing that Peace, the eternal Silence. Now I mean to see things as they are — everything in that Peace — perfect in its way. 'He whose joy is only in himself, whose desires are only in himself' he has learnt his lessons. This is the great lesson that we are here to learn through myriads of births and heavens and hells: There is nothing to be sought for, asked for, desired, beyond one's self. The greatest thing I can obtain is myself. I am free — therefore I require none else for my happiness. Alone through eternity — ;because I was free, am free, and will remain free for ever. This is Vedantism. I preached the theory so long, but oh, joy! Mary, my dear sister, I am realizing it now every day. Yes, I am. I am free — Alone — Alone. I am, the One without a second.
Vivekananda's eyes were looking at the light of another world, his real abode. And how vividly and touchingly he expressed his nostalgic yearning to return to it, in his letter of April 18, 1900, written from Alameda, California, to Miss MacLeod, his ever loyal Joe:
Just now I received your and Mrs. Bull's welcome letter. I direct this to London. I am so glad Mrs. Leggett is on the sure way to recovery.
I am so sorry Mr. Leggett resigned the presidentship.
Well, I keep quiet for fear of making further trouble. You know my methods are extremely harsh, and once roused I may rattle Abhedananda too much for his peace of mind.
I wrote to him only to tell him his notions about Mrs. Bull are entirely wrong.
Work is always difficult. Pray for me, Joe, that my work may stop for ever and my whole soul be absorbed in Mother. Her work She knows.
You must be glad to be in London once more — the old friends — give them all my love and gratitude.
I am well, very well mentally. I feel the rest of the soul more than that of the body. The battles are lost and won. I have bundled my things and am waiting for the Great Deliverer.
'Siva, O Siva, carry my boat to the other shore!'
After all, Joe, I am only the boy who used to listen with rapt wonderment to the wonderful words of Ramakrishna under the banyan at Dakshineswar. That is my true nature — works and activities, doing good and so forth, are all superimpositions. Now I again hear his voice, the same old voice thrilling my soul. Bonds are breaking — love dying, work becoming tasteless — the glamour is off life. Now only the voice of the Master calling. — I come, Lord, I come.' — 'Let the dead bury the dead. Follow thou Me.' — 'I come, my beloved Lord, I come.'
Yes, I come, Nirvana is before me. I feel it at times, the same infinite ocean of peace, without a ripple, a breath.
I am glad I was born, glad I suffered so, glad I did make big blunders, glad to enter peace. I leave none bound, I take no bonds. Whether this body will fall and release me or I enter into freedom in the body, the old man is gone, gone for ever, never to come back again!
The guide, the guru, the leader, the teacher, has passed away; the boy, the student, the servant, is left behind.
You understand why I do not want to meddle with Abhedananda. Who am I to meddle with any, Joe? I have long given up my place as a leader — I have no right to raise my voice. Since the beginning of this year I have not dictated anything in India. You know that. Many thanks for what you and Mrs. Bull have been to me in the past. All blessings follow you ever. The sweetest moments of my life have been when I was drifting. I am drifting again — with the bright warm sun ahead and masses of vegetation around — and in the heat everything is so still, so calm — and I am drifting, languidly — in the warm heart of the river. I dare not make a splash with my hands or feet — for fear of breaking the wonderful stillness, stillness that makes you feel sure it is an illusion!
Behind my work was ambition, behind my love was personality, behind my purity was fear, behind my guidance the thirst for power. Now they are vanishing and I drift. I come, Mother, I come, in Thy warm bosom, floating wheresoever Thou takest me, in the voiceless, in the strange, in the wonderland, I come — a spectator, no more an actor.
Oh, it is so calm! My thoughts seem to come from a great, great distance in the interior of my own heart. They seem like faint, distant whispers, and peace is upon everything, sweet, sweet peace — like that one feels for a few moments just before falling into sleep, when things are seen and felt like shadows — without fear, without love, without emotion — peace that one feels alone, surrounded with statues and pictures.—I come, Lord, I come.
The world is, but not beautiful nor ugly, but as sensations without exciting any emotion. Oh, Joe, the blessedness of it! Everything is good and beautiful; for things are all losing their relative proportions to me — my body among the first. Om That Existence!
I hope great things come to you all in London and Paris. Fresh joy — fresh benefits to mind and body.
I am so sorry Mr. Leggett resigned the presidentship.
Well, I keep quiet for fear of making further trouble. You know my methods are extremely harsh, and once roused I may rattle Abhedananda too much for his peace of mind.
I wrote to him only to tell him his notions about Mrs. Bull are entirely wrong.
Work is always difficult. Pray for me, Joe, that my work may stop for ever and my whole soul be absorbed in Mother. Her work She knows.
You must be glad to be in London once more — the old friends — give them all my love and gratitude.
I am well, very well mentally. I feel the rest of the soul more than that of the body. The battles are lost and won. I have bundled my things and am waiting for the Great Deliverer.
'Siva, O Siva, carry my boat to the other shore!'
After all, Joe, I am only the boy who used to listen with rapt wonderment to the wonderful words of Ramakrishna under the banyan at Dakshineswar. That is my true nature — works and activities, doing good and so forth, are all superimpositions. Now I again hear his voice, the same old voice thrilling my soul. Bonds are breaking — love dying, work becoming tasteless — the glamour is off life. Now only the voice of the Master calling. — I come, Lord, I come.' — 'Let the dead bury the dead. Follow thou Me.' — 'I come, my beloved Lord, I come.'
Yes, I come, Nirvana is before me. I feel it at times, the same infinite ocean of peace, without a ripple, a breath.
I am glad I was born, glad I suffered so, glad I did make big blunders, glad to enter peace. I leave none bound, I take no bonds. Whether this body will fall and release me or I enter into freedom in the body, the old man is gone, gone for ever, never to come back again!
The guide, the guru, the leader, the teacher, has passed away; the boy, the student, the servant, is left behind.
You understand why I do not want to meddle with Abhedananda. Who am I to meddle with any, Joe? I have long given up my place as a leader — I have no right to raise my voice. Since the beginning of this year I have not dictated anything in India. You know that. Many thanks for what you and Mrs. Bull have been to me in the past. All blessings follow you ever. The sweetest moments of my life have been when I was drifting. I am drifting again — with the bright warm sun ahead and masses of vegetation around — and in the heat everything is so still, so calm — and I am drifting, languidly — in the warm heart of the river. I dare not make a splash with my hands or feet — for fear of breaking the wonderful stillness, stillness that makes you feel sure it is an illusion!
Behind my work was ambition, behind my love was personality, behind my purity was fear, behind my guidance the thirst for power. Now they are vanishing and I drift. I come, Mother, I come, in Thy warm bosom, floating wheresoever Thou takest me, in the voiceless, in the strange, in the wonderland, I come — a spectator, no more an actor.
Oh, it is so calm! My thoughts seem to come from a great, great distance in the interior of my own heart. They seem like faint, distant whispers, and peace is upon everything, sweet, sweet peace — like that one feels for a few moments just before falling into sleep, when things are seen and felt like shadows — without fear, without love, without emotion — peace that one feels alone, surrounded with statues and pictures.—I come, Lord, I come.
The world is, but not beautiful nor ugly, but as sensations without exciting any emotion. Oh, Joe, the blessedness of it! Everything is good and beautiful; for things are all losing their relative proportions to me — my body among the first. Om That Existence!
I hope great things come to you all in London and Paris. Fresh joy — fresh benefits to mind and body.
But the arrow of Swami Vivekananda's life had not yet finished its flight. Next he was to be seen in Paris participating in the Congress of the History of Religions, held on the occasion of the Universal Exposition. This Congress, compared with the Parliament of Religions of Chicago, was a rather tame affair. The discussion was limited to technical theories regarding the origin of the rituals of religion; for the Catholic hierarchy, evidently not wanting a repetition of the triumph of Oriental ideas in the American Parliament, did not allow any discussion of religious doctrines. Swami Vivekananda, on account of his failing health, took part in only two sessions. He repudiated the theory of the German orientalist Gustav Oppert that the Siva lingam was a mere phallic symbol. He described the Vedas as the common basis of both Hinduism and Buddhism, and held that both Krishna and the Bhagavad Gita were prior to Buddhism. Further, he rejected the theory of the Hellenic influence on the drama, art, literature, astrology, and other sciences developed in India.
In Paris he came to know his distinguished countryman J. C. Bose, the discoverer of the life and nervous system in plants, who had been invited to join the scientific section of the Congress. The Swami referred to the Indian scientist as 'the pride and glory of Bengal.'
In Paris Swami Vivekananda was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Leggett, at whose house he met many distinguished people. Among these was the young Duke of Richelieu, a scion of an old and aristocratic family of France. The title had been created by Louis XIII, and one of the ancestors of the Duke had been Premier under Louis XVIII. Born in Paris, educated at a Jesuit school in France, and later graduated from the University of Aix-en-Provence, the Duke of Richelieu became greatly attached to the Swami and visited him frequently. On the eve of Vivekananda's departure from Paris, the Swami asked the Duke if he would renounce the world and become his disciple. The Duke wanted to know what he would gain in return for such renunciation, and the Swami said, 'I shall give you the desire for death.' When asked to explain, the Swami declared that he would give the Duke such a state of mind that when confronted by death he would laugh at it. But the Duke preferred to pursue a worldly career, though he cherished a lifelong devotion to Swami Vivekananda.
During his stay in Paris the Swami met such prominent people as Professor Patrick Geddes of Edinburgh University, Pere Hyacinthe, Hiram Maxim, Sarah Bernhardt, Jules Bois, and Madame Emma Calve. Pere Hyacinthe, a Carmelite monk who had renounced his vows, had married an American lady and assumed the name of Charles Loyson. The Swami, however, always addressed him by his old monastic name and described him as endowed with 'a very sweet nature' and the temperament of a lover of God. Maxim, the inventor of the gun associated with his name, was a great connoisseur and lover of India and China. Sarah Bernhardt also bore a great love for India, which she often described as 'very ancient, very civilized.' To visit India was the dream of her life.
Madame Calve the Swami had met in America, and now he came to know her more intimately. She became one of his devoted followers. 'She was born poor,' he once wrote of her, 'but by her innate talents, prodigious labour and diligence, and after wrestling against much hardship, she is now enormously rich and commands respect from kings and emperors....The rare combination of beauty, youth, talents, and "divine" voice has assigned Calve the highest place among the singers of the West. There is, indeed, no better teacher than misery and poverty. That constant fight against the dire poverty, misery, and hardship of the days of her girlhood, which has led to her present triumph over them, has brought into her life a unique sympathy and a depth of thought with a wide outlook.'
After the Swami's passing away, Madame Calve visited the Belur Math, the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Mission. In old age she embraced the Catholic faith and had to give up, officially, her allegiance to Swami Vivekananda. But one wonders whether she was able to efface him from her heart.
Jules Bois, with whom the Swami stayed for a few days in Paris, was a distinguished writer. 'We have,' the Swami wrote to a disciple, 'many great ideas in common and feel happy together.'
Most of the Swami's time in Paris was devoted to the study of French culture and especially the language. He wrote a few letters in French. About the culture, his appreciation was tempered with criticism. He spoke of Paris as the 'home of liberty'; there the ethics and society of the West had been formed, and its university had been the model of all others. But in a letter to Swami Turiyananda, dated September 1, 1900, he also wrote: 'The people of France are mere intellectualists. They run after worldly things and firmly believe God and souls to be mere superstitions; they are extremely loath to talk on such subjects. This is truly a materialistic country.'
After the Congress of the History of Religions was concluded, the Swami spent a few days at Lannion in Brittany, as the guest of Mrs. Ole Bull. Sister Nivedita, who had just returned from America, was also in the party. There, in his conversations, the Swami dwelt mostly on Buddha and his teachings. Contrasting Buddhism with Hinduism, he one day said that the former exhorted men to 'realize all this as illusion,' while Hinduism asked them to 'realize that within the illusion is the Real.' Of how this was to be done, Hinduism never presumed to enunciate any rigid law. The Buddhist command could only be carried out through monasticism; the Hindu might be fulfilled through any state of life. All alike were roads to the One Real. One of the highest and the greatest expressions of the Faith is put into the mouth of a butcher, preaching, by the orders of a married woman, to a sannyasin.* Thus Buddhism became the religion of a monastic order, but Hinduism, in spite of its exaltation of monasticism, remains ever the religion of faithfulness to daily duty, whatever it may be, as the path by which man may attain to God.
From Lannion, on St. Michael's Day, he visited Mont St. Michel. He was struck by the similarity between the rituals of Hinduism and Roman Catholicism. He said, 'Christianity is not alien to Hinduism.'
Nivedita took leave of the Swami in Brittany and departed for England in order to raise funds for her work on behalf of Indian women. While giving her his blessings, the Swami said: 'There is a peculiar sect of Mohammedans who are reported to be so fanatical that they take each new-born babe and expose it, saying, "If God made thee, perish! If Ali made thee, live!" Now this which they say to the child, I say, but in the opposite sense, to you, tonight — "Go forth into the world, and there, if I made you, be destroyed. If Mother made you, live!"' Perhaps the Swami remembered how some of his beloved Western disciples, unable to understand the profundity of his life and teachings, had deserted him. He also realized the difficulties Westerners experienced in identifying themselves completely with the customs of India. He had told Nivedita, before they left India, that she must resume, as if she had never broken them off, all her old habits and social customs of the West.
On October 24, 1900, Swami Vivekananda left Paris for the East, by way of Vienna and Constantinople. Besides the Swami, the party consisted of Monsieur and Madame Loyson, Jules Bois, Madame Calve, and Miss MacLeod. The Swami was Calve's guest.
In Vienna the Swami remarked, 'If Turkey is called "the sick man of Europe," Austria ought to be called "the sick woman of Europe"!' The party arrived in Constantinople after passing through Hungary, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria. Next the Swami and his friends came to Athens. They visited several islands and a Greek monastery. From Athens they sailed to Egypt and the Swami was delighted to visit the museum in Cairo. While in Cairo, he and his women devotees, one day, in the course of sightseeing, unknowingly entered the part of the city in which the girls of ill fame lived, and when the inmates hurled coarse jokes at the Swami from their porches, the ladies wanted to take him away; but he refused to go. Some of the prostitutes came into the street, and the ladies saw from a distance that they knelt before him and kissed the hem of his garment. Presently the Swami joined his friends and drove away.
In Cairo the Swami had a presentiment that something had happened to Mr. Sevier. He became restless to return to India, took the first available boat, and sailed for Bombay alone.
Throughout his European tour the Swami's friends had noticed that he was becoming more and more detached from the spectacle of external things, and buried in meditation. A sort of indifference to the world was gradually overpowering him. On August 14 he had written to a friend that he did not expect to live long. From Paris he wrote to Turiyananda: 'My body and mind are broken down; I need rest badly. In addition there is not a single person on whom I can depend; on the other hand, as long as I live, all will be very selfish, depending upon me for everything.' In Egypt the Swami had seemed to be turning the last pages of his life-experience. One of the party later remarked, 'How tired and world-weary he seemed!' Nivedita, who had had the opportunity of observing him closely during his second trip to the West, writes:
The outstanding impression made by the Swami's bearing during all these months of European and American life, was one of almost complete indifference to his surroundings. Current estimates of value left him entirely unaffected. He was never in any way startled or incredulous under success, being too deeply convinced of the greatness of the Power that worked through him, to be surprised by it. But neither was he unnerved by external failure. Both victory and defeat would come and go. He was their witness....He moved fearless and unhesitant through the luxury of the West. As determinedly as I had seen him in India, dressed in the two garments of simple folk, sitting on the floor and eating with his fingers, so, equally without doubt or shrinking, was his acceptance of the complexity of the means of living in America or France. Monk and king, he said, were the obverse and reverse of a single medal. From the use of the best to the renunciation of all was but one step. India had thrown all her prestige in the past round poverty. Some prestige was in the future to be cast round wealth.
For some time the Swami had been trying to disentangle himself from the responsibilities of work. He had already transferred the property of the Belur Math from his own name to the Trustees of the organization. On August 25, 1900, he had written to Nivedita from Paris:
Now, I am free, as I have kept no power or authority or position for me in the work. I also have resigned the Presidentship of the Ramakrishna Mission. The Math etc. belong now to the immediate disciples of Ramakrishna except myself. The Presidentship is now Brahmananda's — next it will fall on Premananda etc., in turn. I am so glad a whole load is off me. Now I am happy.... I no longer represent anybody, nor am I responsible to anybody. As to my friends, I had a morbid sense of obligation. I have thought well and find I owe nothing to anybody — if anything. I have given my best energies, unto death almost, and received only hectoring and mischief-making and botheration&....
Your letter indicates that I am jealous of your new friends. You must know once for all I am born without jealousy, without avarice, without the desire to rule& #151; whatever other vices I may be born with. I never directed you before; now, after I am nobody in the work, I have no direction whatever. I only know this much: So long as you serve 'Mother' with a whole heart, She will be your guide.
I never had any jealousy about what friends you made. I never criticized my brethren for mixing up in anything. Only I do believe the Western people have the peculiarity of trying to force upon others whatever seems good to them, forgetting that what is good for you may not be good for others. As such I am afraid you would try to force upon others whatever turn your mind might take in contact with new friends. That was the only reason I sometimes tried to stop any particular influence, and nothing else.
You are free. Have your own choice, your own work....
Friends or foes, they are all instruments in Her hands to help us work out our own karma, through pleasure or pain. As such, 'Mother' bless all.
Your letter indicates that I am jealous of your new friends. You must know once for all I am born without jealousy, without avarice, without the desire to rule& #151; whatever other vices I may be born with. I never directed you before; now, after I am nobody in the work, I have no direction whatever. I only know this much: So long as you serve 'Mother' with a whole heart, She will be your guide.
I never had any jealousy about what friends you made. I never criticized my brethren for mixing up in anything. Only I do believe the Western people have the peculiarity of trying to force upon others whatever seems good to them, forgetting that what is good for you may not be good for others. As such I am afraid you would try to force upon others whatever turn your mind might take in contact with new friends. That was the only reason I sometimes tried to stop any particular influence, and nothing else.
You are free. Have your own choice, your own work....
Friends or foes, they are all instruments in Her hands to help us work out our own karma, through pleasure or pain. As such, 'Mother' bless all.
How did America impress Swami Vivekananda during his second visit to the West? What impressions did he carry to India of the state of things in the New World? During his first visit he had been enthusiastic about almost everything he saw — the power, the organization, the material prosperity, the democracy, and the spirit of freedom and justice. But now he was greatly disillusioned. In America's enormous combinations and ferocious struggle for supremacy he discovered the power of Mammon. He saw that the commercial spirit was composed, for the most part, of greed, selfishness, and a struggle for privilege and power. He was disgusted with the ruthlessness of wealthy business men, swallowing up the small tradespeople by means of large combinations. That was indeed tyranny. He could admire an organization; 'but what beauty is there among a pack of wolves?' he said to a disciple. He also noticed, in all their nakedness, the social vices and the arrogance of race, religion, and colour. America, he confided to Miss MacLeod, would not be the instrument to harmonize East and West.
During his trip through Eastern Europe, from Paris to Constantinople, he smelt war. He felt the stench of it rising on all sides. 'Europe,' he remarked, 'is a vast military camp.'
But the tragedy of the West had not been altogether unperceived by him even during his first visit. As early as 1895 he said to Sister Christine: 'Europe is on the edge of a volcano. If the fire is not extinguished by a flood of spirituality, it will erupt.'
One cannot but be amazed at the Swami's prophetic intuition as expressed through the following remarks made to Christine in 1896: 'The next upheaval will come from Russia or China. I cannot see clearly which, but it will be either the one or the other.' He further said: 'The world is in the third epoch, under the domination of the vaisya. The fourth epoch will be under that of the sudra
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