Swami Vivekananda In The West New Discoveries

Vol 1 - 6

❈

Cover







Title

Swami Vivekananda in the West: New Discoveries

Author

Marie Louise Burke

Publisher

Advaita Ashrama Kolkata

Description

This book is an outcome of the painstaking research work undertaken by the author with a view to provide correct information, as far as possible, to the devotees of Swami Vivekananda about his stay and work in the West together with contemporary reports and illustrations. The author has carefully traced the footsteps of the great Swami throughout his mission in the West and has supported her narration with adequate evidences in the form of newspaper reports, photographs, epistles, reminiscences, etc. Apart from presenting pictures of the places where the Swami lived and worked, and of the people he knew and loved and who helped him during his visit to the West, one main contribution of this present series is that it marshals massive evidence to prove that during his visits to the West the Swami was keenly devoted to doing ‘Mother’s work’ for which his Master had commissioned him. From these pages the Swami emerges as the illumined toiler who ceaselessly worked for ma’s advancement towards the fulfilment of his destiny. Here’s a series, among others, which certainly deserves a place on the bookshelf of all the lovers of the great Swami.


↑ Contents

Volume 1

1.1 BEFORE THE PARLIAMENT

After a "quiet and uneventful" voyage, the Empress of India, one of the three new 6,000 ton "Empresses" of the Canadian Pacific line, docked at Vancouver on Tuesday, July 25, at seven o'clock in the evening [1]. The Canadian Pacific Railway's daily "Atlantic Express" had left hours earlier for points east, and thus Swamiji, together with his fellow eastbound travelers, had, perforce, to spend the night in Vancouver, then a ramshackle frontier town, newly, but not well, built on the ashes of a fire that had swept it out of existence in 1886. There was nothing to detain Swamiji there for more than one night, and he most probably boarded the train the following morning. He then traveled second class through the wonderfully scenic country of southwest Canada, where, as he later wrote, snow lay on even the lower mountains. At Winnipeg, which he reached on Friday night, he transferred to another train that carried him down to the United States and through the lake splashed hills and farms of Minnesota to St. Paul. From St. Paul, a third train would carry him some four hundred miles farther east to Chicago, where, if all went according to schedule, he arrived on Sunday, July 30, around eleven o'clock at night.

The story of the six weeks between Swamiji's arrival in Chicago and the opening of the Parliament of Religions on September 11 has been told in the Life of Swami Vivekananda by His Eastern and Western Disciples (hereafter called the Life), where it has been largely derived, it would appear, from the first two known letters that he wrote from America to India. The earlier, and more pertinent, of these was written from "Breezy Meadows," Massachusetts, on August 20, and the next from Chicago on November 2. Both were addressed to his Madras disciples through one of their members, Alasinga Perumal. But these letters, even taken together, do not give the full picture of Swamiji's pre Parliament days in America, and thus the story which has been based upon them is necessarily incomplete. Happily, however, additional material pertaining to this pre Parliament period has come to light, and it is with this material that the present chapter is primarily concerned. But before presenting it, a brief summary of what has heretofore been known, together with two or three interspersed bits of new information, will be helpful, for the new material will be better understood if seen against the background of the old.

(It should be mentioned that two of these bits of information have been taken from early versions of the above mentioned letters. The versions primarily consulted are handwritten copies, evidently made before the originals were first published, that is, before February of 1905, when the letter of August 20, 1893, was printed in part in the Brahmavadin magazine. These copies, made on stationery bearing the letterhead "Mysore Government," were found among the papers of Mrs. Ole Bull; but who made them is not known—certainly not Mrs. Bull herself, for the handwriting is unquestionably not hers. In any case, they seem to be faithful transcriptions, and inasmuch as they are less abridged than any published versions, I have relied upon them as the best sources of information).

From the Life we have known that Swamiji arrived in America with a minimum of luggage (even which minimum was to him, as he wrote from Yokohama, "an awful botheration"), little money, and no pre arrangements at all. Young, unheard and unheard of, absorbed in God, and as innocent and incapable of worldly ways as a child, he had stepped from the serene and open roads of India, where the sannyasin could sleep beneath a tree or beg his food from door to door, into the midst of the crowded and bewildering hurly burly of Chicago, where the huge World's Columbian Exposition had been underway for three months and turmoil and confusion were at fever pitch. The shock of this drastic change of scene and atmosphere was surely great, but greater still was the shock of learning that the authorities of the Parliament of Religions required all delegates to produce credentials. Swamiji had no credentials. Moreover, he was, he Found, too late to register as a delegate even if he had had credentials. Thus his hope of speaking before the Parliament vanished almost at once. There remained no chance of his gaining a hearing in America until the late fall, for not until then would people return to the cities and the lecture season begin. But the cost of living in America, and particularly in Chicago, was to Swamiji unexpectedly exorbitant. In the first edition of the Life it is told that, being a total stranger, he wisely stayed, for a time at least, at a first class hotel.[2] Since a room in a first class Chicago hotel was then three dollars and upwards a day, he soon found that his daily expenses came, on the average, to a pound (five dollars), at which rate his small purse could by no means carry him through a freezing American winter, for which he was entirely unprepared. Added to all this was the financial panic that had hit the country that spring: many banks had closed, many businesses had failed, widespread unemployment was setting in, and, despite the glad industrial tidings announced by the Exposition, American generosity was at a low ebb. Indeed, it seemed for a time that mere survival in this country where a sannyasin, as such, counted for nothing, was out of the question and that the trip had been in vain.

It is true that Swamiji was not altogether friendless. With him was a Mr. C. Lalubhai, who had been a fellow passenger on the Empress of India; further, through a letter of introduction from a Madras friend (Varada Rao) he shortly became acquainted with a Director of the Fair and his wife. Unfortunately, Swamiji does not reveal the name of this couple;" we learn, however, that they belonged as he wrote, "to the highest, Chicago society,'[ 3]and from this we can infer that they were not poor, for while a sizable fortune may not have been the only prerequisite for position in Chicago society, it was in  those days an indispensable one. We learn also that the head of the family and others suggested to Swamiji that he represent India at the Parliament.[4] Yet despite this suggestion, which indicates that his gifts were indeed appreciated, no one at this time seems to have invited him to be a house guest, nor, for one reason or another, was anyone able to offer him the financial help which would have made it possible for him to remain in Chicago until the opening of the Parliament, then some five weeks away. "They were so very kind to me," Swamiji wrote to India, appreciative of any goodness. "But here they want to make much of foreigners, [just] for a fun and no farther. When it comes to their pocket they all almost step back, and this is such a bad year here, commercial failures everywhere. So I took my departure from Chicago forthwith and came to Boston.[5]

During the twelve days or so that Swamiji spent in Chicago, he visited the Fair almost every day, for it was a huge and spectacular exhibition of the modern wonders of steam and electricity, and, as he wrote, "one must take at least ten days to go through it'[6] He himself was a wonder to his fellow spectators, some of whom pushed him and pulled at his turban. Indeed, Swamiji's first welcome to America was less than open: armed; while his rich acquaintances made much of him only "for a fun," the man in the street stared and poked at him as at some object of curious and dubious nature. Thus it was in something like despair that he left Chicago for Boston, where, as he had been told, the cost of living was lower.

"Mysterious, " write his biographers, "are the ways of the Lord!'[7]for it was on the train to Boston that he met an "old lady" who invited him to live at her farm, Breezy Meadows, in Massachusetts. It was through this providential woman that Swamiji was to meet, among others, Professor John Henry Wright of Harvard University. From the Life we know that Professor Wright was at once appreciative of Swamiji's genius and persuaded him of the importance of attending the Parliament of Religions. Nor did the good professor stop there; he gave him all the necessary assistance; he introduced him by letter to the proper authorities as a superbly well qualified delegate, one "who is more learned than all our learned professors put together" and who, as he said, was like the sun, with no need of credentials in order to shine;[8] he bought his train ticket back to Chicago, gave him some money, and saw to it that his housing would be arranged for. In short, Professor Wright acted as a sort of deus ex machina, without whose timely intervention Swamiji might never have attended the Parliament at all.

In Boston, however, Swamiji had no outward way of knowing that a preordained plan was unfolding. His money was fast disappearing, the weather, even in August, seemed to him like winter, and his clothes were not only inadequate against the early autumn chill but could incite violence in the streets. The story of one such occasion he told long afterward: "I landed [in Boston] once, [he said] a stranger in a strange land. My coat was like this red one and I wore my turban. I was proceeding up a street in the busy part of the town when I became aware that I was followed by a great number of men and boys. I hastened my pace and they did too. Then something struck my shoulder and I began to run, dashing around a corner, and up a dark passage, just before the mob in full pursuit swept past and I was safe!'[9]

The outlook in those days was bleak indeed, but Swamiji was not to be defeated. "All those rosy ideas we had before starting have melted," he wrote in his letter of August 20, "and I have now to fight against impossibilities. A hundred times I had a mind to go out of the country and go back to India. But I am determined, and I have a call from Above; I see no way, but His eyes see.*(2) And I must stick to my guns, life or death.'[10]

*(1) In connection with Swamiji’s meeting with these Chicago people, it is written in the Life (in all editions): “Thus was begun a friendship which lasted as long as the Swami lived. All the members of the family learnt to love him dearly, to appreciate his brilliant gifts, and to admire the purity and simplicity of his character, to which they often bore willing and loving testimony.” Those sentences first appeared in 1908 in footnote to Miss Ellen Waldo’s “Introductory Narrative” to Inspired Talks. The foot note reads: “Later a Brahmin of Madras wrote to a gentleman in Chicago about the Swami and this gentleman took the young Hindu into his own family. Thus was begun a friendship...” and so on, as in the Life. It would seem clear from the context of Miss Waldo’s narrative that this footnote refers to a later period than that of Swamiji’s first stay in Chicago. It also seems clear that the author of the footnote has confused the Hale family, whom Swamiji did indeed meet later and who did indeed love him dearly, with the people to whom his Madras friend introduced him. Otherwise, we are faced with the strange phenomenon of a family who “often bore willing and loving testimony” to Swamiji’s character, but whose name the authors of the Life did not know. (Had they known, would they not have told?. The chances are that Swamiji never became intimately associated with the people to whom Varada Rao introduced him. But who were they? Our only clue is that the man was a Director of the Fair. Checking through the Official Director of the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893), in which the names of all the Directors and other Officers are given, one finds no one familiar in the context of Swamiji'’ life in America other than Mrs. Potter Palmer and Mr. Thomas W. Palmer of Detroit. Thus, to date, the mystery remains unsolved.

It was very probably after writing this letter that Swamiji cabled from Boston to Alasinga, in what he later referred to as "a moment's weakness,'[11]requesting him to send the money that would make his stay in America humanly possible *(3) .This cable, incidentally, drew forth two responses a world apart in feeling. One of these Swamiji later disclosed in his lecture "My Plan of Campaign, " which he delivered in Madras in February of 1897. "The money was small," he said, "and it was all spent before even the Parliament of Religions began. Winter came. I had only thin summer clothes. One day my hands froze. I did not know what to do in that cold, dreary climate, for, if I went to beg in the streets, the result would be my being sent to gaol. There was I with the last few dollars in my pocket. I sent a wire to my friends here in Madras. This came to be known to the Theosophists, and I possess a letter written by one of the Theosophists. 'Now the devil is going to die; God bless us all ' . . I will show you that letter if you want; I have it in my possession.'[12] This message, fortunately enough, could not have become known to Swamiji until some time later. In the meanwhile another person in Madras who came to know of his cable was his friend Manmathanath Bhattacharya. In Swami Vivekananda—A Forgotten Chapter of His Life by Beni Shanker Sharma, it is said that Mr. Bhattacharya wired on August 30 to the Maharaja of Khetri, informing him of Swamiji's difficulties. The Maharaja, always eager to help Swamiji, at once sent five hundred rupees (150 dollars) to Boston via Thomas Cook and Son.[13] Simultaneously, as one learns from the previously mentioned handwritten copy of Swamiji's letter of November 2, 1893, Alasinga raised three hundred rupees (ninety dollars), which sum he, too, wired to America. As it turned out, neither of these amounts reached Swamiji until after September 7, by which time he had found his own way and was no longer in need.

*(2)Swamiji spoke always literally when he mentioned the guidance of his Master. But rarely did he speak of it in detail; only years after the event would he sometimes tell of a vision or direct command. In a letter of March 16,1899, Sister Nivedita relayed to Miss MacLeod one such disclosure. " I forgot to tell you," she wrote, " that  [Swamiji] said Ramakrishna always said 'Lok na pok'': Men are mere worms'— and when he was in Chicago he had a vision. He was lying on the floor 'half dead' from anxiety and privation apparently, and Sri Ramakrishna came into the room and touched him and said, 'Hut! Get up man! Lok na pok!"

*(3) The urgency of Swamiji's cable to Alasinga was clear. It read: " Starving. All money spent. Send money to return at least"(Swami Deshikatmananda, "Uncrowned King of Madras: Alasinga Perumal," Prabuddha Bharata, April 1990, pm 185

The little more we have known of Swamiji's life in Massachusetts has come solely from his letter of August 20. We have known, for instance, that during his stay at Breezy Meadows his hostess showed him off as "a curio from India," that he was gaped at for his "quaint dress," that he was on this account advised to buy "long coats black coloured," that he was to speak at "a big ladies' club . . . which is helping Ramabai, " and that he visited and was deeply impressed by a women's reformatory.[14] From the earliest published versions of this letter we learn also that he was to lecture before "a large society of ladies in Salem. " To these facts more now can be added, particularly in regard to the period between August 20 and September 8, which until now has been virtually a blank.

Wherever Swamiji went he made news, and in my attempt to fill in the gaps in his life's story I assumed that New England was no exception to this rule and that the papers of those towns which he visited in the pre Parliament days would contain some mention of him. The nearest town to the farm Breezy Meadows is Metcalf, some twenty five miles west of Boston, but upon making inquiries I found that Metcalf was too small to possess a newspaper. The town next in size is Holliston, still not large enough to support a paper of its own, and the next large is Framingham, a full sized town, complete with newspaper office. It was to Framingham, therefore, that I went. In the 1890s the Framingham Tribune, which covered the noteworthy events of the surrounding country, was a weekly, coming out on Fridays. There being but few papers to look through, it was not difficult to find the following item which, small as it was and in spite of its quaintness, or perhaps because of it, had the impact of reality:

                                                                                                                                                                                  Friday,
August 25, 1893

Holliston: Miss Kate Sanborn, who has recently returned from the west, last week entertained the Indian Rajah, Swami Vivekananda. Behind a pair of horses furnished by liveryman F. W. Phipps, Miss Sanborn and the Rajah drove through town on Friday [August 18] en route for Hunnewell's.

What a sight that must have been! And who could help mistaking the young monk for a rajah as, in robe and turban, he was regally driven through the quiet New England village behind a pair of trotting horses, the mistress of Breezy Meadows at his side? Swamiji's hostess, Miss Kate Sanborn, whose name we learn for the first time from this news item, was no doubt taking her "curio from India" on a sightseeing trip to Hunnewell's, a large and beautiful estate, the park like grounds of which were open to the public for strolling. The drive to Hunnewell's would itself have been a lovely one along a country road, past old houses surrounded by wide, elm shaded lawns, past old churches, stone horse troughs, mellowed villages, and woodsy fields. While this particular outing may not have been social, there was much else that was, for Miss Sanborn delighted in showing off her "Rajah," and, as Swamiji wrote resignedly, "all this must be borne.'[15]Indeed, it seemed ordained: Miss Sanborn, amiable, prominent, and gregarious, was precisely the person to act as hostess to Swamiji in those early days, for she not only introduced him to Professor Wright and other men and women of influence, but was instrumental in providing him with a well rounded preview of the American scene.

Further research regarding Miss Sanborn revealed that, aside from being an enthusiastic hostess, she was a lecturer and an author, taking for her topics all the numerous facets of her active life—people, incidents, places. Although Swamiji referred to her as "an old lady," she was, by American standards, not old when he first knew her. She was fifty four and very energetic. She was possessed of a lively humor and a warm sympathy for her fellowman, was keenly observant and widely known for her repartee. Even in her correspondence her wit was irrepressible, it being her practice to include in her letters short and apt verses scribbled on cards. One of these, sent to a group of young women, advises: "Though you're bright And though you're pretty/They'll not love you/If you're witty." A more serious side of her nature is revealed by another card which reads: "Down with the fallacy enshrined in Senator Ingalls' sonnet on the one opportunity. She comes, not alone in the gospel of the 'second opportunity,' but she is with you everyday and hour waiting for recognition."

Originally from New Hampshire, Kate Sanborn had bought one of the old abandoned farms of Massachusetts and had pro ceeded to restore it into Breezy Meadows. Two of her books are devoted to life on the "farm," and it is from these that one learns of the scene that greeted Swamiji. She writes lovingly of the pines and silver birches, the huge elms growing near the house, the natural pond of waterlilies, and the two brooks where forget me nots grew along the shaded banks. The house itself was a rambling farmhouse with a vine growing over half the roof. There is a photograph of it in one of her books: a friendly, comfortable house. There is also a picture of Kate Sanborn herself (older than when Swamiji knew her) standing in her front doorway, offering a welcome to one and all. Inside, the house was roomy and warmed by a fireplace, whose chimney, curiously, rose beside the central staircase. More curiously still, on each floor, there was an opening in the housing of the chimney, within which, on either side, was a seat, reached by a tiny stairs—a hidden place to meditate on a cold autumn morning or evening when a fire roared in the fireplace, as was often the case when Swamiji was there. Today Breezy Meadows has changed; part of the property is occupied by a seminary for Xaverian Fathers, and another part is at present being used as a summer day camp for poor children of Boston. On this latter part, the house where Swamiji made his first home in America still stands, much altered now by fire and the passage of time.

2

In his letter of August 20 Swamiji mentions, as has been noted, that he is to speak before a women's club that was helping Ramabai, a Hindu woman who had been converted to Christianity. In 1887 1889 Ramabai had been active informing clubs in America for the purpose of raising funds for Indian child widows, whose plight she had graphically misrepresented. Unfortunately, no report has been found in the Boston papers of Swamiji's talk before the Boston Ramabai Circle; nor does the 1893 Annual Report of that club mention it. But in the light of subsequent developments to be discussed in a later chapter, we can be reasonably sure that Swamiji gave the women of the Boston Ramabai Circle a true picture of India and of child widows and that it was a picture they did not relish.

The first direct mention of Swamiji in the Boston papers is tucked away in the "Personal" column of the Evening Transcript of August 23, 1893:

Swami Virckananda of India, a Brahmin monk who is on his way to the parliament of religions to be held at Chicago in September, is the guest of Miss Kate Sanborn at her "abandoned farm" in Metcalf, Mass. Last evening he addressed the inmates of the Sherborn Reformatory for Women upon the manners, customs and mode of living in his country.


The original Women's Reformatory at Sherborn, a small town near Breezy Meadows, still stands—a forbidding structure of red brick. But grim though its exterior may have been, the Reformatory itself made a highly favorable impression upon Swamiji. "It is the grandest thing I have seen in America," he wrote to Alasinga in his letter of August 20, and went on to compare heart brokenly the benevolent and rehabilitating treatment of the inmates with the wretched conditions of "the poor, the low, the sinner in India [who] have no friends, no help, (who] cannot rise, try however they may.'[16]Perhaps when Swamiji spoke before the inmates of the Sherborn Reformatory, they thought that he was the grandest thing they had seen in America. At any rate, it is safe to assume that their response was more sympathetic than that of the Ramabai Circle. One cannot know, but the young Hindu monk, in his red robe and yellow turban, must have been like a sunburst in that dismal prison, and the effect in some cases may have been profound and truly transforming.


The next mention of Swamiji in the Boston papers is found in the "Personal" column of the Evening Transcript of Friday, August 25. It reads in full:


The Swami Vere Kananda of India, the Brahmin monk who was in this country for the purpose of attending the parliament of religions at Chicago next month, arrived in Boston yesterday, in company with Mr. F. B. Sanborn of Concord.


Franklin Benjamin Sanborn was a cousin of Kate Sanborn, and it was no doubt he to whom Swamiji referred when, in his letter of August 20, he wrote: "A cousin of my lady friend who is coming to day to see me writes to her, 'a real Hindu devotee is an interesting study but I am too old to be cheated by the esoteric Buddhists!' "" But if Franklin Sanborn had his doubts as to whether his cousin's guest was a real Hindu devotee or an "esoteric Buddhist," by which he meant an exponent of Theosophy, those doubts were soon dispelled. There is no question that after meeting Swamiji Mr. Sanborn thought highly of him. Indeed the two must have delighted in each other's company, for Sanborn was at heart an idealist and one of those few remaining New Englanders whose thought had been molded by the Transcendentalist movement. At the age of fourteen he had discovered Transcendentalism at the tag end of its life and, enchanted, had later become a close friend of Emerson, Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott, whose biographies, among others, he was to write an undertaking that led to his being called "the Plutarch of the Transcendentalist movement " Apart from being an author, he was extremely active in organizing and promoting works of benevolence. He served as secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Charities—the first of its kind in America—and helped in founding many other charitable institutions. He also was among the founders of the Concord Summer School of Philosophy. After meeting Swamiji, Mr. Sanborn invited him to speak at an august convention of the American Social Science Association in Saratoga Springs, New York, the most fashionable resort town of the era and a favorite rendezvous for conventions.


But before going to Saratoga Springs, Swamiji passed a busy week and a half in Massachusetts. While he was spending Thursday, August 24, with Mr. Sanborn in Boston, Professor John Henry Wright, eager to meet the phenomenal Hindu monk, of whom he had no doubt heard a great deal from the Sanborns, was on his way from Annisquam, a popular and picturesque little seaside resort village on Cape Ann some forty miles northeast of Boston, where the Wright family was spending the summer. Through some misadventure, this meeting did not take place. Yet perhaps this was no misadventure at all; for, not to be deprived of meeting Swamiji, Professor Wright invited him to spend the weekend at Annisquam, and it was during those days that the professor formed the opinion of his guest that was to have such far reaching consequences. It should be noted here that when Professor Wright recommended Swamiji to the Parliament authorities as being "more learned than all our learned professors put together," he knew whereof he spoke. Although his fields were primarily philology, classical archaeology, and Greek history, his range of teaching was by no means confined to these subjects; for his knowledge, as is noted in the Dictionary of American Biography, was "encyclopedic: ' A formidable scholar, he was well qualified to appreciate Swamiji's own encyclopedic learning, and his opinion in this respect was one that carried weight. Swamiji and Professor Wright had long conversations at Annisquam, and the professor was no doubt astounded by the young Hindu monk who proved to be a saint and savant combined. Nor was he the only one to be amazed during that Annisquam weekend. A letter written by Mrs. Wright to her mother tells of the occasion:


Annisquam,Mass.
August  29, 1893


My dear Mother:

We have been having a queer time. Kate Sanborn had a Hindoo monk in tow as I believe I mentioned in my last letter. John went down to meet him in Boston and missing him, invited him up here. He came Friday! In a long saffron robe that caused universal amazement. He was a most gorgeous vision. He had a superb carriage of the head, was very handsome in an oriental way, about thirty years old in time, ages in civilization. He stayed until Monday and was one of the most interesting people I have yet come across. We talked all day all night and began again with interest the next morning. The town was in a fume to see him; the boarders at Miss Lane's in wild excitement. They were in and out of the Lodge [the Wright's cottage] constantly and little Mrs. Merrill's eyes were blazing and her cheeks red with excitement. Chiefly we talked religion. It was a kind of revival, I have not felt so wrought up for a long time myself! Then on Sunday John had him invited to speak in the church and they took up a collection for a Heathen college to be carried on strictly heathen principles—whereupon I retired to my corner and laughed until I cried.


He is an educated gentleman, knows as much as anybody. Has been a monk since he was eighteen. Their vows are very much our vows, or rather the vows of a Christian monk. Only Poverty with them means poverty. They have no monastery, no property, they cannot even beg; but they sit and wait until alms are given them. Then they sit and teach people. For days they talk and dispute. He is wonderfully clever and clear in putting his arguments and laying his trains (of thought) to a conclusion. You can't trip him up, nor get ahead of him. 


I have a lot of notes I made as stuff for a possible story— at any rate as something very interesting for future reference. We may see hundreds of Hindoo monks in our lives —and we may not.[18]


Aside from its importance in opening Swamiji's way to the Parliament of Religions, this weekend lastingly enriched the Wright family—as well it might have, for none fortunate enough to have Swamiji as a guest soon forgot him. The memory of this and later meetings became a part of the Wright family tradition, and Mr. John K. Wright, the younger son of Professor and Mrs. Wright and erstwhile Director of the American Geographical Society, today still speaks in the family idiom of "our Swami," though he was but a child of two when Swamiji first came to Annisquam.


Through Mr. Wright's kindness a few of his mother's letters, including the one quoted above, and other papers have been made available to us, and in a small diary that had belonged to her one can make out under the date Friday, August 25, 1893, the now faded, almost illegible words: "Rain—Swami Vivekananda came. Went down to Wambaugh's in the evening, his talk mainly political. Very warm: ' This "Very warm" might as well refer to Swamiji's talk as to the weather, for, as we learn from the story that Mrs. Wright did indeed compose from her notes, his discourse that evening was a heated, impassioned one. In regard to the manuscript of this story, which has been found among her papers, Mr. Wright tells us that "sometime in or after 1897, she prepared the account from the original notes, which have disappeared. She either typed it herself or had it typed by a stenographer and then thoroughly revised it in ink.[19]


When we first received a copy of this manuscript, it seemed both familiar and new, and on comparing it with material in the Life, we found, to be sure, that some portions of it had already been published. In the Life readers will find an article which is said to have come from a newspaper and which is a very much abridged version of the same story.[20] Mr. Wright was not aware that his mother had contributed her article to a newspaper, and it is not known where or when it first appeared; but inasmuch as we are now in possession of the complete manuscript, this is of little importance. The unpublished portions comprise a good half of the original article and are, I believe, of absorbing interest, for they give an intimate picture of Swamiji from the pen of one who well understood that her subject was no ordinary person. But perhaps it is a picture that might also prove shocking. Mrs. Wright has caught Swamiji in one of his bursts of fire, hard for some to reconcile with his calm, all compassionate, all loving nature. Fire and compassion, however, are not disparate—indeed they often are as inseparable as the two sides of one coin.  Swamiji's heart, one never can forget, was full of unhappiness for the suffering of his motherland, and correspondingly his mind was full of anger against all that contributed to her degradation. In the early days he ascribed a great deal of that degradation to the imperialism of the British, and it was only natural that he would lash out against a people who had ruthlessly crushed those whom he loved. It is well known that when Swamiji later met the English people on their home ground he became an ardent admirer of their many noble characteristics; nonetheless he never changed his opinion of British imperialism nor, for that matter, of any oppression of one people by another. He was a thorough student of world history, and whenever in the story of man's life he found injustice and inhumanity he never hesitated to point them out in no uncertain terms.


However, here are the unpublished portions of Mrs. Wright's article. For the sake of clarity and continuity I have retained certain portions which have already been quoted in the Life, and, for the same reason, I have omitted a word or phrase here and there and made a few minor corrections.


According to Mrs. Wright's story, the Annisquam villagers and the boarders at Miss Lane's first caught sight of Swamiji as, in company with Professor Wright, he crossed the lawn between the boardinghouse and the professor's cottage. So astonishing a sight did Swamiji present in this quiet little New England village that speculation set in at once as to who this majestic and colorful figure might be. From where had he come? What was his nationality? And so forth. The article continues as follows:


. . . Finally they decided that he was a Brahmin, and the theory was rudely shattered when that night, at supper, they saw him partake, wonderingly, but evidently with relish, of hash.


It was something that needed explanation and they unanimously repaired to the cottage after supper, to hear this strange new being discourse.... [Actually, as one learns from the above entry in Mrs. Wright's more accurate diary, it was not to the Wright's tiny cottage that the party repaired after supper, but to that of Professor Eugene Wambaugh of the Harvard Law School, who, with his family, was summering at Annisquam. It was there that Swamiji enthralled and startled the little gathering.]


"It was the other day," he said, in his musical voice, "only just the other day—not more than four hundred years ago." And then followed tales of cruelty and oppression, of a patient race and a suffering people, and of a judgment to come! "Ah, the English," he said, "only just a little while ago they were savages, . . . the vermin crawled on the ladies' bodices, . . . and they scented themselves to disguise the abominable odor of their persons.... Most horrible! Even now, they are barely emerging from barbarism."


"Nonsense," said one of his scandalized hearers, "that was at least five hundred years ago."


"And did I not say 'a little while ago'? What are a few hundred years when you look at the antiquity of the human soul?" Then with a turn of tone, quite reasonable and gentle, "They are quite savage," he said. "The frightful cold, the want and privation of their northern climate ", going on more quickly and warmly, "has made them wild. They only think to kill.... Where is their religion? They take the name of that Holy One, they claim to love their fellowmen, they civilize—by Christianity!—No! It is their hunger that has civilized them, not their God. The love of man is on their lips, in their hearts there is nothing but evil and every violence. 'I love you my brother, I love you!' . . . and all the while they cut his throat! Their hands are red with blood." . . . Then, going on more slowly, his beautiful voice deepening till it sounded like a bell, "But the judgment of God will fall upon them. 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord,' and destruction is coming. What are your Christians? Not one third of the world. Look at those Chinese, millions of them. They are the vengeance of God that will light upon you. There will be another invasion of the Huns," adding, with a little chuckle, "they will sweep over Europe, they will not leave one stone standing upon another. Men, women, children, all will go and the dark ages will come again. " His voice was indescribably sad and pitiful; then suddenly and flippantly, dropping the seer, "Me, —I don't care! The world will rise up better from it, but it is coming. The vengeance of God, it is coming soon."


"Soon?" they all asked.

"It will not be a thousand years until it is done."

They drew a breath of relief. It did not seem imminent.


"And God will have vengeance," he went on. "You may not see it in religion, you may not see it in politics, but you must see it in history, and as it has been, it will come to pass. If you grind down the people, you will suffer. We in India are suffering the vengeance of God. Look upon these things. They ground down those poor people for their own wealth, they heard not the voice of distress, they ate from gold and silver when the people cried for bread, and the Mohammedans came upon them slaughtering and killing: slaughtering and killing they overran them. India has been conquered again and again for years, and last and worst of all came the Englishman. You look about India, what has the Hindoo left? Wonderful temples, everywhere. What has the Mohammedan left? Beautiful palaces. What has the Englishman left? Nothing but mounds of broken brandy bottles! And God has had no mercy upon my people because they had no mercy. By their cruelty they degraded the populace, and when they needed them the common people had no strength to give for their aid. If man cannot believe in the Vengeance of God, he certainly cannot deny the Vengeance of History. And it will come upon the English; they have their heels on our necks, they have sucked the last drop of our blood for their own pleasures, they have carried away with them millions of our money, while our people have starved by villages and provinces. And now the Chinaman is the vengeance that will fall upon them; if the Chinese rose today and swept the English into the sea, as they well deserve, it would be no more than justice."


And then, having said his say, the Swami was silent. A babble of thin voiced chatter rose about him, to which he listened, apparently unheeding. Occasionally he cast his eye up to the roof and repeated softly, "Shiva! Shiva!" and the little company, shaken and disturbed by the current of powerful feelings and vindictive passion which seemed to be flowing like molten lava beneath the silent surface of this strange being, broke up, perturbed.


He stayed days (actually, a long weekend).... All through, his discourses abounded in picturesque illustrations and beautiful legends....


One beautiful story he told was of a man whose wife reproached him with his troubles, reviled him because of the success of others, and recounted to him all his failures. "Is this what your God has done for you," she said to him, "after you have served Him so many years?" Then the man answered, "Am I a trader in religion? Look at that mountain. What does it do for me, or what have I done for it? And yet I love it because I am so made that I love the beautiful. Thus I love God." . . . There was another story he told of a king who offered a gift to a Rishi. The Rishi refused, but the king insisted and begged that he would come with him. When they came to the palace he heard the king praying, and the king begged for wealth, for power, for length of days from God. The Rishi listened, wondering, until at last he picked up his mat and started away. Then the king opened his eyes from his prayers and saw him. "Why are you going?" he said. "You have not asked for your gift." "I," said the Rishi, "ask from a beggar?"


When someone suggested to him that Christianity was a saving power, he opened his great dark eyes upon him and said, "If Christianity is a saving power in itself, why has it not saved the Ethiopians, the Abyssinians?" He also arraigned our own crimes, the horror of women on the stage, the frightful immorality in our streets, our drunkenness, our thieving, our political degeneracy, the murdering in our West, the lynching in our South, and we, remembering his own Thugs, were still too delicate to mention them....


Often on Swami's lips was the phrase, "They would not dare to do this to a monk." . . . At times he even expressed a great longing that the English government would take him and shoot him. "It would be the first nail in their coffin," he would say, with a little gleam of his white teeth, "and my death would run through the land like wild fire." . . .


His great heroine was the dreadful Ranee [the Rani of Jhansi] of the Indian mutiny, who led her troops in person. Most of the old mutineers, he said, had become monks in order to hide themselves, and this accounted very well for the dangerous quality of the monks' opinions. There was one man of them who had lost four sons and could speak of them with composure, but whenever he mentioned the Ranee he would weep, with tears streaming down his face. "That woman was a goddess," he said, "a devi. When overcome, she fell on her sword and died like a man." It was strange to hear the other side of the Indian mutiny, when you would never believe that there was another side to it, and to be assured that a Hindoo could not possibly kill a woman. It was probably the Mohammedans that killed the women at Delhi and Cawnpore. These old mutineers would say to him, "Kill a woman! You know we could not do that"; and so the Mohammedan was made responsible.


In quoting from the Upanishads his voice was most musical. He would quote a verse in Sanskrit, with intonations, and then translate it into beautiful English, of which he had a wonderful command. And in his mystical religion he seemed perfectly and unquestionably happy...[21]


It is interesting to compare the prophetic utterances Swamiji made in Annisquam with those reported by Sister Christine in her "Reminiscences": "Sometimes he was in a prophetic mood, as on the day when he startled us by saying: 'The next great upheaval which is to bring about a new epoch will come from Russia or China.' '[22] And according to tradition, at another time Swamiji made a statement to the effect that if and when the British should leave India there would be a great danger of India's being conquered by the Chinese. Again, in an unpublished letter written on July 16, 1896, from London by John P. Fox, a young disciple, one reads: "[Swamiji] talked much about [Russia] which he said the other evening he expects to lead the world next [23].  I mention these statements of Swamiji's just in passing, for in view of the fact that at the end of the nineteenth century neither Russia nor China was in a position to become a dominating world power, they attest to his foresight and were, at the time, startling indeed.


On Saturday, Swamiji continued to hold the Wrights, and whoever may have come to their cottage, spellbound. As Mrs. Wright wrote to her mother, "It was a kind of revival." In her diary she noted: "Swami talked all morning all afternoon. " We can know that the talk was of religion, for the entry under Sunday, August 27, reads: "Same thing. Swami talked religion." Yet he also played with the Wright children, delighting, perhaps, as much in this as in long and absorbing conversations. "He was wonderfully unspoiled and simple," Mrs. Wright commented in her typed story, "claiming nothing for himself, playing with the children, twirling a stick between his fingers with laughing skill and glee at their inability to equal him. "


The Wrights had three children: Elizabeth, or as she was more often called, Bessie, who was thirteen; Austin, who had just turned ten; and John, the baby, who was two. According to the family memories, it was Austin in whom Swamiji was the most interested, talking with him at some length and later, when he visited the Wrights at Cambridge, buying for him a red heart shaped box of candy, and on one occasion giving him a copy of The Light of Asia by Edwin Arnold, inscribed "Presented to Austin Wright with love and blessings of Vivekananda." Austin, on his part, was filled with wonder by Swamiji. It was probably at Cambridge in the early part of 1894 that, coming down to breakfast one morning, he found a screen set up in the living room, over which were draped long pieces of colored cloth. Swamiji had arrived late at night and had been put up on a couch, with the screen for privacy.*(4) To the little boy the sight was unexpected and those bright lengths of turban silk in a familiar living room seemed to him strange and romantic and as redolent of far off places as Swamiji himself. This incident was to remain so long impressed on his mind that the story came down to his daughter, who told me of it.

*(4) According to some accounts, Swamiji slept as Professor Wright's guest at Miss Lane's boarding house. Inasmuch as the Wright's small cottage, the Lodge, consisted of only one room downstairs and one room and a bathroom upstairs, this would seem probable. We are indebted to Miss Elva Nelson for a description and a photograph of the Lodge, a boxlike New England cottage with a peaked roof. Inside it was unfinished. ( See "Footnotes on Swami Vivekananda in Annisquam" Prabuddha Bharata, June 1979)

An unusual child, Austin Tappan Wright was to become an unusual man, of whom it was said in tribute after his untimely death in 1931 : "There seem to have been no rough angles in his character, no bitterness in him.'[24] Charming, simple, and direct, he was recognized during his lifetime as "an extraordinary person of deep sympathy, wide intellectual interests and keen critical mind: '[25]"He was a kind of Renaissance man," it was also said of him, "akin to Leonardo in the diversity of his interests, . . . a man with a profound feeling for life in all the factual, poetic, realistic and imaginative wonder of it.'[26]

As an adult, Austin Wright lived, in a sense, two lives, both of them richly: one in the United States as a brilliant lawyer and beloved professor of law, and the other as chronicler of Islandia, an imaginary country which he knew perhaps better, and certainly admired more, than his native America. It was perhaps around the time Swamiji visited Annisquam that Austin began inventing Islandia. Other children, it is true, sometimes invent imaginary worlds, but Austin's was no passing thing; it developed as he grew into a full blown country with a language, traditions, a religion, and a history of its own. Nor did the creator of this Utopia stop there; from time to time he worked quietly, and solely for his own pleasure, on an Islandian novel, which in its finished form ran to twenty three hundred finely written pages. In 1942, eleven years after his death, the novel, Islandia, was published in much abridged (though not short) form, and the country itself became for hundreds of readers almost as real and absorbing a world as it had been for its creator.


One cannot attribute the origin of Islandia to Austin Wright's meeting with Swamiji: the penchant for creating imaginary utopian countries was a family trait. Later, John K. Wright, excluded now and then from his elder brother's world, invented a country of his own called Cravay, and even Professor John Henry Wright, from whom the trait seems to have stemmed, had a world of his own devising, the maps and charts of which were found among his papers after his death. But while Austin's instinct toward the utopian seems to have been more or less hereditary, his meeting with Swamiji may have seemed as one of the catalysts that brought Islandia into being. In any case, as the country developed, its details were necessarily woven from his own experience, and here and there one can find in the novel unmistakable echoes of his early encounter with the vital and kindly Hindu. Islandians, for instance, were an ancient agricultural people with an inner life of their own, and among them was a racial type whose members were "big, with massive heads, black hair, black eyebrows, dark eyes, and ruddy skins.'[27]The novel's benevolent and noble hero, who was of this type and who, incidentally, parted his hair in the middle, had "magnificently arched eyebrows," "a strong chin slightly cleft," "a mature mouth," "even white teeth," and a clear, strong, and deep voice, which "without being loud filled the room"; and, what is more, he sang to himself "his own odd melodies in an undertone or roar like the sea.'[28] It would be hard to find as accurate a description of Swamiji as this. Then, in the annals of Islandian history one finds a young, heroic queen who, in the fourteenth century, led her troops in person against the enemy. Had not young Austin been listening entranced to Swamiji's tale of the Rani of Jhansi?


Almost all references to Islandian religion have been omitted from the published version of the novel, but Austin Wright's daughter Sylvia (Mrs. Paul J. Mitarchi) has told me that it was a religion "quite without dogma, the Islandian church being called a House of Quiet, where people go to sit quietly and meditate or, occasionally, to talk or listen to another person talk. The Islandian God is called Om, though he is never worshipped as a God in the Christian sense.'[29 ]In Islandia one finds a hymn to Om, a specimen of Islandian literature, which reads in part:


Om
Cannot be seen with eyes
Nor heard with ears
Nor felt with the hand.

Om is great because Om
Is what man cannot understand....
The goodness and evil of men
Is of their own making.
They are the rulers of the kingdom of right and wrong.
In that kingdom Om does not rule.

Does Om bid you do evil?
Does Om bid you do good?
Evil and Good are alike to Om!
Go not to Om for guidance in petty matters.

But it is well for men to sit in the halls of Om
And, so sitting, to be lost in his darkness
Or so sitting, to be dazzled by his brightness.
And to know that Om is.[30]


As will be seen later, Swamiji quoted From the Upanishads to the Wright children and in. a special note to Austin told him, in words that an imaginative child could well understand, of God's immanence. It is possible, of course, that the inhabitants of Islandia derived their religion from another source, but I myself would hazard the guess that whether they knew it or not, Swamiji's influence had touched Islandian shores and from there had moved inward and taken permanent root.


But to return to the weekend with the charming Wrights, one learns from Mrs. Wright's diary that on Saturday evening the children gave a play at (one gathers) the Hyatts'. The Hyatts were Professor Alpheus Hyatt, the famous zoologist, and his family, and there cannot be much doubt that after the performance the conversation proceeded at a lively pace. The "revival" in the Wright household continued in full force on Sunday also, when Swamiji "talked religion" during the morning and afternoon. That evening he gave his first lecture in an American church, after which the collection was taken that caused Mrs. Wright such fits of laughter. It is small wonder that she laughed: this was undoubtedly the first collection "for a Heathen college to be carried on strictly heathen principles" ever to be solemnly contributed to by a New England congregation; and no one but Swamiji could have brought such a marvel to pass.


Although this memorable and, as it turned out, history making weekend caused such a stir in Annisquam, the Gloucester Daily Times, which covered the Annisquam news, ran on August 28 the following item, typical of New England's verbal economy:

Annisquam.


Mr. Sivanei Yivcksnanda, a Hindoo monk, gave a fine lecture in the church last evening on the customs and life in India. And on August 29 the Cape Ann Breeze commented:


In the evening the church was open and a little of the Orient came to our doors in the person of a gentleman from Cathay, a Hindoo monk, the first one, I understand, who ever crossed the ocean to America. He is a guest of Professor Wright at Miss Lane's boarding house and has a musical Indian name, whose intricacies of speaking and pronunciation I have not yet mastered. He spoke in fairly good English, of the manners and customs in his far away land, and his dusky face, picturesque dress, distinctive phraseology, and pleasantly told story was a charming innovation in our matter of fact Western civilization.[31]


But while this is all the local newspapers had to say about Swamiji's lecture at the Annisquam Universalist Church, there are even today people to whom its main burden is still fresh and to whom Swamiji is still vivid. One woman, a summer resident of the village, writes to me in regard to Swamiji's weekend in Annisquam: "I consider it a great privilege to have known him. He was a striking looking man in appearance and dress. He wore a turban around his head and a long orange robe of heavy woolen cloth with a wide purple sash. He had a charming voice. He began his lecture in the Annisquam village church by saying that the Hindus were taught to have great respect for other people's religions."


The weather, as Mrs. Wright noted in her diary, had been warm all weekend and, for the most part, clear. But on Monday, August 28, when Swamiji left, it began to rain, and on Tuesday  night a storm of cyclonic proportions swept over northeastern Massachusetts. While no damage to speak of was done in New England, this was not a storm to be taken lightly; branches and wires were blown down, ships off the coast were tossed about, and persons found it difficult to stand upright. According to reports, this "miniature hurricane " originated in the West Indies, from where, no miniature, it had rapidly and determinedly headed north, raising a mighty commotion en route. This seems, after all, the least the elements could do by way of appropriate comment. The "cyclonic monk," as Swamiji later came to be called, had delivered his first American lecture and was on his way.

It was to Salem, some fifteen miles southwest, where he was scheduled to speak before the Thought and Work Club that Swamiji now traveled. The only information we have hitherto had of this lecture engagement is a bare reference in his Breezy Meadows letter. But his stay in Salem was more extended and active than this brief mention indicates, and we have been fortunate enough to find out more about it.

3

In the spring of 1950, an advertisement in a magazine devoted to antiques was brought to the notice of a student of Vedanta. The advertisement, placed by a Mrs. Prince Woods, offered for sale a trunk and a walking stick which had belonged to Swami Vivekananda. Naturally enough, these articles were sent for, and a request was made for further information regarding them. A correspondence ensued between the Vedanta student and Mrs. Woods, in the course of which the following facts came to light.

In August, 1893, Swamiji had been invited by Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods, whom he had evidently met at Miss Sanborn's, to stay in her home at 166 North Street, Salem. He remained there a week, during which time he lectured in the small but famous town, was criticized by the clergy, and became beloved  by Mrs. Woods, some nine years a widow, and her son, Prince, a young medical student. At the end of his visit, Swamiji, intending to return, left behind his staff, his trunk, and other luggage. Of his return Mrs. Prince Woods (the wife of Mrs. Woods's son) writes: "He spent two weeks at the Woods homestead at one time [actually it was one week] and came back from Chicago for another week [?] and to say 'Farewell'. I did not know the family then, but he came with some friends in a carriage and a fine pair of horses just after I met my husband to be and was invited there. I just saw him as he said 'Goodbye.'[32] On leaving this second time, Mrs. Prince Woods tells in another letter, "he gave his staff, his most precious possession, to Dr. Woods who was at that time a young medical student and the only child of Mrs. Woods. To her, he gave his trunk and his blanket, saying to them, 'Only my most precious possessions should I give to my friends who have made me at home in this great country.' " Mrs. Prince Woods adds, "This was a most gracious gesture after he had been feted all over the country,'[33] and from this one may gather that Swamiji's second visit to the Woods homestead occurred not immediately after the Parliament of Religions, but quite some time thereafter. The staff, trunk, and blanket were cherished by the Woods family as mementos of a great soul and a great friend. Dr. Woods, his wife tells us, refused to sell them, "the British Museum offering $200.00 for it [the trunk] early in 1900....'[34] Thus, happily, all three in 1950 were still available. The blanket was actually a large, coarsely woven, dark orange shawl, the kind sometimes worn by wandering monks in India; and the trunk a small steamer trunk, which undoubtedly had accompanied Swamiji halfway around the world.


From the letters of her daughter in law we learn that Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods, who was fifty eight when Swamiji was her guest, was, like Miss Kate Sanborn, an energetic lecturer and author. "[She] died July 10, 1910 . . . then 75 years of age, but very youthful in manner and looks, having lecture engagements all over the country. She went to Los Angeles and all over the West Coast not long before she passed on."[35] During her lifetime she wrote "many books," among which were Hester Hepworth, a story of the witchcraft delusion, A Fair Maid of Marblehead, Hidden years, and so on. She also wrote and illustrated poetry. Some of her books were for children, toward whom she no doubt felt a special interest, for during Swamiji's visit she arranged for him to speak in her garden to a group of local children and young people.*(5)

*(5)More detailed information about Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods has been given by David R. Proper in his article “Swami Vivekananda in Essex County” in the Essex Institute Historica Collections for January 1967. Mr. Proper’s paragraphs in regard to Mrs. Woods read as follows: “Kate Tannett [Tannatt] Woods, born at Peekskill, N.Y. in 1838, came East with her family while quite young. She was at one time a teacher in Salem schools before marrying George H. Woods, of Salem. A lawyer and member of Gen. Sheridan’s staff during the Civil War, Mr. Woods was the son of Ephraim and Mary A. Woods of Salem, where he was born in 1831. The Woods family had occupied the North Street property for many years, and it was here Mrs. Woods returned after the death of her husband at Decatur, Ill., in 1884 (Biographical Clippings, scrapbooks, Essex Institute, 31:149). This was her home until the turn of the century when she moved to North Falmouth, Massachusetts, where she died in 1910.  (Who was Who, 1897 1942) Among her many activities, Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods was an active editor, author, poet and widely travelled social leader.She contributed to Harper's Bazaar, helped edit the Ladies Home Journal and wrote for the Boston Evening Transcript, Boston Globe, Boston Herald and other newspapers. One of the original organizers of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, she was the founder of the Massachusetts State Federation of Women's Clubs and Vice President of the Women's National Press Association, as well as leading in other groups dedicated to the rights and privileges of women. She was author of verse and books for children, as well as a contributor of articles to many publications. 

This children's afternoon was by no means due to an underestimation of Swamiji's worth. The Woods family, as did all who came into contact with him, reverenced him. ". . . I never saw the Swami," Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods's daughter in law writes (although, as seen above, she had once caught a glimpse of him), "but have felt that I knew him from the many things I have heard of him in the Woods family. My husband . . . spoke of him as . . . of a real Christian gentleman. I have heard that he and Mahatma Gandhi were more Christlike than any the world has known.'[36]

Those who had known Swamiji never tired of discussing him and pondering over the new and awakening ideas which he brought into their lives. Two years later Ella Wheeler Wilcox, the celebrated journalist and poet, who was a friend of Mrs. Woods, writes to her of Swamiji in words which were no doubt similar to those often spoken between them. Fortunately, these letters were among those which Mrs. Woods's daughter in law had preserved, and although they relate to a time later than the one dealt with in the present chapter, I will include them here not only as giving a new glimpse of Swamiji but also as shedding some light on his hostess to whom they were addressed.

May [1895]


Dear Mrs.Woods: 

.....                                                         

Vivekananda is [at] 55 W. 33rd street.

I know it is Consecration to give out—I was born knowing that truth, but I think it is a great blot on the Consecration when we tell of it—and I am always ashamed after I have told of my own good deeds. Vivekananda says he meets many people who can not be led to talk of any subject that they do not drag in their own charitable acts, how they gave away a dime—or helped some one in need...'[37]

May [1895]


I was listening to Vivekananda this morning an hour. How honored by fate you must feel to have been allowed to be of service to this Great Soul. I believe him to be the re incarnation of some great Spirit—perhaps Buddha —perhaps Christ. He is so simple, so sincere, so pure, so unselfish. To have listened to him all winter is the greatest privilege life has ever offered me. It would be surprising to me that people could misunderstand or malign such a soul if I did not know how Buddha and Christ were persecuted and lied about by small inferiors. His discourse this morning was most uplifting—his mere presence is that. His absolute sinking of self is what I like. I am so tired of people who place the capital 'I' before truth —and God. 'To do good For good's sake—with no expectation or desire of reward, and never to speak of what we have done—but to keep on working for the love of doing God's work'—is Vivekananda's grand philosophy of life. He always makes me feel ashamed that I have ever thought for one moment I was burdened or that I ever spoke of any good act of my own. . .'[38]


Welcome as was the information regarding Swamiji in Salem, it was incomplete, and in order to add to it, a visit to that city was called for. North Street, Salem, wide and shaded, is lined with old frame houses, most of which were standing in 1893. As I walked along looking for 166, which Mrs. Woods had called "Maple Rest," I felt that this street, unlike those of larger cities, presented the same aspect as it had to Swamiji —more worn now, it is true, but substantially the same, quiet and comfortably settled into itself. Soon I came to 166, where Swamiji had stayed. It was a small two and a half story house with a run down garden at the side and back. Indeed, one could hardly call it a garden; it was a yard with weeds growing in it. But when Swamiji had spoken there, it most likely had been well kept. The house itself, flush with the sidewalk and devoid of the gingerbread of a later period, was in good repair, newly painted and probably but little different in appearance from what it had been when Swamiji left his trunk behind. The name on the front door, however, was not Woods. The Woods family, I learned, had moved away years before, and the present occupant had never heard of a Hindu monk in Salem.


(That was in 1951. A few years later the house again changed hands, coming into the possession of a Mr. and Mrs. Warren Baughn. From Mrs. Baughn I have learned that the house, built with hand wrought nails and wooden dowels and protected from the raids of American Indians by inside blinds and shutters, must be at least two hundred years old. It has eleven rooms, three of them in the attic, and originally each had an open fireplace of its own. Mrs. Baughn has provided us with a photograph of this quaint old house in which Swamiji lived, and it is here reproduced.)


From 166 North Street I found my way to the Essex Institute, where the old Salem newspapers are filed away and where I looked for, found, and copied the following articles from the Salem Evening News of August 24, 1893, and the Salem Evening News and the Daily Gazette of August 29. It would appear either that the same reporter served both papers or that the evening paper lifted copy bodily from that of the morning. In any case, the three articles are given here respectively, along with their original headlines. Salem journalism in 1893 had its own charm:


Evening News, August 24, 1893

A MONK FROM INDIA

He Will Visit Salem, Monday August 28 and Make an Address

On Monday next a learned monk from India will speak to the members of the Thought and Work Club, telling something of his land, its religion and customs. Club members will meet the rajah at Wesley chapel on North street promptly at four o'clock. Gentlemen and ladies who are not members can obtain tickets through some members of the club. The rajah will wear his native costume.

Evening News, August.29, 1893

A MONK FROM INDIA

Salem Audience Interested in His Remarks

He has no Faith in Missionaries.

Explains the Bad Condition of Women in His Land

In spite of the warm weather of yesterday afternoon, a goodly number of members of the Thought and Work club, with guests, gathered in Wesley chapel to meet Swani Vive Kanonda, a Hindoo monk, now travelling in this country and to listen to an informal address from that gentleman, principally upon the religion of the Hindoos as taught by their Vedas or sacred books. He also spoke of caste, as simply a social division and in no way dependent upon their religion.


The poverty of the majority of the masses was strongly dwelt upon. India with an area much smaller than the United States, contains twenty three hundred millions [sic] of people, and of these, three hundred millions [sic] earn wages, averaging less than fifty cents per month. In  ome instances the people in whole districts of the country subsist for months and even years, wholly upon flowers, produced by a certain tree which when boiled are edible.


In other districts the men eat rice only, the women and children must satisfy their hunger with the water in which the rice is cooked. A failure of the rice crop means famine. Half the people


LIVE UPON ONE MEAL A DAY

the other half know not whence the next meal will come. According to Swani Vive Kyonda, the need of the people of India is not more religion, or a better one, but as he expresses it, "practicality," and it is with the hope of interesting the American people in this great need of the suffering, starving millions that he has come to this country.


He spoke at some length of the condition of his people and their religion. In course of his speech he was frequently and closely questioned by Dr. F. A. Gardner and Rev. S. F. Nobbs of the Central Baptist Church. He said the missionaries had fine theories there and started in with good ideas, but had done nothing for the industrial condition of the people. He said Americans, instead of sending out missionaries to train them in religion, would better send someone out to give them industrial education.


Asked whether it was not a fact that Christians assisted the people of India in times of distress, and whether they did not assist in a practical way by training schools, the speaker replied that they did it sometimes, but really it was not to their credit for the law did not allow them to attempt to influence people at such times.


He explained the

BAD CONDITION OF WOMAN

in India on the ground that Hindoo men had such respect for woman that it was thought best not to allow her out. The Hindoo women were held in such high esteem that they were kept in seclusion. He explained the old custom of women being burned on the death of their husbands, on the ground that they loved them so that they could not live without the husband. They were one in marriage and must be one in death.


He was asked about the worship of idols and the throwing themselves in front of the juggernaut car, and said one must not blame the Hindoo people for the car business, for it was the act of fanatics and mostly of lepers.


This afternoon Vive Kanonda will speak on the children of India to any children or young people who may be pleased to listen to him at 166 North street, Mrs. Woods kindly offering her garden for that purpose. In person he is a fine looking man, dark but comely, dressed in a long robe of a yellowish red color confined at the waist with a cord, and wearing on his head a yellow turban. Being a monk he has no caste, and may eat and drink with anyone.


The matter omitted in the following article consists of a word for word repetition of sentences in the above.

Daily Gazette, August 29, 1893

RAJAH SWANI VIVI KANAUDA

Has but Little Faith in the Missionaries, 

Husbands of India Never Lie, Never Persecute

His Purpose Here to Organize Monks for Industrial Purposes

Rajah Swani Vivi Rananda of India was the guest of the Thought and Work Club of Salem yesterday afternoon in the Wesley church.


A large number of ladies and gentlemen were present and shook hands, American fashion, with the distinguished monk. He wore an orange colored gown, with red sash, yellow turban, with the end hanging down on one side, which he used for a handkerchief, and congress shoes....


Speaking at some length of the relations of men and women, he said the husbands of India never lied and never persecuted, and named several other sins they never committed....


AS FOR THE WORSHIP OF IDOLS

he said he had asked Christians what they thought of when they prayed, and some said they thought of the church others of G O D. Now his people thought of the images. For the poor people idols were necessary. He said that in ancient times, when their religion first began, women were distinguished for spiritual genius and great strength of mind. In spite of this, as he seemed to acknowledge, the women of the present day had degenerated. They thought of nothing but eating and drinking, gossip and scandal.


The speaker explained his mission in his country to be to organize monks for industrial purposes, that they might give the people the benefit of this industrial education and thus to elevate them and improve their condition.


Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods had been one of the founders of the Thought and Work Club in 1891 and was its president for its first eight years. The first literary and cultural women's group in Salem, the club counted among its members and friends many women of outstanding ability as well as social prominence, some of whom took a leading part in the cultural activities of the day. According to Mr. David R. Proper (see note for page 43), the club's executive committee had met at Mrs. Wood's home on Thursday, August 24, when Swamiji was still a guest at Breezy Meadows, to plan a special meeting to hear him speak. "It was decided to have post cards sent to the members, announcements read from the local church pulpits on Sunday and twenty five cents admission charged to non members attending the meeting.'[39]Among the guests who came to hear Swamiji were Mrs. Francis W. Breed of the North Shore Club in Lynn, Massachusetts, whom he was to know better later on, and Mrs. Caroline M. Severance, a noted leader of women's groups, who would entertain him in California in 1900.


The local clergy also came. Nor was the Reverend S. F. Nobbs of the Central Baptist Church, who "frequently and closely questioned" Swamiji, the only one among them who came in no friendly spirit. This we learn from the letters of Mrs. Prince Woods, who writes: "All the ministers were present and none of them appreciated what he said. Several were most critical. "[40] And again: "I . . . remember that my mother in law . . . many times spoke of the outspoken, narrow attitude of most of the ministers in Salem who openly criticised him in the Pulpit. She had arranged an open meeting in one of the churches and most of the ministers openly accosted him in the most acrimonious manner while he remained gentle in speech and manner."[41] This was, as far as can be known, Swamiji's first encounter with hostile Christian ministers, and while their acrimony left him unperturbed he was no doubt surprised by it. Presumably no collection was taken that day for a heathen college. (It was, incidentally, on the evening of the day following this Lecture that the previously mentioned storm struck Salem with a crash.)


Swamiji spent the following week—August 29 to September 4 at Mrs. Woods's home. On the breezy, pre storm afternoon of Tuesday, August 29, he spoke in the garden to the children, and on the evening of the following Sunday, September 3, he lectured at the East Church, whose minister was apparently one of the few in Salem who were sympathetic. The Salem Evening News of September 1 reported on the first of these events, the Daily Gazette of September 5 on the second. Both reports follow respectively:

TO SPEAK AGAIN

SWAMI VIVA KANANDA, The India Monk, 

at East Church Sunday Evening

The learned Monk from India who is spending a few days in this city, will speak in the East Church Sunday evening at 7 30. Swami (Rev.) Viva Kananda preached in the Episcopal church [actually the Universalist Church] at Annisquam last Sunday evening, by invitation of the pastor and Professor Wright of Harvard, who has shown him great kindness.


On Monday night he leaves for Saratoga, where he will address the Social Science association. Later on he will speak before the Congress in Chicago. Like all men who are educated in the higher Universities of India, Viva Kananda speaks English easily and correctly. His simple talk to the children on Tuesday last concerning the games, schools, customs and manners of children in India was valuable and most interesting. His kind heart was touched by the statement of a little miss that her teacher had "licked her so hard that she almost broke her finger." "We have no corporal punishment in our schools," he said, "none at all." As Viva Kananda, like all monks, must travel over his land preaching the religion of truth, chastity and the brotherhood of man, no great good could pass unnoticed, or terrible wrong escape his eyes. He is extremely generous to all persons of other faiths, and has only kind words for those who differ from him.

SOME SUNDAY SERVICES

Several Ministers Return to September Pulpits 

Rajah Rananda at the East Church

Rajah Swani Vivi Rananda of India spoke at the East church Sunday evening, on the religion of India and the  poor of his native land. A good audience assembled, but it was not so large as the importance of the subject or the interesting speaker deserved. The monk was dressed in his native costume, and spoke about forty minutes. The great need of India today, which is not the India of fifty years ago, is, he said, missionaries to educate the people industrially and socially and not religiously. The Hindoos have all the religion they want, and the Hindoo religion is the most ancient in the world. The monk is a very pleasant speaker and held the close attention of his audience.


What a difference of feeling there is in these pre Parliament of Religions lectures from those that came after! In Swamiji's letters and lectures one can trace his change of attitude through the months in his approach to the American public. He came with the purpose of getting help for India, of telling the American people of his country's real needs and real genius, but he stayed only to give, pouring himself out for the sake of Americans, for not only did he soon find that he could expect little real, immediate help for his Indian work, but he could not see hunger in any form, spiritual or physical, without satisfying it.

On August 30 Swamiji wrote to Professor Wright in regard to the invitation he had received from Mr. Franklin B. Sanborn to lecture before the American Social Science Association at Saratoga Springs. The following letters were found among Dr. Wright's papers and, together with others written by Swamiji to the professor, have been made available to us by his son, Mr. John K. Wright:

Salem
30th Aug '93


Dear Adhyapakji (honorable professor)

I am going off from here today. I hope you have received some reply from Chicago. I have received an invitation with full directions from Mr. Sanborn. So I am going to Saratoga on Monday. My respects to your wife. And my love to Austin and all the children. You are a real Mahatma (a great soul) and Mrs. Wright is nonpareil.

Yours aflly [42]

Vivekananda


Swamiji evidently did not yet know the decision of the officials of the Parliament of Religions to whom Professor Wright had written. But by September 2, the arrangements were well under way:


Saturday Salem [Sept. 2, 1893]

Dear Adhyapakji—

I hasten to tender my heartfelt gratitude to you for your letters of introduction. I have received a letter from Mr Theles of Chicago giving me the names of some of the delegates and other things about the Congress.


Your professor of Sanscrit in his note to Miss Sanborn mistakes me for Purushottama Joshi and states that there is a Sanskrit library in Boston the like of which can scarcely be met within India. I would be so happy to see it.


Mr Sanborn has written to me to come over to Saratoga on Monday and I am going accordingly. I would stop there at a boarding house called Sanatorium. If any news come from Chicago in the meanwhile, I hope you will kindly send it over to the Sanatorium Saratoga.


You and your noble wife and sweet children have made an impression on my brain which is simply indelible and I thought myself so much near to heaven when living with you. May He the giver of all gifts shower on your head His choicest blessings.

Here are a few lines written as an attempt at poetry. Hoping your love will pardon this infliction.

Ever your friend [43]

Vivekananda

 

The poem which Swamiji "inflicted" upon Professor Wright was very likely the first poem he had written in the English language, and while it is by no means his best, it contains, I believe, some of his most poignant lines. To judge from the original, he dashed it off on letter paper in the flush of inspiration and, making only minor corrections here and there, sent it on to his friend. Now published in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (hereafter called the Complete Works), it need be reproduced only in part here:

O'r Hill and dale and mountain range
In temple church and mosque
In Vedas Bible Al Koran
I had searched for thee in vain

Like a child in the wildest forest lost
I have cried and cried alone
Where art thou gone my God my love
the echo answered gone . . .

Years then passed in bitter cry
each moment seemed an age
till one day midst my cries and groans
Some one seemed calling me . . .

Again Again it seemed to speak
the voice divine to me
In rapture all my soul was hushed
Entranced enthralled in bliss

A flash illumined all my soul
the heart of my heart opened wide 
O joy O bliss what do I find
My love my love you are here
And you are here my love my all

And I was searching thee
From all eternity you were there
Enthroned in majesty . . .

From that day forth where ere I roam
I feel him standing by
O'er hill and dale high mount and vale
Far Far away and nigh . . .

Thou wert my God with prophets old
All creeds do come from thee
The Vedas Bible and Koran bold
Sing thee in harmony

"Thou art" "Thou art" the Soul of souls
in the rushing stream of life
* "Om tat Sat om" Thou art my God
my love I am thine I am thine.[44]

* Tat Sat means that only real existence. [Swamiji's note]

Swamiji left for Saratoga Springs on Monday night to speak before the convention of the American Social Science Association. Mr. Sanborn was at this time secretary of the Association, which counted among its members eminent and cultured men from all professions, and he no doubt felt that he was offering them a rare treat in the person of Swamiji. Indeed, the fact that he invited a young, unknown Hindu monk to speak before so august an assembly is ample evidence that, like Professor Wright, he highly valued Swamiji's intellectual genius. But although Swamiji spoke three times before the convention and twice at a private home he characteristically never mentioned in his letters this honor paid to him during his first weeks in America. This omission was probably due to the fact that since the honor had been paid not to Hinduism or to India but to himself he felt it was not worth mentioning.


The sessions of the American Social Science Association, held in the Court of Appeals Room of the Town Hall, were of course wholly secular. Chosen at random from various reports in the Daily Saratogian, some of the titles were: "Compulsory Arbitration," "American Colleges and Their Work,"


"The Educational Value of the Woman's Paper," "The Education of Epileptics," "Turkey and Civilization," "The Relative Values of the Factors that Produce Wealth," "The Status of Silver," "Recent Progress in Medicine and Surgery, " and so on. But Swamiji was prepared to speak on a variety of subjects, and in keeping with the tone of the convention he chose for his talks: "The Mohammedan Rule in India" (evening of September 5) and "The Use of Silver in India" (morning of September 6). (The silver standard was, at this time, a burning question in American politics.) The title of his third talk, given on the evening of September 6, is now unfortunately unknown, and, more unfortunately, the text of none of his talks was reported upon. Nevertheless, the newspaper articles which carried accounts of his appearances at the convention and at "Dr. Hamilton's" are here reproduced in part. The first two excerpts are taken from the Daily Saratogian of September 6, 1893 ; the third, from the same paper of September7:

THEIR SCIENCE IS SOCIAL

A Brainy Gathering Elects Its Officers

Able Papers Read at Yesterday's Session—The Education of Epileptics — To Establish Social Science Professorships —The Program for Today is Important.


The second session of the American Social Science association opened in the Court of Appeals room, Town Hall, yesterday morning....

EVENING SESSION

The evening session opened at 8 o'clock, every seat in the room being occupied. The first business on the program was the election of officers. . .


A paper was read by Hon. Oscar S. Strauss of New York on "Turkey and Civilization, " in which he most  emphatically denied the general reports that Turkey was an uncivilized country.


The platform was next occupied by Vive Kananda, a Monk of Madras, Hindoostan, who preached throughout India. He is interested in social science and is an intelligent and interesting speaker. He spoke on Mohammedan rule in India.

The program for today embraces some very interesting topics, especially the paper on "Bimetallism, " by Col. Jacob Greene of Hartford. Vive Kananda will again speak, this time on the Use of Silver in India.

LOCAL GOSSIP

Swami Vive Kananda, an educated Hindoo who lately arrived in this country from India, is in attendance on the social science convention this week and has spoken twice to crowded parlors at Dr. Hamilton's on the manners customs and beliefs of the people of that wonderful country. He is an entertaining speaker, a highly educated man and his lectures, covering a wide range of topics, were very interesting. He is a striking figure in his oriental costume, and the public are invited to see and hear him at the Institute tonight at seven o'clock sharp. The lecture closes at 7:30.

MONEY WAS THE SUBJECT
Of the Able Paper at the Social Scientists' Session

What President Andrews Said About the Monetary 

Experiment in India — Other Interesting Papers —

The Program for Today.

The second day's session of the American Social Science association opened auspiciously yesterday morning there being a large gathering.


The addresses and papers all pertained to finance which, especially at this time, proved very interesting.... Col. Jacob L. Greene of Hartford read a paper on "Bimetallism," treating the subject in a very exhaustive manner. A paper by Dr. Charles B. Spahr of New York followed on the status of silver which was attentively listened to. A paper by President E. Benjamin Andrews of Brown University on "The Monetary experiment in India," was a masterpiece for thought and intellectual ability....


At the conclusion of the reading Vive Kananda, the Hindoo monk addressed the audience in an intelligent and interesting manner, taking for his subject the use of silver in India.


Within three weeks Swamiji had, as far as we now know, given eleven lectures and talks. He had, moreover, come into contact with a cross section of American life: he had spoken to the Ramabai Circle; he had met members of the clergy, both friendly and hostile; he had talked to the inmates of a prison, to American club women and even to children; and he had met and gained the respect of some of the leading thinkers and educators of the country. He could not have had a better preparation for all that was to come.


In the Saratogian there ran an advertisement headed "Half Rate to the World's Fair," which recommended "the excellent Chicago train service on the Delaware and Hudson Railroad. . . . $26.00 round trip: ' If Swamiji took advantage of this bargain, he would have arrived in Chicago at the handsome red brick Dearborn Street Station on the corner of Dearborn and Polk streets on the evening of either Friday, September 8, or Saturday, September 9. When he had left the city less than a month earlier, the situation had on its surface seemed hopeless. Now he returned as an accepted delegate to the grand Parliament of Religions, assured of a cordial welcome by the authorities and filled with joy at this clear manifestation of divine protection and guidance. There was only one hitch: he did not know where to go from the station; he had lost the address of whatever place he was supposed to present himself. What happened next is well known to everyone familiar with Swamiji's biography, for the story was told in the first edition of the Life and has since been often repeated. Yet it is possible that by the time it was recorded in the Life, twenty years after its occurrence, some of its details may have gone awry; indeed, they do not all stand up under close examination. But however that may be, Swamiji himself had often told the story, and thus we can be certain of the main facts.


Alone in a large and still strange American city, he could not, for one reason or another, make anyone understand where he wanted to go—indeed, he himself did not know. In this predicament, he did the thing most natural to him—he followed the instincts of the sannyasin—one whose heart sang "the sky thy roof; the grass thy bed; and food, what chance may bring . . ." The equivalent of sky and grass in a Chicago depot and freight yard would have been an empty boxcar (called in India a "goods wagon")—a traditional American shelter for the homeless and penniless wanderer. Thus in all probability, it was in a boxcar that Swamiji spent the night. In the Life it has been recorded, through what one cannot but think was a misunderstanding, that he slept that night in "a huge empty box.'[45]This box has become legendary; even in stories of Swamiji's life written for children one finds drawings of it with him curled up most uncomfortably and implausibly inside. There is, I believe, no way to get rid of this box; engraved now on the minds of innumerable children, it is with us for all time. But the present writer—along with many others who know the general state of things in an American freightyard is inclined to think that Swamiji very sensibly spent the night in a ready to hand and roomy boxcar. But box or boxcar, the next morning he set out, sannyasin like, to beg his food from door to door.


Dark skinned, unshaven, wearing what must have been by now a very rumpled orange robe and a strange looking turban, Swamiji was a matter for alarm. Housewives turned away; servants slammed doors in his face; some verbally insulted him. He walked on. He walked for at least two and a half miles, and at length, weary and hungry, he sat down on the west side of Dearborn Street (on the curbstone perhaps) and resigned himself to God's will. In a few moments, the front door of the house opposite opened, and out came a dignified, well dressed woman, who, it happened, was Mrs. George W. Hale.*(6)Mrs. Hale was not one to fear a stranger; rather, she was ready to offer help. She was, moreover, evidently perceptive enough to recognize in the oddly dressed young man sitting quietly across the street the look of holiness and princeliness combined. She went up to him and ventured, "Sir, are you a delegate to the Parliament of Religions?" Learning that he was, she at once took him into her house, gave him breakfast, saw to it that his every need was attended to, and no doubt sent for his luggage from the station. Later she took him to the offices of the Parliament, where he was awaited. Thus was Swamiji not only cared for, he was led to the Hale family at the very beginning of his American work—a family that was to become more dear to him than any other he would know in the West.

*(6) The site of the Hale house is today occupied by a high rise apartment building. Across the street, where Swamiji sat, stands Saint Chrysostom's Episcopal Church, which was built and dedicated in 1894. In September of 1893, the property now occupied by the church was for the most part vacant. (What was once the 500 block of Dearborn Avenue is 

now designated the 1400 block of North Dearborn Street)

Through a news report in the Chicago Record of September 11, we next find him seated (probably on Sunday, September 10) in the parlor of Dr. John H. Barrows, the primary organizer of the Parliament. This report, which contains the first known mention of Swamiji as an accepted delegate, read in part:

Four leaders of religious thought were sitting in Dr. Barrow's [sic] parlor—the Jain, George Condin [Candlin], the missionary who has passed sixteen years in China, Swami Vivekananda, the learned Brahman Hindoo, and bDr. John H. Barrows, the Chicago Presbyterian. These four talked as if they were brothers of one faith.


The Hindoo is of smooth countenance. His rather fleshy face is bright and intelligent. He wears an orange turban and a robe of the same color. His English is very good. "I have no home," said he. "I travel about from one college to another in India, lecturing to the students. Before starting for America I had been for some time in Madras. Since arriving in this country, I have been treated with utmost courtesy and kindness. It is very gratifying to us to be recognized in this Parliament, which may have such an important bearing on the religious history of the world. We expect to learn much and take back some great truths to our 15,000,000 faithful Brahmins:'


It was with the humility of true greatness that Swamiji expected to learn much from the Parliament and from the representatives of religions other than his own, and he was indeed to learn a great deal—but not all of it in accordance with his hopes.


ⓘ
[1] Vancouver Daily News Advertiser, July 26, 1893; Victoria Colonist, July 26, 1893.
[2] The name of this hotel is not mentioned, and I have not been able to discover it. Although several Chi tago hotels that             existed in 1893 are still operating, their 1893 registers, as far as I have found, have been destroyed.
[3] Complete Works, 5 : 12.
[4] Complete Works, 5:18.
[5] This passage is from an early copy of Swamiji’s original letter of August 20, 1893, Sara Chapman Bull Papers.
[6] Complete Works, 5:11.
[7] Life, 1:402.
[8] Life, 1:405.
[9] “Vivekananda: Some New Findings,” comp, the Editors, Vedanta and the West 16 (November December 1953): 167.
[10] Complete Works, 5:12.
[11] Complete Works, p. 19.
[12] 3:209.
[13] Beni Shanker Sharma, Swami Vivekananda—A Forgotten Chapter of His Life, pp. 86 92.
[14] Complete Works, 5:12 18 passim. (Words from Swamiji’s original letter have also been quoted in this paragraph.)
[15] Complete Works, 5 :12.
[14] Complete Works, 5:12 18 passim. (Words from Swamiji’s original letter have also been quoted in this paragraph.)
[15] Complete Works, 5 :12.
[16] Complete Works, 5 :13—14.
[17] This passage is from an early handwritten copy of Swamiji’s original letter of August 20,1893, SCB.
[18] Mary Tappan Wright to her mother, August 29, 1893, Wright Collection, copy Vedanta Society of Northern California Archives.
[19] John K. Wright to Swami Ashok ananda, December 10, 1962, VSNC.
[20] Life, 1:406 9.
[21] Excerpts from a typescript of an article by Mary Tappan Wright. Wright Collection, copy VSNC.
[22] Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda (Sister Christine), p. 203.
[23] John P. Fox to Sara Bull, July 16, 1896, SCB.
[24] Lawrence Clark Powell, “The Islandian World of Austin Wright” (a talk given to the Zamoran Club in April, 1957, by the Librarian of University of California at Los Angeles).
[25] Lawrence Clark Powell, “The Islandian World of Austin Wright” (a talk given to the Zamoran Club in April, 1957, by the Librarian of University of California at Los Angeles).
[26] Lawrence Clark Powell, “The Islandian World of Austin Wright” (a talk given to the Zamoran Club in April, 1957, by the Librarian of University of California at Los Angeles).
[27] Austin Tappan Wright, Islandia, 2nd ed. (New York: Rinehart and Company, 1958), p. 32.
[28] Austin Tappan Wright, Islandia, 2nd ed. (New York: Rinehart and Company, 1958), pp. 3, 4, 7, 65.
[29] Sylvie W. Mitarchi to the author, July 24, 1962.
[30] Austin Tappan Wright, Islandia (New York: Rinehart and Company, 1942), p. 1017. Also Sylvia W. Mitarchi to the author, July 24, 1962.
[31] This quotation from the Cape Ann Breeze was kindly supplied by Miss Elva Nelson before the publication of her article “Footnotes on Swami Vivekananda in Annisquam,” Pra buddha Bharata, June 1979.
[32] Helen Tyson Woods to Josephine M. Stanbury, August 31, 1950, VSNC.
[33] Helen Tyson Woods to Josephine M. Stanbury, April 18, 1950.
[34] Helen Tyson Woods to Josephine M. Stanbury, April 18, 1950.
[35] Aug. 31, 1950.
[36] May 17, 1950.
[37] Ella Wheeler Wilcox to Kate T. Woods, May, 1895, VSNC.
[38] Ella Wheeler Wilcox to Kate T. Woods, May, 1895, VSNC.
[39] David R. Proper, “Swami Vivekananda in Essex County,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, 103:1 (January 1967). Mr. Proper has cited the following source: “Thought and Work Club, Salem, Mass. Minutes of meetings, record book of the secretary. Original records made available by Mrs. R. W. Silvernail, former president of the organization. Locked in an old tin box, the services of a locksmith were required to make these records available.”
[44] Swami Vivekananda, In Search of God and Other Poems, 2nd ed. PP  3~5 
[45] Life, 1:411. (Italics added.) 

↑ Contents

1.2 THE PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS 1

The primary purpose of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 was to bring together the fruits of man's material progress. Everything imaginable was on exhibit—not only the achievements of Western civilization but the better to show these off, life-size models of the more backward cultures of the world. The Fair, however, would not have been complete without a representation of the world's thought. Neely's History of the Parliament of Religions tells us that "the idea of a series of congresses for the consideration of the greatest themes in which mankind is interested, and so comprehensive as to include representatives from all parts of the earth originated with Charles Carroll Bonney in the summer of 1889.'[1]Mr. Bonney was a well-known lawyer of that time and the author of many important constitutional and economic reforms. His voice carrying weight, his idea was given wide publicity and met with general approval. A committee was formed, and on October 30, 1890, the World's Congress Auxiliary of the Columbian Exposition was organized with Mr. Bonney as its president. For the next two and one-half years, elaborate and complex plans were made, involving an untold number of letters to and from all corners of the earth. The congresses, which finally met between May 15 and October 28, 1893, were twenty in all and embraced such things as woman's progress, the public press, medicine and surgery, temperance, commerce and finance, music, government and law reform, economic science, Sunday rest, and—"since faith in a Divine Power . . . has been like the sun, a light-giving and fructifying potency in man's intellectual and moral development'[2] —religion. "So numerous," says  Houghton, "were these congresses and so extensive the proceedings that their programmes bound in one volume constitute an interesting book of 160 pages.'[3] (Italics mine.)

Of these congresses, the Parliament of Religions was by far the most famed and widely heralded. "No one gathering ever assembled," wrote the Reverend John. Henry Barrows in The World's Parliament of Religions, "was awaited with such universal interest '[4]The Parliament was indeed a unique phenomenon in the history of religions. It is true that throughout the history of India meetings of different religions had taken place; it is also true that before 1893 there had been from time to time ecumenical conventions of Christians and also of Mohammedans. But it can be correctly said that never before had the representatives of the world's great religions been brought together in one place, where they might without fear tell of their respective beliefs to thousands of people. It was an unparalleled meeting, and when first proposed in that day of intolerance and materialism it seemed to many impossible of human achievement. To even a casual observer it might almost appear that some superhuman force was propelling it forward, and one is not surprised to learn that Swamiji, before embarking for America, had said to Swami Turiyananda, "The Parliament of Religions is being organized for this", (pointing to himself). "My mind tells me so. You will see it verified at no distant date.'[5]

That, however, was a motive for organizing the Parliament which had never entered the minds of those who were most instrumental in bringing the religions of the world together. Whatever the divine motives may have been, the human motives lying behind the organization were mixed. Swamiji later wrote in a letter: "The Parliament of Religions was organized with the intention of proving the superiority of the Christian religion.[6] And again, during the course of an interview, he said, "The Parliament of Religions, as it seems to me, was intended for a 'heathen show' before the world'[7]It has sometimes been thought that Swamiji may have been unfair in this judgment of the Congress which introduced him to the Western world, but a reading of the accounts of both the preparations and the proceedings leaves one without a doubt that the Parliament was permeated with Christian prejudice. That Christianity would gloriously and unequivocally prove its superiority was a foregone conclusion in the minds of many of its promoters.

On the other hand, there were some connected with the Parliament who, having no religious commitments---no religious axe to grind--conceived of it in broader and more realistic terms. To them, it was an unprecedented opportunity for promoting understanding and good will among all seekers of truth. One of these was President Bonney, of whom Swamiji wrote: "Think of that mind that planned and carried out with great success that gigantic undertaking, and he, no clergyman, a lawyer presiding over the dignitaries of all the churches, the sweet, learned, patient Mr. Bonney with all his soul speaking through his bright eyes . . .'[8] Bonney himself described his dream of what the Parliament might accomplish: "I became acquainted with the great religious systems of the world in my youth, and have enjoyed an intimate association with leaders of many churches during my maturer years. I was thus led to believe that if the great religious faiths could be brought into relations of friendly intercourse, many points of sympathy and union would be found, and the coming unity of mankind in the love of God and the service of man be greatly facilitated and advanced.'[9] But although it was Bonney's inspiration that lay behind the Parliament, it was actually not he but the Reverend John Henry Barrows, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, who was Chairman of the General Committee and responsible for carrying out the elaborate preparations.

The work of the Committee was voluminous. More than 10,000 letters and 40,000 documents were sent out, and answers from all parts of the globe were received by the bushel. Barrows writes pridefully: "For thirty months nearly all the railroads and steamship lines of the world were unconsciously working for the Parliament of Religions. The post-office clerks at Chicago handled great bundles of letters which had previously passed through the brown fingers of the postal clerks in Madras, Bombay and Tokyo.'[10]Advisory Councilors were selected from all parts of the world, their number finally reaching 3,000. Among the Councilors chosen from India were G. S. Iyer, editor of the Madras Hindu, B. B. Nagarkar of Bombay, and P. C. Mazumdar of Calcutta, the last two of whom represented the Brahmo Samaj at the Parliament. The Committee was also in communication with H. Dharmapala, the General Secretary of the Maha-Bodhi Society in Calcutta, who later became the delegate for the Southern Buddhists of Ceylon, and Muni Atmaramji, High Priest of the Jain community of Bombay.

This abundance of correspondence was not all: articles, lectures, sermons, and editorials were written, which either extravagantly praised or bitterly condemned the attempt to bring together all the religions of the world. It was through articles in the Hindu by its editor, G. S. Iyer, that the plans of the Parliament were made generally known in India, and it is probably through this channel that Swamiji, not being affiliated with any sect or organization, came to learn of what was afoot in America.

The task of assembling this unprecedented gathering had its delicate as well as its cumbersome aspects. The initial action of the Committee, which was appointed in the spring of 1891 and was formed largely of zealous Protestant ministers, was to advise religious leaders of the proposed objectives of the Parliament, which were in brief: "1. To bring together in conference, for the first time in history, the leading representatives of the great Historic Religions of the world. 2. To show to men, in the most impressive way, what and how many important truths the various Religions hold and teach in common.... 4. To set forth, by those most competent to speak, what are deemed the important distinctive truths held and taught by each Religion, and by the various chief branches of Christendom.... 7. To inquire what light each Religion has afforded, or may afford, to the other Religions of the world. . . . 9. To discover, from competent men, what light Religion has to throw on the great problems of the present age, especially the important questions connected with Temperance, Labor, Education, Wealth and Poverty. 10. To bring the nations of the earth into a more friendly fellowship, in the hope of securing permanent international peace."[11]

At first the responses that flowed in were mostly favorable and enthusiastic. To be sure, a missionary of the Presbyterian Board in India expressed some "misgivings through fear lest the faith we loved and the Saviour we preached might seem to us to be dishonored."[12] But further acquaintance with the plans served to remove these misgivings and to bring about his hearty approval.

In what this further acquaintance consisted may be gathered from a quotation in Barrows's book. "The Christian conviction back of this Parliament," he writes approvingly, "was well expressed by Pere Hyacinth in the Contemporary for July, 1892: 'It is not true that all religions are equally good; but neither is it true that all religions except one are no good at all. The Christianity of the future, more just than that of the past, will assign to each its place in that work of evangelical preparation which the elder doctors of the church discern in heathenism itself and which is not yet completed.' "[13]

But this assurance was not enough to remove all misgivings, and as the plans became more widely known, dissent was soon loud and strong. Many Christian journals in America came out in decided opposition, largely on the same grounds that had given pause to the Presbyterian missionary, but also out of fear that the Parliament would only aggravate discord. The worst blow of all, however, was struck by the powerful Archbishop of Canterbury, who after due consideration finally wrote in a letter to the Committee: ". . . The difficulties which I myself feel are not questions of distance and convenience, but rest on the fact that the Christian religion is the one religion. I do not understand how that religion can be regarded as a member of a Parliament of Religions without assuming the equality of the other intended members and the parity of their position and claims.'[14]

Echoes were heard. For example, a letter from a minister in Hong Kong: ". . . If misled yourself, at least do not mislead others nor jeopardize, I pray you, the precious life of your soul by playing fast and loose with the truth and coquetting with false religions.... You are unconsciously planning treason against Christ. "[15]

Although the stand of the Archbishop and others like it were criticized by many, the opposition to them was for the most part based on the conviction that, after all, Christianity had nothing to fear. "In my judgment," wrote one bishop in America, "no Christian believer should hesitate one moment to make the presentation of the Religion of Jesus Christ grand and impressive, so that it may make itself felt powerfully in the comparison of religions.... Who can tell but that the great Head of the Church may, in his providence, make use of the immense gathering to usher in the triumph of his truth, when at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow?'"[16]—Jesus Christ.'"[17]

Dozens of similar letters flowed in, approving of the Congress for evangelical reasons. Barrows, apparently without the slightest consciousness that these letters were hardly in the spirit of the proposed objectives, added his own voice to them. He found it part of his work, in replying to the criticisms of the Parliament, to write articles and give many public addresses explaining the Christian and Scriptural grounds on which its defense, as he says, "securely rested," namely, that Saint Paul "was careful to find common ground for himself and his Greek auditors in Athens, before he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection." "We believe," Barrows went on to say, "that Christianity is to supplant all other religions, because it contains all the truth there is in them and much besides, revealing a redeeming God." Patronage was taken to be enlightened brotherly love. "Though light has no fellowship with darkness, light does have fellowship with twilight. God has not left himself without witness, and those who have the full light of the Cross should bear brotherly hearts towards all who grope in a dimmer illumination.'"[18]

Generally speaking, this was as liberal as the Christian ministry could get. There were of course letters and articles which expressed the thought of more open minds. But in Barrows's history, these are in the minority and almost all came from the pens of laymen. Representative is the following from Count Goblet d'Alviella of Brussels: "The significance of such an attempt cannot be too much insisted upon. In opposition to sectarian points of view which identify Religion with the doctrines of one or another particular form of worship, it implies, 1. That religious sentiment possesses general form and even a sphere of action independent of any particular theology; 2. That men belonging to churches the most diverse can and should come to an understanding with each other in order to realize this program common to all religions.'"[19]

But views such as this, though they represented a fair portion of public opinion, missed the main point as far as the General Committee was concerned. "The Parliament was conceived and carried on," Barrows says, "in the spirit of Milton's faith that 'though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worst in a free and open encounter?' '[20]Truth, in this instance, was, of course, Christianity; falsehood, every other faith.

While this sort of thing had the effect of allaying the fears of the more bigoted section of the Christian Church (though not those of the Archbishop of Canterbury), it also had the effect of repelling the leaders of other religions. It became necessary for Barrows hastily to assure certain alarmed foreign delegates that "the spirit of kindness and fraternity  would prevail in the Parliament "[21]

The General Committee had many a ticklish problem on its hands, and there were some beyond its control. At the last moment, for instance, in the summer of 1893, the —and the Christian Endeavor Society withdrew all connections with the World's Fair, the reason being that after long-drawn-out debates the managers of the Fair had decided that its doors were to remain open on Sundays—a decision which was obviously the work of Satan. "For other reasons the Congress of the Anglican Churches . . . was given up.'[22] Russia refused to send a representative, as did Turkey.

But at length all plans were in order, and on August 11, 1893, the General Committee sent out a request for Universal Prayer "to the advance of spiritual enlightenment, to the promotion of peace and good will among nations and races, and to the deepening and widening of the sense of universal human brotherhood."[23]

It must be said here that despite the obvious and strong prejudices of a large portion of the Christian ministry, and despite the rampant materialism of the age, thousands of men and women trustingly looked to the Parliament for the fulfillment of the first and broader objectives laid down by the Committee. An editorial that appeared in the Chicago Evening Post on the day of the opening expressed the expectations of many:

We look for great results from this great gathering; and not at once; not, perhaps in near future. But in the wisdom of that Providence which men of all creeds profess to worship, and whose movements are slow but sure, the energy here concentrated will be felt upon all the world, and its effect will be for the unification and uplifting of mankind.[24]

There was without question a sincere and open-minded search in America for spiritual truth and an eagerness to welcome it wherever it might be found. But while this need existed, a truly liberal attitude could not, in those days, obtain acceptance among the clergy or the public as a whole. Ironically, however, the Parliament, which could be convened only through a spirit of Christian evangelism, became in spite of itself an instrument for the destruction of bigotry.

2

 The Parliament of Religions opened on the morning of September 11, 1893, at the Art Institute of Chicago, which is not to be confused with the "Art Palace"—a temporary though grandiose structure in the Fair Grounds. The Art Institute was a permanent, newly constructed building on Chicago's Michigan Avenue, not yet ready to house the art exhibits for which it was intended. Except that its thirty-odd halls accommodated at various times all the congresses, the building proper had no real connection with the Fair, nor did it disappear with time as did most of the Exposition buildings; rather, it stands today, a large grey limestone structure in the style of the Italian Renaissance, serving as one of the world's finest museums of art. In 1893 the building had by no means attained its present size; only the first unit, so to speak, had been completed—and this not fully. Its central dome was un-finished, as was its grand staircase; and the elegant bronze lions that today guard its entrance did not make their appearance until the following year. For the purpose of the World's Congresses, two large halls, each of which could accommodate some 3,000 people with standing room for at least a thousand more, had been temporarily constructed between the wings of the building—the Hall of Columbus on the north, and the  Hall of Washington, to which an extra gallery had been added, on the south.*(1) It was in the former that the delegates of the Parliament gathered on that memorable morning.

*(1) In reply to an inquiry, Miss Margot Schutt of the Art Institute of Chicago writes: “As for as we can tell, the two halls or audience rooms located between the wings of the Art Institute building at the time of the Columbian Exposition, are still part of the museum. The north Hall of Columbus presumably corresponds to what is now Fullerton Hall (a lecture hall seating 473); the south Hall of Washington, to what is now the Burnham and Ryerson Libraries. Fullerton Hall and the libraries are directly on either side of the main hall.” (See floor plans reproduced in this book.)

At ten o'clock, ten solemn strokes of the New Liberty Bell, on which was inscribed, "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another," proclaimed the opening of the Congress—each stroke representing one of the ten chief religions, listed by President Bonney as Theism (that is, the doctrine of the Brahmo Samaj), Judaism, Mohammedanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Zoroastrianism, Catholicism, the Greek Church, and Protestantism.*(2) It is not likely that any of the delegates heard those ten strokes of the bell, for this particular object was one of the curiosities of the Fair and was located at a considerable distance from the Parliament. Nor did the bell serve to summon the spectators. A multitude of people had long since besieged the big oak doors of the Institute;[25] four thousand had crowded onto the floor and into the gallery of the Hall of Columbus and were waiting in expectant silence for the delegates to appear. The hush was like that of a church. It is said that this "mass of people was so wonderfully quiet that the flutter of wings was heard when a tiny bird flew through an open window and over the vacant platform."[26]

*(2) Catholicism, the Greek Church, and Protestantism count, of course, as one religion—Christianity. It should also be noted that Taoism was not represented, except through a brief essay read at the Scientific Section; whereas Jainism, though not listed by Bonney, was represented at the plenary session by Virchand A. Gandhi  

This platform was approximately fifty feet long, running less than the full width of the auditorium, and about ten feet deep. Empty of delegates, it must have presented a somewhat dreary and hodgepodge appearance. Against the back wall, upon which hung what appear to have been a Japanese and a Hebrew scroll, giant marble statues of Cicero and Demosthenes stood some twenty-five feet apart and brooded over the scene. On Demosthenes' left, a comparatively small and sprightly bronze maiden held a nest of fledglings, one of which she was letting fly from her upraised right hand. But the most extraordinary object was a thronelike chair, made, it is said, of iron, its high back intricately wrought. This chair was centered between the statues and, on this opening day, was reserved  for Cardinal Gibbons, the highest prelate of the Catholic Church in America. On either side of the throne, about thirty spindle-backed chairs stood three rows deep and awaited the delegates, the officials of the Parliament, and invited guests. A speaker's rostrum completed the scene.

Not on the opening day, but later, a sign was hung on the front of the rostrum, which read: "No Admittance Except to Authorized Representatives of the Chicago Daily Press." This admonition referred to the pit directly below, in which reporters and official stenographers sat at small tables and recorded the daily proceedings, and was made necessary by the early comers of the audience who frequently appropriated the chairs at the press tables to make another first row, as well as by the curious and, at times, reverent crowds who pressed forward at the close of a session to reach the platform. Indeed, one of the women members of the press (of whom there were but one or two) later told of how crowds used to rush forward to touch the hem of Swamiji's robe and of how deeply she was impressed by his supreme and unbroken humility in the face of such adulation.

But to return to the vacant platform of the opening day:. it had a makeshift air about it, as though someone had unsuccessfully attempted to convey the spirit of universality. It presented a conglomeration of unrelated things and was certainly not what one would call either harmonious or prepossessing. However, as the Reverend Barrows explained in another connection: "It would have been unworthy of the moral dignity, the serious purpose of the occasion, if there had been any attempt at mere pageantry:'[27]


Pageantry there was enough without a studied attempt at it. In another part of the building, President Bonney's office was turned into a reception room, where Chinese in their mandarin robes and pigtails, Japanese in picturesque garb of chaste colors and varicolored head-dresses, Indians in their gaudy gowns of red, orange, and green; Germans, Russians, and Scandinavians, natives of Britain, and her dependencies, and half a dozen interpreters mingled and mixed in a medley of universal brotherhood. The fair sex were there too, and they were not neglected. But sisterhood in such a gathering was superfluous. The air was full of brotherhood, and it was of the generic kind, such as fits both sexes.[28]


At the appointed hour of ten, this dazzling group started out. Heading the long procession came President Bonney and Cardinal Gibbons, arm in arm, the Cardinal resplendent in his crimson robes, the President somber and dignified in his morning coat. Following these two were the President and Vice-President of the Board of Lady Managers of the Exposition, Mrs. Potter Palmer and Mrs. Charles H. Henrotin, in sweeping silk dresses with puffed sleeves and bustles. The procession slowly and majestically entered the back of the auditorium, the crowd making way for it. Then beneath the flags of many nations and amid wave upon wave of cheers it marched down the center aisle and ascended the platform.


"The sight," says Houghton, "was most remarkable. There were strange robes, turbans and tunics, crosses and crescents, flowing hair and tonsured heads. " [29]Cardinal Gibbons sat in the center of the group on the iron throne. On his right were the five Buddhist priests of China in their long white robes, and on his left, the black-garbed patriarchs of the old Greek Church, "wearing strangely formed hats, somber cassocks of black, and leaning on ivory sticks carved with figures representing ancient rites.'[30]The First Secretary of the Chinese Legation in Washington, who had been deputed by the Emperor of China to present the doctrine of Confucius, wore the robes of a mandarin. His pictures show him sitting bolt upright, squarely facing the audience with immense dignity and looking somewhat like a huge Chinese doll with a round and moonlike face. To quote again from Houghton: "The high priest of the state religion of Japan was arrayed in flowing robes, presenting  the colors of the rainbow. Buddhist monks were attired in garments of white and yellow; . . . the Greek Archbishop of Zante, from whose high head-gear there fell to the waist a black veil, was brilliant in purple robe and black cassock, and glittering as to his breast in chains of gold. Dharmapala [whose slight, lithe person was swathed in pure white, while his black hair fell in curls upon his shoulders] was recognized in his woolen garments; and in black clothes hardly to be distinguished from European dress, was Mazoomdar, author of the 'Oriental Christ.' "[31] The closing sentence of an eyewitness account by the Reverend Mr. Wente (from which the above bracketed words regarding Hewivitarne Dharmapala are taken) is worth quoting here to complete the picture: "The ebon-hued but bright faces of Bishop Arnett, of the African Methodist Church, and of a young African prince, were relieved by the handsome costumes of the ladies of the company, while forming a somber background to all was the dark raiment of the Protestant delegates and invited guests:[32]


In the midst of this impressive array sat Swamiji, conspicuous, according to all accounts, for his "orange turban and robe," or, as better put by the Reverend Mr. Wente, for his "gorgeous red apparel, his bronze face surmounted with a turban of yellow."[33]

This, then, was the scene on the platform. Facing it was the vast audience of men and women, filling every seat of the floor and gallery and comprising representative intellects of the day, both clerical and secular. "Such a scene," writes Houghton, "was never witnessed before in the world's history.'[34]Swamiji later wrote, "My heart was fluttering and my tongue nearly dried up."[35] And it is little wonder, for he had suddenly found himself surrounded on all sides by solemn and august personages in full regalia, who represented the religious thought of the whole world. Although, as was told in the preceding chapter, he had spoken to small gatherings in America, never before had he seen, let alone addressed, such a crowd as this.


Suddenly the great organ in the gallery burst forth with the strains of the "Doxology," and the entire assembly arose to sing: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow; Praise him, all creatures here below; Praise him above, ye heavenly hosts; Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost." There were more verses, and one can be sure that the hall resounded. At the end of the hymn a deep silence was sustained by the uplifted hand of the Cardinal. Then into this impressive hush he began the words of the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father which art in heaven . . . and every voice in the hall joined with his. "The supreme moment of the nineteenth century," says Houghton, "was reached. "[36]


The Parliament of Religions had begun. Seventeen days of continual speech-making, morning, afternoon, and evening, followed. Each session was attended by an audience that, big to start with, grew in volume as time went on until by the fourth day the crowd became so great that it overflowed into the neighboring Hall of Washington, where the entire program was repeated word for word. On the fifth day, however, the Scientific Section of the Parliament was opened, and thenceforth the spectators were divided between the Parliament proper and this adjunct, the purpose of which was to collect and examine impartially the data of all religions and, in the words of its idealistic president, the Honorable Merwin-Marie Snell, to prepare thereby the way "for the complete annihilation of vital religious differences and the placing of the facts and principles of religions upon an absolutely inexpugnable basis."[37]


One fortunate thing about the Parliament, which may be noted here, was that it was held in the early autumn, when the days were no longer stifling hot. With the exception of that overcrowded fourth day, when the temperature rose to 95°, and of a morning toward the end of the Parliament when it fell to 39°, the days, as far as temperature went, were mild. It was windy, however, and sometimes it rained. Indeed, such a storm blew one evening that rain was driven into the building, forcing many to protect themselves with umbrellas, and pounded on the roof with such a roar that often the speakers' voices were drowned out. The pounding of rain was not the only thing that often drowned out the speakers' voices; while the Art Institute was nicely situated in a small park on the shore of Lake Michigan, it also stood adjacent to the main station of the Central Illinois Railroad. "The orators of the congresses," it was said, "battled in the halls of Washington and Columbus for six months in vain against the noise of [the trains]:[38] But this must have been something of an exaggeration, for we know that the audience from the first day to the last heard at least some of the rhetoric of the Parliament.


The first day was devoted to speeches of welcome from the officials and responses by the delegates. There were seven of the former, delivered in high oratory and consuming a large part of the morning session, which was concluded with eight short speeches of response. To some of the latter the audience was wildly demonstrative. The first delegate to speak was the Archbishop of Zante, representative of the Greek Church, who expressed the sentiment that "all men have a common Creator and consequently a common Father in God," and concluded with, "I raise up my hands and I bless with heartfelt love the great country and the happy, glorious people of the United States.'[39]"This is indeed glorious!" cried President Bonney, and the audience burst into prolonged cheering.[40]Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, the representative of the Brahmo Samaj in Calcutta, who had been in America ten years before and was known to many, was also loudly cheered. But the expressions of welcome given to Pung Kwang Yu "were surpassed in the case of no other speaker on the platform," says Barrows. "Men and women rose to their feet in the audience, and there was wild waving of hats and handkerchiefs:[41]This not because the audience was in sympathy with Confucianism, but because, as President Bonney had said in his introductory remarks, "We have not treated China very well in this country.[42]


To judge from a quotation from the St. Louis Observer of September 21, 1893, which is reproduced in Barrows's book Dharmapala, the Buddhist From Ceylon—whom Swamiji later spoke of as "a nice boy"-—omewhat startled the public. "With his black, curly locks thrown back from his broad brow, his keen, clear eye fixed upon the audience, his long brown finger emphasizing the utterances of his vibrant voice, he looked the very image of a propagandist, and one trembled to know that such a figure stood at the head of the movement to consolidate all the disciples of Buddha and to spread 'the light of Asia' throughout the civilized world."[43]


Through all this Swamiji remained seated, meditative and prayerful, letting his turn to speak go by time and again. It was not until the afternoon session, after four other delegates had read their prepared papers, that, urged by the kindly and scholarly French pastor G. Bonet Maury, who was seated next to him,*(3) Swamiji, inwardly bowing down to Devi Sarasvati (the Goddess of Knowledge), arose to address the Congress and, through it, the world. The electric effect on the audience of the first words Swamiji spoke is well known. Both Barrows and Houghton comment on the fact that "when Mr. Vivekananda addressed the audience as 'Sisters and Brothers of America,' there arose a peal of applause that lasted for several minutes.'[44]And Swamiji himself tells us that, "a deafening applause of two minutes followed:'[45]Another reference to this incident comes from Mrs. S. K. Blodgett, who much later became Swamiji's hostess in Los Angeles. "I was at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893," she related. "When that young man got up and said, 'Sisters and Brothers of America,' seven [?] thousand people rose to their feet as a tribute to something they knew not what. When it was over I saw scores of women walking over the benches to get near him, and I said to myself, 'Well, my lad, if you can resist that onslaught you are indeed a God!'[46] (It is told in the Life that the night following the opening day of the Parliament Swamiji, a guest at the time in a luxurious home, wept from the depths of his heart over the poverty and suffering of the Indian masses. This was his reaction to the fame and power that were suddenly his.

*(3)This information comes from a letter written by Swami Siddheswarananda to Miss Josephine MacLeod, dated June 11, 1946. The relevant passage reads: “For a long time I have been in contact with a man of science (Paul-Bennet Maury)... The other day the old mother of Paul Bennet-Maury came to see me. She is about 80 years old and she told me that her father-in-law, a Protestant Pastor, was one of  the delegates to the Chicago Parliament of Religions and a very close friend of Swamiji. In the dais of the Parliament Pastor Bennet-Maury [G. Bonet Maury] had his place next to Swamiji and she told me how she had heard from him that when Swamiji was each time giving his place to another to speak, it was Bennet-Maury, the pastor, that encouraged Swamiji to get up and speak in spite of the hesitation that Swamiji had. And as the old lady told me the story she got up from her seat and with trembling emotion told me of what she had heard of the tremendous impression produced by Swamiji when he addressed the audience as ‘Sisters and Brothers of America.’

As has been seen, however, the crowds had not sat glum and silent until he spoke : they had cheered a few others vociferously. As far as spiritual perceptiveness was concerned, this audience was an average one, its spiritual yearnings moving invisibly, even to itself, beneath layers of material tradition. This was not India, where greatness has but one meaning—spiritual greatness—and where, when it is seen, it is understood. The audience of the Parliament, as a whole, could not have known, .as Mrs. Blodgett says, precisely why it cheered for Swamiji at his very first words. In other cases there had been obvious reasons: political or religious sympathy, previous knowledge of the speaker, or atonement for national sin. In Swamiji's case there was nothing like this, nor could the applause have been inspired by his words alone, for sentiments of universal brotherhood had been given voice throughout the whole morning and half the afternoon. Was it not, rather, inspired by something unspoken that came through Swamiji's words? Bearing in mind that this was the first time he had addressed the great American public and that he himself was strongly moved by the occasion, one cannot but think that the deepest powers of his nature were fully active as he stood there on the platform and that the knowledge of his spiritual identity with that huge crowd of men and women was paramount in his mind and vibrant in his voice, communicating itself irresistibly to those who saw and heard him. In short, it would not seem to be going beyond the realm of fact to say that the spontaneous and prolonged standing ovation that met Swamiji's first words of greeting sprang from a source as deep as did those words themselves and that the rapport that was immediately created between himself and his audience betokened the real significance of his visit to the West. This at least would seem to have been the case, though few at the time may have been aware of what force had so deeply stirred them.

The text of Swamiji's opening address as given in the Complete Works is taken from Barrows's History of the World's Parliament of Religions.[47]But when one compares this text with that  which appeared in the various Chicago newspapers the following day, one finds the former lacking in a few respects. None of the available papers, it is true, published the complete text; but at least four of them printed different parts of it.[48]Combining these, we can, I believe, arrive at what the auditors may have actually heard from the lips of the arrestingly handsome Hindu monk, whose first five simple words had electrified them. After the applause had died down, he went on:


It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the grand words of welcome given to us by you. I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks the world has ever seen, of which Gautama was only a member. I thank you in the name of the Mother of religions, of which Buddhism and Jainism are but branches; and I thank you, finally, in the name of the millions and millions of Hindoo people of all castes and sects. My thanks also to some of the speakers on the platform who have told you that these different men from far-off nations will bear to the different lands the idea of toleration which they may see here. My thanks to them for this idea.


I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal tolerance but we accept all religions to be true. I am proud to tell you that I belong to a religion in whose sacred language, the Sanskrit, the word exclusion is untranslatable. (Applause) I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, a remnant of which came to southern India and took refuge with us in the very years in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. 


I will quote to you, brothers, a few lines from a hymn which every Hindoo child repeats everyday. I feel that the very spirit of this hymn, which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is everyday repeated by millions and millions of men in India, has at last come to be realized. "As the different streams, having their sources in different places, all mingle their water in the sea; O Lord, so the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee."


The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself an indication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: "Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form I reach him, all are struggling through paths that in the end always lead to Me." Sectarianism, bigotry and its horrible descendant fanaticism, have possessed long this beautiful earth. It has filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human gore, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations into despair. But its time has come, and I fervently believe that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of the representatives of the different religions of the earth, in this parliament assembled, is the death-knell to all fanaticism (applause), that it is the death-knell to all persecution with the sword or the pen, and to all uncharitable feelings between brethren wending their way to the same goal, but through different ways.


The applause that had punctuated Swamiji's talk thundered out at its close. The people had recognized their hero and had taken him to their hearts; thenceforth he was the star of the Parliament.


Four talks followed Swamiji's address before the opening day came to a close, making, throughout the morning and afternoon sessions, twenty four talks in all. And now that the foreign delegates and the American people had greeted one another, the serious business of the Parliament could begin.

3

There is a room at the left of the entrance to the Art Palace marked "No. I—keep out." To this the speakers at the Congress of Religions all repair sooner or later, either to talk with one another or with President Bonney, whose private office is in one corner of the apartment. The folding doors are jealously guarded from the general public, usually standing far enough apart to allow peeping in. Only delegates are supposed to penetrate the sacred precincts, but it is not impossible to obtain an "open sesame," and thus to enjoy a brief opportunity of closer relations with the distinguished guests than the platform in the Hall of Columbus affords.

The most striking figure one meets in this anteroom is Swami Vivekananda, the Brahmin monk. He is a large, well-built man, with the superb carriage of the Hindustanis, his face clean shaven, squarely moulded regular features, white teeth, and with well-chiselled lips that are usually parted in a benevolent smile while he is conversing. His finely poised head is crowned with either a lemon colored or a red turban, and his cassock (not the technical name for this garment), belted in at the waist and falling below the knees, alternates in a bright orange and rich crimson. He speaks excellent English and replied readily to any questions asked in sincerity.

Along with his simplicity of manner, there is a touch of personal reserve when speaking to ladies, which suggests his chosen vocation. When questioned about the laws of his order, he has said, "I can do as I please, I am independent. Sometimes I live in the Himalaya Mountains, and sometimes in the streets of cities. I never know where I will get my next meal, I never keep money with me. I come here by subscription." Then looking round at one or two of his fellow-countrymen who chanced to be standing near he added, "They will take care of me," giving the inference that his board bill in Chicago is attended to by others. When asked if he was wearing his usual monk's costume, he said, "This is a good dress; when I am home I am in rags, and I go barefooted. Do I believe in caste? Caste is a social custom; religion has nothing to do with it; all castes will associate with me."

It is quite apparent, however, from the deportment, the general appearance of Mr. Vivekananda that he was born among high castes—years of voluntary poverty and homeless wanderings have not robbed him of his birthright of gentleman; even his family name is unknown; he took that of Vivekananda in embracing a religious career, and "Swami" is merely the title of reverend accorded to him. He cannot be far along in the thirties, and looks as if made for this life and its fruition, as well as for meditation on the life beyond. One cannot help wondering what could have been the turning point with him.

"Why should I marry," was his abrupt response to a comment on all he had renounced in becoming a monk, "when I see in every woman only the divine Mother? Why do I make all these sacrifices? To emancipate myself from earthly ties and attachments so that there will be no re-birth for me. When I die I want to become at once absorbed in the divine, one with God. I would be a Buddha. "

Vivekananda does not mean by this that he is a Buddhist. No name or sect can label him. He is an outcome of the higher Brahminism, a product of the Hindu spirit, which is vast, dreamy, self extinguishing, a Sanyasi or holy man.

He has some pamphlets that he distributes, relating to his master, Paramhansa Ramakrishna, a Hindu devotee, who so impressed his hearers and pupils that many of them became ascetics after his death. Mozoomdar also looked upon this saint as his master, but Mozoomdar works for holiness in the world, in it but not of it, as Jesus taught.

Vivekananda's address before the parliament was broad as the heavens above us, embracing the best in all religions, as the ultimate universal religion—charity to all mankind, good works for the love of God, not for fear of punishment or hope of reward. He is a great favorite at the parliament, from the grandeur of his sentiments and his appearance as well. If he merely crosses the platform he is applauded, and this marked approval of thousands he accepts in a childlike spirit of gratification, without a trace of conceit. It must be a strange experience too for this humble young Brahmin monk, this sudden transition from poverty and self effacement to affluence and aggrandizement. When asked if he knew anything of those brothers in the Himalayas so firmly believed in by the Theosophists, he answered with the simple statement, "I have never met one of them," as much as to imply, "There may be such persons, but though I am at home in the Himalayas, I have yet to come across them. "

Aside from being able to give word pictures of Swamiji, we are fortunate enough to have recently discovered one of the first likenesses of him in America—an unposed snapshot, taken, it can be reasonably assumed, in the room marked "No. I keep out:” Perhaps it is not so clear as one would like his pictures to be, but it nonetheless belongs in his history and is here reproduced.

In a letter dated November 2, 1893, Swamiji asked his Madras disciple Alasinga Perumal for information regarding a Madras boy called Narasimhacharya, who "has cropped up in our midst " "He has been loafing about the city for the last three years," he wrote. "Loafing or no loafing, I like him, but please write to me all about him, if you know, anything. He knows you. He came in the year of the Paris Exhibition [1889] to Europe."

This "boy called Narasimhacharya" is without question the same Narasimhacharya who is pictured peering intently over Swamiji's shoulder in the photograph mentioned above and who was described in the Boston Evening Transcript as "often seen in the ante-room, leaning with graceful abandon on the table in the center of the room, his bright boyish face lighting up as he freely airs his opinions upon the Indian civilisation and ours." He was a "loafer" to be sure—" 'an itinerant Hindu,' as he laughingly styles himself,"—but a loafer of undoubted charm and a good deal of wit and spirit. In answer to Swamiji's request for information regarding him, Alasinga wrote a long biographical letter which told that Narasimhacharya was a prodigal son on whose account his mother had shed many tears. The letter followed Swamiji about from place to place in his later lecture tour and did not catch up with him until long after Narasimhacharya had been lost sight of. In the meantime, Narasimha, moving about the United States, found himself stranded for a time in Nashville, Tennessee. In February of 1894 he wrote to Swamiji on hotel notepaper:

I have come here, & without being able to get out, am stopping and I would be very much obliged if you would kindly send me $50, so that I can fix the whole thing & come over to Chicago from which place, I shall go back home. Please do so at once as I am in trouble.[52]

Fifty dollars in those days was no trifling amount. On February 14, Swamiji forwarded the above note from Detroit (where he was then staying) to Mrs. Hale, with the question "What do you advise Mother?" written on its back. Mrs. Hale evidently advised that the money be sent to Narasimha, but that was not the end of it. Three months or so later Swamiji wrote to Alasinga, "[Narasimha] wrote to me for help in the last stage, and I will try to help him as much as is in my power. Meanwhile, you tell his people to send money as soon as they can for him to go over.... He is in sore distress. Of course I will see that he does not starve.'[53]But it can come as no surprise to those who know Swamiji's nature that during the rushed days of the Parliament and for long afterward he tried to take care of a charming wastrel who somehow, one cannot imagine how, had become a delegate to the dignified Parliament of Religions, at which he represented "the Sri Vaishnava Sect and the Visishtadwaiti [sic] Philosophy."

Another description of Swamiji comes from Sister Devamata's "Memories of India and Indians," where one reads of the Swedenborgian minister who was among those deeply impressed by him. Telling of her first knowledge of one whose lectures and classes were later to transform her life, Devamata wrote;

My mother, sister and I had spent the month of June at the Great Fair of 1893 in Chicago, and we were planning to return for the Congress of Religions in the autumn on our way to Japan and the Orient. A death in the family brought our journey to a halt in a little town in Ohio. Soon after our arrival the Swedenborgian minister, as a courtesy to strangers, invited us to dine with him. We went. The minister himself met us at the door, his face aglow with enthusiasm. He had just returned from the Congress of Religions and he could talk of nothing else.

He described at length the various sessions of the Congress, dwelling with emphasis on this delegate or that. "But," he continued, "there was one speaker who stood out above all others, because of his learning, his eloquence and his impressive personality. No other could compare with him except two or three Roman Catholic prelates, and they had sent their best men: ' He paused, leaving his brilliant figure without name or nationality. "Who was he?" I asked eagerly. The minister replied quietly; "A Hindu-Swami Vivekananda.'[54]

It can be noted here in passing that Swamiji came to be generally known, among other things, as a "Brahmin monk." This was no doubt due to expediency on the part of the newspaper reporters, to whom, as to most Americans in that age, "a Brahmin" was synonymous with "a high caste Hindu who was a religious teacher." It was a careless but forgivable error and one which Swamiji could not have corrected. The term "Kshatriya," the caste to which he belonged, would not only have conveyed nothing to the public, but would have been a bete noire to the press. "Brahmin" was bad enough. As a matter of fact, Swamiji acquired a sizable assortment of epithets during his stay in America, being known variously as the "Indian Rajah, " "The High Priest of Brahma," "The Buddhist Priest ", "Theosophist," and so on. Anything that conveyed the idea to the public that he was noble, religious, and Indian sufficed for a headline. Later, however, Swamiji's enemies made capital out of these casual and typically American errors, imputing to him a deliberate misrepresentation of his status.

A picture of Swamiji at the Parliament would not be complete without some knowledge of his activities outside the plenary sessions, which by no means occupied his entire time. These days were strenuous for the delegates. Papers were read not only at the Parliament proper, but at side meetings. It is known, for instance, that Swamiji spoke at least four times at the erudite Scientific Section, which, as has been said, was opened on the fifth day.*(4) It is a great misfortune that these talks are missing from all known reports of the Parliament; their dates and tides, however, are given by Barrows; On the morning of Friday, September 22, Swamiji addressed the Section and conducted a "Conference on Orthodox Hinduism and the Vedanta Philosophy"; that afternoon he and Mr. Merwin-Marie Snell conducted a "Conference on the Modern Religions of India"; the following day, Swamiji again addressed the Section and then conducted a "Conference on the subject of the Rinzai Zen of Japanese Buddhism"; on Monday afternoon, September 25, he spoke on "The Essence of the Hindu Religion.'[55]

It was the purpose of the Scientific Section to study and compare the religions of the world from a technical point of view, and here Swamiji must have spoken of India's religion in philosophical and historical detail, as he seldom did elsewhere during this period. At the more popular sessions of the Parliament, and also later during his tour through the United States, he deliberately couched his message in language as simple and untechnical as possible, for his intention was to reach the people with words and ideas meaningful to all. He was a World Teacher, not a pedant. But when the occasion called for a scholarly presentation of Hinduism, as it did at the Scientific Section, where sharp-minded philosophers, theologians, and scholars came to learn and perhaps to challenge, he very likely gave as much rein to his vast learning as was necessary, both in his talks and in the lengthy and animated discussions that followed. In any event, it is clear from the following report from the Chicago Inter Ocean of September 23 that his replies to the questions with which he was deluged were, to say the least, adequate:

In the Scientific Section yesterday morning Swami Vivekananda spoke on "Orthodox Hinduism." Hall 3 was crowded to overflowing and hundreds of questions were asked by auditors and answered by the great Sannyasi with wonderful skill and lucidity. At the close of the session he was thronged with eager questioners who begged him to give a semi-public lecture somewhere on the subject of his religion. He said that he already had the project under consideration.

An additional description of this same session of the Scientific Section appeared in a paper called the Messenger. (The following quotation from this paper, the date and origin of which I have not been able to trace, appears in B. S. Sharma's Swami Vivekananda—A Forgotten Chapter of His Life.)

Another session held on Friday morning [September 22] was devoted to orthodox Hinduism. Swami Vivekananda, a Brahmin Sanyasi or monk, spoke of the teachings of his religion and answered questions put by the audience. Hundreds of questions were asked by men and women of various creeds, Catholics, Protestants, Clergymen, Theosophists, nationalists, etc. The hall was crowded and immense enthusiasm prevailed; and yet between this heterogeneous audience and this pagan teacher there was no disagreeable friction whatever.[56]

On page 200 of volume eight of the Complete Works is a report of a lecture entitled "The Love of God," which Swamiji delivered on Sunday, September 24, at the Third Unitarian Church, and which may have been the semi-public lecture he had been requested to give. This lecture was the first he delivered from a Unitarian pulpit and marked the beginning of a hospitality on the part of Unitarian ministers that was to stand the American public in good stead, Unitarian pulpits being almost the only ones in America open to a Hindu monk—particularly to a Hindu monk as forthright as Swamiji. The above-mentioned report, taken from the Chicago Herald of September 25, has not been reproduced in full in the Complete Works, and as the omitted portion gives an insight into the stance that was necessary for the Unitarian minister of the Midwest to take in connection with Swamiji, that portion is given here:

The pastor, Rev. Mr. Blake, said that he was glad to invite Mr. Vivekenanda into his pulpit and to introduce him, believing still in the faith of his fathers. Rev. Mr. Blake said he would turn his hand neither one way or the other to make such a man a Christian. He would do all he could to make such a man think for himself along the lines of the exalted spiritual conceptions which he had acquired.

But to return to the busy days of the Parliament: apart from the extra-plenary sessions, the hospitality which the leading citizens of Chicago offered the delegates allowed them little rest. Enormous receptions were held after the close of some of the afternoon and evening sessions, and smaller parties were given throughout the two weeks.

Along with the other foreign delegates, Swamiji was officially introduced to American society on the evening of the opening day of the Parliament at a huge reception held by the Reverend Mr. Barrows at the home of Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Bartlett—a great stone mansion, the rooms of which had been decorated with many hundreds of flags. On the second evening an even larger reception was given by President Bonney for all the delegates in the decorated upper floor and halls of the Art Institute, where thousands milled about to the strains of a mandolin orchestra. On the following Thursday, the fourth evening, Mrs. Potter Palmer, president of the Lady Managers of the Fair and the unquestioned queen of Chicago's social and cultural life, whom Swamiji later spoke of as having been very kind to him in America, entertained the members of the Parliament at the Woman's Building in the Exposition grounds. Here electric launches (an innovation in those days) were provided to carry the foreign delegates—probably Swamiji among them—through the Fair's lagoons, that they might witness "the beautiful illuminations in the Court of Honor." Edison's newly perfected light bulbs, glowing magically and reflected in the dark waters, were no doubt a sight to behold. Indeed they called forth rhapsodies of prose: "After dark any night a walk about the court of honor is like walking through the nebulae of aurora borealis. Light, light, light in every conceivable gradation or vagary of color. Search-lights leaping through mists of liquid white, soft rose and violet, pale gold and deep sky blue, green that seems alive and growing and streaks of red like fountain sprays of blood...."[57]

(It may be noted here in passing that the delegates, as such, also saw the Fair Grounds in the daytime. On the morning of September 20 many of them took off from the Parliament "in advance of the religious demonstrations [that] afternoon when a representative of each faith in the world, beginning with the most ancient [Hinduism?], will sound the new liberty bell in the name of peace, unity, liberty and religion, at the same time repeating a silent prayer to their respective divinities, asking for a blessing of the bell.")[58]

The receptions went on. On the evening of Friday, September 15, Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer entertained, among others, the foreign delegates at their huge castle-like mansion at 100 Lake Shore Drive, and the following afternoon, "the handsome home of Mr. and Mrs. E. W. Blatchford at No. 375 LaSalle Avenue was . . . the scene of another of those cosmopolitan gatherings which shall make the social history of the last week memorable for many years to come.'[59] It was a gala affair, at which everyone of any importance seems to have been present and to have received an enthusiastic welcome. But the "delegates most sought were those in the quaint, picturesque costumes of the Orient.... Those reverend gentlemen from the far-off East were always surrounded by anxious listeners, and the hours of receiving were all too short. . . :'[60]

At Mrs. Palmer's reception at the Woman's Building on the evening of September 14, Swamiji is said to have given a brief talk on the condition of women in India. "It was Mrs. Palmer's earnest wish," writes Barrows, "to secure authoritative statements with regard to the condition of women in other lands, and appropriate addresses in response to her desires were made by the Archbishop of Zante, Hon. Pung Kwang Yu, Mr. Dharmapala, Mr. Mazoomdar, and Mr. Vivekananda:'[61]These talks evidently pleased Mrs. Pahner very much indeed, for on the afternoon of Friday, September 22, a repeat performance, so to speak, was held in Hall 7 of the Art Institute. According to reports in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Inter Ocean and several other Chicago newspapers, Hall 7 was crowded to discomfort that afternoon, and all of the "bright-robed delegates,[62] who occupied the platform with Mrs. Potter Palmer and Mrs. Charles Henrotin, made it very clear that the condition of women in the East was not at all what Westerners had been led to believe. Swamiji, for one, said in part:

. . . The idea of perfect womanhood is perfect independence. The central idea of the life of a modern Hindu lady is her chastity. The wife is the centre of a circle, the fixity of which depends upon her chastity.... The Hindu women are very spiritual and very religious, perhaps more so than any other women in the world. If we can preserve these beautiful characteristics and at the same time develop the intellects of our women, the Hindu woman of the future will be the ideal woman of the world![63]

This had been a crowded day for Swamiji. He had spoken both morning and afternoon at the Scientific Section, where many questions had been asked him, and had then somehow managed to be present at Mrs. Palmer's special session on women. The following day, September 24, was equally crowded. In addition to speaking again at least once, and possibly twice, at the Scientific Section, he spoke at an afternoon session of the Universal Religious Unity Congress. It is true that his talk before this congress, as quoted in the Chicago papers (and in volume eight of the Complete Works), seems to have been brief, yet one cannot but remember that his appearance at such sessions involved not only speaking, but sitting and listening—at times endlessly. Nor was the brevity of Swamiji's talk before the Religious Unity Congress any measure of the force behind it or of its impact. The few sentences that have come down to us constitute a treatise on comparative ethics that must have shattered the more complacent among his Christian brothers. Yet he spoke quietly:

. . . Much has been said for [the brotherhood of man] as being a natural condition, since we are all children of one God. Now, there are sects that do not admit of the existence of God—that is, a Personal God. Unless we wish to leave those sects out in the cold—and in that case our brotherhood will not be universal—we must have our platform broad enough to embrace all mankind. It has been said here that we should do good to our fellow men, because every bad or mean deed reacts on the doer. This appears to me to savour of the shopkeeper—ourselves first, our brothers afterwards. I think we should love our brother whether we believe in the universal fatherhood of God or not, because every religion and every creed recognises man as divine, and you should do him no harm that you might not injure that which is divine in him.[64]

Thus it was the "heathen" who pointed out to his Christian brethren the universal basis for religious unity among men —not vice versa.

The grand receptions, the smaller dinners and suppers that must have been given for the delegates, the auxiliary sessions, and outside talks were like frills on the main fabric of the Parliament, but very likely these extras were in themselves enough to open Chicago to Swamiji, for through them there could have been few Chicagoans whom he did not meet and charm. Indeed he was said to be "one of the most popular of guests in Chicago drawing-rooms.'[65]Years later Prince Woltonsky, a free-lance delegate from Russia, commented to Albert Spalding, the famous violinist, on Swamiji's popularity. In Spalding's autobiography, Rise to Follow, one finds the following passage:

Wolkonsky was a delightful conversationalist. I found that he knew my country, having represented Russia in the Congress of Religions at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. I asked him whether by any chance he had met Swami Vivekananda there, Oh, yes, he had, and for some time afterward the two had maintained an active correspondence. But how was it that I came to speak of him? I was, after all, much too young to have remembered... I explained that my family had been acquainted with the Swami and had often talked about him.

"He made a—what do you call it?—sensational 'hit' in your country," said Wolkonsky, "especially with the Chicago ladies. Ah, those Chicago ladies! They seemed to take life—and incidentally themselvesv—very seriously.'[66]

The Chicago ladies were, as were the women throughout America, asserting themselves in a new-found independence. Indeed, the Exposition's Board of Lady Managers, which was made up of representatives from every state, was considered quite an innovation and was no less a cause of general wonder than the array of new inventions presented by the Fair. Never before had women been appointed to an executive position, and they were determined to prove themselves worthy of this honor. Perhaps it was precisely because the women of the 1890s took life and themselves so seriously that they took Swamiji seriously, instinctively finding in him a symbol of the freedom and dignity which they knew to be their birthright and which they were inexorably winning for themselves. From the very start, Swamiji's Christian opponents attributed his tremendous popularity among the American women to the brilliant color of his robe and turban. The fact was, however, that women had taken over the cultural life of the nation. While the men attended to making money hand over fist, the women saw to it that the country did not thereby become brutalized. Although American women still had no economic freedom or political voice, their position was, on the whole and for that age, an exalted one. "Nowhere were they more honored and protected, nowhere given wider scope for the employment of their talents and virtues," Henry Steele Commanger wrote of the late nineteenth-century American woman. "In all matters of church and school, women took the lead.... Women not only controlled education and religion but largely dictated the standards of literature and art and clothed culture so ostentatiously in feminine garb that the term itself came to have connotations of effeminacy.'[67]Swamiji could not say enough in his letters to India of these American "goddesses" "Nowhere in the world are women like those of this country," he wrote. "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 centered in them.... I am struck dumb with wonder at seeing the women of America...."[68]

Although the women, generally speaking, may have given more expression than the men to their admiration of Swamiji —for women were intent upon expressing themselves—men and women alike were drawn to him as to a magnet. The descriptions we have of Swamiji at the Parliament of Religions show him as colorful and dynamic, dominating the scene with the force of his personality and the utter purity of his message. He was glowing with the vigor of his youth, ready to face the entire world and to sacrifice his life for "the poor, the ignorant, the oppressed" of his motherland. And there was yet another reason for his phenomenal popularity. Never before had the people of America seen one in whom spiritual truths had been fully realized. Though Swamiji's towering spiritual eminence was not consciously recognized by the hundreds who, as he later reminisced, "jostled with one another in the streets of Chicago to have a sight of this Vivekananda," who flocked to hear him speak, who waited interminable hours for even a few words, and who applauded him when he simply crossed the platform, the people through some inner knowledge seemed unerringly to recognize him for what he was and, from start to finish, instinctively to sense that his very presence conferred a blessing. "Darshan" was unheard of in America, but here at the Parliament was a spontaneous and unconscious manifestation of the attraction of the human soul to the spiritually great.

But let us turn now to the Parliament itself as it progressed through its seventeen days.


*(4) According to Life (1965 edition, p 310), in addition to Swamiji's four known talks before the Scientific Section, " four other addresses in these conferences were given by the Swami". The source of this information is not known to the present writer

4

For the most part each day was divided into three sessions lasting from two and a half to three hours each. At the opening of each morning session the presiding chairman—there was a different one for each session—"invited the assembly, rising, to invoke, in silence, the blessing of God on the day's proceedings; then, while the assembly remained standing, (a chosen member of the Parliament) led in 'the Universal Prayer,' 'Our Father which art in Heaven.' "[69] Talks by the delegates were limited to half an hour apiece, but this ruling was at times relaxed, for the crowd had its favorites and would brook no interference with them. The greatest favorite, of course, was Swamiji; and it is well known how the attraction of the crowd for him, embarrassing as it may have been to some of the defenders of Christianity, was used to good advantage. From the Boston Evening Transcript we know, for instance, that "the four thousand fanning people in the Hall of Columbus would sit smiling and expectant, waiting for an hour or two of other men's speeches, to listen to Vivekananda for fifteen minutes."[70]  In a letter to India Swamiji himself remarked upon this trick of saving the best until the last,[71]and recently we have come across other accounts of the stratagem. One of these is given by Virchand Gandhi, the Jain delegate, in the January 1895 issue of the Arena, an American periodical now defunct but once widely read, which described itself as "A Monthly Review of Social Advance". . . at the Parliament of Religions . . . it was a fact that at least a third and sometimes two-thirds of the great audience of Columbus Hall would make a rush for the exits when a fine orator from India had closed his speech. It was even a very noticeable fact that, long before the close of the Parliament, some of my countrymen, made popular by the Parliament, were used as a drawing card to hold the great audiences, and in this way thousands were compelled to sit and listen to long, dry, prosy papers by Christians. They showed plainly that they were not interested, but there they sat enduring with much murmuring, expecting the next speaker might be one of the popular Orientals whose name was usually first on the bulletin board....

The allusion no doubt included Swamiji, and the following account from the Northampton Daily Herald of April 11, 1894, leaves no question regarding the matter:

. . . At the Parliament of Religions Vivekananda was not allowed to speak until the close of the programme, the purpose being to make the people stay until the end of the session. On a warm day when some prosy professor talked too long, and people would leave the hall by hundreds, it only needed the announcement that Vivekananda would give a short address before the benediction was pronounced to hold the vast audience intact, and thousands would wait for hours to hear a fifteen minutes talk from this remarkable man.

Even the assurance of Swamiji's appearance on the platform could rescue a dull session. As early as the evening of the third day, for instance, a session of three papers by orthodox Christian ministers was saved by the device of making Swamiji the chairman[72] Whether or not he spoke a few words that evening is not recorded, but one can be almost certain that the audience remained seated in hopes that he would. Again, on the fifth day at the end of a long afternoon session, during which three learned papers had been read, "Swami Vivekananda, a royal looking Hindoo gorgeous in his golden turban, and who has come to be known as the 'Prince of gentlemen in the orange garb,' was called upon" (as the audience may well have been promised he would be).[73] Swamiji amiably responded with a fable that brought forth laughter and applause. In brief, there was a fat, pompous, self-satisfied little frog, who thought the well in which he lived comprised the universe: nothing could possibly be bigger, and no one could persuade him to the contrary. "And that, " said Swamiji, "has been the difficulty all along. "

I am a Hindu [he continued]. I am sitting in my own little well and thinking that the whole world is my well. The Christian sits in his little well and thinks the whole world is his well. The Mohammedan sits in his little well and thinks the whole world that.[74]

Officially the Parliament was not intended to be a controversy but, rather, a symposium of all the faiths of the world. The subjects presented were divided into two categories. The first comprised speculative and abstract topics; the nature of God, the nature of man, the importance of religion, revelation, the Divine Incarnation, immortality, and so forth. Such subjects were discussed from the second to the tenth day. Then, the metaphysical doctrines of the various faiths having been made clear, the remaining seven days of the Parliament were devoted to papers bearing upon the second category of subjects, namely, the relation of religion to practical social problems, such as family life, the arts and sciences, the love of mankind, morals, Christian missionary methods, and so on.

During the first ten days of the Parliament every religion had its say. A paper by Manilal N. Dvivedi gave a technical exposition of Hinduism and Indian philosophy. Dharmapala of the Maha-Bodhi Society in Calcutta defined Buddhism in all its aspects. Confucianism, Shintoism, Japanese Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Judaism, and many other religious doctrines were expounded and re-expounded. And, as students of Swamiji's life well know, he not only explained the teachings of his faith in his paper on Hinduism, but made them come alive as eternal truths pertinent to all people everywhere.

No doubt some members of the audience had come expecting to hear strange and weird beliefs regarding idolatry, blood sacrifice, and polytheism, for the popular conception, fed by missionary propaganda, was that the Oriental lands were rife with dark and unholy practices. As the Chicago Evening Journal of September 14 editorialized: "Very few people in this country have any knowledge of the religions of the Orient.... The common impression is that the natives of India, China, and Japan belong to semi-civilized races and worship idols. That is enough. The religious classification is simple, and the race classification is highly gratifying to our own sense of superiority." But by the time the first half of the Parliament was over that sense of superiority had been deeply undermined and many hitherto fast-embedded misconceptions regarding Eastern religions had been uprooted. Not only Swamiji's paper on Hinduism, but other papers as well served to clarify hazy popular notions concerning, among other things, idolatry. In an article on Barrows's book, The World's Parliament of Religions, the Review of Reviews for March 1894 reflected the change of attitude that was brought about on at least this one point:

The book contains many pictures of idols such as one mostly finds in missionary literature. There they are intended to excite the horror and pity of the Christian reader. Here the attitude to idolatrous religions is avowedly sympathetic rather than critical; but one can scarcely escape a twinge of the old feeling at a sight of the fantastic objects of worship. Nevertheless, the popular Protestant notion of idolatry was emphatically repudiated by those who spoke in the name of image-worshippers?[75]

In substantiation of this, the article quotes briefly from the papers of Dvivedi and J. J. Modi, a Parsi of Bombay, and then goes on to quote at length from Swamiji's "noble address." Among other photographs that illustrate this article is one of Swamiji in profile.

The change in the popular attitude toward Eastern religions was also reflected in other contemporary journals and periodicals. The Christian Herald of October 11 noted:

From the Parliament of Religions which has just closed its sessions in Chicago, two significant and important results have come. First we have learned from the addresses delivered by representatives of many religions, especially those of Asia, that the leaders of these faiths have generally the same aim as that of the Christian preacher. They are seeking in their way to eradicate sin and vice, to ennoble and purify the lives of men and to encourage kindness, charity and helpfulness. Thus, so far as morality is concerned, they are allies rather than opponents of Christianity.

The thing that strikes us with something of a shock today is that this was news. The Outlook of October 7 made an even more profound discovery:

The relations of the ethnic religions to Christianity are, in every phase of these meetings at Chicago, forced more and more into prominence, as the strong personalities of the men who represent Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, press themselves upon the listening thousands; their seriousness, devoutness, and spirituality, as they sit side by side with Greek, Anglican, German, and American Churchmen, precludes the thought that their religions are ancient shades which will fall or melt into mist as the triumphant light of Christianity shines through them. The representatives of the Hindu cults, in particular, are no men of straw, and through their eyes Christians have looked, many perhaps for the first time, into the depths of religions which for thousands of years have not only occupied the minds of philosophers, but have formed the ethical codes and directed the Godward aspirations of millions and millions of human beings.

During the first ten days of the Parliament the full range of Christian conviction was also expounded. Although the principles of universal toleration for which, ideally, the Parliament stood were earnestly and well expressed by some of the Christian delegates, the notion that a universal religion meant nothing other than a universal acceptance of Christianity not only insinuated itself into the proceedings, but was sounded forth in unabashed oratory. An example or two may indicate something of the general trend.

On the afternoon of the third day of the Parliament, a Reverend Frank Bristol read a paper by the Reverend Thomas Ebenezer Slater, of the London Missionary Society, Evangelist to educated Hindus, entitled "Concession to Native Ideas,. having Special Reference to Hinduism." It may be worth noting here that the Reverend Mr. Slater had written a book called Studies of the Upanishads, in which he had stated: "The Vedanta, the highest conclusion of Indian thought, is based on a mistaken and pessimistic view of life; on a formulated dogma unsupported by any evidence and untaught in the hymns of the Rig-Veda: the whole an elaborate and subtle process of false reasoning. " In his paper at the Parliament the Reverend T. E. Slater conceded to native ideas the fact that they were based on a search of the human spirit for the Divine. "The Vedas," he wrote, "present 'a shifting play of lights and shadows; sometimes the light seems to grow brighter, but the day never comes.' For, on examining them, we note a remarkable fact. While they show that the spiritual needs and aspirations of humanity are the same . . . we fail to find a single text that purports to be a Divine answer to prayer, an explicit promise of Divine forgiveness, an expression of experienced peace and delight in God, as the result of assured pardon and reconciliation. There is no realization of ideas. The Bible alone is the Book of Divine Promise—he revelations of the 'exceeding riches of God's grace' . . . for this reason it is unique.'[76]And so on.

On the fourth day, the Reverend Joseph Cook from Boston, a doughty man with fuzzy sideburns, gave a talk on "Strategic Certainties of Comparative Religion." The Reverend Mr. Cook was a popular and well-known lecturer who belonged to no particular denomination—"the servant," as he said, "of no clique or clan." He had delivered talks throughout the world, and his "Boston Monday Lectures" had been widely published. It can be said that he represented the far right of Christian evangelism and was proud of it. But he was something of an embarrassment to the Parliament authorities. The Open Court, a weekly journal, later editorialized:

It was a humiliating fact to the liberal and tolerant Christian to find that the first discordant note sounded at the Parliament of Religions—the first manifestation of bigotry and ill-will—was made, not by a Pagan, Mahommedan, or Jew, but by a Christian. All were courteous, tolerant, and charitable in utterance and demeanor till the Rev. Joseph Cook, of Boston, took the platform.[77]

Mr. Cook's performance was bigotry undisguised and on the rampage. According to a report of his talk in the Chicago Tribune, the Reverend made the "platform tremble with the weight of three hundred pounds of orthodoxy," and the speaker's desk to "totter as the sturdy New England fist smote it," and as he "thundered and tramped to and fro upon the stage pouring out a torrent of denunciations with face red with the vehemence of his utterances.'[78]Those utterances consisted of one theme repeated over and over obsessively. It was in brief this: "It is clear that we cannot escape from conscience and God and our record of sin. It is a certainty and a strategic certainty that, except Christianity, there is no religion under heaven or among men that effectively provides for the peace of the soul by its harmonization with itself, its God, and its record of sin."[79] The Reverend Mr. Cook concluded his talk with a poem that he wanted to have engraved on his tombstone. Space does not permit quoting the entire poem here, but perhaps two stanzas will suffice:

Endless sin means endless woe
Into endless sin I go, 

If my soul, from reason rent, 
Takes from sin its final bent.

Balance lost, but not regained,
Final bent is soon attained.
Fate is choice in fullest flower.
Man is flexile—for an hour![80]

The Rev. Mr. Cook's obsession with sin and lurking damnation was representative of what in that day was given out as religion by a large part of the Christian clergy. It is important to understand this, for one cannot otherwise appreciate, on the one hand, the shock with which some sections of the audience must have heard Swamiji's ringing words, "Ye divinities on earth-sinners? It is a sin to call a man so. It is a standing libel on human nature,"[81]and, on the other hand, the enthusiastic approval of other sections. A stanza of a poem which appeared in the Open Court of October 12 reflects the latter reaction. The poem was entitled "Aunt Hannah on the Parliament of Religions," which accounts for its dialect: 

Then I heered th' han'some Hindu monk, drest up in orange dress, 

Who sed that all humanity was part of God—no less, 

An' he said we was not sinners, so I comfort took once more, 

While th' Parl'ment of Religions roared with approving roar.

This approving roar seriously alarmed many a Christian missionary. Later an attempt was made to set matters straight.

"The Swami by his denial of sin," the missionaries explained, "shows that he knows nothing of true religion, and that he is a teacher of deadly error. Woe! woe! to those who follow a blind guide to their own destruction."[82]

Although many of the doctrines of Eastern religions that had been expounded during the first week of the Parliament by such men as Dvivedi and Dharmapala were hair-raising in the light of the orthodox, evangelical Christianity of 1893, they had for the most part been delivered in a dry and pedantic form not apt to ignite the soul, and were therefore not alarming to the Christian ministry. But the enthusiastic reception which Swamiji was given from the very beginning was a matter of serious concern, and it was perhaps this that prompted several of the Christian delegates to attack Hinduism openly on September 19—the day that Swamiji was scheduled to read his paper.

On this day, Houghton tells us, "The Hall of Columbus . . . could not accommodate all who endeavored to gain admittance." And from the Chicago Inter Ocean of September 20 one learns that Great crowds of people, the most of whom were women, pressed around the doors leading to the hall of Columbus, an hour before the time stated for opening the afternoon session, for it had been announced that Swami Vivekananda, the popular Hindu Monk, who looks so much like McCullough's Othello, was to speak. Ladies, ladies everywhere filled the great auditorium.

Men were, of course, also present among those crowds: ministers, priests, and laymen. There was, no doubt, electricity in the air, and before long it began to crackle, eventually calling forth one of Swamiji's short but flaming rebukes.

The Dubuque (Iowa) Times of September 29, 1893, gleefully reviewed this ninth day of the Parliament as though a tournament were under consideration:

GOD AND MATTER

------------------------

Brethren All, Yet They Indulged in Sharp Words.

-------------------------

Rev. Joe Cook Criticised the Hindoos, and the Hindoos Attacked Christianity....

WORLD'S FAIR, Sept. 28: —(Special.)—The parliament of religions reached a point where sharp acerbities develop. The thin veil of courtesy was maintained, of course, but behind it was ill feeling. Rev. Joseph Cook criticised the Hindoos sharply and was more sharply criticised in turn. He said that to speak of a universe that was not created is almost unpardonable nonsense, and the Asiatics retorted that a universe which had a beginning is a self evident absurdity. Bishop J. P. Newman, firing at long range from the banks of the Ohio, declared that the orientals have insulted all the Christians of the United States by their misrepresentations of the missionaries, and the orientals, with their provokingly calm and supercilious smile, replied that this was simply the bishop's ignorance.

Buddhist Philosophy

In response to the question direct, three learned Buddhists gave us in remarkably plain and beautiful language their bedrock belief about God, man and matter.

There follows a summary of Dharmapala's paper of "The World's Debt to Buddha," the reading of which Dharmapala had prefaced, we learn from another source, by singing a Singhalese song of benediction. The article then continues:

His [Dharmapala's] peroration was as pretty a thing as a Chicago audience ever heard. Demosthenes never exceeded it.

Cantankerous Remarks.

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo monk, was not so fortunate. He was out of humor, or soon became so, apparently. He wore an orange robe and a pale yellow turban and dashed at once into a savage attack on Christian nations in these words: "We who have come from the east have sat here day after day and have been told in a patronizing way that we ought to accept Christianity because Christian nations are the most prosperous. We look about us and we see England the most prosperous Christian nation in the world, with her foot on the neck of 250,000,000 Asiatics. We look back into history and see that the prosperity of Christian Europe began with Spain. Spain's prosperity began with the invasion of Mexico. Christianity wins its prosperity by cutting the throats of its fellow men. At such a price the Hindoo will not have prosperity. "

And so they went on, each succeeding speaker getting more cantankerous, as it were.

Swamiji's "cantankerous remarks " were by way of preface to his central and official statement to the Parliament—his paper on Hinduism, which had been scheduled to come last on the afternoon's program and for which the audience had waited with fortitude.

They gave no outward sign of impatience through the delivery of three classic essays which separated them from Vivekananda's eloquence [the Inter Ocean commented], but it was evident from the applause which greeted the Oriental about 5 o'clock, as in his orange garb he arose to speak, that had he spoken first instead of last some of the great audience might not have been present at the close of the session.

It was when the applause died down that Swamiji dashed into what the Dubuque Times chose to call his "savage attack on Christian nations: ' The Chicago Tribune of September 20, which touched on his preliminary remarks in two articles, gave quite a different picture. There Swamiji is seen as neither "savage" nor "cantankerous." Indeed, "heroic" would be a more appropriate word. The first article read in part as follows:

In the afternoon Swami Vivekananda, a Hindoo monk, was the orator, who, with his quick eloquence and graceful manner, caught the sympathy of the audience as Dr. Haweis had in the morning. He spoke of the patronizing way in which he and his fellow-Orientals had been treated by some of the speakers at the parliament. . .

The Tribune's second mention of Swamiji's rebuke of the outspoken intolerance that had marked the afternoon read in part:

Dr. Noble then presented Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo monk, who was applauded loudly as he stepped forward to the center of the platform. He wore an orange robe, bound with a scarlet sash, and a pale yellow turban. The customary smile was on his handsome face and his eyes shone with animation. Said he: [The quotation here reads identically with that in the Dubuque Times and then continues:] I have sat here today and I have heard the height of intolerance. I have heard the creed of the Moslem applauded, when today the Moslem sword is carrying destruction into India. Blood and the sword are not for the Hindu, whose religion is based on the law of love.

(When the applause had ceased Mr. Vivekananda went [on] to read his paper....)

Swamiji's now famous paper on Hinduism, which was officially entitled "Hinduism as a Religion," has been published in volume one of the Complete Works and is well known to students of Swami Vivekananda's teachings. Perhaps Sister Nivedita best summed up the importance of this address when she wrote in her introduction to the Complete Works, "It may be said that when he began to speak, it was of 'the religious ideas of the Hindus,' but when he ended, Hinduism had been created. " Indeed, in this stunning talk Swamiji gave coherence and unity to the bewildering number of sects and beliefs that through untold ages have gathered and flowered under the name of Hinduism. He revealed the lofty philosophy and aspiration, the great religious goal and drive, the central beliefs common to each widely divergent sect. He made it all not only clear but supremely inspiring, a living religion springing eternally from the very soul of humanity itself.

The Hindu religion [he said in summary] does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realising—not in believing, but in being and becoming.

Thus the whole object of their system is by constant struggle to become perfect, to become divine, to reach God and see God; this reaching God, seeing God, becoming perfect even as the Father in Heaven is perfect constitutes the religion of the Hindus....

. . . Man is to become divine by realising the divine: Idols or temples or churches or books are only the supports, the helps, of his spiritual childhood; but on and on he must progress.

. . . To the Hindu, man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower truth to higher truth.... And every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and more strength, till it reaches the glorious sun.[83]

Throughout, Swamiji drew parallels between the beliefs of Hinduism and the basic theories of modern science, "seem like echoes" of "the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy." He pointed out that the ideal of Hinduism in its catholicity and universality, its capacity to embrace all creeds, was, if perfectly realized, the only possible ideal for a universal religion—a religion which will be the sum total of all creeds "and still have infinite space for development " He wove into his talk both the clear rationality and the intense and pure devotion of the Hindu; he touched upon the various religious paths that wind or leap to the ultimate goal, and he defined that goal in its highest reaches. Indeed, in this first statement of the Hindu religion that Swamiji made to the American public lay the seeds of all his subsequent teachings. That which he was later to develop and formulate in terms adapted to Western understanding and culture was all there; and perhaps in that moment not only was Hinduism created, but a new religion for the world was given its first enunciation in the West—a religion fulfilling the past, lighting up the future. Swamiji's concluding words—though he meant them as an accolade to the ideal of universality that lay behind the Parliament—could well apply to his Master's message and his own:

The star arose in the East; it travelled steadily towards the West, sometimes dimmed and sometimes effulgent, till it made a circuit of the world; and now it is again rising on the very horizon of the East, the borders of the Pacific, *(5) a thousandfold more effulgent than it ever was before.[84]

Something of the effect of Swamiji's paper on Hinduism can be gathered from the following undated, unidentified newspaper article, which clearly referred to this particular address:

One [of] the most interesting personages to the multitude, is Professor Swami Vivekanunda, a Hindu theologian of great learning. Professor Vivekanunda, who is of pleasing appearance, and young to be so well filled with the ancient lore of India, made an address which captured the Congress, so to speak. There were bishops and ministers of nearly every Christian church present, and they were all taken by storm. The eloquence of the man with, intellect beaming from his yellow face, his splendid English in describing the beauties of his time honoured faith, all conspired to make a deep impression on the audience. From the day the wonderful Professor delivered his speech, which was followed by other addresses, he was followed by a crowd wherever he went. In going in and coming out of the building, he was daily beset by hundreds of women who almost fought with each other for a chance to get near him, and shake his hand. It may safely be set down that there were women of every denomination among his worshippers. Some of them were votaries of fashion who did not care what became of their fine toilets in the struggle, while others were the "mothers in Israel" of the various churches of Chicago and elsewhere. The Professor seemed surprised at this homage, but he received it graciously enough until it became tiresome from repetition, and then he made his entries and exits at times when there were no crowds of women in the vestibule and corridors. Other strangers from the far East, in picturesque garb, and with a Midways plaisance [the amusement section at the Fair] flavor about them, were also much sought after, but in a less degree: This talk in the sessions of the Congress was a revelation to many people, even of education and much reading. That men so well endowed with brains, astute thinkers, should adhere to those heathenish religions, was a surprise to many people, more thoughtful than the women who made a lion of Professor Vivekanunda. It was from the Christian theologians on the platform, however, that the women took their cue.[85]

Certainly it was not only the women of the audience who were deeply responsive to Swamiji's thought and presence. Among the many men who long remembered his paper on Hinduism and were profoundly moved by it was a young student who went on to become a well-known and influential philosopher. In his "Recollections of Swami Vivekananda" William Ernest Hocking wrote in his later years:

. . . We all carry about with us unsolved problems of adjustment to this many-angled world—without formulating questions, we are living quests, unless by some rare chance our philosophy of life is entirely settled. And to meet some person may resolve a quest wholly without his knowledge; it may be simply mode of being that brings the release.

This was in some measure the story of my first encounter with Swami Vivekananda, though I was only one of an immense audience.... I was a casual visitor at the Fair, just turning twenty, interested in a dozen exhibits on the Midway.... But aside from all this, I had a quietly rankling problem of my own.

I had been reading Herbert Spencer, all I could get of his works.... I was convinced by him; . . . but it was somehow a vital injury to think of man as of the animals.—birth, growth, mating, death—and nothing more—finis. I had had my religion—Methodism—an experience of conversion with a strange enlightenment which gave me three days of what felt like a new vision of things, strangely lifted up; Spencer had explained that all away as an emotional flurry—the world must be faced with a steady objective eye. The Christian cosmology was fancy.

But still, Christianity was not the only religion. There were to be speakers from other traditions. They might have some insight that would relieve the tension. I would go for an hour and listen. I didn't know the program. It happened to be Vivekananda's period.

. . . He spoke not as arguing from a tradition, or from a book, but as from an experience and certitude of his own. I do not recall the steps of his address. But there was a passage toward the end, in which I can still hear the ring of his voice, and feel the silence of the crowd—almost as if shocked. The audience was well-mixed, but could be taken as one in assuming that there had been a "Fall of man" resulting in a state of "original sin," such that "All men have sinned and come short of the glory of God . " But what is the speaker saying? I hear his emphatic rebuke:

*(5) In all the early reports of Swamiji's paper on Hinduism (which he had evidently written in longhand and given to the press) the word Pacific was transcribed as "Tasifu", which the reporters may have thought was some far-away inland sea of Oriental mystery and romance. The plain fact of the matter was that Swamiji's Ps looked like Ts; and his "Pacific" like "Tasifu". By some unknown process, "Tasifu" became "Sanpo" ( a Tibetan name for the Brahmaputra River) in the Complete Works; thus the "horizon of the East" receded ever further.) But, characteristically, Swamiji used words understandable to everyone in his talks before the Parliament; indeed, never when speaking to the public (or, as far as we know, in private) was he esoteric, or obscure. "Pacific," clear, simple and sensible, was surely what he wrote in his paper and what he said.

"Call men sinners??

It is a SIN to call men sinners!"

. . . Through the silence I felt something like a gasp running through the hall as the audience waited for the affirmation which must follow this blow.*(6) What his following words were, I cannot recall with the same verbal clarity: they carried the message that in all men there is that divine essence, undivided and eternal: reality is One, and that One, which is Brahman, constitutes the central being of each one of us.

*(6)"Aunt Hannah" had heard the audience roar "with approving roar"; but whether the response was approving roar or stunned silence, the fact remains: a thunderbolt had struck.

For me, this doctrine was a startling departure from anything which my scientific psychology could then recognize. One must live with these ideas and consider how one's inner experience could entertain them. But what I could feel and understand was that this man was speaking from what he knew, not from what he had been told. He was well aware of the books; but he was more immediately aware of his own experience and his own status in the world; and what he said would have to be taken into account in any final world-view. I began to realize that Spencer could not be allowed the last word.

And furthermore, that this religious experience of mine, which Spencer would dismiss as a psychological flurry, was very akin to the grounds of Vivekananda's own certitude.[86] 

But while Swamiji's address before the Parliament may have taken everyone by storm and, on deeper levels, set lifelong quests and currents of thought in motion, the missionary-minded Christians and those amazed that so astute a thinker as Vivekananda should yet adhere to heathenish religions continued to claim, with even greater insistence it would seem, that theirs was the superior religion, in fact, the only religion. Up until the very last day of the Parliament, the Hall of Columbus rang with such pronouncements as: "Christianity is absolutely superior in its motive power, its purifying influence and its uplifting inspiration from any and all other religions with which it comes. in competition. The greasy bull of Madura and Tanjore has little in common with the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world,'[87]or "The attitude . . . of Christianity towards religions other than itself is an attitude of universal, absolute, eternal, unappeasable hostility; while toward all men everywhere, the adherents of false religions by no means excepted, its attitude is an attitude of grace, mercy, peace, for whosoever will.'[88]That is, for whosoever will become a Christian.

It is tempting to go on quoting similar statements made during a parliament the avowed purpose of which was to bring together the representatives of the great religions of the world for mutual enlightenment and understanding. But perhaps by now the general trend has been made clear. For the most part it was the Protestant Christians who shouted from the platform. As for the Catholics, they handled the subversive influences of the Parliament in their own way. "Before the Parliament was half over," an observer of the proceedings writes, "when its trend was properly cognised, there appeared placards in conspicuous places in the Art Palace stating that 'questions regarding Catholic faith would be answered in room six.''[89]Thus any Catholic whose mind had been unsettled by the papers of Pagan, Protestant, or Agnostic could be straightened out even before he left the building.

It must be said, however, lest the reader get too one-sided a view of the scene which confronted Swamiji, that there were speakers at the Parliament who were truly liberal and who were possessed of that blessed trait that seems to go with true liberality, namely, humor. Many of these were laymen. Prince Serge Wolkonsky, for instance, who informally represented Russia, and Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson of Cambridge both spoke for a religion as broad and all-inclusive as the skies, and both later became friends of Swamiji. Lyman Abott, Alfred W. Momerie, Merwin-Marie Snell, and the Reverend H. R. Haweis were others who represented the liberal trend and who welcomed Swamiji. But the talk most remarkable for its broad views came from the Reverend E. L. Rexford of Boston, who in the course of a long paper on "The Religious Intent" said:

No ruthless hand shall justly destroy any form of deity while yet it arrests the reverent mind and heart of man. There is only one being in the world who may legitimately destroy an idol, and that being is the one who has worshipped it. He alone can tell when it has ceased to be of service. And assuredly the Great Spirit who works through all forms and who makes all things his ministers, can make the rudest image a medium through which he will approach his child.... And the great religious teachers and founders of the world . . . have lived and taught and suffered and died and risen again, that they might bring us to themselves? No; but that they might bring us to God. 'God-Consciousness,' to borrow a noble word from Calcutta, has been the goal of them all[90]

But such papers, indicative of a broad and liberal outlook, were rare. To the Christian clergy as a whole, it never occurred that evangelism was presumption or that the occupation of soul-saving in foreign lands might be, to say the very least, superfluous.

Although the Parliament was not intended to be a debate, it was inevitable that a current of controversy should flow through the entire proceedings, sometimes coursing beneath the surface, sometimes rising into open view. The question under consideration was not only whether or not Christianity was superior to other religions, but whether or not it was to replace other religions through missionary endeavor, and if so, how. It was a debate closely watched by a large part of the Christian world. Officially, only one session—the afternoon of the twelfth day—was devoted to a discussion of this all important issue, but actually from first to last it colored the proceedings; it was there by implication, if not by overt expression, in most of the Christian talks; it cropped up in the papers of the foreign delegates; and it appeared irrepressibly in unscheduled discussions.

The Christian missions were, on the one hand, scathingly criticized by the representatives from China, Japan, and India, and, on the other hand, passionately defended by the missionaries themselves. The foreign delegates contended that the failure of Christian missions was due to the fact that the missionaries were intolerant, selfish, ignorant, and bigoted, and also to the fact that the countries they represented were anything but Christ-like in their imperialistic policies. Moreover, while maintaining respect toward Christianity, the non Christian delegates made bold to state in no uncertain terms that Christian conversion was not necessary to salvation. The Christian speakers replied to the effect that (1) Christian missions were not a failure; (2) while some individual missionaries might make mistakes, missionaries were, on the whole, worthy followers of Christ; (3) Christianity was the only religion that gave assurance of salvation.

Although Swamiji found it necessary to deliver a few well-aimed blows as the extent and virulence of Christian bigotry became more and more pronounced, it was on the whole the other foreign delegates who in prepared talks dwelt upon missionary activity in discomforting detail. In the course of expounding the doctrines of their respective religions during the first days of the Parliament, the Confucian Pung Kwang Yu and the Japanese Buddhist Horin Toki found little that was good in the intrusion of Christian missions into China and Japan. The missionaries, they said, were uneducated, arrogant, and totally unnecessary. Such denunciations were delivered with impeccable and devastating politeness. A third talk, given by Kinza Riuge M. Hirai, a Buddhist layman of Japan, attributed the failure of Christian missions in his country not to the missionaries themselves, nor to the fact that Japan was already possessed of a satisfactory religion, but to the immoralities of Christian nations in their treatment of the Japanese people. This was an essentially political speech, and it brought down the house. The Chicago Herald of September 14, 1893, as quoted by Barrows, reported:

Loud applause followed many of his [Hirai's] declarations, and a thousand cries of "shame" were heard when he pointed to the wrongs which his countrymen had suffered through the practices of false Christianity. When he had finished, Dr. Barrows grasped his hand, and the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones threw his arm around his neck, while the audience cheered vociferously and waved hats and handkerchiefs in the excess of enthusiasm.[91]

Shortly the Hindus entered the field. Nagarkar, the Brahmo Samajist, cried on the seventh day for less soul-saving and more education. "Little, how little, do you ever dream that your money is expended in spreading abroad nothing but Christian dogmatism and Christian bigotry, Christian pride and Christian exclusiveness. I entreat you to spend at least one-tenth of all this vast fortune on sending out to our country, unsectarian, broad-learned missionaries that will spend all their efforts and energies in educating our women, our men, and our masses.'[92]The force of this plea, however, was lost in a talk devoted to a rhapsodic tribute to the moral and civilizing influence of British rule in India—an account which must have caused Swamiji no little anguish—and to the reform movement of the Brahmo Samaj.

At the close of the evening of the tenth day, the audience was treated to an unexpected and electrifying talk from its favorite. The session had, it so happened, consisted of only two relatively short papers, one entitled "The Restoration of Sinful Man through Christ" and the other, "Religion in Peking." At the conclusion of the latter, its author had solemnly informed the audience that inasmuch as the Chinese people spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year worshipping their ancestors by burning paper money and incense, they could perfectly well afford to support Christianity. It was after the reading of this paper, which contained a number of similar observations, that Swamiji agreed to address the audience. Short bursts from his magnificent rebuke (for such it was) were later published in Barrows's World's Parliament and subsequently in the Complete Works under the title "Religion not the Crying Need of India." But these combined fragments did not add up to a quarter of the whole. The Christian Herald of October 11, gave a few additional quotations; but it was the Chicago Inter Ocean of September 21 that printed what appears to have been the full address, taken down on the spot. This eminently satisfactory report was unearthed in Chicago after three-quarters of a century by Swami Yogeshananda, who has kindly made his discovery available to us. It read as follows:

Suami Vivekananda

At the close of the reading of Mr. Headland's paper on "Religion in Peking" Dr. Momerie announced that the other speakers bulletined for the evening had failed to appear. It was but 9 o'clock, and the main auditorium and galleries were well filled. There was an outburst of applause as they caught sight of the Hindoo monk, Vivekananda, sitting in his orange robe and scarlet turban upon the platform.

This popular Hindoo responded to the generous applause by saying that he did not come to speak to-night. He took occasion, however, to criticise many of the statements made in the paper by Mr. Headland. Referring to the poverty which prevails in China, he said that the missionaries would do better to work in appeasing hunger than in endeavoring to persuade the Chinese to renounce their faith of centuries and embrace Christianity at [as] the price of food. And then the Hindu stepped back on the platform and whispered to Bishop Keane, of the Catholic church, a moment.

He then resumed his address by saying that Bishop Keane had told him that Americans would not be offended at honest criticism. He said he had heard of all the terrible things and horrible conditions which prevail in China but he had not heard that any asylums had been erected by Christians for remedying all these difficulties. He said:

Christian brethren of America, you are so fond of sending out missionaries to save the souls of heathens. I ask you what have you done and are doing to save their bodies from starvation? (Applause). In India, there are 300,000,000 men and women living on an average of a little more than 50 cents a month. I have seen them living for years upon wild flowers. Whenever there was a little famine hundreds of thousands died of starvation. Christian missionaries come and offer life but only on condition that the Hindoos become Christians, abandoning the faith of their fathers and forefathers. Is it right? There are hundreds of asylums, but if the Mohammedans or the Hindoos go there they would be kicked out. There are thousands of asylums erected by Hindoos where anybody would be received. There are hundreds of churches that have been erected with the assistance of the Hindoos, but no Hindoo temples for which a Christian has given a penny.

What the East Needs

Brethren of America, the crying evil [need]of the East is not religion. We have more than religion enough; what they want is bread, but they are given a stone. (Applause). It is an insult to a suffering man dying of hunger to preach to him metaphysics. Therefore, if you wish to illustrate the meaning of "brotherhood" treat the Hindoo more kindly, even though he be a Hindoo and is faithful to his religion. Send missionaries to them to teach them how better to earn a better piece of bread and not to teach them metaphysical nonsense. (Great applause).

And then the monk said he was in ill health today and wished to be excused. But there were thunders of applause and cries of "Go on" and Mr. Vivekananda continued.

The paper just read says something about the miserable and ignorant priest. The same may be said of India. I am one of those monks who have been described as beggarly. That is the pride of my life. (Applause). I am proud in that sense to be Christ-like. I eat what I have today and think not of tomorrow. "Behold the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin: ' The Hindoo carries that out literally. Many gentlemen present in Chicago sitting on this platform can testify that for the last twelve years I never knew whence my next meal was coming. I am proud to be a beggar for the sake of the Lord. The idea in the east is to preach or teach anything for the sake of money is low and vulgar, but to teach the name of the Lord for pay is such a degradation as would cause the priest to lose caste and be spat upon. There is one suggestion in the paper that is true: If the priests of China and India were organized there is an enormous amount of potential energy which could be used for regeneration of society and humanity. I endeavored to organize it in India, but failed for lack of money. It may be I shall get the help I want in America.

But we know it is very hard for a heathen to get any help from "Christian people". (Great applause). I have heard so much of this land of freedom, of liberty and freedom of thought that I am not discouraged. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

And then the popular visitor bowed gracefully and sought to retire with a graceful smile, but the audience cried to him to proceed. Mr. Vivekananda, fairly bubbling with an expression of good nature, then explained the Hindoo theory of [re]incarnation. At the close of the address Dr. Momerie [a delegate From England] said that he now understood why the newspapers had well called this parliament an approach to the millennium. "It is the greatest event in the religious history of mankind," he said, "it has come from the great heart of the American people, and I congratulate Americans upon it [for their enthusiastic response to criticism]. It makes me wish I were an American myself. "

And then the English divine was greeted with an outburst of applause which approached an ovation, and one of the most enthusiastic meetings of the parliament adjourned.

The Catholics received Swamiji's criticism with sympathy. In the section of Barrows's history entitled "Introduction to the Parliament Papers" it is reported that ". . . on the eleventh day, Bishop Keane said: 'I endorse the denunciation that was hurled forth last night against the system of pretended charity that offered food to the hungry Hindus at the cost of their conscience and faith. It is a shame and a disgrace to those who call themselves Christians.' . . . Bishop Keane, who read Mr. Donnelly's review of the history of Catholic charity, said that in India their system was one of absolute indifference to the religious faith of the needy, and in addition to endorsing the denunciation by Mr. Vivekananda of Christian charity any way limited to converts, he pronounced justifiable, from the Hindu point of view, 'the denunciation of the Christian system of atonement that came also from the heart of the Hindu monk.’ He declared that we do not hear half enough of such criticism, and that if by these criticisms Vivekananda can only stir us and sting us into better teachings and better doings in the great work of Christ in the world, he For one 93 would only be grateful to our friend the Hindu monk."[93]

Turning to the actual report of Bishop John J. Keane's reading of Mr. Donnelly's paper, we find a further parenthetical observation: ". . . My heart was glad when I listened last night and heard our good friend, the Hindu, confess that for years he did not know where he was going to get his next meal. That was the way with these poor Franciscan monks. They were reduced to poverty in order that they might better consecrate themselves to the service of God everywhere.'[94]

It is possible that Swamiji spoke at other sessions on the topic of missionaries, for the Outlook, October 7, 1893, in giving an impressionistic picture of the Parliament, adds this highlight:

. . . The subject of Christian work in India calls Vivekananda, in his brilliant priestly orange, to his feet. He criticises the work of Christian missions. It is evident that he has not tried to understand Christianity, but neither, as he claims, have its priests made any effort to understand his religion, with its ingrained faiths and race-prejudices of thousands of years' standing. They have simply come, in his view, to throw scorn on his most sacred beliefs, and to undermine the morals and spirituality of the people he has been sent to teach.

This may be a reference to the talk, "Religion Not the Crying Need of India." One suspects, however, that the full texts of Swamiji's extemporaneous utterances at the Parliament have not been recorded and that he said more and spoke on more occasions than we know. One indication of this comes from  the pen of the Reverend H. R. Haweis, one of the more or less unofficial Anglican delegates who was later to become an ardent friend and admirer of Swamiji's in London. In his book Travel and Talk, Mr. Haweis wrote of the Parliament and of some of Swamiji's utterances, the vigor of which was clearly still fresh in his mind. His quotation of Swamiji's words is identical (with the exception of the words which I have enclosed in brackets) to a report that appeared in the London Woman's Herald of October 26, 1893, but one does not find this brief but scathing talk of Swamiji's in any known official record of the Parliament:*(7)

*(7)While it is gratifying, to say the least, to discover snatches from Swamiji's extempore talks at the Parliament that were not recorded in the official histories, it should be noted that sometimes words are attributed to him that he did not say. For instance, in the Historians' History of the World (as quoted in the Life, p 314) it is said that a " a noted Hindu" paused in the midst of his discourse at the Parliament of Religions and asked how many in the audience had read the sacred books of Hindus. Only three or four hands were raised, whereupon "the Hindu raised himself to his full height, and in a voice every accent of which must have smitten the audience as a rebuke, pronounced these simple words, 'And yet you dare to judge us!' " It has been assumed in the Life that the "noted Hindu" was Swamiji. But according to the New York Daily Tribune of September 17, 1893, it was the Bhddhisst Hewavitarne Dharmapala who flung out the challenge and gave the rebuke. 
Again one finds in the Forum for November 1893 (p 393) the following passage ascribed to Swami Vivekananda. " I humbly beg to differ from those who see in monotheism, in the recognition of a personal God apart from nature, the acme of intellectual development....The ultimate satisfaction of human reason and emotion lies in the realization of that universal essence which is the All.... This idea of the formless All...is the central idea of the Veda, nay, the root idea of the Hindu religion in general." Actually, these words were uttered by Manilal N. Dvivedi on the second day of the Parliament during his talk on Hinduism (Barrows p 318)

Vivekananda, the popular Hindu monk, whose physiognomy bore the most striking resemblance to the classic face of the Buddha, denounced our commercial prosperity, our bloody wars, and our religious inconsistency, declaring that at such a price the 'mild Hindu' would have none of our vaunted civilisation. The recurrent and rhetorical use of the phrase 'mild Hindu' produced a very singular impression upon the audience, as the furious monk waved his arms and almost foamed at the mouth. 'You come ' he cried, 'with the Bible in one hand and the conqueror's sword in the other—you, with your religion of yesterday, to us who were taught thousands of years ago [by our Richis] precepts as noble and lives as holy as your Christ's. You trample on us and treat us like the dust beneath your feet. [You destroy precious life in animals. You are carnivores.] You degrade our people with drink. You insult our women. You scorn our religion—in many points like yours, only better, because more humane. And then you wonder why Christianity makes such slow progress in India. I tell you it is because you are not like your Christ, whom we could honour and reverence. Do you think if you came to our doors like Him, meek and lowly, with a message of love, living and working and suffering for others, as He did, we should turn a deaf ear: Oh, no! We should receive Him and listen to Him, as we have done our own inspired [Richis,] teachers: I consider that Vivekananda's personality was one of the most impressive, and his speech one of the most eloquent speeches which dignified the great congress.[95]

The afternoon of the twelfth day of the, Parliament was officially devoted to the "Criticism and Discussion of Missionary Methods." "On this day," Barrows tells us, "the crowds in the Hall of Columbus were, if possible, more dense than on any previous day." It is conceivable that these crowds expected to witness a row. If so, they were destined to disappointment, for there was no row. Dharmapala and Narasimhacharya represented the Eastern religions; Rev. G. T. Candlin and Rev. R. E. Hume, the Christian. (Swamiji was not present, being that afternoon at the Scientific Section.) Each gave a short but cogent talk. Dharmapala, who opened the discussion, did not spare the missionaries; whereupon, in reply, Mr. Candlin, an American missionary to China, who for some reason always dressed during the Parliament in Chinese costume, objected with indignation to Dharmapala's "personal remarks." Narasimhacharya, who followed, did not attribute the failure of Christianity to the selfishness and intolerance of the missionaries, but rather to their interference with native custom. It was, of course, not to be admitted by the Christians that Christian missionary work had by any means failed in foreign lands. Mr. Hume informed Narasimhacharya that "it is predicted that in a generation all the positions of influence and of responsibility will be in the hands of the Christian community in India,'[96]and went on to add that missionaries sometimes do make mistakes and are grateful for correction. This same minister, as will be seen in a following chapter, attempted some months later without success to engage Swamiji in public controversy.

The session was short, and it was over without mishap. But the tension that had accumulated throughout the Parliament finally broke down the control of the Reverend George T. Pentecost of London, who on the following Sunday evening {September 24), when Swamiji was quite probably present, interspersed throughout his paper many glaring violations of the Parliament's watchword: "Tolerance and Fraternity: ' For a report of this incident I quote from Barrows:

The argument of (Pentecost's paper, "The Invincible Gospel,"] was the ultimate triumph of Christianity as assured by its essential superiority to all other religions. Certain impromptu remarks interjected between the lines of the paper drew forth a reply on the following day [from Virchand A. Gandhi, the Jainist delegate]. He (Pentecost] was reported by the press as saying: "Some of the Brahmans of India have been here and have dared to make an attack upon Christianity. They take the slums of New York and Chicago and ask us why we do not cure ourselves. They take what is outside the pale of Christianity and judge Christianity by it " Proceeding then to attack the religious systems of India on the point of morality, he alleged that among the followers of Brahmanism there were thousands of temples in which there were hundreds of priestesses who were known as immoral and profligate. They were prostitutes because they were priestesses, and priestesses because they were prostitutes.[97]

It is true that Mr. Pentecost represented the extreme of bigotry and not the spirit of the Parliament; but he represented also that large number of his kind, both in America add in India, who were later to do their utmost to destroy Swamiji.

Aside from his talks at the Scientific Section and at other auxiliary sessions, and aside from his brief, extemporaneous, and history-making remarks, Swamiji gave four talks during the course of the Parliament: his opening and closing addresses, his paper on Hinduism, and his short talk on Buddhism.*(8) He had been invited to give this last on the evening of September 26, at the end (again) of a long session devoted to Buddhist papers, both Japanese and Indian, some of which were read by interpreters and almost all of which were exceedingly dry. The Chicago Inter Ocean of September 27 gives perhaps the best account that can be found in the newspapers of the day of Swamiji's part in this Buddhist evening:

*(8) All four of these talks can be found in volume one of the Complete Works

Long before the hour for the opening of the evening session the capacity of the great hall was taxed to the utmost. The subject of the evening, "The Defense of Buddhism, " was frequently applauded. Dharmapala, the Buddhist of Ceylon, Vivekananda, and other Hindoo monks were heartily cheered as they took their seats upon the platform. Dr. Alfred W. Momerie, of London, filled the chair....

At the conclusion of his paper Mr. Dharmapala asked Mr. Vivekananda, the Brahman monk, to criticise Buddhism. He said that Vivekananda being a priest in a different faith, his criticism would not be partial to the Buddhist. Vivekananda is always received with applause in the parliament and as he stepped forward at the side of Dr. Momerie, the chairman, he was received with generous enthusiasm. The Hindoo monk made a masterly plea for truth in whatever faith it might be found.... He had nothing but kind words for Buddhism, and as he gave evidence of his culture in the history which underlies the different Oriental faiths, he closed with that sentiment which has characterized the utterance of all the priests from the Orient and the Occident [?]—a plea for tolerance, and the recognition of essential truth, wherever it may be found. The scholarly language in which he clothed his appeal for a fair hearing and a calm consideration of the qualities which have kept alive the faith to which his life's work is devoted, struck a responsive chord in the audience, and he retired amid a thunder of applause.

Perhaps that applause was inspired as well by the breadth of the idea Swamiji expressed at the close of his talk—an idea he was to return to often during his visit in America. "Addressing the picturesque group of Buddhists on the platform, he said," the report continues,

We cannot live without you, nor you without us. Then believe what separation has shown to us, that you cannot stand without the brain and philosophy of the Brahman, nor we without your heart. This separation between the Buddhist and the Brahman is the cause of the downfall of India. That is why India is populated by three hundred millions of beggars, and that is why India has been the slave of conquerors for the last one thousand years. Let us, then, join the wonderful intellect of the Brahmans with the heart, the noble soul, the wonderful humanizing power of the great Master.[98]

On the evening of September 27, after seventeen days of long, sometimes tiresome, sometimes stirring sessions, the Parliament of Religions came to a close. Every shade of religious thought had been expressed, from the most light-filled to the most clouded, and it was not lost upon the audience that the heights of spiritual expression came from the least expected quarters. Indeed, many a Christian felt the whole affair had been disastrous. In a sermon preached on November 12, 1893, a Reverend Dr. Morgan Dix of New York gave voice to this view:

We have recently been treated to the sight of what was called the Parliament of Religions. I do not believe that those who projected the scheme were animated by any feeling of antagonism to Christianity. I impugn no one's motive.... I doubt, however, that if the prime movers of that Parliament had wanted to spread agnosticism they could have made a better move. It was a masterpiece. Through the rose-colored haze of that atmosphere one seems to discern about the heads of the Jewish rabbi, the Indian priest, the Greek patriarch, and the learned advocates of Shintoism, Brahmanism, and Romanism, a banner bearing this inscription, "To the Unknown God."[99]


Yet despite the fear of those who saw such a banner looming ominously through the haze and who came close thereby to justifying the fear of others who had predicted a scene of discord rather than of harmony, the total impression one receives through reading the accounts of the Parliament is one of Festivity. It was as though, no matter what some of Her children might have thought, the Divine Mother had arranged this party and was present through it all. It is difficult to put one's finger on the source of this impression. It is not to be found in the high-8own protestations of harmony, nor is it in the handkerchief waving. Perhaps it is simply in the fact that regardless of what was said about God most of the delegates spoke of Him in earnestness, and in the further fact that each was allowed to say what he would. Certainly at the close of the Parliament the elation was marked.


More than seven thousand persons were crowded into the Halls of Washington and Columbus [Barrows writes]. For more than an hour before the time announced, the eager crowds swept up against the doors of the Art Palace. The throng extended from the doorways to Michigan avenue and thence for half a block in either direction.... An eye-witness reports: ". . . The last and closing scene of the great Parliament of Religions is one that will live forever in the memory of those who were so fortunate as to be spectators. The great Hall of Columbus was illuminated by a myriad of lights. Every inch of room was used by the greatest crowd that ever sat within its walls. On the stage, beneath the folds of the flags of all nations, were the representatives of all religions. The dull, black and somber raiment of the West only intensified the radiantly contrasted garbs of the Oriental priests." Twice during the evening flashlight photographs were taken of the historic group on the platform.[100]


(In passing it should be noted that in Barrows's history there are three published photographs of "the historic group on the platform:' These were taken on the morning of September 14, the morning of September 21, and the evening of September 27. In the second of these, which has been reproduced in the second edition of the Life, Swamiji has been tentatively identified in the front row of the delegates; I am sorry to say that a comparison with an enlarged and annotated copy of the same picture shows that this is not Swamiji but that "loafer" Narasimhacharya. In the photograph taken on September 27, however, it is probable, though not at present certain, that Swamiji does indeed appear, seated with regal unconcern in the second row of delegates. This scene of the Parliament on the evening of the closing day has been included in the present volume, in addition to a closeup of the platform, showing, among others, Swamiji and Dharmapala.)


The immediate results of the Parliament were mixed. Perhaps it is correct to say that the bigots, several of whom at once took to frenzied sermon-giving, became more bigoted, for their backs had been pressed to the wall, and that the liberal-minded became more liberal, for they were now confirmed in their views, and that this latter outcome was undoubtedly the more important and enduring. It is undeniable, moreover, that the American people had not been merely intellectually impressed by the nobility and wisdom of Eastern doctrines which hitherto, in the words of Dr. Alfred Momerie, "they had been taught to regard with contempt," but had been touched by and had responded to the tremendous power of living spirituality that Swamiji embodied. Something far more important and more far-reaching had taken place than an intellectual appreciation of Eastern religions. It was as though the soul of America had long asked for spiritual sustenance and had now been answered.


This is not to say, as has sometimes been implied, that Swamiji was recognized by all for what he was—the spiritual leader of the age. Some attributed greater spirituality, for instance, to Mazumdar, whose talk on the Brahmo Samaj unaccountably inspired the multitude to rise to its feet and sing the hymn "Nearer, my God, to Thee.'"101]The Advocate of September 28, 1893, after stating that Swamiji's knowledge of English is as though it were his mother tongue, went on to say:


. . . This is equally true of Mazoomdar, who however is a man of far greater spirituality and profounder religious conviction. The chief representative of the Brahmo Samaj, he is careful to say that he did not get his religion from the missionaries, but that it is an evolution out of Hinduism, now laying hold of all that is true in that as in all other forms of religion, but culminating in the acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Savior of the world.


It is not too surprising that the Advocate gave first place to Mazumdar. In the same article the observation was made that since "most of the representatives of the religions of India and Japan were accomplished English scholars, . . . it was inevitable . . . that their expositions of Brahminism, of Shintoism, should take colouring from the truths they had learned directly or indirectly of Christ."


It is interesting in this connection to take note of Barrows's remarks in regard to Swamiji's final address. In the course of his talk Swamiji had said: "The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the others and yet preserve its individuality and grow according to its own law of growth." This was, of course, not at all the looked-for lesson of the Parliament. Certainly the Christian was not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist; with Swamiji most would have cried, "God forbid!" But the halls had resounded with the conviction that the Hindus and Buddhists were to become Christians. Barrows tells us: "Swami Vivekananda was always heard with interest by the Parliament, but very little approval was shown to some of the sentiments expressed in his closing address.”


There were other interpretations of the public reaction. A description of the closing scene is quoted here from the Critic of October 7, 1893, with the omission of the text of Swamiji's address:


......The scene was one not to be easily forgotten. Before an audience which filled every corner of the great hall, the delegates from distant lands paid tribute to the purity of Christian ideals. They bore witness to the spirit of charity which animated the speakers of the congress, and a kind of exhilaration possessed them, as of something large and fine accomplished. With the black-coated Occidentals were seated thus the dark-skinned men from the East, quiet, attentive and dignified.


A young African prince, whose black face showed what is best in the Ethiopian type, arose in his dark-richly embroidered robes, to express a conviction that the Parliament had promoted a feeling for the brotherhood of man which can unite all races. "The very atmosphere, he said, "seems pregnant with an indefinable, inexpressible thing—something too solemn for utterance" And it was this background to the joyousness that appealed to the imagination and gave the occasion its peculiar impressiveness....


But the most impressive figures of the Parliament were the Buddhist priest, H. Dharmapala of Ceylon, and the Hindoo monk, Suami Vivekananda. "If theology and dogma stand in your way in search of truth," said the former incisively, "put them aside. Learn to think without prejudice, to love all beings for love's sake, to express your convictions fearlessly, to lead a life of purity, and the sunlight of truth will illuminate you." But eloquent as were many of the brief speeches of this meeting, whose triumphant enthusiasm rightly culminated in the superb rendering by the Apollo Club of the Hallelujah chorus, no one expressed so well the spirit of the parliament, its limitations and its finest influence, as did the Hindoo monk. I copy his address in full, but I can only suggest its effect upon the audience, for he is an orator by divine right, and his strong intelligent face in its picturesque setting of yellow and orange was hardly less interesting than these earnest words and the rich, rhythmical utterance he gave them. [After quoting the greater part of Swamiji's Final Address, the article continues:]


Perhaps the most tangible result of the congress was the feeling it aroused in regard to foreign missions. The impertinence of sending half educated theological students to instruct the wise and erudite Orientals was never brought home to an English-speaking audience more forcibly. It is only in the spirit of tolerance and sympathy that we are at liberty to touch their faith, and the exhorters who possess these qualities are rare. It is necessary to realize that we have quite as much to learn from the Buddhists as they from us, and that only through harmony can the highest influence be exerted.

                                                                                                                                                                                         LUCY MONROE.

Other organs of public opinion attest to Swamiji's popularity and influence. Many quotations from these are already known to the readers of the Life, but one more can here be added from the Chicago Inter Ocean of September 1, 1894, which almost a year following the Parliament recalled Swamiji's appearance before the American public:

VIVEKANANDA AND THE HINDOOS

There was no delegate to the Parliament of Religions who attracted more courteous attention in Chicago by his winning ways, his ability, and his fearless discussion of all questions relating to his religion than Swami Vivekananda, who represented the Hindoos of South India. This distinguished Hindoo was enthusiastic in his admiration of the greatness of the Western World and its material development, eager in his efforts to learn of those things that might be beneficial to his people, earnest in his desire to recognize the religions of all people as related to each other, and all sincere efforts in behalf of virtue and holiness, but at the same time he defended the Hindoo religion and philosophy with an eloquence and power that not only won admiration for himself but consideration for his own teachings.


To some members of the great Parliament audience, Swamiji stood as the victorious opponent of all that was stereotyped, dull, and unthinking in Christian churches. Among these was Sir Hiram Maxim, one of the brilliant engineers and inventors of his day, who, in 1893, had not yet left his native America to become a British subject. Twenty years later, in a foreword to his anti-missionary treatise, Li Hung Chang's Scrap-Book, Sir Hiram recalled the Parliament of Religions and the figure who was still vivid in his mind as its hero. He wrote: A few years ago there was a Congress of Religions at Chicago. Many said that such a thing would be impossible. How could any understanding be arrived at where each particular party was absolutely right and all the others were completely in the wrong? Still the Congress saved the American people more than a million dollars a year, not to mention many lives abroad. And this was all brought about by one brave and honest man. When it was announced in Calcutta that there was to be a Congress of religions at Chicago, some of the rich merchants took the Americans at their word, and sent them a Brahmin monk, Viva Kananda, from the oldest monastery in the world. This monk was of commanding presence and vast learning, speaking English like a Webster. The American Protestants, who vastly outnumbered all others, imagined that they would have an easy task, and commenced proceedings with the greatest confidence, and with the air of "Just see me wipe you out " However, what they had to say was the old commonplace twaddle that had been mouthed over and over again in every little hamlet from Nova Scotia to California. It interested no one, and no one noticed it.


When, however, Viva Kananda spoke, they saw that they had a Napoleon to deal with. His first speech was no less than a revelation. Every word was eagerly taken down by the reporters, and telegraphed all over the country, where it appeared in thousands of papers. Viva Kananda became the lion of the day. He soon had an immense following. No hall could hold the people who flocked to hear him lecture. They had been sending silly girls and half educated simpletons of men, and millions of dollars, to Asia for years to convert the poor benighted heathen and save his alleged soul; and here was a specimen of the unsaved who knew more of philosophy and religion than all the parsons and missionaries in the whole country. Religion was presented in an agreeable light for the first time to them. There was more in it than they had ever dreamed; argument was impossible. He played with the parsons as a cat plays with a mouse. They were in a state of consternation. What could they do? What did they do? What they always do—they denounced him as an agent of the devil. But the deed was done; he had sown the seed, and the Americans commenced to think. They said to themselves: "Shall we waste our money in sending missionaries who know nothing of religion, as compared with this man, to teach such men as he? No!" And the missionary income fell off more than a million dollars a year in consequence.[l02]


Inevitable and, to Sir Hiram, eminently satisfactory as this result was, Swamiji had of course not sought it. He had not come to the Parliament to engage in battle with the Christian missionaries. He had not asked that they leave India but had asked that they stop defaming her. He had asked for justice and for an end to intolerance and bigotry.


To a request of the New York World of October 1, 1893, for "a sentiment of expression regarding the significance of the great meeting" from each representative, Swamiji replied with a quotation from the Gita and one from Vyasa:


"I am He that am in every religion—like the thread that passes through a string of pear. " "Holy, perfect and pure men are seen in all creeds, therefore they all lead to the same truth—for how can nectar be the outcome of poison?"


Swamiji's closing words of his final address at the Parliament were perhaps an even more explicit expression in modern terms "regarding the significance of the great meeting" :


If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world it is this: It has proved to the world that holiness, purity, and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character. In the face of this evidence, if anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of the others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart and point out to him that upon the banner of every religion will soon be written, in spite of resistance: "Help and not Fight," "Assimilation and not Destruction," "Harmony and Peace and not Dissension'[103]


This, certainly, was the lesson taught by the Parliament. Though some may have been loath to acknowledge it at the time, it was a lesson that had struck deep and that would not be forgotten. The back of bigotry, although not broken, had received its first hard blow


 ⓘ
[1].Walter R. Houghton, ed., The Parliament of Religions and Religious Congresses at the World's Columbian Exposition, p. 15.
[2].John Henry Barrows, ed., The World's Parliament of Religions, p. 3.
[3] Houghton, op. cit., p. 15.
[4] Barrows, op. cit., p. 59.
[5] Swami Turiyananda in Spiritual Talks by the First Disciples of Shri Ramakrishna (1955), p. 254.
[6] Complete Works, 5 : 64.
[7] Complete Works,5:211.
[8] Complete Works6: 250.
[9] Barrows, op. cit., p. 185.
[10] Barrows,  p. 59.
[11] Barrows,p. 18.
[12] Barrows,p. 14.
[13] Barrows, PP- 19-20.
[14] Barrows, pp. 20-22.
[15] Barrows,  p. 26.
[16] Barrows,pp. 24-25.
[17] Barrows, p. 25.
[18] Barrows,pp. 26-28.
[19] Barrows,p. 56.
[20] Barrows,p. 33.
[21] Barrows,p. 61.
[22] Barrows,p. 58.
[23] Barrows, P. 57.
[24] Chicago Evening Post, September 11, 1893*
[25] Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, September 12, 1893.
[26] Houghton, op. cit., p. 34. 
[27] Barrows, op. cit., p. 62. 
[28] Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, September 12,    1893. 
[29] Houghton, p. 34.
[30] Houghton, p. 34.
[31] Houghton pp. 34-35* 
[32] Barrows, p. 64. 
[33] Barrows, p. 62. 
[34] Houghton, p. 22.
[35] Complete Works, 5 : 20. 
[36] Houghton, p. 35. 
[37].Houghton ,p. 259.
[38] The Inland Architect and News Record (Chicago), December 1893, p. 47. 
[39] Houghton, p. 86.  
[40] Houghton,p. 86. 
[41] Houghton,p. 88.
[42] Houghton,p. 88
[43] Houghton P.95
[44] Barrows, p. 101.
[45] Complete Works, 5:21. 
[46] Rem. (Josephine MacLeod), p. 247; Brahmacharini Usha (Pravrajika Anandaprana), “Swamiji in Southern California,” V and W 158 (November-December 1962): 39-40. 
[47] Complete Works, 1 :3-4; Barrows, p. 102.  
[48] The Chicago newspapers giving the most coverage on September 12, 1893, to Swamiji’s opening address at the Parliament of Religions were the Herald, Inter Ocean, Tribune, and Record. The Herald's report was the most complete.
[49] Life, 1:428-29; also quoted in Indian Mirror, March 9, 1894.
[50] Harriet Monroe, A Poet's Life, PP* 136~37*
[51] Harriet Monroe, A Poet's Life, PP* 136~37*
[52] Narasimha to Swami Vivekananda, undated, Mrs. Boshi Sen Collection. 
[53] This passage is from the original letter, RKM, Belur. (Cf. Complete Works, 5:34.)
[54] P.B., April 1932, p. 190.
[55] Barrows, pp. 152-54.  
[56] Quoted in Akshay K. Ghosh to Raja Ajit Singh, November 4, 1893, Sharma, Forgotten Chapter, p. 203. 
[57] Lillie W. B. Buck, Amy Leslie at the Fair (Chicago, 1893), p. 211. 
[58] Oakland Enquirer, September 20, 1893*
[59] Chicago Inter Ocean, September 17, 1893.
[60] Chicago Inter Ocean, September 17, 1893.
[61] Barrows, p. 156. 
[62] Chicago Daily Tribune, September 23,1893. 
[63] Complete Works, 8:198. 
[64] Complete Works,8 :199. 
[65] F. Herbert Stead, “The Story of the World’s Parliament of Religions,” Review of Reviews, American edition, March 1894, PP- 299~ 310. 
[66] Albert Spalding, Rise to Follow, P* 131* 
[67] Henry Steele Commanger, The American Mind, p. 100.  
[68] Complete Works, 6 :252. 
[69] Barrows, p. 112. 
[70] Boston Evening Transcript, April 5, 1894.  
[71] Complete Works, 5:24. 
[72] Chicago Tribune, September 14, 1894.
[73].Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, September 12, 1893. 
[74].Houghton, p. 258; Barrows, pp. 118-19.  
[75].See note 65 above, p. 301. 
[76].Barrows, p. 460. 
[77].Allen Pringle, “The Great Parliament of Religions,” Open Court, November 2 andg, 1893,pp.3855— 57,3863-66. 
[78].Quoted in above. 
[79].Barrows, p. 540.
[80].Barrows, p. 542.  
[81].Complete Works, 1 : 11. 
[82].Swami Vivekananda and His Guru with Letters from Prominent Americans on the Alleged Progress of Vedantism in the United States, p. xxxiii.  
[83].Complete Works, 1 : 13, 16, 17. 
[84].Complete Works, p. 20. 
[85].Reprinted in the Indian Mirror, November 30, 1893. 
[86].William Ernest Hocking, “Recollections of Swami Vivekananda,” V and W163 (September-October J963): 58-60. 
[87].Barrows, p. 1238.
[88].Barrows, p. 1249.
[89].See note 77 above, November 9 1893, PP- 3863-66.
[90].Barrows, pp. 520-22 passim. 
[91].Barrows, p. 116.
[92].Barrows,p. 778. 
[93].Barrows,pp. 228-29. 
[94].Barrows ,p. 1036. 
[95].H. R. Haweis, Travel and Talk, 1 : 74ff. See also Buddha Chai-tanya (Swami Yogeshananda), “Swami Vivekananda: a New Discovery,” Vedanta for East and West 112 (March-April 1970): 1-6.
[96].Barrows, p. 1095.
[97].Barrows,p. 143. (See also Chicago Inter Ocean, September 25, 1893, p. 2, col. 5.) 
[98].J. W. Hanson, ed., The World9s  Congress of Religions at the World9s Columbian Exposition, p. 1194. 
[99].Morgan Dix, “The Parliament of Religions,” Monist 4 : 336. 
[100].Barrows, pp. 157-58. 
[101].Barrows, p. 114. 
[102].Hiram Maxim, Li Hung Chang9 $ Scrap-Book (London: Watts and Co., 1913), p. xxiii.
[103].Complete Works, 1 *.24.

↑ Contents

1.3 IN AND AROUND CHICAGO

Among the many gaps in the biographies of Swami Vivekananda is one which appears after the Parliament of Religions and extends over the period comprising the last part of 1893 and almost the whole of 1894. This gap, to be sure, is not total. We know, for instance, that Swamiji toured through the Middle West and East, lecturing in many cities, for a time in connection with a lecture bureau and later independently, and also we catch distant and disconnected glimpses of him as he went from place to place. But when we consider the hundreds of conversations he must have held during this period, the scores of lectures and the many private interviews he must have given, to say nothing of the innumerable spiritual experiences he must have had, we cannot help feeling dissatisfied with the meagerness of our present knowledge. This current chapter, however, and those to follow throw a little more light upon Swamiji's post-Parliament activities.

One thing that has been obscure is the length of time he remained in Chicago before commencing his lecture tour. Supported by one or two contemporary reports, we can now hazard the guess that he made his home there for at least two months, during which time he took short trips to nearby towns. In connection with this period we are fortunate enough to have two heretofore unpublished letters that he wrote to Professor Wright. These are, I believe, among the most valuable of his letters, for they not only supply facts regarding his activities but convey something of his luminous state of mind during the early days of his American mission. The first letter was written from Chicago on October 2:

Dear Adhyapakji-

I do not know what you are thinking of my long silence. In the first place I dropped in on the Congress in the eleventh hour. And quite unprepared and that kept me very very busy for some time. Secondly I was speaking almost every day in the Congress and had no time to write and last and greatest of all—my kind friend I owe so much to you that it would have been an insult to your Ahetuka (unselfish) friendship to have written you business like letters in a hurry. The Congress is now over.

Dear brother, I was so so afraid to stand before that great assembly of fine speakers and thinkers from all over the world and speak but the Lord gave me strength and I almost every day heroically (?) faced the platform and the audience. If I have done well He gave me the strength for it if I have miserably failed—I knew that before hand— for I am hopelessly ignorant. Your friend prof. Bradley was very kind to me and he always cheered me on And oh! everybody is so kind here to me who am nothing— that it is beyond my power of expression. Glory unto Him in the highest in whose sight the poor ignorant monk from India is the same as the learned divines of this mighty land. And how the Lord is helping me every day of my life brother—I sometimes wish for a life of million million ages to serve Him through the world dressed in rags and fed by charity.

Oh how I wished that you were here to see some of our sweet ones from India—the tender hearted Buddhist Dhammapala the orator Mazoomdar and realize that in that far off and poor India there are hearts that beat in sympathy to yours, born and brought up in this mighty—and great country.

My eternal respects to your holy wife and to your sweet children my eternal love and blessings.

Col Higginson a very broad man told me that your daughter had written to his daughter about me and he was very sympathetic to me. I am going to Evanston tomorrow and hope to see prof. Bradley there.

May He make us all more and more pure and holy so that we may live a perfect spiritual life even before throwing off this earthly body.

Vivekananda

(The letter continues on a separate sheet of paper:)

I am now going to be reconciled to my life here. All my life I have been taking every circumstance as coming from him and calmly adapt myself to it. At first in America I was almost out of my water. I was afraid I would have to give up the accustomed way of being guided by the Lord and cater for myself—and what a horrid piece of mischief and ingratitude was that. I now clearly see that He who was guiding me on the snow tops of the Himalayas and the burning plaines [sic] of India is here to help me and guide me. Glory unto Him in the highest. So I have calmly fallen in my old ways. Some body or other gives me a shelter and food; some body or other comes to ask me to speak about Him and I know He sends them and mine is to obey. And then He is supplying my necessities and His will be done.

"He who rests [in] Me and gives up all other self assertion and struggles I carry to him whatever he needs" Gita.

So it is in Asia So in Europe So in America for is He not here also? And if He does not I only would take for granted that He wants that I should lay aside this three minutes body of clay—and hope to lay it down gladly-- 

We may or may not meet brother. He knows. You are great learned and Holy. I dare not preach to you or your wife—but to your children—I quote these passages from the Vedas—

"The four Vedas, Sciences, languages, philosophy and all other learnings are only ornamental the real learning--the true Knowledge is that which enables us to reach him who is unchangeable in His love"

"How real, how tangible, how visible is He through whom the skin touches, the eyes see and the world gets its reality"

"Hearing Him nothing remains to be heard

Seeing Him nothing remains to be seen

Attaining Him nothing remains to be attained"

"He is the eye of our eyes the ear of our ears the 

Soul of our Souls."

He is nearer to you, my dears than even your father and mother—you are innocent and pure as flowers—remain so and He will reveal Himself unto you. Dear Austin, when you are playing there is another playmate playing with you who loves you more than anybody else and oh He is so full of fun. He is always playing—sometimes with great big balls which we call the sun and earth and sometimes with little children like you and laughing and playing with you.

How funny it would be to see him and play with Him, my dear think of it.

Dear Adhyapakji, I am moving about just now—only when I come to Chicago—I always go to see Mr. and Mrs. Lyons [Lyon] one of the noblest couples I have seen here. If you would be kind enough to write to me kindly address it to the care of Mr. John B. Lyons 262 Michigan Ave Chicago.

"He who gets hold of the One in this world of many—The one constant existence in a world of flitting shadows— the One life in a world of Death—He alone crosses this sea of misery and struggle. None else none else" Vedas

"He who is the Brahman of the Vedantins,, Ishwara of the Naiyayikas, Purusha of the Sankhyas, cause of the Mimamsakas Law of the Buddhists absolute zero of the Atheists and love infinite unto those that love, may [He]  take us all under His merciful protection"

Udayanacharya

(a great philosopher of the Nyaya or Dualistic school and this is the Benediction pronounced at the very beginning of his wonderful book "Kusumanjali a handful of flowers" in which He attempts to establish the existence of a personal creator and moral ruler of infinite love independently of revelation.) 

Your ever grateful friend [1]
Vivekananda

Until recently, where Swamiji stayed during the sessions of the Parliament of Religions has been a mystery. Suddenly, however, floods of light have been thrown on the subject. Thanks to Cornelia Conger, a granddaughter of the Mr. and Mrs. John B. Lyon whom Swamiji mentions in the above letter, we learn that it was they who were his hosts during this period. Cornelia Conger was only six years old in 1893, but her memories of Swamiji are vivid, and her "Memoirs of Swami Vivekananda, " which first appeared in the Prabuddha Bharata of May 1956, give an invaluable picture of him at this important time in his life. It is to Swami Shankarananda, then President of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission in India, that we owe Miss Conger's article, for, having considered her memories "childish and trivial, " she had been reluctant to give them written form. "But the Swami said something," Miss Conger writes, "infinitely kind and gracious which I shall never forget: That every great man is like a jewel with many facets. That each facet is important as it reflects a different aspect of his character. " "So here," she continues, "is my very tiny 'facet' offered in memory of someone I have loved for all these sixty-two years." Years later, when Miss Conger had just turned eighty-four, she gave an informal talk to the members of the Chicago Vedanta Center, during which she again recollected all she could of Swamiji. "It is a memory, " she said at the close, "that I've never forgotten. His was a most extraordinary, magnetic personality, and his picture in my mind is just as clear [as though it were yesterday]. I've never known anybody like him." During the course of her talk, Miss Conger related substantially the same memories as she had earlier written for Swami Shankarananda, but here and there a new detail emerged, which is inserted in brackets in the following quotation from her written "Memoirs " :

Before the Congress (or Parliament) of Religions met in Chicago at the time of the Columbian Exposition in 1893, members of various churches volunteered to ask into their homes as guests delegates to it. My grandmother, Mrs. John B. Lyon, was one of these, requesting, if possible, that a delegate who was broadminded be sent to us as my grandfather was much interested in philosophy but heartily disliked bigots! Our home was 262, Michigan Avenue, a pleasant somewhat old-fashioned frame house, painted a [soft olive green. It had a porch on its side, and in summer we had red and white striped awnings and window boxes with red geraniums and white petunias. Big trees lined the street; there was a little back yard, and we had a kennel for our dogs and a little stable. It was all very nice and cosy. Its location was under the middle of what is today (1971) the Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue. The house was full of guests all that summer [of 1893] as my grandparents were naturally hospitable and this World's Fair was a very exciting and fascinating affair. So all our out-of town relatives and friends were eager to come to Chicago to see it. When word came that our delegate was to arrive on a certain evening, the house was so crowded that my grandmother had to send her elder son to a friend's house to have his room for our guest. We had been given no idea who he would be nor even what religion he was representing. A message came that a member of our Church—the First Presbyterian [of which the Rev. John Henry Barrows was minister]—would bring him after midnight. Everyone went to bed except my grandmother who waited up to receive them. When she answered the doorbell, there stood Swami Vivekananda in a long yellow robe, a red sash, and a red turban—a very startling sight to her because she had probably never seen an East Indian before. She welcomed him warmly and showed him to his room. When she went to bed she was somewhat troubled. Some of our guests were Southerners, as we had many friends in the South, because we owned a sugar plantation on the Bayou Teche in Louisiana. Southerners have a strong dislike for associating with anyone but whites because they stupidly think of all people who are darker as on a mental and social plane of their former Negro slaves. My grandmother herself had no color prejudice and she was sufficiently intelligent anyway to know that Indians are of the same Caucasian inheritance as we are.

When my grandfather woke up, she told him of the problem and said he must decide whether it would be uncomfortable for Swami and for our Southern friends to be together. If so, she said he could put Swami up as our guest at the new Auditorium Hotel near us. My grandfather was dressed about half an hour before breakfast and went into the library to read his morning paper. There he found Swami and, before breakfast was served, he came to my grandmother and said, "I don't care a bit, Emily, if all our guests leave! This Indian is the most brilliant and interesting man who has ever been in our home and he shall stay as long as he wishes." That began a warm friendship between them which was later summed up—much to my grandfather's embarrassment!—by having Swami calmly remark to a group of my grandfather's friends one day at the Chicago Club: "I believe Mr. Lyon is the most Christ-like man I ever met!"

[Well, everybody loved him. He had a keen sense of humor and was very easy for all of us to get on with; my whole family was devoted to him. He and my grandfather got on very well. My grandfather wasn't what you'd call a religious person, but, as my grandmother said, he was deeply interested in philosophy. He and Swami would have long, long talks]. Swami seemed to feel especially dose to my grandmother, who reminded him of his own mother. She was short and very erect, with quiet dignity and assurance, excellent common sense, and a dry humor that he enjoyed. My mother, who was a pretty and charming young widow, and I—who was only six years old lived with them. My grandmother and my mother attended most of the meetings of the Congress of Religions and heard Swamiji speak there and later at lectures he gave. I know he helped my sad young mother who missed her young husband so much. Mother read and studied Swamiji's books later and tried to follow his teachings.

My memories are simply of him as a guest in our home —of a great personality who is still vivid to me! His brilliant eyes, his charming voice with the lilt of a slight well-bred Irish brogue, his warm smile! He told me enchanting stories of India, of monkeys and peacocks, and flights of bright green parrots, of banyan trees and masses of flowers, and markets piled with all colors of fruits and vegetables. To me, they sounded like fairy stories, but now that I have driven over many hundreds of miles of Indian roads, I realize that he was simply describing scenes from the memories of his own boyhood. I used to rush up to him when he came into the house and cry, "Tell me another story, Swami," and climb into his lap. Perhaps, so far from home and in so strange a country, he found comfort in the love and enthusiasm of a child. He was always wonderful to me! Yet—because a child is sensitive —I can remember times when I would run into his room and suddenly know he did not want to be disturbed when he was in meditation. He asked me many questions about what I learned in school and made me show him my school-books and pointed out India to me on the map—It was pink, I recall and told me about his country. He seemed sad that little Indian girls did not have, in general, the chance to have as good an education as we American children.... My grandmother was president of the Women's Hospital in Chicago and he visited it with lively interest and asked for all the figures in infant mortality, etc. (He spoke not only to patients and doctors and nurses, but to the cooks and laundresses. He asked a thousand questions--everything about the hospital, and was so interested in it.]

I was fascinated by his turban which struck me as a very funny kind of a hat, especially as it had to be wound up afresh every time he put it on! I persuaded him to let me see him wrap it back and forth around his head.

As our American food is less highly seasoned than Indian, my grandmother was afraid he might find it flat. [He told my grandmother that Ramakrishna had told him before he came to the West that he should] conform to all the customs and [eat] the food of his hosts, so he ate as we did. [When my grandmother asked him if there was anything special he wanted or couldn't have, he just said, "No, I'll take whatever you have."] My grandmother used to make a little ceremony of making salad dressing at the table and one of the condiments she used was Tabasco Sauce, put up by some friends of hers, the McIlhennys, in Louisiana. She handed him the bottle and said, "You might like a drop or two of this on your meat, Swami." He sprinkled it on with such a lavish hand that we all gasped and said, "But you can't do that! It's terribly hot!" He laughed and ate it with such enjoyment that a special bottle of the sauce was always put at his place after that.

My mother took him to hear his first Symphony Concert on a Friday afternoon. He listened with great attention but with his head a bit on one side and a slightly quizzical expression. "Did you enjoy it?" mother asked at the end. "Yes, it was very beautiful," he replied, but mother felt it was said with some reservation. "What are you thinking?" she asked. "I am puzzled by two things," he answered. "First, I do not understand why the program says that this same program will be repeated on Saturday evening. You see in India, one type of music is played at dawn. The music for noontime is very different, and that for the evening is also of a special character. So I should think that what sounds suitable to your ears in the early afternoon would not sound harmonious to you at night. The other thing that seems strange to me is the lack of overtones in the music and the greater intervals between the notes. To my ears it has holes in it like that good Swiss cheese you give me!"

When he began to give lectures, people offered him money for the work he hoped to do in India. He had no purse. So he used to tie it up in a handkerchief and bring it back—like a proud little boy!—pour it into my grandmother's lap to keep for him. She made him learn the different coins and to stack them up neatly and to count them. She made him write down the amount each time, and she deposited in her bank for him. He was overwhelmed by the generosity of his audience who seemed so happy to give to help people they had never seen so far away!

Once he said to my grandmother that he had had the greatest temptation of his life in America. She liked to tease him a bit and said, "Who is she, Swami?" He burst out laughing and said "Oh, it is not a lady, it is Organization!" He explained how the followers of Ramakrishna had all gone out alone and when they reached a village, would just quietly sit under a tree and wait for those in trouble to come to consult them. But in the States he saw how much could be accomplished by organizing work. Yet he was doubtful about just what type of organization would be acceptable to the Indian character and he gave a great deal of thought and study how to adapt what seemed good to him in our Western World to the best advantage of his own people.... I spoke earlier of his delightful slight Irish brogue.... My grandfather [once said to him, "You know, when I hear you speaking from the next room, I'd say I had a very cultivated Irish gentleman staying with me because of your accent." Swami was perfectly amazed. He said, "Nobody ever said that before!" Then he thought it over and said, "You know, my favorite professor in India was] an Irish gentleman, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. [I went to all his lectures and saw him a great deal. So probably, not being used to speaking English then, I unconsciously copied his accent "]

After Swami left us, my mother was eager to do some studying along the lines of Oriental philosophy, as she realized she had not enough background to understand his teachings as fully as she wished. A Mrs. Peake held some classes in Chicago that following winter. and, in the course of them, mother discovered much to her surprise that if she held a letter torn up into fine bits between her hands, she received a brief but vivid impression of the writer, both physically and mentally. When Swamiji returned to Chicago a year or so later to give lectures, mother asked him about this strange gift and he said he had it also, and that when he was young he used to have fun doing it to show off, but Ramakrishna had rapped his knuckles and said, "Don't use this great gift except for the good of mankind! Hands that receive these impressions can also bring relief from pain. Use this gift to bring healing!"

On this second visit, he only stayed with us for a short time. He knew he could teach better if he lived in his own regime of food and of many hours for meditation. It also left him free to receive many who came to him for help. So my grandmother helped him find a simple but comfortable little flat, but I do not recall that I ever saw it.

Swamiji was such a dynamic and attractive personality that many women were quite swept away by him and made every effort by flattery to gain his interest. He was still young and, in spite of his great spirituality and his brilliance of mind, seemed to be very unworldly. This used to trouble my grandmother who feared he might be put in a false or uncomfortable position and she tried to caution him a little. Her concern touched and amused him and he patted her hand and said, "Dear Mrs. Lyon, you dear American mother of mine, don't be afraid for me! It is true I often sleep under a banyan tree with a bowl of rice given me by a kindly peasant, but it is equally true that I also am sometimes the guest in the palace of a great Maharajah and a slave girl is appointed to wave a peacock feather fan over me all night long! I am used to temptation and you need not fear for me!"

. . . I asked my mother's sister, Katharine (Mrs. Robert W. Hamil) what she could add to my scattered memories. She was a bride and had her own home. So she was not at her mother's and father's so very much. She recalled Swamiji much as I did, but never heard him lecture. However, she and her husband were "young intellectuals" and had a group of young professors from our university, young newspaper men, etc. around them. One Sunday evening she was telling them how remarkable Swamiji was and they said that modern scientists and psychologists could "show up" his religious beliefs in no time! She said, "If I can persuade him to come here next Sunday evening, will you all come back and meet him?" They agreed and Swamiji met them all at an informal supper party. My aunt does not recall just what subjects were brought up, but that the entire evening was a lively and interesting debate on all sorts of ideas. Aunt Katharine said that Swamiji's great knowledge of the Bible and the Koran as well as the various Oriental religions, his grasp of science and of psychology were astounding. Before the evening was over the "doubting Thomases" threw up their hands and admitted that Swamiji had held his own on every point and they parted from him with warmest admiration and affection.[2]

The intellectual friends of Miss Conger's aunt might well throw up their hands. Around this time, Swamiji was associating with some of the greatest scientists of the world, who had gathered in Chicago for the International Electrical Congress. According to the Life, "immediately following his appearance at the Parliament," he was the guest of honor at a vegetarian dinner given by Professor and Mrs. Elisha Gray at their home in Highland Park, a suburb on Lake Michigan, just north of Chicago. Among the guests invited to meet him were (as recounted by the Life[3] the famous scientists Lord Kelvin (formerly William Thomson), Professor von Helmholtz, and  Ariton Hopitallia.*(1)

*(1)Elisha Gray, the famous electrical inventor, was chairman of the International Electrical Congress, which had been held toward the end of August in conjunction with the Columbian Exposition. Evidently some of the foreign delegates had remained in Chicago for a time. Kelvin and Helmholtz were, of course, delegates from, respectively, Scotland and Germany. As for Ariton Hopitallia, whoever he may have been, historians, biographers, and encyclopedists do not seem to have remembered him. Let us note here, however, that the name of the delegate from France to the International Electrical Congress at the World’s Fair was Professor Edouard Hospitalier.

It was no doubt also around this time that Swamiji met and conversed with the famous agnostic Robert Green Ingersoll, who had been outraging good Christians for many years with his attacks on the credibility of the Bible and the dogmatic aspects of Christianity. Finding the myths and dogmas of Christianity at variance with scientific thought, he repudiated religion altogether. But scandalous as his doctrines were to nineteenth century ears, his lectures were highly popular. "Mr. Ingersoll gets five to six hundred dollars a lecture Swamiji wrote to Alasinga on November 2, 1893. "He is the most celebrated lecturer in this country.'[4] Swamiji and Ingersoll, each in his own way, cared for truth alone. Whatever Ingersoll's views about religion may have been, they were honest, and for that in itself Swamiji would have admired him. "It is better to be an outspoken atheist," he was to say later on, "than a hypocrite.'[5] Later in London Swamiji spoke of a conversation he had had with Ingersoll:

In America there was a great agnostic, a very noble man, a very good man, and a very fine speaker. He lectured on religion, which he said was of no use; why bother our heads about other worlds? He employed this simile: we have an orange here, and we want to squeeze all the juice out of it. I met him once and said, "I agree with you entirely. I have some fruit, and I too want to squeeze out the juice. Our difference lies in the choice of the fruit. You want an orange, and I prefer a mango. You think it is enough to live here and eat and drink and have a little scientific knowledge.... I want to understand the heart of things, the very kernel itself. Your study is the manifestation of life, mine is the life itself . . . I must know the heart of this life, its very essence, what it is, not only how it works and what are its manifestations. I want the why of everything, I leave the how to children.'[6]

Mr. Ingersoll would have perceived that this approach would, like his own, quickly undermine the dogmatic supports of religion. He must have recognized that Swamiji was as revolutionary as he was himself "Fifty years ago," he said to him on one occasion, "you would have been hanged in this country if you had come to preach. You would have been burnt alive or you would have been stoned out of the villages.'[7]

Even in 1893 Swamiji was not welcome in orthodox Christian circles, but he went everywhere else in complete freedom, observing, learning, asking "a thousand questions," as well as spreading his own influence. In September of 1894, the Chicago Inter Ocean ran an article on him which included the following sentence:

. . . Vivekananda lingered in Chicago for several months after the great Parliament of Religions closed, studying many questions relating to schools and the material advancement of civilization in order to carry back to his own people as convincing arguments regarding America  as he brought to this country concerning the morality and spirituality of his own people.

While "lingering in Chicago" Swamiji could have seen and studied a great deal. Indeed there was perhaps no better place for him to take his first close look at Americans and American institutions than this city still in the exuberance of its youth. Everything about Chicago was new, venturesome, and expanding with enormous activity. Although many of its districts were still undeveloped and sparsely settled, its population had grown in less than sixty years from one hundred and fifty to over a million, and its industries, its institutions, and its ambitions had grown as fast. If Chicago lacked mellowness, as it surely did, if it was not so polished and knowledgeable as the older cities of the East Coast, it made up for its want of tradition and sophistication by its immense vitality. With the crush of horse-drawn traffic rattling over the congested streets of its business district, the crowding of tugs and barges on its sludgy river, its grain elevators, stockyards, and factories, its Board of Trade and network of great railways, with its university and its new Art Institute, not to speak of its great World's Fair, which remained open and in full glory until October 31, Chicago offered Swamiji a picture of late nineteenth-century America such as did not exist in so pure and unrelieved a form elsewhere. The city even contained slums that in wretchedness were second to none in the country and a settlement house that was to become world famous.

One of the schools that Swamiji visited was the Cook County Normal School, whose principal was the well-known Col. Francis Wayland Parker. Even before the influence of John Dewey had been felt in America, Colonel Parker had introduced progressive educational principles in Boston and in 1883 had brought them to Chicago. Although it is not certain that the following description of Swamiji's visit to Colonel Parker's school belongs to the present period, it is not likely that in "studying many questions relating to schools" he would have overlooked the most progressive school in the city. And thus a child's glimpse of his visit can as well be quoted here as elsewhere. The story, taken from an article by Henrietta Holmes Earl, first appeared in Prabuddha Bharata of September 1933. Mrs. Earl wrote:

I think of Vivekananda always as "Vivekananda the Vivid." And perhaps that is so because for a few brief moments I looked into his eyes. It happened when I, a small child, was a pupil in the school of which Col. Francis W. Parker was the head. Several of our schools are named after him, and his influence on education and thought was so great that he may be classed as a prophet of education. His work was known in far countries, and children came to his school from many lands with their parents who returned to their foreign homes to teach his methods. Among this group of foreign students was a Hindu family, the son being in my class. Each morning the entire school assembled for Chapel and often a brief talk by some distinguished visitor was heard. On one of these occasions we were all fascinated by the spectacle of our tall Col. Parker ushering in another stately man who was dressed in flowing robes and turban. We sang, and Col. Parker read a prayer. Then the Swami spoke to us. I was too little to remember what he said, but I do remember how quiet the big room was, and how brilliant his eyes and vibrant his voice. When his talk was over he too said a prayer, and then he and Col. Parker walked down together from the platform through the assembly hall. The Hindu boy next to me sat in an aisle seat, and, as the Swami passed him, bent and kissed his robe. I was so surprised at such a thing that I whispered to the boy, "Why did you do that? Who is he?" "The man is Swami Vivekananda, a great saint from my country," he said. "But," said I, "there are no saints any more." "Not here in your country," he replied, "but we still have them in India.'[8]

During the two months or so that Swamiji remained in Chicago he not only absorbed all kinds of information regarding the workings of Western civilization but lectured in the city and in nearby towns. The Chicago correspondent of the Critic, Lucy Monroe, whose article of October 7 was quoted in the last chapter, again wrote about him on November 11. Lucy Monroe was a sister of Harriet Monroe, the poetess, whose vivid description of Swamiji has been earlier quoted. Unlike Harriet, Lucy Monroe went to hear Swamiji more than once, not merely because of her duty as a reporter but, to judge from her articles, because of her personal appreciation of him. A small portion of the following report may be familiar to the reader, for, by way of illustrating the fact that he was proving to America that Hindus "are not savages, " Swamiji himself quoted from it in a letter to India [9]The full report reads as follows:

2

. . . It was an outgrowth of the Parliament of Religions, which opened our eyes to the fact that the philosophy of the ancient creeds contains much beauty for the moderns. When we had once clearly perceived this, our interest in their exponents quickened, and with characteristic eagerness we set out in pursuit of knowledge. The most available means of obtaining it, after the close of the Parliament, was through the addresses and lectures of Suami Vivekananda, who is still in this city. His original purpose in coming to this country was to interest Americans in the starting of new industries among the Hindoos, but he has abandoned this for the present, because he finds that, as "the Americans are the most charitable people in the world," every man with a purpose comes here for assistance in carrying it out. When asked about the relative condition of the poor here and in India, he replied that our poor would be princes there, and that he had been taken through the worst quarter of the city only to find it, from  the standpoint of his knowledge, comfortable and even pleasant.

A Brahmin of the Brahmins, Vivekananda gave up his rank to join the brotherhood of monks, where all pride of caste is voluntarily relinquished. And yet he bears the mark of race upon his person. His culture, his eloquence, and his fascinating personality have given us a new idea of Hindoo civilization. He is an interesting figure, his fine, intelligent, mobile face in its setting of yellows, and his deep, musical voice prepossessing one at once in his favor. So it is not strange that he has been taken up by the literary clubs, has preached and lectured in churches, until the life of Buddha and the doctrines of his faith have grown familiar to us. He speaks without notes, presenting his facts and his conclusions with the greatest art, the most convincing sincerity; and rising at times to a rich, inspiring eloquence. As learned and cultivated, apparently, as the most accomplished Jesuit, he has also something Jesuitical in the character of his mind; but though the little sarcasms thrown into his discourses are as keen as a rapier, they are so delicate as to be lost on many of his hearers. Nevertheless his courtesy is unfailing, for these thrusts are never pointed so directly at our customs as to be rude. At present he contents himself with enlightening us in regard to his religion and the words of its philosophers. He looks forward to the time when we shall pass beyond idolatry—now necessary in his opinion to the ignorant classes—beyond worship, even, to a knowledge of the presence of God in nature, of the divinity and responsibility of man. "Work out your own salvation, " he says with the dying Buddha; "I cannot help you. No man can help you. Help yourself."


The statement that Swamiji had abandoned his purpose of interesting Americans in the starting of new industries among  the Hindus is clarified by his second hitherto unpublished letter to Professor Wright:


c/of J. Lyons 262 Michigan av.

Chicago

26 October '93

Dear Adhyapakji .

You would be glad to know that I am doing well here and that almost everybody has been very kind to me, except of course the very orthodox. Many of the men brought together here from far off lands have got projects and ideas and missions to carry out and America is the only place where there is a chance of success for everything. But I thought better and have given up speaking about my project entirely—because I am sure now—the heathen draws more than his project. So I want to go to work earnestly for my own project only keeping the project in the background and working like any other lecturer.


He who has brought me hither and has not left me yet will not leave me ever I am sure. You will be glad to know that I am doing well and expect to do very well in the way of getting money. Of course I am too green in the business but would soon learn my trade. I am very popular in Chicago. So I want to stay here a little more and get money.


Tomorrow I am going to lecture on Buddhism at the ladies' fortnightly club—which is the most influential in this city. How to thank you, my kind friend or Him who brought you to me—for now I think the success of my project probable and it is you who have made it so.


May blessings and happiness attend every step of your progress in this world.

My love and blessings to your children

Yours affly ever'[10]  
Vivekananda


Although Swamiji remained in Chicago for so long a time, speaking before literary clubs and in churches, the only definite information we have at present regarding his lectures in the city comes from his letter quoted above, in which he says: "Tomorrow [October 27] I am going to lecture on Buddhism at the ladies' fortnightly club—which is the most influential in this city." This club, founded twenty years earlier and known then and now as the Fortnightly of Chicago, was, as Swamiji said, the most influential in the city and was also one of the most exclusive. Its membership of some one hundred and fifty women was drawn from the upper and professional classes and included, naturally, Swamiji's friend Mrs. Potter Palmer. The club's object, as stated in its early by-laws, was "intellectual and social culture." Unhappily for our purpose, the Fortnightly has traditionally avoided publicity, and thus one fails to find even a resume of Swamiji's lecture in the Chicago newspapers. Two weeks earlier, however, a small news item appeared in the Tribune to the effect that the fortnightly Club had held its first meeting and lecture of the season at the Hotel Richelieu (on South Michigan Avenue;. Swamiji's lecture; which is recorded in the Fortnightly yearbook for 1893 as the "History of Buddhism, " was no doubt also delivered at the Richelieu, one of the city's most elegant hotels, long since demolished. This is all we know to date of Swamiji's lecture engagements during his stay in Chicago.


As for his lectures in neighboring towns, we have been able to gather a few reports from the contemporary newspapers. In his letter of October 2, Swamiji wrote that he was to visit Evanston, a town just north of Chicago, where Professor Wright's friend Dr. Bradley lived. The Evanston lecture engagement was made almost immediately after the Parliament in conjunction with Dr. Carl von Bergen, a fellow delegate from Sweden. Dr. von Bergen, to judge from a photograph published in Neely's History of the Parliament of Religions, was a rather formidable, beetle-browed man, bald-headed and bewhiskered. According to the records, he spoke only once at the Parliament, giving on the opening day a short talk in which he made it clear that the broad and tolerant outlook of the Christian church in Sweden long antedated that of the Parliament of Religions. The conception that all religions have a measure of good in them was not new to him. We have reason to believe that von Bergen was one of those delegates who later developed a friendship with Swamiji, for we find that he attended a small and intimate luncheon in his company many months after the Parliament. (See chapter four.)


The first information regarding the Evanston lectures was discovered in the Chicago Evening Journal of September 29, 1893, in the form of a preliminary announcement:

ALTRUISM OF CHRISTIANITY

It Will Be Contrasted with Hindoo Ethics in Lectures at Evanston

Suami Vivekananda, a representative from India to the recent World's Parliament of Religions, and Dr. Carl Von Bergen, a representative from Scandinavia, will give three lectures in Evanston beginning to-morrow evening. The other lectures will be given on Tuesday and Thursday evenings of next week in the Congregational Church. The subjects for Saturday evenings are "Altruism in Christianity; illustrated by the life of Catherine of Siena, the herald of pure Christianity in the middle ages," by Dr. Von Bergen; "Hindu Altruism," by Suami Vivekananda. Tuesday evening, "Monism," Suami Vivekananda; "Lord Shaftesbury, the most earnest philanthropist of our age," Dr. Von Bergen. On this evening John W. Hutchinson will sing a number of the old time songs which have made him so famous. Thursday evening, "Huldine Beamish: the founder of the Edelweiss," Dr. Von Bergen. "Reincarnation," Suami Vivekananda. The first announcements in the Evanston papers of this lecture course appeared in the Press and the Index, September 23, four days before the close of the Parliament. The announcement in the Press read as follows:

NEWS NOTES

SUAMI VIVEKANANDA is the brilliant Hindu monk at the Parliament of religions. He has been the center of attraction on all occasions, not only by his "Baltimore Oriole" dress, but by his beaming countenance, his perfect unconsciousness [sic] and his marvellous eloquence in expounding Hindu philosophy. This brilliant orator has been engaged to give a course of three lectures in Evanston beginning Saturday, Sept. 30.


The announcement in the Index was much the same as that above, and I will not burden the reader with it here, except to say that the Index referred to Swamiji himself—not his dress—as "the Baltimore Oriole." Notices in both papers appeared also on September 30, giving the additional information that admission to one lecture was fifty cents, and to the course of three, one dollar.


Since both Evanston papers were weeklies, it was not until Swamiji and Dr. von Bergen had completed their lectures that the Press and the Index each ran a report on the series. The report in the Index of October 7, which is the more comprehensive, reads as follows (I have omitted those passages which relate only to Dr. Carl von Bergen) :

RELIGIOUS LECTURES

At the Congregational Church, during the past week, there have been given a course of lectures which in nature much resembled the Religious Parliament which has just been completed. The lecturers were Dr. Carl von Bergen, of Sweden, and Suami Vivekananda, the Hindu monk. . . . Swami Vivekananda is a representative from India to the Parliament of Religions. He has attracted a great deal of attention on account of his unique attire in Mandarin colors, by his magnetic presence and by his brilliant oratory and wonderful exposition of Hindu philosophy. His stay in Chicago has been a continual ovation. The course of lectures was arranged to cover three evenings. [The lectures of Saturday and Tuesday evenings are listed without comment; then the article continues:] On Thursday evening Oct. 5, Dr. von Bergen spoke on "Huldine Beamish, the Founder of the King's Daughters of Sweden," and "Reincarnation" was the subject treated by the Hindu monk. The latter was very interesting; the views being those that are not often heard in this part of the world. The doctrine of reincarnation of the soul, while comparatively new and little understood in this country, is well-known in the east, being the foundation of nearly all the religions of those people. Those who do not use it as dogma, do not say anything against it. The main point to be decided in regard to the doctrine is, as to whether we have had a past. We know that we have a present and feel sure of a future. Yet how can there be a present without a past? Modern science has proved that matter exists and continues to exist. Creation is merely a change in appearance. We are not sprung out of nothing. Some regard God as the common cause of everything and judge this a sufficient reason for existence. But in everything we must consider the phenomena; whence and from what matter springs. The same arguments that prove there is a future prove that there is a past. It is necessary that there should be causes other than God's will. Heredity is not able to give sufficient cause. Some say that we are not conscious of a former existence. Many cases have been found where there are distinct reminiscences of a past. And here lies the germ of the theory. Because the Hindu is kind to dumb animals many believe that we believe in the reincarnation of souls in lower orders. They are not able to conceive of kindness to dumb animals being other than the result of superstition. An ancient Hindu priest defines religion as anything that lifts one up. Brutality is driven out, humanity gives way to divinity. The theory of [re]incarnation does not confine man to this small earth. His soul can go to other, higher earths where he will be a loftier being, possessing, instead of five senses, eight, and continuing in this way he will at length approach the acme of perfection, divinity, and will be allowed to drink deep of oblivion in the "Islands of the Blest."


We need not give here the report on the lectures that appeared in the Press of the same date, for nothing additional is to be learned from it except that "Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Herbert entertained the lecturers at her residence Thursday evening, and here the third lectures were delivered." (Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Herbert, incidentally, had spoken before the Universal Religious Unity Congress at the Parliament on the same day, September 23, as had Swamiji.)


Other evidence of Swamiji's lecturing outside of Chicago comes from the following letter, which he wrote on October 10 to Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods, his hostess in Salem during the days before the Parliament:


Dear Mrs. Tannatt Woods:

I received your letter yesterday. Just now I am lecturing about Chicago—and am doing as I think very well—it is ranging from 30 to 80 dollars a lecture and just now I have been so well advertised in Chicago gratis by the Parliament of religions that it is not advisable to give up this field now. To which I am sure you will agree. However I may come soon to Boston but when I cannot say. Yesterday I returned from Streator where I got 87 dollars for a lecture. I have engagements every day this week. And hope more will come by the end of the week.  My love to Mr. Woods and compliments to all our friends.

Yours truly[11]
Vivekananda


Streator is a relatively small city, ninety miles southwest of Chicago. To judge from the announcement which appeared in the Streator Daily Free Press of October 5, the prices of admission to Swamiji's lecture, delivered in the Plumb Opera House, were twenty-five cents for the first floor and thirty-five cents for the balcony. Although in mid-western towns the words "opera house " were applied to any building, however small or shabby, where performances were held—the term being more cultural-sounding and uplifting than the morally questionable "theatre"—the Plumb Opera House seems to have been a fairly sizable place. By a mathematical process, and allowing for the percentage taken by the manager of the house, one can arrive at the conclusion that Swamiji's audience consisted of approximately four hundred people. But although the lecture was well attended, the Daily Free Press of October 9 ran the following somewhat dreary review:

3

The lecture of this celebrated Hindoo at the Opera House, Saturday night, was very interesting. By comparative philology, he sought to establish the long admitted relationship between the Aryan races and their descendants in the new world. He mildly defended the caste system of India which keeps three-fourths of the people in utter and humiliating subjection, and boasted that the India of today was the same India that had watched for centuries the meteoric nations of the world flash across the horizon and sink into oblivion. In common with the people, he loves the past. He lives not for self, but for God. In his country, a premium is placed on beggars and tramps, though not so distinguished in his lecture. When the meal  is prepared, they wait for some man to come along who is first served, then the animals, the servants, the man of the house and lastly the woman of the household. Boys are taken at 10 years of age and are kept by professors for a period of ten to twenty years, educated and sent forth to resume their former occupations or to engage in a life of endless wandering, preaching, and praying, taking along only that which is given them to eat and wear, but never touching money. Vivekananda is of the latter class. Men approaching old age withdraw from the world, and after a period of study and prayer, when they feel themselves sanctified, they also go forward spreading the gospel. He observed that leisure was necessary for intellectual development and scored Americans for not educating the Indians whom Columbus found in a state of savagery. In this he exhibited a lack of knowledge of conditions. His talk was lamentably short and much was left unsaid of seeming greater importance than much that was said.


It is clear from the above report that the American press, for one reason or another, did not always give Swamiji an enthusiastic reception.


To date, these reports are all we have been able to gather in connection with his side trips from Chicago, although undoubtedly there are others waiting to be found.

4

The reader may have formed some idea of Swamiji's state of mind during this period from his letters to Professor Wright. Additional new material indicates what a blessed state it was—a state which, despite his incessant activity, was one of perfect peace. How fortunate were those who knew him at this time, for his inner serenity was such that it shone out as a blessing and a revelation. In an excerpt from a newly discovered letter written to Swamiji by Mrs. Hale she recalls Swamiji as . . . the great and glorious soul that came to the Parliament of Religions, so full of love of God, that his face shone with Divine light, whose words were fire, whose very presence created an atmosphere of harmony and purity, thereby drawing all souls to himself.[12]

One look at a photograph which has recently come to our hands is enough to show us something of what Mrs. Hale meant, for one cannot fail to be moved by the childlike tenderness of Swamiji's appearance, and by the wonderful peace and calm of his expression. Inasmuch as this picture was copyrighted in Washington by the photographer, it was evidently taken after Swamiji had become famous, that is, after the first day of the Parliament. It has come to us along with a group of five other photographs,[13] all of which, there is reason to believe, were taken in September of 1893, and all of which have been published. One of these is no doubt familiar to the reader; it is that in which Swamiji stands with arms folded across his chest and which was used as a colored poster during Parliament days. All six pictures are autographed by Swamiji and inscribed with English translations from Sanskrit mottoes, some with the original Sanskrit written in Bengali characters. The mottoes are as follows:


1.Ajaramaravat prajnah vidyam
  arthancha chintaye
  Grihita-iva kesheshu mrityuna
  dharmam acharet 


When in search of knowledge or prosperity think that you would never have death or disease, and when worshipping God think that death's hand is in your hair.


2.Eka eva suhrid dharma 

  nidhanepyanuyati yah

Virtue is the only friend which follows us even beyond the grave. 

Everything else ends with death.


3.One infinite pure and holy—beyond thought beyond qualities I bow down to thee 

4.Samata sarva-bhuteshu etanmuktasya Lakshanam

Equality in all beings is the sign of the free


5.Thou art the only treasure in this world


6.Thou art the father the lord the  

 mother the husband and love


It was through the kindness of the late Swami Vishwananda, then in charge of the Vivekananda Vedanta Society in Chicago, that these photographs and other invaluable material regarding Swamiji came to our hands, and the story of how this material was discovered by the Swami is worth telling here, for it is an example of those coincidences that occur so frequently in matters concerning Swamiji. Swami Vishwananda told us that a young man, unconnected with Vedanta, had received from his grandmother a bundle of unpublished letters, photographs, and other material, all pertaining to Swami Vivekananda. Knowing that his grandmother had cherished them, the young man had kept them, and indeed might still possess them, or perhaps by this time have discarded them, had it not been that a friend of his was a student of Swami Vishwananda's. How this friend came to know of the bundle of old documents is not known, but one day she told Swami Vishwananda of its existence. The Swami forthwith visited the young man and found, with what joy we can imagine, a veritable feast of hitherto unknown material! The young man gladly gave him the bundle, which had originally belonged, the Swami learned, to the McKindley sisters, nieces of Mr. and Mrs. Hale. It is such unlooked-for and fortuitous discoveries which give us hope that eventually more hidden material regarding Swamiji will come to light, slowly pushing its way up through the years.


But to return to Swamiji as he was during the Chicago days following the Parliament. Perhaps the clearest indication of his exalted state is given in a letter that Swami Vishwananda received in 1939 from Sarat Chandra Chakravarti, a disciple of Swamiji's whose diary is published in the Complete Works. A translated portion of this letter reads as follows:


. . . Swamiji once told me that one moonlight night when he was on the shore of Lake Michigan his mind began to merge in Brahman. Suddenly he saw Sri Ramakrishna and he remembered the work for which he had come to this world, and then his mind came down and again turned toward the fulfilment of his mission. I recorded this in my diary, but I did not think it necessary to make it public; therefore I have not published it as yet. I am letting only you know. . .[14]


In what a transcendent state Swamiji lived at the very time when the world was his for the asking! The doors of the rich, the socially prominent, the brilliant were all open to him, and everywhere he was in demand. But his difficulty, it would seem, was not to lift his mind above the world that pressed about him on all sides but, for the sake of his work, to hold it down. It was always so with him; yet during the first few months of his stay in America the difficulty was perhaps at its most obvious. One recalls in this connection the following passage from Sister Nivedita, as quoted in the Life:


The Swami never seemed, it must be remembered, to be doing tapasya, but his whole life was a concentration so intense that for any one else it would have been a most terrible tapasya. When he first went to America, it was extremely difficult for him to control the momentum that carried him into meditation. "When he sits down to meditate," had said one whose guest he was in India, "in two minutes he feels nothing, though his body be black with mosquitoes." With this habit thus deeply ingrained, he landed in America, that country of railways and tramways, and complicated engagement lists, and at first it was no uncommon thing for him to be carried two or three times round a tram circuit, only disturbed periodically by the conductor asking for the fare. He was very much ashamed of such occurrences, however, and worked hard to overcome them.[15]


During the months Swamiji remained in Chicago after the Parliament of Religions he must have been the house guest of various friends. He himself writes of this period: "Many of the handsomest houses in this city are open to me. All the time I am living as a guest of somebody or other." As we have seen, one home that was always open to him and where he stayed both during and after the Parliament was that of Mr. and Mrs. John B. Lyon at 262 Michigan Avenue, and to judge from the fact that a letter dated November 19, 1893, which he wrote to Mrs. Tannatt Woods (see chapter four) was written on stationery bearing the letterhead "George W. Hale, 541 Dearborn Avenue, Chicago," it is almost certain that he was a guest of the Hale family for at least a part of the time.* (2)The Hales were excellent hosts, treating him from the first as a cherished member of the family and understanding him, perhaps not fully, but with the unquestioning  insight of love.

*(2) A letter to an Indian friend, dated November 15, 1893 was also written on the Hale's stationery (Original Letters, Belur Math) 

The Hale house (on Dearborn between Burton Place and Schiller) was a block and a half from Lincoln Park, and there Swamiji sometimes went to sit in the sun and open air. A touching and revealing incident took place during these outings. It seems that each day when Swamiji sat in the park, a young woman and a little girl six years old would pass by on their way to the market. One day the woman, no doubt convinced that the young Hindu was kind and trustworthy, asked him if she might leave her child in his charge while she went about her marketing. Swamiji assured her that she might, and thenceforth every morning that they met in the park, Swamiji took the little girl into his care. But the story does not end here. When the child had grown to fifteen or sixteen, her mother came upon a picture of Swamiji, of whose fame she had by that time learned, and allowing it to her daughter, asked, "Do you remember your friend?" She remembered; for who knowing Swamiji, even at the age of six, could forget? Later, after she had married and moved to Philadelphia, the memory of Swamiji again became vivid in her mind, drawing her to spiritual life. She became a student of Swami Akhilananda, who used to visit that city now and then to meet with a group of devotees.[16] How many small happenings such as that of a mother leaving her child in his charge took place throughout Swamiji's visit to America, how many chance contacts he had with people whose lives were translated by his touch or glance, we can only guess.

The Hale family were perhaps the most fortunate of all; for, as is known, not only was Swamiji their guest from time to time, but he made their home his headquarters during almost all of 1894, before the pivot of his activities moved eastward to the Atlantic Coast. It was on George W. Hale's letter paper and thus, presumably, during one of his stays at Dearborn Street, that he jotted down in pencil a series of notes on the subjects of reason, faith, and love which have recently come to light. The date of the manuscript cannot be accurately determined, but inasmuch as Swamiji wrote these notes in the sanctuary that the Hales offered him in Chicago, I think their reproduction here will not be out of place. I am giving them exactly as they appear in the original:


Reason—has its limits its base—

its degeneration. The walls round it—

Agnosticism. Atheism. But must not stop

The beyond is acting upon influencing us every 

moment—the sky the stars acting upon us—even

those not seen. Therefore must go beyond—reason 

alone can't go—finite can not get at the infinite 


Faith its degeneration when alone—bigotry 

fanaticism--sectarianism. Narrowing

finite :. can not get to the infinite 

Sometimes gain in intensity but looses [sic] in 

extensity—and in bigots & fanatics become 

worship of his own pride & vanity


Is there no other way— there is Love

it never degenerates—peaceful softening 

ever-widening—the universe is too small 

for its expansiveness.


We can not define it we can only trace

it through its development and describe its 

surroundings


It is at first—what the gravitation

is to the external world—tendency to unification 

forms and conventionalities are its death.

Worship through forms—methods—services 

forms—up to then no love.


When love comes method dies.

Human language and human Forms

God as father, God as mother, God as

the lover—Surata—vardhanam etc. Solomon's Song of 

Songs—Dependence and independence


Love Love—

Love the chaste wife— Anasuya Sita—

not as hard dry duty but as ever pleasing 

love—Sita worship—


The madness of Love--God intoxicated man

The allegory of Radha—misunderstood 

The restriction more increase—

Lust is the death of love

Self is the death of love 

individual to general 

Concrete to abstract—to absolute 

The praying Mahomedan and the girl 

The Sympathy—Kavir 

The Christian nun from whose hands blood came 

The Mahomedan Saint

Every particle seeking its own complement

When it finds that it is at rest

Every man seeking—happiness—& stability

The search is real but the objects are themselves 

but happiness is coming to them momentary at least 

through the search of these objects.

The only object unchangeable and the only 

complement of character and aspirations of the

human Soul is God

Love is struggle of a human Soul to find its

complement, its stable equilibrium its infinite rest.[17]


While Swamiji was in Chicago, word of his great and saving spiritual power spread from person to person, and very likely many came to him for private interviews, seeking help and guidance and finding in his presence not only the solace of profound and unjudging wisdom, but, as well, the understanding friendship of one who was not divorced from an interest in the life around him. He was father, son, teacher, and friend.*(3) From the few facts we know of his days in Chicago after the Parliament we can form some sort of picture of what he must have been like. We see him in the vigor of youth, his face shining with divine light, fulfilling many lecture engagements, and no doubt many social engagements, taking a keen interest in Western life and institutions, and explaining India's life and culture in their true significance. That fraction of his mind with which he attended to the world was brilliantly alert—indeed, was in itself far more than a match for the keenest intellect. But we see also that this fraction was informed and illumined by a far larger part that lay quiet and untouched beneath the surface, always absorbed in God, ready to pour out blessings upon and alter the lives of those who came to him. How often Swamiji verged upon nirvikalpa samadhi, only to be drawn back, by Sri Ramakrishna, or by his own love and compassion for man, in order that he might fulfill his mission here, we cannot know; but we can assume that he always lived on the borderline between the relative and the Absolute, as a prophet of his supreme eminence must.

5

It is still not known exactly when Swamiji felt it advisable to sign up with a lecture bureau. Unfortunately, we cannot be much more precise than the Life, which tells us that "it must have been in the very late autumn or the early winter months when, to use his own expression, he 'began to whirl to and fro.' " Although it must indeed have been around this time that the lecture tour started, Swamiji used the expression "I was whirling to and fro" at a much later date and in connection with his rapid travel between New York and Boston.18 He actually tells very little about his midwestern "whirlings," or when and why he had joined a lecture bureau. But if his purpose was to broadcast the truth regarding Indian religion, culture, and customs, which had been so systematically and thoroughly misrepresented in America by Christian missionaries, and if he felt that he must earn money both for his own support and for the work in India, then to engage himself with a bureau would seem the logical step for him to take. Then, as now, lecture bureaus, concert agencies, impresarios, and so on were necessary evils to anyone who would come before the general public, there being no other way to make coordinated engagements in many towns. The expedience of this move may have occurred to Swamiji as early as November 2, for in a letter written on that date he speaks of the fact that "a Christian lady from Poona, Miss Sorabji, and the Jain representative, Mr. Gandhi, are going to remain longer in the country and make lecture tours." From this we can gather that while Swamiji had not yet made any definite plans, he may have been considering the advantages of enlisting with a bureau.

One can be fairly certain that Mr. Slayton, the head of the lecture bureau under which Swamiji placed himself, knew that he had a prize on his lists. If he had not known it from reading the Chicago newspapers, he learned it from the following letter, written to him by the Reverend Dr. W. H. Thomas, a Congregational minister. Mr. Slayton was later to use the text of the letter by way of advertisement.


Dear Mr. Slayton: Of the many learned men in the East who took part in the great World's Parliament of Religion, Vivekananda was the most popular favorite, and when it was known that he was to speak thousands were turned away for want of room. Nor was it curiosity alone that drew the masses; for those who heard him once were so impressed by the magnetism of his fine presence, the charm and power of his eloquence, his perfect command of the English language and the deep interest in what he had to say, that they desired all the more to hear him again. It will be the opportunity of a life time for the cities of our land to see and hear this noble, earnest, loving Brahman dressed in the costume of his order, and telling the true story of the religions and customs of his far-off country. Affectionately, W. H. Thomas.[19]


Mr. Slayton somehow persuaded Swamiji to sign a three year contract. It is in a sense difficult to understand this, for although Swamiji was uncertain of the future at this time, he had little intention of remaining in America for three years, and certainly would not have wanted to commit himself to do so. It is also difficult to understand why no one warned him that almost as a matter of course attempts would be made to exploit him, unless it were that his friends were as naive in this respect as was he. In any case, if one is to believe what one reads in newspapers, he did sign a long-term contract. This information is to be found in the Appeal-Avalanche of January 21, 1894, a Memphis, Tennessee, newspaper. "He is under contract with the 'Slayton Lyceum Bureau,' of Chicago," this paper reported, "to fill a three-years' engagement in this country." In this connection it might be mentioned that in the "Memoirs of Sister Christine" it is said, "after the Parliament of Religions, Swami Vivekananda was induced to place himself under the direction of Pond's Lecture Bureau and make a lecture tour of the United States.'[20] Pond's Lecture Bureau was a well-known agency with headquarters in New York and was not the same as the Slayton Lyceum Bureau of Chicago. It is now definitely established that Swamiji signed up with Slayton Lyceum Bureau. But this knowledge is not so valuable as one could wish, for to date one finds no trace of the Bureau's old files. One fears they have been destroyed and with them the information that could enable us to trace Swamiji's itinerary and follow his footsteps in the Midwest. However, even without this help, we are able to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge of his tour, though to be sure many remain.


One thing that should perhaps be of some consolation to those who would like to see all the gaps filled in the story of Swamiji's life is that his brother monks and friends in India had an even more difficult time than we in attempting to keep track of him. The following letter of some poignancy was written at the direction of friends who longed to hear of the doings and triumphs of their beloved Swamiji in this strange land. It was addressed to Thos. Cook and Son, Calcutta, and dated March 28, 1894:

Dear Sirs—

Swami Vivekananda
Care Mr. Geo. W. Hale
54I Dearborn Ave
Chicago

The above Hindu monk has been travelling under Messrs Tho. Cook & Sons Agency. Your Bombay people arranged last year for his passage to America where he went to represent the Hindu religion at the Parliament of Religions held in connection with the World's Fair at Chicago---Swami Vivekananda is reported to have delivered several Iectures in America, a few of which only are reproduced or noticed in the Indian papers—But as the extracts and notices that appeared here are believed to be unsatisfactory, the brother monks and admirers of Swamiji are anxious to obtain all the American papers or cuttings thereof as most convenient containing all the speeches that have been delivered in and about Chicago, and in fact wherever he spoke in America, these to include all newspaper notices or criticisms both for and against that are known to have appeared, but not to include the Report of the Parliament of Religions issued by the Secretary of the Chicago Exhibition, a copy of which has already been secured from here. Under the circumstances the undersigned on behalf of the brother monks and admirers of Swami Vivekananda shall be very much obliged if you will kindly arrange, owing to the excellent facilities you possess on a/c of your numerous agencies and branches, with your people at Chicago for the collection of papers and pamphlets named above together with one or two copies of photos if they are in circulation, and have them all forwarded to your care, the express thereof shall be paid by Swamiji's admirers through the undersigned. Further the only address known of Swami Vivekananda is noted as above. It is quite possible that Swamiji has or will have left the place ere this reaches your Chicago Agent, therefore I beg to ask you to kindly write and inform your Chicago Agent to put himself in communication with Mr. Hale or any other party regarding the movements of Swami Vivekananda, who according to the rules of Hindu Sannyasi (ascetic) will not write and inform of his whereabouts, which information however is so anxiously looked for by his admirers and brother monks

Yours obediently[21]

Kali Krishna Dutta

For many years it seemed evident that Swamiji did not communicate with his brother disciples until he had been in America for over seven months, or until March 18, 1894, the date assigned to the published version (in both the Bengali and the English translation) of what is clearly his first letter to any one of them.[22] However, one finds that on February 18, 1894, Swami Ramakrishnananda wrote to Munshi Jagmohanlal, the private secretary of the Maharaja of Khetri, giving him a resume of the first, recently-received, letter from Swamiji.*(4)Swami Ramakrishnananda's resume goes into some detail, and there can be no doubt that it refers to the same letter as that which has all along been dated March 19; nor can there be any doubt that this letter was written not in March but probably around the middle of January, the mail taking in those days about a month to go from America to India.*(5)

*(4)Swami Ramakrishnananda's letter to Munshi Jagmohanlal was first published in Swami Vivekananda-- A Forgotten Chapter of His Life by Beni Shanker Sharma. The date of this important letter has long been uncertain, but recent examinations of the original have shown the correct date to be February 18, 1894. In connection with the date of Swamiji's first letter from America to Swami Ramakrishnananda, it may be noted tin its opening paragraph, Swamiji mentions a letter from Haridas V Desai, we learn elsewhere (Complete Works 8:297), he had received " a few days" before January 29. This tends to confirm that Swamiji's letter to his brother disciple was written in the latter half of January. It was incidentally, not Swamiji who misdated his letter March 19; The original Bengali letter bears no date at all as was often the case with his letters to his brothers. There is evidence that the date March 19, 1894 should very probably be assigned to the second letter Swamiji wrote to Sri Ramakrishnananda (Complete Works 6:282) which is also undated.
*(5) On December 27, 1893, The Indian Mirror printed a letter to the Editor from "Trigunatit (Swami Trigunatita, one of Swami Vivekananda's brother disciples). The letter contained quotations from the New York Critique(Critic) and the New York Herald in praise of Swamiji. One might infer from this that Swamiji had sent these clippings to his brother disciples to let them know of his doings. It is more probable, however, that the clippings or the quotations from them, came to the knowledge of Swami Trigunatita through Swamiji's letter of November 15, 1893 (wrongly dated November 15, 1894 in the Complete Works, Volume eight) to Haridas V. Desai, which contained the same quotations exactly, no more and no less. " I cease from quoting more", Swamiji had written to the Dewan, "lest you think me conceited; but this was neccessary to you who have become more nearly frogs in the well and would not see how the world is going on elsewhere. I do not mean you personally, my noble friend, but our nation in general."

But even though this letter was apparently written after mid January rather than in March, many months had passed since Swamiji had left India, months during which he had written at least three times to his Madras disciples, and the question. remains why he had waited so long before communicating with his brothers. Had he grown out of the habit of writing to them through a long separation? Or was he not yet prepared to offer them the new program which was taking shape in his mind, wanting perhaps to initiate it through his own disciples? Or, again, was he waiting for a divine command before asking his brothers to follow his ideas? Yet another and more simple explanation presents itself: during this time most of the monastic disciples of Sri Ramakrishna were still wandering through India and were as hard to trace as was Swamiji himself. The difficulty with this answer is that when Swamiji wanted to communicate his plans to his brother monks, he found their dispersion over India no particular drawback. It was possibly in April of 1894 that he wrote to Swami Shivananda asking that he call all the monks back to the Math to begin work. Shortly after receiving this letter, Swami Shivananda met Swami Brahmananda and Swami Turiyananda in  Lucknow and 'relayed' Swamiji's request to them. Swami Turiyananda returned to Calcutta in August, while Swami Brahmananda went first to Brindavan, not leaving there for Calcutta until November or December. Gradually all returned. During 1894 and the early part of 1895 Swamiji's letters to his brothers were not many, but during the latter part of 1895 and the first part of 1896 we find him writing to them frequently. These letters did not, it is true, give much news of his external life, but they gave something better-the power of his inspiration and vision that was to revolutionize the concept of monasticism in India.


ⓘ
[1] Swami Vivekananda to Professor John H. Wright, October 2, 1893, VSNG.
[2] Cornelia Conger, “Memoirs of Swami Vivekananda,” P.B., May 1956, pp. 205-8. Talk by Cornelia Conger at the Vivekananda Society, Chicago, January, 1971.
[3] Life, 1 : 448.
[4] Complete Works, 5 : 25.
[5] Complete Works,1 : 127.
[6] 2 : 186. Another version of Swamiji’s reply to Ingersoll is given in Complete Works, 7:77 and Life, 1 :449-
[7] Life, 1 :448.
[8] Henrietta Holmes Earl, “Vedanta Work in America and Its Leader Swami Vivekananda,” P.B., September 193 3, pp. 447-49.
[9] Complete Works, 8:327. (This letter should bear the date November 15, 1893, not 1894 as in the Complete Works.)
[10] Swami Vivekananda to Professor John H. Wright, October 26, 1893, VSNC.
[11] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods, October 10, 1893, VSNG.
[12].Mrs. George W. Hale to Swami Vivekananda, date unknown, VSNC.
[13].Photographs, VSNC.
[14].This letter from Sarat Chandra Chakravarti to Swami Vishw-ananda was translated in part by Swami Ashokananda for use in this book. The present whereabouts of the original letter is not known.
[15].Life, 1: 446 (See also Nivedita, The Master as I Saw Him, p. 226.)
[16].Her name was Mrs. Agnes C. Ewing. She died in 1945.
[17].Notes in Swami Vivekananda’s hand, VSNC.[18].Complete Works, 5 : 33.
[19].Wisconsin State Journal, November 18,1893.
[20].“Memoirs of Sister Christine,” P.B., February 1931, p. 57.
[21].K. K. Dutta to Thomas Cook and Son on behalf of Swami Vivekananda’s brother monks and friends, March 28, 1894, Swami Nikhilananda Collection.
[22].Complete Works, 6 : 250-56.


↑ Contents

1.4 THE MIDWESTERN TOUR

The first definite knowledge we have of the date on which Swamiji left Illinois to widen his field of activity is contained in a letter he wrote to Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods on November 19, 1893. It read in full:

Dear Mrs. Woods—

Excuse my delay in answering your letter. I do not know when I will be able to see you again. I am starting tomorrow for  Madison and Minneapolis. The English gentleman you speak of is Dr. Momerie of London. He is a well-known worker amongst  the poor of London and is a very sweet man: You perhaps do not know that the English church was the only religious  denomination in the world who did not send to us a representative and Dr. Momerie came to the parliament in spite of the  Archbishop of Canterbury's denouncing of theParliamentof religions.  

My love for you, my kind friend, and your noble son is all the same whether I write pretty often or not.

Can you express my books and the cover-all to the care of Mr. Hale? I am in need of them, the express will be paid here.The Blessings of the Lordon you and yours.    

Ever your friend,
Vivekananda

P.S. If you have the occasion to write to Miss Sanborn and others of our friends in the east kindly give them my deepest respects.                                                                                                                                                              

Yours truly[1]

                                                                                                                                                                           Vivekananda

Swamiji's departure from Chicago for Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, no doubt marks the beginning of his famous and important lecture tour of the Midwest and South, which lasted until April of 1894. But although this tour is famous and important, we have been able to gather information about Swamiji's lectures in only four cities prior to his visit to Detroit in February of 1894. We have found that he visited not only Madison and Minneapolis in November of 1893 but, in the same month, Des Moines. Through a more recent finding we have also learned that in mid-December he returned to Minneapolis to deliver an additional lecture there. Another discovery is that Swamiji visited Memphis, Tennessee, in January of 1894. Thus today we have information regarding five different engagements of his tour in the winter of 1893-94, and while these findings by no means fill all the gaps in our knowledge, they do, I believe, give a more or less representative idea of his tour as a whole.

Madison, Swamiji's first stop in his tour, was 140 train-miles northwest of Chicago and had a population of about thirteen thousand. His short visit there (not even an overnight stay) is described in a letter he wrote to Mrs. Hale from Minneapolis the following day. (On its envelope someone was to write: "Lovely letter—with benediction." And indeed, Swamiji was already dear to the Hale family, and they to him.) His letter read in full:

                                                                                                                                                                            Minneapolis
21 Nov. '93 

Dear Mother

I reached Madison safely went to a hotel and sent a message to Mr Updike: He came to see me. He is a Congregational and so of course was not very friendly at first but in the course of an hour or so became very kind to me—and took me over the whole place and the University. I had a fine audience and 100$. Immediately after the lecture I took the night train to Minneapolis. I tried to get the clergymen's ticket but they could not give me any not being the headquarters. The thing to be done is to get a permit from every head office of every line in Chicago. Perhaps it is possible for Mr. Hale to get the permits for me. If it is so I hope he will take the trouble to send them over to me to Minneapolis if they can reach me within [the] 25th, or to Des Moines if within the 29th. Else I would do it the next time in Chicago. I have taken the money in a draft on the bank which cost me 40c.

May you be blessed forever my kind friend,  you and your whole family have made such a heavenly impression on me as I would carry all my life.

Yours sincerely [2]
Vivekananda

Swamiji's lecture at the Congregational Church in Madison was reported upon somewhat meagerly in the Wisconsin State Journal the following day:

2

The lecture at the Congregational church last night by the celebrated Hindoo monk, Vivekananda, was an extremely interesting one, and contained much of sound philosophy and good religion. Pagan though he be, Christianity may well follow many of his teachings. His creed is as wide as the universe, taking in all religions, and accepting truth wherever it may be found. Bigotry and superstition and idle ceremony, he declared, have no place in "the religions of India."

A more satisfactory report of this lecture is to be found in the Daily Cardinal of November 21—a students' newspaper of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. It read in full:

RELIGIONS OF INDIA

Viva Kananda, the Hindoo Orator Delivers an Interesting Lecture

A crowded house greeted Viva Kananda at the Congregational Church last evening. The speaker was attired in native costume, which consisted of a cream turban, with yellow gown and cardinal sash.


The first part of the lecture was devoted to illustrating the many resemblances of Sanscrit, the language of the Hindoos, to that of English. They have no word in their language which means salvation; to them it is freedom from bondage. They believe that man's real nature is perfect, and that cause and effect controls all except God. Religion was aptly illustrated by the story of the blind men who each felt of a portion of a huge elephant, and each thought the animal like the particular part he felt of it; so with religion each of the various sects have a part of the whole truth, while truth itself is infinite and no man can say "I have seen it all."


The Hindoo belief was shown to be one of the most charitable of beliefs. Persecution is something unknown in India; there is no such word in their language. The lecturer challenged the world to show an instance in Hindoo progress, of a Christian missionary being persecuted. A Greek historian, writing of them said: "No Hindoo man is dishonest, no Hindoo woman unchaste."


Viva Kananda came to this country from India in the interest of the world's congress of religions, and his lecture last evening on the "Religions of India," was an inspiration to all who heard him. He has a pleasant, clearcut, dusky face, and a decidedly impressive manner and bearing. His voice is low and pleasant, with a secret something which rivets your attention at the start.

From Madison, Swamiji travelled overnight some two hundred and fifty miles farther northwest to Minneapolis, Minnesota, a city with a population of about a hundred and sixty-five thousand and of no little importance. Indeed, Minneapolis and its "Twin City," St. Paul, on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, are said to have constituted the "regional capital of the old Northwest." Although Swamiji arrived on the morning of Tuesday, November 21, he apparently did not lecture in the city until the twenty-fourth. Meanwhile, he seems to have been with friends, unknown to us today, who showed him the beauties of a city, a lake, and a river transformed by snow and ice into a wonderland. He had what was most probably his first sleigh ride behind steaming horses and on November 23 saw the Minnehaha Falls, more beautiful in winter, some said, than in summer—"a solid mass of rugged ice fifty feet high, glistening in the bright sunlight [3] " On that same day he was sought out and interviewed by a reporter from the Minneapolis Tribune, who was charmed by this "Priest of Brahma," who, in turn, was still entranced by his awakened memories of Hiawatha. (The full text of the interview can be found in Appendix B.) That Swamiji thoroughly enjoyed the sub-zero weather in Minneapolis (for now he had clothes and overshoes to withstand it), we learn from his second letter to Mrs. Hale, which read in full:


Minneapolis 

24th Nov'93


Dear Mother—

I am still in Minneapolis. I am to lecture this afternoon and day after tomorrow go to Des Moines

The day I came here they had their first snow and it snowed all through the day and night and I had great use for the arctics.*(1) I went to see the frozen Minihaha falls. They are very beautiful. The temperature today is 21 below zero but I had been out sleighing and enjoyed it immensely though. I am not the least afraid of losing the tips of my ears or nose.

*(1)For the benefit of modern readers, “arctics” are rubber overshoes. Mrs. Hale had evidently supplied Swamiji with a pair for his winter travels.

The snow scenery here has pleased me more than any other sight in this country.
I saw people skating on a frozen lake yesterday.
I am doing well hoping this will find you all the same.

I remain

Yours obediently[4] 

Vivekananda


Swamiji gave his first public lecture in Minneapolis in the evening (not afternoon, as he wrote) of Friday, November 24. The next day, the Minneapolis Star ran the following report:

3

Its Principles and Truths Set Forth in a Clear and Forceful Manner in a Lecture by Swami Vive Kananda.

"Brahminism" in all its subtle attraction, because of its embodiment of ancient and truthful principles, was the subject which held an audience in closest attention last evening at the First Unitarian Church, while Swami Vive Kananda expounded the Hindoo faith. It was an audience which included thoughtful women and men, for the lecturer had been invited by the "Peripatetics," and among the friends who shared the privilege with them were ministers of varied denominations, as well as students and scholars. Vive Kananda is a Brahmin priest, and he occupied the platform in his native garb, with caftan on head, orange colored coat confined at the waist with a red sash, and red nether garments.


He presented his faith in all sincerity, speaking slowly and clearly, convincing his hearers by quietness of speech rather than by rapid action. His words were carefully weighed, and each carried its meaning direct. He offered the simplest truths of the Hindoo religion, and while he said nothing harsh about Christianity, he touched upon it in such a manner as to place the faith of Brahma before all. The all-pervading thought and leading principle of the Hindoo religion is the inherent divinity of the soul; the soul is perfect, and religion is the manifestation of divinity already existing in man. The present is merely a line of demarcation between the past and future, and of the two tendencies in man, if the good preponderates he will move to a higher sphere, if the evil has power, he degenerates. These two are continually at work within him; what elevates him is virtue, that which degenerates is evil.


Kananda will speak at the First Unitarian Church tomorrow morning.

It should perhaps be mentioned here that the Peripatetics' invitation to Swamiji does not preclude the possibility of his being engaged at this time by a lecture bureau; for it was a function of lecture bureaus to arrange such engagements. On the other hand, his schedule appears to have been more or less flexible. For instance, his Sunday morning lecture at the Unitarian Church was evidently not scheduled in advance. Swamiji did not mention it in his letter of November 24 to Mrs. Hate. Indeed, as seems clear in the following report, which appeared in the Minneapolis Journal of Monday, November 27, he gave it in response to popular demand:

4

Swami Vivekananda Addresses a Minneapolis Audience.
Mercenaries in Religion
In this Way He Characterizes the Western Nations—
He Tells About the Religions of India.

The Unitarian church was crowded yesterday morning by an audience anxious to learn something of eastern religious thought as outlined by Swami Vivekananda, a Brahmin priest, who was prominent in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago last summer. The distinguished representative of the Brahmin faith was brought to Minneapolis by the Peripatetic Club, and he addressed that body last Friday evening. He was induced to remain until this week, in order that he might deliver the address yesterday. Vivekananda is a typical Hindeu, dark-skinned, well rounded features, and a flashing eye that gives evidence of a quick intellect. He appeared in his picturesque native dress. He occupied the platform with Dr. H. M: Simmons, the pastor, the opening prayer was sung, Vivekanandai following the lines closely, and then Dr. Simmons read from Paul's lesson on faith, hope and charity, and "the greatest of these is charity," supplementing that reading by a selection from the Brahmin scripture which teaches the same lesson, and also a selection from the Moslem faith, and poems from the Hindu literature, all of which are in harmony with Paul's utterances.


After a second hymn Swami Vivekanandi was introduced. He stepped to the edge of the platform and at once had his audience interested by the recital of a Hindu story. He said in excellent English:


"I will tell you a story of five blind men. There was a procession in a village in India, and all the people turned out to see the procession, and specially the gaily caparisoned elephant. The people were delighted, and as the five blind men could not see, they determined to touch the elephant that they might acquaint themselves with its form. They were given the privilege, and after the procession had passed, they returned home together with the people, and they began to talk about the elephant. 'It was just like a wall,' said one. 'No it wasn't,' said another, 'it was like a piece of rope.' 'You are mistaken,' said a third, 'I felt him and it was just like a serpent.' The discussion grew excited and the fourth declared the elephant was like a pillow. The argument soon broke into more angry expressions and the five blind men took to fighting. Along came a man with two eyes, and he says, 

'My friends, what is the matter?' The disputation was explained, whereupon the new comer said, 'Men, you are all right: the trouble is you touched the elephant at different points. The wall was the side, the rope was the tail, the serpent was the trunk and the toes were the pillow. Stop your quarreling; you are all right, only you have been viewing the elephant from different standpoints."'.


Religion, he said, had become involved in such a quarrel. The people of the West thought they had the only religion of God, and the people of the East held the same prejudice. Both were wrong; God was in every religion. There were many bright criticisms on Western thought. The Christians were characterized as having a "shopkeeping religion." They were always begging of God—" Oh, God, give me this and give me that; Oh, God, do this and do that" The Hindu couldn't understand this. He thought it wrong to be begging of God. Instead of begging, the religious man should give. The Hindu believed in giving to God, to his fellows, instead of asking God to give to them. He had observed that the people of the West, very many of them, thought a good deal of God, so long as they got along all right, but when reverse came, then God was forgotten: not so with the Hindu, who had come to look upon God as a being of love. The Hindu faith recognized the motherhood of God as well as the fatherhood, because the former was a better fulfilment of the idea of love. The Western Christian would work all the week for the dollar, and when he succeeded he would pray, "Oh, God, we thank thee for giving us this benefit," and then he would put all the money into his pocket; the Hindu would make the money and then give it to God by helping the poor and the less fortunate. And so comparisons were made between the ideas of the West and the ideas of the East. In speaking of God, Vivekananda said in substance: "You people of the West think you have God. What is it to have God? If you have Him, why is it that so much criminality exists, that nine out of ten people are hypocrites? Hypocrisy cannot exist where God is. You have your palaces for the worship of God, and you attend them in part for a time once a week, but how few go to worship God. It is the fashion in the West to attend church, and many of you attend for no other reason. Have you then, you people of the West, any right to lay exclusive claim to take possession of God?"


Here the speaker was interrupted by spontaneous applause. He proceeded: "We of the Hindu faith believe in worshipping God for love's sake, not for what he gives us, but because God is love, and no nation, no people, no religion has God until it is willing to worship Him for love's sake: You of the West are practical in business, practical in great inventions, but we of the East are practical in religion. You make commerce your business; we make religion our business. If you will come to India and talk with the workman in the fields, you will find he has no opinion on politics. He knows nothing of politics. But you talk to him of religion, and the humblest knows about monotheism, deism and all the isms of religion. You ask: 'What government do you live under?' and he will reply: 'I don't know. I pay my taxes, and that's all I know about it' I have talked with your laborers, your farmers, and I find that in politics they are all posted. They are either Democrat or Republican, and they know whether they prefer free silver or a gold standard. But you talk to them of religion; they are like the Indian farmer, they don't know, they attend such a church, but they don't know what it believes; they just pay their pew rent, and that's all they know about it—or God."


The superstitions of India were admitted, "but what nation doesn't have them?" he asked. In summing up, he held that the nations had been looking at God as a monopoly. All nations had God, and any impulse for good was God. The western people   as well as the eastern people, must learn to "want God," and this "want" was compared to the man under water, struggling for air—he wanted it, he couldn't live without it. When the people of the West "wanted" God in that manner then they would be welcome in India, because the missionaries would then come to them with God, not with the idea that India knows not God, but with love in their hearts and not dogma.


From Minneapolis, without even a day's rest, Swamiji travelled two hundred and sixty miles south to Des Moines, the capital city of Iowa. It was most probably on this trip that he engaged in conversation with a rugged and god-fearing Presbyterian cowboy, who did indeed know his religion, or part of it, and who, on learning that his fellow traveller was not a Christian, stated with finality that he (Swamiji) was bound to end up in hell. Yet, before long, the same cowboy was confessing a long-held belief in, of all things, reincarnation! Small as this incident was, it opens up to the imagination an aspect of Swamiji's travels that one is apt to overlook. In attempting to follow him on his lecture tour, the mind leaps with ease from one town or city to the next; but Swamiji spent long hours in day coaches and no doubt, when traversing the wide distances between lecture stops, in "family tourist cars" which, as a Great Northern Railway brochure boasted, "look like regular sleepers, being built on the same plan, but not having the same ornate finish, the upholstering being in leather instead of plush'[5] On such trips he could not but have struck up friendships with his fellow travellers, for those cars were "family" cars indeed. "There is a spirit of fraternity and friendliness apparent at once in the well-filled tourist car," the same brochure went on to say. "People get acquainted quickly and easily. They share their delicacies, their story-books and newspapers, and their hopes and fears with one another, stroll out of the cars in company when there is a stop, to gather flowers  or to 'take in the town,' and in all ways fraternize as though they had all known each other for years.'[6] In the trains that clacked along, rarely at a greater speed than forty miles per hour, through wintry prairies and bleak little towns, Swamiji must have had many an extraordinary conversation with Americans of all types: with cowboys and farmers, traveling salesmen and entertainers, businessmen, laborers, and politicians, preachers, reformers, and those in need of reform. How many encounters he thus had with people whom he would not otherwise have met and who most likely would not have attended his lectures it is impossible to guess; but there can be little doubt that his long journeys by train, monotonous and wearisome as they must often have been, played a not inconsiderable part in the significance of his lecture tour. Indeed, the single, wondrous glimpse one gets of Swamiji discussing reincarnation with a dour Presbyterian cowboy while traveling from Minneapolis to Des Moines is like looking into some fleeting chamber of time where threads of a coming culture were perhaps being spun.


Arriving in Des Moines, Swamiji gave an informal talk on the afternoon of Monday, November 27, and a formal lecture that evening. The first talk was given at the home of Rev. and Mrs. Harvey O. Breeden at 1318 Woodland Avenue and, according to a brief item in the Des Moines Daily News of November 25, had been arranged by the Tourist Club probably the Des Moines counterpart of the Peripatetics. The afternoon was a success. Indeed, it would appear from the following news item in the Daily News of November 28 that from the very start Des Moines took to Swamiji with enthusiasm: On Monday afternoon, a small company were invited to the home of Dr. and Mrs. H. O. Breeden on Woodland avenue, to meet the Hindu monk, Swami Vivekananda, whose brilliant intellect made him one of the prime favorites of the parliament of religions, and whose lectures  to Des Moines may be said to be of the era-making type. The distinguished oriental first gave an informal talk, in costume, on the manners and customs of India, and afterwards submitted to a running fire of questions from the guests, his witty and often sarcastic retorts proving highly entertaining.


Swamiji's fame had spread before him, and the Central Church of Christ, of which Dr. Breeden was pastor, was well filled for his first public lecture in Des Moines. "The great oriental scholar and Hindu Monk is a great drawing card judging from the advance sale of seats," the Daily News had noted on November 25, and had added, "The elite as well as the cultured people of Des Moines will hear him. " "Thinkers " also were urged to attend. "The lecture event of the season will take place to-night at the Central Church of Christ when the Hindoo Monk will deliver his lecture on 'The Hindoo Religion,"' the same paper announced on November 27. "No thinker can afford to miss it."


On the day following Swamiji's lecture both the Daily Iowa Capitol and the Des Moines Daily News printed fairly long reports of the lecture. The following from the Daily lowa Capitol appeared on the front page:

5

ALL RELIGIONS ARE TRUE 
SUCH IS THE MESSAGE BROUGHT 
FROM INDIA 
by a Hindu Monk

Swami Vivekananda Tells of Ancient Faith 

Speaks again Tonight

It was a rare as well as an odd treat which the people of Des Moines enjoyed last evening at the Central Church of Christ. A monk, of the ancient faith of Brahma, made a happy presentation of that faith, not so much of its peculiarities as of its underlying principles. The audience was a good sized one, perhaps 500 or 600 persons being present. The main floor being well filled and there were perhaps a couple of hundred in the gallery.


The speaker opened by saying that all religious systems were an attempt to answer the question What am I? This and the kindred ones, Whence Come I? and Whither Am I Going? are constantly recurring. Without following the speaker throughout the entire lecture, suffice it to say, that underlying the Hindu religion according to the speaker is the belief that "We are all divine". In each is a conscious spirit that survives the body and the mind and is a part of the absolute. The speaker very ably defended religion against the attacks of science. The latter can use only the five senses, and unless a thing can be proven to be by these senses is disposed to doubt its existence. But does science know that there are only five senses? The speaker contended for the existence of a supersensuous sense; through which man obtains revelations of spiritual truths. The Hindu word for revelation is "Veda". Hence the "Vedas" are the revelations. These writings are not confined to those of the Hindus, but include those of all peoples; because said the speaker, all religions are true.


When "revelations " undertake to tell of material things they enter upon a domain which belongs to science and are not to be accepted. There was an ancient superstition that because Moses gave a revelation of the will of God, therefore everything Moses wrote must be true. There is a modern superstition that, because there are mistakes in the writings of Moses, therefore nothing Moses wrote is true. When Moses wrote the tables of the law he was inspired. When he told of the creation what he said was merely the speculations of Moses the Jew.


The speaker was not favorably impressed with the efforts to make Hindu converts—perverts he calls them— to Christianity, nor the converse. All religions being true, such perversions serve no good end. The Hindu religion the speaker claimed is not disposed to antagonize any belief; it absorbs them. As for tolerating different beliefs, the language of the Hindu has no word corresponding with the English word "intolerance". That language had a word for religion and one for sect. The former embraced all beliefs. The conception of the latter the speaker illustrated by telling the story of the frog, who had no idea there was any world outside the well in which he had always lived,


The speaker urged his hearers to cultivate the divine within them and to discard the "nonsense" of sects.


The lecturer is an able, dignified and forcible speaker. His mastery of English is perfect, there being only the faintest indications of a foreign accent. The lecturer was followed with closest attention by the audience. After the lecture, the speaker consented to answer questions to a portion of the audience that remained for that purpose. In the course of these answers he said that the Hindus were altogether opposed to the destruction of the life of any animal. He admitted the worship of the sacred cow. He said further that the Hindus had nothing answering to our church organizations. He was his own priest, bishop and pope.


This evening this eloquent Hindu will speak on "Reincarnation". It will unquestionably be well worth hearing. These lectures will doubtless awaken and intensify an interest in those of Nagarkar of the Brahmo-Somaj, which are coming this week and next.


The reporter from the Daily News had more to add to the above, and although in spots he failed to follow Swamiji's argument regarding conversion, it is apparent from his account that this was an exceptional lecture, containing ideas that Swamiji did not often express in quite this way. The report was embodied in a daily column entitled "Des Moines," and thus had no heading of its own:


Swami Vivekananda, the talented scholar from the far-off India, spoke at the Central church last night. He was a representative of his country and creed at the recent parliament of religions assembled in Chicago during the world's fair. Rev. H. O. Breeden introduced the speaker to the audience. He arose and after bowing to his audience, commenced his lecture, the subject of which was "Hindoo Religion: ' His, lecture was not confined to any line of thought but consisted more of some of his own philosophical views relative to his religion and others. He holds that one must embrace all the religions to become the perfect Christian. What is not found in one religion is supplied by another. They are all right and necessary to the true Christian. When you send a missionary to our country he becomes a Hindoo Christian and I a Christian Hindoo. I have often been asked in this country if I am going to try to convert the people here. I take this for an insult. I do not believe in this idea of conversion. To-day we have a sinful man; tomorrow according to your idea he is converted and by and by attains unto holiness. Whence comes this change? How do you explain it? The man has not a new soul for [then] the soul must die. You say he is changed by God. God is perfect, all powerful and is purity itself. Then after this man is converted he is that same God minus the purity he gave that man to become holy. There is in our country two words which have an altogether different meaning than they do in this country. They are "religion" and "sect." We hold that religion embraces all religions. We tolerate everything but intoleration. Then there is that word "sect." Here it embraces those sweet people who wrap themselves up in their mantle of charity and say, "We are right; you are wrong." It reminds me of the story of the two frogs. A frog was born in a well and lived its whole life in that well. One day a frog from the sea fell in that well and they commenced to talk about the sea. The frog whose home was in the well asked his visitor how large the sea was, but was unable to get an intelligent answer. Then the at-home frog jumped from one corner of the well to another and asked his visitor if the sea was that large. He said yes. The frog jumped again and said, "Is the sea that large?" and receiving an affirmative reply, he said to himself, "This frog must be a liar; I will put him out of my well." That is the way with these sects. They seek to eject and trample those who do not believe as they do.


That Des Moines was at once enchanted by Swamiji is apparent from the following article that appeared on November 28 in the Iowa State Register. One also finds in this report a number of sidelights, including fairly conclusive evidence that he was indeed at this time on a planned lecture tour:

6

A MESSAGE FROM INDIA

Vive Kananda, the Famous Hindoo Monk and Scholar, Appears in Des MoinesA Young Man of Thirty Years and a Big, Active Brain and True Heart

The people of Des Moines had a glimpse of Oriental life and thought at its best yesterday, from the lips of the famous Hindoo monk, Swami Vive Kananda. A central figure in the great Parliament of Religions at Chicago this summer, where he coped with some of the greatest minds of the country with honor to himself and his people, he gave those who heard him, and especially those who met him at Dr. Breeden's, something new to think about. It was a message from over the sea, from another people of wholly different surroundings, training, customs and traditions, but as the monk says, the basic principles are the same in all religions. It is his doctrine that there is good in all religions and he preaches it with great power.


In personal appearance, Vive Kananda is a prince, and indeed he is of the royal Brahmin blood. Of medium stature, erect bearing, handsome, one may truly say, beautiful face, he is a striking and attractive, though never a sensational figure, even in his native costume, red trousers, loose red gown, with belt and large white turban.


"The Mild Hindoo" is a beautiful character. In his own country he is above all caste and is responsible to no one but himself and the people. He is not allowed to marry or to touch money. His occupation is entirely a spiritual one. He goes about from place to place preaching, and the people take care of him and his fellows, giving them the clothing and food and anything else they may need. This lecture tour is being made for the purpose of founding a school in India for the poor, to elevate them from their present unfortunate condition. But he prefers not to put his lectures upon this ground, but upon their own merits.


Yesterday afternoon he met a large number of the brightest women in Des Moines, members of the various literary clubs, at the invitation of Mrs. H. O. Breeden, at her home, 1318 Woodland avenue, and he talked to them for two or three hours about his religion, his view of Christianity, in which he heartily concurs, and of the manners and customs of his people. The thing which Vive Kananda most strongly insists upon is that the Hindoo religion is not to be blamed for all that is bad in India any more than Christianity is to be blamed for all that is bad in America. And he insists that it is absurd to give Christianity credit for all the marvelous undertakings and achievements of the people who cherish it. He joins in the praise of the sublime things in the bible, but says that when Moses undertook to speak of the creation of the world, he was merely Moses, the Jew and nothing more.

This view from the other side, and a sympathetic side at that, is a most helpful and instructive and intensely interesting one. Vive Kananda uses the purest English, for he was well educated in the English university, Calcutta.


He praises the American women most enthusiastically. "I do not know what would have become of me if it had not been for your women, " he said to a reporter for THE REGISTER last night. "They took me up and took care of me and made all necessary arrangements for me. They are the best women in the world. They have been so kind to me," with a grateful smile.


Last night Vive Kananda spoke on "The Hindoo Religion," and will speak to-night at the Central Church of Christ on "The Reincarnation". The lecture will begin promptly at 8 o'clock and will last one hour. From 9 to 10:30 Vive Kananda will spend with the Prairie club at the Savery house, where he will answer questions.


Swamiji's lecture "Reincarnation" (not "The Reincarnation") was also announced in the Daily News of November 28:


"Reincarnation" will be the subject of Swami Vive kananda's lecture at the Central Christian church to-night. Those who heard the gifted Hindu monk last night will be glad of a second opportunity and those who did not are to be congratulated on the fact that they can still hear him. Do not fail to go. Regrettably, the only accounts that have been found in the Des Moines papers of this lecture are brief paragraphs in the Daily Iowo Capitol of November 29 and the Iowa State Register for the same date. These read respectively as follows:


Swami Vivekananda last night talked of reincarnation. It is based, he contended, on the fact that there never has been a new creation; that creation has existed coevally with God from all eternity. Departed souls find bodies to inhabit either better or worse than their former tenement, according as they made them fit for one or the other. The lecturer will speak again on Thanksgiving evening at the same place on the manners and customs of India.


Vive Kananda, the Hindoo monk, lectured last night on the "Reincarnation" at Central Church of Christ and after the lecture was received by the Prairie Club at the Savery House. His dates west have been cancelled and he will speak on Thanksgiving night at the same place on "The Manners and Customs of India" which to the popular mind is his most entertaining lecture.


Whether Swamiji himself cancelled his lecture engagements further west or whether they were cancelled by the lecture bureau is not known. In any event, Des Moines was delighted, as the cancellation enabled him to remain two days longer in the city, which was by now thoroughly captivated by "his charming presence and adroit scholasticism. " On one of these days-Wednesday, November 29—he gave no lecture or talk, and thus he was free to see the sights of this capital city, one of which was the Iowa State Historical Department. As to how he passed Wednesday evening, the following item from the Daily News gives an idea:


Vivekananda attended a prayer meeting Wednesday evening and witnessed the baptism of two young women. The service impressed him very much. He said: "I see. The sentiment is ennobling and the ceremony beautiful. It is the more impressive that the minister is honest, earnest and believes what he says." According to the Iowa State Register of November 30, Wednesday seems to have been a day for the meeting of clubs in Des Moines. While Swamiji rested, or at least did not lecture, the intellectuals of the city digested all they had so far heard:

7

The remarkable discussions started by the famous Hindu monk, Vive Kananda, were the topic of interest in intellectual circles yesterday. Especially so was his comment on the work of American missionaries in India, and his strong defence of his own people and morals and religion. His position is that the people of India do not need any more religion, but training in the practical things of life that will enable them to cope with the English who have occupied India. Vive Kananda was the guest of Mr. F. W. Lehman and Mr. O. H. Perkins yesterday and in their company visited the state house, which he very much admired. He took a special interest in the portraits of the American Indians that he saw there. [Swamiji's visit to the "State historical department at the Capitol" was also noted in the Social News of the Iowa Daily Capitol of December 1.] He will lecture tonight at the Christian church on "Manners and Customs of India" and will reply to questions after the lecture.

On Thursday afternoon Swamiji surely experienced the awesome bounty of an American Thanksgiving dinner at the home of one or another of his Des Moines friends, and that evening delivered the lecture that was announced as follows in the Daily Iowa Capitol:


The now celebrated Hindu monk, Swami Vivekananda will Lecture for the last time in Des Moines tonight. He will speak on "Life in India" ["Manners and Customs of India"] a most interesting theme. The renowned Hindu is a brilliant man about 30 years old. He says American women are lovely, but American men are entirely too practical.


Such casual announcements were, of course, not the sole means of advertising Swamiji's lectures. If he was at this time engaged by a lecture bureau, and most likely he was, raucous posters, in which good taste was no consideration, proclaimed his presence. Publicity of this sort was simply one of the ordeals of a lecture tour in the 1890s. "When you arrive in an American town to lecture," a touring lecturer wrote in 1890, "you find the place flooded with your pictures, huge lithographs stuck on the walls, on the shop windows, in your very hotel entrance hall. Your own face stares at you everywhere, you are recognized by everybody. You have to put up with it. If you love privacy, peace, and quiet, don't go to America on a lecturing tour.'[7]Swamiji was not spared in this respect. In Prophets of the New India, Romain Rolland has described one of the posters that heralded his arrival: "I have in my hands," Rolland wrote, "an advertising prospectus, in which the headlines announce him in large letters to the passers-by as 'One of the Giants of the Platform.' His portrait is included with four inscriptions proclaiming at the four cardinal points that he is: '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.' The Announcement does not fail to enumerate his moral and physical advantages, especially his physical, his bearing, his height, the colour of his skin and clothing—with attestations from those who had seen him, heard him and tried him.'[8]Lecture bureaus left nothing to chance or imagination.


However, by the time Swamiji gave his last lecture in Des Moines posters were unnecessary; he himself had electrified the city. Although no report of "The Manners and Customs of India" has been found in the newspapers, both the Daily News and the Iowa State Register commented with enthusiasm on the effect his visit as a whole had had on the intellectual circles of this "western" city. The following two articles are taken, respectively, from the Daily News of November 29 and the Register of December 3.


Dr. Breeden has conferred a real intellectual benefit upon this community by giving it an opportunity to hear the representatives of the Greek and Hindu religions discourse upon their favorite themes. There is a good deal of philistinism in America, and the west, which feels less of the influence of our foreign relations than is perceptible at the seaboard, is peculiarly liable to become a little narrow and intolerant in its excessive Americanism. The archbishop of Zante and the Hindu monk, Swami Vivekananda, have shown thinking people in Des Moines how possible it is to honestly view the problems of life from a point of view different from that of a busy, practical American.


(Although the Archbishop of Zante, a delegate to the Parliament, is mentioned in connection with Swamiji, it is apparent that he visited Des Moines at an earlier date. Unlike Swamiji's lectures in Evanston which, as the reader will remember, were given in conjunction with Dr. Carl von Bergen, those in Des Moines were delivered alone.)


A brief portion of the following from the Iowa State Register of December 3 will perhaps seem familiar, as it has been quoted in the Life:

8

It has done no harm to Christianity to have some of its weaknesses of so-called Christians pointed out as they have been so clearly and mercilessly during the past week by Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo monk who spoke three times in Des Moines. During his stay in the city, which was happily prolonged by the cancellation of engagements farther west, Vivekananda met many of the best people in the city, who found their time well spent in discussing religious and metaphysical questions with him. But it was woe to the man who undertook to combat the monk on his own ground, and that was where they all tried who tried it at all. His replies came like flashes of lightning, and the venturesome questioner was sure to be impaled on the Indian's shining intellectual lance. The workings of his mind, so subtle and so brilliant, so well stored and so well trained, sometimes dazzled his hearers, but it was always a most interesting study. He said nothing unkind, for his nature would not permit that. Those who came to know him best found him the most gentle and lovable of men, so honest, frank and unpretending, always grateful for the many kindnesses that were shown him. Vivekananda and his cause found a place in the hearts of all true Christians. It is to the credit of Dr. Breeden that, knowing what Vivekananda would say, he brought him here to address the members of his congregation. He did not look at it as one woman did, who tried to get Dr. Breeden to suppress the monk's address wherein he criticised some features of Christianity because it would prevent Christians from going to hear him. Dr. Breeden thinks that a religion that cannot stand discussion, or being looked at from the other side, is not of much account. So with the polished Hindoo, he feared not to meet, single-handed and alone, the combined attacks of all the Christians of America. He had that much confidence in his religion. Yet he did not seek to proselyte. He does not wish to persecute. He remarked once: "We Hindoos have never burned witches."*(2) Although his knife cuts deep sometimes, it is like that of the surgeon, in that it cuts only to be kind. He sifts out the good from the bad and the dead in Christianity with a fine discrimination. Having no superstitious fear to restrain him the Oriental scholar does not hesitate to assail what is weak in Christianity or Christendom, and we are a very narrow-minded people if we cannot profit from his criticisms, even if they do sometimes go too far.

*(2) Any good New Englander will here protest, "We did not burn our witches in Sale; We hanged them. This distinction, it is true, may have been lost on Swamiji, but, as far as can be determined, he was not referring in this context exclusively to Salem witches; he seems to have been speaking in a broader vein, including all of Christendom. As is well known, the burning of witches at the stake was for long the usual and accepted Christian method of their execution.  Whenever Swamiji flung out this taunt about burning witches, which he did more than once during the course of his tour, his listeners always jumped to the conclusion (and relished it) that he meant Salem witches. Perhaps he did, but according to all reports, he never specifivally said so. 

Probably the most practical thing that Vivekananda has done is to give us a truer idea of India and to correct  some of the mistaken ideas that we have obtained from reading what he calls the recent books about India, written by Americans and Englishmen who have spent a few weeks in India talking with servants and in sport and then come home and written five volumes about the customs and religion of the higher classes. Vivekananda recommends Sir W. Wilson Hunter's "Short History of the People of India" as being official and perfectly reliable, and almost the only book published in English about India and the religion and customs of the Hindoo people that can be depended upon.

Another effect of the Eastern influence will be, or at any rate it ought to be, to make us treat our dumb animals better. The Hindoo holds it to be a very great sin to kill any of God's creatures, or to cause them pain. He is a vegetarian. When his horses are old they are sent to a hospital and taken care of in their old age. His nature is gentle, so he is called the mild Hindoo and he is proud of it. The way dumb animals are abused in America is a great reproach to the civilization that we boast of. We are reforming a little, however, and perhaps this lesson from the East will shame us into doing better.


There was not much comfort for prohibitionists in the results of such legislation in India, as Vivekananda explained them to the Prairie club. He said that his people were the victims of too much legislation. They are the most temperate people on earth and statistics show that there is less crime there, though magistrates are promoted according to the number of convictions secured and if they fall below a certain number they are removed. But the people have been dwarfed intellectually by this weight of moral legislation. For ages it has crushed them down, till they have no moral guide but the law. They are a degenerate race. They have no choice between right and wrong. They are mere automatons. The monk thinks that they will never become a strong people until they throw off these restrictions, gradually, and learn to think and choose for themselves. He says it is not more morals, more religion or more superstition that his people need, but to be taught the affairs of life and how to govern themselves, that they may be able to protect themselves against the English, who occupy and govern India. So he says the extent of good that the Christian missionaries do in India is to maintain schools for the Indian boys and girls. "Of course," he said, "the boys have to listen to all these stories about Noah and the Ark and all such nonsense, but the Hindoo lad is clever and he takes the bait clean off and never gets the hook. The average cost of converting a Hindoo to Christianity is $30,000. Yes, we like to have you send the missionaries, because they spend money with us and do us no harm. Most of them are good men. But I find that the desire of the Christian is not to help the heathen, as he calls us, but to compel us to believe as he does. He takes us by the throat and says: 'Here, you rascally heathen, you must be converted!' The Christians will not help the heathen. They will help the Christianized heathen, but not those who remain true to their own religion. If I should become a Christian I could get a million dollars tomorrow for my school for the poor in India. But I prefer to earn the money by hard work, though it seems like the work of a lifetime to get enough to make a start in the work I want to do: '


Everywhere he has gone the monk has been made a lion of, especially by the women of America, and of them he says: "They are the grandest women in the world. Your men I do not like; they are all for money; they think of nothing but dollars. But your women—Lord bless them! They have been so kind to me."


In his own land the Hindoo monk is not allowed to touch money. He cannot marry or own any property. He goes from place to place and preaches to the people and they give him clothing and food, and this is all he may have. He is responsible to no one. There is no pope, bishop, or any ecclesiastical authority to which he is amenable. There is no church and the monks do not live in or build monasteries. The priests build and occupy the temples, but as they marry and take pay for their services they are far beneath the monks in rank. The monk is independent of all caste. Vivekananda had never touched money till he went on board a ship to come to America. His visit to Des Moines, where he became at once the chief subject of discussion in intellectual circles has had a permanent good effect in broadening the views of a great many people, and compelling them, by the force of his intelligence and character, to see things from a different standpoint.


There is now in Des Moines another representative of India [Mr. B. B. Nagarkar], the more advanced class, the Bramo-Somaj, which is doing a great deal in India to abolish the old customs that savor of barbarism, chief among them being child marriage, which is a result of the Mohammedan invasion. It was resorted to in northern India to protect the girls from falling into the hands of the ruthless invaders, who would carry them off to their harems. The Rev. Mr. Nagarkar, who is now lecturing in Des Moines, has thrown off nearly all the old Hindoo customs.


In the eighteen-nineties, the more modern, the more valuable was axiomatic. Thus while appreciating Swamiji, the Daily Iowa Capitol mused, "In the lectures to be given at the Unitarian Church by B. B. Nagarkar of Bombay, India, we shall have the yet higher privilege of hearing the modern religious thought of the Hindu people." Swamiji himself had of course only good to say of his fellow countryman, who was among his detractors. The following sentences come from a brief article about Mr. Nagarkar in the Iowa State Register of December 1:


Before he left the city, Vive Kananda took occasion to say a warm word of praise for the Bramo-Somaj, the work it is doing in India, especially for the women, and of its representative in this country. The visit of Vive Kananda, stirring as it did the intellectual centers of the city to their depths and starting a lively religious discussion prepared the way for the present visitor [Nagarkar] from the Orient and heightened public interest in whatever he might have to say.


Swamiji would have been well pleased, one thinks, with this immediate and visible result of his visit to Des Moines. To stimulate open-minded religious discussion and generate an understanding of and sympathy for India were, as is eminently clear from the subjects he generally chose to lecture on, two of the purposes uppermost in his mind during this early period of his Western mission.


Swamiji delivered his last lecture in Des Moines on the evening of November 30. We do not know at present where he went from there, but through a recent discovery we find him two weeks later back in Minneapolis. On December 9, the Ariel, a student newspaper of the University of Minnesota, announced his return to the city with the following article:

9

The most impressive figure at the World's Parliament of Religions was the Hindu monk Swami Vive Kananda. He was sent to that body as a representative of the Brahmin faith. The convincing sincerity of his words and the magnetic power of his personality fascinate all who hear him and have given him the title of "an orator of divine right. " Stories and fables are very often used to convey his thought and the richness and color lent his speech by this oriental imagery are as native as the turban worn upon his head. His strongly intellectual face, in its picturesque setting of yellow and orange, is hardly less interesting than his earnest words. It is sensitive to every thought in the shifting humour of the speaker. One is reminded in seeing him of the elder Salvini.*(1)There is the same repose, yet glow of feeling and fiery burst of passionate power. Vive Kananda has something to say, something new, refreshing and important for thinking people to learn. He seeks to enlighten us in regard to his religion and the words of its philosophers to give a true account of the lives of his people in their far away eastern home. The subject on which he speaks in Minneapolis next Thursday evening [December 14] at the Unitarian church will be "Manners and Customs in India." While in the city Swami Vive Kananda will be the guest of Dr. Folwell. It is earnestly hoped that a surplus in receipts will result, to be devoted to a worthy University institution.

*(3) Tomaso Salvini (1829-1916), Italian actor of the Romantic school, known through out Europe and America in the 1870s and 1880s, was considered by some to be the greatest actor of the day and was particularly famous for the "cyclonic force"  of his interpretations of Othello.

The gentleman mentioned has spoken in Minneapolis informally before and those who listened to him are extremely desirous of hearing him again. Kananda was the sensation of the World's Fair Parliament of Religions, and the mere fact of his appearance on the platform repeatedly filled the hall to its utmost. He is, exceedingly interesting and well worth the attention of every student.

So, too, was the First Unitarian Church of Minneapolis filled to its utmost when Swamiji made his second appearance in the city. Reports of the lecture he gave on the evening of December 14, entitled "Manners and Customs of India," were printed in the Minneapolis Journal and Tribune on the following day and read, respectively:


10

A WITTY HINDU
Swami Vivekananda Entertains Another Large Audience.

A large number of people assembled at the Unitarian church last evening for the purpose of listening to Swami  Vivekananda of India. The customs and manners of the people of that country were described, and during his lecture the Brahmin took occasion to show up some of the rough points of America. He is of the humorist order and his quick replies and witty sallies rarely failed to evoke applause. He would not admit that his people were wrong in everything, but there were a great many things peculiar to India which the Americans did not approve of and yet which might be all right. He had never seen husband and wife go before a magistrate to tell their troubles. They grew up with the idea that they were to be married and they loved each other as brothers and sisters. 


He described the customs of his country, the temples, the art of the juggler and all of the other peculiarities of oriental countries in a manner that was charming. Following the address a number of questions were asked by persons in the audience.


Swami Vive Kananda, the Brahmin priest, was greeted by. a packed house last evening at the First Unitarian Church, when he appeared before his second Minneapolis audience. Vive Kananda is a bright, quick witted talker, ready at all points to attack or defend, and inserts a humor into his speeches that is not lost upon his auditors. He spoke last evening under the auspices of the Kappa Kappa Gammas of the University, and the audience embraced a large number of earnest thinking men and women, pleased to be enlightened upon the "Manners and Customs of India," which was his chosen subject.


Robed in his native garb, with his hands for the most part clasped behind his back, Kananda paces back and forth the narrow platform, talking as he paces, with long pauses between his sentences, as if willing that his words should sink into the deepest soil. His talk is not so weighty that the frivolous mind may not appreciate some of his sayings, but he also speaks a philosophy that carries gravest truth. He tells of the manners and customs of India, of the divided life between the male and female, of the reverence for and holiness of women, and again of their degeneracy; of the calm and peaceful life, that yet is not true life because it is not liberty; he speaks of the Mohammedans, who form one-fifth of the Indian population, and that 65,000,000, equal to the entire population of the United States. He describes the magnificence of the temples, the art of the jugglers, who are the gypsies of the Indian race, and he touches upon the superstitions of the people, of how they fill the water jars and stand them in the doorway before starting on a journey; he speaks of the metaphysical knowledge of the plowman, who yet only knows that he "pays taxes to the government;" he admits the reverence of the Hindu for the river Ganges, and his ever lingering wish that he shall die on its banks; he tells all these things in a quiet, half supercilious voice that presently leads to some remark on the American way of doing things, and then his audience is in a ripple of laughter, and a tremor of clapping expresses amused acknowledgement of his sarcasm.


A marked accent that strangely perverts the vowel sounds, and misplaces the inflection, lends a novelty to his delivery that constitutes a sort of charm. Charm there is, to hear this dark-skinned, smiling-faced, caftan-covered East Indian descant upon the ways of life in his foreign home. He is broadly intelligent, and keen in his criticism.


When some one at the close of his lecture asked him "What class of people are reached and converted by the missionaries?" he quickly replied, "You know as much about that the American sees the reports, we never do," he has turned the query into a cause for smiling, and while the house regains its composure he paces quietly to and fro. The address was followed with the closest attention and was supplemented by several questions and answers among the audience, from whom he invited interrogation.


We now lose all trace of Swamiji until the middle of January, 1894, and thus, except for this brilliant flash of light in mid December, when we find him in Minneapolis, a period of six weeks remains in darkness. Although during this time he must have been extremely active, lecturing here and there in large and small cities, our attempts to unearth information regarding his whereabouts have been largely in vain. But the search continues and hope is by no means given up.

11

The nineties were strange and confused years. On the one hand, Americans looked backward into a more or less orderly century in which they had been robustly confident that they were headed toward a state of social perfection and that their nation was "a special object of Divine favor." On the other hand, the nineties stared aghast into a new age in which the end was not at all certain. Economic and social conditions were undergoing rapid and radical changes with which the old moral and spiritual values could not cope. These values, moreover, were being attacked from within by physics and biology, to say nothing of Darwinism, which had given a resounding blow to the doctrine of man's unique position in the universe. The optimism and self confidence that had characterized the eighteenth century and most of the nineteenth had suddenly given way to doubt and confusion. Nerves were on edge and, as in all transition periods, both the resistance to change and the attempts to adjust to it contained a note of hysteria.

As the story of the Parliament of Religions has shown, there were two very definite and clear-cut religious attitudes. One was that which clung to the old order of things with the strength and ferocity of a death struggle. The denominations which held this attitude, and which were later to be characterized as "fundamentalist," refused to give way either to Darwinism or to the social conditions which called for a broader and more liberal outlook. They resented the higher criticism and clung with fierce tenacity to a literal and rigid interpretation of Scripture.


Liberal Christianity, on the other hand, had set itself to accept and incorporate into its tenets man's new knowledge, and at the same time it attempted to socialize religion, conceiving it the duty of the church to examine such problems as the labor question, the growth of slums, the creation of huge and predatory fortunes, political corruption, and so on. It assumed a moral responsibility for man's social and economic welfare and invaded the political field to the neglect of the spiritual. Secularization was the inevitable result. But nevertheless it was the clergy of this liberal Christianity which, priding itself upon its broad-mindedness, welcomed Swamiji. It was no accident that in every city he was almost invariably invited to speak at either a Unitarian or a Congregational church.


It has been said by some that the Transcendentalist movement, which took place earlier in the nineteenth century, had prepared the American mind for Swamiji's teachings. In a sense this is true, for the eyes of many had been opened to the life of the spirit by the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and even Bronson Alcott. Yet it is a fact that by the seventies Transcendentalism had lost ground. It was no longer in tune with a generation that was becoming increasingly materialistic and which looked for a solution to its problems in a more down-to earth and scientific philosophy. The vanguard of religious thought strove to come to terms with the findings of science, and the emphasis was now upon social reform in accordance with the laws of nature rather than those of spirit. It is true that such religions as Christian Science and New Thought were spreading rapidly, but by and large these religions emphasized man's material rather than spiritual welfare. Only  insofar as they asserted that man's problems can be solved through regeneration of the spirit were they in sympathy with the teachings of Swamiji. But even so, theirs was a small voice scarcely heard; it was drowned out by the most "respectable" liberal thought of the age, which insisted that a change in human nature could be brought about only by first transforming the social environment.


While socialized Christianity, whose leaders and adherents were to be found for the most part on the East Coast, fought for all manner of economic and social reforms, the "fundamentalists," who predominated in the Middle West and South, busied themselves with frenzied attacks upon intemperance and vice. The "churchwomen" whom Swamiji mentioned during an interview in India no doubt belonged to this breed of reformer. Of them he was to say:


These 'churchwomen' are awful fanatics. They are under the thumb of the priests there. Between them and the priests they make hell of earth and make a mess of religion. With the exception of these, the Americans are a very good people.[9]


These "churchwomen" were a far cry from the warm-hearted, noble-minded, and public-spirited women who gave meaning to the much-used phrase, "pure and enlightened womanhood," and whom Swamiji never tired of praising. The "churchwoman" was, in a sense, a caricature of America's nineteenth century woman, but she was not without power. A book which depicts the period speaks of this type of woman as "a terror to editors, the hope of missionary societies and the prey of lecturers. . . . She was an emblem, a grotesque shape in hot black silk, screaming at naked children in a clear river, with her companionable ministers and reformers at heel" [10] Shrill and aggressively moral, these formidable women, who, for the most part, lived in the smaller cities and towns of the Middle West, were not content simply to seek out and attack the depravity,  real and imagined, of the large cities, but found a made-to-order outlet for their chronic indignation in the monstrous tales of "heathen" practices, which for decades had been fed to them by the missionaries. The missionaries, in turn, had found in these women an eager audience, and, between the two, India's reputation had been dragged to a lower and yet lower level.


It is hard today to grasp the enormity of missionary propaganda that held hypnotic sway over the American mind during the last half of the nineteenth century; for ignorant and fanciful as we may still be in regard to Hinduism, the ground has certainly been cleared of the more fantastic notions that then flourished unchecked and unexamined. The following hymn is typical of the kind of thing that filled the air. It comes from a book entitled Songs for the Little Ones at Home written by a Christian missionary in India for the edification of the young:

See that heathen mother stand 
Where the sacred current flows;
With her own maternal hand 
Mid the waves her babe she throws.

Hark! I hear the piteous scream; 
Frightful monsters seize their prey, 
Or the dark and bloody stream 
Bears the struggling child away.

Fainter now, and fainter still,
Breaks the cry upon the ear;
But the mother's heart is steel 
She unmoved that cry can hear.

Send, oh send the Bible there, 
Let its precepts reach the heart; 
She may then her children spare-
Act the tender mother's part. 

Such verses, earnestly piped by "the little ones at home," were heard with perfect credulity, nor was their message confined to missionary circles. All strata of society had been bombarded with falsehoods and slander regarding India. When Swamiji later said that all the mud on the bottom of the Indian Ocean could not balance the filth that had been thrown at his motherland, he was not exaggerating. Characteristic was a book entitled India and Its Inhabitants. First published in 1858, it comprises 335 pages of lectures delivered throughout America by a Mr. Caleb Wright, M.A. (no relation of Prof. John Henry Wright). On the title page is the information that "The Author Visited India and Travelled Extensively There, For the Express Purpose of Collecting The Information Contained in This Volume"—information which was predominantly false, calumnious, and sensational. This book, profusely illustrated with line drawings and replete with moral reflections on the order of "Send, oh send the Bible there, " had a phenomenal success among the intelligentsia. A preface cites testimonials from the presidents of twenty American colleges who gave unstinting praise to the lectures of Caleb Wright. A comparison of two editions of the book shows that within a space of two years over 36,000 copies were printed.


And this was but one book among many of its kind. For decades before Swamiji came to America, missionary calumny against India had saturated the public mind and provided it with thrills of righteous horror. The atmosphere in the early nineties was still thick with ignorance and bigotry, poisonous to both America and India, and it was inevitable that Swamiji, confronted by so strongly entrenched and so pernicious an enemy to his motherland, would make every effort to combat it.


One indication that he gave serious thought to the missionary propaganda against India is the fact that a few months after the Parliament he took the trouble to copy out in longhand on three sheets of letter paper a passage which portrayed the true missionary situation in India. It was through the kindness of the late Swami Vishwananda, head of the Vedanta center in Chicago, that these three pages, covered with Swamiji's handwriting in pencil, came into the hands of Swami Ashokananda. Welcome as they were, they presented a mystery, for there was no indication from what source Swamiji had quoted, if he had quoted at all. The only clue was a single notation in his hand on the back of the third sheet, which read: "Louis Rousselet ", an unknown name which could mean anything or nothing. But while Swami Ashokananda was puzzling over the import of Swamiji's writing, the San Francisco Vedanta Society received a packet of second hand books that had been bought on sale, sight unseen. Among them was a large illustrated travel book on India, long out of print-by Louis Rousselet! On page 533 was the passage in question. The title of this book is India and Its Native Princes—Travels in Central India and in the Presidencies of Bombay and Bengal. It is a translation of the French L'Inde des Rajahs and was first published in 1876 and later ran into other editions. The passage which struck Swamiji and which, no doubt, was the first true account of India he had read for a long time, is given here precisely as he copied it:


Is there a people in the world more tolerant than this good gentle Hindoo people, who have been so often described to us as cunning, cruel and even bloodthirsty? Compare them for an instant with the Mussulmans, or even with ourselves, in spite of our reputation for civilization and tolerance. Only let a Chinese or an Indian come and walk in our streets during a religious festival or ceremony, and will not the crowd exhibit the most hostile feelings towards him if his bearing should not be in conformity with the customs of the country? Will his ignorance excuse him? I doubt it. And in what country could such a spectacle be witnessed as that which met my eyes that day in this square of Benares? There, at ten paces from all that the Hindoo holds to be most sacred in religion, between the Source of Wisdom and the idol of Siva a Protestant missionary has taken his stand beneath a tree. Mounted on a chair, he was preaching in the Hindostani language, on the Christian religion and the errors of paganism. I heard his shrill voice, issuing from the depths of a formidable shirt-collar, eject these words at the crowd, which respectfully and attentively surrounded him—"You are idolaters! That block of stone which you worship has been taken from a quarry, it is no better than the stone of my house."


The reproaches called forth no murmur; the missionary was listened to immovably, but his dissertation was attended to, for every now and then one of the audience would put a question, to which the brave apostle replied as best he could. Perhaps we should be disposed to admire the courage of the missionary if the well-known toleration of the Hindoos did not defraud him of all his merit; and it is this tolerance that most disheartens the missionary one of whom said to me "Our labours are in vain; you can never convert a man who has sufficient conviction in his own religion to listen, without moving a muscle, to all the attacks you can make against it."


This passage must have seemed like a refreshing oasis of sanity to Swamiji, and he copied it out for the benefit of friends. On the back of the second page of his transcription there is the following notation in an unknown hand:


Written by Swami the 12th [really the 11th] of February —after dining with Mr. and Mrs. Woodhead and Carl Von Bergen—Before leaving us in the afternoon, he gave us one of his most wonderful efforts on spiritual things, "I say there is but one remedy for one too anxious for the future—To go down on his knees: '—Mr. and Mrs. Norton came home with the girls in the evening. Swami left for Detroit Monday Feb. 13 [12]-1894.


12

The Parliament of Religions can perhaps be likened to a huge boulder dropped into the middle of a shallow pond, causing upheaval on all sides. Even without Swamiji the Parliament would have created no little confusion, for it was a shock to people to discover that Oriental priests were not on a level with grotesquely masked medicine men; but with Swamiji the effect was galvanizing and permanent. Something had happened in America that could never be talked away, although many an effort was made to do just that. In view of the religious climate of the country during the last decade of the nineteenth century one may be able to deduce the various reactions to the Parliament. It is not surprising, for example, that many orthodox Christians prayed God "that such a gathering may never again give occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme"; or that they fulminated against "that sophistical Hindu 'monk ' Vivekananda.'[11] But the disturbance was even more pronounced and widespread than one might have expected, and perhaps there is no better way to study it than through the contemporaneous newspapers of a typical American city, for there one can see the situation at first hand.

In the Life it is said: "In his tours the Swami visited all the larger cities of the Eastern and Midwestern States"12] and in the early editions the list of these cities includes St. Louis, Missouri. It would appear, however, that Swamiji did not go there. A thorough search has been made of the St. Louis newspapers of 1893 and 1894, and no mention has been found of his lectures. This omission constitutes fairly conclusive evidence that St. Louis was not included in his itinerary; for wherever Swamiji went he made news, and it seems unthinkable that the reporters of St. Louis would have failed at least to mention his presence. One explanation of this lies in the fact that, according to contemporary accounts, St. Louis was "a wretchedly poor lecture town, " and was no doubt shunned by lecture bureaus. But even if Swamiji did not lecture there, the city was not exempt from repercussions of the Parliament, and I think it will serve very well as our typical "case."


The St. Louis Republic ran a column called "Sunday Thoughts on Morals and Manners." It was written by an anonymous clergyman and is perhaps one of the finest examples that one could come upon of the religious mentality of the Midwest. On September 10, the eve of the opening of the Parliament, all was serene. The clergyman with admirable and placid broad-mindedness invoked the blessings of God upon the Congress which was to open the next day:


There ought to come out of the parliament an authoritative statement of the creeds of the world, brought down to date, and revised into as close harmony with the age as possible---of rare interest and importance to all students of comparative religion. Thus far we have been obliged to consult ancient authorities, or to grope after rare and sometimes inaccessible books, or else take the word of unfriendly critics, regarding the tenets of faiths beyond the Christian pale. It will be a gain worth the whole cost of the parliament to get from these faiths themselves their raison d'etre.... Not that the Faiths represented will fraternize. Far from it. They are essentially antagonistic and exclusive. Each claims all, or will accept nothing. But it is something to win the consent of their representatives to confer at all, and to make on a common platform an expose of faith and conduct.


Our clergyman immediately followed these reflections with statistical proof, for the benefit of "those who imagine that Christianity is declining," that on the contrary it was growing by leaps and bounds and that "the Electric Age, on whose threshold we stand, will bring in the greater part of the whole human race [to the Christian roster]."


By the following Sunday this quiet and reasonable clergyman had become transformed. The generosity and calm with which he had settled down to hear what the religions beyond the Christian pale had to say for themselves were no longer anywhere in evidence. He was raging mad. He wrote:


The reports of the proceedings of the Parliament of Religions, which assembled in Chicago last Monday, and is now in session, show, as might have been expected, an insistence upon the part of all the speakers that each one is eternally and exclusively right. This is especially true of the representatives of the various Oriental faiths. Claims are easily made—often out of wind! When claims conflict, the courts test them. Christ lays down a practical rule "By their fruits ye shall know them!" What are the fruits of the Oriental faith?


Take India. Polytheism prevails in the grossest forms. There are not less than 33,000,000 deities—enough to give each man, woman and child a god of his or her own. These are worshipped by impure rites, and exact on the part of their devotees self torture, including in the case of widows burial or burning alive. The Hindoo is taught that these images are divine, and the heaviest judgments are denounced against him if he dares to suspect that they are nothing else than the elements which compose them. Cast[e] is universal. Tyranny is immemorial. Woman is degraded. Polygamy abounds. Infanticide is common. Lying and theft are habitual. There is a want of tenderness toward and care for the sick, the poor and the dying. Ignorance and slavery and immorality compose the real trinity of Hindustan. These facts are undeniable.


"Sunday Thoughts" went on to give a brief outline of the faiths of Shintoism and Mohammedanism, which latter "came out of the distempered brain of the epileptic Mohammed." This was the minister who had a week before serenely welcomed the opportunity the Parliament offered for the study of comparative religion. This indeed was the Middle West in its true colors, the thin veneer of liberality thrown to the winds.


The following week, as the Parliament drew to a close, our clergyman made it clear, lest anyone be misled, that nothing at all had been learned from the sessions other than what he had predicted in the beginning:


Perhaps the chief value [of the Parliament] will be found in the demonstration given of the universality of the religious instinct.... There is a difference as abysmal as the space that divides heaven and earth between the ethics of Confucius, the dreamy mysticism of Buddha, the mist and moonshine of Theosophy, the dizzy polytheism of Brahmanism, the ancestor-worship of Shinto and the Christian system. All that there is of sweet and pure and good in the other faiths Christianity contains in a higher development, with a super-added wealth of distinctive tenets all its own.... We inscribe over it the old legend that was traced on the pillars of Hercules—Ne plus ultra .


Having settled this point, he deals another blow at Mohammedanism and then sits back to pursue the unruffled and platitudinous tone of his column.


But not for long. The Parliament continued to rankle within him. On October 15, a large part of "Sunday Thoughts" was devoted to a comparison of the Christian ideal of womanhood with that of "the semi-civilized peoples of the Orient." He wrote:

The ethnic religions of China, India and Japan and the teachings of Islam are alike in making woman guilty of her sex and in giving her importance solely as an annex to man.... She must be "protected," and to make and keep her willing to be "protected" she is dwarfed in mind, stunted in soul and prostituted to mere physical uses. 


There is a great deal more in this same vein. The fact was that if anyone wanted to stir up hostility against a culture or a religion he could not do better than suggest, or boldly state, that its treatment of women was not all that it should be. Never had American women been more conscious of themselves as women than in the nineties. One woman writer, an exception among them, summed up the situation with humor and objectivity. In an article entitled "Women's Excitement Over 'Woman,' " which was published in the Forum of September 1893, she writes:


Woman is a species of high and heroic and emancipated womanhood, as serviceable to the sex for the purposes of rhetorical and impassioned address, as that gentle and vapid species, "the Fair Sex," is to men for after-dinner gallantry. She is wise with the wisdom of clubs and conventions and strong in her inheritance of instincts. There is nothing of which she is not sure, except that man was designed by nature to be her helper; and there is nothing which she will not do for the good of her own species, except do nothing.... She gets columns, nay pages, of the newspapers written by Her for Her.... The magazines bow to the pressure of Her personality, and review Her profoundly in the light of history and of every possible and impossible modern circumstance.


All the missionaries needed to do in the nineties was to elaborate on the plight of the Hindu widow and they had the full force of outraged American womanhood ranged beside them. It was a force to be reckoned with and one which few editors dared oppose. It is little wonder that Swamiji so often spoke of the Hindu ideal of womanhood as he toured America, for this aspect of Indian culture had been dragged as far down as possible into the mud and there exploited for all it was worth.


In "Sunday Thoughts" of October 15 our clergyman made use of another current device—one which served many of his    colleagues in getting around the inconvenient fact of the intellectual brilliance and moral grandeur displayed at the Parliament by the Oriental delegates. He quotes the following item taken from a Chicago newspaper, the Interior: "It is especially noticeable that most of the men who eulogized alien faiths were those who personally owed their intellectual quickening and their morals to contact with Christianity."


But how was one to deal with Swamiji in this respect? The author of "Sunday Thoughts " maintained a judicious silence on the subject, and one can only imagine the intensity of his indignation when on October 30, 1893, Prince Wolkonsky, the Russian delegate to the Parliament, who, as readers will remember, became a friend of Swamiji's, spoke in St. Louis on his impressions of America. In the course of his talk, which appeared in the St. Louis Republic of October 31, Wolkonsky said with his customary frankness:


Don't ask every man: "To what church do you belong?" It is of no importance to you, but it is to him. The question is: Is he a man? Judge him by what he is. The great value of the religious congress was that these people learned to know a man. There was one man there the embodiment of spirituality! I do not know what church he belonged to. He thinks and acts and speaks as a Christian. But you say he is not a Christian. So much the better. You say he is a Buddhist. Better still. If you belong to a higher religion you should try to be better still than he.


There can be no doubt that Wolkonsky was referring to Swamiji, who was often called Buddhist. The point was not missed, but it wasn't until February 18 that our clergyman had his answer. In one short paragraph he neatly disposed of Wolkonsky and Swamiji once and for all. It was the perfect retort. One can almost see him standing aside to watch the effect of it:

One of the picturesque figures at the Chicago Parliament of Religions was a Hindoo monk named Vive Kananda. He impressed his hearers as being a man of remarkable intelligence and vivacity. Many thought highly of a religion that could produce such a representative. Now it transpires that he is a graduate of Harvard University. That is where all his Nineteenth Century notions come from. He is indebted to Asia only for his color and his costume.


The Christian clergy could now draw a deep breath. "Sunday Thoughts on Morals and Manners," however, does not represent the whole of religious thought in the Middle West. In their reaction to the Parliament of Religions, not all clergymen resorted to a tempest of name-calling. The liberal section of the Christian church, which had already faced the fact that the Christian doctrine needed re-examining if it was to meet the requirements of the times, took a more serious and honest view of the situation. The St. Louis Daily GlobeDemocrat, a far more liberal paper than the Republic, reflected this attitude in an article of October 2, which covered the sermons given on the Sunday following the close of the Parliament. Its headlines read:   "Religious Provincialism: It Has Received Its Death Blow in America, says Dr. Snyder. The Parliament of Religions Discussed in Many Pulpits—Christianity Must Prove Its Superiority at the Bar of Public Intelligence."


But whatever were the reactions to the Parliament of Religions, there can be no doubt that it had caused a ferment in the pulpits of America. Ministers ranted, reasoned, and made resolutions regarding the necessity for self-examination. The storm extended as far as China, where, according to the Republic of February 18, 1894, a religious Parliament, composed of the various missionary elements at work there, was held for "mutual encouragement in the one great mission of Christian enlightenment. "

But repercussions of this sort were not all: something else happened. A nation-wide religious revival of immense proportions took place. People suddenly began to rush to the churches in overwhelming numbers. According to the Republic of January 21, 1894:


Revivals are being held everywhere, and the accessions to the church are gratifying results that prove the stability of the great truths taught by the prophets of old, and explained by Christ himself.... In New York, Boston, Philadelphia and even in San Francisco, the work is being carried on by religious workers with unusual success, and the new year promises to be as productive of good results as the years of 1857-58, when failure after failure created distrust in the permanence of things of earth.... The present generation watching the mighty strides of progress and struggling in the vortex of business cares, has been prone to adopt the negative creed of the Pantheist or to answer in the easy manner of the Agnostic; but now, in the time of trouble, the soul instinctively seeks its Maker and a tide of religious sentiment is rushing with an irresistible current, cleansing sinful lives and carrying away the barriers of sin.... Evangelists, zealous workers, are converting sinners everywhere and the light of gospel, with incomparable radiance, is flooding the land.


On January 29, 1894, the Republic again covered the religious revival in a Front page dispatch from New York, headlined: "A Religious Wave Now Sweeping Over New York and Brooklyn. " The article reads in part:


Church workers in New York think that a tidal wave of religion has been fairly launched in the United States and is fairly settling over New York and Brooklyn. Revival meetings are being held in more than half of the churches in Brooklyn, and ministers in New York are joining the crusade.... Now from all parts of the country the news is coming of a religious awakening, promising to surpass in magnitude that one of the past.... Ministers from every portion of the City of Churches reported renewed interest; there seemed to be remarkable religious feeling. At last evangelists were engaged. Meetings have been held daily in half a dozen places. Hundreds and hundreds have risen for prayers, and thousands have promised to lead a better life. Last Sunday the new acquisitions to the membership o the churches of the city (Brooklyn] aggregated nearly 500. ... Last week the Central Committee (a body made up of 17 clergymen of all denominations] decided that the movement had assumed such proportions that the body could not adequately take care of it, so the responsibility was delegated to the rightful authorities and notice was given that every pastor in the city must attend to those nearest his own doors. For three weeks meetings have been held in 13 churches every evening. During the day two meetings have been kept up. This week more churches will be opened every night and the day meetings will be continued. The attendance at all of these meetings has been phenomenal. Every church is crowded. People willingly stand for hours. "After meetings" draw more people than ever. They seem loath to leave the church. The revivals of today are conducted very differently from those of 10 years ago. The old way was to frighten sinners with terrible stories of an everlasting hell until they were driven, from sheer sense of fear, into the inquiry room, where "experience meetings " were depended on to do the rest. All is now changed. The all powerful love of Jesus Christ is the appeal. God's love and forgiveness the theme.


The St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat also covered the religious revival, devoting, on February 4, 1894, more than a full page to a statistical report of conversions in five states. The article consists almost solely of the names of the churches in 177 counties and the number of people who had recently joined them. I cannot imagine anyone sitting down to read this, and fortunately the essence of the whole story is told in the following headlines: "THE CHRISTIAN HARVEST. Astonishing Results of Religious Revivals in the West. Nearly Fifty-Four Thousand Conversions Since Last September. Churches Strengthened by Forty-Nine Thousand New Members. A Religious Awakening Almost Unprecedented in Extent and Power. Special Reports from Globe-Democrat Correspondents, Covering One Hundred and Seventy-Seven Counties in Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Texas and Arkansas." I hope the reader will note the figures given pertain to five states only, and that he will also note that the revival started in September, 1893 the month of the Parliament of Religions.


It is always a problem for historians and psychologists to explain what propels such phenomena as the sudden conversion of thousands upon thousands of people. Perhaps many forces are at work. In this particular case one can clearly see at least three. First, the obvious one: there was at the time a financial depression. Second: the Christian clergy had been pressed by the unexpected outcome of the Parliament to stir up Christian fervor. And third, and I believe most important: there suddenly appeared in America one who embodied a spiritual power of the very highest order.


The most remarkable thing about this revival of 1893 was the unmistakable atmosphere of joy which pervaded it and which distinguished it from revivals of earlier times. A new note had been struck in the exhortations of the ministers. The clergy no longer hammered, as they had done in previous revivals, upon the imminence of hellfire and eternal damnation, terrorizing their parishioners into a hysterical surrender. Now the emphasis was upon God's infinite mercy, the glories of heaven. People were not hounded to church; they poured in and sang their hymns with an irrepressible elation.


A reporter in the St. Louis Republic remarked upon this change from that of the old days in a lengthy article entitled "In the Olden Time." He concluded with the following paragraph: 


[The old time exhorter's] spirit is the distilled essence of vinegar mixed with the extracts of wormwood and gall and his dolorous voice sounds the Funeral knell of his parishioners' hopes for happiness on earth. Happily, this class of exhorters is dying off rapidly and the penetrating rays of the true conception of God's mercy are penetrating the fastnesses and jungles in which the somber exhorter had so long held forth.


But aside from the change in the voice from the pulpit, there was a spontaneity in the response which took even the clergymen by storm and which makes it difficult not to believe that the advent of so great a prophet as Swamiji had stirred the spiritual forces latent in America and awakened such a hunger for spiritual sustenance that men and women everywhere eagerly rushed to satisfy it, flocking in droves to the religion closest to them, in whose tradition they had been reared, and with whose doctrines and forms they were familiar.


Swamiji's fame, as we know, had spread like wildfire through America both during and after the Parliament of Religions. Swami Abhedananda, who knew at first hand the American reaction to him, said in a lecture delivered on March 8, 1903, before the Vedanta Society of New York: "During the last decade there have been few pulpits in the United States which have not held preachers who have had something to say either for or against the teachings of the world-renowned Swami Vivekananda."[13] Swamiji's message was spread far and wide. In one guise or another it became known to the people, and it cannot but be supposed that a surge of genuine religious feeling came as a result of this great current of fresh thought from the East, which was given with the full vigor of a spiritual power such as the world has rarely known. Such power moves silently and invisibly but surely, working on all levels, churning the surface into a foam, as well as altering forever the deep, hidden currents of the spiritual life of a whole people. It was the latter result for which Swami Vivekananda had come, but the former was bound to take place; and when one thinks of it, it would seem more a matter for wonder if something of this sort had not happened than that it had.


ⓘ
[1] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. K. T. Woods, November 19, 1893, VSNC.
[2] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, November 21, 1893, Mrs. Boshi Sen Collection
[3] Souvenir of Minneapolis in Colors (Minneapolis, 1911).
[4] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, November 24, 1893, Sen Col.
[5] Great Northern Railway Timetables for 1892-95. 
[6] Great Northern Railway Timetables for 1892-95.
[7]. Max O’Rell, A Frenchman in America, p. 69.
[8] Romain Rolland, Prophets of the New India, p. 358 n.
[9].Complete Works, 5:211.
[10].Thomas Beer, The Mauve Decade, PP- 35-36.
[11].“The Parliament of Religions: A Review,” Missionary Review of the World 12 (December 1894): 882, 894-
[12].Life, 1:442.
[13].Swami Abhedananda, Vivekananda and His Work, 3rd ed., p. 7.

↑ Contents

1.5 IN A SOUTHERN CITY

On Saturday, January 13, 1894, Swamiji arrived in Memphis, invited by the members of the Nineteenth Century Club, some of whom had attended the Parliament of Religions and had been deeply impressed by "the Hindu Monk." It would seem from what we so far know that many of Swamiji's engagements were made independently of the lecture bureau, negotiations being made directly between him and various clubs or individuals. For instance, the Peripatetic Club invited him to speak in Minneapolis; Dr. H. O. Breeden arranged for his lectures in Des Moines; the Nineteenth Century Club brought him to Memphis; and, as will be seen in a following chapter, the Unity Club first sponsored him in Detroit. But if Swamiji signed a contract with the lecture bureau in November, that agency no doubt received a large share of the proceeds from every lecture given thereafter—whether arranged under its management or not.

In Memphis Swamiji was the guest of Mr. Hu L. Brinkley, who lived in what was variously known as "Miss Moon's establishment" or the "La Salette Academy." Actually, although its name persisted in current use, the La Salette Academy was nonexistent, having closed in 1891. Miss Virginia Moon, fondly known in Memphis as "Miss Ginny," turned the building in which the academy had been housed into a boardinghouse for six or seven bachelor gentlemen. At the time of Swamiji's visit Miss Moon was around fifty and one of Memphis's most extraordinary characters. She must have delighted Swamiji with her spirit of independence, for she was an emancipated woman par excellence, who had little use for men and who toted a pearl-handled revolver in a dainty, ruffled parasol. But Miss Ginny had a heart of gold. Her main vocation was giving in charity and, with her ever-present and persuasive parasol in hand, convincing the wealthy men of Memphis that they should do likewise. History has recorded her as "a one woman community fund" It was in the large parlors of Miss Ginny Moon's boardinghouse that Swamiji received callers, held interviews, and twice lectured.

On the evening of his arrival in Memphis a reception was held for him by a Mrs. S. R. Shepherd, and the next day, Sunday, January t0, he granted an interview to a local reporter. The interview was in certain respects unique, as will be seen in the following article from the Memphis Commercial of January I5:

2

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA HERE

The Hindu Monk Who Is to Lecture in This City

He Talks Entertainingly to a Reporter on Various 
Subjects, Among Them Suspended Animation and 
Other Marvels Peculiar to His Home.

Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindu Monk,. who will lecture this afternoon at 3 o'clock before the Nineteenth Century Club, and tomorrow night at the Auditorium, arrived in Memphis Saturday, and is the guest of Hu L. Brinkley at Miss Moon's establishment, Third Street, near Poplar.

Swami Vive Kananda is in some respects the most interesting visitor Memphis has ever had. Himself a Brahmin, he sacrificed his rank and joined the order of Hindu monks called Sanyasin. He was to Americans at least perhaps the most interesting figure in the World's Parliament of Religions, held at Chicago in connection with the World's Fair. This was not alone because he came as the representative of a religion of a far away land, but because of the  excellent speeches which he made during the great religious gathering.

Yesterday afternoon Swami Vive Kananda dined at Col. R. B. Snowden's [at Annesdale] where he met Bishop Thomas F. Gailor. He had only a short time returned from this visit when a Commercial reporter called upon him at Miss Moon's, and was accorded an interview with him in the rooms of Gen. R. F. Patterson, where he was sitting at the time.*(1)

*(1)Swamiji probably first met General and Mrs. Robert Franklin Patterson in Memphis, where they lived. During the Civil War, General Patterson had served with distinction as a brigadier general in the Union Army. He was postmaster of Memphis from 1889 to 1893 and was later appointed American Consul General to India, a post he held from 1897 to 1906. According to Josephine MacLeod, Mrs. Patterson persuaded President McKinley to give her husband this appointment so that they could be near Swamiji in India. (Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana, Tantine, the Life of Josephine MacLeod [Calcutta : Sri Sarada Math, 1990], p.202) Marion Patterson’s dream was more than fulfilled. As is well known, she traveled with Swamiji's party through northern India (up to Anantnag in Kashmir) in 1898. 

It is sometimes said that Mrs. Patterson was the southern lady who rescued Swamiji from color-prejudiced hotelkeepers, inviting him to stay in her home. However, the incidents in which Swamiji was refused admittance to several first-class hotels tooke place in Baltimore, Maryland, not Memphis.

Vive Kananda is very striking in his personality. Though quite dark of complexion, his intellectual forehead, large fine eyes and black hair, his easy, graceful manners and fine figure and carriage make him a very handsome man.

Asked by the reporter for his impressions of America, he said:

"I have a good impression of this country especially of the American women. I have especially remarked on the absence of poverty in America."

The conversation afterward turned to the subject of religions. Swami Vive Kananda expressed the opinion that the World's Parliament of Religions had been beneficial in that it had done much toward broadening ideas.

"What," asked the reporter, "is the generally accepted view held by those of your faith as to the fate after death of one holding the Christian religion?"

"We believe that if he is a good man he will be saved. Even an atheist, if he is a good man, we believe must be saved. That is our religion. We believe all religions are good, only those who hold them must not quarrel."

Swami Vive Kananda was questioned concerning the truthfulness of the marvelous stories of the performance of wonderful feats of conjuring, levitation, suspended animation, and the like in India. Vive Kananda said:

"We do not believe in miracles at all but that apparently strange things may be accomplished under the operation of natural laws. There is a vast amount of literature in India on these subjects, and the people there have made a study of these things.

"Thought reading and the foretelling of events are successfully practised by the Hathayogis.

"As to levitation, I have never seen anyone overcome gravitation and rise by will into the air, but I have seen many who were trying to do so. They read books published on the subject and spend years trying to accomplish the feat. Some of them in their efforts nearly starve themselves, and become so thin that if one presses his finger upon their stomachs he can actually feel the spine.

"Some of these Hathayogis live to a great age."

The subject of suspended animation was broached and the Hindu monk told the Commercial reporter that he himself had known a man who went into a sealed cave, which was then closed up with a trap door, and remained there for many years, without food. There was a decided stir of interest among those who heard this assertion. Vive Kananda entertained not the slightest doubt of the genuineness of this case. He says that in the case of suspended animation growth is for the time arrested. He says the case of the man in India who was buried with a crop of barley raised over his grave and who was finally taken out still alive is perfectly well authenticated. He thinks the studies which enabled persons to accomplish that feat were suggested by the hibernating animals.

Vive Kananda said that he had never seen the feat which some writers have claimed has been accomplished in India, of throwing a rope into the air and the thrower climbing up the rope and disappearing out of sight in the distant heights.

A lady present when the reporter was interviewing the monk said some one had asked her if he, Vive Kananda, could perform wonderful tricks, and if he had been buried alive as a part of his installation in the Brotherhood. The answer to both questions was a positive negative. "What  have those things to do with religion?" he asked. "Do they make a man purer? The satan of your Bible is powerful, but differs from God in not being pure."

Speaking of the sect of Hathayoga, Vive Kananda said there was one thing, whether a coincidence or not, connected with the initiation of their disciples, which was suggestive of the one passage in the life of Christ. They make their disciples live alone for just forty days.

Only the members and invited guests of the Nineteenth Century Club will hear Swami Vive Kananda this afternoon; tomorrow night, when he appears at the Auditorium, the public will have an opportunity to see and hear this very interesting man and no less interesting talker. Vive Kananda will likely go from here to Chicago. He does not yet know how long he will remain in America.

On the afternoon of Monday, January 15, Swamiji gave his first lecture in Memphis at the Nineteenth Century Club. What his subject was we do not know, but we do know from an item in the Appeal-Avalanche of January 21 that "the address of Swami Vive Kananda before the Nineteenth Century Club and the reception given after the lecture was one of the pleasant events of this eventful year in club calendar. " A piano solo and a song "formed the musical program of the afternoon." How many musical programs Swamiji must have heard while on tour! Few occasions were considered complete without at least two solos, rendered as a rule by "accomplished young women."

The following reports which cover the first three days of Swamiji's stay in Memphis and which give some idea of how his reputation had spread, appeared in the Appeal-Avalanche of January 14, 15, and 16 respectively. As will be seen, no matter how well known Swamiji became, the idea still persisted that he had been a Brahmin who became a Hindu priest or monk. (Most of the following was obviously copied from Lucy Monroe's "Chicago Letter" of November 11, which appeared in the Critic. See chapter three.)

3

COMING WEEK'S ATTRACTIONS

Memphis this morning has a distinguished visitor in the person of Swami Vive Kananda, a Brahman monk of India, who is the guest of the Nineteenth Century Club. His culture, his eloquence, and his fascinating personality has given this country a new idea of Hindoo civilisation. He is an interesting figure, his fine, intelligent, mobile face in its setting of yellows and his deep, musical voice prepossessing one at once in his favour. So it is not strange that he has been taken up by the literary clubs, and has lectured and preached in many American churches. He speaks without notes, presenting his facts and his conclusions with the greatest art, the most convincing sincerity, and rising at times to a rich, inspiring eloquence. "Hinduism" will be his subject next Tuesday evening at 8 o'clock at the Auditorium.

AMUSEMENTS

"One of the giants of the platform," "a model representative of his race," "a sensation of the World's Fair parliament," "an orator by divine right " All this and more is true of Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindu Monk, who is in the city, a guest of the Nineteenth Century Club. Several members of the club heard Vive Kananda during the recent parliament of religions, and were so charmed with his eloquence, his earnestness, his culture, that they determined to have him visit Memphis, and to this end have been in correspondence with him since the adjournment of the parliament. On tomorrow evening at 8 o'clock in the Auditorium an opportunity will be given the people of Memphis to see and hear this earnest, eloquent Brahman tell of the religions, manners, and customs of his people.

4

THE HINDOO MONK
The Eloquent Lecturer from the Orient 
Will Be Heard Tonight

Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindoo monk, who is to lecture at the Auditorium tonight, is one of the most eloquent men who has ever appeared on the religious or lecture platform in this country. His matchless oratory, deep penetration into things occult, his cleverness in debate, and great earnestness captured the closest attention of the world's thinking men at the World's Fair Parliament of Religion, and the admiration of thousands of people who have since heard him during his lecture tour through many of the states of the Union.

In conversation he is a most pleasant gentleman; his choice of words are the gems of the English language, and his general bearing ranks him with the most cultured people of Western etiquette and custom. As a companion he is a most charming man, and as a conversationalist he is, perhaps not surpassed in the drawing-rooms of any city in the Western World. He speaks English not only distinctly, but fluently, and his ideas, as new as sparkling, drop from his tongue in a perfectly bewildering overflow of ornamental language.

Swami Vive Kananda, by his inherited religion or early teachings, grew up a Brahmin, but becoming converted to the Hindoo religion he sacrificed his rank and became a Hindoo priest, or as known in the country of oriental ideality, a sanyasin. He had always been a close student of the wonderful and mysterious works of nature as drawn from God's high conception, and with years spent as both a student and teacher in the higher colleges of that eastern country, he acquired a knowledge that has given him a worldwide reputation as one of the most thoughtful scholars of the age.

His wonderful first address before the members of the World's Fair Parliament stamped him at once as a leader in that great body of religious thinkers. During the session he was frequently heard in defence of his religion, and some of the most beautiful and philosophical gems that grace the English language rolled from his lips there in picturing the higher duties that man owed to man and to his Creator. He is an artist in thought, an idealist in belief and a dramatist on the platform.

Since his arrival in Memphis he has been guest of Mr. Hu L. Brinkley, where he has received calls day and evening from many in Memphis who desired to pay their respects to him. He is also an informal guest at the Tennessee Club and was a guest at the reception given by Mrs. S. R. Shepherd, Saturday evening. Col. R. B. Snowden gave a dinner at his home at Annesdale in honor of the distinguished visitor on Sunday, where he met Assistant Bishop Thomas F. Gailor, Rev. Dr. George Patterson and a number of other clergymen.

Yesterday afternoon he lectured before a large and fashionable audience composed of the members of the Nineteenth Century Club in the rooms of the club in the Randolph Building. Tonight he will be heard at the Auditorium on "Hindooism. "

By the time Swamiji reached Memphis his name seems to have been established as Vive Kananda. This division of Vivekananda into a first and last name was probably an inspiration on the part of the lecture bureau. It was easier to remember this way, less liable to distortion in spelling and pronunciation and, in the jargon of modern publicity agents, "better box office." In most cases, particularly in advance publicity, the "Vive" was dropped altogether and he was heralded in the papers as "Kananda" in letters an inch high.

Swamiji s lecture on Hinduism, as has been seen in the above accounts, was delivered on Tuesday evening, January 16, at the Auditorium. The Commercial of January 17 reported upon it as follows:

5

PLEA FOR TOLERANCE
Swami Vive Kananda Instructs Christians 
on the Faith of the Hindus.

An audience of fair proportions gathered last night at the Auditorium to greet the celebrated Hindu monk, Swami Vive Kananda, in his lecture on Hinduism.

He was introduced in a brief but informing address by Judge R. J. Morgan, who gave a sketch of the development of the great Aryan race, from which development have come the Europeans and the Hindus alike, so tracing a racial kinship between the people of America and the speaker who was to address them.

The eminent Oriental was received with liberal applause, and heard with attentive interest throughout. He is a man of fine physical presence, with regular bronze features and form of fine proportions. He wore a robe of pink silk, fastened at the waist with a black sash, black trousers and about his head was gracefully draped a turban of yellow India silk. His delivery is very good, his use of English being perfect as regards choice of words and correctness of grammar and construction. The only inaccuracy of pronunciation is in the accenting of words at times upon a wrong syllable. Attentive listeners, however, probably lost few words, and their attention was well rewarded by an address full of original thought, information and broad wisdom. The address might fitly be called a plea for universal tolerance, illustrated by remarks concerning the religion of India. This spirit, he contended, the spirit of tolerance and love, is the central inspiration of all religions which are worthy, and this, he thinks, is the end to be secured by any form of faith.

His talk concerning Hinduism was not strictly circumstantial. His attempt was rather to give an analysis of its spirit than a story of its legends or a picture of its forms. He dwelt upon only a few of the distinctive credal or ritual features of his faith, but these he explained most clearly and perspicuously. He gave a vivid account of the mystical features of Hinduism, out of which the so often misinterpreted theory of reincarnation has grown. He explained how his religion ignored the differentiations of time, how, just as all men believe in the present and the future of the soul, so the faith of Brahma believes in its past. He made it clear, too, how his faith does not believe in "original sin," but bases all effort and aspiration on the belief of the perfectibility of humanity. Improvement and purification, he contends, must be based upon hope. The development of man is a return to an original perfection. This perfection must come through the practice of holiness and love. Here he showed how his own people have practiced these qualities, how India has been a land of refuge for the oppressed, citing the instance of the welcome given by the Hindus to the Jews when Titus sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple.

In a graphic way he told that the Hindus do not lay much stress upon forms. Sometimes every member of the family will differ in their adherence to sects, but all will worship God by worshiping the spirit of love which is His central attribute. The Hindus, he says, hold that there is good in all religions, that all religions are embodiments of man's inspiration for holiness, and being such, all should be respected. He illustrated this by a citation from the Vedas, in which varied religions are symbolized by the differently formed vessels with which different men came to bring water from a spring. The forms of the vessels are many, but the water of truth is what all seek to fill their vessels with. God knows all forms of faith, he thinks, and will recognize his own name no matter what it is called, or what may be the fashion of the homage paid him.

The Hindus, he continued, worship the same God as the Christians. The Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, Siva is merely an embodiment of God the creator, the preserver and the destroyer. That the three are considered three instead of one is simply a corruption due to the fact that general humanity must have its ethics made tangible. So likewise the material images of Hindu gods are simply symbols of divine qualities.

He told, in explanation of the Hindu doctrine of incarnation, the story of Krishna, who was born by immaculate conception and the story of whom greatly resembles the story of Jesus. The teaching of Krishna, he claims, is the doctrine of love for its own sake, and he expressed [it] by the words "If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of religion, the love of God is its end."

His entire lecture cannot be sketched here, but it was a masterly appeal for brotherly love, and an eloquent defense of a beautiful Faith. The conclusion was especially fine, when he acknowledged his readiness to accept Christ but must also bow to Krishna and to Buddha; and when, with a fine picture of the cruelty of civilization, he refused to hold Christ responsible for the crimes of Progress.

It may have been after this lecture on Hinduism that the pen of a journalist took wings. The following flight has come down to us as an undated clipping from an undesignated paper, said to be of Memphis. Whoever wrote it had clearly been deeply moved by hearing Swamiji, and although the piece contributes little to our factual knowledge of his lectures, it does indicate something of the effect upon those who heard him; and for this reason it is included here at least in part:

6

Swami ViveKananda. 

Did you ever read Sir Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia"? What sweet entrancing thought is rife in every graceful verse and every verse is grace and beauty and love....

It is a thing of beauty, that poem. How lovely—no clashing cruelties— only tolerant self abnegation and a supreme purity, clothed in the calm of never-ending peace. Heaven on earth is its story and Swami Vive preaches just such things.

Yes, he preaches, for every word, every burning, living thought enunciated is a sermon on tolerance, truth and purity. Eloquent, logical scholar that he is—to his fingers ends, every word of the Talmud, Koran, Bible and the Vedas, a mind electric in the rapidity and clearness of its perceptions, infinite in the variety, beauty and perfection of his parallels and similes. He is the artist, the scholar, the high-priest of man glorified.

He thinks and makes you think. You should hear, it must benefit. To detail his addresses or lectures, would be to write pages of closely thought out discourse. A sketch would not even suggest his outline. To say that he held his auditors interested would ill express their rapt attention.

Characteristic as was his discourse of the higher intelligence, he was not above his auditors in that respect. Our most intelligent readers and thinkers were his hearers. Applaud they did, but dissect his arguments as well. There were those who agreed and those who differed materially, but all conceded that "toleration after all is the true charity, " and a visitation of many such emissaries of such a creed could but prove a blessing to us in this age of selfish, unkindly living.

On the evening following his talk on Hinduism, Swamiji lectured in the rooms of the Woman's Council on "The Destiny of Man." The lecture was reviewed in a relatively down-to-earth manner by the Appeal-Avalanche of January 18:

7

THE DESTINY OF MAN DISCUSSED
Lecture by Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindoo Monk.
The Eloquent Orator Talks Entertainingly of Man and
His Destiny—Synopsis of His Lecture Last Night 
in the Rooms of the Woman's Council

"The Destiny of Man" was the subject of a lecture by Swami Vive Kananda last night at the Woman's Council-room, corner Second and Adams street.

The audience was moderately large, and was made up of the best literary and musical talent of the city, including some of the most distinguished members of the legal fraternity and financial institutions.

The speaker differs in one respect in particular from some American orators. He advances his ideas with as much deliberation as a professor of mathematics demonstrates an example in algebra to his students. Kananda speaks with perfect faith in his own powers and ability to successfully hold his position against all argument. He advances no ideas, nor makes assertions that he does not follow up to a logical conclusion. Much of his lecture is something on the order of Ingersoll's philosophy. He does not believe in future punishment nor in God as Christians believe in Him. He does not believe the mind is immortal, from the fact that it is dependent, and nothing can be immortal except it is independent of all things. He says: "God is not a king sitting away in one corner of the universe to deal out punishment or rewards according to a man's deeds here on earth, and the time will come when man will know the truth, and stand up and say, 'I am God,' am life of His life. Why teach that God is far away when our real nature, our immortal principle is God?

"Be not deluded by your religion teaching original sin, for the same religion teaches original purity. When Adam fell he fell from purity. (Applause) Purity is our real nature, and to regain that is the object of all religion. All men are pure; all men are good. Some objections can be raised to them, and you ask why some men are brutes? That man you call a brute is like the diamond in the dirt and dust— brush the dust off and it is a diamond, just as pure as if the dust had never been on it, and we must admit that every soul is a big diamond.

"Nothing is baser than calling our brother a sinner. A lioness once fell upon a flock of sheep and killed a lamb. A sheep found a very young lion and it followed her and she gave it suck, and it grew up with the sheep and learned to eat grass like a sheep. One day an old lion saw the sheep lion and tried to get it away from the sheep, but it ran away as he approached. The big lion waited till he caught the sheep lion alone, and he seized it and carried it to a clear pool of water, and said, 'You are not a sheep, but a lion; look at your picture in the water: The sheep lion, seeing its picture reflected from the water, said, 'I am a lion and not a sheep.' Let us not think we are sheep, but be lions, and don't bleat and eat grass like a sheep.

"For four months I have been in America. In Massachusetts I visited a reformatory prison. The jailer at that prison never knows for what crimes the prisoners are incarcerated. The mantle of charity is thrown around them. In another city there were three newspapers, edited by very learned men, trying to prove that severe punishment was a necessity, while one other paper contended that mercy was better than punishment. The editor of one paper proved by statistics that only 50 per cent of criminals who received severe punishment returned to honest lives, while 90 per cent of those who received light punishment returned to useful pursuits in life.

"Religion is not the outcome of the weakness of human nature; religion is not here because we fear a tyrant; religion is love, unfolding, expanding, growing. Take the watch—within the little case is machinery and a spring. The spring, when wound up, tries to regain its natural state. You are like the spring in the watch, and it is not necessary that all watches have the same kind of a spring, and it is not necessary that we all have the same religion. And why should we quarrel? If we all had the same ideas the world would be dead. External motion we call action; internal motion is human thought. The stone falls to the earth. You say it is caused by the law of gravitation. The horse draws the cart and God draws the horse. That is the law of motion. Whirlpools show the strength of the current; stop the current and stagnation ensues. Motion is life. We must have unity and variety. The rose would smell as sweet by any other name, and it does not matter what your religion is called.

"Six blind men lived in a village. They could not see the elephant, but they went out and felt of him. One put his hand on the elephant's tail, one of them on his side, one on his tongue [trunk], one on his ear. They began to describe the elephant. One said he was like a rope; one said he was like a great wall; one said he was like a boa constrictor, and another said he was like a fan. They finally came to blows and went to pummelling each other. A man who could see came along and inquired the trouble, and the blind men said they had seen the elephant and disagreed because one accused the other of lying. 'Well,' said the man, 'you have all lied; you are blind, and neither of you have seen it.' That is what is the matter with our religion. We let the blind see the elephant. (Applause.)

"A monk of India said, 'I would believe you if you were to say that I could press the sands of the desert and get oil, or that I could pluck the tooth from the mouth of the crocodile without being bitten, but I cannot believe you when you say a bigot can be changed.' You ask why is there so much variance in religions? The answer is this: The little streams that ripple down a thousand mountain sides are destined to come at last to the mighty ocean. So with the different religions. They are destined at last to bring us to the bosom of God. For 1,900 years you have been trying to crush the Jews. Why could you not crush them? Echo answers: Ignorance and bigotry can never crush truth."

The speaker continued in this strain of reasoning for nearly two hours, and concluded by saying: "Let us help, and not destroy. "

8

At the request of his already large following Swamiji delivered three more lectures in Memphis. The first two of these were held at La Salette Academy (Miss Moon's boardinghouse), whose parlors were no doubt large enough to hold a sizable audience. On Friday evening the subject was "Reincarnation, " and the lecture was reported by the Appeal -Avalanche of January 20:

VIVEKANANDA ON REINCARNATION
The Hindoo Monk Discourses on Metempsychosis.
An Appreciative Audience Is Enlightened on the Subject 
of the Transmigration of the Soul by the Learned 
Theosophist from the East.

Swami Vive Kananda, the beturbaned and yellow-robed monk, lectured again last night to a fair-sized and appreciative audience at the La Salette Academy on Third street.

Kananda's popularity has increased wonderfully since his arrival in this city, and especially is this noticeable among the ladies. To them, he is like the latest sensation, they never grow tired of talking about him. Two-thirds of the audience last night were feminine and throughout the discourse they were most attentive, taking in every word that dropped from the speaker's lips as if they were pearls given up by the bottomless seas.

The subject was "Transmigration of the Soul, or metempsychosis." Possibly Vive Kananda never appeared to greater advantage than in this role, so to speak. Metempsychosis is one of the most widely-accepted beliefs among the Eastern races, and one that they are ever ready to defend, at home or abroad. As Kananda said:

"Many of you do not know that it is one of the oldest religious doctrines of all the old religions. It was known among the Pharisees, among the Jews, among the first fathers of the Christian Church, and was a common belief among the Arabs. And it lingers still with the Hindoos and the Buddhists.

"This state of things went on until the days of science, which is merely a contemplation of energies. Now, you Western people believe this doctrine to be subversive of morality. In order to have a full survey of the argument, its logical and metaphysical features, we will have to go over all the ground. All of us believe in a moral governor of this universe; yet nature reveals to us instead of justice, injustice. One man is born under the best of circumstances. Throughout his entire life circumstances come ready made to his hands-all conducive to happiness and a higher order of things. Another is born, and at every point his life is at variance with that of his neighbor. He dies in depravity, exiled from society. Why so much impartiality [partiality] in the distribution of happiness?

"The theory of metempsychosis reconciles this disharmonious chord in your common beliefs. Instead of making us immoral, this theory gives us the idea of justice. Some of you say: 'It is God's will.' This is no answer. It is unscientific. Everything has a cause. The sole cause and whole theory of causation being left with God, makes him a most immoral creature. But materialism is as much illogical as the other. So far as we go, perception [causation?] involves all things. Therefore, this doctrine of the transmigration of the soul is necessary on these grounds. Here we are all born. Is this the first creation? Is creation something coming out of nothing? Analysed completely, this sentence is nonsense. It is not creation, but manifestation.

"A something cannot be the effect of a cause that is not. If I put my finger in the fire the burn is a simultaneous effect, and I know that the cause of the burn was the action of my placing my finger in contact with the fire. And as in the case of nature, there never was a time when nature did not exist, because the cause has always existed. But for argument sake, admit that there was a time when there was no existence, Where was all this mass of matter? To create something new would be the introduction of so much more energy into the universe. This is impossible. Old things can be re-created, but there can be no addition to the universe.

"No mathematical demonstration could be made that would have this theory of metempsychosis. According to logic, hypothesis and theory must not be believed. But my contention is that no better hypothesis has been forwarded by the human intellect to explain the phenomena of life.

"I met with a peculiar incident while on a train leaving the city of Minneapolis. There was a cowboy on the train. He was a rough sort of a fellow and a Presbyterian of the blue nose type. He walked up and asked me where I was from. I told him India. 'What are you?' he said. 'Hindoo,' I replied. 'Then you must go to hell,' he remarked. I told him of this theory, and after [my] explaining it, he said he had always believed in it, because he said that one day when he was chopping a log his little sister came out in his clothes and said that she used to be a man. That is why he believed in the transmigration of souls. The whole basis of the theory is this: If a man's actions be good, he must be a higher being, and vice versa.

"There is another beauty in this theory—the moral motor [motive] it supplies. What is done is done. It says, 'Ah, that it were done better.' Do not put your finger in the fire again. Every moment is a new chance: '

Vive Kananda spoke in this strain for some time, and he was frequently applauded.

Swami Vive Kananda will lecture again this afternoon at 4 o'clock at La Salette Academy on "The Manners and Customs of India."

The lecture on "The Manners and Customs of India" was poorly attended owing to inclement weather: It was perhaps the smallness of the gathering that gave this lecture a somewhat informal aspect. As will be seen in the following report from the Appeal-Avalanche of January 21, the ladies kept interrupting Swamiji to ask questions both relevant and irrelevant:

9

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF INDIA
Lecture by Swami Vive Kananda, The Hindoo Monk.

He Beautifully Describes the Traditions of His Native Country—A Cordial Welcome Has Been Extended the High Priest from India—He Lectures Again Tonight.

Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindoo monk, delivered a lecture at La Salette Academy yesterday afternoon.

Owing to the pouring rain, a very small audience was present.

The subject discussed was "Manners and Customs in India." Vive Kananda is advancing theories of religious thought which find ready lodgment in the minds of some of the most advanced thinkers of this as well as other cities of America.

His theory is fatal to the orthodox belief, as taught by the Christian teachers. It has been the supreme effort of Christian America to enlighten the beclouded minds of  heathen India, but it seems that the oriental splendor of Kananda's religion has eclipsed the beauty of the old time Christianity, as taught by our parents, and will find a rich field in which to thrive in the minds of some of the better educated of America.

This is a day of "fads," and Kananda seems to be filling a "long felt want " He is, perhaps, one of the most learned men of his country, and possesses a wonderful amount of personal magnetism, and his hearers are charmed by his eloquence. While he is liberal in his views, he sees very little to admire in the orthodox Christianity. Kananda has received more marked attention in Memphis than almost any lecturer or minister that has ever visited the city.

If a missionary to India was as cordially received as the Hindoo monk is here the work of spreading the gospel of Christ in heathen lands would be well advanced. His lecture yesterday afternoon was an interesting one from a historic point of view. He is thoroughly familiar with the history and traditions of his native country, from very ancient history up to the present, and can describe the various places and objects of interest there with grace and ease.

During his lecture he was frequently interrupted by questions propounded by the ladies in the audience, and he answered all queries without the least hesitancy, except when one of the ladies asked a question with the purpose of drawing him out into a religious discussion. He refused to be led from the original subject of his discourse and informed the interrogator that at another time he would give his views on the "transmigration of the soul," etc.

In the course of his remarks he said that his grandfather was married when he was 3 years old and his father married at 18, but he had never married at all. A monk is not forbidden to marry, but if he takes a wife she becomes a monk with the same powers and privileges and occupies the same social position as her husband.

In answer to a question, he said there were no divorces in India for any cause, but if, after 14 years of married life, there were no children in the family, the husband was allowed to marry another with the wife's consent, but if she objected he could not marry again. His description of the ancient mausoleums and temples were beautiful beyond comparison, and goes to show that the ancients possessed scientific knowledge far superior to the most expert artisans of the present day.

Swami Vive Kananda will appear at the Y.M.H.A. Hall to-night for the last time in this city. He is under contract with the "Slayton Lyceum Bureau" of Chicago, to fill a three-years' engagement in this country. He will leave to-morrow for Chicago, where he has an engagement for the night of the 25th.

It is unlikely that Swamiji made the remark attributed to him in the third paragraph above regarding the marriage of monks. This must have been a blunder on the part of the reporter; for, as is well known, if a sannyasin takes a wife he is considered by Hindu society to have fallen, as it were, from grace and is ostracized. Probably what Swamiji said was that if a married man should renounce the world, his wife would do likewise. Or perhaps he said "priest," not "monk. "

Swamiji's "theory fatal to the orthodox belief" was too much for one Reverend G. T. Sullivan whose Sunday sermon was given in the Appeal-Avalanche of January 22. The Reverend Mr. Sullivan took as his theme a Biblical text often cited at the Parliament of Religions: "For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ." The sermon need not be quoted here. Suffice it to say that the Reverend Mr. Sullivan characterized the Parliament of Religions as "the greatest fraud of the Nineteenth Century." It might also be mentioned that in the course of his lecture he displayed a confusion typical in Western thought regarding the doctrine of reincarnation. Swamiji had just delivered a lecture on this subject and often took pains to set the matter straight, for it was a stumbling block to the West's understanding of Eastern religions. Out of his fund of misinformation, the Reverend Mr. Sullivan explained:

Another feature of the world's [non-Christian] religion is, it does not recognize the immortality of man. Transmigration of the soul is taught; that is, our soul, they say will go out into some animal, perhaps, or some other creature.... I would rather never to have lived to think my soul would go into an ox. I had rather not live at all than to die and be annihilated. Better be cast into the sea with a millstone about your neck than to be a materialist.

On Sunday, January 21, Swamiji held a discussion in the parlors of La Salette Academy. The reporter from the Appeal—Avalanche was evidently deeply appreciative of the Hindu monk, and fortunately he was present at this meeting, for he gives us one of our rare and invaluable close-range word pictures of him:

10

A TALK WITH THE HINDOO MONK

He Thinks Americans Are Materialists and Tells Why
His Mission to This Country Is Not to Gain Converts to 
His Faith, But to Raise Funds for a College in
His Native Land—His Religion.

Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindoo monk, whose lectures have attracted marked attention during his sojourn here, has been misunderstood, insomuch as the object of his visit to America is concerned. He is here not to propagate the doctrines of any religion of India and make converts to the same, but to raise the money wherewith to establish a polytechnic institution in his native land that shall be the nucleus around which he hopes to build an educational system that shall tend to develop the minds of  his people along lines of thought to which, owing chiefly to their religious beliefs, they have been strangers heretofore.

Kananda has no quarrel with the faith of the people of the Western world, as he calls Americans. While he sees much in their mode of life, their social and religious institutions, to disagree with, he does not criticise them unless called upon to do so. He is here rather to cull from American soil ideas and natural aid that will advance his people. As a conversationalist Kananda is very agreeable. Modest in his demeanor, he is inclined to be diffident until aroused by some query that affects his mission, his religion or his people. Then he is assertive, but never aggressive. Perhaps there is at times a tinge of irony, felt rather than seen, in his manner when contrasting the manners and customs of his people with those of the West, but being a gentleman by instinct, a scholar by training and a monk by choice he is always courteous and never impatient.

If there has been anything of the irascible in his nature it would surely have been developed last evening when, for an hour or more, he was subjected to a cross-fire of interrogatories that kept him ever on the alert and frequently on the defensive. The conversation was participated in by a number of those who have become interested in the work [monk] and his mission since he arrived in Memphis, among those present being a representative of the Appeal-Avalanche. Kananda has said much on behalf of his people and their religion and much concerning Americans and the doctrines of Christianity, and it was to ascertain something of the ground upon which he bases his claims for the Hindoo belief and to settle points not made clear by his discourses that the monk was induced to discuss certain interesting topics.

Kananda is diplomatic to a marked degree. While ever ready to reply to any question propounded him, he is, nevertheless, capable of amusing those that he does not see fit to enter into conversation in detail in a way that precludes further discussion, while not committing himself or offending his interrogator. He is remarkably well versed upon religious, scientific and metaphysical literature, not only of his own country but of the world as well, and is capable, by reason of his versatility, of maintaining himself in any position in which circumstances may cast his lot. There is throughout his bearing and conversation a certain child-like simplicity of manner that enlists one's sympathy, and convinces one of the sincerity of the man's utterances before he begins to speak.

According to Kananda, the spiritual life ought to be developed at any cost, and it is to the attainment of the spiritual rather than the material that his religion tends.

"I am a monk," he said, as he sat in the parlors of La Salette Academy; which is his home while in Memphis, "and not a priest. When at home I travel from place to place, teaching the people of the villages and towns through which I pass. I am dependent upon them for my sustenance, as I am not allowed to touch money.

"I was born," he continued, in answer to a question, "in Bengal and became a monk and a celibate from choice. At my birth my father had a horoscope taken of my life, but would never tell me what it was. Some years ago when I visited my home my father having died, I came across the chart among some papers in my mother's possession and saw from it that I was destined to become a wanderer on the face of the earth."

There was a touch of pathos in the speaker's voice and a murmur of sympathy ran around the group of listeners.
Kananda knocked the ashes from his cigar and was silent for a space.

Presently some one asked:

"If your religion is all that you claim it is, if it is the only true faith, how is it that your people are not more advanced in civilization than they are? Why has it not elevated them among the nations of the world?" 

"Because that is not the sphere of any religion," replied the Hindoo gravely. "My people are the most moral in the world, or quite as much as any other race. They are more considerate of their fellow man's rights, and even those of dumb animals, but they are not materialists. No religion has ever advanced the thought or inspiration of a nation or people. In fact, no great achievement has ever been attained in the history of the world that religion has not retarded. Your boasted Christianity has not proven an exception in this respect. Your Darwins, your Mills, your Humes, have never received the endorsement of your prelates. Why, then, criticize my religion on this account?"

"I would not give a fig for a faith that does not tend to elevate mankind's lot on earth as well as his spiritual condition," said one of the group, "and therein I am not prepared to admit the correctness of your statements. Christianity has founded colleges, hospitals and raised the degenerate. It has elevated the downcast and helped its followers to live."

"You are right there to a certain extent," replied the monk calmly, "and yet it is not shown that these things are directly the result of your Christianity. There are many causes operating in the West to produce these results.

"Religious thought should be directed to developing man's spiritual side. Science art learning and metaphysical research all have their proper functions in life, but if you seek to blend them, you destroy their individual characteristics until, in time, you eliminate the spiritual, for instance, from the religious altogether. You Americans worship what? The dollar. In the mad rush for gold, you forget the spiritual until you have become a nation of materialists. Even your preachers and churches are tainted with the all-pervading desire. Show me one in the history of your people who has led the spiritual lives that those whom I can name at home have done. Where are those who, when death comes, could say, 'O Brother Death, I welcome thee: Your religion helps you to build Ferris wheels and Eiffel towers, but does it aid you in the development of your inner lives?"

The monk spoke earnestly, and his voice, rich and well modulated, came through the dusk that pervaded the apartment, half sadly, half accusingly. There was something of the weird in the comments of this stranger from a land whose history dates back 6,000 years upon the civilization of the Nineteenth Century America.

"But, in pursuing the spiritual, you lose sight of the demands of the present," said some one. "Your doctrine does not help men to live."

"It helps them to die," was the answer.

"We are sure of the present "

"You are sure of nothing. "

"The aim of the ideal religion should be to help one to live and to prepare one to die at the same time. "

"Exactly," said the Hindoo, quickly, "and it is that which we are seeking to attain. I believe that the Hindoo faith has developed the spiritual in its devotees at the expense of the material, and I think that in the Western world the contrary is true. By uniting the materialism of the West with the spiritualism of the East, I believe much can be accomplished. It may be that in the attempt the Hindoo faith will lose much of its individuality."

"Would not the entire social system of India have to be revolutionized to do what you hope to do?"

"Yes, probably, still the religion would remain unimpaired. "

The conversation here turned upon the form of worship of the Hindoos, and Kananda gave some interesting information on this subject. There are agnostics and atheists in India as well as elsewhere. "Realization" is the one thing essential in the lives of the followers of Brahma. Faith is not necessary. Theosophy is a subject with which  Kananda is not versed, nor is it a part of his creed unless he chooses to make it so. It is more of a separate study Kananda never met Mme. Blavatsky, but has met Col Olcott, of the American Theosophical Society. He is also acquainted with Annie Besant. Speaking of the "fakirs" of India, the famous jugglers or musicians [magicians], whose feats have made for them a world-wide reputation. Kananda told of a few episodes that had come within his observation and which almost surpass belief.

"Five months ago," he said, when questioned on this subject, "or just one month before I left India to come to this country, I happened in company in a caravan, or party of 25, to sojourn for a space in a city in the interior. While there we learned of the marvellous work of one of these itinerant magicians and had him brought before us. He told us he would produce for us any article we desired. We stripped him, at his request, until he was quite naked and placed him in the corner of the room. I threw my traveling blanket about him and then we called upon him to do as he had promised. He asked what we should like, and I asked for a bunch of California grapes, and straightway the fellow brought them forth from under his blanket. Oranges and other fruit were produced, and finally great dishes of steaming rice."

Continuing, the monk said he believed in the existence of a "sixth sense" and in telepathy. He offered no explanation of the feats of the fakirs, merely saying that they were very wonderful. The subject of idols came up and the monk said that idols formed a part of his religion insomuch as the symbol is concerned.

"What do you worship?" said the monk, "What is your idea of God?"

"The spirit," said a lady quietly.

"What is the spirit? Do you Protestants worship the words of the Bible or something beyond? We worship God through the idol. "

"That is, you attain the subjective through the objective," said a gentleman who had listened attentively to the words of the stranger.

"Yes, that is it," said the monk, gratefully.

Vive Kananda discussed further in the same strain until the call terminated as the hour for the Hindoo's lecture approached.

Vive Kananda goes to Chicago today.

That night Swamiji gave his last, and, according to the Appeal-Avalanche of January 22, his most stirring talk. This farewell lecture was announced in the Appeal-Avalanche of January 21 as follows:

Tonight Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindoo monk, will lecture at the Young Men's Hebrew Association Hall on "Comparative Theology." Among the literary and thinking people generally of Memphis, he has attracted a great deal of attention. He possesses a keen mind, his ideas are broad and philosophic, and he reasons with a logic that is almost convincing. Altogether, he is a man of strong intellect, and his lectures are very instructive, especially to the student of religion and its more intimate relation to civilization and mankind.

On the same day the Memphis Commercial also announced Swamiji's lecture. In addition to giving the facts of time and place, the item read:

11

HE'LL SPEAK TO ALL CLASSES

This lecture will not be in the interest of any institutions, but has been arranged by Col Hu Brinkley and some other gentlemen who, having heard the oriental orator and conversed with him, have been so impressed with his remarkable learning and talents that they desire all the people to have an opportunity to hear him. Swami Vive Kananda has been entertained in a public and private way by the citizens and has created a profound sensation in all cultured circles. His learning embraces such a wide range of subjects and his knowledge is so thorough that even specialists in the various sciences, theology, art and literature, learn from his utterances and absorb from his presence. The topic he has chosen for his oration tonight is one that he can treat with masterly ability and in a manner peculiarly his own. The conditions of the arrangements are such that the man would secure a large audience of all classes of people, as he no doubt will. The lecture will occur at the Young Men's Hebrew Association hall, and will begin at 8 o'clock.

It is interesting to note that although Swamiji was attempting to earn money by lecturing, it was evidently impossible for him not to contribute most of what he earned to some needy cause. Not only in Memphis, but in other towns, notably Boston, we see him lecturing for the benefit of various local charities. To judge from .the report of "Comparative Theology" in the Appeal-Avalanche of January 22, that lecture was the only one delivered in Memphis the proceeds of which Swamiji did not give away (perhaps to one or another of Miss Moon's favorite charities). The article reads as follows:

GAVE HIS FAREWELL LECTURE
Swami Vive Kananda Makes the Grandest Effort of His Life.
"Comparative Theology" Was the Subject, and He
Handled It in a Masterful Manner. The Discourse
Was Interspersed With Eloquence and Logic.

"Comparative Theology" was the subject of a discourse last night by Swami Vive Kananda at the Young Men's Hebrew Association Hall. It was the blue-ribbon lecture of the series, and no doubt increased the general admiration the people of this city entertain for the learned gentleman.

Heretofore Vive Kananda has lectured for the benefit of one charity-worthy object or another, and it can be safely said that he has rendered them material aid. Last night, however, he lectured for his own benefit. The lecture was planned and sustained by Mr. Hu L. Brinkley, one of Vive Kananda's warmest friends and most ardent admirers. In the neighborhood of two hundred gathered at the hall last night to hear the eminent Easterner for the last time in this city.

The first question the speaker asserted in connection with the subject was: "Can there be such a distinction between religions as their creeds would imply?"

He asserted that no differences existed now, and he retraced the line of progress made by all religions and brought it back to the present day. He showed that such variance of opinion must of necessity have existed with primitive man in regard to the idea of God, but that as the world advanced step by step in a moral and intellectual way, the distinctions became more and more indistinct, until finally it had faded away entirely, and now there was one all-prevalent doctrine—that of an absolute existence.

"No savage," said the speaker, "can be found who does not believe in some kind of a god.

"Modern science does not say whether it looks upon this as a revelation or not. Love among savage nations is not very strong. They live in terror. To their superstitious imaginations is pictured some malignant spirit, before the thought of which they quake in fear and terror. Whatever he likes he thinks will please the evil spirit. What will pacify him, he thinks will appease the wrath of the spirit. To this end he labors ever against his fellow-savage."

The speaker went on to show by historical facts that the savage man went from ancestral worship to the worship of elephants [the elements], and later, to gods, such as the God of Thunder and Storms. Then the religion of the world was polytheism. "The beauty of the sunrise, the grandeur of the sunset, the mystifying appearance of the star-bedecked skies and the weirdness of thunder and lightning impressed primitive man with a force that he could not explain, and suggested the idea of a higher and more powerful being controlling the infinities that flocked before his gaze," said Vive Kananda.

Then came another period—the period of monotheism. All the gods disappeared and blended into one, the God of Gods, the ruler of the universe. Then the speaker traced the Aryan race up to that period, where they said: "We live and move in God. He is motion." Then there came another period known to metaphysics as the "period of Pantheism. " This race rejected Polytheism and Monotheism, and the idea that God was the universe, and said "the soul of my soul is the only true existence. My nature is my existence and will expand to me: '

Vive Kananda then took up Buddhism. He said that they neither asserted nor denied the existence of a God. Buddha would simply say, when his counsel was sought: "You see misery. Then try to lessen it." To a Buddhist misery is ever present, and society measures the scope of his existence. Mohammedanism, he said, believed in the Old Testament of the Hindoo [Hebrew] and the New Testament of the Christian. They do not like the Christians, for they say they are heretics and teach man -worship. Mohammed ever forbade his followers having a picture of himself.

"The next question that arises," said he, "are these religions true or are some of them true and some of them false? They have all reached one conclusion, that of an absolute and infinite existence. Unity is the object of religion. The multiple of phenomena that is seen at every hand, is only the infinite variety of unity. An analysis of religion shows that man does not travel from fallacy to truth, but from a lower truth to a higher truth.

"A man brings in a coat to a lot of people. Some say the coat does not fit them. Well, you get out; you can't have a coat. Ask one Christian minister what is the matter with all the other sects that are opposed to his doctrines and dogmas, and he will answer; 'Oh, they're not Christians.' But we have better instruction than these. Our own natures, love and science—they teach us better. Like the eddies to a river, take them away and stagnation follows. Kill the difference in opinions, and it is the death of thought. Motion is necessity. Thought is the motion of the mind, and when that ceases death begins.

"If you put a simple molecule of air in the bottom of a glass of water it at once begins a struggle to join the infinite atmosphere above. So it is with the soul. It is struggling to regain its pure nature and to free itself from this material body. It wants to regain its own infinite expansion. This is everywhere the same. Among Christians, Buddhists, Mohammedans, agnostic or priest, the soul is struggling. A river flows a thousand miles down the circuitous mountain side to where it joins the seas and a man is standing there to tell it to go back and start anew and assume a more direct course! That man is a fool. You are a river that flows from the heights of Zion. I flow from the lofty peaks of the Himalayas. I don't say to you, go back and come down as I did, you're wrong. That is more wrong than foolish. Stick to your beliefs. The truth is never lost: Books may perish, nations may go down in a crash, but the truth is preserved and is taken up by some man and handed back to society, which proves a grand and continuous revelation of God."

The people of Memphis had received Swamiji royally. Not only did they like his lectures, they liked him and honored him at all manner of parties. The climax was reached by a Mrs. Jere Horn, who went to great pains to pay tribute to her guest and his country. The following description of her luncheon is from an unidentified Memphis paper:

12

CHOTA-HAZRI

Swami Vive Kananda was the recipient of many social courtesies during his stay in the city, and it devolved in most appropriate graciousness for Mrs. Jerre [Jere] Horn to extend the hospitality of her handsome home as a most beautiful and fitting conclusion to the week's series of triumphs.

Mrs. Horn spent some time in the Orient and brought back with her many souvenir curios and draperies from the East. These she used with most effective beauty Friday afternoon in transforming her home into an oriental court of Indian symphony. The walls were hung with Eastern draperies and the lotus flower reigned supreme.

The table covered with oriental drapery was defined by a wreath of smilax interwoven with poppies and the same seductive flower graced the epergne in the center of the table.

The menu also symbolized the Indian floral emphasis, and reflected poppies. Altogether it was a most charming and artistic event and a most delicate compliment to the honored guest.

One wonders about the menu, but whatever it may have been, Swamiji must have been much touched by this chota hazri or "little repast. "

Among the many friends he made in Memphis was a Mr. G. C. Connor, who had somehow learned, and had verified, that he was a member of the brotherhood of Freemasons,[1] a society then prestigious and influential in the United States. On the day he left Memphis, Mr. Connor gave Swamiji what was, in effect, an open sesame to the Freemasons of Chicago. This letter of introduction was written on paper engraved with the letterhead "Office of Most Worshipful Grand Master, State of Tennessee," and read:

Bun. F. Price

Grand Master- Memphis, Tenn., January 22, 1894

Gilbert W. Barnard, Esqur.

Masonic Temple, 

Chicago, Illinois

My dear Brother:-I take very great pleasure in introducing to you personally, and as a Freemason, our East India Brother.

13

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

Whom I examined in the English Work, in which he was made a Master Mason, in Anchor and Hope, 236, E.C. He was educated in India, and is a Monk of the oldest, and most humane of the Religions of the world; and because of my own family relations to the city of Calcutta I am anxious that this amiable representative of that wonderful land receive as cordial consideration in my country as I received in his. And because of such desire I have given him letters to you and General Smith.

I will add that I am here to attend the Convention of all the Lodges of this city tonight, and the Brethren are very much disappointed that his lecture engagements prevent Brother Vivekananda from being with us.

Sincerely Yours,[2]
G. C. Connor

On Monday, January 22, Swamiji left Memphis for Chicago. He had been in this southern city for only a little over a week; yet in his short stay had clearly been a fruitful one. Hundreds of people had come in contact with him, had felt uplifted by his talks and lectures, had absorbed his teachings, and, knowingly or unknowingly, had been spiritually nourished.

This was, of course, true of Swamiji's lecture tour as a whole. At the end of January, 1894, Mr. Merwin-Marie Snell, who had been assistant to the Chairman of the Parliament of Religions, and who had evidently kept track of Swamiji through the following months, wrote an open letter to the editor of the Indian periodical Hope, in which he spoke of the readiness of many of the American people to benefit from a true representative of Hinduism. His letter, which was reprinted in the Indian Mirror of March 9, 1894, read in part:

. . . Since the Parliament [Swami Vivekananda] has been lecturing before large audiences in the principal cities of the United States and has received an ovation wherever he went. He has often been invited to preach in Christian pulpits and has by all who have heard him on any occasion, and still more by those who have made his personal acquaintance, been always spoken of in terms of the highest admiration. The most rigid or orthodox Christians say of him, "He is indeed a prince among men," even when they find it necessary, for the sake of their time honoured prejudices, to add, "but he must be altogether an exception: of course there are no other Hindus like him. "

As intense [as] is the astonished admiration which the personal presence and bearing and language of Paramahansa Vivekananda have wrung from a public accustomed to think of Hindus—thanks to the fables and half truths of the missionaries—as ignorant and degraded "heathen", there is no doubt that the continued interest is largely due to a genuine hunger for the spiritual truths which India through him has offered to the American people.

America is starving for spiritual nourishment in spite of its absorption in material things, in spite of the ignorance and provincialism of its upper classes and the savagery of its lower, there are many souls scattered everywhere throughout its great population who are thirsty for higher things. Europe has always been indebted to India for its spiritual inspirations. There is little, very little of high thought and aspiration in Christendom which cannot be traced to one or another of the successive influxes of Hindu ideas: either to the Hinduised Mazdaism of the Gnostics, to the Hinduised Judaism of the Kabbalists, or to the Hinduised Mohamedanism of the Moorish philosophers, to say nothing of the Hinduised Socialism of the New England Transcendentalists and the many other new streams of Orientalising influence which are fertilising the soul of contemporary Christendom....

All the Hinduising forces hitherto at work have received a notable impulse from the labours of Swami Vivekananda. Never before has so authoritative a representative of genuine Hinduism—as opposed to the emasculated and Anglicised versions of it so common in these days—been accessible to American inquirers. . : .

A few, and only a few, representatives of the extreme orthodox wing of the protestant Christian community have been provoked into hostile criticism by jealousy of his success. But this has come exclusively from religionists of an abnormal and obsolescent type, and, as a rule, jealousy and sectarian animosity even from this quarter have been silenced by the uniform kindliness and good will, as well as the learning and dignity and personal charm, of the orange-robed monk from the land of the Bharatas.[3]

The fact was that the animosity of the orthodox wing of the Protestant Christian community had not yet, at the date of Mr. Snell's letter, reared its ugly head. It was to do so about a month later.

14

In trying to trace Swamiji's footsteps through the Midwestern states of America one finds that at times the trail is clear; at other times it is altogether lost, but I think the reader will by now have gathered a general impression of the nature of his lecture tour and of the enthusiastic reception he received wherever he went. Perhaps, however, the physical and mental suffering it cost him has not been apparent.

For months, most of which fell in the dead of a severe winter, Swamiji traveled almost incessantly, lecturing many times a week. As has been seen in the preceding chapters, he spent October and the first three weeks of November in Chicago and nearby towns. Toward the end of November he travelled farther afield, presumably under the direction of the Slayton Lyceum Lecture Bureau, and commenced his long and arduous tour. The first cities on his itinerary were Madison, Minneapolis, and Des Moines, all three of which he visited within the space of one short week.

Although after this (except for a day in mid-December, when he returned to Minneapolis) we lose trace of Swamiji for approximately six weeks, we can infer from various sources something of what this period was like. For instance, if the pace with which he began his tour in the last week of November was continued, as very likely it was, then within those six weeks he must have lectured—to make a conservative estimate—in at least fifteen towns. The far-flung location of these towns we can judge from his own words. "Necessity," he wrote to Swami Ramakrishnananda, "makes me travel by rail to the borders of Canada one day, and the next day finds me lecturing in a southern state of America."[4] This information may not be literal as regards time, but it nonetheless characterizes the lecture tour. A little of the nature of this period can also be gathered from the "Memoirs of Sister Christine, " in which she writes of his tour "As is the custom, the committee at each,new place was offered the choice of several lectures—'The  Divinity of Man,' 'Manners and Customs of India,' 'The Women of India,' 'Our Heritage.' . . . Invariably when the place was a mining town with no intellectual life whatever, the most abstruse subjects were selected. He told us the difficulty of speaking to an audience when he could see no ray of intelligence in response."[5]

Evidently the lecture bureau led Swamiji on a regular "barnstorming" tour, advertising him "as if he were a circus turn," and the picture comes to mind of him making one-night stands week after week, enduring all the hardships of winter travel, keeping account of luggage and of money, meeting the blank and perhaps often stony faces of small-town audiences, and being besieged, after having just delivered a lecture on "The Divinity of Man," by questions concerning the feeding of Hindu infants to Ganga crocodiles. His visits to the larger cities, as, for instance, Des Moines or Memphis, where intellectual torpor was less ingrained and fundamentalism less pronounced, were no doubt a relief to him, but even there the pace was grueling and the demands made upon his energy unrelenting. Perhaps one way to form an idea of a lecture tour through the Midwest in the 1890s is to read the memoirs of another visitor who undertook one. In the winter of 1890, when conditions were no worse than in t893, a Max O'Rell made the Midwest circuit under the auspices of Pond's Lecture Bureau. In his book A Frenchman in America O'Rell remarked of the tour as a whole:

. . . Such work is about the hardest that a man, used to the comforts of this life, can undertake. Actors, at all events, stop a week, sometimes a fortnight, in the cities they visit; but a lecturer is on the road every day, happy when he has not to start at night. No words can picture the monotony of journeys through an immense continent, the sameness of which strikes you as almost unbearable.... Burned-up fields, stumps of trees, forests, wooden houses all built on the same pattern. All the stations you pass are alike. All the towns are alike.... All the streets are alike, with the same telegraph poles, the same "Indian" as a sign for tobacconists, the same red, white, and blue pole as a sign for barbers.... All the hotels are alike. Some are worse.... If you arrive at one minute past three (in small towns, at one minute past two) you find the dining-room closed, and you must wait till six o'clock to see its hospitable doors open again.... To be in a railroad car for ten or twelve hours day after day can hardly be called luxury, or even comfort.... Constant traveling softens the brain, liquefies it, churns it, evaporates it, and it runs out of you through all the cracks of your head. I own that traveling is comfortable in America, even luxurious [in Pullman cars]; but the best fare becomes monotonous and unpalatable when the dose is repeated every day.... Of course I have not seen California, the Rocky Mountains, and many other parts of America where the scenery is very beautiful; but I think my remarks can apply to those States most likely to be visited by a lecturer, that is, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and others, during the winter months, after the Indian summer, and before the renewal of verdure in May.'[6]

While Swamiji, the sannyasin, was not used to the "comforts of life" in the same sense as was Max O'Rell, and while he found not burned-up fields but "masses of snow, spotlessly white," one cannot forget that this life of ceaseless, harried travel was one to which his body, tuned to profound contemplation, was ill suited. At what cost he willingly lived the life of an itinerant lecturer one cannot imagine.

But there was a bright side: the Middle West was not, after all, a totally unrelieved spiritual desert. "Churchwomen" and bigoted clergymen did not constitute the entire population. In every town, at least in every city, there were people eager to hear Swamiji and to open their minds and hearts to his thought and his presence. Scattered here and there, moreover, were some who at once understood and spoke his language, and to come across such rare souls naturally delighted him. In a letter from Detroit to one of the Hale sisters he tells of one such bright spot."(2) Since he rarely wrote to India regarding the details of his American experiences, good or bad, this passage is, I believe, especially valuable, giving as it does so intimate and rare a glimpse into his itinerant life:

Here is a beautiful young girl. I saw her twice I do not remember her name. So Brainy so beautiful so spiritual so unworldly. Lord bless her—She came this morning with Mrs. M'cDuvel and talked so beautifully and deep and spiritually—that I was astounded. She knows everything about the yogis and is herself much advanced in Practice!

"Thy ways are beyond searching out" Lord bless her so innocent, holy and pure. This is the grandest recompense in my terribly toilsome, miserable life—the finding of holy happy faces like you from time to time. The great Buddhist prayer is "I bow down to all holy men on earth" I feel the real meaning of this prayer whenever I see a face upon which the finger of the Lord has written in unmistakable letters "mine." May you all be happy blessed---good and pure as you are for ever and ever. May your feet never touch the mud and dirt of this terrible world. May you live and pass away like flowers as you are born is the constant prayer of your brother.'[7]

The story of how Swamiji first met the Hales just before the opening of the Parliament of Religions has been recounted in an earlier chapter and need not be repeated here. It can be said, however, that the family almost at once became, as it were, his own. The Hales' home served as a kind of pivot for his mid-western tour, an oasis to which he could return from time to time and there find the refreshing atmosphere of sheer goodness. A brief description of his "headquarters " can be found in a letter to Swami Ramakrishnananda.

I shall now tell you something of the Hales to whose address you direct my letters. He and his wife are an old couple, having two daughters [Mary and Harriet], two nieces [Isabelle and Harriet] and a son [Sam]. The son lives away from home and earns a living. The daughters live at home.... All the four are young and not yet married.... They will probably live unmarried; besides, they are now full of renunciation through contact with me and are busy with thoughts of Brahman!

The two daughters are blondes, that is, have golden hair, while the two nieces are brunettes, that is, of dark hair. They know all sorts of occupations. The nieces are not so rich, they conduct a kindergarten school; but the daughters do not earn.... The girls call me brother, and I address Mrs. Hale as mother. All my things are at their place, and they look after them, wherever I go.'[8]

And at another time he wrote of the Hales, "I scarcely find a family so highly pure and kind. Or why should God shower His blessings on them in such abundance? Oh, how wonderfully kind they are! If they chance to learn that a poor man is in a strait at such and such a place, there they will go, ladies and gentlemen, to give him food and clothing, and find him some job,'[9]

It should be added here for the sake of completeness that there was a married McKindley niece named Mary, who was living in Omaha, Nebraska, during the time Swamiji was in Chicago. Mary never met Swamiji, but her seven-year-old daughter—then Louise Baker and later Mrs. Herbert E. Hydeoften saw him while visiting her great-aunt, Mrs. Hale. "I remember Swami very well," Mrs. Hyde told me. "I remember his luminous eyes and his beautiful voice. He was so gorgeous, so handsome! I remember him sitting in a beautiful robe and snow-white turban. He pointed his finger at me and said, 'That child is a fire-worshiper.' And, to be sure, I have always loved fire; I have loved fireplaces, and I have also loved the sun." Mrs. Hyde has told me of her memories not only of Swamiji  but of the Hales and McKindleys, and thus more can be added to our knowledge of this family to whom Swamiji was so close.

Mrs. Hyde's mother and her two aunts, Harriet and Isabelle McKindley, were the daughters of Mr. Hale's sister Mrs. John Gilchrist McKindley, who had died when her children were young. Harriet and Isabelle had come to live with their Uncle George and Aunt Belle Hale after the death of their father, who, during his last years, had lost a good deal of money in the stock market, leaving his two unmarried daughters without means of support. The Hales' spacious, three-story house on Dearborn Avenue in Chicago was well able to accommodate the two girls with room to spare, and the arrangement was a happy one, for the Hale daughters and nieces were close friends. Of the four girls, all of whom were in their twenties when Swamiji was in America, Harriet McKindley was the oldest by several years; next in age was her sister Isabelle; then came Mary Hale and, after her, Harriet Hale. Sam Hale, the only boy in this household of spirited women, was the youngest of all and in 1893 had been but a short time out of Yale University. Like his sisters, Sam was tall, blond, and very handsome. Although he was not living at home when Swamiji was first in Chicago, he was no doubt in and out of the house, for Swamiji knew him and often mentioned him in his letters to the family. Later in the nineties, Sam took off in a spirit of adventure for the Klondike gold fields near Alaska, where thousands of Americans hoped to find their fortune and where a large percentage found only extreme hardship. (It was this trip to which Swamiji referred when he wrote in July of 1901 to Mary Hale, who was then in Italy: "Sam is with you this year—I am so glad! He must be enjoying the good things of Europe after his dreary experience in the North:' )[10]

The kindergarten that Harriet and Isabelle conducted in Chicago to earn a living was in its day a somewhat startling innovation. While charity kindergartens for children of destitute parents were comparatively well known, private kindergartens for the children of the rich were a new departure in the field of education. It was to this latter type of school that the McKindley girls gave their time. "It would be impossible to find women of more culture, refinement and intelligence than the little band of kindergartners," a contemporary newspaper writes of the McKindleys and their colleagues. "They are all well connected and known socially, which seems almost necessary, since they must gain the whole confidence of the mothers and come in such close and frequent contact with them. They are earnest women who appreciate the importance of the work they are doing, and they are giving the very best of themselves to it.... Miss [Isabelle] McKindley has a wonderfully comprehensive grasp of the work, and her attitude with the children is all that love and wisdom could suggest. She has a fine mind and is a brilliant conversationalist '[11]

Of all the four girls, Isabelle was perhaps the most sparkling. "It was said in years gone by " Mrs. Hyde related, "that no dinner party was complete without Isabelle McKindley. Her conversation was scintillating and she had a rare sense of humor. She was, moreover, very good looking. She was the dominant one of the McKindley sisters; Harriet, more dryly intellectual and far less beautiful, adored her and bowed to her in everything.'[12] A line drawing of Isabelle McKindley, which accompanied the newspaper article quoted above, shows her classical beauty and her resemblance to the Venus de Milo—a resemblance that was remarked upon by her family and that Swamiji verified for himself when he later visited Europe. "By the by," he wrote to Mary Hale from Darjeeling in 1897, "I saw the Venus of what do you call it-—nd you are right Isabelle's face is much like that statue. Of course her hands are better, for the statue has only stumps-—hat is to say, to our uneducated taste. Anyhow, Isabelle is beautiful because she is like Venus and that Venus is beautiful because she is like Isabelle!!* (3) On the whole I think she is much more beautiful than the statue, stumps  notwithstanding.'[13]

Mary Hale, in her own blond and statuesque way, was as beautiful as Isabelle and, perhaps, as talented. Although neither she nor her younger sister Harriet had to earn a living, for Mr. Hale had retired in 1882 from a senior partnership in a highly successful iron-manufactory firm and was well off, they were not idle; both were actively engaged in charitable work and busy also, of course, in the whirl of Chicago's social life. Both girls were gifted pianists and often played duets together —no doubt at times for Swamiji himself.

Swamiji was totally at home in this family and, elder brother, sage, and child combined, he was much loved. There was, certainly, no dull moment in his company, and very likely no predictable one. Mary Hale once told a small but revealing story of life at Dearborn Avenue with Swamiji to Swami Abhedananda, who has recounted it in his autobiography. It seems that one day Swamiji decided to learn to roller-skate. Forthwith, he fastened skates to his shoes and for two or three days earnestly practiced in the expensively carpeted and furnished parlors and halls of the Hale house, wheeling about the rooms to his heart's content, no one objecting. Mercifully, after mastering the art, this beloved, gerrua-clad son promptly lost interest in his new skill.

With his keen perception and concern for their future, the girls' beloved "brother" once wrote a character sketch of them: "Harriett [Hale] will have a most blessed and happy life," he predicted, "because she is not so imaginative and sentimental as to make a fool of herself. She has enough of sentiment as to make life sweet, and enough common sense and gentleness as to soften the hard points in life which must come to everyone. So has Harriett McKindley in a still higher degree. She is just the girl to make the best of wives.... You, Mary, are like a mettlesome Arab-grand, splendid. You will make a splendid queen, physically, mentally. You will 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.... As to sister Isabelle she has the same temperament as you; only this kindergarten has taught her a good lesson of patience and forbearance. Perhaps she will make a good wife.'[14]*(4)

*(2)The full text of this letter, which was dated March 17, 1894, first appeared in the first and second editions of this volume (chapter five). The original letter has been preserved in an envelope addressed to Miss Harriet McKindley, the eldest of the Hale sisters (or cousins), which may or may not be its original cover. To judge from the tone and contents of the letter itself,it seems to have been written to Isabelle Mc-Kindley, to whom Swamiji felt more close than he did to Harriet. However, at the present time we lack sufficient evidence to say conclusively that the letter and its envelope have somehow become mismatched. We can only say that to whomever Swamiji addressed the letter, it was clearly meant to be shared by both the McKindley sisters and their cousins as well. 
*(3) It is generally assumed that it was the armless Venus de Milo that Isabelle McKindley resembled. However, in his letter of April 28, 1897, Swamiji’s reference seems to have been to a statue in Florence, which city he had visited in December of 1896. The Venus de Milo is and was in the Louvre in Paris. During his first visit to the West, Swamiji visited the museums of Paris only in August of 1895. The Venus de Medici is in Florence, but both her arms are intact.
*(4) Swamiji  was not here foretelling the future; he was reading character only. Neither Harriet nor Isabelle McKindley married. Isabelle died young. Harriet lived to be 95, dying in 1955 in San Diego, where for many years she had lived at the El Cortez Hotel. Harriet Hales marriage to Clarence Woolley was not happy and ended in divorce. As for Mary Hale, in the early 1900s (after 1902) she married Signor Giuseppe Matteini, a wealthy Italian, very much her senior. They lived in a large and beautiful estate outside Florence, and as far as is known, the marriage was not unhappy. Mr. Matteini died in 1922 and Mary went to live with her mother in a hotel in Florence.

Although Swamiji loved all four "sisters" it was not the two Harriets whom he Found the most companionable. Rather it was the two "mettlesome Arabs," Isabelle McKindley and her cousin, Mary, who was not only queenly and spirited but also, according to her niece, "a very gentle and sweet person, warm-hearted and serene." Swamiji's deep and abiding affection for Mary Hale is well known to readers of his published letters, but not so his affection for Isabelle McKindley, for his letters to the latter have been unknown. However, in the bundle of papers that Swami Vishwananda discovered and made available to us were many letters from Swamiji to Isabelle, most of which will be produced in the course of this narrative. Suffice it to say here that they show how fond he was of her, confiding to her his various thoughts, allowing her to attend to many small personal matters for him and feeling sure that in whatever mood he wrote—playful or serious—his letters would be read in a matching spirit. "Dear Sister," he wrote from Detroit in one of the many letters found in the bundle of papers and very likely meant for Isabelle, "Got your package yesterday. Sorry that you send those stockings—I could have got some myself here. Glad that it shows your love. After all the satchel has become more than a thoroughly stuffed sausage. I do not know how to carry it along.'[15]

Isabelle was perhaps as dear to Swamiji as was Mary Hale. But however that may be, all four Hale "sisters " must have been extraordinary young women, born, as he writes, "like flowers," "good and pure," their faces "holy, happy, " for otherwise he could not have associated with them as intimately as he did throughout the years. "You are all so kind, the whole Family, to me," he wrote to Mary Hale from India in 1898, "I must have belonged to you in the past as we Hindus say.'[16] And again in 1899, "It is curious, your family, Mother Church [Mrs. Hale] and her clergy, both monastic and secular, have  made more impression on me than any family I know of. Lord bless you ever and ever.'[17]

But to return to the midwestern lecture tour, such "holy happy faces " as those of the Hales and McKindleys were few and far between, and on the whole we cannot but look upon the tour as an ordeal in which, as Sister Nivedita writes, using Swamiji's own words, "he was bowled along from place to  place, being broken the while!'[18]



ⓘ
[1].Readers of the Life(i: 117-18) will recall that Swamiji had become a Freemason in Calcutta on the advice of his father.
[2].Sen Col.
[3].Quoted in Vivekananda in Indian Newspapers, edited by S. P. Basu and S. B. Ghosh, pp. 12-14.[4].Complete Works, 6:251.
[5].Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 158.
[6].Max O’Rell, op. cit., pp. 25, 29, 2 04-5, 2 44-45.
[7].Complete Works, 7 :459-60.
[8].Complete Works,6:269—70.
[9].Complete Works, 6:291.
[10].Complete Works, 5:166.
[11].Chicago Sunday Times-Herald, February 5,1899.
[12].Interview by the author with Mrs. Herbert Hyde, July 17, 1962. Mrs. Hyde to the author, June 4, 1959 and October 15, 1959.
[13].Complete Works, 6:391; this passage is taken from an early copy of the original letter, SN Col.
[14].Complete Works, 8:389-90.
[15].Complete Works,7:459.
[16].Complete Works,8:445.
[17].Complete Works,8:474.
[18].Sister Nivedita, The Master as I saw Him, 6th cd., pp. 226-27.


↑ Contents

1.6 THE CLIMAX AT DETROIT

After leaving Memphis on January 22, Swamiji arrived in Chicago in time to keep an engagement on the evening of the twenty-fifth. Although no reports can be found in the Chicago newspapers to throw light on this visit, he presumably remained in the city almost three weeks, for on Sunday, February 11, he lunched there with Mr. and Mrs. Woodhead and Carl von bergen, at which time he copied out the passage from a travel book on India which was quoted earlier. Readers may remember that the back of one of the pages on which he had written bore a notation to the effect that he left Chicago for Detroit on Monday, February 12.

In the Life and other biographies very little has been said of Swamiji's visit to Detroit in 1894, and one is left with the impression that this city was just another on his itinerary where he delivered a few lectures and received the usual amount of both acclaim and criticism. Although it is true that we have been able to learn from the memoirs of Sister Christine and Mrs. Mary Funke something of the extraordinary and radiant power which he manifested during his Detroit lectures, nowhere is there an intimation that this period was one of the most important in his American mission, almost equal in significance to that of the Parliament of Religions. The old Detroit newspapers, however, tell the story of what took place, without a knowledge of which Swamiji's midwestern tour seems inconclusive and, coming after the Parliament of Religions, almost anticlimactic.

Detroit is known as "the dynamic city" not only because it is today one of the greatest industrial centers of the world, but  because it was always, from early days, a town of vigor and enterprise. One of the oldest cities in the United States, it is also one of the most restless, "ever renewing itself, " as one historian writes, "lucky—or at least versatile—in finding new sources of wealth, new patterns of life, new inventions to profit by, new contentions to debate.'[1] Although in February of 1894 the first automobile had not yet chugged along the streets, industry had been thriving, and the people, of whom there were a little over two hundred thousand, were energetic and adventurous, alive to every issue and ready to battle for every opinion. Detroit was, in a sense, a turbulent vortex of the contemporaneous thought of the nation, both conservative and radical, and this, together with the fact that Swamiji's power was rising to a peak, tended to make his visit there akin to the explosion of a long-brewing storm.

The first clouds had gathered, of course, at the Parliament of Religions. Although at that historic assembly every effort had been made to maintain a spirit of "tolerance and fraternity," and although displays of antagonism had been forbidden, the animosity of the more rigidly orthodox toward non Christian religions had broken through in unrestrained bursts of anger. Politic handclasps with the heathen and fraternal smiles had over-strained the endurance of many a clergyman, and it is little wonder that directly after the Parliament was over, good manners were dropped altogether. Indeed it was considered a Christian duty to drop them. "While in the Parliament, he [Vivekananda] was here as our guest," wrote the editor of a Presbyterian newspaper in Chicago, "but now that it is over we ought to make an enthusiastic attack against him and his false doctrines.'[2] In this spirit of Christian righteousness Swamiji was openly persecuted and denounced. "However a man may conduct himself," he wrote later to Mrs. Ole Bull, "there will always be persons who invent the blackest lies about him. At Chicago I had such things everyday against me!'[3]

But that was only the beginning. During the next four months, as he toured the Midwest, attracting large crowds and gaining the acclaim and support of influential citizens, antagonism against him increased. The pulpits rang with frantic repudiations of his teachings and equally frantic affirmations of the superiority of Christianity. As in Memphis, perhaps in almost every town where Swamiji lectured alarmed clergymen warned their flocks against the heathen and his false doctrines. Yet, although these cries were loud and anguished, it was not until he reached Detroit that his opponents launched for the first time an unrestrained and concerted attack against his every word—particularly his words regarding conditions in India and the value of Christian missions.

On reading the diatribes against Swamiji, it is hard today to comprehend that they were not the work of a few fanatics and cranks, but were representative of a solid block of contemporary opinion and prejudice. Bigotry, hiding behind a guise of moral righteousness, was a national force, a force which was, it is true, dying out, but, because dying, all the more virulent. Swamiji faced the assault of opposition undaunted. He was the warrior monk, whose only reaction to criticism and slander was an increase in power; he strode on without the slightest hesitation, fighting never for himself but for his motherland and also for America.

The railway journey from Chicago to Detroit was about 270 miles, but Swamiji's trip took all day and far into the freezing night, for his train could barely inch through the heavy snow.

Arrived safely night before last at 1 o clock A.M. [he wrote in a letter to Mrs. Hale dated February 14]. The train was 7 hours late being blocked by snow drifts on the way. However, I enjoyed the novelty of the sight [;] several men cutting & clearing the snow and two engines tugging and pulling was a new sight to me.

Here I met Mr Bagley the youngest [Paul F. Bagley] waiting for me at the station and it being very late in the  night Mrs Bagley had retired but the daughters sat up for me.[4]

While the Bagley family gave a warm welcome to Swamiji, the city itself greeted him that night with a blizzard. It was a fitting reception, foreshadowing the antagonism that was to howl around him for the next six weeks. But this was not the only welcome he received, and the other, though in sharp contrast, was equally prophetic. On the evening following his arrival Mrs. John J. Bagley, one of Detroit's most influential women, who had met Swamiji five months earlier at the Parliament of Religions and who was now his hostess, honored him with a gala reception to which the whole town, as it were, was invited. Here in the spacious and cheerful drawing rooms of Mrs. Bagley's house the leading lights of Detroit's social and cultural life paid their respects to the famous Hindoo monk. Thus here, too, was a foreshadowing of what was to come; for throughout Swamiji's Detroit visit he was feted and championed by many friends who loved and revered him.

Mrs. Bagley's large brick and stone house on the corner of Washington Boulevard and Park Avenue, with its high central tower and round-arch windows, which the Detroit Free Press had once called "a monument of elegance and cultivated taste ", had in the past been the scene of many receptions for distinguished visitors to the city, among whom had been Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, and Matthew Arnold. The main parlor, where the receptions centered, was a vast, high-ceilinged room, lighted by a gas chandelier of colored globes and crystal pendants.[5] Giltframed paintings, carved mahogany high-boys and mantelpieces, and the overstuffed chairs and divans of the period made it an impressive gathering place for the crowds of guests who came to meet Vive Kananda. The imposing invitation list for this first important reception Detroit had seen for a long time was printed in the Tribune of February 14. The names went on and on and included those of bishops, ministers, rabbis, professors, the mayor and his wife, and at least three hundred of the cream of Detroit society. The list occupies an eleven-inch column of small type. Swamiji, whose last wish would have been to be taken up by "the best people," had nevertheless become the "social lion of the day," as the following item from the Detroit Journal of February 14, 1894, makes clear:

2

The social lion of the day is Swami (brother) Vive Kananda. He is the guest of Mrs. John J. Bagley at her home on Grand Circus park, and last night was given a reception that was one of the most important social functions that has taken place in Detroit this season.

The most common impression that prevails of the great east, its philosophy and mysticism, is akin in character and color to the impression that was received from the reading of the "Arabian Knights" [sic]. Perhaps in the whole of literature, excepting the bible, there is no book that has left so marked an impression as these thousand fairy tales. They are entrancing in themselves and are read by every boy and girl in the land when the mind and imagination were so susceptible to such influences that the impressions are indelible.

The popular mind in a hazy sort of a way, realizes India as a land of ghastly and beautiful mysteries, and when it was ingeniously announced that a monk of the Hindoo religion, one of the eminent ecclesiastics of the country, was to be a guest in Detroit, society turned its eyes in an easternly and heavenly direction and expected to see him appear on a white horse in mid air. Even after he had properly arrived on a railroad train and had been typographically announced by the reporters, there was still an eagerness to see realized in flesh and blood one of the fascinating figures of childhood dreams.

Aside from exhausting the visiting list of exclusive society in compiling the invitation list Mrs. Bagley made a special effort to bring to her reception, thinkers of all religions and creeds. In this she was extremely successful. There has not gathered in a home in Detroit in many a day and perhaps never such a distinguished assemblage of Detroiters as were present last evening to meet the polished Hindoo monk. The reception with its dignities and formalities was entirely worthy of its reason.

Swami Vive Kananda speaks perfect English and was able to be pleasantly intimate with the men and women, who did themselves the honor to be present in Mrs. Bagley's home last evening.

Tonight, tomorrow night, and Saturday night he will lecture at the Unitarian church, under the auspices of the Unity club. Tonight the subject of his lecture will be "Manners and Customs in India" and he will be introduced by Bishop Ninde.

The Detroit Tribune of February 14 commented more satisfactorily upon the reception, and in the following report one can almost see Swamiji in his robe and turban beaming upon the ladies and gentlemen who flocked about him.

3

THEY MET KANANDA
A Reception to the Hindu Monk at Mrs.. Bagley's
One of the Most Brilliant Affairs of the Kind  This Season.

The Distinguished Oriental Greatly Pleased at the Opportunity to Meet a Real American Blizzard—He Charmed Everyone with His Manner Last Night.

An exceptionally large and representative assemblage—pronounced by many of the guests present the most brilliant reception of many years—filled the large hospitable rooms last evening of the Bagley home on Washington avenue, which has been the scene of so many famous gatherings. The reception was given by Mrs. J. J. Bagley in honor of the Hindu monk and scholar, Swami Vive Kananda. His English was polished, his smile cordial, his manners dignified and pleasing, and he made a most picturesque and attractive feature in his long robe of orange, with its scarlet sash, and his pink turban. He conversed easily and happily with the throng that crowded around him and expressed himself as highly favored by having a chance to witness the American "blizzard" of Monday. As snow was an unknown quantity to him until he came to America, and as Monday gave him his first experience with a flying snowstorm, it all forms a few more links in his chain of experiences, and experiences he considers the only items that can minister to growth.

Mrs. Bagley formed a charming picture by his side with her fair and madonna like face framed in its characteristic bands of smooth hair and the pale gray gown shading into delicate old lace at the throat and wrists. She was assisted in receiving by Mrs. John Newbury Bagley, Mrs. Florence Bagley Sherman, Miss Olive Bagley and Miss Helen Bagley. Roses bloomed in profusion and the dining room was brilliant in an arrangement of poinsettia and smilax.

One noticeable fact was that nearly all the religious denominations in the city were represented, which was an appropriate carrying out of the idea of the congress of religions at Chicago last summer, in which Kananda was so prominent and so earnest. It was not only a society but an intellectual gathering and as such of unusual interest. The following is the invitation list and as all but about one hundred of those invited were present it shows that the guests who were in attendance came because they desired to do so, while all present felt more than repaid in the enjoyment of the rare hospitality of the home and the unique pleasure they had in meeting the guest of honor: .. . (Here follows the long invitation list.]

Kananda will deliver his first lecture at the Unitarian Church under the auspices of the Unity Club tonight, and will be introduced by Bishop Ninde of the M. E. Church. The bishop has been in India and is especially interested in the lecturer's subject, "Manners and Customs of India.'[5] 

There was a discordant note in this reception that the reporter does not mention and that must have been infinitely more mortifying to Mrs. Bagley than to Swamiji. Despite the warmth of her drawing rooms, a little of the blizzard seeped in. In a letter which was printed in the Free Press of February 23 and which will be quoted in full in another connection, we find the following information: "Before he ever addressed one word to the public here, a woman, be it said to her shame, took it upon herself to attack and most unkindly denounce him to his face in a house to which she was invited as a guest to meet him. " How often Swamiji met with such malevolence in America one can only guess, perhaps every day—and this, as he once wrote, from "the very Christian of Christians!'[6]

Mrs. Bagley is spoken of in the Life as "the widow of the ex-governor of Michigan and a lady of rare culture and  unusual spirituality.'[7] She was also a woman of unusual spirit, for in those days to be hostess to a "heathen" who was preached against in orthodox pulpits was to court many a raised eyebrow and pursed lip. Mrs. Bagley was undoubtedly severely criticized. We have learned from her granddaughter, Mrs. Frances Bagley Wallace, who was nine years old when Swamiji first came to Detroit, that the children at the private school she was attending made faces at her because her family was host to the heathen—faces that undoubtedly reflected the outraged sensibilities of their elders.

But Mrs. Bagley, "one of Detroit's most widely known and honored women, '[8]was in a position not only to withstand  criticism but to command the leading citizens of the city, clergymen and all, to greet her guest on his arrival, and thus many who otherwise might not have dared approach Swamiji for fear of social censure, came into his presence and benefited by his influence.

Mrs. Bagley was born in Rutland, Ohio, in 1833. Her father, the Reverend Samuel Newbury, a Presbyterian minister from Vermont, was "a man of great mental vigor and enthusiasm, " and her mother "a spirited woman of culture and executive ability." During her childhood she was taken on many travels abroad, which may have contributed to her liberal outlook, unusual for the age in which she lived.

In 1855 she was married to the young John Judson Bagley of Detroit, who had just embarked upon the manufacture of a fine-cut chewing tobacco. In those days small beginnings plus great enterprise quickly resulted in huge fortunes. John Bagley prospered. He became a director in several banks, a power in the Republican party in Michigan, and in 1872, when he was forty, governor of the state. He was well known in Detroit for his progressive ideas in charitable, religious, and political affairs, and one might well believe that had he lived to know Swamiji he would have understood and loved him. But he had died in 1881.

Mrs. Bagley was extremely active. During her husband's governorship, she had been "much admired and esteemed for her refined and elegant manners and the intelligence with which she aided him in all philanthropic work.'[9]She was, moreover, busy with many undertakings of her own. In connection with the Unitarian Church, of which she was a member, she taught a Sunday Bible class on ancient religion, a class so popular that it soon overflowed the church parlors. She was also instrumental in organizing a Sunday school near Detroit's House of Correction, where for many years she taught a class of young women. At the time of Governor Bagley's death she was president of the Woman's Hospital, which she had helped to found. She was also actively interested in Detroit's Industrial  School and various other charitable institutions whose object was to educate and uplift the poor from a life of ignorance and drudgery.

It is obvious that Mrs. Bagley took a keen and warm interest in the world in which she lived, but her interest extended also to ancient cultures. She was a member of the English Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Study and of the Archaeological Institute of America, whose Michigan branch was organized at her house. She was also a corresponding member of the Anthropological Society in Washington and of the Egyptian Exploration Society. Aside from all these various interests and activities, she found time throughout her life to travel widely.

In 1893, Mrs. Bagley was elected one of the lady managers at the Chicago World's Fair. At the time of her appointment it was said of her: "An extensive acquaintance throughout Europe and America has admirably fitted Mrs. Bagley, for a commissioner at large. Being an example of the society born and reared in the state of which Chicago is the Metropolis, free from provincial prejudices, of cosmopolitan tastes, genial in manner, and having a warmth of nature, she will help to serve as hostess of our American society when the people from beyond the oceans shall seek the shores of this continent.[10]

It was undoubtedly at one of the elaborate receptions held for the delegates during the first week of the Parliament that Mrs. Bagley first met Swamiji. Whether she was instrumental in arranging for him to lecture in Detroit is not certain; it is certain, however, that upon his arrival she gave him, as it were, the key to the city. One might even say that she introduced him to Detroit were it not for the fact that even before her reception the city was in a state of excitement over his arrival. On February 11, the Free Press heralded his coming with a welcoming announcement, a portion of which has been quoted in the Life. The article was accompanied by a line drawing of the poster photograph that shows Swamiji standing with arms folded. The full text read as follows:

4

FROM THE OTHER SIDE.
A Distinguished Brahman Coming to Detroit.
He is Said to be an Eloquent and Fascinating Orator.

The people of this country are already beginning to be familiar with many oriental peoples. The Chinese and Japanese are well-known figures in the streets of all cities and large towns. They belong chiefly to the common people and so the more highly educated and cultured members of these races are scarcely known to us. This is true of both classes of India. They are rare and novel, and a high caste Brahman is almost a natural curiosity. They were, however, among the most distinguished and attractive in the congregations of the world's fair, and especially the parliament of religions. One of the most popular of these Hindu representatives was Swami Vive Kananda, formerly a high caste Brahman who abandoned his order for the sake of joining a brotherhood of monks, whose first principle is to sacrifice their pride by relinquishing their Brahminical privileges. He showed himself to be one of the best of orators at the congress, speaking faultless English without notes, and with an utterance that many of his hearers declared would of itself have been music had you not understood a word.

Since the parliament he has spoken to immense audiences in many towns and cities who have but one opinion of praise and [are] enthusiastic over his magnetic power, and his way of giving light and life to every subject he touches. Naturally, his views of great questions, coming like himself from the other side of the globe, are refreshing and stirring to American people. His hearers are pleasantly astonished when the dark-hued, dark-haired, dignified man arises in rich yellow robes and speaks their own language with fluency, distinctness and correctness

He is to address Detroit audiences at the Unitarian church, on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday evenings of this week.

The day after his arrival Swamiji granted an interview to a reporter from the Free Press, during which he touched on the same problem as he had during a discussion in Memphis that of combining material power with spirituality. The development of a new type of man who would combine the "energy of the lion with the gentleness of the lamb," typifying the union of West and East, was later to take a prominent place in Swamiji's thought. The interview, which was published on February 14, read in full:


5
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
The Distinguished Hindoo Monk is in Town.
Differences Between Creed and Religions Defined.
Interesting Conversation with the Visitor.

He will Give Several Lectures at the Unitarian Church.

The complacency of the Hindoo god is superlative. Nothing disturbs him; nothing ruffles the infinite calm which rests upon his features; nothing changes the placid conscientiousness of his inner life. More inscrutable than the Sphinx, the mysticism of the Indian atmosphere surrounds him and with eyes which seem infinite in their wisdom he has gazed and continues to gaze upon the developments of religious ideas, and only those versed in Sanscrit lore question the mute lips. Beside the multitude of Oriental hearts that have bowed before the eastern mountain of life, a band of westerners, with Edwin Arnold and others acting as guides, have wandered as pilgrims into the recesses of the old country, which suffers a material decadence whatever may be its spiritual condition. Swami Vive Kananda, a monk of the Hindoo religion, is in the city, the guest of Mrs. John J. Bagley, and while here he will deliver a number of lectures. Swami (or Brother) Vive Kananda attracted much attention at the Chicago congress of religions, his wonderful eloquence and profound spirituality marking him as a unique and impressive figure among the masters assembled on that occasion. Strange as it may appear, the Indian exponent of divine doctrines made many converts in the Windy City, and he received a great deal of adulation. His personality is charming.

Upon learning that the eastern monk was coming here, a certain lady said: "I think it is so funny that they should bring to Detroit a heathen to speak upon religious matters. Why, he has even converted many people since he came to this country."

In this connection the conversation which the representative of The Free Press had with the gentleman seems especially significant, indicating an entire lack of the missionary spirit in the distinguished visitor. Swami is a person of medium stature, with the dusky complexion common with people of his nationality, gentle in manner, deliberate in movement, and extremely courteous in every word, movement and gesture. But the most striking feature of his personality are his eyes, which are of great brilliancy. The conversation naturally drifted upon the subject of religion, when Swami said among many other striking remarks:

"I make the distinction between religion and creed. Religion is the acceptance of all existing creeds, seeing in them the same striving toward the same destination. Creed is something antagonistic and combative. There are different creeds because there are different people, and the creed is adapted to the commonwealth where it furnishes what people want. As the world is made up of [an] infinite variety of persons of different natures, intellectually, spiritually and materially, so these people take to themselves that form of belief in the existence of a great and good moral law which is best fitted for them. Religion recognizes and is glad of the existence of all these forms, because of the beautiful underlying principle. The same goal is reached by different routes and my way would not be suited perhaps to the temperament of my western neighbor, the same that his route would not commend itself to my disposition and philosophical way of thinking. I belong to the Hindoo religion. That is not the Buddhists' creed, one of the sects of the Hindoo religion. We never indulge in missionary work. We do not seek to thrust the principles of our religion upon anyone. The fundamental principles of our religion forbid that. Nor do we say anything against any missionaries whom you send from this country anywhere. For all of us, they are entirely welcome to penetrate the innermost recesses of the earth: Many come to us, but we do not struggle for them; we have no missionaries striving to bring anyone to our way of thinking. With no effort from us many forms of the Hindoo religion are spreading far and wide, and these manifestations have taken the form of Christian science, theosophy, and Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia." Our religion is older than most religions and the Christian creed—I do not call it a religion, because of its antagonistic features—came directly from the Hindoo religion. It is one of the great offshoots. The Catholic religion also takes all its forms from us, the confessional, the belief in saints and so on, and a Catholic priest who saw this absolute similarity and recognized the truth of the origin of the Catholic religion was dethroned from his position because he dared to publish a volume explaining all that he observed and was convinced of." [Swamiji's reference was no doubt to Bishop Bigandet's Life of Buddha.]

"You recognize agnostics in your religion?" was asked. "Oh, yes; philosophical agnostics and what you call infidels. When Buddha, who is with us a saint, was asked by one of his followers: 'Does God exist?' He replied : 'God. When have I spoken to you about God? This I tell you, be good and do good: The philosophical agnostics, there are many of us, believe in the great moral law underlying everything in nature and in the ultimate perfection. All the creeds which are accepted by all people are but the endeavors of humanity to realize that infinity of self which lies in the great future."

"Is it beneath the dignity of your religion to resort to missionary effort?"

For reply the visitor from the orient turned to a little volume and referred to an edict among other remarkable edicts.

"This," he said, "was written 200 B.C., and will be the best answer I can give you to that question. "

In delightfully clear, well modulated tones, he read :

"The King Piyadasi [Priyadarshi, otherwise known as Ashoka], beloved of the gods, honors all sects, both ascetics and householders; he propitiates them by alms and other gifts, but he attaches less importance to gifts and honors than to the endeavor to promote the essential moral virtues. It is true the prevalence of essential virtues differs in different sects, but there is a common basis. That is, gentleness, moderation in language and morality. Thus, one should not exalt one's own sect and decry others, but tender them on every occasion the honor they deserve. Striving thus, one promotes the welfare of his own sect, while serving the others. Striving otherwise, one does not serve his own sect, while disserving others and whosoever from attachment to his own sect and with a view to promote it decries others, only deals rude blows to his own sect. Hence, concord alone is meritorious, so that all bear and love to bear the beliefs of each other. It is with this purpose that this edict has been inscribed; that all people, whatever their fate [faith] may be, should be encouraged to promote the essential moral doctrines in each and mutual respect for all the other sects. It is with this object that the ministers of religion, the inspectors and other bodies of officers should all work.'[11]

After reading this impressive passage Swami Vive Kananda remarked that the same wise king who had caused this edict to be inscribed had forbidden the indulgence of war, as its horrors were antagonistic to all the principles of the great and universal moral doctrine. "For this reason, " remarked the visitor, "India has suffered in its material aspect. Where brute strength and bloodshed has advanced other nations India has deprecated such brutal manifestations and by the law of the survival of the fittest, which applies to nations as well as to individuals, it has fallen behind as a power on the earth in the material sense.”

"But will it not be an impossibility to find in the great combative western countries, where such tremendous energy is needed to develop the pressing practical necessities of the nineteenth century, this spirit which prevails in placid India?"

"May not one combine the energy of the lion with the gentleness of the lamb?" he asked.

Continuing, he intimated that perhaps the future holds the conjunction of the east and the west, a combination which would be productive of marvellous results. A condition which speaks well for the natures of the western nation is the reverence in which women are held and the gentle consideration with which they are treated.

He says, with the dying Buddha, "Work out your own salvation. I cannot help you. No man can help you. Help yourself. " Harmony and peace, and not dissension is his watchword.

[Here, by way of illustrating the foolishness of parochialism, Swamiji related the story of the frog-in-the-well, which he had told earlier in Des Moines (see chapter four) and earlier still at the Parliament of Religions.] "I have to thank you of America [he concluded] for the great attempt you are making to break down the barriers of this little world of ours, and hope that, in the future, the Lord will help you to accomplish that purpose."

Last evening Swami Vive Kananda was given a reception at the residence of Mrs. John J. Bagley. It was a brilliant occasion and one which many persons availed themselves of in order to meet the learned and scholarly visitor. To-night to-morrow night and Saturday night he will lecture at the Unitarian church.

The Detroit Evening News of February 14 took its copy directly from the above, prefacing it, however, with a touch of sarcasm:

6

THE HINDOO RELIGION
As it is Explained by Swami ViveKananda.

He is a High Grade Hindoo and Says Christianity is Not a Religion but Only a Creed and a Hindoo Offshoot.

Such christians as desire to become converted to the Hindoo religion can apply for the purpose at the residence of Mrs. John J. Bagley. A monk of that faith is the lady's guest, Swami Vive Kananda, who was one of the higher grades of ecclesiastics who made an impression upon the Chicago congress of religions.

From Canada's icy mountains, from Florida's sunny strands, where California's fountains roll down their golden sands; from many a Michigan river, from many a western plain, we've called him to deliver our souls from error's chain. What though our handsome city will make an artist smile; where every fancy pleases and only man is vile; in vain with lavish kindness great Vishnu's gifts are  shown, the christian in his blindness is fighting for the bone.

[The above is, of course, a parody of lines from the famous Christian hymn by Bishop Heber, which go:

From Greenland's icy mountains, from India's coral strand,

Where Afric's sunny fountains roll down their golden sand;

From many an ancient river, from many a palmy plain, 

They call us to deliver their land from error's chain.

What though the spicy breezes blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle;

Though every prospect pleases and only man is vile:

In vain with lavish kindness the gifts of God are strown;

The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone.]

The Hindoo religion, artistically speaking, is of the half tone order, soft, modified and mellowed by the receding centuries, a religion that appeals to the romantic and dreamy as in itself a dream. But its code of morals is essentially the same as that of the christian. Those with whom the various creeds have become a little stale, perhaps, might seek long before they would find anything more adaptable to their moral needs than the quieting creeds of the orient. But, seriously speaking, and placing implicit reliance upon Kananda's own statements, the Hindoo theologist is not here to do missionary work.[The remainder of this article is the same as that in the Free Press.]

7

Swamiji remained in Detroit from February 12 to 23, and then again from March 9 to 30. During these two visits he gave, in all, eight public lectures (not including those delivered in nearby towns) and spoke often at private gatherings. The material in the Detroit papers regarding these visits is voluminous. The battles that raged between the liberal and reactionary forces of Christianity through letters and editorials were long, complex, and revealing as to the salutary upheaval that Swamiji created. "The power that emanated from this mysterious being," wrote Sister Christine, who attended every public lecture Swamiji gave in Detroit, "was so great that one all but shrank from it. It was overwhelming".[12] In this connection Mrs. Charles Erskine Scott Wood, the American poetess, better known as Sara Bard Field, tells of an incident that was related to her by a Miss Marguerite Cook. Miss Cook, a teacher of German in a Detroit high school at the time of Swamiji's visit, attended one of his lectures at the Unitarian Church. Although of a stolid German nature and ordinarily unimpressionable, she was deeply struck by Swamiji's power and, for the first time in her life, felt an impulse to congratulate a speaker. Shaking hands with him after his lecture, she felt suddenly overwhelmed and at a loss for words. Swamiji held her hand for several moments. "I shall never forget his searching look," she told Mrs. Wood many years later. "I was so aware of his greatness and holiness that I couldn't bear to wash my hand for three days!" It is little wonder, considering Swamiji's effect upon his audience, that the city was in an uproar.

Mrs. Wood, whose family lived in Detroit in 1894, also tells us, quoting her father, that for weeks one could not pick up a daily paper without seeing the name Swami Vivekananda. Only a child at the time, she remembers that her father, a stern Baptist, was scornful of Detroit's uninhibited excitement over Swamiji. Surfeited with reading about and hearing about the heathen monk (being a friend of the Bagley family, he must have heard a great deal), he protested by appearing one morning at the breakfast table with a towel wrapped turbanwise around his head and sonorous syllables in imitation of Sanskrit chanting issuing from his mouth. (It was a protest unheeded by his small daughter, who in later life was to become a Vedantin.)

It will not be possible in this narrative to reproduce in its entirety every editorial and letter which was written under the impact of Swamiji's presence in Detroit, but I hope at least to tell of them all insofar as they serve as an index of the various popular reactions and their developments.

Reports from the Free Press of four of the lectures which Swamiji gave during his first stay in Detroit were made available in the Vedanta Kesari of February 1924, and subsequently in volume eight of the Complete Works. The story of how these reports came to light after thirty years is, I believe, one that is worth telling. In 1908 the clippings from the Free Press of February, 1894., were sent to Swami Brahmananda by Mrs. Mary C. Funke, one of Swamiji's most ardent Detroit followers who became his disciple. The closing paragraph of the letter which accompanied the clippings and which was printed in the Vedanta Kesari reads: "Dear Swami, I am enclosing the newspaper clippings of fifteen years ago, for I think they may be of interest to you. They are priceless to me and cannot be duplicated. I trust that you will not consider it selfish in me to ask you to return them, but at your leisure. I have so few mementos of him and you have the Math, his room, and the sacred spot under the Bel tree. Please keep them as long as you wish....'[13]

Thirteen years later, while cleaning out an old catch-all chest of drawers at the Ramakrishna Math in Madras, Swami Ashokananda came across a copy of Mary Funke's letter together with typed-out copies of the Free Press clippings. Recognizing the value of these treasures, the Swami rescued them from oblivion and forthwith gave them to the editor of the Vedanta Kesari. Thus it is that we have not had to wait until now for those excellent reports of some of the most fiery and inspiring lectures that Swamiji gave in America—the lectures of which Sister Christine later wrote: "Was it possible to hear and feel this and ever be the same again? All one's values were changed. The seed of spirituality was planted to grow and grow throughout the years until it inevitably reached fruition.'[14]

Swamiji gave his first lecture in Detroit on Wednesday evening, February 14, at the Unitarian Church. In recalling it Mrs. Funke is quoted in the Life as having said: "The large edifice was literally packed and the Swami received an ovation. I can see him yet as he stepped upon the platform, a regal, majestic figure, vital, forceful, dominant, and at the first sound of the wonderful voice, a voice all music—now like the plaintive minor strain of an Eolian harp, again, deep, vibrant, resonant there was a hush, a stillness that could almost be felt, and the vast audience breathed as one man.'[15]

The text of the Free Press report of this lecture is given in full in volume eight of the Complete Works under the title "India." The following headlines which accompanied the report, however, are not reproduced in the Complete Works and seem well worth quoting here:

8

MOST MORAL NATION
Vive Kananda States He So Considers India.
Though in Bondage Its Spirituality Endures.
Eloquent Address by the Eastern Brother.
Tonight He will Speak on "Hindoo Philosophy."

Those words "Most Moral Nation" were fighting ones to at least one member of the Christian clergy, as were two paragraphs of the text itself:

It seems somewhat singular that the eastern monk who is so outspoken in his disapproval of missionary labor on the part of the Christian church in India (where, he affirms, the morality is the highest in the world) should have been introduced by Bishop Ninde, who in June will depart for China in the interest of foreign missions. The bishop expects to remain away until December, but if he should stay longer he will go to India.

Further along in the article Swamiji was paraphrased:

There is something Christ-like in the humility of the people to endure the stings and arrows of outraged fortune [sic], the while the soul is advancing toward the brighter goal. Such a country has no need of Christian missionaries to "preach ideas," for theirs is a religion that makes men gentle, sweet, considerate and affectionate toward all God's creatures, whether man or beast. Morally, said the speaker, India is head and shoulders above the United States or any other country on the globe. Missionaries would do well to come there and drink of the pure waters, and see what a beautiful influence upon a great community have the lives of the multitude of good and holy men.

This was the first bombshell that Swamiji dropped in Detroit. The lecture was quoted in the Evening News, the Tribune, and the Journal as well as in the Free Press, and there was probably no literate person in the city who was not now aware that Christian missionaries, for all their talk, were not doing any too well in India. Although the other reports of the lecture were, for the most part, repetitious of that in the Free Press, the Tribune of February 15 adds considerably to our knowledge of what Swamiji said and helps to explain some of the subsequent criticisms. With the exception of those portions that are repetitious of the Free Press report, which I have omitted, the Tribune covered the lecture as follows:

9

HAD TO ENTERTAIN
Kananda Tells of the Hospitality of the Hindu.
He is Bound to Guard Against Selfishness Above All Things.

The Famous Monk Addresses an Interested Audience at Unity Church—Facts about the People of India Told by an Indian in the Purest English. 

Last evening a good sized audience had the privilege of seeing and listening to the famous Hindu Monk of the Brahmo Samaj, Swami Vive Kananda, as he lectured at the Unitarian Church under the auspices of the Unity Club. He appeared in native costume and made with his handsome face and stalwart figure a distinguished appearance. His eloquence held the audience in rapt attention and brought out applause at frequent intervals. He spoke of the "Manners and Customs of India" and presented the subject in the most perfect English. He said they did not call their country India nor themselves Hindus. Hindostan was the name of the country and they were Brahmans. In ancient times they spoke Sanscrit. In that language the reason and meaning of a word was explained and made quite evident but now that is all gone. Jupiter in Sanscrit meant "Father in Heaven." All the languages of northern India were now practically the same, but if he should go into the southern part of that country he could not converse with the people. In the words father, mother, sister, brother, etc., the Sanscrit gave very similar pronunciations. This and other facts leads him to think we all come from the common stock, Aryans. Nearly all branches of this race have lost their identity.

There were four castes, the priests, the landlords and military people, the trades people and the artisans, laborers and servants. In the first three castes the boys at the ages of ten, eleven and thirteen respectively are placed in the hands of professors of universities and remain with them until thirty, twenty-five and twenty years old, respectively.... In ancient times both boys and girls were instructed, but now only the boys are favored. An effort, however, is being made to rectify the long-existing wrong. A good share of the philosophy and laws of the land is the work of women during the ancient times, before barbarians started to rule the land. In the eyes of the Hindu the woman now has her rights. She holds her own and has the law on her side.

When the student returns from college he is allowed to marry and have a household. Husband and wife must bear the work and both have their rights. In the military caste the daughters oftentimes can choose their husbands, but in all other cases all arrangements are made by the parents. There is a constant effort now being made to remedy infant marriage. The marriage ceremony is very beautiful, each touches the heart of the other and they swear before God and the assemblage that they will prove faithful to each other. No man can be a priest until he marries. When a man attends public worship he is always attended by his wife. In his worship the Hindu performs five ceremonies, worship of his God, of his forefathers, of the poor, of the dumb animals, and of learning. As long as a Hindu has anything in the house a guest must never want. When he is satisfied then the children, then father and mother partake. They are the poorest nation in the world, yet except in times of famine no one dies of hunger. Civilization is a great work. But in comparison the statement is made that in England one in every 400 is a drunkard, while in India the proportion is one to every million. A description was given of the ceremony of burning the dead. No publicity is made except in the case of some great nobleman. After a fifteen days' fast gifts are given by the relatives in behalf of the forefathers to the poor or for the formation of some institution. On moral matters they stand head and shoulders above all other nations.

Bishop Ninde, a Methodist Episcopalian, who had introduced Swamiji with the prayer that the heathens would someday see the light and who had been under the impression that he was going to hear entertaining descriptions of heathen customs and, perhaps, praise, direct or implied, for the work of Christian missions, had received a severe shock. Before his  very eyes, on the same platform with him, Swamiji had captured the audience, extolled the religion of the Hindu people and declared that India was a moral nation in no need of Christian missionaries! The bishop was shaken and, very likely, in serious difficulties with his church. A hasty explanation was in order, and directly following Swamiji's first lecture in Detroit he penned a letter to the editor of the Free Press, which appeared on February 16 as follows:

10

ViveKananda's First Lecture

To the Editor of The Detroit Free Press:

In referring to the above lecture, your issue of yesterday says: "It seemed somewhat singular that the eastern monk, who is so outspoken in his disapproval of missionary labor on the part of the Christian church in India (where, he affirms, the morality is the highest in the world) should have been introduced by Bishop Ninde, who in June will depart for China in the interest of foreign Christian missions."

It is due to myself and to the Christian public who believe in missions that I should claim the privilege of making an explanation. I was courteously invited by friends in whom I have the fullest confidence to introduce the lecturer to his audience, with the assurance that nothing would be said that could be at all offensive to Christian ears. I inferred that we should be treated to an entertaining description of the manners and customs of one of the most interesting countries on the globe, and without any manifest religious bias. It was suggested that the introduction, coming from me, would be appropriate, as I was, perhaps, the only person in the city who had visited India. I felt no hesitation under the circumstances in rendering so simple a courtesy to a gentleman of such acknowledged ability and learning as Mr. Kananda. Imagine my surprise, however, as the lecture proceeded, when I saw it to be a studied effort to magnify the virtues of the Hindoos and discount the morals of Christian nations, with the evident purpose of showing the impertinence and uselessness of Christian missions. Had I foreseen the drift of the lecture, and especially some of its more caustic and unfriendly references, I should have felt obliged by simple self respect to decline the honor of presenting the speaker.

But the lecture, though able and interesting, instead of weakening my faith in the value of Christian missions in India, has strongly confirmed my conviction of their importance and ultimate triumph. The lecture from first to last was a scathing arraignment of modern Brahmanism (the accepted religion of India to-day) from the view point of a professed Hindoo reformer.

One who has been on the ground cannot be misled by rose-colored exhibits of Hindoo morality. The lecturer stated with emphasis that drunkenness was unknown among the Hindoos, when to the writer's personal knowledge the drinking habit had become quite recently so rife among the natives in a portion of western India that a firm of Hindoo merchants in Bombay engaged one of our unemployed missionaries to go through the country in company with a Brahman to lecture on temperance and offer the pledge. In fact, the moral abominations that prevail throughout India to-day, and under the sanctions of the accepted religion, are too notorious to be successfully denied.

I have no doubt that Mr. Kananda and a few others of like spirit are doing their best to counteract the ever-downward tendency and restore the simpler yet greatly inadequate faiths of primitive Hindooism; yet I am firm in the conviction, despite his denial, that such beneficent reforms as have come about in these latter times in the social and moral condition of India have sprung, not from impulses within the body of Hindooism, but from the direct and  indirect influence of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that the work which the toilsome and self denying missionaries are doing to-day in India should be the subject, not of sneering or critical animadversion, but of warm and unstinted praise. The success of our Methodist missions in central India in making converts is simply marvellous. It indicates with unerring certainty the speedy breaking away of great masses from the old superstitions and their reception of a revealed religion that will satisfy all their needs and regenerate, as no other power can, that ancient and noble race. I repeat what I said in introducing the distinguished speaker, that, "while I differ very widely from him in my conception of the religious idea and religious duty, yet I long and pray for the day when, in the clearer light which God's spirit may vouchsafe to each one of us, the people of all lands and all races may see eye to eye and be perfectly joined together in the service of a common divine Redeemer."

Detroit, February 15, 1894

W. X. NINDE.

The war was on. Henceforth the newspapers fairly crackled with letters and editorials attacking and defending Swamiji, and one can imagine the discussions that must have taken place in the drawing rooms, in the church parlors, and in the club rooms of the city. Members of orthodox, or what Swamiji would call "blue-nose," Christianity were happy with the bishop's letter, and on February 24 the Michigan Christian Advocate, a weekly published in Detroit, printed it with the following introduction:


11

A HINDOO IN DETROIT

The distinguished Hindoo monk, Swamie Vive Kananda, lectured two or three times in Detroit last week, praising the religion of Buddha and making numerous "cute little jabs at the Christian religion," as the daily papers said. But the cunning heathen was careful to avoid any comparison between the social condition of the people in his own land and those to whom he was speaking, though he boldly animadverted upon the great missionary movements of Christianity and sought to belittle and disparage them as other heathens in America have recently been doing. As Bishop Ninde was induced to introduce the speaker the first evening, he wisely made a very satisfactory and instructive explanation through the Free Press next day: [Here followed the full text of the bishop's letter.]

Bishop Ninde's "satisfactory and instructive explanation" was made good use of by Swamiji's missionary opponents. In November, 1894, the Homiletic Review, an organ of the orthodox Christian churches, printed an article in defense of Christian missionaries in India. The writer set the stage for his attack on Swamiji by the following interpretation of the Detroit incident:

.  .  . Vivekananda, acting under the auspices of hospitable friends in Detroit, gave a series of lectures on the superiority of Hinduism, which created no little stir in religious and anti religious circles. He spoke repeatedly in Unitarian churches, and he received many courtesies also from men of what are known as the orthodox creeds. On one occasion he was very courteously introduced to his audience by Bishop Ninde of the Methodist Episcopal Church. But so contemptuous and bitter was the attack upon Christianity and Christian missions which followed, that the good Bishop felt compelled to apologize through the press for the position in which his Hindu friend had placed him as a minister and a bishop in the Christian Church.

Needless to say, when on Thursday evening, February 15, Swamiji gave his second lecture, the good bishop did not introduce him. And sad to say, although the public crowded into the Unitarian Church, the Detroit press had been intimidated by the bishop's repudiation of his Hindu friend. Methodism was strong in the city, and Bishop Ninde, a stalwart figure, was well known and highly respected among the orthodox. Thus the reports of Swamiji's second lecture, "Hindu Philosophy, " are meager and, with one exception, misrepresentative.

The Journal of February 16 took a safe stand beside the bishop, whom its reporter had interviewed:

12

SCORED CHRISTIANITY
Vive Kananda Tells about the Trouble it Has 
Caused in India.

Bishop Ninde did not introduce the Hindoo monk, Vive Kananda, last evening when he was to deliver his second lecture at the Unitarian church. In fact, the bishop had ceased to take any stock in the Hindoo, because of his propensity for attacking the Christian religion, as well as for what he considered his untruthfulness as displayed in his lecture on Wednesday evening. The bishop has traveled in India extensively himself, and in an interview with the Journal after the lecture said the monk had evidently been talking for the purpose of creating an impression. If a more worldly man than the bishop had been describing the monk's lecture he would have said he was "talking through his hat, " as that is just what the bishop meant.

"For instance," said the bishop, "he told us there was absolutely no drunkenness in India; that one might travel all through the country without seeing an intoxicated man. Now, I know better, for I have been there and have observed with my own eyes to what an extent the drink habit has taken hold of the natives. Why, it is positively a fact that English liquor merchants have been sending men throughout India for the express purpose of educating the natives to drink intoxicating liquors, and from my observations I should say they were very apt pupils. I could recite many instances of degradation caused by the drink habit if it was necessary."

The monk's lecture last evening was on "Hindoo Philosophy," but those who expected to learn something from the lecture must have been greatly disappointed, for the whole lecture was made up of pointed little cracks at the Christian religion. He dwelt at some length on what he designated the trouble and misery his people had experienced by the introduction of Christianity into India. His references to "Hindoo Philosophy" were so very few that they could hardly be distinguished from his attacks upon the Christian religion. He thought it only an idle dream to think of all the nations of the earth having the same religious view. He said finally that Buddhists had sent out the first missionaries, and they are the only people who can say they have converted millions without shedding a drop of blood.

It is interesting to notice, in connection with the attacks against Swamiji, that those who opposed him, although often men of high standing in the community, almost invariably betrayed a confusion of mind either in their style of writing or in their multiple self contradictions. Bishop Ninde, for instance, not only misquoted Swamiji regarding drunkenness in India, but attributed its existence to the wiles of English, and presumably Christian, liquor merchants. But in whatever muddle the bishop managed to get himself, the fact remained, as Swamiji had pointed out, that the alcoholic Hindu was an extreme rarity.

The Free Press of February 16 was as cautious as the Journal in its report on Swamiji's second lecture. It was from the  following article of February 16 that the Michigan Christian Advocate would pick up the phrase, "cute little jabs at the Christian religion" :

13

"HINDOO PHILOSOPHY. "

Another Large Audience Listens to 

      Swami Vive Kananda.

The second lecture of the Hindoo monk, Swami Vive Kananda, was given last evening at the Unitarian church to a large and very appreciative audience. The expectation of the audience that the speaker would enlighten them regarding "Hindoo Philosophy," as the lecture was entitled, was gratified to only a limited extent. Allusions were made to the philosophy of Buddha, and the speaker was applauded when he said that Buddhism was the first missionary religion of the world, and that it had secured the largest number of converts without the shedding of a drop of blood; but he did not tell his audience anything about the religion or philosophy of Buddha. He made a number of cute little jabs at the Christian religion, and alluded to the trouble and misery that had been caused by its introduction into heathen countries, but he skillfully avoided any comparison between the social condition of the people in his own land and that of the people to whom he was speaking. In a general way he said the Hindoo philosophers taught from a lower truth to a higher; whereas, a person accepting a newer Christian doctrine is asked and expected to throw his former belief all away and accept the newer in its entirety. "It is an idle dream when all of us will have the same religious vows," said he. "No emotion can be produced except by clashing elements acting upon the mind. It is the revulsion of change, the new light, the presentation of the new to the old, that elicits sensation."

It is from the Tribune, which consistently upheld Swamiji, that we are able to get some idea of his lecture "Hindu Philosophy." Although the Tribune reporter seems to have been more than a little at sea and to have taken somewhat sketchy notes, his account, which appeared on February 16, was unbiased and gives proof that the lecture by no means consisted of "cute little jabs at the Christian religion"

14

HINDU PHILOSOPHY
The Subject of Kananda's Talk to the Unity Club Last Night

The Brahman monk, Swami Vive Kananda, again lectured last evening at the Unitarian church, his topic being "Hindu Philosophy. " The speaker dealt for a time with general philosophy and metaphysics, but said that he would devote the lecture to that part pertaining to religion. There is a sect that believes in a soul, but are agnostic in relation to God. Buddahism [sic] was a great moral religion, but they could not live long without believing in a god. Another sect known as the giants [Jains] believe in the soul, but not in the moral government of the country. There were several millions of this sect in India. Their priests and monks tie a handkerchief over their faces, believing if their hot breath comes in contact with man or beast death will ensue.

Among the orthodox, all believe in the revelation. Some think every word in the Bible comes directly from God. The stretching of the meaning of a word would perhaps do in most religions, but in that of the Hindus they have the Sanscrit, which always retains the full meaning and reasons of the word.

The distinguished Oriental thought there was a sixth sense far greater than any of the five we know we possess. It was the truth of revelation. A man may read all the books on religion in the world and yet be the greatest blackguard in the country. Revelation means later reports of spiritual discoveries.

The second position some take is a creation without beginning or end. Suppose there was a time when the  world did not exist; what was God doing then? To the Hindus the creation was only one of forms. One man is born with a healthy body, is of good family and grows up a godly man. Another is born with a maimed and crooked body and develops into a wicked man and pays the penalty. Why must a just and holy god create one with so many advantages and the other with disadvantages? The person has no choice. The evildoer has a consciousness of his guilt. The difference between virtue and vice was expounded. If God willed all things there would be an end to all science. How far can man go down? Is it possible for man to go back to brute again?

Kananda was glad he was a Hindu. When Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans several thousand [Jews] settled in India. When the Persians were driven from their country by the Arabs several thousand found refuge in the same country and none were molested. The Hindus believe all religions are true, but theirs antedates all others. Missionaries are never molested by the Hindus. The first English missionaries were prevented from landing in that country by English and it was a Hindu that interceded for them and gave them the first hand. Religion is that which believes in all. Religion was compared to the blind men and the elephant. Each man felt of a special part and from it drew his conclusions of what an elephant was. Each was right in his way and yet all were needed to form a whole. Hindu philosophers say "truth to truth, lower truth to higher." It is an idle dream of those who think that all will at some time think alike, for that would be the death of religion. Every religion breaks up into little sects, each claiming to be the true one and all the others wrong. Persecution is unknown in Buddahism. They sent out the first missionaries and are the only ones who can say they have converted millions without the shedding of a single drop of blood. Hindus, with all their faults and superstitions, never persecute. The speaker wanted to know  how it was the christians allowed such iniquities as are everywhere present in christian countries.

Obviously Swamiji's "jabs" were directed for the most part toward the contention that the whole world must become Christian or be doomed. Such "jabs," even though constituting a very small part of a long lecture on Hindu philosophy and spoken without rancor, entered the orthodox mind as lightning thrusts, obliterating everything else that had been said. One can only imagine the power behind his criticisms of the contemporary religious scene when he spoke them from the platform—a power not of voice but of spirit, a force that drove his rebukes deep into the very soul of those for whom they were intended and brought forth howls of protest.

Nothing could have exposed the worst aspects of Christian orthodoxy more effectively than its adherents' denunciation of Swamiji. It was perhaps largely through the process of self exposure on the part of bigotry that his lecture tour awoke America to its most pernicious aspects. He rarely made any rejoinder to his critics. He did not have to. Shortly following Bishop Ninde's repudiation of "Mr. Kananda," for instance, three long and forceful letters ridiculing and reprimanding the bishop appeared in the daily newspapers. The first of these, dated February 16, appeared in the Free Press of February 17:

15

Bishop Ninde and Kananda

To the Editor of The Detroit Free Press:

In The Free Press of Friday Bishop Ninde offers an explanation by way of apology for having been induced under what he seems to construe as false pretenses, to act as chairman and introduce the Brahmin Monk Kananda to a Unitarian church audience. It would now seem from the tone of his letter, that the good Methodist bishop feels as if he had "fallen from grace," and now repents of the disgrace, as he would probably put it if he expressed his innermost convictions. His acceptance and fulfillment of the duty with such good grace, won much admiration from all liberal minded people, many Christians included. It is lamentable that he did not have the grace and moral courage to let well enough alone, even though his private views conflicted with those of the Brahmin....


Bishop Ninde again errs when he attempts to convey the impression in his letter that he was supposed to be the only man in Detroit who had visited India. He should know that this is simply nonsense. But a few days ago Frederick Stearns gave a lecture in the city upon his travels in India, and the bishop well knows that there are scores of others here who have seen as much of that wonderful country as he has, and the public are not ignorant of that fact. The writer was present at the first and last lectures of Kananda, and saw the bishop wince and squirm at the mild mannered, though telling rebuke of "Christian" methods and intolerance with not only the alleged heathen, but with different "Christian" denominations, among themselves.... The discourse of [Kananda] was indeed "caustic," as the bishop says, but not "unfriendly, " as he further states.... He fails to recognize the liberal, generous and holy spirit with which it was conveyed....


The bishop furthermore affirms that whatever social and moral conditions exist in India "have not sprung from impulses within the body of Hindooism, but from the direct and indirect influences of the gospel of Jesus Christ." This the bishop knows to be false if he is versed in ancient history, as he should be. The fundamental morals and virtues of Buddha, Brahma, Confucius and other moral reformers were known long before Christ's coming. Human brotherhood and the godlike in man were taught ages before. If Bishop Ninde is going to the orient as a true missionary he will have to learn the chief lesson of "God in man" before he can truthfully preach the glad tidings of a gospel of peace and love. . .

O. P. DELDOC.

The second long letter written in reproach of Bishop Ninde and in defense of Swamiji was published in the Free Press of February 18. It was signed "Lover of Fair Play" and expressed, for the most part, the same sentiments and emphasized the same points as the above. The following passages, however, can be quoted :


. . . The fundamental principle of the Hindoo religion is the absolute tolerance of all other religions, and it strikes me that the learned bishop has displayed a great deal of intolerance in advocating his own cause. He states that he inferred, when called upon to introduce the speaker, that nothing would be said that showed any religious bias. May a layman be permitted to ask why should we not have one Hindoo missionary among us when we send hundreds to India? Is not turn about fair play? What, then, about the quality of the distinguished brother's moral teachings? He says we should live up to the doctrine that all self is bad and all non-self is good. Is not such teaching grand and ennobling? Is it not as beneficial to poor human nature as the golden rule? The Hindoo religion being the most spiritual in the world, goes further than the golden rule. It teaches its followers to treat your neighbor better than you would expect to be treated. Can anyone question such morality as this? . . .


. .. It seems strange that the bishop should resent the expression of his views from the visitor. Do not the missionaries of the church he so ably represents intrude their views upon the benighted heathen, who in their five daily worships show that the unselfishness of the Hindoo religion, is something beautiful to contemplate? . . . . I know full well that Vive Kananda will not reply to the bishop's letter because his theory is that silence is golden when a religious controversy is impending. He says there should be no quarreling among the representatives of the creeds, for he who casts a reflection upon another creed casts a slur upon his own faith. He casts no reflection upon the Christian religion. What he said was that different people have different religions, and that is well. The Christian religion may answer the needs of certain people, but the Hindoo religion answers better the needs of the people of India, because it teaches them higher doctrines of morality than other nations are prepared to receive.... The sublime religion of the Hindoo we are unprepared for and therefore the Christian religion answers every purpose. This is a cut-throat generation and the gentle doctrine of the divinity of nonself is too far in the future for us....


The third letter appeared in the Journal of February 20 and was signed "E. J." It read in part as follows:

. . It would have done more credit to our Christianity for the bishop to have accepted without comment Vive Kananda's assertion that there is comparatively little drunkenness in India than to have proved its falsity by admitting that a Christian nation, professing a civilization and a religion far in advance of that of Buddha, introduced that degrading vice to a temperate and religious people, and spread it broadcast there through insatiate love of gain. It is a more bitter reflection upon our boasted Christianity than any Vive Kananda made. . . .


As for the "cracks at the Christian religion, " the sting lay in their truth. This Hindoo knows where to find the weak joints in our armor. We ought to be grateful to him for the hits he didn't make. Do our missionaries treat foreign—pagan, we like to call them—religions as tenderly and inoffensively as Vive Kananda treated ours? He was not here to convert us; indeed, in his last lecture he expressly disclaimed any such purpose....


To tell the truth, his broad liberality, that recognizes in every human soul the effort toward freedom (his synonym of our "salvation") and light, and makes that effort religion, irrespective and independent of creed or dogma, shames us all. The spectacle of a Methodist bishop introducing a Buddhist monk in a Unitarian church to an audience composed of Christians, Jews and Gentiles, looked like a move toward the breaking down of the barriers of sectarianism. It seems a pity the bishop thought necessary to excuse his commendable part in it, to the extent of a quarter column of solid nonpareil in the morning papers, because a Brahmin of the Buddhists didn't preach orthodox Christianity.


It can be safely assumed that a large percentage of the Detroit population both read and approved these letters. Bishop Ninde in his denunciation of Swamiji had done nothing but play directly into the hands of the liberals and strengthen their position.


A further point that Swamiji's defenders should have clarified was that in speaking against the Christian missionaries after having been introduced by the bishop he had not overstepped the bounds of courtesy. Bishop Ninde, probably under the impression that Swamiji, like Mazumdar and other "enlightened" Hindus, looked to Christianity for the salvation of India, had introduced him with a fervent prayer for the day "when people of all lands and all races may see eye to eye and be perfectly joined together in the service of a common divine Redeemer"— that is, in the service of Jesus Christ. Swamiji's subject was "Manners and Customs in India," and he could not, in giving a true picture of his country, avoid referring to the Christian missionaries who had so misrepresented her to the world and who had done her such untold harm. But while his purpose in appearing on the platform was not to observe the social  amenities, if Bishop Ninde had omitted his prayer, Swamiji might in courtesy to him have softened his blows. As it was, the bishop had forfeited his right to such consideration. Because of the prayer, it became incumbent upon Swamiji to make his points all the more clear and telling, to correct all misconceptions regarding his country and, above all, to disabuse his audience of the notion that Christianity was India's only hope.


16

There were two misconceptions regarding India prevalent in the 1890s. While on the one hand she was maligned as a land of immorality, idolatry, and superstition and in crying need of Christian missionaries, on the other hand she was lauded as a realm of mystery and marvel where "mahatmas" performed wonderful feats of occult power and telepathically communicated cosmic secrets to the elect, This latter view resulted in a kind of delirium in which occultism, spirituality, super science, and the turban were hopelessly confused. It was in the throes of this fever that the Evening News of February 14 had greeted Swamiji on his arrival in Detroit with the following article:

GIVE US SOME MIRACLES

It may sound vulgar, but it is not improper for Detroit to insist, now that it has gotten one of these wonderful East Indian mahatmas or priests, or whatever they are called, in its social grip, that he either "put up or shut up." During the past 10 or 15 years the people of christian lands have been asked to believe that there exists among some of the upper casts of India a profundity of esoteric wisdom and a knowledge of the laws of nature which, in comparison with our occidental ignorance, borders on the infinite. The mystifying tricks of the eastern fakirs have been long recognized as the best specimens of sleight-of- hand work that exist anywhere in the world, and these tricks have been used as the foundation for stories of wonder-working that places the doings of the adepts of India on a par with the miracles of Jesus of Nazareth.


A series of articles is now running in the Arena, written by a man who claims to have seen all that he tells about, tending to prove that the eastern adepts have gotten so far on the inner side of things in this world that they have almost complete control over all the powers of nature. Large trees from 40 to 75 feet high are grown before man's eyes in a few minutes and the spectators are permitted to climb into the branches of them; rocks and mountains which have stood for centuries are made to disappear and then to reappear; thunderbolts leap from the tips of the fingers of the mahatmas and do what destruction the owner of the finger wills, and other works are done which show that the performers are possessed of powers divine.


Now if all this wonder-working were advanced to show how much more skillful in legerdemain the easterns are over the westerns, we could well confess the superiority and let it go at that; but the claim is that it all shows that the adepts have pushed nearer the center of things than we have, and that it shows how very low and childish our boasted civilization is. It is claimed that the religious knowledge of the adepts is luminosity itself compared with our poor christian paganism.


The obvious answer to all these claims of miracle working is that if they were true, the adepts would come west and do some missionary work by showing the christians what the eastern knowledge would do. The adepts answer this by saying that they have a secret reason why they will not do this. But the world's fair brought a small swarm of these people to our shores, and one of the most celebrated of them is in Detroit at the present moment. The present moment, then, is the time to give notice to Swami Vive Kananda that this great opportunity has arrived to prove that all that has been said about his wonderful miracle working powers is true.


Swami Vive Kananda will talk at the unitarian church, but will he do nothing but talk? There are thousands of Americans who can talk better and longer than he can. They can say sweeter things and say them in more elegant form, but they cannot grow a pine tree before the eyes of 10,000 people. They cannot pick up Belle Isle and sink it in Lake St. Clair and then put it back again. If Swami Vive Kananda declines to do some of these things in addition to saying sweet things, he will injure his boasted religion of superiority more than he will help it. If his religion is better than ours, it surely does not show among the millions of the people of India. It does not show in any wonders seen by western eyes. Where, then, does it show? Answer: As yet only in sensational stories of travelers which thousands of Americans have swallowed. Will Kananda do something handsome while in Detroit?


In the tense atmosphere of Detroit no criticism of Swamiji was let pass without public rejoinder. Through the letter columns of the Journal of February 16 one of Swamiji's most articulate defenders, O. P. Deldoc, whose retort to Bishop Ninde has been reproduced above, was the first to give the Evening News a staunch reply:

17

Mysteries and Miracles

I read with no little surprise and disgust an editorial in the Evening News of February 14, headed, "Give us Some Miracles," said article being called forth on account of the appearance in Detroit of Swami Vive Kananda, the Brahmin monk, who edified and delighted, not only the clergy of all denominations, but all who heard him in the parliament of religions at Chicago. His candor, simplicity and marvelous mentality are only exceeded by his earnest  efforts towards the unity of religion and the brotherhood of man.


The editorial in substance calls upon Vive Kananda, whom it styles "one of those wonderful East Indian mahatmas, to shut up or put up," and challenges him to show some of the "mystifying tricks" alleged to have been witnessed by travelers in India, special attention being called to the articles written by Dr. Hensholdt, now being published in the Arena. The editorial sneeringly and sarcastically alludes to these "doings of the adepts of India" as professedly "being on a par with the miracles of Jesus of Nazareth," yet carries the inference that they are but "tricks of fakirs: ' The article concludes by avowing that "Kananda will talk, but do nothing but talk, " and because he does not produce any of the so-called miracles "he will injure his boasted religion of superiority more than he will help it."


The writer of that editorial ought to know that none more stoutly declare that there are no miracles, never was such a thing as a miracle, that nothing is supernatural, more than the "wise men of the east," or the intelligent recorder or traveler, familiar with the Orient. What the East Indians do claim, and what theosophists and all profound thinkers claim, is that the learned of that country have a better and purer knowledge of the hidden forces of nature, of spirituality, of practical humanity, of religious mysteries, and the occult generally, than has been revealed to many in the western world.


They have a better knowledge of the Arians, earth's earlier ages, and of pure Sanscrit literature, including the lost arts and sciences of modern times, and also of the fundamental basis of all religions. The wise of India are no more responsible for the superstitions, the pretensions, or for those who err and sin, than the good of our own land are responsible for the mistakes and wickedness of the present day. Why call an honest exponent of a pure and simple religion of charity and humanity, to account for the errors of some of his fellows of that vast and varied country, whose total population some self styled Christians delight in dubbing "heathen"? Shall we send our sectarian missionaries to his land, and kick him out of ours because forsooth! he can't hoodoo us with some hocus-pocus tricks or show us what never existed—a miracle?


Christ when in the flesh, was thus importuned by the ignorant rabble, who disbelieved his holy name, and charged him with being an imposter, and who was finally spat upon and put to death by the same bigoted, intolerant mob, who only cried: "Crucify him!" When they jeered him to scorn, and cried, "Show us a miracle," he calmly and meekly rebuked them, saying, "Ye would not believe Moses and the prophets, neither would ye believe though one arose from the dead: ' It is only the ignorant who expect or seek for the miraculous.


The adepts of India or of any other land do not pretend to do marvels; they only by a superior spirituality gained by long fasting, long study, long crucifying of the lusts of the flesh, long meditation upon "nature's finer forces," are enabled to do what would fill the minds of the superstitious with awe and wonder. All scientists familiar with that wonderful country declare the natives experts or adepts in hypnotic power, and for unknown ages they have held the key to electricity, and many other of nature's marvels. India was very old before our nation was born, and her savants have forgotten more than we with our boasted civilization know.


If Swami Vive Kananda succeeds in expounding a gospel of peace, of purity, of self sacrifice and brotherly love; if he succeeds in opening the blind eyes of bigotry, and in unstopping the deaf ears of the intolerant, and shows the professed Christian that even a heathen has some virtues which Christians lack, and more than all if he softens the strong heart of humanity, which he already seems qualified to do, his mission among us will not be in vain.

O. P. DELDOC.

Another retort to the Evening News was included much later in a letter to the editor of the Free Press, in which the author, "having pursued the published reports of Swami Vive Kananda's course of lectures," dutifully set himself to point out the errors of Swamiji's logic. The result, as might be expected, was total confusion, with which I will not burden the reader. The letter concludes, however, with the following more lucid paragraph:


But despite the Hindoo's errors there is so much that is good and true in his tenets and their application that the self professing Christian may well profit by. For certain it is that few, indeed, of any "nation or people, or tongue," can derive any substantial advantage or profit by the adoption of Christianity as at present taught and practically applied; which is but a travesty of the teachings of Christ and his immediate apostles and disciples; and the Hindoo teacher may well return the brutal and blasphemous cry recently hurled at him by certain professed Christians (?) : "Give us some miracles."


But the most pertinent and conclusive reply to the editorial was given by Swamiji himself when the Evening News, more by way of self-justification than apology, printed on February 17 the following brief interview:

18

ONLY WONDERS WORKED

No Miracles in the Pure Hindoo Religion.

"I cannot comply with the request of The News to work a miracle in proof of my religion," said Vive Kananda to a representative of this paper, after being shown The News editorial on the subject. "In the first place, I am no miracle worker, and in the second place the pure Hindoo religion I profess is not based on miracles. We do not recognize such a thing as miracles. There are wonders wrought beyond our five senses, but they are operated by some law. Our religion has nothing to do with them. Most of the strange things which are done in India and reported in the foreign papers are sleight-of hand tricks or hypnotic illusions. They are not the performances of the wise men. These do not go about the country performing their wonders in the market places for pay. They can be seen and known only by those who seek to know the truth, and not moved by childish curiosity."

Thus the matter was settled. Later, the Evening News of February 20 was to boast at the end of a rather sour editorial:


The News has done the only sound service that has been done for the Detroit public and the occidental world in connection with this visit of the Hindu monk. It has wrested from highest Hindu authority testimony about the wonder-working that has been so persistently claimed for the mahatmas of the east. Kananda says that the truth of the Hindu faith does not rest on wonder-working. He makes no pretension either for himself or any of his countrymen on this line. He despises as much as any occidental can the tricks of the fakirs. Truth stands on its own feet. This testimony which The News has wrested from so high authority sweeps away the huge mass of claims that have been set up for the eastern mahatmas by such writers as Sinnet and Blavatski and the writer now running a series of articles in the Arena. The News appreciates Kananda, not as a popular fad, but because he has come and delighted us with the things that are valuable for their own sake.


It was of course, not necessary to "wrest" a denunciation of miracle-working from Swamiji. With every lecture and every interview he—indeed, by his very presence—he established for all thinking people the distinction between true Eastern mysticism and mysterious occultism.


It is not surprising, however, in view of his extraordinary personality, that many people regarded him as a miracle worker. Nor is it surprising that stories confirming this assumption spread far and wide. One such story was told me out of the memory of Mrs. Frances Bagley Wallace, and concerns the reception her grandmother, Mrs. Bagley, held for Swamiji. Mrs. Wallace writes: "I was only nine years old at the time, but I remember that after being locked in Grandfather's study at one end of the house, the Swami materialized in the center of the big parlor at the other end of the house where the guests were. When the prominent gentlemen who had locked him in the study and had pocketed the key returned and unlocked the door, there sat the Swami in the same position as he had been when they had locked him in there!"[16] This story is not altogether incredible, for such materialization is not unknown. There is, for instance, an authentic story regarding Sri Ramakrishna, who, being at Dakshineswar temple, appeared at the same time in a city in East Bengal. What is difficult to believe, however, is that Swamiji would have submitted himself to such a test of his powers, or that he would have used those powers to entertain and astound his friends. Although Mrs. Wallace is definite regarding the authenticity of her memory, a skeptic might be inclined to consider that she had been too young at the time to discriminate between rumor and fact. But however that may be, the story at least proves that fascinating rumors were current regarding Swamiji. It may well have been such rumors that reached the skeptical ears of the editor of the News and prompted him to write his sarcastic editorial.


In any case, Swamiji, with one stroke, absolved India of "mahatmaism" as well as "heathenism"—a stroke which neither the Theosophists nor the missionaries thanked him for.

By the time Swamiji gave his third lecture, "The Divinity of Man," at the Unitarian Church, on Saturday, February 17, the Detroit newspapers had recovered from their reticence and reported upon it at some length. The first two paragraphs of the report in the Free Press of February 18 have been quoted in the Life and the next five paragraphs in volume four of the Complete Works under the title "Is India a Benighted Country?"[17] But although much of the following article will be familiar to the reader, I will nevertheless reproduce it in its entirety, for it gives so excellent a picture of both Swamiji and his Detroit audience. Moreover, so far as I know, the latter half of this report has not hitherto been reprinted:

19

INDIVIDUAL INFINITY
Swami Vive Kananda's Lecture Last Evening.
Philosophy of Swedenborg from a Hindoo Source.
Fatalistic Qualities of the Ancient Indian Religion.
Unitarian Church Crowded to the Doors by
Pleased Auditors.

Swami Vive Kananda, Hindoo philosopher and priest, concluded his series of lectures, or, rather, sermons, at the Unitarian church last night, speaking on "The Divinity of God" [sic]. In spite of the bad weather, the church was crowded almost to the doors half an hour before the eastern brother—as he likes to be called—appeared. All professions and business occupations were represented in the attentive audience—lawyers, judges, ministers of the gospel, merchants, a rabbi—not to speak of the many ladies who have by their repeated attendance and rapt attention shown a decided inclination to shower adulation  upon the dusky visitor whose drawing-room attraction is as great as his ability in the rostrum.


The lecture last night was less descriptive than preceding ones, and for nearly two hours Vive Kananda wove a metaphysical texture on affairs human and divine, so logical that he made science appear like common sense. It was a beautiful logical garment that he wove, replete with as many bright colors and as attractive and pleasing to contemplate as one of the many-hued fabrics made by hand in his native land and scented with the most seductive fragrance of the Orient. This dusky gentleman uses poetical imagery as an artist uses colors; and the hues are laid on just where they belong, the result being somewhat bizarre in effect, and yet having a peculiar fascination. Kaleidoscopic were the swiftly succeeding logical conclusions, and the deft manipulator was rewarded for his efforts from time to time by enthusiastic applause.


The lecture was prefaced with the statement that the speaker had been asked many questions. A number of these he preferred to answer privately, but three he had selected, for reasons which would appear, to answer from the pulpit. They were:


"Do the people of India throw their children into the jaws of the crocodiles?"

"Do they kill themselves beneath the wheels of the juggernaut?"

"Do they burn widows with their husbands?"


The first question the lecturer treated in the vein that an American abroad would answer inquiries about Indians running around in the streets of New York and similar myths which are even to-day entertained by many persons on the continent. The statement was too ludicrous to give a serious response to it. When asked by certain well meaning but ignorant people why they gave only female children to the crocodiles, he could only ironically reply that probably it was because they were softer and more tender and could be more easily masticated by the inhabitants of the rivers in the benighted country. Regarding the juggernaut legend the lecturer explained the old practice in the sacred city and remarked that possibly a few in their zeal to grasp the rope and participate in the drawing of the car slipped and fell and were so destroyed. Some such mishaps had been exaggerated into the distorted version from which the good people of other countries shrank with horror. Vive Kananda denied that the people burned widows. It was true, however, that widows had burned themselves. In the few cases where this had happened, they had been urged not to do so by the priests and holy men who were always opposed to suicide. Where the devoted widows insisted, stating that they desired to accompany their husbands in the transformation that had taken place, they were obliged to submit to the fiery test. That is, they thrust their hands within the flames and if they permitted them to be consumed no further opposition was placed in the way of the fulfilment of their desires. But India is not the only country where women who have loved have followed immediately the loved one through the realms of immortality; suicide in such cases have occurred in every land. It is an uncommon bit of fanaticism in any country; as unusual in India as elsewhere. No, the speaker repeated, the people do not burn women in India; nor have they ever burned witches.


Proceeding to the lecture proper, Vive Kananda proceeded to analyze the physical, mental and soul attributes of life. The body is but a shell; the mind something that acts but a brief and fantastic part; while the soul has distinct individuality in itself. To realize the infinity of self is to attain "freedom" which is the Hindoo word for "salvation." By a convincing manner of argument the lecturer showed that every soul is something independent, for if it were dependent, it could not acquire immortality. He related a story from the old legends of his country to  illustrate the manner in which the realization of this may come to the individual. A lioness leaping towards a sheep in the act gave birth to a cub. The lioness died and the cub was given suck by the sheep and for many years thought itself a sheep and acted like one. But one day another lion appeared and led the first lion to a lake where he looked in and saw his resemblance to the other lion. At that he roared and realized the full majesty of self. Many people are like the lion masquerading as a sheep and get into a corner, call themselves sinners and demean themselves in every imaginable fashion, not yet seeing the perfection and divinity which lies in self. The ego of man and woman is the soul. If the soul is independent, how then can it be isolated from the infinite whole? Just as the great sun shines on a lake and numberless reflections are the result, so the soul is distinct like each reflection, although the great source is recognized and appreciated. The soul is sexless. When it has realized the condition of absolute freedom, what could it have to do with sex which is physical? In this connection the lecturer delved deeply into the waters of Swedenborgian philosophy, or religion, and the connection between the conviction of the Hindoo and the spiritual expressions of faith on the part of the more modern holy man was fully apparent. Swedenborg seemed like a European successor of an early Hindoo priest, clothing in more modern garb an ancient conviction; a line of thought that the greatest of French philosophers and novelists saw fit to embody in his elevating tale of the perfect soul. Every individual has in himself perfection. It lies within the dark recesses of his physical being. To say that a man has become good because God gave him a portion of His perfection is to conceive the Divine Being as God minus just so much perfection as he has imparted to a person on this earth. The inexorable law of science proves that the soul is individual and must have perfection within itself, the attainment of which means freedom, not salvation, and  the realization of individual infinity. Nature! God! Religion! It is all one.


The religions are all good. A bubble of air in a glass of water strives to join with the mass of air without; in oil, vinegar and other materials of differing density its efforts are less or more retarded according to the liquid. So the soul struggles through various mediums for the attainment of its individual infinity. One religion is best adapted to a certain people because of habits of life, association, hereditary traits and climatic influences. Another religion is suited to another people for similar reasons. All that is, is best seemed to be the substance of the lecturer's conclusions. To try abruptly to change a nation's religion would be like a man who sees a river flowing from the Alps. He criticizes the way it has taken. Another man views the mighty stream descending from the Himalayas, a stream that has been running for generations and thousands of years, and says that it has not taken the shortest and best route. The Christian pictures God as a personal being seated somewhere above us. The Christian can not necessarily be happy in Heaven unless he can stand on the edge of the golden streets and from time to time gaze down into the other place and see the difference. Instead of the golden rule, the Hindoo believes in the doctrine that all non-self is good and all self is bad, and through this belief the attainment of the individual infinity and the freedom of the soul at the proper time will be fulfilled. How excessively vulgar, stated Vive Kananda, was the golden rule! Always self! always self! was the Christian creed. To do unto others as you would be done by! It was a horrible, barbarous, savage creed, but he did not desire to decry the Christian creed, for those who are satisfied with it to them it is well adapted. Let the great stream flow on, and he is a fool who would try to change its course, when nature will work out the solution. Spiritualist (in the true acceptance of the word) and fatalist, Vive Kananda emphasized his opinion that all was well and he had no desire to convert Christians. They were Christians; it was well. He was a Hindoo; that, also, was well. In his country different creeds were formulated for the needs of people of different grades of intelligence, all this marking the progress of spiritual evolution. The Hindoo religion was not one of self; ever egotistical in its aspirations, ever holding up promises of reward or threats of punishment. It shows to the individual he may attain infinity by non-self. This system of bribing men to become Christians, alleged to have come from God, who manifested Himself to certain men on earth, is atrocious. It is horribly demoralizing and the Christian creed, accepted literally, has a shameful effect upon the moral natures of the bigots who accept it, retarding the time when the infinity of self may be attained.


The letter Mary Funke wrote to Swami Brahmananda, which has been published in the Vedanta Kesari, gives a much better picture of Swamiji in the process of answering questions than does the above report. She wrote:


I remember that on his first visit to Detroit, when he was lecturing at the Unitarian Church, we were told that the Swami would be glad to answer any question we might wish to ask. The questions were to be written and put in a box one night and the Swami was to answer them publicly the evening following. Many of the questions submitted were serious, others were trivial and flat. Of course, some ninny asked the same old question about Hindu mothers throwing their babies to the crocodiles, etc. I noticed the Swami shrink as he read it and then came a smile of merry mischief and he told in a half serious, half comic manner how, when he was a baby, his mother took him to the Ganges but that he was "such a fat little baby the crocodiles refused to swallow me" ; and he added facetiously, "whenever I feel badly about being such a fat monk, I think of how I was saved from the crocodiles and am comforted." Then he suddenly became very serious, even stern, drew himself up proudly and in tones of thunder hurled forth, "But, ladies and gentlemen, we, I assure you, never burned witches." This brought down the house and there was cheer after cheer, for an American audience enjoys a joke on itself and none of us are proud of the burning of witches at Salem .[18]


To continue with the newspaper reports of this Saturday evening lecture: The Tribune reporter, perhaps the same who had earlier heard "giants" for "Jains," this time heard "bury" for "burn." Otherwise, with the exception of Swamiji's statements regarding the golden rule, he seems to have reported more or less accurately:


20

THEIR OWN CHOICE
That Story About Burying Widows Alive.
Swami Vive Kananda's Version of an 
Old Custom of India.
The Practice Forbidden by One Emperor, but It Grew Again Until Stopped by the English—Religious Fanatics in All Religions.

Swami Vive Kananda at the Unitarian Church last night declared that widows were never buried alive in India through religion or law, but the act in all cases had been voluntary on the part of the women. The practice had been forbidden by one emperor, but it had gradually grown again until a stop was put to it by the English government. Fanatics existed in all religions, the christian as well as the Hindu. Fanatics in India had been known to hold their hands over their heads in penance for so long a time that the arm had gradually grown stiff in that position, and so remained ever after. So, too, men had made a vow to stand still in one position. These persons would in time lose all control of the lower limbs and never after be able to walk. All religions were true, and the people practiced morality, not because of any divine command, but because of its own good. Hindus, he said, did not believe in conversion, calling it perversion. Associations, surroundings and educations were responsible for the great number of religions, and how foolish it was for an exponent of one religion to declare that another man's belief was wrong. It was as reasonable as a man from Asia coming to America and after viewing the course of the Mississippi to say to it: "You are running entirely wrong. You will have to go back to the starting place and commence it all over again: ' It would be just as foolish for a man in America to visit the Alps and after following the course of a river to the German Sea to inform it that its course was too tortuous and that the only remedy would be to flow as directed. The golden rule, he declared, was as old as the earth itself and to it could be traced all rules of morality. Man is a bundle of selfishness. He thought the hell fire theory was all nonsense. There could not be perfect happiness when it was known that suffering existed. He ridiculed the manner some religious persons have while praying. The Hindu, he said, closed his eyes and communed with the inner spirit, while some christians he had seen had seemed to stare at some point as if they saw God seated upon his heavenly throne. In the matter of religion there were two extremes, the bigot and the atheist. There was some good in the atheist, but the bigot lived only for his own little self. He thanked some anonymous person who had sent him a picture of the heart of Jesus. This he thought a manifestation of bigotry. Bigots belong to no religion. They are a singular phenomena [sic].


This same paper (the Tribune, February 18) discussed the importance of Swamiji's first three lectures-"Manners and Customs of India," "Hindu Philosophy," and "The Divinity of Man"—in an editorial entitled "The Hindu Among Us" :


People whose ideas of India and its inhabitants are chiefly derived from the school book pictures of the Hindu mother standing on the bank of the Ganges and throwing her baby to a crocodile, and of the great car of juggernaut rolling over and crushing scores of devotees, must be a good deal astonished to hear a native Hindu like Swami Vive Kananda talk for an hour or two before intelligent American audiences, and hold their attention to the point of absolute silence, upon the customs, philosophy and religion of his own country. This heathen speaks the English language with more elegance than is usually heard from our platforms and pulpits, and he seasons his descriptions with a refinement of wit that is almost unequalled among all the speakers whose words are familiar to our ears in public addresses. His intellect is agile in a way that is marvellous, and if he stabs a belief or a custom which is distasteful to him, he always does it with a needle and not with a pike-staff. His method is not like that of our conventional speakers. In his habit of moving about on the stage and talking sometimes in a way that suggests a soliloquy, he reminds one of John Fiske [a popular lecturer on history and Darwinism].


It is not necessary for one to be a Hindu, or to have any sympathy with the Hindu system of religious belief, to appreciate and enjoy a man like Vive Kananda who has given a course of three lectures here in the last week. He could apparently go on without much effort and talk for a dozen successive evenings with a new topic and fresh thoughts for every night. It would be hard to imagine him reading from a manuscript or coming to an end of his discourse except for the reason that his time was up. He is not what is called a "talkative" man by any means, but when he is making a talk in the way of a lecture his fluency and readiness and nicety of expression are beyond praise.


It is a good sign when Christians are willing to hear all that can be said about religions other than their own. It is a hopeful state of affairs when a distinguished christian can meet a distinguished Hindu and listen respectfully to what he has to offer. The congress of religions at Chicago may be said to have marked an epoch in the history of beliefs. It showed the advocates of diverse faiths that they all had something to learn from each other. It was a great and fruitful experiment in the field of religious toleration. One result has been the appearance of this distinguished Hindu in our midst. It would not hurt us to listen to a disciple of Mahomet and another of Confucius. The study of religions by comparison is not an old science but it is one that marks in a very useful way the progress of the nineteenth century.

21

This was, of course, the voice of liberal Christianity—a voice, which, added to Swamiji's own, was enough to drive missionary-minded Christians into a veritable frenzy. Swamiji's opponents, however, almost invariably based their criticism upon written reports of his lectures. Because of this, a whole week went by and he had already left Detroit before the pulpits resounded with attacks against his provocative Saturday evening lecture, "The Divinity of Man," which was not printed until Sunday morning—too late for the sermons.

In the meantime, the liberal ministers who had heard his lecture had much to say. On Sunday, February 18, the Reverend Reed Stuart of the Unitarian Church delivered a sermon entitled "The Gate Opening Toward the East," and Rabbi Grossman of the Temple Beth El spoke on "What Vive Kananda Has Taught Us." Condensed versions of both these sermons were given in the Detroit Journal of February 19. The  Detroit Tribune of the same date, however, gave a more complete text of each. The following articles are excerpts from the Tribune reports:


Rev. Reed Stuart preached a sermon on "The Gate Opening Toward the East" at the Unitarian Church yesterday morning. The subject was suggested by the recent lectures of Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindu priest. Kananda was in Mr. Stuart congregation yesterday morning, and he nodded his head in approval at frequent intervals during the discourse.


Mr. Stuart said: ". . . As persons are, so they think and as they think they act. Thus, sciences, governments, arts, philosophers, religions, are the product of temperament; and temperament is largely a product of latitude and longitude and material surroundings.


"Nowhere is this diversity more apparent than between the east and west. The eastern mind deals with the larger aspect of things; the western with the minute and measurable. The one believes in the All; the other also believes in the All, but separates it into the Many. The one unites, the other divides. The one believes in infinity the other in boundaries. The one meditates; the other acts.... The one thinks of nature as an illusion and something to be freed from. The other faces nature, analyzes it, and sets it to work for him.... The one has given philosophy; the other science. The east has given religion; the west has given creeds...


"The interesting young lecturer from India pleads that those of his countrymen who have given themselves up wholly to meditation shall be left to ply their avocation undisturbed. The more critical and incisive intellects from other nations should not molest them in their pleasant dreams. His plea ought to be granted. But to grant that, wholesale condemnation need not be passed upon all those who are gifted with power of action, or mixing their thoughts with nature and events and turning them to use for the welfare of humanity....


"Civilization is not a fixed quantity. It implies a mysterious progress. It is mounting up a spiral stairway, the first step of which lies hidden now in the black abyss where the brute began to fade and the human began to appear—where soul gained its first triumph over sense—and whose last step is still hidden in the empyrean. Mankind is slowly and laboriously passing along it. The nations are all groups upon it at different stages. Some are higher than others. But no one is high enough to begin to boast. What they should do is to make a sympathetic comparison of the excellencies of each, and exchange good for good for the benefit of all humanity, and not make a hostile contrast between the best of one and the worst of the other. There is no need for any nation to send missionaries half around the world merely to point out the defects of another nation. Whatever exchange there is should be in kind. One excellence should be added to another excellence. Our missionaries who have returned have told us only of the vices of the East. When they were there they only told of the virtue of the christian civilization of the West. They told of the peace and purity and gentleness of christianity. When they came home they told us of the vices of paganism. The books they wrote abounded in illustrations of the car of Juggernaut and the deluded mortals casting themselves under the wheels; of widows burning themselves upon the burial pyre of their husbands; of devotees torturing themselves in many ways; of aged parents exposed to die of neglect; of mothers flinging their babies into the jaws of hideous crocodiles. Whatever good there was was all concealed from us.


"It would have been better for them and for us if they had told all the truth. Now that the East is sending missionaries to the West, it is to be hoped that they will not make the same mistake. They can go home and tell that so many in every thousand become murderers; many become thieves; that intemperance is widespread; that divorces are frequent; that there is much public and private dishonesty; that infanticide is not unknown. It would be easy to convince their countrymen that America is a complete failure, and that christianity is a religion of cruelty, fraud and superstitions. If they do this they will only do what our missionaries have done in the past. How much wiser and how much better for the world if they would go and find what is good in each civilization and carrying it back would make it common property. The ivory of one nation would make a fine setting for the gold of another nation. The spirituality of the East ought to be set in the practical reason of the West....


"There is a demand becoming now quite general for a freer and larger religion. That we have gone to excess in our zeal for exact definitions and measurements there cannot be much doubt. Around religion we have built doctrinal and verbal barriers. It was all confined to one ancient book. Or it was crowded into a dogma, and put into the pigeon holes the sects had made and labeled as their own...


"There is a growing disposition to remedy that mistake. It is seen in the unrest now prevalent in all the sects.... The time seems to be full of promise. Men are looking through the gate which opens toward the East, and see streaming through it the glory of the ideal, of the infinite—the splendor of that universe which lies beyond sense....


The Reverend Reed Stuart was perhaps a little cautious in making comparisons between East and West, but not so Rabbi Grossman. The rabbi, whose sermon follows, later became a devoted friend of Swamiji. It was at his temple that Swamiji lectured when he revisited Detroit in 1896:


22

A GOD EVERY DAY
Rabbi Grossman is Refreshed by Swami Vive Kananda
Hails the Words of the Talented 
Hindu as Great Wisdom
The Lesson of Universal Brotherhood Taught
by the Indian—Too Much Creed about the Beliefs of
the West and Not Enough of True Religion.


Dr. Grossman, of the Temple Beth El, yesterday morning spoke on "What Vive Kananda Has Taught Us." He said:

"It was refreshing to hear the healthy sense of Kananda after the morbid ecstacy of the Chapman revival. After listening to his truly natural religion one is not quite sure but there is more heathenism in this land of ours than ever we charged to his people. His religion goes beyond the limits of creed. Our creeds often go beyond the decent limits of religion.... Kananda says his Sanscrit has no word for persecution, but our language, our theology, our history, our life, is infected with a brood of such terms and our society is only the truce, and hostilities in it never cease. A quarrel about a vowel and the fine deduction of the scholiasts from it set Europe afire with zealotry. That word [homoiousian or homoousian] was written out with the blood of nations. What has not bigotry done? It has stalked, death in every step, over fertile fields and peaceful homes. It has torn parents from children, and children from parents, and today its gaunt hand is raised in secret against fellow-citizens and neighbors. Thank God, that at last, today, it must shrink from the light and is driven to its last despair.


"For years the churches have had missionaries to India, to China, and to the rest of the heathens. Good money, and what is more, the good will of the people have been put into the proselyting work, while all along our poor were at our door, and the charity, which was so much needed here, was turned into an enterprise as sanctimonious as it was distant. Every day hundreds pine away their dreary, somber lives in the tenement houses of New York, in the miserable back-yard shanties of our own city. The ministration of kind people might have cheered many a despondent soul, might have manned many an exhausted laborer, might have refreshed lives and rescued children from the infection and contagion of impoverished morality, but missionaries had to go to the 'heathen.' How, in this good and sympathetic country of ours, such an illusion, I will not say delusion, could enthrall the robust and sound-sensed citizens, I do not understand. Kananda has told us something of the heathen with a clearness, with a precision, with a candor, which puts to shame the confused and vehement pretension which so long has usurped an unrighteous prestige in church and religion.


"Religion is life, not thought. We have many ideas, fine, elegant notions, but they float in the air. Our religion deals with great ideas, but in catechisms only. The flesh and the blood of the average man has not yet been disciplined into the noble, natural sense, which is as reliable as it is sufficient. We talk of brotherhood, but insult freely a fellow-man who happens to live in the East. Our theology makes free to condemn dissenters to hell and our priests and preachers are too busy in peopling the lower world to notice they are at the same time despoiling the world, for many, of its beauty, and charm and divine attractiveness. . . 


We westerners, we have a God in the sky. Kananda has a God on earth. Our spirit [God] from the beginning is divinely idle save when unfortunate persons who pray unctuously every Sunday give Him something to do and send Him on multifarious errands of grace. Let us learn from the Hindu the lesson that God lives and reigns, now and ever, that God is in every flower of the field; in every breath of the air; in every throb of our blood.


" 'I take your Jesus,' Kananda said last Saturday evening. 'I take him to my heart as I take all the great and good of all lands and of all times. But you, will you take my Krishna to your heart? No—you cannot, you dare not —still you are the cultured and I am the heathen.'


"Here is the contrast, the great fatal flaw in christianity. It is a sect, a restricted, limited sect, not that responsive absorpture [sic], great world-thought and world-fact of a brotherhood. Oh, we say much of something like brotherhood and of equality and such things. True words. But you hear your pastor in the pulpit, that's one thing, do you see the facts of practice? That's another.

"The Hindu is hospitable—'Aditi' [atithi, guest], cries the child into the door of the house, though the family be the poorest. 'Aditi' is the charm that opens all the floodgates of hospitality, and. the guest is sacred. Contrast our parlor hypocrisies. The church is a holy place—oh, so it is, on Sunday for two hours. But not even on Sunday evening, that's the time for the young to come in pairs, as if to a party, which is as cheap as it is guileless. But to a people of 5,000 years of domestic virtue and neighborly rectitude every day is holy and every spot earnest and significant...."


Both these sermons reflected the current dissatisfaction with Christian orthodoxy and the need for a vital religion undivorced from the intellectual, emotional, and social conditions of the modern world. It was a need which Swamiji's teachings both stimulated and filled. But the Evening News, which in a later article called itself "an arbiter of the truth and an impartial friend or critic of all creeds and dogmas," took a somewhat resentful attitude toward the idea that the West could learn from the East. Rabbi Grossman's talk on "What Vive Kananda Has Taught Us" did not sit too well with the editor, as is  evidenced by the following excerpts from an editorial that appeared in the News of February 20:

23

THE WONDERFUL LUCK OF 
SWAMI KANANDA

Swami Vive Kananda may well pray his gods to save him from his American friends. This oriental gentleman came to Detroit last week and conducted himself in a manner to win all hearts. In personal appearance his very eye is suggestive of deep spirituality; in social converse he is delightful; on the lecture platform he is eloquent and persuasive. But the moment this distinguished personage became a temporary guest of Detroit, his admirers began to make him the fad of the hour. Though he did not give to the people of this city a single utterance that added to their previous knowledge of things in the heavens above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth, yet he was pushed to the front in private conversation and in editorials as the possessor of knowledges more wonderful than have ever been revealed to the occidental world.


Sunday the pulpit took up the fad, and Dr. Grossmann, of Temple Beth El, devoted the time usually allotted to a sermon to encomiums of the things that Kananda said in Detroit, as if that gentleman said a single thing that the students of christian literature are not perfectly familiar with....


It is true that Rabbi Grossmann pointed out yesterday a thing or two that distinguishes, or which he concedes as distinguishing, oriental from occidental modes of thought. For instance, he points out that Kananda claims for the Sanscrit language that it has no word for what we call persecution. But does not the good rabbi know that neither has the English language any such word? It is probable that the Hindu monk did not know the meaning of the word "persecute" when he made that ridiculous comparison. We ourselves had to borrow the word from the Latins, and its meaning is nothing more horrid than to "follow up." The English is quite as lacking as the Sanscrit in a single word that expresses the idea of continuous pursuance with the purpose of injuring. Does the friend of Kananda believe that the Sanscrit has no way of expressing the idea of persecution? Does he believe Kananda if he says that the Hindu man never followed up to injure a Hindu man? And will Kananda look an intelligent occidental in the face with those great honest eyes of his and affirm that his language would have no word to express the act if a Hindu should suddenly take to persecuting another Hindu ? . . .


(The remainder of this editorial consists of the paragraph, earlier quoted, which tells of how the News "wrested testimony" from Swamiji regarding miracles.)


Although those ministers who were, to say the least, not in accord with Swamiji had missed his Saturday night lecture, they undoubtedly found ample subject matter for many a sermon in his first and second — the first, in which he had said, with emphasis, that India was morally head and shoulders above the United States or any other nation on the globe and that missionaries would do well to learn from her. Unfortunately, the first Sunday sermons preached against Swamiji are not available, but that they existed is evidenced from the following letter written by one of his anonymous defenders. This letter, which appeared in the Free Press of February 23, also gives a little information regarding the almost constant "following up" Swamiji endured:

24

Praise For Kananda

To the Editor of The Detroit Free Press:

Much has been said about Swami Vive Kananda's attacks on the Christian religion. I do not think any one who has heard his lectures can truthfully say he has attacked the religion itself—that is, what Jesus taught. On the contrary, he has ever spoken with love and reverence of Jesus and His work. What he has done is to denounce the outward expression of so-called Christianity, the creeds, dogmas, superstitions and bigotry which degrade our faith on the one hand, and the dishonesty, cruelty, intolerance and utter selfishness which dominate our social and business life on the other. He has told us that in India with its population of 300,000,000 in about half the area of the United States, no one actually suffers for food if food is to be had; that only in time of famine, when there is no food, are any allowed to want. He that hath freely gives to him that hath not. What does he see in this country to-day, this country of twice the area of his own and only 65,000,000 of people? Hundreds and thousands cold and starving and half clad, not through a failure of the food supply, not because there is not plenty of fuel in the land, not because we have no wool and cotton for clothing—for there is an abundance and to spare of all these, so that none may suffer—but because of our false industrial conditions, because of our selfish greed and grasping, every man for himself regardless of his brother man, so that the few have almost all, the many scarce nothing. Is this Christianity, what Jesus meant when he said "Love thy neighbor as thyself"? I deny it.


Also, when we come to know the facts as to how Kananda has been treated personally, is it to be wondered at that he has told us some caustic truths about ourselves? In Chicago he was maligned and persecuted by fanatical women—American women, think of it! In this city he has been assailed with most insulting letters in nearly every mail. Before he ever addressed one word to the public here, a woman, be it said to her shame, took it upon herself to attack and most unkindly denounce him to his face in a house to which she was invited as a guest to meet him. He has also been imposed upon and most unjustly dealt with in the management of his lecture tour through his lack of knowledge of our laws and our custom to overreach and take every mean advantage we can in business. He has been preached against in almost savage terms from some of our orthodox pulpits by ministers who know nothing of what he has said except by the newspaper reports, which, I think, were inadequate and greatly misleading. How dare these men pronounce upon him without first hearing him! "Judge not that ye be not judged."


Under these circumstances, is it astonishing that he has told us some of our faults? Indeed, I think he has been exceedingly mild and temperate. It seems to me it is a good thing for us that people outside the Christian world should come and tell us how we appear to them. Give us more Kananda not less, to make us see ourselves as others see us, say I. How is it that we, who claim to worship the gentle Nazarene, who gave us a gospel of toleration and love, were ever ready in the past to kill and torture, and are in the present eager to bitterly attack and persecute those who differ from us? Our preachers preach the universal brotherhood of man, and yet, when the eastern brother comes to us, we have nothing but contumely for him. How can we expect him to form any opinion of us other than he has?


And yet, Kananda, judge us not all to be so narrow and unfeeling. There are some of us, not many, I am sorry to say, who really try to strip our minds of the dogmas and superstitions that have somehow attached themselves to our faith, and to truly follow the humble and tender teacher of Judea, whose love included the whole world, and all of us extend to you the hand of welcome and of fellowship, and say to you, "brother."

JUSTITIA.

This letter from "Justitia" started off a controversy in the Free Press letter column, "From Our Readers," that lasted  through February. The main issue was whether or not one had to hear and see Swamiji before one could be in a position to judge him. Although this argument was fruitless, it revealed that those who had seen and heard him were convinced that he was no mere lecturer, but a power, and that to see and hear him was an experience, the essence of which one could not communicate through words. It is evident that Swamiji's lectures, significant as they are, were but a small fraction of what he gave to America through the tremendous vitality of his presence. Furthermore, those who heard him always spoke of his "mild manner, " "his liberal, generous and holy spirit" and so forth. On reading his lectures, one finds his criticisms sometimes drastic; yet he was never harsh, and except for his enemies, those who heard him seldom took offense at his rebukes, for such was his love for all men and such was his uplifting power, that few felt from him anything but benediction. The following letters are indicative of this, and I believe they are also indicative of the general ferment and excitement that Swamiji created in Detroit. "Justitia" and "One Who Heard All The Lectures" are no doubt representative of hundreds who heard him, and "Occidental" of hundreds who didn't hear him and perhaps of some who did.


The first response to "Justitia" from "Occidental" appeared in the Free Press of February 25:

25

Kananda Again

To The Editor of The Detroit Free Press:


Being one  of  those  found fault with in a communication in Friday morning's Free Press for assuming to criticise Mr. Kananda without having heard him, it seems eminently proper to state my position. Mr. Kananda has been thrust upon me as a subject for discussion without my asking. Some of my most intimate and cordial friends, who have heard the Hindoo monk, have not hesitated to discuss the subject matter of one or more of his addresses in my presence, thereby inevitably thrusting upon me the position of defending my own tenets of faith or giving silent consent to those of the discussion. And now, forsooth, one is told that he must have heard the addresses in order to deal fairly with the subject.


My position is like this, which is formulated merely from the statements of what my friends have heard. The conviction is strongly impressed on my mind that this man of the east is as great a trickster with facts as some of his native prestidigitators are with eggs, or other material objects, making them appear and disappear at pleasure. Don't infer from this, please, a fear on my part of having my religious faith shaken by what he might say; this would imply a decided lack of steadfastness, but rather infer a scorning to hear sacred truths handled in a spirit savoring in the least of unfairness or charlatanism.


And now please follow me through one or two examples of this lack of fairness in Mr. Kananda's method of treating Christianity. In the course of one of his discussions he read letters or extracts of letters that had been addressed to him here. One of these he stated contained a picture, for which he desired to return thanks, which picture he further stated was called "The Heart of Our Savior." Of course it was only necessary to make such a statement without comment to cause a sardonic smile to ripple over an audience of Christian believers, to say nothing of the emotions caused in the skeptics present. However, Mr. Kananda must have known that he thus implied an exhibition of a synonym of our religion, whereas, and notwithstanding any amount of gentlest sentiment that might cluster around such a symbol of our Savior's love for the sender, ninety-nine persons out of every hundred would say, and ought to say, on sober second thought, that there was more sentiment than sense in thus placing a weapon of ridicule in an opponent's hands. But is this a fair way to deal with such a sacred subject, may I ask?

Again, Mr. Kananda stated that one inquirer wished to know whether or not they burned widows in his country. To this he replied by condoning the fact that widows burned themselves, as he stated, and added: "We do not burn witches in India." Here is exhibited the same spirit of unfairness and ridicule. Does Mr. Kananda mean to seriously imply that we condone the burning of witches as a tenet of our religious faith, or that the Christian world ever did so?


We assume to be progressive, if anything, and assert with little fear of controversion that Christianity has done more to humanize mankind, wherever founded, than any or all other religions. Then, why this implication by Mr. Kananda? Undoubtedly we have the Spanish inquisition, the Scottish kirk and the Salem, Mass., episodes to blush for in connection with the followers of our faith, but we have not, thank heaven, such scenes as attended the Sepoy insurrection as a recent heritage from the humanizing influences of Christianity.


Let me suggest, in closing, that if any friends conclude to serenade Mr. Kananda before he leaves our city, that they may secure a Scotch band to play "The Campbells are Coming, " which, it will be remembered, was the first sound to greet the ears of the besieged at Lucknow and notify them that relief was at hand.

OCCIDENTAL.

Detroit, February 24,

Before "Justitia" had a chance to answer this diatribe, she gained an ally in "One Who Heard All The Lectures":

26

Doesn't Think Hearsay Will Do

To the Editor of The Detroit Free Press:

I observed a communication in this morning's Free Press from one who signs himself "Occidental." The writer states  that one cannot judge Kananda, so he is told, unless he has heard the monk. The writer of the communication expresses surprise that he is not capable of judging him from what his friends have told him about the lectures. It seems to me that one could as easily criticise one of Raphael's pictures from hearsay as to express an opinion about anyone without having heard him. I could just as accurately pass an opinion upon one of Mozart's operas from having heard a friend hum or whistle a few arias as this writer can upon the Brahman visitor without either having met him or having listened to him. Under the circumstances it seems supremely stupid either to sit in judgment or even to venture to express an opinion, no matter how pompous the writer may be in the way he words his opinions. In confessing to ignorance of the monk, the writer stamps his ideas of him at once as totally valueless and unworthy of more than passing mention. One should realize that hearsay cannot be depended upon; after statements have passed through a few hands they emerge in all kinds of distorted forms, and this meager and misleading information is all that the writer has to base his opinions upon. Without in any way desiring to eulogize Kananda, it might not be amiss to respectfully advise the writer of the communication under consideration to go and hear the monk when he again comes here, to digest carefully what he says, sleep over it, throw away from his clouded intellect all habiliments of prejudice and then, after praying and fasting for a time, write another letter to The Free Press, giving his estimate of the character of the visitor's religious teachings.

I was at the lecture and heard what Kananda said about witches. He cast no reflection on Christians. What he said was that, so far as widows being thrown into the flames by the people of his country was concerned, no facts could bear out the exaggerated statements of travelers relating thereto. After refuting the falsehood, he added, but in "India they never did burn witches." So much for this alleged fling at Christianity. The conclusion of the letter is unworthy of serious consideration. In India Kananda says that the Hindoos receive the Christian missionaries in the spirit of tolerance. They smile at them and say: "Let them go ahead. They are children in religion. Let them amuse themselves." They regard them with a broad philosophical smile. How differently have we treated a single Hindoo missionary? We haven't stoned him or tried to boil him in a pot in a cannibal fashion, but we have assailed him with mean, anonymous letters, calling him all kinds of vilifying names and have politely informed him, without signing any names, that there was a warm place waiting for him hereafter, and we have robbed him of the funds to which he is entitled as a lecturer. No wonder he feels bitter toward Americans as a money-loving country when he has realized hardly nothing from his lectures for the grand object he has in view—the establishment of an educational institution in India—while his unscrupulous managers have reaped nearly all. Kananda knows not the value of money. He was an easy mark for speculating managers. I am not a profound admirer of Kananda, but I like to see a square deal given everyone even if he is a "heathen."

ONE WHO HEARD ALL THE LECTURES

Detroit, February 25.


"Occidental, " who, on the whole, does not appear to have been very bright, evidently confused "One Who Heard All the Lectures" with his original opponent 'Justitia," and answered as though carrying on the same correspondence:

More Kananda

To the Editor of The Detroit Free Press:


It appears that "One Who Heard All the Lectures" (Kananda's) still insists that a person must at least hear the oriental, whether inclined that way or not, in order to enter into an intelligent discussion of the subject matter of his discourses. But, unhappily for me, there is added both penance and prayer before my condition will be fitted for this exalted privilege. And it is hinted at in the Raphael simile that one must see as well as hear Kananda before a just estimate of his discourses can be formed; be it known, therefore, that Occidental must have seen him once, having occupied a front seat at the opening of the world's congress of religious bodies. However, isn't all this simply absurd?


Suppose the Hindoo's addresses had received that attention that "One Who Heard All the Lectures" regards as requisite, must another person surrender at command every opinion formed by forty years of casual reading as well as those resulting from conversations with an intimate acquaintance (a missionary's son), born in India, who grew to young manhood there, speaking their language and singing their songs, merely on Kananda's statements?


Having heard and seen the Hindoo, is it not possible that some might not be better prepared to discuss the questions involved than before: besides, in this country is it not usual to defend opinions when they are assailed without such formality as this case seems to demand?


Sympathy is extended to the disappointment manifested over the financial failure of Kananda's undertaking, but if he also failed to make converts here, please regard the sympathy as ending with the money questions involved.


In conclusion, please receive assurance that nothing has been said less complimentary of Kananda than he has said collectively of all American men and women.

OCCIDNTAL

February 27, 1894


But it was "Justitia" who had the last word. In the same column as the above letter, appeared her reply to "Occidental's" previous one.

"JustitOccidental."

To The Editor of The Detroit Free Press :


Referring to the letter of "Occidental" in reply to my former communication, I am pleased to see the gentleman realized his position required defense. He admits that the inquisition, Scottish kirk and Salem persecutions were stains upon our past, but from his manner of referring to the Sepoy insurrections as a recent outcome of the eastern faith, one is led to infer that he would have us think we have no blots upon our modern life to blush for. In the first place, the Sepoy rebellion was not altogether a religious matter. It was the rising of a subject people against a foreign invader, and would never have occurred if the English had kept their hands off India. It was not a case of fratricidal strife of the people among themselves. Let us look at Christendom. Has the gentleman forgotten the French revolution, an internal outbreak of the people against rulers of their own blood and faith, the atrocities of which certainly equaled, if they did not surpass, those of the Sepoy mutiny? And yet France had been Christian for centuries. Coming to our own time and country, has he also forgotten the war of the rebellion, which emphatically was one of brother against brother, where we sprung to cut one another's throats in the heart of our own nation and the horrors of whose Andersonville and Libby prisons, at least, were not far behind those he refers to? And yet we were Christians, and so were our forefathers for generations before us. Kananda does not claim that his religion and civilization contain all the good there is in the world and ours all the bad. Neither should we, I think, arrogate to ourselves all the good and ascribe to his land all the bad. Let us be actuated by a broad spirit of charity and remove the beam from our own eyes before we attempt to do so for others. As to the principles upon which our civilization and faith are founded, there are none grander. Let us live up to them.


In conclusion, I would ask the reverend brother whether he thinks such preaching and writing as he has indulged in exemplify a gospel of love. Also, would a brass band serenading Kananda with "The Campbells Are Coming" be Jesus' way to bring the stranger within our gates to a realizing sense of the "humanizing" influence of Christianity?

JUSTITIA

Detroit, February 26.

This was the end of the matter. "Occidental" no doubt went on thinking as he thought, but for nearly a month he wrote no more letters, or if he did, they were not published.


While we are on the subject of letters, a curious one appeared in the Free Press letter column during the progress of the above controversy. It is difficult to know just what the writer was endeavoring to prove, but whatever it may have been, his letter stands  as added testimony that Swamiji's statements were not taken lightly by anyone. They were either vehemently resented or heartily endorsed. In this age of transition, in which Western civilization was beginning to re-examine its foundations and  structure, Swamiji, as has been pointed out, championed the reforming and progressive spirit of America. The liberal forces rallied round him, while the reactionary forces attacked him with any weapon they could—even citing at length the ancient laws of Manu. The letter in question read in part as follows:

27

Hindoo vs. Christian Civilization and Law

To the Editor of The Detroit Free Press:


In view of the fact that this community has been recently favored with the presence of a distinguished and learned Hindoo monk—Kananda—who expressed himself freely, as he had an undoubted right to do, in criticism of our "Christian" civilization, I am tempted to devote a leisure hour or two in laying before the multitude of your readers, a few scattered points of Hindoo law, as taken from Sir William Jones' "Institutes of Hindoo Law," being a translation of the "Ordinances of Manu."


The laws of a nation are the best criterion of its civilization. The extracts herewith presented—like the early statutes or ordinances of the Puritans in this land—may have been, many of them, repealed; but do not both tend to show the fact, as the monk is reported to have stated, of a kinship of both peoples to the ancient Aryan race, with the Sanscrit language in common? I quote: "In the Hindoo law of Baron and Feme we find many judicious enactments. Thus every Hindoo is enjoined not to marry 'a girl with reddish hair,' or 'with inflamed eyes,' or who is 'immoderately talkative,' but one who 'walks gracefully like a phenecopteros ( ?) or like a young elephant.' By way of insuring respect for the Feme (woman) in the married state, the Baron is very properly forbidden 'to eat with his wife or look at her eating or sneezing, or yawning, or sitting carelessly at her ease.' The gentleman is also himself enjoined not 'to read lolling on a couch, nor with his feet raised on a bench, nor with his thighs crossed, nor having lately swallowed meat.' "


The mode of recovering a debt is much the same as under the Grutoo law: "By whatever means a Lawful creditor may have gotten possession of his own property, let the king ratify such payment by the debtor, though obtained even by compulsory means. By the mediation of friends, by suit in court, by artful management, or by distress, a creditor may recover the property lent, and fifthly by legal force." [Here followed a solid column of ancient Hindu laws which were not pertinent to nineteenth century America. The writer, no doubt a lawyer, ended his letter with the following plea:]


I ask the admirers and apologists of this monk if the standard of civilization is the regulated liberty enjoyed by and the enlightened intelligence possessed by the individual in a nation, about how much inferior are the American people of to-day to this priest-ridden people of Hindoostan?

HAMILTON GAY HOWARD.

Detroit, February 23, 1894


While Swamiji was making enemies among the "bluenosed,""hard-shelled," and "soft-shelled" fanatics, he was at the same time making numerous friends among the cultured and intellectual circles of Detroit. Readers of the Life know from the letters of Mrs. Bagley how deeply he was respected in that "old conservative city," and how much sought after. Perhaps no day went by during his stay in Detroit that he was not entertained. "We all enjoyed every day of the six weeks he spent with us," Mrs. Bagley writes. ". . . He was invited by the different clubs of gentlemen in Detroit, and dinners were given him in beautiful homes so that greater numbers might meet him and talk with him and hear him talk . . . and everywhere and at all times he was, as he deserved to be, honoured and respected.'[19]


A report in the "Personal and Social" column of the Detroit Journal of Monday, February 19, tells of the various luncheons, teas, and dinners given for Swamiji during his first week in Detroit. Although the following item seems somewhat confused, it at least indicates that he was often and elaborately entertained, or, more to the point, that many people came into close contact with him, conversed with him and absorbed something of his thought, and who knows how much of his spirit:

28

"PERSONAL AND SOCIAL"

Charles L. Freer gave a small reception and supper Saturday evening in honour of Swami Vive Kananda.

The guests were George H. Russel, William H. Wells, Bryant Walker, Dr. F. W. Mann, Fred H. Seymour, John N. Bagley, Joseph H. Brewster, L. A. McCreary, John C. Grout, Capt. Gardiner, Charles M. Swift, F. T. Sibley, Harry W. Skinner, Dr. Devendorf, T. S. Jerome, Dr. Jennings, I. T. Cowles, L. F. Schultz, George Mason, Zach Rice, S. T. Douglass, George Nettleton, George S. Hosmer and Rev. Reed Stuart.


A number of fashionable and private entertainments were given last week in honor of the social lion of the day, Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindoo monk. Tuesday evening [?] Miss Helen Bagley gave a luncheon at the Detroit club to a favored few. Thursday evening, the evening after the large public reception given by Mrs. John J. Bagley, at the family residence on Washington-ave., a select tea was given by Mrs. Bagley. Friday evening C. L. Freer entertained the Witenagamote club at his home on Ferryave., for Mr. Kananda. A number of other guests were present. All of these entertainments were very elaborate affairs.


Mr. Charles L. Freer was a young railway and industrial capitalist—a partner in the Michigan-Peninsular Car Company, which was the largest car-building enterprise in the country. Huge fortunes were made readily in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and, as has been pointed out, even before the advent of the automobile Detroit was a city of industry and wealth. For the most part, wealthy industrialists were absorbed in making and spending their fortunes. But Freer was an exception to the rule. "By one of those subtle alchemies of personality that escape logic," one account of him tells, his interest was centered in Oriental art. Charles Freer gathered what is said to be the greatest collection of Chinese and Japanese masterpieces ever brought together in America. This entire collection he later gave to the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, D.C., together with the building which  today houses it. Although Freer did not start to gather his masterpieces in earnest until he retired in 1900, very likely his house already showed signs of itself becoming a museum of Oriental art when Swamiji dined there in 1894.

A meal served at Mr. Freer's would have been perfection from start to finish, a ceremonial offering to his guests; for this connoisseur of art would suffer nothing short of excellence in all things. "Many of his chefs were returned to New York from his Middle Western home; ' it has been written of him, "having survived but a single meal. His finicky scrutiny missed no detail.'[20] But if not all the formal dinners of the 1890s were as unflawed as Mr. Freer's, all were of necessity Gargantuan, one large course following upon another endlessly, each with its appropriate wine; each, when no ladies were present, punctuated by cigars. For Swamiji, these dinners were, in their way, a kind of tapasya.


It is rather wearisome this constant receptions & dinners [Swamiji confided to Mrs. Hale in a letter of February 20]. And their horrible dinners—100 dinners concentrated into one! And when in a man's club, why smoking goes on between the courses and then begins afresh. I thought the Chinese alone make a dinner run through half a day with intervals of smoking!!


Yet Swamiji appreciated the kindness of his Detroit Friends. "They are very gentlemanly men," he went on, "and strange to say an episcopal clergyman & a Jewish Rabbi take great interest in me and eulogise me.'[21]


It seems unfortunate that those who knew Swamiji in the various American cities he visited were not contacted during their lifetime. What a wealth of anecdotes could have been gathered! But at least two incidents, which could have occurred at Freer's dinner party, are preserved by the following item in the Evening News of February 25:

29

CULTURE AT HOME

Anecdotes of Swami Vive Kananda's Visit to Detroit.


Anecdotes of Swami Vive Kananda's visit are numerous and amusing—at least they must have been amusing to him, although a little humiliating to the American self love. One lady said:


"I really was ashamed at the contrast between the knowledge possessed by him and by some of our Detroit men who consider themselves gentlemen of culture. At one dinner party a gentleman asked Kananda what books he would advise him to read on chemistry, whereupon the Hindu monk responded with a long list of English works on this science, which one would naturally expect an American to know more about than a Hindu. Another gentleman followed by a request as to books on astronomy, to which Kananda obligingly answered with another equally good list of English astronomical works. But his growing astonishment reached its climax when a lady spoke of 'The Christ,' and said, 'What do those words mean?' He again furnished the desired information, but in a tone growing slightly sarcastic."


Probably the choicest example of nineteenth century civilization and culture was given by a lady, who asked Kananda if he liked the English. He very naturally responded that he did not. Then she continued, with fine tact, to pursue the subject still further by touching references to that pleasant event, the Sepoy rebellion. As the Hindu grew excited she smiled at him ironically and said:

"I thought I could disturb your philosophical Eastern calm."


It was indeed rare for Swamiji to grow excited. Those who knew him often remarked upon the fact that no matter how violent his antagonist, he remained always calm and serene. Perhaps the only subject which aroused his anger, particularly in the early days, was that of the English in India—a topic best left undiscussed. But there was no dearth of topics to discuss with Swamiji, who continually surprised and delighted his friends with his unending knowledge on every imaginable subject. The conversations at the private gatherings held for him must have covered many fields—science, history, art, politics— and upon each he must have thrown the light not only of his intellectual knowledge but of his spiritual insight. But the subject dearest to his heart was India. That the desire to collect funds for his motherland was still uppermost in his mind during the Detroit period can be seen from the following excerpts of an oracle that appeared in the Tribune of February 18, written by one of the guests at the evening supper given by Mr. Freer:

30

CULTURE AT HOME

Anecdotes of Swami Vive Kananda's Visit to Detroit.

Anecdotes of Swami Vive Kananda's visit are numerous and amusing-at least they must have been amusing to him, although a little humiliating to the American self love. One lady said:

"I really was ashamed at the contrast between the knowledge possessed by him and by some of our Detroit men who consider themselves gentlemen of culture. At one dinner party a gentleman asked Kananda what books he would advise him to read on chemistry, whereupon the Hindu monk responded with a long list of English works on this science, which one would naturally expect an American to know more about than a Hindu. Another gentleman followed by a request as to books on astronomy, to which Kananda obligingly answered with another equally good list of English astronomical works. But his growing astonishment reached its climax when a lady spoke of 'The Christ,' and said, 'What do those words mean?' He again furnished the desired information, but in a tone growing slightly sarcastic."

Probably the choicest example of nineteenth century civilization and culture was given by a lady, who asked Kananda if he liked the English. He very naturally responded that he did not. Then she continued, with fine tact, to pursue the subject still further by touching references to that pleasant event, the Sepoy rebellion. As the Hindu grew excited she smiled at him ironically and said:

"I thought I could disturb your philosophical Eastern calm."

It was indeed rare for Swamiji to grow excited. Those who knew him often remarked upon the fact that no matter how violent his antagonist, he remained always calm and serene. Perhaps the only subject which aroused his anger, particularly in the early days, was that of the English in India-a topic best left undiscussed. But there was no dearth of topics to discuss with Swamiji, who continually surprised and delighted his friends with his unending knowledge on every imaginable subject. The conversations at the private gatherings held for him must have covered many fields-science, history, art, politics and upon each he must have thrown the light not only of his intellectual knowledge but of his spiritual insight. But the subject dearest to his heart was India. That the desire to collect funds for his motherland was still uppermost in his mind during the Detroit period can be seen from the following excerpts of an oracle that appeared in the Tribune of February 18, written by one of the guests at the evening supper given by Mr. Freer:

HINDU PHILOSOPHY


Its Recent Expression by Vive Kananda.
His Mission Worthy the Serious 
Attention of Americans.

The Two Remarkable Things in the United States Which Gratifies the Distinguished Pagan—What Environment Will Do for Any People—Rap at Missionaries.

There has seldom been such a sensation in cultured circles in Detroit, as that created by the advent of Swami Vive Kananda, the learned Hindu monk, whose exceptional command of our own language has enabled us to receive impressions concerning ourselves from an oriental standpoint and to acquire knowledge of a people of whose peculiar civilization and philosophy we have heard so much.

Both in public and private the Hindu brother has talked freely and frankly. He acknowledges that the masses in India are very poor, very ignorant and are divided into a diversity of sects, with forms of worship varying from downright idolatry to the broadest and most liberal form of divine conception based on the brotherhood of man and the oneness of God. His mission, he says, is not to proselyte us—to try and make us think as he does—but to get means to start a college in India for the education of teachers who are to go among the common people and work a reform of existing evils, of which there are many. He states that India is priest-ridden to a harrowing degree. It is priest craft that distorts truth and perpetuates ignorance. It is priest-craft that substitutes its own crude and narrow interpretations for truth, which perverts the people and prevents their moral progression. The Swami regards all sects and creeds from a broad basis. He even sees good in idolatry. It is an ideal, he thinks, for the ignorant whose mental capacity is insufficient to grasp abstract ideas, and who require a direct personification in some material form. He frankly states that we of the occident are also retarded in our progression by too much priest-craft, and that we are not free from idolatrous practices, in that some of our sects worship shrines, figures and pictures and even the sanctity with which the rostrum and pulpit of a modern church is regarded is an ideal idolatry.

Two Remarkable Things in This Country

The Swami notes two most remarkable things in this country, when asked his frank opinion of us: First, the superiority of our women, as regards influence in position and intellect. Second, in our charities and treatment of the poor, he says, we have almost solved the problem as to what shall be done with them. Not only in this, in the direction of hospitals and charitable institutions, but in our tremendous development of labor-saving machinery. He has no admiration for our material progress, as it does  not make man better, nor for our boasted civilization, as we only ape and imitate the customs and manners of the English—sometimes to a very ridiculous extent. We are yet too young, to have a distinctive civilization; we have yet to assimilate the human sewerage of Europe we have allowed to be poured upon us, before we produce a distinct American type.

[The writer goes on to say that Swamiji's Indian background makes it difficult for him to understand that Western competitiveness is not undesirable but a primal law of nature itself—the survival of the fittest—and that inasmuch as "the dreamy and sentimental philosophy of the Hindoos" accounts for their poverty, degradation, and domination by a "mere handful of Englishmen," the Swami would do well neither to ignore nor to despise the materialism of the West. Having thus editorialized, he continues:]

His Criticism of Missionaries

If what he states is true about the results accomplished by foreign missions in India, the various boards of these various organizations would do well to consult him and follow his advice. It is for the betterment of his people he is here. But he says missionary work does no good; only adds additional sects and creeds to an already sect-ridden country; that the teachings of the Vedas, with which every Hindoo is familiar, is identical with the teachings of Christ. He makes the reasonable plea that foreign creeds and dogmas are not consonant with their inherited proclivities or civilization, and are consequently difficult to propagate.


The mission of Kananda is, however, one that should commend it[self] to every lover of humanity. He hopes to see the best of our material philosophy and progress infused into Hindoo civilization, and that, also, we may take lessons from them, until we shall all become, as we once  were in ages past, brother Aryans, possessing a common civilization—the exalted philosophy of non-self, being alike without sect or creed in oneness with God.

FRED H. SEYMOUR.


It is almost impossible to know how much help Swamiji was able to obtain for the work in India from individual donations, but very likely some of his wealthy and sympathetic friends contributed at least something to his cause. We know, for instance, that Mr. Charles Freer was such a contributor. The following letter written by Mrs. Bagley's eldest married daughter to Swamiji after he had left Detroit the first time gives evidence of this and also that he was considering a return to India. It was dated February 24 and addressed to the care of Mrs. Hale at 541 Dearborn Avenue, Chicago:


Dear Mr. Vive Kananda:


My mother wishes me to write for her, expressing her regret that the draft for the money received here was not sent today. It will go early Monday morning, and I trust will be received on time to save you any annoyance.


Mr. Freer, the gentleman at whose house we dined, sent a check last evening, for two hundred dollars—to Mrs. Bagley—to be forwarded to you, so that is included in the draft.


Do believe me—my dear Mr. Kananda—when I say that when you have been able to enlist the interest and practical help of men like my friend Mr. Freer, in your work, you have no right to go back to India without one supreme effort for your normal school: your personal appeal—with your magnetism—your powerful—masterful presence, can alone make that appeal effective. If in any way we can aid you—I am sure you will ask us, feeling sure of our sympathy and respect.

Yours very sincerely[22]
Florence Bagley Sherman


The draft referred to was made out for the sum of money Swamiji had received in Detroit through his lectures and donations, as one learns from a letter he wrote to Mrs. Hale on February 22 (to be shortly quoted in full). It may also be mentioned, parenthetically, that it was of Mrs. Bagley's daughter that he wrote to Mary Hale on March 30, when he was about to make his final departure from Detroit: "By the by, Mrs. Sherman has presented me with a lot of things amongst which is a nail set and letter holder and a little satchel etc., etc. Although I objected, especially to the nail set, as very dudish with mother of pearl handles, she insisted and I had to take them although I do not know what to do with that brushing instrument. Lord bless them all. She gave me one advice—never to wear this Afrikee dress in society. Now I am a society man! Lord! What comes next? Long life brings queer experiences!" [23]


Although Swamiji's first visit to Detroit extended from February 12 to 23, he had originally intended to stay only one week, giving a series of three lectures at the Unitarian Church. But the people—the hundreds who had heard him speak both publicly and at private gatherings, and the hundreds more who wanted to hear him—would not let him leave their city so soon. As is seen by the following announcement in the Free Press of Monday, February 19, he was induced to give a Fourth lecture:

31

VIVE KANANDA ON "LOVE."

The Hindoo monk, Vive Kananda, will give an extra lecture at the Unitarian Church on Wednesday evening, February 21, on the subject of "Love." Many of those who have already heard him, and many who have failed to do so, have put in a special request for another opportunity to listen to his interesting and eloquent discourses.


There was some confusion regarding the date on which this lecture was to be given. As has been seen above, it was announced, as late as February 19, as scheduled for Wednesday, February 21. Other papers made this same mistake in their "Amusement Columns," which must have misled all those who failed to check further, for actually Swamiji gave his fourth lecture on Tuesday, February 20. But although a correction did not appear in the papers until Tuesday morning, the confusion of dates did not confound too many. The Unitarian Church was jammed, and one is reminded of Sister Christine's description of Swamiji's Detroit audiences:


"Those who came to the first lecture at the Unitarian Church came to the second and to the third bringing others with them. 'Come,' they said, 'hear this wonderful man. He is like no one we have ever heard'; and they came until there was no place to hold them. They filled the room, stood in the aisles, peered in at the windows." And Swamiji's fourth lecture, which Sister Christine does not mention, was the most crowded of all!


The Free Press report on "The Love of God" was one of those which were sent by Mary Funke to Swami Brahmananda and has been reproduced (in slightly altered form) is volume eight of the Complete Works. The headlines and first paragraph of the actual report read as follows:

SONGS OF SOLOMON


Kananda Views Them with the Greatest Admiration.
One Should Not Approach God in a Begging Spirit.
Story of the Religion of a Hindoo Saint.
Another Lecture This Afternoon on 
Hindoo Philosophy


ViveKananda delivered a lecture on "The Love of God" at the Unitarian church last night, before the largest audience that he has yet had. The trend of the lecturer's remarks was to show that we do not accept God because we really want Him, but because we have need of Him for selfish purposes. Love, said the speaker, is something absolutely unselfish; that which has no thought beyond the glorification and adoration of the object upon which our affections are bestowed. It is a quality which bows down and worships and asks nothing in return....


Another report of this lecture, which will not be so familiar, was given by the Tribune of February 21, as follows:


THE HINDU ON LOVE

He addresses a Large and Fashionable Audience

The First Unitarian Church was crowded last night to hear Vive Kananda. The audience was composed of people who came from Jefferson avenue and upper part of Woodward avenue. Most of it was ladies who seemed deeply interested in the address and applauded several remarks of the Brahman with much enthusiasm.


The love that was dwelt upon by the speaker was not the love that goes with passion, but a pure and holy love that one in India feels for his God. As Vive Kananda stated at the commencement of his address the subject was "The Love the Indian Feels for His God." But he did not preach to his text. The major portion of his address was an attack on the christian religion. The religion of the Indian and the love of his God was the minor portion. The points in his address were illustrated with several applicable anecdotes of famous people in the history. The subjects of the anecdotes were renowned Mogul emperors of his native land and not of the native Hindu kings.


The professors of religion were divided into two classes by the lecturer, the followers of knowledge and the followers of devotion. The end in the life of the followers of knowledge was experience. The end in the life of the devotee was love.


Love, he said, was a sacrifice. It never takes, but it always gives. The Hindu never asks anything of his God, never [prays] for salvation and a happy hereafter, but instead lets his whole soul go out to his God in an entrancing love. That beautiful state of existence could only be gained when a person felt an overwhelming want of God. Then God came in all of His fullness.


There were three different ways of looking at God. One was to look upon Him as a mighty personage and fall down and worship His might. Another was to worship Him as a father. In India the father always punished the children and an element of fear was mixed with the regard and love for a father. Still another way to think of God was as a mother. In India a mother was always truly loved and reverenced. That was the Indian's way of looking at their God.


Kananda said that a true lover of God would be so wrapt up in his love that he would have no time to stop and tell members of another sect that they were following the wrong road to secure the God, and strive to bring him to his way of thinking.

Vive Kananda said last night that he expected to leave Detroit this evening.


The Journal also commented on "The Love of God" as follows:

A MERE HOBBY

That is Vive Kananda's Opinion of Modern Religion.


If Vive Kananda, the Brahmin monk, who is delivering a lecture course in this city could be induced to remain for a week longer the largest hall in Detroit would not hold the crowds which would be anxious to hear him. He has become a veritable fad, as last evening every seat in the Unitarian church was occupied, and many were compelled to stand throughout the entire lecture.


The speaker's subject was, "The Love of God." His definition of love was "something absolutely unselfish; that which has no thought beyond the glorification and adoration of the object upon which our affections are bestowed." Love, he said, is a quality which bows down and worships and asks nothing in return. Love of God, he thought, was different. God is not accepted, he said, because we really need him, except for selfish purposes. His lecture was replete with story and anecdote, all going to show the selfish motive underlying the motive of love for God. The Songs of Solomon were cited by the lecturer as the most beautiful portion of the Christian Bible and yet he had heard with deep regret that there was a possibility of their being removed. "In fact," he declared, as a sort of clinching argument at the close, "the love of God appears to be based upon a theory of 'What can I get out of it?' Christians are so selfish in their love that they are continually asking God to give them something, including all manner of selfish things. Modern religion is, therefore, nothing but a mere hobby and fashion and people flock to church like a lot of sheep ."


Kananda expected to leave the city this morning, but he has been prevailed upon to remain over and deliver one more lecture this afternoon. It will be given at the residence of Mrs. John J. Bagley.


Jefferson Avenue and the upper part of Woodward Avenue, referred to at the beginning of the Tribune report, were representative of the most fashionable residential streets of Detroit. Here many of the city's influential industrialists of the nineties lived in large stone mansions, surrounded, especially on Woodward Avenue, by broad lawns and great trees. It was primarily from this district that Swamiji drew his audience. Yet it was hardly his fault that those who attended his lectures belonged for the most part to the intellectual and cultured classes. Indeed it could not very well have been otherwise. Nor was it his fault that the progressive ministers who espoused his cause had, at the same time, a reputation for catering to the wealthy and the fashionable. Yet, there existed so much bitterness between classes in the nineties that Swamiji was accused, along with other slander, of being exclusive! One such criticism came in a letter dated March 20, 1894, to the editor of the Free Press from one who certainly had not heard all the lectures.


The anonymous writer stated with a good deal of asperity that the preachers of progressive, or creedless, Christianity, catered only to wealth and aristocracy, thus dividing religion into social castes and failing to make any impression on the masses.


From a social standpoint [he writes], the religious revival inaugurated in Detroit by Swami Vive Kananda, Citizen Palmer and others is the ideal of missionary work. To deliver well-paid lectures to a select audience, to give banquets where the guests are all intellectual and interesting people, and then and there, while sipping good old wine, discourse on genuine Christianity, free from the cobwebs of creed—that indeed is the latest and most pleasant device yet imagined to diffuse the right kind of religion among our fellowmen.... When Vive Kananda said to his audience at the Detroit Opera House, "Send to India missionaries like Francis Xavier, who mingled with the downtrodden people, " this was the best illustration of what we need in this country as much as in India. For when Vive Kananda was extolling true Christianity and lauding missionaries like Francis Xavier, the poor of Detroit could not listen to him, because they had not the money to pay for their seats and their clothes were too antiquated to sit with propriety among his well-dressed listeners.


The writer of the above explains Swamiji's affiliation with progressive Christian ministers by stating that he was brought up in a religion which for "6,000 years has divided India into exclusive castes." He then concludes his article with the somewhat irrelevant observation that the "so-called science of the Hindoo sages was looked upon with reverence only so long as it was kept secret," and that, submitted to the light of investigation, it was found incapable of producing a single labor-saving device. 


This letter was no doubt representative of a popular resentment against "fashionable religion." But in charging Swamiji with religious snobbishness the writer failed to realize, in the first place, that the non fashionable Christian creeds would not give him a hearing and, in the second place, that Swamiji had asked Christian missionaries to give to the poor in India not religion but bread. In India rich and poor had religion to spare, whereas in America both were in need of it. A further point that might be mentioned here is that Swamiji, in the tradition of Hindu monks, accepted the hospitality of rich and poor alike and with equal compassion gave his teachings to both. Quite literally, he saw the same in all—be they Brahmins or outcastes, industrialists or paupers. This was not true, however, of the Christian missionaries who, professing to serve the poor of India, invariably associated themselves with the English community, whose members lived in a style grander than that of the wealthy Hindu.


It is true that Swamiji's Detroit audiences consisted on the whole of "the best people," but it was these very people whom he scolded for the wrongs of Christian civilization. He neither identified himself with them nor did he belabor them in anonymous tirades behind their backs; he spoke directly to them—and they listened and asked for more:


It was at Swamiji's fifth lecture in this city, given at the insistence of his friends, that he blasted the rich for the excessive wealth they had so long believed to be theirs through the will of God. This now famous lecture was delivered at Mrs.  Bagley's house on Wednesday afternoon, February 21, and the Free Press report of it has been printed in volume eight of the Complete Works, under the title "Hindus and Christians."


The headlines and first paragraph of the original report are as follows:

IT IS IRONY OF FATE.
Christian Religion Preached in the Name of Luxury.
Idols in India are Nothing but Suggestive Symbols.
The Hindoo Monk Lectured Yesterday 
at the home of Mrs. John J. Bagley

The most interesting lecture Vive Kananda has yet delivered was that of yesterday afternoon at the residence of Mrs. John J. Bagley, on the different Hindoo philosophies. The large rooms were crowded. The monk spoke for two hours about the different philosophies, showing how thousands of years ago the spiritual science of India had reached a condition equal to that of today. As on other occasions the talk was freely interspersed with charming stories from the Sanscrit.


The lecture was open to the public, but evidently Mrs. Bagley also invited many of her Friends. Of this occasion she was to write:


. . . He lectured to invited guests in my parlour, one hundred & twenty eight, all I could comfortably seat, & I charged 1.00 admission. I had included lawyers, judges, ministers, army officers, physicians and business—men with their wives and daughters. Vivekananda talked two hours on "The Ancient Hindu Philosophers and What They Taught " All listened with intense interest to the end. Wherever he spoke people listened gladly and said, "I never heard man speak like that." He does not antagonize, but lifts people up to a higher level—they see something beyond man-made creeds and denominational names, and they feel one with him in their religious beliefs.'[24]


"You are not Christians, " Swamiji had said at the end of this lecture. "No, as a nation you are not. Go back to Christ! Go back to Him who has nowhere to lay His head. 'The birds have their nests and the beasts their lairs, but the Son of Man hath nowhere to lay His head.' "


Yours is religion preached in the name of luxury. What an irony of fate! Reverse this if you want to live; reverse this. It is all hypocrisy that I have heard in this country. If this nation is going to live, go back to Him. You cannot serve God and Mammon at the same time. All this prosperity, all this from Christ! Christ would have denied all such heresies. All prosperity which comes with Mammon is transient, is only for a moment. Real permanence is in Him. If you can join these two, this wonderful prosperity with the ideal of Christ, it is well. But if you cannot, better go back to Him and give this up. Better be ready to live in rags with Christ than to live in palaces without Him![25]


In this same lecture Swamiji also gave the "blue-nose" ministers and missionaries cause for chagrin. Among other things, he said:


One thing I would tell you, and I do not mean any unkind criticism. You train and educate and clothe and pay men to do what?—to come over to my country and curse and abuse all my forefathers, my religion and my everything. They walk near a temple and say: "You idolators, you will go to hell." . . . And then you, who train men to abuse and criticize, if I just touch you with the  least bit of criticism, with the kindest of purpose, you shrink and cry: "Don't touch us; we are Americans." . . . And whenever your ministers criticize us let them remember this: If all India stands up and takes all the mud that is at the bottom of the Indian ocean and throws it up against the western countries, it will not be doing an infinitesimal part of that which you are doing to us.[26]


Another blast that was to create much commotion in the pulpits was the following:

With all your brags and boasting, where has your Christianity succeeded without the sword? Show me one place in the whole world. One, I say, through the history of the Christian religion—one; I do not want two. I know how your forefathers were converted. They had to be converted or killed; that was all.[27]


I have taken these quotations directly from the Free Press. For the most part the lecture as printed in the Complete Works follows this report word for word. A short report of this same lecture appeared in the Journal of February 22 and is interesting largely because of its headline:

HIS PARTING SHOT
Vive Kananda Delivered His Final 
Lecture Yesterday.

Monk Kananda delivered his last lecture in Detroit at the residence of Mrs. John J. Bagley yesterday afternoon. In many respects it was the most entertaining lecture of the series. The large rooms and halls of the Bagley mansion were filled to their utmost capacity, and the audience listened for over two hours while this talented orator discussed the different philosophies. The burden of his argument was that the Hindoo never argues that his is the only way to salvation. Vive Kananda made many friends during his brief stay in Detroit, and many were the regrets over his departure.


To judge from the following report in the Journal of Friday, February 23, Mrs. Bagley held a small farewell tea for her departing guest:

VIVE KANANDA LEAVES
He Tells Something About the Conditions of
Hindoo Laborers

Swami Vive Kananda repaid the admiration of his lady acquaintances by writing verses, at the same time religious and semi-sentimental, yesterday afternoon. He departed this morning for Ada, O.


In a conversation concerning the material condition of the Hindu workingmen, the learned monk said that the poor lived on porridge alone. The laborer ate a breakfast of porridge, went off to his daily toil and returned in the evening to another breakfast of porridge and called it dinner. In most of the provinces the farmers were so poor that they could not afford to eat any of the wheat raised. A day laborer on a farm received only 12 pence a day, but a dollar in India brought 10 times as much as it would in this country. Cotton was raised, but its fiber was so short it had to be woven by hand, and even then it was necessary to import American and Egyptian cotton to mix with it.


Swamiji had been in Detroit less than two weeks, but there were, perhaps, few people who had not heard of him. On the evening of his departure, a miniature "Kananda" appeared at a children's fancy-dress party and was the hit of the evening. The Tribune covered the masquerade:

A PSEUDO KANANDA
One of the Characters at Strassburg's 
Children's Party.

The natives of nearly every nation on the globe, as well as many characters of literature and mythology were impersonated in miniature at the children's fancy carnival in Strassburg's Hall last night. And among the 200 characters a little prototype of Vive Kananda was the most noticed by the spectators.


The carnival last night was occasioned by the closing of the first quarter's classes of children in the Strassburg [Dancing] Academy. It was one of the social events of the season with the little ladies and gentlemen. [Here follows a description of the various costumes.] And walking about in all this cosmopolitan throng was the prototype of Vive Kananda, with his orange robe, red sash, and buff colored turban in exact counterfeit of the costume worn by the Hindoo lecturer.


On Thursday, February 22, the day after his lecture at Mrs. Bagley's house, Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Hale:


Dear Mother

I have got the 200$ for the engagements, 175$ & 117$ by private lectures & 100$ as a present from a lady. [As we have seen earlier, Mr. Freer was to add two hundred dollars to the total.]


This sum will be sent to you tomorrow in checks by Mrs. Bagley. Today the banks being closed we could not do it.

I am going tomorrow to lecture at Ada Ohio. I do not know whether I would go to Chicago from Ada or not. However kindly let not Slayton know anything about the rest of the money, as I am going to separate myself from him.

Yours obediently'[28]

Vivekananda

Ada, Ohio, was a small town a few hours' train ride from Detroit. On the evening of his arrival, February 23, Swamiji gave a lecture there entitled "The Divinity of Man." Although a report of the lecture should, chronologically, be given here, it must wait until a later chapter, for it has little bearing on the story of Detroit, with which we are not finished. Swamiji meant to say good-bye to Detroit when he left at the end of February, but the city had not said good-bye to him; it continued to quiver under the impact of his recent presence, and these repercussions, which threatened to undo his work, were shortly to draw him back into the field to settle, as it were, some unfinished business.


ⓘ
[1] Arthur Pound, Detroit Dynamic City, P- 5
[2] Later on, Swamiji was to quote this during the course of a lecture (see chap. 8). The Chicago newspaper was the Interior and highly inimical to him (see Complete Works, 8:217, 314)
[3] Complete Works, 6 :301.
[4] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, February 14, 1894, Sen Col.
[5] W. Hawkins Ferry, The Buildings of Detroit, A History, p. 57.
[6] Complete Works, 6: 301.
[7] Life, 1 :460.
[8] Obituary, Detroit Free Press,February 8, 1898.
[9] Obituary, Detroit Free Press,February  8, 1898.
[10] Obituary, Detroit Free Press, February 8, 1898.
[11] The Edicts of Ashoka, Rock Edict VII.
[12] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 154.
[13] “Pages from the Past,” Vedanta Kesari, February 1924, p. 842.
[14] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 156.
[15] Life, 1 : 466.
[16] Mrs. Frances Bagley Wallace to the author, August 13, 1955, VSNC.
[17] Life, 1:467-68; Complete Works, 4:201-2.
[18] See note 13 above.
[19] Life, 1 :51g.
[20] Aline B. Saarinen, The Proud Possessors (New York: Random House, 1958), p. 119.
[21] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, February 20, 1894, Sen Col.
[22] Florence Bagley Sherman to Swami Vivekananda, Febiuary 24, 1894, VSNC.
[23] Complete Works, 8:305.
[24] Mrs. John J. Bagley to a Mrs. Smith, June 22, 1894 Quoted with some omissions in the Life, pp. 402— 3
[25] Complete Works, 8 : 213.
[26] Complete Works, 8 : 211-12.
[27] Complete Works 8 : 212-13.
[28] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, February 22, 1894, Sen Col.



↑ Contents

1.7 THE CHRISTIAN ONSLAUGHT

No sooner had Swamiji left Detroit than the orthodox divines began, as one writer put it, "to pound the dust all out of their pulpit cushions. " The five public lectures and the many informal talks he had given, together with the favorable comments in the press, which attested to his strong influence, were more than many a clergyman could endure. Swamiji had undermined the very ground upon which the Christian missionaries had stood for so long. Not only did he teach that no one religion was superior in essence to another, but he pointed out the hypocrisy of Christianity as it was practiced both at home and abroad. Added to this, he repudiated every story of immoral "heathen" practices by which missionary societies had heretofore justified their existence—and Christian nations their right to colonize. Idolatry, Juggernaut, under the wheels of which Hindus were reputed to be in the habit of flinging themselves, infanticide, the tragic plight of women, the burning of widows— indeed every tale over which Christian missionaries had become frenzied Swamiji either explained in rational terms or denied utterly.

But the fiction of a degenerate India was the very lifeblood of the more narrow missionary circles, and they had little intention of parting with it. The obvious move was to attack Swamiji with every weapon available. "Vive Kananda, the Hindoo monk, served at least one good purpose by his recent visit to Detroit," said the Detroit Journal of February 26, "for his name and ideas furnished a dozen or more local ministers with themes for their discourses yesterday." Some ministers ranted against him without restraint, others spoke more obliquely, brash oratory being no longer fashionable.

"Some of them Smite Kananda on Hip and Thigh," the Journal quaintly expressed it in headlines. The reader, however, should not be burdened with the full texts of those Sunday smitings. The main points made against Swamiji's lectures revolved around the insistence on the part of the orthodox clergymen that India was not moral but degenerate and that Christian missionaries were heroes and saints to whom the benighted Hindu should bow down in gratitude and whom the American people should support.

Every tactic was used. One Baptist clergyman, irate over Swamiji's attack on the Christian mode of praying, gravely declared that the reason "Kananda and his people do not pray at all," is that "their God, Brahma," being without attributes, has no ears.

The Reverend Mr. Newman of the Central Christian Church summed up the attitude of his brethren in the following paragraphs which have been taken from the Detroit Journal report of his Sunday sermon :

"I preach this sermon, " he said by way of preface, "because there are many who stand ready to accept as true anything and everything Kananda said while here. I will give the monk credit for believing his own theories, but I do not believe they represent either Hindooism or India." In support of this belief Mr. Newman read numerous extracts from Hindoo authorities.... "I am astonished " he went on, "to see the way in which the women, of this city ran after Kananda and lauded him to the skies when, if they had been women of his own country, they would have occupied a coop at the rear of the house.

"It is said that a nation's morality may be judged from the condition of its women, and I intend to read to you the condition of women in India." [There follows a long misinterpretation of Hindoo customs, after which the Reverend Mr. Newman concludes triumphantly:] "And still Vive Kananda says it would be a good thing for our missionaries to go over there and take a few lessons on morality."

In Ypsilanti, a city in Michigan near Detroit, not only Swamiji but his friends, the Reverend Mr. Stuart of the Unitarian Church and Rabbi Grossman, came in for a sermon. It will be remembered that in his talk on Sunday, February 18, Rabbi Grossman had highly praised Swamiji and had rebuked the Christian churches for squandering the good money and goodwill of the American people in proselytizing work far from home, "while all along our poor were at our door." "How in this good and sympathetic country of ours," the rabbi had said "such an illusion, I will not say delusion, could enthrall the robust and sound-sensed citizens, I do not understand." This, together with the Reverend Mr. Stuart's equally high praise of Swamiji and equally damning criticism of Christian methods, could not be let pass without rejoinder. Forthwith the Rev. H. M. Morey of Ypsilanti, who had evidently been reading the Detroit papers, delivered a Sunday retort. I will spare the reader the full text of his sermon, which was given in the Detroit Tribune of February 26, for it was long and filled with the usual indictment of Hinduism and the usual praise of the missionary "heroes" who "have told us of the sufferings and sorrows of humanity, not in the self righteous spirit suggested by the Brahmin, but with tenderness in the voice and with tears in their eyes."

Mr. Morey accused Swamiji and his supporters of telling only "half truths," which "may sometimes do the work of lies and   slanders." For instance, both Rabbi Grossman and Mr. Stuart had suggested that there was as much immorality in America as in India—if not more. Said Morey:

There are half-truths here, but these men of thought should have discriminated. Drunkenness and licentiousness and cruelty exist in Detroit under the shadow of churches. They exist also in Calcutta. Here they are contrary to Christianity and are the remains of the native barbarism not yet extinguished by Christianity. There they exist in the temples of the gods, sanctioned by their example and precepts. In India the people have only to follow the examples of their gods to become drunken and licentious. I wish to deal fairly in this matter and not to deal in half truths.

According to the Reverend Mr. Morey, Swamiji also dealt in half truths:

Vive Kananda .was asked some questions which he answered in the pulpit. He answered with a display of humor and apparent frankness that may deceive. "Do the people of India throw their children into the jaws of crocodiles?" "Do they kill themselves beneath the wheels of Juggernaut?" "Do they burn widows with their husbands?" He ridicules the ideas, and denies the fact except in exceedingly rare and exceptional cases. He has told a truth or a half-truth and in such a way as to justify the claim of the rabbi that it is a "delusion" to send missionaries to India.

Mr. Morey went on to say that while these "horrible rites" (upon which he enlarged at length) no longer exist, their suppression has been due solely to "the direct and indirect influence of the 'delusion' as the rabbi calls Christian missions. " Indeed, by the time Morey was through, India had nothing whatsoever in her favor except the presence of Christian missionaries.

The following Sunday (March 4) an editorial which ran in two papers, the Tribune and the Sunday News Tribune, evinced some surprise that the ministry had reacted to Swamiji with so much hysteria:

VIVE KANANDA

No hurt can yet come to any truth by stirring up the turbid streams of opinion. No evil has resulted to humanity since the days of creation by agitating the sources of religious belief. The pool of Bethesda had no healing power till the angel had troubled its waters, and no doctrine, dogma, creed or item of faith is too sacred to be troubled by the spirit of inquiry and examined with a view of finding upon what it rests.

It does not seem to the secular intellect as though christianity could be imperiled by the public lectures of a single benighted Hindu who stands up and in good queen's English gives some reasons why he thinks the religion of his country has hardly been judged fairly by the missionaries who have been sent to India. The natural man can hardly perceive why a dozen or score of talented and orthodox divines, brightest examples of christian learning and culture, should consider it needful to pound the dust all out of their pulpit cushions in declaiming against one poor pagan who stands alone to defend his ancestral religion in a country where he is surrounded by millions upon millions of christians; and where the fixed habits and customs and social and religious life of the people have been moulded by generations of christians and christian teachers.

It ought to be very safe for christians who know what they believe and why they believe it to hear Vive Kananda or anybody else. If they carry their faith around on a plate and it is liable to slip off at the least joggle, it is high time for it to be joggled.

Plainly speaking, it does not seem to be worthy of the dignity of christian clergymen in a great city to leave all other topics and cry out with one voice against any unbeliever who may chance to speak publicly against the prevailing religion of the churches. It is not worth while for a clergyman who respects the intelligence of his hearers to declare that there is only one religion in the world. Most men carry brains around with them all through the week, and they can be trusted to cling to the doctrines which they understand and believe. It is vain and foolish to undertake to smother discussion. It is ridiculous for a protestant clergyman to lay down a rule that the faithful of his flock shall hear only those preachers with whom they are in entire accord. There may not be much use in religious controversy, but there is a great deal of use in getting at other people's thoughts and ways of thinking. A late revered and admired bishop in Michigan said in connection with his reading of books upon oriental faiths that "the time had come when religion must be studied comparatively." Vive Kananda has helped us in such a study.

Clearly, the writer. of the above editorial did not grasp the main issue. There was every reason for the more narrow clergymen to declaim against Swamiji, for theirs was a creed from which the age itself was moving away. The American people were, on the whole, searching for a more liberal and more rational faith, one which would be applicable to an expanding world, and Swamiji was the very personification of that faith. He himself later wrote: "The orthodox section of this country are crying for help; . . . they are mortally afraid of me and exclaim, 'What a pest! Thousands of men and women follow him! He is going to root out orthodoxy!"' The word "pest" was an understatement. To every narrow mind Swamiji was the archenemy to be eliminated at any cost.

To this end, the Baptists of Detroit held a mass meeting on March 5. Among the speakers was a Dr. W. B. Boggs of Cincinnati, Ohio, who had spent several years in India as the principal of the Telegu Theological Seminary at Ramepatan and could therefore, it was presumed, speak with authority. India is the most idolatrous land on the face of the earth," he declared. "The land is full of idols, not only in the temples, but by the wayside, on the tank embankments, at the public wells, in the fields, in their houses, idols of all sorts representing gods and goddesses, fabulous creatures, and beasts and reptiles. Many of these images are monstrous, repulsive, obscene.... A1l the foulest crimes that have ever entered into the imagination of man are to be found in the characters of some of the divinities that they worship."

Dr. Boggs next took up the caste system, "one of the masterpieces of Satan," wherein he found a weapon with which to deliver a blow at Swamiji. "The Brahmans," he said, "look with unconcealed disdain upon those of the lower castes and will tell you it is 'physically nauseating, etc: And these are the men that will come to this country and talk with mellifluous words about the 'Brotherhood of Man.' It is just as consistent for a Brahman to talk about the brotherhood of man as it would be for a Japanese to boast that chastity and moral purity are a distinguishing characteristic of his nation. 

"There is no saving light in Hinduism," concluded Dr. Boggs. "There is no Savior in Hinduism. Christ alone can save India.... The need of Christian missions in India was never exaggerated and never can be. The need was never greater than it is today."[1]

A Dr. Mabie and a Dr. Gordon spoke in somewhat the same vein at the Baptist mass meeting, Dr. Gordon concluding his talk with the following remarks: "I never believed in parliaments of religion because all forms of religion aside from christianity are counterfeits. There is every evidence that all religions except that which treats of the one Christ are bogus. We had better stand by the religion of Jesus Christ. We must still send out missionaries and have an abundance of faith."

This was the crux of the matter: the missionaries not only must go out, but must go out as God's elect. That a heathen should be preaching religion in the West, that he should be followed and revered by thousands, was an intolerable, unforgivable affront.

There was perhaps no meeting of missionaries in Detroit which did not discuss and attack Swamiji during his absence. One such meeting was reported in the Tribune of March 8:

MIGHT AS WELL BE BURNED
Another Indian Missionary Talks of Kananda's Ideas.

The Missionary Society of the Fort Street Presbyterian Church held its annual meeting at the residence of Allan Shelden, West Fort street, yesterday afternoon. Rev. J. F. Dickie read the scripture lesson and Rev. Mr. Edwards led in prayer . . . Mrs. Harvey, the president, made a short address and then introduced Rev. Dr. Thackwell, who has been a missionary in India for 45 years, under the presbyterian board.

Dr. Thackwell said he thought that the work of the foreign missionary was the greatest work in the world. . . . In speaking of the former habit of burning widows alive, he said that some of them question whether their condition was changed any or not by the law. Before they knew their fate, but now it is a living death. Some people may come over here, as did Kananda, and say that the widow's position is improved, but if it is true then the word of all returned missionaries is untrue. The widow is stripped of her jewels and her finery and a coarse garment placed upon her and she is thenceforth the Cinderella of the family. The belief in regard to their being burned was that the gods were displeased and to insure the husband's salvation his widow must die.

Many female babies are strangled to death, in some cases by their mothers. Marriage and death are principal causes of the national poverty. The son is not exempt from the debts of his forefathers. The girl upon marriage has to be furnished a dower and in order to avoid it, the females are murdered by the thousands. The Brahmins have never tried to prevent these atrocities, but the English government is using its influence to stop them. The Brahmins have not much power in the cities but flourish in the outlying country, where the missionaries have not yet established themselves....

The women uphold their religion because they have more religious fervor and are entirely sincere. The mother brings her little ones to the idol and teaches them to worship it and thus through a mother's constant devotion and influence another idolator is reared. It is the women that must be reached and when they are converted to Christ they will bring up their children in the new faith.

The greatest men of India will attend receptions given by the viceroy. They will come in their richest costumes and chat with the Europeans, but on going home they divest themselves of their clothing and bathe, to rid themselves of the pollution.... The Hindu idea of God is that He is wrathful and thirsty for human blood, that He is ready to wreak His vengeance and they must appease Him. Among various methods to attain His pleasure is to lie naked on a plank studded with sharp nails, to hold an arm or leg up until the limb becomes withered. They punish their bodies for the sin of their souls. If they will come over to the side of christianity they will become a power for good. [And so on.'[2]

But rant as the missionaries would, it was too late. Swamiji had cast a doubt upon all their "eye-witness" reports, and few who had heard him were willing to listen to the old cry. A letter printed in the Journal of March 15, in answer to Rev. Dr. Thackwell, gives an idea of how things were faring.

Foreign Missions

Editor Journal.-- It seems that Kananda, the Hindoo preacher, has stirred up the antagonism of many Christian ministers. At the home of Mrs. Shelden last Wednesday, the ladies of the Foreign missionary society met and  listened to an address by Mr. Thackwell, a missionary from India. He contradicted Kananda's statement that it was the Hindoos who abolished the custom of burning widows in India. Who would be most likely to know best? One who has been there as a missionary, or one who was born on the banks of the Ganges, traveled all over the country and lived there all his life; a man of learning, who could have no object in making a false statement? We have been told again and again, that the overthrow of that custom was one of the blessed effects of Christian missionary work. But here comes a native missionary from India, who tells us it was the Brahmins who put a stop to the horrid custom.

We have also been taught from our early youth that Hindu mothers throw their children to crocodiles in the river Ganges. But now a man who was born on the banks of that river tells us that there was never a crocodile in the Ganges. It is possible that the Rev. Thackwell's statement that Hindu mothers strangle their own babies has no more foundation in truth. Mr. Thackwell says it was the English government that abolished the custom of burning widows in India. But we all know how ready Christian England is to credit herself with any good done, or evil overthrown in her provinces. If England put a stop to that wicked custom, it must have been because she could make no money out of it. She sends out shiploads of liquor with agents to distribute and sell it. She could gain more dollars by making widows through the liquor traffic. India did not want her liquor any more than the Chinese wanted her opium, but she Forced the opium trade on China at the mouth of the cannon, and her liquor trade through distributing agents in India. England is a field greatly in need of missionary work and the foreign missionary society ought not to pass it by.

It costs on an average twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars a head for every heathen convert made. This is very expensive and we do not wonder that every available means are resorted to for the purpose of raising money. Collections of pennies from Sabbath school children, and missionary collections in churches, after listening to a sermon in which the sad condition of the poor heathens who strangle their babes and feed the crocodiles with their children are pictured and the sympathies of the audience are aroused. Dr. Gordon, a member of a church in Boston and an officer of the Foreign missionary society, tells us how they manage to raise money. They pray every day for a month and then take up a $20,000 collection. He boasts that by this means they get from poor servant girls $50, and from one poor old lady living in a tenement house, who only had a thousand dollars to live on all the rest of her days, they managed to get $800--see the Journal of March 6. Now if there is a spot on God's green earth where missionary work is most needed, it must be Dr. Gordon's church in Boston.

The means employed to obtain this money might be prayer, sympathy, hypnotism or the muzzle of a revolver. In a moral point of view it is equally wrong and no more justified than highway robbery. It is at home where true Christian missionary work is most needed, not only in the slums of our cities, but among the 400 in Boston, Chicago and New York; not only among our heathen Indians, who have been robbed and destroyed by American Christians, but many of the professed Christian churches of this land need to be taught the first principles of a true Christianity, justice, righteousness and brotherly love.

J. STEELE.

2

The Student Volunteer Missionary Movement held its second international convention in Detroit shortly after Swamiji had left. The convention, a gathering of no small proportions and no little significance, was in full sway from February 28 to March 4. According to the Michigan Christian Advocate of March 10:

. . . Never before had Detroit been favored with a convention so large in point of numbers, and at the same time of so wide scope and far-reaching significance. As a missionary convention it was not only the largest and most important ever held in Detroit, but the greatest ever held on this continent, and one of the greatest distinctly missionary gatherings that has ever convened in the world. . . . The registration lists showed a total of 1,187 accredited delegates present, representing 294 separate institutions of learning, and 38 different denominations. Besides these, some 50 secretaries or representatives of missionary societies; over 50 returned missionaries; representatives of the Y.M.C.A. and other organizaions, swelled the grand total of registered members of the convention to I,357.........


Meetings took place in the Central Church, which overflowed with missionaries and spectators until, after the first day, additional meetings were held in other churches to accommodate the crowd. "The local committee, " says the Michigan Christian Advocate "were taxed to their wits' end to find entertainment, for so many, but the Christian people of Detroit arose to the occasion and all were comfortably taken care of." The article continues:


It was indeed a grand sight, and one calculated to quicken the pulse and stir the blood of any person interested in the great missionary movements for the world's evangelization, to look into the faces of those 1,200 earnest young men and women, all turning toward the foreign mission field for their life work. These young people represented about 300 institutions of learning, including every such institution of any importance in the United States and Canada. They were in an important sense the picked men and women of these institutions. Seldom does one see such a body of young people. A high intellectual average, intense earnestness of purpose, and a deep consecration to God and his work were marked characteristics. It was manifest that they were here, not on a mere holiday outing, but on serious business-to gain inspiration and learn how to best prepare to take their place in the work of winning this world for Christ.


It was a formidable gathering. And whether or not the delegates mustered in such large numbers as an answer to the Parliament of Religions, they considered that their convention in Detroit was an answer to Swamiji. The Christian Advocate editorialized:


What a splendid antidote the convention was for Vive Kananda and his lectures! Came just in the nick of time. The glamour produced by his suave sophistries vanished like mist before the stalwart faith and living experience of men who have met and coped with heathenism on its own ground. Vale Kananda!


Vale Kananda, indeed! The fact was that, although the convention may have sought to counteract Swamiji's influence, it was itself not uninfluenced by him. A new note, commented upon by the missionaries themselves, sounded throughout the proceedings. Far less emphasis than had been customary at such meetings was laid upon the external aspect of Christian missionary endeavor in foreign lands and far more upon the inner spirit. To quote again from the Christian Advocate of March 10:


The watchwords of the movement were set forth in large printed letters stretched along the galleries: "Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations "; "Let us advance upon our knees." . . .


Among the features that marked the convention, there was none more prominent, or that more profoundly impressed all in attendance, than the intensely spiritual tone that pervaded it. This stood out above everything else. Education, culture, methods, finance, and all the other secularities, were remanded to their rightful and subordinate places, and from first to last, by every speaker with scarce an exception, the thought was kept uppermost that the indwelling Christ and the baptism and fullness of the Holy Ghost constitute the one essential fitness, the prime necessity, the only source of power and guarantee of success.... From first to last, the clarion call was for Spirit-filled men and women. A Methodist could almost imagine himself in a holiness convention throughout the whole meeting. This emphasis laid upon the spiritual side in this great missionary movement is full of significance and fraught with momentous promise. A movement that thus honors the Holy Ghost cannot but succeed....


Even from the missionaries in India the message came that the spiritual side of things was in order. "That was a stirring cablegram read by Chairman Mott at the farewell meeting, from Wilder and White in Calcutta," commented the Christian Advocate: " 'India needs now 1,000 Spirit-filled volunteers.' "


It is not too difficult to believe that this sudden surge of spiritual earnestness both at home and abroad was due to Swamiji's many reminders that something of the sort was called for in missionary activity. If the watchword, "Let us advance upon our knees," was an "antidote" to him it was one that, could only have gratified him, provided it was carried out. It was, however, not the convention's only answer to Swamiji. Although public repudiations of his views are not available, they were unquestionably delivered by the delegates, for, as will be seen, they were at least partly the cause of his return to Detroit.


In the meantime, his first visit to the city was already bearing fruit. In the very teeth of the missionary convention the Evening News of March 1 published a long illustrated article that unmercifully ridiculed the tall tales of missionary propaganda-particularly those in Caleb Wright's book, India and Its Inhabitants, a book which had been published in the 1850s and which formed part of the mental framework of the generation that had grown up under its spell. India and Its Inhabitants has been referred to before (Chapter Four) as one of the most potent weapons of the Christian missionaries. Its luridly illustrated tales of heathen mothers throwing their newborn infants to the crocodiles and of wild-eyed Hindus flinging themselves beneath the crushing wheels of Jagannath had been read and reread, had been believed as gospel truth, and had deposited a good deal of debris in the American mind, which only a hard jolt could dislodge. Swamiji had delivered that jolt; whereupon the Evening News, which was known in those days as a "sensational" paper and which took delight in shocking its subscribers out of their accustomed grooves of thought, followed up with an expose of Caleb Wright and his ilk. The article need not be quoted in full; the closing paragraphs will be sufficient to show that public opinion was undergoing a radical change and also that, now and then, a modern American missionary gave testimony to the truth of Swamiji's assertions. The editorial concluded:


In a work written by Rev. A. D. Rowe, an American missionary, and published by the American Tract society, his introduction says:


"There is an India of the books and there is a real India, and so different are the two that the student of the one would hardly recognize the other, if without a guide he should suddenly find himself in a Hindoo village. These books," he says, "have been written by European travelers, who confined themselves to main routes of travel, the cities and the larger towns, where they see but little undisguised Hindoo life. Many of these books seem to have been made with the aim of astonishing rather than instructing the reader, and they leave on the mind an impression that India is a country where women are caged up like parrots, where widows are burned alive, and children are hung up in baskets to be eaten by birds, or thrown into the Ganges to be eaten by crocodiles; that it is inhabited chiefly by voluptuous native princes, self torturing religious devotees, powwowing Brahmin priests, jewel-bedecked dancing girls, and ferocious Bengal tigers. Of the millions of soberminded, toiling fellow human beings, with hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, sympathies and ambitions common to all mankind, little or nothing is said.


"The school children of America know more about the burning of widows and the drowning of infants in India than do the fathers of an ordinary Hindoo village. These things are as surprising to the young Hindoo as they are to the young American. I do not say that these accounts are literally untrue, but they put too much stress upon characters and topics that are of comparatively little importance to the life of the masses."


A captain of one of the Peninsular & Oriental steamers told Thomas W. Knox that an American passenger on board his ship was very much disappointed when he heard that he would not see a widow burned or a pilgrim crushed by the car of Juggernaut. He was very angry, and said all the poetry of the east was gone, and he wished he had never left home.


Appearing on the same page with the above article was a poem entitled "Christian and Heathen" by J. W. W.


When Chapman waved the christian banner
In a mild and graceful manner, . . . ' 
Stirring souls of men and women 
Up against the dreadful foeman.

"In hoc signo vinces" shouted , 
Showed that dangers all were scouted; 
That the foe was wholly routed.

But, alas! that prince of evil,
Most properly yclept the devil, 
Sly old barbed-tailed, split-hoofed minion, 
Issued from his hot dominion,
Full of argument and knowledge, 
Gathered in Experience college,
Came within these precincts urban, 
Wearing flowing robes and turban; 

Hoofs and tail beneath them hid he, 
Called himself Kananda did he, 
Put his Hindoo logic neatly, 
And overthrew our force completely.
All was silence round about us
The heathen monk, by George, did rout us 
And we were feeling rather sickly 
Till other forces gathered quickly. 
They rose like locusts in the air, 
Aspiring like a heartfelt prayer;
And here they are from hills and prairies, 
Bold-hearted College Missionaries!
Hip! Hip! Hur-stay, our great rejoicing 
May have a slightly hasty voicing;
Our solid front may still be hollow,
As who knows, brethren, what may follow? . . .
Therefore let us wait the ending,
Our posts most quietly defending.

3

What followed was Swamiji's reappearance on March ninth after a two-week absence. This was an unscheduled visitneither planned by Swamiji nor expected by the missionaries. To all intents and purposes, Swamiji had left Detroit for good, possibly to return to India. Thus his reappearance must have come as a shock to many of his adversaries. He was greeted by various articles and letters in the Detroit newspapers, which reflected the general excitement over the return of the warrior monk. The following item appeared in the Evening News of March I0:

CHRISTIAN ECCENTRICITIESCHRI

Very likely they don't do these things any better in India; but it must be confessed that it is a little awkward to have that Hindoo tarn up again in Detroit the same week that three policemen had to be on duty at a christian church for the purpose of keeping order among its members, seated in hostile array and ready for an outbreak on opposite sides of the room. Then, the policemen, at the request of one of this flock, went round with him to the house of his shepherd to pay him a month's salary, but evidently afraid to do so without having witnesses to his act. Perhaps he wanted the protection of the strong arm of the law lest his minister should assault him and take away the money and then refuse to give him an acknowledgment of the payment. The Lutheran minister did refuse to give him a receipt that evening because, as he put it, these dissatisfied parishioners had long withheld his pay and it would be no great hardship to make them wait for the receipt overnight at least.

There are thousands of peaceful congregations, millions of christians in and out of the church, that trust each other respectfully; confide in each other's honor; pay their debts and need no policemen to regulate the conduct of their religious affairs. But at the same time, suppose this casual Hindoo should mistake the exception for the rule, and hold christianity responsible for all its failures. What a nuisance he might make of himself!


An open letter welcoming Swamiji was published in the Detroit Critic of March 11 . It was written by O. P. Deldoc, the same who had earlier written letters to the Free Press in Swamiji's defense and who had a flair all his own for the English language. O. P. Deldoc was evidently a pen name, for it cannot be found in the Detroit registers for 1894. But whoever he may have been, his pen was prolific and vigorous and, to judge from the Fact that the Critic published his letters and articles, he was known in literary and intellectual circles. In any case, Deldoc's outlook upon the current state of civilization in the United States was by no means singular, but represented the liberal thought of the day. His welcoming letter, which gives a picture of the unrest of the age, indicates that the voices which cheered Swamiji were every bit as loud and angry as those which decried him. Feelings ran high in Detroit. The letter, too long to present here in all its verbosity, began as follows:

"HYPOCRITS"

The Christian Religion 
Has Very Many of Them 
Who Hide Their Heads behind Its Convenient Cloak.
Hail Vive Kananda, the Hindoo.

A Nervy Writer Discusses the Abuse of Kananda
With a Very Bitter Pen.

Some Truths Which are Very Hard to Swallow.
An Open Letter to Vive Kananda.

Dear Swami:

I rejoice to see that you are in the missionary field again in this part of our immoral vineyard. Truly "the harvest is great, and the laborers are few." We need more laborers in the harvest.

"There's a cry to Macedonia, come and help us, The light of the Gospel bring; oh! come."

True, we have had the great Chapman revival here, but the sheaves that were garnered would not fill one stall of the barn where his services were held. Missionary Stead has just shaken the dust of the most noted and wickedest city on earth from his brogans, and by this time is half seas over, and Chicago is unconverted. The Baptist brethren have failed to make cold water converts out of Detroit's ardent Spiritualists. The missionary convention brought forth a small army of raw recruits for service, but they were too green to make palatable roast missionary of, though they thought themselves capable of "roasting the heathen. " Soon we are to have the Christian Endeavor Society, to endeavor to see what they can do, but alas! all their endeavors are directed to foreign shores. They want to send more missionaries to convert more heathen, and they want to raise more money to purchase more tracts, plug hats, and suspenders for "those poor men benighted, where only man is vile." In their eagerness to to go abroad, they forget that both man and woman are vile in their own country, and require much missionary work right at home. I rejoice to see that you are in the field. We need you, . . . and we find by more than eighteen hundred years of past experience that we cannot depend upon our own missionaries....

You don't begin to know how vile the heathen are here , even though they dwell in the light of the nineteenth century.... We want some missionaries from India and China, and we want them bad, or rather, we want them good, ours are bad enough.... Your religion for thousands of years has been one of mercy and love. Of humility and truth. Of science, logic and law. Ours is one of bigotry, persecution, war, blood and hatred. One of fable and fallacy. Of fraud and hypocrisy. "Prove it"; why certainly...

Deldoc then proceeded to catalogue most colorfully the iniquities of American civilization. "In the first place," he says, "we worship idols. The idols are in silver and gold.... Other idolaters worship at the shrine of Venus and Bacchus.... Murder, bloodshed, riot, anarchy, cruelty to animals; yes, and cruelty to wife and children, whom they treat as slaves.... Patriotism wades knee-deep in human blood. Blood is the fundamental basis of our religion." He goes on to enumerate and castigate many a practice of nineteenth-century America: Child-murder, so common as to be unnoticed. Female slavery and child slavery. "Sweathouses," suicides; caste in society, state and church. Bribery and corruption in politics, press and pulpit. "We hang, burn and torture criminals. We suffer mob law and violence to rule over us. We build prisons and mad houses, and keep them full to overflowing.... We have opium eaters in our most fashionable circles." Highway robbery, polygamy, prostitution alarmingly prevail. Vile dens of infamy are rented by pew-holders. "Our clergymen are not all saints; they too frequently 'fall from grace,' but when they lose caste here, they can be utilized in foreign missionary service. Our females are in such abject slavery that they have to organize Women's Rights societies to petition legislature to redress their wrongs.... As a result of all this moral depravity, we have starvation, beggary, and crime. Strikes and labor riots are common everyday occurrences among the lower caste...." Deldoc, having left American civilization little cause to raise its head, concludes his letter with a finishing blow:

Besides, we find the clerical cloak, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. One minister recently said, when asked what he thought you would do with the money gained from your lectures, that "you would probably stick to it." How well he knew the inner mysteries of missionary work; but it was unwise to give the snap away. Their whole attention now seems to center in India, instead of among the cannibals, possibly for the reason that your people  don't eat flesh, and they are safer among the mild -mannered natives of India.

These, dear Swami, are a few briefly noted facts, susceptible of ocular demonstration, which even in your short sojourn amongst us you must have noticed. Our watchmen on the walls of Zion have reviled you, figuratively speaking, have kicked you behind your back, and are "bearing false witness" against their neighbor in your own and other lands.... Where shall we look for help in this our time of need? We hopefully turn with anxious eyes to the Orient, or to the "wise men of theeast," where the Star of Bethlehem arose, and where God's bright sunlight ever dawns. If you have a purerreligion than we, and surely you can have none practically worse, I beseech you come over and help us.

Yours, for human brotherhood,

O. P. DELDOC.

The equally vehement opposition was represented by "Occidental," whom readers will remember as a friend of the missionaries who did not deem it necessary to hear Swamiji speak in order to judge him. Occidental appears, to say the least, somewhat fanatical; yet one cannot on this account ignore his letters, for they were as representative of contemporary thought as were the writings of Deldoc. The following was written on March to, the day after Swamiji's return to Detroit, and appeared in the Free Press of March 12 :

Kananda Again In Our Midst

To the Editor of The Detroit Free Press:

"That ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, and yet to stand. "

Is it reasonable to suppose for an instant that among 360,000,000 of Vishnu's followers, clever volunteers were not offered or selections made according to the eastern  standard of wiliness or craftiness for representatives to the "World's Congress of Religious Bodies?"

"We wrestle against spiritual darkness in high places:' Be not deceived. You will not (though this being your purpose appears questionable) be able to convert Ka-nanda. Such is my sincere belief, but he may do incalculable mischief. "Judge of the trees by their fruits." Compare the Fruits of Christianity with those of Brahminism. On the one hand, enlightenment, progressiveness, joy, comforts and good will towards men; not absolute but comparative. On the other hand, darkness, dreariness, misery, and for good will towards men, good will towards dogs, cats and cobras; not absolute, but comparative.

That any intelligent person can for a moment give greater credence to the statements of a Hindoo (educated or not) than to the numerous counter-statements of our own educated men and women, travelers, missionaries or what not, surpasses strangeness. And yet many are ready to argue that the stories we hear of infanticide, widow immolation, and other conditions of misery among the Hindoos, are greatly exaggerated. In this connection please bear in mind that many of the stories we hear only claim to relate to periods prior to England's control of India's affairs; and we all know or should know, of their improvement since.

For my part my fears have been aroused recently so as to have produced a well-grounded belief that some of these stories are rather minimized than exaggerated at this time.... Within a week a man told me that when he was an officer of a vessel some years ago, at the mouth of the Hoogley river, about thirty miles below Calcutta, he was obliged to have his mooring lines cleared of the floating bodies of dead infants. For those unfamiliar with the facts, it is necessary to state that the mouth of the Hoogley river swarmed with crocodiles then, 1854, much as our own Mississippi did with alligators twenty-five years ago, when  the writer saw at one glance of the eye say twenty alligators when there was a chance of their getting anything to eat, in the moat at Port Jackson, half of them large enough to swallow an infant. Whether the river outside the moat was as thick with them or not, he is unable to say, but one scarcely ever rode along this part of the Mississippi on warm days without seeing one or more of them roll off the logs into the river. The number of infanticides in Calcutta and along the river above and below can only be approximated by persons for themselves from these data; taking into consideration the time necessary for a body to rise to the surface and float thirty miles more or less, and the uncertainty of its even reaching the mouth and there becoming stranded on a vessel's mooring lines, in order that eight infant's bodies should thus have become stranded in the seven weeks time that the vessel was there.

One of the missionaries in our city last week, being interrogated on the subject of shocking infanticide in India now by another lady, answered thus: "Why, of course it is true, how could it be otherwise? Don't you know that the words virtue and morality have no meaning with the Hindoos, they are as much worse than the Chinese and Japanese as you can imagine." For those who may not appreciate this comparison, we must speak plainly. In Japan, when a man takes a fancy to a flower girl or tea girl he can negotiate with her parents for her services as a concubine about as we might negotiate for the services of a young girl as a domestic. The inquirer then said, "But Kananda denies all this," to which the missionary replied by smiling, shrugging her shoulders and saying, with as much doubt in her looks as possible, "Perhaps he doesn't know."

Horror of horrors! Wholesale infanticide, cobras, crocodiles and wilful falsehood? Does the witches' cauldron in Macbeth equal this? One hardly knows though, whether to find greater fault with the educated heathen for deliberately falsifying, or with the missionary for failing to state plainly that such was her belief.

"False in one thing, false in all." Therefore, unless you have confirmatory evidence from other sources, please take all Kananda's statements cum grano salis (with salt); and For the love of heaven, let us have the plain truth.

OCCIDENTAL.

The above letter is so palpably malicious and befuddled that no comment is called for. One thing, however, is clear: Swamiji's second visit to Detroit was not welcomed by everyone.3

What followed was Swamiji's reappearance on March ninth after a two-week absence. This was an unscheduled visitneither planned by Swamiji nor expected by the missionaries. To all intents and purposes, Swamiji had left Detroit for good, possibly to return to India. Thus his reappearance must have come as a shock to many of his adversaries. He was greeted by various articles and letters in the Detroit newspapers, which reflected the general excitement over the return of the warrior monk. The following item appeared in the Evening News of March I0:

STIAN ECCENTRICITIESCHRI

Very likely they don't do these things any better in India; but it must be confessed that it is a little awkward to have that Hindoo tarn up again in Detroit the same week that three policemen had to be on duty at a christian church for the purpose of keeping order among its members, seated in hostile array and ready for an outbreak on opposite sides of the room. Then, the policemen, at the request of one of this flock, went round with him to the house of his shepherd to pay him a month's salary, but evidently afraid to do so without having witnesses to his act. Perhaps he wanted the protection of the strong arm of the law lest his minister should assault him and take away the money and then refuse to give him an acknowledgment of the payment. The Lutheran minister did refuse to give him a receipt that evening because, as he put it, these dissatisfied parishioners had long withheld his pay and it would be no great hardship to make them wait for the receipt overnight at least.

There are thousands of peaceful congregations, millions of christians in and out of the church, that trust each other respectfully; confide in each other's honor; pay their debts and need no policemen to regulate the conduct of their religious affairs. But at the same time, suppose this casual Hindoo should mistake the exception for the rule, and hold christianity responsible for all its failures. What a nuisance he might make of himself!


An open letter welcoming Swamiji was published in the Detroit Critic of March 11 . It was written by O. P. Deldoc, the same who had earlier written letters to the Free Press in Swamiji's defense and who had a flair all his own for the English language. O. P. Deldoc was evidently a pen name, for it cannot be found in the Detroit registers for 1894. But whoever he may have been, his pen was prolific and vigorous and, to judge from the Fact that the Critic published his letters and articles, he was known in literary and intellectual circles. In any case, Deldoc's outlook upon the current state of civilization in the United States was by no means singular, but represented the liberal thought of the day. His welcoming letter, which gives a picture of the unrest of the age, indicates that the voices which cheered Swamiji were every bit as loud and angry as those which decried him. Feelings ran high in Detroit. The letter, too long to present here in all its verbosity, began as follows:


"HYPOCRITS"
The Christian Religion 
Has Very Many of Them 
Who Hide Their Heads behind Its Convenient Cloak.

         Hail Vive Kananda, the Hindoo.
A Nervy Writer Discusses the Abuse of Kananda

With a Very Bitter Pen.

Some Truths Which are Very Hard to Swallow.

An Open Letter to Vive Kananda.

Dear Swami:

I rejoice to see that you are in the missionary field again in this part of our immoral vineyard. Truly "the harvest is great, and the laborers are few." We need more laborers in the harvest.


"There's a cry to Macedonia, come and help us, The light of the Gospel bring; oh! come."


True, we have had the great Chapman revival here, but the sheaves that were garnered would not fill one stall of the barn where his services were held. Missionary Stead has just shaken the dust of the most noted and wickedest city on earth from his brogans, and by this time is half seas over, and Chicago is unconverted. The Baptist brethren have failed to make cold water converts out of Detroit's ardent Spiritualists. The missionary convention brought forth a small army of raw recruits for service, but they were too green to make palatable roast missionary of, though they thought themselves capable of "roasting the heathen. " Soon we are to have the Christian Endeavor Society, to endeavor to see what they can do, but alas! all their endeavors are directed to foreign shores. They want to send more missionaries to convert more heathen, and they want to raise more money to purchase more tracts, plug hats, and suspenders for "those poor men benighted, where only man is vile." In their eagerness to to go abroad, they forget that both man and woman are vile in their own country, and require much missionary work right at home. I rejoice to see that you are in the field. We need you, . . . and we find by more than eighteen hundred years of past experience that we cannot depend upon our own missionaries....


You don't begin to know how vile the heathen are here , even though they dwell in the light of the nineteenth century.... We want some missionaries from India and China, and we want them bad, or rather, we want them good, ours are bad enough.... Your religion for thousands of years has been one of mercy and love. Of humility and truth. Of science, logic and law. Ours is one of bigotry, persecution, war, blood and hatred. One of fable and fallacy. Of fraud and hypocrisy. "Prove it"; why certainly...


Deldoc then proceeded to catalogue most colorfully the iniquities of American civilization. "In the first place," he says, "we worship idols. The idols are in silver and gold.... Other idolaters worship at the shrine of Venus and Bacchus.... Murder, bloodshed, riot, anarchy, cruelty to animals; yes, and cruelty to wife and children, whom they treat as slaves.... Patriotism wades knee-deep in human blood. Blood is the fundamental basis of our religion." He goes on to enumerate and castigate many a practice of nineteenth-century America: Child-murder, so common as to be unnoticed. Female slavery and child slavery. "Sweathouses," suicides; caste in society, state and church. Bribery and corruption in politics, press and pulpit. "We hang, burn and torture criminals. We suffer mob law and violence to rule over us. We build prisons and mad houses, and keep them full to overflowing.... We have opium eaters in our most fashionable circles." Highway robbery, polygamy, prostitution alarmingly prevail. Vile dens of infamy are rented by pew-holders. "Our clergymen are not all saints; they too frequently 'fall from grace,' but when they lose caste here, they can be utilized in foreign missionary service. Our females are in such abject slavery that they have to organize Women's Rights societies to petition legislature to redress their wrongs.... As a result of all this moral depravity, we have starvation, beggary, and crime. Strikes and labor riots are common everyday occurrences among the lower caste...." Deldoc, having left American civilization little cause to raise its head, concludes his letter with a finishing blow:


Besides, we find the clerical cloak, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. One minister recently said, when asked what he thought you would do with the money gained from your lectures, that "you would probably stick to it." How well he knew the inner mysteries of missionary work; but it was unwise to give the snap away. Their whole attention now seems to center in India, instead of among the cannibals, possibly for the reason that your people  don't eat flesh, and they are safer among the mild -mannered natives of India.


These, dear Swami, are a few briefly noted facts, susceptible of ocular demonstration, which even in your short sojourn amongst us you must have noticed. Our watchmen on the walls of Zion have reviled you, figuratively speaking, have kicked you behind your back, and are "bearing false witness" against their neighbor in your own and other lands.... Where shall we look for help in this our time of need? We hopefully turn with anxious eyes to the Orient, or to the "wise men of theeast," where the Star of Bethlehem arose, and where God's bright sunlight ever dawns. If you have a purerreligion than we, and surely you can have none practically worse, I beseech you come over and help us.


Yours, for human brotherhood,

O. P. DELDOC.

The equally vehement opposition was represented by "Occidental," whom readers will remember as a friend of the missionaries who did not deem it necessary to hear Swamiji speak in order to judge him. Occidental appears, to say the least, somewhat fanatical; yet one cannot on this account ignore his letters, for they were as representative of contemporary thought as were the writings of Deldoc. The following was written on March to, the day after Swamiji's return to Detroit, and appeared in the Free Press of March 12 :

Kananda Again In Our Midst

To the Editor of The Detroit Free Press:


"That ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, and yet to stand. "

Is it reasonable to suppose for an instant that among 360,000,000 of Vishnu's followers, clever volunteers were not offered or selections made according to the eastern  standard of wiliness or craftiness for representatives to the "World's Congress of Religious Bodies?"


"We wrestle against spiritual darkness in high places:' Be not deceived. You will not (though this being your purpose appears questionable) be able to convert Ka-nanda. Such is my sincere belief, but he may do incalculable mischief. "Judge of the trees by their fruits." Compare the Fruits of Christianity with those of Brahminism. On the one hand, enlightenment, progressiveness, joy, comforts and good will towards men; not absolute but comparative. On the other hand, darkness, dreariness, misery, and for good will towards men, good will towards dogs, cats and cobras; not absolute, but comparative.


That any intelligent person can for a moment give greater credence to the statements of a Hindoo (educated or not) than to the numerous counter-statements of our own educated men and women, travelers, missionaries or what not, surpasses strangeness. And yet many are ready to argue that the stories we hear of infanticide, widow immolation, and other conditions of misery among the Hindoos, are greatly exaggerated. In this connection please bear in mind that many of the stories we hear only claim to relate to periods prior to England's control of India's affairs; and we all know or should know, of their improvement since.


For my part my fears have been aroused recently so as to have produced a well-grounded belief that some of these stories are rather minimized than exaggerated at this time.... Within a week a man told me that when he was an officer of a vessel some years ago, at the mouth of the Hoogley river, about thirty miles below Calcutta, he was obliged to have his mooring lines cleared of the floating bodies of dead infants. For those unfamiliar with the facts, it is necessary to state that the mouth of the Hoogley river swarmed with crocodiles then, 1854, much as our own Mississippi did with alligators twenty-five years ago, when  the writer saw at one glance of the eye say twenty alligators when there was a chance of their getting anything to eat, in the moat at Port Jackson, half of them large enough to swallow an infant. Whether the river outside the moat was as thick with them or not, he is unable to say, but one scarcely ever rode along this part of the Mississippi on warm days without seeing one or more of them roll off the logs into the river. The number of infanticides in Calcutta and along the river above and below can only be approximated by persons for themselves from these data; taking into consideration the time necessary for a body to rise to the surface and float thirty miles more or less, and the uncertainty of its even reaching the mouth and there becoming stranded on a vessel's mooring lines, in order that eight infant's bodies should thus have become stranded in the seven weeks time that the vessel was there.


One of the missionaries in our city last week, being interrogated on the subject of shocking infanticide in India now by another lady, answered thus: "Why, of course it is true, how could it be otherwise? Don't you know that the words virtue and morality have no meaning with the Hindoos, they are as much worse than the Chinese and Japanese as you can imagine." For those who may not appreciate this comparison, we must speak plainly. In Japan, when a man takes a fancy to a flower girl or tea girl he can negotiate with her parents for her services as a concubine about as we might negotiate for the services of a young girl as a domestic. The inquirer then said, "But Kananda denies all this," to which the missionary replied by smiling, shrugging her shoulders and saying, with as much doubt in her looks as possible, "Perhaps he doesn't know."


Horror of horrors! Wholesale infanticide, cobras, crocodiles and wilful falsehood? Does the witches' cauldron in Macbeth equal this? One hardly knows though, whether to find greater fault with the educated heathen for deliberately falsifying, or with the missionary for failing to state plainly that such was her belief.


"False in one thing, false in all." Therefore, unless you have confirmatory evidence from other sources, please take all Kananda's statements cum grano salis (with salt); and For the love of heaven, let us have the plain truth.

OCCIDENTAL.

The above letter is so palpably malicious and befuddled that no comment is called for. One thing, however, is clear: Swamiji's second visit to Detroit was not welcomed by everyone.


ⓘ
[1].Detroit Free Press, March 6, 1894.
[2].See also ibid., March 8, 1894.




↑ Contents

1.8 RETURN OF THE WARRIOR

The first lecture Swamiji gave on his return to Detroit was a direct reply to his antagonists. Not only had local orthodox clergymen attacked him vigorously, but the missionaries and missionary students, who considered their convention an antidote to his lectures, had surely left nothing unsaid in the effort to counteract his influence. No doubt Swamiji's friends had relayed to him the criticisms made in his absence, and had implored him to return to give answer. An announcement in the Detroit Journal of March 9, 1894, corroborates this supposition.

KANANDA AGAIN

The Hindu Will Speak at the Detroit Opera House.

Vive Kananda, the Hindu monk, will return to Detroit to-night from Chicago, and will be the guest either of Mrs. John J. Bagley or Hon. T. W. Palmer. Next Sunday evening Kananda will lecture at the Detroit opera house on "Christian Missions in India," his subject suggested by the convention of student volunteers held here last week.

Falsehood and hypocrisy always aroused the warrior in Swamiji, and one is reminded in this connection of a letter he wrote the following year in which he said: "The more I have been opposed, the more my energy has come out always.'[1] It must have been obvious to him that his opponents in Detroit were in need of a finishing blow, and thus he returned, not to defend himself but to defend the truth; not in anger but in valor. "Christian Missions in India," delivered on Sunday, March 11, was his answer.

The Detroit Free Press report of this lecture has been reprinted with some variations, in volume eight of the Complete Works, under the title "Christianity in India." The headlines and first two paragraphs, which have been omitted in volume eight, read as follows:

NOT EASY TO CONVERT
The People of India Take the Bait
But not the Hook.

Missionaries are not in Sympathy with the People.
Do not Speak the Language or 
Understand the Natives.

Vive Kananda spoke to a crowded audience at the Detroit Opera House last night. He was given an extremely cordial reception and delivered his most eloquent address here. He spoke for two hours and a half. Hon. T. W. Palmer, in introducing the distinguished visitor, referred to the old tale of the shield that was copper on one side and silver on the other and the contest which ensued. If we look on both sides of a question there would be less dispute. It is possible for all men to agree. The matter of foreign missions has been dear to the religious heart. Vive Kananda, from the Christian standpoint, said Mr. Palmer, was a pagan. It would be pleasant to hear from a gentleman who spoke about the copper side of the shield.

Vive Kananda was received with great applause....

The Tribune report of this same lecture caught many of Swamiji's sentences that were missed by the Free Press and reads 

KANANDA, THE PAGAN
Attacked Christian Missions in Last Night's Lecture.
And His Words were Warmly Applauded by the 
Audience.

Christian Nations Kill and Murder, He Said, and Import Disease into Foreign Countries, then Add Insult to Injury by Preaching of a Crucified Christ.

Swami Vive Kananda lectured to a very large audience at the Detroit Opera House last night on "Christian Missions in India." One could believe that the lecture was intended as an answer to the many statements of missionaries which have been aimed at Kananda during the past two weeks in this city.

Kananda was introduced by Honorable Thomas W. Palmer last night, who recited a fable by way of preface. "Two knights of honor once met on the field, " he said, "and seeing a shield hanging on a tree they halted. One said: 'What a very fine silver shield.' The other replied that it was not silver but copper. Each disputed the other's statement until at last they got off their horses, tied them to the tree, and drawing their swords fought for several hours. After they were both well spent by the loss of blood they staggered against each other and fell on the opposite sides from where they had been fighting. Then one glanced up at the pendant shield and said: 'You were right, my friend. The shield is copper.' The other looked up and said: 'It is I who was mistaken. The shield is silver.' If they had looked at both sides of the shield in the first place it would have saved the loss of much blood. I think that if we looked at both sides of every question there would be less argument and fighting.

"We have with us tonight a gentleman who, from the christian standpoint is, I suppose, a pagan. But he belongs to a religion which was old long before ours was thought of by men. I am sure that it will be pleasant to hear from the copper side of the shield. We have looked at it only from the silver side. Ladies and Gentlemen, Swami Vive Kananda."

Kananda, who had remained seated on the stage during Mr. Palmer's remarks, stepped to the front, clad in the orange robe and unique turban of the Brahman priest, bowed in acknowledgement of the welcoming applause, and launched at once into his subject.

What India Is

"I do not know about the efforts of christian missionaries in China and Japan except through reading the books and literature on the subject, but I can speak about the efforts of christianizing India. But before I go into this I want to place before you an idea of what India is."

Then he explained in detail how the 300,000,000 inhabitants of India are divided into castes, between which there can be no affiliation, how the natives of the south cannot understand the language of the ones of the north, and vice versa. He told how the lower caste lived on the flesh of dead animals, and never bathed their bodies, and how impossible it would be for the higher class to mingle with them, although they were granted the protection of the same laws.

He referred to the first appearance of the christians in an attempt to evangelize the followers of Buddah. They were Spaniards, he said, and they discovered a temple near Ceylon, in which was presented a tooth of Buddah as a sacred relic.

"The Spaniard christians thought that their God commanded them to go and fight and kill and murder "he said, "and so they seized the tooth of Buddah and destroyed it. By the way, it was not a tooth of Buddah  at all, but a relic manufactured by the priests—it was a foot long. (Laughter) Every religion has its miracles; you needn't laugh because the tooth was a foot long. Well, after the Spaniards took away the tooth they converted a few hundred and killed a few thousands; and there Spain stops in the history of missionary efforts among the Buddhists."

The Portugese christians, he said, discovered the great temple at Bombay, built in the form of a body with three heads, in representation of the trinity as the Hindoo believes in a trinity.

"The Portugese saw it and couldn't explain it," said Kananda, with a sarcastic ring in his voice, "and so they concluded that it was of the devil, and gathered their forces and knocked off the three heads of the temple. The devil is such a handy man. I am sorry to see him so fast disappearing."

Then Kananda outlined the various stages of christian evangelization in India, and paid very high tribute to two or three missionaries, who, he said, had been great exceptions to the rule, and lived among the people to uplift and minister to their needs.

Antagonize Native Interests

The Hindoo priest told how as soon as the land came into possession of the English people every village had its white colony, which huddled itself together and withdrew from all association with the natives. Then when the missionaries reached the country, he said, they would naturally go at once among the English people, who sympathized with them and with whom they could converse.

The missionaries know nothing of the native language, he says, and so they cannot dwell with the people. Most of them are married and for the sake of getting their wives into the English society they identify themselves with all their interests, and in doing so directly antagonize the interests of the natives, and make it impossible to get in touch with them.

"We sometimes have famines in India," he said. "And so the young missionaries will hang about the fag end of a famine and give a starving native 5 shillings, and there you have him, a ready-made christian; take him. That was probably a baptist missionary, and so when a methodist missionary comes along he gives the same native 5 shillings, and his name is again registered as a convert. The only band of converts around each missionary is composed of those dependent upon him for a living. They have to be christians or starve. And they are dwindling as the money supply decreases. I am glad if you want to make christians in India by giving work and bread to the poor. God speed you to do that. There is one benefit that must be credited to the missionary movement. It makes education cheap. The missionaries bring some money with them from the people who send them, and the Indian government appropriates some, so that there are some very good colleges and schools available to the natives through missionaries. But I will be frank with you. There are no conversions from the schools to the christian religion. The Hindoo boy is very clever. He takes the bait, but never gets the hook."

The speaker said that the lady missionary goes into certain houses, gets four shillings a month, reads the Bible, while the native girls give indifferent attention, and teaches them to knit while they pay very keen attention. The girls, like the boys, he said are always alert to learn practical things, but they will give little heed to the christian religion, although they will espouse it if necessary to get the other advantages.

Most Missionaries Incompetent

"The most of the men whom you send us as missionaries are incompetent," he said. "I have never known of a single man who has studied Sanscrit before going to India as a missionary and yet all our books and Literature are printed in it: '

He suggested as an explanation of the visits of the missionaries that "perhaps the atheism and scepticism at home is pushing the missionaries out all over the world." When in India he said he had thought the sole business of christianity [was] to send all people to the fires of hell, but since coming to America he has found that there are a great many liberal men. He referred to the parliament of religions, and told how a certain editor of a presbyterian paper had written an article at the close of the parliament entitled "The Lying Hindoo," in which he had scored him very severely.

In the article the editor said that "while in the parliament he was here as our guest, but now that it is over we ought to make an enthusiastic attack against him and his false doctrines."

In referring to the medical missionaries in India Kananda said: "India requires health, but it must be health for people. And how can you help our people if you do not get in touch with them? When you come to us as missionaries you ought to throw over all idea of nationality. Jesus didn't go about among the English officials attending champagne suppers. He didn't care to have his wife get into high European society. If your missionary does not follow Christ what right has he to call himself a christian? We want missionaries of Christ. Let such come to India by the hundreds and thousands. Bring Christ's life to us and let it permeate the very core of society. Let Him be preached in every village and corner of India. But don't have your missionaries choose their profession as a means of livelihood. Let them have the call of Christ. Let them feel within that they were born for that work.

"As far as converting India to christianity is concerned, there is no hope. If it were possible it ought not to be done.

It would be dangerous; it would mark the destruction of all religions. If the whole universe should come to have the same temperament, physical or mental, destruction would immediately result. Why couldn't you convert the Jew? Why couldn't you make the Persians christians? Why is it that to every African who becomes a christian too become followers of Mohammed? Why can't you make an impression on India and China, and Japan? Because oneness of mental temperament all over the world would be death. Nature is too wise to allow such things.

Filled the World with Bloodshed

"The christian nations have filled the world with bloodshed and tyranny. It is their day now. You kill and murder and bring drunkenness and disease in our country, and then add insult to injury by preaching Christ and Him crucified. What christian voice goes through the land protesting against such horrors? I have never heard any. You drink the idea in your mothers' milk that you are angels and we are devils. It is not enough that there be sunlight; you must have the eyes to see it. It is not only necessary that there be goodness in people; you must have the appreciation of goodness within yourselves in order to distinguish it. This is in every heart until it has been murdered by superstition and hideous blasphemy. "

Then Kananda drew a very beautiful simile to illustrate that the essential truths of all religions are [the] same, and all else is but incidental and unimportant environment. He told how the savage man might find a few jewels, and prizing them, tie them with a rude thong and string them about his neck. As he became slightly civilized he would perhaps exchange the thong for a string. Becoming still more enlightened he would fasten his jewels with a silken cord; and when possessed of a high civilization he would make an elaborate gold setting for his treasures. But throughout all the changes in settings the jewels—the essentials—would remain the same.

"If the Hindoo wishes to criticize the christian religion he talks of the fables and miracles, and all the nonsense of the Bible, but he does not say one word in disparagement of the sermon on the mount, or of the beautiful life of Jesus. And so when the christian criticizes the Hindoo religion he talks about the dogmas and the temples, but he says nothing [should say nothing] against the morality and philosophy of the Hindoo. Help the Jew and let him help you. Help the Hindoo and let him help you. I deny that any human being has the faculty of seeing good at all who cannot see it in all places. There is the same beauty in the character of Christ and the character of Buddah. It is not an assimilation that we want, but adjustment and harmony. I ask the preachers to give up, first, the idea of nationality; and second, the idea of sects. God's children have no sects.

"Much has been said about the ladies of India, and of their faults and condition. There are faults; God help us to make them right. We are thankful for your criticism of our women. But while you are speaking of them, I will say that I should be glad to see a dozen spiritual women in America. Nice dress, wealth, brilliant society, operas, novels— Even intellectuality is not all that there is for a man or woman. There should be also spirituality, but that side is entirely absent from christian countries. They live in India."

Vive Kananda's large audience listened very respectfully to his remarks last night, and once or twice applauded heartily. Even in Swamiji's estimation this lecture was one of his best. The following day he wrote to Mary Hale, "My last address was the best I ever delivered. Mr. Palmer was in ecstasies and the audience remained spellbound, so much so that it was after the lecture that I found I had spoken so long. A speaker always feels the uneasiness or inattention of the audience.'[2] There was certainly no inattention that Sunday night, and it might be said that his words became a part of the mental convictions of many who heard him. True, perhaps only a thousand or so heard that lecture, but a handful of people with firm convictions—provided that those convictions coincide with truth—can slowly change the thought of a nation. Moreover, Swamiji's words were spread through the medium of the press, not only in reports but in editorials. For instance, the Evening News, one of the most widely read papers in Detroit, which had earlier been hostile to him, printed an article on March 12 entitled, "A Pointer for the Missionaries." A large portion of this editorial was later reprinted by the Boston Evening Transcript of April 5, 1894, and thereby found its way into volume four of the Complete Works, where it was included under the title "Is India a Benighted Country?" But although most of the Evening News article will be familiar, I believe it should be reproduced here in its entirety, for it is indicative of the reaction to Swamiji's repudiation of Christian missionary work in India:

A POINTER FOR THE MISSIONARIES

Most people will be inclined to think that Swami Vive Kananda did better last night in his opera house lecture than he did in any of his former lectures in this city. The merit of the Brahman's utterances last night lay in their clearness. He drew a very sharp line of distinction between christianity and christianity, and told his audience plainly wherein he himself is a christian in one sense and not a christian in another sense. He also drew a sharp line between Hindooism and Hindooism, carrying the implication that he desired to be classed as a Brahman only in its better sense. Swami Vive Kananda stands superior to all criticism when he says:

"We want missionaries of Christ. Let such come to India by the hundreds and thousands. Bring Christ's life to us, and let it permeate the very core of society. Let Him be preached in every village and corner of India."

When a man is as sound as that on the main question, all else that he may say must refer to the subordinate details. The best christian thought and hope of all the centuries have wholly to do with what Kananda says he wants to see in India—Christ's life "permeating every corner of society. " Here is the highest "testimony," as our religionists are pleased to call it, of the essential truth and power of the real gospel of the Nazarene. The failure of christian missions in foreign lands is not to be referred to the divine person who stands behind the missionaries, for the pagans themselves are quite willing to concede the glory of that life, but to the missionary failure to illustrate that life in their methods and customs. There is infinite humiliation in this spectacle of a pagan priest reading lessons of conduct and of life to the men who have assumed the spiritual supervision of Greenland's icy mountains and India's coral strand, but the sense of humiliation is the sine qua non of most reforms of this world. Having said what he did of the glorious life of the author of the christian faith, Kananda has the right to lecture the way he has the men who profess to represent that life among the nations abroad.

"If your missionary does not represent Christ what right has he to call himself a christian? Let Christ be preached in every village of India, but don't have your missionaries choose their profession as a means of livelihood. Let them have the call of Christ. Let them feel from within that they were born for that work." And after all, how like the Nazarene that sounds! "Provide neither silver nor gold nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves; for the workman is worthy of his meat." Those who had become at all familiar with the religious literature of India before the advent of Kananda are best prepared to understand the utter abhorrence of the orientals of our western commercial spirit—or what Kananda calls the shopkeeper's spirit-—n all that we do, even in our very religion.

Here is a pointer for the missionaries which they cannot afford to ignore. They who would convert the eastern world of paganism must live up to what they preach in contempt for the kingdoms of this world and all the glory of them.

Swamiji's lecture at the Opera House not only impressed his friends but silenced his critics, at least for the time being. The following Sunday not one orthodox minister dared openly respond. An editorial in the Sunday News Tribune, which was controlled by the publisher of the Evening News, anticipated this silence in the following editorial that appeared on March 18:

THE LESSON OF TOLERATION

"Every real thought on any real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other," wrote Dr. Holmes many years ago, and when the sufferer gets his breath he begins the "back-talk"; but it is not at all likely that the pulpits of Detroit will resound today with anything like the vigorous whacks which fell upon them after Kananda's first visit. The provocation, if such it can be called, which he gave a week ago in his lecture of two hours and a half, was greater than on the occasion of his former appearance, and this last address was professedly and openly in response to statements which had been made while the missionary convention was in session here, and it is reckoned the ablest of all his discourses in Detroit; nevertheless the chances are a good many to one that the clergymen hereabouts will not with one accord this time stand up and reply in any very vehement manner. It is more than probable that the placid Hindu has taught us a lesson and that the fruit of all his work here will be a broadening of our sympathies and some enlargement of our ability to comprehend views upon important subjects that are quite out of the beaten path in which our thoughts and opinions have been accustomed to travel.

From hearing what an intelligent Hindu like Kananda has to say of the religion of his country it is no more necessary to adopt that religion than it is to worship Zeus and Apollo as a result of studying the theology of the Greeks. Kananda is not a Buddhist, but if an educated priest of Buddhism should come along and be willing to tell us more than we knew before of the faith that has the largest following of any in the world, it would surely not beneath the dignity of a scholar of the nineteenth century to listen patiently to what he had to say. The Mohammedans at one time led the world in learning and scientific attainments. If an Arabian disciple of Mohammed, fit to instruct in his religion, should crave audience of our people, it might be very safe and profitable to listen to him. The old Shinto religion of Japan has held the belief of myriads of men with intellects pretty nearly as acute as ours; would it be likely to damage our spiritual perceptions to hear a Shinto priest explain it?

We seem to be in some danger of taking a one-sided view of our own position and that of persons from whom we differ. There appears to be no question of politeness or propriety when we go to the people of Asia in their own stand and beg to assure them that they have been following a vain shadow for several thousand years and that if they do not accept our new religion in place of their old religion they will find themselves booked for something decidedly uncomfortable in the next world; but we do not recognize the right of every person to preach his own religion quite so clearly when it is the man from Asia who comes to us. 

There is no finer test of intellectual strength than the willingness to receive and consider the well-digested thoughts of all the people under the sun. The horizon of religious toleration stretches further and further away every year. Twelve months from now it is not at all likely that Kananda's coming to Detroit and talking to people who might choose to hear him would shake the churches from center to circumference or agitate the clergymen at all. It is not easy to see any sufficient reason why it should have done so at any time. While not many persons are greatly concerned about the Hindu's theology, there are members who feel thankful for the fresh encouragement that has been given to the spirit of toleration.

The writer of the above article was probably the same who two weeks earlier, had raised his eyebrows at the pulpit -pounding that had followed Swamiji's first week in Detroit. He still did not seem to grasp the fact that the very nature of orthodox Christianity, which deemed itself to be the one saving religion and all else the work of the devil, prevented its preachers and followers from "tolerating" Swamiji. The color and mood of the silence following the Opera House lecture was perhaps well expressed by the following anonymous letter that appeared in the Free Press of March 17:

Mission Work in India.
To the Editor of The Detroit Free Press:

Kananda claimed in his lecture, Sunday evening, to be perfectly well posted in regard to mission work in India. How comes it then, that he is ignorant of the fact that all missionaries try to speak to the people among whom they work in their own vernacular?

Many missionaries do not learn the Sanskrit because it is a dead language, spoken nowhere, hence they spend their time on the spoken languages. It would please me to show you books in one vernacular, the work of American missionaries, notably a dictionary, by a man whose memory is revered, not only in Detroit, but, also, by many as learned Brahmans as Kananda himself.

This dictionary is the only one in the language it represents, and is constantly used by natives learning English and by the English learning the native language.

May I ask Kananda why it is that the low caste people in India, are so changed after coming in contact with the missionaries? Why are they better educated; why are they superior; why are they different from their own class who are still under the rule of the Brahman? It would also be a gratification to one who has lived years in India, and who knows a little about the country, and, also, show natural history, to learn what those creatures are that are seen by the hundreds (by all travelers), sunning themselves on the sand churs, in every large river in India, if they are not crocodiles?*(1) Can it be possible that the god Krishna, that wonderful incarnation of the pure and immaculate Vishnu, with his sixteen wives, and 16,000 concubines, and all the progeny he murdered, are disporting themselves under this guise, and is that the real reason why the creatures are bullet-proof?

Will Kananda tell us where he finds his definition of the word Swami? The Sanskrit dictionary, at the public library, says it means lord-master, owner-husband; but never a word about brother.

One thing more. Will the learned Babu tell us all he knows about the rites and ceremonies necessary for him to perform, before he can appear before his own people as a real Hindoo Brahman? It will gratify many, and prove instructive to hear from his own lips all about these ceremonies and their spiritual significance.

ONE OF THE MISSIONARIES.

No one answered this letter through the Free Press columns, but an article by our friend O. P. Deldoc, who never hesitated to speak his mind, appeared in the Detroit Critic on March 18 and expressed, no doubt, the opinion of many. The following highly abridged version of Deldoc's lengthy polemic shows to  what an extent Swamiji had aroused the liberal element of Detroit, and how dry the timber he had set ablaze:

*(1) Very probably those creatures were fish-eating gavials (or gharials) which inhabited the Ganges and other rivers of northern India. The gavial is related to and resembles the crocodile but is neither people- nor infant eating.

CHIMERICAL RELIGION
A Brainy Writer Discusses One of the Great 
Questions of the Present Day
Was there No Love, No Joy, No Hope and No Religion 
Before Christ Came to Us?
Were All Noble Souls before His Time Doomed 
to Perdition?

It is nearly 1900 years since the religion of Christ was taught in all its primitive grandeur and purity. A religion of forbearance, meekness, charity and love, yet its fundamental principles of truth and righteousness were old and widely known and practiced before Christ was born. There were patriarchs, prophets, saints and martyrs; men who "walked with God"; law givers and high priests; good, wise and holy men, whose bones had crumbled to dust ages before the Star of Bethlehem arose....

Was there no love, no hope, no joy, no religion then? . . . Were all the noble souls abiding before Christ doomed to perdition? . . .

The question is not whether christianity is true, but are we true to Christianity as professed Christians?

I claim that the vast majority of so-called Christians are not true, but false to the precepts and practices of their Lord and Master. They are only chimerical christians, who roar with the lion's head, disguise their body in the form of a goat, and a scapegoat at that, and then wiggle the tail of a venomous dragon. They are continually belching forth flames of fire (hell fire) upon all who differ from their favorite dogmas, creeds and sects, vide Dr. Briggs, .the "heretic," and Kananda, the "pagan." Some  of their pet and petrified, dogmas are comprised in this quarto of beautiful specimens, "The fall of man in Eden"; "The sin of unbelief"; "An atonement by proxy," and "The eternal punishment of the damned." If they encounter an individual with manhood, moral courage and wisdom . . . , they proceed at once to damn him.

These mongrel specimens love to sing "This world is all a fleeting show," and so it is, a veritable Wonderland menagerie, filled with curious, incongruous monstrosities and deformities, such as Baptist barnacles, petrified Presbyterians, and Methodist mummies....

Mind, I do not speak of those broad-hearted, liberal, thinking, reasoning, truthful christians, of whom thank God there are many. I am speaking of the vaster body of chimerical christians. "By their works ye shall know them." Intolerance, bigotry, superstition, envy, malice and falsehood are their prominent features.... They evade the truth, and are false even unto themselves. . . They delight to prate of missionary work among the heathen, thanking God "they are not as other men are." The pagan, so called, could teach them more of the fundamental truth of religion than they ever dreamed of in their philosophy. Better far to be like the heathen worshipping even a false god, than to be false to the God they pretend to worship.....

There is but one religion, one philosophy, one God over all. Religion is love; not love of self, but love of God and all His creatures. Religion: People preach for it, write for it, fight for it, die for it, do everything but live for it....

A religious Hindoo comes to us and talks of love, asking for bread and they give him a stone. He tells them he gladly accepts their Christ with His religion which is old to them as the "rock of ages" upon the eternal hills, but they will accept neither his word, his philosophy or his religion.... They claim christianity has caused all advancement, all civilization. Whence came all the glory, all the grandeur and all the wisdom existing before the Nazarene Reformer was born among men and became one of the Sons of God? . . . It is as falsely ridiculous to claim such chimerical christianity has been the cause of civilization as it would be to say that it was due to plug hats and suspenders....

All nations and all eras have had their reformers and their saviours, and there are more to follow, until even the despised Jew may yet have his long-looked-for Messiah....

Since the advent of the Brahmin Monk, over-zealous and bigoted preachers have tried to defame him and denounce his pure philosophy. They have pointed out the ungodly condition of India; they have claimed her women were slaves, her law corrupt and vile. A sapient lawyer has quoted whole volumes of the laws of India with sneering sarcasm [see Chapter Six]; as well might he have quoted the ancient Mosaic Code, or the blue laws of Connecticut or pointed out our own laws with regard to licentiousness, women and prohibition. India never had drunkards until christian lands carried them liquor.

As well point out our barbarous treatment of the western Indian, our old slave laws or the records of vice and crime as found in the slums of our modern civilization....

Truth is mighty and must prevail. This world or any other of God's unlimited universe does not stand upon a turtle, nor is it supported upon any Hercules. Its corner stones are light, liberty, love and law, and it is the chimerical christians who would knock away these four corner stones of the universe....

Another intolerant bigot, occupying a Detroit pulpit, recently cast a slur on the world's parliament of religion, by warning his brethren to have no affiliation therewith. . ..

Let the Star of Bethlehem be the true Christian's polar star; let it arise and shine with all its ancient glory, as beheld by the wise men of the east; let its splendid light banish the mists of error and the darkness that befogs men's brains. Let it light up the dark and narrow aisles, not alone in pagan but in Christian lands, until the monster Chimera, the false deformity of Christianity, shall hide its hideous head forevermore.

Deldoc is to be thanked for his articulate dissertations, for rarely do we find so explicit a description of the religious bigotry existing in the United States during the 1890s. It was, moreover, a description which would tend to make Christian ministers less inclined to cast stones across the sea.

2

On this second visit to Detroit Swamiji had evidently come directly from Chicago, for he wrote almost immediately to Mrs. Hale, letting her know that he had reached his destination without mishap. His letter, dated March 10, 1894, is among those recently made available to us and read in part:

Reached Detroit safely yesterday evening. The two younger [Bagley] daughters were waiting for me with a carriage. So everything was all right. I hope the lecture will be a success as one of the girls said the tickets are selling like hot cakes. Here I found a letter from Mr. Palmer waiting me with a request that I shall come over to his house and be his guest.

Could not go last night—he will come in the course of the day to take me over. As I am going over to Mr. Palmer I have not opened the awfully packed bag. The very idea of repacking seems to me to be hopeless. So I could not shave this morning. However I hope to shave during the course of the day. I am thinking of going over to Boston & New York just now as the Michigan cities I can come and take over in summer but the fashionable of New York & Boston will fly off. Lord will show the way. Mrs. Bagley & all the family are heartily glad at my return and people are again coming in to see me.[3]


The Honorable Thomas Witherell Palmer, who had invited Swamiji to be his guest, was one of Detroit's wealthy businessmen who felt it their patriotic responsibility to enter politics. Palmer put his talents to the service not only of Detroit but of the federal government. After holding various local offices, he was elected to the United States Senate in 1883. Far ahead of his times, he worked for women's suffrage some forty years before that movement became triumphant. Even more far-sightedly, he strove to establish governmental control of the octopus like railroads, and originated the slogan "Equal rights to all, special privileges to none." At the end of his term in the Senate he was appointed Minister to Spain, and shortly after he resigned that post was chosen Chief Commissioner of the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. It was no doubt during the Parliament of Religions that this warm-hearted, sanguine champion of the people first recognized in Swamiji a kindred spirit.


Swamiji's move to Mr. Palmer's large frame house, which stood some twenty-four blocks north of Mrs. Bagley's, on the site of what is now the Detroit Institute of Arts, would not have saved him from the horrendous dinners of the era; on the contrary, it was, in this respect, like walking into the lion's den.


"S-Senator P-Palmer" is a very nice gentleman and very kind to me [he wrote to Mrs. Hale in his letter of March 10]. He has got a French chef—Lord bless his stomach! I am trying to starve & the whole world is against me! ! He used to give the best dinners of all Washington! Hopeless! I am resigned![4]


That very night the dinner parties began. On March I2 Swamiji wrote to Mary Hale:

I am now living with Mr. Palmer. He is a very nice gentleman. He gave a dinner the night before last to a group of his old friends, each more than 60 years of age, which he calls his "old boys' club.'[5]

And again, on March 15, he wrote to the Hale sisters:


I am pulling on well with Old Palmer. He is a very jolly, good old man.... The funniest thing said about me here was in one of the papers which said, "The cyclonic Hindu has come and is a guest with Mr. Palmer. Mr. Palmer has become a Hindu and is going to India; only he insists that two reforms should be carried out: firstly that the Car of Jaggernath should be drawn by Percherons raised in Mr. Palmer's Loghouse Farm, and secondly that the Jersey cow be admitted into the pantheon of Hindu sacred cows." Mr. Palmer is passionately fond of both Percheron horse and Jersey cow and has a great stock of both in his Loghouse Farm.... (He) makes me laugh the whole day. Tomorrow there is going to be another dinner party.'[6]

Mr. Palmer's "old boys' club" consisted of some of the most influential citizens of Detroit, one of whom was host on the evening of March 15 at one of the many dinners given for Swamiji. The following items which tell of this event appeared in the Detroit Journal of March 16 and the Free Press of March 17, respectively:

DINNER TO KANANDA


Pleasant Function of E. W. Cottrell Last Evening.

Eber W. Cottrell gave a very elaborate dinner last evening at his residence, 155 Lafayette-ave., Vive Kananda being the guest of honor. The other guests who shared the delightful affair were Ex-Senator T. W. Palmer, M. S. Smith, W. Livingstone, jr., F. E. Driggs, Capt. Gardener, of Fort Wayne, Michael Brennan, G. W. Cottrell and George C. Robinson.

KANANDA LECTURES AGAIN MONDAY

Eber W. Cottrell entertained Kananda at his residence, 155 Lafayette avenue, last night. A charming dinner was given and the distinguished Hindoo was the center of attraction. Among others who were present were Hon. T. W. Palmer, M. S. Smith, W. Livingstone, Jr., F. E. Driggs, Michael Brennan, George Robinson and Capt. Gardener, of Fort Wayne. Kananda is extremely happy in this kind of gathering. He is quick to reply to all questions, and his conversation is interesting and instructive. One of the guests commenting upon the event remarked that the eastern brother displayed a subtlety which is characteristic of the educated Hindoos. On Monday night Kananda will lecture at the Auditorium, taking for his subject "Brahmanism. " [His subject was "Buddhism."]


The Following evening, Friday, March 16, Mr. Palmer gave yet another dinner party in honor of Swamiji. According to the Free Press of March 18, the guests were "Mr. Don M. Dickinson, Mr. W. A. Moore, Mr. W. V. Moore, Mr. E. W. Meddaugh, Mr. Zach Rice, Dr. Johnson, Mr. A. G. Boynton, and Mr. Asdikion, the distinguished Armenian."


Many of the names mentioned in the above reports are also mentioned in histories of Detroit. These were men who ardently and dutifully engaged in politics and who supported numerous measures intended to promote the public welfare. They were, in a sense, merchant-princes in an age in which politics had a place for merchants and princes. They were good and solid men, and Swamiji talking to them at their elaborate, many coursed dinners was as much at home as he was at Mrs. Bagley's feminine "afternoons."


It was largely (if not entirely) through Mr. Palmer's influence that Swamiji was able to break free from the clutches of the Slayton Lyceum Lecture Bureau, which had been defrauding him of most of the money he was trying so hard to earn —or his country. Our first knowledge of his dissatisfaction with the lecture bureau comes from a postscript to his letter of February 14 to Mrs. Hale. "I have received a letter from Slayton in reply to that in which I wrote to him that I could not stay," he wrote. "He gives me hopes. What is your advice. I enclose the letter in another envelope."[7]


We do not know what Mrs. Hale advised, but as the days went on, it became more and more evident that Mr. Slayton, head of the lecture bureau, had been cheating him right and left and beguiling him with false promises. Swamiji apparently discussed the matter with his astute and experienced Detroit friends, and on February 20 he again wrote in this connection to Mrs. Hale:


. . I am thoroughly disgusted with this Slayton business and am trying hard to break loose. I have lost at least 5000$ by joining this man.... Now the man [men?] who got up the lectures have got at least a thousand $. So in every place. And this is what he is doing. His will be done. I am going home. Seeing the liking the American people have for me I could have by this time got a pretty large sum. But Jimmy [Irving] Mills and Slayton was [were] sent by the Lord to stand in the way. His ways are inscrutable.

However this is a secret. President Palmer has gone to Chicago to try to get me loose from this liar of a Slayton. Pray that he may succeed. Several judges here have seen my contract—& they say it is a shameful fraud and can be broken any moment but I am a monk—no self defence —therefore, I had better throw up the whole thing and go to India.[8]


Mr. Palmer was able to free Swamiji from his three-year contract with the lecture bureau, which, rascally though it was, had served a purpose through its wide-flung circuit *(2) Now, back in Detroit, Swamiji made arrangements with a lecture manager named Holden. But while Mr. Holden may have been honest, he was not competent. "I got only 127 dollars by my last lecture," Swamiji wrote to the Hale sisters on March 15, referring to his two-and-a-half hour lecture of March 11 that had packed the Detroit Opera House. "[It] was not properly managed, the cost of the hall being I50 dollars. I have given up Holden. Here is another fellow cropped up; let me see if he does better.[9]


Whether or not the other fellow did better we do not know, but in any case, it had by now become eminently clear to Swamiji that he would not be able to earn a substantial amount of money for his Indian work by lecturing for a few months or a year in America. Simultaneously, the "work fever," as he called it, subsided, one of its immediate causes gone, and the third week of March saw him rebel against the whole machinery of lecture-touring. Two letters written during this week (which, it so happened, followed his climactic, tide-turning lecture of Sunday, March 11) vividly reflect his mood. The first was that of March 15 to the Hale sisters; the second was written the following day to Mrs. Hale. In both, he who could exert almost cosmic power wrote with childlike candor, as a brother and a son.


After telling the "Babies" that the Detroit papers had called him "the cyclonic Hindu," he continued in this letter of March 15:

I am really not "cyclonic" at all. Far from it. What I want is not here, nor can I longer bear this "cyclonic" atmosphere. This is the way to perfection, to be perfect, and to make perfect a few men and women. My idea of doing good is this: to evolve out a few giants, and not to strew pearls to the swines and thus lose time breath and energy....


. . . I do not care for lecturing any more. It is too disgusting, this attempt to bring me to suit anybody's or any audience's fads. However, I shall come back to Chicago for a day or two at least before I go out of this country. Lord bless you all.[10]


Relinquishing, for the time being at any rate, the idea of gathering money in the West for his Indian work, Swamiji attempted to return the donations of his Detroit friends (such as Mr. Freer). "[I] told them," he was to write to Mrs. Hale in April, "that there being almost no chance of my succeeding in my enterprise I have no right to keep your money—but they refused and told me to throw that into the waters if I liked.'[11]


But funds for India or not, Swamiji let the tide of his mission carry him as it would. His letter to Mrs. Hale of March 16 reveals the serene, untroubled mood in which he followed its current:


I am going to lecture here [Detroit] on Monday [he wrote] and in two places near the town [Bay City and Saginaw, Michigan] on Tuesday & Wednesday [March 20 and 21]. I do not remember the lady you refer me to and she is in Lyn. What is Lyn, where on the globe is its position I do not know. I want to go to Boston what good would it do to me by stopping at Lynn? Kindly give me a more particular idea. Nor could I read the name of the lady.*(3) However I am in no way very anxious. I am taking life very easy in my natural way. I have no particular wish to go anywhere Boston or no Boston. I am just in a nice come what may mood. Something should turn up bad or good. I have enough now, to pay my passage back and a little sightseeing to boot. As to my plans of work I am fully convinced that at the rate it is progressing I must have to come four or five times back to put it in any shape.


As to informing others and doing good that way— have failed to persuade myself that I have really anything  to convey to the world. So I am very happy just now and quite at my ease. With almost nobody in this vast house and a cigar between my lips, I am dreaming just now and philosophising upon that work fever which was upon me. It is all nonsense. I am nothing, the world is nothing, the Lord alone is the only worker. We are simply tools in His hands. . . .[12]


It is difficult to estimate exactly how much money Swamiji was able to collect for India during his midwestern lecture tour, for his known references to this subject do not tell a complete story. It is fairly certain, however, that he could not have accumulated a great deal by the end of March, 1894. As for financial contributions to his cause, we know only that Mr. Freer donated two hundred dollars and "a lady" one hundred. It is probable that Mr. Palmer and some of the other "merchant-princes" of Swamiji's acquaintance also contributed, but at present we have no way of knowing. On the other hand, we do know a little in regard to his earnings. For instance, immediately following the Parliament he writes that he received "from 30 to 80 dollars a lecture.'[13] His next mention of his earnings comes in late November, when he wrote, "I had a fine audience [in Madison, Wisconsin] and 100$.'[14] In January of 1894, "A lecture fetches from two hundred up to three thousand rupees. I have got up to five hundred [about 160 dollars].'[15] Again on February 22 he wrote from Detroit (Chapter Six), "I have got the 200$ for the engagement, $175 & 117$ by private lectures....'[16] And in July, referring back to this period of his midwestern tour, "In the Detroit lecture I got $900, i.e. Rs 2,700.*(4) In other lectures, I earned in one $2,000 i.e. Rs. 7,700, in one hour, but got only 200 dollars! I was cheated by a roguish lecture bureau. I have given them up.'[17]Of other money that he earned in March of 1894 Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Hale on the twenty-seventh, "Herewith I send two cheques of 114$ and 75$-to be put in  the bank For me. I have endorsed them to your care.'[18]


Taking his midwestern tour as a whole, Swamiji perhaps averaged about seventy-five dollars a lecture, which was certainly not much, considering that in Detroit, and no doubt elsewhere as well, he often drew larger audiences than did Ingersoll, who, as Swamiji had written earlier, "gets five to six hundred dollars for a lecture.'[19]Seventy-five dollars was, to be sure, no trifling amount even in America,*(5)and in India it could go far; nonetheless, compared to the amount of energy Swamiji expended, his midwestern tour was, to say the least, not lucrative. Moreover, the criticism he was receiving from missionary circles as well as from some of his own countrymen was doing his work considerable harm. On June 20 he would write to India: "Now lecturing for a year in this country, I could not succeed at all (of course, I have no wants for myself) in my plan of raising some funds for setting up my work. First, this year is a very bad year in America; thousands of their poor are without work. Secondly, the missionaries and the Brahmo Samaj try to thwart all my views. Thirdly, a year has rolled by, and our country could not even do so much for me as to say to the American people that I was a real Sannyasin and no cheat, and that I represent the Hindu religion.'[20]

*(2)According to Sister Christine, who related the story during a conversation with Swami Ashokananda, Swamiji’s Freedom from slayton cost him almost all the money he had so far saved for India. But according to some of the letters of this period that have recently come to light, this does not seem to have been the case. Moreover, since the contract was fraudulent, Mr. Palmer would, one thinks, have managed to free Swamiji from it without difficulty.
*(3) This lady, it turned out, was Mrs. Francis W. Breed of Lynn, Massachusetts, a town near Boston.  She was a member of the Salem Thought and Work Club, and Swamiji had no doubt met her at the house of Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods. (See  Chapter One)
 *(4) To which Detroit lecture Swamiji is referring here is not clear, but it must have been given after he had become free of the inept Mr. Holden as well as of the questionable Slayton. 
*(5) Although prices in 1894 seemed exorbitant to Swamiji, the purchasing power of the dollar in America was, of course, much greater than it is today. As Swamiji himself pointed out (with inverse intent), a decent pair of men's shoes cost $8, a good suit $165 (which last was indeed relatively high). A servant received $2 a day, but that same servant could buy, on sale, a man's winter suit for $6.75, a hundred-piece English porcelain dinner set for $7.50, a coat for $7.00

For almost a year Swamiji labored without the slightest support from his countrymen, and while he earned enough through lecturing to pay his own expenses, there could not have been much left over. For the benefit of those who judged his financial success by the popularity of his lectures and who, for one reason or another, begrudged him any gain, the following item in the Detroit Critic, March 25, pointed out how little he was actually making:

I hear a great deal about the money Kananda is making by his rather sensational campaign in the efforts to propagate the great truths and beauties and spiritual blessings of heathenism in Detroit. The financial gain to Kananda, I happen to know, is almost as meager as the salaries of Christian missionaries sent to India at the instance of the  Foreign Missions departments of our various denominations. The fact is that he is making barely anything. He has been here now some six weeks, and during that time has given a public lecture at the Detroit Opera House, one at the Auditorium, one in a church and one or two in the state. At the first the opera house got about all the money in sight; at the Auditorium, unless Mrs. Bagley made him the present of the use of the building—which seems possible as he has been her guest—he did well if he cleared expenses; at the church I don't know how he came out, probably better than anywhere else. The afternoon talks at private houses which gave him his reputation are as free as air. So Kananda, as I figure it, has done little more the past six weeks than play even and besides, the territory is now worked out. The fact remains, however, that with rapid traveling and large territory he would be a paying attraction.

3

Swamiji stayed with Mr. Palmer for a festive and strenuous week,*(6) toward the end of which Mrs. Bagley understandably became restive. In his letter of March 16 to Mrs. Hale he wrote:

Since my last there has been nothing of interest here. Except that Mr. Palmer is a very hearty jolly good old man and very rich. He has been uniformly kind to me. Tomorrow I go back to Mrs Bagley because I am afraid she is rather uneasy at my long stay here. I am shrewd enough to know that in every country in general and America in particular "she" is the real operator at the nose string.'[21]

One suspects that Swamiji was also surfeited with "good time."

I have returned to Mrs. Bagley's [he wrote to the Hale sisters on March 17] as she was sorry that I would remain so long with Mr. Palmer. Of course in Palmer's house there was real "good time." He is a real jovial heart whole fellow, and likes "good time" a little too much and his "hot Scotch." But he is right along innocent and childlike in his simplicity. He was very sorry that I come away, but I could not help.'[22]


(It should perhaps be noted here that in his later years Mr. Palmer became, for better or worse, an ardent advocate of Prohibition.)


The afternoon talks at private houses that are mentioned above in the Detroit Critic of March 25 electrified the city as much as did his public lectures. Indeed, during them Swamiji spoke on many subjects which did not fall within the scope of the lectures and answered innumerable questions that must have ranged all the way from the conditions of village life in India to the subtleties of Hinduism, refreshing the minds of his listeners with the newness and brilliance of his ideas. Even his most casual comments and observations were quoted far and wide. One of these was published by the Evening News of March 21 :

*(6) In his known letters Swamiji never mentioned Mrs.Thomas W. Palmer, who did exist and was, in her own right, well connected in Detroit. It is probable that she was away at the time, for otherwise she surely would have played a prominent part as hostess to her illustrious guest, in which case Swamiji would have mentioned her in his letters to Mrs. Hale

WAYSIDE STORIES

Curiosity, says our Hindoo visitor, is the most conspicuous trait of the American people; but he added that it is the way to knowledge. This has long been the European estimate of the American, or more strictly the Yankee character, and perhaps the Hindoo's comment was only an echo of what he had heard the Englishmen in India say of the "Yankee."

The News, of course, was consistently adverse to giving Swamiji any credit for independent observation. It is note, worthy, however, that the phrase "our Hindoo visitor" needed no further explanation, so famous had he become in Detroit.

Fortunately Swamiji's afternoon talks are not entirely lost to us. The following article, which appeared in the Detroit Tribune of March 17, was evidently written from notes taken down on Friday afternoon, March 16:


KNEW NOT KIPLING
Kananda Never Heard of Him till He Came Here.
Hardly Agrees with Some of the 
Stories Rudyard Has Told.

The Monk Explains that It is Not
Proper to Talk of the Profession 
of Lalun in India—The Oriental
Custom a Terrible Thing, Kananda Admits.

"Lalun is a member of the most ancient profession in the world. Lilith was her very great-grandmamma, and that was before the days of Eve, as everyone knows. In the west people say rude things about Lalun's profession and write lectures about it, and distribute the lectures to young persons in order that morality may be preserved. In the east, where the profession is hereditary, descending from mother to daughter, nobody writes lectures or takes any notice."

RUDYARD KIPLING.


The story of which the sentences that precede this one are a paragraph, was written in India. They were written by Rudyard Kipling, from whom most of us have learned all that we definitely know about India, with the exception of the fact that India raises wheat enough to be a great competitor of our own farmers, that men work there for two cents a day and that women throw their babies into the Ganges, which is the sacred river of the country.


But Vive Kananda, since he came to this country, has exploded the story about the women of India feeding their babies to the alligators, and now he says that he never heard of Rudyard Kipling until he came to America and that it is not proper in India to talk of such a profession as that of Lalun, out of which Mr. Kipling has made one of his most delightful and instructive tales.


"In India," said Kananda yesterday, "we do not discuss such things. No one ever speaks of those unfortunate women. When a woman is discovered to be unchaste in India she is hurled out from her caste. No one thereafter can touch or speak to her. If she went into the house they would take up and clean the carpets and wash the walls she breathed against. No one can have anything to do with such a person. There are no women who are not virtuous in Indian society. It is not at all as it is in this country. Here there are bad women living side by side with virtuous women in your society. One can not know who is bad and who is good in America. But in India once a woman slips she is an outcast forever, she and her children, sons and daughters. It is terrible, I admit, but it keeps society pure."


"How about the men?" was asked. "Does the same rule hold in regard to them? Are they outcast when they are proven to be unchaste?"


"Oh, no. It is quite different with them. It would be so, perhaps, if they could be found out. But the men move about. They can go from place to place. It is not possible to discover them. The women are shut up in the house. They are certainly discovered if they do anything wrong. And when they are discovered they are thrown out. Nothing can save them. Sometimes it is very hard when a father has to give up his daughter or a husband his wife. But if they do not give them up they will be banished with them, too. It is very different in this country. Women cannot go about there and make associations as they do, here. It is very terrible, but it makes society pure.

Our Great Sin

"I think that unchastity is the one great sin of your country. It must be so, there is so much luxury here. A poor girl would sell herself for a new bonnet. It must be so where there is so much luxury."


Mr. Kipling says this about Lalun and her profession: "Lalun's real husband, for even ladies of Lalun's profession have husbands in the east, was a great, big jujube tree. Her mama, who had married a fig, spent ten thousand rupees on Lalun's wedding, which was blessed by forty seven clergymen of mama's church, and distributed 5,000 rupees in charity to the poor. And that was a custom of the land."


In India when a woman is unfaithful to her husband she loses her caste, but none of her civil or religious rights. She can still own property and the temples are still open to her.


"Yes," said Kananda, "a bad woman is not allowed to marry. She can not marry any one without their being an outcast like herself, so she marries a tree, or sometimes a sword. It is the custom. Sometimes these women grow very rich and become very charitable, but they can never regain their caste. In the interior towns, where they still adhere to the old customs she cannot ride in a carriage, no matter how wealthy she may be; the best that she is allowed is a pair of bullocks. And then in India she has to wear a dress of her own, so that she can be distinguished. You can see these people going by, but no one ever speaks to them. The greatest number of these women is in the cities. A good many of them are Jews, too, but they all have different quarters of the cities, you know. They all live apart. It is a singular thing that, bad as they are, wretched as some of these women are; they will not admit a christian lover. They will not eat with them or touch them—the 'omnivorous barbarians,' as they call them. They call them that because they eat everything. Do you know what that disease, the unspeakable disease, is called in India? It is called 'Bad Faringan,' which means 'the christian disease.' It was the christians that brought it into India: '

"Has there been any attempt in India to solve this question? Is it a public question the way it is in America?"


"No, there has been very little done in India. There is a great field for women missionaries if they would convert prostitutes of India. They do nothing in India—very little. There is one sect, the Veshnava [Vaishnava], who try to reclaim these women. This is a religious sect. I think about 90 per cent of all prostitutes belong to this sect. This sect does not believe in caste and they go everywhere without reference to caste. There are certain temples, as the temple of Jagatnot [Jagannath], where there is no caste. Everybody who goes into that town takes off his caste while he is there because that is holy ground and everything is supposed to be pure there. When he goes outside he resumes it again, for caste is a mere worldly thing. You know some of the castes are so particular that they will not eat any food unless it is prepared by themselves. They will not touch any one outside of their caste. But in this city they all live together. This is the only sect in India that makes proselytes. It makes everybody a member of its church. It goes into the Himalayas and converts the wild men. You perhaps did not know that there were wild men in India. Yes, there are. They dwell at the foot of the Himalayas."


"Is there any ceremony by which a woman is declared unchaste, a civil process?" Kananda was asked.


"No, it is not a civil process. It is just custom. Sometimes there is a formal ceremony and sometimes there is not. They simply make pariahs of them. When any woman is suspected sometimes they get together and give her a sort of trial, and if it is decided that she is guilty then a note is sent around to all the other members of the caste and she is banished.


"Mind you," he exclaimed, "I do not mean to say that this is a solution of the question. The custom is terribly rigid. But you have no solution of the question, either. It is a terrible thing. It is a great wrong of the western world."

On March 13, the Evening News printed the following little item:

CHANCE FOR KANANDA

Another Christian Pastor Touches up His Religion.

A leading catholic clergyman of Detroit, who gives the origin of Buddhism as it is found in the encyclopedias, says the 10 commandments of Buddha were taken from Hebrewism, which spread into India in the reign of Alexander the Great. These 10 commandments are the same as those which Moses found up in the mountain. Here's a chance for Kananda.


Whether Swamiji was aware of this "chance" or not, he gave a very clear answer to the leading Catholic clergyman of Detroit in the lecture he delivered at the Auditorium on Monday evening, March 19, a report of which appeared in both the Journal and the Tribune of March 20. Unfortunately, for it is all we have of this lecture on Buddhism, the report was short. The following is from the Tribune:

AS THE WAVE FOLLOWS WAVE

So Soul Follows Soul, according to Kananda.

Vive Kananda lectured to an audience of about 150 (according to the Journal, 500) at the Auditorium last night upon "Buddhism, the Religion of the Light of Asia." Honorable Don M. Dickinson introduced him to the audience.


"Who shall say that this system of religion is divine and that doomed?" asked Mr. Dickinson in his introductory remarks. "Who shall draw the mystic line?"


He also said that at one time the followers of Buddha were the unwilling allies of the christian religion. Kananda appeared in a robe of orange yellow with a sash-like cord about the waist, and a turban draped out of some eastern cloth of silken texture, the flowing end of which was brought in front over one shoulder.


Vive Kananda reviewed at length the early religions of India. He told of the great slaughter of animals on the altar of sacrifice; of Buddha's birth and life; of his puzzling questions to himself over the causes of creation and the reasons for existence; of the earnest struggle of Buddha to find the solution of creation and life; of the final result.


Buddha, he said, stood head and shoulders above all other men. He was one, he said, [of] whom his friends or enemies could never say that he drew a breath or ate a crumb of bread but for the good of all.


"He never preached transmigration of the soul," said Kananda, "except he believed one soul was to its successor like the wave of the ocean that grew and died away, leaving naught to the succeeding wave but its force. He never preached that there was a God, nor did he deny there was a God.


" 'Why should we be good?' his disciples asked of him.


'Because,' he said, 'you inherited good. Let you in your turn leave some heritage of good to your successors. Let us all help the onward march of accumulated goodness, for goodness' sake.'


"He was the first prophet. He never abused any one or arrogated anything to himself. He believed in our working out our own salvation in religion.


" 'I can't tell (help) you,' he said, on his death bed, 'nor any one. Depend not on any one. Work out your own religion [salvation].'

"He protested against the inequality of man and man, or of man and beast. All life was equal, he preached. He was the first man to uphold the doctrine of prohibition in liquors. 'Be good and do good,' he said. 'If there is a God you have him by being good. If there is no God, being good is good. He is to be blamed for all he suffers. He is to be praised for all his good:


He was the first who brought the missionaries into existence. He came as a savior to the downtrodden millions of India. They could not understand his philosophy, but they saw the man and his teachings and they followed him. "


In conclusion Kananda said that Buddhism was the foundation of the christian religion; that the catholic church came from Buddhism.


This lecture on Buddhism had been advertised as Swamiji's "farewell lecture, " which he no doubt intended it to be, for on March 20 he had an engagement at Bay City, and on March 21 one at Saginaw, relatively small cities in Michigan not far from Detroit. But before he left Detroit Swamiji evidently had to promise his friends to come back as soon as he had filled his out-of town engagements (which will be dealt with in a later chapter). In the Sunday News Tribune of March 18 we read the following item:

Swami Vive Kananda has been prevailed upon to deliver a lecture on "The Women of India" next Saturday evening (March 24) in the Unitarian Church. This is a subject he has not exploited in Detroit, and his immediate friends here expect to be highly entertained and instructed.


The condition of women in India, as has already been seen, was one of the topics of discussion at Swamiji's afternoon talks.

So inspiring and so ennobling must have been his description of the Hindu ideals of womanhood, and so contrary must they have been to missionary propaganda that it is little wonder that Swamiji was asked to make his talks on the subject available to the public. This he did, but unfortunately his lecture on "The Women of India" was reported upon only briefly by the Free Press and the Evening News of March 25, respectively, as follows. (An item in the Journal was a repetition of that in the Free Press.)

WOMEN OF INDIA

In the West Woman is a Wife; in the East a Mother.


Kananda lectured last night at the Unitarian church on "The Women of India." The speaker reverted to the women of ancient India, showing in what high regard they are held in the holy books, where women were prophetesses. Their spirituality then was admirable. It is unfair to judge women in the east by the western standard. In the west woman is the wife; in the east she is the mother. The Hindoos worship the idea of mother, and even the monks are required to touch the earth with their foreheads before their mothers. Chastity is much esteemed.


The lecture was one of the most interesting Kananda has delivered, and he was warmly received.

INDIAN WOMEN

Vive Kananda Lectured upon Them Last Night.

Swami Vive Kananda lectured at the Unitarian Church last night on "The Women of India, Past, Medieval and the Present" He stated that in India the woman was the visible manifestation of God and that her whole life was given up to the thought that she was a mother, and to be a perfect mother she must be chaste. No mother in India ever abandoned her offspring, he said, and defied any one to prove the contrary. The girls of India would die if they, like American girls, were obliged to expose half their bodies to the vulgar gaze of young men. He desired that India be judged from the standard of that country and not from this.


Swamiji did not say everything in this lecture that he had said in his afternoon talks on the same subject. Fortunately, however, someone had the good judgment to take notes at one of those informal gatherings, and thus at least some of the things that Swamiji did not repeat in the lecture were preserved for the Detroit public (and for us) in the following article which appeared in the Tribune of April 1, 1894:


"WOMEN OF INDIA."


Things Kananda Forgot to Say Publicly.
Scraps of Conversation Reported by One of His Listeners

When He Sees a Hindu Girl Kananda "Marvels That God could Make Anything so Exquisite"—Christian Witch vs. Hindu Widow Burning—Things to Read.


While Swami Kananda was in Detroit he had a number of conversations, in which he answered questions regarding the women of India. It was the information he thus imparted that suggested a public lecture from him on this subject. But as he speaks without notes, some of the points he made in private conversation did not appear in his public address. Then his friends were in a measure disappointed. But one of his lady listeners has put on paper some of the things he told in his afternoon talks, and it is now for the first time given to the press:


To the great tablelands of the high Himalaya mountains first came the Aryans, and there to this day abides the pure type of Brahman, a people which we westerners can but dream of. Pure in thought, deed and action, so honest that a bag of gold left in a public place would be found unharmed twenty years after; so beautiful that, to use Kananda's own phrase, "to see a girl in the fields is to pause and marvel that God could make anything so exquisite." Their features are regular, their eyes and hair dark, and their skin the color which would be produced by the drops which fell from a pricked finger into a glass of milk. These are the Hindus in their pure type, untainted and untrammeled.


As to their property laws, the wife's dowry belongs to her exclusively, never becoming the property of the husband. She can sell or give away without his consent. The gifts from any one to herself, including those of the husband, are hers alone, to do with as she pleases.


Woman walks abroad without fear; she is as free as perfect trust in those about her can render her. There is no zenana in the Himalayas, and there is a part of India which the missionaries never reach. These villages are most difficult of access. These people, untouched by Mahometan influence, can but be reached by wearisome and toilsome climbing, and are unknown to Mahometan and Christian alike.

India's First Inhabitants

In the forest of India are found races of wild people very wild, even to cannibalism. These are the original Indians and never were Aryan or Hindu.


As the Hindus settled in the country proper and spread over its vast area, corruptions of many kinds found home among them. The sun was scorching and the men exposed to it were dark in color. Five generations are but needed to change the transparent glow of the white complexion of the dwellers of the Himalaya Mountains to the bronzed hue of the Hindu of India.

Kananda has one brother very fair and one darker than himself. His father and mother are fair. The women are apt to be [fair,] the cruel etiquette of the Zenana established for protection from the Mahomedams keeping them indoors and fairer. Kananda is thirty-one years old.

A Clip at American Men

Kananda asserts with an amused twinkle in his eye that American men amuse him. They profess to worship woman, but in his opinion they simply worship youth and beauty. They never fall in love with wrinkles and gray hair. In fact he is under a strong impression that American men once had a trick—inherited, to be sure—of burning up their old women. Modern history calls this the burning of witches. It was men who accused and condemned witches, and it was usually the old age of the victim that led her to the stake. So it is seen that burning women alive is not exclusively a Hindu custom. He thought that if it were remembered that the christian church burned old women at the stake, there would be less horror expressed regarding the burning of Hindu widows.

Burnings Compared

The Hindu widow went to her death agony amid feasting and song, arrayed in her costliest garments and believing for the most part that such an act meant the glories of Paradise for herself and family. She was worshiped as a martyr and her name was enshrined among the family records.


However horrible the rite appears to us, it is a bright picture compared to the burning of the christian witch who, considered a guilty thing from the first, was thrown in a stifling dungeon, tortured cruelly to extort confession, subjected to an infamous trial, dragged amid jeering to  the stake and consoled amid her sufferings by the bystander's comfort that the burning of her body was but the symbol for hell's everlasting fires, in which her soul would suffer even greater torment.

Mothers are Sacred

Kananda says the Hindu is taught to worship the principle of motherhood. The mother outranks the wife. The mother is holy. The motherhood of God is more in his mind than the fatherhood.


All women, whatever the caste, are exempt from corporal punishment. Should a woman murder, her head is spared. She may be placed astride a donkey facing his tail. Thus riding through the streets a drummer shouts her crime, after which she is free, her humiliation being deemed sufficient punishment to serve as a preventive for further crime.


Should she care to repent, there are religious houses open to her, where she can become purified or she can at her own option at once enter the class of monks and so become a holy woman.


The question was put to Mr. Kananda whether the freedom thus allowed in the joining the monks without a superior over them did not tend to hypocrisy among the order, as he claims, of the purest of Hindu philosophers. Kananda assented, but explained that there is no one between the people and the monk. The monk has broken down all caste. A Brahmin will not touch the low-caste Hindu, but let him or her become a monk and the mightiest will prostrate himself before the low-caste monk.


The people are obliged to take care of the monk, but only as long as they believe in his sincerity. Once condemned for hypocrisy he is called a liar and falls to the depths of mendicancy—a mere wandering beggar—inspiring no respect.

Other Thoughts

A woman has the right of way with even a prince. When the studious Greeks visited Hindustan to learn of the Hindu, all doors were open to them, but when the Mohammedan with his sword and the Englishman with his bullets came their doors were closed. Such guests were not welcomed. As Kananda deliciously words it: "When the tiger comes we close our doors until he has passed by."


The United States, says Kananda, has inspired him with hopes for great possibilities in the future, but our destiny, as that of the world, rests not in the lawmakers of today, but in the women. Mr. Kananda's words: "The salvation of your country depends upon its women."


"The Women of India" was Swamiji's last lecture in the "dynamic city." He wanted now to move on, away from the Midwest. His letter of March 27 to Mrs. Hale, which enclosed two checks for her safekeeping, read:


I am going to Boston in a day or two. I have got 57$ with me. They will go a long way. Something will turn up as it always does. I do not know where I go from Boston. I have written to Mrs. Breed but as yet heard nothing from her. His will be done. Not me but Thou, that is always the motto of my life.


With my eternal gratitude, Love, and admiration for Mother Church and all the dignitaries, I remain your son.[23] 


A few days later something did indeed turn up.


Mrs. Breed wrote to me a stiff burning letter first [he wrote in a letter of March 30 to Mary Hale], and then today I got a telegram from her inviting me to be her guest for a week. Before this I got a letter from Mrs. Smith of New  York writing on her behalf and [on behalf of] another lady Miss Helen Gould and another Dr: to come over to New York. As the Lynn Club wants me on the 17th of next month, I am going to New York first, . . . [24]


Thus, just as Swamiji was about to move on to the East Coast invitations from that area came to him unbidden.

4

As has been pointed out earlier, there was scarcely any outcry in Detroit against Swamiji's long and highly provocative lecture "Christian Missions in India, " which he had delivered in reply to earlier uninhibited criticism. Why this sudden silence? It certainly did not mean that Swamiji's opponents had been overcome by a sense of universal brotherhood and toleration, or, it seems clear, of shame. Indeed, there does not appear to have been any natural cause. One factor, however, that cannot be ignored when trying to understand various reactions to Swamiji's lectures is the tremendous—one might almost say, for lack of a better word, supernatural—power he was able to exert when he so wished, and in this particular instance it would indeed seem that some power had drained away the strength of his opponents. But however that may be, the strange new silence marked a turning point in the attitude of orthodox Christianity toward India. From this time forward few missionaries or clergymen stood up in the pulpits of America and openly made absurd and damning statements in regard to Hinduism, such as had for generations been poisoning the Western mind. This is not to say that all open opposition to Swamiji was suddenly dispensed with. On the contrary, Christian missionaries still indulged in a great deal of propaganda, although the center of their operations was henceforth India rather than America. As far as America was concerned, the opposition went underground where, joining already existing forces, it commenced a whispering campaign in an effort to besmirch Swamiji's character. As he was to write to Alasinga in April, "Of course the orthodox clergymen are against me and seeing that it is not easy to grapple with me, they try to hinder, abuse and vilify me in every way.'[25] Even worse; it was shocking to contemplate, but his enemies, whoever they may have been, not only spread malicious scandal about him in a desperate attempt to discredit him in the eyes of his supporters and followers, but plotted to do away with him altogether.

The following story comes to us from the recorded and published conversations of Swami Vijnanananda, a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, who heard it from Swamiji himself. It was at a dinner in Detroit that Swamiji, about to drink his coffee, saw by his side the vision of Sri Ramakrishna warning him, "Do not drink—it is poisoned." Such a story would perhaps not pass as evidence in the law courts, but when told by Swamiji and retold by Swami Vijnanananda, a great monk, a great knower of God, and a great scholar, we cannot doubt its veracity, nor can we fail to accept it as an indication of the virulent enmity of some individuals toward Swamiji.


"But the Guru is with me," he had written in another connection to Swami Ramakrishnananda in January of 1894, "what could anyone do?'[26]


Swamiji's friends were also unshakably with him. We know from the Life how Mrs. Bagley and her unmarried daughter Helen wrote letters repudiating the slander his enemies had spread in Detroit and elsewhere through anonymous letters and whispering campaigns, incredibly vicious and yet perhaps only to be expected. "It goes without saying," Romain Rolland wrote in his biography of Swamiji, "that they produced the classic accusation of Anglo-Saxon countries, seduction.'[27] The Bagley letters in defense of Swamiji are so eloquent and throw so much light on his stay in Detroit that, although written at a later period, they can, I believe, be quoted here. According to an early copy, the following letter was addressed to a Mrs. Smith; which Mrs. Smith she was is not clear at present, but she  evidently knew Swamiji (though not well) and troubled by gossipers, had sought a statement from Mrs. Bagley that would settle the matter of his probity once and for all and thereby silence his detractors. Writing from Annisquam on June 22, 1894, Mrs. Bagley gave such a statement more than willingly:


You write of my dear friend, Vivekananda. I am glad of an opportunity to express my admiration of his character and it makes me most indignant that anyone should call him in question. He has given us in America higher ideas of life than we have ever had before. In Detroit, an old conservative city, in all the Clubs he is honoured as no one has ever been, and I only feel that all who say one word against him are jealous of his greatness and his fine spiritual perceptions; and yet how can they be? He does nothing to make them so.


He has been a revelation to Christians, . . . he has made possible for all of us a diviner and more noble practical life. As a religious teacher and an example to all I do not know his equal. It is so wrong and so untrue to say that he is intemperate. All who have been brought in contact with him day by day, speak enthusiastically of his sterling qualities of character, and men in Detroit who judge most critically, and who are unsparing, admire and respect him.... He has been a guest in my house more than three weeks, and my sons as well as my son-in-law and entire family found Swami Vivekananda a gentleman always, most courteous and polite, a charming companion and an ever-welcome guest. I have invited him to visit us at my summer-home here at Annisquam, and in my family he will always be honoured and welcomed. I am really sorry for those who say aught against him, more than I am angry, for they know so little what they are talking about. He has been with Mr. and Mrs. Hale of Chicago much of the time while in that city. I think that has been his home. They invited him first as guest and later were unwilling to part with him. They are Presbyterians; . . . cultivated and refined people, and they admire, respect and love Vivekananda. He is a strong, noble human being, one who walks with God. He is simple and trustful as a child. In Detroit I gave him an evening reception, inviting ladies and gentlemen, and two weeks afterwards he lectured to invited guests in my parlour.... I had included lawyers, judges, ministers, army-officers, physicians and businessmen with their wives and daughters. Vivekananda talked two hours on "The Ancient Hindu Philosophers and What They Taught." All listened with intense interest to the end. Wherever he spoke people listened gladly and said, "I never heard man speak like that" He does not antagonize, but lifts people up to a higher level—they see something beyond manmade creeds and denominational names, and they feel one with him in their religious beliefs.


Every human being would be made better by knowing him and living in the same house with him.... I want every one in America to know Vivekananda, and if India has more such let her send them to us.'[28]


And in another letter, dated March 20, 1895, Mrs. Bagley writes to the same friend, who was evidently hearing a great deal of gossip and was inclined to listen:


Let my first word be that all this about Swami Vivekananda is absolute falsehood from beginning to end. Nothing could be more false. We all enjoyed every day of the six weeks he spent with us.... He was invited by the different clubs of gentlemen in Detroit, and dinners were given him in beautiful homes so that greater numbers might meet him and talk with him and hear him talk, . . . and everywhere and at all times he was, as he deserved to be, honoured and respected. No one knew him without respecting his integrity and excellence of character and his strong religious nature. At Annisquam last summer I  had a cottage and we wrote Vivekananda, who was in Boston, inviting him again to visit us there, which he did, remaining three weeks, not only conferring a favour upon us, but a great pleasure I am sure, to friends who had cottages near us. My servants, I have had many years and they are all still with me. Some of them went with us to Annisquam, the others were at home. You can see how wholly without foundation are all these stories. Who this woman in Detroit is, of whom you speak, I do not know. I only know this that every word of her story is as untrue and false as possible.... We all know Vivekananda.Who are they that they speak so falsely? [29]


The following day Helen Bagley lent an indignant voice to Swamiji's defense. To the same Mrs. Smith she wrote:


I am glad to know that the story was not circulated by R—. If I find it possible I wish to see Mrs. S-- and ask her what her authority for such a statement was. I shall do it quietly of course, but I am going to find out for once, if possible, who starts these lies about Vivekananda. These things travel fast, and if once one is uprooted, perhaps these women will stop to think before they circulate a story so readily. If only they would investigate them, they  would find how false they all are. . .[30]


To return to the effect of Swamiji's lecture "Christian Missions in India," it is significant that the only open rejoinder of any importance came from outside Detroit when, on March 21, the Reverend R. A. Hume, the director of a mission in India, wrote an open letter to Swamiji in an obvious but unsuccessful attempt to draw him into a public debate. Swamiji replied briefly to this letter, whereupon Hume, having received little satisfaction, again stated what he considered to be his case, and there, for the time being, the matter rested. This correspondence, which, according to Hume's wish, was published in the Detroit Free Press of April 8, 1894 (and later in pamphlet form by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions), was to lead to a long controversy, in which Swamiji took no part. The Reverend Mr. Hume, who, as readers may remember, had said at the Parliament of Religions: "In a generation all the positions of influence and responsibility will be in the hands of the Christian community of India," wrote his first letter to Swamiji from Auburndale, Massachusetts, on March 21, 1894. It began:


Swami Vivekananda,
My Fellow-countryman from India:

A Detroit Free Press of March 12, 1894, has just been sent me, giving a long report of your address in the Detroit Opera House on March 11. As one who was born in India and has spent most of his life there, who has traveled there extensively, and known leaders of Indian thought in all parts, and seen hundreds of missionaries in their work, I am surprised at many things which you are reported as having said. Therefore I write you this letter and first send it privately, with the hope that in reply you will wish decidedly to modify the impression made by that report. But as that has been printed, I desire afterwards to have this letter printed, and, if you wish, to have your answer also printed.


Much as I should like to speak of many things in your reported address, it seems better to touch only a few points.

The remainder of Hume's letter occupies a column of small type two feet long. As this seems too much to impose upon
the present reader, I shall give a summary of Hume's points. There were eight of them:


1. Hume expressed surprise and regret that the Swami did not have one good thing to say about Christian missionaries in India and declared that the majority of missionaries were college graduates and self sacrificing men and women who spoke the vernaculars better than any other group of foreigners. In defense of their activity he quoted from a report of the director of public instruction in Madras, and also from an appreciative editorial in the Hindu, a daily paper published in Madras for and by Hindus.


2. Hume did not approve of Swamiji's disparagement of Christian converts and stated that whatever insincerity and venality there might be in some was "manifestly due, not to their Christianity but to their Hinduism:


3. Hume was astonished that Swamiji had said that the interest in America in foreign missions was probably due to a decline of Christianity at home. He countered by saying that if Christianity were declining at home, the people would not be so interested in spreading their religion abroad.


4. Hume denied that missionaries vilified the people of India and spread vile falsehoods about them. Some of the stories, he admitted, might not apply to the whole of India, but were true of parts of India that Swamiji had not visited.


5. He then proceeded to give Swamiji an overall picture of the Indian people and their religion, a picture that was ninety nine per cent condemnatory.


6. He further told him what the missionaries were trying to teach: they were trying to teach that God was universal and that Jesus Christ was the only savior.


7. In substantiation of the missionaries' belief that only Christianity could save India, Hume quoted from Kipling: "What's the matter with this country is not in the least political, but an all-round entanglement of physical, social, and moral evils and corruptions, all more or less due to the unnatural treatment of women.... The foundations of their life are rotten-utterly rotten."


8. In conclusion Hume challenged Swamiji to invite his audience to come to India and help the Hindus. "You are not likely," he said, "to get more than a few travelers who would like your help in studying theosophy and jugglery and in seeing the country." The fact was, Hume said, that the Christian missionaries were the only body of foreigners who had come to India and who were willing to serve her.


Swamiji wrote a hurried reply to Hume, confining his remarks, for the most part, to correcting certain statements falsely imputed to him. Other than this he neither modified the Free Press report of his lecture nor repeated it. His letter read as follows:

Detroit,
March 29, 1894

Dear Brother;-- Your letter just reached me here. I am in a hurry, so excuse a few points which I would take the liberty of correcting you in.


In the first place, I have not one word to say against any religion or founder of religion in the world—whatever you may think of our religion. All religions are sacred to me. Secondly, it is a misstatement that I said that missionaries do not learn our vernaculars. I still stick to my statement that few, if any, of them pay any attention to Sanskrit; nor is it true that I said anything against any religious body—except that I do insist on my statement that India can never be converted to Christianity, and further I deny that the conditions of the lower classes are made any better by Christianity, and add that the majority of southern Indian Christians are not only Catholics, but what they call themselves, caste Christians, that is, they stick close to their castes, and I am thoroughly persuaded that if the Hindu society gives up its exclusive policy, ninety per cent of them would rush back to Hinduism with all its defects.


Lastly, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for calling me your fellow-countryman. This is the first time any European foreigner, born in India though he be, has dared to call a detested native by that name—missionary or no missionary. Would you dare call me the same in India? Ask your missionaries, born in India, to do the same—and those not born, to treat them as fellow human beings. As to the rest, you yourself would call me a fool if I admit that my religion or society submits to be judged by strolling globe-trotters or story-writers' narratives.


My brother—excuse me—what do you know of my society or religion, though born in India? It is absolutely impossible—the society is so closed; and over and above, everyone judges from his preconceived standard of race and religion, does he not? Lord bless you for calling me a fellow-countryman. There may still come a brotherly love and Fellowship between the East and the West.

Yours fraternally,[31]
Vivekananda.


In Hume's defense it should be said that Swamiji had been misquoted in the Detroit papers as having said that Christian missionaries in India could not speak the native language. But although we know that he had been referring to Sanskrit and not to the vernaculars, the fact remained that the attempts of the missionaries to speak the languages of the people left much to be desired. Their often incomprehensible jargon was a standing joke among the Hindus. Even Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, the Brahmo leader, an avowed devotee of the Christ, and a great friend of the Christians, emphatically maintained in an article published in the Outlook that the Christian missionaries did not know the vernaculars as they were spoken by the people. A few did, however, attain a working knowledge of the native languages, and with Hume's avowal of this fact Swamiji readily concurred.


But Hume was not content to let the matter drop. His second letter to Swamiji, written on March 31, was largely concerned with the linguistic talents of his colleagues. The important thing, he said, was that the missionaries knew the vernaculars. It did not matter whether or not they knew Sanskrit because even the best Brahmins in India had no real knowledge of that language. The fact was, however, Hume continued, that some missionaries did know Sanskrit. He himself knew four or five men who were well versed in that language. He named them. He then went on to quote again from the Hindu in contradiction of Swamiji's assertion that the lower classes in India were not benefited by Christianity. In conclusion he declared that he looked upon India as his own motherland.


Swamiji did not answer this second letter at all, and because of this he was later criticized as having evaded the main issues.

An article in the Outlook of April 28, 1894, editorialized upon the Hume-Vivekananda letters as follows:

MISSIONARIES IN INDIA

Since the meeting of the Parliament of Religions in Chicago two or three members of that body have devoted themselves to lecturing in various parts of the United States against the missionary work in India. One of them—Vivekananda—has been speaking in Detroit, and, as a result of his lectures, an interesting correspondence has appeared in the "Free Press' of that city. The Hindu monk has met an able and courteous antagonist in the Christian missionary Robert A. Hume. We have seldom read anything more courteous and more utterly conclusive than the letters of Mr. HUme. The Hindu monk unqualifiedly denounced the missionaries; he had not one good thing to say about them. Mr. Hume begins his letter, "My Fellow Countryman from India." He is entitled to begin it in that way because he was himself born in India and has spent the greater part of his life there. [The article goes on to summarize Hume's letter and then continues:]

The reply of the monk is evasive, and closes with the simple assertion that it is not possible for foreigners to know the people of India, that it is not possible for Mr. Hume, even though he was born in that country.... The simple fact, to say the least, is that Vivekananda finds it quite as difficult to understand and appreciate the Christians as he imagines they find it difficult to understand his people.


Actually, as Swamiji said in the course of a letter, he suspected that Mr. Hume was trying to drag him into a public debate, into which he refused to enter. He had no wish to engage in a controversy with men whose outlook was narrow and superficial, for such debate could be nothing but a waste of time and energy. He again expressed his feeling on this subject when, at a later date, he wrote to Mrs. Hale: "I do not care the least for the gambols these men play, seeing as I do through and through the insincerity, the hypocrisy and love of  self and name that is the only motive power in these men.'[32]Swamiji's stand in this matter was fully justified, for later the Reverend Mr. Hume was to show himself for what he was. Sometime in August of 1894 Swamiji wrote to Dharmapala: "A retired missionary in this country wrote me a letter addressing me as 'Fellow-countryman' and tried to create a sensation by quickly printing my brief reply. But you know what the people here think of these gentlemen. This very missionary went to some of my friends in secret and tried to persuade them not to help me in any way. He received only pure contempt from them. I am surprised at this man's behavior. He is a minister of religion, yet what a hypocrite he is!'[33] Nor was the Reverend Mr. Hume satisfied with his attempts to slander Swamiji in America; he later extended his activities to India. On September 8, 1895, Swamiji was to write to Alasinga: "If the missionaries tell you that I have ever broken the two great vows of the Sannyasin—chastity and poverty—tell them that they are big liars. Please write to the missionary Hume asking him categorically to write you what misdemeanours he saw in me, or give you the names of his informants, and whether the information was first-hand or not; that will settle this question and expose the whole thing."[34] There can be little doubt that this is the same Hume with whom we are concerned and with whom Swamiji refused to engage in debate.


Even had Swamiji wanted to give a point by point reply to Hume, he could only have repeated what he had already said many times to American audiences. Moreover Hume's points, though couched in weighty language, were without substance. His central theme (points 5, 6, and 7 of his first letter) was that Hindu religion and culture were all wrong for the Hindus and that conversion to Christianity was their only salvation. Holding this view, it was inevitable that he would express surprise and regret that Swamiji had found nothing right about Christian missionaries (point 1) and that he had disparaged Christian converts (point 2). But Swamiji was convinced that one could not change the indigenous religion and culture of a people without destroying the people themselves. His view was that the missionaries could justify their presence in India only by being of real service to the Indian people and not by simply preaching Christianity to them. In order to render real service, an understanding of the religion and culture of the people was essential. Such understanding, however, was impossible without a sympathetic and respectful approach to Hinduism, which the Christian missionaries refused to make, and therefore Swamiji could not but condemn them. Further, the missionaries alienated the loyalty of the converts to their country and their heritage, directing it toward those who financed missionary projects and also toward the religious heads of the Christian churches, all of whom were foreign. The problem of national loyalty is one of the unfortunate of shoots of Christian missionary activity and one of which Swamiji was undoubtedly aware. There is, moreover, no denying the fact that missionary activity in Oriental countries has gone hand in hand with the conquest of those countries by Western powers. Just as such conquests constitute political and economic colonialism, so Christian conversion has been looked upon as a sort of religious colonialism.


In regard to point 3, Swamiji, as quoted by the Detroit Tribune, had said, "Perhaps the atheism and scepticism at home is pushing the missionaries out all over the world." This was a matter of opinion and not one for debate. There may have been many reasons, very different from the ostensible one, why missionaries went out to foreign lands, and the motives behind  missionary activity were open to various interpretations. Swamiji's could have been a very good one. But that missionaries had spread false and vilifying stories about India (point 4) was a fact. It was one that Swamiji had vouched for many times, and one which he now could only have repeated. Hume's denial of the falsity of these stories was as absurd as his supporting contention that Swamiji did not know India.


Hume's further contention that the Christian missionaries were the only foreigners who had gone to India to "serve" the Indians (point 8) was neither here nor there. Their uniqueness did not necessarily make them either helpful or welcome.


In defense of missionary activity in India, Hume quoted from a report of the director of public instruction, who was, I dare say, an Englishman and a Christian. The director found that the students among Christian converts had a higher degree of English education than the students from Hindu communities. Swamiji was well aware that Christian missionaries provided schools and colleges in India and that, from a practical point of view, such institutions were helpful. But the value of education cannot be judged from a practical standpoint alone. A foreign system of education which is superimposed upon any country is bound to be destructive of that country's own traditions, and the superimposition of English education in particular upon India was in this respect certainly not to her best interests. It was not designed to make its students true upholders of Indian culture and religion; on the contrary it implanted alien ideas in their minds and had the effect of turning them into hybrid products belonging neither to India nor to any other country. From Swamiji's point of view, the schools and colleges of the missionaries only made more complete the process of denationalization begun by Christian conversion. He could hardly, therefore, find them objects of his categorical praise. Indeed, shortly before his death, he expressed the opinion that the introduction of English education in India had set back her progress by at least fifty years.


In addition, Hume quoted from the Hindu, whose Hindu editor, a Mr. G. S. Iyer, had written appreciatively of the missionaries and their work. It should be mentioned, however, that while Mr. Iyer may have been a good editor, it does not follow that he was a good Hindu imbued with and loyal to the ideas and ideals that had sustained his country for millenniums. He and many other Hindus of his time (and of the present time also) were infatuated by Western culture to the neglect and disparagement of their own. The fact is that despite the name of his journal, Mr. Iyer was an opponent of orthodox Hinduism. In an article published in the Vedanta Kesari of January and February 1923, which tells of Swamiji's visit to Madras in 1897, Professor K. Sundararama Iyer writes: "Mr. G. Subrahmanya Aiyer [Iyer] had once been a very orthodox Hindu.... He changed to the opposite extreme of a social revolutionary."


To justify the work of the Christian missionaries, Hume also quoted, of all people, the chauvinistic Kipling. Indeed Mr. Hume's authorities were in themselves enough to disqualify his letter as worthy of serious consideration and reply.


As for his second letter, Hume's statement that few Hindus knew Sanskrit was absurd. India abounded in Sanskrit scholars. Moreover, the large majority of those Hindus who did not know Sanskrit were nonetheless imbued with the age-old philosophy and religion of their country. It was not necessary for the Hindus to be Sanskrit scholars in order to comprehend their own religion, whereas it was essential for the Christian missionaries if they were to understand India and Hinduism and were to be of service to the country. Hume's admission that very few of his colleagues knew Sanskrit was tantamount to an admission that very few understood Hinduism. Nor did Hume say what attitude those few held toward India. Possibly such a disclosure would have been inconvenient.


As regards the missionaries knowing the vernaculars, how many were able to read the religious literature embodied in those languages? And of those who were able, how many read to discover the excellences of the Hindu religion rather than its weaknesses? Perhaps none. The result was, of course, an  almost total misconception of Hindu religion and philosophy.


Except through a thorough reading knowledge of both Sanskrit and the vernaculars there was no way in which the missionaries could learn the inner meaning of Hinduism, for in those days no one in India would have taught the religion of the Vedas to avowed enemies of that religion. While India has always disclosed her spiritual treasures to those who have come in earnestness and with respect, she has always and traditionally hidden them from those who have sought to pry into her religion in order to destroy it. Swamiji was being literal when he said that Hindu society and culture were closed to Hume.


It should be mentioned here parenthetically that in its criticism of Swamiji the Outlook was not just in equating his relation to Christians with the missionaries' relation to the Hindus. Swamiji had a full knowledge of Christianity, he had a deep reverence for Christ and his teachings, and, as he again and again stated, he had not come to America to convert the people to Hinduism. Comparable observations could not be made of the Christian missionaries in India.


As for Hume's contention that the Hindus of the lower classes were benefited by becoming Christians, the fact was that on the whole the benefit was so superficial as to be harmful. Certainly no one could have longed more for the economic betterment of the Indian masses than Swamiji, but not at the cost of their integrity. Cultural suicide should never, in his estimation, be committed for material gain. That had never been and never should be India's way.


But Mr. Hume and others like him were incapable of understanding this. Swamiji did not work on the plane where Hume lived and thought, and it would have been laughable had he engaged in a point by point controversy with him. Nor was there need for Swamiji to reply in any detail to letters such as Hume's, for the controversy was carried on by others. The Hume-Vivekananda letters set off a bitter debate which lasted into the early part of 1895 and which was published in various widely read periodicals such as the Forum, the Arena, the Monist,  and so on. The principal antagonists were, on the missionary side: the Right Reverend Mr. J. M. Thoburn, Missionary Bishop to India and Malaysia, Mr. Fred Powers, Rev. J. M. Mueller, and Rev. E. M. Wherry; and on the Hindu side: Mr. Virchand R. Gandhi and Mr. Purushottam Rao Telang. Every conceivable facet of the subject was anatomized, dissected, thrashed out, and rethrashed until by the end if the American public knew nothing else they at least knew that there were two sides to the matter and that, as Mr. Telan said, "to preach Christianity to the Hindu who had a religion and was civilized before the dawn of history seems . . . the most ridiculous thing on earth—indeed, audacious."


It is not hard to see, when we survey Swamiji's lecture tour through the Midwest, that his visit to Detroit marked its climactic finish. He had by this time spoken to every type of midwestern American, his ideas had spread throughout the "Bible Belt," and there was perhaps not an orthodox minister who was not shaken by them, nor a person ready to benefit from them who was not uplifted. On both the intellectual and spiritual levels, he had poured out enough energy to revitalize a whole nation. He had done a major part of his work, and whether or not he consciously thought of it in this way, we can see from his letters that he knew it was time to move to the East Coast. The fact was that he had said all that was necessary for him to say in his battle with the missionaries, and he could well write to India: "The conflagration that has set in through the grace of the Guru will not be put out.'[35]

4

But was it merely to give battle to the bigots that a prophet of Swamiji's supreme eminence underwent such suffering as his Midwest lecture tour entailed? No doubt a question has been growing in the reader's mind as to the real meaning of his strange winter as well as the period which followed when, released from the clutches of the lecture bureau, he continued to tour the country. Swamiji rarely mentioned the hardships he had to endure, and thus one is apt to forget them or, at least, minimize them. I have already mentioned something of the difficulties of the midwestern tour; but that was not all: throughout his eastern tour his work continued to make rigorous and exhausting demands upon him. A hint of these trials comes from a letter he wrote to India in February of 1895. "In order to give lectures," he confided, "I had often to make my way through snow-covered mountains in the terribly severe winters and had to travel even up to one or two o'clock at night.'[36] From Swami Abhedananda we also learn something of Swamiji's incessant labor. In his lecture "Vivekananda and His Work," the Swami says: "Sometimes he would be invited by people living in different cities hundreds of miles apart to give public addresses on the same day and he would accept in every case, travelling for hours by train or by any available conveyance.'[37]Such traveling, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, was grueling even to a seasoned lecturer and man of the world.

One cannot but ask why Swamiji underwent this ordeal. What did he think and feel during this time? What motives, conscious or unconscious, guided him, and how are we to interpret the significance of this itinerant period in relation to his mission as a whole? As far as I am aware no clear or, satisfactory answers to such questions have ever been set forth. Swamiji was at the peak of his youth and vigor during these many months. They comprised the best time of his life, when his spiritual power was fully matured and his mental and physical energies were still fresh. And it was during these months that he gave of himself unstintingly until, by the end of 1894, his health was already declining and his best energy going. Thus, this lecture-tour period, which extends from the time he first came to America until he settled in New York at the beginning of 1895, deserves, I believe, much more study than it has hitherto been given; for one cannot believe that Swamiji, "who was born on earth," as Sri Ramakrishna said, "to remove the miseries of mankind."[38] gave the best of his youth and power without sufficient reason—a reason commensurate with his gigantic spiritual stature. (It should be mentioned here that while Swamiji's lecture tour cannot be said to have come to a definite end until he settled in New York, the last part of 1894. marks a transition in his attitude toward his American work. In Chapters Eleven and Fourteen the reader will find a discussion of this period.)


One can distinguish in his biographies three interpretations of Swamiji's activities during his tour. First, it is said that he was preaching Vedanta to the West; second, that his primary object was to clear the ground of much that was false and detrimental in American thought, so that later on Vedantic philosophy might flourish in congenial soil; and third, that his motive was primarily to obtain material help for India, and also to destroy the missionary-created prejudice against his country, which choked American generosity and stifled reason. Broadly speaking, all three interpretations have been woven together and considered to be a sufficient explanation of his tour. But a study of this period through material not fully available to his early biographers seems to reveal not only that all three interpretations, whether taken singly or together, miss the mark, but that the first two are not even in accord with the facts.


Judging from what Swamiji himself said and did, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the idea of teaching Vedanta to the West did not fully evolve in his mind until the last part of 1894. It was a complex and profound idea, involving an intimate and mature knowledge of the characteristics and needs of the Western mind. As Swamiji later conceived it, Vedanta was the one unifying force of all the diverse religious, philosophical, and cultural outlooks of man. He showed it to be the philosophy of all religions, the inevitable and ultimate conclusion of science, the justification of all social, moral, psychic, and philosophical efforts of man to realize his own glory, and the method by which that glory might be fully attained. Vedanta, as he conceived it, was India's saving gift to the world, and for this reason he pleaded with his countrymen to become strong in order to give, and to give in order to become strong. In the early part of Swamiji's American visit one does not find this conception of the function of Vedanta in the modern world worked out in his mind and put into practical Form. It was a development that required time.


Although Swamiji's mature conception of his mission was, of course, implicit in all his earlier activities, and although inevitably in all his lectures he taught some Vedanta, whether under that name or not, Vedanta being a part of his very nature, still we cannot read the concepts of 1895 into those of 1893 and 1894 without running headlong into complications.


For instance, even a cursory reading of his letters written during the first nine to ten months of his stay in this country can leave no doubt that his conscious purpose in coming to America was to obtain material help for the masses of India, whose suffering he felt as only he could feel. "With a bleeding heart I have crossed half the world to this strange land, seeking help," he wrote on August 20, 1893,'[39] And again in 1894 he said in his first letter to Swami Ramakrishnananda, "I have come to America to earn money myself, and then return to my country and devote the rest of my days to the realization of this one aim of my life [the regeneration of India]:[40] And in June of that year to the Dewan of Junagad, "Primarily my coming [to America] has been to raise funds for an enterprise of my own.... [The masses] are to be given back their lost individuality. They are to be educated.'[41]And around the same time to the Maharaja of Mysore, "Our duty is to put ideas into [the heads of the poor], they will do the rest. This is what is to be done in India. It is this idea that has been in my mind for a long time. I could not accomplish it in India, and that was the reason of my coming to this country."[42] Again and again Swamiji made similar statements, which do not seem to indicate that he was essentially concerned at this period with spreading Vedanta in the West. The intensity of his desire to obtain American aid for India can be gathered from the fact that although he despaired of earning the money through lecturing, he never gave up the hope of finding help. As late as April 1897 he wrote to Sarala Devi, a niece of Rabindranath Tagore, "My going to the West [again] is yet uncertain; if I go, know that too will be for India. Where is the strength of men in this country? Where is the strength of money?'[43] (It may be noted in passing that in 1951 Swamiji's dream of substantial material help from America to India began to come true. Since that time, America's economic and technical aid to India has on the whole increased greatly, assuming at times magnificent proportions.)


But to say that Swamiji's primary purpose during the first year or so of his visit to America was to obtain help for his motherland either by asking for it directly, as he did prior to the Parliament of Religions, or by earning it little by little through a lecture tour, is not to say that his sole aim in lecturing was a financial one. We find that wherever he went he made it a point not only to describe the manners and customs of the Indian people in their true light, but to explain the ennobling and exalted ideals of the Hindu religion. His effort to correct America's erroneous concept of India was unceasing and at times this in itself seemed to him to be sufficient reason for his having come to the West. "If my coming has done nothing [else]," he wrote in November of 1893 to his friend Haridas V. Desai, the Dewan of Junagadh, "it has done this that Americans have come to know that India even today produces men at whose feet even the most civilized nations may learn lessons of religion and morality.'[44] Further, we find that Swamiji often spoke to the American people of the divinity of man, of the true meaning of religion, and of the essential characteristics of devotion; he spoke also of Buddha and Buddhism, and, above all, he invariably spoke, in one way or another, of his Master's message of the basic unity of all religious aspirations and teachings. But though Swamiji's lectures during his first year or so in this country were necessarily an expression of his own thought and inevitably had a profound effect on the American public, it does not appear that he felt they constituted a specific mission to the West or that he was deliberately and methodically teaching a spiritual philosophy and path to be followed by the American people. Indeed, he himself declared that such teaching, serious and deeply transforming, could not be accomplished through public and itinerant lecturing.


Further, we find that during his lecture tour he disclaimed any such teaching mission. The tour was being made, he told an interviewer in Des Moines in November of 1893, "for the purpose of founding a school in India for the poor, to elevate them from their present unfortunate condition." Some three and a half months later this purpose had not changed: "His mission, he says, is not to proselyte us-to try to make us think as he does," wrote a Detroit journalist, "but to get means to start a college in India." After returning to India in 1897, Swamiji made it clear that his purpose in going to America had not been to preach Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions, or elsewhere, but to seek help for India. In his lecture "My Plan of Campaign," delivered in Madras, he said: "I travelled years all over India, finding no way to work for my countrymen, and that is why I went to America. Most of you know that, who knew me then. Who cared about this Parliament of Religions? Here was my own flesh and blood sinking every day, and who cared for them? This was my first step.'[45] Again during a lecture in India he explained, "My mission in America was not to the Parliament of Religions. That was only something by the way, it was only an opening, an opportunity"[46] We know, moreover, that had it not been for the urging, the insistence, of Professor Wright, Swamiji might well not have attended the Parliament at all.


The fact is that nowhere, either before leaving India or during his first year in this country, does Swamiji speak or write of teaching Vedanta in America or, for that matter, of having a specific religious mission to the people of the West. It is true that in February of 1893 he delivered a lecture in Hyderabad entitled "My Mission to the West." But to judge from the little we know of this lecture,*(7)the word "mission" must, I believe, be understood as "purpose in going" rather than "message" or "spiritual teaching. " In the first edition of the Life Swamiji's biographers have written in regard to this lecture: "Finally he spoke of his Mission, 'which is nothing less than the regeneration of the Motherland,' and he declared that he felt it an imperative duty to go out as a missionary from India to the farthest West, to reveal to the world the incomparable glory of the Vedas and the Vedanta.'[47] During this same period Swamiji had an interview with the Nawab of Hyderabad, in the course of which, it is reported in the Life, "he . . . gave out his intention of going to the West to preach the gospel of the Universal, Eternal Religion.'[48]Whether or not Swamiji actually spoke these exact words, the broad purpose they define is not at all contrary to our present thesis: to reveal to the world the incomparable glory of the Vedas and the Vedanta and to preach the gospel of the Universal, Eternal Religion is in effect what Swamiji did during his first year or so in America, and this was, to his mind, an essential part of his program for the regeneration of his Motherland. "It is for the people of India that I am going to the West," he told his Madras disciples, "-for the people and the poor!'[49] He explained his venture more specifically to Haridas V. Desai, writing after the Parliament of Religions, "Some representative men must come out of India and go to all the nations of the earth to show at least that you are not savages. You may not feel the necessity of it from your Indian home, but believe me, much depends upon that for your nation.'[50]But to reveal the glories of the Vedas and the Vedanta and to preach in a general way the Universal, Eternal Religion was quite a different thing from teaching Vedanta to the American people for their own spiritual benefit. Although Swamiji did undoubtedly benefit America with every word he uttered, the benefit of India was for many months clearly uppermost in his mind.

*(7) In recent times several efforts have been made to find reports of this lecture of February 13, 1893, in the old newspapers and periodicals of Hyderabad. (See, for instance, "Swami Vivekananda in Madras: 1892-93 " by Sri. i Shankari Prasad Basu , Prabuddha Bharata, August 1974, p 295)  The failure of thse efforts to date leads one to suppose that the lecture was not reported by the newspapers of the day. 

In presenting the view that Swamiji did not come to America and did not undertake his lecture tour in order to teach Vedanta to the American people, I am not forgetting that there are some passages in his letters written before the fall of 1894 that might seem contradictory to this thesis. For example, he wrote on December 28, 1893, to Mr. Haripada Mitra, "As regards spirituality, the Americans are far inferior to us, but their society is far superior to ours. We will teach them our spirituality, and assimilate what is best in their society" [51] And in January of 1894 he wrote to Swami Ramakrishnananda, "As our country is lacking in social virtues, so this country is lacking in spirituality. I give them spirituality and they give me money.". [52]Now, there is no question that Swamiji was giving spirituality to the American people, both individually and collectively. But do the above passages indicate that he was intent at the time of writing these letters on teaching Vedanta to Americans? It does not seem that this was what Swamiji was saying, for in both these letters he mentioned his main reason for being in America. "I came to this country . . . to see if I could find any means for the support of the poor in India. If God helps me, you will know by-and-by what those means are,"[53] he wrote to Mr. Mitra. And to Swami Ramakrishnananda, "I do not know how long I shall take to realise my end.... I shall try to earn the wherewithal myself to the best of my might and carry out my plans, or die in the attempt."[54] It would seem that when Swamiji said in these particular letters, and elsewhere during this period, that he was giving spirituality he was simply stating a fact, not explaining his primary purpose.

There are, to be sure, other passages that may seem to indicate that he had undertaken a world-wide mission of religious teaching. During the summer of 1894, for example, he wrote to his brother monks of his desire to spread the message of Sri Ramakrishna "all over the world, "[55] and he urges them to do the same. Again, "We want thousands of men and thousands of women who will spread like wild fire from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, from the North Pole to the South Pole-all over the world.'[56]Yes, it is true that just as Swamiji was giving spirituality to America, he was, as has been pointed out above, spreading his Master's message of the basic unity underlying all religious expression and spiritual striving. Further, he knew that this message must eventually be spread far and wide and with full vigor; and this ideal he naturally set before his brothers, urging them to start to work. But when one reads these and similar passages written during the period in question in their proper context and when one realizes that when they were written the work in India had not even begun, one can, I believe, only see them as indications of the general program Swamiji was developing in his mind for the future and not as statements regarding the work he was presently engaged in.


After considering all that Swamiji said explicitly in regard to his American work in his letters, interviews, and lectures and after taking into consideration the passages that might seem by implication to contradict his own very clear and unequivocal statements, I, for one, cannot but believe that throughout the last part of 1893 and a large part of 1894 he had not embarked upon the broad and world-encompassing mission that he later knew to be his. It appears to have been only toward the end of 1894 and the beginning of 1895 that the fullness of his message to the West began to take shape in his mind and that he settled down to formulate it.


The second interpretation of Swamiji's activities following the Parliament comes from the pen of Swami Kripananda, more generally known as Leon Landsberg, one of the three people in America whom Swamiji initiated into sannyasa. In a dispatch to the Brahmavadin, Swami Kripananda wrote in regard to Swamiji's work: "Before even starting this great mission [of the teaching of Vedanta in the West], it was necessary to first perform the Herculean labour of cleansing this Augean stable of imposture, superstition and bigotry, a task sufficient to discourage the bravest heart, to dispirit the most powerful will. But the Swami was not the man to be deterred by difficulties. Poor and friendless, with no other support than God  and his love for mankind, he set patiently to work, determined not to give up until the message he had to deliver would reach the hearts of truth-seeking men and women.'[57]


Now, there is no gainsaying the fact that one result of Swamiji's lecture tour through America was, as has been seen, to correct much that was erroneous in contemporary religious thought; but to interpret his activities prior to 1895 as a conscious and deliberate attempt to prepare the American mind for the message of Vedanta would imply that he intended all along to remain in the West to deliver that message in its fully developed form. We have seen from some of his letters written in the early part of 1894 that this was not the case. Although later on he at times considered remaining in America through another winter, he did not come to a definite decision in this regard until the last part of 1894. As late as September of that year he wrote to Alasinga, "I hope soon to return to India. I have had enough of this country.'[58]


It would seem, then, that the only warranted interpretation of Swamiji's outer activities during 1893 and most of 1894 is the third and most obvious one. It appears very clear from all the evidence we have at hand that the uppermost motives that guided him were ( 1) to raise funds for the development of his work in India, and incidentally to provide for his self support during his stay in this country, and (2) to give the American people correct ideas of Hinduism, to combat the current misconceptions regarding India, and to inculcate the spirit of tolerance. With these correlated aims in mind, Swamiji joined a lecture bureau as the best means of carrying them out—not as the best means of teaching Vedanta philosophy to the Western world.


In other words, when we analyze the biographies in the light of history and untangle the motives which have been erroneously attributed to Swamiji from these that are in accord with his own statements and activities, we are faced with the strange conclusion that an illumined soul of the greatest magnitude gave his best energies to the task of earning money for India, of explaining Hindu customs and religion to the American people, and of answering questions asked, for the most part, by the ignorant, the bigoted, and the dull! Can we accept this as a complete interpretation of the itinerant period of Swamiji's life in America? Has not the essential significance of his lecture tour somehow been overlooked?


When one reads the lives of saints and sages, it seems clear that the activity of an illumined soul must necessarily be understood on two levels. There is, first, the activity which embraces the visible purposes of his life and which can be seen and comprehended by all in greater or lesser degree. But strenuous and inspired as such activity may be, it occupies only a part of his mind, by far the larger and more potent part operating on a level hidden from our view. Indeed, it would seem that the very speciality of such a person consists in the fact that far beneath his surface mind are depths that are fully awake and fully absorbed in God. It is said that in its deepest levels the mind of a saint is so close to God that His effulgence forms, as it were, its very substance and texture. Surely that vast and silent part of Swamiji's mind, which was at one with God even while he was in the midst of the most "cyclonic" outer life, not only served to inform and illumine his surface mind but had a function of its own which constituted the true and special significance of his mission.


But somehow this most important aspect of Swamiji's life has been given little importance in his biographies, and his life in America has been so presented as to give the reader the impression that he was primarily a "man of action, " a lecturer and a writer-spiritually inspired, it is true, but first and foremost an intellectual genius. We do not see him as he must have been: continually in a transcendental state of consciousness, possessed of innumerable spiritual experiences of the highest order and, while undertaking the most rigorous of active lives, performing on a deeper level a service of incalculable value to the world.


I do not mean here to minimize the importance of Swamiji's external accomplishments. His biographers have understandably placed a great deal of emphasis upon his magnificent vindication of India, his glowing and convincing oratory, and his brilliant exposition of Hinduism in its various phases. All this was certainly the work of great genius and helped to establish India in the eyes of the world as a nation worthy of honor and respect. But I must confess that to Americans Swamiji's patriotism is not so important as it is to his own countrymen. And I believe that as time goes on and India forgets her past degradation and urgent need for national vindication in the eyes of the world, even she will see it as of secondary importance. It would seem, therefore, unfortunate that in the interpretation of Swamiji's mission in this country the patriotic and intellectual aspects have been emphasized, while the most important part—that which sprang from the depths of his being and which had unique and infinitely more lasting value —has been relatively neglected.


It is interesting to note in this connection that the biographies of the other monastic disciples of Sri Ramakrishna are rich with accounts of their exalted spirituality and spiritual experiences, but not so that of Swamiji, although, as is well known, he was acknowledged by his Master and his brother monks to have been spiritually the greatest among them. The biographers themselves tell us this, but then, as though forgetting their own words, they seem to become bedazzled by the radiance of his external accomplishments, almost losing sight of all else. Perhaps so one-sided a portrayal has left the way open to a great deal of misunderstanding.


For instance, some modern interpreters have explained that Swamiji fulfilled the external aspect of Sri Ramakrishna's mission, while the vast legacy of spiritual power was embodied elsewhere. Again, one reads in an essay on Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda that if the latter had not visited Dakshineswar, he might well have become one of India's foremost statesmen. But according to Sri Ramakrishna himself, Swamiji was nityasiddha, eternally perfect, and born to save the world. While it is true that Swamiji had world-shaking gifts and powers of all sorts, surely it was no accident that he came to Dakshineswar and that his genius took the form it did.


Other interpreters, taking Swamiji's activities during the lecture-tour period at their face value, have been led to remark that he could not have been receiving divine guidance at this time, for his mission was apparently of a temporal nature and was directed, moreover, by his own instincts and his own will. It has been suggested that, as far as his world mission is concerned, this early period was one of groping and of indecision and that, all in all, it was more human than divine.


Now, it would seem to me that to criticize Swamiji as not having been divinely guided simply because at times he seemed to decide matters for himself is to fail in appraisal of his spiritual stature. Not only was he divinely guided in the sense of receiving commands from God, but, if we are to believe the opinion of one of his great brother disciples, Swami Shivananda, he was Ishwara-kalpa , literally Godlike. Living as he did on the very borderland of the Absolute, his will was God's will, his every action the action of God. More than this, he was born with the tremendous spiritual power of a world-teacher. Unless this aspect, indeed essence, of his life on earth is brought into prominence how can we even begin to understand and appreciate what he was accomplishing during his long lecture tour?


It is said that by its very nature the deep center of an illumined mind shines out over the relative world, redeeming it and awakening it. Was it not this activity, this shining forth of his being in its full perfection and power, that constituted Swamiji's greatest service to America? 'The fact is that American devotees view him, not as an intellectual expounder of the Vedanta philosophy, but as the first great prophet sent to this country by God. Swamiji himself said that he did not lecture, he gave. Being what he was—a completely illumined soul whose heart cried over the suffering of all men—he inevitably poured out his blessings as the sun pours out its light. In and through everything he said and did, his profound calm and peace, his boundless compassion for all humanity, and his ready ability to awaken spirituality in others loomed large. And it was these things—not his patriotism or his intellectual genius—that captured the heart of this country.


Wherever Swamiji went, whatever his external activities, his mission was, first and always, to impart spirituality to whoever was able to receive it. Such was his very nature. Whether he was answering questions regarding India's customs, lecturing on Hinduism, or castigating the bigoted and hypocritical, whether he was attending social gatherings or making chance acquaintances on trains or in hotels, he was, under all circumstances, shedding divine light. Quite literally he planted the seeds of spirituality deep in the hearts of innumerable human beings, changing the course of their lives forever. So spontaneously and naturally did he do this that at times it seems that he himself was not aware of it. And indeed, such "unawareness" has always characterized prophets and saviors—just as it characterizes the sun, which does not deliberate upon whether or not it will shine. Yet, there was awareness, too; did he not write, probably in March of 1894, "Through this instrument He is awaking the spiritual consciousness in thousands of hearts in this far-off country"?'[59] Sometimes, at least, he well knew his stature and his power.


It was during the period of the lecture tour that Swamiji came in contact with more people than at any other time; and if we accept the Hindu belief that every word of an illumined soul bears everlasting beneficial fruit in the life of the hearer, then we cannot even begin to estimate the spiritual effect of that tour upon the life of America. How many hundreds and thousands received his blessings as he went about from city to city in the Midwest, South, and East we can never know. Possibly even many of those who received them were themselves not conscious of the fact, for blessings often work in secret through inexorable ways. Thus, although the apparent purpose of Swamiji's tour was to collect funds for India, to spread a true  knowledge of her culture and religion, to combat the slander disseminated against her, and to teach religious tolerance, his deeper purpose was to fulfill the divine function of a prophet among the people of the Western world, mingling with as many as possible and blessing all. We in America believe that it was this last which formed the true substance and inner power of his mission to the West, and we believe that America has been divinely favored.


Perhaps of all his interpreters Swami Abhedananda, who knew Swamiji as he was in this country, came closest to the American evaluation of him when, in his lecture before the Vedanta Society of New York on March 8, 1903, he said: "The preachers of truth are very few, but their powers are felt by those who happen to come within the atmosphere of their divine personality. Such a preacher of truth occasionally appears like a gigantic comet above the horizon, dazzling the eyes and filling the hearts of ordinary mortals with wonder and admiration, and silently passes away into the invisible and unknown realms of the universe. The late Swami Vivekananda was one of those great comets who appeared in the spiritual firmament once perhaps after several centuries."[60]


Yes, truly Swamiji was in the fullest sense a prophet sent by God to America. He was a prophet who prepared us to meet the modern age, which not only needs the philosophy of Vedanta to solve its many and complex problems but requires thousands of spiritually awakened people to put that philosophy into practice and make it a living force in the future history of the world. And since such a prophet can fulfill his function only by mingling with the people, blessing them through his very presence, it would seem strange had Swamiji not traveled here and there, enduring untold hardships and giving of himself without stint. Only thus could he quicken and transform the inner life of this nation; and this in truth is what he did.


It was only after having fulfilled this essential part of his prophetic mission that Swamiji settled down in New York to establish a center, to give Vedanta a definite intellectual form, to write books, and to train disciples. One might well say that during the first sixteen months of his American visit he lit the fire of spirituality in innumerable hearts, and then, during the next sixteen months, built up a legacy of spiritual and philosophical knowledge by which that fire might be fed for centuries to come.


If the reader agrees with this interpretation of Swamiji's activities during 1893 and 1894, then he will also agree that they constitute an essential part of his function as a divine prophet and that this period during which he moved among the people of America, talking with them and blessing them, formed one of the most important parts of his entire mission to the West.


ⓘ
[1].Complete Works, 8 : 349.
[2].Complete Works, 8 : 301.
[3].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, March 10, 1894, Sen Col.
[4].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, March 10, 1894, Sen Col.
[5].Complete Works, 8 : 300.
[6].Complete Works ., 8 : 301-2.
[7].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, February 14, 1894, Sen Col.
[8].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale., February 20, 1894, Sen Col.
[9].Complete Works, 8: 302.
[10].Complete Works., 8:302-3; the wording of this passage is taken from a copy of the original letter, SN Col.
[11].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, April 10, 1894, Sen Col.
[12].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale., March 16, 1894, Sen Col.
[13].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. K. T. Woods, October 10, 1893, VSNC.
[14].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, November 3, 1893, Sen Col.
[15].Complete Works, 6 : 251-52.
[16].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, February 22, 1893, Sen Col.
[17].Complete Works, 5 : 37.
[18].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, March 27, 1894, Sen Col.
[19].Complete Works, 5: 25.
[20].Complete Works., 8:309.
[21] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, March 16, 1894, Sen Col.
[22] Complete Works, 7 :459. (See notes for chap. 5, p. 285
[23] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, March 27, 1894, Sen Col.
[24] Complete Works, 8:304.
[25] Complete Works., 5 : 31.
[26] Complete Works., 6 : 252.
[27] Romain Rolland, Prophets of the New India, p. 326, note 17.
[28] Life, 1 : 491-92.
[29] Life., pp. 403-4.
[30] Life p. 404.
[31] Complete Works, 7 : 460-61.
[32] Complete Works., 8 : 315.
[33] Complete Works 5:59
[34] Complete Works 5 • 95*
[35] Complete Works6 : 270.
[36].Complete Works 6:299.
[37].Swami Abhedananda, Vivekananda and His Work, pp. 20-21.
[38].Life, 1 : 76.
[39].Complete Works, 5:16.
[40].Complete Works., 6 : 255.
[41].Complete Works 8:306, 307.
[42].Complete Works 4:362-63.
[43].Complete Works5: 128.
[44].Complete Works8 : 326. (The year of this letter has been wrongly given in the Complete Works as 1894. It was clearly written shortly after the Parliament of Religions. See note (f) for chapter three, p. 186.
[45].Complete Works 3:226.
[46].Complete Works 3:310.
[47].Life, 1st ed., vol. 2, p. 246. (This passage does not appear in later editions of the Life.)
[48].Life ., p. 245. In subsequent editions of the Life the words the Eternal Religion read the Universal, Eternal Religion. The first venion is perhaps closer to Swamiji’s own words.
[49].Life., p. 278.
[50].Complete Works, 8 :326.
[51].Complete Works., 5:27.
[52].Complete Works 6:255.
[53].Complete Works5:27.
[54].Complete Works6:255.
[55].Complete Works 6:289.
[56].Complete Works 6:267.
[57].Quoted in Life, 2:63.
[58].Complete Works, 5:44.
[59].Complete Works., 6:283 (variant translation).
[60].Swami Abhedananda, op. cit., p. g.


↑ Contents

APPENDIX A

Meetings with Mme Calve and John. D. Rockefeller

While it is now fairly certain that Swamiji and Mme Calve did not meet in Chicago in 1894, there is at present no certainty regarding what year their first meeting took place. It is thought by some that it was in November of 1899. In opposition to this is the fact that the circumstances surrounding Swamiji's stay in Chicago at that time were quite different from those described in Calve's memoirs; for one thing, he was not then lecturing. Another possibility is that they first met in the early part of April of 1896, when, also, they were, for a few days at least, both in Chicago, Calve singing and Swamiji holding classes. It is possible that he was living at this time with Mr. and Mrs. Milward Adams, who almost certainly knew the famous opera star, Mr. Adams being manager of the Auditorium Opera House. On the whole, however, the date of Calve's first meeting with Swamiji is still so uncertain that I believe it best to let the story remain as a part of this volume until some conclusive evidence shows us where it more properly belongs.

In whatever year the following story took place, we are indebted for it to the late Mme Paul Verdier of Paris and San Francisco, for it was to her that Calve confided more details of her first meeting with Swamiji than she chose to tell in her published memoirs. Shortly after hearing the account, Mme Verdier jotted down Calve's words, and it is these notes that she shared with us.

When she first met Swamiji, Emma Calve was visiting Chicago with the Metropolitan Opera Company. In the 1890s she was at the peak of her career, enjoying a tremendous success in Europe and New York with her dramatic interpretation of the role of Carmen. The world was at her feet; she was entertained, as are most celebrities, by the cream of society, and had become friendly with whoever it was Swamiji was staying with at the time (most likely not the Hales). But Calve, the toast of two continents, was possessed of a temperament that rarely makes for happiness. Tempestuous, headstrong, and sensuous, she was, it would seem, frequently involved in emotional attachments. The most recent and most deeply felt of these had just come to an unhappy end, leaving her desolate. Her only comfort was her daughter, who had accompanied her to Chicago and upon whom she lavished her love. The following is Mme Calve's story of her first meeting with Swamiji and of the circumstances surrounding it, as recounted in Calve's autobiography and in Mme Verdier's notes:

My Life: . . . [Swamiji] was lecturing in Chicago one year when I was there; and as I was at that time greatly depressed in mind and body, I decided to go to him.l

Mme Verdier's Notes: She [Calve] told me that one evening at the opera where she was singing Carmen her voice had never been so beautiful, and although she Felt nervous going to the theatre, she had after the first act a tremendous success.

During the first intermission she suddenly felt terribly depressed and thought she would not continue the second act, but with a great effort she succeeded in getting ready, and although she had the impression she would not be able to sing, she sang magnificently. Right after the second act, coming back to her dressing room she almost collapsed and asked the manager to announce she was ill. She was more depressed than before and had difficulty in breathing. The manager and people around her insisted so, that finally she continued and was almost carried to the stage for the last act. She told me that at that minute she made the greatest effort of her life to finish the performance. She also said that it was the day she sang her best and the public gave her a tremendous ovation. She ran to her dressing room without waiting for the applause, and when she saw several people and the manager waiting for her with sad faces, she knew something tragic had happened.

The tragedy was that her daughter, who had been in a house of a friend that evening, was dead, having been burned to death during the performance of Carmen. Calve collapsed.

Then came the period of days during which she wanted to commit suicide. Her friend Mrs. X was constantly with her, trying to comfort her, asking, begging her to come to her house to see Swamiji. Calve constantly refused. She told me that her only thought was to commit suicide by throwing herself in the lake, and each time as though in a daze she found herself on the road to Swamiji's house. She said it was like awaking from a dream. And each time she came back home. Finally, the fourth or fifth time, she found herself on the threshold of her friend's house, the butler opening the door. She went in and sat in a deep chair in the living room. She was there for a while as in a dream, she said, when she heard a voice coming from the next room saying, "Come, my child. Don't be afraid," And automatically she got up and entered into the study where Swamiji was sitting behind a large table-desk.2

My Life: . . . Before going I had been told not to speak until he addressed me. When I entered the room, I stood before him in silence for a moment. He was seated in a noble attitude of meditation, his robe of saffron yellow falling in straight lines to the floor, his head swathed in a turban bent forward, his eyes on the ground. After a pause he spoke without looking up.

"My child," he said, "What a troubled atmosphere you have about you, Be calm. It is essential."

Then in a quiet voice, untroubled and aloof, this man who did not even know my name talked to me of my secret problems and anxieties. He spoke of things that I thought were unknown even to my nearest friends. It seemed miraculous, supernatural.

"How do you know all this?" I asked at last. "Who has talked of me to you?"

He looked at me with his quiet smile as though I were a child who had asked a foolish question.

"No one has talked to me," he answered gently. "Do you think that it is necessary? I read in you as in an open book: '

Finally it was time for me to leave.

"You must forget," he said as I rose. "Become gay and happy again. Build up your health. Do not dwell in silence upon your sorrows. Transmute your emotions into some form of external expression. Your spiritual health requires it. Your art demands it"

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 clear and calming thoughts. I became once again vivacious and cheerful, thanks to the effect of his powerful will. He did not use any of the hypnotic or mesmeric influences. 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 acquiescence, so that one could give complete and undivided attention to his words.

(Records of the death of Mme Calve's daughter would, of course, help us to determine the year of this interview, but any such records seem to be as unavailable as are records of the daughter's birth. Indeed, as has been pointed out by skeptics, one can only take Mme Calve's off- the-record word for it that she had a daughter—but who could have known better than she?)

There is yet another story which Mme Calve told regarding this period of Swamiji's life. Unfortunately we are not in a position to authenticate it, but it is not in essence an unlikely story, and at the risk of providing material for the start of a legend I think it should be made available to Swamiji's followers. It is related in Mme Verdier's journal from notes taken during conversations with Mme Calve and reads as follows:

Mr. X, in whose home Swamiji was staying in Chicago, was a partner or an associate in some business with John D. Rockefeller. Many times John D. heard his friends talking about this extraordinary and wonderful Hindu monk who was staying with them, and many times he had been invited to meet Swamiji, but, for one reason or another, always refused. At that time Rockefeller was not yet at the peak of his fortune, but was already powerful and strong-willed, very difficult to handle and a hard man to advise.

But one day, although he did not want to meet Swamiji, he was pushed to it by an impulse and went directly to the house of his friends, brushing aside the butler who opened the door and saying that he wanted to see the Hindu monk.

The butler ushered him into the living room, and, not waiting to be announced, Rockefeller entered into Swamiji's adjoining study and was much surprised, I presume, to see Swamiji behind his writing table not even lifting his eyes to see who had entered.

After a while, as with Calve, Swamiji told Rockefeller much of his past that was not known to any but himself, and made him understand that the money he had already accumulated was not his, that he was only a channel and that his duty was to do good to the world—that God had given him all his wealth in order that he might have an opportunity to help and do good to people.

Rockefeller was annoyed that anyone dared to talk to him that way and tell him what to do. He left the room in irritation, not even saying goodbye. But about a week after, again without being announced, he entered Swamiji's study and, finding him the same as before, threw on his desk a paper which told of his plans to donate an enormous sum of money toward the financing of a public institution.

"Well, there you are," he said. "You must be satisfied now, and you can thank me for it "

Swamiji didn't even lift his eyes, did not move. Then taking the paper, he quietly read it, saying: "It is for you to thank me." That was all. This was Rockefeller's first large donation to the public welfare.

The reader can make of this what he will. Except for the fact that it was in the mid-1890s that Rockefeller entered upon his career of philanthropy, there is nothing in the published accounts of his life to corroborate the story that he was inspired by Swamiji. But on the other hand, this is so intimate a story that it is unlikely it would find its way into the biographies of a financier. We do know that in his own way Rockefeller was interested in religion, and once, almost as though echoing Swamiji, he said, explaining the reason behind his monumental philanthropies: "There is more to life than the accumulation of money. Money is only a trust in one's hands. To use it improperly is a great sin. The best way to prepare for the end of life is to live for others. That is what I am trying to do."3

APPENDIX B

Minneapolis Tribune, Thursday, November 23, 1893

A PRIEST OF BRAHMA

Swami Vive Kananda Here on a Mission

One of the Delegates to the Parliament of Religions at the World's Fair Visits Minneapolis—Enthusiastic over the Beauties of Minnehaha—A Benefactor to the Masses of India—Projects for the Betterment of the Condition of His People—An Interesting Talk to THE TRIBUNE—Lecture for the Peripatetic Literary Club.

A foreigner of dignified position, a Brahmin priest, Swami Vive Kananda, is a guest in the city for a few days. He was one of the delegates to the Parliament of Religions at Chicago and arrived in Minneapolis Tuesday [November 21] to remain over Friday, when he is to give a lecture in the evening at the First Unitarian Church for the Peripatetic Literary Club. He is stopping with friends during his stay.

Vive Kananda is an oriental in everything but dress, and this he will be tomorrow evening when he will give his lecture in the native priest costume. He is a man of little more than 30 years, with dark brown skin, coal black hair and jetty eyes. He is of medium height, compactly built, and with a highly intelligent cast of countenance from which beams kindliness and interest when in pleasant conversation. When Vive Kananda was found by THE TRIBUNE yesterday afternoon he was smoking a cigar, and he blew the smoke in grateful enjoyment far above his head. He had just returned from a trip to Minnehaha, and his frequent lapses into silence were interrupted by the emphatic expression "Hiawatha." He had read Long-fellow's poem far over in his Indian home in Calcutta, and he was delighted to have visited the scene of the legend. Kananda is not merely a casual visitor to this part of the world. He comes with a purpose strong, deep and earnest. He comes in the guise of a benefactor to the masses of India, the lower class people who dwell in ignorance and poverty.

In his native land he is one of thousands of mendicant monks who travel from village to town preaching the Brahmin faith. As a priest Vive Kananda is above all caste, and, in his own words, "I am my own man. I have no church. I bow to no one: " His official title, "Swami" a word of Sanscrit origin, designates his position as "master," or as rabbi in other nations. He uses the English language with happy ease, and his speech is slow and dignified, while he speaks in low musical tones. His mission to this country is to obtain funds by his lectures, to return to India and establish an institute of learning for the ignorant masses who swarm through the country. In this errand he is an evangel, for no one has ever yet endeavored to better the condition of the lower classes.

Told by Vive Kananda, the story of his mission and his coming to America is pleasing to hear. "I am, as you know " he says, "a monk, who with thousands of others travels about the land speaking to the people. As I traveled I was called to do a work that no one else had even attempted. I was called to journey into the new world. The people of India are a depressed race, and there are two reasons for their condition—their ignorance and political oppression. They can never relieve themselves of the second calamity until they have overcome the first. So I undertake a pilgrimage to interest distant people, and when the time comes I shall return to establish a school for the masses."

Pressed further for details of his plan and for the location of his school, Kananda smiled. "It is in my brain yet, and I do not know where it will be," he said.

"I shall have thousands of workers to help me in the cause. India has her universities, and one of them contains 20,000 students, but it is only the higher class people who reap their benefit. The poor people work in the fields and labor, but education and the practical things of life are not their reward. I wish to start a school, and this is how I shall do it. These brother missionaries who are traveling about the country I shall call upon them and they will help. When the people gather in the fields at night and sit smoking after the toil of the day, a missionary will join their number, and little by little they will learn some of the things it will be good for them to know. In this way my school will be started. Then I shall have a training college, where sons of farmers will learn to be missionaries, and soon they, too, shall teach and by and by there will be a group of schools and colleges."

Vive Kananda grew more earnest as he dwelt upon his plans, and when accused in a friendly way of being an apostle in his work, he replied: "Apostle or no apostle, I do the work and the people of my land will be aided to help themselves." Kananda turns to America when he cannot and will not look to England, and his stay in this country will be regulated by the sympathy with which he meets.

His lecture tomorrow evening will be on the subject, "Brahminism," and while the audience will be limited to members and friends of the Peripatetics, he will probably remain in the city for a few days, since both Rev. Mr. Simpsons and Dr. Tuttle are desirous that the people of their churches shall hear him speak. In his travels through this country he conforms himself to the customs of the people with whom he is, and at table, in dress or conversation he is an agreeable and interesting person to meet. With one phase of missionary work as conducted in foreign lands he is not in sympathy, since he believes that the men who are most frequently employed as foreign missionaries are not always the worthiest for the position and place they are called upon to fill.


↑ Contents

Volume 2

2.1 THE EASTERN TOUR – I

“I am wearied of lecturing and all that nonsense,” Swami Vivekananda had written from Detroit to the Hale sisters shortly after his powerful and pivotal lecture of March 11, in which he had directly replied to the orthodox Christian denigration of India. “This mixing with hundreds of different varieties of the human animals male and female has disturbed me - I would 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—a very select few, and let them carry and sow my ideas broadcast if they will—not I. It is only just and a division of labour."[1] But despite Swamiji's weariness and his disappointed hope of earning money for India through lecturing, it was evidently the divine will that he himself should carry and scatter his ideas broadcast for a longer time and over a wider space. There was no rest for him; indeed, the division of labor he wanted was not to come about fully during his lifetime.

Prophets, it is said, do not make detailed plans; but when one views their life in retrospect, one can see a broad plan unfolding itself. No sooner had Swamiji completed his mission in the Midwest, with its climatic weeks in Detroit, then he began to receive invitations from the East Coast. He had now broken with the Slayton Lyceum Lecture Bureau and was free to accept or reject whatever lecturing engagements presented themselves; he was also free to return to India, and considered doing so. But despite his growing disgust with continuous public lecturing, he chose to remain in America, for a few months at least.

We cannot know, in this connection, whether he received direct guidance from Sri Ramakrishna or whether he was prompted by his own knowledge and will, but in any case his guidance came from a divine source. Of this fact he himself was always sure. “Through the Lord’s will,” he wrote Swami Ramakrishnananda, “the desire for name and fame has not yet crept into my heart, and I dare say never will. I am an instrument, and He is the operator.... Thousands of men and women here love and revere me.’He makes the dumb eloquent and makes the lame cross mountains.’ I am amazed at His grace. Whatever town I visit, it is in an uproar. They have named me ‘the cyclonic Hindu.’ Remember, it is His will —I am a voice without a form.'[2] Again he writes: “I am now making for the east. He knows where the bark will reach the shore.”[3]Thus, moving as he was led, Swamiji left Detroit for New York at the end of March.

But before relating what is today known of his life on the East Coast, let us turn back a moment to fill in a blank spot in the story of his midwestern tour. In the last chapter of volume one it was briefly mentioned that during his six-weeks stay in Detroit he made two side trips, one on February 23 to Ada, Ohio, and the other on March 20 and 21 to Bay City and Saginaw, Michigan.

When Swamiji visited Ada he was still under contract with the lecture bureau, which had no doubt chosen the small town as a likely place for a lecture because, being the seat of the Ohio Northern University, a Methodist college founded in 1871, it was apt to provide a large audience. It did. The Ada Record, a weekly and the town’s only contemporary newspaper, gives an account of Swamiji’s lecture there. Although the eyes of the reporter were none too keen when looking at the speaker, one can nevertheless visualize through them the audience—an interested, alert, and perhaps astonished group of people who bombarded Swamiji with all sorts of questions, most of which evinced a real interest in Hinduism.

The following announcement and article are from the Ada Record of February 21 and 28 respectively. Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindu Monk who is to his country what Joseph Cook is to ours, will lecture in the opera house next Friday evening, February 23, on the “Divinity of Man.”

2

THE LECTURE

The Lecturer did not appear on the platform until 8:30. In personal appearance he is well built, smooth faced, about middle age. His jaws are broad, eyes small, bright and close together. His skin is very dark. His choice of words showed him to be an educated man and we have heard that he was a graduate of an American college.


He stated that the fundamental basis of all religions was belief in the soul which is the real man, and something beyond both mind and matter, and proceeded to demonstrate the proposition. The existence of things material are dependent on something else. The mind is mortal because changeable. Death is simply a change.


The soul uses the mind as an instrument and through it affects the body. The soul should be made conscious of its powers. The nature of man is pure and holy but it becomes clouded. In our religion every soul is trying to regain its own nature. The mass of our people believe in the individuality of the soul. We are forbidden to preach that ours is the only true religion. Continuing the speaker said: “I am a spirit and not matter. The religion of the West hopes to again live with their body. Ours teaches that there can not be such a state. We say freedom of the soul instead of salvation.” The lecture proper lasted but 30 minutes but the president of the lecture committee had announced that at the close of the lecture the speaker would answer any questions propounded him. He gave that opportunity and liberal use was made of the privilege. They came from preachers and professors, physicians and philosophers, from citizens and students, from saints and sinners, some were written but dozens arose in their seats and propounded their questions directly. The speaker responded to all — mark the word, please — in an affable manner and in several instances turned the laugh on the inquirer. They kept up the fusillade for nearly an hour; when the speaker begged to be excused from further labor there yet remained a large pile of unanswered questions. He was an artful dodger on many of the questions. From his answers we glean the following additional statements in regard to the Hindu belief and teachings: They believe in the incarnation of man. One of their teachings is to the effect that their God Krishna was born of a virgin about 5000 years ago in the North of India. The story is very similar to the Biblical history of Christ, only their God was accidentally killed. They believe in evolution and the transmigration of souls; i.e., our souls once inhabited some other living thing, a bird, fish or animal and on our death will go into some other organism. In reply to the inquiry where these souls where these souls were before they came into the world he said they were in other worlds. The soul is the permanent basis of all existence. There was no time when there was not God, therefore no time when there was no creation. Buddists [sic] do not believe in a personal god; I am no Buddist. Mohammed believes in Christ but denies that he is God. The earth was peopled by evolution and not special selection [creation]. God is the creator and nature the created. We do not have prayer save for the children and then only to improve the mind. Punishment for sin is comparatively immediate. Our actions are not of the soul and can therefore be impure. It is our spirit that becomes perfect and holy. There is no resting place for the soul. It has no material qualities. Man assumes the perfect stage when he realizes he is a spirit. Religion is the manifestation of the soul nature. The deeper they see is what makes one holier than another. Worship is feeling the holiness of God. Our religion does not believe in missions and teaches that man should love God for love’s sake and his neighbor in spite of himself. The people of the West struggle too hard; repose is a factor of civilization. We do not lay our infirmities to God. There is a tendency toward a union of religions.


Evidently the St. Louis rumor that Swamiji was a “graduate of an American college” (chapter four) had rapidly filtered through the Midwest. Although this news must have brought comfort to Ada’s Methodist university, the Ada Record was no doubt innocent in its repetition of what had been malicious in origin. It was innocent and also in its comparison of Swamiji with Joseph Cook, one of America’s most popular fire-and-brimstone orators who, at the Parliament of Religions, had had no patience with the motto “Tolerance, Fraternity.” The comparison was, in a sense, a compliment, for it was no doubt made in regard to the Reverend Mr. Cook’s fame and influence, rather than to his lectern-smiting personality.


Swamiji’s engagements in Bay City and Saginaw, Michigan, in the last part of March were, unlike that in Ada, not made by the Slayton Lyceum Lecture Bureau but, very possibly, by Mr. Holden’s successor. In any event, they must have been booked prior to March 16, as it seen from the following item that appeared in the Detroit Tribune of March 17:

3

KANANDA AT BAY CITY

Bay City, Mich., Special, March 16— Kananda, the Hindu monk, is booked for a lecture here next Tuesday evening. He could not secure any of the local churches and his lecture will be given at the old roller skating rink on Washington Avenue.


While it is conceivable that the Bay City clergy refused Swamiji a roof “the old roller skating rink” sounds as though he were forced to lecture in a broken-down, abandoned, barn-like structure, and this may have been the impression that the Bay City reporter meant to convey. Actually, however, the term had no such connotation, for the old roller-skating rink was currently the Bay City Opera House, where very likely all manner of performances—even—operas were held. There was nothing wrong with the old rink.


Although the Bay City clergy may have turned their backs on Swamiji and cautioned their flocks to do likewise, other sections of the population welcomed their distinguished visitor with joy. The papers heralded his coming with items such as: “All about Hindooism at the Opera house this evening,” and “Bay City people have a rare opportunity listening to an exponent on Paganism, Tuesday evening, March 20, at Washington Avenue rink. The following more lengthy reports are taken from two Bay City newspapers:


Reserve seats on sale for Vive Kananda’s lecture at the Opera House tomorrow evening [Tuesday, March 20]. No extra charge

The Hindoo monk has drawn larger audiences in Detroit than R.G.Ingersoll. His marvelous oratory, perfect English and depth of thought has attracted the attention of educated people throughout the country. He represented his people in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago.[4]


The learned Hindoo monk Swami Vive Kananda who has crated such furor in the religious world, will lecture at the Opera house this evening, and indications are that he will have a large and cultivated audience.[5]

4

A HINDOO MONK

He gave an interesting lecture at the Opera House last evening. It is rarely that Bay City people have the opportunity of listening to a lecture similar to the one given last evening by Swami Vive Kananda. The gentleman is a native of India, having been born at Calcutta about 30 years ago. The lower floor of the Opera house was about half filled when the speaker was introduced by Dr. C.T.Newkirk. During the discourse, he scored the people of this country for worship of almighty dollar. It is true that there is caste in India. There, a murderer can never reach the top. Here, if he gets a million dollars he is as good as any one. In India, if a man is a criminal once, he is degraded forever. One of the great factors in the Hindoo religion Is its tolerance of other religions and beliefs. Missionaries are much more severe on the religions of India than upon that of other Oriental countries, because the Hindoos allow them to be, thus carrying out one of their cardinal beliefs, that of toleration. Kananda is a highly educated and polished gentleman. It is said that he was asked in Detroit if the Hindoos throw their children into the river. Whereupon, he replied that they do not, neither do they burn witches at the stake. The speaker lectures in Saginaw tonight.[6]

SWAMI VIVE KANANDA THE NOTED HINDOO MONK 

          IN BAY CITY YESTERDAY 

Lecture at the Opera House on the Religion

   of His Country — His Opinion of America

Bay City had a distinguished visitor yesterday in the person of Swami Vive Kananda, the much talked of Hindoo monk. He arrived at noon from Detroit where he has been the guest of Senator Palmer and proceeded immediately to the Fraser house. 


There he was seen by a reporter for The Tribune. Kananda is striking in appearance. He is nearly six feet tall, must weigh 180 pounds and is splendidly proportioned. He has a clear olive comlexion and beautiful black hair and eyes and clean shaven face. His voice is soft and well modulated, and he speaks English remarkably well; in fact better than the majority of Americans. He is polite to a noticeable degree.


Kananda spoke entertainingly of his country and his impression of this country. He came to America via the Pacific and will return via the Atlantic. “This is a great land,” he said, “but I wouldn’t like to live here. Americans think too much of money. They give it preference over everything else. Your people have much to learn. When your nation is as old as ours, you will be wiser. I like Chicago very much and Detroit is a nice place.”


Asked how long he intended remaining in America, he replied: “I don’t know. I am trying to see most of your country. I go east next and will spend some time at Boston and New York. I have never been there.


Concerning himself the easterner said he was 30 years old. He was born at Calcutta and educated at a college in that city. His profession calls him to all parts of the country, and he is at all times the guest of the nation.


“India has a population of 285,000,000,” he said. “of these about 65,000,000 are Mohammedans and most of the others Hindoos. There are only about 600,000 Christians in the country, and of these at least 250,000 are Catholics. Our people do not, as a rule, embrace Christianity; they are satisfied with their own religion. Some go into Christianity for mercenary motives. They are free to do as they wish. We say let everybody have his own faith. We are a cunning nation. We do not believe in bloodshed. There are wicked men in our country and they are in the majority, same as your country. It is unreasonable to expect people to be angels.”

5

ViveKananda will lecture in Saginaw to-night.

                 Lecture Last Night

The lower floor of the opera house was comfortably filled  when the lecture began last evening. Promptly at 8:15 o’clock Swami Vice Kananda made his appearance on the stage, dressed in his beautiful oriental costume. He was introduced in a few words by Dr. C.T.Newkirk.


The first part of the discourse consisted of an explanation of the different religions of India and the theory of transmigration of souls. In connection with the latter, the speaker said it was on the same basis as the theory of conservation was to the scientist. This latter theory, he said, was first produced by a philosopher of his country. They did not believe in a creation. A creation implied making something out of nothing. That was impossible. There was no beginning of creation, just as there was no beginning of time. God and creation are as two lines —without end, without beginning, without ? [6] parallel. Their theory of creation is, “It is, was, and is to be.” They think all punishment is but re-action. If we put our hand in the fire it is burned. That is the re-action of the action. The future condition of life is determined by the present condition. They do not believe God punishes. “You, in this land,” said the speaker, “praise the man who does not get angry and denounce the man who does become angry. And yet thousands of people throughout this country are every day accusing God of being angry. Everybody denounces Nero, who sat and played on his instrument while Rome was burning, and yet thousands of your people are accusing God of doing the same thing today.”


The Hindoos have no theory of redemption in their religion. Christ is only to show the way. Every man and woman is a divine being, but covered as though by a screen, which their religion is trying to remove. The removal of that Christians call salvation, they, freedom. God is the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe.


The speaker then sought to vindicate the religions of his country. He said it had been proven that the entire system of the Roman Catholic Church had been taken from the books of Buddhism. The people of the west should learn one thing from India —toleration.


Among other subjects which he held up and over hauled were: The Christian missionaries, the zeal of the Presbyterian church and its non-toleration, the dollar-worshipping in this country, and the priests. The latter he said were in the business for the dollars there were in it, and wanted to know how long they would stay in the church if they had to depend on getting their pay from God. After speaking briefly on the Caste system in India, our civilization in the south, our general knowledge of the mind, and various other topics the speaker concluded his remarks.[7]


From Bay City Swamiji traveled to Saginaw, Michigan, where he lectured on Wednesday evening, March 21. Possibly because his current manager was not advertising “Kananda” with splashing posters, the audience was small, a circumstance that outraged, as well it may have, the editor of the Saginaw  Evening News.


Both this paper and the town’s other paper, the Courier Herald, gave accounts of Swamiji’s visit, under the impression that he was a Buddhist. The confusion between Buddhism and Hinduism was not confined to small towns but existed even in Chicago during the Parliament of Religions. It is perhaps attributable in part to Edwin Arnold’s widely read Light of Asia, in part to the general ignorance which prevailed in the West regarding all non-Christian religion, and in part to Swamiji’s frequent references to Buddha and Buddhism. In any case, he was often called by the press “a Buddhist priest,” even after he had lectured. In the following articles the reader should, in most cases, substitute the words “Hinduism” and “Hindu” for “Buddhism” and “Buddhist.” There was also some confusion in Saginaw regarding the title of Swamiji’s lecture, which was perhaps due to the fact that he had intended to lecture on “Buddhism, the Religion of the Light of Asia,” but changed to “The Harmony of Religions.” 


The following announcements and articles are from the Saginaw Evening News of March 19, 20, 21 and 22, respectively:

Kanandah, the celebrated Buddhist, who created such a marked impression at the parliament of religions at the World’s fair, lectures at the academy Wednesday evening. His topic will be “Buddhism.”


Swami Vive Kananda, the Buddhist monk, who lectures at the academy tomorrow night on “Buddhism, the Religion of the Light of Asia,” has been the guest of Ex-Senator Palmer, president of the World’s Fair Commission.

6

KANANDA ARRIVES

Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindu Monk, arrived this afternoon from Bay City and is registered at the Vincent. He dresses like a well-to-do American and speaks excellent English. He is slightly above the medium height, is stoutly built and his complexion resembles that of an Indian. In answer to a question by a NEWS representative, he said he learned English from private tutors, and by contact with Europeans, who visited Hindustan. He further stated that his talk tonight would be explanatory of the religion of the Hindoo and to show that they are not heathen but believe in a future state.

RELIGIOUS HARMONY

Kananda Talks about the Different Creeds

Buddhism Teaches Perfection on Earth

Charges that Christianity was Introduced by the Sword

Swami Vive Kananda, the much talked of Hindoo monk, spoke to a small but deeply interested audience last evening at the academy of music on "The Harmony  of Religions.” He was dressed in oriental costume and received an extremely cordial reception. Hon. Rowland Connor gracefully introduced the speaker, who devoted the first portion of his lecture to an explanation of the different religions of India and the theory of transmigration of souls. The first invaders of India, the Aryans, did not try to exterminate the population of India as the Christians have done when they went into a new land, but the endeavor was made to elevate persons of brutish habits. The Hindoo is disgusted with those people of his own country who do not bathe and who eat dead animals. The Northern people of India have not tried to force their customs on the southerns, but the latter gradually adopted many ways of the former class. In southernmost portions of India there are a few persons who are Christians and who have been so for thousands of years. The Spaniards came to Ceylon with Christianity. The Spaniards thought that their God commanded them to kill and murder and tear down heathen temples.


If there were not different religions no one religion would survive. The Christian needs his selfish religion. The Hindoo needs his own creed. Those which were founded on a book will stand. Why could not the Christian convert the Jew? Why could they not make the Persians Christians? Why not so with the Mohammedans? Why cannot any impression be made upon China or Japan? The Buddhists, the first missionary religion, have double the number of converts of any other religion and they did not use the sword. The Mohammedans used the most force, and they number the least of three great missionary religions. The Mohammedans have had their day. Every day you read of Christian nations acquiring land by bloodshed. What missionaries preach against this? Why should the most bloodthirsty nations exalt an alleged religion which is not the religion of Christ? The Jews and the Arabs were the fathers of Christianity, and how have they been persecuted by the Christians! The Christians have been weighed in the balance in India and found wanting. The speaker did not wish to be unkind, but he wanted to show Christians how they looked in other eyes. The missionaries who preach the burning pit are regarded with horror. The Mohammedans rolled wave after wave over India, waving the sword, and today where are they? The farthest that all religions can see is the existence of a spiritual entity. So no religion can teach beyond this point. In every religion there is the essential truth and non-essential casket in which this jewel lies. The believing in the Jewish book or the Hindoo book is non-essential. Circumstances change, the receptacle is different; but the central truth remains. The essentials being the same, the educated people of every community retain the essentials. The shell of the oyster is not attractive, but the pearls are within. Before the small fraction of the world is converted Christianity will be divided into many creeds. That is the law of nature. Why take a single instrument from the great religious orchestras of the earth? Let the grand symphony go on. Be pure, urged the speaker, give up superstition and see the wonderful harmony of nature. Superstition gets the better of religion. All the religions are good since the essentials are the same. Each man should have the perfect exercise of his individuality but these individualities form a perfect whole. This marvelous condition is already in existence. Each creed has had something to add to the wonderful structure.


The speaker sought throughout to vindicate the religions of his country and said that it had been proven that the entire system of the Roman Catholic Church had been taken from the books of Buddhism. He dilated at some length on the high code of morality and purity of life that the ethics of Buddha taught but allowed that as far as the belief in the personality of God was concerned, agnosticism prevailed, the main thing being to follow out Buddha’s percepts which were, “Be good, be moral, be perfect.”


Several among the audience remarked at the conclusion of the lecture that they would have enjoyed listening to the speaker much longer, and expressed a desire to hear him again. He is only 30 years of age, a finished scholar and one who has the reputation of high intellectual attainments. He was born in Calcutta and educated at a college in that city. His voice is soft and well modulated and he speaks English remarkably well. He leaves here for the east and will spend some time in Boston and New York. After he has looked over the country he will visit Europe, and when he reaches his own land will doubtless utilize the impressions he has received while girdling the globe.


The following editorial appeared in the same paper and on the same day as did the above article:

    HE IS INSTRUCTIVE 

And Hence the People Do not Care to Hear Him

What is the matter with people of Saginaw, anyway? For several days it had been announced that Kananda, a Hindoo priest, was to deliver a lecture at the academy. He is one of the most distinguished men who has visited America in years. In Hindostan he occupies the same relation to religion and learning that Dr. Harper, Dr. Sumner, Dr. Elliot and Dr. Angell do in America. He takes high rank among the learned men of his age, and came here to speak of one of the oldest faiths in the world. He speaks English fluently and is an orator. And yet this distinguished visitor talked to empty seats. Perhaps if Kananda would learn a skirt dance or could sing a tropical song the people would turn out to hear them [sic]. But inasmuch as his theme is instructive and strangely interesting he is denied even a fair audience. The Saginaw Courier-Herald covered Swamiji’s visit with the following article, which appeared on Thursday, March 22:

FROM FAR OFF INDIA

Kananda, the Hindoo Preacher, Visits Saginaw and 

Talks Entertainingly before a small audience at the academy

Seated in the lobby of the Hotel Vincent yesterday evening was a strong and regular featured man of fine presence, whose swarthy skin made more pronounced the pearly whiteness of his even teeth. Under a broad and high forehead his eyes betoken intelligence. This gentleman was Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindoo preacher. Mr. Kananda’s conversation is in pure and grammatically constructed English sentences, to which his slightly foreign accent lends piquancy. Readers of the Detroit papers are aware that Mr. Kananda has lectured in that city a number of times and aroused the animosity of some on account of his strictures upon Christians. The Courier-Herald representative had a few moments’ conversation with the learned Buddhist just before he left for the Academy, where he was to lecture. Mr. Kananda said in conversation that he was surprised at the lapses from the paths of rectitude which were so common among Christians, but that there was good and bad to be found among members of all religious bodies. One statement he made was decidedly un-American. Upon being asked if he had been investigating our institutions, he replied: “No, I am a preacher only.” This displayed both a want of curiosity and narrowness, which seemed foreign to one who appeared to be so well versed upon religious topics as did the Buddhist preacher.


From the hotel to the Academy was but a step and at 8 o’clock Rowland Connor introduced to a small audience the lecturer, who was dressed in long orange colored robe, fastened by a red sash, and who wore a turban of windings of what appeared to be a narrow shawl.


The lecturer stated at the opening that he had not come as a missionary, and that it was not the part of a Buddhist to convert others from their faiths and beliefs. He said that the subject of his address would be, “The Harmony of Religions.” Mr. Kananda said that many ancient religions had been founded, and were dead and gone.


He said the Buddhists comprise two-thirds of the race, and that the other third comprised those of all other believers. He said the Buddhists have no place of future torment for men. In that they differ from the Christians, who will forgive a man for five minutes in this world and condemn him to everlasting punishment in the next. Buddha was the first to teach the universal brotherhood of man. It is a cardinal principle of the Buddhist faith today. The Christian preaches it, but does not practice its own teachings.


He instanced the condition of the Negro in the South, who is not allowed in hotels nor to ride in the same cars with white men, and is a being to whom no decent man will speak. He said that he had been in the South, and spoke from his knowledge and observation.


The lecture was interesting because of its uniqueness, and was worthy of a better filled house.


All in all, the people of Saginaw were remiss, even in the matter of hospitality. We can, for instance, infer from Swamiji’s being seated in a hotel lobby prior to his lecture that no one in the town, not even the Honorable Rowland Connor, had invited him to dinner. He evidently had been left to his own devices, and if the Vincent Hotel was typical of small-town hotels in the 1890s, it was a dismal place in which to be left alone to eat, to sit, and to wait. The experience may have been one of many such during the course of his midwestern tour.

7

From Detroit Swamiji went directly to New York, where he had been invited by small group of people interested in the study of metaphysics — a Mrs. Smith, Dr. and Mrs. Egbert Guernsey, and “another lady, Miss Helen Gould.” On April 2 we find him living at the Guernseys’ house at 528 Fifth Avenue, between Forty-third and Forty-fourth streets. The street, he wrote to Mrs. Hale, was “a nice quiet —which words at once evoke a picture of Fifth Avenue of that day, the decorous quiet of its mansion-lined elegance broken only by the occasional clop-clop of spanking carriage horses and the rumble of wheels. From the Guernseys’ four-story stone house Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Hale shortly after his arrival. His letter, recently made know to us, is given here in full:

New York 
The 2nd April’94

Dear Mother

I am in New York. The gentleman whose guest I am is a very nice and learned and (well to do) man. He had an only son whom he lost last July. Has only a daughter now. The old couple have received a great shock but they are pure and God-loving people and bear it manfully.


The lady of the house is very very kind and good. They are trying to help me as much as they can and they will do a great deal I have no doubt.


Awaiting further developments. This Thursday [April 5] they will invite a number of the brainy people of the Union league club and other places of which the doctor is a member and see what comes out of it. Parlour lectures are a great feature in this city and more can be made by each sure lecture than even platform talks in other cities.


It is a very clean city. None of that black smoke tarring every one in five minutes and the street in which he Doctor lives is a nice quiet one.  


Hope the sisters are doing well and enjoying their music both in the opera and the parlours.

I am sure I would have appreciated the music at the opera about which Miss Mary wrote to me.

I am sure the opera musicians do not show the interior anatomy of their throat and lungs.

Kindly give brother Sam my deep love. I am sure he is bewaring of the vidders. Some of the Baby Bagleys are going to Chicago — they will go to see you and I am sure you would like them very much.

Nothing more to write.

With all respects, love & obedience
Your Son, Vivekananda

P.S. I have not to ask now for the addresses. Mrs. Sherman [Mrs. Bagley’s married daughter] has given me a little book with A.B.C. &c marks and has written under them all the addresses I need and I hope to write all the future  addresses in the same manner. What an example of self help I am!! [8]

[This address book was probably the first of a number of similar gifts which, as he was later to confide to Sister Christine, he was continually misplacing, if not losing altogether.]

Like the Hales in Chicago and the Bagleys in Detroit, the Guernseys in New York took Swamiji into their family, looking upon him as a beloved son; indeed, he reminded him of the son whom they have so recently lost and who had been about his age. Dr. Egberrt Guernsey, then nearing seventy-one, was an exceedingly well-known and well-loved physician, who, it was said, successfully practiced a combination of the better parts of homeopathic and orthodox medicine. He was also a writer, an editor of various periodicals, the founder of the Brooklyn Daily Times, the founder and editor-in-chief of the New York Medical Times, a founder and director of several important medical institutions in New York, a founder of the  famous, prestigious and still-existing Union League Club, and, above all, a man of wide mind and large heart. It has been said, and is no doubt true, that he was the physician whom Bret Harte described in his story “The Man Whose Yoke Was Not Easy” as “a man of broad culture and broader experience; a man who had devoted the greater part of his active life to the alleviation of sorrow and suffering.........”

All we know at present of Swamiji’s next week in New York comes through a letter that he wrote to Mrs. Hale on April 10. He was still staying with the Guernseys, but, as he mentions quite casually, had for a few days been a house guest of Miss Helen Gould. He had also been to the circus. His letter, like the one written on April 2, has only recently come to light and is given here in full:

New York
The 10th April ‘94

Dear Mother

I just now received your Letter. I have the greatest regards for the Salvationists [the Salvation Army]; in fact they and the Oxford Mission gentleman are the only Christian missionaries for whom I have any regard at all. They live with the people as the people and for the people of India. Lord bless them. But I would be very very sorry of any trick being played by them. I never have heard of any Lord in India —much less in Ceylon. The people of Ceylon and Northern India differ more than the Americans and Hindus. Nor there is any connection between the Buddhist priest and the Hindu. Our dress manner religion food language differ entirely from Southern India much less to speak of Ceylon. You know already that I could not speak a word of Narasinha’s language!! Although that was only Madras. Well you have the Hindu princes —why not a Lord  —which is not a higher title.


There was a certain Mrs. [Arthur] Smith in Chicago — I met her at Mrs. Stockham’s. She as introduced me to the Guernsey. Dr.Guernsey is one of the chief physicians of this city and is a very good old gentleman. They are very fond of me and are very nice people. Next Friday [April 13] I am going to Boston. I have not been lecturing in New York at all. I will come back and do some lecturing here.


For the last few days I was the guest of Miss Helen Gould, daughter of the rich Gould at her palatial country residence, an hour’s ride from the city. She has one of the most beautiful and large green houses in the world full of all sorts of curious plants and flowers. They are Presbyterians and she is a very religious lady. I had very nice time there.


I met my friend Mr. Flagg several times. He is flying merrily.


There is another Mrs. Smith here who is very rich and pious. She has invited me to dine today.


As for lecturing—I have given up raising money. I can not degenerate myself any more. When a certain purpose was in view I could work —with that gone I can not earn for myself.


I have sufficient for going back. I have not tried to earn a penny here. And have refused some presents which friends here wanted to make to me. Especially Flagg —I have refused his money. I had in Detroit tried to refund the money back to the donors— and told them that there being almost no chance of my succeeding in my enterprise I have no right to keep your money—but they refused and told me to throw that in waters if I liked. But I can not take any more conscientiously. I am very well off Mother. Everywhere the Lord sends me kind persons and homes—so there is no use of my going into beastly worldliness at all.


The New York people though not intellectual as the Bostonians are I think more sincere. The Bostanians know how well to take advantage of everybody. And I am afraid even water can not slip through their closed fingers !!! Lord bless them !!! I have promised to go and I must go—but Lord make me live with the sincere ignorant & the poor and not cross the shadow of the hypocrites and tall talks who, as my Master used to say, are like vultures [that] soar high & high in their talks but the heart is really on a piece of carrion underground. I would be the guest of Mrs. Breed for a few days and after seeing a little of Boston I would come back to New York.


Hope the sisters are all right and enjoying their concerts immensely. There is not much of music in this city, that is a blessing (?)


Went to see Barnum’s circus the other day; it is no doubt a grand thing.

I have not been as yet down town. This street is very nice and quiet.

I heard a beautiful piece of music the other day at Barnum’s —they call it a Spanish Serenada —whatever it be, I liked it so much. Unfortunately Miss Guernsey is not given to much thumping although she has good assortment of all the noisy stuffs in the world —and so she could not play it — which I regret ever so much.

Yours obediently, 

Vivekananda

Most probably I will go to Annisquam as Mrs. Bagley’s guest. She has got a nice house there this summer. Before that I will go back to Chicago once more if I can.[9]


Most of the above letter needs no clarification, but one or two points can perhaps be enlarged upon. There was, for instance, the Miss Helen Gould at whose country house Swamiji spent few days. This was without doubt Helen Miller Gould, the elder daughter and heiress of one of the richest and most unscrupulous of America’s great “robber barons,” “that summate master of speculation,"[10] as the press was wont to call him— Mr. Jay Gould died in 1892, leaving a fortune of well over half a billion dollars (In today’s currency, over ten billion), to be divided among six children. Helen Gould’s share of this immense legacy included among its odds and ends the estate of Lundhurst at Irvington-on-Hudson, with “its 500 acres of meticulously landscaped grounds with lawns, rare shrubbery, carefully tended drives, and ornamental waters, all approached through massive gateways manned night and day by an army of private security guards."[11]The forty-room house was a forbidding Gothic stronghold, surrounded at suitable distances with number of other structures—gatehouse, stables, carriage house, servant-quarters, swimming pool, bowling alley, and so on —such as any well-appointed estate should have. Indeed, as country houses went in that flamboyant age, all this was the bare minimum; Jay Gould was said by his peers to have lived a simple and austere life, more intent on making money than spending it. There was, however, one field in which he had splurged; this was the greenhouse at Lyndhurst, which Swamiji has remarked upon. It was, as Swamiji said, large; it was, in fact, not one greenhouse, but a “magnificent system of greenhouses"[12] where Mr. Gould had grown, along with thousands of other choice specimens, the largest collection of rare and exciting orchids in the world. There were, in all, more than 10,000 plants, “all tended and cherished by an army of educated gardeners supervised by Gould himself."[13] It is clear from Swamiji’s own description that after her father’s death Jelen Gould kept up the greenhouse in proper style.


At Lyndhurst, and also at the house she had inherited on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-seventh Street, not far from the Guernseys’, Miss Gould lived with two younger brothers and a younger sister, the last of whom was to marry one of Europe’s fortune-seeking noblemen the following year and to become thereby a countess. Although Helen Gould would think nothing of bestowing upon her sister a huge and priceless diamond for a wedding gift, of spending fifteen million dollars on renovating Lyndhurst, or of traveling about the country in a palatial private railway car, she did not share her sister’s desire (and that of many another American heiress) for a title; nor did she approve of her brothers’ wildly extravagant taste in houses, estates and parties. She lived soberly, and, as Swamiji remarked was “a very religious lady.” Later on she was to marry a Mr. Finley J.Shephard, and throughout her life gave away millions in contributions to causes and organizations with religious overtones.


One cannot help but wonder why Miss Gould did not at one time or another give Swamiji at least a few hundred thousand dollars for his Indian work, for clearly she was interested in him, and such sums were as available to her and as endlessly flowing as the ornamental waters of Lyndhurst. Perhaps the answer lies in the following reminiscence by Debendra Kumar Roy, first published in the Bengali monthly Udbodhan and later reviewed in Prabuddha Bharata. The relevant passage in the latter magazine reads:


[The writer of the reminiscence] one day asked Swamiji to recount some of his unique experiences in America and Europe. Swamiji said that while in America, an heiress being attracted by his personality and great eloquence, once offer her vast fortune and herself to Swami “to help in his mission of life.” Swamiji thanked her heartily for this kind offer. But he said he was unable to accept it, being as he was a monk who had already dedicated his all, body, mind, and soul to the one Lord of his life, Sri Ramakrishna.[14]


This particular heiress was, of course, not necessarily Miss Helen Gould. In the 1890s there were many young American heiresses with vast fortunes more than one of whom may have wanted to lay it all at Swamiji’s feet. But when strings were attached, he would of course take nothing.


Even when strings were not attached, Swamiji would accept no money at this time for his Indian work. There was, for instance, Mr. William Joseph Flagg, whose offer to help he refused. Mr. Flagg was a well-known lawyer, congressman, author, and student of comparative metaphysics, with leanings toward Theosophy. His niece, incidentally, was Mrs.Cornelius Vanderbilt II—the Mrs. Vanderbilt, then the reigning queen of America’s drawing rooms and mistress of more millions than anyone could count. Immensely rich people, either close at hand or just over the horizon, seem to have simply appeared during this year of Swamiji’s life in the West. He sought nothing; he lectured and met people as the invitations came, “taking life very easy,” as he write, “in my natural way.” Or again, “His will be done—Not me but Thou— that is always the motto of my life.” Doors opened ahead of him. In his letter of April 10 he mentions a “very rich and pious” Mrs. Smith, who had asked him to dine; and then there was, among other, the wealthy Mrs. Breed, whom we shall meet later.


On April 5 the Boston Evening Transcript ran a long article entitled, “Our Coming Hindoo Guest.” With the exception of the first paragraph this article was made up of excerpts culled from the Detroit newspapers and has been reprinted in Volume four of the Complete Works under the title, “Is India a Benighted Country?” It is with the first paragraph, however, that we are concerned here; it reads as follows:


Suame Vive Kananda is coming to Boston in all the glory of his gorgeous orange turban and his advanced views on all topics, intellectual and moral. Everybody who had any interest in Parliament of Religions while in Chicago knows of “Brother Vive Kananda,” as he likes to be called. He had come to America on an independent missionary tour of his own, to see what he could do to aid in return to spiritual conviction for this material and dollar-worshipping land. He is really a great man, noble, simple, sincere, and learned beyond comparison with most of our scholars. They say that a professor at Harvard [Professor John Henry Wright] wrote to the people in charge of religious congress to get him invited to Chicago, saying, “He is more learned than all of us together.” He is coming to Boston with letters to a dozen of the best known people here from leaders of thought, action and fashion —for there is a fashion in these things, too, —r in Chicago.


Whether or not Swamiji lectured in Boston during the first part of April is not certain. Very likely he did not, for the Boston newspapers do not mention him again until the middle of May when, as will be seen later, he gave several lectures. A single item in the Northampton Daily Herald of April 13 leads us to believe, however, that he had at least visited Boston before that date, made acquaintances there, and perhaps gave one or two informal talks. The item reads as follows: 


A prominent Boston society lady gave a novel entertainment for Vivekananda. She asked all of her guests to bring their most puzzling problems, whether of philosophy, science or religion, and propound them to the Hindu monk. They came, they asked, they were answered, and departed, saying “of a truth the half had not been told.”


Whatever the above may signify, it is certain that on April 14, when the New England countryside was turning green, Swamiji lectured at Northampton, Massachusetts (ninety miles or so west of Boston), and on April 15 at Smith college, located there. In his letters that are at present available he does not write of an invitation to lecture in either the town or the college, but he must have received one and at least tentatively accepted it before he left Detroit, for in the Northampton Daily Hampshire Gazette of April 2 we read the following notice:


Suami Vive Kawananda, the Hindoo priest who made such a stir at the parliament of religions in Chicago, will probably lecture in this city soon.


A few days later the date of the lecture was set. On April 6, the Northampton Daily Herald and the Daily Hampshire Gazette ran the following news items, respectively:


Saturday, April 14th, Northampton people will have a chance to hear the most brilliant scholar, Vice Kananda, the Hindoo monk. While there are few who agree with him in a religious sense, there are none who will not want to hear him either from curiosity or from some other cause.


In speaking of Vive Kananda, the Hindoo priest, who is to speak in our city on Saturday, April 14th, Mrs.Gov.Bagley of Detroit, at whose house he has been visiting, says, “No one in the parliament of religions was more interesting than he, or their words more remembered.”


We need not rely upon the newspapers alone for information regarding Swamiji's visit to this quiet college town. Martha Brown Fincke, one of the Smith College students who came in contact with him, wrote her reminiscences forty-two years later at the request of the Swamis at Belur Math —reminiscences which were first published in Prabuddha Bharata of September 1936, under the title “My memories of Swami Vivekananda.” Although Mrs. Fincke’s memory was not accurate regarding the date of Swamiji’s visit (she placed it erroneously in November of 1893), and although her memory of his lectures was not vivid, Swamiji himself was indelibly impressed upon her mind. Through her reminiscences we gain an intimate picture of his almost awesome majesty, of his delightful childlike friendliness, and of the vast intellect and scholarship with which he trounced at every turn the “black-coated and somewhat austere” ministers and professors who came to instruct him regarding the superiority of Christianity, She writes:


At the close of the Parliament, in order to be independent of the personal benefactions of his admirers, the Swami engaged with a Lecture Bureau to tour the states  beginning with the East, and early in November he came to the town of Northampton, Massachussetts. The charming old town, half-way between New York and Boston, and since prominent as the home of Calvin Coolidge, is situated on low hills in the Connecticut Valley just before the river plunges into the gap between Mt. Tom and Mt. Holyoke. In flood seasons the low-lying meadows about the town shine with the covering waters and the purple outline of the Mt. Holyoke range forms the horizon to the south. Stanley elm-trees border the streets and the place had then a slumberous aspect except when an eruption of students woke it to animation. For a women’s college formed the centre of its intellectual life, Smith College, founded in 1875 by Sophia Smith for the higher education of women.


To this College I went as a Freshman in the fall of 1893, an immature girl of eighteen, undisciplined but reaching out eagerly for the things of the mind and spirit .... The College dormitories were not large enough to house all of the incoming class, so I with three other Frenchmen boarded in a square brown house near the campus. This was kept by a lady whose independent spirit and humorous outlook endeared her to us, despite her despotic rule. College lectures for the whole body of students with compulsory attendance, were of frequent occurrence, and many well-known leaders of thought visited us.


On the Bulletin for November was the name of Swami Vivekananda who was to give two evening lectures. That he was a Hindu monk we knew, nothing more, for the fame he had won in the recent Parliament of Religions had not reached our ears. Then an exciting piece of news leaked out; he was to live at our house, to eat with us and we cold ask him questions about India. Our hostess’ breadth of tolerance may be seen in receiving into her house a man with dark skin, whom the Hotel had doubtless refused to admit. As late as 1912 the great poet Tagore with his companion wandered through the streets of New York looking in vain for shelter.


The name of India was familiar to me from my earliest childhood. Had not my mother almost decided to marry a young man who went as a missionary to India, and did not a box from our Church Missionary Association go each year to the Zenanas? India was a hot land where snakes abounded and “the heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone.” It is astonishing how little an eager reader like myself knew about the history or literature of that great country . . . To talk with a real Indian would be a chance indeed.


The day came, the little guest-room was ready and a stately presence entered our home. The Swami’s dress was a black Prince Albert coat, dark trousers, and yellow turban wound in intricate folds about a finely shaped head. But the face with its inscrutable expression, the eyes so full of flashing light, and the whole emanation of power, are beyond description. We were awed and silent. Our hostess, however, was not one to be awed, and she led an animated conversation. I sat next to the Swamiji and with my superfluity of reverence found not a word to say.


Of the lecture that evening I can recall nothing. The imposing figure on the platform in red robe, orange cord, and yellow turban, I do remember, and the wonderful mastery of the English language with its rich sonorous tones, but the ideas did not take root in my mind or else the many years since then have obliterated them. But what do I remember was the symposium that followed.


To our house came the College President, the Head of the Philosophy Department and several other Professors, the ministers of the Northampton churches and a well-known author. In a corner of the living-room, we girls sat as quite as mice and listened eagerly to the discussion which followed. To give a detailed account of this conversation is beyond me though I have a strong impression that it dealt mainly with Christianity and why it is the only true religion. Not that the subject was the Swami’s choosing. As his imposing presence faced the row of black coated and somewhat austere gentlemen, one felt that he was being challenged. Surely these leaders of thought in our world have an unfair advantage. They know their Bibles thoroughly and the European systems of philosophy, as well as the poets and commentators. How could one expect a Hindu from far-off India to hold his own with these, master though he might be of his own learning? The reaction to the surprising result that followed is my purely subjective one, but I cannot exaggerate its intensity.


To texts from the Bible, the Swami replied by other and more apposite ones from the same book. In upholding his side of the argument he quoted English philosophers and writers on religious subjects. Even the poets he seemed to know thoroughly, quoting the Wordsworth and Thomas Grey (not from the well-known Elegy). Why were my sympathies not with those of my own world? Why did I exult in the air of freedom that blew through the room as the Swami broadened the scope of Religion till it embraced all mankind? Was it that his words found an echo in my own longings, or was it merely the magic of his personality? I cannot tell, I only know that I felt triumphant with him.


[A Swami at the Belur Math] said that to him Swami Vivekananda personified Love. To me that night he personified Power. I think that I can explain this from my later knowledge. No doubt these great men of our College world were narrow-minded, of closed convictions, “wise in their own conceit.” How could they accept the saying, “Whosoever comes to Me through whatsoever form I reach him”? At Chicago the Swami recently felt the rancour of Christian missionaries and undoubtedly his accents took on an austerity as he felt the same spirit in these representatives of Western learning. To them Love would not appeal, but Power can awe even when it does not force agreement. The discussion, beginning with the utmost courtesy, became less cordial, then bitterness crept in, a resentment on the part of the champions of Christianity as they felt that it was “thumbs down” for them. And truly it was. The repercussion of the triumph that filled me then is with me to this day.


Early the next morning loud splashings came from the bathroom, and mingling with them a deep voice chanting in an unknown tongue. I believe that a group of us huddled near the door to listen. At breakfast we asked him the meaning of the chant. He replied, “I first put the water on my forehead, then on my breast and each time I chant a prayer for blessings on all creatures.” This struck me forcibly. I was used to a morning prayer, but it was for myself first that I prayed, then for my family. It had never occurred to me to include all mankind in my family and to put them before myself.


After breakfast the Swamiji suggested a walk and we four students, two on each side, escorted the majestic figure proudly through the streets. As we went we shyly tried to open conversation. He was instantly responsive and smiled showing his beautiful teeth. I only remember one thing he said. Speaking of Christian doctrines, he remarked how abhorrent to him was the constant use of the term “the blood of Christ.” That made me think. I had always hated the hymn, “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins” but what daring to criticise an accepted doctrine of the Church! My “freethinking” certainly dates from the awakening given me by that freedom-loving soul. I led the conversation to the Vedas, those holy books of India he had mentioned in his lecture. He advised me to read them for myself, preferably in the original. I then and there made a resolve to learn Sanskrit, a purpose which I regret to say I have never fulfilled. Indeed as far as outward result goes, I am a case of the good seed choked by thorns . . .[15]  


But thorns were no match for Swamiji’s influence. Martha Brown Fincke is an example of the hundreds of people who came close to him and who received in their inner being the awakening touch of his spiritual vitality. Although she did not at once follow his teachings, it was only a matter of time before they bore fruit. Here memories conclude:


One reads of the seeds found in Egyptian sarcophagi, buried thousands of years previously and yet retaining enough vitality to sprout when planted. Lying apparently lifeless in my mind and heart, the far-off memory of that great apostle from India has during the past year begun to send forth shoots. It has at last brought me to this country [India}. During the intervening years —years of sorrow and responsibility and struggle mingled with joy —my in most self has been trying out this and that doctrine to see if it is what I want to live by. Always some dissatisfaction resulted. Dogmas and rituals, made so important by orthodox believers, seemed to me so unimportant, so curbing that freedom of spirit that I longed for.


I find in the universal Gospel that Swamiji preached the satisfaction of my longing. To believe that the Divine is within us, that we are from very first a part of God, and that this is true of every man, what more can one ask? In receiving this as I have on the soil of India, I feel that I have come Home. [16]


Was it not precisely for this—that thousands might more quickly find their way “Home”—that Swamiji felt compelled to continue his travels in America, visiting as many places and talking to as many people as he could?


The Northampton papers, the Daily Herald and the Daily Hampshire Gazette, both heralded his coming for several days in advance. The following items, which appeared in one or the other of these papers, are indicative of the wide fame which had come to him since the Parliament of Religions and of the excited welcome with which he was received almost every where he went, whether to a large city or small town:


Swami Vivekananda, a high caste Bhramin and a representative of orthodox Hindooism and a most distinguished figure at the parliament of religions at the world’s fair, is to lecture in city hall on the evening of the 14th of April. He should and doubtless will be welcomed by a large and intelligent audience.


An extract from the prayer of the Hindu monk, Vive Kananda, at the parliament of religions, is “Thou art He that beareth the burdens of the universe; help me to bear the little burden of this life.” 


Swami Vivekananda has been in Detroit lately and made a profound impression there. All classes flocked to hear him, and professional men in particular were deeply interested in his logic, and soundness of thought. The opera house alone was large enough for his audiences. He speaks English extremely well and “is as handsome as he is good,” says the Detroit News. [Copied from the Boston Evening Transcript, April 5, 1894.]


There is a good sale of tickets for the appearance of S. Vive Kananda at city hall Saturday evening. 

At the Parliament of Religions Vivekananda was not allowed to speak until the close of the programme, the purpose being to make the people stay until the end of the session. On a warm day when some prosy professor talked too long, and people would leave the hall by hundreds, it only needed the announcement that Vivekananda would give a short address before the benediction was pronounced to hold the vast audience intact, and thousands would wait for hours to hear a fifteen minutes from this remarkable man. 


Extract from prayer offered by Vivekanada at the parliament of religions: “At the head of all these laws, in and through every particle of matter and force, stands One through whose command the wind blows, the fire burns the clouds rain, and death stalks upon the earth And what is His nature? He is everywhere the pure and formless One, the Almighty and All Merciful. Thou art our Father. Thou art our beloved friend.


The day of Swamiji’s arrival, Friday, April 13, finally came, and, we have read in Mrs. Fincke’s memoirs, “a stately presence” entered Northampton. The Daily Herald found its expectations well justified, reporting on April 14:


The famous Hindu Philosopher, religionist, writer and speaker, Swami Vive Kananda, who speaks in City hall this evening, quite captivated the company of gentlemen who were invited to meet him at the Elm street residence yesterday afternoon. The many-sided intellect, subtle wisdom and broad-visioned culture of the student-priest of modest dignity are supplemented by a singularly magnetic attractiveness of personality, rendering this much admired old-world visitor to our hero-worshipping new world a man whom it is liberal education to meet socially.


Swamiji’s lectures given at the Northampton city hall, the import of which Mrs. Fincke failed to remember, was summarized and editorialized upon by the Daily Herald of April 16 as follows

8

AN EVENING WITH OUR HINDU COUSINS

For Swami ViveKananda proved conclusively that all our neighbors across the water, even the remotest, are our close cousins differing only a trifle in color, language, customs and religion, the silver-tongued Hindu monk prefacing his address in city hall Saturday evening by an historic sketch of the origin of is own and all other leading nations of the earth which demonstrated the truth that race-kinship is more of a simple fact than many know or always care to admit.


The informal address that followed regarding some of the customs of the Hindu people was more of the nature of a pleasant parlor talk, expressed with the easy freedom of the conversational adept, and to those of his hearers possessing a natural and cultivated interest in the subject both the man and his thought were intensely interesting for more reasons than can be given here. But to others the speaker was disappointing in not covering a larger scope in his word-pictures, the address, although extremely lengthy for the American lecture-platform, referring to very few of the “customs and manners’ of the peculiar people considered, and of whose personal, civil, home, social and religious life much more would have been gladly heard from this one of the finest representatives of this oldest of races, which the average student of human nature should find pre-eminently interesting but really knows the least about.


The allusions to the life of the Hindu began with a picture of the birth of the Hindu boy, his introduction to educational training, his marriage, slight reference to the home life but not what was expected, the speaker diverging frequently to make comparative comments on the customs and ideas of his own and English-speaking races, socially, morally and religiously, the inference in all cases being clearly in favor of his own, although most courteously, kindly and gracefully expressed. Some of his auditors who are tolerably well posted as to social and family conditions among the Hindoos of all classes would have liked to have asked the speaker a challenging question or two on a good many of the points he touched upon. For instance, when he is so eloquently and beautifully portrayed the Hindu ideas of womanhood, as the divine motherhood ideal, to be forever reverenced, even worshipped with a devotion of loyalty such as the most woman-respecting unselfish and truest of American sons, husbands and fathers cannot even conceive of, one would have liked to know what the reply would have been to the query as how far this beautiful theory is exemplified in practice in the majority of Hindu homes, which hold wives, mothers, daughters and sisters.


The rebuke to the greed for gain, the national vice of luxury-seeking, self-seeking, the “dollar-case” sentiment which taints the dominant white European and American races to their moral danger, morally and civilly, was only too just and superbly well-put, the slow, soft, quiet, unimpassioned musical voice embodying its thought which all the power and fire of the most vehement physical utterance, and went straight to the mark like the “Thou art the man” of the prophet. But when this learned Hindu nobleman by birth, nature and culture attempts to prove, —as he repeatedly did in his frequent and apparently half-unconscious digressions from the special point under consideration, — that the distinctively self-centered, self-cultivating, pre-eminently self-soulsaving, negative and passive, not to say selfishly indolent religion of his race has proven itself superior in its usefulness to the world to the vitally aggressive, self-forgetful, do-good-unto-others-first-last-and-always, go-ye-into-all-the-world and work religion which we call Christianity, in whose name nine tenths of all the really practical moral, spiritual and philanthropic work of the world has been and is being done, whatever sad and gross mistakes have been made by its unwise zealots, he attempts a large contract.


But to see and hear Swami Vive Kananda is an opportunity which no intelligent fair-minded American ought to miss if one cares to see a shining light of the very finest product of the mental, moral and spiritual culture of a race which reckons its age by thousands where we count ours by hundreds and is richly worth the study of every mind.


Sunday afternoon the distinguished Hindu spoke to the students of Smith college at the vesper service, the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man being, virtually, his theme, and that the address made a deep impression is evinced by the report of every auditor, the broadest liberality of true religious sentiment and precept characterizing the whole trend of thought.


It was no doubt Swamiji’s “attempts to prove” the value of the Hindu religion that incited the learned doctors and ministers to call upon him after the lecture. We know from Mrs. Fincke’s memoirs what took place — a scene which was undoubtedly repeated in almost every town Swamiji visited and which evoked a feeling of triumph and exaltation in the hearts of those witnesses who, spiritually undernourished by the dry and narrow exhortations of their parish ministers, found a rich delight in hearing Swamiji champion so powerfully and so adroitly the cry of their own souls.


The following afternoon, Sunday, April 15, Swamiji spoke at Smith College. With the exception of the last paragraph of the above quotation, all we know of this lecture comes to us from a short item in the Smith College Monthly of May, 1894, which reads as follows:


On Sunday, April 15, Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo whose scholarly exposition of Brahmanism caused such favorable comment at the Congress of Religions, spoke at Vaspers. —We say much of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, but few understand the meaning of these words. True brotherhood is possible only when the soul draws so near to the All-Father that jealousies and petty claims of superiority must vanish because we are so much above them. We must take care lest we become like the frog of the well in the old Hindoo story, who, having lived for a long time in a small place, at last denied the existence of a larger space.


From Northampton Swamiji went to Lynn, Massachusetts, an industrial city some ten miles from Boston. Lynn is known primarily for its manufacture of shoes and also for the fact that Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, lived there in the mid-nineteenth century before embarking upon her mission. Swamiji’s hostess, Mrs. Francis W. Breed, whom he had met at Salem the previous year and had forgotten, was one of Lynn’s social leaders. Originally from Chicago, where she no doubt had known the Hale family, she married a prominent Lynn boot and shoe manufacturer. Mrs. Breed also owned a leather company and was, at the time of Swamiji’s visit, extremely wealthy. The Breeds had several children and lived in an enormous house where they were entertained extensively and with an extravagance typical of the late nineteenth century. Indeed, Mrs. Breed, according to all reports, was something of a grande dame, strikingly handsome, commanding, dramatic and lavish with her money. It is said that she owned a Russian sleigh which was pulled by three horses abreast. In the winter time, ensconced in black furs, Mrs. Breed would ride majestically in this sleigh through the streets of Lynn, exciting, no doubt, the awe of the populace. Had Swamiji visited her earlier in the year he would surely have had a troika ride, but by mid-April the snow had melted and spring was on its way. Nevertheless, if the sleigh was typical of Mrs. Breed’s expensive tastes, then, winter or spring, Swamiji was entertained during his week in Lynn with a good deal of imagination and flourish.


Swamiji gave two lectures in Lynn, the first on the afternoon of April 17 at the North Shore Club—  a women’s club described as “a social and literary organization of the highest  character” of which Mrs. Breed had formerly been president  —and the second on the evening of April 18 before the general public at Oxford Hall. A report of Swamiji’s first lecture, entitled “The Manners and Customs of India,” has been recovered from the Lynn Daily Evening Item of April 18.” It read:

8

AN EVENING WITH OUR HINDU COUSINS

For Swami Vive Kananda proved conclusively that all our neighbors across the water, even the remotest, are our close cousins differing only a trifle in color, language, customs and religion, the silver-tongued Hindu monk prefacing his address in city hall Saturday evening by an historic sketch of the origin of is own and all other leading nations of the earth which demonstrated the truth that race-kinship is more of a simple fact than many know or always care to admit.


The informal address that followed regarding some of the customs of the Hindu people was more of the nature of a pleasant parlor talk, expressed with the easy freedom of the conversational adept, and to those of his hearers possessing a natural and cultivated interest in the subject both the man and his thought were intensely interesting for more reasons than can be given here. But to others the speaker was disappointing in not covering a larger scope in his word-pictures, the address, although extremely lengthy for the American lecture-platform, referring to very few of the “customs and manners’ of the peculiar people considered, and of whose personal, civil, home, social and religious life much more would have been gladly heard from this one of the finest representatives of this oldest of races, which the average student of human nature should find preeminently interesting but really knows the least about.


The allusions to the life of the Hindu began with a picture of the birth of the Hindu boy, his introduction to educational training, his marriage, slight reference to he home life but not what was expected, the speaker diverging frequently to make comparative comments on the customs and ideas of his own and English-speaking races, socially, morally and religiously, the inference in all cases being clearly in favor of his own, although most courteously, kindly and gracefully expressed. Some of his auditors who are tolerably well posted as to social and family conditions among the Hindoos of all classes would have liked to have asked the speaker a challenging question or two on a good many of the points he touched upon. For instance, when he is so eloquently and beautifully portrayed the Hindu ideas of womanhood, as the divine motherhood ideal, to be forever reverenced, even worshipped with a devotion of loyalty such as the most woman-respecting unselfish and truest of American sons, husbands and fathers cannot even conceive of, one would have liked to know what the reply would have been to the query as how far this beautiful theory is exemplified in practice in the majority of Hindu homes, which hold wives, mothers, daughters and sisters.


The rebuke to the greed for gain, the national vice of luxury-seeking, self-seeking, the “dollar-caste” sentiment which taints the dominant white European and American races to their moral danger, morally and civilly, was only too just and superbly well-put, the slow, soft, quiet, unimpassioned musical voice embodying its thought which all the power and fire of the most vehement physical utterance, and went straight to the mark like the “Thou art the man” of the prophet. But when this learned Hindu nobleman by birth, nature and culture attempts to prove, - as he repeatedly did in his frequent and apparently half-unconscious digressions from the special point under consideration, - that the distinctively selfcentered, self-cultivating, preeminently self-soulsaving, negative and passive, not to say selfishly indolent religion of his race has proven itself superior in its usefulness to the world to the vitally aggressive, self-forgetful, do-good-unto-others-first-last-and-always, go-ye-into-all-the-world and work religion which we call Christianity, in whose name nine tenths of all the really practical moral, spiritual and philanthropic work of the world has been and is being done, whatever sad and gross mistakes have been made by its unwise zealots, he attempts a large contract.


But to see and hear Swami Vive Kananda is an opportunity which no intelligent fair-minded American ought to miss if one cares to see a shining light of the very finest product of the mental, moral and spiritual culture of a race which reckons its age by thousands where we count ours by hundreds and is richly worth the study of every mind.


Sunday afternoon the distinguished Hindu spoke to the students of Smith college at the vesper service, the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man being, virtually, his theme, and that the address made a deep impression is evinced by the report of every auditor, the broadest liberality of true religious sentiment and precept characterizing the whole trend of thought.


It was no doubt Swamiji’s “attempts to prove” the value of the Hindu religion that incited the learned doctors and ministers to call upon him after the lecture. We know from Mrs. Fincke’s memories what took place - a scene which was undoubtedly repeated in almost every town Swamiji visited and which evoked a feeling of triumph and exaltation in the hearts of those witnesses who, spiritually undernourished by the dry and narrow exhortations of their parish ministers, found a rich delight in hearing Swamiji champion so powerfully and so adroitly the cry of their own souls.


The following afternoon, Sunday, April 15, Swamiji spoke at Smith College. With the exception of the last paragraph of the above quotation, all we know of this lecture comes to us from a short item in the Smith College Monthly of May, 1894, which reads as follows:


On Sunday, April 15, Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo whose scholarly exposition of Brahmanism caused such favorable comment at the Congress of Religions, spoke at Vaspers. - We say much of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, but few understand the meaning of these words. True brotherhood is possible only when the soul draws so near to the AllFather that jealousies and petty claims of superiority must vanish because we are so much above them. We must take care lest we become like the frog of the well in the old Hindoo story, who, having lived for a long time in a small place, at last denied the existence of a larger space.


From Northampton Swamiji went to Lynn, Massachusetts, an industrial city some ten miles from Boston. Lynn is known primarily for its manufacture of shoes and also for the fact that Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, lived there in the mid-nineteenth century before embarking upon her mission. Swamiji’s hostess, Mrs. Francis W. Breed, whom he had met at Salem the previous year and had forgotten, was one of Lynn’s social leaders. Originally form Chicago, where she no doubt had known the Hale family, she married a prominent Lynn boot and shoe manufacturer. Mrs. Breed also owned a leather company and was, at the time of Swamiji’s visit, extremely wealthy. The Breeds had several children and lived in an enormous house where they were entertained extensively and with an extravagance typical of the late nineteenth century. Indeed, Mrs. Breed, according to all reports, was something of a grande dame, strikingly handsome, commanding, dramatic and lavish with her money. It is said that she owned a Russian sleigh which was pulled by three horses abreast. In the winter time, ensconced in black furs, Mrs. Breed would ride majestically in this sleigh through the streets of Lynn, exciting, no doubt, the awe of the populace. Had Swamiji visited her earlier in the year he would surely have had a troika ride, but by mid-April he snow had melted and spring was on its way. Nevertheless, if the sleigh was typical of Mrs. Breed’s expensive tastes, then, winter or spring, Swamiji was entertained during his week in Lynn with a good deal of imagination and flourish.


Swamiji gave two lectures in Lynn, the first on the afternoon of April 17 at the North Shore Club — a women’s club described as “a social and literary organization of the highest  character” of which Mrs. Breed had formerly been president — and the second on the evening of April 18 before the general public at Oxford Hall. A report of Swamiji’s first lecture, entitled “The Manners and Customs of India,” has been recovered from the Lynn Daily Evening Item of April 18.” It read:

NORTH SHORE CLUB

The Meeting. Tuesday Afternoon, Addressed by Suami Vive Kananda, a Learned Monk from India — Description of the Manners and Customs of His Country.


At the meeting of the North Shore Club, Tuesday, afternoon, the audience was a large and brilliant one, representing the highest culture, and including many distinguished guests. Swami Vive kananda, from India, a learned monk, who speaks English with ease and fluency, gave an intensely interesting description of the manners and customs of his country. Suami Vive Kananda, who wore the yellow robe and turban of his order, began by saying that India is divided into two parts, the northern and the southern. In each the language and customs are so different that the speaker who was from the northern portion on meeting a fellow countryman at the Parliament of Religions from the southern, was obliged to converse with him in English, neither being able to understand the other’s native language. Throughout the entire country there are nine languages and 100 dialects spoken.


There is some uniformity of religion, yet each sect is a religion and a law unto itself. Many erroneous descriptions have been written about India, based on imperfect knowledge from which inferences have been drawn that have been most prejudicial. With the Hindoo everything is subservient to religion and he gives up all that is antagonistic to it, his creed being that he is not to enjoy life but to conquer it and gain a supreme mastery over self, which is the highest type of civilization. Caste distinctions which are being obliterated are simply the Aryans and the un-Aryans —the Bhramins and the Sudras. The Bhramin, who is the child of a  thousand years’ culture, such lead a life of rigid discipline; but the Sudra, who is ignorant, is allowed great latitude.


Woman in the position of mother is accorded universal reverence in India. When a son who has become a monk returns to his home, his father, when greeting him must kneel and touch his forehead to the earth; but the monk must kneel before his mother. Women in India do not throw their children into the rivers to be devoured by crocodiles. Widows are not burned on the funeral pyres of their husband unless it is a voluntary act of self-immolation.


There is no divorce allowed for the high class; a woman who leaves her husband, even if she be the most degraded, holds still an interest in his property. Suami Vive Kananda recited a beautiful passage from the Legend of the Ramayana, one of the grandest poems of India, which showed what the love of a wife for her husband should be. The love of Sita for Rama. He added, “Much is said these days on the ‘survival of the fittest,’” and western nations use it as an argument against India, reasoning that their own wealth , prosperity and power show them to be greater and their religion higher and purer.


But India has seen mighty nations rise and fall whose aim has been only the power of conquest and the glory of this life. India has been repeatedly despoiled, has worn the yoke of the conqueror and borne the burden of oppression with indomitable patience and has shown tolerance to all, because she has possessed the knowledge that her people hold fast to a religion that stands securely on a high spirituality and not on the shifting sand of the present enjoyment.


The same day, the Lynn Daily Evening Item warmly announced Swamiji’s coming public lecture (no report of which has been found):


“The lecture of the learned Hindu at Oxford Hall, this evening, is an event not to be overlooked. His address Tuesday afternoon, before the North Shore Club, will not soon be forgotten by the ladies who heard him. Those who like to hear things new as well as bold should go and hear this learned Brahmin.”


Mrs. Breed was as much of Boston as of Lynn; thus, during the week Swamiji stayed with her he not only renewed his friendship with Professor John H. Wright but made, no doubt, many new Boston acquaintances. Our information regarding this week of his life (and much else) comes to us from a heretofore unpublished letter that he wrote from New York to Isabelle McKindley on what was probably April 25. It read


Dear Sister

Your letter reached me yesterday. You are perfectly right— I enjoyed the fun of the lunatic interior [Chicago Interior—a “blue-nose” Presbyterian newspaper, which opposed Swamiji] but the mail you sent yesterday from India was really as mother church says in her letter good news after a long interval. There is a beautiful letter from Dewanji [Haridas V. Desai]. The old man Lord bless him— offers as usual to help me. Then there is a little pamphlet published about me—revealing that once at least in my life the prophet has been honored in his own country. There are extracts from American and Indian papers and magazines about me. The extracts printed from Calcutta papers were especially gratifying although the strain is so fulsome that I refuse to send the pamphlet over to you —They call me illustrious, wonderful and all sorts of nonsense but they forward me the gratitude of the whole nation. Now I do not care what they even of my own people say about me — except for one thing. I have an old mother. She has suffered much all her life and in the midst of all she could bear to give me up for the service of God and man —but to have given up the most beloved of her children — her hope -—to live a beastly immoral life in a far distant country — as Mazoomdar was telling in Calcutta would have simply killed her. But the Lord is great none can injure His children.


The cat is out of the bag — without my seeking at all. And who do you think is the editor of one of our leading papers which praise me so much and thanks God that I came to America to represent Hinduism? Mazoomdar’s cousin !! — Poor Mazoomdar — he has injured his cause by telling lies through jealousy. Lord knows I ever attempted any defence.

I read the article of Mr.Gandhi in the Forum before this.


If you have got the Review of Reviews of last month — read to mother the testimony about the Hindus in connection with the opium question in India by one of the highest officials of the English in India.. He compares the English with the Hindus and lauds the Hindu to the skies. Sir Lepel Griffin—was one of the bitterest enemies of our race. What made this change of front?

I had a very good time in Boston at Mrs. Breeds—and saw prof Wright. I am going to Boston again. The tailor is making my new gown— I am going to speak at Cambridge University [Harvard] and would be the guest of prof Wright there — they write grand welcomes to me in the Boston papers.


I am tired of all this nonsense —toward the latter part of May I will come back to Chicago. And after a few days stay would come back to the East again.


I spoke last night at the Waldorf hotel. Mrs. Smith [Mrs. Arthur Smith, a well known lecturer on Oriental religions, whom Swamiji had met in Chicago] sold tickets at 2$ each. I had a full hall which by the way was a small one. I have not seen anything of the money yet hope to see in the course of the day.


I made a hundred dollars at Lynn which I do not send because I have to make my new gown and other nonsense.

Do not expect to make any money at Boston Still I must touch the Brain of America and stir it up if I can

Your loving brother[17]

Vivekananda

9

Swamiji spoke before Mrs. Smiths “Conversation Circle” at the Waldrof Hotel on the evening of Tuesday, April 24. It was, in a sense, a historic lecture, for, as far as we know at present, it was the first he gave in New York. Aside from his mention in his letter to Isabelle McKindley that the hall was full (though small), our entire knowledge of the lecture to date comes from the following brief item that appeared the next day in the New York Daily Tribune:

A LECTURE ON “INDIA AND HINDUISM”

Swami Vivekananda lectured before Mrs. Arthur Smith’s conversation circle last evening at the Waldrof on Smith’s conversation circle last evening at the Waldrof on “India and Hinduism.” Miss Sara Humbert, contralto, and Miss Annie Wilson, soprano, sang several selections. The lecturer wore an orange-colored coat and the accompanying yellow turban, which is called a beggar’s suit. This is worn when a Buddhist has given up “everything for God and humanity.” The theory of reincarnation was discussed. The speaker said that many clergymen who were more aggressive than the learned asked: “Why one is unconscious of a former life if such a thing had been?” The reply was that “It would be childish to lay a foundation for consciousness, as man is unconscious of his birth in this life, and also of much that has transpired.”


The speaker said that “no such thing” as “a judgement Day” existed in his religion, and that his god neither punished nor rewarded. If wrong was done in any way, the natural punishment was immediate. The soul, he added, passed from one body to another, until it had become a perfect spirit, able to do without the limitations of a body.


Among the large number present were Dr. and Mrs. Dewey, Dr. and Mrs. Guernsey and Miss Guernsey, Mrs. David King, Jr., Mme. Van Norman, Miss Phoebe  Cousins, Miss Phillips, C. Amory Steverns, Charles A. Montogomery, Mrs. J.C.Ward, Dr. R.B.Karib, Canon Knowles, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas E. Calvert, Roderick Perry Hughes and Mrs. Arthur Smith.


Swamiji remained in New York from April 24 to May 6, evidently lecturing before various gatherings, giving informal talks and meeting many people. In another hitherto unpublished letter written from New York to Isabelle McKindley he tells a little of his activities during that time. This letter also gives a glimpse of that side of him which was so childlike and gay even in the midst of duties that were irksome. (Although he dates this letter May 2, it is clear from the postmark on the envelope, as well as from internal evidence, that he wrote it on May 1.)

2nd [Ist] 

May’94 

Dear Sister

I am afraid I cannot send you the pamphlet just now. But I got a little bit of newspaper cutting from India yesterday which I send you up. After you have read it kindly send it over to Mrs. Bagley. The editor of this paper is a relative of Mr.Mazoomdar. I am now sorry for poor Mazoomdar!! [The last two sentences were written crosswise on the left margin.]


I could not find the exact orange colour of my coat here so I have been obliged to satisfy myself with the next best a cardinal red with more of yellow.


The coat will be ready in a few days.


Got about 70$ the other day by lecturing at Waldorf. And hope to get some more by tomorrow’s lecture.

From 7th to 19th there are engagements in Boston but they pay very little.


Yesterday I bought a pipe for 13$ —mershaum do not tell it to father Pope. [The pipe was a gift to Mr. Hale.] The coat will cost 30$. I am all right getting food, drink and money enough —Hope very soon to put something in the bank after the coming lecture.


I have eaten a good slice of meat—just now because in the evening I am going to speak in a vegetarian dinner.


Well, I am a vegetarian for all that because I prefer it when I can get it —I have another invitation to lunch with Lyman Abbott day after tomorrow. After all I am having very nice time and hope to have very nice time in Boston —only that nasty nasty lecturing— disgusting. However as soon as 19th is over—one leap from Boston Bake-beans to Chicago smoked-hams and then I will have a long breath and rest rest for two three weeks. I will simply sit down and talk talk and smoke.


By the by your New York people are very good —only more money than brains.


I am going to speak to the students of the Harvard University Three lectures at Boston 3 at Harvard—all arranged by Mrs. Breed. They are arranging something here too so that I will on my way to Chicago come to New York once more —give them a few hard raps and pocket the boodle and fly to Chicago.


If you want anything from New York or Boston which can not be had at Chicago —write sharp—I have plenty of dollars now I will send you over anything you want in a minute. Don’t think that it would be indelicate anyway —no humbug about me If I am a brother so I am — I hate only one thing in the world hypocrisy.

Your affectionate bro[18]
Vivekananda

(It should be noted by the Indian reader that Boston was famous for its baked beans and Chicago for its smoked hams. Although according to Sri Ramakrishna, Swamiji could eat any kind of food, even that forbidden by scriptural injunction, without the least ill effect,[19] he was not here referring to his own eating habits; he was simply poking fun at American Specialities.)


Swamiji’s second lecture in New York was given on the evening of May 2 at the home of Miss Mary Phillips, who had been among those present at his lecture at the Waldorf Hotel. She later became one of his fast friends, offering him her hospitality and help, and he often used her home in New York at 19 West 38th Street as a sort of headquarters, giving it as his return address on many of his letters to India. Miss Phillips is spoken of in the Life as one of “the eager workers in his cause,” and as “a lady prominent in many circles in women’s charitable and intellectual work in the metropolis.” The following small item from the New York Daily Tribune of May 3, 1894, tells what little we know of Swamiji’s lecture at her house :

10

Swami Vivekanmda [sic] lectured on “India and Reincarnation” last evening at the home of Miss Mary Phillips, No. 19 West Thirty-eithth-st. He mentioned among other salient points regarding Hindooism, or Brahminism, that their religion bore no distinctive name; that it was considered that a belief in of all creeds was religion, and that the belief that one certain dogma was the real and only religion was sect. The Karmic law of cause and effect was explained, also the external and internal natures in their close relations to each other. The actions in this world, as governed by a previous life and the change to still another life, were dwelt upon in detail. Among the large number present were Miss Emma Thursby, Roderick Perry Huges, Professor Leon Landsberg, Professor Woodford, Dr. Holman, Thomas E. Calvert, a number of members of the Emerson Club, Miss Alice Ives, Miss Katharine Stag, Mrs. Samuel Swan, Mr. and Mrs. Doubleday, Mrs. Arthur Smith, Miss Caroline Whitcher and Issac B. Mills.

Among the people who attended Swamiji’s first two lectures, as noted by the Tribune, were several who were to serve his cause for years to come. At the Waldorf lecture, for instance, had been Dr. and Mrs. Egbert Guernsey, whom we have already met, and Miss Mary Phillips, who, forthwith, had arranged to have Swamiji lecture at her house, inviting, among many others, Miss Emma Thursby, the famous singer, and Leon Landsberg. The former [who may have later introduced Swamiji to her close friend Mrs. Ole Bull) was to become a member of the New York Vedanta Society, and the latter, as member of New York Vedanta Society, and the latter, as is well known, became Swami Kripananda, one of Swamiji’s first monastic disciples in the West. Actually Leon Landsberg was not a professor, as stated in the Tribune, but a writer and newspapeerman, employed at the time of the staff of the Tribune itself. (It would appear that Swamiji and Leon Landsberg came to know each other well in May of 1894, for when Swamiji would again visit New York at the end of June, Landsberg would meet his train and give him a room for the night.)

How many talks Swamiji gave at private homes and before clubs during his April, 1984, visit in New York we cannot know, nor can we know how many people of intellectual and religious influence he met, learning from them the current trends of thought and, in turn, giving them a knowledge of India’s religion and, in some cases at least, a new color and direction to their thought. In his letter of May 1 to Isabelle McKindley Lyman Abbott - an extremely well-known clergyman, who took an active part in social and industrial reform and in the religious and theological movements of time. When Swamiji knew him, Mr. Abbott was pastor of the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn and editor-in-chief of the Outlook, having succeeded in both those posts the famous and eloquent Henry Ward Beecher. The Outlook, known earlier as the Christian Union, was an important and widely read weekly, as much devoted to secular matters as to religious, whose editorial staff, with whom Swamiji was invited to dine, must have been a knowledgeable group of men. Mr. Abbott, whom Swamiji had very likely first met at the Parliament of Religions, represented the best of those Christian ministers and writers of the late nineteenth century who, with reservations, became his friends. Those reservations were inbred in almost every Christian clergyman; however liberal they might try to be, very few could fully acknowledge the validity of nonChristian religions. The most lenient view of the heathen’s fate - a view which Lyman Abbott held and which was accepted with some reluctance by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions - was that he was not necessarily doomed to eternal damnation, but would be given a further chance after death to accept God’s grace. “While [Abbott] was unwilling to be dogmatic regarding the fate of those who knew not Christ,” Ira V. Brown writes in Lyman Abbott, a study of the ministers life and thought, “[he] never developed a very keen appreciation of other religions.”20 This is something of an understatement. Although Mr. Abbott presumably admired Swamiji, he was later to respond to a query from the Christian missionaries in India as to the truth of the alarming reports that Swamiji had “made hundreds of converts in America from Christianity to Hinduism” in the following words: “We are familiar with this phenomenon in America which gives in succession apparent converts now to Spiritualism, now to Hypnotism, now to Christian Science, now to Theosophy, now to Hinduism, a conversion rarely of either intellect or affections, still less of stable purposes, but partly of ardent impulses, partly of idle curiosity. Meanwhile the Church of Christ goes on its way increasing, as the statistics show, in numbers faster than the population, rapidly as that has increased, and as Christian activity shows, increasing also in rational and practical faith which believes more and more in deeds and less and less in dreaming.”21 It would seem that when even a liberal Christian clergyman held out his right hand to Swamiji, the left clung fast to the pillar of orthodoxy.

Swamiji probably met other well-known Christian clergymen during his visit to New York. It is, for instance, not unlikely that Dr. and Mrs. Guernsey honored him at this time with the dinner party of creeds which one reads about in Constance Towne’s article, “Swami Vivekananda As I Knew Him,” first published in Prabuddha Bharata of January 1934. Although Mrs. Towne did not record her memories of her first meeting with Swamiji until some forty years later, it was an event which had remained vivid in her mind. If the Guernseys’ Sunday afternoon dinner was given during Swamiji’s first visit to New York, a one can reasonably assume it was, it must have taken place on April 29, this being the only Sunday in his brief stay. Of this somewhat incendiary affair Mrs. Towne, who at the time was Miss Gibbons, writes :

... When I met him he was twenty-seven years old [actually, thirty-one]. I thought him as handsome as a god of classic sculpture. He was dark of skin, of course, and had large eyes which gave one the impression of “midnight blue.” He seemed larger than most of his race, who often to us appear slight of frame because they are small-boned. He had a head heaped with short black curls....

Our meeting was rather unusual. After his triumph at Chicago he was, of course, showered with invitations to come to New York, where the great of all the world are entertained. Here lived at the time a very famous physician, Dr. Egbert Guernsey, genial, literary and ideally hospitable, with a spacious and very handsome house on Fifth Avenue at Forty-fourth Street. It was Dr. Guernsey’s pleasure, heartily endorsed by his charming wife and daughter, to introduce celebrated visitors from abroad to New York society. It was to be expected that he would pay special honor to the great swami, whose ideal of closer relations between the East and the West in the interest of religion and world peace so strongly appealed to him.

Dr. Guernsey accordingly arranged to give a Sunday afternoon dinner party at which every guest should represent a different religious creed, he himself holding the view-point of Robert Ingersoll, who was absent from the city. His Grace the Cardinal was interested but declined to dine or to appoint a substitute from among his clergy. So it happened that I, being a Catholic and trained by the noted Jesuit Priest, William O’Brien Pardow, S.J., had the privilege of being a guest at that famous Sunday dinner. Dr. Guernsey, who was my physician, sent for me to uphold Catholicism. Dr. Parkhurst was there, and Minnie Maddern Fiske, the famous American actress, who was staying with the Guernseys at that time. I remember that there were fourteen at that table.

There was, of course, a tacit understanding that everyone should be polite about his or her religious differences with the Swami and his so-called non-Christian (“Pagan” is a hard word !) attitude. Alas! as the dinner progressed, the most heated dispute was not with Swami at all. All of the differences were confined to the Evangelical brethren!

I was seated beside the Swami. We looked on in amused silence at the almost comical intolerance of the Creeds. Now and again our host would adroitly make some wise or humorous remark that kept the conversation at plane not actually injurious to the function of digestion. The Swami would make from time to time a little speech apparently in explanation of his native land and the customs of its people so different from our own, but always to gain his point in philosophy and religion. A more broadminded and tolerant man surely could not have been found anywhere in India to carry out the mission of founding Vedanta Centres in America.

He wore on that occasion his orange cassock, a cincture of deep rose-red silk, and his turban of white shot with threads of gold. His feet, otherwise bare, were covered by sandals of soft brown leather.

It was at this dinner that our friendship began. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, he said to me : “Miss Gibbons,your philosophy and mine are one; and the heart of our faiths is the same.”[22]

Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, who attended the dinner, was one of the best-known clergymen of the day. He was pastor of the then fashionable Madison Square Presbyterian Church and liked to preach, as did many another contemporary minister, on current issues - political, economic, and social. But, unlike others, Parkhurst did not stop at preaching; he had recently created an upheaval in New York politics. In a famous sermon delivered on February 14, 1892, he had denounced from his pulpit the mayor, the district attorney, and the police, all of whom were, he declared, linked in an “official and administrative criminality that is filthifying our entire municipal life, making New York a very hotbed of knavery, debauchery and bestiality.”[23] These charges, not unfounded, created a sensation, and it was up to Parkhrust to substantiate them. Accordingly, disguised as a ruffian - a transformation difficult for the dignified pastor - he set out on a three-week’s tour of New York’s “dens of vice.” The first-hand evidence he thus collected caused a second sensation and resulted in 1894 in the defeat of Tammany Hall and the election of a reform mayor.

Although there is no record of how Swamiji and Dr. Parkhurst got along together at Dr. Guernsey’s dinner party, they perhaps enjoyed one another’s company, for the minister was a gentle, scholarly, and courageous man. ON the whole, however, this seems to have been a strange and combustible gathering - an opinion shared by Miss Gibbons’ mother. Constance Towne’s memoir’s continue:

I then lived with my mother at the Beresford Apartments at 1, East Eighty-first Street, overlooking Central Park. My mother was Southern, of the royal French blood, from Charleston, South Carolina, and a famous beauty, dark of eyes and hair. She was a witty woman and delighted in the social pleasures centering about the Church of England, to which, she maintained, all the aristocratic world belonged. Thus the Swami and I were outside the fold. I told my mother of him on my return home from Dr. Guernsey's dinner party, and what a splendid mind he had. I dwelt on the great force which had come to us. To which she replied: "What a terrible dinner party, with all those Methodists, Baptists and resbyterians, and one black Pagan in orange cloths!" But she grew to like Vivekananda, to respect his view-point, and afterwards joined one of the Vedanta Centres. She was awfully amusing to him, and I can see him now,[24] after all these years, laughing so gaily at her remarks about him.

While we are quoting Mrs. Towne's memoirs, an incident that most likely took place later than the spring of 1894 can be included, for it is illustrative of the sensation Swamiji made by his very appearance even in New York, a city to which the unusual had become the usual. Mrs. Towne writes:

On one occasion there was an all-star cast in "Faust" at the Metropolitan Opera, on a Monday night when all society appeared to sit in their boxes and show their anatomy covered with jewels; to gossip, to visit, to come in late and be observed of all observers, and to do everything but listen to the * opera. There was Melba in her prime, the de Reszkes and Bauermeister. The Swami had never been to the opera, and our subscription seats were in a conspicuous part of the orchestra. I had suggested that the Swami be invited to accompany us. Mama said to him: "But you are black. What will the world say?" To which he laughed and said: "I will sit beside my sister. She does not mind, I know."

He never looked more handsome. Everyone about us was. so wrapped up in him that I am sure they did not listen to the opera at all that night.

I tried to explain the story of "Faust" to Vivekananda.

Mama, hearing me, said: "Heavens! you, a young girl, should not tell this awful story to a man."

"Then why do you make her come herself, if it is not good?" said the Swami.

"Well," replied Mama, "it is the thing to do to go to the opera. All the plots are bad; but one need not discuss the plot.

Alas for poor, vapid humanity and its foolishness! Later on during the performance the Swami said: "My sister, the gentleman who is making love to the beautiful lady in song, is he really in love with her?"

"Oh, yes, Swamiji "

"But he has wronged her, and makes her sad."

"Yes," I said humbly.

"Oh, now I see," said the Swami. "He is not in love with the handsome lady, he is in love with the handsome gentleman in red with the tail-what do you call him?-the Devil." Thus that pure mind reasoned out, weighed and found wanting both the opera and the audience.

One of society's pets, a very young girl, came down between the acts to Mama and said: "Mama is consumed with curiosity to know who the[25] elegant man is in the yellow dressing gown."

Although in the 1890s hansom cabs, cable cars, and horsecars, rather than automobiles, buses, and taxicabs, crowded the streets of New York, and although the highest skyscraper was little more than twenty stories, the city was already the metropolis of the western hemisphere, the humming center of New World civilization. People of all races, nationalities, and creeds made it then, as now, a teeming world one could never fully know-a cauldron of human joy, suffering, and striving. Swamiji evidently liked New York, feeling in its people an openness to new ideas and an energy which could bring those ideas to fruition. A glimpse of him in the very heart of the city, the clatter of iron wheels and horses' hooves on the rough stone pavement of Fifth Avenue no doubt echoing in his ears, comes to us through the poetess Harriet Monroe, who writes in her autobiography, A Poet’s Life:

Later [after the Parliament of Religions] I knew him quite well, and always I shall remember an encounter and talk years after in Fifth Avenue, when his eyes soared up to the tip of a sky-scraper, and he said something which made me realize that all this newness was as romantic to him as thc old things are to us, and that his vision entrusted to our fresh energies his hope of a more united and glorious world![26]

Indeed, wherever Swamiji saw an expression of man's vitality and creativity, there he saw the vitality and creativity of the Divine Mother. Strength in whatever form spoke to him, as it were, on a deep level where man's energy as expressed in a skyscraper was not different from the divine energy sustaining and moving the universe. It was the same energy and power which he himself embodied.

In the autobiographies of others who had met him one now and then comes across a few lines of recollection, and something of the dynamic force which emanated from him is vividly conveyed to us. Even those who had met him only once never forgot him. The following paragraphs are taken from Heads and Tales by Malvina Hoffman, the famous sculptress:

India brought back one of my vivid memories of childhood, an exciting evening spent with a relative of my father's who lived in a modest boarding-house in West Thirty-eighth Street. In the midst of this group of old fashioned city boarders was introduced suddenly a newcomer-the oriental philosopher and teacher, Swami Vivekananda. When he entered the dining-room there was a hush. His dark, bronzed countenance and hands were in sharp contrast to the voluminous, light folds of his turban and robe.

His dark eyes hardly glanced up to notice his neighbors, but there was a sense of tranquility and power about him that made an imperishable impression upon me. He seemed to personify the mystery and religious "aloofness" of all true teachers of Brahma, and combined with this a kindly and gentle attitude of simplicity towards his fellow men.

It was many years later, in 1931, that we visited outside of Calcutta, at Belur, the marble temple which was dedicated to this same man by the thousands of his devoted followers. When I offered the garland of jasmin to be laid on the altar, I recalled, with emotion, that the only time I had seen this holy man, he had revealed to me more of thc true spirit of India, without even uttering a word, than I had ever sensed in the many lectures on[27] India, or by Indians, which I had attended since.

Even the skeptics were drawn to Swamiji, liking him despite themselves. One amusing example of this is told in Albert Spalding's autobiography, Rise to Follow. The following passage relates to the violinist's childhood when his family lived in an apartment house at Central Park South and Seventh Avenue. Although this incident may have taken place later in 1894, I believe it can be told here, for it is an example of Swamiji's universal appeal:

Once an Indian swami came to dinner. He was none other than the renowned Vivekananda. Aunt Sally found him fascinating, though she could never quite see the exalted spirituality that his fleet of admirers claimed for him. For the paeans of praise that filled the air she had pithy rejoinders. "Land-a-mercy," she would retort to some assertion of the swami's rigidly ascetic life, "ascetic life, indeed! Let me tell you that man never got such a generous figure living on wildflowers!"

"But, Aunt Sally, you know you liked him. You showed you did. "

"Certainly, I liked him. I like lots of men, and I don't have to think they're Jesus of Nazareth just because I do." She would hold her breath with a kind of smothered chuckle when she felt she had been on the brink of blasphemy.

The evening parties were almost always musical ones. Even the swami did not escape, although my mother had qualms and did not let the music go on too long.[28]


11

On April 25 and again on May 4 Swamiji wrote from New York to his good friend Professor John Henry Wright, whom he had recently seen in Boston. The following letters, which have been made available to us through the kindness of Professor Wright's son, Mr. John K. Wright, are of great help in straightening out Swamiji's itinerary at this period of his life, our previous knowledge of which has been sketchy and confused:

25th April '94

Dear professor

I am very very grateful for your invitation. And will come on May 7th. As for the bed—my friend, your love and noble heart can convert the stone into down.I am sorry I am not going to the authors' breakfast at Salem.

I am [illegible] by May 7th

Yours truly[29] 

Vivekananda

4th May 1894 

Dear Adhyapakji ["Honorable Professor"]

I have received your kind note just now. And it is unnecessary for me to say that I will be very happy to do as you say.

I have also received Col. Higginson's letter—I will reply to him.

I will be in Boston on Sunday [May 6]. On Monday I lecture at the Women's Club of Mrs. Howe.

Yours ever trulys'[30]
Vivekananda

Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, of whom we will hear more later, had been a delegate to the Parliament of Religions and was one of the more liberal-minded writers of the age. He was interested in the Free Religious Association, the motivating idea of which was contained in his paper, "The Sympathy of Religions, " which he had read at the Parliament and which had created a furor in Boston. As we shall learn further on, Swamiji was invited to speak at a meeting of the Free Religious Association held in August, 1894, at Plymouth, Massachusetts.


The reader will have gathered from the above letter that Swamiji arrived in Boston on Sunday, May 6, and, at the invitation of Mrs. Howe, lectured before a women's club on Monday, May 7.


There can be little doubt that this Mrs. Howe was the famous Julia Ward Howe who many years earlier had written, in a moment of fire, the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and who was otherwise known as an upholder of innumerable causes, such as peace, universal suffrage, Russian freedom, the higher education of women, and so on. Both Mrs. Howe and Colonel Higginson were among the last of those men and women from the golden age of New England culture, which had reached its height before the Civil War. By the nineties an age of nostalgia had set in; Boston looked, on the one hand, back to its lost glory and, on the other hand, ahead to it knew not what. It was an age of radically changing values, in which all that had been strong, exuberant, and idealistic seemed to be dying, with nothing worthwhile to take its place. There remained, however, a few sturdy souls who upheld the old literary and scholastic traditions, who were, indeed, oblivious of the growing commercialism and utilitarianism that had invaded the "American Athens." "These magnanimous worthies," wrote Van Wyck Brooks, a historian of New England culture, "these generous natures, for whom nothing had ever existed that was common or mean, were destined to see mankind as forever triumphant. They ignored the signs of the times and lived above them, as Emerson had lived all his life.'[31] Mrs. Howe, one of these worthies, was seventy-five in 1894 and is described by Brooks as Swamiji must have seen her: "The great-grandmotherly Mrs. Howe, never at a loss for causes, appeared in her lace hood at every meeting. No meeting could have deserved the name unless she recited the 'Battle Hymn,' in her flowered silk cloak and lilac satin. She was never too old to appear at the State House to plead for justice or mercy, — no day without its cause was her constant motto.... As a national institution,  Dr. [Edward Everett] Hale was her only rival."[32]


Swamiji and these idealistic, yet sturdy, old-time Bostonians must have got on well together. The spirit of Transcendentalism was still alive in their hearts, and very likely he felt more at home in their company than in that of the younger generation, which, on the whole, lacked their vision and breadth of soul. A dry and pedantic intellectualism had replaced (for a time at least) the richness and depth of thought that characterized the Yankee genius. It was this parching of the wellsprings, this sterility, that would make Swamiji cry out, "Oh, they are so dry!'[33]


The day following Swamiji's lecture before "the Women's Club of Mrs. Howe" (undoubtedly the New England Woman's Club, of which Julia Ward Howe was president) he spoke to the younger generation of Bostonians at Radcliffe, a recently founded college for women, associated with Harvard University and familiarly known as the "Harvard Annex," or just simply the "Annex." Earlier in this story of Swamiji's life in America we quoted extensively from the letters and papers of Mrs. John Henry Wright. Now, with the aid of her journal, we are able to learn something of his activities that have hitherto been unknown and to feel something of the impact of his personality upon those with whom he came in contact. As will be seen from the following excerpts, which Mrs. Wright's son, Mr. John K. Wright, has made available to us, her journal was written for the most part as though she were giving a day-by day narrative of a mythical family called the "Kirtlands."


May 7, 1894

Mr. Kirtland [Dr. Wright] had invited an Oriental to spend the next week with them, Swami Vivekananda; but the Swami elected to stay at a hotel in Boston. It was quite a relief for Mrs. Kirtland although she liked the Oriental; but the packing was more than she could manage with a Heathen God always at hand, at least she feared so. He had been with them in the previous summer.*


Saturday, May 12, 1894


On Tuesday (May 80 Vivekananda spoke before the Annex upon his religion. It was most poetic, full of reverence and that deep feeling that for the moment makes converts. The trivial faces of some of the women hardened into a fixed attention and they seemed to be straining every nerve in order to follow the speaker; but when he began to tell us our faults and show up our follies and crimes he came down to a lower level and they laughed with the vexed laugh born of a sting.


The widows of high caste in India do not marry, he said; only the widows of low caste may marry, may eat, drink, dance, have as many husbands as they choose, divorce them all, in short enjoy all the benefits of the highest society in this country. Then we laughed....


Thursday [May 10] Vivekananda spoke at the Round Table at Mr. Collidge's in Boston. He again amused himself by making flings at the Americans. Witty, bitter, sharp flings that were all deserved, all neatly done, all to the point but the man has it in him to do higher things. He looked very picturesque in his yellow turban and scarlet robe, and he spoke with a good deal of dignity. Reproached the country for its plutocracy, its bad morals, its lack of religion.


"When we are fanatical," he said, "we torture ourselves we throw ourselves under huge cars, we cut our throats, we lie on spiked beds; but when you are fanatical you cut other people's throats, you torture them by fire and put them on spiked beds! You take very good care of your own skins!'[34]


It is obvious that Mrs. Wright appreciated Swamiji, indeed was deeply impressed by him, recognizing him as a man of great stature; yet it appears that she was also somewhat repelled by that side of him which could never make itself "sweet and accommodating to every black falsehood.'[35] Like a fierce and cleansing wind, Swamiji tore into and uprooted all that was dead and obstructive in the forests of human life, at the same time scattering the seeds of a new and vigorous growth. He was well able to take on the responsibility of telling people the unsavory facts about themselves, for never did he do so without simultaneously revealing a deeper truth. Such was his compassion and his power for good that his audience rarely remarked upon his "witty, bitter, sharp flings. " We owe this picture largely to Mrs. Wright-the picture of Swamiji lecturing to rows of "trivial faces" and neatly turning them, as it were, inside out, exposing the absurdities and contradictions of their lives and thought.


This process, of course, did not delight everyone. It is told in the Life that in Boston Swamiji once spoke "before a large audience gathered to hear him lecture on 'My Master.' " "Full of the fire of renunciation," the passage reads, ". . . when he saw before him the audience composed, for the most part, of worldly-minded men and women lacking in spiritual sympathy and earnestness, he felt that it would be a desecration to speak to them of his understanding of and his real feelings of devotion for Sri Ramakrishna. So, instead, he launched out in a terrible denunciation of the vulgar, physical, and materialistic ideas which underlay the whole of Western civilization. Hundreds of people left the hall abruptly, but in no way affected, he went on to the end. The next morning the papers were filled with varying criticism, some highly favourable, others severely critical in their analysis of what he had said, but all commenting on his fearlessness, sincerity and frankness. '[36]


A search of the Boston papers has, so far, not yielded reports of Swamiji's tongue-lashing of his Boston audience. It is fairly certain, however, that this lecture does not belong to the period with which we are concerned at present; for according to Swamiji's letter of May 1, 1894, to Isabellle McKindley, he had engagements to give, in all, six lectures at Harvard and Boston during the first part of May, all of which are accounted for, and none of which were delivered before a large audience or entitled "My Master."


As has been seen, his first lecture fell on May 7 before the "Women's Club of Mrs. Howe," the second on May 8 at Radcliffe College, and the third on May 10 at "Mr. Collidge's Round Table" in Boston. Although in an article, which has already been quoted, the Boston Evening Transcript of April 5 heralded Swamiji's coming with Seat excitement, newspaper was remiss, as were the other Boston papers, in reporting on these first three lectures. On May 12, however, the Transcript ran the following announcements:

12

LECTURE NOTICES

Mr. Suami Vive Kananda will give a lecture, "The Manners and Customs of India" at Association Hall, on Monday afternoon [May 14], in aid of the Tyler-Street Day Nursery.


Mr. Swami Vivekananda will give a lecture, "The Religions of India" in Association Hall, next Wednesday afternoon [May 16] for the benefit of Ward 16 Day Nursery. Among the matters explained will be the distinction between image worship and idolatry, the various Indian conceptions of the Deity and the teachings of the ancient Hindoo philosophers.


Swamiji’s lecture of May 14, the proceed, from which he would give to a local charity, was reported upon by both the Boston Evening Transcript and the Boston Herald of May 15. The reports were so similar that it will be sufficient to reproduce only, that of Herald, which read as follows:

THE RELIGION OF INDIA

It is Described by Swami Vivekananda,

The Brahmin Monk.

Association Hall was crowded with ladies yesterday, to hear Swami Vivekananda, the Brahmin Monk, talk about '"The Religion of India" [actually "The Manners and customs of India"] for the benefit of the ward 16 day nursery (Tyler Street Day Nursery]. The Brahmin monk has become a fad in Boston, as he was in Chicago last year, and his earnest, honest, cultured manner has won many friends for him.


The Hindoo nation is not given to marriage, he said, not because we are women haters, but because our religion teaches us to worship women. The Hindoo is taught to see in every woman his mother and no man wants to marry his mother. God is mother to us. We don't care anything about God in heaven; it is mother to us. We consider marriage a low vulgar state, and if a man does marry, it is because he needs a helpmate for Religion.


You say we ill-treat our women. What nation in the world has not ill-treated its women? In Europe or America a man can marry a woman for money, and, after capturing her dollars, can kick her out. In India, on the contrary, when a woman marries for money, her children are considered slaves, according to our teaching, and when a rich man marries, his money passes into the hands of his wife, so that he would be scarcely likely to turn the keeper of his money out of doors.


You say we are heathens, we are uneducated, uncultivated, but we laugh in our sleeves at your want of refinement in telling us such things. With us, quality and birth make caste, not money. No amount of money can do anything for you in India. In caste the poorest is as good as the richest, and that is one of the most beautiful things about it.


Money has made warfare in the world, and caused Christians to trample on each other's necks. Jealousy, hatred and avariciousness are born of money-getters. Here it is all work, hustle and bustle. Caste saves a man from all this. It makes it possible for a man to live with less money, and it brings work to all. The man of caste has time to think of his soul, and that is what we want in the society of India.


Thc Brahmin is born to worship God, and the higher his caste, the greater his social restrictions are. Caste has kept us alive as a nation, and while it has many defects, it has many more advantages.


Mr. Vivekananda described the universities and colleges of India, both ancient and modern, notably the one at Benares, that has 20,000 students and professors.


When you judge my religion, he continued, you take it that yours is perfect and mine wrong; and when you criticise the society of India you suppose it to be uncultured just so far as it does not conform to your standard. That is nonsense.


In reference to the matter of education, the speaker said that the educated men of India become professors, while the less educated become priests.The Hotel Bellevue, where Swamiji had chosen to stay, stood on Beacon Street near the State House and was relatively inexpensive. From here, on hotel stationery he wrote two letters to Mrs. Hale, telling her, with the freedom and intimacy of a son, some small, everyday details of his life, which thus come (as they would not otherwise have done) to our knowledge. The letters, dated May 11 and May 14, 1894, are given here in full, one following upon the other:

Boston, 11th May, 
1894 

Dear Mother.

I have been since 7th lecturing here every afternoon or evening. At Mrs. Fairchild's I met the niece of Mrs. Howe. She was here today to invite me to dinner with her today. I have not seen Mr Voldinen as yet. Of course the pay For lecture is the poorest and everybody has an axe to grind. I got a long letter full of the prattles of the babies. Your city ie. N.Y. pays far better than Boston so I am trying to go back there. But here one can get work almost every day.


I think I want some rest. I feel as if I am very much tired and this constant journeyings to and fro have shaken my nerves a little but hope to recoup soon. Last few days I have been suffering from cold and slight fever and lecturing for all that; hope to get rid of it in a day or two.


I have got a very nice gown at 30$ the colour is not exactly that of the old one but cardinal with more of yellow—could not get the exact old colour even in New York.


I have not much to write for it is the repetition of the old story of talking talking talking. I long to fly to Chicago and shut up my mouth and give a long rest to mouth and lungs and mind. If I am not called for in New York I am coming soon to Chicago.

Yours obly[37]
Vivekananda

(Swamiji's first sentence of the above letter seems to indicate that he gave a talk on the afternoon or evening of May 9; but of this we have at present no information.)

Boston, May I4th 1894 

Dear Mother

Your letter was so pleasing instead of being long-I enjoyed every bit of it. I have received a letter from Mrs. Potter Palmer asking me to write to some of my countrywomen about their society &c. I will see her when I come to Chicago personally, in the meanwhile I will write he rall I know. Perhaps you have received 125$ sent over from New York; tomorrow I will send another 100$ from here. The Bostonians want to grind their own axes ! !


Oh they are so so dry—even girls talk dry metaphysics here [it] is like our Benaras where all is dry dry metaphysics! ! Nobody here understands "my beloved" here. Religion to these people is reason and horribly stony at that. I do not care for anybody who can not love my "beloved " Do not tell it to Miss Howe, she may be offended.


The pamphlet [from Calcutta] I did not send over before, because I do not like the quotations from the Indian Newspapers —especially [when] they give a haul over coal to somebody. Our people so much dislike the Brahmosamaj that they only want an opportunity to show it to them. I dislike it. Any amount of enmity to certain persons cannot efface the good works of life. And then they [the Brahmos] were only children in Religion. They never were much of religious men—i.e. they only wanted talk and reason—did not struggle to see the beloved. And until one does that I do not say that he has any religion. He may have books, forms, doctrines, words, reason, sects, but not religion, for that begins when the soul feels the necessity, the want, the yearning after the "Beloved" and never before. And therefore our society has no right to expect from them anything more than from an ordinary "householder."


I hope to come to Chicago before the end of this month —oh I am so tired.

Yours afly[38]
Vivekananda

Tired though he was, Swamiji had more lectures to give before he could rest. The day after writing the above letter he traveled some twenty-five miles north of Boston to fill an engagement in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a great manufacturing center, where the huge and impressive pacific Mills were located. The newspaper account of his lecture in Lawrence, which appeared in that city's Evening Tribune of May 16, read in full:

LECTURE BY HINDUO MONK

Swami Vivekananda Tells About the

Religion of High Caste Indians.

Liberty hall was comfortably filled last evening, on the occasion of the lecture by Swami Vivekananda, the noted Brahmin Monk, who was a prominent personality at the world's parliament of religions at Chicago last summer, and who is spending some time in this country, studying its manners and customs. The lecture was under the auspices of the woman's club, and was a novel and interesting occasion. The noted Hindu was pleasantly introduced by the president of the club, Miss Wetherbee, who alluded to the great antiquity of India, its wonderful history and the high intellectual qualities of the Hindu race.


The speaker of the evening was attired in native costume, namely, a bright scarlet robe, confined at the waist by a long scarf of the same color, and wore a picturesque white silk turban wound round his head. At the first glance one saw the swarthy complexion, the dark and dreamy eyes and introspective manner of a high caste Brahmin, whose  life is devoted to religion and who is also a celibate. That he is a finely educated person, appeared in his wonderful command of English and his power of argument, while an occasional quotation from Milton and Dickens, showed that he was appreciative of the great English classics.


He first spoke of that striking peculiarity of the social condition of the Hindu's caste, affirming that it is not now as strict an institution as in the past, although even now everything goes by heredity. Mixture of castes, though not absolutely forbidden, entails disadvantage on the children. The Brahmin or high caste person devotes the first part of his life to the study of the Vedas or sacred books and the latter part to meditating on the divinity, being supposed to have overcome the human in himself, and to be only a soul.


The speaker did not hesitate to criticise adversely some western customs, especially some connected with the position of woman. He affirmed that we worship women in the wife, while all women to the Hindu represent the mother element. In America when a woman ceases to be young and beautiful, she has a hard time of it, but in India kings must step aside for an aged woman to pass, so great is the respect in which they are held. He affirmed that some of the most beautiful portions of the Vedas, the Hindu bible, were written by women, but that there was no other bible in this world in which they had any part.


Considerable time was given to refuting the statement, which he characterized as untrue, in regard to the cruelty practised to widows in India, the speaker referring in the course of his remarks to the zenana widows, who have been for some time the objective point of Christian missionaries from other countries. Marriage is an institution very safely guarded and, in addition to the law that a Brahmin must not marry a relative, none are allowed to marry who are known to have such a disease as consumption or any incurable physical ill. The strict rules of caste which prevent a person from drinking from the same glass as another, and other kindred regulations, although [not] part of the religion, were excellent in their result on the physical condition of a country, numbering 285 millions, in the prevention of the spread of contagious diseases. The speaker was horrified, as he might well be, at the promiscuous water drinking seen in railroad trains and stations ' in this country. The children are, first of all, taught kindness to all living beings and so thoroughly is this training that the smallest child instinctively turns aside from stepping on a worm. A strange thought that among these so called heathen there is no need of the society with the long name which often fails in its mission in Christian lands.* The guest of a house, that is, a man who comes to the door and says, "I am hungry," is God's own image to the Hindu and is treated with the utmost kindness and consideration, being fed before the master and mistress of the establishment.


The speaker alluded sadly to the poverty of his country, for, while the upper caste live in comfort, there are millions whose only food is dried flowers, and who are so low in the scale of existence that they have hardly an identity, and are pitiful objects in the plane of existence. He hinted quite forcibly that food and education would be better than the sermons which Christians and Mohammedans had been throwing at them for the last hundred years. Many of the simple and primitive customs of this peculiar people were told with naivete and innocence that was refreshing in this age when words are used to conceal thoughts. He said there was no flirting or coquetting between their young men and maids, and that the latter did not strut forth into public places with all their bravery [finery?] on for the purpose of securing a husband, all of which made the inhabitants of this great and glorious republic wonder if something were not slightly rotten in the state of Denmark. It is well to see both sides of the shield in order to be able to decide with an unprejudiced eye, and many of the listeners went away quite puzzled in mind at hearing some of their pet American customs arraigned by a Hindu and a heathen.


The address was a most interesting one and was listened to with deep attention by all present. At the close many [questions] were presented to the thoughtful monk; who wasted very few words in social flourishes or unmeaning talk. He seemed much interested in Dr. Bowker, the only one in the audience who had ever visited the strange land which was centuries old before this republic was born.[39]


Another report of the above lecture appeared a few days later, on May 18, in the Lawrence American and Andover Advertiser and gave a vivid description of Swamiji, who was indeed '(as he had appeared two weeks or so earlier to Miss Gibbon as handsome as a god of classic sculpture. " This report, the accuracy of which is here and there questionable, read in full:

THE BRAHMAN MONK

Swami Vivckananda the Guest of 
the Woman's Club.
He Points Out the Better Phases of
Brahmanism.
And Delivers a Pointed Message to 
Christians.

Swami Vivekananda, the Brahman monk addressed a most interested audience Tuesday night in Library Hall under the auspices of the Lawrence Woman's Club.


Miss Wetherbee introduced the speaker and prepared the way for a cordial reception which American courtesy rarely fails to give a distinguished visitor from another nation.


Miss Wetherbee wisely referred to him as a prominent personality at the World's Parliament of Religions, also to the strong impression made by him at the World's fair.


Last evening Swami Vivekananda did not fail to make a decided impression upon his Lawrence audience. His dress was a robe of vivid scarlet; around his head were gracefully wound some twelve yards of yellow silk, the end of which fell over his left shoulder on his breast. His beauty is undoubtedly remarkable. An erect, fine form, a face strong and yet refined, most intelligent eyes and perfect expressive mouth, a voice rich and musical, —a voice capable of electrifying an audience and also when combined with the flash of his eye and the curve of his lip expressive of the utmost scorn. When in certain emotional situations, he hisses out.

His Iterations 

upon the meddlesome but intended kindnesses of other nations,. one thought, O, Vivekananda, were it possible for you to be a lover of woman, what a magnificent Othello you might make! but alas, this man of superb beauty is a Brahman Monk and therefore he may never marry.


In his own country, in his own class, he addresses all women as mother. The Brahmin is educated thus to think of women as mother and a man may not marry his mother. In that country the mother instinct is developed in woman; in this he thought the wife instinct was cultivated, and the most beautiful thing in his lecture was his tribute to the mother, and not unnoticed was the reference to the kindness of heart of the little Hindoo child which would instinctively cause him to turn aside from his path rather than crush a worm.

The Subject of Marriage

formed a large part of his lecture. Among the high classes, called Aryans, women think of marriage as indecent [?].


A widow is not expected to ever marry again. A man who never marries, is highly praised, and indeed worshipped, but should he marry then in the minutes all would be changed. He who does not marry is looked upon as highminded, as holy and spiritual.


Among the Aryans no money is paid in marriage [?], and as female children are largely in the majority it is one of most difficult things for a father to marry his daughter, and from the time of her birth he racks his brains to find her a husband.


With the two lower classes the rules in regard to marriage are all different. Widows marry again and wives and husbands if desirous become divorced. When a child is born an astrologer comes and casts a horoscope of the child, he delineates the future character of the boy or girl—it is decided whether he is a manly or a devilish child; if devilish—he is married to one next in caste, and thus is obtained a minute chance of bettering the condition of the devilish child.


The matter of marriage is not left to the decision of the child as in that case he might marry because in love with a good nose or good eyes and so in having his own way would spoil the whole thing. The fact was emphasised that only the higher classes think of a

True Spiritual Life

and of worshiping God instead of thinking of marriage. He spoke of the pitiful condition of the lower classes, their poverty and their ignorance. Millions and millions are [un]able to write their name and yet he said: We are all preaching sermons into them, when their hands are reaching out for bread. Poverty is so extreme in the lower classes that fifty cents a month is the average income of a Hindoo. Millions live on one poor meal a day and millions subsist on wild flowers for food.


He spoke of the idea being prevalent that there were no scholars among the women of India and stated that this was an error as many women of the Brahmins were married but became scholars, and with evident pride he referred to the fact that in no nation could one line be found

In Any Bible

that had been written by a woman excepting his own country alone where many beautiful things in their Bible had been written by women.


Swami Vivekananda did not fail to inform the audience in English words which could not be misunderstood, that the effort to raise his people by teaching them the Christian religion was a thankless task. He said: "We have seen the Greek and the Persian come to us—we have seen the Spaniard with guns come to make us Christians, still we are Hindoos and thus we shall remain" Had Vivekananda used all the power of his flashing eyes and his expressive voice it would have been a most dramatic speech when he said: "I dare here in America to say that we of India shall stand by our religion." He said our customs were good for us and we were welcome to them. He stood before us as he has before many a cultured American audience—he, the learned exponent of the Brahman religion, the only Hindoo who has ever come to this country to tell us—as forcibly as he dared and as politely as he could and yet be forcible—to say no more to the poor Hindoo but to be so very kind as to mind our own business.


After the lecture many of the audience gladly availed themselves of the opportunity offered by Mr. and Mrs. Young to meet Vivekananda at their residence where he has been entertained and has proven himself to be a most delightful guest.


On another page of this same newspaper was an editorial, the writer of which not only did not hear Swamiji very well but was not about to be carried off his feet by what he did hear, for it was just at this time that the seeds of doubt sown by Swamiji's enemies in India were reaching America, and just at this moment that they found their way to Lawrence—but of this more later. The first paragraphs of the Americans editorial read as follows:

Impressions of Vivekananda

A person attired in a bright scarlet robe fastened at the waist by a long scarf with a white silk turban upon his head, a person of dark, dreamy eyes, and of deliberate movement—such was the Brahman monk who addressed the Woman's Club and its friends at Library hall Tuesday evening, as he appeared on the platform.


He talked in a free conversational way for about one hour and a half upon the customs and habits of thought of his countrymen and fellow religionists. His treatment of his subject was very unsystematic, and his voice was so low pitched and his pronunciation so indistinct that it was difficult to catch all that he said. On the other hand, his self possession, his good use of simple English words, his evident acquaintance with English writers and English habits of thought, his outspoken criticism of some of the worst phases of the western "civilization" and "religion" his plain exposition of the better phases of Hinduism—these among other things held the closest attention of the audience, and evoked considerable sympathy and applause. It must be said, however, that the general impression left on the minds of his hearers is better described as "mixed" than as "favorable."


Without attempting to pass judgment upon him, his sincerity and truthfulness, the AMERICAN would submit the following extracts from Indian papers regarding the monk and his credentials.


[There followed several paragraphs of quotations from Indian newspapers inimical to Swamiji, which will be of more concern to us in the next chapter than here.]


As we have seen from the last sentence of the report of Swamiji's lecture in the Lawrence American, he was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Young during his brief stay in the city. The Reverend George Henry Young was a Unitarian minister, at whose church Swamiji was to lecture at a later date. In the Vedanta Kesari of January 1962, one finds the following brief story of that later visit, for which no date has as yet been determined:


Swami Vivekananda is thought to have spoken at a Vesper Service at the Unitarian Church in Lawrence, Massachusetts, sometime after May, 1894, and to have spent the night in the home of the Unitarian minister, the Rev. George Henry Young.


As Mrs. Young and the eldest daughter, Anne, were away at the time, the second daughter, Sheila, was managing the household and taking care of the younger children, Eleanor and Philip.


Sheila remembers that Swamiji sat on her right at the breakfast table, between her father and her, across the table from Eleanor and Philip.


When the Swami left the table he went into the adjoining room. There, as both Sheila and Eleanor remember, he took off his turban and showed the children how he wound it. The turban was white, and there was a great deal of cloth in it.


The Birthday Book in which Swamiji wrote, belonged to Eleanor. It is a little book with a Bible quotation for each day of the year. Beside each quotation is a space where friends sign their name next to the date of their birthday.[40]


(Accompanying the above paragraphs from the Vedanta Kesari, and reproduced here, was a facsimile of a December page from the Birthday Book, on which Swamiji had signed his name beneath that of the young Philip and had written: "Do in childhood that will help you in age.")


On the day following his lecture of May 15, 1894, in Lawrence Swamiji returned to Boston, where he had engagements that same day to give two lectures. The first, at Association Hall (again a benefit) was "fixed late—from 3:30 till 5:30—so that business men may attend," and the second was scheduled for eight in the evening at Harvard University. A report of the afternoon lecture, "The Religions of India," appeared in the Boston Herald of May 17 and read :

BY THE BRAHMIN MONK

Lecture in Aid of the Ward 16 Day NurseryDelivered Yesterday Afternoon.

The Brahmin monk, Swami Vivekananda, lectured yesterday afternoon in Association Hall on "The Religions of India," in aid of the Ward 16 Day Nursery. There was a large attendance.


The speaker first gave an account of the Mahommedans, who formed, he said, one-fifth of the population. They believed in both Old and New Testaments, but Jesus Christ they regarded only as a prophet. They had no church organization, though there was reading of the Koran.


The Parsees, another race, called their sacred book the Zend-Avesta, and believed in two warring deities, Armuzd the good and Ahriman the evil. They believed that finally the good would triumph over the evil. Their moral code was summed up in the words: "Good thought, good words, good deeds."


The Hindus proper looked up to the Vedas as their religious scripture. They held each individual to the customs of caste, but gave him full liberty to think for himself in religious matters. A part of their method was to seek out some holy man or prophet in order to take advantage of the spiritual current that flowed through him.


The Hindus had three different schools of religion—the dualistic, the qualified monistic and the monistic—and these three were regarded as stages through which each individual naturally passed in the course of his religious development.


All three believed in God, but the dualistic school believed that God and man were separate entities, while the monistic declared that there was only one existence in the universe, this unitary existence being neither God nor soul, but something beyond.


The lecturer quoted from the Vedas to show the character of the Hindu religion, and declared that, to find God, one must search one's own heart.


Religion did not consist of pamphlets or books; it consisted of looking into the human heart, and finding there the truths of God and immortality. "Whomsoever I like," said the Vedas, "him I create a prophet," and to be a prophet was all there was of religion.

The speaker brought his lecture to a close by giving an account of the Jains, who show remarkable kindness to dumb animals, and whose moral law is summed up in the words: "Not to injure others is the highest good."


The following announcement for Swamiji's evening lecture appeared in the Harvard University Calendar for May 11, and also in the Harvard Crimson of the same date:

ADDRESS BY SWAMI VIVEKANANDA.

On the evening of Wednesday, May 16, at 8 o'clock, in Sever 11, an address will be given under the auspices of the Harvard Union by SWAMI VIVEKANANDA, a Hindoo monk. The public are invited. Vivekananda is an adherent of the ancient Brahmin faith of India, and was for eight years the disciple of the sage Ram Krishna. He is well qualified, both by his attainments in native learning and by unusual gifts of eloquence, to expound to a western audience the beliefs of his countrymen. His addresses at the World's Parliament of Religions have attracted great attention.


On May 17 the Harvard Crimson ran a brief review of the lecture as follows:

VIVEKANANDA'S ADDRESS

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo monk, gave an address last evening in Sever Hall under the auspices of the Harvard Religious Union. The address was very interesting, the clear and eloquent voice of the speaker, and his low, earnest delivery making his words singularly impressive.


There are various sects and doctrines in India, said Vivekananda, some of which accept the theory of a personal God, and others which believe that God and the universe are one; but whatever sect the Hindoo belongs to he does not say that his is the only right belief, and that all others must be wrong. He believes that there are many ways of coming to God; that a man who is truly religious rises above the petty quarrels of sects or creed. In India if a man believes that he is a spirit, a soul, and not a body, then he is said to have religion and not till then.


To become a monk in India it is necessary to lose al! thought of the body; to look upon other human beings as souls. So monks can never marry. Two vows are taken when a man becomes a monk, poverty and chastity. He is not allowed to receive or possess any money whatever. The first ceremony to be performed on joining the order is to be burnt in effigy, which is supposed to destroy once for all the old body, name and caste. The man then receives a new name, and is allowed to go forth and preach or travel, but must take no money for what he does.


As in New York, so in Boston, Swamiji no doubt made many new friends as well as renewed the friendships of those whom he had met earlier. Notable among these may have been Mrs. Ole Bull of Cambridge, who was to remain devoted to him for the rest of her life. We do not know exactly when or where Swamiji first met Mrs. Bull. If in Boston, then it may have been during his visit there in April, or, more probably, during that in May.


Swamiji must also have looked up Miss Kate Sanborn, his very first American friend, whom he had met even before his arrival in Chicago in July of 1893. It has long been supposed that Swamiji first met Miss Sanborn while traveling by train from Chicago to Boston. Recent findings, however, have revealed that the train on which Kate Sanboro was first dazzled and charmed by "the monk, a magnificent specimen of manhood—six feet two,...with a lordly, imposing stride, as if he ruled the universe, and soft, dark eyes that could flash fire if roused or dance with merriment if the conversation amused him"—that train was the Canadian Pacific Railway's Atlantic Express, on its scenic route from Vancouver to Winnipeg, carrying a wide variety of distinguished tourists on their way to the Fair.[41] In the observation car, Miss Sanborn liberally distributed invitations to her "farm" in Metcalf, Massachusett, near Boston. But to Swamiji she made her invitation more than casual "I told him as we separated," she later recalled "I should be most pleased to present him to some men and women of learning and general culture, if by chance he should come to Boston." Swamiji did not forget that cordial promise, and as we know, it was abundantly well kept. (See pert one, chapter one of this book.)


According to his letter of May 1 to Isabelle McKindley, Swamiji intended to return to New York after completing his lectures in Boston. But as Far as one can learn, he did not do so; rather, feeling tired and ill, he went directly to Chicago, arriving there by May 24. To judge from his letters, both published and heretofore unpublished, he remained at the Hales' through most of June, getting at last the rest he needed after so much "whirling to and fro" [42]—from Detroit to New York to Boston to Northampton to Lynn to Boston to New York to Boston and, finally, to Chicago and "home."


ⓘ
[I] Complete Works of Swami Vivek-ananda, 8:302; this passage is from an early copy of the original letter, Swami Nikhilananda     Collection.
[2] Complete Works, 6 : 283.
[3] Complete Works , 6 : 286-87.
[4] Bay City Times Press, March 19, 1894.
[5] Bay City Daily Tribune, March 20, 1894.
[6] Bay City Times Press, March 21, 1894.
[7] Bay City Daily Tribune, March 21, 1894.
[8].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, April 2, 1894, Sen Col.
[9].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, April 10, 1894.
[10].Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons, p. 169.
[11].Lucius Beebe, The Big Spenders, p. 14.
[12].Lucius Beebe, The Big Spenders, p. 14.
[13].Lucius Beebe, The Big Spenders, p. 14.
[14].Prabuddha Bharata, September 1926, p. 424; Udbodhan 28 : 7 (July-Aug. 1926).
[15].P.B., September 1936, pp. 611-13; Rem. (Martha Brown Finke), pp. 147-52. In A Memoir of Dr. Charles Louis Finke Mrs. Finke also tells of Swami Vivekananda’s visit to the house at Smith College. There she places the date in October of 1893 and mentions that six girls, rather than four, were awed onlookers at the confrontation between Swamiji and “an array of famous figures: Henry Van Dyke, our President Seelye, the heads of the Philosophy and Religion Departments, and others.”
[16].Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda (Martha B. Finke), pp. 146-47.
[17].Complete Works, 7 : 462-63; original letter, VSNC.
[18]. Swami Vivekananda to Isabelle McKindlcy, May 1, 1894; Complete Works, 7 : 464-65; original letter, VSNC.
[19] Swami Saradananda, Sri Ramakrishna, the Great Master, pp. 660, 762-63.
[20] Ira V. Brown, Lyman Abbott (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953). pp-136-37
[21]'Swami Vivekananda and His Guru. (For full citation see Bibliography.)
[22] Rem. (Constance Towne), pp. 253-55
[23] Quoted in Incredible New York by Lloyd Morris (New York: Random House, 1951), p. 216.
[24] Rem. (Towne), pp. 255-56.
[25] Ibid., pp. 256-57.
[26] Harriet Monroe, A Poet's Life, P- 137*
[27] Malvina Hoffman, Heads and Tales, pp- 306-7.
[28] Albert Spalding, Rise to Follow, P- 23
[29] Complete Works, 7 :461, original letter, VSNC.
[30].Complete Works., 7 :465, original letter, VSNC.
[31].Van Wyck Brooks, New England: Indian Summer 1865-1915, p. 410.
[32].Van Wyck Brooks, New England: Indian Summer 1865-1915, , p. 418.
[33].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, May 14, 1894, Mrs. Boshi Sen Collection.
[34].“Journal of Mary T. Wright,” copy, VSNC.
[35].Complete Works, 5 : 71.
[36].The Life of Swami Vivekananda, 5th ed. (1965), P- 407
[37].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, May 11, 1894, Sen Col.
[38].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, May 14, 1894, Sen Col.
[39].First reprinted in Vedanta Kesari, October 1961, pp. 266-67, contributed by Miss Elizabeth Copeland
[37].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, May 11, 1894, Sen Col.
[38].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, May 14, 1894, Sen Col.
[39].First reprinted in Vedanta Kesari, October 1961, pp. 266-67, contributed by Miss Elizabeth Copeland
[40].“Autograph of Swami Vivekananda,” contributed by Miss Elizabeth Copeland through the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, Vedanta Kesari, January 1962, pp. 39&-S7
[41].Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana, “Kate Sanborn and her Reminiscences of Swamiji,” Samvit, No. 26, September 1992.
[42].Complete Works, 5 : 33.

↑ Contents

2.2 TRIALS AND TRIUMPH

1

Some of the letters that Swamiji wrote during the month of June were, as usual, addressed to India. Ever since his arrival in America, through the busiest of his days he had found time to write of his plans for the rejuvenation of his motherland. Halfway across the world he had conveyed to his disciples the tremendously energizing power of his own spirit and enthusiasm, sometimes rebuking them scathingly, sometimes praising them, and always exhorting them to do the work which was so dear to his heart and of which he never lost sight that of lifting the Indian masses through education. In June of 1894 he continued to write such letters, but now a new note entered them.

As has been pointed out in an earlier chapter, almost a year had passed and Swamiji "could not," as he said, "succeed at all" in his plan for raising funds for his Indian work. Although in 1894 America was in the throes of a depression, this was not the primary cause of his lack of financial success. The rich were still rich and would have been able to contribute the relatively small amount of money that he was attempting to raise. The difficulty lay not in America's "poverty," but in the Fact that ever since the opening of the Parliament of Religions Swamiji's enemies, both Christians and Hindus, had been waging a continuous campaign in an attempt to discredit his character and his work in the eyes of the American people. Coupled with this, the Hindu communities in India had uttered not a word of official support and, by their silence, had unwittingly confirmed the slander published and written about him. By April the situation had become, to say the least, difficult. Beset on all sides and in fear lest even his American friends lose faith in him, Swamiji wrote on April 9 to Alasinga asking him to organize in Madras a meeting of prominent Hindus who would pass a resolution recognizing and approving his work in America[1]. He well knew that India's lack of public support was due, not to an unwillingness on the part of the Hindus to recognize him formally as a true representative of Hinduism, but rather to a characteristic apathy. He had been informed that when the news of his triumph at the Parliament of Religions had reached India the country had been thrown into an uproar of jubilation. He had also received, as he wrote to Isabelle McKindley on April 26, "a little pamphlet published in Calcutta[2]," containing extracts from the local papers, the strain of which was "so fulsome" that he refused to send it to her. Again, on May 1, he told Miss McKindley that he had the day before received "a little bit of a newspaper cutting from India"[3].But articles and editorials from Indian papers did not constitute an official approval of Swamiji and his work. For one thing, they did not necessarily represent the concerted opinion of the Hindu communities, nor, for another, were they published in American papers for all to read. If, in view of the statements of his enemies, Swamiji was to be established in the West as an authoritative exponent of Hinduism, an official sanction from the heads of the various Hindu communities was essential. But, after centuries of subjugation under foreign rule, such was the inertia of the Hindus that, jubilant as they were, it did not occur to them to take united and official action to acknowledge publicly the champion of their country and to thank the American people for their reception of him. Even in those practical matters it was necessary for Swamiji to be their guide and director.

Yet months went by and he received no answer from Alasinga to his letter of April 9. To a Madras disciple he wrote on June 28:

Now as to my prospects here-it is well nigh zero. Why, because although I had the best purpose it has been made null and void by these causes. All that I get about India is from Madras letters. Your letters say again and again how I am being praised in India. But that is between you and me, for I never saw a single Indian paper writing about me, except the three square inches sent to me by Alasinga. On the other hand everything that is said by Christians in India is sedulously gathered by the missionaries and regularly published and they go from door to door to make my friends give me up. They have succeeded only too well for there is not one word for me from India. Indian Hindu papers may laud me to skies, but not a word of that ever came to America, so that many people in this country think me a fraud. In the face of the missionaries and with the jealousy of the Hindus here to back them I have not a word to say. I now think it was foolish of me to go to the Parliament on the strength of the urging of the Madras boys.... I came here without credentials. How else to show that I am not a fraud in the face of the missionaries and the Brahmo Samaj ? Now I thought nothing so easy as to spend a few words; I thought nothing would be so easy as to hold a meeting of some respectable persons in Madras and Calcutta and pass a resolution thanking me and the American people for being kind to me and sending it over officially, i.e., through the Secretary of the function, to America, for instance, sending one to Dr. Barrows and asking him to publish it in the papers and so on, to different papers of Boston, New York and Chicago. Now after all I found that it is too terrible a task for India to undertake. There has not been one voice for me in one year and every one against me, for whatever you may say of me in your home, who knows anything of it here? More than two months ago I wrote to Alasinga about this. He did not even answer my letter. I am afraid his heart has grown lukewarm. So you must first think of that and then show this letter to the Madras people....

Oh! If only I had one man of some true abilities and brains to back me in India![4]

Swamiji also wrote in June to his friend, the Dewan of Junagadh State, Haridas Viharidas Desai:

The backbiters, I must tell you, have not indirectly benefited me, on the other hand, they have injured me immensely in view of the fact that our Hindu people did not move a finger to tell the Americans that I represented them. Had our people sent some words thanking the American people for their kindness to me and stating that I was representing them? On the other hand Mazoomdar, Bombay's Nagarkar [see Vol. 1, pp. 214-15], and a Christian woman named Sorabji have been telling the American people that I have donned the Sannyasin's garb only in America and that I was a cheat, pure and simple.[5]

Swamiji's enemies can be grouped under three headings. First, there were the Christian missionaries, whose concerted attacks have been dealt with in previous chapters. Second, there were the Theosophists, who, like the missionaries, were organized in both America and India and among whom were a few of Swamiji's own countrymen. Although the number of Theosophists in America was not large, they nevertheless played an active part in the opposition, joining forces with the missionaries and attempting to thwart Swamiji at every turn. While he was in the West, he said nothing publicly of the harm the Theosophists were attempting to do his cause, but during one of his first lectures given after his return to India, "My Plan of Campaign, " he exposed their unseemly activities.[6]

During the course of this lecture Swamiji also told of another of his enemies, "the leader of a reform party in India." "This gentleman, " Swamiji said, "I knew from my childhood; he was one of my best friends; when I saw him-I had not met for a long time one of my countrymen-I was so glad, and this was the treatment I received from him. The day the Parliament cheered me, the day I became popular in Chicago, from that day his tone changed, and in an underhanded way, he tried to do everything he could to injure me".[7]

The gentleman in question was Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, which was the third group inimical to Swamiji and which was composed entirely of his own countrymen. Mr. Mazumdar was, perhaps, Swamiji's worst single enemy. Compelled by a kind of malignant jealousy, he attempted by every means to destroy Swamiji's reputation and influence. Being at the head of the New Dispensation Brahmo Samaj in Calcutta and the editor of Unity and the Minister, he was in a position of some authority in India. He also had attracted favorable attention in America, where, ten years prior to the Parliament of Religions, he had lectured with great success. He was, moreover, well known in the West for his book The Oriental Christ. Indeed, by preaching a kind of oriental-flavored Christianity, he had attained a reputation in America as a great spiritual light, and in this reputation he had basked.

At the Parliament of Religions, Mazumdar, representing the Brahmo Samaj, had been well received. As was told in an earlier chapter, one of his talks had so inspired the vast audience at the Hall of Columbus that it had risen in a body and burst forth with the hymn "Nearer, my God, to Thee." But it was Swamiji who had carried the day. During the Parliament Mazumdar's star had perceptibly faded, for America had seen as true Hindu and, as Prince Wolskonsky commented later, "a man" "As it pleased the Lord," Swamiji wrote in January to Swami Ramakrishnananda, "I met here Mr. Mazoomdar. He was very cordial at first, but when the whole Chicago population began to flock to me in overwhelming numbers, then the fire began to burn in Mr. Mazoomdar's heart. Brother, I was astounded to see and hear these things.... Mazoomdar slandered me to the missionaries in the Parliament of Religions, saying that I was a nobody, a thug and a cheat, and he accused #

me of coming here and pretending to be a monk. Thus he greatly succeeded in prejudicing their minds against me. He so prejudiced President Barrows that he didn't even speak to me decently. In their books and pamphlets they tried their[8] best to snub me, but the Guru is my help. What could Mazoomdar say?”

Shortly after the Parliament Mr. Mazumdar returned to India, and there he attempted to discredit Swamiji with every weapon at his command. Swamiji received news of this sometime in March of 1894 in a letter from his "brethren at Calcutta."

The letter says [he wrote to Mary Hale on March 18, 1894] that Mazoomdar has gone back to Calcutta and is preaching that Vivekananda is committing every sin under the sun in America-especially 'unchatiity' of the most degraded type!!! Lord bless his soul-You need not be sorry-I am too well known in my native land as to my character and my brethren my life-long companions know me too well to believe such trash They only laugh at Mazoomdar's attempts as very clumsy. This is your America's wonderful spiritual man!! It is not their fault until one is really spiritual, that is, until one has got a real insight into the nature of his own soul, and has got a glimpse of the world of soul, he cannot recognize chaff from seed, tall talk from depth and so on.... I am sorry for poor Mazoomdar that he

should stoop so low!! He says that I am leading a bestially unchaste life with American women!! Lord bless the old boy-women of America know better of me I hope.[9]

The women of America, those at least who were well acquainted with Swamiji, certainly knew better of him. They were his most staunch and loyal supporters, rising to his defense, as did Mrs. Bagley (chapter eight), to thoroughly squelch the scandalmongers. These last, giving ear to Mazumdar and the Christian missionaries, busily and anonymously "warned" Swamiji's friends against him; and while such tactics undoubtedly influenced many who did not know him well, they had no effect whatsoever on his friends. Mr. Hale, for instance, once received an anonymous and scandal-filled letter warning him not to allow his daughters and nieces to associate with the Hindu monk. On reading this bit of advice, Mr. Hale dropped the letter into the flames of his hearth, as one might drop into the fire a vermin-ridden bit of trash.

But although none who knew Swamiji well could for a moment have doubted his veracity and honor, for, as he himself said, "What I am is written on my brow," he-from whose face the light of truth shone-lived for months thinking that even the best of his friends might turn From him, or, what was worse, would consider themselves to have been cheated and their hospitality abused. Aside from this fear, tales of his alleged fraudulence and unchastity, originating as they did from one of his own countrymen, must have made him sick at heart. He, the purest of men, accused of immorality! The heartbreak such sordid rumors might inflict on those who loved him worried him above all. As he had written to Isabelle McKindley on April 25 or 26: "Now I do not care what they even of my own people say about me-except for one thing. I have an old mother. She has suffered much all her life and in the midst of all she could bear to give me up for the service of God and man-but to have given up the most beloved of her children her hope-to live a beastly immoral life in a far distant country-as Mazoomdar was telling in Calcutta would have simply killed her."[10]

Mazumdar's behavior undoubtedly offended and incensed Swamiji's brothermonks who wrote to him of it. But to them, so Far distant, Swamiji did not confide his own pain, rather he consoled and fortified them. To Swami Ramakrishnananda he Wrote ('probably in March) : "I am very sorry to hear of Mazoomdar's doings. One always behaves thus in trying to push himself before all others. I am not much to blame.

Mazoomdar came here ten years ago, and got much reputation and honour; now I am in flying colours. Such is the will of the Guru, what shall I do? It is childishness on Mazoomdar's part to be annoyed at this. Never mind. Great men like you should pay no heed to what he says. Shall we, children of Sri Ramakrishna and nourished with his heart's blood, be afraid of worm bites? 'The wicked criticise the conduct of the magnanimous, which is extraordinary and whose motives are difficult to fathom.' Remember this and forgive this fool."[11]

It was not as though Mazumdar was not well acquainted with Swamiji's true character and background. Not only had he known him for many years, but he had also known his Master, Sri Ramakrishna, had sat at his feet, and, some fifteen years before the Parliament of Religions, had written and published an article in most eloquent and convincing praise of that great saint. "My mind is still floating in the luminous atmosphere which that wonderful man diffuses around him whenever and wherever he goes," were Mazumdar's words. "... A living evidence of the depth and sweetness of Hindu religion is this good and holy man. He has wholly controlled his flesh. It is full of soul, full of the reality of religion, full of joy, full of blessed purity.... His spotless holiness, his deep unspeakable blessedness, his unstudied, endless wisdom, .his childlike peacefulness and affection towards all men, his consuming, all-absorbing love for God are his only reward.... Our own ideal of religious life is different, but so long as he is spared to us, gladly shall we sit at his feet to learn from him the sublime precepts of purity, unworldliness, spirituality and inebriation in the love of God."[12]

Mazumdar's article was to rebound against him when, after the Parliament of Religions, he set about maligning Swamiji, whom he well knew to be the chief disciple of Sri Ramakrishna. The story goes that at an evening gathering in America, where Mazumdar had been speaking disparagingly of Swamiji and his Master, one of the guests handed him his article and asked: "Did you not write this?" What Mazumdar said in reply is not recorded. There was, after all, little he could say.

It may well have been Mazumdar's article that Swamiji had distributed in pamphlet form at the Parliament (see chapter two), for it was the best current appraisal of his Master. But however that may be, it was certainly this article to which Swamiji referred when, on June 28, he wrote to a disciple in India, "By the by, will you kindly send up a few copies of the sketch of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa's life written by Mazoomdar to Chicago? They have lots in Calcutta[13]." No doubt Swamiji wanted to circulate the sketch among those of his friends who desired to know more of Sri Ramakrishna. But he was also, perhaps, not unmindful of the fact that it was the best possible answer to Mazumdar's vilification. The pamphlets reached him in late September, forwarded to Boston by Mrs. Hale. Acknowledging their receipt, he replied:

The bundles all came safely. One was newspapers From India. The other was the short sketch of my Master published by Mr. Mazumdar long ago. In the latter bundle there are two sexto or pamphlets. One My Master sketch--the other a short extract to show how what Mr [Keshab] Chandra Sen & Mazumdar preached as their "New dispensation" was stolen from my Master's life. The latter therefore you need not distribute. But I hope you will distribute My Master's life to many good people.

I beg you to send some to Mrs Guernsey, Fishkill on the Hudson, N.Y. Mrs. Arthur Smith and Mrs. Phillips 19 West 38th st. New York both. To Mrs. Bagley Annisquam Mass and Prof. J. Wright prof of Greek Harvard Mass.

The newspapers you may do [with] whatever you like and I hope you will send any newspaper scrap you get about me to India[14].'

One Of Mazumdar's attacks, accusing Swamiji of being a sort of Bohemian impostor who preached a pseudo-Hinduism, was published in Unity and the Minister and was subsequently quoted by everyone who, for one reason or another, wished to harm his reputation. The paragraph that embodied this accusation first reached America via the Boston Daily Advertiser of May 16, 1894, in the following article:

A PROPHET FROM INDIA

Not long ago Buddhism was a subject of interest and study in the vicinity of Boston. But, just as in India about a thousand years ago, Buddhism was supplanted by Hinduism proper, so now in Boston Hinduism seems to be supplanting Buddhism in popular interest. This is partly due to the presence and addresses of the Hindu monk VIVEKANANDA, who attracted much attention at the parliament of religions.

As evidence of his standing in India he presents a letter from the professor of chemistry in Pacheappa's College, Madras. India is so remote that naturally it would be known to but few here that Pacheappa's College is the centre of the anti-Christian spirit in India and that the publications of BRADLAUGH and INGERSOLL are the kind of material from which members of that institution have largely drawn both their conceptions of Christianity and their attacks on it. But though offering such evidence of his Indian standing, VIVEKANANDA has in this country, we believe, openly expressed his dissent from that extreme kind of anti-Christian materialism.

When the published reports of the attentions paid to VIVEKANANDA at the parliament of religions reached India the newspapers of that country naturally commented upon them and upon the substance of his addresses. Among such comments in the press of India we have noticed the following: The Christian Patriot, the leading Christian paper of southern India, edited by Indian Christians, one of them being a graduate of Cambridge University in England, in its issue of Dec. 7, 1893, said:

"Although the young Hindu ascetic who appeared at Chicago with the assumed names VIVEKHANANDA SAWMY, is described by the American papers as a Brahman, and although this wrong view has been endorsed by our contemporary the Bengalee, we happen to know to a certainty that VIVEKHANANDA is not a Brahman. He is none other than Babu (i.e. Mr.) NORENDRA NATH DUTT, son of the late Babu TARAH NATH DUTT of Simla, Ind., who was a pleader of the high court. Babu NORENDRA NATH DUTT was an intelligent graduate of the Calcutta University and it was very recently that he took to ascetic life."

The Indian Evangelical Review at Calcutta, in its April issue, remarked:

"Until we had heard from Chicago we were not aware that we had such a genius among us in Calcutta as it now seems we have. It only proves the truth of the words of JESUS: 'A prophet is not without honor save in his own country.' More than this, evidence of the truth of Christianity we have in our Swami. What he taught as Hinduism and what gave power and influence to his words was the large admixture of Christian truth which he taught and which he received as a student in one of the Christian missionary colleges of Calcutta, and truth too which is the very opposite of the error which is the foundation stone of the Hinduism which he professed to teach, viz: (1) the brotherhood of man, and (2) the Lordship of God over the conscience. The caste system of Hinduism antagonizes both, and persecutes, as far as the Christian government permits, any who chooses to act under the influence of either. A man who chooses to eat with a brother man, or to obey his enlightened conscience in the matter of religious duty, and is baptized, will by Hinduism all over India be persecuted by the death of his soul and body; and yet this baboo goes across seas and continents to tell the parliament of religions that Hindus do not persecute and that Hindus love all men as brethren. "

The following is from Unity and the Minister, published at Calcutta which is the official organ of that branch of the Brahmo Somaj of which Mr. Moozoomdar is the leading member.

"The Indian Mirror has published several long leaders in praise of the Neo-Hindu Babu NORENDRA NATH DUTT alias VIVEKHANANDA in some of its late issues. We have no objection to the publication of such panegyrics on the Sanyasi (monk), but since the time he came to us to act on the stage of the Navavrindavan Theater or sang hymns in one of the Brahmo Samajes of this city we knew him so well that no amount of newspaper writing could throw any new light on our estimate of his character. We are glad our old friend lately created a good impression in America by his speeches, but we are aware that NeoHinduism of which our

friend is a representative is not orthodox Hinduism. The last thing which the latter would do is to cross the Kalapani (ocean), partake of the Mlechha food (i.e., food of outcasts, i.e. of Christians and foreigners) and smoke endless cigars and the like. Any follower of modern Hinduism cannot command that respect from us which we entertain for a genuine orthodox Hindu. Our contemporary may try to do his best to promote the reputation of VIVEKHANANDA, but we cannot have patience with him when he publishes glaring nonsense. All of which goes to show several things, among others, that human nature in India is a good deal like human nature in other quarters of the globe. Hinduism is a multi meaning term, and remembering how wide apart may be two representations of the Christian religion, both equally sincere, we need not wonder that Hinduism as VIVEKHANANDA understands it is a quite different thing from Hinduism as Moozoomdar understands it. This is not the first evidence which has reached us that some of the most impressive statements of Oriental beliefs, and the most rapturously applauded, made at the parliament of religions in Chicago last summer, were very far from being such as the "orthodox" adherents of those beliefs on native soil would accept; or that the ideas expressed in many instances by visiting Hindus and other Orientals that seemed to compare so favorably with Christianity were really, though perhaps unconsciously, absorbed from Christian missions and schools.

Coupled with everything that the Christians had thrown at Swamiji, this article, which was also published word for word in the Detroit Free Press letter column of June 11, and its quoted matter in the Lawrence American of May 18, as well as in various other widely read journals and periodicals, including Lyman Abbott's Outlook of June 9, did nothing to allay the growing suspicion in America that perhaps he was, after all, a "fraud." Among other things, Mr. Mazumdar forgot to mention in his paragraph regarding Swamiji in Unity and the Minister that if "Norendra Nath Dutt alias Vivekhananda" had acted on the stage of the Nava-Vrindavan Theater he had done so in good company. Keshab Chandra Sen had also taken a part in the same play, which, it so happened, was a religious drama enacted by the intimate members of the Brahmo Samaj, of which Keshab was the head. It is doubtful that Swamiji's enemies, who took delight in quoting from Unity and the Minister, knew these facts which completely altered the significance of Mazumdar's reference to Swamiji. Some Americans, however who, were better informed, kept level heads, a fact attested to by the following anonymous letter, which appeared in the Boston Daily Advertiser of May 17 :

2

Vivekananda

To the Editor of The Advertiser: The quotations that appeared in your paper about Swami Vivekhananda may mislead the public in some points, especially those who do not care to read between the lines.


The passages quoted from Indian papers are all "Christian," with the exception of the last, which is edited by Mr. Moozoomdar, who represented the "Brahmo Samaj" and not "Hinduism" in any of its "phases" and "sects."


Moreover these quotations are attacks made on "Hindu" papers, especially the "Indian Mirror" and the "Bengalee," for their praising Vivekhananda and fully indorsing his views. I have at hand from Calcutta some of those "Hindu" papers and I send two quotations from two of the leading ones, namely, the "Indian Mirror," which is assuredly the leading Indian paper edited by a Hindu, and another Calcutta paper, "Amrita Bazar Fabriku [Patrika]," which has the greatest political influence of any in India and also edited by a Hindu.


"We were anxious for a man who would be competent to enlighten the parliament on the subject of Hinduism as might not only justify it in the eyes of the civilized world, but also win for it the respect of the spiritually minded of all systems of faith. But when reliable reports reached us of Swami Vivekhananda we felt thankful to the great disposer of all events that he in his inscrutable ways, had found the right man in the right place. It is a matter of national congratulation that the representative of Hinduism has been equal to his task and he discharged his duties in a manner that has earned for him the gratitude of the entire Hindu community. "


"The precepts preached by the illustrious Vivekhananda, disciple of the still more illustrious Ram Krishna Taranhansa [Paramahamsa] gave to those who had always heard of the Hindus as devil worshippers a true view of Hinduism."

So it is clear the "Hindus" all acknowledge him. He never pretends to represent "Christianity" or "Brahmo Samaj." 


Yours truly, 

S


But although "S" and perhaps a few others who had seen the Hindu papers quickly came to Swamiji's defense, it was the papers inimical to him that were widely quoted in America, not those favorable to him. Some of his own countrymen had, for the time being at least, effectively betrayed him, and no others had come officially to his support. "Every moment I expected something from India," Swamiji wrote on June 28. "No, it never came. Last two months especially I was in torture every moment. No, not even a newspaper from India! [Except, as he said in this same letter, "the three square inches sent to me by Alasinga."] My friends waited—waited month after month; nothing came, not a voice. Many consequently grew cold and atlast gave me up. But it is the punishment for relying upon man and upon brute, for our countrymen are not men yet. They are ready to be praised, but when their turn comes even to say a word, they are nowhere.'[15]

3

These were months of anguish to Swamiji, months in which his motherland (or so he thought) lifted not a finger to help him but in which, unfaltering, he never gave up his fight for her. I do not believe that his trial in this respect has been fully appreciated. Some hitherto unpublished letters which he wrote to Professor John Henry Wright reveal how deeply disturbed he was by the slander of his enemies and by the ever-present possibility that his friends would consider themselves to have been duped. Aside from giving his word to Professor Wright, Swamiji sent him every available scrap of testimony in an effort to prove himself worthy of the professor's friendship and trust. It is not likely that Dr. Wright doubted Swamiji. But after the appearance of the article in the Boston Evening Advertiser, quoted above, Swamiji felt obliged to vindicate himself. The following letter was written from Boston prior to May 24 (on which date, as we see from his next letter to the professor, he was in Chicago) :

I7 Beacon Street.

Dear Adhyapakji

By this time you have got the pamphlet and the letters. If you like I would send you over from Chicago some letters from Indian Princes and ministers—one of these ministers was one of the Commissioners of the late opium commission —that sat under Royal Commission in India. If you like I will have them write to you to convince you of my not being a cheat. But my brother our ideal of life is to hide to suppress and to deny.


We are to give up and not to take Had I not the "Fad" in my head I would never have come over here. And it was with a hope that it would help my cause that I joined the parliament of Religions—having always refused it when our people wanted to send me for it. I came over telling them—"that I may or may not join that assembly and you may send me over if you like" They sent me over leaving me quite free.


You did the rest.

I am morally bound to afford you every satisfaction my kind friend—but for the rest of the world I do not care what they say—the Sanyasi must not have self defense. So I beg of you not to publish or show anybody anything in that pamphlet or the letters, I do not care for the attempts of the old missionary but the fever of jealousy which attacked Mazoomdar gave me a terrible shock and I pray that he would know better—for he is a great and good man who has tried all his life to do good. But this proves one of my master's sayings—"living in a room covered with black soot—however careful you may be—some spots must stick to your clothes."


So-however one may try to be good and holy—so long he is in the world—some part of his nature must gravitate downwards.

The way to God is the opposite to that of the world. And to few very few are given to have God and mammon at the same time.

I was never a missionary nor ever would be one—my place is in the Himalayas—I have satisfied myself so far—that I can with a full conscience say "my God—I saw terrible misery amongst my brethern I searched and discovered the way out of it—tried my best to apply the remedy but failed—So thy will be done." May His blessings be on you and yours for ever and ever.

Yours affly

Vivekananda

54I Dearborn Ave Chicago

I go to Chicago tomorrow or the day after

Yours.[16]

V.

The pamphlet that Swamiji had sent before writing the above was no doubt the same one he had mentioned in his letter of April 26 to Isabelle McKindley as "a little pamphlet published in Calcutta about me—revealing that once at least in my life the prophet has been honored in his own country." But evidently neither pamphlet nor letters altogether satisfied the professor, or, at least, Swamiji felt that they did not, for in a second letter from Chicago he enclosed further testimony regarding his good standing in India. His reference to "Mr. Mazoomdar's party chief" was, of course, to the late Keshab Chandra Sen, who had been a leader of the Brahmo Samaj in Calcutta. In the following letter we learn for the first time that Swamiji held none too high an opinion of Keshab, despite the fact that Sri Ramakrishna had been deeply fond of him:


541 Dearborn Avenue.

Chicago, 

24th May'94 

Dear Adhyapakji.

Herewith I forward to you a letter from one of our ruling princes of Rajputana His Highness the Maharaja of Khetri.

And another from the opium commissioner late minister of Junagad one of the largest states in India and a man who is called the Gladstone of India.


These I hope would convince you of my being no fraud. One thing I forgot to tell you I never identified myself anyway with Mr. Mazoomdar's party chief. If he says so he does not speak the truth.


I hope after your perusal you will kindly send the letters over to me except the pamphlet which I do not care for.


I am bound my dear friend to give you every satisfaction of my being a genuine Sanyasi but to you alone. I do not care what the rabbles say or think about me.


"Some would call you a saint some a chandala some a lunatic, Others a demon; go on then straight to thy work without heeding either" thus saith one of our great sanyasis—an old emperor of India King Bhartri Hari who joined the order in old times.

May the Lord bless you for ever and ever. My love to all your children and my respects to your noble wife.


I remain ever your friend

Vivekananda

P.S.

I had connection with Pundit Shiva Nath Shastries party—but only on points of social reform. Mazoomdar and Chandra Sen I always considered as not sincere and I have no reason to change my opinion even now. Of course in Religious matters even with my friend Punditji I differed much. The chief being I thinking Sanyasa (or giving up the world) the highest ideal and he, a sin. So the Brahmo Samajists consider becoming a monk a sin!!

Yours

V.

The Brahmo Samaj like Christian Science in your country spread in Calcutta for a certain time and then died out. I am not sorry neither glad that it died. It has done its work—viz social reform. Its religion was not worth a cent and so it must die out. If Mazoomdar thinks I was one of the causes of its death—he errs I am even now a great sympathiser of its reforms—but the "booby" religion could not hold its own against the old "Vedanta" What shall I do? Is that my fault? Mazoomdar has become childish in his old age and takes to tactics not a whit better than some of your Christian missionaries. Lord bless him and show him better ways.

Yours
Vivekananda


When are you going to Annisquam? My love to Austin and Bessie my respects to your wife and for you my love and gratitude is too deep for expression.


Yours ever affectionately[17]
Vivekananda

Among Professor Wright's papers was the letter from the Maharaja of Khetri, dated April 7, 1894, which Swamiji had sent him. It read:


My dear Guroo

I was very glad to receive your kind letter of 28th Feb. You indirectly accuse me of not writing to your holiness more than once. Of course I must confess it, but, at the same time I should be allowed to say that I was unable to make my letters reach you for some months till you had decided to make a long stay at Chicago; after that I had been travelling almost all the time, visiting Bombay, Dawarika, Virawel, Girnar etc. And afterwards Rampur to join in the rejoicings held there on account of the marriage of the Nawab Sahib. But after all I think I should beg to be apologised for it.


I see, there is no need of advising one who is far more wiser, but still I dare say that you ought not to feel disgusted by the backbiting of our countrymen for you should see "Krayavikraya-velayam kacha-kacha mani manih." ["At the time of buying and selling," that is, true appraisal, "glass is only glass, a jewel is a jewel."] If a man like you would give up your long cherished design for bettering your mother country by getting some help from the noble civilised people of west, who else could ever attempt to fulfil it? Although I would always like to have you with me, for who knows how long one can live, but still I must not be selfish and should ask you to try your best for the poor and wretched condition of our dear India which could once produce men of such capability who did find the "Spirit knowledge" in those days when there were not even the slightest traces of the present inventions such as the steam and electric machines. That age is perhaps considered as "the Dark age" according to the present western theories, .who suppose mankind to have been too young in those days.


My eagerness for seeing your holy self urges me to write to you to come back soon, but at the same time something else checks my pen and makes me write something quite contrary to that i.e. to ask you to remain still there where the people are jewellers of human beings.


Swami Akhundanandji is here now-a-days. He has written a separate letter to your holiness enclosed with this. Jug Mohan is at Jeypore but I am sure he will be much pleased when he hears that I have written his dundavets [prostrations] to you without his request.


We have at last catched the tiger which had been roaming in our Khetri hills and had devoured about 50 buffaloes here up to till it was nicely secured.


With my hearty dundavets

I am proud of signing

Yours[18]Ajit Simh


Aside from the above letter, Swamiji also sent to Professor Wright a leading article from the Indian Mirror of February 22. Written across the now faded and torn bit of newspaper are the words in Swamiji's hand: "The most influential paper in India." (It was this leader that "S" had paraphrased. See pages 91-92.) Excerpts from the article are given below:


SWAMI VIVEKANANDA IN AMERICA

When the Executive Committee of the Parliament of Religions, held in connection with the World's Fair at Chicago, issued its invitation to the members of every creed and church in the world to send their representatives to its meetings, we felt an anxiety as to the possibility of finding a man who would be a Hindu of Hindus, and yet would not have scruples to cross the ocean, and must, at the same time, be competent to enlighten the Parliament on the subject of Hinduism as might not only justify it in the eyes of the civilized world, but also win for it the respect and admiration of the spiritual-minded and religiously disposed among the followers of every other system of faith. But when reliable reports reached us of the ability, wisdom and eloquence with which Swami Vivekananda was expounding Hinduism at the Parliament, not only all our anxiety about the matter was at an end, but we felt thankful to the Great Disposer of all events who, it seemed, in his inscrutable ways, had found the right man for the right place. It was a demand of the time and of the age that Hinduism, which has been so cruelly misjudged and imperfectly apprehended by the Christians in particular, should be represented in its true aspect before all the world. The platform of the Parliament of religions was indeed the fittest place from which Hinduism could be effectively defended against the many false charges, repeatedly brought against it by interested persons and communities, and also from which its merits could be expounded to enable people to accord to it its just position in the ranks of the world's great religions. It is a matter of national congratulation that the representative of Hinduism at the great Parliament was equal to his task, and discharged his duties in a manner that has earned for him the gratitude of the entire Hindu community. [Here follows a resume of Swamiji's talk at the Parliament. The article then continues:]

His fame, as an eloquent preacher of sublime Hindu doctrines, spread fast through the American cities and towns, and we learn that ever since the Parliament dissolved, the Swami has been eagerly sought for by numerous persons, invitations have poured upon him from various places to deliver lectures, and he has been strongly pressed to prolong his stay in America. Mr. A. Wann, an American gentleman of standing, writing under the date the 27th December to a friend in Calcutta, says: "Mr. Swami Vivekanand has been delivering splendid lectures all over the country. He is very popular here." As might be expected, some American padres, (note in Swamiji's hand at foot of column: padre = a missionary-slang) driven to desperation, as they were, by the sudden lift Hinduism was given to by its expositions by the Swami, made an effort to discredit him in the eyes of the American public, an effort in which they were aided, we are sorry to be told, by a member of the Hindu race. But his opponents failed to find a single flaw either in his life or his teachings, and the Swami has steadily risen in the estimation of the people in the United States, and in Canada, till his popularity has grown to such a high pitch that we are told, he is now in a manner idolized.

. . . With the fact before us of this outburst of enthusiasm and admiration for the teachings of Hinduism by hundreds of Americans, shall we not be justified in advancing the opinion that these Christian people have found in the essence of Hinduism a higher and truer ideal of religious life than Christianity could supply them?

Whatever may be the practical outcome of Swami Vivekananda's Mission in America, there can be no question that it has already had the effect of immensely raising the credit of the true Hinduism in the eyes of the civilized world, and that is, indeed, a work for which the whole Hindu community should feel grateful to the Swami.

If Professor Wright had ever entertained misgivings about Swamiji's integrity, they were by this time effectively banished. Another close friend, however, began to have qualms, or so, at least, Swamiji thought. On June 18 he wrote again to Professor Wright as follows:

541 Dearborn Avenue
18th June '94

Dear Adhyapakji

Excuse my delay in sending the other letters-I could not find them earlier-I am going to New York in a week. I do not know whether I will come to Annisquam or not

The letters need not be sent over to me until I write you again. Mrs. Bagley seems to be unsettled by that article in the Boston paper against me. She sent me over a copy from Detroit-and has ceased correspondence with me. Lord bless her She has been very kind to me.

Stout hearts like yours are not common my brother. This is a queer place-this world of ours. On the whole-I am very very thankful to the Lord for the amount of kindness I have received at the hands of the people of this country-I a complete stranger here without even "credentials ". Every thing works for the best--

Yours ever in gratitude
Vivekananda

P.S. The East India Stamps are for your children if they like.[19]

It is difficult to believe that Mrs. Bagley, who had been Swamiji's hostess in Detroit, was actually unsettled by the article in the Boston Daily Advertiser. She knew Swamiji well and only a few days after he had written the above letter to Professor Wright was to write one of her adamant letters in his defense-letters which have been quoted in chapter eight of volume one. She had earlier invited Swamiji to spend the summer in Annisquam, and, to judge from her letter of June 22, she had by no means rescinded the invitation. Her silence subsequent to sending the article to Swamiji was surely misconstrued by him, but the fact remained that, beleaguered on all sides, he thought that Mrs. Bagley had lost faith in him, and this must surely have hurt him deeply. (Nor would it be until late in July that he was persuaded by Mrs. Francis Breed that Mrs. Bagley's invitation of course held good and that he was "too sensitive." "I have written to Mrs. Bagley," he was to write to Mrs. Hale on July 23, and, presumably, Mrs. Bagley acknowledged his letter, for we know he was indeed to be her guest in August.)

But the month of June, which Swamiji spent in Chicago, was a dark one for him. Even "Mother Church" and "Father Pope" were away at a health resort, and the four girls left town toward the end of the month. Yet in spite of all, on June 26 he wrote to the "sisters" what is perhaps one of the most beautiful of all his letters. It has been published, but the original, which Isabelle McKindley saved along with those addressed to her alone, differs in some respects from the published version. Inasmuch as this letter was undoubtedly written in a mood of spiritual ecstasy, I think the reader might like to see it exactly as Swamiji wrote it. It is, moreover, indispensable to our narrative, for it shows the deeper state of his mind during this period of tribulation. He wrote:

Dear Sisters

The great Hindi poet Tulsidas in the benediction to his translation of the Ramayan says "I bow down to both the wicked and the holy, but alas for me they are both equally torturers-The wicked begin to torture me as soon as they  come in contact with me-the good alas take my life away when they leave me" I say amen to this. To me for whom the only pleasure and love left in the world is to love the holy ones of God-it is a mortal torture to separate myself from them.

But these things mast come-thou music of my beloved's flute-lead on I am following. It is impossible to express my pain-my anguish-at being separated from you noble and sweet and generous and holy ones. Oh, how I wish-I had succeeded in becoming a stoic. Hope you are enjoying the beautiful village scenery--"Where the world is awake there the man of self control is sleeping Where the world sleeps-there he is waking." May even the dust of this world never touch you for after all the poets may say it is only a piece of carrion covered over with garlands. Touch it not if you can. Come up-young ones of the bird of paradise-before your feet touch this cesspool of corruption this world and fly upwards.

"Oh those that are awake do not go to sleep again. "Let the world love its many, we have but one beloved -the Lord-We care not what they say-We are only afraid when they want to paint my beloved and give him all sorts of monstrous qualities-let them do what ever they please-for us He is only the beloved-my love my love my love and nothing more.”

"Who cares to know how much power, how much quality he has-even that of doing good-We will say once and for all-we love not for the long purse-we never sell our love-we want not we give."

"You philosopher come to tell us of His essence-His powers-His attributes-fool! We are here dying for a kiss of His lips."

"Take your nonsense back to your own home-and send me a kiss of my love--can you?"

"Fool whom thou art bending your tottering knees before in awe and Fear-I took my necklace and put it round his neck and tying a string to it as a collar I am dragging him along with me-for fear He may fly even for a moment -that necklace was thc collar of love, that string the ecstasy of love-fool! You know not the secret-the infinite one comes within my fist under the bondage of love." "Knowest thou not that the Lord of the universe is the bond slave of Love." "Knowest thou not that the mover of the universe used to dance to the music of the ringing bracelets of the shepherdesses of Vrindavan?"

Excuse my mad scribbling

Excuse my foolery in trying to express the inexpressible -     It is to be felt only.

Ever with blessings your brother[20]
Vivekananda

Thus, during a period of outward trial and tribulation, Swamiji's inner mind and heart were filled only with spiritual love and joy.

3

Meanwhile, even as he was scolding his Madras disciples for not having arranged a public meeting, Alasinga and others were, in fact, obeying him and were organizing the now famous Madras Meeting which was held on April 28, 1894. Although an unpublished sentence or two in a letter of Swamiji's that has been dated (by someone other than he) "May 28, 1894" gives some indication that by then he knew a meeting had been organized in Madras, the actual proceedings did not reach him until the early part of July when a wrongly addressed letter telling of them finally arrived from Alasinga, having "travelled," as Swamiji wrote, "the whole country to come to me." But the matter did not end there. He wrote in reply to Alasinga on July 11, giving him detailed instructions as to what should be done with the Madras resolutions so that they would reach the American newspaper through the proper, official channels and thus serve as the "credentials" he had lacked for so long. He asked also that copies be sent to Professor Wright, "the first man who stood as my friend, " to Mr. Palmer and Mrs. Bagley of Detroit, and to Mrs. Hale, who, as he wrote in an unpublished portion of this letter, "is my greatest friend. " In his eagerness that nothing should miscarry, one senses his vast relief at these stirrings of life in India. "Now if similar things come from Calcutta with big names," he wrote in another unpublished portion of the same letter, "then I will get what the Americans say a boom and then half the battle will be won. Then the Yankees  will be confident that I am a sincere representative."[21]

The actual letters and resolutions of the Madras Meeting did not reach America until almost another two months had passed; and thus the suspense went on. The whole thing, from start to finish, was abhorrent to Swamiji. The anxiety, the necessity for "a boom," the need to prove himself, the endless collecting of newspaper clippings—all this was, he felt, a blotch on that unsullied "disregard of gain or name or fame" with which, in actual fact, he worked. On August 23 (when he was in Annisquam) he poured out (and immediately resolved) his disgust with "this public life" to Mrs. Hale, confident that both his complaint and his transcendence of it would be understood:


I know the gentleman whom you name perfectly well [he wrote in the course of this very long letter of August 23]and you may give him any information about me you like. I do not care [about] sending [newspaper] scraps and getting a boom for me. And these friends from India bother me enough for newspaper nonsense. They are very devoted faithful and holy friends. I have not much of these scraps now. After long search I found a bit in a Boston Transcript. I send it over to you. This Public life is such a botheration. I am nearly daft. Where to fly? In IndiaI— have become horribly public--crowds will follow me and take my life out. I got an Indian letter from Landsberg. Every ounce of fame can only be bought at the cost of a pound of peace and holiness. I never thought of that before. I have become entirely disgusted with this blazoning. I am disgusted with myself. Lord will show me the way to peace and purity. Why, Mother, I confess to you—no man can live in an atmosphere of public life even in religio—-without the devil of competition now and then thrusting his head into the serenity of his heart. Those who are trained to preach a doctrine never feel it for they never knew religion. But those that are after God and not after the world—feel at once that every bit of name & fame is at the cost of their purity. It is so much gone from that ideal of perfect unselfishness, perfect disregard of gain, or name or fame. Lord help me—Pray for me, Mother. I am very much disgusted with myself. Oh why the world be so that one cannot do anything without putting himself to the front, why cannot one act hidden and unseen and unnoticed. The world has not gone one step beyond idolatry yet. They cannot act from ideas; they cannot be led by ideas, they want the person—the man. And any man that wants to do something must pay the penalty, no hope. This nonsense of the world. Shiva, Shiva, Shiva.


By the by I have got such a beautiful edition of Thomas a Kempis—How I love that old monk. He caught a wonderful glimpse of the behind the veil. Few ever got such. My— that is religion. No humbug of the world. No shilly shallying—tall talk, conjecture— I presume, I believe, I think—How I would like to go out of this piece of painted humbug they call the beautiful world with Thomas a Kempis—beyond beyond—which can only be felt, never expressed. That is religion. Mother, there is God. There all the saints, prophets and incarnations meet. Beyond the Babel of Bibles and Vedas, creeds and crafts, duped and doctrines—where is all light, all love—where the miasma of this earth can never reach. Ah! who will take me thither. Do you sympathise with me, Mother? My soul is groaning now under the hundred sort(s) of bondage(s)—I am placing on it. Whose India? Who cares? Everything is His; what are we? Is He dead? Is He sleeping? He without whose command a leaf does not fall—a heart does not beat, who is nearer to me than my own self. It is bosh and nonsense to do good or do bad or do fuzz. We do nothing; we are not; the world is not. He is, He is. Only He is. None else is. He is.


Om. The one without a second. He in me I in Him. I am like a bit of glass in an ocean of light. I am not. I am not. He is. He is.

Om the one without a second.'[22]


A week after Swamiji wrote the above, news of the Madras Meeting appeared in the American newspapers, and it was through the following editorial in the Boston Evening Transcript of August 30 that he at last came to know that at least some of the formal recognition necessary to his work had been accorded it:


Swami Vivekananda came to the United States to convert the heathen of this country from the ruling faith in materiality to a lively conviction of spiritual things. The impression he made at the Parliament of Religions and his subsequent missions in various parts of the country are matters well known to all. Like our own missionaries to India, the gentlemen who come as missionaries to us in America are not all of the same tenets and practices, and do not often know all about the good works of one another. But it is interesting to receive just at this moment, when the Hindoo monk has been speaking at Eliot and Plymouth, a circular of the proceedings of the public meeting at Madras, where leading Hindoos assembled together to make formal expression of their gratitude to him for his representing of Hindooism to the American public at the  Chicago Parliament of Religions. The chairman said they were assembled to express their admiration and their thanks to the great American people for the very kindly and sympathetic reception which they had accorded to Paramahamsa Swami Vivekananda, whom all here knew so well and revered so much. They had met also to convey to the Swami their high appreciation of the signal services which he had rendered in America in the Parliament of Religions and in other places. There could be no doubt that his visit to the great Western country and his services there were of excellent augury. He believed that it was a precursor of many such visits and still greater services on his part and on the part of others who had such great capacity as Swami Vivekananda had of rendering national services. He had no doubt that all present were agreed that for a long time to come they must simply be learners and students and endeavor to learn and assimilate what was good and excellent in the civilization of the West. In the formal thanks sent to America are these fervent words:


"Amid all the troubles and humiliations of our past history, in spite of our present fallen condition, we, Hindus, yet retain undiminished our faith in our ancient system of religion, of which the fundamental and central conceptions have been placed before you with such conspicuous power and success by our gifted representative. All of us who have the privilege of knowing personally Swami Vivekananda never felt a moment's doubt that his mission to your great and free nation would prove an entire success and that his genius, enthusiasm, wisdom and eloquence will bear fruit. India is still the home of spirituality, as it was the cradle of the world's civilization. Virtue and holiness still continue a power with our people; and, as long as this continues, our ancient conviction that ours is the holy land and ours the chosen race cannot desert us. Our Anglo-Saxon rulers—your near and our distant kinsmen—are fulfilling, with such might and sincerity as is possible, their heaven-sent mission in this land; already the signs of a brighter era of rejuvenated nationality are beginning to dawn upon us; and when all our fetters break asunder as they must with the progress of good government and material prosperity, we hope that our race will yet be able to utilize her national resurrection for the spiritual elevation of the world. It is in this light that the Hindoo community views the great success of Swami Vivekananda's mission to America, and the kindly and enthusiastic reception which your great nation, in its centres of light, might and freedom, has been pleased to accord to our gifted representative and to his exposition of the teachings of our sages and prophets."


On reading the above, Swamiji wrote to Alasinga: "I just now saw an editorial on me about the circular from Madras in the Boston Transcript. Nothing has reached me yet. They will reach me soon if you have sent it already. So far you have done wonderfully, my boy. Do not mind what I write in some moments of nervousness. One gets nervous sometimes alone in a country 15,000 miles from home, having to fight every inch of ground with orthodox inimical Christians. You must take those into consideration, my brave boy, and work right along."[23] Swamiji's mail, which was possibly being again forwarded here and there, finally caught up with him, and he duly received the Madras Address itself. "The Bundle was the report of the meeting," he wrote to Mrs. Hale on September 4. "Hope you will succeed in publishing some in the Chicago papers . . . Here are some newspaper clippings & an India Mirror I will send later on. Some has been sent to Mr. Barrows, don't hope he will give them publicity. '[24] In the meantime the American newspapers kept him informed. On August 31 the Chicago Inter Ocean spread the story of his official vindication:


It is pleasant to note, that this Hindoo teacher is not a prophet without honor in his own country, and that, at a  public meeting recently held in Madras, the Hindoo community indorsed all his efforts in America, and sent their thanks to America for the manner in which he was received. The Hindoos of Madras have sent to THE INTEROCEAN a communication expressing their thanks and admiration for 'the gracious hospitality and large hearted philanthropy which characterizes your great and powerful community. The generous fervor with which your great people have received and listened to the holy man, who undertook to convey to them the message to mankind of our Hindoo sages and prophets, has proved to us how false and foul are the charges which we have every now and then seen leveled against America, that she is the motherland of unblushing dollar worship, that her sons are absorbed in gross materialism, and that there is no love among them for the things of the spirit.'


The Parliament of Religions has begun to show its fruits far off in India. The people are correcting their impressions of America since they have seen it through eyes in which they have confidence as representing themselves, and India through the reports of Swami Vivekananda, the great Hindoo teacher, will learn to admire the Western world and learn from it many things that will improve her material welfare, as Americans learned of the spiritual beauties of Hindoo philosophy as taught by one of the great Hindoo priests. The World's Congress had for its motto 'Not Things but Men,' but it will show in its fruits many advancements that concern things as well as men, when the seeds sown by the delegates to these great congresses take firm root in the soil of the Orient.


At least two New York papers, the Sun of September 2 and the Daily Tribune of September 3, followed suit, taking a delight, it seemed, in Swamiji's triumph, as well as in India's gratitude to the American people. In short, as Swamiji was to write to his brother disciples in late September: the Madras Address "was published in all the newspapers here and created a sensation.;[25]


Meanwhile, the Dewan of Junagadh, Sri Haridas Viharidas Desai (a letter from whom Swamiji had sent to Professor Wright as a sort of affidavit), wrote of his own accord to Mr. Hale. His letter arrived in America in the early days of September. Swamiji forwarded it to the Hales, together with some newspaper clippings from India and (the next day) "an autograph letter of H.H. the Maharaja of Mysore, the chief Hindu King in India.'[26] Although Mr. and Mrs. Hale had no need of certificates regarding Swamiji's probity, he nonetheless felt an obligation to lay all this at their feet. "Your kind note to G. W. Hale has been very gratifying, " he wrote to the Dewan in September, "as I owed them that much.'"[27]The Dewan's note read in full:

Nadiad
2nd August 94

Sir,

I hope you will excuse my troubling you with this letter. I learn with regret that some people have given out in America that Swami Shri Vivekanandaji is not what he appears to be in public there.


Allow me to tell you as a friend of his that the Swami is known to me for some years. I respect and revere him very much. He is sincere to the avocation he has disinterestedly taken up for the good of the people at large. He has given up his family and social connections since about 12 years and has devoted himself entirely to the good of his own soul and that of others. He went to Chicago only with the avowed object of enlightening the American nation with the true religion of the Hindus, the knowledge of which he has acquired so much as to win the admiration of those who are in a position to appreciate it. He is a true friend of the Hindus and a staunch advocate of their religion. I saw his house, mother & brothers in Calcutta where I was in November and December last, to serve as a member of the Royal Commission on Opium. He does not keep any connection with his relations &c, because he has long renounced the worldly connections and become a Sanyasi. I send you by Book Post a small pamphlet, the perusal of which will introduce my humble self to you.


You are welcome to make use of this letter in any way you think proper for the sake of truth and fair play.

I remain

Yours very Faithfully[28]

Haridas Viharidas


Swamiji's American friends could be satisfied through letters from his Indian friends, but the public could be satisfied only through public acclaim. With the Madras Meeting, India had at last become aware of her responsibility to her champion, and in time other public meetings were held throughout the country with jubilation and ceremony. There was, for instance, a public meeting in Kumbakonam on August 22, one in Bangalore on August 26, and one in Khetri in March of the following year. But the Calcutta Meeting of September 5, 1894, in which "enthusiasm reached a pitch of frenzy," was to carry the greatest weight. Not only was Calcutta Swamiji's birthplace, where his life and character were well known, but it was the state of Mr. Mazumdar's opposition; further, many reputable orthodox Brahmin pandits were prominently represented at the Meeting, thereby belying the widely circulated claim that the "Neo-Hinduism of which [Vivekhananda] is a representative is not orthodox Hinduism." It was owing largely to the efforts of Swami Abhedananda, one of Swamiji's brother disciples, that this crowning and highly successful meeting was held. "[The Swami] worked day and night like a mad man for the meeting, " Mahendranath Datta, Swamiji's brother wrote, "and raised funds for the purpose from his acquaintances. He had the proceedings of the meeting printed and sent them to the press for wider publicity, and he performed this task with the utmost devotion.[29]


The Press was itself enthusiastic and burgeoned with reports and editorials relating to Swamiji. There was a sense of national victory and celebration. Perhaps the best idea of the importance of the Calcutta Meeting can be gathered from the following accounts in the Indian Mirror of September 6 and 16, which read in part, respectively:


THE PUBLIC MEETING IN CALCUTT'A 

TO THANK SWAMI VIVEKANANDA 

AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

The great meeting of the Hindu community last evening at the Town Hall must have furnished a striking object lesson to everyone who was present at the immense gathering. The appearance of the different castes and subcastes, into which Hindu society is split up at the present time, on a common platform, the oneness of feeling that animated all, the common enthusiasm, the united applause, as speaker after speaker rose and resumed his seat, and the absolute sincerity of the entire proceedings, all went to show that life has begun to beat with strong pulsation once more into the veins of the Hindu nation. Yesterday's meeting was convened for an extraordinary but truly national purpose. It was a meeting called for an expression of gratitude to one who deserved well of his people; but anyone could see that the whole object of the meeting went beyond that; anybody could see that the Hindus of Calcutta had met not simply for voting an address to Swami Vivekanand, but for the higher purpose of giving a powerful impetus to the advancement of the Hindu cause in the Western World.... Swami Vivekanand has appeared before the American people as the accredited messenger of the whole Hindu nation, and he spoke in their name; and he spoke not for himself or with the dogmatism of assumed authority, but on behalf not only of modern Hindus, but also, and much more of the great sages, law-givers, and prophets of Ancient India. Is it any wonder that when the American people saw the utter sincerity and selflessness of Swami Vivekanand, that they approved of the messenger, or that when they had heard the Swami out, they approved of the message likewise? Attempts have been made even in this country to belittle Swami Vivekanand's wonderful successes in America. Some have even gone so far as to deny that he represented the Hindus at all. But it is a fact that the Hindus of Madras bore the expense of his mission. They have subsequently, in a public meeting, warmly approved of the work of their gifted delegate. And subsequently Hindus from all parts of India have ratified the choice of Madras. Yesterday's great meeting at the Town Hall showed that the Hindus of Bengal are not behindhand in according to Swami Vivekanand that position which he has amply deserved by his work. . .[30]

4

SWAMI VIVEKANAND

A PUBLIC MEETING OF THE HINDU 

COMMUNITY AT THE TOWN HALL

A very crowded and enthusiastic meeting of the inhabitants of Calcutta and its Suburbs was held at the Town Hall on Wednesday, the 5th instant, at 5-30 P.M. The object of the meeting was to consider how best to express the gratitude of the Hindus to Swami Vivekananda for the great services rendered by him to the cause of Hinduism in America. The meeting was thoroughly representative in character. Every section of the Hindu community was represented. The meeting was announced to commence at 5-30 P.M. but it was scarcely 5 P.M. when the hall was literally packed. The speakers, as they entered the hall, were most enthusiastically cheered. The most interesting feature of the meeting was that a large number of orthodox Pandits were present to show their sympathy with the object of the meeting. It was estimated that nearly four thousand people were assembled on the occasion. [There followed a list of prominent Hindus, the address of the Chairman, Raja Peary Mohun Mukerji, and the long preambles to and texts of the Resolutions, of which there were three. These were:]


1. That this meeting desires to record its grateful appreciation of the great services rendered to the cause of Hinduism by Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament of Religions at Chicago, and of his subsequent work in America.


2. That this meeting tenders its best thanks to Dr. J. H. Barrows, the Chairman, and Mr. Merwin Marie Snell, the Secretary of the Scientific Section of the Parliament of Religions at Chicago, and to the American people generally, for the cordial and sympathetic reception they have accorded to Swami Vivekananda.


3. That this meeting requests the Chairman to forward to Swami Vivekananda, and Dr. Barrows, copies of the foregoing Resolutions together with the following letter, addressed to Swami Vivekananda. [The letter addressed to Swami Vivekananda was given in full in the Indian Minor, and we shall quote from it later on.[31]


The public acclaim of Calcutta vindicated Swamiji as nothing else could have, setting upon him and his work the official seal of approval with final, indisputable authority. When the details of the meeting reached him, Swamiji wrote in the overflowing of his joy and gratitude to the Hale Sisters. This letter is perhaps the most moving of all his letters, revealing as it does how humanly deep his previous suffering must have been and how childlike his joy at the news of India's wholehearted official support. Thus, although the letter has been published in the Complete Works and may be familiar to the reader, it is included here. (It should be mentioned that in the Complete Works, and also in a copy of the original, this letter has been given the date July 9, 1894, which must be in error, for the text obviously refers to the Meeting of September 5. It would appear, moreover, that Swamiji enclosed the official letter addressed to him by the Chairman of the Meeting, which did not reach his hands until the second week of October.[32] The following letter, therefore, should probably bear an October date:)


Oh my sisters

Glory unto Jagadamba [Mother of the Universe]—I have gained beyond expectations--the prophet has been honored and with a vengeance. I am weeping like a child at His mercy—He never leaves his servant, sisters—The letter I send you will explain all—and the printed things are coming to the American people—The names there are the very flower of our country. The president was the chief nobleman of Calcutta and the other man Mahesh Chander Nyayaratna is the principal of Sanscrit College and the chief Brahman in all India and recognized by the Government as such—The letter will tell you all—0h! sisters! what a rogue am I that in the face of such mercies sometimes the faith totters--seeing every moment that I am in his hands--

Still the mind sometimes gets despondent. Sisters, there is a God—a fatherMother who never leaves his children—never, never, never—Put uncanny theories aside and becoming children take refuge in Hi—I cannot write more —I am weeping like a woman.

Blessed Blessed art thou Lord God of my Soul—

Yours aflly'[33]
Vivekananda—


The letter Swamiji mentions was undoubtedly the official letter addressed to him by the Chairman and sent to him in accordance with the third Resolution. It was unstinting in its appreciation of his achievement in the West on behalf of India and read in part:


The trouble and sacrifice you have incurred by your visit to America as a representative of the Hindu Religion are profoundly appreciated by all whom you have done the honour to represent. But their special acknowledgments are due to you for the services you have rendered to the cause they hold so dear, their sacred Arya Dharma, by your speeches and your ready responses to the questions of inquirers. No exposition of the general principles of the Hindu Religion could, within the limits of a lecture, be more accurate and lucid than what you gave in your address to the Parliament of Religions on Tuesday, the 19th September, 1893. And your subsequent utterances on the same subject on other occasions have been equally clear and precise.... Your fellow--countrymen, fellow citizens and fellow-Hindus feel that they would be wanting in an obvious duty if they did not convey to youtheir hearty sympathy and earnest gratitude for all your labours in spreading a true knowledge of the ancient faith. May God grant you strength and energy to carry on the good work you have begun.[34]


An obstacle to Swamiji's mission was effectively smashed. But the Calcutta Meeting by no means marked a resting point. On the contrary, learning of its success and of the part his brother disciples had had in its organization, he spurred them on.


Now you have come to know your own powers [he wrote to Swami Ramakrishnananda on October 22]. Strike the iron while it is hot. Idleness won't do. Throw overboard all idea of jealousy and egotism, once for all. Come on to the practical field with tremendous energy; to work, in the fullness of strength! As to the rest, the Lord will point the way. The whole world will be deluged by a tidal wave. Work, work, work—let this be your motto.[35]


And to Swami Abhedananda:

You have all evinced a wonderful capacity for work. And how can Shri Ramakrishna's words prove false? You have got wonderful spirit in you.... "All noble undertakings are fraught with obstacles." It is quite in the nature of things. Keep up the deepest mental poise. Take not even the slightest notice of what puerile creatures may be saying against you. Indifference, indifference, indifference! I have already written to Shashi [Swami Ramakrishnananda] in detail....

A bit of public demonstration was necessary for Guru Maharaja's [Sri Ramakrishna's] work. It is done, and so far good. Now you must on no account pay any heed to what the rabble may be prattling about us.... So long as you gird up your loins and rally behind me, there is no fear even if  the whole world combine against us.[36]


To Alasinga in Madras:

The Missionaries—who cares for them here? They had barked after me a good deal, now they have stopped. I never answered them, and the public estimation is all the better for me for that. Do not send any more newspapers, I have enough of them. A little advertisement was necessary for the work. We have enough. Look around and see how they [Swamiji's brother disciples] have built with almost no ground at their feet. And if with this grand beginning you cannot do anything, I will be sadly disappointed. If you are my children you will fear nothing, stop at nothing You will be like lions. We must rouse India and the whole world. I take no nay. Do you mind? No cowardice. True unto death.... Electrify people. Raise funds and preach. Be true to your mission. So far you have done well, do better and  better still, go on and on.[37]


Meaninglessly, the chatter of criticism and antagonism kept on for a time, like a wound-up machine. Indeed, the Calcutta Meeting, news of which duly reached the American Press,  tended in some respects to exacerbate it; for instance, a surprisingly jaundiced comment in the Critic, a periodical ordinarily favorable to Swamiji, struck a new note in the chorus of fault-finders. The following article was printed on May 4, 1895 :


On the return [?] of their delegate, Swami Vivekananda from the Parliament of Religions at Chicago, the Hindu community of Calcutta met in the Town Hall, 5 Sept., 1894, to thank him and the American people publicly. A largenumber of influential orthodox Pundits were in this great gathering of nearly 4000 people, and the speeches and proceedings were mostly in English. The English and Bengali texts are reprinted in a pamphlet, from which Oriental and American readers can find out what took place. We have read all the speeches that were given in English, and from them, it is very evident that modern America has but just been discovered by these our Oriental brethren. It is very evident also, that the Hindu is as fond of hifaluting panegyric and bombastic conceit as is the American when he breaks loose on the Fourth of July. Apart from the naturally strong expression of faith and joy in their own Hindu tenets, we are informed by one of these fellow Aryans of ours of what we owe to the dwellers in the land of the Vedas. Almost everything of high thought and aspiration in Christendom, it seems, may be traced to one or another of the successive influxes of Hindu ideas. We learn also that, while America is starving for spiritual nourishment, pretty much all the men and women of light and leading among us are turning to Hinduism for mental food, and that the prospect of the people of the United States becoming Hindus is excellent. One must go abroad to get the latest home news. The pamphlet is well calculated to burn like red pepper in the eyes of the ultraorthodox Christian hater of the study of comparative religions, and to warm the cockles of the hearts of all who would enjoy seeing Christianity sink to a level among the  various religions of the world. The sagacious man who can read between the lines, who has some sense of humor, and who enjoys human nature in its various manifestations will appreciate this proof that in both its needs and aspirations, as well as in conceit and boasting, the whole world is kin. Only 2000 copies of these "Proceedings of the Calcutta Town Hall Meeting Regarding Swami Vivekananda" have been printed (Calcutta: New Calcutta Press) .


But although there may have been resentment in some quarters, there could no longer be doubt in anyone's mind that Swami Vivekananda was a prophet well honored in his own country. As the Indian Mirror was to editorialize in December of 1894:


...It is only narrow-minded sectarianism or scornful bigotry that can incite any Hindu, be he an idolator or a Brahmo, to sneer and cavil at Swami Vivekananda's great work in America.[38]


As for Swamiji himself, he remained the same. "I do not think the Lord will allow his servant to be inflated with vanity at the appreciation of his countrymen, " he had written on September :g to Mrs. Hale, who had ,perhaps expressed motherly concern over the acclaim, both public and private, he was receiving.


I am glad that they appreciate me [he continued], not for my sake but that I am firmly persuaded that a man is never improved by abuse but by praise and so with nations. Think how much of abuse has been quite unnecessarily hurled at the head of my devoted poor country, and for what? They never injured the Christians or their religion or their preachers. So you see Mother, every good word a foreign nation says to them has such an amount of power for good in India. The American appreciation of my humble work here has really done a good deal of benefit to them. Send a good word, a good thought at least to the downtrodden villified poor millions of India instead of abusing them day and night. That is what I beg of every nation. Help them if you can, if you cannot at least cease from abusing them.[39]


ⓘ 
[1] Complete Works, 5: 31-32.
[2] Ibid., 7 : 462.
[3] 7 : 464.
[4] 8: 310-12.
[5] 8 : 306; this passage is taken from the original letter, Ramakrishna Math, Belur.
[6] 3 : 208-10.
[7] 3: 210.
[8] 6 : 252; this passage is from a variant translation.
[9] 8 : 303; this passage is taken from an early copy, Sen Col.
[IO] 7: 462.
[I I] 6 : 282-83.
[12] Pratap Chandra Mazoomdar,"Paramahamsa Srirnat Ramakrishna Tuistic Quarter!, Review, October 1879.
[13] Complete Works, 8: 313.
[14] Swamiji to Mrs. Hale, September 27, 1894, Sen Col.
[15]  Complete Works, 8 : 313.
[16].Complete Works 7:466-67; Wright Col., VSNC. 
[17].Complete Works, 8 : 467-69; Wright Col., VSNC. 
[18].Maharaja of Khetri to Swami Vivekananda, April 7, 1894, Wright Col., VSNC.
[19]Complete Works, 7: 469-70; Wright Col., VSNC.
[20].Complete Works 6 : 257-59, original, VSNC. 
[21].Complete Works, 5 : 36-38, from the original letter, RKM, Belur. 
[22].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, August 23, 1894, Sen Col. 
[23].Complete Works, 5 : 40. 
[24].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, September 4, 1894, Sen Col. 
[25].Complete Works, 6 : 271. 
[26].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, September 5,1894, Sen Col. 
[27].Complete Works, 8 : 322. 
[28].Haridas V. Desai to Mr. George W. Hale, August 2, 1894, Sen Col. 
[29].Mahendranath Datta, Srimat Vivekananda Swamijir Jivaner Ghatanavali (Calcutta: Mahendra Publishing Committee,                           1957), Vol. 3, p. 130. 
[30].Quoted in Swami Vivekananda in Indian Newspapers (see Bibliography), pp. 48-49.
[31].Quoted in Swami Vivekananda in Indian Newspapers (see Bibliography) pp. 55-60.
[32].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Bull, October 17, 1894, Sen Col. 
[33].Complete Works, 8: 316; the letter as given here is taken from an early unedited copy.
[34].Indian Mirror, September 6, 1894, quoted in VIN, p. 51.
[35].Indian Mirror, September 6, 1894, quoted in VIN,6 : 278.
[36].Indian Mirror, September 6, 1894, quoted in VIN,7 : 477~79-
[37]..Indian Mirror, September 6, 1894, quoted in VIN,5:61; this passage is quoted from the original letter, RKM, Belur.
[38].Quoted in VIN, p. 66.
[39].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale, September 13,1894, Sen Col.  [31].    Quoted in Swami Vivekananda in Indian Newspapers (see Bibliography) pp. 55-60.
[32].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Bull, October 17, 1894, Sen Col. 
[33].Complete Works, 8: 316; the letter as given here is taken from an early unedited copy.
[34].Indian Mirror, September 6, 1894, quoted in VIN, p. 51.
[35].Indian Mirror, September 6, 1894, quoted in VIN,6 : 278.
[36].Indian Mirror, September 6, 1894, quoted in VIN,7 : 477~79-
[37].Indian Mirror, September 6, 1894, quoted in VIN:61; this passage is quoted from the original letter, RKM, Belur.
[38].Quoted in VIN, p. 66.
[39].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale, September 13,1894, Sen Col.

↑ Contents

2.3 SUMMER, 1894

In the last chapter we dwelt upon the trials Swamiji underwent during the summer of 1894, and the reader may have been left with an impression that this was a time of despondency for him. But such was not the case. Despite the fact that outward circumstances had been dark indeed and were to remain unsettled until the end of August, inwardly he was filled with spiritual joy, and in regard to this inward and most important aspect of his life, this summer can be looked upon as immensely fruitful. If there is a contradiction, here it is of the kind that has characterized the lives of all great prophets, who necessarily live on two levels—the human and the divine.

A letter written from the Hales', where he was spending the month of June, shows him as free from care as a child. It was addressed to Mrs. Hale, who, together with her husband, was "taking the waters" at a fashionable mineral springs resort in Warren County, Indiana, about too miles south of Chicago. The Hale sisters (and nieces) remained at home, chaperoned by Mr. Hale's sister Mrs. James Matthews, whom Swamiji called "Mother Temple." His letter from this Chicago household read:

Dear Mother

We are all doing very well here. Last night the sisters invited me & Mrs.Norton & Miss Howe & Mr Frank Low. We had a grand dinner & soft shell crab and many other things and a very nice time. Miss Howe left this morning.

The sisters & Mother temple are taking very good care of me. Just now I am going to see my "oh my dear" Gandhi [Virchand A. Gandhi?]. Narasimha was here yesterday, he wanted to go to Cincinnati where he says he has more chances of success than anywhere else in the world. I gave him the passage so I hope I have got the white elephant out of my hands for the time being. How is father Pope doing now. Hope he has been much benefited by the mud-fish business.

I had a very beautiful letter from Miss Guernsey of New York, giving you her regards. I am going down town to buy a new pair of shoes as well to get some money my purse having been made empty by Narasimha.

Nothing more to write—yes—we went to see the "Charley's Aunt" I nearly killed myself with laughing. Father Pope will enjoy it extremely. I had never seen anything so funny.

Yours affectionately[1]

Vivekananda

Charley's Aunt was a highly popular comedy, based on an incongruous switch of identity—a gimmick that struck American audiences as hilarious. The humor was unbarbed and innocent, and Swamiji, roaring with laughter, entered fully into the spirit of it.

And here in Chicago was Narasimha again, turning up like the proverbial bad penny. Swamiji felt much concerned for the boy, who, as he had written to Alasinga at the end of May, "has proved a complete failure. [He has] mixed with nondescript rogues and women, and everybody shuns him. However, he wrote to me for help in the last stage, and I will try to help him as much as in my power. Meanwhile you tell his people to send money as soon as they can for him to go over [to India].... He is in distress. Of course I will see that he does not starve.'[2]

Swamiji did more than see that Narasimha did not starve; he saw to it that he would get back to India without fail. "[His people may pay the money] to Cook &. Son," he instructed Alasinga "and they [Cook & Son] will give him a ticket to India and not cash. I think via the Pacific is the better route for him as having no temptation for him to stop anywhere.'[3] In the meantime, a Mrs. Smith, who was evidently much taken by the young Hindu, had other plans for him, to wit: he was to become a Christian missionary to "heathen India." Mrs. Smith explained this in a number of letters to Mrs. Hale, who relayed the information to Swamiji, who in turn expressed his opinion in a letter to "Mother Church" dated August 23, 1894:

Narasimha has perhaps got his passage by this time. He will get it soon whether his family gives him the money or not. I have written to my friends in Madras to look to it and they write me they will.

I would be very glad if he becomes a Christian or Mohamedan or any religion that suits him but I am afraid for some time to come none will suit our friend. Only if he becomes a Christian he will have a chance to marry again even in India—the Christians there permitting it. I am so sorry to learn that it is the "bondage of heathen India" that after all was the cause of all this mischief—We learn as we live. So we were all this time ignorantly and blindly blaming our much suffering, persecuted, saintly friend Narasimha—while all the fault was really owing to the "bondage of heathen India" ! ! ! !

But to give the devil his due this heathen India, has been supplying him with money to go onto a spree again and again. And this time too "heathen India" will or already has taken our "enlightened" and persecuted friend from out of his present scrape and not "Christian America"!! Mrs Smith's plan is not bad after all—to turn Narasimha into a missionary of Christ. But unfortunately for the world—many & many a time the flag of Christ has been entrusted to such hands. But I would beg to add that he will then be only a missionary of Smithian American Christianity, not Christ's. Arrant humbug! That thing to, preach Lord Jesus! ! ! Is He in want of men to uphold His banner? Pooh! the very idea is revolting. Do good to India indeed! Thank [you for] your charity and call back your dog—as the tramp said. Keep such good workers for America. The Hindus will have a quarantine against all such (out-casting) to protect their society. I heartily advise Narasimha to become a Christian, I beg your pardon, a convert to Americanism—because I am sure such a jewel is unsaleable in poor India. He is welcome to anything that will fetch a price.[4]

But before Narasimha could become a Christian missionary, Swamiji's more direct plan for his return to India went into effect. "By the by, Narasimha is in Chicago now," he was to write on September 21 to Alasinga. "As they have not given him cash he cannot but go to India back. I think he has started by this time.'[5] And a week later: "Narasimha has started back, I suppose. He is a queer man. He did not even write to me informing me about it and I was all the time trying to do whatever I could do to send him back and keep him alive here."[6] Toward the end of December Swamiji learned from Alasinga that the young ne'er-do-well had arrived safely home, and it is most likely that, hearing the news, he breathed a sigh of immense relief. But even then he did not wash his hands of his young friend. In a heretofore unpublished passage of a letter dated January 11, 1895, to his Madras disciple "G.G. " he wrote: "Narasimha (American) has written a letter to Mrs. Hale from India in which he styles the Hindus as savages and he has not one word for me. Something is the matter with his brain I am afraid. Try to recover him. Nothing is lost forever."

To return to the summer of 1894, at the end of June Swamiji left Chicago for New York. It was a risky time to travel, for the great strike against the Pullman Company was in progress, creating a first-rate, widespread snarl in railway traffic and outraging the nation. Still, passenger trains between Chicago and New York (even those with Pullman cars) somehow continued to run on schedule, and on June 28 Swamiji's train steamed safely into Grand Central Station. Almost at once he wrote to Mrs. Hale to tell her so:

Dear Mother

Arrived safely two hours ago—Landsberg was waiting at the station. Came to Dr Guernseys house. Nobody was there except a servant. I took a bath and strolled with Landsberg to some restaurant where I had a good meal. Then I have just now returned to Landsberg's rooms (room) in the Theosophical Society & writing you this letter.

I haven't been to see my other friends yet. After a good & long rest through the night I hope to see most of them tomorrow. My love to you all. By the by somebody stepped on my umbrella on board the train and broke its nose off.

Your affectionate Son
Vivekananda

P.S.

I have not settled myself, so as to direct letters to me they can be directed c/o Leon Landsberg 144 Madison Ave. New York.[7]

During the next week or two Swamiji no doubt visited his many New York friends, and, as we learn from the following letter, written on July r to Mrs. Hale, he spent a few days, alternately, at the homes of one or another of them:

Dear Mother

Hope you are settled down in peace by this time. The babies are doing well in Mudville—in their nunnery I am sure. ["Mudville" was very possibly the family name for Kenosha, Wisconsin, then a small town on Lake Michigan, where the Hales had a summer home.] It is very hot here but now and then a breeze comes up which cools it down. I am now with Miss Phillips; will move off from here on Tuesday [July 3] to another place.

Now I am going to send up the orange coat today; as for the books that came to me from Philadelphia, I do not think they are worthy of being sent at all. I do not know what I am going to do next. Patiently wait and resign myself upto His guidance, that is my motto. My love to you all.

Your affectionate Son[8]

The omitted part of the above letter was devoted to a quotation from Monier Williams, who was ordinarily imperialistic in his attitude toward India. Swamiji, happy always to find one kind and fair word for his motherland among the buckets of contumely thrown upon her, wrote out the passage, even as he had earlier written out two paragraphs from Louis Rousselet. The passage; as he copied it and with his comments at the start and finish, read in full:

Here I find a quotation from a speech by Sir Monier Williams professor of Sanskrit in the Oxford University. It is very strange as coming from one who every day expects to see the whole of India converted to Christianity:

"And yet it is a remarkable characteristic of Hinduism that it neither requires or attempts to make converts. Nor is it at present by any means decreasing in numbers nor is it being driven out of the field by two such proselyting religions as Mahomedanism and Christianity. On the contrary it is at present rapidly increasing. And far more remarkable than this is that, it is all-receptive, all-embracing and all-comprehensive. It claims to be the one religion of humanity—of human nature, of the entire world. It cares not to oppose the progress of Christianity nor of any other religion. For it has no difficulty in including all other religions within its all embracing arms and ever widening fold. And in real fact Hinduism has something to offer which is suited to all minds. Its very strength lies in its infinite adaptability to the infinite diversity of human minds characters and human tendencies. It has its highly spiritual and abstract side suited to the philosophical higher classes. Its practical & concrete side suited to the man of affairs and the man of the world. Its aesthetic and ceremonial side suited to the man of poetic feeling and imagination. Its quiescent and contemplative side suited to the man of peace and lover of seclusion.

"Indeed the Hindus were Spinozists 2000 years before the birth of Spinoza, Darwinians centuries before the birth of Darwin, and evolutionists many centuries before the doctrine of evolution has been accepted by the Huxleys of our time, and before any word like evolution existed in any language of the world. 

This as coming from one of the staunchest defenders of Christianity is wonderful indeed. But he seems to have got the idea quite correct.[9]

One finds Swamiji in mid July staying at the Guernseys' summer home at Fishkill Landing, or, as it was also known, Fishkill-on-Hudson, a village (now a part of the city of Beacon) fifty-eight miles north of New York City. The Guernseys' two-and-a-half story house was Colonial in architecture and Victorian in furnishings, some pieces of which—the rosewood bed in the master bedroom and the bathtub, for instance—were outsize, for Dr. Guernsey was a man of "huge bulk," requiring huge accommodations. Surrounding the house were large cool lawns dappled with trees and flowering shrubs; beyond was a fruit orchard, a small pond, a copse, and a wide field.[10] Nearby ran the Hudson River, where Swamiji surely went for a dip on the hot July days.

How long he stayed with the Guernseys is not clear. He had, however, no dearth of invitations to visit elsewhere. In a post-script to an undated letter written to Mrs. Hale from Fishkill Landing, he wrote:

". . . I am bearing the heat very well here. I had an invitation to Swampscott on the sea from a very rich lady whose acquaintance I made last winter in New York, but I declined with thanks. I am very careful now to take the hospitality of anybody here, especially the rich. I had a few other invitations from some very rich people here. I refused; I have by this time seen the whole business through. Lord bless you and yours, Mother Church, for your sincerity. Oh! it is so rare in this world.[11]

On July 19 Swamiji again wrote to Mrs. Hale from Fishkill Landing. This letter is given here in full, for it not only bespeaks the serenity of his mind in these troubled summer months, but contains information to which we shall refer later. It read :

Dear Mother

Your kind note reached me here yesterday evening. I am so glad to hear the babies are enjoying. I got the "interior" (a conservative Chicago newspaper) and am very glad to see my friend (Pratap Chandra) Mazoomdar's book spoken of so highly. Mazoomdar is a great and a good man and has done much for his fellow beings.

It is a lovely summer place this Cedar Lawn of the Guernseys'. Miss Guernsey has gone on a visit to Swampscot(t). I had also an invitation there but I thought better to stay here in the calm and silent place full of trees and with the beautiful Hudson flowing by and mountain in the background.

I am very thankful for Miss Howe's suggestion and I am also thinking of it. Most probably I will go to England very soon. But between you and me I am a sort of a mystic and cannot move without orders and that has not come yet. Mr Higgins a rich young lawyer and inventor of Brooklyn is arranging some lectures for me. I have not settled whether I will stop for them or not.

My eternal thanks to you for your kindness. My whole life can not repay your debt. You may see from the letter from Madras that there is not a word about Narasimha. What can I do more? I did not get the check cashed yet for there was no necessity. Miss Philips was very kind to me. She is an old lady about 50 or more. You need not feel any worry about my being taken care of, the Lord always takes care of His servants and no long I am really His servant and not of the world's I am very confident of getting everything that would be good for me. The Guernseys love me very much and there are many families in New York and Brooklyn who would take the best care of me.

I had a beautiful letter from Mr. [Merwin-Marie] Snell saying that a sudden change for the better has taken place in his fortunes and offering me thrice the money I lent him as a contribution to my work. And he also has beautiful letters from Dharmapala and others from India. But of course I politely refused his repayment.

So far so good. I have seen Mr. Page the writer of the Forum here, he was so sorry not to get the article on missionaries. But I have promised to write on other interesting subjects. Hope I will have the patience to do so.

I had a letter yesterday from Miss. Harriette from which I learn that they are enjoying Kenosha very much. Lord bless you and yours Mother Church for ever and ever. I can not even express my gratitude to you.

As for me you need not be troubled the least—my whole life is that of a vagabond homeless roving tramp—any fare good or bad in any country is good enough for me.

Yours ever in love and obedience[12]

(To annotate the above letter: The ticket for Narasimha's passage back to India had not yet come, but, as we have seen earlier, it was eventually to do so. The Mr. Page to whom Swamiji refer was Walter Hines Page, well-known editor-director of forum and Atlantic Monthly. He was later appointed United States Ambassador to Great Britain.)

Although Swamiji had been reluctant to accept an invitation to Swampscott, a summer report town on Massachuaetts Bay, just north of Lynn, he nevertheless did so, and from there on July 23 he wrote to Mrs. Hale, letting her know where he was and that all was well, for, like a mother, she tended to worry about this son of hers who wandered through America without money or care:

Dear Mother

I think I have all your questions answered and you are in good humour again.

I am enjoying this place very much; going to Greenacre today or tomorrow and on our way back I intend to go to Annisquam to Mrs. Bagley—I have written to her. Mrs. Breed says, "you are very sensitive."

Now I did not fortunately cash your check in New York. I wanted to cash it here—when Lo! you have not signed your name to it. The Hindu is a dreamer no doubt but when the Christian dreams he dreams with a vengeance.

Do not be distressed—some body gave me plenty of money to move about. I would be taken care of right along. I send herewith the check back to you. [He forgot to do so.] I had a very beautiful letter from Miss Mary. My love to them.

What is father Pope doing? Is it very hot in Chicago. I do not care for [about] the heat of this country. It is nothing compared to our India heat. I am doing splendidly. The other day I had the summer cholera, and cramp &c came to pay their calls to me. We had several hours nice talk and groans and then they departed.

I am on the whole doing very well. Has the mereshaum pipe reached Chicago? [This was the pipe Swamiji had bought in New York as a gift for Mr. Hale.] I had nice yachting, nice sea bathing and enjoying myself like a duck. Miss Guernsey went home just now. I do not know what more to write. Lord bless you all.[13]

Three days later Swamiji wrote a lighthearted letter to the Hale sisters, which would indicate that his spirits were soaring. From this letter one also learns a little more of his activities at Swampscott: "I had been to see Mis. Breed," he wrote in part. "Mrs. Stone was there, with whom is residing Mrs. Pullman and all the golden bugs, my old friends hereabouts. They are kind as usual. On my way back from Greenacre I am going to Annisquam to see Mrs. Bagley for a few days. Darn it, I forget everything. I had duckings in the sea like a fish. I am enjoying every bit of it '[14]In this same letter one sees again how close the Hale sisters were to him, how free they were with him able to tease him, even to play jokes on him and be assured of his laughter. "What nonsense was the song Harriet taught me 'dans la plaine'?" he wrote, "the deuce take it. I told it to a French scholar and he laughed and laughed till the fellow was well nigh burst at my wonderful translation. That is the way you would have taught me French. You are a pack of fools and heathens, I tell you. Now are you gasping for breath like a huge fish stranded? I am glad that you are sizzling. Oh! how nice and cool it is here, and it is increased a hundred-fold when I think about the gasping, sizzling, boiling, frying four old maids, and how cool and nice I am here. Whooooooo!'[15]

In retrospect Swamiji told a little more about his visit to Swampscott (pronounced Swampscote) in a letter to Mrs. Hale written on August 28 and, in true American style, made an awful pun. "Did I tell you, " he wrote, "that I met your friend Mrs. H. O. Quarry at Swampscott? She can swamp a horse for all that, not to speak of a colt—and that I met there the woman that pulls by the nose Mr. Pullman? And I also heard there the best American singer, they said—she sang beautifully she sang bye baby bye.'[16](

It is probable that the Mrs. Stone and Mrs. Pullman whom Swamiji mentioned above were Mrs. Eleanor O. Stone, a member of Lynn's North Shore Club, before which Swamiji had spoken in April, and Mrs. Cora H. Pullman, wife of the Reverend James M. Pullman, minister of Lynn's First Universalist Society and a leading local figure.)

Reading of Swamiji's stirring and outspoken lectures, learning of the raps he could give ministers and matrons alike, considering the majesty with which he strode through America undaunted by hardship and malicious opposition, reading his letters of fiery leadership to India, and again, remembering the silent and fathomless depths of contemplation into which he often fell, one sometimes forgets how young he was, how ready to take duckings in the sea and to laugh uproariously with those whom he loved. This was, of course, not only because he was barely in his thirties, but also because, living as he did on the very edge of the Infinite, where the great festival of the Divine Mother is continuously taking place, Swamiji was profoundly, eternally young.

Nor is it strange that his spirits rose during the summer. Ever since his arrival in America in July of 1893 he had known little but cities and towns, trains and hotels. He had been under the constant strain of lecturing, making engagements, rushing here and there in accordance with a time schedule and, on the whole, living a life almost diametrically opposite to that of his years of wandering through the lofty Himalayas and vast plains of India. For a year he had kept his mind as much as possible in the relative world, restraining it from its natural state of spiritual absorption, lest, as was the case when he first arrived in America, he should become entirely oblivious of his surroundings, missing his engagements, and perhaps even becoming lost in the maze of a foreign city. When he first started lecturing, "he was a far different being from what he afterward developed into," Miss Waldo wrote in her reminiscences. "He was dreamy and meditative, often so wrapped in his own thoughts as to be hardly conscious of his surroundings. The constant friction of alien thoughts, the endless questioning, the frequent sharp conflict of wits in this Western world awoke a different spirit, and he became as alert and wide awake as the world in which he found himself.'[17] And as if it were not enough for Swamiji to become, as it were, a "man of action " attending, to all the details that encumber the life of a celebrated lecturer, he was forced to meet at every turn the nagging persecution of his enemies. Although this last, as we have seen, continued during the summer of 1894, he was at least afforded a respite from lecturing, and it is little wonder that his mind at once soared upward like a spring released.

During this period one can detect a turning point in Swamiji's thought and the beginnings, at least, of a new idea regarding his mission in America. The enthusiasm with which he had at first gone from place to place explaining the customs and religions of his motherland had, to some extent, cooled, and we find his thoughts during the summer months beginning to work along new lines. One indication of this is to be found in his letter of July 26 to the Hale sisters: "Miss Philips has a beautiful place somewhere in N.Y. State," he wrote, "mountains, lake, river, forest altogether—what more? I am going to snake a Himalayas there and start a monastery as sure as I am living—I am not going to leave this country without throwing one more apple of discord into this already roaring, fighting, kicking, mad whirlpool of American religion.'[18] Although this was written in jest, it nonetheless shows that Swamiji was thinking in terms of an American ashrama. Another desire he had at this time was to write a book, a fact which indicates that new ideas were arising within his mind and seeking outward expression. As early as mid-March he had given up his hopes of raising money in America. This had not been a passing discouragement; as time went on it became more and more obvious to him that his chances of earning a great deal in America were slim indeed. In a letter dated August 20, which will be given in full later on, he wrote to Isabelle McKindley, "I have given up all money making schemes and will be quite satisfied with a bite and a shed and work on."[19]Perhaps his change of mind in regard to earning money was due not only to a realistic view of things, but also to a dislike of money itself, inherent in the man of renunciation, for even though Swamiji was not attempting to raise funds for himself but for India, the very sight and touch of it was repugnant to him. "You know the greatest difficulty with me is to keep or even to touch money," he wrote to Alasinga on August 31. "It is disgusting and debasing.'[20]

But Swamiji's work of lecturing on India and of trying to earn money for her had been the two ostensive objects of his life in America. If he was not to continue along these lines, then what pattern was his work to take? Surely, a change was taking place in his mind, and, on the whole, one cannot view this summer of 1894 as merely a period of relaxation for him, a sort of hiatus between seasons; it was rather a period of transition in which his mind, freed from daily pressure, tended toward its natural state of creative quiet, a state from which would eventually arise new modes of thought and activity. As though by some cosmic intention, the outward circumstances of his life at this time seem to have been readymade for him. It was toward the end of July, when he was in a mood of spiritual creativity and when, consciously or unconsciously, he was seeking a new form of approach to the American people, that he went to Greenacre.

2

The community of Greenacre, newly founded by Miss Sarah J. Farmer, was, in a sense, one of the outcomes of the Parliament of Religions. It was a summer colony or retreat on the bank of the Piscataqua River, near Eliot, in Maine, the purpose of which was to put into practice the ideal of the harmony of all religions. The Greenacre Religious Conferences went considerably further than the Parliament of Religions in this respect, for they represented the overthrow of orthodox views  and brought together the seething new religious thought of the age. Inevitably there were in the assemblage a number of cranks and followers of freakish, flyby-night sects, and, at least during the first summer of the Conferences, a kind of wild exaltation pervaded the group. But for all that, the men and women of Greenacre had kicked over the traces of a narrow, stereotyped religion and were directing all their energies toward evolving a new pattern of faith. They were earnest, vital, and unafraid. Among them, moreover, were thinkers, scholars, and people who, in one way or another, were awake to the need of a spiritual renascence and who were earnestly struggling to bring it into being. Nowhere else could Swamiji have found in one place a group more receptive to his ideas and more ready to benefit from his influence. These circumstances; together with the fact that Greenacre offered to him the wide, unpaved vistas of open country and days in which his mind was free to plunge into profound contemplation or to lift in ecstasy, make it seem that, like other events in his life, the founding of the Greenacre Conferences in 1894 was part of the same divine plan that had brought him to America.

Miss Sarah Farmer, whom Swamiji had met in New York, had invited him to Greenacre. She was the daughter of the famous Moses Gerrish Farmer who, some ten years prior to Edison's invention of a marketable electric bulb, had "lighted a house in Cambridge with forty incandescent lamps in multiple circuit" Mr. Farmer, it is recorded, used frequently to tell his daughter that the chief principle of the inventor was inspiration and that "he who could grasp that inspiration and walk boldly on, to him was vouchsafed the success that men respect and prize."[21] Miss Farmer grasped the inspiration for Greenacre probably at the Parliament of Religions and walked boldly on, dedicating many acres of the large estate her father had left her to the establishment of the Greenacre Religious Conferences, to which anyone with something constructive to say might come and lecture. "We have no room for iconoclasts," she is reported as having said. "Those are the only ones we bar. All others are welcome to come and express their views. All are listened to with respect and  attention"[22]

The result was, of course, a symposium—if not a jumble—of every kind of religious thought—-rom Vedanta to the wildest spiritualism. With humor and with an all-encompassing tenderness, Swamiji wrote on July 31 to Mary Hale of his companions at Greenacre:

One Mr. [W. J.] 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 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—Mrs. [Anna W.] Mills is quite brilliant and so are many other ladies—A lady named Mrs. Chapin whom all along I had taken for a widder now proves to have a husband all along—She is a very beautiful lady—Another lady from Detroit, very cultured and with beautiful black eyes and long hair is going to take me to an island 15 miles into the sea. Hope we will have nice time—Mrs. Arthur Smith is here. Miss Guernsey went home from Swampscott . . . - It is a beautiful and nice place and the bathing is splendid—Cora Stockham has made a bathing dress for me and I am having as good times in the water as a duck. This is delicious even for the denizens of Mudville.... There is here Mr. Wood of Boston who is one of the great lights of your sect [Christian Science]. But he objects to belong to the sect of Mrs. Whirlpool [Mary Baker Eddy] so he calls himself a mental healer of metaphysical, chemico-physical religiosio what not etc.... -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 . . . You will be astounded with the liberty they enjoy in the camps, but they are very good and pure people—a little erratic that is all. '"23]

But aside from the religious oddities who romped over the hills, there were men and women of more serious and sound turn of mind. There was, for instance, Dr. Edward Everett Hale, the widely known and highly influential Unitarian minister, reformer, and writer; Octavius Brooks Frothingham, one of the last of the Transcendentalists; Miss Josephine Locke, superintendent of art education in the public schools of Chicago and a friend of the Hales; Ernest F. Fenollosa, the famous connoisseur of and lecturer on Oriental art; and Franklin B. Sanborn, the well-known philanthropist and one of Swamiji's first friends in this country. There were also Mrs. Arthur Smith, Mrs. Ole Bull, and Miss Emma Thursby, the famous singer all of whom, particularly Mrs. Bull, whom we meet here for the first time, were to grow close to Swamiji and his work. And then there was Dr. Lewis G. Janes, President of the Brooklyn Ethical Association, who was to become one of his devoted and stalwart friends.

According to an early edition of the Life, Swamiji met Dr. Janes in New York before his visit to Greenacre, possibly in May. "At a lecture given in the parlour of a friend," the Life tells us, "he chanced to meet Dr. Lewis G. Janes, . . . who was so much struck with his unusual attainments as well as with his message that he invited him at once to give a series of lectures on the Hindu Religion before the Brooklyn Ethical Association.'[24]This invitation was no doubt of a piece with the plans to which Swamiji had referred in his letter of July 19 to Mrs. Hale: "Mr. Higgins, a rich young lawyer and inventor of Brooklyn is arranging some lectures for me. I have not yet settled whether I will stop [in America] for them or not.'[25] Mr. Higgins, who was on the Committee of Comparative Religions at the Ethical Association, did not wait for Swamiji's decision. He went ahead with his plans. It was at Greenacre that Swamiji learned of and, as we see in the following letter of August 5 to Mrs. Hale, agreed to the completed arrangements:

Dear Mother

I have received your letter and am very much ashamed at my poor memory I unfortunately forgot all about the cheque. Perhaps you have come to know by this time of my being in Greenacre. I had very nice time here and am enjoying it immensely. In the Fall I am going to lecture in Brooklyn New York. Yesterday I got news that they have completed all the advertising there. I have an invitation today from a friend in New York to go with him to some mountains north of this state of Maine. I do not know whether I will go or not. I am doing pretty well. Between lecturing—teaching—picnicing and other excitements the time is flying rapidly. I hope you are doing very well and that Father Pope is in good trim. It is a very beautiful spot this Greenacre and have very nice company from Boston. Dr [Edward] Everett Hale you know of Boston & Mrs. Bull of Cambridge. I do not know whether I will accept the invitation of my friend of New York or not.


So far only this is sure that I will go to lecture in New York coming fall. And Boston of course is a good field. The people here are mostly from Boston and they all like me very much. Are you having good time and Father Pope? Has your house painting been finished? The Babies I am sure are enjoying their Mudville.


I am in no difficulty for money—I have plenty to eat and drink. 

With my best love and gratitude to you and Father Pope and the Babies.

Yours affly[26]
Vivekananda

A few days later in a letter to Mrs. Hale dated August 8, Swamiji again wrote of the Brooklyn engagement. "I have not yet determined all my plans, only I am going to lecture in [Brooklyn) New York during [the] fall; every arrangement is complete for that. They have printed advertisements at their own expense for that and made everything ready.'[27] Thus during his stay at Greenacre, which seems in itself to have played a part in shaping the development of his Western mission, he agreed to remain in America at least through the fall.


To reach Greenacre (which he probably did on July 27), Swamiji would have embarked on a small river-steamer at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and disembarked an hour or so later at the wooded and knolled acres of the retreat. On the flat land by the wide river, in which he sometimes "had as good times in the water as a duck, '[28] was "Sunrise Camp"—a group of small tents for those who could not afford the luxury of the Greenacre Inn. A little toward the hills was a much larger tent, at the peak of which waved a white flag. This was called the Eirenion or Hall of Peace. Here lectures were given and here also the heterogeneous worshipers meditated together. "Through all the throng," writes an impressed witness of the scene, "there was a silent sympathy. Yet in no two hearts were there the same ideals, the same beliefs:'[29] But spiritually substantial as the Hall of Peace may have been, it was, as were the smaller tents of Sunrise Camp, liable to be blown away by a strong wind. One remembers Swarniji's humorous description of such an event in a letter to Mary Hale: "Yesterday there was a tremendous cyclone which gave a good 'treatment' to the tents. The big tent under which they had the lectures, had developed so much spirituality, under the 'treatment,' that it entirely disappeared from mortal gaze and about 30 two hundred chairs were dancing about the grounds under spiritual ecstasy!'[30]


On a hill that rose from the flat land was the Inn, where the more wealthy visitors stayed. This inn was surrounded by several small cottages, one of which was to be named "Nightingale's Rest" in honor of Miss Emma Thursby, who was to return summer after summer to Greenacre. Through fields abounding in wild flowers and over the hill, nearly a mile from the river, was a wood in which, here and there, rose the towering Lysekloster pines, so named by Mrs. Ole Bull for her home in Norway, where the same (or similar) red-bark species also grew. The Lysekloster pines were, perhaps, the most important part of Greenacre, for here religious classes were held daily, at which a teacher —Jewish, Christian (non orthodox), or Hindu—would sit under his chosen tree, surrounded by his students. A reporter of the Lewiston Saturday Journal of August 12, 1899, has left an excellent picture of those forest classes:


. . . The forenoon discourses of the early hour are in the tent near the Inn. But later all walk up over the hill to the Lysekloster pines.... A person standing at a little distance can scarcely see that there are people beneath the tree so lowly do the branches swing. A more delicious spot than one of these trees affords to listen I cannot conceive. The scene is far retired from all that can disturb. It is so far from the highway that there is no rumble of wheels. The only sound is the chirp of the birds and the voice of the speaker coming in mellowed tones from under the great tree.


The listeners loll about on the ground as suits them best. A few of the elderly people have chairs. The middle aged and young are entirely unconventional. Some lie on their backs listening and looking up into the blue arch of the heavens. Others lie resting on one elbow and meditatively pluck in pieces the leaves of the shrubs that surround, as they listen.


On July 28 an article headed VIVEKANANDA AT GREENACRE appeared in Boston's brahminical and worldfamous Evening Transcript. It was almost certainly written by Ralph Waldo Trine, who was later to become a well-known author on metaphysical subjects. (At the time, he was a special correspondent for the Transcript at Greenacre, where he had built for himself "a little cabin . . . on the edge of a pinegrove.)[31] The article read in part:


Greenacre Inn, Eliot, Me., promises to draw to itself a large concourse of people next week. The program offered is excellent.

On Monday, Colonel Norton of Arlington and Miss Ellen M. Dyer of philadelphia, who are guests at the Inn, have been invited to speak. Tuesday, Professor A. C. Dolbear of Tufts College, who is a recognized authority on such subjects, delivers an address upon "The Known Relations of Mind and Body. " Wednesday will be devoted to theosophy, Miss Burnett, the author of "Practical Metaphysics," and Mr. George D. Ayres, of Boston, being the speakers. Thursday, Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D.D., speaks on "Sociology."


Friday an extra lecture will be given by Swami Vivekananda of India, who is spending a few weeks at Greenacre. He is deeply interested in this unitary work which has been inaugurated, and each morning may be seen, attired in his flowing red robes and yellow turban, sitting crosslegged on the ground near a wide-spreading pine, and surrounded by a group of eager listeners, men and women, to whom he pours out freely his treasures of knowledge and experience. It is a rich opportunity to us who are privileged to enjoy it, and our only regret is that so many hungry souls ar missing it.


Greenacre is very full, as are also a half dozen or more cottages in the vicinity: still there is room. The townspeople are opening their rooms to accommodate the numbers who desire to attend the lectures, which are free to all....


. . . Mrs. Ole Bull has taken rooms for the first three weeks in August, and will have among her guests Mrs.Edwin P[ercy] Whipple (wife of the well-known writer and critic] and Miss Emma Thursby, the distinguished vocalist.


The special correspondent for the Portsmouth Daily Chronicle also wrote about Swamiji in his "Greenacre Notes," dated July 31 (by which time the number of guests was "increasing daily") :


Vivekananda, the Hindoo monk from India, is . . . a centre of much interest. Each morning he meets a company of men and women under a large pine in the woods, and sitting cross-legged, discourses to them of the things of the soul. This gentle, loving-hearted son of the east, by his simplicity and earnest devotion has won to himself some very warm friends. He is generous in the extreme, giving freely to any one from his stores of wisdom. On Friday he is to deliver an address in the large tent, his subject being "The Reality of God." This will be the only opportunity of listening to him publicly. He came to this country to speak at the Parliament of Religions at Chicago and was greeted with crowds wherever he spoke. His red robe and yellow turban make him a picturesque figure wherever he goes.


And a figure never to be forgotten. Of those days at Greenacre one who was there as a child wrote in old age to a friend, "I sat under [the "Swami's Pine"] many times and heard Swami Vivekananda give his talks when I was a young girl.... How well I remember Swami Vivekananda with his pleasant smile and beautiful eyes. I can see him now in my mind walking up the roads with his Turban and Robe on with people following behind.''[32]


Mrs. Bull arrived at Greenacre in time to attend Swamiji's public lecture of Friday, August 3, and in her inimitable style  wrote the following report of it, which was printed on August 11 in the Evening Transcript:

3

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

A defense of Mahomet by a Hindu to a Christian audience; the lesson that all prophets are to be revered and their teachings studied reverently; that the followers of these teachers should not confound for us by their behavior the revelation made from God to man by prophecy—was the theme at Greenacre yesterday.


Clear thought and statement patiently corrected the crude and superficial adverse criticism and comment that had been made concerning the Eastern belief—reincarnation. The statement was masterful, because simple, and was brought home by illustrations familiar and commonplace. This was followed by a nobly eloquent plea for the judicial spirit in judging the history of the time and the faith of Mahomet himself and the service done the human race by the essentials of this faith as a prophet of God. Men and women present, many of whom fear the heathen, were moved as they tell us Wendell Phillips was wont to move the hard hearts to consider the sin of slavery.


Scorn, wit and intellect did noble service in all gentleness and dignity in this appeal that the defects, the horrors, of each and all religions should be put one side that the essentials common to all—the immortality of the soul, one God, the Father and his prophets sacred, each, to some division of the human family, and each having truth to give needful to all—should be recognized and reverenced to salvation.


The speaker, Swami Vivekananda, gave what only a great soul is capable of giving. It was an hour never to be forgotten. This man brought those present into the light of truth, whatever their prejudice and training, as Phillips Brooks united Unitarian and Episcopalianism, and all who love the good and true came to hold him for their bishop. So this Hindu, in his constructive thought, when he will give it, can make the power of the prophets known to us by his own presence.


To judge from Mrs. Bull's "when he will give it," which she slipped into the last sentence of her article, this was not the first of Swamiji's lectures she had heard. One is inclined to think that in May she had attended his talks in Boston and Cambridge, where, as Mrs. John Henry Wright had observed, he made "witty, bitter, sharp flings that were all deserved, all neatly done, all to the point: ' But however much to the point Swamiji's outspokenness was, Mrs. Bull was long in becoming reconciled to it.


Many and various were the lectures delivered in the 'Hall of Peace" that summer at Greenacre, and in Appendix A we have given the season's program for its interest as an intellectual background. But for us today and for many who were there in 1894, it is Swamiji's classes that dominate the foreground. Under one of the tall Lysekloster pines, which came to be known as the "Swami's Pine," *[1] he held classes every morning. Down through the years the hope has been that some notes of those classes would come to light, but not until recently has that hope been fulfilled. Among those who sat on the forest floor around Swamiji, eagerly listening to his words, was Miss Emma Thursby, and to her unbounded credit she not only took notes but preserved them. Long hidden away among her papers at the New-York Historical Society, those notes were discovered by the present writer almost by chance, and are presented here. While, as Miss Thursby acknowledges, they were taken down "miscellaneously" from a number of Swamiji's Greenacre classes, one can clearly hear his voice through them and derive an idea of the type of class he was holding under his Pine. The notes covered both sides of two large sheets of paper and read, unedited, as follows:


Notes taken miscellaneously from discourses given by Swami Vivekananda under the "Pine" at Greenacre in July & August 1894. The name of Swami's Master was Ramakrishna Parama Hamsa-The signification of Vivekananda is, conscious bliss-Meditation is a sort of prayer and prayer is meditation-The highest meditation is to think of nothing. If you can remain one moment without thought, great power will come. The whole secret of knowledge is concentration. Soul best develops itself by loving God with all the heart. Soul is the thinking principle in man, of which mind is a function. Soul is only the conduit from Spirit to mind.


All souls are playing, some consciously, some unconsciously-Religion is learning to play consciously.

The Guru is your own higher self.


Seek the highest, always the highest, for in the highest is Eternal bliss. If I am to hunt, I will hunt the Rhinoceros. If I am to rob, I will rob the treasury of the King. Seek the highest.


If I know you are bound-If you know you are free, you are free. My mind was never bound by yearnings of this world, for like the eternal blue sky, I am the essence of knowledge of existence and of bliss. Why weepest thou brother? Neither death nor disease for thee, Why weepest thou brother? Neither misery nor misfortune for thee, Why weepest thou brother? Neither change nor death was predicated of thee, Thou Art Existence Absolute.


[Swamiji is here freely translating verses from the Avadhuta Gita.]

I know what God is, I cannot speak him to you. I know not [what] God is, how can I speak him to you, but seest not thou my brother that thou wert he, thou wert he? Why go seeking God here & there? Seek not and that is God. Be your own self. One that cannot be confessed or described, One that can be perceived in our heart of hearts. One beyond all compare, beyond limit, unchangeable like the blue sky-Oh! learn the All Holy One. Seek for nothing else.


Where changes of nature cannot reach, thought beyond all thought, unchangeable, immovable, whom all books declare, all sages worship, O Holy One! Seek for nothing else.


Beyond compare, Infinite Oneness-No comparison is possible. Water above, water beneath, water on the right, water on the left, no wave on that water, no ripple, all silence, all eternal bliss. Such will come to thy heart. Seek for nothing else. Thou art our father, our mother, our dear friend, Thou bearest the burden of this world. Help us to bear the burden of our lives. Thou art our friend, our lover, our husband, thou art ourselves.


Four sorts of people worship me. Some want the delights of the physical world. Some want money, some want religion. Some worship me because they love me. Real love is love for love's sake. I do not ask health or money or life or salvation. Send me to a thousand hells, but let me love Thee For love's sake. Mirabai, the great Queen, taught the doctrine of love for love's sake. Our present consciousness is only a little bit of an infinite sea of mind. Do not be limited to this consciousness. Three great things to be desired to develop the soul-First human birth, second thirst for the highest, third to find one who has reached the highest, a Mahatma, one whose mind, word & deed are full of the nectar of virtue, whose only pleasure is in doing good to the universe, who looks upon others' virtues be they only as a mustard seed, even as though they were a mountain; thus expanding his own self & helping others to expand; thus goes the Mahatma.


The word "yoga" is the root of which our word yoke is a derivation meaning to join, & yoga means joining ourselves with God. Joining me with my real self. All actions now involuntary or automatic were once voluntary & our first step is to gain a knowledge of the automatic actions, the real idea being to revivify & make voluntary all automatic actions, to bring them into consciousness. Many yogis can control the actions of their hearts. To go back into consciousness & bring out things we have forgotten is ordinary power but this can be heightened. All knowledge, all that can be brought out of the inner consciousness & to do this is yoga. The majority of actions & thoughts are automatic or acting behind consciousness. The seat of automatic action is in the medulla oblongata & down the spinal cord. The question is, how to find our way back to our inner consciousness. We have come out through spirit, soul, mind, & body, & now we must go back from body to spirit. First get hold of the air, then the nervous system, then the mind, then the atma or spirit, but in this effort we must be perfectly sincere in desiring the highest. The law of laws is concentration. First concentrate all the nerve energies & all power lodged in the cells of the body into one force & direct it at will. Then bring the mind, which is thinner matter, into one center. The mind has layer after layer; when the nerve force concentrated is made to pass through the spinal column, one layer of the mind is open. When it is concentrated in one bone [plexus or "lotus"] another part of the world is open. So from world to world it goes until it touches the pineal gland in the center of the brain. This is the seat of conservation of potential energy, the source of both activity and passivity. Start with the idea that we can finish all experience in this world in this incarnation. We must aim to become perfect in this life this very moment. Success only comes to that life amongst men who wants to do this [this] very moment. It is acquired by him who says "Faith, I wait upon faith come what may." Therefore go on knowing you are to finish this very moment. Struggle hard and then, if you do not succeed, you are not to blame. Let the world praise or blame you. Let all the wealth of the earth come to your feet, or let you be made the poorest  on earth, let death come this moment or hundreds of years hence, swerve not from the path you have taken. All good thoughts are immortal and go to make Buddhas & Christs.


Law is simply a means of expression, various phenomena brought into your mind. Law is your method of grasping material phenomena and bringing them into unity. All law is finding unity in variety. The only method of knowledge is concentration on the physical, mental, and spiritual planes, and concentrating the powers of the mind to discover one in many, is what is called knowledge.


Everything that makes for unity is moral, everything that makes for diversity is immoral. Know the One without a second, that is perfection. The One who manifests in all is the basis of the Universe, and all religion, all knowledge must come to this point.

It is clear from Miss Thursby's notes that in his exalted mood, surrounded by receptive and eager seekers of truth, Swamiji spoke much more of philosophy and spiritual practice than of the manners and customs of India. We can gather this also from excerpts of the Greenacre Voice, a magazine published by the colony. Although the 1894 issues are no longer available, I have come across in another magazine one or two quotations taken from them. The first consists of Swamiji's translation of verses from the "Nirvanashatkam" of Shankara-one of the most uncompromisingly monistic of Vedantic texts:


Under the Swami's famous pine at Greenacre, Vivekananda said:


"I am neither body nor changes of the body; nor am I senses nor objects of the senses. I am Existence Absolute. Bliss Absolute. Knowledge Absolute. I am It. I am It.


"I am neither death nor fear of death; nor was I ever born, nor had I parents. I am Existence Absolute. Bliss Absolute. Knowledge Absolute. I am It. I am It.


"1 am not misery nor have I misery. I am not enemy nor have I enemies. I am Existence Absolute. Bliss Absolute. Knowledge Absolute. I am It. I am It.


"I am without form, without limit, beyond space, beyond time; I am in everything, I am the basis of the universe---everywhere am I. I am Existence Absolute. Bliss Absolute. Knowledge Absolute. I am It. I am It.'[33]


Another scrap of quotation from the Greenacre Voice reads as follows :

Says Vivekananda, "You and I and everything in the universe are that Absolute, not parts, but the whole. You are the whole of that Absolute.'[34]


To judge from these scraps, from Miss Thursby's more substantial notes and from Swamiji's own letters, it was at, Greenacre that he taught for the first time in America the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta (though, as far as we know, not naming it as such) to a group of eager listeners. "I teach them all Shivoham, Shivoham, " he wrote to Mary Hale, "and they all repeat it-innocent and pure as they are and brave beyond all bounds and so I am happy and glorified.'[35] Nor was it only during the scheduled hours of his class that Swamiji taught, for it was not only during those hours that listeners and seekers gathered around him. And wherever there were ears to hear, there he spoke of God and of the Spirit-continuously teaching. "I want a little quiet," he was to write a week after leaving Greenacre, "but it is not the will of the Lord it seems. At Greenacre I had to talk on an average [of] 7 to 8 hours a day; that was rest if it ever was! But it was of the Lord-and that brings vigour and glory with it.'[36]Although it cannot be supposed that at Greenacre Swamiji formulated his later method of teaching in the West, this period can be thought of as a foreshadowing of what was to come-the beginnings of a new method of work.


Swamiji not only taught Advaita Vedanta beneath his pine, but, to his utmost joy, meditated and also slept beneath it. In his letter to Mary and Harriet Hale he wrote: "The other night the camp people went to sleep beneath 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 a year of brutal life that I have led, to sleep on the ground, to meditate under the tree in the forest!"[37]


It was perhaps of such a still, warm night under the stars that the Evening Transcript of August 13 commented:


Emerson and Bronson Alcott and all of the old Concord set would have enjoyed sitting out under the stars at Greenacre to listen while the Hindu Vivekananda rolled forth the solemn poetry of the Vedas for an hour the other night in his excellent English.

Did not Swamiji also roll forth the original Sanskrit? One feels sure that he did and that the very pines held their breath to hear. Thus for a time Swamiji found an ashrama. "Perhaps I did not tell you in my last," he wrote in a letter to Isabelle McKindley, "how I slept and lived and preached under the trees and for  a few days at least found myself once more in the atmosphere of heaven."[38]


Even the storm that struck Greenacre on Sunday, July 31, a day or so after the night under the stars, was glory. This was no small tempest. In "Greenacre Notes," dated July 31, the Portsmouth Daily Chronicle reported upon it as follows:


The storm of Sunday, one of the grandest electrical displays ever seen in this vicinity, threatened at one time to entirely destroy Sunrise camp, the popular adjunct to Greenacre. Three of the tents were blown down, also the large tent in which the lectures are held. The latter was  badly torn but the rents have been repaired and the tent is again in use. At the time of the storm Mr. W. J. Colville [the spiritualist] was lecturing in the hall of the Inn and the calm way in which he proceeded demonstrated convincingly his assertion that "All is good."


The rest of the people were out trying to save the camp, and one can picture Swamiji in the heart of the great storm, watching the campers battle with the cyclone and, no doubt, helping them rescue their tents from destruction. To others this may have been simply a necessary tussle with the wind and rain, but to Swamiji it was the glorious struggle of man's soul against the onslaughts of nature. To the Hale sisters he wrote: "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 and souls of triple steel and spirits of fire arc in the camp. If you had seen them yesterday, when the rain was falling in torrents and the cyclone was overturning everything, hanging by their tent strings to keep them from being blown down, and standing on the majesty of their souls-these brave ones-it would have done your hearts good-I will go a Hundred miles to see the like of them. Lord bless them."[39]


Yet, although Swamiji was living in that mood in which all things were fraught with glory, he was not by any means deceived by what was going on around him. While his vision penetrated to the spiritual reality behind people and events, he never overlooked anything; indeed, he perceived the surface reality with a clearness and accuracy not given to others. In the same letter in which he told of his great joy at witnessing the valor of the Greenacre campers, he wrote: "One thing they are a dry sort of people here-and as to that very few in the whole world are there that are not. They do not understand 'Madhava,' the Sweet One. They are either intellectual or go after faith cure, table turning, witchcraft, etc., etc. Nowhere have I heard so much about 'love, life and liberty' as in this country, but nowhere is it less understood. Here God is either a terror or a healing power, vibration, and so forth. Lord bless their souls! And these parrots talk day and night of love and love and love!'[40]


In the same vein, Swamiji wrote at another time and in another connection: "I am perfectly aware that although some truth underlies the mass of mystical thought which has burst upon the Western world of late, it is for the most part full of motives unworthy or insane. For this reason, I have never had anything to do with these phases of religion, either in India or elsewhere, and mystics as a class are not very favourable to me.'[41]


But despite the Greenacre mystics by whom Swamiji was surrounded he was living in a state of high spiritual ecstasy. "Instead of materializing the spirit, i.e. dragging the spiritual to the material plane as these fellers do," he wrote to the Hale sisters, "convert the 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....


"Stick to God. Who cares what comes in the body or in 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 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 of the world's but Thine-leave not Thou 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 for the highest, aim for the highest and you shall reach the highest.'[42]


We have two pictures of Swamiji taken at Greenacre under his pine. One of these, which was among Isabelle McKindley's treasures, shows him standing with folded arms, his eyes looking as eyes look when the whole world is seen as permeated by Divinity. The other, in which he is sitting on the ground with his class about him, was discovered by Miss Elva Nelson and may well be the photograph he spoke of in his letter to the Hale sisters: "Herewith I send a photograph Cora Stockham took of the group under the tree. It is only a proof and will fade away under exposure, but I cannot get anything better at present.'[43] Very likely a more durable print was made; for both pictures reproduced in this book have been taken from finished photographs. From the Portsmouth Daily chronicle of August 9 one learns that Miss Stockham took another group picture in which Swamiji was present. This time it was in the Tent following a lecture given by Dr. Edward Everett Hale on Thursday, August 2. The pertinent passage reads in part:


. . . Swami Vivekananda, as a representative of the far east, sat upon the platform, gorgeous in his scarlet and gold. At the close of the lecture he and Dr. Hale, Mr. Gulesian [a native of Armenia] and Miss Farmer were photographed in a group by Miss Stockham of Chicago.


On Wednesday, August 15, the Evening Transcript printed a brief account of Swamiji's last class under his pine, which he held on the morning of Sunday, August 12. The Transcript article, which follows, was rather misleadingly headed "The Nonsense of Nations" :


A short resume is given below of the last of the talks of Vivekananda under the pines at Eliot, in the temple of thc gods, to paraphrase Bryant's line----


"The groves were God's first Temple."

What is the nation? What is law? We have laws only that we may become outlaws (above law).

There is the freedom of the soul; through this we know the freedom of law. I am of the nation of those who seek

the liberty of the soul. I am of the nation of those who worship God.


The divine ones of God are all my Masters. I learn of your Christ in learning of Krishna, of Buddha, in learning of Mohamet. I worship God alone. "I am existence absolute, bliss absolute, Knowledge Absolute." I condemn nothing that I find in nation, state or religion, finding God in all. Our growth is not from evil to good, but from good to better, and so on and on. I learn from all that is called evil or good. The nation and all such nonsense may go. It is love, love, love God and my brother.


Miss Thursby was present on that last morning under the Pine, now and then taking notes, but evidently too absorbed to write as much as we would like to read. Her notes, more scrappy and disconnected than usual, read:


I am existence absolute Kundaline
bliss absolute Circle mother
I am He, Shivoham 
I am He, Shivoham Kalidas
He is the learned man who sees that every man's property is nothing. 
Every woman his Mother
Shanti peace
500 miles from Calcutta
We meditate on the Glory of hrim
Mother
love
The Tatwas


Rama mrigi    
Buddistic [sic] Prayer
I bow to all the saint(s] on Earth
I bow to all the founders of Religion
to all holy men and women
Prophets of Religion
who have been on Earth
Hindu prayer


I meditate on the Glory of the producer of this Universe may He enlighten our minds.'[44]

"I teach them all Shivoham, Shivoham," Swamiji had written to Mary Hale with obvious delight. And one sees that these words, "Shivoham! Shivoham! I am He! I am He!" were among the last he spoke to his Greenacre class-the first class he held in America of which we have any record.


He was going now to Plymouth, Massachusetts. On August 8 he had written to Mrs. Hale of the invitation he had received to lecture there at an important meeting of the leaders of the most liberal school of Christianity. His letter read in part:


Dear Mother

I have received the letter you sent over to me coming from India.


I am going to leave this place on Monday (August 13)for Plymouth where the Free religious Association is holding its session.

They will defray my expenses of course. I am all right enjoying nice health and the people here are very kind & nice to me. Up to date I had no occasion to cash any cheque so everything going on smoothly. I have not heard anything from the Babies hope they are doing well.


You also had nothing to write, however I feel that you are doing well. I would have gone over to another place but Mr [Thomas Wentworth] Higginson's invitation ought to be attended to. And Plymouth is the place where the fathers of your country first landed. I want therefore to see it. I am all right. It is useless reiterating my love and gratitude to you and yours, you know it all. May the Lord shower His choicest blessings on you & yours.This meeting (at Plymouth) is composed of the best professors of your country and other people so I must attend it, and then they would pay me....

Give my best love to the Babies, to Father Pope and believe me ever in gratitude & love

Your Son 
Vivekananda

P.S.

I am very much obliged to the sisters for asking me to tell them if I want anything. I have no want anyway— I have everything I require and more to spare.
"He never gives up His servants "
My thanks & gratitude eternal to the sisters for their kindness in asking for my wants.[45]


Swamiji indeed had everything he required and more to spare. Help came unasked, and sometimes it came unwanted. On August 11 he wrote to the Hale sisters, "They have been all very kind to me. One Chicago lady, Mrs. Pratt of Kenilworth [a community north of Chicago], wanted to give me $500; she became so much interested in me; but I refused. She has made me promise that I would send word to her whenever I need money, which [circumstance] I hope the Lord will never put me in. His help alone is sufficient for me.'[46]


Aside from Swamiji's lack of need, he habitually refused any offering with the least string attached; even a gossamer thread was to him a rope. The following story, which found its way into the "Jottings" column of the Transcript of August 14, may have referred to Mrs. Pratt's offer or to some other equally well-meant wish to serve this servant of the Lord. It was not that easy.


An enthusiastic woman at one of the lectures of Vivekananda at Eliot [Greenacre] offered him $500 for himself and also $100 to head a subscription to pay for printing a book. It was desired that he would write it, embodying his views against national organizations, or rather representing the superiority of spiritual forces to external ones in the government of the world. But Vivekananda promptly refused to write a book saying he could not bind himself to any task. lie is most absolutely indifferent to money, they find at Eliot. Now he is going to Plymouth to lecture there.


Swamiji thought highly of the work carried on at Greenacre. In 1895 he would write to Mrs. Bull, who had offered to contribute to his Indian fund: "I sincerely believe that you ought to turn all your help to Miss Farmer's Greenacre work this year. India can wait as she is waiting centuries and an immediate work at hand should always have the preference.'[47] In Miss Farmer's Greenacre work Swamiji saw the practical application of his teaching that religious growth never goes from evil to good but from good to better. In December of 1895 he wrote to her:


There is a mass of thought which is at the present time struggling to get expression. It teaches us that higher direction and not destruction is the law. It teaches us that it is not a world of bad and good, but good and better and still better. It stops short of nothing but acceptance. It teaches that no situation is hopeless, and as such accepts every form of mental, moral or spiritual thought where it already stands, and without a word of condemnation tells it that so far it has done good, now it is time to do better. . . It above all teaches that the kingdom of heaven is already in existence if we will have it, that perfection is already in man if he will see it.


The Greenacre meetings last summer were so wonderful, simply because you opened yourself fully to that thought which has found in you so competent a medium of expression, and because you took your stand on the highest teaching of this thought that the kingdom of heaven already exists.


You have been consecrated and chosen by the Lord as a channel for converting this thought into life, and every one that helps you in this wonderful work is serving the Lord.


Our Gita teaches that he who serves the servants of the Lord is His highest worshipper. You are a servant of the Lord, and as a disciple of Krishna I will always consider it a privilege and worship to render you any service in the carrying out of your inspired mission wherever I be.'[48]


As the years went on, Greenacre increased and flourished, many men and women offering their time and support. The work had no endowment, but rested simply, as Miss Farmer said, "on the promises of God which have never failed: ' According to an 1899 news article, many famous leaders of thought came during the summers to lecture and to give "their time and their efforts, grateful to be allowed the opportunity of addressing such an audience as groups under and around one of the great Lysekloster pines." "It appears a singular thing," this same report continued, "that so many famous people could have been attracted to this little town up in Maine; that they have been sufficiently interested in this work and this concourse of people, to be willing to come and give so freely that for which their admiring fellows in other parts were so anxious to pay."[49]


During the thriving years of the Greenacre Religious Conferences all who wrote of the place wondered at the sense of peace and upliftment it imparted, a serenity to be found nowhere else and that captivated both faith healers and philosophers alike. But was this attraction really to be wondered at? Here under the spreading Lysekloster pines the great prophet of the age meditated and spoke in one of his most exalted moods-a mood comparable perhaps only to that which he would experience the following summer at Thousand Island Park. It was not really a "singular thing" that for many years afterward hundreds were attracted to the "little town up in Maine: ' During the two weeks or so of Swamiji's visit to Greenacre, he not only enlightened scores of earnest seekers of truth but left behind him an atmosphere of intense spirituality. And, as we have suggested earlier, it was perhaps during those same weeks that he himself began to see in a new light his mission to America.

4

Leaving Plymouth, Swamiji again visited his friends Dr. and Mrs. Guernsey at Fishkill Landing. Here he stayed for only a few days and then, on Mrs. Bagley's confirmed invitation took the train to Boston and thence to Annisquam, where she had rented Professor Alpheus Hyatt's house. It was almost a year to the day since Swamiji had visited Annisquam as a guest of Professor John Henry Wright and had there given his first lecture in an American church. He had then been unknown; he had had no credentials and little money, indeed nothing but a few newly made friends and some ochre robes. He had written at that time, "I am trying my best to find out any plank I can float upon . . .[53] Now he was famous, recognized by thousands as a great exponent of Hinduism and loved and revered as a prophet by innumerable loyal and influential friends. In the fitness of things, it was while Swamiji was in Annisquam that news of the Madras Address, a document that put the seal of official approval upon his year of labor in the West, was published in the American newspapers.

The times had changed; but except for a greater mastery of English oratory, a greater knowledge of the American people, and, above all, a greater manifestation of spiritual power, Swamiji himself had not changed. He was still, as Mrs. Bagley wrote of him, "a strong, noble human being who walks with God . . . as simple and trustful as a child.'[54] He was still and  always the very embodiment of purity, whom the world could not harm either by vicious criticism or by fervid admiration and of both he had had a lion's share.


Swamiji arrived in Annisquam around August 17 and remained there until (at the earliest) September 5. "I shall be here," he wrote to Mary Hale on August 31, "till Tuesday next [September 4] at least, on which day I am going to lecture here in Annisquam.'[55] Of this visit Mrs. Bagley was to write, "At Annisquam last summer I had a cottage and we wrote to Vivekananda, who was in Boston, inviting him again to visit us there, which he did, remaining three weeks, not only conferring a favor upon us, but a great pleasure I am sure, to friends who had cottages near us.[56]


In so small and informal a seaside village as was Annisquam, or " ' Squam" as it was familiarly called, Swamiji, who knew the Wrights and the Bagleys, probably knew everyone else besides and no doubt joined in the carefree life of summer vacationing. "It was his holiday time, " a fellow house guest wrote later to Sister Nivedita, and in this same letter, which is quoted in the Life, she told of his delight in listening to humorous anecdotes of which she had a store. "I remember," she wrote, "he was greatly amused by a tale about a Chinaman who had been arrested for stealing pork and who, in reply to the Justice who remarked that he thought Chinamen did not eat pork, said, 'Oh! Me Melican man now. Me, sir, me steal, me eat pork, me everything.' How often I have heard Vivekananda say sotto voce, 'Me Melican man.'[57] The occasions on which Swamiji may well have murmured "Me Melican man" were numerous. He attended a clambake one evening on the beach; he went boating and once capsized the boat, having to be rescued from the sea (or was it placid Lobster Cove?) ; and he sat for his portrait in the long summer afternoons. As far as we can at present determine, the clambake, a "Melican" institution if ever there was one, was given in August of 1894 by the family of Professor Alpheus Hyatt, the Harvard zoologist, whom  Swamiji had met the previous year. Of this occasion Professor Hyatt's daughter, Anna Vaughn Hyatt (Mrs. Archer M. Huntington), the well-known sculptress, wrote to me when I asked for her memories: "He [Swamiji] came to a primitive clam-bake we had one evening on our beach, and he was shown how to open and eat hot clams from the shell with his fingers. As I remember, he was a good sport about it and the affair, and he made a very colorful figure lit by the firelight against the blackness of the night. It was either the day before that or the day after that he fell out of a rowboat and was rescued by one of the family.  He was quite a stout figure as I recall." *[2]


Swamiji evidently had many boat rides during the summer of 1894. In a letter to India he refers to the New Englander's preoccupation with sailboats. "Here in summer they go to the seaside—I also did the same. They have got almost a mania for boating and yachting. The yacht is a kind of light vessel which everyone, young and old, who has the means, possesses. They set sail in them every day to the sea, and return home, to eat and drink and dance—while music continues day and night. Pianos render it a botheration to stay indoors!'[58] This picture of life in a New England resort town is accurate, but while the piano music of the gay nineties might at times have become unendurable, Swamiji evidently did not mind his drenching in the sea. He refers to it again in reply to concerned inquiries from the Hale family. To Mary Hale he writes, "I have plenty of gowns already, in fact, more than I can carry with ease. When I had that drenching in Annisquam I had on that beautiful black suit you appreciate so much, and I do not think it can be damaged in any-way; it also has been penetrated with my deep meditations on the Absolute.... Kindly tell Mother that I do not want any coat now.'[59]


We are able to learn a little more about Swamiji's stay in Annisquam from a hitherto unpublished letter, which he wrote to Isabelle McKindley on August 20:


Dear Sister:

Your very kind letter duly reached me at Annisquam. I am with the Bagleys once more. They are kind as usual. Professor Wright was not here. But he came day before yesterday and we have very nice time together. Mr. Bradley of Evanston whom you have met at Evanston was here. His sister in law had me sit for a picture several days and had painted me. I had some very fine boating and one evening overturned the boat and had a good drenching clothes and all.I had very very nice time at Greenacre. They were all so earnest and kind people. Fanny Hartley and Mrs. Mills have by this time gone back home I suppose.


From here I think I will go back to New York. Or I may go to Boston to Mrs. Ole Bull. Perhaps you have heard of Mr. Ole Bull the great violinist of this country. She is his widow. She is a very spiritual lady. She lives in Cambridge and has a fine big parlour made of woodwork brought all the way from India. She wants me to come over to her any time and use her parlour to lecture. Boston of course is the great field for everything but the Boston people as quickly take hold of anything as give it up. While the New Yorkers are slow but when they get hold of anything they do it with a mortal grip.


I have kept pretty good health all the time and hope to do in the future. I had no occasion yet to draw on my reserve yet I am rolling on pretty fair. And I have given up all money making schemes and will be quite satisfied with a bite and a shed and work on.

I believe you are enjoying your summer retreat. Kindly convey my best regards and love to Miss Howe and Mr. Frank Howe.

Perhaps I did not tell you in my last how I slept and lived and preached under the trees and for a few days at least found myself once more in the atmosphere of heaven.


Most probably I will make New York my centre for the next winter-and as soon as I fix on that I will write to you. I am not yet settled yet in my ideas of remaining in this country any more. I can not settle anything of that sort. I must abide my time. May the Lord bless you all for ever and ever is the constant prayer of your ever affectionate

Brother[60]
Vivekananda


Swamiji received bundles of mail at Annisquam, forwarded to him by Mrs. Hale. "I am now almost become dizzy through the perusal of a heavy and big mail, so excuse my hasty scrawl," he wrote to her on August 20. Some of the mail was from India. "The word Sri," he explained to Mrs. Hale (who no doubt inquired) "means of good fortune, blessed &c. Paramahamsa —is a title for a Sanyasi who has reached the goal, i.e., realized God. Neither am I blessed nor have I reached the goal—but they are courteous that is all.[61]There was a letter from the Maharaja of Khetri, dated June 8; one from Alasinga telling that money would soon be sent to the prodigal Narasimha for his return to India; and one, it seems, containing the information (as he relayed it to Mrs. Hale) that "[the] missionaries try to make me a malcontent before the English govt. in India, and the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal in a recent speech hinted that the recent revival of Hinduism was against the government. Lord bless the missionary. Everything is fair in love and (religion?):'[62]


(In connection with such accusations, Swamiji was to write a month or so later to Alasinga: "One thing I find in the books of my speeches and sayings published in Calcutta. Some of them are printed in such a way as to savour of political views; whereas I am no politician or political agitator. I care only for the Spirit—when that is right everything will be righted by itself.... So you must warn the Calcutta people that no political significance be ever attached falsely to any of my writings or sayings. What nonsense! . . . I have said a few harsh words in honest criticism of Christian governments in general, but that does not mean that I care for, or have any connection with politics or that sort of thing. Those who think it very grand to print extracts from those lectures and want to prove that I am a political preacher, to them I say, 'Save me from my friends:)'[63] With all this mail from India, there was still nothing to let Swamiji know that the Madras Meeting had been successfully held and that news of this official recognition of his work had reached America. He was naturally anxious; and yet, as we have seen earlier, it was around this time (on August 23) that he wrote to "Mother Church" in flaming rebellion against the very need to care. "My soul is groaning now under the hundred sort(s) of bondage[s] I am placing on it. Whose India? Who cares? . . . Only He is.... He in me, I in Him. I am like a bit of glass in an ocean of light. I am not. I am not. He is He is He is:'[64]


The next day we find Swamiji giving a lecture in Magnolia, then a beautiful seaside resort village on the south side of Cape Ann, where the affluent summered in huge wooden hotels with long varandahs and a view of the sea. In the Cape Ann Breeze of August 25 the following information appeared:


At the Library Hall last evening, the learned and eloquent Hindoo monk, Swami Vivekananda, lectured before a large and fashionable audience. His subject was "Life in India."


Everything else we know at the present time about Swamiji's side visit to Magnolia comes from a long letter he wrote to Mrs. Hale after his return to Annisquam. (He wrote it, he remarked, with a new fountain pen, which some unknown friend had sent him from New York and which worked "very smoothly and nicely, as you can judge from the writing:' This letter, through which one also sees a little into Swamiji's state of mind at that time, was postmarked August 28 and read in part:


Dear Mother

I have been for three days at Magnolia. Magnolia is one of the most fashionable and beautiful seaside resorts of this part. I think the scenery is better than that of Annisquam. The rocks; there are very beautiful and the forests run down to the very edge of the water. There is a very beautiful pine forest. A lady of Chicago and her daughter, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Sawyer, were the friends that invited me up there. They had also arranged a lecture for me out of which I got 43$. I met a good many people. Mrs Smith Junior who said she knows Harriet and Mrs. Smith the elder knows you well.


In Boston the other day I met a Unitarian clergyman who said he lives next to you in Chicago. I have unfortunately forgotten his name. Mrs Smith is a very nice lady and treated me with all courtesy. [In a note at the bottom of the page someone, probably Mrs. Hale, wrote "Mrs. Percy Smith he means."] Mrs. Bagley is kind as ever and I will have to remain here a few days more I am afraid. Prof. Wright and I are having a good time. Prof. Bradley of Evanston has gone home. If you ever meet him at Evanston give him my best love and regards. He is really a spiritual man....


. . . Magnolia is a good bathing place and I had two baths in the sea. A large concourse of men and women go to bathe there every day—most part men. And strange, women do not give up their coat of mail even while bathing. That is how these mail-clad she warriors of America have got the superiority over men.


Our Sanskrit poets lavish all the power of expression they have upon the soft body of women; the Sanskrit word for women is "komala" the soft body—but the mail-clad ones of this country are "armadillas" I think. You cannot imagine how ludicrous it appears to a foreigner who never saw it before. Shiva, Shiva....


[Mrs. Hale evidently saw nothing strange about the elaborate bathing dress of the period. Swamiji later had to explain: "I did not see any impropriety in the bathing places at the sea shore but only vanity in some. In those that went into water with their corsets on—that was all.]'[65]


. . . I have written to India not to bother me with constant letters. Why, when I am travelling in India nobody writes to me. Why should they spend all their superfluous energy in scrawling letters to me in America. My whole life is to be that of a wanderer-here or there or anywhere. I am in no hurry. I had a foolish plan in my head unworthy of a Sanyasin [his plan to raise money in America for his Indian work]—I have given it up now and mean to take life easy. No indecent hurry. Don't you see, Mother Church? You have to always remember, Mother Church, that I cannot settle down even at the North pole, that wander about I must—that is my vow, my religion. So India or North pole or South pole—don't care where. Last two years I have been travelling among races whose language even I cannot speak. "I have neither father nor mother nor brothers nor sisters no friends no foes, nor home nor countrya— traveller in the way of eternity—asking no other help seeking no other help but God.[66]


On August 31 the Boston Evening Transcript of the previous day reached Annisquam, and in its sedate and prestigious pages Swamiji read for the first time published news of the Madras Meeting. A few days later came the bundle of reports from India, sent to him by Alasinga and forwarded to Annisquam by Mrs. Hale. Thus, as the summer drew to a close the American public learned that Swamiji, was a true and officially acknowledged representative of his country’s religion. The long wait was over.


All the residents of Annisquam no doubt heard the news and were thereby more happy than ever that their remarkable visitor was going to lecture on the evening of Tuesday, September 4, at Mechanics Hall (a two story wooden structure where the great events of the village took place). Annisquam was too small to support or, most likely, to want a newspaper of its own; thus the two papers of Gloucester, a small city a few miles away, printed its news. On September 4 the Cape Ann Breeze in a column entitled "Squibs from 'Squam" reminded its readers of the coming event:


An opportunity not lightly to be slighted, will be given as this evening to learn something of the conditions of Oriental life and religious observances by the lecture announced below:


Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo monk, whose addresses at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago have attracted so much attention, is the guest of Mrs. Governor Bagley in the Hyatt house. In compliance with the urgent request of many persons in Annisquam, both citizens and summer visitors, he had consented to give a public address this evening at 8 o'clock in Mechanics Hall on "Life and Religion in India". His unusual eloquence and learning and his remarkable personal presence will make the occasion one not to be forgotten by all who may hear him.


There will be a small admission fee of 25 and 35 cts. charged. It is hoped that this stranger from a strange and far-off land will be greeted with a good audience, on this his second appearance among us.


After the lecture, both the Gloucester Daily Times and the Cape Ann Breeze of September 6 did their best to write it up. Their reports read respectively as follows:

5

ANNISQUAM LECTURE

Mechanics Hall was well filled on Tuesday evening to hear the lecture given by our visiting friend, the Hindoo monk. He was introduced to the audience by Prof. Wright, who also made some preliminary remarks befitting the occasion. The Lecturer alluded to the visit he made to this village last year, and stated that the address he gave here at that time in the church was the first public discourse that he ever gave in English or in his native language; and kindly thanked his friends present who induced him to attempt the same. The religion of India was explained at some length by the speaker from a metaphysical standpoint, showing the working of his mind and the thought following, yet his ideas were broad and liberal, when practically applied.

SQUIBS FROM 'SQUAM

A very fair audience assembled in the hall Tuesday to listen to the address of Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu monk. He wore the distinctive dress of his rank, and was a picturesque figure in the flowing robes and loosely knotted sash, with his dusky, oriental-looking face and shapely head, surmounted by a dexterously twisted turban. His English is that of a cultured foreigner, who has been chiefly associated with refined and educated people. One has to follow him closely to always catch his meaning, however. The matter and manner of his lecture proved very interesting to his hearers, and they, so far as we have learned, congratulated themselves on the opportunity of hearing the distinguished stranger.


A day or two following his lecture Swamiji left Annisquam for Boston, but first he took time on September 5 to write a long letter in Bengali to his good friend Mr. Manmatha Nath Bhattacharya, who had been instrumental in 1892 in introducing him to Madras. A translation of this letter is given here in part, for it draws so good a picture of American mores as seen through Swamiji's observant and often humor filled eyes that the story of his life so far in America would not be complete without it. "Dear Mr. Bhattacharya, " Swamiji wrote,


I was much pleased to read your affectionate letter. I shall make inquiries about the weaving machine as soon as I can and let you know. Now I am resting at Annisquam, a village on the sea coast; soon I shall go to the city and attend to the matter of the machine. These seaside places are filled with people during the summer; some come to bathe in the sea, some to take rest, and some to catch husbands.


There is a strong sense of decorum in this country. You have to always keep yourself covered from neck to foot in the presence of women. You cannot so much as mention the normal functions of the body: nobody knows when one goes to the toilet—one has to live so circumspectly. In this country you can blow your nose a thousand times into your handkerchief—there is no harm in that; but it is highly uncivilized to belch. Women sometimes are not embarrassed to expose their bodies above the waist—you must have seen the kind of low-cut gown they wear—but they say that to go barefoot is as bad as being naked. Just as we always dwell on the soul, so they take care of the body, and there is no end to the cleaning and the embellishing of it. One who fails to do this has no place in society.


Our method of cooking with cow dung and eating on the floor they consider as eating like pigs: they say that the Hindus have no sense of disgust and that, like pigs, they eat cow dung. The word "cow dung" is taboo in English. On the other hand, numbers of people will drink water with the same glass without thinking of washing it, and they rarely observe the rule that things must be washed before cooking. But should the clothes of the cook be a little soiled, they will throw her out. The tableware is all spick and span. They are the richest people on earth; their enjoyments and luxuries beggar description....


Now, just as in our country the parents suffer a lot to have their daughters married, here in the same way the girls suffer—the parents only a little—it is the job of the girls to capture husbands. I am now closely associated with them in all their affairs; I am, as it were, a girl amongst girls. Therefore I have seen, and am seeing, all their play. To give dinners, to dance, to go to musical parties, to go to the watering places—all that is all right. But all the while the young women are scheming within themselves how to capture husbands. They hang moping around the boys. The boys, on the other hand, are so cautious that, though they mingle with the girls and flirt with them all the time, when it is time to surrender they run away. The boys place the girls above themselves; they show them respect and slave for them; but the moment the girls stretch their hands to catch them, they run away beyond their reach. After many efforts of this kind, a girl succeeds in capturing a boy. If the girl has money, then many a boy dances attendance upon her, but the poor have great difficulty. If a poor girl is exceedingly beautiful, she can marry quickly, otherwise, she has to wait all her life. Just as in our country, so here, one marriage in a thousand takes place through love and courtship; the rest are based on money. After that, quarrel, and then, "Get out!" divorce. We do not have this; the only way out is to hang oneself. It is the same in all countries. Only, here the girls take matters into their own hands; and in our country we get the help of the parents.... The result is the same in either case.


Nowadays, however, American girls don't want to marry. During the Civil War a large number of men were killed and women began to do all kinds of work. Since then, they have not wanted to give up the rights they have acquired.. They earn their own living, and therefore they say, "There is no use in marrying. If we truly fall in love, then we shall marry; otherwise, we shall earn and meet our own expenses." Even if the father is a millionaire, the son has to earn enough before he marries. One may not marry depending on an allowance from the father. The girls also want the same thing now. When a son marries he becomes like a stranger to his own family, but when a girl marries she brings her husband, as it were, into her parents' home. Men will visit their wives' parents ten times, but rarely go to their own parents. Yet they are very much afraid of having their mothers-in-law on their neck.


In this country there are rivers of wealth and waves of beauty, and an abundance of knowledge everywhere. The country is very healthy; they know how to enjoy this earth.... When the princes of Europe become poor they come to marry here. The average American doesn't like this; but some rich, beautiful women fall for the titles. Yet it is very difficult for American women to live in Europe. The husbands of this country are slaves of their wives; but the European wives are slaves to their husbands—this the American women don't like. In everything the men here have to say, "Yes, ma'am"; otherwise the wives lose face before people.

The women in America are very sentimental and have a mania for romance. I am, however, a strange sort of animal who hasn't any romantic feeling, and therefore they could not sustain any such feeling toward me, and they show me great respect. I make all of them call me "father" or "brother." I don't allow them to come near me with any other feeling, and gradually they have all been straightened out....


The ministers in this country . . . are eager to throw sinners into hell. A few of them are very good, however.... I have a great reputation among the women in this country. I have not as yet seen a single unchaste girl among the unmarried. It is either a widow or a married woman who turns unchaste. The unmarried girls are exceedingly good, because their future is bright....


If we ignore this little fault of theirs—their romantic tendency—then our "monkeys" are not fit to stand near them. Those emaciated Western women, looking like old dried-up fruit, whom you see in India, are English, and the English are an ugly race amongst the Europeans. In America the best blood strains of Europe have blended, and therefore the American women are very beautiful. And how they take care of their beauty! Can a woman retain her beauty if she gives birth to children . . . every hour from her tenth year on? Damn nonsense! What a terrible sin! Even the most beautiful woman of our country will look like a black owl here. Yet it must be admitted that the women of the Punjab have very well-drawn features. Many of the American women are very well educated and put many a learned professor to shame; nor do they care for anyone's opinion. And as regards their virtues: what kindness, what noble thought and action! Just think, if a man of this country were to visit India, nobody would even touch him; yet here I am allowed to do as I please in the houses of the best families—like their own son! I am like a child; their women shop for me, run errands for me. For example, I have just written to a girl for information about the machine, which she will gather carefully and send on to me. Again, a phonograph was sent to the Maharajah of Khetri: the girls managed the whole affair very well. Lord! Lord! It is the difference between heaven and hell. "They are the goddess Lakshmi in beauty and the goddess Saraswati in talents and accomplishments." This cannot be achieved through the study of books. I say, can you send out some men and women to see the world? Only then will the country wake up—not through the reading of books. The men here are very clever in earning wealth. Where others do not see even dust, there they see gold.


The papers [regarding the Madras Meeting] have arrived duly and in good shape; there has not been any difficulty about that. The enemy has been silenced. Consider this: they have allowed me, an unknown young man, to live among their grown-up young daughters, and when my own countryman, Mazoomdar, says I am a rogue, they don't pay any attention! How noble they are, and how kind! I shall not be able to repay this debt even in a hundred lives. I am like a foster son to the American women; they are really my mother. If they don't flourish in every way, who would?


A while back several hundred intellectual men and women were gathered in a place called Greenacre, and I was there for nearly two months [weeks]. Every day I would sit in our Hindu fashion under a tree, and my followers and disciples would sit on the grass all around me. Every morning I would instruct them, and how earnest they were!


The whole country now knows me. The ministers are very angry; but naturally not all of them. There are many followers of mine among the learned ministers of this country. The ignorant and the stubborn amongst them don't understand anything but only make trouble, and thereby they only hurt themselves. By abusing me, Mazoomdar has lost three-fourths of what little popularity he had in this country. I have been adopted by them. When anyone abuses me he is condemned everywhere by the women.

I cannot say when I shall return to India, possibly next winter. There I shall have to wander, and here also I do the same.


There is nothing more to add. Please don't make this letter public. You understand I have to be careful about every word I say—I am now a public man. Everybody is watching, particularly the clergy.[67]


ⓘ
[1].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, probably early June, 1894, Sen Col. 
[2].Complete Works, 5:34; this quotation is from the original letter, RKM, Belur.
[3].Complete Works, 5:34; this quotation is from the original letter, RKM, Belur. 
[4].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, August 23, 1894, Sen Col. 
[5].Complete Works, 5:43; this quotation is from the original letter, RKM, Belur. 
[6].Complete Works, 5:55; this quotation is from the original letter, RKM, Belur. 
[7].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, June 28, 1894, Sen Col. 
[8].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale July 1, 1894, Sen Col. 
[9].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale July 1, 1894, Sen Col. 
[10].We are indebted to Mrs. Wilhelmina B. Powers of the Adriane Memorial Library, Poughkeepsie, New York, for this description of th Guernseys’ summer home. 
[11].Complete Works, 8 : 315. 
[12].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, July 19, 1894, Sen Col. 
[13].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, July 23, 1894, Sen Col. 
[14].Complete Works, 8 : 317. 
[15].Complete Works, 8 : 317. 
 [16].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale; this letter is undated but it is clear from internal evidence that it was written on August 28, 1894. Sen Col. 
[17].Rem, (Sarah E. Waldo), p. 126. 
[18].Complete Works, 8:317. 
[19].Complete Works, 5:38-40, original letter, VSNC. 
[20].Complete Works ,5 :42.
[21].Lewiston Saturday Journal, August 12, 1899.
[22].Lewiston Saturday Journal, August 12, 1899.
[23].Complete Works, 6 : 259-60; this quotation is from an early copy of the original letters, SN Col.
[24].Life (1913) 2 : 354; this passage as given in later editions of the Life (e.g., 1965 ed., p. 336) is ambiguous in regard to the time Swamiji first met Dr. Janes. Our most recent information makes it clear, however, that the invitation to lecture at the Brooklyn Ethical Association came before July of 1894.
[25].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, July 19, 1894, Sen Col.
[26].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale , August 5, 1894, Sen Col.
[27].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale,August8, 1894, Sen Col.
[28].Complete Works, 6 : 260.
[29].Lewiston Saturday Journal, August 12, 1899
[30].Complete Works, 6 : 260.
[31] Ralph Waldo Trine, My Philosophy, My Religion, p. 9.
[32] Mrs. Alice Cummings to Mr. Edmundo Melendez, February 8, 1970.
[33] Quoted in the Arena, October 1899, P- 499
[34] Quoted in the Arena, October 1899, P- 499
[35] Complete Works, 6 : 261.
[36] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, August 20, 1894, Sen Col.
[37] Complete Works, 6 : 260-61.
[38] Complete Works, 5 : 38-40, original letter, VSNC.
[39] Complete Works, 6 : 261.
[40] Complete Works, 6 : 261.
[41] Complete Works,8:335
[42] Complete Works, 6 : 262, quoted from an early copy.
[43] Complete Works,8 : 318-19.
[44] Emma Thursby Collection, New-York Historical Society, New York, N.Y.
[45] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, August 8, 1894, Sen Col.
[46] Complete Works, 8 : 318.
[47] Complete Works,8 : 299.
[48] Complete Works,8 : 354~55
[49] Lewiston Saturday Journal, August 12, 1899.
[50] Complete Works, 8 : 318.
[51] Rev. William J. Potter, first secretary of the Free Religious Association, quoted in “The Free Religious Association” by George Willis Cooke, New England Magazine, June I9O3
[52] Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, “Reminiscences,” quoted in article cited in note 51 above.
[53] Complete Works, 5:19.
[54] Life, 1 :491; see chap. 8, note 28.
[55] Complete Works, 8 : 319.
[56] Life, 1 :519; see chap. 8, note 29.
[57] Life, 2 :84.
[58] Complete Works, 6 : 269.
[59] Complete Works,, 8-.321.
[60] Complete Works, 5 : 38-40, original letter, VSNC.
[61] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, August 20, 1894, Sen Col.
[62] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, August 20, 1894, Sen Col.
[63] Complete Works, 5 : 46.
[64] See chap. 10, note 22.
[65] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, September 13, 1894, Sen Col.
[66] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale ., August 28, 1894, Sen Col. See note 16 above.
[67].Complete Works, 7 :470-77. This translation of Swamiji’s letter is taken from an early draft which differs in one or two minor respects from the version published in the Complete Works.



↑ Contents

2.4 THE EASTERN TOUR-II

The Summer was over. Schools and colleges were opening and people were returning from mountain ans seaside resorts to the cities. Swamiji's second year of lecturing in America began in Boston, where he spent nearly the entire month of September. But lengthy though this Boston visit was, our knowledge of it must at present be pieced together from his published letters, for the Boston papers seem to have been curiously silent regarding his lectures. We can only surmise that for the most part he gave them before private or semiprivate gatherings.

Evidently Swamiji had made arrangements during his last week or so in Annisquam to lecture in Boston, for prior to this there is no intimation that he definitely intended to go there. In his letter of August 20 to Isabelle McKindley he writes, "From here [Annisquam] I think I will go back to New York. Or I may go to Boston [Cambridge] to Mrs. Ole Bull.'[1] Actually he did neither of these things. The next we know he is writing to Mrs. Hale on September 12 from the Hotel Bellevue in Boston. This was just a short note requesting "the 2 little scrap from the Indian Mirror about my detroit lectures which I sent you.'[2]The following day he wrote to her, and also to Mary Hale, at greater length. From his letter to Mary we learn that he had been at the Bellevue Hotel "for about a week" and that he would "remain in Boston some time yet'[3]To Mrs. Hale he wrote more about the sending of newspaper clippings and letters from Indian notables back and forth—a "botheration" still necessary; for news of the definitively vindicating Calcutta Meeting had not yet reached America. Mrs. HaIe could evidently make good use on his behalf of such  testimony as the letters and clippings provided. So also could some of his other friends. "The newspaper clippings are with Mrs. Bagley," he wrote in his letter of September 13 to Mrs. Hale; "only a [typed] copy has been sent over to you. By the by Mrs. Bagley becomes jealous if I send away everything to you. That is between you & me. The Indian Mirror is with Prof. Wright—and he will send it over to you.'[4]

"I was suffering for the last few days from cold and fever," he wrote in this same letter. "I am all right now"—information that must have concerned "Mother Church." A few days later he was assuring her that he had sufficient clothing. "I do not require any clothes here; there is plenty of it. I am taking good care of my cuffs and collars &c. I have more clothes than is necessary; very soon I will have to disburse myself of half of it at least."[5]

Although the lecturing season had commenced and Swamiji was, as he wrote on September 19, "lecturing in several places in Boston, "[6]the desire to write a book, which he had had since early July, was still strong. To his Madras disciple Alasinga he had written on July 11, "At this time of the year there is not much lecturing to be done here, so I will devote myself to my pen and write."[7]But he had found little time for writing during the summer months of 1894, and in September the need to set down his thoughts was unsatisfied. "I am going to write out my thoughts on religion [and] in that no missionaries have any places,'"8] he wrote to Mrs. Hale on September 13.*(1) And in his letter written on the same day to Mary Hale one finds a passage endearingly characteristic of those beset with an urge to write: first the entrancing, if not altogether essential, paraphernalia must be purchased. "Today this vagabond lama was seized with a desire of going right along scribbling, and so I walked down and entering a store bought all sorts of writing material and a beautiful portfolio which shuts with a clasp and has even a little wooden ink-stand. So far it promises well. Hope it will continue.'[9]

*(1) In a letter to Alasinga, dated August 31, 1894, Swamiji is quoted in the Complete Works (5:41) as having written “I am now going to write my mems in a book.: In the original letter, which has been recently examined at Belur Math, Swamiji’s underscored word seems to be “ideas” rather than “mems.” And indeed at this period it was always his “thoughts on religion” that he wanted to write, never his memoirs.

But in Boston also Swamiji knew little of the quiet necessary to writing a book. "I have not been able to write a line yet . . : ' he wrote to Alasinga on September 21. "Perhaps I may be able to take [the proposed book] in hand later on."[10] Yet in spite of a busy schedule, he did find time to compose his long, stirring, and now famous Reply to the Madras Address, his first impassioned public exhortation to his motherland since he had left her shores. His Reply was in part a scholarly dissertation on the origin. of the various forms of Hinduism, on its organic unity, theoretical and practical, and on its all-embracing grandeur; in part a decrial of the propaganda of the missionaries—"the abuses incessantly hurled against the head of a prostrate race in season and out of season."11] and in part a rousing call to India's slumbering spiritual genius, which he know to be both the source of her strength and her priceless gift to the world. "Let us take our stand," he wrote, "on the one central truth in our religion—the common heritage of the Hindus, the Buddhists and Jains alike—the spirit of man —the Atman of man—the immortal, birthless, all-pervading, eternal soul of man whose glories the Vedas cannot themselves express, before whose majesty the universe with its galaxy upon galaxy of suns and stars and nebulae is as a drop. . . . First, let us be Gods, and then help others to be Gods. 'Be and make.' Let this be our motto.... Manifest the divinity within you, and everything will be harmoniously arranged around it.... I do not see into the future; nor do I care to see. But one vision I see clear as life before me is that the ancient Mother has awakened once more, sitting on Her throne—rejuvenated, more glorious than ever. Proclaim Her to all the world with the voice of peace and benediction"[12] It was a clarion call that he was to sound again and again in the years to come throughout the length and breadth of his country.

Swamiji also found time in Boston to write other, more personal letters to India. To his brother disciples, they who were to form the very heart of his work there, he wrote in a passion of exhortation, pouring his own fire into that center of spiritual energy. "The world is not a child's play," he wrote on September 25," and great men are those who build highways for others with their heart's blood. This has been taking place through eternity, that one builds a bridge by laying down his own body, and thousands of others cross the river through its help. . . , To work, with undaunted energy! What fear! Who is powerful enough to thwart you! 'We shall crush the stars to atoms, and unhinge the universe. Don't you know who we are? We are the servants of Shri Ramakrishna.' Fear? Whom to fear, forsooth? . . . 'It is those foolish people who identify themselves with their bodies that piteously cry, "We are weak; we are low." All this is atheism. Now that we have attained the state beyond fear, we shall have no more fear and become heroes. This indeed is [true] theism, which we, the servants of Shri Ramakrishna, will choose.' "[13]

But the Address and the letters that Swamiji dashed off in the white heat of inspiration were not what he meant by "writing." "What I want is to get a place where I can sit down and write down my thoughts," he wrote on September 19 to a friend in New York. "I had enough of speaking; now I want to write. I think I will have to go to New York for it. Mrs. Guernsey was so kind to me and she is ever willing to help me. I think I will go to her and sit down and write my book.... Kindly write me whether the Guernseys have returned to town or are still in Fishkill.'[14]

Mrs. Arthur Smith, to whom this letter was almost certainly addressed, *(2) very likely relayed its message to Mrs. Ole Bull, who, in turn, invited Swamiji to Cambridge. On September 26 he replied to her, "I have received both your kind notes. I cannot express my gratitude for your kindness. I will have to go back to Melrose on Saturday and remain there till Monday. On Tuesday (October 2) I will come over to your place.... That is exactly what I wanted, a quiet place to write. Of course much less space will suffice me than what you have kindly proposed to put at my disposal. I can bundle myself up anywhere and feel quite comfortable.'[15]

*(2) This letter, dated September 19, 1894, is addressed in the Complete Works (6:268) to “Dear Mother Sara” and is said to have been written to Mrs. Ole Bull. It is probable, however, that “Mother Sara” is a mis-reading of “Mother Smith,” which is the way Swamiji addressed Mrs.Arthur Smith of New York. The contents of the letter apply far more readily to Mrs. Smith than to Mrs. Bull; nor is it likely that Swamiji would have addressed Mrs.Bull at this early date (if ever) as “Mother Sara.” (The original letter is not at present available.)

Melrose is a small town a few miles north of Boston, where Swamiji evidently lectured at least twice. His second lecture, given probably on September 30, was his last in the vicinity of Boston in the fall of 1894, for on October 2 he went to Mrs. Bull's home in Cambridge, where his desire for a quiet place "to sit down and write" was at last fulfilled.

When Swamiji first met Mrs. Bull she was in her early forties and had been a widow for fourteen years. Aside from the fact that she was by nature warmhearted, courageous, independent, and, as Swamiji said, "very spiritual," her wide travels with her famous violinist husband, her experience with managers, audiences, and all that goes with public life, to say nothing of her close association with an artist, had well equipped her to help Swamiji, to give him not only good advice regarding his work in America but personal sympathy and, to some extent at least, understanding. Almost from the start of his acquaintance with her he felt a trust in her judgment and in her large heart—an intuitive trust which led him to write to her later, "Through the mercy of Ramakrishna, my instinct 'sizes up' almost infallibly a human face as soon as I see it, and the result is this: you may do anything you please with my affairs, I will not even murmur.... Not only for the help you have given me, but from my instinct (or, as I call it, inspiration of my Master), I regard you as my mother and will always abide by any advice you may have for me.'[16]

Before Mrs. Bull's marriage to the Norwegian violinist, Ole Bull, she had been Miss Sara Thorp; daughter of the Honorable Joseph G. Thorp, a rich lumberman and state senator of Madison, Wisconsin. In her youth, her family had lived in a spacious mansion, the finest house in all of Madison, which in later years became Wisconsin's gubernatorial residence. Mrs. Thorp, a formidable woman of iron will, reigned as the city's social leader—"a reign," it is said, "that for brilliance and unchallenged authority has never since been equalled in the Wisconsin State capital.'[17]"The great house on 'Yankee Hill,' " this same account continues, "became the acknowledged social center of the town, and invitations to the Thorp lawn parties, musicales, amateur theatricals, and elaborate formal dinners were frantically sought."18] Naturally enough, the Thorps entertained visiting celebrities, and it was in the great house on Yankee Hill that sixty-year-old widower Ole Bull met and courted Sara Thorp, a girl of barely twenty. In The Life of Ole Bull by Mortimer Smith, the young Sara has been described as "black-haired, of a serious, rather melancholy sort of beauty, highly impressionable, passionately fond of music and—thanks to her mother—entirely ignorant of young men of her own age."[19] She was a highstrung girl, idealistic and sensitive. The story goes that when she was seventeen she attended with her mother one of Ole Bull's concerts and then and there made up her mind that she would one day become his wife. She was of the same mind when, three years later, she met him socially.

As for Ole Bull his meeting with Sara was evidently a case of love at first sight. "But," says his biographer, "this romantic attachment between age and youth might well have come to nothing had it not been for a very remarkable woman, Sara's mother.'[20] Brushing aside the protests of her husband, Mrs. Thorp encouraged the romance, until, in September of 1870, it culminated in marriage. It was a strange alliance; not only was there a forty years' difference in age between husband and wife, but a wide difference in background and temperament. Sara Bull belonged to a highly conventional mid-western family; Ole Bull to the unconventional, free society of artists. Yet the couple were in love, and all might have gone well had not Mrs. Thorp, Mr. Thorp, their son Joseph, a Mrs. Abbie Shapleigh (Mrs. Thorp's companion), and her two children kept almost constant tabs on the couple both in America and Europe. For several years this entourage lived with them, traveled with them, argued with them, and incessantly gave them advice. Explosion continuously threatened until finally, after numerous and unsuccessful attempts to transform the impulsive and extravagant Ole Bull into a docile and respectable son-in-law, Mrs. Thorp came to the conclusion that he was not, after all, a suitable husband for her daughter. She forthwith engineered a separation and bundled Sara and her small daughter, Olea, who had been born in 1871, home to Madison.

But as Sara grew older she became a match for her mother. After two years of pining at home, she one day rebelled against parental authority, left Madison, and rejoined her husband in Norway. After this, the Bulls lived a private and quiet life—if the life of a concert violinist may be said to be private and quiet. It was, at least, a life in which the Thorp family no longer interfered, but with which they finally came to terms. Henceforth peace reigned between Sara's family and Ole Bull. Mrs. Bull took charge of her impractical husband's affairs, virtually managed his concert tours, borrowed money from her father when necessary, and became, all in all, a mature and efficient wife to this aging, somewhat erratic man, whom she adored, indeed whom she worshiped.

In the meantime, Mrs. Thorp, bored with Madison, moved her family to Cambridge where, to her delight, her son Joseph married the youngest daughter of the poet Longfellow. It was in Cambridge that the Bulls made their home-—in a separate establishment-when they were in America, and it was there that Mrs. Bull continued to live after the death of her husband in 1880. She became, The Life of Ole Bull relates, "a well-known figure in Cambridge, and her spacious house on Brattle Street, where she lived until her death in 1911, was a famous gathering place for 'intellectual' society and for leaders of causes. She presided over her salon with a gentle, unobtrusive, and somewhat melancholy grace. Here she could be found introducing the Swami Vivekananda and his Vedanta philosophy to her cautious and faintly suspicious Cambridge friends, or discussing religion with William James, or playing accompaniments for the aggressive baritone of John Fiske. For two years she conducted in her house what she called 'the Cambridge Conferences'; here, in a large living room panelled in Indian teakwood and dominated by a bust and innumerable portraits of Ole Bull, one was privileged to listen to the controversial social questions of the day discussed by such figures as Professor James, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Josiah Royce, and Jane Addams. In the audience one could rub shoulders with such varied persons as the patrician Miss Alice Longfellow, Irving Babbitt, Professor Munsterberg, the still active Julia Ward Howe, and even a young woman named Gertrude Stein, then a student at Radcliffe.'[21]

Mrs. Bull could provide a sanctuary in her Cambridge home as well as a scintillating salon, and it was here that in October of 1894 she offered Swamiji a place where he could write undisturbed. It is, of course, not unlikely that she persuaded him to give one or two informal talks in her large living room, and very possibly it was during this stay with Mrs. Bull that Swamiji first became intimately acquainted with William James. (It was perhaps at this time that he demonstrated, as we have been told, the mystery of divine communion for the noted philosopher by plunging, in his presence, into samadhi.) But although Mrs. Bull may have introduced others of her friends to Swamiji she no doubt for the most part gave him an opportunity to rest and to write down his thoughts, for perceptive and sensitive as she was, she must have seen that he was in need of a few days of peace.

"I hope soon to return to India," he had written on September 21 to Alasinga. "I have had enough of this country, and especially as too much work is making me nervous. The giving of too many public lectures and constant hurry have brought on this nervousness.... So you see, I will soon return."[22] And again on September 27, "This nonsense of public life and newspaper blazoning has disgusted me thoroughly. I long to go back to the Himalayan quiet:'[23]Yet despite his fatigue, he continued in the last part of 1894 to lecture wherever opportunity presented itself. It would appear, as has been pointed out before, that he was destined, before settling down in one place, to spread his influence throughout America, to scatter his blessing and the potent seeds of spirituality over wide areas, to meet thousands upon thousands of people, and to stir not only their minds but the deep recesses of their souls those depths which none but a prophet of his stature could reach and awaken. Therefore his stay at Mrs. Bull's house was not long, though it gave him a much needed rest.

"I am going off from here tomorrow to Baltimore " he wrote , to Mrs. Hale from Cambridge on October 10 and continued:

I had enough to pay all my expenses here—and since I am living with Mrs Bull there is no expense. She is a rich and highly cultured lady. She has given me 500$ for my work or anything I like. As I am not going west very soon, I will have a Bank account here in Boston. From Philadelphia I go to Washington and then I will run between New York and Boston. So I do not think I will be able to see you except perhaps Sister Mary [who was coming to Boston]. I want so very much that Mary will see Mrs. Bull & others of my friends here. I have the fat of the land as usual and my dinner is cooking very well both here and in India. Do not make it public, Mother, that is between you & me and the babies, and do not worry yourself about anything. All things come to him that waits. I am going to send greater part of the money I have got to India and then money will come faster. I have always found that the faster I spend the faster it comes. Nature abhors a vacuum. I am in very good spirits, only you must not stop keeping me informed about yourself, Babies & Father Pope from time to time.

Perhaps you remember the two letters that came from Mysore—I want one of those envelopes—with the Mysore King's seal on the outside, to be sent to Miss Phillips 19 West 38th street—N.Y.

I cannot go to New York now nor to Chicago—although I had a number of invitations and offers from both the places. I must see now the capital & the other cities. I am in His Hands. If Miss Mary be in Boston sometime I may hope to see her....

From India they always write me to come come come. They do not know the secret. I am acting more from here than I will ever do from there.

Kindly send my letters to this address and they will reach me safe wherever I be. This will be one of my homes when I am in Boston. 

Lord bless you all dear Mother. Yours ever affectionately,[24]

In giving Swamiji the five hundred dollars he mentioned above, Mrs. Bull accompanied the gift by a letter, her draft of which is available to us. It read:

My dear Mr Vive Kananda

You have blessed to higher uses this home of ours by your presence. You have given us the pearl of great price. If there shall be as there have been those who would turn and send you, let us remember that it is ignorance and not allow the stones they would throw to obstruct the current, but by gentleness and dignity convert for them these very stones to bread that they have cast upon the waters—for truly they know not what they do. The conditions of life here where they differ from your own in their recognition of the need of that which is beyond all price, must not put you to a disadvantage. My husband worked here in this country during a period of some fifty years and gave his best. He would love you and your ideals. It was my great privilege to learn how I might guard & shelter him in his work from the hurts that came to the spiritual in him from both friends &. enemies. As I believe the work is all one let me think of you as his son and please take the enclosed as a token. Let it be of such use & service as I would gladly make this house whenever you are near us--and in the coming years I shall hope to put a like amount at your disposal asking you only that it may serve you & your people who are our people as well, as you find occasion. I would like to convert this cheque to a Bank order that can be used anywhere that you may be without difficulty, and can give you it in several far smaller amounts if you prefer. These will be safe as requiring your signature and better than the carrying about of money. I want to arrange it before you go to Baltimore. Believe me sincerely your obliged friend.[25]

Sara Bull

This was the beginning of Mrs. Bull's long and generous service to Swamiji's work. Nor was she to serve him only with gifts of money, but in many other ways besides, making her house available to his classes, supporting in part some of his disciples, helping his New York work during the next two years. Small gifts she also gave him, such as a mother would give a son. When he left Cambridge for Baltimore, for instance, she presented him with a nice new outfit, all in brown. There was even a brown purse as a token of good luck. On the gift card for this last she wrote:

My dearest child

This is a prosaic gift, but the handselen purse will complete in a pair of brown gloves the smartness of the brown costume. May you have many days of happy use of this outfit it has been such a pleasure & privilege to bring together. Lovingly, M.i.L. [Mother in Lord?[26]

2

The next news we have of Swamiji is of his arrival in Baltimore, Maryland, on the evening of October 12. The old city, one of the great seaports of America, had in those days a population less than that of Boston (today its population is far greater) and a gentle, Southern air about it. Its houses were built mainly of "a cheerful red brick" and its public parks were "among the most beautiful in the world"[27] But the Baltimore newspapers were about the same as those of any other city. The reporter of the American lost no time in interviewing Swamiji, and the following article, replete with various inaccuracies, appeared the day after his arrival:

A HIGH PRIEST OF INDIA 

Swami Vivekananda Arrives in Baltimore 

His Views on Religion

Swami Vivekananda, a Brahmin high priest of India, arrived in Baltimore last night, and is the guest of Rev: Walter Vrooman. He came to America over a year ago, to attend the Congress of Religions, at the World's Fair, in Chicago, and his address before that body made him one of the most popular representatives in the congress. In personal appearance, Swami Vivekananda is a picturesque character. He is about five and a half feet tall and heavily built, weighing probably 225 pounds. His skin is dark, but it is the shade peculiar to the Asiatic races. His face is round and plump, and his head is crowned with a wealth of jet black, wavy hair, that falls on his forehead and reaches down nearly to his eyebrows. His eyes are as black as his hair, and they are bright and sparkling, and when he smiles he displays a set of almost perfect pearly teeth. His countenance is both handsome and striking, and in addition to this, he is as good-natured and jolly as it is possible for a man to be. The garb he wore last night was rather of a clerical cut; but he carries with him a costume such as he wears among his people, in India, and it is bright with scarlet and yellow. Though but thirty three years of age, he is a profound scholar, and can fluently speak seven languages, and can read as many more. His English is beyond criticism.


To an American reporter last night Swami Vivekananda said: "I have been very favorably impressed with American institutions during my stay in this country. My time has been divided between four cities—Chicago, New York, Boston and Detroit. I never heard of Chicago when in India, but I had frequently heard of Baltimore. The main criticism I have to pass on America is that you have too little religion here. In India they have too much. I think the world would be better if some of India's surplus of religion could be sent over here, while it would be to India's profit if its people could have some of America's industrial advancement and civilization. I am a believer in all religions. I think there is truth in my religion; I think there is truth in your religion. It is the same truth in all religions applying itself through various channels to the same end. I think the great need of the world is less law, and more godly men and women."


The word "Swami" means high priest or cardinal, and indicates Vivekananda's rank, while the latter is his family name. His family record reaches back 2,000 years. He is a member of the highest caste in India, and is counted an equal of the gods of his people, to whom he is an object of worship. His religion is Hinduism. His address at the Congress of Religions at Chicago last year was a profound production, and made a great impression on all who heard or read it.


Swami Vivekananda, during his stay in America, has been studying American institutions, particularly the American mode of government. He favors the establishment in this country of an international university, where all the religions of the world can be taught, for, he thinks there is no more need of American missionaries going to India than there is of Indian missionaries coming to America.


Swami Vivekananda is a charming conversationalist. He is familiar with the works of all the great writers in a dozen different tongues, and he quotes long selection from Spencer, Darwin, Mill or others of the great philosophers with a fluency that is surprising. Tomorrow evening he will appear on the stage of the Lyceum Theater in conjunction with the three Vrooman brothers, and will deliver an address. He will wear the costume of his native country.


The three Vrooman brothers were, at the time of Swamiji's visit to Baltimore, in their early twenties; yet the career of each was already varied. The three—Walter, Hiram, and Carl belonged to a family of five energetic boys, all of whom were, among other things, ministers. Three were Congregationalists, one was a Baptist, and another, Hiram, first a Congregationalist and later a Swedenborgian.


A story is told of the boyhood of Hiram and an older brother, perhaps Walter, which is illustrative of the Vrooman gift for enterprise. When they were respectively twelve and fourteen years old, Hiram and his brother, being in delicate health, were sent by their parents from their home in Kansas to one of the western springs so popular in those days as panaceas for young and old. It appears, however, that Hiram and his brother had small use for the springs, for shortly, having met a pedlar of a remarkable soap guaranteed to remove all stains, the boys, who evidently had money for their cure, bought out his stock, bought also the secret of manufacture, and forthwith proceeded to peddle soap. Starting on an itinerant enterprise, manufacturing the "Lightning Cleaner" and selling it along the road, they worked their way to Denver, Colorado. There, tired of peddling, and finding the Denver Exposition in progress, they invested their earnings in peanuts and opened a peanut stand. The peanut business flourished; Hiram and his brother cleared enough not only to pay all their expenses from the time they had left home, but to send two hundred dollars, a sizable amount in those days, to their parents, who by this time must surely have been at their wits' end. But the Vrooman boys were not through adventuring. They left Denver and, presumably cured by now of whatever had ailed them, embarked upon a lecture tour. The elder, who was then fifteen, lectured on phrenology, and Hiram, thirteen, acted as advance agent.


The story reads like the true American adventure story, and it could have happened, of course, only in nineteenth-century America, when the country was a vast playground and where opportunity was waiting even for small boys. But adventure never seemed to come to an end for the Vrooman brothers. It is true that, after their lecture tour, the two boys returned to Kansas and soberly went to school. Hiram later took a special course at Harvard and then became a news paperman, working as editor and reporter on a New York daily. He soon abandoned this course of action, however, in favor of theological studies and shortly entered the Congregational Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, as a minister. This was not to last long. He began to study the doctrine of the Swedenborgians and in 1893, when he visited Baltimore to officiate temporarily at the Associate Reformed Church, was invited to occupy the pulpit of the New Jerusalem, or Swedenborgian, Church. He accepted this post and was still holding it when the Vrooman brothers invited Swamiji to Baltimore to be their guest.


Unless Walter Vrooman was the elder of the pair of adventuresome boys who peddled soap, we know little of his career prior to Swamiji's visit to Baltimore. It is said, however, that in 1886, when he must have been still in his teens, he made his reputation as a political speaker in Henry George's campaign for mayor of New York. In 1894 he was on the staff of the Arena magazine and was also pastor of the People's Congregation in Baltimore, which held weekly meetings at the Lyceum theater.


Carl Vrooman, the youngest of the brothers, was twenty-one at the time of Swamiji's visit and was still studying for the ministry. A bright boy, he had taken all the highest oratorical honors attainable in American colleges and was president of the Intercollegiate Debating Union of America.


Although the Vrooman brothers seemed to be preoccupied with religion, their interest was primarily centered in politics. The three young men zealously crusaded for the People's Party, the platform of which included many long-needed reforms such as: "The abolition of 'child labor' and the 'sweating system' by federal statute", also, "Government ownership of all monopolies, both natural and unnatural." The Vrooman brothers' meetings on "Dynamic Religion" were avowedly political campaigns, dynamic religion being to them identical with progressive political action. It was typical of their enterprising spirit that they invited so unfailing a drawing card to speak with them as Swamiji, the famous and "dynamic" Hindu monk. We do not know at present, however, what induced Swamiji to accept their invitation, nor, for that matter, how the Vroomans contacted him. It would appear that they did so while he was staying with Mrs. Bull, for as late as October 5 he had written to Mrs. Hale, "I will be with Mrs. Ole Bull a few days and then I go to New York to Mrs. Guernsey."[28] Possibly the Vroomans had managed to meet Swamiji in Cambridge and lured him to Baltimore with talk of plans for an international university—a project which was dear to his heart. The Vrooman vitality and forthrightness may also have appealed to him, for the brothers were, to say the least, spirited. He may also have welcomed this opportunity to visit new and important cities in the United States. But in any event, nothing would have induced Swamiji to go anywhere against the divine guidance he constantly felt. As he had written to Mrs. Hale in connection with this trip: "I am in His Hands:'[29]


There was much to be desired, however, in the Vrooman hospitality. The brothers not only put up Swamiji at a hotel, a breach of manners which for one reason or another may have been unavoidable, but made no advance arrangements for him. Young though they were, the Vrooman brothers were not without experience and must have been well aware that racial prejudice existed in Baltimore; they must also have been aware that their guest, whose skin was dark, would be treated with distrust and rudeness by undiscriminating hotel clerks. Yet, on Swamiji's arrival in Baltimore, the Reverend Walter Vrooman conducted him to one third-rate hotel after another, only to have him turned away. Of this incident Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Bull: "You need not be sorry on account of the ill-treatment I received at the hands of a low class hotel-keeper at Baltimore. It was the fault of the Vrooman Brothers. Why should they take me to a low hotel?'[30] It would seem that accommodations had finally been found at a hotel near the railway station, where Swamiji stayed overnight. The following morning Rev. Hiram Vrooman took him at last to the Hotel Rennert, one of the best hotels in Baltimore, and there, without more ado, engaged a room for him. A waggish reporter from the Baltimore News, who evidently had been trailing along during the transfer from one hotel to the other, wrote an article in which one sees Swamiji accepting cheerfully whatever came his way—including the reporter himself. The following interview, if one may call it that, appeared in the News on Saturday evening, October 13:


PRIEST SWAMI IN TOWN.
A HIGH CASTE HINDOO VISITING IN BALTIMORE.

His Gorgeous Garb Attracts Much Attention

in the Lobby at the Rennert—He Whistles and Indulges in

East Indian Wit—He Comes to Baltimore on a Tour of the Country and Will 

Speak at the Lyceum Tomorrow Night.


Swami Vivekananda, High Priest of the Hindoos, walked into the lobby of the Hotel Rennert this forenoon attired in a flaming red cloak and a gaudy yellow turban that made him the centre of all eyes.


Swami has just come to Baltimore. He arrived last night and put up at an inn near the station, where they invited him to eat salt with them. He is a fleshy man of the swarthy, Asiatic complexion and shiny-black hair. He has white teeth, which he shows a great deal in his frequent smiles.


He will speak tomorrow night at the Lyceum Theatre in conjunction with the Vrooman brothers, who are delivering a series of Sunday-night lectures on "Religion in Motion: '


The High Priest went to the Rennert with the Rev. Hiram Vrooman and was introduced at once to the clerk, to whom he did humble obeisance and who handed him a pen. Swami writes best in Sanskrit, but, as the Rennert clerk is a little rusty on his Sanskrit conjugations, the Hindoo put down his name in readable English characters. He was shown to his room by one of an admiring group of porters who had assembled and gave audience there in the flaming red cloak to a reporter for The News.


Easily Approached.

The High Priest is a very approachable sort of person. One could almost slap him on the back the way they do Governor Brown and inquire how things are over in India. But they don't slap Swami on the back at home. There he is a very superior person of the very highest cast, who always gets complimentary tickets to the theatre and is entreated to lend the use of his name as a patron for swell society events in Bombay and as a member of the board of directors for all the county fairs they hold up in the hill country. Swami is a great man.


He is a member of a class of priests that are adored by the people of India. There are over 100,000 of his class in India, but that is not so many in a country of 300,000,000 people who are devoted in their religious life. It is proper to state that when Swami came to Baltimore he paid his fare, but he never pays at home. He goes to the railroad station and stands waiting. Pretty soon some devotee who has his eyes on standing in with the gods buys a ticket and gives it to Swami. Then Swami goes on his journey. If President Mayer and Magnate Pullman want to get solid with the gods of the Hindoos now is their chance.


His Idea of Humor

Swami Vivekananda has the sense of humor about him. He was talking this morning about the Food Show, which he intends to visit. He says he doesn't know much about food except to swallow it, and that is a very representative specimen of the wit of Ormus and of Ind.


Another time he spoke of women's rights and said laughingly that women had more rights the world over than they were credited with having. When he changed his black coat, before going to the Rennert, and put on the cardinal red garment with the yellow turban he came out of his room smiling, and said:


"A transformation!"

The High Priest can whistle and has enough music in his soul to start the tunes in class-meeting if he were Methodist instead of Hindoo. He whistled a couple of strains in his room this morning for a reporter of The News. It was not "Daisy Bell" nor yet "Sweet Marie," and must have been some sort of a heathen Hindoo jingle.


His Philosophical Side

This is how Swami Vivekananda is funny. There is the ponderous side of him that deals of philosophy and sociology, of the mysteries of existence, of the eternities past and the eternities to come, of the essence of spirit and the unfoldings of destiny, of musty lore and ancient tradition. Swami revels in these things and spends much of his time meditating on them. He is highly educated in English and Sanskrit and speaks English with only a slight brogue, hardly worse than if he hailed from Cork instead of Calcutta. He is a person of theory and does not exhibit much acquaintance with practical realities. He has spent most of his life in study and meditation, waiting for the neighbors to bring in something for dinner, and, thanks to the superstition of the Hindoos, he has never gone hungry to bed.


Swami has been in America ever since the World's Fair, where he spoke for Hindooism in the Parliament of Religions. He remembers Cardinal Gibbons, who opened the parliament, and will probably pay his respects to His Eminence before leaving Baltimore.

Views on Topics of the Day

Swami is traveling around the country, as he says, lecturing and studying American institutions, but he seems not to have got much into the pith of American sociology, for he knows nothing of such questions as European immigration, divorce, the race problem, etc., which are worrying the economists of the land.


He is, however, posted on Oriental immigration, and says the United States has no right to bar out the Chinese. He says the law of love must prevail and force must yield. He predicts the downfall of any nation that uses force. He says also that the United States should open his doors to the world. He believes the Southern part of the continent should be filled with Hindoos and Chinese.


"There is no such thing as divorce in India," he said; "our law does not allow it. Our women are more limited in their sphere than the women of America. Some of them are as highly educated. They are entering the medical profession to some extent now. I see no reason why American women should not vote."


He evaded a question as to the position of Hindoo women in their homes and their treatment by their husbands. It may be that he does not know much about it. He is not a married man. Priests of his caste do not marry.


He mentioned two things which he said had impressed him in America. One was the absence of poverty in the country at large, and the other was the unusual prevalence of ignorance in the South.

Likes the Elevator

When he went to the elevator at the Rennert he said:


"There is an American institution which we do not have to any extent in India. I like it very much: '


A lady was just coming off the elevator. She was somewhat startled by the red and yellow costume of the priest, but his imperturbable countenance gave no sign of consciousness of the attention he attracted.


His address tomorrow night at the Lyceum will be mainly introductory of himself and explanatory of the Hindoo nation. He will speak briefly, but will remain in Baltimore and speak more at length a week from tomorrow night.


(It may have been in particular connection with this article that Swamiji was to write to "G. G: ' on January 11, 1895:


Anent the newspaper reports, you may take them very cautiously. For if a reporter is not admitted to an interview he goes out and writes all the fabulous nonsense he can. So you get all this Baltimore nonsense. I myself do not know how the fellows got all that stuff. American newspapers write anything they like about anybody! ! ![31]


The next we know, a reporter from the Sunday Herald found Swamiji seated with majestic calm in the hotel lobby. It will be seen from the following article, which appeared in the Sunday Herald of October 14, 1894, that despite their ineptness as hosts and despite the fact that Hiram Vrooman was under the impression that Swamiji was a Buddhist priest, the brothers held their guest in high esteem.

A WISE MAN AMONG US

Visit of a Distinguished Hindoo Priest to This City

He is a Guest of the Vrooman Brothers and Is 

Interested in the Establishment of an International

University of Religions—His Gorgeous Garb.


Seated in the main lobby of the Hotel Rennert yesterday afternoon was a personage clad in maroon dressing-gown, bound with a red sash. His face was dark, and mystically dignified, its lineaments expressive at once of both intellectuality and sentiment. His complexion was a deep olive, his eyes large, black and luminous, his hair black as midnight, his brow a study for the physiognomist. Taken all in all, his head was such a one as would delight the believer in phrenology.


The man was Swami Vivecananda, the Brahmin high priest, whose arrival has created such a furore in local religious circles. He was the observed of all observers. In his hand he held a copy of a leading magazine, which he was perusing with interest. Mr. Vivecananda conversed with a SUNDAY HERALD reporter, speaking English with ease and with an accent similar to that of an educated Italian. He displayed the greatest familiarity with the institutions of this country, religious, political and social.


Mr. Vivecananda came to Baltimore at the invitation of the Vrooman brothers, Hiram, Carl and Walter, and while in this city will be their guest. Rev. Hiram Vrooman was seen at his residence, 1122 North Calvert Street, yesterday, and talked freely in reference to the visit of the distinguished guest.


"Mr. Vivecananda," he said, "is one of the most intelligent men I have ever met. He came to this city at our invitation, and while here will confer with us in reference to the founding of the international university, which it is proposed to establish as an outcome of the World's Congress of Religions, which was such an interesting feature of the World's Fair. This university is one of Mr. Vivecananda's pet ideas, and has the full sympathy of myself and my brothers, and also a number of gentlemen of wealth and position, including several religions. Among its promoters are members of the Roman Catholic and Hebrew religions. The idea of the university is education in general religion.


"When founded its head will be one of the most distinguished educators in this country, and its faculty will include professors selected from all religions. Mr. Vivecananda was sent to this country by the ecclesiastics of the Buddhist religion in India to study our religious and political systems. His expenses are paid by the ecclesiastical authorities of the Buddhist faith. He was its representative at the World's Congress. One of Mr. Vivecananda's ideas in the establishing of the university is that it may serve to educate a superior kind of missionary for work in India. While he is steadfast to his own religious belief, he wishes that the present system of sending ignorant men as missionaries to India may be discontinued and men sent there who can teach the Christian religion from an elevated standpoint. In this wish he is animated only by a desire for the good of general religion.


"He is one of the widest-informed men on religious topics I ever knew. It maybe of interest to Roman Catholics to know that he was the first man to translate the works of Thomas a'Kempis, the great theologian of their faith, the favorite philosopher of Pope Leo, into the Sanscrit tongue. He carries a volume of the works of St. Thomas with him constantly.


"Mr. Vivecananda told me that his father was a great believer in the Lord Jesus, as he called Him, and that when a boy he had read in the Gospel of St. John the thrilling description of the crucifixion of the Savior and wept over it. He will remain in this city for several weeks. Tomorrow evening he will deliver a brief address at our meeting at the Lyceum, and on Sunday week will speak at length at our second meeting on the university plan.


"I can say relative to the university that it is to be located near Boston, and that a meeting to give it definite shape will be held soon. Mr. Vivecananda will not leave this country until it is established. He does not receive money from any one or eat meat, both being against the laws governing this caste. Before becoming a priest he had studied English law in India: '


As has been said, the Vrooman brothers may have used the project of the international university to lure Swamiji to Baltimore, but as far as can be learned from the newspaper reports, which are fairly complete, the Sunday meetings were not remotely concerned with "the university plan." "As for the Thomas a Kempis business," Swamiji wrote to Alasinga, to whom he had probably sent this clipping, "it is also news to me."[32] (It is true, of course, that in 1889 he had translated six chapters of the Imitation of Christ into Bengali, and also true that when in India he had at times carried with him a volume of that work.)


On Sunday, October 14, Swamiji spoke---or, as it was said, assisted the Vrooman brothers at the first of their meetings. Both the Baltimore American and the Baltimore Sun of October 15 reported on the affair in articles that read, respectively, as follows:

LESS DOCTRINE, MORE BREAD

The Words of the High Priest of India
A Meeting at the Lyceum

The Lyceum Theater was crowded last night at the first of a series of meetings by the Vrooman Brothers. The subject discussed was "Dynamic Religion." The story of David and Goliath was discussed by Rev. Hiram Vrooman, Mr. Carl Vrooman and Rev. Walter Vrooman. In the course of his remarks, Rev. Hiram Vrooman said the most popular preachers today were generally those who manifest the greatest ingenuity in arranging the lights in the heavens without disturbing the darkness that is gathered over the church pews and over the city. "We are," said he, "in a crisis of the world's history. If shot and shell were breaking the air and brass bands playing war marches, I would not be a particle more interested in what daily transpires than I am now in these times of apparent peace, when the great movements are developing which are to bless or curse the millions of our race who are yet to live."


Mr. Carl Vrooman followed. In the course of his remarks, he said: "What we need is less of that cowardice which calls itself humility, and less of that trust which lolls in luxurious piety, while Lazarus and his million brothers are starving and sinning within easy reach, trusting that in his own good time and way God will provide. " 


Rev. Walter Vrooman said: "Dynamic religion means religion in motion, and is opposed to that religion at rest which is locked up in the hundreds of huge stone buildings scattered throughout our cities, during the whole week, with the exception of a couple of hours, during which time the people are allowed to go in and nibble at it as though it had a sort of medicinal effect in easing the pains caused by conscience."


Swami Vivekananda, the high priest from India, was the last speaker. He spoke briefly, and was listened to with marked attention. His English and his mode of delivery were excellent. There is a foreign accent to his syllables, but not enough to prevent him from being plainly understood. He was dressed in the costume of his native country, which was decidedly picturesque. He said he could speak but briefly after the oratory that had preceded him, but he could add his endorsement to all that had been said. He had traveled a great deal, and preached to all kinds of people. He had found that the particular kind of doctrine preached made little difference. What is wanted is practical sort of work. If such ideas could not be carried out, he would lose his faith in humanity. The cry all over the world is "less doctrine and more bread." He thought the sending of missionaries to India all right; he had no objections to offer, but he thought it would be better to send fewer men and more money. So far as India was concerned, she had religious doctrine to spare. Living up to the doctrines was needed more than more doctrines. The people of India, as well as the people all over the world, had been taught to pray, but prayer with the lips was not enough; people should pray with their hearts. "A few people in the world," he said, "really try to do good. Others look on and applaud, and think that they themselves have done great good. Life is love, and when a man ceases to do good to others, he is dead spiritually. "


On Sunday evening next Swami Vivekananda will make the address of the evening at the Lyceum.

THE VROOMAN BROTHERS

They Expound Religion of Action at the 
Lyceum Theatre

Assisted by Swami Vivekananda

The Last Mentioned is a Hindoo High Priest Who Is 

Travelling through the  United States-Commending

The Action of Dr. Parkhurst in New York

Dynamic religion, or religion of action, was expounded in addresses last night at the Lyceum Theatre by Rev. Hiram Vrooman, Rev. Walter Vrooman and Mr. Carl Vrooman.


The three are brothers. Rev. Hiram Vrooman is pastor of New Jerusalem Church, Baltimore. Rev. Walter Vrooraan is a member of the Arena Magazine staff. Mr. Carl Vrooman is president of the Intercollegiate Debating Union, and was last year winner in the debate for the championship between Harvard and Yale Universities.


Swami Vivekananda, a Hindoo high priest, added his testimony to that of the other speakers in urging the necessity of more practice and less preaching in overcoming evil.


The theatre was crowded with an audience which showed appreciation of the address and evident sympathy with their object by earnest attention and frequent applause.


Vivekananda was one of the delegates to the World's Congress of Religions last year at Chicago. He has since been traveling about the United States, studying American customs and institutions. He wears a costume of a bright red cloak and yellow turban, with a long streamer hanging down his back. He speaks fluently in English.


On account of his bronze skin Vivekananda had a little difficulty securing hotel accommodations when he arrived in Baltimore on Saturday. Rev. Walter Vrooman took him to four hotels before he was accepted as a guest at the Rennert.

Doctrines Enough.

Vivekananda sat on the stage last night with imperturbable stolidity until it came his turn to speak. Then his manner changed and he spoke with force and feeling. He followed the Vrooman brothers and said there was little to add to what had been said save his testimony as a "man from the Antipodes: '


"We have doctrines enough, " he continued. "What we want now is practical work as presented in these speeches. When asked about the missionaries sent to India I reply all right. But we want money more and men less. India has bushels full of doctrines and to spare. What is wanted is the means to carry them out.


"Prayer may be done in different ways. Prayer with the hands is yet higher than prayer with the lips and is more saving.


"All religions teach us to do good for our brothers. Doing good is nothing extraordinary—it is the only way to live. Everything in nature tends to expansion for life and contraction for death. It is the same in religion. Do good by helping others without ulterior motives. The moment this ceases contraction and death follow."

Goliath in Baltimore

Rev. Hiram Vrooman opened the meeting by reading the story of David and Goliath.


"The same identical armies that are described in this story," he said, "are encamped now upon the hills of Baltimore. Every day Goliath comes out of the Philistine camp and proclaims his mockeries against the altruistic teachings of Jesus. Twenty-one hundred saloons, with their train of ruined homes and blasted lives, produce the spectacle of his grinning face, and ill-gotten gold, the product of fraud, is his armour...."


The Reverend Hiram Vrooman, and, later, Walter and Carl Vrooman, went on in this vein at some length. And although Swamiji listened with "imperturbable stolidity," the present readers need not be burdened with the Vrooman orations regarding the corruption in Baltimore politics in 1894.


It was sometime during the following week that Swamiji received the news of the Calcutta Meeting, which came to him in a bundle of Indian mail, forwarded by Mrs. Hale to Cambridge and by Mrs. Bull to Baltimore. To the former he wrote a short undated note:

1123 Saint Paul Street

Baltimore

Dear Mother

You see where I am now. Did you see a telegram from India in the Chicago Tribune? Did they print the address from Calcutta? From here I go to Washington—from thence to Philadelphia & then to New York. Send me  the address of Miss Mary in Philadelphia so that I may look in on my way to N.Y. Hope your worry is over.

Yours aff'ly'[33]
Vivekananda

To Mrs. Bull Swamiji wrote from the same address (whose it was we do not know) on October 17:


Dear Mrs. Bull.

I could not find time earlier to write you. I was so incessantly knocking about. We had a nice meeting last Sunday at Baltimore and going to have one more next Sunday. Of course they do not financially help me a bit but as I promised to help them and like the idea I speak for them.


The letters you sent over from India was an address sent over to me from Calcutta by my fellow citizens for my work here and a number of newspaper cuttings. I will send them on to you later.


Yesterday I went to see Washington and met Mrs Colvill and Miss Young who were very kind to me.

I am going to speak at Washington again and then will go over to Philadelphia and from there to New York.

Your affectionate Son'[34]
Vivekananda

As far as we know at present, Swamiji's jaunt to Washington (an hour's train ride from Baltimore) on October 16 was purely for sightseeing, not to keep a lecture engagement. He must have visited the Capitol, the White House, the Washington Monument, and many another historic landmark. He does not say how he liked it all, but presumably he did, for in those leisurely days of carriages and unblighted grandeur the city was impressive and gleaming. It was said by a contemporary traveler, who voiced the general view, that "no more beautiful city [could] be found in the States, pleasing alike from the beauty of its streets and parks, the architectural proportions of its massive and many public buildings, and the numerous statues and hundreds of other objects that interest the traveller.[35] We do not know whether or not Swamiji stayed overnight in the capital city, but in any event, he was soon to return for a longer visit.


Meanwhile, the second meeting of the Vrooman brothers was held in Baltimore on Sunday, October 2 . On this occasion Swamiji was the main speaker, and it was perhaps natural, in view of the brothers' preoccupation with "Goliath," that he should speak of Buddha, who discovered the very root of all evil, all suffering. The following report (from which the talks of the Vroomans have here been omitted) appeared in the Morning Herald of October 22:


BUDDHA'S HIGH PRIEST

He Speaks to 3,000 People at the Lyceum

Second of the Vrooman Brothers' Meetings in the 

Interest Of "Dynamic Religion"—The Judiciary and

How It Should be Maintained.

An audience which filled the Lyceum Theatre from pit to dome assembled last night at the second of the series of meetings held by the Vrooman Brothers in the interest of "Dynamic Religion." Fully 3,000 persons were present.


Half of the assembly were ladies. The interest was maintained throughout, and in several instances the remarks of the speakers were greeted with applause. Addresses were made by the Rev. Hiram Vrooman, Rev. Walter Vrooman and Rev. Swarri Vivekananda, the Brahmin High Priest now visiting this city. The speakers of the evening were seated on the stage, the Rev. Vivekananda being an object of particular interest to all.


He wore a yellow turban and a red robe tied in at the waste [sic] with a sash of the same color, which added to the Oriental cast of his features and invested him with a peculiar interest. His personality seemed to be the feature of the evening. His address was delivered in an easy, unembarrassed manner, his diction being perfect and his accent similar to that of a cultured member of the Latin race familiar with the English language. He said in part:


The High Priest Speaks

"Buddha began to found the religion of India 600 years before the birth of Christ. He found the religion of India at that time mainly engaged in eternal discussions upon the nature of the human soul. There was no remedy according to the ideas then prevailing for the cure of religious ills but sacrifices of animals, sacrificial altars and similar methods.


"In the midst of this system a priest was born who was a member of one of the leading families who was the founder of Buddhism. His was, in the first place, not the founding of a new religion, but a movement of reformation. He believed in the good of all. His religion, as formulated by him, consisted of the discovery of three things: First, 'There is an evil'; second, 'What is the cause of this evil?' 'This he ascribed to the desires of men to be superior to others, an evil that could be cured by unselfishness. Third, 'This evil is curable by becoming unselfish.' Force, he concluded, could not cure it; dirt cannot wash dirt; hate cannot cure hate.


"This was the basis of his religion. So long as society tries to cure human selfishness by laws and institutions whose aim is to force others to do good to their neighbors, nothing can be done. The remedy is not to place trick against trick and force against force. The only remedy is in making unselfish men and women. You may enact laws to cure present evils, but they will be of no avail.


"Buddha found in India too much talking about God and His essence and too little work. He always insisted upon this fundamental truth, that we are to be pure and holy, and that we are to help others to be holy also. He believed that man must go to work and help others; find his soul in others; find his life in others. He believed that in the conjunction [sic] of doing good to others is the only good we do ourselves. He believed that there was always in the world too much theory and too little practice. A dozen Buddhas in India at the present time would do good, and one Buddha in this country would also be beneficial.


"When there is too much doctrine, too much belief in my father's religion, too much rational superstition, a change is needed. Such doctrine produces evil, and a reformation is necessary."


At the conclusion of Mr. Vivekananda's address there was a hearty burst of applause.


The Baltimore News of October 22 also reported on the meeting, giving abundant space to the long-winded, electioneering Vrooman brothers. The report of the Baltimore American, however, is more to our purpose: evidently not of the same political persuasion as the brothers, it pointedly gave no space to them at all. Of Swamiji's talk, on the other hand, it wrote more intelligibly than did the News:

THE RELIGION OF BUDDHA

Swami Vivekananda's Address at the Lyceum Theater

The Lyceum Theater was crowded to the doors last night at the second meeting of the series conducted by the Vrooman brothers on "Dynamic Religion." Swami Vivekananda, of India, made the principal address. He spoke on the Buddhist religion, and told of the evils which existed among the people of India at the time of the birth of Buddha. The social inequalities in India, he said, were at that period a thousand times greater than any where else in the world. "Six hundred years before Christ," he  continued, "the priesthood of India exercised great influence over the minds of the people, and between the upper and nether millstone of intellectuality and learning the people were ground. Buddhism, which is the religion of more than two-thirds of the human family, was not founded as an entirely new religion, but rather as a reformation which carried off the corruption of the times. Buddha seems to have been the only prophet who did everything for others and absolutely nothing for himself. He gave up his home and all the enjoyments of life to spend his days in search of the medicine for the terrible disease of human misery. In an age when men and priests were discussing the essence of the deity, he discovered what people had overlooked, that misery existed. The cause of evil is our desire to be superior to others and our selfishness. The moment that the world becomes unselfish all evil will vanish. So long as society tries to cure evil by laws and institutions, evil will not be cured. The world has tried this method ineffectually for thousands of years. Force against force never cures, and the only cure for evil is unselfishness. We need to teach people to obey the laws rather than to make more laws. Buddhism was the first missionary religion of the world, but it was one of the teachings of Buddhism not to antagonize any other religion. Sects weaken their power for good by making war on each other. " Revs. Hiram and Walter Vrooman also spoke.


3

On October 22 or 23 Swamiji left Baltimore for Washington, where he stayed as the guest of Mrs. Enoch Totten, "an influential lady here," as he wrote to Mrs. Bull, "and a metaphysician."[36]Mrs. Totten was a niece of a Miss Howe, a friend of the Hales. In Washington Swamiji also made many acquaintances through Miss Emma Thursby, who had often sung in that city and had many friends there. Among the people to whom she gave Swamiji letters of introduction was Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, widow of the mining magnate, Senator George Hearst, and mother of William Randolph Hearst, then a young, comparatively unknown San Francisco newspaperman. Mrs. Hearst, whom Swamiji was to meet again several years later in California, was well known in her own right as a philanthropist, donating freely to many causes and institutions, among which was Greenacre. On October 23, 1894, Mrs. Hearst wrote from Washington to Miss Thursby.


I should indeed be most happy to meet Swami Vive Kananda— and, in fact, any one in whom you are especially interested—but, being so short a time in Washington, I cannot speak positively with regard to what his success might be if he should come here now.


Most of the people who would be interested in his work are away, as they return to this city later than they do either to Boston or New York. However, if he should come to Washington, I hope you will not fail to give him a card to me. I should be greatly pleased to meet him, but am sorry to say that I think the present a most unfavorable time for him to address the Washington people.[37]


Miss Thursby did not fail to give Swamiji a letter of introduction to Mrs. Hearst, as well as to other of her Washington friends. The following short note from Swamiji, which, together with the above, has been found among Miss Thursby's papers, is undated but it was almost certainly written from Washington; and among the ladies he refers to was, as certainly, Mrs. Hearst:


Dear Miss Thursby

I received your kind note and the introductory letters. I will make it a point to see the ladies and hope to be benefited much by it.

I had a beautiful letter from Mr. Flagg. I am soon coming to N.Y. where I hope to see you.

With my deepest love & gratitude

I remain yours fly[38]
Vivekananda

Despite Mrs. Hearst's pessimistic outlook, Swamiji seems to have enjoyed his visit in Washington. "The American women, as everywhere, came to my rescue,"[39]he wrote to Mrs. Bull on October 27 in connection, specifically, with the racial prejudice he encountered in Southern cities. But in all respects it was always the women of America who knew how to care for him. "I am almost at my wit's end to see the women of this country!" he wrote in amazement to his brother disciples. "They take me to the shops and everywhere, as if I were a child."[40] And there seemed always to be some motherly and capable woman to care for him in every city in which he stayed. In Washington there was Mrs. Totten, from whose house at 1708 West I Street he wrote to Isabelle the following undated letter, postmarked October 26:


Dear Sister:

Excuse my long silence but I have been regularly writing to mother church. I am sure you are all enjoying this nice cool weather. I am enjoying Baltimore and Washington very much. I will go hence to Philadelphia. I thought Miss Mary was in Philadelphia and so I wanted her address. But as she is in some other place near Philadelphia I do not want to give her the trouble to come up to see me as mother church says.


The lady with whom I am staying is Mrs. Totten a niece of Miss Howe. I will be her guest more than a week yet so you may write to me to her care.


I intend going over to England this winter somewhere in January or February. A lady from London with whom one of my friends is staying has sent an invitation to me to go over as her guest and from India they are urging me every day to come back.


How did you like Pitoo in the cartoon? Do not show it to anybody. It is too bad of our people to caricature Pitoo that way.


I long ever so much to hear from you but take a little more care to make your letter just a bit more distinct. Do not be angry for the suggestion.

Your ever loving brother'[41]
Vivekananda


The lady from London who invited Swamiji to be her guest was Miss Henrietta Muller, a member of the Theosophical Conference at the World's Parliament of Religions. Swamiji's friend who was staying with her was Akshay Kumar Ghosh, a young Hindu whom Miss Muller had adopted a year or so earlier and whom she was now sending to law school at Cambridge. It had been, actually, Akshay Ghosh who had written to Swamiji on Miss Muller's behalf. "Akshay Kumar Ghosh is in London," he wrote to Alasinga on October 27. "He sent a beautiful invitation from London to come to Miss Muller's. And I hope I am going in January or February next."[42] This was at the time a fairly definite plan; Swamiji was again tired of America, of lecturing, of publicity. "How I long to give up this life of weariness and blazoning day and night," he wrote to Mrs. Hale on the same day. "I will go from here to New York and will come back to see you in Chicago before I start for England.'[43] But all this was to be changed. Swamiji was himself aware that his plans made in the fall of 1894 were only tentative. Even in his letter of October 27 to Alasinga he wrote, "I am doing here exactly what I used to do in India. Always depending on the Lord and making no plans ahead.'"44]


In answer to this letter, in which he had written in an unpublished portion; "By this time you must have received my other letters. You must excuse me for certain harshness of tone sometimes, and you know full well how I love you all," Swamiji's Madras disciples wrote on November 29 a joint reply, the following excerpts from which show their deep and touching love for their absent Guru. G. G. Narasimhacharya, of whom Swamiji once wrote, "G. G.'s nature is of the emotional type," contributed the first section, Alasinga the second, and Kidi (Singaravelu Mudaliar, a professor of science in Madras) the third:


Beloved Swamiji,

Your last letter from Washington to hand. Your Baltimore tour we hope will be more effective to the satisfaction of Rev Mr Vrooman. Some of the hostels might have been a little cold at the beginning but we hope that it is all for good; but we believe Baltimore will appreciate you better.


Your last letter seemed to us not to have been written in your usual mood. There is more of exhaustion visible in it. So far as we are concerned we do not very much complain about your long stay in America for we sincerely feel that that land has afforded you a large and suitable field for the message of the Lord. It was there that all the priests of different religions heard first the message of the Lord, it was there the message was appreciated and reverenced.


You teach us to depend upon nobody, to have faith in ourselves, but it does not prohibit our loving you who first taught us the potency of love, by loving us with the true spiritual love, and thus widening our mind. Nothing can be harsh from you, nor anything too much from you. Hitherto the only bond that knit a few of us together was that of the material gravitation, of the flesh, but now we feel the existence of another elastic chord which is capable of binding together the whole universe within its sweet and exhilarating grip and which is only hidden for all external appearance. To some of us at least, it is Vivekananda. You do not care for anything of the world. You are now in America, you know the Americans and you love them, but we are still of the world, we know not anything of the outside world and so we might in our over anxiety for you write or do something nonsensical; but the only way in which we console ourselves is by thinking as Kidi would put it, "Whatever is, is right" In spite of all our efforts and in spite of all that we imagine we can [do,] we are at times led to feel that we are the blind in a forest, an empty vessel in a stormy sea, a kite without the flying string. And so we appeal to you now and then. No! We can not go anywhere else even though you spurn us away—We cannot but stick to you like bur. Do you not love us—Are we not still ignorant children, in need of a guide? How can we rest till we see the Lord? I am afraid I am growing stupid and troublesome.


I already alluded in our last letters to you that everything that you do there rebounds to India with a greater force. Everybody here now feels Religion in the air. Some of the missionaries here the friends of the degraded Heathen just now seem to have risen from their dream, and feel the atmosphere insalubrious and after wisely tracing everything home to you, have begun to hurl their lances at you from here across the seas. Alasinga sent you by the last a review of an article by a missionary one Hudson in the Sian College magazine. The same votary of Christ has launched another letter in the Calcutta "Statesman ", which purports to say that the appreciation of Vivekananda by the Americans was chiefly due to his flowing robe and orange turban. The Editor of the "Madras Times," a European, has reviewed it in an editorial which is herewith sent.

The sashtanga pranamas of all our Madras friends to Swamiji.

Very affectionately ever Swamiji
G. G. Narasimhacharya

Dear Swamiji,

Being too deeply immersed in college work I allowed myself the privilege of not writing my lengthy letter this week for which I have no doubt you will excuse me as it has been much better done this week by G. G. However much we may strive to believe that in the present Religious Revival we have had a hand we find that the conviction won't grow in us. We have done absolutely nothing. The credit is all due to the spiritual fire that is within you. You want us to move on. Much as we feel for the very exhaustive work you have been doing, we feel we are helpless to do anything to relieve you even for a time. Your return to India will serve a double advantage. It will perhaps enable you to take rest as well as continue your work in your mother-country. I send you herewith a leader that appeared in a European Daily here reviewing a missionary's criticism on your exposition of Hinduism referred to by G. G. Please don't fail to inform us before you leave America for England, and give directions to our letters being directed to you in England. Time forbids me from writing more. Dr., Kidi and all other friends send their pranams to you.

Very affly yours
M C Alasinga

I am sorry to inform you that there is a rumour here that Bhattacharji [Mr. Manmatha Bhattacharya, to whom Swamiji had written from Annisquam] has been transferred to Calcutta. The gap in Madras society cannot at all be filled up. Perhaps he has done his work in Madras that of introducing you to Madras.

MCA

Accept my adoration of your love.'[45]

Kidi

(It might be noted here that Swamiji's brother monks also wrote to him about the doings of "one Hudson," to which he answered "I have no need to reply to what a Mr. Hudson has spoken against me. In the first place, it is unnecessary, and secondly, I shall be bringing myself down to the level of people of Mr. Hudson's type. Are you mad? Shall I fight from here with one Mr. Hudson? Through the Lord's grace, people who are far above Mr. Hudson in rank listen to me with veneration: ')


Swamiji had not intended to lecture in Washington until a week or so after his arrival. His first two scheduled lectures, to be given at the Metzerott Music Hall, were announced in the Evening Star of October 27:

Swami Vivekananda.

The Great High Priest of India

Two Famous Discourses,

Thursday, Nov. 1, "KARMAX!"

Tuesday, Nov. 6, Gods [God] of All Nations

It so happened, however, that before Swamiji delivered his discourse on "Karmax!" (in the Washington Times, "Kan Ax!"), which turned out to be a lecture on Reincarnation, he spoke twice on Sunday, October 28. Of his Sunday morning talk the Washington Evening Post commented:

RELIGION IN THE HEART

At the People's Church yesterday morning Vive Kananda, the Brahmin monk, delivered an address, in which he emphasized the truth that religion is not in books, nor in forms, nor in sects, but in the human heart.


A lengthier and far more satisfactory report of Swamiji's Sunday morning talk appeared in the Washington Times of October 29. (See Appendix B.) And on that same day We Washington Post published the following article:

ONLY A HINDOO MONK

Vive Kananda Believes Not in the Tricks of the Yogis.

A Hindoo who is a member of no religious sect, who claims no knowledge or powers of occultism, who is not a believer in the miracles of the yogis, who never saw the Deliah [sic] Lama, and who does not think any more of him or of the other wonder workers of India than he does of the Christian missionaries who are working on the out. skirts of the masses there, but who simply announces himself as a religious student and a teacher to the world at large, is certainly something of a rarity.


This Hindoo monk or "swami," is Mr. Vive Kananda , , now the guest of Col. Enoch Totten, of this city. Mr, Kananda is booked to lecture twice in Washington within the next week and a half, but he spoke twice yesterday without special announcement, before the congregation of the People's Church in the Typographical Temple. He attended the parliament of religions in Chicago during the World's Fair, and is now touring the country, lecturing and preaching in various cities. Though a member of the parliament of religions, Mr. Kananda claims no sect, calling himself simply a Hindoo, which term he uses to indicate both race and religion. His position regarding the religion of his country would be about that of a Unitarian in this country but for the fact that the Brama Sumage [Brahmo Samaj] claim the title of Hindoo Unitarians, leaving Mr. Kananda a free lance, outside the very outer wall.

All Religions Are Good

Mr. Kananda spoke yesterday at the People's Church on the invitation of Dr. Kent, pastor of the church. His talk in the morning was a regular sermon, dealing entirely with the spiritual side of religion, and presenting the, to orthodox sects, rather original proposition that there is good in the foundation of every religion, that all religions, like languages, are descended from a common stock, and that each is good in its corporal and spiritual aspects so long as it is kept free from dogma and fossilism. The address in the afternoon was more in the form of a lecture on the Aryan race, and traced the descent of the various allied nationalities by their language, religion and customs from the common Sanskrit stock.


After the meeting, to a Post reporter Mr. Kananda said: "I claim no affiliation with any religious sect, but occupy the position of an observer, and so far as I may, of a teacher to mankind. All religion to me is good. About the higher mysteries of life and existence I can do no more than speculate, as others do. Reincarnation seems to me to be the nearest to a logical explanation for many things with which we are confronted in the realm of religion. But I do not advance it as a doctrine. It is no more than s theory at best, and is not susceptible of proof except by personal experience, and that proof is good only for the man who has it. Your experience is nothing to me, nor mine to you. I am not a believer in miracles—they are repugnant to me in matters of religion. You might bring the world tumbling down about my ears, but that would be no proof to me that there was a God, or that you worked by his agency, if there was one.

He Believes It Blindly

"I must, however, believe in a past and a hereafter as necessary to the existence of the present. And if we go on from here, we must go in other forms, and so comes my belief in reincarnation. But I can prove nothing, and any one is welcome to deprive me of the theory of reincarnation provided they will show me something better to replace it. Only up to the present I have found nothing that offers so satisfactory an explanation to me."


Mr. Kananda is a native of Calcutta, and a graduate of the government university there. He speaks English like a native, having received his university training in that tongue. He has had good opportunity to observe the contact between the natives arid the English, and it would disappoint a foreign missionary worker to hear him speak in very unconcerned style of the attempts to convert the natives. In this connection he was asked what effect the Western teaching was having on the thought of the Orient.

"Of course," he said, "no thought of any sort can come into a country without having its effect, but the effect of Christian teaching on Oriental thought is, if it exists, so small as to be imperceptible. The Western doctrines have made about as much impression there as have the Eastern doctrines here, perhaps not so much. That is, among the higher thinkers of the country. The effect of the missionary work among the masses is imperceptible. When converts are made they of course drop at once out of the native sects, but the mass of the population is so great that the converts of the missionaries have very little effect that can be seen."

The Yogis Are Jugglers

When asked whether he knew anything of the alleged miraculous performances of the yogis and adepts Mr. Kananda replied that he was not interested in miracles, and that while there were of course a great many clever jugglers in the country, their performances were tricks. Mr. Kananda said that he had seen the mango trick but once, and then by a fakir on a small scale. He held the same view about the alleged attainments of the lamas. "There is a great lack of trained, scientific, and unprejudiced observers in all accounts of these phenomena," sai he, "so that it is hard to select the false from the true. "


Mr. Kananda will remain in Washington till Thursday, when he lectures at Metzerott Hall on "Reincarnation " , and after a short visit to New York will return to speak On "Gods of all nations" on the following Tuesday. [Actually, "God of All Nations."]


As reported in the Washington Times of November 2, Swamiji did indeed lecture on "Reincarnation" as announced (see Appendix B), but "God of All Nations" was cancelled; nor did he make a short visit to New York, as was said in the above report. Rather, as we can deduce from a published letter which he wrote to Mary Hale, his plan was to lecture in Baltimore on November 2 and 5, return to Washington on November 6, and then go to Philadelphia for a few days to see Professor Wright, who was spending the winter in that city. According to notices in the Baltimore papers, Swamiji's lectures of November 2 and 5 were to be, respectively, "India and Its Religion" and "India and Its People." Both were to be given for the benefit of "the International University."


The first of these lectures Swamiji gave, and in the Baltimore News of November 3 one finds the following brief report:

Vivekananda's Lecture

Swami Vivekananda, Hindoo high priest, lectured last night at Harris' Academy of Music Concert Hall. His subject was "India and Its Religion". He explained the belief of the various Eastern religions, including his own, which is Brahminism. He ridiculed the idea of sending missionaries of so many different faiths to heathen lands, and said that the various religions engaged in missionary work should be united. Mr. Vivekananda explained that the Hindoo religion is optimistic and not pessimistic. His main point was the doctrine of reincarnation, which means that all have existed before and will live again in other forms. The proceeds of the lecture will be applied to the work of founding an international college.


This was Swamiji's last lecture in Baltimore. Suddenly, and for reasons that are at present unknown, his plans changed, and he returned to New York. This we learn from the Vrooman brothers. "It was announced," a sentence reads in a report of their meeting of November 4 at the Lyceum Theatre, "that Rev. Swami Vivekananda, the India High Priest, had been called suddenly to New York, and would not lecture in the Concert Hall, Academy of Music, tonight." Thus, two or three days before planned, Swamiji's visit to Baltimore and Washington came to an end.


Since Swamiji was called suddenly to New York, it is not likely that he stopped by in Philadelphia to visit Professor Wright. Nor do we know much about his activities during November. We can only assume that he spent most of that month in New York City, but whether he lectured there or not, we do not know. Swamiji's plans at this time stem to have been in a state of flux, naturally so, perhaps, as it appears to have been toward the end of 1894 that his mission as a teacher to the West was taking definite shape in his mind and that the road to its accomplishment was opening; everything fell into place. His proposed trip to Europe and thence to India was postponed; if its possibility had once been certain, it was now vague; the engagement he had made while at Greenacre to lecture at the Brooklyn Ethical Association in the fall was now scheduled for the very end of the year; as for the month of December, Mrs. Bull was making plans that were to result in giving him new hope for the success of his "project." Of some of these matters we learn a little from a letter Swamiji wrote from New York to Mrs. Hale on November 18. It read in full:


Dear Mother

I have been very late this time in writing you as Sister Mary has already written to you no doubt about me. The clothes have all reached safe, only I will send over some of the summer & other clothes as it will be impossible to carry the burden all along with me. 


The certainty about going to Europe this December has gone—so I am uncertain when I go. 

Sister Mary has improved a great deal from what I saw her last. She lives with a number of fox hunting squires and is quite happy. I hope she will marry one of those fellows with long pockets. I am going again to see her tomorrow at Mrs Spalding's; I was there last afternoon. I will be in N Y this month then I go to Boston and perhaps will be there all through December. When I was sick in Boston last spring I went over to Chicago & not to Detroit as Mrs Bagley expected, so this time I am going to Detroit first and then to Chicago—if possible. Else I give up the plan of going to the West soon altogether.

There is more chance of working my plans out in the east than in the west as it now appears.


I have got news of the phonograph, it has reached safe, and the raja [of Khetri] wrote to me a very nice letter on that. I have a lot of addresses & other nonsense from India. I have written home to them not to send any more newspapers. My love to the babies at home, and I am going to visit the baby abroad.


Mrs Guernsey has been at death's door. She is now recovering slowly. I have not seen her yet. She is not strong enough to see anybody. Hope she will soon be strong.


My love to Father Pope and Everyone


Your ever affectionate son[46]
Vivekananda

The phonograph Swamiji mentions in the above letter had been en route from America to the Maharaja of Khetri for months. It was probably the very latest of models; for in January of 1894 Swamiji had written to his disciples in Madras, "Kindly tell Mr Bhattacharya that I have not forgotten his phonograph, but that Edison has made a recent improvement and until that is out I do not think it advisable to buy one."[47] Swamiji—or the Hale sisters, who had attended to the matter —must have bought the new model for the Maharaja. Again and again in his letters, starting with that of August 20 from Annisquam, Swamiji assured Mrs. Hale that the phonograph had not had time to reach Khetri. Finally, however, he himself became anxious; From Baltimore on November 3 he wrote to her:


I do not know what to say about this phonograph business. It takes six months to go to India!! and the company can not get an inquiry in another six months!!! American express indeed!! Well however they are bound to make good my money. Mother do not lose the receipt of the express ompany.[48]


Then in mid-November news came of the phonograph's safe arrival at its destination. The Maharaja of Khetri was at last in possession of this remarkable hand-turned contraption, which carried with it his Guru's voice on a wax cylinder.*(3) 


*(3) It was not until 1896 that Edison placed on the market his first springmotor phonograph; until then, one turned the mechanism by hand. As for the re-corded message that Swamiji sent in 1894 to the Maharaja of Khetri, do we find a reference to it in the following passage from Nivedita’s The Master as I Saw Him (6th edition, page 287)? “Our Master.... Regarded the Order to which he belonged as one whose lot was cast for all time with the cause of Woman and people. This was the cry that rose to his lips instinctively, when he dictated to the phonograph in America, the message that he would send to the Rajah of Khetri.”


Whether or not Swamiji lectured in New York during November of 1894, one thing he did do was of great historic significance. Throughout the year he had been scattering the seeds of his Master's message; he now formed a receptacle that would contain and nourish them. On November 30 he wrote to Alasinga, "I have started [an organisation] already in New York and the Vice President will soon write to you. Keep correspondence with them. Soon I hope to get up a few in other. place".[49] Although we do not know at present either the name or the nature of this organization, it was very likely formed with a mixed purpose. As early as July 11 Swamiji had written to Alasinga, "When the cold weather comes and people return to their homes, I shall begin lecturing again, and at the same time organise societies."[50]The purpose of the societies Swamiji had in mind at that time was no doubt as much financial as philosophical and religious, for we find him writing on August 31 to the same disciple: "I have friends here who take care of all my monetary concerns.... It will be a wonderful relief to me to get rid of horrid money affairs. So the sooner you organize yourselves and you be ready as secretary and treasurer to enter into direct communication with my friends and sympathizers here, the better for you and me."[51]The New York society which Swamiji formed in November was no doubt organized partly in pursuance of this plan. But, as will be seen in a later chapter, toward the end of 1894 he was also becoming keenly aware of America's need for the religion of India; thus the society was undoubtedly concerned also with the religious and philosophical aspects of his work.

4

If Swamiji's role as teacher in the West had not been decisively clear to him before, it must have become so during the month of December, most of which he spent holding classes in Cambridge. "Three weeks spent at Greenacre . . . ," a brochure read, "suggested to Mrs. Bull . . . the benefit of lectures combined with classes." Acting on this suggestion, she sent out invitations to "a course of Morning Talks" to be held not at her home, but at the nearby residence of a Mrs. Richards at 181 Brattle Street on "Dec. 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, and 17, at eleven o'clock, and on Sunday Afternoon, Dec.16, at three o'clock.'[52] The speakers, the program stated, were to be Lady Henry Somerset, Mrs. Milward Adams, Mr. Ernest F. Fenollosa, and Swami Vivekananda. With the exception of Mr. Fenollosa, an—or rather the—authority on Oriental literature and art, whose talk was scheduled for Sunday afternoon, each speaker was to give two talks; Thomas Wentworth Higginson was to conduct an informal discussion following the first of Lady Somerset's talks, and inevitably there was on each occasion to be music. But if music was unavoidable, it was, at least, good. "Each lecture," the program read, "will open and close with a group of songs sung by Emma Thursby. Violoncello: Mr. Wulf Fries." Miss Thursby was one of the greatest vocalists of her day, and Mr. Wulf Fries, being on the same program with her, could not have been less than an excellent cellist. And very likely Mrs. Bull, who according to all accounts was a pianist of professional caliber, accompanied both Miss Thursby and Mr. Fries. Thus the music was such that one might come to hear it for its own sake. Indeed, one might hear music every day at Mrs. Bull's house during that December. On the back of one of her invitation-programs she wrote the following note to Miss Thursby:

Nov 26th 1894

My dear:--

Bring not only what you want to sing but what you would like to study. I will arrange hours for regular work. You will have a sunny room and piano to yourself besides your bedroom.


Let me know by what train to expect you on the third. I presume Mr. Kananda will consult you that you may come together. You know you can perfectly well wear the same dress for each lecture. And all the better for a Cambridge audience. Is  Ina [Miss Thursby's younger sister] coming?


With love to you both

Affectionately ever
Sara C. Bull

Father is gaining[53]

Mr. Kananda may have consulted Miss Thursby about traveling to Cambridge, but he arrived not on the third of December but on the fifth. The following day he wrote to "Mother Church" :


Dear Mother

I have not heard long from you. What is the matter with you? I am here in Cambridge and will be here during three weeks to come and will have to lecture and hold classes. Here is a Chicago lady Mrs. [Milward] Adams who lectures on tone building &c.

Today we had a lecture from Lady Henry Somerset on Woman suffrage. Miss [Frances] Willard [founder and president of the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union and a prominent figure in the woman suffrage movement] of Chicago was here and Julia Ward Howe.


Col Higginson, Dr [J. Estlin] Carpenter of Eng, and many other friends were present. Altogether it was a grand affair. I have received letter from India informing me that the phonograph was duly received.


I have sent part of my money to India and intend sending the whole of it nearly very soon. Only I will keep enough for the passage back. Saw Mother Temple [Mr. Hale's sister] several times in New York; she was kind as usual. So was Mrs. Spalding.

Sister Mary wrote me a letter from Brookline [a fashionable suburb of Boston]. I am sure she would have enjoyed Lady Somerset's lecture so much. I wrote her about it but I have not heard from her yet.


I will go to see her the first day I get some time. I am very busy. Hope the sisters at home are enjoying themselves. I will try to run in to Chicago for a few days if I can.


Please write me all about the holy family as soon as you get time.

Mrs. Guernsey was very ill and still so weak that she can not get out of her room.

Miss Helen Bagley was seized with diphtheria in New York and suffered a good deal. She has recovered however and the Bagleys have gone home to Detroit 

With my Love to you all 

I remain Ever yours affly[54]

The three weeks or so that Swamiji spent at Mrs. Bull's were full and important ones. According to the program of Morning Talks, he lectured on Monday, December 10, on "The Vedanta Philosophy" and on the following Monday (December 17) on "The Rajpoot Women and Ideals of Motherhood in India." In addition he gave a third formal lecture—possibly on Sunday, December 23. But these three lectures were the least of Swamiji's work in Cambridge. He plunged, evidently at once, into the absorbed, uninterrupted delivery of two classes daily, again teaching Vedanta with the same unbroken intensity as at Greenacre. And his listeners were as eager.


At the end of these three weeks Mrs. Bull wrote to Dr. Lewis G. Janes, telling him something of Swamiji's classes and their effect on those who had heard them. The following letter, which is one of the best sources of information we have at the present time regarding these Cambridge weeks, was found among the papers of Dr. Janes and has been made available to us by his daughter, Mrs. Marcia Lyttle:


Cambridge

Riverview                                                                                                                                                                                        Dec 27th 1894

                                                                               168 Brattle Street


My dear Dr. Janes,

I wish I might hear The Swami Vivekananda Sunday Ev'g under your auspices [at the Brooklyn Ethical Association]. We have had him with us three weeks and he has given two lessons daily and three formal Talks. The lessons have included the 8 Upanishads, several readings from the Gita and from Sankara's books of Realization. The interest awakened has been very unusual and the effect is to be deep and permanent with many. We have urged him always to give the positive side of his Vedanta Philosophy whatever topic was given him; for he can always lead up to that, and the dignity, beauty and strength of his own nature is always brought out when he treats of that. A friend asked him to address her club of women on that topic. He was urged on his return to continue the subject. The membership of one hundred was increased by one hundred & fifty guests and a hall taken. Roman Catholics, Swedenborgians, Agnostics & Episcopalians all paid him the tribute of expressing their best thought and he has helped students who were bewildered by their course of Philosophy at Harvard.


I mention all this because I hope you will find if he treats his subject sincerely that he may prove of help to you. We have had a Greenacre Annex--Seven lectures with classes—Lady Somerset, Miss Willard [who one morning spoke in conjunction with Lady Somerset], Mrs. Milward Adams of Chicago (one of the most gifted women I have ever known) Prof. Fenollosa & Vivekananda. Miss Thursby has given us her voice on each occasion. The Greenacre spirit prevailed. We would have been so pleased and helped could you have joined us. Your letter was most welcome and the Reunion a success.


Miss Farmer had been house-mother and we have had our lecturers as guests, and each has studied with the other. Mr. Vive Kananda as a guest and friend has endeared himself to all. He is so very human and so much of a boy with it all.

Believe me with Sincere regards[55]

Sara C. Bull


It is probable, though not certain, that among the many classes Swamiji held that December (far more than originally scheduled) was a series later printed in booklet form under the title Six Lessons on Raja Yoga and, later still, under the same title in volume eight of the Complete Works. Through the unpublished memoirs of Mrs. Clinton French it is known that the booklet, printed in San Francisco in 1913, was "a compilation of typewritten notes of class talks given by Swami Vivekananda in Mrs. Ole Bull's house.'[56] But while we know where Swamiji held these classes, we do not know for certain when he did and have to be satisfied for the time being with the guess that it was during these winter weeks at Cambridge when he may have been patterning his work, to some extent at least, on that of his summer at Greenacre*(4)." (At Greenacre  Swamiji had taught some raja yoga, as well as Advaita Vedanta, and, as we have seen, Mrs. Bull liked to think of the Cambridge program she was sponsoring as a "Greenacre Annex.") If Swamiji held the six lessons on raja yoga in December (or for that matter, at any other period), he very likely did so before a small, intimate group, consisting, perhaps, of his fellow house guests and a few interested and serious friends. The classes were explicit in regard to the practice of the various steps of raja yoga; indeed, Six Lessons contains the most detailed and complete information we have regarding the practical instructions Swamiji gave in the West to a small, informal group of people. But whether or not Swamiji held these classes in raja yoga at Cambridge in December of 1894, his classes as a whole, growing out of those at Greenacre, were, like them, forerunners of the concentrated teaching that he was to engage in the following year.

*(4) As far as is known today, Swamiji stayed at Mrs. Bull’s house in Cambridge only three times: in October of 1894 for about ten days, when he held no classes at all; in December of 1894 for three weeks or so, when he held many classes; and in March of 6 for a week or so, when he held, as far as we know, only two classes. The most suitable of these periods for the holidays of raja yoga classes would seem to be that of December 1894.

He was, indeed, intensely busy those December weeks. With two classes daily of his own, a lecture once a week, and the necessity, and perhaps the pleasure, of attending the classes and lectures of his fellow house guests, his days were filled. "I would have run into town to see you before this, had I time," he wrote to Mary Hale, who was in Boston and who, for one reason or another, was reluctant to visit Cambridge. "I am kept pretty busy the whole day. Then there is the fear of not meeting you. If you have time you may write and I shall snatch the first opportunity to see you. My time of course is always in the afternoon; so long I shall be here, that is until the 27th or 28th of this month, I will have to be very busy in the morning till 12 or 1."[57]


If Swamiji went to Boston to see Mary Hale, it was not until the last week in December when his work lessened to some extent. In the meanwhile, Miss Hale remained distant. "You must have received Mrs. Bull's letter [an invitation] . . . ," Swamiji wrote on December 21. "If you cannot accept it, I shall be very glad to come over any day—I have time now as the lectures are at an end, except Sunday next.'[58]


Mary Hale did not, or could not, accept Mrs. Bull's invitation, and by her persistent aloofness she no doubt missed some good times. Mrs. Bull, known as a charming and adept hostess, could, when she wished, bring an air of idyllic festivity to the gatherings in her home, and one cannot imagine, particularly since Swamiji was among her guests, that there were any dull or uneasy moments. Just how many house guests Mrs. Bull entertained at this time it is hard to say. There were, we know, the lecturers and the musicians; then there were Miss Sarah J. Farmer and, according to a newspaper account, a Mme Magnuason. There were probably others, for the house was a large one and in addition a fair-sized guest house, known as the "Studio House, " could accommodate a number of people. The occasion was, to be sure, a sort of "Greenacre Annex, " complete even to Miss Farmer, gently presiding in her gray veil along with Mrs. Bull.


In addition to Miss Farmer, the house guests who became close friends of Swamiji and who were to help him in whatever way they could throughout the remainder of his American visit were Miss Emma Thursby and Mrs. Florence Adams. Miss Thursby, who was then nearing her fiftieth birthday, was on the verge of retiring from a highly successful career as concert singer, during which she had reached the pinnacle of fame, feted gloriously in America and all but worshiped in the more demonstrative Europe. Yet with all the adulation she bad received, she had somehow remained as simple and unworldly as she had been at the beginning of her career when, in the 1860s, she had sung as soloist in Reverend Henry Ward Beecher's Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. She was retiring now from public life not because her voice had lost any of its volume or beauty of tone, but simply because the hectic and demanding life of a concert singer was, she had found, spiritually unrewarding. She sought a deeper meaning and a richer purpose to life, and, according to her biographer, the late Richard McCandless Gipson, it had been at this introspective moment that she had heard Swamiji at the Parliament of Religions and had been at once impressed by his teachings. As we have seen, Miss Thursby had attended one of Swamiji's first lectures in New York, and it may have been she who introduced him to Mrs. Bull, whom she had known for many years, having often sung as co-star with the much beloved violinist, Ole Bull.


Mrs. Florence James Adams, in whom Miss Thursby had found a protegee, was in her own way a woman with a career. She was, as far as can be made out, a teacher of "Expression." Swamiji referred to her as a "physical culturist," a term to which she very likely would have objected. For, according to all accounts, physical culture in her hands took wings and rose, unabashed, to metaphysical heights. In any case, Mrs. Adams, then in her early thirties, was a woman of great charm and a speaker of conviction, herself a master of expression in all its aspects. It is evident that Swamiji liked her, and since one often finds her name mentioned in his letters, the reader may be interested in the following excerpt from an unidentified newspaper clipping, which tells something more about her.


In Mr. Ferd Peck’s box sat a little woman whose face attracted me by its peculiar sweetness of expression and its wonderful animation. Mrs. Milward Adams, the charming wife of handsome Milward Adams, the able manager of the Auditorium [Opera House], is perhaps the brightest, most cultured and most sought after of any of the women who move in the higher social circles of Chicago. Hers is a busy life. She devotes many hours of the week to the instruction of young ladies just out of school who desire a more perfect composure of manner or a more graceful carriage. Mrs. Adams is an exponent of the Delsartean system and she has numbered among her pupils many a minister and actor. She was a Miss Florence James, of Boston, and an elocutionist of rare gifts when she came west [that is, to Chicago] and gave private readings and instructed the children of Prof. Tomlins' school in calisthenics and gymnastics. It was, I believe, something over seven years ago that she met and married Mr. Milward Adams, at that time manager of Central Music Hall. No one in the Second City [Chicago] has been more interested in the completion of that mammoth pile of masonry, the Auditorium, than Mrs. Adams. In person she is petite, but her graceful and erect carriage enables her to appear some inches taller than she really measures. Her manner is sincere, cordial and unaffected, and a subtle magnetism which she possesses brings her admirers by the score and endears her to all who have the pleasure of her acquaintance.


An article concerning Mrs. Bull's well-attended December Conferences was published in the Boston Evening Transcript two days before Swamiji spoke. It dealt primarily with the personable Mrs. Adams and read in part:


There is a fine old mansion at the corner of Brattle street and Fairview avenue, Cambridge, where Mrs. Ole Bull, Miss Sarah J. Farmer and others are holding conferences, classes, discussions, etc., on topics of vital import. An attractive part of this "feast of reason" are the morning talks which began on Thursday when Lady Henry Somerset and Col. T. W. Higginson were the principal speakers on "woman suffrage." This morning there was a large attendance and an intensely instructive talk by Mrs. Milward Adams of Chicago, who took as her theme "Orderly Thought and Personal Culture." Mrs. Adams was introduced by Mrs. Bull, who spoke of the fine art of living and paid a graceful compliment to the speaker of the morning, who had much valuable experience in practical directions.


Mrs. Adams referred to the craze for physical culture that has swept over the land. She believed that the reaction had now set in and moderation would follow. She described the innate desire of every human being to express his thoughts and feelings, and having cultivated language  as a symbol, the voice naturally becomes of much importance. The excessive animation that is so distinctively American often carries us beyond a proper balance.


What is needed is calm, settled, orderly thought that all our forces may be centred and ready to be turned in any direction that may be needed. The ancient symbol of the great eye in a triangle, signifying the mental, physical and emotional sides of our natures seems to be particularly expressive of perfect unity.


Before Mrs. Adams's talk, Miss Emma Thursby sang a group of songs by Cowan Chadwick and Toubert, which made the hour all the more delightful. On Monday, Swami Vivekananda will talk on "The Vedanta Philosophy."


There can be little doubt that during his stay in Cambridge Swamiji became more than casually acquainted not only with his fellow house guests but with the many Harvard professors whom Mrs. Bull numbered among her friends. Harvard's philosophy department was at this period in its golden age. There were on its staff George Palmer, William James, Josiah Royce, Hugo Munsterberg, and the young George Santayana, all of whom in 1894 were in residence and each of whom disagreed volubly and zestfully with all the others. In Cambridge there lived also the brilliant Charles Sanders Peirce, neither a professor at Harvard nor, being divorced, a socially acceptable layman, but a power behind the philosophical scenes nonetheless. That Mrs. Bull was among those few who chose not to ostracize Mr. Peirce because of his matrimonial misfortune is evidenced by the fact that he gave a course of classes at her home the following year, and thus it is probable that he and Swamiji met.


Although morally cautious, Cambridge society was, compared to that of Boston, informal, friendly, and based, on the whole, more upon brains than upon first-family traditions. The members of the Harvard faculty and their wives (wearing  by choice the same decent dress season after season) entertained one another with an easy and simple grace, and they would surely have welcomed Swamiji into their midst without too much alarm. It is, indeed, probable that the professors' acquaintance with Swamiji and his teachings on the Vedanta philosophy during these weeks led to his being invited to speak before the Graduate Philosophical School of Harvard in March of 1896—one of the greatest intellectual honors paid to him in America—and of his being subsequently offered the Harvard Chair in Eastern Philosophy, a position he was to decline.


Not all of Swamiji's talks at Cambridge, however, were concerned with the philosophy of Vedanta. As has been seen, his morning lecture given on December 17 pertained to the ideals of motherhood in India. As told in the Life, this address, given at the "special solicitation" of Mrs. Bull, "was deep, stirring and patriotic.... It was as well, though unconsciously, a reply to the remarks which many ignorant or self interested persons had circulated concerning the 'degraded' condition of Indian Womanhood.'[59] Swamiji's reply might not have been altogether "unconscious," for he was well aware of the remarks circulated concerning the condition of Indian women. It is interesting to notice in this connection that in Boston, on the evening before his talk, a Miss Armstrong had given a picture of Indian motherhood quite different from Swamiji's. On December 17, the Boston Evening Transcript printed, in all seriousness, the following news item:

Curious Customs of India

Miss Armstrong, a missionary to India, gave an interesting account of the customs of that country, last night, in the Warren-avenue Baptist Church. Thousands of children, said the speaker, are scarified every year in the interests of heathendom, and as an offering, that the gods may send rain during the dry season. Miss Armstrong is in this country for the purpose of completing her medical education, when she will return to India to establish a  home for outcast women in India. This evening in the vestry of the Warrenavenue Church, Miss Armstrong will speak exclusively to women.


In his portrayal of Hindu women Swamiji dwelt on the beauty and nobility of their character and on the high regard in which they were held. It has been my great good fortune to have come upon a transcript of this heretofore unpublished talk in the papers of Mrs. Ole Bull, which have been made available to me through the kindness of Mrs. Sylvea Bull Curtis. The full talk, taken down as Swamiji gave it by Miss Frances Willard's stenographer, is given in Appendix C, but let me here quote a small portion of it. After giving many instances of the nobility and valor of Hindu women through India's long history, he went on:


Women in statesmanship, managing territories, governing countries, even making war, have proved themselves equal to men, if not superior. In India I have no doubt of that. Whenever they have had the opportunity they have proved that they have as much ability as men, and with this advantage more, that they seldom degenerate; they keep to the moral standard which is innate in their nature, and thus as governors and rulers of their state they prove, at least in India, far superior to men. John Stuart Mill mentions this fact, and even at the present day we see women in India managing vast estates with great ability....


Each nation, beyond a general humanity, develops a certain peculiarity of character; so in religion, so in politics, so in character. One nation develops one peculiarity of character, another takes another peculiarity. Within the last few years the world has begun to recognize this. The very peculiarity of Hindoo women which they have developed and which is the ideal of their life is the mother. If you enter a Hindoo's home you do not find the wife the  same equal companion of the husband as you find her here. But when you find the mother, she is the very pillar of the Hindoo home.... The mother is the God in our family. The idea is that the only real love that we see in the world, the most unselfish love, is in the mother; always suffering, always loving, and what love can represent the love of God more than the love which we see in the mother? Thus the mother is the type, the incarnation of God on earth to the Hindoo.... The love which my mother gave to me has made me what I am and I owe a debt to her that I can never repay....


. . . What is an Aryan? He is a man whose birth is through religion.... If you take up our law books you will find chapters devoted to this, the prenatal influence of a mother on the child. I know that before I was born my mother would fast and pray and do hundreds of things which I could not do for five minutes even. She did that for two years. I believe whatever religious culture I have I owe to that. It was consciously that my mother brought me into the world to be what I am. Whatever little good impulse I have was given to me by my mother, and consciously, not unconsciously. . .


.. . . In this world as each nation is placed under peculiar circumstances and is developing a type, the day is coming when all these different types will be mixed up.... Let us now go to work and mix the nations up together and let the new nation come. Will you let me tell you my conviction? Nearly all the civilization that the world has today has come from that one peculiar race of mankind, the Aryans. Civilization has been of three types: the Roman, the Greek, the Hindoo. The Roman type is the type of organization, conquest, steadiness, but lacking in emotional nature, appreciation of beauty and the higher emotions. Its defect is cruelty. The Greek is essentially enthusiastic for the beautiful, but frivolous and has a tendency to become immoral. The Hindoo type is essentially metaphysical and religious, but lacking in all the elements of organization and work. The Roman type is now represented by the Anglo-Saxon, the Greek type more by the French than by any other nation, and the old Hindoos do not die! Each type has its advantage in this new land of promise; they [Americans] have the Roman's organization, the power of the Greek's wonderful love for the beautiful, and the Hindoo's backbone of religion and love of God. Mix these up together and bring in the new civilization, and let me tell you this should be done by women.


Swamiji's picture of Hindu women-so different from that painted by the missionaries and others-deeply stirred the women of Cambridge and Boston. Unknown to him they sent to his mother a picture of the Virgin Mary and Child accompanied by a letter of profound salutations and respect. Remembering how keenly he felt for his mother, one can imagine that this tribute, of all those paid to him, perhaps gave him when he heard of it the deepest personal joy.


Swamiji had Found an immense difference between the intellectual and religious climate of the generally orthodox and conservative Middle West and the liberal, fermenting East Coast; he had, indeed, found in New York and Boston the natural centers Of his work--centers where people eagerly listened to his ideas, some with intellectual interest only, perhaps, but others with a deeper need to absorb and understand the incalculably great gift he had brought to the West. In a letter written to Mrs. Hale on what was probably December 21, one finds his earlier discouragement vanishing, his native determination rising to the fore. This letter read in full:


Dear Mother

I am glad that Haridas Viharidas has sent the rugs. I am afraid they will take a long time to reach here. The Raja was very much pleased with the phonograph as he writes and has heard my voice several times. Hope he will bring it into life.


I have not seen Sister Mary yet and hope to see her in this week as I am going away to New York next Tuesday. Can not come by any means to Chicago now for I expect to go to Washington from New York and hope to be pretty busy in New York.


If I can snatch up a Few days between the lecture in Brooklyn of the 30th and the next series in New York I will fly to Chicago for a few days. If I had time just now it would have been better for me, for the half fare ticket will expire after this. month.


I have been kept very busy here this month so could not go to Boston even for a day. Now I have time and hope to see Sister Mary.


How are the babies at home? Mrs. M. Adams of Chicago who lectures on voice building & walking &c has been lecturing here all this time. She is a very great lady in every respect and so intelligent. She knows all of you and likes the "Hate girls " very much. Sister Isabel knows her especially I think.


Do not you see, Mother-I am determined to work my project out. I must see the light. India can cheer alone, but no money. In the east and south I am getting slowly friends who will help me in my work, I am sure, as they have done already. They all like me more &. more.


I have made friends of Lady Somerset & Miss Willard, you will be glad to know. So you see, Mother, you are the only attraction in Chicago and so long I am in this country wherever you live is my home. As soon as I have time I will run in to see you & the sisters. But I have no other hopes in the west nor will you advise me to destroy the only hope I have of success in these parts of the country by giving it up and' going to Chicago to be idle as the day long.


Mrs. Bull and a few other ladies here who are helping me are not only sincere and love me but they have the power to do as leaders of society. Would that you had millions.


With my love to you all

Your ever affectionate Son'[60]

Vivekananda

On December 21 Swamiji also informed Mary Hale that he ,as going on Christmas Day to New York, after giving an unscheduled lecture in Cambridge on Sunday, December 23. As it happened, however, he prolonged his stay, and on Christmas night we find him at one of Mrs. Bull's charming and intimate parties, a description of which was given in the Chicago Inter Ocean of December 29:

LIFE IN BOSTON

Christmas Evening with Mrs. Ole Bull

Boston, Mass., Dec. 26-Special Correspondence: Christmas evening was made an enchanted one to the group of guests bidden last evening by Mrs. Ole Bull to her beautiful house in Cambridge. The great salon, where the marble bust of Ole Bull on a pedestal seems to dominate the atmosphere and the grand piano under Mrs. Bull's exquisite touch gives melody that seems not of this world; the Norwegian room, a unique and beautiful apartment, and the various little alcove nooks and the vestibule were thrown open-not to a large company but a little group of congenial friends who realized the charm and the loveliness of the occasion. Mrs. Bull's friend and guest, Miss Farmer, was with her, adding much to the enjoyment, and Mrs. Milward Adams, of Chicago; Mme. Magnusson, so pleasantly remembered at the Exposition, and Swami Vivekananda were guests of the house....


[The article digresses here with several paragraphs on Mrs. Ole Bull and then continues:]

Did I note in passing the impressive words spoken by Swami Vivekananda at Mrs. Bull's last night? In his scarlet gown, with turbaned head and by request intoning Sanscrit in his musical voice, while the light flickered in the open fire-place; the sconces of wax candles burned dimly; and the little group of friends sat hushed and reverent-it was a scene for a painter, and at the close he gave us, by request, the benediction in Sanscrit, the significance of which was the prayer that the courage and strength of the occasion might remain in our lives and the Prince of peace reign in our hearts.


And thus Swamiji's visit in Cambridge drew to a close. Three days later he journeyed to New York to keep an appointment with the officers of the Brooklyn Ethical Association.


ⓘ
[1].See chap. 11, note 60.
[2].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W.Hale, September 12, 1894, Sen Col.
[3].Complete Works, 8 : 321.
[4].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, September 13, 1894, Sen Col.
[5].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale., September 19, 1894, Sen Col.
[6].Complete Works, 6 : 268.
[7].Complete Works., 5 : 38.
[8].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, September 13, 1894, Sen Col.
[9].Complete Works, 8 : 321.
[10].Complete Works, 5 : 44.
[11].Complete Works,6:346.
[12].Complete Works,6 : 350-53 passim.
[13].Complete Works,6 : 273-75 passim. (Swamiji wrote the last lines of this passage in Sanskrit; the English translation given in the Complete Works is not his.)
[14].Complete Works,6: 268.
[15].Complete Works,6: 277.
[16].Complete Works,6: 307.
[17].Mortimer Smith, The Life of Ole Bull, p. 158.
[18].Mortimer Smith, The Life of Ole Bull, p. 158.
[19].Mortimer Smith, The Life of Ole Bull,p. 156.
[20].Mortimer Smith, The Life of Ole Bullp. 157.
[21].Mortimer Smith, The Life of Ole Bullp. 168.
[22].Complete Works, 5 : 44.
[23].Complete Works, 5: 46.
[24].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, October 10, 1894, Sen Col.
[25].Mrs. Ole Bull to Swami Vivekananda, October, 1894, Sen Col.
[26].Mrs. Ole Bull to Swami Vivekananda, October, 1894, Sen Col.
[27].The United States, ed. Karl Baedeker (New York: 1893). 
[28].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, October 5, 1894, Sen Col. 
[29].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale , October 10, 1894, Sen Col. 
[30].Complete Works, 6 : 279. 
[31].Complete Works, 5:66; this passage is taken from the original letter, RKM, Belur. 
[32].Complete Works, 5 : 55; this sentence is taken from the original letter, dated December 26, 1894,-RKM. Belur. 
[33].Complete Works, 8 : 323. 
[34].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Bull, October 17, 1894, Sen Col.
[35].William Smith, A Torkshireman's Trip to the United States and Canada (London, 1892), p. 190. 
[36].Complete Works, 6 : 279. 
[37].Phoebe A. Hearst to Emma Thursby, October 23, 1894, Emma Thursby Papers, New-York Historical Society. 
[38].Phoebe A. Hearst to Emma Thursby, October 23, 1894, Emma Thursby Papers, New-York Historical Society. 
[39].Complete Works, 6 : 279. 
[40].Complete Works, 6 : 279. 
[41].Complete Works,5 : 49, original letter, VSNC. 
[42].Complete Works, 5: 51- 
[43].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, October 27, 1894, Sen Col. 
[44].Complete Works, 5 : 50. 
[45].Madras disciples to Swami Vivekananda, November 29,  1894, VSNC. 
[46].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, November 18, 1894, Sen Col. 
[47].Complete Works, 5 : 29; this passage is taken from the original letter, RKM, Belur. 
[48].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, November 3, 1894, Sen Col. 
[49].Complete Works, 5 : 52. 
[50].Complete Works., 5 : 38.
[51].Complete Works5 : 42
[52].Copy of printed invitation, VSNC. 
[53].Copy of printed invitation, VSNC.  
[54].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, December 6, 1894, Sen Col. 
[55].Sara Bull to Dr. Lewis G. Janes, December 27, 1894, courtesy of Mrs. Charles Lyttle. Copy, VSNC. 
[56].Cara M. French, “Memoirs,” VSNC. (See Second Visit, 2nd edition, chap. 5, sec. 14.) 
[57].Complete Works, 8 : 332. 
[58].Complete Works, 8 : 333. 
[59].Life, 1:515 
[60].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. Hale, December 21 (?), 1894, Sen Col. 

↑ Contents

2.5 THE LAST BATTLE

"I arrived safely in New York and proceeded at once to Brooklyn where I arrived in time", Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Ole Bull on Friday.  December 28—the function for which he arrived in time being an evening reception given him by Mr. Charles M. Higgins on that same Friday. "We had a nice evening," Swamiji continues. "Several gentlemen belonging to the Ethical Culture Society came to see me.... Dr. Janes was as usual very kind and good and Mr. Higgins is as practical as ever. Here alone in New York I find more men interested in religion than in any other city, and do not know why here the interest is more amongst men than women.'[1]

The Brooklyn Ethical Association, which is what Swamiji meant by "the Ethical Culture Society, " was founded in 1881 by Dr. Lewis G. Janes, who in 1885 became its president. Because of Janes's frequent lectures on the subject, the Association soon became known as a defender of evolutionary views and an exponent of Herbert Spencer's system of philosophy, ethics, and sociology. Janes, largely self educated, was an ardent and excellent scholar, devoted to the spirit of free inquiry. In 1896 he was to relinquish the presidentship of the Ethical Association and become director of the Cambridge Conferences, an annual series of lectures for "the comparative study of ethics, religion, and philosophy" that Mrs. Ole Bull had started in her home. Janes also became the director of the Monsalvat School of Comparative Religion at Greenacre, and, in 1897, was elected president of the Free Religious Association, upon the retirement of Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who was later to speak of his successor as "the most wholly stainless man I knew:'[2]“[Janes] and I agree so much", Swamiji had written from Greenacre, but whether Janes agreed entirely with Swamiji's metaphysics, which left the Spencerian doctrine of evolution far behind, is open to question. His mind, however, was broad and flexile enough to weigh carefully any viewpoint earnestly and rationally held, and when his support was needed he was to become one of Swamiji's most loyal and articulate champions. Indeed Dr. Janes was one of the few men in America who openly and uncompromisingly defended Swamiji against attack.

Mr. Charles M. Higgins—the Higgins of the then well-known Charles M. Higgins & Co., Manufacturers of Inks and Adhesives—as a member of the Committee on Comparative Religion of the Brooklyn Ethical Association. In November of 1894 he had had a ten-page pamphlet printed about Swamiji, which he distributed, as the title page tells, "among those interested in the study of Oriental Religions."[3]This pamphlet was well prepared and consists of articles regarding Swamiji taken from both American and Indian newspapers, some of which have already been quoted in the course of this narrative. Under what circumstances Mr. Higgins had it printed is not known, For as yet we know almost nothing of Swamiji's life during most of November, 1894. Perhaps Higgins, being a practical man, distributed the pamphlet as advance publicity of sorts for Swamiji's coming lectures at the Brooklyn Ethical Association.

It may have been for the same reason that he invited a reporter from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to his reception. In any case, on December 30 that paper ran the following article (written on December 29), which was accompanied by a line drawing of Swamiji in his turban:

VISIT OF A HINDOO MONK

To Lecture To-morrow on Vedic Philosophy

He Comes to Brooklyn at the Request of the Ethical 

Society, and Last Night was Given a Reception at the

Residence Of Charles M. Higgins

The Hindu monk, Swami Vivekananda, who has been well known in this country since the time of the world fair, when he attended the congress of religions, arrived in this city on Friday from Boston. He has accepted an invitation from Charles M. Higgins of 499 Fourth street to lecture before the Brooklyn Ethical society, the admission to which will be free to all. In order that his guest might become acquainted with some of Brooklyn's well known people and the members of the society before which he is to lecture Mr. Higgins gave an informal reception at his home in Fourth street Friday night. Among the people there were William C. Burling, Abram H. Dailey, Delmore Elwell, Dr. Lewis G. Janes, Dr. Charles H. Shepard, Mrs. Charles H. Shepard, Miss Shepard, James A. Skilton, Miss Mary Phillips, H. W. Phillips and Professor Landsbery [Landsberg] of New York. The reception was entirely informal. The people who were there talked on various topics, but the chief one discussed was that in which the monk was most deeply interested, the philosophy of the Vedic religions. He explained many points which had previously been a mystery to his hearers as a foretaste of his lecture at the Pouch gallery to-morrow evening.

Of Swami Vivekananda, an Indian admirer [G. G. Narasimhachariar of Madras] observes: "The first thing that strikes you when you look at his calm and pleasant face is his eyes, which are large and brilliant, and whenever he gets enthusiastic over anything, they roll and shed a peculiar luster. He would not say anything about himself, and all that I am able to tell you now about his early life is what I gleaned from respectable persons who knew him from his infancy. He is a man of about 32 or 33 years of age. He belongs to a respectable family in Bengal and is a graduate of the Calcutta university. His secular name was Norendra Nath Dutta. In his younger days, unlike other youths of his age, he showed a strong inclination for spiritual things. He would never pass the Salvation army marching in the streets of Calcutta, or a Brahmo Samaj congregation without joining them and chanting their chorus. He was very fond of frequenting holy places and talking to holy personages. His 20th year marks an epoch of his life, when, on the death of his father, he became a sanyasi (monk), under the illustrious Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. He lived with the Paramahamsa for a period and, after his death, he took to traveling. He lived on the Himalayas for some time, and, after traveling on foot to Thibet and other places, he returned to India. He used to speak occasionally of the sublime sceneries and the eternal snow regions of the Himalayas, and say that while there he first acquired calmness of mind. After ten or twelve years [?] of such a life, he took a vow to travel the whole of India and not to touch metal. It was during this trip that many of us became acquainted with him. It was by fortuitous concurrence of circumstances that we met him. We met him at a time when many of our young mm at Madras were absorbed in their fashionable thoughts of the day, at a time when they had no proper idea of their own selves and their mission in this world. It was a godsend to many of them that they met one so full of spirituality that even a short contact with him made them turn over a new leaf in their lives. They found in him a wonderful combination of religious orthodoxy and social radicalism. He claimed equal rank both with the Pandits and with the professors. His discourses on any subject were interesting, but on a religious question, non pareil. Sri Paramahamsa Ramakrishna is said to have once observed that Norendra Nath had in him both the spirit of divine knowledge and the spirit of divine love highly developed. Nobody who came in contact with him escaped the magic influence of his heart. The happiness which one felt in his company was not a mere gratification of the intellect, but it transcended all emotions of the heart. I am not competent enough, gentlemen, to pass an opinion on his knowledge. But this much I can say, that his eloquent course on the teachings of Krishna turned many a man into a statue. He preached a wonderful religion of harmony. He taught that the Vedas should be studied through the spectacle of evolution; that they contain the whole history of the process of religion until religion has reached its perfection in unity—Advaitism; and that no new religious idea it preaches: anywhere which is not found in the Vedas, which teach from Agnimida [Agnimide] to Tatsah [Tat Sat]. To him the seeming contradictions and conflicting teachings of the Vedas are all true as describing portions of the one Infinite Reality; and Hinduism, where one passes from truth to truth, and not from error to truth as in other religions, was the religion of religions. He defined God as the apex of the triangle of creation and drew a sharp line between God and Brahman."

(The above quotation from G. G. Narasimhachariar was taken from his introductory address before the Bangalore Public Meeting to honor Swamiji. The account of this meeting was first printed in the Bangalore Spectator of August 27, 1894, reprinted in the Indian Mirror of September 6, and rereprinted in Mr. Higgins's pamphlet.)

Swamiji's first lecture sponsored by the Ethical Association was given at what was known as the Pouch Mansion. This building was on one of the wide, tree-lined avenues of Brooklyn's residential district. I visited the spot where the Pouch Mansion had once stood, hoping to find it still there, but in its place found a tall, red brick apartment building. Here and there on the same street remained large residences surrounded by spacious lawns and gardens, all of which bespoke Swamiji's era, but these, too, are rapidly being replaced by the ubiquitous and characterless red brick. I mention this nostalgic fact, not to decry change, but only to impress upon the reader that it was a very different scene that greeted Swamiji than greets us today. It was a world in which nothing moved much faster than the trot of a horse, in which a motorman of an electric trolley—of which Brooklyn boasted—was arrested for going at the death-defying speed of twelve and a half miles an hour, and in which a controversy was raging as to whether or not a revolver might be more serviceable to a cavalryman than a saber or a sword.

Swamiji's first lecture in Brooklyn was reported not only by the Brooklyn papers, but by the New York Tribune of December 31. The following excerpt from the Tribune is typical of the confusion prevailing at the time regarding Hinduism:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA IN BROOKLYN

The Pouch Mansion, in Brooklyn, was crowded last evening by an audience assembled to hear a lecture by Swami Vivekananda, of Bombay, upon "The Religions of India." The lecture was under the direction of the Brooklyn Ethical Association. Dr. Lewis G. Janes presided. The lecturer, who is a Hindoo monk, represented the religion of the Hindoos at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago last year. He appeared in his native garb, with a yellow turban and a scarlet robe. In the course of his lecture he expounded the Zoroastrian philosophy, founded upon the Vedas. He said that the religion of the Hindoos taught a positive something and not a negative nothing.

After the address a number of questions put by A. W. Tenney; Dr. R. G. Eccles, Delmore Elwell and others were answered by Mr. Vivekananda. A reception was given for him before the lecture.

Swamiji's lecture on "The Religions of India" will not be unfamiliar to readers of the Complete Works, for the report of it which appeared in the Brooklyn Standard Union of December 31, 1894, has been reproduced in volume one under the title "The Hindu Religion. " In early editions of the Complete Works the Standard Union report has been quoted in full, but in late editions one finds that the descriptive portions have been omitted. These portions have also been omitted, or at least greatly reduced, in recent editions of the Life. In as much as the vivid picture of Swamiji painted by the reporter of the Standard Union is nowadays out of print, I am reproducing the descriptive part of the article in full, omitting the lecture proper. (It should perhaps be mentioned that this lecture can be found not only in volume one of the Complete Works but in volume four as well, under the title "Indian Religious Thought " This latter article, taken from the Rutherford American (New Jersey), differs in wording from the first but is in substance the same.)

RISHIS' VOICE

The Ancient Vedas Defended by Swami Vivekananda
An Ancient Religion of Love
With the Modern Attribute of Sciences and
Philosophy—the Migration of the Soul and 
Individual Divinity
“All Kinds of Religions Must be True”

It was the voice of the ancient Rishis of the Vedas speaking sweet words of love and toleration through the Hindoo monk Paramahamsa Swami Vivekananda, that held spellbound last evening every one of those many hundreds who had accepted the invitation of the Brooklyn Ethical Society and packed the large lecture hall and the adjoining rooms of the Pouch Gallery on Clinton avenue to overflowing.

The fame of the Oriental ascetic, who came to the Western world as the emissary and representative of the most ancient form of philosophical religious worship, Buddhism, had preceded him, and as a result men of all professions and callings—doctors and lawyers and judges and teachers—together with many ladies, had come from all parts of the city to listen to his strangely beautiful and eloquent defense of the "Religions of India." They had heard of him as the delegate of the worshipers of Krishna and Brahma and Buddha to the "Parliament of Religions" at the World's Pair in Chicago, where he had been the most honored of all pagan representatives; they had read of him as the philosopher who, for the sake of his religion, had given up what promised to be a most brilliant career, who, by years of ardent and patient study, had taken the scientific culture of the West and had transplanted it to the mystic soil of the ancient tradition of the Hindus; they had heard of his culture and his learning, of his wit and his eloquence, of his purity and sincerity and holiness, and hence they expected great things.

And they were not disappointed. "Swami" i.e., Master or Rabbi or Teacher Vivekananda is even greater than his fame. As he stood, last night, upon the dais in his picturesque kafftan of bright red, a stray curl of jetblack hair creeping from under the many folds of his orange turban, his swarthy face reflecting the brilliancy of his thoughts, his large, expressive eyes, bright with the enthusiasm of a prophet, and his mobile mouth uttering, in deep melodious tones and in almost perfect English, only words of love and sympathy and toleration, he was a splendid type of the famous sages of the Himalayas, a prophet of a new religion, combining the morality of the Christians with the philosophy of the Buddhists, and his hearers understood why, on Sept. 4, 1894, a crowded mass meeting at Calcutta was held for the sole purpose of "publicly recording the grateful appreciation of his countrymen for his great services rendered to the cause of Hinduism."

Whatever else may be said of the Swami's lecture or address (for it was spoken extemporaneously), it was certainly intensely interesting. After thanking the audience cordially for the hearty reception it had given him after his introduction by Dr. Janes, the president of the Ethical Association, Swami Vivekananda said in part: [Here follows the report of Swamiji's lecture which can be found in volume one of the Complete Works under the title "The Hindu Religion." The article ended with the following paragraph:]

The speaker was frequently and heartily applauded. At the end of his lecture he devoted some fifteen minutes to answering questions, after which he held an informal reception.

The December 31 issues of the Brooklyn Times and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle also contained lengthy reports of this same lecture. They varied somewhat from the report in the Standard Union and read, respectively, as follows:

BROOKLYN ETHICAL ASSOCIATION
Addressed by Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo Monk,

The Brooklyn Ethical Association, at the Pouch Gallery last night, tendered a reception to Swami Vivekananda, of Bombay, the Hindoo monk who first came into prominence in this country, as the representative of the religion of the Hindus, at the Congress of Religions, at Chicago, during the World's Fair.

Previous to the reception the distinguished visitor delivered a remarkably interesting lecture on "The Religions of India." The interest excited by Swami Vivekananda and his lecture, was shown in the numbers present. The rooms were crowded to suffocation. Long before the commencement of the lecture, all the seats [a line omitted here by the printer] was a luxury, by the time the visitor from the far East began to talk.

Swami Vivekananda made his appearance last night in his native Eastern costume. He is a heavily built man of medium stature, with a bright, handsome face and dark, flashing eyes, and when he smiles he reveals two rows of even, white teeth. Last night he wore a turban, and a bright scarlet cloak enveloped his form clear down to his feet. He speaks English fluently. He delivered his lecture in a sort of monotone which was not at all unpleasant. He speaks with an earnestness that seems to carry conviction with his words. Among other things he said:

"The Hindoo's view of life is that we are here to learn; the whole happiness of life is to learn; the human soul is here to love learning and get experience. I am able to read my Bible better by your Bible, and you will learn to read your Bible better by my Bible. If there is but one religion to be true, all the rest must be true. The same truth has manifested itself in different forms, and the forms are according to the different circumstances of the physical or mental nature of the different nations.

"If matter and its transformation answer for all that we have, there is no necessity for supposing the existence of a soul. But it can [not] be proven that thought has been evolved out of matter. We can not deny that bodies inherit certain tendencies, but those tendencies only mean the physical configuration through which a peculiar mind alone can act in a peculiar way. These peculiar tendencies in that soul have been caused by past actions. A soul with a certain tendency will take birth in a body which is the fittest instrument for the display of that tendency, by the laws of affinity. And this is in perfect accord with science, for science wants to explain everything by habit, and habit is got through repetitions. So these repetitions are also necessary to explain the natural habits of a new-born soul. They were not got in this present life; therefore, they must have come down from past lives.

"All religions are so many stages. Each one of them represents the stage through which the human soul passes to realize God. Therefore, not one of them should be neglected. None of the stages are dangerous or bad. They are good. Just as a child becomes a young man, and a young man becomes an old man, so they are traveling from truth to truth; they become dangerous only when they become rigid, and will not move further—when he ceases to grow. If the child refuses to become a young man, or a young man refuses to become an old man, then he is diseased, but if they steadily grow, each step will lead them onward until they reach the whole truth. Therefore, we believe in both a personal and impersonal God, and at the same time we believe in all the religions that were, all the religions that are, and all the religions that will be in the world. We also believe we ought not only tolerate these religions, but to accept them.

"In the material physical world, expansion is life, and contraction is death. Whatever ceases to expand ceases to live. Translating this in the moral world we have: If one would expand, he must love, and when he ceases to love he dies. It is your nature; you must, because that is the only law of life. Therefore, we must love God for love's sake, so we must do our duty for duty's sake; we must work for work's sake without looking for any reward—know that you are purer and more perfect, know that this is the real temple of God."

He closed his lecture with a series of arguments showing that religion is based upon experience.

At the conclusion of the lecture, Swami Vivekananda answered questions pertinent to his subject, which were propounded by members of the association.

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA
Lecture by Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu Monk
He Addressed a Large Audience under the Auspices of the 
Ethical Society. In a Picturesque Garb He Discusses the 
Tenets of the Ancient Vedas

A large audience gathered in the Pouch mansion last evening to listen to a lecture by Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo monk, on "The Religions of India." The gallery, the parlor adjoining and the hall were filled to overflowing, many of the audience standing throughout the entire lecture. The speaker was introduced by Dr. Lewis G. Janes, president of the Brooklyn Ethical association, under whose auspices the lecture was given. He wore a bright red robe, reaching just below the knee and bound at the waist with a girdle of darker red. On his head was a turban of light yellow silk. He is a man of medium height, of stout build, and his face, which is rather swarthy in color, was cleanly shaven. His eyes are dark and large and his features regular. His voice is low and musical. He spoke in a monotone and his language was marked with a slight foreign accent.

After referring to the views of the Mohammedans, the Buddhists and other religious schools of India, the speaker said that the Hindoos received their religion through the revelations of the Vedas, who teach that creation is without beginning or end. They teach that man is a spirit living in a body. The body will die, but the man will not. The spirit will go on living. The soul was not created from nothing for creation means a combination and that means a certain future dissolution. If then the soul was created it must die. Therefore, it was not created. He might be asked how it is that we do not remember anything of our past lives. This could be easily explained. Consciousness is the name only of the surface of the mental ocean, and within its depths are stored up all our experiences. The desire was to find out something that was stable. The mind, the body, all nature, in fact, is changing. This question of finding something that was infinite had long been discussed. One school of which the modern Buddhists are the representatives, teach that everything that could not be solved by the five senses was non-existent. That every object is dependent upon all others, that it is a delusion that man is an independent entity. The idealists, on the other hand, claim that each individual is an independent body. The true solution of this problem is that nature is a mixture of dependence and independence, of reality and idealism. There is a dependence which is proved by the fact that the movements of our bodies are controlled by our minds, and our minds are controlled by the spirit within us, which Christians call the soul. Death is but a change. Those who have passed beyond and are occupying high positions there are but the same as those who remain here, and those who are occupying lower positions there are the same as others here. Every human being is a perfect being. If we sit down in the dark and lament that it is so dark it will profit us nothing, but if we procure matches and strike a light, the darkness goes out immediately. So, if we sit down and lament that our bodies are imperfect, that our souls are imperfect, we are not profited. When we call in the light of reason, then this darkness of doubt will disappear. The object of life is to learn. Christians can learn from the Hindus, and the Hindus from Christians. He could read his Bible better after reading ours. "Tell your children, " he said, "that religion is a positive something, and not a negative something. It is not the teachings of men, but a growth, a development of something higher within our nature that seeks outlet. Every child born into the world is born with a certain accumulated experience. The idea of independence which possesses us shows there is something in us besides mind and body. The body and mind are dependent. The soul that animates us is an independent factor that creates this wish for freedom. If we are not free how can we hope to make the world good or perfect? We hold that we are makers of ourselves, that what we have we make ourselves. We have made it and we can unmake it. We believe in God, the Father of us all, the Creator and Preserver of His children, omnipresent and omnipotent. We believe in a personal God, as you do, but we go further. We believe that we are He. We believe in all the religions that have gone before, in all that now exist and in all that are to come. The Hindu bows down to the all religion [sic] for in this world the idea is addition, not subtraction. We would make up a bouquet of all beautiful colors for God, the Creator, who is a personal God. We must love God for love's sake, we must do our duty to Him for duty's sake, and must work for Him for work's sake and must worship Him for worship's sake.

"Books are good but they are only maps. Reading a book by direction of a man I read that so many inches of rain fell during the year. Then he told me to take the book and squeeze it between my hands. I did so and not a drop of water came from it. It was the idea only that the book conveyed. So we can get good from books, from the temple, from the church, from anything, so long as it leads us onward and upward. Sacrifices, genuflections, rumblings and mutterings are not religion. They are all good if they help us :to come to a perception of the perfection which we shall realize when we come face to face with Christ. These are words or instructions to us by which we may profit. Columbus, when he discovered this continent, went back and told his countrymen that he had found the new world. They would not believe him, or some would not, and he told them to go and search for themselves. So with us, we read these truths and come in and find the truths for ourselves and then we have a belief which no one can take from us."

After the lecture an opportunity was given those present to question the speaker on any point on which they wished to have his views. Many of them availed themselves of this offer. In answer to a question as to the origin of evil the lecturer said he would try to answer it, if the questioner would prove the existence of evil. Devil worship, he said, was not a part of the Hindoo religion. All men were not equally enlightened, therefore some were better or purer than others, but every man had a chance to make himself better; we cannot unmake ourselves, we cannot destroy the force, that force which animates us, but we can give it a different direction. In reply to a question as to the individuality and the question of cosmic entity of matters [sic] about us or whether they were simply imaginings of our mind, the speaker replied by relating the story of a scholar, [who] when asked by his teacher what would happen if the earth should fall [said]: "Where would it fall to?" The world is certainly an entity in his opinion, but it mattered not whether it was or not. We are moving onward and upward. We are not individuals now. Our souls and spirits are individualities in us. When we pass from this state to the higher state and meet God face to face we shall be perfect individuals. As to the question of the blind man brought to Christ and the question asked of Him whether he or his parents sinned that he was born blind, the speaker said that while the question of sin did not enter into the problem in his mind, he was convinced that the blindness was due to some act on the part of the spirit in the man. Asked as to whether or not the spirit passed at death into a state of happiness the speaker replied: "Time and space are in you. You are not in time and space. It is enough to know that as we make our lives better here as every opportunity is given us, we come nearer and nearer to the perfect man."

A more complete version of the question and answer period which followed Swamiji's lecture of December 30 has been published in volume five of the Complete Works in the section entitled "Questions and Answers." It will be found that Swamiji was also asked: "What is the Hindu theory of the transmigration of souls?" "Why are the women of India not much elevated ?" "Do you not think if the fear of future hellfire were taken from man, there would be no controlling him?" "Do you intend to introduce the practices and rituals of the Hindu religion into this country?" (To this last he answered: "I am preaching simply philosophy. ") It was during the course of this discussion that, in addition to giving succinct answers to all the questions asked, Swamiji first made his now famous statement: "I have a message to the West as Buddha had a message to the East.'[4] (A year later an identical statement was quoted in an article on Swamiji published in the New York Herald of January 19, 1896.)

2

In a letter to Mrs. Bull dated January 3, 1895, Swamiji wrote of the success of his first lecture in Brooklyn: "Some [of the prominent members of the Ethical Society] thought that much Oriental religious subjects will not interest the Brooklyn public. But the lecture through the blessings of the Lord proved a tremendous success. About 800 of the elite of Brooklyn were present and the very gentlemen who thought it would not prove a success are trying for organizing a series in Brooklyn."[5] Of Swamiji's immediate success in Brooklyn Miss Ellen Waldo, who was a member of the Ethical Association and who later became one of his most devoted disciples, writes in her "Introductory Narrative" to Inspired Talks: "The lecture was on 'Hinduism' and as the Swami, in his long robe and turban, expounded the ancient religion of his native land, the interest grew so deep that at the close of the evening there was an insistent demand for regular classes in Brooklyn. The Swami graciously acceded and a series of class meetings was held and several public lectures were given in the Pouch Mansion and elsewhere."" Announcing the series of public lectures, the Brooklyn Ethical Association sent out the following bulletin:

LECTURES BY
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA, 
of India,
Pouch Gallery, 345 Clinton Avenue, 
Near Lafayette Avenue.
Religious and Social Customs in India.

Sunday Evening, January 20th, 1895: Ideals of Womanhood,—Hindu, Mohammedan and Christian.
Sunday Evening, February 3rd,1895: Buddhism as understood in India.
Sunday Evening, February 18th,1895: The Vedas and Religion of the Hindus. What is Idolatry?* 


COMMENCING AT 8 P.M.

COURSE TICKETS, $1.00 SINGLE ADMISSION, 50 Cents. These Lectures are for the joint benefit of the Swami Vivekananda's Educational Work, and the Publication Fund of the Ethical Association.


THE BROOKLYN ETHICAL ASSOCIATION takes pleasure in announcing that it has engaged the services of the distinguished and eloquent Hindu Monk, SWAMI VIVEKANANDA, of Bombay, India, for a series of lectures on the important topics above specified. The profound interest which has been awakened in our city by the address of the lecturer before the Association at the Pouch Gallery, on the evening of Sunday, December 30, has aroused a general and widespread desire to hear further from this able apostle of Hinduism, of the Vedas, and the Philosophy of the Vedanta, not only upon subjects religious and philosophical, but upon the phases of modern life now presented in India. Upon all these topics the lecturer speaks with authority. He is, by birth and education, deeply imbued with the profound mysteries of the Brahman faith, than which no more interesting and profoundly suggestive system has yet been offered in the history of speculative thought. His views upon comparative religion are those of the universal acceptance of all creeds and beliefs as essentially true, and to be interpreted as necessary phases of the religious sentiment. We reprint the following from his address before the Parliament of Religions: [Here follows an excerpt regarding the unity of religions from Swamiji's "Paper on Hinduism" and, following that, a quotation from the Brooklyn Standard Union of December 31, 1894. An announcement at the end of the bulletin read:]


Tickets for sale at Chandler's, at the Pouch Gallery on the evenings of the Lectures, or may be obtained of Members of the Association.


To judge from Swamiji's enthusiastic reception in Brooklyn, the time, on the whole, was ripe for receiving his message. Compared to the Midwest, the East Coast was broad-minded; moreover, few dared openly oppose him, he whose fame had traveled so widely, who was revered by so many American men and women of high intellectual and social standing, who had been officially recognized by India as the most outstanding representative of her highest religious and philosophical thought, and who was known by now as a power to be respected. The direct opposition from the Christian missionary camps had been silenced. It must be said, however, that indirectly the orthodox clergy was still active in its efforts to nullify his influence.


There was, for instance, one Reverend Dr. T. De Witt Talmage of Brooklyn, who was taking a trip around the world and, through a series of newspaper articles mailed from India, was enlightening America regarding the superstition and sin of heathendom. Dr. Talmage's "Round-the-World" series ran through December of 1894 and into January of 1895 and was published not alone in Brooklyn but in other cities as well. A few excerpts from these weekly articles will suffice. Talmage, who was, incidentally, immensely popular and on the platform a showman of no mean ability, wrote as follows: "To show you what Hinduism and Mohammedanism really are, where they have full swing, and not as they represent themselves in a 'Parliament of Religions' and to demonstrate to what extent of cruelty and abomination human nature may go when fully let loose, and to illustrate the hardening process of sin, and to remind you how our glorious Christianity may utter its triumph over death and the grave, I preach this my second sermon in the 'Round-the-World' series, and I shall speak of 'The City of Blood,' or Cawnpore, India." "The life of the missionary is a luxurious and indolent life. Hindooism is a religion that ought not to be interfered with. Christianity is guilty of an impertinence when it invades heathendom; you must put in the same line of reverence Brahma, Buddha, Mohammed and Christ. To refute these slanders and blasphemies now so prevalent, and to spread out before the Christian world the contrast between idolatrous and Christian countries, I preach this sermon..:' "The Ganges is to the Hindoo the best river of all the earth, but to me it is the vilest stream that ever rolled its stench in horror to the sea.... Benares is the capital of Hindooism and Buddhism. But Hindooism has trampled out Buddhism, the hoof of the one monster on the grisly neck of the other monster. It is also the capital of filth and the capital of malodors, and the capital of indecency." "Notwithstanding all that may have been said in its [Hinduism's] favor at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, it makes a man a brute, and woman the lowest type of slave. I would rather be a horse or a cow or a dog in India than be a woman. The greatest disaster that can happen to a Hindoo is that he was born at all."


Thus did Talmage, week after week, in column after column, share his travels with his public. Nor did he leave them without hope:


". . . the missionaries are busy " he wrote "some of them , ,in the churches, in chapels, and bazaars.... In its mightiest stronghold [Benares] Hindooism is being assaulted.... Christianity is undermining heathenism, and not a city or town, or neighborhood of India but directly or indirectly feels the influence, and the day speeds on when Hindooism will go down with a crash.... All India will be taken for Christ." ". . . all the mosques and temples of superstition and sin will yet be turned into churches.... The last mosque of Mohammedanism will be turned into a Christian Church. The last Buddhist temple will become a fortress of light. The last idol of Hindooism will  be pitched into the fire."[7]


This type of thing was in the nature of a last stand on the part of the Christian missionaries, and it is perhaps significant that the Reverend Dr. 'I', De Witt Talmage had been for several months out of touch with the trend of thought in America. He was fighting a battle already lost, for, as Swamiji wrote to India in the last part of 1894: "Here the missionaries and their ilk have howled  themselves into silence and the whole world will do likewise."[8]


There was, however, one more battle to be waged between Swamiji and the missionaries' ilk, who found it their Christian duty to malign India in the name of "helping" her and who were thrown off balance by any word in her favor. In Brooklyn, bitter opposition from a new source was aroused by the report of Swamiji's second lecture sponsored by the Brooklyn Ethical Association. This lecture, "Ideals of Womanhood-Hindu, Mohammedan and Christian," was delivered at the Pouch Mansion on Sunday evening, January 20, and was reported by the Standard Union of January 21, as follows:

IDEAL WOMAN

She is the Wife in the West, the Mother in the Orient.
Story of Umar and Shiver [Uma and Shiva]
Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu Monk, Speaks to 

A Large Audience at the Pouch Mansion—The 
Perfect Woman a Mixture of All Ideals,
Perhaps the Remedy of All Evils

Swami Vivekananda, the celebrated Hindu monk, somewhat disappointed the large audience which had assembled last night at the Pouch Mansion, on Clinton avenue, to hear his lecture on "Ideals of Womanhood—Hindu, Mohammedan and Christian, " the first in a course of three given under the auspices of the Brooklyn Ethical Association.


Not that the discourse was uninteresting—far from that; but Swami Vivekananda seemed to digress too often into subjects only distantly related to the theme proper, thereby mystifying and confusing his hearers. Still, the lecture contained so many beautiful thoughts, so many noble truths, so many bright pictures of the customs and conditions of a race so wholly different from our own, that no one can regret the two hours spent last night at the feet of this Oriental philosopher and sage. Swami Vivekananda, after being presented to the audience by Dr. Janes, president of the Ethical Association said in part:


"The product of the slums of any nation cannot be the criterion of our judgment of that nation. One may collect the rotten, worm-eaten apples under every apple tree in the world, and write a book about each of them, and still know nothing of the beauty and possibilities of the apple tree. Only in the highest and best can we judge a nation—the fallen are a race by themselves. Thus it is not only proper, but just and right, to judge a custom by its best, by its ideal.


"The ideal of womanhood centres in the Arian race of India, the most ancient in the world's history. In that race, men and women were priests, "sabatimini ,[sahadharmini]," or co-religionists, as the Vedas call them. There every family had its hearth or altar, on which, at the time of the wedding, the marriage fire was kindled, which was kept alive, until either spouse died, when the funeral pile was lighted from its spark. There man and wife together offered their sacrifices, and this idea was carried so far that a man could not even pray alone, because it was held that he was only half a being, for that reason no unmarried man could become a priest. The same held true in ancient Rome and Greece.


"But with the advent of a distinct and separate priest-class, the co-priesthood of the woman in all these nations steps back. First it was the Assyrian race, coming of semitic blood, which proclaimed the doctrine that girls have no voice, and no right, even when married. The Persians drank deep of this Babylonian idea, and by them it was carried to Rome and to Greece, and everywhere woman degenerated.


"Another cause was instrumental in bringing this about the change in the system of marriage. The earliest system was a matriarchal one; that is, one in which the mother was the centre, and in which the girls acceded to her station. This led to the curious system of the Polianders [polyandry], where five and six brothers often married one wife. Even the Vedas contain a trace of it in the provision, that when a man died without leaving any children, his widow was permitted to live with another man, until she became a mother; but the children she bore did not belong to their father, but to her dead husband. In later years the widow was allowed to marry again, which the modern idea forbids her to do.


"But side by side with these excrescences a very intense idea of personal purity sprang up in the nation. On every page the Vedas preach personal purity. The laws in this respect were extremely strict. Every boy and girl was sent to the university, where they studied until their twentieth or thirtieth year; there the least impurity was punished almost cruelly. This idea of personal purity has imprinted itself deeply into the very heart of the race, amounting almost to a mania. The most conspicuous example of it is to be found in the capture of Chito [Chitor] by the Mohammedans. The men defended the town against tremendous odds; and when the women saw that defeat was inevitable they lit a monstrous fire on the market place, and when the enemy broke down the gates 74,500 women jumped on the huge funeral pile and perished in the flames. This noble example has been handed down in India to the present time, when every letter bears the words "74,500," which means that any one who unlawfully reads the letter, thereby becomes guilty of a crime similar to the one which drove those noble women of Chito to their death.


"The next period is that of the monks; it came with the advent of Buddhism, which taught that only the monks could reach the 'nirvana,' something similar to the Christian heaven. The result was that all India became one huge monastery; there was but one object, one battle to remain pure. All the blame was cast onto women, and even the proverbs warned against them. 'What is the gate to hell?' was one of them, to which the answer was: 'woman.' Another read: 'What is the chain which binds us all to dust? Woman.' Another one: 'Who is the blindest of the blind? He who is deceived by woman.'


"The same idea is to be found in the cloisters of the West. The development of all monasticism always meant the degeneration of women.


"But eventually another idea of womanhood arose. In the West it found its ideal in the wife, in India in the mother. But do not think that the priests were altogether responsible for this change. I know they always lay claim to everything in the world and I say this, although I am myself a priest. I'll bend my knees to every prophet in every religion and clime, but candor compels me to say, that here in the West the development of women was brought about by men like John Stuart Mill and the revolutionary French philosophers. Religion has done something, no doubt, but not all. Why, in Asia Minor, Christian bishops to this day keep a harem!


"The Christian ideal is that which is found in the AngloSaxon race. The Mohammedan woman differs vastly from her western sisters in so far as her social and intellectual development is not so pronounced. But do not, on that account, think that the Mohammedan woman is unhappy, because it is not so. In India woman has enjoyed property rights since thousands of years. Here a man may disinherit his wife, in India the whole estate of the deceased husband must go to the wife, personal property absolutely, real property for life.


"In India the mother is the centre of the family and our highest ideal. She is to us the representative of God, as God is the mother of the Universe. It was a female sage who first found the unity of God, and laid down this doctrine in one of the first hymns of the Vedas. Our God is both personal and absolute, the absolute is male, the personal, female. And thus it comes that we now say: 'The first manifestation of God is the hand that rocks the cradle: He is of the 'arian' race, who is born through prayer, and he is a nonarian, who is born through sensuality.


"This doctrine of prenatal influence is now slowly being recognized, and science as well as religion calls out: 'Keep yourself holy, and pure.' So deeply has this been recognized in India, that there we even speak of adultery in marriage except when marriage is consummated in prayer. And I and every good Hindoo believe, that my mother was pure and holy, and hence I owe her everything that I am. 'That is the secret of the race— chastity." 


Swamiji spent the three weeks that had elapsed between his first lecture in Brooklyn and this second lecture of January 20, 1895, in Chicago, where he had visited the Hale Family. He now wrote to Isabelle McKindley from New York on January 24:


Dear Miss Bell,

I hope you are wel1,

Tell the tailor to go to

For he hasn't sent my vest.

My last lecture was not very much appreciated by the men but awfully so by vemen. You know this Brooklyn is the centre of anti-women's rights movements and when I told them that women deserve and are fit for everything they did not like it of course. Never mind the women were in ecstasies.


I have got again a little cold. I am going to the Guernseys I have got a room downtown also where I will go several hours to hold my classes etc. Mother church must be all right by this time and you are all enjoying this nice weather. Give Mrs. Adams mountain high love and regard from me when you see her next.

Send my letters as usual to the Guernseys. 

With love for all

Ever your aff bro[9]

Vivekananda

But not all the "vemen" appreciated Swamiji's lecture. In the light of the propaganda which had been spread by the Pundita Ramabai in America, it caused a furore among the members of the Ramabai Circle in Brooklyn. The tumult, however, did not become public until some five weeks after the lecture had been given, and will be dealt with later on. In the meantime, Swamiji delivered both public and semi public lectures in Brooklyn


A letter from Leon Landsberg to Isabelle McKindley, which has recently come into our hands, throws some light on his Brooklyn activities during the last week of January, 1895. The letter reads as follows:

54 W. 33rd str.
New York, Jan'y. 26th. 95. 

Dear Madam,

The enclosed circular may interest you.

Yesterday the Swami held the first of a series of parlour lectures at Mrs. Auel's residence in Brooklyn. The lecture was attended by about sixty .five persons, most of them ladies. The Swami gave an outline of the Upanishads and the Yoga system, and his conversation was highly appreciated. His next conversation will be on Tuesday next.


I am sorry to' say that since his arrival from Chicago, the Swami is constantly suffering from colds. But I hope that with the change of weather he will regain his usual good health.


With sincere regards[10]

Leon Landsberg

The following bulletin was enclosed in the above letter:

BROOKLYN ETHICAL ASSOCIATION

An Introductory
LECTURE and CONVERSATION
will be given by the 
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
of India, 
Under the Auspices of the Brooklyn Ethical 
Association, 
at the Parlors of
Mrs. Charles Auel, 65, Lefferts Place, 

FRIDAY AFTERNOON, JAN. 25, 1895, AT 3-30 O’clock 
Preliminary to the formation of a Class for the Exposition 
and Study of the Upanishads and Yogi Doctrine, as taught 
and practised by the Sages of India.
Subject of the First Conversation


"THE UPANISHADS, AND DOCTRINE OF THE SOUL."

The expositions of the VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY and Religious and Ethical Teachings of the Hindus, by the SWAMI VIVEKANANDA, have delighted and instructed cultivated audiences in Cambridge, Chicago, St. Louis, and elsewhere in the United States.


The course of mental discipline inculcated is, it is claimed, based on scientific psychological principles.


One who has attended the Cambridge Classes of the SWAMI VIVEKANANDA, writes: "He has helped many students (in Harvard University) in the solution of philosophical problems in which they had become involved in their course of study."


As only a limited number can be admitted to these classes, a minimum fee of Fifty Cents will be charged for admission to each Conversation, payable at the door. Those who voluntarily desire, can contribute larger freewill offerings toward the Swami's Educational work.


(The above mention of the "Cambridge Classes" refers, of course, to the morning talks which Swamiji gave during December at Mrs. Ole Bull's home.)


As has been seen in Landsberg's letter of January 26, Swamiji gave a "parlor lecture" in Brooklyn on January 29, as well as on January 25. Very likely there were more Brooklyn parlor lectures but unfortunately we have at present no record of them.


Swamiji's third public lecture in Brooklyn at the Pouch Mansion was entitled, "Buddhism as Understood in India." He delivered it on Sunday, February 3, and it was reported upon in the Brooklyn Standard Union of Monday, February 4, as Follows:

TRUE BUDDHISM
An Eloquent Defense of It by Swami Vivekananda
The Hindoo Monk at His Best

Buddhism a Reformation of Ancient Society and Religion—It Combated Casts, and was the First to Preach Mercy towards Animals—Scenes from the Life of Buddha—Meeting of the Ethical Society at

the Pouch Mansion.

Never before, during his stay in this city, was Swami Vivekananda more eloquent or impressive than last evening, when he spoke to a large audience, at the Pouch Mansion, on the subject: "Buddhism as Understood in India." Himself imbued with a holy enthusiasm for the ancient religion of his forefathers, the celebrated Hindoo monk held his hearers spellbound with the fascinating earnestness of his speech.


Buddha has no truer disciple than this youthful priest who, conscious of his own strength, boldly declares: "The morality of true Buddhism is the noblest yet given to the world!" His tribute to "Buddha, the Great, the Master," was touching in its grand simplicity; as it was admirable in its noble eloquence. His words last night were not those of a paid exponent of a peculiar system of philosophy, but rather those of an apostle, preaching a creed which has become a part of his very self.


Swami Vivekananda, being presented by Dr. Janes, the president of the Ethical Association, under whose auspices these lectures are given, said in part: "The Hindoo occupies a unique position towards Buddhism. Like Christ, who antagonized the Jews, Buddha antagonized the prevailing religion of India; but while Christ was rejected by his countrymen, Buddha was accepted as God Incarnate. He denounced the priest craft at the very doors of their temples, yet to-day he is worshipped by them.


"Not, however, the creed which bears his name. What Buddha taught, the Hindoo believes, but what the Buddhists teach, we do not accept. For the teachings of the Great Master, spread out broadcast over the land, came back in tradition, colored by the channels through which they passed.


"In order to understand Buddhism fully we must go back to the mother religion from which it came. The books of Veda have two parts; the first, Cura makanda [Karma Kanda], contains the sacrificial portion, while the second part, the Vedanta, denounces sacrifices, teaching charity and love, but not death. Each sect took up what portion it liked. The charvaka, or materialist, basing his doctrine on the first part, believed that all was matter and that there is neither a heaven nor a hell, neither a soul nor a God. The second sect, the Gains [Jains], were very moral atheists, who, while rejecting the idea of a God, believed that there is a soul, striving for more perfect development. These two sects were called the heretics. A third sect was called orthodox, because it accepted the Vedas, although it denied the existence of a personal God, believing that everything sprang from the atom or nature.


"Thus the intellectual world was divided before Buddha came. But for a correct understanding of his religion, it is also necessary to speak of the caste then existing. The Vedas teach that he who knows God is a Brahma [Brahmana] ; he who protects his fellows is a Chocta [Kshatriya], while he who gains his livelihood in trade is a Visha [Vaishya]. These different social diversions developed or degenerated into iron-bound casts [castes], and an organized and crystallized priestcraft stood upon the neck of the nation. At this time Buddha was born, and his religion is therefore the culmination of an attempt at a religious and a social reformation.


"The air was full of the din of discussion; 20,000 blind priests were trying to lead 20,000,000 [ ?] blind men, fighting amongst themselves. What was more needed at that time than for a Buddha to preach? 'Stop quarreling, throw your books aside, be perfect!' Buddha never fought true casts, for they are nothing but the congregation of those of a particular natural tendency, and they are always valuable. But Buddha fought the degenerated casts with their hereditary privileges, and spoke to the Brahmins: 'True Brahmins are not greedy, nor criminal, nor angry— are you such? If not, do not mimic the genuine, real men. Cast is a state, not an iron-bound class, and every one who knows and loves God is a true Brahmin.' And with regard to the sacrifices, he said: 'Where do the Vedas say that sacrifices make us pure? They may please, perhaps, the angels, but they make us no better. Hence, let off these mummeries—love God and strive to be perfect.'


"In later years these doctrines of Buddha were forgotten. Going to lands yet unprepared for the reception of these noble truths, they came back tainted with the foibles of these nations. Thus the Nihilists arose—a sect whose doctrine it was that the whole universe, God and soul, had no basis, but that everything is continually changing. They believed in nothing but the enjoyment of the moment, which eventually resulted in the most revolting orgies. That, however, is not the doctrine of Buddha, but a horrible degeneration of it, and honor to the Hindoo nation, who stood up and drove it out.


"Every one of Buddha's teachings is founded in the Vedantas. He was one of those monks who wanted to bring out the truths, hidden in those books and in the forest monasteries. I do not believe that the world is ready for them even now; it still wants those lower religions, which teach of a personal God. Because of this, the original Buddhism could not hold the popular mind, until it took up the modifications, which were reflected back from Thibet and the Tartars. Original Buddhism was not at all nihilistic. It was but an attempt to combat cast and pries-tcraft; it was the first in the world to stand as champion of the dumb animals, the first to break down the caste, standing between man and man."


Swami Vivekananda concluded his lecture with the presentation of a few pictures from the life of Buddha, the "great one, who never thought a thought and never performed a deed except for the good of others; who had the greatest intellect and heart, taking in all mankind and all the animals, all embracing, ready to give up his life for the highest angels as well as for the lowest worm:" He first showed how Buddha, for the purpose of saving a herd of sheep, intended for a king's sacrifice, had thrown himself upon the altar, and thus accomplished his purpose. He next pictured how the great prophet had parted from his wife and baby at the cry of suffering mankind, and how, lastly, after his teachings had been universally accepted in India, he accepted the invitation of a despised Pariah, who dined him on swine's flesh, from the effects of which he died.

The New York World of February 4 briefly mentioned the lecture on Buddhism :

AN EXPOSITION OF BUDDHISM

Six hundred people assembled in the ballroom of the Pouch Gallery at No. 345 Clinton Avenue, last evening to listen to an address by Swami Vivekananda, whose able expositions of the Veda's philosophy have delighted large audiences in Brooklyn before.


As the address was to be given before the Brooklyn Ethical Association, the largest part of the audience were members of that organization.

3

In his lecture at the Pouch Mansion on January 20 Swamiji had said: "In India woman has enjoyed property rights since thousands of years. Here a man may disinherit his wife, in India the whole estate of the deceased husband must go to the wife, personal property absolutely, real property for life.”  Inoffensive as it may seem, this statement had a devastating effect upon the women of the Ramabai Circle of Brooklyn.

The Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati was a well-known exponent of education for Hindu child widows, and the somewhat romantic story of her life was legend among her Western friends. Born in 1858, she was the daughter of a Maratha priest, who brought her up in seclusion and educated her in Sanskrit. On the death of her parents, Ramabai, then sixteen, wandered on foot with her younger brother through India, finding occupation as a cook in various Brahmin families and incidentally gathering, it is said, a knowledge of Hindu customs. On reaching Calcutta, she was acknowledged by the professors of the university as a Sanskrit scholar and received from them the title of "Sarasvati ", goddess of learning. After this followed two years of travel, lectures and writing in the interest of Hindu women. When twenty-two, Ramabai married and settled down, only to be left two years later a widow with an eight-months-old daughter. She forthwith sold her husband's house and set off for England, where she became a Christian convert and was made professor of Sanskrit in Cheltenham College. Then, coming to the conclusion that she could best help her countrywomen by starting a school in India for child widows, she came to America to study modern educational methods. During the two and a half years that she remained in this country she directed her energies to raising $25,000 in a lump sum in order to establish her proposed school and $5,000 to be donated annually for ten years for its perpetuation. To this end she enlisted the support of many influential men and women and founded "Ramabai Circles" from one end of the United States to the other—fiftyfive in all. These Circles were by no means obscure organizations. The first Board of Officers of the Ramabai Association of the United States, for instance, included among its members Lyman Abbott and Edward Everett Hale, both highly influential preachers and writers.


But though Ramabai's purpose was no doubt admirable, the means she employed did nothing to mitigate the poor opinion of India already rooted deep in the American mind. In an effort to raise funds she spread tales of her motherland which were on a par with the most lurid exaggerations of the Christian missionaries. Her lectures, published in the American newspapers, were replete with such statements as: "Widows are not allowed to marry again, and are left to starve and drudge," "There are over 20,000,000 child widows in India, nearly a fifth of them under four years of age, suffering untold wretchedness and misery." "Of the 250,000 [?] women in India one fifth are widows, the beasts of burden for their community." "But it's the child widow, upon whom, in an especial manner, falls the abuse and hatred of the community, as the greatest criminal upon whom Heaven's judgments have been pronounced." And so on.


In The High-Caste Hindu Woman, written in 1887, Ramabai let her emotional imagination run full riot. The book reads like an early version of Mother India and was, as were her lectures, calculated to wring the hearts and purses of American women.* "Mothers and fathers," Ramabai pleaded in conclusion, "compare the condition of your own sweet darlings at your happy firesides with that of millions of little girls of a corresponding age in India, who have already been sacrificed on the unholy altar of an inhuman social custom, and then ask yourselves whether you can stop short of doing something to rescue the little widows from the hands of their tormentors. Millions of heart-rending cries are daily rising from within the stony walls in Indian zenanas; thousands of child widows are annually dying without a ray of hope to cheer their hearts, and other thousands are daily being crushed under a fearful weight of sin and shame, with no one to prevent their ruin by providing for them a better way." 'To promote the sale of this book Ramabai's friends had "A Christmas Thought for India," which was that "those women of the United States who know and who trust Ramabai, will make one united effort at this season of gift-making and gladness, co sell an extraordinarily large number of copies of The High-Caste Hindu Woman."


The American women of the latter part of the nineteenth century were restless. Tired of being merely the ornaments of the country, beginning to assert themselves as Women—always with a capital W—and yet still barred from business and politics, they sought out some noble cause, something which they alone could understand and which they alone could serve: The persecuted Hindu child widows of Ramabai's lectures and book met every requirement, providing, as they did, drama, pathos, and an opportunity to patronize. In view of this it is clear why Swamiji's statement to the effect that Hindu wives and widows were protected by law to a greater extent than were nineteenth century American women came as a severe blow to the good ladies of the Ramabai Circle. It not only undermined the effectiveness of their fund-raising propaganda, but destroyed a good deal of the personal satisfaction they had derived from being benefactors to a class of women less emancipated and less respected than were they themselves. On Sunday, February 24, the president of the Circle registered a protest through the pages of the Daily Eagle, which read :

RAMABAI CIRCLE AROUSED


Statement of Lecturer Swami Vivekananda
Denied as to Treatment of Widows
The Hindoo Monk Declares that Child Wives Left by
High Caste Hindoos are Protected by Law—The
President of the Ramabai Circle Cites Testimony to
Prove that They are Starved and Beaten.


A sharp issue has arisen between certain persons in this city, who are interested in Christian work in India, and Swami Vivekananda, a Hindoo monk now in Brooklyn, on the question of the suffering of child widows in India. Swami Vivekananda denied, in a lecture in the Pouch mansion a fortnight ago, that widows of high caste Hindoos undergo suffering. High caste Hindoo widows are, he said, especially protected by law. This statement is held by many persons in this city to be open to question; and especially by those who are members of the Brooklyn Ramabai circle. Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, from whom the Brooklyn circle and about sixty others in this country are named, visited this country eight years ago, and among other large cities visited Brooklyn. She was a convert to Christianity, and is now conducting an undenominational school for girls in India. The Ramabai circles in this country contribute from $100 to $150 a year each for the support of the institution. That which caused the creation of the Ramabai circles and is the strength of their financial support to the school in India is chiefly the stirring account Ramabai gave when here, though it is declared that there is ample corroborative proof of her representations in that respect.


The president of the Brooklyn Ramabai circle is Mrs. James McKeen of 136 Henry Street. Mrs. McKeen said yesterday to the reporter of the Eagle:


"A square issue of fact seems to be presented on this question of the suffering of child widows in India. We learned from Ramabai, in her addresses here, that girls 3, 4, 5 and 6 years old were married to men of 50 or 60 years of age. If they were not married before they were 11 years old it would be a family disgrace. If the husband died without having a son born to him the widow was compelled to enter upon the most abject life. All their fine clothing and jewelry was taken from them, coarse garments were put on and they became household drudges. I know of one instance from an American woman, who was in India at the time and was personally acquainted with the facts, that a young Hindoo girl married an old man and, a year after his death, was found sick and coarsely clad, lying on an old mat and praying for death to relieve her from her sufferings. She said to this visitor, who told me the story, 'Pray that all the child widows may die. It would be a relief from their sufferings.' From other sources I am thoroughly convinced that Ramabai's story is correct in every detail. As a member of the Ramabai circle in Brooklyn, during the past six years, I have many times solicited money from the public in behalf of suffering child widows in India. It has been reported to me by many creditable gentlemen that they have lately heard it publicly stated by one entitled to know of what he speaks that there does not exist in India any such class as that for which we have appealed. India is a large country, very much larger than many of us are apt to imagine who look only upon the map of it drawn to a scale of 500 miles to the inch. I have never been in any part of it, and cannot pretend to speak of its manners and customs from personal knowledge. But it seems to me that in some respects this absence of personal contact with the subject involved may fit one better for a calm survey of the testimony proffered, as a judge is supposed to be better qualified for giving an unprejudiced judgment when his personal sympathies, interests and tastes are not at all concerned in the decision. What might seem to one born and bred in India a proper and happy condition, might seem to another born and bred in a western land a condition of humiliation and misery. Without desiring, therefore, to assume any superior knowledge on this subject, or to call in question the statements of any others from their own points of view happiness and unhappiness being to some extent relative terms—I am willing to state the reasons that lead me still to believe that there is much suffering among the child widows of India, and a condition of degradation and misery among its women that the happier people of America are in duty bound to alleviate to the extent that may be within our power.


"It may be asked what is the credibility of my witnesses? Naturally the first witness to whom I turn is the Pundita Ramabai. Concerning her probity, consider the personal regard in which she is held by those who have known her for many years, both in this country and in England, and also look at the unsolicited testimony of her compatriots as to her truthfulness and honor. (Here follows some favorable testimony concerning Ramabai and her work from Max Muller, a Miss Hamlin, an unidentified Madras paper and the London Atheneum. Mrs. McKeen then continues:]


"It seems to me that when a woman, such as Ramabai is here described to be, devotes her life to the work of relieving a certain class from misery it is not unreasonable to believe that such a class exists.


"The Bishop of Bombay evidently thought that such a class existed, since he sent 58 pounds to Ramabai to aid her work. Miss Manning, honorable secretary of the British National Indian association, is persuaded that such a class exists, for she has contributed 158 pounds to Ramabai for its relief, and, finally, Mrs. J. W. Adams of Boston, Mass., widely known in this city, and much beloved and honored, having been sent to India by the Ramabai association to look after its work, wrote from Poona last year these stirring words:


" 'We have been told that the life of the child widow is not so hard and pitiless as represented; that the majority have happy homes and they yield cheerfully, bravely, to the restrictions, customs or religion placed upon them. Why, then, are the shaven head and the coarse white garment badges of shame? Why are the bodies emaciated and disfigured by starvation and cruel blows? Why the sullen, joyless expression of the face? Why so many suicides and lives of shame among the child widows? Let him who believes such statements, though made by the Hindoos themselves, come to the Sharada Sadana, listen to the pitiful histories of some of its inmates, see the white marks of the hot iron on the head, the little white scars made by sharp finger nails meeting the tender flesh of the face as I have heard and seen all this, and much more—and he will not only know the truth, but he will feel it a privilege to do something for these unfortunate children.'


"I think what I have said is sufficient to convince any unprejudiced person that if I have been mistaken in this matter I do not speak unadvisedly and have the honor to be mistaken in good company. I shall be glad to mail reports of the work done in India to anyone who will send me his or her address."


For the newspapers a disturbance such as this was always welcome. The Daily Standard Union was quick to take advantage of Mrs. McKeen's animadversions and on February 25 printed the following:

WIDOWS IN INDIA


Swami Vivekananda's Statements Denied In The Ramabai Circle

In his lecture delivered in the Pouch Gallery before the Brooklyn Ethical Association two weeks ago [January 20] the Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu monk who is endeavoring to enlighten Americans as to political, economic, social and religious affairs in India, denied the existence of the ill treatment of widows in that country which is alleged to exist. The Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, a convert to Christianity who visited America eight years ago, and who is now engaged in her own country in the conduct of an undenominational school for her own sex, stated in her talks here, that if the husband of a woman dies leaving no male heir the widow is despoiled of her jewelry and good clothing and is made a household drudge. Corroborative statements have come from other sources. In denying such statements the Swami Vivekananda declared that high caste widows in India are especially protected by law. His denial has created quite a stir in the Ramabai Circle of this city, which is one of many such circles founded in this country to foster the Pundita Ramaliai's work in India.


The revolt promises to be a very pretty controversy, as the Swami Vivekananda has won many friends in this city, and will undoubtedly have a respectable following, while there will be a disposition among a large number of persons interested in such questions to give both sides an impartial hearing. The matter was referred to last night by Dr. Lewis G. Janes, president of the Brooklyn Ethical Association, at the opening of the meeting in the Pouch Gallery. He regarded the position of the Ramabai Circle as tending to bring into disrepute the Swami Vivekananda's own educational work in India, and he said that the association had made careful investigation as to the monk's position and character before inviting him to come here.


Indeed, Dr. Janes lost no time in coming to Swamiji's defense. Having read Mrs. McKeen's statement in the Eagle, he at once wrote a letter to that paper. Although the following was dated erroneously March 3 and published on March 6, it had actually been written and sent on February 24.:


SWAMI VIVEKANANDA


Defended by the Brooklyn Ethical Association's President

To the Editor of the Brooklyn Eagle:

The excellent ladies of the Ramabai circle are laboring under an unfortunate misapprehension. Swami Vivekananda did not at the Pouch mansion or elsewhere in Brooklyn or at any other place deny that widows of high caste Hindoos undergo suffering, He has not, publicly or privately, as far as I am aware, in any way reprobated wise efforts for the education and elevation of Hindoo women. His only allusion in his public addresses in Brooklyn to Hindoo widows was in his lecture on "Ideals of Womanhood, Hindoo, Mohammedan and Christian ", delivered at the Pouch mansion, not a fortnight ago, but on Sunday evening, January 20, five weeks ago. In this lecture he did not even allude to the Pundita Ramabai or her work, and made no such statement as that alleged in your issue of today. His allusion to Hindoo widows was brief and wholly incidental to the main topic of his discourse, and referred exclusively to the property rights of high caste widows under the Hindoo law. These, he asserted, were superior to those guaranteed to widows in this country, giving them absolute possession and control of their inheritance in their husbands' and patrimonial estates. [Dr. Janes erred; Swamiji did not say "patrimonial.”] Unless this statement can be disproved Swami Vivekananda's only assertion in Brooklyn with respect to high caste Hindoo widows goes unchallenged. The lecture on "Ideals of Womanhood" was introduced with the explanation that the purpose of the speaker was solely to present the ideal side, the broad, general tendency of the respective civilizations with reference to social purity and the position of woman. There was a nether side, an aspect of degradation, he admitted, in India as well as in countries called Christian, but of this side he did not propose to speak. It would be as unjust to judge India by the nether side as to judge America by the revelations of the Parkhurst investigation and the Lexow committee. Of child marriage and the social disabilities of Hindoo widows, therefore, he said nothing. As a patriotic Hindoo he presented the type of womanhood on its best and ideal side as developed under the influences of the religion and civilization prevailing in his country. That ideal was the ideal of motherhood. No nobler conception of the mother function as the highest development of the ever womanly nature has ever been presented in my hearing. No more exigent morality, alike obligatory on man and woman, has ever been preached in any pulpit in this City of Churches. The object of this communication, however, is not merely that of the correction or denial of the misapprehensions expressed and implied in the interview entitled "Ramabai Circle Aroused, " but to endeavor to throw some light upon the real attitude of our guest toward the philanthropic movement in which the good ladies of the Ramabai circle are so deeply interested. The Brooklyn Ethical association numbers among its honorary corresponding members in India a gentleman whose devoted labors in behalf of the education and elevation of high caste Hindoo widows long antedated the work of Ramabai. This gentleman is Babu Sasipada Banergie [Banerjee] of Baranagar, a suburb of Calcutta, himself a Hindoo, who, in defiance of current prejudices, more than thirty years ago embarked on this work of reform, which, with his own good wife as a helper, he has since prosecuted with untiring assiduity and devotion. He has won the respect and indorsement of many of the best citizens of his own faith, as well as of Christians who are sufficiently large hearted and liberal to be capable of seeing that good may sometimes come out of Nazareth. Swami Vivekananda is his friend and believes in his work. I have this assurance from his own lips. The work of Babu Sasipada Banergie has been conducted quietly and without ostentation, but it has been fruitful of good result. It is not the object aimed at by the Pundita Ramabai that Swami Vivekananda criticises, but the methods adopted for collecting money, and the impossibility, as he believes, of accomplishing large results in the way proposed. The fact that the Pundita Ramabai is herself a Christian convert is sufficient to repel a great majority even of the liberally inclined high caste Hindoos from encouraging it, as the printed reports of the Ramabai circles are themselves insufficient [?] to demonstrate. Nor will the lofty and not altogether reprehensible pride of the Brahmin permit him to be the recipient of favors rendered possible by the solicitation of money in distant countries from those of an alien faith. To do this would be contrary to a deep seated religious and social prejudice, which, whether we reprobate it or not is an unquestionable fact. The wise helper of his fellow human beings will never waste his strength in kicking against facts. As the reports of Ramabai's work also show, it has been impossible to meet with even a small measure of success save by the assurance that her school was absolutely non-Christian and that no efforts toward proselyting would therein be tolerated. A breath of suspicion that this rule was in danger of being violated, some time since, caused a considerable secession of pupils from her school, and the resignation of all the members of a board of advisors consisting of high caste Hindoo gentlemen of great liberality and the highest social standing. That the practice of the Swami Vivekananda, while in this country, has been consistent with this high conception of duty, I have had occasion to know. Though he has at heart a noble enterprise for the education of the religious teachers of his own faith in sociology, economics and the better things in our Western civilization, he has made absolutely no effort to solicit subscriptions for this purpose. Nor will he accept one penny for his work as a teacher; nor even for this larger work, save as a voluntary, free will offering from people of calm judgment, intellectually convinced of the importance of the work. In Brooklyn he has absolutely declined to hold classes where an admission fee is charged, even for the purpose of paying the expenses of the room and advertising. For himself he accepts from public lectures only what is necessary for traveling expenses and his food, clothing and lodging, from week to week. I personally know of one instance where he returned to an enthusiastic admirer a check for $500 freely given, declining to receive it because he did not need it, and feared the donor was carried away with undue enthusiasm.[11] Those who know the Swami Vivekananda best write in testimony to his nobility of character, and the purity and elevation of his daily life. I have made diligent inquiry in Chicago, where he has many devoted friends; in Cambridge, where his lectures and classes were attended by people of the highest culture, including students of the university, and elsewhere, and have heard but one reply. In the town hall of Calcutta, on September 5 last, a large meeting of his own people was held, which in terms of unqualified eulogy indorsed his character and work. This meeting was reported in the Indian Mirror of the day following, together with a sketch of his life and experiences, from one acquainted with his entire career. The New York Sun of September 2, contained an account of a similar meeting held in Madras. From Professor Rhys Davids we have the assurance that the gentlemen participating in these meetings are of the highest standing in the community. We are justified, therefore, in regarding the word of the Swami Vivekananda as above reproach, and we know him to be in full sympathy with all wise movements for the elevation and improvement of the people, both here and in his own country. That India has something to teach us, that our obligations are reciprocal, he unquestionably believes and teaches. And in this conclusion, when we rid ourselves of our ethnic narrowness, I, for one, believe we shall agree with him. I need only add that I have written without consultation with Swami Vivekananda, and have said in his behalf some things which his modesty and position as a religious teacher would doubtless prevent him from saying for himself:

LEWISS G.JANES
President Brooklyn Ethical Association
Brooklyn, March 3 [February 24], 1895.


As Dr. Janes said, it was true that Swamiji had not dwelt upon the condition of high-caste widows in India; he had, indeed, not mentioned the lives of widows at all. The question then is, what had aroused Mrs. McKeen's passionate and insistent declaration that Hindu widows did undergo suffering? This question was, I believe, partially answered when it was pointed out earlier that Swamiji's statement regarding the inheritance laws of India implied that widows as a class were not persecuted victims of India's social system. Another fact which explains the apparently unprovoked excitement of the women of the Ramabai Circle was that Swamiji's views regarding child widows were not unknown to them. The reader will remember that his first talk in America had been delivered before the Ramabai Circle in Boston in August of 1893 (chapter one). There can be little doubt that at that time he had spoken directly about the condition of Hindu widows in India and that Ramabai's followers had received a severe shock. It would not be unreasonable to believe that thenceforth all the fifty-five circles of America had been antagonistic toward him and that this antagonism has grown in proportion to his growing fame and influence. Moreover, it is very likely that the Ramabai Circles had been influenced in their attitude toward Swamiji by the Christian missionaries. Indeed, as is evidenced by a letter which he wrote on July 1, 1895, to Alasinga, Swamiji suspected this to be the case.[12]The Brooklyn Circle was not, therefore, as it might have appeared to an outsider, suddenly aroused; rather it was making a last stand against an old and feared opponent.


Silence would perhaps have better served the Ramabai Circles' interest, for Swamiji made no compromise in his reply. After his fourth lecture in Brooklyn, given the day following the printing of Mrs. McKeen's interview with the press, he was directly questioned regarding Hindu widows and, in a few clear words, denied Ramabai's tales—a denial which the Circle had anticipated and which was, to them, shattering. This lecture of Monday, February 25, was entitled "India's Gift to The World" and was reported upon in the Brooklyn Standard Union of February 27 as follows:

"INDIA'S GIFTS"
The Subject of Swami Vivekananda's Last Lecture.
Religion, Science and Art have all been Advanced by The 
East, He Says—Christianity the Offspring of Buddhism—
Some Charges Refuted by the Hindoo Monk.

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo monk, delivered a lecture Monday night under the auspices of the Brooklyn Ethical Association before a fairly large audience at the hall of the Long Island Historical Society, corner Pierrepont and Clinton streets. His subject was "India's Gift to the World."


He spoke of the wondrous beauties of his native land, "where stood the earliest cradle of ethics, arts, sciences, and literature, and the integrity of whose sons and the virtue of whose daughters have been sung by all travelers." Then the lecturer showed in rapid details, what India has given to the world.


"In religion," he said, "she has exerted a great influence on Christianity, as the very teachings of Christ would [could] be traced back to those of Buddha." He showed by quotations from the works of European and American scientists the many points of similarity between Buddha and Christ. The latter's birth, his seclusion from the world, the number of his apostles, and the very ethics of his teachings are the same as those of Buddha, living many hundred years before him.


"Is it mere chance," the lecturer asked, "or was Buddha's religion but the foreshadowing of that of Christ? The majority of your thinkers seem to be satisfied in the latter explanation, but there are some—the Monecian [Manichaean] heresy—is now universally regarded as the teaching of a sect of Buddhists. But there is more evidence that Christianity is founded in Buddhism. We find it in recently discovered inscriptions from the reign of Emperor Oshoka [Ashoka] of India, about 300 B.C., who made treaties with all the Grecian kings, and whose missionaries discriminated [disseminated?] in those very parts, where, centuries after, Christianity flourished, the principles of the Buddhistic religion. Thus it is explained, why you have our doctrine of trinity, of incarnation of God, and of our ethics, and why the service in our temples is so much alike to that in your present Catholic churches, from the mass to the chant and benediction. Buddhism had all these long before you. Now use your own judgment on these premises—we Hindoos stand ready to be convinced that yours is the earlier religion, although we had ours some three hundred years before yours was even thought of.


"The same holds good with respect to sciences. India has given to antiquity the earliest scientifical physicians, and, according to Sir William Hunter, she has even contributed to modern medical science by the discovery of various chemicals and by teaching you how to reform misshapen ears and noses. Even more it has done in mathematics, for algebra, geometry, astronomy, and the triumph of modern science—mixed mathematics—were all invented in India, just so much as the ten numerals, the very cornerstone of all present civilization, were discovered in India, and are in reality, Sanskrit words.


"In philosophy we are even now head and shoulders above any other nation, as Schopenhauer, the great German philosopher, has confessed. In music India gave to the world her system of notation, with the seven cardinal notes and the diatonic scale, all of which we enjoyed as early as 350 B.C., while it came to Europe only in the eleventh century. In philology, our Sanskrit language is now universally acknowledged to be the foundation of all European languages, which, in fact, are nothing but jargonized Sanskrit.


"In literature, our epics and poems and dramas rank as high as those of any language; our 'Shaguntala' [Shakuntala] was summarized by Germany's greatest poet, as 'heaven and earth united.' India has given to the world the fables of Aesop, which were copied by Aesop from an old Sanskrit book; it has given the Arabian Nights, yes, even the story of Cinderella and the Bean Stalks. In manufacture, India was the first to make cotton and purple [dye], it was proficient in all works of jewelry, and the very word 'sugar,' as well as the article itself, is the product of India. Lastly she has invented the game of chess and the cards and the dice. So great, in fact, was the superiority of India in every respect, that it drew to her borders the hungry cohorts of Europe, and thereby indirectly brought about the discovery of America.


"And now, what has the world given to India in return for all that? Nothing but nullification [vilification] and curse and contempt. The world waded in her children's life-blood, it reduced India to poverty and her sons and daughters to slavery, and now it adds insult to injury by preaching to her a religion which can only thrive on the destruction of every other religion. But India is not afraid. It does not beg for mercy at the hands of any nation. Our only fault is that we cannot fight to conquer; but we trust in the eternity of truth. India's message to the world is first of all, her blessing; she is returning good for the evil which is done her, and thus she puts into execution this noble idea, which had its origin in India. Lastly, India's message is, that calm goodness, patience and gentleness will ultimately triumph. For where are the Greeks, the one-time masters of the earth? They are gone. Where are the Romans, at the tramp of whose cohorts the world trembled? Passed away. Where are the Arabs, who in fifty years had carried their banners from the Atlantic to the Pacific? and where are the Spaniards, the cruel murderers of millions of men? Both races are nearly extinct; but thanks to the morality of her children, the kinder race will never perish, and she will yet see the hour of her triumph."


At the close of the lecture, which was warmly applauded, Swami Vivekananda answered a number of questions in regard to the customs of India. He denied positively the truth of the statement published in yesterday's [February 25] Standard Union, to the effect that widows are ill treated in India. The law guarantees her not only her own property, before marriage, but also all she received from her husband, at whose death, if there be no direct heirs, the property goes to her. Widows seldom marry in India, because of the scarcity of men. He also stated that the self sacrifices of wives at the death of their husbands, as well as the fanatical self destruction under the wheels of the Juggernaut, have wholly stopped, and referred hishearers for proof to Sir William Hunter's "History of the Indian Empire." 


On February 26 the Brooklyn Times printed a brief report of Swamiji's lecture, and on February 27 the Daily Eagle ran a detailed, though, as will be seen later, faulty account of his answer to the question about Hindu widows. These two articles follow, respectively:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA LECTURES
He Tells about the Arts and Sciences of India.

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu monk who first came into prominence in this country in connection with the world's Congress of religions at the fair in Chicago, and who has recently been delivering a series of lectures in Brooklyn, spoke last night in Historical hall under the auspices of the Brooklyn Ethical association. He delivered his lecture on "India's Gift to the World" to an audience that was extremely enthusiastic and appreciative. The lecturer's subject was particularly interesting to those of antiquarian turn of mind, for he spoke of the arts and sciences which India has given to the world, of the astronomy, the medicine, the mathematics which were developed in that country. He was frequently and heartily applauded. With him on the platform sat President Lewis G. Janes, of the Ethical association; the other officers of the association, Dr. Charles H. Shepard, James A. Skelton, Mrs. Ole Bull and a number of other ladies and gentlemen.

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
Denies that the Child Widows of India are Abused.

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu monk, lectured in Historical hall Monday night under the auspices of the Brooklyn Ethical association, on "India's Gift to the World." There were about two hundred and fifty people in the hall when the Swami stepped on the platform. Much interest was manifested on account of the denial by Mrs. James McKeen, president of the Brooklyn Ramabai circle, which is interested in Christian work in India, of the statement attributed to the lecturer that the child widows of India were not protected [ill-treated]. In no part of his lecture was reference made to this denial, but after he had concluded, one of the audience asked the lecturer what explanation he had to make to the statement. Swami Vivekananda said that it was untrue that child widows were abused or ill treated in any way. He added:


"It is a fact that some Hindus marry very young. Others marry when they have attained a fair age and some do not marry at all. My grandfather was married when quite a child. My father when he was 14 years old and I am 30 years old and am not yet married. When a husband dies all his possessions go to his widow. If a widow is poor she is the same as poor widows in any other country. Old men sometimes marry children, but if the husband was wealthy it was all the better for the widow the sooner he died. I have traveled all over India, but failed to see a case of the ill-treatment mentioned. At one time there were religious fanatics, widows, who threw themselves into a fire and were consumed by the flames at the death of their husbands. The Hindus did not believe in this, but did not prevent it, and it was not until the British obtained control of India that it was finally prohibited. These women were considered saints and in many instances monuments were erected to their memory."


The above report of Swamiji's answer to the question regarding widows was, as Dr. Janes later pointed out, imperfect and incomplete. While denying that all widows were ill-treated, he had admitted that some cases of ill-treatment might exist; these, however, were sporadic and exceptional. He repudiated positively and without qualification the statement that ill-treatment of widows was an accepted and traditional part of Hindu custom, restating, as has been seen in the Standard Union report, the pertinent inheritance laws. Swamiji further declared himself in full sympathy with movements for the education of Hindu widows.


Whether the editors of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle were biased in favor of the Ramabai Circle, or whether they just delighted in keeping the controversy alive is a moot point; but, in either case, they managed to confuse things. It was on March 6 that the Eagle finally thought fit to publish Dr. Janes's letter of February 24, in which he had pointed out, referring to the lecture on "Ideal Womanhood, " that Swamiji had not mentioned the condition of Hindu widows. The date of this letter was falsified to read March 3, making it seem that Dr. Janes had written it after Swamiji's lecture of February 25, in which he had spoken of Hindu widows in answer to a question. Mrs. McKeen was quick to take advantage of the false position in which Janes had been placed and forthwith provided the  Eagle with more copy. On Sunday, March 10, the following article appeared in that paper:

THE PUNDITA RAMABAI
Mrs. McKeen Says She is a Woman 
Christian or Hindoo can Trust.

The controversy between the friends of the Pundita Ramabai and those of the Hindoo monk, Swami Vivekananda as to the treatment of the child widows of India, though slumbering, is still far from being settled. When Mrs. James McKeen, one of the Pundita's staunchest friends, was asked what she had to say regarding the statement made by Dr. Lewis G. Janes of the Ethical society to the effect that the Hindoo monk had not at any time denied the suffering of the widows detailed by the Pundita, she said:


"It is very gratifying to the friends of the Pundita Ramabai that Dr. Janes who has taken upon himself the responsibility of recommending Swami Vivekananda to this community as a religious teacher, should tell us that his oriental guest 'did not at the Pouch mansion or elsewhere in Brooklyn or any other place, deny that widows of high caste Hindoos undergo sufferings.' Nevertheless, in view of the widespread impression to the contrary, in view of the fact that one member of the New York chamber of commerce, whose word is everywhere as good as his bond, distinctly told the writer that he had heard the monk so declare, and once two prominent members of the Ethical association also reported to the writer the same statement, since four reputable and well known citizens unite in giving us the same testimony, since an Eagle report of the lecture in the Historical hall, on February 25, gives the same evidence, and, finally, since one of our own national board heard him so declare at a meeting of a well known Boston literary club, it seems not unreasonable to suppose either the monk's words have been capable of two interpretations, or that our friend has been caught napping in his presidential chair.


"It is pleasant also to record that our learned Pundita quite agrees with Dr. Janes and his Hindoo friend as to the best method to be employed in order to reach the high caste Hindoo widow (whether suffering or not) and give her the priceless boon of education. Ramabai refused to accept the proffered support of a prominent Congregational church in Boston and also a like offer from an Episcopalian church, which would have been glad to enter the field of India with such a helper. She persistently declared that the orthodox high caste Brahmin could only be reached by a non religious school and that she could only accept aid from a body of good men and women of all denominations and of all creeds, who would unite solely for the rescue of these little widows from ignorance and misery.


"As to the position of these widows before the law, it has always been Ramabai's strong contention in her many public discussions of the subject in India, that the Hindoos themselves were transgressing the old laws which they profess to serve, in persecuting these little ones. She has stood as Luther stood at Wittenberg appealing to the scriptures, the law of the church against the church. As to Baba Sasipada Panergie (Babu Sasipada Banerjee], the friend of Swami Vivekananda, whose work and methods he so wholly approves, I quite agree in according to him all praise. I wish I had now at hand a letter received from him some years ago, explaining his work to our association and asking for our sympathy and aid. It is difficult to understand what seems to be a rooted antagonism among the cultivated Hindoos toward Ramabai and her work. Perhaps an experience related to me by Mr. Moncure D. Conway may somewhat explain it. Mr. Conway happened to be in Persia when the news reached there of Ramabai's conversion to Christianity. Mr. Conway himself seemed to rather regret the step she had taken. He told me he had seen the young men in Persia fairly gnash their teeth in rage while tears rolled down their cheeks, as they exclaimed, "To think that our Ramabai, our brilliant Ramabai, of whom we were so proud, to think that she has embraced Christianity!" According to Mr. Conway, the very thought of it seemed to fill them with rage and shame.


"It is well known that there is no such bitter hostility as religious hostility. And incredible as it may seem it is a fact that both here and in India some of the hardest blows Ramabai has received have come from men to whom she had given substantial and much needed aid. One Hindoo student who came to this country friendless and poor brought a letter of introduction from Ramabai to her circle with a request to the treasurer to give him for her almost 10 per cent of her own small income in order to aid him prosecute his studies. The young man accepted the money and settled down to work. Almost the first use he made of his newly acquired power was to attack Ramabai and pronounce her work a failure. I am glad to say this man was not Mr. Vivikananda. The story, however, may illustrate how deep the religious hate of an educated Hindoo may bite.


"The Shawda Sadan [Sharada Sadana] did indeed receive a great blow last year and that, too, at the hands of its professed friends. We are, however, able to report that many of them have repented of their hasty move and some of the most eminent of whom Dr. Janes speaks in high commendation have taken pains to publicly express their renewed confidence in the school. At the latest reports there were fifty-six pupils in the school, with new applications from day to day. And one word more as to Ramabai's Christianity, which seems to bring upon her what might be called a mild rebuke from our esteemed president of the Ethical society. No one emphasizes more clearly than Ramabai the ethical side of Hindooism. She is thoroughly loyal to her people, and would neither Anglicize nor Americanize them with a foreign creed. She bears the heart of a Paul and not of a Peter. And from what I have heard her say, from what I have read and heard of her writings, I believe she would hold Christianity as not antagonistic to the best Brahminism, but inclusive of it, as Paul declared on Mars hill, 'Whom ye ignorantly worship him declare I unto you.' In short, she is a woman in whom both Hindoo and Christian may safely trust: '


So Swamiji was now pronounced guilty of religious hatred! This barb was probably unique in all those he had received in America. But Mrs. McKeen was suffering from an unhealed wound that had been caused by the Hindu dislike of Christian proselytizing. The "great blow" to the Sharada Sadana (Ramabai's school at Poona) to which she refers, was the resignation in a body of the Hindu Advisory Board. In the records of the Brooklyn Ramabai Circle the following letter, dated August 13, 1893, is to be found: "To Mrs. J. W. Andrews, Boston: In the last letter we wrote to you . . . it was stated . . . we were unwilling to undertake any responsibility as an Advisory Board in regard to the Sharada Sadana. We are therefore surprised to find that in the reports published by you our names are still mentioned as constituting an Advisory Board in Poona.... No such Advisory Board as you mention has existed for the past two or three years. If the Sadana is to be conducted as an avowed proselytizing institution, we must disavow all connection with it. We beg you will take into view this declaration and cease to mention our names as members of the Advisory Board." (In August, 1893, blows were raining heavily upon Ramabai's friends. It was shortly after Mrs. Andrews had received the above letter that Swamiji gave his talk before the women of the Boston Circle.) Mrs. Andrews of Boston hastened forthwith to Poona "to see for herself' and returned with the news that there was no proselytizing. Although, after a time, some of the members of the Advisory Board relented, suspicion remained—as well it might, Ramabai being a Christian convert. .


As has been said, the controversy provided excellent copy for the Brooklyn newspapers and also excellent publicity for the Ramabai Circle. On March 16, the Standard Union devoted two and a half columns to Ramabai's life and work, dwelling at length and in detail upon the horrors of a widow’s lot in India. The headlines, which are enough to quote, read:

RAMABAI'S WORK


The Achievements of One High Caste Hindoo Woman 
Her American Supporters
Brooklyn Contributes Funds for the Enlightenment Of
"Darkest India"—Authentic Descriptions of The
Conditions of Child Widows—The Wonderful School
At Poona and Some of the Pupils.


Having read the indefatigable Mrs. McKeen's remarks in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of March 10, Dr. Janes felt again constrained to make Swamiji's position clear to the reading public. Although in some important respects he failed to present this position correctly, his effort was valiant. The following letter, written on March 12, appeared in the Daily Eagle of March 17:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA


Lewis G. Janes on the Hindoo Widow Question

To the Editor of the Brooklyn Eagle:

I am strongly disinclined to continue any semblance of controversy with the good ladies of the Ramabai circle. I deprecate, indeed, any interpretation of my previous communication which would regard it as written with controversial intent. My object, on the contrary, was to show that controversy was out of place. It did not originate with us and had been commenced under a misapprehension as to the real attitude of the Swami Vivekananda toward the movement for the education of Hindoo widows. The interview with Mrs. James McKeen, as reported in your issue of last Sunday [March 10], confirms the position taken in my letter of February 24, but which has been wrongly dated March 3, in your issue of March 6, when it was published. The facts stated by Mrs. McKeen as to the incident related to her by Mr. Moncure D. Conway, strangely located by your reporter in Persia, where there are no Hindoos, and where the Pundita Ramabai probably was never heard of, curiously confirm the practical sagacity of Swami Vivekananda in recognizing the fact that the Hindoo people can be most effectively reached and helped through the teachers of their own faith. Nor is the repugnance of high caste Hindoos to the ministrations of Christian converts so phenomenal as it may at first appear, when we put ourselves in their place, and reflect upon the spirit with which we habitually regard a so-called pervert from Christianity. It is questionable whether, if the most cultivated and devoted lady in Brooklyn should avow her belief in Buddhism or Mohammedism [sic], she would be more acceptable as a reformer of society in this country than the Pundita Ramabai is in India. Human nature is very much the same the world over. I do not question the sincerity or devotion of the Pundita Ramabai. I do not rebuke her Christianity, mildly or otherwise, any more than I rebuke Swami Vivekananda's Hindooism or Mrs. Besant's conversion to Buddhism and Theosophy. I respect the sincere belief of every human being, and would bid them good speed in every effort for the uplifting of humanity. I deprecate, however, an attack on the Swami Vivekananda, in the name of Ramabai, which I am sure that loyal woman would never have made herself, and the false inference that the unthinking might derive that the Swami was opposed to the education of Hindoo women. This inference we hope to dispose of soon, and effectually, by a lecture which will be delivered by the Swami Vivekananda in Brooklyn, in aid of the educational work of Babu Sasipada Banerjee, so warmly commended by Mrs. McKeen. The greatest affliction of the Hindoo widow is ignorance. Education will emancipate her from the chief burden which she bears to-day. Other burdens of ill-treatment, abuse, etc., which may exist in some instances are, we doubt not, sporadic and exceptional. When reputed as if they were habitual, one cannot wonder that they excite indignant protest from a patriotic lover of his people. I will only add in my own behalf that the erroneous date appended to my letter makes it appear to have been written subsequent to the remarks of Swami Vivekananda at Historical hall on February 25, reported in the Eagle of the following day; whereas it was written a day before the delivery of his lecture. And on behalf of the Swami Vivekananda I will add that the report of his remarks in the Eagle was both imperfect and defective. While he repudiated the unfair and extravagant statements about the treatment of Hindoo widows he also declared himself in full sympathy with the movement in favor of their education, as conducted by his friend and compatriot, Sasipada Banerjee.


LEWIS G. JANES
President Brooklyn Ethical Association
Brooklyn, March 12, 1895


Swamiji's decision to donate the proceeds of his next (and extra) lecture in Brooklyn to Sasipada Banerjee was his own and was prompted, no doubt, not only by a desire to make his position regarding the education of Hindu widows clear but by Banerjee's need for help in his work. This incident is mentioned somewhat inaccurately and without reference to the Brooklyn controversy, in the first edition of the Life, where it is stated that Swamiji gave over "the proceeds of his lecture on 'The Ideals of Hindu Women,' delivered before the Ethical Association of Brooklyn, to its President, to be forwarded by him to Babu Sashipada Banerjee's Baranagore Boarding School for Hindu Widows." (It was, as we now know, not until long after the lecture on "The Ideals of Hindu Women" that Banerjee entered the picture.) The Life continues: "In forwarding the proceeds Dr. Lewis G. Janes wrote to Sashipada Babu as follows: 'This sum constitutes the proceeds of a lecture before our Association by your able countryman, the Swami Vivekananda, who has spoken for us several times before large audiences and created great interest in the Vedanta philosophy and also in the social and political conditions in India. In justice to the Swami I should say that the proposition to give a benefit lecture for your school was his own voluntary idea with which we were delighted to co-operate.' [13]

But despite all evidence and despite Dr. Janes's explanation that Swamiji was not opposed to the education of Hindu women but, on the contrary, was in favor of it, Mrs. McKeen could never forgive Swamiji for having stated (1) that Hindu widows inherited their husbands' wealth, and (2) that they were not ill-treated. These statements had come as a severe shock to a deeply rooted pattern of thought which was not peculiar to the Ramabai Circle, but was common to a generation brought up on Christian missionary propaganda. Swamiji was fighting a nation-wide psychological necessity for a sustained belief in the degraded state of the Oriental races—a belief which had given sanction to Western imperialism and provided a satisfying glow of self righteousness and superiority such as little else could. Robert Ingersoll, the famous agnostic, had pointed out to him: "Fifty years ago you would have been hanged if you had come to preach in this country, or you would have been burned alive. You would have been stoned out of the villages, if you had come even much later.'[14] Although by the 1890s there was a growing segment of the people who heard Swamiji's lectures with relief and rejoicing, who championed him and whom he championed, Ingersoll even now advised caution. Contemplating the ire of Mrs. McKeen, who was representative of thousands, one can well see why. The Ramabai Circle, like the missionary circles, did not hesitate to vilify him. On March 21, 1895, he wrote to Mrs. Bull: "I am astonished to hear the scandals the Ramabai circles are indulging in about me. Among others, one item is that Mrs. Bagley of Detroit had to dismiss a servant girl on account of my bad character!!! Don't you see, Mrs. Bull, that however a man may conduct himself, there will always be persons who invent the blackest lies about him. At Chicago I had such things every day against me. And these women are invariably the very Christian of Christians! Is it a wonder that the Hindus call them untouchables and only ceremonial baths can cleanse a person from touching of these?'[15]


Although Dr. Janes had attempted to clarify Swamiji's position, the Ramabai Circle became only further aroused. Mrs. McKeen's next interview with the Daily Eagle appeared on April 6 and read as follows:

SHE PLEADS FOR CHILD WIDOWS


Mrs. James McKeen Replies to Dr. Janes
Hindu Law Givers are Quoted
A Suspicion that the Handsome Monk Vivekananda, 
Who Criticizes the Pundita Ramabai's Methods
Has Hypnotized the Women of Boston
The Position of Lecturer Sasipada Banerjee,
Now in Brooklyn.


The Brooklyn Ethical society has issued a card of invitation to the public to attend a lecture to be given by Swami Vivekananda on Sunday evening, when a collection will be taken in behalf of the Hindu Widows' home, conducted by Babu Sasipada Banerjee, near Calcutta. This announcement revives the question of Swami Vivekananda's attitude toward the question of the treatment of child widows in India and the recent controversy, printed from time to time in the Eagle, between Mrs. James McKeen of this city and Dr. Janes of the Ethical society over the Pundita Ramabai and her teachings. Mrs. McKeen was seen yesterday at her home, 136 Henry street, and was asked whether there was any reply to Dr. Janes' last letter, printed in the Eagle. Mrs. McKeen, who is the manager of the Brooklyn Ramabai circle, said:


"If the whiff of controversy between Dr. Janes and myself shall result in a substantial contribution to this great charity I can only paraphrase the prayer book and exclaim: 'The Lord has indeed granted us a happy issue out of all our troubles!' But it is difficult to understand why it was necessary to prelude all this with a declaration that the young widows of Hinduism were not ill treated by a settled custom of religious prejudice, as we maintain, and that 'their property rights were superior to those guaranteed to widows in this country, giving them absolute control of their inheritance in their husbands' and patrimonial estates.' As to their property rights, the proof is abundant on every side that they have no rights of inheritance at all. We have, in the first place, the laws of their great law giver, Manu, which are still enforced, and did not need to be increased in severity to suit degenerate times. In Manu v:147-156: 'In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her son; a woman must never be independent.' Again, Devendra N. Das, a Hindu, writing in the Nineteenth Century Magazine of September, 1886, tells us, quite in conformity with this law of Manu: 'Among Hindus a woman cannot inherit any paternal  property, and if a widow is left any property by her husband she cannot call it her own. All her wealth belongs to her son if she have any, and if she have none she is made to adopt an heir and give to him all her property directly he comes of age, and herself lives on a bare allowance granted by him. To a Hindu widow death is a thousand times more welcome than her miserable existence.


"Mr. James Wilson, a close friend and supporter of Mr. Banerjee, says of the 'Widows' Home' in his 'Female Education in Bengal''This is, perhaps, the boldest experiment yet undertaken by Mr. Banerjee and can only be carried on by generous support. The widows themselves are not in a position to meet the expenses even of board and clothing.' In the annual report of the school itself for 1893 it said: 'Considering the unfortunate position of widows in this country their case is one purely to call forth sympathy.' And the Indian Magazine of London, 1889, in recording a visit made to the school by the arch deacon of Calcutta, says: 'Mr. and Mrs. Banerjee are stimulated by keen sympathy with the sad condition of so many young widows.' Again in Manu, v:157-158, we read: 'Let the widow emaciate her body by living on pure flowers, roots and fruits. Until death let her be patient of hardships.' Why is it especially enjoined among the duties of a widow to 'be patient of hardships' if there are none that belong especially to her position? In 'Few notes on the Life and Work of Sasipada Banerjee' we find speaking of the Hindu widows they 'with the spread of education and better ideas now feel it hard to continue subject to the austerities of a widow's life.'


"It seems to those who know well and have long known the unspeakable sufferings of a young and childless widow in India, as if we were trying to prove the existence of the sun in the firmament. It is a fact well known to all who are not willfully blind. There is a point in Dr. Janes' letter of March 3 that puzzles the understanding. He says: 'Nor will the lofty and not altogether reprehensible pride of the Brahmin permit him to be the recipient of favors rendered possible by the solicitation of money in distant countries from those of an alien faith. To do this would be contrary to a deep seated religious and social prejudice which, whether we reprobate it or not is an unquestioned fact' How, then, does it come that a collection is to be taken up at a meeting of the Ethical society for the benefit of Mr. Banerjee's Home and School for Widows? Does Dr. Janes mean to imply that the Ethical society has been converted bodily to Hinduism by the eloquent monk and therefore have ceased to be a people of an 'alien faith' from whom the 'not reprehensible pride' of a Hindu forbids him to solicit aid? Some of the women in Boston declare that this handsome Hindu hypnotizes them and we may perhaps excuse the vagaries of our learned Ethical president upon the same ground, for surely nothing less than some such paralyzing power could betray so able a man from the paths of common sense. Our suspicion of hypnotism becomes further strengthened when we read in the same letter of March 3, 'It is not the object aimed at by Ramabai that Swami Vivekananda criticizes, but the methods adopted for collecting money and the impossibility, as he believes, of accomplishing large results in the way proposed: And Swami Vivekananda is the friend 'of Mr. Banerjee' and 'believes in his work.' Must not Mr. Vivekananda therefore have used some occult means for concealing from the president of his recently converted society that Mr. and Mrs. Banerjee sailed for England the 18th of April, 1871, and when there traveled the length and breadth of the land establishing auxiliary societies in aid of female education in India? One striking result of this journey may be found in Mr. Banerjee's own words in reference to his home for widows, when he says: 'The widows' home could not have gained ground without the help and support of friends in England.' And since in speaking of Mr. Banerjee's faith he calls him a Hindu and commends him for having won the indorsement of many of the best citizens of his own — inference is inevitable that he supposes Mr. Banerjee to be an orthodox Hindu.


"This puzzling question then comes to us to add to our bewilderment: How is it possible that Dr. Janes should not know that the honorary corresponding member of the Brooklyn Ethical association, Mr. Sasipada Banerjee, is just as much a heretic and outlaw to the orthodox Hindu as Ramabai herself? The hottest persecution Mr. Banerjee ever encountered was not when he first began befriending widows, nor when he established his girls' school, but when, in July, 1865, he gave up idolatry and caste and threw off the sacred Brahminical thread. In the following August a meeting of orthodox Hindus was held 'to take organized steps to persecute him.' Day and night meetings were held to put him and his wife to all sorts of inconvenience. Not a friend to help or a kind word from any quarter, Mr. Wilson on 'Female Education in Bengal' [sic]. An Englishman's letter in the India Minor [Indian Mirror?] of that day says, 'A sudden stop was now put to the progress of the school by the fact of the founder having embraced Brahmoism. For months no girl came to his school except his niece.'


"But we are compelled to give up the whole mass of objection to Ramabai as incomprehensible when we read again in Dr. Janes' letter of March 3 that the work of Babu Sasipada Banerjee is commended because 'It has been conducted quietly and without ostentation,' and the Pundita's is condemned because it has not been carried on quietly and without ostentation. Surely this good doctor must be under some malign influence. From every publication concerning the work of Mr. Banerjee comes the report of patronage from the very beginning of his schools, of lords and ladies, archdeacons and bishops—presents from members of the royal family, letters of congratulation from the queen. That Mr. Banerjee has kept himself well informed as to every avenue of possible help we very well know who received applications of aid from him in almost the very beginning of Ramabai's enterprise. And far from condemning him, we approve his methods. Indeed, it was probably from his visit to England that Ramabai obtained the hint she so modestly followed here. The Bombay Educational Review, published by the government, says: What epithet we wonder should be applied to the journey to America of an unprotected Hindoo widow, to her loving reception by American ladies, to the formation of Ramabai circles, to the return of the wanderer to India and finally to the installation of the Sharada Sadana in a building of its own worth 45,000 rupees. Romantic is no word for it! It is gratifying to know that all that is best in native society is in hearty sympathy with the work of this gifted and brave Maratha lady.'


"The Pundita Ramabai was a pupil and friend of Babu Keshub Chunder Sen. It was from books lent her by this great teacher that she first learned of Christianity. It was from him also that Mr. Banerjee first received his spiritual impulse. Chunder Sen was the founder of an eclectic theistic society, as much noted for its piety as the NeoHindus, to whom Vivekananda belongs, are noted for what his admirers call ‘freedom of soul.’ I have searched in vain through several published accounts of the life and work of Mr. Banerjee, looking for some mention of Sanyasi monks among his friends and helpers. He mentions in great detail very many trifling acts of friendship as well as more substantial support. I have failed to find any allusion to Sanyasi monks, unless, indeed, they figure without name among the bands of orthodox who organized to persecute him when he joined the Brahmo Samaj. Indeed, the Unity and the Minister, the official organ of  the Brahmo Samaj, the society to which Mr. Banerjee belongs, in Calcutta, goes so far as to say they know Babu Norendra Nath Dutt (alias Vivekananda), better as an actor on the stage of the Nava-Vrindavan theater than as a philosopher. The Ethical society publishes many extracts from Hindu papers commending their protege, but they seem entirely to ignore the criticisms of other Indian periodicals of high standing. The Indian review ridicules the idea that Vivekananda should be supposed to be preaching Hinduism. It says his moral philosophy was taught him at a Christian college in Calcutta and the Unity and the Minister, from which we quoted above, goes on to say: 'Any follower of modern Hinduism (referring to Vivekananda) cannot command that respect from us which we entertain for a genuine orthodox Hindu.' "


The same day on which this extraordinary interview appeared in the Eagle, the Brooklyn Times ran the following announcement:

Brooklyn Ethical Association. Pouch Gallery, 345 Clinton Ave. Free lecture by Swami Vivekananda, of India, Sunday evening April 7, at 8 o'clock. Subject "Some Customs of the Hindus: What They Mean and How They Are Misinterpreted. " Collection for Babu Sasipada Banerjee's school for Hindu widows. All are cordially invited.


Both the Standard Union and the Daily Eagle of April 8 reported on this lecture, in which Swamiji, striding up and down the platform, "his eyes bright and a flush mantling his face," answered Mrs. McKeen and all his other opponents in his own way. The two reports read, respectively, as follows:

THEIR CUSTOMS

Swami Vivekananda Tells of Peculiarities of India
His Talk on Caste, Its Advantages and Defects,
And of the Prospect of Its Total Extermination 
In the Immediate Future

A special meeting of the Brooklyn Ethical Association, with an address by Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu monk, as the main feature, was held at the Pouch Gallery, on Clinton avenue, last night. "Some customs of the Hindus; what they mean, and how they are misinterpreted," was the subject treated. A large throng of people filled the spacious gallery.


Dressed in his Oriental costume, his eyes bright, and a flush mantling his face, Swami Vivekananda started to tell of his people, of his country, and its customs. He desired only that justice be shown to him and to his. In the beginning of his discourse he said he would give a general idea of India. He said it was not a country but a continent; that erroneous ideas had been promulgated by travellers who had never seen the country. He said that there were nine separate languages spoken and over 100 different dialects. He spoke severely of those who wrote about his country, and said their brains were addled by superstition, and that they had an idea that everyone outside the pale of their own religion was a horrible blackguard. One of the customs that had often been misinterpreted was the brushing of the teeth by the Hindus. They never put hair or skin in their mouths, but use a plant. "Hence a man wrote," said the speaker, "that the Hindus get up early in the morning and swallow a plant." He said the [custom of widows throwing themselves under the] car of juggernaut did not exist, never had, and that no one knew how such a story started.


Swami Vivekananda's talk on caste was most comprehensive and interesting. He said it was not a granted [graded] system of classes, but that each caste thought itself to be superior to all the others. He said it was a trade guild and not a religious institution. He said that it had been in existence from time immemorial, and explained how at first only certain rights were hereditary, but how afterward the ties were bound closer, and intermarriage and eating and drinking were restricted to each caste.


The speaker told of the effect that the mere presence of a Christian or Mohammedan would have on a Hindu household. He said that it was veritable pollution for a white man to step into a Hindu's presence, and that after receiving one outside of his religion, the Hindu always took a bath.


The Hindu monk abused the order of the Pariahs roundly, saying they did all the menial work, ate carrion and were the scavengers. He also said that the people who wrote books on India came only into contact with these people, and not with genuine Hindus. He described the trial of one who broke the rules of caste, and said that the only punishment inflicted was the refusal of the particular caste to intermarry or drink or eat with him or his children. All other ideas were erroneous.


In explaining the defects of caste, the speaker said that in preventing competition it produced stagnation, and completely blocked the progress of the people. He said that in taking away brutality it stopped social improvements. In checking competition it increased population. In its favor, he said, were the facts that it was the only ideal of equality and fraternity. That money had nothing to do with social standing in the caste. All were equal. He said that the fault of all the great reformers was that they thought caste was due only to religious representation, instead of ascribing it to the right source, namely, the curious social conditions. He spoke very bitterly of the attempts of the English and Mohammedans to civilize the country by the bayonet and fire and sword. He said that to abolish caste one must change the social conditions completely and destroy the entire economic system of the  country. Better, he said, that the waves of the [Bay of] Bengal flow and drown all rather than this. English civilization was composed of the three "B's"—Bible, bayonet, and brandy. "That is civilization, and it has been carried to such an extent that the average income of a Hindu is 50 cents a month. Russia is outside, saying, 'Let's civilize a little,' and England goes on and on."


The monk grew excited as he walked up and down, talking rapidly about the way the Hindus had been treated. He scored the foreign educated Hindus and described their return to their native land, "full of champagne and new ideas." He said that child-marriage was bad, because the West said so, and that the mother-in-law could torture her daughter-in-law with impunity, as the son could not interfere. He said that the foreigners took every opportunity to abuse the heathen, because they had so many evils of their own that they wanted to cover them up. He said that each nation must work out its own salvation, and that no one else could solve its problems.


In speaking of India's benefactors he asked whether America had ever heard of David Herr [Hare], who established the first college for women, and who had devoted so much of his life to education.


The speaker gave a number of Indian proverbs that were not at all complimentary to the English. In closing he made an earnest appeal for his land. He said:


"It matters not as long as India is true to herself and to her religion. But a blow has been struck at her heart by this awful godless West when she sends hypocrisy and atheism into her midst. Instead of sending bushels of abuses, carloads of vituperation and shiploads of condemnations, let an endless stream of love go forth. Let us all be men!"


Resolutions thanking the monk were unanimously adopted, and a collection was taken for the benefit of Babu Sasipada Banerjee's school for the education of Hindu widows at Baranagar.

LET INDIA ALONE.
Then It will Come Out All Right,
Says Swami Vivekananda

The English people were given a raking over last night by Swami Vivekananda of India, who lectured to a throng at the Pouch mansion. He said that the English used three B's—Bible, brandy and bayonets—in civilizing India. The preacher went ahead with the Bible to get the lay of the fortifications. The English, he said, had exaggerated the social conditions of India in their writings. They got their ideas from the Pariahs, who were a sort of human scavenger. No self-respecting Hindoo, he declared, would associate with an Englishman. The story about widows throwing themselves under the chariot of Juggernaut he declared to be a myth. Child marriage and caste he agreed were bad. Caste, he said, originated with the mechanics' guild:. What India needed was to be let alone, and it would come out all right.


To judge from the above reports, it would appear that far from giving a detailed reply to the women of the Ramabai Circle, Swamiji had not so much as mentioned the condition of widows in India. He neither repeated his earlier statements, nor did he attempt to substantiate them by citing authorities other than himself: Rather, by explaining the significance of India's customs and the Hindus' attitude toward meddlesome foreigners, he had placed the specific problem of widows in a new light, thereby cutting at the very root of his opponents' position. And his words, as is clear by the fervor with which he spoke them, were fraught with power. But whatever deep and lasting effect this impassioned lecture had on the public, Swamiji had not given a point-by-point reply to Mrs. McKeen's  seemingly documented contentions, and therefore the issues in question were left in midair. Were or were not Hindu widows mistreated by law? Mrs. McKeen said yes; Swamiji said no. There the matter stood, and at this point the good Dr. Janes once again took up his pen. In a letter from Mrs. Bull to Mary Hale, dated April ****, one finds his own comments on his reply to Mrs. McKeen. Mrs. Bull wrote in part:


I am going to quote from a letter just received, which will interest you as it comes from a man of fine mind and character, and whose friendship and commendation are of value. He is President of the Ethical Society of Brooklyn —Dr. Janes—and he says: "It is a great gratification to me that the Swami has been with us in Brooklyn and the final outcome of his lectures and the little controversy with our Ramabai friends is sure to bring broader and juster view of the religions, philosophy and social life of the Hindus. . . . I have prepared a full reply to the Eagle with ample quotations from the code of Manu and the reliable authorities, which ought completely to dispose of the legal questions raised by the Brooklyn critics. My article is rather long and I am not sure that the Eagle will print it, but I shall try in some way to bring it before our Brooklyn public.[16]


To its credit, the Eagle did indeed print Dr. Janes's article, and this with a prominent heading:

4


WOMAN'S PLACE IN INDIA
DR. JANES CONSIDERS HER SOCIAL 
AND LEGAL STATUS

He Says that All Things Are Not So 

Black as They Have Been Painted. 

A Defense of Swami Vivekananda  

The article beneath this heading was long indeed, occupying two and a half columns of the Eagle's pages, and as far as the social and legal status of Hindu women was concerned, it left no point of the controversy unanswered; nor did Dr. Janes neglect to defend the Hindu people in general and Swamiji in particular against their persistent maligners. In short, he gave Mrs. McKeen a full and conclusive reply and left not a leg for the opposition to stand on. This article (or letter, for Janes put his reply in the form of a letter to the editor) has been given in full in Appendix D; thus it will suffice here to quote from it in part. Dr. Janes wrote :


. . . There is probably no living European who knows more of the Hindu people, their sacred literature and legal codes than Professor Max Muller. In his interesting little book, "India: What Can It Teach Us?" originally a course of lectures delivered at Cambridge University before the candidates for the Indian civil service, there is a significant chapter on "The Truthful Character of the Hindus," in which he speaks in terms of eulogy so high that any nation might well be proud to wear such laurels of honest commendation. Quoting many travelers and students of India he adds: "I could go on quoting from book after book and again and again we should see how it was love of truth that struck all the people who came in contact with India as the prominent feature in the national character of its inhabitants. No one ever accused them of falsehood." "No doubt, " he adds at the close of the chapter, "there is a moral depravity in India, and where is there not moral depravity in this world? But appeal to national statistics would be, I believe, a dangerous game.... In judging others, whether in public or private life, let as not forget that a kindly spirit will never do any harm." Of this truthful people and of a revered order of religious teachers, the Sanyasi monks, of whom there are more than one hundred thousand in India, the Swami Vivekananda is a representative. He was educated as a lawyer—not as an actor—and took high honors at the University of Calcutta. He was thoroughly trained not only in Manu and the later codes of Hindu law, but also in comparative law. The people interested in the present controversy, if such it must be considered, may rest assured that he knows what he is talking about and has given the unquestionable facts as to the property rights of Hindu women. The interview with the respected manager of the Ramabai circle in last Saturday's Eagle is interesting and shows a commendable effort, by study, to ascertain the facts as [to] the status of the Hindu widow. I fear, however, the good lady has taken her facts at second hand rather than from original authorities, or she would hardly have made some of the statements credited to her in this interview. First, let me dispose, with a word, of the story that the Swami Vivekananda was formerly an actor.


[Here Dr. Janes explained at some length the circumstances under which Swamiji had taken part [by chanting from the Vedas] in Keshab Chandra Sen's religious drama Navavrindavan (see chapter ten, section one). "This is the way," Janes wrote, "in which he was known on the stage of the Nava-Vrindavan theater. If he was an actor, Keshab Chunder Sen and Protap Chunder Mozoomdar were also, and in a much greater degree, actors: ' Janes then mentioned "the immense public meetings in the largest cities of India in recognition of the work of the Swami Vivekananda," and continued:]


That there are some carping critics also may be true, but the quotation from Unity and the Minister in the interview with Mrs. McKeen is evidently not in point. Nor, I think, will the words of Devendra Nath Das, quoted from the Nineteenth Century Magazine, have much weight with thinking people against the testimony of the most eminent scholars and students of India and its literature, and of the code of Manu itself, which I am prepared to produce. Mr. Das, if I am rightly informed, was a very youthful gentleman who accompanied Pundita Ramabai in her visit to England some years since. His article was written for the English market, and with an obvious ulterior motive. It is precisely this kind of advocacy, by distorted and one-sided statements and over-statements of the actual condition of the existing laws and customs in India to which the Swami Vivekananda objects. In view of the actual facts and plain teaching of the code of Manu [Mrs. McKeen's] assertion that "as to their (the widow's) property rights, the proof is abundant on every side that they have no inheritance at all," is a very surprising one. Over and over again in the code of Manu, the separate property rights of Hindu women, including widows, are expressly recognized, those of widows being protected by especially explicit provisions. In illustration I shall quote from the code itself, in the authorized English translation to Max Muller's "Sacred Books of the East ”, not from any secondhand source or authority. First, however, permit me a few quotations from authorities recognized the world over as the highest and most reliable, on the Hindu character and the general attitude of the Hindu law toward women. 


[Here Dr. Janes gave quotation after quotation from such eminent authorities as Sir John Malcolm, Bishop Heber, Mountstuart Elphinstone, Thomas Murro, Samuel Johnson, and so on. All had written to the effect that the Hindus "are brave, courteous, intelligent, most eager for knowledge and improvement; sober, industrious, dutiful to parents, affectionate to their children, uniformly gentle and patient." Janes then quoted directly from Manu, citing verse after verse in which the property rights of women were unequivocally stated.]


From this it appears [Janes summarized] not only that the wife inherits absolutely her husband's personalty and the use of his real estate during her lifetime, but that her own independent property, if she has offspring, goes to her children instead of to her husband. In case she has no offspring, another section makes her husband her heir; or, when the marriage is irregular, her mother and father inherit her estate instead of her husband.


[Janes then gave evidence that the provisions of the Code of Manu "at this moment constitute the living law enforced in India," and as evidence cited the contents of a letter he had recently received from a Hindu widow.]


Thus [he continued] I am not only able to quote from the original code, in the authorized translation, the law substantially as stated by Swami Vivekananda, but also to substantiate further by evidence that the law is not a dead letter, but is actually enforced at the present time in India. I submit that the evidence is complete, conclusive and cumulative, and that henceforth no question can be raised as to the veracity of our guest or the accuracy of his information upon this subject. I regret also to see the reference in the interview with the leader of the Ramabai Circle to "Babu Norendra Nath Dutt (alias Vivekananda)," this phraseology being usually found in police court records to designate those who assume names not their own for purposes of deceit. It should be well known to all that the custom among the Hindu monks is precisely similar to that which prevails among the Catholics and some Protestant orders. A new name is taken to symbolize the complete devotion of the religious teacher to his work and his entire separation from the secular life and family connections.


A beautiful letter from the mother of the Swami Vivekananda in her own handwriting, the original of which I have seen, and a translation of which I have been permitted to read, shows that notwithstanding the separation implied by his vows, and thousands of miles of space, she still clings to him with a mother's love and pride, and is humbly grateful for the good work he is doing and the friends he is making in this distant land. No more noble, tender and motherly epistle has ever fallen within the range of my vision.


[Dr. Janes justified the Ethical Association's contribution to the work of Babu Sasipada Banerjee on the grounds that "the association is expressly and avowedly nonsectarian in its character and that Babu Sasipada Banerjee is himself a member of our association."]


Nor is it true, as intimated [he went on], that the endurance of hardships is exclusively enjoined on widows by the code of Manu. This discipline is also enjoined on men, and in almost the exact phraseology applied to widows. Among the rules for the twice-born Snataka we find the following: "Let him be industrious in privately reciting the Veda. Let him be patient in hardships. Or he may constantly subsist on flowers, roots and fruits which have been ripened by time and have fallen spontaneously following the rules of Vikhanas. Making no effort to procure things that give pleasure, chaste, sleeping on the bare ground, not caring for any shelter, dwelling at the roots of trees: ' Here is an asceticism, indeed, that we may deem irrational, but it is not exclusively prescribed for women, or for widows. The dress and mode of life of the Hindu widow is substantially that of the student class, plain, simple, devoid of ornament, withheld from extravagances and enervating pleasures. That women, and especially widows, who are debarred from marriage by the custom of the country, thereby suffer privations, and are compelled to a life which we should regard as monotonous and in many ways unjustly restricted, I do not question. Education, which will prepare them for more active duties in life, is therefore a great desideratum. All wise efforts in that direction have my heartfelt commendation and approval. That child marriage is sometimes followed by abuses meriting the most indignant condemnation I know to be the fact. But these results are by no means universal. A recent medical report on this subject shows that fifty-five practicing physicians in British India altogether had had only thirteen cases of such abuse come under their personal observation. What if our physicians should be called upon to render like testimony? Would the comparison be in our favor? Child marriage finds no sanction in the Vedas. Its abuses find no sanction in the code of Manu. It grew out of the passionate demand of the Hindus for chastity as an inviolable rule for young and old. For a candid account of child marriage in India, from the point of view of a liberal Hindu, persons interested would do well to read an article on this subject in the North American Review of October, 1888, by Babu Raj Coomar Roy, a cousin of Keshab Chunder Sen, and honorary corresponding member of the Brooklyn Ethical association....


Dr. Janes's well-documented and irrefutable article was an essential piece of work, without which the controversy with Mrs. McKeen and the Ramabai Circle would have been inconclusive and, to say the least, confusing. But sufficient as it was as a reply to Mrs. McKeen and her friends, we can add a little to it here for the interest of the present reader, for Dr. Janes had not made one point clear, without a knowledge of which one could not really understand or pass judgment upon the life of Hindu widows. The fact was that their life was one of extreme religious asceticism, that is to say, of poverty and self-denial. It is the confirmed and not unjustifiable belief of the Hindu that without self-mortification moral and spiritual values cannot be acquired. The widow's life is, by custom, one in which spiritual and moral values are held to be supreme, and therefore it is, by custom, austere. To an outsider, unaware of this fact or without sympathetic understanding of it, such a life would appear to be incontrovertible evidence of the Hindus' cruelty to and mistreatment of their women. But to those who understood it the widows' life would appear as something entirely different from that portrayed by Ramabai.


In Hindu society, the widows represented an informal order of nuns, who, though not secluded in convents, lived in every essential respect the life of monastics. If such lives could be thought of as evidences of ill-treatment, then with equal justification one could consider the austere and rigorous lives of Christian nuns to be evidences of Christian cruelty. In both cases the life was one of hardship, but also in both cases it was one traditionally endured for the sake of a lofty religious ideal. Traditionally, the Hindu widow, rich or poor, young or old, divested herself of jewelry, donned coarse cloth, and cut her hair. Nun like, she subsisted on plain fare, slept on a hard bed, and did not join in the secular festivities of the family. But while observing these hard rules of widowhood, which could not be violated, she was treated with the utmost tenderness and sympathy by her parents or in-laws and was helped to endure the disciplines of her life and to grow strong in their observance.


Child widows, of whom there were not many, but with whom Ramabai was particularly concerned, were, in the vast majority of cases, naturally given as much love and care as were other daughters of the family, and while they may not have at first understood the reasons for observing the rules of widowhood, those rules were made as easy as possible for them to follow and in no sense involved servitude, isolation, or degradation. Child marriage was, of course, in itself frowned upon by Swamiji. "I hate the very name of marriage in regard to a boy or girl,'[17] he had written in May of 1894 to Swami Saradananda. And again, on December 23, 1895, "I have a strong hatred of child-marriage. I have suffered terribly from it and it is the great sin for which our nation has to suffer. . . . I must set my foot to the best of my ability upon this devilish custom of child marriage.... I can kill the man who gets a husband for a baby.'[18] But while Swamiji deplored the custom of child marriage, it did not follow that girls who were widowed were cruelly treated or that, not remarrying, their lives were hence forth blighted. To Swamiji, as to most Hindus, a married life was not the end and all of human aspiration. In India the life of spiritual renunciation, which the widow undertook, was universally considered to be a far more exalted and fruitful life than that of matrimony, and while the dedicated life of the widow was, to be sure, never one of comfort, its reward was great. The remarkable fact was that the widow, whatever her previous disposition may have been, often developed the prized qualities of endurance, fortitude, selflessness, and serenity. Devoting herself to religious practices she became spiritually alive; she was an asset to the community, her leadership and advice were sought after, and she was looked upon by all with respect often amounting to reverence.


As for the economic status of Hindu widows, Dr. Janes had dealt with it thoroughly and adequately. We might add here, however, that although it was true that women did not inherit anything from their fathers [in this respect Janes had earlier misquoted Swamiji, who had not mentioned patrimonial inheritance], it was not true that their fathers ignored them. It may not have been known to Mrs. McKeen and her kind, but Hindu parents were also very affectionate to their daughters and, in lieu of a legacy, provided them with as big a dowry as possible, often going into debt to do so. Furthermore, parents adorned their daughters on the eve of their marriage with as many gold ornaments as they could, all of which were inviolably theirs. Even in times of emergency a Hindu would be reluctant to ask his wife to sell her jewelry. Indeed, throughout their married life he himself bestowed upon her as many gold bangles and other ornaments as he was able, so that in the event of her widowhood she would have a treasure to fall back upon.


It was, to be sure, the case that many Hindu men were poor and many Hindu widows had few gold bangles. It was also the case that the widows, like millions of other Hindus, were in need of education and that, like millions of other Hindus, some were not "in a position," as Mrs. McKeen had pointed  out, "to meet expenses even of board and clothing." No one, least of all Swamiji, denied the fact that education was called for in India; as is well known, one of his most urgent plans for the regeneration of his country was the education of Hindu women—whether widowed, married, or unmarried. Again and again one reads in his letters to his disciples and brother monks his heartfelt belief in the importance of woman's place in his country. "Can you better the condition of your women?" he wrote in December of 1893. "Then there will be hope for your well-being. Otherwise you will remain as backward as you are now:'[19]And in another letter written in 1895: "There is no chance for the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved. It is not possible for a bird to fly on only one wing.'[20] Indeed, if one were to quote all of Swamiji's admonitions to his countrymen regarding the necessity of educating Hindu women, many pages would be covered.


Nor was it true that he did not welcome help from America and other foreign countries. His main purpose in coming to America was precisely to seek financial help. Unfortunately, as in the case of explaining the significance of a widow's life, the good Dr. Janes had failed in explaining why Swamiji did not like to receive aid from non-Hindus after Ramabai's fashion. Yet this was a simple matter. Even a member of the Ramabai Circle would surely have understood that a person would rather starve with his own people than receive charity from those who condemned them; a question of self respect was involved. It was this same question that was involved in receiving foreign help in India. Swamiji was keenly aware that help is of two sorts and that what was ordinarily given to his country by foreigners was almost invariably contaminated by contempt. This was true of the "help" given by the Christian missionaries and, to almost the same extent, it was true of that given by the Ramabai Circle. Swamiji had made it clear, particularly in his lectures in Detroit, that such help was worse than none, for it sapped the self-respect of the nation which received it and thus served to ruin rather than to restore.


Swamiji's disapproval of the methods of Ramabai was based on the fact that she had deliberately catered to the psychological urge of the American women of that era to play the part of Lady Bountiful to some poor unfortunates—preferably a whole class of poor unfortunates. Moreover, Ramabai's own psychology was somewhat strange and tended to disqualify her as a true servant of India. While her unusual and romantic life made her particularly appealing to Western women of Mrs. McKeen's generation, one can hardly think that an isolated upbringing fitted her to enter into Hindu society and become a judge of its complex conditions. Undoubtedly Ramabai was much concerned with the lot of Hindu women, particularly widows, and more particularly child widows. Her interest was sincere and intense, but one cannot think that it was in anyway enlightened. On reading her book and excerpts from her lectures, one sees very clearly that her judgments were based almost entirely on an emotional response to external appearances rather than on a thoughtful and level-headed understanding of the underlying facts. Indeed, so lacking was Ramabai in a real grasp of India's problems that, in order to serve the cause of the Hindus, she condemned them wholesale and with much fanfare. Furthermore, Ramabai had repudiated Hinduism and identified herself with another religion, the determined missionary purpose of which was to destroy everything Hindu. Whatever her personal justification may have been for this shift of loyalty, the fact remained that her Christian conversion inevitably cast suspicion on her school in Poona.


In this connection, it should be pointed out that these was no question of religious prejudice in the Hindus' distrust of Christian institutions. If the Christians were regarded with a wary eye it was not because they were followers of Christ but because they were avowed enemies of Hinduism. Whatever Mrs. McKeen or Ramabai herself may have said to the contrary, the attitude of the Ramabai Circle toward India would indicate that Ramabai was no exception to the general run of nineteenth-century Christians. Although, unlike the missionaries, she had extolled Hindu ideals, the net effect of her campaign was, it would appear, the same as theirs. Under her tutelage her followers had manifestly developed no respect for Hindu customs and no love for the Hindu people; as for Hindu ideals, they became infuriated at the very mention of them. It was for this reason that, while Swamiji never criticized Ramabai, he could never have sanctioned her methods of obtaining help for her work.


On the other hand, Mr. Sasipada Banerjee, whom, incidentally, Swamiji had also helped in the past, had not forsaken his own religion for one which sought to destroy it. Although the Brahmo Samaj, of which he was a member, advocated many social reforms horrifying to the orthodox, it was still a part of Hinduism, and while Banerjee may have stepped outside the pale of orthodox Hindu society by becoming a Brahmo Samajist, he remained, nevertheless, within the fold of the Hindu religion. His educational work was, on the whole, in keeping with the reform program of the Samaj, with which Swamiji, as he had written to Professor Wright, was in sympathy. It is true that in certain details Banerjee's method of work left much to be desired. As Mrs. McKeen was quick to point out, it was similar to that of Ramabai, characterized by an undignified and toadying appeal for foreign help. Whether or not Swamiji knew these unfortunate and damning circumstances is a question that we cannot answer, nor is it altogether important. His main reason for supporting Banerjee rather than Ramabai was that Banerjee was a Hindu trying to help Hindu widows and, as such, was worthy of help.


As long as Western help was characterized by patronage and vilification, Swamiji would have none of it; he would accept only such help for his country as was given in sympathy and respect. The type of foreign aid he had in mind was later demonstrated by the lives of those Western men and women who, at his request, devoted themselves to the service of India. Perhaps the most representative of these was Sister Nivedita, who, in serving the Hindus, became a part of their society, and whose help never undermined in the slightest the strength of those who received it.


Was it possible for Mrs. McKeen, whom we may take to be typical of a large number of American women of her era, to have understood those things? Could she, for instance, have understood the spiritual foundation of the Hindu widow's life? Could she have understood that a life of asceticism was not necessarily one of brutal treatment? And could she have understood that help given in contempt and pity was deadly to the recipient? Whether she could have understood these things or not, Swamiji had made no effort to explain them to her or her friends in his lecture of April 7.


Nor had Dr. Janes made these points fully clear. But his masterful article was reply enough for the general public; there was no answer to it. Swamiji was much touched by his friend's vigorous championship of truth and expressed his appreciation in the following letter from New York, dated April 25,1895.


Dear brother

I was away in the Catskill mountains [at Ridgely Manor] and it was almost impossible to get a letter regularly posted from where I was—so accept my apology for the delay in offering you my most heartfelt thanks for your letter in the "Eagle."

It was so scholarly, truthful, noble and withal so permeated with your natural universal love for the good & true everywhere. It is a great work to bring this world into a spirit of sympathy with each other but it shall be done no doubt when such brave souls as you still hold your own. Lord bless you ever & ever my brother and may you live long to carry on the mighty work you and your society has undertaken.

With my gratitude & love to

you and to the members of the Ethical Society

I remain yours ever truly[21]

Vivekananda

And thus Swamiji's last serious battle with India's Western "benefactors" came to a close.  It is true that now and then an unwary Christian missionary would fulminate against the heathen, but all concerted and influential opposition to Swamiji was henceforth silent. The tide of bigotry had been turned; nor was it argumentation that had turned it, for no bigot was ever silenced by reason. Some other element must have been involved, and one can only think that somehow, by means known only to himself, Swamiji had in Brooklyn exerted the same power as he had in Detroit, where, in one final lecture, he had silenced the cavilings of the Christian missionaries. It would almost seem as though he raised himself on such occasions to a position where he could reach the deep levels of all minds and, being himself only good and bent on doing only good to others, removed from those minds much that was harmful and untrue. Only a Swami Vivekananda could have the ability to reach the collective mind at its unconscious level and there influence it; and in view of our knowledge that he had that power, is it too far-fetched to think that when necessary he used it?


ⓘ
[1] Complete Works, 6 : 295-96.
[2] Lewis G. Janes, Memorial Volume (Boston, 1902), p. 182.
[3] Some Words about the Hindu Monk Swami Vivekananda (New York, November, 1894), VSNC.
[4] Complete Works, 5 : 314.
[5] Complete Works., 5 : 63. 
[6] Sarah E. Waldo, “Introductory Narrative” to Inspired Talks, Swami Vivekananda (New York: Rama-krishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, 1934), pp. 6-7. 
[7] These quotations from the writings of Dr. Talmage have been quoted from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 
[8] Complete Works, 7 : 480. 
[9] Complete Works , 8 : 333-34; original copy, VSNC. 
[10] Leon Landsberg to Isabelle McKindley, January 26, 1895, VSNC.
[11] Dr. Janes was probably referring to an incident at Greenacre; see chap. 11, note 46. 
[12] See Complete Works, 5 : 85. 
[13] Life (1913 ed.), vol. 2, p. 361. 
[14] Life, 1 1327. 
[15] Complete Works, 6 : 301; those portions of this passage not included in C. W. are taken from the original letter, Belur Math. (Mrs. Bagley’s letter of March 20, 1895, refers to these scandals; see chap. 8, sec. 4; see also Life, 402-4.) 
[16] Mrs. Ole Bull to Mary Hale, April 16, 1895, SN Col.
[17].Complete Works, 5 : 33. 
[18].Complete Works ,8 : 365-66. 
[19].Complete Works, 5 : 26. 
[20].Complete Works ,6 : 328. 
[21].Complete Works ,7 : 488. 



↑ Contents

2.6 DAWN OF THE WORLD MISSION

Since what may be called the Ramabai Controversy is of importance in the history of Swamiji's work in America and also illustrative of his method of dealing with actively hostile groups, we have devoted many pages to it. The controversy, however, took little of Swamiji's time and energy. As far as is known at present, between December 30, 1894, and April 8, 1895, he delivered only six public lectures in Brooklyn, and although in the last of these he had silenced with a thunderbolt of awesome power a whole section of American club women, the focal point of his interest during the early months of 1895 was in New York City, where he was embarking with all intensity upon a new and supremely important phase of his Western work.

We have come, then, to the close of the first phase of Swamiji's Western mission. Both America and he himself had been changed by a year and a half's contact with one another. The eyes of the country had been opened to a new vista of thought, and the living seed of spirituality had been firmly planted in the souls of the people, where inevitably it would grow. Swamiji had developed many of his ideas; he had learned the need of the West for the philosophy of Vedanta, and he had seen how that philosophy could be applied to every problem of modern man. Indeed, his message to the West had taken shape during this year and a half, and thus, though the narrative of those months has come to an end, one vital question remains unanswered.

The reader may remember that in the last section of chapter eight we attempted to discover the true significance of Swamiji's  lecture tour through the midwest and the East. By studying what he himself said and did, we found that his mission of teaching Vedanta to the West did not evolve in his mind until the latter part of 1894 and that earlier the apparent motives that had guided him were twofold: (1) to raise funds for the development of his Indian work and incidentally to provide for his own support during his stay in this country and (2) to give the American people a correct idea of Hinduism (and of religion in general), to remove current misconceptions regarding his motherland, and to inculcate a spirit of religious tolerance. But while these were motives not unworthy of Swamiji's great patriotism and intellectual genius, they were not, one must concede, commensurate with his spiritual stature. We were forced, therefore, to recognize that his tour had another and more fundamental meaning and concluded that during his travels he was, consciously or unconsciously, fulfilling the function of a divine prophet to America—scattering the seeds of spirituality wherever he went and bestowing his blessing upon innumerable men and women.

This prophetic mission was, of course, not peculiar to Swamiji's lecture tour. Throughout his life, wherever he was and whatever he was outwardly doing, he permanently lifted the consciousness of all with whom he came in contact. It was truly said of him: "Vivekananda is nothing if not a breaker of bondage."[1] His very presence was a profound blessing, and we shall miss the full significance of his activities and teachings if we forget that above all he was a prophet, born—if his Master is to be believed— for the good of mankind. We are not concerned here, however, with his functions as a divine prophet, but rather with the development of his message and his world mission.

If one accepts the view that Swamiji did not come to America with a ready-made and full-blown message, then the question that remains to be answered is how, why, and when it evolved. It is this question which I should like now to discuss and to which I shall try to find as clear an answer as possible. One of the best means of doing this is to search for clues through the foregoing narrative, through Swamiji's letters, both published and heretofore unpublished, and through other available records of his thought prior to 1895.

In making this research I am not unaware of certain handicaps. First, although we are now in possession of more material pertaining to 1893 and 1894 than has been included in the biographies and the Complete Works, many gaps in our knowledge of the period still remain. Second, the available material consists largely of newspaper accounts, in which Swamiji's lectures and talks reach us colored by the minds of reporters. When we compare these reports with the transcriptions of his later lectures made by Josiah J. Goodwin, and compare the press interviews with, for example, the vivid account of his conversations in Annisquam written by Mrs. John Henry Wright, we are forced to recognize that much of the originality and subtlety of his ideas and many of the fresh and shining insights that must have flashed through his lectures, illuminating whole fields of knowledge, were lost upon the general run of reporters—and thus lost to us. The newspaper reports, moreover, are for the most part short. While we are often told by the reporters of Swamiji's clarity and strength of thought, of his genius for imparting new ideas, we are seldom given a verbatim account of those ideas. Lectures that took him two hours to deliver were summarized (often incompetently) in one or two columns, and ideas which must have poured forth in torrents were reduced to a trickle. (It should also be mentioned that sometimes Swamiji was deliberately misquoted and misrepresented by hostile writers. But in such cases, his friends, as has been seen, often came to his defence and set matters straight. There is little danger therefore of our being misled in this respect. It is also possible that some fictitious and detrimental reports reached India through the machinations of his enemies, but these also need not concern us here.)

However, despite the above deficiencies, the reports included in this book are on the whole dependable and, when checked for accuracy against Swamiji's letters, serve as invaluable source material. We should in fact be grateful to the reporters for doing as much and as well as they did. They have thrown light not only on the development of Swamiji's mission, but on a great deal more. They have, for instance, given us general information about his activities which we cannot come upon elsewhere. They have also highlighted many small details as to what he said and did, which, while perhaps not always of primary importance, are sources of delight to us, for it is through such small, endearing, and revealing glimpses of him that he emerges as a living and vital personality. We should be particularly grateful to the reporters for having given so much attention to his personal appearance, his clothes, his manner, his voice, and his way of speaking. Such descriptions bring home to us the fact, sometimes hard to grasp, that Swamiji walked this earth and that he talked to and smiled upon people such as you and me. Apart from contributing these details, the newspapers in their editorials, letter columns, and even headlines give us an idea of the reaction of the public to the "Hindoo Monk" The reported titles of the lectures, moreover, serve as an index to the ideas he was interested in propagating during his tour, and the reported contents of these lectures, though at times regrettably skimpy, are nevertheless revealing of the way in which he dealt with those ideas. We gain, for instance, a fair knowledge of his appraisal and defense of Hinduism and Hindu culture in the face of American criticism; we learn how he attacked Christian bigotry; we see his impact upon the nineteenth-century Western mind and also something of its impact upon him.

While a knowledge of these things serves, I admit, only a subsidiary purpose to our main research, it is, in itself, invaluable to students and devotees of Swamiji, and so, in passing, I would like to refer briefly to some of these contributions of the American press.

It is curious that nowhere else does one find so detailed a description of Swamiji's personality as in the American news papers. Although Romain Rolland gives us a general picture of him in his Prophets of the New India, and the Life has reproduced a paragraph from the Phrenological Journal of New York in which his measurements are given and head bumps interpreted, the Indian biographies and the memoirs written by people who had known him seem with scrupulous care to avoid describing him. Unfortunately this is also true of the biographies of Sri Ramakrishna's other disciples and those of Sri Ramakrishna himself. Were it not for a few available photographs we should be left completely in the dark in regard to the personal appearance of these great souls. Possibly this oversight is due to the Hindu writers' concern with spiritual rather than physical facts. Yet the Hindu is aware that the devotee never tires of hearing detailed descriptions of the object of his devotion. He wants to know about the shape and size of his eyes, the texture of his hair, the exact hue of his complexion, his height, the build of his body, the quality of his voice, his characteristic gestures, his clothes, his likes and dislikes, and so on. In fact, this hunger for knowledge regarding the outer characteristics' of the manifestations of God and of the knowers of God is more typically Indian than Western. Why the Hindu biographers of Sri Ramakrishna and his great disciples were so unrealistic in these matters seems, therefore, an unanswerable question.

Be that as it may, the American reporters of the 1890s have happily made up for this lack in regard to Swamiji. Although in some instances their descriptions are contradictory, on the whole they agree and, combined, give a fairly clear picture of him as he was in the full vigor of his youth.

According to the consensus, he was a little over medium height and strongly built. After the summer of 1894 he is spoken of as heavy, weighing, one reporter guessed, 225 pounds. Most likely, however, this was a wild guess, for the Phrenological Journal, whose writers were given to taking accurate measurements, described him as five feet eight and a half inches tall, weighing 170 pounds. But perhaps accurate measurements were impossible in Swamiji's case, for we learn from a reporter of the New York Herald, writing on January 18, 1896, that he had a curious habit of altering his height up and down to an astonishing degree! This may also have been true of his weight. But whatever Swamiji's weight may have been at any given time, he was always described as well-proportioned, and his carriage was always spoken of as majestic, graceful, and utterly unself conscious. On first laying eyes on him, Mrs. Wright wrote of him to her mother: "He came Friday! In a long saffron robe that caused universal amazement. He was a most gorgeous vision. He had a superb carriage of the head, was very handsome in an Oriental way. . . ." She was later to enlarge upon Swamiji's appearance in her article written from notes taken during this first encounter. "There was a commanding dignity and impressiveness in the carriage of his neck and bare head," she wrote, "that caused everyone in sight to stop and look at him; he moved slowly, with the swinging tread of one who had never hastened. " And recalling her first sight of him, Mrs. Mary Funke wrote: "I can see him yet as he stepped upon the platform [in Detroit], a regal, majestic figure, vital, forceful, dominant...

It was no doubt Swamiji's "superb carriage" that lent so much glamour to his robe and turban, for while these were in themselves sights to behold, they became on him the raiment of a king. Almost invariably they were commented upon by the reporters. In Minneapolis and again in Des Moines, Swamiji seems to have worn trousers the color of his robe, written of with delicacy as "red nether garments." But according to later witnesses, his trousers were black. His robe, reaching slightly below his knees, was at first a rich orange-yellow, bound with a red sash, which led to his being described as wearing "Baltimore Oriole" dress—the Baltimore oriole being a bird of brilliant orange and black plumage. In May of 1894 he had a new robe made; the exact gerua (ochre) color being impossible for him to find, it was more red than orange and was described variously in Baltimore and Brooklyn as maroon, bright scarlet, and bright red. As to his turban, it was light yellow silk (or sometimes white), "the flowing end of which was brought in front over one shoulder"—which end, a Salem reporter wrote, "he used for a handkerchief." This reporter also tells us that Swamiji was wearing "Congress shoes"—a type of shoe then in fashion, ankle-high and equipped with triangular elastic insets at the sides.

When not lecturing, he sometimes dressed "like a well-to-do American"—with the exception, perhaps, of his turban. According to Mrs. Martha Brown Fincke, who met him during his visit to Northampton in the spring of 1894, his dress "was a black Prince Albert coat, dark trousers and yellow turban wound in intricate folds about a finely shaped head." This may have been the suit which Mary Hale "appreciated so much" and which later received a drenching in Annisquam. Although Swamiji insisted that this drenching damaged his suit not at all, he very likely had a new one made, for two months later a Baltimore reporter tells us that "the garb he wore . . . was rather of a clerical cut."

While Swamiji's robe and turban and the majestic way in which he wore them drew the attention of everyone, it was his face that held people spellbound. According to all reports, he was extraordinarily handsome, indeed strikingly so—"as handsome as a god of classic sculpture," Mrs. Constance Towne wrote in her reminiscences. His complexion was described variously as "quite dark," "bronze," "dusky," "rather swarthy," "deep olive," and "resembling that of an Indian," by which last was probably meant an American Indian, whose skin is generally copper in tone. All in all it appears that Swamiji was, for a Hindu, more fair than dark and perhaps when a flush mantled his face, as it did during a lecture in Brooklyn, his complexion became red-gold and luminous.

His features were regular and well-rounded. His forehead was called "intellectual," and his face, "fine, intelligent and mobile," "strong and yet refined," "its lineaments expressive at once of both intellectuality and sentiment." His hair was thick wavy, and "black as midnight," and sometimes, when, not wearing a turban, he let it fall over his forehead, so that it reached "nearly to his eyebrows." His teeth, which rarely show in his known photographs, were "straight, even and pearly white." But the most wonderful and arresting features of Swamiji's face were his eyes. They were large, jet-black (or, as Miss Gibbons remembered, "midnight blue"), "of great brilliancy," "bright," "sparkling," "flashing," "full of fight," 'bright with the enthusiasm of a prophet," "dark, subtle, penetrating," and "suggestive of deep spirituality"; indeed, although the reporters do not say so, these were eyes that had looked upon God and held within their depths the light of infinity.

Swamiji's voice was often compared to a musical instrument. In her story of his conversations at Annisquam, Mrs. Wright tells of how in his serious and intense utterances his "beautiful voice" deepened "till it sounded like a bell." "He had a beautiful voice like a violoncello," Miss Josephine MacLeod told Romain Rolland, "grave without violent contrasts but with deep vibrations that filled both hall and hearts. Once his audience was held he could make it sink to an intense piano piercing his hearers to the soul. Emma Calve, who knew him, described it as 'an admirable baritone, having the vibrations of a Chinese gong.' " Harriet Munroe wrote of his voice as being "rich as a bronze bell," and Mary Funke as being "all music—now like the plaintive minor strain of an Eolian harp, again, deep, vibrant, resonant." The newspaper reports amply confirm this, consistently, describing Swamiji's voice as "music, had you not understood a word," as "deep and musical," "rich and sonorous," "prepossessing one at once in his favor," "a voice capable of electrifying an audience."

As for his speech, his fluent, eloquent, and precise use of the English language was "beyond praise," and was sometimes a source of as much amazement as was the subtlety and brilliance of the thought it carried. "This heathen," wrote a Detroit reporter, "speaks the English language with more elegance than is usually heard from our platforms and pulpits, and he  seasons his descriptions with a refinement of wit that is almost unequalled among all the speakers whose words are familiar to our ears in public addresses." "His choice of words," wrote another reporter, "are [sic] the gems of the English language: ' "He speaks without notes," commented Lucy Monroe of the Critic, "presenting his facts and his conclusions with the greatest art, the most convincing sincerity, and rising at times to a rich, inspiring eloquence." Swamiji's accent, we are told, was only slight, "similar to that of a cultured member of the Latin race familiar with the English language: ' (Miss Conger refers to it as "the lilt of a slight well-bred Irish brogue.") Sometimes he stressed the wrong syllable of an English word, and sometimes, if he has been quoted correctly, he gave a quaint twist to an English phrase, all of which must have lent further charm to the wit and poetry that wove through his lectures, giving "light and life to every subject he touched." "The workings of his mind, so subtle and so brilliant, so well stored and so well trained sometimes dazzled his hearers " wrote one reporter; and another: "He speaks English not only distinctly, but fluently, and his ideas as new as sparkling, drop from his tongue in a perfectly bewildering overflow of ornamental language.... He is an artist in thought, an idealist in belief and a dramatist on the platform. "

But although Swamiji's lectures were suffused with poetic imagery and drama, they were at the same time logically precise. "The speaker differs in one respect in particular from some American orators," commented a Memphis reporter. "He advances his ideas with as much deliberation as a professor of mathematics demonstrates an example in algebra to his students.... He advances no ideas, nor makes assertions that he does not follow up to a logical conclusion." Swamiji's critics were sometimes prone to emphasize the fact (presumably damning) that his audiences consisted primarily of women. Women, it is true, may have predominated in most lecture halls, but his vast learning and the impeccable logic with which he presented his thesis attracted to him intelligent and educated people of both sexes. As the Northampton Daily Herald commented, "To see and hear Swami Vive Kananda is an opportunity which no intelligent fair-minded American ought to miss if one cares to see a shining light of the very finest product of the mental, moral and spiritual culture of a race which reckons its age by thousands where we count ours by hundreds and is richly worth the study of every mind." "All classes flocked to hear him," the same paper reported, "and professional men in particular were deeply interested in his logic and soundness of thought: ' One also remembers that Mrs. Bagley of Detroit included among those whom she invited to hear him speak "lawyers; judges, ministers, army officers, physicians and business-men with their wives and daughters," and that "all listened with intense interest to the end." In Brooklyn "men of all professions and callings—doctors and lawyers and judges and teachers—together with many ladies, had come from all parts of the city to listen to his strangely beautiful and eloquent defense of the 'Religions of India' . . . they had heard of his culture and his learning, of his wit and his eloquence, of his purity and sincerity and holiness, and hence they expected great things. And they were not disappointed."

Swamiji's learning was prodigious "beyond comparison with most of our scholars"; and this, together with his irresistible charm and "magnetic attractiveness," made him not only an incomparable lecturer but a superb conversationalist. "As a companion," wrote a Memphis reporter, fortunate enough to know whereof he spoke, "he is a most charming man, and as a conversationalist he is, perhaps, not surpassed in the drawing rooms of any city in the Western World." The combination of humility and erudition, of simplicity and wisdom endeared him to all with whom he came in contact. "He is remarkably well versed upon religious, scientific and metaphysical literature," another Memphis reporter wrote, "not only of his own country but of the world as well, and is capable, by reason of his versatility, of maintaining himself in any position in which circumstances may cast his lot. There is throughout his bearing and conversation a certain child-like simplicity of manner that enlists one's sympathy, and convinces one of the sincerity of the man's utterances before he begins to speak. " "Swami Vive Kananda has been entertained in a public and private way by the citizens and has created a profound sensation in all cultured circles," wrote the Memphis Commercial. "His learning embraces such a wide range of subjects and his knowledge is so thorough that even specialists in the various sciences, theology, art and literature, learn from his utterances and absorb from his presence." In Baltimore he was written of as "a charming conversationalist . . . familiar with the works of all the great writers in a dozen different tongues, and he quotes long selections from Spencer, Darwin, Mill or others of the great philosophers with a fluency that is surprising." and withal, Swamiji was "as good-natured and jolly as it is possible for a man to be."

Yet there was about him the majesty of his spiritual stature. Though he was 'jolly" and sometimes "turned the laugh on the [impertinent] inquirer," one senses throughout the reports of his lectures and conversations his immense, though "modest," dignity and "magnetic power." "There was a sense of tranquility and power about him," Malvina Hoffman wrote, "that made an imperishable impression upon me. He seemed to personify the mystery and religious 'aloofness' of all true teachers of Brahma, and combined with this a kindly and gentle attitude of simplicity towards his fellow men:' And Mrs. Martha Browne Fincke, who met him at Smith College when she was a young girl, wrote of "the face with its inscrutable expression, the eyes so full of flashing light, and the whole emanation of power [which were] beyond description. "

The word "dynamic," so often used in connection with Swamiji, is apt to give rise to a false picture. He was not "dynamic" in the ordinary sense of the word; that is, he was not explosive. His intense power and magnetism were felt rather than seen; and far from being violent he was "gentle in manner, deliberate in movement, and extremely courteous in every word, movement and gesture. " In spite of the power and vitality of his words, his manner of speaking was quiet and precise. Unlike the majority of contemporary lecturers, who stood glued to one spot from which they held forth, he had a habit of walking about the stage or platform, "talking sometimes in a way that suggests a soliloquy." He never orated, nor did he ever substitute loudness of voice for true force of expression. He convinced his hearers "by quietness of speech rather than by rapid action," "his low, earnest delivery making his words singularly impressive. " As a Northampton reporter ably expressed it, "the slow, soft, quiet, unimpassioned musical voice, embodying its thought with all the power and fire of the most vehement physical utterance, went straight to the mark." One striking instance of Swamiji's ability to electrify a large audience without raising his voice is his first lecture in Brooklyn. This lecture, which was such a tremendous success and which "held spellbound . . . everyone of those many hundreds" who attended, was delivered, wrote a reporter, "in a sort of monotone."

Swamiji's criticisms of Western life, of which there were more and more as time went on, were never exaggerated, and despite their pointedness were always "courteously, kindly, gracefully expressed." "If he stabs a belief or custom which is distasteful to him he always does it with a needle and not with a pike-staff," a Detroit reporter wrote, and, expressing the same idea, Lucy Monroe wrote of his early lectures, "Though the little sarcasms thrown into his discourses are as keen as a rapier, they are so delicate as to be lost on many of his hearers. Nevertheless his courtesy is unfailing, for these thrusts are never pointed so directly at our customs as to be rude:' Later on, Swamiji's thrusts became, perhaps, more direct, causing Mrs. Wright to refer to them in May of 1894 as "witty, bitter, sharp flings that were all deserved, all neatly done, all to the point. . . "

Indeed, as time went on Swamiji's manner changed; although he remained always reserved, his approach to the public became more positive. At first he was "modest in demeanor, . . . inclined to be diffident until aroused." In his letters to Professor Wright, written shortly after the Parliament of Religions, he appears modest and humble, depending for his strength on God, and apparently feeling his way in his new field of work, sensing its overwhelming difficulties and grateful for any kindness and help. Swamiji never became indifferent to kindness, but as he began to understand the scope of his work and the extent of his responsibility, he began to develop an unshakable faith in his ability to "convulse the world. " He knew with ever-increasing certainty that behind his work and his words was a power greater than any on earth. "I see a greater Power than man, or God, or devil at my back'[2] he wrote in September of 1895 to Alasinga; and however gentle he may have been, he carried about him an aura of that power, which some found difficult to bear. (It was only, however, through 1893 and 1894 that he exerted this power against the critics of his people. From the spring of 1895 onward he felt that his work of breaking the back of missionary fanaticism was over. Henceforth he became comparatively nonresistant to criticism.)

But while Swamiji was assertive, he was "never aggressive," and only those who stood to lose by the keenness and truth of his observations took offense. He himself was totally innocent of personal rancor. "He does not antagonize," Mrs. Bagley wrote, "but lifts people up to a higher level—they see something beyond man-made creeds and denominational names, and they feel one with him in their religious beliefs. " His simplicity was often remarked upon by those whom he engaged in conversation. "Those who came to know him best," wrote the Iowa State Register, "found him the most gentle and lovable of men, so honest, frank, and unpretending, always grateful for the many kindnesses that were shown him." His brilliance, his ready wit, his vast and astonishing fund of knowledge on every subject and his insight into every person and every situation were so devoid of self consciousness and egotism that they enhanced rather than concealed his childlike nature. The fact is that when Swamiji came to America he was already established in the state of a Paramahamsa (a transcendental knower of God), and had become in his total purity similar to a child, uncontaminated and blissful. Now and then one catches hints of what his inner state must have been during his wandering days in India. There is, for instance, his confidence to Mary Hale written in June of 1895 from Thousand Island Park: "Every day I feel I have no duty to do; I am always in eternal rest and peace. It is He that works. We are only the instruments. Blessed be His name! The threefold bondage of lust and gold and fame is as it were fallen from me for the time being, and once more even here I feel what sometimes I felt in India, 'From me all difference has fallen, all right and wrong, all delusion and ignorance has vanished, I am walking in the path beyond the qualities. What law I obey, what disobey?' '[3]The last two sentences are Swamiji's free translation of the first verse of "Shukashtakam" ("Eight Verses of Shuka") and are a description of the state beyond all gunas—the transcendental state, which once attained, is never actually lost.

Even while Swamiji was in the midst of arduous work we again and again find comments upon his holiness and "childlike simplicity of manner." One is reminded, for instance, of what Mrs. Wright wrote at the beginning of his American visit: "We saw him leave us . . . with the fear that clutches the heart when a beloved, gifted, passionate child fares forth, unconscious, in an untried world." But having fared forth, Swamiji was changed by neither fame nor hardship. After he had traveled through the Midwest and the East, maligned by ill-wishers and lionized by intellectual and social leaders, Mrs. Bagley wrote of him: "He is a strong, noble human being, one who walks with God. He is as simple and trustful as a child," and the Brooklyn papers spoke of "his purity, sincerity and holiness." This quality of unruffled and inviolable innocence, this uncomplicated childlikeness, which, despite, or perhaps because of, his "personal reserve when speaking to ladies," always brought out the maternal instinct in the women who knew him, such as Mrs. Lyon and Mrs. Hale in Chicago, Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Bagley, Mrs. Bull and, no doubt, Mrs. Guernsey and many others, is characteristic, as the Hindu reader will know, of the Paramahamsa—he who is eternally united with God.

As has been said, the titles of Swamiji's reported lectures give a good indication of the subjects he dealt with during his tour and of the general ideas he was trying to implant in the American mind. In the course of the foregoing narrative I have presented reports and notices of sixty-five lectures, seven informal talks, and six interviews that were given during the period from August 27, 1983, to January 28, 1895, on which date he opened his classes in New York. In addition there are reports of three lectures delivered in Brooklyn on February 3, February 25, and April 8 of 1895, which should, I believe, be considered as belonging to the period of his lecture tour, for though they overlap the start of his New York classes, they are more concerned with an explanation of Indian customs than with Vedanta. We have in all, therefore, sixty-eight reports of lectures which can be classified as "pre-Vedanta: '

On the basis of their titles these lectures can be divided into three categories: those which dealt with India, those which pertained to the harmony of religions, and those devoted to a discussion of Buddha and Buddhism. Of the lectures which fall within the first group, two, delivered in Saratoga Springs, were entitled "The Mohammedan Rule in India" and "The Use of Silver in India"; thirteen were concerned with giving a general picture and interpretation of the Hindu way of life, and six with explaining the life of Hindu women; two dealt directly with the position of the Christian missionary in India, and twenty-three were devoted to an explanation of the religions of India, including five on the subject of reincarnation. In the second group of lectures, which pertained to the harmony of religions, nine were directly concerned with that subject and eight with the general meaning of religion. In the third group were five lectures on Buddha and Buddhism.

While it is true that Swamiji's lectures defy strict classification by titles, for his mind was not compartmented but was an organic whole in which every thought was intimately integrated with every other thought, it is nevertheless clear from the above analysis that his early lectures in America were primarily concerned with explaining India, with inculcating religious tolerance, and, through emphasis on Buddha, with teaching compassion.

It is interesting to notice in connection with Swamiji's lectures on India that those which were given prior to the Parliament of Religions differed in tone and content from those which came after. Reading the reports of the lectures given in Salem in August of 1893, one notices a certain innocence in his approach—a belief that most people had the welfare of their fellow men at heart, that American wealth presupposed American generosity, and that a simple explanation of India's real needs would be sufficient to draw a response from the large-hearted American public. Although Swamiji was, of course, not unaware of Christian bigotry, having encountered it in India, he was no doubt surprised by the bitter antagonism that greeted his explanation that it was the Hindu body rather than the Hindu soul which was in need of saving.

Shortly thereafter the tone of his plea changed. At the Parliament of Religions he rebuked the Christians for their hypocrisy. "You Christians," he asked, "who are so fond of sending out missionaries to save the soul of the heathen—why do you not try to save their bodies from starvation? In India, during the terrible famines, thousands died from hunger, yet you Christians did nothing.... I came here to seek aid for my impoverished people, and I fully realized how difficult it was to get help for heathens from Christians in a Christian land." Indeed it had not taken long for Swamiji's realization of the difficulty to become complete.

After the Parliament he abandoned the plan of publicly interesting Americans "in the starting of new industries among the Hindoos," and decided, rather, to earn the money himself with which to start an educational project for the benefit of his people. Although it is true that he continued to explain his Indian work to sympathetic friends, speaking, for instance, at a Detroit dinner party of his dream of founding an industrial college for monks, his approach to the general public became, so to speak, more educational. Aware that India's defects would be attributed to her lack of Christianity and would elicit not sympathy but only further criticism, he no longer spoke of the poverty, ignorance, and suffering of the Indian masses. He was also aware that the mores of any people, when viewed against the background of a foreign Weltansicht, are open to fantastic misinterpretation. It became his primary purpose, therefore, to explain the Hindu's basic outlook on life—his religion and moral idealism —and to give, against this background, a true picture of Hindu culture. In addition, he found it imperative to disabuse the American mind of the rank falsehoods that had been dinned into it, refuting wherever he went the distorted and often totally fictitious tales of such things as widow-burning, suicide under the car of Jagannath, throwing infants to the crocodiles, persecution of widows, and so on.

Swamiji refused to be one of those Hindus, who, having identified themselves with a conquering nation, held the misery of their own people up to ridicule and contempt. "My mission in life," he wrote later, "is not to be a paid reviler "4 and with, what Sister Nivedita was to call his "splendid scorn of apology for anything Indian,'[5] he always spoke with pride of his people and his country. Indeed Swamiji was the first to present India in her true light to the West. As he himself wrote to Alasinga, "I am the one man who dared to defend his country and I have given them what they never expected from a Hindu.'[6]His brilliant and convincing descriptions and interpretations of India's customs and religion came as a revelation to open minded Americans, who, having seen the true India through his eyes, could never again accept the calumnious tales of missionaries and other detractors. Even the die-hard bigots were forced to modify their views, so thoroughly discredited had they become. Swamiji's very presence was enough to militate against them. "His culture, his eloquence, and his fascinating personality have given us a new idea of Hindoo civilization," Lucy Monroe of the Critic wrote shortly after the Parliament of Religions, and as time went on this new idea became an established conviction.

It can, I believe, be rightly said that in a little more than one year Swamiji permanently altered the strong current of antagonistic thought that for decades had been directed against his motherland. This he did without using methods of propaganda; rather, with a few descriptions of and insights into the life of India he revealed the character and meaning of the whole of Hindu culture. There was, for instance, his comparison made at Radcliffe College, recorded by Mrs. Wright: " 'When we are fanatical,' he said, 'we torture ourselves, we throw ourselves under huge cars, we cut our throats, we lie on spiked beds; but when you are fanatical you cut other people's throats, you torture them by fire and put them on spiked beds! You take very good care of your own skins!"' Again, there were his moving depictions of the pure and noble life of Hindu women: "In the West woman is the wife; in the East she is the mother. The Hindoos worship the idea of mother, and even the monks are required to touch the earth with their foreheads before their mothers." Or he spoke of the Hindu's total unselfishness and extreme hospitality. "As long as a Hindu has anything in the house," he told his audience in Detroit, "a guest must never want. When he is satisfied, then the children, then father and mother partake. They are the poorest nation in the world, yet except in times of famine no one dies of hunger." He explained the merits of the caste system. "It is true that there is caste in India," he once said. "There a murderer can never reach the top. Here, if he gets a million dollars he is as good as any one. In India, if a man is a criminal  once, he is degraded forever." And again, "In caste the poorest is as good as the richest, and that is one of the most beautiful things about it.... The man of caste has time to think of his soul, and that is what we want in the society of India." Nor were Swamiji's listeners likely to forget the description of a Himalayan community of pure Hindus, "unknown to Mahometan and Christian alike," which he gave during one of his afternoon talks in Detroit and which is to be found nowhere else in his lectures or writings. "Pure in thought, deed and action, " reads the report, "so honest that a bag of gold left in a public place would be found unharmed twenty years after; so beautiful that, to use Kananda's own phrase, 'to see a girl in the fields is to pause and marvel that God could make anything so exquisite.' Their features are regular, their eyes and hair dark, and their skin the color which would be produced by the drops which fell from a pricked finger into a glass of milk. These are the Hindus in their pure type, untainted and untrammeled."

To those who considered the Hindus' culture only a step more advanced than that of the savage, Swamiji's lecture, "India's Gift to the World," which he delivered in Brooklyn, must have come as a shock. Indeed it must have come as a shock even to the more liberal-minded, for it constituted what was probably the first public exposition of India's many and invaluable contributions to Western civilization. After hearing this lecture, even those who ranked material gifts higher than spiritual had to bow their heads before the land whose civilization was father to their own.

Through disclosures such as these Swamiji opened, as it were, a door into a new world. Americans had been told, and had believed, that behind that door lay ghosts and spirits, devils, devil worshipers, and a race of monsters who all but devoured their own children. Suddenly there was disclosed a land of hoary culture, of lofty idealism, of purity and self-sacrifice, where persecution was nonexistent, and where the ethical standard was the highest among nations, based on the  belief that "all non-self is good and all self is bad." From any lecturer this would have come as a surprise, but from Swamiji, who was the very personification of India's highest ideals, who was the living proof of his own word—"a splendid type," as a Brooklyn reporter wrote, "of the famous sages of the Himalayas"—it came as a never-to-be-forgotten revelation which destroyed the old beliefs and permanently raised India in the estimation of the West.

In presenting his country to America, Swamiji never attempted to hide the facts. He never hesitated to tell his audience her defects when this was called for, but he never imagined and never gave the impression that these defects were representative. His purpose was to make Americans feel the true pulse beat of India, and thus in his general descriptions he always portrayed her healthy and normal state. "The product of the slums of any nation cannot be the criterion of our judgment of that nation," he said in his lecture in Brooklyn on "Ideals of Womanhood." "One may collect the rotten worm eaten apples under every apple tree in the world, and write a book about each of them and still know nothing of the beauties and possibilities of the apple tree. Only in the highest and best can we judge a nation—the fallen are a race by themselves. Thus it is not only proper, but just and right, to judge a custom by its best, by its ideal."

The Christian missionaries and some Indian reformers did not accept this view, nor did they understand it. To them the rotten, worm-eaten apples were representative of the whole tree. Both concentrated on deviations from the norm: the reformers advocated radical changes that dug at the very foundation of Hindu culture, and the missionaries condemned Hindusim with a blind fanatical zeal, more often than not misrepresenting it and insisting that it be uprooted and replaced by Christianity. It was not alone this wholesale condemnation of Hinduism to which Swamiji objected, but the persistent attempt on the part of so-called reformers, both foreign and Indian, to force Hindu life into an alien mold.

In an earlier chapter I have tried to present Swamiji's position in relation to the activities of Christian missionaries in India and I need not repeat myself here, but this is as good a place as any to clarify a certain point left undiscussed. The reader may have noticed that an apparent contradiction exists between Swamiji's main thesis and his invitation to "hundreds and thousands of missionaries of Christ." "We want missionaries of Christ," he declared in Detroit. "Let such come to India by the hundreds and thousands. Bring Christ's life to us and let it permeate the very core of society. Let him be preached in every village and corner of India." Although during the course of this same lecture he said: "As far as converting India to Christianity is concerned, there is no hope. If it were possible it ought not to be done," his invitation was interpreted to mean that he was not averse to Christian conversion but only to the poor caliber of the contemporary missionary.

The fact is that Swamiji made a distinction between Christian missionaries and "missionaries of Christ: ' A clear indication of this is to be found in a report of a Memphis lecture, in which he was quoted as having said that "when the people of the West wanted God [as a man under water wants air], then they would be welcome in India, because missionaries would then come to them with God, not with the idea that India knows not God, but with love in their hearts and not dogma." Thus when he said, "Let him [Christ] be preached in every village and corner of India," he meant not the Christ of dogma—the one and only Savior—but rather, a perfect embodiment of spiritual and moral virtues, a knowledge of whose life would benefit any culture.

In inviting "hundreds and thousands" of missionaries of Christ to India, Swamiji, of course, had in mind men and women whose sole purpose would be to implant the seeds of goodness and spirituality in the hearts of the people, to serve the poor, the downtrodden, and the miserable, and who would give more importance to the spirit of religion than to its out ward forms, caring little whether the Hindus worshiped Christ or Shiva, Sri Krishna or Buddha. "A true lover of God," he said in Detroit, "would be so wrapt up in his love that he would have no time to stop and tell members of another sect that they were following the wrong road . . . and strive to bring him to his way of thinking."

If such true lovers of God were to crowd into every corner of India, Swamiji knew that Hinduism would be safe from attack—would, indeed, be enriched and benefited. His invitation, therefore, did not by any means indicate that his country was an open field for conversion; indeed, though India welcomed all who came to her with respect and sympathy, her doors were closed to those who came to interfere and to destroy. During one of his informal talks in Detroit, he explained this attitude of the Hindu toward the foreigner. The report reads: "When the studious Greeks visited Hindustan to learn of the Hindu, all doors were open to them, but when the Mohammedan with his sword and the Englishman with his bullets came, their doors were closed. Such guests were not welcome. As Kananda deliciously words it: 'When the tiger comes we close our doors until he has passed by.'"

There is, of course, much more to be learned from the reports of Swamiji's lectures and talks on India, and I am tempted to go on speaking of them. For while it is true that his lectures given in India, his recorded conversations, his letters to his brother monks and to his disciples, and his Bengali writings, such as "Modern India, " are replete with passages in which he states his views of his country's past, present, and future, I do not believe that there is anything to take the place of his presentation of India in his lectures of 1894, '94, and '95. I must, nevertheless, resist the temptation to say more on this subject and will devote myself to my main thesis, which is to discover the evolution of his message and mission. For this we must first turn to the two groups of lectures which I have classified under the headings of harmony of religions and Buddha and Buddhism, for it is in these that we find him beginning to move toward a definite formulation of his message to the world in its fullness.

2

It was inevitable that from the start Swamiji would lecture in the West on religious harmony, for he was a Hindu, born with an instinctive reverence for all faiths and all sages and prophets. Moreover, and more importantly, the great doctrine of the harmony of religions had been an essential part of his Master's message and had been vividly demonstrated in his life. It was not surprising, therefore, that at Annisquam Swamiji began his first public lecture in America with the statement—as remembered by one of the audience—"The Hindus are taught to have a great respect for other people's religions." But while it was natural that he would at first put forward the doctrine of the harmony of religions in its general form, it was inevitable that he would not remain satisfied with it.

This doctrine has been generally understood to mean that since every religion leads to the same goal—God—every man, while faithfully following the particular religion in which he was born or in which he feels most at home, should at the same time maintain a respectful attitude toward other religions, neither criticizing their beliefs nor obstructing their practices. Swamiji explained this teaching in his first address at the Parliament, when he spoke of his country's acceptance of all religions as true and quoted from the Gita: "All men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to Me.'[7] But while such a teaching might at first glance seem to make it possible for various religions to live in peace with one another, it left them more or less separate. It was in practice a teaching of live and let live—a teaching that could not give rise to a stable harmony among religions unless an underlying unity was recognized by them. It was this unity, therefore, which Swamiji later stressed in his "Paper on Hinduism" when he spoke of truth as being the "same light coming through glasses  of different colours,'[8]and described the future universal religion as one "which will have no location in place or time, which will be infinite, like the God it will preach, . . . which in its catholicity will embrace in its infinite arms, and find a place for every human being from the lowest grovelling savage not far removed from the brute to the highest man . . . and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be centered in aiding humanity to realize its own true, divine  nature."[9]


Although Swamiji did not at this time indicate how such a religion could come into existence, in his final address at the Parliament we find him suggesting a means by which at least a partial unity could be established among religions. Going further than in his first talk, he declared that while the Christian was not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian, "each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve his individuality and grow according to his own law of growth:"[10] He was here advocating more than respect for other religions; he was urging a receptive attitude toward all the great spiritual thoughts of the world and a breaking down of the walls that surrounded each faith, isolating it from the others. The absurdity of religious narrowness was, of course, patent to him from the start, and, knowing that a parable could sometimes bring home a truth more quickly than a statement, he told at the Parliament and in many places thereafter the story of the pompous frog who considered his own small well to be the entire universe and who could never be convinced of the contrary.


As Swamiji started on his lecture tour we find him laying greater and greater stress on the unity of religions and suggesting various means by which it could be realized. However, while his lectures show a definite development in thought, he did not completely reject his earlier ideas; rather, he retained and often repeated for the sake of those whom it would benefit the teaching that all religions lead to the same goal and that they should all, therefore, be recognized as true and good. "The Hindus," he is reported as having said in Memphis,  "hold that there is good in all religions, that all religions are embodiments of man's inspiration for holiness, and being such, all should be respected:" Although Swamiji felt that mutual respect among religions could not in itself lead to unity, he knew that such respect was nonetheless a prerequisite, for once bigotry had taken root in a man's heart there could be no hope. In the same city he related the saying of an Indian monk: "I would believe you if you were to say that I could pluck a tooth from the mouth of the crocodile without being bitten, but I cannot believe you when you say a bigot can be changed:" Was this perhaps told in answer to the Christian minister in Memphis who, as Swamiji later wrote in his reply to the Madras Address, preached that "in every village of India, there is a pond full of the bones of little babies"?


Confronted in America by legions of such bigots, Swamiji could not but stress the fundamentals of tolerance. Again and again he emphasized the fact that all religions are good, that variations are essential. "Why take a single instrument from the great orchestra of the earth?" he asked in Detroit. "Let the grand symphony go on.... Each creed has something to add to the wonderful structure." Illustrating this point further, he often told the story of the five blind men, each of whom investigated a different part of an elephant and each of whom vigorously defended his own conception of what manner of creature the elephant was. Each was, of course, wrong, but taken all together their pronouncements fairly approximated the truth. "One religion is best adapted to a certain people because of habits of life, association, hereditary traits and climatic influences," he said in Detroit. "Another religion is suited to another people for similar reasons.... Let the great stream flow on, and he is a fool who would try to change its course, when nature will work out the solution." Or again, "Men are different. If they were not, the mentality of the world would be degraded. If there were not different religions, no religion would survive." Thus Swamiji retained all that would be of value to various kinds of listeners; but while teaching the fundamentals of tolerance he at the same time continued his effort to define the principles that would embrace all religions and constitute their unity.


An excerpt from a report of a lecture given on November 27, 1893, in Des Moines, Iowa, reads: "He [Swamiji] holds that one must embrace all the religions to become the perfect Christian. What is not found in one religion is supplied by another. They are all right and necessary for the true Christian. When you send a missionary to our country he becomes [or should become] a Hindoo Christian and I a Christian Hindoo." Here Swamiji was trying to show how one might in actual practice not merely assimilate the spirit of other religions but identify oneself with them, while remaining true to the faith of one's own choice. A Christian should be able, for instance, to worship God without hesitation or fear in a temple or a mosque when in India. Religious labels were to him the handmaidens of narrowness, and narrowness the cause of dissension. "My Master used to say," he would write to Mrs. Bull in 1895, "that these names as Hindu, Christian, etc., stand as great bars to all brotherly feelings between man and man." Very likely, however, he felt the device of adding the names of other religions to one's own would not in itself suffice to bring about the unity which he so ardently desired, for while he may not have altogether abandoned the idea,[11] we do not find him mentioning it in any subsequent American lecture.


In this same Des Moines lecture, Swamiji presented a more advanced idea. Expansion of religious life, he pointed out, could be achieved by seeking the common denominator of every form of worship; for underlying all creeds, sects, or religions there are permanent and basic principles, which he called by the simple name of religion. "There are in our country," he said, "two words which have altogether different meanings than they do in this country. They are 'religion' and 'sect.' We hold that religion embraces all religions. . . . Then there is that word 'sect.' Here it embraces those sweet people who wrap themselves up in their mantle of charity and say,  'We are right; you are wrong.' " Swamiji was now asking Christians to stop identifying themselves with a sect or creed and to embrace the universal, timeless principles of one all encompassing religion.


As time went on, he began to stress more and more the difference between religion and creed and sought to formulate the unifying principles through which one could see all creeds as parts of one great whole. Creed, he contended, was not wrong when understood as subservient to religion, but when taken to be religion itself it was deadly. "Religion," he said during the course of an interview in Detroit, "is the acceptance of all existing creeds, seeing in them the same striving toward the same destination. Creed is something antagonistic and combative. There are different creeds because there are different people, and the creed is adapted to the commonwealth where it furnishes what the people want. . . . Religion recognizes and is glad of the existence of all these forms, because of the beautiful underlying principle.... All the creeds which are accepted by all people are but the endeavors of humanity to realize that infinity of Self."


According to Swamiji, Christianity, "because of its antagonistic features," was more a creed than a religion. Hinduism, on the other hand, was a religion, for "one of the great factors in the Hindoo religion is its tolerance of other religions and beliefs." It was not, of course, merely tolerance that constituted religion, but, as he said, an acceptance of the underlying principles which unify all creeds. True and lasting tolerance was a natural outcome of this acceptance. "I ask the preachers to give up first the idea of nationality; and second, the ideas of sects," he said in Detroit. "God's children have no sects."


Swamiji illustrated the difference between religion and creed in many ways. One of the most beautiful of these illustrations, and one which is not found elsewhere in his lectures or writings, was given during the course of his spectacular lecture in Detroit of March 11, "Christian Missions in India." "He told them," reads the report, "how the savage man might find a few jewels, and prizing them, tie them with a crude thong and string them about his neck. As he becomes slightly civilized he would perhaps exchange the thong for a string. Becoming still more enlightened he would fasten his jewels with a silken cord; and when possessed of a high civilization he would make an elaborate gold setting for his treasures. But throughout all the changes in settings the jewels—the essentials—would remain the same."


He also endeavored to define the fundamental principles of religion itself. "Religion," he said, according to a Detroit report, "is the manifestation of the soul nature," or, as he wrote about this same time to his Madras disciple Kidi "Religion is the manifestation of the divinity already in man. " One of his unique illustrations of the soul's struggle to realize its own innate perfection is contained in a lecture in Memphis and is worth repeating here. "If you put a simple molecule of air in the bottom of a glass of water it at once begins a struggle to join the infinite atmosphere above. So it is with the soul. It is struggling to regain its pure nature and to free itself from this material body. It wants to regain its own infinite expansion. This is everywhere the same." Again in Detroit he said, "A bubble of air in a glass of water strives to join with the mass of air without; in oil, vinegar and other materials of differing density its efforts are less or more retarded according to the liquid. So the soul struggles through various mediums for the attainment of its individual infinity." But realizing the divinity within did not constitute the whole of the one religion which Swamiji was seeking to define during his first year in America; as is seen from a study of his complete message, his idea of one religion embraced many other aspects of human life. (Unfortunately it is not possible to trace each separate step of his evolving thought in this connection, for in the material at present available there are not many indications of how all the many facets of his message were integrated into a single whole. It is clear, however, that as time went on, more and more streams entered the current of his thought—each to find its fulfillment in his ultimate message.)


In a subsidiary attempt to find a basis for religious unity, Swamiji often pointed out the historical relationship between Eastern and Western religions, declaring, for instance, to the indignation of the orthodox, that Buddhism was the foundation of the Christian religion, particularly of the Roman Catholic Church. He also dwelt upon the common cultural heritage of all Indo-European peoples. "By comparing philology," reads a report of his lecture in Streator on October 8, 1893, "he sought to establish the long admitted relationship between the Aryan races and their descendants in the new world: ' Throughout his tour Swamiji spoke in a like vein. An excerpt from a Detroit paper reads: "In ancient times they spoke Sanscrit.... In the words father, mother, sister, brother, etc. the Sanscrit gave very similar pronunciations. This and other facts lead him to think we all come from the common stock, Aryans. Nearly all branches of this race have lost their identity."


In the common descent of Europeans and Hindus Swamiji saw a justification for building a unified civilization. During a dinner party in Detroit he voiced this idea. A report of this conversation written by one of the dinner guests reads: "The mission of Kananda is . . . one that should commend itself to every lover of humanity. He hopes to see the best of our material philosophy and progress infused into Hindoo civilization, and that, also, we may take lessons from them, until we shall all become, as was once in ages past, brother Aryans, possessing a common civilization—the exalted philosophy of non-self, being alike without sect or creed in oneness with God:" On the East Coast Swamiji again sought to impress his listeners with the cultural and racial kinship of Eastern and Western peoples. A Northampton report of one of his lectures was headed "An Evening With Our Hindoo Cousins," and continued: “For Swami Vivekananda proved conclusively that all our neighbors across the water, even the remotest, are our close cousins, differing only a trifle in color, language, customs and religion.”


Swamiji's active interest in the founding of an international university, whose faculty was to "include professors selected from all religions," is yet another indication that he was seeking ways and means by which the unity of religions could be achieved. In Baltimore he envisioned this university, which was to be located near Boston, as one "where all the religions of the world can be taught," and which "may serve to educate a superior kind of missionary for work in India."


Although the international university—which the Rev. Hiram Vrooman referred to as "one of Mr. Vivekananda's pet ideas"—did not materialize, a near approach to it was the Monsalvat School for the Study of Comparative Religions, founded at Greenacre in 1896 by Swamiji's friends, Miss Sarah Farmer and Dr. Lewis G. Janes. One object of this school was, Miss Farmer said, "to train missionaries for the work in foreign lands, . . . where they would go, not to quarrel but to meet on the common plane between religions'[12] statement which sounds very much as though Miss Farmer and Swamiji had been conversing on the subject.


It is important to notice that Swamiji was the first prophet to define thoroughly and teach explicitly the unity of all religions. As is evidenced by his lectures, his letters, and his other writings, the search for this unity was continually in his mind, almost like a driving force which gave him no rest. One might wonder why this was so. Was it because, being a philosopher as well as a prophet, he naturally and persistently sought to formulate the one principle behind all religious phenomena? Or was it because, being essentially a prophet, he was aware that the world—politically, economically, socially, and culturally—was rapidly becoming a close-knit whole, which could be stable only if unity was also found among religions—a unity not dogmatically imposed, but inherent in religions themselves? Or again, was it because he understood Sri Ramakrishna's message to be that of one religion? Possibly Swamiji was motivated by alt these three considerations, yet the strongest motive must have been his understanding of his Master's life. True, one does not find in the available teachings of Sri Ramakrishna many indications that he sought to present the one religion underlying all religions. Rather, we find the doctrine that all religions in their several forms are good and true, that none should be disturbed. While Swamiji by no means rejected this teaching, he seems to have understood it in a deeper sense than it is generally understood and, as we have seen, sought from the very first days of the Parliament to formulate a comprehensive doctrine which would include every religion and creed.


We do not find in his early lectures, talks, and interviews, however, any indication of how this one religion was to be conceived in detail, of how the prevalent religions or creeds were to make their adjustments with it, or of how it was to be formulated and taught so that it would be inclusive of all the spiritual aspirations, efforts, and experiences of man. These were problems which no doubt occupied his mind during the latter part of his lecture tour, and which were ultimately to find their solution in his affirmation of Vedanta.


In Swamiji's effort to explain the essentials of religion to the American people and also in his effort to present India in her true light, he laid a great deal of stress upon India's religious maturity—her knowledge of and adherence to the lofty principles of spirituality. But among practical-minded Americans the question inevitably arose why, if India's religion was so superior to that of the West, she was so backward materially. This was not necessarily a taunting or thoughtless question, nor was it one which Swamiji passed off as irrelevant. Although he often rebuked the American people for "dollar-worship," he was a great admirer of America's inventive genius, its spirit of enterprise, its gift of organization, and, above all, its elevation of the common man. He who had at heart the welfare of man in every respect—physical and mental, as well as spiritual could never belittle material progress as such. Indeed, one of his fondest desires was to bring material well-being to India. But the problem was how to do this without in any way jeopardizing her spiritual life.


To many Hindus, and to many Americans as well, the combination of spirituality and material prosperity has seemed to pose no particular problem. It is generally taken for granted that a spiritual and material renascence go almost hand in hand and that the strong revival of India's spiritual power, ushered in by Sri Ramakrishna, will automatically bring prosperity in its wake. Yet Swamiji never made this assumption. Being a thorough student of history and of human nature, he clearly recognized that religious development and material advancement have always in the past been mutually exclusive and that their desired combination in the future could not be left to nature or to chance. Although he declared again and again that a spiritual renascence was India's only hope, he did not unrealistically imagine that a golden age of material well-being would follow as a matter of course.


In answer to a question put to him during a discussion in Memphis as to why India's religion had not elevated her among the nations of the world, Swamiji said: "Because that is not the sphere of any religion. My people are the most moral in the world, or quite as much as any other race. They are more considerate of their fellow man's rights, and even those of dumb animals, but they are not materialists. No religion has ever advanced the thought or inspiration [sic] of a nation or people. In fact, no great [material?] achievement has ever been attained in the history of the world that religion has not retarded. Your boasted Christianity has not proven an exception in this respect. Your Darwins, your Mills, your Humes, have never received the endorsement of your prelates." One is reminded of his statement made a year later during his lecture in Brooklyn on "The Ideals of Womanhood" to the effect that "the development of all monasticism had always meant the degeneration of women." "I'll bend my knees to every prophet in every religion and clime," he continued, "but candor compels me to say that here in the West the development of women was brought about by men like John Stuart Mill and the French revolutionary philosophers. Religion has done something, no doubt, but not all."


During the course of an interview in Detroit Swamiji again expressed his belief that adherence to moral and spiritual principles had retarded India's material progress. "Where brute strength and bloodshed has advanced other nations," he is reported as having said, "India has deprecated such brutal manifestations and by the law of the survival of the fittest, which applies to nations as well as to individuals, it has fallen behind as a power on the earth in the material sense." On the other hand, he was keenly aware that those nations which had forged ahead materially had done so at the sacrifice of their spiritual development.

Swamiji faced the fact that when the best energies of a people had been devoted to spiritual development, their material life had suffered, and when those energies had been spent in improving material life, spirituality had been lost. So had it always been in the past, and so would it be in the future—unless some remedy were found. 'As the bearer of Sri Ramakrishna's message and as one who had come to the earth for the good of mankind, he was bound to seek that remedy, and it was inevitable that during his wanderings in India and America he should give a great deal of thought to the problem of how spirituality and material prosperity could be combined to the advantage of both.


"I believe that the Hindoo faith has developed the spiritual in its devotees at the expense of the material," he is quoted as having said in Memphis, "and I think that in the Western world the contrary is true. By uniting the materialism of the West with the spiritualism of the East, I believe much can be accomplished." In Detroit he again expressed his belief that material progress and spiritual development need not, and should not, be forever opposed. "May not one combine the energy of the lion and the gentleness of the lamb?" he asked during an interview, and according to the report, continued by intimating that "perhaps the future holds the conjunction of the East and the West, a combination which would be productive of marvelous results."


We know that in his Vedanta—particularly in his teaching of karma yoga and in his emphasis on the divinity of man— Swamiji later worked out the means by which this combination could be achieved, thus assuring that the advent of Sri Ramakrishna would indeed usher in a golden age of total well-being. "From the day Sri Ramakrishna was born dates the growth of modern India and of the Golden Age," he wrote to his brother monks from America, and continued: "You are the agents to bring about this Golden Age. To work, with this conviction at heart!"[13 ]It was Swamiji who laid down the lines this work was to take, and there can be no doubt that his solution of the problem of how man might devote his energies to spiritual realization and yet not neglect the material needs of the world constitutes one of his greatest contributions to both the religious and the secular thought of the modern age.


Swamiji was, of course, not the first Indian teacher to try to combine material life and spirituality. The first, barring some Upanishadic sages, was Sri Krishna, whose teachings in the Bhagavad Gita deal in general with the same problems with which Swamiji was concerned. But just as Sri Krishna said to Arjuna, "Through long lapse of time this yoga has been lost to the world," so could Swamiji say that Sri Krishna's teachings had, in turn, been gradually forgotten and that he himself was reviving and restating them, blending with them the spirit of compassionate service. In this respect, if in no other, he could well declare, as he did to Swami Turiyananda: "I have made a new path and opened it to all.'[14]


There was always, we can be sure, a reason for whatever Swamiji taught. Although, as I have pointed out, one of the ostensible purposes of his lecture tour was to explain Hinduism to the American people, he evidently felt from the first that an exposition of Buddhism must form an essential part of that explanation. Speaking with the Vrooman brothers at their lecture series on "Dynamic Religion, " he cited Buddha's teachings as a remedy for social ills. "The remedy," he said, "is not to place trick against trick and force against force. The only remedy is in making unselfish men and women. You may enact laws to cure present evils, but they will be of no avail. . . [Buddha] always insisted upon this fundamental truth, that we are to be pure and holy, and that we are to help others to be holy also. He believed that man must go to work and help others, find his soul in others, find his life in others. " In Brooklyn Swamiji spoke of Buddha as "the great one, who never thought a thought and never performed a deed except for the good of others; who had the greatest intellect and heart, taking in all mankind and all the animals, all-embracing, ready to give up his life for the highest angels as well as for the lowest worms: ' How much this sounds like Swamiji himself, whose heart responded to the cry of all humanity and who once said, "Of course I would commit a crime and go to hell forever, if by that I could really help a human being!'[15](The serenity and compassion of Buddha were reflected even in Swamiji's features. The Reverend H. R. Haweis once remarked in his "most striking resemblance to the classic face of Buddha '[16], and in 1901 Sister Nivedita would write, "Mr. Tata told me that when Swami was in Japan everyone who saw him was immediately struck by his likeness to Buddha.")[17]


In a world which was growing ever more complex, in which religious dogmas no longer served as goads and sanctions for moral action, in which blind faith had lost its strength as a bulwark against despair, and in which the religious outlook was thought to be incompatible with reason, Swamiji knew that the elements of self reliance, reason and compassion must each play a large part in any religion that would meet the needs of the times. Standing free from the current dogmas, philosophies, and traditions of India, Buddha had blazed a path of reason. This was, in effect, what modern man also was attempting to do. Like Buddha, he was skeptical and iconoclastic; Buddha's agnosticism, his pioneering spirit, his thorough-going rationality certainly appealed to him. But was he ready, as Buddha had been, to push reason to its utmost limit and venture upon that tremendous voyage of the spirit which alone leads to moral and spiritual perfection? Clearly, he was not. It was no doubt in an effort to inspire the Western world to follow the path of highest reason to its end—an end which nullifies all self and which alone can bridge the gap between matter and spirit—that Swamiji so often spoke of Buddha's life and teachings. He was perhaps also impelled by the fact that this age, if it is to fulfill its promise, is one in which true sympathy with all men must be a predominant motive of action. No greater example of selfless compassion could be found than Lord Buddha, and since the elements of self-reliance, reason, and compassion formed a large part of Swamiji's message to the world, he could not but give prominence to this most independent, most rational, and most compassionate of all men. It was, to be sure, no accident that in his book Karma Yoga he would cite Lord Buddha as an example of the supreme karma yogin.


But there were other reasons for Swamiji's pronounced interest in Buddhism, and although these are not strictly pertinent to a discussion of his lectures in America, some reference to them will not be out of place. The fact is that until recently Buddhism has been thought of in India as non-Hindu and has thereby been excluded from the Hindu's consciousness of his heritage. If we consider that the origin, the development, and the flourishing of Buddhism occupied over a thousand years of India's history, it is clear that the Hindu heritage, minus Buddhism, has a hole in it at least a millennium wide. Unlike Hindu teachers of the past, such as Shankara, who repudiated Buddhism, Swamiji saw little reason why those thousand years of Buddhistic achievement, both in India and abroad, should not be accepted as an integral part of the Hindu heritage. Moreover, he wanted to imbue Hinduism with the motif of compassion. As is well known, Swamiji identified himself with the Mahayana school of Buddhism, which was opposed not only to the nihilistic doctrines of the Hinayana school, but also to the self-centeredness which nihilism tended to breed among its followers. To him, Mahayana Buddhism, which he held to be the older of the two schools, more clearly expressed the humanity of Buddha than did Hinayana, and it was this humanity, this largeness of spirit and all-embracing sympathy, that Swamiji felt was wanting in Hinduism. It was not that Hinduism excluded the spirit of mercy, of charitableness, and of good will, but that the often spurious desire of the average Hindu to become God-absorbed had, generally speaking, pushed the teachings of active service into the background. As a result, compassion had not for a long time been a prime motivating power of the Hindu nation, and it was in this sense that Swamiji found Hinduism lacking. As he later wrote, "Taking up this plea of sattva [illumination], the country has been slowly sinking in the ocean of tamas, or dark ignorance."


"This state of things must be removed," he wrote to Alasinga as early as August, 1893, "not by destroying religion, but by following the great teachings of the Hindu faith, and joining with it the wonderful sympathy of that logical development of Hinduism—Buddhism."[18] A month later he said at the Parliament of Religions: "Hinduism cannot live without Buddhism, nor Buddhism without Hinduism. Then realize what the separation has shown to us, that the Buddhists cannot stand without the brain and philosophy of the Brahmanas, nor the Brahmana without the heart of the Buddhist.... Let us then join the wonderful intellect of the Brahmana with the heart, the noble soul, the wonderful humanizing power, of the Great Master."19]


How often Swamiji wrote from America to his brother monk and disciples, exhorting them to devote themselves to the service of man! "If you want any good to come," he wrote to his monastic brothers in the early summer of 1894, "just throw your ceremonials in the waters of the Ganga and worship the visible God, He who wears all these various human forms.... This world is His universal form. Worshipping Him means serving the world; this indeed is work, not indulging in ceremonials.... My salutation to those of you who have any brain, and my earnest prayer is that you spread like fire and preach this worship of the Virat God visible as the universea form of worship which was never undertaken in our country."[20] In another letter, which is one of his most inspired and in which he himself said, "I feel as if somebody is moving my hand to write in this way," he wrote: "He alone is a child of Sri Ramakrishna who is moved to pity for all creatures and exerts himself for them even at the risk of incurring personal damnation.... Whoever will be ready to serve him—no, not him but his children—the poor and the downtrodden, the sinful and the afflicted, down to the very worm—who will be ready to serve these, in them he will manifest himself."[21] Again he wrote: "I can secure my own good only by doing your good. There is no other way, none whatsoever.... The only way of getting our divine nature manifested is by helping others do the same."[22]


That this idea was not a passing one with Swamiji is evidenced by his letter of May 30, 1897, to Pramada Das Mitra in which he wrote: "Another truth I have realized is that altruistic service alone is religion; the rest, such as ceremonial observances, is madness—it is wrong even to hanker after one's own salvation. He alone becomes liberated who gives up everything for others, whereas those who worry their brains day and night thinking 'My salvation!' 'My salvation!' wander about to the ruin of both their present and future well-being. I have seen this happen many a time with my own eyes."[23]


To Swamiji, Buddha was an outcome of the teachings of the Upanishads, an extension or demonstration of the ancient Vedanta. Yet this had never been sufficiently recognized by the Hindus. By embracing Buddha's great heart and incorporating it in his message to the world, Swamiji was to revive that lost aspect of his country's religious heritage, he was to set afire a philosophy that had grown cold through lack of heart, through lack of spirit of service to others. Hinduism, he knew, would become transformed through the acceptance of Buddhism as a part of itself, would become immeasurably richer, immensely more self-confident, and full of an all-embracing sympathy. Only thus could Hinduism fill the role of spiritual leadership to the world, which Swamiji knew it must.


But Swamiji's attempt to formulate one religion, his concern with resolving the conflict between material prosperity and spirituality, and his insistence upon introducing the motive power of compassion into the lives and works of men did not constitute the only elements that went into the evolution of the message he was to call Vedanta. So comprehensive and so diverse was this message by 1895 that there can be little doubt that during its formulative period he pondered over many other problems of modern life. There were, for instance, the current conflicts between science and religion, rationalism and faith, utilitarianism and mysticism, the spirit of self-reliance and the spirit of submission. While these nineteenth-century dilemmas may have been on Swamiji's mind during his wandering days in India, his tour in America must have brought them into greater prominence, and it can be safely assumed that his contact with the intellectual and the thoughtful—particularly on the East Coast—made him deliberate upon them with greater intensity than ever before. Knowing, as we do, that everything that concerned man was of deep concern to him and knowing of the vast knowledge he possessed of human life in all its phases, we can be sure that he studied and understood modern civilization with the combined insight of a sociologist, psychologist, historian, philosopher, and mystic. As was said of him, he acquired "the greatest familiarity with the institutions of this country, religious, political and social." Nor was this familiarity acquired through contact with intellectuals alone; rather, as he said, he spoke during the course of his mid western tour also with laborers and farmers; his finger was, as it were, on the pulse of the nation. Born a world teacher, he must have felt a spontaneous urge to seek a comprehensive solution to all the many and complicated problems that beset and imperiled mankind. Indeed, one cannot but think that the latter part of 1894 was a period of great mental activity for him. New ideas, new answers must have pressed forward in his mind, some to be rejected and replaced by others, until by the beginning of 1855 the final answer—a restatement and reenergizing of the ancient Vedanta—emerged in clear outline.


As has been pointed out in chapter eleven, one can detect a change in Swamiji's thought during the summer of 1894 and the beginnings, at least, of a new concept of his mission in America. But it was very likely not until he attended the Greenacre Conferences in July-August that the importance of teaching and giving intensive spiritual training to Americans began to be apparent to him. Whatever else may be said of the people at Greenacre, they were, as Swamiji wrote to the Hale sisters, "healthy, young, sincere and holy men and women." "I teach them all Shivoham, Shivoham," he wrote with evident delight, "and they all repeat it, innocent and pure as they are and brave beyond all bounds"[24] As we know, he held classes in monistic Vedanta under the Lysekloster pines, and, using as his text Shankara's "Nirvanashatkam," taught his receptive and eager listeners the very essence of spirituality. In chapter eleven I have dwelt upon the meaning of Greenacre in Swamiji's life in America; suffice it to say that one would not be far wrong in believing that his stay there marked a turning point in his attitude toward his American work and that he henceforth began to think of it as valuable for its own sake as well as for that of India. A study of his letters amply bears this out.


"The whole world requires Light," he wrote to Alasinga at the end of August. "It is expectant! India alone has that Light, not in magic, mummeries and charlatanism, but in the teaching of the glories of the spirit, of real 'religion---of the highest spiritual truth. That is why the Lord has preserved the race through all its vicissitudes unto the present day. Now the time has come."[25] It is of course true as was pointed out earlier that the highest spiritual truth formed the very fabric of Swamiji's thought and had inevitably permeated his lectures in America from the start. Indeed, one of the lecture titles that he offered during his mid western tour was "The Divinity of Man." The lofty concepts of Vedanta were to him precepts; how could he not speak of them with an open heart to others? "Your Highness cannot realise without seeing, how eagerly they [the Western people] take in any little bit of the grand thoughts of the holy Vedas, which resist and are unharmed by the terrible onslaughts of modern science," he wrote on June 23, 1894, to the Maharaja of Mysore. "My conclusion is that they require more spiritual civilisation, and we, more material."[26]Yes, Swamiji had certainly always known that the West required spirituality—and this with greater and greater conviction as time went on. Further, it goes, without saying that he could not by his very nature ask America for financial help for India without giving of his own spiritual wealth in return. "As our country is poor in social virtue of, so this country is lacking in spirituality," he wrote to Swami Ramakrishnananda in January of 1894. "I give them spirituality, and they give me money."[27]But this is not the same thing as saying that Swamiji had known from the start that his mission in the West was to teach Vedanta or that he had formulated those teachings in such a way that they could become an integral and redeeming part of Western culture and constitute a counter force to the destructive energies of modern times. The task of teaching an effective spiritual philosophy to a materialistic civilization was not a simple one; it required the full light and power of a Swami Vivekananda's thought, and he does not seem to have consciously given his mind to this task until the latter part of 1894.


One indication that during the fall of that year he was coming to close grips with the multifarious problems of mankind, including those of Western man, and was seeking a clear solution to them is that the desire to write, which he had had in July, became insistent in September. "Today this vagabond lama was seized with a desire of going right along scribbling,'"28] he wrote to Mary Hale on September 13. And to Mrs. Smith (?) on September 19, "What I want is to get a place where I can sit down and write down my thoughts."[29]"I have not been able to write a line yet for my proposed book," he wrote regretfully to Alasinga on September 21. "Perhaps I may be able to take it in hand later on."[30] As we know, Mrs. Bull offered him her house in Cambridge for this purpose—an invitation he would not have accepted had not his need for a quiet place where he could ponder deeply been urgent. But even at Mrs. Bull's Swamiji was not able to take his book in hand. "You must remember," he wrote to Alasinga on October 27, "that I have to work incessantly in this country and that I have no time to put together my thoughts in the form of a book."[31]


A clue to the direction his thought was taking during this period can, however, be found in his lengthy Reply to the Madras Address, which he was "busy writing" around the end of September and in which he strongly stressed the point that the Jnana-kanda portion of the Vedas—the Upanishads, or Vedanta—stands as the basis of all the religious sects and schools of Hinduism. "If one be asked to point out the system of thought towards which as a centre all the ancient and modern Indian thoughts have converged," he wrote, "if one wants to see the real backbone of Hinduism in all its various manifestations, the Sutras of Vyasa [the Vedanta Sutras] will unquestionably be pointed out as constituting all that.... One will find that all these various teachers and schools have as their basis that system whose authority is the Shruti [the Upanishads], the Gita its divine commentary, the Shariraka Sutras its organised system, and all the different sects of India, from the Paramahamsa Parivrajakacharyas to the poor despised Mehtar disciples of Lalguru, are different manifestations."[32] In other words, Swamiji was finding in Vedanta the basic unity and innate strength of all aspects of Hindu religion. His paper was a direct call to his countrymen to "Let the lion of Vedanta roar." "Let us take our stand, " he urged, "on the one central truth in our religion--the common heritage of the Hindus, the Buddhists and Jains alike—the Spirit of man, the Atman of man, the immortal, birthless, all-pervading Soul of man.'[33]


While one cannot but recognize on reading this Reply to the Madras Address that Swamiji's attention was still largely centered in India, one must also recognize that he was at this time keenly aware of Western needs. "Today," he wrote in the Reply, "the West is awakening to its wants, and the 'true self of man' and the 'spirit' is the watchword of the advanced school of Western theologians.... Is it not curious that, whilst under the terrific onset of modern scientific research, all the old forts of Western dogmatic religions are crumbling into dust; . . . whilst the vast majority of thoughtful Western humanity have broken asunder all their ties with the church, and are drifting about in a sea of unrest, the religions which have drunk the water of life at that fountain of light—the Vedas—Hinduism and Buddhism, alone are reviving? The restless Western atheist or agnostic finds in the Gita or in the Dhammapada the only place where his soul can anchor."[34]One must further recognize that Swamiji was finding in Vedanta the rallying point not only of all Hindu sects but of every religion, Indian or Western: "As the Vedas are the only scriptures which teach this real absolute God, of which all other ideas of God are but minimized and limited visions; as the Shruti takes the devotee gently by the hand, and leads him from one stage to another, through all the stages that are necessary for him to travel to reach the Absolute; and as all other religions represent one or other of these stages in an unprogressive and crystallised form, all the other religions of the world are included in the nameless, limitless, eternal Vedic retigion.'[35]Clearly, it was but a step from this concept to the formulation of his message to the West as Vedanta.


Coupled with his growing awareness of America's need for India's religion was his growing belief that India's hope for survival lay not only in reviving the pure religion of the Upanishads but in spreading that religion broadcast. This conviction, which was later to ring like a call to battle through his lectures to his own countrymen ("Up India and conquer the world with your spirituality!")[36] seemed to find its first explicit expression in his Reply to the Calcutta Address, which he mailed to India on November 18, 1894. Although a portion of this letter has already been quoted in chapter eight it will bear repeating here. "Give and take is the law " Swamiji wrote, " "and if India wants to raise herself once more, it is absolutely necessary that she brings out her treasures and throws them broadcast among the nations of the earth, and in return be ready to receive what others have to give her. Expansion is life, contraction is death. Love is life and hatred is death. We commenced to die the day we began to hate other races, and nothing can prevent our death unless we come back to expansion, which is life."[37]


In December there is definite proof that Swamiji's message to the West was taking conscious form, for from December 5 to 28 we find him in Cambridge teaching a philosophy to which he gave the name "Vedanta." From what we know of these Cambridge classes, we can be almost certain that they were preparatory to his New York work and that during the course of them he experimented with methods of teaching adapted to the Western mind and gave a unified form to his message. From a bulletin later printed by the Brooklyn Ethical Association we learn that during the Cambridge classes he "helped many students [of Harvard University] in the solution of philosophical problems  in which they had become involved in their course of study";[38] and surely we can infer that he helped not only Harvard students to solve their problems through the application of Vedanta but many others who attended his classes.


As has been mentioned, in the fall of 1894 new thoughts were surging in Swamiji's mind and were demanding written expression; yet he found little time to write. "I am writing no book on Hinduism now," he wrote to Alasinga toward the end of the year, "I am simply jotting down my thoughts."[39]That these thoughts were concerned with Vedanta is evidenced by  the fact that in this same letter he urged Alasinga and his other Madras disciples to give their minds to its study. "If you could start a magazine on Vedantic lines it would further our object.... Expand your hearts and hopes as wide as the world. Study Sanskrit, especially the three Bhashyas [Commentaries] on the Vedanta. Be ready, for I have many plans for the future."[40]The importance of the study of Vedanta was by no means a passing thought with Swamiji, for in January we find him still insisting upon it. 


But while it seems reasonable to infer that Swamiji's "jottings " were concerned with Vedanta as an answer to world problems, they have remained undiscovered. In volumes four and five of the Complete Works we find synopses of two books that he intended to write, but these do not seem relevant to the period we are considering. In its May 1895 issue, however, Prabuddha Bharata published an unfinished and undated article by him, the contents of which seem to be in keeping with the trend of his thought in late 1894 and 1895 and may possibly constitute the jottings he mentioned. A portion of this article, which can be found today in the Complete Works under the tide "Fundamentals of Religion," reads as follows:


Strictly speaking there are no absolutely racial religions, yet it may be said that . . . the Vedic, the Mosaic, and the Avestan religions are confined to the races to which they originally belonged; while the Buddhistic, the Christian, and the Mohammedan religions have been from their very beginning "spreading" religions.


The struggle will be between the Buddhists and Christians and Mohammedans to conquer the world and the racial religions also will have unavoidably to join in the struggle. Each one of these religions, racial or "spreading," has already been split into various branches and has undergone vast changes, consciously or unconsciously, to adapt itself to varying circumstances. This very fact shows that not one of them is fitted alone to be the religion of the entire human race. Each religion being the effect of certain peculiarities of the race it sprang from, and being in turn the cause of the intensification and preservation of those very peculiarities, not one of them can fit the universal human nature. Not only so, but there is a negative element in each. Each one helps the growth of a certain part of human nature, but represses everything else which the race from which it sprang did not have. Thus for one religion to become universal would be dangerous and degenerating to man.


Now the history of the world shows that the two dreams, viz., that of a universal political empire and that of a universal religious empire, have been long before mankind; but that again and again the plans of the greatest conquerors have been frustrated by the splitting up of his territories before he could conquer a considerable part of the earth and that similarly every religion had been split into sects before it was fairly out of its cradle.


Yet it seems to be true that the solidarity of the human race, social as well as religious, with a scope for infinite variation, is the plan of nature; and if the line of least resistance is the true line of action it seems to me that this splitting up of each religion into sects is the preservation of religion, by frustrating the tendency to rigid sameness, as well as the clear indication to us of the line of procedure.


The end seems, therefore, to be not destruction but a multiplication of sects until each individual is a sect unto himself. Again, a background of unity will come by the fusion of all the existing religions into one grand philosophy. In the mythologies or the ceremonials there will never be unity, because we differ more in the concrete than in the abstract. Even while accepting the same principles, men will differ as to the greatness of their ideal teachers.


So, by this fusion will be found a unity of philosophy as the basis of union [of religions], leaving each at liberty to choose his teacher or his form as illustrations of that unity. This fusion is what has been naturally going on for thousands of years; only, by mutual antagonism, it has been woefully held back.


Instead of antagonizing, therefore, we must help all such interchange of ideas between different races, by sending teachers to each other, so as to educate humanity in all the various religions of the world; but we must insist, as the great Buddhist Emperor of India, Ashok, did in the second century before Christ, not to abuse others, nor to try to make a living out of others' faults; but to help, to sympathize with, and to enlighten all.[41]


Whatever might be the date on which Swamiji wrote the above, it is certain that by the end of December, 1894, the was finding in Vedanta the "one grand philosophy" and that he was fully conscious of the nature and dimensions of his message, for it was on the last day of the year that he declared with the startling directness of a true prophet: "I have a message to the West as Buddha had a message to the East"—a statement which can leave no doubt in anyone's mind that he had arrived at a clear knowledge of his mission. A few weeks later he settled in New York to open his classes on Vedanta. (It should be noted here that for a while he associated the word Yoga with Vedanta in naming his message. Later on, however, he was satisfied to use simply Vedanta, no doubt recognizing that it was inclusive of Yoga.)


Almost immediately after the beginning of 1895 Swamiji embarked with full vigor and full assurance upon his world mission, that of teaching Vedanta as he conceived it—a religion and philosophy that would suit all different temperaments and different stages of religious development and yet meet man's highest spiritual needs; a religion and philosophy, also, that could be practiced in every walk of life, that would be of benefit to every aspect of human existence and would solve such problems as the conflicts between science and religion, utilitarianism and mysticism. At the same time, as we find in his letters to his brother monks and disciples, he continued to stress the fact that Vedanta could be of immense service to the Indian people in their national regeneration and to urge its study. On January 3 he wrote to Sir S. Subrahmanya Iyer: "After taking a far and wide view of things, my mind has now been concentrated on the following plan. First, it would be well to open a Theological College in Madras, and then gradually extend its scope; to give a thorough education to young men in the Vedas and the different [Commentaries on Vedanta] and Philosophies including a knowledge of the other religions of the world."[42]On January 12, he wrote to Alasinga: "We must have a College in Madras to teach comparative religions, Sanskrit, the different schools of Vedanta and some European languages."[43]Swamiji's insistence on the importance of the study of the three aspects of Vedanta is shown by the fact that he continued to urge it, writing on April 4 to Alasinga, "My idea is for you to start a society where people could be taught the Vedas and the Vedanta with the commentaries. Work on these lines at present."[44]


It is true, of course, that Swamiji gave greater importance to Advaita as the answer to world problems than to the two other Vedantic schools. On April 24, he wrote to Mr. E. T. Sturdy: "I quite agree with you that only the Advaita Philosophy can save mankind, whether in East or West, from 'devil worship' and kindred superstitions, giving tone and strength to the very nature of man.'[45] But he by no means discarded the other Vedantic schools of thought. Indeed, it was in all three that he found the unity of religions, or, rather, Religion itself, which he had been seeking so long to formulate.


"Now I will tell you my discovery," he wrote to Alasinga on May 6, 1895. "All of religion is contained in the Vedanta, that is, in the three stages of the Vedanta philosophy, the Dvaita, Vishishtadvaita and Advaita; one comes after the other. These are the three stages of spiritual growth in man. Each one is necessary. This is the essential of religion. The Vedanta applied to the various ethnic customs and creeds of India, is Hinduism.


The first state, Dvaita, applied to the ideas of ethnic groups of Europe is Christianity; as applied to the Semitic groups, Mohammedanism. The Advaita as applied in its Yoga perception form, is Buddhism, etc. Now by religion is meant the Vedanta. The application must vary according to the different nations. You will find that although the philosophy is the same, the Shaktas, Shaivas, etc. apply it to their own special cult and forms. Now, in your journal write article after article on these three systems, showing their harmony as one following after the other, and at the same time keeping off the ceremonial forms altogether. That is, preach the philosophy, the spiritual part, and let people suit it to their own forms. I want to write a book on this subject, therefore I want the three Bhashyas, but only one volume of the Ramanuja has reached me as yet."[46]


Swamiji's desire to write this book was persistent. In June of 1895 he wrote to Mary Hale: "The three great commentaries of the Vedanta philosophy belonging to the three great sects of dualists, qualified monists and monists are being sent to me from India.... Then I will have an intellectual feast indeed. I intend to write a book this summer on the Vedanta philosophy."[47] Again, in 1896 he wrote to Alasinga from London: "I am busy writing something big on the Vedanta philosophy. I am busy collecting passages from the various Vedas bearing on the Vedanta in its threefold aspect.... It would be a pity to leave the West, without leaving something of the philosophy in book form."[48] But although Swamiji did not write this book, which was evidently to be a sort of textbook on Vedanta, he certainly did not leave the West without leaving "something of the philosophy in book form." His recorded lectures given in 1895 and 1896, his Karma Yoga, Raja Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and, Jnana Yoga, are in themselves a large work on the subject and, together with other lectures and writings, constitute a message that will, as he himself said toward the end of his life, be enough to last the world for fifteen hundred years.[49]


Parallel to the development of Swamiji's message during the fall of 1894 was a decided change in his plan of work. We know that through 1893 and most of 1894 he was reluctant to remain long in America. The major part of his attention was centered in India; and while it is true that throughout his lecture tour he shed the blessings of a divine prophet upon the American people and also taught them a great deal of religion, his evident motive was to find means of bettering the material condition of the Indian masses. By the middle of March, 1894, he had had enough of the West, and being thoroughly disgusted with lecturing to large crowds, wrote to Mary Hale from Detroit, "I shall come back to Chicago for a day or two at least before I go out of this country.'[50]And to Alasinga around the same time, "Money can be raised in this country by lecturing for two or three years. But I have tried a little, and although there is much public appreciation of my work, it is thoroughly uncongenial and demoralising to me. So, my brother, I have determined to go back to India this summer via Europe."[51] While it is true that during the summer of 1894 Swamiji at times thought of remaining in America through the winter of 1894/95, his overriding inclination, as expressed in his letters, was to leave, to return to India. "I am writing a book," he wrote in September of 1894 to his brother disciples. "As soon as it is finished, I run for home."[52]And a few days later to Alasinga, "I hope to return soon to India—I have had enough of this country.... I do not care for this busy, meaningless, money-making life. So you see, I will soon return.'[53]Up to the end of September, Swamiji had come to no settled decision to remain in America and teach. Yet he remained.


One cannot help wondering what held him in America. At first glance, it would appear that it was his determination to raise funds, against all odds, for his Indian work, but more probably it was his knowledge that he was acting in accordance with the divine will. Although he was seldom explicit in regard to the details of the guidance he received from the Mother of the Universe or from Sri Ramakrishna, he often hinted at them, and now and then more than hinted. One remembers, for instance, that he wrote to Mrs. Hale in July of 1894, "Most probably I will go to England very soon. But between you and me, I am a sort of a mystic and cannot move without orders, and that has not come yet."[54] And I have heard from a senior monk of the Ramakrishna Order that Swamiji once confided to a brother monk, Swami Vijnanananda, that during his lecture tour in America he sometimes received direct instruction from Sri Ramakrishna as to which places he should or should not visit. Knowing this, we can be sure that he was being literal when he wrote on May 28, 1894, to Alasinga, "I do not know when I am going back to India. It is better to leave everything in the hands of Him who is at my back directing me."[55]And later, "I am in His hands, . . . I will go back [to India] when I get the command."[56]Thus while Swamiji sometimes felt that he was doing little permanent good through lecturing here and there and that from a financial point of view "it is useless to hope,"[57]he kept on. In the depth of his being he must have known that he was God's prophet to America and that he had a message to give to the West. Yet as late as the end of September, 1894, he was writing: "I long to go back to the Himalayan quiet,"[58] and again: "I do not know when I come back but I have seen enough of this country I think, and so soon will go over to Europe and then to India"[59]


A conclusive indication that in the fall Swamiji was becoming conscious that his mission must include the West is that around the end of October a definite change in tone appears in his letters. Quite suddenly his repeatedly expressed longing to return to India disappears altogether and in its place is the repeated assertion that America is a great field for the propagation of high ideas. On October 22 he writes from Baltimore to Swami Ramakrishnananda: "There is no end of work here—I am careering all over the country. Wherever the seed of his power will fall there it will fructify, be it today, or in a hundred years."[60] And the next day he writes to Vehemia Chand, "By this time I have become one of their own teachers."[61]


Perhaps the clearest sign that his plans had changed is contained in his letter of October 27 to Alasinga: "I think I have worked enough, now I want to rest and to teach a little to those that have come to me from my Gurudeva [Sri Ramakrishna].'[62]Here one sees an indication of the form Swamiji's American work was later to take—the ripening of a desire which, as has been said, may have begun at Greenacre. Not only did Swamiji now desire to teach American disciples, but he obviously felt that such teaching was an essential part of his divine mission. "Look not for me," he wrote in this same letter. "Here is a grand field. What have I to do with this 'ism' or that 'ism'? I am the servant of the Lord, and where on earth is there a better field than here for propagating all high ideas? Here, where if one man is against me, a hundred hands are ready to help me; here, where man feels for man, and women are goddesses.'[63]


It is true, that Swamiji had always found in what he had called "this thoroughly materialistic country" "honourable exceptions"; he had seen thousands of men and women respond to his ideas and had from the first looked upon the American women as "goddesses." But despite his early admiration for many aspects of Western civilization and despite his fondness for Americans, he had not previously regarded the country as "a grand field" for teaching religion. "It will take centuries for the Westerners to understand the higher spirituality," he had written on September 21,  1894. "Everything is £.s.d. to them. If a religion brings them money or health or beauty or long life, they will all flock to it, otherwise not:'[64] And four days later in summation of the American character, "All is right with them, but that enjoyment is their God.[65] "Our field is India," he wrote to Alasinga at the end of September, "and the value of foreign appreciation [i.e., public acclaim] is in rousing India up. That is all.[66]  But now in the late fall he wrote, "Tell the sapient sage who writes to me to finish my preaching work here and return home . . . that this country is more my home.... To return home! Where is the home? I do not care for liberation or for enjoyment, I would rather go to a hundred thousand hells, 'doing good to others  like the spring season.' This is my religion.'[67] Shortly after, he wrote to Swami Brahmananda, "There is no certainty about my going back to India. I shall have to lead a wandering life there also, as I am doing here. But here one lives in the company of scholars, and there in the company of fools—there is this difference as between heaven and hell.'[68] "My intention," he wrote toward the end of 1894, "is to do something permanent here, and with that object I am working day by day. I am every day gaining the confidence of the American people."'[69]


As time went on Swamiji expressed an ever-growing awareness of his ultimate mission and an ever-growing sense of responsibility in regard to it. For instance, in a letter to Swami Abhedananda, which is dated simply "1894" but which, in view of internal evidence, can be placed in December, he expressed a consciousness of his status as prophet. According to a literal translation of the original Bengali, which differs from that given in the English edition of the Complete Works, he wrote: "As long as you gird up your loins and stand united behind me, there is no fear even if the whole world combines against us. Finally I have understood this much—that I shall have to assume a very high position.'[70]


"I find," he writes on January 3, 1895, "I have a mission in this country also.'[71]And on January 11 : "Know . . . that this is a grand field for my ideas, and that I do not care whether they are Hindus or Mohammedans or Christians, but those that love the Lord will always command my service."[72] "I have a message, and I will give it after my own fashion," he wrote to Mary Hale on February 1. "I will neither Hinduize my message, nor Christianize nor make it any ize in the world. I will only Myize it and that is all.'[73]One cannot but conclude from such statements and others like them that Swamiji's attitude toward his American work had undergone a radical change, a change so great that on February 14 he wrote to Mrs. Bull, "Collecting funds even for a good work is not good for a Sanyasin.... I had these childish ideas of doing this and doing that. These appear like a hallucination to me now. 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.'[74]


While the temptation is sometimes great to attribute such statements to a mere variation in mood and to dismiss them summarily, a careful, chronological study of Swamiji's letters shows unmistakably that during the last part of 1894 and the beginning of 1895 he was becoming keenly aware of his world mission. One sees, moreover, that the change in his thought was permanent. Henceforth, whenever occasion arose, he reminded those who might forget it that his mission was not to India alone but to the world. "Truth is my God," he wrote to Alasinga in August of 1895, "the universe is my country.... I have a truth to teach, I, the child of God."[75] And on September 9, "I know my mission in life, and no chauvinism about me; I belong as much to India as to the world, no humbug about that."[76] And again: "You must not forget that my interests are international and not Indian alone: "A reader of the Complete Works can find for himself many more such passages—none of which, he will discover, appears before the last part of 1894.


The way in which Swamiji used the word Vedanta was somewhat his own. From what I have been able to learn, the term had been used in northern India mainly to indicate the monistic interpretation of the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutras. It was in this sense that Sri Ramakrishna himself often used it, distinguishing it from nonmonistic Hindu doctrines—although sometimes he spoke also of the Vishishtadvaita (qualified monistic) school of Vedanta. "Here," he once said, referring to himself, "people of all sects come—Vaishnavas, Shaktas Kartabhajas, Vedantists, and also members of the modern Brahmo Samaj."[78] Or again, "I respect the Shaktas, the Vaishnavas, and also the Vedantists."[79] In southern India Vedanta was generally understood to include qualified monism and dualism as well as monism, but it was nevertheless applied only to faiths which had the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutras as their philosophical basis. Never before Swamiji's time had the term been given such universal significance as he gave it. Never before had it been broadened into a philosophy and religion which included every faith of the world and every noble effort of man—reconciling spirituality and material advancement, faith and reason, science and mysticism, work and contemplation, service to man and absorption in God. Never before had it been conceived as the one universal religion, by accepting the principles of which the follower of any or no creed could continue along his own path and at the same time be able to identify himself with every other creed and aspect of religion.


A chronological study of Swamiji's use of the word Vedanta up until 1895 is extremely revealing. At the outset it should be said that in the press reports of the lectures and interviews included in this book the word does not occur even once. In making this study, therefore, we have to depend for the most part upon his letters and other writings, such as his replies to the Madras and Calcutta Addresses. Apart from these, the other available records of Swamiji's actual words prior to 1895 are the brief accounts given in the first edition of the Life of his 1893 lecture in Hyderabad, to which I have referred in an earlier chapter, and the "Notes taken down in Madras, 1892-93,” which are to be found in volume six of the Complete Works.


Consulting these various sources, one finds that Swamiji first used the word Vedanta in a letter of August 17, 1889, to Pramada Das Mitra, with whom he had been discussing the Brahma Sutras.[80] Here his uses of the word were purely academic and had no connection with his future message. In a second letter to Mr. Mitra, written on March 3, 1890, he said, "I am a very soft-natured man in spite of the stern Vedantic views I hold."[81] These "stern Vedantic views" were of course, those of Advaita, Vedanta, the uncompromising monistic philosophy, in which he had been trained by Sri Ramakrishna and which therefore represented only his personal philosophy--not his message. In  this same letter Swamiji also used Vedanta to apply exclusively to Advaita when he spoke of his Master as either the Avatara, "or else the ever-perfect man, whom the Vedanta speaks of as the free one, who assumes a body for the good of humanity."[82]  In regard to the "Notes taken down in Madras" in 1892-83, we find that although the word Vedas in the sense of Vedanta often occurs, there is no indication that he had at that time conceived his message to be Vedanta; indeed the word Vedanta as such does not occur at all. In the Life, Swamiji is indirectly quoted as having said in his Hyderabad lecture of February 13, 1893, that he felt it an "imperative duty . . . to reveal to the world the incomparable glory of the Vedas and the Vedanta."[83]There is at present no evidence that he actually said this." [84] but even if he did, he was clearly using the word Vedanta here (and to the Nawab of Hyderabad the day before) to signify "the Eternal Religion," the Sanatana Dharma of the Hindus. And this he did indeed reveal to the West from the days of the Parliament of Religions onward. As far as Swamiji's actual words are concerned (and it is with these that one feels on safest ground), it was not until May of 1894 that we find him again using the word Vedanta, when in a postscript to a letter to Professor Wright (see chapter ten) he remarked that "the 'booby' religion [of the Brahmo Samajists] could not hold its own against the old 'Vedanta' '[85]meaning Advaita Vedanta, to which the Brahmo Samaj was opposed.


Clearly, in the above uses Swamiji had no thought of identifying his own message with Vedanta. But in a letter of September 25 to Swami Ramakrishnananda he writes, apropos of Christian Scientists: "They are Vedantins; I mean, they have picked up a few doctrines of the Advaita and grafted them onto the Bible.'[86] While this does not indicate anything more than it says, a large part of this letter is a thunderous affirmation of Advaita Vedanta and evinces his desire to make Advaita a vital part of his message to India. Around this same time he wrote his Reply to the Madras Address, which contains abundant evidence that he was identifying his message to India with Vedanta and that he was also aware that India's religion in its pure form was essential to the West.


Henceforth—that is, after September—Swamiji began to use the word Vedanta as more or less synonymous with his message although a complete identification of the two did not take place until a few months later. On October 27 he writes to Alasinga: "It is good to talk glibly about the Vedanta, but how hard to carry out even its least precepts!'[87] If Swamiji had not been thinking of his own teaching in terms of Vedanta he would not in this instance have called his disciple, whom he had been instructing and inspiring through innumerable letters from America, a follower of Vedanta. Even a cursory reading of this letter will show that throughout he was speaking in the spirit of Advaita Vedanta; he could not, therefore, have been using the word Vedanta to refer to the fact that Alasinga had been born and brought up in a family devoted to Vaishnavism—the qualified monistic school of Vedanta as taught by Ramanuja.


I have already referred to the fact that toward the end of 1894 Swamiji began to urge Alasinga and his other Madras disciples to take up the study of the three Bhashyas on the Vedanta. I need not, therefore, repeat that quotation here; but it was surely a telling piece of evidence that he was now recognizing Vedanta to be his message to the world. His next use of the word Vedanta is found in a letter written to Swami Shivananda around the end of 1894 in which he equated Sri Ramakrishna's message to the total truth of religion. "Without studying Ramakrishna Paramahamsa first," he wrote, "one can never understand the real import of the Vedas and the Vedanta, of the Bhagavata and the other Puranas. . . . He was the living commentary to the Vedas and to their aim.... A single word of his is to me far weightier than the Vedas and the Vedanta."[88] By this Swamiji did not mean that Sri Ramakrishna taught anything which was not a part of the Vedas and the Vedanta, but rather that his utterances were direct living revelations and therefore of far more value than written texts. (In a later Bengali writing entitled "Hinduism and Sri Ramakrishna" we find him describing his Master as "Veda-murti," the "Embodiment of the Vedas".[89]I n December, as has been seen, Swamiji wrote to Mary Hale of his classes on Vedanta—a clear indication that he was now designating his teachings by that name.


Thus we see that from the summer of 1894 onward simultaneous developments, keeping pace with one another, were taking place in Swamiji's thought along three lines: there was the evolution of his message, the change in his plan of work, and the increasing degree in which he identified his own message with Vedanta. All three were aspects of a single event—the emergence of his world mission, and all three have left their undeniable traces in his written and spoken words. I do not think it would be true to say, however, that by the beginning of 1895 Swamiji had given the final form to his message; for through the following years it was to shift in emphasis and to become ever more complete and detailed. Nor from what knowledge I have of the texts of Vedanta does it appear to me that he taught orthodox Vedanta in every respect. He mixed with it, for instance, a great deal of Sankhya in order to answer some of the questions posed by modern knowledge. It is not my purpose, however, to expound Swamiji's way of teaching Vedanta or to discuss the developments that took place in it. I want only to point out that changes did take place and that Vedanta, as he taught it, was in certain respects his own contribution to the modern age.

One may ask why Swamiji gave a name—Vedanta—to the principles of religion. On the face of it, this was not necessary, for as he himself often observed, those principles have always existed, in greater or lesser degree, in every religion. And did he not write, "The real thing is the Religion taught by Sri Ramakrishna; let the Hindus call it Hinduism, and others call it in their own way.[90] Why, then, if the Religion could be found in established religions, did he call it by a specific name? One obvious and important reason is, of course, that the name already existed. The one religion in all its aspects had already been formulated and for thousands of years had been called Vedanta. Swamiji could not ignore this fact. I can think, however, of at least two other reasons.


First, he had, as we have seen, attempted throughout his lecture tour to define the harmony of religions in the truest sense and had concluded that it consisted in the recognition of the unity of religions or, rather, in the recognition of religion, which is always one and the same. Now, if he had not given religion a name, its concept would have remained vague, and the dangers of such vagueness are apparent. There would, for instance, be little likelihood of the essentials of religion remaining clearly defined and unadulterated if it were left for each creed to interpret them according to its particular inclinations. Compromise would be an inevitable result, and shortly the fundamentals of religion would be again lost in various dogmas. Moreover, not every religion or creed is possessed, or wants to be possessed, of all the fundamentals of religion; in fact, every religion, other than Hinduism, would be hard put to it to discover room for them within its tenets.


The second reason I can think of why Swamiji wanted to give a name to the one religion was that in so doing he not only ensured the purity of its principles, but made it possible for anyone to follow those principles without first attaching himself to a specific creed and burdening himself with forms and ceremonials not necessary to him. One could, in short, become a "Vedantin" and go straight to the heart of religion itself. "By combining some of the active and heroic elements of the West with calm virtues of the Hindus, there will come a type of men far superior to any that have ever been in this world,'[91]he had written in September 1894 to Haridas Viharidas Desai. Now in May of 1895 he wrote with firm purpose to Alasinga, "I am to create a new order of humanity here."[92] But this new type of man could not come into existence unless he was thoroughly trained in the doctrines and practices of pure religion; and those doctrines and practices necessarily had to be defined and named, not only to safeguard them from adulteration, but to give them clarity and cohesiveness in the minds of their followers.

3

In attempting to analyze the way in which Swamiji arrived at his message and mission, I may have made it appear that his efforts in this respect were mainly intellectual and therefore speculative. I did not mean to imply, however, that his ideas necessarily originated on the level of discursive reason or depended upon it for their validity. It is true that during his lecture tour he seems to have been working toward a complete definition of his message, to have been thinking it out. It is also true that, according to Sister Christine, he sometimes spent hours debating aloud the pros and cons of a given problem before coming to its solution. But does reasoning preclude divine inspiration or divine confirmation?

One cannot ignore the fact that Swamiji was an illumined soul and that his thought was not like that of ordinary men but was intuitive and free of laborious process. Indeed, the line between his thought process and divine inspiration was a fine one and perhaps impossible to draw. He often said that there are truths which cannot be comprehended by reason but which, though beyond its grasp, are never contradictory to it. Innumerable must have been the times when, in search of truth, he stepped far beyond reason's boundary and discovered facts unavailable to reason but nevertheless harmonious with it. To him who was effortlessly in touch with a vast and infinitely wise consciousness that boundary was not a barrier. Rather, the working of reason and that of super reason must have been for him a continuous, single process.


In thinking of the case with which Swamiji's mind moved between the realms of reason and super reason, one is reminded of two passages in Sister Nivedita's The Master as I Saw Him. Writing of "the stories he would tell of his lecturing experiences," she narrates: "At night, in his own room, a voice, he said, would begin to shout at him the words he was to say on the morrow, and the next day he would find himself repeating, on the platform, the things he had heard it tell. Sometimes there would be two voices, arguing with each other. Again the voice would seem to come from a long distance, speaking to him down a great avenue. Then it might draw nearer and nearer, till it would become a shout. 'Depend upon it,' he would say, 'whatever in the past has been meant by inspiration, it must have been something like this '[93] "Again," Sister Nivedita writes in the same book, "there was the dream that he recounted on board ship, 'in which I heard two voices discussing the marriage-ideals of the East and the West, and the conclusion of the whole was, that there was something in each with which as yet, the world could ill afford to part.' '[94]


Whether the voices Swamiji heard came from the depths of his own being or from some other source is immaterial. The fact remains that his thoughts often originated in a region far beyond that of the ordinary mind. "I am an instrument, and He is the operator," he wrote to Swami Ramakrishnananda apropos of his mission in America. "Through this instrument He is awakening the spiritual consciousness in thousands of hearts in this far-off country.'[95] We know that in America Swamiji was in direct communion with his Master. During the course of this book I have given several instances of this fact and have quoted his own avowals of it. There are many more hints and affirmations in his letters to the effect that his work and thought were divinely directed and also that his experiences were far beyond the range of ordinary comprehension and often too sacred or too startling to be divulged. "For the last six months," he wrote to Swami Ramakrishnananda in 1894, "I have been saying, the curtain is going up, the sun is rising. The curtain is lifting—lifting by degrees, slow but sure. It will be known in time. He knows." He goes on to quote the first line of a song Sri Ramakrishna used to sing, " 'How can I tell you the secret of my heart, friend? I am forbidden to do so,' " and then continues, "Brother, these are not things I can write about or speak about.'[96] And to Alasinga in August of 1895, "I could have told you many things that could have made your heart leap, but I will not. I want iron wills and hearts that do not know how to quake.'[97]


But while Swamiji did not reveal his spiritual experiences in his letters, he left no doubt about the fact that he was continually receiving divine guidance. "While I am on earth Sri Ramakrishna is working through me," he wrote to Swami Ramakrishnananda in 1895. "So long as you believe this, there is no danger of any evil for you. '[98] And there was his assurance to Alasinga: "I see a greater Power than man, or God, or devil at my back.'[99]


That his decisions were not guided by reason or practical considerations alone is well illustrated by the fact that during the peak of his success in London in 1896 he decided to leave for India—a departure which from a common sense point of view was, to say the least, untimely. But to Miss MacLeod he wrote: "Of course everybody here thinks it foolish to give it [the London work] up just now that the 'boom' is on, but the Dear Lord says, 'Start for Old India.' I obey.'[100] At a later date he wrote to Mary Hale, who was fearful lest by his outspokenness he antagonize people: "My time is short. I have got to unbreast whatever I have to say, without caring if it smarts some or irritates others. Therefore, my dear Mary, do not be frightened at whatever drops from my lips, for the power behind me is not Vivekananda but He the Lord, and He knows best.'[101] Few people, if any, fully understood Swamiji. To his disciple, Alasinga, he wrote: "I am a singular man, my son, not even you can understand me yet."[102]And to another disciple, G. G. Narasimhacharya, "You have not caught my fire yet—you do not understand me.'"103] Indeed, Sri Ramakrishna himself had said, "No one will be able to understand Naren [Swami Vivek-ananda) fully"[104]—and so it was. What he said and did were at times beyond the understanding of even his brother monks, his actions and words sometimes seeming to them impetuous and detrimental to his own mission. He worked, however, according to an inner knowledge. "You need not be afraid," he wrote to one of his brother disciples in 1897, "I do not work alone, but He is always with me."105]


One remembers how he thundered when another of his brothers felt that he was departing from the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna: "How do you know that these are not in keeping with his ideas? Do you want 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 himself is at my back and is making me do all these things in these ways."[106] And again, "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.'[107]


In view of these things, it is quite clear that Swamiji's conclusions regarding his message either originated with Sri Ramakrishna or had his approval, and one cannot think, therefore, that the evolution of his message as Vedanta was the product of reason alone; one would be far more correct in thinking that it was of the nature of revelation. Yet all prophets must put their revelations into terms comprehensible to the human mind, terms that can be grasped by thought and understood step by logical step. This translation of a divine vision into philosophical and practical form is one of the essential functions of a world teacher, and was in Swamiji's case, a work, immensely complex. We can say, therefore, that he was guided both by divine inspiration and by his own intellect. But in so saying we must bear in mind that his intellect opened out into the realm of super consciousness, that his thought was so penetrative and so broad that it could in itself scarcely be distinguished from revelation.


Swamiji's mission was, in a sense, twofold. First, he was deeply concerned with finding a practical and unified answer to the many problems facing the modern world. Second, being the appointed messenger of Sri Ramakrishna, he was equally  concerned with spreading his Master's teachings in their most pristine and also most complete form. As I pointed out above and as he so often said, he taught nothing that was not of Sri Ramakrishna. The combination of these two objectives into one mission had involved, on the one hand, a thorough and prescient knowledge of the interwoven and enormously complicated struggles of an age which at the end of the nineteenth century had only just begun, and, on the other hand, a thorough understanding of every aspect of a divine personality of infinite scope. Had Sri Ramakrishna been less than he was—a complete and universal being, combining within himself every mode of God and every ideal of man—it would have been more difficult, if not impossible, for Swamiji to equate Vedanta with his Master's life and message. As it was, he saw the two as one and inseparable. Although it is not apparent that every aspect of Swamiji's Vedanta was derived from the recorded teachings of Sri Ramakrishna, the Master was, in Swamiji's understanding, its complete living embodiment. And, conversely, Vedanta, as it appeared to Swamiji, was the systematic representation and exegesis of that great life. That which, as principle, was Vedanta, was, as living existence, Sri Ramakrishna. "His life ", Swamiji wrote, "is the living commentary on the Vedas of all nations."[108] To make Vedanta inclusive of all human aspirations, efforts, and achievements, to comprehend the universal dimensions of his Master's life and teachings, and to equate the two, was one of Swami Vivekananda's supreme contributions to the world—a stroke of prophetic genius which not all of Sri Ramakrishna's devotees understood at first and which some, one suspects, do not understand yet.


ⓘ
[1] Nivedita, Notes of Some Wanderings, p. 55.
[2] Complete Works, 5 : 96.
[7] Complete Works, 1 :4.
[8] Complete Works , 1 : 18.
[9] Complete Works, 1 : 19
[10] Complete Works,1 : 24.
[11] For Swamiji’s later thoughts somewhat relevant to this idea see Nivedita, The Master, pp. 243-46.
[12] Lewiston Saturday Journal, August 12, 1899.
[13] Complete Works, 6:318.
[14] Swami Ritajananda, Swami Turiyananda, p. 192. See also Swami Turiyananda in Spiritual Talks, p. 281.
[15] Nivedita, The Master, p. 33.
[16] Haweis, op. cit. (see chap. 2, note 95)
[17] Nivedita, P.B., November 1936, p. 698.
[18] Complete Works, 5 : 15.
[19] Complete Works, 1 : 23.
[20] Complete Works,6 : 264. The passage as given here is a variant translation.
[21] Complete Works,6 : 294-95.
[22] Complete Works,6 :319.
[23] Complete Works,6: 395.
[24] Complete Works,6:261.
[25] Complete Works,5:43
[26] Complete Works,4: 361-62.
[27] Complete Works,6:255.
[28] Complete Works,8:321.
[29] Complete Works,6:268; see note to chap. 12, p. 244.
[30] Complete Works,5:44
[31] Complete Works,5: 50
[32] Complete Works,4 : 334-35
[33] Complete Works,4 :350-51-
[34] Complete Works,4 : 346-49, passim.
[35] Complete Works,4 : 343
[36] Complete Works,3 : 277
[37] Complete Works,4: 365-66.
[38] This sentence in the Association’s bulletin was adapted from Mrs. Ole Bull’s letter to Dr. Janes, December 27, 1894 (see chap. 12,sec. 4).
[39] Complete Works, 5 : 61.
[40] Complete Works, 5 : 61-62.
[41] Complete Works,4:375-77
[42] Complete Works,4 : 371
[43] Complete Works,5:67.
[44] Complete Works,5 :77
[45] Complete Works,8:335.
[46] Complete Works,5:81-82.
[47] Complete Works,8:341.
[48] Complete Works,5 :118.
[49] Life, 2: 590
[50] Complete Works, 8 : 303.
[51] Complete Works, 5 : 56; the last sentence of this quotation is from an unpublished portion of the original letter, RKM, Belur.
[52] Complete Works,6:274.
[53] Complete Works,5 :44
[54] See chap. 11, note 12.
[55] Complete Works, 5:34.
[56] Complete Works., 5 : 74.
[57] Complete Works,5 :44
[58] Complete Works,5 :46
[59] Complete Works ,8: 322.
[60] Complete Works,6 : 278.
[61] Complete Works,5:48.
[62] Complete Works,5 :50.
[63] Complete Works,5:51
[64] Complete Works,5:44-45; this passage is taken from the original letter, RKM, Belur.
[65] Complete Works,6 : 271-72.
[66] Complete Works,5:47.
[67] Complete Works,7 :486-87.
[68] Complete Works,6: 315.
[69] Complete Works,5:62.
[70] Complete Works,7 : 479 (variant translation).
[71] Complete Works,4 :373
[72] Complete Works,5:65.
[73] Complete Works,5 : 72.
[74] Complete Works,6: 299-300.
[75] Complete Works,5 :92-93.
[76] Complete Works,5 : 95
[77] Complete Works,5 :125.
[78] Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 540.
[79] Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna., p. 538.
[80] Complete Works, 6 : 209-14.
[81] Complete Works ., 6 : 229.
[82] Complete Works,6:231.
[83] Life (1913 ed.), vol. 2, p. 246.
[84] See note to chap. 8, p. 482.
[85] See chap. 10, note 17.
[86] Complete Works, 6 : 270.
[87] Complete Works., 5 : 52.
[88] Complete Works,7 : 483.
[89] Complete Works,6: 184.
[90] Complete Works,6 :331.
[91] Complete Works,8:322.
[92] Complete Works, 5:82.
[93] Nivedita, The Master, pp. 391-92.
[94] Nivedita, The Maste, p. 335.
[95] Complete Works, 6 : 283.
[96] Complete Works ., 6 : 284.
[97] Complete Works,5-93
[98] Complete Works,6 : 330.
[99] Complete Works,5 :96.
[100] Complete Works,8 :393.
[101] Complete Works, 5: 137.
[102] Complete Works,5:95-96.
[103] Complete Works,5:66
[104] Life 1:87 
[105] Complete Works 8:397
[106] Life, p 504
[107] Life, p 508
[108] Complete Works 6:320


↑ Contents

APPENDIX A

The Greenacre Program, Summer, 1894 

(See Chapter Eleven, Section Two )

The following program was distributed at Greenacre, Maine, in the form of a printed leaflet consisting of a front and back cover and five pages. We are indebted for it to Swami Sarvagatananda, head of the Vedanta Society of Massachusetts, and to Miss Elva Nelson, who obtained it from an old-timer at Greenacre and donated it to the Society. The cover of the leaflet read: "Program of the Summer Lectures at Greenacre, Eliot, Maine. July 3-August 30, 1894.

Inside, the leaflet's five pages outlined the program:

SUMMER LECTURES.

Greenacre Inn, Eliot, Maine, proposes to add to its rural attractions and comforts a series of Lectures and Classes on topics which shall quicken and energize the spiritual, mental, and moral natures, and give the surest and serenest physical rest to its guests.

Or, in the more expansive expression of the Congresses of 1893, its purpose is to "review the progress already achieved in the world, state the living problems now awaiting solution, and suggest the means of farther progress."

To make this work possible and practical, it must be localized in the centres of action all the world over. Therefore, with spontaneous delight and the culmination of desires which for years have stirred the hearts of several progressive thinkers, the following program has been arranged for definite work at Greenacre Inn and its immediate environments during July and August, 1894:

Tuesday, July 3. Mrs. Ole Bull, Of Cambridge. “Address of Welcome.”

Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, of Chicago. "Greetings from the West."

Mr. Wm. Ordway Partridge. "Opening Address

."Wednesday, July 4. Peace Day! Rev. Dr. Flavius J. Probst, of Chicago. "The Coming American: '

Thursday, July 5. Mr. Frederick Reed, of Roxbury Latin School. "The Education of the Future."

Mrs. H. H. Farnsworth, of Chicago. "The Science of Life." 

Monday, July 9.Mrs. Abby Morton Diaz, of Boston. "The True Work of Humanity for Humanity."

Prof. Thomas E. Will, of Boston. "Union for Practical Progress."

Tuesday, July 10. Mr. Henry Wood, of Boston. "Mental and Physical Chemistry."

Mrs. Helen Van Anderson. "How to Make the Christ Life Practical."

Wednesday, July 11. Miss Sophia Beck, of Malden. "Helps to Soul Expression."

Mr. Ralph Waldo Trine, Ph.D., of Mt. Morris, Ill. "The True Art of Authorship and Oratory."

Thursday, July 12. Rev. H. C. Vrooman, of East Milton. "The Material Expression of the Spiritual Age: '

Mrs. Helen Wilmans, of Boston. "Mental Freedom."

Monday, July 16. Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, of the Institute of Technology. "The Elevation of Home Life."

Miss Maria Daniell, of Wollaston. "The Scientific and Economic Preparation of Food."

Mr. Frank B. Sanborn, of Concord, Mass. "The Humane Treatment of Mental and Spiritual Aberrations."

Tuesday, July 17. Dr. Henry B. Blackwell, of Boston. "The Possibilities of Woman. "

Miss Lida Hood Talbot, of Chicago. "Physical Culture in Relation to Soul Expression."

Wednesday, July 18. Mrs. B. O. Flower, of Boston. "The Influence upon the Race of Freedom in Dress."

Dr. Alice B. Stockham, of Chicago. "Motherhood." 

Thursday, July 19. Mr. B. O. Flower, of the Arena. "Early Environment.”

Mr. Parker Pillsbury, of Concord, N.H. Subject to be announced.

Monday, July 23. Children's Day. In charge of Miss Margaret Saltonstall, of Wollaston.

Dr. G. P. Wiksell. "The Children of Shalam."

Rev. W. W. Locke, of New York. "Our Boys."

Tuesday, July 24. Mr. Henry Wood, of Boston. "Economic Natural Law."

Col. Post, of Georgia. "Political Economy."

Wednesday, July 25. Rabbi Solomon Schindler, of Boston. "Individualism and Socialism. "

Thursday, July 26. Mr. W. J. Colville. "The Coming of Civilization. "

Monday, July 30. Dr. C, D. Sherman. "The Relation of Planetary Force to the Evolution of Man."

Tuesday, July 31. Prof. A. C. Dolbear, of Tufts College. "The Known Relations of Mind and Body."

Wednesday, August 1, Miss M. J. Barnett, of Boston."Theosophy:'

Mr. George D. Ayers, of Boston, "The Theosophical Movement " 

Mr. Buschacd Hardinge, of London. "Karma and Incarnation." 

Thursday, August 2. Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D.D. "Sociology."

Monday, August 6. Mrs. Bernard Whitman, of Boston. "Lend a Hand Work."

Miss Emily Morgan, of Hartford. "Vacation Homes."

Tuesday, August 7. Mrs. Evelyn Mason, of Brookline. "Rest through Higher Development."

Rev. Augustine Caldwell, of Ipswich. "The Spiritual Significance of Names and Numbers."

Wednesday, August 8. Rev. Mr. Hillis, of Evanston, Ill. "Ruskin."

Rev. T. Ernest Allen, of Grafton. "Universal Religion."

Thursday, August 9. Dr. Lewis G. Janes, President Brooklyn Ethical Association. "Evolution and Life."

Monday, August 13. Temperance Day. In charge of Mrs.L. M. N. Stevens, of Portland, President Maine W.C.T.U. 

Mme. Layyah Barakat, of Syria. "Temperance Work in  yria."

Mr. Joseph G. Thorp, Jr., of Cambridge. "The Norwegian Law."

Gen. Neal Dow, of Portland. "Prohibition."

Tuesday, August 14. Rev. E. P. Powell, of Clinton, N.Y. "The Possible Permanent Removal of Poverty."

Wednesday, August 15. Mrs. Margaret B. Peeke, of Sandusky, Ohio. "The Soul in its Search after God."

Rev. Wm. R. Alger, of Boston. "Universal Religion."

Thursday, August 16. Mr. S. Frank Davidson, La Grange, Ill. "The Outlook for the Future."

Mrs. Ursula N. Gestefeld, of New York. "The Inner Meaning of the Bible."

Monday, August 20. Prof. Ernest F. Fenollosa, of Boston Art Museum. "The Relation of Religion to Art."

Tuesday, August 21. Mrs. Martha Howe Davidson, La Grange,Ill. "Religious Art."

Mr. Frank H. Tompkins, of Boston. "Practical Talk on Art."

Mr. Arthur W. Dow, of Ipswich. "Composition in Art." 

Wednesday, August 22. Mrs. Mary W. Chapin, of Boston. "Spiritual Healing. "

Mr. E. M. Bishop, of Boston. "The Law of Correspondence in its Relation to Life."

Thursday, August 23. Mrs. Fanny M. Harley, of Chicago, of Universal Truth. "Demonstration."

Mrs. Anna W. Mills, of Chicago. "The Search for Truth."

Mrs. Sara A. King, of Baltimore, "Divine Healing."

Monday, August 27. Rev. George Lewis, of South Berwick. "Prophets and Prophecy. "

Rev. T. Ernest Allen, of Gesfton. "Is Spiritualism Worth While, if True ?"

Tuesday, August 28. Mr. S. P. Wait, School of Philosophy, Port Edwards, N.Y. "The Soul and its Possibilities."

Wednesday, August 29. Mr. Edwin D. Mead, of New England Magazine. "Immanuel Kant."

Thursday, August 30. Miss Josephine C. Locke, of Chicago."The Symbolic Woman."

These lectures will be given at 3 o'clock p. m., and will all be free.

In addition to the above, lectures are promised from Swami Vivekananda on "The Religion of India," also by Dr. Janes on "Evolution, " Dr. Probst on "The Summit of the Nineteenth Century" and "The Philosophy of Wit and Humor"; by Mr. B. O. Flower on "Whittier, " Mr. Colville on "Vibration" and "New Light from the Great Pyramid, " Miss Josephine C. Locke on "Woman in Mythology and Art," Miss Shida Mori, of Yanagawa, Japan, on Japanese Dress and Home Life."

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, of England, will contribute a paper on "Christian Scientific Methods in Biology."

Dr. Ibrahim G. Kheiralla, of Egypt, is expected to be present, and speak on "The Truth and the Oriental Philosophy of the Occult 5cience:' Miss Virginia Vaughan will speak on "Oriental Poetry."

Private classes to study the above subjects will be held by competent teachers, information concerning which can be obtained of Miss Farmer, the Secretary.

The music will be in charge of Mrs. Ole Bull, Mrs. Elizabeth M. Allen, a pupil of Letchitizsky, of Vienna, Mr. Edward T. Barker, Mr. Harry W. Eliot, and Mr. Stephen S. Townsend, of Boston. A rare opportunity will be given for pupils to continue their musical instruction during the summer.

↑ Contents

APPENDIX B

The Washington, D. C. Times

(See Chapter Twelve, Section Three)

We owe the following two reports from the Washington times to the researches of Ray and Wanda Ellis. The first, dated October 29, 1894, amply covered Swamiji's Sunday morning talk of October 28 at the People's Church in Washington, D.C. The second and shorter article, dated November 2, 1894, reported the lecture he gave on the evening of November 1 at Metzerott Hall, also in Washington. As announced in the Times, the second lecture was entitled "Kan Ax! (Reincarnation)." The two reports, though inadequate, as were all newspaper reports of Swamiji's lectures, were less muddled than most and are given below in full.

LOVE RELIGION'S ESSENCE
Vive Kananda, a Brahmin Monk, 
Preaches at the People's Church.


INTRODUCED BY REV. DR. KENT
Those Who Want God as They Want Life Will Find—Many 
People Attend Church Because It Is Fashionable in Their 
Set—True Devotion Asks No Returns.

Vive Kananda, the Brahmin monk, spoke to the congregation of the People's Church, No. 423 G street northwest, at 11:00 a.m. yesterday.

He was dressed in a robe of scarlet which covered his entire person, from throat to ankles, in large, simple folds. On his head he wore a turban of ample silk of the color of gold, which flowed back, falling as far as his waist. He has a smooth face, with large, regularly curved features; large eyes, whose light is subdued by being partly closed much of the time. Between the brown of his face and his robe below was a narrow band of white, the upper edge of a well laundered linen collar, and edging his turban above, a broad touch of black hair. Large and well proportioned, his simplicity of dress gave him a majestic appearance.

Dr. Kent introduced the monk. He said that Dr. Leonard Beacon's statement to the World's Parliament of Religions that we do not sufficiently take into account the personal equation in hearing the report of missionaries, ought to be seriously pondered. These reports are honest but very misleading. The World's Parliament of Religions had given the people so generally misrepresented an opportunity to tell the truth about themselves. But we must not expect too much. Many denominations, - like the turtle, have withdrawn themselves into their shells and refused to hear.

Dr. Mummery [Dr. Alfred W. Momerie], of England, has said: "What in any religion is fundamental is largely true, and what is superficial is largely false." This is being impressed upon our people by the literature of other religions that has been spread through our country from the Parliament of Religions.

Vive Kananda,. coming forward, said as a boy at the university he studied comparative religion. In India are many religions. One-fifth are Mohomedans. A million are Christians. He studied all. He listened to a great Hindoo preacher, and when he had finished, said:

"My brother, have you seen God?"

The preacher looked up in surprise.

"No."

"How, then, do you know these things are true?" "

My father told me."

"Who told your father?"

"His father, " and so on through his ancestors to the clouds.

He heard a Christian preacher of great eloquence. This man told the seeker for truth that if he was not immersed in water at once he was in great danger to be roasted alive. Upon further questions, this Christian also, through the records of his books, went back to his ancestors, and so back to the clouds.

THE STUDENT NOT SATISFIED.

This did not satisfy the student. He set about praying. He prayed sometimes three days and nights with much weeping and without food. He finally found a man who knew no books, not even to write his own name. This sage was preaching his religion. When asked the old question, he replied.

"Yes, I see God now and I will teach you to see Him:' 

This man bore the Stamp of God in his features. It was the same certificate that came to the man of Nazareth when the dove descended upon him at Jordan. He made his hearer to believe that God lives and religion is not a mockery.

For twelve [sic] years Kananda sat at this man's feet. He was the master. He said one day, "Take up this book." Kananda took up the book and read. It was a calendar [an almanac]. He read in it where the rainfall was foretold. It said that within a certain time so many tons of rain would fall in a certain district. "Now," said the teacher, "close the book and press it." He did so. "Squeeze it very hard." He obeyed. "Did any water come from the book?" "None." So are all books. The true religion is here, at the heart.

The truth is people do not want God. Far from it. Religion is largely fashionable. My lady has a fine parlor, elegant furniture, a piano, beautiful jewelry, well-fitting, costly dresses, a hat that is the latest thing out. She cannot get along without a dash of religion to keep up with her set. There is much of this fashionable religion, but it is hypocrisy, and hypocrisy is the root of all evil. This sort of religion is not of God. It is only the shadow. People with such religion, sometimes grow to be in earnest and alk about religious things as if they had some reality. So talking about religion without having it these people fall to quarreling and fighting. "Mine, mine," is the cry, never "thine, thine. " "My religion is the best" "No, mine," and so they fight as did the savage tribes about their rival gods. Mumbo and Jumbo. Competition in religion, as in business, is the bane of all.

LOVE ABIDETH.

Your own Paul says "all else shall perish, but love abideth. " That is the great truth. That false doctrine that my nation shall be aggrandized at the cost of every other nation is not of God.

A youth went to his master and said, "I want to know God." The master paid little attention, but the youth persisted and would not be put off. Finally one day the master said: "Let us go down to the river and have a bath." So they went down and the youth plunged in. The master followed and falling upon him held him under. The youth struggled, but the master would not let him up. Finally, when he seemed to be almost dead, he desisted, drew him from the water and revived him. "What did you most want when in the water?" the master asked, "Breath, " was the answer. "Then you don't want God."

So it is with men, what do you want? You want breath, without it you cannot live; you want bread, without it you cannot live; you want a house, without it you cannot live. When you want God as you want these things. He manifests himself unto you. It is a great thing to want God.

A majority of men and women in this world want the enjoyments of sense. They have been told that there is a God afar off and if they will send him a cartload of words he will help them get these good things of this world. But in every land there are a few persons who want God. They would be one with the essence of good and truth. Religion is not shop keeping. Love asks no return; love begs not; love gives.

Religion is not an outgrowth of fear; religion is joyous. It is the spontaneous outburst of the songs of birds and the beautiful sight of the morning. It is an expression of the spirit. It is from within an expression of the free and noble spirit.

If misery is religion, what is hell? No man has a right to make himself miserable. To do so is a mistake; it is a sin. Every peal of laughter is a prayer sent to God.

To go back, what I have learned is this: Religion is not in books, not in forms, not in sects, not in nations; religion is in the human heart. It is engrafted here. The proof of it is in ourselves.

I make two points. There are sects. Let them go on increasing in number till each [person] is a sect by himself. None can see God exactly as another; each must believe in Him and serve Him as he sees Him. Then I want a harmonizing of the sects. Individuality is not in a fight with universality.

Let each for himself and all together fight evils. If you have a power of eight and I a power of four, and you come and destroy me, you have lost at least four. You have only four left to conquer evil. It is love alone that can conquer hatred. If there is power in hate, there is infinitely more power in love.

THE HINDOO OPTIMISTIC

Vive Kananda Compares Religions and 

    Talks of Reincarnation

Optimism is the feature of the belief of the Aryans or  Hindoos as distinguished from Western religions, according to the Brahmin monk, Vive Kananda, who spoke to a fair sized audience at Metzerott Hall last night. His subject was reincarnation. Much of his lecture was devoted to a comparison of Hindoo with Christian doctrine.

To illustrate the tenet of reincarnation he compared the human body to a river. Each drop of water passes on and is replaced by another. The entire body of water, he observed, changes wholly in a few moments, but we call it the same river. In the same way the particles of the body are constantly replaced by others and no two days do we have the same body, yet we preserve our identity.

The spirit remains so, the Hindoos believe, that the person may have a different and more sudden and violent change in death and yet pass on in its existence to some other place in the universe, to some other planet or star, and then take on a body of flesh again or of some other kind.

He said there ought to be no talk of sin. The mistakes of the past ought to be used only for guidance in the future, never to be moaned over. When the lesson is learned from them, they should be forgotten.

"Strike a light," he said, "sit not in darkness and sorrow. Do always better and be happy. "

He is stopping with Hon. Enoch Totten, No.1708 I street northwest and many prominent people were to be found in his presence, interested listeners. Mrs. Totten, though a strict Presbyterian, thinks his doctrines very helpful, and believes to hear him would be a great benefit to many Christians, as well as to thoughtful people outside of the churches.

↑ Contents

APPENDIX C

Lecture by Swami Vivekananda 

December 17, 1894

(See Chapter Eleven)

To speak about the women of India, ladies and gentlemen, I feel that I am going to talk about my mothers and sisters in India to the women of another race, many of whom have been like mothers and sisters to me. But, though unfortunately within very recent times there have been only mouths to curse the women of our country, I have found out that there are some who bless them, too. I have found such noble souls in this nation as Mrs. Bull and Miss Farmer and Miss Willard, and that wonderful representative of the highest aristocracy of the world, whose life reminds me of that man of India, 600 years before the birth of Christ, who gave up his throne to mix with the people. Lady Henry Somerset has been a revelation to me. I become bold when I find such noble souls, who will not curse, whose mouth is full of blessing for me, my country, our men and women, and whose hands and hearts are ever ready to do service to humanity.

I first intend to take a glimpse into times past of Indian history and we will find something unique. All of you are aware, perhaps, that you Americans and we Hindoos and this lady from Iceland [a Mrs. Magnusson] are the descendants of one common ancestry known as Aryans. Above all we find three ideas wherever the Aryans go: the village community, the right of women and a joyful religion. The first is the system of village communities—as we have just heard from Mrs. Bull concerning the North, each man was his own and owned the land. All these political institutions of the world we now see are the developments of those village systems; as the Aryans went over to different countries and settled, certain circumstances developed this institution, others that. The next idea of the Aryans was the freedom of women. It is in the Aryan literature that we find women in ancient times taking the same share as men, and in no other literature of the world. Going back to our Veda books, the oldest literature the world possesses and composed by your and my common ancestors (these were not written in India, perhaps on the coast of the Baltic, perhaps in Central Asia— do not know) ; their oldest portion is composed of hymns and these hymns are to the gods whom the Aryans worshipped. I may be pardoned for using the word "gods"—the literal translation is "the Bright Ones." These hymns are dedicated to Fire, to the Sun, to Varuna and other deities. The titles run, "such and such a sage composed this verse, dedicated to such and such a deity." After the fourth or fifth comes a peculiar hymn, for the sage is a woman, and it is dedicated to the one God who is at the background of all these gods. And all these previous hymns were spoken in the third person as if some one were addressing the deities, but this hymn takes a departure, God is speaking for himself; the pronoun used is I. "I am the empress of the universe, the fulfiller of all prayers:

This is the first glimpse of women's work in the Vedas. As we go on we find them taking a greater share, even officiating as priests. There is not one passage throughout the whole mass of literature of the Vedas which can be construed even indirectly as signifying that woman could never be a priest. On the other hand, there are many examples of women officiating as priests. Then we come to the last portion of these Vedas which is really the religion of India, the concentrated wisdom of which has not been surpassed even in this century. There, too, we find women preeminent; a large portion of these books are words which have proceeded from the mouths of women. It is there recorded with their names and teachings. There is that beautiful story of the great sage Yajnavalkya, the one who visited the kingdom of the great King, Janaka, and there in that assembly of the learned, people came to ask him questions. One man asked him, "How am I to perform this sacrifice?" Another asked him, "How am I to perform the other sacrifice?" And after he had answered them there arose a woman who said, "These are childish questions. Now have a care; I take these two arrows, my two questions. Answer them if you can, and we will call you a sage. The first is: What is the soul? The second is: What is God?" Thus arose in India the great questions about the soul and God and these came from the mouth of a woman; the sage had to pass an examination before her and he passed well.

Coming to the next stratum of literature, our epics, we find that education has not degenerated. Among especially the caste of princes this ideal was most wonderfully held up. We find this idea of marrying in the Vedas; the girls chose for themselves; so the boys. In the next stratum they are married by their parents, except in one caste. Even [here] I would ask you to look at another side. Whatever may be said of the Hindoos they are one of the most learned races the world ever produced. The Hindoo is the metaphysician; he applies everything to his intellect. Everything had to be settled by astrological calculation. The idea was that the stars governed the fate of every man and woman. Even today when a child is born a horoscope is cast. That determines the character of the child; one child is born of divine nature, another of human, others of lower character. The question was, if a child who was of a monster character was united with a child of a god-character would they not have a tendency to degenerate each other. The next question was, our laws did not allow marriage even within the same clans. One may not only not marry in his own family nor one of his cousins, but one must not marry in the clan of his father or even of his mother. A third difficulty is if there had been leprosy or phthisis or any such incurable disease within six generations of either bride or bridegroom there must not be a marriage. Now taking these three difficulties, the Brahmin says, "If I leave it to the choice of the boy or girl to marry, the boy or girl will be fascinated with a beautiful face and then very likely all these circumstances will bring ruin to the family." This is the primary idea that governs our marriage laws as you will find, and whether right or wrong, there is this philosophy at the background. Prevention is better than cure. That misery exists in this world is because we give birth to misery and the whole question is how to prevent the birth of miserable children. How far the rights of a society should extend over the individual is an open question. But the Hindoos say that the choice of marriage should not be left in the hands of the boy or girl. I do not mean to say that this is the best thing to do, nor do I see that leaving it in their hands is at all a perfect solution! I have not found a solution yet in my own mind, nor do I see that any country has one.

We come next to another picture. I told you there was another peculiar form of marriage (it was generally among the royalty that it was the case) where the father of the girl invited different princes and noblemen and they had an assembly and the young lady, the daughter of the king, was borne on a sort of chair before each one of the princes in turn, and the herald would repeat, "This is Prince so-and-so and these are his qualifications." And the young girt would either wait or say, "Move on: ' And before the next prince the crier gives a description also and the girl says, "Move on." (All this had been arranged beforehand; she had the liking for somebody before.) Then at last she asks one of the servants to throw the garland over the head of the man, and it is thrown to show he is accepted. (The last of these marriages was the cause of the Mohammedan invasion of India.) These marriages were specially reserved for the prince caste.

The oldest Sanskrit poem in existence, the Ramayana, has embodied the loftiest Hindoo ideal of a woman in the character of Sita. We have not time to go through her life of infinite patience and goodness. We worship her as God incarnate, and she is named before her husband Rama. We say not Mr. and Mrs. but Mrs. and Mr. and so on with all the gods and goddesses, naming the woman first. There is another peculiar conception of the Hindoo. Those who have been studying with me are aware that the central conception of Hindoo philosophy is of the absolute; that is the background of the universe. This absolute being of whom we can predicate nothing has its powers spoken of as she that is, the real personal God in India is she. This Sakti of the Brahman is always in the feminine gender. Rama is considered the type of the absolute, and Sita that of power. We have no time to go over all the life of Sita, but I will quote a passage from her life that is very much suited to the ladies of this country. The picture opens when she was in the forest with her husband, whither they were banished. There was a female sage whom they both went to see. Her fasts and devotions had emaciated her body. Sita approached this sage and bowed down before her. The sage placed her hand on the head of Sita and said, "It is a great blessing to possess a beautiful body; you have it. It is a greater blessing to have a noble husband; you have it. It is the greatest blessing to be perfectly obedient to such a husband; you have that. You must be happy." And Sita replies, "Mother, I am glad that God has given me a beautiful body and that I have so devoted a husband, but as to the third blessing, I do not know whether I obey him or he obeys me. One thing alone I remember, that when he took me by the hand before the sacrificial fire, whether it was a reflection of the fire or whether God himself made it appear to me, I found that I was his and he was mine, and since then I have found that I am the complement of his life and he of mine." Portions of this poem have been translated into the English language. Sita is the ideal of a woman in India, and the worshipped God-incarnate of all.

We come now to Manu the great lawgiver. Now, in this book there is an elaborate description of how a child should be educated. We must remember it was compulsory with the Aryans that a child be educated whatever his caste be. After describing how a child should be educated Manu adds, "Even so, in the same lines, the daughters are to be educated exactly as the boys." I have heard often that there are other passages where women are condemned. I admit that in our sacred books there are many passages which condemn women as offering temptation; you can see that for yourselves, but there are passages that glorify women as the power of God; there are other passages which state that in that house where one drop of a woman's tear falls the gods are never pleased and the house goes to ruin. Drinking wine, killing a woman, and killing a Brahmin are the highest crimes in the Hindoo religion. I admit there are condemnatory sentences, but here I claim the superiority for these Hindoo books, for in the books of other races there is only the condemnation and no good word for a woman.

Next I will come to our old dramas. Whatever the books say, the dramas are the perfect representation of society as it then existed. In these, which were written from 400 years before Christ downward, we find even universities full of both boys and girls. We would not find Hindoo women as they have since become, cut off from the higher education; but they were everywhere pretty much the same as they are in this country— going out to the gardens and parks to take promenades. There is another point which I bring, before you and where still the Hindoo woman is superior to all other women in the world— her rights. The right to possess property is as absolute in India for woman as for men, and has been for thousands and thousands of years. If you have any lawyer friend and can take up commentaries on the Hindoo law you will find it all for yourselves. A girl may bring a million dollars to her husband, but every dollar of that is hers. Nobody has any right to touch one dollar of that. If the husband dies without issue the whole property of the husband goes to her, even if his father or mother is living, and that has been the law from the past to the present time. That is something which the Hindoo woman has had beyond that of the women of other countries. The older books or even newer books do not prohibit the Hindoo widows from being married; it is a mistake to think so. They give them their choice, and that is given to both men and women. The idea in our religion is that marriage is for the weak, and I don't see any reason to give up that idea today. They who find themselves complete, what is the use of their marrying? And those that marry, they are given one chance; when that chance is over both men and women are looked down upon if they marry again, but it is not that they are prohibited. It is nowhere said that a widow is not to marry. The widow and widower who do not marry are considered more spiritual. Men, of course, break through this law and go and marry, and women, they being of higher spiritual nature, keep to the law. Just as, for instance, our books say that eating meat is bad and sinful but you may still eat such and such a meat, mutton for instance. I have seen thousands of men who eat mutton, and never have seen a woman of higher caste in my life who eats meat of any kind. That shows their nature is to keep the law, keeping more towards religion. So do not judge too harshly of Hindoo men; you must try to look at it from my position, too, for I am a Hindoo man. This non-marriage of widows gradually grew into a custom and whenever in India a custom becomes rigid it is almost impossible to break through it, just as in your country you will find how hard it is to break through a five-day custom of fashion. In the lower castes, except two, their widows remarry. There is a passage in our later law books that a woman shall not read the Vedas. So it is prohibited to a weak Brahmin even; if a Brahmin boy is not strong-minded the law is applied to him also. But that does not show, that education is prohibited to them, for the Vedas are not all that the Hindoos have. Every other book women can read, all the roads of Sanskrit literature, that whole ocean of literature, science, drama, poetry is all for them; they can go there and read that, except the scriptures. In later days the idea was, woman was not intended to be a priest; what is the use of her studying the Vedas? In that the Hindoos are not so far behind other nations. When women give up the world and join our order they are no longer considered either men or women; they have no sex, the whole question of high or low caste, man or woman, dies out entirely. Whatever I know of religion I learned from my master, and he learned of a woman.

Coming back to the Rajpoot woman, I will try to bring to you a story from some of our old books during the Mohammedan conquest, how one of these women was the cause that led to the conquest of India. A Rajpoot prince of Delhi, a very ancient city, had a daughter. She had heard of the military fame of Prithi Rai [King of Chitore] and all his glory, and she was in love with him. Now her father wanted to hold a Rajasuya sacrifice, and he invited all the kings in the country, and in that sacrifice they all had to render menial service to him because he was superior over all; and with that sacrifice he declared there would be a choice of his daughter. But the daughter was already in love with Prithi Rai and he was very mighty and was not going to acknowledge loyalty to the king, her father, so he refused the invitation. Then the king made a golden statue of Prithi Rai and put it near the door and said that was the duty he had given him to perform—that of a porter. The upshot of the whole affair was that Prithi Rai, like a true knight, came and took the lady behind him on his horse and they both fled. When the news came to her father he gave chase with his army and there was a great battle and the majority of both armies were killed. And [thus the Rajpoots were so weakened that] the Mohammedan empire in India began.

When the Mohammedan empire was being established in Northern India the Queen of Chitore was famed for her beauty, and the report of her beauty reached the Sultan, and he wrote a letter for the Queen to be sent to his harem. The result was a terrible war between the King of Chitore and the Sultan. The Mohammedans invaded Chitore, and when the Rajpoots found they could not defend themselves any more, the men all took sword in hand and killed and were killed, and the women perished in the flames. After the men had all perished the conqueror entered the city: there in the street was rising a horrible flame. He saw circles of women going around it, led by the Queen herself. When he approached near and asked the Queen to cease from jumping into the flames, she said, "This is how the Rajpoot woman treats you, " and threw herself into the fire. It is said that seventy-five thousand women perished in the flames that day to save their honor from the hands of the Mohammedans. Even today when we write a letter, after sealing it we write 74 1/2 upon it, meaning if one dares to open this letter that sin of killing 74,500 women will be upon his head.

I will tell you the story of another beautiful Rajpoot girl. There is a peculiar custom in our country called "protection." Women can send small bracelets of silken thread to men, and if a girl sends one of these to a man that man becomes her brother. During the reign of the last of the Mogul Emperors, the cruel man who destroyed that most brilliant empire of India, he similarly heard of the beauty of a Rajpoot chieftain's daughter. Orders were sent that she should be brought to the Mogul harem. Then a messenger came from the Emperor to her with his picture and showed it to her. In derision she stamped upon it with her feet and said, "Thus the Rajpoot girl treats your Mogul Emperor." As a result, the imperial army was marched into Rajpootana. In despair the chieftain's daughter thought of a device; she took a number of these bracelets and sent them to the Rajpoot princes with a message, "Come and help us," and all the Rajpoots assembled and the imperial forces had to go back again.

I will tell you a peculiar proverb in Rajpootana. There is a caste in India called the shop-class, the traders. They are very intelligent, some of them, but the Hindoos think they are rather sharp. But it is a peculiar fact that the women of that caste are not so intelligent as the men. On the other hand, the Rajpoot man is not half as intelligent as the Rajpoot woman. The common proverb in Rajpootana is, "The intelligent woman begets the dull son, and the dull woman begets the sharp son." The fact is, whenever any state or kingdom in Rajpootana has been managed by a woman it has been managed wonderfully well.

We come to another class of women. This mild Hindoo race produces fighting women from time to time. Some of you may have heard of the woman who, during the Mutiny of 57, fought against the English soldiers and held her own ground for two years, leading modern armies, managing batteries, and always charging at the head of her army. This Queen was a Brahmin girl. A man whom I know lost three of his sons in that war; when he talks of them he in calm, but when he talks of this woman his voice becomes animated. He used to say she was a god, she was not a human being. This old veteran thinks he never saw better generalship than she possessed. The story of Chand Sultana in older times is well known in India. She was the Queen of Golconda, where the diamond mines were. For months she defended herself. At last a breach was made in the walls. When the imperial army was trying to rush in there she was in full armor, and she forced the troops to go back. In still later times perhaps you will be astonished to know that a great English general had once to face a Hindoo girl of sixteen.

Women in statesmanship, managing territories, governing countries, even making war, have proved themselves equal to men, if not superior. In India I have no doubt of that. Whenever they have had the opportunity they have proved they have as much ability as men, and with this advantage more, that they seldom degenerate; they keep to the moral standard which is innate in their nature, and thus as governors and rulers of their state they prove, at least in India, far superior to men. John Stuart Mill mentions this fact, and even at the present day we see women in India managing vast estates with great ability. There were two ladies where I was born who were the proprietors of large estates and patronesses of learning and art and who managed these estates with their own brains and looked to every detail of the business.

Each nation, beyond a general humanity, develops a certain peculiarity of character; so in religion, so in politics, so in the physical body, so in mental habitude, so in men and women, so in character. One nation develops one peculiarity of character, another takes another peculiarity. Within the last few years the world has begun to recognize this. The very peculiarity of Hindoo women, which they have developed and which is the idea of their life, is the mother. If you enter a Hindoo's home you do not find the wife the same equal companion of the husband as you find her here. But when you find the mother, she is the very pillar of the Hindoo home. The wife must wait to become the mother and then she will be everything. If one becomes a monk his father will have to salute him first because he has become a monk and therefore superior to him; but to his mother he will have, monk or no monk, to go down on his knees and prostrate himself before her and take a little cup of water before her feet, and she will dip her toe in it, and he will have to drink of it; a Hindoo son gladly does it a thousand times over again! Where the Vedas teach morality the first words are, "Be the mother your God," and that she is. When we talk of woman in India, our idea of woman is mother. The value of women consists in their being mothers of the human race. That is the idea of the Hindoo. I have seen my old master taking little girls by the hands, placing them in a chair and actually worshipping them, placing flowers at their feet and prostrating himself before these little children, because they represented the mother God. The mother is the God in our family. The idea is that the only real love that we see in the world, the most unselfish love, is in the mother; always suffering, always loving, and what love can represent the love of God more than the love which we see in the mother? Thus the mother is the type, the incarnation of God on earth to the Hindoo. "That boy alone can understand God who has been first taught by his mother."  I have heard wild stories about the illiteracy of our women. Till I was a boy of ten I was taught by my mother. I saw my grandmother living and my great grandmother living, and I assure you that there never was in my line a female ancestor who could not read or write, or who had to put "her mark" on a paper. If there was a woman who could not read or write my birth would have been impossible. These caste laws make it imperative. So these are wild stories which I sometimes hear--that statement that in the middle ages reading and writing were taken away from Hindoo women. I refer you to Sir William Hunter's History of the English People where he found Indian women who could calculate a solar eclipse. I have been told that too much worship of the mother makes either the mother selfish or too much love of the children for the mother makes them selfish. But I do not believe in that. The love which my mother gave to me has made me what I am and I owe a debt to her that I can never repay.

Why the Hindoo mother should be worshipped? Our philosophers try to find a reason and they come to this definition: we call ourselves the Aryan race. What is an Aryan? He is a man whose birth is through religion. This is a peculiar subject, perhaps, in this country, but the idea is that a man must be born through religion, through prayers. If you take up our law books you will find chapters devoted to this, the prenatal influence of a mother on the child. I know that before I was born my mother would fast and pray and do hundreds of things which I could not do for five minutes even. She did that for two years. I believe whatever religious culture I have I owe to that. It was consciously that my mother brought me into the world to be what I am. Whatever little good impulse I have was given to me by my mother, and consciously, not unconsciously. "A child materially born is not an Aryan; the child born in spirituality is an Aryan." And for all this trouble and because she has to make herself so pure and holy in order to have pure children, that is the peculiar claim she has on the Hindoo child, and the rest is the same with all other nations. She is so unselfish; but the mother has to suffer most in our families. The mother has to eat last. I have been asked many times in your country why the husband does not sit with his wife to eat, if the idea is perhaps that the husband thinks she is too low a being? This explanation is not [at] all right. You know a hog's hair is thought to be very unclean; a Hindoo cannot brush his teeth with these brushes made of it, so he uses the fibre of plants. Some traveller saw one of them brushing his teeth with that and wrote that "a Hindoo gets up early in the morning and gets a plant and chews it and swallows it!" Similarly they have seen the husband and wife not eating together, and have made their own explanation. There are so many explainers in this world, and so few observers; as if the world is dying for their explanations! That is why I sometimes think the invention of printing was not an unmixed blessing. The real fact is, just as in your country many things must not be done by ladies before men, so in our country the fact is it is very indecorous to munch and munch before men. If a lady is eating she may eat before her brothers, but if the husband comes in she stops immediately and the husband walks out quickly. We have no tables to sit at, and whenever a man is hungry he comes in and takes his meal and goes out. Do not believe that a Hindoo husband does not allow his wife to sit at table with him; he has no table at all. The first part of the food when it is ready belongs to the guests and the poor, the second to the lower animals, the third to the children, the fourth to the husband, and last comes the mother. How many times I have seen my mother going to take her first meal when it was two o'clock—we took ours at ten and she at two, because she had so many things to attend to: someone knocks at the door and says "Guest." And there was no other food except what was for my mother and she would give it to him willingly and then wait for her own. That was her life and she liked it, and that is why we worship mothers as gods. I wish you would like less to be merely petted and patronized and more to be worshipped! A member of the human race, the poor Hindoo does not understand that; but when you say, "We are mothers and we command," he bows down. This is the side then that the Hindoos have developed.

Going back to our theories; people in the West came about one hundred years ago to this point, that they must tolerate other religions. But we know now that toleration is not sufficient toward another religion, we must accept it. Thus it is not a question of subtraction, it is a question of addition. The truth is the result of all these different sides added together. Each of all these religions represents one side, the fullness being the addition of all these. And so in every science, it is addition that is the law. Now the Hindoo has developed this side; will this side be enough? Let the Hindoo woman who is the mother become the worthy wife also, but do not try to destroy the mother. And that is the best thing that you can do. Thus you get a better view of the universe instead of going about all over the world and rushing into different nations, and criticising them and saying, "the horrid wretches, all fit to be barbecued for eternity!" If we take our stand on this position, that each nation under the Lord's will is developing one part of the human nature, no nation is a failure. So far they have done well, now they must do better! (Applause) Instead of calling the Hindoos "heathens, wretches, slaves," go to India and say, "So far your work is wonderful, but that is not all; you have much more to do. God bless you that you have developed this side of woman as a mother now help the other side, the wife of men." And similarly I think (I tell it with the best spirit) that you had better add to your national character a little more of the mother side of the Hindoo nature! This was the first verse that I was taught in my life, the first day I went to school: "He indeed is a learned man who looks upon all women as his mother; who looks upon every man's property as so much dust, and looks upon every being as his own soul".  There is the other idea of the woman working with the man. It is not that the Hindoos had not those ideals, but they could not develop them. It is alone in the Sanskrit language that we find four words meaning husband and wife together. It is only in our marriage that they promise "What has been my heart now may be thine." And the husband promises the same thing. It is there that we see that the husband is made to look at the Pole Star, touching the hand of his wife and saying, "As the Pole Star is fixed in the heavens so may I be fixed in my affection to thee," and the wife does the same. Even a women who is vile enough to go into the stree ts can sue her husband and have a maintenance. We find the germs of these ideas in all our books through out our nation, but we were not able to develop that side of the character.

We must go away beyond sentiment when we want to judge, and we know it is not emotion alone that governs the world, but there is something behind emotion. Economic causes, surrounding circumstances and other considerations enter into the development of nations. (It is not in my present plan to go into the causes that develop woman as wife.) So in this world as each nation is placed under peculiar circumstances and is developing a type, the day is coming when all these different types will be mixed up, when that vile sort of patriotism which means "rob everybody and give to me" will vanish. Then there will be no more one-sided development in the whole world, and each one of these will see that they had done right. Let us now go to work and mix the nations up together and let the new nation come. Will you let me tell you my conviction; nearly all the civilization that the world has today has come from that one peculiar race of mankind, the Aryans. Civilization has been of three types: the Roman, the Greek, the Hindoo. The Roman type is the type of organization, conquest, steadiness; but lacking in emotional nature, appreciation of beauty and the higher emotions. Its defect is cruelty. The Greek is essentially enthusiastic for the beautiful, but frivolous and has a tendency to become immoral. The Hindoo type is essentially metaphysical and religious, but lacking in all the elements of organization and work. The Roman type is now represented by the Anglo-Saxon, the Greek type more by the French than by any other nation, and the old Hindoos do not die! Each type has its advantage in this new land of promise; they have the Roman's organization, the power of the Greek's wonderful love for the beautiful, and the Hindoo's backbone of religion and love of God. Mix these up together and bring in the new civilization, and let me tell you this should be done by women. There are some of our books which say the next incarnation; (we believe in ten) and the last is to come in the form of a woman. We see resources in the world yet remaining, because all the forces that are in the world have not come into use. The hand was acting all this time while other parts of the body were remaining silent. Let the other parts of the body be awakened and perhaps in harmonious action all the misery will be cured. Perhaps, in this new land, with this new blood in your veins, you may bring in that new civilization, and perhaps through American women.

As to that ever blessed land which gave me this body, I look back with great veneration, and bless the merciful being who permitted me to take birth in that holiest spot on earth. When the whole world is trying to trace their ancestry from men distinguished in arms or wealth, they alone are proud to trace their descent from saints.

That wonderful vessel which has been carrying for ages men and women across this ocean of life may have run small leaks here and there and of that too the Lord alone knows how much is owing to themselves and how much to those who look down with contempt upon the Hindoos. But if such leaks there be, I, the meanest of her children, think it my duty to stop her from sinking even if I have to do it with my life. And if I find that all my struggles are in vain, still, as the Lord is my witness, I will tell them with my heartfelt benediction, "my brethren, you have done well—nay, better than any other race could have done under the same circumstances; you have given me all that I have; grant me the privilege of being at your side to the last and let us all sink together: ' 


↑ Contents

APPENDIX D

Dr. Lewis G. Janes's Reply to Mrs. James McKeen 

           (See Chapter Thirteen)

The following is Dr. Janes's full reply to Mrs. James McKeen, leader of the Brooklyn Ramabai Circle, as it appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of April 15, 1895 :

To the Editor of the Brooklyn Eagle:

The social and legal status of woman in India is a question of larger interest than that arising out of the friendly interchange of views between the leader of the Ramabai circle and myself: The actual facts should be known to the lawyer and sociologists and to those interested in missionary labor as well as to the practical philanthropist. There is probably no living European who knows more of the Hindu people, their sacred literature and legal codes than Professor Max Muller. In his interesting little book, "India: What Can It Teach Us?" originally a course of lectures delivered at Cambridge University before the candidates for the Indian Civil Service, there is a significant chapter on "The Truthful Character of the Hindus," in which he speaks in terms of eulogy so high that any nation might well be proud to wear such laurels of honest commendation. Quoting many travelers and students in India he adds: "I could go on quoting from book after book and again and again we should see how it was love of truth that struck all the people who came in contact with India as the prominent feature in the national character of its inhabitants. No one ever accused them of falsehood: ' "No doubt," he adds at the close of the chapter, "there is a moral depravity in India, and where is there not moral depravity in this world? But appeal to national statistics would be, I believe, a dangerous game.... In judging others, whether in public or private life, let us not forget that a kindly spirit will never do any harm." Of this truthful people and of a revered order of religious teachers, the Sanyasi monks, of whom there are more than one hundred thousand in India, the Swami Vivekananda is a representative. He was educated as a lawyer—not as an actor—and took high honors at the University of Calcutta. He was thoroughly trained not only in Manu and the later codes of Hindu law, but also in comparative law. The people interested in the present controversy, if such it must be considered, may rest assured that he knows what he is talking about and has given the unquestionable facts as to the property rights of Hindu women. The interview with the respected manager of the Ramabai circle in last Saturday's Eagle is interesting and shows a commendable effort, by study, to ascertain the facts as [to] the status of the Hindu widow. I fear, however, the good lady has taken her facts at second hand rather than from original authorities, or she would hardly have made some of the statements credited to her in this interview. First, let me dispose, with a word, of the story that the Swami Vivekananda was formerly an actor. If it were true it would not necessarily be to his discredit. There are honorable and worthy men and women in the theatrical profession who are entitled to the admiration and respect of all broadminded people. The covert insinuation that because he was once an actor, therefore he is in some way discredited as a philosopher or religious teacher savors more of prejudice and narrowness of vision than of logical argument. The most potent form of hypnotism or suggestion is that which proceeds from religious and social prejudice. But it is not true that the Swami Vivekananda ever was, in the accepted sense of the word, an actor. The facts are these: Some years ago Keshab Chunder Sen, the revered founder of [the] Brahmo Samaj, wrote a sort of sacred drama to express and illustrate his central idea of the unity of religion, that the deepest truths in all the great religions of the world are essentially the same. This drama, the "Nava-Vrindavan," was recited on the stage as a religious exercise, himself, Protap Chunder Mozoomdar and other distinguished representatives of the Brahmo Samaj taking part in its presentation. At a certain juncture the drama required the rhythmic intoning of a benediction, a selected passage from the Vedas. Swami Vivekananda, then a very young man, with a fine voice and presence, and interested in the teaching of Chunder Sen, was selected to come upon the stage and intone this Vedic benediction. This is the only way in which he ever was an actor or connected with theatrical representation. This is the way in which he was known on the stage of the Nava-Vrindavan theater. If he was an actor, Keshab Chunder Sen and Protap Chunder Mozoomdar were also, and in a much greater degree, actors. The whole story arises from a reference, not intended to be unkind [?], to Swami Vivekananda in the organ of the Brahmo Samaj. Before the Swami Vivekananda came to this country he had never been known as a public speaker. The ordinary labors of the Sanyasi monks are not upon the rostrum, but in the humble homes of the people, or in conversation with little circles of their disciples under the spreading trees of Hindustan. The Swami's friends were naturally surprised at the profound interest excited in America by his platform addresses and philosophical expositions. The learning and truthfulness of these presentations of the Vedanta philosophy have since been recognized by the most eminent scholars and most learned pundits in India, professors in the leading colleges, judges in the high courts of the empire, representatives of different sects, orthodox and heterodox. The names of these gentlemen and the reports of the immense public meetings in the largest cities of India in recognition of the work of the Swami Vivekananda are in my possession, but would occupy too much of your space if quoted at length. That there are some carping critics also may be true, but the quotation from Unity and the Minister in the interview with Mrs. McKeen is evidently not in point. Nor, I think, will the words of Devendra Nath Das, quoted from the Nineteenth Century Magazine [see chapter thirteen, p. 305-6], have much weight with thinking people against the testimony of the most eminent scholars and students of India and its literature, and of the code of Manu itself, which I am prepared to produce. Mr, Das, if I am rightly informed, was a very youthful gentleman who accompanied Pundita Ramabai in her visit to England some years since. His article was written for the English market, and with an obvious ulterior motive. It is precisely this kind of advocacy, by distorted and one-sided statements and over-statements of the actual condition of the existing laws and customs in India to which the Swami Vivekananda objects. In view of the actual facts and plain teaching of the code of Manu [Mrs. McKeen's] assertion that "as to their (the widows') property rights, the proof is abundant on every side that they have no inheritance at all," is a very surprising one. Over and over again in the code of Manu, the separate property rights of Hindu women, including widows, are expressly recognized, those of widows being protected by especially explicit provisions. In illustration I shall quote from the code itself, in the authorized English translation to Max Muller's "Sacred Books of the East," not from any secondhand source or authority. First, however, permit me a few quotations from authorities recognized the world over as the highest and most reliable on the Hindu character and the general attitude of the Hindu law toward women. We must remember that the code of Manu dates from about 500 B.C., and is the product of oriental thought. We must not look to it for nineteenth century, European and American ideas of woman. Nor must we expect to find in it always the exact statement of present Hindu law and custom. Subsequent decisions and commentators have modified its original provisions and adapted them to later social conditions. Compared with any early code-even the Hebrew or early Christian—however, Manu is very advanced in its provisions for the protection of women and in recognition of her property rights. As to the general character of the Hindus, Sir John Malcolm says: "They are brave, generous, humane, and their truth is as remarkable as their courage."

Professor Wilson says: "Frankness is one of the most universal features of the Indian character." Colonel Sleeman says: "You could not frighten or bribe them into a deliberate falsehood." Bishop Heber says: "The Hindus are brave, courteous, intelligent, most eager for knowledge and improvement; sober, industrious, dutiful to parents, affectionate to their children, uniformly gentle and patient." Elphinstone, the historian of India, says: "No set of people among the Hindus are so depraved as the dregs of our own great towns. The villagers are everywhere amiable, affectionate to their families, kind to their neighbors." Sir Thomas Murro says: "If the general practice of charity and hospitality among each other and, above all, a treatment of the female sex, full of confidence, respect and delicacy, are among the signs which denote a civilized people, then the Hindus are not inferior to the nations of Europe." In the great epic poem, the Mahabharata, the death of one of its heroes, Bhishma, is due to his vow never to hurt a woman. He is killed by Sikhandin, whom he takes to be a woman. Samuel Johnson, author of "Oriental Religions," one of the most careful students on this subject declares: "Notwithstanding certain precepts, the Hindu law has practically allowed women a larger share in the management of property than the statutes of most Christian nations, and they have shown attendant shrewdness and tact in trade." . . . Tenient, another recognized authority declares with equal explicitness: "As the law in Ceylon recognizes the absolute control of the lady over the property conveyed to her use, the custom of large marriage portions has thrown an extraordinary extent of the landed property into the hands of females, and invested them with corresponding proportion of authority in its management." The law in India differs but little from that in Ceylon. The wife has an absolute control of her own property, and if she becomes a widow, retains her own inheritance, inherits her husband's personalty and a life use of his realty. Prichard, author of "Administration of India," declares: "In the family circle and  daily rounds of domestic duties, interests and enjoyments, the Hindu woman has a field for her sympathies which puts her quite on a level with her sisters of the West." "Christian legislation," says Johnson, "has been in many points more unjust to women than Manu." . . . The law of England, he reminds us, still vests parental rights to the father alone, to the entire exclusion of the mother. The principle of the ' feme covert' is modified to a much greater degree by the code of Manu than it is by the existing laws of Great Britain. "Many of the legal disqualifications of woman," says Johnson, "which have descended from feudalism, make her perpetual wardship among the heathen appear almost respectable in comparison."

Turning now to Manu, we find that the last quotation in the interview with Mrs. McKeen has, on the face of it, no bearing whatever on the question of property rights. It is merely the expression of the general oriental view that a woman must recognize some man as her legal protector. In another section we find the same idea stated thus: "Her father protects her in childhood, her husband protects her in youth and her sons protect her in old age; a woman is never prepared for independence" (Manu, ix. 3). That this has no reference whatever to property rights appears from the fact that those rights are explicitly and repeatedly recognized in the same section of the code. Nor does it even imply the amount of supervision over her person common in Mohammedan countries; for in another clause we read: "No man can completely guard a woman by force; but they can be guarded by the following expedients: Let the husband employ his wife in the collection and expenditure of his wealth, in keeping everything clean, in the fulfillment of religious duties, in the preparation of his food and in looking after the household utensils. Women confined in the house under trustworthy servants are not well guarded; but those who of their own accord keep guard over themselves are well guarded" (Manu, ix. 10, 11,12). The unity of the husband and wife in the family relation is also taught: "He only is a perfect man who consists of three persons united, his wife, himself and  his offspring; thus says the Veda; and learned Brahmanas propound this maxim likewise: 'The husband is declared to be one with the wife"' (Manu ix. [?]). Manu ix. [?] provides that every man who goes abroad on business must provide a maintenance for his wife while he is away. As to property rights and inheritance, we find these provisions: "After death of the father and of the mother, the brothers being assembled may divide among themselves in equal shares the paternal and the maternal estate; for they have no power over it while the parents live" (Manu ix. 104). The fact thus illustrated, that the estate cannot be divided until both parents are deceased, is evidence that the property rights inhere in the widow after the death of her husband. In reality, she has full possession and control of his personalty and a life use of his realty. The code further provides that "to the maiden sisters the brothers shall severally give portions, each out of his share one fourth part; those who refuse to give it will become outcaste." And further: "But whatever may be the separate property of the mother, that is the share of the unmarried daughter alone; and the son of an appointed daughter shall take the whole estate of his maternal grandfather who has no son" (Manu ix. 137). "But when the mother has died, all the uterine brothers and the uterine sisters shall equally divide the mother's estate" (Manu ix. 192). "Even to the daughters of those daughters something should be given as is seemly out of the estate of their maternal grandmother, on the score of affection" (Manu, ix. 193). "What was given before the nuptial fire, what was given on the bridal procession, what was given in token of love and what was received from her brother, mother or father, that is called the six-fold property of a woman. " "Such property, as well as a gift subsequent, and what was given to her by her affectionate husband, shall go to her offspring, even if she dies in the lifetime of her husband" (Manu, ix. 194, 195).

From this it appears not only that the wife inherits absolutely her husband's personalty and the use of his real estate during her lifetime, but that her own independent property, if she has offspring, goes to her children instead of to her husband. In case she has no offspring, another section makes her husband her heir; or, when the marriage is irregular, her mother and father inherit her estate instead of her husband.

Still another section makes it the duty of the king to protect the inherited and other property "of wives and widows faithful to their lords" against all aggressors. "A righteous king must punish like thieves those relatives who appropriate the property of such females during their lifetime" (Manu, viii. 27, 28, 29). And against male relatives who would live on the separate property of females, this malediction is also hurled: "But those male relatives who, in their folly, live on the separate property of women, e.g., appropriate the beasts of burden, carriages and clothes of women, commit sin and will sink into hell" (Manu iii. 52). Thus, not only legal, but religious sanctions of the strongest kind protect the separate estates of Hindu women, be they single, wives or widows. By a curious and happy coincidence, I have very recently come in possession of illustrative evidence of the fact that these provisions of the Code of Manu, sustained, as Johnson shows, by the later commentators and judicial decisions, at this moment constitute the living law enforced in India. A few months ago Babu Protapa Chandra Roy, the publisher of the Mahabharata, the great epic poem of India, an honorary corresponding member of the Brooklyn Ethical association, died in Calcutta. I have received from his widow and business associate an official notice of his death, from which it appears that he left his widow only the possession of his house in Calcutta, all his other property having been absorbed in his publication business. But the widow also states that she is possessed of a small property in her own right which she voluntarily proposes to devote to the completion of his great work. Thus I am not only able to quote from the original code, in the authorized translation, the law substantially as stated by Swami Vivekananda, but also to substantiate his statement further by evidence that the law is not a dead letter, but is actually enforced at the present time in India. I submit  that the evidence is complete, conclusive and cumulative, and that henceforth no question can be raised as to the veracity of our guest or the accuracy of his information upon this subject. I regret also to see the reference in the interview with the leader of the Ramabai Circle to "Babu Norendra Nath Dutt (alias Vivekananda)," this phraseology being usually found in police court records to designate those who assume names not their own for purposes of deceit. It should be well known to all that the custom among the Hindu monks is precisely similar to that which prevails among the Catholics and some Protestant orders. A new name is taken to symbolize the complete devotion of the religious teacher to his work and his entire separation from the secular life and family connections.

A beautiful letter from the mother of the Swami Vivekananda in her own handwriting, the original of which I have seen, and a translation of which I have been permitted to read, shows that notwithstanding the separation implied by his vows, and thousands of miles of space, she still clings to him with a mother's love and pride, and is humbly grateful for the good work he is doing and the friends he is making in this distant land. No more noble, tender and motherly epistle has ever fallen within the range of my vision. As to the questions personal to myself raised in the interview with the leader of the Ramabai circle, I am content to leave them with the briefest rejoinder. With regard to the position of Babu Sasipada Banerjee, I was already fully informed. He is not, however, a Christian convert, like Pundita Ramabai, though he has rejected the sacred thread and thrown off the bondage of caste. The public may not generally know that the Sanyasi monk also rises above the limitations of caste, not by a violent rupture of the Hindu tradition, but by what may be termed a process of growth into a higher religious estate in which caste is no longer a limitation. As to the supposed inconsistency of the contribution to the work of Babu Sasipada Banerjee by the Ethical association, I am content, if need be, to appear inconsistent in a good cause. Emerson has said that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." I think, however, the appearance of inconsistency will mostly disappear when we reflect that our association is expressly and avowedly non-sectarian in its character and that Babu Sasipada Banerjee is himself a member of our association. Nor is it true, as intimated, that the endurance of hardships is exclusively enjoined on widows by the code of Manu. This discipline is also enjoined on men, and in almost the exact phraseology applied to widows. Among the rules for the twice-born snataka we find the following: "Let him be industrious in privately reciting the Veda. Let him be patient in hardships. Or he may constantly subsist on flowers, roots and fruits which have been ripened by time and have fallen spontaneously following the rules of Vikhanas. Making no effort to procure things that give pleasure, chaste, sleeping on the bare ground, not caring for any shelter, dwelling at the roots of trees." Here is an asceticism indeed that we may deem irrational, but it is not exclusively prescribed for women, or for widows. The dress and mode of life of the Hindu widow is substantially that of the student class, plain, simple, devoid of ornament, withheld from extravagances and enervating pleasures. That women, and especially widows, who are debarred from marriage by the custom of the country, thereby suffer privations, and are compelled to a life which we should regard as monotonous and in many ways unjustly restricted, I do not question. Education, which will prepare them for more active duties in life, is therefore a great desideratum. All wise efforts in that direction have my heartfelt commendation and approval. That child marriage is sometimes followed by abuses meriting the most indignant condemnation I know to be the fact. But these results are by no means universal. A recent medical report on this subject shows that fifty-five practicing physicians in British India altogether had had only thirteen cases of such abuse come under their personal observation. What if our physicians should be called upon to render like testimony? Would the comparison be in our favor? Child marriage finds no sanction in the Vedas. Its abuses find no sanction in the code of Manu. It grew out of the passionate demand of the Hindus for chastity as an inviolable rule for young and old. For a candid account of child marriage in India, from the point of view of a liberal Hindu, persons interested would do well to read an article on this subject in the North American Review of October, 1888, by Babu Raj Coomar Roy, a cousin of Keshab Chunder Sen, and honorary corresponding member of the Brooklyn Ethical association.... Would our civilization or English civilization of this time bear comparison with theirs in the entire field of sex relationships? Recent revelations in our own vicarage bid us pause before we cast stones at the convenient sinners on the other side of the world. There seems to be a fruitful and abundant field for missionary enterprise and ethical culture nearer home.

LEWIS G. JANES

President Brooklyn Ethical Association, 

   Brooklyn, April 12, 1895.

We might add to Dr. Janes's powerful and scholarly letter the observation that if Mrs. James McKeen had been genuinely interested in India's traditional attitude toward its women, she could have found with a little research not only those verses from Manu that Dr. Janes quoted but the following as well: "Women must be honored and adorned by their fathers, husbands, brothers, and brothers-in-law, who desire (their own) welfare." "Where women are honored, there the gods are pleased; but where they are dishonored, no sacred rites yield rewards." "Where female relatives live in grief, the family soon wholly perishes; but that family where they are not unhappy ever prospers." "In like manner, care must be taken of barren women, of those who have no sons, of those whose family is extinct, of wives and widows faithful to their lords, and of women afflicted with diseases." Such laws as these were so much a part of a Hindu's heritage that to transgress them was akin to sacrilege.


↑ Contents

ABBREVIATIONS AND SHORT FORMS USED IN THE REFERENCES

Complete Works The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 8 vols. Centenary ed., 1963

Forgotten Chapter Swami Vivekananda - A Forgotten Chapter of His Life, by Beni Shanker Sharma, 1963


Life

The Life of Swami Vivekananda, by His Eastern and Western Disciples, 5th ed., rev. And enl., vols., (1979-1981)

P.B.

Rem.

Prabuddha Bharata, Calcutta

Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, by His Eastern and Western Admirers, Ist ed., 1961

RKM

SCB

Sen Col.

SN Col.

The Master

VLN


Sara Chapman Bull Papers

Mrs. Boshi Sen Collection

Swami Nikhilananda Collection

The Master as I Saw Him, by Sister Nivedita, 6th ed., 1948 Vivekananda in Indian Newspapers, 1893-1902, eds. Sankari Prasad Basu and Sunil Bihari Ghosh, 1969

VSNC

Vendanta Society of Northern California Archives, San Francisco

(When the place and date of publication are not cited for the following references, they are given in the

Bibliography)

↑ Contents

Volume 3

3.1 NEW YORK : SPRING 1895

"New York is a grand and good place," Swami Vivekananda had written in August of 1894. "The New York people have a tenacity of purpose unknown in any other city."[1] New York was also, he had remarked a few weeks later, "the head, hand, and purse of the country."[2] The great, sophisticated, and polyglot metropolis was indeed a wellspring of new ideas; it was creative and enterprising; it was the center of all the arts; it was rich, generous, and throbbing with vitality; everything was there. Thus when Swami Vivekananda decided in the beginning of 1895 to settle down to teach, after a year and some three months of strenuous lecture touring throughout the Midwest and East, he chose New York for his headquarters, rather than, say, Boston or Chicago; and it would be here that his mission to the West would enter its years of full maturity:

It was in Chicago, however, that Swamiji opened the year of 1895. To what must have been the unutterable delight of the Hale family, who loved him as their own, he had given them "a little surprise by dropping in on New Year's day,"[3] unannounced and straight from the East Coast. He stayed in Chicago for almost three weeks, a period of which virtually nothing had been known until the recent discovery of the following letter written to his friend Miss Emma Thursby. From it, we gather a little information about what appears to have been a very active time.

Chicago 541 Dearborn Avenue
17th Jany 95

Dear Miss Thursby

I am very sorry to learn about the passing on of Mr Thorp [Mrs. Ole Bull's father]. Mrs. Bull must have felt it deeply. Still he has passed on after a good and useful life. All is for the best.

I have been lecturing every day to a class in Mrs Adams rooms at the Auditorium. Today I also lecture there and in the Evening to a class of Miss Josephine Locke's at the Plaza hotel.*(1)

Have you seen Mrs. Peake in New York. She is lecturing to a class at Mrs Gurnsey's

Miss Locke is as kind as usual. She is enamoured of Mrs Peake as are many of Miss Locke's friends you will be glad to learn.

Mrs Peake has made a very favourable impression on Chicago; So she does wherever she goes.

Mrs Adams invited me to an organ concert in the Auditorium. She is so good & kind to me. Lord bless her.

I have not seen Mr Young nor I am afraid I have time to see as I start for New York on Friday next.

I will hear him once (?) in New York

I was so busy here these two weeks

I have got a new scarlet coat but can get no orange here.

Ever with blessings

Your brother[4]

Vivekananda

Swamiji may not have stayed with the Hale family during these January weeks in Chicago. In a passage that seems to apply to this period, Miss Cornelia Conger, granddaughter of Mr. and Mrs. John B. Lyon, with whom he had stayed during the days of the Parliament of Religions, writes in her reminiscences:" When Swamiji returned to Chicago a year or so later [after 1893] to give lectures,... he only stayed with us for a short time. He knew he could teach better if he lived in his own regime of food and of many hours for meditation. It also left him free to receive many who came to him for help. So my grandmother helped him find a simple but comfortable little flat, but I do not recall that I ever saw it.'[5]

If this passage pertains to January of 1895 (and there seems to be no other time to which it could reasonably apply), then here one finds the beginning of Swamiji's new, independent way of work. Meanwhile, plans were being made in New York for his coming classes and parlor lectures by two groups of his friends. First, there was the infant Vedanta Society, which he had founded in November of the previous year and which, as far as can be understood, consisted of officers only. Who its president was, we do not know, but possibly it was Mr. Charles M. Higgins of Brooklyn, who was much interested in Swamiji's work.*(2). Its vice-president was Dr. Edward G. Day, of whom we know at present regrettably little; its secretary was Miss Mary Phillips, at whose home in New York Swamiji had given a lecture in the spring of 1894; and its treasurer, there is ample reason to believe, was Mr. Walter Goodyear, a young man from New Jersey.**(3) This Society, inexperienced and nebulous, was trying to make arrangements for Swamiji's regular classes. As for his parlor lectures, these were to a large extent in the hands of Miss Emma Thursby, the famous concert singer, whom Swamiji had known for many months, and her friend Miss Sarah Farmer, founder of the Greenacre Religious Conferences, which he had attended the previous summer. Both Miss Thursby and Miss Farmer were close friends of Mrs. Bull, who, though living in Cambridge, seems to have been a guiding spirit behind the New York scenes and also, at times, a presence on its stage.

In her middle forties in 1895 (she had been far younger than her world-renowned husband), Sara Chapman Bull was a charming, wealthy, and idealistic woman, well known for her grace as a hostess and for her Cambridge salons, at which she brought together writers, philosophers, musicians, social thinkers, and anyone else she deemed worthy—people who were set upon reforming the world, and others who were simply trying to make it more livable. She herself belonged to the latter group, giving in an unobtrusive, gracious, and somewhat vague way whatever support she could—financial, social, and moral—to anyone with noble thoughts and the gift of expressing them well. She had first met Swamiji in Boston in the spring of 1894 and had come to know him better at Greenacre in the summer of that year. In October she had invited him for a week or so of rest at her spacious home in Cambridge, where house guests abounded, and in December she had asked him to participate in the month long lecture series which she was sponsoring in memory of her mother and which she thought of as a sort of miniature Greenacre Conference. She was much impressed by his teachings and his personality and was anxious to help his work in anyway she could. He and others kept her informed of the plans afoot in New York. "The New York course for me is nearly ready;" he had written to her from Chicago on January 3, "but I do not wish to fix the dates until Miss Thursby comes to New York. As such Miss Phillips who is a friend of Miss Thursby's and who is arranging the New York course for me will act with Miss Thursby in case she wants to get up something in New York.'[6] And on January 15 Swamiji's disciple Leon Landsberg wrote from New York, "Miss Thursby expects here Miss Farmer, with whom she will arrange for group meetings"--that is, for parlor lectures.

One does not know what well-meaning plans the Vedanta Society was making for Swamiji's work, but whatever they were, they proved, according to Leon Landsberg, to be "a miserable failure.'[7] Shortly after his return from Chicago, Swamiji took matters into his own hands. He asked Landsberg to rent some rooms where regular classes could be held, and forthwith Landsberg did so.

Leon Landsberg, a bachelor in his early forties, a Russian Jew by birth, European by culture and education, and American by citizenship, was a year later described by a newspaper reporter as being "of medium height, possessed of a shock of curly hair and a pair of eyes in which the fire of the true fanatic undoubtedly burns.'[8] He had first met Swamiji in May of 1894 at Miss Mary Phillips's parlor lecture-the second talk Swamiji had ever given in New York City. Whether Landsberg, who had been at the time a Theosophist and was on the staff of the New York Tribune, had attended the lecture out of personal interest or on a newspaper assignment, we do not know, but whatever had brought him there, his meeting with Swamiji had been for him a galvanizing event. In his own words, written to Mrs. Bull a year later:

. . . At last I had found the ideal vainly sought for during all my past, an object worthy of pursuit, an aim to work for and bestow upon its realization all the stored up energy of years of inactivity. He became to me an object of divine worship.[9]

Landsberg soon became a brahmacharin disciple of Swamiji's and thenceforth, as he was to write to Mrs. Bull in February of 1895, "made it a rule not to have more than two suits of clothing, which is even too much for a Brahmacharin, who care not for the things of this world.'[10]The second suit had no doubt been purchased on Swamiji's insistence. Sending his disciple the necessary money, Swamiji had written to him on September 13, 1894 "Forgive me, but I have the right, as your Guru, to advise you, and I insist that you buy some clothes for yourself, as the want of them stands in the way of your doing anything in this country. Once you have a start, you may dress in whatever way you like. People do not object. You need not thank me, for this is only [the Guru's] duty.'[11]

With characteristic intensity, Landsberg now took over the burden of the practical details of Swamiji's New York work and became, for a time, his right-hand man. On January 21 1895, he wrote to Mrs. Bull a long letter of sympathy on the death of her father and added this paragraph of information:

The Swami has arrived here on Friday [January 18]. He is in good health and happy. Last night (Sunday) he held the first of his series of lectures before the Ethical Society at Brooklyn. In spite of the strike on account of which all traffic has stopped, the house was crowded. His lecture on "Ideals of Womanhood" was a success. He was at his beat. He is urged from all sides to give parlor lectures.[12]

Two days later, carrying out his duties as Swamiji's secretary, Landsberg wrote to Isabelle McKindley, a niece of Mr. and Mrs. Hale—one of the four "Hale sisters." His letter, from which we learn something of what was taking place in New York, read in part:

144 Madison Ave New York,Jan'y 23d 95

Dear Madam,

I received your kind note with express notice, for which many thanks.

That I am ready to comply with your wishes va sans dire. You are the Swami's friend, and this is sufficient reason for me to do anything in my power to please you. So if there is anything I can do for you, know that my services are always at your command.

I mailed to you two newspaper reports of the Swami's Brooklyn lectures.... He gains daily more friends. I am sure that his sojourn in New York will not only add to his glory, but also leave a permanent impress on all those who are favored to hear him. 

Miss Thursby and Miss Farmer are arranging parlour lectures for New York.

It will interest you to learn that I have rented two rooms, one for me and the other to serve as the Swami's headquarters, which we are going to occupy from Sunday next [January 27]. The Swami will board and sleep at the Guernseys, and only use new engaged room as his business office and to hold group meetings in Yoga. It would therefore be advisable to address your letters to the new place, 54 West 33d Street, where I shall be constantly present to receive them, and to answer all the inquiries concerning the Swami. Don't you think that this was a good idea?

The Swami is in good health and happy, and in speaking of you and your family he has only words of love and blessings.

It might be noted here parenthetically that while Swamiji was surely happy, he was not altogether in good health. In a letter to Isabelle McKindley, written three days after the above, Landsberg admitted that Swamiji had been suffering from a series of colds, and Swamiji himself wrote to Isabelle on January 24, "I have got again a little cold.'[14] Traveling back and forth on the Brooklyn Bridge cable car in the bitterness of a New York January did not perhaps make matters any better.

But a cold was no deterrent to Swamiji's plans. Everything had at last been arranged, and on Sunday January 27, he established his headquarters in the rooms that Landsberg had rented at 54 West Thirty-third Street and there started his classes on Vedanta and Yoga, beginning the second phase of his Western work, into which he was to pour heart, mind, and soul.

Built around 1850, 54 West Thirty-third Street was a narrow, three-story brick house with a brownstone front. It stood four doors east of Sixth Avenue on the south side of the street and was the twenty-eighth house west of Fifth Avenue in that long and uninviting block. In the 1890s this was none too good a neighborhood. On the West Side the rich and fashionable were moving north beyond Fifty-ninth Street; trade was sweeping up Fifth Avenue toward Thirty-third Street, and many of the once luxurious old mansions had been replaced by business buildings. Worse, the district known as the Tenderloin was well entrenched in the area lying between Fifth and Eighth avenues, bounded on the south by Twentyfourth Street and on the north by Fortieth Street. Peppered with saloons, bagnios, dance halls, and gambling houses, the Tenderloin was the center of Manhattan's more earthy night life and, with the notable exception of a few years in the mid-nineties, carried on its activities with a zest unrestrained, indeed encouraged, by the city police. Those few exceptional years—the period, as it happened, between November of 1894 and November of 1897—marked an interlude of law, order, and decorum such as had never before been seen in this otherwise obstreperous district and was never to be seen again.

The man who had served to bring about this remarkable hiatus in the life of the Tenderloin was the Reverend Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, whom Swamiji had met at a dinner party in the spring of 1894.[15] If Dr. Parkhurst had deliberately timed his  efforts (as, of course, he did not) so that the district would present a scrubbed face by the beginning of 1895, he could not have timed them better. He fired off what he was to call "the first gun of the campaign" on Sunday, February 14, 1893, delivering from the pulpit of his fashionable Madison Square Presbyterian Church a vigorous and resounding denunciation, not of New York's districts of vice themselves, as many a minister had done before him, but of the city's corrupt political leaders. Having struck at the formidable powers of Tammany Hall, the reverend was called before the grand jury and told either to retract his statements or to substantiate them with concrete facts. A courageous man, he chose the latter course. Disguised as a roisterer, the frail, fastidious, and scholarly pastor underwent a three-weeks' "going down into the disgusting depths of this Tammany debauched town.'[16]He emerged with sufficient eye-witness evidence of the collusion between the City Hall, the Police Department, and the leaders of vice and crime to convince any jury of the validity of his charges. "In one day less than a month," a historian of the period writes, "Dr. Parkhurst had stirred up more controversy, more recrimination and denunciation over commercialized  vice than any of his crusading predecessors in the past thirty years.'[17]

It was not, however, until November of' 1894, when the Tammany Hall politicos were voted out of power by a now aroused electorate, that a reign of law and order descended upon the Tenderloin. The change under a new reform administration was drastic. The street became safe, the police incorruptible, and scores of the more prominent denizens of the district fled—many of them to Chicago. It was, of course, only a matter of time before the old state of affairs returned. At the next city election in November of 1897, the Tammany Hall "bosses" were restored to power, and the Tenderloin burst once again into riotous life. But Dr. Parkhurst's sudden and inspired crusade had served to clean up the theretofore uncleanable Tenderloin for a three-year period—a period which embraced the yeas of swamiji’s residence in its vicinity

With the disappearance of the more disreputable characters and activities of the neighborhood, 54 West Thirty-third Street was not an unthinkable place to live. The block’s respectable elements were now predominant; toward Fifth Avenue stood the small and exclusive Cambridge Hotel, so sedate and reserved that it had no lobby in which to loiter. Directly across from this “squat red-brick establishment," on the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-third Street, the towers of the brand-new and opulent Waldorf Hotel rose a spectacular thirteen stories above the cobbled street. The shiny black carriages and hansom cabs drawn up at its Thirty-third Street entrance and the coming and goings of the fashionable shed a certain luster over its surroundings. Still, Swamiji's quarters far down the block, bordering not only on the shadow of the Sixth Avenue El but on that of a bad reputation, could not by any stretch of the imagination be called select. It has been generally assumed that Landsberg, with Swamiji's consent, chose such quarters because of financial considerations, and this may have been largely the case.*(4) 

For a time after opening his New York classes, Swamiji continued to deep at the Guernseys' house at 528 Fifth Avenue, but soon, no doubt for the sake of convenience, as well as for total independence, he moved, bed and board, to his lodging. Like the Hales, the Guernseys. whom Swamiji had first met in New York in the early part of 1894, had opened their house to him. Dr. Egbert Guernsey was a prominent physician, a well-known philanthropist, writer, Editor, and founder-director of various important journals, clubs, and medical institutions in New York. He was, moreover, well loved for his large heart and nobility of soul.*(5) That the Guernseys looked upon Swamiji with parental affection and held him in high esteem and that his move from their home had caused no rupture or misunderstanding between himself and these good people is clearly seen by the following letter that the doctor wrote to Mrs. Bull in March of this year, shortly after one of her visits to New York.

Union League Club 
New York

Dear Mrs. Bull

I was sorry not to have had the pleasure of meeting you when you called the other day renewing our Alaska [?] acquaintance, which will ever remain a bright spot in my memory, and thanking you for your interest in, and kindness to the Swami who by his kindness of heart, great intelligence, purity and nobility of character has endeared himself to me almost like a son. It is a gratification to me to know that ladies like yourself fully appreciate the rare qualities of head and heart, of one, whom I shall always be proud to call my friend.

The Swami from time to time has formed a part of my family for several months. Always welcome, we have all of us derived both profit and pleasure from the rich stores of a mind full of thought in which he seemed to have been able in his investigations of spiritual matters to have eliminated the discordant elements for the true and harmonious. Hoping to meet you at no distant day

Very truly[18]
Egbert Guernsey

Even apart from its location, the lodging at 54 West Thirty-third Street was a far cry from the Guernseys' Fifth Avenue mansion. From a few hints found in various sources one can deduce that Swamiji's rooms were on the second floor. The front room, facing the street, served as his headquarters; the other was Landsberg's bedroom, for which he (Landsberg) paid half the rent and which doubled at times as a kitchen, there being nowhere else to install the gas cooking stove that a kind friend had donated. (There was also a community kitchen in the house for the use of lodgers, where, more than likely, Swamiji created many a meal.) His room contained, we know, a sofa, a marble-topped dresser, and a corner washstand with drain boards. Most probably it also possessed a couch, a small round table, one or two upholstered chairs, a patterned carpet, net curtains at the window, gaslight fixtures, and, one trusts, a heating arrangement of some sort, for the winter was cold, and in early February a heavy blizzard whipped the city. The room could not have been large—the house itself was only twenty feet wide—but here Swamiji held classes (until they overflowed), received visitors, gave interviews, wrote articles, translated passages from the Sanskrit books which he was now having sent from India, read, studied, and often entered into the state of deep meditation that was natural to him and always at his command.

The house (and no doubt its furnishings) being almost fifty years old and having seen many lodgers come and go, must, on the whole, have been worn with use and time. But whatever its lack of elegance, Swamiji was content with it; that there were those who strongly disapproved made no difference to him at all. Two months or so later he was to write to Mrs. Bull in retrospect:

Everyone of my friends thought it would end in nothing, this my getting up quarters all by myself, and that no ladies will ever come there. Miss Hamlin [a friend of Mrs. Bull's] especially thought that "she" or "her right sort of people" were way up from such things as to go and listen to a man who lives by himself in a poor lodging. But the "right kind" came for all that, day and night, and she too. Lord, how hard it is for a man to believe in Thee and Thy mercies! Shiva! Siva! Where is the right kind and where is the bad, mother? It is all He! In the tiger and in the lamb, in the saint and sinner all He! In Him I have taken my refuge, body, soul, and Atman.[19]

2

Swamiji opened his classes most probably on Monday, January 28.*(6) At first, for one day at least, his friends seemed to have been correct in their judgment: only a few people came. Among them was Miss Sarah Ellen Waldo, who had first heard him lecture at the Brooklyn Ethical Association (of which she was a member) and who was to become one of his closest American disciples. Of those first classes she wrote in her reminiscences:

The Swami was living very simply in New York, and his earliest classes were held in the small room he occupied, and in the beginning were attended by only three or four persons.


But that was only the beginning. Word quickly spread, and in no time the "right sort," in every sense of the term, were crowding into Swamiji's small room.


[The classes] grew with astonishing rapidity [Miss Waldo continued], and as the little room filled to overflowing, [it] became very picturesque. The Swami himself always sat on the floor, and most of his audience likewise. The marble-topped dresser, the arms of the sofa, and even the corner washstand helped to furnish seats for the constantly increasing numbers. The door was left open, and the overflow filled the hall and sat on the stairs. And those first classes! How intensely interesting they were! Who that was privileged to attend them can ever forget them? The Swami so dignified yet so simple, so gravely earnest, so eloquent, and the close ranks of students, forgetting all inconveniences, hanging breathless on his every word! It was a fit beginning for a movement that has since grown to such grand proportions. In this unpretentious way did Swami Vivekananda inaugurate the work of teaching Vedanta philosophy in New York.[20]


To Swamiji’s early classes also came Josephine MacLeod, who, like Miss Waldo, though in her own unique and spirited way, was to become one of his most devoted friends and helpers. She, too, became, it can be said, his disciple, for while she often emphasized in later years that she was his friend, not his disciple, in her own reminiscences she speaks of some early spiritual instruction she received from him and of an experience she had as a result of following it; one also knows that he gave her a mantra.*(7) To receive instruction and a mantra from Swamiji was surely more than enough to make one his disciple. But however that may be, Miss MacLeod’s memories of her first meeting with him and of his early classes are contained in her reminiscences. First, the following excerpt from the notebooks of her friend the late Mme Paul Verdier will serve as a sort of prologue. Immediately after a conversation with Miss MacLeod in 1947, Mme Verdier jotted down the following:


Tantine [as Miss MacLeod was universally known in later years] was living with her [elder] sister [Besse or Betty Sturges] at Dobbs Ferry on the Hudson.... Her sister [a widow] had two children, a boy [Hollister] and Alberta. She was friendly with Mrs. Dora Roethlesberger, who was very spiritual and alto very psychic.... Around the 25th of January, 1895, Tantine received a letter from Mrs. Roethlesberger while in Dobbs Ferry, asking her and her sister to come down to New York and to hear and see a wonderful man from India. They both came down and on January 29 the three of them went to 54. W. 33rd Street, where Tantine saw Swamiji for the first time.[21]


The class held on Tuesday, January 29, was probably Swamiji's second, and if the memories of both Miss Waldo and Miss MacLeod were accurate in regard to the number of people present, then there was already a considerable increase in attendance. Miss MacLeod wrote:


On the twenty-ninth of January 1895, I went with my sister to 54 West 33rd Street, New York, and heard the Swami Vivekananda in his sitting room where were assembled fifteen or twenty ladies and two or three gentlemen. The room was crowded. All the arm chairs were taken; so I sat on the floor in the front row. Swami stood in the corner. He said something, the particular words of which I do not remember, but instantly to me that was truth, and the second sentence he spoke was truth, and the third sentence was truth. And I listened to him for seven years and whatever he uttered was to me truth. From that moment life had a different import. It was as if he made you realize that you were in eternity. It never altered. It never grew. It was like the sun that you will never forget once you have seen....


...His power Jay, perhaps, in the courage he gave others. He did not ever seem to be conscious of himself at all. It was the other man who interested him. "When the book of life begins to open, then the fun begins," he would say. He used to make us realize there was nothing secular in life; it was all holy. "Always remember, 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." That is what he used to tell us. His presence, you see, was dynamic. You cannot pass that power on unless you have it, just as you cannot give money away unless you have it. You may imagine it, but you cannot do it.[22]


According to another of Miss MacLeod's memories, Swamiji's power once assumed for her concrete form, vivid and overwhelming: Although this reminiscence comes to us third-hand, its main point has no doubt remained intact through its retelling. To judge from Miss MacLeod's description of the size of Swamiji's audience at the time, her experience occurred not at the first class she attended, but at one held several weeks later in the downstairs rooms of the lodging house. The story as she told it years afterward to a swami of the Ramakrishna Order (then a brahmacharin) and as he, in turn, retold it years later to a group of devotees at Belur Math, one of whom took notes, has come out thus:


I first met Swamiji in New York when my elder sister Mrs. Sturges had her days of courtship with Mr. Leggett.... At that time I used to read the Gita, translated by Mohini Mohan Chatterjee. One day we two sisters came to New York by the Hudson River, and went to listen to Swami Vivekananda's lecture. The subject of the talk was the Gita. More than one hundred persons were Present, they were all scattered in the room: When Swamiji started speaking . . . I lifted my eyes and saw with these very eyes (she pointed to her own eyes) Krishna himself standing there and preaching the Gita. That was my first wonderful vision. I stared and stared . . . I saw only the figure, and all else vanished.[23]


The parlor lectures that Swamiji gave in the early part of this season must have greatly helped to increase the attendance at his classes, for they served to introduce him to new people, and those who heard him speak once almost invariably wanted to hear him again and yet again. Not all of these parlor lectures had been arranged by his New York friends; some took place in Brooklyn. On January 26 Leon Landsberg wrote to Isabelle McKindley:


Yesterday the Swami held the first of a series of parlor lectures at Mrs. [Charles] Auel's residence in Brooklyn. The lecture was attended by about sixty five persons, most of them ladies. The Swami gave an outline of the Upanishads and the Yoga systems, and his conversation was highly appreciated. His next conversation will be on Tuesday next [January 29].[24]


These Brooklyn "conversations," to which an admission fee of fifty cents was charged, were arranged after Swamiji had given his first lecture at the Brooklyn Ethical Association on December 30, 1894. As Miss Waldo wrote, "his success was immediate, . . . and a course of lectures there and at other places in Brooklyn soon followed.'[25]Although we have no more information at present about Swamiji's course of parlor lectures in Brooklyn, many of those who attended them no doubt came also to his classes across the Bridge, as did Miss Waldo herself.


But his parlor lectures in New York City must have drawn even more people to his lodgings. What was probably the earliest of these he gave in the last week of January at Miss Thursby's apartment in Gramercy Park, one of the roost exclusive residential squares of the city. (Mia Thursby no doubt invited many of her friends, including Sara Bull, who was then in New York, and it may well have been on this occasion that an incident took place which led to a fiery scene and a fiery letter--but of this more later.) 


There is some evidence that in the early months of the year Swamiji also gave a parlor lecture at the Guernseys’ and that it was this lecture which drew to his classes Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, a well-known popular poetess of the day, and her husband, to whom she referred as “the Man.” In her memoirs written in 1907 Mrs. Wilcox recalled:


Twelve years ago I chanced one evening to hear that a certain teacher of philosophy from India, a man named Vivekananda, was to lecture a block from my home in New York. (Let us interrupt Mrs. Wilcox here with the observation that in 1895 she and her husband lived at 125 West Fortyfourth Street. As far as can be determined in the light of our present knowledge, there was only one place a block away from the Wilcox home where Swamiji might have given a lecture at this period, and that was the Guernseys’ house at Fifth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street. One comes to the tentative conclusion, then, that the Wilcoxes had heard that Swamiji was giving a parlor lecture at the Guernseys’ house.*(8) That this took place early in the year becomes evident as Mrs. Wilcox’s memoirs continue:)


We went out of curiosity,... and 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 spell-bound and almost breathless, to the end of the lecture.


When it was over we went out with new courage, new hope, new strength, new faith, to meet life’s daily vicissitudes. “This is the Philosophy, this is the idea of God, the religion which I have been seeking,” said the Man. And for months afterwards he went with me to hear Swami Vivekananda explain the old religion and to gather from his wonderful mind jewels of truth and  thoughts of helpfulness and strength. 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, the Man 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.[26]


Later in the season, as Swamiji's classes would be drawing to a close, Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote of them to her friend Mrs. Rate Tannatt Woods of Salem, Massachusetts, who, in the days before the Parliament of Religions, had been Swamiji's hostess. One of her letters, dated "May, 1895," read:


I was listening to Vivekananda this morning an hour. How honored by fate you must feel to have been allowed to be of service to this Great Soul. I believe him to be the re-incarnation of some great Spirit--perhaps Buddha—perhaps Christ. He is so simple--so sincere, so pure, so unselfish. To have listened to him all winter is the greatest privilege life has ever offered me. It would be surprising to me that people could misunderstand or malign such a soul if I did not know how Buddha and Christ were persecuted and lied about by small inferiors. His discourse this morning was most uplifting—his mere presence is that. His absolute sinking of self is what I like. I am so tired of people who place the capital "I" before truth--and God. "To do good for good's sake"—with no expectation or desire of reward, and never to speak of what we have done—but to keep on working for the love of doing God's work--is Vivekananda's grand philosophy of life. He always makes me feel ashamed that I have ever thought  for one moment I was burdened or that I ever spoke of any good act of my own.[27]


During the first week of his New York classes Swamiji gave another parlor lecture on the night of Friday, February 1. It was very probably of this occasion that Miss Thursby wrote in the following letter to Mrs. Bull. Dated simply "Monday, " her letter read in part:

34 Gramercy Park 
Monday [February 4(?), 1895]

My dear friend

We are still going at the same rate or I should have had time to write you before this. The dinner at Miss Corbin's Saturday [Friday?] night was a great success, but we were there until nearly two o'clock as she asked us to remain until all the people went, as she was alone. Vivekananda was very fine, spoke to the people who came after dinner most impressively. There was the most wrapt [sic] attention on the part of the 400--who seemed to feel & expressed the great delight at the change from the ordinary fashionable gathering. He has made many new and valuable friends. Miss Corbin was too happy to express. She has offered the Conservatory, which is lovely—for classes in the Upanishads. Last night's [February 3?) lecture in Brooklyn was a splendid one. He seems to have come to the realization that he must work in the spirit of his Master. I wrote him in sending a check for $ 25 [for his parlor lecture in January?]--some days ago—how much my friends had enjoyed his talk and how we all felt the uplift when he spoke to us only in the spirit of his Master. Landsberg said last night that he would never talk again in the old antagonistic spirit. They seem so earnest. L[andsberg] told Miss Farmer that they were going to give up smoking for six weeks from today. So all seems to be going well.... There seems a lovely spirit about Vivek now. It was so kind of you to send check for him, but I should prefer not taking it.[28]


Miss Anna Corbin was the daughter of Austin Corbin, one of the wealthy railroad tycoons of the era, who lived, needless to say, in a mansion on Fifth Avenue. The Four Hundred, whom Miss Thursby mentioned, were the cream of New York society, but Miss Corbin's circle would have been, on the whole, of a younger generation, one in which the once rigid and impenetrable walls of New York society had broken down and new life was pouring through the breaches crowding across the boundaries. While Miss Corbin's guest list would surely have included members of the Four Hundred (itself no longer unassailable), it would have included as well heirs and heiresses of the new-rich and a number of impoverished but titled sons of European noblemen—two groups that had a symbiotic relationship with one another and that brought to New York society enormous wealth on the one hand and bona fide blue blood on the other. "[The Corbins'] house is always choke full of swells and foreign aristocracy," Swamiji would write to Mrs. Hale. "Princes and Barons & what not from all over the world. Some of these foreigners are very bright. I am sorry your home-manufactured aristocracy is not very interesting."[29]


Swamiji did not get home until late on the night of his parlor lecture at Miss Corbin's. "The Swami arrived this morning at  1o'clock . . . ," Landsberg wrote in a postscript of a letter to Mrs. Bull, dated February 2. "He is delighted with the success he had. Miss Corbin intends to have classes in her house.'[30]

3

Miss thursby's reference to swamiji's having spoken "only in the spirit of his master" and having "a lovely spirit" about him "now," implies that there were times when Swamiji had had something different from "a lovely spirit." And indeed to Miss Thursby and Mrs. Bull, as well as to others brought up in a tradition that associated holiness with meekness and mildness, this might have seemed to be the case. Swamiji was at times as puzzling to Christians as was Christ himself. The previous year, during his lecture tours, and possibly also during his stay in Cambridge in December, he had not hesitated to speak forthrightly when forthright speech was called for. He spoke out not only against bigotry and hypocrisy, but against the superficiality and worldliness of those who professed to be religious. In bringing his Master's message of universality to the whole world, he had had to be a warrior and a hero, intensely active, fearlessly outspoken, indomitable. At times his spirit was a fire that scorched, as well as a light that awakened. "He seems to be walking with an unsheathed sword in his hand,'[31]Sri Ramakrishna had once proudly said of his youthful and beloved disciple, and an unsheathed sword was essential to a world teacher—he whose mission was to destroy all that was false and limiting as well as to give power and direction to the true spirit of mankind. It was essential also for one whose related task was to set India's record straight in the Western mind. "I am the one man who dared to defend his country," he would write to Alasinga in May of 1895, "and I have given them what they never expected from a Hindu—giving them tit-for-tat, with a compound interest.'[32]

At the beginning of 1895, however, Swamiji's days of hard-won battle against the forces of bigotry in America were winding to a close. The opposition had, by and large, retreated; he was entering now into a new and essentially unchallenged phase of his mission, quietly teaching those who came to him and who hail no quarrel with him. But however loving and compassionate he was, however serene, it would never be his way to be politic. "Success" as the world conceives it, was his for the asking; yet he scorned it. "Now, my children, " he was to write to his Madras disciples in May of this year, "I could have made a grand success in the way of organising here, if I were a worldly hypocrite.'[33] He refused to comply with the conventions and prejudices of society; nor would he compromise his message in the slightest or blunt the keen edge of his teaching for the sake of harmonious relations with the more bigoted members of the established clergy. Although he never sought a confrontation with his adversaries, he stood his ground when he found himself challenged in face-to-face argument, thereby confounding and angering his opponent. Naturally enough, those who loved him remonstrated with him, seeking to advise and warn him. It was much like advising the lion to accommodate himself to the ways of sheep, and at the very outset of his first season in New York two such admonitions drew forth from him a resounding roar of independence. The first reproving suggestion that he mend his ways probably occurred after the parlor lecture at Miss Thursby's in the last days of January. In his own words:


The other day at Miss Thursby's I had an excited argument with a Presbyterian gentleman, who, as usual, got very hot, angry, and abusive. However, I was after wards severely reprimanded by Mrs. Bull for this, as such things hinder my work. So, it seems, is  your opinion.[34]


The above was addressed to Mary Hale, in reply to a letter of rebuke in which she sums to have taken alt the privileges of a sister, and more, one thinks, than would become a younger sister. A fragment of what appears to be this particular letter of hers reads:*(9)


My dear Swami

I did not intend answering your first letter. I thought best to let the matter drop & have no more words on the subject but now that the second one has come, beginning with the same story, full of the same spirit, not of love, but of hate-of revilings, of bitterness & of rancor, I cannot but express myself. I confess dear Brother, to a feeling of terrible disappointment--a year ago such a letter from your pen would have been an utter impossibility. I am glad to have that time to look back upon! Where is the great & glorious soul that came to the Parliament of Religions, so full of love of God, that his face shone with Divine light, whose words were fire, whose very presence created an atmosphere harmony & purity, thereby drawing all souls to himself? It is our turn to cry "My!!!" Where now is your illustration of the light in the lamp? The force of the Lord reflected in all his creation?[35]


Swamiji's reply of February 1 was a blazing declaration that left no question of how he intended to conduct himself and his work. Although this letter is well known, it will bear quoting here in part, for it was, in effect, Swamiji"s proclamation of the stand he would take during his next two years of teaching in the West—the period with which this book is concerned.


I am very glad of your criticisms [he wrote] and am not sorry at all.... I am glad you write about it just now, because I have been giving a good deal of thought to it. In the first place, I am not at all sorry for these things— perhaps that may disgust you--it may. I know full well how good it is for one's worldly prospects to be sweet, but when it comes to a horrible compromise with the truth within, then I stop. I do not believe in humility. I believe in samadarshitvam--same state of mind with regard to all. The duty of the common man is to obey the commands of his God--society; the children of Light never do it. This is an eternal law. One accommodates himself to surroundings and social opinion and gets all good things from the giver of all good society. The other stands alone and draws society up towards him. The accommodating man finds a path of roses; the non-accommodating, one of thorns. But the worshippers of Vox populi go to  annihilation in a moment; the children of truth live forever.


I will compare truth to a corrosive substance of infinite power. It burns its way in wherever it falls—in soft substance sooner, in hard granite later, but [it] must. What is writ is writ. I am so, so sorry, Sister, that I cannot make myself sweet and accommodating to every black falsehood. But I cannot. I have suffered for it all my life, but I cannot. I have essayed and essayed, but I cannot. I have given up. The Lord is great. He will not allow me to become a hypocrite. New let what is in come out at last. I have not found a way that will please all, and I cannot but be what I am, true to my own self... God of truth, be Thou alone my guide! I am. too old to change now into milk and honey. Allow me to remain as I am .... I have no desire for wealth or name or fame or enjoyments, Sister, they are dust to me. I wanted to help my brethren. I have not the tact to earn money, bless the Lord. What reason is there for me to conform to the vagaries of the world around me and not obey the voice of Truth within?.....


The last fight with the Presbyterian priest and the long fight afterwards with Mrs. Bull showed me in a clear light what Manu says to the Sannyasin, “Live alone, walk alone.” All friendship, all love, is only limitation. There never was a friendship, especially of women, which was not exacting. Oh, great sages! You were right. One cannot serve the God of Truth who leans on somebody. Be still, my soul! And the Lord is with you.


...In one word, I have a message to give, I have no time to be sweet to the world, and every attempt at sweetness makes me a hypocrite. I will die a thousand deaths rather than live a jelly-fish existence and yield to every requirement of this foolish world—my own country or a foreign country. You are mistaken, utterly mistaken if you think I have a work as Mrs. Bull thinks— I have no work under or beyond the sun. I have a message, and I will give it after my own fashion. I will neither Hinduise my message, nor Christianise it, nor make it any “ise” in the world. I will only my-ise it and that is all. Liberty, Mukti, is all my religion, and everything that tries to curb it, I will avoid by fight or flight.[36]


Mary Hale may have been momentarily stunned by the above blast from Swamiji; but what “sister” of his would not in her heart “cheer those that dare dash this false God, society, onto the earth and trample on its unmitigated hypocrisy”?[37]And to be sure, she would cheer. Thinking he might have been too harsh, Swamiji sent her a conciliatory poem on February 15, the first verse of which read:

Now Sister Mary,
You need not be sorry
For the hard raps I gave you,
You know full well, 
Though you like me tell, 
With my whole heart I love you.

(This poem, which went on for thirteen more stanzas, included the famous lines: “The wounded snake its hood unfurls,/ The flame stirred up doth blaze,/ The desert air resounds the call / Of heart-struck lion’s rage.”)[38]

Mary replied in verses of her own, applauding, teasing, and remorseful. The pertinent lines read:

One day he sat and mused alone
Sudden a light around him shone,
The “still small voice” his thoughts inspire 
And his words glow like coals of fire.


And coals of fire they proved to be, 
Heaped on the head of contrite me-
My scolding letter I deplore 
And beg forgiveness o’er and o’er.[39]

Although Mary Hale seems not to have written to Swamiji for a few weeks after this exchange,*(10) soon all was well, as it always had been and ever would be, between Swamiji and the Hales.


As for Mrs. Bull, who had probably received the first full throated roar of the “heart-struck lion’s rage,” she did not leave New York without seeing Swamiji again after their “long fight.” From a small item in the social columns of the New York Herald one learns that on Wednesday, January 30, a Mrs. A. B. Weaver gave a luncheon in her honor, at which Swamiji and Miss Thursby were among the guests.[40] It is true that a social function does not imply peace, but Swamiji’s benign presence could have brought about nothing else. He had said what he had had to say, and that was all. Moreover, if Mrs. Bull still felt dismay when she returned the following day to Cambridge, such dismay would have sprung only from the abundance of her good will and concern. Indeed, she had at heart even the welfare of Swamiji’s disciples: almost immediately upon arriving home she wrote to Leon Landsberg, dispatching to him an overcoat that had belonged to her father. Landsberg’s reply read in part:


54 W. 33rd Street
New York, February 2d—95

My dear Mrs. O. Bull.

Your kind note of yesterday as well as the Ulster sent by express received. Many thanks for the gift which was deeply appreciated. Many thanks for the gift which was deeply appreciated. But even deeper I appreciate the spirit that animated you in making it. It is the spirit of love that spreads joy and happiness—even among the undeserving; for so far I have not done anything for you to deserve your solicitude for my welfare. Nor do I know how to repay your kindness, unless it be with my blessings which I give you from the innermost of my soul . . .


...I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Mr. A. S. Gron from Harvard who came to call on the Swami. He made upon me the impression of an energetic, high souled young man in whom the Swami’s teachings have taken deep root. Wish to God the Swami had more of such disciples! Full of vigor and enthusiasm, they are the best agents to propagate our high ideals among the coming generation.


We had a number of callers in our new residence which seems to have become the Mecca not only of the devoted truth seekers, but also of all curiosity seekers who imagine the Swami can in one lesson, impart them the art to work miracles. Men are mostly children who want their toys.


The Swami has written an interesting article on Ether for Dr. Gurnsey’s [Guernsey’s] medical Journal, which I shall send you next week. He is now writing a very learned essay on Reincarnation for the Metaphysical journal.


Miss Hamlin was kind enough to send us a gas stove. I am sorry that the adjoining room of which we intended to make a kitchen, has been rented, and so we’ll have to do our cooking in the bedroom.


With kindest regards and many blessings.


Although Mrs. Bull’s concern over Swamiji’s outspokenness was natural enough, it was unavailing; he would always oppose whatever he found to be false wherever he found it. But while he went his own way and while the word power has often been used in describing him, that independence and that power had their source in profound inner peace and were, for this very reasons, unerring and beneficent. It had always been so, but now, as he started and conducted his work in New York, his spirit seems to have been more luminous, his power more benevolent than ever. 


A year and a half of mixing with hundreds, thousands of people had created within him, on the one hand, a strong desire to bless and enlighten the common man, and, on the other hand, a resistance to public life and a need to throw off the restricting and burdensome circumstances of a traveling lecturer. By the time he arrived at New Your he felt a great urge to teach Americans and, simultaneously, as great an urge to live once again the unfettered life of a Hindu monk. To Swamiji the satisfaction of both these urges was possible. Breaking away from the demands of his rich and fashionable friends and taking up his own quarters, he there lived the austere and spiritually intense life of the sannyasin. Not only did he remain in a high state of spiritual consciousness, but he would plunge at the slightest opportunity into the depths of meditation. He would recite texts from Sanskrit scriptures, he would repeat the name of God, or caught up in a mood of divine love he would sing devotional songs from the depths of his heart. And who can say how many hours in the silence of the night he remained lost in the abyss of divine union or what experiences were his while the world slept? And when one thinks of his exalted state one cannot but feel that he lived both day and night on the very edge of the Infinite. “He literally radiated spirituality.... An atmosphere of benediction, of peace, of power and of inexpressible luminosity was felt by one and all who came to his classes.[42]


“One sees him in his New York retreat,” reads the Life, “in the morning or the evening quiet, or at dead of night, meditating. Oftentimes he was lost in meditation, his unconsciousness of the external betraying his complete absorption within.'[43] Even while holding a class he would plunge into profound contemplation. “When the Swami emerged from such states,” the Life relates, “he would feel impatient with himself, for he desired that the Teacher should be uppermost in him, rather than the Yogi. In order to avoid repetitions of such occurrences, he instructed one or two how to bring him back by uttering a word or a Name, should he be carried by the force of meditation into Samadhi.'[44]


One can well imagine that to attend Swamiji's classes was no simple matter. To come suddenly from a cluttered, urban life and from noisy, winter-dreary streets into the rarefied atmosphere of his room, which literally vibrated with spirituality; to be day after day in the presence of a radiant prophet and to have one's mind suddenly lifted and expanded to where it might behold a realm never dreamed of before, was an experience that could be overwhelming. But it was Swamiji's greatness as a teacher to guide his students in such a way that their bodies and minds became fit vessels to receive the almost terrible gift of his liberating power.


Those who came to argue or to scoff, those who came out of curiosity, those who came to learn some psychic trick or mysterious lore remained to sit at his feet and to drink the pure water of spirituality that he gave to one and all without stint. "Some Theosophists came to my classes in New York," he was to write the following August to Mr. E. T. Sturdy, "but as soon as human beings perceive the glory of the Vedanta, all abracadabra’s fall off of themselves. This has been my uniform experience."[45]And some who came with open and ready minds were made at once aware of their own infinitude and forthwith were transformed. "I think that is what happened to me 41 years ago, January 29, when I saw and heard Swamiji," Miss MacLeod wrote to a friend when she was an old woman. "Somehow one was lifted above the body and time and space."[46]


As far as can be determined, Swamiji at first held classes every morning from eleven till one o'clock and often till later; as he wrote to Mrs. Hale on February 18, "I talk [to] them until they [grow] tired."[47] Later this schedule was changed to the mornings and evenings of Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. No program of these classes has been discovered, but from various hints here and there, we can be almost certain that he taught the four yogas-—jnana, bhakti, karma, and raja. He may have held a class on the Gita as well, and, as Miss Waldo wrote, "there were 'question' classes to help those to whom the teaching was so new and strange that they were desirous to have an opportunity for more extended explanation."[48]


It has been thought that no notes of Swamiji's first season of classes in New York have come down to us. There is a good possibility, however, that most of the nine sections of "Discourses on Jnana-Yoga," as published in volume eight of the Complete Works, were taken down in longhand by Miss Ellen Waldo at 54 West Thirty-third Street in the early part of 1895.* (11) If this was indeed the case (and let us assume here that it was), then we have an excellent record of at least some of Swamiji's early jnana yoga classes. And what classes they were!


It is small wonder that those who attended them hung "breathless on his every word" and felt that they "were in eternity." If one took Swamiji's statements as revelations of fact, not as beautiful ideas, but as actual facts applicable to oneself here and now, if one listened not with one's mind only, but with one's inner being (and who could not so listen to Swamiji, for it was to the inner being that he spoke?), then from that moment forward life would indeed have had a "different import". His teachings, spoken with the penetrating authority of a prophet, turned the accustomed universe upside down and inside out, and one's life with it. Nor were there any philosophical arguments here or scholarly dissertations; there was simply, as Miss MacLeod said, truth and again truth. Here are a few passages:


The highest good is the realisation of the Self. It is beyond sense, beyond thought. The real "I" cannot be grasped. It is the eternal subject and can never become the object of knowledge, because knowledge is only of the related, not of the Absolute. All sense-knowledge is limitation, it is an endless chain of cause and effect. This world is a relative world, a shadow of the real; still, being the plane of equipoise where happiness and misery are about evenly balanced, it is the only plane where man can realise his true Self and know that he is Brahman.


This world is "the evolution of nature and the manifestation of God." It is our interpretation of Brahman or the Absolute, seen through the veil of Maya or appearance. The world is not zero, it has a certain reality; it only appears because Brahman is.

When the delusion of this world is once broken, it will come back to us, but no longer will it hold any reality for us. We shall know it as a mirage. To reach behind the mirage is the aim of all religion.


To separate ourselves utterly from matter and all belief in its reality is true Jnana.... Abstract unity is the foundation of Jnana-Yoga. This is called Advaitism ("without dualism or dvaitism"). This is the cornerstone of the Vedanta philosophy, the Alpha and the Omega. "Brahman alone is true, all else is false, and I am Brahman."


The essence of Vedanta is that there is but one Being and that every soul is that Being in full, not a part of that Being. All the sun is reflcted in each dew-drop. Appearing in time, space, and causality, this being is man, as we know him, but behind all appearance is the one Reality. Unselfishness is the denial of the lower or apparent self. We have to free ourselves from this miserable dream that we are that bodies. We must know the truth, "I am He." We are not drops to fall into the ocean and be lost; each one is the whole, infinite ocean, and will know it when released from the fetters of illusion. Infinity cannot be divided, the "One without a second" can have no second, all is that One. The knowledge will come to all, but we should struggle to attain it now, because until we have it, we cannot really give mankind the best help. The Jivanmukta ("the living free" or' one who knows) alone is able to give real love, real charity, real truth, and it is truth alone that makes us free....Our real nature is all bliss, and all the pleasure we know is but a reflection, an atom, of the bliss we get from touching our real nature.


When everything has been thrown away until what cannot be thrown away is reached, that is the Self.. Ask not for healing, or longevity, or prosperity, ask only to be free.


"Comfort" is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being "comfortable". If one intends to really find truth, one must not cling to comfort. It is hard to let all go, but the Jnani must do it. He must become pure, kill out all desires and cease to identify himself with the body. Then and then only, the higher truth can shine in his soul. Sacrifice is necessary, and this immolation of the lower self is the underlying truth that has made sacrifice a part of all religions.......

.......Time and apace exist only in us, we are the one Permanent Being.


If a thing happens once, it can happen again. If any human being has ever realised perfection, we too can do so. If we cannot become perfect here and now, we never can in any state or heaven or condition we may imagine.


Do not pity anyone. Look upon all as your equal, cleanse yourself of the primal sin of inequality.... Equality is the sign of the free....Only sinners see sin. See not man, see only the Lord..... Realise "I am Existence Absolute, knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute—I am He, I am He". Be glad at birth, be glad at death, rejoice always in the love of God.


The Vedas . . . assert in the plainest terms that man can and does transcend this sense-bound, frozen universe. He can, as it were, find a hole in the ice through which he can pass and reach the whole ocean of life. Only by so transcending the world of sense, can he reach his true Self and realise what he truly is.


Time is but the method of our thinking, but we are the eternally present tense.... The secret of Jnana is to give up all and be sufficient unto ourselves.


...There is only one Individual, and each of us is That. Oneness alone is love and fearlessness; separation leads us to hatred and fear.[49]


If the "Discourses on Jnana Yoga" are in fact notes of Swamiji's classes held in the winter and spring of 1895, then they are among the first substantial records we have of his classes in the West.*(12) And we find that here, as in all his subsequent teachings, the key word was realization. He did not preach moral sermons; he did not exhort man to be good; rather, he showed him how to raise the level of his consciousness to the point where his actual perception of himself and of his world was not of matter, limited and gross, but of spirit, for only at that high level of perception could moral action, untainted by self interest, be spontaneous, consistent, and fraught with the power for good. Even the struggle to attain to that level, even the persistent undertaking of spiritual disciplines, could not but lessen, to at least some degree, the agony of the world. "The heart must be pure," he said in his jnana yoga class, "and the pure heart sees only good, never evil. We should never try to be guardians of mankind, or to stand on a pedestal as saints reforming sinners. Let us rather purify ourselves, and the result must be that in so doing we shall help others'[50] Though he does not seem to have yet used the term, his mission now and always was "man-making." "It is the patient up-building of character," he would write to a friend in regard to his New York work, "the intense struggle to realise the truth which alone will tell in the future of humanity. So this year [1895] I am hoping to work along this line practically training into the Advaita realisation a small band of men and women."[51]


As the weeks went on, more and more people poured into Swamiji'a classes, and, as Miss Waldo noted, "Long before [June], they had outgrown their small beginnings and had removed downstairs to occupy an entire parlour floor and extension." But though the classes were crowded, the collections or contributions were sometimes not large enough to pay expenses. "The Swami gave his services free as air," Miss Waldo continued:


The rent was paid by voluntary subscriptions and when these were found insufficient the Swami hired a hall and gave secular lectures on India and devoted the proceeds to the maintenance of the classes. He said that Hindu teachers of religion felt it to be their duty to support their classes and the students, too, if they were unable to care for themselves, and the teachers would willingly make any sacrifice they possibly could to assist a needy disciple.[52]

4

On the Sundays of January 20, February 3 and 17, and April 7, as well as on the Monday of February 25, Swamiji delivered lectures before the ethical association in Brooklyn, which might be called "secular" and which were primarily on the subject of Indian culture and religion. Although he gave these lectures during the period under discussion, they do not in subject matter or tone belong to the second phase of his western work, with which this book is concerned, and thus they have been dealt with in a previous volume.[53]neverthdess, the money Swamiji earned by them must have helped in some measure to support his New York work.

How many "secular" lectures Swamiji gave in a hired hall in New York is not known at present. We do, however, learn from a letter written to Mrs. Bull on Sunday, March 24, by Elizabeth L. Hamlen (of whom more later) that he was to give a lecture that evening on India. "I am to take the tickets at the door," she wrote, not specifying what door, "while Prof Landsberg and Mr. Friedeberg [a friend of Landsberg's] seat  People."[54] And from the published memoirs of' Sister Devamata (Laura Glenn in l895)*(13) we learn of two lectures on Vedanta and Yoga that Swamiji delivered in a small hall. Sister Devamata was vague as to dates, but it seems almost certain that the following pertains to the early months of 1895. She wrote:

One day, as I was walking up Madison Avenue, I saw in the window of the Hall of the Universal Brotherhood a modest sign saying: "Next Sunday at 3 p.m. Swami Vivekananda will speak here on 'What is Vedanta?' and the following Sunday on 'What a Yoga?' " I reached the hall twenty minutes before the hour. It was already over half full. It was not large, however—a long, narrow room with a single aisle and benches reaching from it to the wall; a low platform holding reading desk and chair at the far end; and a flight of stairs at the back. The hall was on the second story and these stairs gave the only way of access to it—audience and speaker both had to make use of them. By the time three o'clock had arrived, hall, stairs, window-sills and railings, all were crowded to their utmost capacity. Many even were standing below, hoping to catch a faint echo of the words spoken in the hall above.

A sudden hush, a quiet step on the stairs and Swami Vivekananda passed in stately erectness up the aisle to the platform. He began to speak; and memory, time, place, people, all melted away. Nothing was left but a voice ringing through the void. It was as if a gate had swung open and I had passed out on a road leading to limitless attainment. The end of it was not visible; but the promise of what it would be shone through the thought and flashed through the personality of the one who gave it. He stood there—prophet of infinitude.

The silence of an empty hall recalled me to myself. Everyone was gone except the Swami and two others standing near the platform. I learned later that they were  Mr and Mrs. Goodyear, ardent disciples of the Swami. Mr. Goodyear made the announcements at the meetings.[55]

The public lectures were not of much financial help. "I am faring well," Swami wrote to Mrs. Hale three weeks after opening his classes. "Financially I am making the ends meet and nothing more because I do not charge anything for the classes I have in my rooms. And the [proceeds from the] public lectures have to go through so many hands.'[56]

But to make ends meet was enough, for Swamiji had relinquished for the time being any attempt to raise money for his Indian work and was satisfied, indeed overjoyed, to have nothing for himself. Supporting his classes at Thirty-third Street through his own labor, he lived as he wanted and taught on his own terms. He refused at this point to accept money even from Mrs. Bull, whom he held in high esteem. He refused as gently as possible, but he repeated in effect the cry of freedom that had resounded throughout his letter to Mary Hale two weeks earlier: " 'Live alone, Walk alone.' . . . Oh, great sages! you were right. One cannot serve the God of Truth who leans on somebody." Now, on February 14, he wrote to Mrs. Bull:

Accept my heartfelt gratitude for your motherly advice. I hope I will be able to carry out them in life.

How can I express my gratitude to you for what you have already done for me and my work, and my eternal gratitude to you for your offering to do something more this year. But I sincerely believe that you ought to turn all your help to Miss Farmer's Grenacre work this year. India can wait as she is waiting centuries and an immediate work at hand should always have the preference.

Again, according to Manu, collecting funds even for a good work is not good for a Sannyasin, and I have begun to feel that the old sages were right. "Hope is the greatest misery, despair is the greatest happiness." It appears like a hallucination. I am getting out of them. I was in these childish ideas of doing this and doing that...

Perhaps these mad desires were necessary to bring me over to this country. And I thank the Lord for the experiences.[57]

In this mood Swamiji let things happen as they would, which is, in fact, what he had always done. He accepted invitations to speak outside his lodgings as they came, neither courting them, nor avoiding them. In the same letter of February 14 to Mrs. Bull he wrote, "I went to see Miss Corbin the other day, and Miss Farmer and Miss Thursby were also there. We had a nice half-hour and she wants me to hold some classes in her home from next Sunday. I am no more seeking for these things. If they come, the Lord be blessed, if not, blessed more be He.[58]

Swamiji started his classes in Miss Corbin's conservatory at 425 Fifth Avenue not on Sunday, February 17, as first planned, but on the Sunday following. "Behind [Miss Corbin's] parlor," he wrote in his letter of February 18 to Mrs. Hale, "she has a long arbour with all arts of palms & seats and electric light. There I will have a little class next week of a score of long-pockets. The fun is not bad.'[56] Some of Swamiji's New York friends must have been highly pleased, for these "long pockets" were indeed the "right people." But within a month he threw over the whole thing. On March 16, after four Sunday classes in the Corbin conservatory, he called on Miss Corbin "and told her," as he wrote to Mrs. Bull; "that I should not be able to come to hold classes any more." "Was it ever in the history of the world that any great work was done by the rich?" he exclaimed. "It is the heart and the brain that do it ever and ever and not the purse. My idea and all my life with it —and to God for help; to none else! This is the only secret of success. I am sure you are one with me here."[60] In this same letter (dated March 21) he informed Mrs. Bull that he would have a series of paid Sunday lectures  (to take the place of the Corbin classes?) in the downstairs rooms of his lodging house, which would seat about a hundred persons and where all were welcome; he expected these lectures to cover his expenses.

Meanwhile, Swamiji had given other outside talks. There had been, for instance, the lecture course at the large house of Mr. And Mrs. Amzi Lorenzo Barber on Fifth Avenue at Sixty-eighth Street, which was sponsored by Mrs. Bull and which consisted of five lectures—two by Swamiji, two by Mrs. Florence Adams, and one by Mrs. Ernest Fenollosa, the well-know connoisseur and curator of Oriental art. Except for lending her spacious and, it was said, handsome drawing rooms for this series, Mrs. Barber seems to have had little to do with it. To judge from the following invitational announcement, it had been Miss Farmer and Miss Thursby who (in consultation with Mrs. Bull) had organized the series, and Mrs. Bull who presided over it:

Three weeks spent at Greenacre, Eliot, Maine, during August, 1894, suggested to Mrs. Ole Bull of Cambridge, Mass., the benefit of lectures combined with classes.

The success of the lectures given in December at Cambridge under her auspices led her to consent to preside over a similar course in New York.

Through the courtesy of Mr. And Mrs. A. L. Barber, these lectures will be given at their residence, 871 Fifth Avenue.

On receipt of an acceptance and five dollars (addressed to Miss Farmer, in care of Miss Emma Thursby, 34 Gramercy Park), a ticket of admission will be forwarded to those desiring to attend this course. A prompt response is requested, that the waiting list may be supplied.


In connection with these lectures, classes and private lessons on the following subjects will be given. Those desiring to attend can arrange hours and terms with miss Farmer.


Classes may begin February 18

Mrs. Milward Adams: The Study of Expression.

Miss Emma Thursby: Musical Expression and Phrasing.

The Swami Vivekananda: The Vedanta Philosophy.


PROGRAM.

February 23, 8 p.m.— Mrs. Milward Adams of Chicago. Orderly Thought and Personal Culture.

February 28, 3 p. m.—The Swami Vivekananda of India.  The Vedanta Philosophy: Soul 

March 4, 3 p.m —Mrs. Milward Adams of Chicago. The conversational Voice and its Possibilities.

March 7, 8 p. m.—The Swami Vivekananda of India.  The Vedanta Philosophy: God

March 9, 8 p.m.—Mr. Ernest F. Fenollosa of the Art Museum, Boston.Art as Related to Religion.

Music: Miss Emma Thursby and Other Artists.

871 Fifth Avenue.[61]


According to a report in the social columns of a New York newspaper, Mrs. Ole Bull, “a delicate, sweet-voiced woman with a tender, dreamy face and masses of dark hair,” introduced Mrs. Milward Adams to the audience. One can infer that she introduced Mr. Fenollosa and Swamiji as well, but this, together with the above announcement and program (which was repeated in part in the society news), is all we know at present about Swamiji’s two ‘Barber House” lectures, for which he received, almost tow months after giving the second one, a check for $ 100 from Miss Farmer.[62] As for the related classes and private lessons mentioned in the announcement, we have no further information about them.


On the evening following his second Barber House lecture, Swamiji gave a talk at Unity Hall in Hartford, Connecticut (one hundred miles or so by train from New York City). His subject, as announced in the Hartford newspapers, was "God and the Soul." The text of the lecture as reported in the Hartford Times of March 11, 1895, has been published in volume one of the Complete Works under the title "Soul, God, and Religion," but the newspaper report had an opening paragraph not found in full elsewhere. It read:


Vivekananda was greeted by a fine house last night [March 8], and all who went will be glad they did, for talks by high caste Brahmans are not a common occurrence in this latitude. The Brahmans seldom leave their native land: they lose caste by crossing the ocean. But Vivekananda was willing to submit to that to get to Christian lands, for his views are more in consonance with those of Christ than those of many so-called Christians. His broad charity takes in all religions and all nations. The simplicity of his talk last night was charming, and in his long red gown and yellow turban, with his handsome Asiatic face, he was picturesque to the eye as well as fascinating to the ear through his high spiritual ideas. He speaks excellent English, and with an accent that gives added zest to his talk.


Mr. Frank G. Burnham of the South Baptist choir sang very finely, and to the evident delight of the audience, and Mr. C. B. Patterson introduced the speaker, who said:


[Here follows Swamiji's talk as later published in volume one of the Complete Works.]


The Complete Works title "Soul, God, and Religion" does in fact more accurately describe the substance of this lecture than did its original title, its main theme being the unity of the essential principles of religious thought throughout the ages and in all parts of the world.


The harmony of religions was a subject Swamiji spoke on again and again during his first visit in America; it was not only one of the primary elements of his Master's message, but  was a subject the vital importance of which bad been repeatedly borne in on him during his tours in 1893 and 1894 of midwestern America, when he had come up against the extremes of religious narrowness and bigotry—attitudes which he of course knew to be rooted in ignorance and potentially dangerous to the entire world. The new age that mankind was entering would call for a universal understanding of the harmony, if not the unity, of the ideals and aspirations most fundamental to the human race, those which concerned man's essential nature, his God, his ultimate purpose, and his destiny—those, in short, that constituted his religion. Without a recognition that the basic principles of these most deeply felt of human ideals were common to all mankind, that only the non-essentials differed—and should differ—there could be no harmony among peoples and nations in any field of human life. "My master used to say that these names as, Hindu, Christian, etc., stand as great bars to all brotherly feelings between man and man," Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Bull in March of 1899. "We must try to break them down first. They have lost all their good powers and now only stand as baneful influences under whose black magic even the best of us behave like demons. Well, we will have to work hard and must succeed. That is why I desire so much to have a centre. Organisation has its faults, no doubt, but without that nothing can be done."[63]


In the last chapter of the volume preceding this one,64 we discussed Swamiji's developing attempt to define for the Western world the essential principles underlying the rich variety of religious expressions and forms that had evolved throughout world history. It had not been enough, he seemed to feel, to say that each religion was a way to God and should be respected, even accepted, as such by the followers of other religions. In addition to this, he sought to give meaningful expression to a deeper interpretation of his Master's message and to formulate a coherent body of principles that could be shown to underlie all religious paths and that could be called Religion, with a capital R. As far as we can judge from the sources available to us--primarily newspaper accounts of his lectures in 1893 and 1894--it was not until the latter part of 1894. that he spoke in America of the dualistic, qualified monistic, and monistic views of God as ascending stages of experience and understanding, together embracing the entire spectrum of religious aspiration.[45]


In his Hartford lecture, Swamiji pursued this line of thought, pointing out concepts common to all living religions of the world. "We find that all religions teach the eternity of the soul," he said, "as well as that its lusture has been dimmed, and that its primitive purity is to be regained by the knowledge of God."[66] And as for God, he traced the evolution of man's concept of God from that of early tribal deities through that of the monotheistic, extracosmic God, to that of God immanent in nature, and, finally, to the realization that man is God Himself, that "al! that is real in me is He; all that is real in Him is I."[67] Behind all religious struggle was the universal human need to reach that goal. "The end of all religions is the realising of God in the soul. That is the one universal religion. If there is one universal truth in all religions, I place it here—in realising God. Ideals and methods may differ, but that is the central point.... There is that beyond all books, beyond all creeds, beyond the vanities of this world, and it is the realisation of God within yourself."[68]


As time went on, Swamiji was to define and explore in detail every aspect, theoretical and practical, of this universal religion. Indeed, to formulate the essential principles of Religion into a comprehensive teaching that would meet all the needs of heart, reason, and will and that would accommodate all ideals was the very crux of his world mission.

5

Many streams entered the current of Swamiji's message, which was as rich and broad as the age it was meant for, and It is unfortunate that we know but little of his teachings in the early part of 1895. But although only a few of his many talks were taken down, he wrote three articles during this season, each of which reveals a different aspect of his thought. These writings, which were not connected one with the other, pertained— successively, as it happened—to (I) the cosmos, (2) the individual soul or jiva, and (3) the Atman, all of which subjects he was to expand, develop, and combine in great detail the following year. The first article has not heretofore been known.

As the reader may recall, in his letter of February 2 to Mrs. Bull, Landsberg wrote, “The Swami has written an interesting article on Ether for Dr. Gurnsey’s medical Journal.” Dr. Guernsey’s medical journal was the New York Medical Times, a prestigious monthly, of which Guernsey was fonder and editor-in-chief. Whether or not Swamiji chose the subject of this article, it was one in which he was no doubt much interested, dealing as it did with science—the ruling faith and dogma of the day. His article, which appeared anonymously in the February 1895 issue of the Medical Times, was, as far as is known, his first (and by no means his last) attempt to point out the similarities between Western science and Eastern thought and, further, to point ahead to the meeting, if not merger, of physics with metaphysics, which he knew must eventually take place. Some details of the scientific theories that Swamiji cited in his article have, it is true, since been modified by more recent findings; indeed the concept of the “ether” itself, which was then still a matter of controversy among scientists, was finally discarded in the early part of the present century and is still (1893) in unanimous disrepute. As for the electron, in 1895 its existence, though hypothesized, had not yet been verified. Thus, while the most technical part of the article—Swamiji’s summary of the calculations of Johann Zollner, to the effect that the ether consists of “electric particles”—must have been of much interest to readers of the Medical Times, perhaps its primary interest today  lies in its indication that Swamiji had a detailed knowledge and grasp of these matter far beyond that of most laymen. Because of its value in this respect, his succinct exposition of Zollner’s theories has been retained here in its entirety, but because the reader may like to skim over it, it has been set in smaller type. These paragraphs are, in any event, not necessary today to Swamiji's conclusions, which are, one ventures to think, as valid and important now as when he drew them and, ether or no ether, far more in tune with present-day scientific thought than with that of the nineteenth century. The article read:


THE ETHER.

Classification or grouping of phenomena by their similarities is the first step in scientific knowledge—perhaps it is all. An organized grouping, revealing to us a similarity running through the whole group, and conviction that under similar circumstances the group will arrange itself in the same form—stretched over all time, past, present and future—is what we call law.


This finding of unity in variety is really what we call knowledge. These different groups of similars are stowed away in the pigeon holes of the mind, and when a new fact comes before us we begin to search for a similar group already existing in one of the pigeon holes of the mind. If we succeed in finding one ready-made we take the newcomer in immediately. If not, we either reject the new fact, or wait till we find more of his kind, and form a new place for the group.


Facts which are extraordinary thus disturb us, and when we find many like them, they cease to disturb, even when our knowledge about their cause remains the same as before.


The ordinary experiences of our lives are no less wonderful than any miracles recorded in any sacred book of the world; nor are we any more enlightened as to the cause of these ordinary experiences than of the so-called miracles. But the miraculous is “extraordinary,” and the every day experience is “ordinary.” The “extraordinary” startles the mind, the “ordinary” satisfies.

The field of knowledge is so varied, and [the] more the difference is from the center, the radii diverge the more widely.


At the start the different sciences were thought to have no connection whatever with each other, but as more and more knowledge comes in, that is, the more and more we come near the center, the radii are converging more and more, and it seems that they are on the eve of finding a common center. Will they ever find it?


The study of the mind was above all the science to which the sages of India and Greece had directed their attention. All religions are the outcome of the study of the inner man. Here we find the attempt at finding the unity, and in the science of religion, as taking its stand upon general and massive propositions, we find the boldest and the most vigorous manifestation of this tendency at finding the unity.


Some religions could not solve the problem any more than the finding [of] a duality of causes, one good, the other evil. Others went as far as finding an intelligent personal cause, a few went still further beyond intellect, beyond personality, and found an infinite being.


In those, and only those systems which dared to transcend beyond the personality of a limited human consciousness, we find also an attempt to resolve all physical phenomena to unity.


The result was the “Akasa” of the Hindus and the “Ether” of the Greeks.


This “Akasa” was, after the mind, the first material manifestation, said the Hindu sages, and out of this “Akasa” all this has been evolved.


History repeats itself, and again during the latter part of the nineteenth century the same theory is coming, with more vigor and fuller light.


It is being proved more clearly than ever that as there is a co-relation of physical forces there is also a co-relation of different [branches of] knowledge, and that behind all these general groups there is a unity of knowledge.


It was shown by Newton that if light consisted of material particles projected from luminous bodies, they must move faster in solids and liquids than in air, in order that the laws of refraction might be satisfied.


Huyghens, on the other hand, showed that to account for the same laws on the supposition that light consisted in the undulating motion of an elastic medium, it must move more slowly in solids and fluids than in gases. Fizeau and Foucault found Huyghens' predictions correct.


Light, then, consist in the vibrating motion of a medium, which must, of course, fill all space. This is called the ether.

In the fact that the theory of a cosmic ether explains fully all the phenomena of radiation, refraction, diffraction and polarization of light, is the strongest argument in favor of the theory.


Of late, gravitation, molecular action, magnetic, electric, and electro-dynamic attractions and repulsions have thus been explained.


Sensible and latent heat, electricity and magnetism themselves, have been of late almost satisfactorily explained by the theory of the all-pervading ether.


Zollner [Johann K. F. Zollner, 1834-82], however, basing his calculations upon the data supplied by the researches of Wilhelm Weber, thinks that the transmission of life force between the heavenly bodies is effected both ways, by the undulation of a medium and by the actual evidence of particle.


Weber found that the molecules, the smallest particles of bodies, were composed of yet smaller particles, which he called the electric  particles, and which in the molecules are in a constant circular motion. These electric particles are partly positive, partly negative.


Those of the same electricity repulsing those of different electricity, attracting each other, each molecule containing the same amount of electric particles, with a small surplus of either positive or negative quickly changing the balance.
Upon this Zollner builds these propositions:


(1) The molecules are composed of a very great number of particles, the so-called electric particles, which are in constant circular motion around each other within the molecule.

(2)  If the inner motion of a molecule increases over a certain limit, then electric particles are emitted. They then travel from one heavenly body through space until they reach another heavenly body, where they are either reflected or absorbed by other molecules.

(3)  The electric particles thus traversing space are the ether of the physicist.

(4) These ether particles have a two-fold motion: first, their proper motion; second, an undulatory motion, for which they receive the impulse from the ether particles rotating in the molecules.

(5)  The motion of the smallest particles corresponds to that of the heavenly bodies.

The corollary is:

That the law of attraction which holds good for the heavenly bodies also holds good for the smallest particles.

Under these suppositions, that which we call space is really filled with electric particles, or ether. 

Zollner also found the following interesting calculation for the electric atoms:

Velocity, 50,143 geographical miles per second.

Amount of ether particles in a water molecule, 42,000 millions.

Distance from each other, 0.0032 millimeter.


So far as it goes, then, the theory of a universal cosmic ether is the best at hand to explain the various phenomena of nature.

As far as it goes, the theory that this ether consists of particles, electric or otherwise, is also very valuable. But on all suppositions, there must be space between two particles of ether, however small, and what fills this inter-ethereal space? If particles still finer, we require still more fine ethereal particles to fill up the vacuum between every two of them, and so on.


Thus the theory of ether, or material particles in space, though accounting for the phenomena in space, cannot account for space itself.


And thus we are forced to find that the ether which comprehends the molecules explains the molecular phenomena, but itself cannot explain space, because we cannot but think of ether as in space. And therefore, if there is anything which will explain this space, it must be something that comprehends in its infinite being the infinite space itself. And what is there that can comprehend even the infinite space but the Infinite Mind?[69]


In his letter of February 2 to Mrs. Bull, Landsberg also mentioned that Swamiji was "now writing a very learned essay on Reincarnation for the Metaphysical journal." Swamiji's article, which he wrote after beginning his New York classes, was a closely reasoned argument in favor of t6e theory of reincarnation and the soul's beginningless independence of the body. He traced through history the various views on the subject, and although he had an abundance of historical knowledge at his finger tips, the article required research. On February 1, he wrote to his good Friend Professor John Henry Wright, whose knowledge of ancient history was encyclopedic, for bibliographical help. His letter, not heretofore published, read:

54 W• 33 street
New York 1st Feb 95

Dear Adhyapakji

You must be immersed in your work now, however taking advantage of your kindness to me, I want to bother you a little.

What was the original Greek idea of the soul both philosophical and popular? What books can I consult (Translations of course) to get it?

So with the Egyptians & Babylonians & Jews?

Will you kindly name me the books? I am sure you are perfectly well and so is Mrs. Wright and the children.

Ever gratefully & fraternally 
Yours'[70]
Vivekananda


Professor Wright no doubt sent on a list of books some of which Swamiji may have found in one or another of New York's three libraries—the Astor, the Lenox, or the Mercantile. ("Every little bit of time I get I spend in the library," he wrote around this period to Mary Hale.)*(14) His scholarly essay, written in other rare hours when he had no classes, visitors, or outside engagements, was published in the March 1895 issue of the Metaphysical Magazine, then a new monthly, and subsequently in volume four of the Complete Works. In its course he pointed out that the theory of reincarnation (a theory much stranger to the average American then than it is today) had arisen only among those ancient people who believed in the independent and eternal (beginningless as well as endless) existence of the individual soul. A sure indication of such a belief, he pointed out, was that those who held it made no attempt to preserve the bodies of their dead by careful burial, as did, for instance, the Egyptians, but quickly burned them, as did the Aryans. "It was in India and among the Aryans," he said, "that the doctrine of the pre-existence, the immortality, and the individuality of the soul first arose .... This soul is without birth and without death; it is not a compound or combination but an independent individual, and as such it cannot be created or destroyed.'[71] Given a belief in the soul, independent and eternal, "the question arises: Where was it all this time? The Hindu philosophers say," he continued, " 'It was passing through different bodies in the physical sense, or, really and metaphysically speaking, passing through different mental planes.''[72]


To convince Western readers, Swamiji quoted from Fichte, Schopenhauer, and, "nihilistic though he was," David Hume, all of whom, though Christian background, endorsed the theory of reincarnation.


Nor was the matter of reincarnation merely one of academic dispute; an important issue was at stake. In concluding his essay, Swamiji succinctly set it forth:


So far as explaining the tendencies of' the present life by past conscious efforts goes, the reincarnationists of India and the latest school of evolutionists are at one; the only difference is that the Hindus, as spiritualists, explain it by the conscious efforts of individual souls, and the materialistic school of evolutionists, by a hereditary physical transmission. The schools which hold to the theory of creation out of nothing, are entirely out of court....


It is thus that the doctrine of reincarnation assumes an infinite importance to our mind, for the fight between reincarnation and mere cellular transmission is, in reality, the fight between spiritualism and materialism. If cellular transmission is the all-sufficient explanation, materialism is inevitable, and there is no necessity for the theory of a soul. If it is not a sufficient explanation, the theory of an individual soul bringing into this life the experiences of the past is as absolutely true. There is no escape from the alternative, reincarnation or materialism. Which shall we accept?[73]


(To accept the theory of reincarnation did not, of course, mean to deny the hereditary transmission of certain tendencies. In his lecture in Brooklyn on December 30, Swamiji had explained this point. He is reported as having said: "We cannot deny that bodies inherit certain tendencies, but those tendencies only mean the physical configuration through which a peculiar mind alone can act in a peculiar way.... A soul with a certain tendency will take birth in a body which is the fittest instrument for the display of that tendency, by the laws of affinity.")[74]


Swamiji wrote his third article of this New York period in May in response to a request that he contribute to a discussion that was being carried on in the New York Morning Advertiser. "Is the Soul Immortal!?" was the question, and a number of illustrious thinkers were asked to present their views. Among the invited contributors, aside from Swamiji, were Dr. Charles August Briggs, then America's leading theologian; Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, President of Brown University; Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, a well-known author; Cardinal Gibbons; Bishop John P. Newman; and Professor Max Muller. Swamiji's article was introduced with the words:


The main discussion is continued to-day by Swami Vivekananda, the learned and thoughtful Hindu. He argues that there can be no annihilation of the soul, with picturesque force.[75]


Swamiji's article, the force of which was, one thinks, more eloquent and logical than picturesque, has been republished in volume four of the Complete Works under the title "Is the Soul Immortal?" It was short and concise, and though every word of it was of importance (as was always so with his words, written or spoken], let us quote from it here only briefly:


Now the problem resolves itself into this dilemma: either the whole universe is a mass of never-ceasing change and nothing more, irrevocably bound by the law of causation, not one particle having a unity of itself, yet is curiously producing an ineradicable delusion of permanence and freedom, or, there is in us and in the universe something which is permanent and free, showing that the basal constitutional belief of the human mind [that we are immortal and free] is not a delusion....


. . . Any explanation that wants to overlook the fact of this persistent and all-necessary idea of freedom commits the . . . mistake of denying a portion of the fact in order to explain the rest and is, therefore, wrong. The only other alternative possible, then, is to acknowledge, in harmony with our nature, that there is something in us which is free and permanent.


. . . It is not the body; neither is it the mind .... But beyond this momentary sheathing of gross matter, beyond even the finer covering of the mind is the Atman, the true Self of man, the permanent,the ever free.  It is his freedom that is percolating through layers of thought and matter, and in spite of the colourings of name and form, is ever asserting its unshackled existence. It is his deathlessness, his bliss, his peace, his divinity, that shines out and makes itself felt in spite of the thickest layers of ignorance. He is the real man, the fearless one, the deathless one, the free.


. . . This Being, this Atman, this real Self of man, the free, the unchangeable, is beyond all conditions, and as such, it has neither birth nor death.[76] pg 63 in book

“I am very happy now,” Swamiji had written to Mrs. Bull in his letter of February 14, in which he had declined with thanks her offer of help. “Between Mr. Landsberg and me, we cook some rice and lentils or barley and quietly eat it, and write something or read or receive visits from poor people who want to learn something, and thus I feel am more a Sannyasin now than I ever was in America.[77]


A meal of “rice and lentils or barley” was a great relief to Swamiji. In the first half of February he had attended a number of dinner parties, some of which may have been given in his honor by Miss Corbin’s “long-pocket” friends. In a letter written to Mrs. Hale on February 18, he tells a little of these unavoidable occasions and of much else besides. We have earlier quoted several passages from this long and informative  letter but since it has not been heretofore published as a whole, it is given here in full:


54 W• 33• Newyork [sic]
The 18th March [February] 95

Dear Mother

I am sure you are all right by this time. The babies write from time to time and so I get your news regularly, Miss Mary is in a lecturing mood now, good for her. Hope she will not let her energies fritter away now—a penny saved is a penny gained. Sister Isabell has sent me the French Books and the Calcutta pamphlets have arrived but the big Sanskrit books ought to come. I want them badly. Make them payable here if possible or I will send you the postage.


I am doing very well. Only some of these big dinners kept me late and I returned home at 2 o'clock in the morning several days. Tonight I am going to one of these. This will be the last of its kind. So much keeping up the night is not good for me. Every day from 11 to 1 o'clock I have classes in my rooms and I talk [to] them till they [grow] tired. The Brooklyn course ended yesterday. Another lecture I have there next Monday.


Bean soup and rice or barley is now my general diet. I am faring well. Financially I am making the ends meet and nothing more because I do not charge anything for the classes I have in my rooms. And the public lectures have to go through so many hands.


I have a good many lectures planned ahead in New York which I hope to deliver by and by. Sister Isabel wrote to me a beautiful letter and she does so much for me. My eternal gratitude to her.


Baby [Harriet McKindley, youngest of the "sisters" ?] has stopped writing. I do not know why.


Kindly tell baby to send me a little Sanskrit book which came from India. I forgot to bring it over. I want to translate some passages from it.


Mr. Higgins is full of joy. It was he who planned all this for me and he is so glad that everything succeeded so well.

Mrs. Gurnsey is going to give up this house and going to some other house. Miss [Florence] Gurnsey wants to marry but her father and mother does not like it at all. I am very sorry for her, poor “Sister Jenny”*(15) and so many men are after her. Here is a very rich railway gentleman called Mr Corbin, his only daughter Miss Corbin is very much interested in me. And though she is one of the leaders of the 400, she is very intellectual and spiritual too in a way. Their house is always choke full of swells & foreign aristocracy. Princes & Barons & what not from all over the world. Some of these foreigners are very bright. I am sorry your home-manufactured aristocracy is not very interesting. Behind her parlor she has a long arbour with all sorts of palms & seats & electric light. There I will have a little class next week of a score of long-pockets. The Fun is not bad. “This world is a great humbug after all” Mother. “God alone is real everything else is a dream only.” Mother temple [Mrs. James Matthews, a married sister of Mr. Hale’s] says she does not like to be bossed by you and that is why she does not come to Chicago. She is very happy nearby. Between Swells and Delmonico & Waldorf dinners my health was going to be injured. So I quickly turned a thorough vegetarian to avoid all invitations. The rich are really the salts of this world—they are neither food nor drink. Goodbye for the present.

Your ever affectionate Son[78]
Vivekananda


It is small wonder that Swamiji began to avoid all dinner invitations. A dinner party in the 1890s was a formidable affair, particularly at ultra-fashionable places like the Waldorf Hotel and Delmonico's restaurant (then on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street). The menus at either place would have been elaborate, rich, and endless. But even if the food had been moderately simple, Swamiji, sannyasin that he was, would have much preferred home-cooked lentils and rice to dining out; moreover, he enjoyed the company of his disciple, at least at first.


To judge from Swamiji's letters written in February and March, his life with Landsberg had started out harmoniously, and one can think of few greater blessings than to have been in Landsberg's shoes. But was the blessing too great? Perhaps in the spiritually rarefied and vibrant atmosphere that Swamiji created around himself, no one other than his own brother disciples could easily live at close quarters with him week after week. In any event, Landaberg's nerves appear to have grown more taut than usual. "May I suggest," Mrs. Bull wrote to him around April 11, "that if you will not permit yourself to expect prejudice, you will meet all in a gentler mood yourself? Sometimes you seem very forbidding & dictatorial--a spirit you do not cherish. Your nervousness is physical & from physical causes, and if you wilt not permit yourself to think others are opposed to you because of race or religion, you will carry with you the calm love of God and man that the Swami has taught us all. When your face radiates this you have a dignity and sweetness and help all. And you will know that he never means to wound. You spoke to me of words that had hurt you, but is it not the least of our duty to remember only the gentleness and generosity of his great heart that beats with love and gives itself in service to God and man as we know?{79]


In reply, Landsberg wrote on April 14 a many-paged letter in a fine Spencerian hand, pouring out his heart, recounting his grievances, and justifying the action he was about to take. One difficulty had been the matter of eating at home.


As to the little "family brawls" we had with regard to the cooking [he wrote], I lost my patience not on account  of the work which I had to perform, but because I regarded it as unworthy of men of spiritual aspirations to waste the greatest part of their time with thinking and speaking of eating, preparing and cooking the food, and washing dishes, while the frugal meals required by a Yogi could be had quicker and cheaper in any restaurant. We need not look far for the cause of my nervousness; I only wonder that this "doing our own cooking" suggested by some evil demon, did not land me in the lunatic asylum.[80]


Swamiji bore his disciple's outbursts with equanimity. "The one with whom he lived had a violent temper," Sister Christine was to write in her Memoirs (and one cannot think who this could have been if not Landsberg). " 'Why do you live with him?' someone asked. 'Ah,' he replied, 'I bless him. He gives me the opportunity to practice self-control.'[81] The cooking problem was the least of Landsberg's grievances. "This trouble, too, past [sic] by," he continued in his letter of April 14, "not, however, without aggravating the already strained relations between me and the Swami."


Reading this letter—both what is written and what lies between those meticulously penned lines--one tends to think with Mrs. Bull that the problem was indeed Landsberg himself: Although his hypersensitive temperament did not in the least conceal from Swamiji a sincerely generous, affection starved, and deeply devout soul, it seems in those early New York days to have antagonized almost everyone else. To quote further from his long letter to Mrs. Bull is perhaps the best way to relate what took place during his stay with Swamiji; we have, in fact, no other account of it:


It is not my rule to excuse my conduct before the world [he began]. I act to the best of my knowledge of what is right, and the praise or blame of men leaves me entirely indifferent. It is my fate to be misjudged. However good, noble, and unselfish my motives I know that they will be  interpreted as bad, mean and selfish, and so I have learned to be satisfied with the verdict of my own conscience.


If, now, I attempt to set myself aright in your opinion it is because you are the only woman, nay, the only person I have met with in my life for whom I have felt the greatest respect and admiration on account of your nobility of soul and the purity and unselfishness of all your motives...


I stand alone in the world. Father and mother are long dead. No wife or child that make life worth living and spurs us to restless action! Money, name, and fame, no more entice and snare my soul with vain visions. Ambition wherewith the mind deludes itself has vanished with the realization of the vanity of its objects. . . . But it is in our nature to love something, and so, when I met the Swami . . he became to me the object of divine worship. My whole being was absorbed in his personality and work: no thought but for his happiness, no aspiration but for his grandeur, no effort but for his cause....


Thin devotion to my master should not be in vain. You know how the organization started with great flourish of trumpets for the propagation of the Swami's teachings proved a miserable failure. President, Vice President, Secretary and all the rat's tail of trustees and committees did not draw one soul into the camp of the holy cause. Then the Swami and I went to work. Our only reliance was the Lord, our only means to work with our strong and inflexible will to make New York a center for the propagation of His truth. And-needless to tell you the result, since you yourself have attended the large classes that had sprung up within a few weeks I do not write you all this in order to boast with the success that accompanied my efforts but to simply state the fact that my association with the Swami was not detrimental to our cause, . . . that all the later reproaches made as to my being unfit for this work are not based upon fact but excuses to hide—uncharitableness.


But the happy state of my mind resulting from the progress of our work should not last long. To my surprise I found that I had made many enemies, enemies of the very people whom I myself had first initiated into the Swami's teachings. There did not pass a day when the Swami did not report to me, "Mrs. so and so does not like you, Mr. so and so hates you, Miss so and so has become your enemy." In vain did I try to find out the cause of this enmity springing up against me on all sides. I was not aware of having willfully wronged or hurt any one of all those who though assuring me of their eternal friendship nevertheless nourished such bad feelings against me. First I did not care what the Swami said people spoke about me, For knowing my pure motives I came only to realize the truth of the words in Luke: "Blessed are those who make enemies"; but finally it occurred to me that my presence might prevent some prejudiced people of learning of the Swami's glad tidings. Should I stand in the way of a soul that wanted to approach the Lord? God forbid! rather would I suffer a hundred hells.... And so I made up my mind to withdraw from the movement. But the Swami would not listen to my thousand and one arguments in favor of my withdrawal, and besides he was so helpless that I had not the heart to leave him. And so I stayed, resolving to keep afar from all those persons to whom my presence might give offense....


But now arose a new trouble, .a trouble caused by our very friends and those who were sincerely interested in the Swami's work. You will find that most of our troubles are caused by our friends. After the Swami and I, single handed, had succeeded in awakening here a wide spread interest in the Yoga philosophy, there came the advisers with their schemes how to improve things. They could not accuse me of insincerity, a lack of devotion, or neglect in the performance of my duties, but—but—and with these "buts" they poisoned his mind and made his life unbearable. On the one hand he was loth of offending his friends by refusing to listen to their advice, on the other hand it pained him to wound the feelings of his disciple whom he loved and whose sincerity he had tested. He became nervous, and not knowing how to get out the dilemma, he threw the whole work overboard. On Saturday morning [April 13] he left. He intended to go to Mr. Legget's, but then he told me he would go to Chicago. Where he has gone and how long he will stay away I know not. He left without telling me even good bye. He left no instructions about his letters, his classes. May be he will write to you about his plans for the future.


As to myself I have now determined to break once for all my relations to him. Not that I bear any grudge to him, but in the interest of the peace of our souls, in the interest of the cause it is necessary that I keep away from him. Though loving him, I shall flee his presence as if he were my greatest enemy. From to--day I am non-existent for him or his friends. I shall sink back into the oblivion from which he has dragged me; no more enemies, abuses and humiliations, again I shall stand in the world alone! In my solitary life I shall always remember you with gratitude. You have been so kind to me—God bless you! You alone were able to discover under the crudeness of my appearance a soul worthy of your sympathy and friendship. You have made a good karma.


All in all, it seems clear that Swamiji had done his best to admonish his disciple, but it is not likely that he told him, except perhaps as a last resort, that certain members of the class disliked him. Nor, of course, was it true that he "threw the whole work overboard." Swamiji does, however, seem to have been seeking to resolve the unpleasant situation at Thirty third Street. One solution to this problem (and perhaps to others as well) was for him (not Landsberg) to move to different quarters. We learn a few detail of a proposed move at this time from the letters of Elizabeth L. Hamlen to Mrs. Bull. Miss Hamlen, whose name Swamiji spelled Hamlin, was helping him at Mrs. Bull's instructions and in her employ. She seems to have been a rather simple and unremarkable young lady, effusive, eager to be liked, and apt to be misunderstood in her frequent protestations of sincerity. But Miss Hamlen meant well and worked conscientiously at the task assigned to her. As far as one can make out, her primary duties were those of public-relations secretary and door keeper at Swamiji's Monday and Saturday classes. (Miss Waldo was in charge on Wednesdays.) She took down the names and addresses of all who came, seated them, kept an eye on them, wrote and mailed scores of notices when necessary (telephones were a rarity), helped Miss Waldo, and out of money given to her for the purpose by Miss. Bull, paid for the printing of tickets, the renting of chairs and stools, the purchase of "writing material, paper, postal cards and stamps." ("If it weren't for your fifty dollars," she would write to Mrs. Bull during Swamiji's absence in April, "I could not even now do what must be done to hold S.V. together here.") In addition, she persistently gave Swamiji advice in regard to the social aspect of his work, an aspect about which he cared, as We have seen earlier, leas than nothing.


Miss Hamlen was herself neither wealthy nor socially prominent; yet apparently she knew New York and had connections among the city's "best people." She lived modestly with her widowed and impoverished mother and made ends meet by taking whatever ladylike job offered itself. At first, she accepted money from Mrs. Bull for assisting at Swamiji's classes, but later she refused. "I can not take any money to work for this spirituality," she wrote to her benefactress on the evening of April 9. "It was all right for the Lectures t[he "secular" lectures?], but now I can not." In this same letter she told Mrs. Bull of Swamiji's intended move from 54  Thirty-third Street to another and far more acceptable neighborhood.


[In the late morning of April 9] I went to 33 St. and found two friends [Swamiji and Landsberg on good terms with one another?]. My opinion is that this understanding of his friend has made the Swami more practical. He wishes Prof: (Landsberg) to be his personal friend, and a member of classes, and he is glad to have Miss Waldo and me work as we think beat.


[In other words, Landsberg was no longer to function as Swamiji'a assistant. "I am so glad the Swami and Prof. Landsberg are good friends," Miss Hamlen would write to Mrs. Bull two days later, "and that Prof: L. is not to be annoyed by class arrangements which his nervous constitution can not endure. "]


He [Swamiji) was lovely to me. We went to call on Dr and Mrs Moore at one o'clock and he talked beautifully, and they did. He will go there to live.


But we must find a class room west of Madison Avenue, and a little larger than the room at 33 St. Then we went to see Mrs. Guernsey and saw her and the Doctor and they approve our plan, and are glad he is to be at Dr. Moore's. Dr Moore was making bread, so he will invite the Swami to make his kind of bread.


I walked down with the Swami to 33 St. and then rode home (to 120 West Sixteenth Street). It is all right, and I am tired and glad. Tomorrow (Wednesday) Miss Waldo will be [in attendance] at the Class, and I will look for a Class room (between 40th and 50th State).... The Swami said he had told Prof. L. to stay in his present room and he will pay the two dollars extra. I think that is fair, as Prof. L. has done and will do a great deal for the Swami.[82]


Thus it was(or thus it seemed) that on Tuesday, April 9, Swamiji's change of quarters and classroom to a fashionable  neighborhood was settled to everyone's satisfaction. But Swamiji was not bound by plans. The next day he announced that he was not moving to the Moores', that he was leaving town, that there would be no classes on the following Saturday. And on Saturday he left, to return, he thought, on Monday. "I am going away to the country tomorrow to see Mr. Leggett for a few days," he wrote to Mrs. Bull on Friday. "A little fresh air will do me good, I hope. I have given up the project of removing from this house just now, as it will be too expensive, and moreover it is not advisable to change just now. I am working it up slowly." It would seem clear from the rest of this letter that on Tuesday the ninth, walking down the Avenue with Swamiji, Miss Hamlen had talked too much. Indeed, she was to tell Mrs. Bull that she had made "many suggestions" to him before he went away "about seeing people." "The only 'right sort of people' are those whom the Lord sends, " he now thundered, "that is what I understand in my life's experience. They alone can and will help me. As for the rest, Lord help them in a mass and save me from them.... Truce to this 'right sort of presentation.' Thou art my right, Thou my wrong, my Shiva.'[83]


Swamiji would be away from New York for ten days, but it had not been to escape from Miss Hamlen's advice, or, for that matter, from Landsberg's temper, that he had left town. The explanation was simple enough: he was tired to the point of exhaustion, and he had received an invitation from Mr. Francis H. Leggett to spend the Easter holidays at his country place in the Hudson River Valley, eighty miles or so above New York. One might say that Swamiji jumped at this god-sent chance for rest and peace. He had been working steadily for many months—in December in Cambridge, in January in Chicago, in February, March, and a part of April in New York, not to speak of his five public lectures and possibly many classes in Brooklyn during this period.*(16) Nor were the conditions under which he worked always healthful. "I know the [New York class] lectures in those close rooms were very exhausting," Miss Hamlen would write on April 19, "and I do not like the Restaurant food for the Swami." (Landsberg had evidently won out, for a time at least, in respect to the cooking.) Indeed, Swamiji sorely needed "a little fresh air." "He worked continually and faithfully; ' Mrs. Bull wrote to Mary Hale in April, a few days after he had left town, "his lectures requiring on his part reading and careful thought "


His teaching in class [she continued] was so clear and gentle in spirit that I felt it to be perhaps the best of all his work. It has served to call together earnest people among those who came to him, and I hope that a center of work for him in this country may be the permanent result of it all. He is tired now, but rest will soon make all the positive good apparent to him. The real character of the man and his work are now known to many and at any time [his work] may be resumed, as there are those who would always gladly welcome and assist him.... All who know him love the beauty of his life and he brings with him the realization of all good and noble endeavor Godward.[84]


Mrs. Bull also wrote to Miss Hamlen, evidently explaining to her that Swamiji did not wish to be advised about the best people. "What a child he is!" Miss Hamlen replied on Tuesday April 16, and continued:


A wonderful teacher—inspired—and a boy combined. I said so last Tuesday [April 9] to him when he was so beautiful to me. I told him I could only explain my desire to help him in this stranger land, as coming from my care-taking of a younger brother.... I am trying to keep the 33 St. Class people, and have written to them all that I will notify them what day the Swami will recommence classes. He did not return today, so I feel his return is indefinite. But his rooms at 33 St. are waiting for him....He does not understand our point of view, our "best society"-and he does not trust my judgement, although he seemed to accept me for what I am both on Sunday the 7th and on Tuesday the 9th when we were together.[85]


Before long, Miss Hamlen learned Swamiji's address and at once wrote to him, "asking him if I could send hie letters to him or do anything about 33 St. for him." "And I told him," she continued in a letter to Mts. Bull, "how satisfied I am with the class work as a corner stone of a larger work in New York.'[86]


As for Landsberg, he moved to a lodging house at 228 West Thirty-ninth Street on Friday, April 19. "I would have removed sooner," he wrote to Mrs. Bull, "but my weeks rent was paid in advance, and I could not well afford to pay rent twice.'[87] He was instantly happy. "Again I am alone, " he wrote, "and after the moral tempest that shook my soul to its very foundation, I am regaining the calm and peace which had fled me for such a long time. Again I feel myself carried by a spiritual wave, again after a long period of spiritual death, my soul is reborn to a higher life. . . . Yes, I shall preach and teach the Lord.'[88]


He had a small following, which included, for a time at least, Miss Ellen Waldo, "a soul filled with love of God and all mankind." (Miss Waldo had, it would seem, been momentarily upset by Swamiji's prolonged absence. "Miss Waldo is serene again, evidently," Miss Hamlen would write to Mrs. Bull on April 24, "and very sorry for the Swami's exhaustion etc.' She is a very good woman to do work in regular classes.")[89] Among Landsberg's followers was also, he wrote, "Friedberg, my faithful disciple.... and a few other gentlemen, lawyers and physicians, whose materialism I succeeded to supplant by true religious devotion. They will meet in my room once a week.... Of course we shall select an evening that will not interfere with the Swami's classes; for needless to say—I shall always direct to the Swami as to the master from whose treasure house of divine knowledge I picked up but a few precious jewels.[90]


On the bright side, Landsberg returned to Mrs. Bull a check she had sent to him for his personal use. It was not that he did not need the money; though he earned a salary from his job with the Tribune, it was small, and he gave most of it to those who had less than he. He had true compassion for the poor and very little care for his own physical comfort, and for these qualities alone Swamiji would have cherished him.

6

Swamiji was surely relieved to get away from the noisy and soot-filled city into the country, green and blossoming with spring. His host, Mr. Leggett, was a prosperous New York businessman, president of a high-quality wholesale grocery firm, which he and an elder brother had founded in their youth in 1861. Ordinarily totally absorbed in his business, he had at the time of our story a second interest—the beautiful, recently widowed Besse MacLeod Sturges, whom he was courting, and it was through her that he had met Swamiji. The circumstances of the meeting were told by Josephine MacLeod in her memoirs.


After relating how she and her sister started coming to Swamiji’s classes in late January, Miss MacLeod continued:


I heard him all that winter, three days a week, mornings at eleven o’clock. I never spoke to him, but as we were so regular in coming, two front seats were always kept for us in this sitting room of the Swamiji. One day he turned and said, “Are you sisters?” “Yes,” we answered. Then he said, “Do you come very far?” We said, “No, not very far—about thirty miles up the Hudson.”* (17) “So far? That is wonderful.” Those were the first words I ever spoke to him.[91]


They had kept their discovery of this godlike man a secret, telling no one where it was they went three mornings a week. “Don’t you recall ho we hid Swamiji all that first few weeks even from Francey [Mr. Leggett]?[92] Josephine MacLeod wrote years later to her niece Alberta. But Swamiji could not be hid for long. Miss MacLeod continues in her memoirs:


We never spoke to [Swamiji], had nothing much to do with him; but during that spring we were dining one night [at the Waldorf, as she told it another time] with Mr. Francis H. Leggett, who later became my brother-in-law. “Yes, we can dine with you but we cannot spend the evening with you,” we had told him. “Very well,” he answered, “just dine with me.” When dinner was over, he said, “Where are you going this evening?” We told him we were going to a lecture; and he asked, “Mayn’t I come?” We said, “Yes.” He came, he listened; and when it was over, he went up to Swamiji, shook hands with him and said, “Swami, when will you dine with me?” And it was he who introduced us to Swami socially.[93]


This must have occurred shortly before Mr. Leggett invited Swamiji to his country home, Ridgely, along with Miss MacLeod, Besse Sturges, and the latter’s two children Alberta, eighteen, and Hollister, sixteen. Swamiji was to leave New York on April 11 but owing to a mix-up, his date of departure was postponed to the thirteenth. On the eleventh he had a class at the home of a Miss Andrews at 40 West Ninth Street. “As I was given to understand by Miss MacLeod that that class could be postponed, I was only too glad at the prospect of joining the company tomorrow,” he wrote to Mr. Leggett on April 10. “But I find that Miss MacLeod was mistaken and Miss Andrews came to tell me that she could not by any means stop the class tomorrow or even give notice to the members, who are about 50 or 60 in number.'[94] (this mention of a class at Miss Andrews’s, which must have been one of a series, is, at present, our only information about it.)


The country estate that Mr. Leggett named Ridgely had been purchased by him in 1892 as a place of recreation for himself and his friends. Although the property already had a number of houses on it, he had built not only the spacious and hospitable "Manor," but the "Casino " a large playhouse equipped with bowling alleys, space for gymnastics, and adjacent tennis courts. The landscaping of Ridgely was still in embryo in 1895; many of the trees that would later be tall and spreading were mere saplings and the shrubs and flower beds hardly visible. The house had the bare look of newness; but the countryside was wooded, old, and lovely, and to the north in the not-too-far distance were the rolling Catskill Mountains.


This was Swamiji's first visit to Ridgely; the second would take place at Christmas of the same year, when Miss MacLeod . and the children would be away is Europe; and the third, longest, and most memorable, in the late summer of 1895, when he would spend there ten golden weeks.*(18) Of this first stay very little is definitely known; Swamiji wrote no letters to New York or Cambridge (and left no address). Through the grapevine, however, word reached Miss Hamlen of his exact whereabouts and his state of health. On April 16 Jehanghir Cola, returning to New York from, presumably, Ridgely, reported to Miss Mary Phillips that Swamiji "had been really ill" during his first days in the country. A few days after relaying this information to Mrs. Bull, Miss Hamlen wrote " to her, "I saw Mrs. Guernsey Saturday [April 20] . . . and they had a letter from Mr. Francis H. Leggett (who is a patient of Dr Guernsey) expressing his pleasure to have with him among other guests, the Swami Vivekananda, and that the ! Swum was enjoying himself since he had recovered from his illness and prostration. I think the letter was written on Friday.'[95]It was probably in connection with this much needed vacation that two stories were told in later years by Miss MacLeod, both of which illustrate Swamiji's recovery his rested, relaxed, and playful mood. They come down to us not through her reminiscences, but through the swamis at Belur Math to whom she told them.


The first (of which there are two versions) concerns some lively acrobatics performed by Swamiji and his host, who were, clearly, getting along famously. One day Miss MacLeod opened the door of Mr. Leggett's study (which she thought unoccupied) and had a fleeting vision of Francis Leggett flying (literally, she thought) through the air and landing with a crash on the floor and of Swamiji lying on his back, his feet aloft, trouser legs fallen to his knees. Then with a bound Swamiji jumped up, straightened his clothes, and in a severe tone rebuked the female intruder. "This is a man's drawing room! Why did you not knock?" Then, after a pause, during which Miss MacLeod ad nothing to say, he laughed. "Come, Joe," he said, "let us pick up what is left of Francis." Swamiji had, of course, been balancing Mr. Leggett on his feet, and because his trouser legs had fallen back to the knees and because this was the prim 1890s, he had instantly sent his host flying and jumped up, all in one motion, at the unexpected appearance of a woman."


In the other version of the same incident (or might it have been another incident altogether?) Miss MacLeod and her sister came upon Swamiji and Mr. Leggett in the "Casino" engaged in acrobatics, no doubt in their shirt sleeves, trousers rolled up. The women, caught watching, were sent away by the outraged men. "They were making peacocks of themselves," Miss MacLeod disdainfully remarked years later.[97]


The second story was about Swamiji's first spectacular try at golf, which almost certainly took place during thin Easter vacation (rather than during the summer of 1899, when he would also play golf at Ridgely). One day he went for a walk with Hollister on Mr. Leggett's private and well-kept nine hole golf course. Seeing a small flag at a distance, Swamiji, not knowing the game, asked, "Why that flag flutters there?" Hollister explained the procedure and went to get a club and ball in order to demonstrate it. Returning, he told Swamiji that par for that particular hole was four, and seven or eight for beginners. Swamiji smiled. "I will make you a bet," he said. "I shall put the ball in the hole with one stroke. " Hollister produced fifty cents, Swamiji took a dollar from his pocket. At this point Mr. Leggett appeared and asked what these two were plotting. Being told, he informed Swamiji that what he proposed was an impossibility even for good players. "What is your bet?" Swamiji said. Mr. Leggett took a ten dollar bill from his wallet, and the bet was made. Swamiji told Hollister to stand by the hole—not too close. Hollister took his position, Swamiji pulled up the sleeves of his robe, looked intently at the Hag, and swung at the ball. It entered the hole.

When Mr. Leggett was able to speak, he said, "Has your yoga got something to do with it, Swami?"


"I don't use yoga for so trifling a thing, " Swamiji replied. "What I did I will tell you in two sentences. First, I measured the distance by sight, and I know the strength of my biceps. Second, I told my mind that I would be richer by ten dollars and a half. And then I swung.'[98]


And there was the time at Ridgely—an incident not related by Miss MacLeod, but by Hollister—when the young boy walked by Swamiji's closed bedroom door and heard peals of laughter coming from the room. When Swamiji emerged later, Hollister asked, "Whom were you talking to?" "I was alone in meditation," Swamiji said. "But what was all that laughter about?" Hollister persisted. And after a pause to recall his laughter in meditation, Swamiji replied, "Oh, God is so funny!'[99]


After witnessing at an impressionable age a Variety of such incidents taking place casually every day, indeed after knowing Swamiji at all, one would ever afterward believe in him—and in God. Hollister would never be much given to metaphysical thinking, but years later when he was asked by his young son what he thought about certain philosophical questions, he replied, "I've never thought about them, really, but I know there is a God because Swamiji told me so.'[100]


The young Hollister, of whom Swamiji was later to say, “I never saw a sweeter boy,'[101] had been entranced and perhaps awed by this monk who shot a hol ein one and laughed with God. The businessman, Mr. Leggett, was equally impressed, but in a different way. “Vivekananda is the greatest man I ever saw,” he remarked shortly after this Ester Vacation, and when someone asked him why, he replied, “He has more common sense than anyone I’ve ever known.'[102] In a man-to-man gesture, he sent Swamiji a box of cigars—“a thousand cigars,” Miss Hamlen heard, though one thinks she took the word thousand too literally. On May 4 Swamiji, whose six weeks of non-smoking were well up, wrote a note of thanks from New York:


Dear Friend,

Many thanks for your kind present. The cigars are indeed delicious and a hundred times so as coming from you.

With everlasting love and regards,

I remain yours truly,[103]
Vivekananda 

7

Swamiji returned to his lodgings in New York on April 23 and found Landsberg gone. But he had only blessings for his disciple. “The trip did me good,” he wrote to Mrs. Bull, “and I enjoyed the country and the hills, especially Mr. Leggett’s country-house in New York State. Poor Landsberg has gone from this house. Neither has he left me his address. May the Lord bless Landsberg wherever he goes! He is one of the few sincere souls I have had the privilege in this life to come across. All is for good. All conjunctions are for subsequent disjunction. I hope I shall be perfectly able to work alone. The less help from men, the more from the Lord!'[104]

But Swamiji’s New York work did require helpers. Even during his absence he had, as Miss Hamlen put it, “to be held together.” Dutifully, she had written in her flowing hand to  all the class members in both New York and Brooklyn, letting them know that there would be no class on Saturday, April 13. She sent out fifty or more letters again in regard to the Monday class, and on Tuesday she wrote to everyone yet again, assuring them this last time that she would inform them when the classes would reopen. Miss Hamlen did her best to push Swamiji to success. She never understood, she had no way of understanding, that her concepts of success were meaningless vis-a-vis his work. Nor could he brook them.

Replying to his letter of April 23, Mrs. Bull seems to have put in a good word for Miss Hamlen and her services. Swamiji answered at once:

Taking down names and giving notices is a big task, no doubt, and I am very thankful to both [Mr. Landsberg and Miss Hamlen] for doing that for me. But I am thoroughly persuaded that it is laziness on my part, and therefore immoral, to depend on others and always evil comes out of laziness. So henceforth I am doing and will do it all myself and thus avoid all further disturbance to others and to myself..... After all, though I am very, very grateful to the young lady, Miss Hamlin, for the great hope and encouragement she gave me of introducing me to the “right sort of New Yorkers” and for the practical help she has given me, I think I had better do my little work with my own hands. It is nothing yet to seek others’ help. It is only a very very small bit of work.

Continuing in a sterner tone, he reminded Mrs. Bull that he would work in his own way, accepting help and advice only from a very few, whom he himself would choose:

Through the mercy of Ramakrishna, my instinct “sizes up” almost infallibly a human face as soon as I see it, and the result is this: you may do anything you please with my affairs, I will not even murmur;--I will be only too  glad to take Miss Farmer's advice, in spite of ghosts and spooks. Behind the spooks I see a heart of immense love.... Even I will allow Landsberg to "monkey" with my affairs from time to time; but here I put a full stop. Help from any other persons besides these frightens me. That is all I can say. Not only for the help you have given me, but from my instinct (or, as I call it, inspiration of my Master), I regard you as my mother and will always abide by any advice or command you may have for me--but only personally. When you select a medium, I will beg leave to exercise my choice. That is all.[105]

And so Miss Hamlen lost her job. Her first knowledge of Swamiji's return to New York came to her by way of a plain postcard (in itself offensive to her) from Miss Waldo. Dated April 23, it read:

You will be pleased to know that the Swami has returned and will hold a class tomorrow as usual. He asked me to notify the members of the classes, so as I fortunately had the list of the Wed. class [of which she had charge], that you sent me last week, I was able to do so. If you will kindly let me have the lists of the Sat. & Mon. classes, I will send them postals too. I will be over early tomorrow morning.

Yours sincerely, 
S.E.W.

But Miss Hamlen had had an agreement with Miss Waldo about the notices, and she meant to carry out her part of it. She replied to her ("on a postal out of respect to myself," she told Mrs. Bull) as follows:

8 p.m. April 24th

I will send notices by Thursday evening's mail (as I agreed) to the Class Members of the Saturday morning and evening classes, and the Monday morning class, that those classes will meet again—and I will then send to 33 St. the complete lists I have made of all class members.

Thanks for the papers, and I will send the money due.
Yours truly, 
E.L..H.

There it ended. “Do not think I am discouraged,” she wrote in her letter to Mrs. Bull. “I am amused by Miss W., so good, and so----- -!! To let herself be rude to me!'[106] Amused, perhaps. More likely broken-hearted. But Miss Waldo had had her orders from Swamiji, and there had been no way to soften that blow.

Miss Hamlen took it valiantly. “I have sent the notices ‘as I agreed,’” she wrote to Mrs. Bull on April 26, “and will send the Class list book to 33 St. tomorrow morning.*(18) But if Miss Farmer or Miss Thursby go to the Saturday evening class, I will go also, as I am a member of that class.'[107] In a very real sense, though perhaps unaware of it, she won a victory. “I saw Miss H. subjected to a test which few women could stand and she came out pure gold,” Ruth Ellis, who took over Miss Hamlen’s work in Swamiji’s classes, would write later to Mrs. Bull. “I consider myself fortunate in knowing her and having her for a friend.'[108]

I am glad Miss Ellis (140 East 49 St.) is now assisting about the classes at 33 st. [Miss Hamlen wrote to Mrs. Bull on May 4]. She seats the people and attends to the door, etc, and Miss Waldo sits as usual by the Swami, with her note book. The Swami looked well and gave a very good lesson. [And on May 9:] I learn so much more since I sit quietly in a corner and have my mind only on his teaching. The other ladies, Miss Waldo and Miss Ellis, have been to classes since the beginning in January, so I feel conscientious about not working during the class hour.[109]

And Swamiji was "lovely" to Miss Hamlen. "He talked with me when everybody was gone [after the Wednesday morning class],” she wrote happily. "I ate rice with him, and he said he wishes to give me two books. I said no he must not, but he said I must not say any more against a present from him. " And in another letter written on this same day: "What a dear child he is; he is really lovely to me now, and I shall never again let myself seem practical.'[110]

All was well with Landsberg, too—or almost so. He came to see his guru on the evening of May 8 and, according to Miss Hamlen, who heard it from Swamiji, they had a long and good talk together. But it was to be another week or so before the disciple was fully soothed.

After his return from Ridgely, Swamiji wrote two letters to Mrs. Hale. Neither is dated, but their envelopes bear the postmarks, respectively, of April 25 and 26. (It is, incidentally, clear from both letters that he had had no intention of going to Chicago at this time as Landsberg had thought.) Since neither letter has been heretofore published, both are given here in full.

[April 25]

Dear Mother

I was away a long time in the country. Came back day before yesterday.

I think the summer coat is in chicago. if so will you kindly send it over c/o Miss Phillips 19 W. 38 str New York? It is getting hot here every day

I will remain in New York till the end of May at least.

Hoping you are all in perfect health I remain yours tly[111]

Vivekananda 
54 W. 33. 
New York 
[April 26]

Dear Mother

Perhaps you did not receive my letter asking you to send the Calcutta pamphlets about the Paramhansa Ramkrishna. Kindly send them to me at 54 W. 33. And also the pamphlets about the Calcutta meeting if you have any. Also the summer coat to the care of Miss Phillips 19 W. 38.


As I do not see any probability of my going soon to Chicago—I am thinking of drawing all my money from the Chicago bank to New York. Will you kindly ascertain the exact total amount I have in Chicago? So that I may draw it out at once and deposit it in some New York bank.  


Kindly do these and I will bother you no more. I have written to India long ago about the rugs. I do not know whether Dewanji [Shri Haridas Viharidas Desai, Dewan of Junagadh] is alive or dead. I have no information.


I am all right and will be more than a month yet in Newyork. After that I am going to the Thousand Islands wherever that place may be for a little summer quiet and rest. Mrs. Bagley has been down here to see me and attended several of my classes.


The classes are going on with a boom; almost every day I have one, and they are packed full. But no “money” except they maintain themselves. I charge no fees. Except as the members contribute to the rent & c voluntarily.


It is mostly probable that I will go away this summer. With my love to all Ever gratefully yours[112]

Vivekananda

The light-weight orange robe that Mrs. Hale had had made for Swamiji in Chicago soon arrived, but not so the rugs from  India, which (the previous year) he had asked his good friend the Dewan of Junagadh to send to the Hale family. In a heretofore unpublished postscript to a long letter from Chicago, dated June 20, 1895, Swamiji had written to the Dewan:


P.S. I would ask a favour of you. I am going off now to N.Y. This family [the Hales] have sheltered me all the time and loved me as their—that in spite of the calumny of our countrymen and their own priests and that I came to them without any credentials or introductions or anything of that sort.


I would like to make them a little present—if you can send me some beautiful rugs made in Agra or Lahore—2 or 3 pieces—they are very fond of Indian rugs for their floors. It is a great luxury. There is one difficulty—the Americans allow nothing in without taxing duty. Perhaps the consul at Bombay can make it come free by permitting it as a present to friends—if not you may send them over—I will pay the duty here. If they are too ecpensive, I do not care to have [113]


The rugs were to arrive in America a year later—in June of 1895. Meanwhile, Swamiji seems to have had an uneasy feeling about the Dewan—a premonition perhaps. On May I, 1895, he again wrote to Mrs. Hale:


54 W• 33 Newyork
The 1st of May 1895

Dear Mother

Many many thanks for sending the coat. Now I am well equipped for summer. I am so sorry the rugs could not come before I leave this country. They will come if Dewanji is alive.

I have been out of town a few days and am now come back all right healthy as ever. 

Lord bless you ever & ever for your untiring kindness to me.

Ever Yours grateful Son 
Vivekananda

P.S. The History of Rajasthan [by James Tod, given to him by Mrs. Potter Palmer] I present you and the sachel [sic] to the babies.


Yours[114]
Vivekananda


As Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Hale on April 26, his classes, though flourishing, were bringing only enough money to pay for the rent of the parlor rooms where they were held. Sometimes, as we have seen earlier, they had not brought even this much; and now again the collections fell short. A week later, on May 2, he wrote to Mrs. Bull, "The classes are going on, but I am sorry to say, though the attendance is large, it does not even pay enough to cover the rent. I will try this week and then give up.'[115] But help came. A few days later Swamiji wrote again to Mrs. Bull: "Since writing to you my pupils have come round me with help and the classes will go on nicely now no doubt. I am so glad at it because teaching has become a part of my life, as necessary to my life as eating or breathing."'1" Just as his Master had said. One recalls that less than ten years earlier Swamiji had vehemently declared to Sri Ramakrishna that he would not teach. "Your very bones will do it, '[117] Sri Ramakrishna had replied. And to be sure, his mission as world teacher was now the uppermost reason in his mind for staying in the Western world. On this same date, May 6, he wrote in a letter to Alasinga, "I am to create a new order of humanity here who are sincere believers in God and care nothing for the world. This must be slow, very slow.'[118] But Swamiji's mission was not for a day.


He went on holding classes throughout the month of May, and in order to supplement the contributions of his students, perhaps also to earn a little money for his Madras disciples, whom he was urging to launch an English-language magazine, and, above all, to touch a wider public, he gave more outside Lectures. “I am going to have tow public lectures more in New York in the upper hall of the Mott’s Memorial Building,” he wrote to Mrs. Bull on May 7. “The first one will be on Monday next, on the Science of Religion. The next, on the Rationale of Yoga.[119]


Mott Memorial Hall was an unprepossessing three-story building on Madison Avenue near Twenty-seventh Street and had possibly been selected for Swamiji’s lectures by the Vedanta Society’s vice-president, Dr. Edward G. Day, for it was a renowned medical headquarters. Unfortunately, everything that we known at present about Swamiji’s two lectures in this building is contained in the following announcement, which appeared on May II in the Religious Notices of the New York Herald:


ATTENTION!—The Swami Vivekananda of India will deliver two lectures at Mott Memorial Hall, 64 Madison av., on Monday evenings, May 13 and 20, at 8:15, subjects, “The Science of Religion” and “The Rationale of Yoga.” Course ticket, $I; single tickets, 75 cents; for sale at the hall.


(The same information appeared in a handbill that Miss Phillips, secretary of the Vedanta Society, had had printed. The only copy known to be extant had belonged to Mrs. Bull, who, for her own satisfaction, crossed out a laudatory paragraph, the inclusion of which she considered, perhaps rightly, to be “bad judgment.” Mrs. Bull’s copy, which had been sent to her by Miss Hamlen on May 12, is here reproduced.)


Mrs. Bull was in New York to hear the second of these lectures. In her sporadic diary, Miss Thursby noted on May 15: “Mrs. Bull arrives.'[120] A week later she was back in Cambridge, for on May 23 Landsberg worte one of his interminable letters to her, in which it is clear he had talked with her of his troubles. “Explain [it],” he wrote, “by instinct, intuition or my ardent desire to hear soon from one with whom during the last eight days my mind was constantly occupied—whatever may have been the cause of my expectation . .  . I was as sure that you would write me at your earliest convenience as I was sure of the nobility of your soul and your unselfish love of which you have given me so many marked examples." His letter goes on in this vein at some length; in total sincerity he poured out his gratitude. "I was thirsting my whole life long after a little sympathy, a little love, warm unselfish love, but never could find it. And now you give me all this in abundance, to me a stranger, a tramp, who has done nothing to deserve it.'[121]


Although Landsberg had talked with Swamiji as early as May 8 and had attended a class or two, it was Mrs. Bull who, somehow, in her gentle, sympathetic, and persuasive way had stilled the tumult in his mind and heart. "Just see the effect of your broad unselfish love!" he now wrote to her. "It has calmed the storm that, on account of the recent events, was raging in my soul and stirred it up to its very foundations. It has brought me back, not only to my Guru, but also to God.[122]So it was that Landsberg fully returned, not at this late date to Thirty-third Street, but to Swamiji. Once again he regularly attended his guru's classes, and in this long letter of May 23 he devoted three sentences to them. "The Swami's classes ," he informed Mrs. Bull, "are going on smoothly. Last Wednesday's Class [May 22] for men, in spite of the inclemency of weather, was attended by over twenty persons, lawyers, physicians, clergymen, all men of good moral and mental caliber. I am sure that in next class we will have at least twice this number.'[123] Again, in a letter to Mrs. Bull dated June 4 he wrote, "The classes were closed on Saturday (June I), both here and in Brooklyn, and the Swami's last lectures were permeated with the spirit of his master'[124]—which last phrase he must have picked up from Mrs. Bull herself.


(Of Swamiji's Brooklyn classes we know only that toward the end of January he had given, as mentioned earlier (page 27), two parlor lectures at the residence of a Mrs. Auel,  whose address was 65 Lefferts Place. These may have ban the beginning of a course of classes that continued through May.) While Swamiji may not always have been "sweet," his classes and lectures could not fail to be permeated with the true spirit of his Master-an immense force, of which he had had intimate firsthand knowledge and which had been transmitted to him in full. He was well aware of the incalculably effective spiritual power that flowed through him. Two weeks before the close of his New York classes he summed up the season's work in a letter to Mrs. Hale. "Financially," he wrote, "this winter's work was no success at all. I could barely keep myself up, but spiritually [it was] very great '[125] a Was it not Swamiji's task to infuse the "force" that was Sri Ramakrishna into the underlying spirit of the age, to articulate the two into one tremendous surge toward unity and freedom? Was it not for this that his Master had come to earth and that he himself had come?


In any event, Swamiji's active life was entirely absorbed in the task of applying his Master's message (the full significance of which perhaps he alone understood) to all aspects of Western and Eastern life. Eastern life he well knew; about Western life he never ceased to learn. When he was not holding classes or giving lectures, or granting private interviews, or meditating, he spent much of his time in the study of Western culture and history. Indeed, as a world teacher, he was also a world student; everything pertaining to humanity interested him, and, as always, he read prodigiously, retaining all he read and relating every facet of man's life and thought W spiritual ideals. In the spring of 1895 he was also organizing his work in India by means of long heartening and rousing letters; this period was, in fact, one of intense activity in this regard, and his work of planning, of finding practical solutions to India's complex problems, and of directing and inspiring his brother monks and his disciple, was in itself a stupendous task-one that requires a chapter of its own to do it justice.


But in the midst of furious work, of teaching, studying, writing, carrying on a voluminous correspondence, in the midst of bitter opposition which lasted in some quarters into the spring of 1895,* in the midst of adulation from both those who looked upon him as a "social lion" and those who knew his true worth, he remained always in the blissful repose that asked nothing of and took nothing from the world. He never compromised his message--"What!" he exclaimed, "measure my soul according W what the bond-slaves of the world say? Pooh!'[126]-but his message in its vastness embraced all; he gave everything to everyone, and, with the unstudied precision which is, surely, a quality of grace, he gave to each in the right way at the right time.


He cared nothing for praise and nothing for blame. "No one ever succeeded in keeping society in good humour and at the same time did great works," he had written to Mrs. Bull in March. "One must work as the dictate comes from within, and then if it is right and good, society is bound to veer round, perhaps centuries after one is dead and gone. We must plunge heart and soul and body into the work. And until we be ready to sacrifice everything else to one Idea and to one alone, we never, never will see the Light [127]


As we have seen above, Swamiji's first season of New York classes came to a close on the first of June. He was pleased with the work he had done and the response he had received. "This winter's work in N.Y. was splendid," he was to write to Mary Hale later in the month, "and it may die if I suddenly go over to India, so I am not sure about going to India soon.[128]Indeed as early as May 14 he had written to Alasinga, "Now I have got a hold on New York, and I hope to get a permanent body of workers who will carry on the work when I leave the country. . .


Of course financially it is a failure, but men are more valuable than all the wealth of the world.'[129]


Summer was beginning to press down upon the city; people were leaving for the mountains and seashore, and Swamiji himself longed for rest. Yet more urgent than his need for  an extended vacation was his desire to place his work on a permanent footing. Since many of his students themselves disliked the thought of his classes being discontinued during the summer months, a plan had evolved which made it possible for him to escape from the sweltering city and, at the same time, to train the group of men and women who, he hoped, could eventually carry on his work--a plan which was to result, in any case, in some of the most spiritually fruitful days of his American mission. One of his students, a Miss Dutcher, offered him a cottage that she owned at Thousand Island Park, a small community on one of the "Thousand Islands" in the St. Lawrence River. The house was to be for his own use and that of as many of his students as it would accommodate. Swamiji accepted, agreeing to join at Thousand Island Park any students earnest enough to travel the three hundred miles from New York City.


In the meanwhile, he accepted an invitation from Mr. Francis Leggett to visit his fishing camp in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He left New York on June g, as we learn not only from Landsberg, but from two heretofore unpublished notes that he wrote to Mrs. Bull. The first, partially published elsewhere, was dated May 28; the second, June 4 :


The 28th May'95 

Dear Mother

Your last kind letter to hand. This week will be the last of my classes. I am going next Tuesday with Mr. Leggett to Maine. He has a fine lake and a forest there. I will be two or three weeks there. From thence I go to the Thousand Islands. Also I have an invitation to speak at a parliament of religions at Toronto Canada on July 18th. I will go there from Thousand Islands and return back.


So far everything is going on well with me

Ever your grateful son
Vivekananda

P.S. My regards & love to your daughter and pray for her speedy recovery'[130]

4th June'95 

Dear Mother

Today I leave New York at 5 p. m. by steamer with Mr. Leggett.

The classes were closed on Saturday last [June 1] and so far the work has been very successful, no small part of which is due to you.


Ever praying for you & yours .

I am ever your Son 
Vivekananda

P.S. I will acquaint you with my whereabouts as soon as I know it myself.[131]


ⓘ
[1].Complete Works, 8 :319.
[2].Complete Works, 5:44
[3].Complete Works ,5:63; New Discoveries, p. 538 (2d ed.,p. 601).
[4].Swami Vivekananda to Emma Thursby, January 17, 1895, Emma Thursby Collection, New-York Historical Society.
[5].Rem. (Cornelia Conger), pp. 138-39
[6]. See ref. 3 above.
[7].Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, April 16,1895, SCB.
[8].New York Herald, January 19, 1896.
[9].Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, April 16,1895, SCB.
[10].Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, February 2,1895.
[11].Complete Works, 8:320.
[12].Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, January 21,1895, SCB.
[13].Leon Landsberg to Isabelle McKindley, January 23, 1895, SCB.
[14].Complete Works, 8:333.
[15].See Prophetic Mission-2, chap. 9, sec. 3.
[16].Charles Parkhurst, Our Fight with Tammany, p. 74.
[17].Richard O’Connor, Hell's Kitchen, p. 110
[18].Dr. Egbert Guernsey to Sara Bull, March, 1895, Emma Thursby Collection, New-York Historical Society.
[19].Complete Works, 6:303. (This letter, dated April 11, 1895, in the Complete Works, was actually dated April 12 in the original, RKM, Belur.)
[20].Rem. (S. Ellen Waldo), pp. 12728.
[21]. Notes of Mme Paul Verdier, VSNC.
[22].Rem. (Josephine MacLeod), PP- 235-36.
[23].As related by Swami Vijayananda to Professor Sankari Prasad Basu, January 22, 1968. Professor Basu has kindly made his notes available for use in this book.
[24].Leon Landsberg to Isabelle McKindley, January 26, 1895, VSNC.
[25].Rem. (S. E. Waldo), p. 127.
[26].New York American, 26 May 1907; quoted in Life (1965), pp. 386-87; 5th ed. (1981), 2 : 10—11.
[27].Ella Wheeler Wilcox to Kate Tannatt Woods, May, 1895, VSNC.
[28].Emma Thursby to Sara Bull, February 4 [?], 1895, SCB.
[29].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. George W. Hale, February 18, 1895, Sen. Col.
[30].Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, February 2, 1895, SCB.
[31].Gospel, pp. 968-69.
[32].Complete Works, 5:81. (This quotation is taken from the original letter, RKM, Belur.)
[33].Complete Works, 5 : 82.
[34].Complete Works, p. 70.
[35.Taken from a typed copy of a fragmentary letter written by a member of the Hale family to Swami Vivekananda. The date as given on the copy is February 26, 1895, SN Col.
[36].Complete Works, pp. 70-72 passim. (Parts of this quotation have been taken from an unedited copy of the original, Leg. Col.)
[37].Complete Works, 5 : 72-73. (The wording of this quotation has been taken from an unedited copy of the original, Leg. Col.)
[38].Complete Works, 8 : 162-63.
[39].Complete Works., p. 165.
[40].New York Herald, 3 February 1895.
[41].Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, February 2, 1895, SCB.
[42].Life (1965), p. 339 5th ed. (1981), 2 : 4.
[43].Complete Works pp. 346-47; 5th ed. (1981), 2:11.
[44].P- 339 5 5th ed. (1981), 2:3-4. (See also The Master, p. 384.)
[45].Complete Works, 8 : 346.
[46].Josephine MacLeod to George Montague, ninth earl of Sandwich, January 2, 1936, courtesy of Lady Faith Culme-Seymour, through Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre, England.
[47].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale, February 18, 1895, Sen Col.
[48].Rem. (S. E. Waldo), p. 128.
[49].Complete Works, 8 : 3-23 passim.
[50]. Complete Works, 8 : 20.
[51]. 8:335. (The wording of this passage has been taken from an unedited copy of the original, Leg. Col.)
[52]. Rem. (S. E. Waldo), p. 128.
[53].Prophetic Missions, chap. 13.
[54].Elizabeth L. Hamlen to Sara Bull, March 24, 1895, SCB.
[55].Sister Devamata, “Memories of India and Indians,” Prabuddha Bharata, April 1932, pp. 190-91.
[56].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale, February 18, 1895, Sen Col.
[57].Complete Works, 6 : 299-300.
[58].Complete Works, 6: 300.
[59].See ref. 56 above.
[60].Complete Works, 6 : 302.
[61].Printed Barber House Announcement, SCB.
[62].Complete Works, 6 : 306.
[63].Complete Works., p. 301.
[64].Prophetic Missions, chap. 14, sec. 2. {New Discoveries, 2d ed, pp. 649-56, 667, 671-73.)
[65].Complete Works, 1 : 331.
[66].Complete Works., 1 : 322.
[67].Complete Works1 : 323.
[68].Complete Works 1 : 324.
[69].New York Medical Times, February 1895, pp. 57-58.
[70].Swami Vivekananda to John Henry Wright, February 1, 1895, VSNC.
[71].Complete Works, 4: p 263, 265.
[72].Complete Works, 4: p. 265.
[73].Complete Works 4: p 271.
[74[.Complete Works 2 : 500; New Discoveries, pp. 474-476  (2d ed., pp. 529-31); Prophetic Missions, chapter 13, sec. 1.
[75]. Quoted in the Brahmavadin, September 14, 1895, p. 5.
[76].Complete Works, 4 : 255-56.
[77].Complete Works, 6 : 300.
[78].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale, February 17, 1895, Sen Col.
[79].Sara Bull to Leon Landsberg, April 11 or 12, 1895, draft, SCB.
[80].Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, April 14, 1895, SCB.
[81].Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 203.
[82].Elizabeth L. Hamlen to Sara Bull, April 9, 1895, SCB; bracketed quotation, ibid., April II, 1895.
[83].Complete Works, 6:302-3. (See ref. 19 above.)
[84].Sara Bull to Mary Hale, April 16, 1895, SN Col.
[85]. Elizabeth Hamlen to Sara Bull, April 16, 1895, SCB.
[86].Elizabeth Hamlen to Sara Bull., April 24,1895, SCR
[87].Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, April 17,1895, SCB.
[88].Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, April 19,1895, SCB.
[89].See ref. 86 above.
[90].See ref. 88 above.[91].Rem. (Josephine MacLeod),P-235.
[92].Josephine MacLeod to Alberta Sturges (then Countess of Sandwich), January 25,1927, courtesy of Lady Faith Culme-Seymour, through Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre, England.
[93].Rem. (Josephine MacLeod), p. 236.
[94].Complete Works, 8:334.
[95].Elizabeth Hamlen to Sara Bull, April 24,1895, SCB.
[96].As told by Miss MacLeod to Swami Vijayananda and by him to Professor Sankari Prasad Basu. (See ref. 23 above.)
[97].As told by Miss MacLeod to Swami Ashokananda and others at Mayavati.
[98].See ref. 96 above.
[99].Paul M. Sturges to Swami Chetanananda, November 12, 1972. Also Paul Sturges to the author, October 2,1981.
[100].Paul Sturges to Swami Chetanananda, November 19,1972.
[101].Complete Works, 6:375.
[102].Josephine MacLeod to Mrs. Frances Leggett, 1941, Leg. Col.
[103].Swami Vivekananda to Francis H. Leggett, May 4, 1895, Leg. Col.
[104].Compute Works, 6:309-10. (In the Compute Works this letter is dated June, 1895, but to judge from internal evidence, its correct date is probably April 23, 1895.)
[105].Compute Works, 6:306-7. (A portion of this quotation has been 589 II taken from the original letter, RKM, Belur.)
[106].Miss Waldo’s and Miss Hamlen’s postcards are quoted in Elizabeth Hamlen to Sara Bull, April 24, evening, 1895, SCB.
[107].Elizabeth Hamlen to Sara Bull, April 26, 1895, SCB.
[108].Ruth Ellis to Sara Bull, July, 1895, SCB.
[109].Elizabeth Hamlen to Sara Bull, May 4 and May 9, 1895, SCB.
[110].Elizabeth Hamlen to Sara Bull, ., May 9.
[111].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale, probably April 25, 1895, Sen Col.
[112].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale,probably April 26, 1895.
[113].Swami Vivekananda to Haridas Viharidas Desai, postscript to letter dated June 20, 1894 (Complete Works, 8 : 310), RKM, Belur.
[114].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale, May 1, 1895, Sen Col.
[115]. Complete Works, 6 : 308. (The only date this letter bears is “Thursday.” There is, however, evidence in unpublished parts of the original that it was written shortly before May 7. Since the Thursday before May 7 was May 2, it is perhaps safe to assign this date to it.)
[116].Complete Works, 7:489. (The original letter bears no date, but internal evidence, as well as a partly legible postmark, indicates that it was written on May 6, >895-)
[117]. Gospel, p. 985.
[118].Complete Works, 5 : 82.
[119].Complete Works., 6:308.
[120]. Diary of Emma Thursby, Thursby Papers, New-York Historical Society.
[121].Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, May 23, 1895, SCB.
[122].Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, May 23, 1895, SCB.
[123].Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, May 23, 1895, SCB.
[125].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale, May 16, 1895, Sen Col.
[126].Complete Works, 5 : 73.
[127].Complete Works, 6 : 301-2. (The capitalization in this passage is from a copy of the original, Leg. Col.)
[128].Complete Works, 8 : 343.
[129].Complete Works., 5 : 83. (This passage has been quoted from the original letter, RKM, Belur.)
[130].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, May 28, 1895, Sen Col.
[131].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, June 4, 1895, SCB.


↑ Contents

3.2 THOUSAND ISLAND PARK

On June 4, 1895, Mr. Francis Leggett’s party of five took a steamer from New York to Portland, Maine, a train from Portland to the small village of Percy, New Hampshire, in a remote region of the White Mountains, and a rowboat to Mr. Leggett’s rustic cabin, known as White Birch Lodge. The Lodge stood on the very edge of the lake; behind stretched woods of laurel, birch, and pine, and across the lake itself were forest-covered hills, luxuriantly green in the first weeks of June. The party arrived at one o’clock on the afternoon of the sixth; they recorded the event in the Lodge’s Log Book, and signed their names: “Besse MacLeod Sturges; Francis H. Leggett; Josephine MacLeod; Georgia Waitham Spence [an elder cousin of the MacLeod sisters]; Swami Vivekananda, India, Heathen Hindu.'[1]

Swamiji’s twelve-day stay at Camp Percy among congenial friends would give him more than a rest of body and mind, it would provide as well the freedom of time and space in which his spirit could soar. Indeed, in some respects Camp Percy, with its quiet, its woods, its lake, and its remoteness from civilization (one could reach the house from the nearest village only by rowing for nearly an hour to the far end of the long lake) was like a hidden forest ashrama in India. The day after his arrival, Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Bull, “This is one of the most beautiful spots I have ever seen.... So lovely, so quiet, so restful! And you may imagine how glad I am to be here after the bustle of cities. 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... I will meditate by the hours and  days here and be all alone to myself. The very idea is ennobling.'[2]

He could be alone to walk in the woods or sit by the late as often and for as long as he wished. At other times he enjoyed the companionship of his friends and was as merry as they. And they were merry indeed; this sojourn at Camp Percy was a sort of betrothal party in the wilds. Besse (or Betty) MacLeod Sturges and Francis Leggett had just become engaged and were planning to be marred in Paris in September. To Alberta Sturges (Betty's eighteen-year-old daughter) Swamiji wrote a few weeks later of those cloudless days at the Camp. "We had such jolly good times up there at Percy with Mr. Leggett-isn't he a saint? . . . We had a good deal of rowing . . . and I learnt a point or two in rowing. Aunt Joe Joe had to pay for her sweetness; the flies and mosquitoes would not leave her a moment. They rather gave me a wide berth I think because they were very orthodox sabbatarian flies and would not touch a heathen. Again, I think I used to sing a good deal at Percy and that must have frightened them away. We had such fine birch trees. I got up an idea of making books out of the bark as used to be done in ancient times in our country and wrote Sanskrit verses for your mother and aunt '[3]Apropos of Swamiji's learning a point or two in rowing, the story is told that he once missed his stroke and nearly capsized the boat, falling backward, hitting his head on the aide-and laughing.[4]

But Swamiji could move without effort from the playful mood of a summer vacation to immergence in the highest bliss. He who had had to restrain himself (not always successfully) from entering into samadhi during his classes in New York City could now give free rein to his mind, and it at once rushed, as it were, to its "own abode." In later years, during her stays at Belur Math, Miss MacLeod sometimes told of Swamiji's samadhi at Camp Percy. The following account of her words was given by Swami Vijayananda:

One morning before breakfast Swamiji came out from his room with a Sanskrit Gita in his hand. I (Josephine MacLeod] was behind him. Seeing me, he said, "Joe, I am going to sit under that pine (pointing to a nearby pine) and read the Bhagavad Gita. See that the breakfast is sumptuous to-day." Half an hour later I went over to the pine tree and saw Swamiji sitting there motionless. The Gita had fallen from his hand and the front of his robe was wet with tears.

I went nearer and saw that his breathing had stopped altogether. I trembled in fear-Swamiji must be dead. I did not shout, but ran to Francis Leggett and told him, "Come quick, Swami Vivekananda has left us." My sister ran to the spot with loud cries and my [future] brother-in-law also came with tears in his eyes. By now seven or eight minutes had passed. Swamiji was still in the same position. But my brother-in-law said, "He is in a trance; I will shake him out of it" I stopped him, shouting, "Never do that!" I remembered that Swamiji had said once that when he would be in deep meditation one should not touch him. Another five minutes or so passed, then we saw the signs of breathing. His eyes had been half closed; now slowly they opened. And then Swamiji, as if soliloquising, said, "Who am I, where am I?" Thrice he spoke like that, and then, wide awake, he saw us, was very much embarrassed, stood up, and said, "I am sorry to have frightened you all. But I have this state of consciousness now and then. I shall not leave my body in your country. Betty, I am hungry, let's hurry.'[5]

According to another version, also related by Miss MacLeod, the gardener (or caretaker) had found Swamiji by the lake to all appearances dead and had called the other, who did indeed touch him in an attempt to restore him. But in what ever way Swamiji was brought back to normal consciousness, he may well have been in nirvikalpa samadhi, in which state  (if one may so call it) the body appears in all respects to be dead and the mind itself is merged in Brahman. This was not to be the only time that summer of 1895 that Swamiji lost all outer consciousness. But never (as far as is known) was he to remain long in the highest state; for his Master had "kept the key." It had been at Cossipore, Calcutta, that Swamiji (then Narendra Nath Datta) had first entered into nirvikalpa samadhi. His Master, Sri Ramakrishna, had then said to him, "Now then, the Mother has shown you everything. Just as a treasure is locked up in a box, so will this realisation you have just had be locked up and the key shall remain with me. You have work to do.'[6]And to be sure, we find in Swamiji's biographies that he was, as it were, thrown down from that state, or from its threshold, again and again (a return possible only to the world's great spiritual Teachers), in order that he might carry out his mission. It may have happened so at Camp Percy. Later, when he was in India, Swamiji was to say to his disciple Sharat Chandra Chakravarty: "A time comes when what you call differentiation vanishes, and we cannot perceive it at all. I have experienced that state in my own life." "When have you done so?" the disciple asked, and Swamiji replied:

One day in the temple-garden at Dakshineswar Shri Ramakrishna touched me over the heart, and first of' all I began to see that the houses-rooms, doors, windows, verandahs-the trees, the sun, the moon-all were flying off, shattering to pieces as it were-reduced to atoms and molecules-and ultimately become merged in the Akasha. Gradually, again, the Akasha also vanished, and after that, my consciousness of the ego with it; what happened next I do not recollect. I was at first frightened. Coming back from that state, again I began to see the houses, doors, windows, verandahs, and other things. On another occasion, I had exactly the same realisation by the side of a lake in America.... Know-this knowledge of Oneness is what the Shastras speak of as realisation of the Brahman, by knowing which, one gets rid of Fear, and the shackles of birth and death break for ever.'[7]

Was not Swamiji speaking here of his experience at Camp Percy? (On the shore of Late Michigan he had also entered into samadhi, but on that occasion it was Sri Ramakrishna who, appearing to him, drew him back "to the Work for which he had come to the world.")[8]

2

On the morning of Tuesday, June 18, Swamiji left the White Mountains of New Hampshire (by train) for Thousand Island Park, about zoo miles to the west, where a number of his students awaited him. Everything at the Park had, it would seem, been made ready for his coming. The steamer St. Lawrence, on which he arrived from Clayton, four miles up the river, had been newly painted a gleaming white, elegantly reaccoutered, and gaily beflagged. The Dock, with its jaunty two-story pavilion, had been entirely rebuilt. The electric lights of' the Park's completely renovated system were perhaps already glowing (for it was late afternoon or early dusk) in the grand, three-year-old Columbian Hotel and casting circles of light along the short elm-lined avenue that led straight back from the Dock to the Tabernacle at its far end. The whole village had been brushed up for that summer. Even the sewer system (in a "deplorable state" the summer before) had been entirely reconstructed, placing the "sanitary conditions of the Park above par with those of other resort. " Some might say it all happened by coincidence; but however that may be, it was a newly cleaned, brightly lighted, refurbished community to which Swamiji came on Tuesday, June 18, 1895.[9]

Almost certainly, his hostess, Miss Mary Elizabeth Dutcher, and the two or three other disciples who had gathered at Thousand Island Park ahead of him were on the Dock to  greet him and to escort him (no doubt by horse and buggy hired for the occasion) the short half toile to Miss Dutcher's cottage, which stood, set apart from hundreds similar to it, on the wooded sod hilly edge of the community, behind and to the west of the Tabernacle. The little two-story house, built in 1885, was also ready to receive Swamiji-and this, without any doubt, by design. As soon as he had accepted ha invitation to make her cottage at Thousand Island Park his summer retreat,* Miss Dutcher had made arrangements to add a wing to the cottage for his comfort. There had been ample time. Swamiji's earliest known mention of hie acceptance of Miss Dutcher's invitation is found in a published letter to Mrs. Ole Bull:


... I cannot go to Greenacre now; I have arranged to go to the Thousand Islands, wherever that may be. There is a cottage belonging to Miss Dutcher, one of my students, and a few of us will be there in rest and peace and seclusion. I want to manufacture a few "Yogis" out of the materials of the classes, and a busy farm [fair?] like Greenacre is the last place for that, while the other is quite out of the way, and none of the curiosity-seekers will dare go there.'[10]


This letter was dated April 25, 1895; thus there were about seven weeks at the least in which to build a wing of three sizable rooms, each about twelve by fifteen feet, one above the other.** The top room, Which was for Swamiji's personal use, was served by an outside staircase and opened, also, onto an upper veranda of the cottage. The room directly below opened onto the first-floor front parlor and was to be used as a study and classroom. The room beneath that, which was to become an extra guest room, stood below the first floor of the house and had its own entrance, for the cottage proper had been built, literally, on a rock-a huge granite boulder, such as crop up throughout the area. The lattice skirts of the  cottage, together with its floor, hugged and enclosed the rock; whereas the new wing stood behind it and could rest on lower ground. Although the biblical symbolism of building on a rock very likely appealed to Miss Dutcher, the architecture of the little cottage did not lend a sense of stability. It was that of the late 1870s-the steeply pitched roof, the tall doors and windows, the slender, lathe-turned veranda posts, the adorning wooden lace and froufrou all conspired to produce a Fragile and charming storybook effect. The earliest known photograph of the cottage, which is reproduced here, shows it after Swamiji's wing had been added. If one covers over the wing (the left side of the house beyond the verandas), the original cottage stands clear. (The large rock in the foreground of the photograph is not a part of that upon which the cottage stands.)


As a finishing touch to the preparations for Swamiji's arrival a homemade banner proclaiming in large letters "WELCOME VIVEKANANDA" had been tacked up to greet him as he entered the front parlor. He was welcome indeed! But perhaps not even in their fondest dreams could his disciples have foreseen the spiritual bonanza in store for them.

3

Swamiji had been right in thinking that Thousand Island Park was "quite out of the way"; it was not, certainly, a fair for religious curiosity-seekers, as was Greenacre. But it was not, on the other hand, a remote or unpeopled spot. The 1700-and-more islands, "scattered," as it was said in an 1894 guidebook,[11] "in prodigal profusion along the noble St. Lawrence River," had during the past twenty years become a popular resort area, beautiful, easy of access, and pervaded by "a spirit of rest and freedom from care." "During the summer season," the guidebook informed the vacationer, "the Islands teem with life, and the reticulated channel of the sparkling blue river is flecked with the white wings of little sailing yachts and pleasure boats which, like birds, of passage,  flit hither and thither among the Islands, in search of pleasure and new delights." The Islands varied in size "from a small mass of rock . . . to picturesque islands miles in extent, overspread with a rich and luxuriant vegetation." Wellesley Island, on which Thousand Island Park was situated, was the second largest of these "island gems," and according to an item in a contemporary newspaper, if the Park was the most popular summer resort of all.

In June of 1895 Thousand Island Park was exactly twenty years old. On June 9, 1875, the sale (or long-term lease) of its first lots (each 40 by 80 feet) had begun. The area, comprising at the time 980 acres, had recently been purchased by the Thousand Island Camp Meeting Association for the purpose, precisely, of holding religious camp meetings during the summer months. The plan, thought up by a Methodist minister, the Reverend John Ferdinand Dayan, was to establish a permanent campground somewhat on the order of the Chautauqua Institute, which had been founded the year before in Chautauqua County, New York. Other such campgrounds were putting down roots here and there on the East Coast; indeed in the latter half of the nineteenth century religious camp meetings were taking on an air of sobriety. No longer were they the frenzied itinerant revival meetings of the early 1800s with their shouting ministers, their screaming and convulsive congregations. Things had quieted down considerably, and an element of thought was tempering the old time evangelical madness. Prepared sermons often took the place of emotional tirades, the meetings became more like study sessions than religious orgies and were held over a longer period of time-say, a week or two, rather than a day or two. Accordingly, lodgings for large crowds were set up in the vicinity of the revival tent. At first, the meeting-goers lived in tents themselves; later on, family cottages and rooming houses were built, and a sort of religious summer resort came into existence.


The Thousand Island Camp Meeting Association had the  establishment of just such a resort in mind, “free from the frivolities and extravagances of fashionable watering places.'[13] It was a resort in which the highly moralistic (some said “bluenosed”) restrictions of orthodox Protestant Christianity were rigidly observed and in which religious camp-meetings were the principal recreation. At first there was no drinking of liquor, playing of cards, or selling of tobacco at any time or at any place in the Park; there was a curfew for noise at nine o’clock at night and for lights at ten o’clock; there was to be no nonsense whatsoever on Sundays, not even croquet, boating, or landing at or embarking from the premises. (Later on, some of these laws were relaxed: Swamiji could have bought a cigar in the village store had he wished, and every Saturday night, there was a fulldress “hop” at the Columbian Hotel, at which couples blithely waltzed or danced the two-step to orchestra music and carried on till well after nine o’clock.)


The Thousand Island Camp Meeting Association, which changed its name to the Thousand Island Park Association in 1879, owned the land, the Dock, the main communal buildings, and the many tents that it rented to campers. On the liability side, the Association was responsible for the care, maintenance, and improvement of the Park and for various kinds of public service. Through the lease of lots, the granting of franchises to stores, boardinghouses, and so on, the charge of a commission of profits, the levying of a low (today very high) tax on leased land, and a sporadic (and hotly debated) entrance fee, the Association became a going concern, and in no time the Park grew into a healthy, thriving community, its character changing rapidly from campmeeting ground to “Christian Summer Resort.” Indeed, despite its persisting blue laws, which preserved it as “a place where ‘the assassins of society’ would have no inducement whatever to come,'[14] the community had never been excessively hidebound. Outdoor sports (except on Sundays) had always been encouraged, and from the beginning much stress was laid on the Park’s nondenominational aspect and its “international character,” by  which last was meant that Canadians from across the St. Lawrence were welcome to buy lots.


In 1875 no one, of course, dreamed that in twenty years a Hindu monk would be teaching a heathen creed in one of the Park's very own cottages! And yet during the course of the first series of lectures held at the vast Tabernacle tent in the summer of 1875 a hymn was sung in, of all things, the Hindi language. To quote from a history of the Park:


Among [the] speakers was Mrs. J. L. Humphrey, a missionary recently returned from India, who spoke on the activities of the Ladies' Foreign Missionary Society in India and then "sang a hymn in the Hindoo language, the words being set to their music"; a Park Missionary Society was formed on the spot.[15]


Although the quoted words in the above passage are ambiguous, it is not likely that Mrs. Humphrey sang a Hindu bhajan; more probably the song was a Christian hymn translated into Hindi and set to what passed for Indian music. Nevertheless, a hymn in the Hindoo language had been sung in the Tabernacle during the first, christening, services of the campground. While the intent, to be sure, was not to bring India to the Park, there she was.*


Thousand Island Park grew apace. In 1883 the large and grand Thousand Island Park Hotel was opened, its four stories and impressive central tower facing the river. Seven years later, the hotel burned to the ground, and in its place was built the even grander and larger Columbian Hotel. In 1884 a permanent Tabernacle replaced the huge tent of the early days. The wooden facade of this new structure stood squarely across the end of the Park's central avenue and accommodated the platform, with podium and seats for a choir of several hundred. Extending back from the platform was the slightly sloped earth floor of the auditorium, the plank benches of which could seat 3,000. This immense area was  covered by a pitched wooden roof, supported by hand-hewn posts, beams, and rafters; its back and sides were wide open to the woods, though canvas curtains could be lowered in case of heavy rains and gales. That was the Tabernacle as Swamiji knew it.


The 1880s and the early 1890s saw rapid improvements in the Park’s public facilities. At first, a few scattered wells and rain barrels had provided water, but in 1883 a wood-burning steam engine pumped river water to a reservoir stop Sunrise Mountain (which rose behind the Tabernacle and was nearly 200 feet high at its summit), from where it was piped, for a fee, to individual cottages. A gas system provided lights on the main avenues, as well as in the hotel. (Electricity of sorts took over this task in the early 1890s.) A sewer line was installed in the populous part of the Park, and garbage, it was decreed, would be picked up “at least twice during the months of July, August, and September of each year.” Streets were graded and graveled; there was a telegraph office in the hotel; the Park had its own post office, its general store, its lumber dock and yard, tin shop, bookstore and circulating library, photograph studio, chapel, museum, art gallery, glass blower, basket maker, baseball field, tennis courts, taffy stand, and almost anything else a summer resident might desire. In short, by the 1890s Thousand Island Park was a summer resort par excellence. As one historian was to write in 1898, “The village, for such it is in fact, has . . . every adjunct of a completely appointed municipality, and far better than the majority of them in this state.[16]


Competing for attention with the tennis courts and the luxurious Columbian Hotel at the river end of St. Lawrence Avenue, the Tabernacle programs tended to become more diversified and, one might say, secular. Although the religious meetings continued, lectures on various nonreligious topics, such as Shakespearian Drama, the Laws of Storms, New Electrical Devices, and the Woodpecker, appeared on the scene, as did Glee Club Programs and Recitations. Thousand Island Park began to be referred to as the "Chautauqua of the North," and the crowds kept pouring in, Meanwhile, as has been km earlier, the entire area of the Thousand Islands had also been transformed during the past twenty years from a remote wilderness to a popular resort-laud where people played games, danced, fished, went boating, and otherwise enjoyed themselves. By 1895, the Islands as a whole drew thousands of excursionists every day; Thousand Island Park (now 800 acres in area, 100 acres of which were plotted for cottage lots) had a summer population of around 10,000; its cottages, large and small, numbered well over 600, and in addition to the hotel, there were at least a dozen rooming houses. "It is a very beautiful spot," Swamiji was to write in early July, "but I am afraid it becomes too crowded during the season,'[17] The Park would, indeed; scarcely seem the place for a summer retreat. But most of the cottages lay jam-packed between the river and the base of Sunrise Mountain; whereas Miss Dutcher's little house, perched alone a short way up the hill, was quiet and relatively secluded.

4

Inside, the cottage was simplicity itself and typical of many others in the Park. One entered from the front porch into a small, rectangular parlor, about nine by fifteen feet, whose windows looked out over the south veranda into the trees, Adjoining it was a slightly wider second parlor, or dining room, most of whose light came through the open archway between the two rooms.* Alongside this was a small, shed like kitchen, which Miss Dutcher had added after the cottage was built.[18] At the front end of the second parlor a narrow, enclosed staircase led to the upper floor. Here, normally, there would have been two bedrooms, one on either side of a narrow hallway, but Miss Dutcher had chosen to divide these rooms into four small cells to accommodate her guests. That was all there was of the cottage before the summer of 1895, except for the wide verandas which ran along the front and the side that faced the river.

An outside staircase led to the upper verandas for the benefit, perhaps, of the villagers, who came from time to time in neighborly fashion to see the view.[19] Today, the trees surrounding the cottage hide the river, but such was not the case in 1895, for some forty years earlier, the then owner of the Park site had thoroughly lumbered its rich forests, until by 1864 there was only “pasture land and areas covered by brush.” The trees had grown up again, but slowly. By the 1890s the tallest tops of the maples, elms, and oak on the slopes below Miss Dutcher’s cottage were barely on a level with the second floor. Thus the upper verandas were the highest lookouts in the Park, commanding a wide vista of the river and its opposite shore. Everyone was welcome day and night to come and gaze, and Miss Dutcher had thoughtfully screened off Swamiji’s porch from the one that ran along the front of the house, to which the neighbors had access.


In the various memoirs that have come down to us, no one described the living conditions in 1895 in a Thousand Island Park cottage, perhaps because they were not unusual for the age. Eighty-odd years later, however, they are worthy of note, and it is possible to make some educated guesses in regard to them. We know, for instance, that water was almost certainly piped to the cottage from the reservoir higher on the hill, but it is not likely that there was more than one faucet, which would have been in the kitchen. Each bedroom would have had a bowl and ewer for washing, but there was no bathroom. Sunk in the rock under the house was a cistern where rain (Miss Dutcher’s only water source in the days before the reservoir) had been collected. The cistern was still functional in 1895, and one could shiveringly bathe there with a dipper and bucket. As was the case with most country houses of the era, there was an outhouse, and since the cottage was not connected with the Park’s new sewer system, it was probably primitive. There are no existing records to show whether  or not the village gas lines reached as far as the cottage (it is certain that the electric lines did not); so kerosene lamps and candles may have given the only light. As for heat, because of a Park ordinance, there were no open fireplaces to cheer a rainy or chilly evening.[20] But such evenings were rare in the summer months, and in the winter the whole Park closed down, hibernating under a cover of deep snow.

It was in a state of spiritual joy and, certainly, spiritual power that Swamiji came from the White Mountains to Thousand Island Park-a state in which he stood at the open door of the highest samadhi, holding back, as it were, in order to teach, and at the same time, though not in contradiction, in which he was like a carefree boy. As for his physical health, even as his spirit soared, his body and mind relaxed after the tensions of his city work. "All the sleep in the world has come upon me," he wrote to Betty Sturges in early July from the Park. "I sleep at least two hours during the day and deep through the whole night se a piece of log. This is a reaction, I think, from the sleeplessness of New York. I am also writing and reading a little, and have a class every morning after breakfast. The meals are being conducted on the strictest vegetarian principles, and I am fasting a good deal I am determined that several pounds of my fat shall be off before I leave.'[21] Swamiji, in fact, wanted to lose thirty to forty pounds that summer, as he had written to Mary Hale from New York earlier in the year. "That will be all right for my size," he assured her.'[22]

A week or so after arriving at Thousand Island Park Swamiji wrote two letters to Mary Hale, both of which are dated in the Complete works June Rs. 26, 1895, but which must have been written a few days apart. In what appears to be the first, he wrote in a somewhat low key: "Nothing noticeable has happened during this visit to the Thousand islands. The scenery is very beautiful  and I have some of my friends here with me to talk about God and soul ad libitum. I am eating fruits and drinking milk and so forth, and studying huge Sanskrit books on Vedanta which they have kindly sent me from India.'[23]


In this same letter he spoke philosophically, somewhat in the tone of his classes as we know them from Inspired Talks: “The more the shades around deepen [and] the more the ends approach [,] the more one understands the true meaning of life, that it is a dream; and we begin to understand the failure of everyone to grasp it, for they only attempted to get meaning out of the meaningless.... Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage.


“Denial of the will to live, knowledge, and same sightedness is the trinity of liberation.


“Freedom is the goal of the universe.'[24]


In the second letter dated June 26, Swamiji suddenly bursts through the page, revealing the exalted state of a Paramahansa, a Knower of Brahman:


A wonderful calmness is coming over my soul. Every day I feel I have no duty to do; I am always in eternal rest and peace. It is He that works. We are only the instruments. Blessed be His name! The threefold bondage of lust and gold and fame is, as it were fallen from me for the time being, and once more, even here, I feel what sometimes I felt in India, “From me all difference has fallen, all right or wrong, all delusion and ignorance has vanished, I am walking in the path beyond the qualities. What law I obey, what disobey?” From that height the universe looks like a mudpuddle. Hari Om Tat Sat. He exists; nothing else does. I in Thee and Thou in me. Be Thou Lord my eternal refuge! Peace, Peace, Peace![25]


From that height Swamiji taught the twelve students who followed him to the Park, wanting, as he said, to “train them in Advaita realization” so that later they could carry on his  work in his absence. How far he would succeed in this immediate purpose, he himself did not know. Nor, perhaps, did it matter. Later he was to say that he had been at his beat at Thousand Island Park," and we know from the notes of his classes and from the few available memoirs of the seven weeks he spent there that he poured out continuously a torrent of spirituality. "Day by day I am experiencing a manifestation of power in me," he was to write in July to his Madras disciple Alasinga.[27]And the power manifested in a Swami Vivekananda could not be contained in a small place or be effective for only a limited time. Was not his stay at Miss Dutcher's cottage only the occasion then, for releasing a flood of spiritual energy into the very heart of the nation? Was he not teaching generations of Americans in those few weeks? One cannot but think that the immense power generated by Swamiji'e teaching day and night at the height of spiritual consciousness must have far transcended and outdistanced its effect in the lives of the twelve students who gathered around him and who asked themselves the unanswerable question, "What have we ever done to deserve this ?'[28]


Let us recall here what we know of those disciples, First, Miss Dutcher, who was, Sister Christine tells us, "a conscientious little woman [and] a devout Methodist.'[29] Her whole outlook on life had been conditioned by one of the mat orthodox, missionary minded Protestant denominations. It was a matter for amazement not only that she was among the group at Thousand Island Park, but that she had herself proposed the retreat and added a wing to her cottage to accommodate Swamiji. But there was, perhaps, more to Miss Dutcher than met the eye. Indeed, considering the age in which she lived, her background, and her religious upbringing, she seems to have been something of a rebel.


Born about 1895 in Oswego County, New York (not far  from the Thousand Islands), she was the daughter of a poor farmer and no doubt spent her girlhood as did other country girls of that era, attending a one-room school, helping with the chores, and regularly going to church on Sundays. She very likely also attended with her parents many a Methodist Camp Meeting, which in her girlhood would have been extravagances of "jumping, jerking, and roaring," interspersed with terrifying, guilt-forging sermons on sin, responsibility, and hell-fire.


Not easily in the early half of the nineteenth century did a country girl break away from such an upbringing to attend art school in New York City. But Mary Elizabeth Dutcher went off to New York to study art at the Art Students' League and also at the Academy of Design. She did not return to the farm, but moved to Rochester, where she taught art and on occasion exhibited her own paintings.[30]Prim and proper she may have seemed to a later generation; actually she must have had daring and courage. She managed to support herself through her art work and had enough money left over to buy the lot at Thousand Island Park (for about $100) and to build a cottage on it. Nor, presumably, did Miss Dutcher care in the least what her God-fearing neighbors might think of her harboring a Hindoo in t6eir very midst. Inevitably, they had their opinions. The story goes that one day a young girl of sixteen, living with her family at the foot of the hill, "expressed the desire to talk to the Swami. 'Don't go near him,' her mother said sternly. 'He is a heathen!’ '[31] Miss Dutcher held her ground. Indeed, she was to invite many of the neighbors to her cottage one Sunday to see and hear the heathen for themselves Here, it would seem, was no "conscientious little woman" but a stalwart and earnest soul. She was a gentle soul as well, who quite literally would not hurt a fly: in her cottage she kept a humane fly trap, which she took into the woods each evening to release the flies imprisoned during the day.[32]


Having attended Swamiji's New York classes, Miss Dutcher must have known, to some extent at least, that she was taking  into her house a spiritual tornado. Surely she knew that much of her lifelong religious conditioning, her ingrained beliefs and assumptions, were about to be turned topsy-turvy. Yet to know that a tornado is coming does not lessen its impact, and Miss Dutcher seems to have been shaken to the very roots of her being by Swamiji’s teachings at Thousand Island Park. He could not spare her; he taught what he had to teach, much of which must have seemed not only outrageous but blasphemous to her. And yet his words rang with an authority she could not deny. The conflict was shattering. Sometimes she would disappear (to a neighbor’s cottage, perhaps) for two or three days at a stretch. “Don’t you see,” Swamiji explained to the others, “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.'[33]Yet she held on, playing in her own way an essential role in Swamiji’s Western mission.*


Just as there could not have been the weeks at Thousand Island Park without Miss Dutcher, so there could not have been the book Inspired Talks without Sarah Ellen Waldo. Miss Waldo, who was nearing her fiftieth birthday in the summer of 1895,[34] was, like Miss Dutcher, a spinster. Unlike her, however, she apparently had no need to earn a living, or to supplement a private income. She had her own house in Brooklyn at 249 Monroe Street and spent a good deal of time in intellectual pursuits. She was a close student of the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, to whom she was distantly related, and most probably had studied the works of other Transcendentalists as well. Thus she was familiar, even before meeting Swamiji, with a mode of thought derived, in part at least, from India. She had also read the writings of Professor Max Muller, including, perhaps, his then recent Vedanta Philosophy. Such interests, together with her membership in the Brooklyn Ethical Association, made it almost inevitable that she would attend Swamiji’s first lecture before that learned gathering on the night of December 30, 1894, and that, subsequently,  she would regularly attend his classes in New York.


Although we know almost nothing of Miss Waldo's life before she met Swamiji, it does not appear to have had any particular focus. Now it became centered in his mission. As we shall see in a later chapter, she was to serve Swamiji and the early New York Vedanta Society as a tireless factotum. Tall, "very portly," efficient, and inclined to be somewhat domineering, Miss Waldo may have vexed others at times, but it was she who did most of the work.


Ruth Ellis was a close friend of Sarah Ellen Waldo and was probably about the same age. Almost all we know of her comes from a brief description in Sister Christine's reminiscences. "Ruth Ellis was on the staff' of one of the New York newspapers,” Christine wrote. "She was gentle and retiring and seldom spoke, yet one knew that her love and devotion were unbounded:'[35]Miss Ellis, a Dr. L. L. Wight, to whom she was like a daughter, and Miss Waldo had been attending lectures on philosophy together for thirty years, and together they came to Swamiji's New York classes, finding at last what they had sought for so long.


Of Dr. Wight we know only that in 1895 he was "well over seventy but as enthusiastic and full of interest as a boy.'[36] Indeed "little old Docky Wight," as his fellow-disciples called him, seems to have been stunned by Swamiji's teachings, not devastatingly, as was Miss Dutcher, but with a kind of awe. "At the end of each [morning class at Thousand Island Park]," Christine wrote, "there was usually a pause, and the little old 'Docky' would stoop down and rub his bald head and say, with the most pronounced nasal twang, 'Well, Swami, then it all amounts to this, "I am the Absolute!"' We always waited for that, and Swamiji would smile his most fatherly smile and agree.'[37]


Then was Stella. If anyone among the group was a misfit, it seems to have been this one-time actress, who was past her prime and who, according to Sister Christine, may  have been hoping to "restore her fast-fading beauty and bring back her lost youth" by becoming spiritual. Sizing up Stella, the others doubted that Swamiji understood her motives in coming to Thousand Island Park. How could he understand "that anyone could put such an interpretation upon his lofty teachings?" Then one day he said, "I like that Baby. She is so artless." This remark, Christine relates, met with a dead silence. "Instantly his whole manner changed, and he said very gravely, 'I call her Baby hoping that it will make her childlike, free from art and guile.''[38]There was very little Swamiji did not understand, and there was no one for whom he did not have compassion and blessings.


Sister Christine tells us that at Thousand Island Park Stella lived "in a room below." Whether this means that she occupied the relatively large room on the ground floor of Swamiji's wing or that she lived in a room in the village is not clear. The latter meaning may be the more probable one, for Christine goes on to say, "It was several days before we saw her, for she seldom came up to the classes, being, as we were given to understand, too deeply engrossed in ascetic practices to break in upon them.'[39] Apparently Stella did not appear for any meal during those several days, and unless she was fasting even from water, she must have been rooming and boarding in the village--and no doubt scandalizing the good natives with her bizarre behavior. But we cannot know for certain; Christine's sentence leaves us only with a question unanswerable at the present time.


After leaving Thousand Island Park at the end of the summer, Stella (whose last name was Campbell) built a tiny cabin on an island in Orchard Lake near Detroit and there continued her yoga practices. This created a sensation. Among the newspaper stories written about her was one by the then young and unknown novelist Will Levington Comfort, who later on came to know Swamiji and to love India. It was he who once told Christine (as she was to write in 1924 to Miss MacLeod) that "everyone connected with Swamiji whom he  had ever known had a glow.'[40]Perhaps he included Stella in this observation; she was the first he had known.


In any event, Swamiji did not take Stella's aspirations lightly. In July of 1897 he was to write to Josephine MacLeod from Almora, "There is a young lady, Miss Campbell,Orchard Lake, Orchard Island, Michigan, who is a great worshipper of Krishna and lives alone in that Island, fasting and praying. She will give anything to be able to see India once, but she is awfully poor. If you bring her with you, I will anyhow manage to pay her expenses.'[41]Although Stella did not make the voyage with Miss MacLeod, Swamiji did not abandon the idea of brining her to India. Now and then he inquired of Christine about "Baby. " "I am sorry she state of mind of' Baby is so unsettled, " he was to write to her on May 20 of 1898. "I hope to find a home for her in India very soon and one for you if you like and your duties permit '[42]And again, in August of that year, "I had a very beautiful letter from Baby-I am so glad she is happy and has helping friends. Lord bless the dear child.'[43]And in July of l899 he would write, again to Christine, that he had had another "beautiful letter from Baby" and that he was soon going to "pen a reply in [Christine's] care as directed.'[44] After her experiments with yoga, Stella went back for a time, at least, to the stage, "and none of us knew anything of her afterwards," Christine wrote, "until news came of her death a few months ago."" This undated statement, like "a room below," leaves us with a question. But Stella's death must have come sometime between 1927, when Christine started writing her memories, and 1930, when she herself died.


In her reminiscences of Thousand Island Park, Sister Christine mentions many of her fellow-students, but not Walter and Frances Goodyear, who, as we know from another source,[46]were members of the group at Mia Dutcher's cottage for two weeks. They were at the time a young, childless couple (not until 1897 was a son born to them), who lived in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. As has been seen in the preceding  chapter, the Goodyears were among those who had given Swamiji practical help during the spring of 1895. In September of this same year, Walter Goodyear was to become the New York agent for the Brahmavadin, the English-language magazine newly launched by a group not Swamiji's Madras disciples. He seems also to have been treasurer of the New York Vedanta Society from its very beginning in the fall of 1894 and was almost certainly one of the trustees who constituted the Society's Executive Committee, which would be formed in December of 1895 to handle all business matters Inasmuch as Walter Goodyear was treasurer of the New York branch of the Goodyear Sewing Machine Company of Canada, he was a logical choice for these responsibilities and, together with his wife, was to be helpful in the secular side of the work-which side, Swamiji said, "nearly breaks me to pieces.'[47]

6

In the last week of June or first week of July came Mme Marie Louise, brining along a small pet tortoise, which instantly took off into the alluring woods and disappeared. One can well imagine that the whole household was set to searching for the errant pet, to no avail. "[Marie Louise] was a little sorry at first,” Swamiji worte to Betty Sturges, "'but we preached liberty with such vigour that she had to come round quich.'[48]

Mme Marie Louise; who for reasons of her own, always refused to divulge her family name (which she would soon no longer need), "was, in some respects, the outstanding personality in this small community," Sister Christine recalled.


A tall, angular woman, about fifty years of age [she continued], so masculine in appearance that one looked twice before one could tell whether she was a man or a woman. The short, wiry hair, in the days before bobbed hair was in vogue, the masculine features, the large bones,  the heavy voice and the robe, not unlike that worn by men in India, made one doubtful. Her path was the highest, she announced, that of philosophy--jnana. She had been the spokesman for ultra-radical groups and had learning and some degree of eloquence. "I have magnetism of the platform," she used to say. Her vanity and personal ambition made her unfit for discipleship, and useless as a work in Swami Vivekananda's  movement.[49]


This strange Frenchwoman seems to have exasperated some of Swamiji's other disciples as well, including, later on, Sister Nivedita, who was to write of her from India in 1899, "Such egotism I have new imagined!'[50] But Swamiji's attitude toward her was equally unimaginable. Nivedita remarked upon it a week later with almost the same exclamatory phrase: "Such greatness, such sweetness, such humility as I see in him towards her, I could not have imagined!'[51]


As is well known, Swamiji gave the vows of sannyasa to Mme Marie Louise and the name Abhayananda at Thousand Island Park. The ceremony took place on Sunday, July 7, very possibly at sunrise, with a homa fire outdoors.[52]"One of my new Sannyasins is indeed a woman,'[53]Swamiji was to write in March of 1896 to his apparently astounded Madras disciple Alasinga Perumal, who had read the news in the New York Herald of January 19, 1896. "She was a leader of the labourers,'[54] he added in a heretofore unpublished sentence, which must also have struck Alasinga dumb.


The newspaper article Alasinga had read and had reprinted in the Brahmavadin was a review of Swamiji's work in New York. The paragraph that concerns us here gives us what little we know of Mme Marie Louise’s background. For the past twenty-five years she had been an American citizen living in New York City and known to liberal circles as "a materialist, socialist (some say anarchist), friend of Emma Goldman and others of that ilk." At the beginning of 1895 she had been  a prominent member of the Manhattan Liberal Club and was known in the press and on the platform as "a fearless, progressive, advanced woman, whose boast it was that she was always in the forefront of the battle and ahead of her times.'[55]


The rumors that Mme Marie Louise was an Anarchist were probably untrue; she could not have been a Socialist and an Anarchist at the same time, for the latter contemptuously, and necessarily, rejected all forms of political organization. Still, if she was a friend of the young Emma Goldman (an Anarchist loader of fiery disposition) "and others of that ilk," she very likely sympathized with the wildly unrealistic and utopian ideals of theoretical Anarchism. At any rate, she clearly had been a vociferous and, it would appear, by no means self-effacing champion of the oppressed and desperate laboring classes, who had not yet found a united voice of their own. When and how she first came to Swamiji, whom she was to call "Mon Papa," we do not know; but once she had found her way to him, the direction of her life altogether changed, though not overnight her nature. "She is impetuous, and quick to take offense where no offense is intended," Ruth Ellis would write to Mrs. Bull from the Park on Monday, July 29, "but withal she has splendid qualities and I expect much from her. She can reach the masses and her work will probably lie in that direction. She has softened wonderfully since her initiation and the Swami seems satisfied with her.'[56]Leon Landsberg, whom Swamiji also initiated into sannyasa at Thousand Island park, giving him the name of Kripananda, arrived on July 11. "The Master calls," he had written to Mrs. Bull from New York the day before, "and I am ready to do his will. I just received a letter from the Swami asking me to come to Thousands' Island. I suppose you know the object. I shall probably leave to-night '[57]The storm that had earlier raged in his soul, stirring it up, as he said; "to its very foundations," may have been salutary. In a second letter to Mrs. Bull that will be given is full later on, Ruth Ellis was to remark upon the great change "which has taken place in  Landsberg. We all noticed it and were touched by it.'[58]


But as will be clear in later chapters, Leon Landsberg did not remain (on the surface, at least) greatly changed-no more so than did Mme Marie Louise. Indeed, in view of what is known of these two disciples, both of whom were eventually to turn against Swamiji, the question of why he gave them sannyasa is bound to arise. Presumptuous and ultimately unanswerable though such a question may be, one cannot help reflecting over it, hoping that such refection, however short it may fall of the mark, may lead to some small understanding of Swamiji himself.


We can be sure at the outset that Swamiji knew these disciples far better than did anyone else, seeing in them virtues and strengths hidden from others by an overlay of faults and weaknesses-which weaknesses themselves he may have seen as latent strengths. His choice of these two, Sister Christine writes, "grew out of the theory which he then held that fanaticism is power gone astray," a force that "can be transmuted and turned into a higher channel.'[59]No doubt Swamiji was moved by the inner worth and potential powers of these disciples, seeing therein their capacity for good work. But did he not a1w see the flaws that would make it unlikely that either Abhayananda or Kripananda would be able to carry on his work successfully? One cannot but think that he of course did (though differently than we) ; nor can it be thought that he had no motives for giving sannyasa other than to mate good workers. Such initiation from him was a rocketing into spiritual freedom for the disciples-though fire if need be. It was an event of supreme importance in the long journey of the soul, the meaning of which soul hardly be read in terms of one lifetime alone.


A few years later Swamiji was to say to Sister Nivedita in connection with his giving sannyasa to Westerners, "I am at heart a mystic, Margot, all this reasoning is only apparent I am really always the lookout for signs and things—and  so I never bother about the fate of my initiations. If they want to be sannyasins badly enough I feel that the rest is not my business. Of course it has its bad side. I have to pay dearly for my blunder sometimes-but it has one advantage. It has kept me still a sannyasin through all this-and that is my ambition, to die a real sannyasin as Ramakrishna Paramahansa actually was-free from lust-& desire of wealth, & thirst for fame. That thirst for fame is the worst of all folth.'[60]


His bestowal of sannyasa, then, was not motivated. by an evaluation of the candidate's potential for beneficent power nor by his recognition of some special virtues; more simply, it was his unreasoned response to the prayer of the disciple, the outflowing of his grace that knew no calculation. This is not to say that Swamiji gave initiation for the mere asking. He gave "if they want to be sannyasins badly enough." In a letter written the following year to the Brahmavadin, Kripananda mentions Swamiji's "great reluctance to create Sanyasins in this country, except upon the most urgent insistence of the applicants.'[61] It was the inner cry alone that tapped his grace.


Another point that can perhaps be ventured here is that aside from Swamiji's immediate reasons of mind or heart for giving the vows of sannyasa to any individual, his acts-the acts of a world teacher-were far-reaching, establishing a pattern for the future. His desire, as he often intimated, was to see many hundreds of men and women of the West formally renounce the world. "The yellow robe of the sannyasin is the sign of the free," he said in one of his last classes at Thousand Island Park. "Give up the beggar's dress of the world; wear the flag of freedom, the ochre robe.'[62] Although Swamiji often said that in this age the highest of Vedantic thought and practice must spread among nonmonastics (this was indeed a vital part of his message), he wanted to see a flowering of monasticism too. In March of 1896 he was to write to Alasinga from New York, "Yellow-garbed sannyasins will be common here and in England.'[63]Could not his first initiations of a  man and a woman into sannyasa have nudged into being a culture in the West where the ochre robe would be a common sight? ("Even now," he once said during a morning class in June, "we can 'give the push' in consciousness and it goes beyond and acts in the superconscious'[64] certainly Swamiji could give that push.) One may still ask, why those two? But who else in America had so far importuned him for sannyasa? As far as we know, there had been no one else.


Christina Greenstidel* and Mrs. Mary Funke, of whom we shall say more later on, were the last students to arrive at Miss Dutcher's cottage, bringing the number of known disciples up to eleven. But in her "Introductory Narrative" to Inspired Talks Miss Waldo writes, "By a singular coincidence just twelve students followed the Swami to Thousand Island Park.'[65]Who, then, was the twelfth? At the date of this writing his or her identity is unknown, and therefore when occasion arises, we shall refer to this twelfth person as the Unidentified Student. It is probable, as will be seen later, that he or she was present for only a week or ten days in the first part of July.

7

The morning after he arrived at Thousand Island Park Swamiji started to hold his classes in the new room just below his own. It was a small group that gathered around him; aside From Miss Dutcher, Miss Ellen Waldo must have been present, for it is her notes of this class of June 19 that open the now famous book Inspired Talks. "We had not yet all assembled there," she wrote at the outset, "but the Master's heart was always in his work, so he commenced at once to teach the three or four who were with him.'[66] Who the other one or two were we can only guess, but for a number of reasons, with which we need not bother the reader, the best guess is that they were Ruth Ellis and Dr. Wight, close friends of Miss  Waldo's, both of whom very likely came with her from New York.


The room was relatively large and full of light. Five tall windows (two of which can be seen in the photograph of the house) looked out into leafy trees; a door opened onto the veranda, and another onto the small front parlor.[67]As we have seen earlier, there was no fireplace (as there is today), and thus there was plenty of wall space for a number of chairs and perhaps a sofa or two. Where Swamiji's chair stood, no memoir has told us; yet perhaps that spot is not more vibrant than any other in the room, for according to the accounts that have come down to us, he seldom remained seated when talking to the small informal group. As he became absorbed in his subject, he would often pace back and forth, propelled, as it were, by the force of his thought. The whole room was his dais.


That first morning he came with a Bible in his hand. Those who were present were all Christians, he said; so it was proper to start with a Christian scripture. He chose the Gospel of John, "in the first five verses of [which], is the whole essence of Christianity; each verse is full of the profoundest philosophy.'[68] And it was not long before Christianity and Vedanta were indistinguishable; Religion itself, unlabeled and eternal, poured from his lips-and for forty-three morning classes thereafter it continued to do so.


In Inspired Talks we have by no means everything Swamiji said during those incomparable morning sessions, for Miss Waldo's longhand lagged behind his flow of words, perhaps catching only every other sentence or so. But if her notes were not speedy they were expert. Aphoristic, often startling in their clarity, beauty, and depth, they seem like scripture itself. Indeed one can find on almost any page of Inspired Talks a wealth of Vedantic thought as concentrated and sharply focused as in an Upanishad. Swamiji was himself amazed at the faithfulness with which she captured his thought, and one day he expressed his delight. The incident has been related by Sister Devamata:


. . . As [Miss Waldo] herself said, it was as if the thought of Swami Vivekananda flowed through her and wrote itself upon the page. Once when she was reading a portion of these same notes to some tardy arrivals in the Thousand Island Park home, the Swami paced up and down the floor, apparently unconscious of what was going on, until the travellers had left the room; then he turned to her and said: "How could you have caught my thought and words so perfectly? It was as if I heard myself speaking." What need of other commendation?[69]


No need. One only regrets that Miss Waldo did not take notes throughout every day and well into the night; for according to all accounts, Swamiji taught not only during the morning class, but continually. "He told us," Miss Waldo later wrote, "that he accepted us as real disciples and that was why he so constantly and freely taught us, giving his best'[70]The morning classes, however, perhaps represented the core of his teachings at Thousand Island Park; they seem indeed to contain the core of his teachings in the Western world, as though he wished to present to this small group the very heart of his message.


It should be mentioned here in passing that Inspired Talks has not come to us from Swamiji's lips entirely unedited. Some unconscious editing was, for instance, inevitable even as Miss Waldo took down his words, but the major editing was done in 1907 by Miss Laura Glenn (later Sister Devamata) with Miss Waldo's permission and approval. "It is criminal for you to keep these notes to yourself," Miss Glenn had exclaimed on hearing them read. "They belong to the world." To which Miss Waldo had replied:


"They have always seemed to me too Fragmentary, too inadequate, to publish.... They would give a false idea of the wonderful teaching Swamiji gave us during those six weeks at Thousand Island Park." She remained silent for a moment [Sister Devamata recalled]; then her face lighted up; she leaned forward in her chair, held out the book of notes and said to me: "If you are willing to take them and work on them and bring them out, I am glad to pass them over to you. If I tried to do anything with them, I should be thinking all the time how lacking they were.'[71]


Expert as Sister Devamata's editing may have been, it did here and there dampen the ring of Swamiji's voice. We are fortunate in having a second set of notes, which was brought to light in recent years by Swami Atmaghanananda.[72]Although these notes are anonymous and indeed fragmentary, they not only provide a few additions to Miss Waldo's notes as give in Inspired Talks, but contain a few differences of expression. Such differences are, to be sure, of no philosophical importance, but they seem to reveal the vigor and freshness of Swamiji's diction and style. To give two instances of what may have been a certain refining process in Inspired Talks: Swamiji it quoted there as saying, "Three great gifts we have: first, a human body.... Second, the desire to be free. Third, the help of a noble soul.... When you have these three, bless the Lord; you are sure to be free.'[73]According to the anonymous set of notes, what Swamiji said was not "bless the Lord," but "you have made the lucky throw of the dice"-certainly a more refreshing thing to say. Again, in Inspired Talks Swamiji is quoted as saying, "There is a vast difference between saying 'food, food' and eating it, between saying, 'water, water' and drinking it."74 What he actually said was not "water, water" but, more vigorously, "wine, wine." On the positive side, the anonymous notes give strong evidence that (from July 2 forward, at least) the sequence of Miss Waldo's notes as it occurs in Inspired Talks is faithful to the sequence and dates of Swamiji's classes-except for some minor and curious rearrangements.


(The question arises here of who took this second set of notes. They start on July 2, which would lead one to suppose, in accordance with our knowledge of the comings and goings of the students, that the note taker was either Stella or the Unidentified Student's I believe we can at once rule out Stella, who, as far as Sister Christine knew, seldom came to the classes; one does not picture her as taking notes. Let us assume, then, that our note taker was the Unidentified Student. We find that he or she struggled manfully up to July 10. From then to the last class on August 6 the notes are almost (but not entirely) identical with Miss Waldo's, as we know the latter from Inspired Talks. It is possible that the Unidentified Student remained at Thousand Island Park until August 6. But it is also possible that he or she left the Park on July 10 or 11 and copied Miss Waldo's notes at a later date.)


For convenience, Swamiji's morning class can, I think, be divided into three not altogether arbitrary parts. The first extends from June 19 through July 5; the second, from July 6 through July 19; and the third from July 20 through August 6. It is not that he was teaching different subjects, or even different aspects of the same subject; these different parts mark, rather, somewhat different avenues of approach to the same persistent and compelling theme that was to ring through all his teachings in the West during the next year and a half. As far as we can know from Inspired Talks, the first section (according to this scheme) consisted of twelve classes.'[76]During the course of these he took as his texts the Gospel of John, the Narada Bhakti Sutras (summarizing the entire book in one session), and the Bhagavad Gita. In addition, he devoted one morning to a talk on Sri Ramakrishna and another to a talk on the Divine Mother. He spoke of God, the path of devotion, Divine Incarnation, Bibles, and Prophets. There was a wonderful variety of religious thought, a symphony of many themes, each exquisite in its own truth. And each was related in its own way to a great pervasive master theme-or, one might say, each was illumined from within by the same unwavering light: through  out these classes one basic instruction resounded: "Stand upon the Self!"


To quote almost at random: "We are striving 'to be' and nothing more, no 'I' even just pure crystal, reflecting all, but ever the same.... Know you are the Infinite, then fear must die. Say ever, 'I and my Father are one.' "'a "All pleasures of the senses or even of the mind are evanescent; but within ourselves is the one true unrelated pleasure, dependent upon nothing. It is perfectly free, it is bliss. The more our bliss with in, the more spiritual we are. The pleasure of the Self is what the world calls religion”79 Life and death are only different names for the same fact, the two sides of the one coin. Both are Maya, the inexplicable state of striving at one time to live, and a moment later to die. Beyond this is the true nature, the Atman.'[80]In short, as Swamiji was to say toward the end of the summer, "The keynote running through the music is 'I am He, I am He'; all other notes are but variation and do not affect the real theme.'[81] Indeed so monistic was the primary theme running through Swamiji's first two weeks of classes (devotional though they also were) that Miss Waldo used her notes of them to give an ending to another set of notes taken down most likely during his New York classes on jnana yoga, held earlier in the year. (See note for chapter one, page 41.)

From the start he taught a doctrine of strength, spurning softness of approach. "Get freedom, even at the cost of life," he thundered while teaching from the Bible. ". . . All we can do is to put down all desires, hates, differences; put down the lower self, commit mental suicide, as it were.... Seek truth for truth's sake alone, look not for bliss. It may come, but do not let that be your incentive. Have no motive except God. Dare to come to Truth even through hell.'[82]

8

According to the scheme we arc here following, the second part of Inspired Talks began on July 6. The group of students had become somewhat larger. "Marie Louise arrived yesterday," Swamiji wrote to Betty Sturges sometime before July 7. "So we are exactly seven now including all that have come yet.'[83]Was it coincidence that with the arrival of the intellectual and intense Frenchwoman Swamiji now took as his text the Brahma Sutra Bhashya of Shankaracharya, or had the awaited book only just arrived? In any event, the morning class now entered the deep waters of Advaita Vedanta philosophy.


As is well known to every student of Indian philosophy, the Brahma Sutras, or Vedanta Sutras, was an ancient attempt to systematize the sometimes obscure and contradictory thought of the Upanishads. These highly terse and elliptical sutras have been ascribed to Badarayana Vyasa, of whom little is known, (Some scholars place him in ancient times, and tradition identifies him with Veda Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata.) Because of their near impenetrability, the 550-odd aphorisms of this compendious work have been interpreted down through the ages, each commentator at times twisting the text a bit, as Swamiji pointed out, to suit his own philosophical bent and thesis-"conscious liars" all. The commentaries of Shankara (monistic), Ramanuja (qualified-monistic), and Madhva (dualistic) are the best known.


As early as March 6, 1895, Swamiji, in an unpublished passage, had written to Alasinga Perumal, "Can you send me the books I wrote you for?[84]And on April 4, "Send me the Vedanta Sutras and the Bhasyas of all the sects.'[85] a Alasinga had already sent the first volume of the Bhashya of Ramanuja. On his receipt of the book Swamiji wrote a long letter (dated May 6, 1895) to his disciple, in the course of which he explained in some detail his reason for wanting all the great commentaries. The passage is well known, but can be repeated here, for it sounds one of the main themes of his thought:


Now I will tell you my discovery. All of religion is contained in the Vedanta, that is, in the three stages of the Vedanta philosophy, the Dvaita [Dualism], Vishi shtadvaita (Qualified-monism], and Advaita [Nondualism]; one comes after the other. These are the three stages of spiritual growth in man. Each one is necessary. This is the essential of religion; the Vedanta, applied to the various ethnic customs and creeds of India, is Hinduism. The first stage, i.e. Dvaita, applied to the ideas of the ethnic groups of Europe, is Christianity; as applied to the Semitic groups, Mohammedanism. The Advaita, as applied in its Yoga-perception form, is Buddhism, etc. Now by religion is meant the Vedanta; the applications must vary according to the different needs, surroundings, and other circumstances of different nations. You will find that although the philosophy is the same, the Shaktas, Shaivas, etc. apply it each to their own special cult and ,forms. . . I wish to write a book on this subject, therefore I wanted the three Bhashyas; but only one volume of the Ramanuja (Bhashya) has reached me as yet.[86]Swamiji was eager to receive the other volumes, which were long in coming. In May he had written to Mrs. Bull about the expected arrival of the Sanskrit works and his intention "to write a book in English on the Vedanta Philosophy in its three states when I am at Thousand Islands."87 Other Sanskrit books came from India, but not, it would appear, the Bhashyas. In a heretofore unpublished letter to Mrs. Hale, dated May 16, 1895, Swamiji had written from New York in regard to the arrival and nonarrival of books and other packages and packets from India-always a matter of concern. His letter is given here in full:

54 W. 33
New York 16th
May'95


Dear Mother

Your kind note duly reached. The books have arrived safe and more are coming. The Sanskrit books pay no duty being classics.


I expect a big package from Khetri. The big packet was from the raja of Khetri sending me an address from a meeting held of Rajput nobility at Mount Abu for my work in this country.


I do not know whether I will be able to come over to Chicago or not. I am trying to get a free pass-in case I succeed I will come, else not. Financially this winter's work was no success at all. I could barely keep myself up, but spiritually very great. I am going to the Thousand Islands for the summer to visit a friend and some of my pupils will be there.


I have got plenty of books now to read from India and I will be quite engaged this summer.


The Khetri package will not arrive soon, so kindly make arrangements that it will be received during your absence if you go away. [There] will have to be paid a heavy duty for [it] I am afraid.


Mrs. [Florence] Adams brought me the love from the [Hale] Sisters on her way to Europe. She started this morning. A large package of books also I expect soon: The original Upanishads; there is no duty on them.


I have had some trouble with my stomach; hope it will be over in a few days.


With love to all, I am ever your affectionate Sons[88]

Vivekananda


It was no doubt in regard to the same shipment of safely arrived books that Swamiji had written from New York to Mary Hale, who generally attended to forwarding to him his Chicago-addressed letters and packages: "The letters from India and the parcel of books reached me safe." In another passage of this letter it is clear that those books were not the eagerly awaited Bhashyas. "The three great commentaries on the Vedanta philosophy belonging to the three great sects of dualists, qualified dualists, and monists are being sent to me from India. Hope they will arrive safe. Then I will have an intellectual feast indeed. I intend to write a book this summer on the Vedanta philosophy.'[89]


It is not clear from Swamiji's letters exactly when the Bhashyas came into his hands. As late as June 26 he was still "expecting some books from India," and asking Mary Hale to "kindly send them over here [to Thousand Island park].[90] But finally they arrived. As has been said, we know that Swamiji began his discussion of the Vedanta Sutras on July 6. And although Miss Waldo does not always indicate in her notes on which days he read from and elucidated the commentaries, it is possible to discover (to some extent at least) the mornings on which he brought one or another of the great tomes to the class. For instance, on the morning of July 6, he went through the entire text of Shankara's introduction to his commentary, in which is discussed the subject of adhyasa, or the superimposition of the object upon the subject, the latter of which is "the only reality; the other [the object] a mere appearance." On this same morning, he covered also Shankara's commentary on the first and second aphorisms of the Brahma Sutras, bringing out the salient points from the midst of long and weighty arguments and expositions, which tend to confound the Western student, particularly in the then available English translatio.[91]On July 10 he took up the commentary on the third aphorism; on July 12 and 16 (jumping around a bit) that on the fourth aphorism; and on July 18, that on the fifth.


Interspersed, were classes on the Shri Bhashya of Ramanuja. Although Miss Waldo made no note of it, Swamiji seems to have begun his discussion of Ramanuja's philosophy, or theology, on the morning of Sunday, July 7. He began to quote from Ramanuja's Shri Bhashya on that afternoon and continued to elucidate it on the following morning and the morning after that. As for the Bhashya of Madhvacharya, he did not linger with it. "Madhva is a thoroughgoing dualist or dualist," he said. ". . . He quotes chiefly from the Puranas. He says that Brahman means Vishnu, not Siva at all, because  there is no salvation except through Vishnu.... There is no place for reasoning in Madhva's explanation, it is all taken from the revelation in the Vedas.'[92] That is almost all we find about Madhvacharya in Inspired Talks.


It was the Bhashyas of Shankara and Ramanuja that claimed Swamiji's attention from July 6 through July 19. Throughout these classes he not only quoted from the commentaries but gave his own harmonizing views. To Swamiji it was on the basis of Advaita that the dualistic religions, from the most crude to the most rarefied, had validity; they Were needed representations or expressions of the soul's partial visions of itself at varying distances-some far off and awesome, some close and enrapturing. Ultimately, they led to the highest realization of all-that of the identity of the unveiled soul with the Self or Brahman. Swamiji's reconciliation of the three philosophical schools of Vedanta was, as he himself was later to say, a contribution to Indian thought. Previously each school had been considered a different, though equally valid, path to the soul's liberation. Sri Ramakrishna had demonstrated the actual truth of this in his life, verifying it beyond all doubt. Swamiji now pointed out philosophically the basis for the harmony of all religious ideals and paths, showing them to be but stages on the way back to the One Reality as taught by Advaita Vedanta. When asked in later years why, if this view was correct, it had never before been mentioned by any of the Masters, he replied, with the knowledge of his own stature, "Because I was born for this and it was left for me to do.'[93]


In his classes at Thousand Island Park we find him dwelling on this subject, explaining again and again the place of dualistic religions in relation to Advaita Vedanta, the meaning of the Personal God in relation to the Absolute Brahman. Indeed, the views he expressed at Miss Dutcher's cottage perhaps constitute an important part of the book he wanted to write that summer. Here are a few passages pertinent to this particular theme.


So long as I say "you" [he said on July 19] I have the right to speak of God protecting us. When I see another, I must take all the consequences and put in the third, the ideal, which stands between us; that is the apex of the triangle.... The idea of creation or change is inseparably connected with will. So long as we perceive this world in motion, we have to conceive will behind it.... From our present standpoint, this world appears to us as will and consciousness. Personal God is as much an entity for Himself as we are for ourselves, and no more.[94]


And a few days later:

Separating ourselves from the Absolute and attributing certain qualities to It gives us Isvara. It is the Reality of the universe as seen through our mind.[95]


A week later:

Man does not manufacture God out of his own brain; but he can only see God in the light of his own capacity, and he attributes to Him the bat of all he knows. Each attribute is the whole of God, and this signifying the whole by one quality is the metaphysical explanation of the Personal God. Isvara is without form yet has all forms, is without qualities yet has all qualities. As human beings, we have to see the trinity of existence--God, man, nature; and we cannot do otherwise.[96]


It is through God Himself that we can go beyond Him, back (as it were) to the Absolute Brahman. "Some imaginations help to break the bondage of the rest," Swamiji said in his last-but-one day at Thousand Island Park. "The whole universe is imagination, but one set of imaginations will cure another set.... The highest imagination that can break all the links of the chain is that of the Personal God.'[97]


There are many definitions and explanations of the Personal God, both as Ishvara and as the Divine Mother, in Inspired Talks, but let us quote just one more-one in which we find the illusory line between God and Brahman-the "optical illusion," the difference that does not exist and yet, because we see it, cannot be denied: The sea calm is the Absolute; the same sea in waves is Divine Mother. She is time, space, and causation. God is Mother and has two natures, the conditioned and the unconditioned. As the former, She is God, nature, and soul (man). As the latter, She is unknown and unknowable. Out of the Unconditioned came the trinity: God, Nature, and soul-the triangle of existence."


To the orthodox Vishishtadvaitist (qualified-monist) the triangle is real; to the Advaitist, it is the magic spell under which, for a time, man laughs and cries and prays-all the while, as Swamiji said, eternally free. "Beyond [Maya] is the true nature, the Atman. While we recognise a God, it is really only the Self, from which we have separated ourselves and worship as outside of us; but it is our true Self all the time-the one and only God.'[99]


Ramanuja would not have agreed. Nor perhaps would Shankara have agreed with Swamiji's [and Sri Ramakrishna's] recognition of the Vishishtadvaita stage as essential in the life of the aspiring soul. Essential, but not permanent or prolonged. Swamiji never tired of emphasizing that while the jiva (the individual soul) must recognize a God, the effort must be ever toward freedom, toward the Advaitic realization, not toward further and further dependence, not , in the gravitational field of Maya, toward a more and more crude and debilitating form of dualism. "Fearlessness is not possible as long as we have even God over us; we must be God.''[100]"We create God in our image; it is we who create Him to be our master, it is not God who mates us His servants. When we  know that we are one with God, that we and He are friends, then come equality and freedom. So long as you hold yourself separated by a hair's breadth from the Eternal One, fear cannot go.'[101] And again, "Never forget the glory of human nature. We are the greatest God that ever was or ever will be. Christs and Buddhas are but waves on the boundless ocean which I am. Bow down to nothing but your own higher Self. Until you know that you are that very God of gods, there will never be any freedom for you.'[102]


Swami completed his discussion of the Bhashyas of the Brahma Sutras on July 18 or 19, and so ended (according to our division) the second part of his morning class.

9

It appears to have been around this time that two strangers, wet, bedraggled, and terrified by their own boldness, knocked one dark and rainy night at the Front door. Miss Dutcher, who let them in, called Swamiji from the upstairs veranda to see the "two ladies from Detroit.'[103]He came down the stairs to the little parlor, and the young women, overwhelmed in his presence, forgot all their rehearsed speeches. The words tumbled out: "We have come to you just as we would go to Jesus if he were still on the earth and ask him to teach us.'[104]

"He greeted us so sweetly!" one of them was to write to a friend. "It was like a benediction[105]." And he said, "If only I possessed the power of the Christ to set you free now!"4 Then after a few more words, he invited them upstairs to join the group to whom he had been talking. "And what do you think?" the letter went on. "Instead of our staying at a hotel or boarding house, as we expected, those dear people insisted [the next day] upon our becoming members of the household. Our hearts sang paeans of praise.'[106]


And thus it was that Mrs. Mary Funke and Miss Christina Greenstidel came to Swamiji[107] "my disciples," he would say  in later years, "who travelled hundreds of miles to find me, and they came in the night and in the rain.'[108]


According to Sister Christine's memoirs, she and Mrs. Funke arrived at Thousand Island Park on the night of July 6. Yet her memory of the date was admittedly not certain, for when first mentioning it she wrote, "It must have been the 6th of July, 1895, that we had the temerity to seek him out.'[8] With due apologies to Sister Christine, one must venture to say that there are a number of reasons that the date could not have been the sixth of July. First of all, July 6 was not a rainy night. The first time that rain fell in the area after weeks of what the natives considered to be a drought was on the night of Monday, July 8. It was an event worthy of notice. "The blessed rains came last night beginning at 8 p.m.," the Watertown Times rejoiced.'[109]Nor could the two young ladies have arrived on the evening of July 8, for it seems clear from Sister Christine's memoirs that Leon Landsberg was there ahead of them, and he, it is certain, had arrived not earlier than July 11. Again, we learn from Sister Christine that Swamiji was planning to initiate several people on the Monday following the arrival of the two young women from Detroit. The two initiation ceremonies that Swamiji held at Thousand Island Park took place on Sunday, July y (when he gave the vows of sannyasa and the name Abhayananda to Mme Marie Louise).[110]and Monday, July 22 (when he gave the same vows and the name Kripananda to Leon Landaberg). In all probability it was the second occasion to which Sister Christine was referring, and thus it could have been on the rainy night of Saturday, July 20, that she and Mary Funke arrived. According to another reference in Christine's memoirs, however, it was not the twentieth, but the equally rainy nineteenth. Writing of their first meeting at the cottage, she precisely describes the class which is dated July 20 in Inspired Talks. Indeed, her notes of this morning class coincide in places almost word for word with Miss Waldo's.[111]Nor in any of Christine's writings about Thousand Island Park does she refer to classes or events earlier than those of July 20. So even if we had only the inclusions and omissions in the memoirs of Sister Christine to go by, we would feel confident in giving the date of July 19 to that memorable dark and rainy night. But we have also a series of letter fragments, interwoven with reminiscences, written by Mary Funke. These "Reminiscences," as the composition is called as a whole, appeared in Prabuddha Bharata in February of 1927, only a few months before Mrs. Funke died. The date that heads it is "July 19 [1895].'[112] It is clear enough that the first letter fragment was not written on the day of arrival; but it is also clear that the date does not belong to the first fragment any more than to later, undated fragments; rather, its purpose, it would seem, is to mark the beginning of that wonderful and auspicious time. All in all, then, July 19 would seem to have been the date of the arrival of the "two ladies from Detroit "


But late though they may have come, they stayed to the end and were filled, as were all the others, to overflowing. Indeed it was a time not to be counted in days or weeks; it partook of eternity-a time they could never have imagined in anticipation and could not easily recapture in memory.


Only if one's mind were lifted to that high state of consciousness in which we lived for the time, could we hope to recapture the experience (Sister Christine was to write in her memoirs]. We were filled with joy. We did not know at that time that we were living in his radiance. On the wings of inspiration, he carried us to the height which was his natural abode. He himself, speaking of it later, said that he was at his best in Thousand Islands.[113]


As is well known to everyone familiar with Swami Vivekananda's life, Christina Greenstidel and her friend Mary Funke had first heard Swamiji in their home town of Detroit in mid February of 1894. A combination of conditions-religious and intellectual boredom, the dreary monotony of Detroit's usual lecture season, Mary Funke's unquenchable sense of optimism about what lay around the next corner, and, surely, some imponderable element-had taken them one evening to the Unitarian Church to hear "Vive Kananda, the Hindoo Monk." They had gone hoping for a ray of light, and they found the sun itself.


"Surely, never in our countless incarnations had we taken a step so momentous!" Sister Christine was to write long after, the wonder of the event only increasing with the passing years. "For before we had listened five minutes, we knew that we had found the touchstone for which we had searched so long. In one breath, we exclaimed--'If we had missed this . . . !' '[114]


Swamiji was in Detroit that season from February 12 to 23 and from March 9 to 30. He gave eight public lectures in the city, all of which the two friends attended. They did not meet him personally; it had been enough to be in the same auditorium with that radiant power, to listen to that mind.


That amazing mind! (Sister Christine was to recall.] What can one say that will give even a faint idea of its majesty, its glory, its splendour? It was a mind so far transcending other minds, even of those who rank as geniuses, that it seemed different in its very nature. Its ideas were so clear, so powerful, so transcendental that it seemed incredible that they could have emanated from the intellect of a limited human being.... He burst upon us in a blaze of reddish gold, which seemed to have caught and concentrated the sun's rays. He was barely thirty, this preacher from far away India.'[115]


After Swamiji had left Detroit the two young women lost track of him. It was not until the summer of the following year that a friend happened to inform them that he was still in America and was spending the summer at Thousand Island Park. One can imagine that Christina Greenstidel and Mary Funke simply looked at one another and without a word knew what they would do. Early the next morning they were on a train headed east--to Niagara Falls (or perhaps to Buffalo), New York; from there to Clayton, and thence by river steamer to the Dock at the Park: a journey all told of more than five hundred miles.


Arriving in the early evening, they no doubt took a room and had dinner; and then, for they could not wait, they made in inquiries at the village stores about how to find Swami Vivekananda. At length they learned that there were, yes, "some queer people living up on the hill, among whom is a foreign looking gentleman.'[116] They hired a man with a lantern, who led them through the rain to the Tabernacle and thence along a wet and slippery path--slick with mud in some spots, with wet granite in others--up and across the wooded hill. They could not have gone more than sixty yards before they saw a light through the trees and heard the "rich, beautiful voice of the Swami, who was talking to those who had gathered on his porch." "Our heart-beats could have been heard, I truly believe!" Mary Funke later wrote to her friend'[117]But their courage did not fail them. They reached the cottage, walked up the front steps, knocked on the door--and we know the rest.


These two pilgrims became dear to Swamiji, particularly Christina Greenstidel. Gentle, "pure in soul,'[118]as he said, and self sacrificing, she would, he knew, become instrumental in his Indian work. For Mary Funke he saw another road. Of her future he was to say, dashing her romantic dreams of wearing yellow robes in Himalayan caves-"You are a householder. Go back to Detroit, find God in your husband and family. That is your path at present." Eminently sensible, she acknowledged the rightness of his words. "How foolish of me " she later wrote, "and how wise Swamiji was!'[119]


Of Mary Caroline Funke's background and life we know only that her husband, Charles F. Funke, was a wholesale grocer in Detroit and an elder in the Presbyterian Church (which, on the whole, did not look with favor upon Swamiji).


We know also that Mary Funke was beautiful, gracious, and charming, that she was somewhat older than Sister Christine, that she suffered From ill health in later years, that she died a widow in August of 1927 and was survived by a daughter. To judge from her letters and reminiscences, together with the memoirs of Christine, she had an optimistic and sunny disposition, a bubbling sense of humor, the gift of giving herself to others, and the blessed ability to amuse Swamiji. She had, as well, the "temerity" to seek him out with Christina in his "retreat," the humility to be aghast at her own boldness, and the courage, again, to knock upon his door. "Mrs. Funke is a jewel," Swamiji was to write in a letter to Christine years later, "--all blessings on her.'[120] Christina Greenstidel had the same courage, the same humility, the same dauntless spirit as her friend, but she does not seem to have had the same spontaneous cheerfulness. Indeed her life (before Swamiji entered it) seems to have been without rapture, burdened with external responsibilities, darkened by inward depression, and propelled by an iron will. A sketch written by Mr. Boshi Sen, a good friend of hers in later years, gives us the only information we have of her early days. Mr. Sen, whose source was, no doubt, Christine herself, wrote:


Sister Christine was born of German parentage, in Nuremberg, August 17, 1866. Her father, Frederick Greenstidel, moved to the United States when she was only three years old, and the family settled in Detroit. [The home address of Christine's family was in the heart of Detroit's German district, as was that of Mary and Charles Funke.] She had a very happy childhood. Her father, a noble, free-thinking German scholar, was the hero of her worship and the object of her adoration. But he lacked business acumen and as a result lost all his savings and inheritance. At the age of seventeen, Sister Christine, faced with the responsibility of being the sole provider for her mother and five [actually, four] younger sisters, accepted the position of teacher in the Detroit Public Schools. From this time on to the very end, life demanded of her heroic struggles and noble self-effacement.[121]


According to Boshi Sen, Christina, outgrowing an early devotion to the orthodox church, became “one of the first Christian Scientists of Detroit.” But along with many another spiritual seeker, she had ventured up other religious avenues and byways as well. Indeed, in the summer of 1895 she and Mary Funke were attending a class in Detroit held by Mrs. Peake, an occultist of sorts. Mrs. Peake, whom Swamiji had once referred to as “a simple good woman,'[122] taught some wonders passing strange. “The two ladies [so good and pure] who have come from Detroit were in Mrs. Peake’s class,” he wrote from Thousand Island Park on July 29, “and unfortunately were mighty frightened with imps and other persons of that ilk. They have been taught to put a little salt, just a little, in burning alcohol, and if there is a black precipitate, that must be the impurities showing the presence of the imps. However, these two ladies had too much fright from the imps. It is said that these imps are everywhere filling the whole universe.'[123]


It is small wonder that Mary and Christina ran to Thousand Island Park. “Oh, the sublime teaching of Vivekananda!” Mary Funke wrote from there. “No nonsense, no talk of ‘astrals,’ ‘imps,’ etc., but God, Jesus, Buddha. I feel that I shall never be quite the same again for I have caught a glimpse of the Real.'[124]


In her memoirs, Sister Christine tells how Swamiji happened to initiate them (?) almost immediately upon their arrival at Miss Dutcher’s cottage. “We came on Saturday, . . .” se wrote, meaning, no doubt, the morning they joined the household. “Swami Vivekananda had planned to initiate several of those already there on Monday [July 22]. ‘I don’t know you well enough yet to feel sure that you are ready for initiation,’ he said on Sunday afternoon. Then he added rather shyly, 'I have a power which I seldom use-the power of reading the mind. If you will permit me, I should like to read your mind, as I wish to initiate you with the others tomorrow.' We assented joyfully.'[125]


He told them a little of what he found. "He saw that one of us [Christina] would be indissolubly connected with India. Important as well as minor events were foretold for us, nearly all of which have come to pass. In this reading the quality of the personality was revealed-the mettle, the capacity, the character.'[126] But modestly enough, Sister Christine does not relate in her memoirs what she confided to Boshi Sen:


The day after the arrival [Mr. Sen wrote in his sketch], Swamiji, with Sister Christine's permission, read her life. When he asked: "May I read all?" she replied: "Yes, of course." "Brave girl !" he exclaimed. He told her then that she had only three veils left and that her third eye would open in this life. The next day Swamiji initiated her.[127]


The reference to "three veils" and "third eye" has an esoteric ring uncharacteristic of Swamiji. But whether or not he actually used these terms, their significance is clear: Christina had already advanced far along the spiritual path. There may have been other teats of her readiness as well. Would it not have been during the first day or two after her arrival that Swamiji, perhaps wanting quickly to plumb the depth of her spiritual sincerity, or perhaps forcing her to plumb the depths of her own commitment, outrageously blew cigarette smoke in her face? In her own words:


It is true that we were conventional and proper to the point of prudishness. Still even one more Bohemian might have been disconcerted. He, in the days when men did not smoke before ladies, would approach, and blow the cigarette smoke deliberately into one's face. Had it been anyone else, I should have turned my back and not spoken to him again. Even so for a moment I recoiled. I caught myself and remembered the reason for coming. I had come to one in whom I had seen such spirituality as I had never even dreamed of. From his lips I had heard truths unthought of before. He knew the way to attainment. He would show me the way. Did I intend to let a little whiff of smoke turn me back? It was all over in last time than it takes to tell it. I knew it was over in another sense as well.[128]


Did Swamiji initiate Christina then and there into brahmacharya? According to Miss Waldo's reminiscences, written in 1905, it seems almost certain that he did.


. . . Every one of the students (at Thousand Island Park) received initiation at the hands of the Swami (Miss Waldo wrote).... The ceremony of initiation was impressive from its extreme simplicity. A small altar fire, beautiful flowers, and the earnest words of the Teacher alone marked it as different from our daily lessons. It took place at sunrise of a beautiful summer day, and the scene still lives fresh in our memories. Of those who became Brahmacharinis at Thousand Island Park, two are dead, and one is now in India helping to carry on the work nearest to Swami Vivekanauda's heart, the uplifting of his fellow countrymen.[129]

As is well known, it was Sister Christine, alone among the students at Thousand Island Park, who was working in India in Igo5. (According to Miss Waldo, four others received the vows of brahmacharya at Thousand Island Park.)[130]

10

The classes that Christina Greenstidel and Mary Funke attended from July 20 through August 6 constitute what we  have called the third part of Inspired Talks. There were only eighteen classes (and two recorded after noon talks) is this last section, but there was everything in them that had gone before, at least in essence, and there was also more. There were discussions on the necessity for a guru, and also, from a higher standpoint, on the non necessity for a guru. (In a passage that one finds only is the anonymous set of notes, Swamiji said on July 13, "We do not require a guru. Know: I depend on no one; I have all I need, I no more need a teacher. All a guru is for, is to teach us that we do not need a teacher.")[131] There were discussions, also, of Buddha, Christ, free will, the art of teaching, the need for chastity, the theory of raja yoga, the practice of karma yoga and bhakti yoga, and, throughout, persistently and continuously, the fiery call to discrimination and renunciation, the insistence on total spiritual independence, the commands: Stand on the Self! Be Free! There was little argumentation or philosophical reasoning in Swamiji's classes; rather, there was the outpouring of one stunning spiritual truth after another. He himself was proof of their validity. He seems to have been drawing aside a curtain in the most simple way to reveal the most simple (and most philosophically abstruse) of all facts: "I am He"-the individual soul is Brahman. His words, even as one reads them, convey power as well as knowledge; but, as Sister Christine writes in her memoirs, "there was something else, as influence, an atmosphere charged with the desire to escape from bondage-all it what you will that can never be put into words, and yet was more powerful than any words.... 'Azad, Azad, the Free,' he cried, Pacing up and down like a caged lion. Yes, like the lion in the cage who found the bars not of iron but of bamboo.'[132]Or, "walking up and down the room, getting more and more excited, he would stop before some one, as if there were no one else in the room. '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:'[133]Or, again, "He would rush up to one of us With blazing eyes and fingers printing and would exclaim, ‘Remember, God is the only Reality.’ Like a madman, but he was mad for God.'[134]

From July twenty-first through the twenty-eighth Swamiji taught from various texts: the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Bhagavad Gita, the Brihadaranyaka and Katha Upanishads, and the uncompromisingly monistic Avadhuta Gita. The following nine days he seems to have taught without any particular text, creating, as it were, his own scriptures. And through all ran the grand theme of man’s innate divinity. It is sometimes said that Swamiji taught both monism and dualism side by side, or one at one time and the other at another time. But a reading of Inspired Talks (among others of his works) would seem to leave no doubt that he taught only the great fact that One Being alone existed, a Being that included I and thou, even as the Personal God was included in and stood upon the Absolute Brahman.


In bringing the teachings of Advaita Vedanta from the “caves and forests of India” “into our everyday life, the city life, the country life, the national life, and the home life of every nation,'[135] Swamiji never lost sight of the average man’s practical necessity to act within the world as he perceived it the world of Maya perceived at its best on the plane of Vishishtadvaita, where God, the soul, and Nature form “the trinity of existence.'[136]“What we need today,” he said, “is to know that there is a God and that we can see and feel Him here and now.'[137]And again, “At the present time God should be worshipped as ‘Mother,’ the Infinite Energy. This will lead to purity, and tremendous energy will come here in America.'[138]But at the same time, as we have attempted to point out earlier, he let no one lose sight of the One Reality, within which all dreams—dreams of God, man, and the world—have their existence. “The dream is only the dreamer, it has no other basis.'[139]Or, to pick another passage more or less at random, “He who knows he is the Atman, he is a law unto himself. He knows he is the universe and its c reator.'[140] Again, “Atman is the reality of all; all we see is Atman, but not as we see it, as name and form; they are all in our veil, in Maya.'[141]


In Swamiji's teachings at Thousand Island Park one senses a movement in and out, a swinging from the Formless Reality to the Divine Illusion of Form magically patterned in Pure Consciousness. "Learn concentration and use it in any direction," he taught. "Thus you lose nothing. He who gets the whole must have the parts too. Dualism is included in Advaitism.* . . . You must be able to sympathize fully with each particular, then at once to jump back to the highest monism. After having perfected yourself, you limit yourself voluntarily. Take the whole power into each action. Be able to become a dualist for the time being and forget Advaita, yet be able to take it up again at will.'[142]"Give up the waves and go to the ocean, then you can have the waves as you please.'[143]


This practical monism was, in Swamiji's view, essential to the modern world. It by no means demanded a scornful rejection of the world as unreal and worthless; it demanded, rather, the renunciation of the false and narrow vision. It asked that man see the world in its highest light, as permeated through and through with divinity. "We divide ourselves into two to love God, myself loving my Self," he had said on July 3• ". . . The very idea of God is love. Seeing a cat loving her kittens, stand and pray. God has become manifest there; literally believe this. Repeat 'I am Thine, I am Thine,' for we can see God everywhere. Do not seek for Him, just see Him.'[144]And at a later date, "Everything is the living God, the living Christ; see it as such. Read man, he is the living poem.'[145] And, on the last day, “'The seeing of many is the great sin of all the world. See alt as Self and love all; let all ideas of separateness go.'[146]


Was this not the very essence of Swamiji's Vedanta for the intensely active, deeply involved men and women of the present day? It was the Vedanta of applied monism, the assertion of one's own divinity here and now: the persistent  declaration of, and, consequently, the worship and service of, the living divinity of all men everywhere and at all times; i was a new path for a new world.


There are many more strands of Swamiji's world message in Inspired Talks, but to attempt to trace them all is not my purpose here. I want only to point out that this early record of his concentrated teaching of Vedanta to the West announces the essential theme, the "keynote" that he was to develop and elaborate during the next year and a half of his Western visit. There were to be many variations, many philosophical and psychological explanations, many detailed instructions and practical teachings, some of which I shall attempt to discuss in later chapters, but the basic strength-and-freedom giving theme, "I am , I am He!" was never to be overshadowed by its expositions and variations. On the contrary, it was to grow more and more emphatic. By 1900, when he would deliver his last lectures in the West, he would be admonishing man to "stand upon the Self" with such unqualified insistence and love that al! other themes would be drowned out in that lion roar.[147] But that would be the grand finale, far ahead of our story. Thousand Island Park was the arresting clap of thunder at the start.


And during what informal and simple times it came! Up until now, our information about the seven weeks Swamiji spent at Thousand Island Park has been derived primarily from three well-known memoirs: those of Ellen Waldo, Sister Christine, and Mary Funke. In addition, some published letters of Swamiji have also thrown light on his summer there, but it is mainly through student-eye views that we (as students) can savor something of those weeks. We are fortunate, therefore, to have another (though brief) on-the-spot account in the form of a hitherto unpublished letter from Ruth Ellis to her friend Sara Bull. Written from Kingston, Ontario, and dated  August 9, 1895 it reads in full as follows (Miss Ellis's spelling is her own) :


My dear Mrs. Bull

We staid at The Park a week longer than we expected to when I wrote you.* The Swami gave up his trip to Chicago and this enabled him to lengthen his stay. He started for New York at 8-45 pm Tuesday last [August 6] and I came to this place the next morning.


Our family at Miss Dutcher's cottage was never smaller than eight, and sometimes we had ten or even twelve persons. Our facilities for cooking were somewhat primitive and we had only one small maid to help us, so you can see that with the classes our time was fully occupied. It was a trying experiment too, to bring under the same roof people of such strongly marked peculiarities as we happened to possess. But we got along with less friction than I dared to expect, and we all parted better friends than we were when we came together.


A Mr. and Mrs. Goodyear, a young couple from New York, were with us for two weeks and proved to be delightful people who put into daily practice the Vedanta philosophy we were listening to. Mr. G is a good business man and I think he will prove an efficient helper to the Swami the coming winter. I wish you had found it convenient to have come to us here if only for a few days. Of the teaching itself I can hardly trust myself to dwell upon. I am very sure that all of us who listened to it came away better and nobler for having come in contact with the water of life that could quench all our thirst. The Swami was in admirable temper all the time; more tolerant than in New York tho' perfectly fearless and outspoken. One Sunday Miss D asked in as many people as her parlor would hold and the Swami talked to them of the principles of Religion as understood by the Hindu people. The address seemed to be well received and no objections could be made to any statement. The Methodist clergyman Mr. Searls called on the Swami and proposed to have him speak in the Tabernacle near us, but a Mr. Gracie a returned missionary, made some objection and this put a stop to the arrangement *


Two ladies from Detroit who had attended the Swami's lectures in that place came to us, hardly daring to hope for a welcome yet feeling that earnestness like theirs could not be refused. They proved to be sincere and thoughtful and were very enthusiastic.


As to the making of Sanyasis, we were all taken by surprise as none of us knew that this step was intended. Marie Louise was ready to fulfill the conditions and the Swami was willing to accept the responsibility. She seemed to be in dead earnest but she has many characteristics of the untamed and the untamable, and I confess a fear that the Swami has taken "a bigger bite than he can chew."


I could not imagion a greater change than that which has taken place in Landsberg. We all noticed it and were all touched by it. If ever the deepths in human life were touched, it surely is in this case. There was something awfully pathetic in his thin intense face as he left us in the grey morning [of August 1] to begin his new life and work. God bless him! I am sure he will do nothing to dishonor the order he has united himself with. I gave Marie Louise a part of the money you entrusted to me for her. I think she was somewhat in debt in New York as she had been ill and unable to earn anything most of the winter. Mrs Goodyear sees her and will let me know if she needs' anything. If not I will return the ten dollars to you or Miss Hamlen. The ten sent by Miss H, I returned to Marie Louise before your letter containing the checque reached me. On talking over the matter with her she came to see that Miss H could still be her friend without congratulating her on becoming a Sanyasin. I showed your last letter to the Swami because I had given him the  first to read & it seemed best that he should see the other as well. I think he understands you thoroughly and have heard him say several times that "Mrs Bull is the very best friend I have in America. She understands my thought and appreciates all that is good and true in me."


I shall be in Canada for some weeks and shall be very glad to hear from you. Remember me to Miss Hamlen when you write to her and tell her I think of her always as a noble woman.

Sincerely Yours[148]
Ruth Ellis


(Apropos of Swamiji's regard for Mrs. Bull, let us quote here in passing some hitherto unpublished lines from an undated letter that he wrote to her from Thousand Island Park:


(In India Raja Ajit Sing of Khetri & in America Mrs Ole Bull-these are the two persons upon whom I can depend at any time. Of all the friends I have in the world you two show such wonderful steadiness of Purpose and both are so calm and silent, both of your actions remind me of a passage of "Kalidas"-speaking of a line of Kings-Their workings were so silent that it was only when the result came, that people could infer that they were working,--"just as we infer a past life by the results of the present." The raja is taking very good care of my family.)[149]


In connection with the Tabernacle from which Swamiji was debarred from speaking, a story is told by one who heard it from Mary Elizabeth Dutcher many years ago.[150] One Sunday morning Swamiji attended the services at the Tabernacle with Miss Dutcher (as he may have done more than once). This Sunday there was a special drive for funds, and before the collection was taken the minister rhetorically exhorted the members of the congregation to "give all they  had in their purses and pockets." When the collection plate came to Swamiji he quietly put into it several silver dollars a very large donation in those days, when ten cents was usual and fifty cents munificent. Miss Dutcher was aghast. "Why did you give so much!" she whispered. Swamiji looked at her with surprise. "The man said to give all we had with us," he replied. "That is what I had."*


Adding Ruth Ellis's letter to the three memoirs mentioned above, we can perhaps form a more or less clear picture of the days as they passed, particularly those days after Christina and Mary Funke had joined the group. It would seem logical to assume that when the newcomers from Detroit arrived almost everyone else was there. "Our family . . . was never smaller than eight," Ruth Ellis writes, "and sometimes we had ten or even twelve persons. " Presumably she was including Swamiji in this count; so let us say that at least once there were eleven students-which could have been only when the Goodyears and "the two ladies from Detroit" were all four present.[151]But the little cottage could not have accommodated so large a crowd for long, and it is more than likely that the Goodyears soon left. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, Sister Christine's description of her fellow students does not include them; their presence at the cottage has been revealed to us only through Ruth Ellis. Nor does Christine mention the Unidentified Student, From which omission we can infer that he or she had also left-possibly on July 11, as we have earlier guessed. The others were all there: the two newly ordained swamis, Miss Dutcher, Miss Watdo, Miss Ellis, Dr. Wight, Stella, Christine, and Mary Funke-all of whom (with the exception of the two swamis, who were to leave before Swamiji himself) stayed on to the end, and some even beyond. Where did all the members of this group, which was "never smaller than eight" (and often larger) sleep? The reader already has an idea of the house with its four tiny upstairs bedrooms, the comparatively large bedroom (occupied by Stella?) on the ground floor of Swamiji's wing, the small parlors and verandas.


Even the voluminous clothes they wore would have required a large amount of space: the ladies' long skirts and balloonsleeved shirtwaists, the stiff brimmed straw hats, the many obligatory petticoats and stays and chemises-where were they all kept? But who cared? "We put up with some inconveniences, as it is so crowded," Mary Funke wrote cheerfully to her anonymous friend.[152]


They ate at the refectorylike dining table, which filled almost the whole of the second parlor. Preparations for the midday meal (always vegetarian) would get under way as soon as the morning class was over. The bustling about in the little kitchen with its cast-iron wood-burning stove, cold water sink, icebox, and cooler was not without anguish for the students. In those days, when only the poorest of families were without servants, few among the group were accustomed to doing housework. Even Christine, whose family had fallen upon hard times, was told by Swamiji in later years, "You don't know a thing about cooking.'[153]Chaos ensued. One or two of the women were, perhaps, efficient, as, for instance, Miss Waldo and the French Abhayananda. But these two strong-minded women would not, certainly, have agreed as to how things should be done, and the others, trying to be helpful, would only have got in the way, or, struggling with their allotted tasks such as slicing bread, would, as Sister Christne tells it, all but weep.[154] At length, as we have seen, "one small maid" was engaged to help.


Even so, household tensions sometimes neared the breaking point. Then Swamiji, with fatherly understanding, would give everyone a respite and a treat. "After a morning in the classroom, where it almost seemed as if he had gazed into the very face of the Infinite,'[155]he would say with the utmost sweetness, "Today I shall cook for you.'[156]At thin Swami Kripananda would groan and acclaim under his breath, "Heaven save us![157]As we have seen in the last chapter, Kripananda, then Landsberg, had found that Swamiji's cooking could call for many a utensil. But to the rest of the students, a meal from  Swamiji was worth the washing of every pot, pan, and dish in the place.


"With what patience would he stand over the stove and prepare some Indian tit-bit for us!" Mary Funke wrote. " .. What a lesson to his disciples; the brilliant, the great and learned Vivekananda ministering to their little wants! He was at those times so gentle, so benign. What a legacy of sacred tender memories has he left us![158] And what great fun he was! At another time Mrs Funke wrote, "He is a wonderful cook and delights in serving the 'brithrin.' The food he prepares is delicious but for 'yours truly' too hot with the various spices; but I made up my mind to eat it if it strangled me, which it nearly did. If a Vivekananda can cook for me, I guess the least I can do is to eat it. Bless him!


"At such times we have a whirlwind of fun. Swamiji will stand on the floor with a white napkin draped over his arm, a la the waiter on the dining cars, and will intone in perfect imitation their call for dinner, 'Last call for the dining cab. Dinner served.' Irresistibly funny! And then, at table, such gales of laughter over some quip or jest, for he unfailingly discovers the little idiosyncrasies of each one-but never sarcasm or malice--just fun.'[159]


One thinks of Swamiji saying gravely when Dr. Wight would appear at mealtime a trifle late, "Here is the Absolute![160]or telling of his first (or second?) meeting with Landsberg, when the latter, delivering a lecture on "The Devil" at a New York Theosophical society, would every now and then say the word "devil" with great emphasis and invariably point at a woman in the audience who wore a scarlet blouse.[161]One can imagine Swamiji relating the story with perfect mimicry, to the hilarity of all. He loved to tell and hear comic anecdotes, at which he would laugh like a boy; but again, his mood would abruptly change and he would be telling tales of deep beauty from Indian mythology or history, holding his listeners enthralled.


Swamiji's conversation-his humor, his vivid story-telling, his recollections of his life in India, his flow of ideas on all subjects—was invariably entertaining, instructive, and uplifting all at once; no one who ever wrote of him found it to be less. Thus those spicy meals, with him presiding over the “family,” would have been veritable festivals. “It was a perpetual inspiration to live with a man like Swami Vivekananda,” Miss Waldo wrote. “From morning till night it was ever the same we lived in a constant atmosphere of intense spirituality.'[162]


In the afternoons Swamiji had time to himself to rest, to read, to write letters, to fill “two pretty [Camp Percy] birch bark books” with Sanskrit texts and translations for Josephine MacLeod and her sister,[163]and perhaps to do other writing. One Sunday afternoon, as we have already seen, he spoke to the good people of Thousand Island Park, who had gathered to hear him in Miss Dutcher’s parlors and who went away unable to object (hard as some might have tried) to the Hindu views of religion. Often he would go on a walk in the woods behind the house or down to the river and perhaps along its bank. Generally, he would take only Kripananda with him; but sometimes he would ask the whole group, or perhaps just two or three. “We could walk in all directions and meet no one,” Sister Christine recalled;[164]but her memory could have been only three-fourths accurate, for during a walk south through the village, which was not so far away as she remembered (Christine’s memories of time and space at Thousand Island Park were almost all exalted, like those of childhood), they must have encountered dozens of people. In the last half of July the Park was crowded with “pleasure a seekers.” This popular resort,” it was said at that time, “now presents the aspect of a small city.'[165]


We know of two such walks the group took through the village. One of them took place before many people were abroad. They stopped at the Thousand Island Park Studio, which specialized in “Portrait Photography, Instantaneous Pictures, [and] Thousand Island Park Views,'[166]and at the request of his students Swamiji had tintypes taken of himself, two of which may well have been the poses reproduced in these pages: one full-length with a painted river-view for a backdrop, the other a Simple head and shoulders.* "He was so full of fun, so merry," Mrs. Funke wrote of this occasion.[167]And it is clear to see.


During the other known stroll along the boardwalks of the village, Swamiji was also Full often and merriment. Mrs. Funke tells of this outing, which was for her particularly memorable:


One day, we all walked down to the village and passed a glassblower's tent. Swamiji was much interested in this and held a whispered' conversation with the glass-blower. Then he asked us to take a walk through the main street of the village, and upon our return the glass-blower handed him sundry mysterious packages which proved to contain a gift for each of us, a large crystal ball, each one different with our names blown in the glass "With the love of Vivekananda." Upon reaching the house, we opened our packages. My name was spelled "Phunkey. " We were convulsed with laughter but not where he could hear us. He never having seen my name written; "Phunkey" was the result.


And he was so sweet, so gentle and benign all that evening, just like an indulgent father who had given his children beautiful gifts, although many of us were much older than he.[168]


The favorite walk, one where indeed they might have met no other person, was "back of the cottage down a hill [the present roadway?) and then a rustic path to the river." "Sometimes we stop several times," Mrs. Funke wrote to her friend, "and sit around on the grass and listen to Swami's wonderful talks. A bird, a flower, a butterfly will start him off and he will tell us stories from the Vedas or recite Indian poetry.'[169] Surely to walk or sit under the trees with Swamiji, to gee through his eyes the sun-splashed paths, the massive grey and pink boulders mottled with silver-green lichen, the wide river-to see this loveliness as he saw it, if only for a brief moment, was surely to have one's mind washed clear of all cluttering thought and to taste something of the freedom in which he lived. "We are taught to see God in everything," Mary Funke wrote, "from, the blade of grass to man-'even in the diabolical man.' "[170] His was never a sentimental view of natural beauty or the world. Of this, Sister Christine wrote:


Did you in your immature enthusiasm see the world as beautiful, and believe in the reality of good and the unreality of evil? He was not long in destroying all your fine illusions. If good is real, so is evil. Both are different aspects of the same thing. Both good and evil are in maya. Do not hide your head in the sand and say, "All is good, there is no evil." Worship the terrible even as now you worship the good. Then get beyond both.... Terrible in its sternness was this teaching. But soon there came glimpses of something beyond, an unchanging Realty.'[171]


Swamiji's presence was in itself a breaking of bondage, but he delivered palpable shocks for good measure, deliberately cutting through ingrained and concealed obstructions to spiritual freedom. The habitual helplessness, for instance, that came so naturally to Victorian women, was in his eyes nothing but worldliness, the worse for its guise of propriety. He refused to take part in the game of chivalry:


. .. We found that this man whom we had set up in our minds as an exalted being did not observe the conventions of our code [Sister Christine wrote]. All fine men reverence womanhood; the higher the type, the greater the reverence. But here was one who gave no heed to the little attentions which ordinary men paid us. We were allowed to climb up and slide down the rocks without an extended arm to help us. When he sensed our feeling, he answered, as he so often did, our unspoken thought, "If you were old or weak or helpless, I should help you. But you are quite able to jump across this brook or climb this path without help.


You arc as able as I am. Why should I help you? Because you are a woman? That is chivalry, and don't you see that chivalry is only sex? Don't you see what is behind all these attentions from men to women?" Strange as it may seem, with these words came a new idea of what true reverence for womanhood means.... Was not every woman to him a manifestation in one form or another of the Divine Mother? . . . Knowing the criticism that awaited him in India, he still dared in America to initiate into sannyasa a woman, for he saw in her only the sexless Self.'[172] Swamiji's training of the individual students at Thousand Island Park went on continuously, but its method was different in each case. To quote Sister Christine again:


. . . With some, it was an incessant hammering. The severest asceticism was imposed with regard to diet, habits, even clothing and conversation. With others his method was not so easy to understand, for the habit of asceticism was not encouraged. Was it because in this case there was spiritual vanity to be overcome and because good had become a bondage? With one the method was ridicule-loving ridicule-with another it was sternness. We watched the transformation of those who put themselves into line with it. Nor were we ourselves spared. Our pet foibles were gently smiled out of existence. Our conventional ideas underwent a process of education. We were taught to think things through, to reject the false and hold to the true fearlessly, no matter what the cost.'[173]...


He refused to solve our problems for us. Principles he laid down, but we ourselves must find the application. He encouraged no spineless dependence upon him in any  form, no bid for sympathy. "Stand upon your own feet. You have the power within you!" he thundered. His whole purpose was-not to make things easy for us, but to teach us how to develop our innate strength. "Strength! Strength!" he cried, "I preach nothing but strength. That is why I preach the Upanishads." From men he demanded manliness and from women the corresponding quality for which there is no word. Whatever it is, it is the opposite of self pity, the enemy of weakness and indulgence. This attitude had the effect of a tonic. Something long dormant was aroused and with it came strength and freedom.[174]


"One afternoon," Mary Funke wrote in her memoirs, "when he had been telling us of the glory of renunciation, of the joy and freedom of those of the ochre robe, he suddenly left us and in a short time he had written his 'Song of the Sannyasin; a very passion of sacrifice and renunciation.'[175]Swamiji may have written this now famous poem on the afternoon of July 23, the day following his giving of monastic initiations, for on that afternoon he had said during the course of a short conversation, "'Let go the rope,' delusions cannot touch the Atman. When we lay hold of the rope-identify ourselves with Maya, she has power over us. Let go of it, be the Witness only, then you can admire the picture of the universe undisturbed'[176]--a teaching which one finds in two verses of his thirteen-verse poem:


There is but One-the Free, the Knower, Self! Without a name, without a form or stain.

In Him is Maya dreaming all this dream. The Witness, He appears as nature, soul. Know thou art That, Sannyasin bold! Say "Om Tat Sat, Om!"


Where seekest thou? That freedom, friend, this world Nor that can give. In books and temples vain

Thy search. Thine only is the hand that holds

The rope that drags thee on, Then cease lament, Let go thy hold, Sannyasin bold! Say

"Om Tat Sat, Om![177]


Two days later (July 25) Swamiji quoted his own poem in his morning class: "We only dream this bondage. Wake up and let it go. Take refuge in God, only so can we cross this desert of Maya. 'Let go thy hold; Sannyasin bold, say "Om Tat Sat Om!'[178]

A few days thereafter he sent the poem to his disciple Alasinga, accompanying it with a letter dated July go, 1895, in which he wrote in part:


The "Song of the Sannyasin" is my first contribution for your journal [the forthcoming Brahmavadin). Don't feel depressed. Don't lose faith in your guru. Do not lose faith in God. Oh, Child! As long as the inspiration and faith in the guru and God is within you, nothing will be able to defeat you. Day by day I am experiencing a manifestation of power in me. Oh, my courageous children! Go on working.[179]


This letter, like Swami’s poem itself, has the ring of ecstasy in it. And yet, on that very day (July 30) he wrote to Mr. Hale of a great sorrow that had come to him. His letter read in part:


Oh Mother my heart is so sad the letters bring the news of the death of Dewing. Hairdas Viharidas has left the body. He was as a father to me. Poor man he was the last g years seeking the retirement from business life and at last he got it but could not enjoy it long. I pray that he may never come back again to this dirty hole they call the Earth. Neither may he be born in heaven or any other horrid place. May he never again wear a body good or bad thick or thin. What a humbug & illusion this world is Mother, what a mockery this life, I pray constantly that all mankind will come to know the reality i.e., God, and this "Shop" here be closed for ever. My heart is too full to write more. Write to me or wire if you like

Your ever obnt Son[80]
Vivekananda


Swamiji had first met Haridas Viharidas Desai, the Dewan of Junagadh, during his wandering days in India. The Dewan, whom he looked upon as one of India's great men, had become his admirer, supporter, and close friend. He had of his own accord written to Mr. Hale the previous year, vouching for Swamiji's probity, which the Christian missionaries had been doing their best to bring into question.[181] The following year, Swamiji was to write from New York to Mr. Giriharidas Mangaldas Desai, a nephew of the Dewan. The letter, dated March 2, 1896, read in part:


Your uncle was a great soul, and his whole life was given to do good to his country. Hope you will all follow in his footsteps.I am coming to India this winter, and cannot express my sorrow that I will not see Haridasbhai once more.He was a strong noble friend, and India has lost a good deal in losing him.[182]


But though sadness came to Swamiji even at Thousand Island Park, nothing could overshadow the joyfulness that was always his and that welled from an unalterable, unobstructed source, The little group basked in it, and he gave himself to them fully. "It was a most blessed summer, " Mary Funke wrote. "I have never seen our Master quite as he was then. He was at his best among those who loved him.[183]

11

As far as can be reasonably ascertained, Swamiji did not leave Thousand Island Park on any side trips or excursions during his seven-week stay. Although he and. the students may have embarked on one of the daily boat excursions among the scenic Islands, he did not, it would seem, go further afield. He had, however, two invitations to speak elsewhere. One of these was canceled, and the other is a matter of some mystery.


Of the first Swamiji had written to Mrs. Bull from New York in his letter of May 28, which has been given in full in chapter one, "I have an invitation to speak at a parliament of religions at Toronto Canada on July 18th. I will go there from Thousand Islands and return back.'[184]


Toronto, on the Canadian shore of Lake Ontario, is about 150 miles from Thousand Island Park. Swamiji could have made the round trip in one day, or a day and a half at the most. The orthodox Christians, however, were not of a mind to let the Hindu monk steal the show in Toronto as he had done in Chicago. Of this turn of events Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Bull on July II from Thousand Island Park. His letter, heretofore unpublished in full, read as follows:

C/o Miss Dutcher
Thousand Island Park
13th [postmarked 11th] July'95, N.Y. 


Dear Mother

The shirts arrived yesterday they are nice and fit me well. Everybody liked them. Landsberg arrived this morning with a picture of Sri Ramakrishna.


The Toronto affair has fallen through because the clergyman objected to a heathen. There is one invitation from the Christian Union of Oak Beach. I do not know whether I will go there.


As I intend to go to Chicago in August I ought to give to the people here all the time I can.


I do not know yet the exact date when I start [for Europe] but somewhere at the end of August I am sure. Landsberg sends his love all the rest.

Ever yours in love & gratitude.[185]

Swamiji's invitation from the "Christian Union of Oak Beach" (by which he meant the Oak Island Beach Christian Unity Conference) poses a problem. Oak Island Beach was a summerresort town on Fire Island, a small island near Babylon, Long Island, New York. The Conference was a fairly important affair, the purpose of which was briefly explained by the following item that appeared in the Open Court of July 25, 1895:


The Christian Unity Conference is now in session at Oak Island Beach, Long Island, N.Y. The idea of the Conference is to bring the various denominational divisions of Christianity in the United States close together, and to effect some kind of organic Christian unity. Addresses will be made by the Rev. Josiah Strong, the Rev. Madison C. Peters, the Rev. Franklin Noble, the Rev. J. Winthrop Hegeman, the Rev. James DeWolf Perry, and many others. Swami Vivekananda and Dr. Paul Carus will speak on the World's Religions Parliament Extension.* The officers of the Conference have chosen as their place of meeting one of the pleasantest resorts on the Atlantic Coast and a large attendance may be expected, as also beneficent results.[186]


Reports of the Conference, which was held during the last week in July, appeared in a number of Brooklyn and New York newspapers. Two of these reports are of particular interest to us. The first is from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of Sunday, July 18, 1895, and read in part:


The bright little settlement under University Extension rule at Oak Island Beach is profiting by cool sea breezes, several kinds of lectures and good music.... The past week was devoted to the Christian unity congress which began on Tuesday [July 23], the Rev. Josiah Strong, secretary of the Evangelical alliance and the Rev. Leighton  Williams of Amity Baptist church, were speakers. Other clergymen included . . . Swami Vivekananda and Dr. Paul Carus, editor of the Monist. The character of the concerts at Oak Island Beach is excellent as the names of the soloists would indicate.[187] [The italics are mine.]

The second report of note appeared in the .New York Tribune of the same date and read in full:

A BASIS FOR WORLD-WIDE UNITY.
IT IS BEING AND DOING RIGHT, 
SAYS SWAMI VIVEKANANDA, 
AN ORIENTAL RELIGIONIST.

The Oak Beach Christian Unity was addressed yesterday afternoon by the Oriental, Swami Vivekananda. He spoke of the world-wide unity, and said that all religions were, at the bottom, alike. This was so, although the Christian Church, like the Pharisee in the parable, thanks God that it atone is right, and is willing to admit that all other religions are wrong and in need of Christian light. Christianity must become tolerant before the world will be willing to unite with the Christian Church in a common charity, he said. God had not left Himself without a witness in any heart, and men, especially men who follow Jesus Christ, should he willing, he said, to admit this. In fact, Jesus Christ was willing to admit every good man to the family of God. It was not the man who believed something, but the man who did the will of the Father in Heaven who was right. On this basis -being right and doing right-the whole world can unite, he contended.


Dr. Paul Carus also spoke during the afternoon about the World's Parliament Extension. This organization proposes to extend the work of the Chicago parliament. It is proposed to hold such a parliament in this city next  spring. These parliaments will show the world that by taking what is best in each religion and improving the various religions up to this level there shall be had the religion of the twentieth century.[188]


(As the reader may recognize, most of the above resume of Swamiji's talk has been published in volume five of the Complete Works under the title "World-Wide Unity.")[189]We may also note here that in the Brahmavadin of September 28, 1895, there was this item: We are glad to learn that Swami Vivekananda is still actively engaged in the propagation of the Vedanta religion in the West. Both he and Dr. Paul Caurns [Carus] are said to have recently addressed a large audience in New York in connection with the Parliament of Religions extension....


Now, if we were to judge by the newspapers alone, it would seem clear that Swamiji spoke at Oak Island Beach on the afternoon of Saturday, July 27. But looking into Inspired Talks we find that he held a class that morning at Miss Dutcher's cottage on the Katha Upanishad.[190] Not by the fastest train could he have been at Oak Island Beach that afternoon! Nor could he have been back at the cottage on Sunday morning (when he also held a class), for no steamers or boats were allowed to dock at Thousand Island Park on Sundays. So here is something of a mystery. The most probable explanation is that Swamiji did not appear in person at the Oak Beach Conference but sent a short paper, which was read by someone else, the reporters not knowing the difference. Until more information comes to light, I think we shall have to suppose that this was the case. It is, moreover, the most agreeable, as well as the most reasonable, explanation, for one does not like to think that Swamiji broke into those serene days at Thousand Island Park to spend even a fraction of them at  Oak Island Beach. At the very least he would have been away for two days and two nights, and the nights at Miss Dutcher's cottage were no less precious than the days.

12

After the supper dishes had been washed and Miss Dutcher had released the day's catch of flies into the woods, everyone would repair to the roofed-over, screened-off veranda outside Swamiji's room. "At our feet, like a sea of green, waved the leaves of the tree tops, for the entire place was surrounded by thick woods," Miss Waldo wrote. ". . . Beyond the trees spread the wide expanse of the St. Lawrence, dotted here and there with islands, some of which gleamed bright with the lights of hotels and boardinghouses. All these were so far away that they seemed more like a pictured scene than a reality.'[191]


When the students had assembled on the veranda, Swamiji would soon come from his room and sit in a big chair by his door. And then, "the nights all glowing with the soft mystery of moonlight or golden starlight,'[192]would begin some of the best hours of the twenty-four. In the darkness no one could take notes of what Swamiji said; thus only brief accounts have come down to us of those marvelously informal and varied evenings. "None of us," Miss Waldo wrote, "can ever forget the uplift, the intense spiritual life of those hallowed hours.'[193]Swamiji spoke during those evenings with the utmost freedom; he would seem at times to be communing with himself, recalling his own struggles or experiences, or perhaps thinking aloud, pro and con, about his plans for his Indian work, to which a part of his mind was always given. Or in his "wondrously beautiful" voice he would speak of spiritual life and vision, pacing up and down the short stretch of the veranda, "pouring forth a perfect torrent of eloquence," his mind soaring to greater and greater heights as the hours passed. One night-it could have been in early July or, more probably, during the first few days of August (for Christine  mentions it)-he talked to the spellbound group until the moon, just past full, set in the west around two in the morning. On that "glorious night" none of them had been conscious of the passing time.[194] Indeed, they seldom were-except perhaps when Swamiji would call upon one of them to attempt to answer a question or, worse, insist that one or another stand up and give an extemporaneous talk. No one was excused from the latter ordeal, not even Mme Marie Louise, who had had practice enough and to spare in public speaking.


He was ever the loving, gentle father during these evening hours when he trained and taught his disciples-all of whom, except Christine, were older than he. Sometimes the young guru would teach with words, sometimes in silence, as when he would enter into a deep meditation that lasted for hours. The students would meditate for a time with him and then, one by one, slip away, knowing there would be no further words that night.


The last days of July were fiercely windy, cold, and rainy. At the resort-hotels of the Thousand Islands the vacationers "huddled indoors around fireplaces," and the river was empty of pleasure craft.[195]One could not take pleasant strolls under the trees or sit on the veranda in the evening; nor, as noted earlier, was there a cheerful fireplace in Miss Dutcher's cottage to huddle around. But by the second of August the days were warm and fair again, and at night the moon shone clearly. Thus the last few days of the retreat were lovely ones-not excepting a sudden thunder shower, of which more in a moment.


As we have seen from Miss Ellis's letter, these last days were an unexpected boon for the disciples. Swamiji had originally intended to leave the Park on the first of August for Chicago, where he had planned to visit the Hale family; from Chicago he would have returned to New York in time to sail to Paris with Mr. Leggett. This had been the proposed schedule, with variations, until July 30. Then, because of a change in  Mrs. Hale's plans, Swamiji decided (at the last minute, it would seem) to prolong his stay at Thousand Island Park and go directly from there to New York.*


Thus he stayed at Miss Dutcher's cottage until the night of August 6.[196] On that morning he held his class as usual, and here again he explained with the crystal clarity and simplicity born of direct experience the place (logical and psychological) of the Personal God in man's spiritual journey to the realization of his own Being. God was as real as the journey-no more, no less. Swamiji could not, one thinks, have made this more clear. To quote a few sentences:


Both matter and mind exist in a third, a unity which divides itself into the two. This unity is the Atman, the real Self.[197]

There is being, "x," which is manifesting itself as both mind and matter. Its movements in the seen are along certain fixed lines called law. As a unity, it is free; as many, it is bound by law.... We must get out. Mukti is the one end to be attained....[198]


While we think on the relative plane, we have the right to believe that as bodies we can be hurt by relative things and equally that we can be helped by them. This idea of help, abstracted, is what we call God. The sum total of all ideas of help is God.... That should be the sole idea.... Cry for help and you will get it, and at last you will find that the one crying for help has vanished and so has the Helper, and the play is over; only the Self remains.[199]


And yet "To the end Ramanuja remained the favorite among the students," Miss Waldo wrote in her "Introductory Narrative:"[200] That is to say, the favorite teaching was that of qualified nondualism, in which the ultimate reality is sad to be an organic unity composed of God, the individual souls, and the world. Day after day, morning, noon; and night;


Swamiji had taught a transcendent unity that both subsumed this trinity and gave meaning to it. And did he not want those whom he trained at Thousand Island Park to teach this allcomprehensive religion in their turn? It had been his purpose at the start to train these disciples in Advaita Vedanta in order that they might carry on his work; he did not, apparently, change his mind in this respect.


He felt [at Thousand Island Park] that he had found the channel through which his message might be spread, the way to fulfil his mission [Sister Christine wrote in her reminiscences], for the guru had found his own disciples. His first overwhelming desire was to show us the path to mukti (freedom), to set us free.... His second object, not so apparent perhaps, but always in the under-current, was to train this group to carry on the work in America. "This message must be preached by Indians in India, and by Americans in America," he said.[201]


On the other hand, Swamiji never dictated to his students what they should teach. Although he often spoke to them (particularly toward the end of his stay) on the art of spiritual teaching itself, he gave them full freedom. "Each one is quite independent to teach, quite free to preach whatever he or she likes," he was to write to Swami Abhayananda (Marie Louise) later in the year.[202]And, then, what could any disciple do but teach what he himself had understood and been set aflame by? Swamiji poured his indestructible, boundless spirit into them all; the vessels, small or large, rigid or malleable, were their own. And did the shape and size of the immediate vessels really matter? Would not (as we asked in the beginning) the spiritual power generated at Thousand Island Park make its own trackless way throughout the Western world ?


But let us return to Swamiji's last day at the Park. After the midday meal, he took his walk as usual, this time-the last timeasking Christine and Mary Funke to accompany him, for, as he said, the others had been with him all summer (from the beginning), and he wished to have a last talk alone with these newcomers. They "went up a hill about half a mile away," Mrs. Funke later wrote. "All was woods and solitude." (In recent times those who know the area well have guessed that Swamiji and the two young women must have walked northeast, up and across the hill, partly through woods and partly over huge outcroppings of granite. They would have come to a spot, less than half a mile from the house, where the branches of an oak tree today spread above the flat top of an immense boulder. Here the hill drops steeply away to the river, and the lovely green and wooded country is visible for miles.) "Finally," Mary Funke continued, "he selected a low-branched tree [in all probability, the same oak that shelters the site today], and we sat under the low-spreading branches. Instead of the expected talk, he suddenly said, 'Now we will meditate. We shall be like Buddha under the Bo Tree.' He seemed to turn to bronze, so still was he. Then a thunderstorm came up, and it poured. He never noticed it. I raised my umbrella and protected him as much as possible. Completely absorbed in his meditation, he was oblivious to everything.'[203]


"It is reported," Swami Nikhilananda writes in his introduction to the 1958 edition of Inspired Talks, "that one day at Thousand Island Park (Swamiji] experienced nirvikalpa samadhi.'[204] Was not this the time? If so, Swamiji's emergence into the Impersonal Brahman was once again interrupted. "Soon," Mary Funke continued, "we heard shouts in the distance. The others had come out after us with raincoats and umbrellas. Swamiji looked around regretfully, for we had to go, and said, 'Once more am I in Calcutta in the rains.''[205] A seemingly simple statement-then one remembers the rainy season at Cossipore, Calcutta, in 1886 and the event the Life speaks of as "the greatest moment of Naren's Sadhana, the very crest and glory of his spiritual realisations.'[206]Had he touched upon that height again-only to be again called back, "thrown out," as it were, to continue his mission in the world a mission by no means done ?


That night at a quarter to nine Swamiji, accompanied by Miss Waldo, boarded the river steamer for Clayton, where they would take the train-Miss Waldo for Albany, Swamiji for New York. Tradition has it that as Swamiji took leave of the Park he said, "I bless these Thousand Islands." The words, though spoken in gratitude for the peace he had known, cannot but seem redundant: his very stay at the Park had been a long, sustained blessing. "The presence of those who love God makes a place holy," he had said in one of his morning classes, " 'such is the glory of the children of the Lord.' They are He; and when they speak, their words are scriptures. The place where they have been becomes filled with their vibrations, and those going there feel them and have a tendency to become holy also.'[207]His parting words but put a seal upon the fact. Then, as the steamer moved out into midstream, "he boyishly and joyously waved his hat" to the five or six disciples on the Dock. And he was gone.[208]


ⓘ
[1] Frances Leggett, Late and Soon, p. 277. Also a facsimile copy of the Log Book page made available by Mrs. Frances Leggett, VSNC. 
[2].Complete Works, 6 : 309. (Original, Sen Col.)
[3].Complete Works., pp. 313-14. (Original, RKM, Belur.)
[4].Frances Leggett, op. cit., p. 276.
[5].Interview given by Swami Vijay-ananda to Professor Sankari Prasad Basu, January 22, 1968, and kindly made available by Professor Basu to the author.
[6].Life (1965), P- 145; 5* cd (i979), I : 178.
[7].Complete Works, 5 : 391-93.
[8].Prophetic Mission-1, chap. 3, sec. 2.
[9].Information regarding the state of Thousand Island Park in the summer of 1895 bas been gleaned from various issues of the Water-town Times of June 1895.
[10].Complete Works, 6 : 306.
[11].“The Thousand Islands,” in Routes and Rates for Summer Tours— 1894 (New York, 1894).
[12].Watertown Times, 13 July 1895.
[13].Quoted in Thousand Island Park: One Hundred Tears, and Then Some by Helen P. Jacox and Eugene B. Kleinhans, Jr., p. 18. This well-researched and informative book was the source of a large part of the information given in this chapter regarding the history of Thousand Island Park. The present author’s personal interview with Mr. Kleinhans in August of 1977 was also of much help.
[14].John A. Haddock, ed., Souvenir of the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence River (New York, 1896), P-47*
[15].Jacox and Kleinhans, op. cit., p. 35
[16].Quoted in Jacox and Kleinhans, op. cit.,p. 95.
[17].Complete Works, 5 : 89.
[18].This information is to be found in Malcolm Willis, “Historical Sketch of Vivekananda Cottage at Thousand Island Park, New York,” Vedanta Kesari, August 1963. pp- 252-56
[19].Same as above.
[20].This description of living conditions in 1895 at Thousand Island Park has been put together from the author’s interviews in 1977 with a number of oldtimers at the Park, as well as from records of the Thousand Island Park Corporation.
[21].Complete Works, 5 : 88.
[22].Complete Works,  ., 8:341.
[23].Complete Works,  , p. 343.
[24].Complete Works, ., p. 344.
[25].Complete Works,., p. 345.
[26].Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 159.
[27].Swami Vivekananda to Alasinga Perumal, July 30, 1895, July 1977, P. 287. (Translated from the Bengali version.)
[28].Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 171.
[29].Rem., p. 172.
[30].See ref. 18 above.
[31].Swami Nikhilananda, “Swami Vivekananda at Thousand Island Park,” in Inspired Talks, My Master and Other Writings, 2d ed., rev. (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1958), p. 7.
[32].See ref. 18 above, p. 252.
[33].Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 173.
[34].Miss Waldo was bom on September 1, 1845; she died on July 15,1926.
[35].Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 161.
[36].Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 161.
[37].Rem. (Sister Christine) , pp. 161-62.
[38].Rem. (Sister Christine)., p. 162.
[39].Rem. (Sister Christine)., p. 162.
[40].Rem. (Sister Christine)., p. 163. Also Sister Christine to Josephine MacLeod, September 26, 1924, Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre, London.
[41].Complete Works, 8 :409.
[42].Swami Vivekananda to Christina Greenstidel, May 20, 1898, Sen Col.
[43].Swami Vivekananda to Christina Greenstidel ., August 27,1898.
[44].Swami Vivekananda to Christina Greenstidel., July 14,1899.
[45].Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 163.
[46].Ruth Ellis to Sara Bull, August 9, 1895, SCB.
[47].Complete Works, 8: 361.
[48].Complete Works 5:89. (This letter, dated July, 1895 in the Complete Works, was probably written in late June or the first week of July.)
[49].Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 164-65.
[50].Sister Nivedita to Josephine MacLeod, March 23, 1899, Letters of Sister Nivedita, ed. Sankari P. Basu.
[51].Sister Nivedita to Josephine MacLeod., March 30, 1899.
[52].This information is contained in a letter written by Swami Abhay-ananda (Mme Marie Louise) to Sara Bull, July 8, 1896, SCB.
[53].Complete Works, 5 : 105.
[54].This quotation is from the original letter, RKM, Belur.
[55].New York Herald, 19 January 1896. See also Life (1965), p. 349.
[56].Ruth Ellis to Sara Bull, July 29, 1895, SCB.
[57].Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, July 10, 1895, SCB.
[58].Ruth Ellis to Sara Bull, August 9, 1895, SCB.
[59].Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 164.
[60].Sister Nivedita to Josephine MacLeod, March 5, 1899, SCB.
[61].Brahmavadin, March 28, 1896, p. 182.
[62].Inspired Talks (1932), p. 192; Complete Works, 7 : 93.
[63].Complete Works, 5 : 106.
[64].See ref. 62 above, p. 48.
[65].Sarah Ellen Waldo, “Introductory Narrative” in Inspired Talks (1932), P.13
[66].Complete Works, 7:3.
[67].In her “Introductory Narrative” to Inspired Talks (p. 10) Miss Waldo writes that the classroom “opened out of the main part of the house by several doors.” It is true today that three doors open into other rooms, but in Swamiji’s time, before Miss Dutcher had further enlarged the house, it does not seem that this could have been the case.
[68].Complete Works, 7 : 3.
[69].Sister Devamata, Preface to Inspired Talks (1932), pp. iv-v.
[70].See ref. 65 above, pp. 13-14.
[71].P.B., June 1932, p. 302.
[72]. Swami Atmaghanananda, “Further Light on Swami Vivekananda’s Inspired Talks,” Vedanta Kesari, August, September 1963, PP- 193-98, 354-64.
[73].Inspired Talks (1932), p. 165; Complete Works, 7 : 77. (See ref. 72 above.)
[74].Inspired Talks ., p. 189; Complete Works,
[75].Swami Atmaghanananda (see ref. 72 above) suggests that the anonymous note-taker may have been Miss Dutcher. But in this case, Swamiji’s hostess would not have arrived at her cottage until almost two weeks after her guest of honor. This does not seem probable. Or was she present during those first weeks, but not caring to take notes until July 2 ? This also seems improbable.
[76].Between the notes of classes held on the mornings of June 19 and June 23 there are no entries in Inspired Talks; nor does Miss Waldo give any indication of what took place on those three mornings.
[77].Inspired Talks (1932), p. 54; Complete Works, 7:11.
[78].Inspired Talks ., p. 48; C.W., 7 : 7.
[79].Inspired Talks ., p. 55; C.PK, 7 : 11.
[80].Inspired Talks , p. 57; C.W., 7 : 13.
[81].Inspired Talks ., p. 185; C.W., 7 : 89.
[82].Inspired Talks ., pp. 66-67; C.W., 7 : 18.19, cp. C.W., 8 : 32.
[83].Complete Works, 5 : 88.
[84].Complete Works, , p. 75. (The unpublished passage is quoted from the original letter, RKM, Belur.)
[85].Complete Works, , p. 77.
[86].Complete Works, pp. 81-82.
[87].Complete Works, ., 6 : 308-9.
[88].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale, May 16, 1895, Sen Col.
[89].Complete Works, 8 : 341. The date June 22, 1895, which this published letter bears, is clearly mistaken. Swamiji was not in New York after June 4. From internal evidence it seems clear that the letter was written in late April of 1895.
[90].Complete Works,., p. 345. In the Complete Works there are two letters to Mary Hale dated June 26, 1895. The one cited here appears to have been written a few days later than the other.
[91].As far as I am aware, the only English translation of Shankara-charya’s Bhashya that was available in 1895 was that of George Thibault, and of this only Part One had been published. Thibault himself was to write in 1904 in his introduction to his translation of Ramanuja’s Commentary on the Brahma Sutras*. “Indian philosophy would, in my opinion, be more readily and widely appreciated than it is at present, if the translators of philosophical works had been somewhat more concerned to throw their versions into a form less strange and repellent to the western reader than literal renderings from technical Sanskrit must needs be in many passages.”
[92].Inspired Talks (1932), PP- 97"98; Complete Works, 7 : 37.
[93].Sister Nivedita, The Master, 6th ed., 1948, p. 242.
[94].Inspired Talks (1932), pp. Complete Works, 7 : 57-58.137-148
[95].Inspired Talks (1932) ., p. 149; C.W., 7:67.
[96].Inspired Talks (1932) .,p. 174; C.PK, 7:82.
[97].Inspired Talks (1932) ., pp. 202-3; C.W., 7: 99.
[98].Inspired Talks (1932)   ., p. 81; C.W., 7:27.
[99].Inspired Talks (1932) ., p.57.C.W ,7:13.
[100] Inspired Talks (1932) ., p. 114; C.W., 7 :47.
[101] Inspired Talks ., p. 84; C.W., 7 :29.
[102] Inspired Talks  , p. 167; C.W., 7:78.
[103] Mary C. Funke, ‘‘Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda,” P.B., February 1927, p. 72. (See als0 PP- 259-65-)
[104] Mary C. Funke, “The Master” from Inspired Talks (1932), p. 26.
[105] See ref. 1 above.
[106] See ref. 2 above.
[107] See ref. 1 above.
[108] Christina Greenstidel was Sister Christine’s premonastic name. Generally Swamiji addressed her as Christina, rather than Christine.
[109] See ref. 2 above, p. 25.
[110] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 159.
[111] Watertown Times, July 9, 1895, P- 5.
[112] See secs. 1-9, ref. 52.
[113] Rem. (SisterChristine), pp. 174-75.
[114] See ref. I above, p. 71.
[115] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 159.
[116] Rem. (Sister Christine),p. 154.
[117] Rem. (Sister Christine),pp. 154-55
[118] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 161; also note 1 above, p. 71.
[119] See ref. 1 above, p. 72.
[120] See ref. 2 above, p. 23.
[121] See ref. 1 above, p. 75.
[122] Swami Vivekananda to Christina Greenstidel, January 24, 1900, Sen Col.
[123] Boshi Sen, “Sister Christine,” P.B., September 1930, p. 420.
[124] Complete Works, 5 : 76.
[125] Complete Works,, p. 87.
[126] See ref. 1 above, p. 72. (See also Rem., p. 260.)
[127] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 169.
[128] Rem. (Sister Christine),, p. 170.
[129] See ref. 21 above, p. 421.
[130] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 214.
[131] Rem. (S. E. Waldo), p. 130.
[132] S. E. Waldo, “Introductory Narrative” in Inspired Talks, p. 14.
[133] Swami Atmaghanananda, “Further Light on Swami Vivekananda’s Inspired Talks, ” Vedanta Kesari, September 1963, p. 363.
[134] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 179.
[135] Rem. (Sister Christine),  p. 177.
[136] Rem. (Sister Christine),p. 180.
[137] Complete Works, 2 : 300.
[138] Inspired Talks (1932), pp. 81, 174; Complete Works, 7 : 27, 82.
[139] Inspired Talks, p. 152; C. W., 7 : 69.
[140] Inspired Talks, p. 195; C.W., 7 : 95.
[141] Inspired Talks, p. 185; C.W., 7 : 89.
[142] Inspired Talks, p. 153; C.W., 7 : 69.
[143] Inspired Talks, p. 162; C.W., 7 : 75.
[144] Inspired Talks, pp. 182-83; C.W., 7:87-88.
[145] Inspired Talks, pp. 201-2; C.W., 7 : 98.
[146] Inspired Talks, pp. 84-85; C.W., 7 : 29.
[147] Inspired Talks, p. 185; C.W., 7 : 89.
[148] Inspired Talks, p. 210; C.W., 7 : 103.
[149] See Second Visit, chaps. 4, 5, and 6.
[150] Ruth Ellis to Sara Bull, August 9, 1895, SCB.
[151] Complete Works, 5 : 93-94. In its published form this letter bears the date August, 1895. The original (RKM, Belur), from which this passage has been quoted, is undated. The Maharaja of Khetri, to whose dependability Swamiji refers in this passage, did, in fact, stop taking care of Swamiji’s family in 1900 (See Second Visit, p. 482).
[152] Told to the author by Thomas Mitchell of Thousand Island Park, August, 1977.
[153] Writing at a“ later date, Miss Waldo recalled that ten was “the largest number present at any one time” {Inspired Talks, p. 14). I have taken Miss Ellis’s on-the-spot statement, “sometimes we had ten or even twelve persons,” as more accurate.
[154] Mary C. Funke, “Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda,” P.B., February 1927, p. 72. See also Rem. (Mary Funke), p. 261.
[155] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, November 10, 1899, Sen Col.
[156] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 171.
[157] Mary C. Funke, “The Master,” in Inspired Talks (1932), p. 27.
[158] See ref. 54 above.
[159] See ref. 54 above.
[160] See ref. 55 above.
[161] Rem. (Mary Funke), pp. 261
[162] Rem. (Mary Funke),, p. 261.
[163] See ref. 54 above, p. 182.
[164] S. E. Waldo, “Introductory Narrative,” in Inspired Talks (1932), P.13
[165] Complete Works, 5 : 90.
[166] See ref. 54 above, p. 170.
[167] Watertown Times, July 13, 1895, p. 12.
[168] Jacox and Kleinhans, Jr., op. cit., p. 74. (See ref. 13, secs. 1-9, above.)
[169] See ref. 52 above, p. 75. (Rem. p. 263.)
[170] See ref. 52 above, p. 74. (Rem. p. 263.)
[171] See ref. 52 above, p. 75. {Rem., p. 264.)
[172] See ref. 52 above, p. 72. (Rem., p. 261.)
[173] See ref. 54 above, pp. 210-11.
[174] See ref. 54 above, pp. 214-15.
[175] See ref. 54 above, p. 212.
[176] See ref. 54 above, p. 212.
[177] See ref. 55 above, pp. 26-27.
[178] Inspired Talks (1932), p. 145; Complete Works, 7:65.
[179] Complete Works, 4 : 394.
[180] See ref. 76 above, p. 151.
[182] P.B., July 1977, p. 287. (This version of Swamiji’s letter of July 30, 1895, to Alasinga Perumal is an English translation of the Bengali translation of the original English, which last is apparently not extant.)
[183] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. George W. Hale, July 30, 1895, Sen Col.
[184] Haridas Viharidas Desai to Mr. George W. Hale, August 2, 1894, Sen Col.
[185] This letter to Mr. G. Mangaldas was given to Swami Ekatmananda by the addressee’s grandson. It was first published in the Udbodhan of September 1973.
[186] See ref. 55 above, p. 26.
[187] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, May 28, 1895, Sen Col.
[188] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, postmarked July 11, 1895, Sen Col. (The signature on the original letter has been excised.)
[189] The Open Court, 25 July 1895, p. 4582.
[190] Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 28 July 1895.
[191] New York Tribune, 28 July 1895, (p. 21, col. 6).
[192] Complete Works, 5:293. (First reprinted in Brahmavadin, October 24, 1896.)
[193] Inspired Talks (1932), P- 153  Complete Works, 7 : 70.
[194] Waldo, loc. cit., p. 11.
[195] Rem. (Mary Funke), p. 265.
[196] Waldo, loc. cit., p. 12.
[197] Waldo, loc. cit., p. 12.
[198] Watertown Times, 1 August 1895.
[199] The date of Swamiji’s departure from Thousand Island Park is given in Inspired Talks as August 7. According to Ruth Ellis, however, he left at 8 : 45 p.m. on Tuesday, August 6. Inasmuch as Miss Ellis reported this only three days later, she was apt to be correct.
[200] Inspired Talks (1932), pp. 206-7; Complete Works, 7:101.
[201] Inspired Talks (1932), p. 207; C. W., 7 : 102.
[202] Inspired Talks (1932), pp. 210-11;C.W., 7:103-4.
[203] Waldo, op. cit., p. 16.
[204] Rem. (Sister Christine), pp. 15960.
[205] Complete Works, 7 : 487. This letter was almost certainly written to Swami Abhayananda, not, as in the Complete Works, to Alasinga.
[206] Rem. (Mary Funke), pp. 264-65.
[207] Swami Nikhilananda, “Swami Vivekananda at Thousand Island Park,” Inspired Talks, 2d cd. (1958), P.15
[208] See ref. 103 above, p. 165.
[209] Life (1965), p. 144. (Life [1979] vol. i,p. 177.)
[210] Inspired Talks (1932), p. 52; Complete Works, 7:10.
[211] See ref. 103 above, p. 265.


↑ Contents

3.3 INTERLUDE

Wonderful though the retreat at Thousand Island Park had been for the disciples as well as for Swami Vivekananda himself, it had been hard work for him. "We are having a nice time here," he had written on July 18 to Mr. Francis Leggett, "except as an oId Hindu proverb says, , . . 'a pestle must pound even if it goes to heaven.' I have to work hard all the same.'[1] Tired, he slept soundly through the train trip from Clayton to New York City, oblivious of jolting stops and starts and even of the engine's derailment, which could not have taken place smoothly. From New York, he wrote of the trip to Christina Greenstidel, who, with Mary Funke, had stayed on for a while at Miss Dutcher's cottage. His letter, heretofore published only in part, was his first in a correspondence that was to continue for as long as he lived. His many known letters to Sister Christine, whom he almost always addressed by her given name, were to be filled with an affectionate and tender concern, as though to a beloved and none-too-robust daughter for whom life was hard. His first letter to her read in full:

9th August'95
19 West 38th Street

Dear Christina

You must be enjoying the beautiful weather very much. Here, it is extremely hot but it does not worry me much. I had a pleasant journey from Thousand Islands to Newyork & though the Engine was derailed I did not know anything of it being asleep all the time. Miss Waldo went out of the train at Albany I did not see her off as I was asleep. I have not heard anything from her yet. Hope to hear soon. Dr and Miss Ellis must have gone home by this time.

We gave them telepathic message but Miss Ellis has not got it sure else she would write. I am making preparations for my departure. I came in time for one of the meetings here another one last evening-going to have one more this Evening and almost every evening till I go over. What is Mrs. Funkey doing and Miss Dutcher? Do you go to meditate on the mountain as usual? Did you hear from Kripananda? Write to me as soon as you can-I am so anxious to hear from you. Ever yours with blessings & love Vivekananda P.S. My love & blessings to Mrs. Funkey & Miss Dutcher.[8]

Swamiji's references to "the meetings" was no doubt to his New York class, which had been going on in his absence. "[The members] have carried it bravely on, although I was not there,[3] he had written to Betty Sturges from Thousand Island Park. Unfortunately, we have at , present no way of knowing where Swamiji now held these evening classes, who attended them, or what he said. Very probably, however, he held them at the home of Miss Mary A. Phillips at 19 West Thirty-eighth Street, near Fifth Avenue, where he was then staying.

Miss Phillips had been one of his first friends in New York. In May of 1894. he had given his second New York lecture in her parlor and through her had met many people who had subsequently become interested in his work. As we have seen in an earlier chapter, she was the first secretary of the New York Vedanta Society, which Swamiji had founded in November of 1894. In the Life, Miss Mary Phillips is spoken of as "a lady prominent in many circles in women's charitable and intellectual work in the metropolis.'[4]To this we can add that she was a member of an old and distinguished New England and New York family which traced its ancestry back to Colonial times.'[5]Motherly and large-hearted, Miss Phillips seems at the same time to have been something of a grande dame with the spirit to defend what she felt to be right in the face of all opposition. In the teachings of Vedanta she saw a "foundational faith," as she would later say to a newspaper reporter, through the study of which "we may better understand the religion of Jesus of Nazareth." Once wealthy, she had tended to give away her inherited fortune;[6]thus it happened that at the time of our story (when she was fifty one) she had found it necessary to take in boarders. This being the case, it was almost certainly at her home, and very probably in this August of 1895, that the famous sculptress Malvina Hoffman saw Swamiji when she was a little girl. Of that unforgettable evening Miss Hoffman wrote in later years :

One of my vivid memories of childhood [is] an exciting evening spent with a relative of my father's who lived in a modest boarding-house in West Thirty-eighth Street. In the midst of this group of old-fashioned city boarders was introduced suddenly a newcomer-the oriental philosopher and teacher, Swami Vivekananda. When he entered the dining room there was a hush. His dark, bronzed countenance and hands were in sharp contrast to the voluminous, light folds of his turban and robe.

His dark eyes hardly glanced up to notice his neighbors, but there was a sense of tranquility and power about him that made an imperishable impression upon me. He seemed to personify the mystery and religious "aloofness" of all true teachers of Brahma, and combined with this a kindly and gentle attitude of simplicity towards his fellow men.[7]

The fact that Miss Phillips took in boarders had, of course, nothing to do with Swamiji's visit with her; from the beginning of 1895 he had made her home his New York headquarters, receiving his mail there and coming and going as he pleased, even as he did at the Hales' house in Chicago. Indeed, a large bundle, redirected from the Hales, may have been awaiting him at Miss Phillips's when he arrived from Thousand Island Park. It was full of shawls, brocades, and knickknacks that he had asked the Maharaja of Khetri to send to him from India.

Ever since May, Swamiji had been mentioning the coming of this package in his letters to Mrs. Hale. His letter to her of May 16, which contains his first known reference to the shipment, has been given in full in the previous chapter, but the passage will bear repeating here: "I expect a big package from Khetri.... [It] will not arrive soon so kindly make arrangements that it will be received during your absence if you go away. They [the various articles] will have to be paid a heavy duty for I am afraid.'[8]

Throughout July Swamiji corresponded with Mrs. Hale about this shipment, for it was she who, like a mother, attended to such matters for him. Nor were such matters simple; even at Thousand Island Park, anxious that his gifts for his friends arrive safely in America, he was troubled with the complications of duty, bills of Iading, receipts, and the like. His following four letters to Mrs. Hale, which are published here for the first time, are, I believe, for the most part self explanatory:

2nd July 
c/o Miss Dutcher's
Thousand Island park
N.Y.

Dear Mother

You did not write to me a single line for a long time. Neither did Sister Mary write about the duty paid on the rugs [from the Dewan of Junagadh]. I am afraid the rugs are small.

Here is another consignment from Raja Ajit Sing [the Maharaja of Khetri] consisting of carpets shawls &c &c for which the bill of laiding [sic] you sent me the other day. This consignment has no duty to pay because it was all prepaid in India and the bill of laiding says so expressly. I will send you the bill of laiding & the receipt for the duty. Kindly take one more trouble for me and get it out of the express company. And keep it with you till I come. The goods have arrived in New York and I had a notice of that. They are on their way to Chicago.In two or 3 days' I will send the bill of lading & the receipt for duty paid to you. I foolishly asked Miss Phillips as soon as I got the Companies' notice to get them out before I got the bill of lading. Now the bill of lading shows that it is bound for Chicago. So I am bound to give you this trouble. I am so sorry. Again with my usual business instincts-I forgot to note down the name of the express company. So I have written to New York for the letters of the Company. As soon as that comes I will send over to you.

I am going to Europe by the End of August or a little later.

I will come to see you by the End of August.

Lord bless you and yours for ever & ever

Your Ever aff Son[9]
Vivekananda

July 3 [?], 1895 
Thousand Island Park , N.Y. 
c/o Miss Dutcher

Dear Mother

Herewith I send you the bill of lading and the inventory of the goods sent from India. The duty as you will find has been prepaid so there is no botheration on that score. The goods have reached Hull [England; not New York as Swamiji had thought]. They will be here by the middle of this month. And if you see a letter with the Morris American express co. name on the envelope tear it open and need not forward it to me for that will be the notice of arrival to Chicago. I am sure Dewanji's carpets were too small but why do not you write to me about the duty if you had to pay it? I insist upon paying it myself. The raja's things seem to come very quick. I am so glad too I will have something to present to Mrs. Bagley Mrs. Bull &c[10]

Enclosed in the above was the following:

541.
Dearborn Ave Chicago.
To the Morris Express Co

Dear Sir

Please permit Mrs. G. W. Hale of 541 Dearborn Ave Chicago to act for me about the goods sent to me from India and receive the same.

I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient servant Swami Vivekananda

In addition to the Dewan's rugs and the Maharaja's package, there was something else coming from India, of which Swamiji wrote to

Mrs. Hale on July 27:
Thousand island park c/o Miss Dutcher
N.Y. 2'7th July'95

Dear Mother-I will be ever so much obliged if you kindly look into the "bead" affair. I think there will be a little duty to pay. I will pay it to you when I come.

I start from here next week. I will be in Detroit a day or two on my way. I will be in by the third or fourth of August.

With Everlasting love your Son[11]
Vivekananda

Enclosed in the above. was the following :

27th July'95
To the United States Express Company foreign department.

Dear Sir

Herewith I authorize Mrs. George W. Hale to take delivery of the "beads" that has been expressed to me from India. Hoping they will be regularly delivered to her I remain yrs obly

Swami Vivekananda

(The "beads" must have been a number of japa malas (rosaries) that Swamiji wished to give to his Western disciples.)

A few days later Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Hale of the death of his friend Haridas Viharidas Desai-the Dewan who had sent the rugs. In chapter two (pages 167-68) we have quoted his sorrowing paragraph about his friend. Following is the remainder of that letter, which was postmarked July 30:

c/o Miss Dutcher Thousand island Park

3oth August (July) '95

Dear Mother

I was starting for Chicago thursday next (August 1) but your letter stopped me. The letter & the package have safely arrived.

Write to me or wire if you want me to come to chicago. I will then start for Chicago next week I e on Tuesday next (August 6). I thought Sister Mary was at home. When are the other babies [Harriet Hale and Isabelle and Harriet McKindley] coming? My going to Europe is not yet settled finally. The babies have not written me a line not one of them.

[Here Swamiji wrote of the Dewan.] P.S. We will think of the coming package [from the Maharaja of Khetri] in chicago. How long will you be in chicago more? If it is only a week or so I need not come. I will meet you at Newyork. If more than that I come to see you

Yrs[12] V.

On July 31 Swamiji's plans, so uncertain the day before, seem to have suddenly jelled. He had no doubt heard from Mr. Leggett regarding the date of the European sailing and had decided there was not time to go to Chicago; nor was Mrs. Hale certain of her own plans. The package from Khetri would, accordingly, have to be forwarded to New York. Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Hale to this effect in a letter postmarked July 31, 1895:

c/o Miss Dutcher Thousand island Park
N.Y. [July 31, 1895]

Dear Mother

I am afraid I can not come to see you and neither you will advise me. I am going with a friend to Europe at his expense. We go first to Paris and from there to London. My friend will go to Italy & I to London. I will however come back to New York in September. So I am not going away for good.

I start on the 17th. So you see it is impossible to come and go that way for 3 or 4 days.

The package from India ought to have reached by this time. If they come kindly take the delivery and send it back to New York to Miss Mary Phillips 19 W. 38. If the package does not come to Chicago before you go away then kindly send the bill of lading &c to Miss Mary Phillips 19. W. 38. The babies [the Hale daughters] did not write me a line nor did they intimate where they are. I absolutely do not know anything about them. As  they do not want it, it seems I ought not to disturb them with my letters. But you kindly convey them my love & eternal undying blessings. So to you Mother & Father Pope. I will pen a longer episle [sic] in a few days. We will see each other next spring in Chicago Mother if we all live.

Ever gratefully your Son[13]
Vivekananda

That was not quite the end of the Khetri package matter. On August 2, Swamiji sent the following telegram to Mrs. Hale:

WHY ANY CHARGES DUTY PREPAID YOU HAVE DOCUMENTS WRITE FULL particulars. vivekananda,[14]

How this duty charge was straightened out we do not know, but in the long run, the package came into Swamiji's hands. If it was not waiting for him at Miss Phillips's when he arrived in New York, it must have come in a day or two, and it must have been enormous, for besides shawls, brocades, and knickknacks, it contained two large and heavy oriental rugs. One of these was a gift for Dr. and Mrs. Egbert Guernsey and the other a wedding gift for Francis Leggett. Of the latter, Mr. Leggett wrote to his betrothed, who, with her sister, had gone on to Paris to buy a trousseau;

Swami made me another call yesterday at 7.30 a.m.; this is his unconventional hour of visiting me of late. A porter accompanied him hugging a very heavy rug from a prince of India. I have it spread over my drawing room floor and it looks very well. It is quite thick and heavy and of harmonious coloring and marked with conventional flowers. This was one of two sent to him from India, the other found its way to Guernseys. The gift and presentation were truly oriental.[15]

(For many years this large rug, approximately 8. by 11 feet, was used at Ridgely Manor, where Swamiji no doubt walked  on it. Years later, it was given by Mrs. Frances Leggett [daughter of Francis and Besse Leggett] to the Ramakrishna Vivekananda Center of New York.) As for the shawls, how many there were we do not know. We do know, however, that one went to Mrs. Bull, one to Bagley, and one to Miss Phillips. The last, "a beautiful Mrs,

cashmere shawl, embroidered in a wide band of gold thread " , is today in the possession of her grandniece, who so described it. Of the brocades and knickknacks, there is no indication in any letter what exactly they were or to whom Swamiji gave them; nor has the bill of lading and inventory come to light. But whatever treasures the bundle contained, how happily and lovingly Swamiji must have presented them to those who had befriended him in America, and how touched those persons must have been to receive his gifts! Mrs. John Bagley, at whose home he had stayed in Detroit in February and March of 1894., wrote to him at once. Her letter, dated August 16 and forwarded to England, read in part:

My dear Swami Vivekananda

The box containing the beautiful shawl came this morning. Thank you for the very kind and thoughtful remembrance. I shall wear it with pleasure and it will not only "carry with it a thought of India" but I shall always feel that in it is folded your blessings. We all unite in wishing you a pleasant journey to England but with it the hope that you will come back again to America to Detroit and to us. When you come to Detroit we shall be glad to have you make our house your home, and go from here as occasion demands, on your visits to friends. If you have the time write from England giving me your address there. We are always glad to hear from you and if it should happen that you go to India, before coming here again, do write us from there, and let us know where we can reach you by letter.

Can you not induce more of the learned men of India to come to this country and teach us the higher truths of our own and other religions? We need this ancient and true revelation of God's word to quicken and make alive His spirit in us. I am sure your own mother would be glad to know that her son had done so much good in this faraway country. I should be very glad to send to her cordial and kindly greetings.[16]

(Those last two sentences must have touched Swamiji deeply, for his mother, he always felt, had been a sacrifice to his mission. Her opinion alone he cared about.)

In the hot August days before his departure for Europe -days which, he wrote, are "exactly like Calcutta. You perspire profusely and there is not a breath of air'[17]--he visited his New York friends, held evening classes, and wrote letters, one of which, heretofore unpublished, was to Mrs. Bull:

9th August '95
19 West 38th Street

Dear Mother

Your note duly received. I saw also Miss Thursby yesterday. After the hard work at the Thousand islands, I am taking a few days quiet & preparation for my departure. So I cannot come to Green Acre. I am with Miss Phillips and will be till the 17th on which day I depart for Europe. I have seen Mr. Leggett. You remember Mrs. Sturges the widow in black in my classes. She is going to marry Mr. Leggett in Paris. They will be married the 1st week we arrive and then they go on a tour through Europe & I to England. I hope to return in a few weeks back to New York.

Kindly give to Miss Hamlin to Miss Farmer Dr & Miss Howe and all our friends my greetings love & good bye.

Ever sincerely your Son[18]
Vivekananda

Swamiji's decision to go to England after attending his friends' wedding was in response to an invitation he had received from a Mr. Edward T. Sturdy, of whom we shall hear a great deal more in the following chapter. "Since leaving Percy," he had written to Francis Leggett on July 7 from Thousand Island Park, "I had invitations to come over to London from unexpected quarters, and that I look forward to with great expectations. I do not want to lose this opportunity of working in London. And so your invitation, coupled with the London one, is, I know, a divine call for further work.'[19]That this London invitation was from Mr. Sturdy alone is confirmed by a letter Swamiji wrote around the same time to Mrs. Bull, the following passage of which is taken from the original undated letter:* "Now here is another letter from the same Mr. Hardy [Sturdy].** I send over it to you. See how things are being prepared ahead. Do you think this coupled with Leggett's invitation is a divine call? I think so and I am following. I am going by the end of August with Leggett & then go to London and try to work in both these countries.'[20]

It would appear that on hearing of Swamiji's opportunity to visit London, Mr. Leggett magnanimously offered to pay his passage to England direct, releasing him from his agreement to attend the Paris wedding. Swamiji would hear none of it. His heretofore unpublished reply from Thousand Island Park read in full:

Dear friend,

I received your note duly. Very kind of you and noble to ask me to have my own way to London. Many thanks for that. But I am in no hurry for London and moreover I want to see you married in Paris and then I go over to London.

I will be ready father Leggett at hand and in time never fear. 

Yours affly ever,[21]
Vivekananda

Afraid that Mr. Leggett did not receive the above note, as "it was not posted carefully," Swamiji wrote another, dated July 31, again protesting that his "principal object in going with you is to see you married. When you go away for a trip, I go to London. That is all.'[22]

Although Swamiji was of course well aware of the English prejudice against the Hindu, he does not seem to have had the least hesitation in extending his Western work to London. One of his friends, however, felt there was reason to fear for his reception; the slander so abundantly heaped upon him by his Christian enemies in America had, Mrs. Bull knew, drifted across the Atlantic Ocean. In a manner characteristic of all Swamiji's staunch and devoted friends, she took up her pen and did what she could to protect him. The following letter was to Lady Henry Somerset, who had met Swamiji in Mrs. Bull's Cambridge home in December of 1894, and who, it so happened, had recently been re-elected president of the British Women's Temperance Union. Mrs. Bull's letter is given here in full, for it gives not only an idea of Mrs. Bull herself, but an indication of the incessant and niggling criticism Swamiji encountered in America from those who tried to discredit him in every possible way:

August 22nd 1895

My dear Lady Henry

I am going to ask a personal favor of you. The Swami Vivekananda has gone to England. Before he went he received as he told me written word that you had spoken to an acquaintance of his in London of your disappointment in him as drinking champagne in your presence at dinner. I told him this was impossible, because he had eaten with you only at my and your table, but that you had spoken of that as being his reputation, was quite possible. Since you were with us in December, it has come in my way to know him and his work intimately. The discussion and attacks likely to follow his  Talk on the Ideals of Indian Womanhood at our house, came about in Brooklyn, N.Y. He gave it again in a course of seven lectures before the Ethical Ass. to large audiences, and the Ramabai people attacked his utterances in print. His side was fully sustained; but both sides are to my mind in the right, and should be harmonized in the spirit of Max Muller. The estimate against Vivekananda has been serious because of remarks repeated from Mozoomdar, Lyman Abbot and Prof Estlin Carpenter, remarks that have come directly to me, and from others as well as these. The fact that V. has smoked for years & has at luncheons and dinners a few times tasted wine (not with men alone) with the impulsive , combative nature of the man-in large part his own fault as I tell him*-and in part the prejudice of creed and custom against any oriental not a converted Christian, have contributed to this prejudice which had reached me before I knew him. Clergymen both smokers and drinkers have spoken to me most sharply of him. The most serious scandals unreservedly repeated in Brooklyn by the Ramabai people were met and turned to his credit, as the friends quoted against him wrote that his presence had been a benediction to old and young of their households. His training under a holy and revered teacher make him in philosophy and religion, the spiritual side of his nature, an inspiring and, to my mind, a safe guide. His purity of thought and life have been felt and given me unsought by the men of the families with whom he has lived-physicians & men of the world who know him intimately and love him. His caste was not the Brahmin but the military Kshatriya. His faults are on the surface and those of a noble not a mean nature. He has a large influence at home-India. His life and work here among us are fitting him for his return to India, and I feel that it is important that he should understand our best and not think that philanthropists and Christians will stab  the heathen collectively and individually wherever opportunity offers. Theosophists in general are opposed to him because he has no interest in the occult, but deals with philosophy pure and simple. I wrote to Mazoomdar and his letter in reply affirms his reverence for the master of Vivekananda-Ram Krishna-and his personal regard and best wishes for Vive-Kananda himself, and says that the opposition to V. credited to him in India and this country are unfounded.

Had a son of my own met the difficulties that this man has met as nobly and ably I would be proud. He is very like my husband in temperament and seems providentially to me to have been brought within my knowledge both as regards his home status and his associations in this country. I care for the Vedanta Philosophy and have studied it for practical help for the last nine years. This has helped to make him feel at home with me. His work as a teacher among agnostics, atheists & working people, among different creeds-Methodists, Presbyterians and Students of Ethics will be of paramount value and gives what our Harvard Professors do not give, a living reality to God and the Soul. The essentials of his order, Chastity and poverty, his single purpose in life in these. respects, are established to my own satisfaction; and instances of practical help to there as an outcome thereof. Therefore, I ask you dear Lady Henry, in reporting the unfavorable estimate of him to add also the fact that he has made for himself many friends here whose homes and hearts are open to him and his ideals. So far, I have not been able to come upon a single exception to the contrary among the men and women who have known him intimately.

I count myself in sympathy with the work of Ramabai and Mozoomdar. But I recognize that for India her great reformers like Ram Mohan Roy and of later date, with the efforts to uplift and educate women have been first and foremost as well among the native religions of that  country, whose old Philosophy and wisdom are helping us today in our need. As I would regret to be counted other than a Christian so I would regret to have their best workers come out of their own Vedanta to the same truth in the New Testament, as I believe they can best serve their people without doing so.

Believe me dear Lady Henry, 
Ever sincerely with affectionate regards[23]
Sara C. Bull

As far as is known, Lady Somerset did not report unfavorable estimates of Swamiji in England. Nor did Swamiji change his ways. He went his own way. To the dismay at times of his wellwishing, protective friends, he said what he wanted to say; did what he wanted to do. The possibility of making a false step was no longer a part of him-if ever it had been. How were Christian ministers and missionaries ,and the good ladies of the nineteenth century to understand the roaring fire that was Swamiji ? For the most part, they could not; but he did not for that reason, or for any other, stop blazing. Nor did he ever defend himself: first, he was a sannyasin; more significantly, the power behind him, as he was to say, "is not Vivekananda but He the Lord.'[24]

It was not only in America that Swamiji was assailed by critics of all kinds, but in India as well. The Christian missionaries, among others, did their utmost to undermine his reputation and his teachings, trying everything from petty and carping criticism to calumnious accusations. He gave the matter his attention only to enhearten his Indian disciples sometimes with ridicule and scolding. "Why do you behave like babies," he had written to Alasinga from Thousand Island Park.

If anybody attacks your religion why cannot you defend it and give the devil his dues ? . . . Cowardice is not virtue.... I have friends who will back me here and help me in India too. So you need not fear. Only so long as you only shriek at the missionary attempts and jump without being able to do anything, I laugh at you. You are little dollies, that is what you are. Oh! Swami, missionary bites me, Oh, oh, ho ho ! ! ! ! What can Swami do for old babies ! ! . . . 'This Atman is , not to be reached by cowards.' You need not be afraid for me. The Lord is with me; you defend yourselves only, and show me you can do that, and I will be satisfied. And don't bother me any more with what any fool says about me. I am not waiting to hear any fool's judgements of me. You babies, great results are attained only by  great patience, great courage, and great attempts.[25]

Swamiji's American friends, those who had helped him, were well satisfied that their trust in him had not been misplaced; about this he had cared deeply; beyond this, he cared nothing for praise or blame. "I sought praise neither from India nor from America," he wrote to Alasinga shortly before leaving America for Paris; "nor do I seek such bubbles. I have a truth to teach, I, the child of God. And He that gave me the truth will send me fellow workers from the earth's bravest and best. You Hindus will see in a few years what the Lord does in the West.'[26]

The Prophet had found his field of work. Throughout much of 1894., as has been said in the Prologue, Swamiji had often thought of returning to India; he now had no intention of leaving the West until the truth he had to teach had taken deep root in the consciousness of the Western people. From India his brother disciples, his disciples, and his friends urged him to return; his reply was-not yet. "As to my coming to India," he wrote to the Raja of Khetri on July 9, 1895, "the matter stands thus. I am, as your Highness well knows, a man of dogged perseverance. I have planted a seed in this country; it is already a plant, and I expect it to be a tree very soon.... The more the Christian priests oppose me, the more I am determined to leave a permanent mark on their country.... They every day find me a hard bit to crush with all their wiles.... This winter anyway has to be spent partly in London and partly in New York, and then I shall be free to go to India.'[27]

It was not that Swamiji had the Western people alone at heart; it was, rather, that as time went on (to judge from his letters) he came more and more to feel that his hope for all mankind lay in the West. In a letter of August g to Mr. Sturdy he wrote, "I love India no doubt, but my visions are being cleared every day. My brother, what is India or England or America to us? We are the servants of that God who by the ignorant is called man. He who pours water at the root, waters the whole tree.

"There is only one basis of well-being socially, politically, or spiritually, to know that I and my brother are one, and this is true for all countries and all people. And let me tell you that the westerners will realize the idea quicker than the Hindus, who have exhausted themselves almost in formulating the ideas and bringing out a few cases of individual realisation. My hope is in the West.'[28]

One recalls in this connection a letter Swamiji had written to Sturdy in April of the same year. "One Western man or woman awakened," he wrote, "is equal to a thousand Hindus as the Hindu is only a spent up inert bundle of nonsense. So the West is the field of work if one wants to benefit humanity and not his particular sect or country.'[28]

As is clear from many other of Swamiji's writings and conversations, he by no means meant that the West would become the spiritual leader of the world. His position is perhaps most clearly stated in a talk that was to take place in 1899 in India with a disciple, Priya Nath Sinha. When Mr. Sinha asked him if he was going to deliver many lectures in India, Swamiji replied :

. . . Lectures won't do any good in this country.... What good will hammering do on a piece of rusty old iron? It will only crumble into pieces. First, it should be made red-hot, and then it can be moulded into any shape by hammering. Nothing will avail in our country without setting a glowing and living example before the people. What we want are some young men who will renounce everything and sacrifice their lives for their country's sake. We should first form their lives and then some real work can be expected....

. . . Then again, in these days, would you accept the words of a Sannyasin clad in rags in the same degree as you would the words of a white-face (Westerner) who might come and speak to you on your own religion? . . . When my Western disciples after acquiring proper training and illumination will come in numbers here and ask you, "What are you all doing? Why are you of so little faith? How are your rites and religion, manners, customs, and morals in any way inferior? We even regard your religion to be the highest!"- then you will see that lots of our big and influential folk will hear them. Thus they will be able to do immense good to this country. Do not think for a moment that they will come to take up the position of teachers of religion to you. They will, no doubt, be your Guru regarding practical sciences etc., for the improvement of material conditions, and the people of our country will be their Guru in everything pertaining to religion. This relation of Guru and disciple in the domain of religion will forever exist between India and the rest of the world.[30]

Even now in 1895 Swamiji's vision had become global in its scope. He was thinking not for the West, not for India, but for the world-each part of which needed all the others. In the two years since his arrival in America the vitality and freshness of the West had captivated him, even as he had captured the inmost heart and mind of the Western people. It was a meeting of greatness-East and West-the consequences of which were to be of tremendous import to the  future of all mankind. There was little doubt at the close of the nineteenth century that the technologically oriented culture of the West would spread itself over the world-a potential life-giver, but also, as Swamiji knew, a potential poison. It was in the heart of the West, therefore, that the spirituality of the East, with its saving insight into the deepest nature of man, must be implanted if man himself was to survive in any real sense of the word. And India, in turn, seeing its worth in the eyes of the West, as well as in its own spiritual heroes, would again pour out its priceless treasures, and in so doing, would, as Swamiji was so often to say, renew its life force and "conquer the world" with its spirituality. In this sweeping world movement, as he saw it, the West had a vital role to play. There was nothing, then, least of all the "rascally missionaries' nonsense," that could stop him from fulfilling his destiny of world teacher. Nor was it a matter of his own will as distinct from the Divine Will. "I am in His hands," he had written earlier in the year to Alasinga. "What is the use of going back to India? India cannot further my ideas. This country takes kindly to my ideas. I will go back when I get the Command.'[31]

In Detroit on Saturday, August 17, Miss Christina Greenstidel received a telegram which read:

SWAMI LEAVING SENDS YOU AND MRS FUNKE LOVE AND BLESSINGS[32]

The message was signed "Kripananda," but in their mind's eye Sister Christine and Mary Funke must have seen Swamiji "boyishly and joyously" waving his hat to them as his ship sailed away from a New York pier and headed for Europe.

2

The S.S. Touraine, a fairly new, deluxe ship of the French Line, Ianded at Le Havre on August 24.[33]The seven-day  crossing from New York had no doubt been pleasant, for though Swamiji and Francis Leggett were, to be sure, "a strangely assorted pair" (as the latter's daughter-then unborn was to write years later),[34] they were good companions. For one thing, Mr. Leggett, whose interests were ordinarily in hunting, fishing, and business, was on his way to meet his betrothed and was in a state of bliss; he was, moreover, an admirer of Swamiji's "common sense.'[35]Thus, in "a strangely assorted" way, the two complemented one another-Swamiji's common sense a balance to Mr. Leggett's transports.

They took the train to Paris and were no doubt met at the St. Lazare Station by Betty Sturges and her sister, Josephine MacLeod, both of whom had been in France for over a month., The two women had plans for the coming weeks. "We four " Betty Sturges had written to Frank, "will do many things for instance we will take all the tramways on top and see Paris on every corner from that perch. There is so much to be done when we are four, more perhaps than a smaller number because of the exchange of opinions and impressions which with intelligent people is a rare addition to travel and sightseeing. So gather up your Hindoo and come as soon as convenient.'[36]


The opinions and impressions of the "Hindoo" must have been a rare addition indeed as "the four" viewed every corner of Paris from atop horse-drawn tramcars and omnibuses. There was nothing pertaining to man and his culture in which Swamiji was not intensely interested and very little of which he did not have an extensive and penetrating knowledge. But while he had vast stores of knowledge to give, these days were, as well, a time of observing and learning for him. The European aspect of Western civilization was new to him, and Paris was where he could best feel its pulse. Yet it is not unlikely that in the bustle and crowds of this "capital of modern civilisation" he would now and then take a sip of Ganges water from a small vial.


. . . Last time I went to the West [he was to write several years later during his second visit], I took a little of [the sacred waters of the Ganges] with me, fearing it might be needed, and whenever opportunities occurred I used to drink a few drops of it. And every time I drank, in the midst of the stream of humanity, amid that bustle of civilisation, that hurry of frenzied footsteps of millions of men and women in the West, the mind at once became calm and still, as it were. That stream of men, that intense activity of the West, that clash and competition at every step, those seats of luxury and celestial opulence-Paris, London, New York, Berlin, Rome-all would disappear and I used to hear that wonderful sound of "Hara, Hara", to see that lonely forest on the sides of the Himalayas, and feel the murmuring heavenly river coursing through the heart and brain and every artery of the body and thundering forth, "Hara, Hara, Hara!'[37]


At times in this hot city of Paris Swamiji must have longed to plunge into the cold and clear Himalayan Ganges itself. In the nineteenth century, Europeans bathed with even less frequency than Americans; accordingly, even the most elegant of hotels, such as the first-class Hotel Continental, where he and, presumably, his host were staying, had no bathrooms. Of this aspect of Western living he was to write later in his short book Prachya O Paschatya ("The East and the West"):


. . . A millionaire friend of mine once invited me to come over to Paris : Paris, which is the capital of modern civilisation-Paris, the heaven of luxury, fashion, and merriment on earth-the centre of arts and sciences. My friend accommodated me in a huge palatial hotel, where arrangements for meals were in a right royal style, but, for bath-well, no name of it. Two days I suffered silently -till at last I could bear it no longer, and had to address my friend, "Dear brother, let this royal luxury be with you and yours! I am panting of get out of this situation. Such hot weather and no facility of bathing; if it continues like this, I shall be in imminent danger of turning mad like a rabid dog.'[38]


Mr. Leggett forthwith sought a hotel with a bathroom. "Twelve of the chief hotels were seen," Swamiji recalled, "but no place for bathing was there in any of them. There are independent bathing houses, where one can go and have a bath for four or five rupees. Good heavens !'[39]


But aside from this unpleasant state of affairs, Swamiji evidently enjoyed his stay in Paris. His friends not only took him on omnibus and tram rides and on visits to museums, cathedrals, and churches, but introduced him to their Parisian friends, of whom Mrs. Sturges and Miss MacLeod, no strangers to Paris, had a number. Among them was very probably the Countess of Caithness, or, as she was better known in Europe, the Duchesse de Pomar. There is good reason to think that Swamiji went on a drive into the suburbs with this sixty-five year-old dowager for a change of air, and the most likely way for him to have met her would have been through the MacLeod sisters. Like their close friend Dora Roethlesberger, the countess was devoted to a study of the occult in its various forms, taking dictation from Mary Queen of Scots, with whom she communed at length and whose incarnation she somewhat inconsistently believed herself to be. One reads in an English journal devoted to "spiritualism, religion, and reform," that she was "distinguished for her unbounded hospitality to the elite of Paris society, and also for her earnest and unwearied devotion Spiritualism, in the promotion of which she was lavish in the expenditure of time, money, and talent.'[40] And in the same journal of another date: ''Lady Caithness called her palace here Holyrood. It contained the finest hall and concertroom in Paris, where she used to gather her friends and their friends to hear scientific, literary, and religious lectures.... One saw there generals Dragomiroff and Annenkoff, . . . Rajas on their  way to London; Cardinals who forgave Lady Caithness her heresies, and Protestants of pulpit fame.'[41]


Swamiji could well have been taken for one of the "Rajas on their way to London," but whether or not he attended a reception given by the Duchesse de Pomar we do not know. The only thing about his acquaintance with her that has come down to us is a story of the coachman who drove them into the suburbs.


According to Swamiji's brother Mahendra Nath Datta,* who was often to hear Swamiji tell it, the coachman stopped the phaeton by the side of a village road, along which a little boy and girl were walking with a maidservant. The coachman got down from his seat and caressed the children. Then he got back, took up the reins, and proceeded along the road. With amazement, the Duchesse de Pomar asked, "Why did you do that? Those are a gentleman's children!" Turning in his seat, the coachman explained that he had been the manager of a large bank in Paris that had recently failed. With what little money remained to him, he had bought the phaeton and horses and was working to support his wife and children in a rented village house, engaging a maid to look after them. The calmness and dignity of the man deeply impressed Swamiji. Telling of the incident, he would say, "This is what I call a Practical Vedantist. This man has understood the essence of Vedanta. Falling from such a high estate to this low condition, he is nonetheless unmoved. Thank God for such power of mind! This man is really a Vedantist!'[42]

After a little over two weeks of sightseeing and, perhaps, of conversing with the philosophers, scientists, cardinals., and ministers of the Duchesse de Pomar's circle, Swamiji witnessed the marriage of Francis Leggett and Besse (or Betty) Sturges, which took place on Monday, September g, at the American Cathedral (the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity), said to be "the most beautiful example of English Gothic on the Continent." This being the second marriage for both bride and groom, the ceremony was perhaps performed in the small vaulted chapel of the cathedral-the Chapel of St. Paul, the Traveler. There were perhaps not many witnesses--just Swamiji, a few friends, and Alberta and Hollister Sturges, Betty's children, who were attending school in Germany and had been brought to Paris for the occasion by Mr. Leggett's special courier.


Among the wedding guests may have been the young artist Maud Stumm, who was to give Swamiji drawing lessons four years later at Ridgely Manor. She met him now for the first time in the living room of the MacLeod sisters' suite at the Hotel de Hollande. Of this event she was to write in her reminiscences :


It was in the fall of '95 that I first saw him, sitting with his back to the light in Mrs. Leggett's sitting room in Paris.* I did not catch his name, but presently found myself next to him, and being asked if I spoke French. He said he didn't either; when I asked him if in his opinion English would be the next dominant language of the world-as they seemed to be the coming race-"The next great leading force on earth will be the Tartars or the Negroes"-was his astonishing reply; and he proceeded to give his reasons. I found that he dealt not with decades or even centuries but with vast ages and movements of races, as judged by his knowledge of the past.


Then I inquired who this deep-voiced man was, and was told he was a holy man from the East, Swami Vivekananda.[43]


A holy man, yes, and much more--a vast, fully awake being who took in the unfolding centuries and races at a glance. "Mon Prince," Mr. Leggett's courier used to address him. "I am no prince," Swamiji told him, "I am a penniless monk. But the man was not to be put off. "I have traveled with too many princes, " he replied; "I know one when I see one!'[44]


He was right, of course; nor was he alone in recognizing nobility when he saw it. "There were but two celebrated personages whom I have met," Mrs. Leggett was to say later, "who could make one feel perfectly at ease without themselves for an instant losing their own dignity-one was the German Emperor, the other, Swami Vivekananda.'[45]It is, actually, small wonder that Swamiji had the bearing of a prince; he walked in the majesty of his mission. On the day of the wedding he wrote to Alasinga, "I am a singular man, my son; not even you can understand me yet.... I see a greater Power than man, or God, or devil at my back.'[46] A prince indeed, and this by' divine right.


ⓘ
[1] Complete Works, 5:84. (Internal evidence indicates that this letter was written after July 13, 1895.)
[2] Swami Vivekananda to Christina Greenstidel, August 9, 1895, Sen Col.
[3] Complete Works, 5 : 87.
[4] Life (1965), P-394.
[5] Obituaries printed in New York newspapers of December 3, 1922.
[6] This information was given to the author by Miss Phillips’s grandniece Mrs. S. Leonard Kent.
[7] Malvina Hoffman, Heads and Tales (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), p. 306. (This passage is quoted more fully in New Discoveries, 2d ed., p. 424, Prophetic Missions, chap. 9, sec. 3.)
[8] See chap. 1, sec. 8, ref. 4.
[9] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale, July 2, 1895, Sen Col.
[10] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale ., July 3, 1895, Sen Col.
[11] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale ., July 27, 1895, Sen Col.
[12] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale ., July 30, 1895, Sen. Col.
[13] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale ., July 31, 1895, Sen Col.
[14] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale, telegram, August 2, 1895, Sen Col.
[15] Francis H. Leggett to Betty Sturges, August, 1895, Leg. Col.
[16] Mrs. John Bagley to Swami Vivekananda, August 16, 1895, SGB.
[17] Complete Works, 7 : 490.
[18] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, August 9, 1895, Sen Col.
[19] Complete Works, 5 : 90.
[20] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, undated, Thousand Island Park, Sen Col. This portion of the letter has been published in the Complete Works, 5 : 93, and there dated August 1895.
[21] Swami Vivekananda to Francis H. Leggett, Leg. Col. This letter bears the date August 1895, but it must have been written in July.
[22] Complete Works, 5 : 91-92.
[23] Sara Bull to Lady Henry Somerset, August 22, 1895. RKM, Belur.
[24] Complete Works, 5 : 137.
[25] Complete Works ., p. 86. (Portions of this passage have been taken from a copy of the original, RKM, Belur.)
[26] Complete Works., p. 93.
[27] Complete Works., p. 91. (A sentence of this passage has been taken from a copy of the original, RKM, Belur.)
[28] Complete Works, 8 : 349-50. (Original, Leg. Col.)
[29] Complete Works., p. 335. (Original, Leg. Col.)
[30] Complete Works, 5 : 352-54, passim.
[31] Complete Works ., 5 : 77.
[32] Swami Kripananda to Christina Greenstidel, telegram, August 17, 1895, Sen. Col.
[33] Swami Vidyatmananda, “Swami Vivekananda in France,” P.B., March 1967, pp. 118-37.
[34] Frances Leggett, Late and Soon, p. 101.
[35] J. MacLeod to Frances Leggett, 1941. (See chap. 1, sec. 9.)
[36] See ref. 33 above, p. 101.
[37] Complete Works, 7 : 301.
[38] Complete Works., 5 : 471-72.
[39] Complete Works., 5 : 471-72.
[40] Two Worlds, Manchester, September 11, 1896, p. 585.
[41] Two Worlds, Manchester,., November 15, 1895, p. 722.
[42] Mahendranath Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 3 vols (Calcutta : Mahendra Publishing Committee, 1937-38) 2 : 176.
[43] “Vivekananda: Some New Findings,” comp, the Editors, Vedanta and the West, no. 16 (November-December 1953: 165. Later published in Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, 2d ed.)
[44] Josephine MacLeod to Frances.Leggett, 1941, courtesy of Frances Leggett.
[45] Life, 4th ed. (1965), p. 412.
[46] Complete Works, 5 : 95-96.



↑ Contents

3.4 ENGLAND 1895

"I have a cordial invitation from Miss Muller,"* Swamiji had written to Edward T. Sturdy from Paris on September 5, 1895, "and as her place is very near to yours, I think it will be nice to come to her place first for a day or two and then to come over to you.'[1]It would seem that Mr. Sturdy had not taken to this idea, for as things turned out, he met Swamiji in London on September I o and escorted him by train from Paddington Station directly to Reading, a town thirty-six miles southwest. There is no indication in Swamiji's known letters that there was a break in the journey for a stopover at Maidenhead, where Miss Henrietta Muller was then living. "I arrived safe in London," he wrote from Sturdy's home in Caversham to Miss MacLeod (not giving more of a date to his letter than "September, 1895"), "found my friend, and am all right in his home. It is beautiful.'[2]

The borough of Reading in the county of Berkshire on the south bank of the Thames was an ancient town, full of history that reached back to the days of the first Danish invasion of England in the ninth century. Yet, for all its antiquity, it was, in Swamiji's day, predominantly Victorian, its older buildings trampled down throughout the nineteenth century by the unheeding feet of progress and prosperity. Still, the Victorian churches, halls, and blocks of houses, some of them designed by celebrated architects of the era, had their own charm, and certainly the people of Reading, who in 1895 numbered some 64,000, were proud of them.

Although Caversham, a parish of some 5,000 souls, was looked upon as a part of Reading, it lay across the Thames in Oxfordshire, connected to the larger city by an iron bridge. It would seem likely, indeed certain, that Mr. Sturdy hired a cab, horse-drawn, to take his guest from the Reading Station across the bridge to Caversham, and thence up the hilly road to "High View," as his house was called. Exactly where "High View'' stood, and whether or not it still stands, cannot at present be determined, for there is no house in Caversham presently known as "High View"; nor is there a listing in the old ReadingCaversham directories of an Edward T. Sturdy. But to judge from its name, Mr. Sturdy's house sat high on the Caversham hill, a then sparsely settled residential district, and commanded a view of the lovely river valley. That Mr. Sturdy was not listed in the Reading directories is not altogether surprising, for he was not a permanent resident of Caversham, but had leased the house only for a year or so, from whom we do not know. It was fitting, however, that he had chosen this neighborhood to set up house with his young wife and infant son, for Reading was, in a sense, his ancestral seat, his forebears having lived there from 1540 to about 1790.

Since Mr. Sturdy was to play a prominent part in Swamiji's life and work in England, the reader may like to know a little about his antecedents and early life. The following bare facts were gathered primarily from interviews and correspondence in 1972 and 1976 with his son, Major Ambrose Sturdy (who had been the infant at "High View" during Swamiji's stay there).[3] Although Major Sturdy was far too young in 1895 to have been impressed by his father's guest, he has been a generous source of reliable information about his father himself. Yet, even here, his knowledge was more general than detailed, for his father, he said, had been a taciturn, uncommunicative man, not given to telling his son tales of the past. It was Major Sturdy who had traced the family tree back to its sixteenth century roots in Reading.

The earliest Sturdy on record was a freeman and master worker, that is to say, he was self employed. Born around 1560, in the early years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, he died in  1633. The next six generations of Sturdys followed various trades, such as tanner, weaver, miller, and baker, and prospered as well as the times allowed, which was none too well for yeomen in rural England. The Sturdy who brings us into the nineteenth century was named Daniel. He moved from Reading to London around 1790 and became a baker and corn chandler in the village of Clapham in Lambeth, Surrey, then a group of rural villages south of the Thames. Daniel Sturdy took advantage of the progressive times of the early nineteenth century, when London was expanding and "bricks and mortar were on the march across the green fields.'[4] Speculating in real estate, he made a small fortune and became, as his descendant Major Sturdy commented, "a gent." This son of the Industrial Revolution was our Edward T. Sturdy's great grandfather. He had two sons, the elder of whom sired a line of highly affluent nineteenth-century Sturdys.

But it is with Edward, the second son of Daniel the Clapham baker, that we are concerned. His self made father bought him a flour mill in Berwickshire, Scotland, and there he raised a family of three sons. The eldest, Daniel (our Edward's father), came down to London around 1845 when he was in his early twenties to sell his father's mill-products on the Corn Exchange. It was just around this time that the Corn Laws, which had placed a high duty on imports, were repealed, and for London grain merchants times promised to be good. Daniel Sturdy sent for his two younger brothers to join him. Sturdy Brothers, as the firm they established in London was called, prospered, mainly by importing oats from abroad. Indeed, the period between 1850 and 1875 was one of great general prosperity in England, and despite the pleasant fact that Daniel Sturdy spent much of his working life yachting on the Thames Estuary, he did well enough in twelve years to retire.

Following what was perhaps a long-held desire to become a farmer, for like most Englishmen he much enjoyed country life, Daniel Sturdy studied the art of farming in the British Museum Library. He then took his family-his wife and two young daughters-to Canada to search for suitable farmland. And it was in Toronto, on January 20, 1860, that our Edward T. Sturdy was born-the "T" standing for the city of his birth.

Not finding Canada to his liking, Daniel Sturdy returned to England and without more ado bought "Trigon," an eleven -hundred-acre estate of farmland, water meadows, woodland, and heath, in Wareham, Dorset, several miles inland from the south coast. And though Daniel Sturdy may have learnt his farming out of books, he was no dilettante. "He was a wonderful man," his grandson Major Ambrose Sturdy writes. "As the farm was practically derelict, he dug out the channels of the water meadows, refrained all the fields, built the farm buildings from clay bricks made on the estate and timber felled on it; he gravelled the two-mile-long drives, and was using steam for farm machinery as early as 1870, breaking up much heath--and all the while spending the greater part of his time fishing and shooting.'[5]That was Edward Toronto Sturdy's father-enterprising, industrious, loving the land, and loving sport-an Englishman to the bone.

The young Edward spent a happy boyhood at Trigon, swimming in the river Piddle, playing in the woods, fishing and shooting with his younger brother Richmond. He went to prep school at Blackheath and from the age of twelve to fifteen attended Clifton College in Bristol, one of the many public schools that were then being founded throughout the country along the lines of the hoary and prestigious Eton and Harrow. Edward's school life was shortlived. After three years, he was brought to London to work in the family business under his two uncles. Here, too, he stayed for only three years; for living in lodgings, working in a city office and market were not to the taste of a boy who had been brought up in beautiful Trigon. At the age of eighteen he cut free and took off in a slow sailing ship for New Zealand, to make his own way. It was the first leg of the long voyage that was to lead him to Swamiji.

In New Zealand, a land of promise and open air, where British colonization was still taking place at full tide, an enterprising young man could make a good profit in a number of ways, and Edward Sturdy did not fail to do well for himself. He took contracts to drive sheep from one end of North Island to the other, engaging drovers to assist in the herding. At the same time, he bought up tracts of forest land, cleared them, built log houses on them, and sold them for farms. In such ways, he was to save about 2,000 within ten years or so. Meanwhile, in 1884, when he was twenty-four, another kind of adventure opened to him. He was living at his headquarters of Woodville, Hawkes Bay, a small town in the approximate center of North Island, surrounded by mountains and forests, when a good friend of his, an Edward Bold (later Postmaster General of New Zealand), introduced him to the world of Theosophy.

Sturdy was evidently at once caught up into the strong excitement of Madame Helena P. Blavatsky's communications (or "precipitations" as she called them) from Tibetan Mahatmas and her flights into misty realms of the occult. But he was also interested in the philosophical and more serious aspects of the study and spent long hours reading the Bhagavad Gita with his friend, poring over an English translation made in       the time

of Warren Hastings. ("It was faulty," he recalled in later life, "and its teaching wrongly applied to astrology. But it strongly appealed to something 'hidden by change of birth.'")[6]

He soon communicated with the Theosophical headquarters in Adyar, Madras, and in October of 1885 received his diploma of membership, thus becoming a Fellow of the Theosophical Society, the fifth member on the New Zealand roll.

But to a restless, searching young man, it would not do to simply read the Gita in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. There was nothing for it but to go to the source. Thus in 1886, Edward Toronto Sturdy set off for India. There he met many of the top-ranking Theosophists, including Colonel Henry Steele Olcott, the International President. Quickly Sturdy became close to the center of things, and as Colonel Olcott recorded in Old Diary Leaves, "played a prominent part in our Society's affairs."' From India, he sailed to England, where he saw a good deal of Madame Blavatsky herself and of the few disciples who then surrounded her. (The London Theosophical Society was still very small in those days and was suffering from a recent expose of occult trickery at Adyar. Nor had Mrs. Annie Besant yet appeared on the scene.) From England, Sturdy sailed to America, where he met the leading Theosophists of the American section, William Quan Judge and Dr. J. D. Duck. Then, completing his trip around the world, which had been, in a sense, a pilgrimage, he returned to New Zealand.

Sturdy could not have been away from home for much more than two years, for we find that in 1888 he founded a Theosophical Lodge in Wellington. The Lodge had about fifteen members from the city, including the then Premier of the Colony, Sir Harry Atkinson, and a number of members from other parts of the island. Thus it was that through the efforts and contagious enthusiasm of Edward T. Sturdy, Theosophy came to be established in New Zealand, where it grew apace.

And now the time came for Sturdy to leave the untamed land he had grown to love. In 1889 his father died, and he was called back to England to run Trigon. For one reason or another, however, he sold the estate-now well cultivated and rich with livestock and fields of grain-to one of his uncles and moved to London and to "H.P.B.," as Madame Blavatsky was known among her devotees. By this time, Theosophy had many followers in London among the upper and middle classes, including Miss Henrietta Muller and, by now, Mrs. Annie Besant; the eloquent, fervent, and famous (one might say notorious) atheist and socialist, who had embraced the doctrine to the stupefaction of many of her old friends and colleagues, such as Charles Bradlaugh, the famous Secularist, and George Bernard Shaw, the young and brilliant Fabian  Socialist. (To such hardheaded; logical thinkers Theosophy was the least imaginable of beliefs and "had only a very minor place among the world's delusions.'[8]But Mrs. Besant took little interest in what her old friends thought; like many others, she had fallen deep under the spell of the extraordinary, fascinating, and curiously lovable Madame Blavatsky.)

Mr. Sturdy was soon a familiar figure among the intimate group of Fellows at the Blavatsky Lodge at 19 Avenue Road, St. John's Wood. He was admitted not only into the select Esoteric Section, but into its even more exclusive Inner Group, whose rites and seances were cloaked in deep secrecy. He was, moreover, appointed in 1890 to a seven member advisory council of the "European Section," as the Blavatsky Lodge had come to be called, and was made Treasurer. Thus within a short time, Mr. Sturdy had plunged into the thick of things-both esoteric and exoteric--and was thereby the more vulnerable to disillusionment. It was to come fairly soon.

In May of 1891 Madame Blavatsky died in London, naming Annie Besant her heir and "Chief Secretary of the Inner Group and Recorder of the Teachings"--a very exalted position. Thereupon ensued a power struggle involving the head of the American Section, William Qnan Judge, Colonel Olcott, and Mrs. Besant. The details of these wranglings need not concern us, but they deeply concerned and stunned Mr. Sturdy and other members of the Theosophical Society. Mr. Judge was accused of forging a number of "precipitated" letters written in praise of himself by the Tibetan Mahatmas Masters Koot Hoomi and Morya--whose very existence was now suspect. He was called for a hearing before the London Judicial Committee of the Society, which met in July of 1894.. Mr. Judge was let off lightly, which circumstance so incensed one of the members of the Society that he forthwith divulged the whole affair, with documentation, to the Westminster Gazette, one of London's leading newspapers. With much glee and hilarity the Gazette ran a series of long, anonymous articles  entitled "Isis Very Much Unveiled"-an obvious parody of Madame Blavatsky's first famous book, Isis Unveiled. Not content with this expose, the paper continued to amuse itself and all of London by flailing the Theosophical Society with ridicule, referring, for instance, to "Theosophistry" and the foggy "Mahatmosphere." Theosophists were themselves not amused by the purported shenanigans of William Q; Judge. In chagrined disillusionment, Edward T. Study, among many others, resigned.

News of the scandal spread, of course, to America, and in Swamiji's letters of this period one finds that he was well aware of what was going on. On November 19, 1894, he wrote to Alasinga: "I read a nonsense in one of the Theosophical magazines in India saying that they prepared the way for my success!! Indeed ! ! ! I have never seen I o Theosophists here and they are held in bad reputation by the public here. If I had mixed with them, I would never have got a single high class man or woman to follow me. Rot nonsense! Theosophists prepared the way ! ! ! Rogues who will not give me even an introduction now come for a share of the praise ! ! Even Annie Besant could not get an audience here. There is a gloom over the Society on account of the trickery of the founders and any amount of after work cannot take it out. So take care! [You] must beware of everything that is untrue at the start. Stick to the truth and we shall succeed, maybe slowly, but surely.'[9]

Meanwhile, the gods had been watching over Mr. Sturdy. After the death of Madame Blavatsky, he had gone to Adyar, the Theosophical headquarters in Madras, where the scandal was breaking, and thence to Almora in the Himalayas to practice sadhana. There he had come in contact with one of Swamiji's brother disciples, Swami Shivananda, and a monk of the Sarasvati group named Swami Sachidananda. Drawn to the two sannyasins, he had had long talks with them, and through the former had learned of Swamiji. He was ready at this point to become a monk and in many respects was already  living the life of sannyasa. Of this young and serious Englishman, Swami Shivananda wrote on May 9, 1893, to Babu Pramada Das Mitra: "An English gentleman, a member of the London Theosophical Society, has come here. I am charmed by his manner, behaviour and steadfastness in the way of Yoga. They are all like those of a Hindu Sannyasin, and he is a good companion. He lives quite close to the ashrama where I am staying. Therefore, very often we have a discussion on religious topics." And in another letter to the same Mr. Mitra: "The name of the Theosophical Englishman is E. T. Sturdy. .

. . He is of a very quiet nature and his modes and manners are just like those of a Brahmin.... He is aged about thirty, and is unmarried.'[10]In early 1894 Sturdy was Honorary Secretary of the Indian Section of the Theosophical Society and had evidently planned to remain for some time in India. Was it karma, was it those watching gods, or was it the stars? Whatever power it may have been, it, or they, had other plans for him. Returning to London in an official capacity for the hearing of Mr. Judge, Sturdy at once became seriously ill. Being a strict vegetarian, he could find no one who would undertake his care, except, at last, one Lucie Black, a young hospital nurse. She nursed him back to health on vegetables, and in the spring of 1894. he married her. Much later he was to describe this event in a letter to Miss MacLeod as "the complete turning over of [a] page in my life.'[11]Upon that turned page had been writ his "complete immunity to woman's influence"--his chosen life of sadhana and renunciation. On the following page was written his marriage. In February of 1895 a son, Ambrose, was born to him. And the next month, about a year too late, as he came to believe, he wrote his first letter to Swamiji. "Many things have come too late for me in this incarnation," he was to write in October of 1898 to Miss MacLeod; "there was a time when I had entirely got adrift from all worldly ties and obligations : I ought to have met Swami then, instead of only his gurubhais; what a gain it would have been to everybody.'[12]One wonders what Lucie  Sturdy would have said to this. But in any event, late or not, his first known letter to Swamiji read as follows :

c/o King & Co
65 Cornhill, London 
30/13/95

Respected Swamiji

I should be much obliged if you would let me know when you arrive in England.

I was living for some time in India with two of your gurubhais, Sivanandaji and Satchidanandaji [the latter was not a monk of the Ramakrishna Order] and found them both good men and worthy of respect. This was in Kumaon.

You must already know that the leader of the Theosophical Society in America is given up to false claims of association with Mahatmas and is leading the people there on a wrong path. The evidence of his unscrupulous conduct are evident and are well known in this country.

I hope that your good work in America will not be spoiled by identification with the Theosophical Society there, as it is at the present time constituted.

A magazine like the Metaphysical Magazine, to which I see you have contributed,* will do much good, if it can be kept free of the charlatanry either of false claims to mental healing, astrology, association with Mahatmas & • other divine beings &c & c.

I am too ardent a lover of the pure adwaita philosophy of India not to be jealous when I see it threatened in its interpretation by Western bias or Western charlatans.

Since the Indian Section of the Theosophical Society has passed a vote of censure upon Judge, he has been taking a position more or less hostile to the whole of India.

It remains yet to be seen whether the Theosophical Society can be put upon a thoroughly candid and honourable footing. It has undoubtedly power to do much good

if it can be made pure. There will be a big struggle for mastery between Judge's party and the party who desire to act honestly at the next European convention.

Yours in[13]
Edward T. Sturdy

The Englishman's earnest tone touched Swamiji, nor could he be indifferent to one who had lived with his brother disciple Swami Shivananda in the Himalayas. He replied at once to the letter, which, as he said, had taken more than three weeks to reach him. His tone was open, friendly, almost confiding. Indeed, some portions of Swamiji's first letter to Mr. Sturdy, dated April 24., 1895, provide valuable information regarding his work and thought at the time. In other portions, which have not been previously published, he assured Mr. Sturdy that he had not been misled by the more "mystical" aspects of Theosophy.

It goes without saying [he wrote] that the theosophists never had any place-of respect in my soul. And as to the Mahatma letters and things of that ilk, I always smelt something not safe about them and kept aloof from them.

No doubt the theosophists could have done a great work in the world-had they not been inextricably mixed up with uncanny things and I am afraid it will be almost impossible to cleanse the Augean stable now-seeing that its very foundation was on these Mahatmas of the Himalayas and these ghost and demi-god stories were the attractions that drew people round its standard. My little experience in America shows to me that a great section of the Western community especially of women are ever ready to have their shattered nerves tickled with startling stories, but they are always for a change. . . .[14]

Sturdy continued his correspondence with Swamiji, urging him to come to England, and eventually Swamiji accepted, if only for a short stay. "So far as I see now," he had written to Sturdy on August 2, "I can stay only a few weeks in London. But if the Lord wills, that small time may prove to be the beginning of great things.'[15]And indeed, his visit to England in 1895 was to result in an extension and intensification of his Western work-a development that seems to have been an inseparable, and extremely important, part of his mission.

And now, in September of 1895, Mr. Sturdy had Swamiji in Caversham-his two incompatible lives, that of husband and father and that of would-be monk, harmoniously contained for the time being under one roof.

2

The purpose of Swamiji's first visit to England being, as he himself remarked, "just to probe a little,'[16] he spent several quiet weeks at Mr. Sturdy's house on the heights of Caversham, overlooking the tranquil, tree-bordered Thames and the gentle downs and green fields of Oxfordshire and Berkshire. A guidebook of the period devotes many paragraphs to describing the historic buildings in and around Caversham and "the charming walks, drives, or cycling runs" that could be had without too much exertion. A visitor could, for instance, take a "very enjoyable walk in bracing air, with a beautiful view of the river Thames, the town of Reading, and the wooded hills all around." He could return "by the Lower Warren Road, which runs parallel with and close to the river, . . . [and which is] shaded by a row of pines nearly the whole distance and forms a picturesque and agreeable promenade." Or one could stroll in the opposite direction "through Mr. Crashay's fine park," or, again, "up Hamdean Road past the prettily laid-out Cemetery to Grove Hill" and on to Dyson's Wood. If Swamiji did not visit the historic buildings and houses of the neighborhood, he surely took some of these charming walks in the English countryside, often accompanied, no doubt, by his host.

But such gentle ramblings would have been incidental to his main occupation in these early weeks, which appears to have been to help Mr. Sturdy with his study of Sanskrit, with his translation of and commentary on the Narada-Bhakti-Sutras, and with his pursuit of Indian philosophy. It was a restful time for Swamiji, whose health was in much need of these quiet weeks, and certainly it was a blessed time for Sturdy, whose talks with his guest must have gone on for hours on end. Whether or not Sturdy realized at the time how great a soul was living with him, walking the country lanes with him, fondling his infant son, talking of simple, everyday things as well as of philosophy, sharing his strictly vegetarian meals (cooked "a la Indienne perfectly"),[17] and explaining to him the advanced intricacies of Sanskrit grammar, we do not know, but he, Sturdy, seems to have been in no hurry to bring these idyllic days to an end.


Swamiji was himself content to let matters follow their own course. "My friend being a Sanskrit scholar, we are busy working on the great commentaries of Shankara etc." he wrote to "Joe Joe" (Miss MacLeod) shortly after his arrival. "Nothing but philosophy and religion here."[18] And again on September 24. to Mrs. Bull, "I have not done any visible work as yet except helping Mr. Sturdy in studying Sanskrit.... So far it is all right. Waiting for the next wave, 'avoid not & seek not-wait for what the Lord sends', is my motto.'[19]


Meanwhile, he was discovering to his relief and surprise that the English people were, on the whole, "very friendly" unlike most of their countrymen in India and also unlike many Americans. "Except [for] a few Anglo-Indians, they do not hate black men at all," he wrote to Mrs. Leggett in early October. "Not even do they hoot at me in the streets. Sometimes I wonder whether my face has turned white, but the mirror tells me the truth. Yet they are all so friendly here.'[20] Even some Anglo-Indians (by which term was meant in those days Englishmen who had lived or were living in India) were unexpectedly courteous, How revealing of Swamiji's earlier experiences in India was his comment in his first letter from Caversham to Miss MacLeod : mentioning that he had already met "several retired Generals from India," he added, "they were very civil and polite to me.'[21]


Swamiji also met at this time a "Prof. Fraser," who, as he wrote to Mrs. Leggett from Caversham, was "a high official . . . [who] has been half his life in India, and . . . has lived so much in ancient thought and wisdom that he does not care a fig for anything out of India! !'[22]This was very probably Professor Robert Watson Frazer, a retired Indian Civil Servant, who was then forty-one and a lecturer in Tamil and Telugu at University College in London. According to Professor Frazer's obituary, he "had a good knowledge of the Sanskrit literature, especially in the sphere of philosophic and religious ideas, and he was intimately acquainted with Indian life."[23] We also find in Professor Frazer's book Indian Thought Past and Present, first published in 1915, what may be snatches from his talks with Swamiji. In a paragraph on Sri Ramakrishna, in which he quoted from Max Muller, the Professor wrote:


... His [Sri Ramakrishna's] teachings were followed by his disciple Swami Vivekananda, who attracted large audiences to his lectures in England and America. In private conversation he always maintained a quiet confidence that "Indian thought, philosophical and spiritual, must once more go over and conquer the world." To his Guru the image of Kali was a consecrated and living image of God, to Vivekananda in the worship of the idol: "we are struggling to get to the thing signified, to get beyond the material to the spiritual; the spirit is the goal not the matter. Forms, images, bells, candles, books, churches, temples, and all holy symbols are very good, very helpful to the growing plant of spirituality, but this far and no farther.'[24]


It is so difficult to believe that the author of the above passage was not the same "Prof. Fraser" whom Swamiji met and talked with, that the present author is content to believe that he was.


It also seems more than likely that Mr. Sturdy took Swamiji to call upon Miss Henrietta Muller at Maidenhead sometime in September. Maidenhead, an ancient market town in Berkshire of about 12,000 people in 1895, was twelve miles northeast of Reading on the main railway line. One could go there from Reading by train, or by carriage, or, better still, by boat-for, as a guidebook of the period told the visitor, Maidenhead was "situated on the Banks of the Thames, in the midst of the most charming scenery to be found on the whole of this charming River." One hopes that Mr. Sturdy took Swamiji for a boating trip down the "sweet Thames" to Maidenhead. From there they could have walked or driven a mile or so along country lanes to Miss Muller's house, "The Meads," in the village of Pinkney's Green.


Miss Muller was to figure prominently in Swamiji's English life and will, accordingly, enter now and then into our present story. As we have seen earlier, she had, like Mr. Sturdy, belonged to the Theosophical Society-specifically, to the Madame Blavatsky Lodge in London-and, like him, she had resigned. She had also spent some time in India in the early nineties in connection with Theosophy.


Born in Valparaiso, Chile, around 1850, Frances Henrietta' Muller had spent a happy childhood in her parents' beautiful home in the countryside a few miles outside the pre-eminently commercial city. It was an idyllic life, interrupted only by a two-year visit to Boston and London when she was between nine and eleven years old and marred only by the frequent and alarming earthquakes to which Ghile is subject. When she was about thirteen, the Muller family moved permanently to London. Here Henrietta and her younger sister, Eva (the education of both of whom had previously been in the hands of governesses and tutor), attended school with more or less regularity. Interspersed, however, were many trips to Europe, for her parents loved to travel. "I cannot count," she later said, "the number of times I have been on the continent"25 which sojourns no doubt contributed to her ability to speak fluently French, German, Italian, and Spanish.


After she had left school and was, perhaps, around eighteen, her father bought an estate in Shenley, Hertfordshire, to which he moved the family. Henrietta disliked the place and as time went on became increasingly dissatisfied and bored with the banal life to which young women of that era were doomed. She passed her time, she related, "in the usual round of social duties as girls generally did then. I enjoyed social life very much for a short time, . . . but after three or four years I began to weary of it all. I was discontented with my idle life; I felt that I had something to do for my fellow creatures, yet I could not find out what it was as I did not feel very capable of doing anything, because as a young girl I was very timid and wanting in self confidence.'[26]


"I have cured that tendency however now," Miss Muller added. Indeed, she seems to have cured it even in young womanhood, for the step she then took required considerable determination and courage. That was an age when the typical and correct lady knew very little, thought very little, and did almost nothing beyond attending to her needlework. It was taken for granted as a fact of nature that she did not have the brain or the emotional stability for much else, and certainly she had no need for economic, legal, or political rights, or, for that matter, the need for an education beyond whatever was necessary to keep house for a husband, under whose benevolent guidance and protection she would live out her life. In the view of almost everyone, men and women alike, that was the way things would forever be. But by midcentury a faint suspicion had started to grow in a few English minds that perhaps something was wrong with this divine scheme. With the growth of the Humanitarian movement, in which women had been accorded a small place, a few young ladies were becoming aware that the world was crying out for help. They were beginning to see the grim poverty, the extreme social injustice, the deplorable and unrelieved working conditions that every where prevailed-and they found themselves completely powerless and unequipped to right these glaring wrongs. They began to recognize that the enforced uselessness of their lives was a grave injustice not only against their own sex but against the whole of humanity. John Stuart Mill, a philosopher whom Swamiji admired in many respects, was the first man to take up the cause of women. "We have had the morality of submission, and the morality of chivalry and generosity," he wrote in 1869; "the time is now come for the morality of justice.'[27]Although women were politically and socially helpless to help themselves, the awakening social conscience and restlessness of a small-a very small-minority was in itself a force, and by the early seventies, their desire for "a higher education" was finding its first, tentative fulfillment.


It was at this juncture that Miss Henrietta Muller, though "past girlhood," as the Girton Review put it, plunged into the advance stream of history. She was among the handful of young women who, in defiance of strong and outraged parental opposition (Henrietta's parents were no exception), social censure, and ridicule, enrolled at Girton, one of the two small colleges for women that had recently been founded at Cambridge. In 1874, Girton was in every respect still a pioneer venture; even the building was hardly completed; the grounds were bare, without trees or fences; the rooms and halls were unadorned, cold, and uncomfortable. The girls and their house mistresses were keenly conscious that the widened eyes of the nation were upon them, watching for them to crumble under the strain of study-an occupation for which only the male brain was fit-waiting for their health, their morals, their tenuous sanity, and, above all, their womanliness to visibly disintegrate. Seriously and eagerly the girls pursued their studies; there were no outbreaks of scandal or of madness, and no one died. As for their womanliness-they seemed, on the whole, to retain it Although it was still unthinkable for women to receive university degrees, they were individually permitted, with the unofficial and rather grudging agreement of the Cambridge examiners, to take regular, unmodified honors examinations, known in Cambridge as tripos. To everyone's amazement but their own, almost all the young women who were allowed to take these examinations in the first years of Girton did well in them. Completing the usual three-year course in 18'77, Miss Muller passed with third-class honors in the Moral Science Tripos, which included such subjects as Political Economy, Philosophy, and Psychology. It was a fair-to-middling distinction, but a distinction nonetheless, and it served somewhat to reconcile her parents and friends to this willful and unladylike behavior.


But that was by no means the end of it. The great London School Board, established in 1870, was the first, and for long the only, place from which women could have an official voice in public affairs. At the urging of some of her more radical friends, Miss Muller stood for election at the end of 1879-a stand few Victorian women were bold enough to take. She won by the largest vote in the whole of London and thereby found herself presiding over the new Board. The function of the School Board was to attend to all matters concerning the London school system, many of which matters were in vital need of reform. The work was said to be heavy and exacting; it was also said that during Miss Muller's six years on the Board she was one of its hardest workers, constantly visiting the schools, becoming "in a real and intimate sense the friend of the women teachers,'[28] and bringing about a few important, though inconspicuous, changes. Hard though she worked, it would appear that Miss Muller had had energy to spare. For her recreation in those days she would go down to the River Thames and row upstream for twenty miles or so. Or, for variation, she would go tricycling for 50 miles at a stretch. "It is an amusing experience, " she recalled, "to see the milestones pass by so quickly-fifty in a day make a show." During holidays, she and her sister, Eva, would climb the Swiss Alps. "I like exercise," she said to an interviewer.'[29]


Her primary interest, however, was the Women's Movement for which she worked and propagandized throughout most of her life. She was closely in touch with the rather sporadic efforts to establish women's trade unions; she founded the Society for the Return of Women as Poor Law Guardians (another of the few public positions for which women had been eligible), and in 1888 she started the Women's Herald, a penny weekly "conducted, written, printed, and published by women" and devoted to the women's cause, which she edited under the name of Helena B. Temple. As editor, Miss Muller helped to bring about workhouse and temperance reforms (both of which were within the province of women), and once she killed both birds with one stone when she charged an unfortunate Master of the Workhouse with intemperance and compelled the School Board, against its wishes, to oust him. A strong-minded woman, Miss Muller.


But the age called for "strong--minded women"--then a term of opprobrium and derision in male circles. Women's rights, women's education, women's trade unions, women's suffrage, temperance movements, humanitarian movements, social reforms-these were all more or less interconnected crusades and enlisted, indeed required, the support of spirited, determined, and courageous women. And such a one was Henrietta Muller. Even during the 1880s-a decade of slow, steady, ladylike, and frustrating work in the Women's Movement-she created something of a sensation by adamantly refusing to pay taxes on her newly purchased London house as a protest against being denied the right to vote. As a result, much of her best furniture was carted away, while a crowd of incensed working men and women booed the bailiffs for so mistreating a poor defenseless lady. But it was all for the good of the Cause. "The Press," as she said, "took it up very generally, there was scarcely a newspaper in England that had not a leading article on the question of women's votes.'[30]


Indeed, Miss Muller's heroic stand against the tax-collector attracted wide attention. She was one of the first English women, if not the first, to attack the problem of women's suffrage in so head-on a manner. It was the right approach, but far ahead of its time. Not until the next century did the gentlewomen of England, realizing that politeness and lawfulness were getting them nowhere, become violently militant in their demands. By then, however, Henrietta Muller had long since withdrawn from the front line of battle.


It is not known at present when, exactly, she joined the Theosophical Society, but it must have been sometime between 1887 (when Madame Blavatsky returned to London from India) and 1891 (when she is known to have been Vice-President of the League of Theosophical Workers). On September 14, 1893, she read a paper entitled "Theosophy as Underlying all Scriptures” before the Theosophical Congress at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. It is not certain that she met Swamiji at this time, but one thinks she must have at least seen him and perhaps have heard one of his shorter talks at the plenary sessions. It is not probable, however, that she was present on the afternoon of September 19 to hear his main address on Hinduism, for the Theosophical delegation, Miss Muller included, sailed from New York on September 20, returning to London.


The following month, Mrs. Annie Besant traveled to India for a glorious lecture procession. Whether or not Miss Muller accompanied her for the whole of this trip is not known; at the end of 1893, however, she was at Adyar, Madras, for the Theosophists' annual convention, where she was introduced with pardonable exaggeration as "the renowned womansuffragist." While in India, Miss Muller, wealthy, altruistic, and childless, adopted a young Indian who she felt had great promise and who, it so happened, was a disciple of Swamiji's. His name was Akshay Kumar Ghose. Two years earlier, Swamiji, wanting to help him and, as was his wont, seeing the best in him, had introduced him to Haridas Viharidas Desai as "a very honest and intelligent boy and an undergraduate of the Calcutta University.'[31]In the beginning of 1895 the adoption, which had caused a good deal of gossip and controversy in the Indian papers, became legally complete, and the young man "fell heir to his new mother's ample fortune," as was noted in the February Theosophist. The editor, Colonel Olcott, assured his readers of "the purity and unselfishness of [Miss Muller's] motives, however eccentric her actions might at any time appear." "Her plan," he wrote, "is to have her protege educated for the Bar, enter Parliament, and devote his life to social and political reform in India.'[32]


Things did not work out quite that way, though at the time of our present story Akshay was studying at Cambridge in pursuance of Miss Muller's plan.


Returning to England in mid--1894, Miss Muller was among those Theosophists to be shaken by the resounding scandal of Mr. Judge's alleged forgeries. It was around the time of the hearings and the newspaper expose that she invited Swamiji to visit her, no doubt at the urging of her new son. "Akshay Kumar Ghose is in London," Swamiji wrote to Alasinga from Washington, D.C. on October 27, 1894. "He sent a beautiful invitation from London to come to Miss Muller's, and I hope I am going in January or February next.'[33]As we know, it was not until September of the following year that Swamiji was able to accept Miss Muller's renewed invitation.


Swamiji's first meeting with Miss Muller at Pinkney's Green was not altogether auspicious. She had, it seems, urged him to lend support to the cause of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, an anti-liquor organization imported from America in 1883. Swamiji had demurred. "A lady called Miss Muller who has adopted a disciple of mine might have been a great friend to me but for the W.C.T.U. Ladies," he wrote to Mrs. Bull from Caversham in a heretofore unpublished passage of his letter of September 17. "All is for good," he continued, "I am trying for men only. My object is to preach religion. I cannot identify myself with any other movements.'[34]


But although Miss Muller did not have her own way, she evidently soon forgave Swamiji. In his next letter to Mrs. Bull, dated September 24,, he writes in another heretofore unpublished passage, "Miss Muller is getting up a lecture for me in Reading & there will be some lecturing in London too. [Let us] see what we can slowly do. Then you know, I do not seek to know people; if people are thrown in my way by the Lord all right. It is my principle not to force myself on others.'[35]


There were times; however, when Swamiji did not let things take their own course. It would seem that he and Mr. Sturdy had gone to visit Miss Muller a second time, and the temptation is great to wonder if it was not while walking across the fields around Pinkney's Green in those September days that he saved her from the onrush of an angry bull. The incident as related by Sister Nivedita is well known, but it will bear repeating here, for it was characteristic of the unhesitating courage with which Swamiji always "faced the brute." The story goes that he was walking with Miss Muller and an Englishman across some fields when a mad bull came charging toward them.


The Englishman frankly ran [Nivedita wrote], and reached the other side of the hill in safety. The woman 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. But the animal suddenly stopped, a few paces off, and then raising his head, retreated sullenly.[36]


Apart from such perilous strolls across the green and pleasant fields of Berkshire, Swamiji's life with Sturdy seems to have been uneventful. Although he was at this time surely making new friends through his host and perhaps giving some informal talks, there is no indication in his known letters that he was holding classes in or around Reading in the month of September or the early part of October. The slowness with which things were moving was more or less deliberate. "Sturdy and I want to get hold of a few at least very strong and intellectual men in England to form a society and therefore must proceed slowly," Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Bull in his letter of September 17. "We must take care not to be run over with 'fads' from, the first. This you will know has been my policy in America too. .  . . Purity, perseverance and energy-these three I want & if I get only half a dozen here my work will go on. I have a great chance of getting such a few.'[37]A week later, as seen above, he wrote to Mrs. Bull of the possibility of lectures in Reading and London, but nothing definite was as yet planned. In another heretofore unpublished passage of this same letter of September 24 he wrote, "The London Season is not open yet. Then again Mr. Sturdy wants to go slowly--& build on a sure foundation rather than make a good deal of noise for nothing. So we are slowly moving on. By November I will come to America surely.'[38]


One reason Mr. Sturdy wished to move slowly upon London was the adverse publicity the Theosophical Society had received less than a year earlier. Theosophy had made a splash in London. Many men and women, searching for an antidote to the arid secularism and skepticism of the age, had found it in the "Secret Doctrine," particularly in the theories of reincarnation and karma, to say nothing of the Mahatmas: Indeed, so popular in fashionable circles was the "fad" that a contemporary cartoon depicted members of the smart set courteously inquiring of one another, "How is your karma?" Thus when the scandal broke, the shock was widespread; believers were crushed, and every scoffer was more confirmed than ever in his scoffing. The Theosophical vogue may indeed have popularized a few Eastern ideas and familiarized the public with them, but it had also discredited them. The very people whom Swamiji wished to reach-the intelligent and  the searching-had become, temporarily at least, wary of everything Eastern. In a letter to Mrs. Bull, written on October 4 or 5, he briefly mentions the situation. The letter is given here in full, for parts of it have not previously been published:

6 [4 or 5] Oct. 95 
High View, 
Caversham,
Reading.

Dear Mrs. Bull

I have not had any letter from you long.


I am coming in November next certain. In the meanwhile we are prospecting work in Eng. We do not want to make any noise but go silently, as the theosophists have spoiled the atmosphere with their ludicrous revelations.


Where are you now? Does Kripananda write you often? Has the Green acre affair been successful this year? Kindly give my eternal love & gratitude to Miss Farmer to Miss Hamlin & Miss Thursby. You will be glad to know I am translating a little book on Bhakti with Mr Sturdy which is going to be published soon with copious commentaries &c.


This month I will have three lectures two in London & one in Maidenhead. That will open up the way to some classes or parlour lectures &c and that will be a good beginning.


My love to you & your daughter
May the Lord bless you & yours
my noble friend for ever & ever

Your ever loving son
Vivekananda

I haven't written to Mrs Adams yet, as I do not want to disturb her; she has been always so good & kind to me-because (between you & me) the ladies of the W.C.T.U. will be all against me & they are her friends.


Now if she helps me openly-they might think ill of it. I will be the last to disturb the cause of a kind friend[39].-- V.


Swamiji seems to have made the good ladies of the W.C.T.U. very cross by not crusading for their cause. But as we shall see in later chapters, Mrs. Adams, who lived in Chicago, continued to be as helpful to him as ever.


The "little book on Bhakti" that Swamiji was translating with Mr. Sturdy was the Narada ,Sutra, An Inquiry into Love. The manuscript was to be in the press by March of the following year and would be published at the end of April by Longmans, Green, and Company. It turned out to be a well-printed sixty-eight-page book, on the tan cloth cover of which was printed in gold: "Indian Ideals-No. I." Mr. Sturdy intended to follow it with more translations of Sanskrit texts, but as far as can be ascertained at present, there were no further numbers in this particular series; indeed, the words "Indian Ideals-No. I" were dropped from the cover of future editions (but we shall return to the subject of Mr. Sturdy's publications in a later chapter). The Narada Sutra was an excellent little book, and considering that Swamiji devoted so much time to the work, one might say that the author of the commentary had been guided by him all the way, particularly as Sturdy had by now taken initiation and looked upon Swamiji as his guru. And to be sure, although in his introduction he assumed all responsibility for the commentary, he "affectionately dedicated" the work to Swamiji and acknowledged his assistance. The book was well received: the comments of one critic, who reviewed it in the July 1896 issue of India (an English monthly), read in part:


No Christian could study "Narada Sutra" without gaining a new sympathy, a new and strange sense of kinship, with those who through many generations have regarded these maxims as divine...


. . . One cannot but hope that this little series will  reach a wider circle of students than has been touched by the "Sacred Books of the East," or by Professor Max Muller's Hibbert Lectures of 1878, and penetrate more deeply, if less widely, than Sir Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia." Perhaps in future volumes of the series a little more help in the way of a historical introduction might be given to the ignorant but interested Western reader. It is not, however, for the translation alone that we owe something to Mr. Sturdy. It would be ungrateful to pass over in silence the extreme beauty of parts of his commentary. Here is one fine saying: "He who loves equally everywhere need seek no asceticism; it will seek him as long as he has a coin to spend, a loaf to divide or a coat to give. " And here is another: "No religious system pretends to define Deity; it can at the best strive with other systems to suspend some intellectual or emotional veil through which, in shining, the light may take form...."


Aside from helping Sturdy with his Sanskrit studies and translations, Swamiji found time, as he always did, to write to his brother disciples in India, his disciples East and West, and his friends, sometimes penning a batch of letters all on one day. On Friday, October 4, for instance, he wrote to Swami Brahmananda, to Mrs. Bull (probably), and also to Sister Christine. This letter to "Christina," only a sentence of which has been previously published, was, as far as we know at present, the second letter he had written to her. It read in full:

c/oE. T. Sturdy
High view
Caversham
Reading
Eng.

Dear Christina

I received your beautiful note regularly enough-but I was so buisy [sic] in many things as to be unable to reply sooner. It is too long a delay to be decent, kindly excuse me. I send my love every day to you-however & in every letter I write to America.


I received another note from Kripananda Since then he is silent. Where is he? Very glad to learn he did so well in Detroit he is very correct & persevering Success always comes to such.


Things are coming up very slowly here in England as the Season is over-I will be only a month or so more here and then start again for America Give my love to Mrs. Funkey to Mrs. Phelps & all the Detroit friends. Purity patience & perseverance overcome all. All great things must of necessity be slow.


I am in good health happy, and as usual waiting for things to develop themselves. Drop me a line when you find time. Hope your sister has recovered perfectly this time. Lord bless her.


May the blessing of the Lord be ever & ever on you dear Kristina & may your path in life be ever one of peace & purity is the continuous prayer of

your Ever loving friend[40]
Vivekananda

Actually, the London season was not over, as Swamiji somehow wrote in the above letter; it had only just begun, and in anticipation, Swamiji's friends, Mr. Sturdy and Miss Muller, had not been idle. By the beginning of October, as we have seen from Swamiji's letter of the fourth or fifth to Mrs. Bull, three lectures had been scheduled for later in the month-one in Maidenhead and two in London. The first of these three was Miss Muller's "Reading" lecture that Swamiji had mentioned to Mrs. Bull in his letter of September 24.


This Maidenhead lecture took place on Thursday evening, October 17, at the Town Hall, a building of neoclassic style, constructed in the first half of the century and looking very grand in its English-village setting. As far as Swamiji's work in England was concerned, the lecture was a sort of preliminary talk and does not seem to have been too well managed in regard to publicity, timing, and so on. An eye-catching announcement, however, appeared in the weekly Maidenhead Advertiser on October 9, 1895:

A Lecture
Will be delivered
ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17th, 
At 8 p.m., in the
TOWN HALL, MAIDENHEAD, 
BY
THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA,
An Indian Yogi,
Subject-"Eastern Doctrine of Love."
The chair will be taken by E. Gardner, Esq.,
J.P., C.C.,
Supported by Mrs. Eva McLaren,J. D. M. Pearce, 
Esq., J. P., and Miss F. H. Muller, M.A.
Tickets, price zs. 6d and Is., may be obtained at 
the door.

(In regard to the "supporters" listed above, Mrs. Eva McLaren was Miss Muller's sister. Her husband, Walter Stowe Bright McLaren [or M'Laren], was a nephew of the famous radical political figure, John Bright, and brother of the first Lord Aberconway. The two brothers and their father were for many years Members of Parliament and regularly stood on the side of liberal causes, including that of women's rights. The well-to-do Walter M'Larens lived much of the time in Pinkney's Green in a house called "The Nook." Mr. J. D. M. Pearce, and the Chairman, Mr. E. Gardner, were, clearly, Justices of the Peace, and, it would follow, of high standing in the community; at the present time, however, nothing further is known of them. One finds that Miss Muller, too, had impressive letters after her name. She was entitled to them (at least to "B.A. ")--but only in spirit; for neither Cambridge nor Oxford, nor, for that matter, any other university in Great Britain, granted degrees to women in the nineteenth century. But according to Miss Muller, degrees should have been granted to women; she seems therefore to have simply taken what was hers by right.


For the subject matter of his talk Swamiji chose that aspect of Vedanta which had been occupying his thought recently in his work on the Narada Bhakti Sutras. Although this lecture was brief and delivered to a small audience, it is nonetheless important to us and fortunately did not go entirely unrecorded by the local paper. A report of it, heretofore unknown, appeared in the Maidenhead Advertiser on October 23, 1895, almost a week after its delivery. The use of diacritical marks in Swamiji's name, a certain lucid grasp of the subject, not usual with reporters, even in England, and the insistence that Swami Vivekananda was not associated with the Theosophical Society leads one to suspect that Mr. Sturdy may have had a hand in the preparation of the article. It read:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON LOVE.

On Thursday the Swami Vivekananda delivered a lecture at the Town Hall, Maidenhead, taking as his subject "The Eastern Doctrine of Love." Owing to other attractions in the town the attendance was not large. Many of the public also associated the lecturer with the Theosophical Society, with which, however, he has, we are informed, nothing whatever to do, nor with any other society, neither does he propose forming any society himself. He believes in expounding his views to whoever will listen to them and leaving those individuals to advocate them as a whole, or with whatever modifications they may deem fitting, or to reject them altogether, believing that out of the strife of all opinions truth at length prevails.


The chair was taken at 8 p.m. by Mr. E. Gardner, J.P., C.C., and he very brie8y introduced the lecturer, who was clad in his native costume. The Swami then proceeded to express his view upon devotion to deity, or, as more commonly expressed in the East-love (Bhakti), to the following effect:-Religion may be divided into two forms, the first almost entirely superstitious and the second merely metaphysical, but if either of these is to have any force it must be accompanied by love. Work alone without this element did not satisfy. The land might be covered with hospitals, penetrated by good roads; there might be great social institutions well conducted, and good sanitation, but these were all external physical processes and by themselves brought man no nearer to Divinity. Both the realist and the idealist were necessary and complementary one of the other. The idealist brought the bold aspiration down to earth, the realist caused it to take form through work. Love cannot be defined in positive terms, only negatively. Its nature is of the form of renunciation. In its more general sense it might be divided threefold : ( 1 ) That love which is for one's own pleasure, irrespective of pleasure or pain to others-the purely selfish, the lowest. (2) That love which exchanges--"I will love you if you love me. We will make each other mutually happy"-the partially selfish, the middle path trodden by the great majority of mankind. ('3) That love which gives all and asks for nothing, without premeditation and which never regrets, unconquerable by any evil thing done to him from whom it emanates. It is the highest, the divine. Only with this last kind are we concerned here. The first is the path of the sensualist and the animal, the second the path of struggling humanity on its way to better things, the third the real path of love, trodden by those who renounce the world and set out upon that road which leads to Eternal Peace. In that love there is no fear. Love kills fear. A lion might stand over a babe and threaten its life; the mother knows no fear, she does not fly, but she opposes. At that moment love destroys terror; at other times the same woman would run from a small dog. A fierce Mahomedan warrior went to a garden to pray. In the same garden a girl had appointed to meet her lover. The warrior lay prostrate on his face according to the prescribed form of his religion. At that moment the girl espied her lover, and with joy rushing to meet him, trod upon the prostrate form. He jumped up and laying hand upon his sword would have slain the girl. "How dare you ?" cried he, "vile wench, disturb my worship, my devotion to God, with your base feet." "Worship ! devotion !" cried the girl, "you do not know what they are. You had no devotion, lying there, no spirit of worship. If I, a timid girl, could so forget the presence of an object of dread like you, in my worship and devotion to my earthly lover as to tread upon you and not even know it, how much more should you, if your heart had been absorbed in love and devotion to God, have been ignorant that I touched you?" The warrior was humbled and appeased and went away. Our highest ideal of love is the image which we form for ourselves of deity. A barbarous people have a tyrannical and cruel god. A wise and noble people see God in ever and ever widening potencies. God is always God, but the views which men and nations may take of Him vary. higher view is known than that of love. The man who bears in his heart an unrelaxing love to every creature, whether he recognize that that creature is a manifestation of God, in which he is actually present, or whether he look upon it merely as fashioned by Deity, that man is on the path to Deity, on the great path of devotion and renunciation. He cannot injure the creature of God, however repulsive to his narrower view of what should or should not be. He gives in love, not in pride; in loving Deity he loves its manifestations, works with them and abides by them.


The lecture was impressively delivered, and at the close a vote of thanks was accorded the Chairman (on the proposition of Mr. E. T. Sturdy, of Caversham).


The proceedings occupied only a little over half an hour. 3 The formal meeting between Swami Vivekananda and England-the beginning of what was to be a long and mutually satisfactory friendship-took place on the evening of Tuesday, October 22, in Prince's Hall, London. Fittingly, Swamiji chose for his subject "Self Knowledge," the key, as he said in an interview, to his philosophy.


Announcements for this first of his London lectures began to appear in the London newspapers on October 15, on which date the Westminster Gazette ran the following item;


SWAMI VIVEKANANDA, the Indian Yogi (connected with no Society) will deliver an Oration on Vedanta Philosophy, entitled "SELF-KNOWLEDGE", Prince's Hall, Piccadilly, TUESDAY, October 22, at 8.30. Stalls, 5s.; reserved seats 3s; unreserved 2s, Is. Tickets at Hall and Libraries.


The parenthetical information in the above announcement that Swamiji was "connected with no Society" was, of course, Mr. Sturdy's way of notifying the public that the Indian Yogi was not associated with Theosophists of any shape or color; he was just himself. The same announcement with the same assurance appeared in the Westminster Gazette of October 19 and 22, and also in the Daily Graphic of October 22. In addition, the Daily Graphic, a smaller paper than the Gazette, but, as it said of itself, "the most popular home newspaper in the world," published on October 21 a brief article about Swamiji accompanied by a photograph. (The Daily Graphic also boasted that it was "the only illustrated morning newspaper published in the world.") Its article read:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

An interesting figure has lately arrived in this country in the person of Swami Vivekananda, an Indian Yogi one who formally renounces the world, and gives himself to study and devotion: He left India to express his interpretation of the Vedanta philosophy to Western people at the Parliament of Religions held at Chicago in 1893. Since that event he has been teaching and lecturing in America. He has now reached England, but will, after a short visit, return to America to carry on his self appointed task there during the winter.


He will lecture at Princes' Hall, Piccadilly, tomorrow evening.


The portrait of Swamiji that accompanied the above was taken at the Walery Photographers, then located on Regent Street in London, and is all the proof needed that this now well-known picture, which shows him in profile, wearing a black astrakhan like hat and a clerical collar, was taken in London in 1895 and not, as had long been supposed, in Cairo five years later. We may judge, incidentally, that Swamiji had come into London some time before Sunday, October 19, to sit for his photograph, for on Monday, the twentieth, he wrote from Caversham to Miss MacLeod, who had recently arrived in the city, that he would not be able to come in to see her until the day of the lecture.


Swamiji must have been happy to learn that the newly wed Francis Leggetts-the "Turtle-doves," as he called them, had come to London after their honeymoon on the Continent, bringing "Joe Joe" with them. "This note," he wrote to the latter, "is to welcome the Leggetts to London. This being in a sense my native country, I send you my welcome first; I shall  receive your welcome next Tuesday the 22nd at Princes' Hall half past eight p.m.'[41]


Prince's Hall (just one prince) was a public auditorium in the building belonging to the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, an august Society founded in 1831. The building, constructed between 1881 and 1883, was a twostory, elegantly classical structure on the south side of Piccadilly, a block or so from the Circus. In Swamiji's day, the building faced six Georgian houses (now the red-brick and stone building known as Nuffield House). To the right of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours was St. James's Church, erected in 1689. by the famous architect Christopher Wren, and on its left was the renowned bookstore of Messrs. Hatchard, which has long since been rebuilt. Indeed, except for the now restored St. James's Church and the upper facade of the Royal Institute, this part of Piccadilly would today be almost unrecognizable to Swamiji. The street was then narrower in places than now and certainly more sedate. The nearby Circus was, however, commercial and busy enough, resounding throughout the day with the clop-clop of horses' hooves, the shouts of cabbies, the clatter of iron wheels, the calls of street-vendors, and the harsh cries of the cockney flower girls who clustered around the fountain of Eros and hawked their "luverly vi'lets, pennig-a-bunch."


Removed from the bustle and hurly-burly of the Circus, the Royal Institute stood in Olympian dignity. Under its balustraded roof, the words "Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours" were carved across its facade. Under the letters were enshrined in circular niches, offset by Grecian columns and a stone frieze of garlands and urns, the busts of eight famous watercolorists, sculpted by the then famous Onslow Ford. Two muses, carved by a different hand, lounged languidly back to back over the main doorway. (These muses still grace the building today, but their position has been elevated.) The street-level facade must have been equally imposing, but is now altered, and a huge commercial sign spreads itself under the aloof noses of the artists and their muses. In Swamiji's day, the ground floor, given over now to an airline office, was occupied by six shops, each with its basement and mezzanine, and, behind them, by Prince's Hall, named in honor of Edward, Prince of Wales.


It was not much of an honor. The hall, in daytime, was a gloomy cavern with a platform at one end and an overhanging balcony at the other. Its windows were raised so far above the floor that one could look out only with the aid of a ladder, and then all that met the eye was the bare and unlovely yard of St. James's. Prince's Hall was known as the "dismal cave of the Muses," and was soon to be totally remodeled (indeed, 1895 was the last year of its existence as a hall). But at nighttime, when all the gas lights were lit and attention was focused on the platform, where a speaker or musician brightened the atmosphere with new ideas or pleasant songs, then Prince's Hall was as good an auditorium as most and served its purpose well. From our standpoint, the most important purpose of its thirteen years was served, of course, on the night of October 22, 1895.


A few days before the event a correspondent of the Westminster Gazette visited Swamiji for an interview. The result, in which the essence and purpose of his teachings were stated with clarity and succinctness, has long since been published in volume five of the Complete Works. But we may recall here the heart of the matter:


"I propound a philosophy [Swamiji said during the course of the interview] which can serve as a basis to every possible religious system in the world, and my attitude towards all of them is one of extreme sympathy-my teaching is antagonistic to none. I direct my attention to the individual, to make him strong, to teach him that he himself is divine, and I call upon men to make themselves conscious of this divinity within. That is really the ideal-, conscious or unconscious-of every religion.'[42]


During a large part of this interview, the interviewer so persistently drew from Swamiji the assurance that he taught "no authority proceeding from hidden beings speaking through visible agents" that one is inclined to envision Mr. Sturdy sitting nearby, guiding the flow of questions. For instance,


"Then you are connected with no society or sect in this country? Neither Theosophical nor Christian Scientist, nor any other?"

"None whatever!" said the Swami in clear and impressive tones. (His face lights up like that of a child, it is so simple, straightforward and honest.) "My teaching is my own interpretation of our ancient books, in the light which my Master shed upon them.'[43]


Regrettably, this pre-lecture interview did not appear in the newspapers until after the lecture had been given; nor was there much advance publicity of any kind. As a consequence, few people in the vast and busy metropolis of London knew about Swamiji at all, let alone that he was not a Theosophist, arid the Hall was not full. Nonetheless, the lecture was a great success. One who attended it-an Indian named T. J. Desai (who appears to have been Miss Muller's teacher in some capacity)-wrote a brief memoir of the occasion, His memory was more of Swamiji than of the lecture; yet, in some respects, Swamiji and his lectures were indistinguishable, like lightning and its charge. Mr. Desai wrote:


About this time (1895) I had an invitation from Miss Muller to attend the two public lectures delivered by Swami Vivekananda. I heard the first lecture at St. James' [Prince's] Hall with Mrs. Ingall. That was the first time I saw the commanding figure of the great Swami. He looked more like an Indian Prince than a sadhu [holy man], He had a bhagva patka (ochre coloured turban) on his head. He , electrified the audience by his grand and powerful oratory. The next day the report appeared in  the papers that he was the next Indian after Keshab Chandra Sen, who had surprised the English audience by his magnificent oratory. He spoke on the Vedanta. His large eyes were rolling like anything, and there was such an animation about him that it passeth description. After the meeting was over, the Swami took off his turban and put on a huge and deep Kashmiri cap looking like a big Persian hat.[44]


One can only imagine, for there are no detailed contemporary accounts, that the audience that gathered at 8:30 that evening consisted of men and women from various walks of society, though mainly from the upper classes, as it was primarily the upper classes in England, as well as in America, who were interested in new ideas-religious, philosophical, political, scientific, social. While such ideas directly touched the lives of the working classes-particularly ideas bearing on political and social reform-only the upper and middle classes had the education and leisure to pursue them. And, certainly, only they were interested in nonorthodox religions; for, generally speaking, only the educated classes found orthodox Christianity unsatisfactory and were seeking answers elsewhere. Some people, of course, came simply out of curiosity; others hoping against hope for a Tibetan Mahatma in the flesh; still others prompted by some inner, inarticulate impulse. One can picture a late nineteen -century audience of men in dinner jackets, women in hourglass dresses and evening cloaks, dowdy matrons, dreamy ports, a clergyman or two, and a sprinkling of faces familiar to the speaker--Mr. Sturdy, Miss Muller and her sister, the Leggetts and Miss MacLeod, perhaps some friends from Caversham.


There was as yet no one among Swamiji's English followers who was able to take shorthand notes, or who thought to take them; thus we have no verbatim transcript of this, his first extemporaneous talk to the London public. However, in addition to the interview mentioned above, the Westminster Gazette printed a report of the lecture on the following day. The Standard also published a report on October 2g, which was almost identical to that in the Gazette and which is given here in full:*

AN INDIAN ASCETIC

Since the days of Ramahoun [Ram Mohan] Roy, with the single exception of Keshub Chunder Sen, there has not appeared on an English platform a more interesting Indian figure than the Brahman who lectured in Princes' [sic] Hall last night. Clothed in the long orange-coloured robe of the Buddhist priest, with a monk-like girdle round his waist instead of the usual Indian cummerbund, and wearing the massive turban of Northern India on his had, the Swami Vivekananda discoursed for an hour and a quarter, in the most faultless English, on the cardinal doctrines of the school of religious philosophy to which he is devoting his life. The name by which he makes himself known is a name assumed, on his becoming an apostle of his school, in the style of many philosophers and doctors of antiquity and the Middle Ages. As the Chairman, Mr. E. T. Sturdy, explained, the first of his names is a Sanskrit term, signifying 'the bliss of discrimination’.


The lecture was a most fearless and eloquent exposition of the pantheistic philosophy of the vedanta school, and the Swami seems to have incorporated into his system a good deal also of the moral element of the Yoga school, as the closing passage of his lecture presented in a modified form not the advocacy of mortification, which is the leading feature of the latter school, but the renunciation of all so-called material comforts and blessings, as the only means of entering into perfect union with the supreme and absolute Self. The opening passages of the lecture were a review of the rise of the grosser form of Materialism in the beginning of the present century, and the later  development of the various forms of metaphysical thought, which for a time swept materialism away. From this he passed on to discuss the origin and nature of knowledge. In some respects his views on this point were almost a statement of pure Fichteism, but they were expressed in language, and they embodied illustrations, and made admissions which no German transcendentalist would have used. He admitted there was a gross material world outside, but he confessed he did not know what matter was. He asserted that mind was a finer matter, and that behind was the soul of man, which was immovable, fixed, before which outward objects passed, as it were, in a procession, which was without beginning or end-in other words, which was eternal, and finally which was God. He worked out this pantheistic conception of the personal identity of man and God with great comprehensiveness and an ample wealth of illustration, and in passage after passage of great beauty, solemnity, and earnestness. 'There is only one Soul in the Universe', he said; 'there is no "you" or "me" ; all variety is merged into the absolute unity, the one infinite existence-God.' From this, of course, followed the immortality of the soul, and something like the transmigration of souls towards higher manifestations of perfection. As already stated, his peroration of twenty minutes was a statement of the doctrine of renunciation. In the course of it he made some remorselessly disparaging criticism on the work that factories, engines and other inventions, and books were doing for man, compared with half a dozen words spoken by Buddha or Jesus. The lecture was evidently quite extemporaneous, and was delivered in a pleasing voice, free from any kind of hesitation.


The London Morning Post and the Daily Chronicle also commented upon Swamiji's lecture, printing the following articles, , respectively, on October 23:

NATIVE INDIAN LECTURER AT PRINCES' HALL.

Last night at Princes' [sic] Hall, Piccadilly, Swami Vivekananda, an Indian Yogi, who is at present on a visit to this country, delivered what was described as an "oration" on the subject of "Self Knowledge." A Yogi, it was explained, is one who formally renounces the world and gives himself up to study and devotion. Swami Vivekananda originally left his native land for the purpose of giving his interpretation of the Vedanta philosophy at the Parliament of Religions which was held two years ago at Chicago, and since that time he has been engaged in delivering lectures on the same subject in America. In the course of his address last night he declared that there were indications in these closing days of the 19th century that the pendulum of scientific thought was swinging back, for men all over the world were rummaging in the pages of ancient records, and ancient religious forms were again coming to the fore. To many this seemed to be a case of degeneration, while others regarded it as one of those outbursts of superstition which periodically visited society, but to the scientific student there was in the present state of things a prognostication of grand future benefit. The lecturer then proceeded at considerable length to describe the peculiar system of philosophy which he teaches, and traced the three different stages of the religion which has grown out of it. He spoke with a good deal of fluency, and his remarks were listened to with attention by the somewhat small audience.


THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: Attired in picturesque Oriental costume, this famous preacher last night addressed an audience at Prince's Hall on "Self Knowledge. " He is an Indian Yogi, that is to say, one who has formally renounced the world and gives himself to study and devotion, and not, as he amusingly pointed out last night,  one who did juggling tricks or flew through the air. The Swami Vivekananda originally left his native land to express his interpretation of the Vedanta Philosophy at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago two years ago, and since then has been lecturing in America, where he will return to carry on his self appointed task in a few weeks. It is stated that "his close acquaintance with various lines of Western thought, as well as the books of his own country, his broad teachings and stout maintenance of individual responsibility and self development, combined with a tolerance to all living beings, his avoidance of all mystery-mongering or identification with various societies, have attracted to him a number of inquirers from all classes in America." In his address last night he put forward the essential doctrines which have for so long inspired India, and it is hardly necessary to add there was much to interest students of metaphysics.


As for the Church, its members reacted with restraint; no frenzied outcry against the "heathen" greeted Swamiji's lecture. On the contrary, there was a certain amount of coolheaded and friendly interest, as evidenced by the following short item in a column entitled "Men and Things" in the church Family ,Newspaper of October 25:


Something new cropped up this week in the lecture line at Prince's Hall, when an Indian Asiatic [Ascetic?], named Swami Vivekananda, discoursed upon the evils of this material age and the bliss of a pantheistic philosophy. Ever since Mr. Sinnett published his "Esoteric Buddhism" [a Theosophical work], there has been a growing interest amongst a certain class of minds in the spiritual beliefs of the Asiatic world. Sir Edwin Arnold's celebrated poem, "The Light of Asia," revealed much of the high morality of Buddhism, and if Madame Blavatsky has soiled the robe of Theosophy, there still remains much that is interesting in the whole study of Indian Asceticism. I shall try and hear, at an early opportunity, "The Bliss of Discrimination," for such is the meaning of the assumed name of the new lecturer.


[Who the "I" was of the above is not known.]


Swamiji was satisfied with the interest his first lecture evoked, restrained as it may have been. He sent the article that had appeared in the Standard (as given above) to Alasinga in a letter dated October 24. "So far I have delivered my first address," he wrote, "and you may see how well it has been received by the notice in the Standard. The Standard is one of the most influential conservative papers."45 But public success, fame, the praise of people, most of whom could not know of the profound and sacred source from which Swamiji spoke, the brassy sound of popular acclaim, always jarred upon him. In a heretofore unpublished letter to Isabelle McKindley, also written on October 24., the day after the London newspapers had accepted him, we see at firsthand his reaction to success, as well as his general mood. On the very eve of a new chapter in his Western mission, he was longing to go-to be free. The letter reads in full as follows:

24th October 95
80 Oakley Street
Chelsea, S.W.
London.

We meet and part. This is the law 
and ever ever be
I sadly ask O gentle ones
Do you remember me?

I haven't had any news from Chicago-nor did I write as I did not want to bother you, also-I did not know where to.

Accompanying is a newspaper notice of a lecture I delivered in London. It is not bad. The London audience are very learned and critical and the English nature is far from being effusive. I have some friends here made some more-so I am going on.

My bed is in the foaming deep 
What care I, friend, the dew!

It is a queer life mine-always travelling no rest. Rest will be my death-such is the force of habit. Little success here, little there-and good deal of bumping. Saw Paris a good [deal). Miss Josephine M'cLeod a New York friend showed it all over to me for a month. [?] Even there the kind American girl! Here in England they know us more. Those that do not like the Hindus-they hate them -those that like, they worship them.


It is slow work here but sure. Not frothy not superficial. English women as a rule are not as highly educated as the American women, nor are so beautiful. They are quite submissive wives or hidden away daughters or church going mothers the embodiments of crystalized conventionality. I am going to have some classes at the above address.


Sometimes and generally when I score a success-I feel a despondence-I feel as if everything is vain-as if this life has no meaning-as if it is a waking dream. Love, friendship, religion, virtue, kindness everything a momentary state of mind. I seem to long to go-in spite of myself I say-how far O how far! Yet the body and mind will have to work its karma out. I hope it will not be bad.


How are you all going on? Where is mother church? Is she interviewing the ghosts of the Thotmeses and Rameseses in the Pyramids-or calmly going her round of duties at home?


Yet the life seems to grow deep and at the same time loose its hold on itself


Not disgust nor joy for life-but a sort of-indifference things will take their course who can resist-only stand by and look on. Well I will not talk about myself so much. Egregious egotist! I always was that you know. How about you all? Great fun this life is isn't it? Don't go to the extremes. A calm, restful, settled married life is good for the majority of mankind. Mr. Sturdy the friend with whom I am living now-was in India several times. He mixed with our monks and is very ascetic in his habits but he is married at last and has settled down. And has got a beautiful little baby. Their life is very nice. The wife of course doesn't much care about metaphysics or Sanskrit but her whole life is in her husband, husband's soul is in Sanskrit metaphysics! Yet it is a good combination of theory and practice I think. Write me all about yourselves if you have time and inclination and give mother church my eternal gratitude.My movements are so so uncertain. Yet I will be a month more in London.


With never ending gratitude and love[46]

Vivekananda

3

According to some of Swamiji's early letters, he had intended to return to America in the first part of November. It would appear, however, that he and Mr. Sturdy had a plan: if the Prince's Hall lecture should prove successful, then he would remain in London for another month and there hold a series of classes. The lecture was indeed a success, the response to it justifying the rental of London quarters. Thus, on October 23, Sturdy, wasting no time, sent off the following letter to the Editor of the Standard. It was printed the next day:

AN INDIAN YOGI IN LONDON

To the Editor of the "Standard".

Sir, As Chairman on the occasion of the Swami Vivekananda's recent oration at Princes' Hall, of which you gave so full and lucid a synopsis, may I be permitted to make one short statement, for the convenience and assistance of your readers who may desire to hear more of the Vedanta Philosophy from this learned Oriental?


I merely desire it to be known that the Swami may be communicated with, either by letter or personally, by anybody whomsoever, at 80 Oakley Street, S.W., and that, his work being wholly in the interest of Truth and for Love, no fees, costs, or collections of any kind whatever fall upon those who attend his classes or meet him privately.


No Society is being formed, nor is such meditated, nor does any inquirer commit himself to any doctrine whatsoever.

I am, Sir,
Your obedient Servant, 
E. T. Sturdy.

Swamiji moved into his new quarters on Tuesday, October 29, as we learn from a heretofore unpublished sentence in his letter of October 24. to Alasinga: "I am going to be in London for a month from next Tuesday [October 29] at 80 Oakley Street, Chelsea, London, S.W.'[47]The building at 80 Oakley Street, which was later numbered 61 and which today no longer exists at all, was one of a block of identical four-story yellow-brick houses, each with a stoop three or four steps above the sidewalk, a front door flanked by wooden columns, and, above the doorway, a balustraded balcony, running the full two-window width of the house. In short, it was a tall and narrow dwelling, sharing its side walls with identical neighbors. Although in Swamiji's day Oakley Street was more of a thoroughfare (with wooden paving in sorry disrepair) than a residential drive, the neighborhood was not unfashionable. No. 80, which was very likely a lodging house, was only a block from the aristocratic Cheyne Walk, the Chelsea Embankment, and the Thames beyond. Inside, the house seems to have suited Swamiji very well. "I shall begin at my lodgings from Saturday night next [November 2]," he wrote to Miss MacLeod on October 31. "I expect to have a pretty good-sized room or two for my classes.'[48]


Meanwhile, as we learn from this same letter, Swamiji had been holding classes at a Mr. Chamier's. At present, we can only guess that these classes, which could not have lasted for more than a week, had been arranged by Miss MacLeod. "Come over and try to form a class,'[49]Swamiji had written to her before her arrival in London. And possibly she had arranged the Chamier classes for the last week in October. But this is speculation. We do not really know exactly who Mr. Chamier was, where he lived, how Swamiji met him, what the subject of the classes was, how often they were held, and by whom they were attended. We know only that two American ladies living in London-a mother and daughter named Mrs. and Miss Netter-came to the last class, held on the evening of October 30, and were, as Swamiji wrote to Miss MacLeod, "very sympathetic." We do not hear again of Mr. Chamier until 1899, when Swamiji, quarantined on the deck of his ship in the Madras harbor, spied him in one of the dozens of small boats full of men, women, and children who had come out to see him. In all those crowds, he was to write, "I found also Mr. Chamier, my English friend who had come out to Madras as a barrister-at-law.'[50]


No sooner had Swamiji settled into his quarters at Oakley Street than visitors began to come. On Thursday afternoon, October 31, Miss Muller called, perhaps to see for herself that all was well. That same afternoon, close upon her heels, came two strangers-a Mr. Silverlock and a friend whose name Swamiji did not relay and which is, perhaps, forever lost to us. These two young gentlemen, one of whom was an engineer and the other in the grain trade, were, as Swamiji wrote to Mr. Sturdy, "very fine, intelligent, and educated men"-and withal, interested in religion. He was filled with joy to find representatives of the class of Englishmen he wished to reach.


But in addition to this, the visit of Mr. Silverlock and his friend was memorable-indeed historic-because of a question they asked, a question which to this day remains unanswered. Swamiji had wanted to find the answer at once. The moment the young men left he sat down, full of enthusiasm, and dashed off a now well-known letter to Sturdy.


"Both of them want to know," he wrote, "the rituals of my creed! This opened my eyes. The world in general must have some form. In fact, in the ordinary sense religion is philosophy concretised through rituals and symbols." The ideal poured through his pen with the urgency of his conviction behind it, brooking no delay. "It is absolutely necessary to form some ritual and have a Church. That is to say, we must fix on some ritual as fast as we can. If you can come Saturday morning or sooner, we shall go to the Asiatic Society library or you can procure for me a book which is there, called Hemadri Kosha, from which we can get what we want, and kindly bring the Upanishads.'[51] It was not the traditional Hindu rituals that Swamiji had in mind. Months earlier an interviewer in America had asked him : "Do you intend to introduce the practices and rituals of the Hindu religion into this country?" And he had replied: "I am preaching simply philosophy.'[52] He envisioned now a ritual that would symbolize to the Western consciousness the sublimity and strength of that philosophy. "We will fix something grand, from birth to death of man," he wrote. "A mere loose system of philosophy gets no hold on mankind. If we can get it through before we have finished the classes, and publish it by publicly holding a service or two under it, it will go on. They want to form a congregation, and they want ritual.'[53]


But Mr. Sturdy, cautious, conservative, and perhaps fearful lest the atheists on the one hand and the orthodox Christians on the other should become alarmed at anything like a new church, promptly threw cold water on Swamiji's enthusiasm. Sturdy's written reply is not available, but we have Swamiji's brief answer to it, dated November 2. As published, his letter was addressed to "Dear Friend." "I think you are right," he wrote; "we shall work on our own lines and let things grow.'[54] It is interesting to note that one never again hears of Swamiji's wanting to "form some ritual" in the Western world.*


Another sentence in Swamiji's brief note of November 2 read: "I shall come on Sunday if nothing extraordinary prevents me." It is possible, then, that Swamiji went or the day to Caversham; if so, he would have found there Miss MacLeod, who was spending the weekend with the Sturdys (the Leggetts had by now returned to America). This was the first meeting of Swamiji's American and English disciples, and it was, we know, successful. Miss MacLeod and Mr. Sturdy were to correspond off and on for many years to come, their love for Swamiji, expressed so very differently in each case, forming the bond between them. But however that may be, and whether or not Swamiji spent Sunday, November 3, in Caversham, the center of his life and work was now London, and it was there that the "next wave" rolled in to carry his mission forward.


As far as can be judged from his letters, Swamiji lived in his lodgings at 80 Oakley Street alone. Yet no doubt Miss Muller saw to his needs, and he was helped as well by a young Indian friend by the name of K. Menon, of whom he wrote to Alasinga on October 24, "I met K. Menon several times in London.'[55] And, again, on November 18, "K. Menon is as faithful as ever. He comes very often and helps me a good deal.'[56]But for the most part Swamiji, working day and night, seems to have had no personal help, and he accepted very little financial aid. "In England," he was to write to Mrs. Bull after returning to New York, "I . . . refused even the voluntary collection they made. Mr. Sturdy being a rich man bore the major part of the expenses [such] as lecturing in big halls the rest I bore. It worked very well.'[57]


One catches a glimpse of Swamiji this first season in London through the eyes of the Reverend H. R. Haweis.


This remarkable person [Haweis wrote] appeared in England in the autumn of 1895, and although he led a very retired life, attracted numbers of people to his lodgings, and created everywhere a very deep impression. He seemed completely indifferent to money, and lived only for thought. He took quite simply anything that was given to him, and when nothing came he went without, yet he never seemed to lack anything; he lived by faith from day to day, and taught Yogi science to all who would listen, without money and without price. His bright orange flowing robe and white turban recalled forcibly the princely Magians who visited the birthplace of the Divine Babe.'[58].


Throughout most of November Swamiji held eight classes a week at 8o Oakley Street. Although no schedule has been found to date, we know that there were two classes a day-the morning class, as Swamiji was to tell his American friend Professor John Henry Wright, was "for the high Caste people Lady This and Lady That Honorable This and Honorable That"; whereas the evening class was "for the low Caste people, who came pell-mell.'[59] The aristocratic people of the morning class seem also to have come pell-mell, for as Swamiji was to write later on to Mary Hale, "I had eight classes a week apart from public lectures, and they were so crowded that a good many people, even ladies of high rank, sat on the floor and did not think anything of it.'[60]"I tell them," he wrote to Alasinga, "to imagine that they are under the sky of India, under a spreading banyan, and they like the idea.'[61]And who but Swamiji could evoke banyan trees and the skies of India in a cold and gray London November? Notes of only two of the probable twenty-five classes that he held during that month have come down to us, but those notes (taken by Miss Margaret Noble) are filled with the beauty and power of his thought, and I shall quote from them later on.


In addition to holding classes, Swamiji gave several talks elsewhere in the city. His primary concern, as he had written in his letter of October 31 to  Sturdy, was to reach the philosophically religious people of London. To have discovered through the two young men, Mr. Silverlock and his friend, who had come of their own accord to visit him, that such a class existed had delighted him. "We must hurry the book through," he had written, presumably referring to the Narada Sutra. '"We will touch a class thereby who are philosophically religious without the least mystery-mongering.'[62]But it was not the book that opened the way; it was Swamiji's lectures themselves. Indeed, his first lecture at Prince's Hall had been the open sesame to the very heart of philosophically religious London. Almost immediately the invitations came. On October 24. he wrote to Alasinga in a heretofore unpublished passage: "I am going to lecture in [Mrs. Haweis's] parlour.'[63](This important "At Home" was to take place on Saturday, November 16.) Another equally important invitation came to him on or before October 31, on which date he wrote to Miss    MacLeod,    "I have been . . . invited to Moncure Conway's Ethical Society, where I speak on the roth.'[64]What Swamiji     was referring to was the South Place Chapel in Finsbury, London, which has been called by one historian "the most pleasantly invigorating stopping place in metropolitan Infidelity for nearly two decades.'[65]South Place Chapel was indeed the mecca of heretical London-the gathering place for the philosophically religious and the philosophically irreligious as well. Another invitation came from a less likely source and had perhaps been issued at an earlier date; it may, in fact, have been the second of the two London lectures to which Swamiji had referred in his letter of October 4 to Mrs. Bull.* In any event, the lecture, open to the public, was to be delivered at the Balloon Society on Tuesday, November 5. Still another invitation came from Lady Isabelle Margesson, who having heard the "Indian Yogi" at Prince's Hall, asked to speak at her home in St. George's Road, London, to a selected group of intellectual, religiously skeptical people mostly women. Swamiji accepted all these invitations and accepted also one from Miss MacLeod for lunch with Stanton Coit. Let us take up these significant meetings and events in their chronological order.


There was first the lunch with Stanton Coit. This took place on Friday, November I, at the Albermarle Hotel, which then stood on Piccadilly across from the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. Stanton Moses Coit was thirty-eight when Swamiji met him and was well known in London, where he had been living for nine years or so. An American born in Columbus, Ohio, he had early in life absorbed the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, had taught English literature at Amherst College in Massachusetts, studied political science at Columbia University and philosophy in Germany, and was a dedicated disciple of Felix Adler, the founder in 1876 of the American Ethical Culture Movement in New York.* It was his commitment to the ideals of Adler that determined the direction of his life. In 1886 Coit had moved to London, where he stayed for a time at Toynbee Hall, then a newly founded University Settlement in East End London, whose humanitarian work deeply impressed him. While there, he inspired the founding of the first British Ethical Society, many of the original members of which had been associated with the same group of men who around this time had formed the socialist Fabian Society. As set forth in its Prospectus, the aim of the young and small Ethical Society was to make an "intelligent study of the basis of morality, with a view to elevate and purify social life." (It is interesting to note that in the small, heterogeneous, and interrelated world of London's Freethinkers the early Ethical Society had some of its printing done by the Women's Printing Society, which Miss Muller had helped to start many years earlier.)


The following year (1887) Coit was invited, on the recommendation of Moncure Conway, to become minister at South • Place Chapel, a post from which Conway had retired two years earlier after a highly successful ministry of more than twenty years. On taking over, Coit immediately changed the name of the organization to the South Place Ethical Society and affiliated it with Felix Adler's American Ethical Union. Further, to the dismay of the old guard, Coit erased much of Conway's mystical coloring from the services. He did, however, introduce a wide variety of lecturers. It was during his ministry that two extensive series of Sunday lectures entitled "Centres of Spiritual Activity" and "Phases of Religious Development" were delivered at South Place. The lectures, first published in December of 1889 in a collection entitled Religious Systems of the World, constituted a sort of preliminary world parliament of religions all phases of Christianity, all kinds of religious philosophy, all the great nonChristian religions were represented. Even Theosophy had been expounded by Annie Besant, who had given, as was her wont, an excellent explanation of the philosophical aspects of the "Secret Doctrine." The "parliament" was at the time a bold venture, and, as it turned out, the collection of lectures was exceedingly popular and ran into many editions.


Although Stanton Coit was a broad-minded, eloquent, and stimulating preacher around whose leadership a liberal society could flourish, Moncure Conway's long-standing congregation had developed a distinctive and mellow personality of its own, quite different from that of the young Coit. There was friendship, but not love, between the two; thus after five years Coit resigned. He went on to become an increasingly prominent leader of the Ethical Movement in London; he helped to found the East London Ethical Society at Mile End, as well as the South London Ethical Society, and was an organizing lecturer for the West London Ethical Society, drawing in this capacity large audiences at Prince's Hall. The work of these societies and their branches lay not merely in study, discussion, and lectures; it was primarily practical and consisted mainly in conducting kindergartens and Boys' and Girls' Guilds, or educational clubs, in an attempt to raise the moral and intellectual level of the poor and, thereby, of the whole social fabric.


In 1895 Coit was not yet even in mid-career; but he was well on his way, his road clearly charted. He was among the last of those late nineteenth-century "materialists" whom Moncure Conway had earlier defended against the attacks of Christian prelates. These "materialists," Conway had pointed out, were men of self sacrifice, "giving up life and fortune in the pursuit of an ideal society . . . men of plain living and high thinking, almost ascetic in their self denial, and ever dreaming of high education, of cooperation, and other schemes for the moral, intellectual, or social advancement of mankind."66 Not only was Coit such a man himself, but he moved among such men-all of whom agreed that the world must (and would) become a better place, almost none of whom agreed on how to make it so.


The conversation over lunch at the Albermarie between Swamiji and Mr. Coit must have been lively with exchanged ideas, Miss MacLeod joining in. We do not know if the two men met again, but to judge from many instances of Swamiji's meeting with intelligent and good-hearted men, Stanton Coit would have been much taken with him and would surely have introduced him to other thinkers, some of whom perhaps later attended his classes at Oakley Street and many of whom were no doubt in the audience at his lecture at South Place Chapel on November 10. (Stanton Coit was himself not present, for that morning he was giving his own lecture at the West London Ethical Society.)


Before November 10, however, Swamiji spoke at the Balloon Society, which name, understandably enough, has been transcribed in his published letters as "Balboa Society" and, again, as "Balleren Society." Improbable though this engagement was, it was not quite as odd as one might at first suppose. The Balloon Society, which had been formed fifteen years earlier, was not made up of balloonists, professional or otherwise (most of whom in those days were barnstorming showmen), but was, rather, an illustrious society composed of members of other specialist Societies, such as the Aeronautical, the Geographical, the Astronomical, the Chemical, and the Meteorological. The common bond of the members was an interest in aeronautics; their common purpose to record and utilize scientific observations made when in the air. Granted that the individual members were men of learning and cultivation, one still cannot but wonder how Swamiji happened to speak before them in their particular aeronautical grouping. Our only clue at present to who might have arranged the lecture lies in the not surprising fact that a number of military men were members. Since, as we have seen earlier, Swamiji had met several retired generals from India, who had been "civil and polite" to him may we not put two and two together and arrive at the Balloon Society lecture? In any event, Swamiji spoke at the weekly meeting of the Society on the evening of Tuesday, November 5.


"The Lord will help,'[67] he had written to Miss MacLeod in apparent reference to this engagement. And it would appear that the Lord did indeed help, providing Swamiji with fuel at the end of the lecture for a blaze that few who witnessed it would soon forget


According to Swamiji himself, his subject was "Indian Philosophy and Western Society," but according to the Indian Mirror, which reported briefly on the lecture in its issue of December I, 1895, the title was "Man and Society in the Light of Vedanta." This article, which gives an idea of the gist of the lecture, read as follows :

News and Notes

At the weekly meeting of the Balloon Society, an address on "Man and Society in the Light of Vedanta" was given by Swami Vivekananda. The Swami who wore the red robe of his sect, spoke with great fluency and in perfect English for more than an hour without the help of a single note. He said that religion was the most wonderful factor in the social organism. If knowledge was the highest gain that science could give, what could be greater than the knowledge of God, or the soul, of man's own nature which was given by the study of religion a It was not only impossible that there should be one religion for the whole world, but it would be dangerous. If the whole of religious thought was at the same level, it would be the death of religious thought; variety was its life. There were four types of religion-(1) the worker, (2) the emotional, (3) the mystical, and (4.) the philosophical. Each man unfortunately became so wedded to his own type that he had no eye to see what existed in the world. He struggled to make others of the same type. That religion would be perfect which gave scope to all the different characters. The Vedantic religion took in all, and each could choose in what his nature required. A discussion followed.


The discussion that followed turned out to be the most memorable part of the evening-to the mind, at least, of Mr. T. J. Desai. Mr. Desai, who had earlier attended the Prince's Hall lecture and was now in the audience at the Balloon Society, tells of the sudden burst of flame with which Swamiji reproved and informed an ill-advised heckler:


The next time I heard him was at the Balloon Society (Mr. Desai wrote). He spoke there for some time but not with his former fire. A clergyman got up after the lecture and attacked the Swami, and said that it would have been better if the Swami had taken the trouble of writing out his lecture at home and of reading it there, etc. The Swami got up to reply, and he was now on his mettle. He made such a fiery speech that the clergyman was nowhere. He said that some people had crude notions that the Vedanta could be learnt in a few days! The Swami further said that he had to devote about twelve long years of his life to the study of the Vedanta. He ' replied to the objections of the clergyman categorically  one by one, recited the sonorous Vedic hymn beginning with "Suparnam" [Taittiriya Aranyaka, 3. I I. I] and ended with a triumphant peroration that still rings in my ears.[68]


Swamiji's next lecture engagement was on the following Sunday morning, November 10, at the South Place Chapel the church which had "the largest congregation in London" because, as Moncure Conway pointed out, "every thinking man ought to account for at least a dozen who attend churches or chapels as a mere custom or fashion.'[69]And whatever else the members of the South Place congregation may have been, they were all thinking men and women. They were, moreover, free-thinking men and women-children of the Enlightenment who were guided in their search for the true and the good by their reason rather than by the authority of a doctrine or a book; and their reason led them up and down a variety of paths to an even greater variety of conclusions. The group or society had been formed in 1793 as a reaction to the harsh and rigid doctrines of Calvinism, and in 1802 it had become Unitarian. But it was not until 1816, when William Johnstone Fox took charge, that the pulpit at South Place became famous. For forty years thereafter, Fox led his large and willing congregation further and further to the left on the wide Unitarian scale of belief. It was during those years also that South Place took on the intellectual and artistic flavor that was to characterize it for the remainder of the century.


The actual Chapel in which Swamiji was to lecture was constructed in 1822 and dedicated in February of the following year. It was a simple but impressive building, its facade designed in the classic revival style then in vogue, with a shallow gable roof, the pediment of which was austerely plain, and four Ionic columns fronting its portico. The auditorium, together with its galleries, seated about a thousand, and the acoustics, as Moncure Conway was later to pronounce, were excellent. The Chapel stood in the East End of London near Finsbury Circle in what was then a good neighborhood. Fox had drawn the "carriage trade," as did Moncure Conway after him, despite the fact that in the latter part of the century the district was to know its years of deterioration and decay.


In 1847 the stimulating and much loved William Fox left South Place for Parliament, and for several years thereafter the Chapel, led by a series of more or less mediocre ministers, was becalmed. Not until South Place and Moncure Conway discovered one another in 1864. did this Freethought vessel once again sail out into a boundless and uncharted sea. With Conway at the helm, the congregation was not only safe, it rode the crest of the wave.


An American, born in Virginia in 1832, Conway was a prototype of many a nineteenth-century minister, progressing (or many would have said degenerating) from hellfire-and brimstone Protestant orthodoxy to a rich and broad agnosticism with, in Conway's case, a touch of mysticism thrown in. After receiving an M.A. from a college in Pennsylvania at the age of seventeen, he had started out, in keeping with his background, as a Methodist circuit rider-an itinerant preacher, spreading the fear of God among the isolated and ill-educated country folk of the old South. Before long, the young preacher happened upon a settlement of Quakers in Maryland and was so deeply impressed with their dignified, virtuous, happy, yet withal unorthodox lives that "dogma paled [and] creedless freedom began to flush with warm life.'[70]He was charmed away, as he said, "from the dogmatic habit." Conway, however, did not remain with the small Qnaker community. He went on to spend two years at the Harvard Theological School, to become a Unitarian, to meet Ralph Waldo Emerson, and, through him, to enter the roofless thought-world of the Bhagavad Gita and other books of Eastern wisdom. As a Christian minister he was, one might say, done for.


No longer could he accept, let alone preach, the tenets of the established Christian Church. Even Unitarianism in its more staid aspects was too orthodox for the new wideness and liberality of his mind. Furthermore, he became an Abolitionist, advocating the immediate emancipation of all slaves, an extremely unpopular stand in his home territory. Indeed, except for an air of Southern "aristocracy" that clung about him, he was in a class now with the robust and liberal New England Transcendentalists of the first half of the nineteenth century, many of whom he came to know. In the 1860s Conway went to England with an impractical scheme of his own to end the Civil War in the United States. Nothing came of this except embarrassment; but in London he discovered, and was discovered by, the South Place Chapel. The meeting, as one historian has observed, was "one of those rare encounters between man and institution which seem predestined.'[71]Indeed, the South Place congregation had been led to almost precisely the same pitch of heresy to which Moncure Conway was then tuned. He stayed on.


From 1885 to 1885, and then again from 1892 to 1897, South Place and Conway thrived in a close, affectionate, and almost symbiotic relationship. This rationalistic, mystical, warmhearted, and deeply loved minister conducted Sunday services of his own devising, which included reading from the Hindu scriptures and other texts of the world's spiritual literature combined with a sort of meditation in which the whole congregation joined. Crowds came to the Chapel, drawn mainly, if not entirely, from London's many intellectual and freethinking groups, which, in turn, were drawn from the upper and middle classes. Conway moved with ease among artists, scholars, scientists, and liberals of all kinds. He opened his pulpit to every brand of religious dissension, and many a prominent heretic spoke from it. So also did exponents of altogether non-Christian faiths, including Keshab Chandra Sen and Pratap Mazumdar of the Brahmo Samaj, both of whom had had their first London hearings at South Place. (Of the latter, Conway had astutely observed that he was "in spirit not really a Hindu at all, but a preacher of average English Unitarianism.")[72]One of Conway's best-known accomplishments, and one that attested clearly to his universality, was his Sacred Anthology, published in England in 1873 and in America the following year. It was a bold venture for the times, a sort of world-bible of nearly five hundred pages, containing passages from the sacred texts of East and West alike, setting them on an equal level of spiritual grandeur and value.* Just as Conway was universal in his intellectual knowledge and understanding, so was he universal in his friendships. He knew everyone and sympathized with all but the bigot and the humbug; it has been said that "there was probably no one who was on more friendly terms with so many eminent persons on both sides of the Atlantic" than was Moncure Conway.[73]


In view of his wide interests, his lifelong study of Eastern philosophy, and what must have been his gleeful knowledge of the orthodox Christian discomfiture at the Parliament of Religions, he almost certainly had heard of Swami Vivekananda and very probably had attended his lecture at Prince s Hall. In any event, we can assume that Conway himself invited Swamiji to speak at the South Place Chapel on Sunday morning, November 1 o. And a better London pulpit (or "desk" as Conway liked to call it) Swamiji could not have been offered. In point of intelligence, the congregation was, to be sure, "the largest in London," and freedom of thought was bred in its bones. For the subject of his lecture before the South Place Ethical Society, which name the Chapel had retained, he chose "The Basis of Vedanta Morality."


It is a misfortune that the only report we have at present comes from the Christian Commonwealth, a Nonconformist journal, whose editor viewed the entire proceedings with a somewhat squinty eye. The article appeared as follows on November 14 under the general heading "Pulpit and Pew, Platform and Press" :

The Christian Commonwealth
South Place Chapel Lecture

“THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA" enlightened the congregation at South-place Chapel last Sunday morning on "The Basis of Vedanta Morality." Attired in a terra-cotta coloured cassock-like garment-which, a lady observer was quick to point out, admirably suited his swarthy complexion-his face cleanshaven, his rotund head covered with an amplitude of black hair, his eyes large and lustrous-the clever exponent of Hinduism has a picturesque and prepossessing appearance. Observing his calm and easy bearing, his perfect command of English, his unbounded confidence in the finality of his statements, one can understand the stir he made at the Parliament of Religions. His manner and tone seem to imply: "You have heard many doctrines and theories propounded: now listen to me; I have probed to the root of things, I can speak the final word: here it is."


THE SWAMI explained that in the system of morality which he was expounding actions were not inspired by any hope of reward, here or hereafter, nor by any fear of punishment in this world or in the beyond: "We must work simply from the impetus within, work for work's sake, duty for duty's sake." This idea of morality is claimed to be superior to the religion of Jesus, and so has beguiled some so-called Christians into Buddhism or other Eastern philosophies. But the essence of true Christianity is that, if your actions are inspired by the heavenly kingdom within you, Paradise will be the result, whereas, if you act in harmony with the devil's kingdom without you will land in Perdition. The genuine Christian does not, as the Swami seemed to suggest, act for the purpose of evading punishments, but at the same time he sees the ultimate consequences of all actions.


AT South-place Chapel the semblance of Christian worship is preserved, except that public prayer is omitted: why, it is not easy to understand. It is curious to hear selections from Wordsworth, Browning, Tennyson, Lowell, George Eliot, and others sung to tunes usually associated with Evangelical hymns. The hymn-singing, however, is left almost entirely to the professional quartette, who also render two anthems at each service. The first and second lessons were read by Vivekananda. They were selections from the Vedas and formed the text of his address.


According to the letter Swamiji had written to Mr. Sturdy on October 31, the selections he read were from the Bhagavad Gita and the Jatakas. "The Ethical Society," he had written, "has sent me another letter thanking me for the acceptance of this offer. Also a copy of their forms. They want me to bring with me a book from which to read for ten minutes. Will you bring the Gita (translation) and the Buddhist Jataka (translation) with you?'[74] Since the Society evidently had not thought to ask Swamiji to prepare an abstract of his coming talk, and since he of course did not, the following is all we learn from "The South Place Magazine" in regard to his lecture:


On Sunday, November 10, the Swami Vivekananda, an Indian yogi, lectured at South Place on "The Basis of Vedanta Morality", an abstract of which we regret we are unable to give.


That information did not leave the congregation at South Place as unsatisfied as it leaves us. They had heard Swamiji himself, absorbed his ideas, been inspired by his power of lifting an audience to a sense of spiritual awareness. How many friends he made that morning, how many of them later attended his classes, how many became his disciples, we cannot know. But at least some-perhaps the half dozen earnest people he wanted-must have followed him; for while the congregation was comprised largely of confirmed agnostics and secularists, it contained also seekers of the spiritual truth he had so abundantly to give. This was indeed the kind of beginning he had hoped for.


There was more to come On the afternoon of that same Sunday he had an engagement to speak to a small group in a house at 63 St. George's Road. In at least one respect this proved to be one of the most rewarding engagements of his early London work. But of this, more later. Let us go first to a house in Chelsea, only two blocks from his own lodgings: the residence of the Reverend Hugh Reginald Haweis, the eminent, though unorthodox, Anglican clergyman, music critic, and author.

4

As we have seen above, it was as early as October 24, two days following the Prince's Hall lecture, that Swamiji mentioned in his letter to Alasinga that he was going to lecture in Mrs. Haweis's parlor. It seems clear from this letter, in which Swamiji mentions some previous correspondence with Mrs. Haweis, that she had not waited to hear his lecture before inviting him to speak at her first "At Home" of this 1895-96 season. She did not have to: she had heard him two years earlier at the Parliament of Religions, which she had attended with her famous husband. In his book Travel and Talk, published in 1896, the Reverend Mr. Haweis gives an account of the Parliarnent and makes particular mention of "the popular Hindu monk," even quoting a few passages from one of his more forthright unscheduled talks. The full text of Mr. Haweis's account has been reproduced by Swami Yogeshananda (then Brahmachari Buddha Chaitanya) in Vedanta for East and West, but I shall quote here a sentence or two from it: 


Vivekananda, the popular Hindu monk, whose physiognomy bore the most striking resemblance to the classic face of the Buddha, denounced our commercial prosperity, our bloody wars, and our religious inconsistency, declaring that at such a price the "mild Hindu" would have none of our vaunted civilization.... I consider that Vivekananda's personality was one of the most impressive, and his speech one of the most eloquent speeches which dignified the great congress.[75]


The Reverend H. R. Haweis had not been an official Anglican delegate to the Parliament, the Archbishop of Canterbury having indignantly refused to recognize that conclave-"The Christian religion," he had written in his letter to the organizers of the gathering, "is the one religion. I do not understand how that religion can be regarded as a member of a Parliament of Religions, without assuming the equality of the other intended members and the parity of their position and claims.'[76]This official stand did not, however, prevent a number of Anglican clergymen from independently applauding the idea behind the Parliament and of lending their names to the Advisory Council. Among these was the Reverend Mr. Haweis, who also accepted an invitation to be a speaker on his own and, accordingly, spoke at one of the plenary sessions in Columbus Hall on "Music, Emotion and Morals."


On whatever subject this eloquent, charismatic, and often outrageously unorthodox clergyman spoke, he enthralled his listeners, who crowded to hear him. Born in 1838, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a Master of Arts degree. After filling several pulpit appointments, he was offered in 1866 the curacy at the Crown Chapel of St. James's in Marylebone, London. St. James's (first known as Titchfield Chapel, and not to be confused with St. James's Church in Piccadilly) was a proprietary chapel, built in 1774 and owned by the Duke of Portland, who supplied its living and had the right to appoint its clergy and rent out its pews. In 1817, the duke sold his chapel rights to the king, at which time the building became the Crown Chapel of St. James's. The services held in proprietary chapels were bona fide offices of the Church, but the chapels had no parishes; nor could christenings, weddings, or funerals take place in them without special permission. This somewhat second-rate curacy did not in the least cramp the Reverend Mr. Haweis's style. On the contrary, he made St. James's, which was rebuilt and enlarged in 1867, one of the most fashionable and well-attended churches in London. Towards the end of 1871, his proud and adoring wife was to write in her journal: "The Church evening congregation is growing nearly as large as the morning. We have now, in the dead season, ~6-odd every Sunday from strangers. Boff is valued and sought after by all clever and intelligent men-Roman Catholics, Dissenters, almost all creeds meet and settle down in our Church and consult and trust Rennie,'[77]("Boff" and "Rennie" were, of course, both fond references to the Reverend Mr. Haweis.)


Indeed so popular was he that in 18'72, despite his unorthodox views, he was invited to be a regular Evening Preacher at j Westminster Abbey, where he held the congregation spell bound. Nor was it only the upper classes who came to hear him. In the 1870s Haweis inaugurated "Sunday Evenings for the People," on which occasions the poor and the lonely of Marylebone flocked to St. James's, and were enthralled not only by talks from the smiling Reverend but by many a ] cheering tune from his violin, which he played uncommonly well.


And all these people-High Churchmen, Low Churchmen, Broad Churchmen, . Nonconformists, Catholics, Dissenters, Atheists, Secularists-all came to hear the diminutive curate (he was barely five feet tall) not only because his oratory was brushed with magic, but because of what he said. He marched quite fearlessly to the beat of the times, even catching now and then the rhythms of the future. Nor, although he tended toward poetic flights, did he obscure matters with long-winded bombast. For the most part, he spoke in simple everyday language, to which people actually listened. Further, aside from giving sermons, he wrote an endless number of articles, more than a dozen books, and frequently went on far-flung lecture tours-all of which outpouring lent its vitality to the ideas seething at the end of the nineteenth century.


Mr. Haweis was often identified with the "Broad" faction of the Church of England-the liberal, rationalist faction, as distinguished, on the one hand, from the "High" Anglican, which followed the way of the Roman Catholic Church in everything except a recognition of Papal authority, and, on the other hand, from the older "Low" Anglican, which stemmed from the Evangelical movement of the eighteenth century and laid much less stress upon theological scholarship than did the "Anglo-Catholics." Haweis himself, like many other clergymen of the Anglican Church, disclaimed all labels. The fact is, however, that he recognized still another party, to which he gave the name "Mystic Broad," as opposed to "Rational Broad." Such a party did indeed exist, though in a shadowy, tenuous way. Now and then bubbles of romantic mysticism surfaced in the religious thought of the late nineteenth century, only to be pricked more often than not by the clergy-High, Low, and Broad alike. But while it lasted, this shimmering and uncertain mysticism was in part responsible for the crowds that poured into such chapels as those of Moncure Conway and Hugh Reginald Haweis. It drew them as the glint of water draws the parched traveler to an oasis. Was it only a mirage? Even, or perhaps primarily, the liberal clergy thought so. But not Haweis. Although he tended to mix romanticism, psychic phenomena, spiritualism, and mysticism into a frothy brew, he tried nonetheless to give respectability to the "wellsprings" of religious experience.


In view of Mr. Haweis's recognition of the need to retain the "mystical" element in religion, it is not surprising that he was deeply impressed by Swamiji from the moment he first heard him at the Parliament of Religions. As we have seen, however, it was his wife, Mary Eliza Haweis, who invited the "Indian Yogi" to be the speaker-of honor at Queen's House on the afternoon of November 16; in late October, when the invitation was issued, the Reverend was still on a world-tour, from which he returned only just in time to be host. at the party. Born in London in 1838, Mary Eliza Haweis was the elder daughter of the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Musgrove Joy and had inherited his gift for painting. After her marriage in 1867 to the young curate of St. James's, she set about seriously developing her talents, not only to eke out a parson's income, but simply because her gifts and intellect cried for expression. She began to publish articles, poems, and drawings, to illustrate books, to design book covers and bindings, to sketch women's dress, and to infuse into both women's fashions and the decor of Victorian houses her own impeccable good taste. With the start of women's education in the 1870s and the consequent creation of a new reading public-the very public for which Mrs. Haweis wrote and drew-she soon found herself to be one of the few English women in the latter part of the nineteenth century who had careers of their own. She had attained this distinction, moreover, without being severely criticized for the very attempt; her pursuits did not in the least encroach upon the preserves of the Victorian male. By the 1880s her illustrated books entitled The Art of Beauty, The Art of Dress, The Art of Decoration had established her reputation as an authority on women's dress and interior decorating, and her Chaucer for Children, which was published in 1877 and which, though highly popular, was not an unscholarly work, went through many editions. Nor was Mrs. Haweis ignorant of certain metaphysical concepts. In The Women's Signal, a women's journal started by Miss Muller and taken over by Lady Henry Somerset, of whom we have heard earlier, one reads that at one of her Queen's House tea parties "Mrs. Haweis caused a good deal of merriment by alluding to sex as a 'mere dress.' " Such. merriment, the Signal loftily pointed out, indicated "ignorance on the part of her hearers of Buddhist and Theosophical theories of reincarnation."


Queen's House, which the Haweises bought in 1883, was an ideal setting for Mrs. Haweis's At Homes, or, as they were also called, her "Saturday Lecturettes," at which some renowned person was invited to deliver a short discourse. The house, which stood on Cheyne Walk, facing the Chelsea Embankment and the Thames, was historic and elegant, built in 1717 on a portion of the grounds where once Henry VIII's vast manor of Chelsea stood. Tradition had it (wrongly) that the house once belonged to Catherine of Braganza, the unhappy wife of Charles II, for which reason Mrs. Haweis changed its name from Tudor House to Qneen's House. But whatever its early history may have been, it is certain that Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the famous Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter, owned the house from 1862 until his death twenty years later and that his friend Algernon Charles Swinburne and his brother W. M. Rossetti lived with him there for a time after the untimely and tragic death of his wife. It was because of its association with Rossetti, whose work she much admired, as well as for its own charm and beauty, that Mrs. Haweis loved Qneen's House. She furnished and decorated all the rooms in the best of late Victorian taste, and on the peak of the roof she added a crowning touch-a statue of Hermes, messenger of the gods.


At Queen's House, Mrs. Haweis gave some of her most brilliant At Homes, filling the large drawing room, which ran the entire width of the house and whose seven tall windows faced the Thames, with notables, brainy, gifted, fashionable, and to a large extent liberal-minded. A drawing said to be from the Illustrated London News depicts one such occasion a meeting of the Browning Society in February of l891. The drawing is here reproduced, for the scene must have appeared very much the same four and a half years later. Even the clerical gentleman standing to the left of the host and hostess (who are at right center) bears a striking likeness to Canon Basil Wilberforce, who was present on that afternoon of November 16, 1895, when Swamiji entered the room. Later, relating his London experiences to his old friend Professor John Henry Wright, Swamiji was to say, "Wasn't it funny? When I came into Mr. Haweis's crowded parlour he came up to me and in a loud voice said, 'Here comes the master!' '[78]


One can well imagine the sudden hush that fell over the gathering, as everyone turned to look at the handsome and smiling monk, with his "swarthy complexion," abundant black hair, and rich "terra-cotta" robe. Unfortunately, there is no satisfactory report of Swamiji's talk that afternoon. All we have is the following item that appeared in The Queen, the Lady's Newspaper of November 23, from which it is clear that he spoke on the possibility of a universal religion, often discussed in the West. The brief article read as follows:

AN UNIVERSAL RELIGION

Mrs. Haweis's first autumn At home took place last Saturday at Queen's House, when the Indian Yogi, or ascetic, Swami Vive Kananda (Buddhist delegate at the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893) discussed in a liberal spirit, and not without humour, the chances and the charms of an universal religion. He showed that the underlying principles of all the great religions of the world resembled one another, and amongst the great prophets he placed the Christian Redeemer very high, implying, however, that His teaching was little borne out sometimes by His professed followers. There was no radical impossibility of reconciliation between sects, now biting and devouring each other from the best motives, if charity and sympathy were carried into the kiosque, the temple, and the church. Canon Basil Wilberforce and the Rev. H. R. Haweis both made interesting speeches in reply to the Swami. Amongst the guests were Lady Westbury, Lady Kennett-Barrington (who wore black), Canon and Mrs. Basil Wilberforce, Lady Jephson (who looked charming in green velvet and sable), Lady Hutt, Mrs. and Miss Linwood-Strong, Mr. and the Hon. Mrs. Arthur Nash, the Hon. Mrs. Raymond Parr; Mrs. Wm. Mitford and Mrs. Bonhote, Col. and Mrs. Benson, and Mrs. Albert Vickers (in a pretty dress of black broche with blouse of rose crepon and vast sleeves). The hostess wore blue cloth, trimmed with silver balls, and a bodice of Chinese silk. The rooms were decorated with palms, autumn leaves, and enormous chrysanthemums from Mrs Josselyn's well-known conservatories at Stratford St. Mary, The guests numbered 150.


Swamiji must have made good friends of many of the hundred and fifty elegantly dressed men and women in Mrs. Haweis's drawing room. It is possible, for instance, that on this occasion he first met Miss Emmeline Souter, who was later to contribute financially to his Indian work. Miss Souter, whom we shall meet again in a later chapter, was a member of the Reverend Mr. Haweis's congregation and one of his most ardent admirers. Very likely it was also at Queen's House that Swamiji first met Canon Basil Wilberforce, who, as seen above, was one of the guests. Their meeting seems to have resulted in an immediate friendship and also, seen from this distance, gave impetus to the wave that was carrying Swamiji into the heart of London. Although Mr. Haweis was at the time a better known and more popular figure in the pulpit than Canon Wilberforce, the former's unconventional preaching did not tend to make him a pillar of the Establishment. Canon Wilberforce, on the other hand, was the best of the Anglican Church personified, and his liking for Swamiji was tantamount to an official seal of British approval. He showed his liking at once. According to Professor Wright's secondhand account to his wife, "Canon Wilberforce . . . took him into his house and gave him a dinner.'[79]There is, however, a somewhat different version of the Canon's hospitality in the Indian Mirror of January 18,  1896, where it was said : "At [Canon Wilberforce's] residence there was a levee in honor of the Swami, to which some of the distinguished ladies and gentlemen of London were invited." Swamiji could, of course, have been entertained and honored, more than once at the Canon's house which stood (and still stands) at 20, Dean's Yard, Westminster.  Canon Albert Basil Orme Wilberforce was the grandson of the famous English philanthropist and slavery abolitionist, William Wilberforce, the "Great Emancipator," and the youngest son of the High Churchman Samuel Wilberforce who had been bishop successively of Oxford and Winchester and who was an extremely eloquent and ingratiating (some said unctuous) orator. Although Bishop Wilberforce, widely known as "Soapy Sam," was a powerful ecclesiastic in his time he is perhaps best known today for his pontifical and informed ridicule of Darwin's theory of evolution during a public debate and the stern squelching he received from the young and grave Thomas Huxley. His son Albert Basil Orme Wilberforce, born in 1841, was also an eloquent and popular speaker, though in 1895 he was neither a well-known nor a weighty potentate of the Church. Nor was he "soapy" : he was an earnest, a well-read, and a good man, a kindly friend, a liberal thinker, and, it so happened, a serious student of the Vedanta philosophy. For all these reasons, he much admired Swamiji and told him (as Swamiji related it to Professor Wright) that "they were trying to teach in substance the Vedanta philosophy in the Church at the present time, and that he [Swamiji) was really a missionary to the Church of England.'[80]


As time went on and Swamiji met more and more Englishmen on their home ground, his estimate of the English people continued to change. "I have been in the midst of the genuine article in England," he was to write to Mary Hale after his return to America. "The English people received me with open arms, and I have very much toned down my ideas about the English race.... I also found at once the difference in culture and breeding between [the English and the Americans] and came to understand why American girls go in shoals to be married to' Europeans." Swamiji could not, of course, avoid coming across arrogant and crude Anglo-Indians even in England; but he found also lovers of India, caught forever by her spell. "There are two sorts of Englishmen who have lived in India," he wrote in the same letter. "One consisting of those who hate everything Indian, but they are uneducated. The other, to whom India is the holy land, its very air is holy. And they try to out-Herod Herod in their Hinduism.'[81]


The English, moreover, were on the whole well informed (the men particularly) and intensely interested in the thought of the times-religious as well as secular. A thoughtful response to his lectures must surely have been a relief to Swamiji after the emotional and often mindless reaction his very presence had created among some circles in America. In a letter written to Alberta Sturges on his departure from London at the end of November he was to sum up the matter:


. . . In your country [America], Alberta, the Vedantic thought was introduced in the beginning by ignorant "cranks ", and one has to work his way through the difficulties created by such introductions. You may have noticed that only a few men or women of the upper classes ever joined my classes in America. Again in America the upper classes being the rich, their whole time is spent in enjoying their wealth and imitating (aping?) the Europeans. On the other hand in England the Vedantic ideas have been introduced by the most learned men in the country, and there are a large number among the upper classes in England who are very thoughtful. So you will be astonished to hear that I found my grounds all prepared.[82]


To Mary Hale he would write in the same vein: "The English people laughed and laughed when I told them about my experience with the Presbyterians and other fanatics [in America] and my receptions in hotels etc. [because of a racial confusion]. . . . In [America] my teachings are thought to be queer by the 'Methodist' and 'Presbyterian' aristocracy. In England it is the highest philosophy to the English Church aristocracy.'[83]


As mentioned earlier, there were three parties in the Anglican Church: the Anglo-Catholics, who stressed sacraments, ritualism, and theological scholarship; the Evangelicals, who emphasized the need for individual conversion, holy living "in the great Taskmaster's eye," Biblical study, and moral and social reform; and the Broad Church party, which was liberal '; and rationally oriented. These movements, and varying shades and mixtures of them, were all integral parts of the powerful established Church of England. Outside, though a part of orthodox Christianity, was the large body of Nonconformist Protestant evangelical denominations, such as Methodist, Baptist, and Congregationalist. Unlike their counterparts in nineteenth-century America, these Churches were by and large on the side of Radical social reform and were liberal in outlook. If they had their narrow, intolerant side, it had no weight with the public. "I found," Swamiji was to write to Mary Hale in the letter quoted above, "that those fellows [such] as Lund [a Christian missionary] etc., who came over from England to attack me were nowhere. Their existence is simply ignored by the English people. None but a person belonging to the English Church is thought to be genteel. Again, some of the best men of England belonging to the English Church and some of the highest in position and fame became my truest friends.'[84]Not all English clergymen, of course, agreed with Swamiji's views, but none attempted to silence him by slander or any other means. "The English Church people are all gentlemen born," he was later to say on his return to India, "which many of the missionaries are not. They greatly sympathised with me. I think that about thirty English Church clergymen agree entirely with me on all points of religious discussion.'[85] But it was not really to be wondered at. In all parties of the Anglican Church, as well as among those who, like Haweis, claimed to belong to no party at all, there were many highly educated and cultured clergymen, some of whom had studied not only Christian theology and history but the philosophies and scriptures of non-Christian religions as well-and this not to condemn, but to learn. Many churchmen were keenly aware that the widening rift between traditional Christian doctrine and the relentless currents of modern scientific thought was disastrous; they sought somehow to bring about a reconciliation. Many were also awake to the terrible social evils of nineteenth-century England and deplored the Church's failure to meet the new and proliferating problems. Some of the more thoughtful of the clergy recognized that a deepening of religious awareness, rather than secularization, could bring the Church more into line with the times. An infusion of Eastern thought into Christianity was, therefore, not an unthinkable (though not, of course, officially welcomed) prospect to those who knew what Eastern thought in its loftiest reaches was. And those who knew, recognized in Swamiji its representative and "missionary." As he was to write to Mary Hale, "Many people of education and rank, and amongst them not a few clergymen, told me that the conquest of Rome by Greece was being re-enacted in England.'[85] That cultural conquest would be sidetracked by coming years of war and economic turmoil-but the seeds for it were to be well planted and could bide their time.


It is clear from Swamiji's letters that he met many celebrated and influential people, laymen and clergymen alike, during his first stay in England, but he gives no detailed account of them and almost no names. We do know, however-and this again through Professor John Henry Wright, who relayed the information to his wife-that he met at least one person high up in the British Government. Professor Wright wrote that Swamiji had "succeeded in winning" "the chief Secretary for India, Sir F. Arbuthnot," and that "they became fast friends." This information, significant though it was, was confused. Sir F. Arbuthnot was not the Secretary for India and never had been. Here are some facts, on the basis of which the reader can make his own guess as to whom Swamiji had won over and become fast friends with. Among reasonable possibilities, there was the Marquess of Ripon, whose wife, as we shall see presently, Swamiji had almost certainly met. Lord George Ripon had been Secretary of State for India in 1866, Viceroy of India in 1880— 84, and in 1895 was Secretary of State for the Colonies, with particular concern for India, toward which he had a sympathetic and extraordinarily liberal attitude. Swamiji could well have met and become fast friends with Lord Ripon. As for Sir F. Arbuthnot, this must have been Sir Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot, a well-known Orientalist, who had been born in India and had spent many years there in the Civil Service. Later, he became a trustee of the Royal Asiatic Society in London and in 1891 inaugurated a new series of the Oriental Translation Fund. Clearly, Sir F. Arbuthnot was interested in things Indian, and Swamiji certainly could have met him, perhaps through the like-minded Professor Robert Watson Frazer (see page 222). My own guess is that Swamiji met both men and that in the hearing and retelling of it Professor Wright got them mixed up.*


In no time at all and with very little effort on his part, London opened to Swamiji. The Anglican Church, the Freethinkers, the Radicals, as represented by Miss Muller's family, the scientists of the Balloon Society, Her Majesty's Government, as represented by at least one high-ranking official, Orientalists, and scholars-all were his. There was no one in London who would hesitate to attend his classes, lest to do so be somehow not quite proper; no door in the city was closed to him. In short, as generally happened in the course of his Western mission, the way opened at every turning, and he simply strode along.

5

Another momentous gathering took place on the afternoon of Sunday, November 10,** at 69 St. George's Road (now St. George's Drive) in Pimlico, or South Belgravia, then a fashionable district not far from Chelsea. The occasion was momentous not for its size and social elegance, but, on the contrary, for its smallness, its intimacy, and for the presence  of a young woman who listened with concentrated, if skeptical, attention. The house was one in long rows of narrow houses abutting one on the other without a crack of air between, each with its identical columned stoop, each four stories tall, each with its basement, its garret, its chimneys, its stone facade and its well-turned balusters and cornices. Number Sixty-three belonged to Mr. Mortimer Reginald Margesson and his wife, Lady Isabel Margesson, sister of the seventh earl of Bucking hamshire. Lady Isabel, in her early thirties at the time, was a Liberal, an ardent feminist (later, a militant suffragette), an advocate of Froebel's then modern principles of education, and an intellectual, conversant with the social and political issues of the day. Having seen the announcement for Swamiji's lecture at Prince's Hall in the newspapers, she had attended it and, subsequently, had invited him to speak at her home. For his audience she had chosen a challenging group of people, most of whom had "been singled out . . . on the very score of their unwillingness to believe." Among this select number was Miss Margaret Noble of Wimbledon, just turned twenty-eight, a brilliant young journalist and educationalist, who, while by no means irreligious,* was as difficult to convince as anyone could wish.

As those who are familiar with Swami Vivekananda's life will know, Margaret Noble was to become Sister Nivedita, one of his foremost Western disciples, and was to give her life to the service of his India. It is from her book The Master as I Saw Him that we learn about that Sunday gathering in Lady Isabel Margesson's West End drawing room, where Swamiji "was seated, facing a half circle of listeners, with the fire on the hearth behind him." "We were but fifteen or sixteen guests," she wrote, "intimate friends, many of us, and he sat amongst us, in his crimson robe and girdle, as one bringing us news from a far land, with a curious habit of saying now and again ‘Shiva! Siva!' and wearing that look of mingled gentleness and loftiness, that one sees on the faces of those who live much in meditation, that look, perhaps, that Raphael has painted for us, on the brow of the Sistine Child." He chanted Sanskrit verses for them, thrilling them with "those wonderful Eastern tones," which they found "at once so reminiscent of, and yet so different from, the Gregorian music of our own churches. " And he answered their many questions, staying on until darkness came and the lamps were lighted.'[87]


In her narrative of that afternoon, Sister Nivedita refrained from giving names; thus we cannot know with absolute certainty who was present among the guests, besides herself. She does tell us, however, that "[the] hostess and one or two others were interested in those modern movements which have made of an extended psychology the centre of a faith.'[88]After puzzling over this sentence, the present writer has guessed that the reference is to the young New Thought and faith-healing movements of the time, such as Christian Science and Unity. And, to be sure, Mrs. Asliton Jonson, who was a friend of Lady Margesson and who was almost certainly present, was a believer in mental and spiritual healing.


On the same page Nivedita poses another riddle: "The whitehaired lady, with the historic name, who sat on the Swami's left, and took the lead in questioning him, with such exquisiteness of courtesy, was perhaps the least unconventional of the group in matters of belief, and she had been a friend and disciple of Frederick Denison Maurice." There are several hints here, and I do not think one would be wrong in coming to the conclusion that this courteous, liberal, and elderly lady was the Marchioness of Ripon, wife of Lord George Ripon, and widely known for her sweetness and charm. Together with her husband, Lady Ripon had, to be sure, been a friend and follower of Maurice, the idealistic and heterodox theologian, out of whose teachings grew the movement known as Christian Socialism. Further, Lady Ripon was a friend and cousin of Lady Isabel Margesson and, with her, had been co-founder of the Sesame Club, to which Sister Nivedita and Mrs. Ashton Jonson belonged. To clinch the matter, Lady Ripon had white hair in this period of her life, and the name Ripon surely  qualifies as historic. Since she fills all these conditions, let us place Lady Henrietta Ripon on Swamiji's left.


As for the rest of his audience, they were, as has been seen above, skeptical of "religious propaganda in general," and had been invited for that very reason. Why? Had Lady Margesson, a Christian Scientist or the like, meant to crack their shells of disbelief? Had she meant, on the other hand, to face Swamiji with challengers? Or had she wanted simply to set the scene for the kind of stimulating discussion she enjoyed -the kind in which intellects glowed in the heat of argument and shot off sparks and perhaps now and then a rocket? Whatever her motive, she had surely not dreamed that the life of one of her young skeptics would be completely reforged that afternoon in the furnace of the Indian Yogi's thought. This consequence was not immediately obvious. On taking leave of their hostess, Miss Noble and her friends remarked that the Swami had said nothing new; it had all been said before. There was, in short, nothing to become excited about. And yet, as even Margaret Noble was to admit, he had put forward ideas new to them. He had told them "that both the mind and the body were regarded by Hindus as moved and dominated by a third, called the Self." He had also insisted on the word "realization" as the crux of religious experience, rather than "faith." Further, he had dwelt for a while on the "infinite power of man" and had declared "the one message of all religions to lie in the call to Renunciation." Again, it must have surprised that group to be informed that the desire to reach Heaven was regarded in India "by the most religious people, ‘as a little vulgar.''[89]


It will perhaps be of interest to take a moment here to wonder why Swamiji's thought, most of which was actually revolutionary in the nineteenth century, seemed familiar on first hearing to his well-read, though perhaps not scholarly, listeners. One reason may have been his way of making the most subtle and difficult of ideas seem available and natural; but another may have been the apparent and deceptive similarity between the philosophy of Vedanta and the element of idealism and romanticism in the background of nineteenth century thought. Just at random, one can think of a number of disconnected ideas floating about in the English consciousness that could have been brought to mind by Swamiji's talk. The romantic poets, for instance, had found God flamingly immanent in nature and had felt within themselves intimations of immortality that could not, to themselves, be gainsaid. Some were pantheistic in outlook, and Shelley, as everyone knew, had sung, "The One remains, the many change and pass " and had likened life to a dome of many-colored glass staining the white radiance of Eternity. In philosophy, Immanuel Kant had declared that the very structure of the human mind, with its built-in lens of time and space, was itself that many-colored glass, unavoidably distorting the real world-the thing-in-itself of which nothing at all could logically be known or said. Later German idealistic philosophers, such as Fichte and Schiller, who were inspired but not restrained by Kant, speculated at length upon the nature of the "truly Real." Hegel, the most influential of all, believed the Absolute to be involved in the finite, unfolding itself through a dialectical process in time and history. He said such things as "The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of Freedom,'[90]which sounded somewhat like Swamiji's "The whole life of society is the assertion of that one principle of freedom.'[91](But to Hegel, the finite world was in process of becoming the Infinite; whereas to Swamiji, as the illusory veil of finitude grows finer and yet finer, "the light behind shines forth, for it is its nature to shine.")[92] Schopenhauer, who considered Hegel's philosophy to be "a monument of German stupidity'[93]and found solace in the Upanishads, advised renunciation. "If we turn our glances from our own needy and embarrassed condition to those who have overcome the world," he wrote, ".  .  . we shall see that peace which passethunderstanding, that perfect calm of the spirit, that deep rest, that inviolable confidence and serenity . . . ; only knowledge remains, the Will [by which he meant a blind and driving cosmic Force] has vanished.'[94]


The vehement Carlyle in England and the benign Emerson in America lent their voices to German idealistic views, popularizing them. Of immortality, Carlyle wrote in Sartor Resartus (the theme of which was itself Vedanta-like), "Know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable; the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, is even now and for ever.'[95]And of our earthly lives he wrote, "They are dust and shadow; a shadow system gathered round our ME; wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence, is to be revealed in the Flesh.'[96] And Emerson, who had studied the Bhagavad Gita, declared in his "Over-Soul," "We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul.'[97]


Such ideas reached down the years through later-day romantics and idealists as, for instance, Moncure Conway and Haweis. South Place Chapel, where Hindu and Buddhist scriptures were regularly read at the Sunday services, was a veritable mart of idealistic thought. In the published collection of lectures on World Religions delivered at the Chapel in 1888 and 1889, one finds opposite the title page a quotation from the Universal Review of December 1888 which reads in part: "A new Catholicity has dawned upon the world. All religions are now recognized as essentially Divine. They represent the different angles at which man looks at God." (It was, of course, not true that all religions were then recognized as essentially divine, least of all by the official Church of England; but the thought was in the air and in print, even before the Parliament of Religions had been dreamed of.) Man, too, was recognized as essentially divine, in a way. At least he was recognized by some as essentially and innately good. Froebel (whose theories of education were followed by Lady Margesson and Miss Noble) had defined education as "the unfolding of the Divine within us'[98]--a sentiment which, again, sounded Vedantic,  but which, again, was not. It stemmed back to Rousseau's natural man and was mixed with pre-Darwinian theories of evolution.


Thus, ideas noble, lofty, idealistic, poetic, metaphysical were familiar to most educated Englishmen (and a few educated Englishwomen), particularly those who sought relief from the harsh light of science and escape from the windowless walls of dead-end skepticism. They did not flow from an irrefutable core of hard-won realization and knowledge (jnana); they were speculative, vague, and, when pushed, stumbling and confused; yet there was greatness in them. In their intensity of search, the thinkers and poets of the first half of the nineteenth century had reached into deeps of human consciousness and had come up with gems of transcendent wisdom. Their thought, moreover, had a tinge of Eastern influence, for Indian scriptures and philosophy had not been unknown in the Europe of that age. Nor, of course, were they unknown in England in the ' latter part of the nineteenth century to a more general public; the Freethought magazines had given respectful attention to the scriptures of India, and Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia was widely read. On a more scholarly level, the works of the Orientalists Max Muller and Paul Deussen were studied and discussed. And then, for better or worse, there was Theosophy. In the early 1890s Mrs. Annie Besant, newly converted, gave many knowledgeable lectures in and around London, in which she expounded much of Indian philosophy, including (or perhaps particularly) the theories of karma and reincarnation. If her old friends, such as George Bernard Shaw and Charles Bradlaugh, thought she had probably lost her mind, hundreds of others, mainly from the upper classes, flocked to hear her and hung upon her every word.


Thus it was that Swamiji's thought seemed familiar to the little gathering of intellectuals at 63 St. George's Road, who listened to him as though to yet another speculative philosopher or metaphysician, whose views, however lofty, were not, after all, original. Yet, returning to Wimbledon, Miss Margaret Noble could not so easily dismiss Swamiji. Had not the deep need in her for some certainty of belief detected the crystal sound of certainty itself? The authoritative ring of Swamiji's words, the experience of that Sunday afternoon, did not leave her.


As I went about the tasks of that week [she wrote in The Master as I Saw Him], it dawned on me slowly that it was not only ungenerous, it was also unjust, to dismiss in such fashion the message of a new mind and a strange culture. It occurred to me that though each separate dictum might find its echo or its fellow amongst things already heard or already thought, yet it had never before fallen to my lot to meet with a thinker who in one short hour had been able to express all that I had hitherto regarded as highest and best. I therefore took the only two opportunities that remained to me, of hearing the Swami lecture, while he was still in London.[99]


On week days, Margaret Noble attended to her school in Wimbledon ("The Ruskin School" for boys and girls up to the age of ten). Thus her only opportunity to hear Swamiji lecture in London was on weekends. From her notes appended to The Master as I Saw Him we know that she attended his crowded Saturday classes of November 16 and 23. At the time she did not, as she would acknowledge years later, fully understand the immense depth and import of his teaching nor hear it with a receptive mind; yet she seems to have accurately recorded it, struck, perhaps, by the very force of its expression. The first class she attended was on bhakti yoga, and her notes have been entitled in the Complete Works "The Religion of Love." The class of the second Saturday was, one might say, on the divinity of man; and has been entitled "Jnana and Karma." In both classes Swamiji spoke of a religion without dogmas, without liturgies, without penances. He spoke of renunciation and of realization and of faith in oneself. These were, indeed, keynotes of his teaching in the West, and Margaret Noble's ear seems to have been tuned to them even there in the very beginning of what was to be a stormy, lifelong discipleship. Since her notes give us the only idea we have of Swamiji's London classes of November 1895, a few passages from them are quoted here, taken more or less at random from The Master as I Saw Him :


In the highest love [Swamiji said in "The Religion of Love"], union is only of the spirit. All love of another kind is quickly evanescent. Only the spiritual lasts, and this grows.... Deepen your own power of thought and love. Bring your own lotus to blossom: the bees will come of themselves. Believe first in your self, then in God. A handful of strong men will move the world. We need a heart to feel; a brain to conceive; and a strong arm to do the work.... Yesterday, competition was the law. To-day, cooperation is the law. To-morrow, there is no law. Let sages praise thee, or let the world blame. Let fortune itself come, or let poverty and rags stare thee in the face. Eat the herbs of the forest one day, for food; and the next, share a banquet of fifty courses.Looking neither to the right hand nor to the left,followthouon![100]

And in "Jnana and Karma" :


. . . Become possessed with the feeling of renunciation.... But does renunciation demand that we all become ascetics? Who then is to help the others? Renunciation is not asceticism. Are all beggars Christ’s? Poverty is not a synonym for holiness; often the reverse. Renunciation is of the mind....


Even forgiveness, if weak and passive, is not true; fight is better. Forgive when you could bring legions of angels to the victory.... As a lotus-leaf, living in the water yet untouched by it, so should the soul be, in the world.

This is a battlefield, fight your way out. This world is a poor attempt to see God. Make your life a manifestation of will strengthened by renunciation.


We must learn to control all our brain-centres consciously. The first step is happiness. Asceticism is fiendish.... The second step is purity. The third is full training of the mind. Reason out what is true from what is untrue. See that God alone is true. If for a moment you think you are not God, great terror will seize you. As soon as you think I am He, great peace and joy will come to you. . . . The history of the world is the history of a few men who had faith in themselves.... What is civilisation? It is the feeling of the divine within. When you find time, repeat these ideas to yourself, and desire freedom. That is all. Deny everything that is not God. Assert everything that is God. Mentally assert this, day and night. So the veil grows thinner.


I am neither man nor angel. I have no sex nor limit. I am knowledge itself. I am He. I have neither anger nor hatred. I have neither pain nor pleasure. Death or birth I never had. For I am Knowledge Absolute, and Bliss Absolute. I am He, my soul, I am He! . . .


But this you must guard [against]. Do not disturb the faith of any. For you must know that religion is not in doctrines. Religion lies in being and becoming, in realisation.[101]


At the close of this class, Swamiji gave a reply to a question that would surely have appealed to Margaret Noble, an ardent admirer of John Ruskin, who held that the good and the beautiful were ultimately one. She jotted it down:


The artist is the witness who testifies to the beautiful. Art is the most unselfish form of happiness in the world.[102]


The above passages are but random samplings from Miss Noble's stirring notes, which were themselves but fragments of Swamiji's classes; and these, in turn, were but two out of a probable twenty-five held in November of 1895. Crowds came. "In England my work is really splendid," he wrote to Alasinga on November 18; "I am astonished myself at it. The English people do not talk much in the newspapers, but they work silently. I am sure of more work in England than in America. Bands and bands come, and I have no room for so many.... I shall have to go away next week, and they are so sorry. Some think my work here will be hurt a little if I go away so soon. I do not think so. I do not depend on men or things. The Lord alone I depend upon-and He works through me.'[103]


One pictures Margaret Noble sitting on the 8oor among those bands of rapt Englishwomen, her notebook in her lap, her intense face turned upward to the gerua-robed sannyasin, into whose hands she would before long place her life. Sitting there, appreciating the unusual quality in the man and his words, she had not the least idea of becoming his disciple. According to what one can make of her own somewhat less than-clear account, she was not to call Swamiji "Master" until the following year, when, before he left England for India, she desired to make herself "the servant of his love for his own people." By that time she had "recognized that heroic fibre of the man" and made obeisance, as she wrote, to "his character." Yet even then, she did not "cast in [her] lot with the final justification of the things he came to say.'[104]Margaret Noble, a prototype in this respect of the modern Western seeker, would give her full allegiance only to that which her experience could prove true.


Swamiji not only admired this quality of mind but gave to it great importance. It was indeed precisely because a wholly justifiable skepticism had entered the current of Western thought, to become its powerful mainstream, that spiritual reality had to be made available to the direct experience of the individual. Nothing short of that would stand up to the intellect of Western man; nothing else would satisfy his basic need to know truth or fill his deepest hungers. He had come to the dead-end of all external attempts to discover the ultimate reality of himself, his God, his universe. There was no other way but to seek within; no other path to take but the inward path the ancient Vedic Aryans had found millennia before and had cleared and charted. It was a way completely foreign to Western thought as a whole. One of Swamiji's primary tasks as a World Teacher was to present the ancient Vedantic truths and ancient Vedantic paths in the cultural idiom of the modern West and in such a way that everyone from a philosopher to a child would find them natural, comprehensible, and applicable. The time was ripe; but the task nonetheless was one that only a Prophet could achieve-and a Prophet, moreover, of gigantic intellect. As Swarxiiji was himself to write in a much quoted letter to Alasinga, he must "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, pogular and at the same time meet the requirements of the highest minds." It was a task, he said, that only "those can understand who have attempted it." But no one before him had ever attempted it. "That is my life's work," he wrote.'[105]


One of the essential prerequisites of Swamiji's task-or so it would seem to the present writer-was an intimate, firsthand, empathetic knowledge of the Western mind in all its varieties and moods-the aversions and desires peculiar to it, its richnesses and its poverties, its cultural griefs, joys, assumptions, insanities, and dreams, its fears, its tabus, and its idols. He had to know, in short, the subliminal racial language of the West, for how else could he be guru to the Western people? True, human nature is basically the same the world over, and Swamiji was teaching basic truths; but he was well aware that peoples and cultures were widely varied and that (as he taught) the vessels in which basic truths come to them must be varied also. He did not ignore the profound cultural differences, between East and West but, as a true Teacher, gave them his full respect.


Swamiji's first visit to England paved his way for his future work there; but was not this visit also a sort of exploratory voyage into the vortex of the modern world, where all the currents and crosscurrents of change were particularly tumultuous and audible? Western thought was, of course, nothing new to Swamiji. Not only had he had a large dose of it in America, but he had always been a profound student of the Western world. He knew its history, its philosophies, much of its science. He knew the philosophical and psychological reactions to the scientific overthrow of traditional religion; he well understood that Western man had been forced to deny the validity of his deepest quests. But even for a Swami Vivekananda, it was perhaps one thing to study a culture from a distance, and quite another to walk in the streets of one of its most ancient citadels and talk with its heirs on their home ground. Indeed, as we have seen, his estimate of the English people themselves had changed in many respects during his first visit among them--" and I am glad to confess it," he was to write to Alberta Sturges.[106]To be sure, Swamiji's understanding of people and cultures and of the questions that arose out of those cultures was intuitive and immediate; it was not a matter of labored research; yet, however quick and spontaneous it may have been, the further understanding of the Western people that he gained in London was surely important to the full formulation of his message.

6

In the nineteenth century England was the center of the new world in almost all respects. English culture was Western culture. Almost all Western thought had found its way to London, had churned awhile in its cauldrons, and had spread out again along the seaways of the Empire-"the greatest machine that ever existed," as Swamiji said, "for the dissemination of ideas.'[107]England was, indeed, a sort of clearing house for nineteenthcentury thought. Much of it had also originated there. It had been in England, for instance, that Newton had quietly, without really meaning to, demolished traditional Christian belief; it was there that David Hume had pulled the rug from under all other kinds of belief, including that based upon sense experience; it was there that Wesley had started a great Evangelical revival in revolt against rationalism, and there, also, that the Romantic writers and poets had passionately reacted against the tick-tock universe of the eighteenth century as well as against the total skepticism to which reason suicidally led. The individual, the Romantics declared, was free to believe whatever his heart and intuition prompted him to believe: emotion was the key to truth. On the Continent, the German idealistic philosophers who followed upon the heels of Kant reinforced the emphasis upon individualism and feeling-an emphasis that persisted, though decreasingly, throughout most of the nineteenth century. At the opposite pole were the English Utilitarians Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and, less radically, John, Stuart Mill, who thought everything, from morals to human welfare, could be governed by reason. It was in England, again, that science gave the coup de grace to orthodox religion with the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species and in 1871 of his Descent of Man. It was in England that the brilliant Thomas H. Huxley, a formidable logician, scientist, and agnostic (a term he invented for himself), championed Evolution with his doubleedged sword of reason and sarcasm, decapitating whatever romantic or sentimental nonsense dared raise its head. He demanded hard evidence for all belief. "The universe is one and the same throughout," he wrote in a letter explaining his personal commitment; "and if the condition of my unravelling some little difficulty of anatomy or physiology is that I shall rigorously refuse to put faith in what does not rest on sufficient evidence, I cannot believe that the great mysteries of existence will be laid open to me on other terms.'[108]This avowal was not peculiar to Huxley; it was the commitment of the new age.

Ultimate truth was to be found either in the hard facts of science or not at all. Many Victorians, children of the Enlightenment, were confident that science could answer all questions and solve all problems-social, moral, economic, political, personal, and even philosophical. Moreover, they were certain that social and moral good would increase and evil steadily decrease until Heaven was established on earth for all time. But to others less sanguine, science could not answer the ultimate philosophical questions; such questions, therefore, were unanswerable and absurd. The only "far-off divine event" was extinction. What had once been thought to be the eternal verities of religion were, after all, mere fairy tales, and man, mumbling them to himself, was but a dreaming animal standing alone on a mote of dust in a vast and silent darkness. The reactions to this more pessimistic and grim outlook were various. Many Victorians were torn with confusion and despair; some tried to cover over the emptiness with sentimentality, pious faith, ritualism, or an exciting occultism; others faced it with a stoic and fatalistic courage; still others shrugged it off with an eat-drink-and-be-merry bravado, which could, and did, slide easily into an unabashed worship of money, of things, and of short-term happiness. Or, again, the same basic hedonism could be sublimated into a cult of aestheticism, which, in turn, could verge on decadence.


Another result of the scientific and industrial revolutions eminently apparent in nineteenth-century England was the near catastrophic social upheaval that was taking place everywhere. The deplorable social conditions created by the rapid switch over from an agricultural economy to an industrial one had forced the working classes to demand a more humane and democratic treatment. To some extent, the awakened conscience of the new and prosperous middle class itself compelled reform. In London many varieties of socialistic and humanitarian movements had their vocal leaders and followers. Freedom was becoming the battle cry of the age--freedom, equality, dignity of the individual, compassion for the poor and oppressed. Concurrently, ideas and words such as submission, surrender, humility, obedience, and so on-words associated with a tyrannical Church and State, were becoming anathema to the common man. If he was to have a religion, then it would have to be in accord not only with science and reason, but with his new spirit-his fight for individuality, for dignity, his struggle for an equal chance for happiness. It was indeed this spirit which the liberal factions in the churches were trying to keep abreast of-but they were becoming thereby only more and more secular in their approach.


London, an old city, richly layered with tradition, was an articulate and roiling center of all these attitudes, moods, demands and efforts-newfangled and basic alike. There was scarcely any person in London without a voice to raise-each propounding some different solution to all ills-and that with passionate intensity and volubility. Swamiji could not have failed to hear all those voices, which throbbed in the city like a commingled cry for help; and, being Swamiji, he could not have failed to respond.


A few hints in his letters written during his first visit to England make it clear enough that this period of his Western mission was still, in some respects, a formative one. He was indeed, as he said, "probing," still exploring the nature of the West as a great Teacher explores the nature of a great disciple. Quite apart from his revised understanding of the English people he appears to have felt with greater clarity and certainty than before the need to present the Vedanta philosophy in a way that would reconcile it with a modern scientific outlook or, at least, to present the Vedanta cosmology, eschatology, psychology, and so on, in the light of modern scientific theories and findings. This effort, which was to hold his attention through much of the following year, seems to have begun, or at least, to have gathered behind it the force of his will, in England. "These are countries of gigantic scholars," he wrote to Swami Brahmananda from Caversham probably in late October. "Is it a joke to make disciples of such people?'[109]And to Swami Ramakrishnananda, "The common people here . . . will give you a wide berth if you preach God and such things to them. They think this must be another clergyman!'[110] In this same letter, he not only sent out a call for Sanskrit books but made a request that would, one thinks, set minds any less hardy than those of his brother monks reeling. "You just patiently do one thing, " he wrote, "-set about collecting everything that books, beginning with the Rig-Veda down to the most insignificant of Puranas and Tantras, have got to say about creation and annihilation of the universe, about race, heaven, and hell, the soul, consciousness, and intellect, etc., the sense-organs, Mukti, transmigration, and suchlike things." "No child's play would do," he added. "I want real scholarly work.'[111] It seems clear that while he was in England, Swamiji set his mind more intently than ever upon giving the Western people a teaching of Vedanta such as would fully satisfy the most rational, the most scientific, the most intellectually inquiring of minds, as well as the most spiritually searching.


His early plan "to get hold of a few at least very strong and intellectual men in England to form a society" had now changed. Not only had his classes attracted men and women both, but, as we have seen, it did not appear wise at the time to form a society of any kind. But society or no society, Swamiji was anxious that his English work take some sort of shape and cohesiveness so that it would hold together during his absence in America and be carried forward later when he would leave the West altogether. To this end he sent out an urgent call to his brother disciples, asking them (in several letters) to send one of their number to London. As early as September 24, he wrote to Mrs. Bull, "He [Sturdy] wants me to bring over a monk from India from amongst my brethren to help him when I am away in America. I have written to India for one.'[112]The need was for a swami versed in both Sanskrit and English, not, of course, merely to help Sturdy with his personal study, but to help with the propagation of the Vedanta philosophy through the study and teaching, as well as the translation and publication, of Sanskrit texts. "The work," Swamiji wrote in October to Swami Abhedananda, "is to teach the devotees I shall be leaving here, to make them study the Vedanta, to do a little translation work into English, and to deliver occasional lectures.'[113] Among his brothers, Swamiji felt that Swami Ramakrishnananda, Swami Abhedananda, Swami Trigunatita, or Swami Saradananda would fill the role, and of these four, the last was just then in the best health. Swamiji sent for him. Like an affectionate and paternally anxious older brother, he sent money and instructions regarding the details of the voyage-ticket, pocket expenses, clothes, diet, and so on. "Above all," he had written to Swami Abhedananda, "[whoever will come] must have a wool overcoat, for it is very cold. If you do not put on an overcoat on the ship, you will suffer much.'[114]Having requested Swami Saradananda to take the next boat from Bombay for London, Swamiji impatiently waited for him. "If Sharat [Swami Saradananda] has started immediately on your receipt of my letter," he wrote to Swami Ramakrishnananda, "then only I may meet him, otherwise not. Business is business, no child's play.'[115]


But when Swamiji left England at the end of November, there was still no sign of the Swami. And when, in New York, ~ he received a letter from Swami Saradananda himself, who was still in India, he knew that his young brother disciple did not intend to come at all, fearful, perhaps, of the West with its gigantic scholars. And indeed Swamiji had been giving his brothers some hair-raising, though not inaccurate, pictures of the Western work. He had, for instance, written from America that year, "The thing is, one has to snatch one's bread from the jaws of the missionary scholars. That is, one must prevail over these people by dint of learning, or one will be blown off at a puff. They understand neither Sadhus nor your Sannyasins, nor the spirit of renunciation. What they do understand is the vastness of learning, the display of eloquence and tremendous activity. Over and above that, the whole country will be searching for flaws, the clergy will day and night try to snub you, through force or guile. You must get rid of these obstructions to preach your doctrines.'[116] It is small wonder that even Swamiji's brother disciples hesitated. Swamiji himself, however, saw no reason for their delay. Seeing that Swami Saradananda did not intend to come, he replied on December 23 with one of his more devastating communications :


Your letter only made me sad [he wrote). I see you have lost all enthusiasm. I know all of you, your powers and your limitations. I would not have called you to any task which you are incompetent to do.... I would have moulded you to it. Anyone could have done as well-only a little smattering of Sanskrit was absolutely necessary. Well, everything is for the best. If it is the Lord's work the right man for the right place will be forthcoming in the right time. None of you need feel disturbed.


...The upshot of the whole thing is--I want bold, daring, adventurous spirits to help me. Else I will work alone. I have a mission to fulfil. I will work it out alone. I do not care who comes or who goes....


Good-bye! I would not bother you any more, and all blessings go with you all. I am very glad I have been of some service to you sometimes if you think so. At least I am pleased with myself for having tried my best to discharge the duties laid on me by my Guru, and well done or ill, I am glad that I tried. So good-bye.... Good-bye . . . to you all. One chapter of my life is closed. Let others come in their due order. They will find me ready. You need not disturb yourselves at all about me. I want no help from any human being in any country. So good-bye! May the Lord bless you all for ever and ever![117]


Needless to say, it was not long after receiving this letter that Swami Saradananda set sail for England.


But to return to Swamiji's desire to give shape to his work and to keep it in motion during his absence from London, he thought not only of bringing one or more of his young brother disciples to the West but also of bringing a disciple of his own. In a hitherto unpublished portion of a letter to Alasinga from Oakley Street, dated November 18, 1895, he wrote:


. . . I have sent for a Sannyasin from Calcutta, to leave him in London. I want one more for America. I want my own man. Can't you send a strong fellow from Madras? Of course I will pay everything. He must know both English and Sanskrit pretty well-English more. At the same time [he] must be a strong man not to be spoiled by the women, etc. Again he must be a thoroughly trustworthy and obedient man. Do you know Sanskrit enough? G.G. [Narasimhachariar] knows some. Guru Bhakti is the foundation of all spiritual development. You cannot come I am afraid, leaving your paper [the Brahmavadin]. Can G.G. come? I want to have two fellows in these 2 centres, then I can go to India and send fresh men to relieve them. I am tired really from incessant work. Any other Hindu would have vomitted blood and died if he had to work as hard as I have.[118]


Swamiji was working not only for the sake of his Western mission; he was at the same time pouring his energies into India. As will be seen in more detail in chapter fifteen of the following volume, he continued during this entire period in England to write vigorously to his brother disciples at Alam bazar Math and elsewhere and to his disciples in Madras, keeping in close touch with all they were doing and giving guidance, advice, and encouragement. He urged them to open centers and to form societies. "Work! Work!" he wrote. "Go on opening centres!'[119] He wanted Swami Abhedananda to start a center at Meerut; Swami Shivananda to start one at Almora; Swami Akhandananda to start them at Jaipur and Ajmer, with branches in Alwar and Khetri; Swami Ramakrishnananda to try to open centers "in places all over Bengal"; and, a little later, he wrote to Swami Brahmananda to open a center in Kashmir.[120]He scolded and exhorted. "We are all of us self important," he wrote to Swami Akhandananda, "which never produces any work. Great enterprise, boundless courage, tremendous energy, and, above all, perfect obedience -these are the only traits that lead to individual and national regeneration. These traits are altogether lacking in us.'[121]But whatever traits may have been lacking Swamiji himself supplied through the very inspiration of his leadership. And in their love for him, his great brother disciples took his most casual word (for no word of his, they knew, was really casual) as his command.


Simultaneously, he gave detailed instructions to Alasinga in Madras regarding the new English language magazine, the Brahmavadin, the first two issues of which he received (after impatiently waiting) by the end of October. Again, he praised and scolded and encouraged and gave sound editorial advice. He was eager that the magazine be successful. "Pay all attention to the paper," he wrote to his disciple on October 24. "Make it a great success. Mr. Sturdy will write [for it] from time to time, so will I. I cannot send any money now. In England lectures never pay-so I had everything to spend and nothing to gain. By and by I will have friends here who will spend money on magazines etc. So long as you are true and pure you will never fail. Mother will never leave you. All blessings will be on you.'[122] And with his keen ear for the English idiom-knowing so well, as few foreigners can, what was quaint, what was jocose, what was pompous-he was an excellent editor: "Don't write such things as—‘a pious Vairagi shuffled off his mortal coil' ! ! !" he cautioned Alasinga in a letter of November 18. "That is a phrase rather humorous to be mixed up with a pious Vairagi's death'[123]


To judge from the letters he wrote to India during this  period, he seems to have been thinking of his mission more and more in worldwide terms, both in respect to organization and content. From America he had written earlier in the year to Swami Brahmananda, "At present we shall have to work three centres, one in New York, another in Calcutta, and a third in Madras.'[124]Now he added London and wanted co-ordination between the four centers. "In effect," he wrote in October of 1895 to Swami Abhedananda, "Mr. Sturdy is my secretary in England, Mahendra Babu [Mahendra Nath Gupta, later known as "M"] in Calcutta, and Alasinga in Madras." (Miss Phillips was at that time secretary of the Society in America.) "We must set the whole world afire," he wrote in this same letter. " . . . In time we shall send preachers in large numbers to all the quarters of the globe.'[125]And again, to Swami Akhandananda he wrote from Caversham, "By degrees we must spread the world over.'[126]

That Swamiji''s message should "spread the world over" was, of course, as important as that it should be rationally oriented and in keeping with the new scientific outlook. His was a new teaching for a new world-a dynamically interacting and volatile world where widespread spiritual knowledge combined with boundless compassion was to be the only alternative to wholesale destruction. One is inclined to think that he consciously knew exactly what was in store for mankind in the coming centuries-the good as well as the evil; certainly as time went on, he shaped his message with more and more thoroughness, detail, and urgency, as though aware that mankind was rapidly creating for itself a drastically new environment to which it would as rapidly have to adapt.


On Wednesday, November 27, Swamiji set sail from Liverpool for New York on the Britannic of the White Star Line. He had been in England for eleven weeks and was well satisfied with his work there as a beginning. "I had a splendid success in England," he wrote to Sister Christine on December 10, after his return to America, "and have left a Nucleus there to  work till my arrival next summer.'[127] And on January 6, 1896, to Mary Hale, "In England I find strong-minded men and women to take up the work and carry it forward with the peculiar English grip and energy.... The English woman is slow; but when she works up to an idea, she will have a hold on it sure; and they are regularly carrying on my work there and sending every week a report-think of that!'[128]Indeed Swamiji had great hopes for his work in England. As his ship lay at anchor in the fog off the English coast, he wrote to Alberta Sturges, "I was very successful in London, and though I did not care for the noisy city, I was very much pleased with the people.... I am convinced that my work will have more hold on England than America.'[129] But it was in America that the most productive year of his Western mission was soon to begin.


ⓘ
[1] Complete Works, 8 : 350.
[2] Complete Works., 8:351.
[3] Conversations between Major Ambrose Sturdy in London and Swami Yogeshananda, 1972; conversations between Major Sturdy and the author in London, January, 1976; Major Ambrose Sturdy to the author, December 5, 1976.
[4] G. M. Trevelyan, History of England, vol. 3, p. 148.
[5] Major Ambrose Sturdy to the author, December 5, 1976.
[6] Edward T. Sturdy to Swami Pavitrananda, September 22, 1947
[7] Col. Henry Steele Olcott, Old Diary Leaves—III (1883-87).
[8] Charles Bradlaugh in the Reformer. Quoted in Arthur H. Nethercot, The First Fine Lives of Annie Besant, p. 298.
[9] Complete Works, 4:369-70 (passage quoted is largely from the original letter, RKM, Belur).
[10] Swami Shivananda to Babu Pramada Das Mitra, May 9 and May 18, 1893; quoted in Sailen-dra Nath Dhar, A Comprehensive Biography of Swami Vivekananda, vol. 2, p. 767.
[11] E. T. Sturdy to Josephine MacLeod, January 18, 1903, SN Col. For information regarding Mr. Sturdy in 1894, see TheTheosophist, March 1894, P-391 and September 1894, PP- xiii-xiv.
[12] E. T. Sturdy to Josephine MacLeod, October 18, 1898, SNCol.
[13] E. T. Sturdy to Swami Vivekananda, March 30, 1895, SCB.
[14] Complete Works, 8:335-36. Original letter SN Col. (also copy AA.).
[15] Complete Works, 8 : 346.
[16] Complete Works., 6: 339.
[17] Complete Works6:344.
[18] Complete Works8:351.
[19] Complete Works  6:343.
[20] Complete Works  6:343-44.
[21] Complete Works8:351.
[22] Complete Works 6:344.
[23] Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1921.
[24] Robert Watson Frazer, Indian Thought Past and Present (London, 1915)
[25] Woman's Herald, London, 28 November 1891.
[26] Woman's Herald, London, 28 November 1891.
[27] John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, in Essays on Sex Equality, ed. Alice S. Rossi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), P.173
[28] Girton Review, Lent Term, 1906.
[29] See ref. 25 above.
[30] See ref. 25 above.
[31] Complete Works, 8 : 288.
[32] The Theosophist (London), February 1895, p. 344.
[33] Complete Works, 5 : 51.
[34] Complete Works , 6 : 342, unpublished passage, Sen Col.
[35] Complete Works6 : 343, unpublished passage, Sen Col.
[36] Sister Nivedita, Notes of Some Wanderings, 4th ed. (Calcutta: Udbodhan Office, 1957), pp. 97-98; It# (1965)1 P- 443*
[37] Complete Works, 6:342, passage from original letter, Sen Col.
[38] Complete Works., 6 : 343, passage from original letter, Sen Col.
[39] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, October 4 or 5, 1895, Sen Col. (Swamiji dated this letter 6th Oc. 95, but its envelope bears the postmark: “Reading Oc. 5 8 : 30 PM 95.”)
[40] Swami Vivekananda to Christina Greenstidel, October 4, 1895. (Swamiji did not date this letter, but its envelope bears the postmark: “Reading Oc 4 8:30 PM 95.”) Sen Col.
[41] Complete Works, 8 : 354-55.
[42] Complete Works., 5 : 187-88.
[43] Complete Works 5: 186.
[44] Rem. (Desai), p. 302.
[45] Complete Works, 5 : 96. (The wording here is taken from Leg. Col.)
[46] Swami Vivekananda to Isabelle McKindley, October 24, 1895, VSNC.
[47] Complete Works, 5 :96. Quoted from original letter, RKM, Belur.
[48] Complete Works., 8:355.
[49] Complete Works., 8:354.
[50] Complete Works.,7 : 332.
[51] Complete Works 8:356-57.
[52] Complete Works,5: 34.
[53] Complete Works, 8 :357.
[54] Complete Works, 8 : 358.
[55] Complete Works., 5:96, original letter, RKM, Belur.
[56] Complete Works 5:97, original letter, RKM, Belur.
[57] Complete Works6:352, passage quoted from original letter, Sen Col.
[58] Hugh Reginald Haweis, Travel and Talk, vol. 1, pp. 199-200; quoted in Vedanta for East and West, no. 112 (March-April 1970).
[59] John Henry Wright to Mary Tappan Wright, March 27, 1896, VSNC.
[60] Complete Works, 8 : 369.
[61] Complete Works., 5 : 97.
[62] Complete Works 8 : 356.
[63] Complete Works 5 :96, original letter, RKM, Belur.
[64] Complete Works8 : 355.
[65] Warren S. Smith, The London Heretics, 1870-1914, p. 104.
[66] Moncure Conway, Idols and Ideals (London, 1877), p. 17.
[67] Complete Works, 8 : 355.
[68] Rem. (Desai), p. 302.
[69] Warren S. Smith, op. cit., p. 115.
[70] Conway, Autobiography, vol. 1, p. 107.
[71] Smith, op cit., p. 104.
[72] Conway, My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East (London, 1906), p. 221.
[73] Smith, op. cit., p. 109.
[74] Complete Works, 8 : 357.
[75] H. R. Haweis, op. cit., pp. 198-99.
[76] Quoted in World's Parliament of Religions, ed. J. H. Barrows (Chicago, 1893), vol. i,pp. 20-22.
[77] Bea Howe, Arbiter of Elegance, pp. 105-6.
[78] See ref. 59 above.
[79] See ref. 59 above.
[80] See ref. 59 above.
[81] Complete Works, 8 : 368-69.
[82] Complete Works., 6 : 351.
[83] Complete Works 8:368-69.
[84] Complete Works 8 : 368.
[85] Complete Works 5 : 22
[87] Nivedita, The Master, pp. 3-5 passim.
[88] Nivedita, The Master., p. 9.
[89] Nivedita, The Master., pp. 5-6 passim.
[90] Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree, 1899 (New York: Dover Publishers, Inc., 1956), Introduction, p. 19.
[91] Complete Works, 2 : 126.
[92] Complete Works., 2 : 82.
[93] Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, vol. 2 (London, 1883), p. 22.
[94] Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, vol. 2 (London, 1883)., Frauenstadt ed., pp. 486, 487.
[95] Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, book 3, chap. 8.
[96] Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, vol. 2 (London, 1883)
[97] Emerson, “The Over-Soul,” Essays, 2 vols. (New York: A. L. Burt Company), vol. 1, p. 261.
[98] Quoted in “On the Ethical Training of the Child” by Lady Isabel Margesson, The Woman's Library, vol. 3 (London, 1903).
[99] Nivedita, The Master, pp. 9-10.
[100] Nivedita,., app. A, pp. iii, v; Complete Works, 8 : 221, 223-24.
[101] Nivedita,, app. B, pp. vii, ix, x-xi; Complete Works, 8:226, 227-29 passim.
[102] Nivedita, op. cit., app. B, p. xii.
[103] Complete Works, 5 : 97.
[104] Nivedita, op. cit., pp. 11, 12.
[105] Complete Works, 5 : 104-5.
[107] Complete Works,  6:365.
[108] Quoted in William Irvine, Apes, Angels, and Victorians, p. 128.
[109] Complete Works, 6 : 336.
[110] Complete Works.., 6 : 339.
[111] Complete Works6 : 339-4°
[112] Complete Works6 : 343.
[113] Complete Works 8 • 352. 
[114] Complete Works8 : 352. 
[115] Complete Works6 : 339
[116] Complete Works6 : 341.
[117] Complete Works 8 : 365-67 passim.
[118] Unpublished portion of letter, Complete Works, 5 : 97-98, original letter, RKM, Belur
[119] Complete Works, 6 : 322.
[120] See Complete Works, 6:321, 325, 339> 34b 349-
[121] See Complete Works, 6 : 349.
[122] Unpublished portion of letter, Complete Works, 5:96, original letter, RKM, Belur.
[123] Unpublished portion of letter, Complete Works, 5; 97, original letter, RKM, Belur.
[124] Complete Works, 6 : 340.
[125] See Complete Works., 8:353.
[126] See Complete Works6:322.
[127] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, December 10, 1895, Sen Col.
[128] Complete Works, 8: 369.
[129] Complete Works., 6: 351.



↑ Contents

3.5 NEW YORK : DECEMBER 1895

The S.S. Brittanic, the ship on which Swami Vivekananda set sail from Liverpool on November 27, 1895, was by no means the most modern "luxury liner" afloat. Built over twenty years earlier, it had long since been outmoded in design, power, and speed by steamers three times its tonnage, and its comforts were nothing compared to theirs. But the voyage started well. On the second day out, the ship, as was customary, anchored for a few hours off Qneenstown, Ireland, to pick up the mail, and it was very likely from there that Swamiji wrote to Edward T. Sturdy, "So far the journey has been very beautiful.” He had been given a cabin to himself by a friendly purser ("Every Hindu is a Raja, they think, and are very polite,'[2] he wrote to Alberta Sturges) ; he had been promised that the fare, which, as he wrote, had been "meat, meat, meat," would be varied by the vegetables he preferred and had been eating exclusively for many months; and he found that the weather, though so foggy that the ship was delayed, was calm and cheerful. But after leaving Queenstown the Brittanic set forth onto the open seas and headed straightway into rough and stormy waters. From then on, the voyage was as Swamiji put it, the most "disastrous" he had ever had[3]. The little ship, endlessly tossing and pitching, made slow, laborious headway through the turbulent Atlantic; and for the first time in his life Swamiji was "very badly seasick'[4] - and this for days on end.

On Friday, December 6, at 4:24 a.m., the Brittanic at last crossed Sandy Hook Bar outside the harbor of New York. The temperature was six degrees below freezing and a sharp wind was blowing, but the sky was clear and the sun rising when, after the usual long stop at the quarantine station at Ellis Island, the ship was piloted toward the docks of Manhattan. Although the skyline that greeted Swamiji who surely stood on deck, had little resemblance to the spectacular skyline of today, its massive buildings--one of which, the first true skyscraper, rose to an awesome twenty-one stories-and the colossal stone towers of its great Brooklyn Bridge were impressive sights and among the wonders of the world.

There is no record of who met him at that early hour, but most probably his disciple Swami Kripananda was waiting at the North River dock to greet him, to look after his luggage, and to escort him to the lodging house at 228 West Thirtyninth Street, where a few days earlier two large parlor rooms had been rented for his and Kripananda's use. "My friends had already engaged some rooms . . . where I am living now,'[5] he was to write to Mr. Sturdy two days later, and we can be almost certain that these friends were officers of the Society that he had founded in 1894. The lodging house was one in which Kripananda (then Leon Landsberg) had lived from April 19 to July 10 of this same year and to which he had returned in October; in November he had held classes there under the auspices of the Vedanta Society, and thus the house, familiar now to Swamiji's students, had no doubt seemed the logical place for him to make his headquarters.

The neighborhood, though dreary, was somewhat more respectable than that in which he had lived the previous season, it being six blocks farther north. Yet one cannot agree that the house was, as Kripananda wrote in a letter of December 7 to the Brahmavadin, "in the best part of the city.'[6] Though farther north, it was also farther west; and west in New York, particularly around Thirty-ninth Street, could scarcely be called "best." The house was a three-story, twenty-foot-wide brick building with a brownstone front and a slate roof. According to Sister Devamata, whose memories of this period were first published in Prabuddha Bharata of 1923, it was "one in a long monotonous row of dingy boarding houses'[7]a row, as an early photograph of this particular block shows, of those narrow, high-stooped, brownstone fronts, each almost identical with the one jammed next to it, which had sprung up everywhere in New York during the, latter half of the nineteenth century, and many of which, in their old or middle age, had been converted into lodging houses. Two redeeming features of this house were the low rent of its rooms and the handy fact that it could be easily reached, as Kripananda correctly pointed out, from all parts of the city. The house, which stood in the middle of the block between Seventh and Eighth avenues, was not far from the Broadway cable cars, or for that matter, from the Sixth Avenue Elevated, whose wooden coaches, drawn by steam locomotive, thundered into a station at Forty-second Street; and on Forty-second Street itself ran a cross-town horesecar.

The two parlor rooms that Swamiji's friends had engaged were on the first floor, running front to back alongside a narrow hall and opening onto one another, as parlors in those days generally did. The front windows, tall and narrow, faced north onto the street, and it was they, presumably, that provided most of the light, for the back parlor could have had, at best, only a side window that looked onto an airwell. There was neither private bath nor kitchen connected with the rooms; they were simply rooms. The lodging house kitchen, shared in common by the roomers, was, as we learn from Sister Devamata's memoirs, on the floor below (the basement or ground floor), and, to judge from the usual arrangement of houses such as this, the bathroom, also shared by all, was on the floor above. It was to this unremarkable lodging house that Swamiji, "clad in a red and flowing Hindoo cloak," came on the morning of December 6.

As far as can be determined, the New York newspapers had not concerned themselves with Swamiji's stay earlier in the year. Cosmopolitan, sophisticated, and churning with people and ideas of all sorts, the city accepted him without fanfare or blazing headlines. Nor was he the controversial figure here that he had been elsewhere in America, giving rise to wordy debates, which the press delighted in. Yet even in this metropolis that took in its stride so much that was foreign and strange, Swamiji's arrival on the Brittanic did not go unremarked. It was, in fact, viewed with amazement by at least one reporter, who hastened to interview this extraordinay visitor. The result, which was reprinted in part in the Brahmavadin,[8]appeared originally in the New York World on Sunday, December 8, 1895, and read in full:

ABOU BEN ADHEM'S IDEAL*(1)

Swami Vivekananda the Yogi, Comes from Bombay, Preaching 
Love for His Fellow-Man.

To find an ascetic of the Highest Eastern type clad in a red and flowing Hindoo cloak over unmistakable American trousers is necessarily a surprise. But in other thin besides dress is Swami Vivekananda astonishing. In the first place he declares that your religion or any one else's religion is just as good as his own, and if you should happen to be a Christian or Mussulman, Baptist or Brahmin, atheist, agnostic or Catholic, it will make no difference to him. All that he asks is that you act righteously according to your lights.

*(1) Abou Ben Adhem, the hero of Leigh Hunt's famous poem, who asked a recording angel to list him as loving his fellowmen, was as familiar to Swamiji s contemporaries as was, say, Omar Khayyam.

The Yogi, with his peculiar notions of dress and worship arrived Friday on the Brittanic. He went to No. 228 West Thirty-ninth street. While in New York he will lecture upon metaphysics and psychology, and will also disseminate in a general way his ideas on the universal religion which asks no man to take another by the throat because his creed happens to be different. "Let me help my fellowman; that is all I seek," he says.

There are four general types of men" he- says, "the rational, the emotional, the mystical and the worker. For Them we must have their proper worship. There comes the rational man, who says, I care not for this form of worship. Give me the philosophical, the rational--that I can appreciate.’ So for the rational man is the rational, philosophic worship.

“There comes the worker. He says: I care not for the worship of the philosopher. Give me work to do for my fellow-men.' So for him is made a worship, as for the mystical the emotional. In the religion for all these men are the elements of their faith.

"No, "said the Swami, very softly, in answer to a question, "I do not believe in the occult. If a thing be unreal it is not. What is unreal does not exist. Strange things are natural phenomena. I know them to be matters of science. Then they are not occult to me. I do not believe in occult societies. They do no good, and can never do good."

In fact, the Swami belongs to no society, cult or creed. His is a religion which compasses all worship, all classes, all beliefs.

Swami, who is a very dark-featured and good-looking young fellow, explained his creed yesterday in remarkably pure English. One forgot when he spoke that an orthodox choker peered over the Bombay robe which in turn scantily concealed the American trousers. One saw instead a winning smile and a pair of deep, lustrous black eyes. One saw instead a winning smile and a pair of deep, lustrous black eyes.

Swami believes in reincarnation. He believes that with the purification of the body the soul rises to a higher condition, and as the purification through matter continues the spirit rises, until released from further migration and is joined with the universal spirit

Such a man as the Jew-baiter Ahlwardt, who has just arrived in this country, the Swami cannot understand. "You say," he said, "that he comes here to preach hate against his fellow-men. Is he not of wrong mind? Is he allowed to spread this hate? The doctors should examine his brain to find out the wrong."

The peculiar name of the Yogi signifies, literally, "the bliss of discrimination." He is the first Indian Yogi who ever came to this country. He comes from Bombay.

2

Contrary to the belief generally held by his biographers-a belief traceable to a fairly exaggerated report given by Swami Kripananda in his newsletter of December 7,   1895, to the Brahmavadin-the work of spreading Vedanta had not been particularly successful during Swamiji's absence in England. The actual story, as far as it is known, is contained in letters written to Mrs. Bull by the two workers themselves-Swami Kripananda and Swami Abhayananda. (Aside from these two, Swamiji had authorized no one else to teach, and there is no indication that Miss Waldo was holding classes or l.ecturing during this period.)

After leaving Thousand Island Park on the morning of August I, Kripananda had gone to Buffalo, New York, to visit a German couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Tralles, the latter of whom had earlier become his disciple through correspondence. He stayed two weeks with the Tralleses, most pleased to see their natures undergo "a wonderful change." Before leaving, he gave them the vows of brahmacharya.

And these happy results [he wrote to Mrs. Bull on August g] together with your kind suggestions indicate to me the line of work in which I may hope to be successful. It is not on the public platform but in the family circle where I must try to disseminate the truths brought to us from the east. And it occurs to me that it might prove a blessing for many if I were to walk afoot through the country, for a short time at least; touching towns and villages, and thus reaching people who, otherwise, might  perhaps never have heard of the master's message. I might thus meet some soul thirsting after truth, but groping in the dark, to whom my gospel may prove a blessing. What do you think of this idea? It came to me like an inspiration[9]

It would appear from Kripananda's sub sequent letters that he visited New York around August 15 in order to see Swamiji off on his voyage to Europe. Then, perhaps at Swamiji's advice, he went on to Detroit, where he remained for about a month. During that period he wrote four times to Mrs. Bull telling her of his work and thoughts, and since his own words convey the intense sincerity of his efforts better than any other words could, his story can best be told through a few excerpts from his letters, which were almost always very long. His first letter from Detroit, written about a week after his arrival, was dated August 27:

Well, I have begun under very favorable auspices. So far I held two classes at Mrs. Phelps's residence and we have agreed to meet regularly twice a week. (Mrs. Phelps was a friend of Swamiji's) I have found some brave souls thirsting after truth, the very material Sanyasins are made of, and with the help of the Lord, I trust to be able to lead them to liberation.

As Miss Greenstidle (sic), a teacher of the public schools, at whose house I stopped on my arrival to Detroit, is very poor, having to support a mother and six sisters, I could not well accept her kind offer to stay in her house, and therefore rented a room for $2 1/2 a week. But I am not sure how long I am going to keep the room, as I intend in the days when free of the classes, to make foot excursions to the neighboring towns and so carry out my plans spoken of to you in New York. I find more and more that my chief force consists in individual teaching . . .

I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Mrs. [John J.] Bagley who regularly attends my classes. She is a very lovely woman. She practices meditation under my directions and though I cannot expect to make of her a Sanyasyna [sic], I am sure that she will turn out a good Karma Yogi if not a sincere Bhakti Yogi.[10]

September 6:


Next Monday [September 9) I start a new class which will be composed of poor young men and women. Besides I have got now three individual disciples who earnestly desire to live the life of purity and renunciation. It is these for whom I care most. As regards the others who take up the study of Yoga in the hope of acquiring wonderful powers by means of breathing exercises, I tell them plainly that their hope is for nothing, and . . . their Breathing exercises . . . may result in physical and mental injury for them.... As I do not charge any fee, I am free to teach them what I please; and I am pleased to teach above all Karma Yoga & Bhakti....


As soon as I finish my work here I intend to perfectly isolate myself from the world at least for forty days. I do not know how this thought came to me, but I feel I ought to carry it out.[11]


September 16:

Your kind note with enclosure was received. [Mrs. Bull sent money to Kripananda almost regularly, as did Swamiji.)... The check came this time quite a propos. As I do not charge for my teachings I have to depend on the free contributions of my disciples.. The poor disciples cannot afford to make any contributions . . . while the wealthy ones seem to labor under the mistake that a Sanyasin can live on pure ether. The Lord bless them. What they principally want is to attain the power to make More money.

What I crave for is to find some brave souls who for God's and Truth's sake are willing to give up everything - even their lives. Thanks the Lord, I have found here two such souls. (To one of these two young men, he gave the vows of brahmacharya.)...

I have a class of poor girls, from 18 to 24. Years of age, who are very eager to lead a holy life. Of course, I cannot expect to make of them Sanyasins; but I shall be very happy, if my teachings will turn them from worldly frivolities to God.


I am studying now very hard the Tattvas*(2). a subject which the Swami hardly touched in his lectures, but which seems to me one of the most important and interesting studies in the Science of Yoga. It gives the rationale of the breathing exercises, and opens a vast field of investigation that leads to a true knowledge of our nature.

*(2) By the "Tattvas" Kripananda was very probably referring to a Theosophical work by Rama Prasad entitled Nature's Finer Forces, which included the author's translation from the Sanskrit of the Tantric work "The Science of Breath and the Philosophy of the Tattvas." The "Tattvas," as here defined, were the evolutes of cosmic force. The book dealt to a large extent with psychic phenomena. Its second edition had been published in London in 1894.. (It is also possible, but not likely, that Kripananda had in mind the pancatattva--the five "forbidden" things of Tantric practice, in which case the Detroit ladies could well have been aghast.)

The more I meditate on the Advaita philosophy, the more I come to disagree with Sankaracharya and to accept Ramanuji's (sic) commentary. If this world be a mere illusion-as Sankara would have it-then we have no right to infer a reality behind it. From nothing we cannot infer something (There follows a long discussion of this point.)


Next week I shall carry out my strong longing for a solitary life. I shall take-in a little town in the neighborhood a room, and become entirely invisible to the world. Letters will reach me through the old address.[12]


September 18:

I have closed my classes being with the results achieved very much pleased. Friedeberg writes me from New York that Abhayananda (formerly Mme Marie Louise) had made two Bramacharyas (sic). Now, I am much slower with making Bramacharyas. Many are called but few are chosen.


I shall leave to-morrow for Buffalo where I intend to stay about a week. My presence there is necessitated by my two Bramacharyas who gave proof of their earnestness and sincerity. I feel as though I have to give them strength and courage in one of the most critical periods of their spiritual developments


So, in answer to your question: Would you like to come to see me for a while? I answer: Yes.... I regard your kind invitation as a call from the Lord, and am sure that by following it, some good will result.[13]


The three or four weeks that Swami Kripananda spent in Cambridge with Mrs. Bull and her two other guests, Miss Elizabeth Hamlen and a Mrs. Walling, were extremely happy ones for him, and perhaps for the others as well. In his good moods he could be an interesting and entertaining companion. "He had all the great qualities of his race-emotion, imagination, a passion for learning and a worship of genius," Sister Christine was later to write of him. ". . . His intimate knowledge of Europe, its philosophies, its languages, its culture, gave him a profundity and depth of mind which are rare.'[14]All this would have appealed to Mrs. Bull, and there must have been a flow of good talk between them. It was perhaps one of the few truly happy times of Landsberg's life; indeed, he seems to have had a sense of the oasis like quality of those weeks and a foreboding of difficult days ahead. Returning to New York, he wrote to Mrs. Bull on October 2 r from Miss Thursby's home in Gramercy Park, where he was staying for a few days:


When I look back upon the few weeks of my sojourn in your house, it appears to me as though my soul had spent there the blissful dream of Devachan [sic], and the reminiscence of the continuous calm and peace I enjoy in your presence will brighten and carry me over many a dark and troublesome day that may await me in the futures.


I saw Abhayananda last night, who held a class on the Sankya [sic] philosophy in her house. There were present about 8 or 9 persons. I am surprised to find how much knowledge in so short a time Abhayananda has acquired on these subjects. She looks very well...


As soon as I settle somewhere, I shall begin writing out for you lessons as well as experimental texts of Yoga and the Tattvas.[15]


Kripananda's next letter to Mrs. Bull was a very long one, dated October 27, and read in small part:


Your kind note as usual, helped to strengthen me in my struggles to become perfect. Your letters always bring to me messages of peace, hope and faith, and inspire me with courage, whenever in view of the many obstacles in the way to liberation, my will becomes weak and my soul despondent.


....I have taken quarters at 228 W 39th street.. I am working very hard. In order to get rapidity in shorthand I started a course of 20 lessons in Paine's Business College for $ I 2, taking a lesson every day and then practicing for four or five hours. [Kripananda had started studying shorthand a week or so before going to Thousand Island Park. His purpose was to be able to take down Swamiji's lectures.] Then I study and practice Yoga. By the way, I hope to get ready for you before the end of the week a lesson on the Kundalini, which will help you to more thoroughly understand the rationale of Raja Yoga, and besides give you a certain object for your meditations.


.. Abhayananda has made great progress; she must have studied hard the Hindu philosophy since my absence. I am glad to say that she also practices meditation, a thing which must be very difficult for her lively, mobile French mind.


I shall go this afternoon to Friedebergs in order to look up in my Kabalistic book some appropriate monogram for you and Miss (Mrs.] Walling.[16]


A Day or so later, after consulting his Kabalistic book, Kripananda sent "a seal" to Mrs. Bull along with a very long exposition of the meaning of various Hebrew mantras. He enclosed also a seal for Mrs. Walling. Through November things went on in more or less the same way for him. He continued to practice his shorthand; he prepared long lessons on raja yoga for Mrs. Bull; he took over the Wednesday class of the Vedanta Society from Swami Abhayananda and spoke to the members on the Tattvas. He made two more disciples who were "ready to sacrifice everything for His sake'[17] he had another seal engraved with Hebrew letter's for Mrs. Bull, wrote many pages of spiritual counsel for her, and found her letters "permeated with that spirit of love which I endeavor to nourish in your heart." The Vedanta Society began to hold its classes in his lodging house, and he made "every effort to make the lessons both interesting and instructive.'[18]He lived an exceedingly austere life, eating very little and accepting no money, except, it would seem, from Swamiji and Mrs. Bull.


Meanwhile, Swami Abayananda had also worked earnestly during Swamiji's absence in an effort to spread his teachings and to make disciples. From Thousand Island Park she had gone to her small Greenwich Village house at 179 Waverly Place and had there started to hold classes. "I have worked very hard," she was to declare to Mrs. Bull, "making propaganda, preaching, teaching, talking, writing on Hinduism.'[19] But for all that, the classes were small, a fact for which Abhayananda, proud and quick to take offense, felt the officers of the Vedanta Society were to blame. On November 22 she wrote an outraged letter to Mrs. Bull, which read in part:


Dear Madam,

I have just gone through the strangest experience of my life regarding those classes which I started in accordance to the specific instructions of Swami Vivekananda. The offers of the Society took in their heads that I wanted to teach them! and sent me Kripananda on his return here to tell me that "I try to force myself as a teacher on the society, that I create antagonism and offend every body." He; at that visit, promised me to come to my classes and be present on the following Saturday. But he never came, neither did he ever call on me since although I went to his own class (when he returned here, I vacated the chair at Wednesdays' meeting in his favor) and listened to what he had to say.


Some ladies from Brooklyn and New York attended the meetings in my own house for a few times, but they have been persuaded to discontinue and leave me alone.


Had the officers of the society had any common knowledge of what it is to propagate new ideas they had helped by their presence and other duties required by the starting of such a movement. But they shun my house as if the pest were in it, and have completely isolated me from everyone. It is not to me, they did the harm, but to the cause I endeavor to advocate, the truths I seek to preach. My residence as you know, is not well situated to attract people, the street is too crooked for New Yorkers to find their way easily. I spoke of moving (on my return from the [Thousand] Islands) but was told not to do it.


Indeed, I have moved in organized Societies of all kinds in my life, but I have never met anything so indescribable as the attitude assumed by those who believe themselves entrusted with the piloting of the Society of which I am a Sanyasin. Wonders will never cease.[20 ]


To judge from a letter that Swamiji had written from England to Abhayananda in October of 1895, she had complained to him of her difficulties in somewhat the same vein and had, in addition, evidently expressed an intention, or threat, to defect*(3). The portion of Swamiji's letter that has been published in the Complete Works,**(4) though magnificent in Itself seems harmless. But when it is read as a reply to Abhayananda's grievances, its underlying reproofs suddenly glow like live coals. The following more complete version of this stunning rebuke has recently been found among Mrs. Bull's papers:


*(3) In what he supposed was a defense of Swamiji, Kripananda wrote to Mrs. Bull on December 22, 1895, "Do you know that [Abhayananda] threatened him in spite of all he had done for her--to go over to the Theosophists if he would not satisfy her constant demand for money, more money. Imagine! apart from breaking a sanyasin's pledge not to belong to any society, she joined or threatened to join those who spread the filthiest calumnies against her Guru and benefactor!" Allowing for Kripananda's generally heated views of most matters, we can still assume that Abhayananda had written to Swamiji of the advantages of belonging to an organized and wealthy society, such as the Theosophical Society, which was (cont.) indeed inimical to him at that period.
**(4) As published in the Complete Works (7: 487-88) this letter (the original of which is no longer extant) is addressed to Alasinga. In the Life (first edition, volume 2, pages 396-97), however, it is rightly addressed to Swami Abhayananda. Miss Hamlen made two copies-at Mrs. Bull's behest-a complete copy, of which the last part is missing, and a partial copy, from which the version published in the Complete Works has been taken. Neither copy as found today bears a salutation, but its contents make it certain that the letter was addressed to Abhayananda, not Alasinga.

I received your letter duly (Swamiji wrote) and many thanks to you for it. Perhaps you forget that we have no organization nor want to build any. Each one is quite independent to teach quite free to preach whatever he or she likes, you need not take the least notice who helps you or not, who comes or goes, you do your work whenever you like and in whatever manner you choose, if you have the spirit with in you will never fail to attract others.


The Theosophists' method cannot be ours, for the very simple reason that they are an organized sect-we are not. Nobody is bound to take any teaching from anybody unless he or she likes, nor have I any objections to my pupils going to other persons or societies to learn the truth. Lord bless them all, and so far as I know I teach if they find something beyond and better in any society or organization or person I am only too glad that they should go. Individuality is my motto, I have no ambition beyond training individuals up. I think you can learn much from the Chickering Hall lectures of Mr. Wright, and moreover they being well-to-do people can help you in your material needs a good deal. I am sure they will appreciate you and your efforts very much and as they are nearly in the same line of thought and most probably much more competent than me to express it, I am sure you will find immense help from them. As for me, I again repeat-I form no sect, nor organization-I know very little and that little I teach without reserve. Where I am ignorant I confess it as such and never never am I so glad as when I find people being helped by Theosophists or Christians or Mohammedans or anybody in the world. I am a Sanyasi, as such I hold myself as a servant not as a master in this world. Yet if people love me, they are welcome, if they hate they are also very welcome.


Each one will have to save himself. each one to do his own work. I seek no help, I reject none (seek and none were underscored three times]; nor have I any right in the world to be helped. Whosoever has helped me or will help, it will be their mercy to me, not my right, and as such I am eternally grateful.


I am very sorry your circumstances are so bad-but you know, ma chere fille, I am in a worse plight. In this country (England] I have everything to spend and nothing to gain, the rooms in London alone cost me L3 a week, then many other necessities. To whom shall I complain? It is my own Karma that will have to be worked out, and when I became a Sanyasi I consciously took the step, knowing that perhaps this body will have to die of starvation. What of that? A Sanyasi must never complain. In this world he is a traveller. Come what may, a blessing on all. I am so sorry I can not send you any help from here. I do not know what to advise you. Perhaps the best thing for you will be to identify yourself with some rich organized body as the Theosophists etc. I am a beggar, my friends are poor. I love the poor. I welcome poverty. I am glad that I sometimes have to starve. I ask help of none. What is the use? Truth will preach itself it will not die for the want of the helping hand of me! ! "Making happiness and misery the same, making success or failure the same, fight thou on"-Gita. It is that eternal love, unruffled equanimity under all circumstances and above all perfect freedom from jealousy or animosity that will tell that alone will tell- nothing else. That you do not succeed, is your fault, because you can not attract, because you can not throw out that infinite power of love-who else to blame? I taught you the little that I know, I helped you with half a loaf so long I had one, but I am very sorry I have none now. There is only one friend in all England who gives me food and shelter when I am in need. I am sorry I have no more power to help you. I will be only too glad if any society takes you by the hands, you have talents, you can speak well. The Theosophists especially will be too glad[21] [The remainder is missing.]


(As Swamiji reminded Abhayananda, he had done for her what he could, when he could. "Do you know," Kripananda would write to Mrs. Bull on December 22, 1895, "that for several months [Abhayananda] was supported from the few savings [Swamiji] left here for that purpose?'[22] It is also a fact [learned from her own letters)*(5) that the Vedanta Society paid Abhayananda's rent and some expenses. Swamiji unobtrusively looked after his own as well as he could. Indeed, at one time he took French lessons from Abhayananda-then, perhaps, still Mme Marie Louise-in order to keep her from starving.23 But this is by the way.)

*(5) Swami Abhayananda's available letters are to be found among the papers of Mrs. Ole Bull.

Receiving Abhayananda's letter of November 22, Mrs. Bull, soothing friend to Swamiji's high-strung disciples, invited her to Cambridge for a few days to talk things over. Swami Abhayananda took the train from New York on November 26 in a happy mood; two days earlier she had delivered a successful lecture before the Philosophical Society of Brooklyn. "I was warmly received," she wrote in her reply to Mrs. Bull's invitation, "warmly applauded and I answered my critics in a manner that secured the verdict of the audience in my favor.'[24]


After Swamiji's return to New York in December, Abhayananda made a short and formal call upon him "to pay her respects " ("What nonsense!" Kripananda remarked)[25] and then stayed strictly away from his classes. After a time, Swamiji, together with Miss Waldo, went to see her in her little house on the crooked street in Greenwich Village in order to smooth out whatever may then have been have difficulty.**(6) How far he succeeded is not clear from the available evidence.

**(6) Greenwich Village, an area in the southwest part of New York City, had been actually a village before the city was laid out in a gridiron street plan, in which it then formed a sort of tangle. It was a maze of narrow, twisting streets, which, according to an 1897 account, "lead everywhere and nowhere and wander about in the most irregular ways." In the 1890s Greenwich Village was no longer inhabited by the respectable and sturdy gentry of its earlier days, but neither was it yet the bailiwick of rebel artists and writers. It was a fairly poor district of Irish and Italian immigrants. The houses were on the whole dilapidated, and the rents low. Waverly Place was a crooked, self--crossing street, twisting between Christopher and West Tenth streets. Without Miss Waldo's company, Swamiji would surely have become completely lost trying to find Abhayananda's house.

But be that as it may, it is clear enough that Swami Kripananda and Swami Abhayananda had done everything in their power to propagate Swamiji's message while he was away, and, having come straight from weeks of close association with him at Thousand Island Park, their power could not have been negligible. If in the course of their work they each ignited even one person, turning his or her life toward a spiritual ideal, then their work that autumn was successful. It does not appear to have been the case, however, that they "succeeded in forming new centres . . . at Buffalo, N.Y.; Detroit, Mich. ; and other cities of the Union.'[26]Indeed, as far as can be judged, there was no outward growth of the Vedanta movement during Swamiji's absence. The New York Society had held weekly class meetings and had survived, but that seems to have been all.


Before starting his work, Swamiji had the weekend to recover from his days of illness at sea and to find his land legs once again. We do not know in any detail how he spent Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and most of Monday, but we do know that aside from being interviewed by a reporter from the New York World, one of the first things he did upon his arrival in the city, which he found "very dirty and miserable" after "the clean and beautiful cities of Europe,'[27] was to visit several of his friends. He called, for instance, on the newly wed Mr. and Mrs. Francis Leggett, delivering to these "birds of paradise" packages that Josephine MacLeod had sent in his care from England. "They are as usual very kind," he wrote to Miss MacLeod on Sunday, December 8, and in this same letter he mentioned others on whom he had paid calls. "Saw Mrs. and, Mr. Salomon and other friends. By chance met Mrs. Peak [Peake] at Mrs. Gurnsey's but yet have no news of Mrs. Rothlinburger [Dora Roethlesberger].'[28]


On his way to the Guernseys' he probably walked up Fifth Avenue in the bracing December air. From Thirty-ninth to Fortyfourth Street the Avenue would have been serenely quiet on the weekend, its stone mansions and its churches facing a street empty of all but an occasional brougham or hansom cab drawn by smartly trotting horses. He would have passed the massive, ivy-covered granite wall of the Croton Reservoir and, across the street, the Temple Emanu-El with its twin Moorish towers, and further along a rural meat market and a placid country saloon. This was still the most composed of neighborhoods, but even here one could sense the vitality and exhilaration of a growing world metropolis in which new ideas were continually bubbling over.


As soon as possible Swamiji began his classes, eager, it would seem, to plunge into this second season of his New York work. From Kripananda's letter of December 10 to Mrs. Bull, we learn that his opening class was held on the evening of Monday, the ninth.


The Swami began his work last evening with a lecture [Kripananda wrote], in which he gave a general idea of the various methods of Yoga. He was all Bhakti. The two rooms were crowded, and the movement promises to assume this year immense proportions. Enclosed I send you the dates of the various Yoga classes. Provided the means will be forthcoming, the Swami intends to give free Sunday lectures in a larger Hall.[29]


Unfortunately, the list of classes and their dates is lost, but from a letter Kripananda had written to Mrs. Bull on November 19 we learn something of Swamiji's plans for his coming work:


I expect to see the Swami on or about the first of December. In a letter written to Miss Waldo, he gives the subjects of the discourses he proposes to have in his classes. Among the topics are:--Prana and its modifications; Mind its functions and control; the chief Yoga methods, the Upanishads etc.[30]


It is clear that this season Swamiji wanted to give all aspects of his message a detailed and complete form. Nor did his plan of work pertain to New York alone; from the start he intended to hold classes in Chicago and Detroit. "My plans are not settled yet about the work here," he wrote on Sunday, December 8, to Mrs. Bull, who was at that time visiting Chicago. "Only I have an idea to run to Detroit and Chicago meanwhile, and then come back to New York.... If you think after consulting Mrs. Adams and Miss Locke that it would be practicable for me to come to Chicago for a course of lectures, write to me.'[31] In two letters to Christina Greenstidel, Swamiji also spoke of the possibility of his making a quick tour of Detroit and Chicago. They read in full:


228 W. 39 8th Dec '95

Dear Christina

I am once more on American Soil and have taken lodgings at 228 W. 39 where I begin work from Monday next. Sometime after Christmas I intend to make a tour through Detroit and Chicago.


I do not care for Public lecturings at all-and do not think I shall have any more public lectures charging admission. If you will see Mrs. Phelps & other of our friends and arrange some classes (strictly on nonpayment basis) it will facilitate things a good deal.

Write at your earliest opportunity & give Mrs. Phunkey and all our friends my deepest love & gratitude


Yours ever in the Lord Vivekananda

P.S. Kripananda is over full of praise of you and Mrs Funkey. And sends his loving regards for you.[32]

228 W. 39. Dec 10 1895 

Dear Christina

Perhaps by this time you have received my first letter. I received yours just now.

I had a splendid success in England and have left a Nucleus there to work till my arrival next summer. You will be astonished to learn that some of my strongest friends are big "guns" of the Church of England.

This Christmas I am going away a week from 2q.th Decem to the country with Mr & Mrs Leggett after that I resume my work. In the meanwhile the classes have begun.


I have written to you my intentions of taking a quick turn through Detroit and Chicago in the meanwhile and return back.

Give Mrs Phelps my love and kindly arrange the classes [in Detroit] with her. The best thing is to arrange for a public lecture where I give out my general plan of work-the Unitarian church is available and if the lecture is free there will be a big crowd. The collection most possibly will cover the expenses. Then out of this we will get the materials of a big class and then hurry them through leaving Mrs. Phelps & you & Mrs. Funkey to work on with them.


This plan is entirely feasible & if Mrs Phelps & Mrs Bagley desire it they can work it out very quick.

Ever yours with love &

blessings Vivekananda

But as it happened, Swamiji's New York work was to prove to be too concentrated to admit of his taking "a quick turn through Detroit and Chicago" until the beginning of March, 1896. His full schedule began at once: from December ninth through the twenty-second he held classes twice daily on four days of the week and a question-and-answer class on Sundays.


According to Swami Kripananda (writing to Mrs. Bull on December 27), “the morning lectures are for the advanced class, and the evening lectures for the beginners.'[34]Although Kripananda’s list of the classes is lost, Miss Waldo, writing in 1905, recalls that there were at first nine classes a week.[35]This statement, together with other scraps of information, gives us the following schedule for December:

Monday

Introductory

evening

December 9

Wednesday

Morning 

and evening

December11, 18—Jnana Yoga

Friday

Morning 

and evening

December13, 20—Karma Yoga

Saturday

Morning 

and evening

December14, 21—Raja Yoga

Sunday class

(afternoon?)

December15, 22—Question

Monday

Morning 

and evening

December16, 23—Bhakti Yoga

Even as Swamiji’s schedule settled into a pattern, so also did the “household,” everyone finding his or her own place in the scheme of things. From the day of his arrival in New York until a few days after his classes began, Swamiji shared the two parlor rooms at 228 West Thirty-ninth Street with Kripananda. On December 10 the latter wrote to Mrs. Bull, “Since the Swami arrived, we had common house holding, and I gave my share to defraying the expenses of the victuals.'[36]These victuals were cooked, no doubt, in the community kitchen on the floor below. But shortly the situation changed. AT the crowded preliminary class meeting of December 9, it had become apparent that both parlor rooms would be needed for the morning and evening classes; Kripananda would require a room of his own. Thus, within a few days, he moved to a small room on the top floor of the house, which he called his garret and for which he paid two dollars a week. Concurrently, the task of cooking fell on Sarah Ellen Waldo. As Sister Devamata (Laura Glenn in the 1890s) tells the story in her "Memories of India and Indians," the day following Swamiji's arrival (actually, it was probably not until after the classes had started) he said to Miss Waldo, "The food here seems so unclean, would it be possible for you to cook for me?" She was, of course, delighted.

She went at once to the landlady [Devamata writes] and obtained permission to use the kitchen. Then, from her own store, she gathered cooking utensils and groceries. These she carried with her on the following morning. She lived at the far end of Brooklyn. The only means of transportation was a jogging horsecar, and it required two hours to reach the Swami's lodging at 38th [3gth] Street in New York. [Actually, cable cars ran across the Brooklyn Bridge at intervals of one minute (fare, three cents). But a jogging horse-car could also have been involved in the trip from the New York terminal of the Bridge to West Thirty-ninth Street, and in any event, the daily journey would have been an arduous one.] Undaunted, every morning found her on her way at eight o'clock or earlier; and at nine or ten at night, she was on her way home again.'[37]


Miss Waldo evidently did things with a vigor that swept all before it, and the name "Haridasi" (Servant of the Lord), which Swamiji had given (or was to give) her, seems to have become her well. "[She] moved about doing everything," Devamata writes. "Her service was continuous and untiring. She cooked, edited, cleaned, and took dictation, taught and managed, read proof and saw visitors."


As mentioned earlier, there is no known evidence that Miss Waldo had held Vedanta classes during Swamiji's absence from New York in 1895. The weekly classes of the Vedanta Society had been held by either Swami Abhayananda or Swami Kripananda; nor did Swamiji authorize Miss Waldo to lecture and hold classes until October of 1896, as is clear from a letter he wrote to her at that time. But however that may be, Ellen Waldo was close to him and was among those who best understood his teaching. It was, indeed, because of her ability to grasp his thought so well that he was to entrust her with the final editing of his lectures and class talks. It was she also whom he felt free to scold. "One morning the Swami found Miss Waldo in tears," Sister Devamata relates. " 'What is the matter, Ellen?' he asked anxiously. 'Has anything happened? ‘I seem unable to please you,' she replied. ‘Even when others annoy you, you scold me for it.' The Swami said quickly: 'I do not know those people well enough to scold them. I cannot rebuke them, so I come to you. Whom can I scold if I cannot scold my own?’ “38 Needless to say, Miss Waldo no longer felt his scoldings to be a cause of sorrow; on the contrary, they were thenceforth "a proof of nearness."


Almost at once after the start of Swamiji's classes another change took place in the "household": there appeared on the scene, out of the blue, Josiah John Goodwin--the young man whose work for Swamiji was to be of incalculable importance to the Vedanta movement. On December 12 the officers of the Society had inserted the following want ad in both the Herald and the World:


Wanted-A rapid shorthand writer to take down lectures for several hours a week. Apply at 228 West 39th Street.


Mr. Goodwin must have applied immediately and have been immediately engaged, for those three momentous lines appeared in the papers only once.


It is said in the Life that prior to Goodwin's coming, two stenographers had been tried out and, for one reason or another, been found unequal to the task of recording Swamiji's classes.39 One of them may have been Swami Kripananda, who, as we have seen earlier, had been working very hard for the past six weeks or so to learn shorthand and typing for this very purpose. But though he had worked for hours every day and had become fairly proficient, he was evidently not expert enough for the task. The second applicant, on the other hand, may have been technically skillful but wanting in comprehension. What was required was an expert shorthand writer and typist who was, at the same time, a man of intelligence and spiritual understanding. It would not seem likely that such a person, if available at all, would be available for a job that must have offered a salary lower than the prevailing one of fifteen to eighteen dollars a week. Yet J. J. Goodwin was just such a man. "I have intense faith in Truth," Swamiji had written earlier in the year. "The Lord will send help and hands to work with me.'[40] One cannot very well doubt that Goodwin, a handsome young Englishman recently come to America, was, literally, a godsend. Not only was he fully qualified for the task of taking down and transcribing Swamiji's class talks and lectures, but he was capable, as he soon proved, of handling many other matters as well.


Certainly from Mr. Goodwin's point of view, it was by the grace of God that he had found his way to 228 West Thirty ninth Street. Although he was a very competent young man by the age of twenty-five he had behind him eleven years of journalistic training, experience in editing three newspapers, and a job as court reporter-he was also, one reads in Noble Lives by Nagendranath Gupta, "on the highroad to become a wastrel.'[41]This impending profligacy of Goodwin's was, one thinks, due more to frustration than to an inherent tendency to dissipate his gifts, for, as far as is known, he came from steady minded stock. Although his lineage has not been traced further back than two generations, one finds that his paternal grandfather, the Reverend Josiah Goodwin, was a Wesleyan minister of Scarborough, Yorkshire, and not given, one can guess, to wastry. The reverend's son, Josiah the younger, born in 1817, also followed a stable course, though not in the ministry. Early in life he discovered that he had an aptitude for journalism and, in line with this, became an expert shorthand writer (probably following the new and innovative Pitman system, first published in 1837). This special and then uncommon skill led him to become for a time the official reporter in connection with the disputes and arbitrations attendant upon the first laying of railway lines in England. Subsequently, Yorkshire left behind, he became a successful editor of, in turn, the Birmingham Advertiser, the Wilts County Mirror, and the Exeter Gazette. Exactly when he married and settled down permanently in Batheaston, a suburb of Bath, is not at present known, but it was there that his children, Margaretta and Josiah John, were born, the latter in September of 1870 and there that he became prominent in Bath's literary life. Though quiet and unassuming, he was soon appointed Honorary Secretary of a number of prestigious and learned institutions, including the Literary and Philosophical Association, the Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, and the Bath Centre of the Oxford Examinations. He was esteemed, as well, as an archaeologist (or, one might better say, an antiquarian) in both Bath and Exeter. From 1859 until his death in 1890, his primary responsibility was that of editor of the Journal of the Bath and West of England Agricultural Society, of which he also served as Secretary for some sixteen years, until poor health forced him to resign. From all accounts, Josiah Goodwin, aside from being a well-honored journalist, was a courtly, gentle, industrious, discreet, modest, and kindly man with a well stocked mind, retentive memory, and sound judgment.*(7) He seems to have passed on most of these qualities to his son, our Josiah John, and to have given him in addition a training in journalism and in speedy shorthand. As for the "wastrel" part in the son's makeup, one could suppose that this was a restlessness of soul combined with high spirits, a restlessness that took him (after an unsuccessful newspaper venture in Bath in 1893) to Australia and then to America. He made a living of sorts as he went, editing things here and there, but in the process of this anchorless life his native buoyancy and trust began to bog down in agnosticism and perhaps in despair. And then one cold December day he came to 228 West Thirty-ninth Street.

*(7) Information regarding Josiah Goodwin, father of Josiah John Goodwin, has been gathered from the (conc.) Journal of the Bath and West of England and Southern Counties Society, June 1890, which journal was unearthed through the research of Swami Yogeshananda.

Swamiji's impact upon the young Goodwin was profound and evidently immediate. "The Swami told him many incidents of his past life, and this created such a moral revolution in him," the Life relates, "that henceforth his whole life was changed.'[42]Thus Swamiji sometimes startled a half asleep soul into wakefulness. But it was also, perhaps, his infinite compassion and understanding that attracted Goodwin. "He r' was as simple as a child," we learn from Mr. Gupta, "and ' wonderfully responsive to the slightest show of kindness." Would he not, then, be ready to fall at the feet of one who had ' no word of condemnation, but who offered unconditioned love? Fall at Swamiji's feet is, figuratively, what Josiah Goodwin did. ' Later he spoke of his meeting with Swamiji to Swami Saradananda. "Being poor from childhood, I have gone many places trying to make a living. I have hobnobbed with all kinds of people; they gave me work and a salary, but no one gave me his heart's love. Then in America I met Swami Vivekananda then alone could I understand what love was. So, income or no income, I am caught! Never have I found such a noble being as Swami Vivekananda. One is drawn to him as if to one's very own.'[43]


Goodwin forthwith plunged heart and soul into the Vedanta movement. It is not true, however, as has often been said (in Josephine MacLeod's reminiscences, for instance),[44] that he refused' to accept a salary. Surely if it had been possible for him to work without pay, he would have done so. But it was not possible. When, in connection with a difficulty that will be touched upon in a later chapter, Miss Mary Phillips was to remind him that the members had subscribed his salary among themselves, he replied: "I am a poor man. For the sake of my part in the Vedanta movement, I wish I were not, but I am, and I am not ashamed of it. I simply had to take salary for my work in New York.'[45] The salary, however, was no doubt a small one, possibly barely enough to cover his expenses. Several months earlier--in August of 1896-he had written to Mrs. Bull: "If I am to work for the Vedanta—and my wishes are all that way: I think I may say my heart is thoroughly in the work-I am afraid I shall have to accept bare living, but beyond that I would not consent to any arrangement.'[46]


From the beginning, "he would work day and night over the lectures" the Life tells us, "taking them down stenographically and then typewriting them, all in the same day.'[47]Even if he took down only the advanced morning class, this was in itself a feat, for, as Kripananda wrote in reference to Swamiji's karma yoga class, "These lectures are very long if taken down verbatim.'[48]To keep pace with Swamiji was to have little time to spare, and if there had been an unoccupied room in the same lodging house, Goodwin most probably would have taken it. As it was, he took a room almost directly across the street at 247 West Thirty-ninth, and it was undoubtedly there that he did his typing, going from the morning class to his typewriter and back again to the evening class, or first perhaps to dinner at Swamiji's table.


To sit at Swamiji's table was something Kripananda nowadays refused to do. "I thought it most practicable to live on my own resources and not to be supported by the Swami," he was to write to Mrs. Bull on December 20. "I occupy a small garrett [sic] in the same house for which I pay two dollars a week, and as to my meals, I take once or twice a day a lunch outside, though the Swami has his meals cooked at home. Of course, the Swami insisted upon my sharing his meals with him, but I found it best to live for myself.'[49]


To tell you the truth-entre nous [he continued]-I am much tired of that committee of petticoats, which estranges me more and more from the Swami. They dispose of everything, even the money which comes in as contributions in the classes. They even grudge me, the Swami's Sanyasin, a copy of the Swami's lectures, of which there are furnished several transcripts by the shorthand man [Goodwin], and for which they have no special use. It is for this reason that I am anxious to get a, type-writer of my own, so as not to have to ask their favor.[50]


Of this "committee of petticoats'' we shall say more later. Suffice it at present to note that with classes twice a day, a committee running everything, Miss Waldo everywhere, people , coming and going, temperaments following their own course, and Swamiji an immense and dynamic presence around whom everything revolved-with all this going on, things were abustle and aglow with astonishing life behind the drab front of 228 West Thirtyninth Street.

3

One source of information regarding Swamiji's classes of this season is to be found in an article in the New York Herald of January 19, 1896, written by a reporter who had attended a class on karma yoga. From his very brief and none too astute description of this class ("Its theme was: ‘That which ye sow ye reap, whether of good or evil' "), one suspects that he attended it during December when Swamiji had explained the workings of karma. But however that may be, there was included in this article a summary of Swamiji's teachings on the four yogas, taken, it would appear, from a written statement. The paragraph in question was subheaded "The Doctrine of the Swami" and read:

The following is a brief sketch of the Swami's fundamental teachings:

"Every man must develop according to his own nature. As every science has its methods so has every religion. Methods of attaining the end of our religion are called Yoga, and the different forms of Yoga that we teach are adapted to the different natures and temperaments of men. We classify them in the following way, under four heads: 


"( I ) Karma Yoga-The manner in which a man realizes his own divinity through works and duty.

"(2) Bhakti Yoga-The realization of a divinity through devotion to and love of a personal God.

"(3) Rajah Yoga-The realization of divinity through control of mind.

"(4) Gnana Yoga-The realization of man's own divinity through knowledge.


"These are all different roads leading to the same center-God. Indeed, the varieties of religious belief are an advantage, since all faiths are good, so far as they encourage man to religious life. The more sects there are the more opportunities there are for making successful appeals to the divine instinct in all men."


In Swamiji's class talks on each of the four yogas he adapted the most important paths of spiritual life, as they had been known to the sages of India and as he himself knew them, to the requirements of the modern mind, emphasizing again and again the necessity for the tests of reason and experience, for initiative, strength, and courage, for practice and realization at every step of the way. He did not value any one method above another; each, if followed earnestly and practiced assiduously, would result in "the attenuating of the lower self, so that the real higher Self may shine forth.'[51] While the best path of all was, to his mind, a combination of all four equally perfected, he taught each singly and as complete in itself. He did not in his general teachings recommend any special way; nor did he ask any man or woman to retreat from the world as a necessary means of attaining the highest goal. He did not condemn the world as such, nor did he ignore it as unreal; rather, he deified it, transfigured it: Indeed, when one considers Swamiji's teachings as a whole during this second season in New York; one finds him marking out a way for the active modern man and woman such as had never been defined before. His teachings were more than the orthodox philosophies of. Vedanta and Yoga put into simple and modern language and infused with new power. True, he did indeed infuse them with a tremendous power, but he also gave them a new turn, such as made them fully relevant to and redemptive of an age whose ways and needs were not at all the ways and needs of any previous age on earth and which called for a new mode of spiritual struggle. Keenly aware of this need, he was marking out a new path and opening it to all mankind.


In the following chapter we shall try very briefly and in small measure to discuss Swamiji,s new path. It is enough to say here that his great mind, so vast in scope, so transcendent in quality-a mind that can be called more divine than human -must have been facing problems and producing solutions which involved the destiny of all men and women for centuries ahead. He was to give full utterance to those solutions during the coming year, such as he had not given before. Although there are no incontestable records of the classes he held 'in New York during the spring of 1895, we can assume that while these may not have been different in essence from those he was to hold in the winter of 1895-96, they were, in a sense, preliminary to them and did not constitute so complete and detailed a presentation of his teachings. The very fact that he had felt the need to return to New York would indicate that he had more to say and to do than he had already said and done. The foundation, however, had been laid in the spring of 1895, and it had by no means disappeared.


The Vedanta Society, which he had founded in November of 1894., was still intact, and those who had drawn close to him were still eager to serve him. Aside from the two to whom he had given sannyasa, there were Miss Ellen Waldo, Miss Mary Phillips, Dr. Edward G. Day, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Goodyear, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Leggett, Miss Josephine MacLeod (who, although at the time abroad, was ready to give what support she could), Miss Emma Thursby, and, on her visits to New York, Mrs. Ole Bull. This is to say nothing of the many now mostly anonymous people who had come to his classes in the spring of 1895 and who had been waiting for his return. Then, too, he had close friends and loyal supporters in New York who belonged in a category somewhere between those who worked actively for the Vedanta movement and those who simply listened to him speak. Such may have been the New York attorney Myron H. Phelps, whose name one now and then reads in connection with Swamiji but of whom little more is known. A good majority of all these people must have flocked to his classes as soon as he reopened them in December of 1895.


According to Kripananda, the two parlor rooms could together hold 150 people,[52]but this may have been an overestimate. Writing of this period, Miss Waldo was to recall that all the classes "were attended by large numbers to the full capacity of the rooms,'[53]and the highest figure we have for the class attendance is 120. At first the attendance was generally under 100; yet both rooms, though not full, were always needed-even during the days just before Christmas. "In spite of the holiday engagements," Kripananda wrote to Mrs. Bull on December 22, "people come in great numbers to the classes and always delight in hearing the Swami.'[54] (After the first week in January, when Swamiji began giving public lectures, the class attendance would grow. "The classes are constantly increasing," Kripananda was to write on January 14. "We have now in the average from 70 to 80 people.'[55] And in February Swamiji would write to Sturdy, "The general attendance varies between 70 and 120.")[56]


But if the attendance at Swamiji's classes was relatively small, it was, in a sense, selective. "I could have thousands at my lectures if I wanted them," he remarked in New York to a disciple who had expressed regret that his sublime teachings had no larger following. "It is the sincere student who will help to make this work a success and not merely the large audiences. If I succeed in my whole life to help one man to reach freedom, I shall feel that my labours have not been in vain, but quite successful.'[57] Again, he was to say during the course of a bhakti yoga class, “Perhaps only half a dozen men and women will follow me in all my life, but they will be real men and women, pure and sincere, and I do not want a crowd. What can crowds do? The history of the world was made by a few dozens, whom you can count on your fingers, and the rest were a rabble.'[58]


Sincerity was the only requirement for regular attendance at Swamiji's Classes, and aside from the automatic selection that took place (either one was sincere to start with, shortly became sincere, or dropped away) there were no prerequisites. All kinds came, many to both morning and evening classes, avidly drinking in every word-the women in long sweeping skirts, balloon sleeves, furs, and hats topheavy with flowers, fruit, feathers, and ribbons, the men in dark suits, ulsters, derbies and spats; but some, perhaps most, were plain and variously unfashionable. From Sister Devamata we learn something of these people. Unfortunately, by the time she wrote about the first and second seasons of Swamiji's New York work the two years had become somewhat confused in her memory, but while this robs her reminiscences of their value as a historical account, their several parts, when unscrambled, present us with clear, easily placed pictures of his life in New York, such as one cannot find elsewhere. The following paragraphs, for instance, apply essentially to the second season. She wrote:


It was a heterogeneous gathering at the classes in those shabby lodgings-old and young, rich and poor, wise and foolish; stingy ones who dropped a button in the collection basket, and more generous ones, who gave a dollar bill or even two. We all met day after day and became friends without words or association. Some of us never missed a meeting. We followed the course on BhaktiYoga and the course on Jnana-Yoga. We walked simultaneously along the paths of Raja-Yoga and Karma Yoga. We were almost sorry that there were only four Yogas. We would have liked six or eight, that the number of classes might be multiplied....

The faithful group that followed the Swami wherever he spoke were as relentless as they were earnest. If he suggested tentatively omitting a class because of a holiday or for some other reason, there was a loud protest always. This one had come to New York specially for the teaching and wished to get all she could; another was leaving town soon and was unwilling to lose a single opportunity of hearing the Swami. They gave him no respite. He taught early and late. Among the most eager were a number of teachers, each with a blank book in hand; and the Swami's words were punctuated by the tap of their pencils taking rapid notes. Not a sentence went unrecorded; and I am sure that if, later, anyone had made the circuit of the New York Centres of New Thought, Metaphysics, or Divine Science, they would have heard everywhere Vedanta and Yoga in more or less diluted form.[59]


Sister Devamata was, perhaps, too close to Swamiji's classes to be able to judge how the gathering might appear to a disinterested stranger, but we have also the impression of one who visited the class solely to observe it. In the Herald article quoted above, the reporter wrote of the "well-dressed audience of intellectual appearance." He picked out among the group of "between fifty and a hundred persons," not religious teachers avidly taking notes, but "doctors and lawyers, professional men and society ladies." And one could surely find scattered here and there people known to the world at large. In addition to Emma Thursby, who had sung before kings and been feted on both continents, there would be Antoinette Sterling, recently come from London, where she had been the most famous ballad singer of the 188os. One might find the writers Mary Mapes Dodge and Kate Douglas Wiggin, both of whom took an active interest in Swamiji's work, and the popular poetess Ella Wheeler Wilcox, who, with her husband, always found in his classes "the same uplifted sense of soul and enlarged g vision. Again, among the teachers and students of metaphysics there might be the aristocratic Mrs. May Banks-Stacey, one of the founders of the Rosicrucian Order in the United States and Matre of the Grand Lodge of America, who is said to have "studied the mysteries of Hindoo philosophy under Swami Vivekananda.'[61] And now and then one would perhaps see the great scientist, Nikola Tesla, who was to take time off from his continuous work to attend Swamiji's public lectures.


From the same newspaper report we learn that Swamiji, in his ochre robe, sat between the two parlor rooms; the students, rich and poor, famous and unknown, grouped on either side of him. Some may have sat on sofas or divans upholstered in plush or horsehair, others on straight-backed chairs . rented or borrowed for the purpose. (Earlier in the year many of Swamiji's students-in both New York and London-had sat, perforce, on the floor, and this may also have been so at Thirty-ninth Street.) But wherever and however Swamiji's listeners sat, they were absorbed not only in his words, but in Swamiji himself. "He is possessed of a large amount of personal magnetism, " the Herald reporter wrote in the same article. "One has but to glance at the grave, attentive faces of the men and women who attend his classes to be convinced that it is not the man's subject alone that attracts and holds his disciples.... Following the lecture or instruction, the Swami held an informal reception, and the magnetism of the man was shown by the eager manner in which those who had been listening to him hastened to shake hands or begged the favor of an introduction.'[62]


It was, indeed, difficult to distinguish Swamiji from his message. Like all great prophets, he was his message, the embodiment of it, and almost all who were drawn to the one seem to have been drawn to the other also. At first, some had come to him simply as to one more religious teacher, including him in their rounds of incessant lecture-going. "We were insatiable knowledge-seekers," Devamata writes of herself and her friends, referring now to the spring of 1895. "We did not limit ourselves to any one doctrine or scripture. We went to one lecture in the morning, a second one in the afternoon, and sometimes to a third in the evening. Philosophy, metaphysics, astrology, each had its turn. Yet, although we seemed to scatter our interest, our real loyalty belonged to the Swami. We recognized in him a power that no other teacher possessed. It was he alone who was shaping our thought and conviction.'[63]


Soon Devamata (then Laura Glenn) and her friends no longer even seemed to scatter their interest. "Through the late winter and spring of 1895," she writes (meaning, as the context makes clear, the winter of 1895-1896), "the work-carried on without the intermittence of the earlier teaching-gained tremendous momentum and fervor. We divided our interest no longer. It was wholly focussed on the message the Swami had to give. That had become the foundation of our daily living, the stimulus that urged us onward.'[64] It is little wonder that it was so. Speaking of Swamiji's power to revolutionize the world, Swami Turiyananda once said, "[He] used to tell us, 'Do you think I only lecture? I know I give tangible, living spirituality to them, and they know they receive it.' In New York Swamiji was lecturing to a class. Oh, the tremendous effect of it! K. [Swami Abhedananda] said that while listening to the lecture he felt as if some force was drawing the Kundalini up, as at the time of meditation.'[65] (The reference here was to a class held in New York in 1900, but in 1895 and 1896 Swamiji's power was no less.)


To be stirred to one's depths was not always a comfortable experience. Even Laura Glenn, who attended all his New York classes through two seasons, felt so shy in his presence that she never came "in close personal touch with him. " "There seemed," she wrote, "to be an intangible barrier.'[66]Some people reacted with more than shyness. In the Life an unidentified disciple is quoted as having said, "It would be impossible for me to describe the overwhelming force of Swamiji's presence. He could rivet attention upon himself: and when he spoke in all seriousness and intensity-though it seems wellnigh incredible-there were some among his hearers who were literally exhausted. The subtlety of his thought and arguments swept them off their feet. In one case, I know of a man who was forced to rest in bed for three days as the result of a nervous shock received by a discussion with the Swami. His personality was at once awe-inspiring and sublime. He had the faculty of literally annihilating one if he so chose.'[67]


But while Swamiji's personality alarmed some and caused others to take to their beds, it attracted far more, for his extraordinary power was penetrated through and through with a consummate benevolence and simplicity. "Those who feared to be caught in the current of this great power were but few " Sister Christine wrote;' "the others by thousands were drawn with the irresistible force, even as iron filings to a magnet. He had the power of attraction so great, that those who came near him, men and women alike, even children, fell under the magic spell he cast'[68]--and, one might add, even animals. "Even my dog-an Irish setterfelt this," Sister Devamata wrote. "He would stand perfectly still and a quiver would run through his body whenever Swamiji would lay his hand on his head and tell him he was a true Yogi.'[69]

4

As we have seen earlier, Swamiji's bhakti yoga classes were held in December on Mondays-two classes on the sixteenth and two on the twenty-third. These were all beginners classes; nor do the original transcripts of them constitute, as one might suppose, the first chapters of Swamiji's book Bhakti-yoga. Rather, they are published in volume four of the Complete Works as the first four sections of "Addresses on Bhakti-Yoga."*(8) Indeed, the "Addresses on Bhakti-Yoga" comprise six of the seven (or perhaps nine) bhakti yoga classes for beginners (both morning and evening) that Swamiji held in December and January of this second season, It is owing to a blessed blunder on the part of Mr. Sturdy that these six have been published.

*(8) "Addresses on Bhakti-Yoga" (Complete Works, 4: 360), together with Swamiji's New York lecture "Bhakti Yoga" or, as in the Complete Works (2 : 38-53), "Bhakti or Devotion," constitute the book Religion of Love by Swami Vivekananda (Calcutta: Udbodhan Office, 1907).

As the bhakti yoga classes (and other classes as well) were taken down and transcribed, they were sent to Mr. Sturdy in England for the classes he was there conducting. "I will send you a copy of each (class lecture] as it is finished," Swamiji informed Sturdy in a heretofore unpublished passage of a letter written on December 23, 1895. "Perhaps you may find in them some suggestions for your classes there.'[70]Thinking to promote Swamiji's work in London, Sturdy published the transcripts of the karma yoga classes and those of bhakti yoga in two very well got up little books; he also brought out some of the raja yoga classes in pamphlet form-all without a word to Swamiji. This was to cause no little indignation among the officers of the New York Society, to whom Swamiji had given the rights of publication. The point to be made here, however, is that Mr. Sturdy's rush into print was not wholly unfortunate, for it has preserved for us the classes almost as they came from Swamiji's lips. "These addresses," Sturdy wrote in a note for his publications, ". . . are reprinted with very slight modifications as reported by the shorthand writer.'[71]The first part of Bhakti-yoga, on the other hand, while similar in substance (and often in wording) to Swamiji's beginners classes, actually consists of articles written by him in December and January, typed by Swami Kripananda, and sent to Madras for publication in the Brahmavadin and, later, in book form.


It is in the "Addresses," therefore, that we find Swamiji's words as he spoke them directly to the students in his beginners class, scolding them at times for their intellectual scorn of an "anthropomorphic" Personal God and at other times for running after psychic phenomena-ghosts and hobgoblins and "all these creepy things.'[72]"Whenever we attempt to make an image of God we make a caricature of Him," he said to the intellectuals, "because we cannot understand Him as anything higher than man, so long as we are men. The time will come when we transcend our human nature, and know Him as He is; but so long as we are men we must worship Him in man. Talk as we may, try as we may, we cannot see God except as a man.... Religion is realisation, and you must make the sharpest distinction between talk and realisation....If anyone [other than a Paramahamsa, a knower of God] tells you he is not going to worship God as man, take care of him. He is an irresponsible talker, he is mistaken; his religion is for frothy thinkers, it is intellectual nonsense.'[73]This passage, which is also (with variations) in Bhakti'—Yoga, continues in "Addresses" alone:


It is absolutely necessary to worship God as man, and blessed are those races which have such a "God-man" to worship. Christians have such a God-man in Christ; therefore, cling close to Christ; never give up Christ. That is the natural way to see God; see God in man. All our ideas of God are concentrated there. The great limitation Christians have is that they do not heed other manifestations of God besides Christ. He was a manifestation of God; so was Buddha; so were some others, and there will be hundreds of others. Do not limit God anywhere. Pay all the reverence that you think due to God, to Christ; that is the only worship we can have. God cannot be worshipped; He is the immanent Being of the universe. It is only to His manifestation as man that we can pray.[74]


And to the mysterymongers he went on to say:

But you must not mix up Christ or Buddha with hobgoblins flying through the air, and all that sort of nonsense. Sacrilege! Christ coming into a spiritualistic seance to dance! I have seen that pretence in this country. It is not in that way that these manifestations of God come. The very touch of one of them will be manifest upon a man; when Christ touches, the whole soul of man will change.... The great strength of Christ is not in His miracles or His healing. Any fool could do those things, fools can heal others, devils can heal others. I have seen horrible demoniacal men do wonderful miracles.... I have seen fools heal at a glance, by the will, the most horrible disease. These are powers, truly, but often demoniacal powers.... So in worshipping Christ, in praying to Him, we must always remember what we are seeking. Not those foolish things of miraculous display, but the wonderful powers of the Spirit which makes man free, gives him control over the whole of nature, takes from him the badge of slavery, and shows God unto him.[75]


Or again Swamiji scolded his class for a "shopkeeping" religion-the asking of God for small material things, among which he included heaven.


The first task in becoming a Bhakta [he said, and I quote from an unedited transcript] is to give up all such desires for material things and even for heaven. Such a heaven would not be much different from this earth. We have here some miseries and some happiness; we will just have a little less, or a little more. There will be no more light than we have here; it will be the result of our good deeds; perhaps plenty to eat, or perhaps very little. Perhaps we will have the power to fly like bats through the air, and jump through walls, and play all sorts of tricks, to dance in some seance room. To my mind, it is better to go to the nether regions than to run a spiritualistic camera. The Christian's idea of heaven is of a place of intensified sensual enjoyment. How can that be God?


You have had such heavens hundreds of times, and had to tumble down again. The question is how to get rid of these laws of nature.... We have become so unhinged and unnatural, that nothing natural will satisfy us. Every nerve is full of poison and morbidity, and we are always grasping after morbid things and must have unnatural excitement and unnatural food and drink and surroundings of life. The air must be poisoned first and then we can breathe. As to fear, what are our lives but bundles of fear? We are afraid of catching cold every day, we are afraid of what we eat, we are afraid of man....


How are we to break ourselves of this, that is the question: It is all very well to say we are men and human beings. I find Utilitarians stand up and say, "Don't talk of God and all these things; we can't know anything about them; let us live happily in this world." 1 would be the first to do so if we could, but the world will not allow us. As long as you are a slave of nature, how can you ? . . . This external unquenchable thirst! Always wanting for something. When a man is a beggar he wants money, money, money. When he has money he wants other things -society, and after that something else. Never at rest. How are we to quench this eternal desire? If we get to heaven our desires will only be increased.... After all, this desire to go to heaven is a desire after enjoyment. This is to be given up. It is too little, too vulgar a thing to go to heaven for you to think of. It is just the same as thinking I will become a millionaire and a very powerful man. There are many of these heavens, but through them you cannot gain the right to enter the gates of religion and love.[76]


With these words, spoken on the evening of December 23, Swamiji closed his Bhakti yoga classes for the Christmas holidays.

Both Mr. Sturdy's edition of Swamiji's karma yoga classes and the New York edition, which we know today, follow more or less the same sequence of classes, and neither of them gives a hint of which are beginners classes and which advanced. This distinction may not greatly matter, but in trying to follow the morning and evening courses as Swamiji gave them, it would, I think, be helpful to know which is which. I have, therefore, tried to sort them out with the help of Swami Kripananda's dated transcripts, five of which have recently been found among Mrs. Bull's papers. From these one learns that "Karma in Its Effect on Character" arid "We Help Ourselves, Not the World" are beginners classes and that "Each Is Great in His Own Place," "Non-Attachment Is Complete Self Abnegation," and "Freedom" are advanced classes. Around these posts the rest seem to fall into place like this: Beginners Course: "Karma in Its Effect on Character," "What is Duty?" "We Help Ourselves, Not the World," and "The Ideal of Karma Yoga." Advanced Course: "Each Is Great in His Own Place," "The Secret of Work," "NonAttachment Is Complete Self Abnegation," and "Freedom."


One finds, I believe, that each of these two sets of four lectures leads the mind from one step to the next without a sense of contradiction, repetition, or confusion. The early practice of karma yoga, in which the aspirant cheerfully and as selflessly as possible performs the duty contingent upon the circumstances of his life, leads to the advanced practice in which the motive of duty is left behind and work is done for its own sake, without compulsion and with the increasing insight and love that come with detachment.


One drawback to this suggested reading of the American edition of Karma--Yoga is that it requires some adjustments or, rather, the undoing of adjustments. It would appear from a comparison with Mr. Sturdy's London edition (now long out of print) that in order to give smoothness and a certain logic to the present sequence of chapters, someone in New York-perhaps Miss Waldo, presumably with Swamiji's consent-made several transpositions, interpolations, and omissions. It would be tedious to describe here all these editorial alterations; let us just say that without them the classes within each series, as listed above, follow easily and obviously one after the other.


As for the main text of the classes, Sturdy's unauthorized but, as he avowed, virtually unedited publication again serves us well. Through its pages, excerpts from which have been published (though not identified) in volume five of the Complete Works, one can hear Swamiji speak freely and energetically to his students of the pitfalls along this spiritual path. Even as he stressed again and again the necessity for practice in every path, for becoming inwardly pure and capable of selfless action, for realizing the truths of religion, so also he pointed out the multiple traps into which one could so easily step, the subtly self serving and self deceiving acts which passed for idealism and virtue but which, in fact, subverted them.


The reformer's single-minded zeal was one of the distortions of "selfless activity" that he inveighed against, at times, as in the following passage, amicably and with humor, but tellingly nonetheless:


You see these wine fanatics and cigar fanatics. Some [people] think that if men give up smoking cigars the world will be a millennium, and the women are generally these fanatics.... There was a young lady here one day, in this class. She was one of a number of ladies in Chicago who have built a little house where they take the working people, and give them some music, and gymnastics. One day this young lady was talking about these evils and said she knew the remedy. I said, "How do you know ?" and she said, "Don't you know the Hull House?"*(9) In her opinion this Hull House is the great panacea for all the evils that the flesh is heir to. This will grow upon her; I am very sorry for her. There are some fanatics in India who think if a woman can get two or three husbands it will cure all evil. This is fanaticism, and when you know that this world is a dog's curly tail and will never straighten, you will never be fanatics. Fanatics can never do real work. When I was a boy I thought that fanaticism was a great element in work, but now, as I grow older, I find out that it is not. If there was no fanaticism in the world the world would make much more progress than it does now.... There may be a man who goes about cheating people, there is no trusting him, no woman is safe near him. But perhaps that blackguard does not drink wine. He sees nothing good in anyone who drinks wine; all these wicked things that he does are of no consideration. It is the natural human selfishness and onesidedness. Whatever you do or possess you think the best in the world, and those things you do not possess are of no value.... Do you not remember in your own history how these "Mayflower" people came and began to call themselves Puritans; they were very pure and good as far as they went, until they began to persecute other people, and throughout the history of humanity it is the same. I have read of two wonderful ships. The first was Noah's Ark and the second the "Mayflower." The Jews say that out of Noah's Ark all creation has come, and the Americans say that out of the "Mayflower" nearly half the people have come. I scarcely meet one who does not say, "My grandfather or great-grandfather came out of the 'Mayflower'."

*(9) Hull House was the famous Settlement House in Chicago founded in 1889 by Jane Addams. Swamiji did not of course discredit its charitable service of the poor-except as a solution in itself to all the ills of the world.

...Fanatics only make hatred in the world. Do you mean to say these fanatics love these poor fellows who become drunkards? They are simply fanatics because they want to get something out of it.... They have no sympathy, and as soon as you come out of the company of fanatics you will begin to love and to sympathise, and the more you get of this love and sympathy, the less will be the power of cursing these poor fellows, but you will sympathise rather with their faults.[77]


Again in Sturdy's Karma—Yoga one hears Swamiji on the subject of "helping the world." The following passage differs in some respects from the parallel passage in volumes one and five of the Complete Works, notably in its greater length, and it is perhaps as close as we can come to what was actually said:


"Those whose whole soul is gone into the Self, whose desires are confined in the Self, who have ever become associated with the Self, for them there is no work." A ship once passed over a mountain of magnet and all the bolts and bars were drawn out, and it went to pieces. It is in ignorance that all struggles remain, because we are alt really Atheists. Real Theists can never work. We are all Atheists more or less; we do not see God, believe in Him. He is G-O-D to us, and nothing more. There are moments when we think He is near, but then we fall down again. When you see Him, who struggles for whom? Help the Lord! There is a proverb in our language, "Shall we teach the Architect of the Universe how to build?" So those are the highest of mankind who do not work. The next time you use these silly phrases of the world, and how we must all help God, do this, and do that for Him, remember this. Do not think it; it is too selfish. All the work you do is subjective, for your own benefit. God has not fallen into a ditch for you and me to help Him out by building a hospital or something of that sort. He allows you to work. He allows you to exercise in this great gymnasium, not to help Him, but to help yourself. Do you think even an ant will die for want of your help? Most arrant blasphemy! Do you think you can help the least thing in this universe? You cannot. You only help yourself in this gymnasium of the Lord. He allows you to work, and it is in order to help yourself. This is the attitude of work. If you work in this way you will never be attached. If you always remember that it is a privilege which has been given to you. The world does not need you at all. This world goes on. Millions of men and women in this world think . . . they are great ones, and when they die they are like a drop in the ocean; nobody thinks of them. God is living infinitely.... Blessed are we that we are given the privilege, allowed the great privilege of working for Him, not helping Him.[78]


As for the dates of the eight karma yoga classes, Swamiji almost certainly held them on the Friday mornings and evenings of December 13 and 20, and January 3 and 10. Of the two outside dates we can be positive: we know that the class "Each Is Great in His Own Place" was held on Friday, December 13, it having been published in the Brahmanadin of February 1 1896, together with information regarding its date; further, as mentioned earlier, a dated transcript of the class "Freedom" has recently come to light, leaving no doubt that it was held on the morning of Friday, January.10


We can be certain that Swamiji held his December jnana yoga classes on the Wednesdays of the eleventh and the eighteenth, and almost certain of what they were. As will be seen in the following chapter, we have recently been able to identify all of the jnana yoga classes of January and February of 1896, and in the light of this knowledge, as well as in the light of their own nature and tone, it is reasonable to infer that the notes of at least two of the jnana yoga classes of December 1895, are published in the Complete Works as "Introduction to Jnana Yoga" (volume six) and "Steps to Realisation" (volume one). Further, two dated transcripts of Swami Kripananda's that have recently surfaced give us two more classes: the advanced class "Cosmology" (volume two) and a heretofore unknown introduction to the beginners (evening) jnana yoga class, which for convenience let us temporarily entitle "The First Step towards Jnana." In December, then, Swamiji's beginners jnana yoga classes, held on the evenings of December 11 and 18, were, respectively, "The First Step towards Jnana " and "Steps to Realisation." His advanced (morning) classes were probably "Introduction to Jnana Yoga" and certainly "Cosmology" (also known as "Sankhya Cosmology"). Of the advanced classes we shall speak in a later chapter; let me here quote at some length from the heretofore unknown introductory and most wonderful beginners class, "The First Step," that Swami Kripananda ably took down (Mr. Goodwin had not yet appeared on the scene) typed out, and sent to Mrs. Bull, among whose papers it has been preserved for all these years. Here are some excerpts:


The word Jnana means knowledge. It is derived from the root "jna"-to know-the same word from which your English word to know is derived. Jnana Yoga is yoga by means of knowledge. What is the object of the Jnana Yoga? Freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom from our imperfections, freedom from the misery of life. Why are we miserable? We are miserable because we are bound. What is the bondage ? The bondage is of nature. Who is it that binds us? We, ourselves.


The whole universe is bound by the laws of causation. There cannot be any thing, any fact, either in the internal or in the external world that is uncaused, and every cause must produce an effect. Now this bondage in which we are is a fact. It need not be proved that we are in bondage. For instance: I would be very glad to get out of this room through this wall, but I cannot; I would be very glad if I never became sick, but I cannot prevent it; I would be very glad not to die, but I have to; I would be very glad to do millions of things that I cannot do. The will is there, but we do not succeed in accomplishing the desire. When we have any desire and not the means of fulfilling it, we get that peculiar reaction called misery. Who is the cause of desire? I, myself. Therefore I myself am the cause of all the miseries I am in.


Misery begins with the birth of the child. Weak and helpless he enters the world. The first sign of life is weeping. Now, how could we be the cause of misery, when we find it at the very beginning? We have caused it in the past.


(Here Swamiji entered into a fairly long discussion of "the very interesting theory called Reincarnation." He then continued:]

We learn that in the first place we have been existing eternally; in the second place that we are the makers of our own lives. There is no such a thing as fate. Our fives are the result of our previous actions, our Karma, and it naturally follows that, having been ourselves the makers of our Karma, we must also be able to unmake it.


The whole gist of Jnana Yoga is to show humanity the method how to undo this Karma. A caterpillar spins a little cocoon around itself out of the substance of its own body, and at last finds itself imprisoned. It may cry and weep and howl there; nobody will come to its rescue, until it becomes wise and then comes out a beautiful butterfly. So with these our bondages. We are going around and around ourselves through countless ages, and now we feel miserable, and cry and lament over our bondage. But crying and weeping will be of no avail. We must set ourselves to cutting these bondages.


The main cause of all of bondage is ignorance. Man is not wicked of his own nature, not at all. His nature is pure, perfectly holy. Each man is divine. Each man that you see is a God by his very nature. This nature is covered by ignorance, and it is ignorance that binds us down. Ignorance is the cause of all misery. Ignorance is the cause of all wickedness, and knowledge will make the world good. Knowledge will remove all misery. Knowledge will make us free. This is the idea of Jnana Yoga: knowledge will make us free! What knowledge? Chemistry? Physics? Astronomy? Geology? They help us a little, just a little. But the chief knowledge is that of your own nature. "Know thyself." You must know what you are, what your real nature is. You must become conscious of that infinite nature within. Then your bondages will burst. . .


. . . There are various ways to know this Self, but in Jnana Yoga it takes the help of nothing else but sheer intellectual reasoning. Reason alone, intellect alone, rising to spiritual perception, show what we are. There is no question of believing. Disbelieve everything-that is the idea with the jnani. Believe nothing and disbelieve everything; that is the first step. Dare to be a rationalist. Dare to follow reason wherever it leads you.


We hear every day people say all around us: "I dare to reason." It is, however, a very difficult thing to do. I would go two hundred miles to look at the face of the man who dares to reason and follow reason. Nothing is easier to say, and nothing is more difficult to do. We are bound to follow superstitions all the time, old, hoary superstitions, either national or belonging to humanity in general, superstitions belonging to family, to friends, to country, to fashion, to books, to sex, and to what not. Talk of reason! Very few people reason, indeed. You hear a man say, "Oh, I don't like to believe in anything, don't like to grope through darkness. I must reason." And so he reasons. But when reason smashes to pieces things that he hugs unto his breast he says, "No more! This reasoning is all right until it breaks my ideals. Stop there!" That man would never be a jnani. That man will carry his bondage all his life and his life to come. Again and again he will come in the power of death. Such men are not made for Jnana. There are other methods for them, as Bhakti, Karma, or Raja Yoga, but not Jnana.[79]


I want to prepare you by telling that this method can only be followed by the boldest. Do not think that the man who believes in no church, belongs to no sect, or the man who boasts of his unbelief is a rationalist. Not at all. In modern times it is rather bravado to do anything like that.


To be a rationalist requires more than unbelief. You must be able not only to reason, but also to follow the dictates of your reason. If reason tells you that this body is an illusion, are you ready to give it up? Reason tells you that heat and cold are mere illusions of your senses; are you ready to brave these things? If reason tells you that nothing that the senses convey to your mind is true, are you ready to deny your sense perception? If you dare, you are a rationalist.


It is very hard to believe in reason and follow truth. This whole world is full either of the superstitious or half hearted hypocrites. I would rather side with superstition and ignorance than stand with these half hearted hypocrites. They are no good. They stand on both sides of the river.


Take anything up, fix your ideal and follow it out boldly unto death. That is the way to salvation. Half heartedness never led to anything. Be superstitious, be a fanatic if you please, but be something. Be something, show that you have something; but be not like these shilly-shallyers with truth, these jacks-of all-trades, who just want to get a sort of nervous titillation, a dose of opium, until this desire after the sensational becomes a habit. The world is getting too full with such people. Contrary to the apostles who, according to Christ, were the salt of the earth, these fellows are the ashes, the dirt of the earth. So let us first clear the ground and understand what is meant by following reason, and then we will try to understand what the obstructions are in our following reason.


The first obstruction in our following reason is our unwillingness to go to truth; we want truth to come to us. In all my travels, most people told me: "Oh, that is not a comfortable religion you talk; give us a comfortable religion!" I do not understand what they mean by this "comfortable religion. " I was never taught any comfortable religion in my life. I want truth for my religion; whether it be comfortable or not...These people have got into a rut, and they do not dare to get out of it. Truth must apologize to them....


As children we all think that the world is made so very nice, and that masses of pleasures are simply waiting our going out into it. That is every schoolboy's dream. And when he goes out into the world, the everyday world, very soon his dreams vanish. So with nations. When they see how every city is built upon ruins, every forest stands upon a city, then they become convinced of the vanity of this world. All the power of knowledge and wealth once made has passed away; all the sciences of the ancients, lost, lost forever; nobody knows how. That teaches us a grand lesson. Vanity of vanities; all is vanity and vexation of the spirit. If we have seen all this, then we become disgusted with this world and all it offers to us. This is called vairagyam, non--attachment, and is the first step towards knowledge.


The natural desire of man is to go towards the senses. His turning back, away from the senses, takes him back to God. So the first lesson we have to learn is to turn away from the vanities of the world. How long will you go on sinking and diving down, and going up for five minutes to again sink down, again come up and sink, and so on, tossed up and down? How long will you be whirled on this wheel of Karma, up and down, up and down? How many thousands of times have you been kings and rulers, how many times have you been surrounded by wealth and plunged into poverty? How many thousands of times have you been possessed of the greatest powers? But again you had to become men, rolling down on this mad rush of Karma's waters. This tremendous wheel of Karma stops neither for the widow's tears or the orphan's cry. How long will you go on? How long? Will you be like that old man who had spent all his life in prison and when let out begged to be brought back into his dark and filthy dungeon cell? This is the case with us all! We cling with all [our] might to this low, dark, filthy cell called this world, to this hideous, chimerical existence where we are kicked about like a football by every wind that blows. We are slaves in the hands of nature, slaves to a bit of bread, slaves to praise, slaves to blame, slaves to wife, to husband, to child, slaves to everything.... Do you call that love? Not I. This is mere desire, animal desire, nothing more. Turn back from these things. Is there no end to these hideous dreams ? Put a stop to them.


...True civilization does not mean to congregate in cities and live a foolish life, but going Godward, controlling the senses, and thus becoming ruler in this house of the Self. Think of the slavery in which we are. Every beautiful form I see, every sound of praise I hear immediately attracts me; every word of blame I hear immediately repels me. Every fool has an influence over my mind. Every little movement in the world makes an impression upon me. Is this a life worth living? So when you have realised the misery of this physical existence, when you become convinced that such a life is not worth living, you have made the first step towards Jnana.[79]


In Swamiji's next beginners jnana yoga class (entitled in the Complete Works "Steps to Realisation" and in Prabuddha Bharata [1897], where it was first published, "Sadhanas or Preparations") he continued with the further prerequisites of jnana yoga: the six steps of sensory and mental control; intense desire for freedom; and discrimination between the Real and the unreal. Their purpose was not, as might be thought in connection with this path and in connection with Swamiji's emphasis on reason, to clarify the intellect as such but rather to deepen and purify the heart, for, as he said, "the pure heart is the best mirror for the reflection of truth." By "heart" in this context Swamiji did not, of course, mean the devotional love of the bhakta but the unclouded knowledge of the jnani the insight into the underlying meaning of things and the selfless, reverential, and uncompromising response that such insight evokes. "These preparations will make us pure and light," he said. "Bondages will fall off by themselves, and we shall be buoyed up beyond this plane of sense-perception to which we are tied down." And there was a grand ending to this class: "Every being that is in the universe has the potentiality of transcending the senses; even the little worm will one day transcend the senses and reach God. No life will be a failure; there is no such thing as failure in the universe. A hundred times man will hurt himself, a thousand times he will tumble, but in the end he will realise that he is God.... No one will be lost.'[80]


There is little doubt that four of Swamiji's raja yoga classes were also held in December, on the Saturdays of the fourteenth and the twenty-first, and that the evening classes consisted roughly of what now constitutes chapters one and two of the book Raja-Yoga and the morning, or advanced, classes, of his introduction to Patanjali's "Yoga Aphorisms" and his commentary on about half of its first chapter. On Monday, December 23, Swamiji wrote to Mr. Sturdy, "I have now taken up the Yoga Sutras, and take them up one by one and go through all the commentaries along with them. These talks are all taken down, and when completed will form the fullest annotated translation of Patanjali in English. Of course it will be a rather big work.'[81]At first Swamiji seems to have followed this plan. "The words dropped in my last letter were Yoga Sutra which I am translating, with notes from various authorities," he wrote again to Sturdy on January 16 1896. "I want to incorporate the chapter in Kurma-Purana in my notes.'[82]But as it turned out, the big, scholarly, and annotated work he had contemplated was not written. Instead, as he would write in his preface to Raja-Yoga, his "Yoga Aphorisms" consist of "a rather free translation of the aphorisms (sutras) of Patanjali, with a running commentary." "Effort," he continued, "has been made to avoid technicalities as far as possible, and to keep to the free and easy style of conversation.'[83]


Swamiji's "Yoga Aphorisms" are indeed without technicalities or complexities, so much so that from time to time since the publication of Raja-Yoga the question has arisen in the minds of its students if the commentaries are not, in part at least, transcribed class talks, as his letter of December 23 to Mr. Sturdy would seem to indicate, rather than dictations to Miss Waldo, as has been generally supposed. Certainly Miss Waldo played a large part in Swamiji's work of translating the Sutras, sitting with him in the back parlor on quiet afternoons. "Those cherished hours of work on it were specially happy ones for her," Sister Devamata writes. "She often spoke of them. Each day when the Swami's meal had been prepared and her tasks in the kitchen were done, she would come up to the back parlour where Swamiji lodged; take her seat at the table, on which stood an open inkwell; and dip her pen in the ink.'[84]Miss Waldo's own account of those sessions has been quoted in the Life; but it will bear repeating here. "It was inspiring to see the Swami as he dictated to me the contents of the work ", she wrote. "In delivering his commentaries on the Sutras, he would leave me waiting while he entered 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.'[85]


But did Swamiji dictate the whole of what is now known as his commentary on the Yoga Sutras to Miss Waldo? It has recently become certain that he did not. Even with the conclusive evidence now available (of which more in a moment) the tone of the commentaries leads one to guess, as mentioned above, that they are class talks. Indeed one finds a few expressions that would seem definitely to indicate that Swamiji was speaking to a group. For instance: "Most of you ladies play the piano"[86]"Some of this I have told you before",[87] "The system of Yoga is built entirely on the philosophy of the Sankhya, as I told you in some of the previous lectures"[88]Now perhaps you have remarked that when I talk on subjects in which I take a few ideas that are familiar to everyone, and combine, and recombine them, it is easy to follow, because these channels are present in everyone's brain.'[89]But while these scattered clues have long led to many a suspicion, only recently have we come upon conclusive evidence that such suspicions have been correct: Swamiji's advanced raja yoga classes in December, January, and February did indeed consist of his introduction to and running commentary on Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms. For this certainty we can thank, initially, Swami Kripananda, whose laboriously typed transcripts of these classes have recently come to light.*(10)

*(10) At the date of this writing, six of Kripananda transcripts of Swamiji's advanced raja yoga classes have come to light. Four of these have been made available through the kindness of Mrs. Sylvea Bull Curtis and two through the kindness of the Vedanta Centre at Cohasset, Massachusetts. The last of these six transcripts is dated February 1, 1896, and is Swamiji's commentary on chapter two, numbers 19 through 24 of the Yoga Aphorisms. It can be assumed that he continued and completed his commentary on all the aphorisms on the mornings of February 8, 15, and 22.
(A number of Kripananda's typed transcripts of Swamiji's bhakti, karma, and jnana yoga classes have also been recently discovered. To judge from Kripananda's letters to Mrs. Bull, none of his transcripts are typed from his own shorthand, but, rather, copied from Goodwin's transcripts.)

But there is no reason to suppose thereby that Swamiji did not also dictate to Miss Waldo translations of the Aphorisms, some of the deeply thought-out ideas contained in his commentaries, and his short appendix to Raja--Yoga, which last consists of references to yoga from various Sanskrit texts other than Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. As it appears in Raja-Yoga, then, "Yoga Aphorisms" very probably consists of a combination of Swamiji's dictation to Miss Waldo and Goodwin's (not, I believe, Kripananda's) transcripts of his advanced raja yoga classes-all much edited 1by Miss Waldo, Swamiji himself, and, later on, Mr. Sturdy.

5

Swamiji's work' in New York this second season did not consist alone in delivering his message, but in providing the means by which it would be perpetuated after he had left America. His primary move in this direction was to train a permanent body of workers-a process he had begun, as we have seen earlier, by taking several of his disciples to a summer retreat at Thousand Island Park to finish their training in yoga and bhakti and jnana. "Then they will be able to help carry the work on,'[90] he had written to Alasinga on May 6 of 1895.

But aside from this, it was, he knew, essential for him to establish an organization of some sort through which those he had trained could function, and without which, as he had written to Mrs. Bull in March of 1895, "nothing could be done." To this end, he had wanted for some time to give the secular side of his work a definite form. In the summer of 1895, he had written to Alasinga from Thousand Island Park, "Here [in America] I have already got a respectable following. Next year I will organise it on a working basis, and then the work will be carried on.'[91]The time was now ripe for this organization to take shape.

For one thing, it was no longer essential, as it had been the previous season, for him to keep the secular aspect of his work in his own hands and out of the hands of those who wanted him to cultivate "the right sort of New Yorkers " and whose well-meaning help, as he had said, "frightened" him. He had by now convinced his friends and supporters that his own method of work, unconventional, uncompromising, and fearless, would not spell disaster either to himself or to his mission. Even Mrs. Bull no longer counseled him from Cambridge to "keep society in good humor." She now simply watched, with bated breath perhaps, but for the time being in silence, wisely concluding, no doubt, that there was no other course possible. "I always wish to be of help to his work, however and wherever he determines to direct it himself," she wrote to Kripananda toward the end of December 1895 and added with motherly resignation, "He is gaining in experience.'[92]

For another thing, Swamiji's New York following was by now so well established that he felt at last free to disentangle himself from the "horrid money affairs" that were always so irksome to him. Although most of his followers were poor, there were some who were able to contribute to his work and to handle the financial side of it. Whereas the previous season he had supported his classes by giving paid public lectures, now, a day or two after his return from London, he wrote to Mrs. Bull, "The public lecture plan I intend to give up entirely,as I find the best thing for me to do is to step entirely out of the money question-either in public lectures or private classes. In the long run it does harm and sets a bad example.... My idea is for autonomic, independent groups in different places. Let them work on their own account and do the best they can. As for myself, I do not want to entangle myself in any organisation.'[93]Thus, in December of 1895, Swamiji established an Executive Committee within the New York Society which would attend to the business end of things.

As has been seen in chapter one, the Society as it existed prior to this time had been nebulous and largely ineffectual. Its officers, still untrained and uncomprehending of Swamiji's method of work, had had very little voice in the management of his affairs and left little trace behind them. It was, in fact, long thought by Swamiji's biographers that the Vedanta Society of New York did not come into existence until the end of February of 1896--a date based on a misleading sentence in one of Kripananda's newsletters to the Brahmavadin. But unobtrusive as the Society was in 1895, we can say definitely, on the basis of information that has come to light, that it did exist.

Well aware at an early date of the need for at least a skeletal organization, Swamiji had founded the Society in November of 1894., writing at the end of that month to Alasinga, "I have started [an organisation] already in New York and the Vice President will soon write to you. Keep correspondence with them. Soon I hope to get up a few in other places.'[94]

In connection with this new--born Society (or parallel to it, or perhaps for a time identical with it) was something called a "Temple Universal." What this was is not clear from any available records. We know that when Swamiji was in Baltimore in October of 1894. he was much interested in a project to found an "international university." According to the Reverend Hiram Vrooman, his host in Baltimore, this university was "one of Mr. Vivecananda's pet ideas." "[It] has the full sympathy of myself and my brothers," Mr. Vrooman went on, "and also a number of gentlemen of wealth and position, including several religions. Among its promoters are members of the Roman Catholic and Hebrew religions. The idea of the university is education in general religion.... One of Mr. Vivecananda's ideas in the establishing of the university is that it may serve to educate a superior kind of missionary for work in India.... I can say relative to the university that it is to be located near Boston, and that a meeting to give it definite shape will be held soon. Mr. Vivecananda will not leave this country until it is established.'[95]

Nothing seems to have come of this idea of an international university, but out of it may have evolved Swamiji's idea for a "Temple Universal." The Indian Mirror of January 31, 1895 writes of this latter project as though it were well on its way. Under the heading "News and Notes" one reads the following:

We learn that an organisation named 'Temple Universal' has been started by Swami Vivekananda in America. Mr. Edward G. Day, M.D., the Vice-President of the Association, writing to a friend here says: "The expressed object of the organisation is to help the spiritual growth of man by the aid of all forms of religion which are recognised as so many paths, leading to the same goal." So the Swami's stay in America will be of permanent good to both India and America. He means starting a few more societies, like the above, in other cities. Mr. Day further says: "The Swami is highly esteemed in our midst, and earnest seekers after truth cluster round him. He will shed a great light on the West, and will lead many to a more perfect knowledge of God, and a closer communion with him.'[96]

The news rapidly spread. On February 7, 1895, Mr. Sarat Chandra (Chakravarty?) and Swami Subodhananda wrote a joint letter to Mr. Lala Badri Shah, a friend of Swamiji's in Almora: "Swami Vivekananda has founded a society for a place of worship there at America. The place is called the Temple Universal & men of all creeds can use it to preach their own faith.'[97]Again on August 22, 1895, the Indian Mirror reported;

....The Swami has established in every principal town in the United States a branch of his new association, called 'Temple Universal'.[98]

Swamiji himself was not aware that he had done so. Indeed, the Temple Universal, the establishment of which would have required a great deal of money, organization, and concerted effort (such as had been envisioned for the "international university") does not seem to have materialized at all. "I do not hear much now about the Temple Universal that was to be built in America," Swamiji had written to Alasinga on May 6, 1895; "yet I have a firm footing in New York, the very centre of American life, and so my work will go on.'[99]

Swamiji did not altogether give up the idea of building a temple in the West. In a heretofore unpublished portion of a letter dated in the Complete Works March 1896 he was to write to Alasinga, "That Temple Universal I have given up. I have a new name, the "Mumukshu" ["Desire for Liberation"].... Patience, patience.

Next year I expect to build a temple in New York and then the Lord knows.'[100]But Swamiji was not to return the following year to America; nor, as far as it is known at present, did he again mention building a temple in New York. Thus, unless more information comes to light, we cannot really know what he had in mind. (Perhaps, as in the temple he envisioned for Madras,[101]OM was to be the all inclusive symbol of veneration, and perhaps mumukshu was to be recognized as the unifying theme of and power behind all religious paths. But whatever Swamiji's idea may have been, the time was not ripe for its realization.)

Although the Temple Universal proposed at the end of 1894 or beginning of 1895 did not take tangible form, the Society that Swamiji founded at that period did not disband. Once or twice after he had left America for England in August of 1895, we hear, if not the voice of the society itself, the reverberation of its activities, or lack of them. As we have seen, for instance, its officers had managed to incense Swami Abhayananda by not attending her lectures. On the more positive side, it had paid her rent during the summer of 1895 and "what [she] had to spend in postage stamps and carfare for the propaganda.'[102]The Society again gave evidence of its existence in November: at the classes Swami Kripananda was then holding at 228 West Thirty-ninth Street, it was the Society's treasurer who took up the collection. "I have not made one cent, " Kripananda wrote on December 10 to Mrs. Bull in reply to her inquiry. "The small collection that was taken up in the classes were taken by the Treasurer Mr. Goodyear. He offered me several times assistance, and so did Miss Waldo. But I did not accept anything as I had still some means; I paid all the time my own rent, until last week when the two rooms were engaged for the Swami and myself.'[103]We need no further evidence to show that the Society existed throughout 1895. An inadequate organization it undoubtedly had been; nevertheless, it was a society and thought of itself as such*(11).

*(11) It was not until October of 1898, when Swamiji was in India, that the New York Vedanta Society was (cont.) incorporated and registered under the laws of the State of New York, with Mr. Francis Leggett as its president, and not until the spring of 1900, when Swamiji was in California, that the trustees of the Society opened a membership roll. The Society's first Constitution, drawn up by Swami Abhedananda in 1898, when many of the first officers were still active, read: "The Vedanta Society of the City of New York was founded by Swami Vivekananda in 1894, and incorporated according to the Laws of the State of New York by Swami Abhedananda on October 28, 1898." (See Swami Abhedananda, Complete Works, 10: 67; Sister Shivani, Swami Abhedananda in America [Calcutta: Ramakrishna Vedanta Math], pages 289, 291.) It may also be noted here that in 1899 the stationery of the New York Vedanta Society bore the letterhead:
Vedanta Society
Office and Library 146 E 55th Street Established-1894. Incorporated--1898
Any official records relevant to the first years of the Society were very probably destroyed by fire-if they existed at all. (See Sister Shivani, op. cit., page x.)

It should be mentioned here that while the Society had officers from the start and, to judge from Kripananda's description (see chapter one), trustees and at least one committee, it had no formal membership outside this small group of officiaries, nor was it to have one for several years. It had what one might call sympathizers, but no members in the usual sense. This was as Swamiji wanted, for while he knew that the work of spreading his teachings and, at the same time, of keeping them pure and intact required an organization, the last thing he wanted was to create a membership that would savor in any way of exclusiveness. It has been more or less taken for granted by Swamiji's biographers that the New York Vedanta Society, at the time of its inception, "invited members of all religious creeds and organizations to become its members without change of faith . . . [who] became known as 'Vedantins.' '[104]This is not in accordance with the facts as they are now known nor with what Swamiji seems to have had in mind at that time. A large group of people known as "Vedantins" (whatever their religious creed) he wanted to avoid for as long as possible. He wanted to keep his message fluid and unconfined, so that it would reach all levels of society, touch all philosophies, and flow through all religions, breaking down the barriers between them. He wanted Vedanta to be a religion that one could, to be sure, follow directly if one wished, but he wanted it also to be a teaching that could find its place in the lives of those who followed any other religion in the world, or of those who followed no religion at all. The initial carrying out of this purpose did not require-indeed, it precluded-the enlistment of an organized following, which, in those early days, could so easily have formed itself into an exclusive sect and thereby have nipped the fulfillment of Swamiji's purpose in the bud. It was a danger he was aware of and one which he was careful to guard against. Again and again, he told reporters in America and others who questioned him that he was not founding a new religion or a religious society, but was simply teaching a philosophy. "Preach the philosophy, the spiritual part, and let people suit it to their own forms,'[105]he wrote in May of 1895 in connection with the editorial policy of the Brahmavadin, which was meant for both Indian and Western readers.

Nor did Swamiji feel at this time that a religious organization with a membership was essential for the spread and preservation of his message. "Neither numbers, nor powers, nor wealth, nor learning, nor eloquence, nor anything else will prevail, but purity, living the life, in one word, anubhuti, realization. Let there be but a dozen such lion-souls in each country, lions who have broken their own bonds, who have touched the Infinite, whose whole soul is gone to Brahman, who care neither for wealth, nor power, nor fame, and these will be enough to shake the world," he had written to Sturdy on August 9, 1895. "As to societies and organisations," he had added, "these will come of themselves.'[106]Thus in America, as in England, Swamiji "let things grow," laying down no rules, giving no preaching directions to his ordained disciples, enlisting no followers, introducing no rituals, and establishing no society except that which was essential to handle the secular, or external, side of his work. "As to the teaching part," he would write to Mr. Sturdy on January 16, 1896, "my friends will go over this country from place to place, each one independent, and let them form independent circles. That is the easiest way to spread. Then, when there will be sufficient strength, we shall have yearly gatherings to concentrate our energies.'[107]


The establishment of an efficient Executive Committee within the Vedanta Society was a vast relief to Swamiji. "I have made over all the secular part of the work to a committee and am free from all that botheration," he wrote to Mr. Sturdy on December 23, 1895. "I have no aptitude for organising. It nearly breaks me to pieces.'[108]There are no available records of who constituted this committee, but we can be fairly certain that Miss Mary Phillips, Miss Ellen Waldo, and Mr. Walter Goodyear were among its first members. There were others as well, for we find Swami Kripananda writing to Mrs. Bull on December 20 of those who were then managing Swamiji's secular affairs as "mostly to me unknown people who constitute a self made committee of the Swami's movement.'[109](In this same letter, he also referred to "that committee of petticoats.") Who these unknown-to-Kripananda people (mostly women) may have been it is hard to say, for he was acquainted with all those whose names are familiar to us. Many New Yorkers, however, could have become interested in Swamiji's work during the spring of 1895, when Kripananda (then Leon Landsberg) had decided to live apart from his Guru, and there must, indeed, have been workers whose names have not come down to us. One thing that is certain is that Kripananda was mistaken when he called the Committee "self made." It had been appointed by Swamiji to serve a definite purpose, namely, to raise funds, to take up collections, to rent halls, to advertise, to engage a "typewriter"-in short, to handle the business aspect of the classes and lectures-and also to attend to whatever other business matters might come along, For instance, on January 16, 1896, Swamiji wrote to Mr. Sturdy, "I have a chance of getting a piece of land in the country to serve as a summer meditation resort. That, of course, requires a committee to look after it in my absence, also, the handling of money and printing and other matters.'[110]And then there was to be the project of publishing Swamiji's pamphlets and books, which would require a committee of its own, but of this more later.


According to Kripananda's letter of December 20 to Mrs. Bull the Executive Committee was by that date functioning in full forcedisposing of everything, "even the money which comes in as contributions in the classes." This was, of course, as Swamiji wished. Out of the collection money and donations, the committee met the expenses of the work. While these disbursements may not have always been wise or practical (Mrs. Bull would take a dim view of them in general),*(12) it was owing to them that Swamiji was able to give his lectures and class talks entirely free of charge. Nor did the committee handle financial matters alone, it also made resolutions. "I do not think the Swami will come to Boston," Kripananda wrote to Mrs. Bull on December 26. "The Committee resolved that he should not start his intended tour to Detroit or Chicago before the close of his work in New York which will be in April.'[111]Needless to say, to make resolutions in connection with Swamiji's work was like deciding in which direction the wind should blow or where lightning should or should not strike, and, to be sure, things would not work out at all as the committee resolved. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that at this time the committee members were solemnly making well-intentioned, albeit superfluous, resolutions and plans.

*(12) For Mrs. Bull's opinion of the New York Vedanta Society's handling of money see World Teacher-2 chapter 14. section two.

Those December days were full ones. "The Swami works very hard," Kripananda wrote on December 20, "lecturing twice a day, and then spending the rest of the time in hard study over the Sanskrit books [for which he had sent to India and London], not allowing himself half an hour a day for going outdoors. He eats very little-vegetable food. I am afraid [sic] he will make himself sick.'[112]Certainly anyone else would have made himself sick. "You must always remember how much work I have to do," Swamiji wrote on this same day to his Madras disciples. "Sometimes I have to deliver two or three lectures a day*(13)--and thus I make my way against all odds-hard work; any weaker man would die.'[113] Nor, as he was to write to Mrs. Bull on February 6, 1896, had he "slept even one night soundly in New York."

*(13) It is not surprising that Swamiji sometimes held three classes a day during this period. Often in America he would hold classes in the homes of his friends, in addition to those at his own lodgings. At the present writing, however, we have no records of his extra classes in December of 1895. According to Kripananda's letter of December 23 to the Brahmavadin, "during this short time he lectured seventeen times, morning and evening." (Brahmavadin, February 1894, pages 134--359 Swamiji's regular classlectures more than account for this number.

Even before Swamiji's second season hit its full stride, as it would do in January, there was work for everyone around him: Mr. Goodwin and Miss Waldo were fully occupied; other members of the Committee bustled about; Kripananda, aloof in his garret, worked far into the night, pounding out all manner of things on a Smith Premier typewriter, which with the help of Mrs. Bull he had rented for five dollars a month and which, he assured her, "I understand to handle. "


"I am now preparing on the typewriter some newspaper articles from [the Swami's] lectures," he wrote to her in his letter of December 26, though I am afraid that the daily papers care little for religious matter. The last few days I worked very hard till late at night. My head is dizzy.


[And on December 29:] I have not been well at all in the last few days, and so I could not finish a few more very long lessons [for Mrs. Bull] on Raja Yoga. I was crowded with work. So far I have arranged three lessons for the papers, which I shall try to place. Besides, I am translating deussen for the Swami and writing for the Brahmavadin, and typewriting the Swami's articles [on bhakti yoga] for the same paper.'[114]


In addition, Kripananda wrote long letters to Mrs. Bull at least once a week; thus, as he said, his time was "filled out from the early morning to late in the night." He contributed what he could to the young Vedanta movement. On December 22 there appeared in the Herald an article he had "succeeded in placing in that paper." This was a compilation, with his introductory remarks, of the "Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna," taken from four issues of the Brahmavadin. The following week (Sunday, December 29) the Herald published one of the articles he had prepared from Swamiji's karma yoga class entitled "Each Is Great in His Own Place." Again, on January 19 the Herald brought forth an article in which he had quoted at length from Swamiji's bhakti yoga class of the morning of December 23. These three articles, which appeared under large and provocative headings, were no doubt read by many people, some of whom may have thereby discovered Swamiji; Kripananda's articles themselves, however, would not add anything to the present narrative and we need not reproduce them here.


Into a period of two weeks or so-from the ninth of December through the twenty-third-Swamiji had crammed a full season's activity. He had held at least twenty classes, and perhaps several more, most of which, together with his classes of the next two months, were to form a large part of the books he was to speak of as the "text-books which will be the basis of work when I am gone." These were, of course, the now famous books KarmaYoga, Bhakti--Yoga, and Raja--Yoga. (Of Jnana--Yoga we shall say more later on.) He had dictated part of his translation of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, had written two or three chapters of Bhakti--Yoga, had directed, as always, the Indian work through his fiery letters to his brother monks and to his disciples in Madras, and had formed an executive committee to handle the secular aspect of his work in New York. In addition, he had no doubt given many private interviews, refusing none who came to him for help, guidance, and instruction.


Despite the fact that his students, as Sister Devamata writes, wanted to give him no holiday, these two weeks of unremitting work and sleepless nights made a Christmas vacation imperative. Indeed, Swamiji was longing around this time to "bury" himself in a remote Himalayan cave, there to plunge into the furthest depths of meditation. "Narendra belongs . . . to the realm of the Absolute,'[115] Sri Ramakrishna had said of him. And throughout his life, his longing for the Absolute was intense and constant. From time to time, he expressed it in a cry of anguish or in a resolve to withdraw entirely from the world, a plan that he must have known could not be carried out until the towering structure of his mission was built and his work on earth done. One such plan he communicated to Swami Kripananda, who, taking it seriously (for who could not take Swamiji's moods seriously?), wrote in his letter of December 26 to Mrs. Bull, "In May he will sail to England, to go from there to India where he intends burying himself in a cave for several years. Thus it is the last season we shall have the blessing of having him in our midst."


Swamiji was never to know, outwardly, the peace of a Himalayan cave. But at least he had a respite from work during the Christmas holidays of 1895. As early as December 8, his good friends Mr. and Mrs. Francis Leggett had invited him to spend the holidays with them at their country home in Ulster County, New York. "Going with the birds of paradise to Ridgely this Christmas,'[116]he had written to Josephine MacLeod, and accordingly he closed his New York classes on the evening of December 23 with a bhakti yoga class and the next day took off. Before going, he wrote at least two notes (both dated December 24.), one of which, heretofore unpublished, was to Christina Greenstidel. It read in full:


Dear Christina--Merry Christmas and happy Newyear to you. 

I am going today to the country. I return in 10 days.

As about the tour through Detroit, I will fix it later on. I am afraid 

if I go just now everything here will fall to pieces.

I will come anyway and I am afraid it will be later than I expected.

My love to Mrs. Phelps Mrs. Phunkey & all our friends & Christmas greetings

ever yours in the Lord[117]
 Vivekananda

P.S. Kripananda sends his greetings too

Swamiji's other note was a short greeting to Mrs. Bull:

Merry Christmas and happy New Year to you Dear Mrs. Bull. And may peace and health rest on you and yours for ever. I am going out of town today and will be back in ten days.

My love to all

Yours affiy,[118]
Vivekananda 


ⓘ
[1] Complete Works, 8 : 358.
[2] Complete Works  , 6: 352.
[3] Complete Works  8:360
[4] Complete Works  6:352.
[5] Complete Works, 8 : 359.
[6] Brahmavadin, January 18, 1896, p. 120.
[7] prabuddha Bharata, May 1932, P.243
[8] See ref. 6 above, p. 121.
[9] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, August 9,1895, SCB.
[10] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull., August 27,1895, SCB.
[11] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull., September 6, 1895, SCB.
[12] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, September 16, 1895, SCB.
[13] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull., September 18,1895, SCB.
[14] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 165.
[15] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, October 1,1895, SCB.
[16] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull., October 27,1895, SCB.
[17] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull., November 1,1895, SCB.
[18] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull., November 16,1895, SCB.
[19] Swami Abhayananda to Sara Bull, December 26,1895, SCB.
[20]Swami Abhayananda to Sara Bull., November 22, 1895, SCB.
[21] Swami Vivekananda to Swami Abhayananda (Mme Marie Louise), October, 1895. (Complete Works, 7 : 487-88.) Copy of original letter made by Elizabeth Hamlen, SCB.
[22] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, December 22, 1895, SCB.
[23] See Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 216.
[24] Swami Abhayananda to Elizabeth Hamlen, November 25, 1895, SCB.
[25] See ref. 22 above.
[26] Brahmavadin, January 18, 1896, p. 120.
[27] Complete Works, 8 : 360.
[28] Complete Works, 8 : 360.
[29] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, December 10, 1895, SCB.
[30] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull , November 19, 1895, SCB.
[31] Complete Works, 6 : 352-53.
[32] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, December 8, 1895, Sen Col.
[33] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine., December 10, 1895, Sen Col.
[34] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, December 27, 1895, SCB.
[35] Rem. (Sarah E. Waldo), p. 131.
[36] See ref. 29 above.
[37] Sister Devamata, “Memories of India and Indians,” P.B., May 1932, p. 242.
[38] Sister Devamata, “Memories of India and Indians,., p. 243.
[39] See Life (1965), p. 382.
[40] Complete Works, 8 : 336.
[41] Nagendranath Gupta, Noble Lives (Bombay: Hind Kitabs Lmt., 1950), P- 179 See also Rem. (Gupta), p. 18.
[42] Life (1965), P-382.
[43] Mahendra Nath Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, vol. 1, p. 136.
[44] Rem. (Josephine MacLeod), P- 239.
[45] J.J. Goodwin to Mary A. Phillips, October 24, 1896, SCB.
[46] J.J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, August 29, 1896, SCB.
[47] Life(1965),p. 382.
[48] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, December 14, 1895, SCB.
[49] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, December 20, 1896, SCB.
[50] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, December 20, 1896, SCB.
[51] Complete Works, 1 : 66.
[52] Brahmavadin, January 18, 1896, p. 120.
[53] Rem. (Sarah E. Waldo), p. 131.
[54] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, December 22, 1895, SCB.
[55] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull,, January 14, 1896, SCB.
[56] Complete Works, 8 : 364. In the Complete Works this letter is dated December 16, 1895. Internal evidence indicates, however, that it was written in early February, 1896.
[57] Rem. (Van Haagen), p. 149.
[58] Complete Works, 4 : 58.
[59] Devamata, op. cit., Prabuddha Bharata, April 1932, p. 191.
[60] See Life (1965), p. 38 7.
[61] The American Rosae Crucis, New York, January 1916, p. 17.
[62] New York Herald, 19 January 1896.
[63] Devamata, op. cit., p. 191.
[64] Devamata,, p. 192.
[65] Spiritual Talks (Swami Turiy-ananda), p. 200-201.
[66] Devamata, op. cit., p. 191.
[67] Quoted in Life (1965), p. 400-401.
[68] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 213.
[69] Devamata, op. cit., p. 191.
[70] Swami Vivekananda, Addresses on the Vedanta Philosophy, 3 vols. (London, 1896).
[71] Swami Vivekananda, Addresses on the Vedanta Philosophy, 3 vols. (London, 1896).
[72] Complete Works, 4: 35. (The word creepy appears in Mr. Sturdy’s edition of Bhakti- Yoga—see note 71 above—and was no doubt the word Swamiji used rather than weird as in the Complete Works.)
[73] Complete Works., 4 : 29-31.
[74] Complete Works, 4 : 31.
[75] Complete Works,4 : 32-33, passim.
[76] Quoted from Swami Kripa-nanda’s transcript of Swami Vi-vekananda’s bhakti yoga class of December 23, 1895, evening, SCB. (See Complete Works, 4: 38-40.)
[77] This passage is taken from Edward T. Sturdy’s edition (see note 71 above), vol. 1, pp. 101-3. (Cf. Complete Works, 5 : 242-45 )
[78] This passage is taken from Edward T. Sturdy’s edition (see note 71 above), vol. 1, pp. 127-8. (Cf. Complete Works, 106-7, 5 : 245-46.)
[79] Swami Kripananda’s transcript of Swami Vivekananda’s jnana yoga class of Wednesday evening, December 11, 1895, SCB.
[80] Complete Works, 1 : 414,416.
[81] Complete Works., 8 : 361.
[82] Complete Works8 : 370.
[83] Complete Works1 : 122.
[84] Devamata, op. cit, Prabuddha Bharata, May 1932, p. 243.
[85] Life (1965). P- 348
[86] Complete Works, 1 : 240.
[87] Complete Works., 1 : 224.
[88] Complete Works  1 : 250. (For this wording see early American editions of Raja Yoga, pp. 165-66.)
[89] Complete Works  1 : 225. (For this wording see early American editions of Raja Yoga, p. 135.)
[90] Complete Works  5 :81.
[91] Complete Works5:86.
[92] Sara Bull to Kripananda, December 23, 1895, SCB.
[93] Complete Works, 6 : 352.
[94] Complete Works., 5 : 52.
[95] See Prophetic Mission-2, chap. 12, sec. 2.
[96] Quoted in VIN, p. 76.
[97] Sarat Chandra and Swami Subodhananda to Badri Shah, February 7,1895, Sen Col.
[98] Quoted in VIN, p. 76.
[99] Complete Works, 5 : 81.
[100] Complete Works., 5 :106-7. This passage is quoted from the original letter, RKM, Belur.
[101] Complete Works, 3 :302-3.
[102] Swami Abhayananda (Mme Marie Louise) to Sara Bull, December 26,1895, SCB.
[103] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, December 10,1895, SCB.
[104] Life (1965), p. 391.
[105] Complete Works, 5 : 82.
[106] Complete Works., 8 : 348, 349.
[107] Complete Works8:371.
[108] Complete Works8:361.
[109] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, December 20,1895, SCB.
[110] Complete Works, 8 : 370.
[111] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, December 26,1895, SCB.
[112] See ref. 108 above.
[113] Complete Works, 5 :99.
[114] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, December 29,1895, SCB.
[115] Gospel, p. 810.
[116] Complete Works, 8 : 360.
[117] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, December 24, 1895, Sen Col.
[118] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, December 24,1895, SCB.


↑ Contents

3.6 NEW YORK: JANUARY, FEBRUARY 1896-I

The last time that Swamiji had visited Mr. Leggett's estate in the Hudson River Valley, some eighty miles north of New York City, the countryside had been green and flowering, the Catskills blue in the distance, and the air fragrant with spring. Now everything was white, trees were bare, and smoke rising from neighboring houses and from the chimneys of Ridgely Manor spoke of blazing fireplaces or crackling wood stoves, of people gathered indoors, of roasted chestnuts, plum pudding, and Christmas trees. The main house at Ridgely, large and comfortable, was presided over by those who well knew how to take care of their extraordinary guest. They knew his need of frequent solitude, his habit of entering into deep meditation for hours at a stretch, his tendency to slip into samadhi. They knew, as well, his gay moods, his childlike sense of fun and play that made any holiday a festival. Indeed, Frank and Betty Leggett were no doubt among those of Swamiji's Western hosts who are mentioned in the Life as having allowed him absolute personal freedom. "Did he desire to talk, they would listen with rapt attention. Did he desire to sing the songs of his own land, he could do so freely. If he sat in silent abstraction they left him to his mood. Times were when he would break the silence of days in a rhapsody of divine eloquence; and then again he would talk on matters that required no mental concentration."[1]

At present we have no detailed account of the Christmas vacation at Ridgely; nor do we know who, if any, the other guests were. Yet we can form some pictures of our own. We can, for instance, imagine brisk walks in the snowy countryside,  excursions by horse and sleigh into the Catskills, where Swamiji learned that land in large plots could be had "for very little money,'[2] and where he found a plot of 101 acres, with "some buildings on it; plenty of trees and a river'[3]for sale at two hundred dollars, which, with Mrs. Bull's help, he wanted to buy for a summer meditation resort. We can also guess at the long evening talks before a roaring fire in the great hall of the "Manor," when he spoke of God and man with the authority and grandeur of the prophet that he was, carrying the minds of his listeners far beyond their accustomed worlds. We can, in fact, more than guess at this last, for we find Mr. Leggett writing from New York on January 10, 1896, to Miss MacLeod (then in Europe) of this holiday with Swamiji that she had missed. "One night at Ridgely," he told her, "we were all spellbound by his eloquence. Such thoughts 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 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.'[4]

"Ridgely seems a particularly favored place; ' Miss MacLeod was to write to Mary Hale a year and a half later. "Swamiji having given us his most eloquent words there'[5]--a remark that could have pertained to this Christmas holiday, which she knew of from hearsay, as well as to the Easter vacation of 1895. (She could not yet have dreamed of the "Great Summer " of 1895, when he was to spend ten weeks at this indeed favored place.)[6] The Christmas holidays of 1895 lasted only a brief ten days; yet at this season of his life Swamiji was still in good health, still strong and physically resilient, and those days in brisk country air had been enough to refresh him. Returning to New York, he wrote to Mrs. Bull on January 3*(1). His letter, which has not heretofore been published, read in full :

*(1) During this Christmas holiday Swamiji did not make a side trip, as is sometimes said, to Mrs. Bull’s house in Caqmbridge. His letters to her of December 24, 1895, and January 3, 1896, which bracket his Ridgely visit, make this abundantly clear.

228 39th street

New York the 3rd Jan 96

Dear Mrs Bull-I have had a letter from Mr Trine asking me to have some classes at the Procopeia in February. I do not see my way to go to Boston in Feb. however I may like it. I have given up for the present my plan of going to Detroit & Chicago in February. Later on I will try. Miss Locke will see to my having classes in Chicago & I have some friends in Detroit. I may go to Baltimore for a few days in the meanwhile. I enjoyed my visit with the Leggetts exceedingly. It has braced me for further work. I am very well both physically and mentally.

Wishing you a happy New Year

I remain yours ffiy[7]
 Vivekananda

And now ahead of him lay three and a half months of incessant, strenuous activity.

2

"Never fear! The Divine Mother is helping me!" Swamiji wrote to Swami Brahmananda, probably just after his return from Ridgely. "This year such work is going to be turned out, that you will be struck dumb to hear of it!'[8]And the year of 1896 was indeed to be the most fruitful year of his work in the West. It was, one might say, the climax of his mission-the year in which he gave his fully developed world message, both theoretical and practical, in all its detail and profundity.

Before the Christmas holidays Swamiji had decided to deliver a series of public Sunday lectures in January, which were to be free of charge. To charge admission to his lectures had always been distasteful to him; he had done so only during his midwestern lecture tour in 1893 and 1894, when he had been trying for raise money for India, and again in the early part of 1895, when there had been no other way to support his classes. It was .not only his personal dislike of handling money that now prompted him to give public lectures free of charge; the time had come for him to establish a definite policy of work for the young Vedanta movement. As we have seen earlier (page 367), he had decided after his return from England "to step entirely out of the money question" in both public lectures and private classes.[9]A sannyasin asks nothing in return for his religious teachings: this was the age-old tradition in India and one that he knew must be followed by the Vedanta movement in the West, if that movement was to remain pure. He must also have felt that the Western Vedanta societies could not, and certainly should not, expect to lean indefinitely on their spiritual leaders for financial support. Thus Swamiji's decision to set a precedent of free public lectures had a twofold purpose: it would release his successors from the burden of earning money and it would compel the Western societies to stand financially on their own feet. And then, aside from all that, there was Swamiji's cheerful observation-"If the lecture is free, there will be a big crowd.'[10]So, all in all, whatever the financial condition of the New York Vedanta Society may have been in 1896, the giving of free lectures was the logical move.


The Society's financial condition was, as it happened, not good. "The Swami is utterly poor," Kripananda had written to Mrs. Bull on December 22, 1895: "no one to support his movement, all expenses for rent of class rooms, lecture hall, printing and advertising are defraid [sic] from his own means and he does not charge anything neither for class attendance or public lectures. In order to provide for all these things, he -I tell it privately to you-starves himself! And he works like a giant. He hardly permits himself ten minutes walk after the evening lecture.'[11]It was true that Swamiji worked like a giant; but the rest, written in one of Kripananda's turbulent moods, was surely an exaggeration. Miss Waldo, who cooked for him, would have seen to it that he had enough to eat; moreover, she, Miss Phillips, the Goodyears, Miss Ellis, and others whose names we do not know, contributed toward paying not only Mr. Goodwin's salary but the rent of Swamiji's rooms: Very likely they helped to defray many other expenses. Still, these people were not wealthy, and there is no doubt that Swamiji lived with the utmost frugality, working constantly, giving the best of his life to his mission in the West.


His New York work had now taken on a definite rhythm which could not be broken before its course had run; his earlier plan to visit Chicago and Detroit after Christmas was, therefore, postponed. "Here if I go away for a week, everything falls to pieces,[12] he wrote to Mary Hale on January 6, implying, perhaps, that even a Christmas vacation had caused a lapse in the class attendance. And to Mrs. Bull he explained on January 10 that he could not yet come to Boston. "These are the difficulties in the way," he wrote. "First the work here will fall to pieces-secondly I have begun to write in right earnest. I want to finish some text books to be the basis of work when I am gone. I want to hurry through four little text books before I go. Of course it is impossible to come this month as the notices are out for the four Sunday lectures.'[13]In an unpublished portion of this letter, all of which varies considerably from the published version, Swamiji went on to say:


My idea now is to make a tour in Boston, Detroit, and Chicago in March and then come back to New York a week or so and then start for England. In March I will be able to stay a few weeks at each of these places. Of course it is true that [as] yet I have no competent persons here to carry on the work like Sturdy in England nor any sincere friend to stand by me except you. I will do anything you want me to do and if you think it is good for me to come to Boston in February I am ready.[14]


Swamiji wrote also to Detroit, letting his friends there know that they should not soon expect him. A letter of this period to Mary Funke, whose name he always had one difficulty or another in spelling, has not heretofore been published. It read in full:


228 W. 39
New York, the 6th Jan 1896.

Dear Mrs. Funkey.

Many many thanks for the sweet flowers. It recalls to me the beautiful times we had at the Thousand islands and presages many such summer gatherings.


The work here had begun in right earnest and we will advance it farther this year than in the last.

I am therefore uncertain as to the exact date of my coming to Detroit. I will come however very soon.

Yours ever in the Lord[15]
Vivekananda


To Sister Christine on this same date Swamiji sent his now well-known poem, "To an Early Violet." He addressed it "To my dear disciple Miss Christina Greenstidle," but somehow, she did not reply, at least not before January 24, when he wrote to her again. This second letter has not before been published; it read:

24.th Jan '95 [‘96]


Dear Christina

I have not heard from you long. Hope everything is going on well with you and Mrs Phunkey.


Did you receive my poem? I had a letter from Mrs. Phelps today. I am coming to Detroit next March early as I will have to finish my February course in New York. The public lectures will be printed as they are delivered right along. The class lectures will very soon be collected & edited in little volumes. May the Lord bless you ever & ever

Yours ever with love & blessings[16]
Vivekananda


Swamiji's first series of Sunday lectures began on the after noon of January 5 in the auditorium of Hardman Hall, which had been rented for the first four Sundays of the year. The day before, the following announcement appeared in the ,New York World, and a similar one in the Herald:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

Will lecture on Sundays at 3: 30 P.M. during 
January, in Hardman Hall, 19th st and 5th ave.; 
subject to-morrow, "The Claims of Religion; Its 
Truth and Utility." Admission free; collection.


It was a freezing day. "The sky was clear and blue as in summer," the papers read, "but the air cut like a knife." And at three-thirty in the afternoon when Swamiji's lecture presumably began, the temperature was fifteen degrees, a degree of cold which the wind would have much worsened. But cold weather could not daunt New Yorkers, and although we have no record of the lecture attendance for this particular Sunday, the auditorium, which was a small one, was probably full to overflowing. Later in the month Swamiji wrote of the January lecture attendance, "900 will come as a rule, 300 standing, and about 300 going off, not finding room.'[17]


The following report of the first lecture appeared in the New York World Telegram of January 6:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA LECTURES The Hindoo Monk tells 

New Yorkers About

the Truth and Utility of Religion.


Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo monk and delegate to the World's Parliament of Religions, delivered the first of a series of lectures yesterday afternoon at Hardman Hall. His subject was "The Claims of Religion; Its Truth and Utility."


This wise man of the East has made this country his home since the World's Fair. He has lectured and taught in Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Boston, Brooklyn and New York; in which cities he has many followers. Swami Vivekananda is one of a large order of monks in 'India called "Sanyasi" (one who has renounced the world). These monks go about teaching "Yoga," or "Union ", which is how to realize God and our divinity.


Swami Vivekananda was educated at a university in Calcutta. He is a tall man of handsome face and figure, and looked picturesque and Oriental as he made his address in the garb of his religious order.


Swami Vivekananda spoke in a slow, impressive and musical monotone. His diction was simple and his thought seemed to have weight with the attentive audience.


"Religion is a vision and an inspiration," he said. "It is unknowable. And where is the utility of studying the unknowable? To do good to others is one utility of religion. But you cannot do much good in this world. It is good to do good, but we have been doing good for hundreds of thousands of years and have not added anything to the sum total of human happiness. Religion is neither pessimistic nor optimistic; it wants to know the truth."


Swami Vivekananda pronounced the benediction in his native language. Classes in Yoga are taught free every day at No. 228 West Thirty-ninth street.


The above report was accompanied by a line drawing of "Swami Vivekanand," standing solidly on the platform of the hall, his hands behind his back. The drawing is hardly that of a "tall man, of handsome face and figure," but it is reproduced in this book for the readers' amusement or indignation, as the case may be. Swamiji himself may have thought it a good likeness. Rarely aware of his body, he apparently did not know what it looked like. A story in illustration of this was told to Sister Devamata by Miss Waldo and took place in the front drawing room of 228 West Thirty-ninth Street - a long, narrow room with two tall windows facing the street, between which hung a mirror "reaching from floor to ceiling."


This mirror [Devamata wrote] seemed to fascinate the Swami. He stood before it again and again, gazing at himself intently. In between he walked up and down the room, lost in thought. Miss Waldo's eyes followed him anxiously. "Now the bubble is going to burst," she thought. "He is full of personal vanity." Suddenly he turned to her and said: "Ellen, it is the strangest thing, I cannot remember how I look. I look and look at myself in the glass, but the moment I turn away I forget completely what I look like.'[18]

Mr. Goodwin's typed transcript of Swamiji's first public lecture of the season was not printed in pamphlet form. Several months later Walter Goodyear wrote to Mrs Bull in regard to the transcript, "We [the New York Vedanta Society] find we have typewritten copies of the following which have never been printed-'The Claims of Religion,' Sun. Jany 5, 'Immortality' deliv. in Brooklyn Jany 17 and notes Question Class [Sunday] Dec 15, '95.'[19](The two lectures eventually found their way into the Complete Works, the former in volume four and the latter in volume two. What became of the class notes is not known.)


It was not until the following week that arrangements were under way to print and publish Swamiji's Sunday lecture in pamphlet form, a procedure that must have involved much activity at 228 West Thirty-ninth Street-typing by Goodwin, editing by Miss Waldo, checking by Swamiji, retyping, proof reading, rushing copy to and from the printer, all in the space of a few days. Publication started with "The Ideal of a Universal Religion," which Swamiji had delivered on the afternoon of Sunday, January 12. The following Sunday when he gave his third lecture, a stack of pamphlets appeared on a table in the lobby of Hardman's Hall, for sale at ten cents a copy. This pamphlet, the title page of which is here reproduced, constituted the first publication in America of Swamiji's lectures ,marking, in a sense, the beginning of the book on the Vedanta philosophy he wanted to leave behind. (The lecture itself, which, as Swami Kripananda wrote to Mrs. Bull, was "a grand success," had been delivered, it so happened, on Swamiji's birthday. He had turned thirty-three.)


Swamiji's third and fourth Sunday afternoon lectures at Hardman Hall, delivered on January 19 and 26, were entitled, respectively, "The Cosmos: The Macrocosm" and "The Cosmos: The Microcosm." The two lectures were published in one pamphlet, entitled simply "The Cosmos" and were put on sale at Brentano's, "the literary emporium" of New York.


3 With "The Microcosm" Swamiji's January lectures, given in a hall that proved far too small for the hundreds who tried to gain admittance, came to a close. His next New York lecture series would be held in an auditorium with a seating capacity at least four times as great, but before we speak of those February lectures, let us consider the four January ones. It is, I believe, of interest to note that the sequence of lecture subjects in the January series would be repeated six months later in London, when Swamiji would again introduce the vast and lofty philosophy of Vedanta. One is led to believe, without much surprise, that he was following a deliberate, step-by-step method of presenting these unfamiliar, and therefore difficult, ideas to Western audiences*(2), and it may be profitable to attempt to understand, to some extent at least, what his method was, for it is not obvious in the unchronological arrangement of his Complete Works, or for that matter, in the book Jnana—Yoga.. As we have seen above, his first New York lecture was "The Claims of Religion; Its Truth and Utility" (in London his first lecture would be "The Necessity of Religion").

*(2) The method of leading the mind from an easily grasped concept to an unfamiliar and subtle one is called in India Arundhati Nyaya. In Swamiji’s words: “To show a man the fine star Arundhati, one takes the big and brilliant star nearest to it, upon which he is asked to fix his eyes first, and then it becomes quite easy to direct his sight to Arundhati” (Complete Works, 3:398).

In an age in which religion of any kind had come to be looked upon-by almost every educated person with disdain and distrust, it was of course important that Swamiji convince his audiences at the very outset that the principles of religion were based on reality and that they had value in human life. Indeed, one of his major efforts in the West was to bring religion, as such, back into good repute. Although almost everyone still went dutifully to church, religion meant little more to most than a set of theistic and authoritarian doctrines and beliefs which the findings of science and the dictates of reason had once for all demolished and which had, moreover, little relevance to the social and economic realities of an industrial age. The word religion had developed a hollow and mocking ring.


What claim had religion upon the attention of the enlightened people of the modern West? What is religion? In answering these questions, Swamiji went straight to the mark:


. . . Essentially, . . . religion belongs to the supersensuous and not to the sense plane. It is beyond all reasoning, and not on the plane of intellect. It is a vision, an inspiration, a plunge into the unknown and unknowable, making the unknowable more than known, for it can never be "known." This search has been in the human mind, as I believe, from the very beginning of humanity. There cannot have been human reasoning and intellect in any period of the world's history without this struggle, this search beyond.


. . . It is my belief that religious thought is in man's very constitution, so much so that it is impossible for him to give up religion until he can give up his mind and body, until he can stop thought and life. As long as man thinks, this struggle must go on, and so long man must have some form of religion....


The great question of all questions at the present time is this: . . . Why shall we not be content with the known?

Why shall we not rest satisfied with eating, drinking, and doing a little good to society?[20]


The remainder of this lecture was, primarily, a reply to this question. "Fortunately, " Swamiji said, "we must inquire into the beyond."


This present, this expressed, is only one part of that unexpressed. The sense universe is, as it were, only one portion, one bit of that infinite spiritual universe projected into the plane of sense consciousness. How can this little bit of projection be explained, be understood, without knowing that which is beyond? . . . This God, this eternally Unknowable, or Absolute, or Infinite, or without name-you may call Him by what name you like-is the rationale, the only explanation, the raison d’etre of that which is known and knowable, this present life.[21]


There lay the validity of religion. The facts it discovered and spoke of constituted the basis of the phenomenal world. That such facts could not be verified by sense experience or by reason could not render them meaningless; they were the very essence of meaning. Yet, on the other hand, Swamiji strongly objected to the acceptance of religious statements through blind faith. "In true religion," he said, "there is no faith or belief in the sense of blind faith.... To believe blindly is to degenerate the human soul.'[22] Religious facts were to be discovered for oneself through supersensuous inspiration. Here sounded one of the main themes of his message-the availability of "supersensuous inspiration": "If one man was ever inspired, it is possible for each and every one of us to be inspired, and that is religion.... Come face to face with religious facts, and come into direct contact with the science of religion. Religion does not consist in believing any number of doctrines or dogmas, in going to churches or temples, in reading certain books. Have you seen God? Have you seen the soul P If not, are you struggling for it? . . . Religion is here and now, in this present life.'[23]


Swamiji's own conviction, his own immediate perception, of his listeners' capacity to come "face to face with religious facts" was, perhaps, more persuasive than thousands of words. Even here in his first public lecture of this season in New York he made no compromise with what was to him a visible truth; although he took pains to make matters simple, he did not talk down spiritually to his audience; he did not assume they were incapable of the highest realization nor that they could not grasp the highest ideas, for, as he was to say three Sundays later, "The same divine essence from which the ideas emanated is ever present in man, and, therefore, he can always understand them. " In his profound respect for human beings, he did not teach them a comforting religion; he did not hesitate to goad them on to self effort. "Religion is a question of being and becoming, not believing," he said. "This is religion, and when you have attained to that you have religion. Before that you are no better than the animals.'[24]


In speaking of religion as the very substance of all human knowledge-including science, religion itself, and "what you call ethics"-Swamiji tore large holes in the doctrine of Utilitarianism, which, in the minds of many people, served admirably as a rational foundation for ethical and humanitarian behavior. He was to do the same in his parallel lecture in London, "The Necessity of Religion," and in this latter connection we shall say more regarding his many-phased rebuttal of this materialistic, indeed hedonistic, doctrine, which at the close of the nineteenth century was held by many who were "passing for the [most] learned, the most rational, the most logical, the most intelligent crowd ever seen on this earth.'[25]


As for the utility of religion, Swamiji pointed out that it "has made man what he is, and will make of this human animal a god." "Take off religion from human society, what will remain ? Nothing but a forest of brutes.'[26]Further, spiritual knowledge brings to man the greatest possible happiness. If utility is what conduces to happiness, then true religion must be of the highest utility.

We find that man enjoys his intellect much more than an animal enjoys his senses, and we see that man enjoys his spiritual nature even more than his rational nature. So the highest wisdom [utility?] must be this spiritual knowledge. With this knowledge will come bliss. All these things of this world are but the shadows, the manifestations in the third or fourth degree of the real Knowledge and Bliss.[27]


Swamiji's second Sunday lecture at Hardman Hall, "The Ideal of a Universal Religion" (his second lecture in London would have the same title) dealt with a subject that he felt to be of vital importance to the present age and was one on which he often spoke. But aside from being an extended commentary on the doctrine of religious harmony that Sri Ramakrishna had taught and so fully embodied, it was as well a preliminary and integral step in Swamiji's explanation of the universal principles of Vedanta. Having in his previous lecture defined religion in general, he anticipated the question: What of all the various warring religions of the world? "Is it possible that there should ever reign unbroken harmony in this plane of mighty religious struggle?"[28]The answer involved a further definition of religion in general and of various religions or creeds in particular.


Even as Swamiji had pointed out in "The Claims of Religion" that religion in general dealt with supersensuous reality which is available to superconscious experience, he now declared that this universal religion "runs through all the various religions of the world in the form, of God." " 'I am the thread that runs through all these pearls,' and each pearl is a religion or even a sect thereof.'[29]It was not that the pearls must be identical one with the other, or even similar. The harmony of religions did not lie in an impossible uniformity, or even a synthesis, of beliefs and practices; it could exist only in the underlying reality from which they all arose and toward which they all aspired.


We find [he said] . . . that if by the idea of a universal religion it is meant that one set of doctrines should be believed in by all mankind, it is wholly impossible. . . Again, if we expect that there will be one universal mythology, that is also impossible; it cannot be. Neither can there be one universal ritual. Such a state of things can never come into existence; if it ever did, the world would be destroyed, because variety is the first principle of life.... This world must go on working, wheel within wheel, this intricate mass of machinery, most complex, most wonderful.


What can we do then? We can make it run smoothly, we can lessen the friction, we can grease the wheels, as it were. How? By recognizing the natural necessity of variation.... We must learn that truth may be expressed in a hundred thousand ways, and that each of these ways is true as far as it goes. We must learn that the same thing can be viewed from a hundred different standpoints, and yet be the same thing.... Through high philosophy or low, through the most exalted mythology or the grossest, through the most refined ritualism or arrant fetishism, every sect, every soul, every nation, every religion, consciously or unconsciously; is struggIing upward, towards God; every vision of truth that man has is a vision of Him and of none else.... This is the only recognition of universality that we can get.[30]


Here Swamiji in the vastness of his vision seems to have been speaking not only of religion as such but of all aspects of human life. Life itself was a struggle toward God, and each individual life was a religion, each moving surely toward God, as a radius of a circle toward the center. No one path or faith or way of life was any better in relation to the ultimate goal' than any other. In another analogy he pointed out that there were indeed stages along the way from which the view of the goal approximated to a greater or lesser extent the goal itself and to which one might assign a value; but whatever the view, the goal remained the same, as the sun remains the same, though an observer traveling toward it sees it differently from different stages of his journey. In still another analogy he spoke of the variety of religious views created by different capacities and characters, each mind shaping its own idea of God, as vessels shaping the water they contain into their own size and form. But the substance of that which is thus limited and structured is in each case the same. "In each vessel the vision of God comes in the form of the vessel. Yet He is One, He is God in every case.'[31]


But how, from a practical standpoint, could harmony be brought to this kaleidoscopic variety of views? Swamiji's proposal was twofold. First, he spoke somewhat as he had in his appeal for harmony at the Parliament of Religions:


In the first place, I would ask mankind to recognize this maxim: "Do not destroy." Iconoclastic reformers do no good to the world. Break not, pull not anything down, but build. Help if you can; if you cannot, fold your hands and stand by and see things go on. Do not injure if you cannot render help. Say not a word against any man's convictions so far as they are sincere.[32]

But in addition to this, a positive basis of unity was needed, a deeply felt understanding of the principles embracing all varieties of spiritual struggle and a practical means of accommodating every aspirant, whatever his temperament and needs. For the first time (as far as we know) Swamiji spoke in public of introducing a "new" religion to the West: What I want to propagate [he said] is a religion that will be equally acceptable to all minds; it must be equally philosophic, equally emotional, equally mystic, and equally conducive to action.... To become harmoniously balanced in all these four directions is my ideal of religion. And this religion is attained by what we in India call Yoga-union.[33]


He went on to define in some detail each of the four yogas raja, karma, bhakti, and jnana. To each he gave equal attention, but it was the philosophy inherent in the last, and not alien to the others, that provided the basis for religious unity the philosophy of monism. He did not elucidate the principles of this philosophy in this first series of New York lectures, except to say now:

[Jnana-Yoga] tells man that he is essentially divine. It shows to mankind the real unity of being, and that each one of us is the Lord God Himself, manifested on earth. All of us, from the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the highest beings to whom we look up with wonder and awe--all are manifestations of the same Lord.[34]


This was a theme that he would later on develop in full. For now, he closed this important lecture, which, as he was to write to Mr. Sturdy, "was the outline of our work,'[35] with a paragraph that will perhaps always resound in the mind of every student of his thought:


It is imperative that all these various Yogas should be carried .out in practice; mere theories about them will not do any good. First we have to hear about them, then we have to think . about them. We have to reason the thoughts out, impress them on our minds, and we have to meditate on them, realise them until at last they become our whole life. No longer will religion remain a  bundle of ideas or theories, not an intellectual assent; it will enter into our very self. By means of intellectual assent we may today subscribe to many foolish things, and change our minds altogether tomorrow. But true religion never changes. Religion is realisation; not talk, nor doctrine, nor theories, however beautiful they may be. It is being and becoming, not hearing or acknowledging; it is the whole soul becoming changed into what it believes. That is religion.[36]


In Swamiji's third and fourth lectures, "The CosmosThe Macrocosm" and "The Cosmos-The Microcosm," he answered some age-old questions that were, in modern form, agitating the nineteenth-century mind. (In London these two subjects would be dealt with in one lecture under the title "The Real and Apparent Man," published in the Complete Works as "The Real Nature of Man.") First: Whence came this vast external universe? Did God create it out of nothing and for purposes known to Himself? Or did the blind forces of matter and energy bring it into existence and shape it through natural processes, such as those of geology and evolution? Whence did it come? Where is it going? Why? These were the first, elementary questions that Swamiji answered in "The Macrocosm." "I will try to present before you," he said, "the outline of the answer that I have gathered from the ancient philosophers of India in harmony with modern knowledge.'[37]He then proceeded to explain the Vedantic concept of the cyclic involution and evolution of the universe, its rhythmic projection and dissolution, the causal form evolving into the subtle, the subtle into the gross, the gross involving back into the subtle, going back to the cause; then evolving once again. "This coming out of the fine and becoming gross, simply changing the arrangements of its parts, as it were, is what in modern times [is] called evolution.... But we have to learn one thing more," he said. "We have to go one step further, . . . every evolution is preceded by an involution.'[38]


This concept, familiar to every present-day student of Vedanta, can be briefly stated with running excerpts from this lecture: We see then, that nothing can be created out of nothing. Everything exists through eternity, and will exist through eternity. Only the movement is in succeeding waves and hollows, going back to fine forms, and coming out into gross manifestations. This involution and evolution is going on throughout the whole of nature. The whole series of evolution beginning with the lowest manifestation of life and reaching up to the highest, the most perfect man, must have been the involution of something else. The question is: The involution of what? What was involved? God. The evolutionist will tell you that your idea that it was God is wrong. Why? Because you say God is intelligent, but we find that intelligence develops much later on in the course of evolution.... This objection of the evolutionists does not hold water, as we shall see by applying our theory. The tree comes out of the seed, goes back to the seed; the beginning and the end are the same. The earth comes out of its cause and returns to it. We know that if we can find the beginning we can find the end. E converso, if we find the end we can find the beginning.... In the end we find the perfect man, so in the beginning it must have been the same. Therefore, the protoplasm was the involution of the highest intelligence.... That perfect man who is at one end of the chain of evolution was involved in the cell of the protoplasm, which is at the other end of the same chain.


Applying the same reason to the whole of the universe, we see that intelligence must be the Lord of creation, the cause. What is the most evolved notion that man has of this universe? It is intelligence.... The beginning was, therefore, intelligence.... The sum total of the intelligence displayed in the universe must, therefore, be the involved universal intelligence unfolding itself. This universal intelligence is what we call God....


We now see that all the various forms of cosmic energy, such as matter, thought, force, intelligence, and so forth, are simply the manifestation of that cosmic intelligence, or, as we shall call it henceforth, the Supreme Lord. Everything that you see, feel, or hear, the whole universe, is His creation, or to be a little more accurate, is the Lord Himself.... He it is that comes down and becomes the lowest atom, and slowly unfolding His nature rejoins Himself. This is the mystery of the universe.... This is the only solution of the Cosmos that satisfies the human intellect. In one word, we are born of Him, we live in Him, and unto Him we return.[39]


It was an answer satisfying not only to the modern intellect, which seeks for the cause of things in their own nature rather than in some external, supernatural force or intelligence, but to the emotions as well; it was a theistic answer, but it reached the highest peaks of dualism. The Supreme Lord, from whom the universe emanated, was immanent everywhere, in everything; nothing was not He. "It is He who is shining as the sun and the stars, He is the mother earth.... He is the man who is talking. He is the audience that is here. He is the platform on which I stand, He is the light that enables me to see your faces. It is all He.'[40]This explanation of the universe was at once more reasonable and more exalted than the explanation given by Christian theology in its orthodox forms. It was, moreover, inclusive of the glimpse of things gained through the peephole of science, and was thus acceptable to many of Swamiji's listeners. Nor, of course, was he speaking academically. Did he not vividly perceive then and there that all was God Himself-the platform, the audience, the light, his own form? More, had he not known in the vastness of his own being the rhythmic rise and fall of universes without beginning and without end ? His teaching, as always, was out of his own experience and thereby carried with it the power to convince.


But grand though this lecture was, it was not the final word he wanted to give. Questions remained, one of the most important of which was: Who is this "I" that witnesses the external world? Put more simply: Who and what is man? "From analysing the external nature," Swamiji was to say at the beginning of his next lecture, "The Microcosm, " "man is led to analyse the internal; this question of the internal man comes with a higher state of civilisation, with a deeper insight into nature, with a higher state of growth.'[41] And this questioning had become particularly active in the latter part of the nineteenth century when the concept of man as a special creation of God had received a damaging, indeed mortal, blow through the theory (or fact) of Evolution. Man's prestige had grievously suffered, and for all his vaunted progress, his self respect was at a dangerously low ebb. The concept of man as a higher animal, long held by rationalists and now confirmed by science, opened wide the door to the jungle. If man is an animal, should he not rightly act like one rather than suppress his natural bent? The question in all its implications had not yet pushed through the walls of Victorian prudery into the open, but it was on its way, and it could well alter the face of human society, for the concept man has of his essential nature perhaps determines more profoundly than anything else his outlook on life, forming and informing every aspect of his culture. Indeed, the answer to this all-important question "What is man?" was basic to Swamiji's message.


As far as his New York lectures are concerned, he began his answer with "The Microcosm, " leading his audience through an epistemological argument. Again, let us quote his own words:


I am looking at you. How many things are necessary for this vision? First, the eyes.... Secondly, . . . the nerve centre in the brain. [Third,] the mind must be there....


The mind, too, is only the carrier; it has to carry the sensation still forward, and present it to the intellect.... Still this is not sufficient. The intellect must carry it forward and present the whole thing before the ruler in the body, the human soul, the king on the throne....


The instruments are in the external body, the gross body of man; but the mind and the intellect are not. They are in what is called in Hindu philosophy the finer body and what in Christian theology you read of as the spiritual body of man; finer, very much finer than the body, and yet not the soul. This soul is beyond them all.[42]. . . Just as the body has its progress and decadence, so also has the mind, and, therefore, the mind is not the soul, because the soul can neither decay nor degenerate. How can we know that? . . . Because knowledge which is self illuminating and the basis of intelligence cannot belong to dull, dead matter. . . . It is intelligence that illumines all matter.... This body is not self luminous; . . . neither can the mind nor the spiritual body be self-luminous They are not of the essence of intelligence. That which is self luminous cannot decay.... Decadence is possible only of that light which is borrowed and is not of its own essence.[43]. . . The light which shines through the mind is not its own. Whose is it then? It must belong to that which has it as its own essence, and as such can never decay or die, never become stronger or weaker; it is self luminous, it is luminosity itself. It cannot be that the soul knows, but it is knowledge. It cannot be that the soul has existence, but it u existence. It cannot be that the soul is happy, it is happiness itself: . . .


We see, then, that this human being is composed first of this external covering, the body, secondly, the finer body, consisting of mind, intellect, and egoism. Behind them is the real Self of man....


... If the existence of the soul is drawn from the argument that it is self luminous, that knowledge, existence blessedness are its essence, it naturally follows that this soul cannot have been created. A self--luminous existence, independent of any other existence, could never have been the outcome of anything. It always existed; there was never a time when it did not exist.... How can the soul . . . be said to be existing in time, when time itself exists in the soul? It has neither birth nor death, but it is passing through all these various stages. . . . It takes up a body and uses it; and when that body has failed and is used up, it takes another body; and so on it goes[44]


At this point Swamiji veered off from his definition of the real nature of man; it was necessary first to explain to his audience a concept as new and strange to Western thinking as was that of an uncreated, beginningless soul-the theory of reincarnation. He devoted the remaining third of this lecture to a discussion of that subject. And so came to a close his first series of Sunday lectures in New York. Anyone attending all four lectures would have gained a broad and rich outline of the first steps of Vedantic thought.

3

The New York newspapers had not ignored Swamiji this season, but it was not until his public lectures showed clear signs of proving successful that the Herald considered him newsworthy enough for special attention. On Sunday, January 19, that paper released not one, but two long articles telling of his presence in the city and of his classes. The first article, which concerned a bhakti yoga class held on December 23, had been submitted by Swami Kripananda (see chapter five, section five) . The second article, which appeared in another section of the Herald, has been quoted in part earlier, but the remainder of it can be given here: 

SWAMI PREACHES TO GOTHAMITES.
High Priest of Hindooism Promulgates Oriental Lore 
from West Thirty-Ninth Street.


WINS FAME AND PUPILS


Many Well Known Persons Are Seeking to Follow the 
Teachings of His Philosophy.


FUNDAMENTALS OF THE FAITH.

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA is a name to conjure by in certain circles of New York society to-day-and those not the least wealthy or intellectual. It is borne by a dusky gentleman from India, who for the last twelve months has been making name and fame for himself in this metropolis by the propagation of certain forms of Oriental religion, philosophy and practice. Last winter his campaign centred in the reception room of a prominent hotel on Fifth avenue. Having gained for his teachings and himself a certain vogue in society, he now aims to reach the common people, and for that reason is giving a series of free lectures on Sunday afternoons at Hardman Hall*(3).

*(3) This sentence and the one preceding it could not have been more misleading. The last thing Swamiji had had in mind was to gain “for his teachings and himself a certain vogue in society.” As is well known, in the early months of 1895 he had disregarded every bit of well-meaning advice in this connection. Far from centering his “campaign” in “the reception room of a prominent hotel on Fifth Avenue” (the reference is to the Waldorf), he had, as related in chapter one, taken rooms in an unfashionable and humble lodging house.

Sufficient success has attended the efforts of Swami Vivekananda to justify a description of the man and his work in the United States.

THE MAN HIMSELF

The Swami Vivekananda is a pure blooded Hindu, born some thirty-three years ago in the Province of Bengal, and educated at Calcutta University, where he learned to speak the English language with ease and fluency. Of his early life he never speaks, save to talk in a general way about the great master who taught him the doctrines and practices he is now trying to introduce into this country.

The outlines of his later life are better known to Americans, for he came to the United States three (two and a half] years ago as the representative of Hindooism at the Congress of Religions held in Chicago during the World's Fair. Afterward he went on a lecturing tour through the United States.


The personality of the Swami may be gathered in great measure from his picture. He is of dark complexion, of rather more than average height and heavily built. His manner is undoubtedly attractive, and he is possessed of a large amount of personal magnetism....


The work of the Hindoo in this country consists at present in giving free lectures and holding free classes, initiating disciples and conducting a large correspondence,

At present, while the lectures and classes are popular, and the number of pupils daily increases, the Swami has only two proclaimed disciples. Both of these have changed their names and are now known by Sanscrit pseudonyms, prefixing the word Swami, which means "Lord" or "Master." Both of these disciples are Americans of foreign extraction, and one at least is well known in New York.


[There followed two paragraphs descriptive of Swami Abhayananda and Swami Kripananda. In chapter two, section seven*(4), we have quoted excerpts from these paragraphs, and to reproduce them here will add nothing new. Following them was a "brief sketch of the Swami's fundamental teachings," which has been quoted in full in chapter five, section four. Following that was a brief description of one of Swamiji's karma yoga classes, the audience, and the informal reception during which "those who had been listening to him hastened to shake hands or begged for the favor of an introduction." This passage has also been quoted in chapter five, section four. The article then continued:]

*(4) See chapter one, section one, and chapter two, section seven.

Concerning himself the Swami will not say more than is absolutely necessary. Contrary to the claim made by some of his pupils, he declares that he has come to this country alone and not as officially representing any order of Hindoo monks. He belongs to the Sanyasi, he will say, and is hence free to travel without losing his caste. When it is pointed out to him that Hindooism is not a proselytizing religion, he says he has a message to the West as Buddha had a message to the East. When questioned concerning the Hindoo religion, and asked whether he intends to introduce its practices and ritual into this country, he declares that he is preaching simply philosophy*(5). In talking, if standing up, he has a very odd trick of shortening or heightening himself imperceptibly, so that at one moment he is apparently at the height of his interlocutor's shoulder and again on a level with his eyes.

*(5) This sentence and the one preceding it appear to have been taken from a report of the question-and answer period following Swamiji’s lecture before the (cont.) Brooklyn Ethical Association on December 30, 1894. It was then that he said for the first known time, “I have a message to the West as Buddha had a message to the East.” (See Complete Works, 5:314.)

THOSE WHO LISTEN

There can be no question that the Swami is securing an influential following. Many clergymen have attended his lectures. Indeed, he was invited to lecture before the Dixon Society in this city by Dr. Wright. Some of those who are his pupils are well known in the city. Among the names of these recorded at the Swami's house were Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Leggett, Mme Antoinette Stirling, Dr. Alan Day, Miss Emma Thursby and Professor Wyman. Mrs. Ole Bull also is one of his disciples. The Swami has just received an invitation from Mr. John P. Fox to lecture before the Harvard Graduate Philosophical Club. Here he lectures twice daily on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, in addition to his public lectures on Sunday afternoon.

4

Since Swamiji's karma yoga classes had extended to the first and second Fridays of January (see chapter five, section five), it was indeed the case that he had been holding classes twice daily on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 228 West Thirty-ninth Street. But with the completion of karma yoga, the number of weekly classes was reduced to seven. The new schedule was printed on the back of the first pamphlet, "The Ideal of a Universal Religion," which was distributed on January 19:

CLASS LECTURES.

228 West 39th Street, New York City.

MONDAYS : "BHAKTI YOGA," ----- 11 A. M. 8 P. M..
WEDNESDAYS: "GNANA YOGA, " - - - 11 A.M. 8 P. M.
FRIDAYS : QUESTIO,N CLASS, ------ 8 P.M.
SATURDAYS : "RAJA Y'OGA," ------ 11 A.M. 8 P. M.


On the back cover of the subsequent pamphlet, "The cosmos," the additional information was given that the morning classes were for advanced students and the evening classes for beginners. To judge from available dated transcripts, however, Swamiji's bhakti yoga classes did not follow this pattern; rather, the beginners classes appear to have been held both mornings and evenings in December and January, and after them came classes on parabhakti, or supreme devotion. Except for the bhakti yoga classes that may have been held on Monday, January13, and one held on the morning of January 20, all the beginners classes are given in "Addresses on Bhakti-Yoga" in volume four of the Complete Works. The transcripts of the January 13 classes (if indeed any classes were held on that day) remain undiscovered, but by good fortune Mr. Goodwin's transcript of the bhakti yoga class of January 20 has recently come to light and will bear quoting from here at some length, for it is new to us. This was Swamiji's last beginners class and is given in full in appendix A. He began:


We finished in our last about Pratikas. One idea more of the preparatory Bhakti, and then we will go on to the Para, the Supreme. This idea is called Nishta, devotion to one idea.... [Nishta is] knowing that all different forms of [worshipping God] are right, yet sticking to one and rejecting the others. We must not worship the others at all. We must not hate or criticise them, but respect them. The elephant has two teeth coming out from his mouth. These are only for show; he cannot eat with them; but the teeth that are inside are those with which he chews his food. So mix with all states, say yea, yea, to all, but join none. Stick to your own ideal of worship. When you worship, worship that ideal of God which is your own Ishtam, your own chosen. If you do not, you will have nothing. Nothing will grow. When a plant is growing it is necessary that it should be hedged round lest any animal eat it up. When it has become strong and a huge gigantic tree, do not care for any hedges, it is perfect in itself. So when just the seed of spirituality is growing, to fritter away the energies in all sorts of religious ideas, a little of this and a little of that, a little of Christianity, a little of Buddhism, and reality of nothing destroys the soul. This has its good side, and in the end we will come to it. Only do not put the cart before the horse.... After a long course of training in this Ishtam, when this plant of spirituality has grown and the soul has become strong and you begin to realise that your Ishtam is everywhere, [then] naturally all these bondages will fall down.... Devotion to one idea; those who have this will become spiritual, will see the light....


Of course, at the same time, we must always remember that we must recognise the Ishtams of others and respect them, . . . or else worship will degenerate into fanaticism. There is an old story of a man who was a worshipper of Shiva. There are sects in our country who worship God as Shiva, and others who worship Him as Vishnu. This man was a great worshipper of Shiva, and to that he added a tremendous hatred for all worshippers of Vishnu, and would not hear the name of Vishnu pronounced. There are a great number of worshippers of Vishnu in India, and he could not avoid hearing the name. So he bored two holes in his ears and tied two little bells on to them, and whenever a man mentioned the name of Vishnu, he moved his head and rang the bells, and that prevented his hearing the noise.


But Shiva told him in a dream, "What a fool you are; I am Vishnu and I am Shiva; they are different only in name; there are not two Gods." But the man said, "I don't care. I will have nothing to do with this Vishnu business !" He had a little statue of Shiva and . . . built an altar for it. One day he bought some beautiful incense and went home to light some of the incense for his God. While the fumes of his incense were rising in the air he found that the image was divided into two: one half remained Shiva, and the other half was Vishnu. Then the man jumped up and put his finger under the nostril of Vishnu so that not a particle of the smell could get there.


Then Shiva became disgusted, and the man became a demon. He is the father of all fanatics, the "bell-eared" demon....


This is the only danger in this Nishta Bhakti, becoming this fanatical demon. The world gets full of them. It is very easy to hate.... The ordinary, undeveloped weak brain of mankind cannot love one without hating another. This very [characteristic] becomes fanaticism in religion.... This should be avoided, and at the same time the other danger should be avoided: we must not fritter away our energies. Religion becomes a nothing with us; just hearing lectures. These are the two dangers. The danger with the liberals is that they are too expansive and have no intensity. You see that in these days religion has become very expansive, very broad, but the ideas are so broad that there is no depth in them.... This is the danger with the liberal thought, and on the other hand the sectarians have the depth, the intensity, but that intensity is so narrow. They are very deep, but with no breadth to it, and not only that, it draws out hatred to everyone else. Now, if we can avoid both these dangers and become as broad as the uttermost liberals and as deep as the bluest fanatic, then we will solve the problem....Here ends the first part of Bhakti, the formal, the ceremonial, the preparatory [45]


Swamiji then went on to review the preparatory steps of bhakti yoga, which led up to para-bhakti. First there were the qualifications of the disciple: longing for spirituality, purity, and perseverance. The teacher, too, must be properly qualified, able to transmit the spiritual current that has passed down to him through generations. Then came the preparatory steps of worshiping God through symbols, of repeating His name, of holding to one's Ishta, and of reverencing those of others. In speaking of the worship of God through symbols, or pratikas, Swamiji told another story:


We can worship anything we like [he said] if we think it is God. If we do not think it is God that worship is not Bhakti. If you think it is God it is all right.


There was a certain Yogi who used to practise meditation in a lonely part of the forest, on the banks of a river. There was a poor cowherd, a very ignorant man, who used to tend his herd in that forest. Every day he used to see this same Yogi meditating by the hours, practising austerities, living alone, studying. Somehow he got curious what he did, so he came to him and said, "Sir, can you teach me the way to God ?" This Yogi was a very learned, great man; and he replied, "How will you understand God, you common cowherd; blockhead, go home and tend your cows, and don't bother your head with such things " The poor fellow went away, but somehow a real want had come to him. So he could not rest, and he came again to the Yogi, and said "Sir, won't you teach me something about God?" Again he was repulsed, "Oh you blockhead, what can you understand of God? Go home." But he could not sleep, he could not eat; he must know something about God.


So he came again, and the Yogi, in order to quiet the man, as he was so insisting, said, "I'll teach you about God."


The man asked, "Sir, what sort of being is God ? What is his form? How does he look?"


The Yogi said, "God is just like the big bull in your herd; that is just God; God has become that big bull."

The man believed him, and went back to his herd, and day and night he took that bull. for God, and began to worship it. He brought the greenest grass for that bull, rested close to it, and gave it light, sat near it, and followed it. Thus days and months and years pass. His whole soul was there. One day he heard a voice, as it were, coming out of the bull. The bull speaks. "My son, my son." "Why, the bull is speaking! No, the bull cannot speak." Again he went away, and sat near meditating in great misery of his heart; he did not know . anything. Again he heard the voice coming out of the bull, "My child, my child." He goes near-"No, the bull cannot speak." Then he went back again and sat despondent. Again the voice came and that time he found it out. It was from his own heart. He found that God was in him. Then he learned the wonderful truth of the Teacher of all Teachers, "I am with thee always." And the poor cowherd learned the whole mystery.


Then he goes back to the Yogi, and when he is at some distance the Yogi sees him. The Yogi has been the most learned man in the country; practising austerity for years, meditating, studying, and this cowherd, an ignorant  blockhead, never studied a book, never learnt his letters, but he comes, his whole body, as it were, transfigured, his face changed, the light of heaven shining round his face. The Yogi got up. "What is this change? Where did you get this ?"


"Sir, you gave me that." "How? I told you that in joke."


"But I took it seriously, and I got everything I wanted out of that bull, for is He not everywhere?"

So that bull was the pratika, and that man worshipped the bull as his pratika, as God, and he got everything out of it. So that intense love, that desire, brings out everything. Everything is in ourselves, and the external world and the external worship are the forms, the suggestions that call it out.


But forms lead one to the highest only if one desires the highest. "All these external forms of Bhakti," Swamiji went on in this same class, this repetition of the name, worship of Pratika, this Nishta, this Ishtam, are but the preparations until that eternal power wakes up. Then alone comes spirituality, when one goes beyond these laws and bounds. Then all laws fall down, all forms vanish, temples and churches crumble into dust and die away.... So this is the goal towards which we are going, the Supreme Bhakti, and all that leads up to this is but preparation. But it is necessary. It prepares the infinite soul to come out of this bondage of books and sects and forms; these fly away and leave but the Soul of man: . . .


We see that the vast mass. of mankind is born in some church or temple or [some religious] form and never comes out of it. Why? Have these forms helped the growth of spirituality? If through these forms we step onto the highest platform of love, where forms vanish and all these sectarian ideas go away, how is it that the vast majority of men are always groveling in some form or other? They are all atheists; they do not want any religion.... What you want, you get. The Lord fulfills all desires. If you want to keep a certain position in Society you will do so; if you want church you will get that and not Him. If you want to play the fool all your life with all these churches and foolish organisations, you will have them and have to live in them all your lives.... Those that love Him alone will come to Him, and those that love others will go wherever they love[46].


In the second part of Bhakti--Yoga, "Para-Bhakti or Supreme • Devotion," the soul had soared far beyond the need of these preparatory practices and had set forth on the open sea of intense spiritual love. Here the superficial conflict between the often pious and sentimental beginning bhakta and the often dry and disdainful beginning jnani disappeared. As both passed beyond the kindergartens of religion, as both neared the outposts of Reality, then for each aspirant true religion began, and therein lay the essential unity of these separate paths. "Each seems to lay a great stress upon his own peculiar method of worship," Swamiji wrote, "forgetting that with perfect love true knowledge is bound to come even unsought, and that from perfect knowledge true love is inseparable.'[47] "There is no sweetness but He," he would say in a jnana yoga class. When through knowledge, you "look upon all things with the same eye, . . . then you have got the truth, and then alone you will know what happiness means, what peace means, what love means.'[48] It was through love, on the other hand, that the ripe bhakta "sees no distinctions; the mighty ocean of love has entered into him, and he sees not man in man but beholds his Beloved everywhere. Through every face shines to him his Hari. Wherever there is beauty or sublimity, to him it is all His.... Such, though bitten by a serpent, only say that a messenger came to them from their Beloved.'[49] Perceiving that all is He, the jnani loves all; loving Him, the bhakta perceives that all is He.


Nor did the bhakta in Swamiji's teaching stop with the "blessed madness of divine love." From that "dizzy height on the pinnacle of the religion of love,'[50] where all sense of self is lost, the bhakta becomes identified with the object of his worship.


We all have to begin as dualists in the religion of love [Swamiji said at the close of his classes on para-bhakti. God is to us a separate Being, and we feel ourselves to be separate beings also. . . . We all begin with love for ourselves, and the unfair claims of the little self make even love selfish. At last, however, comes the full blaze of light, in which this little self is seen to have become one with the Infinite. Man himself is transfigured in the presence of this Light of Love, and he realises at last the beautiful and inspiring truth that Love, the Lover, and the Beloved are One.[51]


This culmination was the bhakti of Advaita, monism, which transcends the organic unity of Ishvara, the souls, and the world. Even as Swamiji had defined the meaning of Ishvara at Thousand Island Park, so did he define Him in New York at the very outset of his bhakti yoga class.


It has always to be understood [he wrote] that the Personal God worshipped by the Bhakta is not separate or different from the Brahman. All is Brahman, the One without a second; only the Brahman, as unity or absolute, is too much of an abstraction to be loved and worshipped; so the Bhakta chooses the relative aspect of Brahman, that is; Ishvara, the Supreme Ruler.... Ishvara is the highest manifestation of the Absolute Reality, or in other words, the highest possible reading of the Absolute by the human mind. Creation is eternal, and so is Ishvara.[52]


But behind the eternity of time was the Timeless Brahman, into whom (or which?) both worshiper and worshiped might disappear-for both, all along, were He. Indeed, the culmination of all yoga was neither to love nor to know but to be. Naked in itself, the soul "has not knowledge, existence, and blessedness as its qualities, they are the essence of the soul'[53]so Swamiji had said in "The Microcosm" the day before opening his class on parabhakti. And so he was to say with greater emphasis and fuller explanation in many lectures to come.


Karma yoga was no different in its ultimate goal than bhakti or jnana yoga. By this path of selfless, nonattached work "men may get to where Buddha got largely by meditation or Christ by prayer'[54] Swamiji said in one of his advanced karma yoga classes, and in another, "We find that Jnana, Bhakti, and Karma all come to one point. The highest ideal is eternal and entire self abnegation, where there is no 'I' but all is 'Thou' and whether he is conscious or unconscious of it, Karma-Yoga leads man to that end.'[55]


This path of action started exactly where one stood, wherever that might be, and climbed to the goal of freedom-"the goal of all human nature." Meant for those who are active in one way or another-in ruling a kingdom or sweeping a street, in fighting a battle or reading the scriptures-it was the path (with variations) for the vast majority of people, including most monastics, as well as householders and those unmarried men and women living in the world, but dedicated to a life of spiritual unfoldment and service. In his first advanced class Swamiji made it clear that there was no difference in spiritual value between one way of life and another, or, for that matter; between one yoga and another. "The important thing," he said, "is to know that there are gradations of duty and of morality-that the duty of one state of life in one set of circumstances will not and cannot be that of another.'[56]


He gave an illustration, which was, in fact, the key to the whole matter of who should and who should not follow the path of work :


....One man does not resist [evil] because he is weak, lazy, and cannot, not because he will not; the other man knows that he can strike an irresistible blow if he likes; yet he not only does not strike, but blesses his enemies. The one who from weakness resists not commits a sin, and as such cannot receive any benefit from the non-resistance; while the other would commit a sin by offering resistance....


Such is the central idea of Karma-Yoga. The Karma Yogi is the man who understands that the highest ideal is non-resistance, and who also knows that this non-resistance is the highest manifestation of power in actual possession, and also what is called the resisting of evil is but a step on the way towards the manifestation of this highest power, namely, non-resistance. Before reaching this highest ideal, man's duty is to resist evil; let him work, let him fight, let him strike straight from the shoulder. Then only, when he has gained the power to resist, will nonresistance be a virtue.


[Until then] inactivity should be avoided by all means. Activity always means resistance. Resist all evils, mental and physical; and when you have succeeded in resisting, then will calmness come.... We see very few in the world who have really reached that stage. I do not know if I have seen twenty persons in my life who are really calm and non-resisting, and I have travelled over half the world.[57]


In the beginning, the practice of this yoga lay in doing one's duty. How does one determine what one's duty is? Swamiji devoted a large part of his beginners classes (see chapter five, section five) to answering this question. But to act out of a sense of duty was by no means the essence of karma yoga; indeed, in his last advanced class, entitled "Freedom," he pulled aside, as it were, duty's pious mask to reveal the gross face of compulsion and attachment. "What is duty after all?" he asked, and replied: "It is really the impulsion of the flesh, of our attachment; and when an attachment has become established . . . we baptise it with the high-sounding name of duty. We strew flowers upon it, trumpets sound, and sacred texts are said over it, and then the whole world fights, and men earnestly rob each other for this duty's sake.'[58] Still one's conventional duty in life was a guideline to action and the only place from which to start.


As Swamiji defined it, one's duty was, briefly, "to do that work which will exalt and ennoble us in accordance with the ideals and activities of the society in which we are born'[59] and of course, in accordance with one's position in that society at any particular time. To do one's duty as so defined and to do it with forbearance, without complaint, with courage, without any sense that one's own position is inferior or superior to that of others, and above all to do it with progressive unselfishness prepared the moral foundation for the real practice of karma yoga. And lest the worms of self righteousness and fanaticism undermine the whole structure, Swamiji made it clear that while one's duty was to do good to the world " the world does not require our help at all.'[60] Moreover, "no permanent or everlasting good can be done to the world.... The sum total of the good things in the world has been the same throughout in its relation to man's need and greed. It cannot be increased or decreased.'[61]"Let us give up all this foolish talk of doing good to the world," he said. "It is not waiting for your or my help; yet we must work and constantly do good, because it is a blessing to ourselves.'[62]


By working in this way, readily doing whatever happens to be our duty, "we shall find that even this idea of duty undergoes change, and that the greatest work is done only when there is no selfish motive to prompt it.'[63] It was when "the tentacle of selfishness" began to lose its grip that the karma yogi threw all idea of duty overboard-and with it all idea of reward or praise or recognition on earth or in heaven.


"Be not compelled," Swamiji charged his advanced students. "Why should you be compelled? Everything that you do under compulsion goes to build up attachment.'[94]And in his last beginners class: "The Karma-Yogi asks why you require any motive to work other than the inborn love of freedom. Be beyond the common worldly motives.... Let us do good because it is good to do good; he who does good work even in order to get to heaven binds himself down, says the Karma-Yogi. Any work that is done with the least selfish motive, instead of making us free, forges one more chain for our feet. So the only way is to give up all the fruits of work, to be unattached to them.'[65]


In his four advanced karma yoga classes (see chapter five, page 351  ) Swamiji explained in detail the rationale behind nonattached action and the method of achieving it. He did not present this yoga as an easy path to freedom-"To attain this unattachment is almost a life-work,'[66] he said-but he charted the way, speaking as Sri Krishna had done more than three millennia before him, not for those rare souls "who are perfectly satisfied with the Self, whose desires do not go beyond the Self, whose mind never strays out of the Self, to whom the Self is all in all'[67]but for those who "stand inside (the world-machine) and learn the secret of work.'[68]


As has been seen earlier we can say with certainty that the first eight chapters of Raja-yoga consist of Swamiji's beginners classes and that his "Yoga Aphorisms" are his advanced (morning) classes. As he wrote to Mr. Sturdy, the original transcripts were "much altered and rearranged'[69]for publication, but however that may have been, Raja-Yoga as it stands today forms a systematic, step-by-step course in "controlling nature, external and internal" to the end of perceiving and manifesting "Him who is beyond all darkness."


"The teachers of the science of Yoga," Swamiji told his Class, “. . . declare that religion is not only based upon the experience of ancient times, but that no man can be religious until he has the same perceptions himself. Yoga is the science which teaches us how to get these perceptions.'[70] Like karma yoga in its unmixed form, this science of raja yoga “ never asks the question what our religion is, whether we are Deists or Atheists, whether Christians, Jews, or Buddhists. We are human beings; that is sufficient.'[71] During his Saturday evening raja yoga classes, Swamiji explained the meaning and rationale of each step of the way, from the essential moral disciplines, through breathing exercises, to mental control, to concentration and deep meditation, and finally to the superconsious state of samadhi. This was a science in which the mind deals with the mind itself, probes deeper and deeper into its own secrets, lifts itself, probes deeper and deeper into its own secrets, lifts itself to higher and yet higher levels of awareness, generates more and more power, discovers subtler and yet subtler states of reality, until, at length, utterly concentrated and still, it dissolves in the transcendent light of the Purusha, the Self. The long journey of the soul was to be undertaken methodically, deliberately, and without recourse to any outside, supernatural power whatsoever. As psychic and spiritual states and phenomena passed by, as it were, in review, Swamiji showed them all to be natural—not supernatural, but contained within man from the start and made now to unfold quickly, as though evolution had been speeded up a thousandfold.

One of Swamiji’s purposes in explaining the rationale of raja yoga—“one of the grandest of sciences”—was to divest it of the clouds of mystery that had enshrouded it and that had, as he said, well-nigh destroyed it. He not only explained its steps, as far as possible, in the light of the most advanced psychological and physiological knowledge of that age, but pointed out that the science of religion was as clear cut, as empirical, as rational, and as capable of verification as any science of the external world. Like each of the physical sciences, it had the instruments and methods appropriate to it; it had  its own verifiable discoveries and was open to the experimentation of anyone willing to learn the relevant techniques and disciplines. How much training in actual practice Swamiji gave in his classes we cannot know. Perhaps he gave more than the brief and simple instructions in pranayama that one finds in the book Raja--''Yoga, which he himself edited. Surely he gave instruction in meditation and encouraged its practice in his presence. His emphasis was ever on practice in all the yogas, hard, steady practice. And in connection specifically with raja yoga he insisted that "practice is absolutely necessary." "You may sit down and listen to me by the hour every day, but if you do not practise, you will not get one step further. It all depends on practice.'[72]It is probable, then, that he gave detailed instruction in his actual classes, later eliminating some of it from his book and warning in his Preface, "Yoga can only be safely learnt by direct contact with a teacher.'[73] But the book he left behind is today an invaluable guide not only for those in the Western world who, in search of new frontiers of reality, are turning the mind's searchlight of inquiry into the mind itself and there beginning to discover undreamt of powers, but also, and more particularly, for those who are discovering the immense spiritual value of meditation. Swamiji's sane, rational delineation of the inner territory of the mind, which had long since been thoroughly explored and charted by India's ancient sages, but which was known to the West only through the mystifying jargon of occultism, could save the Western experimenter many years of stumbling trial and error. Swamiji's primary intent in Raja--Yoga, however, seems to have been to untangle the then prevailing confusion between psychic and spiritual phenomena and to put both on a basis acceptable to the rational mind of the West, or, rather, to expand that mind a bit to include more in its scope than the outermost skin of reality. Thus, though he may have judiciously edited out of Raja-Yoga a good deal of practical instruction, his book stands as a monument of religious science.


Swamiji’s advanced jnana yoga classes were, in a sense ,closely related to those on raja yoga, for the philosophy of Patanjali’s Yoga is almost identical with the Sankhya philosophy of kapila, which is, in turn, a sort of springboard for Vedanta-one that Swamiji made use of to reach the great heights of Advaita.


But let us speak first of his beginners jnana yoga classes, which were faithfully transcribed by Mr. Goodwin, but not published until years later and not identified until now. Through Miss Waldo and Sister Devamata three of Goodwin's transcriptions of the January classes found their way, without exact identification, into the pages of The Message of the East, a monthly magazine published by the Vedanta Centre of Boston (founded by Swami Paramananda in 1909) and thence into volume two of the Complete Works. Fortunately, the transcripts themselves still exist, and through the kindness of the Vedanta Centre (whose headquarters are now in Cohasset, Massachusetts) they have been made available to this book. Since these transcripts are clearly dated, even as to time of day, it is now possible to identify Swamiji's beginners jnana yoga classes in the Complete Works and to determine their chronological order. As we have seen in the previous chapter (page 357), the first two beginners classes, held on the evenings of December 11 and 18, were, respectively, the unpublished "First Step towards Jnana" and the published "Steps to Realisation"; the classes that followed on the Wednesday evenings of January were "The Atman: Its Bondage and Freedom," January 8; "Soul, Nature, and God," January 15; "The Way to Blessedness," January 22; and on January 29 a heretofore unpublished class on the Mundaka Upanishad, of which we shall say more later.


Swamiji opened the first of these January jnana yoga classes with the words (as given in Goodwin's transcript) : "We have talked of nityanitya-viveka, discriminating that which is real from  the unreal.'[74]This was no doubt a reference to his class of December 18, "Steps to Realisation," in which, as mentioned earlier, he had discussed the requisite disciplines of jnana yoga-the six steps of sensory and mental control; intense desire for freedom; and discrimination between the Real and the unreal. (He had insisted upon the necessity for renunciation in the preceding class of December 11.) Now in "The Atman: Its Bondage and Freedom" he began a philosophical discussion of Vedanta, starting with the dualistic idea that "each man consists of three parts-the body, the internal organ or the mind, and behind that, what is called the Atman, the Self." "The Atman," he said, "is the only existence in the human body which is immaterial.... [It] is omnipresent.... But the Self acts through the mind and the body, and where they are, its action is visible.'[75]What one's body and mind are, and why they are what they are, was, by and large, the theme of this class. Their condition at any given time, Swamiji said, was entirely due to the tremendous force of samskaras-the impressions made upon the mind through one's own thoughts and actions, good and bad. Samskaras, the sum total of which determines a person's character, compel the soul (or the mind) to transmigrate through life after life, taking on and manifesting through one body after another. "A man dies," he said; "the body falls away and goes back to the elements; but the Samskaras remain, adhering to the mind which, being made of fine material, does not dissolve, because the finer the material, the more persistent it is. But the mind also dissolves in the long run, and that is what we are struggling for.'[76] He used here the vivid analogy of the whirlwind-a force that gathers bits of matter (body) around itself as it rotates on and on. Until the force of samskara is finally spent, "the Atman is covered by the whirl of the mind and imagines it is being taken from place to place,[77] from one life to another, each of which is determined by the power of our acts and thoughts in previous lives.


But (in another metaphor) the long chain of life and death is really a circle that inevitably returns to its starting point in Brahman.


All this universe was in Brahman, and it was, as it were, projected out of Him, and being turned out, it has moved forward and forward. But what is meant by that forward movement? At last we find it was moving in a circle, and comes back to the point from which it was projected. So with this force which we call soul, which for the time being we will assume is a force projected out from God; later on we will find what it really is. This being projected, it came out through all sorts of vegetable and animal forms, and at last it is in man, and is about the furthest curve of the circle, the nearest link to God. To come back to the point from which we have been projected is the great struggle of life. Whether people know it or not does not matter.... All social struggles, wars and fights, human struggles, and competitions, in plant life, animal life, and; everywhere, are but the expressions of that eternal struggle ' to get back to this equilibrium.[78]


But if the circle is bound to come round of its own accord, why should we struggle ? "If everyone is going to be free " Swamiji said, "we will sit down and wait. That is true. Every being will become free sooner or later; no one can be lost.'[79]But there were two reasons that we struggle. "In the first ace," he said, "these struggles are the very factor that will bring us to the centre, and in the second place, we do not know why we struggle. We have to.'[80]Here Swamiji likened the cycle of evolution to the giant Ferris wheel that he had watched revolving at the Chicago Fair, and he went on to say first what seems to have been a detour) :


. . . When you enter into one of the carriages of the Ferris wheel you are bound by the conditions of the wheel, but when you come out you are free. So whosoever has come into this wheel of nature for him to talk of freedom is nonsense; it cannot be. The law of causation rules us, and when we see that it is the law of causation what can we do? Why preach religion, and why struggle to do something higher and all that? That may be a natural question, but it is a wrong one, because it takes for granted that one [person] is bound by law and another is not. If you say, "Why do you preach to us?" I answer, "Because I too am bound by laws, and have to work under laws, as I am doing." The relation does not change, as we are all in the same position. We are all in this room; my distance from you is about four feet. If this room moves, the distance between us would not change. That is to say, we are both changed, but the relation will not change, so there will still be four feet between us. If all are bound, the relation will not change. A thief is brought before a magistrate, and the thief says, "Why should you punish me? It was by the laws of nature that I was forced to steal; it was not I." The magistrate replies, "The same laws of nature compel me to punish you, my friend." What is the motive power of all our actions ? The desire, the thirst. We desire, want something, and we are struggling to fulfill that want. So long as there is a want, it is a sure sign that there is imperfection. all During the course of this discussion, Swamiji brought in the related subject of recurring cosmic cycles. This passage, which was mentioned earlier as being a detour of sorts, seems in some places to be clearer in Goodwin's transcript than in the Complete Works, and because of its great interest, I have quoted pertinent portions of it in Appendix B as they appear in the transcript.


Swamiji began his next beginners jnana yoga class, "Soul, Nature, and God," with the same statement that each man consists of three substances, so to say-the gross body, the subtle body*(6). and the Self. He analyzed the process of perception (as he would do in his public lecture "The Microcosm"), tracing it back to the Self, "the ruler of all these instruments [the senses and the mind], the master in the house, the enthroned king in this body.'[82]He then went on to compare the structure of the whole universe with that of the individual, the macrocosm being built on the same plan as the microcosm. Thus he posited the existence of God. "We have three entities ", he said. "Here is nature which is infinite, but changeable.... Then there is God, unchangeable, the ruler; and there is the soul, unchangeable as God, eternal, but under the ruler. One is the master, the other the servant, and the third one is nature.'[83] Swamiji then described the relationship between these three entities according to the dualistic and qualified monistic views. At the end of this class he touched upon the monistic view, for it was that to which he was leading, but he did not here enter into it.

*(6) The subtle body or sukshma sharira is composed of the sense organs, the mind, the intellect (buddhi), the egoism (ahamkara), the five subtle elements, and the five vital forces (pranas).

It was in his last two beginners classes that his exposition of Advaita Vedanta reached its culmination. The first, published in volume two of the Complete Works as "The Way to Blessedness," was his free translation of and running commentary on many verses of the katha Upanishad-almost all of the first, second, and third cantos of part one and those verses from parts two and three that highlighted the line of thought in which the philosophy of the Self was developed. Summing up, Swamiji carried forward the view of qualified monism to its logical conclusion in monism, where the Self, the One Being, stands free; where there is no coming and going for the soul, no transmigration at all, no dependence, and no law.


This is the one fundamental idea in the Vedas [he said], that our search in the stars, the nebulas, the Milky Way, in the whole of this external universe leads to nothing, never solves the problem of life and death. The wonderful mechanism inside had to be analysed, and it revealed to [the Vedic Aryans] the secret of the universe; nor star  or sun could do it. Man had to be anatomised; not the body, but the soul of man. In that soul they found the answer. What was the answer they found ? That behind the body, behind even the mind, there is the self existent real man. He dies not, nor is He born. The self existent One is omnipresent, because He has no form. That which has no form or shape, that which is not limited by space or time, cannot live in a certain place. How can it? It is everywhere, omnipresent, equally present through all of us....


. . . Now, we know that the universal Soul is infinite. How can infinity have parts? How can it be broken up, divided? It may be very poetic to say that I am a spark of the Infinite, but it is absurd to the thinking mind. What is meant by dividing Infinity? Is it something material that you can slash it or hack it into pieces? Infinite can never be divided. If that were possible, it would be no more Infinite. What is the conclusion then? The answer is, that Soul which is the universal is you; you are not a part but the whole of It. You are the whole and the all of God.... As Self, there is only one in the universe. It is in me and you, and is only one; and that one Self has been reflected in all these various bodies as various different selves. But we do not know this; we think we are separate from each other and separate from Him. And so long as we think this, misery will be in the world. This is hallucination.[84]


As was said earlier, Goodwin's transcript of Swamiji's next and last beginners class in jnana yoga has not been heretofore published. It comprises Swamiji's commentary on the Mundaka Upanishad, in which the knowledge of the Self is extolled above all other knowledge and the path of renunciation above all other paths. Mr. Goodwin's transcript is given in full in Appendix C, but let us quote here a portion of Swamiji's commentary on canto two of part three:


. . . Two things exist in the world, dream and reality. What we call life is a succession of dreams, dream within dream. One dream is called heaven, another earth, another hell, and so on. One dream is called the human body, another animal body, and so on; all are dreams. The reality is what is called Brahman, that Being who is Existence, Knowledge, Bliss.... When we desire we are hypnotising ourselves. Just as I desire I will go to heaven, that hypnotises me, and I begin to find I am in heaven directly I die, and will see angels and all sorts of things. I have seen about fifty people who have come from death's door, and they a have told me stories about being in heaven. These are the mythologies of our country, and it shows that it is all hypnotism. Where Western people make a great mistake is here. So far as you have these ideas [that] heaven and hell [are not real] we agree with you, but you say this earth is real. That cannot be. If this is real, heavens and hells are real, because the proof of each of these is the same, and if one is a hypnotic condition, the whole of it must be. So Vedantists say that not only are heavens hypnotic, but so is this life and everything here. Some people want to go from one hypnotic condition to another, and these are what we call the fools of the world, the samsaris, the travellers who go from dream to dream, from one hypnotic trance to another.... The Vedanta philosophy says that this whole universe, mental, physical, moral is hypnotic. Who is the cause of this hypnotism? You yourself are to blame. This weeping and wailing, and knocking your heads into corners will not do you the least good. This knocking everything on the head is what is called non-attachment, and clinging on to more and more hypnotism is attachment. That is why, in all religions, you will find they wanted to give up the world, although many of them do not understand it.... You have heard those wonderful stories of India, of how those magicians can make a man see a rope rise from the ground to the skies. I have not seen one of them. One of the Mogul Emperors, Jahangir, mentions it.... He said, "Allah, what do these devils do? They take a rope or a chain, and the chain is thrown up and up, until it becomes firm, as if it were stuck to something. Then he lets a cat go up the chain, then a dog, then a wolf, then a tiger, then a lion. All walk up the chain and vanish. Sometimes they will send men up the chain. Two men will go up and begin to fight, and then both of them vanish and after a while you hear a noise of fighting, and a head, a hand, and a foot fall, and, mind you, there are two or three thousand people present. The fellow showing it has only a loincloth on." They say this is hypnotism, throwing a net over the audience. That is what they call their science. It exists in a certain limit, but if you go beyond this limit, or come within it, you do not see it. The man who is playing does not see anything. So if you stand near him you do not see anything. Such is the hypnotism here. So we have first to get beyond the circle, jnana, or stand within the circle of the hypnotism, bhakti, with God, the great player who is playing ail these things: the whole universe he projects. Chapter after chapter comes and goes. This is called Maya, the power which creates all these tremendous things, and he who is the ruler of this Maya is God.... Just as in the case of that chain-the man who was standing in the centre had the power and was not deluded, but all that audience was governed by Maya. So that portion of Atman which rules Maya is called God, and the little bits of the Atman deluded by it are called souls-you and I. The bhakta says crawl nearer and nearer to the hypnotist, and when you get to the centre you do not see anything. You get clear of it. The jnani does not care to undergo all this trouble-it is a dangerous way. Unless a man becomes a lunatic, when he finds himself covered with mud will he take more mud to wash himself? So why increase the  hypnotism? Get out of the circle: cut it off and be free. When you are free you will be able to play, even without being caught yourself. Now you are caught: then you will catch; that will be all the difference.'[85]


As far as we know, this passage constituted Swamiji's first long discussion of Maya in his New York classes and lectures. And here, of course, lay the true rationale behind the path of renunciation, the philosophy to which he had been leading all along in his lectures and classes alike: "You are under this hypnotism, and so long as you are in it you will have to see God, and nature, and the soul, and when you are beyond this hypnotism God will vanish, and so will nature, and so will the soul.... The thing manifested, the universal being, is not anything of these; these are all nonsense, Maya, but that upon which all these things are being played, the background upon which all this picture is written-we are one with Him.'[86]


Even as Swamiji's beginners jnana yoga class was a step-by-step exposition of Vedanta, his advanced class, which he had begun in December and had been holding every Wednesday morning in January and which he would continue to hold on two Wednesdays in February, was also a ladder to Advaita, though of a different sort. Indeed, seven of these advanced classes constitute a masterpiece of Sankhya-Vedanta exposition, and it was very likely to them that Miss Waldo referred when she wrote in 1905 "The New York lectures on jnana-yoga have never been published, although they are among the finest Swami ever gave.'[87] Two years later, probably at her urging, the classes were brought out in book form by the New York Vedanta Society under the title Jnana Yoga-Part II, and a year later in Calcutta as The Science and Philosophy of Religion, with a preface by Swami Saradananda. In both editions the classes are introduced by a chapter consisting of excerpts from Swamiji's lecture "The Claims of Religion; Its Truth and Utility," which, as seen earlier, he had delivered on Sunday, January 5, and which was not a class at all. (Their actual  introduction may well have been "Introduction to Jnana Yoga," which was very probably a pre-Goodwin class held on the morning of December 11, 1895)*(7) But however that may be, it is, I believe, safe to say that The Science and Philosophy of Religion is the long-delayed fourth of the "four little text books" that Swamiji had had in mind as fruit of this season's work. It was the Jnana-Yoga that would have formed a set with Raja-Bhakti-, and karmaYoga. According to the "Editor's Preface" to the New York edition of 1907 (the editor at that time was Sister Devamata),**(8) "the purely philosophical character [of these lectures] made it doubtful as to whether they would appeal to the general public, and for that reason they were not brought out in book form at once."



*(7) In the Complete Works this “Introduction” and the eight jnana yga classes (including “Introduction to Jnana Yoga”) are scattered through the first three volumes, in most cases with altered titles and many variations in the text. As published in book form, the classes (not including “Introduction to Jnana Yoga”) are entitled: “The Sankhya Cosmology,” “Prakriti and Purusha,” “Sankhya and Advaita,” “The Free Sould,” “One Existence Appearing as Many,” “Unity of the Self,” and “The Highest Ideal of Jnana Yoga.” The first three classes appear in volume two of the Complete Works, entitled respectively “Cosmology,” “A Study of the Sankhya Philosophy,” and “Sankhya and Vedanta.” The fourth and fifth classes appear in volume three with unaltered titles; the sixth in volume two under the title “Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi,” and the seventh in volume one under the title “Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi,” and the seventh in volume one under the title “Steps of Hindu Philosophic Thought.” The “Introduction” is published in volume three as “Unity, the Goal of Religion,” which constitutes excerpts from “The Claims of Religion; Its Truth and Utility” The two paragraphs at the close of the “Introduction” may have been added by Swami Saradananda, who prepared the class notes for publication while he was in America at the beginning of 1897 (see Editor’s Preface to The Science and Philosophy of Religion). In connection with the early editing of Swamiji's lectures, there is the following passage, dated September 29, 1897 from Swami Abhedananda's diary: "Miss Waldo was a motherly old lady well-educated in Western philosophy and a devoted disciple of Swami Vivekananda who initiated her as a Brahmacharini. She never married and was about 45 years old. It was she who corrected and edited all the lectures of Swami Vivekananda which were afterwards published in book form" (Complete Works of Swami Abhedananda, vol. 10, pages 13-14).
Sister Devamata also remarks on Miss Waldo's part in the preparation of Swamiji's American publications for the press. "So great was Swami Vivekananda's confidence in her ability," she wrote, "that he would pass the type-written transcriptions of his lectures over to her with the instruction to do with them what she thought best" (Preface to the Madras edition of Inspired Talks, 1908).
Later on, Sister Devamata herself took over the task of preparing Swamiji's still unpublished lectures and classes for the press. In her "Memories of India and Indians" she wrote: "Although I saw Miss Waldo frequently while Swami Vivekananda was in New York, our real friendship dated from 1901, when the charge of the publishing department of the New York Vedanta Society-then well established-passed from her hands to mine. Her eyes had given out and she was unable to undertake further literary work. The first task she transferred to me was the editing and putting through the press of the Swami's two volumes on Jnana-Yoga. When the editing of them was completed I carried them back to her, feeling she was the one to pass judgement on what J had done, but she made no corrections and the books were published" (Prabuddha Bharata, May 1932, page 244.). (Jnana-'Yoga Part I, which consisted primarily of Swamiji’s (cont.) London lectures, was published in 1902. Jnana—Yoga Part II, which consisted of Swamiji’s New York jnana part II, which consisted of Swamiji’s New York jnana yoga classes, was not published until 1907.)
**(8) In connection with the early editing of Swamiji's lectures, there is the following passage, dated September 29, 1897 from Swami Abhedananda's diary: "Miss Waldo was a motherly old lady well-educated in Western philosophy and a devoted disciple of Swami Vivekananda who initiated her as a Brahmacharini. She never married and was about 45 years old. It was she who corrected and edited all the lectures of Swami Vivekananda which were afterwards published in book form" (Complete Works of Swami Abhedananda, vol. 10, pages 13-14).Sister Devamata also remarks on Miss Waldo's part in the preparation of Swamiji's American publications for the press. "So great was Swami Vivekananda's confidence in her ability," she wrote, "that he would pass the type-written transcriptions of his lectures over to her with the instruction to do with them what she thought best" (Preface to the Madras edition of Inspired Talks, 1908).Later on, Sister Devamata herself took over the task of preparing Swamiji's still unpublished lectures and classes for the press. In her "Memories of India and Indians" she wrote: "Although I saw Miss Waldo frequently while Swami Vivekananda was in New York, our real friendship dated from 1901, when the charge of the publishing department of the New York Vedanta Society-then well established-passed from her hands to mine. Her eyes had given out and she was unable to undertake further literary work. The first task she transferred to me was the editing and putting through the press of the Swami's two volumes on Jnana-Yoga. When the editing of them was completed I carried them back to her, feeling she was the one to pass judgement on what J had done, but she made no corrections and the books were published" (Prabuddha Bharata, May 1932, page 244.). (Jnana-'Yoga Part I, which consisted primarily of Swamiji’s (cont.) London lectures, was published in 1902. Jnana—Yoga Part II, which consisted of Swamiji’s New York jnana part II, which consisted of Swamiji’s New York jnana yoga classes, was not published until 1907.)

Throughout his advanced jnana yoga class, Swamiji's purpose was to present in clear language the classical philosophical explanation of the highest truth discovered long ago by Indian seers through superconscious perception. To Swamiji, as to all Indian sages and teachers, philosophy was not an attempt to find truth through rational inquiry; rather, it was the attempt to explain in rational terms the suprarational truths discovered through experience and thereby to guide others through a rational process to an attainment of the same experience. Reason was essential to the practice of jnana yoga, the followers of which must first be intellectually convinced of the transcendental reality that they seek to know-or more accurately, that they are. But one thinks that Swamiji was also laying before everyone, jnani or not, the highest of all truth the Oneness of Existence-in terms acceptable to the modern West, the terms of reason. This experience of unity, of oneself as the One, was not the goal of the jnani alone; it was the ultimate goal of every human being, whatever his path.


And yet this class was of course primarily a class in the path of jnana-of knowledge. He began with an exposition of the Sankhya cosmology and psychology of Kapila, "the father of Hindu evolutionists," who is said to have lived before the Sixth century B.C. This was the classic approach to jnana yoga,  for it discriminated at the very outset between the Self and the non-Self, or, in the terminology of Sankhya, between Prakriti (nature) and Purusha (the conscious principle). But . in presenting the Sankhya cosmology (which Vedanta, up to a point; adopted) Swamiji also had another purpose in mind. He wished to show the parallelism between the findings and theories of modern physics (as then known) and the facts about the universe perceived in supersensory vision by the ancient seers, demonstrating thereby that "the real, essential parts of psychology (by which he meant here "the truths gathered from internal experience"] are in perfect accord with the essential parts of modern physical knowledge.'[88] "Real truth in any field of knowledge, " he said, "will not contradict itself.'[89]To reconcile religion (or truths perceived through superconscious experience) with science (truths gathered through experience of the physical world) was one of Swamiji's primary interests during this period of his teaching; for just as in 'India every philosophical proposition or spiritual claim stood or fell by the Vedas, so in the modern West it stood or fell according to its agreement or disagreement with scientific knowledge. "In the first place," Swamiji said in one of his first classes (that of December 18), "let us go over the psychological and scientific ideas of the Orientals as to Cosmology and all that pertains to it, and we shall find how wonderfully it is in accordance with all the latest discoveries of modern science; and when there is anything lacking, we shall find that it is on the side of modern science.'[90]But in 1896 a very great deal was lacking on the side of science. The subtle analysis of matter and mind, with which the Sankhya philosophy had so thoroughly dealt had not yet even begun in the West. The electron, for instance, was not to be identified until the following year: the interchangeability between matter and energy was unsuspected; time and space were still considered to be absolutes; psychology was still a branch of philosophy, and although William James's monumental Principles of Psychology (published in 1890) bore out Kapila's psychology up to a point,  it stopped far short of tracing the miracles of perception and action, of thought and will back to their finer and yet finer forms. In short, all branches of nineteenth-century science were still bulldozing over the surface of the universe, into the unfathomable depths of which the ancient sages of India had peered with the exquisitely tuned instrument of the illumined mind. "How fine their perception was," Swamiji exclaimed, "how perfect their analysis and how wonderful!'[91]The knowledge that Western science had so far turned up was indeed, as Newton had understood, only a pebble on the shore of the great ocean of truth. But however that might have been, both science and religion were attempts to seek the explanation of things through an exploration of the nature of the things themselves. The former deals, by definition, with the nature of the material universe, so called; the latter deals with the subtle realm of the mind in which the universe is perceived and known and explores far deeper into the "nature of things" than does science. In this sense, religion, as Swamiji saw it, was an extension of science. Just as matter and mind could be said to form a continuum, so the disciplines of science and religion could be said to form a continuum of man's exploration of the same reality. One of Swamiji's main efforts at this period was, then, not so much to point out a detailed parallel between the findings of modern science and those of Indian cosmology and psychology, as to show that the external world and the internal world were not separate, that "the gross melts into the fine, physics into metaphysics, in every department of knowledge." Nor, as he pointed out in his class on raja yoga, was metaphysics a vague discipline. Religious inquiry, following the internal path, using the methods and instruments appropriate to its own field, testing its findings by reason, verifying its reasoning by experience, was a science in its own right. Moreover, like the external or physical sciences, it moved toward broader and broader generalizations, until at length an (or the) all-embracing principle was reached.


But while Swamiji made a special effort to show that science  and religion are not in contradiction to one another but "each rests on truth, and . . . the truths internal are in harmony with the truths external," his primary effort in his jnana yoga class was to put forward the philosophical, rational explanation of the truths discovered through the superconscious experiences of ancient Indian sages. He wanted to drive home those truths, to make them dynamic parts of the minds and hearts of his students. To do this, he had to make them intellectually acceptable to the best of Western thought as well as compatible with and relevant to the Western time-spirit, the inexorable ground swells of modern Western culture. Although he did not deviate from the orthodox Indian methods of exposition, and certainly never from the Upanishads, he yet made these ancient teachings, long dormant and unavailable, glow with new life.


Even as he had introduced the Vedanta philosophy in his public lectures with a general explanation of Vedantic (or, generally speaking, Sankhya) cosmology, so he began his advanced jnana yoga classes with a detailed exposition of Sankhya cosmology and psychology. This was a particularly difficult subject for those brought up in Western thought. Indeed, the principles most important to Indian thought were the very ones most foreign to the West. These were the related principles, or concepts, that ( 1 ) matter is an evolute of mind (Mahat) and (2) that mind is a finer form of matter and quite different from Spirit. "It is very hard to grasp it [that matter evolves in stages out of mind]," Swamiji told his class, "because in Western countries the ideas are so queer about mind and matter. It is hard to take these impressions out of our brains. I myself had tremendous difficulty," he added, "being educated in Western philosophy in my childhood.'[92]Although, as he pointed out, the equivalence of mind and matter was in accord with the ideas of the modern materialists, the Indian concept that "mind is but matter in a finer form'[93]was in radical opposition to the ingrained Judeo-Christian tendency to equate mind with soul.


Swamiji took great pains to make this and other startling concepts clear to his class before demolishing the dualism of the Sankhya system in its higher reaches. Again and again he went over the steps of cosmic evolution; he traced it backward and forwardbackward through the psychological mechanism of perception, forward through the steps of "creation"; again and again he explained the important point that an effect was always the cause in a more gross form, or, conversely, the "cause is the more subtle state of the manifested state";[94]all gross things are the results of fine ones. He discussed the agreements and disagreements between Sankhya and Western philosophy; he pressed home Sankhya's epistemological implications; he clarified the place of will in the cosmic scheme-a place not at all fundamental-and he pointed out how very small a portion of reality comes within the range of our consciousness.



ⓘ
[1] Life (1965), PP- 396-97; (1981); vol. 2, p. 86. 
[2] Complete Works, 6 : 358.
[3] Complete Works, 8 : 370. See also 8 : 364.
[4] Francis Leggett to Josephine MacLeod, January 10, 1896, Leg. Col.
[5] Josephine MacLeod to Mary Hale, July 19,   1897,  Leg. Col.
[6] For the story of Swamiji’s visit at Ridgely Manor in the summer of 1899 see Second Visit, chap. 3.
[7] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, January 3, 1896, SCB.
[8] Complete Works, 6 : 325-26.
[9] Complete Works., 6 : 352.
[10] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, December 10, 1895, Sen Col.
[11] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, December 22, 1895, SCB.
[12] Complete Works, 8 : 369.
[13] Complete Works., 6 : 353. This quotation is taken from the original letter in the Sen Collection. The date the letter bears in Swamiji’s hand, “10th Dec., 1895,” is belied by the postmark, “Jan.” as well as by the letter’s contents.
[14] Same as above.
[15] Swami Vivekananda to MaryFunke, January 6,  1896, Sen Col.
[16] Swami Vivekananda  to Sister Christine, January 24, 1896, Sen Col.
[17] Complete Works, 8 : 364.
[18] Sister Devamata, “Memories of India and Indians,” Prabuddha Bharata, May 1932, p. 243.
[19] Walter Goodyear to Sara Bull, April 12, 1896, SCB.
[20] Complete Works, 4 : 203-4.
[21] Complete Works., 4 : 204.
[22] Complete Works, 4: 216.
[23] Complete Works,4: p. 215.
[24] Complete Works,4: p. 216.
[25] Complete Works,4 : p.209.
[26] Complete Works,4: pp. 209-10.
[27] Complete Works,4: pp. 210-11.
[28] Complete Works,2 :376.
[29] Complete Works, 2 : 381.
[30] Complete Works, 2  pp. 382-84 passim.
[31] Complete Works, 2 P.383.
[32] Complete Worksp,2: 384.
[33] Complete Works, 2: PP. 387-88.
[34] Complete Works, 2 :p. 396.
[35] Complete Works 8 : 370.
[36] Complete Works 2 : 396.
[37] Complete Works 2 : 203.
[38] Complete Works,2; p. 207.
[39] Complete Works, 2: pp. 208-11 passim.
[40] Complete Works, 2:  p. 211.
[41] Complete Works, 2: p. 212.
[42] Complete Works, 2: pp. 213-14.
[43] Complete Works, 2: P. 215.
[44] Complete Works, 2: pp.216-17.
[45] J. J. Goodwin’s transcript of Swami Vivekananda’s morning bhakti yoga class, January 20, 1896, Vedanta Centre, Cohasset, Massachusetts.
[46] J. J. Goodwin’s transcript of Swami Vivekananda’s morning bhakti yoga class, January 20, 1896, Vedanta Centre, Cohasset, Massachusetts.
[47] Complete Works, 3 : 34.
[48] Complete Works., 2:211 (Svetdsvatara Upanishad, 4:3).
[49] Complete Works,3 : p. 76. 
[50] Complete Works,3 ; p. 83.
[51] Complete Works,3: p. 100.
[52] Complete Works,3: p. 37
[53] Complete Works,2 :P. 216.
[54] Complete Works,1 :p. 55
[55] Complete Works, 1: p.84-85.
[56] Complete Works,1: p. 37
[57] Complete Works,1: pp. 38-41 passim.
[58] Complete Works,1: p. 104. (This passage is from Sturdy’s edition of Karma Yoga.)
[59] Complete Works,1: p.64
[60] Complete Works,1: p. III.
[62] Complete Works,1: p. 77.
[63] Complete Works,1:  p. 66.
[64] Complete Works,1: p. 104.
[65] Complete Works,1: p. 116.
[66] Complete Works,1: p. 59.
[67] Complete Works,1 :p. 98.
[68] Complete Works,1: p. 115.
[69] Complete Works,8 : p. 374.
[70] Complete Works,1 : p. 127
[71] Complete Works, 1: p. 131.
[72] Complete Works,1: P. 139.
[73] Complete Works,1:  P. I23.
[74] J. J.Goodwin’s transcript of Swami Vivekananda’s jnana yoga class, January 8, 1896, evening, (opening lines). Courtesy of Vedanta Centre, Cohasset, Massachusetts.
[75] Complete Works, 2 :p. 254.
[76] Complete Works,2:p. 255.
[77] Complete Works,2,: p. 256.
[78] Complete Works,2: pp. 258, 259. (This passage is taken largely from the original transcript.)
[79] Complete Works,2: p. 259. (This passage was taken from the original transcript.)
[80] Complete Works,2: p. 259. (do.)
[81] Except for the last sentence, which is from Complete Works, 2:261, this passage is taken from the original transcript.
[82] Complete Works, 2 : 425.
[83] Complete Works., 2 : 429.
[84] Complete Works, 2:413-14 passim. (As given in the original transcript.)
[85] From J. J. Goodwin’s transcript of Swami Vivekananda’s jnana yoga beginners’ class of January 29, 1896. Courtesy of Vedanta Centre, Cohasset, Massachusetts.
[86] From J. J. Goodwin’s transcript of Swami Vivekananda’s jnana yoga beginners’ class of January 29, 1896. Courtesy of Vedanta Centre, Cohasset, Massachusetts.
[87] Rem. (S. E. Waldo), p. 131.
[88] SPR, 8 (C.W., 2 : 432).
[89] SPR, 9 (C.W., 2 : 433).
[90] SPR, 9 (C.W., 2 : 433).
[91] SPR, 9., 27 (C.W., 2 : 445)
[92] SPR, 9, 2 5-2 6 (C.W., 2 : 444).
[93] SPR, 9., 10 (C.W., 2 : 433).
[94] SPR, 9., 23 (C.W., 2 : 442).


5

In one line of reasoning, the Sankhya scheme of cosmology is the logical starting point of the Vedanta philosophy. It begins with the gross world as it is grossly perceived-that is to say, it starts, realistically, with the given, with what is real to an ordinary human being-and traces it back and back to its origins, which it conceives of as an ultimate duality. Vedanta takes over from there: In his advanced jnana yoga classes Swamiji traced the complete progress of this train of thought, and although the small book comprising those classes is readily available, it may not be amiss here to remind the reader of his presentation of Sankhya cosmology and of the resolution of its dualism in the highest Vedantic knowledge. We need not trace in much detail the cosmological scheme of the Sankhya-the evolution of the universe from an undifferentiated and static primordial state (avyaktam) to the gross matter we perceive, on the one hand, and on the other, to the mind and senses by which we perceive it. It will suffice here to quote some of Swamiji's summarizing paragraphs.

According to the Sankhya philosophy [he said in his third class, "Sankhya and Advaita"*(9)], Prakriti is the cause of all these manifestations which we call thought, intellect and reason, love, hatred, touch and taste; . . . everything is from Prakriti. This Prakriti consists of three sorts of elements [gunas], one called sattva, another rajas, and the third tamas. These are not qualities, but the materials out of which the whole universe is being evolved, and at the beginning of a cycle they remain in equilibrium. When creation comes this equilibrium is disturbed and these elements begin to combine and recombine and manifest as the universe.[1]

*(9) This was actually Swamiji’s fourth advanced jnana yoga class, if his introductory class has not been included in The Science and Philosophy of Religion, I am not counting it and thus, I trust, am avoiding confusion. But to add a little to the confusion, I can mention here that the class entitled “Prakriti and Purusha” in The Science and Philosophy of Religion was entitled “The Sandhya Categories,” which was actually its subject, when it was first published in the Brahmavadin (October 15, 1897).

The first manifestation of this Prakriti in the cosmos [Swamiji had said in his previous class] is what the Sankhyas call Mahat. We may call it universal intelligence-the great principle; . . . It covers all the grounds of consciousness, subconsciousness, and superconsciousness.... Out of this Mahat comes the universal egoism, and these [Mahat and egoism, or ahamkara] are both material.There is no difference between matter and mind save in degree.... And that egoism changes into two varieties:'' In one variety it changes into the organs. Organs are of two kinds, organs of sensation and organs of reaction.... Out of the same substance, the egoism, is manufactured another fine form, the tanmatras, fine particles of matter.... And out of the tanmatras, or subtle matter, is manufactured the gross matter-air, water, earth, and all the things that we see and feel.

....That is the cosmic plan, according to the Sankhyas, and what is in the cosmos or macrocosm must be in the individual or microcosm.

Take an individual man. He has first .a part of undifferentiated nature in him, and that material nature in him becomes changed into Mahat--a small particle of the universal intelligence, and that small particle of the universal intelligence in him becomes changed into egoism--a particle of the universal egoism. This egoism in turn becomes changed into Egoism. - a particle of the universal egosim. This egoism, in turn becomes changed into the sense-organs and the tanmatras, and out of the latter combining he manufactures his world, his body. I want this to be clear, because it is the first stepping-stone to Vedanta, and ii is absolutely necessary for you to know.[2]

Swamiji had touched on the profound significance of this point in his first class :

...It is impossible, according to the Sankhyas, for any material thing to exist which has not as its material some portion of consciousness ["consciousness" here means mind]. Consciousness is the material out of which manifestations are made.... I do not know this table as it is, but it makes an impression; it comes to the eye, then to the indriyas, and then to the mind; the mind then reacts, and that reaction is what I call the table. It is just the same as throwing a stone into a lake; the lake throws a wave against the stone; this wave is what we know. The waves coming out are all we know....

The question is, how do we all see the same things? Because we all have a part of this cosmic mind.[3]

As Swamiji had pointed out a little earlier in this same class, Sankhya psychology was; in effect, akin to the philosophy of the European idealists.

. . . Some European philosophers have asserted that this world exists because "I" exist, and if "I" do not exist, the world will not exist.... But these European philosophers do not know the psychology of it, although they know the principle; they have only a glimpse of it.[4]

The psychology of it was that the perceiving organs and the perceived objects were two sides of the same coin-the "I"  or ego-consciousness, the ahamkara. In other words, the perceived world, the universe as it is known to us, is an outward correlate of the inner sense organs; both are evolutes of egoism, which in turn stems from Mahat. And all this is in Prakriti.

The detailed evolutionary steps of Prakriti, with its Sanskrit terms and non-Western concepts, must have caused many unaccustomed brains to spin, and it is very likely that Swamiji had a blackboard in his classroom on which he drew charts; Indeed, in one class he cites "a blackboard" as an object d perception--an object not likely to come to mind as an example unless it looms before the eye. But the Sankhya cosmology and psychology led to conclusions to which even chalk and blackboard could not have done justice. Let us here interrupt Swamiji's class to present a heretofore unpublished and undated one-page manuscript that has bearing on this subject and that has recently come to light*(10). Some of the ideas that Swamiji ' here noted down give a stunning-indeed staggering-picture of the creative interaction of individual minds. This was not subjective idealism, or solipsism, or realism; it was a description ' of the play of Prakriti, "the eternal phenomenal net," of which "inside" and "outside"-mind and matter-were simply inter-reacting states. Swamiji wrote:

*(10) These notes written in Swamiji’s hand have been made available through the kindness of the Vedanta Centre in Coasset, Massachusetts.

My nerves act on my brain-the brain sends back reaction which on the mental side is this world.

Something x acts on the brain through the nerves, t reaction is this world.

Why not they be also in the body-why outside? Because we find the already created outside world (as t result of a previous reaction of the brain) act [s] on us calling on a farther reaction.

Thus inside becomes outside & creates another action which interior action created another reaction, which again becomes outside and again acts inside.

The only way of reconciling between idealism and realism is to hold that one brain can be affected by the world created as reaction by another brain from inside, i.e., the mixture x + mind which one brain throws out can affect another[,] to which it's external[,] similarly.

Therefore as soon as we come within the influence of this hypnotic circle or influence created by hundreds of preceding brains we begin to feel this world as they see.

Mind is only a phase of matter, i.e., of the ever-changing phenomena of which matter & mind are different states or views. There must be something in whose presence this eternal phenomenal net is spread-that is the Substance, the Brahman.[5]

To return to Swamiji's class, in which matters were comparatively simple: He explained again and again that Prakriti is jada (insentient). It is working under law; it is all compound and insentient. Mind, intelligence, and will, all are insentient.'[6]The whole universe, gross and subtle, and the whole process of knowing the universe, have all evolved from that mass of primal stuff called avyaktam. It evolves and involves eternally vast machine, a continuously changing and marvelously fashioned kaleidoscope of gunas, endlessly shifting, endlessly mysterious, for in its subtle reaches it is far, far beyond the scope of ordinary human consciousness and reason. Many layered and wondrously wrought, it is everything that man can ever know-happiness, misery, life, death; indeed, it is the creating and knowing mind itself in all its modes, all its depths and heights, its powers, and its infinite extent-subconscious, conscious, and superconscious. Prakriti is everything -and yet, it is nothing; it is a compound through and through, no part of it is free; nor, for all its dazzle and grand display, is its light its own. In itself, Prakriti is dead.

This was one side of the picture presented by the Sankhya philosophy. But there had to be another side, for while Prakriti by itself has no light, "we find reason and intelligence in it." "Therefore," Swamiji pointed out, "there must be some Existence behind it . . . whose light is percolating through it and appearing as Mahat and consciousness and all these various things, and this Existence is what Kapila calls the Purusha, . . and the Vedantist-Self.'[7]

According to Sankhya, there are an infinite number of Purushas, as many as there are conscious beings, and each, being immaterial and simple, is infinite and omnipresent. In his second and third classes Swamiji spoke at some length about the Purusha, describing it more in terms of what it was not than of what it was, for it is necessarily beyond description. It is entirely different from Prakriti, out of which all concepts and words are formed; it is unchanging and uncaused; it is the "unwitting cause" of all the changes going on in Prakriti. But it is not any part of, or involved in, Prakriti; "it is neither intelligence nor Buddhi (will), but yet it is the cause of both these; it is His [Purusha's] presence that sets them all vibrating and combining.'[8] Indeed, Purusha, aloof and serene, might be likened to the light of a magic lantern, whose mere shining produces an infinitely varied play, and without which there is nothing. ''This Purusha is not consciousness," Swamiji went on to explain, "because consciousness is a compound, but whatever'' is radiant and good in this consciousness belongs to it.... All the joy and happiness and light in the universe belongs to the Purusha, but [that joy etc.] is a compound because it is that Purusha plus Prakriti.'[9]

The difficulty-the primordial human difficulty-is that Purusha, infinite, unchanging, entirely luminous and pure, has somehow identified itself with Prakriti:

It thinks "I am the Linga Sharira [the subtle body],*(11) it thinks "I am the gross matter, the gross body," and as such is enjoying pleasure and pain; but these do not really belong to the soul, they belong to this Linga Sharira and to the gross body.... The soul has neither pleasure nor pain; it is the Witness of everything, the eternal Witness of things that are going on, but it takes no fruits from any work.[10]

*(11) The Linga Sharira or Sukshma Sharira, the subtle body (see note for page 427, above), is generally thought of in Christianity as the soul, or the “spiritual body.” It survives the death of the gross body, goes to heaven or hell, and (in Eastern thought) is reincarnated in another gross body. In the Sankhya system all this coming and going of the subtle body takes place in Prakriti; it is as mechanical and material as everything else. In Advaita Vedanta, it is illusory. In either case, there is nothing “spiritual” about it. Only the unmoving Purusha or, in Vedanta, the Self, is spiritual.

Why Prakriti? Why all this evolving and involving, which according to Sankhya is real and everlasting? It is said that Prakriti goes through this dance time without end so that the individual soul, experiencing all the arabesques and pirouettes of fortune, from the most gross to the most refined, will at last discover "that it never was in Prakriti but was entirely sepasate.'[11]Swamiji does not linger on this explanation of why Prakriti exists, and neither need we, for at this point enters the lion of Advaita Vedanta, quietly at first, later roaring.

"So far so good," Swamiji had said. "[Kapila's] psychology is clear and most precise, and just think of the age of it, the oldest rational thought in the world ! . . . But we shall have to differ with him on some points as we go on.'[12]

First, that [according to the Sankhya] intelligence or anything of that sort does not belong to the soul, but that it belongs entirely to Prakriti, the soul being simply qualitiless, colourless. The second point is that there is no God, and Vedanta will show that without a God there cannot be any explanation whatever. Thirdly, we shall have to contend that there cannot be-many souls, that there cannot be an infinite number of them, that there is only one soul in the universe and that one is appearing as many.[13]

"We will take the first proposition," Swamiji went on, "that intelligence and reason belong entirely to Prakriti, and not to the soul.'[14]He referred back to the Sankhya-Yoga concept of perception, in which the chitta (mind-stuff) reacting to stimulus throws out waves, which produce the world we see. But what the original stimulus actually is we can never know. "It is what the German philosophers call the 'thing-in-itself.' "[15] Swamiji calls the stimulus from outside "x". The combination of this "x'' plus mind is our external universe.

Similarly in internal perception, when we want to know ourselves. The real Self, which is within us, is also unknown and unknowable. Let us call it "y". When I want to know myself as Mrs. so-and-so, the "y" has to appear as "y" plus the mind.... [So] all internal knowledge is a combination of "y" plus the mind.... So the intelligence that we know is a compound of the power of the light of the soul plus nature. Similarly, the existence which we know must be a compound of "x" plus the mind [nature].

We find . . . that in [the] three factors-I exist, I know, and I am blessed (the idea that I have no want, which comes from time to time)-is the central idea, the grand basic idea of our life.... These factors manifest as existence phenomenal, knowledge phenomenal, and love phenomenal.... This existence which we know is a compound of "x" and the mind, and knowledge is a compound of that "y" inside plus mind, and that love also is a compound of the "y" and mind.... These three factors I exist, I know, and I am blessed), which come from inside and are combining themselves with the external things to manufacture phenomenal existence, knowledge, and love, are called by the Vedantists "Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, and Bliss Absolute." . . . [These] are not qualities of the soul, but its essence; there is no difference 'between them and the soul. And the three are one; we see the one thing in three different lights: They are beyond all knowledge and by their reflection Prakriti appears to be intelligent[16]*(12).

*(12) This passage, as given in The Science and Philosophy of Religion, seems rather difficult and obscure. It has been heavily edited and altered, no doubt for the sake of clarity, in the Complete Works (2: 458—59). I have, (cont.) however, adhered as closely as possible to the earliest published text.

"The first thing; therefore, that we find against Kapila," Swamiji went on to say, concluding this part of his argument, "is that he conceives the soul to be a mere qualitiless, colourless, inactive something. Vedanta teaches that it is the essence of all Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss, infinitely higher than all knowledge that we know, infinitely more blessed than any human love that we can think of, infinitely existing.'[17]

The second point (not the first, as in the Complete Works version) which Swamiji took up with Kapila was the latter's idea of God or, rather, his idea that there was no God in the sense of a Cosmic Ruler. Swamiji dealt with this in short order. He pointed out (as he had done elsewhere) that since the individual series of Prakriti (the microcosm) requires the Purusha (or Self) behind it as the ruler and governor, and since the microcosm and macrocosm are built on the same plan, it follows that "this universe, too, will require such a soul, [and] the universal soul which is behind the modifications of Prakriti is called by Vedanta; Ishvara-the Supreme Ruler, God.'[18]

Swamiji was now in a position to show that God and the soul were one. The strongest argument to support this view lay in the answer to another question: What is the mind that is always being added to "x" and "y" and obscuring them? The reply was of supreme importance to the philosophical structure of Vedanta.

The mind is "time, space, and causation." These form the very essence of the mind.... These three are the forms in which both "x" and "y" are caught and become limited by the mind. Beyond them there is nothing else in the constitution of the mind. Take off these forms, which of themselves do not exist-what remains? It is all one; "x" and "y" are one. It is only this mind, this form, that has limited them apparently, and made them differ as internal and external world: . . . When there are no qualities there can be only one. "X" and "y" are both without qualities because they take qualities only in the mind, therefore these "x" and "y" are one.

. . . This whole universe is all one, and is called in the Advaitist philosophy Brahman. Brahman appearing behind the universe is called God; appearing behind the little universe-the microcosm, is the soul. This very "Self" or Atman therefore is God in man. There is only one Purusha, and He is called God, and when God and man are analysed, they are one. The universe is you yourself, the undivided you; you are throughout this universe.... The whole universe is you; . . . You are God, you are the angels, you are man, you are the animals, you are the plants, you are minerals, you are everything : all manifestation is you. Whatever exists is you-the real "You" the one undivided Self-not the little, limited personality - that you have been regarding as yourself.[19]

Another conclusion was implied in this reasoning and followed rigorously from it:

The question now arises-how have you, the Infinite Being, become broken into parts, as Mr. so-and-so, the animals and so on a The answer is that all this division is s only apparent. We know that the infinite cannot be divided, therefore this idea that you are a part only-has no reality, and never will have; and this idea that you are Mr. so-and-so was never true at any time; it is but a ' dream. Know this and be free. That is the Advaitist conclusion. "I am neither the mind, nor the body, nor am I the organs; I am Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute; I 'a am He, I am He." This is knowledge, everything besides this is ignorance.[20]

So far, Swamiji's argument had proceeded from the psychological or epistemological standpoint. In his fourth class, "The Free Soul," he reached the same conclusion through an ontological discussion:

All these souls are but reflections and not real.... There , is but one Infinite Being in the universe, and that Being ; appears as "You" and as "I", but this appearance of division is after all delusion. He has not been divided, but only appears to be divided. This apparent division is caused by looking at Him through the network of time, space, and causation.... He is the one Infinite Being of the universe, and that Being we are. I am That, and you are That. Not parts of it, but the whole of it.[21]

Unlike Sankhya (and unlike Vishishtadvaita) Advaita Vedanta stated that it is not only the identification of the soul with matter and mind, or with Prakriti, that is illusory; rather, the whole of Prakriti is an illusion, hanging on the thread of that illusory identification. In his next class, "One Existence Appearing as Many," Swamiji clarified and emphasized this point:

You must bear this in mind; it is not that there is a soul in man, although I had to take that for granted in order to explain it at first, but that there is only one Existence, and that one the Atman, the Self, and when this is perceived through the senses, through sense imageries, it is called the body. When it is perceived through thought, it is called the mind. When it is perceived in its own nature, it appears as the Atman, the one only Existence. So, it is not that there are three things in one, the body and the mind and the Self-although that was a convenient way of putting it in the course of explanation but all is that Atman.... "I am that one Existence"-- this is the last conclusion.[22]

It was a tremendous statement, so bold, so immense that the mind feels overwhelmed and turns away as from something too vast for its contemplation, too threatening to its very existence, and tends to reduce it to harmless philosophical talk. But Swamiji meant these things to be taken literally not as philosophical speculations, but as fact. He was by no means merely expounding Indian philosophy. He spoke not only to the intellect, but to the deeper layers of man's being, where an immediate awareness of Reality was possible. "This illusion of the universe will break one day [as does a mirage]," he had told his students. "The whole of this will vanish, melt away. This is realisation. Philosophy is no joke or talk. It will be realised.'[23]

How? Here he came to a discussion of the actual practice of jnana yoga. But first in "The Free Soul" he had taken up an inevitable question. The beginning of jnana yoga, as was said before, demands an intellectual conviction of the truth to be realized; thus in these classes Swamiji gave many arguments, answering many questions, dispelling as many doubts as was possible. The next-to-last question was a stumbling block built into the mind itself-the mind of which time, space, and causation were the very essence. That mind was compelled to ask what had caused itself, though the concept of cause was entirely its own fabric. This was the question: "How is it that what is infinite, ever perfect, ever blessed, Existence Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, has come under these delusions? . . How did this illusion come?" Swamiji gave the simple Vedantic answer-an evasion almost, but no more so than illusion itself, endlessly reflecting its own image down mirrored corridors:

The answer is that we cannot expect any answer to an impossible question. The very question is impossible in terms. You have no right to ask that question. Why? What is perfection? That which is beyond time, space; and causation. That is perfect. Then you ask how the perfect became imperfect. In logical language the question may be put in the form--"How did that which is beyond causation become caused?" You contradict yourself. You first admit it is beyond causation and then ask what causes it. Questions can only be asked within the limits causation.... Within time, space, and causation [the question can never be answered, and what answer map lie beyond these limits can only be known when we have transcended them; therefore the wise will let this question rest. When a man is ill, he devotes himself to curing his disease, without insisting that he must first learn how he came to have it.[24]

Delusion is not caused by real existence. Delusion causes delusion, the causal chain retreating forever into the past. And this gave rise to the final question : "Does not this admission [of self caused delusion] break your monism, because you get two existences in the universe, one your self, and the other the delusion?" "The answer," Swamiji replied, "is [that] delusion cannot be called an existence. Thousands of dreams come into your life, but do not form any part of your life. Dreams come and go; they have no existence; to call delusion existence will be sophistry.'[25]

In the fall of this year, when he would be in London, Swamiji was to enter more fully into the theory of Maya, which "forms one of the pillars upon which Vedanta rests.'[26] The concept required much elucidation, for it seemed more like a pit than a pillar to the Western mind; a negation of reality rather than an affirmation of it. But now, in his New York class ("One Existence Appearing as Many") he turned on the morning of Wednesday, January 29, to a discussion of the practice of jnana yoga.

The jnana yogi (the Advaita jnani) is he who takes the teaching of Advaita Vedanta seriously; he first hears it, then reflects upon it, becomes convinced of it, and then constantly asserts it.

Think always-"I am Brahman" (Swamiji instructed his class] ; every other thought must be cast aside as weakening. Cast aside every thought that says that you are men or women. Let body go, and mind go, and gods go, and ghosts go, let everything go but that one Existence.... Get rid of all other thoughts, everything else must be thrown aside, and this is to be repeated continually, poured through the ears until it reaches the heart, until every nerve and muscle, every drop of blood tingles with the  idea that "I am He, I am He." . . . Even at the gate c death, in the greatest danger, in the thick of the battle field, at the bottom of the ocean, on the tops of the highest mountains, in the thickest of the forest tell yourself," am He, I am He." Day and night say, "I am He." . . These are words that will burn up the dross that is in the mind-words that will bring out the tremendous energy which is within you already, the infinite power which is sleeping in your heart. This is to be brought out by constantly hearing the truth and nothing else. Wherever there is thought of weakness, approach not the place Avoid all weakness if you want to be a jnani.'[27]

In his classes entitled "The Free Soul" and "One Existence Appearing as Many" Swamiji spoke of the qualifications required of those who wanted to be jnana yogis. As we have mentioned earlier, he dwelt on most of these disciplines in some detail in his beginners classes of December, "The First Step toward Jnana" and "Steps to Realisation"; now he spoke only briefly of the need for "renunciation of all fruits of work and of all enjoyments in this life or another life"; of the necessity for controlling the mind, not by taking physical or mental helps, as does the raja yogi, but by the sheer power of will; of the practice of forbearance-"bearing all miseries without murmuring, without complaining" ; and, as we have seen in the quotation given above, of viveka, rigorous discrimination between the Real and the unreal. Convinced that phenomenal world is unreal, the jnana yogi jumps as it w off the edge of the universe without hesitation and without' backward look. He plunges head-on. "The jnani feels that cannot wait," Swamiji said, "he must reach the goal this very moment.... [He] seeks to tear himself away from this bondage of matter by the force of intellectual conviction. This is negative way-the 'Neti, Neti' ('Not this, Not this').'[28]

But Swamiji pointed out that there was a positive way also in which the world was not denied but was totally transformed  or, rather, in which its ordinary appearance was brushed aside and its reality affirmed and responded to as divine. In his next class; entitled in The Science and Philosophy of Religion "Unity of the Self," he told of how the sage Yajnavalkya taught his wife Maitreyi that one loves everything not for its own sake but because of the Self, thus illustrating and applying the grand philosophy of Advaita to everyday life and everyday relationships:

In and through every part of this little individuality is shining that Infinite, the Real Individuality. Everything is a manifestation of the Atman.... That perfect One, when seen through certain kinds of covering, we call different degrees of good, and when seen through other kinds, we call evil.... How can there be anything but that One? Whatever is the lowest physical enjoyment is He, and the highest spiritual enjoyment is also He. There is no sweetness but He.... When you come to that state and look upon all things with the same eyes; when you see in the drunkard's pleasure in drink or in the saint's meditation that sweetness only, then you have got the truth, and then alone you will know what happiness means, what peace means, what love means.[29]

Swamiji's last advanced jnana yoga class was, as he said at its outset, "a brief resume of all that I have been trying to tell you"*(13) Here he traced the steps that Vedantic thought had taken to solve the "great question of all questions-out of what did God create [the universe]?'[30] Again, as in his beginners class, he explained the dualistic, the qualified-monistic, and, finally; the monistic solutions, one leading into the other, until the grand conclusion of Oneness was reached. "If a man reasons," he had said in an earlier class, "there is no place for him to stand until he comes to this, that there is but One Existence, that everything else is nothing. There is no way left for rational mankind but to take this view'[31]. But while this was the fact, Swamiji was of course aware-though perhaps regretfully so-that "all people cannot take up this Advaita philosophy; it is too hard." "First of all," he said, "it is very difficult to understand it intellectually. It requires the sharpest of intellects, a bold understanding. Secondly, it does not suit the vast majority of people'[32]. But he did not for this reason or any other espouse a dualistic teaching. Each one of us must pass through the steps of dualism and qualified monism, 1 said-but do so quickly. "While the human race took millions of years to reach from one step to another, individuals may live the whole life of the human race in a few year or they may be able to do so more quickly, perhaps in s months'[33].

*(13) Unless Swamiji held an advanced jnana yoga class that has not been published or unless he skipped one Wednesday morning in Janu.ary or February, this series, which opened on the morning of December I t, closed on the morning of February 12.

He had little patience with the talkers of monism-those who denied the existence of God but not of themselves as individuals or of their worlds. "If you have one piece, you must take the whole."

The man who says here is this world but there is no God is a fool, because if there be a world, there will have be a cause of the world, and that is what is called God. . , As long as this dream exists . . . we are bound to look upon ourselves as being born and dying, but as soon as the dream that we are bodies vanishes, will vanish the dream that we are being born and dying, and will vanish the other dream that there is a universe. That very thing which we now see as this universe will appear to us as God and that very God who was so long external, will appear as the very Self of our own selves. The last word of Advaita is "Tat-tvam-asi"-"That thou art'[34].

That was the last word of Swamiji's class on jnana yoga. It was, indeed, the last word of all that he taught; it was the highest fact, eternally true. One could wake up from the dream at once, or one could dream better and better dreams, surfacing at last into Reality. But whether one awoke soon or late, the Fact was always there, unchanged, eternal-"That thou art."

6

As Swamiji pointed out many times, the whole of religion was the total, unmediated realization of this one Reality; the different yogas were the means. "The grandest idea in the religion of the Vedanta," he said in one of his beginners karma yoga classes, "is that we may reach the same goal by different paths; and these paths I have generalised into four-viz. those of work, love, psychology, and knowledge.... Each blends into the other. But according to the type which prevails we name the divisions.... We have found that, in the end, all these four paths converge and become one. All religions and all methods of work and worship lead to one and the same goal.'[35]Nor was one method intrinsically better than another. "The yogas of work, of wisdom, and of devotion," he often declared, "are all capable of serving as direct and independent means for the attainment of Moksha.'[36]And it was as such that he taught them. But he taught them also in a way that each could be combined with one or more of the others. As we have pointed out earlier, he had come to earth for men and women in every walk of life and of every kind of temperament and ability-for the student, the householder, the unmarried self supporting man or woman, and the monastic; for the intellectual, the emotional, the active, and the contemplative; he had come for those who believed in God and for those who did not believe in God, for those who sought ultimate Reality and for those who cared nothing for ultimate Reality but wanted only to alleviate the immediate and very real suffering of their fellowmen. He came, as well, for those who combined within themselves every kind of temperament and ability. This last type of person, perfected, was, indeed, his ideal man. "Would to God," he had cried in his lecture "The Ideal of a Universal Religion," "that all men were so constituted that in their minds all these elements of philosophy, mysticism, emotion, and of work were equally present in full! That is the ideal, my ideal of a perfect man'[37].

It followed that a path in which all four yogas were combined was the ideal path, and it is not in the least surprising that as Swamiji taught the yogas they were all intimately inter connected. Each could be practiced independently of the others, but they could also be combined without conflict or contradiction; indeed they reinforced and clarified one another His advanced karma yoga classes, for instance, would has been easy to understand by those who were also attending b classes on jnana yoga and raja yoga, for both karma yoga at raja yoga were based on the psychology of Sankhya, as well ; on the philosophy of Vedanta. In explaining the rationale karma yoga in "The Secret of Work" he: referred to "the great saying of the Sankhya, 'The whole of nature is for d soul, not the soul for nature.' The very reason of nature’s existence is for the education of the soul; it has no other meaning; it is there because the soul must have knowledge and through knowledge free itself.'[38]And in his karma yoga class entitled "Freedom" he pointed out in one of his vivid passages that the meaning behind both jnana and karma yoga was the same:

. . . When we speak of man as not other than the infinite being which is manifesting itself, we mean the only one very small part thereof is man; this body a1 this mind which we see are only one spot of the infinite being. This whole universe is only one speck of the infinite being; and all our laws, our bondages, our joys and our sorrows, our happinesses and our expectations, are only with this small universe; all our progression and digression are within its small compass.... [Man] has forgotten his infinite nature, and his whole idea is confined to the little joys, and sorrows, and heart jealousies of the moment He thinks that this finite thing is the infinite; and m only so, he will not let this foolishness go. He clings on desperately unto Trishna, the thirst after life.... To acquire freedom we have to get beyond the limitations of this universe; it cannot be found here.... nor in heaven, nor in any place where our mind and thought can go, where the senses can feel, or which the imagination can conceive.

. . . Man's experience in the world is to enable him to get out of its whirlpool.... Karma-Yoga makes a science of work; you learn by it how best to utilise all the workings of this world.... KarmaYoga makes us admit that this world is a world of five minutes, that it is a something we have to pass through; and that freedom is not here, but is only to be found beyond[39].

In his classes on raja yoga there is the same teaching:

. . . You were never bound by laws, nature never had a bond for you. That is what the Yogi tells you. Have patience to learn it. And the Yogi shows how, by junction with nature and identifying itself with the mind and the world, the Purusha thinks itself miserable. Then the Yogi goes on to show you that the way out is through experience. You have to get all this experience, but finish it quickly. We have placed ourselves in this net and will have to get out. We have got ourselves caught in the trap, and we will have to work out our freedom. So get this experience of husbands, and wives; and friends, and little loves; you will get through them safely if you never forget what you really are. Never forget this is only a momentary state, and that we have to pass through it. Experience is the one great teacher-experience of pleasure and  pain; but know it is only experience[40].

Again, the actual practice of raja yoga, particularly the practice of meditation, was an almost indispensable help in refining and honing the instruments of the body and the mind, preparing them for their enormous and sustained effort of turning around to face not matter but Spirit, of giving up "the clinging to this universe." Raja yoga lent speed and power to the other yogas, energizing them.

As for bhakti yoga, its practice by no means ended with prostrations at a shrine, with japa, or hymns, or ritualist worship. It reached out to worship the universe, not symbolically, but actually. "God is the Samashti [the generalized an the abstract universal whole]," Swamiji said in a class o bhakti yoga, "and this visible universe is God differentiate and made manifest'[41].

If we love this sum total, we love everything. Loving the world and doing it good will all come easily then; . . With the love of God will come, as a sure effect, the love of everyone in the universe. The nearer we approach God the more do we begin to see that all things are in Him When the soul succeeded in appropriating the bliss of this supreme love, it also begins to see Him in everything. Our heart will thus become an eternal fountain of love And when we reach even higher states of this love, a1 the little differences between the things of the world are entirely lost; man is seen no more as man, but only as God; the animal is seen no more as animal, but as God even the tiger is no more a tiger, but a manifestation a God. Thus in this intense state of Bhakti, worship is offered to everyone, to every life, and to every being[48].

This ideal could be as much a part of karma yoga as a bhakti. Several times during his classes on karma yoga Swamiji pointed out that the "idea of mercy and selfless charity can be put into practice . . . by looking upon work as 'worship in case we believe in a Personal God'[43]. Indeed, for those who believe in God, this way is much less difficult than is the way of those who "are left to their own devices." The latter "hats simply to work with their own will, with the powers of their mind and discrimination, saying, 'I must be non-attached.' [Whereas the former] give up the fruits of work unto the Lord, they work and are never attached to the results. Whatever they see, feel, hear, or do, is for Him.... Let us be at peace, perfect peace, with ourselves, and give up our whole body and mind and everything as an eternal sacrifice unto the Lord. Instead of the sacrifice of pouring oblations into the fire, perform this one great sacrifice day and night-the sacrifice of your little self'[44]. And again, "When you are doing any work, do not think of anything beyond. Do it as worship, as the highest worship, and devote your whole life to it for the time being.'[45] And that highest worship was that in which one sees God in all beings and all beings in Him. "Why should we expect anything in return for what we do?" Swamiji asked in a beginners karma yoga class. "Be grateful to the man you help, think of him as God. Is it not a great privilege to be allowed to worship God by helping our fellow-men?'[46]. And in a passage preserved by Mr. Sturdy in his edition of KarmaYoga, "Blessed are we that we are given the privilege of working for Him, not of helping Him. Cut out this word 'help' from your mind. You cannot help; it is blaspheming. You are here yourself at His pleasure. Do you mean to say you help Him? You worship. When you give a morsel of food to the dog, you worship the dog as God. God is in that dog. He is the dog. He is all and in all. We are allowed to worship Him. Stand in that reverent attitude to the whole universe, and then will come perfect non-attachment. This should be your duty. This is the proper attitude of work. This is the secret taught by Karma-Yoga'[47].

Philosophy, devotion, meditation, and action all went hand in hand; practice, as well as theory, was intertwined. Though standing "inside the world-machine," one could assert "I am that One Existence" and work through freedom and through love, without the least desire or fear, letting "the ripples come and go, [letting] huge actions proceed from the muscles and the brain, but [letting] them not make any deep impression on the soul";[48] and without contradiction one could perceive only divinity in one's fellowmen and worship that living divinity through service of all kinds; here karma, jnana, and bhakti yoga mere one, and the practice of meditation that tapped the source of knowledge, power, and love charged the whole. A combination of yogas was, of course, nothing new in itself. Sri Krishna had taught it millennia ago. But the combination that easily harmonized nonattached activity, renunciation, the inviolate freedom of the Self, the equal divinity of all beings, and the dedicated and reverent service of man as God Himself was as unique in the history of religion as the modern age is unique in the history of the world. It was fully in keeping with the timespirit of the age-rational, compassionate, active, meditative. It was, moreover (and necessarily), a path that would produce a type of human being such as the new age demands and such as the world has never seen before, except in rare individual instances. Whether formal monastics, householders, or the special class emerging today of free-lance, uncloistered brahmacharins-whatever their way of life, they would be men and women of high spiritual ideals, of selfless love for all, of strong will, with the ability for effective and beneficial action, and the capacity to give their lives freely in the service of their fellowmen. Such was the new man of Swamiji's vision.

This world is not for cowards [he said in a passage relating to karma yoga]. Do not try to fly. Look not for success or failure. Join yourself to the perfectly unselfish will and work on.... The ordinary Sannyasin gives up the world, goes out, and thinks of God. The real Sannyasin lives in the world, but is not of it. Those who deny themselves, live in the forest, and chew the cud of unsatisfied desires are not true renouncers. Live in the midst of the battle of life. Anyone can keep calm in a cave or when asleep. Stand in the whirl and madness of action and reach the Centre. If you have found the Centre, you cannot be moved.[49]

One who could so live and act was the kind of hero this world had. great need of. "If there are a hundred of such in any country," Swamiji had said in one of his karma yoga classes, "that country need never despair.'[50]And in thinking of the highest development of such people, he wrote in August of 1895 to Mr. Sturdy, "Half a dozen of such lions in each country, lions who have broken their own bonds, who have touched the Infinite, whose whole soul is gone to Brahman, who care neither for wealth nor power nor fame, are enough to shake the world.'[51]But it was not only such fully developed lion-souls whom Swamiji had in mind; he envisioned a whole new type of human being, a type out of which the lions would emerge. As early as September of 1894 he had written to his friend Haridas Viharidas Desai, "With proper care and attempt and struggle of all [India's] disinterested sons, by combining some of the active and heroic elements of the West with calm virtues of the Hindus, there will come a type of men far superior to any that have ever been in this world.'[52] A few months later he felt that such a type could be produced also in the West, which was, perhaps, one reason he settled down in New York to teach intensively for a while. "I am to create a new order of humanity here," he wrote from New York to Alasinga in May of 1895, "who are sincere believers in God and care nothing for the world.'[53]By the time his second season in New York began he seems to have definitely formulated the teaching by which this could be accomplished. And only thus could the wave of good in this world rise to great and long enduring heights. As he had said in "The Secret of Work," "We may convert every house in the country into a charity asylum, we may fill the land with hospitals, but the misery of man will still continue to exist until man's character changes.'[54]

Necessarily, Swamiji did far more than make his teachings  intellectually clear to those who came to his lectures and classes. He himself was there. He who gave these teachings m the ocean of his own experience, he who pointed out these paths and combinations of paths was standing there, incredibly vivid, incredibly vast, incredibly compassionate and wise, giving of himself and his power day after day, as constant as truth itself. "It was like the sun that you will never get once you have seen.'[55]


ⓘ
[1] SPR,38 (C.W.,2:454).
[2] SPR., 24-27 passim (C.W., 2:443-45)
[3] SPR., 21 (C.W., 2 :441).
[4] SPR., 14 (C.W., 2 :441.).
[5] Swami Vivekananda, holograph, no date or place. Courtesy Vedanta Centre, Cohasset, Massachusetts.
[6] SPR, 23 (C.W.,2 :450).
[7] SPR, 40 (C.W., 2:455-56).
[8] SPR, 34 (C.W., 2 :451).
[9] SPR., 35 (C.W., 2:451).
[10] SPR, 41-42 (C.W., 2 :456-57).
[11] SPR., 43 (C.W., 2:457):
[12] SPR., 39 (C.W., 2 :455).
[13] SPR., 43. (This passage docs not appear in C. W.)
[14] SPR., 43 (-do-).
[15] SPR, 44 (C.W., 2 :458).
[16] SPR, 45-47 (C.W., 2 :458-59).
[17] SPR., 48 (cp. C.W., 2:460).
[18] SPR., 49 (C.W., 2 :460).
[19] SPR, 51-52 (C.W., 2 :461-62).
[20] SPR., 5 2-5 3 (C.W., 2:46 2).
[21] SPR., 56 (G.W.,3 :7-8).
[22] SPR., 73 (C.W., 3 : 20-21).
[23] SPR., 59 (C.W., 3 ; 10).
[24] SPR., 63 (C.W., 3 :12-13).
[25] SPR., 64 (C.W., 3 :13-14).
[26] Complete Works, 2 : 88.
[27] SPR, 79-81 passim (C.W., 3 :25-26).
[28] SPR., 83 (C. W., 3 :28).
[29] SPR., 89-92 passim (C.W., 2:420-21).
[30] SPR., 95 (C.W., 1: 394).
[31] SPR., 62 (C.W., 3 :12).
[32] SPR., 106 (C.W., 1:404).
[33] SPR., 106 (C.W., 1:404).
[34] SPR., 107 (C.W., 1:404).
[35] Complete Works, 1:108.
[36] Complete Works., p. 93.
[37] Complete Works., 2 : 388.
[38] Complete Works., 1: 56-57.
[39] Complete Works.1, pp. 96-99 passim.
[40] Complete Works 1 : 249.
[41] Complete Works 3 :82.
[42] Complete Works 3 :82.
[43] Complete Works 1 : 59-6o.
[44] Complete Works  1 : 102-3.
[45] Complete Works  1 : 71.
[46] Complete Works  1 : 77.
[47] Complete Works   5:246.
[48] Complete Works  1 :56.
[49] Complete Works  6:83-84.
[50] Complete Works 1 :85.
[51] Complete Works  8 : 348. (A part of this passage is taken from a typed copy of the original.)
[52] Complete Works  8:322.
[53] Complete Works 5 :82
[54] Complete Works  1:53
[55] Rem. (Josephine MacLeod), P.235.

↑ Contents

3.7 NEW YORK: JANUARY, FEBRUARY 1896-II

Swamiji's beginners class on bhakti yoga closed on Mom January 20, and that on raja yoga on Saturday, January Newcomers, however (and there were more and more ever day), may have felt at sea in the advanced classes, which continued through the first three weeks of February. Therefore Swamiji asked his disciple Swami Kripananda to start holding beginners classes in both these yogas. In his newsletter d: January 3 t to the Brahmavadin, Kripananda duly reported development:

Our new Sanyasins, Abhayananda and Kripananda are now beginning to assist the Swami in his great Though quiet and attracting less attention, their work spreading the sublime teachings of their master is persistent and accompanied with success. Abhayananda h well attended classes on the Vedanta Philosophy Brooklyn, and Kripananda, at the head-quarters, tea ' lessons on Raja-Yoga and Bhakti to classes of beginners.'[1]

While it was true that Swami Abhayananda was successfully holding classes and lecturing once a week in Brooklyn, when she had moved in the beginning of the year, Kripanan situation was a more difficult one. Those who came to West Thirty-ninth Street to hear Swamiji and found that class was being held by someone else-anyone  else--bound to be disappointed. "The moon,"

Kripananda wrote sadly to Mrs. Bull, "plays a very insignificant figure in presence of the lord of the day.... But a beginning must be made, and in venturing to teach here under such humiliating conditions for me, I simply obey the Swami's desire.... The contribution last time was forty five cents. I do not care about the financial results, but will be too happy if I only succeed in bringing one single soul to God.'[2]

It would appear that Swamiji shortly took up once again the beginners class on raja yoga, fox on February 4 Kripananda wrote to Mrs. Bull: "The Swami has reduced his classes to four in the week and has begun a Raja class for beginners.'[3]Whether or not this beginners class constituted a fifth weekly class in Swamiji's schedule is not clear. It seems certain, however, that during the first three weeks of February he regularly held an advanced class on bhakti yoga, one on jnana, and one on raja, a question-and-answer class and/or a beginners class on raja yoga. In addition he held a weekly class at the home of his friend Miss Corbin and gave a public lecture every Sunday afternoon to a large audience. But before we speak of Swamiji's February talks, let us return to January, for during that month he delivered a few lectures other than those at Hardman Hall which we have already discussed.

In the closing paragraph of one of the two articles about Swamiji that appeared in the New York Herald of January 19, 1896 it was said that he "was invited to lecture before the Dixon Society [in New York] by Dr. Wright." (See chapter six, section two.) It has not been discovered to date who this Dr. Wright was; nor, as far as has been determined, was there an organization in New York in 1895 or 1896 known as the Dixon Society. The only prominent New Yorker at that time by the name of Dixon whose field of interest might conceivably be related to Swamiji's teachings was Thomas Dixon, Jr., a well-known, rather fierce-looking young clergyman, who in April of 1895 had founded the People's Church. From Kripananda's newsletter of January 31 to the Brahmavadin we learn that in January of 1896 Swamiji did, to be sure, lecture before the People's Church in New York.[4]In view of this, it is perhaps reasonable to suppose, until contrary information comes to light, that the "Dixon Society" and the People's Church were one and the same. In any event, we know that Swamiji spoke' before the latter-on what date and on what subject, Kripananda neglected to say.

In March of 1895 Thomas Dixon, Jr., had resigned his ministry of the Twenty-third Street Baptist Church in order to start his own nondenominational church "on a broad and popular platform." Outstandingly fervent and intense, the young Thomas Dixon considered that the machinery of a strict Baptist Church was a hindrance to "the reaching of the nonchurch-going masses of New York." "I believe," he wrote; "that it is more important to lift many men out of the ditch than to spend my time making a few men Baptists." He wanted "a perfectly free pulpit" from which he could "preach to their last logical conclusion those things which have become to me of supreme importance," such as his belief that politics should be religion in action Thenceforth, he preached every Sunday morning at the Academy of Music (New York's former opera house) and called his pulpit the People's Church. His Church lasted for four years, drawing a large congregation from the downtown masses of New York, but not sufficient funds. Mr. Dixon resigned in March of 1899 and, disillusioned about the value of nondenominationalism-"what we gained in breadth we lost in vital force'[6]-resumed for a time the Baptist ministry. Despite Dixon's unquestioned compassion for the poor of New York City, he was at heart a fiery reactionary, speaking fervently from his pulpit against populism, feminism, and being from the South, black rights; indeed he never overrode an obsessive racial prejudice. Later on, he became a novelist and in 1905 published his best-known work, The Clansman, a historical romance of the Ku Klux Klan, the theme of which was white supremacy. (His play based on this novel was the model for the first true epic motion picture in America, "Th Birth of a Nation:' First shown in 1915, it created wild racial riots many parts of the United States.)

But Thomas Dixon also had an idealistic side, and it is not  surprising that during his years of preaching he invited Swamiji to address his New York congregation. One finds, however, no actual account of Swamiji's lecture nor any record that the two young men, so radically different in their basic outlooks, met and exchanged views. We know at present only that one day in January of 1896 Swamiji spoke from the pulpit of the People's Church to a large and motley audience, consisting in part, at least, of poor, tenement-dwelling workingmen and women, many of whom would have been immigrants.

A very different group was that which Swami Kripananda termed "the matadors of materialism. " Kripananda's account of Swamiji's talk before these hard-core skeptics was imbedded in his newsletter dated January 12,  1896, to the Brahmavadin. Regrettably, he gave no specifics of time or place or audience, and while Swamiji's talk may have taken place sometime between December 9 of 1898 and January 12 of 1896, it could also have been given in late 1894 or early 1895. In any case, the importance of the talk, the text of which is lost to us along with all else, lay in the very fact that Swamiji met these "matadors" on their own ground and came away fully victorious. Events such as this remind us that his scholarship and powers of logic were as incisive as his spirituality was inspiring. He could defeat the keenest of intellects in argument as well as win the most doubting of hearts. In his lectures and classes he used simple language, for his purpose there was to make "the abstract Advaita . . . living-poetic-in everyday life."' But when it came to upholding the principles of philosophical Vedanta against a scholarly onslaughtEast or West-he could be devastatingly encyclopedic and a master of debate. Kripananda evidently stood by enthralled during the occasion he describes in the following passage, watching the deft play of his master's unsheathed sword.

. . . The so-called free-thinkers [he wrote], embracing the atheists, materialists, agnostics, rationalists, and all those who, on principle, are averse to anything that smells of religion, . . . thought this Hindu monk was an easy match for them, and that all his theology would be crushed under the weight of Western civilisation, Western philosophy, and Western science. So sure were they of their triumph, that they invited him, in New York, to lecture before their Society, anxious to show to their numerous followers how easily religious claims can be refuted by the powerful arguments of their logic and pure reasoning. I shall never forget that memorable evening when the Swami, accepting the challenge, appeared, single-handed, to face the matadors of materialism, all arrayed with their; 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 mass. Imagine their surprise and consternation 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 the Advaita philosophy. He showed them that their much vaunted Western civilisation consisted principally in the development of the art to destroy their fellowmen, that their 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 wag the 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 knowledge which is true, but by the very laws upon which it depends for its basis; that pure reasoning 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 a something which is above matter, above force, above senses, above thought and even consciousness; and of which all these are but the manifestations....

The powerful effect of this lecture could be seen on the following day, when numbers of the materialistic camp came to sit at the feet of the Hindu monk, and listen to his sublime utterances on God and religion.[8]

On Friday evening, January 17, Swamiji gave one of his most stirring lectures of this season to the members of the Metaphysical League of Brooklyn; which had been founded two months earlier. The League (as it called itself, for it was loosely organized) held its meetings in Brooklyn's Robertson Hall on the first and third Friday evenings of each month, and thus Swamiji had little choice but to cancel a question-and answer class in order to speak to these metaphysicians. The subject he chose, or that may have been chosen for him, was Immortality." As luck would have it, Mr. Goodwin attended the lecture, taking it down in his expert shorthand, and thus, although the transcript was not printed in pamphlet form, it was preserved in the New York Vedanta Society and first published in India in a 1902 edition of Jnana-Yoga (then spelled Gnana-Yoga).

"Immortality" was not connected with Swamiji's Sunday afternoon series at Hardman Hall, which was then in progress and during the course of which, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, he would slowly lead his listeners up to the very edge of Advaita Vedanta but would not, during January, plunge fully into the heart of the matter. The single lecture before the Metaphysical League was, on the other hand, an explosion of philosophy, the steps accelerated into one leap. presumably, his audience was ready to follow. "There is no half way house," Swamiji told them. "You are metaphysicians and there is no crying quarter.'[9] And he proceeded to give one of his most powerful affirmations of the Self, the One Being in the universe.

It is true that he led up to his conclusion, employing the same scientifically oriented themes as would form the substance; his coming Sunday lectures (January 19 and 26) on the cosmos First, he showed that all life was, as it were, immortal, seemingly separate life, each form of matter and manifestation of energy being a link in one continuous chain extending from protoplasm (the first form in which life manifests itself) to the highest manifestation, the perfect man, the incarnation of God on earth. "The whole of this series is but one life, and the whole of this manifestation must have been involved in that very protoplasm. . . . This one mass of intelligence, from the protoplasm up to the most perfected man, slowly and slow uncoils itself. What was it? It was a part of the cosmic universal intelligence involved in that little protoplasm itself, and it w all there. Not that it grows.*(1) . . . It can never grow. It was there; only it manifests itself:'[10]And this process was etertal As he had done in a jnana yoga class (see chapter six), Swamiji likened the unending cycles of cosmic involution and evolution and the chance recurrence of the same combination of forms again and again to the cars of the giant Ferris wheel at the Chicago Fair and the individual souls to their passengers. This cosmic wheel constituted a sort of immortality: "We see . . . that there is recurrence of the same material phenomena at certain periods, and that the same combinations have been taking place throughout eternity. But that is not the immortality of the soul.'[11]

*(1) These lines have been quoted from the 1902 Udbodhan edition of Gnana-Yoga(page 126). In the Complete Works(2:228) the text reads: “Not that it grows. Take of the ideas of growth from your mind. With the idea of growth is associated something coming from outside, something extraneous, which would give the lie to the truth that the infinite which lies latent in every life is independent of all external conditions” In the earlier 1902, edition the italicized words read: “and that will break the mathematical demonstration that the cosmic energy s the same throughout.” In this lecture Swamiji had not yet shown that the Infinite lies latent in every life -that was a conclusion to which he was leading. The premise he had established was that “the sum total of the energy that is displayed in the universe is the same throughout (Complete Works, 2:227). It was upon this proposition that he was basing his argument, not upon the indwelling Infinite, which he had not posited.

A second idea was that "you and I [passengers in the wheel of forms must] be part of the cosmic consciousness, cosmic life cosmic mind, which got involved and we must complete the circle and go back to this cosmic intelligence which is .'[12] This is another kind of immortality. But Swamiji pointed out that this, too, is insufficient. As a part of the cosmic life or cosmic intelligence, the individual could not as such be eternal being a compound-a part of something or a result of some thing, however subtle-the individual could not remain eternally intact. "Everything that is a compound must sooner or later go back to its component parts.... It gets dispersed,broken up, resolved back into its components.'[19] Where, then, is individual immortality?

And now Swamiji proceeded to seek out the truly immortal soul through an analysis of the mystery of perception-a line of inquiry which would have been familiar to those attending his jnana yoga classes at that time. From the sense organs he carried his listeners back and back until he came to "the King of kings inside, the Ruler on His throne, the Self of man.'[14] From here on, his lecture was a thunder of Advaita Vedanta. "Some of you, perhaps, will be frightened," he warned-but he did not on that account muffle his voice. Briefly:

. . . The Self of man is not the body, neither is it thought. It cannot be a compound, . . . and that which was never a compound can never die.... That which does not die cannot live. You were never born, and you will never die.... [Further] that which is beyond law, where there is nothing to act upon it, how can that be limited? It must be omnipresent. You are everywhere in the universe....

If, then, we are beyond all law, we must be omniscient, ever-blessed; all knowledge must be in us and all power and blessedness. Certainly. You are the omniscient, omnipresent being of the universe. But of such beings can there be many? . . . Certainly not. Then what becomes of us all? You are only one; there is only one such Self and the One Self is you.... Therefore know that thou art He; thou art the God of this universe, "Tat Tvam Asi" (That thou art). All these various ideas that I am a man or a woman, or sick or healthy, or strong or weak, or that I hate or I love or have a little power, are but hallucinations. Away with them! What makes you weak? What makes you fear? You are the One Being in the universe. What frightens you? Stand up then and be free.[15]

Swamiji was not talking here to monastics or would-be monastics or to advanced spiritual aspirants, but to house-holders, to ordinary men and women who were, to be sure, interested in spiritual culture, but who were living in the world, occupied with the many demanding tasks and obligations of domestic, uncloistered lives*(2). They were, by and large, the people of the "market place," through the mazelike lanes of which the vast majority of the human race has to find its way to liberation. It was to these people that Swamiji taught Advaita Vedanta, straight, uncompromising, unbuffered. He indeed gave no quarter. He pointed to the solid, uncluttered ground of the Self and said, stand here. Any path marked out on such firm ground would lead unerringly to freedom. What can frighten you? If the suns come down, and the moons crumble into dust, and systems after systems are hurled into annihilation, what is that to you? Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self, the God of the universe....

*(2) The names of some of the members of the Metaphysical League are known to us; many of them were married couples. (See Brooklyn Eagle November I, 1896)

Silly fools tell you that you are sinners, and you sit down : in a corner and weep. It is foolishness, wickedness, down. right rascality to say that you are sinners! You are all God.... Know then, that thou art He, and model your . whole life accordingly; and he who knows this and models his life accordingly will no more grovel in darkness.[16]

This teaching, which Swamiji gave with such evident power that evening of January 17, was, as the present writer under stands it, the dominant theme of his world message. He was, of course, well aware, as he was to say in a lecture two weeks later, that few men dared "to follow [Advaitism] in all its practical bearings.'[17]But he also knew that "there are a few brave souls in the world who dare to conceive the truth, who dare to take it up, and who dare to follow it to the end."l8 And those few, belonging to any station in life, active in any field,, would leaven the world.

Swamiji's next "outside" lecture engagement took him at the end of January to Hartford, Connecticut. This old and quiet New England town, which had been and was still a center of culture, must have charmed Swamiji even in the dead of winter, when its gardens and parks were snow covered and its trees bare. The town was not unknown to him, for on March 8 of 1895 he had lectured there on "God and the Soul" (see chapter one). His lecture now (January 31, 1896) was entitled "The Ideal of a Universal Religion," a subject similar to his earlier lecture and one that he had spoken on, as we have seen in the last chapter, during his Sunday series in New York and which he would speak on again this . year in Detroit, Boston, London, and yet again in 1900 during his second visit to the West. It was, in fact; a subject he often chose when speaking only once to any particular audience, for its message of harmony between creeds, of unity in variety, was one of the important and immediately relevant parts of his Master's teaching and of his own, as well. But although Swamiji sometimes spoke more than once on the same subject, under the same title, he seems never to have given exactly the same lecture twice. His themes, never frozen into notes, often fell into new patterns; new lights would be thrown on them, new illustrations or analogies would reveal some new aspect or meaning. Always speaking extemporaneously, he was always new.

If Mr. Goodwin accompanied Swamiji to Hartford, he evidently did not take notes of the lecture for no transcript of it has been published. This being the case, a heretofore unreprinted newspaper report that appeared in the Hartford Daily Times of February I is worth quoting in full.

"UNIVERSAL RELIGION."
Vivekananda's Lecture on the Creeds of the World.

A fair house greeted the Hindu monk, Vivekananda, last night. But if Hartford people . had known what they were losing, it would have been crowded from top to bottom. It was a lecture that ministers, especially, could ill afford to lose. The talk of the Swami (spiritual teacher) would have sweetened their own charity and broadened their own pulpits. But apparently but one of them ventured out. As Emerson once said: "We need some good pagan religion." But Vivekananda's can hardly be called pagan; it embraces the universe. He was introduced by Mr. C. B. Patterson, in some fitting remarks. Vivekananda is a fine looking man in his turban and yellow rube, the latter the badge of the vow of poverty and chastity that those of his order have to take. His dark face is refined ' and spiritualized by the high thought in which he lives. ' His subject last night was "The Ideal, or Universal Religion" [sic].

Throughout the universe there are two forces constantly at work, the centrifugal and centripetal, positive and negative, action and reaction, attraction and repulsion. We find love and hatred, good and evil. What plane is strongest than the spiritual plane, the plane of religion? The world furnishes no hate stronger than that engendered by religion, and no love stronger. No teachings have brought more unhappiness into the world, nor more happiness:'' The beautiful teachings of Buddha have been carried across the Himalayas, at a height of 20,000 feet, by his disciples. Five hundred years later came the teachings your beautiful Christ, and these have been carried on the wings of the wind. On the other hand, look at your beautiful earth deluged in blood in the interest of prop agandism and religion. As soon as a man comes into company of those who do not believe as he does, his v nature changes. It is his own opinions he fights for, not religion. He becomes the very embodiment of cruelty fanaticism. His religion is all right, but when he starts o to fight for his own selfish opinions he is all wrong. People are up in arms about the Armenian and the Turkish butcheries, but their consciences don't say a word when the butcheries are committed in the interest of their own religion. In human beings we find a curious mixture of God, man, and devil, and religion stirs up the latter more than anything else. When we all think alike, the God side of our nature comes out; but let there be a clash of opinions, and presto, change! the devil has the floor. This has been so from time immemorial, and will be so always. In India we know what fanaticism means, for that country for the last thousand years has been the especial field of missionaries. But above the clash of opinions, and the fight for religions, there comes the voice of peace. For 3,000 years efforts have been made to bring the different religions into harmony. But we know how this effort has failed. And it always will fail, and it ought to fail. We have a network of words about love, peace, and universal brotherhood, which were meant all right originally, but we repeat them like parrots, and to us they mean nothing. Is there a universal philosophy for the world? Not yet. Each religion has its own creeds and dogmas and insists upon propagating them. You can't make one religion for the whole world. That must not be. The Armenians say it will be all right if you will all become Armenians. And the Pope of Rome says: "O yea, it is a very easy thing. If you will all become Roman Catholics, it will be all right." And so with the Greek church, and the Protestant church, and all the rest. There can never be one religion only, it would be death to all other religions. If every one thought alike there would be no more thought to think. If everybody looked alike, what monotony! Look alike and think alike--what could we do but sit down and die in despair? We can't live like a row of chipmunks; variation belongs to human life. One God, one religion is an old sing-song, but there's danger in it. But, thank God, it can never be. Start out with your long purse, and your guns and cannon, to push your propagandism. And suppose you succeed for a while? In ten years your so-called unity would be split into fragments. That is why there are so many sects. Take the largest religion, the Buddhist. They try to help the world to be better. Next come the Christians, with good many things to teach. They have three a Gods in one, and one in three, and one of the three took on the sins of the world and was killed. Whoever doesn't k believe in him, goes to a very hot place. And Mohammed, whoever doesn't believe in him will have his skin burnt off, and then a fresh one will be furnished to be burnt, That he may know that Allah is the all-powerful. All religions came originally from the Orient. These great teachers or incarnations come in different forms. The Hindus have ten incarnations; the first was a fish, and so on, down to the fifth, and from there, they were all men. The Buddhists say: "We don't care to have so many incarnations; we want only one." The Christians say: "We will have only one, and this is Christ." And they say he is the only one. But the Buddhist says they have the start in time; their great teacher came five hundred years earlier. And the Mohammedans say theirs came last, and therefore is the best. Each one loves his own, just as a mother loves her own child. The Buddhist never sees any fault in Buddha; the Christian never sees any fault in Christ, and the Mohammedan never sees any fault in Mohammed. The Christian says their God took the form e of a dove and came down, and that they say is not mythology, but history. The Hindu says his god is manifested in a cow and that he says is not superstition, but history. The Jew thinks his Holy of Holies can be contained in a : box or chest, with an angel on guard on either side. But the Christian's God in the form of a beautiful man or woman, is a horrible idol. "Break it down!" they say. One ' man's prophet did such and such wonderful things, while others call it only superstition. So where's your unity: Then there are your rituals. The Roman Catholic puts on his robe, as I have mine. He has his bells and candles and holy water, and says these are good and necessary, but what you do, he says is only superstition. We can never upset all this and have but one religion for the very life of thought is the differentiation of thought. We must learn to love those who think exactly opposite to us. We have humanity for the background, but each must have his own individuality and his own thought. Push the sects forward and forward till each man and woman are sects unto themselves. We must learn to love the man who differs from us in opinion. We must learn that differentiation is the life of thought. We have one common goal, and that is the perfection of the human soul, the god within us. Religion is the great force to help unfold the god within man. But we have to unfold in our own way. We can't all assimilate the same kind of food. Let your aspirations be of the highest, and your inspirations will be in harmony with reason and all known laws, and the Lord will always be with you.

According to one of Kripananda's letters to the Brahmaradin the above lecture was delivered before the Metaphysical Society at Hartford. Nothing in the Hartford papers, however, indicates that this was the case. The lecture was open to the public and had been announced in the Religious Notices of the Hartford newspapers several days before the event. It was not, however, until the day after the lecture that the following item appeared in the "Social Notes" of the Hartford Daily Times. Had it been printed in the paper on time, that is, before the lecture, the hall might have been as crowded as the talk had warranted:

SOCIAL NOTES

Hartford has been favored with some fine and entertaining lectures this season. But none will exceed in interest the one to be given in Unity Hall, next Friday evening, by Swami Vivekananda on "The Ideal of a Universal Religion." He is a fine speaker and has many splendid ideas, all based upon the highest spiritual principles.

Besides, he is so interesting a personality and picturesque figure in his Oriental robes and graceful turban, it is worth the price of admission to look at him.

By the time the good people of Hartford were reading this item on Saturday morning, Swamiji was back in New York, holding a class on raja yoga.

On that same Saturday morning, February 1, 1896, the following item appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle :

COMPARATIVE RELIGION

The first of a course of four lectures on comparative religion under the auspices of the Brooklyn Ethical Association will be given at the Pouch Mansion, 345 Clinton Ave., tomorrow night. Swami Vivekananda, the well known Hindu monk will speak on "The Hindu Conception of God: the Atman." Other lecturers in the course will be Prof. J. Leonard Corning and the Reverend F. Hubert James.

On the same date, the following announcement appeared in both the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the Daily Standard Union, under "Religious Notices":

Brooklyn Ethical Association. Sunday Eve. February 2 at 8:00 PM. First lecture in the course on the "God Idea in Some of the Principal Religions of the World. " The Swami Vivekananda of India. Subject: "The Hindoo conception of God-the Atman." Course tickets $I.50 Single admission 50c.

Although Swamiji had decided by now to give a sec series of Sunday lectures in New York, he could not change the date of this lecture in Brooklyn. Thus on this first Sunday of February, accompanied by Mr. Goodwin, and perhaps also by others, including Swami Kripananda (Miss Waldo was already there), Swamiji crossed the East River to Brooklyn (then still separate city) by way of the great Bridge or by ferry. The Brooklyn Ethical Association knew Swamiji well, Dr. Lewis Janes, its president, having introduced him there at the of 1898., Swamiji's subsequent lectures delivered under the auspices of the Association in the early part of 1895 had drawn audiences that had filled to overflowing the large gallery and parlors of the Pouch Mansion, a spacious Victorian house, used for various functions, including club meetings and dancing parties.

The people of Brooklyn, unlike those of Hartford, were aware that Swamiji was coming, and on the evening of February a spoke to a full house-or, as a reporter more elegantly put "The audience which gathered was sufficient to occupy all accommodations provided."

At least two Brooklyn reporters were present, one from the Daily Standard Union, the other from the Times. Their articles, which appeared the following morning, are given in Appendix or this is the only lecture Swamiji delivered in America of which we have both newspaper reports and Mr. Goodwin's transcription, which was printed in pamphlet form and later published in Jnana-Yoga under the title "The Atman." By paring the reports with the published lecture it becomes once clear that the reports give only a faint idea of Swamiji's stirring eloquence and of the heights of thought to which he ed. Both reporters, it is true, caught the general trend of lecture in which he had discussed the three phases of vedanta philosophy; but both emphasized its least important aspect, dwelling at length on his analysis of dualistic Vedanta devoting but a passing remark or two to his ringing exposition of monism, which, as the title of the lecture indicates, constituted his main theme.

It is not surprising that this was so, for as he himself acknowledged during his talk, nondualistic Vedanta was a difficult concept for the mind to grasp.

Even in India, its birthplace [he said], where it has been ruling supreme for the last three thousand years, it has not been able to permeate the masses.... It is difficult for even the most thoughtful man and woman in any country to understand Advaitism. We have made ourselves so low. We may make great claims, but naturally we want to lean on somebody else. We are like little, weak plants, always wanting a support. How many times have I been asked for a “comfortable religion”![19]

It would seem clear enough that Swamiji did not advocate a dualistic religion, or anything near it. On the other hand he did not insist on the monistic way for everyone; that would have been contrary to monism itself, contrary to the upward spiraling path of the human mind, and contrary, certainly, to his own vastness of outlook, in which world history, indeed time itself, was a mere illusory speck on the face of truth. He took man where he was, or where man thought he was.

As society exists at the present time [he said at the close of this lecture], all these three stages are necessary; the one does not deny the other, one is simply the fulfilment of the other. The Advaitist or the qualified Advaitist does not say that dualism is wrong; it is a right view, but a lower one. It is on the way to truth; therefore let everybody work out his own vision of this universe according to his own ideas.... All will come to truth in the long run. [20]

Yet as time went on, Swamiji was to become impatient for the human race. More and more, particularly during his second visit to the West, he was to stress the need for all men to assert their own divinity—now. The long run was too long. Even in 1896 one hears in his lectures the ring of urgency almost of insistence; for how could he, who saw so clearly, endure to see even a speck of darkness clouding the face of God! "Why give thirsty people ditch-water to drink whilst the river of life and truth flows by?'[21]he was to protest later in the year. Never did he speak of Advaita Vedanta without speaking in clarion tones. His words were always an impassioned call to the soul. Even in this more or less expository lecture before the humanists of the Ethical Association he cried:

What does the Advaitist preach? He dethrones all the gods that ever existed, or ever will exist in the universe and places on that throne the Self of man, the Atman, higher than the sun and the moon, higher than the heavens, greater than this great universe itself. No books, no scriptures, no science can ever imagine the glory of the Self that appears as man, the most glorious God that ever was, the only God that ever existed, exists, or ever will exist. I am to worship, therefore, none but my Self: . . . I am He, and He is I. None but I was God, and this little I never existed.... You are the veritable Gods of the universe; nay, there are not two-there is but One.

. . . This is the last word of the Vedas. It begins with dualism, goes through a qualified monism and ends in perfect monism. We know how very few in this world can come to the last, or even dare believe in it, and fewer still dare act according to it. Yet we know that therein lies the explanation of all ethics, of all morality, and all spirituality in the universe.[22]

Inadequate though the newspaper reports of this lecture are, we learn from the Daily Standard Union that Swamiji spoke at the Pouch Mansion for "an hour and a quarter." From this it is apparent that he said even more than was published in pamphlet form, for to read "The Atman" as it there appears (aloud and slowly) takes no more than forty-five minutes. A clue to at least one passage that was edited away is contained in a sentence of the Times report: "He told of the beliefs of the Buddhists who take their stand on an ethical foundation. 'B, good and do good' is their doctrine:" A discussion of Buddhist doctrines does not appear in "The Atman" as we know it today. But Swamiji spoke often of Buddha in the West, for a he was to say later in London, "We want today that bright sun of intellectuality [that is found in Shankaracharya] joins with the heart of Buddha, the wonderful infinite heart of love and mercy. This union will give us the highest philosophy.'[23]

Almost certainly, Swamiji himself gave the final. stamp o approval to the editing of this Brooklyn lecture and of the four others that appeared in pamphlet form in New York in 1896 We can be reasonably sure, therefore, that these lectures a first published contained only what he wanted them to contain and equally sure that they did not contain everything he had said from the platform to rapt audiences. Many digressions stories, repetitions, and scoldings must have been omitted Indeed, from Swamiji's letters to Mr. Sturdy in connection with his New York lectures and classes, we learn that he "expunged everything that is objectionable.'[24](Such "objectionable” passages may have consisted not only of Swamiji's forthright criticism of his listeners but of those quick flashes of wit with which he could turn aside an untimely or irrelevant question. The story is told, for instance, that in the course of a lecture at the Brooklyn Ethical Association [perhaps the one we have been discussing] he had touched on the subject of yoga, but had not entered into the details of its practice. During the question-and-answer period that followed a woman asked, "Swami, what do you think about breathing and eating: Whereupon Swamiji rep lied, "I assure you, Madame, that am in favor of both!")*(3)

*(3) This incident was related by the late Swami Akhilananda, recorded by Dr. Hilary Holt, and made available to this book through the kindness of Swami Chetanananda, head of the Vedanta Society of. St. Louis.

Throughout his lecture tours in 1893 and 1894. Swamiji had not hesitated to speak as he wished, often pointing out with devastating accuracy the foibles, inconsistencies, complacencies, and prejudices of the times. Such blasts, fearless and uncompromising promising, were, to say the least, considered indiscreet by some  who, like Mrs. Bull, were trying to promote his work, but there is no reason to believe that on this account Swamiji had stopped delivering them. "I know full well how good it is for one's worldly prospects to be sweet," he had written in a fury of rebellion to Mary Hale on February 1 of 1895, "I do everything to be sweet, but when it comes to a horrible compromise with the truth within, then I stop.'[25] His great heart would not allow him to be "sweet"; it was, indeed, that heart, the heart of a Buddha, pierced by every cry of humanity, that compelled him to walk among men and to undertake a bone-breaking schedule of work in the midst of Western civilization. The question sometimes arises how Swamiji, who saw divinity everywhere and continuously, could at the same time see the evil and anguish of the world and give himself fully to its removal. The present writer has no way of answering this question except to quote from the words of a senior monk of the Ramakrishna Order. In speaking of the great monistic knowledge and the equally great compassion of Swamiji, he said:

There is a logical contradiction here. Yes, I cannot but admit to myself that there is always a contradiction between these two motives-the motive of truth and the motive of compassion. But what a blessed contradiction!

I can only say this: in the relative state there are these two strong motives always there. At least, these two motives should be active in the lives of people. But aside from this, there is, I think, a deeper explanation for the contradiction we find in souls such as Buddha and Swamiji. You see, when man transcends his relative being and yet still lives in his body on this plane, there comes an extraordinary state. That is the state in which one can cast one's mind into any mode or any mood one likes. And it will be a total mood or total mode. Suppose his mind, for some reason, is seized with the motive of truth. His whole mind will join in it, and there will not be anything lacking in his longing for truth. At that time it would be quite possible that the cry of suffering would not reach his ears. But by the same token there could come another moment in which his whole being would be molded into a profound mood of compassion, of love and service. At that time, the idea of Truth would not reach him. Not a ripple of thought would arise to ask: "Are these people real? Doesn't philosophy say that this man is really God pretending to be a suffering man?" No, that is the voice of the intellect, and when the heart alone speaks, the intellect is silenced.

You find such contradictions in all great lives. Reconciliation does not lie in the simultaneous existence of these two motives, or moods, one adjusting to the other; it ' lies, rather, in the transcendence of  all limited  moods.  He  who  lives transcendentally is thereby able to wield his whole mind according to an oncoming mood, and when the mood of compassion comes, then his whole being is gives ' to the service of man..... So Swamiji could say that he was ready to go to hell if thereby he could serve one person....

Yet, great as he was, vast as he was, and multiform and manyphased as he was, underlying and overlaying his moods and modes of thought was still a basic hung " for the abyss of the Absolute. He was tormented by the longing to be lost in it. Not always was he conscious this, but unconsciously it was there, making him restless by night and by day.[26]

2

This mood, this longing for the Absolute, came on Swamiji at times with an almost irresistible force. We have seen t in December of 1895 Kripananda was convinced that his Guru would retire shortly to a Himalayan cave, never to return. January Swamiji himself wrote to Mrs. Bull, "After a 1 months' work in England I will go to India and hide myself absolutely for some years or for ever.... I get more and more convinced that there is no other object in work except the purification of the soul-to make it fit for knowledge. This world with its good and evil will go on in various forms. Only the evil and good will take new names and new seats. My soul p hankering after peace and rest eternal and undisturbed.... I long, oh! I long for my rags, my shaven head, my sleep under the trees, and my food from begging! India is the only place where, with all its faults, the soul finds its freedom, its God.'[27]


Two weeks later Swamiji wrote again to Mrs. Bull in the same vein. This letter, which has. not previously been published, is perhaps as indicative as any he ever wrote of the intensity of that basic mood in which his whole being was pulled, as it were, to the Formless. It read in full:

228 W. 39
New York the 6th of Feb. '96


Dear Mrs. Bull

I received your last duly but owing to many things I have given up the idea of taking rest next month. I go to Detroit the first week of March and then towards the middle or last week come to Boston. I have not much faith in working such things as the Procopaea &c-because these mixed up conglomerations of all isms and ities mostly fads, disturb the steadiness of the mind and life becomes a mass of frivolities. I am very glad however to get an opportunity to talk to the graduates of Harvard. This does not mean that I am not coming to Procopaea [a club in Boston]. I will come but it will be only for your sake. There is one if however-and that is if I am physically able. My health has nearly broken down. I have' not slept even one night soundly in New York since I came and this year there is incessant work both with the pen & the mouth. The accumulated work and worry of years is on me now I am afraid. Then a big struggle awaits me in England. I wish to go to the bottom of the Sea & have a good long sleep.


To Detroit I must go dead or alive as I have disappointed them several times last year. There were big money offers from near Chicago. I have rejected them as I do not any longer believe in paid lectures and their ' utility in any country. If after Detroit I feel the body able '' to drag itself on to Boston I will come, else I will remain in Detroit or some other quiet place and rest to recuperate for the coming work in England. So far I have tried to work conscientiously-let the fruits belong to the Lord. If they were good they will sprout up sooner or later; if bad, the sooner they die the better. I am quite satisfied with my task in life. I have been much more active than a Sanyasin ought to be. Now I will disappear from society; altogether. The touch of the world is degenerating me I ' am sure--so it is time to be off. Work has no more value beyond purifying the heart. My heart is pure enough, why shall I bother my head about doing good to others. "If you have known the Atman as the one only existence & nothing else exists; desiring what? for whose desire you : trouble yourself?" This universe is a dream pure & simple: Why bother myself about a dream? The very atmosphere: of the world is poison to the yogi-but I am waking up-my old iron heart is coming back-all attachments of relatives, friends, disciples are vanishing fast. "Neither through wealth nor through progeny-but by giving up,: everything as chaff is that immortality attained"-the Vedas. I am so tired of talking too; I want to close my' lips and sit in silence for years. All talk is nonsense


Yours flfly[28]
 Vivekananda


(There was no chance that Swamiji could soon close lips and sit in silence. And one might note here that around this time he was writing to his brother disciples in India: work! as far as in you lies ! Then I shall go to India move the whole country. What fear! . . . Gangadhar [Swami Akhandananda] has done right heroic work! Well done! Kali [Swami Abhedananda] has joined him in work-thrice well done!! Let one go to Madras, and another to Bombay, let the world shake in its hinges! Oh, the grief! If I could get two or three like me, I could have left the world convulsed. ")[29]


While the amount of work Swamiji was doing was in itself certainly enough to account for the extreme physical fatigue of which he wrote to Mrs. Bull, the effort required to force his mind to remain on the level where work was not only possible but charged with tremendous energy and will was an effort known perhaps only to avatars and prophets. Was it not this constant strain on the subtle levels of his being that broke Swamiji's health? Yet, surely in the nights when carriages and wagons no longer rattled by on cobbled streets, when Miss Waldo had gone home, when the lodging house was still and no suffering heart made its demands upon his own, perhaps then his mind, released, plunged into the abyss of God. It could not really have been otherwise, for he lived on the very edge of samadhi, wading in the tidelands of that Ocean. It has been said that Swamiji's continuance of "the meditative habit throughout his Western life was remarkable; for the disturbances were innumerable.'[30]But perhaps it was more remarkable that he maintained the habit of activity, for his effort was not to keep his mind lifted, but to hold it down. His great heart compelled him to work; his prescient belief that he had but a few years left compelled him to work incessantly. "Sister," he had written in his letter of February I, 1895, to Mary Hale, "the way is long, the time is short-evening is approaching-I have to go home soon, I have no time to give my manners a finish. I cannot find time to deliver my message.'[31]


And yet one could say that his grueling schedule might of itself have hastened the day of his departure from this earth. It was during the months of January and February of 1896 that his health, once robust, began to break down. Tired even when he had arrived from England in December after a hard six weeks of steady teaching ("I am really tired from incessant work," he had written to Alasinga from London on November 18, 1895. "Any other Hindu would have vomitted blood and died if he had to work as hard as I have to"),[32] he had had no rest before undertaking his heavy program of New York classes in December. By February, he was badly feeling the strain, writing to Sturdy in the second week of that month, "I am afraid my health is breaking down under constant work. I want some rest. We are so unused to these Western methods, especially the time-keeping.'[33] And to Mary Hale on February 10, "My health is very much broken down this year by constant work. I am very nervous. I have not slept a single night soundly this winter. I am sure I am working too much, yet a big work awaits me in England.... I was not made for these struggles , and fights of the world.'[34]


Perhaps it was around this time and in this mood that , Swamiji wrote the following heretofore unpublished and undated lines of an unfinished poem :


From life to life I am waiting here at the gates-they open not.

My tongue is parched with ceaseless prayers and dim my eyes have grown

With constant straining through the gloom to catch one ray long sought;

My heart is seized with dark despair, all hope well nigh has flown.

And standing on life's narrow ridge, beneath the chasm I see

Strife and sorrow, darkness deep of whirling life & death,

Of mad commotion, struggles vain, of folly roaming free.

On one side this dark abyss-I shudder to see it even On the other this wall[35]


Now and then, despite the intensity and fullness of his routine, Swamiji had some recreation, though it was not the kind of rest he craved. He walked a little every day, sometimes in Central Park with one or another of his friends, sometimes simply along the streets of the city. "It required no little courage," Miss Waldo later told Sister Devamata, "to walk up Broadway beside that flaming coat. As the Swami strode along in lordly indifference, with me just behind, half out of breath trying to keep up with him, every eye was turned upon us and on every lip was the question: 'What are they?' " And to be sure they must have been a sight-the lordly flaming monk and the portly, heavily breathing woman just behind. "Later," Miss Waldo confided to her friend, "I persuaded him to adopt more subdued clothing for the street.'[36]And one indeed hopes that in the bitterly cold winter of New York Swamiji at least wore an overcoat over his robe.


Sometimes, on a day when there was no class, he would go to Miss Waldo's house in Brooklyn. "It was [then] Swamiji who took the jogging horse-car [at least a part of the way], travelled the two hours and cooked the meals," Devamata wrote. "He found genuine rest and relaxation in the freedom and quiet of Miss Waldo's simple home. The kitchen was on the top floor of the house, in front of it the dining-room full of sunshine and potted plants. As the Swami invented new dishes or tried experiments with Western provisions, he ran back and forth from one room to the other like a child at play:»s~

Miss Waldo was deeply devoted to Swamiji. Years later, she expressed the depth of her feeling in a letter to Miss MacLeod, who had shared with her some of his letters.


I brought the dear letters upstairs and read them over again and then put my head down on them and had a good cry over them. My blessed, blessed guru! How was I ever so favored as to be permitted to know him! And not only to know him, but to love him and be accepted by him as his disciple ! I always bless the day he came into my life. May I always be faithful to him and to his teachings![38]


Sometime during this New York season Swamiji attended a dinner quite different from those informal and free occasions at Miss Waldo's. This was "a little dinner given by Mrs. Leggett at the Metropolitan Club,'[39] a very grand and exclusive establishment, known to New Yorkers as "the millionaires' club." The building itself, which stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Sixtieth Street "a gleaming white Italian Renaissance palace, entered from a spacious colonnaded courtyard'[40]was a match in grandeur for any of the super magnificent mansions that were being built along the Avenue from Fiftieth Street northward by the millionaires themselves. While Swamiji may have loved to cook his own dinner at Miss Waldo's humble house in Brooklyn, he would have been equally at home in the fashionable surroundings of the Metropolitan Club dining room and have enjoyed the company of his friends the Leggetts: The young artist Maude Stumm, who had first met Swamiji in Paris, met him for the second time at this dinner and later, at Miss MacLeod's request, jotted down her memory of the occasion :


Besides this wonderful guest [Swamiji] were three others, one of them the young Boston woman who had taken the prize for the "Hymn of the Republic" sung at the World's Fair. She was little and sat very erect, with an alert expression. Swami was rolling out Sanskrit and translating the ancient glories of India-nobody daring to speak. He dwelt finally upon the spiritual superiority of the Hindu, even today. Thereupon the Boston lady interrupted: "But, Swami, you must admit that the common people of India are way below the cultivation of the same class in, say Massachusetts; why look at one item-the newspapers!" Swami, recalled from his poetic flight, raised his great eyes  and regarded her silently. "Yes, Boston is a very cultivated place," he said, "I landed there once-a stranger in a strange land. My coat was like this red one and I wore my turban. I was proceeding up a street in the busy part of the town when I became aware that I was followed by a great number of men and boys. I hastened my pace and they did too. Then something struck my shoulder and I began to run, dashing around a corner, and up a dark passage, just before the mob in full pursuit, swept past and I was safe! Yes," he concluded, "Massachusetts is a very civilized place!" Even this did not silence the little woman, and with astonishing temerity she raised her voice again to say, "But, Swami, no doubt a Bostonian in Calcutta, would have created just such a scene!" "That would be impossible, " he replied, "for with us it is unpardonable to show even polite curiosity to the stranger within our gates, and never open hostility.'[41]


Far more remarkable was another dinner, or rather supper party, attended by Swamiji on Wednesday evening, February 5. The event was written up in New York Herald of Sunday, the ninth, in a social column, headed with unwitting appropriateness "A GALA OCCASION." The occasion referred to was not, it so happened, the party at which Swamiji was a guest, but Mrs. William Astor's annual ball. This "most sacred ceremony of the year" had taken place throughout the night of Monday, February 3. But the event that occurred two evenings later was, as far as we are concerned, the true GALA OCCASION. And, in fact, this particular social column devoted a good deal more space to it than to Mrs. Astor's ball. The heading (in part) and the relevant paragraphs read as follows :


A Wonderful Curio Supper Proves the 
Most Novel Entertainment of 
the Winter Season.

The supper given on Wednesday night by Mrs. Austin Corbin and Miss Annie Corbin at their home, No. 425 Fifth avenue, styled by some a curio party, was, perhaps, the most unique entertainment in the social calendar of the winter season. It was an entertainment arranged by the hostess for the purpose, in order that Mme Sarah Bernhardt might meet the Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindoo priest. The French tragedienne, since she has added "Izeyl" to her repertoire, has taken a profound interest in Hindoo mythology and the occult sciences of the East, and she was extremely anxious to converse with the well known expounder of the religion of the Far East. So on Wednesday night the opportunity was offered, and Mme. Bernhardt was not slow to grasp it. She arrived at the Corbin house soon after her labors at the theatre were over, and there found the Brahmin priest arrayed in his rather showy robes 'of office and, surrounding him was a brilliant company of young people, including Mrs. Adolf Ladenburg, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Cooper Hewitt, Lieutenant and Mrs. Gianni Bettini, M. Victor Maurel, Miss Caroline Duer, Mr. Charles Mathews, Mr. Creighton Webb, Mr. J. Norman de R. Whitehouse, Mr. Frederic H. Baldwin and Professor Nikola Tesla, the electrician.


An elaborate supper was served, and as it progressed Mme. Bernhardt, through the aid of Mrs. Ladenburg, Mr. Whitehouse and Mr. Mathews, as interpreters, discussed Hindoo mythology with the Swami and had little fits of delight over the discourse of Professor Tesla, who is one of the inventors of photographing through opaque substances. The French actress, the Swami, the Professor and several others in the company engaged in a lengthy disputation on the great questions of life and death and the great hereafter, while exquisite theories on life and morals were advanced, and suggestions worthy of Plato on the banks of the Ilissus were made. It was an intellectual treat seldom encountered in social life in the metropolis.


To say the least! High Society in the metropolis studiously avoided anything that approached the dangerous realm of ideas; whereas the Corbin party entered that realm head on. In the New York World of February 6 and g one finds, respectively, the following items:


Mr and Mrs Austin Corbin gave a supper and vaudeville last night at their home, No. 425 Fifth avenue. Sarah Bernhardt gave some monologues, the Hindoo High Priest gave a typical performance and other artists assisted.


. . . Mrs. John J. Wysong gave one of the swagger VaudevilleKettledrums of the week on Wednesday afternoon, when she had a great many callers.... The same evening Mrs. Austin Corbin capped the climax in this line by having Sarah Bernhardt, the Indian high priest and others of their ilk at the very fine supper party they gave. The craze for vaudeville is rampant.


Vaudeville, it should be noted, was not in those days the slapstick, rowdy variety show it had been at an earlier age and that it was to become again. In the 1890 it was relatively elevated. "Name acts" had been introduced as a drawing card, famous stage or concert artists did not feel it beneath their dignity to be prominently featured on a vaudeville bill, and lucky was the hostess of a private entertainment who could persuade the great and renowned to perform. The Corbins' party was clearly on a high cultural level, for only the most famous of artists could be asked to sing, play, or speak under the same roof with the divine Sarah; those of her "ilk" were top rank. Victor Maurel, for instance, was a famous baritone, currently singing at the Metropolitan Opera House. As for Swamiji, one suspects that the social editor of the World had little idea of what a Hindoo High Priest was apt to do; "typical performance" was the safe way out. Very likely he just sat quietly during the "vaudeville," enjoying the monologues and songs. It was later in the evening that he entered into conversation.


The news of the party spread as far as Detroit. In the Detroit Free Press of March I, in a section entitled "Fair Woman's World," one finds the following item from New York:


The Swami, who has been a social fad this winter in certain circles, has been given a number of receptions. Last week Mrs. Austin Corbin gave a brilliant gathering of social and professional stars in honor of Mme. Sarah Bernhardt and the Swami Vivekananda, . . . who discussed the philosophy, morals and religion of Hindoo life through an interpreter for several hours. The priest was in the Brahmin robes; the actress wore an exquisite evening gown. It is also stated that a warm friendship has sprung up between the two.


The Corbin's evening was the initial to quite a series at which these distinguished foreigners were entertained. Mrs. Ole Bull had an afternoon for the great actress, who it is said is very enthusiastic over everything American, and is very demonstrative in showing it. If a lady pleases the divine Sarah, she goes into wild delight over her, holding her hands and patting her face in a truly French style.


It must have been sometime during the next to last week in January that Swamiji had gone to see Sarah Bernhardt in the drama Izeyl, which was having a brief run at Abbey's Theatre (three short blocks from his lodgings). He was no doubt taken to the play by insistent friends, for no one should miss seeing the Bernhardt, as the divine Sarah was called in America. Moreover, the play was based on the legend of Buddha and the courtesan Ambapali; it was, in short, Indian, and therefore Swamiji must see it.


Mme Bernhardt had brought Izeyl to America in January of 1896, along with a number of other plays, from her theater  in Paris, where, according to the Boston Transcript, it had been "one of the most sensational novelties of a decade." She had transported across the Atlantic not only the original cast of Izeyl, but "all the original scenes, properties and costumes" an operation that was characteristic of the Bernhardt's method f procedure. As Swamiji was later to remark, "Sarah Bernhardt is given to spending lavishly.'[42] Izeyl was elaborately staged and, to judge from the sketches in the newspapers, the sets presented a wide variety of effects-Egyptian, Arabian, Classical Greek, Coptic, and amid all this Eastern or near Eastern glory, at least one scene that Swamiji found to be authentically Indian. A few years later he was to mention this last in his travel-letters written for the Udbodhan magazine. 'One year," he wrote, "[Mme Bernhardt] performed a drama touching on India, in which she set up a whole Indian street scene on the stage-men, women and children, Sadhus and Vagas and everything-an exact picture of India! After the performance she told me that for about a month she had visited ;very museum and made herself acquainted with the men and Nomen, and their dress, the streets and bathing ghats and everything relating to India.'[43]Clearly, Swamiji was impressed by the care Mme Bernhardt had taken in her researches and by the faithfulness with which she had reproduced this particular scene.


The play itself was something else again. Its four acts, which swamiji patiently sat through, concerned the courtesan Izeyl's attempt to win the heart of Buddha. "It is a sort of Frenchified life of Buddha," Swamiji wrote to Mr. Sturdy. It was indeed. and it was Frenchified in more than plot. Written especially or Sarah Bernhardt by two now obscure French poets, Armand sylvestre and Eugene Morand, the drama took place entirely n French verse, and perhaps for this reason, as well as for its high-flown sentiments, was considered one of the cultural highlights of the New York season. During its short run in dew York it was such a success that although it had been scheduled to play for only five days, three extra performances were given, the last of which was a matinee held on Wednesday February 5.


"I went to see this Buddha business," Swamiji told Mr Sturdy. ". . . A courtesan 'Iziel' wants to seduce the Buddha under the banyan-and the Buddha preaches to her the vanity of the world, whilst she is sitting all the time in Buddha's lap. However, all is well that ends well--the courtesan fails.'[44]Swamiji went on to say that during the performance Sarah Bernhardt had spied him in the audience and forthwith had wanted to have an interview with him. "A swell family of m acquaintance arranged the affair," he wrote. "There were besides Madame, M. Morrel [Maurel], the celebrated singer also the great electrician, Tesla," and as we have seen, quite number of others. But it is not likely that Sarah Bernhard wanted to discuss personal spiritual problems with Swamiji for she does not seem to have had a more than passing interest in. such matters, nor was she at that time in her life troubled at heart. Fifty-one years old when Swamiji first met her, she had attained to a dignity of bearing, a certain maturity c judgment, and, if one can call it so, a serenity of mind; am yet she had lost none of her extraordinary incandescence and charm. One imagines, then, that Sarah Bernhardt-famous adored, beautiful, fulfilled, and untroubled by questions as t life's ultimate meaning-desired to meet Swamiji simply because he was, as she had seen at a glance, a great and remark able man, an imposing presence, and, like Izeyl herself, Hindu.


Mme Bernhardt's slightest wish in those days, and for many years to come, was tantamount to a royal command. Yet no one, not even she before whom monarchs had bowed, could command Swamiji. If he had sensed in her desire to meet him merely the whim of a spoiled and self willed woman, it is ver likely that he would have refused the invitation. As it was, he must have seen beyond the fabulously famous actress to; woman with greatness of heart, of immense vitality, and indomitable spirit; a woman whose zest for life and singleness of purpose no amount of suffering-and no amount of adulation -could destroy. Sarah Bernhardt's motto, which she had adopted at the very beginning of her career, was one Swamiji would have approved: "Quand meme"-"Just the same," or, translated by her granddaughter, "Despite all." It was a motto that she lived by, magnificently overriding all obstacles (and there had been many) in her path to glory. She was, to be sure, obstinate, given to violent tempers, incredibly extravagant, demanding, capricious, and utterly scornful of convention; but Sarah Bernhardt was never petty, never was she weak, nor was she by any means stupid. She had genius and Was well aware of it; she had also the determination and the capacity for endless and painstaking work. Further, she had the capacity, when necessary, for true self-sacrifice, as was evident, for instance, in her tireless and selfless nursing service during the Siege of Paris in 1870. Indeed, Mme Sarah was not only a great actress, she was, as the passing years were to reveal more and more, a great and gallant woman. "Wherever there is the least manifestation of greatness," Swamiji once said, "know for certain God is there.'[45]And thus, even as he had gone to see Sarah Bernhardt in Izeyl, so would he agree to this "interview" with her, which was arranged by the Austin Corbins, whom they both knew and who were indeed a "swell family."


It may have been at this party that Sarah Bernhardt told Swamiji in that "wonderful voice" (which he was later to mention) and with the help of interpreters, her English being exceedingly poor and Swamiji's French not good, about her researches for the Indian street-scene in Izey; and he no doubt expressed his admiration. She assured. him again and again that India was "very ancient, very civilized, " and she certainly told him, as she was to do again in Paris in 1900, that his country was the dream of her life. Swamiji listened, amused, perhaps charmed, for whatever Sarah Bernhardt said, she said it charmingly. When writing of her, he always seemed to be vastly and benignly entertained, as by an exceptionally talented, highly spirited, and astonishing child. In any event, the talk at the Corbins' surely had its light and vivacious moments, Mme Bernhardt chatting animatedly about India, about her researches, about the theater, and Swamiji listening amiably. But it would appear that before long the conversation slid into a discussion of Indian philosophy, Swamiji and Tesla conversing at some length on the subject of Vedanta cosmology. Sarah Bernhardt was by no means lost or bored by this turn of events, going, indeed, into "little fits of delight"; but it was Nikola Tesla who, according to Swamiji, was the most pleased. "Madame is a very scholarly lady and has studied up the metaphysics a good deal," Swamiji wrote to Sturdy. "M. Morrel [Maurel] was very interested, -but Mr. Tesla was charmed to hear about the Vedantic Prana and Akasha and the Kalpas, which according to him are the only theories modern science can entertain.'[46]


This was probably not Swamiji's first meeting with Nikola Tesla, that extraordinary genius whose fame today is by no means commensurate with his achievements in the field of electricity. There is good reason to believe that Mr. Tesla attended Swamiji's lectures in New York in 1896, for about. a year later Swamiji remarked during the course of a lecture in south India, "I have myself been told by some of the best scientific minds of the day, how wonderfully rational the conclusions of the Vedanta are. I know one of them personally, who scarcely has time to eat his meal, or go out of his laboratory, but who yet would stand by the hour to attend my lectures on the Vedanta; for, as he expresses it, they are so scientific, they so exactly harmonise with the aspirations of the age and with the conclusions to which modern science is coming at the present time.'[47] Swamiji was surely referring here to Nikola Tesla, who did indeed scarcely leave his New York laboratory. "I spend so many hours at my laboratory at times that my friends become alarmed and threaten to lock the place up and hide the key," Tesla told a newspaper reporter in 1894. Yet evidently the Vedantic cosmology that Swamiji was expounding in New York in January and February of 1896 drew him forth on Sunday afternoons to Hardman Hall or Madison Square Garden; and at either place, if he had arrived late, he would have had to stand. Swamiji's first meeting with Tesla may have occurred even earlier than 1896. At the World's Columbian Exposition (where the Parliament of Religions had been held) the electrical scientist had demonstrated his most recent inventions with spectacular showmanship, and most probably he had been one of the distinguished guests at the vegetarian dinner that the Chairman of the Electrical Congress, Professor Elisha Gray, and his wife gave for Swamiji in September of 1893 at "their beautiful residence, Highland Park, Chicago.'[48]


Curiously, he who did so much for industrial America is today scarcely mentioned in American histories. But in 1896 Nikola Tesla, who in July of that year would reach the age of forty, was a celebrated figure, regarded by scientists and laymen alike with something approaching awe. No other electrical scientist of his day, including Thomas Edison, whom Tesla looked upon as a somewhat doltish trial-and-error man, understood so well the properties of electro-magnetic waves, and no one could make them do his bidding as could he. Before coming to America from his native Croatia (now a part of Yugoslavia) he had invented the polyphase alternating-current system (an accomplishment no one had thought possible) and had made remarkable discoveries in the fields of high frequencies and high voltage. These achievements were to release electricity from the bondage of the direct-current powerhouses, those feeble generators that were so dear to Edison's heart but that could do no more than send hesitant and fluctuating charges of electrical current to distances not much greater than half a mile. It was in 1896 that the gigantic Niagara Falls powerhouse, which utilized Tesla's patents, went into operation and that, for the first time, electric power of high voltages could be transmitted for many miles. The age of electric power was born then and there; and Nikola Tesla was, without question, its father. He created, as has been said of him, the modern era.


Indeed practically everything Tesla invented was; either literally or figuratively, of a world-shaking order and, for the most part, beyond the grasp of his contemporaries. By 1896 there were far more wonders in his brain-which served him as a filing case, drawing board, and laboratory-than he had as yet revealed. Already, for instance, he had discovered the fundamental principles of radio and the principles, also, of remote control, both of which he was to demonstrate in New York in 1898. He had in mind, not as fantasies but as wellworked-out possibilities, radiocontrolled and jet-propelled airplanes. He had invented fluorescent lighting; had described what are today known as cosmic rays and the phenomena of radioactivity. In the early part of 1896 he was publishing his improvements on the production of X-rays that he had been working on for several years and that Roentgen had only just discovered.


These are but a few of the things Nikola Tesla worked with and played with long before anyone else had dreamed of them and long before anyone could think what earthly good they were. Ironically, many of his important inventions and discoveries are today credited to other men. He himself was in part to blame for his present obscurity, for he often neglected to take out patents, or, if he had patents, sold them for too little. As a result, he was dependent on others for capital; and those others lacked his vision. Thus, despite the fact that over half of his two hundred and twelve patents are today in essential use, Tesla died at the age of eighty-seven in poverty and obscurity.


But to return to 1896 - he was then young, famous, and abounding in self confidence and vitality. He was six feet two inches tall, slender, handsome, charming, and highly cultured. -' He dressed meticulously, even while working, and was given to dining in solitary splendor at the luxurious Waldorf Hotel. Now and then, he would invite his friends to regal dinners that were the talk of the town and would entertain them afterward with the thunders and lightnings of his laboratory. If Sarah Bernhardt was the goddess of the age, he was the god. He was the god Thor, who not only could create lightning and shake the earth' (with an oscillator), but could cause palpitations in many a female heart. Yet, Tesla followed a severely rigorous program of self discipline and austerity. He refused far more invitations than he accepted, and, for the sake of his work, had banished women from his life altogether. His effort was to achieve supermanhood; and as far as the development of almost superhuman powers were concerned, he had been successful.


The trio that convened at the Corbins' house that evening of February 5, 1986, was indeed something to contemplate! Swami Vivekananda, Sarah Bernhardt, Nikola Tesla-each peerless in his or her own field, each at the height of achievement and fame, each looked upon by others as somehow superhuman. The genius and vitality that flowed there, manifesting itself so abundantly on three different levels, was staggering, and the ground it covered was immense. Taken together, the spheres those three represented and commanded stretched over the entire spectrum of human life and expression - the sphere of the emotions and the senses, the sphere of the intellect, and, embracing and transcending both, the sphere of the spirit. One could search far through history and not find a comparable meeting.


While the dedication of each of these three embodied powers was total, there were recesses, so to speak, and the Corbin supper .was a recess they all seem to have enjoyed. Sarah Bernhardt, her still slender figure crowned by a mop of frizzy red hair, dressed, the papers said, in an exquisite evening gown; Swamiji in a flamecolored silk robe and white turban; Nikola Tesla in the elegant white tie and tails he donned every evening, must have chatted together like old friends. As we have surmised earlier, the talk probably started with the sets for Izeyl and found its way to Indian philosophy-specifically Vedanta (or Sankhya) cosmology, which, to Mme Bernhardt's apparent interest and Tesla's delight, Swamiji explained in some detail. In his desire at this period of his mission to correlate the insights of the ancient rishis with the findings and theories of modern science, he probably asked Tesla many a question and a day or so later evidently put his queries in a letter. On February 8 Tesla wrote him the following note:


My dear Sir,

As it would be difficult to answer your questions by letter and as I wish to have the pleasure of meeting you again I would suggest a visit to my laboratory 45 East Houston Street any day next week you find convenient.

Faithfully yours[49]
N Tesla


A meeting was arranged. "Mr. Tesla thinks he can demonstrate mathematically that force and matter are reducible to potential energy," Swamiji wrote to Mr. Sturdy on February 13. "I am going to see him next week, to get this new mathematical demonstration. In that case, the Vedantic cosmology will be placed on the surest of foundations. I am working a good deal now upon the cosmology and eschatology of Vedanta. I clearly see their perfect unison with modern science.'[50]


But one searches in vain, both through Swamiji's lectures and writings and Nikola Tesla's published papers, for a further reference to the mathematical demonstration that Swamiji had so hopefully looked forward to. It is highly probable that he met with disappointment. Indeed, a year and a half later, during the course of a lecture in Lahore, he said, "There is the unity of force, Prana; there is the unity of matter, called Akasha. Is there any unity to be found among them again? Can they be melted into one ? Our modern science is mute here; it has not yet found its way out"51 In fact, to judge from the views that Tesla held for many years thereafter on the relationship between matter and energy, he had either not fully grasped Swamiji's ideas on this subject, or, not being able to demonstrate them mathematically, had rejected them as false. Indeed, although some of Swamiji's ideas have since been verified, even today (1982) the unified primal energy beyond Prana and Akasha that he wanted science to discover has not yet been found.


Let us consider briefly the Vedanta cosmology in relation to science then and now, for even after Swamiji had given his classes in Sankhya cosmology, his mind went on working with those ideas. He intended, as he wrote to Sturdy, to write a book on this subject in the form of questions and answers. "The first chapter will be on cosmology, showing the harmony between Vedantic theories and modern science.... The eschatology will be explained from the Advaitic standpoint only." By which he meant that this visible world and the various spheres through which, from the dualistic standpoint, the soul actually passes after death, are, from the Advaitic standpoint, visions constituted of name and form only, like waves in an ocean. "This name-and-form is called Maya, and the water is Brahman."Sz In this letter he outlined the "layers of the universe"-the varying appearances of Akasha and Prana:


.. .The lowest or most condensed is the Solar sphere, consisting of the visible universe, in which Prana appears as physical force, and Akasha as sensible matter. The next is called the Lunar sphere, which surrounds the Solar sphere. This is not the moon at all, but the habitation of the gods, that is to say, Prana appears in it as psychic forces, and Akasha as Tanmatras or fine particles. Beyond this is the Electric sphere, that is to say, a condition in which the Prana is almost inseparable from Akasha, and you can hardly tell whether Electricity is force or matter. Next is the Brahmaloka, where there is neither Prana nor Akasha, but both are merged in the mind - stuff, the primal energy. And here-there being neither Prana nor Akasha -the Jiva contemplates the whole universe as Samashti or the sum total of Mahat or mind. This appears as a Purusha, an abstract universal soul, yet not the Absolute, for still there is multiplicity. From this the Jiva finds at last that Unity which is the end. Advaitism says that these are the visions which rise in succession before the Jiva, who himself neither goes nor comes, and that in the same way this present vision has been projected. The projection (Srishti) and dissolution must take place in the same order, only one means going backward, and the other coming out.[53]


It is only during the last ten years or so that the Big Bang theory-the theory of a universe rushing outward from an initial explosion-has been accepted by almost all scientists; and this is merely a small part of Vedantic cosmology, a part taking place after (immediately after, perhaps) the evolution, or formation, of Prana: and Akasha, energy and matter. That the physical universe will fall back in on itself, to again expand, and so on cyclically forever, is today a theory entertained by a number of reputable physicists, but it is as yet (1982) unproved. Swamiji's "Electrical sphere," on the other hand, where the "Prana is almost inseparable from Akasha," was established by Einstein long ago; his term "mass-energy" embodies this interchangeability of matter and energy. But what this "mass energy" is no one at this writing seems to know. Yet it was this-the state beyond matter and energy, the state out of which matter and energy evolved-that Swamiji had hoped Nikola Tesla could mathematically demonstrate. He could not. Indeed; is it not just here that physics meets metaphysics and begins to slip beyond the grasp of mathematics? But however that may be, Tesla, in accord with his era, had not yet grasped the concept of "mass-energy," the sphere or state where one can "hardly tell whether electricity is force or matter." Despite his remarkable discoveries and inventions (some of which, it is said, have unlimited possibilities today, waiting to be tapped), despite his brilliance and prescience, his concepts were not of the twentieth century. As late as 1938 he made an emphatic statement about a belief he had doggedly held since 1893 or 1894. "There is no energy in matter other than that received from the environment; . . . [this] applies rigorously to molecules and atoms as well as to the largest heavenly bodies, and to all matter in the universe in any phase of its existence from its very formation to its. ultimate disintegration.'[54]In short, for many years Nikola Tesla was of the firm conviction that matter and energy were two entirely and eternally distinct entities. Like all nineteenth century physicists, he believed that atoms were, as Newton had said, "solid, hard, impenetrable and unbreakable." He believed, further, that electricity was a force that acted upon the atom from the outside, thereby producing electric currents. He did not believe and did not want to believe that force and matter were interchangeable and that both were "reducible to potential energy." Swamiji was far ahead of him.


Just the same, Nikola Tesla was, as Swamiji said, charmed with the ideas of Vedantic cosmology and, up to a point, was surely in accord with them; nor did he ever forget them. In the last years of his life, when he had finally conceded that mass could be converted into energy, he wrote a paper on the incalculable power at the command of man. In this paper, a portion of which was published for the first time in his biography, Prodigal Genius, by John J. O'Neill, he said :


Long ago [Man] recognized that all perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or a tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the Akasha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life-giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never ending cycles, all things and phenomena. The primary substance, thrown into infinitesimal whirls of prodigious velocity, becomes gross matter; the force subsiding, the motion ceases and matter disappears, reverting to the primary substance.


Can Man control this grandest, most awe-inspiring of all processes in nature?.. If he could do this, he would have powers almost unlimited and supernatural.... He could cause planets to collide and produce his suns and stars, his heat and light. He could originate and develop life in all its infinite forms. (Such powers] would place him beside, his Creator, make him fulfill his ultimate destiny.[55]


Here one finds that well over forty years after knowing Swamiji, Tesla remembered the exact terms the Hindu monk had used, and although he chose from both Vedantic cosmology and modern physics the parts that gratified his obsession with supermanhood, it is clear that Swamiji's lectures, conversations, and, perhaps, classes had stirred him deeply.


Although Swamiji met both Sarah Bernhardt and Nikola Tesla separately at least once after their meeting at the Corbins', these tremendously vital archetypes of man's genius in three spheres-spiritual, intellectual, and esthetic-never again came together as a trio. Their meeting in February of 1896 had been like some splendid astronomical conjunction that occurs but once in hundreds, thousands of years. What meaning it had in the lives of Sarah Bernhardt and Nikola Tesla or in the larger life of mankind we can only guess; but that Swamiji delighted in meeting and talking to these two people, each so great in his and her own field, we can be sure; for Man was his love, and human greatness, wherever he found it and however it was expressed, never failed to give him joy*(4). How often did he say that the whole universe was contained in that one word-Man !

*(4) Nikola Tesla was told in an article by the present (cont.) author in Prabuddha Bharatq, March 1972, pages 110- 20. More information was there given in connection with Mme Bernhardt and Mr. Tesla.

The Austin Corbins' house at 425, Fifth Avenue, where this rare trio had talked together, was not unfamiliar to Swamiji. As we have seen in an earlier chapter, he had held several classes there in February and March of the previous season. It had not been long, however, before he was writing to Mrs. Bull (on March 21, 1895), "I went to Miss Corbin's last Saturday and told her that I should not be able to come to hold classes any more. Was it ever in the history of the world that any great work was done by the rich?'[56]That had been the end of the Corbin classes for 1895. During this season of 1896 Swamiji had again agreed to hold classes at 425 Fifth Avenue, somehow fitting them into his crowded weeks of January and February. At present all we know of what may have been a weekly class comes from a heretofore unpublished letter written by Swamiji to Miss Thursby:


228 West 39th Street 
New York, Feby 26th, 1896


Dear Miss Thursby

Will you oblige me by giving Mr. Goodwin any particulars you can with reference to the business arrangements made for my 6 lectures with Miss Corbin. He will see her, with the idea of obtaining payment.

Thanking you in anticipation, & with best regards

Very truly yours[57]

Vivekananda


Mr. Goodwin was successful in this mission. On March I he wrote to Mrs. Bull:

I succeeded in getting $100 from Miss Corbin on Friday [February 28] & the Swami wanted to pay his Detroit expenses out of it, but I thought you would not like him to do so, so persuaded him not to. I hope I did correctly. I have seen a letter from Detroit from which it is certain that his expenses will be met there.[58]


We can, I believe, assume that this hundred dollars from Miss Anna Corbin was in payment for the six classes that Swamiji had held in her house. It does not seem a handsome sum even for those days; but on the other hand, Swamiji would have taken no payment at all if he had not wanted to meet his own expenses and if the Corbins had not been extraordinarily rich.

 In those days the very rich were very rich indeed, while the laboring classes could barely keep alive. The gap between the two was immense: the ratio of the average income of the employed masses of downtown New York-that is, the tens of thousands who were trapped in unending poverty, filth, and wretchedness-and that of the tycoons of residential Fifth Avenue, the few hundred who lived lavishly in palatial mansions, was something in the neighborhood of one to fifteen thousand. 

Generally speaking, Swamiji's following lay between these two extremes, consisting of the more or less comfortable middle class that could give some thought to matters of the spirit. But he spoke also to some of the very poor, at, for instance, the People's Church, and to some of the very rich at the Corbins'. Indeed, there seems to have been no section of the American people upon whom his glance did not fall and whom his words did not reach.

3

Through February of 1896, though longing to "sit in silence for years," Swamiji continued to hold classes and to deliver a public lecture at least once a week. A hall in Madison Square Garden had been rented for the last three Sunday afternoons in the month, and the crowds that came to hear him lecture on those afternoons were larger than ever. "People are now flocking to me," he would write on February 17. "Hundreds have become convinced that there are men who can really control their bodily desires; and reverence and respect for these principles are growing.'[59]

Madison Square Garden, which should not be confused with the immense arenas that have since served its purpose, covered the block bounded by Madison and Fourth avenues and Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh streets. Though huge, it was a graceful, arcaded three-story building, topped by a tower 300 feet high, which was, in turn, topped by a 13-foot-tall twirling statue of Diana, with bow and arrow poised to shoot into the wind. Completed in 1890, the building housed the auditorium of New York, where all manner of exhibitions, conventions, sports events, horse shows, and circuses took place. It was not, however, in the main auditorium that Swamiji gave his lectures, but in the more modest Concert Hall on the second floor. Yet even the Concert Hall was large for those days, seating r5oo people-five times as many as Hardman Hall. Here, to capacity crowds, Swamiji delivered the second series of his New York lectures: "Bhakti Yoga," "The Real and the Apparent Man," and "My Master," on, respectively, February 9, 16, and 23.


In his series at Hardman Hall Swamiji had given his Sunday audiences a foundation for the heights of Vedantic thought. He had established on a rational basis the need for religion in human life; he had as rationally pointed out the essential unity of the religious principle, of which all the various creeds were vital manifestations; and in his third and fourth lectures he had posited, through a cosmological argument, the existence of an immanent God and, through an epistemological argument, the existence of the individual, self luminous, immutable soul behind the changing phenomena of body and mind. There, on this pinnacle of dualistic thought, he had left the .matter for the time being.


Now, beginning his second New York series, Swamiji did not at once take up the thread of Vedanta philosophy where he had left off. Rather, he spoke of the living relationship between the individual soul and the Personal God-a relationship at first a little stiff and shy on the part of the devotee, expressed with ceremonies, rituals, forms, and various symbols of reverence. But in his very absorption in these prescribed observances; the devotee becomes more and more enrapt, his yearning more authentic, less spasmodic and contrived; his relationship with God becomes more and more real, until the ceremonious gestures, the chants and the incense, the sanctified place of worship are no longer needed. The conception of the Beloved has so deepened and widened that the devotee's every thought, act, and word are instinct now with an almost breathless reverence; there is no being who is not found to be He, no spot that is not His temple. And at length, in that blaze of love the Fire at the heart of the universe consumes the spark and "that God who at first was a Being somewhere, became resolved, as it were, into Infinite Love. Man himself was also transformed. He was approaching God, he was throwing off all vain desires, of which he was full before. With desires vanished selfishness, and, at the apex, he found that Love, Lover, and Beloved were One.'[60]


This lecture was, in effect, a summary of Swamiji's bhakti yoga classes. Like them, it reached the monistic consummation through the path of devotion; it employed not reason, but love, to transcend the dualistic view of God, the soul, and the world. This path was, surely, an age-old means by which the soul and the world itself are dissolved in that blaze of union. Indeed, in this lecture, as well as in his bhakti classes, one would think that Swamiji had nothing else in mind or heart to teach but the .path of devotion, so fully did he give himself to it, so carefully and glowingly did he explain it. But it was not so. His teachings necessarily reached beyond the dualistic ways they accommodated; the Oneness of Advaita Vedanta was the ground on which bhakti yoga (as he taught it) stood, the Infinitude to which it aspired.


It was in his second Madison Square Garden lecture that he took up the thread of the Vedantic argument, left hanging in Hardman Hall. This long lecture, entitled "The Real and the Apparent Man," was the grand climax of his two Sunday courses, the full, culminating statement of his message, for which he had prepared the way. He first reviewed both the cosmological and epistemological (or psychological) arguments that he had employed in his earlier lectures, coming, on the one hand, again to Mahat (the Universal Mind), out of which Akasha and Prana have been produced, and, on the other hand, to the soul of man, against the permanence of which perceptions are unified and known. We are here still in a dualistic  realm - the realm of an unchanging Substance against which real forms continually rise and fall.


Before moving on from the dualistic concept of God, soul, world, Swamiji pointed to an equally valid view of things hat of Buddhism, according to which "there is no such thing as immovability in the universe; it is all change and nothing but change.'[61]. It was Advaita Vedanta that resolved apparent conflict between these two views, each of which ~ supported by strong reason; neither of which was in itself actually tenable. "The reality is," Swamiji said,


That there is change, and there is non-change in this universe. It is not that the Soul and the mind and the body are three separate existences, but this organism is one. It is the same thing which appears as the body, as the mind, and as beyond the mind and body, but not at the same time.... He who sees only motion never sees that absolute calm; and he who sees that absolute calm, for him the motion has vanished....


There is then but One Unit Existence, and that One is appearing as manifold. This Self, or Soul, or Substance, is all that exists in the universe. That Self, or Substance, or Soul, is, in the language of non-dualism, the Brahman, appearing to be manifold by the interposition of name and form.[62]


In one grand, rolling sentence after the other, Swamiji went expounding the concept of Advaita Vedanta:


. . . This whole universe is that One Unit Existence; name and form have created all these various differences.... This idea of duality, of two, is entirely false, and the whole universe is the result of this false knowledge. When discrimination comes, and man finds there are not two but One, he finds that he is this universe. It is I who am this universe as it now exists, a continuous mass of change. It is I who am beyond all changes, beyond all qualities, the eternally perfect, the eternally blessed.


There is, therefore, but one Atman, one Self, eternally pure, eternally perfect, unchangeable, unchanged; it has never changed; and all these various changes are but appearances in that one Self. . . . None comes and none goes, says the nondualist.... Omnipresent is the Self of man. Where to go? Where not to go? It is everywhere.... It is nature that is changing, not the soul of man. This never changes. Birth and death are in nature, not in you.... These spheres, and devils, and gods, and reincarnations and transmigrations, are all mythology; so is this human life. It is not that they are mythology, and this [life] is true.... The whole thing is mythology, and the greatest of all lies is that we are bodies, which we never were. It is the greatest of all lies that we are mere men; we are the God of the universe. We have been always worshipping our own hidden Self.[63]


This lecture (in the view, at least, of the present writer) was one of Swamiji's most important and most beautiful. It not merely combined the moving beauty of poetry and the crystal beauty of clear logic, but, more important, pointed to the terrible beauty that flamed at the heart of the universe and that the names and forms of entire universe could never fully express-the beauty which in its entirely was the very essence of man. The subject of this lecture was, of course, man himself. What was he really? This question, which had grown more and more central to the Western search for truth and value, more and more pivotal to cultural and political life since the Renaissance, had become by the close of the nineteenth century all-important. The question "What is God?" was no longer pertinent to the life of the people as a whole. As for the question "What is the universe?" the answer was shortly to become so complex and uncertain that the layman would abandon all hope of comprehending it. But the most ordinary man asked  with increasing wonder, "What am I ?" "Who am I ?" Was the answer in its inmost depth available to his realization? To this anguished and most legitimate question Swamiji answered ringingly Yes ! Even here and now, while living. "It is a mistake to think that we are impure, that we are limited, that we are separate. The real man is the One Unit Existence.... Is it possible to realise this?....It is. There are men still living in this world for whom delusion has vanished for ever.'[64] Moreover, "if all mankind today realise only a bit of that great truth, the aspect of the whole world will be changed.'[65]


Paradoxical though his concern may seem, Swamiji deeply cared about the welfare of the world in its every aspect. His love was man-not only what some might call the "spiritual man" but man in his everyday working, struggling, often miserable existence. In his every form man was to Swamiji God, man as man was the spiritual man. That he should suffer even in dreams was an agony to Swamiji's heart. He did not point out in this lecture, as he had often done before and would do again to a startled nineteenthcentury audience, that the world as such and on the whole was never through the operation of its own laws going to become better or worse than it was; the sum total of relative good and the sum total of relative evil would ever be the same. He did not here discuss the eternal wavelike nature of the cosmos, with its inescapable crests and troughs; rather, he asserted that one could break these laws of relativity and be free. And then "religious realization does all the good to the world'[66]and this in a practical sense:


People never stop to think [he said] that those who least thought of their own individualities were the greatest workers in the world. Then alone a man loves, when he finds that the object of his love was not a clod of earth, but the veritable God. That wife will love the husband more when she thinks that the husband is God Himself.... That man loves his greatest enemy who knows that that very enemy is God Himself. That man loves a holy man  who knows that the holy man is God Himself, and that very man loves the unholiest of men because he knows that the background of the unholiest of men is even He, the Lord; and that man becomes a world-mover for whom the little self is dead and God stands in its place. The whole universe will become transfigured, as it were. That which is painful and miserable will all vanish, struggles have all departed and gone.... Gods will live upon this earth. This very earth will be heaven, and what evil can there be when gods are playing with gods, when gods are working with gods, gods are loving gods ?[67]


Did, then, Swamiji envision a time when large numbers of the human race would have realized their own divinity-their own spiritual essence? It would seem that he did, but not overnight; he was practical from start to finish. Again and again throughout his mission he declared that monistic understanding, let alone realization, was not immediately available to all, but that an initial handful would be enough to change the world. He said now:


If one-millionth part of the men and women who live in this world simply sit down and for five minutes say, "You are all God, O ye men and O ye animals, and living beings, ye are the manifestations of the one living Deity!" the whole world will be changed in half an hour.[68]


Who knew from where-from what city or village, from what section of society, from what cultural background, from what religion-the individuals composing that millionth part of mankind would arise? Reading this lecture and many others that Swamiji delivered in the West, one finds it difficult to think that he did not want the highest of Vedantic philosophy to be taught without qualification to everyone, high and low. Who could know where that seed of pure truth would sprout and flourish? As prodigal as nature itself, he expended vast amounts of energy so that even one life might emerge and be lifted into freedom. He did not calculate: though acknowledging the value (indeed the necessity) of lesser truth, he himself never taught as conclusive anything less than what he knew to be the highest. He threw it all broadcast.


My whole life has been changed by the touch of one of these Divine men, about whom I am going to speak to you next Sunday [he said at the close of this climactic lecture], and the time is coming when these thoughts will be cast abroad over the world. Instead of living in monasteries, instead of being confined to books of philosophy to be studied only by the learned, the time has come when they will be sown broadcast over the whole world, so that they may become the common property of the saint and the sinner, of men, women, and children, of the learned and of the ignorant. It will permeate the atmosphere of the world, and the very air that we breathe will tell with every pulsation, "Thou art That." And the whole universe of myriads of suns and moons, through everything that speaks, with one voice will say, "Thou art That.'[69]


If this knowledge, this jnana, was mankind's hope-and Swamiji fully believed that it was-he could not temporize in expounding it nor hold back his power of giving it. How much spiritual force did not flow through his body! And though that body was a perfect conduit, even that superbly tuned instrument was shaken. This lecture, which marked the peak of his American mission, seemed also to mark a peak of physical exhaustion. The following day (February 17) he wrote to Alasinga, "Just as I am now writing to you, every one of my bones is paining after yesterday afternoon's long Sunday public lecture. I have succeeded now in rousing the very heart of the American civilization-New York. But it has been a terrific struggle.... Now things are in such shape that they will go on.'[70]

4

Flooded over by that torrent of power, surely none who attended Swamiji's New York lectures and classes could have remained unchanged; a new element entered the lives of those who came in contact with him, and because he never spoke to the intellect alone, but, literally, to the very soul of his listeners, his thought had entered their lives for all time, there to grow and to become at length the force that would determine their destinies. It was bound to be so. Swamiji's own words, spoken in a bhakti yoga class, explain the phenomenon of guru-shakti -and surely, whether or not he gave formal initiation, he was guru to all who sat at his feet. "If a heater is hot," he said, "it can convey heat vibrations.... Even so is the case with the mental vibrations of the religious teacher which he conveys to the mind of the taught. It is a question of transference, and not of stimulating only our intellectual faculties. Some power, real and tangible, goes out from the teacher and begins to grow in the mind of the taught.'[71]

To some of his New York students Swamiji gave formal diksha initiation (the first initiation into spiritual life); to those who wanted it, he gave brahmacharya, and to those who wanted it badly enough, he gave sannyasa. Of this last group there was just one in 1896. On Thursday, February 13, Swamiji gave the vows of sannyasa to a Dr. Street, naming him Swami Yogananda. The ceremony took place, Kripananda wrote in the Brahmarvadin of March 28, 1896, "in the presence of the other Sannyasins [evidently Abhayananda had come from Brooklyn] and a number of Brahmacharins." Who these brahmacharins were we do not know. One remembers, however, that Swamiji had given the first monastic vows to five disciples at Thousand Island Park, and very probably had made other brahmacharins since his return from England. 


Of Dr. Street, the third sannyasin Swamiji made in America, he wrote to Sturdy on February 13, "Today another Sannyasin has been added to the list. This time it is a man who is agenuine American and a religious teacher of some standing in the country. He was Dr. Street. He is now Yogananda, as his leaning is all towards Yoga.'[72]Swami Yogananda had, in fact, developed certain psychic powers before he had met Swamiji, as one learns from Swami Abhedananda, who met Yogananda in New York in 1898. Swami Abhedananda wrote in his Diary:


On March 3 [1898] Swami Yogananda . . . called on me and spent the morning talking on psychic experiences he had acquired by crystal gazing. He could foretell events by looking intently on a ball of white crystal placing it on a small table in front. This is called Tratak yoga in India. He had practised this branch of Hatha Yoga for many years before he met Swami Vivekananda and attended his classes on Raja Yoga in New York city. Swami Vivekananda was pleased to know him and admired his psychic powers.... He was a student of Egyptian mysticism and wrote a book on that subject. He was a clairvoyant, that is, with the help of his crystal he gained the psychic vision of things or events happening at a long distance. I was told that on the eve of the Spanish American War in 1898 Dr. Street was sitting in his room with a group of young American ladies and gentlemen who were gazing at the crystal ball with him. He suddenly declared that the American Battleship called "Maine" was blown up by the Spaniards in the port of Santiago in the Island of Cuba and that this disaster would bring on the war between U.S.A. and Spain. His vision and statement were correct in every way and the war was declared against Spain by U.S. Government.... The Swami was honest, simple, amiable and a great mystic. The one peculiar thing I noticed in his talk [was] that he pronounced Vandanta for Vedanta.'[73]


But however he may have pronounced it, Yogananda had been struck by the vastness of Vedanta, in the infinity of which a man could find his own meaning. He expressed his views on the subject in a short article, more rhapsodic than philosophical, that appeared in the Brahmavadin of September 12, 1896. The only other bit of information that the present writer knows about this first Yankee sannyasin is that by June of 1896 he had started a class in Brooklyn and was in close touch with the New York Vedanta Society.


From Swami Kripananda's letters to the Brahmavadin we learn that on the Thursday following the initiation of Yogananda, Swamiji made several young men and women his disciples; giving them a mantra. These two ceremonies, held on February 13 and 20, are the only ones of which we have definite knowledge, and it was perhaps during one of them that Swamiji gave the vows of brahmacharya to at least three people-Miss Waldo, Mr. Goodwin, and young Mr. Van Haagen. Of one such ceremony Mrs. Bull wrote several months later to Kripananda, who had been mistakenly addressing her as "Yati Mata," dividing the monastic name Yatimata into two words and wrongly supposing it to mean "Mother of Monks." Correcting him in at least one respect, Mrs. Bull related some of the facts: "The designation of Yati Mata was given to Miss Waldo and none other so far as know-certainly not myself*(5) I have taken no vows, but I spoke my aspirations ; in the presence of those who had, asked their help and the ' blessing of Vivekananda whom. I reverence for the knowledge he brought me of his Master and for his own brave life towards purity and perfection.'[74]

*(5) The name Haridasi, which Swamiji had earlier given to Miss Waldo, was evidently not her monas- tic name. In 1897 she was known to Swami Abhed- ananda as Brahmacharini Yatimata (see Swami Abhedananda, Complete Works, 10: 7, 13). In later years, the members of the New York Vedanta Society knew her not only as Miss Waldo but as Sister Yatimata. (See Sister Shivani, Swami Abbedananda in America, p.231)

(In considering Swamiji's methods of work, it is of interest to note that he gave monastic vows to both men and women r in spite of the fact that there was not a semblance in the Western world of Vedantic monasteries or convents. His American monastic disciples were, so to speak, fledglings ' without a nest; they did not have the convenience, protection, support and discipline of a monastic institution of any kind whatsoever; they had to stand on their own strength alone. It is not impossible to think that Swamiji saw an advantage in this, a test of true renunciation and a schooling in detachment and courage. As he had said in his classes: "Live in the midst of the battle of life. Anyone can keep calm in a cave or when asleep. Stand in the whirl and madness of action and reach the Centre. If you have found the Centre, you cannot be moved.'[75] And again, "To be in the world, but not of it, is the true test of the Sannyasin.'[76]This is not to say, of course, that Swamiji did not also recognize the desirability of Vedanta monasteries and convents in the West, as well as in the East; undoubtedly he did, but that is a subject beyond the scope of this book.).


Since the middle of December, 1895, Mrs. Bull had been wanting to come to New York, but time and again she had been compelled by domestic duties to change her plans: "Why are you not here?" Kripananda had finally cried out in despair on receiving news in mid January of yet one more cancellation of a proposed visit. "How I longed, and am longing to see your face again, to come under the influence of that angelic personality which emanates peace and happiness for all alike, the good and the bad, without asking for any reward or thanks!'[77]


This cry arose from weeks of increasing misery on Kripananda's part. Nothing had been going well for him. The trouble, ostensibly at least, was the hard-working, ebullient Miss Waldo, who, he wrote, "is ruling supreme." "From the early morning till late at night every corner is full with her. She belongs to those beings as the ghost in Arabian Nights, that once let out of the bottle he fills the whole universe, and nothing else can exist near him. She wants him Swamiji absolutely for herself alone.... I go her out of the way.... She is a very good woman, but what may be an advantage in her, that profusion of devotion for the Swami, repulses me from her, more and more.'[79]


And then there was the "shorthand man." The unexpected presence of the young and capable Goodwin, who was rapidly growing ever closer and dearer to Swamiji and becoming indispensable to the work, must have been a source of even more bitter heartbreak, too painful for utterance.


Kripananda's morose, and, it would seem, very apparent hostility toward those who were close to Swamiji and taking hold of the work could not but have created unpleasantness. His relationship even with Swamiji himself became for a time, as he told Mrs. Bull, "a very cold one." Yet Swamiji never wavered in his love for his disciple, and we see him one January day, when matters had perhaps reached a crisis, stopping his work to climb the stairs to the small attic room in which Kripananda had isolated himself.

The Swami came up to my room (Kripananda wrote to Mrs. Bull] and poured out his inmost heart before me, his old love for me found again beautiful expression and I could not help yielding to the tenderness he showed me.[79]


And for the time being, at. least, Kripananda saw all things in a different light.


The same day (he continued] peace was made between us and Abhayananda. I went, on the Swami's instigation, to see her and the result was that all the trivial quarrels of the past are burried [sic] and we are, what we always should be, brother Sanyasins. She will call again on the Swami who, in spite of what had occurred, is and was always ready to forget and forgive.[80]


We do not know at present what had occurred between Abhayananda and Swamiji that required his forgiveness, but whatever it had been, his forgiveness was, indeed, a foregone conclusion; his grace was inexhaustible. Kripananda's particular misery, however, seems to have been impervious to God Himself; it had a will and a resilience of its own. The following week he wrote to Mrs. Bull:


You are indeed the only one who kindly thinks of me. I live here as in a desert, perfectly alone. No one to pour out my heart.... She [Miss Waldo] has driven me away from the friend and the teacher. I withdraw in my little chamber, and only see the Swami when I come down to the lecture. My mental agonies I cannot describe. It is only to you that I entrust the secret of my heart. Everything will pass.[81]


And then at last Mrs. Bull came. The exact date on which she arrived in New York is not known, but that it was after the sixth of February is certain, for on that date Swamiji had written to her, making no mention of her impending visit. Once in New York, it is probable that she remained for more than two weeks, or at least until Swamiji's last lecture at Madison Square Garden on February 23. Little is known directly of her visit, but it is clear from subsequent events that during it, and perhaps because of it, she began to take a more active and leading part in the American Vedanta movement than she had before.


A vitally important aspect of that work was the publication of Swamiji's lectures and classes, through which his teachings would remain living and available to future generations. As has been seen earlier, he had been at work on preparing Raja Yoga as early as December and in January was planning to publish three other books-Bhakti-Yoga, which would first come out in Madras; karma-Yoga; and, Jnana- Yoga, which last, as he originally conceived it, was no doubt to consist of his advanced class talks on the subject. In February, Karma-Yoga was ready for the printer, and the manuscript of Raja-Yoga was nearing completion. So far, the Vedanta Society had published only pamphlets, the officers having raised among themselves the money for Mr. Goodwin's small salary and the cost of printing. The Executive Committee had handled all the necessary business contingent upon bringing out the pamphlets, but this early publishing venture seems to have been a more or less informal affair as far as financial and legal matters were concerned. No definite organization had as yet been set up to undertake so large a project as the publication of Swamiji's books-a project that would require not only more capital than the publication of pamphlets, but a sustained and responsible management. As far as can be gathered, there was no one in New York at that time able to take full charge of the matter. Those who had the ability did not have the freedom; while those with freedom lacked ability. "My great want here is a strong man like you, possessing intellect, and ability, and love," Swamiji had written to Mr. Sturdy on January 16, longing even then, as he was so often to long thereafter, for workers equal to his vision. "In this nation of universal education," he continued, "all seem to melt down into a mediocrity, and the few able are weighted down by the eternal moneymaking.'[82] The formation of the Executive Committee in New York had been Swamiji's solution to the lack of a single strong; steady, and financially independent worker. Yet even a committee needs both an able leader and money if its work is to prosper and survive. In February, the imminent publication of Swamiji's books, together with his equally imminent departure from New York-and, in a month or two, from America called for both financial and managerial help.


Mrs. Bull's visit to New York could not have been better timed-a fact that upheld the somewhat fatalistic view she herself held toward her comings and goings. "There is always one best place for us," she once wrote to Swamiji, "and I have learned not to ask or to choose.'[83] .One of the most important results of her visit was that all the publishing activities of the Executive Committee were now turned over to a new committee, which became known as the "Publication Committee of the Vedanta Society." Mrs. Bull was, in Swamiji's words, "the principal backer" (together with Mr. Leggett) of this new committee; she was also, so to speak, its chairwoman. The Committee was a businesslike affair. In return for advancing (not donating) the money for Mr. Goodwin's stenographical services, as well as for the printing and handling of books and pamphlets, the members were to own, legally and in proportion to their financial interest, whatever they published. The copyright certificates, though in Swamiji's name, were placed in Mrs. Bull's keeping, and, as befitted her position, she was given power of attorney to conduct the Committee's business. This we learn from a letter Mr. Walter Goodyear addressed to her shortly after her return to Cambridge, in which he wrote, "Power of Attorney and first two copyrights to follow later.'[84](These first two copyrights must have been for the two pamphlets published in January: "The Ideal of a Universal Religion" and "The Cosmos.") Some six weeks later Mr. Goodyear sent to Mrs. Bull by registered mail "the copyright certificates for [the book] Karma Yoga, [and the pamphlets] Real & Apparent Man and Atman.'[85]. The copyright for the pamphlet "Bhakti Yoga"-the public lecture Swamiji had delivered in New York on February g-was not mentioned in the available correspondence between Mr. Goodyear and Mrs. Bull; this pamphlet was, however, included among the first publications of the Vedanta Society, which comprised, in all, five pamphlets and one book.


Although Mrs. Bull was not one to be the principal backer of a venture over which she could have no control, it is certain that Swamiji did not place her in charge of the publication of his pamphlets and books for that reason. Her money would have meant nothing to him, nor, for that matter, would her other more worldly qualifications, such as her wide and diverse contacts, her managerial experience and ability, her broad education, and her general business acumen. Essential as all these attributes may have been to the success of a publication venture, they would have been of small value in Swamiji's eyes-even of negative value-had not Mrs. Bull also possessed an unwavering goodness of heart. Indeed, her practicality and common sense seem often to have been overlaid and suffused by a misty idealism that befogged rather than illumined the matters at hand. Inconvenient though this quality was to prove in times of crisis, Swamiji suffered it; it was more than made up for by the nobility, generosity, and loyalty of her character that would lead him to call her Dhira Mata-"Steady Mother." "You [alone] may do anything you please with my affairs," he had written to her in April of 1895. "I will not even murmur.'[86]


From time to time, however, Swamiji did murmur. Although Mrs. Bull appreciated him, she did not yet (in the early part of 1896) fully understand his methods of work, nor did she yet grasp the magnitude of Swamiji himself: Not yet did she call him "the Prophet"; she was still capable of a slightly patronizing air, such as an older woman might take toward a young protege whose genius was unquestioned but still immature. She could write in June of 1895 to her friend Mohini Chatterji, who had first introduced her to Vedanta: "The past six months [actually it had been longer] I have known the Swami Vivekananda and been much impressed by the life of Ram Krishna, his Master. Vivekananda has done much towards helping agnostics and atheists the latter among our working people as well as scholars. I find him sincere and able and hope that his experience here will help to give him poise and judgement that shall tend towards his benefit as a worker when he returns to India.'[87]


Possibly it was not until Mrs. Bull knew Swamiji in India that her appreciation of this glowing young Hindu who called her "Mother" would turn to deep reverence. Meanwhile, she seems to have persisted in offering him unapt advice. "I will die a thousand deaths," he had thundered in February of 1895 after an argument with her, "rather than lead a jelly-fish existence of yielding to every requirement of this foolish world. "[88] Yet, certain that he was ruining his chances, she could not remain silent forever. In a letter written to her by Kripananda on April 16, 1896, long after her return to Cambridge, we catch faint echoes of what seems to have been another royal storm. "Both you and the Swami owe it [to me]," Kripananda wrote, "that, instead of being enemies, you separated as good friends: at the time when the Swami felt most irritated against you, [I received all the blows which in his anger were directed at you.'[89]


It is not likely that Swami and- Mrs. Bull would have parted enemies. Though they had their differences of opinion, though Swamiji may often have overthrown her plans for him, though he may often have stormed against "keeping society in good humor,'[90]She was always to him (even before he called her so) "Dhira Mata," and convinced that she was one of those who were destined to help his work, he entrusted her with a large part of it.


The first evidence that the new Publication Committee was in operation appeared on Sunday, February 23, when Swamiji's first book, Karma-yoga, was presented to the public. In telling of his last lecture, which he delivered on this day, Sister Devamata wrote in her "Memories" :


It was on this [final] Sunday that the Swami's first volume appeared. F or some time the lectures of one Sunday had been for sale on the book table the next Sunday in pamphlet form. Now a whole collection of lectures on Karma-Yoga was brought out in a large, thin, closely-printed volume-very different from the edition published later. It was not very beautiful, but the workers were extremely proud of it.[91]


On the title page of this first edition of Karma-.Yoga was printed in small capitals: PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE VEDANTA SOCIETY. The Vedanta Society had now taken on, officially and legally, the role of publisher. And things had changed: the pamphlet "The Real and the Apparent Man," which came out on the same day, presented a photograph of Swamiji on its cover; the type faces on the cover and title page were better chosen than-or, at least, different from-those of the earlier pamphlets, and their arrangement was more arresting. Even more significant than these changes in format was the addition of a line on the cover and title page which read: "Under the Auspices of the Vedanta Society." From this last we can, I think, infer that it was during the week Karma-Yoga went to press that the Publication Committee was set up to handle it and to take into its care the publication of Swamiji's pamphlets and future books composed of his New York lectures and classes. As far as can be determined, Miss Waldo was officially placed in charge of the editorial work,*(6) Mr. Goodwin of the printing, and Mr. and Mrs. Walter Goodyear of the distribution and accounting.

*(6) For, information about the editing of Swamiji's New York lectures and classes see notes for chapter six, page 463.

As though suddenly conscious of itself as an entity of importance, charged with keeping Swamiji's message alive in his absence, the Vedanta Society began during this momentous third week of February to use its name elsewhere as well. We find, for instance, that the newspaper announcements of Swamiji's final lecture, which appeared on February 22, read:


SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

Final Lecture under the auspices of 
THE VEDANTA SOCIETY
Feb. 23, 1896, at 3:30 P.M. at Madison Square 
Concert Hall, Madison ave. and 26th st. Subject 
"My Master: His Life and Teachings." Admission 
free. Collection.

Heretofore, the Vedanta Society had operated more or less in the background, attending in what seems to have been an informal way to the printing of pamphlets, the hiring of halls, and the making of plans and resolutions. But though it had been active and helpful, it had been almost invisible in the radiance of its leader. Indeed, to some who had attended lectures and classes but who had taken no part in the work that had gone on behind the scenes, it appeared that the Society came into being only as Swamiji left New York much as stars seem to come into being only as the sun leaves the sky. Sister Devamata, for instance, became aware of the existence of a Vedanta Society only toward the end of Swamiji's stay. Even then she thought little of it. Recalling those early days, she wrote: "In the closing days of Swami Vivekananda's American sojourn, his most devoted followers had banded themselves into a so-called Society, but it was a loosely-woven organization, without headquarters or definite channels of activity. The members met occasionally and listened to each other lecture, the lecture being rebuilt notes of Swami Vivekananda's teachings; but little was accomplished towards giving the group permanent form.'[92]


It is true that after Swamiji's departure the Vedanta Society remained for some time "a loosely-woven organization." But loosely woven or not, its function was now to carry on his work. The sudden emergence of the Society as a purposeful entity, together with the simultaneous organization of the Publication Committee, throws a little light on a sentence in Kripananda's letter of March 22, 1896, to the Brahmavadin, in which he wrote, covering the news from February 19, "There has been organized in New York a 'Vedanta Society' for the study and propagation of the Vedanta literature.'[93]He may have had in mind the new Publication Committee as well as the new function the Vedanta Society had assumed-a function which might well enough be called "the study and propagation of the Vedanta literature." That Kripananda enclosed the words Vedanta Society in quotation marks was perhaps his way of divesting the group of reality, just as Devamata's "so-called" was perhaps hers. But whatever else the Society may or may not have been, ii was real and had been so for a long time.[94]

5

Swamiji gave his last Sunday lecture at Madison Square Garden on February 23. According to the lunar calendar, by which Indian anniversaries are generally reckoned, this day was more or less Sri Ramakrishna's birthday,*(7) and, as though in celebration, Swamiji had chosen to speak on his Master.

*(7) The exact date of Sri Ramakrishna's birth was not determined until later as having been February -z8, 1836. In Swamiji's day, the consensus was that the day was February 2o, and the choice of year ranged from 1833 to 1835. In the first published edition of "My Master," Swamiji is quoted as having given Sri Ramakrishna's birth date as February 20, 1835.

The subject, "My Master-His Life and Teachings," was also particularly fitting for the close of this New York season. The previous Sunday he had reached the summit of his exposition of Vedanta philosophy in "The Real and the Apparent Man." The truth of what he had uttered could be verified only in the depths of Self Knowledge, or, short of that, in the life of one who fully embodied and exemplified it. Perhaps an even more cogent reason why Swamiji chose this subject to close the season during which he had fully formulated his mission in all its aspects was to state categorically the fundamental purpose of Sri Ramakrishna's advent and, by extension, of his own. During the course of this lecture, he expanded the theme he had touched upon at the close of his previous lecture -that of world-transformation through spirituality, renunciation, self sacrifice, and the total clarity of same-sightedness. This was, indeed, the primary theme of "My Master"; it weaves through the original lecture like a fiery thread and, at the end, bursts into flame. Although this magnificent closing passage-a clarion call to renunciation, combined with a scorching indictment of Western hedonism-was the grand resolution and full statement of the lecture's dominant theme , it is not to be found in the version of "My Master" as published in the Complete Works.


As is fairly well known, "My Master" as we read it today (and as it has always been presented to the public) is woven of Swamiji's New York lecture and another on Sri Ramakrishna that he delivered in England in the fall of 1896. It would appear that because of his forthright denunciation of Western materialism during the course of the New York lecture, Swamiji had banned its publication. "I did not allow it to be published," he is quoted as having said a year or so later, "as I had done injustice to my Master. My Master never condemned anything or anybody. But while I was speaking of him I criticized the people of America for their dollar-worshipping spirit. That day I learnt the lesson that I am not yet fit to talk of him.'[95]To judge from the very fact that "My Master" as Swamiji had given it in New York was indeed never published, it would seem clear that it was this lecture to which he was here referring.


In the Life it is said that Swamiji "once spoke in Boston before a large audience gathered to hear him on 'My Master.' " "Full of the fire of renunciation that he was," the passage continues, "when he saw before him the audience composed, for the most part, of worldly-minded men and women . . . he launched out on a terrible denunciation of the vulgar, physical and materialistic ideas which underlay the whole of Western civilization. Hundreds of people left the hall abruptly, but in no way affected, he went on to the end.'[96]Unfortunately, my searches through the contemporary Boston newspapers of all the possible dates on which Swamiji could have given this Lecture (its date is not recorded in the Life) have failed to uncover any trace of it. It would seem possible, then, that in the early telling and retelling of this particular piece of history one city became confused with another and that the story actually pertains to Swamiji's New York lecture of February 23, 1896, rather than to a lecture in Boston. And yet one does not find in the relevant New York newspapers the outraged editorials mentioned in the Life; nor to judge from the memory of one who attended the lecture, does it appear that "hundreds of people left the hall abruptly." Recalling the occasion, Sister Devamata wrote:


[Madison Square Concert Hall] was full to the uttermost at that closing lecture-every seat, every foot of standing room was occupied.... As he entered the hall from a door at the side of the platform, one sensed a different mood in him. He seemed less confident, as if he approached his task reluctantly.... He began his lecture with a long preamble [a not unimportant historical background]; but once in his subject, it swept him. The force of it drove him from one end of the platform to the other. It overflowed in a swift-running stream of eloquence and feeling. The large audience listened in, awed stillness and at the close many left the hall without speaking. As for myself, I was transfixed. The transcendental picture drawn overwhelmed me. The call had come and I answered.[97]


Could this have been the same lecture that drove hundreds from the hall in indignation? We do not know; indeed, the whole matter seems open to further study.*(8)

*(8) There was at least some disapproval of Swamiji's New York lecture "My Master." In this connection. Betty Leggett wrote to Mrs. Bull on March 16, 1896, "I always feel the fine things [the Swami] accomplishes in new fields. The shallow criticisms I have .heard since the last lecture ["My Master"] make me feel that his noble & generous work here for two years has been largely to empty heads & emptier hearts" (SCB). It is probable that the following passage from a letter written by Mr. William J. Flagg to Mrs. Bull on June 19, 1896, refers also to Swamiji's "My Master" as delivered in New York: "He [Swamiji] promised he would write [out] beforehand his last Music Hall lecture on Sri Krishna Paramahansha, but was too busy to do so. The consequence was that it occupied an hour and a half in delivery, and gave much offense" (SCB). Mr. Flagg, an admirer of Swamiji's (see Prophetic, Mission-2,.chapter nine, section two), lived in New York and would almost certainly have attended at least some of his lectures at the Concert Hall in Madison Square Garden. True, he says Music Hall, and there was a well-known Music Hall in Boston. However, I think we can reasonably assume that Mr. Flagg's "Music Hall" was a slip; for the Boston Music Hall was just that-a music hall, where the Boston Symphony Orchestra regularly gave performances and top-notch artists such as Paderewski and Emma Thursby gave concerts. It would have been highly irregular for a lecture to have been delivered in the Music Hall. Moreover, if Mr. Flagg's comments refer to a Boston lecture on Sri Ramakrishna (not, surely, on Sri Krishna), then Swamiji would have had to deliver it in March of i896, and ,it the present writing 1 have found no evidence that he did so.

But however that may be, Swamiji was unquestionably remorseful over certain fiery passages in the New York "My Master." Moreover, this tribute to Sri Ramakrishna, magnificent though we know it was, may have seemed heartbreakingly inadequate to him. "I have understood him very little," he was later to say to an Indian disciple. "He appears to me to have been so great that whenever I have to speak anything of him, I am afraid lest I ignore or explain away the truth, lest my little power does not suffice, lest in trying to extol him I present his picture by painting him according to my lights and belittle him thereby!'[98]For such reasons Swamiji perhaps despaired over his New York lecture ! And never would we have known its true glory and import had not Swami Saradananda brought out an Indian edition of Miss Waldo's (or perhaps Sister Devamata's) composite version-an edition which, by some great good fortune, includes (as the "Waldo" version does not) what must have been one of its more flaming passages.


But, first, let us speak of this lecture as a whole. Only recently has the New York lecture been extracted from its entanglement with the England lecture (the latter of which was published in the Brahmavadin in 1897).[99]In addition, a comparison has been made between two early editions of the composite version, one first published by the New York Vedanta Society in 1901, and the other (Swami Saradananda's edition) published by the Udbodhan Office, Calcutta, in 1907. Passages not found in the New York edition are found in the Indian one, and vice versa, and between the two, a version of "My Master" which comes as close as possible to the lecture Swamiji gave n New York has been constructed.*(9)

*(9) For the disentanglement of Swamiji's lecture "My Master" as given in New York from the composite lecture in volurke four of the Complete Works., as well as for its reconstruction, we are indebted to Michael D. Smith and David T. Kalins, both of whom under- took this scholarly and painstaking work while living at the monastery of the Vedanta Society of Northern California.

The first six and a half pages of "My Master" as published n volume four of the Complete Works are from the New York lecture. Thenceforth, passages, both long and short, from the England lecture are liberally interspersed. Almost all those hat deal at some length with Indian customs as well as those hat discuss Sri Ramakrishna's practice of various religions and his conclusions regarding their underlying unity and identity of goal are from the England lecture. (In all, the Massages from the England lecture add up to approximately fifteen pages of the thirty-four-page "My Master" as published n the Complete Works.) Valuable in their own context though these passages are, they tend to obscure the thread of the New York lecture; its theme no longer stands out clearly and incisively; its edge is blunted. When the original "My Master" stands free, then its theme, the call to renunciation, sounds with clarion directness throughout.


The lecture opened with the well-known verse from the Bhagavad Gita, "Whenever virtue subsides and vice prevails, I come down to help mankind . . ." And then Swamiji went on. (The following passages are excerpts from the New York "My Master" as separated from the England lecture.)[100]


Whenever this world of ours, on account of growth, on account of added circumstances, requires a new adjustment, a wave of power comes; and as a man is acting on two planes, the spiritual and the material, waves of adjustment come on both planes.... Today, man requires one more adjustment on the spiritual plane; . . and the power is coming to drive away the clouds of gathering materialism. The power has been set in motion which, at no distant date, will bring unto mankind once more the memory of its real nature; and again the place from which this power will start will be Asia.[101]


I am going to put before you the life of a man who has been the mover of such a wave in India.[102]His studies showed him that the one goal in the religions of India was the realisation of [the] Mother and this idea took possession of the boy. His whole life, as it were, became concentrated on that. How should he find Mother? The prepossession grew, grew until he could speak nothing, hear nothing, except about that one thing, how to attain to Mother.[103]


At that time he had no teacher, nobody to tell him anything except that every one thought that he was out of his mind. This is the ordinary condition of things. If a man is not mad with desire for gold, the men of this world say that he is out of his mind! If one seeks not after lust and wealth and vanity, he is called mad. But such men are the salt of the earth. Out of such madness came the powers that have moved this world of ours in the past, and out of such madness alone will come the powers of the future, that are yet to move it. So days, months, and even years passed in a continuous struggle of the soul to arrive at Truth.[104]


[Later on, he became] free and developed, and the first impulse that came to him was to struggle to rid himself of the superstition of social distinctions, to be quit of the last trace of social vanity, to make himself the equal of the lowest.[105]


Then came to him the conviction that to be perfect, the sex idea must go, because soul has no sex, soul is neither male nor female. Sex exists only in the body and the man who desires to reach the spirit cannot at the same time identify himself with it.... His mind became changed, and he entirely forgot the idea of sex; and with it vanished all possibility of desire. His whole horizon was changed.... Think of the blessedness of that life from which all carnality had vanished. To him, every woman's face had become transfigured and to one who can look upon all women alike with the eyes of this love and reverence, shines out from behind women, the face of, the Divine Mother, the Blissful One, Protector of the human race. That is what we want. Do you mean to say that the divinity behind woman can ever be cheated? It never was and never will be. Unconsciously it asserts itself. Unfailingly it detects fraud, detects hypocrisy, unerringly it recognises the warmth of truth, the light of spirituality, the holiness of purity. Such purity is absolutely necessary in every country in the world.[106]


Such was the rigorous and unsullied purity that now came into the life of that man. All the struggles that we meet through our lives were past for him. His hard-earned jewels of spirituality, for which he had given three-quarters of his life, were now ready to be given to humanity. And now began his mission....


The one great principle of his life was "Go out not to seek! Let the lotus of your own heart bloom. All the rest will come of itself. First acquire spirituality. It will not take long to give it to the world.'[107]


...He had the same sympathy for all; he had found the secret of their harmony. A man ought to be intellectual, or devotional, or mystic, or active; each of the various religions represents one or the other of all these types. Yet it is possible to combine all the four in one man, and this is what humanity in the future is going to do. That was his idea. He condemned none but saw the good in all [108]


In the presence of my Master I found out that even in this body, man may be perfect. Those lips never cursed any one; never even criticised any one. Those eyes had pierced, as it were, beyond the possibility of seeing evil, that mind had lost the power of thinking evil. He saw nothing but good. Such infinite purity, such immense renunciation give us the one only secret of spirituality....


So all the great saints and prophets have expressed it, and so have they done. How can there be spirituality without renunciation? Renunciation is the background of all religious thought, wherever it be, and you will always find that in proportion as it diminishes, in proportion as the senses creep into the field of religion, so, in the same ratio, will spirituality die out. This man was the very embodiment of renunciation. . . . He was a triumphant example, a living realisation of the complete renunciation of lust and money. He was far beyond any idea of either; and such a man was necessary for this present age. Such renunciation is necessary in these days when men have begun to think that they cannot live a month without what they call their "necessities," which they are at the same time increasing in geometrical ratio. It was necessary that in a time like this, one man should arise to demonstrate to the sceptics of the world, that he cared not a straw for all the gold and all the wealth that was in the universe. There are still such men.[109]


And then, at the close, came Swamiji's call. It is given here in full, for only a small fraction of it is found in the Complete Works:


Such a man, then, was necessary; and such renunciation is what this age requires. Men and women of to-day! if there be among you any pure, fresh flower, let it be laid on the altar of God. If there are among you any who, being young, do not desire to return into the world, let them give up! let them renounce! This is the one secret of spirituality, renunciation. Think of every woman as your mother. Give up this wealth. What does it matter? Wherever you are, the Lord will protect you. The Lord takes care of His children. Dare to do this. Be brave enough to do it. Such great sacrifices are necessary. Can you not see the tide of death and materialism that is rolling over these Western lands? How long will you keep the bandage over your eyes? Can you not see the power of lust and unholiness, that is eating into the very vitals of society?


Believe me, you will not arrest these things by talk, or by movements of agitation for reform; but by renunciation, by standing up, in the midst of decay and death, as mountains of righteousness. Talk not, but let the power of renunciation emanate from every pore of your body. Let it strike those who are struggling day and night for gold, that even in the midst of such a state of things, there can be one to whom wealth counts for nothing. Nor let there be lust! Put away lust and wealth. Sacrifice yourselves.


But who is it that will do this? Not the worn-out or the old, bruised and battered by society, but the Earth's freshest and best, the strong, the young, the beautiful. Such are they who must be laid upon the altar, and by their sacrifice save the world. Lay down your lives. Make yourselves servants of humanity. Be living sermons. This, and not talk, is renunciation. Stand up and strike ! The very sight of you will fill the worldly mind, the wealth seeking mind, with terror. Words never do anything. Preaching has been all in vain. Every moment, prompted by the thirst for wealth, books are brought out. But they do no good, because the power behind their words is zero.


Stand you up, and realise God ! If you can renounce all wealth and all sex, it will not be necessary for you to speak. Your lotus will have blossomed, and the spirit will spread. Whoever approaches you will be warmed, as it were, by the fire of your spirituality.


This is the message of Sri Ramakrishna to the modern world. Care not for doctrines or for dogmas, for sects or for churches. All these count for but little, compared with that essence of existence, which is in each one, and called spirituality. The more this is developed in a man, the more powerful is he for good. He who has most of it can do most good to his fellow-men. First, then, acquire that.


... Only those who have seen it will understand this; but such spirituality can be given to others, even though they be unconscious of the gift. Only those who have attained to this power are amongst the great teachers of mankind. They are the powers of light.


Then be you this! The more of such men any country produces, the higher is that country raised. That land where no such men exist, is doomed. Nothing can save it. Therefore my Master's message to the world is, "Be ye all spiritual! Get ye first realisation!" And to the young and strong of every country he would cry that the time is come for r enunciation. Renounce for the sake of humanity ! You have talked of the love of man till the thing is in danger of becoming words alone. The time is come to act. The call now is, Do ! Leap into the breach and save the world .[110]


Here "My Master" ended,*(10) as did also Swamiji's second and last season in New York **(11)

*(10) The anticlimactic ten and a half lines at the close of "My Master" as published in the Complete Works (beginning: "for realization; and then you will see the harmony in all the religions of the world") do not occur in Swami Saradananda's edition or anywhere in the London lecture as published in the .Ri,ahmavadin. The lines may have been added by Miss Waldo or others in New York in an effort to tie the composite lecture together.
**(11) Sister Devainalta tells us that a day or two after Swamiji had given his lecture "My Master" "a supplementary meeting in a private house marked the close of the Swami's New York work" (.Prabuddha Pharata, April 1932, page 192). We can, 1 believe, assume -Lbis meeting to have been the last of the six class-lectures that Swamiji had held at Miss Corbin's house (see page 568.., This would indeed have been a "supplementary" meeting. Since Swamiji's public lectures and the classes he held at his own quarters constituted the main body of his New York work as it has come down to us, it can be said that the season closed with "My Master."

It is not possible to estimate the amount of energy Swamiji expended during this season, for one cannot judge his work by ordinary standards: Yet even by those standards, even in terms of physical and intellectual energy, his output was prodigious. At a conservative estimate, he held throughout this season (from December 9 through February 25) seventy classes (including those at Miss Corbin's) and delivered ten public lectures. And this in addition to interviews, initiations, extensive correspondence, the writing of articles, the translating of scriptures, the editing of lectures for publication, and the organizing of his work into some sort of shape that would contain and perpetuate his message. He had given of himself to the point of exhaustion during those three months-and there remained far more to do.


ⓘ
[1] Brahmavadin,march 14,1896,p162.
[2] swami kripananda to sara bull, jan 26, 1896.SCB
[3] swami kripananda to sara bull, feb4 ,1896.SCB
[4] see ref. I above
[5] new york times,11 march 1895.
[6] new york times, 16 jan 1899.
[7] complete works,5:104.
[8] Brahmavadin,feb 15,1896,p.147,(see life(1965),pp.342-43.)
[9] complete works, 2:235.
[11] complete works,2:231.
[12] complete works,2:231.
[13] complete works,2:231.
[14] complete works,2:233
[15] complete works,2: PP- 233-36 passim.
[16] complete works,2: pp. 236-37.
[17] complete works,2: p. 248.
[18] complete works,2: p. 248.
[19] complete works,2:pp. 247-48.
[20] complete works,2: p. 253.
[21] complete works, 7 : 499
[22] complete works,2 : 250-52 passim.
[23] complete works,2 : 140.
[24] complete works, 8 : 373. (In a copy of the original letter the word is “expunged” not “purged” as in C. W. 8 : 373.)
[25] complete works,5 : 70.
[26] Swami Ashokananda, “The Mind and Heart of Swami Vivekananda,” transcript, VSNC.
[27] Complete Works, 6 : 358-59.
[28] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, February 6, 1896, SCB.
[29] Complete Works, 6 : 356.
[30] Life (1965), P- 348.
[31] Complete Works, 5 : 72.
[32] Complete Works., 5:98. (This passage is taken from the original letter, RKM, Belur.)
[33] Complete Works., 8 : 364. (The wording of the passage is taken from a copy of the original letter, Advaita Ashrama.)
[34] Complete Works., 5 : 99-100.
[35] This undated poem written in Swamiji’s hand is preserved in the archives of the Vedanta Centre, Cohasset, Massachusetts, and is printed here with the kind permission of the Centre.
[36] Prabuddha Bharata, May 1932, p. 242.
[37] Prabuddha Bharata, May 1932, p. 242.
[38] Sarah E. Waldo to Josephine MacLeod, April 8,1912, Leg. Col.
[39] “Some Findings,” Vedanta and the West, November-December 1953, p. 167.
[40] Lloyd Morris, Incredible New York, p. 205.
[41] See ref. 39 above.
[42] Complete Works, 7 : 374.
[43] Complete Works, 7 : 374.
[44] Complete Works,5 : 101.
[45] I cannot at present find the source of this quotation, though I, and others too, remember well that Swamiji somewhere said these words, which constitute a free translation of the Gita, 10 : 41. It is hoped that later the reference will be found. Meanwhile, I beg the reader to bear with me.
[46] Complete Works, 5 : 101.
[47] Complete Works,., 3 : 185.
[48] Life (1965), P-413
[49] Nikola Tesla to Swami Vivekananda, February 8, 1896, SCB.
[50] Complete Works, 5 : 101.
[51] Complete Works,, 3 : 400.
[52] Complete Works,5 : 102, 103.
[53] Complete Works, 5 : 102-3.
[54] Quoted in John J. O’Neill, Prodigal Genius, p. 248.
[55] Quoted in John J. O’Neill, Prodigal Genius , pp. 251-52.
[56] Complete Works, 6 : 302.
[57] Swami Vivekananda to Emma Thursby, February 26, 1896, Thursby papers, New-York Historical Society.
[58] J. J.Goodwin to Sara Bull, March 1, 1896, SCB.
[59] Complete Works, 5 : 105.
[60] Complete Works 2 : 53.
[61] Complete Works2:273. (This passage is taken from the New York pamphlet.)
[62] Complete Works 2 : 274. (-do-)
[63].Complete Works2 : 273-79 passim. (These passages are taken largely from the New York pamphlet.)
[64] Complete Works2 : 280.
[65] Complete Works 2 : 286-87.
[66] Complete Works2 : 286.
[67] Complete Works2 : 286 . (The wording of this passage is from the New York pamphlet.)
[68] Complete Works 2:287.
[69] Complete Works2:288.
[70] Complete Works5:104. (The wording of this passage is taken from the original letter, RKM, Belur.)[71].Complete Works4:27.
[72] Complete Works 5:100.
[73] Swami Abhedananda, Complete Works, 10:25-26.
[74] Sara Bull to Swami Kripananda, late July, 1896, SCB.
[75] Complete Works, 6 : 84.
[76] Complete Works., 8 : 9.
[77] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, January 24 (?), 1896, SCB.
[78] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, January 24 (?), 1896, SCB.
[79] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, January 28,1896, SCB.
[80] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, January 28,1896, SCB.
[81] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, February 4 (?), 1896, SCB.
[82] Complete Works, 8: 370.
[83] Sara Bull to Swami Vivekananda, draft, January, 1896, SCB.
[84] Walter Goodyear to Sara Bull, February 19,1896, SCB.
[85] Walter Goodyear to Sara Bull., April 12,1896, SCB.
[86] Complete Works, 6:307.
[87] Sara Bull to Mohini Chatterji, June, 1895, SCB.
[88] Complete Works, 5 : 72.
[89] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, April 16,1896, SCB.
[90] Complete Works, 6 : 301.
[91] Sister Devamata, “Memories of India and Indians,” P.B., April1932, P-192.
[92] Sister Devamata, “Memories of India and Indians,” P.B.., November 1932, p. 552.
[93] Brahmauadin, April 25, 1896, p. 207.
[94] See this book, chapter one, section one and chapter five, section six.
[97] Devamata, op. cit, P.B., April 1932, p. 192.
[98] Complete Works, 5 : 390.
[99] Brahmavadin, September 15, 1897, pp. 22-29; October 1, 1897, pp. 63-71.
[100] The excerpts from “My Master” on pages 533-538 are taken from David Kalins’s unpublished critical edition, in which the early New York and Udbodhan editions of the composite lecture are compared. The following references are to the parallel passages in the Complete Works.
[101] Complete Works, 4 : 154.
[102] Complete Works, 4, p. 156.
[103] Complete Works, 4, p. 167.
[104] Complete Works, 4, p. 171.
[105] Complete Works, 4, p. 175, Udbodhan editions only.
[106] Complete Works, 4,p. 176.
[107] Complete Works, 4,p. 177.
[108] Complete Works, 4, p. 178.
[109] Complete Works, 4,p. 183-84.
[110] except for parts of its last two paragraphs,this passage appears in the  udbodhan edition only.if it were published in the complete works,it would come on page 187 of volume four after paragraph one,substituting for the remainder of the page.

↑ Contents

APPENDIX A


(Unpublished and Unedited Transcript made by J. J. Goodwin) 
BHAKTI YOGA, Monday A.M., Jan. 20th, 1896.

We finished in our last about Pratikas. One idea more of the preparatory Bhakti, and then we will go on to the Para, the supreme. This idea is what is called Nishta, devotion to one idea. We know that all these ideas of worship are right, and all good, and we have seen that the worship of God, and God alone, is Bhakti; the worship of any other being will not be Bhakti, but God can be worshipped in various forms, and through various ideas, and we have seen that all these ideas are right and good, but the difficulty is here: If we just stop with his last conclusion, we find that in the end we have frittered away our energies, and done nothing. It is a great tendency among liberal people to become jack-of all-trades, and master of none, to nibble a little here and there, and in the long run and they have nothing. In this country it many times grows into a sort of disease, to hear various things and do nothing. there is the advice of one of our old Bhaktas-"Take the honey com all flowers, mix with all with respect, say yea, yea, to all, out give not up your seat". This giving not up your own seat is what is called Nishta. It is not that one should hate, or even criticises the ideals of other people; he knows they are all light; but, at the same time, he must stick to his own ideal every strictly. There is a story of Hanuman, who was a great worshipper of Rama; just as the Christians worship Christ as he incarnation of God, so the Hindus worship many incarnations of God; according to them, God came nine times in India, and will come once more. When he came as Rama this Hanuman was His great worshipper. Hanuman lived very long, and was a great Yogi, and during his lifetime Rama came again as Krishna, and he, being a great Yogi, knew that the same God had come back again as Krishna. He came and served Krishna, but he said to Him, "I want to see that Rama form of yours". Krishna said." Is not this form enough? I am this Krishna; I am this Rama; all these forms are mine". Hanuman said, "I know that, but the Rama form is for me. The Lord of Janaki and the Lord of Sri are the same; they are both the incarnations of the Supreme Self; yet the Lotus-eyed Rama is my all in all". This is Nishta; knowing that all these different forms of worship are right, yet sticking to one, and rejecting the others. We must not worship the others at all. We must not hate or criticise them, but respect them. The elephant has two teeth coming out from his mouth. These are only for show; he cannot eat with them; but the teeth that are inside are those with which' he chews his food. So mix with all states, say yea, yea to all, but join none. Stick to your own ideal of worship. When you worship, worship that ideal of God which is your own Ishtam, your own chosen. If you do not you will have nothing. Nothing will grow. When a plant is growing it is necessary that it should be hedged round lest any animal eat it up. When it has become strong and a huge gigantic tree, do not care for any hedges, it is perfect in itself. So when just the seed of spirituality is growing, to fritter away the energies on all sorts of religious ideas, a little of this, and a little of that, a little of Christianity, a little of Buddhism, and reality of nothing, destroys the soul. This has its good side, and in the end we will come to it. Only do not put the cart before the horse. In the first place we are bound to become sectarians, but this should be the ideal of sectarianism, not to avoid anyone. Each of us must have a sect, and that sect is our own Ishtam, our own chosen way, but that should not make us want to kill other people; only to hold to our own way. It is sacred, and it should not be told to our own brothers, because my choice is sacred, and his is sacred. So keep that choice as your own. That should be the worship of everyone. When you pray to your own ideal, your own Ishtam, that is the only God you shall have. God exists in various phases no doubt, but for the time being, your own Ishtam is the only phase for you. Then, after a long course of training in this Ishtam, when this plant of spirituality has grown, and the soul has become strong and you begin to realise that your Ishtam is everywhere,[then] naturally all these bondages will fall down. When the fruit becomes ripe it falls of its own weight. If you pluck an unripe fruit it is bitter, sour. So we will have to grow in this thought. Simply hearing lectures, and all this nonsense, making the battle of Waterloo in the brain, simply unadjusted (undigested?) ideas, is no good. Devotion to one idea; those that have this will become spiritual, will see the light. You see everyone complaining-"I try this", and "I try that", and if you cross question them as to what they try, they will say they have heard a few lectures in one place and another, a handful of talk in one corner and another, and for three hours, or a few days, they worshipped and thought they had done enough. Chat is the way of fools, not the way to perfection, not the way o attain spirituality. Take up one idea, your Ishtam, and let the whole soul be devoted to it. Practise this from day to day until you see the result, until the soul grows, and if it is sincere and good, that very idea will spread till it covers the whole universe. Let it spread by itself; it will all come from the inside out. Then you will say that your Ishtam is everywhere, and that He is in everything. Of course, at the same time, we must always remember that we must recognise the Ishtams of others and respect them, the other ideas of God; or else worship will degenerate into fanaticism. There is an old story of a man who was a worshipper of Shiva. There are sects in our country who worship God as Shiva, and others who worship Him as Vishnu. This man was a great worshipper of Shiva, and to that he added a tremendous hatred for all worshippers of Vishnu, and would not hear the name of Vishnu pronounced. There are a great number of worshippers of Vishnu in India, and he could not avoid hearing the name. So he bored two holes in his ears, and tied two little bells on to them, and whenever a man mentioned the name of Vishnu, he moved his head, and rang the bells and that prevented his hearing the noise.

But Shiva told him in a dream, "What a fool you are! I am Vishnu, and I am Shiva; they are not different, only in name; there are not two Gods". But this man said, "I don't care I will have nothing to do with this Vishnu business".

He had a little statue of Shiva, and made it very nice, built an altar for it. One day he bought some beautiful incense and went home to light some of the incense for his God. While the fumes of his incense were rising in the air he found that the image was divided into two : one half remained Shiva, and the other half was Vishnu. Then the man jumped up and put his finger under the nostril of Vishnu so that not a particle of the smell could get there.

Then Shiva became disgusted, and the man became a demon. He is the father of all fanatics, the "bell-eared" demon. He is respected by the boys of India, and they worship him. It is a very peculiar kind of worship. They make a clay image, and worship him with all sorts of horrible smelling flowers. There are some flowers in the forests in India which have a most pestilential smell. They worship him with these, and then take big sticks and beat the image. He is the father of all fanatics, who hate all other gods except their own.

This is the only danger in this Nishta Bhakti, becoming this fanatical demon. The world gets full of them. It is very easy to hate; the generality of mankind get so weak that in order to love one they must hate another; they must take the energy out of one point in order to put it into another. A man loves one woman, and then loves another, and to love the other, he has to hate the first. So with women. This characteristic is in every part of our nature, and so in our religion. The ordinary, undeveloped weak brain of mankind cannot love one without hating another. This very [characteristic] becomes fanaticism in religion. Loving their own ideal is synonymous with hating every other idea. This should be avoided, and at the same time the other danger should be avoided. We must not fritter away all our energies. Religion becomes a nothing with us; just hearing lectures. These are the two dangers. The danger with the liberals is that they are too expansive and have no intensity. You see that in these days religion has become very expansive, very broad, but the ideas are so broad that there is no depth in them. Religion has become to many merely a means of doing a little charity work just to amuse them after a hard day's labor; they get five minutes religion to amuse them. This is the danger with the liberal thought, and on the other hand the sectarians have the depth, the intensity, but that intensity is so narrow. They are very deep, but with no breadth to it, and not only that, but it draws out hatred to everyone else. Now, if we can avoid both these dangers and become as broad as the uttermost liberals, and as deep as the bluest fanatic, then we will solve the problem. Our idea is how that can be done. By this theory of Nishta, knowing that all these ideals that we see are [good] and true, that all these are so many parts of the same God, and at the same time thinking that we are not strong enough to worship Him in all these forms, and therefore must stick to one ideal and make that ideal our life. When you have succeeded in doing that all the rest will come.

Here ends the first part of Bhakti, the formal, the ceremonial, the preparatory, and you must remember that the first lesson in this Bhakti was on the disciple. Who is the disciple? What are the necessary qualifications for a disciple ? You read in the Scriptures-"Where the speaker is wonderful, so is the listener, when the teacher is wonderful, so is the taught; then alone will this spirituality come". Mankind generally thinks that everything is to be expected from the teacher; very few people understand that they are not fit to be taught. In the disciple first this is necessary, that he must want; he must really want spirituality. We want everything but spirituality. What is meant by want? Just as we want food; luxuries are not wants, but necessaries are wants. Religion is a necessary thing to very few, and to the vast mass of mankind it is a luxury. There are a hundred things in life without which they can live, until they come to the shop and see a new and artistic something, and they want to buy it. Ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent of mankind come to religion in this way; it is one of the many luxuries they have in life. There is no harm in this; let them have all they want; [but] they are entirely mistaken if they think they can fool with God; He cannot be fooled with; they will only fool themselves, and sink down lower and lower until they become like brutes. Those therefore will become spiritual who want, who feel the necessity of religion, just as they feel the necessity of clothes, the necessity of work, the necessity of air to breathe. A necessary thing is that without which we cannot live, and a luxury is that which is simply gratification of a momentary desire. The second qualification in the disciple is that he must be pure, and the other was that he must be persevering; he must work. Hearing is only one part, and the other part is doing.

The second necessity in Bhakti was the teacher. The teacher must be properly qualified, and the main idea in that lecture was that the teacher must have the seed of spirituality. The teacher is not a talker, but the transmitter of spiritual force, which he has received from his teacher and he from others, and so on, in unbroken current. He must be able to transmit that spiritual current. So when the teacher and the taught are both ready, then the first step in Bhakti Yoga comes. The first part of Bhakti Yoga is what is called the Preparatory, where you work through forms.

The next lecture was on the name; how in all Scriptures, and in all religions, name has been exalted, and how that name does us good, and for the Bhakti Yogi, he must always think that the name itself is God, nothing different from God. Name and God are one.

Next it was taught how for the Bhakti Yogi humility and reverence are necessary. The Bhakti Yogi must hold himself as a dead man. A dead man never takes an insult, never retaliates, he is dead to everyone. The Bhakti Yogi must reverence all good people, all saintly people, for the glory of the Lord shines always through His children.

The next lesson was the Pratikas. In that it was taught that Bhakti is only when you worship God. Worshipping anyone else is not Bhakti. But we can worship anything we like if we think it is God. If we do not think it is God that worship is not Bhakti. If you think it is God it is all right.

There was a certain Yogi who used to practise meditation in a lonely part of the forest, on the banks of a river. There was a poor cowherd, a very ignorant man, who used to tend his herd in that forest. Every day he used to see this same Yogi meditating by the hour, practising austerities, living alone, studying. Somehow he got curious what he did, so he came to him and said "Sir, can you teach me the way to God?" This Yogi was a very learned, great man, and he replied, "How will you understand God, you common cowherd; blockhead, go home and tend your cows and don't bother your head with such things".

The poor fellow went away, but somehow a real want had come to him. So he could not rest, and he came again to the Yogi, and said "Sir, won't you teach me something about God ?" Again he was repulsed, "Oh, you blockhead, what can you understand of God ? Go home." But he could not sleep, he could not eat; he must know something about God.

So he came again, and the Yogi, in order to quiet the man, as he was so insisting, said, "I'll teach you about God."

The man asked, "Sir, what sort of being is God? What is his form? How does he look?"

The Yogi said, "God is just like the big bull in your herd ; that is just God; God has become that big bull".

The man believed him, and went back to his herd, and day and night he took that bull for God, and began to worship it. He brought the greenest grass for that bull, rested close to it, and gave it light, sat near it, and followed it. Thus days and months and years passed. His whole soul was there. One day he heard a voice, as it were, coming out of the bull. "The bull speaks". "My son, my son". "Why, the bull is speaking! No, the bull cannot speak". Again he went away, and sat near meditating in great misery of his heart; he did not know anything. Again he heard the voice coming out of the bull, "My child, my child". He went near-"No, the bull cannot speak". Then he went back again and sat despondent. Again the voice came and that time he found it out. It was from his own heart. He found that God was in him. Then he learned the wonderful truth of the Teacher of all Teachers, "I am with thee always". And the poor cowherd learnt the whole mystery.

Then he goes back to the Yogi, and when he is at some distance the Yogi sees him. The Yogi has been the most learned man in the country, practising austerity for years, meditating, studying, and this cowherd, an ignorant blockhead, never studied a book, never learnt his letters, but he comes, his whole body, as it were, transfigured, his face changed, the light of heaven shining round his face. The Yogi got up. "What is this change ? Where did you get this ?"

"Sir, you gave me that." "How? I told you that in joke" .

"But I took it seriously, and I got everything I wanted out of that bull, for is He not everywhere?"

So that bull was the pratika, and that man worshipped the bull as his pratika, as God, and he got everything out of it. So that intense love, that desire, brings out everything. Everything is in ourselves, and the external world and the external worship, are the forms, the suggestions that call it out. When they become strong, the Lord within awakes. The external teacher is but the suggestion. When faith in the external teacher is strong, then the Teacher of all teachers within speaks; eternal wisdom speaks in the heart of that man. He need not go any more to any books, or any men, or any higher beings, he need not run after supernatural or preternatural beings for instruction; the Lord Himself becomes his instructor. He gets all he wants from himself, no more need to go to any temple, or church; his own body has become the greatest temple in the world, and in that temple lives the Lord of Creation. In every country great saints have been born, wonderful lives have been (lived), coming out of the sheer power of love. So all these external forms of Bhakti, this repetition of the name, worship of Pratika, this Nishta, this Ishtam, are but the preparations until that eternal power wakes up. Then alone comes spirituality, when one goes beyond these laws and bounds. Then all laws fall down, all forms vanish, temples and churches crumble into dust and die away. It is good to be born in a church, but the worst possible fate to die in a church. It is good to be born in a sect, and the worst possible thing to die in a sect, with sectarian ideas. What sect can hold a child of the Lord, what laws bind, what forms shall he follow ? What man shall he worship ? He worships the Lord Himself. He Himself teaches him. He lives in the temple of all temples, the Soul of man.

So, this is the goal towards which we are going, the Supreme Bhakti, and all that leads up to this is but preparation. But it is necessary. It prepares the infinite soul to come out of this bondage of books and sects and forms; these fly away and leave but the Soul of man. These are superstitions of an infinite amount of time. This "my father's religion", "my country's religion", or "my book", or my this and that, are but the superstition of ages; they vanish. Just as when one is pricked with a thorn he takes another thorn to get the first out and then throws both of them away. So this superstition is in us; in many countries even into the soft brains of little babies are put the most horrible and diabolical nonsense as sect ideas. Parents think they are doing good to the child, but they are merely murdering it to satisfy Mrs Grundy. What selfishness! There is nothing that men out of fear of themselves or out of fear of society will not do. Men will kill their own children, mothers will starve their own families, brothers will hate brothers, to satisfy forms, because Mrs So-and-so will be pleased and satisfied. We see that the vast mass of mankind is born in some church or temple or (some religious) form and never comes out of it. Why? Have these forms helped the growth of spirituality? If through these forms we step on to the highest platform of love, where forms vanish and all these sectarian ideas go away, how is it that the vast majority of men are always groveling in some form or other? They are all atheists; they do not want any religion. If a man comes to this country without any friend, or without knowing anyone, supposing he is a blackguard in his own country, the first thing he will do in this country will be to join a church. Will that fellow ever have religion? Do you mean to say that these women who go to churches to show their dresses will ever have religion, or will come out of forms? They will go back and back, and when they die they will become like animals. Do you mean to say that those men who go to church to look at the beautiful faces of women will ever have religion? Those who have certain social religions, because society requires that they shall belong to Mr. So-and-so's church or because that was their father's church-will they ever have religion? They understand certain broad views, but they must keep a certain social position, and will keep it through eternity. What you want, you get. The Lord fulfills all desires. If you want to keep a certain position in Society you will do so; if you want church you will get that and not Him. If you want to play the fool all your life with all these churches and foolish organisations, you will have them and have to live in them all your lives. "Those that want the departed go to the departed and get ghosts; but those that love Him, all come to Him". So those that love Him alone will come to Him, and those that love others will go wherever they love. That drill business in the temples and churches : kneel down at a certain time, stand at ease, and all that drill nonsense, all mechanical, with the mind thinking of something else-all this has nothing to do with real religion.

There was a great prophet in India, Guru Nanak, born 400 years ago. Some of you have heard of the Sikhs, the fighting people. He was a follower of the Sikh religion. One day he went to the Mohammedans' Mosque. These Mohammedans are feared in their own country, just as in a Christian country no one dare say anything against their religion. They think they have liberty to kill and criticise everybody who does not agree with them. So this man went in, and there was a big Mosque, and the Mohammedans were standing in prayer. They stand in lines; they kneel down, stand up, and repeat certain words at the same times, and one fellow leads. So Guru Nana went there, and when the mullah was saying "In the name of the most merciful and kind God, Teacher of all teachers", he began to smile. He says "Look at that hypocrite". The mullah got into a passion. "Why do you smile?" "Because you are not praying, my friend, that is why I am smiling". "Not praying?" "Certainly not; there is no prayer in you". The mullah was very angry, and he went and laid a complaint before a magistrate, and said, "This heathen rascal dares to come to our mosque and smiles at us when we are praying; the only punishment is instant death, kill him". The man was brought before. the magistrate, and asked why he smiled. "Because he was not praying". "What was he doing?" the magistrate asked. "I will tell you what he was doing, if you will bring him before me". The magistrate ordered the mullah to be brought, and when he came he said "Here is the mullah explain why you laughed when he was praying". He said, "Give the mullah a piece of the Koran [to swear on]. When he was saying Allah, Allah, he was thinking of some chicken he had left at home". The poor mullah was confounded. He was a little more sincere than the others, and he confessed he was thinking of the chicken, and so they let the Sikh go. "But", said the Magistrate "Don't go to the church again. It is better not to go at all than to commit blasphemy there and hypocrisy. Do not go when you do not feel like praying, do not be like a hypocrite, and do not think of the chicken and say the name of the Most Merciful and Blissful God."

A certain Mohammedan was praying in a garden. They are very regular in their prayers. When the time comes, wherever they are they just begin, fall down on the ground and get up and fall down, and so on. One of them was in a garden when the call for prayer came, so he knelt there, prostrate on the ground to pray. A girl was waiting in the garden for her lover, and saw him on the other side, and in her hurry to reach him did not see the man prostrate, and walked over him. He was a fanatical Mohammedan, just what you call here a Presbyterian, the same breed. Both believe in barbecuing eternally. So you can just imagine the anger of this Mohammedan when his body was walked over. He wanted to kill the girl. The girl was a smart one, and she said "Stop that nonsense; you are a fool and a hypocrite". "What! I am a hypocrite?" "Yes, I am going to meet my earthly lover and I did not see you there, and you are going to meet your heavenly lover and should not know that a girl was passing over your body".

This transcript has been made available by the Vedanta Centre, Cohasset, Massachusdtts.

↑ Contents

APPENDIX B

The Recurrence of Cosmic Cycles

In his jnana yoga class "The Atman: Its Bondage and Freedom," held on the evening of January 8, 1896 (see chapter six, section six), Swamiji introduced the subject of the cyclic recurrence of forms , time without end, with these words: "The vast mass of mankind are content with material things, but there are some who become awakened and want to get back, who have had enough of the playing down here [Complete Works, 2 : 259]. Along with this comes a very important question, and because I may forget it, I will discuss it now." He then went on (and with the kind permission of the Vedanta Centre, Cohasset, Massachusetts, I quote from Goodwin's transcript, which differs in spots from the same passage in the Complete Works):

The question is why should we attempt to get our and get back to the centre. Suppose we have all come from God, but we find this world is pleasurable and nice; then we would rather try to get more and more of this. Why should we try to get out of it? The alpha and omega of Vedanta philosophy is to "give up the world" ; that is the idea with which we started, giving up the unreal and taking the real. [But] why should we not turn towards enjoyment and not away from it? . . . The answer is this, that all these forms that we are seeing now are being manifested again and again, and we know that this world in which we live has been here many times before. I have been here and talking to you.... And many times more it will be the same.... This world has been here many times. We are all certain that this world will die and will be broken to pieces. Secondly, we see that these things periodically occur. Suppose there are three or four dice, and when we throw them one comes up five, and another four, and another three, and another two, and you keep on throwing and throwing. There must come times when those very same numbers will recur. Go on throwing, and no matter how long may be the interval, those numbers must come again. It can be mathematically asserted in how many throws they will come again; this is the law of chance. So with souls. However distant may be the period, these things are happening again and again, all these combinations and dissolutions. There is only a short rest, and then-and then this eating and drinking here comes back, and then death again....

Along with this (idea] of throwing dice, comes (the] very interesting (view] that it was not the same soul, that this body is one link in the whole chain, and that the whole chain is composed of many links, beginning from the little worm, and let us hope ending in man, and these links form a circle, and this circle is revolving like the Ferris wheel at Chicago, the carriages of which are rolling forward all the time, but the occupants are changed. A soul goes into a carriage, goes through the circle, and comes out again. The wheel still goes on and on. All these forms are what is called permanent; cyclically the wheel revolves, showing all these forms, but you and I must get out. Different souls are riding in this wheel. This is how it can be explained that a man can read the past and future life of another man. The most astonishing powers of reading the past and the future have been known in every country and every age....

This last sentence occurs in volume two of the Complete Works, at the beginning of paragraph two of page 261. It should be noted here that the remainder of the paragraph does not appear in Goodwin's transcript, according to which Swamiji went on to say that everything within the Ferris wheel-even the struggle to be free-acts according to law and is predictable.

↑ Contents

APPENDIX C

J. J. Goodwin's Unedited Transcript of 

Swami Vivekananda's Jnana Yoga Class Held on the

Evening of January 29, 1896 

In last Gnana lecture we read one of the Upanishads; we will read another. Brahma was the first of the Devas, the Lord of this cycle and its protector. He gave this knowledge of the Brahman, which is the essence of all knowledge, to his son, Atharvan. The latter handed it over to his son Angiras, he to his son, Bharadvaja, and so on. There was a man called Saunaka, who was a very rich man; who went to this Angiras as a learner. He approached the teacher and asked him a question. "Tell me sir which is that which, being known, everything else is known." One is supreme and the other is inferior. The Rigveda is the name of one of the different parts of the Vedas. Siksa is the name of another part. All different sciences are inferior. What is the supreme science. That is the only science, the supreme science, by which we reach the unchangeable one. But that cannot be seen, cannot be sensed, cannot be specified, without colour, without eyes, without ears, without nose, without feet, the Eternal, the Omnipresent, the Omnipenetrating, the Absolute, He from whom everything comes. The sages see him, and that is the supermist knowledge. Just as the urnanabhi, a species of spider, creates a thread out of his own body, and takes it back, just as the plants grow by their own nature, and all these things are yet separate and apparently different; the heart is as it were different from the other parts of a man's body; the plants are different from the earth; the thread is different from the spider; yet they were the causes, and in them these things act. So from this unchangeable one has come this universe. First out of the Brahman comes the knowledge of desire and from that comes the manifestation of Creator, or the golden womb. From that comes intelligence, from that matter and all these different words. This is the truth; that those who want to come to salvation or attain to other enjoyments in the Vedas, various ways are told, and then it goes on to say how they will reach to these blessings. When they die they will go through the sun's rays into places which are very beautiful, where after death they go to heaven, and live there for some time, but from there they again fall. Here are two words-ista purtam, sacrificial and other rituals are called istam and purtam is making roads, building hospitals and so on. "Fools are they who think that rituals and doing good work are high, and that there is nothing higher. They get what they desire, and go to heaven, but every enjoyment, and every sorrow, must have an end, and so that ends and, they fall back and back, become men again, or still lower. Those that give up the world, and learn to control the senses, live in a forest, through the rays of the sun they reach that immortality where lives He who is the Absolute. Thus the sage, examining all desires of good or evil works, throws away all duties, and wants to know that, getting which there is no more return, no more change, and to know that he goes to the Guru, the teacher, with fuel in his hand. There is a myth in our country of going to the Guru with fuel in their hands, as a sign of helping him in making sacrifices, as he will not take presents. What is a teacher? He who knows the secrets of the scriptures, he whose soul has gone unto Brahman, who does not care for works, or going to heaven, or all these things. Unto such a disciple, who has controlled his mind, has become peaceful and calm, given up all this tremendous wave that rises in the mind by desire-"I will do this & that"-and all those things which are at best only disturbing, such as name & fame, which impel mankind to do all sorts of things, in that disciple in whom all these vexatious desires have been calmed down, him the teacher taught the way by which he could know that One who never changes, and who is the truth, which is the science of Brahman. Then comes what he taught "This is the truth, oh gentle one-as from a mass of burning flame myriads of sparks come out, of the same nature as the fire, even so from this unchangeable one, all these forms, all these ideas, all this creation, comes out, and unto Him it goes back." But the Eternal One is everlasting, formless, without beginning, inside and outside of every being-beyond all life, beyond all mind, the Pure One, beyond even the unchangeable, beyond everything. From Him is born the vital principle, from Him comes the mind, from Him come all organs of the senses, from Him are air, light, water, and this earth which holds all beings. These heavens are, as it were, his head; his eyes, the sun and moon-the cardinal points are, as it were his ears-the eternal knowledge of the Vedas is, as it were, his manifested speech. His life is the air, His heart is this universe, His feet this world. He is the Eternal Self of every being. From Him have come the different Vedas, from Him have come the Gods of the Sadhyas -the latter are superior men, much higher than ordinary men, and very much like the Gods. From Him are all men, from Him are all animals, from Him is all life, from Him all the forces in the mind, from Him all truth, all chastity. The seven organs are all from Him, the seven objects of perception from him, the seven actions of perception are from Him, from Him the seven worlds in which the life currents flow. From Him are all these seas, oceans, from Him are all rivers that roll into the sea, from Him are all plants and all liquids. He is the inside, He is the inner Soul of every being. This great Purusha, this great One, He is this universe, He is the work, He is the sacrifice, He is the Brahman, He is the Trinity. He who knows Him is freeing his own soul from the bond of ignorance, and becomes free. He is the bright one; he is inside every human soul. From Him are all name and form, all the animals, and men are from Him. He is the one Supreme. He who knows Him becomes free. How to know Him. Take this bow, which is the Upanishad, the knowledge of the Vedanta; place upon that bow the sharpened rod of worship, stretch that bow by what? By making the mind of the same form as He, by knowing that you are He. Thus strike at it; strike at that Brahman with this rod. This One is the bow. This human mind is the rod. Brahman is the object which we want to hit, and this object is to be hit by concentrating the mind, and just when the rod has hit, the rod penetrates into the object, and becomes one with it, a unity. Even so, this soul, the rod, is to be thrown upon the object so that it will become one with it. In whom are the heavens, this earth, and the skies, in whom is the mind and all that lives. In the Upanishads there are certain passages which are called the great words, which are always quoted and referred to. In Him, that One, in Him alone, the Atman, can be all other words. What is the use of all other talks. Know Him alone. This is the bridge over this life to reach to universality. He goes on to show a practical way. So far it is very figurative. Just as all the spokes of a wheel meet at the axle, even so in this body is that place from which all the arteries flow, and at which they all meet. There meditate, upon the Om that is in the heart. May thou succeed. May the gentle one with success attain unto the goal, may you gQ beyond all darkness, to Him who is omniscient, the all-knowing. His glory is in heaven, on earth, everywhere. He who has become the mind, the prana, he who is the leader in the body, he who is established in the food, the energy of life. This is another of the sentences very much quoted. By supreme knowledge the sages see Him whose nature is bliss, who shines as immortality. By supreme knowledge. There are two words. One is Gnanam, the other Vignanam. Gnanam may be translated as science; this means intellectual only and Vignanam realisation. God cannot be perceived by intellectual knowledge. He who has realized [the Self] by that supreme knowledge, what will become of that man ? All the knots of the heart will be cut asunder. All darkness will vanish for ever when you have seen the truth. How can you doubt? How foolish and childish you will think these fights and quarrels of different sciences and different philosophies and all this. You will smile at them. All doubts will vanish, and all work will go away. All work will vanish.


Beyond, the golden sheath is there, without any impurity, without compare, He, the Brahman. His is the brightness, the light of all light, the knower, the Atman. Realise Him as such, and when you have done that the sun cannot illumine, nor the moon, nor the stars. A flash of lightning cannot illumine the place; it is mental, away deep in the mind. He shining, everything else shines; when He shines inside the whole man shines. This universe shines through His light. You take such passages later on, when studying the Upanishads. The difference between the Hindu mind and the European mind is that whereas in the West, truths are arrived at by examining the particular, the Hindu takes the opposite course. There is no metaphysical sublimity as in the Upanishads. It leads you on beyond senses infinitely more sublime than the suns and stars. First they try to describe God by sense sublimities, that his feet are the earth, his head the heavens. But that did not express what he wanted to say. It was in a sense sublime. He first gave that idea to the student, and then slowly took him beyond, until he gave him the highest idea, the negative, too high to describe. He is immortal, He is before us, He is behind us, He is on the right side, He is on the left, He is above, He is beneath Upon the same tree there are two birds with most beautiful wings, and the two birds always go together, always live together. Of these; one is eating the fruits of the tree, the other, without eating, is looking on. So in this body are the two birds always going together. Both have the same form, and beautiful wings. One is the human soul, eating the fruits; the other God Himself; of the same nature. He is also in this body, the Soul of our soul; He eats neither good nor evil fruits, but stands and looks on, But the lower bird knows that he is sleek and small, and humble, and tells all sorts of lies. He says he is a woman, or he is a man, or a boy. He says he will do good, or do bad, he will go to heaven, and will do a hundred sorts of things. Just in delirium he talks and works, and the central idea of his delirium is that he is weak. Thus he gets all his misery, because he thinks he is nobody. He is a created little being; he is a slave to somebody; he is governed by some god or gods, and so is unhappy. But when he becomes joined with God, when he becomes a Yogi, he sees that the other bird, the Lord, is his own glory. "Why, it was my own glory whom I called God, and this little I, this misery, was all hallucination; it never existed; I was never a woman, never a man, never any one of these things." Then he gives up all his sorrow. When this golden one who is to be seen is seen, the Creator, the Lord, the Purusha, the God of this universe, then the sage has washed off all stains of good and bad deeds. Good deeds are as much stains as bad deeds. Then he attains to extreme sameness with the pure one. The sage knows that He who is the Soul of all souls, this Atman, shines through all. He is the man, the woman, the cow, the dog, in all animals, in the sin, and in the sinner. He is the Sanyassi, He is in the ruler, He is everywhere. Knowing this the sage speaks not. He gives up criticising anyone, scolding anyone, thinking evil of anyone. His desires have gone into the Atman. This is the sign of the greatest knowers of the Brahman, that they see nothing else but Him. He is playing through all these things. Various forms, from the highest gods to the lowest worms, are all He. The ideas want to be illustrated. First of all the writer showed us the idea that if we want to get to heaven and all these places, we will get there. That is to say, in the language of the Vedas, whatever one desires that he sees. As I have told you in previous lectures the Atman neither comes nor goes. It has neither birth nor death. You are all omnipresent, you are the Atman, you are at this moment in heaven, and in the darkest places too. You are everywhere. Where are you not? Therefore how can you go anywhere. These comings and goings are all fictions, but the Atman can never come nor go. These visions change. When the mind is in a particular condition it sees a certain vision, dreams a certain dream; so in this condition we are all seeing this world, and man, and animals, and all these things, but in this very place this condition will change and the very thing we are seeing as earth we shall see as heaven, or we may see it as the opposite place, or as any place we like, and all this depends on our desires. But this dream cannot be permanent, just as we know that any dream in the night must break. Not one of these dreams will be permanent. We dream that which we think we will do. So these people who are always thinking in this life of going to heaven, and meeting their friends, will have that, as soon as their dream of this life is ended, and they will be compelled by their desires of this life to see these other dreams, and those who are superstitious and are frightened into all such ideas as hell, will dream that they are in the hot place. Those whose ideas in this life are brutal, when they die, will become pigs and hogs, and all these things. With each one, what he desires he finds. This book starts by telling us that those who know nothing better than a little road making, or hospital building, and such good works, will have a good dream when they die, they will dream that they are in a place where they will have god bodies, and can eat anything they like, jump about, go through walls and so on, and sometimes come down and startle someone.

In our mythology there are the Devas, who live in heaven, and the Devakas, who are very much same, but a little more wicked. The Devas are like your angels, only some of them from time to time become wicked, and find that the daughters of men are good. Our deities are celebrated for this sort of thing. What can you expect of them? They are here simply hospital makers and have no more knowledge than other men. They do some good work with the result that they become Devas. They do their good work for fame, or name, or some reward, and get this reward, dreaming that they are in heaven, and doing all these things. Then there are demons who have done evil in this life. But our books say that these dreams will not last very long, and then they will either come back and take the old dream again as human beings, or still worse. Therefore, according to these books, it behaves every sensible, right thinking man, once for all, to brush aside all such foolish ideas as heavens and hells. Two things exist in the world, dream and reality. What we call life is a succession dreams, dream within dream. One dream is called heaven, another earth, another hell, and so on. One dream is called the human body, another animal body, and so on, all are dreams. The reality is what is called Brahman, that Being who is Existence, knowledge, bliss. So he is the Guru, the sage, who wants to get rid of all these dreams, to stand aside and know his own nature, who wants to go beyond this self hypnotism. When we desire we are hypnotising ourselves. Just as I desire I will go to heaven, that hypnotises me, and I begin to find I am in heaven directly I die, and will see angels and all sorts of things. I have seen about fifty people who have come from death's door, and they all have told me stories about being in heaven. These are the mythologies of our country, and it shows that it is all hypnotism. Where Western people make a great mistake is here. So far as you have these ideas of heaven and hell we agree with you, but you say this earth is real. That cannot be. If this is real, heavens and hells are real, because the proof of each of these is the same, and if one is a hypnotic condition, the whole of it must be. So Vedantists say that not only are heavens hypnotic, but so is this life and everything here. Some people want to go from one hypnotic condition to another, and these are what we call the fools of the world, the samsaris, the travellers who go from dream to dream, from one hypnotic trance to another. For fifty years they are under the idea they are men and women. What nonsense is a man or a woman in the soul? It is terrible hypnotism. How can the soul have any sex? It is self hypnotism. You have hypnotised yourself and think you are men and women. If we are fools we will again hypnotise ourselves and want to go to heaven, and hear all this trash of gods and goddesses, and all sorts of humbugs, and will kneel down and pray and have god bodies by the million to worship on thrones. At the end, they have to hypnotise themselves again. We are all in the same boat here, and all who are ' same boat see each other. Stand aside, free, beyond earn and hypnotism. Some fools have hypnotised themselves that they will have bodies, and wives, and all these things. I also am a fool, and have hypnotised myself that I will have senses, and all these things. So we are all in the same boat and see each other. Millions of people may be here whom we do not see, touch or feel, just as in hypnotism there may be three books before you-you are hypnotised and are told that one of them does not exist, and you may live for a year in that condition and never see it. Suppose thirty men are under the same hypnotic influence, and are told that this book does not exist. Those who are in this condition will all fail to see the book. Men, women, animals are all hypnotised, and all see this dream, because they are all in the same boat. The Vedanta Philosophy says that this whole universe, mental, physical, moral, is hypnotic. Who is the cause of this hypnotism. You yourself are to blame. This weeping and wailing, and knocking your heads into corners will not do you the least good. This knocking everything on the head is what is called non-attachment, and clinging on to more and more hypnotism is attachment. That is why, in all religions, you will find they wanted to give up the world, although many of them do not understand it. These fellows used to starve themselves in a forest, and see the devil coming to them. You have heard those wonderful stories of India, of how those magicians can make a man see a rope rise from the ground to the skies. I have not seen one of them. One of the Mogul Emperors, Jahangir, mentions it, and he was a great sage. He says "Allah, what do these devils do? They take a rope or a chain, and the chain is thrown up and up, until it becomes firm, as if it were stuck to something. Then he lets a cat o up the chain, then a dog, then a wolf, then a tiger, then a lion. All walked up the chain, and vanished. Sometimes they will send men up the chain. Two men will go up and begin to fight, and then both of them vanish and after a while you hear a noise of fighting, and a head, a hand, and a foot fall, and, mind you, there are two or three thousand people present. The fellow showing it has only a loincloth on". They say this is hypnotism, throwing a net over  the audience. That is what they call their science. It exists in a certain limit, but if you go beyond this limit, or come within it, you do not see it. The man who is playing does not see anything. So if you stand near him you do not see anything. Such is the hypnotism here. So we have first to get beyond the circle, Gnana, or stand within the circle of the hypnotism, Bhakti, with God, the great player who is playing all these things: the whole universe he projects. Chapter after chapter comes and goes. This is called Maya, the power which creates all these tremendous things, and he who is the ruler of this Maya, is God. And he who is ruled by Maya, just as in the case of that chain-the man who was standing in the centre had the power and was not deluded, but all that audience was governed by Maya. So that portion of Atman which rules Maya is called God, and the little bits of the Atman deluded by it are called souls-you, and I. The Bhakta says crawl nearer and nearer to the hypnotist, and when you get to the centre you do not see anything. You get clear of it. The Gnani does not care to undergo all this trouble-it is a dangerous way. Unless a man becomes a lunatic, when he finds himself covered with mud will he take more mud to wash himself? So, why increase the hypnotism. Get out of the circle; cut it off and be free. When you are free you will be able to play, even without being caught yourself. Now you are caught; then you will catch; that will be all the difference. Therefore in the first part of this book, we are told that we must give up all this idea of heaven, and of birth and death, and so on. It is all nonsense; no man was ever born, or ever died. They are all in hypnotism-So is eternal life, and all this nonsense. Heaven is hypnotism, and so is earth. It is not as materialists say, that heaven is a superstition, and God is a superstition, but he himself is not a superstition. If one is superstition, if one link is nonexistent, the whole chain is nonexistent. The existence of the whole chain depends on the existence of one link, and that of one link on the whole. If there is no heaven there is no earth, and if there is no God there is no man. You are under this hypnotism, and so long as you are in it you will have to see God, and nature, and the soul, and when you are beyond this hypnotism God will vanish, and so will nature, and so will the soul. Therefore first of all we will have to give up all these ideas of God and heaven, and enjoying the fruits of these, and all that going to heaven will be one more dream. Next, after showing these things, the book goes on to tell us how to get out of it, and the one idea that is brought out through all these ideas is to be one with that universal being. The thing manifested, the universal being, is not anything of these; these are all nonsense, Maya, but that upon which all these things are being played, the background upon which all this picture is written, we are one with Him. You know you are one with Him, only you must realise it. He gave us two words, one knowledge intellectual and the other is realisation. That is to say, intellectual assent is within this realisation, and realisation is beyond it. Therefore intellectual assent is not sufficient. Every man can say this theory is right, but that is not realisation; he must realise it. We can all say we understand that this is hypnotism, but that is not realisation. That will be when the hypnotism will break, even for a moment; it will come with a flash; it must come. If you struggle it will come. When it does vanish, all idea of body will go along with it, that you have sex I or body, just as a lamp blows out. Then what will become. If some part of your Karma remains this world will come back -again, but not with the same force. You have known that it is what it is; you will know no more bondage. So long as you have eyes you will have to see, or ears to hear, but not with the same force. I had read all sorts of things about this mirage, but had never seen it before, until about four years ago I was travelling in Western India. Of course, as a Sanyassi, I was travelling on foot, making my slow marches. So it took' me about a month to travel through that country. Every day I saw  such beautiful lakes and the shadows of trees on the shores of those lakes, and the whole thing was quivering in the breeze, and birds flying and animals. Every day I saw this, and thought what a beautiful country it was, but when I reach some village I find it is all sand. I say how is it. One day I was very thirsty, and thought I would drink a little water at the lake, but when I approached it disappeared, and with a flash came into my mind "This is the mirage about which I read all my life." But the strange thing is that I was travelling for a month, and could never recognise that it was a mirage, and in one moment it vanished. I was very glad to know this was the mirage about which I had read all my life. Next morning I saw the lake again, and along with it, came the idea "That is the mirage. " All this month I have been seeing the mirage, and could not distinguish the fine distinction between reality and mirage, but in that one moment I caught the idea. From that time, when I see a mirage, I will say "That is a mirage", and never feel it. Such will it be [with] this world when the whole thing will vanish once, and after that, if you have to live out your past work, you will not be deceived. Take a carriage with two wheels. Suppose I cut one of the wheels from the axle. The other wheel will run for some time by its past momentum, and will then fall. The body is one wheel, and the soul another, and they are joined by the axle of delusion. Knowledge is the axe, which will cut the axle and the soul will stop immediately, will give up all these vain dreams. But upon the body ' that past momentum, and it will run a little, doing this and that, and then it will fall down, but only good momentum will be left and that body can only do good. This is to warn you not to take a rascal for a free man. It will be impossible for that man to do evil. So you must not be cheated. But when you become free the whole hypnotism has vanished, and you know the distinction between the reality and the mirage. It will no more be a bondage. The most terrible things will not be able to daunt you. A mountain [could] fall upon you but you will not care. You will know it for a mirage.

This transcript, the original of which is written in Goodwin's hand on thirty sheets of paper, has been made available by the vedanta Centre, Cohasset, Massachusetts.

↑ Contents

APPENDIX D

The following two newspaper articles from, respectively, the Brooklyn Daily Standard Union of February 3, 1896, and the Brooklyn Times of the same date are reports of Swamiji's lecture "The Atman" (see chapter seven, section two) and are reproduced here for comparison with the transcript of the lecture as published in volume two of the Complete Works.

'THE HINDU GOD'
Reappearance of the Swami Vivekananda

FIRST OF A SERIES OF LECTURES ON "THE GOD-IDEA" DELIVERED BEFORE THE ETHICAL ASSOCIATION-FAITH OF THE COMMON PEOPLE OF INDIA.

Under the auspices of the Brooklyn Ethical Association, the first of a series of lectures on "Comparative Religion; or, The GodIdea," was delivered before a large audience in Pouch Mansion last evening by the Swami Vivekananda of India. This was the first time this lecturer has appeared in Brooklyn since his return from England, where he went after his great success in this country last year. Dr. Lewis G. Janes, the president of the association, introduced the speaker, who talked for an hour and a quarter without once referring to notes on "The Hindu Conception of God." The subject was treated under three heads, "The Differentiated or Personal God " , "The Partially Differentiated, or Immanent God," and "The Undifferentiated, or the Philosophical Absolute."

According to the Swami Vivekananda, ninety per cent of the people in India believe in the first kind of God. These believe that God the Creator is eternally separated from nature and from human souls. He is a Being only to be loved and not to be prayed to for material things. For material things the people pray to the little gods, of which they have many.

The people who believe in the God of the second subject are a little higher intellectually than the mass of the people, but both sects believe that the soul is by nature pure, and both believe that the selfish philosophy of "Me and Mine" is at the very root of the misery in the world. The mass of the people who believe in a personal God are great vegetarians, and their aversion to eating flesh is based on a loftier foundation than that of the Buddhists. When you ask a Buddhist why he does not eat the flesh of animals, he will say: "Because it is wrong to kill animals: ' When you ask the same question of a Hindu Dualist, he will answer: "Because the animals belong to God. "

The belief in the God classed under the third subject, was a philosophy rather than a religious faith, and of course too abstruse and too high ever to become the religion of the masses. In the Sanscrit, the word "creation" is "projection. " The Hindus do not believe that God created the world out of nothing. They believe he projected it out of something.

During the lecture the Eastern theory of reincarnation was''.. explained, and the highest ethics and human ideas were ' elaborated to portray the prevailing faith of the Hindus.

HINDU CONCEPTION OF GOD

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA BEFORE THE
ETHICAL ASSOCIATION

The first in a Course of Four Lectures On the God-idea in Some of the Principal Religions of the World Historical and Explanatory Exposition of the Beliefs of the Various Sects.

Swami Vivekananda, of India, lectured last night in the Pouch gallery on "The Hindu Conception of God." The lecture was the first in a course arranged by the Brooklyn Ethical association to be given on alternate Sunday evenings, the general subject of the course being the God-idea in some of the principal religions of the world as illustrated in literature, philosophy and art. The lecture of Swami last night was the first he has delivered before the Ethical association since his return from England, and in consequence the audience which gathered, was sufficient to occupy all the accommodations provided.

The lecturer commenced by saying that from much that had been written of the religions of India, it might be supposed that the monistic school was at the head. The fact was that there had been various phases of Indian thought and that of the monistic thinkers formed a very small part of the whole. From the earliest times there had been various schools of thought in India. The people were free to choose their own forms, to make their own philosophy and to start their own sects. Swami said that at the present time he did not know how many sects there were in India, but they were in the thousands. It seemed that the religious activity of the country was inexhaustible.

The lecturer then spoke of the establishment of the most ancient religions in India. He told of the beliefs of the Buddhists, who take their stand on an ethical foundation. "Be good and do good" is their doctrine. Beside the Buddhists and the other unorthodox sects were the orthodox sects, who all admit the authority of the Hindu Scriptures, the Vedas. They form various schools which are principally divided into three groups, the logicians, the Vedantists and the numericals. The first and third did not form any sect and so the second division, the Vedantists, really governed India. They took the name especially because they wanted to base their all on the Vedas. They were not unanimous in opinion, however. Still they all believed that the universe was created in cycles, appearing and disappearing, that it was projected out and that after a long period it contracted and went back again. Then, after a period of perfect rest it again appeared. The first sect were called the dualists. They believed that God was the creator of the universe, yet that he was eternally separated from nature and from human souls. They believed that God is personal-that is, he has human attributes-he is merciful, just, powerful, almighty, he can be loved and he loves us in return. In a word, they believed in an anthropomorphic God. Out of his own will he had helped to create the universe, but nature existed in spite of him. He must have material to create and nature was his material. Swami said that go per cent of the people all over the world were dualists in religion. They were necessarily so, as their minds could not grasp anything higher. The dualists believed, also, that man and not God was responsible for the evil in the world. They believed that the soul, in the long run, must go to salvation. According to the dualists, there was beyond this universe another, where no death, evil or disease existed, and sooner or later we would all come to that world, where there was no misery. We must be born and born again, until finally we got rid of all desire of enjoyment, of all desire for personal pleasure. The idea of "me and mine" was the root of all evil. Everything must be held as God's. Finally, with the heart purified, we should come at last into this perfect universe, where we should have almost supreme power and live forever a beautiful existence with God. This, Swami said, was the religion of the masses in India. Above them were the mono-dualists, who believed that the effect in the universe was but the cause reproduced in another form. They believed the God was the creator and the material out of which the universe was created. There were also the non dualist Vedantists, who believed that we did not exist at all we were self hypnotized, and imagined all we saw. Finally came the sect which believed that the soul was the God, that it was absolutely supreme, that .beside it there was nothing. The lecturer closed in a eulogy and eloquent exposition of this latter religion, which, he said, could never become the religion of the masses because they could not comprehend it.

↑ Contents

Volume 4

4.1 DETROIT: MARCH 1896

1

As has been related in the last volume, Swami Vivekananda completed his second season of teaching in New York City in the last week of February, 1896. It had been a season of great harvest, to be matched only by that which was to come in London in the fall of this same year. During the months of December, 1895, and January and February, 1896, he had produced, largely through the medium of his classes, the books Karma-Yoga, Bhakti-Yoga, and Raja-Yoga, as well as The Science and Philosophy of Religion, which consisted of his advanced New York classes on jnana yoga. In addition, seven of the pubic lectures that he gave during this period constitute today a good part of the book we know as Jnana-Yoga and provide, when read in chronological order, his step-by-step presentation of the Vedanta philosophy. Besides these, he delivered during this period a number of other important lectures, including "The Claims of Religion," "Bhakti or Devotion," and "My Master."

Ever since Swamiji's return from England in the early part of December of 1895, he had been planning to visit Detroit and to hold classes in that "dynamic city" of the Midwest, if only for a short period. His previous visit in Detroit had taken place in February and March of 1894 and its nature, in keeping with the first period of his Western mission, had been dramatic and necessarily public. He had to a large extent concentrated, as he had throughout his mid-western tour, on counteracting through his many lectures the highly distorted and denigrating pictures that Christian missionaries had given of the complex, highly diversified, and exquisitely refined culture and religion of India. 

Needless to say, Swamiji's lectures in Detroit had also contained stirring teachings on the philosophy of Vedanta—whether or not he called them by that name—for first and foremost he was a teacher of spirituality; indeed, he was above all a prophet of the highest magnitude, standing among those rare visitors to this earth whose advent creates a spiritual tide in the currents of world thought. Throughout his travels in the Midwest he bestowed his blessings without effort or deliberation upon the thousands of people with whom he came in contact. One might say, for lack of a better English term, that he shone upon them. Perhaps if Swamiji had done nothing else in the Western world, this silent aspect of his mission would have been enough to turn the direction of Western culture toward a spiritual goal. But in this rationally oriented and highly practical age, it was also important that he be philosophically explicit; thus came the period of concentrated work in New York City, a period of teaching during which his mission struck deep roots and which he wanted now to extend to the Midwest.

Swamiji, with his faithful and efficient secretary-disciple, Josiah J. Goodwin, arrived in Detroit on the night of Tuesday, March 3,(1) a day later than expected but well in time to hold his first class, which was scheduled for the following morning at eleven o'clock. Two of Swamiji's Detroit disciples, Christina Greenstidel (Sister Christine) and Mrs. Mary Funke, had engaged a parlor and two bedrooms for him and Goodwin at the Richelieu Hotel—"a kind of combination between an apartment house and an hotel, in the best quarter of the City.'[1]

This two weeks' visit, during which he intended to hold two classes daily, morning and evening, was to be more or less private. News of his classes, which were meant for serious students, would inevitably and rapidly spread by word of mouth among his friends. There was no need of publicity; nor did Swamiji want any. Two years earlier his presence in Detroit had provoked a religious storm, rocking the pulpits, alarming missionary societies, and delighting every newspaper editor in town. The heated controversy—the wordy virulence of the more orthodox clergymen, who saw Swamiji as a threat to their credibility and power, the eloquence of more liberal thinkers, both lay and clerical, who saw him as a champion of their cause—made heady copy. And that controversy had been in dead earnest; Swamiji's enemies would have destroyed him if they could; they were not merely talking.(2) His friends, for their part, were fighting not for Swamiji alone but for humanity itself.

It is today a matter of history that in 1894 Swamiji had silenced the bigots of Detroit simply by his undeniable spiritual eminence. It had been abundantly clear that the country whose religion he represented and whose son he was, could hardly be a totally benighted land of dark and idolatrous creeds. Swamiji had won the day without effort. But his enemies, though publicly silenced in America, did not give up. Was he, after all, a true representative of Hinduism? One or two hostile Indian newspapers, anxious to discredit him, declared that he was not. Many American newspapers diligently quoted such reports, all of which put Swamiji in an extremely awkward position, for at that time he had had no official backing from his fellow countrymen. It was not until months after his first visit in Detroit that word reached America of his public recognition by the important Hindu communities of India as an accredited representative of Hinduism and as an honored sannyasin. In the fall of 1894 the news was duly published in the newspapers of New York, Chicago, Boston, and other large cities of the United States—except, it would seem, those of Detroit. Indeed, as late as March of 1896 the Detroit newspapers were not only in the dark regarding Swamiji's total and unquestioned vindication, they were still living in the days of his first visit to the city and spoiling for another fracas over the Heathen Monk. If Swamiji now wished to avoid as far as possible the newspaper "blazoning" that he so much disliked, his entrance into the city should have been, so to speak, on tiptoe. It so happened, however, that Swami Kripananda had arrived in Detroit three and a half days in advance of his guru.

Only at the last minute had Kripananda decided to go to Detroit. On February 27 Mr. Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull, who had recently returned to Cambridge from a visit to New York:

You ask about Krapananda [sic], & I am afraid that you will be surprised to hear he left on Wednesday evg for Buffalo, with the intention of proceeding this (Thursday) evg. to Detroit. He came back from seeing you off, & told me that he was to stop in Buffalo, & would not be going on to Detroit, but changed his mind within the next half an hour....

Kripananda is taking a room at Detroit in a different house to that in which the Swami will be.[2]

In Buffalo Kripananda visited Mr. and Mrs. Tralles, both of whom he had initiated into brahmacharya the previous year. He spent two happy and peaceful days in the company of these devoted disciples, and then, fatally, moved on to Detroit, where he arrived in the early afternoon of Saturday, February 29.

It does not seem probable that Swamiji would have requested Kripananda to announce his arrival in Detroit to the local newspapers. Yet that is the first thing Kripananda did. As he wrote to Mrs. Bull, he "called at the principal newspapers to have the announcement of the Swami's arrival published in the Sunday paper: ' Nor was this all. "It occurred to me," he continued, "to call on Miss Hamilton [a half disciple of his, of whom more later] as she might introduce me to some reporter of the Detroit Free Press where I wished to have published the Swami's coming.'[3] And thus Kripananda, barely off the train, set in motion a newspaper hubbub, which though meaningless, was disagreeable and for a time disruptive to the private and serious classes Swamiji had wanted to hold.

On Sunday morning, March 1, the Detroit .News-Tribune printed the following announcement.

(1) Swamiji had been expected in Detroit on the night of Monday, March 2. As it happened, however, his good friend Mrs. Florence Adams of Chicago gave a lecture that evening in New York, and he had stayed over to attend it. According to Swami Kripananda, then in Detroit, this twenty-four hour delay in Swamiji’s arrival caused no little anxiety among his Detroit students, who feared, Kripananda informed Mrs. Bull, that he might not come at all.
(2) The missionaries had good reason to be afraid of Swamiji’s eloquence, brilliant intellect, and manifest spirituality. And what they feared did indeed come to pass. Headlines of an article in the Chicago Inter Ocean of April 6, 1896 (two and a half years or so after Swamiji’s appearance at the Parliament of Religions), proclaimed: CRISIS IN MISSIONS — EVANGELISTS CANNOT RETURN TO THEIR WORK IN INDIA—TEACHERS OF THE GOSPEL MUST REMAIN INACTIVE BECAUSE THERE IS NO MONEY IN THE TREASURY. (See also Swami Vivekananda, His Second Visit to the West, Second Edition, pages 663-65)

KANANDA COMING

The Hindoo Philosopher Will Revisit Detroit

Swame Vive Kananda, who created a stir in Detroit's social circles when he was here two years ago, will revisit Detroit this week for the purpose of instructing classes in his religious doctrines. He will arrive in the city sometime Tuesday.

There will be six of these classes. The first one will be called together at 11 o'clock Wednesday morning, when everybody is invited to be present and listen to the teachings of the Hindoo. In accord with Swame's life there will be no charges whatever for the lessons. The second class will meet Wednesday night at 8 o'clock. All the classes will meet at the Richelieu, 420 Second avenue, where apartments have been engaged for Kananda. In addition to the classes Kananda will probably lecture once or twice in the Unitarian church.

Actually, Swamiji intended to remain in Detroit for two weeks and to hold far more than six classes. Kripananda was not well informed in these matters. Yet he talked on—and not entirely about Swamiji. On the same morning the Free Press, one of the leading newspapers of the city, ran the following:

VIVEKANANDA COMING

The Swami Will Once More Visit This City.

He Will Give Free Classes In The Hindoo Religions.

Swami Kripanande Arrived In Detroit Yesterday

The Latter is the Translator of "The Unknown Life of Christ."

Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindoo monk who excited much interest here two years ago, will arrive in Detroit to-morrow. The Swami's precursor, Swami Kripanande, disciple and brother "Sanyasin," reached the city last evening. He is domiciled at the Utopia. Vive Kananda will give public lectures and free classes in Yoga and Vidante philosophy. The first lecture will probably be given in the Unitarian church March 8. The free class lessons will begin Wednesday, March 4, and will be held at 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. at the Richelieu, 420 Second Avenue.

Swami Kripanande is the translator of that work which attracted so much attention, "The Unknown Life of Jesus." The old documents were found at Lhasa, in India, in an old monastery and purported to have been written about the time of the Savior. Max Muller cast ridicule upon the work.

Last night Swami Kripanande said to a Free Press representative: "You can publish that I have received word from Vive Kananda in this important matter. He announces that a brother 'Sanyasin' has investigated the documents in the old monastery and guarantees their genuineness.'(3)

"And why should not India throw light on the Savior's life?" added the visitor. "India is the country where nearly all religions had birth; she is the mother of religions and has herself the oldest and most enduring religion of all."

In this connection the eastern philosopher [i. e., Kripananda] added: "All religions are true. The goal is the same, though the methods may vary. The principal methods are: Karma Yoga, Bhakte, Raga and Gnana. Karma Yoga is the religion of unselfish work; Bhakte indicates devotion to God, or faith; Raga signifies control of mind and Gnana, knowledge. Different temperaments assimilate different methods, but the goal is the same. The heart method, the mind method, the spiritual method —all tend to the same end. All are good. The Karma Yoga is the oldest order and the one to which Buddha belonged."

(3)The old documents that Nicholas Notovich, author of The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ, claimed to have found in a Tibetan monastery tell of how Jesus travelled in his fourteenth year to India, where he studied Vedic and Buddhist scriptures and then proceeded to convert a large part of the country to Christianity, preaching in the best missionary manner against idolatry, the divine origin of the Vedas, the caste system, sun worship, and so on, recalling, the book sayass, “the true God to the people that were in deparavities.” Far from giving credence to this work, Swamiji scoffed at it. “It is nonsense to say that Notovich’s book is genuine,’ he wrote on March 2, 1896, from Detroit (not from Boston as in the Complete Works, 6:359) to Swami Trigunatita, who had written to him on the subject. 

Swami Kripanande is a linguist of rare talents, having about ten languages at his command.

On Sunday afternoon, Kripananda had yet another interview with a representative from the Free Press, to whom Miss Hamilton may have introduced him. During this "chat" Kripananda delivered a creditable lecture on the harmony of religions, which was duly printed the following morning (March 2) together with two drawings: one of Swami Vive Kananda and the other of Swami Kripananda, the latter of which has been reproduced in the previous volume. The headings and opening paragraphs of the article read as follows;

ALL FAITHS ARE GOOD

JUST AS IT WAS SAID ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME.

METHODS MAY DIFFER, BUT THE END IS THE SAME.

HINDOO RELIGION HAS ALWAYS RECOGNIZED THIS.

Chat Yesterday Afternoon With Swami Kripananda.

Swami Kripananda, who is in Detroit, is domiciled a the Utopia. His brother in faith, Swami Vive Kananda will be here today and will give a course of free lectures.

Swami Kripananda, in speaking of religious matters, said yesterday to a representative of The Free Press:

"All roads lead to Rome; and so all religions lead to God. The various religions are, as it were, so many universal dramas in which one and the same actor God-appears in different roles-Yehova, Allah, Krishna, Jesus, and so forth-but in all alike good, grand, and perfect... "

[The remaining paragraphs were devoted to Kripananda's talk on the harmony of religions.)

In the meanwhile, the Evening News had not been idle. Sniffing a good wrangle in the wind, that journal, always hostile to Swamiji, lost no time in calling on the Right Reverend J. M. Thoburn, a Christian missionary whose contempt for all things Indian could be counted on. This particular reverend had not engaged directly in the frenzied attack against Swamiji in 1894 (he had not been in Detroit)(4) but had taken a prominent part in a controversy that had raged in several widely read periodicals during the last part of 1894 and the first part of 1895 on the subject of Hinduism and Christian Missions. Mr. Thoburn did not disappoint the Evening News. Blazoned on the front page of the Monday evening (March 2) edition were the headlines:

(4) During the years 1893 and 1894 the Reverend Mr. Thoburn had been pastor of the Methodist Episcopal church in Duluth, Minnesota.

SWAMI'S NAME

REV. THOBURN SAYS VIVE KANANANDA BORROWED ONE.

THE HINDOO PRIEST WAS AN OBSCURE LAWYER IN CALCUTTA.

SO THE PASTOR OF THE CENTRAL M. E. CHURCH DECLARES.

WHAT AN INDIAN PAPER HAS TO SAY OF THE MISSIONARY.

Illustrating the article that followed was a drawing two columns wide of Sri Ramakrishna, taken from the photograph that shows him seated in meditation posture. The caption read: "Head of the Sanyasen Order to which Swami Vivekananda Claims to Belong." The intent of publishing this likeness of Sri Ramakrishna, which in the 1890s would have appeared too scantily clad, was clearly malicious. Its use as a weapon against Swamiji came as a surprise to Kripananda, and, to his credit, he was not slow to object. "Kripananda was greatly disturbed, " the Evening News blandly reported the following day, "because the picture of the holy man Ramakrishna had been printed in connection with the attack."

Yet, one wonders how the photograph from which the drawing was made fell into the hands of the News in the first place. While it is conceivable that Swamiji's enemies in Detroit had somehow obtained it, it is more likely that Kripananda had imprudently lent the News his own copy. He was, in any case, suspect.

I have received this morning a copy of a Detroit paper [Miss Waldo wrote to Mrs. Bull from New York on March 6 containing a savage attack on the Swami, and in the midst of it, a picture of Sri Ramakrishna "the head of the order of Sanyasens to which Swami Vivekananda belongs." I cannot help deploring the publication of this picture. It is the very last thing that Sri Ramakrishna himself would have wished. I do not know who was so ill-advised as to give it to the papers, but I think all friends of the movement will greatly regret such very undesirable newspaper notoriety for such a man. Perhaps you will also receive a copy of the paper & can judge for yourself. These cheap and claptrap methods of advertising the Swami, as if he were some variety performer, seem to me to be entirely mistaken, but perhaps I am wrong. They certainly are undignified, and unworthy of the great teachings he comes to present.'[4]

Miss Waldo, needless to say, had her own idea of who had given the photograph to the papers. So also had Mr. Goodwin. "I sincerely hope," the latter would write to Mrs. Bull on March 9, "the newspaper cuttings will not get into the papers in Boston, especially one in which a portrait of Ramakrishna was given in conjunction with an interview with Kripananda, in which not a word referred to the Swami himself.'[5] This comment was not altogether fair of Mr. Goodwin. While it was true that Kripananda had talked a great deal about himself during the three and a half days he was alone in Detroit, he had also mentioned his "brother sanyasin" several times. This particular article of March 2, moreover, certainly referred to Swamiji. Its first part was, as Miss Waldo noted, a savage attack on him; the second part was, to be sure, an interview with Kripananda. Its text read in full:

Rev. J. M. Thoburn, pastor of the Central M[ethodist] E[piscopal] church, was from 1885 to 1888 pastor of the largest Christian church in Calcutta, Ind., the home of Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo missionary who comes to Detroit tonight to conduct a series of meetings and classes for the spread of the faith which he represents. He was asked this morning if he had known Vivekananda in India.

"No," he replied, "and neither did anyone else. I was well acquainted with natives of all descriptions, both Hindoos and Mohammedans, but I never heard of this man there. From what I can learn, however, he seems to have been an obscure lawyer there at that time or not long before.:

Mr. Thoburn then showed The News a copy of the Indian Witness of Calcutta, the largest religious [Christian missionary] paper published in India, which has a circulation throughout that country as well as Burmah and Ceylon. The issue of Saturday, Feb. 9, 1895, says, editorially:

"[We] note with some surprise that first-class English journals take the trouble to give a careful analysis of what they call 'the new Hinduism,' as taught by Vivekananda. If the English editors correctly understood the character of the man and his teachings they would not give him the compliment of a three-line paragraph.... Neither his own life nor his statements of Hindu religious thought give him the slightest claim on the attention of serious-minded men, of any race or any religion."

Did He Borrow His Name.

"In another issue of the same paper," said Mr. Thoburn, "it was stated that the name Vivekananda was not the one by which this man was known while practicing as a lawyer in Calcutta. In fact, it was alleged that he had borrowed the name and the monkish title 'Swami' from a Madrassi monk, and came over here to the congress of religions as the self appointed representative of a Hindooism existing in his own mind only.

"Mr. K. C. Banarji, one of the leading Bengali barristers at the high court of Calcutta, in an address delivered in Calcutta in June, 1894, on the effect of the congress of religions in India, referred to Vivekananda as 'the self styled Swami.'

"This title belongs to an order with which he has no more connection, either by blood or otherwise, than you have. To my personal knowledge, at the time he was being so lionized in this country and figuratively borne on the shoulders of certain impressionable people here, the Calcutta papers were making all manner of sport of the gullibility of Yankees who were taken in by the glib fellow. He appears to have a peculiar fascination for a certain class of women in this country, particularly women of wealth and leisure, who are in a very uncertain state as to their religious views."

Converted Kripananda.

Swami Kripananda, the advance agent of Swami Vivekananda, has been in the city two days, stopping at the Utopia. He talked enthusiastically of his brother, and of the work he has been doing in New York, and hopes to do here.

"I have always been a seeker for truth," said he. "I studied many religions and found some truth in all, but all too much encrusted with superstition, until I became a materialist, and remained so until I met the swami in New York just after he came here, and was helped to find the truth. I have lived with him three years since, and learned to know that religious experiences are as capable of demonstration as any other fact in science, that they can be proved, that we may see God. I am an American citizen, and was educated in Germany and France. I have lived in this country for years. I used to have a paper in the south myself, and was later connected with one of the largest dailies in New York.

"The swami will remain here about two weeks, holding classes at 420 Second avenue [the Richelieu Hotel], at 11 a.m. and 8 p.m., every day, beginning Wednesday. They will be free. Religious teaching cannot be sold for dollars and cents. He has had great success in New York for the last three months, holding daily classes with large attendance, and bringing many to the truth. He will go to Boston from here and Harvard, then after a week in Chicago he goes to England, where Lady Dudley and others have long been interested.

Will Go Into A Cave.

"He will spend the summer there and then return to India, where he will retire to a cave for maybe two or three years for contemplation and introspection, as pious monks do. I was initiated by him to the order of Sanyasens, or announcers of the truth, and will remain here after he goes, to continue his work.

"How will I live? I will get some work to earn enough to keep body and soul together. We take three vows before we are initiate—-poverty, chastity and homelessness. 'Not I, but you,' is the watchword of a sanyasen. We work for the love of the good. Religion should not be made a profession."

Swami Vivekananda has written a book and some pamphlets on the faith which Kripananda admitted would be sold, and the receipts used for the benefit of the poor among the Swami's disciples.

The following day (March 3) the Detroit Tribune, which seems to have been little more than an echo of the Evening ,News, printed a summary of Thoburn's attack under the headlines:

ROASTS KANANDA.

Rev. J. M. Thoburn Never Heard of the Hindoo in Calcutta

The Free Press, which should have known better, followed suit:

BABOO N. N. DUTTA, B.A.

IS THIS VIVE KANANDA'S TRUE AND ONLY NAME?

Rev. J. M. Thoburn Will Deliver a Sermon About Him.

. . . "I regard the Swami as a very dangerous man," said the pastor. "He is more dangerous than Bob Ingersoll, because he is more subtle. He received his education from the Christians and came near being a Christian at one time. Mr. K. C. Banarji, one of the leading barristers in Calcutta, referred to him. as the 'self style Swami.' "

"I intend to preach a sermon on the matter. next Sunday," said the pastor. "I think it my duty to open the eyes of the public regarding the character of this man."

The Reverend Thoburn's ill-informed attempts to discredit Swamiji were scarcely worth a direct rejoinder. Even in the early days, Swamiji's consistent reply to those whose purpose was to destroy his reputation and his work had been silence; he had, moreover, asked his followers in India to refrain from giving battle. "Tell my friends that a uniform silence is all my answer to my detractors . . .," he had written to Alasinga in September of 1894. "Tell them that the truth will take care of itself, and that they are not to fight anybody for me.'[6] (Thoburn's virulence, it may be noted here, was too much for Alasinga. Reading Detroit newspaper clippings, he wrote a long and forceful letter in Swamiji's defense to the editor of the Detroit Evening News. It was printed by the ,News-Tribune of Sunday, June 7, 1896, and is given in full in Appendix A.) Kripananda was, of course, well aware of Swamiji's policy of silence in the face of even the most outrageous slander; yet one cannot blame him too much for wanting to somehow get matters under control before his guru arrived in Detroit. "The Swami, as you will see from [the] last clipping sent to you, has now more advertisement than he cared for," he wrote to Mrs. Bull on March 3. "I, too, unvoluntarily am drawn into the controversy; but of course, though I would be indifferent to attacks on myself, I can not suffer untruths to be spread concerning the Swami without refuting them. The Rev. Thoburn . . . announces a sermon for next Sunday about the Swami.'[7]

Kripananda's refutation appeared in the Evening News of March 3:

CHANGES NAMES

SANYASENS ALWAYS TAKE MONKISH TITLES. 

KRIPANANDA EXPLAINS AWAY REV. 

THOBURN'S CHARGES. GRECE SAYS VIVEKANANDA IS WELL KNOWN IN INDIA

Detroit Lawyer Found the Prophet Honored at Home.

Swami Vivekananda missed his train yesterday, but is expected today. Swami Kripananda, his advance agent, seemed little disturbed by the attack made upon his master by Rev. J. M. Thoburn in yesterday's News.

"It is true," said he, "that the name by which we know the Swami is not that by which he was known when studying law in Calcutta. His real name is Baboo Norendra Nath Dutta. So, my real name is not Kripananda. When one becomes a Hindoo monk he takes a monkish name, the same as do those who join some of the orders in other churches. Swami is the title the same as 'reverend' or 'brother' or 'father.'

These attacks we expect. The militant spirit seems to be strong in the missionary world. It is not Christian. I call a Christian one who lives the life of Christ. There is very little religion among some of these people. They stir up strife. I suppose they fear the Swami may interfere with their collections for Indian missions. The Swami never answers slanderous attacks. They only react upon those who assail him. He lives his life for the good of others. He knows God, and these petty things cannot disturb him. 

"As to the Swami not being known in India, Mr. Kripananda said: "Why, the rajahs worship him as a holy man. Those who have touched his garments dare not tell a lie, and a maharajah is proud to wash his feet."

Kripananda was greatly disturbed because the picture of the holy man Ramakrishna had been printed in connection with the attack. He considered it blasphemy.

Edward S. Grece, of Detroit, recently returned from India, says:

"I have noticed in The News the statement of Rev. M. Thoburn, regarding Vivekananda. It was my pleasure to meet many in India who know him and words of commendation and praise were always given in his behalf. On his return to India after his tour through America, and his grand reception at the world's congress of religions, he was received everywhere, except by the Christian missionaries, with open arms. (Mr. Grece erred: Swamiji had not returned to India.]

"At Madras he delivered an address which was printed in pamphlet form and circulated everywhere. I have a copy of this address. The people of India are not much given to recognizing frauds, and knowing Vivekananda as well as he is known in India, it is not likely he would be received and loved as he is there, even among the orthodox Hindoos, if he were other than what he has heretofore been known to Americans and Europeans.

"Is there not room in our midst for the teachings of these eastern sages? If they have the truth can we not tolerate it? And if what they say is false, surely the people may judge. Nothing is gained against such men by calumny.

"Let me add that while at Adyar, near Madras, I was called upon to address an audience of intelligent Hindoos on Vivekananda in America."

("Mr. Grece is a lawyer highly respected in this city," Kripananda explained to Mrs. Bull, to whom he sent a clipping of the above article. "He and his wife had returned a short time ago from a trip to India. He had called on me and told me of all the good things he had heard about the Swami when in India, and when the slanderous attack appeared he readily consented to my request to refute the false statements made therein).'[8]

But the same day (March 3) on which it published Kripananda's brave but ineffectual attempt to set things straight, the Evening News also published an editorial which for sheer vulgarity outdid the Reverend Mr. Thoburn himself. It read:

A CLEVER HINDOO BOOK AGENT.

Whether or not the Swami Vivekananda that we know here in Detroit is the only genuine blown-in-the-bottle Swami Vivekananda of unpronounceable Hindoo birth and surroundings, is not of the slightest consequence. The Hindoo-Brahmin-Buddhistic fad of an effete and rotten orientalism has run its course in the west, and it has been found that there is nothing in it. The statement can be proved by the infallible test of personal experiment. Before the world's congress of religions at Chicago, a, great deal of attention had already been given by western scholars to the "ethnic religions" of the east, and already the new learning had begun to filter down among the commoner sort of students so that everybody had a smaller or larger smattering of the system of Confucius, Zoroaster, Gautama and the rest of 'em. Half the people of the country who affect a degree of intellectuality in these matters had come to think half way that the old religions of the east contained a good deal of truth and beauty that Christianity knows nothing about.

After all these eastern isms had had their say, there was a regular mania throughout the occident for the religions that had done little for the masses of their votaries but to make dirty, lazy beggars of them. Detroit was specially favored by the presence through a formal course of  lectures of one of the high priests of one of these old systems. He told not a single truth that does not form a stone in the foundation of our own western faith, but whenever Kananda said a pretty and truthful thing which may be heard in christian pulpits every day, he was applauded to the echo by people who know so little about the religion of their own fathers that they actually thought this brown-faced Hindoo was making a new revelation to them—such honor have the prophets away from their own countries!

Now here is the test and the challenge. The News challenges anybody in the state of Michigan to name a single new truth or thought or religious idea which Kananda gave him, and which is not a part of the already existing common stock of our own christian knowledge, and which the person challenged has taken into his life for his mental and moral enlargement. In other and briefer words, we challenge a man or woman to point to a single spiritual benefit he or she has derived from this Hindoo which was not accessible in the treasuries of christian learning. Kananda had come to be forgotten and his work had utterly perished with him. And now he is back again! His very presence as a representative of an effete system with his personality we have nothing to do—is no compliment to the intelligence or the religious stability of Detroit. Kananda has not a thing of value to offer to people trained in christian modes of thought. But the clever Hindoo has, according to his advance agent, some books and pamphlets for sale and therein probably lies the true reason for his return to Detroit. The modern book agent is a wonder.

On the same page in a column of brief and caustic comments one could read: "If Swami Vivekananda really wants converts here he won't be too sudden about introducing the Ramakrishna style of apparel. " It was also noted that Professor Max Muller could "converse in 18 different languages," which threw Kripananda's ten into deep shade.

2

This was the frenzy into which the newspapers had worked themselves when Swamiji arrived in Detroit on the night of Tuesday, March 3. It is not likely that anyone met him at the depot (for he had not sent word of his delayed arrival); nor is it likely that he read the local papers at that late hour. It may not, then, have been until the following morning that he learned of the commotion in the press and not until he came down to the parlor at the Richelieu Hotel to greet, as he supposed, his assembled friends, that he received his first shock. It was a stunning one. In the large crowd that awaited him there was only one familiar face. The rest were strangers, curious, sensation-seeking. Mr. Goodwin indignantly wrote of the situation to Mrs. Bull. His letter, dated March 5, read:

The Swami reached here at about half an hour before midnight on Tuesday & yesterday gave two lectures —morning & evening, both of them The Ideal of a universal Religion. There has been considerable confusion here I am sorry to say. When we arrived we found that a newspaper war had been in course of progress. Charges had been made against the Swami & they had been, injudiciously, refuted. The consequence was that his arrival had been made thoroughly public property, &, the classes which he had intended as entirely private to friends, degenerated into public classes. At the first, indeed, only one of his friends was present, & the room was filled with strangers. It has been decided, to overcome the difficulty, to give three public classes, & to confine the remainder to his friends. The unfortunate part of the matter was that the Swami himself was very much upset at the miscarriage of intentions, but the rearrangement has put him more at ease. I hope that there will be no more difficulty & can assure you that anything I can do to help the ladies here to that end will be done?.[9]

The crowds at Swamiji's second class, held on Wednesday evening, were as dense as they had been in the morning, if not more so. The scene was described by a Tribune reporter, whose write-up appeared the following day (March 5):

VIVEKANANDA'S PHILOSOPHY

He Would Have Many Kinds of Religion.

Vivekananda, the Hindoo missionary, lectured at the Hotel Richelieu last night. The parlors of the private hotel were filled to overflowing with a crowd of ladies. When Vivekananda arrived at the hotel it was with difficulty he worked his way in. He went upstairs and very shortly came down again robed in a purple gown, caught about the waist with a purple cord.

Vivekananda in his talk said that there were various religions and each believer thought his religion the only true religion. It was a mistake, he said, to suppose that all should have the same religion.

"If all were of the same religious opinion," said he, "there would be no religion. No sooner does a religion start than it breaks into pieces. The process is for the religion to go on dividing until each man has his own religion, until each man has thought out his own thoughts and carved out for himself his own religion."

Vivekananda will remain in Detroit about two weeks and will give classes every morning at 11 o'clock and every evening at 8 o'clock at the hotel. The announcement was made that his next public lecture would be Monday. 

While Swamiji had been upset by the large number of strangers who flocked to his classes, crowding out his disciples and friends, the absurd newspaper attack on his integrity was in itself harmless and did not disturb him. When asked why he did not defend himself against the Thoburns,(5) who threatened to "hound him out of Detroit," he replied, recalling Sri Ramakrishna's counsel, "The dog barks at the elephant, is the elephant affected? What does the elephent care?'[10] But the flagrant misuse of his Master's sacred photograph was another matter. When Swamiji saw it printed with malign intent on the front page of the Evening News he cried out, "Oh! This is blasphemy!'[11]

Swamiji was not pleased with his disciple. "When he arrived here," Kripananda wrote in retrospect to Mrs. Bull, "not a question he asked if I had a place where to lay my head upon— how I lived, whether I had any means to live—and he knew very well that I had not means. But instead reproaches.'[12]

Actually, Swamiji knew very well that his disciple had means for at least a week; he himself had given him more than enough money for this Detroit sojourn; Kripananda was not destitute just then. Yet he suffered, understandably enough, from corroding jealousy, and Swamiji's apparent indifference was magnified by his mind into rejection. Josiah Goodwin, young and competently filling the place Kripananda had earlier deserted, did nothing to help matters. "In Detroit I was a perfect stranger to [Swamiji]", the latter continued in the same letter, "and when I dared to call on him, I had to leave after five minutes stay carrying with me away the bitter feeling of humiliation. By his new favorite I was insulted and put to public shame in the most outrageous manner.'[13] (By "public" Kripananda generally meant that there was a third person present.)

Mr. Goodwin gave his own version of what must have been this same scene in a letter of March 9 to Mrs. Bull. "I am avoiding all unpleasantness with Kripananda," he wrote, "altho I did once lose my temper & accuse him of self advertisement'[14] If Kripananda's self advertisement, if such it was, had been his only indiscretion during the three and a half days he had been on his own in Detroit, peace might soon have been restored. He was not to blame, after all, for the malice of Swamiji's enemies. But as will be seen later, his bitterness of mind had led him to further and more serious mistakes, which seemed almost deliberately self-destructive.

How the attempted rearrangement of Swamiji's classes worked out is not known. But as the days went by a natural selection very likely took place: Swamiji's old friends must have soon learned to arrive early, and those strangers not seriously interested must have soon dropped away. Meanwhile, many of those who had been strangers became friends, and the classes remained crowded. Indeed, it was not altogether unfortunate that so many newcomers had been pushed by curiosity into the Hotel Richelieu; for they returned again and again, caught up in the radiance of the "Hindoo priest." How many must have exclaimed, as had Christina Greenstidel and Mary Funke two years before, "If we had missed this !'[15]

On March 11, a week after Swamiji's arrival in the city, Kripananda wrote to Mrs. Bull, "The classes the Swami had so far were filled to overcrowding. The parlour, the hall, the staircase could not hold the great crowd of people who—in Spite of the attack made against the Swami in the newspapers, had come to listen to his teachings.'[16] From another source one also learns of the crowds that attended Swamiji's classes as well as something of Swamiji himself. Recalling those days, Mrs. Funke wrote in her sketch "The Master," "They [Swamiji and Goodwin] occupied a suite of rooms at The Richelieu, a small family hotel, and had the use of the large drawing room for class work and lectures. The room was not large enough to accommodate the crowds and to our great regret many were turned away. The room, as also the hall, staircase and library were literally packed. At that time he was all Bhakti—the love for God was a hunger and a thirst. A kind of divine madness seemed to take possession of him, as if his heart would  burst with longing for the Beloved Mother.'[17]

Detroit's mixed reaction to Swamiji provides a clear picture of his position vis-a-vis the American religious scene at the end of the nineteenth century. Although the city's population was under three hundred thousand, its church life represented in concentrated form the religious thought prevalent throughout the Midwest—a section of the country in which religion was taken with intense seriousness. On the one hand, Detroit seems to have contained more than its share of "old-time" ministers and missionaries who were afflicted with minds as tight and hard as clenched fists, minds gnarled with suspicion of and hatred for anything beyond their own small purview. On the other hand, it was not an unsophisticated or culturally backward city.

Detroit's wealthy citizens looked toward the East Coast for intellectual stimulus, and among the young a liberal outlook was growing fashionable; the "old-time religion" was rapidly losing ground to the universe of science with its expanding horizons and astounding revelations. Even before Swamiji's first hurricane like descent upon the city in 1894, Detroit was a battleground of the old and the new, and many a bystander was caught betwixt and between. Educated truth-seekers could no longer listen to old-fashioned preachers without acute uneasiness of mind, but neither could they listen to more modern, secularly oriented ministers without uneasiness of soul. Caught between a creed they could no longer believe and one that substituted a doctrine of social service for a living faith, they experienced a profound restlessness. They wandered, as had Christina Greenstidel and Mary Funke, from one lecture or sermon to another, seeking they knew not what. In the 1890s every American city contained such religious nomads; but Detroit seems to have been abundantly supplied. In no other large city had people flocked with the almost frantic eagerness of the half starved to hear Swamiji, and, significantly, in no other American city had he been so violently opposed. But now, two years after he had decisively won his battle, only  the ill-informed and ill-advised Mr. Thoburn, egged on by the newspapers, was foolish enough to stand against him. The Reverend Mr. Thoburn was, one might say, the last of the Missoos. (6)

While Swamiji held his classes at the Richelieu, the newspapers raved on. "HOW ABOUT KANANDA?" the journal asked on March 5, and assuming the role of public guardian, followed this query with an editorial, which read in part:

In view of the serious charges reflecting upon his standing and character in his representative capacity, it would seem to devolve upon the Hindoo monk, "Swami Vivekananda," to vindicate himself if he can and prove beyond the possibility of a doubt that he is what he represents himself to be. The charges preferred brand him as an impostor and the testimony offered by those who make the charges is of a character which cannot well be ignored. If he is an impostor, it is due to those who are being imposed upon to know it. If he is not, it is due both to him and the public that the proof of his sincerity be at once established....

The world is too largely populated with innocent fools and clever rascals to make it a barren field for impostors to work in but it is nevertheless our duty to save as much pasture as possible for the true and worthy.

The following day the Detroit Tribune pursued another line of attack by plastering across its front page a three-column-wide caricature (a poor one) of Swamiji standing on a dais and reading from a book. Surrounding him in various attitudes of rapt adoration were a cluster of fashionable women in informal evening dress. Two potted palms, which may have been part of the decor of the Richelieu parlor, completed the picture. Across the top were the words: "VIVEKANANDA’S FERTILE MISSIONARY FIELD." At the bottom, a caption read: "Where  The Apostle of Hindoo Mysticism Seeks Converts in the City of the Straits." This was an old trick, used as early as 1893, when Swamiji's detractors had sought to belittle his success by pointing out that his audience consisted primarily of women. In what sense this was a discredit to him, neither the women of America nor Swamiji himself ever understood.

And then on March 8 the Reverend Mr. Thoburn gave the Sunday sermon he had promised. It was not, as he had promised, on the character of Swamiji, but was replete nevertheless with "a half hour prelude with the stereoptican, wherein pictures [were] shown which [he] brought from India, contrasting Brahminism and Buddhism with Christianity, particularly in the temples and people these different systems have produced.'[18] 

(5)Writing of Swamiji’s reaction to this unpleasant episode, Sister Christine refers to “the machinations of a family of missionaries long connected with Calcutta” (Rem., pages 202-3; italics mine).
(6)In his unedited letters to Mary Hale Swamiji referred to Christian missionaries of the Rev. Mr. Thoburn breed as the Minsoos. The term was a pleasantry of the era.

On Monday, March 9, three of Detroit's leading newspapers reported on the sermon with similar articles. It will be enough to quote briefly here from that of the Tribune:

KANANDA'S CREED

IT WAS ROASTED HARD BY REV. J. M. THOBURN.

HIS RELIGION IS DEGRADING

It Makes Slaves of Women, and American Women 

Should be Slow to Favor It.

Rev. J. M. Thoburn spoke of "Comparative religions" at the Central M.E. church last evening, denouncing the religions of India, and particularly those taught by Vivekananda, although the latter's name was not mentioned.

Rev. Mr. Thoburn lived in India for four years, and he stated that he felt capable of talking intelligently on the subject....

"The fact is [Thoburn said], Hinduism has gone into partnership with sin. No vice is ever rebuked at her altars. 'The brides of Krishna' are 10,000 fallen women. Oh! if our American women only knew what slaves the religions of India made of their sisters there, they would be very slow to crowd the audience of a mystic pundit who dares to champion such degrading superstitions.

". . . How men and women of culture and intelligence can rave over the mental and rhetorical gymnastics of an aristocratic yogee from the plains of Hindustan is a freak which cannot be accounted for on any other basis than cataleptic hysteria.

"The renaissance of Sanscrit literature, Edwin Arnold's poetry and the religious menagerie held at Chicago during the world's fair are responsible for the oriental religious fad which has swept over England and America. I have lived in India for four years. I have witnessed its blight on character and truth. I have seen the kind of people it produces, and have viewed with horror its deified vice. A pigsty looks artistic under the magic of moonshine, when you are at a safe distance from its odors. Hinduism enamors only those who have never gotten up close to it."

And so on. Even the newspapers were embarrassed by the Reverend Mr. Thoburn's "Comparative Religions." Having stirred him into giving a sermon against Swamiji, they now reproved him in one or two editorials for his failure to exert an uplifting Christian influence on the people of Detroit. In addition, the Evening News, the first paper to have interviewed Thoburn, now promptly interviewed Rabbi Grossmann, certain of an entertaining commentary on the missionary's empty and abrasive rhetoric. The article in which the rabbi was quoted appeared on March 9 and read in part:

ROASTS THOBURN

Rabbi Grossmann expressed some pointed views this morning about Rev. Dr. Thoburn's roast of Buddhism last evening at the Central M.E. church.

"I cannot suppose," said Rabbi Grossmann, "that since Dr. Thoburn was during his four years' stay in India in the devout communion of the christian missionaries and was religiously preoccupied with the salvation of souls, he had much leisure to go to the literary and metaphysical sources of the counterfeit religions he saw there, but he quotes from the Hindu Tract society, and that sort of literature seems very satisfactory to him. But there was one thing in which Rev. Dr. Thoburn has profited very much, and he must have edified his congregation very much indeed, and they must have regarded him as very powerful. I confess I relished his eloquence; it is so churchy, you know. Listen to his list of arguments: 'Perversion, distortion, mythological shadows, demon-worshiper, revolting mystic, degrading godless, nauseating compound, paganism that was dumped, emasculated, mental and rhetorical gymnastics, aristocratic yogee, cataleptic hysteria,' and—this was probably the climax of his christian zeal—'pigsty looking artistic under the magic of moonshine.' Dr. Thoburn is ingenious, but his ingenuity is medievalism revamped, and that none of us want in the city of Detroit today, even if a Hindu is in town....

. . . As to the merits of that which Swami Vivekananda has said, the auditors of Dr. Thoburn can best assure themselves in the way in which we Americans usually do assure ourselves—by going to hear the man. If Kananda is really an exhibit of the vices which Dr. Thoburn has taken pains to describe in a succession of names, it would seem that the presence of the man in this country should be regarded by the church as felicitous and a substantial help. If this christian minister is sure of the superiority of his faith, he can well afford to leave the alternative of the choice to sensible people. If he is not sure of it, he will hardly improve his chances by resorting to abuse. I do not mean to be understood, however, as defending Vivekananda."

If the Evening News had quoted Rabbi Grossmann correctly,  it is strange that he did not mean to be understood as defending Swamiji. The rabbi, whom Kripananda described as "a learned young man,'[19] had spoken in support of Swamiji in February of 1894, when it was a daring thing to do. He had delivered a Sunday lecture entitled "What Vivekananda Has Taught Us," during the course of which he had said, among other things in praise of Swamiji, "Kananda has told us something of the heathen with a clearness, with a precision, with a candor, which puts to shame the confused and vehement pretension which so long has usurped an unrighteous prestige in church and religion.... Let us learn from the Hindu the lesson that God lives and reigns, now and ever, that God is in every flower of the field; in every breath of the air; in every throb of our blood.'[20]

If a seed of doubt regarding Swamiji's status had been sown in the rabbi's mind by the press, he had the decency to go now to Swamiji himself to have the matter cleared up. Sometime during the second week in March the two men met, and as a result, the rabbi offered his temple—the Temple Beth-El—for Swamiji's use on Sunday evening, March 15. The lecture Swamiji was to give that evening would be one of the most largely attended and enthusiastically received that he had given in the United States.

It is significant that the efforts of the newspapers in 1896 to stir up another controversy over Swamiji fell as flat as had Thoburn's sermon. Few people bothered to express their views on the subject. Even the articulate O. P. Deldoc, who in 1894 had written long and vigorous letters to the Free Press, castigating the bigotry of the age with many a zestful metaphor, was now silent. Swamiji's battle had been won, and the people of Detroit were fully aware of it. They welcomed him with open arms, and it is unlikely that any of those hundreds who had heard him speak in 1894 and who heard him now gave the slightest importance to Thoburn's outmoded and tiresome charges. Those who feared the Hindoo monk no longer dared publicly oppose him; those who loved and honored him knew  that he no longer needed defense. Indeed Swamiji had well known whereof he spoke when, a few months after his first visit to Detroit, he had written to India, "The torch has been applied and the conflagration that has set in through the grace of the Guru will not be put out. In course of time the bigots will have their breath knocked out of them.'[21]


3

Swamiji had many friends in Detroit. To those he had made in 1894, among whom were Mrs. John J. Bagley, the Honorable Thomas W. Palmer, and Mr. Charles Freer, he had since added many others, including a Mrs. Speers, who lived at the Richelieu, a Mrs. Phelps (whom he may have met earlier and who had tried in September of 1895 to help Kripananda), Christina Greenstidel, who lived with her mother and four younger sisters at 418 Alfred Street, the heart of the city's German district, and Mrs. Mary Funke, who lived nearby with her husband, Charles, a well-to-do wholesale and retail grocer. Then there was Stella Campbell, one of Swamiji's students at Thousand Island Park, who had now secluded herself on a small island in one of the many lakes around Detroit. Although Stella was determinedly reclusive, it is hard to think that she did not come into the city at least once to see her guru. But the closest of his earlier friends—she in whose home he had been an honored guest for many weeks. and who had bravely and devotedly championed him when he had been maligned—was not in the city. Mrs. Bagley was in Colorado tending a daughter, who was recovering from tuberculosis. She was never again to see Swamiji; before his next visit to America she would die, still in Colorado, from an attack of appendicitis.

Holding classes morning and evening and giving interviews in the afternoon, as was generally his custom, Swamiji had less time than he had had in 1894 to accept formal invitations. Yet no doubt he often dined informally at the homes of his close friends, and no one could be as delightfully informal as Swamiji. 

The teacher who held crowds of people spellbound by the very transcendence of his personality and whose majesty of bearing could inspire awe, could also play with the light-heartedness of a child. The simplest occasion became in his presence a joyous festival, where all formality and shyness disappeared. The life tells us of an unplanned dinner at the home of one of his Detroit friends:

On a certain occasion he went to the house of one of his admirers and, with that unique sense of freedom and frankness which was his, asked to be allowed to cook an Indian meal himself. The request was immediately granted, and then to the amusement of everyone present, he gathered from his pockets some score or more of tiny packets filled with finely ground condiments and spices. These had been sent all the way from India, and wherever he went these packets went with him, At one time, one of his choicest and most prized possessions was a bottle of chutney some gentleman had thoughtfully sent him from Madras. His Western disciples delighted to have him cook his own dishes in their kitchens. They helped him also in this, and thus time would pass by in merriment and making new experiments. He would make the dishes so hot with spices that they were not palatable to a Western taste, and many times the preparations took so long that when the food was ready to be served the party was literally ravenous, Then there would be much talk and laughter, and he would take the keenest delight in seeing how the Western tongue stood the hot-spiced dishes of distant Hindusthan. They were, no doubt, soothing to his high-strung temperament and tired nerves, but certainly not "good for his liver " as he insisted they  were.'[22]

There is no way of knowing how many disciples Swamiji made in Detroit, but that many people became his followers is certain, and to be a direct follower of his was no small matter.  No one who came close to him could have ignored, or ever forgotten, the fact that such a man actually existed. Henceforth, if only unconsciously, all other experience would be judged by the touchstone of his being, and the direction of one's life would tend toward that which he had so vividly and unmistakably personified. The experience of coming face to face with Swamiji would have been in itself a kind of initiation, a plunge into the current of spiritual life. Nor can one doubt that he bestowed his liberating blessing upon all whom he met, silently, permanently removing deep-seated obstructions that had long blocked their paths; one cannot doubt that he thus turned hundreds of lives toward freedom, for to do so was in his power.

It is probable, however, that in Detroit several men and women, if not many, became his formal disciples and that some took their first monastic vows. In Kripananda's letter of March 22 to the Brahmavadin one reads, "In Detroit, too, several persons joined the children of Sri Ramakrishna.'[23]It is interesting to note that at least one and a half of those who received. the vows of brahmacharya from Swamiji had been Kripananda's own disciples. "Two Brahmacharyas were made," he wrote to Mrs. Bull on March 11. "Miss Hamilton half the Swami's disciple and half my own pupil took the vow of Bramacharina and so did Mr. Edwards, my disciple.'[24]

One wonders how Swamiji felt about having only half a disciple in Miss Martha Hamilton. Perhaps, if he knew of it, he let it pass so as not to give more pain to Kripananda, who was to be sorely in need of the sympathy and friendship that Miss Hamilton could and would offer him.(7) The hopes that Swamiji had held for his sannyasin disciple had been shattered; much as he loved Kripananda, much as he recognized his good qualities and potential strengths, it had become impossible for him to introduce him to Detroit as his successor, as he had intended. Kripananda had not only inadvertently triggered a newspaper war, which was forgivable enough, but had talked, apparently with malice and certainly with indiscretion, against  the officers of the New York Vedanta Society. On March 11 Mr. Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull, informing her of Kripananda's distressing and, one might say, distraught accusations.

There has been so much misrepresentation not only of myself but of everyone in New York, here, that I want to ask you to let me pay my own expenses in coming here & while here. The Principal charge made before we reached here was that the Swami had been systematically "robbed" in New York. This was the word used. The charge went further & said that he had not even been allowed carfare, & that I had been sent here by the Vedanta Society to act as a spy over him & get what I could out of him for the Vedanta Society. It was also carefully circulated that I was getting $18 a week here & had been throughout, & was in the general movement. I suppose I need not tell you who was the author of this, (Kripananda) who added that he had lived &, had his meals away from the Swami in New York rather than be a party to the robbery. He even went so far as to say that he had given the Swami the proceeds of anything he had written [news]papers about the Swami's work in New York. The Swami has since let this cat out of the bag (unintentionally) & has admitted that Kripananda has had hundreds of dollars from time to time, & that he even paid his fare to Detroit.

But the chief point is this, that nothing on my part shall be allowed to lend color of truth to the charge, & with your permission, to avoid this, I should like to refund to you my part of the expenses.'[25]

After months of smoldering, the fire of Kripananda's jealousy seems to have totally destroyed his judgment; one can only think that a sort of madness possessed him. But however explainable (and forgivable) his conduct may have been, it could not be overlooked. Swamiji could not possibly endorse the charges Kripananda had publicly made against the officers of  the New York Vedanta Society by sponsoring him in Detroit as a religious teacher. There seems to have been an element of selfdestruction in Swami Kripananda that defied any amount of grace; at least so it seemed during this difficult stretch of his life, when almost nothing he did was right.

There was, for instance, his teaching of the "Tattvas" —whatever those may have been. On March 9 Mr. Goodwin, who lost few opportunities to criticize poor Kripananda, though not without justification, had written to Mrs. Bull:

I really am afraid the Swami will make a mistake in doing as he proposes—letting him [Kripananda] go his own way. Mrs. Phunke, Miss Greenstidel, & two other ladies here, whose names I do not remember, have told me that he has been systematically preaching Tatvas, entirely unknown to the Swami, & they are confident he will continue this directly the Swami's back is turned. This would be degradation of the Swami's teaching & would not only not lead to spirituality, but would make the road to spirituality harder & more obscure. I do not wish to pose as a saint. I have nothing of saintliness, but I do say that this teaching has got a firm enough hold on me to make the idea of such a result as Krapananda's connection with the work seems to promise thoroughly repugnant to me.'[26]

What the young Mr. Goodwin thought of Swami Kripananda's connection with Swamiji's work was, of course, neither here nor there. But Swamiji himself, while never forbidding his disciples to teach in accordance with their own understanding and temperament, could not authorize the preaching of the "Tattvas," which, as the Detroit ladies had correctly surmised, Kripananda was intent upon. As far as can be understood, the term Tattvas, as Kripananda and others were using it, signified a type of Kundalini yoga with emphasis on various stages of psychic experience. (See note for Volume Three, .chapter five, page 379.) This was a kind of teaching Swamiji strongly advised against; yet, for all the fuss the ladies made, Kripananda's "Tattvas" do not seem to have been on the dark or lefthand side or to have warranted the disapproval Mrs. Bull conveyed when she later rebuked him for having "tampered with unclean books & taught from them.'[27]

Kripananda's stars seem to have been particularly awry during that month of March 1896—or, if one prefers, his bad karmas seem to have been pelting down upon his head like apples from a shaken tree. Before the month was out even an earlier indiscretion dropped its missile fruit. As was seen in the last volume, one of Kripananda's duties was to write a monthly letter to the Brahmavadin, reporting upon the progress of Swamiji's work. In January of 1896 his newsletter from New York had consisted in large part of a heated diatribe against Theosophical and spiritualist groups, as well as other "religious and irreligious monstrosities" that then abounded in America. "In this Bedlam of religious cranks," he wrote, "in this devil's kitchen of fraud, imposture and knavery, the Swami appeared to teach the lofty religion of the Vedas, the profound philosophy of the Vedanta, the sublime wisdom of the ancient Rishis.... He denounced fraud and superstition in whatever guise they appeared, and all those untrue and erratic existences hid themselves, like bats at the approach of daylight, in their haunts before this apostle of Truth.'[28]

(7) Miss Martha Hamilton had evidently met Swamiji at Greenacre in the summer of 1894. She had also met Mrs. Bull there.

It is not likely that in those busy New York days Swamiji had taken the time to read Kripananda's long and acrimonious letter before it was sent off to Madras. It was published in the February 15, 1896, issue of the Brahmavadin, and in the last part of March returned in printed form to America, where it came to the attention of one of Swamiji's New York friends and supporters, William Joseph Flagg. (7)Mr. Flagg wrote the following letter to Swamiji on March 23 :

(8) For information about William J. Flagg see Burke, Swami Vivekananda in the West, New Discoveries: His Prophetic Mission - Part Two (Hereafter called Prophetic Mission-2), chapter nine, section two.

My dear Master,

I enclose a cutting from the last Brahmavadin, to which I beg to call your attention. I am sure you would not sanction the insulting flings at

1 Americans in general.

2 The 6 million spiritualists.

3 The equally numerous "healers, scientists &c."

4 The Theosophical Society  which some indiscreet friend has been indulging in. "We do not catch bees with vinegar"

There can be no good done by making enemies, I do not think there is one fraud in a thousand of them. (except paid mediums)

I dont object to giving a scolding to the Scribes and Pharisees, and sinners in general, but do the sincere millions whom Mr. K is trying to kick deserve the epithets he flings?

You know they don't hit me, for I am neither a healer, a spiritualist, nor a Theosophist. All these naturally lean towards you, for they are all occultists & look upon India as the home of occultism. I see no good in driving them away.

I trust to see you on your way through: If you are subject to sea-sickness I have a specific for it. Yours most truly.[29]

Swamiji received Mr. Flagg's letter after he left Detroit and turned it over to Mrs. Bull to act upon. She promptly copied it out and, for his information, sent it on to Kripananda. On March 30 he replied to her:

I am sure the Master sanctions every word said in this article. If he should not do so now, it would only prove that he has changed his mind since it was written.

I wrote what I thought to be the truth and stand for it, whether people like it or not, provided I have the approval of my own conscience.

As you were so eager in sending me the letter—implying another reproach on your part, I trust you will show yourself just as eager in informing me of the Swami's opinion of the article.

You are, of course too busy at present to think of me, so I wont detain you with a long letter.[30]

Whether or not Swamiji's opinion was relayed to Kripananda we do not know; we do know, however, that he told Alasinga, editor of the Brahmavadin, his views on the matter:

A letter you published from Kripananda in the Brahmavadin was rather unfortunate. Kripananda is smarting under the blows the Theosophists [not "Christians" as in the Complete Works)(9) have given him and that sort of letter is vulgar, pitching into everybody. It is not in accord with the tone of the Brahmavadin. So in future when Kripananda writes, tone down everything that is an attack upon any sect, however cranky or crude. Nothing which is against any sect, good or bad, should get into the Brahmavadin. Of course, we must not show active sympathy with frauds.[31]

All in all, speaking, writing, and acting out of torments of emotion, Kripananda had managed to make one mistake after another, until finally he was in deep disrepute. To make matters worse, there are indications that in Detroit he had angrily berated Swamiji.. In a letter to Mrs. Bull, dated March 19, he wrote:

Had I no reason to be exasperated, not on account of my personal misery but on account of this betrayal of friendship? (The "betrayal of friendship" to which Kripananda referred here was Swamiji's failure on his arrival in Detroit to ask him if he had "a place to lay his head upon."] . . . You will say that it was all my own fault, that it was my irascible temper which caused all this trouble. I will plead guilty to this charge. But again let me ask, what made me so? I used to be respected, loved? There must be some cause for a man becoming mad. Your woman's tact ought long ago have guessed the real cause, and if so you ought not to condemn me. I am not perfect yet and have still human feelings. Can you not imagine the torments of one who after years [?] of faithful devotion sees himself thrown away like a dirty rag?[32]

In another letter Kripananda refers twice to "that fatal occurrence with the Swami,'[33]by which he may have meant the entire Detroit episode or some specific and critical occasion of which he assumed Mrs. Bull had been informed. But whatever Kripananda may have said to or about his guru, or however harshly the guru may have rebuked him, there was no change in Swamiji's love. One cannot but apply the following passage in Mary Funke's essay "The Master" to Swamiji's relationship with Kripananda:

He knew no malice. Did one abuse him, he would look thoughtful, repeat Siva, Siva, then his face would become illumined and he would say gently: "It is only the voice of the Beloved"; or if we who loved him would become indignant, he would ask: "What difference can it make when one knows that blamer, blamed, and praiser, praised, are one?[34]

But while Swamiji readily forgave Kripananda for his affronts to himself and those, less forgivable, to his friends—perhaps seeing in such behavior nothing worse than the inner twistings of a still unpurified but deep devotion—he was compelled for the sake of his work (and for the sake of the disciple himself) to maintain an outward coldness—a discipline that could be terrible indeed. But for his part, Kripananda seems to have recognized no causal relation between his own actions and those of his guru. Months later he was to relate to Mrs. Bull his own version of Swamiji's glacial treatment of him in Detroit.

(9) In his original letter to Alasinga (RKM, Belur), Swamijis’s word was Theosophs. One of Swami Kripananda’s difficulties was the amount of criticism he had been receiving from the members of the Theosophical Society in New York, from which he had resigned in early 1895. A little later he had written to Mrs. Bull: “I severed my connections with the [Theosophical] society and my associates, so that not the  p. 36 (cont) least particle of my time and devotion should be robbed on the Swami and his cause. I became his servant, his slave, his shadow, and I was ready to lear - and the Lord only knows how much I have - all the slander and abuse heaped on me by my former associates on account of my following the man who I regarded as the embodiment of divine truth” (Kripananda to Sara Bull, April 16, 1895, SCB). But Kripananda’s acidulous letter of January, 1896, to the Brahmavadin was a means of retaliation against his former associates at the expense of Swamiji’s cause of tolerance. There was, to be sure, much truth in his depictin of the religious, or quasireligious, groups in America that confronted Swamiji, and for this reason the Brahmanavadin letter has been quoted in various editions of the Life since 1913. Only recently has it become clear that this was the polemic to which Swamiji had objected in his letter dated March, 1896, to Alasinga, (Complete Works, 7:490). 

You know that the Swami, far from helping me to continue his work here, did everything to frustrate the very purpose for which he had me come to Detroit. Not only did he not announce to his classes that I would resume his work, but by his actions and talk showed that I was entirely estranged to him, so that even the few friends I had here turned away from me, and his very followers made me the subject of slander and calumny warning everybody not to avail themselves of my teachings. Some persons who had learned of my being in the city and desirous to take lessons went to ask at the Swami's residence of my whereabouts were purposely denied my address by the Landlord who from the Swami's public utterances implied his dislike for me. I know this as a fact.[35]

What Kripananda knew as facts were, particularly when his emotions were involved, largely fantasy. There is little doubt, however, that the estrangement between him and Swamiji in Detroit was apparent to everyone. Yet for the sake of his work, as well as for the sake of the disciple whom he loved and with whom his relationship was many-leveled and beyond our probing, there was surely nothing Swamiji could have done other than what he did.

4

On March 11 Mr. Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull, "The attacks which have been made on the Swami here, almost of daily occurrence, have urged him on to give a Sunday public lecture—altho' he does not acknowledge this as the reason—& the subject of it will be 'India's message to the West.' . . . It is sure to be one to inspire him.'[36]

As we saw earlier, Rabbi Grossmann had offered Swamiji the use of the Temple Beth-El, and on Saturday, March 14, the newspapers duly announced that the lecture would commence at eight o'clock the following evening and would be free. The News Tribune had more to say: on Sunday morning it published a long editorial clearly intended to dissuade all sensible people from attending the lecture. On the basis of Swamiji's New York pamphlet Bhakti-Yoga, the paper pronounced with authority "that those portions of [the Swami's] teachings that are true are not novel in the west, and those portions that are novel to westerners are not true." "The hearers and readers of Kananda," the editorial went on, "have always been struck by the similarity of most of his moral and spiritual teachings to those of the christian teachers. " And no wonder! Why, "Kananda was educated at Oxford in an atmosphere that is altogether christian." (One is reminded here of the St. Louis minister who, two years earlier, made the gratifying discovery that Swamiji had graduated from Harvard and owed everything but his robe and the color of his skin to the West.)[37]The editorial continued with a nastiness and an obtuseness that the present reader can be spared, and concluded: "Wherever Kananda's philosophy is untrue, it is so palpably untrue that the whole system would fall flat if it were not for the liberal mixture of christianity that it contains. Is this chase after the orientalism of an effete people to be charged up to the mental unbalance that seems to have come over the whole western world?"


If so, the people of Detroit were sorely deranged: they flocked to the Temple Beth-El that evening. Hundreds-those who failed to arrive at least an hour before the lecture was to begin were turned away. Every seat and every square inch of standing space, aisles and all; were filled. Swamiji, wearing his vivid robe and a white turban, was introduced by Rabbi Grossmann, whose talk, as Kripananda wrote to the Brahmavadin, "was one grand eulogy of the Hindus and Hinduism.'[38]


Although Swamiji had intended to lecture on "India's Message to the West," he changed his mind, perhaps at the last moment, and lectured instead on "The Ideal of a Universal Religion." This latter subject was, of course, not divorced from the former, yet in emphasis it was more in keeping with the message he wished to impress upon the American public during this second phase of his mission. Did he perhaps change his subject at the sight of his audience? He had been going to reply to his enemies, or, rather, to the maligners of his motherland, but facing him now were thousands of spiritual seekers. In the exalted mood of a world prophet he spoke not of India, but of Religion-of its basic meaning, of the endless variety of its expressions and practices, of the reality, certainty, and universality of its goal. This was a theme that he had spoken on often before--it had, indeed; been the subject of his first two classes at the Richelieu, and although no transcripts exist of any of Swamiji's Detroit talks-public or private-we can guess that this particular lecture was similar to those of the same title that he had given in New York and in Hartford and would give the following week in Boston. We need not dwell on those ideas here except to say that Swamiji felt it was of supreme importance that mankind comprehend them. "To learn this central secret that the truth may be one and yet many at the same time, that we may have different visions of the same truth from different standpoints, is exactly what must be done " he was to say in his lecture on Sri Ramakrishna later in the year. " . . This idea, above all other ideas, I find to be the crying necessity of the day.'[39]


The lecture was a stunning success. Two or three months later, when they were in London, Mr. Goodwin, recalling these American days, exclaimed to Swamiji, "Our biggest meeting was in Detroit. Nearly 6,000 people! That day your words came out with superhuman strength. I was mad with joy!'[40] Six thousand may have been an exaggeration, but even the Detroit newspapers had to admit that the temple had been packed solid. The longest accounts appeared in the Tribune and the Free Press of March 16 and read, respectively, as follows:

HEARD SWAMI TALK
VIVEKANANDA LECTURED IN TEMPLE BETH EL.
Spoke on the Ideal of a Universal 
Religion-He Will Probably 
Leave Tuesday

Temple Beth El was crowded to the doors last night when Swami Vivekananda delivered his address upon "The Ideal of a universal religion." The time announced for the service was 8 o'clock, but the congregation began to assemble at the temple early in the evening so that the doors had to be opened at 6:25 p.m. They were closed at 7 o'clock and the hundreds that arrived after that time had to be turned away.


"We all hear about universal brotherhood, and how societies stand up and want to preach this. -But to what does it amount? As soon as you make a sect you protest against equality, and thus it is no more," said Swami.


"Unity in variety is the plan of the universe. Just as we are all men, yet we are all separate. We find then, that if by the idea of a universal religion is meant one set of doctrines should be believed by all mankind, it is impossible, it can never be, any more than there will be a time when all faces will be the same. We must not seek that all of us should think alike, like Egyptian mummies in a museum, looking at each other without thought to think. It is this difference of thought, this differentiation, losing of the balance of thought, which is the very soul of our progress, the soul of thought."


Swami will probably leave Tuesday [March 17]. At the close of his address last night he thanked the people of Detroit For the kind reception tendered him and his philosophy.

THE WOMEN STOOD UP.
BIG CROWD TO SEE KANANDA AT THE TEMPLE BETH-EL.

It was a singular spectacle. Hundreds of Christians in a temple devoted to the worship of God after the manner of the Hebraic faith, and all listening eagerly to a discourse from a Hindoo priest, who discussed the religious customs of his hearers. Such was the scene at the Temple Beth-EI last evening, it having been announced that Swami Vive Kananda would speak. Before 7:30 every seat in the building was taken, and every aisle was taken up by people willing to stand wearily through the service to gratify their curiosity or learn a new lesson in religion. And not all that wanted to managed to get inside the building. For some time after the ceremonies had begun the voices of many could be heard in the hall as they tried unsuccessfully to push their way into the building.


It was noteworthy that the greater part of the audience were women. It seemed as if at least two-thirds of the attendants wore big hats and bonnets. It was the women and girls in the back part of the room that stood on chairs to look at the Hindoo monk and many of the fair ones in the audience stood in front of their seats in order that they might the better gaze upon the swarthy features of the man that seems to exercise a spell over Detroit's femininity.


There was applause when Rabbi Grossmann walked upon the platform with the Swami. After a flattering introduction by Dr. Grossmann Kananda, dressed in a red gown and with a white hood with long white streamers, began his address. He argued for the universal brotherhood of man, which he said would continue until every man was a sect unto himself; in fact until the right of every man to his own individual religious belief was fully established.


The power that emanated from Swamiji that evening was of a different quality than that which he had manifested during his visit to Detroit two years earlier. It had then been predominantly and necessarily the power that destroys "the wicked"-or, certainly, the obstructive; it was now predominantly that which "protects the righteous and establishes religion." The difference was a subtle one, but it was not lost upon Sister Christine, who had attended his Detroit lectures in 1894, been with him at Thousand Island Park, and now knew him well enough to detect different aspects of the same benevolent force. In a portion of her memoirs that has been recently made available to us by Mrs. Boshi Sen, Christine recalled Swamiji's Detroit lectures:

Vivekananda was to visit Detroit once more, but this time for only a short farewell visit.


When asked what preparation he made for speaking, he told us none-but neither did he go unprepared. He told us that usually before a lecture [no doubt during his first visit in Detroit] he heard a voice saying it all. The next day he repeated what he had heard. He did not say whose voice he heard. Whatever it was, it came as the expression of some great spiritual power, greater than his own normal power, released by the intensity of his concentration. This may have been quite unconscious. No written words can convey the vitality, the power, the majesty that came with his spoken words, What might happen to one's ideas, values, personality if this current of power were let loose upon them! It was great enough to move the world, let alone one little human personality, which was but as a straw upon its mighty current. It was force that could sweep everything before it. Old ideas would change, the purposes and aims of life, its values would change, old tendencies would be directed into a new channel, the entire personality would be transmuted....


. . . The spiritual force generated at such times was so great that some in the audience were lifted above the normal state of consciousness, so that it was possible to remember only the beginning of a lecture. After a certain point, there seemed a blank. The normal mind was no longer functioning; a higher state of consciousness, beyond reason and memory, had taken its place. Long after, perhaps, it would be found that during that period when the mind seemed blank, a specially deep impression had been made....


. . . After giving (his course of classes at the Richelieu Hotel], he was invited by his friend Rabbi Grossmann to speak at the Temple Beth-El on the last Sunday of his stay in Detroit. An hour before the time appointed the Temple was filled to its utmost capacity and it became necessary to close the doors. Hundreds were turned away. Others, refusing to be shut out, hammered on the doors and tried by every means to gain admittance. Just as the lecture was about to begin the clamour became so great that it seemed as if the mob would storm the place. But when he appeared on the platform a hush fell over the audience. I heard a foreign voice near me gasp, "How beautiful he is!" And indeed never was beauty more ethereal. At this time the power was not so obvious. It had been transformed into a diviner radiance and a deeper compassion for the world which he was soon to leave. So India often pictures her gods-robes and turbans of concentrated sunlight, complexion of gold, a divine radiance lighting the face, an inner stillness as of a deep pool. He rose and poured forth majestic truths in a voice which completed a beautiful harmony of appearance, voice, and message. Not a gesture was there to detract the mind from the intense concentration into which he had plunged his hearers.[41]


Mary Funke, also struck by the ethereal, still quality of Swamiji's presence, wrote in her own reminiscences of this period:

His last public appearance in Detroit was at the Temple Beth EI of which Rabbi Louis Grossman[n], an ardent admirer of the Swami, was the pastor. It was Sunday evening and so great was the crowd that we almost feared a panic. There was a solid line reaching far out into the street and hundreds were turned away. Vivekananda held the large audience spellbound, his subject being . . . "The Ideal of a Universal Religion." He gave us a most brilliant and masterly discourse. Never had I seen the Master look as he looked that night. There was something in his beauty not of earth.[42]


It was not until the eve of Swamiji's departure from Detroit that the city caught up on the news of 1894. One guesses that he had deliberately waited until his work in Detroit was over before making available to the papers the letter written to him by the Chairman of the Calcutta Meeting, which had long since been published in the papers of many other American cities. Coming at this late hour of his visit in Detroit, the letter acclaiming his work in America was obviously not published as a rejoinder to Thoburn and his kind, but as his parting assurance to his supporters that their trust had not been given to an impostor. That he felt he owed this to his friends was characteristic of his humility; yet the timing of his release of this letter to the Detroit papers had about it the immense dignity of the elephant passing through the marketplace, unmindful of the barking at its feet. On Monday, March 16, 1896, the day after his resoundingly successful public lecture and the day before his departure from the city, the Calcutta letter appeared in the Free Press with the following heading and introduction:

PRAISE FOR VIVE KANANDA LAUDED FOR HIS 

LEARNING BY BROTHER HINDOOS
Action Taken at a Public Meeting Held in Calcutta.

On account of the recent strictures passed upon Swami Vive Kananda the following proceedings of a public meeting, which was held in the town hall of Calcutta, September 5, 1894, will prove of interest. It was called by the representative men of the Hindoo community for the purpose of expressing their gratitude to him for his able representation of Hindooism at the Parliament of Religions, held during the world's fair. Some 4,000 people were present, and speeches in praise of Vive Kananda were made by the most learned men in the community, who lauded him both For his learning and his tact. Towards the close of the meeting the chairman, by resolution, sent the following letter to Vive Kananda:


The letter, addressed to Sreemat Vivekananda Swami by the Chairman of the Meeting, Raja Peary Mohun Mookerjee, followed in full and left no doubt at all that Swamiji was a bona fide representative of Hinduism and a real swami. It closed with the passage:


Hinduism has, for the first time in its history, found a Missionary, and by a rare good fortune it has found one so able and accomplished as yourself. Your fellow-countrymen, fellow-citizens and fellow-Hindus feel that they would be wanting in an obvious duty if they did not convey to you their hearty sympathy and earnest gratitude for all your labours, in spreading a true knowledge of the ancient faith. May God grant you strength and energy to carry on the good work you have begun![43]


That settled the matter as far as Swamiji's status and name were concerned. It was not, however, until June 7, when Alasinga Perumal's stalwart and eloquent letter was printed in the Detroit Sunday News-Tribune that the Reverend J. M. Thoburn was roundly answered point by point and as roundly roasted (see Appendix A). But by then Swamiji had left the city far behind.



ⓘ
[1] J.J Goodwin to Sara Bull, March 1, 1896, SCB.
[2] J.J. Goodwin to Sara Bull , February 27, 1896.
[3] Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, March 2, 1896, SCB.
[4] Sarah E. Waldo to Sara Bull, March 6, 1896, SCB.
[5] J.J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, March 9, 1896, SCB.
[6] Complete Works, 5 : 46.
[7] Kripananda to Sara Bull, March 3, 1896, SCB.
[8]  Kripananda to Sara Bull, March 3, 1896, SCB.
[9] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, March 5, 1896, SCB.
[10] Rem. (Sister Christine), pp. 202-3. (See Gospel, p. 84.)
[11] Life (1965), P- 404
[12] Kripananda to Sara Bull, March 19, 1896, SCB.
[13] Kripananda to Sara Bull, March 19, 1896, SCB.
[14] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, March 9, 1896, SCB.
[15] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 154.
[16] Kripananda to Sara Bull, March 11, 1896, SCB.
[17] Mary Funke, “The Master,” in "Inspired Talks" by Swami Vivekananda, 1934 ed., p. 32.
[18] Detroit Journal, 6 March 1896.
[19] Kripananda to Sara Bull, March 15, 1896, SCB.
[20] Prophetic Missions, chap. 6, sec. 5.
[21] Complete Works, 6 : 270-71.[22].Life (1965), PP- 398-99-
[23].Brahmavadin, April 25, 1896, p. 207.
[24].Kripananda to Sara Bull, March 11,    1896, SCB.
[25].J- J- Goodwin to Sara Bull, March 11,    1896, SCB.
[26].J- J- Goodwin to Sara Bull., March 9, 1896.
[27].Sara Bull to Kripananda, draft, late July, 1896, SCB.
[28].See Life (1965), pp. 341-42. (A portion of this same letter was quoted in a different connection in World Teachers, chap. 7, sec. 1.)
[29].William J. Flagg to Swami Vivek-ananda, March 23, 1896, SCB.
[30].Kripananda to Sara Bull, March 30,1896, SCB.
[31].Complete Works, 7 : 490.
[32].Kripananda to Sara Bull, March 19,    1896, SCB.
[33].Kripananda to Sara Bull, ., April 16, 1896, SCB.
[34].See ref. 17 above, pp. 20-21.
[35]. Kripananda to Sara Bull, July 27, 1896, SCB.[36].J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, March 11, 1896, SCB.
[37].See Prophetic Missions, chap. 4, sec. 3.
[38].See ref. 23 above.
[39].Complete Works, 4: 181. (This passage of “My Master” as published in the Complete Works is from the lecture Swamiji gave in England on Sri Ramakrishna.)
[40].Mahendra Nath Datta, Londone Swami, Vivekananda, part 1, chap. 5, p. 125. (Swami Yogeshananda’s English prdcis.)
[41].Sister Christine, “Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda,” (Chap. XV), Prabuddha Bharata, March 1978, PP- 138-39-
[42].See ref. 17 above, pp. 32-33.
[43] For Raja Peary Mohun Mooker-jee’s full letter see Life (1965), pp. 325-26. See also Prophetic Mission-2, chap. 10, sec. 3.

↑ Contents

4.2 BOSTON: MARCH 1896

Traveling straight from Detroit to Boston, a railway journey of some seven hundred and fifty miles, Swamiji and Mr. Goodwin arrived at their destination on the afternoon of March 18, 1896. The following evening, the third Thursday in the month, a rainy day with a temperature only a little above freezing, the Procopeia (Progress) Club held its monthly reception, at which Swamiji and his friends Mrs. Ole Bull, Miss Emma Thursby, and Mrs. Antoinette Sterling were among the honored guests. The Boston Evening Transcript of March 20. recounted the news:

DISTINGUISHED GUESTS AT THE PROCOPEIA

Swami Vivekananda, Mrs. Ole Bull, Miss Emma Thursby, Emil Paur, Wulf Fries, Miss Harriet Shaw, John Orth and Mrs. Antoinette Sterling were the special guests of the Procopeia Club at its rooms on St. Botolph street, last evening. The reception committee included: Mrs. George Seabury, Mrs. Winifred Barber, Mrs. F. R. Fibbetts and Mrs. W. H. Stearns.

The Procopeia Club's monthly receptions "are always thoroughly informal and homelike, but very largely attended," the young Ralph Waldo Trine, a member (perhaps an officer) of the Club who was later to become a well-known writer on metaphysics, had written to Miss Thursby a month earlier, inviting her on behalf of the reception committee not only to attend the March gathering but to sing at it. This was, he explained, to be a "musicians' evening," at which each musician was to "contribute his or her little share in a selection or two." As an incentive, Mr. Trine informed Miss Thursby that the Club was "planning to have Swami Vivekananda as the class teacher . . . about that time.'[1]Ralph Waldo Trine, who had been at Greenacre in the summer of 1894 as special correspondent for the Boston Evening Transcript, well knew that Swamiji would draw not only Miss Thursby to the Procopeia Club but many another seeker of truth. He had sued for Swamiji well in advance.

Even that first evening the club rooms were no doubt crowded with people who had come to see the famous Hindu as well as to hear the music, all of which would have been excellent. As vocalists, Emma Thursby and Antoinette Sterling, both of whom were world famous, were unsurpassed, and none but a first-rate musician (such as Mrs. Bull) would, one trusts, have presumed to perform on the same program with either of them. But "of course," as the Boston Daily Globe of March 20 commented in an article describing this Procopeia Club reception, "the chief interest of the evening centered in the Swami Vivekananda, whose oriental countenance and dress of rich dark red made him a conspicuous figure." And of course Swamiji was one of the guests of honor, being scheduled as the club's "class teacher" for the remainder of the month. Although on the following day (March 20) Swamiji went to Medford, a small town just north of Boston, to fill a lecture engagement there(1),' the Procopeia's musical reception marked the beginning of an eleven-day period in Boston and Cambridge that was to form a climactic finale to his five seasons of public lecturing in America.(2)

Boston was by no means an unfamiliar city to Swamiji. It was there in August of 1893 that he had delivered his first lecture in the West, a semi-public lecture before a faintly hostile Ramabai Circle. It was in Boston also that during this same early period he had been chased by a crowd of men and boys, enraged by the sight of an orange robe to the point of throwing stones. And it was in Boston, shortly after this incident that, at  the advice of his friends, he had bought his first somber Western attire—a black Prince Albert frock coat.[2]During his second visit to Boston in May of 1894 he had lectured there, and in September of the same year he had spent almost four weeks in the city, lecturing, as he wrote, "in several places," and subsequently had spent ten days or so as a guest of Mrs. Bull in nearby Cambridge. He was in Cambridge also in December of 1894, holding a series of classes at Mrs. Bull's during almost the whole of that month.[3] Thus by 1896 Boston and Swamiji knew each other well, and as the Daily Globe commented in an article that will be reproduced in full later on, "society, fashionable, intellectual and faddist, went wild over him. "

In the 1890s Boston was the hub not only of the universe but of those three categories of American society, not least of all the faddist. Despite, or perhaps because of, the city's deep-rooted, ironclad traditions, there proliferated dozens of unorthodox sects, all of which were known in Boston as fads and which ranged from straggly groups surrounding spiritualists and astrologers, who held seances or cast horoscopes in eerily decorated back parlors, to well-organized churches of New Thought persuasion. In an article describing these Bostonian heterodoxies, a correspondent from the Chicago Inter Ocean wrote in part:

There is a region of Boston not unlike the Latin quarter of Paris, in that it is a region that is very much alive and that in it everything happens. In the best sense, it is semi-Bohemian—an artistic Bohemia, with an even stronger element of the occult trend of thought and speculation. . , . No mere resume of these various activities can give any adequate idea of the force and variety they lend to life. There are the three prominent centers of the "spiritual temple"—the Theosophical Society, which has its rooms on Mount Veraon street, and the "First Church of Christ, Scientist;" of which Rev. Mary Baker Eddy is the idolized pastor. There are many and various teachers of "mental healing" of all shades of belief, no two of which coincide. There is the Procopeia, which stands for a great deal and is a most interesting center.[4]

The Procopeia Club, which has left behind no records of its activities or statements of its purposes, does not appear to have represented any one particular belief but seems, rather, to have been a meeting place for Boston's upper-notch religious "faddists" of all varieties. The membership was no doubt composed in part of gentle and serious seekers of truth, such as Mrs. Ole Bull, in part of earnest religious teachers and healers, and in part of men and women in various states of high-minded confusion. Socially and economically it was not an exclusive club. It took as its motto: "To be spiritually minded is life and peace," and asked only that its members agree with this dictum and that they pay five dollars a year in dues (equivalent to at least fifty dollars today 1982). Yet knowing that Mrs. Bull was connected with the Club, one can be sure that it had its intellectual aspects as well as its noble ideals and that it was eminently respectable. (Although Sara Bull, having originally come from what Bostonians would have looked upon as backwoods, was not a Proper Bostonian and although, as it was whispered in Cambridge, she burned incense in her private heathen shrine and although her house turned its back upon Brattle Street in a most peculiar manner, she was by no means Bohemian, or even semi-Bohemian, in her outlook or manner.)

The Procopeia Club had its headquarters on St. Botolph Street in two adjoining houses that had been thrown into one, "the parlors on one side forming a pleasant lecture-room, seated with camp chairs, and those on the other side used as a reception-room and library." During the season extending from November to May, the doors were open every day for social meetings, and the monthly program consisted of a public lecture every Thursday evening (with the exception of the third Thursday in each month) and of two series of class talks intended for members only.

Swamiji evidently had a knowledge of the Procopeia Club prior to 1896 and was not altogether pleased with what he knew. Because of its more or less indiscriminate embrace of Boston's various metaphysical cults and ventures, he felt a reluctance to lecture under its auspices. On January 3, 1896, he had written to Mrs. Bull from New York, "I have had a letter from Mr. [Ralph Waldo] Trine asking me to have some classes at the Procopeia in February. I do not see my way to go to Boston in Feb. however I may like it.[5] But even when a visit to Boston became possible, Swamiji did not see himself holding classes at the Procopeia. It was Mrs. Bull who would persuade him, not Mr. Trine. On February 6 he wrote to her, "I have not much faith in working such things as the Procopeia &c—because these mixed up conglomerations of all isms & ities mostly fads—disturb the steadiness of the mind and life becomes a mass of frivolities.... This does not mean I am not coming to Procopeia I will come but it will be only for your sake.'[6]

Swamiji spoke five times before the Procopeia Club. Four of these lectures had been intended (as in Detroit) to constitute a series of private class talks, while the fifth, to be delivered on Thursday evening, March 26, was to be open to the public. As it turned out, however, all five lectures were public. Although there had been no newspaper hullabaloo and only one inconspicuous announcement, word had spread through Boston that Swami Vivekananda was to speak. It had shortly become apparent that the Procopeia Club's parlor and its complement of camp chairs would be stormed. Any idea the members may have had of keeping Swamiji's classes to themselves was abandoned, and the arena of the Allen Gymnasium, a building situated directly across St. Botolph Street, was rented to accommodate the expected crowd. Even this proved too small, and, as on almost all the occasions in 1896 when Swamiji had lectured publicly, scores of disappointed people were turned away. Thus all chance of intimacy was lost, but at the same time the Procopeia's aura of occultism that Swamiji disliked was dissipated in the crowd.

On March 21 the Evening Transcript introduced Swamiji's current work in Boston with an excellent article, such as one would not find in cities further west, or, for that matter, further south. The Boston Evening Transcript was no ordinary newspaper. Founded in the 1830s, it was the journal of First-Family Bostonians, ceremoniously delivered everyday at teatime to their doorsteps and religiously read. It reflected their likes and dislikes, their approvals and .disapprovals, and also guided their intellectual and political thought. "In the wind of its editorial opinion [its readers] swayed, said T. S. Eliot, 'like a field of ripe corn.' "' It was a bible of sorts and also what would today be called a status symbol. It was, as Lucius Beebe put it, "a qualitative hallmark as clear-cut in its implications as a coat of armor or membership in the Somerset Club [one of Boston's sacrosanct clubs].'[8] Even the employees of the Transcript, from copy boys to editors, were as dignified, as sedate, and often as well entrenched socially as were its readers. Nor was the esteem felt for the Transcript confined to Boston; the paper was known nationally as the best of thoughtful and sober journals, and it was also acclaimed abroad. When the Transcript devoted a long article to Swamiji in its stately pages, it was doing more than giving the news; it was announcing that the "Athens of America" had welcomed him without reservation. Even Emerson had not been accorded this honor. "Original thinkers," the Transcript had sternly written in connection with the latter, "are not always practical men, and they are sometimes led into insupportable theories.'[9] Although Swamiji very likely gave little heed to the approval or disapproval of the Transcript, the fact remained that the following article was a magnificent accolade:

PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM
Swami Vivekananda Compares Teachings 
of Hindu Wisdom, and Western Religions.

The Swami Vivekananda, who will be remembered as the Hindu delegate to the World's Parliament of Religions, is in the city as the March class lecturer at the Procopeia, 45 St. Botolph street. The Swami has been doing some most valuable and successful work in systematic class lecturing in New York, with constantly increasing audiences, during the past two winters, and comes to Boston at a most opportune time.

The Swami gives the following description of his work. In explanation of the term sannyasin, he said, When a man has fulfilled the duties and obligations of that stage of life in which he is born, and his aspirations lead him to seek a spiritual life, and to abandon altogether the worldly pursuits of possession, fame, or power; when, by the growth of insight into the nature of the world, he sees its impermanence, its strife, its misery, and the paltry nature of its prizes, and turns away from all these, then he seeks the true, the eternal love, the refuge. He makes complete renunciation. (sannyasin) of all worldly position, property and name, and wanders forth into the world to live a life of self-sacrifice, and to persistently seek spiritual knowledge, striving to excel in love and compassion, and to acquire lasting insight; gaining these pearls of wisdom by years of meditation, discipline and inquiry. He in his turn, becomes a teacher, and hands on to disciples, lay or professed, who may seek them from him, all that he can of wisdom and beneficence.

A sannyasin cannot belong to any religion, for his is a life of independent thought, which draws from all religions; his is a life of realization, not merely of theory or belief, much less of dogma.[10]

In giving some idea of his work and its methods, the Swami says he left the world because he had a deep interest in religion and philosophy from his childhood, and Indian books teach renunciation as the highest ideal to which a man can aspire.

The Swami['s] teaching, as he expresses it, "is my own interpretation of our ancient books in the light which my master (a celebrated Hindu sage) shed upon them. I claim no supernatural authority. Whatever in my teachings may appeal to the highest intelligence and be accepted by thinking men, the adoption of that will be my reward. All religions have for their object the teaching of devotion, or knowledge, or activity, in a concrete form: Now, the philosophy of Vedanta is the abstract science which embraces all these methods, and this is what I teach, leaving each one to apply it to his own concrete form. I refer each individual to his own experience, and where reference is made to books, the latter are procurable, and may be studied for each one by himself'." The Swami teaches no authority from hidden beings, through visible objects, any more than he claims learning from hidden books or MSS. He believes no good can come from secret societies. "Truth stands on its own authority, and truth can bear the light of day." He teaches only the Self, hidden in the heart of every individual, and common to all. A handful of strong men, knowing that Self, and living in its light, would revolutionize the world, even today, as has been the case of single strong men before, each in his day.

His attitude towards Western religions is briefly this. He propounds a philosophy which can serve as a basis to every possible religious system in the world, ' and his attitude towards all of them is one of extreme sympathy. His teaching is antagonistic to none. He directs his attention to the individual, to make him strong, to teach him that he himself is divine, and he calls upon men to make themselves conscious of divinity within. His hope is to imbue individuals with the teachings to which he has referred, and to encourage them to express these to others in their own way; let them modify them as they will; he does not teach them as dogmas; truth, at length, must inevitably prevail.

The Swami will give a series of four class-lectures on the Vedanta philosophy at the Procopeia on the evenings of Saturday, March 21, Monday, the 23rd, Friday, the 27th, Saturday, the 28th. He will also give the Thursday evening public lecture on the 26th, on "The Ideal of a Universal Religion." No charge will be made for the class-lectures to those who are not members of the club and who wish to attend them. He will also give two afternoon lectures at the home of Mrs. Ole Bull in Cambridge, and will lecture to the graduate students in the department of philosophy at Harvard University.

Swamiji's first three class-lectures were entitled "The Science of Work," "Devotion," and "Realization, or the Ultimate of Religion." As is apparent not only from their titles but from newspaper reports as well, these lectures were expositions of, respectively, karma yoga, bhakti yoga, and raja yoga. During his fourth "class" he read from the Upanishads, giving his commentary, which no doubt constituted a discourse on jnana yoga. In this series one finds, then, a sort of summing up of his winter's class work in New York, during the course of which, as we have seen in the previous volume, he had given talk after talk on these four yogas and had prepared for publication a book on each. (Jnana Yoga as we know it today differs from the book that was contemplated in 1896.)[11] The subject of Swamiji's Officially public lecture at the Procopeia Club (March 26) was "The Ideal of a Universal Religion"—a subject on which he had lectured publicly in almost every town he had visited during this 1896 season and which, as said often before, constituted an intrinsic and vital part of his message to the West. Of equal importance would be the subjects of his lectures at Harvard and the Twentieth Century Club, entitled respectively "Vedanta Philosophy" and "The Vedanta: Its Practical Bearings." Thus in the lectures that Swamiji would give in or near. Boston during these last days of March, 1896, one finds a resume of the most essential aspects of his Western message—a message that he had by now completely and concisely formulated and fully given.

As far as is known today, Mr. Goodwin did not take down or transcribe the Procopeia Club lectures; it is from the news papers alone that we learn a little about them. A correspondent from the Chicago Inter Ocean, who often described life in Boston and Cambridge, seems to have attended at least one, and while her following paragraph from the Inter Ocean of April 4, 1896, betrays a confusion regarding Swamiji's teachings, it is of value for its information, some of which is not found elsewhere:

VIVEKANANDA

It is under the auspices of [the Procopeia Club] that the Swami Vivekananda has just been giving a course of lectures, which attracted such throngs of people that the Allen gymnasium, just across the street, had to be engaged as a lecture-room. The hour was 8 o'clock, but by 7:15 o'clock every seat would be filled, and even the aisles crowded to suffocation with people, who stood for three-quarters of an hour before the lecture began in order to hear it. The Swami lectured on Karma Yogi as an ideal of universal religion, and devoted his last evening to readings from the Sanskrit, with interpretations that were extremely interesting. Anything more musical than his reading from the Sanskrit could not be imagined. One listened as if to unknown magic.

After Swamiji had given his first two lectures at the Allen Gymnasium, the Boston Daily Globe, a substantial journal, wrote appreciatively of the monk who had come from "the mountains of India." The writer, whose article appeared on March 24, had evidently interviewed Swamiji:

OUT OF THE EAST.
Message Brought by the Swami Vivekananda in His Country the Gods Are 
Bright Ones" That Help.'

The Swami Vivekananda is enjoying as great a degree of popularity on his present visit to Boston as he did when society, fashionable, intellectual and faddist, went wild over him on his former visit.

This monk has come from the mountains of India, where he wandered in solitude, occupied with spiritual meditations. He comes weighted with the maxims and principles of an ancient religion. He comes to tell the people of this western continent, struggling with scores of varying creeds, the simple, unified thought of the Hindu teachings. He is not here to proselyte or to found a new religion, but simply to make men conscious of the divinity within them.

The Swami has talked not only before intellectual audiences and in fashionable drawing rooms, but he has sought out and made friends with the working men with whom he is able to get on so well, because he believes that all great truths are expressed in simple forms.

A New York paper published an interview with the Swami, in which he is reported to have expressed the opinion that in Boston "the women are all faddists, all fickle, merely bent on following something new and strange. " But Swami Vivekananda says that this is an exaggerated and distorted presentation of a criticism which he made upon all American women, that they were too superficial and too prone to follow the sensational and to change from one thing to another. This he says his observation has forced upon him. The American women are intellectual, but they are not steady, serious and sincere.

The first of the Swami's lectures was delivered before an audience of 400 people in the Allen gymnasium, Saturday evening on "The Science of Work," and the second one of the course on "Devotion" was given in the same place, the hall being filled and a number turned away unable to gain admittance.

The lecture was exceedingly interesting and the speaker's manner was very magnetic. In his country, said the Swami, the gods were the "bright ones" who gave help to men and received help from them. The gods are Only human beings who are somewhat elevated after death, but God, the highest, is never prayed to or asked for help. He is given only love and worship without anything being asked in return. There are two phases of this God, the one, the abstract God behind the substance of the universe, and the other the personal God who is seen through human intellect and given attributes by it.

The love which is given to God never takes, but always gives, and it does not depend on anything. The worshipper does not pray for health, money or any other thing, but is content with the lot apportioned to him.

People who ask about religion from mere motives of curiosity become faddists, they are always looking for something new and their brains degenerate until they become old rags. It is a religious dissipation with them.

It is not the place that makes heaven or hell, but the mind. Love knows no fear, there can be no love where it is. In love of any sort external objects are only suggested by something within—it is one's own ideal projected, and God is the highest ideal that can be conceived of.

Hatred of the world does not drive good men from it, but the world slips away from the great and saintly. The world, the family and social life, are all training grounds, that is all.

When one realizes that God is love, it does not matter what his other attributes are, that is the only essential. The more a man throws himself away, the more God comes in, hence self-abnegation, which is the secret of all religion and morality.

Too many people bring down their ideals. They want a comfortable religion, but there is none such. It is all self-surrender and upward striving.

The above article contains a paragraph that requires a digression, for Swamiji's statement that American women were too superficial was pounced upon by his enemies and worried out of all recognizable shape. It would be somehow attributed to his India lectures of the following year, then thrown back, much altered, to America, where it would be fielded by the old adversaries. According to the original New York interview (from an unidentified newspaper), Swamiji's words (most of which he may well have said) were, to be sure, scolding and admonitory.[12]But, as is well known, his regard for the women of America was always wholehearted. "I am really struck with wonder to see the women here," he had written in 1894."How gracious the Divine Mother is on them! Most wonderful women, these!'[13] And as he said more than once, he looked to the American women for the salvation of the country.[14] He scolded men and women alike only to make sure that women's potential greatness would be realized. "When I look about me and see what you call gallantry," he was quoted as having said in the New York interview, "my soul is filled with disgust. Not until you learn to ignore the question of sex and to meet on a ground of common humanity will your women really develop. Until then they are playthings, nothing more.... We should not think that we are men and women, but only that we are human beings, born to cherish and to help one another.'[15]

Swamiji's admiration for the virtues and strengths of American women was never dimmed by his observation of their foibles. In an attempt to counteract the false reports that were encircling the globe, Mr. Goodwin would write from India on June 28, 1897, to Mrs. Bull:

We have just seen reports from Chicago and Detroit papers which give a lecture by Dr. Barrows, & contributions from our old friends the Revs. Mr. Thoburn & Mr. Clark. In these it is stated that Swamiji has lost no opportunity since he returned to India of abusing & belittling American women. Now, we do not wish to reply to these papers, but you have so many opportunities of meeting representative American women that I can do no harm in acquainting you with the absolute facts, and leaving them in your hands. I have been present at every single lecture given by Swamiji in India & Ceylon. I have also been present at every single interview granted to a newspaper man. Further I have not missed one single report of any utterance of his in any paper. With this opportunity of knowing the actual facts I can assure you that any statement of a single word from Swamiji derogatory to American women is a malicious fabrication. On the contrary I am becoming almost weary, if that be possible, of hearing him speak in the most glowing terms of the American women, and only a week or two ago he said "If I have to come back again as woman I must & will come as an American woman.'[16]

But let us return to Boston. During Swamiji's visit there, the Evening Transcript published four articles or reports on his lectures, the first of which has been reproduced above. The second, a brief report of his public lecture "The Ideal of a Universal Religion," appeared on March 27:

Said a Universal Religion is Impossible.

Swami Vivekananda told the large audience that crowded the Allen Gymnasium to hear him speak on the "Ideal of a Universal Religion," last night, that the recent Parliament of Religions at Chicago proved, to that date, that universal religion was impossible. "Nature," he said, "is wiser than we have thought her to be. It is competition of ideas, the clash of thought, that keeps thought alive. Sects have always been antithetical, and always will be splitting into little varieties of themselves. And the way to get out of this fight of religions is to let the sects go on subdividing.

"There is no unity in the three elements of religion—philosophy [theology?], mythology and ceremony. Each theologian wants unity, but his idea of unity is the adjustment of all other creeds to his own. I agree with the old prophets as long as they agree with me. But there is an element of religion that towers above all; that is, philosophy. The philosopher seeks truth, which is one and the same always. And it is acceptable to the four sides of every religious nature—the emotional, mystical, active and philosophical. And he who dares to seek the truth for truth's sake is greatest among men."

The third Evening Transcript article about Swamiji appeared on March 28 and was even briefer than the above, being no more than a mention of his lecture "Realization, or the Ultimate of Religion." For the sake of completeness, it is given below:

VIVEKANANDA ON THE 'FUTURE OF RELIGION'

In the Allen Gymnasium, last evening, about four hundred people heard the Swami Vivekananda speak under the auspices of the Procopeia on "Realization, or the Ultimate of Religion." Tonight the last lecture of the course will be given, to be followed by a general philosophic discussion. On Monday the Indian philosopher will return to Chicago. [As we know, Swamiji had come from Detroit, not Chicago.]

On Monday, March 30, the Evening Transcript printed its fourth and longest article about Swamiji, summarizing his work in the city and at Harvard with understanding and appreciation. But before reproducing this article, let us look at another side of Swamiji's life in Boston. His stay there was not all work; there was a holiday aspect to it, for several of his close friends had come from New York and were staying in Cambridge as guests of Mrs. Ole Bull.

2

The commodious house on Brittle Street was even more full of people than usual. In addition to the relatives, friends, housekeepers, secretaries, and proteges, who in greater or lesser number seemed always to be a part of Mrs. Bull's household, there were Miss Thursby and Mrs. Sterling, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Leggett, and, later in the month, Miss Sarah Farmer. Miss Farmer, the gentle founder of the Greenacre Conferences, who dressed habitually in grey and wore a flowing headdress resembling that Of an Anglican deaconess, was a close friend of Mrs. Bull's and her guest for at least a part of Swamiji's Boston visit. Not being in the city to greet him when he arrived, she wrote to him from New York on stationery embossed with the Greenacre seal (a twig-bearing dove flying over the word PEACE) to express her regret. Her letter was dated March 20 and read:

My dear Brother

It seems a strange providence that I should be here in New York and not in Boston to welcome you and do something to help make pleasant your stay, but I trust I may be able to return before you leave & that I may have the privilege of seeing you for a short time at least before you return.

I have thought of you a great many times and have given thanks to God for making you a blessing to so many souls. There were many inquiries about you at Greenacre last year and many wishes expressed that you might be there, but I think all your friends rejoiced that you had the privilege of carrying your message to England, but we hoped that this summer Greenacre might claim you. Is it not so to be? The report comes to me that you are to go abroad again this summer, is it true? God bless you wherever you may go and strengthen you for your work!

If you are not too busy while you are in Boston, will you kindly note down for me the particulars of the Parliament of Religion held in your country so many hundreds of years ago, telling me who originated it and what was the end sought. Please send it to 26 Holyoke St. that I may find it on my return

With every good wish for you, I remain Your sister, in the work[17]'

(Miss Farmer's reference to the Parliament of Religion held in India was no doubt to the conclave Akbar the Great convened at his Ibadat-khana, or House of Worship, in the latter half of the sixteenth century. This parliament, attended by Hindu philosophers, Jaina teachers, Parsi priests, and Christian missionaries-the learned imams of Islam had previously had their say-had been referred to by Swamiji as "only a parlour meeting" compared to the great Parliament of Religions held in Chicago, but it was a parlor meeting of which he was justly proud.)

Another out-of town friend of Swamiji's who had come to Boston in March was Miss Ellen Waldo, his New York disciple, secretary, housekeeper, and all-round worker for his cause. Miss Waldo did not stay with Mrs. Bull-the two were not altogether congenial-but with her (Miss Waldo's) cousin, a Dr. William H. Prescott, who lived in Boston at 285 Marlborough Street. "He has for years done a large amount of free medical work among the poor and he is interested in the higher teachings that the Procopeia is striving to popularize," Miss Waldo had written to Mrs. Bull from New York earlier in the month, accepting on her cousin's behalf tickets to the Procopeia Club meetings.

Where Swamiji (with Goodwin always nearby) made his headquarters during this Boston period is not known. One can, however, be fairly sure that while he gave his mailing address as the Procopeia, he often stayed overnight at Mrs. Bull's hospitable house in Cambridge where so many of his good friends had gathered. Mrs. Bull, one imagines, would not have had it otherwise, and Swamiji himself must have welcomed a relaxed evening, talking in the fire-and candlelight with congenial friends, for after nearly three years of continuous work his nerves, as he wrote to Alasinga on March 23, were "almost shattered[18]." But another part of the time he may well have slept for the sake of convenience at the Procopeia Club in Boston, where he no doubt sometimes held morning and afternoon interviews with those who wished to talk with him, who wished to receive instruction, to have their problems solved, their way of life clarified, and their paths cleared of obstruction, who wished, in short, his blessing. Swamiji would have taken the time and care to give to ail who came.

And then he had many friends in Boston and Cambridge other than his fellow visitors. Of his pleasure in renewing these old friendships he wrote to both Christina Greenstidel and Mary Funke, whom he had parted from in Detroit a few days earlier. In his letter to Christina, whom he looked upon as a daughter and whose dependent family had less than enough money, he enclosed a check. (Christina excised from his letter the direct evidence of Swamiji s affectionate concern for her, but inferential evidence remains.) His two letters, heretofore unpublished, read;

22nd March 96
c/o the Procopeia 45 St Botolph street 
Boston Mass.

Dear Christina

Herewith [words excised] to countersign it & put it [words excised]. I am afraid I have made ,a mistake in writing Miss to your name. In that case you will have to sign also as Miss &c.

I am enjoying Boston very much especially the old friends here.

They are all kind. Reply promptly. Write fully later on. With everlasting love & blessings ours &c[19]

Vivekananda

22nd March 96.

Dear Mrs Funkey

I had no time to write a line even I was so busy. I am enjoying Boston immensely only hard work. The meeting with old friends is very pleasing no doubt. The so called class swelled up to 500 people last night and am afraid will go on increasing. Every thing going on splendidly. Mr. Goodwin as nice as ever. We are all friends here. I go next week to Chicago.

Hope everything is going on well with you there. Kindly give my love to Mrs. Phelps Mr Phelps and all the rest of my friends.

With all love and blessings Yours[20]
Vivekananda

Swamiji's Boston friends included the famous Julia Ward Howe, the equally famous Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Franklin Sanborn, and Professor William James. But his friend of longest standing was Professor John Henry Wright of Harvard's Greek Department, who in 1895 had been made dean of the University's Graduate School. Swamiji's friendship with professor Wright and his family dated back to the days before the Parliament of Religions when almost no one could correctly spell Vivekananda and very few had tried. It had been professor Wright who, like an instrument of providence, had quickly recognized Swamiji's genius, had urged him to appear as a delegate to the Parliament, and had made it possible for him do so, writing the necessary letters of introduction to the authorities. Since those early days, Swamiji and the professor had met frequently and, from time to time, had corresponded.

The Wright family was one of which Swamiji was particularly fond, but unhappily for all concerned, Mrs. Wright and three Wright children-Elizabeth, or Bessie, who was sixteen, Austin, going on thirteen, and the four-year-old John -were not in Cambridge in March of 1896. Because of the delicate health of John, or Jackie, Mrs. Wright had taken the children to Marion, Alabama, for the winter, thus escaping the rigors of the New England climate. Professor Wright had perforce remained in Cambridge, a temporary bachelor, rooming at one of Harvard's dormitories. But while New England had its snow, sleet, and subzero temperatures, the southern part of the United States had perils of its own, and the Wright family was not to escape tragedy. In March the two boys, Austin (in whom Swamiji was especially interested) and John, contracted typhoid fever, in those days a prevalent and dread disease. The correspondence at this time of crisis between Professor Wright and his wife has been made available to us by Mr. John K. Wright (the Jackie of 1896), for it was during this trying period that the professor saw Swamiji and wrote of him at some length to Mrs. Wright.

On the evening of Tuesday, March 24, Professor Wright called on Swamiji at Mrs. Bull's, but as other guests abounded, there was small opportunity for a long and good talk between the two men. By ten o'clock the professor was back in his dormitory room, writing to his wife and preparing to catch an eleven o'clock train for New Bedford, a Massachusetts city some fifty miles south of Boston.

Tonight [he wrote in this hurried letter] I went to Mrs. Ole Bull's to call on Swami. He is coming to lunch with me on Friday. He looks good, and happy and is making a great success at lecturing. A young stenographer [Mr. J. J Goodwin] has fallen in love with his teachings, been converted from Materialism to Vedantism, and takes him down for love, following him from city to city. Many of his lectures are in print. At Mrs. Bull's I met Mr. Fenellosa, Miss Emma Thursby, Miss Seabury and Mrs. Vaughan (born Bull) [Olea Vaughan, Mrs. Bull's daughter], besides Mr. Leggett, a New York rich man (rather nice) who took Swami to Europe last summer, and greatly admires him[21].

Professor Wright's next letter to his wife was written on the following day from New Bedford, where, it appears, he had gone to make a study of educational methods. By chance, this New Bedford field trip fell on the day of Swamiji's Harvard 1ecture, and thus we have no firsthand account from Professor Wright of that occasion. In New Bedford, however, he thought of his now famous friend and, with a touch of paternal pride, to which he was well entitled, wrote to his wife of the heights Swamiji had attained in the world and of his recent successes in Boston:

Swami gives a lecture tonight in Cambridge, before the Philosophical Club: all the big wigs in philosophy are going to see him.

He is giving talks in Boston before the Procopeia society: they supposed about 150 people might come, but they have had to take a larger hall, 450 people crowding in. And there has been absolutely no advertising[22].

The following day Professor Wright returned to Cambridge, and on Friday, March 27, Swamiji had lunch with him, going first to his room in Harvard's Holworthy Dormitory for an hour long talk and, after lunch at "the Club," returning to the room where for another hour and a half the conversation continued. Swamiji told of his life for the past year or so-of his visit to England, of the people he had met and the reception he had been accorded, of his triumphs and his adventures. this recounting he owed the professor, who, as he had once written to Alasinga, had been "the first man [in America] who stood as my friend[23]."

Professor Wright found Swamiji changed. The last time he and Mrs. Wright had together seen him had been in May of 1894; since then he had formulated his message in detail, had become certain of the nature of his mission in the West, and had settled down to teach. The fiery warrior who in one city after another had forthrightly given the lie to missionary propaganda against his motherland, who had defied all opposition, who had indeed stridden onward as though opposition, virulent as it was, did not exist, who manifested power above all else, this "cyclonic Hindu" had become the imperturbable teacher, more absorbed now in delivering his message than in pulling the fangs of bigotry, from which he had by now milked most of the venom. As a consequence, he appeared more gentle. Others had commented upon this change in his manner, which seems to have become noticeable around the beginning of 1895, or at the start of his teaching work in New York. The reader may remember, for instance, that Miss Thursby, in writing to Mrs. Bull, had remarked: "Last night's lecture in Brooklyn was a splendid one. He seems to have come to the realization that he must work in the spirit of his Master. I wrote him . . . how much my friends had enjoyed his talk [at a private class] and how we all felt the uplift when he spoke to us only in the spirit of his Master. Landsberg said last night that he [Swamiji] would never talk again in the old antagonistic spirit."24 But "the old antagonistic spirit" had been essential to the work Swamiji had had to do during most of 1894. His days of battle were over only because the battle had been won.

Swamiji's experiences since he had last seen Professor Wright had been many and varied, and it is small wonder that there was so much to talk of. Telling his wife of that conversation of March 27, the professor wrote:

Swami came and lunched with me today. He came to the room at about twelve: we sat and talked till one, when we went over to the Club; then at two we came back and talked till half past three.

He is become so much gentler, and wiser, and sweeter. Indeed he is most charming. He says his stay in America has taught him a great deal. I wish I could give you an idea of his talk: He says he has worked on and out with a new view of life: that the practical living of America has brought his old problems before him in new lights.

Last summer he was in England and had a very successful time. He made a speech in Queen's [Prince's] Hall and the papers took him [up], writing editorials. The clergy of the Established church became interested in him, and came to his classes. Canon Wilberforce, now in charge of Westminster Abbey, took him into his house and gave him a dinner. Mr. Haweis had him lecture in his own parlours, and preached about him and his teachings in his church. "Wasn't it funny?" Swami said. "When I came into Mr. Haweis' crowded parlour he came up to me and in a loud voice said 'Here comes the master!' "

The chief secretary for India, Sir F. Arbuthnot, Swami succeeded in winning, and they became fast friends.* Swami said that England is just like India with its Castes. "I had to have separate classes for the two castes. For the high Caste people-Lady This and Lady That, Honorable This and Honorable That-I had classes in the morning; for the Low Caste people, who came pell-mell, I had classes in the evening."

My account of what Swami said may sound as if he was boasting, but it was not so. He was never so modest. He has made a very fast friend in a Scotch gentleman, a Mr. Sturdy, who must be a character. He made a fortune of £10,000 a year in Australia and then came to England, and became a Theosophist. His Theosophy carried him to India where he soon became cured of it.** He then became a monk and fell in with some of' Swami's gurubhais (or 'fellow pupils') and became much attached to them. Something then carried him back to England where he married, giving up the monk's life. But his love for his former brethren now finds its outlet in Swami. It was he who got up the various lectures and classes in London. Swami says that he intends to take to India .a score of young English Vedantists and have them go as missionaries to the Hindoos, of their own (the Hindoo) religion. The Hindoos, he says will listen to them as to no other people. "Why! if these people think there is so much in our religion, there must be something in it," Swami naively said they would say.

Canon Wilberforce told Swami that they were trying to teach in substance the Vedanta philosophy in the church at the present time, and that he (Swami) was really a missionary to the Church of England.

Mr. Leggett, Swami's New York friend is a very rich grocer. Swami becomes genuinely American in talking about him: "he is worth about $20,000,000." He took Swami to England last summer. In May Swami goes over again, and several other people are also going. It is a sort of nineteenth century Vedantade. Mrs. Ole Bull will probably be of the company.

In England Swami saw men chiefly, clergymen, members of the India civil service, not a few army officers. He says that about every one person in four was either born or has lived in India. And these people either hate it bitterly, or think there is no country like it. The latter class found in Swami something that reminded them of their beloved home, and came to him and helped him most enthusiastically.

Swami has evidently swept Professor James off his feet. Miss Sibbens told me this evening that he was going in to Boston to hear his talks at every opportunity. Dear old Swami! He said he used to believe in revivals, and used to take part in them . . . He used to harangue in the wildest manner, sing and dance, and have crowds following him in India but that is all wrong. Quietness and Knowledge is best. [It is more than probable that Professor Wright confused two stories here: one, a description, . perhaps, of the early days at the Baranagore Monastery when Swamiji and the other monks would at times lose themselves in a fervor of spiritual emotion, spending hours totally absorbed in singing devotional songs; and two, a description of Hindu kirtans, such as those inspired and led by Sri Chaitanya in the sixteenth century, when crowds dancing and singing in devotional ecstasy could be said to be mad with the love of God. Swamiji may well have joined in such public kirtans in India, but that he led them does not accord with what is known of his life there prior to his coming to America. Thus until some corroborative evidence is forthcoming it is safer to assume that Professor Wright, to whom this whole subject must have been new and strange, got it a little wrong.] He said some very beautiful things: he is going to send me his lectures, and I'll let you have them. He asked very affectionately about you and the children the very first thing he said to me[25].

Just before lunching with Swamiji, Professor Wright had received news that his two sons were very much better but that bessie had entered upon the uncertain course of the disease. It was a time of extreme anxiety for him. "The tension is not easy to bear," he wrote to his wife; yet (or perhaps therefore) he would devote pages in this same letter to telling her about Swamiji, knowing she would be interested, and she, in turn, could remember him and write of him with affection. "Your letter came about Swami," she wrote on the night of March 30. " . . Dear old Swami! I do love him[26]."

It was not until a day or two after Swamiji had left Boston that Professor Wright received word from Marion, Alabama, of his daughter's death, and not until some six weeks later that this tragic news reached Swamiji in England. Swamiji's letter of condolence, which has also been made available to us by Mr. John K. Wright, is the last he is known to have written to his friend:

16th May 1896 63 St George's Road London. S.W

Dear Adhyapakji [Honorable Professor] Last mail brought the very very sad news of the blow that has fallen on you.

This is the world my brother-this illusion of Maya-the Lord alone is true. The forms are evanescent but the spirit being in the Lord and of the Lord is immortal and omnipresent All that we ever had are round us this minute for the spirit can neither come nor go only changes its plane of manifestation.

You are strong and pure and so is Mrs. Wright and I am sure that the Divine in you has arisen and thrown away the lie and delusion that there can be death for anyone. "He who sees in this world of manifoldness that one support of everything, in the midst of a world of unconsciousness that one eternal consciousness, in this evanescent world that one eternal and unchangeable, unto him belongs eternal peace"

May the peace of the Lord descend upon you and yours in abundance is the prayer.

of your ever loving friend[27] 
Vivekananda

During his stay in Boston and Cambridge, Swamiji also renewed his friendship with Professor James, sweeping him, as Professor Wright told his wife, "off his feet " Swamiji had probably first met James in October of 1894 when he had stayed at Mrs. Bull's for ten days or so, and almost certainly he had met him in December of that year when he had held classes in Cambridge under Mrs. Bull's auspices. An account of what must have been the first of these 1894. meetings is given in the Life:

It was at this time [the time is not made clear] that the Swami met the distinguished Professor William James of Harvard at dinner at the residence of Mrs. Ole Bull. After dinner the Swami and the Professor drew together in earnest and subdued conversation. It was midnight when they rose from their long discourse. Eager to know the result of the meeting Of these two great minds, Mrs. Bull asked, "Well, Swami, how did you like Professor James?" He replied in a sort of abstracted way, "A very nice man, a very nice man!" laying emphasis on the word nice. The next day the Swami handed a letter to Mrs. Bull with the casual remark, "You may be interested in this." Mrs. Bull read and to her amazement saw that Professor James, in inviting the Swami to meet him at his own residence for dinner a few days later, had addressed him as "Master[28]."

Swamiji had evidently not been able to accept that invitation, for now in 1896 Professor James, still addressing him as "Master," again asked to see him "for once" under his own roof. His letter, delivered to Mrs. Bull's house by his young son, read in full :

95 Irving St.
Cambridge March 28 [1896]

Dear Master,

I hate not to have any talk with you before you go away.

I am willing to give up two engagements I have this afternoon for the sake of meeting you, if you yourself should be free between 4 and 6:30 o'clock. Or if it suits you better can you lunch with me tomorrow at one? Or can you dine with me at 6:00 this evening and still be in time for your lecture at 8?

Pray choose one of these alternatives and let the messenger, my son, know which. A verbal message will suffice. In case you choose this afternoon at 4, pray say whether you prefer to come to my house or to have me call at Mrs. Bull's? I can do either, but naturally I should like to see you for once under my own roof. If I go to Mrs. Bull's I may not be there before half past four. If you stay to dinner tonight, pray come as early in the afternoon as you can.

Sincerely yours[29]
Wm. James

Of these various alternatives, Swamiji, who would have to deliver two lectures that Saturday, March 28-one at the Twentieth Century Club and one at the Procopeia Club chose to lunch with Professor James the following day at one o'clock. Accordingly, James's young son William dutifully came once again to Mrs. Bull's to escort his father's improbable guest across the Cambridge Common to the house on Irving Street. Many years later, when the young William was an old man, he wrote to a friend; recalling that disconcerting experience. His letter read in part:

I was deputed one spring Sunday morning (when I was about 13 years old) to call for [the Swami] at Mrs. Ole Bull's house on Brattle St and conduct him to lunch with my parents in Irving St. He of course was dressed in his turban and Hindoo robes and I remember feeling anxiety lest we should meet any of my schoolmates on our way across the Common. You can see that this fear of being conspicuous didn't make for conversation-he being occupied with his high thoughts and I with my low ones. I remember that at lunch he and my father were much interested in each other-and that he accepted, in his stride, our American fare-in regard to which he must have had some dispensation[30].

The conversation at that lunch, which took place on the last day but one of Swamiji's stay in Boston, could not have been anything but rich and brilliant, the two men delighting in one another's company, though not necessarily agreeing with one another's though, which was as it should have been in Cambridge, where no philosopher worthy of the name agreed with any other.

How many friends, all told, Swamiji had in and around Boston there is no telling. We can be sure, however, that they did not all belong to the circles of the famous or the near-famous, for Swamiji's friendships were never confined to any one group or class of people. Indeed the story of his visit to America would not be complete without taking into account a sentence imbedded in one of the news articles quoted earlier. Speaking of his American life in general, the Daily Globe observed: "The Swami has talked not only before intellectual audiences and in fashionable drawing rooms, but he has sought out and made friends with the workingmen with whom he is able to get on so well, because he believes that all great truths are expressed in simple forms." Swamiji's friendship with American workingmen constitutes a part of his life of which we know almost nothing, for no memoirs or letters concerning it have come down to us. Yet even as he had made friends with the rich and the poor alike during his wandering days in India, so in America he surely did the same, and to overlook this aspect of his visit to the West is to miss a large part of Swamiji himself, for his love and concern for the poor and the burdened was an intrinsic element of his nature. How often did he write: "Love the poor, the miserable, the downtrodden!" It is true that he had in mind, and at heart, primarily the poor of India, but not exclusively. "May I be born again and again," he wrote to Mary Hale in 1897, "and suffer thousands of miseries, a 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 special object of my worship[31]." It is said that even as a boy he used to visit the quarters of Calcutta where the untouchables lived in order to help them; and during his days of wandering alone through India he grieved, brokenhearted, over the misery he saw throughout his motherland. Feeling for the poor as he did, it is not likely that he would have ignored them in this country, particularly in the depression years of 1893 to 1897 when the suffering among the laboring classes was intense. One remembers the passage in Sister Christine's "Reminiscences" in which she recalls several instances of his keen feeling for the poverty-stricken and the forlorn in America. "His compassion," she writes, "for the poor and downtrodden, the defeated, was a passion. One did not need to be told, but seeing him one knew that he would willingly have offered his flesh for food and his blood for drink to the hungry[32]."

1n the 1890s in America the distinction between the upper and lower classes was vast. While industry and business flourished, and immense fortunes were being raked up in piles by a few enterprising and often ruthless men, the workingman's average earnings remained low. He worked, if he were lucky enough to work at all, a minimum of sixty hours a week, and for those sixty hours he earned from five to nine dollars (barely enough to pay his rent and feed his family). He lived, undernourished, in ramshackle, overcrowded, fetid, and rat-ridden tenements. In the best of times the specter of unemployment was never absent, and in those depression years, when hundreds of thousands were thrown out of work, it was a stark and fearful reality. Nor did he have at any time a means of redressing the many wrongs done him, nor any avenue of escape. He dived, his back against a cliff, on the edge of pauperism-an abyss into which illness or an accident or simply a lay-off could plunge him irrevocably.

It was such men and women whom Swamiji sought out and made friends with, talking with them, perhaps, on the docks of New York, at the People's Church, in the slums of Chicago, or in the swarming back streets of South End Boston, where the Italian and Greek venders plied their pushcarts and the Irish huckster with his horse and wagon gave full-throated advertisement to his wares. Perhaps he sometimes entered their dilapidated tenements and shared their meals. Nor did he find the conditions too terrible, for he had seen worse. (In Chicago in 1893 he had remarked that the slums there-among the worst in the United States-were "comfortable and even pleasant" compared with those of India.[33]) Swamiji's eye, moreover, penetrated to an essential quality of the American workingman-his air, his inner conviction, of self respect and dignity. The workingman, come recently perhaps from Europe,  was now a citizen of a democracy, and he sensed, even if he did not actually experience, all that that implied. Writing in 1898, Robert A. Woods, one of the first authors to draw attention to the plight of the lower classes in urban America, remarked: "Even in the face of the most untoward circumstances -and without making light of the crushing power of the circumstances that surround the life of poverty-one can often find here some touch of that dauntlessness which is typically American[34]." Swamiji found it; he found that look in the face and carriage of the poorest of the poor which declared, "I am a man among men[35].”

3

Swamiji lectured seven times during his stay in Boston, and on Monday, March 30, the day he left the city, the Evening Transcript devoted a long article to his work. Although portions of this article have been quoted in the first and the latest (1981) editions of the Life, it is given here in full. Despite a bit of confusion in connection with the Harvard talk, it conveys, I believe, not only an idea of Swamiji's lectures of. this period, but also an idea of Boston's reception of them as reflected in its best of newspapers:

FOR UNIVERSAL RELIGION

The Hindu Swami Lectures Before Several Societies.

The Swami Vivekananda has, during the past few days, conducted a most successful work in connection with the Procopeia. During this time he has given four class lectures for the club itself, with constant audiences of between four and five hundred people, at the Allen Gymnasium, 44 St. Botolph street, two at the house of Mrs. Ole Bull in Cambridge, and one before the professors and graduate students of the philosophical department of Harvard University.

The idea which brought the Swami to America three years ago as Hindu delegate to the Parliament of Religions, and has been the guiding motive of all his subsequent work, both in America and England, is one which appeals strongly to the people whose creation the parliament was, but the methods which he proposes are peculiarly his own. One of his lectures during the week has been "The Ideal of a Universal Religion," but a "harmonious religion" would, perhaps, equally meet the case, if, indeed, it would not more adequately express that for which he is striving. The Swami is not a preacher of theory. If there is any one feature of the Vedanta philosophy, which he propounds, which appears especially refreshing, it is its intense capability of practical demonstration. We have become almost wedded to the idea that religion is a sublime theory which can be brought into practice and made tangible for us only in another life, but the Swami shows us the folly of this. In preaching the Divinity of Man he inculcates a spirit of strength into us which will have none of those barriers between this life and actual realization of the sublime that, to the ordinary man, appear as insurmountable.

In discussing the general lines on which it appears to him universal religion can alone be established, he claims for his plan no super-authority. As he says: "I have also my little plan. I do not know whether it will work or not, and I want to present it to you for discussion. In the first place, I would ask mankind to recognize this maxim: 'Do not destroy.' Iconoclastic reformers do no good to the world. Help, if you can; if you cannot, fold your hands, stand by, and see things go on. Therefore say not a word against any man's convictions, so far as they are sincere. Secondly, take man where he stands, and from thence give him a lift[36].

"Unity in variety is the plan of the universe. Just as we are all men, yet we are all separate. As humanity, I am one with you; as Mr. So-and-so, I am different from you. As a man you are separate from woman, but as human beings you are all one; as a living being you are one with animals and all that lives, but as man you are separate. That existence is God, the ultimate unity in this universe. In Him we are all one. We find, then, that if by the idea of a universal religion is meant that one set of doctrines should be believed by all mankind, it is impossible; it can never be, any more than all faces will be the same. Again, if we expect that there will be one universal mythology, that is also impossible, it cannot be. Neither can there be a universal ritual. When this time comes the world will be destroyed, because variety is the first principle of life. What makes us Formed beings? Differentiation. Perfect balance will be destruction.

"What then do I mean by the ideal of a universal religion? I do not mean a universal philosophy, or a universal mythology, or a universal ritual, but I mean that this world must go on, wheel within wheel. What can we do? We can make it run smoothly, we can lessen friction, we can grease the wheels, as it were. By what? By recognizing variation. Just as we have recognized unity, by our very nature, so we must also recognize variation. We must learn that truth may be expressed in a thousand ways, and each one yet be true. We must learn that the same thing can be viewed from a hundred different standpoints, and yet be the same thing.

"In society we see so many various natures of mankind. A practical generalization will be impossible, but for my purpose I have simply characterized them into four. First, the active man; then the emotional man; then the mystical man, and lastly the philosopher.

"To be universal, religion must provide possibility of realizing truth through means suitable to any one of these minds, and a religion which says that through one alone all men must struggle, whether these minds are capable of the struggle or not, must end in agnosticism. "

In his lecture on Karma Yoga, the Swami dealt with the science of work. The lecture for the most part analyzed the motives men have in work, and particularly the motive of heaven as a reward for good work on earth. This, said the Swami, is shopkeeping religion. Work alone reaches its highest when it is done absolutely without hope of reward, work for work's sake, and without regard to the consequences.

In discussing Bhakti Yoga, Devotion, the Swami explained the rationale of a Personal God. This idea of devotion and worship of some being who has to be loved, and who can reflect back the love to man, is universal. The lowest stage of the manifestation of this love and devotion is ritualism, when man wants things that are concrete, and abstract ideas are almost impossible. Throughout the history of the world we find man is trying to grasp the abstract through thought forms, or symbols, and the external manifestations of religion. Bells, music, rituals, books, images, come under that head. Man can only think with form and word. Immediately thought comes, form and name flash into the mind with them, so that when we think of God, whether as the Personal God with human shape, or as the Divine Principle, or in any other aspect, we are always thinking of our own highest ideal with some or other form, generally human, because the form of man is the highest of which man can conceive. But, while recognizing this as a necessity of human weakness, and while making proportionate use of rituals, symbols, books and churches, we must always remember that it is very good to be born in a church, but it is very bad to die in a church. If a man dies within the bounds of these forms, it shows that he has not grown, that there has been no uncovering of the real, the Divinity, within him.

True love can be regarded as a triangle. The first angle is, love knows no bargain. So when a man is praying to God, "give me this, and give me that," it is not love. How can it be? "I give you my little prayer, and you give me something in return;" that is mere shopkeeping. The second angle is, love knows no fear. So long as God is regarded as a rewarder or a punisher, there can be no love for him. The third angle, the apex, is, love is always the highest ideal. When we have reached the point where we can worship the ideal as the ideal, all arguments and doubts have vanished forever. The ideal can never escape, because it is part of our own nature.

In his lecture at Harvard University the Swami traced the history, so far as it is known, of the Vedanta philosophy, and showed to what extent the Vedas (the Hindu scriptures) are accepted as authoritative; merely as the foundation for the philosophy in so far as they appeal to the reason. He compared the three schools, the Dualists, who acknowledge a supreme being, and a lesser being manifesting in men, but eternally separate from men. Next he described the philosophy of the Qualified nondualists, whose particular idea is that there is a God and there is nature, but that the soul of nature [?] is simply the expansion, or the body of God, just as the body of man is to man's soul. They claim, in support of this theory, that the effect is never different from the cause, but that it is the cause reproduced in another form, and as God, therefore, is the cause of this universe, he is also the effect. The Monists . . . declare that if there is a God, that God must be both the material and the efficient cause of the universe. Not only is he the Creator; but he is also the created. He himself is this universe, apparently; but, in reality, this universe does not exist-it is mere hypnotisation. Differentiation is in name and form only. There is but one soul in the universe, not two, because that which is immaterial cannot be bounded, must be infinite; and there cannot be two infinities, because one would limit the other. The soul is pure, and the appearance of evil is just as a piece of crystal, which is pure in itself, but appears to be variously colored when flowers are placed before it. In discussing Raja Yoga ["Realization, or the Ultimate of Religion" at the Procopeia], the psychological way to union with God, the Swami expanded upon the power to which the mind can attain through concentration, both in reference to the physical and the spiritual world. It is the one method that we have in all knowledge. From the lowest to the highest, from the smallest worm to the highest sage, they have to use this one method. The astronomer uses it in order to discover the mysteries of the skies, the chemist in his laboratory, the professor in his chair. This is the one call, the one knock, which opens the gates of nature and lets out the floods of light. This is the one key, the only power-concentration. In the present state of our bodies we are so much distracted, the mind is frittering away its energies upon a hundred sorts of things. By scientific control of the forces which work the body this can be done, and its ultimate effect is realization. Religion cannot consist of talk. It only becomes religion when it becomes tangible, and until we strive to feel that of which we talk so much, we are no better than agnostics, for the latter are sincere and we are not.

The Twentieth Century Club had the Swami as their guest Saturday [March 28], and heard an address from him on the "Practical Side of the Vedanta Philosophy." He leaves Boston today, and will, within a few days, sail for England, en route for India.

In volume five of the Complete Works it is mentioned that Swamiji gave two afternoon talks on March 22 and 24 of 1896 to a group of Harvard students. From two brief entries in Miss Emma Thursby's diary, we learn that these afternoon talks and the class lectures that he held at Mrs. Bull's house on Brattle Street in Cambridge (mentioned in the first paragraph of the above article) were one and the same. "Harvard students at Mrs. Bull's hear Swami," Miss Thursby noted on March 22; and on March 24 the variation, "Harvard students hear the Swami at Mrs. Bull's[37]." Miss Thursby was not much of a diarist and commented no further on these events, but in the Complete Works we find Swamiji's answers to the questions asked at Mrs. Bull's by the Harvard students[38]. The questions themselves were not taken down, but to judge from the answers, alone of which were quite long, these young men were serious, thoughtful, and eager. They wanted to know about Buddhism, the problem of free will, the Vedantic theory of evolution, the theory of Maya, and so on. Although Swamiji's class talks themselves are lost, it would appear from this subsequent discussion that he had spoken primarily of Advaita Vedanta. It would appear also that he had immensely enjoyed talking to these earnest young men whose minds were still flexible and vigorous. He had, indeed, looked forward to such an occasion. "I am very glad however," he had written to Mrs. Bull in February of his proposed Boston visit, "to get an opportunity to talk to the graduates of Harvard." (The "however:' in this sentence was in reference to the lack of enthusiasm he had felt in regard to the Procopeia Club.[39]) The Harvard students, in turn, found in Swamiji a teacher par excellence, one who could clarify and evaluate abstruse concepts and help a lost youth thread his way through Harvard's philosophical labyrinths. Once before, in December of 1894 Swamiji had spoken to Harvard students in Mrs. Bull's spacious teak-paneled music room and had unsnarled their philosophical tangles. "He has helped students who were bewildered by their course of Philosophy at Harvard[40]," Mrs. Bull had written to Dr. Lewis G. Janes, and there can be little doubt that this was equally true of his classes in March of 1896. The story is told, no doubt 0riginally by Professor James, that as he (James) was walking behind two Harvard undergraduates who had just attended one of Swamiji's talks, he overheard the following conversation: First student: "I was really disappointed." Second student: "Why?" First student: "Well, we were told that this man was so great, that his ideas were so profound." Second student: "What makes you say his ideas aren't profound?" First student: "Because I understood every word he said[41]!”

Many Harvard students not only understood what Swamiji said, they never forgot it. In this connection one recalls the "Recollections of Swami Vivekananda" by the late Professor William Ernest Hocking, said to have been the last of the great American Idealists. After writing of the deep impression Swamiji had made on him at the Parliament of Religions, Professor Hocking went on:

For several years I lost sight of Vivekananda....I spent four years in Davenport [Iowa], earning money to come East and study with James. During those years, Vivekananda had begun his great work of founding centers for the Vedanta throughout America. In the course of this work he came to Cambridge. I heard him twice: once in a class in metaphysics, and once at the home of Mrs. Ole Bull on Brattle Street. It was in these informal gatherings that the quality of the man most directly spoke, and I was confirmed in my regard, and my purpose to rethink my philosophical foundations[42].

The 1896 class lectures at Mrs. Bull's were, in a sense, forerunners of Swamiji's lecture of March 25 before the Harvard Graduate Philosophical Club. This Harvard engagement, spoken of by his biographers as "one of the most remarkable incidents of his whole American career,"43 served the purpose, though without conscious intent, of an ideally appropriate farewell tribute. To be invited to speak before this society was to receive one of the highest honors intellectual America could pay, and while Swamiji himself does not seem to have been particularly impressed by the honorific significance of the invitation, it could not have been lost upon others. One can say without exaggeration that in the 1890s the Graduate Philosophical Club of Harvard represented the best of America's philosophical thought. It was not only one of the few graduate societies of any kind then existing in the country, but was, without question, the most intellectually rich and varied of them all. Its members included the graduate students of Harvard's Department of Philosophy and also, of course, Harvard's professors of philosophy and psychology (the latter being still officially regarded as a branch of the former). George H. Palmer, William James, Josiah Royce, Hugo Miinsterberg, and George Santayana-to name them in order of their seniority-were in 1896 its stars, and, with the exception of Santayana, who was as yet unknown to the world at large, were the stars also of American philosophy as a whole. Closely affiliated were Charles C. Everett in Harvard's Philosophy of Religion, Francis G. Peabody in Social Ethics, E. C. Moore in Christian Morals, and P. H. Hanus in Education, all well known in their respective fields.

Professor Palmer affectionately and accurately referred to the Department of Philosophy, of which he was head, as a "philosophical menagerie. "44 One could not easily have found elsewhere so varied, so lively, and so noisy a group of thinkers. All its members were brilliant, none thought along the same lines as any of the others, and each delighted in prolonged argumentation. An open and joyful debate took place endlessly on the campus and in the professors’ cheerful and hospitable homes. Recalling this halcyon period of philosophical wrangling, George Foot Moore, who had been at the time a professor of Hebrew at the not-distant Andover Theological Seminary, wrote of it with nostalgia:

Palmer, . . . James, Royce, Munsterberg, and, a little later, Santayana, made such a constellation as no American University had seen or may perhaps see again in our time. They were men of widely diverse types; fundamentally different philosophies and opposite ways of approaching all philosophical problems were represented among them. It was no "Harvard School," having a system to inoculate the minds of docile pupils with, but so many vigorous and independent thinkers, fit to inspire students to thought by their very disagreements. For in fact they agreed on little else than freedom to disagree, and in their generous admiration and affection for one another. Uniformity of opinion on things human or divine they had no wish to see among themselves or in their pupils, knowing that it is purchasable only by renunciation of a man's right to think for himself, which is worth more to him than even the possession of the truth[45]!

It is perhaps not too surprising under the circumstances that some of the students found themselves not so much inspired as "bewildered by their course of Philosophy at Harvard." But however that might have been, the professors were in transports. "If our students now could begin really to understand what Royce means with his voluntaristic-pluralistic monism, what Munsterberg means with his dualistic scientificism and platonism, what Santayana means by his pessimistic platonism, . . . what I mean by my crass pluralism, what you mean by your ethereal idealism, that these are so many religions, ways of fronting life, and worth fighting for," James wrote with exuberance to Professor Palmer, "we should have a genuine philosophic universe at Harvard[46]."

In the New York Herald of January 19, 1896, it was said that Swami Vivekananda had "just received an invitation from Mr. John P. Fox to lecture before the Harvard Graduate Philosophical Club." This statement is somewhat misleading. In 1896 John Pierce Fox was a young man, footloose, without title or authority, and in no position to issue so important an invitation. He had graduated from Harvard in 1894, had studied for a part of the following year in Harvard's Divinity School, and in the first half of 1896, having not yet settled upon a career, was working in his brother's real estate office. One can only assume (though there are no available records to this effect) that during this last period he was also corresponding secretary for the Graduate Philosophical Club and, in this capacity, sent the invitation to Swamiji. In any event, Swamiji did indeed receive an invitation, of which he wrote to Mrs. Bull in the early part of January, 1896: *

I have received your letter & also another from the Secretary of the Harvard Metaphysical (Philosophical?] club.**

I will be only too glad to come to Boston for the Harvard lecture especially[47].

Whatever Mr. Fox's position may have been, Swamiji wrote to him, and on January 15 that young man, who was also in touch with Mrs. Bull, wrote the following letter to her:

I had a note from Vivekananda Monday [January 13], saying he expects to come to Boston in March or perhaps in February, and will be only too glad to speak to the students: It will be not before the Harvard Religious Union, but the Graduate Philosophical Club-the most philosophical organization at Harvard-so that the audience will be the best the University can afford[48].

Again, on February 23, John Fox wrote to Mrs. Bull from his home in Dorchester, Massachusetts:

Your letter came Friday, and I at once went out to Cambridge to see Mr. Lough, the president of the Philosophical Club. He said the Club would like to have Swami speak on Wednesday evening, March 25[49].

Thus one gathers that while Mr. Fox clearly played a part in the arrangements for Swamiji's talk before the Harvard Philosophical Club, the invitation itself was issued by the president of that august body and was very likely sanctioned by its senior members, who, in the early months of 1896, would have been William James and Josiah Royce. (Professor George Palmer was taking a sabbatical leave and traveling in Europe with his wife. Hugo Miinsterberg, the brilliant young psychologist whom William James had brought from Germany in 1892 to take charge of Harvard's psychological laboratory, had returned for a time to his homeland. Although George Santayana, the youngest of the group-just Swamiji's age-was teaching in Harvard in the spring of 1896, he was not yet a full professor with a decisive voice in the affairs of the Department. This left James and Royce, Harvard's brightest philosophical stars in any event, in full command.)

As far as I know, there are no records to prove beyond all possibility of doubt that these two professors attended Swamiji's lecture before the Graduate Philosophical Club. One does know, however, that they intended to. A few days before the event, Mr. Fox wrote to Mrs. Bull, "Mr. Lough said that Vivekananda's addresses (his published pamphlets] interested not only the philosophical students, but also Prof. James and Prof. Royce, who hope to be at his Harvard talk." And to judge from Professor Wright's account of James's enthusiastic attendance at the Procopeia lectures and his remark that "a11 the big wigs in philosophy" were going to attend the Harvard talk, it is not likely that James was absent; nor would Royce have done Swamiji the discourtesy of remaining away. Other professors who we can be reasonably sure attended the lecture were Professor Charles Rockwell Lanman, chairman of the Sanskrit Department, who had helped to collect the thousand-and-more manuscripts of Harvard's Sanskrit library (and who was later made an honorary member of the New York Vedanta Society), and the Reverend Charles Carroll Everett, head of Harvard's Divinity School. How many others were present we can only guess, but professors and divines, instructors, such as George Santayana, and graduate students, such as John Fox, no doubt packed the hall.' It was, as the life remarks, a "great critical gathering."

Swamiji's talk, "The Vedanta Philosophy," which one can find in volume one of the Complete Works, was a short, brilliantly concise exposition of the origin, development, and meaning of Vedanta in its three phases. It was a talk intended for philosophers and students of philosophy, whose interest in the subject could be presumed to be primarily intellectual. And yet, toward the end, when speaking of Advaita Vedanta, Swamiji seems to have become electrified; the brilliant scholar became the incandescent prophet, pouring out his message, as was usually his way, directly to the hearts, as well as to the minds, of his listeners.

"My success," Swamiji had written two days earlier to his Madras disciple Alasinga, "is due to my popular style-the greatness of a teacher consists in the simplicity of his language[51]." Beyond question it was true that Swamiji made his lectures as simple as possible, his purpose being always to help spiritually, never to confuse intellectually; but simplicity of language was not the whole of the secret. "That man," William James was later to exclaim, "is simply a wonder for oratorical power[51]."

The discussion following the Harvard lecture was long and lively-a sure indication of the audience's interest and delight. There were many questions; some were philosophical, some were concerned with the relation of Vedanta to science, to ethics, to psychic phenomena (one of William James's interests), and inevitably to the Indian caste system-though this was an odd question to be raised at Harvard, where the Bostonian caste system was accepted as one of the irrefrangible laws of the universe. Unfortunately, the names of the questioners, many of which might today be of interest, have not come down to us, but one can assume that it was primarily the professors who asked, for such was, and is, the usual procedure at gatherings of this sort.

Swamiji's Harvard talk may have been longer than we know. A comparison between a report of his lecture in the Evening Transcript (see pp. 85-86) and the version that has been published in the Complete Works (as taken from a pamphlet printed in April or May of 1896) leads one to the unsettling suspicion that it has not come down to us in full. Who was to blame for whatever omissions may have been made there is today no way of knowing. Indeed, before going to England Swamiji himself did some editing. On April 14 Mr. Fox, by then becoming involved in Swamiji's work, wrote from New York to Mrs. Bull, who had charge of the publishing end of things:

Mr. Goodwin wrote you, I believe, that Swami has worked on the Harvard lecture, spending about three hours Sunday morning with me. On the Vedas, commentators, etc., he wrote three pages of notes,-making everything clear on those matters I think. This afternoon, I am going to see him again about a thing or two more....

In regard to the expense of printing the Harvard lecture, Mr. Leggett is ready to help, but did not say to what extent: that would depend on the cost, I suppose.

I expect now to return Thursday [April 16] and will come out to see you the first thing, that there may be no more delay about publication[52].

Within two weeks the publication of the pamphlet was well under way, and Mr. Leggett, a man of his word, not only helped, but bore the entire expense of publishing the first edition. On May 1 he wrote to Mrs. Bull:

I am in receipt of your letter and enclose check for $125 to cover expense of publishing the Swami Harvard talks. Of course a paper cover is far preferrable to pamphlet form for durability etc. I should not combine the Harvard series with the Raja production unless it is carefully revised and all repetition is eliminated.

Prof Royce's preface to the Harvard series I should think to be very desirable and gives Swami's thought the stamp of approval and thereby helps the ordinary reader[53].

Whether Professor Royce's preface to Swamiji's lecture was actually written or only proposed and what, in any event, became of it, we do not know. Duly published, the booklet contained an Introduction by the Reverend Charles Carroll Everett and a Note written by John P. Fox, but there was no preface by Royce or anyone else. Mr. Fox's Note, which gives information regarding the lecture's editing, read:

This lecture and the discussion which followed were stenographically reported. They could receive from the Swami only a cursory revision, owing to his departure for England, but it is hoped no errors have crept in. Professor LANMAN and Professor WRIGHT of Harvard [the latter despite the grief that then was his] have kindly assisted in the final revision. In the reporting of the discussion, some of the questions were unavoidably lost. The first four notes were added by the Swami. In the original lecture, the quotations from Hindu writings were first given in the Sanskrit, and then translated; these offhand translations stand as given.

Following the lecture and discussion, are the answers of the Swami to questions at two afternoon talks with some Harvard students, on March 22 and 24. These answers were stenographically reported, but the questions were not. There have also been added a few selections from unpublished lectures. Some of the answers and selections cover the same general ground, but they have all been retained on account of the variety in treatment.

While no adequate exposition of the Vedanta philosophy can be given in a single address, it is hoped that this, with the accompanying answers and selections, will be of value to those interested in the thought and life of the East[54].

Dr. Everett's introduction to the Harvard booklet has been reproduced in full in the first edition of the Life and in part in later editions. For the convenience of the present reader all of it is given here:

The Swami Vivekananda was sent by his friends and co-religionists to present their belief at the Congress of Religions that was held in connection with the World's Fair in Chicago. This he did in a way to win general interest and admiration. Since then he has lectured on the same theme in different parts of our country. He has been in fact a missionary from India to America. Every where he has made warm personal friends; and his expositions of Hindu philosophy have been listened to with delight. It is very pleasant to observe the eager interest with which his own people in India follow his course, and the joy that they take in his success. I have seen a pamphlet filled with speeches made at a large and influential meeting in Calcutta, which was called together to express enthusiastic approval of the manner in which he has fulfilled his mission; and satisfaction at this invasion of the West by oriental thought. This satisfaction is well grounded. We may not be so near to actual conversion as some of these speakers seem to believe; but Vivekananda has created a high degree of interest in himself and his work. There are indeed few departments of study more attractive than the Hindu thought. It is a rare pleasure to see a form of belief that to most seems so far away and unreal as the Vedanta system, represented by an actually living and extremely intelligent believer. This system is not to be regarded merely as a curiosity, as a speculative vagary. Hegel said that Spinozism is the necessary beginning of all philosophizing. This can be said even more emphatically of the Vedanta system. We occidentals busy ourselves with the manifold. We can, however, have no understanding of the manifold, if we have no sense of the One in which the manifold exists. The reality of the One is the truth which the East may well teach us; and we owe a debt of gratitude to Vivekananda that he has taught this lesson so effectively[55].

Of the distribution and sale of the first edition of the Harvard pamphlet (which was later to run to several editions) we learn a little from the following letter that the talented if not altogether practical Mr. Fox wrote to Mrs. Bull on June 6, 1896, from the S.S. Victorian on his way to London:

I forgot to ask you about the receipts from the Sale of the Harvard lectures, and so shall send word to Mr. Goodyear to write to you about the matter. You will want the money sent to you, I suppose. The Old Corner Bookstore will forward their receipts to Mr. Goodyear along with the receipts from the other pamphlets, unless you want to write to them: I had Mr. Wilson (the printer) send them fifty Harvard lectures. If the distribution does not go smoothly, I will straighten things out in the fall.

In the hurry at Mr. Wilson's, I forgot to have copies sent to Dr. Everett, Prof. Wright, and Prof. Lanman. Prof. Wright was away in the evening so I do not know just how many copies he would like. I left one copy for Dr. Everett when calling with Dr. Jaynes (Janes?). I will ask Mr. Lough to see that he has more. As to Prof. Wright and Prof. Lanman,-could you not have ten Copies sent to each? or perhaps Miss Hamlin could take them.

I have done a little Vedanta missionary work on the steamer, correcting false ideas of Mohini (Chatterji) and Vivekananda held by three Boston ladies[56].

The Harvard professors had been so deeply impressed with Swamiji's lecture and with his incisive and sometimes heated replies to their questions during the discussion that he was offered the chair of Eastern Philosophy. Invitations such as this were not given lightly at Harvard. The offer had about it something of the solemnity of a marriage proposal; for President Eliot, not without good reason, expected his professors to wed themselves heart and soul and for life to the University. Writing in the spring of 1897 to Hugo Munsterberg, who was having difficulty trying to decide whether to live in Germany or in Cambridge, Eliot made himself clear. "I ought also to say to you frankly," he wrote, "that the University will not be content to have you return hither without 'burning your ships'; the University will desire that you return with the intention to remain in its service, just as any American accepts a professorship here with the definite intention of spending his life in all probability at Harvard.... In accepting a professorship which is not limited to a term of years the incumbent is expected to have the present [57] intention to remain."

This stipulation would have applied as well to the offer made to Swamiji. The professorship of Eastern Philosophy was, like any other Harvard professorship, a lifetime post, and since the vows on both sides were inviolable, it is clear that the Harvard professors were not only much impressed by Swamiji's scholarship and mastery of his subject, but that many of them, including President Eliot, knew him more than casually and were impressed with him as a man. "[He] is an honor to humanity[58]," William James would later on write to Mrs. Bull. Harvard, in short, had decided that it wanted Swamiji for its own-forever. A higher honor than this could not have been paid by the academic world of America. But Swamiji was a sannyasin; he could not bind himself to a secular institution, and he had, moreover, work to do and a message to give in the open world. Thus he refused.*

(That all of philosophical Harvard-professors and students alike-acclaimed Swamiji's eloquent, forceful, and rational presentation of Vedanta is unquestioned, but whether or not he had budged such monuments as James and Royce one inch from their hard-fought and well-known philosophical positions is another matter. The reader can find some thoughts on this subject in Appendix B.)

On March 26, the day following the Harvard talk, Miss Thursby noted in her diary: "Mrs. Bull gives reception for Sterling, Leggetts and self. Swami's lecture at Procopia[59]." This reception was no doubt a late afternoon tea, and, although the diary does not mention it, Swamiji was certainly present, three of the guests of honor being his close friends and the fourth, Mrs. Antoinette Sterling, well known to him. And that evening, which in this cold and snowy month was remarkably springlike in its warmth, his hostess, himself, the guests of honor, and very likely other guests, such as Miss Farmer, who had by now come from New York, crossed over the Charles River to Boston, where he was to deliver "The Ideal of a Universal Religion" at the Procopeia Club.

During the next two days, in which the weather returned to a more seemly, March-like cold, Swamiji delivered his last three talks in Boston, holding in the evenings his third and fourth classes ("Realization, or the Ultimate of Religion" and the Upanishad class) at the Procopeia's rented arena, and on the afternoon of March 28 giving a talk at the Twentieth Century Club. Of this last, no announcements or reports can be found in the Boston papers, which leads one to think that the occasion must have been a private one. The loss, however, is minimal, for the lecture ("The Vedanta: Its :Practical Bearings; How It Differs from Other Philosophies") and the discussion that followed were printed in pamphlet form by the Twentieth Century Club and later published in volumes one and five, respectively, of the Complete Works[60]. (The lecture as published in volume one of the Complete Works has been given the title "The Spirit and Influence of Vedanta.")

As its name would indicate, the Twentieth Century Club was riding on the crest of the times into the future. It was a dub devoted primarily to social reform, and its standards of membership were high. As described by a contemporary magazine, "It called at once for progressive men, in sympathy with the advancing spirit of brotherhood in the world." It wanted "men to a degree dissatisfied with the existing social and industrial order; men reaching out for light and leadership, humble enough to confess their perplexity in the face of grave problems and teachable enough to receive instruction from any source[61]." This was a big order, and, as might be expected, the membership included men whose biographical sketches can be found in Who Was Who, as well as in various encyclopedias. To name a few: Edward Everett Hale (whom Swamiji had met at Greenacre), John Fiske, Davis R. Dewey, Robert A. Woods, and the club's president, Edwin D. Mead.

To have been invited to speak before Boston's Twentieth Century Club was, in a sense, as great an honor as to have been invited to speak before Harvard's Graduate Philosophical Club. Its membership was as elect and its guest speakers as carefully chosen. "The Twentieth Century Club," a contemporary newspaper noted, "is the modern representative of the old and famous Radical Club of Boston. Like that, it has the most distinguished men of the day as its speakers and guests[62]." The Radical Club itself was not unknown to Swamiji. Among his friends were men and women who had been closely connected with it during its years of glory: notably, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Franklin B. Sanborn, who, like Professor Wright, had recognized Swamiji's genius even before the days of the Parliament of Religions, Julia Ward Howe, Charles Carroll Everett, Lewis G. Janes. In fact, the Radical Club, which had been formed in 1869 when to be "radical" meant to be more liberal than, and in open rebellion against, the main body of the Unitarian Church, was associated both in spirit and in membership with the Free Religious Association, before which Swamiji had spoken in 1894. To speak before the one was, in effect, to speak before the other. It was, however, the Twentieth Century Club that more truly represented the intellectual world of 1896, its interests lying more in the findings and promises of science and in social and economic reforms than in the speculative idealism of theology.

As far as we know, Swamiji's talk before this group was relatively short, but in it he presented compactly and powerfully the essential teachings of Vedanta insofar as they are of relevance to, and importance for, the Western world. He spoke of the broad impersonality of Vedanta, which stands as a background to all sects, which is antagonistic to none, and which, in fact, supports rather than nullifies variety in religious belief: He spoke of the Vedantic teaching of the divinity of man, of the infinite oneness of human life, which is the basis and sanction of all morality and ethics, and in the unfoldment and realization of which alone lies universal brotherhood. Significantly, and perhaps deliberately, Swamiji gave in this last public lecture in America (during his first visit to the West) a proud and eloquent recital of his country's immemorial and ,consistent history of tolerance which was almost identical with that in his first address at the Parliament of Religions. Also, as in that first talk, he gave in this, his last, a free translation of the Sanskrit verse which stands as the rationale of religious harmony: "As so many rivers, having their source in different mountains, roll down, crooked or straight, and at last come into the ocean-so all these various creeds and religions, taking their start from different standpoints and running through crooked or straight courses, at last come unto Thee[63]." As though taking a long backward look over his work in the West, he seemed to find that the message he had started with-the message of universal toleration and sympathy, based on the essential divinity of all men and the identity of their goal-was the message he should end with, for this was a basic teaching of bit great Master and one of which the West was in desperate need. To these idealistic men of the Twentieth Century Club, who wanted to advance the "spirit of brotherhood in the , world," he gave the secret in a word: "The Vedanta lays down that each man should be treated not as what he manifests, but as what he stands for. Each human being stands for the divine, and, therefore, every teacher should be helpful, not by condemning man, but by helping him to call forth the divinity that is within him[64]."

It was before these men who sought to mold the coming age that Swamiji bade farewell to the country in which he had spent the better part of three years. According to the pamphlet in which his talk was printed, he said: "I have lived three years amongst you. I have travelled over nearly the whole of this country, and as I am going back from here to my own country, it is meet that I should take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude in this Athens of America.... In a few words I would like to sum up all my experiences here. Here alone, in this climate, in this land of America, no question is asked about a man's peculiarities. If a man is a man, that is all, and they take him into their hearts, and that is one thing I have never seen in any other country in the world[65]."

Swamiji left Boston on Monday, March 30. Although, as we shall see in the following chapter, he did not leave America until a little over two weeks later, he had delivered in Boston the last of the public lectures he ,was to give during his first American visit and had made his official farewell.

ⓘ
[1] Ralph W. Trine to Emma Thursby, February 18,1896, Thursby Papers, New-York Historical Society.
[2] See Prophetic Mission-1, chap. 1, sec. I.
[3] See Prophetic Missions, chap. 12, sec. 4.
[4] Chicago Inter Ocean, 4 April 1896.
[5] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, January 3, 1896, SCB. (For full letter see World Teocher-1, chap. 6, sec. 1.)
[6] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, February 6, 1896, SCB. (For full letter see World Teacher-i, chap. 7, sec. 3.)
[7] Quoted in Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians, p. 333.
[8] Lucius Beebe, Boston and the Boston Legend, p. 185.
[9] Cleveland Amory, op. cit., p. 185.
[10] This paragraph of the Evening Transcript article and the one preceding it are quoted in volume five of the Complete Works under the title “The Sanny^sin.”
[11] See World Teacher-1, chap. 6.
[12] The article from this unidentified New York paper was reprinted in the Pacific Vedantin, September 1902, pp. 11—12, and also in Speeches and Writings of Swami Vivekananda (Madras, 1927). Excerpts from the article appear in volume five of the Complete Works, pp. 412-13.
[13] Complete Works, 6 : 272.
[14] See Prophetic Missions, chap. 8, sec. 3.
[15] Complete Works, 5 : 412.
[16] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, June 28, 1897. Leg. Col.16 J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, June 28, 1897. Leg. Col.
[17] Sarah J. Farmer to Swami Vivekananda, March 20, 1896, VSNC.
[18] Complete Works, 5 : 106.
[19] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, March 22,1896, Sen Col.
[20] Swami Vivekananda to Mary Funke, March 22, 1896, Sen Col.
[21] John Henry Wright to Mary Tappan Wright, March 24, 1896. (Copies of this letter and those that follow between Professor Wright and his wife, Mary Tappan Wright, are preserved in the VSNC archives.)
[22] John Henry Wright to Mary Tappan Wright,, March 25, 1896.
[23] Complete Works, 5 : 37.
[24] Emma Thursby to Sara Bull, February 4 (?), 1895, SCB. (See World Teacher-1, chap. 1, sec. 3.)
[25] John Henry Wright to Mary Tappan Wright, March 27, 1896.
[26] Mary Tappan Wright to John Henry Wright, March 30, 1896.
[27] Swami Vivekananda to John Henry Wright, May 16, 1896, VSNC.
[28] Life (1965), p. 405.
[29] William James to Swami Vivekananda, March 28, 1896, Sen Col.
[30] William James, Jr. to Mrs. Woodman Webster, October 7, 1954, VSNC.
[31] Complete Works, 5 : 137.
[32] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 216.
[33] See Prophetic Mission-i, chap. 3, sec. 1.
[34] Robert A. Woods, The City Wilderness (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898).
[36] Cf. Complete Works, 2 : 384.
[37] Diary of Emma Thursby, March 1896, Thursby Papers, New-York Historical Society.
[38] Complete Works, 5 : 276 ff.
[39] See ref. 6 above.
[40] Sara Bull to Lewis G. Janes, December, 1894, Mrs. Charles Lyttle, copy VSNC.
[41] Related by Swami Akhilananda and recorded by the late Dr. Hilary Holt; made available by Swami Chetanananda, 1977.
[42] William Ernest Hocking, “Recollections of Swami Vivekananda,” Vedanta and the West, No. 163, p. 61.
[43] Life (1965),?. 389
[44] Bliss Perry, And Gladly Teach, p. 223.
[45] Quoted in Margaret Miinsterberg, Hugo Miinsterberg: His Life and Work, pp. 42-43.
[46] William James to George Palmer, April 2, 1900, in The Letters of William James, 2 vols., ed. Henry James, Jr.
[47] Complete Works, 6 : 353. (Original letter, Sen Col.; see notes for chap, nine.)
[48] John P. Fox to Sara Bull, January 15, 1896, SCB.
[49]  John P. Fox to Sara Bull,., February 23, 1896.
[50] Complete Works, 5 : 106.
[51] William J arnes to Sara Bull, August 2, 1900, quoted in "Vivekananda: Some New Findings," Vedanta and the West, NovemberDecember, 1953.
[52] John P. Fox to Sara Bull, April 14, 1896, SCB.
[53] Francis H. Leggett to Sara Bull, May 1, 1896, SCB.
[54] John P. Fox, Note, introductory to The Vedanta Philosophy by Swami Vivekananda (New York: Vedanta Society, 1896).
[55] Charles Carroll Everett, D.D., Introduction to The Vedanta Philosophy (sec note 54 above).
[56] John P. Fox to Sara Bull, June 6, 1896, SCB.
[57] Margaret Miinsterberg, op. cit. (note 45 above), pp. 58-59.
[58] See ref. 51 above.
[59] See ref. 37 above.
[60] Complete Works, 1 : 387-92; 5 : 310-11.
[61] American Monthly Review of Reviews, July 1901, pp. 73-76.
[62] Chicago Inter Ocean, 4 April 1896.
[63] Puspadanta, “Hymn on the Greatness of Shiva” (Sivamahimnah Stotram), stanza 7. (See Complete Works 1 :4.)
[64] Complete Works, 1 : 388.
[65] Complete Works, 1 :387. (The wording of this passage is from the original pamphlet.)

↑ Contents

4.3 LAST DAYS IN AMERICA

On March 17, 1896, Swamiji's last day in Detroit, he had received an alarming letter from his English friend, Mr. Edward T. Sturdy, and had at once answered it. A crisis had arisen regarding the publication of his New York lectures and classes, particularly the publication of Raja-yoga.

In the last week of February, before leaving New York, Swamiji had completed his editing of his raja yoga classes. He had done so in a rush and had turned the transcript over to Miss Sarah Ellen Waldo(1).Somewhat distraught, Miss Waldo wrote to Mrs. Bull on March 6:

(1) For the part Miss S. Ellen Waldo played in the editing of Swamiji’s New York lectures and classes, see World Teacher-1, chapter six., page 433, note **.

I am hard at work on the Raja matter, and have nearly finished it. The last part was corrected in such a hurry by the Swami, that I find it very difficult to bring it into a satisfactory shape. I wish you were here, that I could submit it to you, before publication. I feel it almost too much responsibility to decide on it alone.[1]

Plans for publishing the book were already well under way. On Saturday, February 29, Mr. Walter Goodyear, who, together with his wife, Frances, was agency manager for Swamiji's pamphlets and books, had written to Mrs. Bull, giving her his report on the progress that had been made to date. His letter read in full:

My dear Mrs. Bull

Mr Goodwin has consulted Mr. Gestefeld who is now with the Metaph[ysical] Pub. Co. as to the best means of bringing out the Rajah book. One way is to handle it ourselves as we have the ones [pamphlets and Karma-Yoga] already in print. Goodwin thinks it would cost about $280 for first thousand. Another way would be to print it, and give the handling of it to them, for which they would give us 40c and take 60c (supposing it to be a $1 book.) The third way—and the one which, all things considered, we all favor, is to give the whole affair into their hands and take a royalty of about 20 % of selling price—they to pay all expenses &c. While the percentage may seem small, it seems to us that considering their facilities for distribution and adv'g, this would be the most advantageous way—especially considering that the meetings [lectures and classes] are over and we cannot any longer avail ourselves of them. The manuscript will be ready Mon. [March 2] and if you approve of the above or will leave it to me on seeing Mr. Whipple (Mr. Goodwin's information was only advisory not official) please wire me Mon. at 115 Nassau Str. In any event the copyrights will be in Swami's name as heretofore.

Power of Atty and first two copyrights [for the pamphlets "The Ideal of a Universal Religion" and "The Cosmos"] to follow later.

Your kind note of Thurs rec'd and noted—many thanks 

With kindest regards from each of us

Most sincerely yours[2] 

Walter Goodyear

As Miss Waldo had informed Mrs. Bull, the manuscript was not ready on Monday, March 2, but would be so about a week later. The haste in getting the book into print may have been due in some measure to the hints of trouble that had come from London. Toward the end of February it had become apparent to the officers of the New York Vedanta Society that while the Publication Committee was busy producing Swamiji's lectures in pamphlet and book form(2), Mr. Sturdy in England  had been pursuing plans of his own. On December 23, 1895, before the Publication Committee had been established, Swamiji had written to Sturdy:

(2) For the formation of the Publication Committee of the New York Vedanta Society, see World Teacher – 1, Cpater seven, section seven.

We have got up a very nice idea here. We have got a stenographer to take down the talks as they are delivered to the class—these are then typewritten. I will send you a copy of each as it is finished. Perhaps you may find in them some suggestions for your classes there.[3]

A few days later (on December 29) Swamiji again wrote to Sturdy: "By this time the copies of the lectures must have reached you:. Hope they may be of some use.'[4]In January he sent more typed manuscripts to Mr. Sturdy and also a copy of the first pamphlet, "The Ideal of a Universal Religion." "They may suggest to you some ideas,'[5]he wrote on January 16. They did indeed. Swamiji's next letter, however, should have served to nip those ideas in the bud.

Some friends here are publishing my Sunday lectures [he wrote in the first week of February](3). have sent you a few copies of the first one. I shall send you next mail a few of the next two lectures ["The Cosmos—the Macrocosm" and "The Cosmos—the Microcosm," printed in one pamphlet] and if you like them I shall ask them to send you a number. Can you manage to get a few hundred copies sold in England? That will encourage them in publishing the subsequent  ones:[6]

(3) In the Complete Works (8:363) the date given to this letter is December 16, 1895, but on the evidence of the letter’s contents, Swamiji must have written it in early February of 1896.

It would seem clear enough from this that Swamiji wanted the American pamphlets to be sold in England. But Mr. Sturdy either failed to understand or, understanding, felt that the publication efforts of Swamiji's American friends were not to be taken seriously. It is not improbable that he tended to look upon the American work as a colonial branch of the London work and to feel that if anyone was to undertake the publication of Swamiji's lectures, it should be he. In any case toward the end of February Mr. Sturdy sent Swamiji a pamphlet that he had had printed in London from some of the material Swamiji had sent to him—very probably the New York lecture "The Ideal of a Universal Religion." This coup must have caused no little consternation in the New York Vedanta Society. Swamiji hastened to advise Mr. Sturdy that in the eyes of the now established Publication Committee the material belonged to the Committee and to no one else. "The pamphlet was beautiful," he wrote on February 29, and went on to explain the situation.

The books and pamphlets here have been got up this way. A committee was formed in New York. They paid all the expenses of stenographing and printing on condition the books will belong to them. So these pamphlets and books are theirs.... The books are the property of this Committee of which Mrs. Ole Bull is the principal backer, also Mr. Leggett. It is only just that they should have the books as they paid all the expenses. There is no fear of the publishers meddling with them as they are the publishers themselves.[7]

On March 5 Mrs. Bull also Wrote to Mr. Sturdy in what was no doubt her charming and often confusing way. But Mr. Sturdy evidently received neither Swamiji's letter nor hers in time to prevent him from setting forth at some length his publication plans in a letter to Mrs. Frances Goodyear. In the same mail he sent to Mrs. Goodyear a copy of each of the pamphlets, or small books, that he had so far printed. There were five of these: The Ideal of a Universal Religion, The Cosmos, Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Raja Yoga(4). The first two had been printed from the New York pamphlets, and the remainder from the typed transcripts of Swamiji's New York class talks. Sturdy's letter to Mrs. Goodyear, dated March 11, read in part:

(4)The full titles of Mr. Stury’s publications as finally brought out were: Addresses on the Vedanta Philosophy: Volume I, Karma Yoga, Volume II, Bhakti Yoga, Volume III, (I) The ideal of a Universal Religion, (2) The Cosmos and Microcosm

I have printed 500 copies of each of these subjects which have been for distribution gratis. Of course that cannot go on for long as it would exhaust resources needed for other things. What I should like to do would be to publish the series as a series to be called the "Viveka Series". We would keep it continually going and each volume would help those to follow. In that way we should make a public around our work. Now Longmans Green & Co. are important & also nice people and they have a house in New York, London & Bombay. I think they would be the best people for our purpose. The series should be sold just to cover the expenses and so be put in everybody's power to procure. Longmans Green & Co. are bringing out a little book for me, a translation of the Narada Sutras or "Inquiry into Love (Bhakti)". I shall have it published in New York also and shall call it Viveka Series.No 1(5). On the fly page I have dedicated the work to Swami. In an appendix there is an explanation of who he is. I shall be following with other little translations and this is why I think it would be well to keep all the work in one series.[8]

(5) See World Teacher – 1, chapter four, section one. Mr. Sturdy dropped the idea of the “Viveka Series.” His Narada Sutra, published in March of 1896, was subtitled “Indian Ideals – No. 1,” which designation was also dropped in the next edition.

To judge from the fait-accompli tone of Mr. Sturdy's letter, it did dot seriously occur to him, if it occurred at all, that anyone might object to this plan. It was, one feels, only as a last-minute courtesy that he asked the approval of Swamiji and his American friends. "I should like to hear soon," he continued in his letter to Mrs. Goodyear, "whether this plan is approved by Swamiji and his friends on your side. I think the sooner we go ahead the better. If I hear from Swami that he approves I shall immediately put all the work, of which I am sending you copies by this mail, into Longmans' hands with instructions to publish in New York and London.[9]

It did occur to Mr. Sturdy, however, that the class talks Swamiji had edited might be considered better than those he himself had edited. In this event, the solution would be simple:

"The only difference that it would be necessary to make to my proposal," he wrote, "is that his [Swamiji's] copy should take the place of that which I am sending & of which I have something under 400 copies left, this balance can be given away gratis as always intended & Swami's copy go to Longmans.'[10]

In a later paragraph of this same letter to Mrs. Goodyear Sturdy suggested that it would "probably economise our fund if you can run off 200/500 copies of the pamphlet[s] in New York instead of my posting them. This latter plan would run me out of them."

All in all, it is clear that Mr. Sturdy intended to handle the publication of Swamiji's lectures for both New York and London. The work already done in New York does not seem to have made any impression upon him at all.

This, then, was the way matters stood when on March 17, just as he finished his work in Detroit, Swamiji received a letter from Mr. Sturdy which no doubt outlined the same plan he had set before Mrs. Goodyear. In his reply, Swamiji did not mince words:

I received your last just now and it frightened me immensely. The lectures were delivered under the auspices of certain friends who paid for the stenography and all other expenses on condition they alone will have the right to publish them. As such they have already published the Sunday lectures as well as three books on "Karma-Yoga," "Raja-Yoga" and "Jnana-Yoga(6)." " The Raja-Yoga especially has been much altered and rearranged along with the translation of "Yoga Sutras of Patanjali". The Raja-Yoga is in the hands of Longmans. The friends are furious at the idea of these books being published in England; and as they have been made over to them by me legally, I am at a loss what to do. The publication of the pamphlets was not so serious, but the books have been so much re-arranged and changed that the American edition will not recognise the English one. Now pray don't  publish these books, as they will place me in a very false position and create endless quarrel and destroy my American work....

(6) When Swamiji wrote to Mr. Sturdy on March 17, 1896, that his American friends had “as such … already published the Sunday lectures as well as three books on `Karma-Yoga,’ `Raja-Yoga’ and `Jnana-Yoga,’” he must have meant in regard to the last two that the New York Committee possessed the absolute right to publish them and fully intended to do so.

I pray you again to think about this publishing business and write some letters to Mrs. Ole Bull and through her ask the opinion of the American friends of the Vedanta, remembering "ours is the Gospel of oneness of all beings", and all national feelings are but wicked superstitions. Moreover I am sure that the person who is always ready to give way to others' opinions finds at last that his opinion has triumphed. Yielding always conquers at last.[11]

On March 23 we find Miss Waldo in Boston with the manuscript of Raja-Yoga, which Mrs. Bull had now read. Negotiations in America with the Metaphysical Publishing Company as well as with Longmans for its publication had in both cases come to nothing. The Arena Company in Boston was now being consulted, as one learns from the following letter Miss Waldo wrote to Mrs. Bull on March 23 from the Boston home of her cousin, Dr. William H. Prescott.

I received the parcel of manuscript all right this morning, & noticing your suggestion of a title page for the Aphorisms, I went at once to Mr Goodwin & got him to type me one. I then went to Helen Gardiner's (Mrs Smart) to leave the manuscript for an estimate. I found her quite ill with "grip" so she passed me on to her husband who took me to the Arena office & gave me the estimate, a copy of which I enclose. Col Smart wants a "catching" title for the cover, as Yoga Philosophy would appeal only to the initiated, and he thinks that the book will be certain of a large sale, as anything occult is the rage just at present. He would also copyright it in Eng. & bring it out there. He says books of this class have a large & ready sale there. The contract provides for mistake in estimating no. of  pages, also other details. The Eng. cop. right would be $5.25.

The book can be got out in good shape in about six weeks. The Arena Co. would advertize, review, push & sell the book & estimate their expenses in so doing at an equal amount. Of course their prestige & position in the trade count for a good deal. The charge for Ed, correction would be taken out, should the book be found not to require it.

I am writing by this mail to Mr Goodyear for a report as to our financial standing. I think any money put into this would be sure to come back from sales, & I think it very possible that Mr Flagg would help us(7).' " I would do what I can & perhaps the Leggetts would let their advance stand over for this book too. I thought I had better write you this in advance, so that you could think it over before I see you tomorrow. I wrote it, in case there should be no opportunity to talk about it this evening, & then I could just hand you the note.[12]

(7) For information about Mr. William Flagg see Prophetic Mission – 2, chapter nine, section two.

[At the close of her letter Miss Waldo quoted the following estimate]


No of pages (estimate)

288

Size of book page

8 1/2 x 5 1/2

Size " type " pages

5 1/2 x 3

No of copies

2000

Retail price (cloth)

$I.25

small pica type double leaded, Aphorisms-Pica

Cost of composition & electrotyping

205.92

Editorial corrections

30.00

Cost paper & printing

136.25

Cost binding 2000 copies-cloth including dies

323.00


 696.17

(Here we find an estimate of nearly $700 for two thousand copies, which was considerably more than Mr. Goodwin's guess of $280 for the first thousand.)

In the meanwhile, Mr. Sturdy had received Mrs. Bull's letter of March 5. His reply, dated March 17, must have reached Cambridge during the last days of Swamiji's stay there. It read in part:

I have your letter of Mar 5th from Cambridge Mass.

The, Jnana Yoga typed copy has already been edited by me but on learning that a syndicate had been formed in America to publish & look after all Swami Vivekananda's work there I put it on one side and have not printed it.(8)

(8) Th Jnana Yoga that Mr. Sturdy mentions in his letter of March 17 to Mrs. Bull was not the Jnana Yoga we know today, which contains many lectures Swamiji had not delivered. (See World Teacher – 1, chapter six, section six.)

I am waiting to hear further as to what should be done. The 500 copies of several of the American typed lectures & addresses I received I have given away for the most part, especially to Swamis classes &c here, but the remainder I am about to advertise for sale altho' I shall not publish them & thus not interfere with your book or books if you bring them out.

I thought it as well to make a charge because I can thus husband my resources which would otherwise give out.[13]

As might be expected, Mr. Sturdy was much put out by the American interference with his publishing project. On March 29, however, he replied to Swamiji's letter of March 17 with restraint:

My dear Swamiji

Your letter of the 17th March has reached me in good time to prevent the books being sold.

I shall now do nothing further with them unless I hear to the contrary from your American Committee.

It is a pity because it has wasted some £90 of my resources.

This was brought about by the first letter that came with the original type-written reports telling me to make what use I thought best of them. [Swamiji had referred only to their use in Sturdy's classes.]

However we can only regret the waste of energy & money & let the matter drop.

For the satisfaction of your American Committee kindly show them these figures.

I printed

Ideal  Cosmos

of Un.

Religion

Raja

Yoga

Karma

Yoga

Bhakti

Yoga


500

500

500

500

500

Gaveaway

125

75

41

29

20

Still on my hands

375

425

459

471

480

So you see very little harm has been done.

These books would has [sic] been sold on the book stalls at 1s/ld whereas the bound copy of Karma Yoga sent me from America is published at 4/2 [$1.00]. They will never cell in London at such a price, except to a mere handful of people.

The Theosophists are selling a scholarly edition of the first 5 or 6 Upanishads at 6d and the Gita also at 6d both of them as good as any Edition published anywhere heretofor [sic].

I have a note from Naples from Saradananda and I see by the mail news his steamer has now passed Gibraltar: he expects to be here about April 2nd.

Many letters only make confusion so will you kindly place this before your American Publishing Committee.

I am telling friends you will be here in the beginning of May, which I presume is correct.

Yours always in  [Sat]
E. T. Sturdy

This suppression of literature entirely cripples our prospect of making your coming well known. The books would have been travelled by four travellers all over the country & in the city of London.[14]

Two days later, Mr. Sturdy wrote more crossly to Swamiji in regard to the suppression of literature by the "American Syndicate." This second letter, dated March 31, read in full:

I wrote you at once on the receipt of your letter informing you that I had entirely suppressed the books I had printed at the wish of your American friends. Since writing I have refused various applications for them either on sale or as gifts.

I am writing now because the attitude of your Committee in America is inexplicable to me. Even supposing that the books have been enlarged, there could have been no harm in these books appearing in England as a preliminary edition in their original form, and of course, as you well know, I have eliminated anything that would seem indiscrete [sic] in print, altho' well enough spoken to friends. Is it that these people are only thinking of recuping [sic] their outlay, or is it national or personal jealousy, or what is the reason? I quite fail to understand them.

It is well however that they should know the result. It is this—

We are entirely disarmed here; we have nothing to send for review to the press; nothing to set before the people or refer to, and this valuable month, preceding your coming, will be entirely lost. We can only sit down and do nothing. When you come we shall be just where we were last year and all to begin over again. It is different in America where you have been now known for three years. I do not know what your American Syndicate intends to do in England.

If they are going to bring out books here at any price much over 1/- they will be quite unread: people will not buy them. Books to be popular and tempt to purchase when the subject is new must be almost given away. Your friends here have had to be dissuaded from making a protest to the American Committee for having so entirely crippled your prospects for the coming season.

To bring out these books when you are already leaving the country for India will be to lose half or very much more than half the result of people seeing them whilst you could be referred to here. All this has made your friends here indignant. These people [the Americans] have neither produced for us any cheap literature here, nor have they given us a free hand to do so.

To produce it in the middle of next Summer when those people who would be your audience are all gone to the country is almost useless, if you adhere to your plan of going to the East in the late autumn.

If you bring your stenographer friend over or if we can engage one here I hope to bring out a series of your English Addresses.

I hope however to make your American friends a free gift of any such work and not to buck their enterprise or to prevent them utilizing this work, perfectly or imperfectly, as best they promptly may, in their country.

No news of Saradananda yet, but he must be nearing Plymouth now.

I had made arrangements with a large firm who employ 4 travellers to have your books offered everywhere in town & country. As nothing to make your coming efficiently known can now be done, I propose to utilize the time with Saradananda in translating some little books quietly at home.[15]

A few days thereafter, Mr. Sturdy informed all readers of the Brahmavadin that the London work was being obstructed by Swamiji's American followers. In a letter to that magazine he wrote the following easy-to-read-between lines:

Constant applications are being made for literature which unfortunately cannot be supplied, the addresses and lectures given by Swami Vivekananda in America not being obtainable, so far, in this country.

We live in an age of cheap books and cheap printing and the only way in which a large number of people can be made quickly aware of any subject is through books and through reviews in the Press. We hope soon after Swami's return to remedy this absence of his lectures and addresses so that we may put them before everybody at as low a rate as possible. —E.T.S.[16]

Mr. Sturdy may have had a point. In any case, the American Committee had become divided on the issue. Miss Waldo, to whom Swamiji had dictated his translation of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, who was closely involved with the actual editing of RajaYoga as a whole, and who had enthusiastically and energetically busied herself in making arrangements for its publication, was much upset by Sturdy's attitude. Indeed, it would seem that it was she who headed the American oppositon to him. Mrs. Bull and Mr. Goodwin, on the other hand, were swinging around to Sturdy's side—and it was Mrs. Bull who had the authority in the matter, she being in charge of the Publication Committee, with power of attorney. A letter written by Mr. Goodwin to Mrs. Bull (after a ten-day visit with her) gives ample evidence that Swamiji's American workers were, to say the least, not of one accord. Dated April 10, Goodwin's letter read in part:

Since I returned [to New York from Cambridge] this morning I have been rather discouraged by many things. To begin with, while I hold to my contention that Miss Waldo's manners are not advantageous to the work &  that she lacks consideration for what we, who are trying in various ways to advance the Vedanta have a right to expect, I am afraid I have been too severe in my condemnation.

I really believe that, in great measure, if not wholly, these failings are due to lack of judgment, & Mrs Goodyear told me to-day that on her (Miss Waldo's] return [from Boston] she was almost heartbroken at the turn things had taken, & especially at the Swami's apparent forgetfulness of her work for him, into which he was responsible for pushing her, even to the point of being responsible for many of the ill judged things she has done In a way, this will do me good, I believe. I have vowed mentally that I will never again, knowingly, criticise anyone....

Mr. Sturdy has actually published the early Raja lectures in pamphlet form. I shall read it to-night, & think I can get an idea of his acquaintance with Raja. Gnana, of course, he is safe with. But this previous knowledge may be of use in deciding the other.[17]

The following day, April 11, Swamiji returned to New York from Chicago. He had by now read Mr. Sturdy's outraged letters of March 29 and 31 and at once turned them over to Mr. Goodwin, who, in turn, promptly forwarded them to Mrs. Bull, together apparently, with Sturdy's proof for his 'Raja Yoga" pamphlet. The publisher, Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., was a branch of the famous Luzac & Co., Oriental Publishers. It was enough to give one pause. In his covering letter Goodwin wrote:

I enclose herewith letters from Mr. Sturdy which the Swami who arrived this evg —has handed me. They are rather disturbing. Simpkin, Marshall & Co. are equal probably to Longmans in their way as publishers, which you no doubt know, & it seems an extreme pity that the work should have been interfered with. Miss Waldo was present when the Swami handed me the letters & I showed her the proofs with that firms imprints. She must have realised her mistake then, & I believe did so--& is sorry for it. I did not show her the letters. There is no use in perpetuating the ill-feeling—but I showed them to Mr. Goodyear afterwards. I suggested to the Swami cabling Mr Sturdy as follows—Use all publications except Raja —Vivekananda—but he thought not. I think, however, we should do so without referring to him again. I was going to do it on my own responsibility but would rather ask you—What do you think of it? If you approve I should be glad if you will write me on receipt of this, & I will do so at once. Mr. Sturdy will have your letter by now, &. this, with the cable, would make him feel secure.[18]

Mrs. Bull's letter to Sturdy to which Goodwin refers is not today available, and we cannot guess what it proposed. In any event, with an authority that Swamiji had evidently given her, she consented to Goodwin's hair-raisingly disobedient (but, as it turned out, not injudicious) cable advising Sturdy to "use all publications except Raja.”(9)

(9) In a complex business letter to Mr. Sturdy, written after Goodwin’s cable had been sent off, Mrs. Bull indicated her authorization of it. “My understanding is this,” she wrote: your letter of inquiry concerning the motives and methods of the N.Y. Committee with the title pages of your English Pamphlets marked “suppressed” was forwarded to me from New York. To facilitate your arrangements a cable, I understand, was sent releasing all but the Raja, which seemed to me advisable at the time” (Sara Bull to E.T. Sturdy, undated, SCB).

In an extended postscript to his letter of April 11, Mr. Goodwin assured Mrs. Bull that while he would not "openly criticise [Miss Waldo] again" (as he had resolved in his letter of April 10), he still had his "ideas of how things should be." "And I shall always," he wrote, "when the power is in my hands, follow my best judgement, wherever possible, with the added force & light of the opinions of others, but without giving the possibility of offense by open criticism” (It was a resolve he would have occasion to remember in later months.) In this postscript, which was dated April 12, he continued:

Miss Waldo was discussing Boston with me nearly the whole of yesterday, & took a very decided course with regard to myself. She claims that I was in everything only  a tool to yourself. I asked her to remember that I had not varied one atom in Boston from the views I had expressed to her in New York previously on the two main points (I) Mr Sturdy (2) The necessity of care in her personal relations with the Swami—for his sake. These enclosures from Mr Sturdy prove my attitude on that point to have been the correct one, while the other matter can only be left to personal & individual taste. I have always asked her if the proper way to regard Mr Sturdy's use of the pamphlets & lecture matter generally was not as for the Vedanta as a whole, & whether we were practically applying Vedanta in claiming for one section of Vedantists, as against another, proprietary rights in educational matter which is of as much importance to one as the other & vice versa—merely because one section had found the means & the other had not?[19]

It was, in actual fact, Mr. Sturdy who had found a better means of publishing Swamiji's works than had the Americans. Because of this, not because of the lofty idealism with which Mr. Goodwin had belabored Miss Waldo, the project of publishing Raja-Yoga in America was stopped. There was some idea now of bringing out the book in England, and Professor William James was to be approached (by Mrs. Bull and Goodwin) for a preface.

The Swami is delighted at the idea of Prof. James' preface [Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull on April 15]. He is anxious that Raja shall be got through as soon as possible now. Do you think Prof James could criticise it & write this without delay, so that it might follow us to England at earliest?[20]

Almost everyone was happy with these decisions. Only Miss Waldo was left with an unconsoled heart. No one seems to have informed her about the fate of the raja yoga manuscript; nor  does she seem now to have been speaking (or writing) directly to Mrs. Bull. Instead, she addressed a letter, dated May 19, to Mrs. Bull's secretary-companion, Miss Elizabeth Hamlen, and thus indirectly spoke her mind to the head of the Publication Committee—more with sorrow, one feels, than with rancor.

I cannot tell you [she wrote] anything about the Raja Yoga, beyond the fact that the lessons of this year were most carefully prepared for publication & were all ready to be printed about the 10th Mch. I believe the manuscript has gone to Eng. It may get into print sometime, but I have my doubts. Meantime, Mr Sturdy's little book is better than nothing, & I would be glad to have it circulated. I have no definite information about it however. Fortunately we still have the notes of the lessons & if no public use is made of them, we can have typewritten copies made for the subscribers. I expect that will be the final outcome. People will have got over wanting the Raja book & have turned their attention to some new subject by next Fall, & that is as early as the book can now be put on the market. Right after the Swami's classes closed, there was an active demand for the book & it would have had a ready sale, but you know yourself how soon a thing is forgotten.[21]

The story of the publication of Raja-Yoga now moves its center to England, where we shall come upon it in the following chapter. Let us here return to March 30, 1896, when Swamiji, his Boston work completed, left for Chicago.

2

Chicago was in a sense Swamiji's home town. It was here that he first walked on American streets, and here, nearly six weeks later, that he first spoke to a large and important gathering of American people and then and there set in motion  a ground swell of spiritual thought that even today is gathering momentum.


In the mid-nineties Chicago was, physically, barely a quarter-century old, almost all of it having been burned to the ground in October of 1871 in a superconflagration. It had been at that time a mere overgrown pioneer town, sprung from a rough and muddy trading post that had been bought from the Indians some thirty-five years earlier for a heap of blankets, kettles, hatchets, and the like. Standing at the crossroads of commerce, the town had grown fast. Grain and livestock poured in from the west, lumber and manufactured goods from the east, wheat and cotton from the south,. and all of it poured out again, always leaving behind a rich deposit of profits. Millions were regularly made overnight, largely by the industrious and thrifty Yankees who had come from New England to settle in this gold mine of a town. After the Great Fire, Chicago grew even faster than before, mushrooming up from its cinders with a vitality that astounded oven its own energetic pioneers. Intense concentration had wrought the miracle: the men of Chicago had one, and only one, consuming interest—the making of money.

The same intensity and passion with which that money was made went into civilizing the city, particularly after the fire— and into barbarizing it as well. Chicago quickly took on all the characteristics of any other big American city of the 1880s and '90s—and this with a vengeance. Gamblers and swindlers, who had come from the South during the Civil War, flourished; honest immigrants, full of soon-shattered hope, poured in from Europe; vice and corruption, labor riots murderous on both sides, crowded slums, stockyards, packing houses, grain elevators, massive and ostentatious mansions, the world's first, skyscraper, noise, congestion, unabashed avarice—all went into the brew that was Chicago. And in and through this disorder, the beautiful and gracious wife of the immensely rich Potter Palmer went about building up an elite and cultivated society which sophisticated Easterners could no longer ridicule. Mrs. Palmer reigned with a mind given, as well, to society in a larger sense. Like most upper-class Chicago women, she had an awakening social conscience, a sense of civic pride, and a serious interest in the welfare of the poor. For all its new wealth, Chicago society was not altogether frivolous, nor in the nineties was it crude. Thanks to women like Mrs. Palmer, it had acquired not only a measure of savoir-faire but of responsibility as well, and if it hadn't quite made the Eastern grade in sophistication, it was well out of the prairies.


Chicago's cultural life had also grown apace; among its other prides, the city boasted the beginnings of a symphony orchestra, a stock of masterpiece paintings, purchased in Europe for the new Art Institute Building (where the Parliament of Religions was held), a university, endowed by John D. Rockefeller in 1892, a literary magazine of national interest, a literary club—the Fortnightly, where Swamiji lectured in 1893—and the Auditorium, opened in 1889, where the New York Metropolitan opera company gave annual performances. Furthermore, Chicago had long been on the itineraries of many famous artists and lecturers, among them, Adelina Patti, Ole Bull, Sarah Bernhardt, and Oscar Wilde. To its pride, and sometimes to its astonishment, the trading post had become a metropolis. Most wonderful of all, Chicago, only a scant twenty years out of its ashes, decided to put on a mammoth World's Fair, together with an imposing and unprecedented World's Parliament of Religions, both of which turned out to be enormously successful.


During the last three months of 1893, after his astounding appearance at the Parliament in September, and during the first three months of 1894, Swamiji had been in and out of Chicago, staying, when in the city, primarily with the Hale family on Dearborn Avenue. After March of 1894, he had returned only once, when he had held a series of classes in the first three weeks of January, 1895. Now in 1896, he had come to hold classes once again in the city before leaving America. Outside of the Hale family and the John B. Lyon family, with  the latter of whom Swamiji had stayed during the Parliament of Religions, the names of only a few of his Chicago friends are known to us, and of these, most are only names—such as Mrs. Pratt, Miss Stockham, Mrs. Mills. Of Miss Josephine C. Locke, who enters now and then into Swamiji's correspondence with the Hales and who arranged a class for him at Chicago's Plaza Hotel in January of 1895, a little is known: she was the Director of Art in the Public Schools of Chicago, and at the World's Fair held the position of Chairman of the Women's Committee in charge of the Congress on Manual and Art Education. She was, moreover, a dynamo of energy, and, as Swamiji wrote to Isabelle McKindley in March of 1895, "apt to be carried away by enthusiasm." "Sister Josephine is very fiery," he added.[22]A few years later Nivedita, meeting Miss Locke, would write of her (not unkindly) as being "like twenty storms in one tea cup.'[23] "Sister Josephine" was instrumental in arranging classes for Swamiji during this last visit, and surely went about it with zest. But even more instrumental was Mrs. Florence J. Adams, whom Swamiji had first met not in Chicago but in Cambridge in December of 1894, when they had both been guests of Mrs. Ole Bull.


Florence Adams, then in her early thirties, was the petite and lively wife of Milward Adams, house manager of the grand Auditorium Theatre ("one of the handsomest in the world, Baedeker said), where the acoustics were perfect and, as mentioned above, the Metropolitan Opera Company gave annual performances. The Opera Company was, in fact, gracing Chicago in April of 1896(10),, its stars staying at the Auditorium Hotel—an immense building which, together with an office building and tower, had been constructed in connection with (and to finance) the Auditorium Theatre, making, in all, one "mammoth pile of masonry" on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Congress Street. In her own way, Mrs. Adams was also a star of sorts—a talented ("one of the most gifted women" Mrs. Bull had ever known) and popular lecturer on "The Art of Expression," which art included speaking, walking, gesturing, and standing. (Swamiji took lessons in walking from her, but, as he wrote in March of 1895 to Isabelle McKindley, to "no use; the ever increasing load in front does not allow me to bend forward as Mrs. Adams wants it. If I try to bend forward in walking, the centre of gravity comes to the surface of the stomach, and so I go cutting front somersaults.")[24]

(10) Mme Emma Calve was in Chicago with the Metropolitan Opera Company in March and April of 1896. for her possible meeting with Swamiji at this period, see Prophetic Mission -, Appendix.

Mrs. Adams had a studio in the Fine Arts Building, adjacent on Michigan Avenue to the Auditorium. Here such people as the young Ethel Barrymore and Mme Antoinette Sterling came for lessons, and it was here that Swamiji would give at least two of his talks during his ten-day stay in the city. Inadvertently, he himself did much to make his presence known in Chicago. In a letter dated April 2, 1896, Mrs. Adams told her friend Mrs. Bull that on the night of his arrival "he came to the opera for two acts, and there met many old friends, among them Prince Wolkonsky." The intermission between those two acts of what happened to be Il Trovatore must have been like a gala reception for Swamiji. One can well picture his brilliant robe among the elegantly dressed opera-goers—the ladies in their elaborate low-cut, floorsweeping gowns, their necklaces and tiaras flashing with jewels; the gentlemen courtly in white tie and tails. His was a surprise appearance that must have elicited many a delighted exclamation, sometimes on both sides, as when he met his old friend Prince Wolkonsky, who was also in Chicago for a short visit only. In her letter of Thursday, April 2, Mrs. Adams went on:


The Swami has just given his first lesson and not only the matter but the appreciation of the audience was all we could desire.

The Swami was clear gentle and brilliant. How deep he carries one's thought in the short space of one hour.


As you know Chicago is always convulsed with Opera excitement and I have been so bewilderingly busy since my return after a month absence from the Studio—and with guests for the Opera—the Homers—and nightly box  parties—but best of all hours & hours with the de Reszkes & Melba filled with helpful & stimulating talks. I could not seem to do much for the Swami before he came—and at the time of his arrival I realized after talking with every one I met for the week that one series of talks must be in the center of town, so I waited for his approval & we began today with a select audience in my Studio. The rooms were full and more coming tomorrow if we outgrow the Studio we can go into Apollo Hall. Tonight an eve. course begins at 1628 Indiana Ave.... Next week the Prince [Wolkonsky's] and Swami's lectures will be all there is. Today being Holy Thursday & tomorrow Good Friday—& Saturday a matinee for which people had arranged—I am delighted at todays attendance & response. I want Dr John Hall & Jenkin Lloyd Jones to hear him &c. We had a fair half of men today which is only possible in C[hicago] in a down town place.[25]


So Swamiji gave two classes on April 2—in the morning at Mrs. Adams's Studio, and in the evening at 1628 Indiana Avenue (the home of a Dr. H. S. Perkins). We can, I think, assume that this was the pattern he would follow for the next week—a class downtown in the morning, one in the evening in the home of a friend, and it is probable that the size of at least the morning class made it necessary to move it to a public hall. On May 17 Mrs. Adams would write to Mrs. Bull, who, characteristically, had sent her a check to provide for Swamiji's Chicago expenses:


As to the Swami's affairs in Chicago and your check— my dear friend, I thought you offered to assist about the expenses if we did not receive sufficient return in Chicago. As you know, we literally had no time to prepare the ground for the Swami's coming, but our audience was beyond our aims or plans, and when the financial return by voluntary contribution [at] only the last three lectures amounted to close to $200.00 I was well pleased. After all his expenses were paid—board, R.R. ticket, & Hall rent—I gave him $140.00 as he left, & he seemed to be well pleased.


You are so good to think that I might need help, but I know that the few in Chicago who realized would be glad to do so little as the Swami asked.[26]


Where in Chicago did Swamiji live this time? Not with the Hale family, for Mr. and Mrs. Hale were not in town and the "sisters"—Mary and Harriet Hale and their cousins Isabelle and Harriet McKindley—had taken an apartment together at Walton Place. It is not likely that he stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Adams, who lived at the Auditorium Hotel; nor, as one can gather from the reminiscences of their grand-daughter,[27]did he stay with Mr. and Mrs. Lyon during this period. Where then ? One answer, which may or may not suffice For the whole ten days, can be found in the following item on the social page of the Inter Ocean of Easter Sunday, April 5:


Mr. Vivekananda from Calcutta is the guest of Dr. H. S. Perkins, No 1628 Indiana Avenue.


As we have seen, Swamiji held an evening class at Dr. Perkins's on April 2; on April 6 he wrote two letters from that address; thus it is possible that he stayed with the doctor (who was the director of the Chicago National College of Music and almost certainly a friend of Mrs. Adams), for at least several days. But this is only speculative; at the present time our knowledge of Swamiji's ten-day stay in Chicago is sketchy at best. He did not write newsy letters; Mr. Goodwin had remained behind in Cambridge; and the Chicago newspapers were almost wholly silent on the subject of "the lordly monk's" visit to town—blessedly so for him, unsatisfactorily so for us. All we know for certain is that he held enthusiastically attended classes, had some dental work done(11), was not feeling well, and had "beautiful visits" with his friends. Among those friends were of course the Hale and McKindley "sisters," and it was very likely during this period that he made a number of recordings at their Walton Place flat, talking into a big horn that flared from one of Edison's phonograph machines. This information (though not the exact year to which it belongs) comes from Mrs. Herbert E. Hyde, who was nine or ten years old in 1896, the daughter of a third McKindley sister, Mary (Mrs. Leonard Baker). The little girl, Louise Baker, had often visited her aunts at Walton Place when Swamiji was there. "Of course," she told me when I had the good fortune to talk with her in 1969, "he was generally shut up in a room by himself when he was lecturing into the machine. But once I saw him while he was doing it. I remember the black recording thing. It was very primitive." (Mrs. Hyde also remembered Swamiji's beautiful voice and how very handsome he was. "And his eyes!" she said. "He had luminous eyes. I'll never forget ") What became of the cylinders that bore the impress of Swamiji's voice no one, it would seem, knows. And indeed, unless a permanent matrix was taken of them, they would surely have long since deteriorated, being made, as was customary, of a waxy substance not meant to last.


(11) Mrs. Bull writes in her letter to Swamiji dated April 11, 1896, “Mrs. Adams has written me of your good work with them and her enjoyment of it all – and that you had been busy with visits, dentistry etc.” From this it seems clear that Mrs. Adams had written a second letter to Mrs. Bull (later than that of April 2), in which she had given a fairly detailed account of Swamiji’s Chicago visit. The hope is that someday this letter may come to light.


That Swamiji was not feeling well is not surprising, for he had been physically exhausted when he left New York a month earlier and had been holding classes and giving lectures steadily ever since. On April 6, he wrote to Mrs. Bull, "I am suffering from slight fever the last two days; so I can't write a long letter.'[28]


On this same day he also wrote a short note (and sent another check?) to Sister Christine:

1628 Indiana Ave 
Chicago III 

Dear Christina

[A line is here excised.] reply as soon as possible.
I am going forward to Newyork on Thursday [April 9] and start for England on the 15th of April.
Goodby and love to you all—to Mrs Funkey to Mrs Phelps and all the rest of our friends.
In this life we meet and part again and again but the mind is omnipresent and can be, hear and feel anywhere.

Yours with love and blessings 
Vivekananda 


P.S Give Kripananda & Miss Hamilton my love and blessings when you meet them next.[29]


(Kripananda had need of that message from Swamiji. He was not doing well. On April 11 Mr. Goodwin would write from New York to Mrs. Bull: "I received your letters this evening & was interested in what you write about K. I can quite believe that in his best moods he can do work of a high order. But I also hear that he is at present worse than ever, & Mrs. Phunke says if he receives many more criticisms she thinks he will become quite crazy.")[30]


Before sealing his letter to Christina, Swamiji postponed the date of his departure from Chicago by one day. In the margin he wrote: "I will go to Newyork next Friday [April 10]."

3

Mr. Goodwin, who had returned from Cambridge to NewYork on Friday, April 10, was much perturbed to learn that Swamiji had not yet left Chicago. He wrote to Mrs. Bull at once:

I was very much surprised to receive your telegram stating that Swamiji would not leave Chicago until Friday (today) or Saturday. When writing Mrs Adams the other day I made it clear, as I thought, that he would have a lot of things to occupy his short time in New York, & I understood that she assented to the arrangement of sending him back yesterday. Immediately on receipt of your telegram I wired her "Please send Swami to-day latest—Engagements made." I hope I did correctly. I have no doubt it is by Swami's wish he is staying, & I think that even he should not be exempt from ordinary obligations. I am afraid Mr Le Vinsen was not much pleased when I told him of the message.[31]

(Mr. Carl Le Vinsen was a teacher of music and a good friend of Swamiji's. There was also a Flounce d'A. Le Vinsen and a Maude R. Le Vinsen(12). They lived at 124 East Forty-fourth Street, and very possibly Swamiji would stay with this family for several days after his arrival from Chicago. Beyond this, we have at present no knowledge of the Le Vinsens.)

(12) Three Le Vinsens – Florence d’A., Maude R., and Carl – were on the dock to wave goodbye to Swamiji on April 15, 1896 (see Appendix C).

On April 11, saying nothing of his delayed arrival in New York, Mrs. Bull wrote a bon-voyage letter to Swamiji that speaks of her growing reverence for him. He was placing the American work in her hands, and it was with a certain diffidence that she accepted this position, knowing as she did by now that he did not gladly suffer interference. Her letter read in part:

Your winter's work will be to very many a sure and good foundation. Whatever it has cost you, you may rest assured of it. And, if you go on to India from England, you may ever count upon the love and faithfulness of your students here, who will realize more and more the truth of the principles as the years go by. .

You will know always that any service you will ask of me will be a pleasure. And that at any time any transference of any trust from me to another whom you may choose as better suited to the moment of the task, you will determine and I will understand.

I mentioned to Mr. Sturdy your suggestion that I should be in London for a time, as a politeness to him who stands for your work there. I am to be possibly needed here at home, I cannot yet tell. There is always one best place for us, and I have learned not to ask or choose.


Always my best wishes and my grateful thanks for your true friendship and service.[32]

Swamiji arrived in New York on Saturday, April 11, "I met the Swami at the depot this evening," Mr. Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull, "and had a long talk with him afterwards. He was much pleased, in every way, with his work in Chicago & enjoyed the journey back.'[33]This letter continued at some length, and to judge from its tone, Mr. Goodwin had returned from his visit with Mrs. Bull imbued with a managing spirit. He had gotten on well in Cambridge. "We enjoyed Mr. Goodwin's visit," Mrs. Bull would write to Swamiji. "He worked hard all the time. He made friends of all my family.'[34]Pleased with this dedicated young man, she had, it would seem, made him her deputy in connection with Swamiji's work. Of this arrangement he wrote to her in his letter of April 11 ; after expressing his disapproval of what he felt to be Miss Waldo's non-Vedantic attitude toward Mr. Sturdy's publishing projects, he continued:


I lay no claim to being an ideal Vedantist, & I almost think it is as well that I am not. It strikes me more forcibly every day that some one individual must, either from taste, or as a personal sacrifice, be content & willing to take over the fighting part of the work which it is impossible to eliminate from any movement.... The Vedanta'will never be made a living thing but to a very few, without the element of business in its propagation, & as far as I am able I am willing & anxious to take this work, where no one else will, altho I must confess I wd rather be without it.[35]


He went on to say that Swamiji had "a cheque for $125 from Chicago which he had given into my charge" and that he (Swamiji) "will also draw $200 from the bank to-morrow, which I think he had sent from England." "I intend," he wrote firmly, "to get a draft on Cook's with this, as I have heard here that while in Boston he gave away a large sum of money, quite haphazard—over $300 I believe, & I am determined to stop this indiscriminate giving—I am doing this with Mr. Leggett's approval.”


(From a practical point of view, Mr. Goodwin's resolve was understandable. To appreciate it, one need only remember that three hundred dollars was then equivalent to a laborer's wage for a year, to the earnings of a seamstress working long hours for over three years, or, again, to three times the amount Swamiji received in New York for holding six classes in the Fifth Avenue home of a friend. Swamiji, of course, did not so calculate. But while he gave to whoever had need, the word indiscriminate seems hardly to apply. Nor was he dupable. He had, it is true, been cheated right and left when he first came to America, but he had soon learned to recognize both predator and prey. In March of 1895 he could write to Isabelle MeKindley that the good and credulous metaphysician Mrs. Peake was most likely being "played upon" by a confidence man, the fiery Miss Locke being equally taken in. "This is a wonderful country for cheating," he wrote, "and 99.9 per cent have some motive in the background to take advantage of others. If anyone just but closes his eyes for a moment, he is gone! ! . . . I have been so well handled by the people here that I look round me for hours before I take a step.[36]Swamiji would always give away his money as freely as he gave his blessings, but it was no longer taken from him—at least not often.)


Of the many activities that, according to Mr. Goodwin, were to occupy Swamiji's last days in America we know of only a few. On Sunday morning, April 12, he spent "about three hours" with Mr. Fox (who had come from Cambridge with Goodwin and was staying with him at the Warwick Hotel), editing the Harvard lecture and writing notes for it. On Monday evening "he gave a brief talk to the members of his New York class [who had gathered, one guesses, at the home of Miss Mary Phillips] on the chief principles of the Vedanta and its prospects in America.'[37] This talk is most unfortunately not available today; we learn only a very little of it from a letter written on May 3, 1896, to Swamiji's brother disciples in India by a number of New York students and friends. (This letter and that to which it was a reply are given in full in Appendix C.) The pertinent paragraph read:


The Swami Vivekananda sailed for England on the 15th of April. In his farewell address to his friends and pupils in New York, he spoke highly of the Americans, and the freedom of their institutions, which made them peculiarly accessible to the Vedanta Philosophy.[38]


(Only a few days after Swamiji's friends had composed this letter, he himself was writing from England to Mary Hale in praise of America: "I love the Yankee land.... In America is the place, the people, the opportunity for everything.[39]And a month later, "In America alone there is that something in the sir which brings out whatever is best in everyone.'[40] The spirit, the facts of freedom, of equality, of self reliance, of youth and vitality were, Swamiji felt, essential ingredients of the soil in which the Vedanta philosophy could best flourish, not as an intellectual exercise merely, but as an everyday way of life. While he was well aware of the soul-swamping materialism of American culture, he saw also—and this with delight-—hose qualities peculiarly American that both reflected the divine in man and conspired toward its unfoldment. "You may be astonished to hear," he would later say in a lecture in Lahore, "that as practical Vedantists the Americans are better than we are.'[41] Indeed, the ripe potential for spiritual development in the American character was perhaps why he had come to this country; it was, certainly, why he had stayed.)


On Tuesday, the eve of his departure, Swamiji spent some time writing letters. One of these, written from the Le Vinsens'  on their monogrammed stationery, was to Mrs. Bull and concerned "a curious person [a practical mechanic and inventor] who comes to me with a letter from Bombay . . . [and] wants to learn the secret of iron manufacture." "I do not know anything about this man," he wrote, "but if he is not a rogue I like very much to foster this sort of adventurous spirit among my countrymen. He has money enough to pay his way though I helped him some.'[42] (Mr. Goodwin's measures were not working.) Swamiji concluded by asking Mrs. Bull (if she saw fit) to help this stranger, whom he had taken time to talk to and write about in these last hurried days.


In this same letter he added a significant postscript confirming his appointment of Mrs. Bull as caretaker of his work(13). Heretofore unpublished, this brief mandate read:


(13) In the Life of Swami Vivekananda it is said, “Before leaving New York [Swamiji] made Mr. Francis H. Leggett … the President of the Vedanta Society (1965 edition, page 394; 1981 editiion, vol. 2, page 70). I do not at present know the evidence for this. There is, however, some evidence to the contrary. When Swami Abhedananda first came to New York in August of 1897, Mr. Leggett does not seem to have ever been president of the Society. It was only with difficulty that Swami Abhedananda persuaded him to become the first president of the Vedanta Society of New Yor as incorporated on October 28, 1898 (see Complete Works of Swami Abhedananda, vol. 10, pages 28, 65, 67,71)..

P.S. I shall sail tomorrow, expecting to see you in England. In the meanwhile I leave everything here to your care![43]


Swamiji also wrote at least two letters to India, both full of vigor. The first was addressed to Swami Trigunatita, but was meant for the guidance of all his brother disciples—and this in small detailed matters as well as in large. "The term. 'Friend' can be used with all," he wrote in connection with the form of an English invitation. And in the next few sentences cautioned his brothers against emphasizing the person of Sri Ramakrishna over the principles he taught and thereby making "our movement a little sect.'[44]


Swamiji's second letter to India was addressed to a friend in Madras, Dr. Nanjunda Rao, encouraging him in his proposed magazine and promising to write stories for it.[45] The magazine came out under the name Prabuddha Bharataha—name later to become well known to student of Vedanta the world over. The progress of his Indian work was ever in Swamiji's mind; indeed the amount of energy that flowed toward his motherland was very probably as great as, if not greater than, the energy he  was expending in the West. But of that more later.


On the same day, April 14, he wrote from 6 West Forty-third Street (an address whose occupant in 1896 is not presently known) a short note of farewell to the Hale Sisters: "On account of illness [I] could not write earlier. I sail on board the White Star Line Germanic tomorrow at 12 noon. With everlasting memory of love, gratitude and blessings.'[46]


And at noon on Wednesday, April 15, 1896, the S.S. Germanic sailed from the foot of West Tenth Street with Swamiji aboard. Standing on deck, he waved a gerua scarf for "as long as the eye could follow'[47]to the many students and friends who had come to see him off. Thus his first visit to America came to an end. All told, he had spent less than two and a half years on American soil—years that hundreds of Americans would never forget and that he himself had found particularly fruitful. "After all," he would write to Mary Hale on his arrival in England, "those years there have been some of the best I have yet seen.'[48]


ⓘ
[1] Sarah E. Waldo to Sara Bull, March 6, 1896, SCB.
[2] Walter Goodyear to Sara Bull, February 29, 1896, SCB.
[3] Complete Works, 8 : 361. This passage is quoted from the original letter, A.A.
[4] Complete Works, 8 ; 367.
[5] Complete Works., 8 : 370.
[6] Complete Works,8 : 364.
[7] Complete Works,8 : 373-.
[8] E. T. Sturdy to Frances Goodyear, March 11, 1896, SCB.
[9] E. T. Sturdy to Frances Goodyear, March 11, 1896, SCB.
[10] E. T. Sturdy to Frances Goodyear, March 11, 1896, SCB.
[11] Complete Works, 8 : 374-75.
[12] Sarah E. Waldo to Sara Bull, March 23, 1896, SCB.
[13] E. T. Sturdy to Sara Bull, March 17, 1896, SCB.
[14] E. T. Sturdy to Swami Vivekananda, March 29, 1896, SCB.
[15] E. T. Sturdy to Swami Vivekananda ., March 31, SCB.
[16] Brahmavadin, May 9, 1896, p. 219.
[17] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, April 10, 1896, SCB.
[18].J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull., April 11, 1896.
[19] Postscript to above, dated April 12, 1896.
[20] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, April 15, 1896, SCB.
[21] Sarah E. Waldo to Elizabeth Hamlen, May 19, 1896, SCB.
[22] Complete Works, 5 : 76.
[23] Sister Nivedita to Josephine MacLeod, December 10, 1899, Letters of Sister Nivedita, ed. Sankari. Prasad Basu.
[24] Complete Works, 5 : 76.
[25] Florence Adams to Sara Bull, April 2, 1896, SCB.
[26] Florence Adams to Sara Bull, May 17, 1896, SCB.
[27] See Rem. (Cornelia Conger), pp. 138-39*
[28] Complete Works, 6 : 360.
[29] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, April 6, 1896, Sen Col.
[30] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, April 11, 1896, SCB.[31].J- J- Goodwin to Sara Bull, April 10, 1896, SCB.
[32] Sara Bull to Swami Vivekananda, April 11, 1896, SCB.
[33] See ref. 30 above.
[34] See ref. 32 above.
[35] See ref. 19 above.
[36] Complete Works', 5 : 76.
[37] John P. Fox to Sara Bull, April 14, 1896, SCB.
[38] American Disciples of Swami Vivekananda to the Ramakrishna Math at Alambazar, May 3, 1896. Quoted in VIN, pp. 102-3. (See Appendix C for full letter.)
[39] Complete Works, 7 : 498-99.
[40] Complete Works., 6 : 363.
[41] Complete Works 3 : 428.
[42] Complete Works 6:361. (Wording is from the original letter, Sen Col.)
[43] Quoted from the original letter. Sen Col.
[44] Complete Works, 6 : 362.
[45] See Complete Works., 5 : 107.
[46] Complete Works, 8 :37b.
[47] Sarah E. Waldo to a friend in Calcutta, April 16, 1896. (Quoted in VIN, pp. 95-96.)    [48].Complete Works, 8 : 377.





↑ Contents

4.4 ENGLAND: MAY JULY 1896-I

The voyage from New York to Liverpool on the S.S. Germanic took just half the time of Swamiji's "disastrous" winter crossing (going the other way) the previous December. He availed himself, moreover, of the sea-sickness remedy that his friend William Flagg had offered, and thus, as. he wrote to Mary Hale, "The voyage has been pleasant and no sickness this time".[1] The ship touched at Queenstown, or Cobh, on the south coast of Ireland, and it would seem that Swamiji and Josiah J. Goodwin there disembarked, "made quite a little run through Ireland,'[2] reboarded the Germanic at a port further north; and crossed the Irish Sea to Liverpool. From there they went by train through "some of the old English towns," at one of which Mr. Goodwin changed trains for Bath to visit his widowed mother before going on to London. Swamiji proceeded to Reading, and on April 20 we find him once more in Caversham with Mr. Sturdy "amidst Brahma and Maya and Jiva, the individual and the universal soul, etc.[3]

But Caversham was not all philosophy: Swamiji was delighted to find there (as he knew he would) his brother disciple Swami Saradananda, who had arrived in England on April 1. The two Swamis had not seen each other since the early part of 1891 and had much to say. They no doubt walked together in the April countryside, along the lanes, by the side of the Thames, conversing in Bengali all the while. Swamiji amazed his brother monk with tales of successes in the West and his plans for the future. On his part, Swami Saradananda spoke of Alambazar Math, then the headquarters of the young Ramakrishna Order, and of the other monastic disciples of Sri  Ramakrishna, none of whom Swamiji had seen for at least three years.

Swami Saradananda's report may have helped Swamiji to write a long-pondered letter to his brothers at the Math, stressing, as he had often done before, the need for organization. This time he laid down definite rules and regulations in regard to the Math's daily routine as well as to its overall government. (This now famous letter, written in an Oxfordshire village on the Thames, constituted the beginning of what Swamiji would later expand into the official Rules and Regulations of the Ramakrishna Math at Belur on the Ganges—a world away.)

Aside from this letter of April 27 and his letter of April 20 to the Hale sisters, from which I have quoted above, the only other known letter written by Swamiji at this period is a heretofore unpublished note to Sister Christine. It is short and not very informative, but it perhaps said everything that she could want to know: he sent her his love and blessings and told her that he himself was all right. It read in full:

26th April'96
High View Caversham 
Reading London.

Dear Christina

How things are going on with you? I am all safe & sound here in England Going to begin work from May fourth. How is Mrs. Funkey?

Give them all my Love. Write me all about yourself & Mrs Funkey when you have time from [sic] Address me at 63 St George's Road, S.W. London.

Where is Krip.P What is he doing now? Has he been able to get up any classes yet? Has his temper gone down. Give them all my love & Miss Hamilton & to all my friends & to the Rabbi. .

Yours ever with love & blessings[4]
Vivekananda

Plans were a foot for the coming season in London. During Swamiji's absence, Mr. Sturdy had not been idle: apart from his frustrated publishing projects, he had held weekly classes until the Easter holidays in April, when they had been suspended, and had leased the Margesson house in anticipation of larger crowds. On March 17 he had written to Swamiji, "Lady Isabel lately wrote me that they would be letting their house for the Summer months and furnished. I went to see it and the result is I have taken it for five months from the 1st May until 1st Oct for 63 for you & your classes. I think it will do very well for the purpose. Miss Muller will take some rooms in it and so help to reduce the cost.'[5]The Margessons' house was the townhouse at 63 St. George's Road in fashionable South Belgravia, or Pimlico, where on the cold Sunday afternoon of November 10, 1895, Swamiji had given a talk to a small group of Lady Isabel Margesson's friends, among whom had been a Miss Margaret Noble.

Presumably, Swamiji moved to St. George's Road on Friday, May 1. Before starting work, however, he and Swami Saradananda spent a few days with Miss Muller at her house, the Meads, in the village of Pinkney's Green. There they were joined by Mahendra Nath Datta, the elder of Swamiji's two younger brothers. Mahendra Nath, who was then twenty-six, had recently come to England with the intention of studying law and had been staying in another town. Years later he was to write his memoirs of those extraordinary days in England with his great brother. No one's memory, it is true, remains unaltered through the years; nevertheless, Mahendra Nath Datta's three-volume Londone Swami Vivekananda (Swami Vivekananda in London) is a mine of information, full of details and incidents that could not, one thinks, have existed in memory at all if they had not existed in fact.* We shall, then, with the kind permission of the Mohendra Publishing Committee, take advantage of these memoirs, or, rather, an unpublished English precis of them made by Swami Yogeshananda.

The last time Swamiji had been in Calcutta was in 1890, and it is probable that Mahendra Nath—or Mahendra, as we shall call him—had not seen him since then. He now found in him a new power and presence![6] Indeed at the Meads Mahendra had his first wonder-struck glimpse of his elder brother's loftiness of stature. Even Swami Saradananda was stunned by a remark Swamiji let fall during the course of a conversation with Miss Henrietta Muller. They may have all been sitting in the garden-arbor taking afternoon tea. Speaking of his mission, Swamiji said, "I will have a lot of difficult work to do in this life. Compared with last time, there is much more to be done." And scorning Miss Muller's remark to the effect that work should have an end, he said directly to her, "This time I will work up to the very last moment!'[7] And a little later: "I have just begun my work; in America I have raised only one or two waves; a tidal wave must be raised; society must be turned upside down; the world must be given a new civilization. The world will understand what that Power is and why I have come. Compared with the power I showed last time, it will be tremendous.'[8] When one remembers that Swamiji once later remarked, "This time I have left nothing unsaid,'[9] it is not too difficult to believe that to the small and intimate group at Pinkney's Green, in this brief respite between two momentous seasons of his mission, he suddenly gave expression to the underlying facts of his existence on this earth and of his place in history—facts such as a prophet of his stature intuitively knows.*

There were, of course, other modes of talk at Pinkney's Green. Mahendra recalled that Mr. and Mrs. Sturdy arrived one afternoon on bicycles from Caversham, some twelve miles distant. The conversation then was practical and concerned with plans for the coming London work. It may have been on still another day, when sobersided Mr. Sturdy was, not there, that Swamiji and Swami Saradananda themselves tried (without much success) to ride a bicycle in front of the house. "That day," Mahendra recalled, "he was his boyish self, all jokes, and in a sweet voice he sang a Bengali song:

Who set me adrift on the waves 
in the boat of desire?
At morn the boat went floating;
I thought this was a grand play 
of the water,
And the spring breeze would blow sweet;
I would go floating in joy.[10]

The visit at Pinkney's Green could not have lasted for more than five days, for on Wednesday, May 6, Swamiji was in London at 63 St. George's Road. There were two receptions on that day, morning and evening, "at which arrangements were definitely made for the classes." As Mr. Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull on May 12, these classes were to be held on

"Tuesday at 11.30 & 8.30
"Thursday at 11.30 & 8.30 
"Friday (Afternoons) At Home 
"(Friday) 8.30 Question Class.'[11]

In other words, Swamiji was to hold four regular classes and a question class every week, with, in addition, an afternoon devoted to receiving visitors.

The class-lectures, as they were called, were held in the drawing room on the first floor of the house (the second floor by American reckoning). .In Mahendra Datta's memory, this room, which was divided by supporting iron pillars into two parts, was large, accommodating about 150 people. But a more recent visitor to the house found it small, able to seat at the utmost about 100. The house itself, like so many London houses of that era, was narrow and cramped, squeezed by its neighbors. Following Mahendra's memory (greatly aided by a more recent account),* let us go quickly from bottom to top of its five floors: In the basement, below street level, were the Kitchen, storerooms, and servant quarters. On the floor above—the ground floor—was the entrance hall and to its right the parlour. This room, which had one tall window looking over the iron-fenced areaway to the street, was used by Swamiji (and the others) as a sitting room and dining room combined. Behind it were two small rooms, in one of which he slept, and beyond them was a small lavatory. Swamiji's bedroom is of singular interest; it not only was small, but had no windows. What daylight and air there were came across the adjoining rooms through glass panels (some of which could, presumably, be opened) in the upper part of the walls. (Some years later, Swamiji was goaded into speaking plainly to Mr. Sturdy in regard to his accommodations in London. "There too (at St. George's Road]," he wrote, "I don't remember to have had any luxuries—as to food or drink or bed or even the room given me.")[12] (The italics are his.)

The floor above (the first floor), to which a narrow stairway led, was, as noted before, given over to the double drawing room where Swamiji held his classes. Above this was the second floor, one room of which—surely the front and larger one—was occupied by Miss Muller, and the other by Mr. Sturdy. (Lucie Sturdy and the baby, Ambrose, remained at Caversham.) Proceeding upward, one came to the bathroom— the bathroom—off the landing between the second and third floors. The third floor contained a large room, probably the same size as the double drawing room, in which several people could sleep. Ordinarily, this was the nursery for the Margesson children; now it was occupied by Swami Saradananda and Mahendra. As in all the rooms, there was a fireplace here and, uniquely, a rocking horse by the street wall. Above this was the garret, a long, narrow room with dormer windows and a sloping ceiling. Here slept Goodwin.*

The household, on the whole, was youthful. Miss Muller, around forty-five, was the oldest by at least nine years. Swamiji was thirty-three; Swami Saradananda, thirty; and Mr. Sturdy, thirty-six. The other young men were well under thirty: Mahendra was twenty-six; Goodwin, twenty-five; and John Fox, who would be spending much of his time in the house after the first week of June, was twenty-three. It was, moreover, an exceptionally lively household, for at its center was a  tremendous charge of spiritual energy. Not only did Swamiji manifest enormous power during his classes, of which we shall say more later, but it poured from him as well (though in different aspects at different times) during his everyday life— a life which had its hub in the ground—floor parlor. Here everyone congregated to eat, work, and talk. It was not a large room. There was a round central table, four or five chairs, a secretary or writing table, and, in a corner near the fireplace, opposite the hall door, an easy chair for Swamiji. The ceiling was decorated with a lotus design molded in plaster; the walls, we can be reasonably sure, were patterned with gilt-framed pictures against a patterned paper; the window was draped, the floor carpeted.

Generally, the day began around nine o'clock when Swamiji came into the parlor for breakfast, still wearing his dressing gown and slippers. The early morning had been his own: perhaps he had slept late after a sleepless night; more likely, he had remained in deep meditation or in ecstasy (he would speak at least once of such solitary and luminous hours to the others). His breakfast, which the old housekeeper would bring up from the kitchen, was no doubt eggless and certainly meatless, for Mr. Sturdy and Miss Muller were strict vegetarians, as nowadays was Goodwin.*

After breakfast, Swamiji would sit in his easy chair and talk to Goodwin and Swami Saradananda, while Mr. Sturdy worked on his English translation of some Sanskrit scripture that he hoped to bring out as No. 2 of the "Indian Ideals " series, of which the Narada Sutra, then recently published, was No.1 (Such publications were one way of spreading the ideals of Vedanta, for in those days English translations of Sanskrit works were rare, hard to come by, and on the whole unreadable. Indeed, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, one of the reasons Swamiji had called a brother disciple to England was to suit in the work of translating. Swami Saradananda no doubt helped with whatever text Mr. Sturdy had chosen as No. 2. But whatever it was, it seems never to have been published.)

The news in the morning papers would sometimes lead to discussion, during which Swamiji's heart seems to have been stabbed by the anguish everywhere in the world. There was, for instance, the catastrophe that had taken place at the coronation of Czar Nicholas II. The vast, poorly organized crowd had surged out of hand, and of the thousands of peasants who had come from far-off villages to procure—gratis, perhaps—an enameled coronation cup, 2000 had died, crushed, trampled by one another, and shot at by the overwrought police. Mr. Sturdy and Mr. Goodwin had much to say about the barbarous conditions in Russia, as opposed to the civilized and orderly conditions in England. But Swamiji remained silent, grave. Then suddenly he exclaimed, "What misery! What suffering! For the sake of one cup all those people left their villages and came to the city! And so many killed! How poor the country is! They have given their lives for a two-bit enameled glass!'[13] And he began to walk the floor, his eyes deep with sorrow.

Again, there would be tales of human evil in the news that filled him with despair and disgust. "A race begins to rot from the inside first," he said one morning in connection with the biggest London scandal of the day; "then comes an enemy and destroys it. If this race goes on in this way, its fall is assured. From social'evil every other evil follows.'[14] Sturdy and Goodwin could only agree. But at other times there were fervent patriotic outbursts from the two Englishmen and heated arguments, Goodwin upholding the abstract glory of the British Empire, Swamiji pointing out its flagrant transgressions and injustices, with all the evidence of history behind him, until the young man would be silenced.

There was also, of course, work to be discussed. One of the first matters to be settled was the fate of Mr. Sturdy's pamphlets of Swamiji's New York lectures, which, as we have seen in the last chapter, Sturdy had printed on his own authority. To repeat, there were four such pamphlets, duplicating those already brought out by the New York Vedanta Society. In addition, Mr. Sturdy had printed a pamphlet consisting of at least some of Swamiji's New York raja yoga classes, which production interfered with the proposed American publication of an altered and enlarged manuscript.* It was now agreed, in line with a cable Mr. Goodwin, with Mrs. Bull's concurrence, had sent to Sturdy in April, that the first four English pamphlets be published and distributed by Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company, a reputable publishing firm, with whom Mr. Sturdy had earlier started negotiations. The four pamphlets were to be published in three booklets: Karma Yoga; Bhakti Yoga; and The Ideal of a Universal Religion and The Cosmos. As for Raja Yoga, the version that was to have been published in America was a good-sized manuscript, which included Swamiji's translation of and class-commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Swamiji had brought the manuscript with him, but arrangement for its publication were still unclear, largely because Mr. Sturdy had been unable to fathom the contradictory and highly complicated letters regarding copyright laws that he had received from various members of the American Publication Committee. The complexities of this correspondence between Mr. Sturdy, Mr. Goodyear, Mrs. Goodyear, Ms. Fox on behalf of Mrs. Bull, and Mrs. Bull'' herself were compounded not only by the transatlantic time lag but by the question of whether or not Mr. Sturdy's "Raja Yoga" pamphlet should be distributed in America.** Opinions varied.

"Until the Swami & I reached London," Goodwin would write to Mrs. Bull on July 19 of 1896, "Mr. Sturdy was very much at a loss to know what it was desired that he should do in the matter , and the fact that letters of instruction, often "contradictory to some extent, came from Mr Goodyear & others & clashed with those from yourself, made it more difficult still for him to do anything.'[15]

Mrs.Bull's letters to Mr. Sturdy written in late April are not available today, but there can be little doubt that they contain long illegible passages of the unique circumlocution peculiar to her more formal correspondence. On May 8, Swamiji took matters in hand. His letter of that date to Mrs. Bull, not heretofore published, read in full:

63 St George's Road 
London. S.W.

Dear Mrs Bull—your last letters to Sturdy at hand. They I am sorry to say leave us nowhere. I could not make out anything out of them.

What are we to do? Is the book going to be published or not? Prof. James introduction is of no use in England. So why wait so long for that and what use are those long explanations about him?

Our hands are tied down. Why do not you write something plain and decisive? Life is short and time is flying. I am so sorry you are loosing [sic] sight of that. Your letters are full of explanations directions but not one word about what is to be done!!! So much red tape about printing a little book! ! Empires are managed with less manipulation than that I am sure! ! So kindly write at your earliest something precise about the book and whether it is going to be printed or not and pray make the writing a little legible.

Poor Sturdy is out of his wits as to what to do, he has gone through the Mss long ago.

Joking apart I am very sorry you are not coming over this year. We are in Lady Isabell's house. Miss Muller has taken some rooms in it too. Goodwin is here with us. We have not yet made any big stir here. The classes have begun, they are not yet what we expected. We had only two yet.

We will work on steadily next 4 or 5 months. Sturdy is as patient & persevering and hopeful as ever.

It is cool enough yet here to have fire in the grate

Give my love to Mrs. Adams Miss Thursby and all other friends My love to Mr. Fox and blessings.

Yours with love & blessings[16]
Vivekananda

Before receiving a letter of clarification from Mrs. Bull, Mr. Sturdy was satisfied enough with Mr. Goodwin's explanation of her wishes, and "without further delay he proceeded with the matter of making a contract with Longmans," which "of course took some little time.[17] And, at length, Mrs. Bull's own explanation of what the American Committee had in mind arrived in London. "Your last letter put everything straight," Swamiji wrote to her on June 5, in a passage not heretofore fully published, "and the Raja yoga book is splendidly going on '[18]

As matters now stood, Mr. Leggett and Mrs. Bull were to pay for the publication of the book and, on behalf of the New York Publication Committee, would retain control of the rights to it. Mr. Sturdy was to act as agent for the Committee in negotiating with Longmans, Green, and Company. The book, he had decided, would be printed and copyrighted in England only and distributed both there and in America.* Although Mrs. Bull had no objection to Sturdy's arrangements, she was generally displeased with him. First, for telling others (notably the Goodyears) of the possible inclusion in the book of a preface from William James-which, as it happened, was not forthcoming, certainly not in time for publication. "A preface for an American edition from a specialist would be of decided value, " she wrote to Sturdy reprovingly; "but this was merely an incidental that I desired not mentioned. It seems Mr. Goodyear is however acquainted with that intention also. I deemed it better if not carried out that it should not be spoken of.'[19] Furthermore, for the past several months Sturdy had neglected to reply to her suggestions and queries, perhaps, to give him the benefit of the doubt, not comprehending them. "Your letter of today," she wrote to Swamiji on June 8, "is the first and only message of response of Mr. Sturdy to my business letter [of March], his correspondence since your return to England [has been] solely addressed to Mr. Goodyear I believe.'[20] She was understandably annoyed, and for this reason, as well as perhaps for others, she requested Swamiji to  turn over her power of attorney in connection with his American books to Mr. Leggett. "We did not quite understand your letters," Goodwin wrote to her on June 19.

but I think you have probably handed over the power of attorney to Mr Leggett in order to avoid friction in New York, & Mr Sturdy & I recognise your good motives in this, altho it seems a pity that you do not intend to retain possession, as no one is more fitted to do so than yourself. Of course if you really wish that Mr Leggett shall replace you the Swami is perfectly satisfied that Mr Leggett should take it from you, but, at the same time, he would strongly wish that you still retain the position.

We hope that nothing else has arisen, of which we are unaware, to cause you annoyance. Of course you understand that the Swami is in no way a business man; even if he were he is doing so great a work here that he has no time for the consideration of such matters, & Mr Sturdy, is very pleased to relieve him of the necessity.[21]

But Mrs. Bull's mind was made up, and the power of attorney was transferred. In a heretofore unpublished passage of a letter to Mr. Francis Leggett, dated July 6, Swamiji wrote:

Your kind letter and the £40 for the publication duly reached me and a beautiful letter from Mother [Mrs. Leggett].

Mrs. Bull writes to me to make out a power of attorney for you in regard to the books which I send herewith.

[Enclosed was the following, dated July 6, 1896:]

Dear Sir

Herewith I constitute you as my attorney and representative in regards to all publication pamphlets, etc.  written or dictated by me, their copyright, sale, etc. in the U.S. of America.

Yours affly'[22]
Vivekananda

And to Mrs. Bull Swamiji wrote a formal release:

I have sent to Mr. Leggett by last mail the power of attorney and as you desired this is to notify you of the fact and absolve you from the responsibilities of the power of attorney which I gave you in America last year.[23]

By this time, Raja Yoga was "well under way" (Goodwin wrote in his letter of June 19) and showing "every promise of being published in very handsome form." And while Mrs. Bull ; may have resigned in effect from the New York Publication Committee, she was still in overall charge of the American work. Vague and round-about she may have been, but her judgment in practical matters was generally sound. Above all, she had Swamiji's trust. Of this, Mr. Goodwin more than once assured her. On April 11 he had written:

Quite without suggestion from myself—-he [Swamiji, who was then still in New York] said" Is Mrs Bull going to England with us? I am afraid the baby [her granddaughter] will prevent her"—I told him I thought it quite probable that you would go later on, & he said he hoped you would.

I took advantage of this allusion to ask him what he thought of you as the leader of matters connected with the Vedanta in America—His reply was that he looked upon you as a woman of the most excellent judgment &. that he would not feel so secure of the work in anyone's hands as in yours; and repeated that he hoped you wd be in England.

You must please excuse the personal character of this, but I know you wished just such an expression of his opinion, & especially a voluntary statement.[24]..

Later on, toward the end of the year, Goodwin would again relay to Mrs. Bull (for whom he himself had much respect) words of praise from Swamiji. With the same diffidence and caution he made bold to write:

I know it will not interest you much from the personal point of view, but it will probably help you in understanding letters & so on which the Swami writes you, & which seem harsh, if I tell you that the Swami was speaking of you the other evening & said you were the noblest woman he knew, & the "least cranky." Please excuse my being thus personal.[25]..It is not likely that she took offense.

2

With Raja Yoga "well under way," everyone was happy. Indeed Swamiji was often in a spontaneously playful and joyous mood. But however spontaneous it might have been, no mood could be his master. Mahendra tells us of one occasion, typical, surely, of many, when the playful child became the World Guru in no more time and with no more fuss than it takes to turn over a coin. It was a little while before the morning class. Mr. Sturdy had finished his translating work and had gone upstairs; Swamiji had changed into his gerua robe with its silk sash. The late-morning traffic could be seen through the parlor window, which looked directly onto the street. Horse-drawn carriages and cabs were passing by; men and women were walking along unhurried, some, perhaps, entering the house. Looking out the window, Swamiji suddenly began to improvise a song that his younger brother remembered as: "Umbrella in hand, hat on the head; pretty girls with basketfuls of flour on  their faces." So comic the words and so "droll and mysterious" the tune, that Mahendra went, into fits of laughter. To Swami Saradananda, Swamiji said, "Just see! The ladies have put so much powder on their faces it could be scraped up with a hoe!" It was nearly class time, but Swamiji's mood remained playful. Laughing, joking, and poking one another in the ribs like a pair of children, he and Swami Saradananda started up the stairs to the lecture room, Mahendra following. And as they went, Swamiji became totally transformed. The laughter and play disappeared; he became profoundly grave and withdrawn. Swami Saradananda fell behind, silent. It was not the playful child who entered the first-floor drawing room, where people had assembled; it was the majestic knower of God, the World Teacher.[26]


As we have seen in Swamiji's letter of May 8 to Mrs. Bull , the attendance at his first two classes, which he had held the day before, had not been up to expectations, any effective advance publicity having been blocked, Mr. Sturdy might have pointed out, by the "American Syndicate." But however that may have been, Mr. Goodwin was present taking his shorthand notes, and on May 12 he wrote to Mrs. Bull, giving her a brief resume of Swamiji's first three talks. Since his notes of those talks have not been published, the pertinent portion of his letter is given here in full :


The Swami began last Thursday with two classes—in which he took up the history of the Vedanta. In the morning he traced the history of the Aryan Race—its division into the European branches on the one hand, & the Hindu branches on the other, & showed how the Aryan language permeates all European languages except the Basque &. the Hungarian, & the Tartar (if it may be called European). Then he traced the influence of the old stock on Modern Science. In the evening he followed this up by tracing the influence of the Vedas & the Vedanta on Western religious thought—through the Buddhists, who took it to Persia &.Greece—through the Arabs who took it from Persia, & also, to some extent, from India direct in the course of their commerce. From the Arabs to Greece & Spain. How from Spain it spread to Rome, by means of a Pope educated at a Moorish University at Toledo. [Mr. Goodwin may have misunderstood Swamiji. At Toledo, the Archbishop Raymond (ca. 1130) commissioned a corps of translators to render Arabic works into Latin. The greatest of the translators was Gerard of Cremona (1114- 1187). Another Gerard (also of Cremona) of the thirteenth century translated Avicenna at the order of the emperor Frederic II.] Then through Alfazil [Al-Farabi?] and Avicenna, the Arab philosophers, to Thomas Aquinas, who took up their philosophy [and] who was, in turn, preached by Abelard. Today [the morning class of Tuesday, May 12] he traced the evolution of the Upanishads as the religion of the people in India—from the earlier sacrificial religion of the days of priestcraft.[27]


A large portion of Mr. Goodwin's unpublished transcript of Swamiji's morning class of May 7 has recently been found among Mrs. Bull's papers. This was actually an introductory jnana yoga class, opening with the words:


I have told you how I would divide the subject into four yogas, but, as the bearing [direction] of all these various yogas is the same, [as] the goal they want to arrive at is the same, I had better begin with the philosophical portion: the jnana yoga—jnana means knowledge. [But] before going into the principles of the Vedanta philosophy, I think it is necessary to sketch, in a few words, the origin, the beginning, and the development, that is, the historical portion, of that system.


Swamiji then proceeded, as Goodwin informed Mrs. Bull, to trace the history of the Aryan race through the spread of the Sanskrit language, speaking of the various theories that had been put forward in that regard. In addition, he spoke of the origin of religion and contrasted the early Hindu, Egyptian, and Semitic ideas. And in a fine digression (Swamiji's digressions were often as important and inspiring as his main themes) he spoke with pride in his race for its power of survival, for a vitality that resided in an inner, hidden strength far more tensile and enduring than the overt and relatively short-lived bravura of conquering peoples. Speaking of the many invasions of India that had devastated her culture again and again, he went on:


Books and literature and civilization went down. But there is a vitality in that race which is unique in the history of humanity, and perhaps that vitality comes from nonresistance. Nonresistance is the greatest strength. In suffering is greater strength than in doing. In resisting one's own passions is far higher strength than in hurting others. And that has been the watchword of the race through all their difficulties; their misfortunes, and their prosperity. They are the only nation that never went beyond their frontiers to cut the throats of their neighbours. It is a glorious thing. It makes me rather patriotic to think I am born a Hindu, a descendant of the only race that never went out to hurt anyone, and whose only action upon humanity has been giving and enlightening and purifying and teaching, but never robbing. Three quarters of the wealth of the world has come out of India, and does even now. The commerce of India has been the turning point, the pivot of the history of the world.... Upon the blood of the [toiling millions of Hindus] the history of the world has been turning since we know history and will have to turn for thousands of years more. And what is the benefit? It gives that nation strength. They are, as it were, an example; they must suffer and stand up through all, fighting for the truths of religion, as a signpost, a beacon, to tell unto mankind that  it is much higher not to resist, much higher to suffer, that if life be the goal, as even their conquerors will admit, we are the only race that can be called immortal, that can never be killed.... I want to bring these things before you, for, generally, the uneducated minds, of every nation, like the vulgar mobs in every big city, cannot grasp, cannot see, cannot understand, any fine movement. The causes, the real movements in this world of ours, are very fine: it is only the effects that are gross, and muscular. The mind is the real cause of this body, the fine movements behind. The body is the gross, the external. But everyone sees the body; very few see the mind. So with everything; the masses, the brutal, ignorant masses of every race see a triumphant procession, stampeding horses, arms, and cannonades, and these they understand. But those fine, gentle workings that are going on behind, it is only the philosopher, the highly cultivated man or woman, that can understand.[28]


Interestingly, Mr. Sturdy did not look upon Swamiji's London classes with the same selfless universality with which he had viewed his New York classes. In his letter of May 12 to Mrs. Bull, Mr. Goodwin wrote:


I am sending you the two first lectures, but please keep them entirely to yourself. If you will do so; I think you had better not let Mr Fox or anyone else see them, or let the N. Y. people know anything of them, as Mr Sturdy does not wish to risk the chance of their being used. I rather fancy he is taking a one sided view of things. Of course the old saying "Set a thief to catch a thief" wd not apply, but there is just a suspicion of ego about him, both in relation to this &, to the work here. At the same time his judgement is good, & so are his connections.


(Actually, Mr. Goodwin sent not two but six class transcripts to Mrs. Bull. On the envelope of the above letter he wrote this postscript: "I find the postage on the lectures, which are bulky, is heavy. So shall send half a dozen on Sat'y by express." By Saturday, May 16, Swamiji would, to be sure, have given half a dozen lectures, including an unscheduled one at the Sesame Club. And so careful was Mrs. Bull to keep these talks to herself', as Goodwin had asked, that even today only one of them has been published—that of May 14 and only recently a second transcript discovered—that of May 7, an excerpt from which has been given above.)


Swamiji's unscheduled and unexpected engagement at the Sesame Club gave him precisely the kind of publicity he needed at the beginning of this season in London. In the Daily Chronicle of May 14, one finds the following item:


]The Sesame Club.—At a meeting of the Sesame Club on Tuesday night [May 12], the chairman, Mr. Ashton ,]onson, said he regretted to announce that Mrs. Norman was too unwell to be present to open, as announced, a debate on "Should we return to the land." An address was accordingly given by Swami Vivekananda on the subject of education, in which he urged that no one could obtain intellectual greatness until he was physically pure. Morality gave strength; the immoral were always weak, and could never raise themselves intellectually, much less spiritually. Directly immorality began to enter the national life its foundations commenced to rot. As the life blood of every nation was to be found in the schools, where boys and girls were receiving their education, it was absolutely essential that the young students should lie pure, and this purity must be taught them.


The members of the Sesame Club, who assembled that evening, were intellectuals, most of them interested one way or another in education, which was then just beginning to become a matter for serious thought and experiment. The club had been founded the previous year and was one of the first "mixed" clubs in London—that is, its membership was open to both men and women. According to the "Sesame Club Papers," published in the first years of the club's existence, one of its purposes was to "become a recognized rendezvous for persons interested in education in all its branches, whether as professional teachers or otherwise: ' The Honourable Secretaries were Lady Isabel Margesson and Mrs. Ashton Jonson, both of whom were known to Swamiji. On Tuesday evenings the club held what were called "Literary Evenings" —"a poor title for that function," the "Club Papers" remarked, "there being all sorts of topics brought forward, lectures, debates, etc," Indeed, in the "Papers" one finds mention of talks by people of diverse interests, such as Patrick Geddes, George Bernard Shaw (not yet famous), Rev. H. R. Haweis, and William Butler Yeats, to say nothing of Swami Vivekananda.


Thc talk Swamiji gave on the Tuesday evening of May 12 was not announced in the "club Papers," it having been unforeseen. Even Swamiji had had little chance to inform people that his regular evening class that Tuesday was canceled. Among those who were unaware of it were Mr. and Mrs. Eric Hammond.


Mr. Hammond and his wife Nell lived in a modest house in the suburb of Wimbledon. He was a journalist and poet, well known in his own town for his popular annual lectures on poetry and poets as well as for his work on the Wimbledon Library Committee and his close association with the Wimbledon Literary Society. He and Nell, in their mid-forties in 1896, were kind and gentle people ("She is a great soul " Swamiji would later say of Nell Hammond) and were, of course, good friends of Margaret Noble, who had founded the Literary Society in 1890. It was she who had urged them persistently—to go to London on the evening of May 12 in order to attend one of Swamiji's classes. In a published reminiscence, Mr. Hammond tells what happened that rainy "cheerless and dismal" evening which found him and his wife  ringing the doorbell at 63 St. George's Road. They were "met, at first, by disappointment."


Swamiji was not at home [Mr. Hammond relates). However, a very kindly message awaited us. We were permitted—so the message ran—to follow him to the Sesame Club whither he had gone, at brief notice, to speak in place of a lecturer who was prevented from appearing. Obeying instructions with alacrity we sought the Club [then at 171: Victoria Street, not far from St. George's Road]. We found ourselves in a big drawing room or hall, filled almost to overflowing by smart people in evening dress. Some courteous and obliging person ushered us close to a platform where one or two chairs were vacant. The position was conspicuous and so, alas! were we. Our overcoats were dripping with rain, nor were we otherwise clothed in fine raiment; not anticipating a summons to so distinguished a gathering. Most of those present were, we discovered, schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, tutors and the like. The subject announced for lecture was "Education". Soon he, Swamiji, appeared.... His dark skin, his deep glowing eyes, even his costume, attracted and fascinated. Above all, eloquence acclaimed him, the eloquence of inspiration.... More, Swamiji soon showed that he was equally versed in history and political economy. He stood among these people on their own ground. Without fear, beseeching no favour, he dealt them blow upon blow enforcing the Hindu principle that the teacher who taught for the money-making was a traitor to the highest and deepest truth. "Education is an integral part of religion and neither one nor the other should be bought nor sold." His words, rapier-like, pierced the armour of scholastic convention; yet no bitterness spoilt his speech. This Hindu, cultured, gracious with his notable smile that disarmed unkindly criticism, held his own and made his mark....


Discussion followed. Climatic and other reasons for charges for teaching were set forth, but Swamiji maintained his position.

Such then was our first meeting with him; a meeting which resulted in reverent friendship, in genuine admiration and in most grateful remembrance.[29]


Another report of Swamiji's Sesame Club talk comes to us from the pen of Swami Saradananda, who included it in a May news-letter to the Brahmavadin. His letter published in the issue of June 6, 1896, read in part:


On Tuesday last, the Swami lectured on education at the Sesame Club. It is a respectable club got up by women for diffusing female education. In this he dealt with the old educational system of India, pointed out clearly and impressively that the sole aim of the system, was 'man-making' and not cramming, and compared it with the present system. He held that the mind of man is an infinite reservoir of knowledge and all knowledge present and past or future is within man, manifested or non-manifested, and the object of every system of education should be to help the mind to manifest it. For instance, the Law of Gravitation was within man, and the fall of the apple helped Newton to think upon it and bring it out from within his mind.


After the Sesame Club lecture the attendance at Swamiji's classes began to grow. In the same news-letter Swami Saradananda was able to report:


Swami Vivekananda has made a good beginning here.. A large number of people attend his classes regularly and the lectures are most interesting. Canon Haweis, one of the leaders of the Anglican Church, came the other day and was much interested.... In the class lectures he has begun  with Gnana Yoga. A shorthand report of these lectures is being taken down by Mr. Goodwin, who is a great admirer of the Swami; and will be published later on:


Around the same time in May as Swami Saradananda sent the above to the Brahmavadin, the Queen; the Lady’s Newspaper, published the following, as quoted in the Indian Mirror of June 3 1896:


Here in London; Swami Vivekananda has been holding class lectures, 63, St. George's Road, S.W., every Tuesday and Thursday, both in the morning. and evening. The number of his students has been increasing very rapidly. He has, therefore opened a question class which he holds every Friday, at 8-30 P.M. It is a great wonder indeed, that the Swami has been able to attract, from the very commencement of the course of his lectures; so many men in a materialistic city like London; where none cares a fig for religion, where, politics reigns supreme in the minds of the people, especially now at the time of the London season—the season of balls, feasts and all sorts of entertainments, He, who has once listened to the great Swami, is tempted to attend every lecture that he delivers. We cannot but own that the man possesses a great magnetic power or some power divine by which he even draws so many Londoners towards him. Many a lady and many learned men here have become his students. Today Rev. Canon Haweis, a very learned man, came to his class. He has at once marvelled at his lectures.'[30]


And by the end of May, Swamiji wrote to Mary Hale, "The classes are very big.'[31]


As has been mentioned earlier, these classes were held in a double drawing room that could seat approximately one hundred people: In front of the two windows at the street end was a table and chair, beside which Swamiji stood. In the middle of the side wall to his right was the fireplace, and between this and the windows was a table where Goodwin would sit to take notes, his back to the room. Along the far wall of the room was a large spring sofa, on which Mr. Sturdy, Mahendra, and, later on, John Fox used to sit, acting more on less as ushers—Mr. Sturdy being the usher-in-chief. In addition, there were, of course, other chairs both hard and soft in the room, many of them no doubt borrowed or rented for the classes. The French windows behind and to the left of where Swamiji stood opened into a balcony that extended over the front vestibule. Here, when the weather permitted, several people could sit comfortably.


To the morning classes more women came than men, and some were noteworthy. Near the French window of the balcony, just behind Swamiji, there sat, for instance, a slender young woman in the unmistakable nurse’s uniform of the 1890s, whose name no one ever learned. She attended every class, coming and going silently. Perhaps many another member of the audience came and went silently, anonymously; the thing that marked the nurse off from the others and that makes us want to know her name was that she invariably took shorthand notes of everything Swamiji said.[32] Goodwin, it is true, also took shorthand notes of Swamiji's classes in May and through most of June—but as far as anyone knows to date, most of his notes have been irretrievably lost.


By contrast, another woman came every morning "too late to hear a word," as Swamiji would recall months later, buttonholed him immediately after the class and kept him talking "till a battle of Waterloo would be raging in my internal economy through hunger.'[33]


Then there was the stout, white-haired old lady from Sydenham in far southeast London. She came every class day, part of the way by carriage and part, to save expense, on foot. Once, when she seemed heated from the exertion of climbing the stairs, Mahendra gave her a fan, and they entered into conversation. "I love the Swami's talks," she told him. "I can't understand much of the philosophy, but his voice and gestures charm me. I seem to be seeing someone out of the Bible.'[34]


And there was the middle-aged woman who had been born in Moscow and had spent her youth there. While in Russia she had had a dream which she now related with much emotion. In the dream she was led to a sailing ship by a luminous man; it was a black night, and the ship set sail in a boundless sea. She was afraid. Then another man, whose face she saw very clearly, said to her, "There is no fear. Even in the dark the ship will go to its destination." Her fear left, and she awoke. For many years thereafter she had searched in vain for that face in both Russia and England. Then in October of 1895 she attended Swamiji's lecture at Prince's Hall, and there he was, the man in her dream.[35]


Another visitor to the morning class was distinguished in quite a different way. She was not a regular attendant; indeed, as far as we know, she came only once, but that once, Mahendra tells us, caused all the other ladies to turn to look at her and to whisper among themselves, After she left, driving off in her carriage, the others told Swamiji with bated breath that she was the Duchess of Albany, the widow of Queen Victoria's youngest son, Leopold. She had come incognito so she had intended.[36] (On another and later occasion we shall again find some incognito members of the Royal Household attending one of Swamiji's talks.)


In a few of his letters Swamiji mentions the Galeworthys, who seem to have attended his classes with some regularity. The family was known to Miss MacLeod and was almost certainly that of the Galsworthy who was later to become a famous author. Assuming that it was, it is possible that the as yet unknown and unpublished John Galsworthy attended some of the meetings that Mr. Sturdy had conducted for a time during Swamiji's absence in America. "I have very enthusiastic accounts of your classes from Miss MacLeod," Swamiji had written to Sturdy on January 16, 1896. "Mr. Galsworthy seems to be very much interested now.'[37] This could have been the  young John. Brought up to be a well-mannered, well-educated scion of a wealthy Father and trained to practice law, John Galsworthy had not appeared to be anything but an average young man of the upper middle class. But in the early nineties a marked change had come over him. Various influences outside his affluent circle began to mold and awaken his mind; he became aware that a richer and more meaningful life was possible; simultaneously he discovered the abject poverty that existed in London. He haunted the slums, deeply moved by the misery he saw. Further, he fell in love with a young woman who urged him to write. In this sensitive period of transition from conventional dandy and potential man-of property to serious author, it is not unlikely that in 1896 John Galsworthy, then twenty-nine, found in Vedanta a needed ideal and rudder.* Although some misunderstanding seems to have arisen between Swamiji and the Galsworthys, Miss MacLeod evidently straightened it out. In July of 1896, Swamiji wrote to Mr. Francis Legett, "The Galesworthys have been very very kind!** Joe brought them around splendidly.'[38] Mrs. Galsworthy, the mother of the family, is said by her irritated children to have had a narrow and superficial mind, like that of many English women of her generation. "The Queen, the Royal family, the Church, the structure of Society, all to her were final," her son noted. "Almost at once—if we talked—a kind of irritation would begin in me, a sort of inward railing at the closed door I perceived in her mind.'[39] Mrs. Galsworthy may not have very often attended Swamiji's classes (one hopes she was there when the Duchess of Albany came), but her daughters were of another mind. The two young ladies belonged to the generation of women who were pushing toward freedom; their minds were breaking the bonds of a closed society; they were intellectual, art-loving, talented, open to new ideas, encouraged in pursuing them by their father. Surely one could have often found the Galsworthy daughters, the elder of whom was married, at 63 St. George's Road.


There were, of course, many others who came regularly on Tuesdays and Thursdays and on Fridays as well. Miss MacLeod, who was then in London, would surely sweep in, dressed in the best Paris style and looking very elegant indeed among the conservative English women. Miss Margaret Noble from Wimbledon would attend whenever she could, bringing the Hammonds. The Reverend and Mrs. R. H. Haweis came often and very probably Canon Wilbedorce, together with his wife and daughter, came more than once. A Miss Emmeline Souter, who was a friend of the Reverend Mr. Haweis and who would later contribute to Swamiji's Indian work, often attended, as did Mrs. Ashton Jonson, one of the secretaries of the Sesame Club. And then there would be Captain and Mrs. Sevier, who had somehow found Swamiji and who were to become two of his most devoted and loyal followers. Like Margaret Noble, they would quite literally (and sooner than she) leave all that they had to follow him, giving themselves gently, steadily, and without stint to his work. Captain Sevier was a retired army officer who had served for five years in India and, as Swamiji would write to Alasinga, "knows India a good deal." Both he and his wife, Charlotte Elizabeth, were around forty-nine years old in 1896 and lived quietly in Hampstead, a suburb of London, to which the steam-driven Underground did not then reach. Although on first hearing Swamiji they had both known that this was what each had always been seeking, they could have had little idea that within two months or less they would be his hosts in the Alps. Nor could they have known that within a year they would be living and working in the Himalayas—he to die there in the fall of 1900. They came unobtrusively to his classes, among the many who sat in the double drawing room absorbed in the powerful words that were becoming a part of their being and changing their thought and their lives.


Some of those who attended Swamiji's talks were, it is said, lifted into a state bordering on samadhi; some, on the other hand, may have been deeply disturbed by these strange new ideas that seemed to blast away the very fabric of their accustomed worlds. Some were glorified; some were afraid; none could have been left unmoved. The morning class usually lasted for an hour and a half or so. Afterwards, it is more than probable that Swamiji talked for a time with those who pressed around him, his mood changing from that of the awe-inspiring teacher whom one might hesitate to approach to that of the friend, jovial, informal, and accessible.


Often, he would go out to lunch, sometimes with Miss MacLeod and a friend or two, sometimes with people who struck Mahendra as very important personages. Once, indeed, Swamiji had a luncheon engagement with a "a duke in Park Lane,"—which he had totally forgotten until, in the nick of time, he chanced to consult his engagement book. He rushed to get ready, "Goodwin whirling like a spinning wheel" to help him. A carriage was hailed, and off he went, not to return until very late that night.[40] Thus, not only through his classes, but through his friendships with all kinds of people, Swamiji brought the best of India's religious culture to England: "From now on," Mahendra heard him remark to Swami Saradananda, "they will see India with new eyes.'[41]


Lunch at home had its tensions. There was Henrietta Muller, who seemed to be "an old woman" to Mahendra and who some times wore, he said, “a man’s suit'[42] (very probably a stylish sporting costume with a tight  fitting, broad-lapelled jacket and a skirt that rose a daring four inches from the floor). Miss Muller had some very definite opinions. Mahendra describes an exchange that took place one day when she expressed her disapproval of the old cows in India, remarking that in England such unproductive and suffering animals would be forthwith done away with. At this, Swami Saradananda mildly asked why the English did not, then, do away with their parents when they became old. What Miss Muller, who was much devoted to her elderly mother, replied is not known, but whatever it may have been, it was her last word to the Swami for three days. "You see, Sharat; ' Swamiji told his brother disciple when he heard of this contretemps, "in this country there are two kinds of old maids: some grow fat—they are even tempered and comfortable; the others get dried up and are peevish. You must take great care how you act around them. Stand up when they come into the room; ask 'How are you?'; quickly give them whatever they want; try to pacify them.'[43]


As for Miss Muller, Swamiji would at times gently chide her "We are all monomanics. I am a monomaniac for my preaching of Vedanta; you are a monomaniac for your whims. The world is full of monomaniaca.'[44]One of Miss Muller's main grievances was the cooking done by the elderly housekeeper, who had, no doubt, been engaged by Mr. Sturdy. One day, Mahendra reports, "she grumbled and grumbled about the food, got dressed up and went off to her relatives." Swamiji was much annoyed. "Nothing but quarrels! Let her stay with her family for a while; she will cool off and come back.'[45] And so she did, bringing another cook, whose British method of boiling rice threw Swami Saradananda and Mahendra into such spasms of choked laughter that another row was barely avoided.[46]


Swamiji was himself not always enthusiastic about the monotonous English fare at St. George's Road. Even the basket of choice fruit sent almost daily by an anonymous admirer could not make up for a diet of long-boiled vegetables and potatoes. Now and then he would go down to the kitchen with the spices Swami Saradananda had brought to him from India and create a splendid curry. "Last night I made a dish," he wrote to Mary Hale on May 30. "It was such a delicious mixture of saffron, lavender, mace, nutmeg, cubebs, cinnamon, doves, cardamom, cream, lime juice, onions, raisins, almonds, pepper, and rice, that I myself could not eat it. There was no asafoetida, though that would have made it smoother to swallow.'[47]The event immediately preceding the creation of that dish had been something of an ordeal for Swamiji. Miss Muller had taken him to see a "marriage a la mode." "One of her nieces was married to somebody's nephew I suppose. What tiring nonsense!'[48]Certainly the only thing to do after that was rush to the kitchen and cook "'a la Indienne."

3

On May 28, the day before Swamiji attended the wedding, he had one of the most memorable experiences of his visit in England. He had gone by train with Mr. Sturdy to see Professor Max Muller at his home in Oxford, about sixty-four miles northwest of London. He was enchanted by the venerable philologist and Sanskrit scholar, who, though born and educated in Germany, had spent some fifty years of his life in England, translating and editing the Rig-Veda in six volumes and later editing the fifty-volume Sacred Books of the East,* as well as writing a number of books and essays. The long years he had spent delving into "the interminable forest of Sanskrit literature with deep interest and heart-felt love" had colored, Swamiji found, his whole being.'[49]"It was neither the philologist nor the scholar that I saw," he wrote in a letter to the Brahmavadin a few days after his visit to Oxford, "but a soul that is every day realising its oneness with the Brahman, a heart that is every moment expanding to reach oneness with the Universal.** Where others lose themselves in the desert of dry details, he has struck the wellspring of life. Indeed, his heartbeats have caught the rhythm of the Upanishads.'[50]


Professor Friedrich Max Muller was Corpus Professor of Comparative Philology and had just been made the Right Honourable, which distinction he held among many others.*** He treated Swamiji and Mr. Sturdy with great cordiality, introducing them to his wife, entertaining them at his house at 7 Norham Gardens, a Tudor cottage (which he called his "Ashrama") set in an English garden with rosebushes in full bloom, inviting them to lunch, showing them several Colleges of Oxford, and conducting them through the Bodleian Library, of which he was a curator and which was rich in Oriental manuscripts, and at the close of the day accompanying them to the  railway station. "And all this he did," Swamiji wrote, "because, as he said, 'It is not every day one meets a disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.''[51]


It had been a beautiful spring day away from the noisy and murky city. "The trees, the flowers, the calmness, and the clear sky," Swamiji wrote, "—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.'[52]( The image remained in Swamiji's mind. "Seeing the old man and his lady," he was later to say to an Indian disciple, "it seemed to me that they were living their home-life like another Vasishtha and Arundhati!")[53] Even before he met the Professor, Swamiji had sensed that he belonged to Vedic India—a reincarnation of the fourteenth-century Sayana, born to revive his own commentary on the Rig-Veda. How else explain his inherently profound love for India's ancient scriptures, so anomalous in the nineteenth century West? Now, meeting and talking with "the silverheaded sage, with a face calm and benign,'[54]Swamiji was confirmed in his belief. Max Muller himself, a believer in reincarnation—in total contradiction to his Christian loyalties—seemed to sense that he had lived another life in another land, where his heart belonged. Taking leave of him, Swamiji had asked, "When are you coming to India? Every heart there would welcome one who has done so much to place the thoughts of their ancestors in the true light." "The face of the aged sage brightened up," Swamiji wrote, "there was almost a tear in his eyes, 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 seemed an unwarrantable intrusion into realms wherein are stored the holy secrets of man's heart. Who knows but that it was what the poet has said—'He remembers with his mind the friendships of former births, firmly rooted in his heart.'[55]


Swamiji did not always agree with Max Muller's scholarly conclusions. A few years later at the Paris Congress of the  History of Religions, he was to point out the illogic of a contention of the Professor's (even as he had once "indulged in an innocent squib at Sayana")[56]This did not, however, lessen his respect for "the great-souled scholar." Indeed, Max Muller's love for India and his devotion to the task of bringing out her greatest jewels for Western view and understanding had won Swamiji's everlasting esteem. "His life," he wrote, "has been a blessing to the world."[57]


Nor was the Professor's interest solely in India's great spiritual past; he had also sought out its living present. He had "a deep, unfathomable respect for Sri Ramakrishna,'[58]which particularly endeared him to Swamiji. In April of 1896 he had sent Swamiji the following postcard, the first of their communications:


2 April 96


Dear Sir, Accept my best thanks for your interesting pamphlet. I believe you are a pupil of Rama Krishna Paramahansa, whom I have always sincerely admired. I hope you will continue your work in America and make both Sankara and Ramanuja widely known.

Yours faithfully[59]
F. Max Muller


Swamiji must have replied warmly, for later in the same month Max Muller wrote to him with less formality, opening his heart:

As for your beloved master of blessed memory, Bhagaban Sri Ram Krishan, how can I ever tell you what he is to me, I love and worship him with my whole heart. To think of him makes my eyes fill with tears of gladness that I was permitted to hear of him. His sayings, published in the Brahmavadin, are my greatest delight. How wonderful that his teachings should have been borne to this far-off land where we had never even known of his existence! If  I might only have known him, while he was yet with us! My greatest desire is to one day visit the spot which [was] sanctified by his presence, while he lived, and I may be so fortunate as to fulfil the wish.[60]


"I should say that I went [not to pay a visit but] to pay my respects to [Max Muller]," Swamiji would write, "for whosoever loves Shri Ramakrishna, whatever be his or her sect, or creed, or nationality, my visit to that person I hold as a pilgrimage.'[61]


It had been through making inquiries into the power behind the sudden and momentous changes in the life of Keshab Chandra Sen that Max Muller had discovered the Paramahamsa of Dakshineswar and had thereafter been "an earnest student and admirer" of his life and teachings. He had, in fact, written an article entitled "A Real Mahatman, " which was to be published in the August 1896 issue of the Nineteenth Century, a highly reputable and widely read magazine. He told Swamiji that he would be "very glad to write a larger and fuller account . . . if sufficient materials were forthcoming." It would appear that Swamiji accordingly sent him some information, for on June 22 the Professor wrote to him from Scotland, where he was then staying. His letter to Swamiji, a copy of which came by way of John P. Fox to Mrs. Bull, and thence to us, has not previously been published. It read:

Spitalhaugh
West Linton [Scotland] 
22 June 96

My dear Mr. Vivekananda

Accept my best thanks for your most interesting communication. I wish I had had it when I wrote my article on Rama Krishna which will, I hope, appear in the July number of the xix Century. Just now I am very busy with proof sheets, and a new edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and several other matters. But I have several questions to ask you about your great Guru, and I should be obliged if you would let me have your address.


What I should like to do would be to rewrite my article on R.K., with a complete collection of his sayings, properly arranged according to their subjects. Do you think that your friends would help me to do that.

Yours very truly[62]
F. Max Muller.


On receiving this letter, Swamiji at once wrote to Swami Ramakrishnananda: "Max Muller wants all the sayings of Shri Ramakrishna classified, that is, all on Karma in one place, on Vairagya in another place, so on Bhakti, Jnana, etc, etc. You must undertake to do this forthwith.... We must take care to present only the universal aspect of his teachings.'[63]Later on, Swamiji was to send Max Muller "a full description of his Master's life," upon which the Professor based his book The Life and Sayings of Ramakrishna,[64] It was in respect to this, however, that the Professor was to deal Swamiji something of a blow, or, at least, one thinks, to cause him disappointment. But of this we shall speak in a later chapter.

4

As we have seen, Swamiji often was invited out in the afternoons. But he also received visitors at home, some of whom came for spiritual guidance, others for advice in their personal lives, confiding in him as one might confide in a wise and compassionate uncle whom one had always known. Or on some afternoons when no one else came, he would sit in the parlor talking with Swami Saradananda, Sturdy, Goodwin, Mahendra, and, after the first week of June, John Fox, who had arrived in London around June 6 to study architecture. (For the first week or so of his London stay, Fox lived in the house at St. George's Road, but even after taking lodgings elsewhere, he continued to spend a part of his time there.)* Snatches of the talk come down to us through the memory of Mahendra, who seems almost always to have been present, listening attentively. While one cannot suppose that Mahendra had total recall,* one can, I believe, accept the highlights of his memory, as well as its broad outlines.


There was, for instance, the afternoon when Swamiji, leaning back in his easy chair, his legs crossed, his eyes closed, remained silent for a long time, "as if pondering something." The others in the room were quiet, waiting. Then suddenly Swamiji uncrossed his legs and said to John Fox that he had been thinking of how St. Paul, becoming the Apostle of Christ's teachings, had succeeded in spreading them in the face of powerful opposition. "Paul was a learned fanatic," Swamiji said. "Do you know what I am? I am also a learned fanatic, and I want to create a band of learned fanatics. You see, just a fanatic is not enough; fanaticism is a disease of the brain and makes much mischief. It takes a learned fanatic." He grew quite excited, Mahendra tells us, and his listeners were awestruck by the clear implication of his own place in the establishment of a new Dispensation. And indeed, as Mahendra points out, many have since remarked that what Paul was to Christ, Swami Vivekananda was to Sri Ramakrishna. Here again was Swamiji's impersonal recognition of the immensity of his own place in history.[65]


But not only was it through such statements that his status was revealed. There were times in which it was clearly apparent. The divine light of his being kept shining out, as though a thin veil were being continually blown aside. Sometimes, Mahendra recalled, the power he manifested seemed overwhelming, particularly so during a class or lecture; it was like a fire blazing in the middle of the house and difficult to bear. At such times, what Spirit was could be clearly understood. "It was as if the room was flowing with Brahmajnana and wisdom, and Swamiji, smiling, was sprinkling it around, offering anjali with his two hands.'[66]


Or there were times in the parlor when he sat in so grave and absorbed a mood that no one dared approach him; he was infinity itself. But there were other times when the childlike joy characteristic of the Paramahamsa was uppermost and irrepressible. Often he would sing Bengali songs to himself, as though giving voice to a continual inner joy and worship. And there was the day when he was just soaked in bliss, guilelessly absorbed in joy. There were only a few intimate friends present in the lecture room that day—probably a Friday afternoon and Swamiji, standing by the lecture table, began suddenly to dance.[67]


Or, again, there was the morning in the parlor, where all the household was assembled except Mr. Sturdy and Miss Muller (the latter of whom seldom, it seems, joined the young men). "Swamiji sat for a long time in his chair in deep thought," Mahendra wrote. "Then all at once he began to say, 'So'ham, So'ham.' The look of his face, the tone of his voice became utterly changed. His countenance became the veritable picture of joy. In this bliss he began to pace the floor or dance for a while. Everyone was astonished. Here was a new person, a free person. Then he became silent and sat again in his chair. Slowly, as his mood passed, he became his normal self again.'[68] But Swamiji's "normal self'" was an extraordinary self; there seems to have been always that ecstasy shimmering just below the surface, ready to overflow.


We have not only Mahendra's memories as evidence of Swamiji's spiritual ecstasy during his life in England, but more important and more telling, his own words as they have come down to us in his famous and often-quoted letter written on July 6 to "Frankincense," as he addressed the rather staid Mr. Leggett.


At twenty years of age [he wrote] I was the most unsympathetic, uncompromising fanatic; I would not walk on the footpath on the theatre side of the streets in Calcutta. At thirty-three, I can live in the same house with prostitutes and never would think of saying a word of reproach to them. Is it degenerate? Or is it that I am broadening out into the Universal Love which is the Lord Himself? Again I have heard that if one does not see the evil round him he cannot do good work—he lapses into a sort of fatalism. I do not see that. On the other hand, my power of work is immensely increasing and becoming immensely effective. Some days I get into a sort of ecstasy. I feel that I must bless every one, everything, love and embrace everything, and I do see that evil is a delusion.... He is my playful darling. I am his playfellow. There is neither rhyme nor reason in the universe! What reason binds Him? . . . Whom to praise, whom to blame, it is all His play. They want explanations, but how can you explain Him? He is brainless, nor has He any reason. He is fooling us with little brains and reason, but this time He won't find me napping. I have learned a thing or two. Beyond, beyond reason and learning and talking is the feeling, the 'Love', the 'Beloved'. Aye, Saki,* fill up the cup and we will be mad.[69]


The talks in the parlor ranged over innumerable subjects, and the young men were continually amazed at Swamiji's endless fund of knowledge. He discussed politics with Goodwin, history with Fox, the Harvard graduate, who had taken many courses in the subject. He astounded them not only with the extent of his learning but with the hundreds of absorbing details that he had at the tips of his fingers, as, for instance, the fact that the gluttonous Roman Emperor Vitellius ate myna birds from Assam boiled in ghee and milk. To Mrs. Bull, Fox wrote on June 17, "The last day or two I have had some good talks with [Swami], or rather listened to him, for he knows so much about everything that one hardly ventures to express his own ideas on a subject. I have not realized till lately how much he knows about every country and time, and he has such a true and broad knowledge—real philosophy.'[70] Indeed. He could describe how American carriage wheels were made, discuss the recent discoveries of German science, talk at length  about the Jewish Cabala, about astronomy, other branches of science, Perisian customs, European politics--anything; and while the facts he told were in themselves fascinating, he made them more so by relating them to the wide movements of man's history on earth. He often spoke of India, his mind ever on the means of improving the lot of his countrymen. At times the poverty and helplessness of India's people, compared with the robust activity of the average Westerner, filled him with grief. But though his mind roamed over the world both in time and space, no detail of his immediate surroundings escaped his notice. Were his young brother, for instance, not properly dressed, he would at once admonish him. He himself scrupulously observed the customs and manners of London, lest he give offense to his English friends; nor does it seem to have been difficult for Swamiji to adjust to the ways of the West. Even the humor—that subtle idiom relished by its own culture and era, unintelligible to the outsider—held no mystery for him, as his letters to Western friends delightfully show.


Often there were jokes and laughter. Once Mr. Sturdy, who had attended an English public school, told with indignation of the canings given to the boys. "I get angry," he said, "whenever I see a man beating a boy." "I, too," said Goodwin; "I get angry even when I see a man beating a donkey." Swamiji smiled. "That is because it arouses your fellow-feeling," he said[71]They all laughed, perhaps Goodwin the loudest. Indeed, one might suppose that the house was a continuous mart of joy, filled with peace and goodwill during the ten weeks or so of Swamiji's stay there. To a great extent, this was of course the case; yet it was not altogether so: there were undercurrents of tension in the minds of those who lived, as on some high Himalayan peak, in close association with Swamiji. Alone among them, Swami Saradananda was fully accustomed to the altitude of his presence; it was native to him. Goodwin, Mahendra, and Fox seemed to have basked in it, allowing it to suffuse them. But Mr. Sturdy and Miss Muller appear to have resisted it. "You can silence me," Miss Muller was heard to say to Swamiji from time to time, "but you cannot convince me!'[72]Mr. Sturdy was equally strong-minded. Portions of a letter he was to write in December of 1899 to Miss MacLeod give some insight into his attitude:


Of course Swami does not stand to me as he does to many others. To them he came as a teacher of something they had not heard before and also as a manifestation of his teachings to a great extent in himself.


To me he came as a manifestation, a partial realisation of ideals and doctrines I had studied and striven to follow for—counting them now—I7 years. I realised at once on meeting him that he was far above most of the men I had met in India in many directions and his contact with the West had furnished his mind with many new examples and illustrations and he had heart and head equally developed. I still look up to Swami as a very great man-teacher, but I have very gravely modified my idea of him in some directions. It would be unfair to go into them. They are personal experiences and impressions, which may be entirely or partly the mistakes of the impressed. I have not altered any ideals or convictions, but these experiences and impressions produce just that taking away of enthusiasm and energy without which, when one lacks them, no work or cooperation can be engaged in.[73]


And so on. Mr. Sturdy was to write this letter after he had failed to manage the London work successfully in Swamiji's absence. Nevertheless, it indicates that he suffered from a certain resentment even in the days of 1896, during which (as we know from letters of a later day) he collected and harbored grievances by the score. "Poor Sturdy!" Miss MacLeod would comment to Sister Nivedita in November of 1899, "You've tried to limit the Limitless by your little yard measure—& you couldn't even come to the knee!'[74]


One incident that may have served Sturdy as an "impression" occurred one day in 1896 when he (who did not smoke) bought some inferior pipe tobacco for Swamiji at a bargain. Swamiji found it tasteless; nor did it burn well or draw. After Sturdy had left the room, he said to Goodwin, "Throw this away, my boy. Go out and get me some good tobacco. All day I have to spend talking with people, have to lecture, have to think; I can't even smoke a little if I wish." And with his genius for the apt phrase, he added, "This sour-faced man into whose hands I have fallen has taken the life out of me!'[75]Undoubtedly Mr. Sturdy came to learn that his cheap tobacco had been discarded for a better, more expensive brand; it was a rejection that would not be easily forgotten or forgiven. Nor could it have helped matters that Swamiji often praised the young and exuberant Goodwin, who attended to his every need so devotedly and so well.


Of some of these undercurrents one learns from John Fox—".a nice young fellow," a friend of Mrs. Bull's once wrote of him "looking so pure and good." In his goodness and his youth, Mr. Fox was much surprised to find no one perfect at St. George's Road except the two Swamis. "Mr. Sturdy is rather disappointing," he wrote to Mrs. Bull. "The tone of the house is far from the highest. Mr. Goodwin, though very able in many ways, has not yet realized all he has heard [from Swamiji], but I hope is not too old to change"; and again, "[Mr. Goodwin] is more and more disappointing on close acquaintance. Though very able, with very wide knowledge and experience, with great executive ability, he is inclined to be narrow and dogmatic, wanting his own way always, often very antagonistic and maintaining his view is the right one in the face of all authority. It is a pity he has not assimilated the Vedanta more...."


But it was Miss Muller who made it impossible for John Fox to remain in the house. "I have taken a room near 63 St. George's Road, because I think Miss Muller wanted my room for a new cook though she asked Mr. Sturdy to say to me that she could not 'cater' for me," he wrote to Mrs. Bull on June 27. "Mr. Sturdy hires the house, and Miss Muller tends to the 'catering.' They dislike each other very much indeed. Miss Muller is very peculiar and I am better off here on the whole, with far better food, though room and board cost only 19s. a week, and more freedom and chance to think. It was very distracting at the other house. I can step in and see Swami any time I want to.'[76]


According to Mahendra, Goodwin's position in the household was not much better than Mr. Fox's. But although Goodwin referred to Miss Muller as "the Chilean woman" (she having been born in Chile),* we find no hint in his letters to Mrs. Bull of overt conflict between him and the benefactors at St. George's Road. In actual fact, it seems to have been Mahendra, rather than Goodwin, who, like Fox, was persona non grata. "My poor brother was ill," Swamiji was to write to Sturdy a few years later, recalling those days of 1896, "and Miss Muller drove him away.'[77] Miss Muller's animosity toward his young brother must have been unpleasant for Swamiji, but his primary concern was that "Mohin" choose a fruitful career. In this connection he wrote to Mrs. Bull on June 5:


I have a very serious thing to consult you about. You know my brother Mohin is here in London for the last two months. He intends to become a barrister. He has also a liking he says for electrical engineering.


Now I do not like any one of my blood would become a lawyer although my father was one. My Master was against it and I believe [that] that family is surely to come to grief where there are several lawyers. Secondl—the country [India] is full of lawyers. The universities turn them out by the hundreds with the uniform result that they starve. Again what my nation wants is pluck and scientific genius. So I intend him to be an electrician. Even if he fails in life still I will have the satisfaction that he strived to become great & really useful to his country.


There are good schools for training electricians here no doubt. But in America alone there is that something in the air which brings out whatever is best in everyone. So I want him to go to America and be put under some good electricians & try his venture. The Raja of Khetri will send him some money. I have 300 £ with me I can give him the whole of it. You promised to give me $100 a year. I do not want it. I want my brother to be daring bold and struggle to cut a new path for himself and his nation. An electrical engineer can easily make a living in India. He has been suffering from jungle fever of late and even now gets little feverish every fortnight or so—otherwise he is strong. He is also a very good boy rather puritanic as I was when I was young. Pluck is what my nation wants now and scientific education. I have put the whole case before you and await your reply. He needs to be taken care of a few months at first till he begins to understand western life and method.[78]


Swamiji did all he could to dislodge Mahendra from London, but his efforts did not avail. [Swamiji] had the desire [Mahendra recalled] that Indians should study the science of electricity in the United States and bring it to India. Then the country would be benefited. This was his firm conviction. Therefore he told me again and again to go to America and study electricity. But I was at that time enamoured of the famous Reading Room of the British Museum and was unwilling to leave it.[79]


Mr. Goodwin, who was going off to America with Swami Saradananda, also did his best to persuade his young Indian friend to join them. "If you stay here I will kill you! Come on! Come to a new country and see what fun!" But for the time being the Reading Room won out, and Mahendra, driven away by Miss Muller, moved in with John Fox at 137 Cambridge Street, a nearby lodging house.

As for Fox, he went with Mahendra to the Reading Room and studied the Vedanta Sutras. "I mean to spend all my spare time reading the Hindu books in the Museum, " he wrote to Mrs. Bull on June 27, "as Swami is not inclined to talk very much. I suppose he is too tired.'[80]


5

From May 7 to July I7 of 1896 Swamiji held four regular classes and (until the end of June) one question-and-answer class every week. At this rate (allowing for the evenings of one Tuesday in May and one Thursday in July, when he lectured elsewhere), he held during this period at least forty-five classes in addition to six Sunday lectures. As we have learned earlier from Goodwin's letter of May I2 to Mrs. Bull, in his first three classes Swamiji placed Vedanta in its historical settings in relation to both India and the West. Goodwin's transcript of the fourth class, held on the morning of Thursday, May 10, has recently been discovered—not among Mrs. Bull's papers but among those evidently sent by Miss Waldo to Sister Devamata—and preserved by the Vedanta Centre at Cohasset. Many years ago this transcript found its way into the Complete Works, where it was published without identification in volume six under the title "Methods and Purpose of Religion." In this long and rich class Swamiji introduced the grand ideas of the Vedanta philosophy, or, rather, he presented the great facts of existence to which religious prophets or seers have given utterance through the ages. Who listening to him that morning would not have known he was among the greatest of those seers and that, perchance, one would be a prophet someday oneself? That is what he demanded.

One can read this glowing talk in the Complete Works, but let us quote here some excerpts that touch on its primary theme:

Religious laws, the grand truths of spirituality, . . . are working all the time. If all the Vedas and the Bibles and the Korans did not exist at all, if seers and prophets had never been born, yet these laws would exist.... But they are the prophets who see them, discover them.... As Newton and Galileo were prophets of physical science, so are they prophets of spirituality. They can claim no exclusive right to any one of these laws; they are the common property of all nature.


The Vedas, as the Hindus say, are eternal. We now understand what they mean by their being eternal, i.e. that the laws have neither beginning nor end, just as nature has neither beginning nor end.... The beginning and end of time can be told as regards a certain planet; but as regards the universe, time has no meaning at all. So are the laws of nature, the physical laws, the mental laws, the spiritual laws—without beginning and without end are they. And it is within a few years, comparatively speaking, a few thousand years at best, that man has tried to reveal them. The infinite mass remains before us.... The one great lesson that we learn from the Vedas, at the start, is that religion has just begun. The infinite ocean of spiritual truth lies before us to be worked on, to be discovered, to be brought into our lives. The world has seen thousands of prophets, and the world has yet to see millions.


There were times in olden days when prophets were many in every society. The time is to come when prophets will walk through every street in every city in the world.... The study of religion should be the training to make prophets. The schools and colleges should be training grounds for prophets. [All beings in the] whole universe must become prophets; and until a man becomes a prophet, religion is a mockery and a byword unto him. We must see religion, feel it, realise it in a thousand times more intense sense than that in which we see the wall.


. . . The gigantic principles, the scope, the plan of  religion were already discovered ages ago when man found the last words, as they are called, of the Vedas—"I am He"—that there is that One in whom this whole universe of matter and mind finds its unity, whom they call God, or Brahman, or Allah, or Jehovah, or any other name. We cannot go beyond that. The grand principle has been already mapped out for us. Our work lies in filling it in, working it out, applying it to every part of our lives. We have to work now so that everyone will become a prophet. There is a great work before us.


. . . Vedanta declares that religion is here and now, because the question of this life and that life, of life and death, this world and that world, is merely one of superstition and prejudice. There is no break in time beyond what we make.... So, says Vedanta, religion is to be realised now. And for you to become religious means that you will start without any religion, work your way up and realise things, see things for yourself; and when you have done that, then, and then alone, you have religion....


. . . It is practice, work, that will bring us up to that. The plan of Vedanta, therefore, is: first, to lay down the principles, map out for us the goal, and then to teach us the method by which to arrive at the goal, to understand and realise religion.


Again, these methods must be various. Seeing that we are so various in our natures, the same method can scarcely be applied to any two of us in the same manner....


. . . Multiply your prophets if you like; [Vedanta] has no objection. It only preaches the principle, and the method it leaves to you. Take any path you like; follow any prophet you like; but have only that method which suits your own nature, so that you will be sure to progress.[81]


Aside from this class of May 14 and Goodwin's recently discovered transcript of May 7, there remain out of Swamiji's forty-five or so classes at St. George's Road only two sets of short notes that are identified in the Complete Works (volume six) as being "made out of class notes preserved in England." Presumably these notes, which are entitled "Lessons on Raja-Yoga" and "Lessons on Bhakti-Yoga," were taken down in the summer of 1896.


In addition, Mahendra Nath Datta has written a good deal in his Londone Swami Vivekananda about Swamiji's classes at St. George's Road. He paints an extraordinary picture, but it is a credible one, for it is in full accord with what we know of his subject. Again and again he speaks of the spiritual splendor and power Swamiji manifested during his class talks. He seems never able to say enough or to find the right words to describe the radiance that emanated from him and embraced his listeners, lifting their thought to the high level in which they could, as it were, enter the realm of spiritual consciousness. This phenomenal power, Mahendra tells us, was the "life and soul" of Swamiji's lectures. "As he himself was full of Brahmajnana and wisdom, so was he also able to share it with others.'[82]


He shared spiritual joy as well. He told many tales from the Jataka stories of Buddha's former births, and Mahendra recalled that when he told the story of the tigress his face was very peaceful, as if expressing fullness of love for all creatures. There was not a trace of sternness, only enthusiasm and bliss, and his mood became much more attractive than the tale he was telling. He would sometimes say, "If I meditate on the brain of a Shankara, I become Shankara, or on the brain of a Buddha, I become Buddha." And indeed that evening he seemed to Mahendra to be a modern Buddha, recounting to his audience his own Jataka tales.[83]


Swamiji did not, of course, only radiate sometimes power, sometimes joy; he also poured out ideas, logical, clear, and well organized, such as would stand by themselves through centuries. His subjects that May, June, and the first half of July  were, in Mahendra's memory, raja-yoga, bhakti-yoga, and the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. He apparently spoke on raja-yoga and bhakt- yoga in much detail, explaining their various stages and practices and exemplifying, even as he spoke, the perfected yogi or the supreme devotee of God.


As mentioned above, a few notes "made out of" these classes have been published in the Complete Works. As they come to us, they seem to be self-contained details excerpted from what must have been the richly varied tapestry of the classes. Let us quote here more or less at random some smaller bits yet—snatches of the words Swamiji spoke as he stood, his back to the window, facing the crowded room. The class was on raja yoga:


The last and highest manifestation of prana is love. The moment you have succeeded in manufacturing love out of Prana, you are free. It is the hardest and the greatest thing to gain. You must not criticise others; you must criticise yourself. If you see a drunkard, do not criticise him; remember he is you in another shape. He who has no darkness sees no darkness in others. What you have inside you is what you see in others. This is the surest way of reform. If the would-be reformers who criticise and see evil would themselves stop creating evil, the world would be better. Beat this idea into yourself.[84] . . .


There is no knowledge without experience, and man has to see God in his own soul. When man has come face to face with the one great fact in the universe, then alone will doubts vanish and crooked things become straight. This is "seeing God". Our business is to verify, not to swallow. Religion, like other sciences, requires you to gather facts, to see for yourself, and this is possible when you go beyond the knowledge which lies in the region of the five senses. Religious truths need verification by everyone. To see God is the one goal. Power is not the goal. Pure Existence-Knowledge-and-Love is the goal; and Love is God....

. . . Mere thoughts are like little wavelets; fresh impulses to vibration come to them simultaneously, until at last one great wave seems to stand up and swallow up the rest. These universal thought waves seem to recur every five hundred years, when invariably the great wave typifies and swallows up the others. It is this which constitutes a prophet. He focusses in his own mind the thought of the age in which he is living and gives it back to mankind in concrete form....Once again in our day there is a vibration of the waves of thought and the central idea is that of the Immanent God, and this is everywhere cropping up in every form and every sect.... The majority of sects will be transient, and last only as bubbles, because the leaders are not usually men of character. Perfect love, the heart never reacting, this is what builds character. There is no allegiance possible where there is no character in the leader, and perfect purity ensures the most lasting allegiance and confidence.

Take up an idea, devote yourself to it, struggle on in patience, and the sun will rise for you.[85]


In these notes taken from Swamiji's raja yoga classes, one finds him speaking more than once of "mental healing," a subject he seems to have seldom dwelt upon in other lectures and classes. To his London class he said:


Mental healing is a fine proof of the super-conscious state; for the thought which heals is a sort of vibration in the Prana, and it does not go as a thought but as something higher for which we have no name.[86] . . . When thought is joined to will, we call it power. That which strikes the sick person whom you are trying to help is not thought, but power.


. . . When the imagination is very powerful, the object becomes visualised. Therefore, by it we can bring our bodies to any state of health or disease. When we see a thing, the particles of the brain fall into a certain position like the mosaics of a kaleidoscope. Memory consists in getting back this combination and the same setting of the particles of the brain.... Imagination must hold to the thought of health and strength in order that in case of illness the memory of the ideal of health may be roused and the particles re-arranged in the position into which they fell when healthy. The tendency of the body is then to follow the brain. The next step is when this process can be arrived at by another's mind working on us....

. . . When the mind has reached [one-pointedness] all is gained—healing, clairvoyance, and all psychic gifts. In a moment you can direct this current of thought to anyone, as Jesus did, with instantaneous result.[87]


According to Mahendra, Swamiji instantaneously healed him during their stay at St. George's Road of malarial fever, from which he had been recurrently suffering. Mahendra, who must have known whereof he spoke, wrote in his memoirs:


It is necessary to say that Swami Vivekananda cured the malarial fever of one and a half years standing, of the writer, by his sheer will. He [Mahendra] and Swami Saradananda were in the fourth floor room and Swami Vivekananda from the first floor projected his power and cured the writer.[88] And Swamiji did the same for Swami Saradananda, curing him of a severe and long-standing case of malaria, while his brother disciple sat like a child at his feet. *


But to continue with our brief passages from Swamiji's classes. Here are some scraps from his talks on bhakti-yoga:

We want to become harmonious beings, with the psychical, spiritual, intellectual, and working (active) sides of our nature equally developed. Nations and individuals typify one of these sides or types and cannot understand more than that one. They get so built up into one ideal that they cannot see any other. The ideal is really that we should become many-sided. Indeed the cause of the misery of the world is that we are so one-sided that we cannot sympathise with one another....


. . . The Roman Catholic is deep and spiritual, but he has lost breadth. The Unitarian is wide, but he has lost spirituality and considers religion as of divided importance. What we want is the depth of the Roman Catholic and the breadth of the Unitarian. We must be as broad as the skies, as deep as the ocean; we must have the zeal of the fanatic, the depth of the mystic, and the width of the agnostic.... We are all travelling the same way, towards the same goal, but by different paths made by the necessities of the case to suit diverse minds. We must become many-sided, indeed we must become protean in character, so as not only to tolerate, but to do what is much more difficult, to sympathise, to enter into another's path, and feel with him in his aspirations and seeking after God.[89] . . .


In this world we are bound by laws, and we are always striving to break through these laws, we are always trying to disobey, to trample on nature.... The whole struggle of life is not to obey. (That is why I sympathise with Christian Scientists, for they teach the liberty of man and the divinity of soul.) The soul is superior to all environment. "The universe is my father's kingdom; I am the heir-apparent"—that is the attitude for man to take. "My own soul can subdue all."


We must work through law before we come to liberty. External helps and methods, forms, ceremonies, creeds, doctrines, all have their right place and are meant to support and strengthen us until we become strong. Then they are no more necessary.[90] . 


. . . The highest love is the love that is sexless, for it is perfect unity that is expressed in the highest love, and sex differentiates bodies. It is therefore only in spirit that union is possible. The less we have of the physical idea, the more perfect will be our love; at last all physical thought will be forgotten, and the two souls will become one. We love love always.... God is love, and we love God--or love love.... Love for love's sake cannot be expressed to those who have not felt it.... When man loves God as his highest ideal, as no beggar, wanting nothing, then is love carried to the extreme of evolution; and it becomes a great power in the universe.[91]


But it was during his classes on jnana yoga that Swamiji seemed to rise to a state bordering on the divine—awesome and yet infinitely gracious. "Face shining, he had lost his human nature and seemed like someone from a higher plane, as if his previous self had vanished and in its place there stood a powerful being. It was as if on one side stood personified the hoary doctrine which has come down through ages, and on the other was he, the teacher, trying to dig out the deep meaning from the scriptures of all religions, showing no partiality for any particular view. A dry philosopher and a divine being—he had become both.'[92]


Swamiji's class-lectures on the subject of adhyasa ("super. imposition") were, according to Mahendra, particularly luminous and illuminating. They comprised eight class sessions, extending over a period of two weeks. To summarize Mahendra's account of them (for there are no known notes), Swamiji spoke of the various levels and kinds of spiritual consciousness and of the superimposition, or projection (adhyasa), of these inner states of being upon external nature, creating, as it were, the universes experienced at different stages of spiritual awareness. It is thus that various truths have been revealed to saints and seers in accordance with their own various levels of consciousness and points of view—all of them equally valid, none of them revelations of Absolute Truth, of which there can be no description and no revealer. The audience, Mahendra tells us, was awestruck by Swamiji's elaborate and detailed exposition of this line of thought, in which he explained precisely why it is that "Truth is One, sages call it by various names," and why it is that all religions, however different they may be, present valid views of the One Brahman. He explained rationally the phenomena of visions, giving many examples and descriptions. Mahendra found it difficult to describe the splendor of his face, eyes, and voice during these eight sessions, so great it was. And he recalled that such was the level of these talks that Swamiji's fame increased and many new people came to hear him.[93]


It was shortly after the completion of these talks that a ruckus occurred one evening that momentarily interrupted the concentrated flow of Swamiji's teaching but at the same time brought forth yet another aspect of his power. The scene had everything: comedy, dramatic intensity, pathos, and the Terrible. According to John Fox, who at once reported the incident to Mrs. Bull, the Friday evening question class had just begun. The gas lights were glowing, and the students were in their seats. Swamiji stood in his gerua robe by the lecture table; Goodwin sat at his desk, ready to take notes; Swami Saradananda, Sturdy, Mahendra, and Fox sat on the sofa at the back of the room. Answering a question, Swamiji was speaking of the comparative effects of Christianity and Buddhism on the cultures they dominated; the former, he said, had become a military religion, the latter still maintained an attitude of compassion. At this point a thin, elderly Englishman, with a skin darkened by years under an Indian sun, questioned Swamiji in what Fox described as a "very insulting and cynical way." Swamiji answered calmly, but even as he spoke, the man, Mahendra recalled, kept shouting out in a taunting, sarcastic voice, "Oh, thank you!" Swamiji seemed not to hear, but those who had come to the class in deep interest, if not reverence, turned to glare at the heckler. Having their attention, he began to proclaim that Buddha was a selfish and cruel man who had " run off from his wife and child. The religion of Jesus, he cried, "is the only religion!" Swamiji did not reply. Quietly he spoke of the great compassion of Lord Buddha. "Even today," he said, "there are such noble sadhus in India." "No!" cried the man. "I know that sadhus are all thieves and loafers. I used to chase them out of the village!" This was too much for Mr. Sturdy. Jumping up, he strode to the middle of the room, from where he loudly and heatedly declared, "When I lived in India, I saw many fine sadhus, men of the high level of Swamiji here. I made particular investigations into this matter and talked a lot with them and watched them."


The Anglo-Indian, who had been a civil servant in Bengal, now said in patronizing tones to Swamiji, "I had thought you were from Madras, now I see you are a Bengali Babu. You know that during the Mutiny we saved you." Mr. Sturdy shouted, "But you were well paid for it!" Then shaking with rage, he seized the man by the collar and started to lift him from his chair. Mr. Goodwin, who all this time had been dutifully taking notes, for Swamiji had gone on talking, put down his pen, stood up, and, Mahendra remembered, "rolled up his sleeves." It is unlikely that he did this last; it is more than likely, however, that he assumed a threatening stance. From the sofa, Fox, whose speech was indistinct and who was generally slow to act, was calling out something unintelligible. Swami Saradananda and Mahendra (the latter recalled) were shivering in alarm at this uproar in a foreign land. The audience, one can well imagine, was stunned.


And then it happened: Swamiji's bright and serene expression suddenly changed completely. Turning to the Anglo-Indian, who sat by the fireplace on his right, he assumed an altogether different and terrible aspect, and "poured fire upon him for thirty-five minutes without let." In a steady flow Swamiji told the history of the English people from the days of Hengist and Horsa in the fifth century A.D. He told of their oppressive and arrogant behavior wherever they had gone. He spoke with a full and unhesitating knowledge. His indictment was scathing and unanswerable. The poor man wept uncontrollably, not only, one imagines, because of his humiliation, but because the direct impact of Swamiji's rebuke shattered him—as how would it not?

When he had finished, Swamiji turned back to his class and in his normal voice, as though nothing at all had happened, took up the thread of his talk where it had broken off.[94]


After the class, when the young men of the household gathered in the downstairs parlor, Swamiji said, silencing the outraged talk, "Don't forget, that man, too, is Narayana And then he went out into the night with Goodwin for his customary walk.[95] It may have been with this incident in mind that he wrote to Mr. Leggett on July 6, "You will be pleased to know that I am . . . learning my lessons every day in patience and, above all, in sympathy. I think I am beginning to see the Divine even inside the high and mighty Anglo-Indians. I think I am slowly approaching to that state when I should be able to love the very 'Devil' himself, if there were any.'[96]


As more than a balance to this unpleasant man and his kind, there were, as we have seen in the previous volume, many Anglican clergymen who looked upon Swamiji as a welcome "missionary" from the East. Among them, and perhaps one of the most ardent of them, was the Reverend Hugh Reginald Haweis. Mr. Haweis often attended Swamiji's evening classes and on the Sunday of June 21 he gave two sermons at his own church—morning and evening-on the subject of Swami Vivekananda. Mr. Goodwin attended them both and gleefully reported to the household that the minister had sung Swamiji's " praises and had talked about "Backty and Backto" at great length.[97] In his newsletter, dated June 23, to the Brahmavadin, Goodwin wrote more soberly of Haweis's appreciation of Swamiji:


The Rev. H. R. Haweis, the leading English authority on Church Music, and himself a delegate to the Chicago Parliament of Religions, from the Anglican Church, preached two sermons last Sunday at St. James' Chapel Marylebone, London on the Swami. I wish those in India and elsewhere who are so eagerly following the Swami's movements could have heard the eloquent and generous tribute paid to him by this other worker in God's Vineyard. The Rev. gentleman spoke of the Swami's teachings from the point of view of the support they give to Christ's teachings, and what better evidence could I give that the "Ideal of a Universal Religion" is not falling on barren ground?[98]


Even the Christian Commonwealth mentioned the Reverend Mr. Haweis's evening talk on Swamiji, which had evidently been an extemporaneous continuation of the morning's sermon. His announced theme, the journal noted, was "Occultism,"

but he had little to say about it on Sunday evening. "Where shall wisdom be found?" was his text, and his exhortation was to accept the truth no matter whence it comes. Christ's teaching, he said, was limited in time, and necessarily, therefore, He was not able to embrace all knowledge and wisdom. Mr. Haweis then spoke of his acquaintance with Vivekananda, and read passages from him and other Eastern writers to show how their teaching supported and dovetailed into the sublime teaching of Christ.[99]


At the end of the season, when Swamiji brought his classes to a close in mid July and was about to vacation in Europe, Mr. Haweis sent him a little book of his own sermons, inscribing it: "To the Master Vivekananda from one who both reverences and admires his teachings, H. R. Haweis." A note accompanying the gift read:


My dear Schwami


With every sentiment of profound esteem & admiration I wish you heartily God speed & a return to London. Your teaching is of a kind peculiarly adapted to the Western mind & you are doing inestimable good—Allow me to ask your acceptance of the accompanying little booklet 10,000 of which are now in circulation. It is nothing but a few condensed short hand reports of my general teaching.


Yours truly & faithfully[100]
H. R. Haweis

We have not quite completed the account of Swamiji's daily life at 63 St. George's Road. As we have seen, he usually took a walk after the evening class with Goodwin or Mr. Sturdy to relax after a day of continual work. Sometimes his companion would be John Fox, as it was once on a warm evening in July when there was no class. "I had a most delightful walk with [Swamiji] to Chelsea last week one evening along the river," Fox wrote to Mrs. Bull; "he seemed inspired in a way, and talked to me for two or three hours about many sorts of things." On other evenings he would sometimes have a hot bath, after which he would go to his small bedroom and lie down—alone, quiet. One can only relate in secondhand words something of what would happen when he thus withdrew from the outside world to the threshold of deep meditation. Mahendra heard Swamiji speak of it. "You see," Swamiji said, "at night I go to my room and lie down. I keep quiet for a while, and then within me so much ananda arises that I cannot stay lying down. I see the Blissful Mother. Men, animals, the sky and earth—all are saturated with bliss. I cannot lie down any longer; so I get up and dance in the middle of the room. That bliss can no longer be confined within my heart. The whole world becomes filled with it, as it were." Even as he said this, Swamiji began to dance like a child for a little while. Then he said with affection to those who were present, "Be happy, don't be depressed; the Mother is everywhere; all will be filled with bliss!'[101]


ⓘ
[1] Complete Works, 8 : 377.
[2].Complete Works, 8 : 377.
[3].Complete Works, 8 : 377.
[4].Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, April 26, 1896, Sen Col.
[5].E. T. Sturdy to Swami Vivekananda, March 17, 1896, SCB.
[6].Mahendra Nath Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 1 : 6.
[7].Mahendra Nath Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda., 1 : 25.
[8].Mahendra Nath Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda., 1 : 26.
[9].Spiritual Talks (Swami Turiyananda), p. 255.
[10].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda 1 : 36.
[11].J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, May 12, 1896, SCB.
[12].Complete Works, 7 : 516.
[13].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 1 : 163.
[14].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 1 : 157.
[15].J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, July 19, 1896, SCB.
[16].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, May 8, 1896, Sen Col.
[17].J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, June 19, 1896, SCB.
[18].Complete Works, 6 : 363. (This passage is from the original letter, Sen Col.)
[19].Sara Bull to E. T. Sturdy, June 8, 1896, SCB.
[20].Sara Bull to Swami Vivekananda, June 8, 1896, SCB.
[21].J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull,. June 19, 1896, SCB.
[22].Swami Vivekananda to Francis Leggett, July 6, 1896, Leg. Col. (Complete Works, 6 : 365-67.)
[23].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, July, 1896, SN Col.
[24].J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, April 11, 1896, SCB.
[25].J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull,., November 1, 1896, SCB.
[26].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 1 : 91-92
[27].J- J- Goodwin to Sara Bull, May 12, 1896, SCB.
[28].J. J. Goodwin’s Transcript of Class Talk, May 7, 1896, SCB.
[29].Rem. (Eric Hammond),pp. 297-99.
[30].VIN ,pp. 96-97, 101.
[32].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 1    : 80.
[33].Complete Works, 6 : 375.
[34].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 1 : 78.
[35].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda., 1 : 86-88.
[36].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda., 2 : 105-6.
[37].Complete Works, 8 : 370.
[38].Complete Works, 6: 365.
[39].Dudley Barker, The Man of Principle: A View of John Galsworthy (New York: London House and Maxwell, 1963) p. 18.
[40].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 1 : 119-
[41].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda., 1 : 122.
[42].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 1 : 1, 2.
[43].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda 1 : 68-69.
[44].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda., 1 : 118.
[45].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda., 1 : 119.
[46].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda., 2 : 159.
[47].Complete Works, 8 : 378.
[48].Complete Works., 8 : 379.
[49].Complete Works., 4: 281.
[50].Complete Works.,  4: 280-81.
[51].Complete Works., ., 4: 280.
[52].Complete Works., 4: 280.
[53].Complete Works, 6 ; 495.
[54].Complete Works., 4: 280.
[55].Complete Works., 4: 281-82.
[56].Complete Works., 6 : 495.
[57].Complete Works., 41282.
[58].Complete Works., 6 : 495.
[59].F. Max Muller to Swami Vivekananda, April 2, 1896, copy, SCB.
[60].Quoted in Indian Mirror, 23 May 1896. (See VIN, p. 96.)
[61].Complete Works, 4: 279.
[62].F. Max Miiller to Swami Vivekananda, June 22,1896, SCB.
[63].Complete Works, 6 : 364.
[64] F.Max Muller,Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings p.24.
[65].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 1:118.
[66].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda,, 3 : 63.
[67].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda,., 2 : 168.
[68].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda,., 3 : 6-7.
[69].Complete Works, 6 : 366-67.
[70].John P. Fox to Sara Bull, June 15-17,1896, SCB.
[71].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 1 :84.
[72].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda., 3 : 9.
[73].E. T. Sturdy to J. MacLeod, December 23, 1899, Leg. Col.
[74].J. MacLeod to Sister Nivedita, November 26,1899, SCB.
[75].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 1:111-12.
[76].John P. Fox to Sara Bull, June 13, 15-17,27,1896, SCB.
[77].Complete Works, 7:516.
[78].Complete Works., 6: 363. (Much of this passage is taken from the original letter, Sen Col.)
[79].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 2:61.
[80].John P. Fox to Sara Bull, June 27,1896, SCB.
[81].Complete Works, 6 : 9-17 passim.
[82].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 3:64.
[83].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda., 3 : 52-53-
[84].Complete Works, 6 : 129-30.85.    
[85].Complete Works,, 6 : 133-35.
[86].Complete Works, 6:129.
[87].Complete Works., 6 : 133-36 passim.
[88].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 2 : 81.
[89].Complete Works, 6 : 137-38.
[90].Complete Works., 6 : 140.
[91].Complete Works., 6 : 143-44.
[92].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 2:86.
[93].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda2 : 95.
[94].This account is taken largely from Datta, op. cit., 2:99-100. Information regarding the date and the nature of the class at which the incident occurred, however, comes from John P. Fox to Sara Bull, June 13, 1896, SCB.
[95].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 2 : 102.
[96].Complete Works, 6 : 366.
[97].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 1 : 102.
[98].Brahmavadin, July 18, 1896, p. 2 78.
[99].Christian Commonwealth, June 25, 1896.
[100].Hugh R. Haweis to Swami Vivekananda, July 17, 1896, SCB.
[101].Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 3 : 4i-42.








↑ Contents

4.5 ENGLAND: MAY JULY 1896-II

Swamiji's regular classes at 63 St. George's Road in London, which would continue into the middle of July, did not constitute his only work of that season. Starting on June 7, he delivered a public lecture every Sunday afternoon at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours—the same building in which he had delivered his first lecture in London the previous year, though not the same hall. During the winter of 1895-96, Prince's Hall had been thoroughly transformed from a "dismal cave of the Muses" into a restaurant of lavish multistyle decor, which opened for business on May 16, 1986. Thus Swamiji's public lectures were now given in one of the three large art galleries on the upper floor, to which a handsome, ornately banistered staircase led from the building's main entrance on Piccadilly.

Although these Sunday lectures were not written up in the London papers, it was not the case, as Mahendra supposed, that, due to religious prejudice, the London Press deliberately ignored Swamiji. London, like New York, was a huge, tumultuous metropolis, full of daily surprises and explosive oratory. Swamiji's lectures were not (as far as the journalistic world was concerned) sensational events; nor did they constitute a threat to the Church of England, to be railed against. Yet in their reserved way the London papers did in fact take note of Swamiji's work, and they did so more than once, indicating a friendly and sympathetic attitude toward it. On June 10, shortly after his first Sunday lecture, for instance, the Daily Chronicle printed the following article:

The gentleman known as the Swami Vivekananda, who was one of the most striking figures at the Chicago Parliament of Religions, and who went there to expound the ancient teachings of India to the newest of Western nations, is at present in England, returning to his own land in September. The Swami is one of the greatest living exponents of the Vedantic philosophy; his calm manner, distinguished appearance, the ease with which he expounds a profound philosophy, his mastery of the English tongue, explain the great cordiality with which the Americans received him and the fact that they almost compelled him to remain a year or two among them. The Swami has taken the vow of complete renunciation of worldly position, property, and name. He cannot be said to belong to any religion, since his life is one of independent thought which draws from all religions. Those who desire that his teaching may be made known, arrange the entire business part of the work, and the lectures are, so far, made free. They may be heard at 63, St. George's road, on Tuesday and Thursday, at half past eleven a.m. and half past eight p.m. up to the end of July. It is also announced that the Swami will lecture in one of the rooms of the Royal Institute of Water Colours, 191, Piccadilly, at half-past three p.m. on Sundays.

Another short article appeared around this same time in The Country House for June. It read:

All sorts and conditions of men are to be found in London, but probably the great city contains just now none more remarkable than the philosopher, who represented the Hindu religion at the "Parliament of Religions," held in Chicago in 1893. In an unobtrusive way he is still teaching and preaching though the public know but little of his work. I lately came across two or three little books containing his addresses on the "Vedanta Philosophy." It would be the merest flippancy to attempt on a cursory reading to discuss here and now the recondite subjects with which they deal. But they are singularly lucid in expression and the ideas which they contain are set forth with much moderation and persuasiveness. The Philosopher, who elects to be known as Swami Vivekananda, believes he has a message for the world, and the burden of his theme is a universal religion. There has been of late a curious interest in the philosophy of the East, and the casual reader may obtain from these little books a tolerably clear idea of its general principles.

(These "little books" were no doubt Mr. Sturdy's publications through Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company of Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and in one volume, "The Ideal of a Universal Religion" and "The Cosmos." These three companion volumes had been brought out under the overall title Addresses on the Vedanta Philosophy.)

Indeed the interest in Swamiji was so friendly that the London Sunday Times of June 21, 1896, published a long interview with him, entitled "A Missionary to England," in which he described his mission and was himself described as "a picturesque figure in his Eastern dress, . . . simple and cordial in manner, savouring of anything but the popular idea of asceticism." This interview has been reprinted in volume five of the Complete Works, under the title "India's Mission" (see note * to page 236, chapter twelve), and thus need not be given here, but it must have aroused interest in the London of its day and could not have excited anything but a favorable attitude toward the Hindu "missionary."

Swamiji's Sunday lectures were, in fact, well attended and, as he wrote to Mr. Leggett on July 6, "quite successful"; indeed, the art gallery, which seated around two hundred people, was generally filled to capacity. There can be little doubt, however, that with better publicity Swamiji could have filled a much larger hall, and if he himself did not care for  crowds, Mr. Sturdy did. Apparently still disgruntled that his publication plans for the "little books" mentioned above had been curtailed and delayed for two or three months, Sturdy would append the following note to a lecture pamphlet printed in December of 1896: "The conviction must...be here declared that in place of the hundreds who have heard Swami Vivekananda's teachings during the past year, thousands would have listened and benefited had they known of the existence and nature of such exposition. But time is needed to make such a subject known in an age when by vast advertisement and trumpet blast all things having a little worth or none, are clamouring for the distracted attention of mankind. Progress has however been made, and that of the best kind, for the few who first met Swami Vivekananda soon brought their friends, and these latter, equally gratified, have extended that circle, and so in all probability the knowledge of his work will increase.'[1]

In addition to publicity by word of mouth, cards and handbills were printed and distributed, one of which is here reproduced. As it announced, the titles of Swamiji's first three Sunday lectures (June 7, 14, and 21) were "The Necessity of Religion," "The Ideal of a Universal Religion," and "The Real and the Apparent Man." The first and third of these were transcribed by Goodwin and brought out in pamphlet form by Mr. Sturdy. Subsequently, they were included in the book, Jnana Yoga.

On June 28, July 5, and July 12, Swamiji held a second series of three Sunday afternoon lectures at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, entitled respectively, "Bhakti Yoga," "Renunciation," and "Realisation." But of these there are no known transcripts, for on Saturday, June 27, Mr. Goodwin had  left for America with Swami Saradananda."*

("The Swami recognises with me that I am really wasting time here, & could do much more good in America," Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull on June 4. "He has spoken two or three times of his wish that we had a magazine in the States to keep our people together & assist others in the study of Vedanta. I have thought over the matter carefully, & I have come to the conclusion that my work lies in this direction.'[2]Swamiji approved. In a postscript to a letter to Mrs. Bull, dated June 5, he wrote, "Goodwin is writing to you this mail with reference to a magazine in America. I think something of the sort is necessary to keep the work together, and shall of course do all that I can to help it on in the line he suggests.... I think it very probable that he will come over with Saradananda.'[3]Nothing was to come of this proposed magazine, but Mr. Goodwin did indeed spend the summer of 1896 in America.)

The Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours was not within easy walking distance of 63 St. George's Road; therefore the male occupants of the house—Swamiji, Sturdy, Mahendra, John Fox, and, before they left London, Swami Saradananda and Goodwin—would go by a little horse-drawn omnibus, sitting on benches atop the roof. Miss Muller, more regally, would take a hansom cab. Along the route Swamiji would talk lightly with his companions as though he were on his way to listen to a lecture rather than to give one. Even at the Institute he would chat with his assembled friends until it was time for him to take his place on the small platform at one end of the large art gallery, which could seat four or five hundred people on folding chairs.

Mahendra describes at some length the transformation that would come over Swamiji as he commenced his lecture. We need only note here that the moment he revealed himself as the Teacher, his whole appearance, his voice, his gestures became charged with authority. No one failed to be impressed by the grandeur of his bearing. "The Swami is a man of distinguished appearance," an English interviewer for India (a monthly published in London) commented. "Tall, broad, with fine features enhanced by his picturesque Eastern dress, his personality is very striking.... His gifts as an orator are high. He can speak for an hour and a half without a note or the slightest pause for a word.'[4]Indeed, the words would pour out, and when the lecture was over, Swamiji would again mingle with the audience, talking affectionately with his friends, answering questions. "Yet even then," Mahendra recalled, "a 'lit' look would remain in his face and eyes'[5]—the aura of the Prophet still visible.

Swamiji began his first series of three Sunday lectures with the same subject matter as that of his first Sunday lecture in New York during the winter of 1895-96. As the reader will remember, the New York lecture was delivered on the first Sunday of January, 1896, and was entitled "The Claims of Religion: Its Truth and Utility";* the title of the first London lecture, delivered exactly five months later on the first Sunday of June, 1896, was "The Necessity of Religion." In both lectures Swamiji explained what religion is in essence and pointed out the vital need for it in human life. In 1896 Western man had but touched the fringes of scientific discovery; like a child gleefully striking matches in a powder magazine, he was still enchanted with the unending wonder and charm of the light they made. But it was eminently clear to Swamiji that the religion of the future must be infinite in its scope and depth if it was to meet and sustain the age that lay ahead—the age of such unlimited knowledge and fearsome power that without a truly spiritual religion that would embrace and suffuse all aspects of human life only disaster could result. But what was a truly spiritual religion? In his first London lecture Swamiji went into more detail in regard to the origin and meaning of religious inquiry than he had in his comparable New York lecture. His central point, however, was the same:

A tremendous statement is made by all religions; that the human mind, at certain moments, transcends not only the limitations of the senses, but also the power of reasoning. It then comes face to face with facts which it could never have sensed, could never have reasoned out. These facts are the basis of all the religions of the world.[6]

In this London lecture Swamiji went on to say that there is one charecteristic common to the supersensuous facts discovered by religions:

They are all abstractions as contrasted with the concrete discoveries of physics, for instance.... This one fact stands out from all these different religions, that there is an Ideal Unit Abstraction, which is put before us, wither in the form of a Person, or an Impersonal Being, or a Law, or a Presence, or an Essence. We are always struggling to raise ourselves up to that ideal.[7]

In both New York and London Swamiji asserted that it is the inquiry into that which is beyond the senses and the subsequent struggle to attain to the ideals thus discovered that makes the difference between a man and an animal.

Without the struggle towards the Infinite there can be no ideal [he said in London] .. Man is man so long as he is struggling to rise above nature, and this nature is both internal and external.. It is grand and good to know the laws that govern the stars and planets; it is infinitely grander and better to know the laws that govern the passions, the feelings, the will of mankind. This conquering of the inner man, understanding the secrets of the subtle workings that are within the human mind, and knowing its wonderful secrets, belong entirely to religion. ..

This pursuit of the Infinite, this struggle to grasp the Infinite,. is the grandest and most glorious that man can make.[8]

In “The Necessity of Religion” as in the New York “Claims of Religion” Swamiji took pains to point out the inadequacy of the doctrine of utilitarianism as a foundation and guide for moral action. Indeed in these lectures he seems at times to have been having a sort of dialogue with John Stuart Mill, whose Utilitarianism had been published in 1863.

The utilitarianism of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had been a radical and exciting theory, militating against a belief in the "natural rights" of the upper classes and supplying a logical, "measurable" test for moral behavior. Applying it to the prevailing social and political conditions, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) taught it to his many followers, prominent among whom was James Mill (1773-1830), father of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). The doctrine was rational, antiromantic, antireligious, and optimistic. Politically and economically speaking, it was at one with the radical winds of liberalism, democracy, and parliamentary reform that were sweeping through the West in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. It was, in short, symptomatic of the times. While John Stuart Mill's version of utilitarianism and his understanding of the scope of human happiness were broader and less prosaic than those of Bentham, to Swamiji's mind, his doctrine fell far short of its purpose, which was to insure the morality, freedom, and dignity of all men—and (ahead of his time) of all women.

In pointing out the shortcomings of utilitarianism to his listeners, Swamiji seems to have countered Mill's thesis point by point. Mill wrote:

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility of the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.... The theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded [is] that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either  for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.[9]

Lest anyone think (as some did) that this was a doctrine "worthy only of swine, " Mill protested rather indignantly that the utilitarian, like every other human being, assigns a higher value to "the pleasure of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments . . . than to those of mere sensation:[10] The utilitarian, he assured his readers, will always find greater happiness in the higher pleasures, even though only partly realized, than in, say, a satisfied stomach. "It is better," he said, "to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied,'[11] and the utilitarian is quite as aware of that, he added testily, as is anyone else.

He then went on to say that "the utilitarian standard . . . is not the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether." That is, in the famous phrase used by Bentham, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" is the ultimate end of human life, and, this being the case, it is also the standard of moral action.

Swamiji would not have disagreed with this principle; but for what utility, he asked in effect, do we care about the happiness of others? What is the basis for that assumed caring? "Utilitarian standards," he said in "The Necessity of Religion," "cannot explain the ethical relations of men; for . . . we cannot derive any ethical laws from considerations of utility.... Why should we do good? . . . If happiness is the goal of mankind, why should I not make myself happy and others unhappy? What prevents me?'[12] And in New York: "What prevents me from cutting the throats of my brothers so long as I can make myself safe from the police, and make myself happy? What will you answer? You are bound to show some utility.'[13]

Mill had several answers to this question. First of all, other people will not approve of you if you put your own happiness above theirs or secure your own at their expense. Their displeasure will make you unhappy; therefore your conduct in seeking your own happiness will be self-defeating; it will bring you not pleasure but pain. On the other hand, if you act unselfishly in the interest of others, the consequent approval of your fellow-men will bring you happiness.[14]Thus it pays to be unselfish. Those are the "outward motives" or "external sanctions" for considering others. There is an inward motive also: there is something within man which prods him to be unselfish. In other words men somehow have a moral conscience.[15]

And here Swamiji had him: "When you are pushed from your ground you answer, 'My friend, it is good to be good.' What is the power in the human mind which says, 'It is good to do good,' which unfolds before us in glorious view the grandeur of the soul, the beauty of goodness, the all attractive power of goodness, the infinite power of goodness: That is what we call God, is it not?'[16]

Mill did not care to accept this. The primary basis he puts forth for unselfish action is that man is fundamentally a social being.

There is this basis of powerful natural sentiment, and this it is which, when once the general happiness is recognized as the ethical standard, will constitute the strength of the utilitarian morality. This firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind.[17]

. . . This feeling in most individuals is much inferior in strength to their selfish feelings, and is often wanting altogether. But to those who have it, it possesses all the characters of a natural feeling . . . [and] is the ultimate sanction of the greatest happiness morality.[18]

To this Swamiji replied in "The Necessity of Religion":

The basis of utility is too narrow. All the current social forms and methods [of moral conduct] are derived from society as it exists, but what right has the Utilitarian to assume that society is eternal? Society did not exist ages ago, possibly will not exist ages hence. Most probably it is one of the passing stages through which we are going towards a higher evolution, and any law that is derived from society alone cannot be eternal, cannot cover the whole ground of man's nature. At best, therefore, Utilitarian theories can only work under present social conditions. Beyond that, they have no value. But a morality, an ethical code, derived from religion and spirituality has the whole of infinite man for its scope. It takes up the individual, but its relations are to the Infinite, and it takes up society also—because society is nothing but numbers of these individuals grouped together; and as it applies to the individual and his eternal relations, it must necessarily apply to the whole of society, in whatever condition it may be at any given time. Thus we see that there is always the necessity of spiritual religion for mankind. Man cannot always think of matter, however pleasurable it may be.[19]

Swamiji did not deny that Utilitarians could be very good and moral. "There have been many great men in this world perfectly sound, moral, and good, simply on utilitarian grounds."

But [he continued] the world-movers, men who bring, as it were, a mass of magnetism into the world, whose spirit works in hundreds and in thousands, whose life ignites others with a spiritual fire—such men, we always find, have that spiritual background. Their motive power came from religion. Religion is the greatest motive power for realising that infinite energy which is the birthright and nature of every man. In building up character, in making for everything that is good and great, in bringing peace to others and peace to one's own self, religion is the highest motive power and, therefore, ought to be studied from that standpoint.[20]

But the fallacy at the very root of Utilitarianism or, for that matter, of any other ethical system aimed at the perfecting of human society,'* was not only that its basis was too narrow, but that its goal was impossible. In his New York lecture "The Claims of Religion" Swamiji had pointed out that the good in the world was not steadily increasing, nor the evil steadily fading out. "Thousands of means have been created every day to conduce to the happiness of the world," he had said, "and this has been going on for hundreds and thousands of years. I ask you: Is the sum total of the happiness in the world today more than what it was a century ago? It cannot be. Each wave that rises in the ocean must be at the expense of a hollow somewhere.'[21] In London Swamiji put forth another aspect of the same argument. "To manifest the Infinite through the finite," he said, "is impossible, and sooner or later man learns to give up the attempt." And herein lay the true basis of morality:

This giving up, this renunciation of the attempt, is the background of ethics. Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands.... You have to put yourself last and others before you. The senses say 'Myself first.' Ethics says 'I must hold myself last' Thus, all codes of ethics are based upon this renunciation; destruction, not construction, of the individual on the material plane. That Infinite will never find expression upon the material plane, nor is it possible or thinkable.[22]

In this first public lecture in London in 1896 Swamiji did not enter into the philosophy behind this last statement. As far as the London public was concerned, he had not yet expounded the principles of Vedanta. Just as in his first public lecture in New York, his purpose here was first to establish the fact that a spiritual ideal, an ideal of something higher than matter or social utility, was essential to the well-being of mankind. Only on that basis could a metaphysical discussion have meaning, (It is interesting to note in this connection that in the Complete Works the five words with which this London lecture closes ; "the One without a second, " have replaced the five less philosophical and, to be sure, less resounding words in the original pamphlet, "the God in the universe. " Swamiji had been careful in his public lectures not to confound his audience with monistic concepts that he had not yet explained; he took his listeners step by step over this steep and unfamiliar terrain.)

In this same lecture, Swamiji declared with words even more apt today than when he spoke them:

All . . . narrow, limited, fighting ideas of religion have to go.... As the human mind broadens, so its spiritual steps must broaden. The time has already come when a man cannot record a thought without it reaching to all corners of the earth; by merely physical means we have come into touch with the whole world; so the future religions of the world have to become as universal, as wide....

What is needed is a fellow-feeling between the different types of religion . . . and not the condescending, patronising, niggardly expression of goodwill unfortunately in vogue at the present time with many.[23]

What kind of religion could be broad enough to bring about a harmony not only between the various creeds of the world, but also between religion and "the so-called material sciences" ? Swamiji answered this question in the second of his Sunday lectures, "The Ideal of a Universal Religion." We have no transcript or report of this talk, but according to a letter written by Goodwin on June 23, 1896, to the Brahmavadin[24] it was in substance the same as Swamiji's lecture of that title given in New York at Hardman Hall, which was already in print. In the previous volume we discussed some of the points of that New York lecture, delivered on January 12 of 1896; it  will suffice to remind the reader that Swamiji considered religious harmony to be of extreme importance to the West. And the possibility of such harmony depended on the definition of religion itself. If man's ideal of religion could be broad enough and deep enough, then only could it embrace all varieties of religious forms and practices and satisfy all types of human beings the world over.

A harmony of religions, rooted deep in the unchanging spiritual nature of man and therefore stable, was among the most practical applications of Vedantic teachings, and it is not surprising that wherever he went Swamiji never failed to impress his audiences first off with the need for and basis of that harmony. In this connection, it is interesting to read his thoughts on this subject just as he jotted them down on a scrap of paper, possibly in hurried preparation for a lecture. The following two sets of heretofore unpublished notes have been made available to us by the Vedanta Centre of Cohasset, Massachusetts, and are presented here with the kind permission of Srimata Gayatri Devi. It is probable that in the early years of the twentieth century Miss Ellen Waldo gave these cherished papers that bore Swamiji's handwriting to her friend Sister Devamata, by then a disciple of Swami Paramananda and a member of the Boston (now Cohasset) Vedanta Centre. This probability would lead to the assumption that Swamiji made these notes in America; nonetheless, he expressed these ideas everywhere, and they are as germane to London as to New York. He wrote:

Man will need a religion so long as he is constituted as at present.

The forms will change from time to time

The dissatisfaction with the senses.

The yearning beyond.

There were encroachments of religion on the domains of physical science—these [encroachments] religion is giving up every day.


Yet there is a vast field covered by religion where physical science(s] are mute.

The (vain?] attempt to keep man strictly within the limits of the senses—

Because—there are men who catch a

glimpse now and then of the infinite beyond.

The types of men.

The worker—the mystic the emotional the intellectual.

Each type is necessary for the well being

of society. The dangers of each—

A mixture minimizes the danger

The East is too full of mystics & meditative 

the west of workers—

An exchange will be for the good of both.


The necessity of religion—

The four types of men

that come to religion—

the basis of Unity—

The Divinity

in man. Why use this term?

the western Society has work

and intellectual philosophy

But work must not be destructive of others.

Philosophy—must not be only dry intellectuality[25]

To return to Swamiji's first two lectures in London—"The Necessity of Religion" and "The Ideal of a Universal Religion" —he had established during their course, first, the essential meaning of and need for religion in general and, second, the need in the world today for harmony among all specific religions. His audience, which had filled almost every seat (Mr. Fox said) to hear "The Ideal of a Universal Religion," was ready now for a more detailed exposition of those principles themselves. They were ready, that is, to hear some of the basic principles of Vedanta. In his third and fourth lectures in New York, he had explained the Vedantic cosmology—first, that of the external universe; "The Macrocosm"; second, that of the internal universe, "The Microcosm."

In the third lecture of his first London series, "The Real and the Apparent Man"—or, as entitled in the Complete Works (to distinguish it, no doubt, from the New York lecture) and as I shall henceforth call it, "The Real Nature of Man"—his subject matter was in effect the same as in the two "Cosmos" lectures.

In this London lecture, Swamiji first briefly reviewed the Indian theory of cyclic manifestation and dissolution, which he had thoroughly discussed in the New York "Macrocosm,” reconciling the scientific view of evolution from mollusc to man with the religious view of man's fall from perfection. He then proceeded, as he had in the New York "Microcosm," to turn the scientific outlook on its head. Not matter, he said in effect, but Spirit is the one basic substance of man, God; and the world. His approach in London, however, was different than it had been in the New York "Microcosm”. There he had arrived at the true nature of man through a psychological, or epistemological, argument; he now came to the same conclusion by means of philosophy.

The then prevailing scientific view was that man and everything else was fundamentally matter and that man's actions were mechanically determined. Indeed, Thomas Huxley was of the extreme opinion that consciousness was a mere echo of molecular movements in the nervous system. William James, it is true, argued against this "automaton-theory," pointing out that since consciousness was there, it had "in all probability been evolved, like all other functions, for a use." This use, it seemed, was. through various states of mind, to "steer the nervous system and keep it in the path which to the consciousness seemed best.'[26] In other words, consciousness, James conceded, played an important part in human action—even  though, as he had also said, all mental states and feelings "have brain processes for the condition of existence.'[27]At the other extreme was the metaphysical position (which Swamiji also held) that "the force called thought" manifests the body. But Swamiji did not stop there; he jumped beyond both views and pointed to a force underlying and manifesting both matter and mind.'*

One of the most difficult and certainly one of the most important tasks of his mission was to convey to the West the concept of the Self. Inasmuch as the basic outlook and structure of any culture hinges on what it considers to be the essential nature of man, he took the utmost pains to convincingly present this most central of his teachings, approaching it from all directions. In his London lecture he built his argument on the scientists' own ground. In skeletal form, his reasoning went like this:

There is a great discussion going on as to whether the aggregate of materials we call the body is the cause of manifestation of the force we call the soul, thought, etc., or whether it is the thought that manifests this body.... Taking the . . . position that the soul or the mass of thought . . . is the outcome of this machine, the outcome of the chemical and physical combinations of matter making up the body and brain, leaves the question unanswered. What makes the body? What force combines the molecules into the body form? . . . If you say that some other force was the cause of these combinations . . . it is no answer.... It is more logical to say that the force which takes up the matter and forms the body is the same which manifests through that body. To say, therefore, that the thought forces manifested by the body are the outcome of the arrangement of molecules and have no independent existence has no meaning; neither can force evolve out of matter. Rather is it possible to demonstrate that what we call matter does not exist at all. It is only a certain state of force.... What is the force which manifests itself through the body?[28]

It was this question that Swamiji, having posed, answered by referring to the ancient philosophy of India. As he had in "The Microcosm," he spoke of the subtle body—"the bright body." But even this "has form . . . and requires something else behind it to move it "

That something [he went on] was called the soul, the Atman in Sanskrit.... What is this Atman, this soul of man which is neither the body nor the mind? Great discussions followed. Speculations were made, various shades of philosophic inquiry came into existence; and I shall try to place before you some of the conclusions that have been reached about this Atman.[29]

Pushing further than he had in his comparable American lecture "The Microcosm, " in which he had stopped in his argument with the individual soul, Swamiji now went on to outline the steps leading to the conclusion that "as this Atman is beyond the mind and formless, it must be beyond time, beyond space, and beyond causation.....[Therefore,] it must be infinite. Then comes the highest speculation in our philosophy. The infinite cannot be two. If the soul be infinite, there can be only one Soul, and all ideas of various souls—you having one soul, and I having another, and so forth—are not real." And then the crux of the matter:

The Real Man, therefore, is one and infinite, the omnipresent Spirit. And the apparent man is only a limitation of that Real Man. In that sense the mythologies [that man has degenerated from a state of perfection] are true: the apparent man, however great he may be, is only a dim reflection of the Real Man who is beyond. The Real Man, the Spirit, being beyond cause and effect, not bound by time and space, must, therefore, be free. He was never bound, and could not be bound. The apparent man, the reflection, is limited by time, space, and causation, and is, therefore, bound. Or in the language of some of our philosophers, he appears to be bound, but really is not.[30]

Swamiji was now in a position to point out with even greater force than in his two earlier London lectures the foundations of ethics according to the principles of Vedanta. Here was the root answer to Utilitarianism:

One idea stands out as the centre of all ethical systems, expressed in various forms, namely doing good to others. The guiding motive of mankind should be charity towards men, charity towards all animals. But these are all various expressions of that eternal truth that "I am the universe; this universe is one." Or else, where is the reason? Why should I do good to my fellowmen? Why should I do good to others? What compels me? It is sympathy, the feeling of sameness everywhere.... What is perfect self-abnegation? It means the abnegation of this apparent self, the abnegation of all selfishness[,] . . . and the more this present self passes away, the more the real Self becomes manifest. This is true self abnegation, the centre, the axis, the gist of all moral teaching; and whether man knows it or not, the whole world is slowly going towards it, practising it more or less. Only the vast majority of mankind are doing it unconsciously. Let them do it consciously. Let them make the sacrifice, knowing that this "me and mine" is not the real Self, but only a limitation.[31]

This eloquent and important lecture "was so complete [a treatment of the subject]," Mr. Fox reported, "as to cover the ground of next Sunday's lecture 'Are We Immortal?' so that subject has been changed to 'Bhakti Yoga.'[32]Indeed it was in "The Real Nature of Man" that Swamiji reached the heart of his message to the public, here that he presented to Western man an entirely new outlook—an outlook so transcendental and yet so rational that it subsumed and quieted the two warring views that had been exercising Western thought for centuries—that of Idealism, in which mind is said to produce matter, and that of Materialism, in which matter is said to produce mind. Nor was this lecture only an explanation of the Vedanta philosophy; it was also an exhortation, a practical teaching:

Can [the knowledge of the Spirit] be practised in modern society? Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die. Societies should be moulded upon truth, and truth has not to adjust itself to society.... That society is the greatest, where the highest truths become practical. That is my opinion; and if society is not fit for the highest truths, make it so; and the sooner, the better. Stand up, men and women, in this spirit, dare to believe in the Truth; dare to practise the Truth! The world requires a few hundred bold men and women. Practise that boldness which dares know the Truth, which dares show the Truth in life, which does not quake before death, nay, welcomes death, makes a man know that he is the Spirit, that in the whole universe nothing can kill him. Then you will be free....

. . . Say to your own minds, "I am He, I am He." Let it ring day and night in your minds like a song, and at the point of death declare, "I am He." That is the Truth; the infinite strength of the world is yours. Drive out the superstition that has covered your minds. Let us be brave. Know the Truth and practise the Truth. The goal may be distant, but awake, arise, and stop not till the goal is reached.[33]

Swamiji's second series of three London lectures at the Royal  Institute of Painters in Water Colours (which he gave by popular demand) went unrecorded; for as we have noted Mr Goodwin sailed from England with Swami Saradananda on June 27. Thus we know only the titles of the lectures of June 28, July 5, and July 12—which, as mentioned earlier, were, respectively, "Bhakti Yoga," "Renunciation," and "Realisation." Originally, Swamiji's first lecture of this series was to be entitled "Are We Immortal?" But, as we have seen above, in "The Real Nature of Man" he had covered the subject of immortality of the soul, delivering, as it were, two lectures in one. Given thus an extra Sunday, he chose (not insignificantly, one thinks) the title "Bhakti Yoga." Does not one again glimpse here a pattern of presentation? Was not this second London series comparable in subject matter to Swamiji's second series of lectures in New York in February of this same year "Bhakti Yoga," "The Real and the Apparent Man," and "My Master," which last had much to do with renunciation? It is, of course, not possible to speak with any certainty of lectures of which we have not a shred of a note; we can, however, say that Swamiji's second series of lectures in both London and New York contained one lecture on bhakti yoga, one on jnana yoga, and one in which he emphasized renunciation. (In the fall, it may be noted here, he was to lecture in England, as he had in New York, on Sri Ramakrishna.)

During this spring and hot summer Swamiji held at least forty-five classes and gave six Sunday lectures, but even this did not exhaust the extent of his work. From time to time he lectured elsewhere at the invitation of various and somewhat oddly assorted individuals and groups.

2

As we have already noted, Swamiji had delivered a lecture at a moment's notice at the Sesame Club on the evening of May 12. His next "outside" talk known to us took place on the Wednesday of June 10 at the home of Mrs. John Biddulph  Martin at 17 Hyde Park Gate, "a richly somber house on an exclusive and somber street '[34]Mrs. Martin was the wife of one of the most wealthy and prominent bankers in England, a scion of the landed gentry, next to titled aristocracy in rank and second to none in security. The banking house in which the Biddulph Martin family had been partners for generations was of fifteenth century origin and of such rock-like stability that it could well afford its name, The Grasshopper of Lombard Street. In 1896, Mrs. John Biddulph Martin, then fifty-eight, had been a member of this stolid family for thirteen years and was to remain contentedly so for the rest of her long life. It was a life totally different in all respects from that which she had pursued before her marriage.


Born in a small Ohio town to what one historian aptly describes as "a family of pathologically turbulent poor whites,'[35]Victoria Claflin Woodhull became, through dazzling temerity, the American firebrand of the 1870s. Not only was she the first lady broker on Wall Street, the first woman to address a Congressional committee, the first woman to run for president of the United States (nominated by the Equal Rights Party), the first person in America—man or woman— to print the Communist Manifesto, which she did in the weekly she and her sister edited and published, not only did she campaign for radical social, political, and economic reforms, but, most arrestingly, she persisted in waving the flag of "free love." This was by no means a new doctrine in the nineteenth century, but it was a profoundly shocking one, violating, as it did, all the conventions and taboos of a family-oriented society. The topic was not mentioned in mixed company, let alone in public. But Victoria Claflin Woodhull fearlessly announced her advocacy of "free love" from the housetops, declaring, moreover, that marriage "was the most consummate outrage on women. that was ever conceived"—a sentiment not shared in the 1870s by the generality of American housewives. With her beauty, brilliance, and unfailing magnetism, The Woodhull (as she was called) attracted thousands of people to her inflammatory lectures, sweeping them off their feet; inevitably, however, she also provoked severe criticism and censure. Angry at this injustice (as she felt it to be), she set about exposing the scandalous hypocrisy of one of the most esteemed pillars of society. This was a mistake. The other pillars stood by their own, and Victoria Woodhull soon found herself in jail, where she languished for several weeks.


Her health collapsed; and then with complete suddenness her whole approach to life underwent a transformation. She now turned to a religion somewhat of her own devising and, with the same fervent conviction and intensity as she had talked of social and political freedom, began to talk and write about the Garden of Eden and the "Seventh Seal" of the Bible. But it was not until the young John Biddulph Martin had (unaccountably) attended a religious lecture of hers in London and had determined then and there to marry her that the then twice-divorced Victoria Woodhull began a long and arduous campaign to throw a cloak of respectability over her past. It was, however, to be six long years before the Martin family consented to the marriage and even longer before London society accepted Mrs. Martin into its drawing rooms and entered into hers.**


By the time Swamiji met Mrs. John Biddulph Martin, her transformation from the flaming Victoria Claflin Woodhull to the sedate and gracious matron of the English Establishment was complete. As a serious hobby, she now edited and published, not the explosive Woodhull and Clafiin's Weekly but the staid Humanitarian, a periodical devoted to the prevention of cruelty to men and animals. There is some evidence that the once defiantly unconventional Mrs. Martin was bored with all this respectability, particularly after it was secured, and it is not at all unlikely that Swamiji brought a welcome shaft of light into what she referred to as her "dreary, smoky, foggy" London world.[36] She was by no means unperceptive and surely would not only have recognized greatness when she saw it but have been strongly attracted by Swamiji's majestic air of freedom and independence, qualities she had in her own way striven for all her life. "Mrs. Biddulph Martin, who is I believe a very noble woman . . . is a great admirer of Swami,'[37]Mr. Sturdy was to write in April of the following year to Miss MacLeod.


Whether or not Swamiji was aware of Mrs. Martin's remarkable history we do not know; nor could her past have mattered to him, except as it spoke of spirit, courage, and that quality which had led an American reporter to call her "a small splinter of the indestructible.'[38] In any event, his only known reference to Mrs. Martin is found in a letter of July 6 to Mr. Francis Leggett: "You must already know a good deal about [Mrs. Martin] from Joe.'[39]How much Joe knew is a matter of conjecture. But so well publicized a history as Victoria Woodhull's could scarcely, despite her efforts, be altogether buried; it kept surfacing. Among Mrs. Bull's papers of 1896, for instance, has been found an undated clipping from the Boston Herald which reviewed The Woodhull's advocacy of "social freedom." Across it Mrs. Bull had written, "for Mr. Goodwin: Please show to Dr. Janes and then return to me.... I wish this for my records & cannot give it up.'[40]


Be that as it may, Swamiji saw fit to lecture at Mrs. Biddulph Martin's home on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 10. The London American of June 13 wrote of the occasion:


Those of us who were at home in the year of the Exhibition will doubtless remember the Parliament of Religions which assembled at the World's Fair. It was a bold idea, and one which could scarcely have been conceived of, let alone carried through, by any but Americans. The Indian representative  at that great  gathering  was Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu with a marvellous grasp of his subject, and an equally marvellous power of expression. This interesting man is at present in London, and with her usual eagerness to learn and have others do the same, Mrs. Victoria Biddulph Martin, on Wednesday afternoon,  asked him to deliver an address at her house in Hyde Park Gate on the Hindu Idea of [the] Soul. The weather on Wednesday was wretched, but this did not prevent a large number of ladies and gentlemen [from] accepting Mrs. Martin's hospitality. The address was, as its title would show of a most fascinating nature, the Hindu theology being most graphically and picturesquely explained. After the address, general conversation took place over the teacups, and the Hindu was plied with questions by several ladies who seemed to have studied the subject to some purpose. This, perhaps, was as interesting as the address itself, as it showed wherein the main difference lies between the Christian and Brahmin beliefs. It is the usual thing at Mrs. Martin's receptions to meet Americans, and on Wednesday we noticed many well-known faces. There were also present some members of the Royal Household, but these were strictly incognito. Mrs. Martin's drawing room looked, as it always does, artistic from floor to ceiling. The room formed, indeed, a fitting stage for the Swami, who himself presented a picture with all the Eastern coloring in perfection. His dark olive face with its dignity of expression, his little yet powerful figure clothed in a long brown garment with a crimson girdle, and his raven-black hair, made him look what in truth he is—the Hindu Swami (the Master) ; the expounder of an Oriental creed.


Was the incognito royal party mentioned above the Duchess of Albany and her entourage? Or had other members of the Royal Household, which was extensive, come to hear Swamiji? Unless old letters someday yield this secret, we shall perhaps never know. But it is clear in any case that Mrs. Martin entertained lavishly and with a good deal of social success. On another of her festive occasions even the weather cooperated. Although Swamiji's name is not mentioned in the following article, which appeared in The Lady for July 9, 1896a—  magazine devoted to the doings of upper-class women—he was among the guests (as he would write to Mr. Leggett two days later)[41] at the fashionable Fourth-of-July party of which it tells:


On Saturday night Mrs. John Biddulph Martin gave a large reception at her beautiful house, 17, Hyde Park Gate, in commemoration of "Independence Day." Her guests had the advantage not only of the splendid reception-rooms, but the extensive garden was turned into a fairy retreat, with its many-coloured glimmering electric lights, and its garlanded umbrellas spread under a cloudless sky. To the strains of Herr Gottlieb's Viennese Orchestra, hundreds of people wandered through the flower-decorated rooms into the delightful coolness of the garden, and it seemed impossible to believe that within a stone's-throw Kensington High Road was teeming with nocturnal traffic. Mrs. Biddulph Martin, in a greyish-green silk gown, with touches of red and gold on bodice and skirt, received her many guests at the entrance to the drawing-room. Among the well-known people present were Lady Clark, in turquoise-blue silk, veiled with chiffon of the same shade, and displaying many fine diamonds; Lady Palliser, in black, with a white lace fichu; Colonel and Miss Knollys (the latter in bright red, with fillets of the same colour in her hair), Miss Constans (all in white), Mr. Hermann Vezin, Mr. Murray Carson, Mr. Mowbray Marris, and many others. Lord and Lady Teynham, and Lady Llangattock and the Hon. Miss Rolls were among other distinguished people who accepted invitations. Mrs. Biddulph Martin is to be much congratulated upon the success of her "Fourth of July" party, which had the advantage of a lovely new moon and a cloudless sky to make it quite perfect. 


On the Thursday evening following this gala affair Swamiji lectured at the invitation of another famous woman, whose early life, in some respects, bore a similarity to that of Victoria Martin. Mrs. Annie Besant (whose name, she said, rhymed with "pleasant") is known today almost exclusively for her long leadership of the Theosophical movement, but for years before Theosophy entered her life and she its, she had been actively and conspicuously at the center of what were to the Victorian world radical and shocking causes. She was beautiful, charming, brilliant, and a spellbinding orator. She lived her life as she wished, though, unlike Victoria Woodhull, she did so with extreme circumspection. She was an Atheist, a Socialist, a crusader of the Trade-Union movement, a champion of birth control (a subject as unmentionable as was "free love"), and while she was not divorced, she had tried her best to become so and was legally separated from her husband. She was ostracized, villified, and once jailed. And then, with the same stunning suddenness and thoroughness with which Mrs. Woodhull had changed the pattern and mode of her life, Mrs. Besant embraced Theosophy. That had been in 1889, soon after her first meeting with Madame Helena Blavatsky. Her subsequent rise to prominence in the Theosophical movement had been meteoric; she was soon one of its leaders, placing her unquestioned gifts in its service. "She is not psychic nor spiritual in the least—all intellect," Madame Blavatsky had written to William Q, Judge shortly before her own death in t891. But she had qualities that made up for any deficiency. Her heart is "one single unbroken diamond," Madame Blavatsky continued, "transparent . . . and filled to the brim with pure, unadulterated Theosophy and enthusiasm.'[42]


It may seem odd that Swamiji should accept an invitation to speak before the Theosophical Society in London after Mr. Sturdy had so diligently let it be known the previous year that the Hindu Monk was not in any way associated with that, or any other, organization. But by now Swamiji had firmly established his independence of all religious groups and societies; he could well afford to speak where he chose and to whom he wished. Moreover, although the Theosophical Society had at times been hostile toward him, he said or did nothing whatsoever in the West to harm it; such was not his way. His acceptance of Mrs. Besant's invitation was in friendship. "Godspeed to everyone who wants to do good to the world,'[43] he had written in 1895 in connection with her.


Blavatsky Lodge, as the Theosophical Headquarters in London was called, was located at 19 Avenue Road in St. John's Wood, then a residential district of detached houses and big, leafy gardens. The spacious "lodge" had once belonged to Mrs. Besant, who in 1890 transferred it to the Society. In the grounds behind the house, a meeting hall had been built, which, though unprepossessing on the outside, was elaborately decorated inside with intricate religious, occult, and zodiacal symbols. At one end of the hall was a low platform backed by a large mirror bearing the six-pointed Theosophical star, a painted lion's head, a winged scorpion, and other emblems. It was here that Swamiji stood on the evening of July 9 to deliver "an eloquent discourse on Bhakti Yoga to a crowded lodge'[44] —a discourse of which unfortunately there is no available record.


The only known mention Swamiji made of this talk we find in a letter he wrote to Alasinga on August 8: "By-the-bye, Mrs. Annie Besant invited me to speak at her Lodge on Bhakti. I lectured there one night. Col. Olcott was also there. I did it to show my sympathy for all sects.'[45] But Swamiji did not thereby endorse every aspect of Theosophy as it was then taught. "Regard and estimation and love are one thing," he was to say publicly in Madras on his return to India in 1897, "and swallowing everything any one has to say, without reasoning, without criticising, without analysing, is quite another.'[46]To his mind, occult organizations and beliefs were not among the things India needed. In London toward the end of 1896 he was asked by the editor of an Indian Theosophical monthly, Light of the East, for suggestions toward improving the magazine. It was an ill-advised request, but it is to the editor's credit that he published Swamiji's reply in the December issue. As subsequently reprinted in the Indian Social Reformer for January 31, 1897, it read:


I must frankly state that in my lifelong experience in the world, I have always found 'occultism' injurious and weakening to humanity. What 'we want is strength. We, Indians, more than any other race, want strong and vigorous thought. We have enough of the superfine in all concerns. For centuries we have been stuffed with the mysterious; the result is that our intellectual and spiritual digestion is almost hopelessly impaired and the race has been dragged down to the depths of hopeless imbecility never before or since experienced by any other civilized community. There must be freshness and vigour of thought behind, to make a virile race. More than enough to strengthen the whole world exists in the 'Upanishads'. The Advaita is the eternal mine of strength. But it requires to be 'applied'. It must first be cleared of the incrustation of scholasticism, and then in all its simplicity, beauty, and sublimity be taught over the length and breadth of the land and applied even to the minutest detail of daily life. This is "a very large order" but we must work toward it nevertheless as [if] it would be accomplished tomorrow. Of one thing I am sure that whoever wants to help his fellow beings through genuine love and unselfishness will work wonders.[47]


Swamiji never minced his words to his own countrymen, but East or West, he gave no quarter to those elements in any creed that degraded or obscured its essential truth. He deplored the elements of bigotry and exclusiveness in Christianity, those of fanaticism in Mohammedanism, those of superstition and priest-raft in Hinduism, those of mystery-mongering in Theosophy, those of fraudulence in Spiritualism. Simultaneously, he gave a helping hand to all sincere religious aspiration, whatever  its form. To be sure, his proffered hand could at times seem chastising, and at times more offense was taken than he had meant to give. It was under such circumstances that he wrote a clarifying and soothing letter to the editor of Light, a London journal of "Psychical, Occult, and Mystical Research." On July 4, this magazine had printed an aggrieved piece by the supporters of Spiritualism, some of whom had evidently attended a Thursday and a Friday evening class of Swamiji's at St. George's Road. The plaint had read in part:


SPIRITUALISM AND THE VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY.

When first we heard that the Swami Vivekananda was coming to London to expound the Vedanta Philosophy, we were hopeful that his teaching would not only confirm the faith of Spiritualists, but might also add to their number. We hoped this, because the very essence of the Hindu Philosophy is that man is a spirit, and has a body, and not that man is a body, and may have a spirit also; which is as far as many a Western mind can reach....


It has been the glorious privilege of our modern Spiritualism to prove by actual demonstration the existence of spirit apart from flesh, and it would, therefore, seem reasonable to look for co-operation on the part of the exponents of the Vedanta Philosophy and the supporters of Spiritualism. We are not quite certain, however, that this desirable consummation can be attained, for observations made very recently by the Swami are calculated only to divide the two sects. The Vedanta Philosophy sets before the student an ideal aim! Nothing less, in fact, than the unfolding of the God within him, and nothing could well be more impressive and inspiring than the presentation of this idea by a speaker of the force and eloquence of the Swami. We could only respect and admire, until modern Spiritualism was alluded to, and that in a manner which left upon us the impression that the Swami condemned without reservation all sitting for phenomena. He admitted having sat for observation with professional mediums, and held that one and all had practised fraud. 'Spirit voices,' according to the Swami, are never heard to clash! As 'the sepulchral dies away the small child's voice rises up,' intimating thus that ventriloquism was invariably responsible for the sounds. 'Spirit messages,' he remarked, 'were quite worthless, for they never rose above the level of "I am well and happy, " or "Give John a piece of cake." ' This assertion could, of course, only be made in ignorance of the contents of 'Spirit Teachings,' a book which, we think, can well stand comparison even with the exalted teaching of the Swami Vivekananda. The process of making up sham materialisations and working the figure on the end of a wire was also described in detail.


We were present again the following evening, when a paper of questions bearing upon the adverse criticism of the Swami was read out to the meeting. Some thirty minutes were then passed in qualifying and explaining his remarks of the night before, and, to our deep satisfaction, the Swami not only confessed his belief in the possibility of spirits communicating with mortals, but even expressed his conviction that at times spirits of a high grade visited earth in order to assist mankind. It is, however, we conceive, no part of the Vedanta Philosophy to recommend the seeking of such intercourse, on account of its possible 'dangers.' It is commonly held that the undeveloped spirit can most easily communicate with man, consequently the Swami uttered his word of warning and withheld any word of encouragement. .


To gain the summit of a mountain without climbing might be desirable if possible, but who can do it?


We intend to learn all we can from the Swami. We recognise his ability, his earnestness, and his high purpose, but we claim for ourselves such tribute and recognition as we yield to others. 


Recognizing the sincerity of its wounded authors, Swamiji replied gently to this defense of Spiritualism. His letter, which appeared in Light for July 11, 1896, is here reprinted for the first time.


Sir;—Allow me to put a few words in your estimable journal, as comments on an article in your paper dated July 4th. I must thank you without reserve for the kind and friendly spirit manifested throughout the article towards me and the philosophy I preach; but, as there is a fear of misconstruction in one part of it—especially by my Spiritualistic Friends—I want to clear my position. The truth of correspondence between the living and the dead is, I believe, in every religion, and nowhere more than in the Vedantic sects of India, where the fact of mutual help between the departed and the living has been made the basis of the law of inheritance. I would be very sorry if I be mistaken as antagonistic to any sect or form of religion, so far as they are sincere. Nor do I hold that any system can ever be judged by the frauds and failures that would naturally gather round every method under the present circumstances. But, all the same, I cannot but believe that every thoughtful person would agree with me when I affirm that people should be warned of their dangers, with love and sympathy. The lecture alluded to could but accidentally touch the subject of Spiritualism; but I take this opportunity of conveying my deep admiration for the spiritualist community for the positive good they have done already, and are doing still. ( 1 ) The preaching of a universal sympathy. (2) The still greater work of helping the human race out of doctrines which inculcate fear and not love. Ever ready to co-operate with, and at the service of, all who are striving to bring the light of the spirit, —I remain, yours sincerely,


63, St. George's-road, S.W.                 

ViveKananda.

(In connection with Swamiji's views on whether or not psychic phenomena are capable of scientific demonstration, it is of interest to read in the Complete Works a short undated talk he gave in London during a discussion on the subject. Cutting through webs of fruitless debate, he said, "In order to have scientific explanation of psychical phenomena, we require not only perfect evidence on the side of the phenomena themselves, but a good deal of training on the part of those who want to see. All this being granted, we shall be in a position to say yea or nay about the proof or disproof of any phenomena which are presented before us. But before that, the most remarkable phenomena, or the most oft-recorded phenomena that have happened in human society, in my opinion, would be very hard indeed to prove even in an off-hand manner.")[48]


On July 18, Swamiji gave another "outside" talk before the London Hindu Association. Although no report of his lecture has been found in the London papers, the following article from the Daily Chronicle of July 20 gives some idea of the meeting itself. It read in part:

LONDON HINDU ASSOCIATION.

On Saturday a social conference of Indians resident in Great Britain and Ireland was held under the auspices of above-named association at Montague Mansions [a hotel and office building], Museum Street, W.C., when Swami Vivekananda, M.A., the representative of Hindu. ism at the Parliament of Religions of Chicago, presided, A number of English ladies and gentlemen attended, the others present being composed of Hindus, Parsees, and Mohammedans. After a brief opening by the chairman Mr. Ram Mohan Ray, barrister, delivered an address: on "Hindus and their Needs". He commenced by saying that political questions would not be alluded to at the conference, the subjects to be introduced being entirely of a social character.... In the discussion which followed, Miss Morant drew attention to the condition of women in India with regard to what she termed the army of occupation. Mr. D. Naoroji said, so far back as 1849, he and others started three parsee and three Hindu schools which had oflurished.... Dr. Moncure Conway advised the association not to go rashly to work, but to gather together the genius of India, and by careful action they would in time succeed. Mr. Martin Wood, Mr. T. J. Desai, Sevak Ram (the Hon secretary), and the chairman, also spoke, and the meeting closed with the usual vote of thanks.


The "chairman" who also spoke was, of course, Swamiji. Mr. T. J. Desai, the secretary of the Association, whom we met earlier, has related in his reminiscences something of the impression Swamiji made when, "as chairman of the conference [he] rose to speak and . . . electrified the audience."


When he struck his hand on the table during his speech [Mr. Desai related] my watch bounded from the table and fell down on the ground and created a visible sensation! He had a commanding figure, and my landlady, who had come to the meeting with me, was greatly impressed with his speech and personality. While the Swami had captivated the British public by his oratory, it was placarded as I was going home, that Prince Ranjit Singhi had saved the honour of England against the Australian team. He had scored 154 runs and was not out![49]


While Mr. Desai tells us that Swamiji electrified the audience at the meeting, John Fox, writing to Mrs. Bull on July 24, reveals a little of what he said:


If Swami returns to India and speaks as he did last Saturday to the London Hindu Association, he ought to take the country by storm. I never heard him so eloquent, so earnest, in appealing to the young Hindus to give up European dress and airs on returning home, and mingling with the people and trying to help them. He denounced caste in the strongest terms, and spoke finely on the position of women. I wish you had been there.[50]


Swamiji's fiery talk to his compatriots and their response to it made Fox "fear less for his success in India." He need not have feared at all. Swamiji was already a national hero to the Indian people, as well known and loved in his own field as the great Ranjit Singh was, at the time, well known and loved in his. In August the India Nation printed the following paragraph:


The two most conspicuous Indians now in England are Swami Vivekananda and Mr. K. S. Ranjitsinghi. In a certain sense they represent extremes, but both alike are extremes of excellence, Vivekananda soars on the aerial altitudes of the spirit; and Mr. Ranjitsinghi represents the perfection of certain kinds of physical accomplishment. The Swami, on his plane, is brilliant, original, illuminating. Alike by his presence, his teaching, and the magnetism of his soul, he has impressed large numbers of men and women in England. He has not only rescued the religion of the Hindus from the reproach of a gross and groveling idolatry but placed it on a height and in a light which cannot but secure the respect of men. The young Rajput Chief in his sphere stands gloriously first, and has distanced all competitors as widely as Boswell was regarded by Macaulay to have distanced other biographers. He is the best bat in England, the country most distinguished for the skill of its players. In many other games than cricket, too, he can be beaten by few. He thus sheds a rare lustre on his countrymen, for he exhibits a skill which Englishmen highly value and has achieved a distinction of which they cannot but be jealous.[51]


How many talks Swamiji gave in London that season it is hard to say with accuracy. Aside from his many classes, his six Sunday afternoon lectures, and the few "outside" lectures and talks that we have mentioned, he undoubtedly spoke on occasions of which we know nothing, or very little. He is, for instance, said to have addressed a large meeting "at Notting Hill Gate [a neighborhood of West London] at the residence of Mrs. Hunt." This information originated with Mr. Goodwin's letter of June 23 to the Brahmavadin.[52]He tells in this same letter that Swamiji "also spoke to a large meeting at Wimbledon, when a good deal of helpful discussion followed the lecture." "Several other meetings of a similar character have been held," Goodwin went on, and that must have indeed been so, for Swamiji was in great demand. So often did he lecture and hold classes that by the end of June he was physically exhausted. "At one time he thought of stopping the work," John Fox wrote to Mrs. Bull on June 17, "but is to keep on till about the 15th of July." Swamiji's regular students surely kept on with him, but around the beginning of July many Londoners fled the hot city, and as a consequence, the attendance at his last two Sunday lectures (July 5 and 12) at the Royal Institute noticeably fell off—though, as Mr. Fox informed Mrs. Bull in a letter dated July 16, "the [Art] Gallery was three-fourths filled each time.'[53]

3

It was on that day—July 16-—hat Swamiji held his last class of the season; but not his last class of the year. In June, the students had made as certain as they could that he would continue to teach in the fall. In Goodwin's Brahmavadin letter, mentioned above, he wrote: "At the class lecture yesterday morning a number of those who have been regularly attending, combined to guarantee a sum of money necessary to obtain quarters for the exposition of the Vedanta in London. The proposal includes a large room for regular lectures, a library of books on Eastern Philosophy, including all translations of Sanscrit literature, and a monthly magazine. The fact that the necessary funds were forthcoming before the close of the lecture[s] will be encouraging news to all who are interested in the spreading of the Vedanta.'[54]

In regard to this arrangement Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Bull on July 8, "The English people are very generous. In three minutes' time the other evening my class raised £150 for the new quarters for next autumn's work. They would have given £500 on the spot if wanted, but we want to go slow, and not rush into undue expense. There will be many hands here to carry on the work and they understand a bit of renunciation here, the deep English character.'[55] In a heretofore unpublished portion of this same letter Swamiji added, " . . . the work is growing here as it never grew anywhere else. That, [together] with these men and women with such strong decision of character, the work will never vanish.'[56]


But Swamiji knew that his ideas would spread only slowly. In an interview he had given to a reporter at 63 St. George's Road he had said,* "When you deal with roots and foundations, all real progress must be slow. Of course, I need not say that these ideas are bound to spread by one means or another, and to many of us the right moment for their dissemination seems now to have come.'[57]Indeed Swamiji was convinced that India's spirituality would eventually conquer England. "Today [England] has the sword," he is reported as having said in this same interview, "but it is worse than useless in the world of ideas. You know what Schopenhauer said of Indian thought. He foretold that its influence would be as momentous in Europe, when it became well known, as the revival of Greek and Latin culture after the Dark Ages.... I dare say a good many people saw no signs of the old Renaissance and did not know it was there, even after it had come. But there is a great movement, which can be discerned by those who know the signs of the time."[58]


Swamiji well knew that the world was moving into a new era where the thought of the East would become essential. He knew that the giant tree he was planting would bear its fruit when the need for it came, and he knew he was planting that tree firm and deep. "The work here is coming to a head," he wrote to Swami Ramakrishnananda on June 24. "We have already got funds to start a London Centre. Next month I go to Switzerland to pass a month or two there, then I shall return to London. What will be the good of my going home? This London is the hub of the world. The heart of India is here. How can I leave without laying a sure foundation here? Nonsense!'[59]


And in a heretofore unpublished letter to Mrs. Hale, who was then travelling in Europe, he wrote on July 7 of his satisfaction with his London work. His letter read in full:


Dear Mother—18th of this month I start for Switzerland for a holiday. I will come back to London again to work in Autumn. The work in England bids fare [sic] to be much better & deeper than in the U.S. And here in London is the heart of India also. Where are you now? I am passing through Geneva on my way to the Hills. I will be there a day or two. If you be somewhere near I will make it a point to come to see you. Did you hear Annie Besant? How did you like her? What about your plans of going to India next winter? What about the innocents at home? I haven't had any news of them. My love to Father Pope mother temple and yourself—Kindly answer early as I will be only a few days here.


Ever yours with love & gratitude[60]
Vivekananda


Mr. and Mrs. Hale were in Stockholm when Swamiji's letter reached them; their path did not cross his until much later in the year. Mrs. Bull was as unlucky in this respect. Quite suddenly, she decided to come, after all, to London. She was to sail on the S.S. Cestriars, due to arrive in Liverpool on July 17. And then, as suddenly, she canceled her plans, which was as well. Presumably her intention had been to see Swamiji—what else at this time of year, when everyone was fleeing from London to resorts on the coast, estates in the country, or spas abroad? She would not have arrived in the city until July 18 at the earliest, on which day Swamiji expected to set off for Europe. A letter from him, dated July 8, advising her of his plans, could not have reached her in time for her to change hers; indeed, his mult-ipostmarked envelope was originally addressed to the hotel in Liverpool where she had made a reservation. He meant only at this late date to express his regrets. In a heretofore unpublished portion of this letter he wrote:


Received your letter last evening. Very glad to learn you are coming but I do not know whether I will be able to see you or not—I start for Switzerland on the 18th of this month.* It has been all previously arranged. And as you never write a certain word but always keep things dubious, I could only take the best that opened to me—to go to Switzerland for August & September with some friends.


If however your boat is here earlier—and you come to London-—han 18th I am at your service till 18th.[61]


It is not known at present what prevented Mrs. Bull from embarking on the Cestrian. But a letter of dire foreboding from Swami Kripananda may have been a contributing factor. On July 2, still in Detroit, still in a desolate state of mind, he wrote:

My best wishes accompany you on your voyage.


I wish, however, you would not go to England. I see great dangers before you. Not only your money, but also -our honor, is at stake. A terrible abyss is opening before you ready to engulf you.


Go not to England, listen to my warning.

It is the spirit of my old love and friendship for you that dictates me this warning; for, whatever has happened between you and me, however much pain and suffering you gave me in the last few months by your lack of sympathy and compassion in a period of the greatest distress when friendship's offices were mostly needed, I cannot forget what you were to me once....


I do not know whether under the circumstances in which I am placed I shall have a chance to see you before my long voyage. If events should take this turn, I want you to know that my last thought in departing was —a blessing for you.[62]


Such intimations of all-round disaster might well unnerve anyone on the eve of a voyage, but it was primarily for reasons of her own that Mrs. Bull changed her plans. On July 17 Kripananda wrote again:


I am very glad to learn from your note that the force of circumstances though not my own friendly advice prevailed upon you to give up your trip to England.... You have escaped a great danger. Thank the lord for having disposed things for your best.[63]


While Mrs. Bull may have escaped great danger, she did not escape momentary hurt feelings in connection with her relationship with Swamiji. Although the difficulty does not seem to have been entirely clear to him, he wrote a generally reassuring (and mildly reproving) letter to her. Not heretofore published, it read in full:

63 St. George's Road 
18th July 1896

Dear Mrs. Bull

I received your last note duly—and you already know my gratitude and love for you and that I perfectly agree with most of your ideas and work.


I did not understand however one point you speak of Sturdy and myself being members. Members of what? I as  you well know cannot become a member of any society.*


I am very glad to learn that you have been favourably impressed by Saradananda. There is one big mistake you are labouring under. What do you mean of [my] writing to my workers more confidentially and not to you? I seldom write to anyone. I have nothing to write. I have no workers. Everyone is independent to work as one likes. I don't bother my head about these little things at all. I can give ideas that is all, let people work them out anyway they like and Godspeed to all.

"He who works unattached to persons and giving up the fruits of work is a genuine worker". Gita.


Yours ever, with love and gratitude,[64]
Vivekananda

Meanwhile, there was Raja Yoga. In another heretofore unpublished paragraph of Swamiji's letter of July 8 to Mrs. Bull (which he had expected her to receive in Liverpool) one finds that there was still trouble of sorts surrounding the publication of that book.


I will try once more to give the half over to Sturdy [he wrote]. What a storm in a tea pot about this little book! However it [is] all right now. The money and everything has been already paid.[65]


The first sentence of the above referred to Mrs. Bull's roundabout method of supplying her half of the cost of publication (Mr. Leggett having paid the other half). lndeed, Mrs. Bull's part in the financing of publishing Raja Yoga was remarkable, and the present writer can do no better by way of recounting it than to quote the following passage in a letter from Goodwin to Mrs. Bull, dated July 19:


I explained [to Sturdy] how the whole matter stood, &, Mr Sturdy says he wd not care to receive the money from the Swami, even altho it was an obligation to some other person that he was liquidating, & he would rather pay the half amount, unless indeed it was arranged between you & Mr Leggett that Mr Leggett shall meet the whole cost. In the event of Mr Leggett not caring to take any further responsibility than his half Mr Sturdy, in taking up the other half, requests that you will look upon it as a liquidation through him of the Swami's obligation to you but that you, all the same, retain your control, together with Mr Leggett, of the whole affair, & that Mr Sturdy remain, as heretofore, merely your agent in the matter, in trying to fulfill, as far as can be, your wishes, & the success of the work. Under these circumstances the return from the book as far as your interest in it, would also remain yours.[66]


In any event, the book was published. "Raja Yoga came out Monday [July 13] after many revisions of proof by Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Sturdy," Mr. Fox informed Mrs. Bull in a letter dated July 16. "It seems to have no copyright at all; at least Mr. Sturdy knows of none. Perhaps you had better say very little or nothing about the matter to him.'[67] The matter was no doubt a touchy one. After the many and complicated discussions that had taken place in both America and England regarding the copyright of Raja Yoga, Swamiji had apparently settled the matter with a word. In October of 1896 he would write to Alasinga: "You can very well get out a cheap edition of Raja Yoga if you like.* I have not reserved any copyright on it purposely.'[68]


But copyright or no, Raja Yoga was finally on its way, and Swamiji could go off to Europe with that transatlantic storm behind him. "The season has ended," he had written to Francis Leggett in his letter of July 6, "and I too am thoroughly exhausted. I am going to make a tour in Switzerland with Miss Muller.'[69]As mentioned in the last chapter, Captain and Mrs. Sevier were also to be Swamiji's hosts on this tour that he so badly needed after ten weeks of strenuous and steady work—indeed one might say not ten weeks but three years, for this was to be the first real vacation he had had since his arrival in Vancouver on July 25 of 1893.


ⓘ
[1].“The Necessity of Religion”, (pamphlet printed in London, December 1896), pp. i-ii.
[2].J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, June 4, 1896, SCB.
[3].Complete Works, 6 : 363.
[4].India, London, August 1896; Complete Works, 5 : 201.
[5].Mahendra Nath Datta, Londone Swami Vivekananda, 1 : 106.
[6].Complete Works, 2 : 61.
[7].Complete Works., 2 : 61-62.
[8].Complete Works., 2 : 63-66 passim.
[9].John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism and Other Writings, ed. Mary Warnock, P- 257.
[10].John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism and Other Writings, ed. Mary Warnock., p. 258.
[11].John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism and Other Writings, ed. Mary Warnock, p. 260.
[12].Complete Works, 2 : 63-64.
[13].Complete Works., 4:205.
[14].See Mill, op. cit., p. 280.
[15].See Mill, op. cit.., p. 281.
[16].Complete Works, 4 : 205.
[17].Mill, op. cit., p. 284.
[18].Mill, op. cit, p. 287.
[19].Complete Works, 2 : 64.
[20].Complete Works,, 2 : 66-67.
[21].Complete Works,, 4 : 205-6.
[22].Complete Works,, 2 : 62-63.
[23].Complete Works,., 2 :67, 68. (Quoted from original pamphlet.)
[24].See Brahmavadin, July 18, 1896, p. 277.
[25].Swami Vivekananda, Undated Notes, Vedanta Centre, Cohasset, Massachusetts.
[26].William James, Psychology (New York: Fawcett Publications, Premier Books, 1963), p. 106.
[27].William James, Psychology (New York: Fawcett Publications, Premier Books, 1963), p. 107.
[28].Complete Works, 2 : 75-76.
[29].Complete Works,., 2 : 77.
[30].Complete Works,., 2 : 78.
[31].Complete Works,., 2 : 82-83.
[32].John P. Fox to Sara Bull, June 27, 1896, SCB.
[33].Complete Works, 2 : 84-87 passim.
[34].Johanna Johnston, Mrs. Satan, P. 245-
[35] .J. C. Furnas, The Americans: A Social History of the United States P- 643.
[36].Johnston, op. cit., p. 262.
[37].E. T. Sturdy to J. MacLeod, April 30,    1897, Leg. Col.
[38].Johnston, op. cit., p. 81.
[39].Complete Works, 6 : 365.
[40].Boston Herald, undated clipping, SCB.
[41].See Complete Works, 6 : 365.
[42].Arthur H. Nethercot, The First Five Lives of Annie Besant, p. 306.
[43].Complete Works, 7 : 489.
[44].Lucifer, July 15, 1896.
[45].Complete Works, 5 : 112.
[46].Complete Works., 3 : 208.
[47].Quoted in VIN, p. 432.
[48].Complete Works, 4: 193. (This talk has not as yet been dated, nor do we know at present where in London Swamiji gave it.)
[49].Rem. (T. J. Desai), p. 305.
[50].John P. Fox to Sara Bull, July 24, 1896, SCB.
[51].Indian Nation, 24 August 1896. Quoted in VIN, 354-55.
[52].Brahmavadin, July 18, 1896, p. 278.
[53].John P. Fox to Sara Bull, July 16, 1896, SCB.
[54].See ref. 52 above.
[55].Complete Works, 6:367. (Quoted from original letter, Sen Col.)
[56].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, July 8, 1896; quoted from original letter, Sen Col.
[57].Complete Works, 5 : 193-94.
[58].Complete Works, 5 : 190-91-
[59].Complete Works, 6:364.
[60].Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. G. W. Hale, July 7, 1896, Sen Col.
[61].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, July 8, 1896, original letter, Sen Col. (Cf. Complete Works, 6 : 367.)
[62].Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, July 2, 1896, SCB.
[63].Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull,., July 17,1896.
[64].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, July 18, 1896, SN Col.
[65].See ref. 61 above.
[66].J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, July 19, 1896, SCB.
[67].John P. Fox to Sara Bull, July 16, 1896, SCB.
[68].Complete Works, 5 : 120.
[69].Complete Works., 6 : 365.





↑ Contents

4.6 EUROPEAN TOUR, SUMMER 1896

For serenity, remoteness, and beauty, the Swiss Alps were probably as close to the Himalayas as one could come without leaving the Western Hemisphere. Particularly was this true in the 1890s when tourists—though plentiful enough—had not yet descended (or ascended) en masse upon the lovely mountain valleys. The little villages were hard to get to; yet at the same time they contained comfortable Victorian hotels, built to accommodate a few dedicated European and English view-lovers and mountain-climbers.

In his valuable article "Vivekananda in Switzerland, 1896" Swami Vidyatmananda has traced in vivid detail Swamiji’s Swiss tour—uphill and down, over high mountain passes, alongside torrents, and across glaciers, in horse-drawn stagecoaches, or diligences, on mule-back, on foot, and by train. Much of his information was gathered through firsthand research, for he followed in Swamiji's footsteps, making use of old guide books to recreate the scenes, routes, and conditions of the 1890s. Since Vidyatmananda's article has been published in the Prabuddha Bharata.[1] the detailed information it provides need not be repeated here, but its author's careful research will nonetheless be of help to us in following Swamiji on his Alpine tour—a tour that he seems to have thoroughly enjoyed—"constantly on the move getting a much needed rest.'[2]

The party of four—Swamiji, Captain and Mrs. Sevier, and Miss Henrietta Muller-—eft Dover on Sunday afternoon, July 19, and crossed the English Channel to Calais. From there they went by train to Paris, where they spent the night in a hotel, the name of which is lost to us. The following day the party entrained for Geneva. There they took accommodation in a hotel overlooking Lake Leman, the largest lake in Western Europe, long, narrow, and fed by the waters of the Rhone. They were now in sight of the Alps; big cities, noise, crowds, pounding traffic—all such drains on body and nerves belonged to some distant and forgotten world. Indeed, one might say that it was here in Geneva that Swamiji's vacation really began. And one of the first things he did was to go up in a balloon.

This large, hydrogen-inflated sphere, with a passenger basket hanging below and a long tether for safety, was, to Swamiji, at least, the main attraction of a national exhibition of Swiss handicrafts and industrial products then being held in Geneva. Interested though he was in the Exhibition itself, it was the balloon that captivated him. In the still hour of sunset, the party entered the basket—Mrs. Sevier reluctantly, but unable to resist Swamiji's enthusiasm—and up they went. "Up—up—up!" says the life. "The balloon sped upwards and upwards, like some great bird at ease in its own element. The day was perfect, the sunset itself gorgeous . . . and the balloon sailed steadily and smoothly in the evening air.'[3] It was all-too short a ride, and Swamiji so much enjoyed it that he wanted to go again before night fell. But "other interests intervened, " and the hungry party went to a restaurant instead.

They stayed for three days in Geneva. Aside from taking the smooth, silent balloon-ride high above the city, Swamiji bathed twice in the bracing waters of the Rhone River as they flowed swiftly from Lake Leman through one of the city's bathhouses. On another day, the party went on an excursion to the far end of the lake to visit the Castle of Chillon, made famous by Lord Byron's poem "The Prisoner of Chillon." Perhaps they followed a guide from the lovely surroundings of the castle to the "dungeons deep and old . . . below the surface of the lake," to whose stone columns the Swiss patriot Francois Bonivard had been chained for six years with his two younger brothers, both of whom died beside him one by one. It would have seemed a dark and fearful vault to everyone except, perhaps, to Swamiji, who may have found it—as later he would find another ancient European dungeon—a splendid place to meditate.

From Geneva the party entered the Alps, and from now on it would be hard going all the way, requiring careful preparation and fortitude. And when one considers the enormous quantity of bulky clothes that people, particularly women, wore in those days, even on informal vacation, one is staggered by the amount of luggage that must have gone along with them, adding to the difficulty of traveling up and down mountains. The party went from Geneva to the French village of Chamonix partly by train, but mostly by diligence, an arduous, dusty, and scenically beautiful journey of more than six hours. Chamonix, even then a tourists' Mecca, was well worth the trip for the sheer magnificence of its towering setting of granite, snow, and ice. "Surely," writes one present-day traveler, "there is nothing even remotely comparable to this cataclysm in the whole of the Alps.'[4] According to Swami Vidyatmananda's educated guess, the party made the trip from Geneva to Chamonix on Friday, July 24. It is probable, then, that Swamiji's letter to Mrs. Bull dated July 25 was written in the shadow of the overwhelmingly near Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, and it is small wonder that he wanted "to forget the world entirely." Inasmuch as only two or three sentences of this letter have been heretofore published, it is given here in full:

Switzerland 
July 25 '96

Dear Mrs. Bull—your letter reached today with the £5. As you see I am now travelling in Switzerland, so it is hard for me to get my mail regularly.

The printed forms gave me to understand along with your letter the work that is being done in Cambridge. I have every sympathy with it as you are perfectly aware of.

I got a nice letter from Goodwin about their arrival but none yet about the work at Greenacre. I required this rest badly and I will have no time to write anything for the next two months. I want rest & quite [sic] so you see I can not send any paper to Greenacre this summer. I am always on the move. It is hard to get paper &. pen even for I am travelling in the most lonely nooks and corners of Switzerland. I want to forget the world entirely at least for the next two months and practice hard. That is my rest. I am sorry you could not come to London but everything for the best. You have seen the Raja Yoga by this time of course.

The mountains and snow have a beautifully quieting influence on me and I am getting better sleep here than for a long time.

With everlasting love and gratitude

Yours Vivekananda

P.S. My love to Miss Farmer, Dr. Jain [sic] & all our friends in Boston & Cambridge.[5]

Like a boy out of school, Swamiji was by no means lacking in physical energy. Confronted with the magnificence of Mont Blanc, he at once wanted to climb to its summit of 15,771 feet. He was dissuaded, for although, as a travel book says, "the ascent offers no difficulty for experienced climbers with a guide [two guides in the 1890s] . . . it is extremely fatiguing: ' Nearby, however, was the famous Mer-de-Glace, a glacier that could be more easily crossed than the mountain climbed—though the crossing was no gentle stroll.

One early morning the party set out. First, they had to climb for three hours on muleback to reach the glacier itself; then they made a steep descent to the edge of the ice; next, they crossed the Mer-de-Glace on foot. It was a stormy "sea" furrowed with high frozen waves, deep crevasses, and slippery troughs. They advanced with the aid of steel-pointed alpenstocks and spiked soles fastened to their shoes. Miss Muller, who in her younger days had thought nothing of tricycling for fifty miles at a stretch or rowing for twenty and who, moreover, was an old hand at Alpine climbing, very probably took the glacier in her stride, cheering the others on. In any event they all managed to reach the other shore without mishap. But then, as though this crossing, which took about three quarters of an hour, were not enough, there was a hair-raising ascent on the other side. This consisted of a series of extremely narrow paths and stairs roughly hewn across the sheer face of a precipice and unrailed on their outer edge. This upward passage was called the "Mauvais Pas." Swami Vidyatmananda points out that the name means simply "tight corner" or "awkward situation" and not, as Mark Twain would more feelingly have it, "the villainous road." But it was a tight corner indeed in which to have vertigo. And a spell of vertigo overcame Swamiji on the face of that precipice, with nothing between him and the frozen "sea" far below. His foot slipped several times, the first edition of the Life recounts, and one can imagine that each time the hearts of his companions stopped. After about forty-five minutes of this harrowing ascent, the party reached a little chalet at the summit, where they had a restoring cup of coffee and a blessed rest.

Swamiji had very much wanted to cross a glacier, and it would appear that he enjoyed the adventure, and surely also the awesome and silent majesty of the glacier itself. On the way back to Chamonix (a relatively easy route negotiated on muleback), he seems to have been in high spirits, talking warmly of the similarity between the Alpine peasants and those of the Himalayas. Then he went on to speak of the sacred Himalayas themselves and of his longing to establish a monastery there.

According to the Life, this was the first time the Seviers had heard of Swamiji's dream of a Himalayan ashrama. But one finds that in a letter to the Hale sisters, dated July 7, well over a week before leaving London, he had written, "Later on, towards the end of winter, I expect to go to India with some English friends who are going to live in my monastery there, which, by the by, is in the air yet. It is struggling to materialize somewhere in the Himalayas.'[6] It would appear from this that Swamiji had already discussed his plan for a Himalayan Math (monastery) with the Seviers—though perhaps not in such detail as now, with snow peaks all around and in the air the fragrance of pine and larch.

From Chamonix the party visited the monastery and hospice of Little St. Bernard, which was run by Augustinian Canons, assisted "by lay-brothers and the famous St. Bernard dogs." Little St. Bernard should not be confused with its farbetter-known brother-hospice, Great St. Bernard, situated on the high and much-traveled Alpine pass of the same name. Little St. Bernard is in the Graian Alps between France and Italy, about twenty-five miles south of Chamonix as the crow flies. That crow could probably make the trip in one or two unhurried hours, but for human beings in the 1890s Little St. Bernard was an arduous two-day trek from Chamonix. Swami Vidyatmananda has described the probable 1895 route in interesting detail. To quote briefly, "Much of the trip was done by following bridle paths [on horseback or on mules] which edged mountain torrents. At least two passes of more than ten thousand feet had to be traversed. But there were inns along the route. The [second] day a guide would be necessary . . . since one went along the edge of glaciers.'[7]

The swami suggests that it was because of' Swamiji’s interest at the time in mountain monasteries that he journeyed to this unlikely, far-out-of the-way place. Certainly, it was not for the scenery; for, like that of Great St. Bernard, the scenic aspect of Little St. Bernard is bleak, both being above the timberline. This is not to say that bleakness in itself does not have its austere beauty; it is only to say that one would not go so long and hard a way for that sight alone. Rather, it was, surely, the monastery—the lonely monastery in the high mountains—that called to Swamiji. The stone buildings were as austere as their surroundings, but their monks were warmly welcoming to the travelers—for to render aid to those who needed it was one of their ways of serving God. Swamiji very likely talked at length with the abbot then in charge--Abbe Pierre Chanoux, who, Swami Vidyatmananda tells us, was a selfless and well-loved pastor to the simple mountain villagers.

The only thing we know about this visit is that the romping St. Bernard puppies, who had been born there and who, no doubt, assisted in welcoming the guests, won Swamiji's heart. He very much wanted to buy one-most probably for his Himalayan ashrama. But there was a long way to go to the Himalayas, and one wonders what he, or anyone else, would have done with an enthusiastic St. Bernard puppy in London, or what that heavy-coated puppy would have done in, say, Madras. "Fortunately," the life remarks, the puppies had already been sold .[8]

Since Swamiji no doubt followed the long trail to Little St. Bernard with his future Himalayan Math in mind, let us take time out here to recall what is known of his thoughts on the subject—what he wanted the Himalayan centre to represent, what part he wanted it to play in his overall world mission.

2

As we have seen at the beginning of this book, Swamiji had wanted in the summer of 1895 to train into "practical Advaita realisation a small band of men and women" at Thousand Island Park. "It is the patient upbuilding of character," he had written to Sturdy in this connection, "the intense struggle to realise the truth; that and that alone will tell in the future of humanity.'[9] One might say that the cottage at Thousand Island Park, where for more than six weeks Swamiji taught and trained a few men and women—monastics and householders alike—was the seed, as it were, of a permanent Advaita  Ashrama which, situated at the top of the world, would serve all who could climb to its heights and remain there. Indeed, to create men and women of Advaitic realization was (according to himself) the very crux of Swamiji's mission. Even a few such people, he often said, would revolutionize the entire world. It is very possible, therefore, that a permanent, firmly established, and all-welcoming Advaita Ashrama in the Himalayas had been in his mind at least from early in 1895, when the practical working out of his world mission seems to have taken definite, conscious shape in his mind. It was this longthought-out plan to which he gave voice in the Alps, the "miniature Himalayas," where his spirit soared. The Iife quotes him (through Mrs. Sevier's firsthand memory) as having said:

... It [the Himalayan Monastery] will be a centre for work and meditation, where my Indian and Western disciples can live together, and them I shall train as workers, the former to go out as preachers of Vedanta to the West, and the latter to devote their lives to the good of India.[10]


Two or three years later, shortly after the Seviers had found and purchased an old Himalayan tea plantation, where the Advaita Ashrama was to be established, Swamiji would clearly define its general purpose and scope. In March of 1899 he sent to his disciple Swami Swarupananda, who was then editing the Prabuddha Bharata, four paragraphs to be published together with matter he had already approved. It was his prospectus for the Ashrama. Attached to it was the following note, heretofore unpublished:


My dear S[warupananda].

I have no objection whether Mrs. Sevier's name goes on top or mine or anybody else's, the prospectus ought to go in the name of the Sevier's, mustering my name also if necessary. I send you a few lines for your consideration in the prospectus. The rest are all right. I will soon send the draft deed.[11]

V.

In the January 1900 issue of Prabuddha Bharata, by then being printed at Mayavati itself, the above-mentioned prospectus appeared. The first four paragraphs (barring the last phrase of the third) are those Swamiji had sent to Swami Swarupananda. The prospectus read in full:

THE ADVAITA ASHRAMA
HIMALAYAS.

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; knowing 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, realisation and the practicalisation 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, takes off all dependence and its associated superstitions, thus making us brave to suffer, brave to do, and in the long run 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 the Advaita Ashrama on the Himalayan heights, the land of its first expiration, with the  fullest approval and under the guidance of the Swami Vivekananda.


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.[12]


The main lines along which the work is to be carried on are necessarily educational and consist of sending out trained teachers and issuing publications. Arrangements, therefore, are in course of progress for training Indian and European men and women side by side, for Advaita work in the East and the West. All men and women who believe in the uplifting power of the Advaita and are ready to make their lives one with the GREAT LIFE and to help others in doing so, are invited to join the Ashrama and assist in the carrying out of its object in the manner best suited to each individual circumstances.[13]

Swarupananda. 
(Mrs.) C. E. Sevier.
J. H. Sevier.


It would seem clear that Swamiji wanted the Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati to be a center of intensive spiritual and intellectual study which would train men and women to become true Advaitins. He seems to have wanted particularly a mingling here of East and West, and, as well, of householders and monastics. Above all, he wanted to make great human beings, whatever their sex, nationality, or station in life might be—human beings who "shall arise and cast off these kindergartens of religion and shall make vivid and powerful the true religion, the worship of the spirit by the spirit'[14]Indeed, the Ashrama would be in essence like an ancient Upanishadic forest-school—but it would be for the entire world.


In April of 1900, a few months after the publication of the above prospectus, Swamiji spoke of the establishment of Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati as the very heart of his world mission. In his San Francisco lecture "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?".. (from which comes the quotation in the above paragraph) he left no question in anyone's mind that he wished, as the servant and messenger of Sri Ramakrishna, to bring not a new philosophy but a new method of spiritual practice into the world at large. The following passages from Swamiji's lecture will be familiar to many readers, but let us quote them here anyhow, for they constitute a sort of manifesto:


If Vedanta—this conscious knowledge that all is one spirit—spreads, the whole of humanity Will become spiritual. But is it possible? I do not know. Not within thousands of years. The old superstitions must run out. You are all interested in how to perpetuate all your superstitions. Then there are the ideas of the family brother, the caste brother, the national brother. All these are barriers to the realisation of Vedanta. Religion has been religion to very few....


There is another side to the question. Everyone says that the highest, the pure truth cannot be realised all at once by all, that men have to be led to it gradually through worship, prayer, and other kinds of prevalent religious practices. I am not sure whether that is the right method or not. In India I work both ways.


In Calcutta, I have all these images and temples—in the name of Cod and the Vedas, of the Bible and Christ and Buddha. Let it be tried. But in the heights of the Himalayas I have a place where I am determined nothing shall enter except pure truth. There I want to work out this idea about which I have spoken to you today [the teaching of Advaita Vedanta]. There are an Englishman and an Englishwoman in charge of the place. The purpose is to train seekers of truth and to bring up children without fear and without superstition. They shall not hear about Christs and Buddhas and Shivas and Vishnus—none of these. They shall learn, from the start, to stand upon their own feet. They shall learn from their childhood that God is the spirit and should be worshipped in spirit and in truth. Everyone must be looked upon as spirit. That is the ideal. I do not know what success will come of it. Today I am preaching the thing I like. I wish I had been brought up entirely on that, without all the dualistic superstitions....


I am the servant of a man who has passed away. I am only the messenger. I want to make the experiment. The teachings of Vedanta I have told you about were never really experimented with before. Although Vedanta is the oldest philosophy in the world, it has always become mixed up with superstitions and everything else.[15]


In June of 1900 there appeared in Prabuddha Bharata a more or less detailed plan of how Swamiji's experiment would be carried out. Inasmuch as this article was published during his absence in America, it was very probably not written by him; nor does it seem to be in his style. But however that may be, the article lays down qualifications for membership at Advaita Ashrama and describes the proposed regime; the requirements were necessarily strict and rigorous. The article read in part as follows:

THE ADVAITA ASHRAMA: 
A Few Explanatory Words.

The Ashrama aims at helping with its best might, such men as sincerely long for a life truly suited for the culture of deep spiritual instincts abiding in the human heart. While believing naturally in the elevating power of all systems of religion and allowing its members full liberty to choose and follow their own ways of upasana, the Philosophy of Advaita—which derives its support not  only from the simple unequivocal text of the Srutis but also from the results of modern scientific research—forms the basic principle of its thought and action....


Those only who struggle to be entirely free from sensual appetites are capable of walking on the path, "sharp like the edge of a razor and pronounced extremely difficult by the wise." The Ashrama, therefore, lays down, as the first condition for membership, the rule that every member should take the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. This excludes all those who have not that true longing for spirituality which ever delights in the freedom of renunciation. It also precludes the possibility of the members having to bear their own expenses of living in the Ashrama.


. . . [It is enjoined] upon every one of the members to give that respect and toleration to the habits and religious opinions of others, which he would they should accord to his, and to practise in daily life his belief in the Brotherhood of man and the Selfhood of all.


Now, as everything depends upon a strong physique, and as a good climate and moderate exercise almost ensure it to those whose habits are regulated by strict discipline, the Ashrama deems it wise to have some of its manual work done by the members....


Study would form another important and necessary occupation of the members. The usefulness of discriminate study in an institution of this character cannot be too much emphasized. It prevents the spirit of religion from lapsing into dead formalities and weakening superstitions, by bringing the touchstone of a refined understanding to bear upon whatever comes in its garb and lifts the mind pleasantly and unconsciously from the senseplane to the region illumined with exalted thought....


The last, though not the least object to be particularly attended to by the members of the Advaita Ashrama, is Yoga. This is the channel through which the energy  acquired by judiciously following the disciplinary methods indicated above, should be directed in order that they may lead up to the highest point of spiritual evolution and ground the character firmly on the adamantine rock of conviction, gained through practical experience in spiritual truths.


Those Sannyasin members of the Ashrama who can give satisfactory testimony of their abilities—physical, intellectual and spiritual—to take the responsible position of teachers, will be sent out to teach what they themselves have learnt by study, meditation and Yoga. "Example is better than precept," and the Ashrama will always look to the all-sided development of the members as its sole concern, rather than seek to swell its body by indiscriminate admission.


But as the Advaita Ashrama believes that a single day spent in religious discipline in the company of men leading a higher life, may leave impressions capable of proving a tower of strength in trying circumstances, it will gladly admit members who have a mind to take up the householder's life, after making them, to some extent, fit for its heavy responsibilities by receiving some training in the Ashrama. It should be clearly understood that during the period of training these members will have to abide strictly by the rules stated above.[16]


Four months after Swamiji's death in July of 1902, the following began to appear inside the front cover of almost every issue of Prabuddha Bharata from November 1902 through April 1905:

THE ADVAITA ASHRAMA OBJECTS


1. Study and practice towards realisation of the Advaita Vedanta —the Oneness of Existence.

2. Training of Brahmacharins and Sannyasins to carry  the Gospel of Advaita to all men in all lands.


The Advaita Ashrama is situated in a secluded spot amidst some of the loveliest of Himalayan Sceneries. The climate is one of the best in India....

Brahmacharins are admitted as inmates for training under the rules of the Ashrama. Attempts will be made to make special arrangements for the residence in the Ashrama, temporarily or permanently, of Vanaprasthas, Householders and others, on application.


All particulars will be gladly furnished on enquiry by the manager of this paper.


Perhaps no householders applied, or perhaps because of the limited accommodations at Mayavati it was found impossible to arrange for their temporary or permanent residence in the Ashrama. In any event, this part of the original prospectus faded out. But most of Swamiji's ideas were put into practice. Prabuddha Bharata has been regularly edited at Mayavati for more than three-fourths of a century; many male monastics have been trained there who have then gone out to teach, some in the West; Western brahmacharins are admitted for training; above all, the principles of Advaita Vedanta have been kept pure, no "dualistic weakness" befogging them.


This last and most important of Swamiji's ideas was almost destroyed at the very outset and but for his actual presence at Mayavati might have become an unrealized dream. It is recounted that by the time he visited the Ashrama in 1901 the daily ritualistic (albeit simple) worship of Sri Ramakrishna was being performed in a room dedicated to the purpose. "When Swamiji became aware of this," one account reads, "he vehemently reproached Mother Sevier and Swarupananda, pointing out that in this Ashrama only the Advaita way of life was to be lived, and Puja (ritual worship) was against the regulations.'[17] Although Swamiji did not give an order to remove the shrine, his meaning was no doubt perfectly clear, and the worship was soon discontinued. Some who were devotionally inclined may have felt uneasy living at a shrineless ashrama, but to one who confided his sense of conflict to her, Sri Sarada Devi (Holy Mother) wrote in September of 1902, "One who is our Guru [Sri Ramakrishna] is [all] Advaita. You are all His disciples. So you too are Advaitavadins.[18]


To return to Switzerland, where the idea for the Ashrama began to take form, so certain was Swamiji of what he wanted that he at once set the wheels in motion. To his friend Lala Badri Sah of Almora he wrote on August 5, after his visit to Little St. Bernard, "I want to start a Math at Almora or near Almora rather. I have heard that there was a certain Mr. Ramsay who lived in a bungalow near Almora and that he had a garden round his bungalow. Can't it be bought? What is the price? If not to be bought, can it be rented? Do you know of any suitable place near Almora where I can build my monastery with a garden etc.? I would rather like to have a hill all to myself. Hoping to get an early reply.'[19]


In November Swamiji would write again to Badri Sah, this time even more specifically, "We want a whole hill, with a view of the snow-range, all to ourselves.'[20] It was as though he were visualizing the property that would be later found at Mayavati and exactly describing it.

3

From Little St. Bernard the party returned to Chamonix by the same route they had come—there was no other. From Chamonix they now went on to Zermatt in the Valais Alps, a hard trip by diligence and train of a day and a half, with a stop over at Martigny.* The village of Zermatt was famous for its view of the great Matterhorn that towered above it like some majestic and incredibly steep rock-pyramid (14,700 feet above sea level). From the village one could go on excursions up nearby mountains for even closer, more awe-inspiring views. One such trip was a comparatively gentle climb on muleback up the Riflieberg, from which one enjoyed, as one ascended, ever finer and fuller sights of the Matterhorn and the Gornergrat. But from the Gornergrat itself, a higher mountain than the Riflleberg, one could have what one guide book describes as "one of the most breathtaking panoramic views in all Switzerland."21 The rack-and-pinion railway that today carries passengers up the Gornergrat (10,290 feet above sea level) would not be built until 1898, and Captain Sevier was the only member of the party to attempt the then strenuous and long ascent. It is more than probable, however, that the entire party made the excursion up the Riflieberg and stayed overnight at the summit. Indeed, we know that Swamiji picked Alpine flowers on the glacier of Monte Rosa, which is easily accessible from the summit hotel.


One of these small flowers he sent in a letter (probably on August 3 or 4) to his disciple Kripananda. "I went to the glacier of Monte Rosa yesterday," he wrote, "and gathered a few hardy flowers growing almost in the midst of eternal snow.* I send you one in this letter hoping that you will attain to a similar spiritual hardihood amidst all the snow and ice of this earthly life.'[22]


It was an affectionate and heartening letter, written on impulse. "A few days ago, " he wrote to Goodwin on August 8, "I felt a sudden irresistible desire to write to Kripananda. Perhaps he was unhappy and thinking of me. So I wrote him a nice letter. Today from the American news [he had heard from different letters "a lot about Kripananda"], I see why it was so. I sent him flowers gathered near the glaciers. Ask Miss Waldo to send him some money and plenty of love. Love never dies. The love of the father never dies, whatever the children may do or be. He is my child. He has the same or more share in my love and help, now that he is in misery.'[23]


Kripananda was indeed in misery. In the last chapter we found him darkly hinting at imminent death in a postscript of a letter dated July 2. In his next letter to Mrs. Bull, dated  July 17, in which he expressed relief that she had not voyaged to England, he made a still more stunning announcement:


I wish to prepare you slowly to the shocking news which may reach you some of these days to the effect that the Swami Kripananda has become a bar-tender. I hope you will not blame me if, driven by necessity, I should grasp at this only chance to make a living by a profession so humiliating to the dignity of a religious teacher. All my attempts to obtain a position as a teacher proved fruitless because of my affiliation with the Swami Vivekananda, and as I am not yet far enough advanced in Yoga to live from mere breathing exercises, I must—bongre mal gre—resign myself to doing the lowest kind of work that will help me to keep soul and body together.[24] 


This was, of course, simply a signal of distress, a cry for attention after a period of silence from Mrs. Bull. She had not responded to his talk of dying, but the bartender threat would have been to her another and a graver matter. She replied at once. (It is very likely that she also relayed the news in a letter to Swamiji, which would have been among those to reach him a few days after he had intuited Kripananda's despair.)


Mrs. Bull's letter to Kripananda was dated July 23 and read in part:


Dear Kripananda

I have considered your last letter. It indicates physical want on your part. You do not come out & say directly that you wish help to live as I have told you I wanted you to do, when no way opened to you.... I will now say that your comments [in an earlier letter] I read carefully indeed. As I understand it, you can repudiate the Vedanta wholly and still be a Sanyasin. [But] the title of Swami verily demands of you truth to your vow of chastity & poverty—the former in thought, word and deed. If a Sanyasin fails in this there is no recovery on his part as a teacher in India, I have understood, as he is supposed to take the vow with a full understanding, and if he fail to hold it, he is held more responsible in his failure than the ordinary man.


To stand behind a drinking bar means, with us, to serve the stimulant which is directly connected with impurity of life and deed.

If you ever say to me that you need bread and clothes I will always hope to have some ways and means to supply you as a Sanyasin. But if you differ ever with Vivekananda's teaching as to the two essentials of poverty and chastity, the latter pure & simple without equivocation of word: or sophistry in thought, word or deed, then I would hold you, as I would him, unfit to help others. You know him to be a Gnana, and yet you as a student of his you publicly denounce Gnana—while you claim to be a teacher of Vedanta & the Yogas. Your manner of this announcement was not to my mind in the true spirit of respect & sincerity. Vivekananda asks obedience of his students, only to these ideals they voluntarily assume, not to his teachings, if I understand him. Will you answer me directly if concerning the life & teachings of the Sanyasin you differ from him? I send enclosed for your personal need. That I ask this in the spirit of a friend who would wish to serve you in any moral, physical or spiritual need, I believe you will acknowledge to yourself.[25]


In reply, Kripananda returned Mrs. Bull's check along with ten pages of bitter vituperation in elegant Spencerian script. In the course of this letter, dated July 27, he wrote:


In spite of all the difficulties I have carried on the work till the last of June, and only closed the meetings  for lack of attendance on account of the heat. It will interest you to learn that all my returns for my spiritual teachings was in the neighborhood of $25, rather less than more. The reason for this small income was probably that people thought my expenses were paid by a committee, somewhere in the moon. Some ladies gave me also flowers. That this was not sufficient to keep body and soul together, you will readily agree with me. If it had not been for the kindness of Miss Hamilton, a poor girl who works as typewriter in an office, I would have perished long ago.[26]


What Kripananda did not know was that Mrs. Bull had for some time been corresponding with Miss Martha Hamilton, whom she had met at Greenacre, and had sent her fifty dollars (a fair sum in those days) for his personal needs. Miss Hamilton was sworn to secrecy. "Certainly," she wrote in one of her letters to Mrs. Bull, "your desire to remain unknown in regard to sending the money for K. shall be respected. He shall never know unless you wish it.'[27]


In one of the less angry portions of his long letter Kripananda wrote with total sincerity:

Whatever my relation to the Swami may be, of one thing you may be sure, that I shall not break my vows once taken, as they are too sacred to me as to trifle with them. You know that I always insisted upon living the life, and whatever my enemies may say about me they will never have occasion to say that Kripananda was unchaste or wallowed in wealth.


And now as to the bar-tender affair. I have found another and better way of making my living, which, I trust, will meet with your fullest approval.


I believe I mentioned to you that for years I had been working at the construction of a certain apparatus for curative purposes.[28]


He went on to describe the apparatus he had invented ten years earlier. It involved "odic-force" or electric waves, which were "fifteen million times longer than the light waves" and which, he theorized, "were identical with the waves produced by the mesmerizer with his passes on his subject."


"Now in my embarrassment of getting a livelyhood," he wrote, "I again thought of my invention. After pawning my superfluous clothes (and there was not much of it) and with the kind assistance of Miss Hamilton—God bless her soul, if not for her I would have perished long ago—I succeeded in roughly getting up my apparatus. My first tests exceeded all my expectations:'[29]


The Odomotor, as it was called, was a most remarkable machine. Not only was it capable (Kripananda claimed) of curing cancer, palsy, general disability, and all the other diseases and malfunctions that such "electro-magnetic" devices were said in those days to cure, but it had an extra special potential: with a few improvements, it would also "produce Trance or that state of the Yogi called Samadhi." So far, Kripananda had treated three grateful patients, the first of whom was Miss Hamilton. Indeed, Mrs. Bull had known for some time all about the Odomotor from that young lady, who was, to be sure, full of kindness and faith and who, on her tiny salary, had helped in its creation and promotion.


Kripananda closed his letter to Mrs. Bull with an apology for its long pages of rudeness and "bitter utterances," which had struck as harshly at Swamiji as at Mrs. Bull herself. "I had the intention to rewrite this letter," he told her, "but after second thought I concluded to let it go as it is. You are so good that you will forgive your naughty child for his rudeness. Will you?"

This time she would not. Mrs. Bull replied to Kripananda, but she addressed him as "Leon Landsberg." "For so I must call you now," she wrote, "and I must also, having given you the opportunity to write me without reserve speak to you in sincerity and truth without reserve." Her letter, the date of which, all things considered, was probably August 1 or 2, then continued:


Asking as you have my motherly service and protection in the spiritual sense, I must demand on your part that sincerity and truthfulness that acknowledges sin as virtue to the one whom motherly service is invoked.


This you have denied me. You have broken not only your Sanyasin vow of charitableness, but of pure thought and speech. You have tampered with unclean books & taught from them. [This was a reference to the "Tattvas" (see chapter eight).]


If a way has opened to you to heal the bodies of men thank God reverently and, while serving others, pray for the beginning of that child-like purity and love that shall redeem and regenerate your own soul. I charge you henceforth to offer yourself to no living soul as a religious teacher. This charge is to your own salvation, and the penalty one that will consume [illegible] of your being dedicated to the pure flame of Ram Krishna's life and teachings.


Renouncing your Sanyasin name, I can then in the spirit of truth receive you in all unchanged kindness and protection.[30]

This high-handed and devastating letter, which Kripananda did not answer, was the last in their long correspondence. Mrs. Bull continued to receive news of him from Martha Hamilton and continued to help him in indirect and covert ways, but her esteem and her personal kindness, which had meant so much to him, he had lost. He received the blow of her last letter in the first days of August, just around the time that Swamiji in Switzerland heard, as it were, his cry of pain and sent him his blessings. In his letter of August 8 to Goodwin Swamiji wrote in connection with Kripananda: "It is in the  nature of things that many should fall, that troubles should come, that tremendous difficulties should arise, that selfishness and all the other devils in the human heart should struggle hard when they are about to be driven out by the fire of spirituality. The road to the Good is the roughest and steepest in the universe. It is a wonder that so many succeed, no wonder that so many fall. Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.'[31]


On that roughest and steepest road in the universe, Kripananda was indeed stumbling at this period of his ascent, but there were also moments of accomplishment, and of these Swamiji took greater notice than he did of the falls. In its issue of September :12, 1896, the Brahmavadin published the first part of a four part article by Kripananda entitled "The Talmud: Its Ethics, Doctrines, and Sayings," which he may have sent on during his stay in Detroit. Reading the first installment, Swamiji would be highly pleased. On October 8 he would write to Miss Waldo from England: "I send you two letters one for Krip[ananda] the other for Abh[ayananda]. Kindly see that they reach them. K's article in the Brahmavadin has been magnificent:'[32]


4

From Zermatt, where Swamiji gathered a few Alpine flowers by the Monte Rosa glacier, the party traveled to Saas-Fee, another village in another of the steep lateral valleys of exceptional beauty that lead at right angles from the Rhone Valley deep into the northern slopes of the Valais (or Pennine) Alps. To get from Zermatt to Saas-Fee, the party had to return by train to Stalden and then backtrack by mule into the Saas Valley by a roughly parallel route. From a portion of a letter written by Swamiji to Mr. Sturdy it would appear that the party had at first intended to stay at Saas-Grund (or Saas im Grund), the largest village in the valley. This letter, which is undated but which is clearly Swamiji's first to Sturdy from the Grand Hotel at Saas-Fee, opens with the following heretofore unpublished words:


Blessed and beloved: I hope everything is going on very well with you. .

We have changed the Saas Grund Hotel and have come up a few thousand feet more to Saas-Fee and here we mean to rest a few weeks.[33]


(Swamiji was not good at figures. Saas-Fee is about 800 feet above Saas-Grund, which is itself only 5,125 feet above sea level.) Except for four hotels, Saas-Fee was a cluster of timbered chalets, nestled among glaciers and high snow peaks. "There is not a lovelier spot in Switzerland," a traveler wrote in 1856, "emerald meadows set in frosted silver; glaciers descending from the Alphubel and the Mischabelhorner.'[34]In the summer months gentle cows grazed on those emerald meadows, their cowbells chiming with the sound of peace.


Swamiji's stay of two weeks in Saas-Fee—from around August 4 to August 19—was, in respect to the rest he had so badly wanted, the highlight of his European tour. "I want to forget the world entirely at least for the next two months and practice hard. That is my rest,'[35]he had written to Mrs. Bull on July 25, a week or so before reaching the village,* and as though in response to that need, the party had been guided there.


One of the letters that most clearly bespoke his state of mind during the August days at Saas-Fee was written to Christina Greenstidel on August 5, shortly after his arrival. This letter has been published in Prabuddha Bharata, but it is given here in full, for through its words one can trace his soaring mood:


Blessed and beloved—Surrounded on all sides by eternal snow peaks, sitting on the grass in a beautiful wood—my thoughts go to those I love—so I write.


I am in Switzerland constantly on the move getting a much needed rest. It is a miniature Himalayas-and has the same effect of raising the mind up to the Self—and driving all earthly feelings & ties. I am intensely enjoying it.  I feel so so uplifted-— can not write but I wish you will have the same for ever—when your feet do not want as it were to touch *he material earth—when the soul finds itself floating as it were in an ocean of spirituality.


Prof Max Muller has written in the 19th Century an article on my Master—read it if you can August number. I hope you are enjoying this beautiful summer and are perfectly rested after hard work. My love to all—blessing to all

Yours ever with love & blessing[36]
Vivekananda


In this letter Swamiji also enclosed some Alpine flowers. Mentioning them in a postscript, he used almost the same words as to Kripananda, for Christina's life, too was, in its way, one of hardship and struggle. His flowers were a prayer that she would "attain spiritual hardihood amidst all the snows and ice of this life."


The published portion of Swamiji's letter to Sturdy, written most likely on August 4, also expressed his joy at the marvelous meadows and glaciers and woods:


I am reading a little, starving a good deal and practising a good deal more. The strolls in the woods are simply delicious. We are now situated under three huge glaciers and the scenery is very beautiful.


By the by, whatever scruples I may have had as to the Swiss-lake origin of the Aryans have been taken clean off my mind. The Swiss is a Tartar minus a pigtail.[37]


In a second unpublished portion of this same letter, Swamiji wrote of various mundane matters, his mind, perhaps by effort, brought to touch on them. They were not unimportant:

Did you hear anything from America? Is Fox still in London? Have you found a place [for the fall lectures] yet? Are you going on with your tapas also?


I will write your introduction to the Magazine by and by, you need not be anxious.

A letter from Mrs. I. Butler inviting me to their conference at Berne reached yesterday. I have just written to her accepting the invitation. Miss Muller and the Seviers send their love. My love to Mrs. Sturdy arid the other friends.[38]

On the morning of August 5 Swamiji received a cordial letter from Professor Max Muller, dated August 2, 1896, and written from Droitwick, a small town in Worcester County, England. It is given here in full:


Dear Swami Vivekananda,

I am glad that my article on Ramakrishna Paramahansa has appeared at last in the August number of the XIX Century. I should be glad to know whether on the whole you agree with what I have said. I hope, anyhow, that it may produce a good effect in England, and in other countries, too, for the XIX Cent. is very widely read.


I should like to know what your and Mr. Sturdy's plans are. You may have heard of a lady who offered to assist a Vedantic Journal in England with £1000. I wrote to say that I should always be glad to help, but that in order to live and to be really influential, a new Review would want more capital. You could not get the writers you want, unless you pay them what other Reviews pay; even then, it is a favour their writing for you, because they are more widely read in the old Reviews. I have watched the struggles of several Reviews in England, I am watching one now; and I am afraid it is useless to fight against the power of Mammon with any weapons but his own. It seems to me but yesterday [it was May 28, 1896] that I saw you at Oxford and today I see an account of your visit, sent from England to Madras, printed there [in the Brahmavadin], and now returned to England! Who would have believed that possible a hundred years ago. Thanks for all the kind things you say of me-— only wish I were younger and better able to help you. Studying Sanskrit fifty years ago was very different from what it is now; it was slow work, one had to make the tools oneself, before one could set to work. The time I had to spend on copying and collecting the Rig-Veda, and, still more, on editing Sayana's commentary, was very great. Now everything is ready at hand. The same with the Vedanta Sutras and the commentary. We have now excellent editions and translations. But I can assure you, when I began nearly 50 years ago, the first chapter of Sankara's commentary took me months, and even then I could not always find the thread of his argument. Deussen's translation and Thibaut's in the S.B.E. [Sacred Books of the East] will save students of the Vedanta years of hard work.


I think that a fuller account of Ramakrishna might be useful, if there are sufficient materials. Only, not everything that interests us and people in India will interest the English public. Even Ramakrishna's 'sayings' will have to be sifted so as to avoid offending the taste of readers in Europe.


I shall have to stay here for another fortnight; then hope to return to my quiet Asrama at Oxford.

Yours sincerely[39] 
F. Max Muller*


Receiving the above, Swamiji wrote to Mr. Sturdy on August 5, "A letter came this morning from Professor Max Muller telling me that the article on Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa has been published in The XIX Century August number.... You will see from his letter which I shall send you as soon as I have replied (after reading The XIX Century) that he is very much pleased with our movement and is ready to help it as much as he can.'[40]


In a postscript Swamiji encouraged Mr. Sturdy to start the "big magazine," in England, for which Max Muller promised help. "Some money can be raised in America," he wrote, "and we can keep the magazine all to ourselves at the same time. . . . 'A great tree is to be taken refuge in, when it has both fruits and shade. If, however, we do not get the fruit, who prevents our enjoyment of the shade?' So ought great attempts to be made, is the moral.'[41]


A few days later Swamiji received at Saas-Fee a copy of the Nineteenth Century and was much pleased with the Professor's article. "I have read Max Muller's article, which is a good one," he wrote to Alasinga on August 8, "considering that when he wrote it, six months ago, he had no material except Mazoomdar's leaflet. Now he writes me a long and nice letter offering to write a book on Shri Ramakrishna. I have already supplied him with much material, but a good deal more is needed from India.'[42]


Things looked promising. But of Max Muller there will be more to say later on.

While a part of Swamiji's mind may have been concerned with magazines and books and the course of his work in both India and the West, ninety-nine percent of it was, it would seem, immersed in the God-consciousness he so readily entered whenever the pressure of daily work was removed. A letter written to Goodwin on August 8 (a day on which he also wrote to Mr. Sturdy and Alasinga of practical matters) seems to have been written from just this side of samadhi.


I am much refreshed now. I look out of the window and see the huge glaciers just before me and feel that I am in the Himalayas. I am quite calm. My nerves have regained their accustomed strength; and little vexations like those you write of [from America], do not touch me at all. How shall I be disturbed by this child's play? The whole world is a mere child's play-preaching, teaching, and all included. "Know him to be the Sannyasin who neither hates nor desires." And what is there to be desired in this little mud-puddle of a world, with its ever-recurring misery, disease, and death? "He who has given up all desires, he alone is happy."


This rest, eternal, peaceful rest, I am catching a glimpse of now in this beautiful spot. "Having once known that the Atman alone, and nothing else, exists, desiring what, or for whose desire, shall you suffer misery about the body."

I feel as if I had my share of experience in what they call "work". I am finished, I am longing now to get out.[43]


Those who were with Swamiji at Saas-Fee were witness to his transcendent state of consciousness. One cannot do better here than to quote from the Life, which, in turn, quotes directly from, it must be, Mrs. Sevier.


A strange quiet obsessed him. He seemed far, far away from all worldly concerns.... Many times he walked silently on the mountain paths and his friends seemed to be caught up with him in a world of meditation and of peace. One of those who were with him in this wondrous fortnight says, "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!'[44]


And there was the morning that Swamiji, in gratitude and  devotion, offered (through Mrs. Sevier, lest his Hinduism cause offense) a handful of Alpine flowers at the feet of the Virgin Mary at a small mountain chapel—"For she, also," he said, "is the Mother.'[45]His life had just been miraculously saved on a path that for a stretch skirts a precipice above a mountain torrent. As he had walked along the edge of the precipice in contemplation and at some distance behind his companions, his alpenstock suddenly plunged into a hidden crevice; he lost his balance and, but for a miracle, would have fallen into the waters far below. It was on the way home that Swamiji made his offering—perhaps, as Swami Vidyatmananda suggests, at the Zur Hohen-Stiege, the largest and oldest of the small chapels along the way and, in the opinion of Samuel Butler, "of such extreme beauty—the great Fee glaciers showing through the open portico—that it is in itself worth a pilgrimage.'[46]


After two world-forgetting weeks in Saas-Fee, where, the Life recounts, "the Swami . . . was the silent meditating monk of old,[47] the party left, probably on August 20, for Lucerne. Again the road was hard and steep, and the way slow. The trip took at least two days, much of it by diligence, with a stopover at, very probably, the Rhone Glacier. Lucerne, a charming city in a beautiful and romantic setting of lake and stormy mountains, is in almost the exact center of Switzerland. There was much of interest to be seen in this old and historic town, and although Swamiji had a bad cold when he arrived, the party "took in" many of the famous sights, including the Lion of Lucerne, hewn out of living sandstone, and the Muhlenbrucke, the medieval covered bridge across the Reuss, with its interior paintings of the "Dance of Death"—a series of murals showing death in the form of a grinning skeleton snatching diverse people from the midst of their lives at inopportune moments—a theme popular in the Middle Ages. The party also took a day-long steamer ride on Lake Lucerne and made an excursion by mountain railway up the Rigi, then the most famous viewpoint in all of Switzerland.


But at this period of the trip Swamiji was not feeling well. To Sturdy he wrote from Lucerne on August 23, "I am suffering from a very bad cold indeed.... I have not yet been able to write even a line. I had not a moment's time even to read, climbing up hill and going down dale all the time. We will have to begin the march again in a few days.'[48] And to Mrs. Bull on the same day he declared his intention to retire from all work for good, indeed "to depart to return no more to this hell, this world. Even its religions and its variety is beginning to pall me," he wrote. "May Mother gather me soon to Herself never to come back any more. These works, and doing good, etc., are just a little exercise to cleanse the mind. I have enough of it. This world will be world ever and always.'[49]In this letter there was the same longing for freedom as in that of August 8 to Goodwin, but there was also a thunderous note. It was evidently in reference to this ominous mood that Goodwin would write from London on October 21 to Mrs. Bull, who had no doubt shown him Swamiji's letter, "Both Sturdy and the Seviers tell me Miss Muller 'treated Swami like a dog' in Switzerland. This will account for the fractious letter he sent you. He & the Seviers went to Germany alone.'[50]


It is indeed possible that Swamiji had lost patience with Miss Muller's "violent temper and overbearing conduct and her awfully vacillating mind,'[51] of which he was to warn Margaret Noble the following year. He had no reason or need to suffer Miss Muller or anyone or anything else in this world. "Who works?" he wrote in his letter of August 23 to Mrs. Bull, who had written to him about money in connection with the New York work, which she was at that time attempting to reorganize. "Whose work? There is no world. It is God Himself. In delusion we call [it] world. Neither I nor thou nor you—it is all He the Lord, all one. So I do not [want] anything [to do] about money matters [from] this time. It is your money. You spend it just as you like, and all blessings follow you.'[52]And in a postscript, which had to do with a Greenacre bulletin, the ill-advised wording of which implied  a possessive attitude in regard to his brother disciple, Swami Saradananda—an attitude insufferable to him—he wrote, "I am free, must always be free. I wish everyone to be free —free as the air. . . . I am as good as retired. I have played my part in the world.'[53]Not unnaturally, Mrs. Bull must have been alarmed and dismayed by Swamiji's scorn of all concern and mission, but one thinks that, unlike Goodwin, she was far too aware by now of the divine nature of his independence to have called it "fractious." .


Whether or not the thunderous side of Swamiji's mood was aggravated by Miss Muller's crankiness, she soon left the party. This was not, however, an abrupt departure. As early as August 8 Swamiji had written to Sturdy from Saas-Fee, "Miss Muller thinks that she will go away very soon to England. In that case I will not be able to go to Berne for that Purity Conference [to which a Mrs. I. Butler had invited him] as I have promised. Only if the Seviers consent to take me along, I will go to Kiel and write to you before.'[54] Professor Paul Deussen, the famed Sanskrit scholar, had previously written to Swamiji in London, inviting him and Mr. Sturdy to Kiel, an invitation that was confirmed by a telegram to Saas-Fee (Mr. Sturdy, as it happened, could not accept). And thus when Miss Muller left the travelers in the last week in August, Swamiji and the Seviers (who of course consented to take him along) went on to his engagement with Dr. Deussen.

5

From Lucerne onward the way was relatively easy; there was no more bouncing over rough and steep roads, no more climbing mountains on muleback. The travelling was now all by train or, for a stretch, by steamer up the Rhine. In his article "Vivekananda in Germany and Holland, 1896" Swami Vidyatmananda has provided us with the details of this trip,[55] some of which had not theretofore been recounted in the Life. We need not here go over the ground that has been so thoroughly and interestingly covered by him; rather, let us just quickly follow the trail to Kiel in broad leaps and bounds.

Lucerne to Schaffhausen on the Rhine in the northernmost corner of Switzerland was a half day's train trip from Lucerne, the most effortless journey since the party had left Geneva to plunge into the Alps almost exactly five weeks earlier. In Schaffhausen—a medieval city containing an ancient monastery (once Benedictine) and a thick-walled castle—the Alps were left behind. But here nature was still prodigally spectacular: the Falls of the Rhine, the grandest waterfall in Central Europe, roared over a sixty-foot limestone cliff about two miles downstream from the city. They were, to be sure, nothing in height and width compared with the falls of Niagara, which Swamiji had also seen, but they were far more beautiful in Switzerland's romantic style.

From Schaffhausen, where the party spent a full day, they crossed into Germany and thence north (via Stuttgart) to Heidelberg, a theatrically beautiful town in its own right and world-famed for its 600-year-old university. Rich with old-world, aristocratic glamour and ebullient with youthful joie de vivre, the university had, withal, an extremely high academic standard, which impressed Swamiji. During their day in Heidelberg, he and the Seviers not only visited the university, but also climbed up to the partly ruined castle that rose stalwart and imposing high above the river. They must also have walked through the streets of the old town, marveling at its strata of architectural styles—Gothic, renaissance, baroque.

Then on to the walled city of Coblenz on the Rhine, and from there (on September 1) by steamer to Cologne, sailing down the "lordly, lovely Rhine'[56]itself, passing vineyards and orchards, medieval towns and fairy-tale castles on high bluffs. It was a trip of sixty miles and, say, five hours.

Cologne (or Koln), an ancient city dating from Roman times, was more beautiful from afar for its many towers and spires than from within its gates. Of this city, from which the sweet-smelling eau de cologne gets its name, Coleridge wrote  in 1828 (and no reason to think things had changed by 1896): "In Koln, a town of monks and bones,/And pavement fang'd with murderous stones,/And rags and hags, and hideous wenches,/I counted two-and-seventy stenches.'[57]But making up for any number of murderous stones and stenches, was the famed Gothic cathedral, with its two towers and five naves, its high altar, dating from 1320, its even older bejeweled shrine of the Magi, its fourteenth-century stained-glass windows, its profusely carved Gothic choir stalls, and its rich art treasures. Here in this vast church, said to be the most magnificent of its kind in the world, Swamiji and the Seviers attended Mass.

According to Swami Vidyatmananda's reckoning, it was now September 3. The original plan had been to go directly from Cologne to Kiel, some 450 miles north, but Swamiji's engagement with Dr. Deussen was not until September 10. Thus there remained almost a full week in which to see more of Germany. The Seviers, always eager to serve Swamiji in every possible way, were ready to take him wherever he wanted to go. To travel with him anywhere and everywhere was a joy for them. "Every phase of human activity, and every department of knowledge had interest for Swamiji," Mrs. Sevier was later to write in connection with this European trip, "and his mental attitude of cheerfulness and kindness, combined with his fine intelligence and personal charm, made him the most delightful of travelling companions.'[58] They decided now to see Berlin and Dresden, and although both these cities would take them far out of their way, there might be just enough time, cutting it very thin, for this "detour."

On September 4 the party set out for Berlin, 360 miles and twelve hours by train east of Cologne. It was on this journey that Swamiji saw the prosperous, ambitious Germany of the north, which was beginning to flex its industrial and military muscles, in contrast to the devout, gracious, and home-loving Germany of the south. He was much impressed with Berlin. "Its wide streets, fine monuments and beautiful parks made him compare it favourably with Paris itself,'[59]says the Life, and from a practical point of view he may have done so, but not from an aesthetic one. Several years later he was to write in his Memoirs of European Travel, "After Paris there is no other city in the Western world; everywhere it is an imitation of Paris—or at least an attempt at it.... The Germans are constructing after the French fashion big houses and mansions, and placing big statues, equestrian figures, etc. on top of them. But on seeing a double-storeyed German building one is tempted to ask-—s it a dwelling house for men, or a stable for elephants and camels, while one mistakes a five-storeyed French stable for elephants and horses as a habitation for fairies: '[60]

But there was a great deal to see in the modern city of Berlin, the dynamic center of the great, stirring energy of the country. Thus they stayed through September 6, the Seviers taking him to "every place of historic and intellectual importance.'[61] But, now, if they went to Dresden, which was not en route to Kiel, but about a hundred miles in the opposite direction, and if they spent any time there at all, they would be late for the meeting with Deussen. "Professor Deussen will be expecting us," the Life quotes Swamiji as having said. "We must not defer our visit longer.'[62] So from Berlin the party proceeded directly to Kiel, 230 miles north on the Baltic Sea. They arrived on September 8, and took rooms at the Hotel Germania.

Sending word of their day-early arrival to Professor Deussen, they received in reply an invitation for breakfast the following morning. So on the morning of September, promptly at ten o'clock, Swamiji and the Seviers were cordially greeted by Dr. and Mrs. Deussen at their home at 39 Beselerallee, a substantial, two-story brick house set back from the street. According to Mrs. Sevier's account of the meeting between Swamiji and Dr. Deussen, the talk began almost at once when, after the preliminaries were over, the Professor directed his eyes to some volumes lying open on the table (probably as  a hungry man directs his eyes to bread) and turned the conversation to the books. They were off—he and Swamiji. And they did not stop talking for days—in Kiel, through Germany, Holland, across the North Sea, into England. A good deal of it was in Sanskrit, which Deussen (and of course Swamiji) could speak fluently. And those who listened to this flow of learning and of wisdom were almost as enthralled as were the two savants—at least when the talk was in English, as, in company, it often was.

After breakfast on that first day of September 9, Swamiji courteously began to take his leave. No! No! They must stay on for the mid-day dinner. After dinner, Swamiji again made a move to go. No! They must stay for tea, at which, it so happened, the birthday of the Deussens' little daughter, Erika, was being celebrated.

Dr. Paul Deussen was fifty-one years old and at the height of his powers when he and Swamiji met. Since 1889 he had been Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kiel. His German translation of the Vedanta Sutras with Sankara's Commentary had been published in 1887 and was one of the great pioneer works of Sanskrit scholarship, as Max Muller had mentioned in his letter of August 2, 1896, to Swamiji. Deussen had also written, among many other works, Systems of the Vedanta and Aelgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie ("General History of Philosophy"), portions of both of which had appeared in English translation in the Brahmavadin.* In 1897 his monumental translation of Sixty Upanishads was to be published, and it seems very probable that he and Swamiji discussed some of the knotty problems which peppered this huge work. Indeed, as Mrs. Sevier recalled, "The Swami interested himself in some translations Dr. Deussen was making, and a discussion arose on the precise signification and correct understanding of various obscure passages. The former pointed out that clearness of definition was of primary, and elegance of diction of very secondary importance. The vigorous and lucid interpretations given by the Oriental exegeticist [that is, Swamiji] with such firmness of conviction, and yet such delicacy of perception, eventually quite won over the German savant.'[63]

Paul Deussen had learned Sanskrit the hard way—indeed there was no other way to learn it in the Europe of his youth, despite the fact that Max Muller had blazed the trail before him, as had his own teacher, Professor Christian Lassen. Nevertheless, as Swamiji wrote in his essay on Deussen, "It was long, up-hill work—this learning of Sanskrit; with him, too, it was the same world-old story of successful scholars and their hard work, their privations and their indomitable energy— and also the same glorious conclusion of a really heroic achievement. He thus achieved success; and now—not only Europe but all India knows this man, Paul Deussen.'[64] The thing that most delighted Swamiji was that Deussen was not merely a Sanskrit scholar but a man of insight into and love for the profundity of the texts he labored over. "I have seen professors of Sanskrit in America and in Europe," he wrote. "Some of them are very sympathetic towards Vedantic thought. I admire their intellectual acumen and their lives of unselfish labour. But Paul Deussen . . . and the veteran Max Muller, have impressed me as being the truest friends of India and Indian thought.'[65]

Max Muller himself looked upon Paul Deussen as his heir and successor. In December of 1899, the older scholar wrote to the younger: "I have received lately many letters and papers from India. The Vedanta is working there too, and when I am gone a heavy burden will fall on your shoulders. It will mean not only to make the Vedanta intelligible to Europeans but also to Indians. They possess everything in the Vedanta, but they do not know it, and millions of souls have to be taken into account there. The Alexandrian-Christian philosophy is understood by the Indians, but they would like to derive it as self-developed from the Vedanta. Well, the thing is not impossible, if only we could find facts.... Here in Oxford I have once more been violently attacked as a heretic. Woe to him who is not a heretic, who does not choose for himself!'[66]

Deussen was a satisfactory heretic, more boldly so, perhaps, than Max Muller himself "Deussen is certainly the freest among the scholars in the expression of his opinion about the Vedanta," Swamiji wrote. "He never stops to think about the 'What they would say' of the vast majority of scholars.'[67]"He is what I should call 'a roaring Advaitist,' " Swamiji wrote to Mr. Sturdy. "No compromise with anything else. 'Ishwara' is his bugbear. He would have none of it if he could.'[68] Professor Deussen was, in fact, first a philosopher and only second a Sanskritist. Above all, he was a lover of knowledge in the realm of ideas and sought truth through the medium of every tongue. In addition to Sanskrit and German, he knew Russian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic. As a young man, his whole mind had been given to study—and his heart as well; he did not marry until he was forty-five.

In November of 1892, he and his wife took a trip to India, where they stayed for four or five months. Being German, they were not self-limited by the arrogance of a conquering people, and were, as well, especially endowed with an understanding of the best of India's thought and culture; thus they enjoyed their visit to the full. Not only could Dr. Deussen speak Sanskrit and English, but he quickly picked up some Hindi; thus equipped, he talked to his heart's content to open-hearted pandits and plunged ever deeper into the bottomless treasure-house of Sanskrit texts. Mrs. Deussen, who also spoke English, was herself not at a loss in India. The country was, in fact, one of the topics of conversation that engrossed the Deussens, Swamiji, and the Seviers on that wonderful day of September 9, the Deussens no doubt relating their experiences, telling of many incidents, charming scenes, and gracious customs; but they saddened Swamiji, perhaps, by their dismay at his motherland's desperate poverty, written all too clearly in the out-stretched hands of hungry children. And so the talk went on. There seemed to have been only one interruption—itself of interest. This occurred when Swamiji, perhaps during a lull, was looking into a book of poetry. The Professor, wanting to draw him back into the conversation, spoke to him, but received no response; Swamiji continued to turn the pages. Later on, when he came to know of this seeming discourtesy, he apologized for it, explaining to the Professor that he had been so absorbed in reading that he had heard nothing. This was, indeed, not the first time, nor would it be the last, that Swamiji's mind, focused in a single, steady beam on some matter at hand, was deaf to a friend's word or call. Like others before and after him, Professor Deussen was at first incredulous and later (when Swamiji recited from memory long passages from whatever he had been reading) astounded. Thereupon, the conversation turned to the subject of concentration, which, to quote from the Life, was "practiced by the Indian Yogi with so much perfection that, the Swami said from personal knowledge, in that state he would be unconscious even if a piece of burning charcoal were placed on his body. The Professor remarked that he could now easily believe that.'[69]

After tea, the Deussens insisted upon taking Swamiji and the Seviers to an exhibition of German arts and industries then being held in Kiel. It was only after a light supper together that the day ended.

The next day, Thursday, September 10, was given over to sightseeing in and around the city, the Deussens conducting the tour. Two of the most notable sights at that time were the Kiel Harbour, the chief naval port of Germany, and the entrance (or exit) to the great Kiel Canal, then recently completed, which runs from the North Sea to the Baltic. The fascinating talk very likely went on during this day of excursions, and when Swamiji spoke of starting the following day for London, the Professor understandably objected. What more congenial place for exchange of knowledge and ideas between these two richly stocked minds than the Professor's richly stocked library! But Swamiji's work awaited him; thus all there was for it, if the conversation was to continue, was that Dr. Deussen accompany Swamiji to England.

On September 11 Swamiji and the Seviers left Kiel for Hamburg, and thence on to Bremen, where Professor Deussen joined them.* From Bremen they all went to Amsterdam and spent three days there, sightseeing. From Amsterdam they went by train the short distance to the Hook of Holland and from there, on the night of Wednesday, September 16, made "a most unpleasant'[70]voyage across the rough North Sea to Harwich on the coast of England. At Harwich, early on the morning of September I7, they entrained for London, where they arrived at the Liverpool Street Station at 8.45 A.M.

Deussen obviously enjoyed Swamiji's company, but he seems to have had small understanding of his spiritual attainment and status. In his autobiography, Mein Leben, he wrote an account of his meeting with him that reveals a good deal more of himself than of his subject, whom he judged by the familiar Protestant Christian concept of a holy man—dry, pale, half starved, and constantly fighting temptation. The unattached merriment of the ever-free baffled him. Recalling his days with the "Indian saint," Deussen adopted a patronizing and would-be humorous tone, which ill-repaid Swamiji's friendship, and related almost nothing of interest. What one finds interesting today in connection with Deussen's account is that Swamiji met this cordial but worldly-eyed man on his own ground of philosophy and scholarship and, seeing greatness in him, took pleasure in his company. One also finds that despite the bad cold he had had in Lucerne, Swamiji's vacation, particularly his two weeks of meditation and austerity at Saas-Fee, had done him much good. Deussen wrote:

The 9th of September, 1896, the second birthday of Erika, brought us also a special surprise, the visit of Swami Vivekananda, accompanied by Captain and Mrs. Sevier. People had brought this Swami to the Chicago exposition as a sample of an Indian saint; there two friends of India, Miss Muller and Mr. Sturdy, had caused him to come to London, there to give some lectures on Vedanta. Later they had sent him to Switzerland so that he might relax, from where, after he had asked in advance if I would be at home, he had arrived on September 9 with the Seviers. I showed them what there was to see in Kiel and suggested that they spend a day in Hamburg, following which I joined them at Bremen, from which we left together for England. On the 12th of September the four of us went from Bremen to Amsterdam.

Following the English custom, my companions had a great quantity of baggage. We engaged a porter to conduct us to a big hotel across from the railroad station. Since my companions spoke no Dutch nor any German, it was I who did the negotiations. I asked for two single bedrooms, plus a double room for the couple. But nothing was available except two rooms, each having two beds, and since it was not easy, with all that baggage, to change hotels, I was forced, for good or bad, to share one of the bedrooms with our brown brother from the East, and that not without some apprehension, as the memory of Indian ways that I retained from my trip to India was still vivid.

No sooner had I gone into the room with the holy man to go to sleep than the first thing he did was to light a short English pipe. I could see no solution other than to open the door and window and give him a little lecture on how bad it is for the health to sleep in a room full of smoke.

He spoke Sanskrit very well and English equally well, was lively and clever by nature, was somewhat impetuous in character, a young man abounding with health, with full red cheeks, very different from our conception of a saint.

Deussen went on to speak disparagingly of Swamiji in what he no doubt thought was a perceptive and jocular way. Unfortunately, as already mentioned, his comments and innuendoes came across as crude and obtuse betrayals of Swamiji's friendship, and this being the case, there seems no purpose in recording them here. Swamiji could not have read Deussen's reflections upon him, for Mien Leben was not published until 1922; thus he was spared any hurt he may have felt. Very likely, however, he would only have laughed. Did he not well know that the worldly mind views everything—high, low, and in between—with worldly eyes? Important were the professor's scholarship and affability. Deussen concluded his memoirs of his young Indian friend factually and innocuously:

The next day we visited the Royal Museum, went to the Hook of Holland, and embarked for England. In England we lived separately but met every day and did many things together. Vivekananda introduced me to his protectors, Mr. Sturdy and Miss Muller, whom I found interesting.[71]

Swamiji, for his part, had only kind, impersonal things to say of his friend.

It will always be among the most pleasing episodes in my life [he wrote]—my first visit to this ardent Vedantist at Kiel, his gentle wife who travelled with him in India, and his little daughter, the darling of his heart,—and our travelling together through Germany and Holland to London, and the pleasant meetings we had in and about London.[72]


The daily meetings in and about London with Deussen were  pleasant indeed. To Miss MacLeod Swamiji wrote on October 7 from Wimbledon, "I enjoyed Switzerland immensely, also Germany. Prof. Deussen was very kind—we came together to London and had great fun here. Prof. Max Miiller is very, very friendly too. In all," he added, "the English work is becoming solid—and respectable too, seeing that great scholars are sympathising.'[73]


Before concluding this chapter, let us turn again to the other renowned Sanskritist friend of Swamiji's. As we have seen earlier, in Saas-Fee Swamiji received a warm letter from Max Muller, dated August 2. The Professor wrote to Swamiji again the following month. Although this second letter is not available, it left its trail in a note Swamiji wrote to Mr. Sturdy, probably on Thursday, October 8:* "I forgot to tell you in the morning that Prof. Max Muller also offered in his letter to me to do everything he can if I go to lecture at Oxford: '[74]


We know very little about Swamiji's proposed lectures at Oxford, except that he had fully intended to give them. In a letter to Alasinga, he wrote early in October, "Max Muller is getting very friendly. I am soon going to deliver two lectures at Oxford.[75] Further information comes from a letter written by Professor Max Miiller to Mr. Sturdy on October 16:


I look forward with great pleasure to hearing Vivekananda lecture here. But I am sorry I cannot do what you wish and preside. During all the years I have been at Oxford, since 1847, I have never presided at any Meeting, and if Dr. Drummond lets you have a room in his College, it is he or Prof. Carpenter who ought to preside, not I. I have heard nothing as yet from Prof. [J. Estlin] Carpenter, but shall try to see him and arrange matters with him.[76]


But that is all. The next one hears, Professor Max Muller is writing to Sturdy on November 28 to ask "Is Vivekananda still in England?" And in this same letter inquires: "Has Vivekananda given up his idea of lecturing at Oxford? I was sorry to have to decline taking the chair at Manchester College. But during the 50 years I have spent at Oxford, I have never taken the chair and I could not have done so without giving offence. The head of each College is the right person to take the Chair in his own College.[77]


Why Swamiji changed his mind about lecturing at Oxford we do not know. We can, however, be fairly certain that Professor J. Estlin Carpenter, who is mentioned in Max Muller's letter of October 16, would have been willing to preside. Although the Professor (it was said) had been among those clergymen sharply and unfairly critical of Swamiji during his years in America,* he had evidently changed his views. In the Inquirer, a Unitarian paper of London, the following article, signed by Professor Carpenter, appeared on August 15, 1896. It read in part:


. . . The same indefatigable scholar [Max Muller] has sketched for us in the current number of the Nineteenth Century a modern figure of singular interest, the late Ramakrishna Paramahansa who so deeply influenced Keshab Chunder Sen in the last stage of his career, and died after him, near Calcutta in 1886. He did not belong to any of the orthodox Hindu sects, but came nearest, perhaps, to the teaching of the Vedanta. He represents that tendency, planted so deep in the Hindu mind, towards spiritual abstraction which enabled him to accept the doctrines and practise the usages of each religious cult in turn. His disciples have carried his teachings over India, and one of them Vivekananda, has been recently in this country. The philosophical and religious addresses of this remarkable personality, who produced a great effect at the Chicago Parliament of Religions, have been. issued in three little volumes (Simpkin, Marshall and Co.; eighteen pence each), well worth the  study of all who are interested in the present developments of religion in India. They are reprinted from shorthand reports with very slight modifications. The Swami speaks, as I had the good fortune to hear at the annual meeting of the Free Religious Association at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in August, 1894, in perfect English, with that mastery over both matter and form which comes of long meditation and possession of his subject. One series is entitled "Karma Yoga, or the Realisation of the Divine through Works performed without attachment." The second ascends higher and expounds the principles of "Bhakti Yoga, or the Realisation of the Divine through Love"; while the third presents the "Ideal of a Universal Religion". The perennial problems of the meaning of the world and life are here presented in the light of the highest Hindu philosophy. The preacher stands outside all parties. He does not attempt, like Keshub Chunder Sen or Protap Chunder Mozoomdar, to reckon with Christ or Christianity as living forces. He is not concerned with historic institutions. The essence of religion for him lies in yoga,—union between God and man,—which must be based on the harmonious activity of all man's powers. How to achieve it, what discipline of reason and will, of unselfish labour, of spiritual affection, is needed for the soul that would know itself in God,—this is set forth with much earnestness in these discourses. Whatever message we may have to send to India, we must not ignore the insight of its own seers.


Professor Max Muller corresponded with Mr. Sturdy in November and December of 1896 and January and February of 189'7.* These letters concerned the material sent to the Professor from India for his proposed book on Sri Ramakrishna. He was not altogether satisfied with it. "Tell (Vivekananda)," he wrote in his letter of November 28, "that a collection of Ramakrishna's sayings that I have received from N. Ramakrishnananda Alumbasa [Swami Ramakriahnananda, Alambazar] are the same as those published in the Brahmavadin. What I want to know is whether there are any more, and whether there are any more fully developed, and not mere aphorisms.'[78]


On December 8, he wrote again to Sturdy in this connection: "I have tried to arrange some of Ramakrishna's utterances. If you have a copy of the Brahmavadin to spare, it will be useful. I wonder who has put these sentences into Sanskrit.'[79] Mr. Sturdy informed him that it was Swamiji's Gurubhai Ramakrishnananda who had done so. Whereupon, the Professor wrote: "Are you quite certain that Ramakrishna put these sayings into Sanskrit verse? I was assured that he was quite unable to do so. I think Vivekananda himself told me so.'[80] Then, on being set straight: "The Sanskrit translation is very good—I did not know the meaning of Guruthai [Gurubhai].'[81]


That point cleared up, the Professor continued with his work of "trying to make a complete collection of Sri Ramakrishna's sayings,'[82]from both Swami Ramakrishnananda's manuscript and the Brahmavadin, which, since its first issue, had been running a collection of the Master's Sayings.* In February of 1897, the cold and damp of England caused the Professor to flee to Italy. By this time, however, he had completed his collection of the Sayings and had indexed them.


Meanwhile, Max Muller's Nineteenth Century article on Sri Ramakrishna had been bitterly criticized by both the Christian missionaries and the Brahmo Samajists. In Swamiji's words of a later date:


When Professor Max Muller, who occupies in the West the first rank in the field of Indian religion, philosophy, and literature, published with a devoted heart a short sketch of Shri Ramakrishna's life, in the Nineteenth Century, for the benefit of Europeans and Americans, it is needless to say that a bitter feeling of burning rancour made its appearance amongst [the Christian missionaries and certain members of the Brahmo Samaj]. By improper representation of the Hindu gods and goddesses, the Christian missionaries were trying with all their heart and soul to prove that really religious men could never be produced from among their worshippers; but like a straw before a tidal wave, that attempt was swept away; while that class of our countrymen alluded to above, which set itself to devise means for quenching the great fire of the rapidly spreading power of Shri Ramakrishna, seeing all its efforts futile, has yielded to despair.... Of course, from both sides, unintermittent volleys of fierce attack were opened on the aged Professor's devoted head.[83]


Swamiji went on to say that the Professor faced these attacks with dignity, "and to stop the empty shouts of his inferior opponents, he has published, by way of a warning to them, the book, Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings.'[84]


The book was published in November of 1898. One hundred and three of its two hundred pages were devoted to the Sayings and their Index. The remainder dealt with India's spiritual traditions, some of her modern saints, the life of Sri Ramakrishna, and a strong reply to Pratap Chandra Mazumdar's charges against Sri Ramakrishna—uch as that he declined to live a married life, used strong language, and so on.


But there was one flaw that ran like a crack throughout the main burden of the book. The good Professor was a scholar with a reputation at stake. He was not about to give his critics the least opening for attack. He proceeded with the utmost caution and, to be on the safe side, threw the blame for any possible mistake or misjudgment upon Swamiji. He did this in the name of scholarship. But let us quote from his book itself Introducing his main subject, the life of Sri Ramakrishna, he wrote:


. . . We possess indeed full accounts of his life, but they  are often so strangely exaggerated, nay so contradictory, that it seemed almost hopeless to form a correct and true idea of his earthly career and his character. I applied therefore to one of his most eminent pupils, Vivekananda, asking him to write down for me what he could tell of his own knowledge of his venerable teacher, and I received from him a full description of his Master's life. It will be easily seen, however, that even this account is not quite free from traditional elements. If I give it as much as possible unaltered, I have a reason for it. Such as it is, it will give us an insight into the way in which a new religion, or rather a new sect, springs up and grows. It will place before our eyes the transformation which mere repetition, conversation, or what is called oral tradition will and must produce in the description of the facts as they really happened. We can watch here what is really a kind of Dialectic Process which is at work in all history, both ancient and modern.... There is hardly a single fact in history which can escape being modified by this process [which he also calls the Dialogic Process] before it reaches the writer of history.... How can we ever hope to escape from the transforming power of oral tradition? The changes wrought by that power are of course more or less violent according to circumstances; entirely absent, I believe, they never are. And nowhere are they more evident than in the accounts which have reached us of the founding of new religions and of their founders.... It is for this very reason, and because this process can be so seldom watched, but can generally be traced in its later results only, that even this slight sketch of what a disciple of Ramakrishna, with every wish to be truthful, can tell us of his master, may be of some interest to ourselves both for its own sake and for the light which it throws on the conditions under which every religion has to grow up and to be recorded....


I had made it as clear as possible to Vivekananda that the accounts hitherto published of his Master, however edifying they might be to his followers, would sound perfectly absurd to European students, that stories of miraculous events in childhood, of apparitions of goddess (devi) communicating to the Sannyasin a knowledge of languages and literature which, as we know, he never possessed in real life, would simply be thrown away on us poor unbelievers, and that descriptions of miracles performed by the Saint, however well authenticated, would produce the very opposite effect of what they were intended for. Vivekananda himself is a man who knows England and America well, and perfectly understood what I meant. Yet even his unvarnished description of his Master discloses here and there the clear traces of what I call the Dialogic Process, and the impressible miraculising tendencies of devoted disciples. And I am really glad that it does so, if only it helps to teach us that no historian can ever pretend to do more than to show us what a man or a fact seemed to be to him or to the authorities whom he has to follow, and not what he or it actually was.[85]


While Professor Max Muller attended well to the Dialogic Process, he seems to have given little importance to the logical process. He argued in a circle: the Dialogic Process was inevitable and particularly evident among religious devotees; therefore the actual facts of the life of Sri Ramakrishna were necessarily distorted by Swami Vivekananda's well-intentioned narrative of them; therefore his narrative serves as an excellent example of the process, demonstrating its inevitable influence. To make his point, the Professor here and there interjected a parenthetical remark in the story of Sri Ramakrishna's life, indicating the disciple's unconscious apotheosis of his Master. In connection, for example, with the instances in which people experienced samadhi at the touch of the Master, the  Professor makes the aside: "(evidently cases of hypnosis)." On the other hand, as already mentioned, he boldly contested Pratap Chandra Mazumdar's criticisms of Sri Ramakrishna, seeing in them a Dialogic Process of another kind. As for the Sayings, of which he gave 395, he states that he himself found some of them "insipid, in bad taste, or even blasphemous," but included all such in the interest of historic truth.


Swamiji's admiration for Max Muller and for his life-long work did not diminish. He excused the human weakness of the venerable Professor; yet one cannot but suppose that it saddened him. In his long review of Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings, which he wrote for the Udbodhan of March 4, 1899, it is clear that in some respects neither the book nor the man had come up to his expectations. A few passages from the English translation as published in volume four of the Complete Works read:


There are certain great souls in the West who sincerely desire the good of India, but we are not aware whether Europe can point out another well-wisher of India who feels more for India's well-being than Professor Max Muller. Not only is Max Muller a well-wisher of India, but he has also a strong faith in Indian philosophy and Indian religion. That Advaitism is the highest discovery in the domain of religion, the Professor has many times publicly admitted.... Still, as a worldly man, whoever he may be, he has to look to all sides and conduct himself accordingly. When, after a complete surrender of all worldly interests, even the Sannyasin, when performing any practices which he knows to be purest in themselves, is seen to shiver in fear of public opinion, . . . what wonder then that the man of the world who is universally honoured and is ever anxious not to incur the displeasure of society will have to be very cautious in ventilating the views which he personally cherishes. It is not a fact that the Professor is an utter disbeliever in such subjects as the mysterious psychic powers of the Yogis.


It is not many years since Professor Max Muller "felt called upon to say a few words on certain religious movements now going on in India—which has often and not unjustly been called a country of philosophers"—which seemed to him "to have been very much misrepresented and misunderstood at home." In order to remove such misconceptions . . . Professor Max Muller presented Shri Ramakrishna's life to the learned European public in an article entitled "A Real Mahatman," which appeared in The Nineteenth Century in the August number, 1896.[86]


Swamiji went on to speak of the "volley of fierce attacks [that] were opened on the aged Professor's devoted head" and of his reply in the form of his book, in which "he has collected more complete information and given a fuller account of his [Shri Ramakrishna's] life and utterances. " He then continued:


The Professor greatly fears lest the Dialogic Process— the transformation produced in the description of the facts as they really happened, by too much favourableness or unfavourableness of the narrator towards them—which is invariably at work in all history as a matter of inevitable course, also influences this present sketch of [Shri Ramakrishna's] life. Hence his unusual carefulness about the collection of facts. The present writer is an insignificant servant of Shri Ramakrishna. Though the materials gathered by him for Ramakrishna's life have been well pounded in the mortar of the Professor's logic and impartial judgement, still he (Max Muller) has not omitted to add that there may be possible "traces of what I call the Dialogic Process and the irrepressible miraculising tendencies of devoted disciples", even in "his [Swamiji's] unvarnished description of his Master".... Shri Ramakrishna's life is presented in the book in very brief and simple language. In this life, every word of the wary historian is weighed, as it were, before being put on paper; those sparks of fire, which are seen here and there to shoot forth in the article "A Real Mahatman," are, this time, held in with the greatest care. The Professor's boat is here plying between the Scylla of the Christian missionaries on the one hand, and the Charybdis of the tumultuous Brahmos on the other.[87]


Swamiji then highly praised the Professor for having replied to "the many hard words and many carping remarks" of his critics, removing "with a sober, dignified, not the least malignant, yet firm and thundering voice worthy of the aged scholar . . . the charges that were levelled against some of the out-of the-common ideas of the great-souled sage [Sri Ramakrishna]—swelling forth from a heart too deep for ordinary grasp.'[88]


After himself saying a thundering thing or two about these charges, Swamiji praises the Professor's collection of Sayings as a whole. "That those sayings have attracted the attention of many of the English-speaking readers throughout the world, can be easily inferred from the rapid sales of the book.'[89]Indeed, the book was well received and widely read, helping, as was said, to bring "to the notice of the Western world the life, character, and teachings of one of the greatest Vedantic teachers of modern times.'[90] And so it did. But while Swamiji never lost his high regard for Max Muller, his earlier unalloyed, almost childlike delight in the purity and integrity of the "silver-headed sage" whose "reverence for Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa [was] supreme," was tempered now with his knowledge of the Professor's care for public approval, for the sake of which he would on occasion sacrifice not only his friends but his own beliefs.*


How few people, on the human, everyday level of life, did not in one way or another disappoint Swamiji! Barring his brother disciples, one can count them on one's fingers-a calculation that he himself' certainly never made, so quickly and so totally did he excuse a fault or forgive a failure of understanding or of love—and yet, one cannot suppose that the wounds he sustained were not sometimes very deep.



ⓘ
[1] Swami Vidyatmananda, “Vivekananda in Switzerland, 1896,” Prabuddha Bharata, March 1973, 117-26; April 1973,184-92.
[2] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, August 5,1896, Sen Col.
[3] Life (isted.) 3 : 33.
[4] Hugh Merrick, Companion to the-Alps, p. 112.
[5] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, July 25,1896, Sen Col.
[6] Complete Works, 8 : 379.
[7] Swami Vidyatmananda, “Vivekananda in Switzerland” (sec ref. 1 above), pp. 125-26.
[8] Life (1st ed.) 3 : 36.
[9] Complete Works, 8 : 335. (The wording of this passage is from the original letter, Leg. Col.)
[10]  Life (1965), P-423-
[11] Swami Vivekananda to Swami Swarupananda, March, 1899, A. A.
[12].Complete Works, 5 : 435“3$-
[13].Prabuddha Bharata, January 1900; Brahmavadin, December 1899.
[14].Complete Works, 8 : 141.
[15].Complete Works., 8: 139-41.
[16].Prabuddha Bharata, June 1900, pp. 83-84.
[17].Swami Shraddhananda, The Story of an Epoch (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1982), p. 89. See also Life (1965), p. 702.
[18].Quoted in Udbodhan, 74 : 505; see also Life (1965), pp. 702-3.
[19].Complete Works, 6 : 368.
[20].Complete Works., 6 : 383.
[21].Baedeker's Touring Guides: Switzerland (New York: Macmillan Company, 1967) p. 289.
[22].Complete Works, 8 : 382.
[23].Complete Works., 8 : 385-86.
[24].Swami Kripananda to Sara Bull, July 17, 1896, SCB.
[25].Sara Bull to Swami Kripananda, undated draft, reply to above, SCB.
[26].Kripananda to Sara Bull, July 27, 1896, SCB.
[27].Martha Hamilton to Sara Bull, August 14, 1896, SCB.
[28].Kripananda to Sara Bull, July 27, 1896, SCB.
[29].Kripananda to Sara Bull, July 27, 1896, SCB.
[30].Sara Bull to “Leon Landsberg,” (Kripananda), August 1 or 2, 1896, draft, SCB.
[31].Complete Works, 8 : 383.
[32]. Swami Vivekananda to Sarah E. Waldo, October 8, 1896, Sen Col. (This letter is published in part in Complete Works, 6 : 376-77.)
[33].Complete Works, 8:380. (The quoted passage is from the original letter, A.A.)
[34].Vivien H. Green, The Swiss Alps, p. 152.
[35].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, July 25, 1896, Sen Col.
[36].Swami Vidyatmananda, op. cit. (see ref. 1 above), p. 186. (Swami Vivekananda’s letter to Sister Christine is from Sen Col.)
[37].Complete Works, 8 : 380.
[38].See ref. 33 above.
[39].F. Max Muller to Swami Vivekananda, August 2, 1896, courtesy of Swami Yatiswarananda.
[40].Complete Works, 8 : 380-81.
[41].Complete Works., 8 : 381.
[42].Complete Works., 5 : 112.    \
[43].Complete Works., 8 : 383-84.
[44]. Life (1965), p. 424; Life (1st ed.), 3:36.
[45].Life (1965), p. 425.
[46].Quoted in Vivian H. Green, op. cit. (see ref. 34 above), p. 152.
[47].Life (1965), p. 424-
[48].Complete Works, 5 : 113.
[49].Complete Works., 6:371. (The passage is quoted from the original letter, Sen Col.)
[50].J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, October 21, 1896, SCB.
[51].Complete Works, 7 : 512.
[52].See ref. 49 above.
[53].See ref. 49 above.
[54].Complete Works, 8 : 386.
[55].Swami Vidyatmananda, “Vivekananda in Germany and Holland, 1896,” P.B., March 1975, pp. 96-105, 109.
[56].From Thomas Campbell, “The Child and the Hind.”
[57].Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Cologne” (first published in Friendship's Offering, 1834).
[58].Life (1st ed.), 3 : 40.
[59].Life(1965),?- 426.
[60].Complete Works, 7 : 381-82.
[61].Life (1st ed.), 3 : 40.
[62].Life (1965), P- 426.
[63].Life (1st ed.) 3 : 43.
[64].Complete Works, 4 : 274.
[65].Complete Works, 4 : 274.
[66].The Life and Letters of the Right Honourable Friedrich Max Muller, p. 421.
[67].Complete Works, 4 : 277.
[68].Complete Works,., 8:388. (According to a typed copy of the original letter [Leg. Col.], the words that Swamiji wrote were “a roaring Advaitist,” not, as in the published letter, “a warring Advaitist.”)
[69].Life (isted.),3 -.45.
[70].Life (1965), p. 428.
[71].Paul Deussen, Mein Leben, pp. 305-6. The quoted passage was translated from the German by Swami Vidyatmananda.
[72].Complete Works, 4 : 274.
[73].Complete Works, 6 : 374.
[74].Complete Works,, 8 : 376. (The wording of this passage is from the original letter, Leg. Col.)
[75].Complete Works, 5 : 118.
[76].F. Max Muller to E. T. Sturdy, October 16, 1896, courtesy of Swami Yatiswarananda.
[77].F. Max Muller to E. T. Sturdy., November 28, 1896.
[78].F. Max Muller to E. T. Sturdy., November 28, 1896.
[79].F. Max Muller to E. T. Sturdy, December 8, 1896.
[80].F. Max Muller to E. T. Sturdy, December 9, 1896.
[81].F. Max Muller to E. T. Sturdy, December 14, 1896.
[82].F. Max Muller to E. T. Sturdy, December 14, 1896.
[83].Complete Works, 4 : 414-15.
[84].Complete Works., 4:415.
[85].F. Max Muller, Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings (1898 ed.), pp. 24-30 passim.
[86].Complete Works, 4 : 412-14 passim.
[87].Complete Works., 4 : 416-17.
[88].Complete Works, 4: 417.

[89] Complete Works 4:419  

[90] Quoted from S.P. Basu, Vivekananda O Samakaleen Bharat Varsha 2:141






↑ Contents

4.7 ENGLAND, FALL 1896 - I

Swamiji's vacation in Europe—the pure air of the Swiss Alps, the weeks of peace and meditation at Saas-Fee, the companionship of his fellow travelers, the good talks with Professor Paul Deussen—had done him much good. "I had a fine rest," he would write later to Miss Waldo of those two months.[1] And in a letter to Mary Hale, written on the day he arrived in England from the Continent—September I7: "One good it has done me—a few pounds of unnecessary adipose tissue have returned back to the gaseous state.'[2] From this letter we learn that Swamiji and Professor Deussen had traveled that same day from London to the suburb of Wimbledon, where Miss Henrietta Muller then lived*(1). "I am [going] to stop [with Miss Muller] for the rest of my stay in England,'[3]he wrote, informing Mary Hale of a plan no doubt made in Switzerland before Miss Muller left the party. That arrangement would not, however, prove to be convenient, and in two or three weeks he would move to the city.

*(1) It is interesting to note that although, according tc the Seviers, Miss Muller had "treated Swamiji like a dog" in Europe, he found it in his heart, as always, to forgive and forgive and forgive, and, in this instance to put a seal upon his forgiveness by accepting Mis Muller's invitation to be a guest in her Wimbledon home. Captain Sevier does not appear to have been so tolerant of Miss Muller's vagaries (see note to page 483, chapter I6). According to the Life (pages 428 and 4~9 in the ~965 edition), Swamiji went directly from the Liverpool Station in London to the Seviers' home in the northern suburb of Hampstead, where he is said to have stayed for a few days before going on to Wimbledon. I do not know what evidence there is for this, and since ther~ is good evidence that he and Professor Paul Deussen traveled from London to Wimbledon on the day oi their arrival in London-the evidence of Swamiji'' own words (Complete Works 8: 39~)-I have followec that line of history. (Later on, Swamiji may hav' spent a few days at the Seviers' flat in Hampstead. Or the night of October 7, he wrote a letter to Mis MacLeod from there.)

Meanwhile, he was not without good company in Wimbledon. Although Professor Deussen shortly went to stay with friends at St. John's Wood in London, the two men were often to meet and talk Sanskrit together**(2). Better still, there was Swamiji's 'brother disciple Swami Abhedananda, whom he had sent for when Swami Saradananda left for America. "For the present, I shall have Kali here," he had written to Swami Ramakrishnananda as early as June 24; "tell him to be ready.'[4]And on July 3, "Send Kali to England as soon as you get this letter.... Let there be no delay as in Sharat's [Swami Saradananda's] case, but let Kali come at once.'[5]

*(2) In his autobiography Mcin Leben Deussen wrote of this period: "In England we [Vivekananda and I] lived separately but met every day and did many things together. Vivekananda introduced me to his protectors, Mr. Sturdy and Miss Muller, whom I found interesting." (Translation, courtesy of Swami Vidyatmananda.)

There was no delay. Swami Abhedananda left India in early August, and one day—sometime later than September 17*(3)-—he suddenly appeared in Wimbledon. "By some mischance," Mr. Goodwin would later write to Mrs. Bull, "the Swami Abedananda was not met at the Docks, but found his way up to the city, & from there to Wimbledon alone. This will give you an idea of what he is.'[6]Indeed. It is, in fact, remarkable that Swami Abhedananda learned where Swamiji was, let alone how to find his way to Wimbledon. But find his way he did—not only to Wimbledon, but to Miss Muller's house, where, quite matter-of-factly perhaps, he knocked at her door. There he was—young (he would be thirty on October 2) and extraordinarily handsome with a beauty not of this earth—answering Swamiji's call. Swamiji must have been overjoyed to see him.

*(3) In a letter dated September I7, I896, Mr. Sturdy wrote to Mrs. Bull: "Abhedananda is on his way from India here, another gurubhai (brother) of Swami's."

During the next two weeks or so the two brother disciples surely talked for hours at a stretch; they also worked over the Sanskrit tomes that Swamiji had asked Swami Abhedananda to bring from India. "He will have to bring some books for me," he had written to Swami Ramakrishnananda in early July. "I have only got Rig-Veda Samhita. Ask him to bring the Yajur-Veda, Sama-Veda, Atharva-Samhita, as many of the Brahmanas as he can get, beginning with the Shatapatha, some of the Sutras, and Yaska's Nirukta.'[7] The Swami probably brought them all except, perhaps, the Atharva-Samhita; for one finds Swamiji asking Sturdy on what was probably October 8, "Have you written for the Atharva Veda Samhita edited by Sankara Panduranga?'[8]But in any case, there were, one would think, enough Samhitas, Brahmanas, and Sutras to keep the two Swamis happily occupied. Swamiji had once again started to write "something big on the Vedanta philosophy'[9]—a project he had long been considering but had never had time for. "The other Swami who is here is also helping me in writing by collecting passages from books as I direct," he wrote from Wimbledon to Mrs. Bull on October 8.[10] And to Alasinga from London, shortly after leaving  Wimbledon, "I am busy collecting passages from the various Vedas bearing on the Vedanta in its threefold aspect," and asked for "a [Sanskrit] book published in Mysore in Tamil characters comprising all the one hundred and eight Upanishads.'[11](In the event this book was not available in Devanagari characters, Swamiji planned to learn the Tamil alphabet.)

But even with piles of Sanskrit books to pore over, the two Swamis could not have spent all their time indoors at Wimbledon. Although the air was cold and brisk and the sky overcast that September of 1896, they must have often walked over the Common—an open area of almost one thousand acres that offered, as one contemporary writer put it, "the most glorious beauties, now on the wane [it being the fall of the year], of nature's ample munificence." In the expanse of the Common there was a deep and wide ravine that contained a woodland of hazel, beech, oak, and silver birch, a lovely lake named Queensmere, and a little brook that fed it. The town of Wimbledon was itself not unattractive, even in autumn. The streets of its upper-class residential district, which rose aristocratically on a hill above the railway station and the workmen's district, were shaded by red-and gold-leafed trees and lighted at night by what were even then antiquated oil lamps set on tall posts. The chestnut trees along High Street, where Miss Margaret Noble and her family lived, were laden with nuts, and the hedgerows in the lanes were red with berries. Miss Muller's rented house, Airlie Lodge, stood at the end of a one-block street named Ridgeway Gardens. It was a plain, medium-sized residence, detached from its neighbor by a narrow strip of land (now occupied by a garage), and except for its elfin name and its occupants that autumn of 1896, it was unremarkable, almost indistinguishable from the other houses on the block.

It is not unlikely that along that quiet street, where there was no through traffic, Swamiji again took up his attempt at bicycle riding, which he had begun in the spring at Pinkney's  Green. This time he was more successful. "Like a little child ", Swami Abhedananda wrote in his diary, "Swamiji eagerly learnt to ride a bike," and whether or not this process took place at Wimbledon, he became so proficient that in London, as Swami Abhedananda continued with perhaps some exaggeration, he "would go out bicycling every morning" with Mr. Sturdy and others.[12]

At the present time, we know of only two specific events that took place during Swamiji's stay at Airlie Lodge. One was an outing of which we learn only a little through a letter Swamiji wrote to John Fox, then still in London, who copied it out for Mr. Goodwin, then in America, who, in turn, copied it out for Miss MacLeod in a letter dated October 4. The end result read:

This is from a letter from Swami Vivekananda to Fox —“I will be very glad to see you, and am really anxious to see you before you start for U.S. Tomorrow Prof. Deussen, myself, Miss Muller and some other friends are going to have a little picnic at Hampton Court Castle Hotel at I2.30. You are very welcome. There you will meet us all. Deussen and we have become great friends; we travelled together from Germany to London.'[13]

(In his letter to Miss MacLeod, which contained the above passage, Mr. Goodwin commented: "The enclosed reference to the Swami and Prof. Deussen is very good news—for Deussen.")

Among the other friends who went on this "picnic" may have been the Seviers and Mr. Sturdy, the last of whom had moved with his wife and son from Caversham to London. (It is not probable that Mrs. Sturdy joined the party, for she was not overly fond of Swamiji or of Vedanta or of her husband's preoccupation with both*(4) Moreover, there was the baby Ambrose to attend.)

*(4) On November 4, I897, Swami Abhedananda would write to Swami Brahmananda from New York: "Mrs. Sturdy is dead [set] against Vedanta and Narendra;she gets upset at the very name of India. She has swallowed Mr. Sturdy and is always on her guard lest Sturdy becomes a Sannyasin and escapes" (Swami Abhedananada, Complete Works, IO: I46). For Mrs Sturdy's early animosity toward Swamiji see Complete Works, 7: 516.

Hampton Court Castle, the largest and most magnificent of all England’s royal palaces, had been built by Cardinal Wolsey in 1515 for his own use and ten years later prudently presented to Henry VIII, who had had an eye on it. From then on, up until the time of George II, the palace had been a royal residence, embellished and enlarged as time went by. About fifteen miles southwest of London near the Thames, it was a vast structure of various architectures, mainly Gothic, with towers, crenelated walls, great halls, in which hung fine paintings and tapestries, and various courts, including the one that contained Henry VIII’s marvellous astronomical clock. There were, as well, a moat, beautiful gardens, a vast deer park, and a maze that was easier to get into than out of. It is not conceivable that Swamiji and his friends would have lunched at the Hampton Court Castle Hotel without intending to see at least some parts of this famous and history-rich castle.

The second event that took place during Swamiji’s stay at Wimbledon and of which we have definite knowledge was a lecture he gave at Airlie Lodge to a gathering of the town’s residents. In the Life it is said that Swamiji delivered tow lectures at Miss Muller’s house during this period, but at the present time we have information of only one—almost certainly the second, given on October 6. The only Wimbledon paper that mentioned Swamiji’s lectures was the newborn Post, which came into existence on October 9, 1896. Its first issue carried the following article, the body of which can be found in volume one of the Complete Works, under the title “Vedanta as a factor in civilisation.” Quoted below are the first and last paragraphs of the Post’s write-up, which have been omitted from the Complete Works but which set the scene:

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDAS.
A Glimpse at Hindu Spiritualism.

By kind invitation of Miss Muller, some 30 or 40 residents,  nearly all ladies, gathered at Airlie-lodge, Ridgeway-gardens, on Tuesday afternoon, for the purpose of hearing an address by the Swami Vivekananda, a native of India, on the “Philosophy of the Vedas.” Mr. J.F. Schwann, J.P., presided, and in introducing the Swami, mentioned that Miss Muller, to whose kindness they were indebted for the discourse they were about to listen to, had been in India for some time and had interested herself very much in the religions of that country, and especially in the different branches of the Hindu belief. She accordingly took great interest in the course of lectures which the Swami had been giving in America and England, and he was sure they felt very grateful to her, for having placed her room at their disposal that afternoon. His own knowledge of the subject which was to be dealt with was exceedingly vague, and he expected it was the same with a great many of them.

The Swami then commenced his address, which, eloquent throughout, was listened to with greatest intentness and appreciation. [There followed the excerpt from Swamiji’s talk that appears in the Complete Works. The article then concluded:]

At the close of the address, Mr. Schwann cordially thanked the Swami, on behalf of all present, for the intellectual pleasure he had afforded them, and announced that he had expressed a desire to form some classes in Wimbledon. They would be free and meet at Airleie-lodge by the kindness of Mrs. [sic] Muller.

Accordingly to the probable date of this talk, it would have been, as noted above, the second of the two talks mentioned in the Life. Yet in subject matter it seems to have been an introduction and brief survey of the Vedantic philosophy. Swamiji spoke of the early search by the Vedic Aryans for God in the outside world of sense and matter, of their dissatisfaction with the concept of a monotheistic God, and of their turning inward to discover that “what we call the Absolute, the Universal Soul, the Self is the force by which from the beginning all things have been and are and will be manifested.'[14]

One of the remarkable parts of this lecture, of which we have only an excerpt, was its concluding paragraph. "The scientist," Swamiji said, "is brought to the necessity of recognising metaphysics when he supposes that atoms having neither breadth nor length yet become, when combined, the cause of extension, length, and breadth.'[15] He seems to have been speaking here of subatomic "particles" which indeed lie beyond sensory perception and have "neither length nor breadth," but which are yet the "stuff" of our solid three-dimensional world. When one considers that the existence of even the electron would not be established for another year, Swamiji's scientific knowledge—or was it prescience?—is astounding. "It is finally the mind," he went on to say, "which gives the form to all perception. When I see a chair, it is not the real chair external to my eye which I perceive but an external something plus the material image formed. Thus even the materialist is driven to metaphysics in the last extremity.'[16] Perhaps few scientists of the late nineteenth century would have agreed with Swamiji. But today in the late twentieth century physicists are beginning to point out striking parallels between their own mind-boggling discoveries and the equally stunning pronouncements of Eastern mysticism—parallels that Swamiji had struggled to express again and again with the inadequate scientific terminology of the nineteenth century, attempting to point out in the Newtonian language of his day the similarities between the concepts of Vedanta and the findings of a then unknown physics, which he clearly foresaw. The time was not far off when at least some of the truths that he was stating would be scientifically verified: relativity and quantum physics were just around the corner; but he could not wait; he went ahead, not only giving scientific support to Vedantic concepts but supplying the science of the future with a philosophy and religion it could accept.

On the night of October 6, the day Swamiji probably gave this lecture, he wrote to Sister Christine. His letter, heretofore unpublished, read in full:

Dear Christina
I am sure you got my letter from Switzerland.
I am now in London back after having travelled through Germany and Holland.
How things are going with you? Had you a nice summer?
How are you physically & spiritually? How is Mrs Fhunkey and all the other friends? Have you any news of Baby [Stella Campbell]? Where is Kr[ipananda] and what is he doing now?
I have another Sanyasin here over with me now, who will work here whilst I am away to India, where I go this winter.
I will write to you in extenso later, tonight it is so late and I am so weary

With all love and blessings 
Yours[17]
Vivekananda

The next day (October 7) Swamiji embarked upon his fall series of classes in London. But of these we shall speak later; let us first move to America, where the Vedanta movement was struggling to take form and from which Swamiji had received heartening accounts of Swami Saradananda's success as a lecturer. He had also, however, received some disturbing (or, at least, disturbed) news, which would lead him to ask Miss Waldo, in a letter of October 8, a startling question that was both a command and a sanction: "Why do you not begin to teach?" Thereby hangs a tale, which we can, I think, take time here to relate

2

It had been Mrs. Bull's suggestion in a letter to Mr. Goodwin that Swami Saradananda come to America from London to participate in the summer lecture courses at Greenacre, Maine*(5).' Goodwin replied to her on May 18: "I received your letter with reference to Greenacre this morning, & told the Swami [Saradananda] the contents. He asked me to speak to Mr Sturdy about it; he had rather an idea that Mr Sturdy might have some objection to his going as he had brought him to England. I spoke to Mr Sturdy at once, & after I had told him as I best could what Greenacre was, & the nature of the work, he was perfectly agreeable that he should go." "As to the cost of his passage," Goodwin continued, "it would seem from your letter that with the funds Miss Farmer has at her disposal & Mr. Flagg's offer this will be met. Mr Sturdy has offered to advance the cost, but the Swami Vivekananda, I think, would rather Mr Sturdy were not asked to do this. You will know which you consider the best plan.... I must ask you to excuse me for entering into the money question, but I think you would rather I told you as fully as possible the arrangement which would best please the Swami [Vivekananda].


*(5) For details regarding the summer sessions at Greenacre see Prophetic Mission - 2, chapter eleven, section two. In the summer of I896 Dr. Lewis G. Janes established and conducted the Monsalvat School of Comparative Religion, which was held during the month of August in conjunction with the Greenacre Lecture Conference under the "Lysekloster Pines"-- a pine grove named by Mrs. Bull after her home in Norway.

"Most undoubtedly the only plan is that the Swami Saradananda should be entirely under the care of Dr Janes. The Swami Viv. has the highest opinion of Dr Janes, both as regards his ability to make Swami Sar. comfortable, & as to his wisdom in the conduct of the work. I take it that the idea of his going to Greenacre is mainly to give the practical side of Raja Yoga —& for this an entire absence of contention, or of wirepulling would be necessary. I think he would be more likely to find this peaceful atmosphere with Dr Janes than with anyone else I have in my mind. And the Swami, you may take for granted, will advise his brother Swami to leave everything in the way of arrangements—everything barring the actual teaching—in the hands of Miss Farmer & Dr Janes.'[18]


Mr. Goodwin could not have hinted more pointedly that the officers and workers of the New York Vedanta Society should have no claim upon Swami Saradananda. Mr. William Flagg, a wealthy New Yorker who has entered this history earlier, had made his offer to pay for Swami Saradananda's passage to America through Miss Waldo, thus involving the Society. Whether or not Mrs. Bull understood Goodwin's message, Swami Saradananda's passage (some fifty dollars) was paid for entirely by Boston money, a circumstance that was later to have tactical import.


Sailing from England on June 27, the Swami and Mr. Goodwin, whom Swamiji sent along, arrived in New York on or about July 2. Earlier, Goodwin had written to Mrs. Bull in connection with their arrival in America, "I will bring [the Swami] direct to Boston without staying the night in New York. If it will be convenient to you & to your pleasure I will take him out to Cambridge. If not, he could stay with me until time for him to be handed over to Dr. Janes.'[19] We do not know, nor does it matter, whether or not Swami Saradananda was taken directly to Cambridge, but the part of Goodwin's plan that would spirit him through New York without so much as a nod to anyone there, was no doubt carried out as well as possible. From the very beginning, Mr. Goodwin was biased. Ever since the difference in opinion between the New York and the Boston people—specifically, between Miss Waldo and Mrs. Bull—regarding the publication of Swamiji's books and pamphlets, this dedicated young man, whose handlebar mustache and experience in the world, as well as his ability and intelligence, made him seem older and perhaps wiser than he was, had felt a certain animosity toward Miss Waldo and very likely toward other New York workers as well; accordingly, he had allied himself with Mrs. Bull. In April of 1896 he had been her house guest for ten days or so, and it was not unnatural that during that happy time he had become her assistant in connection with Swamiji's American work (Miss Waldo would have said "her tool").


But however that may have been, the next we learn is. that Swami Saradananda was at Greenacre, where he lectured on the afternoon of July 7 on "The Vedanta Philosophy." It was his first public lecture in the Western world—indeed, his first anywhere in the world—but Swamiji had prepared him for it by having him deliver talks to the little household at 63 St. George's Road. He passed his first test in America with flying colors. Two weeks or so later, after the Swami had held a number of classes at Greenacre, Goodwin wrote to the Brahmavadin of his success. This letter, dated July 23, 1896, appeared in the issue of August 29 and read in part:


The Swami Saradananda began his work on July 7th, with a lecture in which he gave a general presentation of the Vedanta, with the particulars of which I need not deal, excepting to add that he not only received a thoroughly sympathetic hearing for this, his first lecture in the West, but impressed people with the feeling that both from his manner, and the matter of his address, he had much to give them. The following day he began a series of classes on alternate weekdays in Raja-Yoga, to many who are systematically earnestly pursuing this method. From the theoretical instruction in Raja-Yoga, he next took up the subject of Karma-Yoga, in which he is now engaged, and this will be followed by Bhakti-Yoga, but the private instruction in Raja-Yoga will continue throughout the conference, which will last altogether for two months.[20]


Writing of Swami Saradananda to Mrs. Bull, John Fox, who had often talked with him in London, spoke of him with the affection so many felt for him in response to his calm warmth and understanding:


I like Saradananda very much. He is exceedingly kind and thoughtful of other people, very quiet and reserved usually, though not without humor. From his clearness in answering questions and readiness to help, I think he will succeed as a teacher, though he has done no such work as yet, [in London] at least.


Goodwin had been equally enthusiastic, informing Mrs. Bull that the new Swami was of a retiring, modest nature . . . but has evidently given his whole energies toward realisation, & I should say had made enviable progress on the way. He is an able Sanscrit scholar, speaks quite as good English as Swami V., & has a very intimate knowledge of the Vedanta as our Swami, altho in a combative sense probably he is not so strong. Raja Yoga however he is thoroughly competent to teach. He was with Swami V. for six years, & says he owes the greater part of his knowledge to him. He has been a Sanyassin about ten years.... To sum up, he is a good man, in the best sense of the word, & I find his presence & association with him, almost, if not quite, as helpful as I do that of the Swami Vivekananda. He will, I have not the least doubt, succeed in endearing himself to his class.[21]

The Swami did indeed endear himself to everyone in America—in Boston, Greenacre, and New York alike; he was himself so loving, he was inevitably loved. Today one knows Swami Saradananda best—if not entirely—as the first Secretary of the Ramakrishna Order, an indefatigable worker, imperturbably shouldering the immense responsibilities of his position, always compassionate, yet also stern and awesome in his spiritual greatness. He was the Holy Mother's attendant, or, as he humbly called himself, her "doorkeeper," upon whom she depended for everything; he was the author of the monumental book Sri Sri Ramakrishna Lilaprasanga (Sri Ramakrishna, the Great Master); he was one of the direct disciples whose names fill us with reverence. But in 1896, Swami Saradananda was barely thirty years old, retiring and modest, as Mr. Goodwin said, or, as Swamiji said, "with nothing of that pluck and go which I have . . . always dreamy and gentle and sweet! That won't do.'[22]But it did very well in America, where nothing disturbed him and where his very presence tended to bring peace. His photographs of that period show the serenity, purity, and selflessness of one who sees only the hand of God in every circumstance. And there were to be circumstances in America that would require that steady vision.


The trouble started with (but was not directly caused by) what can be called the Greenacre Circular. As we have noted more than once, Swamiji had placed Mrs. Bull in charge of the American work; she now attempted to reorganize it along lines that seemed to her to be workable and desirable. It was the New York work that she felt was most in need of a plan on the basis of which Swami Saradananda could conduct his teaching there and the Vedanta movement could grow. The existing organization—the Vedanta Society of which Miss Mary Phillips was secretary, Mr. Walter Goodyear, treasurer, and Miss Waldo, untitled but ever-present worker—was not, in fact, a particularly strong and cohesive group such as could support and promote the young Vedanta movement. There were no headquarters, no one to take full charge, and little cooperation. As Miss Waldo would write the following year to Swami Saradananda (who was then in Cambridge), the Committee that had come into being in New York in the early part of 1896 had not survived as an efficient body of workers. "I am afraid," she warned him, "you will have quite a hard problem to deal with in the matter of a Committee. And, Swami, it is not of the slightest earthly use to draw up any rules to govern such a Com. because any Com. needing rules to govern it w'd never follow those rules, if it had them. What we need, is to find a few people capable of governing themselves, & able to act together in harmony & love, not continually getting jealous of each other, or trying to outwit each other. Where such people are to be found, only Heaven knows! If the Lord does not send them to us, we must get along as best we can without a Com.'[23]


In the summer of 1896, Mrs. Bull, fully aware of the shaky state of affairs in New York, sought to set up some sort of workable arrangement. Accordingly, during the summer session at Greenacre she and Goodwin drew up and distributed a printed circular that outlined a new plan. Quietly and with apparent reasonableness, this plan, if implemented, would dissolve the New York Society altogether, substituting for it "co-operative work without an organization."


While it is true that Swamiji wanted as little organization as possible in his American work, it does not appear that he had been consulted about the details of the Circular; nor, for that matter, did he wish to be. On July 18 he had written to Mrs. Bull:

I received your last note duly—and you already know my gratitude and love for you and that I perfectly agree with most of your ideas and work....


. . . Everyone is independent to work as one likes. I don't bother my head about these little things at all. I can give ideas that is all, let people work them out any way they like and God speed to all.[24]


So Mrs. Bull had gone ahead on her own. The plan of work that she and Goodwin formulated was set forth in the undated Circular as follows:

SEASON 1896-7

It has been urged that at the conclusion of his work at Greenacre the Swami Saradananda shall meet the Swami Vivekananda's class in New York, and continue instruction in the Vedanta there, with the possible prospect of his visiting other centres in which the Swami Vivekananda has laid a foundation. In order that his work may be carried on to the best advantage, without loss of time, it is suggested that quarters shall be taken in  New York which shall serve as a permanent centre for the presentation of the Vedanta Philosophy. To effect this proposal your cooperation and help are invited.


The plan suggested is, briefly, as follows:

(1) That a four-roomed flat shall be secured at a probable rental of $500 per annum. Two of the rooms to be devoted to the use of the Swami Saradananda and his assistant when in New York, the remaining two to serve as a reading room and library.


(2) That a library be secured, the nucleus of which shall include standard publications in English of Vedic literature, Buddhism, Sankhya, the Sacred Books of the East, and the works of the leading Occidental Philosophers and Metaphysicians. We have reason to believe that a ready response will be made to an appeal for contributions of books of this nature.


(3) For the privilege of using this library and reading room, it is suggested that there shall be a nominal subscription of $1.00 per annum, which will further give members the right to attend—


(a) Fortnightly meetings for the reading and mutual discussion of the Vedanta Sutras and kindred books.

(b) Lectures in the alternate weeks by scholars of standing. It is hoped that a strong program of lecturers may be secured (where possible,) or of papers (where it would not be possible for the writer to attend in person.) Class teaching of the Vedanta to be given by qualified Sanscrit scholars only. These lectures to be open to the general public on admission fee of twenty-five cents.


It is expected that a considerable part of the necessary revenue will be met in the Following way:

From Subscribers                                                $100 00

Admission to the lectures and voluntary contri

butions at discussions, for the season            $100 00

Sale of the Swami Vivekananda's literature    $100 00

                                                                            -----------------

                                                                              $300 00 

This estimate leaves a balance to be met of $200.00. We may add that the personal service necessarily connected with such a library for certain hours of the day and evening, and for the assistance of the Swami Saradananda, for the season 1896-7 has been offered to and accepted by the Swami Vivekananda, and approved by Mr. Sturdy, in the person of Mr. J. J. Goodwin. If this co-operative plan appeals to a sufficient number of the friends of Swami Vivekananda resident in. New York and elsewhere, they are invited to correspond with Mr. Goodwin, who may be addressed as below. Mr. Goodwin's services at Greenacre have been most acceptable.


1f this plan meets with a sufficient response, Mr. Sturdy will be asked to extend the leave of absence, already so generously granted to Swami Saradananda from his London work for the benefit of the Greenacre School of Comparative Religions.


Sarah J. Farmer.

Lea Bull Vaughan.

Lewis G. Janes.

Emma C. Thursday.

Jehanghier D. Cola.

Annie A. Haines.

Keijiro Nakamura, Tokio,


Japan.

Sara G. Farwell.

M. L. Holbrook.

Francis Keefe.

Elizabeth L. Hamlen.

RuthEllis

Mary H. Whitwell.

L. L. Wight.

S. Ellen Waldo.

Sara C. Bull.

The undersigned, having heard the Swami Saradananda's expositions of the Vedanta Philosophy in the School of Comparative Religions at Greenacre, take pleasure in testifying to its clearness and value to all interested in the comparative study of religions. [There follows a list of seventeen names almost the same as those who had signed the proposed plan.]


P.S. It is proposed that those who wish shall be regarded as Associate members of the rooms spoken of in the circular herewith, and that they shall be entitled to correspondence relating to the Vedanta, and questions arising out of the Vedanta. If therefore there are any at the Greenacre Conference who wish to take this interest in the movement, I shall be glad to receive their names. We hope that the rooms will be taken and the library established from October 1st next, and those whose names are handed to me will be communicated with upon the subject in due course. An annual subscription of $1.00 is suggested.

J. J. Goodwin, Greenacre Inn.


Letters addressed to me, Care of Mr. W. Goodyear, 1418 Broadway, New York City, will find me after the close of this Conference.[25]


After distributing the Circular, Mr. Goodwin confirmed its promise of Swami Saradananda's presence in New York during the coming fall season by the following paragraph in his letter of July 23 to the Brahmavadin:


At the close of his [Greenacre] work here, (the Swami Saradananda] has arranged to meet the Swami Vivek-ananda's classes in New York, and to continue the latter's work there, and I have no doubt other work will be found for him. He has one object at heart, to assist and to develop the work of his Guru Bhai, and the unassuming and yet energetic manner in which he is doing his work is creating a profound impression.[26]


Things seemed propitious. "The Swami (Saradananda] invited a discussion of the New York plans," Goodwin wrote on August 21 from Greenacre to Mrs. Bull (who came and went, spending much of her time in her daughter's home in Sharon, Massachusetts), ". . . and I am glad to say he coincides thoroughly with the idea of keeping the rooms free entirely from intrusion—making them a small Mat[h]; in fact. He will support me in this & I think there will be no further difficulty in the matter.'[27] Very clearly, this had reference to Miss Waldo, who had been much in evidence, indeed indispensable, the previous year. As for Miss Waldo herself, she was attending the Greenacre Conference with her friends Ruth Ellis and Dr. Wight and had come to know and deeply appreciate Swami Saradananda; she was amenable therefore to any plan that would further his New York work and quite readily accepted Mr. Goodwin's assumption of authority .“Miss Waldo yesterday told me she wanted to talk to me about New York," Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull on August 29, during another of her absences from Greenacre. "She was prepared to work there at my direction or, if the work is not opened there, to help Abhayananda in Brooklyn. I told her I hoped she wd not neglect Abhayananda. It will probably solve that difficulty.'[28] And again on the same date, "Miss Waldo made a remark to me just now to the effect that she hoped I was going to have entire control of the New York Centre. If she remains in this idea I can make any steps I take to prevent the difficulties we were speaking of from occurring personal to myself, and in that way I think I can manage Miss Waldo.'[29]


Nor did Miss Mary Phillips, secretary of the New York Vedanta Society, object to Goodwin's control over the work. "We were pleased with the idea of having a permanent headquarters with Mr. G. in charge," she would write in retrospect a few months later to Mrs. Bull, "and spoke to everyone about his great interest in the work, and that he had stated that he was willing even to devote his personal earnings if needed to its maintenance, &c. &c.'[30]


In pursuance of the New York plan, Mrs. Bull wrote a long letter to Mr. and. Mrs. Leggett and Miss MacLeod, all three of whom were spending the summer at Ridgely Manor. Her letter, dated August 29, invited them to become associate members of the rooms and set forth in detail her ideas in regard to the way the American Vedanta work should be administered and coordinated. She also, though obliquely, expressed her criticisms of the way the New York work had been conducted in the past. Her letter, too long to be quoted here in full, read in part:


Being rather peculiarly placed and coming in touch personally as I have with all "sorts and conditions" of men as it were, at all the points nearby where Vivekananda has lectured, it gives me a certain sense of responsibility toward it, and possibly some means of determining the right workers and the work's need of them. As the best artist without the right business management is lost as it were, so Vivekananda in the hands of some people is positively injured even....


It seems to me right that the Hindus should be able to follow their own custom of giving their religious teaching without price. But this means that it must be provided for and also that it shall not be made valueless, as the best work of either artist or teacher may be when given improperly to those to direct or receive who do not appreciate it at its true value and quality.


This means that in some way the recipients should according to their means of money or service share in the furtherance of the work itself and such centres as New York, Chicago & Boston[,] Greenacre would gain by having the few who now are interested, in agreement as to essentials and the economical use of resources, both of money and workers.


Now as to the essentials, I wonder if you will agree with me?


First—that all teaching shall be qualified in that a knowledge of Sanskrit and the discipline of a life that has had a noviciate's probation is essential to the real teachers' vocation.


Second—that where practicable the men shall be assisted by personal attendants at their quarters who are men.... 

Third—that such means as shall be contributed shall be in the hands of a Treasurer so well known as to make all feel that the quarters are cared for in a way that prevents narrow dictation, or the turning into limited, personal ways this broad basic philosophy required by all our sects and students if made known to them in its true scope.


I wrote Vivekananda some time since, that I was willing that my own contribution should go entire this year to N.Y.*(6) Since Mr. Goodwin was to be in charge, should it prove needful, to enable the work there to be rightly placed, I have had opportunities of testing Mr. G's fitness. He writes well concerning the philosophy, he is an indefatigable worker, loves Vivekananda personally, but in the broad way, I believe of welcoming other workers and helping them....

*(6) For somewhat manipulative reasons, Mrs. Bull wanted Swamiji to say that her donation was his, offered to him for the work by "a friend." His letter from Switzerland, dated August ~3, I896 (Complete Works, 370-72), was in part a manifestly irritated reply to and rejection of this idea. Her letter, typically opaque and illegible to boot, read as follows:
". . . If Mr. Goodwin's plan of New York quarters seems the best plan to you and you would like to add the Vedanta loan to your credit with me for the support of Saradananda & the quarters in New York, either in whole or in part, to the effect of $500-five hundred dollars-I will be glad to replace it, and it would perhaps be best for you to say to Mr. Goodwin that you have such an amount from a friend for the work and let him receive it from and account to you ? It will leave him free, if not related in his mind to anyone but yourself.
"I see that you do not find anything in Dr. Janes' work at I68 Brattle St with informal, unorganized methods that calls for the cooperation of yourself and Mr. Sturdy. It seems to be best that Saradananda who should represent you always and also Mr. Sturdy through whose courtesy he is here should not be asked for assistance very kindly offered him to Dr. Janes.
"I will suggest to Dr. Janes that you will possibly first find the need of New York and other centres requiring Saradananda's time, and that when that has been met you will be likely if you think it best to yourself suggest the presence and scholarship of Saradananda to him for the Conferences. I will also tell him that you do not find it best no doubt for yourself and Mr. Sturdy to accept even a corresponding membership of the Home Conferences at Brattle St...."

I am suggesting to him not to hasten matters in N.Y. First, I am confident that Vivekananda on his return from Switzerland will give his best. His Talks and Lectures ought to be saved towards the permanent literature of the Vedanta. Personally I am desirous of this and willing to send Mr. G. over for October to secure this material which no one can & will do as himself....


. . . I will like if it is possible to have some definite plan as to the means & methods for future work, something to which we may all attend, and then have Vivekananda clearly understand & accept, that we may work without loss of strength or money, as  I have had to do at various times here to keep his interests from direct harm.


It seems to be necessary that some one of character and means should be Treasurer. I am not willing to place my friends in a position towards the Vedanta that I regret having to accept myself, of having my contributions of money and service sometimes seriously misapplied through a lack of fit workers and direction. It is necessary that Mr. Goodwin if he takes the responsibility for a season in N.Y. with good results, should have the intelligent support of V's friends, unhindered by interference  and criticism such as I have met personally myself. My own experience teaches me the means to make the conditions practicable for him.


[Here Mrs. Bull suggested that Mr. Goodwin be paid, so that he would not have to spend time and energy in supporting himself. Mr. Goodwin, reading a draft of her letter, asked her to make it clear that he would accept only a bare living.[31]


I will try to see you all if possible, if these suggestions meet your approval as to what is needed in the way of putting the work on a permanent basis without the limitations of an organization, which I believe will be better avoided & is in agreement with the Sanyasi principles. A Treasurer and Resident assistant being the only appointments necessary for the year, and these may be made, of course, by Vivekananda himself. These are the main features it seems to me to be considered; and these to be put into definite business shape and practice. Mr. Goodwin has thought of going immediately to N.F. to begin there. I advise him to go to England for October, and meantime we can in October and November, give the Swami Saradananda a house and work in Cambridge.[32]


Mrs. Bull may have had Mr. Leggett, or perhaps herself, in mind for a suitable treasurer. In any case, for reasons that are not clear, Mr. Walter Goodyear, the incumbent treasurer, seems to have been out of favor. Even Mr. Goodwin was angry with him, though this had more to do with the magazine Goodwin was proposing to start in America than with the Society's accounts. It would seem that Mr. Goodyear (the American agent for the Brahmavadin, as well as treasurer) had written to Swamiji, pointing out (among other things) the financial impracticality of launching another and ambitious magazine in America when back issues of the Brahmavadin were piling up in his storeroom for lack of subscribers. Swamiji agreed with the wisdom of this and, as he wrote to Mr. Sturdy  on August 12 from Switzerland, "suggested [to the American people] that instead of having too many papers, they may start by putting in a few sheets in the Brahmavadin—written in America-and raise the subscription a little which will cover the American expenses.'[33]Mr. Goodyear, a man of experience in handling money, had apparently raised other objections, as well, to the new plan of work, opposing it on practical grounds*(7). Mr. Goodwin was much annoyed. He wrote the following letter from Greenacre to Mrs. Bull on Monday, September 1 :

*(7) Mr. Goodwin's letters of this period in I896 are not at present available, but their import can be inferred from Swamiji's letter of August I~ (Complete Works, 8:387), and Goodwin's letter of September I, I896, to Mrs. Bull (SCB).

I have received the enclosed from Mr. Goodyear. I have replied to him that I am trying to carry out the Swami's own wishes. I am sorry Mr. Goodyear wrote him as he did, because it seems that whatever the Swami proposes for the work the financial difficulty is flaunted in his face.


Besides, Mr. Goodyear had no right to raise this difficulty without first asking me with reference to it. I think in any case it would have been well if he had sent me a copy of the letter when mailing it to the Swami. The Swami, in business matters, always accepts the last suggestion made to him. I could write to him now with an absurd & entirely impracticable suggestion with the perfect confidence of securing his approval for it.


These letters have in no way altered my determination to proceed with the work, especially as the Swami's letter gives an idea that this is his ideal. I fail to see how the Brahmavadin, which cannot get a circulation at $2.00 will do so at $3.00.

Perhaps you will give me your view of the matter when you come up on Wednesday. I feel that the time has come when I should formulate an idea for work for the Swami [Saradananda] & simply carry it through with whatever support I am able to get. It is simply impossible to propose a plan which will be universally accepted.[34]


Despite Walter Goodyear's negative financial outlook, a contribution for the proposed rooms was forthcoming—or, at least, was under consideration. On the strength of the Circular, Mr. Leggett had expressed a willingness to give "substantial aid" to the New York work and wished to discuss the matter with Goodwin. Accordingly, the two men met in New York on September 8, a meeting during which Mr. Leggett, an astute businessman, no doubt questioned the younger man minutely, making his own position crystal clear. He gave no promises, left no room for misunderstanding, and requested Goodwin to put the result of their meeting in writing. Goodwin dutifully did so:


Dear Mr. Leggett,

The outcome of [our] conversation, as I took it, was that although you will be interested in whatever work is undertaken, for the sake of your regard for the Swami Vivekananda, you are not willing to be held responsible for it in any way—either financially or otherwise. You will be prepared to consider a request to contribute towards the cost of obtaining quarters for the furtherance of the work, but do not wish it to be understood that you will exceed the amount you then contribute should an occasion arise for a further request for funds. Neither do you wish your name to be connected with whatever you do.


If I am connected with the work, as seems probable, I shall personally take pleasure in seeing that your wishes on these points are respected [35]...


Meanwhile, Swamiji, travelling in Switzerland, received a packet of the Greenacre Circulars. His reaction to them was not auspicious; indeed it boded ill for the whole projected plan. In a postscript to his letter of August 23 from Lucerne, he wrote:

If Goodwin and Saradananda can spread the work in U.S. God speed to them. They are in no way bound to me or to Sturdy or to anybody else. It was an awful mistake in the Greenacre programme about Saradananda that he was there by the kind permission of Sturdy*(8). Who is Sturdy or any body else to permit a sanyasin? Sturdy himself laughed at it and was sorry too. It was one piece of folly nothing short of that. It was an insult to Sturdy and would have proved serious for my work if it had reached India. Fortunately I tore all those notices to pieces and threw them in the gutter and wondered whether it was the celebrated "yankee" good manners the English people delight in talking about. Even so I am no Master to any sanyasins in the world; they do whatever it suits them and if I can I help them, that is all my connection with them. I have given up the bondage of iron the family tie; I am not to take up the gold chain of religious brotherhood.... If N.Y. needs Vedanta or Boston or any other place in the U.S. they will receive them and keep them and provide for them.[36]

*(8) In addition to the Circular, a seven page leaflet was distributed at Greenacre, most of which-a reprint from "a little pamphlet published by Mr. E. T. Sturdy, in England"-explained the importance of the study of Eastern thought in the West and Swamiji's role in expounding it. The last paragraph, however, was purely of American (and possibly of Mrs. Bull's) composition. It read:
"Swami Saradananda, of the same brotherhood of faith as the Swami Vivekananda, is highly commended for his personal qualities and ability as a teacher by competent persons in England, where he has been teaching for some time under the auspices of Mr. E. T. Sturdy, of High View Caversham, Reading. The managers of the Greenacre School of Comparative Religion are deeply indebted to Mr. Sturdy for his kindness in giving the Swami Saradananda leave of absence to assist in the Greenacre work." Whether or not Swamiji saw this leaflet in addition to the Circular is not known.

(Swamiji vehemently underscored the italicized words in the above paragraph three, four, and, in the instance of the word Master, five times.)


Mrs. Bull wrote at once to Mr. Sturdy: had she indeed insulted him? He replied consolingly, "The matter you write of is a very small one. Probably in America the whole matter would pass unnoticed, but to any body acquainted with the East it implies the difference between a Sanyasin—one who works for love & duty & not for any other consideration and a pandita—one who can be hired by paying him, supporting him &c.'[37] But whether or not the matter would pass unnoticed in America, those Circulars had been torn up and thrown into the gutter by a hand that could not err even in a gesture. Something worse than a blunder in wording was wrong.


Indeed, no sooner had the Circulars been widely distributed and thoroughly read, no sooner had the plan they set forth been approved by numbers of Swamiji's New York friends and students than the whole project grew uncertain in Mrs. Bull's mind. If Goodwin should return to England for the month of October (as she felt he should), then Swami Saradananda's proposed work in New York must (she also felt) await Goodwin's return; otherwise the old management would continue as before. As far as Mrs. Bull was concerned, Swami Saradananda could work through October, and perhaps through November, as beneficially in Cambridge as in New York. (Later on, Goodwin would point out to Swamiji that since the Boston people had paid Swami Saradananda's passage to America they "were entitled to first claim on him.")[38]The fact that both the Greenacre Circular and Goodwin's letter to the Brahmauadin had announced clearly that the Swami would meet Swami Vivekananda's class in New York "at the conclusion of his work at Greenacre"-or by October 1 at the latest—did not seem to disturb either Mrs. Bull or Goodwin. Neither of them notified the New York people of a change in plan.


It was not until Miss Phillips wrote to Mrs. Bull in late September, inquiring when Swami Saradananda was coming, that Mr. Goodwin replied, on Mrs. Bull's behalf, that the Swami would probably come to New York around the first of November. This letter, which is not extant, but which Miss Phillips irately quoted from again and again, was dated earlier than September 22, but not much earlier. It was Miss Phillips's first indication that the plans for New York were by no means definite. Placed in what was, to say the least, an awkward position, she was incensed. On October 4, she again wrote to Mrs. Bull:


There has been a great deal of inquiry about the Vedanta Classes in New York. Mr. Goodwin wrote that "To those who ask I believe you can say that the Swami  Saradananda will be in New York probably about the 1st of November." This is so very vague and indefinite after the previous statement that a flat would be taken here in September for a library and classes, that we are puzzled to know what to do, or, say to inquirers.


Has there been a complete change of plans? Kindly keep me posted. Will Saradananda alternate a few weeks at a time between Cambridge and New York, or what can we depend upon from him?


We, of course, prefer to have him continue the work of Swami Vivekananda if possible, before seeking another Teacher.[39]

This last paragraph was a threat—polite but scarcely veiled. In her earlier letter to Mrs. Bull (which Goodwin had answered) Miss Phillips had enclosed a note she had received from a friend in Chicago regarding a Mr. Chattopadhyaya. In his reply Mr. Goodwin had directed Miss Phillips to "give (Chattopadhyaya] absolutely no encouragement with regard to the Vedanta work in this country.'[40]Mr. J. C. Chattopadhyaya (called "Roy" for short)*(9) was a Theosophist soon to arrive in America from England, where he had called on on Swamiji. "The Swami positively & firmly declined to have anything to do with him [in London]," Goodwin informed Mrs. Bull, "and told us afterwards that there were strong reasons why it would not do to allow of any connection between them. Mohin [Mahendra] was at the Theosophical Society offices the same evening of the same day & heard Roy speaking in the most insulting way of the Swami. For these reasons I have written to Miss Phillips.'[41] And Mr. Goodwin fully expected Miss Phillips to heed his instructions.

*(9) Clear evidence thatJ. C. Chattopadhyaya and Roy were the same person is contained in the letter Miss Phillips's friend wrote to her from Chicago on September I5, I896. It read in part:
"I am glad to be able to write you that the young Brahmin J. Chattopadhyaya (we call him Roy for short) who has been in England for the past year, is now on his way to Chicago. He is probably to arrive in N.Y. next Sat. on the St. Louis, & be the guest of Mr. Alex Fullerton of the Am. Sec. of T.S. [American Section of the Theosophical Society] for 2 or 3 days before starting for Chicago. I have written giving him your address & also the address of Mr. Goodyear, as I am as is he very desirous of his meeting you. He is in entire oneness with our Swami Vivekananda & their teachings seem the same. If Saradananda or the lady monks are in N.Y. I hope he will meet them...."

Meanwhile, he and Swami Saradananda had left Greenacre and gone first to Sharon, Massachusetts, where Mrs. Bull's daughter, Olea, lived, and then to a resort hotel in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in a small town called Lisbon,  where they stayed from September 17 to 28. "I believe we are curing the Swami's malaria," Goodwin would write to Mrs. Bull. "He is taking long walks, & yesterday & to-day I have enticed him into Wells [River]. He likes it exceedingly.'[42]


But it was during their stay in the mountains that Mr. Goodwin quite suddenly backed away from the entire New York work. Ostensibly the difficulty was Swami Saradananda's disregard of his (Goodwin's) authority in spiritual matters. But let us quote at some length from his letter to Mrs. Bull, dated September 22:


There is one point with regard to my own connection with (Swami Saradananda's] teaching which has come home forcibly to me, & which I think has made me decide finally to go to England, either now, or a little later on. It is this—and I had a very long discussion with Mrs. Farwell [a friend of Mrs. Bull's from St. Paul and a lecturer at Greenacre] about it this morning. The Swami was asked to give an informal talk here on his religion the other night, & did so very well. On Sunday evg (September 20] he was asked again to answer questions. This he also did. One question towards the end asked for information regarding the breathing. But this question was asked in such a way that he might have avoided it. "If you would rather go into this at another time do so, Swami." Yet he went into the whole matter glossed it over—gave just enough for them to have something to practice, & certainly not enough for them to understand it.


Now, rightly or wrongly, I feel very strongly about this. The Swami Vivekananda sent me over with him to help him in matters of policy, & I feel that as the Swami S. has so great a regard for the Swami V. he shd be willing to follow his wishes in matters of policy—whether he has the freedom of a Sanyassin or no—until he has discovered, really, a line for himself. The Swami V. has come to just the same view of Raja Yoga as I have—& I believe you have, that it shd never where possible to avoid it, be taught in class.... I have spoken numbers of times with Saradananda about this—& he has taken the same view. What am I to think then of his meeting a haphazard dozen of people at a holiday hotel, & telling them just enough Raja Yoga to give them something to work upon, & not enough to be scientific with it? This is not by any means the first time he has entirely ignored my advice, & I can only feel that Miss Waldo has undermined the right the Swami Viv. expressly gave me to advise him. In this case it wd be foolish on my part to take the responsibility on myself of the management part of his work in New York, with the necessity of Miss Waldo at hand constantly. I feel, moreover, that you are right in claiming that New York must share the Vedanta with other towns, & shd therefore wait its turn now. I am afraid in face of all this (I) that I shall have to surrender the charge, in no matter how insignificant a way, of Saradananda's work; (2) that New York should at least wait till the New Year for him, when Mr. Fox probably will have enough acquaintance with the nature of his work in Cambridge to attend him in N.Y., if thought advisable; (3) that altho I will consider it my duty when the time is ripe (perhaps next Dec or January or perhaps later) to establish the New York centre on the line's proposed, my responsibility must end with the establishment. Perhaps you will find it hard to understand how intensely I feel about Raja Yoga, & I may appear bigoted to you in the matter. If so it means that I am not fit to be with the Swami Vivekananda even, but I hope not. I think I have formed my conclusions from careful study of consequences—& helped by numbers of hard facts in the dangers which it has actually implied.


If I go to England I think it will be wrong to delay as little as possible—& I personally favor the idea of going next week—unless I go altogether later....


I must add one thing more. The thing that I have sd here is intended as no reflection on the Swami. I blame Miss Waldo entirely & not him, & I have tried to write this in the broadest possible way.[43]


What Miss Waldo had to do with the matter is not clear, but just at this point she played directly into Mr. Goodwin's hands with a letter that was almost certainly intended to be taunting. She wrote the following to him on September ;23


I went last evig, at Miss Phillips' invitation to listen to Mr. J. C. Chattopadhyaya, a Brahmin from Eng. I like him exceedingly. He is a good speaker & presented the Vedanta in a somewhat new light, but most excellently. It is fortunate for us in N.Y. that we shall not be left destitute of a teacher after all. We hope to keep this one, even tho' Dr. Janes has invited him to Cambridge to speak this winter. I only got home yesterday & went over at once to 38th St (the home of Miss Mary Phillips).... Do you expect to sail on the 26th & are you likely to return to America this winter? If so, I suppose Cambridge will claim you.'[44]


Receiving the above, Goodwin was exultant. On September 25 he wrote to Mrs. Bull:


I enclose [a] letter from Miss Waldo, than which nothing could be more opportune. I tried all the summer, in every way possible—& even went very much out of my way, to become on very friendly terms with Miss Waldo, but I have failed, & intend to take another course in all future dealings. Therefore I am pleased to receive this letter, which, in the face of what both the Swami Saradananda & I told her about this Brahmin & the Swami V's desire that he shd not be connected with  the movement in any way, declares her intention to accept him as the winter's teacher. In the face of this it wd be impossible to ask Mr Leggett or anyone else to contribute anything towards a centre.[45]


It would also be impossible to allow Swami Saradananda to go to New York. In a letter of October 7 to Miss Phillips, Goodwin explained this point:


Only within the last week or ten days has there been any idea of the Swami not being in New York from November (see Goodwin's letter of September 22], but for the present I feel it of the utmost importance that the Swami shall not follow in the footsteps of any unauthorized teacher. And as I was sent by the Swami Vivekananda to do what I could for him I have taken the responsibility of advising him to remain in Cambridge the whole of this autumn, & have thus accepted an invitation given to be accepted any time which seemed advisable for the work.[46]


On October 4, Goodwin, having left Lisbon, wrote to Miss MacLeod from Sharon, where he had talked over matters with Mrs. Bull. His letter read in part:


I thought perhaps you would like to know that it is decided that I go to England by the Teutonic on Wednesday [October 7].... I don't think I shall be in New York until Wednesday morning, by the Fall River boat. I should think it would be safe to leave booking until then. I shall risk it, at any rate.


I want to thank you for showing me that letter of the Swami's (perhaps Swamiji's ecstatic letter of July 6 to Mr. Leggett; see chapter eleven, section four]. If there could possibly be nobler language than that I am not ready for it. Indeed I am not ready for this—it makes  me think & think of the distance between the Swami & myself, but, at the same time, I should be low down indeed if it were not an inspiration for good to me. Shall I shock you very much if I tell you that the Swami takes the place of Christ to me? I think not, for you will understand what I  mean.[47]


On the same day (October 7) that Goodwin had written to Miss Phillips, informing her that he had advised Swami Saradananda to remain in Cambridge for the rest of the year, he passed quickly and silently through New York, boarded the S.S. Teutonic, and before the somewhat formidable Miss Phillips had time to catch her breath was off and away. Six days later, as his ship was safely nearing the shores of England, Miss Phillips wrote an outraged letter to him. Dated October 13, it read in part:


When you have time to think matters carefully over you will probably realize that you have made several serious mistakes....


You seem to consider the great Vedanta Movement, a trifling matter of the petty preferences and wishes of a few people-—hat you can make engagements and break them at will, as if they were not of the slightest importance, as, worth even a notification or, consultation. This is the more astonishing, as the search for Truth should have its foundation in Truth and trustworthiness.

Swami Vivekananda's last public lectures, attracted wide public attention. There is daily inquiry as to when lectures and classes will begin....


Your Circular from Green Acre was read by me to a number. Your article signed "A Disciple, " in the last Brahmavadin was read by the subscribers and others, who have called and written. Your evasive answer about the "possibility" of Swami Saradananda's coming in November, in reply to my note sent to Mrs. Bull . . . only  seemed to defer the time of his coming. Your leaving for England without making any arrangement, of any kind, for any future time, places us all in an extremely unpleasant and awkward position.


We do not consider this a personal affair. Our dear Swami Vivekananda's inspired eloquence was not poured forth to "entertain."

A great and growing interest in a deep religious movement, in a metropolitan city like this, should not be treated in a flippant, offhand, fast and loose, child's play manner as it has been this fall....


It seems incredible that you who seemed so devoted to the movement and whose statements we trusted, should so have betrayed your trust. I learn that you slipped away, without even communicating with a single New York member. I presume that we would have now been left without the courtesy of an announcement that Swami Saradananda would not be allowed to come this winter, had you not felt obliged to answer my note to Mrs. Bull.


Is this honorable, or, brotherly, or, as you would have us do by you? . . . [I am] more amazed than I can describe.


Swami Vivekananda worked hard and patiently under manifold discouragements to establish a firm foothold for the Yoga and Vedanta in New York. No Western teacher could command the confidence, or, attention that a Hindu Sannyasin like Saradananda can, in the absence of our Vivekananda.


A movement like this should not be allowed to die out for want of a teacher, or to sink into a mere literary cult for a favored few.

Swami Vivekananda returned to America last winter to prevent this, and gave his lectures free to all, rich and poor alike. . .


Now, brother Goodwin, what can be done to remedy this remarkable conditions of affairs? For the sake of the Cause, we will keep it from the Reporters of the Newspapers if possible, and do what we can to hold Vedanta Meetings.[48]


This was the first of many letters of reproach brother Goodwin would receive from Swamiji's irate New York friends.


Meanwhile, Miss Waldo, who had had no real intention of engaging Mr. Chattopadhyaya as a teacher without Swamiji's expressed approval, had written to him, telling him of the peculiar situation in New York. On October 8, the day he started his classes in London, he replied, solving all problems with a few clear and definite words. This letter from Wimbledon, parts of which have been published in the Complete Works and often quoted, acquires its full import only when read against the background noise that it effectively silenced; thus it will bear repeating here in part. The following is quoted from the original, substantial parts of which have not heretofore been known:


Dear Ellen,

Your letter gave me a great deal of information for which many thanks. The good news about Abhayananda [who was successfully teaching in Brooklyn] has pleased me more than anything else....     .


... About Swami S[aradananda] I do not see any reason why he cannot work between Boston & New York. We will only have little classes in Boston, &, that too a spice in a hodge podge at best. It must not be forgotten that his duty is to preach Vedanta. I will write to Mrs. Bull to that effect. In the meantime I smell a little of that jealousy that had sprung up between Boston & New York. If you can succeed in smoothing it, you will have my heart-full of blessings & your liberation will proceed in compound accelerated motion....


I hear that Goodwin is coming over to Eng. I had no letter from him or S[wami] S[saradananda]....


I am glad that the young man Roy is in America at last. He came to Sturdy & to me to be taken in. But as for me, I have no funds & Sturdy would not touch a Theosophist. And then this young man has a little desire for money making. None without Vairagyam has any right to preach Vedanta. He is however competent to teach elementary Sanskrit—Gita etc—&, the easy Upanishads. I know very little of him except he is a Bengali. And you know my settled doctrine: I do not trust anyone who has not conquered "lust & gold". You may try him in theoretical subjects, but keep him off from teaching Raja yoga-—hat is a dangerous game except for the regularly trained to play at. Of Saradananda—the blessing of the greatest yogi of modern India is on him& there is no danger.


Why do you not begin to teach? Begin boldly. Mother will give you— all power-housands will come to you. Plunge in. No clinging to this fellow or that. Wherever Ramakrishna's children boldly come out, He is with them. You know a thousand times more philosophy than the boy Roy. There is nothing in Vedanta which you do not know, and you can argue it out & present it infinitely better than this boy. Plunge in bravely. Have faith you will move the world. Send notices to the class & hold regular talks & lectures. Goodyear & the others will back you right along. I will be a thousand times more pleased to see one of you start than any number of Hindus scoring success in America, even be he one of my brethren. "Man wants victory from everywhere but defeat from his own children." I will begin from today sending out powerful thoughts to you all. Make a blaze, make a blaze.


Yours with all love & blessings 
V


P.S. My love to the Goodyears, Miss Phillips, to Carl Le Vinsen, & all the rest of my friends. What is Van Haagen doing? Miss Ellis & Doctor will back you well—to purpose. Stand on your own feet[49] V.


On the same day (October 8) Swamiji wrote a letter to Mrs. Bull, which has also been published only in part. Pertinent portions (both published and unpublished) read as follows:


What about Saradananda? Where is he now? What about Goodwin? I am quite in the dark about their movements. I hear Goodwin was coming over to London -— have no intimation yet.


What about the N.Y. work?

Can not Saradananda work at both places i.e. both Boston and Newyork. I will be very glad if that is possible. For N.Y. is not to be neglected, and then although I am in all sympathy with the various branches of religious and social work [with which Mrs. Bull's Cambridge Conferences were concerned], I find that specification of work is absolutely necessary. Our special branch is to preach Vedanta. Helping in other work should be subordinate to that one ideal. I hope you will inculcate this into the mind of S. very strongly.


This winter will be his first in a cold climate and I do not think his chest is strong. So I hope you will kindly see that he does not suffer from cold for want of clothes....


I will write later on fuller.


It is needless fear for me to state that you have my implicit confidence in all works in the U.S. and that [I] entrust everything there to you.[50]


On October 24 Swami Saradananda visited New York in order to fill an engagement with the Brooklyn Ethical Association that had been made at least a month earlier*(10). On September 22 Mr. Goodwin had written to Mrs. Bull, "Do you think it wd be well to give [Miss Phillips] the opportunity of entertaining the Swami for the night before & after his  Brooklyn lecture? the 24th & 25th October?'[51]This act of generosity was by way of throwing Miss Phillips a crumb, but she made a loaf of it. On November 14 she wrote to Mrs. Bull, not, one thinks, without satisfaction, "When Swami Saradananda decided to remain a few days after the Brooklyn lecture we sent notice immediately for the opening of the Vedanta Classes, and the response exceeded our expectations. The audience even on the one and two days notice which was all we had to give overflowed into the back parlor and hall[52]." Miss Phillips also informed the New York newspapers, one of which (unidentified) printed the following piece:


*(10) Swami Saradananda's lecture of October o5, I896, before the Brooklyn Ethical Association at the Pouch Mansion was entitled "The Ethics of the Hindus." The Swami was the second speaker in a series of ten lectures sponsored by the Association on the ethics of various religions and philosophies. He spoke again at a meeting of the Association, probably on October 29, before returning to Cambridge.

Interest in the Vedanta philosophy has steadily increased since the appearance of the Swami Vivekananda at the World's Congress of Religions, and on his departure for England he persuaded Miss Waldo to carry on the work, as he considers her his ablest and beat-prepared student in this country. Previous to the Swami's arrival she had been interested in the various schools of philosophy, and had been a student of Max Muller. For the last four years she has studied faithfully and diligently, with the result that she will now organize classes of her own. On Wednesday evening last [October 28] there was an informal reunion, in honor of the Swami Saradananda, held at the home of Miss Mary Phillips, No. 19 West Thirty-eight St. Miss Waldo, who is a relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson, is a keen student and eager in the pursuit of the Vedanta philosophy. Miss Emma Thursby, William Flagg, the Rev. Francis Caruthers, Mr. and Mrs. A. H. Spencer, Mrs. Weyman, Dr. Austin Telice and other prominent men and women have signified their interest in the subject by [their] attendance Wednesday evening.


Miss Waldo, who had known Swami Saradananda at Greenacre, was warmed and uplifted by his brief stay. Indeed  his presence was so filled with the spirit of peace and with a loving understanding of everyone involved in the tangle of wills surrounding him, that she wrote a letter of truce to Mrs. Bull—an apology, in fact. She also, however, sent along through Swami Saradananda the letter Swamiji had written to her, and if she felt a certain sense of triumph in doing so, one could hardly blame her. Her letter, 

dated October 27, read:


My dear Mrs. Bull

Swami Saradananda has shown me that I misjudged you about the matter of his coming to New York, so I feel that I owe you an apology. He told me that he showed you my letter to him, so of course I know you are aware of the view I took. Perhaps it was not altogether inexcusable under the circumstances, that I should have supposed that Mr Goodwin was acting under your advice & direction.


He could have easily ascertained from Swami S. that I never had the slightest intention of "defying" Swami Vivekananda. The very idea is absurd! I at once wrote to Swami V. about Mr. Roy & his answer is very much what I expected. Swami S. has a copy of it, which he will show you. I am so thankful that Saradananda makes this little stay at Miss Phillips' & has been able to smooth things out & restore harmony.


He has kindly consented to come to N.Y. for Jan & Feb. & carry on Swami V.'s work.


It was very kind of you to waive your claims on Nov. & Dec. but we have not the slightest disposition to inconvenience you in any way, & we are glad the Vedanta is going to be presented to the Harvard professors thro' you. All that we ever wanted was a definite date and a reliable engagement that would enable us to make plans & issue notices. This we have now secured from Swami S. himself & we are satisfied. It was impossible to take any action on the vague generalities which were all Mr Goodwin vouchsafed.


I trust you will accept my assurance that I did not intentionally do you an injustice &, pardon me for drawing wrong conclusions from premises that seemed to warrant them.[53]


Mrs. Bull replied in her most formal manner.


I have your letter and the copy of the Swami Vivekananda's for which I thank you.


I trust the time may come when the good service and the personal devotion felt for the Swami Vivekananda may find a common unity of expression in steadfast loyalty to him and consideration each for the other.


Until Mr. Goodwin received your letter [of September 23] at Lisbon he expected to have Saradananda in New York from November to May. [See Goodwin's letter of September 22 above, reference 43.] 


With every sincere wish that Vivekananda's words may  prove prophetic.[54]


Miss Waldo did, in fact, do exceedingly well. Indeed, her very effort to carry on Swamiji's work during the last three months of 1896, while Swami Saradananda lectured in Cambridge and Boston, was perhaps more pleasing to Swamiji than would have been the reorganization of the New York work along the lines Mrs. Bull had proposed. At any rate, he was glad that "New York has settled down to work," as he wrote to Mrs. Bull on November 13.[55]


Mrs. Bull also heard from Miss Phillips, who in a long letter, dated November 14, sang Miss Waldo's praises.


The Swami Vivekananda wrote to me that Vedanta would never succeed in America until the Americans themselves become teachers, and added that he would be prouder of the success of one of his pupils than of a hundred of his brethren from India. He urged Miss Waldo in the strongest terms to commence. She finally consented though very reluctantly. I enclose a notice in the N.Y. Tribune for her first address [given on November 11]. There were questions for an hour after the addreea was over, and the people seemed unwilling to go home.


. . . Mr. & Mrs Edward Moran, in whose studio you remember we spent a short time, complimented Miss Waldo highly on her clear style, and judicious manner of presenting the subject. Although the evening was stormy the parlor was full.[56]


Swami Saradananda stayed in or around Cambridge during most of October, November, and December of 1896, lecturing at the Cambridge Conferences,*(11) Mrs. Bull's primary interest, holding classes at her home at 168 Brattle Street, and lecturing at the Procopeia and other clubs in Boston. Swamiji was agreeable to this arrangement. On October 21 Goodwin, now in London, wrote to Mrs. Bull:


*(11) None of Swamiji's letters to Miss Mary Phillips oi this period are available. For the benefit of future researchers it should be noted that one such letter may be in the possession of a Mrs. George Denniston of Seattle, Washington. Mrs. Denniston is the great grandniece of Miss Phillips and possesses, in addition to a letter (of unknown date) written by Swami Vivekananda to her great-grandaunt, other paper; connected with the early years of the Vedanta movement. Mrs. Denniston is not willing at the present timr to describe these papers or allow them, or copies of them, to be seen. In years to come, however, either she or her son, Mr. M. Kent Willing, may wish to make them available to students of Swami Vivekananda's life and work.


Naturally Miss Waldo has written the Swami & he tells me he has written the Swami S. & yourself saying divide the Swami's time between Boston & New York. I have told him how important it is that the Vedanta shd be represented at the Cambridge School [the Cambridge Conferences] & he is agreed that the present arrangement is good, that the Swami shall stay with you till the New Year & then do some New York work. I am going to get him to initial this if I can.[57]


But Mr. Goodwin could not get Swamiji to initial that paragraph or any other. In a postscript he wrote: "The Swami won't initial, because he says he has no right to dictate, but he says what I have written is correct." No one contested it, least of all Mrs. Bull. Although her plans for the New York work had fallen through, the new arrangement was entirely to her liking. The following letter to Swamiji, in which she put in  a good word for her young and energetic friend Goodwin perhaps to counteract other, predictably different report had reached Swamiji along with Goodwin himself:


My dear Vivekananda,

I must send a direct word to you by Mr. Goodwin, and first, love with the best wishes for your resumed London work.

Mr. Goodwin leaves the Vedanta interest stronger than he found it both at Greenacre locally & in the larger sense of what Greenacre is destined to effect; his suggestion of a Greenacre book which he has carried out quietly & efficiently in his helpful way is an important contribution.; Having been at Greenacre the larger part of the Season I was able to observe his patient, wise, untiring service to both strangers & friends—a service that Miss Farmer could feel at every point where a competent, faithful friend was needed.


And to your New York adherents who were there, every effort for loyal co-operation and consideration was made by him, as every courtesy & opportunity extended by Miss Farmer. In fact, I may sum up his service by saying, that it has been wholly constructive, with a forgetfulness of self that has most effectively recommended the Vedanta.


He decides that the Vedanta interest will be best served for the present in connection with Dr. Janes at Cambridge. This leaves him himself free to return to London and I agree with the Leggetts that it is best for him to do this. If you shall decide to take India via the United States, you will remember that you have made for yourself a place in the minds of Cambridge people and would be heartily welcomed; and I hope that some day Mr. Sturdy may be inclined to make our acquaintance.


As for myself, personally, the blessing of Saradananda's presence bringing as the disciples of Sri Ramakrishna do a quality of life that is both an incentive and benediction to all that is worthy and beautiful. The home will be overshadowed by the Divine and that it has come unasked gives it greater power and teaches me to be trustful & not dread lest I myself be unequal to serve the work which seems as it moves on to be self appointed for Cambridge through Dr. Janes. I am evolving gradually, I hope, the spirit of the true grandmother. Our little Edwina's needs & love require this of me. Sometime, dear Vivekananda, when I deserve it, you will perhaps adopt me also as your faithful loving "Grannie" (grandmother) [as had Swami Saradananda.] Will you kindly express to Mr. Sturdy the pleasure Dr. Janes & myself feel in welcoming Saradananda to Cambridge.

Ever your[58] 
Sara Bull.


Except for his brief visit in October to New York, Swami Saradananda stayed at Mrs. Bull's spacious and guest-filled home for three months; then in the first week of 1897 he moved to New York, escorted by John Fox, who had turned his energies and interest from the study of architecture and was devoting himself to the Cambridge Conferences in the capacity of secretary and right-hand man. "I put Swami to bed [on the train] at 10p.m. last night, with a good porter to look out for him," Fox wrote to Mrs. Bull on January 6. "He was quite silent all the way in; perhaps America needs a new kind of non-attachment.'[59]


That night Swami Saradananda also wrote to his Cambridge hostess—his "very first letter from N.Y. " she noted on the envelope. It was not only the first from New York but the first addressed to "Granny" in what was to be a long correspondence, during which he confided in Mrs. Bull as in a close and sympathetic friend. His first letter was informative:


Dear Granny

I have just finished my lecture tonight before the New York class and all seemed satisfied with it. Some fifty to sixty people were present and I spoke on the general principles of Vedanta.


I thank you very much for all that you have done to me both bodily and spiritually for I must confess that I have been helped spiritually a great deal by you and every one there. As long as we are in the relative we both give and receive, there is no doubt of that.


My love & blessings to yourself Mrs. Vaughn and dear Edwina [Mrs. Bull's granddaughter].


I have a little room here on the third floor, with a big window facing the street, where the eternal rumbling of wheels and clatter of horses' hoofs bring to my consciousness always of the busy rushing life of the big city. My meals have been arranged at Miss Phillips'. I have got a gas stove to heat my room and all arrangements to make me feel comfortable. I write you all this so that you might not get anxious for me.


I have not seen the Leggetts as yet nor Miss Thursby but hope to do so soon. The arrangements for my classes have been made as follows,—Monday mornings & evenings Bhakti Yoga, Wednesday evenings—talk on general philosophy and Friday evenings & Saturday mornings on Raja Yoga.


I slept tolerably well on the sleeper last night and am doing well. It is cold today for New York. The temperature now is below zero so after all N.Y. is giving me a cold reception at the very outset.

Hoping you all & Edwina doing very well I am ever 

yrs affly.[60]

Saradananda.

Swami Saradananda held his classes in his room at 509 Fifth Avenue, above Forty-second Street. When the room overflowed, the landlord, a sympathetic man who appreciated  the Swami's talks, let the class move to the hall on the ground floor, free of charge. And there in that hall—he New Century Ha—llthe Swami also held Sunday morning lecture. Indeed, he gave in all six regular lectures a week. A newsletter in the Brahmavadin of March 13, 1897, read:


Class instruction is given on Mondays and Saturdays in the morning, and on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in the evenings in the various Yogas. [This in addition to a regular Sunday morning lecture, and at times a Sunday evening lecture as well.]


Reading the above in India, Swamiji was dismayed. "By the bye," Goodwin would write to Mrs. Bull on March 30, 1897, We have seen a report in the Brahmavadin of the Swami Saradananda's New York work, & he [Swamiji is much troubled by the amount of work he was made to do. The Swami has been declared to be suffering from Diabetes & brain fag, &. you will realise what part the 9 lectures a week in N.Y. played towards that. If 9 lectures are a tremendous strain to a man like the Swami what must 6 lectures a week be to poor Saradananda, to whom every lecture is an effort? Will you please use your influence to prevent what seems be simply greedy disregard for the future work of a man.'[61]


But by the time Mrs. Bull received this letter Swami Sarada-nanda was back in her home, to which he had returned in March. For the remainder of the year he moved, unperturbed, between New York, Greenacre, and Cambridge in a pattern that we need not try to follow here.*(12) In August of 1897 Swami Abhedananda came from London to New York and began to hold classes, carry the work forward, and become the center of another set of controversies. Thus the American Vedanta movement went on, propelled by a will and a force of its own. From the very beginning there had been nothing either from outside or from within-neither malicious obstruction, petty spitefulness, well-intentioned bungling, arrogance, irresponsibility—nothing that could stop the wave Swamiji had set in motion from sweeping forward, from finding its own form and direction, from gaining power as it went.


*(12) The Cambridge Conferences was the name of an ambitious project conceived, organized, managed, and financed by Mrs. Ole Bull and held in her residence at I68 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Conferences, directed by Dr. Lewis G. Janes, were inaugurated on November 8 of I896 and continued this first season through April of I897.Thereafter, until I9OI' they .were held every year for a six-month season. In September of I9OI Dr. Janes died, and the Conferences came to a close. In the Outlook for August I897' there appeared an article by Mrs. Bull in which she explained the purpose and scope of the Conferences. She wrote in part:
"In circular letters sent out last year to a selected list of university professors, students, and others interested, invitations were extended for membership in conferences to be held for the comparative study of ethics, religion, and philosophy during the six months from November, 1896 to May, 1897, in my housee at Cambridge, Mass. An acceptance on the part of some three hundred resulted, including eminent professors of the vicinity and country, clergymen, divinity students, graduate and undergraduate students of Harvard and Radcliffe-the ablest being among the first to respond. No fees or expenses were to be met by professional members, and no work on the part of members was asked or pledged.... Dr. Lewis G. Janes ... accepted the direction of the Conferences....
"In addition to [the course of twenty-five Sunday afternoon lectures before the Conferences], twenty one Wednesday afternoon conferences, and some seventy discussions, class, and special evening meetings, were arranged in response to the call of members and their friends, the attendance increasing as the season advanced..... "The household, adapted somewhat from an experience of visits to college settlements-that is, made up of members interested in the work-found the visits of guests from a distance an extremely pleasant feature. The Oriental guests, we trust, were made to realize the sympathy that lies back of all human needs and feeling, behind the differentiations of formal thought and custom...."
In connection with this household (which consisted of several of Mrs. Bull's friends and helpers), Dr. Janes had written to his wife in January of I897: "It seems Mrs. Bull at first tried to carry out her plan of a cooperative household-no servants, breakfast in the kitcher', stand-up lunch in the pantry, take turns in cooking, etc.-but Mrs. Farwell and Miss Wyn'kicked,' metaphorically speaking, and the whole plan was revolutionized before I came, for which I am devoutly thankful."
Many eminent people participated in the ferences, including Professor Josiah Royce, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Miss Jane Addams, CHarles Carroll Everett, the Anagarika H. Dharmapala, Frank B. Sanborn, Edwin D. Mead, and as we know, Swami Saradananda -- one of the household's "Oriental guests." p. 343 * The Greenacre book that Goodwin had suggeste~ and had been working on throughout September of I896 was to be a collection of the papers read at the "crisp sentences from the [Greenacre] lectures on all subJects and [making] part of the book a daily diary of Greenacre thoughts." In addition and probably in lieu of an American magazine, he had a Vedanta yearbook in mind, which was to consist of relevant quotations from all sources. As far as is known, nothing came of Goodwin's projects, but they kept him occupied between the time the Greenacre Conferences closed and his return to London, and beyond.


In one of her long and indignant letters to Mrs. Bull on the subject of Mr. Goodwin's "incredible" behavior, Miss Mary Phillips had summed up the lessons learned from the attempts Mrs. Bull had made to centralize the work.


One excellent result has come from it (she wrote). It has shown the necessity for each local society to have entire charge of its own affairs. Each society understands the individual needs of its own locality better than a stranger can possibly realize. Each local society can give and take assistance from each other, and help on in all kindness and friendliness the Vedanta Movement in America....


. . We would have sustained Mr. Goodwin with pleasure in his plan of taking a flat. Not in the magazine project as that seems premature. Now, however, it is much better to leave matters as they are, and not have any one person decide for different places. Swami Saradananda seems to me to be very capable of acting as his own manager, and we can agree not to conflict with any plan. each society may decide upon for itself. Do you not think this is much the safer, and better way? And in the end more successful? We can act in perfect harmony, and good-will assisting each other with pleasure in any way we can.'[62]


And that, to be sure, was to be the way the American Vedanta movement would progress as is moved ineluctably on through the years to come.

3

By coincidence, or so it seems, on the day Josiah J. Goodwin sailed from New York on the England-bound Teutonic Swamiji opened what was to be the climactic season of his first visit to the West—a season during which he would give his message in its fullest flowering and of which we might have known very little had not Goodwin felt inclined to return when he did. As it was, many of Swamiji's class-lectures of this season were expertly taken down and together formed a teaching that even he might be satisfied with as "something big on the Vedanta philosophy.'[63] Although these collected class-lectures would not constitute the more technical work he had wanted to leave behind, they formed a deeply communicative and compelling masterpiece of practical teaching. He here translated, but never for a instant watered down, the lofty philosophy of Advaita Vedanta into guidance for everyday life. Scholars such as Max Muller and Paul Deussen could write brilliant and learned treatises on the Vedanta philosophy, but only a person, a prophet, of Swamiji's combined spiritual and intellectual genius could bring that philosophy, made all-embracing through his insight, to the homes, the offices, the marketplaces, and the round tables of the world. This he did throughout his teaching life, but it would seem that he did so most pointedly during this fall season of 1896.


The day of the first meeting was Wednesday, October 7. That night Swamiji did not return to Wimbledon but stayed at the Seviers' flat in Hampstead, a northwestern suburb of London that still retained the rural charm of an old English town. From the Seviers' he wrote that evening to Josephine MacLeod, who was then in America and whose familiar face— 'always helpful, cheerful, and strengthening'[64]—he had missed seeing among those who had come to his opening class. Or had this meeting been a preliminary reception rather than a class? If the date on Swamiji's letter to Miss MacLeod is correct, then one is inclined to think so; for the following day, October 8, he wrote to Miss Waldo, "The London classes were resumed, and today is the opening lecture.'[65] .'And to Mrs. Bull on the same day, ". . . from today the classes have been resumed again.'[66] October 8, moreover, was a Thursday, a day of the week in accord with the class schedule he was to follow for the rest of the season.


But whether the first meeting was a class or a reception, it was held not at 63 St. George's Road, which the Margessons had reoccupied, but in rooms that Mr. Sturdy had found and rented for the fall lectures on behalf of those who had guaranteed the necessary money (see chapter twelve, section three). Writing on October 3 to Miss MacLeod, who was no doubt one of the guarantors, Sturdy described the new rooms:


After a good deal of searching I have taken a room, or rather three rooms, knocked into one, at 39 Victoria Street.


It is on the sixth floor but quiet and has plenty of light and a good lift.
The rent is £80 a year; laying fires and cleaning 6/a week.


The whole block consists of business premises—offices etc, so that it is entirely closed on Sunday. It was impossible therefore to arrange for using the room on that day.


The difficulty in finding a large room is so great and the rents so excessive that there was no alternative.


In the ordinary course the lift ceases running at 7 p.m.. but it is arranged that the lift shall be at our service until 10:30 p.m. for any two nights in the week by paying something,. not yet decided upon, to the porter for his attendance.


The agreement is for five years but can be determined [terminated?] by us at the end of any year by giving due notice.
The electric light has been fitted and it is proposed to have a few shelves for our library.


I am sending a copy of this letter to each of the guarantors of the rent etc, which sum will leave quite a margin to add books to those already kindly lent by Miss Muller and a few previously existing.


I have now much pleasure in enclosing the printed notice which is being sent to all the addresses in my book.'[67]


Victoria Street, as Goodwin would write to Mrs. Bull, was "one of the best thoroughfares in London.'[68] In the district of Westminster, it opened at one end onto Parliament Square, with Westminster Abbey on the right and the Houses of Parliament and the Thames just beyond, and at the other end met Victoria Station and Buckingham Palace Road. The tall (six-and-a-half story) brick and stone building where Swamiji's classroom was located stood on the south side of the street, and while closer to the Abbey than to the Station, was within easy enough walking distance from the latter to be convenient for anyone coming from out of town—from Wimbledon, for instance.


Although Swamiji missed Josephine MacLeod's cheerful face that first day, he saw others familiar to him. "Most of our friends came," he wrote to her, "one of the Galsworthys too—i.e. the married daughter. Mrs. Galsworthy could not come today; it was very short notice. We have a hall now, a pretty big one holding about 200 or more. There is a big corner which will be fitted up as the Library.... They are all coming and more. That is cheering(69)." There would have been, among many others, the Seviers, Margaret Noble (sitting on the left end of the second row, at least on Wednesday evenings), the Eric Hammonds, also from Wimbledon, Henrietta Muller, Mr. Sturdy, Marie Halboister (a friend of Mrs. Biddulph Martin), perhaps Mrs. Martin herself the unnamed nurse, the Reverend Mr. Haweis, his friend Miss Emmeline  Souter, her friend Max Gysi, Lady Margesson, Mrs. Ashton Jonson, and the old lady from Sydenham-in short, all the regulars and more besides.


We do not know exactly when Swamiji decided to live in London rather than to remain at Miss Muller's in Wimbledon and commute, as he had originally intended. One finds him writing from the Wimbledon address on October 8, and then, in what must have been only a few days, writing to Alasinga from his new London address—14 Greycoat Gardens *(13) A building of flats, or apartments, Greycoat Gardens stood on the corner of Greycoat Street and Greycoat Place, a wide-angled corner in the tangle of side streets south of the thoroughfare, only two or three blocks from Swamiji's classroom. It was a huge structure of red brick with stone trim, newly built earlier that year. Inasmuch as the many flats it contained had been fully rented 'before its completion, Swamiji's flat, Number 14, may have been sublet from the original tenant. A basement flat, it was reached from the street hallway by descending a flight of stairs, at the foot of which one found its door directly on one's right. Number 14 was more or less underground, looking out on a narrow areaway in front and a narrow courtyard in back, and though its windows were tall, its rooms were dark and cheerless in the short, pea-soup days of London's fall and winter. (Swamiji would later refer to this basement flat as "the black-hole of London.") Otherwise, it was nice enough and conveniently located. (According to the Life, it had been Captain and Mrs. Sevier who had let, or sublet, the place for Swamiji and Swami Abhedananda, but Swamiji seems to have attributed the choice to Mr. Sturdy.) *(14)


*(13) According to a bulletin put out by the New York Vedanta Society in March of I897, the year's calendar was planned as follows:   Classes in Vedanta Philosophy 508 Fifth Avenue, above 4cd St., N.Y.(These classes are sustained by voluntary contributions)The Course of Lectures commencing on Jan 6th I897 by SWAMI SARADANANDA was continued by him until March 4th. On WEDNESDAY MARCH I oth MISS ELLEN WALDO will resume her Class Lectures at 11 a.m]and at 8. I5 p.m. continuing them on every succeeding Wednesday throughMarch andApril at the same hour. THE SWAMI SARADANANDA of India will lecture on Wednesday evenings, May sth, I~th and Igth at 8.I5 p.m. and will again return to New York on the FIRST OF OCTOBER, to teach and lecture until January I898. As things turned out, the last seven words of the above bulletin did not come true. While Swami Saradananda returned to New York in October of I897, some difficulty had arisen between him and the New York people, the nature of which is not clear. On October 4 he wrote to Mrs. Bull: "I have decided now once & for all to have nothing to do with the N.Y. work, but always to be their personal friend and I am doing it every day. I will always hold the attitude of an elder brother or a father, towards them, though they have perfectly misunderstood me" (SCB). The Swami was then staying with a Mrs. Wheeler, an ardent devotee of Vedanta (who years earlier had had a vision of Sri Ramakrishna), and was holding classes in her house in Montclair, NewJersey, a country town about an hour from New York (see Swami Atulananda, With the Swamis in America, pages 77-78). Meanwhile, Swami Abhedananda had come to America from England, and was carrying on the work in New York. He also visited Montclair to be with his beloved brother disciple. In this connection Swami Saradananda wrote to Mrs. Bull on October I8, "I invited Abhedananda, who came to visit Mrs. Wheeler for a few days, to keep up the interest by giving at least two lectures a month here [after Swami Saradananda's departure]; to which he consents. His visit & stay here has changed many of his opinions regarding the N.Y. affair. Miss Waldo was here too & she also acknowledged that N.Y.S[ociety] has acted very wrongly towards me & also towards you in suspecting unfounded things. She said that she did not endorse many things in this affair. However it might be, I was always just as kind to her as before or at least tried to [be]. This sameness of behavior on my part has convinced her partly at least, I think, that I am governed by no one: & not in the least antagonistic to hem. I thank you so much for fulfilling your promise of sending good thoughts to them for I think that will give them the power of looking at things in the proper proportion, whc. they lack" (SCB). The above makes it clear (at least) that Mrs. Bull was the chief adversary in the "New York affair" and that Swami Saradananda was suspected of being "governed" by her. But however that may be, New York was no longer a congenial field of work for him. At the end of October I 897, he returned to Cambridge, remaining there until January 9, I898, when at Swamiji's call he set offfor India. Mrs. Bull and Miss MacLeod accompanied him.


*(14) This letter to Alasinga (Complete Works 5: II6) is undated but opens, "I have returned about three weeks from Switzerland." Since Swamiji returned from Switzerland on September 17' one can assume that he was writing shortly after October 8.

On October 20, Goodwin arrived in London, probably after visiting his mother in Batheaston on the way from Liverpool, and he of course moved into the flat. The following day he wrote to Mrs. Bull, "The two Swamis and myself are in a flat at the above address alone with myself as housekeeper, cook, &c.'[70] Two days later he wrote in more detail:


We have a flat—in the basement—but comfortable, & respectable, which are the two great requisites. It has dining room—three bedrooms, kitchen, bath room, & a janitor (an unusual but appreciable attraction in England). It is within 2 minutes of his lecture room—39 Victoria St....


We have a woman in for three hours in the evening; but otherwise I am in charge—do the cooking, &c. In this way we are at our own mercy with regard to cleanliness, a distinct advantage.[71]


Swamiji’s move from Wimbledon to London was not made without disturbance. "I was living with [Miss Muller in Wimbledon] for the last few weeks," he wrote to Alasinga in his letter of early October. "But the London work cannot go on without my living in London. As such I have changed quarters. I am sorry it has chagrined Miss Muller a bit. Cannot help.'[72] Swamiji's move seems to have chagrined Miss Muller more than a bit: "There is quite a lot of trouble with Miss Muller here," Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull in his letter of October 21, "and the Swami (according to Mr. Sturdy) will be quite ready to fall into any plans which prevent her from accompanying him to India.'[73] One of Swamiji's plans was a visit to Cambridge, Massachusetts (as Mrs. Bull wanted), at the end of December. He also thought of going to Russia. But (Mr. Sturdy notwithstanding) the avoidance of Miss Muller's tempestuous company on the voyage to India was not Swamiji's primary motive in considering these roundabout routes; nor would they be necessary to achieve that end. While he would not offend Miss Muller if he could avoid it ("I hope you will ask Miss Muller's opinion about the lodgings and the Halt [to be rented for the fall season]," he had written from Switzerland in August to Mr. Sturdy, "as I am afraid she will be very displeased if she and others are not consulted"),[74] he could also speak his mind clearly when necessary and would do so later on.


Meanwhile he lived in peace at Greycoat Gardens. Exactly what trouble Miss Muller caused, what scenes took place and where, we do not know, but the flat provided Swamiji with a sort of monastery and sanctuary. Of all the places he had stayed in the West during his season of work in 1895 and 1896 it was perhaps the most serene. The lively household at 63 St. George's Road had dispersed. Swami Saradananda was, as we know, now in America; John Fox had followed in late September, deciding, as we have seen, to work for Mrs. Bull's Cambridge Conferences; Mahendra Nath Datta was still in London, living in a lodging house (near the one he had earlier moved to with Fox) and was not doing much of anything;'*(15) Mr. Sturdy had moved his family from Reading to London and would soon be living in a house at 25 Holland Villas Road; and Miss Muller, for the most part at least, was at Airlie Lodge, Wimbledon, where Swamiji would hold a class every Monday afternoon until the last day of November.


*(15) See the Life (I98I), 2: I29 and Complete Works,7 5I6 - I8.  Mahendra Nath Datta does not again enter this volume. The only- further information the present writer has of his visit in the Western world comes from a passage in a letter written by Mr. Sturdy inJanuary of I897 to Miss MacLeod: "I do not know anything of Mohin; he has entirely disappeared from view leaving no address and I have returned all his letters to the post office." But Swamiji's hopes for his younger brother's future were to rise. On August I4 of I900 he would write to John Fox, then in America: "Kindly write Mohin that he has my blessings in whatever he does. And what he is doing now is surely much better than lawyering, etc. I like boldness and adventure and my race stands in need of that spirit very much. Only as my health is failing and I do not expect to live long, Mohin must see his way to take eare of mother and family. I may pass away any moment. I am quite proud of him now" (Complete Works, 8:53I-32).

Swamiji's lecture schedule was not as full as it had been in the spring of the year, but it seems nonetheless strenuous. "The Swami lectures on Tuesday & Thursday mornings at the room [39 Victoria Street] & also on Wednesday evenings [when, with an arrangement with the janitor, the lift would be working]; on Monday afternoons he lectures at Wimbledon, on Tuesday evg last he lectured at the Sesame Club. I am writing it up & will send you a copy by next mail. [No copy has been found.] It was an admirable general lecture. He has certainly come back refreshed, & the smaller number of lectures makes the quality very much higher.'[75]


When Goodwin wrote the above he had heard (as he told Mrs. Bull) only two lectures, both given on October 20—"Maya and the Evolution of the Conception of God" in the morning, and the Sesame Club lecture in the evening. (The first has been published in volume two of the Complete works.) If the lecture schedule had been the same during the first week of the season as Goodwin outlined, then he had missed four class-lectures at Victoria Street and two Wimbledon. Four of  these six lectures are lost to us; we do not know even their titles. But two—one, which may have been given on either the morning of Tuesday, October 13, or the evening of October I4 and which is published in volume one of the Complete Works under the title "Vedic Religious Ideals,"*(16) and one entitled "Maya and Illusion “ given almost certainly on Thursday, October 15— were taken down by some anonymous stenographer in a style worthy of Goodwin himself


*(16) There is a possibility that Swamiji gave the lecture entitled "Vedic Religious Ideals" on Wednesday evening, October 28, as an introduction to his two classes on the Eetha Upanishad, "Realisation" and "Unity in Diversity." The evidence for this date isalmost as strong as that for either Tuesday, October I3, or Wednesday, October I4. I have chosen the earlier dates (one or the other of them), as the lecture seems to be more introductory to Swamiji's entire lecture series than to just a part of it. But this choice is not final; it swings with the evidence. For instance, Swamiji's introductory words to "Realisation" as well as an article in Light, dated October 3I' refer to a ~recently given lecture which could have been "VedicReligious Ideals." On the other hand, "Vedic Religious Ideals" itself several times seems to anticipate the Maya lectures and could have predated them. This number includes "Vedanta and Privilege" and "The Absolute and Manifestation," neither of which have been definitely dated.

As the season went on, Swamiji would give many more talks, both at Victoria Street and outside his classrooms, than were transcribed. Of his probable twenty-seven regular class-lectures, given on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and Wednesday evenings, we have only fifteen transcripts**(17). In Wimbledon he held eight Monday afternoon classes in October and November, of which we have only one—"Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa." As for the London lectures that he is known to have given outside his classrooms, there was at least one at the Sesame Club, one at an unidentified "club on Brook Street," and five at the Unitarian Church in West Croyden. Of these seven lectures we have a transcript of only one—"Privilege." All in all, then, Swamiji would give (as far as we can know) forty-two lectures during this season (October 8 to December 10), and of these we have transcripts of only seventeen. But these seventeen, all of which must have been published with his knowledge and consent, give a strong and clarifying statement of the message he wanted to Leave in the West-—he highest teachings of Vedanta put in terms of "common everyday life."


**(17) The transcript that is tentatively assigned here to Wimbledon is "Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa." 

It would appear from what has come down to us that his Tuesday and Thursday morning class-lectures constitute a consecutive series, while those held on Wednesday evenings seem to form a separate but related series. (The Wednesday evening series, however, is a matter of conjecture, for we know of only four lectures, none of which bears a date, that could have belonged to it. But of these we shall speak later.)


For the sake of convenience (and also because they seem to me to fall into this pattern) I have divided Swamiji's Tuesday-Thursday class-lectures into two series. In the first he discussed Maya—Its appearance and its disappearance. These Maya classes comprised not only the three entitled "Maya and Illusion," "Maya and the Evolution of the Concept of God," and "Maya and Freedom," but, as I have understood it, his following class on the Isha Upanishad, entitled "God in Everything" and his two classes on the Katha Upanishad, entitled "Realisation" and "Unity in Diversity." In the second series he discussed specifically the practical aspect of Advaita Vedanta. This series consisted, of course, of his four class lectures entitled "Practical Vedanta" and also, I believe, of a class preceding them entitled "The Freedom of the Soul." For all five classes of this second series he used the Chhandogya Upanishad as a text.


"Vedic Religious Ideals" could well have been Swamiji's introductory lecture to his entire fall course, throughout which he would reveal the great ideas of the Upanishads as being entirely relevant to modern life, He began at the beginning— for even in the earliest Vedic thought lay the germs of the world's loftiest religion and philosophy—and in this lecture traced the transformation of the primitive, "boisterous," and at times drunken gods of the Samhitas into the omnipotent and omnipresent Personal God of monotheism. He pointed out the important phenomenon, basic to Indian culture, that each of the Vedic gods had been raised in turn to the proportions of the infinite Personal God of the Universe. The explanation of this unique mythology is, he said, a grand one, "one that has given the theme to all subsequent thought in India, and one that will be the theme of the whole world of religions: Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti, 'That which exists is One; sages call It by various names.' . . . [In modern times] we have to learn yet that all religions, under whatever name they may be called, either Hindu, Buddhist, Mohammedan, or Christian, have the same God, and he who derides any one of these derides his own God. That was the solution the Vedic Aryans] arrived at.'[76]


But, he went on, the monotheistic idea, grand though it was, did not satisfy the Hindu mind. "A ruler of the world does not explain the world"—either intellectually or morally. So those Vedic sages sought for an explanation of the universe, first in the external world, where it was not to be found, and later, analyzing the mind, within themselves.


And they found out step by step that that which is external is but a dull reflection at best of that which is inside. We shall see how they took, as it were, this old idea of God, the Governor of the universe, who is external to the universe, and first put Him inside the Universe. He is not a God outside, but He is inside; and they took Him from there into their own hearts. Here He is, in the heart of man, the Soul of our souls, the Reality in us.[77]


This was Swamiji's introduction to the Vedanta philosophy as it had been developed through the ages by the groping but unflagging search for truth—a search common to all men but never undertaken so boldly, and so persistently as by the Upanishadic seers. Their consummate discovery, their total revolution in outlook, was their legacy to mankind, and Swamiji, their modern spokesman, revealed the secrets of that great and ancient discovery for another world and time. In his advanced jnana yoga classes in New York he had explained the Advaita Vedanta philosophy at length through means of .the Sankhya cosmology and psychology and had ended up with the difficult but basic doctrine of Maya—a concept which "forms one of the pillars upon which the Vedanta rests,'[78]but which by its very nature is inexplicable and more often than not misunderstood. Now in London he undertook to explain Maya, or, at least, to define it. In doing so, he did not enter into a technical or highly philosophical discussion, which would have had only academic meaning for his listeners; rather, he equated Maya with the most familiar of phenomena-—he curious, tantalizing, baffling, and impenetrable mystery of human life as we know it (or don't know it) and as we live it from day to day, year to year.


He started, in other words, with the given—"what we are and what we see around us.'[79] Maya is "simply a statement of facts about the universe as it exists.'[80]Yet the universe as it exists is a strange affair. From the point of view of our everyday life, the universe is by no means an illusion: it is our reality; the incomprehensible, contradictory, unsatisfactory muddle we call human existence is very real for us. And yet, while it is what we take to be real, it is also unreal. "It has no absolute existence. It exists only in relation to my mind, to your mind, and to the mind of everyone else."


We see this world with the five senses [Swamiji continued in "Maya and Illusion"], but if we had another sense, we would see in it something more. If we had yet another sense, it would appear as something still different. It has, therefore, no real existence; it has no unchangeable, immovable, infinite existence. Nor can it be called nonexistence, seeing that it exists and we have to work in and through it. It is a mixture of existence and nonexistence.[81]


This contradiction underlying all human experience and knowledge also permeates them, riddles them through and through. Swamiji pointed out in some detail the unavoidable inconsistencies, absurdities, frustrations, and tragedies of life that are woven into its very fabric. Though men want knowledge, there is ever "an adamantine wall" beyond which the human intellect cannot pass; the mind by reason of its very constitution can never leap beyond the barrier of time, space, and causation to the substance of things. The universe we know is Maya, but there is no way to find its cause, for cause lies only within Maya's realm; Maya can never explain its own existence; nor can it discover that which lies beyond itself. "The problems which are nearest and dearest to [man] are impelling him on and calling, day and night, for a solution, but he cannot solve them, because he cannot go beyond his intellect.'[82]


So with everything in experience. "Desire is implanted strongly in [man]." His impulse is to be selfish; "at the same time there is some power beyond us which says that it is unselfishness alone which is good." But desire is there: desire for love, for wealth, for glory, for happiness. The young are full of hope and dreams; "old age comes, and life is a mass of ruins. Dreams have vanished into the air, and the man becomes a pessimist." We oscillate between the extremes of optimism and of pessimism "without knowing where we are going." And inevitably—whatever desires one may have had or whatever satisfactions one may have gained—"there is the tremendous fact of death.'[83]


The whole world is going towards death; everything dies. All our progress, our vanities, our reforms, our luxuries, our wealth, our knowledge, have that one end—death. That is all that is certain. Cities come and go, empires rise and fall, planets break into pieces and crumble into dust, to be blown about by the atmospheres of other planets. Thus it has been going on from time without beginning. Death is the end of everything. Death is the end of life, of beauty, of wealth, of power, of virtue too. Saints die and sinners die, kings die and beggars die. They are all going to death, and yet this tremendous clinging on to life exists. Somehow, we do not know why, we cling to life; we cannot give it up. And this is Maya.[84]


Swamiji gave many examples in his Maya lectures of the nonsensical nature of the life of individuals, of societies, of nations, of the human race. "These tremendous contradictions in our intellect, in our knowledge, yea, in all the facts of our life face us on all sides.'[85]There is no happiness without somewhere an equal amount of misery, no social reform without the eruption of social evil, no laughter without tears, no life without death. He did not spare his listeners. This is the way it is, he said, and this is Maya. "It has been preached in every country, taught everywhere, but only believed in by a few, because until we get the experiences ourselves, we cannot believe in it.'[86]


What does it show? Something very terrible. For it is all futile. Time, the avenger of everything comes, and nothing is left. He swallows up the saint and the sinner, the king and the peasant, the beautiful and the ugly; he leaves nothing. Everything is rushing towards that one goal, destruction.[87]


In each of his three lectures on Maya Swamiji stressed this point, perhaps knowing that to hear it from his lips was equivalent to learning it the slow, hard way over hundreds, thousands of lifetimes. His lectures, particularly his class lectures, were often hammer blows, breakers of bondage. He would repeat an unaccustomed or unpalatable idea again and again, never in quite the same way. He would suddenly digress, perhaps to break too great a tension, perhaps to impress an important thought upon minds grown concentrated and receptive; he seldom, if ever, followed an outline. Reading his lectures, one may sometimes lose one's way, but his listeners, caught up in the atmosphere of freedom that surrounded him, were, he could be, themselves set free. "You must bear in mind," he said to them, "that I have to tell you facts that will frighten you sometimes, but if you remember what I say, think of it, and digest it, it will be yours; it will raise you higher and make you capable of understanding and living in truth.'[88] So he pounded upon the hard lesson that no solution, no remedy, no explanation of the contradictions of Maya could be found within Maya's own realm. Like a drawing of a hand that is drawing both itself and its surroundings, it was a closed circle; the mind had somehow created or conjured up its objects, and those objects totally limited the mind within their own unyielding walls.


To find a solution of this problem is impossible [he said]. Why should it be so? It is impossible to answer this, because the question cannot be logically formulated. There is neither how nor why in fact; we only know that it is and that we cannot help it. Even to grasp it, to draw an exact image of it in our own mind, is beyond our power. How can we solve it then? Maya is a statement of the fact of this universe, of how it is going on.... Animals are living upon plants, men upon animals; and, worst of all, upon one another, the strong upon the weak. This is going on everywhere. And this is Maya .[89]


Swamiji insisted that his nineteenth-century audience, so given to the idea of progress and positive thinking, face the world as it is rather than hide the facts under a cloak of optimism. "Bold we must be," he said. "Hiding facts is not the way to find a remedy. As you all know, a hare hunted by dogs puts its head down and thinks itself safe; so, when we run [in] optimism we do just like the hare, but that is no remedy.'[90]He blasted man's foredoomed attempts to solve the problem of evil. For instance, "[We] are told that in the long run all will be good. Taking it for granted that this is possible, why should there be this diabolical way of doing good?" Nor, for that matter, did he believe that "in the long run all will be good:[91] As he so often said in his Western lectures and classes, he did not hold with the theory, taken as gospel truth in his day, that evolution "eliminates evil and, this evil being continually eliminated from the world, at last only good will remain.'[92] "That is very nice to hear," he said. "Yet this argument is fallacious from beginning to end." Why?


It takes for granted, in the first place, that manifested good and evil in this world are two absolute realities. In the second place, it makes a still worse assumption that the amount of good is an increasing quantity and the amount of evil is a decreasing quantity.... Very easy to say, but can it be proved that evil is a lessening quantity? . . . As we increase our power to be happy, we also increase our power to suffer, and sometimes I am inclined to think that if we increase our power to become happy in arithmetical progression, we shall increase, on the other hand, our power to become miserable in geometrical progression. We who are progressing know that the more we progress, the more avenues are opened to pain as well as to pleasure. And this is Maya.[93]


Then there were the agnostics and their kin, the "practical" people who "tell us, 'Don't bother your heads about such nonsense as religion and metaphysics. Live here; this is a very bad world indeed, but make the best of it.'[94] Swamiji made short work of them.


Hope and a positive ideal [he said in "Maya and Freedom"] are very good motive powers for our lives, but there is a certain danger in them. The danger lies in our giving up the struggle in despair. Such is the case with those who preach, "Take the world as it is; sit down as calmly and comfortably as you can, and be contented with all these miseries. When you receive blows, say they are not blows but flowers; and when you are driven about like slaves, say that you are free. Day and night tell lies to others and to your own souls, because that is the only way to live happily." This is what is called practical wisdom, and never was it more prevalent in the world than in this nineteenth century; because never were harder blows hit than at the present time, never was competition keener, never were men so cruel to their fellowmen as now; and therefore, must this consolation be offered. It is put forward in the strongest way at the present time; but it fails, as it always must fail. We cannot hide a carrion with roses; it is impossible. It would not avail long; for soon the roses would fade, and the carrion would be worse than ever before. So with our lives. We may try to cover our old and festering sores with cloth of gold, but there comes a day when the cloth of gold is removed, and the sore in all its ugliness is revealed.[95]


Nor was that all. Swamiji not only mercilessly pointed out the fallacies in man's attempts to somehow get around or hide from the fact that evil as well as good exists in this world, he also undercut every attempt to explain the why and the how of the universe. The material sciences, pride of the modern age, constituted one such attempt to understand and to master the whole of life. It is no use, said Swamiji. It has all been tried before. The Vedic seers had, in principle, penetrated finer and finer levels or states of matter and had there failed to solve the problem.


The detailed workings of modern science do not bring the question one step nearer to solution, because the principles have failed.... In their inquiry into the principle [of the universe] the Hindu thinkers were as bold as, and in some cases much bolder than the moderns. They made some of the grandest generalizations that have yet been reached, and some still remain as theories, which modern science has yet to get even as theories.... No amount of knowledge of the external world could solve the problem.... [The Vedantist] has proved beyond all doubt that the mind is limited.... As no man can jump out of his own self, so no man can go beyond the limits that have been put upon him by the laws of time and  space.[96]


Nor does the concept of God as Creator and Governor serve to explain the universe. In his lecture "Vedic Religious Ideals," from which I have quoted earlier, Swamiji elaborated on this theme:


The Aryan mind had so long been seeking an answer to the question from outside. They questioned everything they could find, the sun,. the moon, and stars, and they found all they could in this way. The whole of nature at best could teach them only of a personal Being who is the Ruler of the universe; it could teach nothing further. In short, out of the external world we can only get the idea of an architect, that which is called the Design Theory. It is not a very logical argument, as we all know; there is something childish about it, yet it is the only little bit of anything we can know about God from the external world, that this world required a builder. But this is no explanation of the universe.... The God that the Design Theory gives is at best only an architect, and a limited architect of the universe; He is bound and restricted by the materials; He is not independent at all.[97]


As providing an explanation of the universe, the Personal God was deficient in yet another respect, which Swamiji discussed in "Maya and the Evolution of the Conception of God." As the concept of God evolved, He "became the most ethical being in the universe, as well as [the most] almighty." But now the problem of evil only increased.


Why under the reign of an almighty and all-loving God of the universe should diabolical things be allowed  to remain? Why so much more misery than happiness, and so much more wickedness than good? We may shut our eyes to all these things, but the fact still remains that this world is a hideous world. At best, it is the hell of Tantalus.[98]


There was no answer anywhere. Neither through reason nor through sense experience, nor by means of both, nor by faith in a Creator God can mankind--even given a million years and more—explain this universe and the half good, half evil life within it. This admission was the beginning of Vedanta. "The Vedanta was (and is) the boldest system of religion," Swamiji said. "It stopped nowhere.'[99]It began with a bold intellectual inquiry and an incessant yearning of heart for release. "Religion begins with a. tremendous dissatisfaction with the present state of things, with our lives, and a hatred, an intense hatred, for this patching up of life, an unbounded disgust for fraud and lies.'[100]


Was it not because of this initial need for "unbounded disgust" that Swamiji again and again tore aside the veils of rationalization and sentimentality from his listeners' minds, forcing them to look squarely at the Tantalus hell in which they lived? Only after doing this did he show the way out. It was in "Maya and Freedom," the third of his Maya lectures, that he turned the attention of his listeners to the voice rising continuously, insistently from the depths of their own beings. "Is there no hope?" he asked. "Is there no way out?" And he devoted the remainder of this series on Maya to his answer. It was a matter, simply, of shifting one's point of view.


We find that with all this, with this terrible fact before us, in the midst of sorrow and suffering, even in this world where life and death are synonymous, even here, there is a still small voice that is ringing through all ages, through every country and in every heart: 'This My Maya is divine, made up of qualities and very difficult to cross. Yet those that come unto me cross the river of life.' This is the voice that is leading us forward.... This is called religion.


. . . Every moment nature is proving us to be slaves and not free. Yet, simultaneously rises the other idea that still we are free.... Some inner voice tells us that we are free.... And if you study all the various religions of the world you will find this idea expressed. Not only religion—you must not take this word in its narrow sense—but the whole life of society is the assertion of that one freedom.... We are all rushing towards freedom, we are all following that voice, whether we know it or not.... The whole universe is nothing but the result of this mad struggle to reach the voice. This is the manifestation of nature.[101]


Thus did Swamiji turn over the coin of Maya. On one side the whole universe was "rushing towards . . . destruction"; on the other side it was all rushing towards freedom. On the one side were the walls of time, space, and causation; on the other side was the innate freedom of the soul—the very Existence which made those walls seem real, the very stuff behind their appearance. This was not philosophical speculation; it was practical religious instruction. The "voice" that asserted the freedom of the soul was dynamic in human life; it was to be heard and to be understood. And then religion begins.


The scene begins to shift [Swamiji went on]. As soon as you know the voice and understand what it is, the whole scene changes. The same world which was the ghastly battlefield of Maya is now changed into something good and beautiful. We no longer curse nature, nor say that the world is horrible and that it is all vain; we need no longer weep and wail.[102]


Swamiji here returned to a theme that ran throughout these classes—the evolution of religious concepts. He had come now to the point where he could show the basic motive power and ideal behind all religious development-—rom the lowest and most external religion up to the highest and most inward —the ideal, in one way or another, had ever been that of freedom.


As the idea of nature expands [he said in summary], the idea of the soul [the gods] superior to nature also expands, until we come to what we call monotheism, which holds that there is Maya (nature), and that there is some Being who is the Ruler of this Maya. .


Here Vedanta begins, where these monotheistic ideas first appear. But the Vedanta philosophy wants further explanation.... The idea that the goal is far off, far beyond nature, attracting us all towards it, has to be brought nearer and nearer, without degrading or degenerating it. The God of heaven becomes the God in nature, and the God in nature becomes the God who is nature, and the God who is nature becomes the God within this temple of the body, and the God dwelling in the temple of the body at last becomes the temple itself, becomes the soul and man—and there it reaches the last words it can teach.... The voice that you heard was right, says the Vedanta, but the direction you gave to the voice was wrong. That ideal of freedom that you perceived was correct, but you projected it outside yourself, and that was your mistake. Bring it nearer and nearer, until you find that it was all the time within you, it was the Self of your own self,[103]


Swamiji's next lecture in his Tuesday-Thursday morning classes was entitled "God in Everything." Although this class was a running commentary on the Isha Upanishad, it was also a continuation of the Maya series. The way out of Maya was simple in the telling: give up the unreal element of experience, assert the real, In a Word: renounce. But Swamiji was well aware of the negative connotations that word had in the Western mind, and thus, even as he had brought the metaphysics of Mayavada into focus, making it relevant to human life on every level, so did he give the teaching of renunciation a realistic ring—a positive, vibrant ring that did not jar on the human heart.


There is evil in the world, give up the world: that is the great teaching [of most religions] and the only teaching, no doubt. Give up the world. There cannot be two opinions that to understand the truth every one of us has to give up error. .

And yet, what remains to us if this theory involves giving up the life of the senses, the life as we know it? And what else do we mean by life? If we give this up, what remains?[104]


In answering this question Swamiji did not enter into a metaphysical discussion; he simply stated the conclusions of the Vedanta philosophy, asking his listeners to take it on faith for the time being that "in Vedanta alone we find a rational solution of the problem." He then stated that solution, and one can only guess at its impact upon his audience as it came from his lips. "Since I heard the Swami," one of his regular class members said, "light has flooded into religion. It is real; it lives; it has a new glad meaning and is altogether transformed for me.'[105]


Here I can only lay before you what the Vedanta seeks to teach [Swamiji said], and that is the deification of the world. The Vedanta does not in reality denounce the world. The ideal of renunciation nowhere attains such a height as in the teachings of the Vedanta. But at the same time, dry suicidal advice is not intended; it really means deification of the world—giving up the  world as we think of it, as we know it, as it appears to us—and to know what it really is. Deify it; it is God alone.


. . . The whole world is full of the Lord. Open your eyes and see Him. This is what Vedanta teaches. Give up the world which you have conjectured, because your conjecture was based upon a very partial experience, upon very poor reasoning, and upon your own weakness. Give it up; the world we have been thinking of so long, the world to which we have been clinging so long, is a false world of our own creation. Give that up; open your eyes and see that as such it never existed; it was a dream, Maya. What existed was the Lord Himself. It is He who is in the child, in the wife, and in the husband; it is He who is in the good and in the bad; He is in the sin and in the sinner; He is in life and in death.[106]


Renunciation, then, was not a matter of running to the Himalayas, there to seek a cave. It was, rather, a matter of switching one's entire point of view from the unreal to the real; from the external appearance to the inner divinity; it was a matter of understanding one's world not through the accustomed mind and senses but through the innermost core of one's being, of perceiving through the divinity within, the divinity everywhere. It was not a matter of giving up activity; one could be more active than ever, but without desire or fear or fanaticism. This was, actually, Swamiji's teaching of karma yoga as rooted in Advaita Vedanta. "We must work ", ha said. "Ordinary mankind, driven everywhere by false desire, what do they know of work? . . . He works who is not propelled by his own desires, by any selfishness whatsoever. He works who has no ulterior motive in view. He works who has nothing to gain from work.'[107]


So work, says the Vedanta, putting God in everything and knowing Him to be in everything. Work incessantly,  holding life as something deified, as God Himself, and knowing this is all we have to do, this is all we should ask for. God is in everything, where else shall we go to find Him? He is already in every work, in every thought, in every feeling. Thus knowing we must work-this is the only way, there is no other. Thus the effects of work will not bind us. . . . Those who have not learnt this secret will have to live in a demoniacal world until they discover it. Many do not know what an infinite mine of bliss is in them, around them, everywhere; they have not yet discovered it. What is a demoniacal world? The Vedanta says ignorance.[108]


Thus did Swamiji comment on the first three verses of the Isha Upanishad and, at the same time, continue his discussion of Maya and its conquest. In his teaching, renunciation became not a fearsome denial of life but a triumphant conquest of the small, the finite. Conquest was his key word. But never did he give the impression that this path was an easy, permissive one. It was as fraught with difficulties as was any other, replete with stumbling blocks, over most of which one would surely stumble. But what of that? "Never mind these failures, these little backslidings," he encouraged the aspirant; "hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more.... There is infinite life before the soul. Take your time and you will achieve your end.'[109]


In the remainder of this class Swamiji took up verses four through eighteen of the Isha Upanishad and ran through them quickly but with luminous and powerful sentences, expounding another and related theme of Vedanta: "this Oneness of life, the Oneness of everything." The One Being that was the sole essence of all apparent diversity was to be affirmed and perceived and known as oneself "The Truth in thee I see, and That which is within thee is within me, and I am That.'[110]

4

On the last day of October, the weekly Light, "a Journal of Psychical, Occult, and Mystical Research," whose editors had earlier been dismayed by Swamiji's apparent criticism of spiritualism and had subsequently been pacified by him (see chapter twelve, section two), published a short review of one of his October classes. As far as can be made out, the class in question had most probably been held on the evening of Wednesday, October 28, and could have been "Vedic Religious Ideals" (to which we have tentatively assigned an earlier date) *(18) or a class similar to it for which we have no transcript. In any event, in the following review one sees and almost hears Swamiji, then at the height of his powers, through the eyes and ears of a stranger:

*(18)  There is a possibility that Swamiji gave the lecture entitled "Vedic Religious Ideals" on Wednesday evening, October 28, as an introduction to his two classes on the Eetha Upanishad, "Realisation" and "Unity in Diversity." The evidence for this date isalmost as strong as that for either Tuesday, October 13, or Wednesday, October I4. I have chosen the earlier dates (one or the other of them), as the lecture seems to be more introductory to Swamiji's entire lecture series than to just a part of it. But this choice is not final; it swings with the evidence. For instance, Swamiji's introductory words to "Realisation" as well as an article in Light, dated October 3I' refer to a ~recently given lecture which could have been "VedicReligious Ideals." On the other hand, "Vedic Religious Ideals" itself several times seems to anticipate the Maya lectures and could have predated them. This number includes "Vedanta and Privilege" and "The Absolute and Manifestation," neither of which have been definitely dated.

On the sixth floor of one of the dismal but convenient Victoria-street houses, we lately listened to a discourse by Swami Vivekananda—one of a long series on the Hindoo Religion and Philosophy. The lecturer is a distinctly interesting personality; in the prime of life, vigorous and suggesting a vitality brimful of health, with a handsome face, splendid eyes, and a good voice. His English is admirable, his flow of thought and facility of expression remarkable, his field very broad. For an hour and a half he spoke, without a note. It is true that the discourse was rather a flow of remarks than a connected study, but it was all keenly interesting.


The subject, in the main, was the Vedas, but we got excursions upon Evolution, Modern Science, Idealism and Realism, the Supremacy of Spirit, &c. On the whole, we gathered that the speaker was a preacher of the universal religion of spiritual ascendancy and spiritual harmony. Certain passages from the Vedas—beautifully translated and read, by the way—were charming in their bearing upon the humanness and sharp reality of a life beyond the veil. One longed for more of this.


We were much impressed with the admission that in the Vedas there were many contradictions, and that devout Hindoos never thought of denying them nor reconciling them. Everyone was to take what he liked. At different stages and on different planes, all were true. Hence the Hindoos never excommunicated and never persecuted. The contradictions in the Vedas are like the contradictions in life—they are very real, but they are all true. This seems impossible, but there is sound sense in it. At all events, as regards excommunication and persecution, we only wish the Christians could make the Hindoo's claim.


On the same day as Light published the above paragraphs, there appeared in the London Daily Graphic a longer article, the author of which may have attended more than one October class-lecture at 39 Victoria Street. While one does not learn from the following enough of what Swamiji said to identify positively which classes those were, it does not much matter; a description of Swamiji is, again, what interests us. The article read in full:

A REAL MAHATMA.
THE NEWEST THING IN OLD RELIGIONS.

Londoners to-day are very much the same as the Athenians of old in their fondness for new things, and yet "the weary King Ecclesiast" declared that there is no new thing under the Sun. That the newest thing in religions should be the oldest savours of paradox, but so does the very presence among us of the Swami Vive Kananda. He is a highly respected pupil of the Goru Tama Krishna [Guru Ramakrishna, whose Bengali life has been told by the Librarian of the India Office under the heading "The Life of a Modern Hindu Saint,"*(19) and still more recently by Professor Max Muller as that of "a real Mahatma."


*(19) The reference was to Charles Henry Tawney's "A Modern Hindu Saint," which appeared in theJanuary I896 issue of the Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review.Tawney's article was a sympathetic critique of Suresh Chandra Dutta's Parambansa Srimad Ramakrishner Upadesha [Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna]. See note for page 292, chapter thirteen.

A SANNYASIN.

The Swami is a young man, a little over thirty years old; and after a distinguished college career, and having sat at the feet of the aforesaid Goru, he became a Sannyasin. For the benefit of the uninitiated, it may be explained that a Sannyasin renounces all worldly position, rank and name; and, as Mr. Ruskin has finely said, it is much more difficult to give up all that than life itself. The Swami's assumed name—Vive Kananda—signifies "Bliss of discrimination and happiness." He was sent by the Rajah of Khetri and other influential Hindus as a delegate to the Chicago Parliament of Religions, and there he made his bow to the Western world. The Swami since then has been lecturing in the United States and in this country, and now he has a considerable following in London. It would not be too much to say that his weekly audience here numbers in the aggregate 500, and on the strength of his preaching a room in Victoria Street has just been engaged permanently for meetings of those people interested in the Swami's message, while the nucleus of a lending library finds a place along the walls. Who shall deny the Swami's fame when it is added that he is to occupy the pulpit of Mr. Page Hopps, and that he has already been the object of one of Mr. Haweis's sermons?

THE SWAMI'S AUDIENCES.

The Swami's way has been prepared before him to some extent, first by the Theosophical Society—not that he has anything in common with the goings on that have driven away the society's earlier adherents, who were attracted by the glamour of the gorgeous East, and were unacquainted with Madame Blavatsky; and in the second place by Sir Edwin Arnold. The poet's place in this galley is accounted for by the popularity of his "Light of Asia." The ten-year soldier tells us in Mr. Rudyard Kipling's ballad, "If you've 'eard the East a-callin' you won't never 'eed naught else"; and anything Eastern—and old—enthralls a certain species of mankind as nothing else can. The Swami's audiences are motley: they include persons of title and fashionable ladies with pretensions to culture, and others, half educated, to whom the oracular is always irresistible; the men of the kind always found in such an environment, and others of both sexes whose earnestness in the pursuit of will-o'-the-wisp Truth it would be discourteous to question. The Swami lectures in an upper chamber—literally, for it is six stories high, but there is a lift. He is a stalwart, good-humoured looking man, with long black hair and clean-shaven face, with nothing of the ascetic about him. He wears a terra-cotta robe (the irreverent might call it a dressing-down) and a stand-up collar, the general effect being clerical. Indeed, the curate's intonation is now and then varied by the perfervid declamation of an evangelical revivalist. But the Swami's voice is more musical than that of either, and the way he half croons Sanscrit verse may be very clever, but, like Mr. Gilbert's hero, "I couldn't understand it," until a metrical English version was repeated. The Yogi is admirably allusive; he uses no notes, but his English is fluent and free, and his gestures do him credit. The listener is convinced, while hearing the discourse, that Milton was right in dubbing him that saw nothing charming or musical in divine philosophy a "dull fool."

THE VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY.

Critics condemn the dramatist who keeps his audience in suspense too long, so it may be explained at once that the Swami's mission is to unfold the Vedanta philosophy. This is not philosophy, he explains, in the same sense that one talks of Hegel's or Kant's philosophy—it is much more, and (cunning touch) it was written by poets! The religion unfolded in the Vedanta is the oldest in the world, and the Swami's enthusiasm for what remains of the Vedas is equal to that formerly displayed by the obsolete believer in verbal inspiration for our own Christian Bible. For all younger religions—Christianity, Buddhism, Mohammedanism—the Vedantic philosopher has a kindly tolerance; and with pride the Swami declares that the Hindus have never been parties to religious persecution. The same God, he says, is common to all systems, and all men are informed by God. There is no such thing as a personal soul, or individuality of mind—our organism, our faculties are illusory (and a twinge of toothache added point to the remark in the case of one listener). It is not "the Virgilian cry—the sense of tears in mortal things"-that the Swami expounds, but the sense of unreality in matter; his crowning conclusion being "the absolute Non-Duality, immanent in all things." There is, however, no unreality in the welcome that Mr. E. T. Sturdy, the moving spirit among the assembled independent inquirers and students committed to nothing (who do not, they expressly say, constitute any society) gives to visitors at the conclusion of the hour's lecture, with the assurance that they are at liberty to attend the lectures and to use the library without money and without price. Alas, too, there is little illusion about the existence of the yellow fog at that moment pervading the metropolis.

5

In Swamiji's next two class-lectures, "Realisation" and "Unity in Diversity," he took up the Katha Upanishad, giving a running commentary on it, and here again he continued his course on Maya. In "God in Everything" he had spoken of the "deification of the world," of knowing that in reality "it is God alone." Now, in "Realisation" he went on to stress that such knowledge is not intellectual, not to be acquired by argument or reasoning; rather, it is the vivid, unobstructed awareness of reality from the very center of things.

Religion [he said] is a question of fact, not of talk. We have to analyse our own souls and to find what is there. We have to understand it and to realise what is understood. That is religion. No amount of talk will make religion.... This is one great idea to learn and to hold on to, this idea of realisation.... This is the watchword of the Vedanta—realise religion, no talking will do. But it is done with great difficulty.'[111]


Swamiji pointed out once again that only by giving up the small, ephemeral joys of this life (and those of heaven, as well) can one know what joy really is.


Philosophy insists that there is a joy which is absolute, which never changes. That joy cannot be the joys and pleasures we have in this life, and yet Vedanta shows that everything that is joyful in this life is but a particle of that real joy, because that is the only joy there is.... But to understand that, we have to go through the negation and then the positive side will begin. We have to give up ignorance and all that is false, and then truth will begin to reveal itself to us. When we have grasped the truth, things which we gave up at first will take new shape and form, will appear to us in a new light, and become deified. '[112]


In this same class he again reviewed the various arguments put forth by the utilitarians who sought pleasure, by the evolutionists who believed that in time evil would be eliminated from the earth, by the German philosophers who theorized that the Infinite would eventually manifest Itself perfectly in the finite world. He demolished them all and closed with a resounding call for renunciation—renunciation not by running from life but by struggling to live on the plane of the spirit in every part of it. These last paragraphs are given somewhat differently in the pamphlet of this class, as published in May of 1897, than in the Complete Works. Though the pamphlet edition is less polished, its sentences are perhaps closer to Swamiji's actual words and perhaps convey more of his vitality of utterance than do those of the Complete Works version, however faithfully the latter may convey his thought. The closing paragraphs of the pamphlet read:


I always cling to the side of the old religious ideas, when I see Christ preach, and Buddha preach, and the Vedanta declare, and the Bible declare it, that we must all come to that perfection in time, but by giving up this imperfection. This world is nothing. It is at best only a hideous caricature, a shadow of the reality. All the fools are running to enjoy the senses.


It is easy to run in the senses. It is easier to run in the old groove, eating and drinking, but what these modern philosophers want to tell you is to take these comfortable ideas and put the stamp of religion on them. But that doctrine is not true. Death is in the senses. We must go beyond death. It is not a reality. Renunciation will take us to the reality. Renunciation is meant by morality. Renunciation is every part of our life, every moment of goodness and real life that we enjoy is when we do not think of ourselves. I am dead; the old man is dead; and then we are in the Real, and the Vedanta says that reality is God, and He is our own real nature, and He is always in you and with you. Live in Him and stand in Him; although it seems to be so much harder, it will become easier by-and-bye. You will find that it is the only joyful state of existence; every other existence is of death. Life on the plane of the spirit is the only life, life on any other plane is mere death; the whole of this life can be only described as a gymnasium. We must go beyond it to enjoy real life.[113]


In his next class, "Unity in Diversity, " held on Tuesday morning, November 3, Swamiji continued his commentary on the Katha Upanishad, beginning with the first verse of part Two and going on to the end. Here again he dwelt on the subject of good and evil, for the idea that a state of unalloyed good could someday be realized on earth and the persistent desire to realize it was the very food of Maya, was Maya itself. Therefore he pounded again and again on the impossibility of good existing in this world without the shadow of evil. In this last class of the Maya series he summed it all up. Let us quote just one passage, which seems to contain the whole:


This is a world of good and evil. Wherever there is good, evil follows, but beyond and behind all these manifestations, all these contradictions, the Vedanta finds out that Unity. It says, "Give up what is evil and give up what is good." What remains then? Behind good and evil stands something which is yours, the real you, beyond every evil, and beyond every good too, and it is that which is manifesting itself as good and bad. Know that first, and then and then alone you will be a true optimist, and not before; for then you will be able to control everything.... First be master of yourself, stand up and be free, go beyond the pale of these laws, for these laws do not absolutely govern you, they are only part of your being. First find out that you are not the slave of nature, never were and never will be; that this nature, infinite as you may think it, is only finite, a drop in the ocean, and your Soul is the ocean; you are beyond the stars, the sun, and the moon. They are like mere bubbles compared with your infinite being. Know that, and you will control both good and evil. Then alone the whole vision will change and you will stand up and say, "How beautiful is good and how wonderful is evil![114]


I can find no better way to recount what Swamiji taught than to quote his own words. But since one has to stop short of  reproducing the whole of Jnana Yoga, I have quoted here only sketchily, following his main theme (as I understand it) as one might follow an arterial path in a woodland of many branching trails or listen to only one line of richly orchestrated music. One cannot help but miss much this way. Swamiji's lectures with their strength and beauty, their poetry, their secondary themes and subtleties of thought, their marvelous sentences and flashes of insight—those wonderful lectures must be read in full to catch their fire and power. They were a triumph of his effort to bring the philosophy of Vedanta with its abstruse doctrine of Maya into sharp focus so that it had a total relevance to ordinary human life. In addition, weaving the theme in and out, he showed the evolution of religion as it moved upward and inward step by step to the grand consummation of the teaching of Oneness—"that behind everything, as the substance of everything, He is standing, and that He is the one real Self.'[115]Swamiji's Maya lectures were themselves more than evolutionary: they were revolutionary; they turned the accustomed universe inside out. There he stood, the "Incarnation of Man," as Sri Ramakrishna had called him, boldly dispelling ancient and enslaving dreams, revealing the eternal reality and sovereignty of the Self, the majesty of his presence giving full support to his astounding words. He himself was satisfied with this series of classes. In her Master as I Saw Him Sister Nivedita wrote, "He always considered, for his own part, that his greatest intellectual achievement during this period had consisted in his lectures on Maya, and it is only by reading these carefully that an idea can be formed of the difficulty of the task he undertook, in trying to render the conception in modern English"—and, one ventures to add, not only in modern English but in the language of life itself.

6

The six Tuesday-Thursday morning class-lectures quoted from above—the three classes on Maya, one on the Isha Upanishad, and two on the Katha Upanishad—were only the beginning of Swamiji's exposition that fall of practical Advaita Vedanta. There was a good deal more to come, but let us pause here. It was, in fact, almost at this point—the Sunday between his first and second talks on the Katha Upanishad—that he wrote a brief summary of his October classes in reply to an inquiry from Mary Hale regarding his views on the Silver Question—a complex political and economic issue that was then agitating the United States, for it formed the platform of William Jennings Bryan's presidential campaign against William McKinley and involved an emotionally charged clash of rich and poor, capitalist and laborer, creditor and debtor. Swamiji replied to this political query with a mind tuned to the fundamental answers contained in the classes he had been giving. His letter, dated November 1, opened:

"Silver and gold," my dear Mary, "have I none; but such as I have give I thee" freely, and that is the knowledge that the goldness of gold, the silverness of silver, the manhood of man, the womanhood of woman, the reality of everything is the Lord—and that this Lord we are trying to realise from time without beginning in the objective, and in the attempt throwing up such "queer" creatures of our fancy as man, woman, child, body, mind, the earth, sun, moon, stars, the world, love, hate, property, wealth, etc.; also ghosts, devils, angels and gods, God etc.[116]


Swamiji went on to speak of realization and renunciation, of good and evil, of Maya and Truth, of phenomena and the One Existence, of the attainment of jivanmukti—all ideas which he had been discussing in his classes and an understanding and application of which could, in his view, alone solve the economic, political, social, and moral problems of the world. This indeed was Swamiji's politics. "God and truth are the only politics in the world," he had written a year or so earlier to Alasinga, "everything else is trash.'[117] and again in an interview in the spring of 1896, "Religion is of deeper importance than politics, since it goes to the root and deals with the essential of conduct '[118] But at the same time, he was intensely interested in everything concerning man's everyday life and problems, as well as in the long sweep of human history. He felt deeply for the suffering of the masses everywhere. And after a time in this letter he answered Mary Hale's question specifically, rising from the real heart of the matter to a sort of middle ground, seeing the problem in its broadest historical perspective and relating it to the rise and fall through the ages of four different social classes, or castes—the priests, the soldiers, the traders, and the laborers. "The first three have had their day," he wrote. "Now is the time for the last—they must have it—none can resist it " He then came to the matter at hand for a brief paragraph or two:


I do not know all the difficulties about the gold or silver standards (nobody seems to know much as to that), but this much I see that the gold standard has been making the poor poorer, and the rich richer. Bryan was right when he said, "We refuse to be crucified on a cross of gold"*(20). The silver standard will give the poor a better chance in this unequal fight. I am a socialist not because I think it is a perfect system, but half a loaf is better than no bread.


*(20) William Jennings Bryan's sensational "Cross of Gold" speech, which had won him the Democratic nomination, did not win him the presidency, which went to William McKinley. A year or two later, when gold became more accessible to the United States Treasury, the monetary issue was no longer critical.Bryan had to find other platforms for his three subsequent presidential campaigns, all of which he lost.

The other systems have been found wanting. Let this one be tried—if for nothing else, for the novelty of the thing....

Let every dog have his day in this miserable world, so that after this experience of so-called happiness they may all come to the Lord and give up this vanity of a world and governments and all other botherations:[119]


Swamiji's statement in this letter to Mary Hale that he was a socialist obviously did not apply, as some have thought, to his views on Indian politics. He was speaking here of the social and economic problems of the late-nineteenth-century industrial West. He was declaring himself, as naturally he would, to be on the side of the American poor with, it so happened, William Jennings Bryan, and on the side of the English poor with the more widely based proponents of socialism. Whatever Swamiji's views may have been regarding India's problems, he was not here referring to them even by implication. It is of interest, nevertheless, to consider what he was referring to. What would he have meant by the term socialism? In the 1890s English Socialism was a movement initiated by a few nonviolent, highly intellectual, middle- and upper-class men and women whose social conscience had been aroused.


The appalling living and working conditions of the laboring classes in industrial England, their poorly paid, overworked, underfed, miserably housed life, their total lack of redress for the injustices heaped upon their heads, the unspeakable workhouses into which they were shunted when employment failed, as it frequently did, the all-in-all hopelessness of an enormous number of men, women, and children, whose unending labor fed and clothed the rich—this state of things had not been discovered and made widely known until the 1880s. Such works as Charles Booth's factual eighteen-volume Life and Labours of the People in London, William Booth's more popular In Darkest England and the Way Out, Andrew Mearns's The Bitter Cry of Outcast London, together with the sensational journalism of William T. Stead, who described the conditions of London's poor in lurid, but not exaggerated, terms (one could hardly exaggerate the squalor of the city's slums in which thirty percent of the population lived)—such books brought to public notice that all was not well in merrie England. Many people, shocked, increased their donations to charity and, much relieved, forgot the whole matter. But the few who could not forget made an intensive study of the causes of poverty. As for its remedy, other books written around this time had much to say and were highly influential—notably, Henry George's Progress and Poverty, Edward Bellamy's Looking  Backward, H. M. Hyndman's England for All, Karl Marx's Capital. These, addressing themselves to the economic problems of the Industrial Age, pointed to a socialistic solution—a redistribution of wealth through state, rather than individual, ownership of the means of production. Around this general idea, various kinds of socialism arose in England—all of them gentlemanly. There were the utopian Christian Socialists, the Marxist-based Social-Democratic Federation, its splinter group, the Socialist League, and the down-to-earth, highly educated, upper-middle-class, hard-working Fabian Socialists, who owed nothing to Marx and favored a gradual means of reform. It would seem to go almost without saying that if Swamiji was in sympathy with any particular group of socialists, it was with the small and fairly exclusive Fabian Society (founded in 1884), for it steered a path between the irrationality of violence on the one hand and that of sentimentality on the other—between, that is, plans for wholesale revolution and dreams of isolated utopian communes.


The leaders of the Fabian Society, which was not and never would be a political party, were brilliant, witty, compassionate, and vigorous men and women; among them were, most notably, George Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Sydney Olivier, Graham Wallas, Hubert Bland, Annie Besant (before she became a Theosophist), and, later on, Bertrand Russell. The Fabians, a historian wrote of them, were "a group of men and women who are endeavouring to spread practical views on the immediate and pressing social problems, and to indicate the way for their embodiment in legislative or administrative measures.'[120]They held regular fortnightly meetings, attended other pertinent meetings, wrote tracts, pamphlets, and leaflets, gave innumerable lectures, and in every way possible tried to "permeate" all classes, high and low, with the idea that "society, as based on the competitive system, must be reconstructed in such a manner as to secure the general welfare and happiness.'[121] Far from being destructive or revolutionary, the Fabian Society "constructed the  edifice of Socialism on the firm foundations of existing political and social institutions'[122]—which in England were, it so happened, already democratic. In short, as described by Graham Wallas, it was "a movement towards economic equality to be achieved by democracy.'[123]


And that movement was, of course, motivated by a deep conviction, considered wildly irresponsible by its right-wing opponents, that all human beings have a right to work, to rest, to eat, to be educated, and to be well housed. While Swamiji would not have agreed that social and economic reforms could in themselves bring about a society consisting of moral and happy men and women, he would not have discouraged these dedicated socialists from doing their utmost for the welfare of others. Nor were all socialists philosophical materialists; some among them placed a strong emphasis on spiritual values. One such was Edward Carpenter, who, along with others, came to visit Swamiji at his flat. In Swami Shuddhananda's reminiscences one reads:


Swamiji said, "At London, [Edward Carpenter] used to call on me on many occasions and sit near me. Many other socialists and democrats also used to visit me. Finding in the religion of Vedanta a strong support for their ideals, they felt much attracted towards its teachings.[124]


It has been said that Edward Carpenter "shows in the appendices to his Pagan and Christian Creeds the undoubted influence of Vivekananda:'[125] The appendix to this work (published in 1920) is entitled "The Teaching of the Upanishads" and consists of two parts: "Rest" and "The Nature of the Self." Both essays are full of Vedantic ideas, and there can indeed be little doubt that Swamiji's thought entered into, clarified, and enriched Carpenter's own. But the door was wide open. Edward Carpenter had been thinking and feeling along Vedantic lines for many years prior to his meeting with Swamiji, and throughout his adult life he had nourished his thought with food from many sources, including the Upanishads. Thus, while one cannot deny Swamiji's influence upon him, one cannot easily pinpoint it.


But however that may be, some of the best and most vital of minds must have gathered at 14 Greycoat Gardens along with Edward Carpenter. There would have been long and good talks on the nature of man, on the foundations of morality, on the meaning of equality and freedom, on the art of working effectively and beneficially, on the divinity of all men and all things, on renunciation and self-sacrifice. The conversation must often have turned on the question of whether a better order of things would be brought about solely by economic reform, which, it was assumed, would enable everyone to manifest his natural goodness and morality, or through, first, a moral and spiritual regeneration, such as would create a perfect society.


As far as India was concerned, Swamiji had written to Alasinga in 1895, "There cannot be any reform without spiritual reform first,'[126]and he no doubt would have said the same in connection with the West. Indeed, he made this point clear in his lecture "Vedanta and Privilege, " which bears no date as published but which may have been given on a Wednesday evening in November:


This is the gist of Vedantic morality . . . sameness for all. We have seen that it is the subjective world that rules the objective. Change the subject, and the object is bound to change; purify yourself, and the world is bound to be purified. This one thing requires to be taught now more than ever before. We are becoming more and more busy about our neighbours, and less and less about ourselves. The world will change if we change; if we are pure, the world will become pure....


. . . You ask one of your great men in England, of great birth and wealth, if he believes as a Christian in the brotherhood of mankind, since all came from God. He answers in the affirmative, but in five minutes he shouts something uncomplimentary about the common herd. Thus, it has been a theory only.... All understand it, declare it as the truth, but when you ask them to practice it, they say it will take millions of years....


Do you believe what Christ says, "Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor"? Practical equality there; no trying to torture the texts, but taking the truth as it is.... Do not torture texts; dare to face truth as it is. Even if we cannot reach to it, let us confess our weakness, but let us not destroy the ideal. Let us hope that we shall attain to it sometime, and strive for it. There it is—"Sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and follow me." Thus, trampling on every privilege and everything in us that works for privilege, let us work for that knowledge which will bring the feeling of sameness towards all mankind. You think that because you talk a little more polished language, you are superior to the man in the street. Remember that when you are thinking this, you are not going towards freedom, but are forging a fresh chain for your feet.[127]


Here again was Swamiji's "political" stand. It called for inner change on the part of many individuals, for without that, no amount of social or economic reform could be effective and lasting. Indeed, too high a social ideal without a strong foundation of individual selflessness and sameness of vision could be only destructive, like an attempt to raise a lofty tower on a bed of silt. According to a letter written by Goodwin to Mrs. Bull, it was during a talk at Greycoat Gardens that Swamiji, discussing social questions, said, "It is very good to have a high ideal, but don't make it too high. A high ideal raises mankind, but an impossible ideal lowers them from the very impossibility of the case:[128] He was surely speaking here of social ideals that involve large groups of people or entire nations, ideals such as communism or anarchism or pacifism, ideals which society as  a whole is not ready to live up to, which in theory are grand and noble but which in practice instantly become corrupt and distorted, sometimes monstrous; for as he said, "it is the subjective world that rules the objective";[129] it is not the other way around.


7

Even when there were no visitors, the conversation at Greycoat Gardens was full of liveliness and interest—at least for the participants. In another letter to Mrs. Bull, Goodwin wrote, "I am writing this while the two Swamis are having a big discussion in Bengalee—12 midnight—which has already lasted over two hours on a sentence in the Brihadaranya (sic) Upanishad which you have often heard the Swami quote 'No man loves the wife for the wife's sake, but for the Self & c’'[130]Or Swamiji spoke on another evening about Buddha. "The Swami says," Goodwin reported to Mrs. Bull, "he thinks that when Buddha came India had reached a very great eminence in civilization, but the intense intellectuality had made religion a dry, selfish, agnosticism. Buddha preached the highest agnosticism—& he also spoke of Buddha never having spoken of doing anything for himself—always for all these.'[131]

And there would of course have been conversations outside the flat as well as in it, for Swamiji was surely often a guest at a luncheon or dinner at the home of one friend or another. We know, however, of only one such occasion during the fall season, information about which comes to us from a letter of Goodwin's dated October 23:


Yesterday we lunched at the house of a wealthy lady [Miss Emmeline Souter]*(21)& met the Rev. H. R. Haweis, & the Bishop of Ballarat (Australia) & others. Mr. Haweis is really splendid in his attitude to the Swami—so deferential, & so generous in his open admiration of his greatness.[132]


*(21) According to Swami Abhedananda's diary for this period, Miss Souter often invited Swamiji to her house (in Marylebone) for lunch and dinner, introducing him to her friends, one of whom was the Reverend Hugh R. Haweis. Swamiji would take Swami Abhedananda along on these occasions, so that he, too, would meet a number of London's distinguished people. (See Brahmachari Satya Chaitanya, "Londone Swami Vivekananda," part 3, Vishwavani, Caitra, I335, p. 855~)

The "we" who attended this luncheon included Swami Abhedananda, who was getting on well in this foreign land. Goodwin "piloted" him about London, showing him the sights; Swamiji saw to it that he met people of all classes, coached him in public speaking, and before long decided that he should give a talk. The young Swami was not to avoid this first-speech trial in London, as Swami Saradananda had fortuitously done earlier in the year (see chapter twelve, section one). The story has come down to us that in the late morning of the scheduled day (October 27) in what must have been Swamiji's seventh-story Victoria Street classroom, Swami Abhedananda said to his older brother, who had just given the glowing class-lecture "God in Everything," “You know, Naren, I don't think I will speak this afternoon. Some other time . . ." And Swamiji, who was a good deal more strongly built than Swami Abhedananda, replied fiercely, "Kali, you must speak, or I will throw you out that window!"


It was a well-chosen gathering at which Swami Abhedananda spoke that afternoon—a small, informal, and friendly meeting of the Christo-Theosophical Society (at 33 Bloomsbury Square) that had convened to hear Swamiji himself. If the audience was at first disappointed not to hear the speaker it had come to hear, it was soon delighted with the young Swami's maiden speech and enchanted by the sight of Swamiji's own unbounded pleasure. Mr. Eric Hammond, who was present, recalled that "an overwhelming joy was noticeable in the Swami in his scholar's success. Joy compelled him," Hammond went on, to put at least some of itself into words that rang with delight unalloyed. It was the joy of a spiritual father over the achievement of a well-beloved son, a successful and brilliant student.... The whole impression had in it a glowing beauty quite indescribable.... He remarked that this was the first appearance of his dear Brother and pupil, as an English-speaking lecturer before an English audience,  and he pulsated with pure pleasure at the applause that followed the remark. His selflessness throughout the episode burnt itself into one's deepest memory.[133]


But for Mr. Hammond that radiant scene would have eluded us—as have how many others! Swamiji wrote with restraint to Alasinga of the lecture: "The new Swami delivered his maiden speech yesterday at a friendly society's meeting. It was good and I liked it; he has the making of a good speaker in him, I am sure.'[134]Goodwin was as matter-of fact: "The, Swami Avedananda lectured to the Christo-Theosophical Socy last week, &. was exceedingly good. He will make a lecturer.'[135] That is all we would have known of Swamiji's pleasure on that occasion, which was indeed a momentous one—the beginning 'for Swami Abhedananda of what would be many years of lecturing in the Western world. But even as Swamiji was overjoyed with him, he himself was more pleased with his great brother than with his own success. On November 19 he wrote from London to a friend in India:


The Swami is holding his classes here & he is really going to be appreciated by the English people. I am surprised to see the wonderful power of speech which the Swami has got. He can charm & attract hundreds of people by his magnetic influence.

You will be glad to know that I have delivered here 3 lectures in English*(22). In the course of delivering my first lecture I felt a little nervous, but in the other two I was not at all nervous. The Swami has got here hundreds of his admire.[136]


*(22) Swami Abhedananda's second lecture was a tall before the class at 39 Victoria Street on the evening of Wednesday, November II, in Swamiji's absence All we know about his third talk is that it took place on Sunday, November I5, when, as Mr. Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull, he lectured "in the country at a church" (SCB)

Swamiji’s English work had lost nothing of its impetus and strength during the summer vacation. The classes had, in fact, grown, and the verbal support of Max Muller and Paul Deussen, both highly esteemed scholars, had given his teachings the aura of respectability, as he informed Mrs. Bull in his letter  of October 8*(23). "Things are working very favorably here in England," he wrote; "that is a great gain. The work is not only popular but respectable.'[137]The Anglican clergy was favourably disposed toward him; unorthodox but highly respected ministers such as the Reverend Mr. Haweis greatly admired him; and, as we have seen, many intellectuals saw in Vedanta a philosophy that could support their views on social reform. But would the work survive his absence? Even though Swami Abhedananda would prove to be a good lecturer, was there an organization to support him? And was one swami enough? The news from America told of Swami Saradananda's success there, but it also indicated that more teachers were needed to fill the demand and maintain a continuity of interest. Though such thoughts did not weigh on Swamiji's mind, they entered it.

*(23) In the Complete Works (6: 377) Swamiji's word "respectable" has been changed to "appreciated." But it was intellectual "respectability" that Max Muller and Deussen had shed over Swamiji's work in England; that is what he meant to convey. To Miss MacLeod he had written, "In all, the English work is becoming solid-and respectable too, seeing that great scholars are sympathising" (Complete Works, 6: 374)

"The work in London is growing apace, the classes are becoming bigger as they go on," he wrote to Alasinga in the second or third week of October, and continued:


I have no doubt this will go on increasing at this rate and the English people are steady and loyal. Of course, as soon as I leave, most of this fabric will tumble down. [But] something will happen. Some strong man will arise to take it up. The Lord knows what is good. In America there is room for twenty preachers on the Vedanta and Yoga. Where to get these preachers and where also the money to bring them? Half the United States can be conquered in ten years, given a number of strong and genuine men. Where are they?[138]


As this last season of his Western work began, Swamiji sent out a resounding call through Alasinga: "My child, what I want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells a mind of the same material as that of which the thunderbolt is made.'[139]He wanted such workers, heroic and unconquerable, not for the West alone, but, as will be seen in the following chapter, for India as well.


ⓘ
[1] Complete Works 6 : 376.
[2] Complete Works., 8 : 389.
[3] Complete Works, 8 : 392.
[4] Complete Works, 6 : 364.
[5] Complete Works., 6 : 364-65.
[6] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, October 21,1896, SCB.
[7] Complete Works, 6 : 364-65.
[8] Complete Works., 8 : 376.
[9] Complete Works, 5 : 118.
[10] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, October 8,1896, Sen Col.
[11] Complete Works, 5 : 118.
[12] Brahmachari Satya Chaitanya, “Londone Swami Vivekananda,” part 3, Vishwavani, Caitra, 1335 (Bengali era).
[13] J. J. Goodwin to Josephine MacLeod, October 4, 1896, A.A.
[14] Complete Works, 1 : 384.
[15] Complete Works, 1 : 386.
[16] Complete Works, 1 : 386.
[17] Swami Vivekananda to Christina Greenstidel, October 6, 1896, Sen Col.
[18] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, May 18, 1896, SCB.
[19] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull , June 19, 1896.
[20] Brahmavadin, August 29, 1896, P-314
[21] John P. Fox to Sara Bull, June 21, 1896, SCB; J. J. Goodwin, May 18, 1896, SCB.
[22] Complete Works, 7 : 498.
[23] Sarah E. Waldo to Swami Sarada-nanda, April 11,1897, SCB.
[24] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, July 18, 1896, SN Col.
[25] Greenacre Circular, printed copy, SCB.
[26] See ref. 20 above.
[27] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, August 21,1896, SCB.
[28] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull., August 29,1896.
[29] Postscript to the above.
[30] Mary Phillips to Sara Bull, November 14,1896, SCB.
[31] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, August 29,1896, SCB.
[32] Sara Bull to Francis and Besse Leggett and Josephine MacLeod, August 29, 1896, SCB.
[33] Complete Works, 8 : 387.
[34] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, September 1, 1896, SCB.
[35] J. J. Goodwin to Francis H. Leggett, September 18, 1896, SN Col.
[36] Complete Works, 6 : 371-72. (Original letter, Sen Col.)
[37] E. T. Sturdy to Sara Bull, September 17, 1896, SCB.
[38] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, October (day unknown), 1896, SCB.
[39] Mary Phillips to Sara Bull, October 4, 1896, SCB.
[40] Quoted in the following letter.
[41] J.J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, September 22, 1896, SCB.
[42] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, September 23, 1896, SCB.
[43] See ref. 41 above.
[44] Sarah E. Waldo to J. J. Goodwin, September 23, 1896, SCB.
[45] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, September 25, 1896, SCB.
[46] J. J. Goodwin to Mary Phillips, October 7, 1896, SCB.
[47] J. J. Goodwin to Josephine MacLeod, October 4, 1896, A.A.
[48] Mary Phillips to J. J. Goodwin, October 13, 1896, SCB.
[49] Complete Works, 6:376-77. (Original letter, Sen Col.)
[50] Complete Works,., 6:377. (Original letter, Sen Col.)
[51] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, September 22, 1896, SCB.
[52] Mary Phillips to Sara Bull, November 14, 1896, SCB.
[53] Sarah E. Waldo to Sara Bull, October 27, 1896, SCB.
[54] Sara Bull to Sarah E. Waldo, undated, SCB.
[55] Complete Works, 6 : 382. Quoted from the original letter, Sen Col.
[56] See ref. 52 above.
[57] J.J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, October 21, 1896, SCB.
[58] Sara Bull to Swami Vivekananda, October 5, 1896, Sen Col.
[59] John P. Fox to Sara Bull, January 6, 1897, SCB.
[60] Swami Saradananda to Sara Bull, January 6, 1897, SCB.
[61] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, March 30, 1897, SCB.[62] See ref. 52 above.
[63] Complete Works, 5: 118.
[64] Complete Works, 6: 373-74.
[65].Complete Works., 6 : 376.
[66].Complete Works., 377. Quoted from the original letter, Sen Col.
[67] E. T. Sturdy to Josephine MacLeod, October 3, 1896, SN Col.
[68] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, October 23,    1896, SCB.
[69] Complete Works, 6 : 374-75.
[70] See ref. 57 above.
[71] See ref. 68 above.
[72] Complete Works, 5 : 118.
[73] See ref. 57 above.
[74]. Complete Works, 8 : 387.
[75]. J.J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, October 23,    1896, SCB.
[76] Complete Works, 1 : 348, 350.
[77] Complete Works., 1 : 355-56.
[78] Complete Works2 : 88.
[79] Complete Works 2 :89.
[80] Complete Works2 : 105.
[81] Complete Works2 : 91.
[82] Complete Works2 :91.
[83] Complete Works 2 : 92.
[84] Complete Works2 : 92-93.
[85] Complete Works2 : 93.
[86] Complete Works 2 : 121.
[87] Complete Works2 : 121.
[88] Complete Works 2:111.
[89] Complete Works 2 : 94, 95.
[90] Complete Works2 :94.
[91] Complete Works2 :95.
[92] Complete Works 2 :95.
[93] Complete Works 2 : 95-97 passim.
[94] Complete Works2 : 123.
[95] Complete Works2 : 122.
[96] Complete Works 2 : 90-91.
[97] Complete Works1 :353-
[98] Complete Works  2 : 110.
[99] Complete Works 2 : 113-14.
[100] Complete Works 2:123-24.
[101] Complete Works 2 : 123-26 passim.
[102] Complete Works 2 : 126.
[103] Complete Works 2:127-28.
[104] Complete Works2 : 145, 146.
[105] Life (1981), 2 : 101.
[106] Complete Works, 2 : 146-47.
[107] Complete Works., 2 : 149.
[108] Complete Works 2 : 150.
[109] Complete Works2 : 152-53.
[110] Complete Works. 2 : 154.
[111] Complete Works2 : 163, 165.
[112] Complete Works2 : 166-67.
[113] Realisation, pamphlet, London, May 1897. (Cf. Complete Works, 2 : 174.)
[114] Complete Works, 2 : 181-82.
[115] Complete Works2 : 129.
[116] Complete Works, 6 : 378.
[117] Complete Works., 5 : 96.
[118] Complete Works5 : 200.
[119] Complete Works 6 : 381-82.
[120] Max Beer, A History of British Socialism, 3d ed. in 2 vols (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1953), 2 : 276-77.
[121] Anne Fremantle, This Little Band of Prophets, p. 32.
[122] Anne Fremantle, This Little Band of Prophets,, p. 82.
[123] Anne Fremantle, This Little Band of Prophets,, p. 16.
[124] Swami Shuddhananda, “Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda,” Vedanta Kesari, January and February 1923, p. 347. (In Rem. [Swami Shuddhananda], pp. 333-34, the word socialists in this passage has been printed as specialists.)
[125] A. N. Marlow, “Vivekananda in Europe,” in Swami Vivekananda in East and West, ed. Swami Ghanananda and Dr. Geoffery Parrinder (London; The Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre, 1968), pp. 106-131 (seep. 126).
[126] Complete Works, 5 : 74.
[127] Complete Works., 1 :426-29.
[128] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, October 23,1896, SCB.
[129] Complete Works, 1 : 426.
[130] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, November 1,1896, SCB.
[131] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull., October 23,1896.
[132] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull., October 23,1896.
[133] Life (1965), p. 434.
[134] Complete Work, 5 :120.
[135] See note 130 above.
[136] Swami Abhedananda to “Dha-mu,” November 19, 1896, Sen Col.
[137] Complete Works, 6:377. (Original letter, Sen Col.)
[138] Complete Works., 5:117.
[139] Complete Works., 5:117.

↑ Contents

4.8 IGNITING THE INDIAN WORK

Throughout this first visit to the West Swamiji had been deeply—almost, it would seem, continuously-concerned with the initiation of his work in India. If one were to judge solely from the many letters (over one hundred) that he wrote from America and England to his brother disciples, to his own disciples, and to a few Indian friends, one could well think that his mind and heart were given wholly to setting in motion forces that would bring about an India "rejuvenated, more glorious than she ever was.'[1] And indeed for many months after the Parliament of Religions his primary effort had been to accumulate funds with which to start his Indian project and thereby awaken his ancient and slumbering motherland. The boldness of that effort, as well as of its goal, is staggering.

I . . . traveled [through India] in search of funds (he wrote from Chicago in January of 1894 to his brother disciples),*(1) but do you think the people of India were going to spend money! .  . . Selfishness personified-are they to spend anything? Therefore I have come to America to earn money myself and then return to my country and devote the rest of my days to the realisation of this one aim of my life—[to raise the Indian masses]. As our country is poor in social virtues, so this country is lacking in spirituality. I give them spirituality, and they give me money. I do not know how long I shall take to realise my end.... I depend on no one in Hindustan. I shall try to earn the wherewithal myself to the best of my might and carry out my plans, or die in the  attempt.[2]

*(1) This was Swamiji's first letter from the West to his brother disciples. The date assigned to it on the original (by another hand) and in the Complete Works is March rg, 1894. [t is reasonably certain, however, that it was not written later than mid-January of that year. (See Prophetic Mission- I, page 183?.)

After a grueling lecture tour through the Midwest in the harsh winter of 1893-94, during which he was "cheated by a roguish lecture bureau," harassed by bigoted ministers, and unable to obtain substantial help for his project from a people whose country was in the throes of a severe economic depression, Swamiji recognized the impossibility of collecting adequate sums of money. He stayed on in America, for he had found that he had a mission to the West; but although the primary motive for his visit thus changed, never did he forget the great need of his country and his resolve to raise her people. He went on writing letter after letter in which he directed the beginning of his work in Calcutta and Madras and sent money to both places whenever he could. Indeed his plan for the regeneration of India was so constant a part of his thought during his entire first visit in the West that any narrative of those years would be incomplete without at least a brief look at the huge effort he made to start the wheels of his Indian work rolling.

On his way to America in the spring of 1893, Swamiji's heartbreak over the condition of the Indian masses—"the poor, the ignorant, the downtrodden"—was, if possible, intensified when in Japan he saw how well the people fared and how vital and progressive was the country. Even the priests favored progress, "And you, what are you?" he wrote from Yokohama to his Madras disciples,

talking twaddle all your lives, vain talkers, what are you? Come, see these people, and then go and hide your faces in shame! . . . Come, be men! Come out of your narrow holes and have a look abroad. See how nations are on the march! Do you love man? Do you love your country? Then come, let us struggle for higher and better things.[3]

In America the contrast between the well-being and freedom of the masses and the wretchedness of their Indian counterparts wrung Swamiji's heart even more. The bleak interior of a late-nineteenth-century reformatory for women seemed glorious to him, for the prison offered hope to the outcasts of society, rehabilitating them. "How grand, how beautiful, you must see to believe!" he wrote to Alasinga from Massachusetts. "And, oh, how my heart ached to think of what we think of the poor and low in India. They have no chance of escape, no way to climb up.'[4]The dreadful slums of Chicago seemed palatial in comparison with the hovels of India's poor. And, above all, he saw the great American dream shining in the eyes of the most destitute immigrant and noted the pride of freedom in his walk; the common laborer had hope, he could hold his head high, he could earn an honest dollar with the best of men, and his children could (and very often did) become millionaires.

In spite of all the ravings of the priests [Swamiji wrote to Alasinga from Chicago in November of 1893], caste is simply a crystallized social institution, which after doing its service is now filling the atmosphere of India with its stench, and it can only be removed by giving back to the people their lost individuality. Every man born here knows that he is a man. Every man born in India knows that he is a slave of society. Now, freedom is the only condition of growth; take that off, the result is degeneration.[5]

He did not blame India's social customs per se for the state of her downtrodden hundreds of millions; nor did he seek the cause in the insufferable oppression and exploitation of the Indian people by the British Raj; least of all did he lay the blame at the door of the Hindu religion, as the country's social reformers were wont to do. He placed the blame on the tyranny of the Hindu rich over the poor, the upper castes over the lower; he placed the blame squarely on the Indians themselves.

Caste or no caste, creed or no creed, any man or class, or caste, or nation, or institution which bars the power of free thought and action of an individual . . . so long as that power does not injure others—is devilish and must go down.... 

Of course, I am a sympathiser for every reform [he went on in this letter of January 24, 189 4to Alasinga] but the fate of a nation does not depend upon the number of husbands their widows get, but upon the condition of the masses. Can you raise them? Can you give them back their lost individuality without making them lose their innate spiritual nature? Can you become an occidental of occidentals in your spirit of equality, freedom, work, and energy, and at the same time a Hindu to the very backbone in religious culture and instincts? This is to be done and we will do it. You are all born to do it. ..  . Sympathy for the poor, the downtrodden, even unto death—this is our motto.[6]

True reformation, such as would strengthen India's unique cultural heritage and simultaneously give social freedom to her people, required more religion, not less. He saw the root cause of India's degradation precisely in her failure to apply "the grandest religion in the world"—a religion that was the very source of her life.

Hear me, my friend [he wrote in his first letter from America to Alasinga], I have discovered the secret through the grace of the Lord. Religion is not at fault. On the other hand, your religion teaches you that every being is only your own self multiplied. But it was the want of practical application, the want of sympathy—the want of heart. The Lord once more came to you as Buddha and taught you how to feel, how to sympathise with the poor, the miserable, the sinner, but you heard Him not. . .[The Pandits] do not know that India is a very small part of the world and the whole world looks down with contempt upon the three hundred millions of earthworms crawling upon the fair soil of India and trying to oppress each other. This state of things must be removed, not by destroying religion but by following the great teachings of the Hindu faith, and joining with it the wonderful sympathy of that logical development of Hinduism—Buddhism.[7]

The first necessity, as Swamiji then saw it, was education, and this on all fronts. The upper classes required an education as well as the lower, but theirs should be one of expansion, an education to break down the wall between India and the modern world. "The fact of our isolation from all the other nations of the world is the cause of our degeneration, " he wrote to Haridas V. Desai, "and its only remedy is getting back into the current of the rest of the world.'[8] That current had been sweeping forward for centuries, bringing with it the ideals of Liberty, equality, and fraternity, of the dignity of the individual and the right of all human beings to realize their own potential for greatness. While the common man was rising, while other societies were radically changing, accommodating themselves to new ideals, Indian society had remained obdurately feudal, caste-bound, and priest-ridden. From the day swamiji had seen the cities of Japan with their thriving Industry and their prosperous people, he urged his countrymen to "come out," to see the world, to learn, to expand, to comprehend what men and women are capable of.

This cannot be achieved through the study of books [he wrote to his friend Manmatha Nath Bhattacharya in September of 1894]. I say, can you send out some men and women to see the world? Only then will the country wake up—not through the reading of books....

Keeping aloof from the community of nations is the only cause for the downfall of India. Since the English came, they have been forcing you back in communion with other nations, and you are visibly rising again.... All narrowness, all contraction, all selfishness is simply slow suicide, and when a nation commits the fatal mistake of contracting itself and of thus cutting off all expansion and life, it must die. Women similarly must go forward or become idiots and soulless tools in the hands of their tyrannical lords. The children are the result of the combination of the tyrant and the idiot, and they are slaves. And this is the whole history of modern India. Oh, who would break this horrible crystallisation of death? Lord help us![9]

"If group after group of Indians travel all over the world and back for some years, the face of India will be changed within twenty years by that alone; nothing else need be done," he wrote in this same letter.[10] Nor did Swamiji want his countrymen to travel abroad only to learn; he wanted them to give as well. This was, indeed, the theme of his Reply to the Calcutta Address, which he wrote in New York on November 18, 1894:

Give and take is the law, and if India wants to raise herself once more, it is absolutely necessary that she brings out her treasures and throws them broadcast among the nations of the earth, and in return be ready to receive what others have to give her. Expansion is life, contraction is death. Love is life, and hatred is death. We commenced to die the day we began to hate other races; and nothing can prevent our death unless we come back to expansion, which is life. We must mix, therefore, with all the races of the earth.... The wonderful structures of national life, which the Western nations have raised, are supported by the strong pillars of character, and until we can produce numbers of such, it is useless to fret and fume against this or that power.[11]

Swamiji saw that the time was coming when Hindus would indeed travel widely and would benefit from and bring benefit to other cultures. But another aspect of India's education could not wait—the education, both secular and religious, of the poor. His plan (revolutionary in many respects) was for his brother monks—the great, though still young, disciples of Sri Ramakrishna—to undertake the task. Further, he wanted his householder disciples in Madras to work along the same lines. Indeed, it seems clear from his early letters to Madras that he had discussed these plans with Alasinga. "Do not forget our plan of a central college," he wrote to him in January of 1894, "and the starting from it to all directions in India. Work hard."'[12] And in a postscript to this letter:

There is no harm in preaching the idea of elevating the masses by means of a central college, and bringing education as well as religion to the door of the poor by means of missionaries trained in this college. Try to interest everybody.[13]

My whole ambition in life [he wrote in this same letter] is to set in motion a machinery which will bring noble ideas to the door of everybody, and then let men and women settle their own fate. Let them know what our forefathers as well as other nations have thought on the most momentous questions of life. Let them see specially what others are doing now, and then decide. We are to put the chemicals together, the crystallisation will be done by nature according  to her laws. [14]

In short, Swamiji was bent on stirring the great cauldron of India, whose incomparable treasures had sunk to the bottom, lying motionless and hidden under layers of debris. The whole  nation, as he said again and again, was sunk in tamas, heavy, inert, almost impossible to move. But in the heart of that nation he knew the embers were still glowing, needing only to be fanned into flame by the fresh breeze of ideas both old and new. He had seen the spiritual ideal shining deep in the serene eyes of every villager, expressing itself in the grace and gentleness of carriage and gesture, woven into every household tradition, indeed into the very texture of life. He knew that in the basic spiritual nature of the Hindu villager lay the hope of his motherland, and he knew that that nature had not died; it could be fully revived. "The only hope of India is from the masses," he would write to Alasinga in March of 1896. "The upper classes are physically and morally dead.'[15]

2

It was not until January of 1894. (probably on the nineteenth) that Swamiji wrote his first letter to his brother disciples, who were at that time scattered, wandering in accordance with the age-old tradition of sannyasins. He addressed his letter to Swami Ramakrishnananda, who alone among the group always remained at the Alambazar Math, performing the worship of the Master with steadfast devotion and generally taking care of things. In this long letter, Swamiji told his plan for the regeneration of India.

At Cape Comorin [he wrote], sitting in Mother Kumari's temple, sitting on the last bit of Indian rock—I hit upon a plan: We are so many Sannyasins wandering about and teaching the people metaphysics—it is all madness. Did not our Gurudeva use to say, "An empty stomach is no good for religion"? That these poor people are leading the life of brutes is simply due to ignorance. We have for all ages been sucking their blood and trampling them underfoot.

. . . Suppose some disinterested Sannyasins, bent on doing good to others, go from village to village disseminating education and seeking in various ways to better the condition of all down to the Chandala, through oral teaching and by means of maps, cameras, globes, and such other accessories--can't that bring forth good in time? All these plans I cannot write out in this short letter. The long and the short of it is—if the mountain does not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. The poor are too poor to come to schools and Pathashalas, and they will gain nothing by reading poetry and all that sort of thing. We, as a nation, have lost our individuality, and that is the cause of all mischief in India. We have to give back to the nation its lost individuality and save the masses.[16]

Swamiji's second letter to Swami Ramakrishnananda was almost certainly written on March 19, 1894, from Detroit, where he was giving some of the most dynamic lectures of his mid-western tour and where Christian ministers and missionaries were at their most rambunctious in their attacks upon him. It was a powerful letter; in it, he spoke as a prophet of his mission and of the inevitability of its fulfillment. He spoke with a prescience too great for fully disclosing. "For the last six months I have been saying the curtain is going up, the sun is rising. Yes, the curtain is lifting by degrees, slow but sure; you will come to know it in time. He knows. One cannot speak out one's mind. These things are not for writing.'[17]In this deeply prophetic mood Swamiji wrote in a general way of the furtherance of the Master's message by a united body of'sannyasins and householders—men and women alike. He wrote of the necessity for universality both in preaching and in deed, for "perfect acceptance, not tolerance only," and for total lack of jealousy and party-spirit among those who would propagate the universal teachings of Sri Ramakrishna.

Everything must be sacrificed, if necessary, for that one sentiment, universality.... Take care how you trample on the least rights of others. Many a huge ship has foundered in that whirlpool. Remember, perfect devotion minus its bigotr—-this is what we have got to show....

Our matrons are all hale and hearty, I hope? Where is Gour-Ma [a woman disciple of Sri Ramakrishna's] ? We want a thousand such Mothers with that noble stirring spirit. . . . We want all. It is not at all necessary that all should have the same faith in our Lord as we have, but we want to unite all the powers of goodness against all the powers of evil.... One must make no distinction between householders and Sannyasins—then only one is a true Sannyasin.[18]

What appears to be Swamiji's third letter to Swami Ramakrishnananda (to whom he would address most of his letters from the West, though they were meant for all his brother disciples) was a thunderclap. Its date is not certain, for these Bengali-language letters through which he was giving form and life to his work seldom bore any date at all; as is clear from the original holographs, they were written at top speed, as though the words were cascading from some overflowing source: the date was irrelevant. Very probably, however, this particular letter was written in April or May of 1894, shortly after he had received news of the celebration at the Dakshineswar Temple of Sri Ramakrishna's birthday on March 11. He wrote in flaming impatience over the energy expended in performing ceremonial pujaa and none in serving "the living God." Here one finds Swamiji's teaching of service-as-worship glowing white hot; to him the altar of true worship was as vast as the surface of the earth and its God "every being that wears a human form." If this concept of service had ever been preached before, its everyday practice had never before been urged so insistently (if at all) upon sannyasins.

But if not sannyasins, then who? Very few were the upper or middle-class householders in Swamiji's day who would give so much as a thought to the poor. In ancient times, Hindu society had been structured in such a way—with its four ashramas and its four main castes—that all parts of the social order had been nourished. In that healthy and vigorous system, it was the unquestioned duty, the dharma, of the upper castes to provide for whatever poor there were. There was little want, and no one went hungry for lack of charity. Under these conditions, it had not been necessary for the sannyasin to engage in social work; his duty in the overall scheme of things was to transcend, not to perpetuate, this unreal world. But after the Mohammedan and English conquests, the Hindu social structure had degenerated and, as Swamiji wrote to Alasinga, was "filling the atmosphere of India with its stench." It was no longer the dharma of the rich to help the poor; it was, rather, their privilege to exploit them. Thus only in the sannyasins of India, whose strength (and prestige as well) lay in renunciation, did Swamiji see help ready at hand. "This tremendous power in the hands of the roving Sannyasins of India," he would say at a later date, "has got to be transformed, and it will raise the masses up.'[19] He would release that power from forest and mountain fastnesses to rush over the plains and into the villages of India, nourishing them, seeding them with new life. To Swamiji, selfless work was not merely a means of purifying the mind, preliminary to the spiritual practices of renunciation and meditation; it was a spiritual practice in itself, on a par with traditional sadhanas and capable of leading, like them, to the highest spiritual goal. Performed rightly, service of man was a direct and conscious worship of God, as spiritually potent in every respect as worship in a shrine and far more beneficial to the world.

It was this idea, burning in Swamiji's heart and mind, that exploded in this third letter to Swami Ramakrishnananda. "There is no hope for our nation," he began, and continued with a thunder of protest:

Not one original idea crosses anyone's brain.... My God! won't you do something to show that you are in any way removed from the common run of men! Only indulging in madness! . . . Today you have your bell, tomorrow you add a horn and follow suit with a chowry the day after; or you introduce a cot today and tomorrow you have its legs silver-mounted, and people help themselves to a riceporridge, and you spin out two thousand cock-and-bull stories—in short nothing but external ceremonials. This is called in English imbecility.... There is an ocean of difference between idleness and renunciation.


And in sentences that can stand as a manifesto of his Indian work he went on:

If you want any good to come, just throw your ceremonials overboard and worship the Living God, the Man-God—every being that wears a human form—God in his universal as well as individual aspect. The universal aspect of God means this world, and worshipping it means serving it—this indeed is work, not indulging in ceremonials.... Let some of you spread like fire and preach this worship of the universal aspect of the Godhead—a thing that was never undertaken before in our country....


Spread ideas—go from village to village, from door to door—then only will there be real work. Otherwise, lying complacently on the bed and ringing the bell now and then is a sort of disease, pure and simple.... Be independent, learn to form independent judgements.... Through the Lord's will, out of your lips shall come millions of Vedas and Tantras and Puranas....


. . . Go from village to village, do good to humanity and to the world at large. Go to hell yourself to buy salvation for others.... Don't worry in the least; heaven or hell, or Bhakti or Mukti—don't care for anything, but go, my boy, and spread the name of the Lord from door to door! . . . As Shri Ramakrishna used to love you, as I love you, come, love the world like that....'1'o do the highest good to the world, [to] everyone down to the lowest—this is our vow. Welcome Mukti or hell, whichever comes of it.[20]

What appears to have been Swamiji's next letter (the fourth) to his brother disciples reinforced all he had written so far. He started quietly, explaining his earlier impatience:


I do not take into any consideration whether people accept his [Sri Ramakrishna's] name or not, but I am ready to lay down my life to help his teachings, his life, and his message spread all over the world. What I am most afraid of is the worship-room. It is not bad in itself, but there is a tendency in some to make this all in all and set up that old-fashioned nonsense over again—this is what makes me nervous. I know why they busy themselves with those old, effete ceremonials. Their spirit craves for work, but having no outlet they waste their energy in ringing bells and all that. I am giving you a new idea. If you can work it out, then I shall know you are men and will be of service.[21]


Swamiji devoted a part of this letter to telling his brothers about life in America, and then the fire in him flamed up, and he wrote on, as though that fire itself flowed through his pen:


What is wanted is a power of organisation—do you understand me? Have any of you got that much brain in your head? If you do, let your mind work.... We want some disciples—fiery young men—do you see?—intelligent and brave, who dare to go to the jaws of Death and are ready to swim the ocean across. Do you follow me? We want hundreds like that, both men and women. Try your utmost for that end alone. Make converts right and left, and put them into our purity-drilling machine.... We must electrify society, electrify the world. Idle gossip and barren ceremonials won't do. Ceremonials are meant for householders; your work is the distribution and propagation of thought currents....


Let character be formed and then I shall be in your midst. Do you see? We want two thousand Sannyasins, nay, ten, or even twenty thousand—men and women both.... We must make a sensation. Give up your passive attitude, gird your loins and stand up. Let me see you make some electric circuits between Calcutta and Madras. Start centres at places, go on always making converts.... He alone is child of Shri Ramakrishna who is moved to pity for all creatures and exerts himself for them even at the risk of incurring personal damnation. [22]


As Swamiji wrote this letter he became more and more impassioned, as though rising to higher and yet higher states of being and of knowing:


. . . Arise! Arise! A tidal wave is coming! Onward! Men and women down to the Chandala—all are pure in his eyes. Onward! Onward! There is no time to care for name, or fame, or Mukti, or Bhakti! We shall look to these some other time. Now in this life let us infinitely spread his lofty character, his sublime life, his infinite soul. This is the only work—there is nothing else to do. Wherever his name will reach, the veriest worm will attain divinity, nay, is actually attaining it; you have got eyes, and don't you see it? Is it a child's play? Is it silly prattle? Is it foolery? "Arise! Awake!" Great Lord! He is at our back. I cannot write any more. Onward! I only tell you this, that whoever reads this letter will imbibe my spirit! Have faith! Onward! Great Lord! I feel as if somebody is moving my hand to write in this way. Onward! Great Lord! Everyone will be swept away! Take care, he is coming! Whoever will be ready to serve him—no, not him but his children—the poor and the downtrodden, the sinful and the afflicted, down to the very worm—who will be ready to serve these, in them he will manifest himself.[23]


How many of Sri Ramakrishna's monastic disciples were living at Alambazar Math in the first part of 1894 is not definitely known. Some came and went; some had been wandering through India, some were living in holy places practicing austerities. As recorded in the History of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission by Swami Gambhirananda, "Swamis Brahmananda and Turiyananda were at Vrindaban; Adbhutananda was in Calcutta; Akhandananda and Abhedananda were travelling separately in Western India. Advaitananda lived at Benares; Yogananda generally stayed either with the Holy Mother or in places outside the Math, his health having been irrecoverably ruined by too much austerity. Niranjanananda roved about in the South.'[24] And Swami Shivananda was in Madras. As far as was possible, Swamiji's letters were circulated among his scattered brothers, and perhaps some of them at once imbibed his spirit. But to others his instructions and exhortations must have seemed, at first, highly impractical. A small, penniless band of young monks to regenerate the whole of India! Moreover, the work he was urging upon them was entirely against the tradition of Hindu monasticism. For millennia India's sannyasins had been striving for illumination through the age-old and not invalid means of solitude, austerity, meditation, and ceremonial worship. The monks of the Ramakrishna Math had continued, more or less, in the old order Of things, finding in Sri Ramakrishna a tremendous spiritual impetus, but failing to find in his teachings a radical departure from the traditional paths of spiritual practice. Then, like a whirlwind from across the seas, Swamiji began exhorting them to lay down their lives in the service of others, to be intensely active, teaching the ignorant, feeding the poor, nursing the sick, opening centers, organizing, preaching throughout India. Sri Ramakrishna had said nothing to them about such things. Were these not Swamiji's own ideas? Nor did it go unnoticed by his brother disciples that in the newspaper reports of his American lectures he seldom, if ever, mentioned his Master. Puzzled, unconvinced, almost none of them made a move in the direction he urged. But there was at least one.


As though mentally receiving Swamiji's highly charged thought—for he had read none of his letters*(2)—Swami Akhandananda had, on his own, taken a vow to alleviate the sufferings of the tenants of the Raja of Khetri in Rajputana. In the early part of 1894 he wrote from Khetri to Swamiji, describing the misery of the poor and the luxurious life of their Indian rulers. "I wanted to know," he would later recount, "whether I was right in taking the vow of relieving the distressed people.'[25]

*(2) For substantiation of this statement, see Swami Akhandananda's own account in his Service of God in Man, pages 63-70 and 77.

Swamiji probably received this letter in May of 1894, and his joy can only be imagined. He replied with explicit instructions:

Try to develop spirituality and philanthropy amongst the Thakurs [lords or rulers] in the different places of Rajputana. . . . Go from door to door amongst the poor and lower classes of the town of Khetri and teach them religion. Also, let them have oral lessons on geography and such other subjects.... Go to other villages from time to time and teach the people the arts of life as well as religion.... The Gerua robe is not for enjoyment. It is the banner of heroic work. You must give your body, mind, and speech to the welfare of the world.... The poor, the illiterate, the ignorant, the afflicted—let these be your God. Know that service to these alone is the  highest religion.[26]


"On getting this reply," Swami Akhandananda recounted, "I applied all my energy to work.'[27]And thus, on a tiny scale, almost imperceptibly, began the humanitarian work of the Ramakrishna Order in India.


3

Meanwhile in America Swamiji had been bombarded with every kind of slander his enemies could conceive of. No supporting word had come from India to the American people, and, as related elsewhere in these volumes, his predicament had been, to say the least, awkward.[28] At his instruction to Alasinga (for no one in India had thought of it)*(3) an official meeting was organized and held in Madras on April 28, 1894, in recognition of the immense value to India of his American work. Shortly thereafter, a few of Swamiji's brother disciples at Alambazar Math, notably Swamis Abhedananda, Ramakrishnananda, and Yogananda, organized a similar meeting in Calcutta, which was held on September 5 and at which the leaders of the Hindu community recognized Swamiji as a bonafide representative of Hinduism and thanked him for his great service to his country. When news finally reached America of these meetings, Swamiji was overjoyed, not only because the resolutions and letters proved to his American friends that he had not abused their trust in him, but because his beloved brother disciples and his Madras disciples were "making a stir." On September 25, after receiving news that the Calcutta Meeting was about to be held, he wrote to his brothers an energizing, spurring letter: "To work with undaunted energy! What fear! Who is powerful enough to thwart you! 'We shall crush the stars to atoms and unhinge the universe. Don't you know who we are? We are the servants of Shri Ramakrishna.' Fear? Whom to fear, forsooth?'[29]And on October 22, "Now you have come to know your own powers. Strike the iron while it is hot. Idleness won't do. . . Come on to the practical field with tremendous energy; to work, in the fullness of strength!'[30]

*(3) It should be noted here that, to his credit, the Buddhist Anagarika Hewivitarne Dharmapala lectured in Calcutta on May I4, I894, on the subject "Swami Vivekananda and Hinduism in America." He paid high tribute to Swamiji, and the event, which was attended by many dignitaries, took the form of a small public meeting in his honor. News of this meeting did not' however, reach the American people. It was the more official and important meeting in Calcutta on September 5, organized in large part by Swamiji's brother disciples, that saved the day.) In the interests of history, it should also be noted that Dharmapala's friendship for Swamiji did not long endure. When Swamiji later spoke of the degradation of Buddhism in India and criticized specifically the then current Buddhism of Ceylon, which Dharmapala had represented at the Parliament of Religions, the latter had a radical change of heart. (See Complete, Works, 7:505-6.) On Swamiji's death, Dharmapala wrote a defamatory obituary letter to Dr. Paul Carus for publication in the Open Court magazine. I have seen a copy of this letter, which outdid even the Christian missionaries in vindictiveness and malice. Dr. Carus, Swamiji's friend, declined to publish it. The letter is not, certainly, worth publishing, even as a curiosity, but its existence is probably worth noting, for it underscores not only the backbiting that Swamiji so often met with, but the loyalty of his friends as well.

A month or two later, probably in December of 1894, Swamiji wrote to Swami Brahmananda, who had by then returned to Alambazar Math, and for the first time gave specific instructions in regard to the work he wanted done. Had these details been forming in his mind as, far off in America, he pondered over the best way to proceed? Had he been waiting for Swami Brahmananda and others to return to the Math? Or was it simply that the iron was now hot, as he had written to Swami Ramakrishnananda, and should be struck? In any case, he gave some definite directives:


It isn't much use getting up a sensation every day. But avail yourselves of this stir that is rife all over the country and scatter yourselves in all quarters. In other words, try to start branches at different places. Let it not be an empty sound merely. You must join the Madrasis and start associations, etc., at different places. What about the magazine which I heard was going to be started? Why are you nervous about conducting it? . . . Come! Do something heroic. Brother, what if you do not attain Mukti, what if you suffer damnation a few times?. . .


An organized society is wanted. Let Shashi look to the household management, Sanyal [a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna's] take charge of money matters and marketing, and Sharat [Swami Saradananda] act as secretary, that is, carry on correspondence etc. Make a permanent centre—it is no use making random efforts as you are doing now. Do you see my point? I have quite a heap of newspapers, now I want you to do something. If you can build a Math, I shall say you are heroes; otherwise you are nothing. Consult the Madras people when you work. They have a great capacity for work. Celebrate this year's Shri Ramakrishna festival with such eclat as to make it a record....


... Well, I cannot tell you all—if I could but get another demon like me![31]


There was no other demon like him. But Swamiji would hear no protests of inadequacy from his brothers. Over and over again he bolstered their self-confidence, for there was no  doubt in his mind that these sons of Sri Ramakrishna could, if they would, "crush the stars to atoms and unhinge the universe"—more, he knew they were destined to "contribute to the great well-being of the world.'[32]His letter to Swami Brahmananda, who in later years was to become a bulwark of strength and administrative ability, carrying forward the work of the Order after Swamiji's death*(4), was in part an exhortation:


*(4) Swami Brahmananda is often called the first president of the Ramakrishna Math, which to the present writer seems somewhat misleading, implying, as it does, that Swami Vivekananda was never the Math's president. It is true that in its early years the Ramakrishna Math was not strictly organized, and nowhere to my, or anyone's, knowledge is there an unequivocal statement that before I90I the Math had a president in the formal and legal sense of the term. But if one uses the word president to mean one who presides and leads, then it would seem clear that Swamiji held the position of president from the very beginning of the Math, when it was first established at Baranagore, to I9OI-and this not only in the eyes of his brother disciples but in his own eyes as well (see Complete Works, 6:434 and 8:538). As for the Ramakrishna Mission, which was founded in I897, Swamiji was both de facto and de jurc its first president. In I90O he resigned from his informal presidentship of the Math and from his formal residentship of the Mission (see ibid.) and turned over the Math property to a Board of Trustees. In January of I9OI the Declaration of Trust was made final, and, subsequently, Swami Brahmananda was formally elected first president of the Trustees. It is in this context that he is said to be the first president of the Math. He himself naturally looked upon Swamiji as the leader de facto until Swamiji's death in July of I902.

. . . What queer humility is this to say, "I know nothing!" "I am nothing!" This is pseudo-renunciation and mock-modesty, I tell you. Off with such a self-debasing spirit! . . . These are the words of an atheist—the humility of a vagabond wretch. We can do everything, and will do everything! He who is fortunate enough will heroically join us, letting the worthless mew like cats from their corner.... Let him who has courage in his mind and love in his heart come with me. I want none else. Through Mother's grace, single-handed I am worth a hundred thousand [men] now and will be worth two millions.[33]


Around this time—the end of 1894—Swamiji was becoming aware of his status as a prophet and of the magnitude and scope of his mission. When his brothers expressed anxiety over the criticism of this or that enemy, he replied as one who knew the power working through him was invincible. To Swami Abhedananda he wrote:


I could not catch the drift of your letter. I shall collect my own funds to build a monastery for ourselves, and if people criticise me for it, I see nothing in this to affect us either way. You have your minds pitched, high and steady, it will do you no harm.... Keep up the deepest mental poise. Take not the slightest notice of what puerile creatures may be saying against you. Indifference, indifference, indifference! . . . Whether I make my pile or do whatever else I am reported to; shall the opinions of the riff-raff stand in the way of His work? . . . So long as you gird up your loins and stand united behind me, there is no fear even if the whole world combines against us. Finally, I have understood this much—that I shall have to assume a very high position.[34]


One of the things Swamiji observed in the West and pondered over as an element essential not only to his work in India but to the new East-West culture he envisioned was the power of organization. Shortly after the Parliament of Religions, he remarked to his Chicago hostess, Mrs. John B. Lyon, that he had had "the greatest temptation of his life in America." And when she teasingly asked, "Who is she, Swami?" he burst out laughing and replied, "Oh, it is not a lady, it is Organisation.'[35] Why a temptation? "We [Hindus]," he would say two years later in connection with religion, "believe that organisation always brings new evils.'[36] But convinced that without organization the "machine" he wanted to set in motion would inevitably stall, he struck again and again at the basic obstacle to (and bane of) all organized work. "We cannot give up jealousy and rally together. That is our national sin,'[37] he wrote to his brother disciples. And again, "That jealousy, that absence of conjoint action is the very nature of enslaved nations. But we must try to shake it off.... At any cost, any price, any sacrifice, we must never allow that to creep in among ourselves. Whether we be ten or two, do not care, but those few must be perfect characters.'[38]


Although Swamiji did not at this time designate any one of his brothers as leader in his absence, he wrote in the same cautionary vein of the qualifications for leadership: "One must be a servant of servants and must accommodate a thousand minds. There must not be a shade of jealousy or selfishness, then you are a leader. First by birth and secondly, unselfish—that's a leader.'[39] Thus he molded them for the unified work ahead, a work in which the least flaw could mar the whole: not saints, but super-saints were needed—men such as the world had rarely seen and never before as a band. "From the day Shri Ramakrishna was born dates the growth of modern India and of the Golden Age," he told them. "And you are the agents to bring about this Golden Age. To work, with this conviction at heart!'[40]


That Swamiji eventually succeeded in forming an organization of spiritual giants in which "each does his own part, and all the parts taken together express an ideal of harmony,'[41]was one of his greatest achievements. By and large, these young men—each different in temperament from the others, each strong-minded, spirited, forged by Sri Ramakrishna —had little desire to undertake the practical, organized work he asked of them; some had thought it out of keeping for a monk to work at all. Swamiji succeeded in winning their full cooperation; but in the long run, it was not alone his power of persuasion that made this achievement possible, it was also their deep love for him, together with their knowledge that the Master had placed them in his charge.


Just as his experience in the Western world convinced Swamiji of the power of organization, so did it open his eyes to the greatness of the role women could play in human society. He was indeed "struck dumb with wonderment at seeing the women of America."


There are thousands of women here [he wrote] whose minds are as pure and white as the snow of this country. And look at our girls, becoming mothers below their teens! Good Lord! I now see it all. Brother, "The gods are pleased where the women are held in esteem"—says the old Manu. We are horrible sinners, and our degradation is due to our calling women "despicable worms", "gateways to hell", and so forth.[42] Goodness gracious! There is all the difference between heaven and hell!!


In the face of the Christian missionaries' crude misrepresentation of India's treatment of her women, Swamiji again and again, throughout America, spoke of the revered position the Indian woman held as mother. He extolled the sanctity of her rights, the chastity and purity of her life. Nonetheless, he was keenly aware that there was much to be desired in the prevailing condition and status of Indian women as a whole. To his brothers he wrote, "[The American women] are like Lakshmi in beauty and like Sarasvati in virtues—they are the Divine Mother incarnate and worshipping them, one verily attains perfection in everything. Great God! Are we to be counted among men? 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 your countrymen become worthy of their name.'[43]


There was then living in India a woman who, in a very special sense, was "the Divine Mother incarnate." Swamiji was among the first of Sri Ramakrishna's disciples to recognize the divinity of Sri Sarada Devi. Not until he had received her blessing would he undertake his first voyage to America, though Sri Ramakrishna had himself beckoned him to cross the seas. Yet it was only in America that the significance of her life in connection with the elevation of women became clear to him. For the first time that we know of he gave full expression to his conviction in a letter written to Swami Shivananda in the winter of 1894. So extraordinary was this letter, ringing with the authority of prophetic vision, that I quote from, it at some length, familiar though it may be to many:


I have determined first to build some place for Mother [Sri Sarada Devi], for women require it first. I have now about $3,000—about Rs 10,000—of which, keeping about Rs 3,000 for my expenses back, I can send nearly Rs,7,000 for a place for Mother.[44]. . . You have not yet understood the wonderful significance of Mother's life—none of you. But gradually you will know. Without Shakti there is no regeneration for the world. Why is it that our country is the weakest and the most backward of all countries? Because Shakti is held in dishonour there. Mother has been born to revive that wonderful Shakti in India; and making her the nucleus, once more will Gargis and Maitreyis be born into the world. Dear brother, you understand little now, but by degrees you will come to know it all. Hence it is her Math that I want first.... Without the grace of Shakti nothing is to be accomplished. What do I find in America and Europe?—the worship of Shakti, the worship of power. Yet they worship Her ignorantly through sense-gratification. Imagine, then, what a lot of good they will achieve who will worship Her with all purity, in a Sattvika spirit, looking upon Her as their mother! I am coming to understand things clearer every day, my insight is opening out more and more. Hence we must first build a Math for Mother. First Mother and Mother's daughters, then Father and Father's sons—can you understand this? . . . To me, Mother's grace is a hundred thousand times more valuable than Father's.... In this terrible winter I am lecturing from place to place and fighting against odds, so that funds may be collected for Mother's Math.[45]

4

Throughout 1895 and a part of 1896 Swamiji continued to write to his brother disciples, repeatedly encouraging them, prodding them, urging them on. "Gird up your loins and set yourselves to work," he would write.[46]Or again, "Let nothing daunt you. Who on earth has the power to snub us so long as the Lord favours us? Even if you are at your last breath be not afraid. Work on with the intrepidity of a lion but at the same time with the tenderness of a flower.'[47]"While I am on earth," he assured them, "Shri Ramakrishna is working through me. So long as you believe in this there is no danger of any evil for you.'[48] Although very little was accomplished until he returned to India, his letters prepared the ground, accustoming his brothers to his ideas, his plans, his expectations. He did not relax the tension of his demands upon them, and with the joy and pride of a father, he encouraged any sign of initiative on their part. To all of them he wrote:

Everyone [among you] has the capacity to manifest, in times of need, the highest energy. I see it. Look for instance how Shashi [Swami Ramakrishnananda] will remain always constant to his spot; his steadfastness is a great foundation-rock. How successfully Kali and Jogen [Swamis Abhedananda and Yogananda] brought about the Town Hall meeting; it was indeed a momentous task! Niranjan [Swami Niranjanananda] has done much work in Ceylon and elsewhere. How extensively has Sarada [Swami Trigunatita]*(5) travelled and sown seeds of gigantic future works! Whenever I think of the wonderful renunciation of Hari [Swami Turiyananda], about his steadiness of intellect and forbearance, I get a new access of strength! In Tulasi [Swami Nirmalananda], Gupta [later, Swami Sadananda], Baburam [Swami Premananda], Sharat [Swami Saradananda], to mention a few, in every one of you there is tremendous energy. If you still entertain any doubt as to Shri Ramakrishna's being a jewel expert, what then is the difference between you and a madman![49]


*(5) The correct form of Swami Trigunatita's name is, of course, Swami Trigunatitananda, the suffix ananda belonging to the names of all sannyasins of the Ramakrishna Order. But as the reader may remember, Swami Vivekananda wrote to him from New York in a letter dated in the Complete Works (6:297) January I7, I895 (I believe the year should be 'I896'): "By the bye, can't you shorten your name a bit, my boy? What a long, long name-a single name enough to fill a volume! Well, you hear people say that the Lord's name keeps away death! It is not the simple name Hari, mind you. It is those deep and sonorous names . . . that put to rout King Death and his whole party. Won't it look nice if you simplify yours a little? But it is too late, I am afraid, as it has already been abroad. But, believe me, it is a world-entrancing, death defying name that you have got!” For practical purposes, it was not too late. Actually one finds the Swami signing himself “Trigunatit” (possibly for the same of anonymity) in a letter to the Indian Mirror, December 27, 1893 (VIN, page 9). Later, when he came to San Francisco in 1903 and there built up the Vedanta Society that Swamiji had started in 1900, he called himself Trigunatita. Thenceforth, he has been known in the Western world, as well as in much of the English-language literature of the Ramakrishna Order, by that name. Needless to say, there is no disrespect or casualness implied in the dropping of ananda. Following Swamiji’s wish(however humorously Swamiji may have put it, it was a wish), he himself discarded the ananda, and following his wish, his American disciples (knowing no better, in any case) always referred to him both officially and informally as Swami Trigunatita. Being an American, I have followed suit.

When Swami Trigunatita thought of bringing out a Bengali language magazine, Swamiji heartily applauded the idea. "Come, here is a task for you, conduct the magazine," he wrote in January of 1895. "Thrust it on people and make them subscribe to it, and don't be afraid.'[50] A year later he wrote again, "Your idea of the paper is very good indeed. Apply yourself to it heart and soul.... The way [to get subscribers] is this: You lead a wandering life; wherever you find Bengali language spoken, thrust the paper on whomsoever you can lay your hands on.'[51]It was not until the beginning of 1899 that Swami Trigunatita's magazine, the Udbodhan, finally appeared, but once it was started, he did indeed apply himself heart and soul to it, conducting it almost single-handed. It was to become one of the main organs of the Ramakrishna Math.


The many centers of the Order that are today flourishing throughout India also had their genesis in Swamiji's letters from the West. Again and again he urged his brother disciples to start centers wherever they might be. "Throw the whole of Bengal and, for the matter of that, the whole of India into convulsions. Start centres at different places.'[52] He instructed Swami Akhandananda, who was still in Rajputana, to send Swami Abhedananda to Meerut to start a center there. "Try to open a centre at Ajmer," he added. "Work! Work! Go on opening centres in this way.... By degrees we must spread the world over.'[53]He wrote also of starting centers at Almora, Jaipur, Benares, Madras, in the Punjab, and in Kashmir. Knowing that the great task of building up the Order and spreading its ideals would devolve upon his brothers, he did everything he could to prepare them. "It is indeed a great thing to discover a new path," he wrote to Swami Brahmananda in what was possibly September of 1895, "but it is as difficult a task to cleanse that path and make it spacious and nice. If you live for some time in places where I have sown the seeds of our Master's ideals and succeed in developing the seeds into plants, you will be doing much greater work than I did.'[54] He counseled patience: "Steady! Every great work is done slowly'[55] yet wanting to "throw the world into convulsions," he stormed with the impatience of one whose vision is far ahead of his day. "All will come in good time," he wrote. "But at times I fret and stamp like a leashed hound.'[56]


In these early days it was Swamiji alone among his brothers who fully understood that Sri Ramakrishna's advent had brought to all of mankind new ways of practicing the eternal truths of religion, new ways of worship, of action, of thought,  ways that would harmonize with existing forms but that would also enable the human race to feel the hard challenges and demands of the coming age. "It was Narendra Nath alone," Swami Saradananda would later write, "who with his prodigious intellect could really evaluate the deep significance of [the Master's] inspired utterances and astound us by explaining, now and then, their true imports.'[57]Nor did Swamiji minimize the incalculable power of grace that was pouring into every corner of the world with the advent of Sri Ramakrishna, who, in his knowledge, was the greatest of all Divine Incarnations to have ever come to earth. In reply to his disciple Saratchandra Chakravarty, who had asked him if he believed Sri Ramakrishna to be an Avatara or Incarnation of God, such as Sri Ramachandra, Sri Krishna, Sri Gauranga, Buddha, and Jesus, Swamiji said, "I know Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna to be even greater than those you have just named. What to speak of believing, which is a petty thing— I know!'[58]To explain the Master's utterances, to give the intended direction to his world-moving power, to make certain that those utterances and that power would not somehow miscarry in this uncertain world were among Swamiji's great tasks. He foresaw the difficulties ahead and warned against them.


One of his primary wishes was that the annual celebrations at the Dakshineswar Temple of Sri Ramakrishna's birthday should attract "a hundred thousand people" and be not only memorial festival but also "the central union of an intense propaganda of his doctrines.'[59]Yet there was a danger. After learning of the celebration held on March 11, 1894, he had written to his brother disciples, "It is a welcome news that Shri Ramakrishna's festival has come off with great eclat; the more his name is spread the better it is. But there is one thing to know: Great sages come with special messages for the world, and not for name; but their followers throw their teachings overboard and fight over their names—this is verily the history of the world.'[60]And in September of the same year, "Always remember that Shri Ramakrishna came for the good of the world—not for name or fame. Spread only what he came to teach. Never mind his name—it will spread of itself. Directly you insist on everybody's accepting your Guru, you will be creating a sect, and everything will fall to the ground—so beware!'[61] He deplored the "cock-and-bull" stories of Sri Ramakrishna's miracles that were being published by his householder devotees. "They are true," Swamiji wrote to one of his Madras disciples, "but the fools will make a mess of the whole thing, I am sure. He had a whole world of knowledge to teach, why insist upon unnecessary things as miracles really are!'[62] Again and again he advised both his brother disciples and his disciples to underplay Sri Ramakrishna as an Avatara and to emphasize, rather, the grand, universal principles that He came to teach. In April of 1896, he wrote to Swami Trigunatita, "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 aloof 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, let people think whatever they like of his person.'[63]


The difficulty was that the Person in question was a Presence as indubitably shining as the sun on a cloudless day and essential to the renewed life of the principles. Indeed Swamiji himself would have been the last to decry the necessity of the person to the success of a religion. "Every new religious wave requires a new centre," he had written to the Dewan of Junagad (Haridas V. Desai) in June of 1894.


The old religion can only be revivified by a new centre. Hang your dogmas or doctrines, they never pay. It is a character, a life, a centre, a God-man that must lead the way, that must be the centre round which all other elements will gather themselves and then fall like a tidal wave upon the society, carrying all before it, washing away all impurities.... That centre, that God-man to lead was born in India. He was the great Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, and round him this band [his monastic disciples] is slowly gathering. They will do the work.[64]


But Sri Ramakrishna was a center without a circumference. "[We are] a non-sectarian sect,'[65]Swamiji wrote to a Madras disciple. And indeed the position of the Ramakrishna movement was without precedent: it was rooted in a single point, and yet it was boundless; it was not a sect, for it included all sects; yet it was a sect, for it had its Center, its teachings, its shrines, and its ever-increasing number of followers. That it was a sect could not be denied, but its uniqueness vis-a-vis other sects was its teaching of nonsectarianism, of principle, not person. Still, the Person was there—blazing. One thinks it was because of the very intensity of that Person that Swamiji warned so strongly against raising around him the barriers he had come to destroy. In devotion and loyalty to him, he himself took every precaution not to limit him. "Do not preach to the public that Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was an Incarnation and things of that sort'[66] was his repeated instruction; he knew that to stress Sri Ramakrishna as a personal Savior of his devotees rather than to emphasize his universal, world-saving message would at last kill the ideas for the sake of the person.[67]The effort most worthy of his Master's greatness was to flood India with the spirituality that lay dormant in her soul and that Sri Ramakrishna had come to exemplify in full degree and to awaken. In his long and stirring Reply to the Madras Address, which he wrote in September of 1894, and through which he hoped to reach the people of India, he made himself very clear:


Bring in the light; the darkness will vanish of itself. Let the lion of Vedanta roar; the foxes will fly to their holes. Throw the ideas broadcast, and let the result take care of itself.... Bring forth the power of the spirit, and pour it over the length and breadth of India; and all that is necessary will come by itself.'[68]


And to Justice Sir Subramanya Iyer in January of 1895:

This is my method—to show the Hindus that they have to give up nothing, but only to move on in the line laid down by the sages and shake off their inertia, the result of centuries of servitude.... We had to stop building during centuries of oppression. Now finish the building and everything will look beautiful in its own place. This is all my plan. I am thoroughly convinced of this. Each nation has a main current in life; in India it is religion. Make it strong and the waters on either side must move along with it. This is one phase of my line of thought.[69]


A most important phase. By giving back to the people a knowledge of and pride in their incomparable spiritual heritage, by giving them an understanding of the eternal principles underlying every aspect of their religious culture, by awakening them to an awareness of their own divinity and the divinity of all others, Swamiji would cause life to flow through India's veins once again. Otherwise, India, as India, could not survive and should she die, then "from the world all spirituality will be extinct.'[70]


By the end of 1895 most of Swamiji's brother disciples had returned at his call to Alambazar Math. Among others, Swamis Akhandananda, Premananda, Niranjanananda, Shivananda, Ramakrishnananda, and Adbhutananda were living at the Math itself, while Swamis Brahmananda, Yogananda, Saradananda, and Trigunatita were nearby in Calcutta"*(6) It was time to think of organizing the Ramakrishna Order in earnest. In the summer of 1895 Swamiji had written to his brothers of the need for a "commodious building" and had suggested a daily routine of classes and sankirtans. But this was only preliminary. As time went on the form of the vessel that was to contain and widely dispense Sri Ramakrishna's message and power continued to take shape in Swamiji's mind. On April 14 of 1896 he wrote from New York to Swami Trigunatita, "Now what you want is organisation—that requires strict obedience and division of labour." Such words he had written many times before, but now the structure of an organization was becoming definite in his thought. "I shall write out everything in every particular from England, for which I start tomorrow. I am determined to make you decent workers thoroughly organised.'[71]

*(6) This information has been culled from Swami Gambhirananda’s History of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, page 111, and Swami Akhandananda’s Service of God in Man, page 84.

True to his word, less than a fortnight later he wrote from England, where he was then staying with Mr. Sturdy, a long, highly detailed set of rules for the Math. "No doubt," he wrote, "it is an evil to be bound by laws, but it is necessary at the immature state to be guided by rules.... Secondly, it is quite natural for idle minds to indulge in gossip and faction mongering, and so forth. Hence I jot down the following hints. If you follow them, you will undoubtedly prosper, but if you don't do so, then there is a danger of all our labours coming to naught.'[72] Swamiji then proceeded to draw up a sort of informal constitution which laid down the general policy of the Math's life and government, from the annual election of office bearers to rules regulating management, daily routine, general conduct, even the amount and kind of furniture in each monk's room. He thought of everything. This long letter, which shows with how much care he was initiating his work in India, was a forerunner of the official Math Rules that he would later draw up and that today guide the Order. He was not throwing out casual, enthusiastic suggestions, but carefully building a strong foundation for a structure that had to endure. He knew that even a small mistake made at the beginning would "in the long run [assume] gigantic proportions and become hard to correct.'[73] Thus he moved with the utmost caution; but at the same time, he moved with inexhaustible intensity. His "hints" had a thunderbolt quality. "If you consider it wise to be guided by my ideas and if you follow these rules," he wrote toward the end of his letter, "then I shall supply all necessary funds. Otherwise, there will be a severance of connection with you completely.'[74] He closed on a more gentle note, "Well, just do with alacrity what I ask you to. Let me see how you carry out these few small things. Then gradually great things will come to pass.'[75]


Swamiji had not forgotten that he wanted to build a math for women, with Sri Sarada Devi at its head. "Please show this letter to Gour-Ma, Yogin-Ma, and others, and through them establish a Women's Math. Let Gour-Ma be the president there for one year, and so on. But none of you shall be allowed to visit the place. They will manage their own affairs. They will not have to work at your dictation. I shall supply all necessary expenses for that work also.'[76]But the time was not ripe for a formal women's math or convent'*(7). In her own spontaneous and unerring way, the Holy Mother would carry forward Sri Ramakrishna's work for many years without an organization. However fervently Swamiji may have wanted to protect her and the Master's other women disciples, her concern at that time was not a Math for herself but one for the monks. Indeed, in earlier years she had prayed to Sri Ramakrishna that a monastery be established to carry on his work and shelter his sons. "Ah, how much I wept, how often I prayed to the Master," she would later say. "That is why you see all these monasteries established by his grace.'[77] And one cannot but remember here the Divine Mother's words to Swamiji when, in Kashmir, he would deplore the ancient destruction of one of Her temples and declare that he would have prevented it had he been there: "Do you protect Me?" She replied, "Or do I protect you?'[78]

*(7) In 1954 an independent convent for women - the Sri Sarada Math - was opened by the Ramakrishna Order in Dakshineswar in accordance with and because of Swamiji’s wish. Since then a number of branches have been established.

5

All this time—through 1894, '95, and '96—Swamiji had been writing to his disciples in Madras—letters as fiery, as demanding, as full of plans and instructions as were those to his brothers, though perhaps not as exacting and impatient, for the wind blows hardest where the trees are strong. Still, he expected much of his Madras disciples; it had been they who had collected most of the money which had enabled him to cross the Pacific in 1893 and to live in America for the first month or so; and it was they who from the start had had unquestioning faith in his ideas and methods of work. Though they sometimes grew disheartened, for his demands were great, not stopping short of the regeneration of India, they were never skeptical. "I sincerely believe from Madras will come the impetus,'[79] he wrote to them, and they did all they could to prove him right. Their strength lay in their devotion to him. "Mind you," he wrote to Alasinga at the end of 1895, "the Guru-Bhakta will conquer the world—this is the one evidence of history.... It is faith that makes a lion of a man.'[80]

Although Swamiji addressed most of his letters to Alasinga Perumal, his instructions were meant for the small group of young householders as a whole. Alasinga, who was, in fact, the leader, was twenty-nine years old in 1894 and a teacher of science (later headmaster) at Pachaiyappa's High School in Madras*(8). Among the others were G. G. Narasimhachariar of Bangalore, whom Swamiji called "G.G."; Dr. Nanjunda Rao, whom he called "Dr."; Singaravelu Mudaliar, Assistant Professor of Science in the Christian College of Madras, whom he called "Kidi"; and G. Venkataranga Rao.

*(8) Alasinga Perumal’s obituary in the Brahmavadin of May 1909, reads in part: “Mr. M.C. Alasinga Perumal ... was first employed as a teacher in a private school at Kumbakonam. Soon afterward he joined the staff of Pachaiyappa’s High School at Chidambaram in 1887 as science teacher. After the death of his father, he sought and obtained a transfer to Pachaiyappa’s High School at Madras in 1890. . He soon rose to be the Head Master of the High School at Madras, which he maintained during his regime in a high state of efficiency. He was, just a few weeks before he died, made Science Lecturer in [Pachiayapp’s] College to teach physics and chemistry to the intermediate classes in accordance with the new regulations of the Madras University.”

Swamiji's letters to Madras were not different in essence from those to his brother disciples. Indeed, he sometimes requested that they be forwarded to Alambazar Math, for by and large what he said to the south was meant for the north as well; what he said to his householder disciples was meant also for his brother sannyasins; and even as he wrote in the fire of inspiration to his brothers, so, too, he wrote to his disciples, spurring them on in letter after letter:


"Great things can be done by great sacrifices only. No selfishness, no name, no fame, yours or mine, nor my Master's even! Work, work, the idea, the plan, my boys, my brave, noble, good souls—to the wheel, to the wheel put your shoulders!'[81]"I do not believe in a God or a religion which cannot wipe the widow's tears or bring a piece of bread to the orphan's mouth.'[82]"Your country requires heroes; be heroes!'[83]"What Indian wants is a new electric fire through the national vein. This was ever, and always will be slow work. Be content to work and, above all be true to yourself. Be pure, staunch, and sincere to the very backbone, and everything will be all right.'[84]"Rejoice that you are the chosen instruments in his hands. The flood of spirituality has risen. I see it is rolling over the land, resistless, boundless, all-absorbing. Every man to the fore, every good will be added to its forces, every hand will smooth its way, and glory be unto the Lord!'[85] "The only way is love and sympathy. The only worship is love.'[86]And so, writing tirelessly, Swamiji imbued them with his own vision, energy, and spirit.


At first, as we have seen earlier, he urged his disciples to work among the poor, educating them.


Try to get up a fund, buy some magic-lanterns, maps, globes, etc., and some chemicals. Get every evening a crowd of the poor and low, even the Pariahs, and lecture to them about religion first, and then teach them through the magic lantern and other things, astronomy, geography, etc., in the dialect of the people. Train up a band of fiery young men [as teachers]. Put your fire in them and gradually increase the organisation, letting it widen and widen its circle.... Printing magazines, papers, etc., are good no doubt, but actual work, my boys, even if infinitesimal, is better than eternal scribbling and talking.... Magazines are secondary, but this is primary. You must have a hold on the masses.[87]


Again and again Swamiji wrote in this vein. In addition he urged his disciples to collect funds to build a temple in Madras and eventually to start a colony in Central India, "where only a man who will follow your ideas will be admitted, and then a little leaven will leaven all:[88] In such a colony, Vedanta in its purest form could thrive afresh without having to struggle for light and air in the dense Indian undergrowth of accumulated tradition and superstition, where, entangled and suffocated, both the spirit and body of the people lay half dead. Behind these various and tentative projects was Swamiji's one aim of raising the Indian masses without destroying "their innate spiritual nature." There was no easy solution, and in early 1895 he changed the method of his Madras work: Where he had wanted practical work among the people first and intellectual work—colleges and magazines—second, he now reversed this order of importance.


I have given up at present my plan for the education of the masses [he wrote to Alasinga on January 12]. It will come by degrees. What I now want is a band of fiery missionaries. We must have a College in Madras to teach comparative religions, Sanskrit, the different schools of Vedanta, and some European languages; we must have a press, and papers printed in English and the Vernaculars. When this is done, then I shall know that you have accomplished something.... If you cannot do anything of the kind in India, then let me alone. I have a message to give, let me give it to the people who appreciate it and who wilt work it out. What care I who takes it? "He who doeth the will of my Father," is my own.[89]


To this stern ultimatum Swamiji added, "Try hard, do not give up.'[90] He cared very much indeed who took his message: 

Until the upper classes of India received it, until the spiritual level of the entire country was raised, there was little hope for the regeneration of her poor. Thus his desire for a magazine through which the ideals of Vedanta and the message of Sri Ramakrishna could be spread was occupying his thought more and more. And the money for this project? In the same letter Swamiji scolded Alasinga in this regard:


The whole national character is one of childish dependence. They are all ready to enjoy food if it is brought to their mouth, and even some want it pushed down. America cannot send you any money. Why should they? You do not deserve to live if you cannot help yourselves. Your letter to me asking me if you can be assured of a few thousand rupees every year from America has almost made me hopeless. You will not get a cent. You will have to meet it all yourself. Can you?[91]


He knew the answer could only be no, for while his disciples would do all they could, it would not be enough. As for those among the wealthy and influential to whom he looked for help, they were by and large unresponsive. The one who showed interest—the Maharaja of Mysore--died in early 1895. "Well!" Swamiji wrote at this turn of events, "The Lord is great. He will send others to help the cause.'[92] Meanwhile, it was Swamiji himself who did the helping. In early May, after scolding Alasinga for his timidity in the face of Christian criticism, he assured him of financial support:


Now, my boy, I have scolded you enough. You deserved it. Now go to work about the organ. I have sent some money to Calcutta; within a month I will be in a position to send you some money. Very little now, but I will continue it onward. So go on working. Do not go about begging from the Hindu beggars. I will do it all myself with my own brain and strong right hand. I do not want the help of any man here or in India. I will earn enough money to keep up both Calcutta and Madras.[93]


And again on May 14, 1895 (a time when he was giving public lectures now and then in order to support his New York classes), he wrote: "Ere long I will be in a position to send you money. It will not be much—a few hundred now, but I will send on from time to time if I live.'[94] The following week he was able to send a hundred dollars to Madras, which he hoped would "go just a little in starting [the] paper." "Hoping to do more by and by,'[95] he added. And without fail he did so.


There was indeed no "demon" like him. He had to do it all, raising money, standing firm against opposition, lifting the inert mass of India, preaching, writing, organizing, exhorting, scolding..


I know, my son [he wrote to Alasinga], I shall have to come and manufacture men out of you. I know that India is only inhabited by women and eunuchs. So do not fret. I will have to get the means of working there. I do not put myself in the hands of imbeciles. You need not worry, do what little you can. I have to work alone from top to bottom. The Calcutta fellows have such a small narrow idea—i. e. my brethren. You Madrasis faint at the barking of a dog!![96]. . .


The brave alone do great things, not the cowards. Know once for all, you faithless, that I am in the hands of the Lord. So long as I am pure and His servant, not a hair will be touched. Bring out your paper. Anyhow I will send more money very soon & I will send money from time to time. Go on. Do something for the nation, then they will help you, the nation will help you.... Be brave, be brave! Man dies but once: My disciples must not be cowards?[97]


From May of 1895 forward Swamiji gave more and more thought to the magazine—which was named the Brahmavadin —giving detailed instructions in regard to its policy, its style, its contents, its writing, its form, its publication, and its distribution. "The journal must not be flippant," he wrote in May of 1895, "but steady, calm, and high-toned.... Get hold of a band of fine, steady writers.'[98]The first issue of the Brahmavadin, a bimonthly, came out on September 14 of that year. It was not widely subscribed to, particularly in the West, but it was close to Swamiji's heart, for not only was it a means of spreading religious ideas, but it served as a line of communication between the centers in New York, London, Calcutta, and Madras. "The Brahmavadin is a jewel," he wrote to Alasinga on August 6 of 1896 from Switzerland; "it must not perish.'[99] And two days later, "I have found my way to let you know . . . I will give you Rs 100 a month for a year or two.... That will set you free to work for the Brahmavadin and make it a better success.*(9) . . . [Have] entire devotion to the cause, knowing that your SALVATION depends upon making the Brahmavadin a success. Let this paper be your Ishtadevata, and then you will see how success comes.'[100] Swamiji watched the magazine's progress with a father's eye. A year after its first issue had appeared, he wrote to Alasinga, "The ideal of the paper, apart from the preaching of Vedanta, should be to make it a magazine of Indian research and scholarship, of course, bearing on religion. You must approach the best writers and get carefully written articles from their pen. Work on with all energy.'[101] The magazine kept on. "[Mr. Alasinga Perumal] was the very substance of its life," his obituary would read in May of 1909, "and worked in no small measure to make it a real success as a Hindu religious journal of importance.'[102] Even after the blow of Alasinga's untimely death, the Brahmavadin (by then a monthly) kept on for four more years, staunchly serving its purpose.**(10)

*(9) the money that would enable Alasinga to give his whole time to the Brahmavadin was offered by Miss Henrietta Mullet, then traveling in Switzerland with Swamiji and the Seviers (see Ciomplete Works, 5:118).The following year the publication department of the Madras Math brought a new monthly - the Vedanta Kesari - which was, in a sense, a successor to the Brahmavadin . Its first issue came out in May 1914, and the magazine continued ever since (see Swami Gambhirananda, History of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission,p. 242).
**(10) Except for the combined issue of March - April 1914, the Brahmavadin stopped appearing in May of 1913.

Curiously, it was another Madras magazine, far less ambitious at its inception than the Brahmavadin, that was to survive and grow. This was the Prabuddha Bharata, a magazine for boys that was started by Dr. Nanjunda Rao with Swamiji's encouragement and direction, as well as his promise to write stories for it "when time permits." (Incredibly, time permitted in October of 1896, when he was opening his fall season in London with a full schedule. "I have begun a story for the Pr[abuddha Bharata]," he wrote to Alasinga on October 28, "I will send it as soon as I finish.")[103] The first issue of Prabuddha Bharata, a monthly, came out in July of 1896 under the editorship of B. R. Rajam Iyer, a alienated, spiritually minded young householder, whom Alasinga had, as he said "unearthed from his hiding place." "[The Magazine] is very satisfactory," Swamiji told "Dr."—except for its elaborately pictorial cover, about which he did not mince words. "The cover is simply barbarous. It is awful and hideous.'[104]And in his next letter he promised to design a cover himself and send it on—in addition to the stories. (As long as the monthly was published in Madras, its cover, into the creation of which someone had surely poured his whole heart, was not changed.) The publication of these magazines delighted Swamiji. "It is from Madras that the new light must spread all over India,'[105] he wrote to "Dr." in connection with the start of Prabuddha Bharata. "Let this paper be your God for the time, and you will succeed." And to be sure, the monthly rapidly gained subscriptions and was hailed as "a real Hindu magazine" that presented Hinduism by "real Hindus," as opposed to "Hinuduised Europeans.'[106] But as things turned out, Prabuddha Bharata was destined to spread its message not from Madras but from the far north. In May of 1898 its editor and chief writer died at the age of twenty-six, and with the June issue the work came to a halt. But Swamiji, in Almora with the Seviers at that time, would not let the magazine die. He made Captain Sevier its manager and publisher, and his disciple Swami Swarupananda its editor. He had its headquarters transferred to the Seviers' rented house in Almora, and the following year had them transferred once again, together with the hand-press and all the type, deeper  into the Himalayas—to the newly purchased ashrama at Mayavati. And there Prabuddha Bharata, which soon became the primary periodical of the Ramakrishna Order, has had its editorial offices ever since.


To do justice to the letters Swamiji wrote to his disciples and brother disciples throughout his first visit to the West, even while he was expending the energy of a giant on every level of his being for his Western work, would be to quote them all in full. Nothing short of that can give a true idea of the force they carried and the ground they covered. They were not letters merely; they were charges of immense power, the ignition of the "machine" of his Indian work, which was, in turn, the very heart of his world mission. Returning to India in 1897, he would develop the ideas he had expressed in his letters, he would propound them to his countrymen in magnificent and stirring lectures "from Colombo to Almora." Despite his shattered health, despite how few there were to help (perhaps twenty, when he had wanted twenty thousand!), he would give those ideas workable form, he would establish the Ramakrishna Math on an unshakable foundation, inaugurate the Ramakrishna Mission, and send out his brother disciples to start branches throughout the country. "I must see my machine in strong working order," he would write to Mary Hale from Almora in July of 1897, "and then knowing 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'[108]. And before he died Swamiji did indeed see his "machine" in strong working order. 



ⓘ
[1] Complete Works, 3:154.
[2] Complete Works., 6:255.
[3] Complete Works 5:10.
[4] Complete Works 5: 14
[5] Complete Works 5:22-23.
[6] Complete Works 5:29-30.
[7] Complete Works 5:14-15.
[8] Complete Works 8:325.
[9] Complete Works 7:475-76.
[10] Complete Works 7:472.
[11] Complete Works 4:365-66.
[12] Complete Works 5:28.
[13] Complete Works 5:30.
[14] Complete Works 5:29.
[15] Complete Works 5:106.
[16] Complete Works6 : 254-55.
[17] Complete Works  6 : 284.
[18].Complete Works6 : 285.
[19] Complete Works 8 : 90
[20].Complete Works6 : 263-66 passim.
[21] Complete Works6 : 289.
[22] Complete Works6: 292-94.
[23] Complete Works8 • 294-95.
[24] Swami Gambhirananda, History, p. 107.
[25] Swami Akhandananda, Service of God in Man (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1979), p. 69.
[26] Complete Works, 6:287-88. See also ref. 25 above, p. 70.
[27] See ref. 25 above, p. 70.
[28] See Prophetic Missions, chap. 10.
[29] Complete Works, 6 : 275.
[30] Complete Works,., 6 : 278.
[31] Complete Works,6 : 314,316.
[32] Complete Works,7 : 491
[33] Complete Works,6:315.
[34] Complete Works,7 : 478-79. (The last two sentences of this passage are a variant translation from the Bengali.)
[35] Prophetic Missions, chap. 3, sec. I.
[36] The Master, p. 8.
[37] Complete Works, 6 : 256.
[38] Complete Works,., 6 : 286.
[39] Complete Works,6 : 284.
[40] Complete Works,6 : 318.
[41] Complete Works,6: 295.
[42] Complete Works,6:253.
[43] Complete Works,6: 272.
[44] Complete Works,7 : 482. (This passage is taken in part from the original letter, RKM, Belur.)
[45] Complete Works,7:484-85.
[46] Complete Works 6:325.
[47] Complete Works6:332.
[48] Complete Works 6:330.
[49] Complete Works 6:323-
[50] Complete Works6: 297.
[51] Complete Works 6:355.
[52] Complete Works 6:297.
[53] Complete Works 6:322.
[54] Complete Works6:341.
[55] Complete Works6:323.
[56] Complete Works 6 :305.
[57] Swami Saradananda, “Sri Ramakrishna’s Disciples and Narendra-nath,” P.B., March 1932, p. 123. (See also Great Master, pp. 821-23)
[58] Complete Works, 5 : 389.
[59] Complete Works., 6:305.
[60] Complete Works 6: 289.
[61] Complete Works 6:274.
[62] Complete Works 5 : 54.
[63] Complete Works 6:362.
[64] Complete Works 8:308-9.
[65] Complete Works4:356.
[66] Complete Works6:350.
[67] See Complete Works, 5 : 68.
[68] Complete Works, 4:351.
[69] Complete Works., 4:373.
[70] Complete Works 4: 348.
[71] Complete Works 6:361.
[72] Complete Works 7 :49i-92.
[73] Complete Works 8 :91.
[74] Complete Works 7:497. This passage is from the original letter, RKM, Belur.
[75] Complete Works 7: 497.
[76] Complete Works 7:497.
[77] Swami Nikhilananda, Holy Mother, (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivek-ananda Center, 1962), p. 241.
[78] The Master, p. 55.

↑ Contents

4.9 ENGLAND: FALL 1896-II

1

"My ideal indeed can be ut into a few words and that is: to preach unto mankind their divinity and how to make it manifest in every movement of life. " Thus Swamiji had written to Margaret Noble on June 7, 1896. "Let us call and call," he wrote in this same letter, "till the sleeping gods awake, till the God within answers the call.'[1] Now in the autumn of the year, the last season of his first visit to the West, he was calling with all the power of his great heart to those sleeping gods, and this through class-lectures in which his message to the people of the West reached its culmination—even as had the Upanishads-—'with a grand flourish of Advaita ideas.'[2] At this point I should perhaps remind the reader that in the spring at St. George's Road Swamiji had dwelt at Length (or so we are told) on bhakti and raja yoga, as well as on jnana. Most, if not all, of those who were now attending his fall classes were old timers; they had heard and, presumably, assimilated what had gone before and would hear nothing now to nullify or contradict it. In his own vast being, all paths were of a piece, and each would find its harmony with the others in the consciousness of those who listened to him. His emphasis, to be sure, was varied. Indeed Swamiji, who had transcended all types of mind and temperament, could pour his whole being into any mold: he could be now the total bhakta, now the total jnani, now the total yogi. He could make each path seem the best; but at the same time he unified them all. Philosophically, their differences found their harmony in the grand, all-embracing teaching of non-dualism, to which he was now giving full attention. If he did not speak  specifically of devotion to God, the need for spiritual love was implicit in his every word, and if he did not give instruction in meditation, the need to still and purify one's mind (if the truths he taught were to become realities in one's life) went without saying, he having said it before in the spring classes and, surely, in private interviews as well.

In an earlier chapter we spoke of his London lectures on Mayavada, which had constituted the first series of this fall season and had included his classes on the Isha and Katha Upanishads. In his second series he would take up the Chhandogya Upanishad, starting on Thursday morning, November 5, with 'The Freedom, of the Soul." A day or two after he had held this class, one of his students requested him to say something about the practical position of the Vedanta philosophy. Swamiji did not reply, as he well could have, that he had been doing just that all along; rather, he readily and perhaps beamingly agreed that "the Vedanta . . . as a religion must be intensely practical." "We must," he said, "be able to carry it out in every part of our lives.[3] And forthwith, starting with the Tuesday morning class of November 10, still using the Chhandogya Upanishad as his text, he gave his famous series of four class-lectures entitled "Practical Vedanta." Related to these five classes in tone and subject matter are three undated lectures in the Complete Works; one of these, "Reason and Religion," was almost certainly given in the Victoria Street classroom on Wednesday evening, November 18, and the other two, "The Absolute and Manifestation" (originally entitled "Realisation and Knowledge") and "Vedanta and Privilege, " were most probably held in the same place on other Wednesday evenings of November or December. Let us say, then, for the sake of convenience, that this second fall series consisted of eight lectures or class-lectures, all of which pertained to the thesis that Vedanta was practical, not only in the sense that its ideal could be put into practice by anyone in any condition of life, but also because the deeply felt effort toward its realization would tangibly benefit the world. While Swamiji had little use for those who would apply religion to material ends, his concern was not alone with the spiritual liberation of the few; it was with the whole of humanity and with every aspect of human life—moral, cultural, social, economic, political. He believed that through a broad and infinitely deep spiritual culture the whole life of mankind in all its richly varied expression could be nourished and rescued from the devastating materialism of the modern age. In this sense, the practice of Advaita Vedanta was, he said, "the only remedy there is.'[4]

It would not be long before the outcome of the battle monotheistic religion was waging against science would be decisive. Indeed, to a large extent, science was already the victor at the close of the nineteenth century: the religion of a Creator and Ruler God could no longer be accepted by the educated, and the result was either what Swamiji called "a hideous mass of unbelief'[5] or, perhaps worse, a belief that amounted to "not-thinking carelessness.'[6]But as he had pointed out in earlier lectures, religion was a necessity of human life, not because of man's habitual need to rely on and pray to some superior being, but because Spirit was the very essence of life, and the need to manifest that essence was the driving power of civilization itself. "The fall [of a nation] begins when this pursuit after the Infinite . . . has ceased," he had said earlier in the year. "That is to say, the mainspring of the strength of every race lies in its spirituality, and the death of that race begins the day that spirituality wanes and materialism gains ground.'[7]That day was undeniably coming in the West, and it was coming with a vengeance, for "the physical sciences are better equipped now than formerly and religions have become less and less [well] equipped.'[8]It was not the development of science and technology per se that was to blame.

The difference between God and the devil [he said in "Vedanta and Privilege"] is in nothing except in unselfishness and selfishness. The devil knows as much as God, is as powerful as God; only he has no holiness— that makes him a devil. Apply the same idea to the modern world; excess of knowledge and power, without holiness, makes human beings devils: Tremendous power is being acquired by the manufacture of machines and other appliances, and privilege is claimed today as it never has been claimed in the history of the world. That is why Vedanta wants to preach against it, to break down this tyrannising over the souls of men.[9]

Keenly aware of the inadequacy of dualistic religion to stand in the face of science, Swamiji tried in many ways to show that on its deeper levels the religious way of looking at the universe was not "unscientific. " In his raja yoga classes, for instance, he had pointed out that both religion and science sought "the One out of which the manifold is being manufactured;'[10]and that religion, like any science, had its own methods of procedure, its own premises, and its own conclusions based on reason and experience. In his New York advanced jnana yoga classes he had attempted to point out the correspondence between the evolutionary theories of Sankhya cosmology and the most recent theories and findings of science. As it happened, Swamiji was somewhat handicapped in this effort: while he may have anticipated—indeed, as pointed out before, he sometimes seems to have been convenient with—a good deal of present-day knowledge, his audiences, even the scientists and scholars among them, were still geared to Newtonian physics, which could not compare in subtlety and range with the physics of' today or, for that matter, with the knowledge possessed by the ancient rishis. Now, in the fall of 1896, he took another and, one thinks, more telling approach to the reconciliation of science and religion. In the third of his "Practical Vedanta" classes and, more fully, in the Wednesday evening class that followed it, he showed that Advaita satisfies, as dualistic religions cannot, two principles fundamental to all scientific inquiry.

Josiah Goodwin wrote glowingly of that Wednesday evening class of November 18. "The Swami's lectures seem to be better and better every time," he told Mrs. Bull. "His lecture on Wedy evg was a plea for the Vedanta in an entirely new way, which he has just recently thought out. It was really superb.'[11]He went on to summarize the class-lecture that is now published as "Reason and Religion." But let us, rather, hear Swamiji himself; in brief, he had put it like this:

This fight [between religious and secular knowledge] cannot last much longer without breaking to pieces all the buildings of religion.

The question is: Is there a way out? . . . Is religion to justify itself by the discoveries of reason, through which every other science justifies itself? . . . In my opinion this must be so, and I am also of opinion that the sooner it is done the better. . .'. All that is dross will be taken off, no doubt, but the essential parts of religion will emerge triumphant out of this investigation....

What do I mean by reason? I mean what every educated man or woman is wanting to do at the present time, to apply the discoveries of secular knowledge to religion. The first principle of reasoning is that the particular is explained by the general, the general by the more general, until we come to the universal.... The last concept that we have, the most universal, [is] that of existence.... [This generalization or classification] is what is meant by knowledge....

A second explanation [principle?] of knowledge is that the explanation of a thing must come from inside and not from outside.... This tendency you will find throughout modern thought; in one word, what is meant by science is that the explanations of things are in their own nature, and that no external beings or existences are required to explain what is going on in the universe.... And this is one of the features of science which I mean to apply to religion.... There is an ancient theory of a personal deity entirely separate from the universe, which has been held from the very earliest time.... What is the cause of the universe? Something outside of it, some being who is moving this universe! . . . And religions are falling to pieces, because they cannot give a better explanation than that.

Another idea connected with this, the manifestation of the same principle that the explanation of everything comes from inside it, is the modern law of evolution. The whole meaning of evolution is simply that the nature of a thing is reproduced, that the effect is nothing but the cause in another form....

Can there be a religion satisfying these two principles? I think there can be.... We have to come to an ultimate generalisation which not only will be the most universal of all generalisations but out of which everything else must come. It will be of the same nature as the lowest effect; the cause, the highest, the ultimate, the primal cause must be the same as the lowest and most distant of its effects [in] a series of evolutions. The Brahman of the Vedanta fulfils that condition, because Brahman is the last generalisation to which we can come. It has no attributes but is Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss-Absolute. Existence, we have seen, is the very ultimate generalisation which the human mind can come to....

Thus we see that the religion of the Vedanta can satisfy the demands of the scientific world by referring it to the highest generalisation and to the law of evolution. That the explanation of a thing comes from within itself is still more completely satisfied by Vedanta. The Brahman, the God of the Vedanta, has nothing outside of Himself; nothing at all. All thee indeed is He: He is in the universe: He is the universe Himself.[12]

Swamiji went on to say that while the Impersonal God is a higher generalization than the Personal, the Impersonal does not thereby nullify the Personal but, rather, makes Him, possible, for "without the Impersonal, the Personal cannot remain.[13]

If you mean to say there is a being entirely separate from this universe, who has created this universe just by His will out of nothing, that cannot be proved. Such a state of things cannot be. But if we understand the idea of the Impersonal then the idea of the Personal can remain there also. This universe, in its various forms, is but the various readings of the same Impersonal . . . and the Personal God is the highest reading that can be attained to of that Impersonal by the human intellect. So that the Personal God is true as much as this chair is true, as much as this world is true, but no more. It is not absolute truth.... A Personal God is explicable as the highest manifestation of the Impersonal. You and I are very low manifestations, and the Personal God is the highest of which we can conceive. Nor can you or I become that Personal God. When the Vedanta says you and I are God, it does not mean the Personal God.... We and the Ruler of the Universe are one, but as manifested beings, men, we are His eternal slaves, His worshippers. Thus we see that the Personal God remains. Everything else in this relative world remains, and religion is made to stand on a better foundation. Therefore it is necessary that we first know the Impersonal in order to know the the Personal.[14]

Thus Swamiji, reconciling science and Advaita Vedanta by pointing out the fundamental principles of knowledge common to the both, took nothing away; rather, he enhanced everything. The Personal God, far from being dethroned, was supported; at the same time, thinking men and women—those who set the overall tone of world thought— would be able to accept religion, to see it not as a set of soft-brained, soothing fantasies, but as an indispensable means to a true knowledge of Reality. "Advaita—the duality, the Oneness, the idea of the Impersonal God," he said, "is the only religion that can have any hold on any intellectual people.'[15]

Its appeal to reason was one of the great practicalities of Advaita Vedanta. But the two-part question—how does one practice Advaita in everyday life, and what does its practice accomplish in that life?—was not thereby answered. In his classes on "Practical Vedanta". Swamiji would answer both parts, but first he clarified an all-important point. Almost at the outset of the series he defined what he meant by practical:

[Ordinarily] we all use this word practical for things we like and can do. Therefore I will ask you to understand that Vedanta, though it is intensely practical, is always so in the sense of the ideal....

. . . This we must always bear in mind, that in the Vedanta there is no attempt at reconciling the present life—the hypnotised life, this false life which we have assumed—with the ideal; but this false life must go, and the real life which is always existing must manifest itself, must shine out. No man becomes purer and purer, it is a matter of greater manifestation. The veil drops away, and the native purity of the soul begins to manifest itself. Everything is ours already—infinite purity, freedom, love, and power.

The Vedanta also says that not only can this be realised in the depths of forests or caves, but by men is all possible conditions of life.... But we must not degrade the ideal to the actual. .. . The present life should be made to coincide with life eternal.[16]

Swamiji did not give the impression that it was an easy matter to make one's life, whatever its circumstances might be, coincide with the ideal. In the beginning at least, there would be resistance and struggle, for the human mind has little inclination to budge from any given position. "To harmonise the ideal with the life, " he said, ". . . is the temptation of our lives.'[17] "There is this strongly conservative tendency in human nature: we do not like to move one step forward. I think of mankind just as I read of persons who become frozen in snow; all such, they say, want to go to sleep.... That is what we are doing all our life, getting frozen from the feet upwards, and yet wanting to sleep. Therefore you must struggle towards the ideal.'[18]And, if that struggle was to be successful, the ideal must be understood.

He never disparaged the role of intellect in spiritual struggle. On the contrary, he urged those who wanted to make progress in spiritual life to have a sound intellectual grasp of what they were trying to do. Not that the intellect could provide spiritual knowledge or even a restless desire for it (no more than could a map impart the experience of travel or excite wanderlust), but it could save one from losing the way; it could prevent the mind from bogging down in superstition and Blind belief.

I will abide by any reason [Swamiji said in "Practical Vedanta-III"] because with all its weakness there is some chance of my getting at truth through it; while by the other means [reliance on authority] there is no such hope at all.... What we want is progress, development, realisation. No theories ever made men higher. No amount of books can help us to become purer. The only power is in realisation, and that lies in ourselves and comes from thinking. Let men think. A clod of earth never thinks; but it remains only a lump of earth. The glory of man is that he is a thinking being.[19]

He provided many lines of reasoning by which the student could intellectually comprehend the truth of and necessity for Advaita Vedanta and thereby push forward to its realization without being hobbled by uncertainty and confusion. In his advanced jnana yoga class in New York, in which he had discussed Vedanta cosmology, he had, for instance, explained the Sankhya systems of ontology and psychology; in his raja yoga classes he had described the methods of practice based on this cosmological scheme. In London he had entered deeply into the theory of Maya, and now in his second London series he pointed out, as we have just seen, that Advaita Vedanta satisfies the basic principles of knowledge. In this series (notably in the third and fourth classes of "Practical Vedanta") he traced another, though related, line of thought, in which he showed that only the philosophy of monism can resolve the age-old battle between idealists and realists, noumenalists and phenomenalists, between those who state, not without good reason, that all that exist--certainly all that we can ever know to exist—is a continually whirling kaleidoscope of phenomena and those who wish to believe, but cannot rationally prove, that behind phenomena there is an unchanging noumenon or substance, or, in religious terminology; God. The failure to reply in a scientific manner to empirical philosophies was one reason that dualistic religions, positing God and matter, substance and qualities, could not hold their own in modern times. "The only answer we get," Swamiji said in "Practical Vedanta-III," "is from the monistic theory of the Vedanta. It is true that only one exists, and that one is either phenomenon or noumenon."

It is not true [he went on] that there are twoso—mething changing, and in and through that, something which does not change; but it is the one and the same thing which appears as changing, and which is in reality unchangeable. We have come to think of the body and mind and soul as many, but really there is only one; and that one is appearing in all these various forms.[20]

This was, of course, another way of saying that monism arrives at the highest possible generalization—the Impersonal  Brahman, which subsumes within Itself (or appears as) the Personal God, the souls, and the world. "There is but one life," Swamiji said in "Practical Vedanta-I," "one world, one existence. Everything is that One.'[21]And, as he had explained at length in his Maya classes, "That One is manifesting Himself as many, as matter, spirit, mind, thought, and everything else." And that One is the Self: "Thou art That." The Self, "the shining One," was to be realized and manifested in everyday life. The question was how.

In his yoga classes in New York (and no doubt in London as well) Swamiji had given varied answers to this question, advising a balanced mixture of all methods. Now in this series on practical Vedanta he did indeed combine them, for though these classes were concerned primarily with jnana yoga, it was a jnana yoga that incorporated into itself an Advaita-based karma yoga as well as a bhakti yoga that took for the object of devotion every manifestation of Brahman—most particularly that highest of all visible manifestations, one's fellow man. Here was a great synthesis of yogas, by means of which the Impersonal God is conceived as fully occupying every particle and every event of the relative world, as water fully occupies the wave. Here work and love are not shunned as relating to an ensnaring delusion, but are looked upon as direct paths to the center of things, for both are seen as the play, as it were, between the manifestations, or appearances, of One Being. At any point, at any time, one can penetrate to the Reality. "The theme of the Vedanta is to see the Lord in everything," Swamiji said in his second "Practical Vedanta" class, "to see things in their real nature, not as they appear to be.... This is the real, practical side of Vedanta.... It does not show that this world is vain and does not exist, but it says; 'Understand what this world is, so that it may not hurt you.' [22]

But while this understanding did not require one to flee from the world to a forest or cave, monastery or hermitage, it did require renunciation. "What philosophy insists on," Swamiji had said in his earlier lecture "Realisation," "is not to give up joys, but to know what joy really is.... But [and this was a very big but] to understand that, we have to go through the negation, and then the positive side will begin. We have to give up ignorance and all that is false, and then truth will begin to reveal itself to us. When we have grasped the truth, things which we gave up at first will take new shape and form, will appear to us in a new light and become deified.'[23] Thus Advaita Vedanta practiced in the world, or in everyday life, was not a matter of throwing a mantle of philosophical words over the manifold universe, it was a hard-fought matter of conquering sense desire, of attaining inner renunciation, of elevating life to the ideal.[24]"Until one has conquered the desires for enjoyment," Swamiji said, "the truth will not shine in him.[25]But the conquest could certainly be made on the battlefield itself. It was a matter of seeing oneself and the world as Brahman, or Spirit, and as nothing else. This was, of course, the very height of spiritual perception; it was the vision of one totally free of delusion; it was, indeed, the goal of spiritual practice. The practice itself, as Swamiji prescribed it again and again, was to struggle continuously to think, to feel, and to act under all circumstances in the way a knower of Brahman would spontaneously and naturally think, feel, and act. This effort to treat the world and to react to it realistically, in the Vedantic sense, would lead unfailingly to the Reality Itself; effort would gradually (or suddenly) become effortless perception; all ways of life, when understood as manifestations of Brahman, would become direct revelations of Him. Such practice was an affirmation (and a celebration) through service, love, and reason of the One Reality; it was an affirmation in which all modes of life were transformed into yogas leading to the realization of the Self.

Thus Swamiji, emphasizing the positive side of Advaita Vedanta, brought it to the marketplaces of the world. "We shall see," he said in his first "Practical Vedanta" class, "how this Vedanta can be carried into our everyday life, the city life, the country life, the national life, and the home life of every nation. For if a religion cannot help man wherever he may be, wherever he stands, it is not of much use; it will remain only a theory of the chosen few.... The principles of Vedanta, or the ideal of religion, or whatever you may call it, will be fulfilled by its capacity for performing this great function.'[26]

As Swamiji pointed out in "The Absolute and Manifestation, " this was not the first time Advaita had been given to the people. It had come whenever materialism had prevailed. "At first," he said, "some monks got hold of [this Advaita] and took it to the forests, and so it came to be called the 'Forest Philosophy'. By the mercy of the Lord, the Buddha came and preached it to the masses, and the whole nation became Buddhists.... Before the Buddha came, materialism had spread to a fearful extent, and it was of a most hideous kind.... A thousand years after his death a similar state of things again prevailed..... Then Shankaracharya arose and once more revivified the Vedanta philosophy. He made it a rationalistic philosophy.'[27] "We want today," Swamiji said in this same lecture, "that bright sun of [Shankara's] intellectuality joined with the heart of Buddha, the wonderful infinite heart of love and mercy. This union will give us the highest philosophy. Science and religion will meet and shake hands. Poetry and philosophy will become friends. This will be the religion of the future, and if we can work it out, we may be sure that it will be for all times and peoples.'[28] And Swamiji, the third great giver of Advaita Vedanta to the people, had been working it out. During the whole of his Western mission, particularly throughout 1895 and 1896, he had been presenting this union of intellect and heart to the modern world, and in these last lectures of 1896, he brought it into sharp focus.

"My idea," he said, "is to show that the highest ideal of morality and unselfishness goes hand in hand with the highest metaphysical conception.... Human knowledge is not antagonistic to human well-being. On the contrary, it is knowledge alone that will save us in every department of life—in knowledge is worship. The more we know the better for us.'[29] But the highest knowledge did not lie in some vast and complex compendium; rather, it was contained in the simplest of truths, easily stated in both its metaphysical and its practical aspects. "[Truth] has to be made practical," he said at the very close of his "Practical Vedanta" classes, "to be made simple (for the highest truths are always simple), so that it may penetrate every pore of human society and become the property of the highest intellects and the commonest minds, of the man, woman, and child at the same time.'[30]

And indeed the simplicity of Swamiji's practical presentation of the most profound philosophy was one of his unique contributions to religious culture. For instance, his application of one of the great culminate mahavakyas of the Vedanta, "Thou art That," to any circumstance of life took the form of two commandments: Have faith in yourself, and recognize that the universe is one. "What is there to be taught more in religion than the oneness of the universe and faith in oneself?'[31] he asked in his first class in "Practical Vedanta," and with one burning sentence after another he extended these two dicta into everyday life, as though throwing lifelines out into the world.

The first, faith in one's self, worked on every level—physical, mental, spiritual. It worked for everyone everywhere, regardless of his condition or of the odds against him, for it was a matter simply of standing on the unshakable ground of one's real nature, the all-powerful Spirit. "Never say 'No,' " Swamiji instructed; "never say 'I cannot,' for you are infinite. Even time and space are as nothing compared with your nature. You can do anything and everything; you are almighty.'[32] It was an entirely practical ideal:

The ideal of faith in ourselves is of the greatest help to us. If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practised, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished. Throughout the history of mankind, if any motive power has been more potent than another in the lives of all great men and women, it is that of faith in themselves. Born with the consciousness that they were to be great, they became great. Let a man go down as low as possible; then must come a time when out of sheer desperation he will take an upward curve and will learn to have faith in himself. But it is better for us that we should know it from the very first. Why should we have all these bitter experiences in order to gain faith in ourselves? We can see that all the difference between man and man is owing to the existence or non-existence of faith in himself. Faith in ourselves will do everything.... Do you know how much energy, how many powers, how many forces are still lurking behind that frame of yours? What scientist has known all that is in man? Millions of years have passed since man first came here, and yet but one infinitesimal part of his powers has been manifested. Therefore, you must not say that you are weak. How do you know what possibilities lie behind that degradation on the surface? You know but little of that which is within you. For behind you is the ocean of infinite power and blessedness.[33]

How to tap that ocean of infinite power and blessedness and channel it into every field and corner of human life? The way, he said, was by saturating one's consciousness with an awareness of that latent power. "Hear day and night that you are the Soul."

Repeat it to yourselves day and night till it enters into your very veins, till it tingles in every drop of blood, till it is in your flesh and bone. Let the whole body be full of that one ideal.... Meditate upon it, and out of that will come work.... Action will come. Fill yourselves with the ideal; whatever you do, think well on it. All your actions will be magnified, transformed, deified by the very power of the thought.[34]

Out of that thought will come tremendous strength of character, fearlessness in the face of death, discrimination between right and wrong, unwavering moral courage, and a selfishness that scorns all thought of gain. What to fear, what to lose, what to gain if one's being is centered in the Self? Swamiji's classes resounded with this call to "the sleeping gods"—a call that lay at the very heart of all practical religion; for unless those gods awoke, nothing in heaven or on earth could make man's lot on earth a happier one; for nothing else could release him from the grip of fear. With the strength of the Self, on the other hand, anything and everything could be accomplished.

Strength, therefore, is the one thing needful [Swamiji declared in "The Freedom of the Soul"]. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease. Strength is the medicine which the poor must have when tyrannised over by the rich. Strength is the medicine that the ignorant must have when oppressed by the learned; and it is the medicine that sinners must have when tryannised over by other sinners; and nothing gives such strength as this idea of monism. Nothing makes us so moral as this idea of monism. Nothing makes us work so well at our best and highest as when all the responsibility is thrown upon ourselves.[35] [And in the last of his classes on "Practical Vedanta":] Build up your character, and manifest your real nature, the Effulgent, the Resplendent, the Ever-Pure, and call It up in everyone that you see.... This is the highest prayer that the Advaita teaches. This is the one prayer, to remember our true nature, the God who is always within us, thinking of it always as infinite, almighty, ever-good, ever-beneficent, selfless, bereft of all limitations. And because that nature is selfless, it is strong  and fearless; for only to selfishness comes fear. He who has nothing to desire for himself, whom does he fear, and what can frighten him? What fear has death for him? What fear has evil for him?[36]

In America such powerful exhortations had raised a hue and cry among Christian ministers; even in England the idea of man's almightiness may have seemed to militate against the Christian teaching of humility before God. The Vedantic teaching was, actually, the same call to perfection, but in another mode. "The one takes the positive side," Swamiji said, "and the other the negative side. One shows to man his strength and the other his weakness."

There may be weakness, says the Vedanta, but . . . being reminded of weakness does not help much; give strength, and strength does not come by thinking of weakness all the time. The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Teach men of the strength that is already within them. Instead of telling them they are sinners, the Vedanta takes the opposite position, and says, "You are pure and perfect, and what you call sin does not belong to you." Sins are very low degrees of Self manifestation; manifest your Self in a high degree. That is the one thing to remember; all of us can do that.[37]

In "The Freedom of the Soul" he had pointed out that while dualistic religions preach man's fall from perfection by one misfortune or another, each giving its own instruction about how to regain that lost paradise, monism denies the fall altogether.

The last and greatest counsel is that you need not weep at all. You need not go through all these ceremonies and need not take any notice of how to regain your empire, because you never lost it. Why should you go to seek for what you never lost? You are pure already, you are free already. If you think you are free, free you are this moment, and if you think, you are bound, bound you will be. This is a very bold statement.[38]

Bold it was. At a time when the doctrines of original sin and redemption through Christ alone had been drilled into the minds of Swamiji's listeners from their Sunday-school days forward, the idea that man was not, in fact, a sinner in need of salvation had the ring of blasphemy. Swamiji was well aware that he was not only assaulting the more rigid doctrines of Christianity but attacking the most formidable and impenetrable fortification in the world—the conditioned human brain; he knew there would be alarm and resistance, but he went ahead, for he also knew that his listeners had come to him out of a desire for truth and that sooner or later they would make it their own. He could not, in any case, give less than the highest, for anything less would no longer do. To think in new religious terms may have been an agonizing, soul-searching struggle for some of those who came to his classes, yet it was the sort of struggle that attends the birth of a new age and awakens human greatness. "I shall have to speak to you very boldly," Swamiji told his listener. "It may frighten you now, but when you think over it, and realise it in your own life, then you will come to know that what I say is true.'[39] And they listened as he spelled out the simple and challenging monistic truth of the soul's eternal freedom and purity.

His second commandment—a deep sense of the oneness of all life—was, of course, a corollary of the first, faith in one's self, for both arose from, or were manifestations of, the underlying spiritual reality of all being. "[Faith in one's self] means faith in all," he said, "because you are all. Love for yourselves means love for all, love for animals, love for everything, for you are all one. It is the great faith which will make the world better. I am sure of that.'[40] Immense, selfless feeling for other, a largesse generated by a sense of oneness was not, he insisted, unique with Buddhas and Christs, but was innate in every man, woman, and child everywhere and at all times. He urged his listeners to practice it in their lives. "The watchword of all wellbeing, of all moral good is not 'I' but 'thou,' " he said in ' an impassioned plea and continued:

Who cares whether there is a heaven or a hell, who cares if there is a soul or not, who cares if there is an unchangeable or not? Here is the world, and it is full of misery. Go out into it as Buddha did, and struggle to lessen it or die in the attempt. Forget yourselves; this is the first lesson to be learnt, whether you are a theist or an atheist, whether you are an agnostic or a Vedantist, a Christian or a Mohammedan. The one lesson obvious to all is the destruction of the little self and the building up of the Real Self.[41]

Again and again throughout his classes on practical Vedanta Swamiji urged the service of one's fellowman. Any work, whatever its field might be—art, science, education, law, commerce, anything—could be transformed into service and laid at man's feet, as at the feet of God. Such action in its most perfect, most spontaneous form was, of course, an expression of the highest love, which love was itself a pure and immediate manifestation of Oneness, a force that could be called Para Shakti, the Force of all forces. "The motive power of the whole universe, in whatever way it manifests itself, is that one wonderful thing, unselfishness, renunciation, love, the real, the only living force in existence. '[42]To become, as it were, an open, unobstructed channel of that force, through which it could flow in its most pure and undistorted form, manifesting itself as "unselfishness, renunciation, and love," was to become ethical in the highest degree. A sense of oneness with all life was, indeed, the very heart of morality. "As manifested beings we appear to be separate, but our reality is one, and the less we think of ourselves as separate from that One, the better for us. The more we think of ourselves as separate from the Whole, the more miserable we become. From this monistic principle we get at the basis of ethics, and I venture to say that we cannot get any ethics from anywhere else.'[43]

While the principles of Advaita Vedanta were the foundation of ethics and thus the key to social well-being, their practice constituted also a direct path to spiritual liberation. In "Practical Vedanta-II" he put it unequivocally. (This was a class of which Goodwin wrote, "he gave himself free play and gave a pure Advaita lecture—what he calls undiluted roaring Vedanta.")[44]

What is more practical [he said] than worshipping here, worshipping you? I see you, feel you, and I know you are God. The Mohammedan says, there is no God but Allah. The Vedanta says, there is nothing that is not God. It may frighten many of you, but you will understand it by degrees. The living God is within you, and yet you are building churches and temples and believing all sorts of imaginary nonsense. The only God to worship is the human soul in the human body. Of course all animals are temples too, but man is the highest, the Taj Mahal of temples. If I cannot worship in that, no other temple will be of any advantage. The moment I have realised God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him—that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free. This is the most practical of all worship.[45]

But what was the difference in effect, as far as ethics was concerned, between the service of man based on the monistic ideal and that based on brotherly love as taught by theistic religions? No difference, providing that brotherly love extended without the slightest distinction to all mankind. It was true that those who followed the religion of Christ in its purity—and in its purity it was not unlike Vedanta—were themselves Christ like in universal compassion. But popular dualistic teachings, by whatever name, were another matter. Swamiji pointed out not only the philosophical limitations of most dualistic ideals, but their psychological limitations as well. For one thing, man's soul, according to dualism, retains its individuality through all eternity, and in most theistic religions this concept is degraded into that of an afterlife of perpetual sense pleasure. "Clinging onto little enjoyments, and to desire the continuation and repetition of this state of things is utter selfishness," Swamiji thundered. ". . . Talk of morality and doing good to others! Silly talk of the present time! . . . The more selfish a man, the more immoral he is. And so also with the race.... It [is] crudeness indeed—his fight for the little self, this clinging on to the 'I', not only in this life, but also in the desire for its continuance even after death. This they declare to be unselfishness; this the foundation of morality!'[46]

Then there was the dualist's constitutional exclusiveness. "The Advaitist knows that whatever may be [the dualist's] theories, he is going to the same goal as he himself. There he differs entirely from the dualist, who is forced by his point of view to believe that all differing views are wrong. The dualists all the world over naturally believe in a Personal God who is purely anthropomorphic, who like a great potentate in this world is pleased with some and displeased with others.... You will find that in almost every religion is the idea, 'We are the favorites of our God, and only by believing as we, do, can you be taken into favour with Him.' . . . I challenge you to show me one dualistic religion which has not more or less of this exclusiveness. And, therefore, in the nature of things, dualistic religions are bound to fight and quarrel with each other, and this they have ever been doing.'[47]

The other side of exclusiveness was fear. If God has favorites, saving some and not others, then it well behooves His devotees to stay in good favor.

[Dualists] have been worshipping a God in heaven separate from them, and of whom they are much afraid. They have been born shaking with fear, and all their life they will go on shaking. Has the world been made much better by this? . . . How can you expect morality to be developed through fear? It can never be. "Where one sees another, where one hears another, that is Maya. When one does not see another, when one does not hear another, when everything has become the Atman, who sees whom, who perceives whom?" It is all He, and all I, at the same time. The soul has become pure. Then, and then alone we understand what love is. Love cannot come through fear, its basis is freedom. In freedom we really begin to love the world, and then we understand what is meant by brotherhood and mankind, and not before.[48]

Swamiji's analysis of the failings of dualism was a prod, as it were, to his listeners; he urged them to break through all confining beliefs. "Come out into the broad open light of day," he cried; "come out from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to live and die in small ruts? Come out into the universe of Light. Everything in the universe is yours, stretch out your arms and embrace it with love. If you ever felt you wanted to do that, you have felt God.'[49]

Nor would one lose anything at all by expanding. "The whole universe is one person," he declared in this same glowing passage; "let go the little things. Give up the small for the Infinite, give up small enjoyments for infinite bliss. It is all yours, for the Impersonal includes the personal. "

Yet Swamiji had no criticism for those who wanted to remain with dualistic beliefs and practices. By its very nature, Advaita disturbed no one's faith, but included all. "If you seek a universal religion which can apply to every one," he said in "The Absolute and Manifestation," "that religion must not be composed of only the parts, but it must always be their sum total and include all degrees of religious development....They are all parts, equally struggling to attain to the whole.'[50] "This is one of the great points to be remembered," he cautioned his class at the close of "Practical Vedanta-II" (for he had been urging his listeners to move forward), "that those who worship God through ceremonials and forms, however crude we may think them to be, are not in error. It is the journey from truth to truth, from lower truth to higher truth.... It must always be borne in mind that we should see others with eyes of love, with sympathy, knowing that they are going along the same path that we have trodden.'[51] And again; "[Dualists] want a consoling religion, and we understand that it is necessary for them. The clear light of truth very few in this life can bear, much less live up to. It is necessary, therefore, that this comfortable religion should exist; it helps many souls to a better one. '[52]"Dualism and all systems that had preceded it are accepted by the Advaita not in a patronising way, but with the conviction that they are true manifestations of the same truth, and that they all lead to the same conclusions as the Advaita has reached.'[53] And in "Vedanta and Privilege": "Consciously or unconsciously, . . . the whole universe is going towards that goal.... One benefit from this theory we practically see is that the idea of a real universal love is only possible from this point of view. All are our fellow passengers, our fellow travellers—all life, plants, animals; not only my brother man, but my brother brute, my brother plant; not only my brother the good, but my brother the evil, my brother the spiritual, and my brother the wicked. They are all going to the same goal. All are in the same stream, each is hurrying towards that infinite freedom.'[54]

Nevertheless, as is evident from his teachings, with their strong emphasis on the divinity of man, Swamiji was anxious to free that universal current wherever it had become entrapped and stagnant.

I have no objection to dualism in many of its forms [he said in "The Freedom of the Soul"]. I like most of them, but I have objections to every form of teaching which inculcates weakness.... I know it is truth alone that gives strength. I know that truth alone gives life, and nothing but going towards reality will make us strong, and none will reach truth until he is strong. Every system, therefore, which weakens the mind, makes one superstitious, makes one mope, makes one desire all sorts of wild impossibilities, mysteries, and superstitions, I do not like, because its effect is dangerous. Such systems never bring any good; such things create morbidity in the mind, make it weak, so weak that in course of time it will be almost impossible to receive truth or live up to it.[55]

Swamiji never inveighed against devotion to the Personal God; on the contrary, he always spoke of true devotion to God in any form or aspect as a sure path to freedom. But weakness was not devotion, and he was giving his life to the effort to dehypnotize human beings of the sense of limitation, guilt, and fear. "For those who want to be practical," he said, "this is the first thing to learn. Never tell yourselves or others that you are weak.'[56]And this he meant for everyone.

The very fact that Swamiji was giving the highest truth to people whose lives, as far as we can know, were closely woven into the world's social fabric—housewives, educators, nurses, men of various professions, women campaigning for the right to take part in life outside the home, men attempting to better the world—the very fact that he was pouring out the highest of Vedantic teachings to such men and women was clear evidence of his conviction that the highest truth could be put into practice and realized by anyone with a yearning for it, "in all possible conditions of life." In his view, no man or woman was ordinary; no one was less than divine, and there was no one who should not be told so.

[To teach the monistic ideal to everyone] appears now a very big and a very great undertaking [he said in "The Freedom of the Soul"]; to many it appears very startling, but that is because of superstition, nothing else. By eating all sorts of bad indigestible food, or by starving ourselves, we are incompetent to eat a good meal. We have listened to words of weakness from our childhood.[57]

And carrying forward the same theme in his next class, "Practical Vedanta-I," he went on as it were: ,

And most of us think that this ideal can never be reached; but the Vedanta insists that it can be realised by every one. There is neither man nor woman nor child, nor difference of race or sex, nor anything that stands as a bar to the realisation of the ideal, because Vedanta shows that it is realised already, it is already there.[58]

From first to last, Swamiji taught man's divinity, which stood clear before his eyes. Even when explaining in "Practical Vedanta-IV" "a few of the popular ideas of dualism" which have been retained in the body of Vedantic thought, he was soon back without transition to the concepts of monism. Then, as though realizing where his thought or vision had led him, he said, "I have been going into things which do not belong to the dualists possibly. I cannot stand long with the dualists, I am afraid,'[59] and he went ahead full sail with his main theme—the practicality of Advaita in everyday life.

The traditional idea that the realization of the Self or Atman was a goal so far-off from the average person that any thought about it was but idle chattering of the mind was to Swamiji the most obstructive of all delusions. "In and through the Self all knowledge comes," he declared in one of his many affirmations of the immediacy and availability of the Impersonal Brahman.

Therefore, it is the best known of all.... Limitation can never come upon the unlimited; it is a fiction. The Self is known, therefore, to every one of us—man, woman, or child and even to animals. . .,. The God of the [monistic] Vedanta is the most known of all and is not the outcome of imagination. If this is not preaching a practical God, how else could you teach a practical God? . . . For you are He, the omnipresent God Almighty, the Soul of your souls, and if I say you are not, I tell an untruth. I know it, whether at all times I realise it or not. He is the Oneness, the Unity of all, the Reality of all life and all existence.[60]

Why, then, should riot this truth be told to all? There was no knowing what life of spirit and release from burden the teaching of man's true nature might bring to the least of men; nor did external modes or conditions of life determine in whom the ideal might take flame. "Perchance a prophet thou " Swamiji liked to say to his listeners, "who knows!" "Men, animals, and gods are all common recipients of this one truth. Let them all receive it," he said in "The Freedom of the Soul " and continued:

Why make life miserable? Why let people fall into all sorts of superstitions? I will give ten thousand lives if twenty of them will give up their superstition. Not only in this country, but in the land of its very birth, if you tell people this truth, they are frightened. They say, "This idea is for Sannyasins who give up the world arid live in forests; for them it is all right. But for us poor householders, we must all have some sort of fear, we must have ceremonies," and so on.

Dualistic ideas have ruled the world long enough, and this is the result. Why not make a new experiment? It may take ages for all minds to receive monism, but why not begin now? If we have told it to twenty persons in our lives, we have done a great work.[61]

And in a passage that rings like a sky of carillons he exclaimed:

I do not believe at all that monistic ideas preached to the world would produce immorality and weakness. On the contrary, I have reason to believe that it is the only remedy there is. If this be the truth, why let people drink ditch water when the stream of life is flowing by? If this be the truth, that they are all pure, why not at this moment teach it to the whole world? Why not teach it with the voice of thunder to every man that is born, to saints and sinners, men, women, and children, to the man on the throne and to the man sweeping the streets?[62]

Though the number of people who strove to put monistic philosophy into continuous practice might be relatively small in any given community, their influence for good would be incalculable. "If we are Advaitins," Swamiji told his class, "we must think from this moment that our old self is dead and gone. . . All weakness has vanished from us, and our only work is to arouse this knowledge in our fellow-beings. We see that they too are the same pure self, only they do not know it; we must teach them, we must help them to rouse up their infinite nature. This is what I feel to be absolutely necessary all over the world.'[63]Indeed, "the salvation of Europe depends on a rationalistic religion,'[64] he said, referring to Advaita Vedanta, and he foresaw the day when "the whole of mankind will become Jivanmuktas—free whilst living.'[65] And one is reminded here of his nudge, which touched Margaret Noble so forcibly, toward total dedication to the monistic ideal: "If this is true, what other thing could matter? If it is not true, what do our lives matter?'[66]

"The Swami's morning lectures are magnificent," Goodwin wrote to Josephine MacLeod on November 14, apropos of the Tuesday-Thursday classes on practical Vedanta. Again on November 30 he exclaimed to her, "I really believe his lectures here are better than ever!" And as though Swamiji were calling to people to come to hear these classes—the last of his first Western visit—the attendance grew. "The morning lectures are now largely attended,": Goodwin told Miss MacLeod on November 20, "about 200 every time. Fresh people come every class day.'[67] Others returned after an absence. Mr. John Galsworthy (senior or junior, we do not know) came on the morning of Thursday, November 19, to hear "Practical Vedanta-IV." It was his first time that season. (He and Swamiji would lunch together the following Tuesday.) Mme Antoinette Sterling also came to that lecture after a long absence. Old friends and newcomers filled the classroom; nor was it only Swamiji's teachings that drew them and held them, it was also the radiance that streamed from the teacher himself. In America and London both, many told of the experience of attending his lectures. "After the first few sentences," Sister Christine would once say, " . . . it always used to be more of realising than listening.'[68] And Miss Muller, writing later of a talk Swamiji would give in India, remembered other lectures, other days:

Sometimes it seemed as though the Teacher, his words, his audience, and the Spirit pervading them all, were ONE. . . . Those who have frequently heard him will recall and recognize a similar experience—a moment when he ceases to be Swami Vivekananda lecturing to critical and attentive hearers; all details, and personalities are lost, names and forms disappear, only the Spirit remains, uniting Speaker, Hearer, and spoken word:[69]

One can but remember and repeat here the words of Mahendra Nath Datta telling of Swamiji's classes earlier that year: "What Spirit is could clearly be understood. It was as if the room was flowing with Brahmajnana and wisdom, and Swamiji, smiling, was sprinkling it around, offering anjali with both his hands"—a picture that brings to mind, in turn, the vision Sri  Sarada Devi had when sitting one moonlit evening on a ghat of the Ganga: she saw Sri Ramakrishna walk swiftly into the river and dissolve into its waters; then suddenly Naren appeared and, crying "Jai Ramakrishna!" "Victory to Ramakrishna!" took up handfuls of that shimmering, immeasurably sacred water and scattered it over the multitudes of men and women who had gathered there, liberating them.[70]

2

In addition to his regular Tuesday and Thursday morning and Wednesday evening classes at Victoria Street, Swamiji went every Monday by train through the bleak November countryside to Wimbledon, where he gave an afternoon class at Miss Muller's house, Airlie Lodge. Of these classes we know almost nothing, for even if Mr. Goodwin took them down, we have no identified transcripts of them. In the town of Wimbledon, however, Swamiji's course of eight classes, which started on October 12 and continued through November 30, did not go un-remarked, and on Saturday, December 5, the Wimbledon News printed the following by way of acknowledgement:

A HINDU PHILOSOPHER.

On Monday afternoon [November 30] the Swami Vivekananda delivered the last of his course of lectures on "Vedanta Philosophy" at Airlie Lodge, Ridgway gardens. The lectures have aroused great interest, on one occasion over 70 persons being present. At the conclusion of the lecture Mr. O. H. Beatty expressed the thanks of the class to Miss Muller for kindly allowing them to meet in her house, and then presented the Swami with a number of books which had been subscribed for by those who had attended his lectures. In making the presentation Mr. Beatty said that, while all could not agree with his views in detail, yet all could find very much to admire in his philosophy. He had placed noble ideas before them, and amid the fret and turmoil of life, noble ideals were more than ever necessary. In addition to the above presentation the following was separately addressed to the Swami by some of his admirers:

"To the Swami Vivekananda from a few members of his Wimbledon class, with their sincere good wishes, and in grateful appreciation of his inspiring teaching in exposition of the Vedanta Philosophy, lifting them a little higher on the altar-stairs which slope through darkness up to God:—

"By many ways the world comes home to God—

Of all-men's wanderings the common goal;—

By each disciple,' cried the strenuous soul, 

'Let his own proper pilgrim-path be trod!

"“The Devotee beneath his banyan-tree;

The child of Jesus kneeling at the Cross;—

If each but, selfless, count the world as loss,

He comes at last to God's felicity!' "*(1)

*(1) These lines may well have been written by Eric Hammond, who was later to contribute a number of poems on Vedantic themes to the Brahmavadir~ and Prabuddha Bharata. Swamiji was extremely fond of both Eric and his wife, Nell. In August of ~898 Margaret Noble (then Sister Nivedita) would write from India to Nell, "He thinks the world of you two, you know" (Letters of Sister J~ivedita, ed. Sankari Prasad Basu, I :I7).

Later on, Margaret Noble would write a Wimbledon newsletters for the Brahmavadin, in the course of which she spelled out the difficulties some of the students had had with Swamiji's "views in detail," as mentioned above by Mr. Beatty.

Of course [she wrote] there are cases in which the name of a given formula arouses a certain repugnance, which it takes time to overcome. Reincarnation is an outstanding rock to this day with very many. That sin is Ignorance is another alien notion. On the whole it may be observed that the last point to be taken quite seriously is the opposition between the Real and the Apparent.[71]

But despite these boulders on the path, each of the Wimbledon students seems to have found in Swamiji's classes a spiritual nourishment profoundly pertinent to his or her particular bent and need. "Some by one gate, and some by another," Margaret Noble wrote, "we have all entered into a great heritage, and we know it.'[72]

Another series of lectures also took Swamiji out of town. Like a number of Unitarian ministers in America, the Reverend John Page Hopps, the liberal, indeed "radical," but well esteemed pastor of the Unitarian and Free Christian Church of West Croyden—a residential suburb south of London—found in Swamiji a strong inspiration and invited him to give not one sermon but a series of five on the Sundays of November 8, 15, 22, 29, and December 6. On the last of those Sundays Swamiji gave not one lecture but two, returning to London to deliver at the Sesame Club that evening a talk entitled "Privilege," which one can find in volume one of the Complete Works. As far as is known, however, none of the West Croyden "sermons" have been published, though very likely at least one was taken down, for we know that Goodwin went along at least once. Of the first lecture at West Croyden, he wrote to Mrs. Bull, "(The Swami) preached a most excellent sermon last Sunday . . . & has sermons for the next four Sundays." "The (first) Croyden sermon," he continued in this same letter, "is being printed by (the Unitarian Church):'[73] No copy of this printing has been found to date; nor have recent inquiries turned up any record of Swamiji's West Croyden talks, possibly because the old church was bombed during the Second World War and, though made of iron, was totally destroyed.

Although in November and a part of December Swamiji regularly gave five lectures a week ("better and better every time," said Goodwin)[74] and although he was deeply tired and had a bad cold in mid-November, he still had energy enough to lunch and dine with friends, to see the sights, to go to the theatre now and then, and to attend at least one lecture he himself was not giving. Such diversions were no doubt welcome in lieu of the "thorough rest" of which he was feeling great need and which, as Goodwin wrote to Josephine MacLeod on November 14, "no man ever deserved more.'[75]It is largely  from Goodwin's confiding letters to his friends who also loved Swamiji—Mrs. Bull and Miss MacLeod—that we learn something of his outings. Additional bits of information come from a precis of Swami Abhedananda's diary for this period. Entitled "Londone Swami Vivekananda" (Swami Vivekananda in London), it was written by Brahmachari Satya Chaitanya and published in 1920 in three issues of the Bengali-language magazine Vishwavani. Swami Swananda, head of the Berkeley Vedanta Society, has very kindly translated the articles for use in this book. While one could wish for more, these two sources serve us moderately well in keeping track of Swamiji's extracurricular activities in London. Here are gleanings from them with a minimum of commentary:

Goodwin to Mrs. Bull, Friday, October 23:

I took Swami Avedananda to the Indian Exhibition the other evg & today I took both [Swamis] to the United Services Museum & the aquarium.

[The Royal United Services Museum contained a large number of national trophies, emblems, weapons, and models of warships and battlefields. Most fascinating of these material memorabilia was a huge model of the Battle of Waterloo complete with tens of thousands of toy soldiers.]

Goodwin to Mrs. Bull, Tuesday, November 11:

[The Swami] heard a lecture at the Royal Asiatic Socy yesterday on Tao. I had told him as I told the Rev. Mr. James that Taoism was an offshoot of Vedantism, & it is interesting to note that in addition to Mr. Sturdy making the claim at yesterday's meeting [in Wimbledon (?)] a letter was read from probably the chief Professor in China making the same admission, in distinct terms. There is, the Swami says, distinct evidence of Vedanta's Missionary enterprise long before the advent of Buddha.

Goodwin to Miss MacLeod, Friday, November 20:

The Swami saw Irving the other evening in Cymbeline. He did not like him, but thought Ellen Terry very good. I took them the other evening to see Charley's Aunt, and I am sorry to say the Swami laughed most at the wicked parts.

[Henry Irving was a famous Shakespearian actor, who, some thought, overplayed his roles; Ellen Terry, an actress of equal fame at the time and better remembered today, had been his leading lady for almost twenty years. As for Charley's Aunt, this was the second time, at least, that Swamiji had seen this hilarious comedy, which is still being produced today by repertory theatres and high school drama classes. The first time he saw it was in Chicago in the summer of 1894, when, as he said, he had nearly killed himself laughing.]

From Swami Abhedananda's Diary regarding the same occasions;

One evening, Swamiji was taken to see 'Cymbeline' by Miss Sutter [sic]. Captain and Mrs. Sevier, Mr. Sturdy and Swami Abhedananda accompanied him. The Prince of Wales was also at the Theatre that night.... Another night, Swamiji, together with Mr. Goodwin and Swami Abhedananda, went to see a comedy called 'Charlie's Aunt'. Swamiji waited a long time in line to get inexpensive gallery tickets. [He] was smiling and saying, "You can't make friends here without knowing their customs, behaviour, politics. You have to know the manners of the rich, the cultured and the poor."

Goodwin to Miss Macleod, Friday, November 20 (cont.):

At Cambridge, tomorrow, the undergrads. are giving a complimentary banquet to Ranjit Sinjhi, the famous Indian cricketer, and the Swami has accepted the invitation to attend and respond to the toast of India.

From Swami Abhedananda's Diary:

Swami Vivekananda would visit various parts of the city of London.... accompanied by Swami Abhedananda. One day Swamiji said, "Let's go see what an English market is like." And they went to see a weekly farmers' market in the poorer section of town. They did not see many of the tropical vegetables common in Bengal, but even then, there was a wide variety of greens and fruits.... Seeing oysters and clams being sold, Swamiji exclaimed, "See, they eat crabs, clams and oysters like Bengalees!"

Goodwin to Mrs. Bull, Friday, December 11:

I took the two Swamis to see the Smithfield Club Cattle show this morning. Our Swami was very anxious to see the very fat pigs of which he has been told.[76]

On December 16, 1896, the Indian Mirror printed a long article about the banquet to Ranjit Sinjhi, the opening sentences of which, together with what is to us the most interesting part, read:

On the 21st of this month [November], the Cambridge "Indian Majlis" gave a complimentary dinner at the University Arms Hotel [in Cambridge] to Prince Ranjitsinhji and Mr. Atul Chandra Chatterjee. Mr. Hafiz G. Sarwir of St. John's College, took the chair. There were about fifty Indians present and a few Englishmen....

Swami Vivekananda rose next to respond [to the toast of India] amidst loud and deafening cheers. The Swami began by saying that he did not know exactly why he should be chosen to respond to the toast unless it be for the reason that he in physical bulk bore a striking resemblance to the national animal of India (laughter). He desired to congratulate the guest of the evening and he took the statement which the Chairman had made that Mr. Chatterjee was going to correct the mistake of past historians of India, to be literally true. For out of the past the future must come and he knew no greater and more permanent foundation for the future than a true knowledge of what had preceded before. The present is the effect of the infinity of causes which represent the past. They had many things to learn from the Europeans but their past, the glory of India which had passed away, should constitute even a still greater source of inspiration and instruction. Things rise and things decay, there is rise and fall everywhere in the world. And though India is fallen today she will assuredly rise again (loud cheers). There was a time when India produced great philosophers and still greater prophets and preachers. The memory of those days ought to fill them with hope and confidence. This was not the first time in the history of India that they were so low. Periods of depression and degradation had occurred before this but India has always triumphed in the long run and so would she once again in the future.

Swamiji must have been a familiar figure in Westminster as he walked from his flat to his classroom, or, in the other direction, to the Victoria Station or the Sesame Club, or, again, to the United Services Museum, or any place within an easy distance. When he wore his turban and his brilliant robe, street urchins would, to his amusement, hoot at him; an alarmed and irate coal-cart driver once, with fortunately poor aim, hurled a lump of coal at his head; other Londoners might turn to watch a maharaja striding by. Sometimes he wore a top hat, which must have also been an arresting sight. But whatever his headgear, Swamiji never passed by unremarked. And there was at least one urchin who did not hoot. Mr. Goodwin told the story in a letter of November 29 to Mrs. Bull:

A very pretty incident happened the other day. The Swami was walking to a Ry Station when a little ragamuffin caught hold of his arm & began rubbing his head against it. The Swami did not remember him at first, but the child said "You remember me, you gave me a penny the other day." It turned out that the Swami saw this boy & another fighting, and after stopping them gave each of them a penny, & this was the boy's way of showing his affection.[77]

The two Swamis—Swamiji and Swami Abhedananda—most likely went sightseeing more often than Goodwin recorded, but they also must have stayed at home many afternoons and evenings on those dark, cold days of fall and winter when thick yellow fog blanketed London. Visitors came to talk or dine with them, and certainly the two gurubhais conversed at length together, recalling perhaps days under different skies at Dakshineswar when they and their companions had sat at the feet of Sri Ramakrishna, listening enrapt as he spoke to them, his mind barely this side of samadhi. The two Swamis also took pleasure in debate, choosing one philosophical point or another for a subject. There was, for instance, the unpublished statement Swamiji had made toward the end of "Practical Vedanta -IV" (and on other occasions as well): "A jiva," he had said, according to a letter of Goodwin's, "can never attain absolutely to Brahman until the whole of Maya disappears. While there is still a jiva left in Maya, there can be no soul absolutely free. '[78] "Swami Avedananda takes exception to this," Goodwin told Mrs. Bull, "and they are going to argue it out." But the argument would have been in Bengali, and Goodwin could not report the outcome—which, in any case, was perhaps not conclusive, for, as Swamiji had said in his lecture (in the same unpublished passage), "Vedantists are divided on this point."

There was work to do at home as well. Throughout November, Swamiji's London class-lectures were being prepared for publication, Goodwin doubtless typing them on the "new kind of typewriter—very cheap" that he had bought at the United Services Museum when he had taken the Swamis there. (Before this, he had written out all the London transcripts in longhand, page after page of small neat script, and had copied them for Mrs. Bull as well.) The London lectures were to be in lieu of, or the beginnings of, a magazine that Mr. Sturdy hoped to produce and that Swamiji encouraged. "There must be work for the people here to do when I am gone," he wrote to Alasinga in November, "else the whole thing will go to pieces. Therefore there must be a paper here, so also in America by and by.'[79] "Mr. Sturdy begins publishing on Dec. 1st the Swami's London lectures-in monthly parts," Goodwin informed Mrs. Bull. "The first months will be a lecture each month with just a few notes perhaps. Three or four papers of other matters, with the idea of developing out of this into a magazine.... The subscription is 6/- [or] $1.50 per annum, to include postage.'[80]These pamphlets would come out regularly for twelve months from December 1, 1896, to November 1, 1897*(2). Each contained a lecture of Swamiji's, and four of them did indeed include a page or two of news, some of which would be contributed by Goodwin from India, and some by Mrs. Bull from America. But as it happened, the pamphlets did not develop into a magazine. At the end of 1897 Mr. Sturdy went on a trip around the world, and by the time he returned to London the magazine idea had died, never in his lifetime to be revived. But that is another story. In November of 1896 things were humming in London with the vitality that Swamiji's presence gave them. Not only were the London lectures being prepared for publication, but the second edition of Raja Yoga was on its way to press; further, Swamiji and Goodwin were going over the New York lectures for their second edition, and Goodwin was making up an index (now lost) of their leading subjects.

*(2) The twelve London lectures that Mr. Sturdy published in pamphlet form were, consecutively: "The Necessity of Religion"; "The Real and the Apparent Man"; "Maya and the Evolution of the Conception of God"; "Maya and Freedom"; "God in Everything"; "Realisation"; "Unity in Diversity"; "The Freedom of the Soul"; "Practical Vedanta" (parts I through IV).

Along with all his other activities, this young man, Goodwin, whose energies were seemingly inexhaustible, continued to work on his Year Book, which he had started in America and which had by now expanded to include verses from the Upanishads, Swamiji helping him with untranslated selections until he had learned Sanskrit, which he was studying on the side. He planned also to include many more Western authors than he had at first contemplated. "It requires a great deal of reading," he told Mrs, Bull, and indeed, as far as is known, the required reading never ended, and the Year Book, over which  he had labored hard, died unfinished. Another project of Goodwin's was " a handbook of the Philosophy of the Vedanta for beginners." "The Swami liked the idea of it when I told him," he wrote to Mrs. Bull. "My idea also is to use Western philosophies to support the theories of the Vedanta and to give the whole subject in a simple reasoned out manner.'[81]This book, too, was never to see the light. But Josiah Goodwin, so devoted to Swamiji, so spirited and hard-working, was once again by his guru's side, taking down and transcribing his lectures; what else he accomplished or failed to accomplish would make no difference—not even to him. The New York people had, to be sure, not forgiven him for highhandedly flouting their work, as they saw it, but under Swamiji's wing he was impervious to blame. "I am getting letters of the most violent condemnation and denunciation from N.Y. almost daily, " he wrote to Josephine MacLeod in November, "but the Swami has supported me in the arrangement by which Saradananda will work in Boston through the winter, and to tell you the truth, N.Y.'s displeasure falls rather flat.'[82] Living with Swamiji and Swami Abhedananda that busy autumn in the flat at 14 Greycoat Gardens, Goodwin was perhaps at the peak of his short, strenuous, and invaluable life.

As early as November 11, Swamiji had definitely decided to return to India by way of Europe rather than by way of America—a route he had at one time considered, partly to prevent the increasingly difficult Miss Muller from traveling with him. ("I think Miss Muller is going mad," Goodwin wrote to Miss MacLeod in his letter of November 14. "She is acting very strangely.") Now that the Seviers had been included in the voyage, the situation had become a little complex: the American route would be inconvenient and expensive for them; and yet one suspects that they had no liking for Miss Muller's tempestuous behavior and no desire to travel with her*(3)." Swamiji now dealt with the problem head-on. "Miss Muller has given up the idea of going to India, after some plain speaking from the Swami, which she has taken very well."  Goodwin reported to Miss MacLeod the following week.[83] Actually, she did not give up the idea of going to India but, rather, agreed to go on her own, accompanied by a companion—a Miss Bell. Swamiji's plain speaking, for which there had been no alternative, was perhaps a tonic she had badly needed at the time. "Miss Muller has recovered from more things than one," Sturdy would write to Miss MacLeod in January of 1897, "and has gone to India. I am sincerely sorry for her, but Swami is her medicine. I can hardly give details but she has cast off the adopted son [Akshay Kumar Ghosh] and I, hope all the nonsense and superstition which led her into that affair.'[84] (It was not until two years later that Henrietta Muller would turn publicly against Swamiji and his country. "Her defection was a great blow to me," he would write in 1900 to Sister Christine, "—as I loved her so much and she was a great helper & worker.")[85]

*(3) Captain Sevier's attitude toward Miss Muller surprised even Mr. Goodwin. Writing to Miss MacLeod from India on March 16, ~897, Goodwin described what seems to have been an outburst of sorts on the part of the good Captain: "By the bye Miss Muller came [to Calcutta] the other day unexpectedly, and Mr. Sevier has become mad in consequence. He is going back to Bangalore (in Madras Presidency) and      I expect home soon. He is certainly unreasonable in this case, for Miss Muller put herself quite in the Swami's hands, offered to go anywhere so that Mr. Sevier might be satisfied, but Mr. Sevier studiously set himself to make a row with her, and it must be said to Miss Muller's credit unsuccessfully. She, in fact, has become unwell-nervously-from having to sit at the table and listen to his really insulting remarks. I think the heat has affected him somewhat" (Leg. Col.).

One reason Swamiji was eager to return to India was to implement what Goodwin called "his biggest project'—“the building of the Monastery in Calcutta as a training ground for Vedanta teachers.'[86] The London newspapers had been full of accounts of the severe famine that was devastating India in the fall of 1896, and such news could not but have moved him deeply. He sent money to the Indian Mirror's famine relief fund, but he whose mind was always thinking of ways and means to bring lasting well-being to the Indian people could not be satisfied with patchwork relief; nor did he attribute the depredations of famine to the will of a Creator God and resign himself to them. "As if it would not be one's right and duty to fight such a God and slay Him!'[87] he would later exclaim in grief over another senseless tragedy. Persistently he had sought a remedy for India's ills and had found it in the application of her own highest teachings. "In India there is a famine now," he said in "Practical Vedanta-II," "but there are temple in each of which there are jewels worth a king's ransom! If the priests taught this Impersonal idea to the people, their occupation would be gone. Yet we have to teach it--unselfishly,  without priestcraft.'[88] There was no other way to raise the nation whose life's blood was spirituality than to give her basic religion to the people, from whom it had been kept and to whom it belonged. "It is there for every one in every occupation of life," he would say in India itself. "These conceptions of the Vedanta must come out, must remain not only in the forest, not only in the cave, but they must come out to work at the Bar and the Bench, in the Pulpit, and in the cottage of the poor man, with the fishermen that are catching fish, and with the students that are studying.... How can the fisherman and all these carry out the ideals of the Upanishads? . . . Let everyone do what little he can. If the fisherman thinks that he is the Spirit, he will be a better fisherman; if the student thinks he is the Spirit, he will be a better student. If the lawyer thinks that he is the Spirit, he will be a better lawyer, and so on.'[89] To establish a monastery from which the great truths of Vedanta and of Sri Ramakrishna's teachings would flood over India was his most pressing mission, now taking precedence over the establishment of a math for women. As we have seen in the previous chapter, he had done all he could through correspondence to imbue his brother disciples and disciples with his ideas; his presence was now needed in India to put those ideas into action.

Swamiji spoke of his project to his close English friends, and they handsomely responded—Miss Muller offered two hundred pounds a year (and later much more), Mr. Sturdy gave five hundred pounds, and Miss Souter, who had also contributed to the famine relief, one thousand. On November 20 he was able to write to Alasinga: "My present plan of work is to start two centres, one in Calcutta and the other in Madras, in which to train up young preachers. I have funds enough to start the one in Calcutta, which being the scene of Shri Ramakrishna's life-work, demands my first attention. As for the Madras one, I expect to get funds in India.'[90]Thus at long last, Swamiji obtained substantial Western help for his Indian work. Nor was it only his English disciples who came forward. Unbeknownst to him, Goodwin wrote to both Mrs. Bull and Miss MacLeod—to the latter by way of cautiously approaching the practical Mr. Leggett—about Swamiji's Calcutta project. Mrs. Bull wrote to Swamiji at once, offering him a very large contribution (35,000 rupees), but still unsure of details, Swamiji refused it. "I don't want to encumber myself with a large sum of money at the first start," he wrote to her on December 9, "but as things progress on I will be very glad to find employment for that sum. My idea is to start on a small scale.'[91] (Later on, Swamiji accepted Mrs. Bull's offer to help him establish Belur Math on the property he had purchased in 1898 with Miss Muller's contribution of Rs. 40,000.)[92]

By November 14. Swamiji's passage to India was booked on the Prinz Regent Luitpold, which would sail from Naples on December 30. "I am doing my best to go," Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull, "as the Swami seems to want me to." Swamiji did indeed want his faithful disciple with him. As early as October 25, after Goodwin had returned from America, Swamiji had decided to give him sannyasa and to keep him close by his side. Furthermore, he wanted this young Englishman, with his good comprehension of Vedanta, to lecture in India. Goodwin was skeptical. "The Swami says he is going to put me up to speak to the 50,000 people (these are his figures) who will make the pilgrimage on Ramakrishna's birthday," he informed Mrs. Bull, "but I regret to say the Swami sometimes speaks nonsense, as an antidote, I suppose, to the amount of sense which he dispenses.'[93] And again, "I do not know exactly what I am to do [in India], but the Swami evidently wants me to lecture there, & of course I shall do my best, although the idea of lecturing there after hearing the Swami so often seems absurd to me. But his idea is that an Englishman living among the natives—the poorer natives—and as a native, can have some influence, & I shall only be too glad if I am able to help his work in any small way, either by what I say or by  personal example, altho in this respect I need an awful lot of improvement myself.'[94]

It all came about as Swamiji had said. On March 16 of 1897 Goodwin would write to Mrs. Bull from Darjeeling: "There were 60,000 at the [Sunday, March 7) anniversary [celebration] at Dakshineswar, and the Swami made me make a speech to goodness knows how many people. Fortunately there was so much noise that nobody could hear what a fool I made of myself. I live quite as a Hindu, eat on the ground with my fingers and everything. It has helped me to make hundreds of friends here already.'[95]But during the year or so he had left to him, Goodwin would find that he was "about 50 per cent American and the rest English (and, in a whisper please, not a bit Hindu).'[96]



ⓘ
[I] Complete Works, 7 : 501.
[2] Complete Works, 3 : 234.
[3] Complete Works  2 : 291.
[4] Complete Works2 : 199
[5] Complete Works 2 : 331
[6] Complete Works 1 : 367.
[7] Complete Works2 : 65.
[8] Complete Works 1 : 367.
[9] Complete Works1 :425
[10] Complete Works 1 : 133-
[11] J.J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, November 20, 1896, SCB.
[12] Complete Works, 1 : 367-74 passim.
[13] Complete Works., 1 : 377.
[14] Complete Works1: 377-79
[15] Complete Works2 :139.
[16] Complete Works2: 294-97 passim.
[17] Complete Works 2 -.293.
[18] Complete Works2 :298.
[19] Complete Works 2:336.
[20] Complete Works 2 :332.
[21] Complete Works 2:297.
[22] Complete Works 2:312.
[23] Complete Works2:166-67.
[24] See Complete Works, 2 : 293.
[25].Complete Works, 2: 161.
[26] Complete Works., 2 : 300-301.
[27] Complete Works  2 :138-39.
[28] Complete Works2:140.
[29] Complete Works 2 :355.
[30] Complete Works2:358.
[31] Complete Works2 :303.
[32] Complete Works2 :300.
[33] Complete Works 2:301-2.
[34] Complete Works2 :302.
[35] Complete Works 2 :2Oi.
[36] Complete Works2 :357-58.
[37] Complete Works 2 :300.
[38] Complete Works 2 :195.
[39] Complete Works 2:195-96.
[40] Complete Works 2 :301.
[41] Complete Works 2:353.
[42] Complete Works 2 :354.
[43] Complete Works 2 :334’
[44] J. J. Goodwin to Josephine MacLeod, November 14, 1896, A.A.
[45] Complete Works, 2 : 320-21.
[46] Complete Works, 2 :352,353.
[47] Complete Works   2:142.
[48] Complete Works 2 :322. (The wording of the last two sentences in this passage is based on the London pamphlet, 1897.)
[49] Complete Works 2:322-23.
[50] Complete Works2:141.
[51] Complete Works2:327.
[52] Complete Works 2 : 337.
[53] Complete Works 2 :347.
[54] Complete Works1 :421-22.
[55] Complete Works 2 : 201.
[56] Complete Works 2 :302.
[57] Complete Works 2 : 199.
[58] Complete Works2:295.
[59] Complete Works 2 : 355. (The wording of this passage is taken from the London pamphlet, 1897.)
[60] Complete Works 2 : 305-6.
[61] Complete Works2: 200.
[62] Complete Works2 : 199.
[63] Complete Works2 :358.
[64] Complete Works 2 : 139.
[65] Complete Works 2 : 188.
[66] Nivedita, The Master, p. 32.
[67] J.J. Goodwin’s letters quoted from in this paragraph are all from A.A.
[68] Boshi Sen, “Sister Christine,” P.B., September 1930, p. 421.
[69] Henrietta Muller in the Brahmavodin, September 15, 1897, p. 3.
[70] See Swami Nikhilananda, Holy Mother (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1962), p. 111.
[71] Margaret Noble, “Vedanta Teaching in Wimbledon,” Brahmavadin, September 15, 1897, pp. 36-38.
[72] Margaret Noble, “Vedanta Teaching in Wimbledon,” Brahmavadin, September 15, 1897, pp. 36-38.
[73] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, November 11, 1896, SCB.
[74] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, November 11, 1896, SCB.
[75] J.J Goodwin to Josephine MacLeod, November 14, 1896, A.A.
[76]. J. J. Goodwin’s letters to Sara Bull are from SCB, and that to Josephine MacLeod is from A.A. Extracts from a prdcis of Swami Abhedananda’s Diary are from “Londone Swami Vivekananda” by Brahmachari Satya Chaitanya, Vishwavani, 1335 (Bengali era).
[77] J.J Goodwin to Sara Bull, November 29, 1896, SCB.
[78] J.J Goodwin to Sara Bul, November 20, 1896. (Sec also Complete Works, 6 : 83.)
[79] Complete Works, 5 : 124.
[80] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, November 4, 1896, SCB.
[81] J.J Goodwin to Sara Bul, November 14, 1896.
[82].J. J. Goodwin to Josephine MacLeod, November 14, 1896, A.A.
[83] J. J. Goodwin to Josephine MacLeod., November 20, 1896.
[84] E. T. Sturdy to Josephine MacLeod, January 25, 1897, Leg. Col.
[85] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, June 20, 1900, Sen. Col.
[86] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, November 20, 1896, SCB.
[87] Sister Nivedita, Notes of Some Wanderings, pp. 39-40.
[88] Complete Works, 2 : 320.
[89] Complete Works , 3 : 245.
[90] Complete Works5 : 124.
[91] Complete Works6:386.
[92] See Ibid., 6 : 389.
[93] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, November 20, 1896, SCB.
[94] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull,., December 8, 1896.
[95] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull,, March 16, 1897.
[96] J. J Goodwin to Josephine MacLeod, May 5, 1898, A.A.


3

The human mind tends to read patterns into everything, and perhaps rightly (or inevitably), for that which is in essence One is not apt to be chaotic in its temporal and spatial modes. But Swamiji's mission seems especially rich with synchronies. Goodwin's entrance onto the scene, for instance, had occurred right on cue. He appeared just as Swamiji's second season in New York was getting underway—the season during which his message in its well-formulated and integrated parts would pour from him in such torrents that only a highly experienced and expert shorthandist, one who was, to boot, educated, intelligent, energetic, and ready to dedicate his life at Swamiji's feet, could take it all down. Josiah J. Goodwin, who walked in the door at 228 West Thirty-ninth Street on December 12, 1895, was exactly such a person. From that day forward he caught the whole Western message verbatim, as it fell fresh from Swamiji's lips, taking down almost every lecture and class from mid-December of 1895 to mid-December of 1896 and, as far as we can know, transcribing the most important of them. A year and a half later he died. Since the faithful Goodwin will not enter the next volumes of this series, let us jump ahead here to follow his life to its end. Swamiji had intended to give him the vows of sannyasa on the auspicious day of Sri Ramakrishna's 1897 birthday (March 5), and he had been ready to receive them*(4)"I want you to know," he had assured Mrs. Bull at the end of January (1897), "that my being a Sannyasin makes [will make?] no difference to my continuing as the servant of the Swami. There is a blanket Swami here, & all sorts of Swamis. I will be the Silent Swami.'[1] For one reason or another Swamiji put off giving Goodwin the vows. As late as June 2 of that year he wrote from Almora to an English friend (Marie Halboister), "You ought to have seen [Goodwin] in his Indian clothes. I am very soon going to shave his head and make a full-blown monk of him.'[2] Somehow things did not work out that way, and Goodwin was to remain the faithful J. J. Goodwin all his life.

*(4) Swamiji had given Goodwin the vows of brahmacharya in New York in February of I896. See World feacher- ', chapter seven, section seven. See also Complete Works, 8: 373.

But however that may be, he was witness to Swamiji's triumphal journey from Colombo to Madras, wide-eyed all along the way to see such scenes as that at Ramnad, where "the rejoicing was tremendous. Cannon roared, torches flared, fireworks were set off, both English and native music played, the Rajah's body guard accompanied the Swami, who was seated in the State Palanquin, & the Rajah's brother commanded the guard. The cheering & shouting of Hara Hara Maha Dev was terrific.'[3]He voyaged with Swamiji from Madras to Calcutta and stayed for a time at Alambazar Math, apparently enjoying himself to the full. Swami Akhandananda, writing of those days, remembered him well: "The three devotees of Madras [Alasinga, G.G., and Dr.] and Goodwin stayed mostly at the Math.... Goodwin danced and sang in his boyish way. The piece 'Sankara siva vyom. vyom bhola' in his mouth was very sweet to hear. He would often catch hold of me and dance around.'[4]Swami Virajananda also remembered Goodwin with affection. "Goodwin and the Madras disciples always remained with the Swami," he recalled. "Goodwin used to serve the Swami day and night. Oh, what a wonderful spirit of service he had!'[5]

For the sake of his health, Swamiji left Calcutta on March 8 for Darjeeling, where the Seviers were already staying. He took Goodwin with him, and there, until the first week of April, Goodwin remained. On April 14 he wrote to Mrs. Bull from Dehra Dun, giving an account of his travels:

A week or ten days ago I left the Swami at Darjeeling, which was continuing to do him immense good, &, at his wish, returned to Calcutta, where Swami Sivananda joined us & we came on here. During the week we are going on to Almora with Miss Muller, who is here at present, & we are to set on foot there between us an institution to act as an adjunct to the institution which the Swami is having founded in Calcutta. We are going there by way of Rishi Kesha, one of the most sacred spots in India, & a great center of pilgrimage. Almora is within I5 days journey of Kedar Nath, one of the four sacred temples of which Ramesvaram, Juggernath, & one in Ghoojerat are the other three. Swami Niranjan[ananda] (who is at Almora) & I are going there also. It is up in the mountains among the snows.[6]

Mrs. Bull (who would be traveling in the north of India herself before long), was always ready to serve those who were serving Swamiji. She had offered money to Goodwin many times, and he now accepted:

I am naturally bound [he wrote in this same letter], when the Swami sends me about from place to place, to rely on the funds on the Math for travelling expenses, & I hardly like this. You were good enough to tell me some time ago to let you know of a case of this kind. If you think it a proper case I should be very glad if you would let me have a little money for this purpose, but only for this reason. If you think there is no reason for scruples on the point I do not need anything for other purposes.[7]

"The Math, Alambazar, Calcutta, will be a better future address," he added as a postscript to this letter of April 14, "as we shall be rarely in the South, & shall always be returning from time to time to Calcutta." But in regard to himself, this was a false prediction.

Swamiji came to Almora in early May with three of his brother disciples, and here again, as so often before, Goodwin witnessed an ecstatic reception for his guru, the whole town turning out to honor him. By this time, however, he was not so impressed as he had been at first.

I think [the Swami] has come to see what, to tell the truth, I have felt for some time, that in India he will do very little [he had written to Mrs. Bull from Darjeeling]. His chief weapon is in his Western work. For every success he has there the influence here is tenfold, but when he is among his own people the truth of the old saying—"A prophet . has no honour in his own country" is verified as far as active help is concerned. The people will run after him. & shout 'Jai Vivekananda' by the thousands, & will applaud him when he says the God of India is the cooking pot & the religion of the country the kitchen, but the same people go home & throw away their meal if anyone looks at it. There are a few strong sterling spirits here, but the many are hopelessly weak, & have no idea of religion outside of hard & fast observances in the kitchen. It is astonishing to a European.[8]

Particularly, perhaps, to a European ready to throw in his lot with India. Goodwin's British pride, if not his innate friendliness, may have been as deeply affronted by India's "kitchen religion" as was his Vedantic idealism. "There can be no assimilation & lasting fusion while the sahib is studiously kept out of the place in which, even in England, he most unbends—the dining room," he went on in his letter to Mrs. Bull with all the irrational indignation of a piqued sahib. And indeed, though  Goodwin was much loved by Swamiji's Indian friends, his position in the India of that day was not comfortable. Shunned by the English community (which, in any case, did not consist, he wrote, of "the real John Bull") for fraternizing with the "natives" and, except where Swamiji's influence prevailed, kept at arm's length by upper-caste Hindus, he pardonably stewed. Swamiji, discouraging Mrs. Bull from coming to India with an idea of serving the poor, would write to her, "Even Goodwin smarts now and then [at all the indignities of isolation which a Mlechcha is made to undergo here] and has to be called to order.'[9]

But in Almora with Swamiji and Swamiji's brother disciples and friends, Goodwin must have felt at home and at ease. The party traveled some twenty miles deeper into the Himalayas to Dewaldhar, a secluded and exquisitely beautiful estate owned by a relative of an Almora friend, Lala Badri Sah, and considerably cooler than the hot town. There in the lovely mountains they stayed for a month or so and then, perforce, returned. On June 20 Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull:

The Swami is again in Almora and seems now to be quite recovered from his indisposition. Alasinga Perumal and Prof Rangacharya (of the Brahmavadin) have also been here, mainly because they wished to visit Badri Narayan, and it was their presence which brought Swamiji up from Dewaldhar.[10]

Was it also their presence that changed everything for Goodwin? Had the two Madras workers asked for his help in a new venture? One does not know, but with what appears to be terrible suddenness, Swamiji sent him to Madras. "Goodwin has gone to work in Madras on a paper to be started there soon," he wrote to Miss MacLeod on July 10.[11] But as things turned out, the proposed third English-language paper was not started, and Goodwin, at Swamiji's request, went to work for the Brahmavadin.

There was, in fact, plenty to do in Madras without starting a third journal, and with enthusiasm still unbounded, Goodwin plunged in, helping not only with the Brahmavadin, which was in dire need of funds, but with the establishment of the Madras Math, which had been started a few months earlier by Swami Ramakrishnananda. Goodwin's energy, ability, and capacity for hard work is evident in a letter he wrote to Mrs. Bull on July 19, which can be given here almost in full, for little has been known of his valiant efforts in southern India.

The Swami is most anxious that the sphere of the Brahmavadin shall be increased, both as regards the teaching it gives, and the width of its circulation. He has over and over again spoken to me about it, and it suggested itself to me to think out a plan for helping this on. There have been three general objections found, both by readers and those who have been asked to become readers. I say this from experience I have had in trying to obtain subscribers. They are as follows:

(1) The paper is altogether Hindu, and therefore, in a way, alien to Western readers. It wants local coloring.

(2) It is too small for the subscription,

(3) It is too scholarly.


Taking the third first, it would unquestionably be a mistake to lower the scholarly tone, and any such idea may at once be dismissed. But there is a way in which all three objections may be obviated. The Swami himself has now a huge circle of acquaintances, friends and admirers, and the proposal I have made, and which meets with the approval of the Swami himself, as well as the management of the paper, is this-that 8 pages shall be regularly added (raising it from 12 pp to 20 pp) and thus meeting objection 2. This 8 pp shall be solely a record, systematically kept of Swamiji's work. It shall contain at least one fresh lecture by him each week. (Thus preserving what he says in the future in permanent form). Reports of the progress  of the work from all the different centres (N.Y., Boston, Calcutta, Madras, London, etc.) and a concise report of all his own work beyond the one lecture given. This, I think, will give the required local colouring, and meet the first objection, at the same time, that without lowering the intellectual tone of the paper, it will give Vedantic teaching in the marvellously simple and easily understood manner of which Swamiji is facile princeps the master.


But the Brahmavadin people have already been issuing the paper at a personal sacrifice for the sake of Swamiji's work, and they have not funds for the increased undertaking. I have proposed therefore to raise the necessary funds ($500) by shares of ($25) among some of Swamiji's friends who are able to help. It will be understood that the assistance will be purely in the nature of an investment, return of which may be claimed at the end of one year, but at the same time I should tell you that it will not be interest bearing. The Brahmavadin people are largely out of pocket so far, but we hope that the increased support which may [be] expected from the new interest which will be given to the paper will help to place it on a sounder basis.


Claims are always being made on your purse and your readiness to help, and I am going to make yet another in this instance, to the extent of one or more shares as I have described. We propose to begin this with the new year's issue [the issue of September 15, 1897], and to thus keep a running and complete record of the autumn tour. I may add that I have undertaken to supply the whole of the matter for this supplement, as I shall be with the Swami on his tour.


I want also to speak to you about the other matter, the regular supply of a Boston letter. It need not be long—one column, but it would be a great help. Can you induce someone to make this a regular duty out of regard for the Swami and his work? . . .

I am taking up as much as they will allow me of the Brahmavadin work, because the Swami has made it very clear to me that he has a real interest in the paper, and anxiety for its success....


I have sent you by this mail a portrait of the Madras group and also of Swami Ramakashnananda. I hope you will find them interesting. At present I am helping to get the latter's work in Madras organised. There was actually no organisation before, and he had really been here for four months for nothing.


You would laugh to see an article by me in the Brahmavadin ("Hegel and the Vedanta," Brahmavadin, July 3, July 17, 1897) ; they were in trouble for a leader, and asked me to write it, but it was too advaitic for the Vishishtadvaitic Madrassis and they trembled at the idea of expressing such opinions, particularly about Isvara.[12]


Goodwin's efforts to improve the Brahmavadin were hampered and complicated by the fact that he was working in a culture alien to him. Temperamentally, he was not suited to India: his whirlwind energy, his impatience, his ingrained British outlook and British self-assurance all came up against the imperturbable, gentle, and unalterable pace of Hindu life. Unable to wait for help, he perhaps took too much upon himself. "I am very much occupied, & can hardly do all I have to do," he wrote to Mrs. Bull from Madras on September 16. "I hope you will think the Bvadin an improvement: I wish the paper were better (it was far inferior to the previous paper), but if we used English paper it would double the cost to us. As it is it will not pay, unless I can increase the subscr list materially as I hope to be able to do.... There is no one to help here; Madras is the laziest place I have ever been. I have joined the staff of the Mail. They asked me to several times, & as they allow me perfect liberty to make the Swami's work my first interest, & as, also, it will enable me to keep myself here, & help my mother out, I joined. My sister is being married & my mother will join me, as she will not care to remain at home under the new conditions.'[13]


In November, Goodwin, no doubt to his joy, was again in northern India with his guru, first at Jammu and then in Lahore, where he took down one of Swamiji's most stunning of lectures, "The Vedanta" (to be published in full in the December 1 issue of the Brahmavadin). It was the last he would record, and, as far as we know, he returned to Madras shortly thereafter. Understandably, Alasinga was not about to turn over the editorship of the Brahmavadin to Swamiji's English disciple; nor, as understandably, could Goodwin adjust to the Indian tempo and mode of work, try as he might. Inevitably, he felt a touch, at least, of frustration. We find him, for example, writing later on to Miss MacLeod, "I gave your letter the day I received it to Alasinga and as usual with the Brahmavadin people it still awaits attention.... If you will please let me know which [of Swamiji's lectures] you would like I will have it attended to by the Prabuddha people, who do attend to things.'[14] (Actually, the Prabuddha people were inclined to be more disorganized than the Brahmavadin people.) The magazine began to occupy less and less of his time, the Madras Mail, more and more, and one thinks that it was only because Swamiji was in India that Goodwin stayed there at all. In a letter on May 5, 1898, to Miss MacLeod, who was then in Calcutta and to whom he wrote with less reserve than to Mrs. Bull, one hears a cry. (His letter was from Ootacamund, where the Mail had an office and where he had gone for a time, perhaps on assignment or to escape the scorching Madras heat.)


When I came to India I need not say what my feelings were with regard to Swamiji, but I have been here 16 months, and I have completely come round to your point of view. I will do anything for him personally, but I simply do not care a pin for anything else. If I do any of his work it will be merely because he wishes it. Partly for this reason I am for the present really out of the work altogether. I  also felt that recognising as I did that I could do absolutely nothing to help—although I really tried in Madras, it was wrong to remain a burden on him or his, and for that reason I joined the Mail.


I should dearly like to go to Kashmere, but cannot. I am going to try hard when I go down from here to get a month off, which would allow me a week or ten days at Srinagar, but I cannot say I have great hopes. I have not seen the Swami since last November.


. . . I realise more and more every day that the Swami is not a Hindu—as Hindus go because everything must be judged by the sum-total, and the sum-total of India is meanness, and petty scheming, and not religion.[15]


Less than a fortnight later Goodwin contracted the chill and fever from which he would not recover. He died at Ootacamund on the night of June 2, not yet twenty-eight. Alasinga sent a telegram to Swamiji, who was in Almora with a few of his Western disciples, and on June 8 he wrote in detail:


Beloved Swamiji,

Poor Goodwin has passed from our midst and we one and all feel exceedingly sorry. When you sent him down here you asked me to put up with his bad temper and pull on with him smoothly. I did all I could to please him and work with him and I believe he had not much to complain against me. [The word However is here crossed out.] We grew to be fast friends and I grieve over his death all the more. He did splendid work for the Ramakrishna Mission and peace [be] to his soul. The day previous to his departure from this place to Ooty he came to me and spent some time. He had asked me to report the proceedings of a public meeting from which he wanted to go away, and he took the report from me and bade me good-bye & never did I dream that that would prove to be his last farewell. After going to Ooty he did not write to me & I  was thinking of writing to him when another Mail reporter came down to Madras &, told me that Goodwin was soon coming down to Madras as he was tired of Ooty. He went there about the first of April & he was to come down about the middle of May. A friend of mine who came here from Ooty about the 26 or so told me that he was very reckless about his health & never cared a bit about it. It seems about the 16th or 17th there was a cricket match & Goodwin got drenched in the rain two or three times. But never changed his coat. The next day he was slightly feverish but went again to be present at the funeral of one Mr Ross, a member of the Madras Legislative Council. He seems to have again got wet. The fever continued to progress. He did not inform either the Mail office or any of us. The climate of Ooty is just now very bad, influenza, typhoid & dysentery all committing. havoc. The papers have begun to complain only just now about the ill health at Ooty. The Mail Office learnt of it rather two [sic] late that Goodwin was seriously [ill] & that he refused to take any medicines. That very evening they sent another of their reporters and we got information in the night about his serious illness. I wired immediately to Goodwin & to some of my friends to nurse him & render every help. I wired to Goodwin that we were ready to start if he wanted help. The next evening i.e. on the second night at about 8 o'clock my friend wired to me that Goodwin was dying in the Hospital. It seems by the time Mr Bremner the Mail reporter reached Ooty Goodwin was delirious & was running away frequently from his bed. He had been removed to hospital & on the second night at about 10-30 he passed away. It seems he has left all his things in utter confusion. There are only a very few of his things—a bicycle (which is out of order), a watch & a few papers. After receiving Mrs. Ole Bull's telegram I saw Mr Brencham, the Editor of the Madras Mail & learnt from him that he had wired to Mr Bremner to take an accurate list of his things & report to the District Magistrate who in his turn will place himself in communication with the Administrator General & only anyone who has a legal right or a power of Attorney from his mother that can get at them. Mr. Beecham also is very sorry for him & wanted to get at the core of Hinduism through Goodwin.[16]


"Now my right hand is gone, " Swamiji said when he was told of his disciple's death. "My loss is incalculable.'[17] And after a few days he insisted on leaving Almora, where "with infinite sorrow" he had received that blow—that sad news made sadder still by its suddenness which, he said, "prevented all possibilities of my being at his side at the time of death.'[18]


The news had shocked and saddened the entire party at Almora. Even Swamiji's Indian friends, such as Lala Badri Sah, were grieved—"so much the boy was loved," Sister Nivedita would write to Nell Hammond*(5)." As for the Western disciples, they had all known Goodwin—Mrs.Bull, Miss MacLeod, the Seviers, Nivedita. Mrs. Bull had perhaps been the closest to him, for it had been through frequent correspondence with him that she had kept in touch with Swamiji's work. Nivedita, who knew him least well, drafted a requiem poem, which Swamiji would rework and give beauty to, and Mrs. Bull, on her own behalf, wrote a letter to the Brahmvadin in tribute to her friend. Swamiji's now famous poem, his memorial paragraph for the press, and Mrs. Bull's letter are all given in Appendix D—flowers strewn on Goodwin's grave, to which every follower of Swamiji's must want to add his own.


*(5) OnJune 5, I898, Sister Nivedita wrote from Almora to Nell Hammond: "Yesterday was made very sad for us here by a telegram towards noon announcing the death of Mr. Goodwin. Mrs. Ole Bull and Miss MacLeod knew him be~tter than I, but I was the last who had seen him, he was so good to me that day at Madras, and his goodness was so utterly characteristic of him! The grief of the Hindus who knew him here was evident and real. One young man who attends us night and day almost, sat here for 3 or 4 hours and scarcely spoke-another, a monk, sat the whole afternoon and told us tender loving memories about him. One man, Badri Shah, the richest man about here, had come to this monk early in the morning saying that he felt sure that his brother Govinda Lall, was dead. When the telegram came, Swami Saddhananda [Sadananda] wanted to suppress it, as the King [Swamiji] was away, and it was addressed to him, but he could not prevent'some tears rolling down,' and this man insisted on knowing the truth. 'Well,' he said, when he heard, 'Govinda Lall or Goodwin, it is almost the same to me.' So much the boy was loved. The King is still away and will be home this morning-the blow will be terrible" (Letters of Sister Nivedita, ed. Sankari Prasad Basu, I :I2).


4

But let us return now to London and to the days of November 1896 when Josiah Goodwin was joyfully busy with a variety of things and Swamiji was bringing his first Western visit to an end. He did not close this London season, even as he had not closed his New York season, without delivering a public, or  semipublic, lecture on his Master. Although this lecture, given in Wimbledon probably in late November or early December, was (as far as we know) his only long and formal talk in England on Sri Ramakrishna, it was not on the first occasion on which he had spoken of him to an English audience. Once, during the course of a reply to a challenging listener at the close of a discourse at some London gathering, he had broken into an impassioned tribute to his Master. That unscheduled talk was remembered by Eric Hammond as a highlight of the season. He wrote of it in part:

At the close of his address, a white-haired and well known philosopher said to the Swami, "You have spoken splendidly, sir, and I thank you heartily, but you have told us nothing new." The lecturer's sonorous tones rang through the room in 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 the Creation, as old as the Great God. If I have told it in such words as will make you think, make you live up to your thinking, do I not do well in telling it?" The murmur of "Hear!" "Hear!" and the louder clapping of hands showed how completely the Swami had carried his audience with him....

"I will tell you how I came to know the Truth," continued the Swami, and in the telling they learned something of the earth-life of Sri Ramakrishna; the sublime simplicity of his character; his indefatigable search for Truth in this religious phase and that; his discovery and his fine proclamation of it: "Where I am, there the Truth is!" . . .

From first to last of this address he dwelt on the message of his Master, Sri Ramakrishna. He had, he said, not one little word of his own to utter, not one infinitesimal thought of his own to unfold. Everything, every single thing, all he was himself, all he could be to us, all he might be to the world, came from that single source; from the pure soul, from the illimitable inspiration who, seated "there in my  beloved India, had solved the tremendous secret and bestowed the solution broadcast, ungrudgingly, with divine prodigality."

In passages of exquisite eloquence he dilated upon Sri Ramakrishna. Self was utterly forgotten, altogether ignored. . . . "Sri Ramakrishna is the spring of this phase of the earth's religious life, of its impulses and its activities. If I can show the world one glimpse of my Master I shall not live in vain.[19]

It was in addition to that spontaneous and moving tribute that Swamiji devoted an entire lecture or class to Sri Ramakrishna. This talk was later combined by an editor in New York (possibly Miss Waldo) with the lecture Swamiji had given at Madison Square Garden on February 23, 1896, and the composite was published under the title "My Master." As we have seen in Part One (chapter seven) of this book, the New York lecture has recently been released from that tangle through a process of scholarly extraction. As for the English lecture, entitled "Ramakrishna Paramahamsa," we need only turn (carefully) to the crumbling Brahmavadins of September 15 and October 1 of 1897 to find it as Goodwin took it down in England and saw it through the press in Madras. Swamiji here gave a brief sketch of Sri Ramakrishna, explaining along the way some ancient customs of India, against the background of which certain incidents in that extraordinary and unparalleled life could be understood by a Western audience. There were two themes in this lecture to which he gave special emphasis, and toward the end he summed them up:

Studying his life I learnt certain things. Of these things that I learnt, two ideas, I think, would be valuable for all humanity. The first [is] the idea of realisation—that religion does not consist in erecting temples, or building churches, that it is neither in books, nor words, nor in lectures, nor in societies, it is not in the power of organisation, but religion consists in realisation. As a fact we all know that nothing will satisfy us until we know the truth for ourselves. However we may argue; however much we may know, but one thing will satisfy us—our own realisation. And such an experience is possible for every one of us, if we only try. The first ideal of this attempt to realise religion is that of renunciation; we must give up. As far as we can, we must give up. Darkness and light, enjoyment of the world and enjoyment of God will never go together. Let people try it, if they will. I have seen millions in every country who have tried, but, after all, it comes to nothing. If one word remains true, it is the saying, give up everything for the sake of the Lord. This is a long task, but you can begin it here and now. Bit by bit we must go towards it.

The second ideal that I have learnt, and which is perhaps the freshest or the newest, is the wonderful truth that the religions of the world are not contradictory nor antagonistic; they are various phases of the one eternal Religion. That Religion is applied to different planes of existence, is applied to the opinions of various minds and various races; there never was my religion or yours, my national religion or your national religion; there never existed many religions; there is only one. The one infinite Religion existed through eternity and will ever exist, and this Religion is expressing itself in various countries in various ways. As such, we must respect them all, and we must try to take them all in as far as we can. Religions manifest themselves not only according to race and geographical position, but according to individual powers. In one it is manifesting itself as intense activity, as work. In another it is manifesting itself as mysticism, in another it is manifesting itself in philosophy, and so forth. It is wrong when we say to others your methods are not right. . . . To learn this one central secret, that the Truth may be one and yet many at the same time, that we may have different visions of the same Truth from different standpoints, is exactly what has got to be.... And this idea, above all other ideas, I find to be the crying need of the day.

Swamiji concluded this lecture with the words:

In every sect—even among the Mohammedans, whom we always regard as the most exclusive, even among them—we find that wherever there was a man trying to realise religion, from his lips have come the fiery words: "Thou art the Lord of all, Thou art in the heart of all, Thou art the guide of all, Thou art the Teacher of all, and Thou carest infinitely more for the land of Thy children than we can ever do.'[20]


One might say that these two (or three?) interwoven threads of his Master's teaching constituted the main themes of Swamiji's own message during his first visit to the West; yet only twice, as far as is known at present, did he give a formal, scheduled lecture on Sri Ramakrishna, and this with reluctance, lest, as he would later say, "I ignore or explain away the truth, lest my little power does not suffice, lest in trying to extol him I present his picture by painting him according to my lights and belittle him thereby!'[21] There were other reasons as well; the Westerner of the 1890s was either content with Christ as a Divine Incarnation or wanted none at all. Only to a few earnest, deeply devoted, and open-minded disciples, such as Mrs. Bull and those who followed him in 1895 to Thousand Island Park, did Swamiji speak at length of his Master. But perhaps one finds the most significant reason for his reticence in his reply in 1897 to his brother disciple Swami Yogananda, who had suggested that his methods of work in India were not in accord with Sri Ramakrishna's intention. Swamiji had flared up:


How do you know that all this is not on Sri Ramakrishna's lines? He had an infinite breadth of feeling, and dare you shut him up within your own limited views of life? I will break down these limits and scatter broadcast over the earth his boundless inspiration. He never instructed me to introduce any rites of his own worship. We have to realise the teachings he has left us about religious practice and devotion, concentration and meditation and such higher ideas and truths, and then preach these to all men. The infinite number of faiths are only so many paths. I haven't been born to found one more sect in a world already teeming with sects. We have been blessed with obtaining refuge at the feet of the Master, and we are born to carry his message to the dwellers of the three worlds.[22]


Mindful of the tendency of the human mind to squeeze the universe into its own small purview, Swamiji was as careful in the West as in India never to preach anything that could be turned into a cult: He did not preach his Master as a Savior or Divine Incarnation; he did not introduce his worship into any of the places he visited; he did not encourage the adoption of Hindu customs or teach the worship of Hindu deities. "The real thing is the Religion taught by Sri Ramakrishna, let Hindus call it Hinduism—and others call it in their own way, " he implored his brother disciples.[23]And to Mary Hale he wrote in 1900, "I preach only what is good for universal humanity. Religion is that which does not depend upon books or teachers or prophets or saviours, and that which does not make us dependent in this or in any other [life] upon others. In this sense, Advaitism of the Upanishads is the only religion.'[24]To preach "the pure Upanishadic religion," which he equated with the universal teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and which he knew had been fully exemplified, empowered, and made accessible to all by Sri Ramakrishna's life, was always the dominant aspect of his mission. And that aspect was eminently suited to the West, for self reliance and self effort were inbred in the Western character; they were, indeed, among the traits Swamiji most admired and would do the least to undermine. Seldom, if ever, did he stress in America or England a religion of supplication  to an external God. Man, he taught, contains within himself, and can evoke, all the grace that man can ever need. Yet, he was never rigid, and in the same letter to Mary Hale he continued: "But saviours, books, prophets, ceremonials, etc. have their places. They may help many.... They are welcome."


While the "pure religion of the Upanishads," as illumined by the life and message of Sri Ramakrishna, found a fertile and uncluttered field in the West, it was not for the West alone, nor for the East alone, but for the world. "You must always remember that you are addressing the whole world, not India alone, " Swamiji had written to Alasinga in connection with the Brahma-vadin.[25] Nor could he himself be confined to or contained within any nationality or culture. He belonged to the whole world, and thc world to him. "What am I?" he would ask on his return voyage to India. "Asiatic, European or American? I feel a curious medley of personalities in me.'[26]And as though the gigantic power of a world teacher were pressing against its bounds he had cried to his brother disciples early in 1896, "Let the world shake on its hinges! Oh the grief! If I could get two or three like me, I could have left the world convulsed. As it is I have to proceed gently. Move the world to its foundations! Send one to China, another to Japan!'[27] But in 1896 there was no one to venture so far afield but he himself, and now that the time was coming for him to travel once again, he thought of going not only to China and Japan, but to Russia as well.


Very likely, it was Mrs. Florence Adams who had opened up to him the possibility of a visit to Russia. She herself had been there in the summer of 1895 and had there introduced Swamiji's name. "I have been telling them in Russia that they must send him a call," she had written to Mrs. Bull in September of 1895, "Perhaps if I return to Russia in the spring to give a course of Lectures, such as the friends there wish to arrange for me, Swami would consider a Russian visit.'[28] Mrs. Adams's return to Russia would be postponed to the late winter of 1896 or early spring of 1897, and it would seem certain that during Swamiji's visit to Chicago in April of 1896 both she and Prince and Princess Wolkonsky, also in Chicago at that time, had offered to open Russian doors for him and had urged him to come. He had not forgotten. Although the Imperial Russia of Swamiji's day was not a cultural force in Europe, Swamiji sensed a world power growing there. "The next great upheaval which is to bring about a new epoch will come from Russia or China. I can't quite see which, but it will be either Russia or China," he had said in 1895.[29]The Russians, moreover, were a deeply religious people, imbued with mysticism and without prejudice toward India. The Czar himself had, to Swamiji's delight, spoken of India as the land of spirituality and wisdom *(6).

*(6) On September 22 of I896 Swamiji wrote to Alasinga, "I send you a Daily Jfews article on a book of travel written by the Czar of Russia. The paragraph in which he speaks of India as the land of spirituality and wisdom, you ought to quote in your paper and send the articletothe IndianMirror"(CompleteWorks, 5: I Is).In the Brahmavadin of October a4, ~896, under "Notes and Thoughts," Alasinga duly published the paragraph. It was from The Travel in the East of ;Yicholas II, Emperor of Russia and read: "To-morrow, India! Sleep deserts mine eyes. I vainly sought it in the balmy night;-in the gold and crimson of the rising sun, the dawn greets the promised land, where the heavens are pervaded with the charms of love, but passion is conquered by an unspeakable sadness-where life glows bright, yet all is as a dream, and breathes with beauty irresistible as death. O land of daring dreams and soaring thought! Thou risest out of the azure deep, whose mournful moaning echoes sadly back the discord reigning in the weary heart. India lies before us! Here holiness and peace appeared in visions unto men contemptuous of pleasures; since their age the people live the self-same life, yearning for the Divinity, for freedom, and atonement. Here, where the earthly realm of sorrow borders on the heavens, and when the soul is crushed by unceasing torments, this magic land calls us into a world of wonders, into the realm of the eternal mysteries of boundless wisdom."

In late October of 1896, Goodwin wrote from London to Mrs. Bull, "[The Swami] would like to know if Mrs. Milward Adams is going to Russia. He is quite anxious to go if she would be able to get him an opening for a hearing there.'[30]Mrs. Bull assured Swamiji by return mail that she would "write to Mrs. Adams to learn of her Russian plans, if she has determined them.'[31]But what Mrs. Adams's plans were, we do not know, for meanwhile Swamiji had changed his, and the Russian visit (as well as a proposed visit to Boston) was dropped. He had decided to go directly to India. At least one reason for this change of plan is contained in a letter to Mrs. Bull dated November 13. "I am very soon starting for India," he wrote, " . . . and as I have arranged to take several friends from England with me to India, it is impossible for me to go to America on my way, however I might have liked it." For the same reason, a visit to Russia would also be out of the question.


As for China and Japan, Swamiji wanted to visit them on his way from India to America in the summer of 1897. "He says that while in Ceylon—where he intends stopping a week—he will arrange through Dharmapala's people for lectures [at some of the universities] in Japan and China," Goodwin wrote to Miss MacLeod on November 14, 1896. "He changes his mind almost daily, but I fancy he will not be in India more  than six months and then Japan and China en route for California, where he intends to work before returning to the Eastern States.'[33] Ill health prevented Swamiji from carrying out this plan in either 1897 or 1898. Nor was he able to visit China and Japan in later years.


In both these countries, through which he had passed in 1893 on his way to America, he had sensed an immense vitality. Of China, where, in Canton, he had seen extreme poverty and "a wilderness of human beings, pushing, struggling, surging, roaring," he would say that the country had had "the most admirable organisation of all nations," but that today it "is like a disorganised mob, because her men are not equal to the system contrived in the olden days." "Religion, " he said, "goes to the root of the matter. If it is right, all is right.'[34] In Japan, where he had briefly visited several large cities, he had been much impressed by their cleanliness and neatness and by the drive of the Japanese toward modernization. As we have seen in the previous chapter, he had wanted his own countrymen to "pay a visit to Japan and China every year. Especially to the Japanese." "Come out of your narrow holes," he had cried, "and have a look abroad. See how nations are on the march!'[35]


It had been for India's sake that he had wanted young Hindus to travel abroad. But by the end of his first visit to the West it was equally for the sake of other countries. "My plan is to send out numbers of Hindu boys to every civilised country to preach, " he wrote to Mary Hale, "[and] get men and women from foreign countries to work in India. This would be a good exchange.'[36] His dream was to bring the best of India to the whole world and the best of the modern world to India. He wanted to flood the West with spirituality and India with material prosperity, and this not by disturbing the basic culture of either but by stimulating each to borrow from the other and to flourish in its own way. Any living culture was, of course, the creation and, in turn, the molder of the people who gave it life; the most potent stimulus any culture could have, therefore, was the development within its own traditions of a new type of men and women, strong, compassionate, open-minded, and wise in the knowledge of man's true nature and purpose. The assimilation by every people not only of each other's unique contributions but of the awakening message of Sri Ramakrishna would everywhere bring about, Swamiji felt certain, a "new order of humanity." "In time, " he said, "the whole world must accept the universal and catholic ideas of Sri Ramakrishna, and of this, only the beginning has been made.'[37] And as a corollary of this vision he would prophesy, "The God of India who is guiding her destiny sent me [to America] and will send hundreds of such to all the nations of the world. No power can resist it.'[38]


From wherever a call came or a field opened up, there he would try to go himself or think of sending an emissary. He wanted, for instance, to spread the Master's message not only to Europe and Asia but also to South Africa, where an Indian community was living on uneasy terms with the British. In response to a request from a Bombay friend (a Mr. Setlur), to send someone "to look after the religious needs of the Indian emigrants [there]," he would consider sending Swami Shivananda. "The work will not be congenial at present, I am afraid," he would write to his brother disciple in December of 1897 from Jaipur, "but it is really the work for a perfect man. You know the emigrants are not liked at all by the white people there. To look after the Indians, and at the same time maintain cool-headedness so as not to create more strife—is the work there. No immediate result can be expected, but in the long run it will prove a more beneficial work for India than any yet attempted. I wish you to try your luck in this. If you agree, please write to Setlur about your willingness and ask for more information.'[39]More information came from a young Indian barrister who was then living in Durban, Natal, and championing the rights of his people. His letter, which was addressed to a Mr. B. N. Bhajekar, High Court pleader of Bombay, was forwarded to Swamiji, then in Kashmir. It  found its way into the papers of Mrs. Bull and thence, through the kindness of her granddaughter, Sylvea Bull Curtis, into the pages of this book. The writer's name was Mohandas K. Gandhi. His letter, dated February 23, 1898, read in full:


Dear Mr Bhajekar,

I have your very interesting & important letter. Let there be no haste in sending out a religious preacher, A religious preacher working on the European lines will not succeed here or for that matter anywhere amongst the orthodox Indians. And the Indians here although they have broken through the caste barriers are still old fashioned & simple minded. I use both the expressions in a good sense. A religious preacher is very badly wanted here but he must tower above all the priests here. He must be absolutely pure minded and unselfish & must not require money to support him. Such a man would extort reverence & wipe out the miserable false priests here who suck the life blood out of the people & work all sorts of mischief. I wonder what Mr. Goodwin would or could do here does he speak Hindustani or Tamil? Does he know the Hindoo scriptures & the great epics? He may come & perhaps he will be able to form a different opinion to mine. ["He has misunderstood our proposal," a marginal note in another hand read. "We said we wd send a Swamy and to help him that Mr. Goodwyn would accompany him if necessary. Poor Goodwyn is gone away from us once for all."] Though I yield to no one in the intensity of belief [,] my work lies in another department & therefore I may not be a sure guide in religious matters. A religious priest for Natal must know Tamil, Telegu & Hindi.


If we are to be self governing at any stage of our national life we would send out doctors to look after the health of our people outside India [,] lawyers to give them legal advice but more particularly to find out their grievances and voice them and priests to keep up the national religions. Our travellers go to Europe to be dazzled by the Western splendour but they would not go to the colonies & other parts of the world where they might not be welcomed & where they might have to rough it.


How can we ask the British Government to send out a priest or two with the immigrants? They do not interfere in religious matters. And have they the capacity to make the selection?


Could not Swami himself be induced to pay us a visit? I shall do everything I can to make his mission a success. He can work both among Indians & Europeans. I take it he moves freely among the Indians the highest as well as the lowest. He is sure to do one thing if he comes. He will electrify the Europeans by his eloquence & possibly hipnotise [sic] them, into liking the 'Coolies' in spite of themselves. Though the Europeans here are very obstinate they are not so as never to listen to reason.


I very rarely write unreservedly but I thought this was one of those occasions when it is allowed to & even obligatory on a man to throw off his reserve.


You may place this letter before the Swami if you so wish it.

I am yrs truly[40]
M. K. Gandhi

Swamiji did not send Swami Shivananda to Africa and, for a variety of reasons, could not go himself—even as he could not go to China, Japan, or Russiat—o spread his Master's message. But, as he knew it must, that message, which he gave so fully in America and England, has today reached almost every corner of the world.

5

While Swamiji may have "changed his mind daily" in the course of making an important decision, once that decision was made, once "the Command" had come, nothing could alter it. In reply to an invitation from Miss MacLeod to visit America (and, most probably, to be at Ridgely Manor for Christmas, as in 1895), he wrote, "the Dear God has disposed it this way, viz, I am to start for India on the 16th [of December]. ... Of course, everybody here thinks it foolish to give [the London work] up just now the 'boom' is on, but the Dear Lord says, 'Start for Old India'. I obey.'[41]

He was more than satisfied with the work he had done in London and with its reception by the English people, about whom (having known them on their own ground) he had had a decided change of heart.

The work in London has been a roaring success [he wrote to the Hale sisters on November 28]. The English are not so bright as the Americans, but once you touch their heart, it is yours forever.... My ideas about the English have been revolutionised. I now understand why the Lord has blessed them above all other races. They are 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.[42]

And after returning to India he would say, "My work in England has been more satisfactory to me than my work in America.... I firmly believe that if I should die tomorrow the work in England would not die, but would go on expanding all the time.'[43] But at other times he had made more accurate predictions. In October of 1896 he had written to Alasinga in connection with the success of his London work, "Of course, as soon as I leave, most of this fabric will tumble down.'[44] And in November, "There must be work for the people here to do when I am gone, else the whole thing will go to pieces.'[45]

Soon after he left England, the London work would indeed go to pieces, vanishing almost without a trace. This was not altogether surprising. On its surface levels the era, giddy with the promises of science and convinced of its supreme enlightenment, was not yet ripe for the serious study and practice of Vedanta. Most of Swamiji's followers had come to hear him because he was Swamiji; when his light, infinitely and universally attractive, was no longer visible, there was very little to hold them together. Swami Abhedananda, who later would be highly successful in America, did his best "to work according to the wish of Mr. Sturdy" (as he would write to Swami Brahmananda),[46] but there was not even a minimal organization to stand behind him. There was only Mr. Sturdy himself, and Mr. Sturdy, torn between Vedanta and a jealous wife, was not a charismatic leader.

But however that would be, Swamiji's work in England did not fail to bear immediate fruit. For one thing, he had mined three jewels, three "lion-souls" who were to play vital parts in his world mission. Among them, perhaps most notable, was Margaret Noble, who would grow into Sister Nivedita. After having heard Swamiji three times in November of 1895, Miss Noble, her keen mind aflame with questions, came as often as she could to his London classes in the spring and summer of 1896 and again in the fall of that year, when she also attended his weekly class in Wimbledon. As early as June of 1896 Swamiji wrote a letter to this fiery, determined, and intense young woman, the tone of which indicated that he had recognized her potential greatness. After answering a question about his ideal, he went on to speak directly to her Who will give the world light? Sacrifice in the past has been the Law, it will be, alas, for ages to come. The earth's bravest and best will have to sacrifice themselves for the good of many, for the welfare of all. Buddhas by the hundred are necessary with eternal love and pity.

. . . The world is in need of those whose life is one burning love, selfless. That love will make every word tell like thunderbolt.

It is no superstition with you, I am sure, you have the making in you of a world-mover, and others will also come. Bold words and bolder deeds are what we want. Awake, awake, great ones! The world is burning with misery. Can you sleep?[47]


Those words did not fall on barren ground. If Margaret Noble had not at first fully accepted Swamiji's teachings, worrying them endlessly in her mind, she had been won over when he returned to London in the spring of 1896. Her good friends Eric and Nell Hammond watched the dawning of her discipleship with sympathetic eyes, and in later years Eric would recall the autumn and winter days in London when her joy of discovery and acceptance was overflowing:


She responded to his call as a harp responds to the touch of a master player. She listened to him at her club, the Sesame; at Miss Muller's, Wimbledon; at many religious and philosophical centres in and near London. Everywhere she went she hailed him as the Prophet of the age. She assisted his appearance at various places, including the Christo-Theosophical Society established by Sir Richard Stapley in Bloomsbury Square, where, by the bye, Swami Abhedananda made his maiden speech in English. There is no doubt that her influence and her persuasive faith, backed by Mr. E. T. Sturdy's solidity of aim and pecuniary aid, largely contributed to Swamiji's career in London. Immersed as she came to be in the Vedanta, she employed all her oratorical power on its behalf. Once caught in Vivekananda's wonderful web, she spoke of him and about him unceasingly. "Have you seen and heard the Swami?" she would ask. "If you have not seen and heard him, you simply must. There is no one like him, no one to equal him, no one at all!" Eloquent, persistent, imperious, she drew friends, acquaintances, even strangers, towards this Son of India who was, she assured them, the Sun of Truth. Her acceptance of, and adhesion to, the Swami's gospel was whole-hearted.[48]


Two short notes from Swamiji to Miss Noble, which have recently turned up, show that in the fall of 1896 she had come to know him personally and was making arrangements for others to meet him. The first, dated "Oc.29.96," was addressed to her school in Wimbledon and read:


Dear Miss Noble

I will be at yours on Friday next at 4. p.m.

I did not know of any arrangements made to meet any  body friday last hence my absence.

Yours[49]
Vivekananda

By December 5, when Swamiji wrote the second note, Margaret Noble had in one way or another served his cause and earned his gratitude:

Dear Miss Noble—Many thanks for sending the kind present of Mr. Beatty. I have written to him acknowledging his beautiful gift.

As for you my dear noble kind friend—I only would say this—we Indians lack in many things—but there is none on earth to beat us in gratefulness—I remain

Ever yours gratefully[50]
Vivekananda


As has been mentioned in the previous chapter, one of Swamiji's pivotal objectives was to elevate the women of his country; he wanted to accomplish this by giving them an education-—ntellectual, practical, and, above all, religious and cultural—such as would produce enlightened women who would be like flames to ignite the lives of others in their turn.  "For this work a woman is needed," he had exclaimed in 1895. "No man can do it. But where is the woman?" "One after another was put to the test and failed," Sister Christine, with whom he had discussed the problem, would write in later years. "It was not easy to find someone who had the necessary qualifications, spiritual and intellectual, who had the devotion of the disciple, who was selfless, and who could pass on the living fire.'[51]


One can only imagine the growing delight with which Swamiji came to know Margaret Noble. This brilliant, highly idealistic, courageous young woman, in whom burned a spirit of self sacrifice, who was a trained educator, who was deeply absorbed in the ideals of Vedanta, and who, in the spirit of a disciple, had begun to call him Master—this young woman was the person he had sought. Yet Swamiji did not try to persuade her to come to India; so momentous a decision would have to be her own, and it would have to be made, not in enthusiasm, but with quietly considered resolve. His approach was almost offhand. During the course of a light conversation with a few people, he turned to her and said, "I have plans for the women of my own country in which you, I think, could be of great help to me: ' That was all. "And I knew," Margaret Noble would write years later when she was Nivedita, "that I had heard a call which would change my life.'[52]Even so, she did not rush to answer that casually dropped thunderbolt.


She experienced a very natural hesitancy [Eric Hammond wrote]. With the present writer she frequently referred to reasons for and against the proposal. If she went to India with that purpose, she must trust others to cherish her aging mother; she must relinquish all those interests for which London claimed her and for which she was endowed with peculiar fitness.  Above all, she must endure harsh misinterpretation of her motive, and suspicion and disapproval on the part of the majority of her Christian  connections.[53]


After Swamiji's departure from England, Margaret Noble did all she could to help keep his work alive. She presided over the meetings in Wimbledon, sometimes spoke at them, wrote an occasional newsletter for the Brahmavadin (at Goodwin's request), and solicited subscriptions for both Madras magazines, all the while wrestling with her destiny. In June or July of 1897 she wrote what must have been an indecisive letter to Swamiji, placing the burden of decision upon him. He did not accept it -at least, not in the way she wanted: "You can do more work for us from England than by coming here," he counseled. "Lord bless you for your great self sacrifice for the poor Indians.'[54]But less than a week later, after learning from others of her determination to work for his country, and confident now that her desire to come was in earnest, he gave a very different reply:

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 specially.


India cannot yet produce great women, she must borrow them from other nations. Your education, sincerity, purity, immense love, determination, and above all, the Celtic blood make you just the woman wanted.


He went on to warn her of the difficulties she would encounter: harsh caste prejudice, severe criticism from her own people, inconvenience, discomfort, sweltering weather. "You must think well before you plunge in," he wrote. But he gave her the assurance of his own unfailing support—whatever might come:


After work, 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.


Finally, Swamiji warned her of Miss Muller, who planned to take her and others under her wing in India and whose quirky disposition he well knew.


It is very kind and good of her [he wrote] but her Lady Abbess plan will never be carried out for two reasons-her violent temper and overbearing conduct, and her awfully vacillating mind. Friendship with many is best at a distance, and everything goes well with the person who stands on his own feet.


But the words that must have shone from Swamiji's letter, dazzling their reader to all else, were these: "You are welcome, and a hundred times welcome." She arrived in Calcutta on January 28, 1898, and the rest is history, for her subsequent life as Sister Nivedita is the subject of many biographies today and will no doubt be the subject of many more tomorrow.


Then there were James and Charlotte Sevier. In his welcoming letter to Margaret Noble, Swamiji recommended them to her. "Mrs. Sevier is a jewel of a lady," he wrote, "so good, so kind! The Seviers are the only English people who do not hate the natives, Sturdy not excepted. Mr. and Mrs. Sevier are the only persons who did not come to patronise us.'[55] Captain and Mrs. Sevier, like Margaret Noble, "burned their boats" (as Eric Hammond wrote in connection with the latter), and this they did sooner than she, for they had no dependents to worry over and no budding careers to renounce. They simply disposed of their possessions in Hampstead, moved to temporary quarters in London, and wr the greatest voyage of their lives.


These were the three jewels—Margaret Noble and the Seviers—that Swamiji had mined in England. (One cannot count here Josiah J. Goodwin, for though he was English to the bone, he  had come to Swamiji in America and had there dedicated his life to him.)


But this, of course, was not the only result of Swamiji's English work. There were scores, if not hundreds, of people in England, both prominent and obscure, whose outlook on life had been clarified and whose burden forever lightened by attending his classes—those incomparable classes, in which he had not merely talked spirituality but had abundantly given it. There was no type of listener at any kind of lecture to whom he could not bring light. In New York he had described the endless fluidity of the "only true teacher," who "can convert himself as it were into a thousand persons at a moment's, notice: '[56] Swamiji himself was such a teacher; in his vastness he could, as it were, become each listener, identifying with his or her need and temperament, cutting through some knot, opening some long-locked door with a precisely tuned word or phrase. Whatever his lecture subject might have been, whatever the focus of his concentration, no one had been left out of his regard.


Vedanta work in London is quite quiescent [Mr. Sturdy would write to Miss MacLeod in July of 1898], but the strong interest in Vivekananda is here all the time and not only does it not die out, but people talk to their friends of their experiences with that wonderful teacher and his fame quietly and steadily spreads.... A great many people carried away from Swami's teachings something which they will never forget.[57]


Among those people were Eric and Nell Hammond. Writing to Swamiji in August of 1899, Sister Nivedita (then in England) told him of a visit with Nell:


How wonderful she is! She is simply a battery charged with devotion, it seems to me. She says the first time she saw you, as you entered the [Sesame] club room, she knew at once your significance to her and turned and said to her husband: "This is he for whom we waited." About her vision she says she told you "I am just as inert as Mr. Sturdy." She says "There is nothing to do but to stand aside. You see it's all done—It's all right now!'[58]


Of Nell Hammond's "inert" state Nivedita wrote to Mrs. Bull the following day, It was a very different kind of inertia from that of Mr. Sturdy, who, at that time, had darkly turned from Swamiji and his work:


She has had a wonderful wonderful wonderful vision—a glimpse of the supe-rconscious if ever there was one. Suddenly, in her little sitting room one day she floated as it were up into the vision of the Mother Kali—distinctly visible. Then when the first cry of surprise was over, she thought "Just the moment to see if it will help anybody." And she turned to "the train-horses" whose unhappy state worries her kind heart much. "But they were not there—they were just shadows, whisking round a corner—& in their place was "Mother". Then she thought "I'll tell Swami" and she turned to him in her thought—but when she looked at him he was a shadow that passed away & left the Mother standing there. It was all Mother everywhere. "And so," she says, "Tho I only saw it once, still I know it now—it's all done. There's nothing to work for, nothing to be done. Everything's all right. We have only to stand aside. "


Isn't it marvelous? She wrote to Swami she says & told him & had a sweet sweet note in reply.[59]


There were many others who would never forget Swamiji. In Nivedita's letter to him of August 23, 1899, we catch a glimpse of one whom we otherwise would not have known, but who, in her gratefulness, is perhaps typical of scores of his English students.


I had a visit from your disciple—Miss Frances Williams of Epsom—who spoke with tremendous feeling of the peace and meaning that you had brought into her life—by a sentence in a lecture here and there—and then by just a word about concentrating her mind on the heart. She cannot tell what it means or why it helped her, she said, but as a matter of fact her life is now satisfied and at peace.... She came to hear about India but I discovered that she had once been in a convent—and I kept her talking about rules and orgariisation.[60]


Such people, whose lives Swamiji had touched, must, in turn, have touched the lives of others with that powerful magic, and so on, in ever-widening circles, until the impact of his thought would gradually spread on untraceable routes to every corner of the earth. "This British Empire with all its drawbacks is the greatest machine that ever existed for the dissemination of ideas," he wrote to Mr. Leggett on July 6 of 1896. "I mean to put my ideas in the centre of this machine, and they will spread all over the world.'[51]


But important though these results were—the capture of a few "lion-souls" on the one hand and the quiet, slow spreading of Vedantic thought on the other—they did not constitute the only, or even the greatest, significance of Swamiji's work in England. It is said that a Divine Incarnation and his apostles work on a deep level of consciousness, where they introduce, as it were, a powerful shaft of spiritual light into the collective mind of humanity; that is the very purpose of their appearance on earth, the meaning of their birth, their sadhana, and their teaching. Through their activity (or play) in human form they awaken, so to speak, the "cosmic Kundalini," charging that state of existence called mankind with a spiritual power that will for centuries manifest itself more and more fruitfully in  the world and, to a greater or lesser degree, in every individual. Swami Shivananda, one of Swamiji's great brother disciples, would say years later: "Swami Vivekananda once said: 'In this age the Brahma-kundalini—the Mother who is responsible for the creation, preservation and destruction of the universe— has been awakened by the fervent prayers of Sri Ramakrishna: . . . That is why we see symptoms of a great spiritual upsurge everywhere. . . . We need have no worry this time. '[62]Could it not be said that Swamiji carried that tremendous power to the Western world and infused with it the deep levels of Western culture? He himself once spoke specifically of his Western work, his words recalled by another of his great brothers, Swami Saradananda:


After Swamiji returned from the West his health completely broke down. He used to say, "Whatever I had I have left in that country (the West). During the lectures a power used to emanate from this body and would infuse the audience." The thought current of the country underwent a change. That was no easy matter....


I had heard that Budo Baba (Swami Satchidananda} begged Swamiji to grant him Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Swamiji said, "If I put on the loin cloth and become absorbed in spiritual practice without thinking of ways and means of maintenance, then perhaps the power to grant Nirvikalpa Samadhi may come. It has become exhausted, or lost, by giving lectures in America.'[63]


Did not this influx of radiant power into the Western world, which is bound sooner or later to set the whole culture aglow, constitute the real significance of Swamiji's work in England as well as in America? Yet this is but a poor attempt to understand what Swamiji did in the West. Who can really assess his accomplishment? "If there were another Vivekananda," he was heard to say at the close of his life, "he would have understood what Vivekananda has done! And yet how many Vivekanandas shall be born in time!!'[64]And of his last days Swami Saradananda would write to a brother disciple, "Sometimes he would say 'Death has come to my bedside, I have been through enough of work and play, let the world realize what contribution I have made, it will take quite a long time to understand that '[65] The coming centuries will indeed be the only other true assessor of his contribution—the rest is inference and speculation. There is, however, one thing we can say even now, and this is that throughout his mission, East and West, he gave himself heart and soul to his Master's work, awakening everywhere man's spiritual consciousness, setting in motion a spiritual tide that no power can stem. "Before this flood," he prophesied, "everybody will be swept off.'[66]


As the time for Swamiji's departure from England drew near, Miss Souter, as though to stay the sun in its passage, had the professional photographer Alfred Ellis take twelve studio pictures of him[67]one of which was the familiar meditation photo and another, the photo reproduced in the frontispiece of this volume—which perhaps do indeed capture him for us*(7). But Swamiji himself, "as impatient as a school boy,'[68] began to count the days. "Three lectures next week," he wrote on December 3 to Josephine MacLeod, "and my London work is finished for this season.'[69]Of those three lectures—his classes of December 8, 9, and 10—we have at present information about only the last. In the back pages of the pamphlet "The Real and the Apparent Man," Mr. Sturdy appended some news-notes entitled, "The Swami Vivekananda's Departure from. London." The first two paragraphs read:

*(7) In recent years a proof sheet from the photographic studio of Alfred Ellis has come to light in which six (not twelve) poses of Swamiji are shown. These were without question taken at the sitting Miss Souter had arranged. They are: the well-known meditation pose; one bust with robe and turban (right profile); one bust with robe and bare head (full face); two full length with robe and turban; one full length with robe and bare head. All of these have been reproduced in Swami Vivekananda: A Biography in Pictures.

The last address was given by Swami Vivekananda to a crowded audience at the Room, in Victoria Street, on Thursday, December 10th. With this lecture the series which has been pursued during the past season, was brought to a conclusion.

The subject was the Advaita Vedanta, or that one of the three views taken by the Vedanta system which maintains  the, Non-Duality of what is Real and Permanent in an otherwise eternally changing universe.


With the close of this lecture, Swamiji's first visit to the West was virtually over. That night at his flat he spoke to a few disciples of a path beyond work, in which the aspirant, as though having climbed to the summit of a Himalayan peak, takes flight into the sky, employing now a new kind of effort to reach the final goal—if it be effort at all.


One wishes Goodwin had taken shorthand notes that night, but at least he wrote to Mrs. Bull of Swamiji's soaring talk:

Last night [December 10, Swamiji] was talking philosophy to two or three of us in his best mood. One or two points are worth telling you. He was talking about work, & gave his own ideas on the matter. He admitted that in lecturing it was essential to preach the ideal of work, but pointed out that a work philosophy (Buddhism for instance) is not sufficient. Good work produces good results, bad bad. Whether good or bad the chain of cause & effect is infinite. Work can only be regarded as a preparatory step & he emphasised very strongly that merely by work we will never become free. Good work is necessary to fit the mind to realise an always existing freedom (in other words that we always have been free) but good work must be done with discretion, & .men have to learn when the time is ripe for the abandonment of work. When we are ready for that no matter what we may do-good & bad will leave no effect on our struggle for freedom, but will, so to speak, be altogether outside &, unconnected with that struggle.


We have to discriminate between local & infinite commandments [he said this same evening], & in this respect Christ, as the typical example of the highest local commandment, falls before the Buddha, as the highest infinite. By "local" the Swami meant that Christ (1) made his  teaching personal, (2) had love for some more than for others—&c—whereas Buddha was always working in the universal & from the Infinite. He quoted as an example the Buddha's death, when Ananda was chided by the Buddha for weeping.


He also spoke very strongly against the Personal God idea, & especially of the "special" Divinity of Christ. "If Christ was God & no one else, what hope is there for anyone else?'[70]


His work done, the physically grueling routine of scheduled classes finished, Swamiji's health, still resilient, at once improved. "[He] is already better," Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull in his letter of December 11, "now that the 'bondage' is over for the time being.'[71]There remained only the Farewell Reception, where speeches were made and he was presented with an ornately printed address from his English friends and disciples*(8). The reception, held at the Institute of Painters in Watercolours on the afternoon of Sunday, December 13, was "a triumphant success," Goodwin reported to Mrs. Bull. "There were over 500 there, & the Swami was in his very best style. He was evidently a good deal affected, because the people here as well as in America have been exceedingly kind to him.'[72]Swamiji was not alone in being affected; there was perhaps no one in that large gathering who was not sorrowful over his departure. Eric Hammond described that farewell day:

*(8) For the text of the farewell address from Swar' English friends and for other addresses of the s kind from his devoted American friends and disci see Appendix E.

It was Sunday in London, when shops were shut, business at a standstill, and the city streets silenced for a while from some at least of the rattle and the rumble of their heavier traffic. Londoners wore their Sunday clothing, their Sunday bearing and manner, and grey, subdued, and semisilent folk wended their way to church and chapel. This afternoon the friends of Swamiji were to say "Goodbye" to him whose coming had meant so much to them. In the hall of meeting, dedicated to the use of the artists, paintings hung upon the walls; palms, flowers, and ferns decorated the platform from which Swamiji would utter his final speech in England's great metropolis to the British people. All sorts and conditions of men were there, but all alike were filled by one desire; to see him, to hear him, even it may be to touch his garment once again.


On the platform musicians and singers at stated intervals "discoursed sweet sounds". Speeches illustrating the esteem and affection which Swamiji had won, were made by men and by women. Salvoes of applause punctuated and followed them. Many were silent, tongue-tied, and sad at heart. Tears were very near to some eyes. Grey and gloom without were intensified and deepened by grey and. gloom within. One form, one figure, fought and triumphed over sorrow; arrayed in garments, glistering as of amber, Swamiji passed among the people like a living shaft of sunshine?[73]


"His last words to me were notable words," Eric Hammond related elsewhere. "I stood before him, saying nothing. He was going back to India, and 'Goodbye' stuck in my throat. He knew what I would say, if I could only say it. (He always knew that. I never remember putting a question to him; he replied without prompting.) Grasping my hands; pouring, as it seemed, his soul through his eyes to mine, he said, 'Yes, yes, I shall come back!' And he has kept his word.'[74]


But Swamiji kept that word only by keeping another, which he had once made in Hammond's hearing: "It may be that I shall find it good to get outside of my body—to cast it off as a disused garment; but I shall not cease to work! I shall inspire men '[75] everywhere, until the world shall know that it is one with God." 75 few of his English disciples would, it is true, briefly see him again in London in 1899, but he would never again be with them as a teacher, pouring the clear water of truth day after day, week after week, from his soul to theirs.


Impatient though he was to return to his motherland, Swamiji had come to love the Western world—not only England and the English people, but America and the Americans. Indeed, according to Swami Abhedananda, he extolled the "liberality and thirst for knowledge" that he had found in America, comparing them favorably with the conservatism and reserve of the English?[76]"I love the Yankee land,'[77]he had written from London earlier in the year to Mary Hale. And again, "Those years there have been some of the best I have yet seen.'[78]He had made many close and dear friends in that Yankee land, the dearest of all being the Hale sisters themselves*(9), to whom he wrote on November 28 in a goodbye letter, "I think you are the four persons whom I love most in this world, somehow or other, and I am vain enough to believe that you four have the same love for me.'[79]And there was Mrs. Bull, "the noblest" and "least cranky" of women, and Josephine MacLeod, "always helpful, cheerful, and strengthening." These and uncounted others had become his own, and he theirs. Indeed, Swamiji and the Western world were forever linked with unbreakable bonds, some visible, some, perhaps most, invisible, lost to all knowledge; together they created an ineluctable and living force that slowly, surely would work its miracle.

*(9) On his way back to India Swamiji would run Mr. and Mrs. Hale ("Mother Church and Father Pope") in Florence, but he would not see the "sisters" again until three years had passed. This not for lack of an invitation to Mary Hale. On August 30, I897, Josephine MacLeod would write to Miss Hale, with whom she was not yet on a first-name basis: "Swami Vivekananda wrote me a few weeks ago from India urging Mrs. Bull and me to come this fall to India and telling me to let you know-in case you to be of the party.... We would love to have you join us. This is but a line to let you know early in case you must make plans ahead.” (Leg. Col.) There was more correspondence on the subject, ending in a telegram dated January 8, 1898, to Mary Hale from Miss MacLeod: “We sail for India Wednesday [January 12] via England. Can you come?” (Leg. Col.) For one reason or another, Mary Hale did not, or could not, go along on that incomparable journey.

Three days after the Farewell Reception, Swamiji and the Seviers crossed the English Channel to France. Goodwin, who would meet the party in Naples, almost certainly went first to Batheaston to spend a few days with his mother, whom he much loved, before boarding the Prinz Regent Luitpold at nearby Southampton on December 21. Swamiji's tour through Italy with the Severs and his journey back to India has been told in the Life in as much detail as is presently known, and the story need not be repeated here. Let me just quote from two of Goodwin's letters to Mrs. Bull and thereby bring this narrative of Swami Vivekananda's first visit to the West to a close. The first letter was dated January 3, 1897, and was mailed from Port Said; the second; January 19, from Kandy, Ceylon;[80]


There is nothing to write about on a voyage ever, but you will be pleased to hear that the Swami joined me at Naples in the best of health & spirits, & completely charmed with his tour. He was full of Rome. Rome & Delhi are the two cities in the world he says. He also liked Milan very well, & was, in fact, interested in every place he saw. We have had bad weather almost throughout the Mediterranean, & Swami & the Seviers have been under the weather. In fact the two latter are still so.... The Swami has entered for some of the tournaments on the boat—of the committee for which, by the bye, I was made chairman.


I am only writing a very few lines here owing to lack of time. There is a great deal to occupy our attention. The Swami received an intensely enthusiastic reception in Colombo, & India is mad with enthusiasm for him. Telegrams pour in: The people regard him in every sense of the word as a Divine Incarnation—as I do—& are constantly worshipping him. He was worshipped at the Temple on Sunday evg by the largest crowd ever seen there, who shouted

Jai Jai Maha Deva—

All Hail Highest Deva.


ⓘ
[1] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, January 31, 1897, SCB.
[2] Complete Works, 8 : 405.
[3] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, January 31, 1897, SCB.
[4] Swami Akhandananda, Service of God in Man (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1979), p. 142.
[5] Life (1981), 2 :235. (See also Swami Shraddhananda, The Story of an Epoch (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1982), p. 62.
[6] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, April 14, 1897, SCB.
[7] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, April 14, 1897, SCB.
[8] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, April 14, 1897, SCB.
[9] Complete Works, 6 : 407.
[10] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, June 20,    1897, Leg. Col.
[11] Complete Works, 8 : 410.
[12] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, July 19,    1897, Leg. Col.
[13] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull., September 16, 1897, SCB.
[14] J. J Goodwin to Josephine MacLeod, May 5, 1898, Leg. Col.
[15] J.J. Goodwin to Josephine MacLeod, May 5, 1898, Leg. Col.
[16] Alasinga Perumal to Swami Vivekananda, June 8, 1898, SCB.
[17] Life (1981), 2 : 349.
[18] Prabuddha Bharata, August 1898, p. 12.
[19] Life (1981), 2 : 101-2.
[20] Cf. Complete Works, 4 : 179-81, 183.
[21] Cf. Complete Works,., 5 : 390. (See also Life [1981], 2 : 251-53.)
[22] Cf. Complete Works,, 6 : 477-78.
[23] Cf. Complete Works,6 : 331.
[24] Cf. Complete Works,8 : 523.
[25] Cf. Complete Works,7 : 49i-
[26] Cf. Complete Works, 8 : 395.
[27] Cf. Complete Works,  6 : 356.
[28] Florence Adams to Sara Bull, September 15, 1895, SCB.
[29] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 203.
[30] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, October 21, 1896, SCB.
[31] Sara Bull to Swami Vivekananda, October, 1896, SCB.
[32] Complete Works, 6 : 382.
[33] J. J. Goodwin to Josephine MacLeod, November 14, 1896, A.A.
[34] Complete Works, 5 : 192.
[35] Complete Works., 5 : 10.
[36] Complete Works6 : 385.
[37] Complete Works7 : 263.
[38] Complete Works3 : 223.
[39] Complete Works8:440-41.
[40] Mohandas K. Gandhi to B. N. Bhajekar, February 23, 1898, SCB.
[41] Complete Works, 8 : 392-93.
[42] Complete Works, 6 : 384.
[43] Complete Works 3:311-12.
[44] Complete Works 5: 117.
[45] Complete Works 5 : 124.
[46] Swami Abhedananda, Complete Works, 10: 146.
[47] Complete Works, 7 : 501.
[48] Eric Hammond, “Sister Nivedita, An Impression of Earlier Years,” P.B., December 1927, pp. 156-57.
[49] Swami Vivekananda to Margaret Noble, October 28, 1896, Sen Col.
[50] Swami Vivekananda to Margaret Noble., December 5, 1896.
[51] Rem. (Sister Christine) pp. 220-21.
[52] The Master, p. 34.
[53] See ref. 48 above.
[54] Complete Works, 7 : 510.
[55] Complete Works., 7:511-12.
[56] Complete Works 4: 183.
[57] E. T. Sturdy to Josephine MacLeod, July 23, 1898, Leg. Col.
[58] Nivedita to Swami Vivekananda, August 23, 1899, Letters of Sister Nivedita, ed. Sankari P. Basu, 1 : 202. For Miss Williams see also ibid., 1 :409-10.
[59] Nivedita to Sara Bull, August 24, 1899, SCB.
[60] See ref. 58 above.
[61] Complete Works, 6 : 365-66.
[62] Swami Shivananda, For Seekers of God, 3rd ed., trans. Swami Vivi-dishananda and Swami Gambhir-ananda (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1972), pp. 7-8.
[63] “Saradananda Smriti,” Udbodhan, vol. 33, No. 11 (1338 Bengali era), p. 573- (See also Complete Works, 5:359
[64] Life (1981), 2 : 652.
[65] Swami Abhedananda, Complete Works, 10 : 114.
[66] Complete Works, 7 : 263.
[67] Satya Chaitanya, Brahmachari, “Londone Swami Vivekananda,” part 3, Vishwavani, 1335 (Bengali era).
[68] J. J. Goodwin to Josephine MacLeod, December 19, 1896, Leg. Col.
[69] Complete Works, 8 : 393.
[70] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, December 11, 1896, SCB.
[71] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, December 11, 1896, SCB.
[72] J. J. Goodwin to Sara Bull, December 19, 1896.
[73] Life (1981), 2 : 145-46.
[74] Hammond, “The Swami Still Speaks,” from notes of an address delivered in London, clipping from an unidentified periodical.
[75] Hammond, “The Swami Still Speaks,” from notes of an address delivered in London, clipping from an unidentified periodical.
[76] See ref. 67 above.
[77] Complete Works,7 : 498.
[78] Complete Works, 8:377.
[79] Complete Works, 6 :384; original letter, Leg. Col.
[80] Both of J. J. Goodwin’s letters are from SCB.

↑ Contents

4.10 EPILOGUE

Swamiji had not expected the tremendous ovation that greeted him. Traveling by stages from Colombo, where he had landed on January 15, 1897, to Madras, he received everywhere the adoration and homage of thousands upon thousands of his countrymen. Everywhere the streets were elaborately decorated and lengthy speeches were delivered in his praise. At one place his carriage was drawn by a group of devotees, at another, hundreds flung themselves on the tracks in front of his approaching train, forcing it to stop so that they might catch a glimpse of him. Everywhere he addressed the multitudes, firing them with his spirit and awakening them to an appreciation of their ancient culture. His nine-day stay (February 6-15) at Madras was a veritable festival, as was the reception given him in the city of his birth, Calcutta, to which he had travelled from Madras by boat, arriving on February 19. No honor was too great to pay him, no words effusive enough to express the love and reverence the people felt for him. To Swamiji all this meant but one thing—that India's spiritual greatness still lived, that she was still able to give higher tribute to a homeless sannyasin than to a military hero, a statesman, or a king. He was profoundly moved. 

In Calcutta he made his headquarters during the day at the riverside home of Gopal Lal Seal in Cossipore. At night he stayed with his brother monks at the Ramakrishna Math in Alambazar. To both places a stream of people came to visit him—scholars, students, householders, and monks—asking questions that touched upon everything from abstruse philosophy to matters of personal concern. To all, particularly to the young unmarried men, in whom he saw India's hope, he communicated his dream of awakening the giant soul of his motherland, inspiring them with his own enthusiasm and determination. On May 1, 1897, he called a meeting of his Master's monastic and lay disciples and inaugurated, with himself as General President, the Ramakrishna Mission Association, the purpose of which was to establish the humanitarian work of the Order on an organized basis.

Swamiji's poor health soon forced him to leave the hot, humid climate of Bengal. Most of March and April he spent in Darjeeling, and on May 6, accompanied by a party of brother monks and disciples, he left Calcutta for Almora, where Miss Muller and Mr. Goodwin awaited him. But rest was a factor that played little part in his life. Although the dry and cool air of northern India benefited him, his three months in Almora were spent in almost continual activity, in receiving streams of visitors, holding discourses, and granting interviews. In early August he started on a lecture tour of northern India, accompanied by several of his brother monks and disciples. For the next five months, though often ill, he lectured and talked almost unremittingly, visiting many places in the Punjab, Kashmir, Rajputana, and the Central Provinces, awakening in the minds of the people a luminous vision of a resurgent India and placing before them the ideals of renunciation and service.

Toward the end of January, having finished his tour, he returned to the Alambazar Math, and there, along with many other activities, continued the training of his young disciples: he held classes not only in Sanskrit scriptures, but in science and history as well, he gave lectures, spent hours with them. in meditation or devotional singing, and discussed with them every topic under the sun, until his ideas became an integral part of their thought and until they themselves became, as he wanted, "strong, vigorous, believing young men, sincere to the backbone. "

Swamiji gave as much care and attention to his Western disciples as to his Eastern. At his call, Miss Margaret Noble had come from England in January, 1898, to work for the good of Indian women. In February, Mrs. Ole Bull and Miss  Josephine MacLeod arrived to help him in whatever way they could. To the question of how this could best be done, Swamiji replied in two words: "Love India!"—and it was through his constant and careful guidance that they learned to do so. Indeed, it was not difficult to love his country when it was seen through his eyes and understood through his heart. From May to October his Western disciples, together with a number of his brother monks and Eastern disciples, travelled with him through northern India. He made them thrill as he did himself to the glories of India's history, to the beauties of her present, and to the simple but noble life of the people, which was rooted in a tradition whose beginnings were lost in an unfathomable past and whose meaning had been continually enriched by generation upon generation of God-centered lives. The party journeyed from Naini Tal to Almora, where the Seviers were already established and where, in the early part of June, Swamiji received the shocking and heartbreaking news of the death of his young disciple, Goodwin. Travelling on, the party reached the beautiful Kashmir Valley, and there leisurely meandered in houseboats up the River Jhelum through the Vale of Srinagar.

In India a new side of Swamiji was revealed to his Western disciples: they saw not only the benign, all-loving and serene teacher they had known in the West, but the fervent, almost fierce, patriot and "man-maker." They saw, moreover, the majestic and awesome moods of the supreme knower of God, whose spiritual experiences reached heights incomprehensible to the mind and who walked paths where none could follow. Even during the first weeks after his arrival in India, when the whole country had risen as one man to welcome him, he would enter during the course of the day into many a brief samadhi. Professor K. Sundararama Iyer, who has related his impressions of Swamiji's nine days in Madras in February of 1897, tells us of his moods of "sweet serenity when his face assumed the air both of a child and an angel from heaven, " and of his sudden lapses into a strange state." He was always having visitors about him," Professor Iyer writes, "and sat listening or speaking to them. Suddenly his eyes became still, though remaining open, and he seemed not to listen or even to be conscious of what was passing about him. When once more he became aware of the scene, he seemed as if he had been utterly insensible to it. He had been neither asleep nor awake.... His eyes . . . remained fixed and without the least sign of movement. . . . He seemed to me like one who for a while had left this physical tenement and fleeted away to another state of existence.'[1]Indeed, Swami Shivananda and Swami Niranjanananda, who were with Swamiji in Madras, both noticed his frequent though brief absorptions into samadhi, and the former was heard many years after to remark that ever since Swamiji's first return from the West he had dwelt in a continuous state of superconsciousness.

While in Kashmir with his Western disciples, Swamiji suddenly, in the last days of July, 1898, announced his desire to visit the Cave of Amarnath, the far-away shrine of Shiva, to which hundreds of devotees were making a pilgrimage. Alone of his Western disciples, Sister Nivedita was chosen to accompany him, making the four-day climb on foot, up and across precipitous, snow-covered mountains. In the huge Cave of Amarnath, Swamiji, nude except for kaupina, or loincloth, his body covered with ashes and his face glowing with devotion, looked upon the great ice symbol of Shiva, and in a supreme moment of divine consciousness beheld the living God Himself He spoke little of this experience, but when he returned to the Vale of Kashmir it seemed to those near him as if Shiva, the Eternal One, had literally permeated his being.

Following his absorption in Shiva, Swamiji's mind and heart turned to the Divine Mother, the Power behind all relative forms. With the same awesome intensity with which he had been concentrated in the motionless and silent God, he was now absorbed in His dynamic aspect. At the end of September he abruptly left his disciples and retired for a week to the Colored Springs of Kshir-Bhavani, a famous shrine of the Mother. There, lost to the world, he performed daily worship and practiced severe austerities. Although we know that at Kshir-Bhavani Swamiji heard the voice of the Divine Mother speaking to him, we know little of his other experiences, of which he no doubt had many; for, after returning from the shrine he quoted from his own poem "Kali, the Mother" "Who dares misery love,/and hug the form of Death,/Dance in Destruction's dance,/To him the Mother comes"—and he said, "It all came true, every word of it. To him the Mother does indeed come. I have proved it. For I have hugged the form of Death !'[2]

The impact of the spiritual experiences through which Swamiji had passed left his body shattered; yet his work continued. Returning to Calcutta in October he took up as strenuously as ever his task of guiding the activities of his brother monks and disciples. In December he installed the sacred relics of Sri Ramakrishna in the new Math at Belur where, earlier in the year, he had purchased seven or so acres on the Ganga. A month later the monastery was moved to these permanent headquarters and thenceforth became known as the "Belur Math." Until June of 1899 Swamiji remained, for the most part, in Calcutta, and then, on the advice of his doctors and friends, set sail once again for the West.

He was aware that there were but few years left to him on this .earth. "I am getting ready to depart to return no more to this hell, this world," he wrote to Mrs. Bull as early as August, 1896,[3]and to Mary Hale in July of 1897: "At most three or four years more of life is left.... My time is short '[4]Knowing how little time he had, he worked with impatience to finish his task and to train others to feel as he felt and to work as he worked. It was an almost terrible impatience, in which his spirit thrashed against the inertia of the world that he longed to lift and exalt—an impatience which led Sister Nivedita to write: "From the moment of my landing in India . . . I found something quite unexpected.... It was the  personality of my Master himself, in all the fruitless torture and struggle of a lion caught in a net.'[5]

Torture it may have been; but fruitless it was not, for during Swamiji's two and a half years in his motherland he had put his "machine in strong working order." Aside from the immeasurable influence he had exerted over the minds and hearts of his countrymen, he had permanently organized the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission—the monastic and humanitarian branches of the Order. (In 1900 Swamiji was informally to hand over the presidency of both the Math and the Mission to Swami Brahmananda [see note for page 420, chapter fifteen]. "Now I am free," he would write to Sister Nivedita on August 25, 1900, "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.'[6] Swamiji would also express his relief at no longer being the head of the Ramakrishna Order to Sister Christine. "I am sending all the money I earned in America to India," he would write to her in October of 1900. "Now I am free, the begging-monk as before. I have also resigned from the Presidentship of the Monastery. Thank God, I am free!'[7]But in 1897, '98, and '99 the "whole load" of organizing and supervising the work of the Order was mainly his. Under his direction, Swami Ramakrishnananda had successfully started a center in Madras. On November 14, 1896, Sister Nivedita had opened her girls' school. His disciples, Swamis Virajananda and Prakashananda, had, at his wish, gone to Dacca in East Bengal to preach Vedanta; two of his brother monks, Swamis Saradananda and Turiyananda, had departed to preach in Gujarat (the former, in December of 1899, went also to Dacca and other cities of East Bengal), and Swami Shivananda had traveled to Ceylon, where he formed classes in raja yoga and the Gita.

Aside from having established monastic centers in Calcutta and Madras, Swamiji realized through the help of his London disciples, Captain and Mrs. Sevier, his long cherished dream of setting up a monastery in the Himalayas. The site of Mayavati, which the Seviers had found after much searching, was an entire hill, 6,400 feet above sea level. After its purchase, Swamiji commissioned four of his disciples to construct additional buildings on the property, to make roads, and to landscape the grounds. The monastery was dedicated to the principle of Advaita, or Nondualistic, Vedanta. External worship of any kind was barred. "Here will be taught and practised," Swamiji wrote, "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.'[8]

The message of Sri Ramakrishna and Swamiji was disseminated not only by the preaching activities of the Order, but through the medium of the written word. Very dear to Swamiji's heart were the three magazines he had established between 1895and 1899. As we have seen during the course of the present volume, the first of these, the Brahmavadin, was published in English by his Madras disciples and had been under way since September of 1899, and in 1898, while he was in Almora, Swamiji arranged to revive the Prabuddha Bharata, an English language monthly, the editor of which had recently died. With the help of the Seviers the editorial offices were moved from Madras to Almora and, with Swami Swarupananda as editor, the magazine was published as an organ of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission. Later, the offices were transferred to Mayavati, where, to this day, Prabuddha Bharata, or Awakened India, is edited monthly, spreading the ideals of the Order. A third magazine was the Udbodhan. Since 1894 Swamiji had urged his gurubhais (brother monks) to start a Bengali periodical. Swami Trigunatita was the first to take up the idea of the magazine with enthusiasm and, as early as 1895, made plans to publish it. It was not, however, until January 14, 1899, that the Udbodhan made its first appearance  with Swami Trigunatita as its editor and manager.

The publication of books, which today forms an important function of the Ramakrishna Order, was also undertaken during Swamiji's lifetime, his own works being published in both English and Bengali by the Math.

An important part of the work of the Ramakrishna Mission was the opening of temporary relief centers in times of disaster. In 1897 Swami Akhandananda, who had earlier established schools in Khetri under Swamiji's encouragement and detailed direction, began to work in the famine-stricken district of Murshidabad in Bengal in an effort to give what help he could. On hearing of this Swamiji was, of course, overjoyed. He sent two of his disciples as assistants and, with the help of the Mahabodhi Society, started a fund to which contributions poured in. With his approval, Swami Akhandananda instituted a non-sectarian orphanage for both boys and girls at Mohula—the first of its kind to be founded under the auspices of the Ramakrishna Order. The orphanage had—as had all of Swamiji's work-—he support of his brother monks.

Other relief work was set up under the guidance of Swamiji by his various brother monks and disciples. In August of 1897, Swami Trigunatita opened a famine relief center in Dinajpur. Later in the same year a third relief center was established at Deoghar by Swami Virajananda, and between October of 1897 and January of 1898 Swami Prakashananda gave out rice to the famished people of Dakshineswar. In May of 1898 Swamiji prepared for relief operations in Calcutta to meet a threatened outbreak of plague, coming down from a needed vacation in Darjeeling to do so. "If the plague comes to my native city," he had written from Darjeeling on April 29, 1898, "I am determined to make myself a sacrifice. "9 In the few days during which the epidemic seemed imminent he did all that was necessary to meet it. Through means of plague manifestoes, he brought confidence to the panic-stricken people; further, he made arrangements for setting up a quarantine camp and also for teaching sanitation to the people and, if need be, for cleaning the lanes and houses of various districts. The following year, 1899, when an epidemic actually broke out in the city, the Ramakrishna Mission plague service went at once into action under Swamiji's direction. The management of the work was placed in the hands of Sister Nivedita as secretary and Swami Sadananda as officer-in-chief. In four areas of the city the poor quarters were cleared of cartloads of filth and with the help of scavengers thoroughly disinfected. Swamiji himself went to live in the slums, that he might bring comfort and courage to the people. On April 22 he presided over a public meeting held in Calcutta, during which fifteen students volunteered for service in response to his stirring plea. As an outcome of this a permanent plague service was established at the Math, making it possible, when the most virulent epidemic of all broke out in 1900, for the Ramakrishna Mission to give invaluable aid.

By mid 1899 Swamiji's health had become dangerously shattered; for rest, more than for anything else, he set sail in the company of Swami Turiyananda and Sister Nivedita for his second visit to the West. As it turned out, that visit would prove to be a momentous chapter of his mission, and its story is the subject of another book.

ⓘ
[1].Rem. (K. S. Iyer), pp. 93-94.
[2].Sister Nivedita, The Master, p. 136.
[3].Complete Works, 6 : 371.
[4].Complete Works, 5 : 136.
[5].The Master, p. 39.
[6].Complete Works, 6 : 434.
[7].Complete Works,., 8:538.
[8].Complete Works,, 5 : 436. (See chap. 13, sec. 2.)
[9].Complete Works, 8 : 451.



↑ Contents

APPENDIX A

Alasinga Permual in Defense of Swami Vivekananda

In view of the attacks made upon Swamiji in Detroit in March of 1896 (see chapter eight) by one Reverend J. M. Thoburn, Alasinga Perumal, a Madras disciple of Swamiji's and editor of the Brahmavadin, wrote the following letter to the editor of the Detroit Evening News, which journal had exhibited a particularly hostile attitude toward Swamiji. It is to the credit of the Evening News that its affiliated paper, the Sunday News-Tribune, published Alasinga's reply to Thoburn in full. The letter, dated April 23, 1896, appeared on June 7 and read: 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA DEFENDED BY THE EDITOR OF A PAPER IN INDIA GIVES HIM A HIGH CHARACTER

To the Editor of the Evening News:

It is a matter for deep regret that some of your Christian missionaries should attack Swami Vivekananda and his work with an amount of pharisaic audacity which is thoroughly unbecoming of men who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ. It seems to me that Jesus Christ was in a true prophetic vein when he said that the custodians of his religion of love would so far degenerate in later centuries as to be unable to recognize the second Christ if he should appear. We see signs of it already. These paid revilers of the so-called gentiles, forgetting the principles of the religion of whose universality and charity they never tire of boasting, instead of making it a common cause with godly men to counteract the evil effects of the rapidly rising tide of materialism in all parts of the world, try to hold aloft the greatness of their own religion by decrying all other faiths and the best of men belonging to these faiths. They do not seem to understand that such unworthy tactics discredit them and their religion in the eyes of all fair-minded men and women. A few illiterate and ignorant men can, perhaps, be taken in by such willful misrepresentations, and this, I suppose, consoles their souls for all their misstatements of facts. I shall presently take up a case of missionary misrepresentation and hope to prove to the satisfaction of all fair minded readers of your paper that I am not drawing upon my own imagination for anything.

GROSS MISREPRESENTATIONS.

Very recently one Rev. Thoburn, on being interviewed by a representative of the Detroit Evening News, has, with a "rarity of Christian charity," vilified in the name of Jesus Christ, Swami Vivekananda by a series of gross misrepresentations and misstatements quite characteristic of overzealous Christian missionaries. I propose to examine here his utterances seriatim.

1. "I don't know Vivekananda, nor did anyone else. I never heard of this man." He seems to argue here very much in the wake of an old character, "not to know me argues thyself unknown." I am very sorry that Swami Vivekananda did not get himself acquainted with the clergyman when he was in Calcutta. The reverend gentleman might not have known him, and that is no reason for his not being known by "anyone else". Thousands of people knew him, both in and out of Calcutta. I have with me plenty of evidence to prove to you that many a Calcutta gentleman of position and respectability, and hundreds of others who came in contact with him during his tour through India, were well acquainted with him. His own great Guru Sri Ramakrishna had predicted a bright future for him, and thousands of men came under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa during his lifetime. Everyone in Madras and other places who met the Swami was struck with his personality and great spiritual powers. They knew that he would form an important factor in the shaping of New India.

History tells us that no great religious teacher is ever known much before he delivers the message. Swami Vivekananda was preparing himself for the gigantic task that was awaiting him. "All great men are made in the cave," says a French writer. It is unnecessary for me to dilate more on this matter. Suffice it for me to say that he was known to a large body of men in India before sailing for America and that wherever he travelled in India he always produced an indelible impression on the minds of those he came in contact with.

Amongst us a truly religious man is a crystal brook that runs at the door of every poor cottage, carrying the cool and refreshing water of eternal bliss to quench the spiritual thirst of the cottager. Our religious teachers do not advertise themselves. We seek them, and they give us religion. Religion is life. It is "to be and become." A truly spiritual teacher needs no credentials. The sun does not require a torch to be seen. Even if Swami Vivekananda were altogether unknown, that ought not to affect his teachings, and that is certainly no reason why Christian missionary gentlemen should call him an impostor and manufacture all sorts of detestable myths about him.

WAS NEVER A LAWYER.

2. The reverend clergyman next says: "From what I can learn he seems to have been an obscure lawyer." I am glad that the reverend is not assertive here, for Swami Vivekananda was never a lawyer, and though he was compelled to finish his course of legal studies, did not even take up the LL.B. degree to qualify him for the legal profession, because the bent of his mind from his youth was in a different direction altogether. Next turning our attention to the scriptures that the venerable bishop quotes in support of his statement:


3. "The Indian Witness is the largest religious paper published in India." This may be true so far as the Christians of India are concerned, but these number about two millions out of a population of not less than three hundred millions. The majority of Hindus have not heard even its name.


4. Says the Witness: "If the English editors correctly understood the character of the man and his teachings they would not give him the compliment of a three-line paragraph," etc. This is surely a cowardly attack. Why does not the Witness enlighten the English editors by describing in detail the character of Swami Vivekananda. This will bring to light the true nature of the character of these revilers. They dare not, therefore, enter into details. We challenge them to do it. We know Swami Vivekananda has led an unblemished life from his youth and that his character is of unalloyed gold. The trials and sufferings he has undergone, and the self-sacrifice he has made—all for the love he bears to God and to humanity are yet a sealed book to all but a few who know his inner life, and I am sure that if this were sufficiently widely known his character will be appreciated all the greater.


5. Reverend Thoburn says again: "It was alleged that he had borrowed the name and the monkish title Swami from a Madrassi monk and came over here to the congress of religions as the self-appointed representative of a Hinduism existing in his mind only." Here again both the Indian Witness and the reverend gentleman betray an utter ignorance of the religion they are attacking. The truth of the matter is that missionary gentlemen that come here, in 99 cases out of 100, care more for their salaries than for understanding the real nature of the religion of the people amongst whom they have to work. They frequently wound the feelings of the people by ignorant abuse of all they cherish as sacred. Every Hindu knows that when a man becomes a sanyasin he gives up all old, worldly associations. He gets, as it were, a new birth and discards all conventional names and forms. He is free thenceforward to call himself by whatsoever name he chooses; he has to observe  three vows, that of chastity, poverty, and homelessness, and that's all. In other respects he is quite free.

The guru, however, from a full knowledge of his nature and tendencies, gives him a characteristic name for the convenience of others, and Swami Vivekananda is a name of that kind given to him therefore by his great guru Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa. Sri Ramakrishna was no Madrassi monk, as the bishop would have you believe. He was a pure blooded Bengali Brahman whose influence over the Calcutta society was so profound that even now every year not less than 15,000 people congregate to celebrate his birthday on the banks of the Ganges. Among those that were influenced by him may be mentioned the two Brahmo leaders—Babus Keshub Chandra Sen and Protab Chandra Muzumdar. The latter gentleman has himself written a short account of the Paramahansa's life.

WAS DULY ACCREDITED.

Rev. Thoburn says again that the Swami was the self appointed representative of Hinduism. Here is again, a misrepresentation. The facts are as follows: A number of Madrassi gentlemen in conjunction with the Maharajah of Mysore and the Rajahs of Khetri and Ramnad subscribed amongst themselves to send him to America, and requested him if he thought fit to represent Hinduism at the Chicago Parliament of Religions, but left him perfectly free in the matter. We know well that when the Swami sailed from India he had no definite plans ahead. He had travelled in India, and wanted to travel in America and do what work God placed in his way in a quiet, unassuming way.

What gives him a representative character is his having been a disciple of a great Hindu sanyasin, and the request of a large body of influential, educated Madras gentlemen that he should represent Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions. His representative character was subsequently confirmed by largely attended public meetings held in different important centers of India, as Madras, Bangalore, Kumbakonum, Khetri  and Calcutta, reports of which are sent herewith for your information.

HIS HINDUISM.

As regards the Hinduism he preached. That it was not woven out of his imagination would become clear to you when I say that no true Hindu in any part of India has taken exception to the Swami's exposition of Hinduism, and any impartial critic will be able to make out that the Swami has correctly expounded what is found in our vedic and vedantic scriptures. In the public meetings already referred to this has been emphasized over and over again. I do grant that corruptions creep in whenever an ideal is put into practice. Many a visitor to Chicago has written volumes upon the Christianity practiced therein but no sane man would ever attribute these corruptions to the noble religion of Jesus Christ. Rev. Thoburn then takes to his help one Mr. K. C. Bennerjee. I am sorry he is not in good company here. Mr. Bennerjee is a native Christian of some standing in society on account of his political views, but in matters religious no Hindu would attach any value to his opinions regarding Hinduism. Rev. Thoburn himself would not like my unfolding this gentleman’s history.

I have said enough to make any impartial reader of your paper make out the fairness or otherwise of the attack made by Christian dogmatists of the stamp of Rev. Thoburn upon the representative of the Hindus at the Parliament of Religions.

DEMAND FOR MORE TOLERANCE

Before I conclude let me ask Rev. Thoburn and other Christian believers to be more tolerant towards other faiths. All great religions and all great thinkers of the world teach virtually the same truths and want us to bring about greater and greater harmony between the warring creeds and sects, "They are all so many paths leading to the same goal, " says Sri Krishna in the Gita. Goethe, addressing the Christian believers, says:

"Ye faithful, do not claim that your confession

Be truth alone; for we have faith like you.

Science can't be deprived of the possession

Belonging to the world and to me too."

In an article on Goethe, Dr. Paul Carus says in a recent issue of the Open Court: "The church that developed from the moral movement started by Christ has supplemented the theoretical doctrines which Christ had neglected to teach, but unfortunately the dogmatists of the church replaced the broad ecce homo by a narrow ecce ego, and thus the assumptions of the ego psychology have become officially recognized as Christian dogmas. Yet I venture to say that those two masters of the world of thought, Buddha and Goethe, are nearer to the spirit of Christ than those who bear his name and call themselves his disciples."

FAILURE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES.

It appears to me that the last few lines apply with equal force to Swami Vivekananda also. Christian missionaries have fallen far short of the ideal set up by their master, and when this is pointed out and a loftier ideal is placed before them their fanaticism resorts to all kinds of undignified vituperation. Let me tell my missionary friends, adopting the words of Amiel: "It is not to the clever folk, nor even to the scientific folk, that the empire over souls belongs, but to those who impress us as having conquered nature by grace, as having passed through the burning bush, and as speaking, not the language of human wisdom, but of the divine will. In religious matters it is holiness that gives authority; it is love or the power of devotion and sacrifice, which goes to the heart, which moves and persuades.... Our business is to point men to another ideal, purer, higher, more spiritual than the old, and so to raise behind a lofty summit one more lofty still. In this way no one is despoiled; we gain men's confidence, while at the same time forcing them to think and enabling those minds which are already tending towards change to perceive new objects and goals of thought. An ideal is replaced by satisfying the conditions of the old with some advantages over [them]. Let the liberal Protestants offer us a spectacle of Christian virtue of a holier, intenser, and more intimate kind than before; let us see it active in their persons and in their influence; they will have furnished the proof demanded by the Master; the tree will be judged by its fruits."

M. C. ALASINUAPERUMAL, 

Editor of the Brahmavadin.

Madras, India, April 23, 1896

↑ Contents

APPENDIX B

Some Thoughts on
Swamiji and the Harvard Professors

Inasmuch as Swamiji was closely listened to and sincerely admired by the professors of Harvard's illustrious Philosophy Department (see chapter nine of this book), one can but ask what effect he had upon the thought of the two most influential metaphysicians of that Department's golden era—William James, the Pluralist and Pragmatist, and Josiah Royce, the Idealist.

In 1896 both James and Royce were already well known. Although Professor James was not to publish his The Varieties of Religious Experience for another six years, nor his more influential philosophical work, Pragmatism, for another eleven, he was famous for his massive and important work, The Principles of Psychology ( 1890), known to students as the "James," and for its abridged version, Textbook of Psychology, or Psychology, Briefer Coarse (1892), known, needless to say, as the "Jimmy." Professor Royce was perhaps even more renowned in the 1890s than was James. A prolific writer, he was looked upon as America's foremost Idealist. He was a Hegelian, a monist and an admirer of those immense dialectical systems of thought that characterized much of the philosophy of the nineteenth century. William James, on the other hand, had an intense dislike for Hegelianism, an impatience with systems, with rationalism, and, above all, with monism of any sort— materialistic, Hegelian, Roycean, or, as it turned out, Vedantic. Although thirteen years older than Josiah Royce, James represented, and may be said to have originated, the reaction against the misty and windy type of Idealism that the younger philosopher so eloquently expounded. First and last, James was a pragmatist; Royce, on the other hand, was one of those  "absolutistic philosophers" whom James described as dwelling "on so high a level of abstraction that they never even try to come down." Their debates were, of course, interminable and a delight to everyone, including themselves. "I lead a parasitic life upon you," James once wrote to Royce, "for my highest flight of ambitious ideality is to become your conqueror, and go down into history as such, you and I rolled in one another's arms and silent (or rather loquacious still) in one last death grapple of an embrace.'[1]

"These differences of opinion in our staff," Professor George Patmer wrote in his autobiography, "were always openly acknowledged. In our lectures we were accustomed to attack each other by name, James forever exposing the follies of the idealists, particularly of Royce and me, Royce in turn showing how baseless all empiricism is, lacking a metaphysical ground.... Our students were not misled by these our attacks on each other. They knew that we were all warm friends, few Departments more so. . . . And what happiness to work under conditions of entire freedom, where suspicions were unknown, and friendships were profound!'[2]

Unlike as they were in their philosophical approach, both Professor James and Professor Royce belonged to the age in which they lived. Both were deeply concerned over the problems peculiar to that age, particularly those which followed on the heels of the recent crash of Christianity's theological foundations. Both had accepted the main ideas of the theory of Evolution (as had almost all literate men and women of the nineties), but they had not become thereby, as had many others, atheists or agnostics. On the contrary, both philosophers felt duty bound to construct a new foundation on the ruins of the old, to devise a philosophy strong and broad enough to support both religious faith and scientific facts. In those days the Big Questions—questions involving the destiny of man and his conduct while en route to that destiny—were still considered appropriate and meaningful matters for philosophical inquiry. Both James and Royce inquired into such questions without embarrassment, and both gave their considered answers. In doing so, Royce manfully tried to come down a little from the metaphysical heights wherein he dwelt; while, from the ground, Jamea reached upward toward what he called "something more," and somewhere in mid air they clasped hands.

There is at present no known record of Swamiji's persona! relationship with Professor Royce. We know, however, that he looked upon William James as "a very nice man, a very nice man!'[3]and that James, when writing to him, addressed him as "Master."[4] Professor James was indeed a thoroughly nice man, as lacking in pettiness and dogmatism as he was rich in the ability to acknowledge and delight in the greatness of others when he saw it. But while James's use of the term "Master" in connection with Swamiji implied deep respect, it did not indicate that he had become Swamiji's disciple or that he had any intention of doing so. There is a passage in James's essay "The Energies of Men" (1907) in which, to quote from the Life, "he speaks of a University professor who underwent the Raja-Yoga practices as a cure for nervous disorders, and who received thereby not only physical benefit but intellectual and spiritual illumination as well.'[5] It has been thought by some that James may have been referring here to himself. Actually, however, the unnamed "yogi" referred to in this essay was Wincenty Lutoslawski, a Polish writer and philosopher, with whom James was well acquainted. (It is interesting to note that while Mr. Lutoslawski undertook hatha yoga [not raja yoga] more or less on his own, he was not uninfluenced by Swamiji. In describing his practices to William James, Lutoslawski wrote, "Thus I decided to follow Vivekananda's advice: 'Practice hard: whether you live or die by it doesn't matter.' ") On first receiving Mr. Lutoslawski's report on his yoga practices, which he later quoted in part in "Energies,'[6]James wrote to him a congratulatory letter, remarking in its course, "You are mistaken about my having tried Yoga discipline—I never meant to suggest that. I have  read several books . . . and in the slightest possible way tried breathing exercises. These go terribly against the grain with me, are extremely disagreeable, and even when tried this winter (the winter of 1905-6) (somewhat perseveringly), to put myself asleep, after lying awake at night, failed to have any soporific effect.'[7]

But although Professor James evidently did not practice raja yoga under Swamiji's instruction—or that of anyone else, there is little doubt that he was deeply impressed with Swamiji himself as a man, a thinker, and what he would have called "a religious genius." James was, in fact, as Professor Wright noted, "swept off his feet," and missed no opportunity of hearing Swamiji lecture in Boston and, presumably, in Cambridge.

As for Josiah Royce, as was said above, we unfortunately do not know at present what he and Swamiji thought of one another. We do know, however, that Royce had long been an admirer of Indian thought, a knowledge of which he had derived first from a study of Schopenhauer and later from European Orientalists, such as Max Muller, Paul Deussen, and Richard Garbe. Royce felt attracted particularly toward the Upanishads and tended to insert Sanskrit phrases here and there throughout his writings. Josiah Royce must have been exceedingly interested in Swamiji's lectures and undoubtedly admired him as a man and as a thinker.

But much as James and Royce admired and respected Swamiji, much as they wanted him to accept the Chair of Eastern Philosophy at Harvard and thus become their permanent colleague and debating companion,[8]much as they must have enjoyed his company, they could not accept, without each doing violence to his own long-held view, the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. They were disturbed by it, and it is through the evidences of this disturbance that Swamiji's effect on the professors can best be seen.

Nothing gave William James more pleasure than a philosophical debate with a worthy opponent. But it was not until 1898, when Swamiji's brother disciple, Swami Abhedananda, lectured in Cambridge, that James again had a chance to tackle Vedantic monism head on. He lost no time at all in taking advantage of this opportunity. The story of the meeting between Professor James and Swami Abhedananda is told in the latter's biography by Swami Shankarananda and clearly shows how exercised William James was over Swamiji's "doctrine of the One," as he called it.[9]

Swami Abhedananda arrived in Cambridge in May and a day or two before delivering his own lecture, audited a class of Professor James's. James evidently knew who the Swami was and seeing him, with some surprise no doubt, among his students, suddenly launched into an attack against monism, bringing forth all the arguments at his command. As has been seen, open attacks such as this were not uncommon, nor unfriendly, at Harvard. Nor did Swami Abhedananda take this one amiss. Rather, he quietly "jotted down in his notebook the essential points." After the class, Professor James expressed the wish, as was only fair, that the Swami discuss "Oneness" at his coming lecture, which he promised to attend. To this proposal, Swami Abhedananda readily agreed.

"In Mrs. Bull's house on the 29th of May," the Swami wrote in his diary, "I gave a lecture on 'One in Many' at the Cambridge Conferences. Dr. [Lewis G.] Janes presided over the meeting. During the lecture I raised Professor James's objections to Monism and showed by logical reasoning how irrational and false those arguments were.... Professor James had come with some of his students. [After the lecture] he began to prompt his students to ask questions.... [When asked by Dr. Janes to put questions himself] Professor James said 'Not here.' I felt that Professor James evaded asking questions, being afraid of being defeated in the presence of his students.*(1) At the end of the meeting, Professor James shook hands with me and praised highly my rational and simple explanation of Monism and invited me to dinner in his house the next evening."

*(1) In fairness to Professor James, it should be noted that at such gathering, at which students questioned a guest speaker, it was, and still is, customary for the Professors to hold their peace. 

The following evening was a momentous one. Describing it in his diary, Swami Abhedananda wrote: "I went to Professor James's house with Dr. Janes. There were along with us at the same table Professor Seller, Professor Royce and Professor Lanman. After the dinner was over, Professor James started arguing against Monism....I myself began to refute his arguments by giving further reasonings. This discussion went on for nearly four hours.... Professor Royce, Professor Seller and Professor Lanman and Dr. Janes took my side. Afterwards, Professor James was compelled to say that my arguments in favor of the Oneness of the cosmic reality were indeed irrefutable:'[10]

Clearly, Swami Abhedananda carried the evening. But this was only round one of the professors' battle against Monism. Although Josiah Royce had sided with Swami Abhedananda during that four-hour discussion, one is inclined to think that he had done so more in disagreement with his colleague James than in agreement with the Swami. In any case, a year later, when Royce gave his Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen, he quoted long passages from the Brihadaranyaka and Chhandogya Upanishads (translations of which had been provided him by Professor Lanman) and, in defence of his own type of idealism, went to some length to show that the philosophical basis of mysticism (by which he meant monism) as set forth in the Hindu scriptures was unsatisfactory. Here one detects a change in Royce's views. In earlier years he had floated in the waters of Indian philosophy; he now, it seems, felt inclined to swim for shore. We need not enter here into his objections to and arguments against "Hindu Mysticism"; suffice it to say that he arrived at the conclusion that the Absolute of Advaita Vedanta spelled Nothing. Absolutely Nothing.[11]

I don't think William James ever went this far; yet he seems to have been unsuited temperamentally, perhaps intellectually, to a monistic philosophy. On August 2 of 1900, while recuperating in Germany from a badly overstrained heart, he wrote to Mrs. Bull: "I have just been reading some of Vivekananda's Addresses in England, which I had not seen. That man is simply a wonder for oratorical power. As for the doctrine of the One, I began to have some talk with that most interesting Miss, Noble [Sister Nivedita] about it, but it was cut short, and I confess that my difficulties have never yet been cleared up. But the Swami is an honour to humanity in any case.[12]

It had been Miss Josephine MacLeod who had lent some of Swamiji's London lectures to Professor James. On August 8, 1900, he wrote to her, "I am sending back to you his addresses, all but 4 [actually 3] ; the Real & the Apparent Man; Maya & Freedom; Practical Vedanta, part IV. These I keep a while longer, and wish I might get hold of the first 3 parts of Practical Vedanta. Has the Swami my books? It has made me feel badly that I didn't give him my Psychology when he was in America; and if he would like aught of mine, I will now have it sent to him, if you can provide me with an address which will 'keep' a while. I am perhaps unduly shy about obtruding my writings on people.'[13]

Whether or not Swamiji and William James met in Europe in the fall of 1900 is not certain. A letter written by Swamiji from Paris on September 3, 1900, to Mrs. Francis Leggett, mentions in its printed form that a "Dr. James" had been a guest at a party that Swamiji had attended. It has been thought by some that Swamiji was referring here to Professor James. Yet the text of the letter itself gives several indications that Dr. Lewis G. Janes, not Professor William James, was the man in question.[14]For one thing, Swamiji speaks a little teasingly of the doctor's "great blaster, Herbert Spencer." It was Dr. Lewis Janes who was, as everyone then knew, a dedicated follower of Herbert Spencer. Professor James, on the other hand, found much in Spencer's philosophy to take issue with, deploring, among other things, "the vagueness of all his fundamental ideas, his whole system wooden, as if knocked together out of cracked hemlock boards.'[15]

But whether or not William James had a further chance to talk with Swamiji, he did once again meet Sister Nivedita. Their first meeting, mentioned above, most probably took place in England in 1899. The second occurred in the spring of 1901, when, recovering from his illness and en route from London to Edinburgh with his wife to deliver his Gifford Lectures, he chanced to meet Mrs. Bull and Nivedita on the train (very likely the famous "Flying Scotsman," then the fastest train in the world, that sped between London and Edinburgh at an average speed of fifty-five miles per hour). "We had a splendid journey yesterday," James wrote to a friend on May I5, 1901, "in an American (almost!) train, first-class, and had the pleasure of some talk with our Cambridge neighbor, Mrs. Ole Bull, on her way to Norway to the unveiling of a monument to her husband. She was accompanied by an extraordinarily fine character and mind--odd way of expressing myself—"a young Englishwoman named Noble, who has Hinduized herself (converted by Vivekananda to his philosophy) and lives now for the Hindu people. These free individuals who live their own life, no matter what domestic prejudices have to be snapped, are on the whole a refreshing sight to me, who can do nothing of the kind myself. And Miss Noble is a most deliberate and balanced person —no frothy enthusiast in point of character, though I believe her philosophy to be more or less false. Perhaps no more so than anyone else's!'[16]

When James's Gifford Lectures were about to be published as The Varieties of Religious Experience, he wrote from Edinburgh to Mrs. Bull in a letter dated June 5, 1902, "Will you kindly send me Vivekananda's address so that I may order a copy of my lectures sent to him. They will seem half hearted stuff, I know, to him. They've appointed a 'safe' man, some DD, to be the next lecturer here. I think I wrote you that I nominated V[ivekananda] who is a man of genius, even though his Absolute be not the truth.'[17]

In The Varieties of Religious Experience (which could not have reached Swamiji in time for him to read it) James quoted at some length from Raja Yoga and also from two of Swamiji's lectures that Miss MacLeod had lent him-"Practical Vedanta, Part IV" and "The Real and the Apparent Man.'[18]Although these quotations were not given by way of either commending or criticizing Vedanta, but simply as illustrative of the monistic interpretation of religious experience, James made it clear enough in Varieties that he did not lean toward monism. In his Pragmatism, published in 1907, however, he took definite issue with Swamiji. Characteristically, he did not do so without paying tribute to him, writing of the Vedanta philosophy as "the paragon of all monistic systems" and of Swamiji as "the paragon of Vedantic missionaries.'[19]But the quotations he now gave from Swamiji's lectures ("God in Everything" and "The Atman") were chosen specifically to illustrate the extreme monistic view to whose "dogmatic rigoristic temper" he was taking objection.[20]In this same work James conceded that monism as a belief had pragmatic value, imparting, as he said, "a perfect sumptuosity of security,'[21] and "in so far forth'[22]was true. But here James seems to have forgotten Swamiji altogether (and, for that matter, Swami Abhedananda and that "extraordinarily fine character and mind," Sister Nivedita). If monism was pragmatically true, he contended, it was true for the "tender-minded" only.[23]Much as though he had never known "the paragon of Vedantic missionaries" or read his lectures, James wrote: "What do believers in the Absolute mean by saying that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since, in the Absolute finite evil is 'overruled' already . . . we have a right ever and anon to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag in its own way, feeling that its issues are in better hands than ours and are none of our business.'[24] And again, "The peace and rest, the security desiderated at such moments [when life breaks down] is security  against the bewildering accidents of so much finite experience. Nirvana means safety from this everlasting round of adventure of which the world of sense consists. The hindoo and the buddhist, for this is essentially their attitude, are simply afraid, afraid of more experience, afraid of life.'[25]

This attack, betraying as it did an ignorance of India's culture and thought together with a boundless faith in the infinite perfectability of the finite, was typical of the times. Josiah Royce had resorted to somewhat the same argument against Hindoo philosophers. In an essay published in 1898 he wrote, "The Hindoo, as a philosopher, has always been a keen critic of human illusions, but since it chanced, by some accident of race-development, that the Hindoo, from an early period of his evolution, did not love life, Hindoo philosophy, extensive as are its literary monuments, is in its essential doctrine always very brief and unfruitful. Life for the Hindoo is an ill; one philosophizes to seek salvation. And salvation lies in some sort of absolute contemplative abstraction from life—an abstraction which you can define in many ways; but the goal is always the same-a peace that passeth understanding, and that flees from facts to the Absolute beyond life's illusions.'[26]

Having dispensed with the majestic and thunderous philosophy of Advaita Vedanta as being a weakness of the Hindu psyche, William James and Josiah Royce continued, each in his own way, as popular spokesmen of their age.

ⓘ
[1].William James, The Letters of William James,ed. Henry James, 2 vols. (Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920), 2 :136.
[2].George Herbert Palmer, The Autobiography of a Philosopher (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Riverside Press, 1930), pp. 52-54.
[3].Life (1965), p. 405.
[4].Life (1965), p. 405.
[5].Life (1965), p. 405.
[6].William James, “The Energies of Man,” Philosophical Review, January 1907.
[7].See ref. 1 above, p. 253 (May 6, 1906).
[8].See chapter eight of this volume, PP 43-44-
[9].Swami Shankarananda, Swami Abhedanander Jivankatha (Calcutta: Ramakrishna Vedanta Math, 1353 Bengali era).
[10].Swami Abhedananda, Leaves from My Diary, quoted in Swami Shankarananda’s biography of Swami Abhedananda, see ref. 9 above.
[11].Josiah Royce, The World and the Individual (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1900), 1 : 156-204.
[12].William James to Sara Bull, August 2, 1900, quoted in “Vivekananda: Some New Findings,” Vedanta and theWest,November-December 1953.
[13].William James to Josephine MacLeod, August 8, 1900, quoted in “Vivekananda: Some New Findings” (see ref. 12 above).
[14].See Burke, Swami Vivekananda, His Second Visit to the West (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1973), pp. 697-99.
[15].William James, Pragmatism (New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., >9O7)> P- 39-
[16].See ref. 1 above, 2 : 143-44.
[17].William James to Sara Bull, June 5, 1902, SCB.
[18]. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1902; Mentor Book, the New American Library, 1958), pp. 307-8, 387*
[19].James, Pragmatism, p. 102.
[20].James, Pragmatism., p. 107.
[21].James, Pragmatism p. 104.
[22].James, Pragmatism p. 58.
[23].James, Pragmatism pp. 58, 170.
[24].James, Pragmatism p. 58.
[25].James, Pragmatism p. 188.
[26].Josiah Royce, Studies in Good and Evil (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1898), p. 353.

↑ Contents

APPENDIX C

Correspondence between Swamiji's New York Students 
and the Swamis of the Alambazar Math

On February 22, 1896, in celebration of Sri Ramakrishna's birthday, Swamiji's New York students sent a telegram to the Swamis at Alambazar Math. Although the telegram itself is no longer extant, its message was no doubt one of reverence and salutation and told (an American newspaper reported) of the rapid progress of the Hindu religion here.'[1] Swami Ramakrishnananda replied:

(To the Students of Swami Vivekananda)

Baranagore

Alambazar Matt

26-2-96

My dear friends

Your telegram of the 22nd inst. duly reached us just at the time when we were engaged in giving a parting feast to one of our brothers Swami Saradananda, who was on the point of starting for Eng. as desired by the leader of the present unique movement tending to bring about the brotherhood of the whole human race, who is now amongst you instilling his broad & universal doctrine of "assimilation but no destruction", "harmony & peace & no dissension." That the sudden & unexpected appearance of a news redolent with the ambrosia of love & affection increased hundredfold the solemnity & unmixed joy that reigned in our Monastery at that time is too apparent to be mentioned. It reached us at a time when our hearts were filled with a love that had for its field of action nothing short of the entire expanse of this world of ours & everything that is in it. Your salutatory note therefore served to animate with fresh vigour the already animated feeling of universal love stirred within us on the occasion.

Swami Saradananda started for Eng. to take his quarters with Mr. Sturdy in the str. Rewa of BISN line & to help Swami Vivekananda in his stupendous labours consequent upon propagating his gospel of love & charity. This new Swami, if it be the desire of his leader at a future date to transfer him to your quarters, is sure to gain your hearts in no time, not of course by those dazzling faculties which especially mark out Vivekananda as a power among nations, but by his sweet & amiable character, diffusing peace & love wherever he goes. In him, you will find a man who is void of all the vanities of the world. He is sure to carry out the onerous duty laid upon him with great credit. [Swami Vivekananda's] indefatigable energy, the immense moral power that can easily surmount the gloomy & unfriendly environments, the keen intellect that can penetrate the deepest veil of what to others appears as mystic &. altogether uncomprehensible, a heart which is the storehouse of love & affection for his fellowmen, a sweet voice & an expressive & amiable countenance, which are the fit agents to bring forth the sweet sentiments hidden under the bosom— all these contribute to make the great revivalist of this highly advanced age, Swami Vivekananda, a fit agent of the Deity whose direct hand is his principal, nay his only stay, in a troublous sea of insincerity & private interests. That he has taken & upheld the cause of Truth, that his heart flows with the sincerest love for his fellowmen, that his extraordinary power, coupled with the divine grace is a sure sign of his ultimate success, are facts which none but the most blinded of bigots can deny. This auspicious telegram is a seal of our mutual love, by this India & America are joined together with the indissoluble tie of love, heart embracing heart. They are no longer two different entities, ocean may separate their physical selves, but essentially they have now become one. May the Lord, Who first breathed this idea of universal toleration in the heart of Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna, & Who is now proclaiming this noble idea throughout the length & breadth of the world thro' Vivekananda, the fit disciple of a great &  unparalleled master, keep us united thro' eternity.

Wishing to hear from you, our other selves of America, every now & then as to the success of our noble cause, in the name of all our brothers here,

I remain yours ever with love 
Ramakrishnananda.

P.S. The Sanyasin disciple of the Swami [Kripananda] sends very interesting letters to the Brahmavadin. We cannot adequately thank him for them. We look with eagerness in every fresh issue of the paper for the letter of K. We would be very glad if he (K) condescend to communicate with us directly.

Yours &c[2]
R.

Swami Ramakrishnananda's letter arrived in New York in the last days of April, and on May 1, Mr. Leggett wrote to Mrs. Bull: "The letter from India in answer to the Cable was simply beautiful. I have not the original but prize the copy which Mr. Goodwin furnished, very highly. I believe Miss Phillips has the original but think either you or I should possess it.'[3]Two days later, a number of the New York students sent the following letter to the Swamis in India:

19, West 38th Street
May 3rd, 1896

Dear Friends and Brothers,—Swami Ramakrishnananda's letter to us, your American brothers and sisters, received a cordial welcome.

We believe with you that a strong bond of union now exists between your land and ours, established by the Swami Vivek-ananda.

The grand truths of the Vedanta, as presented by him, interested thinking minds of all classes, and met with a ready acceptance by many of those, who had the privilege of hearing them.

The Swami Vivekananda sailed for England on the I5th  of April. In his farewell address to his friends and pupils in New York, he spoke highly of the Americans, and the freedom of their institutions, which made them peculiarly accessible to the Vedanta Philosophy.

We did not realize until now, that the Hindus, so distant and so ancient, held so much wisdom and knowledge in trust for us, the youngest among nations.

With loving greetings, and the hope that we may frequently have the pleasure of hearing from you.

Your brothers and sisters in America,

(Sd.) MARY PHILLIPS, S. ELLEN WALDO, WALTER GOODYEAR, FRANCES B. GOODYEAR, ETHEL E. HOWE, L. L. WIGHT, MARIE B. SMITH, SWAMI ABHAYANANDA, EDlTH SWANANDER, RUTH ELLIS, FLOUNCE D'A LE VINSEN, MAUDE R. LE VINSEN, CARL LE VINSEN, SWAMI JOGANANDA, HENRY J. VAN HAAGEN, J. E. SUITLERLIN, ELIZABETH ANNE WYMAN, DR. JOHN C. WYMAN, ANNlE A. HAINES, EDMOND L. (EDWARD G. ] DAY, M.D., MARY H. DAY, and many more.

"K" is not now in this city.[4]

Neither Mr. Leggett nor Mrs. Bull, it may be noted, were included among the above signatories. Nor did they succeed at once in obtaining Swami Ramakrishnananda's original letter from Miss Phillips. In November of 1896 she seems still to have laid it. In writing to Mrs. Bull on November 14 of the success of Miss Waldo's first lecture (see chapter fourteen, section two), Miss Phillips commented: "It [the occasion of the talk] was the first suitable opportunity to read the letter from Ramakrishnananda 'To the Students of the Swami Vivekananda' which had come since the letter reached me and all seemed greatly interested in it, requesting printed copies.'[5]

According to an unidentified American newspaper, Miss Phillips had almost immediately on its receipt shown Swami Ramakrisnananda's letter to the Press. With pardonable though belated defensiveness she had assured a reporter: "'This letter shows with what reverence our Swami Vivekananda is held in India. It refutes effectually all of the hints that his religious enemies have tried to spread broadcast, that he was not the real representative of the Hindu monks to this country.'[6]

ⓘ
[1].Quoted in Indian Mirror, 3 July 1896; see VIN, p. 102.
[2].Swami Ramakrishnananda to the Students of Swami Vivekananda, February 26,1896; copy Leg. Col.; original RKM, Belur.
[3].Francis H. Leggett to Sara Bull, May 1, 1896, SCB.
[4].Quoted in VIN, pp. 101-2.
[5].Mary Phillips to Sara Bull, November 14, 1896, SCB.
[6].Quoted in Brahmavadin, June 6, 1896, pp. 234, 243; also quoted in Indian Mirror, 3 July 1896, see VIN, pp. 102-3.


↑ Contents

APPENDIX D

Tributes to J. J. Goodwin

On receiving news of the untimely death of Josiah J. Goodwin, Swamiji sent the following paragraph and poem to the newspapers as well as to Goodwin's mother. They appeared also in the Prabuddha Bharata of August 1898:

With infinite sorrow I learn the sad news of Mr. Goodwin's departure from this life, the more so as it was terribly sudden and therefore prevented all possibilities of my being at his side at the time of death. 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 one of those few who are born, as it were, to live only for others.

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!


Mrs. Ole Bull, who had known Goodwin well and who was in Almora when the news of his death arrived there, wrote the following letter to Alasinga Perumal. It was published in the Brahmavadin of June 16, :1898:

My Dear Sir,

I have never received a sadder message than the words from you announcing the death of dear Goodwin. It causes us all who know him great sorrow. We had counted so much on seeing him here in India.

Such a life calls, for reverent recognition, so utterly generous, silent and untiring has he been in the service of his beloved Guru Swami Vivekananda and others.

He once told me that his early years had been spent knocking about the world as a journalist and in literary work and the best outcome of it all was agnosticism. After his experience in New York as stenographer to the Swami, with whom he lived day and night for months, the beauty of life's highest realization, knowledge of the soul and of God, came to him, as we know.

His entire devotion to the Swami as his servant and friend was the fruit of his new hope and belief and the Swami's published lectures as recorded by Mr. Goodwin are his permanent contribution to us. This young man embodied the integrity and honor of the gentleman to enemy and friend alike, in brief, he was a true Englishman with the spirit of sympathy, responsive to the noble and divine wherever he found it, at home or abroad. The Sannyasins of Vivekananda's order have in this layman an example of one, who worked for work's sake and loved for love's sake.

In Mr. Goodwin's death, the work of the Swami Vivekananda meets with an irreparable loss to us of the West.

We are grateful for his brave loving life—a life that added richness of experience and pleasure, to all those whom he loved or served. You will, I know, sympathize with us as we with you and all of us with his family in England.

Sincerely yours, 
Sara C. Bull

↑ Contents

APPENDIX E

Addresses to Swami Vivekananda

After he had completed his first Western visit, letters of appreciation came to Swamiji from various groups of his disciples and friends. Two such letters, or addresses—those from the London and the New York students—were elaborately printed—in the style of the day, as though to make the words somehow carry more reverence than, unadorned, they could ever convey. The texts of the addresses from, respectively, the London students, the New York students, the Detroit students, the Cambridge Conferences, and the Brooklyn Ethical Association are given below.

In addition, a Christmas letter from Mrs. Ole Bull to Swamiji's brother disciples is given here, following the addresses.

THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA IN ENGLAND

At a large meeting of the Swami Vivekananda's Friends and Sympathisers held at the Galleries of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, Picadilly, London, on December 13th 1896, the Chairman E. T. Sturdy Esq. was requested to present the following Address to the Swami on the motion of H. B. M. Buchanan Esq. B.A. (Cantab.). Seconded by Mrs. G. C. Ashton Jonson and unanimously supported:—

The Students of the Vedanta Philosophy in London under your remarkably able instruction feel that they would be lacking in their duty and privilege if they failed to record their warm and heartfelt appreciation of the noble and unselfish work you have set yourself to do, and of the great help you have been to them in their Study of Religion.

We feel the very deepest regret that you are so soon to leave England, but we should not be true Students of the very beautiful Philosophy you have taught us to regard so highly, if we did not recognise that there are claims upon your work from our Brothers and Sisters in India. That you may prosper very greatly in that work is the united prayer of all who have come under the elevating influence of your teaching, and no less of your personal attributes, which, as a living example of the Vedanta we recognise as the most helpful encouragement to us one and all to become real lovers of God in practise as well as in theory.

We look forward with great interest and keen anticipation to your speedy return to this Country, but, at the same time, we feel real pleasure that India, which you have taught us to regard in an altogether new light, and, we should like to add, to love, is to share with us the generous service which you are giving to the world.

In conclusion, we would specially beg of you to convey our loving sympathy to the Indian People, and to accept from us our assurance that we regard their Cause as ours, realising as we do from you that we are all One in God.[1]


Address from New York

To our Indian Brethren

Dear Friends:

The Western Aryans send cordial greeting to the Aryans of India.

We, in New York who have been so fortunate as to hear the Vedanta Philosophy taught by the Swami Vivekananda, are desirous of expressing to you in some small measure our grateful recognition of his services to us.

He came, a stranger, unheralded, but, by the force of his magnetic eloquence, and the purity of his personal character, he commanded the attention and interest of thousands, and attracted their minds to the study of a subject almost entirely unknown to them. Here, in New York, where he taught and lectured for two seasons, the impression he produced is so deep, that we hope and trust it will extend until the Vedanta Philosophy shall take permanent root among us, and its comprehensive and tolerant teachings shall find lodgement in hearts, and expression in the lives of large numbers of our people. We who came into more immediate contact with him, are deeply grateful for the noble work he did among us, for the unselfish and self-sacrificing efforts he made in our behalf; and we will try to the best of our ability to establish on a lasting basis the study of the Vedanta Philosophy and to promote the growth of knowledge concerning it.

We wish to extend to you, his fellow countrymen, our heartfelt sympathy in your present afflictions, with an earnest hope that a way may be found to lighten them.

May the Swami Vivekananda's work among his own people be blessed a thousandfold, and meet with the fullest measure of success. Should he return to us in the years to come, he will receive a most cordial welcome. He has made us feel that we are all of one kin, and all expressions of that One Existence which is the background of the Universe.[2]

Mary A. Phillips                                                                                                                                                   Secretary.


Address from Detroit

From this far-away city, in a land, old yet young, ruled by a people who are a part of the ancient Aryan race, the mother of nations, we send to you in your native country—India, the conservator of the wisdom of the ages—our warmest love and sincerest appreciation of the message you brought to us. 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 beautiful presence and matchless eloquence, rekindled within our hearts the knowledge that we of America and you of India are one.

May God be with you! May blessings attend you! May    

All Love and All-Wisdom guide you!

OM TAT SAT OM![3]

[The above was signed by forty-two of  
Swamiji's Detroit friends.]

Address from the Cambridge Conferences 
TO SWAMI VIVEKANANDA—INDIA

DEAR FRIEND AND BROTHER,

As members of the Cambridge Conferences devoted to comparative study in Ethics, Philosophy, and Religion, it gives us great pleasure to recognize the value of your able expositions of the Philosophy and Religion of Vedanta in America, and the interest created thereby among thinking people. We believe such expositions as have been given by yourself and your co-labourer, the Swami Saradananda, have more than. a 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 relationships 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 fresh contact with the life and thought of your people.

In view of the large opportunity for effective work presented in these Conferences, we should be glad to know something of your own plans for the coming years, and whether we may anticipate your presence with us again as a teacher. It is our hope that you will be able to return to us, in which event we can assure you the cordial greetings of old friends and the certainty of continued and increasing interest in your work.[4]

We remain,
Cordially and fraternally yours, 
LEWIS JANES, D.D., Director 
C. C. EVERETT, D.D.
WM JAMES
JOHN H. WRIGHT
JOSIAH ROYCE
J.E.LOUGH (Pres.,Harvard Graduate 

Philosophical Society 1895-96)
A.O.LOVEJOY(Secretary,do 1986-97)
RACHEL KENT TAYLOR (Pres.,
Radcliffe Philosophical Club, 1896-97)
SARA C. BULL
JOHN P. FOX



Address from the Brooklyn Ethical Association


The Pouch Mansion, 
345, Clinton Avenue, 
Brooklyn, N.Y., December 31st,1896.

To our Indian Brethren of the Great Aryan Family.

Dear Friends:—The return to India of the Swami Vivekananda, the delegate of the Vedantists to the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, and the teacher of the Religion and Philosophy of the Vedanta in. England and America, is a proper occasion for the expression of our warm fraternal regard for our Eastern brethren, and our sincere hope that one effect of the presence and teaching of the Swami Vivekananda and the Swami Saradananda in our Western world will be the establishment of closer relations of sympathy and mutual helpfulness between India, England and America.

We wish to testify to our high appreciation of the value of the work of the Swami Vivekananda in this country. His lectures before the Brooklyn Ethical Association opened up a new world of thought to many of his hearers, and renewed the interest of others in the comparative study of religious and philosophic systems, which gives breadth to the mind, and an uplifted stimulus to the moral nature. We can heartily endorse the words of the Venerable Dean of the Harvard Divinity School: "The Swami Vivekananda . . . has been, in fact, a missionary from India to America. Everywhere he has made warm personal friends; and his expositions of the Hindu philosophy have been listened to with delight.... We may not be so near to actual conversion as some seem to believe; but Vivekananda has created a high degree of interest in himself and his work."

We thank you for sending him to us. We wish him godspeed in his educational work in his own country. We hope he may return to us again with new lessons of wisdom resulting from added thought and experience. And we earnestly hope that the new avenues of sympathy opened by the presence of himself and his brother Sannyasins will result in mutual benefits, and a profound sense of the solidarity and brotherhood of the human race.[5]

On behalf of the Brooklyn Ethical Association
Z. SIDNEY SAMPSON, 
President.
LEWIS G. JANES, 
Ex-President.


Christmas Letter from Mrs. Bull

The following letter to the Sannyasins at Alambazar Math was written, in part at least, at the suggestion of Mr. Goodwin, who in a letter to Mrs. Bull dated December 11, 1896, had ventured: "By the by as I know it would be appreciated if you would write to the Math a letter of greeting &, particularly, expressing the ties of motherhood between the West & India in time for Sri Ramakrishna's birthday—Feb 20th." Mrs. Bull complied in her own way. She chose the more immediately at hand celebration of Christ's birthday as an occasion; and the style of her letter, the sentiments it expressed, and the gift it proffered were pure Sara Bull. (The reference in the following letter to a message from Swamiji's mother was possibly to Bhuvaneshvari Devi's non-extant reply to a Christmas 1894 greeting from Mrs. Bull and other women of Cambridge. See Prophetic Mission—2, chapter twelve, section four.) Mrs. Bull's letter to Alambazar Math read :

To the Sons of
Ram Krishna Paramhansa
at the Muth in Calcutta

The divine message of your master, the acceptance of which brings peace to the heart & goodwill to men, enlightens, purifies & strengthens each believer's concept of God & the Soul, whatever be his birth or environment. The Vedanta in the light & warmth of his sacred example vitalizes & establishes the pure teachings of Jesus; the way chosen by our people as we gladly testify. You, the chosen of his heart, with whom he lived & taught, have done us here a great & brotherly service. The truths of revealed religion have been made acceptable to modern thought & agnosticism, a gift than which none could be greater.

Faithfully & ably your Vivekananda & Saradananda have served us. Faithfully & affectionately may we share in your special legacy, the up building of the influence of your master's life & service. The ideal of Divine motherhood made luminous by Ram Krishna while sending your Sanyasis across the earth if needs be, not withholding in cloistered retirement or forest life your message of light & love, has indeed brought to western mothers the consolation of timely help. No sweeter or nobler message than that of Vivekananda's mother, blessing the work of her son in our midst, has come to us. The human weakness of a mother's heart received strength in wishing that her function be fulfilled to him in homes his message had entered. Such mothers are indeed worthy to bear & cherish children fit to become the Sons of a Ram Krishna.

And now my message to you in turn is, that giving on your part to these your mothers the spiritual bread of life as faithfully as they cherished your helpless infancy & childhood that you should become men & Sons of God, makes the bond of Motherhood the world over Divine. Like your revered Sankara Acharya, you will never fail to hear the call of your mothers, through whom all women are blessed by your labors. Their gift of their sons to homelessness & service makes the record of Mary of more effect to us at this Christmas time. Guest rooms for your mothers to be added to the Muth where they may retire for spiritual refreshment & help are a contribution I would like to offer. If God wills, I will one day hope to attend with one of them a devotional service at the Muth. With prayers for the safe return to you of Vivekananda, for a happy reunion of Ram Krishna's sons & people at the birthday, & my salutations to the revered Sarada, & to each of you severally, I am

Faithfully you.[6]
Sara C.Bull.

168 Brattle Street,
Cambridge. Dec. 25, 1896. 
Massachusetts, U.S.A.


ⓘ
[1].Life (1981), 2 : 146-47.
[2].Life (1981), 2 : 211.
[3].Life (1981)., 2:212.
[4].Life (1981)., 2 : 209-10.
[5].Prabuddha Bharata, March 1897, pp- 97-98-
[6].Copy, SCB.


↑ Contents

Volume 5

5.1 SECOND VOYAGE TO THE WEST

1

In the late afternoon of June 20, 1899, Swami Vivekananda boarded the S.S. Golconda in the Hooghly River at Calcutta and began his second and last voyage to the Western world. He had no special plans in view. The thought that a large and fertile field of work would open up to him, that he would deliver a message of crucial importance, and that this trip would result in the establishment of Vedanta on the West Coast of the United States seems to have been far from his mind. There were, of course, reasons for the voyage: the primary one was the hope that it would improve his exceedingly poor health; another was his never-ending need to raise money for his Indian work.

The Swami was by no means unknown in the West. During his first visit there, which had extended from the middle of 1893 to the close of 1896, his name had become familiar to almost every newspaper-reading American. By some he had been loved and revered, by others, feared and reviled; but few, if any, had looked upon him with indifference. His talks at the august and celebrated Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in September of 1893, had revealed to an astounded American public the moral and spiritual grandeur of India’s religious culture. He himself—his majestic presence, his keen wit and powerful intellect, his unmistakable and towering spirituality had been no less an eyeopener. After the Parliament, the fame of the young Hindu monk (he was then thirty years old) had steadily increased, as had his influence. During the last months of 1893 and throughout most of 1894 he had traveled, lecturing, from place to place in the Midwestern, southern,  and eastern states of America. In 1895 and 1896 he had worked primarily in New York and London, teaching in both cities the basic ideals and practices of the Vedanta philosophy and religion and spreading the message of his great Master, Sri Ramakrishna, of whom he was the chief disciple and apostle.

Returning to India at the beginning of 1897, the Swami had given lavishly of his unlimited spiritual and intellectual powers in an attempt to restore the greatness of his beloved motherland, a greatness deeply rooted, as he again and again reminded the Indian people, in their ancient and incomparably rich religious heritage. Through many lectures and innumerable informal talks he had outlined his program for the revival of a strong, spiritually oriented India, vigorous on all levels of thought and activity. Over and over, in a cascade of words, he had exhorted the Hindu people to live by and for the great ideals that had sprung from the very soul of the country itself, and to make them real. “By stimulating [the Hindu people] I want to bring life into them,” he had said; “to this I have dedicated my life. I will rouse them through the infallible power of Vedic Mantras. I am born to proclaim, to them, that fearless message'—Arise! Awake!’ “[1] He wanted to convert India’s deep-rooted and highly honored institution of sannyasa, or monasticism, into an organized force that would, through service, regenerate the country materially, intellectually, culturally, and, above all, spiritually. To this end, he had organized the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission, setting in motion the “machine” that was to carry his work forward and from which his Master’s teaching would spread and, as he said, “penetrate the world to the very bone'[2]. The institutions he started in India were small, but the power he poured into them, assuring their indestructibility and steady growth, was incalculable.

From time to time Swami Vivekananda had contemplated returning to the West. As early as April of 1897 he thought of making a visit to London, where the work he had so successfully started had, in his absence, begun to fall apart. But his doctors prevented him from leaving India. “I may come over for a month or so very soon however,” he wrote in May to a friend. “Only if I could see my work started here, how gladly and freely would I travel about '[3] It was not until the following year that he once more thought seriously of leaving India. “I am going to America again with Mrs. [Ole] Bull in a few months [via Japan],” he wrote to one of his brother monks Swami Ramakrishnananda in February of 1898.[4]

But during that summer and early fall, the Swami traveled through northern India with, among others, three of his Western disciples—Mrs. Ole Bull and Josephine MacLeod from America and Margaret Noble (Sister Nivedita) from England. In Kashmir—that Himalayan land where India’s spiritual culture and religious history is layers deep—he had such profound and sustained spiritual experiences that, returning to Calcutta, his mind remained far withdrawn. He found it difficult to attend even to the voices of those who spoke to him, let alone think of going to the West.

Writing from Kashmir on October 13, 1898, Nivedita told Mrs. Ashton Jonson, one of the leaders of the London work, with almost breathless reverence of those holy days:

A fortnight ago he went away alone, & it is about 8 days since he came back like one transfigured and inspired.

I cannot tell you about it. It is too great for words. My pen wd. have to learn to whisper.

He simply talks like a child, of “the Mother”, but his soul & his voice are those of a God. The mingled sublimity & exhilaration of his presence have made me retire to the furthest corner & just worship in silence all the time. “We have seen the birth of stars, we have learnt one of the meanings.”

It has just been the nearness of one who had seen God, & whose eyes even now are full of the vision. To him at this moment “doing good” seems horrible. “Only the Mother does anything. Patriotism is a mistake. Every thing is a mistake,” he said when he came home. “It is all Mother.... All men are good. Only we cannot reach all.... I am never going to teach any more. Who am I, that I shd teach anyone?”

Silence & austerity & withdrawal are the keynotes of life to him just now and the withdrawal is too holy for us to touch. It is as if any moment not spent alone with “the Mother” consciously were so much lost....

He is all love now. There is not an impatient word, even for the wrong doer or the oppressor. It is all peace & self-sacrifice & rapture. “Swamiji is dead & gone” were the last words I heard him say.[5]

Another brief and heretofore unpublished description of the Swami during this period is contained in a journal kept by Swami Chidrupananda during a visit to India in 1934-35. Under the date January 11, 1935, Swami Chidrupananda (then Alfred T. Clifton) records a talk with Swami Shuddhananda, a disciple of Swami Vivekananda’s, during the course of which Swami Shuddhananda recalled his guru’s almost impenetrable abstraction in the late autumn of 1898. “After his pilgrimage to the cave of Amarnath in Kashmir”, he related, “one day he was questioning me about some simple personal matters of mine. I answered him, but he just said 'What?’ as if he had not heard me at all. Five or six times I answered him, but he gave no indication that he heard a word I said.'[6]

Broken health was also a deterrent to Swamiji’s proposed voyage to the West, and thus although hope returned for a time that he might undertake the trip, he had perforce to write to Mrs. Bull on December 29, 1898, from Vaidyanath, Deoghar, “You know already my inability to accompany you. I cannot gather strength enough.”’ Until the eleventh hour his Western friends looked for a miracle. “As you say,” Charlotte Sevier wrote to Josephine MacLeod on New Year’s Day from Almora, “there is time for Swamiji to change his mind yet, and I should not be the slightest surprised, if he turned up at the last moment on the ship to join you!'[8] But Swamiji did not, could not, leave Vaidyanath, and Mrs. Bull and Miss MacLeod sailed on to England without him. Still, there would be other ships, and his letter of December 29 had closed on an optimistic note: “Hoping soon join you in Europe or America.” 

But a month later he was still too ill to travel. On January 26, 1899, he wrote from Belur Math to Sister Christine, an American disciple:

Excuse my long delay in replying to your very beautiful note. The fact is I was once more in the vale of death. The old Diabetes has now disappeared, in its place has come what some doctors call asthma, others dispepsia owing to nervous prostration. However it is a most worrying disease, giving one the sensation of suffocation sometimes for days. I am best only in Calcutta so I am here for rest & quiet and low diet. If I get well by March I am going to start for Europe.[9]

Ever optimistic, Miss MacLeod sent money for his passage to Swami Saradananda, one of his brother monks, who, together with Swami Brahmananda, was in charge of the Math’s financial affairs. “I have advised Swamiji to come to the West at once,” she wrote to Mrs. Bull in March, and went on to give the gist of her advice: “There was no means to carry out his Indian schemes just now—& sent the ticket money—& I hope he would bring Turiyananda [a brother monk].'[10] Swami Saradananda replied to Miss MacLeod on March 18, 1899: “You have been so kind about the passage money of the Prophet. He has not come to me yet for it & I have deposited it in my bank account. I will give it to him whenever he is really in need of it.'[11 The Prophet” was one of the names Swamiji’s Western disciples in India called him among themselves; “the King” was another.)

In the meanwhile Sister Nivedita had also attempted, with  some success, to persuade Swamiji that a sea voyage would be just the thing for his health. “I urged Swami to leave in April,” she wrote in a long, unpublished letter, dated March 5 to 8, to Miss MacLeod, whom she addressed by the pet name Yum, short for Yum-Yum—no doubt after the chief of the three little maids in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, the three little maids in this case being, of course, Miss MacLeod, Mrs. Bull, and Nivedita, between whom, during their Indian travels with Swamiji, a deep, unbreakable bond had grown. (It is also said that the name Yum belonged to a Tibetan goddess of energy and seemed particularly suited to Miss MacLeod,)[12] Nivedita went on to recount her conversation with Swamiji.

. . . Won’t Sad [Swami Sadananda, a disciple of Swamiji’s] go with him to Port Said & Mr. St. [Edward T. Sturdy, an English disciple who had been in charge of the Vedanta work in London] meet him there? He dreaded being ill at sea so much. He said no . . . but if he cd take Turian [Swami Turiyananda) it wd be a solid — he cd leave him behind to work—somewhere. Only difficulty? Money. So I suggested that I shd write to Mr. Sturdy and suggest his [Swami Turiyananda’s] passage being paid out of the £80 in the Westminster Bank [funds allotted to Swamiji’s work]. He was greatly pleased but said it must be on my own responsibility. So if telegrams from America are not too expensive—will you back up this appeal? I do want him to go West. I know he wd be well—& he wants to go. He told me in the boat [a houseboat on the Ganga, where, for the sake of his health, Swamiji spent part of the day] how he loved to go into the middle of the river when “everything was sizzling” when the waves seemed to throb with heat & so on. It was such a wonderful picture of Maya.[13]

But it was Swamiji’s great brother monk Swami Brahmananda whose voice counted most. “When Swami Vivekananda  went to America for the second time, he had no great inclination for that,” Swami Turiyananda recalled many years later. “But Maharaj [Swami Brahmananda] said, 'There is a necessity for going.’ '[14] One necessity, of course, was that Swamiji was much in need of a long rest far from the scene of his intense labors and worries of the past two and a half years. Perhaps Swami Brahmananda saw other necessities as well, for others there were, both immediate and long-range, both obvious and as yet unrevealed. Gently he persuaded him, and by the beginning of April Swamiji had decided to sail—but not before Swami Saradananda would return to the Math from west India, where he had gone to collect funds. “(He) said he wouldn’t think of [going] till Saradananda’s return—with no one else could he trust the men,'[15] Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod on April 9, and two days later Swamiji himself would write to Sister Christine, “I have written to (Saradananda] to start for Calcutta as soon as possible. On his arrival I make over to him the Math and start for England.'[16] But there were to be still more delays. Swami Saradananda arrived on May 3 and a week later wrote to Mrs. Bull, “The Swamiji is better and still here, but intends to sail by the end of May, if berths couId be secured in the P.O.SS. which saiIs by the 30th inst. Margo [Nivedita] is looking after it'[17]

The fact was, however, that an outbreak of plague in Calcutta was causing Margo difficulties. “The Messageries [a French line] and the P.&O. [Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Line] are not taking any native passengers because they are such a plague!” Swami Saradananda wrote to Miss MacLeod (whom he too called Yum-Yum) and went on to explain the European point of view. “I mean they (the natives) are the personification of the disease, or plague walking on legs!'[18] The best Sister Nivedita could do under the circumstances was to secure berths on the Golconda, a passenger ship of the less finical British India Steam Navigation Company. The Golconda would not sail until June 20; but at least Swamiji’s passage to the West was booked.

“A big piece of news,” Swami Saradananda wrote in his letter of May 18 to Miss MacLeod, “but you have heard it perhaps from Nivedita long before. I am so slow! She keeps nothing for me to say! The Prophet’s passage has been engaged. Turiyananda accompanies him. They sail the 20th June per SS. Golconda of the B.I.S.N.'[19]

Swami Turiyananda, who was to accompany Swamiji to the Western world, was one of Sri Ramakrishna’s great disciples and a monk of austerity and meditation, averse by temperament to a life of outer activity and public preaching. Yet he had pledged himself to undertake whatever task Swamiji might ask of him. As is told in The life of Swami Vivekananda by his Eastern and Western Disciples (hereafter referred to as the Life), it had been in Darjeeling in 1897 that after urging Swami Turiyananda to no avail to preach in northern India, Swamiji finally “put his arms round his Gurubhai’s neck and laying his head against his breast, wept like a child, saying, 'Dear Haribhai, can’t you see me laying down my life, inch by inch, in fulfilling this mission of my Master, till I have come to the verge of death! Can you look on without helping by relieving me of a part of my great burden?’'[20] No one could resist such a plea from Swamiji, least of all one of his brother monks. Never again could Swami Turiyananda say no to his beloved brother—neither in the matter of going to the West nor, while there, in the difficult and; as it turned out, almost killing task that Swamiji was to assign him.

Sister Nivedita was also to sail on the Golconda. “[Swami] talks of taking me to America and setting me to lecture under a bureau, and so earn the money we shall need,” she wrote to “Yum” on June ‘7. “How glad I should be!'[21] Formerly Miss Margaret Noble, Nivedita was an intellectual young woman of Irish parentage, who, before she met Swami Vivekananda in London, had been engaged in running a school in accordance with the progressive methods of education then coming into vogue. She had also been actively, often impassionedly, interested in a number of political and social problems of the day. An articulate champion of the oppressed, an ardent advocate of social reform, brilliant, talented, and intense, she would almost surely have made a name as Margaret Noble had not her meeting with the Swami in the autumn of 1895 changed the entire tenor of her life. At first she had been resistant to his teachings. Yet the memory of him could not be brushed aside, and when in 1896 he had again come to London, she had once again gone to hear him. Then she had gone again and yet again, until, as she was to write years later, “the time came, before the Swami left England, when I addressed him as 'Master.’ ”[22] During 1897 she contemplated, with increasing fervor, the prospect of dedicating her life to the service of the Swami and his motherland, and in the early part of 1898 she voyaged, her mind made up, to India. She was then thirty years old. “Her portrait, at the period of her sailing,” her friend Eric Hammond, who was also an ardent admirer of Swami Vivekananda, was to write, “shows us a young but distinctive woman with luminous grey-blue eyes, with hair of light golden brown, with a complexion radiant in its clearness, with a smile ingratiating and alluring. Of medium height; alert in every muscle and movement, eager, enterprising, dauntless.'[23]

Giving Margaret Noble the first monastic vows—the vows of brahmacharya--shortly after her arrival in Calcutta, the Swami bestowed upon her the name Nivedita 'the dedicated.” “I am now convinced,” he had earlier written in response to her persistent offer to serve, “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 specially.'[24]

To Swami Ramakrishnananda he wrote in March of 1898, “Miss Noble is realIy an acquisition. She will soon surpass Mrs. Besant as a speaker, I am sure: '[25] He was referring to Annie Besant, the gifted leader of the Theosophists.

But Nivedita’s training, which took place largely during the tour of northern India and Kashmir, had not been easy. Idealistic and eager to serve India though she was, she was still fervently opinionated and unpliable, her ideas cemented together by prejudices so inbred as to be unknown to herself. Patiently, though not always gently, for the time was short, the Swami unearthed, unmasked, demolished all that stood in the path of her potential greatness and usefulness. It was a painful process. “My relation to our Master at this time can only be described as one of clash and conflict,'[26] she later wrote in The Master as I Saw Him. But in the end peace was restored and a tangible blessing bestowed. Returning to Calcutta in the fall of 1898, she set about the task the Swami had assigned hert—he establishment of a day school for Hindu girls. For the purpose, she rented a house in the Baghbazar area of Calcutta, and there, living under the Swami’s direction an austere and semi-secluded life, she taught the few girls who came to her. It was a small beginning, but the work of educating the girls of India, of molding great women--capable, strong, independent, and imbued with the basic spiritual ideals of the motherland—was to the Swami’s mind one of the extremely important aspects of his mission. “By all the means in our power the Nivedita Girls’ School in Calcutta should be put on a firm footing,'[27] he had written from Kashmir to Swami Brahmananda. Indeed it was in order to eatablish the school that he had so painstakingly trained Nivedita, spending more effort on her, as he once told Miss MacLeod, than he had spent on any other.

She plunged into the work with all the passionate intensity of her nature, determined to surmount the many obstacles that blocked her way, not the least of which was a lack of money. On February 7, 1899, she wrote to “Yum-Yum”:

[The King] told me that I must return to England. There was no money here—and no hope of any—and my work would be wasted unless I could now proceed to take in 10 or 20 girls as boarders. If I did this at all I must have vested security—so that if I died or turned etc., they might not be thrown back on their families’ hands. There must be permanent security. As far as girls went he could give me 100 any day from amongst his own disciples—some widows, some Brahmos....It was now only a question of when I should go.[28]

Swamiji’s advice had not struck Nivedita as being sound. It had seemed to her, rather, an unjustified admission of defeat. “I told him,” she continued to Miss MacLeod, 

that if he wished, of course I would go.... Afterwards I asked if I had failed in any way. He said, “No, you have done very well. We have failed.” Then I said “May I use what money remains?” “But there is none,” he said. I—“Why I have 620 rupees ($207] untouched.” He—”What! After all these months!” I—“And I think we are strong enough to work and fail if need be. Your idea of leaving in power is mere show after all. We need not think of show.” He “That’s true:” I—“This anxiety has had the good effect of making you consult me about the plan but it doesn’t seem terrible in itself to me. Don’t think further about providing for me. Let me go on till September on what I have—and work as if there were no chance of [my] being called home [by family need]. Then let us face the situation again.” To this he agreed.... 

To fly at the first difficulty [she added to “Yum”]—unless I am called home, and that is made clearly my duty—would be absurd.[29]

Swamiji allowed his disciple to learn for herself. A month later she was still determined to hang on. “Swami has had another serious talk with me,” she wrote to Miss MacLeod on March 8, . . . he came to the conclusion that Rama Bai’s work was the right thing (insofar as she had established boarding rather than day schools) & that if we cd only find money we’d have a house for the school—& widows’ home, & the Holy Mother & her Court in it as head—chaperonage wd be beyond question. “Mais I’argent, mon amie!” “Oh never mind Swami,” I said, “I’m beginning to think Yum’s plan of Paris will really happen next year, &. if it does, I believe it will prove to be my chance to get the work on a big footing. For this year I’ll just hold on!'[30]

Many more weeks passed before Nivedita finally acknowledged that Swamiji knew whereof he spoke.

Only yesterday morning [she wrote on May 21 in one of her many letters to Miss MacLeod] I gave in and told Swami that I knew my school was a waste of time. He was sympathetic, and told me he would give me some important work pending the time when I could go to Europe and bring back money for my “Home for Widows and Girls.'[31]

And the next day, to Nivedita’s great joy (“I danced and sang at the top of my voice”),[32] a letter had come from Miss MacLeod suggesting that she come to England now. There was nothing to stop her; Swamiji was agreeable, and by good fortune a one-way passage to London had been provided through previous arrangement by Miss Muller (who had herself returned to England, though in defection). Thus it happened that when Swamiji left India the second time, Sister Nivedita went with him to seek help in the Western world for her Indian work.

Once the decision to sail had been made, Swamiji was anxious to get to the West, as Swami Saradananda wrote to Mrs. Bull at the beginning of May. Yet to leave his brother monks for a long period of time was not a casual matter: his health being what it was, he was no doubt mindful of the possibility that he might never return, and there was still much to impart to those in India who were to carry on his work. For some five or six weeks before his sailing he again and again gathered his beloved brothers and his disciples around him. “It is very hard to do anything while the Swami is here “ Swami Saradananda wrote on May 11 to Mrs. Bull, “for he wants us all by his side so often, now that he has settled to sail. But he repays us all more than enough with his love & talks and we will all feel the void when he is gone.'[33]

One of Swamiji’s question classes of this period, which has been recorded in the Belur Math Diary, contains a theme that was to resound insistently throughout his coming visit to the West. The class was held on the evening of May 9, 1899, and Swamiji said in part:

The end should never be lost sight of. For all my respect for the Rishis of yore, I cannot but denounce in the strongest terms their method which they always followed in instructing the people. They always enjoined them to do certain things, but they never took care to explain to them the reason why they should do so. This method was pernicious to the very core and instead of enabling men to attain the end, it laid upon their shoulders a mass of meaningless nonsense. They said they kept the end hidden from the view of the people only because they could not understand its real meaning, because they were not worthy recipients of such high instructions. This adhikarivada, as they call it, is the result of pure selfishness.... Those who were so eager to support the adhikarivada ignored the tremendous fact of the infinite possibilities of the human soul. Every man is capable of receiving knowledge if it is imparted in his own language.... You must speak out the truth without any fear that it will perturb the weak. Truth is always truth. Speak it out boldly. Men are selfish, they do not want others to come up to the same level of their knowledge. But they explain it by saying that knowledge of the highest spiritual truths will bring about confusion in weak-minded men. I cannot believe in the self contradictory statement that light brings greater darkness. It is like the chance of losing life by being drowned in the deep of satchidananda. You call it the ocean of absolute existence and at the same time think that you would cease to exist. How absurd is that! 

......Men also desist from speaking out broad truths from fear of losing the respect of people. They always try to make a compromise between real eternal truths and the nonsensical prejudices of the people. The result is that the grand truths are soon buried under heaps of rubbish and the latter is eagerly held as real truths.... Know ye for certain that this attempt at compromise proceeds from arrant downright cowardice, and adhikarivada is a sure result of the most abominable sort of selfishness. Therefore repeatedly I say to you, be bold to speak out your convictions. Never hesitate to do so from fear of losing your respect or causing unhappy friction. . .[34]

The full truth, the highest truth for all—this was to be the keynote of the last great season of Swamiji’s mission to the world.

The time for farewells soon came. On the afternoon of June 17, three days before the date of sailing, Swamiji, accompanied by many members of the Belur Math and by his women relatives as well, went to the chapel on the Math grounds where the relics of Sri Ramakrishna were enshrined and worshiped. He had gone there to sing to his Master and take leave of him. Sister Nivedita, who might have written of that vibrating afternoon to Miss MacLeod, was not present, an address “on the behalf of the younger members of the Math” being given to her in another building.[35]Thus one learns of Swamiji’s farewell to his Master only through the Math Diary, in which one finds the following brief entry for June 17: 

. . . All others went to Thakur-Ghar [chapel] to hear Swamiji’s song, who sang many songs about Siva, Kali, etc. The women relations of Swamiji were also present. Swamiji was much excited.[36]

The words “much excited” in relation to Swami Vivekananda say a great deal.  He was surely in a state of divine ecstasy; for only a huge wave of spiritual emotion could create in him signs of fervor visible to others. “People do not notice the plunge of an elephant in a big lake,” Sri Ramakrishna used to say of the immense spiritual capacity of this beloved disciple.[37] Lost in ecstasy, Swamiji evidently sang for hours that afternoon, communing with his Master, knowing he heard. “When you sing,” Sri Ramakrishna had once said to him, “He who dwells here [touching his heart], like a snake, hisses as it were, and then, spreading His hood, quietly holds Himself steady and listens to your music.'[38]

About dusk (the Math Diary goes on to recount] Swamiji with the relations went to Baghbazar, via Simla by a carriage; eleven of us went by a boat to Baghbazar to join a dinner party given in honour of Swamiji’s departure by Babu M. N. Gupta.... Swamiji was invited by (Maharajah Sir] Jatindra Mohan Tagore to his house, [the latter having been] pleased by reading his Raja Yoga.[39]

In the late afternoon of June 19, the day before the sailing, all the members of the Belur Math (except Swami Brahmananda and a young brahmacharin) gathered at the monastery and a photographer was called in. “A photo of Swamiji and [one] of S. Turiyananda were taken,'[40] the Math Diary relates. Two group photographs were also taken, one of which has been reproduced in Vivekananda, A Biography in Pictures.[41] That night, the Diary continues, 

  a meeting was held to offer parting address to Swamiji in which all were present. The meeting was opened by Swami Saradananda. Then an address was given to Swamiji and Swami Turiyananda by the junior members of the Math. Swami Akhandananda, Swami Trigunatita, Haramohan Babu and the Marhatti Brahmin spoke a few words. Swami Turiyananda gave a short reply. Then Swamiji rose and spoke with earnestness and eloquence![42]

Swamiji’s talk to the assembled swamis and novices has been published in volume three of the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (hereafter referred to as the Complete Works) under the title “Sannyasa: Its Ideal and Practice.” Nevertheless, I shall quote here a short passage, as it appears in the Math Diary, for therein he sounded another theme which was to be heard again and again throughout his second visit to the West:

. . . In our country [he said], the old idea is to sit in a cave and meditate and die. To go ahead of others in salvation is wrong. One must learn sooner or later that one cannot get salvation if he does not try to seek the salvation of his brother. You must try to combine immense idealism and immense practicality in you. You must be prepared to go into deep meditation now and the next moment you must be ready to go and cultivate these fields....

The next thing to remember is that the aim of this institution is to make men. You must not merely learn what some rishi says. Those rishis are gone. Their opinions are also gone with them. You must be rishis yourselves. You are also as much a man as the greatest of men—even an Incarnation. You must stand on your own feet. What can mere book learning do? What can meditation do even? What can the mantras and tantras do? You must have this new method—the method of man-making.[43]

“Red blood began to flow through their veins as people listened to his words,” a Mr. Sachindranath Basu, who was present, later wrote to a disciple of Swamiji’s in Benares. “On hearing him, everyone felt himself to be a man. Swamiji said with great enthusiasm, 'My sons, all of you be men. This is what I want! If you are even a little successful, I shall feel my life has been meaningful’.'[44]

“Men should be taught to be practical, physically strong,” Swamiji had said six weeks or so earlier during an evening talk with Swami Saradananda about the policy of work to be followed in India. “A dozen such lions will conquer the world, not millions of sheep. Men should not be taught to imitate a personal ideal, however great '[45]

“Man-making”! This, as we shall see, Swamiji was to speak of as his “new gospel,” applying it not only to sannyasins, not only to Indians, but, in its most profound sense, to men and women everywhere and in all walks of life. Indeed, to make men and to teach the highest truth constituted in Swamiji’s language one and the same mission—and this mission, to his mind, formed the central task of his life on earth.

The following day, June 20, the Holy Mother, Sri Sarada Devi, gave a sumptuous feast at her house in Calcutta for her departing sons—Swamiji and Swami Turiyananda. All the sannyasins of the Math were invited. As is well known, Holy Mother was the wife of Sri Ramakrishna and Is today looked upon as one of India’s greatest saints; more, she is considered by millions to be an incarnation of the Divine Mother—God in the aspect of Mother. Her sanction and blessings had been on Swamiji’s first visit to the West; her blessings were now on this second trip as well. Indeed, in early January, when he had been too ill to leave India, the Holy Mother had assured Nivedita that he would go to the West later on, that he had much more to do.[46] There could have been no holier mandate than that prophesy and no send-off more propitious than this feast the Mother now gave to her beloved sons.

That afternoon about three o’clock it was time to leave for Prinsep’s Ghat on the Ganga. Although the ship would not weigh anchor until after five, it was necessary to be early, for the passengers would be made to undergo a strict examination at the dock for plague before being permitted to embark. The same Mr. Basu who is quoted above related that there had been talk of getting a carriage for Swamiji, but as no decision had been reached, Mr. Basu himself fetched a brougham and a pair of Arab horses from the house of a friend. In this conveyance Swamiji and his party drove off. He had changed from his sannyasin robes to a coat of Assam silk, trousers, and “a pair of cabin shoes, priced about ten or twelve rupees. And he had on a night cap,” Mr. Basu wrote (perhaps the small round hat he later wore in the West). “. . . But to tell you the truth,” he added, “he was not looking well.'[47]

All the members of the Monastery, the lay disciples of Sri Ramakrishna, many relatives and friends—a crowd of some fifty strong—followed Swamiji to the dock.“There was such a crowd of yellow and other robed ones to see us off!'[48] Nivedita later exclaimed in a letter to Miss MacLeod. Bouquets and garlands were showered on the two sannyasins, and some of these, overflowing, Swamiji gave to his English disciple.

About five o’clock a launch arrived from the Golconda, which was anchored in midstream some distance away. “Swamiji, the delight of our eyes, got on the launch and took leave of everybody,” Mr. Basu recounted. “Swami Turiyananda looked very serious.”

. . . When the launch was about to leave [he continued] all eyes became tearful, some eyes were flooded with tears. Then fifty people bowed with one accord to Swamiji, touching the ground with their foreheads. It was a very moving sight on the bank of the Ganga. The English people looked on with astonishment.... Then the launch left for the ship. As long as Swamiji could be seen, everybody waved their handkerchiefs. . . All faces were sad, as though they had immersed the image of the Divine Mother on the tenth [and last] day of Her worship.[49]

2

The Golconda moved slowly toward the sea, “Only in the high tide and during the day, the pilot can very carefully steer his ship, and in no other condition; consequently it took us two days to get out of the Hooghly [a delta branch of the Ganga],'[50] Swamiji wrote in his book Parivrajak, “the traveler” (translated in volume seven of the Complete works as “Memoirs of European Travel”). The Memoirs (as I shall refer to them) are, actually, a long, running travel-letter meant for serial publication in the Udbodhan, the young Bengali-language magazine of the Ramakrishna Order. Writing the letters to help the magazine along, Swamiji couched them in “a light humorous tone in Bengali,” which, the editor of the translation tells us, “is impossible to render in English.” Much of the startling originality of Swamiji’s style is also lost on us today, for he wrote these Udbodhan letters in colloquial Bengal—then an almost unheard of departure from the classical Sanskritic style that had characterized Bengali literature. The style he used for these letters, Nivedita told Miss MacLeod, was “a deliberate maltreatment of the Bengali language which makes him about as difficult to read as Carlyle when he first appeared and which is purposed to serve certain tremendous ends!!![51] predictably, the intelligentsia of Bengal had been scandalized. “When these articles began to be published in [the Udbodhan], . . . the orthodox literati were critical of his style of composition,” Swamiji’s brother Bhupendranath Datta wrote many years later in his book Swami Vivekananda: Patriot Prophet.

They were purists of the old Sanskrit school [he continued]. They could not tolerate the expressions used by Swamiji in his Bengalee writings.... This school used to ridicule that Udbodhan is Udbandhana, i.e. death by hanging. That means it hangs the language! . . . From the conservative literati came sneer and patronizing tone regarding the style of writing and the knowledge of Bengalee language of Swami Vivekananda. From the highbrow educated class which posed itself as the custodian of literary propriety came not a word of appreciation.[52]


One of the first men to acknowledge Swamiji as a master of Bengali prose was the poet Rabindranath Tagore, whose early works had also suffered the scorn of literary Bengal. “Go at once and read this book of Vivekananda,” he was to tell an eminent fellow writer in connection with Prachya O Paschatya (“The East and the West”), which Swamiji had also written in Bengali for the Udbodhan. “How colloquial Bengalee can appear as a living and forceful language .  .  . you will realize after reading it.'[53]Thereupon he praised the book unstintingly.


Today, among the most well known of Swamiji’s Bengali prose passages—many of which are studied in Indian schools and colleges as examples of a great literary style—is a selection from the Memoirs in which he describes the river banks as they appeared to him from the Golconda as the ship crept a hundred miles or so amid treacherous sand drifts to the Bay of Bengal. It was a scene he had first thrilled to on his return from the West in 1897:


One cannot appreciate the beauty of the banks of our Ganga, unless one is returning from foreign countries and entering the river by its mouth at Diamond Harbour [the translation reads]. That blue, blue sky, containing in its bosom black clouds, with golden-fringed whitish clouds below them, underneath which clumps of cocoanut and date palms toss their tufted heads like a thousand chowries, and below them again is an assemblage of light, deep, yellowish, slightly dark and other varieties of green massed together—these being the mango, lichi, black-berry, and jack-fruit trees, with an exuberance of leaves and foliage that entirely hide the trunk, branches, and twigs—while, close by, clusters of bamboos toss in the wind, and at the foot of all lies that grass, before whose soft and glossy surface the carpets of Yarkand, Persia, and Turkistan are almost as nothing—as far as the eye can reach that green, green grass looking as even as if some one had trimmed and pruned it, and stretching right down to the edge of the river—as far down the banks as where the gentle waves of the Ganga have submerged and are pushing playfully against, the land is framed with green grass, and just below this is the sacred water of the Ganga. And if you sweep your eye from the horizon right up to the zenith, you will notice within a single line such a play of diverse colours, such manifold shades of the same colour, as you have witnessed nowhere else. I say, have you ever come under the fascination of colours—the sort of fascination which impels the moths to die in the flame, and the bees to starve themselves to death in the prison of flowers? I tell you one thing—if you want to enjoy the beauty of Gangetic scenery, enjoy it to your heart’s content now, for very soon the whole aspect will be altered. . . . You will find instead the enveloping smoke of coal, and standing ghost-like in the midst of that smoke, the half-distinct chimneys of the factories![54]


Neither factory nor smog marred Swamiji’s and Nivedita’s view as they sat on deck, watching the banks of the Ganga slowly glide by. Almost at once Swamiji began the marvelous talks that were to continue day after day throughout the long voyage, and almost at once he gave voice to the theme that was to sound forth again and again and in a variety of ways during this second visit to the West. “It was while we sat chatting in the River on the first afternoon,” Sister Nivedita was to write in The Master as I Saw Him, “that he suddenly exclaimed, 'Yes! 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 great scale!’ And these words link themselves in my memory,” Nivedita continued, “with those of another day, when I had been reminding him of the rareness of criminality in India. And he turned on me, full of sorrowful protest. 'Would God it were otherwise in my land!’ he said, 'for this is verily the virtuousness of death!’ “[55]


(Something of Swamiji’s sorrow over the general debility and lassitude of his countrymen can be gauged by the pleasure he was later to take in the contrasting hardiness of the Golconda’s Indian crew. “Seeing these Bengali lascars, coalmen, servants, and boys at work,” he was to write on board ship, “the feeling of despair with regard to my countrymen which I had, was much abated. How they are slowly developing their manhood, with a strong physique—how fearless, yet docile! That cringing, sycophant attitude common to 'natives’ even the sweepers do not possess—what a transformation!”)[56]


The Golconda came at last to the meeting of the Ganga with the Bay of Bengal. “How beautiful!” Swamiji wrote in his travel-letter, and continued:


As far as the eye reaches, the deep blue waters of the sea are rising into foamy waves and dancing rhythmically to the winds. Behind us lie the sacred waters of the Ganga, whitened with the ashes of Shiva’s body, as we read in the description, “Shiva’s matted locks whitened by the foam of the Ganga.” The water of the Ganga is comparatively still. In front of us lies the parting line between the waters. There ends the white water. Now begin the blue waters of the ocean—before, behind, and all round there is only blue, blue water everywhere, breaking incessantly into waves. The sea has blue hair, his body is of a blue complexion, and his garment is also blue.[57]


“As the ship crossed the line, touching the sea for the first time,” Sister Nivedita recalled years later, “[Swamiji] chanted, 'Namah Shivaya! Namah Shivaya! Passing from the Land of Renunciation to the Land of the Enjoyment of the World!’ '[58]


And then he lost himself for a time, enthralled by the sounds of the ship and the turbulent sea, until his absorption was broken by the voices of some of his fellow passengers who hailed the ocean with a chant of their own. “Overhead the thunder of the cloudy monsoon sky,” he wrote,


 on all sides the dance and roar of foam-crested waves, and the din of the powerful engines of our ship setting at naught the might of the sea—it was a grand conglomeration of sounds, to which I was listening, lost in wonder, as if in a half waking state, when, all of a sudden, drowning all these sounds, there fell upon my ears the deep and sonorous music of commingled male and female voices singing in chorus the national anthem, 'Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves!’ Startled, I looked around and found that the ship was rolling heavily, and brother Turiyananda, holding his head with his hands was struggling against an attack of seasickness.[59]


Thus, with a variety of happenings, the voyage to the West began. Yet the turbulent blue sea into which the Golconda had entered was, in a sense, still a part of the “Land of Renunciation,” for the sacred soil of India literally carpeted its floor. In those days the ocean was, to be sure, considered sacred by orthodox Hindus—too sacred to cross—but the phenomenon called the “Ganges Cone” was not guessed at; only recently did a six-year survey (1959-1965) of the bottom of the Indian Ocean reveal that the enormous quantities of mud and silt that the Ganga brings, day after day, century after century, from the Himalayas, Uttar Pradesh, and the Gangetic plain down to the Bay of Bengal pile up on the edge of the continental shelf and periodically avalanche with incredible force and speed down that sheer precipice onto the ocean floor far below. Powerful submarine currents of mud and silt-laden water then hurtle southward and fan out—primarily westward, as though drawn back toward the mother land—to create over the millennia a vast, smooth plain of deep soil, which extends from India to Burma and the Andaman Islands and slopes hundreds of miles south, far beyond Ceylon [now Sri Lanka]. Thus one can say that the waters of the Bay of Bengal are indeed holy waters, not only because the Ganga has mingled with them, but because their basin is richly covered with Ganga silt, as holy to the Hindus as is the Ganga itself.[60]The whole eastern coast of India and the shores of Ceylon are washed with that water and thereby sanctified. Mother Ganga’s embrace was wide indeed; and Swamiji would not, in fact, leave her ambience until the Golconda headed west for the Arabian Sea, a departure that would not take place for many days.


The ship reached Madras during the night of June 24 and anchored in the still waters of the harbor. For the past few days the people of Madras had been in a state of emotional turmoil. First, they had received telegraphed news of Swami Vivekananda’s coming and, filled with joy, had prepared to give him a hero’s welcome, even as they had done in 1897 on his return from the West. Next, they had learned that no Indian passenger of the Golconda was to be allowed to disembark, and their mood had swung from excited, festive anticipation to keen disappointment. “A public meeting was held at Castle Kernan,” an article in the Madras Hindu related, “at which it was resolved to address [the] Government, praying that the Swami Vivekananda be permitted to land at Madras and stop there for a few hours before embarking again.'[61]


On the morning of Sunday, June 25, “two European Police Inspectors, a Madrasi Jamadar and a dozen Constables boarded our ship,” Swamiji wrote in his Memoirs, “and told me that 'natives’ were not allowed to land on the shore, but the Europeans were. A 'native,’ whoever he might be, was of such dirty habits that there was every chance of his carrying plague germs about; but the Madrasis had asked for a special permit for me, which they might obtain.'[62]


No such permit was forthcoming. “Message after message was dispatched to the Blue Heights,” the Hindu report read, “but the Swami’s friends and admirers got only some vague replies, but no sanction was wired to the Port Health Officer and the result was that the Health Officer could not allow him to land.'[63] Nor was anyone allowed to visit the ship, lest he be infected by a “native”—a term laden with pejorative overtones. The ship’s captain and the European passengers, exempt somehow from plague, were allowed to go and come as they pleased.


Swamiji strode the deck like a captive lion. “I found him fretfully pacing up and down . . . and muttering to himself,” Swami Turiyananda recounted many years later. “ 'Why do they not arrest me? Why do they not take my life?’ At this I asked, 'Why? What will be the result if you are arrested or killed?’ Swamiji said, 'Don’t you see that the whole country is looking to me? If they do anything against me, it will rise up like a rocket.'[64]Swamiji may have been right in so judging the underlying temper of his motherland, but as it was, the Madras people, though deprived of his darshan by a discriminatory decree, were compliant and resigned.


From one point of view, the regulation that kept him aboard the Golconda was heaven-sent. “It was quite exciting at Madras” Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod. “Crowds of people and an appeal to the Governor to let [Swamiji] land. But Plague considerations prevailed, and we were kept on board, to my great relief, for the sea-voyage is doing him a world of good, and one day of crowds and lectures would be enough to pull him down from his present magnificent condition into the lowest depths of exhaustion.'[65]


From this standpoint of Swamiji’s health, things were bad enough as they were. All day long crowds of boats put out from shore to cluster round the ship. Hundreds of his disciples and friends called up to him as he stood on deck, offered him presents of all sorts, delivered long addresses. In his own words :


. . . I found all my friends—Alasinga, Biligiri, Narasimhachary, Dr. Nanjunda Rao, Kidi [Singaravelu Mudaliar], and others on the boats. Basketfuls of mangoes, plantains, cocoanuts, cooked rice-and-curd, and heaps of sweet and salt delicacies, etc., began to come in. Gradually the crowd thickened—men, women, and children in boats everywhere. I found also Mr. Chamier, my English friend who had come out to Madras as a barrister-at-law. Ramakrishnananda and Nirbhayananda made some trips near to the ship. [Swami Ramakrishnananda was one of the great monastic disciples of Sri Ramakrishna; at Swamiji’s request he had gone from Belur to Madras in March of 1897 and had there started a monastery and teaching center. He brought sweets and other delicacies to the ship, and Swamiji lowered over the side a large earthenware jar of Ganges water*(1) Swami Nirbhayananda was a disciple of Swamiji’s who had taken his sannyasa vows at the Belur Math in the early part of 1897.] They insisted on staying on the boat the whole day in the hot sun, and I had to remonstrate with them, when they gave up the idea. And as the news of my not being permitted to land got abroad, the crowd of boats began to increase still more. I, too, began to feel exhaustion from leaning against the railings too long. Then I bade farewell to my Madrasi friends and entered my cabin. Alasinga got no opportunity to consult me about the Brahmavadin and the Madras work; so he was going to accompany me to Colombo. The ship left the harbour in the evening, when I heard a great shout, and peeping through the cabin window I found that about a thousand Madrasi men, women, and children who had been sitting on the harbour walls, gave this farewell shout when the ship started. On a joyous occasion the Madrasis, also, like the Bengalis, make the peculiar sound with the tongue known as the hulu.[66]


* (1) For an account of the meeting of the Swamis in Madras harbor see Swami Ramakrishnananda by Swami Tapasyananda (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1972), pages 129-30. The jar of Ganga water that was lowered over the side of the Golconda by Swamiji, and thereby made doubly sacred, was preserved by Swami Ramakrishnananda. It was for long worshiped in the shrine at the Sri Ramakrishna Math in Madras and perhaps still is.

According to Swamiji’s Memoirs, the S.S. Golconda took four days to sail from Madras to Colombo, going the far way around Ceylon. Yet according to the calendar of events as we know it, the trip took three nights and two daysclong enough even so. The seas were wild: “That rising and heaving of waves which had commenced from the mouth of the Ganga began to increase as we advanced,” Swamiji wrote, “and after we had left Madras it increased still more.”


The ship began to roll heavily [he continued], and the passengers felt terribly sea-sick.... When the prow of the ship settled into the hollow of a wave and the stern was pitched up, the screw rose clear out of the water and continued to wheel in the air, giving a tremendous jolting to the whole vessel. And the second class [where two frightened Hindu boys had a dark and airless cabin] then shook as when a rat is seized by a cat and shaken.[67]


Swamiji apparently did not suffer from seasickness; nor did his Madrasi disciple Alasinga Perumal, who had hurriedly bought a ticket to Colombo and boarded the ship. The latter was indeed notably unconcerned by the rolling, bucking, and shimmying of the Golconda. “A Madrasi by birth,” Swamiji wrote of him, “with his head shaven so as to leave a tuft in the centre, barefooted, and wearing the dhoti, [his forehead overspread with the caste-mark of the Tengale sect,] he got into the first class; he was strolling now and then on the deck and when hungry, was chewing some of the popped rice and peas!'[68] which, for the sake of caste purity, he had brought with him in two small bundles.


Swamiji was very fond of this disciple, whom he had known before his first visit to the West and who at his urging and direction had started the English-language Brahmavadin in September of 1895. At first a fortnightly, the magazine was to become a monthly in November of 1899—a change that Alasinga perhaps wanted to discuss, among other things, with  Swamiji. “One rarely finds men like our Alasinga in this world,” Swamiji wrote in his Memoirs, “-one so unselfish, so hardworking and devoted to his Guru, and such an obedient disciple is indeed very rare on earth.'[69]


On the voyage to Ceylon, Swamiji spoke to Nivedita of the extreme scarcity of such unswerving love. “The love on which he could most surely count if he became a drunkard tomorrow,” she wrote to Miss MacLeod, recalling his words, “was not that of his disciples, they would kick him out in horror, but [that of] a few (not all) of his Gurubhais. To them he would be still the same. 'And mind this, Margot,’ he said, 'it is when half a-dozen people learn to love like this that a new religion begins. Not till then.... Give me half a-dozen disciples like that, and I will conquer the world.’'[70]


The voyage to Colombo was for the most part a scenic one. “We have been coasting the east of Ceylon,” Nivedita wrote to “Yum-Yum,” “and have been watching a whale play. Before breakfast I could smell the spring breezes, though only Swami would acknowledge that I was not deceived.'[71]In an article written on board ship she described the changing view of Ceylon’s coast, which cast upon the gazer the spell of that ancient and holy epic, the Ramayana:


We are rounding Cape Dondra. All day long we have been coasting the eastern side of Ceylon, a land lovely with palm-forest and pasture, with rose lit cliff and curving broken rock.


It is the Hour of Peace. Every day at this time, as sunlight dies, the sea begins to utter itself in a new tone. A kind of sorrowful sighing mingles with the sound of waves, and every night and all night long, goes this low moaning of the waters. But to-night it is as if the soft voice spoke to itself a name, —the name of Sita; and again, as a higher surge than common rises, and beats against the ship, “Jay Sita-Ram! Sita-Ram! Jay! Jay! Jay!” one hears dying away in the distance.


That snow-white ring of surf against the shore has significance all its own—here, where it girdles the prison of the most perfect wife the world has ever seen.


Brynhild, the warrior princess of the northern story could become at only through the Circle of Flame—but Sita—type and crown of Indian womanhood—has for her magic guard the “wine-dark sea,” and the fair sea-foam that breaks among the rocks....


Tomorrow at seven we reach Colombo; only a few days more, and the beloved land will be a memory; an ever-present and ever-beautiful memory truly, but no more an actuality. There is pain in all partings: in this, though it is only for a while, how much![72]


Before the parting came there was an afternoon and evening of festivities in Colombo, for here, too, the people knew and revered Swamiji. They had given him a triumphant reception in January of 1897 and were overjoyed at his return, brief though it was. Colombo was more fortunate than Madras, for a permit to land was granted him—though not without ado. “With great delay and difficulty,” Sister Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod a week later, “we got off the boat after midday.” But once having disembarked, they “went from one hospitality to another.'[73] In his Memoirs, Swamiji himself tells a little of his day in Colombo and of the old friends he met once again:


Sir [the Honorable P.) Coomara Swami is the foremost man among the Hindus: his wife is an English lady, and his son is barefooted and wears the sacred ashes on his forehead. Mr. Arunachalam and other friends came to meet me. After a long time I partook of mulagutanni and the king-cocoanut. They put some green cocoanuts into my cabin. I met Mrs. Higgins and visited her boarding school for Buddhist girls. I also visited the monastery and school of our old acquaintance, the Countess of Canovara.


The Countess’ house is more spacious and furnished than Mrs. Higgins’. The Countess has invested her own money, whereas Mrs. Higgins has collected the money by begging. The Countess herself wears a gerua cloth after the mode of the Bengali sari.[74]


(The Countess of Canovara, an American woman, had visited Calcutta a few months earlier. “She has started 15 schools [in Ceylon],” Nivedita, much impressed, had written at that time, “including one orphanage & one industrial school . . . of wh. one has 320 pupils. Government helps her with large grants. I felt wondrous respect for her on hearing this—for whatever the quality of the schools—to have any at all is a great step.'[75]


In her letter of July 5 to Miss MacLeod, Nivedita wrote of the gala farewell reception given to Swamiji at the last house he visited on his way back to the Golconda:


Last of all, driving down to the quay, we had to enter a house where we were met outside by drums, fifes and tom-toms. Inside a dense crowd, and fruit on a table. Oh what a crowd! And how they looked at Swamiji! . . . I could have done anything for any one of them for the way they looked [at him]. He pointed to his European clothes, but it made no difference. He was their Avatar just the same. Then he took a small fruit, and sipped milk (remembering even then, to make me sip from the same glass).... And then, as he turned to go, you should have heard the shout, “Praise to Siva, the Lord of Parbutty! Hail!” It was deafening. And the crowd in the street when we got out! and the crowd on the landing stage! Then came our first host and hostess back to see us off with endless presents.... And there that quiet Europeanised-looking member of the Government stood and 3 times called aloud the praise of Siva, and then 3 times “Swami Vivekanandaji-ki namaskar!” While the crowd cheered, and we steamed away to [the] Golconda.[76]


And now, at last, the Golconda steaming away from Colombo in the late evening of Wednesday, June 28, began indeed the long voyage from “the Land of Renunciation to the Land of the Enjoyment of the World.”

3

The Golconda’s passage across the Arabian Sea seems to have been timed to meet the worst of the monsoon head on. As the ship proceeded west, the seas grew more and more wild.

Now we have to encounter full monsoon conditions [Swamiji wrote]. The more our ship is advancing, the more is the storm increasing and the louder is the wind howling—there is incessant rain, and enveloping darkness; huge waves are dashing on the ship’s deck with a terrible noise, so that it is impossible to stay on the deck. The dining table has been divided into small squares by means of wood partitions, placed lengthwise and breadthwise, called fiddle, out of which the food articles are jumping up. The ship is creaking, as if it were going to break to pieces. The Captain says, “Well, this year’s monsoon seems to be unusually rough.” . . .


. . . Near the island of Socotra [a little over 450 miles east of Aden], the monsoon was at its worst. The Captain remarked that this was the centre of the monsoon, and that if we could pass this, we should gradually reach calmer waters. And so we did. And this nightmare also ended.[77]


It was a long nightmare: the little Golconda took ten days to flounder along, pitching and shuddering, from Colombo to Aden instead of the usual six, and the accommodations, under any conditions, were none too comfortable. At first Swamiji and Swami Turiyananda had been assigned one of the two cabins on the topmost, or hurricane, deck (the ship’s doctor occupied the other), but soon because of the excessive heat from the engine room, which was straight below, they moved to a lower deck. As cabins went in those days, this second cabin was as much as one could reasonably ask for. “The passengers’ cabins,” Swamiji wrote, 

    are made of wood. And there are many holes along the top and bottom of the wooden walls of these, for the free passage of air. The walls are painted over with ivory paint which has cost nearly £25 per room. There is a small carpet spread on the floor and against one of the walls are fixed two frameworks somewhat resembling iron bedsteads without legs, one on top of the other. Similarly on the opposite wall. Just opposite the entrance there is a wash-basin over which there is a looking-glass, two bottles, and two tumblers for drinking water.... Below the lower bedstead, there is room for storing the trunks and bags.[78]


In 1900 the Golconda was not a dazzling new steamship; on the other hand, built in 1887, it was not decrepit, nor was it, for those days, immoderately small. Its tonnage was 5,874 (the tonnage of the average-size passenger liner today is about 20,000; the first Queen Elizabeth was over 83,000). It was 422 feet long and 48 feet wide; it had one screw—the one that periodically rose out of the water and shook the ship like a cat shaking a rat—four masts, two funnels, and a steel and iron hull. The first class could accommodate seventy-eight passengers, and the second class, twenty-four. There was no steerage, and although the ships of the British India Line took deck passengers, the Golconda had none on this particular voyage.


The first-class cabins, as Swamiji pointed out, were somewhat wider than those of the second class, but even so, they could not be described as roomy; there was not enough space between the bunks for a comfortable armchair; nor did the air holes afford much ventilation—particularly in monsoon weather, for, hot though it was, the portholes on the lower decks had to be kept shut. “One day Brother Turiyananda kept the window slightly ajar,” Swamiji recounted, “and a fragment of a wave entered and flooded the whole cabin!'[79]


Nor could one sit comfortably on the wildly rolling and often drenched deck. The best place to pass the time with moderate ease would have been the ship’s saloon, and there, no doubt, the two Swamis and Sister Nivedita spent many hours, reading and writing when possible, but mostly listening to the captain’s “cock and bull stories, ” perhaps chatting with the other passengers, best of all talking among themselves.


Except for Swamiji, Swami Turiyananda, Swami Saradananda’s brother—Satishchandra Chakravarti, who had left Calcutta with the party—and the two seasick Bengali boys in the second class, whom the Swamis befriended and consoled, the Golconda’s passengers were either American or English. When the waves they ruled permitted, the latter paced the deck “with lordly steps, . . . ..dressed in charming attire, with a complexion like the moonbeams—looking like self reliance and self confidence personified, and appearing to the black races as pictures of pride and haughtiness.'[80] There were two Christian missionaries on board, one of whom was an American  ‘a very good man named Bogesh.” (“Boggess they are called,” Sister Nivedita remarked. “Isn’t that a fearful fate?”)[81] Swamiji paints a graphic picture of this Mr. Bogesh and his family:


He has been married seven years, and his children number half-a-dozen. The servants call it God’s special grace—though the children, perhaps, feel differently. Spreading a shabby bed on the deck, Mrs. Bogesh makes all the children lie on it and goes away. They make themselves dirty and roll on the deck, crying aloud. The passengers on the deck are always nervous, and cannot walk about .. . lest they might tread on any of Bogesh’s children. Making the youngest baby lie in a square basket with high sides, Mr. and Mrs. Bogesh sit in a corner for four hours huddled together. One finds it hard to appreciate your European civilization....


. . . A little girl named Tootle is accompanying her father; she has lost her mother. Our Nivedita has become a mother to Tootle and Bogesh’s children.... One sickly child of Bogesh suffers specially from want of care; the poor thing is rolling on the wooden deck the whole day. The old Captain now and then comes out of his cabin and feeds him with some soup with a spoon, and pointing to his slender legs says, “What a sickly child—how sadly neglected!'[82]


Swamiji records an exchange between himself and Mr. Bogesh during the Golconda’s passage up the Red Sea, which is, I believe, worth repeating. The two men were probably walking on deck, when the missionary turned to Swamiji and informed him: “This is the Red Sea, which the Jewish leader Moses crossed on foot with his followers. And the army which the Egyptian King Pharaoh sent for their capture was drowned in the sea, the wheels of their war-chariots having stuck in the mud.”


He further said [Swamiji relates] that this could now be proved by modern scientific reasons. Nowadays in every country it has become a fashion to support the miracles of religion by scientific argument. My friend [said Swamiji to the missionary], if these phenomena were the outcome of natural forces, where then’ is there room for [the] intervention of your god “Yave”? A great dilemma!—If they are opposed to science, those miracles are mere myths, and your religion is false. And even if they are borne out by science, the glory of your god is superfluous, and they are just like any other natural phenomena. To this, Priest Bogesh replied, “I do not know all the issues involved in it, I simply believe.” Swamiji respected Mr. Bogesh’s retreat to the bosom of faith. “This is all right,” he wrote, “—one can tolerate that. But then there is a party of men who are very clear in criticising others’ views and bringing forward arguments against them, but where they themselves are concerned, they simply say, 'I only believe, my mind testifies to their veracity.’ These are simply unbearable: Pooh! What weight has their intellect? Absolutely nothing! '[83]


Throughout the voyage Swamiji wrote a portion, at least, of his memoirs for the Udbodhan, working at times “like a slave in his cabin.'[84]. Later during his short stay in England, he completed the first part (which closed with the arrival of the Golconda at London). The letters were lively, replete with detailed observations, full of interest and wit, and abounding in information. He wrote, among other things, of the history of shipbuilding from primitive canoes and rafts to modern warships and passenger steamers; of the religion of southern India; of the history of Ceylon, of Aden, of Egypt, of the Suez Canal, of the ancient Mediterranean civilizations; he discussed the then modern methods of historical research and criticism; he described the scenes; events, and conditions of the voyage in vivid detail, telling not only of the ship, the passengers, and the crew, but giving, for instance, a play-by-play account of the landing of a shark in the harbor of Suez. His incredibly vast fund of knowledge poured out from his fingertips, as it were, onto the pagen—ot in a scholarly manner, for these letters were meant for popular reading, but with his genius for presenting the essence of any matter in a few colorful and forceful words, which in this case (though he did not hesitate to roundly berate his countrymen now and then) glowed with humor and wit.


But the best part of the voyage—his own conversation—was recorded by Sister Nivedita. At first, she had entertained herself by “testing race questions. ” As she wrote to Miss MacLeod on June 28, her object had been to break down the barriers the British passengers erected between themselves and Swamiji:


I am having great fun out of it, all the time.... Swamiji was so much with me the first day or two. Whenever a man spoke to me, I always contrived to shunt the conversation on to him, making it evident that I sailed under his flag. Presently, I found that every WOMAN had made my acquaintance, in spite of my reserve. So of course the battle is won! At present a good many men are in the habit of coming up and talking to me, then if a “Native” comes to the other side, they suddenly disappear, during my effusive greeting. But even this is only some. Others stay and talk to Swami before they go.... What’s the good of it all? I don’t know. I can’t set things all right all over India. Yet . . . it certainly seems worth while if [30 or 40 young fellows] learn to sit at Swami’s feet and call for light. Yet race prejudice is a great barrier.[85]


After a time Sister Nivedita quieted down, herself sitting at Swamiji’s feet with an absorbed and single mind; thus a week or so after leaving Ceylon she could write to Miss MacLeod of his flowing talk: “In spite of discomfort there have been hours so glorious that one would go through 50 monsoons for them.'[86]And in The Master as I Saw Him:


To this voyage of six weeks I look back as the greatest occasion of my life. I missed no opportunity of the Swami’s society. that presented itself, and accepted practically no other, filling up the time with quiet writing and needlework; thus I received one long continuous impression of his mind and personality, for which I can never be sufficiently thankful.


From the beginning of the voyage to the end, the flow of thought and story went on. One never knew what moment would see the flash of intuition, and hear the ringing utterance of some fresh truth.... Stories of the ShivaRatri, or Dark Night of Shiva, of Prithi Rai, of the judgement seat of Vikramaditya, of Buddha and Yasodhara,  and a thousand more, were constantly coming up. And a noticeable point was, that one never heard the same thing twice. There was the perpetual study of caste; the constant examination and restatement of ideas; the talk of work, past, present, and future; and above all the vindication of Humanity, never abandoned, never weakened, always rising to new heights of defence of the undefended, of chivalry for the weak....


Now he would answer a question, with infinite patience, and again he would play with historic and literary speculations. Again and again his mind would return to the Buddhist period, as the crux of a real understanding of Indian history.[87]


Sometimes Nivedita would beg Swamiji to stop the stream of his thought, for she could contain no more without pouring what she had heard into a notebook. Years later those notes were to serve as the basis. of four chapters (close to ten thousands words) in her Master as I Saw Him---chapters in which she recorded the substance of those long and glorious Golconda talks that went on day after day and that were, in part at least, a continuation of her training. Swamiji steeped her mind in his; he imbued her with a profound understanding of India—its past glories, the hope of its reawakening to a future more glorious still. He revealed to her the inmost significance of the motherland’s ideals, customs, and ways of thought; he initiated her more and more deeply into the realms of spirituality. She understood that much of what he told her was a trust to be passed on to others. “Every now and then,” she wrote, “he would return with consuming eagerness, to the great purpose of his life. And when he did this, I listened with an anxious mind, striving to treasure up each word that he let fall. For I knew that here I was but the transmitter, but the bridge, between him and that countless host, of his own people, who would yet arise, and seek to make good his dreams.'[88]


Swamiji’s trust in Nivedita as a transmitter of his thought was not misplaced: he had early recognized her ability to grasp both the depth and subtlety of his ideas and to appreciate their immense importance to the world. He recognized as well her gifts as a writer and speaker. And indeed it is to her books that we owe much of our knowledge of his life and thought during the months she spent in his company.

4

There was a side to Swamiji’s mood during this period, however, that Nivedita did not record and that has been given scant attention by his biographers. Yet it was an important element in the drama of this second visit to the West. To judge solely from the information we have had of his voyage from Calcutta to England, it would appear that he was in a wholly cheerful and relaxed state of mind. He wrote entertainingly and humorously; he talked for hours on end with his traveling companions; he was amused, as he wrote, by the captain’s tall yarns of adventure at sea; he exercised now and then with dumbbells; his health noticeably improved. “The rolling and pitching do not seem to cause him the least suffering, but rather to do him good[89],” Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod on July 5, two or three days before reaching Aden. And his health continued to improve. Yet there is evidence that on one level at least his mood was by no means serene or joyful. Nor is this surprising.


The last two years had been for him a period of physical and mental torture. It is true that during those years he had accomplished the major part of his mission to his people, but they had not marked one long, smooth road to success. They had, rather, been years of struggle against enormous odds, years in which a sense of frustration had often torn at him, in which he had known many days of despondency, of despairing impatience, indeed of anguish. Again and again he was to refer to that period of his life as to some epochal storm through  which he had passed. “Oh what a load of suffering in these two and a half years I am leaving behind me now!'[90] he had exclaimed as the Golconda moved down the Ganga to the Bay of Bengal. Nor was it all left behind; the effect of those years on his worn-out body was to remain with him for many months to come. Again and again he would refer to that “hell”.


“For the last year also I have not been in my senses at all,” he was to write to Swami Brahmananda from New York on November 21, 1899. “I do not know why. I had to pass through this hell—and I have.'[91] From San Francisco he wrote to Mary Hale in March of 1900, “The last two years have been specially bad. I have been living in mental hell. It is partially lifted now, and I hope for better days, better states'[92].And around the same time to Sister Christine, “I feel sometimes that freedom is near at hand and the tortures of the last two years have been great lessons in many ways. Disease and misfortune come to do us good in the long run, although at the time we feel that we are submerged for ever.'[93]


One could, but need not, cite more references to the past two years. They had been years during which he had with lightning speed and an expenditure of almost inconceivable energy on every level—physical, mental, spiritual. The inability of the Indian masses to respond and the resistance, indeed the opposition, of many sections of the upper classes to his ideas had been heartbreaking. It is true that on his return from his first visit to the West in the early part of 1897 he had been greeted everywhere with resounding ovations; triumphal arches had been erected, flowers had been strewn in his path, his carriage had been drawn by high dignitaries, glowing addresses of welcome had been presented to him. He had been worshiped everywhere as a god; and he had been deeply moved by his country’s homage. But he had not been misled.


“I do not expect any help from India, in spite of all the jubilating over me,” he had written to Sister Nivedita (then  Margaret Noble) in June of 1897. “They are so poor!'[94]India’s poverty had not been the only obstacle confronting him. Powerful groups had opposed him. Orthodox Brahmins in various parts of the country had frowned upon this young sannyasin who had crossed the ocean, who had taught the sacred Vedas to mlechchhas, and who had, it was rumored, eaten beef! Other groups had also stood against him, such as the Brahmo Samaj, an influential neo-Hindu religious and social-reform organization in Bengal; and Christian missionaries had not been idle, spreading gossip of the worst kind. In short, as Swamiji wrote to an American disciple in February of .1897, “The country is full of persons, jealous and pitiless, who would leave no stone unturned to pull my work to pieces. But as you know well,” he had added, “the more opposition, the more is the demon in me roused.'[95]He had indeed allowed nothing to stand in his way. Yet there can be little question that opposition and lack of money had braked his efforts at almost every turn, even as had the massive inertia of the Indian people as a whole. “One had to work so hard to do the least little thing,'[96] he was to write later to an American friend, recalling these years that had drained away his strength.


Nor had it been a small, momentary disappointment to him that a number of Sri Ramakrishna’s disciples, including some of his brother monks, had thought, mistakenly, that his ideas were not in accord with the teachings of his Master. Deeply devoted to him though his brothers were, some had not been convinced in their hearts that the new type of monasticism he was inaugurating should be inaugurated. As a consequence, there had been a lag in enthusiasm and will. Others fired by his spirit, had wholeheartedly given their best to his cause from the start; but their number had been small. And even they, giants in spirituality though they were, had required training in the type of work that Swamiji was insisting upon. Organized humanitarian activity, with its account-keeping, its published reports, its solicitation of funds, its meetings, its paraphernalia, its backbreaking work, was totally alien to the ancient tradition of Hindu monasticism. Rooted in profound meditation though this activity necessarily was (for therein lay its meaning and its strength), it was nonetheless revolutionary and path-blazing.


“Swamiji’s new ideas seemed so different at first from what we had seen under Sri Ramakrishna,” one of Swamiji’s brother monks—Swami Premananda—many years later told a young college student (afterward Swami Ashokananda), “and what he asked us to do seemed so out of keeping with Sri Ramakrishna’s ways that we began to doubt. We felt that Swamiji had learned all these things in the West and was trying to impose them upon us. But as time went on,” he added, “and as I studied Swamiji’s writings, I found that unless we understand Swamiji and act according to what he taught and wanted, we won’t be able to understand Sri Ramakrishna at all!'[97]


Although the love between Swamiji and his brothers had in large measure overridden the latter’s doubts, the early, exceedingly critical period of pioneering had not been easy and smooth-flowing for anyone involved. Swamiji’s anger could be monumental, and he had not hesitated to berate those whom he loved most. “One day,” Swami Turiyananda later recounted, “he was very much annoyed and said, 'I see I have to conduct the whole music single-handed—to sing and play the instrument and do everything myself, with none to help me!’ '[98]


Yet beneath his impatience he had been immensely pleased by, and deeply appreciative of, the hard work of those who had caught his spirit and tried with might and main to carry out his ideas. There were, to mention a few, Swami Brahmananda, his beloved brother monk, who was second in command; Swami Saradananda, who had come back from America to fill the role of secretary-treasurer at Belur Math and who, together with Swami Turiyananda, had gone on a preaching tour through Kathiawar; Swami Ramakrishnananda, who was struggling to establish a center in Madras; Swami Trigunatita, who was producing the Udbodhan almost single-handed; and  Swami Akhandananda, who, the first to catch Swamiji’s spirit, had on his own initiative undertaken arduous works of social service. Swamiji praised them all to others. One reads, for instance, in a letter Sister Nivedita wrote to Swami Akhandananda from England:


All through the voyage, I have been intending to write to you—and tell you how often and how warmly Swamiji has spoken of you for the way in which you have struggled to do and carry out the ideas that we have all received. He seems to place great confidence in you-and to approve of all your efforts in a very special way.


I am sure it would have done you good if you could have heard even one of the many things he has said.[99]


But to Swamiji’s mind nothing had been enough. He was well aware how few years were left him to lay the foundations of his mission, to secure his work “firm as adamant” and to train others to carry it forward in the face of all future difficulties. “To work! In full speed, and with undaunted zeal!” he had written in May of 1897 to one of his brothers. “Let us once throw the country into convulsions of energy'[100]. And in October of the same year, “I am in a tremendous hurry, I want to work at hurricane speed, and I want fearless hearts'[101]. He had thrashed against caution, against misgivings and delays as though the power coursing through him were running a race with death, as indeed it was. At times he felt a sense of failure, its intensity commensurate perhaps with the greatness of his purpose. He had failed, he told Nivedita early in 1899, revealing a mood that few had seen in him. She relayed his words to Miss MacLeod, who would understand, as she did herself, both the anguish behind them and their incongruity. “He had failed—failed in everything for years past—and no one stuck to the man who failed etc., etc.; hence he could do nothing for me—Miss Muller gone because of failure-work spoilt here there and everywhere.'[102]


Perhaps the most frustrating obstacle to Swami Vivekananda’s Indian work had been his uncertain health. In mid February of 1897 as his ship, the Mombassa, was leaving Madras for Calcutta, he had replied to his friend Professor Sundararama Iyer’s query, Will you continue your Mission work in South India?: “Have no doubt about that. I shall take some rest in the Himalayan region, and then burst on the country everywhere like an avalanche'[103]. But a short rest had not restored his health, and illness had often exiled him to the foothills of northern India, away from the stifling plains—and away from the centers of activity. He had not returned to South India, nor had he been able to “burst on the country everywhere like an avalanche: ‘ The precarious state of Swamiji’s health during his first stay in the Himalayan region is clear from the following letter to Mrs. Bull, which, since it has not heretofore been published, I give in full. (Although Swamiji gives Alambazar Math, Calcutta, as his address, his letter, as will be clear, was written from Darjeeling.)

Alambazar Math
Calcutta 26th march ‘97


Dear Mrs Bull—The demonstrations. & national jubilations over me are over, at least I had to cut them short as my health broke completely down. The result of this steady work in the west and the tremendous work of a month in India upon the Bengalee constitution is “diabetes"—It is a hereditary foe and is destined to carry me off at best in a few years time. Eating only meat and drinking no water seems to be the only way to prolong life and above all perfect rest for the brain. I am giving my brain the needed rest in Darjeeling from where I am writing you now.


I am so glad to hear about Saradananda’s success. Give him my best love & do not allow him [to] do too much work. The Bengalee body is not the same as the American.


Mr Chatterjee (Mohini) came to see me in Calcutta and he was very friendly-— gave him your message. He is quite willing to work with me. Nothing more to write only I am bent upon seeing my monastery started and as soon as that is done I come to America once more.


By the by I would send to you a young lady from England, one Gertrude Orchard. She has been a governess--but she has talent in art &c. and I wished her to try her chance ii1 America. I will give her a letter to yourself and Mrs [Florence] Adams.


My love to Mrs Adams, Miss Thursby, Miss Farmer (the noble sister) and all the rest of our friends.


With eternal love and gratitude

Yours affly[104]
Vivekananda


Discomfort and pain Swamiji could well endure; but enforced rest was a torment. “I am soon going down to the plains,” he once wrote during a stay at Almora. “I am a fighter and shall die in the battlefield. Does it behove me to sit up here like a zenana lady?'[105] But again and again he was forced by illness to direct the many aspects and details of his work from a distance.


Other blows there had been. For lack of funds, some projects could not be carried out; others proceeded slowly and only by dint of hard struggle and sacrifice on the part of his brothers and disciples. And shortly before he left India, the municipality, led largely by inimical orthodox Hindus, had decided to levy a property tax on the Belur Math, the newly built headquarters of the Ramakrishna Order, on the grounds that it was not a religious institution at all but was, rather, Swami Vivekananda’s private garden-house—that land and buildings being held in his name[106]. Such a tax at this point would be worse than financially disastrous: if at the very outset the Math were officially declared to be a nonreligious institution, its enemies would have a weapon as handy and as devastating as anyone of ill will could wish for.


It was with the disappointments and frustrations of the past two years weighing on his heart, the burdens and anxieties of the present weighing on his mind, that Swami Vivekananda set out once again for the West. He was certain that he had done his best for his country; he was not yet certain that all he had struggled to establish would not collapse.


“My great anxiety is this,” he had written to Swami Brahmananda in August of 1898, “the work has somehow been started, but it should go on and progress even when we are not here; such thoughts worry me day and night'[107]. such thoughts continued to worry Swamiji even as he sailed across the Indian Ocean and up the Red Sea. Perhaps nowhere (certainly nowhere that I know of) is this aspect of his mood during the voyage more clearly reflected than in one or two passages in Swami Saradananda’s letters to Mrs. Bull, which I have had the good fortune to come upon and which have not, I believe, been heretofore known.


Swami Saradananda had first met Mrs. Bull in America in 1896 and admired her greatly. He had for long addressed her as Granny (presumably because she was grandmother to the infant Edwina, her daughter’s child, who died in 1898), and in his letters to her he referred to himself as “the monk, your boy.” To “dear Granny” he regularly confided everything that he thought would interest her, and knowing of her reverence and love for Swamiji and of her active interest in his work, it was natural for him to write of “the Prophet’s” every mood. Not all of Swami Saradananda’s letters to Mts. Bull have come down to us, but for our present purpose those that are available are enough, as details do not here concern us.


The first extant letter that contains a passage pertinent to the present story is dated July 12, 1899:


A word from the Swami from Madras to inform he was doing well with the rest, but none from Aden, though they must be nearing Suez by this time or have passed the canal. (Actually the Golconda was not to reach Suez for two days.] We have decided not to send the trust deed to him to England from what we have gathered about his unwillingness to sign it at present.... So let it be thus, and please do not give him any hint of what you know from my last two.[108]


Swami Saradananda’s “last two” no longer exist; but since the mail left Calcutta for America once a week, they had most probably been dated June 28 and July 5. Swamiji’s letter from Aden arrived at Belur in due course, and on July 19 Swami Saradananda again wrote to Mrs. Bull:


Swami writes from Aden that the sea breeze, the cold baths (sea) and the dumbbells have already restored him a good deal. He has written me a very cross letter from Aden....


I am going through a great anxiety about the work, on account of this new attitude of the Swami. He says “his eyes have been opened alas! too late”—that even Brahmananda & myself think we have placed him under a great obligation, whenever we do the simplest thing-—hat we are all selfish & c. I cannot see how far this will go; but pray to Sri R. to make all things right. I cannot say, though, I have the same hopeful prospect of the work to my human sight. But the Divine brings out good out of evils &. so we need not despair....


The Ramakrishna Mission has been reopened & I have been invited to give my talks again from the coming Sunday. But I do not know how far I will be able to impress others just at present, with my downfallen spirit. I feel such a desire now to go to the old Sannyasin life or to go away to some other country where I can be my own master. But I see too I must never do it. It would be unfaithfulness to Sri R. and the Swami too.[109]


One can infer the thrashing power of Swamiji’s crossness and impatience from its effect upon Swami Saradananda and, later on, from Swamiji’s own letters. Yet all the while, as we have seen, there were other sides to his state of mind. In the vastness of his spirit he could harbor many moods simultaneously, all of them cosmic in depth and meaning, all as significant as his mission itself. And however painful the outward circumstances of his life may have been, whatever his physical or mental suffering, there was always an immeasurable, indeed infinite, reservoir of pure joy and serenity within him, in which he could at will become immersed and from which he invariably gave without stint. “Two years of physical suffering have taken away twenty years off my life,” he had written to a disciple in April of 1899. “Well, but the soul changeth not, does it? It is there, the same madcap Atman, mad upon one idea, intent and intense. . .'[110]

5

The Golconda arrived at Aden on July 8. Here no one, “white or black,” was allowed to land. But as Swamiji pointed out, the loss was not great, for Aden was a colorless and dreary place where “there are not many things worth seeing'[111]. Since no cargo was allowed into the ship, she soon steamed off into the Red Sea, where, mercifully, and unusually at this time of year, when men had been known to go mad from the heat, there blew a cool north breeze from the Mediterranean. The worst of the voyage was over, and an air of peace seems to have prevailed. It was here that Swamiji and Mr. Bogesh had their chat about the scientific verification of miracles, and here also, as Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod, that Swamiji talked on the subject of charity and, the following day, became absorbed in composing a poem in Bengali. Nivedita’s letter had the date line: “In the Red Sea, nearing the Gulf of Suez. 13th July, 1899,” “Dear Yum Yum,” she wrote, You see where we are.... [Swami] is busy writing a grand Bengali poem about the Mother.... (Yesterday he said, talking of charity), “The Gita says there are 3 kinds of charity-Sattvic, Rajasic and Tamasic. ” The tamasic was impulsive, thinking of nothing but one’s desire to help, no consequences, no anything. The Rajasic, for one’s own glory—”and about the Sattvic” he said—”I more and more think of Mrs. Bull—for it must be done to the right person in the right way and at the proper time. And she seems to me the only person who ever knew exactly how to give—so quietly—and never making a mistake.'[112]


On Friday, July 14, the steamer reached Suez. Here again strict plague regulations were in force, this time on both sides, for there had been an outbreak of plague in Egypt. Not only was no one allowed to disembark, but no one from the shore was allowed to so much as touch the ship, and no one on the ship was allowed to touch its cargo. “It meant a good deal of extra trouble for the ship’s sailors,” Swamiji wrote.


They have to serve as coolies, lift up the cargo by means of cranes and drop it, without touching, on the Suez boats which carry it ashore.... It will take them the whole day to unload the cargo in this slow process. The ship can easily cross the Canal in the night, if she be provided with a searchlight; but if that is to be fitted, the Suez people will have to touch the ship—there, you have ten days’ quarantine. She is therefore not to start in the night, and we must remain as we are in this Suez harbour for twenty-four hours![113].


But for part of that time there was great sport and entertainment for the passengers. “There are innumerable fish and sharks swimming in [the harbour],” Swamiji recounted. “Nowhere else on earth are sharks in such plenty as in this port and in the port of Sydney, in Australia." A number of second-class passengers, equipped with a formidable makeshift hook and a two-pound hunk of pork, managed to land a huge, flat-headed shark, much to the fascination and excitement of the passengers—second- and first-class alike. In his Memoirs Swamiji describes the capture of the shark from start to finish and in vivid detail; indeed his powers of description are such that on reading this long passage one seems to live through the whole fascinating, repelling affair until, after it is over, one feels somewhat as did he himself. "I had my meal almost spoilt that day—everything smelt of that shark'[114].


The next day the Golconda passed through the Suez Canal to Port Said and out into the Western world. The East was left behind. "One type of manners and customs and modes of living ends here," Swamiji commented, "and another type of features and temperament, food and dress, customs and habits begins—we enter Europe'[115].


The Mediterranean was calm and the skies clear. "It was dark when we approached Sicily," Nivedita related, "and against the sunset sky, Etna was in slight eruption. As we entered the straits of Messina, the moon rose, and I walked up and down the deck beside the Swami, while he dwelt on the fact that beauty is not external, but already in the mind. On one side frowned the dark crags of the Italian coast, on the other, the island was touched with silver light. 'Messina must thank me!’ he said, 'It is I who give her all her beauty!’ [116].


The Golconda stopped at Naples, where, the incubation period of Calcutta plague germs being well over and no one aboard sick or dead, passengers were allowed to land. The ship then went on to Marseilles and, the next morning, through the Strait of Gibraltar, where Swamiji, excited, met Sister Nivedita on deck with the words, "Have you seen them? Have you seen them? Landing there and crying 'Din! Din! The Faith! The Faith!"‘ "And for half an-hour," she remembered, "I was swept away into his dramatisations of the Moorish invasions of Spain.'[117]


“And thence," as he wrote, "straight at London'[118]--Over moderately quiet seas. On Monday, July 31, after a voyage of forty-two days, the good ship Golconda landed at Tilbury Dock on the Thames.


ⓘ
[1] Talks with Swami Vivekananda, 2d ed. (1946), p. 217; Complete Works, 7 : 182.
[2] Complete Works, 6 : 411.
[3] Complete Works , 8 : 400.
[4] Complete Works 8 :444.
[5] Sister Nivedita to Mrs. Ashton Jonson, October 13, 1898, SCB.
[6] Alfred T. Clifton (Swami Chidrupananda), “One Hundred Days in India,” VSNC.
[7] Complete Works, 6 : 416.
[8] Charlotte E. Sevier to Josephine MacLeod, January 1, 1899, SN Col., typed copies VSNC.
[9] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, January 26, 1899, Sen Col.
[10] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, March 6, 1899, SCB.
[11] Swami Saradananda to Josephine MacLeod, March 18, 1899, SCB.
[12] Lizelle Reymond, The Dedicated, p. 16m.
[13] Nivedita to Josephine MacLeod, March 5-8, 1899, SCB.
[14] “Notes of Conversations with Swami Turiyananda,” Prabuddha Bharata, 37 (May 1932): 209.
[15] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 114.
[16] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, April 11, 1899, Sen Col.
[17] Swami Saradananda to Sara Bull, May 11, 1899, SCB.
[18] Swami Saradananda to Josephine MacLeod, May 18, 1899, SCB.
[19] Swami Saradananda to Josephine MacLeod, May 18, 1899, SCB.
[20] Life (1981), 2 1452.
[21] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1: 161.
[22] Sister Nivedita, The Master, p. 11.
[23] Eric Hammond, “Sister Nivedita —an Impression of Early Years,” P.B., 32 (December 1927): 558.
[24] Complete Works, 7 : 511.
[25] Complete Works, 8 : 447.
[26] Sister Nivedita, The Master, p. 106.
[27] Complete Works, 8 : 455.
[28] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 48-49.
[29] Letters of Sister Nivedita,, pp. 49-50.
[30] Nivedita to Josephine MacLeod, March 5-8, 1899, SCB.
[31] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 146.
[32] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 146    
[33] Swami Saradananda to Sara Bull, May 11, 1899, SCB.
[34] Belur Math Diary, May 9, 1899, RKM, Belur.
[35] Belur Math Diary,, June 17, 1899.
[36] Belur Math Diary,, June 17, 1899.
[37] Gospel, p. 449.
[38] Gospel., p. 986.
[39] Belur Math Diary, June 17, 1899, RKM, Belur.
[40] Belur Math Diar., June 19, 1899.
[41] Vivekananda: A Biography in Pictures, p. 82. .
[42] Belur Math Diar, June 19, 1899, RKM, Belur.
[43] Belur Math Diar(See also Complete Works, 3:447)
[44] Sachindranath Basu, “Swamijir Sannidhye” [In the presence of Swamiji], Udbodhan, 55 (Vaisakha 1360, Bengali era): 185.
[45] Belur Math Dw/y, March 4, 1899, RKM, Belur.
[46] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1: 37.
[47] See ref. 44 above.
[48] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 170-71.
[49] See ref. 44 above.
[50] Complete Works, 7 : 308.
[51] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 183.
[52] Bhupendranath Datta, Swami Vivekananda:Patriot-Prophet,p. 289.
[53] Bhupendranath Datta, Swami Vivekananda:Patriot-Prophe , p. 893.
[54] Complete Works, 7 : 303-4.
[55] Sister Nivedita, The Master, P-175.
[56] Complete Works, 7 : 325.
[57] Complete Works., p. 305.
[58] Sister Nivedita, The Master, p. 177.
[60] See “Map of Indian Ocean Floor,” in National Geographic, October 1967.
[61] Life (1981), 2-459.
[62] Complete Works, 7 : 331-32.
[63] See ref. 61 above.
[64] “Notes of Conversations with Swami Turiyananda,” Prabuddha Bharata, 37 (June 1932): 261.
[65] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 170.
[66] Complete Works, 7 : 332.
[67] Complete Works., 7 : 332-33.
[68] Complete Worksp. 334.
[69] Complete Worksp. 334.  
[70] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 174.
[71] Letters of Sister Nivedita., 1 : 171-72.
[72] Sister Nivedita, “At the Feet of the Motherland,” Prabuddha Bharata, 5 (August 1899): 122-24; ibid., 32 (July 1927): 326-27.
[73] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 176.
[74] Complete Works, 7 : 339.
[75] Nivedita to Josephihe MacLeod, March 5-8, 1899, SGB.
[76] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 176.
[77] Complete Works, 7 : 340-43.
[78] Complete Works ., p. 322.
[79] Complete Works P.341
[80] Complete Works p. 305. 
[81] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 171.
[82] Complete Works, 7 : 341-42.
[83] Complete Works, 7 : 345.
[84] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 173.
[85] Letters of Sister Nivedita., 1 : 170-71.
[86] Letters of Sister Nivedita1 : 175.
[87] Sister Nivedita, The Master, pp. 174-78.
[88] Sister Nivedita, The Master., pp. 200
[89] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 175.
[90] Letters of Sister Nivedita., 1 : 172.
[91] Complete Works, 8 : 483.
[92] Complete Works, 8 : 494.
[93] Complete Works, 6:429. (In the Complete Works this letter has been addressed wrongly to Sister Nivedita.)
[94] Complete Works 8 : 406.
[95] Complete Works 6 : 689.
[96] Complete Works 8 : 494.
[97] Related by Swami Ashokananda to the author.
[98] Spiritual Talks (Swami Turiyananda), p. 205.
[99] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 194.
[100] Letters of Swami Vivekananda, 4th ed. (Mayavati, Himalayas: Advaita Ashrama, 1948), P- 379.
[101] Complete Works, 8 : 430-32.
[102] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 48-49.
[103] Rem. (K. S. Iyer), p. 107.
[104] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, March 26, 1897, SGB.
[105] Complete Works, 6 : 401.
[106] Swami Gambhirananda, History, 3rd ed., p. 115. See also Complete Works, 6 :419; Swami Saradananda to Sara Bull, November 16, 1899, and June 14, 1900, SCB.
[107] Complete Works, 8 : 456.
[108] Swami Saradananda to Sara Bull, July 12, 1899, SCB.
[109] Swami Saradananda to Sara Bull., July 19, 1899.
[110] Complete Works, 6:418. (This letter, dated April n, 1899, was addressed to Sister Christine.)
[111] Complete Works, 7 : 343.
[112] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 177-'78.
[113] Complete Works, 7 : 349.
[114] Complete Works., 350-56.
[115] Complete Works, p. 360.
[116] Sister Nivedita, The Master, p. 184.
[117] Sister Nivedita, The Master., p. 200.
[118] Complete Works, 7 : 371.

↑ Contents

5.2 AN INTERLUDE

Although the Golconda docked at the unreasonable hour of six in the morning, it would be natural to suppose that Swamiji was met by at least a few of those hundreds of English disciples and friends who had given him a grand farewell reception on his departure from London some two and a half years earlier, who had shed tears to see him go and had pleaded for his quick return. The fact was, however, that not one of those friends and disciples met the Golconda. The reason was not so much the hour of day as the time of year: Swamiji himself had written from Port Said to Mr. Edward T. Sturdy, "As you know sure, I shall not have many friends staying now in London.... A stay in England under these circumstances is not advisable'[1]. Yet even Sturdy was not in the city to welcome him. In a letter that Swamiji received probably at Naples, Sturdy had informed him that he was going off to Wales. This untimely departure of his old friend, disciple, and one time manager of the London work was perhaps the first indication Swamiji had that something was seriously amiss. That the London work had collapsed he had long known, but he had not expected to find so bleak a ruin as was to confront him; nor had he dreamed of personal hostility on the part of Sturdy, which, as time passed, was to become unmistakable. There can be no question that the blow to Swamiji was severe and that his disciple’s tragedy—for that is what it was—formed an extremely painful part of his life at this period. To tell the story of this unhappy episode, we shall have to go back several years.

It had been in March of 1895 that Mr. Sturdy introduced himself by letter to Swamiji, who was then in New York. A member of the Theosophical Society in London, Sturdy had traveled to India in the 1890s to devote himself to the study of Sanskrit and Indian philosophy and had chanced in his wanderings upon two monks of the Ramakrishna Order. "I was living for some time in India with two of your gurubhais," he wrote to Swamiji, "Shivanandaji and Satchidanandaji (the latter was not, actually, a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna’s), and found them both good men and worthy of respect. This was in Kumaon (near Almora)'[2]. It is more probable that Mr. Sturdy had lived near, rather than with, the two Swamis, but in any event he had often talked with them. Living in that holy environment, in the pure air of the Himalayas, he had soon come to look upon himself as a man completely established in austerity, renunciation, and monkhood. Many years later he wrote to Miss MacLeod, "I remember the ridicule and contempt with which I received a palmist’s prediction on my last voyage from India (in the first part of 1894) when she said, 'You will be married twice, have children and suffer much through women.’ (I mention this) because it recalls my complete confidence in myself that I had at that time, the confidence in the road I was to follow, the complete immunity to woman’s influence I thought I had reached and would certainly continue in it'[3]. Cocksure where even saints are prayerful, Mr. Sturdy had tempted the gods. Within a few months he was married to a young woman named Lucie, who promptly bore him the first of two children. By the time he wrote to Swamiji, introducing himself, his days of freedom, whether he knew it yet or not, were gone. But however that may have been, he soon invited Swamiji to become his guest in England, suggesting that he stay long enough "to establish either a (Vedanta) class or a Society'[4].

"I received your last duly," Swamiji replied, "and as I had a previous arrangement to come to Europe by the end of this August, I take your invitation as a Divine Call.'[5]

Around the second or third week of September, 1895, Swamiji arrived in England from Paris and evidently went by train directly to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Sturdy, who were then living in Reading, about thirty six miles west of London. Until the end of October he lived with the Sturdys more or less quietly, giving a few small classes, of which we have only a hint or two, translating the Narada Bhakti Sutras with his host and writing "copious commentaries" on it. On October 22 he delivered a public lecture at Prince’s Hall in London and the next day was acclaimed in glowing terms by the daily papers. His London work was launched.

In the last week of October Swamiji moved to rented rooms at 80 Oakley Street, Chelsea (London), and there held crowded classes. In addition, he gave a lecture at South Place Chapel, a church famous for its liberality, and spoke informally at two or three private homes notably at Lady Isabel Margesson’s house at 63 St. George’s Road, where Sister Nivedita first heard him. Although his public work was not on a large scale during that late fall of 1895, he successfully laid the foundation for the future, and he was pleased.*(1)

*(1) For a detailed account of Swamiji’s visit in England in 1895 see Burke, Swami Vivekananda in the West, New Discoveries: The World Teacher-Part One ( hereafter called World Teacher-I), chapter four.

"In England my work is really splendid," he wrote to Alasinga, "I am astonished myself at it.... I am sure of more work in England than in America. Bands and bands come, and I have no room for so many; so they squat on the floor, ladies and all .... I have sent for a Sannyasin from Calcutta and shall leave him to work in London.'[6]

At the close of November, Swamiji sailed for America, where he worked from early December through March of 1896, keeping in touch all the while with Mr. Sturdy, whom he addressed affectionately as "Blessed and Beloved." He then visited England for the second time, arriving on April 20 at the Sturdys’ house. There, to his delight, he found Swami Saradananda, who, three weeks earlier, had come from India at his call. The two Swamis stayed with the Sturdys until the first week in May, when they moved to Lady Isabel Margesson’s house in London, which Mr. Sturdy had rented for five months (from the first of May until the first of October) for Swamiji and his classes. Miss Henrietta Muller, a wealthy, middle aged Theosophist, whom Swamiji had met at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago and of whom we shall hear more later, sublet some rooms in the house, thus helping, as Mr. Sturdy said, to reduce the cost. Through May, June, and the first part of July Swamiji lived at 63 St. George’s Road and held classes there regularly. He also gave a number of talks at various clubs, and delivered six Sunday lectures in a public hall.

From mid July to mid September he vacationed in Europe, traveling with Captain and Mrs. J. H. Sevier, two devoted English disciples, and, for a part of the time, Miss Muller*(2). On his return to England, Swamiji stayed for a few days with the Seviers in Hampstead, and then visited Miss Muller in Wimbledon— a residential suburb of London where Miss Margaret Noble also lived. Here he gave two "drawing room" talks and a class. Soon, however, he reopened his London work.

*(2) Miss F. Henrietta Muller’s last name is spelled in various records both with and without an umlaut over the u. In this series of books I have followed, somewhat arbitrarily, the no-umlaut school.

In the first week of October a number of his friends took a large room or rather, as Mr. Sturdy wrote to Mrs. Bull, "three rooms, knocked into one,'[7] at 39 Victoria Street, for the purpose of his lectures and classes. As for his living quarters, a basement flat was rented nearby at 14 Greycoat Gardens, Westminster, where he lived with Swami Abhedananda, who had come from India, and Josiah J. Goodwin. The latter had sailed with Swami Saradananda for America on June 27 and had, fortunately, returned —fortunately, because Mr. Goodwin, an expert stenographer, was to take down Swamiji’s London lectures during this fall season, even as he had taken down the New York lectures of the preceding winter. The London lectures, fourteen of which are included in the book Jnana Yoga, formed an important part of Swamiji’s exposition of monistic Vedanta. Clearly, he gave the English people strong spiritual food, and, as clearly, they liked it: by the end of the year his following was large and enthusiastic.**(3)

**(3) For a detailed account of Swamiji’s visits in England in 1896 see Burke, Swami Vivekananda in the West, New Discoveries: The World Teacher-Part Two (hereafter called World Teacher- 2), chapters eleven, twelve, fourteen, and sixteen.

"The work in London has been a roaring success," he wrote on November 28 to his American friends Mary and Harriet Hale. "The English are not so bright as the Americans, but once you touch their heart, it is yours forever. Slowly I have gained, and is it not remarkable that by six months’ work altogether I should have a steady class of about 120 persons, apart from public lectures? . . . My ideas about the English have been revolutionised. I now understand why the Lord has blessed them above all other races. They are 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'[8].

There could have been, had Swamiji wished, many more months of a successful season in London. But he was guided by commands known to himself alone. "Of course everybody here thinks it foolish to give [the work] up just now the 'boom’ is on," he wrote to Miss MacLeod on December 3, "but the Dear Lord says 'Start for Old India.’ I obey'[9]. Thus on December 16, 1896 accompanied by Captain and Mrs. Sevier and followed by Mr. Goodwin, Swamiji sailed for India.

Swami Vivekananda left today [Mr. Sturdy wrote to an American friend].... He had a magnificent reception [on December 13] in the Galleries of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. There were about five hundred people there, and a good many friends were away from London. His influence has sunk very deep into many hearts. We are going straight ahead with his work.... Your presumption is correct. I am heavy hearted today at the loss of the noblest friend and the purest teacher I have met in this incarnation. I must have stored some exceptional merit in the past to receive such a blessing now. What I longed for all my life I have found in the Swami[10].

At a later date Sturdy was to confide to Miss MacLeod: "When Swami left for India, with Goodwin, I laid my head on his breast and sobbed'[11].

Swamiji had been confident that his teachings had taken root in London and would there grow. Indeed, during an interview in Calcutta in late February (or early March) of 1897, he had declared that if qualified preachers could be had, there was greater likelihood of the Vedanta work being permanently established in England than in America[12]. A week or so earlier in Madras he had been even more optimistic: "If I die tomorrow and cannot send any more Sannyasins, still the English work will go on,'[13] he had said. Yet in the fall of 1896, even as his London work was "growing apace," "becoming solid and respectable too, . . . great scholars. . . sympathising," and the classes "becoming bigger as they go on," he had made a truer prediction. "Of course," he had written to Alasinga, "as soon as I leave, most of this fabric will tumble down'[14]. And tumble down it did. At once.

Informing Miss MacLeod about the progress of the work, Mr. Sturdy wrote on January 25, 1897.

We reopened the room at 39 Victoria Street on Jan 12 and Abhedananda gave a very creditable first lecture.... But the attendance has been very meagre indeed from the beginning, showing how much was dependent upon personality. Of course the weather has been bad —sometimes foggy and sometimes wet and many people may be away from town. . . Meanwhile we just fire away and do what is to be done—we cannot command but may deserve success [15].

But success did not come. There was no organization to hold things together; Mr. Sturdy— now a family man, divided in loyalties— was a failure as a leader, and as people drifted away, there was no money to pay expenses. "The London work is not doing well at all, I hear,'[16] Swamiji wrote to Margaret Noble on May 5, 1897. A month later matters became worse. "What about the work in London?" he asked Marie Halboister; another of his young English disciples, and answered his own question: "I am afraid it is going to pieces.'[17]Again to Miss Halboister in July: "The work in London had to go slow for various reasons, and last though not the least was l’argent, mon amie! When I am there l’argent comes in somehow, to keep the mare going. Now everybody shrugs his shoulder. I must come again and try my best to revive the work'[18].

Mr. Sturdy was much put out that Swamiji had not done just that in the spring of 1897. That Swamiji was ill, that he was desperately trying to start his work in India, that the immense effort required to restore the London work as well could have been suicidal, that the doctors had forbidden him to go to England that spring—none of these circumstances seem to have impressed Mr. Sturdy. Angry, he stopped writing to India. "I am so sorry the doctors would not allow my going over with the Raja of Khetri to England, and that has made Sturdy mad,'[19]Swamiji wrote to Miss MacLeod in July of 1897; and in the same month to Marie Halboister: "Sturdy’s thermometer is now below zero, it seems. He seems to be greatly disappointed with my non -arrival in England this summer. What could I do?'[20] After a time Swamiji received a note from Mr. Sturdy. "But it was so stiff and cold," he told Miss Noble. "It seems he is disappointed at the collapse of the London work'[21]. Sturdy was more than disappointed, he was without hope. Sometime in July he sent Swami Abhedananda to New York, thereby capitulating to what appeared to be inevitable failure. "It seems that the English work is impossible without me,'[22] Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Bull on August 19.

Toward the close of 1897 Sturdy took off for a round the world tour, sailing from San Francisco on December 7, as he wrote to Mrs. Bull, for the Orient.[23] It does not appear that Lucie and the two infants went along on this trip, but whether they did or not, the cord that bound him to them was ever present. It would seem that Swamiji, knowing of Sturdy’s travels, sent word to him to stop off in India, perhaps even invited him to go on the proposed trip to Kashmir with the American disciples and Sister Nivedita. From somewhere within sight of India, Sturdy sent his reply. His letter is not available, but Swamiji’s comment on it, contained in a letter to Mrs. Bull, tells us all we need to know of his predicament. (I shall give here Swamiji’s full letter, for although only one paragraph pertains to Sturdy, no part of it has previously been published.)

Darjeeling
the 4th April’98

My dear Dhira Mata —

I am afraid you are getting roasted down there in the heat of Calcutta. Here it is nice & cool and rather chill when it rains; which it does almost everyday. Yesterday the view of the snows was simply superb and it is the most picturesque city in the world, there is such a mass of colour everywhere especially in the dress of the Lepchas & Bhutias and the Paharees. Had it not been for the awful corrugated iron roofs everywhere it will be twenty times more picturesque.

My health was not bad in Calcutta, here it is the same; only the sugar has entirely disappeared, the specific gravity being only 13. I slept very well last night too and the morning ride up or climb of a few miles is proving too much for my adipose tissues. The flannel clothes only made me worse, so I have given them up and have gone to my summer dress and am all right.

I have sent you Sturdy’s letter already—poor fellow—I do not know what to do for him. He is really "living in a desert of his own making"—you see, one thing is not good for every one. Marriage has indeed proved a hell for Sturdy. And he can not come although "he is skirting the coast of India." Lord help the poor boy:—May He cut all his bonds —and make him free soon. Aye it is good that he is feeling the bondage —and not "hugging and kissing its spokes of agony."*(4)

*(4) Swamiji’s reference to Mr. Sturdy’s not "hugging and kissing its spokes of agony" is an allusion to a verse in Edwin Arnold’s then widely read Light of Asia: "Ye suffer from yourselves. None else compels,/ None other holds you that ye live and die,/And whirl upon the wheel, and hug and kiss/ Its spokes of agony,/ Its tire of tears, its nave of nothingness" (Book the Eighth). Swamiji also quoted this verse in "Steps to Realisation," a class-lecture, I896 (Complete Works, I: 407).

I gave a little lecture to the Hindus here yesterday and I told them all their defects purposely and with their permission. I hope it will make them howl:

Miss Muller had taken a bungalow here and she is coming on Wednesday. I do not know whether Miss Noble is coming with her. She [Miss Noble] had better be your guest in Kashmir as according to our plan.

Have you got that place yet or changed? I am going to Kashmir anyway as I have promised.

I will be here only a few days and then I come to Calcutta, to be there only a week and I start for the N.W. Of course this is not the time to see anything in the N.W.P. [North West Frontier Province] everything is burning there. Yet that heat is much healthier than that of Bengal.

Ever yours in the Lord[24]
Vivekananda

Sturdy was keenly "feeling the bondage." In July of 1898, after returning from his trip, he wrote to Mrs. Bull (whom he had not met) in connection with some business matter and then went on in a more personal vein: "If it was not that Karma works its inevitable way, the exasperating thought, that if I had met our dear Swami [when I first went to India], I should [have] escaped continuous suffering in this samsara, would drive me to suicide or madness. I blame no individuals, that would be folly and criminal; they are merely agents, often passive and unconscious. Everything lies in myself, in my own past; still I shall be glad when it is all worked off and I should be glad to leave this body tomorrow.

"I have health, means, healthy children, a kind and affectionate wife. So far from being any comfort to me all these things seem to be killing my true life. I may philosophise, study, talk, but I now see there can be no realization in these conditions, with this body, and the sooner they are all changed by my departure the better. It may sound like selfishness; but it arises from the resentment I feel at conditions I am unable to change by living in them. Then the doubt arises whether anything is changed by leaving it, either by death or in any other way except by jnanam— and so I oscillate restlessly, trying to get that jnanam and never seeming to reach beyond mere head knowledge.'[25]

Such were the dark thoughts that tormented Sturdy’s mind and that could well turn it opaque and sour.

But however that may be, a few months later when Swamiji was seriously thinking of returning to the West, Miss MacLeod wrote to Sturdy at his request. Sturdy’s reply from England was dated October 18, 1898:

. . . It is on account of the importance of the information conveyed in [your letter of August 28] about Swamiji and his plans that I have put off writing from day to day. . .

I do not see any possibility of my being able to join in any work which would take me for many months at any time out of England, so that if Swamiji decided to make Boston his centre from which to work and write I am afraid I should not be able to help him as much as I should like. If on the other hand he decided to make London his centre, I should be glad if he would make my house his home or if he preferred I should see that he got some comfortable place elsewhere and in either case I should be always at his service and only too delighted to be everything I could to him. But I feel diffidence in making any suggestion, when I feel how much greater progress Vedanta is making in U.S.A. than it is making here, for we have nothing going on or organised now....

I understand thoroughly all that you write about Swami. I know exactly the complete absence of interference with which he should be allowed to live in whoever’s house he may dwell, and how much congenial companionship helps him. He would have all that freedom in my house.

But many things have come too late for me in this incarnation; there was a time when I had entirely got adrift from all worldly ties and obligations; I ought to have met Swami then, instead of only his gurubhais; what a gain it would have been to everybody; but the out workings of the past come inevitably to everybody —death to Goodwin, vexations to me![26]

Although Sturdy seems now to have been looking upon his marriage as a fate equal to, if not worse than, death (Goodwin had died of enteric fever at 0otacamund on June 2 of 1898), he had not yet turned his bitterness of heart outward against his guru. Indeed during the next five months or so he did not appear less than friendly. As we have seen, Swamiji’s voyage to England was postponed, first, because of poor health, second, because of the difficulty in securing passage. In the meanwhile, Mrs. Bull and Miss MacLeod visited London in February of 1899 and there came to know Sturdy quite well; indeed his friendship with Miss MacLeod stood for a time on a first name basis. In March, Mrs. Bull was a guest in his house (then in Kensington, a residential borough of London), and all spent "a most happy time." "Lucie quite took to her," Sturdy wrote to "dear Jo Jo," and thought her "the nicest and most considerate guest we have ever had in our house'[27]— a remark that may or may not have been intentionally barbed.

A few unpublished letters belonging to the period between the end of March and Swamiji’s arrival in England are available to us, and although these give little hint of the trouble that was to follow and that was even then brewing, a number of passages from them will supply a brief history of events.

Sturdy to "Jo Jo," March 21, 1899:

I have not heard a word of Miss Muller, except that she invited Mrs. & Miss Mary [May] Noble to visit her and was gracious & showed no animus. Mrs. Bull will have written you that....

By the way, I had a letter from Miss Waldo [a prominent American disciple of Swamiji’s] asking with some perturbation about Miss Muller. I have replied by this mail which will calm her troubled spirit! . . .

Swami cannot have received my letter before his proposed leaving for Madras. I hope he does before he leaves India. I showed it to Mrs. Bull before posting: it was just on the lines we discussed. If he gets it he will set out with some confidence as to what he is coming to do and also set him at rest in any doubts he may have as to the reception friends may give him here.[28]

(Sarah Ellen Waldo’s perturbation about Henrietta Muller was not without good cause. Miss Muller, whom Swamiji had occasion to warn Nivedita against as a woman of "violent temper," "overbearing conduct," and "awfully vacillating mind,'[29] had followed him to India in 1897. She had at first contributed financially to Swamiji’s work, but later, not finding things in India to her liking, had, at the close of 1898, publicly defected from his cause. "What a pity Miss Muller should advertise her foolishness in the papers !" Mrs. Sevier had written to Miss MacLeod from Almora on January 1, 1899. "The 'Indian Social Reformer’ has a paragraph respecting her—viz., 'to our Christian brethren we beg to offer a Christmas present in the shape of news, which we have received from the most authentic source, that Miss Muller has completely severed her connection with Swami Vivekananda’s movement to spread Hinduism, and that she has returned to her Christian faith’—etc. etc. We have not seen Miss Muller’s letter to the ‘Statesman’ nor the reply to it, in the 'Indian Mirror.’ ”)[30]

There was some confusion about the passage money for the Swamis. As we have seen in the preceding chapter, Sister Nivedita had written, with Swamiji’s approval, to Mr. Sturdy, suggesting that the money for Swami Turiyananda’s ticket be paid out of funds held in London for the Vedanta work. Mr. Sturdy, alarmed, wrote to Mrs. Bull, who evidently assured him that the matter would be otherwise taken care of. He was, for the time, much relieved.

Sturdy to Mrs. Bull, April 13:

Many thanks for your reply which has set me at rest on the point of the fare moneys for Swamiji & Turiyananda. I am confirmed in fancying that Nivedita was trying to remove any hindrance to their starting but did not know details & did not like to inquire into them.

Since writing you, I have a very short note from Swamiji, acknowledging my invitation & agreeing with its general outlines of work, but he said he felt he was getting stronger & was inclined to remain a little longer in Calcutta....

Miss Muller has written Mrs. Ashton Jonson hoping for an interview; the latter was a little doubtful of any good and afraid she might deal the former some hard knocks if criticisms were brought up about Swami. I advised the interview and thought nothing of the sort might possibly be broached....

Miss Noble’s letter is full of life & enthusiasm. What a fine full nature it is....

I am ready to receive Turiyananda whenever he may come. I think this is understood but I shall repeat when I write to India by tomorrow’s mail.[31]

In the meantime, Miss MacLeod, ebulliently but, one thinks, unwisely, forwarded to Sturdy, no doubt for his entertainment, Nivedita’s long, chatty, and fairly intimate letter dated March 5 to 8, in which she had mentioned her conversation with Swamiji about the passage money. Mr. Sturdy seems to have been a good deal more disturbed than entertained. His subsequent letter (dated April 16) to Mrs. Bull reveals a less than enthusiastic state of mind.

Since writing you [he wrote] and receiving your reply I have received the enclosed letter of Nivedita’s from Miss MacLeod.

It gives details about conversation with Swamiji about the passage money which Nivedita did not write me; in fact she clearly states in her letter to me that she is writing entirely upon her own responsibility. Do you think they need any authority from you to use the money you referred to?

My position here is this— I know from old experience that as soon as the Swami arrives here, plenty of money will be needed. There will be two to arrange expenses for.

Turiyananda I have already agreed to send on to U.S.A when the time comes. He will probably require some outfitting also. The same applies to Swami. He may elect suddenly to go to U.S.A: he will probably also need new outfit. On top of this Longmans may need money if another edition of Raja Yoga should be needed. Or Swami may write a book here which should be published at once.

I do not know where I could raise any donations amongst Swami’s friends amounting to anything substantial and it would be unwise to try.

I am not able to reduce my own living expenditures below the present, without a change which would involve others & probably would not be wise in the end and so I am left not a very large margin to donate personally.

Looking at these points, I want to be ready for the campaign that is to come and not cripple it. So I should like to hear again from you, just what you think. It is possible they have started by this time as Nivedita spoke of April and this letter to Miss MacLeod is dated March 5.[32]

Mrs. Bull no doubt again assured Sturdy that the Swami’s passage money need not be taken out of the London funds. Nor need he have fretted himself about Swami Turiyananda’s clothes. Swami Saradananda was to write to Mrs. Bull in May: "My dresses fit [Turiyananda] so well, I am giving him everything; so you will find him wearing the same red coats & trousers & overcoats & all.'[33]

Time passed. When at last Swamiji sailed from Calcutta he sent a cablegram to Miss MacLeod: "Started. Wire Sturdy.'[34] The instruction was at once carried out, and shortly Sturdy wrote to Swamiji, addressing his letter to the Golconda at Port Said. This letter, as far as I know, is not available, but from Swamiji’s reply, dated July 14 and published in volume eight of the Complete Works, it is obvious that he considered Mr. Sturdy to be as friendly and cooperative as ever. "I think you are absolutely needed to gather up, as it were, the American work," he wrote. "If you can, therefore, you ought to come over with me. . . :'[35] Whether Swamiji and Swami Turiyananda expected to stay in London with Mr. Sturdy is not clear; nor was it clear, it would seem, to Mr. Sturdy himself. He wrote a second letter to Swamiji saying he was going to Wales,[36] and to Mrs. Bull on July 8:

We leave for Wales on 18th....

I am no further on regarding Swami. I only know that he is on his way, together with Miss Noble, Turiyananda & a brother of Saradananda, a "layman" I presume, named Chakravarti. What he wishes to do, where to rest awhile &c, I leave for time to disclose.

If they come direct to London they are due here on July 27th "the dog days" when everybody has fled to the fields & the seas....

Your visit & also Miss MacLeod’s [in February and March], left us all with the happiest impressions and it is nice to think of the links that unite us all with Swami at the head of our round table.[37]

The knight of the round table was, it seems, somewhat errant. But let us leave him for a time in Wales and return to Tilbury Dock and the arrival of the Golconda. 

2

Of this event Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod, "We arrived on Monday morning [July 31], met at unearthly hours by mother, Min [Nivedita’s sister May], Miss Parson, and the two American ladies, Mrs. Funke and Miss Greenstidel.'[38] If Swamiji was disappointed not to see Sturdy, he was no doubt delighted that the two Americans, had crossed the Atlantic to greet him. This was not the first time these young women had traveled far in order to be near Swamiji. They had first heard him lecture in Detroit, their home town, in March of 1894, but although they had been profoundly impressed, they had not, at that time, approached him. Over a year later, learning from a friend that he was spending the summer in Thousand Island Park, they resolved to seek him out. "At last, after a weary search, we found him," Mary Funke later recounted. On a dark and rainy night, tired and drenched, frightened at their temerity, they arrived at the house atop a small hill where, with a group of some ten disciples, he was living and teaching. "We have come to you," one of them said to him, "just as we would go to Jesus if he were still on the earth and ask him to teach us." Swamiji warmly accepted them into the group, and during the weeks they spent with him he initiated them and gave the vows of brahmacharya to Miss Greenstidel, who became known thenceforth as Sister Christine. Theirs was the kind of temerity that immensely pleased him. "My disciples," he would say of them in later years, "who traveled hundreds of miles to find me, and they came in the night and in the rain'[39]. And now, having heard from him that he was to sail for England in the summer and would like to see them there, having learned the date of his arrival from an Indian magazine, and having heard alarming reports of his illness, they had crossed the ocean to find him again. Sister Christine sent a wire from London to his ship. From Marseilles he replied:

Your very welcome wire just came.... Our stay in England will not be long I am afraid as this is neither the season nor am I in fit condition to work much. Anyhow we will be in London a few weeks at least myself. Then go to U.S. We will talk over all this and infinite things besides when we meet. I do not think even English Summer days enough for all the chatter I will assail you. with.

We go to Wimbledon for a day or two, and then I come back to London and find lodgings for myself and make plans.

Come to the Dock if that is possible and discrete. Yes, it is discrete as there is a lady in the party and others will come to meet her. Only Christina don’t if you feel the least tired or unwell. I hope you are enjoying London immensely.

The orientals do not like any effusion of feeling (he warned, with an eye, perhaps to his two Indian traveling companions]. They are trained to hide all expression[40].

In her first letter from England to Yum, Nivedita continued: "The King spent Monday in Town with these (American] friends, meaning to take rooms near (them]. But he turned up here early on Tuesday morning thinking Wimbledon best after all.... Min found him lovely rooms, near the station, but in green and quietness. They cost 35/-  a week, which I hope Mr. Sturdy will not think too much and I buy food for him and mean to send in the account to Sturdy. While here I trust men will come to him. But meanwhile he says he is in perfect peace.'[41] It was Nivedita, not he, who understandably smarted at the absence of his friends. In this same letter she wrote: "I own that I am sore about people having left London without making special arrangements to wait for Swami. That would have been nothing to do for him. He on the contrary says he has never been in such perfect peace and laissez faire as [he has been] ever since I told him.”

In 1899 Wimbledon was a charming English town, full of trees, history, old houses, curving roads, and a large wooded common where one could take long meandering walks. The Nobles’ house at 21A High Street, however, was singularly unlovely. Situated in a three story brick building, it was central in a row of five identical two story residential units, each of which, two windows wide, rose above a street level shop. "The Lymes," on the other hand—the quarters Min (or May) found for the two Swamis— was a spacious, airy, old fashioned rooming house with a large garden. Located at 35 Woodside, on the corner of Springfield Road, it was about a fifteen minute uphill walk to High Street. The two American women also moved to Wimbledon. As for Mr. Chakravarty, he stayed with the Nobles for a week and then left for Boston.

There was nothing for Swamiji to do at this place and season but rest. "Sturdy is away, Mrs. Johnson (Mrs. Ashton Jonson] and everybody. Margo is rather worried at that," he wrote on August 3 to Joe (Miss MacLeod). " . . . I have become for the present a Shunyavadi, a believer in nothingness, or void. No plans, no after thought, no attempt for anything, laissez faire to the fullest.[42] The good effects of the trip were still his. "He had grown very slim and looked and acted like a boy," Mrs. Funke noted in her memoirs. "He was so happy to find the voyage had brought back some of the old strength and vigor'[43]. Swamiji himself remarked upon his gain: "I have recovered quite a bit by the voyage," he told Joe. "It was brought about by the exercise on the dumb bells and monsoon storms tumbling the steamer about the waves. Queer, isn’t it? Hope it will remain'[44].

But unfortunately it did not remain; in a few days his health underwent a sharp decline, as did his spirits. Though not disturbed, he could not have been cheered by the absence of his English friends, nor by the treacherous gossip and criticism earlier spread by Miss Henrietta Muller (who was at the moment in Lowestoft, Suffolk), which must surely have reached his ears, even as it had reached the ears of the Noble family. "My little mother says she is humiliated to the verge of tears by such criticism of Swami," Nivedita was to write later on to Miss MacLeod and Mrs. Bull. "If she had been rich, he shd not have had to go into rooms!'[45]

What Miss Muller’s grievances were exactly, I do not know; but whatever they may have been, she had returned to England in the early part of 1899 filled with resentment. A stream of criticism (not all of it original) of India, of Swamiji, of his gurubhais, of his work, of the Math, flowed from her lips: the swamis were not ascetic enough; the new Math at Belur had three big rooms; Swamiji intervened in the affairs of his family; Hinduism was based on phallic worship, and so on*(5). To Dr. Lewis G. Janes, a levelheaded American friend of Swamiji’s, who was to hear Miss Muller lecture on India in 1901, it was clear that she was mentally unbalanced[46]. Possibly this was also clear to Swamiji’s English friends and yet the seeds of doubt, whatever their source, had little trouble finding favorable soil; and once those seeds were sown, it was inevitable that a question should arise among the English friends as to the allocation of the money they had donated to Swamiji’s Indian work— little enough as it had been. (Outside of the Seviers, who had, as it were, given their lives, Miss Muller, Mr. Sturdy, and a Miss Souter had been the principal donors.)

*(5) For a time after her return from India Miss Muller forbore to disclose Nivedita’s "teaching and practice of idolatry" in her Calcutta girls’ school. But she could not maintain silence for long. On September 11, 1899, she gave notice, as it were, of damaging disclosures to come. (That Nivedita had by then left England she did not know.) The following correspondence between (contd) Miss Muller Sister Nivedita is from the Sara C. Bull Collection.
Grand Hotel, Lowestoft, [Suffolk, England]

Sept.11th[1899]
Dear Margaret
I must not further put off doing a duty which I had so much hoped would become unnecessary.
I understand that the opinions which you expressed in India about Hinduism, and which you put into practice there remain unchanged;—contrary to my hopes for you that the gentle hand of Time would lead you back to the Truth. The time has come for me to make my position clear. The difference between us is fundamental, and irreconcilable. I cannot any longer hope for the change which I have looked for so long and in vain.
Before leaving India I told you that I would on reaching England maintain silence on the subject of your teaching and practice of idolatry in the school, neither did I expose your moat shameful public defence of it.
My silence must now be broken, I claim and shall take my freedom to break that silence in whatever manner I think fit,
I remain yours truly
F. H. Muller
Nivedita, who owed to Miss Muller her passage from England to India and back, replied from America with lofty and very likely maddening cordiality:
Ridgely Manor
Oct 9 1899]
My dear Rev Mother—
Your letter written at Lowestoft a month ago only reached me yesterday. You have been very kind & considerate about the feeling of my family & I thank you. But my sister has now sold the school & married & all reason for silence is withdrawn.

I quite see your point about freedom to attack my point of view with regard to idolatry, & I do not feel that any attack you might see fit to make on me need ever interfere with my relationship of gratitude & affection towards yourself. Of course you will accord me the same. 

I hope you are well & have enjoyed yr. summer. America is lovely in her autumn colouring—but I do not walk& drive as much as I might, because I am at work writing—on Indian subjects of course—& I cannot do much till I have finished.
Believe me always my dear Rev Mother
Your Daughter as Ever 

Nivedita (or "Margot"?)

Mr. Sturdy, it would appear, had written to Mrs. Bull in regard to the donations, and she had sent Swamiji a copy of her reply. Swamiji’s answer of August 6 to Mrs. Bull in which he dealt with this and other harassments, has not heretofore been published:

The Lymes 
Woodside 
Wimbledon
6th August 99.

My dear Mother

Your letter directed to Sturdy at hand. I am very thankful for your kind words. As for me I don’t know what I  am to do next or anything to do at all. On board the steamer I was all right but since landing feeling quite bad again. As to mental worry there has been enough of late. The aunt whom you saw had a deep laid plan to cheat me and she & her people contrived to sell me a house for 6000 Rs. or £400 and I bought for my mother in good faith. Then they would not give me possession, hoping that I would not go to court for shame to take forcible possession as a Sannyasin.

I do not think I have spent even one rupee from what you and others gave me for the work. Cap Sevier gave me 8000 Rs. with the express desire of helping my mother with. This money it seems has [also] gone to the dogs. Beyond this nothing has been spent on my family or even on my own personal expenses. My food &c being paid for by the Khetri raja & more than half of that went to the Math every month. Only if Brahmananda spends some in the lawsuit [against the aunt] as I must not be robbed that way— if he does I will make it good anyway if I live to do it.

The money which I got in Europe & America by lecturing alone I spent just as I like but every cent I got for the work has been accounted for & is in the Math, & the whole thing ought to be clear as daylight.... I got a letter at Aden from Saradananda that they were preparing an account. I have not received any yet.

I have no plans yet nor care to make any. I neither wish to work. Let the Mother find other workers. I have my burden enough already.

Ever your devoted son[47]
Vivekananda

From the early days of his mission in the West, money had been a trial to Swamiji. To take money for lectures and classes that he would far rather have given freely, to keep track of money thus earned, to prevent himself from being taken  advantage of right and left by unscrupulous lecture agents and managers of halls, to remember, as he seldom did, not to give whatever money he happened to have in his purse to whoever at the moment needed it —all these "botherations" had plagued him, but they were a necessary part of the new monasticism he had in mind— for without money there could be no organized work. Mais l’argent, mon ami! was an expression that much amused him and that he often found all too apt. Returning to India in 1897, he had divested himself as far as possible of all direct handling of funds, turning over to Swami Brahmananda whatever money for the work he had at hand and later (December, 1897) giving him power of attorney so that he could withdraw the Math funds (which were held in Swamiji’s name) from a bank in Calcutta and thus attend to such things as the purchase of land during Swamiji’s absence.[48] This had been a convenient arrangement in many respects. One finds, for instance, a revealing passage in a letter to Swami Ramakrishnananda in February of 1898 in reply to the latter’s recommendation of a young man who wanted financial help. "I would be very glad to help him," Swamiji wrote, "but the fact is, I have no money; every cent I had I have made over to Raja [Swami Brahmananda], as they all say I am a spendthrift and are afraid of keeping money with me.'[49]

But while Swamiji had been more or less free in India of handling money, the responsibility of collecting funds and disbursing them had still lain on his shoulders and weighed on his mind. Again and again he had impressed upon his brother monks the importance of keeping detailed and absolutely strict accounts. They had done so, even to the extent of curbing Swamiji’s own impulse to give money to others whenever he saw an immediate need. Confident that all was in good order, Swamiji now (August 10, 1899) wrote from England to Swami Brahmananda: "Send an account to Mrs. Bull as to how much was spent on purchase of land, how much on buildings, how much on maintenance etc." In this same letter he again stressed the necessity for strict accounting. "Get the signatures of the Committee for every item of expenditure. Otherwise you also will be in for a bad name. This much is customary that people want some time or other an account of their donations. It is very wrong not to have it ready at every turn.... Make a committee of all those who are in the Math and no expenditure will be made which is not countersigned by them— none at all!'[50]

(On the basis of the information Swami Brahmananda was to send to Mrs. Bull, she was able to prepare detailed accounts for the London people: This took time, for the going and coming of mail between the West and India was slow. Only months later, on November 21, could Swamiji write to his brother monk: "The accounts are all right. I have handed them over to Mrs. Bull who has taken charge of reporting the different parts of the accounts to different donors.'[51] In the same month Swami Saradananda was to write to Mrs. Bull: "I need not say 'may Sri R. bless you’; for the way that has been opened to you to help Mother, Swamiji & us all, and to [uphold] the honour of the cause in the West, by helping the Swami in his accounts of the public money shows that you have been chosen by Sri R. & made the corner stone, & stay of His work. I bless you Granny dear with all my heart. ”)[52]

While Swamiji found it entirely reasonable and proper that donors to his cause should want to know how their money had been used and intended to present accounts when the building of the Math was finished, the element of calculation and distrust implicit in the importunate questions of his English friends could not but have hurt him. Yet those who were close to him at this period seem to have felt only his undimmed radiance nothing else. In later years Lizelle Reymond, collecting material for her biography of Nivedita, The Dedicated, corresponded with May and Richmond Noble and on the basis of their memories was able to give one or two descriptions of Swamiji. These and Nivedita’s letters to Yum afford us the closest glimpses we have of him during his stay in Wimbledon.

Although Swamiji’s poor health made it difficult for him to walk up the hill to 21A High Street,*(6) he would sometimes join the Noble family in the garden behind the house and there hold everyone spellbound, striking in each heart a responsive chord. Even May, who was shortly to be married, felt strongly tempted to follow this great man, giving her life to his service, as her sister had done. Mrs. Noble found in him a son who needed her care. Richmond, Nivedita’s brother, stiIl in his teens, found in Swamiji a Christ like man who could answer with authority his aching questions about human life and its meaning, about the existence of God and His ways to man. He found in Swamiji, moreover, a staunch ally against the tyranny of his elder sister. One day, Mlle Reymond recounts, the young Richmond jokingly complained (perhaps only half jokingly) that Nivedita, imposing Hindu customs upon her Irish family, had banned beef from the menus. Swamiji laughed. "So she has been laying down the law, has she!" Thereupon he took Richmond to a small restaurant and, to the young man’s astonishment, ordered a beefsteak medium rare (cuit a point, Mlle Reymond’s original French reads). "Eat, my boy," he said. "It’s for you. I am giving you back what Nivedita has taken from you!'[53]

*(6) Swamiji’s health seems to have worsened badly in England. Even a short walk was difficult for him, let alone the fifteen-minute climb from his lodgings to the Nobles’ house. On August 12, I899, Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod: "The King is this morning far from well. He went to see Miss Souter [in London] yesterday and came home late—but he panted so hard that it took half hour from the station to his rooms—a walk of 4 to 5 minutes" (Letters of Sister Nivedita, ed. Sankari P. Basu, I :195).

(Almost three years to the day after Richmond had first met Swamiji, he was to come to his defense against an unjust and ill-informed newspaper article. "Though I am soon to be ordained in the Orders of the Church of England," he wrote on August 1, 1902, to the editor of the offending paper, "yet having come into contact with Swami I have learnt, while still retaining my Christian Faith, to appreciate so good a man.'[54] In Pravrajika Atmaprana’s biography, Sister Nivedita, one finds a more personal and impassioned appreciation of Swamiji in another letter from Richmond, written perhaps many years later: "That my sister should have obeyed his call was nothing wonderful," he wrote, "for I myself saw Swamiji, and I know his power. One had only to see and to hear Swamiji, and to say to oneself, 'Behold the man.’ One knew he spoke truth, for he spoke with authority, and not merely as a scholar or as a priest. Swamiji brought certainty with him, he gave assurance and confidence to the enquirer.")[55]

The quiet and gentle Sister Christine and the lively, charming Mary Funke added to the pleasantness of the fortnight Swamiji spent at Wimbledon. "He was seldom more spontaneous than in [Mary Funke’s] presence," Christine was to write years later.” “She is naive,’ he said.... This amused her, for she did not spare herself in her efforts to meet his moods. Perhaps more than any of us she realised how much he needed rest and relaxation.... She told funny stories, often at her own expense, talked lightly and entertainingly.'[56] And surely the Hammonds of Wimbledon—Eric and Nell— visited him now and then, their devotion unwavering.

But for the most part the English friends remained out of sight. "None of my old friends have I seen yet except Miss Souter and Max Gysi, who are in London," Swamiji wrote to Marie Halboister, who was then in Ottawa, Canada. "They have been very kind, as they always were. [Max Gysi was a young Swiss and "a great friend of Miss Souter."] . . . Miss Kate Steel is also away. She is coming on Thursday [August 10] or Saturday'[57].Mr. Sturdy managed to come in from Wales for three days, spending those nights in his London house,*(7) but of the meeting between him and Swamiji we know only that, face to face with his guru, he failed to unburden his mind.

*(7) The following year Sister Nivedita was to write from America to Josephine MacLeod, who ever remained Sturdy’s friend: "I am sorry about poor Mr. Sturdy. But I don’t think I did anything there except provide the precipitating-medium, but the criticism and money-nervousness were already ripe in his heart. I know this, if only from the way he used to go back to West Kensington [to his house at 25 Holland Villas (contd) Road] at night—when he might so easily have had the little room beside the King’s" (Letters of Sister Nivedita, I: 341).

On Wednesday, August 16, after spending a little over a fortnight in England, the two Swamis, together with the two American women, took the train to Glasgow and there set sail for New York on the small S.S. Numidian. The Swamis’ destination was Ridgely Manor, the beautiful country home in New York State of Miss MacLeod’s sister and brother in law, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Leggett, whose invitation had been of long standing. At Ridgely Manor, as Swamiji knew, he would find the rest, the care, and the companionship he needed before deciding upon his future course. As for Nivedita, though she was "hungry for work," as she wrote to Miss MacLeod, she dutifully remained in Wimbledon for three weeks or so longer, for she was to be maid of honor at her sister’s wedding. It was the turn now of Sister Christine and Mary Funke to spend serene, uninterrupted days on a ship with Swamiji, suspended, as it were, in the vast timelessness of sea and sky.

These were ten never to be forgotten days spent on the ocean [Mary Funke was later to write]. Reading and exposition of the Gita occupied every morning, also reciting and translating poems and stories from the Sanskrit and chanting old Vedic hymns. The sea was smooth and at night the moonlight was entrancing. Those were wonderful evenings; the Master paced up and down the deck, a majestic figure in the moonlight stopping now and then to speak to us of the beauties of Nature. "And if all this Maya is so beautiful, think of the wondrous beauty of the Reality behind it! ” he would exclaim.

One especially fine evening when the moon was at the full and softly mellow and golden, a night of mystery and enchantment, he stood silently for a long time drinking in the beauty of the scene. Suddenly he turned to us and said: "Why recite poetry when there, ” pointing to sea and sky, "is the very essence of poetry? ”

We reached New York all too soon, feeling that we never could be grateful enough for those blessed, intimate ten days with the Guru.[58]

3

Only after Swamiji was safely out of England did Mr. Sturdy speak his mind. The correspondence that was to take place between them in the fall of 1899 was set off by a note the latter wrote to Nivedita in reply to some comment (now lost) that she had made in praise of her guru. As far as I know, the full text of Sturdy’s reply no longer exists, but a pertinent excerpt from it was copied out by Nivedita along with her answer. A directive at the top of the sheet reads: "Publish after Sturdy's death," and it is, surely, time to do so. The excerpt from his note reads as follows:

You and I take different views of the Swami and his work. I have seen very little of Sannyasa on the part of any of the Sannyasins who have visited this country, although I have heard a good deal about it. I do not want to influence your ideals in any way, but I must admit that I am disappointed in many ways, and am daily pondering how I shall make it known to the Vivekananda.[59]

"I knew there was a flaw in that crystal,'[60] Nivedita had written to Miss MacLeod some three weeks earlier in connection with Sturdy. Now, fancying a cry of anguish in the above, she rushed to the rescue, allowing herself only one lethal dig. Her reply was dated August 24:

As to your letter, how intense is the pain that prompted it, I can only dimly and shrinkingly guess. You say "I do not want to influence your ideals in any way."

Thank God you are able to put aside any foolish hesitation of that sort, and speak out to someone. For a moment I was shocked, for disloyalty is terrible, and I felt that Swami himself, not his disciple nor another, was the right person to hear your criticism, but at the same time my whole heart went and goes out to you for the dull terrible misery that oppresses you, and cuts you off from your old life. But I will tell you how the matter strikes an outsider. I put your difficulty as a question in its extreme form, to my mother, and asked her how the things that I supposed trouble the disciple had struck her. You know, of course, that Swami has appealed to her only on his own merits, having the whole current of ‘her [Christian] orthodoxy, and his effect on my own life, against him.

She said at once that not only did sick men require sick men’s comforts, but that in the case of Swami himself there must be perfect freedom. She said that so great a man would show that greatness in every way, and would take as his own that which to smaller persons might seem enviable. As to other Monks, she understood that the charge made was against their religious fervour. She was not in the habit of judging for others how this should be shown. She thought it would be unreasonable to expect men in a foreign country to adjust their lives all at once to strange conditions, and personally she would be astonished at anyone who would presume to question the asceticism of Swami T[uriyananda], who appeared to her and the whole family, to be simply overflowing with what they call "The love of God", and to be absolutely indifferent to external circumstances. I give you this as it stands, for my one object was to do justice to the charge, and listen to the reply that rose naturally to the lips of the lady. Had my mother said "I think there may be something in it", I should have tried to report the observation faithfully. Now I am willing to discuss the matter from the inside point of view, and that very plainly. You will remember that in India the word "Sannyasa" applies specially to one sort of asceticism, that is, to purity. Now I will ask you "Have you ever found this asceticism to be untrue?" I have found that such as he is in this respect such are, in their degree, all his Gurubhais and all his monastic disciples. I know many of them very intimately, as you are aware, and most of them a little, and of all this is true.

Another thing, in speaking of him in connection with this question of renunciation, do not forget that you are speaking of a man who might be worshipped today from one end of India to the other, and he will not; of a man who fled from fame year after year; of a man who snaps his fingers at all the rich people of his own city today to their infinite chagrin, and insists on living the life of his humblest fellow countrymen, though his knowledge and appreciation of the luxuries of Western luxury is not only greater than that of rich Hindus, but far surpassing my own and yours. Could you do these things? It is just that, this Renunciation is positive, active, overwhelming!

If I, standing up a little with a yard measure or a foot rule, declare that the great roar of the ocean beyond is nothing, since it sweeps on past the headlands, and does not invade my little domain to be measured by my little stick, I think I shall have nothing but my own folly for my pains. But I hold no belief in the matter, I do not know your grounds of criticism, and I fail to see the importance of the thing. The life of the disciples of Sri Ram Krishna in their own country has not struck me, so far as I have seen it, as it has done you. I have thought it anything but self-indulgent, but after all, that is a matter of opinion; I don’t see that anything depends on it.

One thing, however, I do know, Swamiji is the one person to whom these things should be said. There is no need to ponder how to make them known. Do believe for one moment in the greatness of the man, and trust all your criticisms, all your reproaches to him himself.

Believe me always, 
Yours faithfully,[61] N.


Mr Sturdy had not sought all this warmth. He had not asked for Nivedita’s opinion or advice; most certainly he had not requested a comment on his loyalty or solicited her compassion; perhaps he cannot be blamed for replying in icicle terms. There is no question, however, that some of his coldness arose from the strong dislike that he, and others, had taken to her. Jealousy may have been one contributing factor; another may have been her recent identification with India (an attitude that she herself had come to only after much pounding from Swamiji and many tears). It was one thing to listen to a Hindu monk in a West End drawing room and to discuss Vedanta at the Sesame Club; it was quite another thing to call that Hindu "Master," to lay one’s life fully at his feet, to become a Hindu oneself, even to one’s name. "The Seviers are the only English people who do not hate the natives, Sturdy not excepted," Swamiji had warned Nivedita long before.'[62] In July of 1899, Mrs. Ashton Jonson— one of Swamiji’s friends who were out of town that summer*(8)—wrote with considerable candor to Miss MacLeod: "I fear Nivedita will not get much support in England for her India work. There are too few persons who know her sufficiently to believe in her personally & still fewer who care enough about Hindoo women to give them the benefit of such education as Miss Noble wd give:[63] Yet it had seemed axiomatic to Nivedita that her enthusiasms and convictions would be universally shared particularly by those who loved, or who she thought loved, Swamiji. In the West she was to receive more than one shock in this respect. Perhaps the first was Sturdy’s blood-chilling rebuff. It read in full:


*(8) Toward the end of Swamiji’s stay in England, Mrs.Ashton Jonson returned to London and came to Wimbledon to see him, at which time Nivedita, who seems to have admired and trusted Mrs. Jonson and had, in fact, written to her from Kashmir of some of her most precious glimpses of Swamiji’s God-conscious states (see chapter one, section one), tried enthusiastically to persuade her to come to America to help the work there (see Letters of Sister Nivedita,  1:197). Mrs.Jonson made polite protests, promising to help Nivedita "in every possible way" on the latter’s return to England (ibid., 199). What was actually taking place in Mrs. Jonson’s mind beneath her well-bred demeanor is clear enough in the following note.

I have neither the intention nor the inclination to enter into a long paper discussion, or in words, as to Vivekananda’s or any or all of the other Swamis’ characters.


I may merely add this, "everyone must form his own ideal, and work with those who conform to it; with those who do not, association will naturally [not] be so close. I have formed my own idea of the life of Renunciation, and although I am not able to lead it myself, I still hope to see others who profess Sannyasa who may approximate to it.


It is only because you seem to think I shared your unreasoning enthusiasm that I wrote you. It may be quite right for you, but I alone must decide upon the attitude I take, and the opinions on which that attitude is based.


I have found that appeals to loyalty are generally appeals to fanaticism, at the same time spoiling and making tyrants of those who by more discerning methods would have acted differently. I have not set up any Gods for myself, and have none to throw down. If you have set up a God or Gods, it is quite right that you should be loyal. My loyalty is to my ideal; if shifting personalities do not conform to it, where is the loyalty? To them, with whose methods I do not agree, or, to the ideal, which perhaps wrongly, I thought we held in common?


I have let you know that on some points there is difference between Swami and me. It now remains for him and me to settle this, not you and me.[64]


On August 24 Nivedita forwarded the first part of the correspondence between herself and Mr. Sturdy to Miss MacLeod and Mrs. Bull, who were then in America. "It takes all your lovely letters—which mercifully came in the same post— to counteract the effect of my enclosures," she wrote. "You will read them & keep them in the archives. " Sturdy’s criticism that Swamiji and his brother sannyasins of the Ramakrishna Order were not ascetic enough had troubled her. She felt it required an overall answer. "Will you both honestly think out this difficulty of Mr. Sturdy’s," she continued, "and see what permanent meeting of it there shd be.... It may be that on thinking the matter over you may decide to approach Swami on the point with a direct question as to the meaning of his general policy or it may be that you will think it best just to look out for the hints that he drops unconsciously." She went on to search about in her own mind for possible means of justifying to the West the ways of Sri Ramakrishna’s disciples:


For instance, one answer, when I believe to be his [Swamiji’s] conscious policy, wd be that he wished his monks to grow up in certain associations —so that they cd renounce with the ease of him who has possessed....


Or another possible answer wd be that the element of a Monastic Rule was only being brought into Eastern Monasticism by him that until his work was done we cd not take the specimens produced as representative of his will. For himself —it is surely enough to claim that he is free—the Jivan Mukti [jivanmukta] & may do what he chooses. But it may occur to him that this question of representing Eastern Asceticism justly in the West is worth facing & he may decide to impose restrictions tending in that direction on all or some of us.


Another possible reply on his part to these objections wd be that he really wished to create an advance on the present standard of comfort in Bengal &—thought this the way to do it. This point of view wd be easy to preach if he holds it. And personally anything is justified to me that forces narrow hearts to open wider.[65]


The simple fact that seems to have escaped Nivedita and others in those early days was that many of Swamiji’s brother disciples were themselves jivanmuktas (liberated, though embodied). They were free and realized souls, totally selfless, with no further need to practice asceticism or anything else. As they proved again and again, before, during, and after this period, they were capable when necessary of the most severe and sustained austerity and self sacrifice, such as Mr. Sturdy could not even dream of but which was natural to them as breathing. As for Swamiji’s policy, a life of chastity, poverty, and obedience— a life dedicated wholly to the service of man and the realization of God —was, of course, the rule of the Ramakrishna Order. There were, it is true, no spikes at the Math to sleep upon, but there were no soft mattresses either. And at the time of Mr. Sturdy’s complaints there was so little money for the maintenance of the Math that Swamiji was desperate.


When Nivedita’s letter with its enclosures reached Ridgely Manor, Swamiji had already arrived. Never one to beat about the bush, Miss MacLeod did not approach him cautiously, nor did she wait for him to drop hints; she simply showed him the correspondence between Nivedita and Sturdy. She then forwarded Nivedita’s letter to Mrs. Bull, to whom it was also addressed and whose arrival at Ridgely Manor had been delayed. "Read Margot’s letter to no one," she wrote, " —nor refer to Sturdy —nor write him. I’ll tell you much.'[66]


The next day Swamiji wrote from Ridgely Manor to Mrs. Bull at Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she was taking care of her sick daughter, Olea Vaughan: "It is an awful spell of the bad turn of fortune with me last six months. Misfortune follows me ever wherever I go. In England, Sturdy seems to have got disgusted with the work; he does not see any asceticism in us from India. Here no sooner I reach than Olea gets a bad attack. Shall I run up to you?" he added. "I know I cannot be of much help, but I will try my best in being useful.'[67]


It was ten days before Swamiji felt inclined to write to Sturdy. Some parts of his letter of September 14 have appeared in the Complete Works. But the full correspondence between Swamiji and Sturdy during this fall of 1899 has not been published. Somehow, typed copies of most of the letters found their way in later years to the Ramakrishna Monastery in Bangalore, South India, from where they were made available to me through the kindness of the late Swami Yatiswarananda, who at the time was vice president of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission. Thus I am able to add here some more details of this episode, which has been only half known and the important part of which—how much Swamiji forgave his disciple—has not been heretofore known at all. The correspondence will take us into November of 1899, months beyond the point we have come to in our story; but since it had little connection with the events that were taking place during its course but pertained, rather, to Swamiji’s life and work in England, let us plunge here into the whole incredible exchange.


The unpublished portions (together with a published passage or two) of Swamiji’s first letter to Sturdy from America (written from Ridgely Manor and dated September I4, 1899) read as follows:


I have been simply taking rest at the Leggetts’ and doing nothing. Abhedananda is here he has been working hard....

Well, I was given some correspondence between you and Miss Noble to read the other day—I am sorry we could not come up to your ideal. But my experience of life is we so rarely find a person who comes up to that. Then again it is almost impossible for anyone to keep steady on the plane we assign to him in the ideal. We are so human, and liable to change for good or worse. At the same time, like the earth’s rotating we are always leaving the changes in us out of calculation, and attribute it all to the external ideals.


Mrs. Johnson [Mrs. Ashton Jonson]—is of opinion, no spiritual person ought to be ill—it also seems to her now that my smoking is sinful &,c. &c.


That was Miss Muller’s reason for leaving me, my illness. They may be perfectly right, for aught I know, and you too, but I am what I am. In India the same defects, plus eating with Europeans have been taken exception to by many. I was driven out of a private temple by the owner for eating with Europeans. I wish I was malleable enough to be moulded into whatever one desired but unfortunately I never saw a man who could satisfy everyone. Nor can anyone who has to go to different places—possibly satisfy all.... I hear also that there has been some talk about the money you gave me., I got £500 = 7500 Rs.+ £500 = 7500 Rs. from Miss Soutter [Souter], Miss Muller gave through Goodwin 30,000 Rs. total 45,000 Rs. Miss Muller got us to buy a piece of land which cost 40,000 Rs—and about 4,000 to level it and fill up the huge gaps in it, as it was a dockyard. I have a building on it not large and a chapel and library &c. That has been paid for by the Indian friends—and Mrs. Bull of America. The land alone with the improvements will cover more than the sum I got from my English friends. An inquiry in the Registrar’s records of the Howrah Dist. Bengal will show the truth of what I state nor have I even spent a penny of the money given to me by anyone in any country for my work on myself. For my own private expenses I in America used to get money by lecturing or writing in the papers. In India Mrs. Sevier and the Rajah of Khetri used to give me little sums to cover it. Whenever you think it necessary the accounts of every penny the Eng. people gave me is ready. Miss Noble’s school was started with funds I got in India from the Maharajah of Kashmir and my Madras publications and her own money largely. Mrs. Johnson thinks the attitude of Miss Noble towards me is very unsatisfactory—and I am responsible for that. I do not know how I can be responsible for ideas another person has of me of which I am not even cognisant of!!! How could I know your or Mrs. Johnson’s present mental attitude towards me if you did not through the American friends let me know of it? I am told there has been some discussion about some funds between you and Miss Noble— am I to be responsible for that too? Did I write to you to give me any money? I don’t remember myself asking for pecuniary help from anybody anywhere. If they helped me of their own accord I took it, when they gave it to me personally— I spent it; mostly on others; when for the work— it has been spent on the work. I can understand well how differences of opinion tastes and ideals should naturally arise in the course of years—but how so much hatred and dislike may slowly and without any warning expression, gather round little trifling personal peculiarities I cannot understand.


I so long thought it was only the fault of enslaved races like mine; but that manlier races like yours should also have it, and suddenly bring it to light without any previous warning, makes me sad.


Of course it is my Karma— and I am glad that it is so—for, though it smarts for the time, it is another great experience of life, which will be useful either in this or in the next.


If you or Miss Muller or Miss Soutter repent of the help you gave to my work —only give me time, I will try my best to pay it back....

As for me I stick to my nature and principle—once a friend always a friend, also the true Indian principle of looking subjectively for the cause of the objective.


I am sure that the fault is mine and mine only for every wave of dislike or hatred that I get—it could not be otherwise and thanking you and Mrs. Johnson for this calling me once more to the internal,

I remain as ever with love and blessings,[68]

Vivekananda


Emboldened, Sturdy replied to Swamiji on October I. His letter (the curious punctuation of which is not necessarily his own, for I quote from a typed copy) read in full:

25, Holland Villas Rd. W
Oct. Ist, 1899.

My dear Swamiji


I have duly received your letter of Sep. 14th, and thank you for it.


Before I make any further remark, I would like to say that there is no combination of people, with grievances against you here. Miss Soutter [sic], as you know, has had no communication with me for a very long time.


Mrs. Ashton Jonson, she knows but slightly, and never meets, Miss Muller neither these two ladies nor I have anything to do with whatever.


Between Mrs. Ashton Jonson, and myself, there has been some small correspondence during the last 2 1/2 months I have been absent, not about you at all, but what Mrs. A. J., thought of Miss Noble. Now you must understand that I have no comment to make on Miss N’s attitude to you. It is a personal thing, between you two, and there it ends. That is my idea of the freedom of the individual, both for you two, and for me.


But Miss. N. was writing to me assuming all the time, that I held the same attitude of worship, saw you in the same mind-formed shape, that she sees you in. It was necessary therefor, that I should write her, and not act the part of a hypocrite. I also told her to show the letters to you, which she at first declined to do.


Now I have nothing to take back from those letters. Miss Noble was writing of Sannyasins and Sannyasa. I wrote you [her?] just what I have continued to think, for a long time, from very shortly, after the Caversham days, that I have heard, a great deal of Sannyasa, in this country, and seen very little of it from those who professed it. I do not want to enlarge on this subject, and thus embitter the question, but to justify what I have said, I will remark that there has always been grumbling at food and accommodation, and that the expense of supporting the so called Sannyasins, has been very much more than would have supported many a hardworking curate, or young University man, or even doctor in our great poverty stricken centres, who make no pretentions to Sannyasa. But who fulfil their ideals of it without talk, as to other points, your anger about trivial things, a certain amount of boasting and exaggeration, etc. let them pass. I only want to say that I do not profess, or pretend to see perfection, but let us have done with humbug, and sham, and call you, and know you, as you are, that is, like ourselves, with failings equivalent to our own, with more genius, and more insight, doubtless, but not a God walking the earth—at least not for me, whatever some certain devoted ladies may see. If you want to know whether Miss Soutter, or Miss Muller, repent of their gifts to you, you must write them, I know nothing of them, I will answer for myself, I am glad to hear, now, from you, for the first time, that it has been wisely expended. I do not regret one anna of the gift, I hope every brick it may have helped to raise, or Sannyasi, to help may be surrounded with blessing. I do not know that any suggestion has been made by anybody, that their gift was regretted. You talk of hatred, that is an exaggeration or worse. Nobody here that I have anything to do with, comes anywhere in the direction of hatred, or even dislike, honest expression of difference of ideal or opinion, is not hatred. I see no truth in your remarks about enslaved, and manlier races, there is no cabal here, no conspiracy; I have no bloodthirsty confederates. Nobody is hiding any hatred, that I know. I can certainly speak for Mrs. Jonson on that score. She has strong Xtrian science [Christian Science] beliefs, and so is perhaps rather hard on you just there*(9). I know how weak all round we become in illness. I am no judge of how far you or anybody else is ill, by the action of the mind as it were considered apart from disorganized body. I know what you have taught about body, I know also that the, "do as I say, not as I do", of our parsons or of anybody else, has little result. Is mostly a waste of time, stimulates people greatly like champagne for a little and leaves them more depressed, because less believing than before, when they discover the difference, between impassioned oratory, and practice. Think of all the parsons, of all the sects, talking every week, and think of one man, acting instead, What influence, do all the former really have? It all comes to this, Here I am, prepared for work, of any kind, that leads to the worthy setting forth, of the Indian Ideals, and the living up to them. But I am particular and perhaps overnice, as to whom I enter into unconditional cooperation with if they teach in one direction, and their lives do not follow it. If after encouraging Sannyasins, to come here, they have no Sannyasa, neither contentment, equanimity, simplicity of surroundings, or anything else, if they want food, from the other side of the world to live on, shilling cigars to smoke, and the best of fruits, clothes, or what not, what are they? What is it, they are teaching! I don’t understand it. I can only say they are not the ideals of Sannyasa, I have formed in my mind, by reading the Gita, the Upanishads, the Mahabharata, and other books, dealing with a glorious, manly noble Indian past, when there was grit, energy, fire, and great austerity, and command, accompanied by love and gentleness, all in one.


Perhaps they always lived with the wealthy of their period, and had a good time all round, but I don’t think so. They more likely helped the poor and the struggling, and outfaced their poverty by needing less than they. I have to live with wife, children, household, and all the complication of the civilisation, into which I am born, I did not take the opportunity that I had when it offered, some years ago, and towards which I had been struggling, for years before, Well, that is over. When I was acting then, I might teach what I was acting, I cannot teach poverty, simplicity, the non holding on to possessions, when I have to possess for wife and children, and provide a household. But I can help others, who live it to teach it, without hypocrisy. But the question is, can I find anybody? Is anybody in such a world, prepared to act or only to talk, along with the rest of the babbling crew? I want no travesties.


I will rather remain silent for ever, and wait for the ages to roll back. I can with difficulty bring myself, to utter any sentiment, or ideal, that I am not embodying, in my character. I do not want to criticise anybody else, for whatever they may do, up to rape or murder, but I want the speech to be the man in myself, and if I work with others, in them too. I am not satisfied with twoness in myself, I cannot preach to people, things that I am not, expressing in my life, or I would start tomorrow. My life expresses what I am, and that is my preaching. You and your brethren are Sanayasins, you say, Well, be so, What you teach let us all see carried out. I may not be able to express very clearly what I would but I have nothing to hide, or to keep back, and if you think there is anything further to say or to clear up, let us have it. I should like all at Ridgely, including Mr. Leggett, to see this letter, or else to keep it entirely to yourself, as I have here.

Yours as before,[69]
E.T.S.


Swamiji replied softly, obviously wanting to bring to a close this impossible correspondence and bid his disciple Godspeed. His letter bears no date but was written in October from Ridgely Manor. Although it has been published in the Complete Works, I shall give it here in full:


My dear Sturdy,


Your last letter reached me after knocking about a little through insufficient address.


It is quite probable that very much of your criticism is just and correct. It is also possible that some day you may find that all this springs from your dislike of certain persons, and I was the scapegoat.


There need be no bitterness, however, on that account, as I don’t think I ever posed for anything but what I am. Nor is it ever possible for me to do so, as an hour’s contact is enough to make everybody see through my smoking, bad temper, etc. "Every meeting must have a separation" this is the nature of things. I carry no feeling of disappointment even. I hope you will have no bitterness. It is Karma that brings us together and Karma  separates.


I know how shy you are, and how loath to wound others’ feelings. I perfectly understand months of torture in your mind, when you have been struggling to work with people who were so different from your ideal. I could not guess it before at all, else I could have saved you a good deal of unnecessary mental trouble. It is Karma again.


The accounts were not submitted before, as the work is not yet finished; and I thought of submitting to my donor a complete account when the whole thing was finished. The work was begun only last year, as we had to wait for funds a long time and my method is never to ask but wait for voluntary help.


I follow the same idea in all my work, as I am so conscious of my nature being positively displeasing to many, and wait till somebody wants me. I hold myself ready also to depart at a moment’s notice. In the matter of departure thus, I never feel bad about it or think much of it, as in the constant roving life I lead I am constantly doing it: Only so sorry I trouble others, without wishing it. Will you kindly send over if there is any mail for me at your address?


May all blessings attend you and yours for ever and ever will be the constant prayer of[70]

Vivekananda.


Sturdy would not let the matter rest there. As though compelled by some demonic spirit, he had to answer Swamiji with further insult and abuse. "Oh the terrible results when the sons of God marry the daughters of men!" Sister Nivedita had written earlier to Miss MacLeod and Mrs. Bull in connection with Sturdy’s change of attitude.[71] Indeed the man, one thinks, was mad. The following letter was dated November 3:


My dear Swamiji:


I can only protest that no dislike to any person or persons exists in my mind whatever and I have been puzzled to think who you could have had in your mind when you suggested you had been made a scapegoat for them.


I have not the slightest bitterness; you have absolute freedom to carry on your message to the western world in your own way. There is also perfect freedom for everybody else and they will work or refrain according to the impressions they gain. But it is to be presumed that you wish to appear in a consistent light and not to test the intuitions of those who listen to you to such an extent that having to judge by what they see they desire to hear you no more.


I have constantly had to defend you against the criticisms of even good friends of your cause on account of the things I have written previously and have had to stretch my own convictions and do a considerable amount of "special pleading" for you. Poor Goodwin knew this well and his opinion coincided with mine.


[In justice to Mr. Goodwin, it should be noted here that in October of 1896, just before returning to London to be with Swamiji, he wrote in a letter to Miss MacLeod: "Shall I shock you very much if I tell you that the Swami takes the place of Christ to me? I think not, for you will understand what I mean."[72]


Nobody knows better than I [Mr. Sturdy went on] how your prospects here, whatever may be the case elsewhere, have suffered through your own acts. Rather than believe this you prefer to think that my individual prejudice is at the base of it all. You seem never to have perceived that with Western people, altho’ they may seek "great display and luxury" for themselves that they have high regard for simplicity and natural austerity and denial in others, especially in those who teach it and that whilst they are pressing hospitality and luxury upon you they are inwardly regretting the absence of indifference to it.


I shall write no more on this subject. Independence is a fine thing and so is consistency between speech and act. If you want people to look at a grand painting you do not point at it with one hand and throw lime in their eyes with the other. If you desire to make a gift you do not creep up like a thief and so risk blows instead of thanks. If you come as a sannyasi to teach people absence of attachment to the world and at the same time maintain the appearance of having a jolly good time in luxury and comfort even if you were free of these things, what good are you likely to do?


Yours as ever[73],
E. T. Sturdy


There was a limit to the insolence Swamiji would permit. In his letter before this last Sturdy had written: "If you think there is anything further to say or to clear up, let us have it " Swamiji now let him have it. His reply, which was written from New York in November and first published in the 1958 edition of volume seven of the Complete Works, is given below in full and as it appears in an early typed copy:


21 West Thirty Fourth Street


My dear Sturdy—This is not to defend my conduct. Words can not wipe off the evils I have done— nor any censor stop from work the good deeds if any.


For the last few months I have been hearing so much of the luxuries I was given to enjoy by the people of the West; luxuries which the hypocrite myself has been enjoying although preaching renunciation all the while, luxuries—the enjoyment of which has been the great stumbling block in my way, in England, at least. I nearly hypnotized myself into the belief that there at least has been a little oasis in the dreary desert of my life—a little spot of light in one whole life of misery and gloom—one moment of relaxation in a life of hard work and harder curses—even that oasis, that spot, that moment was only one of sense enjoyment.


I was glad—I blessed a hundred times a day those that helped me to get i— when lo! your last letter comes like a thunderclap and the dream is vanished. I begin to disbelieve your criticisms—have little faith left in all this talk of luxuries and enjoyments and other visions memory calls up—these I state; hope you will send it round to friends if you think fit and correct me where I am wrong.


( i ) I remember your place at Reading—where I was fed with boiled cabbage and potatoes and boiled rice and boiled lentils—three times a day—with your wife’s curses for sauce all the time. I do not remember your giving me any cigar to smoke —shilling or penny ones. Nor do I remember myself as complaining of either the food or your wife’s incessant curses, though lived as a thief shaking through fear all the time, and working every day for you.


The next memory is of the house at St. George’s road—you and Miss Muller at the head. My poor brother was ill there and Miss Muller drove him away. There too I don’t remember to have had any luxuries as to food or drink or bed or even the room given to me.


The next was Miss Muller’s place—though she has been very kind to me, I was living on nuts and fruits. The next is that of the black hole of London [14 Greycoat Gardens] where I had to work almost day and night and cook the meals oft times for 5 or 6 —and most nights with a bite of bread and butter.


I remember Mrs. Johnson giving me a dinner and a night’s lodging in her place—and then the next day criticising the black savage—so dirty and smoking all over the house.


With the exception of Cap and Mrs Seviers—I do not remember even one piece of rag as big as a handkerchief I got from England. On the other hand the incessant demand on my body and mind in England— is the cause of my break down in health. This was all you English people gave me, whilst working me to my death—and now I am cursed for the luxuries I lived in!!!!!! Whosoever of you have given me a coat? whosoever a cigar? whosoever a bit of fish or flesh? Whosoever of you dare say— I asked food or drink or smoke or dress or money from you? Ask Sturdy, ask for God’s sake, ask your friends, and first ask your own "God within who never sleeps."


You have given me money for my work, every penny of it is there. Before your eyes—I sent my brother away perhaps to his death, and I would not give him a farthing of the money which was not my private property.


On the other hand I remember in England Cap. and Mrs. Seviers—who have clad me when I was cold, nursed me better than my own mother would have, borne with me in my weaknesses, my trials—and they have nothing but blessings for me. And Sturdy that Mrs. Seviers—because she did not care for honor—has the worship of thousands today and when she is dead millions will remember her as one of the great benefactresses of the poor Indians. And they never cursed me for my luxuries—though they are ready to give me luxuries if I need or wish.


I need not tell you of Mrs. Bull, Miss M’cLeod, Mr. and Mrs. Leggett. You know their love and kindness for me and—Mrs. Bull and Miss M’eLeod have been to our country, moved and lived with us as no foreigner ever did—roughing it all—and they do not ever curse me and my luxuries either—they will be only too glad to have me eat well and smoke dollar cigars if I wish. And these Leggetts and Bulls were the people whose bread I was eating, whose clothes were covering my back, whose money bought my smokes and several times paid my rent, whilst I was killing myself for your people, when you were taking my pound of flesh for the dirty hole and starvation and reserving all this accusation of luxury.


"The clouds of autumn make great noise 
but send no rain;
The clouds of the rainy season —without 
a word flood the earth."


See— Sturdy, those that have helped or are still helping— they have no criticism, no curses: it is only those who do  nothing, only come to grind their own axes, they curse, they criticise. That such worthless, heartless selfish rubbish criticise is the greatest blessing that can come to me. I want nothing so much in life as to be miles off from these extremely selfish axegrinders.


Talk of luxuries—take these critics up one after the other—it is all flesh, all flesh and no spirit anywhere. Thank God —they come out sooner or later in their true lights. And you advise me to regulate my conduct—my work—according to the desires of such heartless, selfish persons, and are at your wits’ end because I do not.


As to my gurubhais—they do nothing but what I insist on their doing—if they have shown any selfishness anywhere—that is my ordering them, not what they would do themselves.


Would you like your children put into that dark hole you got for me in London—made to work to death and almost starved all the time? Would Mrs. Sturdy like that? They are sannyasis—and that means no sannyasin should unnecessarily throw away his life or undertake unnecessary hardship.


In undergoing all this hardship [thrice underscored] in the West we have been only breaking the rules of Sannyasa. They are my brothers, my children—I do not want them to die in holes for my sake—I don’t—by all that is good and true I don’t want them starved and worked and cursed for all their pains.


A word more. I will be very glad if you can point out to me, where have I preached torturing the flesh. As for the Sastras—I shall be only too glad if a sastri dares oppose us with the rules of life laid down for sannyasins and Paramahamsas.


Well Sturdy—my heart aches. I understand it all. I know what you are in—you are in the clutches of people who want to use you. I don’t mean your wife. She is too simple to be dangerous—but my poor boy—you have got—the flesh smell—little money and vultures are around. Such is life.


You said a lot about ancient India—that India still lives in some, Sturdy, not dead—and that living India dares even today to deliver her message without fear or favor of the rich—without fear of anybody’s opinion, either in the land where her feet are in chains or in the very face of those who hold the end of the chain, her rulers. That India still lives, Sturdy. India of undying love—of everlasting faithfulness—the unchangeable, not only in manners and customs, but also in love, in faith, in friendship. And I, the least of that India’s child, love you Sturdy with Indian love and would any day give up a thousand bodies to help you out of this delusion.


Ever yours[74]
 Vivekananda


It would appear that even this did not silence Mr. Sturdy. His retort, as far as I know, is not extant, but that it was written in the same pompous and abusive vein as his previous letters can be gathered from the fact that Swamiji did not reply to it at all. Over a year later, after he had returned to India, he wrote to Sturdy in regard to a business matter. "I learn from Saradananda," he said in part, "that you have sent over Rs.1,529 5 5 to the Math, being the money that was in hand for work in England. I am sure it will be rightly used.... I wrote you a letter from Paris. I am afraid you did not get it. So sorry to learn the passing away of Mrs. Sturdy. She has been a very good wife and good mother, and it is not ordinarily one meets with such in this life. (Lucie Sturdy had died bearing a stillborn child in the late autumn of 1900. Swamiji’s letter from Paris had no doubt been one of condolence.] . . . It is not because of your free expression of opinion in your last letter to me that I stopped writing," he concluded. "I only let the wave pass, as is ray wont. Letters would only have made a wave of a little bubble.'[75]


Whether or not Sturdy had the grace to reply to this is not on record; but one way or the other, Swamiji would have loved him still. His heart could never be host to the slightest rancor, rejecting it even as the body rejects a foreign substance. In January of 1901 he would write to Mrs. Bull, "Kindly convey my undying love to Miss Muller the next time you see her, so to Sturdy.'[76]


Curiously, for Swamiji had most probably shown them Sturdy’s letters, Mrs. Bull and Miss MacLeod had remained friendly with that self deceived man, as their subsequent correspondence with him testifies. Sister Nivedita had not been so forgiving. Although in her book The Master as I Saw Him she does not even hint at the shameful treatment Swamiji was accorded: by some of her countrymen, her reticence did not spring from a desire to spare them; on the country, even to mention their names in connection with her great Master would have been, it seemed to her, to honor them too well. In 1906, while her book was in progress, she wrote in a letter to Miss MacLeod:


I am trusting, trusting, trusting that He will guide my hand line by line, that I might write down more aspects of Him that are eternal, and be able to discard remorselessly all the rest. But you do not know how much I learn, in doing this. All the people who hurt Him in a kind of way I find that I have to forgive them. I find that to pillory them as they so richly deserve, and as I now have the means of doing, would be perhaps only to flaw His beauty and to immortalise them, by placing them at His side. And so I have to throw away many and many a stone that I’ve kept in my pocket this many a year!![77]


Surely Sister Nivedita was right in presenting Swamiji’s greatness in its pure essence, right not to clutter her beautiful book with ugly detail. Yet a time comes when all the details, both shining and shadow ridden, of the drama of Swami Vivekananda’s life should be known, for without such knowledge the greatness of that drama cannot be fully grasped. Swamiji’s beauty and magnificence did not lie in his teachings alone; they lay of course also in his character, and they shone through the small incidents of his life as well as through the dazzling and important events. He was a human being, a man who loved deeply and who could be as deeply hurt, but he was a man who could forgive without reservation the most painful of blows. Though he had the divine power a thousand times over to blast to fragments those who ill used him, he had the divine compassion never to do so, but to bless them instead. The Sturdy episode was but one example of his forbearance. There were many other such incidents. He seldom, if ever, mentioned them; his acts of forgiveness, his blessings, were always simple, as natural, as unstudied as a smile or a wave of the hand. Only as old letters come to light do we learn of the faithless, sometimes treacherous, disciples and friends who bestrewed his path and of the onrushing of his love that swept over them as over pebbles, carrying them along to the sea.


ⓘ
[1] Complete Works, 8 : 464
[2] Edward T. Sturdy to Swami Vivekananda, March 30, 1895, SOB.
[3] E. T. Sturdy to Josephine MacLeod, January 18, 1903, SN Col.
[4] E. T. Sturdy to Sara Bull, September, 1895, SCB.
[5]  Complete Works, 8 : 336.
[6]  Complete Works,5 : 97.
[7] E. T. Sturdy to Sara Bull, October 3,    1896, SCB.
[8] Complete Works, 6 : 384.
[9]  Complete Works,., 8 : 393.
[10] Life (1981), 2 : 150.
[11] E. T. Sturdy to Josephine MacLeod, August 1902, Leg. Col.
[12]  Complete Works, 6 : 447.
[13]  Complete Works,5 : 221.
[14] Complete Works,  5 : 116.
[15] E. T. Sturdy to Josephine MacLeod, January 25, 1897, SN Col.
[16] Complete Works, 8 : 399.
[17] Complete Works., 8 : 404.
[18]  Complete Works  8. 413.
[19] Complete Works  p. 408.
[20] Complete Works,p. 415.
[21] Complete Works,p. 513
[22]  Complete Works, 7 : 513.[
[23] E. T. Sturdy to Josephine MacLeod, December 27, 1897, SCB.
[24] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, April 4, 1898, SCB.
[25] E. T. Sturdy to Sara Bull, July 25, 1898, Leg. Col.
[26] E. T. Sturdy to Josephine MacLeod, October 18, 1898, SN Col.
[27] E. T. Sturdy to Josephine MacLeod, March 21, 1899, SCB.
[28] E. T. Sturdy to Josephine MacLeod, March 21, 1899, SCB.
[29]  Complete Works, 7:512.
[30] Charlotte Sevier to Josephine MacLeod, January 1, 1899, SN Col.
[31] E. T. Sturdy to Sara Bull, April I3> 1899, SCB.
[32] E. T. Sturdy to Sara Bull, April 16, 1899.
[33] Swami Saradananda to Sara Bull, May 11, 1899, SCB.
[34] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, June 21, 1899, SCB.
[35] Complete Works,8 : 464.
[36] See Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 189.
[37] E. T. Sturdy to Sara Bull, July 8, 1899, SCB.
[38] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 190.
[39] Mary C. Funke, “The Master,” in Inspired Talks by Swami Vivekananda (1939), pp. 25 26 passim.
[40] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, July 23, 1899, Sen Col.
[41] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 190 91.
[42] Complete Works, 8 : 465.
[43] Mary C. Funke, op. cit., p. 33.
[44] Complete Works, 8 : 465.
[45] Nivedita to Josephine MacLeod, August 24, 1899, SCB.
[46] Lewis G. Janes to Sara Bull, March 30, 1909, SCB.
[47] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, August 6, 1899, SCB.
[48] Complete Works, 8 : 438 40 passim.
[49] Complete Works., p. 443.
[50] Complete Works pp. 468 69.
[51] Complete Works p. 482.
[52] Swami Saradananda to Sara Bull, November 10, 1899, SCB.
[53] Lizelle Reymond, Nivedita: Fille de ITnde, p. 177 (The Dedicated, p. 201).
[54] Sankari Prasad Basu, Lokamata Nivedita, inserts following p. 464.
[55] Pravrajika Atmaprana, Sister Nivedita, p. 92.
[56] Rem, (Sister Christine), pp. 163 64.
[57] Complete Works, 8:467; for bracketed sentence see ibid., 6 : 43° 
[58] Mary C. Funke, op. cit., pp. 34 35
[59] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 203.
[60] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 191.
[61] Letters of Sister Nivedita 1 : 204 5.
[62] Complete Works, 7 : 512.
[63] Ethel Jonson to Josphine MacLeod, July 23, 1899, SCB.
[64] E. T. Sturdy to Sister Nivedita, August 25, 1899, RKM, Belur Math.
[65] Nivedita to Sara Bull and Josephine MacLeod, August 24, 1899, SCB.
[66] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, September 3, 1899, SCB.
[67] Complete Works, 8 : 470.
[68] Complete Works,  7 : 470 72. Unpublished portions, Sturdy Papers, RKM, Bangalore.
[69] E. T. Sturdy to Swami Vivekananda, October 1, 1899, SCB.
[70] Complete Works, 8 : 478 79.
[71] See ref. 65 above.
[72] J. J. Goodwin to Josephine MacLeod, October 4, 1898, A.A.
[73] E. T. Sturdy to Swami Vivek ananda, November 3, 1899, Leg. Col.
[74] Complete Works, 7:511 15. The quotation as given here is from SN Col.
[75] Complete Works, 5 : 152.
[76] Complete Works, , p. 151.
[77] Nivedita to Josephine MacLeod, May 30, 1906, Letters of Sister Nivedita, 2 : 809 10 

↑ Contents

5.3 RIDGELY MANOR: THE GREAT SUMMER

"Swamiji is starting today Allen Line (Allan State Line).Numidian. from Glasgow. a telegram just received says!" Thus Josephine MacLeod wrote to Mrs. Bull on August I7, I899. Her letter, full of heavy underscorings, continued:

Do what you choose. Come at any hour—you are always welcome.You better meet me in New York & we will go together to meet our Prophet. He ought to be 10 days en route—but I will write you definitely tomorrow the day the ship is expected & you meet me in town. .

Do not tell Mrs Crossley a word, let her stay in Princeton so we can have our Prophet without one thorn or criticism —in all his holiness.

I think I may keep Miss Stumm over--she has her worth.

I am in Heaven.[1]

Lovingly Jojo.

(Mrs. Crossley was a London friend of Mrs. Bull’s who had crossed the Atlantic with her in June. She was not well and not, it would seem, in full accord with Swamiji’s views. The more fortunate Maud Stumm was an artist in her late twenties who had met Swamiji once or twice during his first visit to the West and who evidently had admired him. She was now visiting Ridgely Manor.)

Five days later, Miss MacLeod again wrote to "Saint Sara, " telling her, with more underscorings, the exact date of Swamiji’s arrival in New York:

Swamiji’s boat the Numidian sailed on August I7th & is due in New York on Monday August 28th [double underscore] so a letter just announced. So you take the midnight train on Sunday, arriving at 6.—go directly to 21 [21 East Thirty-fourth Street, the Leggetts’ town house]—where a telegram is to be sent me announcing the day & hour of arrival.

Betty [Besse Leggett] goes to East Hampton on Friday & will meet you in New York on Monday, and I also will be in town that day by noon.

Our Prophet again with us!

I have invited Mrs Coulston to go to 21& to come up here for 3 days visit—not one uncongenial element!

God is kind

If quite convenient you might bring up a trunk of blankets-—n case 18 single ones aren’t enoug—-besides 10 eider down quilts.

What do you think?

I can easily bring a few pairs from our town house & this will be less complicated so do not worry or trouble about it.

I am so thankful to know you are coming to us alone.[2]

The word alone was underscored five or six times, as though to ward off the uncongenial element. But as things happened, Miss MacLeod’s whole exuberant plan for her friend miscarried. Just at that time Olea, spending a week or so at Camp Percy, Mr. Leggett’s fishing camp in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, became ill. She returned to her mother’s home in Cambridge, where Mrs. Bull could not, or would not, leave her, and thus almost six weeks were to pass before they arrived at Ridgely Manor. Even Miss MacLeod’s own long-dreamed-of plan to meet Swamiji’s ship, to see him walking with his wonderfully majestic stride down the gangplank, his face breaking into radiance at the sight of his old friends, was not fulfilled, for the Numidian steamed into the New York harbor two or three hours earlier than scheduled. Fortunately, three people were at the dock to meet Swamiji and Swami Turiyananda—Maud Stumm, who had come down from Ridgely Manor, Mrs. Coulston, acting treasurer of the New York Vedanta Society (Swami Abhedananda was out of town), and a Mr. Sydney Clarke, to whom Miss Stumm had telegraphed, asking him to be on hand to take care of the Swamis’ baggage.

He was "tired and ill-looking," Miss Stumm wrote later of Swamiji’s arrival. "He was carrying most carefully a big bottle wrapped in papers that were torn and ragged; this precious bottle, which he refused to relinquish before reaching Binnewater, contained a wonderful kind of sauce like curry; brought thus by hand from. India. 'For Jo!’ he said.'[3]

Miss Stumm mentions that "the party from Ridgely" (presumably Miss MacLeod and the Leggetts) did not arrive until ten o’clock that morning, "and so disappointed!" "We all went back (to Ridgely Manor] together," she wrote, but whether "all" included Sister Christine and Mrs. Funke, one does not know.[4] It is certain, however, that Swamiji spent almost no time in the hot, humid city, but after a stop at the Leggetts’ town house was whisked away with all speed.

The train trip from New York to Ridgely Manor, or, more precisely, from Weehawken, New Jersey, to Kingston in Ulster County, New York, eighty miles or so up the Hudson, was a lovely ride. On the right lay the broad, deep river, straight almost as a canal, with its traffic of ships and ferries and its lighthouses in midstream, like Victorian dwellings set adrift; on one’s left rose the tall Hudson Highlands pressing close at first to the water’s edge, later on flattening out into the wide river valley with its farms and pastures, its orchards, its green, sun-splashed woods, its little towns, its steepled churches and its distant mountains. At Kingston one boarded another train for Binnewater, a tiny station some seven miles west. Here the party was no doubt met by a surrey and spanking pair and driven the four miles to Ridgely Manor along a gently rolling country road, past apple orchards, corn and pumpkin fields, wooded hills, and occasional farm buildings. Most of these last were of the nineteenth century—neat red barns and white houses scalloped along the eaves with wooden rickrack called Hudson River Bracketed; but here and there a small weathered stone house, dating back to pre-Revolutionary days, stood half hidden among protective elms and chestnuts. Half a mile beyond Stone Ridge, the small village through which the road passed, the horses turned into the avenue of Ridgely and trotted up to the Manor—a graceful and welcoming house said to have been designed by a pupil of the famous architect Stanford White and as dignified, substantial, and unassuming as its owner, Francis Leggett.

The property that Mr. Leggett had acquired in Ulster County some eight years earlier, three years before he dreamed he would be bringing Besse MacLeod Sturges there as his bride, had consisted of several small farms, so that the estate, when it became all of a piece, included within its fifty acres a number of buildings. These were the "Big Cottage," also known as "Clematis Hall"— name more becoming to its size and dignity; the "Little Cottage," itself something more than a cottage; and the "Inn," which had been a select boarding house run by two maiden ladies. In a position more or less . central to these three houses, Francis Leggett had built the Manor, an imposing mansion of clapboard siding, tall-columned porticos and loggia, hip and saddle roofs, and massive chimneys, its architecture reminiscent, on the whole, of the gracious mansions of the old South. In addition, Mr. Leggett had built several small farm buildings, a stable and carriage house, and, for the entertainment of his guests, a large playhouse known as the "Casino." This last was equipped even to bowling alleys, and was adjoined by a tennis court.5 Between the various and widely scattered houses lay some ten acres of sweeping lawns, cool to the eye but in 1899 largely unshaded, for the trees planted by Francis Leggett were still small. Only two old chestnuts, huge and spreading, and an enormous maple (which still stands) gave relief in the hot summer afternoons. Around the house were shrubs of all sorts, but these, too, had been selected by Mr. Leggett and were not yet luxuriant. Indeed the house and grounds still had the bare look of newness, but by the same token one had an unobstructed view of fields and wooded hills and, beyond to the west and north, some twelve to twenty miles distant, of the blue Catskills and, to the south, much closer and clearer, of the Shawangunks. The height of neither of these ranges (Mohonk, the tallest peak of the Shawangunks, rose 1542 feet above sea level) would have impressed Swamiji, for both—particularly the latter—were geologically ancient, honed down and buffed by millennia of rain and snow into mountains barely higher than foothills of Himalayan foothills. But they were lovely nonetheless, with their soft, many-folded contours that seemed to move with the passing day, changing color and form.

This was not Swamiji’s first visit to Ridgely Manor. He had been here twice before: once in April of 1895, when he had taken a short vacation from his New York classes, and again in the Christmas season of the same year, at which time he had been the guest not of Frank Leggett alone but of both Betty and Frank, they having been married in Paris that September. In 1899, the "heavenly pair," as Swamiji called them, were still just that, rhapsodically in love, regretting the days when Frank Leggett’s business in New York took him from Ridgely to the city, still cherishing their long weekends together. It was all harmony and joy at Ridgely that summer of 1899—"the great summer," as it came to be called. And a great summer it was (though strictly speaking, it was autumn too), for the group of people that centered around a saint and prophet of the highest magnitude formed a house party such as the world had probably never known before and very likely will not know soon again. Indeed those ten weeks were rare even for Swamiji, for seldom (never before in the West) had he spent so long a time vacationing in one place.

He and Swami Turiyananda were given the "Little Cottage," which stood about a five-minute stroll from the main house across the generous and open lawns in a northwesterly direction. This "Little Cottage" (afterward always called "Swamiji’s Cottage" by Miss MacLeod) contained five small bedrooms on the second floor, all with pitched ceilings. On the ground floor were two small sitting rooms with fireplaces, a sizable dining room, a large kitchen, a small laundry, and a wide front porch. Almost certainly, Swamiji occupied one of the two front bedrooms and Swami Turiyananda the other. The three back bedrooms were not so comfortable and ran, moreover, one into the other, the far two having no alternate means of access. In connection with the Swamis’ sleeping quarters a charming story was told in later years by Miss MacLeod to Swami Nikhilananda, who passed it on to me. Mrs. Leggett, coming to inspect the accommodations in the cottage, found Swami Turiyananda’s mattress and bedding on the floor of his room. "What is the matter, Swami? she exclaimed. Is something wrong with the bed?" "No, no," he assured her; "the bed is fine. But, you see, I cannot bring myself to sleep on the same level with Swamiji—so I have put the mattress on the floor." One might add here that so great was the love and reverence that Swami Turiyananda always showed for Swamiji that Mrs. Leggett thought (at first, at least) that he was Swamiji’s disciple. Writing to Mrs. Bull on September 2, she commented, "This rest is peace to [Swamiji]. He loves being away with his disciple—who watches every gesture and is interesting in his devotion to his Master.'[6]

The "Big Cottage," which stood farther from the Manor than the "Little Cottage," though in the same direction, was a commodious house with ten bedrooms and a curving driveway of its own. It was to be assigned to Mrs. Bull and Olea and very probably Mrs. Marian Briggs, a close friend of Mrs. Bull’s, with a pair of servants to take care of them. But big as the "Big Cottage" may have been, it was dwarfed—in impressiveness, at least—by the Manor, which encompassed several spacious first-floor living rooms, seven second-story bedrooms, and, on its top floor under the roof, quarters for a staff of servants. The Manor accommodated the family—Mr. and Mrs. Francis Leggett; Josephine MacLeod; Alberta Sturges, Mrs. Leggett’s twenty-two-year-old daughter by a former marriage; the baby, not yet three-year-old Frances Leggett, and her nurse, Miss Looker—and at one time or another during that summer and autumn various transient house guests, such as Mrs. Coulston, whom we have already met; Sarah Ellen Waldo from Brooklyn, who was invited for a day in early October; Mrs. Florence (Milward) Adams, an old friend from Chicago and well-known lecturer on dramatic arts, physical culture, and metaphysics; Miss Florence Guernsey, the daughter of Swamiji’s good friend Dr. Egbert Guernsey of New York; Emma Thursby and her sister Ina; and a Dr. Helmer, a practitioner of osteopathy, which science, then coming into vogue, was Miss MacLeod’s most recent enthusiasm*(1). Other guests were more or less permanent—Sister Nivedita, for instance, and a professor Marchand, who had been brought by the Leggetts from France to help the family polish up its French in preparation for the following summer, when everyone, including Swamiji, was to go to Prais for the International Exposition. (An old man, Professor Marchand fell ill during his stay at Ridgely and there died. During his illness, as Mrs. Frances Leggett tells in Late and Soon, Miss MacLeod had visited the old man in his room, and he had embraced her and said to her, "This is the house of God!'[7] And one cannot but think that Ridgely Manor was indeed that summer a veritable Benares in which to die.)

*(1) One learns from Nivedita’s letters to Miss MacLeod that "a Mrs. Hale" was staying for a time at Ridgely during Swamiji’s visit. Whoever this Mrs.: Hale may have been, she was not the Mrs. Hale of Chicago, Swamiji’s "Mother Church."

Over the stables in an apartment of some four or five bedrooms lived Hollister Sturges, Alberta’s brother (younger than she by two years), and a number of their friends and cousins—all bursting with high spirits. Francis Leggett’s nephew, Theodore Whitmarsh, whom he looked upon as a son, his wife, and their three young children occupied the "Inn" until early September. Housed in the village of Stone Ridge were Maud Stumm, a Miss de Kubel, and a Mr. Goodby, all three of whom came daily, as Miss MacLeod was to write to Mrs. Bull, "to drink deep.'[8]

Other guests no doubt came and went, or, in some cases, stayed on for a week or more. Their names, for the most part, are lost to us; but among those whose visits gave Swamiji particular pleasure were the two McKindley sisters, Isabelle and Harriet, cousins of Mary and Harriet Hale and an inseparable part of that family whom Swamiji loved above all others. ("By the by, Mary," he was to write in September from Ridgely Manor, "it is curious your family, Mother Church [Mrs. George Hale] and her clergy, both monastic and secular, have made more impression on me than any family I know of. Lord bless you ever and ever.")[9] Very probably it was through Swami Abhedananda, who was lecturing at the Greenacre School of Comparative Religions in Maine and to whom Swamiji had sent a telegram,[10] that the McKindley girls, attending the school, learned of his arrival in America and of his presence at Ridgely Manor. Isabelle, the older sister, wrote to him at the end of August. Swamiji’s reply, not heretofore published, was immediate:

31st August ‘99

My dear Isabel—

Many thanks for your kind note I will be so so glad to see you. Miss M'cLeod is going to write you to stop a day and night here on your way to the west.

My love to the holy family in Chicago and hope soon to be able to come west and have great fun.

So you are in Greenacre at last. Is this the first year you have been in? How do you like the place? If you see Miss Farmer [Miss Sarah Farmer, the founder of Greenacre] of course kindly convey her my kindest regards and to all the rest of my friends there

Ever yours affly[11]
Vivekananda

Miss MacLeod sent off an invitation to the two girls on the same day. Her letter, interesting, I believe, for its directions and time tables, read:

August 31, 1899

My dear Miss McKinley—

Your letter this morning was a great pleasure to our household.—We should be so pleased if you and your sister will stop over with us a day and night on your way home—If you will let me know the date, I will arrange to have a free place for you and to meet you at the Station Binnewater four miles off. You can take a train at Boston for Kingston—changing at Albany—and at Kingston take a train to Binnewater—I think the best train leaving Boston is at 11 p.m. Of course if you are in or near New York-we are very accessible, being 3 hours by train from there.

If you have never taken the [boat] trip on the Hudson River, it is well worth the day given to it—leaving New York at 9—to Kingston—arriving at Binnewater at 4:30

Swamiji is delighted at the thought of seeing you and your sister.

He was indeed. "I am dying to see Isabel and Harriet," he wrote to Mary Hale.[13] But for one reason or another, the two girls were long in coming. Swami Abhedananda arrived at Swamiji’s call two weeks before them, as attested by his diary, portions of which have very kindly been made available to us by the Ramakrishna Vedanta Math in Calcutta. The Swami’s entry for September 8 reads:

Arrived at Kingston at 7:30 p.m. drove to Ridgely and arrived there at 9:30 p.m. Saw Swamis V. and T. and lived with them.[14]

The three Swamis lived, of course, in "Swamiji’s Cottage." In Vivekananda, a Biography in Pictures, one finds a photograph (here reproduced) of the Swamis, together with Mrs. Leggett, Miss MacLeod, Alberta, and a friend of Alberta’s, whose name is not known. In another photograph of the same people, taken on the same day, at the same place (the circular portico at the back of the main house) one sees Swamiji standing and looking unwell and Alberta with her face in her hands, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun.

Swami Abhedananda stayed at Ridgely for about ten days, leaving on September 17 or 18 for New York, where (before going on to Massachusetts) he met Sister Nivedita, who arrived from England on September 19,[15]her voyage paid for with money from Joe[16]. As Mrs. Ashton Jonson had predicted, Nivedita had not fared well in England as far as raising support for or interest in her girls’ school was concerned. Nor, it would seem, had she been able to reawaken enthusiasm for Swamiji’s work. "One thing I am sure of," she had written to Miss MacLeod on September 1: "however little the drones think they worship success, they soon drop off from a cause that fails. One must show life and growth, if one is to keep even the hearts that are won'[17]. In her small 1899 diary (the first 253 days of which are missing) the sole entry (September 10) for this brief English interlude reads, "No use," from which one might gather a certain despond.[18]

Josephine MacLeod went down to New York on September 17 to meet Nivedita’s ship—so one learns, among other things, from the following letter written by Betty Leggett to Mrs. Bull:

19 Sept.

Dear Saint Sara,

The other sanyasin comes today no doubt as Joe went to fetch her Sunday evening. We are all in waiting—and the week promises a look at you all—including Dr Helmer. Let naught prevent an early arrival.

I hope Olea is mending rapidly & when she can hold together let her come and be upon the couch in the great hall—or the loggia & listen! How I regret it all—and wish we had sent for her to come when we learned of Swami’s departure from England as we were sorely tempted to do.... We expect Mrs [Florence] Adams the 22nd. Swami needs Dr Helmer badly—he needs to be told the end is not yet. There are many hours when he thinks It is near, as symptoms are graver, in his mind, by heredity.

Joe arrives today. The big cottage awaits you—and is ready.

Swami & Turiananda are in yours—to be more cozy. Swamiji is writing a book on Modern Hindoos—to make some independent means—and to keep busy. He is grand in type as ever.[19]

It was not until the following day, Wednesday, September 20, that Joe and Nivedita arrived from New York. The day after that they wrote jointly to Mrs. Bull, whose ill luck at being detained for so many weeks is, one cannot help but note, our good luck, for we learn considerably more about events and people through the letters written to her from Ridgely Manor than we would otherwise have known. The letter of September 21 read:

Dearest S.S.

Margo & I arrived at 3 p.m. yesterday after a joyous 24 hours together:—

I am beginning to feel that I am almost as glad to know her as Swamiji.

Today we decked her in our finery—then came down to Swamiji for criticism—which never came.

He put the decision entirely into Margot’s care and she said "If I may do as I choose, I shall wear my brahmacharini gerrua always—while on the platform—black otherwise," &. so it is decided—and tomorrow we will go to Kingston to see what can be bought in the way of tough material.

She never was greater, & Betty approves in each detail of her attitude to Swami. Not one thing wld she have Margot change—& her verdict is final in social matters as Margot’s is in spiritual.

Your telegram was a blow—last night—10 days longer away—but "Mother knows best"

I have no servants for you yet.

Dr. Helmer will decide what Swamiji is to do and in this his verdict will be final.

Hearts love to my child [Olea] & her mother.

[Nivedita added a line:] My sweet Grannie—no idea had I that post time had come. It was the desire of my heart to write to you this morning. Here I am—Plans are growing like flowers. I long to see you & begged Y.Y. to let me come & try to carry off Mrs Vaughan & you! But of course I saw that that was a wrong suggestion—anyway, you will be here directly. Lovingly your Child,[20]Margot.

(It is probable that Nivedita’s "Grannie" as applied to Mrs. Bull had a different origin than Swami Saradananda’s "Granny." The relationship in Nivedita’s case was no doubt through Swamiji, her spiritual father, who looked upon Mrs. Bull as "mother.")

A day or two earlier Swamiji had written one of his most beautiful poems, entitled "Peace," and had dedicated it to Mrs. Bull "with eternal love.'[21]But it was perhaps also meant for Nivedita and Sister Christine, as well, for he handed it to the former on her return from a drive around the countryside and mailed it to the latter on September 21 with a note that read in part:

Do you like my new poem? Miss Noble thinks it is nice. But that is her way with everything I do. Do you also say? I will now send my writings to missionary papers to get a fairer criticism.[22]

The reader will perhaps be familiar with Swamiji’s poem, for it has long since been published in the Complete Works; but here, in any case, are a few stanzas:

Behold, it comes in might,
The power that is not power,
The light that is in darkness, 
The shade in dazzling light.

It is beauty never seen,
And love that stands alone,
It is song that lives un-sung,
And knowledge never known.

It is death between two lives,
And lull between two storms,
The void whence rose creation, 
And that where it returns.[23]

That same week the McKindley sisters at last arrived, much to Swamiji’s joy. Of this event, as well as of the arrival and verdict of Dr. Helmer, Miss MacLeod wrote to Mrs. Bull:

Dearest St. Sara,

The two McKiadley girls came yesterday. Since which time Swamiji has been bubbling over with boyishness—

Dr. Helmer came at 6—&. by 7 we knew that Swamiji’s trouble is curable—a spreading of the spine causes the kidney trouble—& though his heart & kidney ace affected, Dr says there is no reason he should not be as strong as he—smoking is gradually to be reduced to nothingness (Nirvana!)

I still think you better come via Albany—and I think if Olea is here Dr. will come up next Saturday—

He is to stay till Monday & is now shooting blue clay pigeons with Hol—who has a new gun.

The McKindleys we drive to Kingston today.

This is only a line to tell you Swamiji speaks of you & Olea daily & would go over to you if we would let him.

Dr Helmer seems to be happy—& I love him.

Margot is winning all hearts.

I will send Berta [Alberta Sturges] over to bring Olea—if you will allow. She wants to go—& seems to think she is not "au complet" without Olea—

Hearts love[24]
Jojo

2

Dr. Helmer’s diagnosis of Swamiji’s illness, it should be noted here, was later to be rejected by Miss MacLeod’s next miracle-worker, of whom more in a later chapter. But whatever the cause and nature of his poor health, the cheerful, well-regulated, but informal life at Ridgely was a balm to him from the start. As early as September 2 Betty Leggett had written to the absent Mrs. Bull:

We are having such privileges as only Swamiji can confer. His talks are intermittent—his health improving, his nights restful & he sleeps wonderfully. He is dieting, eating well—& no doubt as you and Joe have said for long—his great work is to come....


These days are priceless. Do come straight on if possible.[25]


On the same day Swamiji wrote to Sister Christine, who was now back home in Detroit:


My dear Christina:


I hope by this time you are much better. I am getting physically better every day, though mentally not much.


The London work seems to fall to pieces. The friends over there are all shaky even Sturdy. Anyway in Mrs. Bull & Miss McLeod I have very strong friends. They stand by me here, through thick and thin.


Life is a series of fights and disillusionments is it not?


Well I am seeking some quiet if I can, before I plunge into work again. One has to work to gain a livelihood even. Good that it is so, it keeps us straight.


How is Mrs. Funkey? Where are you both now? I am glad though that in this life I have got a number of staunch friends that will stand by me, whether I am in good or bad circumstances, whether I am ill or well, & you are two of them.


I am rather happy these few days. It is so quiet here and everybody is good. Days are passing anyway, and I am learning to be contented.


The secret of life is not enjoyment but education through experience. But we are killed off the moment we begin really to learn. That seems to many a potent argument for a future existence....


I hope soon to be able to come to Detroit. Everywhere it is better to have a whirlwind come over the work. That clears the atmosphere & gives us a true insight into the nature of things. We begin, anew but on adamantine foundations.


I am strong very strong now—I always am when left to stand alone. May you be strong very strong always.


Ever yours with love and blessings[26]
 Vivekananda


Swamiji’s hosts and fellow guests at Ridgely well understood his need for rest, for privacy, and for freedom, as well as for congenial, lighthearted company, and they gave him whatever his mood called for. "It was that attitude in our family towards Swamiji that kept him with and near us ", Josephine MacLeod wrote years later to her niece. "Days without speaking, days and nights continuous speaking. We followed his moods and kept ourselves busy in our own lives and happy when he wasn’t about, so that there was no sort of weight put upon him.'[27] "I feel perfectly at home," he wrote in early September to Mary Hale. And indeed, no sooner had he set foot in Ridgely Manor than his thoughts were flowing out freely (if "intermittently") to the friends who surrounded him. He told of new ideas, of his new message—a message ready for the mission that lay still uncharted and uncertain in the future.


"Swamiji is blessed," Miss MacLeod wrote to Mrs. Bull on September 3, "and has his new message ready—that all there is in life is character, that Buddhas & Christs do more harm than good—for mankind is trying to imitate them—instead of developing its own character! Oh it is grand & thrills one—that 'in one’s greatest hour of need one stands alone.” . . . He is indeed a Prophet with a new message![28] Here was the theme that was to sound forth so often and so emphatically throughout his second visit to America. Once again we hear its announcement at Ridgely Manor in a recollection of Maud Stumm’s: "Nearly every day," she wrote, "Swami was wonderful in a new way; and now it would be music that he dwelt upon, now art, and once he burst into the morning room, declaring for 'Liberty.’ 'What do I care if Mahomet was a good man, or Buddha! Does that alter my own goodness or evil? Let us be good for our own sake on our own responsibility! Not because somebody way back there was good!'[29]


In a "New York Letter" dated September, 1899, to the Brahmavadin, "An American Brahmacharini" (possibly Miss Waldo) wrote also of Swamiji’s new message, having heard of it perhaps from Mrs. Coulston or, again, from Miss MacLeod when the latter was in town to meet Nivedita. "The few chosen ones who have heard the Swami in easy home-talks since his arrival," she recounted, "are deeply impressed with the great message of truth he bears; a larger and fuller prophecy and vision than any he has yet given to the East or West.'[30]


But the full development and pronouncement of Swamiji’s new message had to wait its season. In the meanwhile he consciously, purposefully relaxed, keeping his mind from his many concerns, hoping to gain in physical strength. "Do you know what I am trying to do now?" he asked Mary Hale in his September letter, and answered, "writing a book on India and her people—a short chatty simple something. Again I am going to learn French." He also tried his hand at golf on Ridgely’s private links. "I do not think it difficult at all," he wrote, "—only it requires good practice."[31]


There would have been rich hours of talk, or of reading, in the loggia—a wide, open porch on the left side of the house as one faced it from the back lawn--or of undisturbed naps in the quiet afternoons, Swamiji "lying at full length on the green couch in the Hall (Maud Stumm wrote], sound asleep like a tired child:[32] There were solitary early morning walks around the expansive grounds of Ridgely, generally along a path that led from the "Little Cottage," passed the Casino, and met a road that led across an open field. At the end of this road was a huge spreading oak, and there Swamiji would meditate—so regularly that the tree came to be known as "Swami’s Oak." He would then take a path to the right and come to the "Inn " stopping (in the early days of September before the Whitmarshes left) to play with the three children, who ranged in age from barely two to six; and to give them pennies, as Katharine Whitmarsh, the youngest of the brood, learned from her mother. Then back full circle to the "Little Cottage." Again, there would have been games of croquet, or, perhaps, of gentle tennis, carriage drives through the lovely countryside or up Mount Mohonk, a favorite jaunt, and in the cool, luminous air of sundown there would have been strolls on the wide lawns, Swamiji making a picture that the enraptured Miss Stumm long remembered: "With his flame-colored robes draped about him, what a figure he was as he strode the lawns of Ridgely! His stride came nearer to the poet’s description of a 'step that spurned the earth’ than anything I ever expect to see again; and there was a compelling majesty in his presence and carriage that could not be imitated or described.'[33]


Dinner, served in the dining room—a room not large, but elegant with black marble mantelpiece, rich wallpaper, and stately, carved sideboards[34]—was generally more or less informal. Swamiji, sitting always on Mrs. Leggett’s right, was perfectly at liberty to excuse himself for a smoke or a walk. There was, however, a way to hold him. "A very quick word from Lady Betty [how many times! Miss Stumm recalled] that she believed there was to be ice cream would turn him back instantly, and he would sink into his place with a smile of expectancy and pure delight seldom seen on the face of anybody over sixteen. He just loved it, and he had all he wanted, too.'[35] "He particularly liked chocolate ice cream," Miss MacLeod related in her memoirs, "because, 'I too am chocolate and I like it,’ he would say.'[36]But at least once (special guests perhaps having come) "a very large and elaborate dinner was given at Ridgely." "The flowers and lights on the table were wonderful," Maud Stumm wrote, "and the ladies [were] all in their loveliest gowns and jewels. " (She had been half entranced by all this brilliance and gaiety, and she remembered that Swamiji, noticing her bemusement, had shattered it with a quiet word through "all the noise of other talk." "Don’t let it fool you, Baby," he had said.)[37]


And then there would be long gaslit evenings in the great hall—the wide central hall that ran through the house from front to back, making a cheerful room with its broad staircase, white columns, big fireplace, sofas, and upholstered chairs. It was a room more lived in than the formal sitting. room that adjoined it. Generally, the front and back doors would be open, and the pulsating sounds of the summer night would accompany Swamiji’s mellow yet authoritative tones as he talked on, sometimes for hours at a time. Of those evening talks (held on chilly nights around a fire) Miss MacLeod wrote in her memoirs:


In the evening . . . he would talk, and once, after he came out with some of his thoughts, a lady said, "Swami, I don’t agree with you there." "No? Then it is not for you," he answered. Someone else said, "Oh, but that is where I find you true." "Ah, then it was for you," he said showing that utter respect for the other man’s views. One evening he was so eloquent, about a dozen people listening, his voice becoming so soft and seemingly far away; when the evening was over, we all separated without even saying good-night to each other. Such a holy quality pervaded. My sister, Mrs. Leggett, had occasion to go to one of the rooms afterward. There she found one of the guests, an agnostic, weeping. "What do you mean!" my sister asked, and the lady said, "That man has given me eternal life. I never wish to hear him again.'[38]


(This curious reaction reminds one of Harriet Monroe, the poet, who, after hearing Swamiji at the Parliament of Religions in September of 1893, wrote, "One cannot repeat a perfect moment—the futility of trying to has been almost a superstition with me. Thus I made no effort to hear Vivekananda speak again, during that autumn and winter when he was making converts by the score:’)[39]


Among Swamiji’s occupations at Ridgely Manor was a pursuit of the art of drawing, which he undertook with all the eagerness and concentration of an aspiring young student, "toiling over his crayons," as his teacher wrote, "with as single a mind and heart as if that were his vocation.'[40] And he did wonderfully well. Maud Stumm’s marveling account of his drawing lessons is included in her memoirs of Swamiji, from which I have been quoting now and then. These invaluable reminiscences were written at Josephine MacLeod’s request and were first published in Vedanta and the West (November-December 1953), having been made available by Mrs. Frances Leggett.


One day [Miss Stumm recalled] he told me that he wanted to undertake some sort of work that would keep his hands busy and prevent him from thinking of things that fretted him at that time—and would I give him drawing lessons? So materials were produced, and at an appointed hour he came, promptly, bringing to me, with a curious little air of submission, a huge red apple, which he laid in my hands, bowing gravely. I asked him the significance of this gift, and he said, "in token that the lessons may be fruitful"—and such a pupil as he proved to be! Once only did I have to tell him anything; his memory and concentration were marvellous, and his drawings strangely perfect and intelligent for a beginner. By the time he had taken his fourth lesson, he felt quite equal to a portrait; so . . . Turiyananda posed, like any bronze image, and was drawn capitally-—ll in the study of Mr. Leggett, with its divan for our seat, and its fine light to aid us. . .[41]


On a hot summer day Miss Stumm and others asked Swamiji to show how he wound his turban—a demonstration he had given perhaps countless times in the West for fascinated children and grownups alike. Now at Ridgely Manor he wound and unwound the length of silk, disclosing the mysteries not only of his own turban but of other kinds as well. "When he arranged it as the desert people do, to keep the neck from the great heat," Miss Stumm recounted, "I asked him to pose, and he did, talking all the time. That was the day he talked to us of purity and truth.'[42]


I am able to reproduce here a photograph of Maud Stumm’s drawing of Swamiji au Bedouin, which has, at least, historical value. ("The lines of the mouth were so simple and lovely and yet so very difficult!" Miss Stumm wrote of her attempts to draw him.) Unfortunately, Swamiji’s own drawings of Swami Turiyananda, Nivedita, and others no longer exist, or are at present lost to us. He himself, one imagines, would not have destroyed them, for he took immense pride in his new-found talent.


Thus the days slipped by, all of them beautiful, each marked by some special, unforgettable conversation or incident—a long, spellbinding talk on a balmy evening, or so small a thing as the sight of a flaming robe flashing in and out of the shade of the old chestnut trees or of a dark head bent over a sketch book, its owner lost to the world.


In his letter to Mary Hale, Swamiji mentioned that he intended to go to New York to see "the Dewey procession.'[43]His reference was to the public welcome to be held on Friday, September 29, for Admiral George Dewey, who almost a year and a half earlier had won a naval victory in Manila Bay. He was still an idolized national hero, and the reception accorded him in New York, with its wildly ecstatic crowds, fireworks, and parades, and "Welcome, Dewey" spelled out in electric lights on Brooklyn Bridge, would have been worth the trip to see. But whether or not Swamiji went to see it is not at present known. In any event, the excursion would barely have interrupted the flow of summer days at Ridgely Manor-days that glided gently, almost imperceptibly into autumn.

3

October brought changes to the household. Mrs. Bull finally arrived on Saturday, October 7, followed several days later by Olea. But as things turned out, Miss MacLeod’s plans again miscarried. Two days later "the great summer" came, for her, to an unexpected end. On Monday, October 9 (a date noted in Sister Nivedita’s small diary), a letter came to  Ridgely from a Mrs. S. K. Blodgett, a widow, who was then unknown to Joe and Betty, saying that their elder brother, Taylor MacLeod, lay seriously ill, perhaps dying, in her home in Los Angeles, where she was nursing him.

"Within two hours I was packed," Miss MacLeod wrote in her memoirs, "the horses were at the door . . . and as I went out Swami put up his hand and said some Sanskrit blessing and then he called out, 'Get up some classes and I will come.’'[44]


She could not have left Ridgely without a painful wrench at her heart; yet she drove off with a characteristic resilience and valiance, an acceptance of everything that came her way, which was indeed one of the traits for which Swamiji loved her. Some two weeks later he was to pay her a tribute during the course of a conversation: She was the only one among the group at Ridgely who had attained freedom, he said, and in this he included himself. She could leave everything and everybody and go out to do her work without ever looking back—a quality won only through thousands of lifetimes. And indeed Miss MacLeod had the buoyancy and wide-heartedness that comes from an innate and true detachment. "Jojo is the same as usual," she wrote of herself that summer, at Ridgely. "I am radiant and happy & don’t want anything on earth but a few more people to love.[45]


In Swamiji’s parting call to Miss MacLeod—"Get up some classes and I will come"—one finds the first indication that he felt once again the desire to carry his message to far, and perhaps fertile, fields. Yet only in retrospect does one see that call as the announcement of a new and great mission; there were no flourishes, no rolling of drums; indeed Swamiji’s call seemed at the time to have been only a passing thought, rising like a token bubble from some depths where the future was being formed, glinting for a moment, and then floating off.


With Miss MacLeod gone to California--or Kali-fornia, as she liked to spell it-—nd most of the young people gone back to school, to college, or to work, their vacations over, October was a relatively quiet month at Ridgely. Yet it was not a dull one; for where Swamiji was, there dullness was totally precluded. We learn now of his days and his words from Nivedita’s long, detailed, and faithful letters to "Yum-Yum," which come almost on the heels of the latter’s chatty but sketchy letters to Mrs. Bull and which have been published in the Letters of Sister .Nivedita, edited by Sankari Prasad Basu, a rich and absorbing collection in which we find invaluable glimpses of Swamiji through Nivedita’s eyes and catch echoes of his voice*(3) Here we see him at Ridgely Manor "pacing up and down for an hour and a half like a caged lion," warning her "against politeness—against this 'lovely’ and 'beautiful’—against this continual feeling of the external," admonishing her "to get rid of all these petty relations of society and home, to hold the soul firm against the perpetual appeals of sense, to realize that the rapture of autumn trees is as truly sense-enjoyment as a comfortable bed or a table dainty, to hate the silly praise and blame of people.'[46]


*(3) Edited portions of Nivedita’s letters from Ridgely were earlier published in Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda (1962), pages 278-87.

Or one hears him talking of Shiva: "Even meditation would be a bondage to the free soul, but Siva goes on and on for the good of the world, the Eternal Incarnation.... For meditation is the greatest service—the most direct—that can be rendered: ‘ He talked of Sri Ramakrishna—"full of gaiety and merriment"—and of his own days of discipleship at Dakshineswar, the temple on the Ganga, where in "perfect silence, broken only by the cries of the jackals, in the darkness under the great tree, [we sat night after night] the whole night through, and He talked to me, when I was a boy.'[47]


"I never heard the Prophet talk so much of Sri Ramakrishna," Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod in a letter of which only an undated, heretofore unpublished fragment exists and which could have been written from India in early 1899; but the time, one thinks, could as well have been the fall of that year and the place, Ridgely Manor. "He told us what I had heard before of [his Master’s] infallible judgement of men," she continued, finding good and greatness in the least apparent, and judging at once of the bad weight of karma that so and so had yet to work through before he could come to anything. "And so," Swami said, "you see my devotion is the dog’s devotion. I have been wrong so often and He has always been right and now I trust His judgement blindly"—and then he told us how He would hypnotise anyone who came to him and in 2 minutes know all about him & Swami said that from this he had learnt to count our consciousness as a very small thing.


They believe on grounds of this sort in the Math that Swami is Arjuna—and that there in the Garden at Dakshineshwar they have once more seen Krishna talking with His Disciple, giving him, as it were, a new Gita.[48]


And there was the time Swamiji startled Mrs. Leggett and Olea with his denunciation of the rigid laws and conventions of society by means of which the strong oppress the weak and with his admiration of individuals strong and courageous enough to break through those laws. He did not hesitate to uphold the dark side of individual sovereignty, facing and embracing the Terrible, seeing even the criminal as an essential, indeed glorious, part of humanity’s great surging drive toward Freedom.


Or he might spend an hour or so writing a poem. One of these, only recently made known to us, might well have been written for his hosts, who were finding happiness and renewed youth in their life together:


One circle more the spiral path of life ascends, 

And Time’s restless shuttle-—unning back and front

Through maze of warp and woof—
Spins out a stronger piece.*(3)

Hand in hand they stand—and try
    To fathom depths whence springs eternal love,
Each in other’s eyes,
And find no power holds o’er that age
But brings the youth anew to them,
And time-—the good, the pure, the true.[49]


*(4) Swamiji wrote the poem "One Circle More" on Ridgely Manor stationery. The original was sent to Swami Prabhavananda by Frances H. Leggett in 1962 and was made available in 1973 for reproduction in this book by Swami Chetanananda, then head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. It would appear that the three lines Swamiji wrote on the left-hand side of the sheet, which was actually the back of the folded letter paper (see the facsimile in this book), constituted his final version of the first verse. This is the version I have quoted in the present edition, rather than that based on what would seem to have been Swamiji’s first draft, which was apparently not satisfactory to him.

At times Swamiji was in a "great mood of devotion," at other times he would extol the path of the jnani, "he who likes nothing and witnesses all." Again, "he spoke of Kali, and grew full of worship.'[50] Or he spoke prophetically of social problems, of "the mixture of races, and of 'the great tumults, the terrible tumults’ through which the next state of things must be reached.'[51] He pointed out the hidden meanings of ancient Hindu myths and epics, of their bearing on modern life, of the ideals they depicted, the lessons they taught. And he told charming Indian stories, two of which have come down to us through Maud Stumm and are given in the Appendix. Indeed, Swamiji talked, it would seem, of everything under the sun, and upon everything he cast the clear, brilliant light of another sun, the sun of Brahmavidya, infinitely more lustrous, more revealing.


Very often after Miss MacLeod had left Ridgely, Nivedita and Mrs. Bull’s friend Marian Briggs had Swamiji to themselves for hours at a time, the rest of the household being occupied elsewhere or kept away by a tactful hostess as "he just went on and on-and on.'[52] Those hours were heaven for the two who sat in his company—Nivedita absorbed, self forgetful, Mrs. Briggs listening "exquisitely, without a word or a look.'[53] But whether Swamiji spoke to one person, or to two or to the whole group, nothing he said was not laced with riches. Even the most airy of conversations could call forth from him some jewel to savor and pass on to Yum. One day at lunch his friends teased him for his pride in so relatively minor a talent as his poetry or his painting:


Mrs. Bull turned [Nivedita wrote on October 18] and pointed out how his poetry had been the weak point on which he had been beguiled to the loss of honour. And she said her husband was never sensitive about criticism of his music—that he expected, he knew it was not perfect. But on road-engineering he felt deeply, and could be flattered! Then, in our amusement, we all teased Swami for his carelessness about his religious teacherhood, and vanity about his portrait-painting (he had produced three or four portraits of me which others say are a libel even on me, but which just delights himself—sweet King!) -—nd he suddenly woke up and said, "You see there is one thing called love and there is another thing called Union. And Union is greater than Love.


"I do not love Religion. I have become identified with it. It is my life. So no man loves that thing in which his life has been spent, in which he really has accomplished something. That which we love is not yet ourself. Your husband did not love music for which he had always stood. He Loved engineering in which as yet he knew comparatively little. This is the difference between Bhakti and Gnan [Jnana]. And this is why Gnan is greater than Bhakti.'[54]


At other times he could be hilariously funny. "He described the effect of Boston beans and other Boston food one day," Nivedita told Miss MacLeod: " 'You look at a face and if it is not quite flat you cannot tell anyway whether it is coming toward you or going from you.’ Did not ever hear anything so funny? And he solemnly declared that if you live on baked beans and other things common in that city you will presently find yourself with the Boston face!!!'[55]


But even while Swamiji was full of fun, of poetry, and of sheer radiance of being during those summer and autumn days at Ridgely, the dark period (if one may call it so) of his life was not yet over. One cannot even imagine the quality of his suffering, no more than one can imagine the quality and magnitude of his joy. One only knows what he once or twice revealed to those close to him. Telling Yum of those heart-wrenching revelations, Nivedita wrote:


On Thursday evening [November 2] Swami came down for a cigar or something, and found Mrs. Bull and myself in earnest talk. So he sat down too—of course. One could see that he was troubled and for the first time he talked of the two years foretold to him, of defection and disease and treachery—and of how it was growing thicker today than ever: Laughingly, he said he supposed the last month would be the worst. [Nivedita had long since determined on astrological grounds that the coming December 6, now a month or so away, would mark a decided upswing in Swamiji’s fortunes.] He spoke of E.T.S. [Edward T. Sturdy] and of the Indian troubles—and he said he found himself still the Sannyasi—he minded no loss—but he could be hurt through personal love. Treachery cut deep. S. Sara [Saint Sara, Mrs. Bull] had almost tears in her eyes when she came into my room after, and sat talking of it for an hour. She prays that we may be able, during this last month, to surround him with Peace ..


He had said something to S. Sara, and indeed again in that night-talk, of the fact that he is guided and protected in his work, but all that is personal is turned to ashes.[56] . . .


The next day Swamiji was "radiant," and that night he slept well. But the following day he spoke so impassionedly of a deeper anguish that Nivedita "fled to her room to cry.'[57]


Then he followed me [she wrote] and stood at the door a minute and revealed still more of the awful suffering. . . He was talking in the old way about escaping from the world—he has been reciting the hatred of Fame and Wealth all his life, but he is only now beginning to understand what it really means. It is becoming unbearable. "Where am I now!" he said, turning to me suddenly with such an awful look of lostness on his face. And then he began to repeat something—"And so to Thou—Ramakrishna—(with a pause) I betake myself. For in Thy Feet alone is the refuge of man." . . .


"This body is going anyway. It shall go with hard tapasya-— will say 10,000 OMs a day—and with fasting. Alone, alone by the Ganges—in the Himalayas—saying Hara Hara, the Freed One, the Freed One. I will change my name once more, and this time none shall know. I will take the initiation of sannyasa over again—and it shall be for this—and I will never never come back to anyone again."


And then again that lost look, and the awful thought that he had lost his power of meditation. "I have lost all—lost all for you Mlechhas!" And with that a smile—and a sigh—and the turning to go away.[58]


Only this (though this is enough) and the lines of a poem entitled "To My Own Soul" give glimpses into Swamiji’s continuing sense of suffering during this period. "Hold yet a while, Strong Heart," he wrote, "Not part a life long yoke/ Though blighted looks the present, future gloom.'[59] And to be sure, his heart held strong, his courage never deserted him.


What Swamiji meant by saying (if he said) that he may have "lost his power of meditation" who can tell? From what depths, or heights, of spiritual consciousness was he speaking? To what unimaginable levels of samadhi was he referring? One remembers that on his return to India after his first visit to the West he felt that his power to grant the highest realization had become exhausted by giving lectures in America and England. "If I put on the loin cloth and become absorbed in spiritual practice, . . . then perhaps the power to grant Nrivikalpa Samadhi may come," he had said*(5) To be "alone by the Ganges in the Himalayas,” to become absorbed in the Absolute was still his longing. To the extent that he molded and channeled his power and love into a form that the world could comprehend, to the extent that he lived and worked as a human being among human beings, to that extent, to that very great extent, he suffered. His effort, moreover, to awaken humanity to its own spiritual reality was in the very nature of things bound to meet with resistance and betrayal. Yet his sacrifice, one must suppose, consisted not so much, if at all, in the suffering of body and mind as in the assumption of any limitation at all, and the heights of consciousness on which such limitation was felt as pain, as longing, are, again, unimaginable; .for on such heights that thin veil of limitation was also felt as unutterable joy. Swamiji suffered; and yet he did not suffer; he could turn with "an awful look of lostness on his face"; and yet he was ever an ocean of bliss. Through all his talks at Ridgely Manor on any subject, in any mood, came "flashes of the inner divinity'[60] (Nivedita wrote to Yum), and if one looked at him steadily as he spoke (as his disciple could never help but do), one seemed, she wrote, "to be gazing through open portals straight into the Infinite." "Is this because he is so little conscious of himself?'[61] she asked. Or, what may amount to the same question, was it because neither the joys nor the pains of life could cloud or clutter those portals? The Infinite stood open to full view, ever accessible to him and through him to others. In two letters written from Ridgely to Mrs. George W. Hale Swamiji spoke of the predominant evil of life, of the untouched sovereignty of the soul, and of renunciation as the means—the only means—to freedom. These were perhaps thoughts that were going through his mind at Ridgely, the detachment he recommended to "Mother Church" only different in degree from that total Aloneness that he himself desired.


*(5) See World Teacher- 2, chapter sixteen, section five

Ridgely Manor. 5th Oct ‘99


My dear Mother Church


Many many thanks for your kind words. I am so glad you are working on as ever. I am glad because the wave of optimistics has not caught you yet. It is all very well to say—everything is right but that is apt to degenerate into a sort of laissez-faire. I believe with you that the world is evil—made more hideous with a few dashes of good. All our works have only this value—that they awaken some to the reality of this horror—and [make them] flee for refuge to some place—beyond—-which is called God—or Christ or Brahma or Buddha &c. Names do not make much difference. Again we must always remember ours is only to work—we never attain results—How can we? Good can never be done without doing evil. We can not breathe a breath without killing thousands of poor little animals. National prosperity is another name of death & degradation to millions of other races. So is individual prosperity the beggaring of many. The world is evil—and will ever remain so. It is its nature, and can not be changed"—which one of you by taking thought &c." Such is truth—-the wisdom is therefore in renunciation, that is—to make the Lord our all in all. Be a true Christian, Mother—Like Christ renounce everything and let the heart &  soul & body belong to Him & Him alone. All this nonsense which people have built round Christ’s name is not His teaching. He taught to renounce, He never says the earth is an enjoyable place —And your time has come to get rid of all vanities even the love of children & husband and think of the Lord and Him alone. Ever your Son,[62]


Vivekananda
23rd Oct. 99


My dear Mother—I was taking a few days complete rest and so am Iate in replying to your very kind note. Accept my congratulations on the anniversary of your marriage. I pray many many such returns may come to you. I am sure my business [previous?] Letter was coloured by the state of my body—as indeed is the whole of existence to us. Yet Mother there is more pain than pleasure in life. If not, why do I remember you and your children—almost every day of my life and not many others? Happiness is liked so much because it is so rare—Is it not? Fifty percent of our life is mere lethargy, ennui, of the rest forty percent is pain, only ten happiness—and this for the exceptionally fortunate. We are ofttimes mixing up this state of ennui with pleasure. It is rather a negative state whilst both pleasure and pain are nearer positive, though not positive. Pleasure and Pain are both feeling not wiiling. They are only processes—which convey to the mind excitements or motives of action. The real positive action is the willing or impulse to work of the mind—begun upon [when?] the sensation has been taken in [pleasure or pain] thus the real is neither pleasure nor pain. It has no connection with either. Quite different from either. The barking of the dog awakens the master to guard against a thief—or receive his dearest friend. It does not follow therefore that the dog and his master are of the same nature or have any degree of kinship. The feelings of pleasure or pain similarly awaken the soul to activity—without any kinship at all. The soul is beyond pain, beyond pleasure, sufficient in its own nature--and no hell can punish it nor any heaven can bless it. So far philosophy—I am coming soon to Chicago—and hope to say Lord bless you to you & your children. All love as usual to my Christian relatives—scientific or quacks.[63]


Vivekananda


Whatever suffering Swamiji may have known, whatever its nature or quality, his compassion and concern for others never lessened in the slightest; indeed, it was to serve their spiritual needs that he remained on earth. To those who needed his help he would talk sometimes for hours. There was, for instance, Olea, Mrs. Bull’s "fretful'[64] and generally ailing daughter, who was divorced from her husband in those days  when divorce was looked upon askance and whose child had died the previous year. "On Sunday during lunch (Swamiji) came [to the "Inn"?] and spent three hours alone with Olea and left her a different woman," Nivedita wrote to Yum on October 18 and continued, "On Monday about 10 he came again and spent the morning. He brought the Vedas and Upanishads with him and gave her what was really a class on Gnan—all to herself—-hough many of us were present. Wasn’t that fine?'[65] In Nivedita’s diary one finds another indication of Swamiji’s concern for Olea. On Friday, October 27, there is the entry: "[Swamiji] to Olea—'nightmares always begin pleasantly—only at the worst point [the] dream is broken—so death breaks [the] dream of life. Love death.’ [66]


(It may have been because of Olea’s unhappy marriage, among others, that Alberta asked Swamiji, "Is there no happiness in marriage?" He replied, "Yes, Alberta, if marriage is entered into as a great austerity—and everything is given up—even principle!'[67] He did not minimize the difficulty of the householder’s lot. "I don’t want to be a monk," Hollister once protested, "I want to marry and have children." "All right, my boy," Swamiji answered. "Remember only that you choose the harder path.")[68]


He had a word or a blessing for everyone, even for the baby, Frances. One morning, as Alberta told it in later years to her sister, the child came in from the garden, some flowers in her hand. She gave them to Swamiji, who said gravely, "In India we give flowers to our teachers." And he pronounced over her some Sanskrit words.[69]


Seeing anyone depressed or worried, for whatever reason, he would go out of his way to dispel that person’s particular nightmare—at least for the time being: "I had a worriment that bothered me a good deal," Miss Stumm wrote in her notes, "and though I said nothing of it to anyone, it was constantly in my thoughts." She went on to tell how Swamiji had asked her to go for a walk with him to watch a threshing machine in a nearby field, and how, as they walked, he told  her of the wonderful party that had been held the night before at the Manor: "Wonderful affair," he exclaimed, "stringed instruments and such a supper! Pheasants!" Where had she been? Everybody was there and "they danced and danced, " everything moved out of the house. "Wonderful party!'[70] This gala affair, to which Maud Stumm had not been invited and which had somehow been kept secret from her until now, was, of course, all Swamiji’s fairy tale, conjured up to divert her mind. And divert her mind it did, like shock therapy dealt with a magic wand.


Miss Stumm’s "worriment" may have been connected with a breaking heart, for she was suffering at this time, and later, from an unrequited love of long standing. Yet even so, Mrs. Frances Leggett remembered, she was tremendous fun, always highly entertaining and amusing.


Sometimes Swamiji would join those who escorted her home in the evenings to the little village of Stone Ridge. We learn of one such walk in Nivedita’s diary-entry for Sunday, October 15, in which, after noting Swamiji’s talk with Olea, she continued: "Afternoon, Swami drew me while I wrote. Read Sch[openhauer]. Walk home with Miss Stumm by moonlight." And of this same evening (which was Maud Stumm’s last at Ridgely) Nivedita wrote to Yum:


As we left her, I whispered to Swami that I couldn’t bear even the sound of our feet in the dead hours at night. It was wonderful moonlight, and we walked on up the avenue in silence—a sound would have been desecration. Then he said, "When a tiger in India is on the trail of prey at night, if its paw or tail makes the least sound in passing, it bites it till the blood comes." And then he talked of the need we Western women had to absorb beauty quietly, and turn it over in the mind at another time.[71]


Two days later (on Tuesday, October 17) Nivedita went into retreat, intending to remain secluded for fifteen days, or until November 1. "You see," she wrote to "Yum," "I have to finish [Kali the Mother, a small book, which as early as October 2 she had been "deep in writing on," as Miss MacLeod had reported],[72] and there are other things I have to do—and I have always longed to try a retreat anyway, and my great obstacle was the Master'[73]. Nivedita’s retreat for, which she had finally obtained Swamiji’s permission, does not seem to have lasted long. On Friday, October 20, she wrote in her diary "went down to supper," and from subsequent entries it would appear that thereupon the retreat had come to an end.


But however that may be, the weeks sped by. November came, bringing chilly days, and with it came the season of activity and work. One morning after breakfast Swamiji turned suddenly and fiercely to Nivedita and demanded how much longer she was going to hang on. "He was quite abusive," she told "Yum," "—and then he uttered a relenting word—you know how.... Then he waxed glorious. If he had my health and strength he would conquer the world. I was a Kshattriya. Did I know that I belonged to his family? I was not a Brahmin. Austerity was the path.... It was tremendous —and he ended with a blessing in which the Guru was lost and it became all Father—as he told me to go out into the world and fight for him-—he only thing that he wanted—before he could pass away from the world into peace or death.'[74] "Oh! Yum!" Nivedita exclaimed, for tremendous indeed was the mandate she felt she had received. It was decided then and there that she would leave for Chicago with Olea and Alberta on November 7. On the same date Mrs. Bull would leave for Cambridge, Swamiji for New York. (Swami Turiyananda had already left Ridgely at the end of October and had gone on to Montclair, New Jersey.)


But before the last partings came, an extraordinary event took place, which seemed at the time to be of great import to all concerned. I quote here Nivedita’s account of the incident in a letter to Miss MacLeod, dated November 11, I899, a facsimile of which is given in Sankari P, Basu’s book Lokamata Nivedita. The day of which the letter tells was the previous Sunday, November 5. (The place, to judge from a memo, here reproduced, that Nivedita scribbled on the back of a photograph, was the "Inn.")*(6)


*(5) In October there appears to have been a general redistribution of guests among the various houses at Ridgely. As far as I know, there is no clear indication who was staying where, but inasmuch as there was a good deal of coming and going between the cottages and the Manor, it perhaps does not greatly matter where anyone actually had his or her room.

On Sunday afternoon Swami insisted on my coming and packing with him, & as I worked he took out a couple of silk turbans to give the girls. Then two pieces of cotton cloth—gerrua colour—for Mrs. Bull. He called me to my room, where Mrs. Bull sat writing, to give these, & left the turbans on one side.


First he shut the door-then he arranged the cloth as a skirt & chudder round her waist—then he called her a sannyasini & putting one hand on her head & one on mine he said: "I give you all that Ramakrishna P[aramahamsa] gave to me. What came to us from a woman [the Divine Mother] I give to you two women. Do what you can with it. I cannot trust myself. I do not know what I might do tomorrow & ruin the work. Women’s hands will be the best anyway to hold what came from a woman —from Mother. Who & what She is, I do not know, I have never seen Her, but Ramakr[ishna] P, saw Her & touched Her, like this (touching my sleeve). She may be a great disembodied spirit for all I know. Anyway I cast the load on you. I am going away to be at peace. I felt nearly mad this morning, & I was thinking and thinking what I could do, when I went to my room to sleep before lunch. And then I thought of this & I was so glad. It is like a release. I have borne it all this time, & now I have given it up...."


Were these exactly the words he used? I think they were. It seems to me that it must have been about 3 O’clock or shortly after, for I think it was daylight still, & then I went back with him to the packing & very long after, as it seems now, he seemed surprised when I told him to go downstairs to the fire—I could do the rest of the work alone—& went like a relieved child. Just before he called me to "the Robing" he had said: "Oh! I feel so gay!"


(We both thought of you at that moment Darling—& I for one was glad that you were away—for your life is his personally—& you are still to be the Good Star which could not be if you were entangled in all that has been so hard on him.)


And so, Yum, happened "the event of my life"—the great turning-point-—nd the dear St. Sara’s.[75]


In her diary, Sister Nivedita wrote of this unforgettable day more briefly, making the entry on November 5: "Our wonderful Sunday. Swami’s release. " Her letter to Miss MacLeod continued:


Next morning he came over to Ridgely, and Mrs. Leggett managed to throw Mrs. R. Smith with him, knowing that she was hungry for a word. It seems that she asked him what his message was. And he answered "I have no message. I used to think I had, but now I know that I have nothing for the world—only for myself. I must break this dream." It sounds so limp and forceless, when I repeat it! And it was so great and stern as he told us of it.[76]


As far as is known, Mrs. Bull never made public (or, for that matter, private) claim to the title of sannyasini, which she clearly received in that spontaneous, brief, and informal ceremony at Ridgely. In her diary for Sunday, November 5, I899, one finds only the quiet entry: "Swamiji gave the Sanyasi cloth and charge of work under S.R.K. and the Mother.'[77] As for Swamiji’s bestowal upon her and Nivedita of his powers—or, at least, it would seem, of the power to carry out certain aspects of his mission—he did so in all solemnity. Many months earlier, at the close of 1898, as Mrs. Bull was leaving India, Swamiji had written to her, "Ere this I had only love for you, but recent developments prove that you are appointed by the Mother to watch over my life, hence, faith has been added to love! As regards me and my work I hold henceforth that you are inspired and will gladly shake off all responsibilities from my shoulder and abide by what the Mother ordains through you.'[78] During the months that were to follow the ceremony, he was often to remind Mrs. Bull of her role in his work and of his implicit faith in her judgment. But what actual and practical effect his bestowal of power upon these two disciples had in the implementation of his mission, what effect it had on Mrs. Bull’s life, in what sense it constituted "the great turning point" for her and Nivedita, what "release" it actually gave to Swamiji—these are questions which would, I think, be hard to answer.


Two days later Swamiji left Ridgely Manor for New York. And thus the "great summer"—so restful that it may have added almost three years to his life—that golden time, never to be repeated, came to an end.

ⓘ
[1] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, August 17, 1899, SCB.
[2] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull., August 23, 1899, SCB.
[3] Vivekananda: Some Findings,” comp, the Editors, Vedanta and the West, 16 (November-December 1953): 173.
[4] Vivekananda: Some Findings,” comp, the Editors, Vedanta and the West, 16 (November-December 1953): 173.
[5] The description of Ridgely as given here stems from Mrs. Frances Leggett’s Late and Soon as well as from information kindly supplied by Miss Katharine Whitmarsh and Lord Margesson.
[6] Besse Leggett to Sara Bull, September 2, 1899, SCB.
[7] See Frances Leggett, Late and Soon, pp. 114-15; see also ref. 3 above, p. 172.
[8] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, September 23, 1899, SCB.
[9] Complete Works, 8 : 474. .
[10] Brahmavadin, 5 (January 1900): 172.
[11] Swami Vivekananda to Isabelle McKindley, August 31, 1899, Swami Vishwananda Col., VSNC.
[12] Josephine MacLeod to Isabelle McKindley, August 31, 1899, Swami Vishwananda Col., VSNC.
[13] Complete Works, 8 : 473.
[14] Swami Abhedananda’s Diary for 1899, Ramakrishna Vedanta Math.
[15] P.B., 4 (November 1899): 176.
[16] Sara C. Bull’s Diary for 1899, SCB.
[17] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 208.
[18] Sister Nivedita’s Diary for 1899, RKM, Belur.
[19] Besse Leggett to Sara Bull, September 19, 1899, SCB.
[20] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, September 21, 1899, SCB.
[21] Original holograph, VSSC.
[22] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, September 21, 1899, Sen Col.
[23] Complete Works, 4 : 395-96.
[24] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, September 23, 1899, SCB.[25].Besse Leggett to Sara Bull, September 23, 1899, SCB.
[26] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, September 2, 1899, Sen Col.
[27] Josephine MacLeod to Alberta Sturges Montague (Countess of Sandwich), December 19, 1913, courtesy of Lady Faith Culme-Seymour through Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre, England.
[28] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, September 3, 1899, SCB.
[29] “Vivekananda: Some New Findings,” comp, the Editors, V and W, 16 (November-December 1952): 174
[30] Brahmavadin, 4 (October 15,1899): 815-16.
[31] Complete Works, 8 :472, 474.
[32] See ref. 29 above, p. 175.
[33] See ref. 29 above, p. 173; see also Frances Leggett, Late and Soon, p. 115.
[34] See Frances Leggett, op. cit., p. 88.
[35] See ref. 29 above, p. 174.
[36] Rem. (J. MacLeod), p. 246.
[37] See ref. 29 above, p. 174.
[38] See ref. 36 above.
[39] Prophetic Mission-1, chap. 2, sec. 3.
[40] See ref. 29 above, p. 173.
[41] Ditto.
[42] Ditto.
[43] Complete Works, 8 : 474.
[44] Rem. (J. MacLeod), pp. 246-47.
[45] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, September 3, 1899, SCB.
[46] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 211-12.
[47] Letters of Sister Nivedita., pp. 213-18 passim.
[48] Nivedita to Josephine MacLeod, undated fragment, RKM, Belur.
[49] Original holograph, VSSC.
[50] Rem. (Nivedita), pp. 278-87 passim.
[51] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 215.
[52] Letters of Sister Nivedita, p. 217.
[53] Letters of Sister Nivedita,  P. 214.
[54] Letters of Sister Nivedita p. 216.
[55] Letters of Sister Nivedita  P. 213.
[56] Letters of Sister Nivedita  p. 225.
[57] Letters of Sister Nivedita P. 227.
[58] Letters of Sister Nivedita pp. 227-28.
[59] Complete Works, 8: 170. (See also Swami Vivekananda, In Search of God and Other Poems, 2nd cd. [1968], pp. 30,89.)
[60] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 211.
[61] Letters of Sister Nivedita., p. 224.
[62] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. George W. Hale, October 5, 1899, Sen Col.
[63] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. George W. Hale,, October 23, 1899.
[64] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 220.
[65] Letters of Sister Nivedita., p. 214.
[66] Nivedita’s Diary for 1899, RKM, Belur.
[67] Josephine MacLeod to Mary Hale, February (?), 1908, SN Col.
[68] See ref. 29 above, p. 172.
[69] Ditto.
[70] Ditto.
[71] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 216-17.
[72] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, October 2, 1899, SCB.
[73] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 214.
[74] Letters of Sister Nivedita., pp. 232-33.
[75] A facsimile of this portion of Nivedita’s letter is given in S. P. Basu’s Lokamata Nivedita, inserts following p. 176.
[76] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 234.
[77] Sara C. Bull’s Diary for 1899, SCB.
[78] Complete Works, 6 : 418.

↑ Contents

5.4 NEW YORK AND CHICAGO

On his arrival in New York on Tuesday, November 7, l899, Swamiji went at once to the new Office and Library of the Vedanta Society, which he had founded five years earlier, and there, at about 5: 30 p.m., Swami Abhedananda (who noted the event in his diary) came to greet him. The Vedanta Society’s rooms occupied "a spacious parlor floor" of a narrow, four story house at 146 East Fifty fifth Street (between Lexington and Third avenues) and constituted the first permanent Vedanta headquarters in New York. As newsletters to the Biahmavadin and Prabuddha Bharata informed their readers, the two "large and pleasant rooms [which could] seat over one hundred persons" had been formally opened on October 15, just three weeks before Swamiji’s arrival from Ridgely Manor. A library with a number of philosophical and religious books, loaned or donated, had been started, and the rooms, furnished largely with contributed odds and ends, were open "every afternoon and evening, a daily meditation hour being established from four to five P.M." The headquarters was used also for weekday lectures, classes, and private interviews. On Sunday afternoons, however, Swami Abhedananda regularly lectured in a public hall, the Sunday attendance numbering around three hundred, and growing.[1]

Things were flourishing in the New York Vedanta Society. During his two years of work Swami Abhedananda (sent to America by Mr. Sturdy in the summer of I897, as the reader will remember) had been eminently successful. "In New York, the most difficult city in the United States in which to reach the spiritual nature of people, Swami Abhedananda has made a profound impression," a September 1899 letter to the Brahmavadin stated. "Two years of patient, persistent, loving service has established Vedanta in a consecrated body of earnest students who are devoted to the continuance of the work.'[2]

Nor was the progress of the Vedanta movement in New York remarked upon only by students of Vedanta. In its October 1899 issue, the Arena, an important and widely read American monthly, published an article by an Anna J. Ingersoll entitled "The Swamis in America." Miss Ingersoll spoke knowledgeably of the good work being done by the New York Vedanta Society, "since 1894, sustaining a teacher and giving a course of eighty lectures during the winter months [and] now recognized as a growingly important factor in the thought movement of the day.'[3] (This same issue of the Arena also carried a long article entitled "An Interpretation of the Vedanta," by Horatio W. Dresser of Boston. The interpretation was informed, thoughtful, and, though not without Western prejudice, highly respectful of Vedanta as a noble and needed philosophy.)[4]

On the evening Swamiji arrived in New York (a Tuesday) there was to be a regular weekly lecture at the Vedanta Society’s rooms. He "was urged to take charge of the meeting," a letter to the Brahmavadin reported," . . . Swami Abhedananda introducing the Swami in words of love and reverence as the founder of the present Vedanta work in New York and the pioneer and prophet of Vedanta Philosophy in America. Swami Vivekananda presided and gave the evening to questions and answers.'[5]

Of that evening, which had held so fine a surprise for the students who were present, we know nothing more, except that after Swamiji had answered all the questions and greeted all his friends, old and new, Swami Abhedananda (as he wrote in his diary) "walked down with him to Mr. Leggett’s house [at 21 West Thirty fourth Street]. " (This would have been a walk of some twenty five blocks, but most of them were short and all of them level.)

"In the morning," Swami Abhedananda noted the following day, "I called on Mr. Leggett and saw S.V.... Afterwards I went with S.V. to Dr. Guerandzy [Guernsey] and lunched with him. Came home at 2:30.'[6] During his first visit to America, Swamiji had often stayed with Dr. and Mrs. Egbert Guernsey in their New York house and, in 1894, had also visited their summer place at Fishkill Landing (now Beacon) on the Hudson. The Guernseys looked upon him as a son, and he was ever welcome in their home. Dr. Guernsey, whom we have met in earlier volumes of this series, was a prominent New York physician, well known and honored for his many charities. He was also, among other things, a founder and member of the prestigious Union League Club and a founder and editor in chief of the important New York Medical Times. From I882 until sometime in the late nineties, the Guernseys had lived in a four story house at 528 Fifth Avenue (between Forty third and Forty fourth streets). But as commerce crept inexorably up the Avenue, the doctor, like many others, sold his house. The family moved farther uptown into a fashionable apartment building, called "The Madrid," at 180 West Fifty ninth Street, overlooking Central Park and part of mammoth block of coordinated apartment buildings, all of a grandiose architecture presumably Moorish. (Here also lived the Albert Spalding family, whom Swamiji knew.)[7]

The Dictionary of American Biography describes Dr. Egbert Guernsey as "a man of huge bulk . . . [whose] character and personality are said to have been memorialized in Bret Harte’s tale The Man Whose yoke Was Not Easy." In this story one finds a physician characterized as "a man of broad culture and broader experience; a man who had devoted the greater part of his active life to the alleviation of sorrow and suffering; . . . a man who had acquired a universal tenderness and breadth of kindly philosophy; a man who, day and night, was at the beck and call of Anguish; . . . in brief, a man who so nearly lived up to the example of the Great Master that it seems strange I am writing of him as a doctor of medicine and  not of divinity.'[8]That was the man who was Swamiji’s friend and who had opened his heart to him.

It was in Dr: Guernsey’s apartment on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 8, 1899, very possibly a short time after Swami Abhedananda had left, that Swamiji suffered an emotional shock at the unexpected sight of one who, lamentably, had closed his heart. In a published letter to Miss MacLeod (which in the Complete Works has been wrongly dated "June, 1895") he tells of the incident: "Dr. Guernsey, after examining other things, was feeling my pulse, when suddenly Landsberg (whom they had forbidden the house) got in and retreated immediately after seeing me. Dr. Guernsey burst out laughing and declared he would have paid that man for coming just then, for he was then sure of his diagnosis of my case. The pulse before was so regular, but just at the sight of Landsberg it almost stopped from emotion.'[9]

Swamiji had last seen his disciple Leon Landsberg in March of 1896. Since that time (and before that time) Landsberg had not fared well; his story was, indeed, a dismal one. Although its details belong to an earlier period of Swamiji’s mission, it can be briefly reviewed here*(1). He had met Swami Vivekananda in New York in the early part of 1894. when he was around forty years old, a member of the Theosophical Society, and a journalist with a job on the New York Tribune. A Russian Jew by birth, Landsberg was a lonely, hungry sort of man, without roots, without attachments, and without worldly ambition. "Nothing to love," he wrote of his condition in one of his revealing letters to Mrs. Bull, "nothing to strive for, nothing to brighten the heart with happy dreams!'[10] His meeting with Swamiji had, in a sense, supplied a happy dream; but it had also been a galvanic awakening, or, as he more vividly put it: "When I met the Swami and realized the greatness of his soul, all the love of which my heart was capable, and which was only waiting for an opportunity to escape its prison built up by prejudice and bad experience, blazed forth with all its intensity like a flame that at last had found its way  through the thick cover of ashes to the open air, and focused in his person.'[11]

*(1) Some details of Swami Kripananda’s life with Swami Vivekananda are related in World Teacher-1 and World Teacher-2.

Many of Landsberg’s good qualities flared up in that empyreal moment—qualities for which Swamiji would always love him. Without question, he had genuine devotion to God; he had true compassion for, and generosity towards, the poor and the oppressed; quite literally he would give the shirt off his back to anyone in greater need than himself; he had an intensity of purpose that shone in his eyes with a light called by some "fanatical"; he was intelligent, highly educated, hardworking; he did not spare himself, and he could feel deeply. But Leon Landsberg also had a number of faults: hypersensitive, self-centered to an extreme degree, he was subject to fits of black depression and violent temper, open to torments of jealousy, inclined to self-pity and delusions of persecution; he could be at times a torture to himself and a source of much trouble to others. Indeed, despite his virtues, which were genuine, despite his blessings, which were immeasurable, he contained within himself the ripe seeds of disaster.

In the first part of 1895, when Swamiji had taken rooms in New York on Thirty third Street and had started holding classes, Leon Landsberg had been his living companion and sole assistant. At first all had been harmonious. Soon, however, Swamiji’s classes had grown, other students had gathered round him, many had claimed and received a share of his affection and attention. Resenting the presence of these others and their attempts to help Swamiji’s work, Landsberg made enemies right and left. In addition, he quarreled with Swamiji, sulked, complained, criticized. Around the middle of April, Swamiji left New York for a few days’ rest at Ridgely Manor— his first visit there. Finding himself alone, Landsberg took his opportunity to fly. "I have now determined to break once for all my relations to him," he wrote on April 16 to Mrs. Bull. "Not that I bear any grudge to him, but in the interest of the peace of our souls, in the interest of the cause it is necessary that I keep away from him. Though loving him, I shall flee his presence as if he were my greatest enemy.'[12]

He moved to another rooming-house in New York and there began to "preach and teach the Lord," holding classes on karma yoga, which, he assured Mrs. Bull, would not interfere with Swamiji’s classes, for they would be held on a different evening of the week[13].

"May the Lord bless Landsberg wherever he goes," Swamiji wrote to a friend on his return to New York and to empty rooms. "He is one of the few sincere souls I had the privilege in this life to come across.'[14] Landsberg never returned to Thirty third Street to help his guru, but before the spring of 1895 came to a close, Mrs. Bull, through many letters, persuaded him to return at least in spirit. This he did, and Swamiji accepted him. We next find Landsberg at Thousand Island Park receiving sannyasa, the final monastic vows, from Swamiji, who then sent him forth to teach.

For a time all went well. Although Landsberg (now Swami Kripananda) was not particularly successful, he made a few disciples during the fall of 1895 in Buffalo, Detroit, and New York. It was not until December, when Swamiji took up quarters in the same house into which Landsberg had moved in April and where he was again living, that the old trouble flared up, this time with greater virulence. Swamiji’s work was now on a larger scale than it had been the previous season, and his need for efficient and devoted workers more pressing. Mr. Josiah J. Goodwin providentially appeared upon the scene and at once took over as secretary and right hand man; Sarah Ellen Waldo, coming daily from Brooklyn, did the cooking, ran the house, attended to various tasks, took dictation; Mr. Walter Goodyear kept accounts; other workers, whom Kripananda referred to as "that committee of petticoats,'[15] were—or so it seemed to —omnipresent. He took to a small room in the attic and—stealing in and out for his meals, for he refused to eat with Swamiji and Miss Wald— there wrote letters to the Brahmavadin, did various typing work, and brooded.

There was nothing anyone could do. Swamiji once climbed the many stairs to his disciple’s room to assure him of his continuing love, and for a few days Kripananda’s spirits rose. "I could not help yielding to the tenderness he showed me," he wrote to Mrs. Bull.[16]But within a week he had sunk back into gloom. As time went on, Kripananda, his mind raw with jealousy, made a number of serious blunders in connection with Swamiji’s work. Further, he fatally lost his temper with his guru; as fatally, he reviled Mrs. Bull, who had been an untiring friend, in long, railing letters.

In short, he sank deeper and deeper into a state of resentment and bitterness. In August, Swamiji, who was then in Switzerland, received news of his poor disciple. "I read from different letters a lot about Kripananda," he wrote to Goodwin. "I am sorry for him. There must be something wrong in his head. Let him alone. None of you need bother about him. As for hurting me, that is not in the power of gods or devils. So be at rest. It is unswerving love and perfect unselfishness that conquer everything. We Vedantists in every difficulty ought to ask the subjective question, 'Why do I see that?’ 'Why can I not conquer this with love?"‘ Swamiji’s own love was all enveloping and inexhaustible. At the close of this same letter he wrote: "A few days ago, I felt a sudden irresistible desire to write to Kripananda. Perhaps he was unhappy and thinking of me. So I wrote him a warm letter. Today from the American news, I see why it was so. I sent him flowers gathered near the glaciers. Ask Miss Waldo to send him some money and plenty of love. Love never dies. The love of the father never dies, whatever the children may do or be. He is my child. He has the same or more share in my love and help, now that he is in misery.'[17]

Almost a year later Swamiji was still thinking of the welfare of his disciple. On learning of Mrs. Bull’s and Miss MacLeod’s wish to come to India, he wrote to the latter, "If Mrs. Bull brings old Landsberg with her, that will be saving that fool’s life as it were.'[18] But by this time the once warm relationship between Mrs. Bull 'and Kripananda had frozen beyond all thawing. Whether or not she invited him to India is at present not known, but if she did, he did not accept.

We now lose all track of Kripananda until Sunday, March 27, 1898. On that day there appeared in the New York Herald a full page illustrated article. The illustrations (here reproduced) consisted of a central drawing of an apparently bonafide yogi and, grouped around it, several cartoons of men and women in nightdress, engaged in practicing various yoga postures. A large banner headline and prominent subheadings read:

IF YOU WANT TO BE A YOGI AND HAVE 
HEAVENLY DREAMS, STUDY THESE POSTURES

There are 84,000,000 of Them Altogether in the Hindoo Philosophy, but the Ones Here Shown Are Those Chiefly Practiced in the Privacy of Their Rooms by American Disciples of the Occult Religion. These Sketches Were Drawn from Postures Assumed by the Swami Kripananda for the Benefit of Herald Readers, and Illustrate an Occult Fad That Has Many Secret Disciples in New York City.

BALM OF THE ORIENT
  IS 
BLISS INSPIRING YOGA.
 What a Swami Says of It. 
New York’s Fashionables Now Attain 
Perfect Happiness by Becoming 
Amateur Contortionists.
BUT THAT IS ONLY A PART OF IT.

Yes, that was only a part of it. The Swami Kripananda not only assumed various postures for the benefit of Herald readers, but wrote at great length on the subject of yoga. A reporter’s fairly long introduction to his article read in part:

I know it to be a fact that there are scores of men and women, perhaps hundreds, well known in New York’s fashionable circles who have taken up Yoga in their ceaseless efforts to do something different. You would be astonished could you get a glimpse into some of the Fifth avenue boudoirs where the Swami Vivekananda’s teachings have taken root....

Surprising as this condition of affairs is, you would be still more surprised could I disclose to you the identities of some of the prominent New York men and women who are practicing Yoga. But that is not to be considered. Vivekananda has also many converts in Boston and not a few in practical Chicago.

In Cambridge, Mrs. Ole Bull has donated a large sum of money to Harvard for the purpose of establishing the study of occult philosophy, and so deeply imbued is she with the spirit of Yoga that she has gone to India, there to delve into its mysteries amid more harmonious surroundings.

[After this came the following:]

JUST WHAT YOGA IS.
--------------------

PRACTICE, RATIONALE AND RESULTS OF 

THE ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY.
By the Swami Kripananda.

. . . At the Convention of the Religious Congress at Chicago [the Swami Kripananda wrote in part] was an orange gowned, erudite, wise man of the East, a Sanyasin of great learning, refinement and culture, who visited these shores for the purpose of spreading the Hindoo philosophies and incidentally to introduce the practice of Yoga, which translated means to the ordinary mind the art of developing supernatural psychic powers. He was a success from the start. Handsome, eloquent, charming in manner and convincing in his sophistries, this tawny beggar Prince soon had scores of our intelligent, practical, nineteenth century men and women sitting cross legged in the privacy of their bedrooms, gazing for hours at the tips of their noses, or, if not too plump, staring at their navels, and breathing by set rule with patient gravity and a decorous sense of their growing spirituality.

What was the object of this uncomfortable self inspection, this undignified contortion act, this strabismus producing, paresis encouraging foolery? Well, it was Yoga, and Yoga is a good thing. It is an ancient art from India, and that is enough to give it prestige and standing in our sensation seeking social centres, especially when introduced by so delightful a colored brother as that chocolate tinted sage, the Swami Vivekananda.

A man who can talk in Sanskrit, English and seven kinds of Hindustanee, or charm a bird off a tree, would have no trouble in introducing any sort of bosh ("bosh" is Oriental, you know) into this country. He has only to declare it occult, and hundreds are eager to stand on their heads and let their ears lop down at his word of command. But Yoga has an inherited charm in being really an art and having been practiced since the days of Krishna and Rama....

Kripananda went on and on to give a five column, derisive resume of the "Practice, Rationale and Results" of Yoga. I shall not burden the reader with the remainder of this long article, which one finds today excruciatingly tiresome. In its own day, however, it would have bored few of its readers; on the contrary, it would have convulsed with laughter many an enemy of Swamiji’s and outraged many a friend. Indeed with this ill advised bit of malice Kripananda effectively cut himself off for good from Swamiji’s supporters and disciples. He also brought down upon his head the immediate wrath of Swami Abhedananda, who (as the latter’s diary records) chanced to meet him at the Leggetts’ house the day the article appeared. "I scolded him," the Swami noted with what was, one imagines, quite an understatement.[19]

In India, Swamiji of course duly heard of Kripananda’s performance, and he did so as well in London, where Sister Christine and Mrs. Funke filled him in with details, which could not have been welcome. Although he would have cared not at all about the Herald article as such, there can be no question that this deliberate betrayal by one whom he loved and over whose unhappiness and mistakes he suffered as a father, cut deep indeed. But, if anything, he only loved him more. Of his unexpected, pulse stopping meeting with his disciple at Dr. Guernsey’s in November of 1899, he wrote at the end of his letter to Miss MacLeod, "I said a few kind words to Landsberg and went upstairs to Mother Guernsey to save poor Landsberg from embarrassment '[20]

As far as is known, that was the last meeting between Swamiji and Kripananda. We lose all track of the latter after that, and at the date of this writing, it is not known what became of him.

2

On the evening of Friday, November 10, the New York Vedanta Society held a reception for Swamiji. The New York Tribune, briefly gave this information to its readers, together with various bits of misinformation as to dates and names.[21]Far more interesting and quotable is the reminiscence of one of Swami Abhedananda’s students, a young brahmacharin by the name of Gurudasa (later Swami Atulananda). In his memoirs entitled With the Swamis in America he wrote of his impressions of Swamiji when, at the reception, he saw him for the first time:

During the short period Swamiji stayed in New York, there was great rejoicing at the Vedanta Home. Swamiji did not give any public lectures but he attended the classes and meetings at the Vedanta Home and there he gave short talks and answered questions. A public reception was given to him at the Home and his former friends and students gathered in large numbers to meet their beloved teacher again. It was a very happy gathering. Others were also present who had long desired to meet the great Swami of whom they had heard so much.


Though public, the reception was informal. The Swami had a smile, a joke or a kind word for every one of his old friends. Part of the time he was seated on the floor, in the Indian fashion, some of the friends following his example. There was much talking and laughing and the Swami showed by a gesture or a remark that he had nowise forgotten his old students....


Swamiji was so simple in his behaviour, so like one of the crowd that he did not impress me so much when I first saw him. There was nothing about his ways that would mark him as the lion of New York society as so often he had been. Simple in dress and behaviour he was just like one of us. He did not put himself aside on a pedestal as is so often the case with lionised personages. , He walked about the room, sat on the floor, laughed, joked, chatted nothing formal. Of course I had noticed his magnificent, brilliant eyes, his beautiful features and majestic bearing, for these were parts of him that no circumstances could hide. But when I saw him for a few minutes standing on a platform surrounded by others, it flashed into my mind: "What a giant, what strength, what manliness, what a personality! Every one near him looks so insignificant compared with him." It came to me almost as a shock, it seemed to startle me. What was it that gave Swamiji this distinction? Was it his height? No, there were gentlemen there taller than he was. Was it his build? No, there were near him some very fine specimens of American manhood. It seemed to be more in the expression of the face than anything. else. Was it his purity? What was it? I could not analyse it. I remembered what had been said of Lord Buddha; "a lion amongst men." I felt that Swamiji had unlimited power, that he could move heaven and earth if he willed it. This was my strongest and lasting impression of him.[22]


Swamiji seldom willed to use his power and never wished to impose his ideas upon the minds of others, as he so easily could. According to Swami Nikhilananda’s book Vivekananda: A Biography, it was at one of Swamiji’s class talks or lectures during this period in New York that, aware of his power, he suddenly stopped and left the room.


The meeting broke up [Swami Nikhilananda writes] 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 individuality. That was why he had had to stop.[23]


(Another account of what was presumably the same incident comes down to us in a roundabout way through Mme Paul Verdier, who learned of it from Miss MacLeod, who had it from Alberta, who must have heard it from someone else, for she was in Chicago during this entire period*(2). According to this version, after Swamiji had told why he had stopped speaking so suddenly, his concerned questioner exclaimed, "But your audience will think you forgot what to say!" Characteristically he replied, "What does it matter what they think?")[24]


*(2) It is true that Alberta Sturges was in New York on November 7, 1899. But she, Olea, and Nivedita took the train to Chicago that afternoon and could not have attended the Vedanta Society meeting at which Swamiji spoke. (See Letters of Sister Nivedita, volume one.)

Disappointed and puzzled as the students may have been that evening, they saw and heard Swamiji on many other occasions during the two weeks he spent in New York. He often came to the Society’s headquarters; he held question and answer classes at the regular weekly meetings (Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and Saturday mornings) ; he came also at other times to talk informally to the enthralled students (among whom would have been the poetess Ella Wheeler Wilcox, who at one gathering or another during his stay read to him a poem of hers that had been inspired by his teachings)**(3). Answering questions was no doubt the quickest, most direct way for Swamiji to uncover and solve any spiritual problems or philosophical difficulties the students might have. One of these difficulties one that often cropped up in the West was the cavalier attitude Vedanta seemed to take toward the matter of sin. In an article that appeared in Prabuddha Bharata of April 1918, Gurudasa recalled Swamiji’s reply to an objection of this sort:


**(3) As Gurudasa would observe in later life (when he was Swami Atulananda), "[Ella Wheeler Wilcox] used to compose rhymes rather than poetry" (Atman Alone Abides, ed. Swami Vidyatmananda [Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1973], p. 94. But her rhymes, colored by her New Thought persuasions, were exceedingly popular. Of the poem that she read in 1900 to Swamiji and that Gurudasa remembered with astounding accuracy sixty years later, she wrote in her autobiographical work The Worlds and I (New York, 1918), pp-111-12:
One night, after coming from a lecture [of Vivekananda’s], . . . I prepared for retiring, and then sat down to my moments of concentration. Suddenly I felt that I must go to my desk. I had no idea what I was to do; I had finished my day’s work before I went to the lecture; and I had no least thought of writing anything more that day. Yet so strong was the urge that I arose, went to my desk, and took up my pen and began to write. I was perfectly conscious, yet my mortal brain certainly had nothing to do with what my pen wrote down. It was as if some one thought for me. I watched my hand form the words with interest, as I would have watched a friend write. This is the poem which came under those peculiar conditions:
ILLUSION
God and I in space alone
And nobody else in view.
"And where are the people, O Lord," I said,
"The earth below, and the sky o’er head
And the dead whom once I knew?"


"That was a dream," God smiled and said,
"A dream that seemed to be true.
There were no people, living or dead,
There was no earth, and no sky o’er head
There was only myself—in you."


"Why do I feel no fear," I asked,
"Meeting you here this way,
For I have sinned I know full well,
And is there heaven, and is there hell,
And is this the judgment day?"


"Nay, those were but dreams," the Great God said,
"Dreams, that have ceased to be.
There are no such things as fear or sin,
There is no you—you never have been
There is nothing at all but ME."

[At Swamiji’s question classes] every one was invited to ask any question he wished. So one evening, an old church lady asked him why he never spoke of sin. There came a look of surprise on Swamiji’s face. "But, madam," he said, "blessed are my sins. Through sin I have learned virtue. It is my sins, as much as my virtues that have made me what I am to day. And now I am the preacher of virtue. Why do you dwell on the weak side of man’s nature? Don’t you know that the greatest blackguard often has some virtue that is wanting in the saint? There is only one power and that power manifests both as good and as evil. God and the devil are the same river with the water flowing in opposite directions."


The lady was horrified, but others understood. And then the Swami began to speak of the divinity that resides in every man; how the soul is perfect, eternal and immortal; the Atman resides in every being....


. . . Here was hope, here was strength, every man can become divine, by realising his own divinity. Do you see what an immense consolation Swamiji’s teaching was to those that had searched but had not yet found, those who had knocked but unto whom it had not yet been opened? To them, Swamiji came as a Saviour. He came to the door of their own hearts and knocked. And blessed are they who opened the door to receive the flow of benediction that came with his presence.[25]


Another of Gurudasa’s memories of this happy time is to be found in the same Prabuddha Bharata article. He had come to the Society one afternoon with a large picture of Jesus in his hand.


The Swami asked me what I had there. I told him that it was a picture of Christ talking to the rich young man. "Oh, let me see it," he said, eagerly. I handed him the picture. And never shall I forget the tenderness in his look when he held the picture and looked at it. At last he returned it to me, with the simple words: "How great was Jesus!" And I could not help thinking that there was something in common between these two souls.[26]


Swamiji’s stay at Ridgely Manor had restored his health to some extent, but, as Gurudasa noted, he was still far from well.[27]On November 9 or 10 he moved from the Leggetts’ house to the Guernseys’, for, as he wrote to Miss MacLeod, "the doctor wants to watch me and cure me." "The heart they all say is only nervous," he continued. " . . . [Dr. Guernsey]  also advises me strongly to go on with doctor Helmer’s treatment. He thinks Helmer will do me a world of good and that is what I need now. Is not he broad?'[28] But despite Dr. Helmer’s osteopathic treatments, which Swamiji commenced taking at once, and despite Dr. Guernsey’s care, he developed a bad cold and fever. Not impossibly, the emotional shock of his encounter with "old Landsberg" contributed to this; it was also around this time that he received one of Mr. Sturdy’s improbable letters. Incidents such as these told on his highly sensitive body. Indeed, better than any doctor, Swamiji knew how fine the body and nerves must be to carry and transmit currents of spirituality. Perhaps he was his own best diagnostician. "On the whole," he wrote to Sister Christine from New York, "I don’t think there is any cause for anxiety about my body. This sort of nervous body is just the instrument to play great music at times and at times to moan in darkness. But the peculiarity of such a system is that the organs have got affected.'[29]


On November 12, sick in bed at Dr. Guernsey’s (as one learns from Swami Abhedananda’s diary), he wrote to Mrs. Bull. His letter, which has not heretofore been published, read in full:

180 W. 59 
c/o E. Gurnsey Esq.
12th Nov.

Dear Mrs Bull—

I am laid up with bad cold. The clothes are not ready they will be next week. I don’t know what my next step will be. Dr. Gurnsey is very kind .Several Doctors have examined me and none could detect any organic disease. Even the kidney complications for the present have disappeared. Well the whole thing is then dispepsia. I want ever so much to try Battle Creek Food [renowned health foods manufactured at Battle Creek, Michigan]. There is a restaurant which cooks only Battle Creek food. Do you think it should be best for me to try it just now? If so I go to Detroit. In that case send me my terracotta thick cashmere coat.


Ever yours in the Lord 

Vivekananda 


Had three treatments already from Helmer. Going to take some next week. None can do anything for this "wind." That is why dieting should be tried at any cost.[30]

V.

Swamiji had been thinking for some time about taking Battle Creek food. "Where is this battle creek?" he had asked Sister Christine in a letter from Ridgely dated October 30, "Is it near Detroit? I am seriously thinking of giving it a trial. I am not bad but unfit for any exertion, even for a walk. This sort of life is not good to live. I try Battle Creek & if that fails, get out quick.'[31]


One may remark here parenthetically that Swamiji was a good deal more concerned about Sister Christine’s health than about his own. In a reply to a letter of hers, which evidently gave signs of depression and fatigue, he wrote from Ridgely:


My dear Christina— Your last letter made me sorry. It seems there is a gloom over your mind. Never mind—nothing is to last forever. Anyhow—life is not eternal. I am so so thankful for it. Suffering is the lot of the world’s best and bravest,yet f—or eons yet, till things are righted if possible here—at best it’s a discipline which breaks the dream. In my sane moments I rejoice for my sufferings. Some one must suffer here— I am glad it is I— amongst other of nature’s sacrifices.*(4)


*(4) Most of this paragraph has been published in the Complete Works (6:419) as having been addressed to Nivedita, who at the time was not in the least gloomy.

. .. I see you have not had such a good rest. I don’t care to go to the Sanitarium [at Battle Creek]. You can get all the information about the food for me and directions & the cost. Then take leave of absence for a month or two and be quiet and take rest. Either in Detroit or New York or any other place that suits you. I will join you if you like—you give me German lessons —won’t you? Leave the money part of making up of your salary and the expenses of rest from work on me. I can easily do that much I am sure— without putting myself to straights [sic]. You were on your vacation last time [in England], not leave, was it not? Do think on this and try your luck to get rest. I am very strong and healthy now, and feel strong like a lion, ready to take up any work again.

Don’t disturb your mind about the money part in it—the least, —for I am ready with it already. Else I would not write it. I intend to do some writing too. If you think you will get better rest at home take leave & rest there. I will come gladly if you can give me a hole even, for we Hindus don’t require luxuries. I intend doing some writing & German. Write sharp.[32]


Before Swamiji had mailed this letter, offering to spend weeks if not months with Christine’s family in a crowded house, Mrs. Bull, always ready to extend the hospitality of her spacious home to a needy disciple of Swamiji, invited Christine (whom she had not met) to Cambridge.


You will have a room there [Swamiji wrote in a postscript] and all liberty to do whatever you like. I will have to go to Washington for a few days*(5) After that I will be free to come. But you can come tomorrow if you like. I will join you in a few days. Mrs. Bull is really a mother to me & will do anything I ask her to do. You need not be the least shy but take leave & come. Mrs. Bull is herself sending you an invitation. It is the best for you to come to her I am sure. Take leave &. come, do.


*(5) In his letters of these days Swamiji mentions more than once that he was planning to go to Washington, D.C., for a short visit. As far as I know at present, there is no evidence that he actually went to Washington in 1899.

[And a few days later:] Do come. And mind you I must learn German. I am determined to be a French & German scholar. French I think I can manage with the help of a dictionary. If I can do that much German in a month I will be so glad.[33]


From New York Swamiji again urged his disciple to come to Cambridge, bringing "all the instructions of Battle Creek food." "In Cambridge, Mrs. Bull has a quite separate place—her studio house," he wrote, " you can have rooms there. I wish you to know Mts. Bull. She is a saint a real saint, if ever there was one.'[34]


But Swamiji gave his disciple the freedom of choice. "Write unreservedly where you like me to be," he wrote on November 15 from Dr. Guernsey’s where he was then staying. "If you think it best for me to come to Detroit, write or wire on receipt of this I will come immediately. Only difficulty is now the dispepsia....If Cambridge best, say that immediately.'[35]


Sister Christine finally accepted Mrs. Bull’s invitation, perhaps for Swamiji’s sake as much as for her own. On November 15 he wrote to her:


You are right.... I am really very well—what little remains is only mental and requires rest. Cambridge therefore is the best place.


Mrs. Bull sends me your letter of acceptance: I am glad you accepted. Come as soon as you can to Cambridge. We will have good time of a few weeks at least. I will do some writing and studying. You loaf about and idle.... Well, come soon. I will be in Cambridge in a few days.[36]


Christine’s decision to go to Cambridge may have influenced Swamiji’s own. In any event, he wrote to Mrs. Bull on the same day as he wrote the above:


After all, I decide to come to Cambridge just now. . .

Only my fear is it will be for the whole winter a place for becoming nervous and not for quieting of nerves, with constant parties and lectures. Well, perhaps you can give me a room somewhere, where I can hide myself from all the goings on in the place. Again I am so nervous of going to a place where indirectly the Indian Math will be. [Her correspondence with Swami Saradananda kept Mrs. Bull in constant touch with Belur Math.] The very name of these Math people is enough to frighten me. And they are determined to kill with these letters etc.... I am much better and am all right; nothing the matter with me except my worry, and now I am sure to throw that all overboard. Only one thing I want—and I am afraid I cannot get it of you—there should be no communication about me in your letters to India even indirect. I want to hide for a time or for all time.[37]


Then suddenly the picture changed, and the future began, as it were, to take shape. Five days after writing the above, Swamiji wrote to Mary Hale (from "1 East 39 St "—then the Union League Club) : "I start tomorrow most probably for California.'[38]That same day, November 20, Mrs. Bull came to New York. Three days later she returned to Cambridge, "bringing word," Dr. Lewis G. Janes noted in his meticulously kept Diary of the Cambridge Conferences, "that the Swami Vivekananda has been suddenly called to  California, and  cannot  give the lecture  on Shankaracharya, Dec. 10th.'[39](The Cambridge Conferences was an annual course of lectures held at Mrs. Bull’s house and directed by Dr. Janes. Swami Turiyananda was invited to speak in Swamiji’s place.) As for Sister Christine, she found herself in Cambridge with Mrs. Bull —and not sorry for it. "I am so glad you are happy and peaceful under Mrs. Bull’s hospitable roof," Swamiji would write to her from California on December 27. "She is a great great woman. One whom to see is a pilgrimage. . . I wanted you to know [her] thoroughly. Remain there as long as you  can. It will do you good I am sure. Take heart and be of cheer—for next year is sure to bring many joys and a hundred blessings.'[40]


What lay behind Swamiji’s sudden decision to go to Caliornia?—to make this move which was to prove so important to his mission, which indeed seems in retrospect to have been the primary, though long unrevealed, purpose of his second visit to the Western world? One remembers his parting call to Miss MacLeod as she drove away from Ridgely Manor: "Get up some classes and I will come." But although she had remained in Los Angeles after the death of her brother on November 2 and had urged Swamiji to join her (she ‘had found a new healer-of-all-ills), she had not, by November 20, arranged any classes for him. Nor do we find in his letters of this pre California period that a wish to teach Vedanta in new fields had been a conscious factor in his decision to cross the continent. On the contrary, other motives seem to have been uppermost in his mind.


For one thing, his poor health made a visit to sunny California seem desirable, if not imperative. Secondly, there was his urgent need to find a haven remote from all agitating and unfruitful reminders of the problems connected with his Indian work. "It is necessary that I must disappear for some time," he wrote to Swami Brahmananda on the eve of his departure from New York. "Let not anyone write me or seek me during that time, it is absolutely necessary for my health. I am only nervous that is all,[41] nothing more: ‘


He did not disappear from his brothers’ sight without healing any wounds he may have inflicted over the past months. "Never mind what I have said in previous harsh letters," he wrote. "They would do you good.... If these scoldings don’t make you brave, I shall have no more hopes of you. I want to see you die even, but you must make a fight.... All blessings follow you. Never mind my harshness. You know the heart always, whatever the lips say. All blessings on you.... I am much better well, in fact," he concluded.


"Lord help you all. I am going to the Himalayas soon to retire for ever. My work is done.'[42]


As often and as seriously as Swamiji spoke of retiring, his work was by no means done, nor had his concern for it lessened in the slightest. His hope that in some new place he could earn money for the Math and also, perhaps, interest people in contributing financially to his educational projects in India was as strong as ever, and it would not be wrong to say that this hope constituted the third, and not least, important motive for his trip to the West Coast. In this last respect one finds a certain parallelism between his first visit to the West and his visit now to California. His quest for funds with which to spread education among the Indian masses had been the dominant motive behind his first voyage. The same quest had been prominent among the motives bringing him to America the second time and, ultimately, taking him to the Pacific Coast. "My going over to the West again is uncertain," he had written in April of 1897 from Darjeeling. "If I go, know that too will be for India. Where is the strength of men in this country? Where the strength of money? . . . our well being is impossible without men and money coming from the West'[43]


In 1899 the Math funds consisted of 30,000 rupees, from an original fund of 35,000 rupees donated by Mrs. Bull. (Swamiji had borrowed 5,000 rupees for a house for his mother—of which, as we have seen from his letter of August 6 from Wimbledon, he had been defrauded.)[44] This sum, approximately 9,700 dollars, was invested in his name in Government Bonds, an investment which, though safe and sound, brought but a small income.[45] Swamiji hoped to earn at least 5,000 rupees (1,615 dollars) in order to restore the fund to its original figure; and he hoped also to collect eventually, perhaps in India, some 15,000 rupees (4,800 dollars), thus bringing the fund up to 50,000 and placing things, as he wrote, "on a better footing.'[46] But in addition to the overall financial needs of his Indian work, which were pressing enough, the  Belur Math, the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Order, was, as we have seen, facing a crisis. The legal battle that Swamiji was determined to wage against the municipality’s persecutive assessment required extra money, as well as courage, and there can be little doubt that the matter was a source of worry to him. "Spare no pains or money for the ‘law suit,[47]he had written from Ridgely Manor to his brother monks in an unpublished letter, dated October 13, 1899. And to Mrs. Bull he was to write from Los Angeles on December 12: "Well, the municipality is trying to tax us out good; that is my fault as I did not make the Math public property by a deed of trust.... The present looks very gloomy indeed.'[48]


These, then, were the circumstances that took Swamiji to California: his poor health, his need for seclusion, and his hope to earn money for his Indian work. These factors, or motives, formed the wave, so to speak, upon which his mission to the Western world (begun in 1893) was now to be carried forward, completed, and made secure.


In his letter of November 15 to Mrs. Bull, Swamiji mentioned that he might visit Montclair, "for a few hours at least," before leaving New York.[49] Montclair was a small town in New Jersey about twenty miles, or about an hour’s journey, from Manhattan. Swami Saradananda had often held classes there in 1896 and 1897, living in the home of a Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler, the latter of whom was an ardent student of Vedanta. Since his arrival from Ridgely Manor at the end of October, Swami Turiyananda had been carrying on the Montclair work with much success, coming to the city only on Saturday afternoons to hold a class for children and to talk and meditate with the New York students. Mrs. Wheeler had invited Swamiji to Montclair, but, to my knowledge, there is no evidence to indicate whether or not he was able to accept. All we know is that, having bade good bye to his brother monks, his disciples, and his friends, he left New York for Chicago on the morning of Wednesday, November 22.[50]

3

In a sense, Chicago was Swamiji’s home in the Western world. Here in late July of 1893 he had first set foot in the United States; here in September of the same year he had made his first appearance before the American public, becoming famous literally overnight; and here during almost all of 1894, when he had been lecturing throughout the eastern half of the United States, he had often returned, staying with the Hale family, which, as mentioned earlier, he loved as his own. It was in order to visit the Hales once again and to see his many other friends that he now stopped off in Chicago for a week.


Things had changed. Mr. and Mrs. George Hale had leased their house at 415 Dearborn Avenue and had moved into a comfortable hotel apartment at 10 Aster Street; Mary Hale was staying with them. Harriet Hale was now married to Clarence Woolley, and the couple had an apartment of their own. As for Isabelle and Harriet McKindley, they had moved to a rented flat—at first at 52 Walton Place and in 1899 at 300 Schiller Street.*(6) Sam Hale was off in the Klondike in the far north, searching, along with thousands of others, for gold. Thus the house where Swamiji had so often stayed during his first visit to the West, no longer rang with the life of the Hale family, nor did it have a room waiting for him. It is not certain at the present writing where he stayed during this short visit in Chicago, but surely he often visited the Hales’ apartment and the McKindleys’ flat.


*(6) Much of the information given here about the Hales and McKindleys comes from Louise Baker Hyde, niece of Isabelle and Harriet McKindley. It would appear from other sources, however, that during this period the McKindleys’ flat was no longer at 52 Walton Place, as Mrs. Hyde remembered, but at 300 Schiller Street. Further, from various letters of Sister Nivedita, it would seem that in 1899 Mary Hale was not living with her cousins (as previously supposed) but with her parents.

According to Sister Nivedita’s diary, Mary Hale gave a party for Swamiji on the afternoon following his arrival. Nivedita did not note how large the party was or who the guests were, but no doubt a number of his friends were invited to greet him. He knew, of course, many people in Chicago—certainly a great many more than we know of, for only a few names have come down to us. There were Mrs. Milward (Florence) Adams, who, as we have seen, had paid a visit to Ridgely Manor; Miss Josephine Locke, Director of Art in the city’s public schools; a Mrs. Peake, a teacher of metaphysics; Mr. and Mrs. John B. Lyon, with whom he had stayed during the Parliament of Religions in 1893, and their daughter Mrs. Conger. There were a Miss Howe, a Cora Stockham, a Mrs. Mills. From one of Sister Nivedita’s letters to Yum one learns also of "the Barberts," on whom. Swamiji called, "saying on the doorstep— 'I’m the gentleman from Georgia.'[51]


Undoubtedly, some of Swamiji’s friends entertained him, inviting him to dinner, lunch, or tea; but he also spent quiet times at the Hales’, Mary Hale guarding his privacy. Nivedita sometimes called. "I am down for another talk [at Hull House] . . . on Indian Arts and Crafts of which I know nothing—as I told them," she wrote on Saturday, November 25, to "Aunt Mary." "So I am going to ask if I may come to you on Sunday evening and ask Swami some questions on the subject.... I am sure Swami will be ready to help me— if you ask him, and he knows a great deal really.'[52] Presumably, Nivedita was allowed to come and ask her questions of Swamiji, for her lecture at Hull House, it turned out, was a success.


It is possible that during this week Swamiji made some recordings at the McKindleys’ Schiller Street flat, as he very likely had done in April of 1896 at the Walton Place flat, talking into the horn of one of Edison’s early phonograph machines. Indeed, we find that a little earlier in New York Mr. Leggett had been ready to buy him some cylinders to be played in Los Angeles on "Jo’s machine.[53] But whether or not Swamiji lectured into a horn during this particular visit to Chicago, we know that on Monday afternoon, November 27, he lectured at the Hales’ to a live audience. Unfortunately, we have no information at present of what he said, of what his subject was, of how long he spoke, of how many people attended. One does know, however, that this was an invitational parlor talk, for one finds Sister Nivedita pleading with "Aunt Mary" for a certain Miss Starr, who evidently was in disrepute. "Once more I am going to beg to be allowed to bring Miss Starr on Monday," she wrote. "You heard her little speech the other night—yet already she is beginning to be one of us, and is hungry to come. Do let me bring her! We can sit in a corner out of sight.... I love her so much—she is full of the true something, and a new face is often as stimulating to Swami as to others." ("The fun of it is in Miss Starr’s case," Nivedita continued in an interesting passage, "that Swami really hurt her in her own house, and that all I said in excuse or explanation was that I knew he never made mistakes— and that that was best for her when it happened and greater of him than suavity—for it showed his entire indifference to the opinion of the world. It was on this strong doctrine that she got over her little hurt! On this, and the doctrine that in dealing with him we have to forget that we are anything but a soul asking for truth.")[54] Miss Starr was Ellen Gates Starr, co-founder (with Jane Addams) of Hull House,* (7) where Nivedita was staying. Whether or not she was permitted to hear Swamiji, even from a corner, is not on record.

*(7) Hull House, the first social settlement of its kind in America, was established in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Starr in the dilapidated Hull mansion, which they had bought for the purpose. By 1899 Hull House was well known as a successful humanitarian venture.

Among the people Swamiji was happy to see was Mme Emma Calve, the famous singer, whom he may have met in Chicago several years earlier and who was again in town with the Metropolitan Opera Company.[55]On the afternoon of November 28 she came to call. "She is a great woman " Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Leggett, who knew her. "I wish I saw more of her. It is a grand sight to see a giant pine struggling against a cyclone. Is it not?[56] (This was evidently one of the more stormy periods in Mme Calve’s life. Swamiji’s wish incidentally, came true; he was to see a good deal more of Emma Calve before his visit to the Western world was over.)


On Thanksgiving Day, November 30, he finished packing all his things into a new trunk. Mrs. Bull, returning to Cambridge from New York, where possibly she had seen him off, had written to Mary Hale: "I hope that Swami is safe with his friends in Chicago.... His trunk will just about last him there. If you can procure him one a little larger that will bear knocking about, & be strong enough to permit his taking some books, will you kindly speak to him about it, & attend to it?[57] As one learns from the following heretofore unpublished letter from Swamiji to Mrs. Bull, Mary Hale did indeed attend to it:

Chicago 
the 30th Nov ‘99

My dear Dhira Mata—


I am going to leave this place to-night. They have given me a new trunk a big one. The Maspero [Sir Gaston Maspero, a French Egyptologist and archeologist] book is with me, only the second volume. The first volume must be at Boston. Kindly send it c/o Joe.


They have been very kind. Madame Calve came to see me day before yesterday. She is a great woman.


I have nothing to write here except that Margo is doing very well, except some people were complaining last night that she frightened them with her assertion that Swami can not make mistakes !!!


Hope things are going on with you very well. This is in haste. I write in length from California.

Ever your son[58] 
Vivekananda

My love to Mrs Vaughn


So came to a close Swamiji’s five months of rest. That evening he boarded Santa Fe’s crack California Limited that would take him directly and with the greatest possible speed to Los Angeles, the city where a new chapter of his mission was to begin.[59]


ⓘ
[1] P.B., 5 (February 1900): 28, “Vedanta Work in New York”; Brahmavadin, 5 (February 1900): 303, “New York Letter.”
[2] Brahmavadin, 4 (September 1899): 816, “The Vedanta Work.”
[3] Anna Josephine Ingersoll, “The Swamis in America,” Arena, October 1899, pp. 492 98.
[4] Horatio W. Dresser, “An Interpretation of the Vedanta,” Arena, October 1899, pp. 489 508. Dresser was a leader of the New Thought movement.
[5] Brahmavadin, 5 (February 1900): 304, “New York Letter.”
[6] Diary of Swami Abhedananda for 1899. Ramakrishna Vedanta Math, Calcutta.
[7] See Prophetic Mission 2, chap. 9, sec. 2.
[8] The Writings of Bret Harte (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1904), vol. 2. 
[9] Complete Works, 8 : 338 39.
[10] Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, April 16, 1895, SCB.
[11] Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, April 16, 1895, SCB.
[12] See ref. 10 above.
[13] Landsberg to Sara Bull, April 19, 1895, SCB.
[14] Complete Works, 6 : 310.
[15] Landsberg to Sara Bull, December 20, 1895, SCB.
[16] Leon Landsberg to Sara Bull, February 4 (?), 1896.
[17] Complete Works, 8 : 383, 385 86.
[18] Complete Works., 409.
[19] Diary of Swami Abhedananda, March 27, 1898, Ramakrishna Vedanta Math, Calcutta. For Mr. Leggett’s reaction see the Complete Works of Swami Abhedananda, vol. 10, pp. 30 31.
[20] See ref. 9 above.[21].New York Tribune, 11 November 1899.
[22] A Western Disciple [Br. Guru dasa, later Swami Atulananda], With the Swamis in America, 2d ed. (1946), pp. 79 82.
[23] Swami Nikhilananda, Vivekananda: A Biography, p. 153.
[24] Notes of Mme Paul Verdier, copy VSNG.
[25] Br. Gurudasa [later Swami Atulananda], “Swami Vivekananda’s Mission to the West,” P.B., 23 (April 1918): 85 86.
[26] Br. Gurudasa [later Swami Atulananda], “Swami Vivekananda’s Mission to the West,” P.B., 23 (April 1918): 85 86.    
[27] See ref. 22 above.
[28] Complete Works, 8 : 338; for portion deleted in Complete Works see P.B., 54 (July 1949): 260.
[29] Complete Works, 6:419. As evidenced by the original (Sen Col.), this letter, dated November 15, $99, was addressed to “Christine,” not to “Margot” as in the Complete Works.
[30] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, November 12, 1899, SCB.
[31] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, October 30, 1899, Sen Col.
[32] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine., November 1, 1899.
[33] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, November 1, 1899, and November 4, 1899.
[34] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine., November 10, 1899.
[35] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, November 12, 1899.
[36] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine., November 15, 1899.
[37] Complete Works, 8 : 479 80.
[38] Complete Works., 8 : 482.
[39] Cambridge Conferences Diary for 1899, Lewis G. Janes Papers, SCB.
[40] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, December 27, 1899, Sen Col.
[41] Complete Works, 8 : 497.
[42] Complete Works., 8: pp. 482 83.
[43] Complete Works 5 : 128.
[44] See chap. 2, sec. 2, ref. 47.
[45] Complete Works, 8 : 497.
[46] Complete Works., 6 : 421, 422.
[47] Quoted in Swami Saradananda to Sara Bull, November 16, 1899, SCB.
[48] Complete Works, 6 : 419 20.
[49] Complete Works., 8 : 480.
[50] Diary of Swami Abhedananda for 1899, see ref. 6 above.
[51] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 275.
[52] Letters of Sister Nivedita p. 250.
[53] In connection with these recording sessions, see Swamiji’s letter to Josephine MacLeod {Complete Works, 8 : 338), written in November of 1899, not June of 1895 as published.
[54] Letters of Sister Nivedita, I : 251.
[55] The year of Swamiji’s first meeting with Emma Calvd is at present problematical. See Prophetic Mission 1, app.
[56] Complete Works, 7 : 516.
[57] Sara Bull to Mary Hale, November 24, 1899, Sen Col.
[58] Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, November 30, 1899, SCB.
[59] That Swamiji traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles on the California Limited is verified by a letter he wrote to Mrs. Hale (December 1, 1899) bearing the train’s seal, Sen Col.



↑ Contents

5.5 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA A NEW MISSION BEGINS-I

At the turn of the century, Los Angeles bore almost no resemblance to the huge, sprawling metropolis of today. In 1900 the city’s population, which had doubled during the previous ten years, stood, momentarily, at 102,500; its area was a mere fraction of its present vastness; the Los Angeles River supplied enough water for all its needs; many of its streets were still unpaved tree lined roads that became mud-holes when it rained; its downtown buildings were small and unprepossessing, and while a few grandiose mansions adorned the city here and there, its late Victorian residences were, on the whole, undistinguished. Despite its romantic Spanish and Mexican past, Los Angeles resembled in many respects a typical mid-western town, thriving incongruously amidst pepper trees, eucalyptus, orange groves, and palms. Since the 1880s, and even earlier, mid-westerners had poured by the trainload into this well advertised paradise, where flowers bloomed in abundance throughout the year and blizzards were unknown. For the most part, the newcomers were prosperous and hardy farmers who, though tired of battling the elements in their native states, were by no means tired of life or of themselves. They were not people to be absorbed into a sleepy Mexican pueblo; on the contrary, they had put their own stamp on the little town and in short order had converted it into a prosperous, fully American, predominantly Republican and Protestant city. They had introduced electric car lines, electric lights, water mains, and sewers. They thought of ways and means to grow and to improve; they were, in fact, already urging  their adopted town, which at the close of the nineteenth century ranked twenty sixth among American cities, to catch up in economic and cultural status to the urbane, self assured San Francisco, which ranked ninth.

But though seething internally with ambition, Los Angeles was to all outward appearances still a quiet, peaceful, and compact town. In one residential section, it is true, oil wells were fast ruining the lawns and gardens; but this was a limited disturbance. One could still bask in the city’s sunshine, fill one’s lungs with its clean and fragrant air, and walk into outlying farmlands. The start of the motion picture industry was some ten years in the future; Hollywood was an uneventful village of five hundred devout and temperate Methodists; paved highways did not exist, and the automobile, a rarity, was still looked upon askance as "an expensive luxury . . . well named the 'devil wagon.’ "

In the early afternoon of December 3 Swamiji arrived in this Eden of America. It was a sunny day with only a few clouds scattered in the sky. The temperature was in the sixties and the breeze was gentle. There can be little doubt that Josephine MacLeod met him at the railway depot and that she took him, not to Mrs. Blodgett’s, as has heretofore been supposed, but to the home of a Miss Spencer. "Swami & I are to spend the first week with Miss Spencer, who has spent the last 10 years in nursing a dying mother," Miss MacLeod had written to Mrs. Bull on November 26 and had added, "After that we will come to stay with Mrs. Blodgett'[1]

Miss MacLeod did not say just who Miss Spencer was, just where she lived, or why she and Swamiji visited her during his first week in Los Angeles, and none of our other currently available sources of information answer these questions. But that Swamiji did stay with Miss Spencer and her mother at some time during his Los Angeles visit has long been known. "At Los Angeles he was for a time the guest of Miss Spencer, who became one of his fervent disciples," a passage in the Life of Swami Vivekananda reads. "While there, he was wont to sit on the floor beside her aged mother who was blind and nearing the end. At Miss Spencer’s question, why he seemed so interested in her mother, he told her that death like birth was a mystery, and so the mother was an interesting study to him.'[2]

This somewhat dreary picture of Swamiji sitting beside the chair of an aged lady, observing with absorption the slow receding of life, constitutes our only glimpse of him during his first four or five days in southern California, but all in all this seems to have been a gloomy time. "Your sixth arrived, but with it yet no change in my fortune, " he wrote on December 6 to Sister Nivedita, who had prophesied great happenings and beginnings for that date. (The Day, she had written in anticipation in her diary.) "Would change be any good, you think?" Swamiji continued. "Some people are made that way, to love being miserable. If I did not break my heart over people I was born amongst, I would do it for somebody else. I am sure of that'[3]. Just the same, perhaps December 6 did indeed mark a turning point for Swamiji, or at least a sliding from one period into another, for it was just now that he was beginning a new phase of his mission to the West. On that day he wrote to Mrs. Hale:

My dear Mother 

A few lines to say my safe arrival and am going to resume my usual work of lecturing here.
I am much better than I was in Chicago —and hope soon to become well again.
I can not tell you how I enjoyed once more the little visit with my American Mother & Sisters.
Harriet has scored a triumph really— I am charmed with Mr Wooly [sic] only hope Mary will be equally fortunate. It gives me a new lease of life to see people happy. May they all be happy.
Ever with love your son[4]

Vivekananda 

During his first four or five days in Los Angeles, Swamiji clearly did other things besides sitting with the aged Mrs. Spencer. Miss MacLeod, for instance, must have introduced him to her newly made friends, who had been eagerly looking forward to his arrival in their city. "I was invited to meet a dozen people at Judge Cheney’s [judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court from 1885 to 1891] to tell them about India!" she had written on November 26 to Mrs. Bull. "But they were all so keen on Swamiji’s coming that he became the pivot " Indeed, so keen on Swamiji’s coming were Judge Cheney’s guests that one of them, Mr. Bernhard R. Baumgardt, set himself to making arrangements for his first lecture in the city, engaging for the purpose Blanchard Hall  'the best in town."

Mr. Baumgardt, who was to become one of Swamiji’s ardent admirers, was in the printing business and was himself a master printer. But printing was merely the bread-winning part of his life. In addition, he was an expert seaman, a mathematician, an astronomer, a connoisseur in music, art, literature, a linguist of rare attainments, fluently speaking nine languages, and a lecturer of marked ability. Born in England in 1862 and educated in Sweden where he graduated from Strengnas College, he had come to America in the 1880s. In I892 he had been secretary of the Oregon Academy of Sciences and at the time of our story was secretary of the Southern California Academy of Sciences and chairman of the Academy’s Astronomy and Mathematics Section. This excellent young man helped to arrange not only Swamiji’s first lecture in Los Angeles, but, as we shall see, his second lecture as well, which was held before the Academy. Nor was Mr. Baumgardt the only member of his family drawn to Swamiji: his wife, as I have learned from her daughter in law, became deeply interested in his teachings —even more so than Banmgardt himself.

"Various gentlemen are interested," Miss MacLeod had written to Sister Nivedita in regard to the plans being made for Swamiji, "so I do nothing. In fact, I shall always try to be in the background—though necessarily I must vouch for the Prophet, as I am the one who knows him."6 But while Miss MacLeod may have been the only person in Los Angeles who knew Swamiji personally, the name of Swami Vivekananda was by no means unknown in that city. News of his appearance at the World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893 had inevitably reached southern California, either through Californians who had themselves attended the Parliament or through letters from the Midwest telling in alarm or in jubilation of the extraordinary young Hindu who had burst upon the religious scene with galvanizing effect. "All the ideas the Californians have of me emanated from Chicago,'[7]Miss MacLeod was later to quote Swamiji as having said. His subsequent lecture tour had also surely come to the notice of the people on the Pacific Coast; nor were his later teachings unknown to them. His books, first published in I896, had reached California and, as he was to find, "did indeed great service on this coast.'[8]Thus many were those who had looked forward to his arrival with informed interest and no little excitement attitudes that were reflected in the following article, which appeared December 2 in the Capital, a Los Angeles weekly, accompanied by a photograph captioned "Swami Vivekananda Who Will Lecture at Blanchard Hall Next Friday Evening."

A PRINCE FROM INDIA

--------------------------------

LOS ANGELES is to be royally favored, in a very short time, in the visit of Swami Vivekananda to this city. He is in very truth, an Indian Prince—Prince in intellect, in knowledge and in that strange realm we vaguely call spiritual. There will be lectures presumably, and other mediums through which the men and women of the extreme Western city may drink from the fountain of the Eastern Seer’s rare mind. Swami Vivekananda has awakened the interest of a number of the most prominent society people —men and women of culture in LosAngeles. If he does not provide a new sensation under the sun then there is nothing in indications.

Swami Vivekananda is the red coated Indian monk who spoke at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago. Unlike other wise men from the East he comes not to salute the rising of an Occidental luminary, but to scatter amongst younger peoples the long garnered lore of his own race.

A great scholar pointed out the other day the curious effect that the discovery of Sanscrit had had on the imagination of IndoEuropean nations. From the day that Sir William Jones found that it was easier to translate a Sanscrit play (sakoontalaly kalidas) [Sakuntala by Kalidasa] into Latin first and then into English, till now, there has been a steady growth of the feeling that Hindu, Persian, Greek, Roman and Teuton are one in blood. We are all Aryan. Roman law, British power, Greek literature, Persian arts, and Indian wisdom are all branches that have been acquired by various members of the family for the common good. None of them ever die. They may seem to be dead. They only bide their time, like the statues in the museum, till the hour strikes in their hearing, and they may step down from their pedestals warm with life.

For the most part, it is the scholar that bids a latent culture speak. It is the great savants that translate Plato, and are critical of Persian poets, and treat of the relation of Roman law to modern life.

But India appears to be an exception. Such are the social customs of that curious country, and such is the tenacity of the national character, that no science or scheme of things once formulated there seems ever to be lost. Now this is very strange indeed, when we think of it. Who of us cares to acquaint himself with medieval alchemy? Yet in Benares—the Rome of Asia, as it has been called—exist learned men whose pride it is today that they are competent to restore all the intricate instruments of an old time observatory. And so it may well seem absurd to the grave Eastern mind that we should be training students and paying professors to drink deep into the Sanscrit lore of life as if it were a branch of antiquity, when it is actually a living philosophy of conduct, an active discipline, a stern ideal of daily living at this moment in India, the country of its birth.

For it is too late in the day to doubt that the Indian wisdom has really existed, or that it was indeed, wisdom. Schopenhauer, Emerson, Burnouf, Deussen and Max Muller would all have lived in vain if we could question this fact. But after all the scholar can give little but dry bones! Emerson—of this list—comes nearest to being a living voice. Edwin Arnold, in his Light of Asia, unlike the grave persons of the libraries, touches the emotional note, and we know how we respond!

These are the interpreters that we desire. And such, it is said, is Mr. Swami Vivekananda. Those who saw him at the World’s Fair in 1893, speak of him as a young man, thirty or thereabouts, a born orator, who seemed charged with the Philosophy of the Vedanta. Apparently he was deeply versed in Sanscrit itself; then he had sat long, as it seemed, at the feet of great sages, and finally he had wandered on foot over thousands of miles of his own country watching every manifestation of religious feeling and observance and acquiring that deep insight into human experience which is all important to the religious teacher.

Six years have come and gone, however, since the World’s Fair and it is reasonable to assume that the Swami’s strange personality has undergone some changes in those years. For one thing, he has in the interval seen many new countries and completed the circuit of the globe.

Is he as Oriental as ever in his ideas? Or has he become somewhat cosmopolitan? It will be interesting to hear what this vigorous mind has carried away from our Western World. Above all, we shall be glad to have an opportunity of comparing the importance of the grand Occidental motive—the Perfecting of Life— as it stands related in his mind to the Eastern motive —Freedom and Renunciation. It is a strange element to come into our modern world—a man who has lived the life of wisdom in forests and mountains, and who, nevertheless, is able to cope with our manners and customs, with our sentiments and interests, like one of the rest of us.

He was the first monk to brave [leave?] India’s shores on a mission of evangelization to the rest of the world and his country received him back with acclaim. Religion rules everything there, and the papers of the day told how one of the richest of Indian Princes—the Maharajah of Ramnad—knelt at the monk’s feet as he landed once more on his soil; how six or eight ruling sovereigns were proud to draw the carriage that contained him; and how the pe661uijm ople of Madras gave him an ovation not equalled even on the occasion of the visit of the Prince of Wales.

His journey through his own country in the year 1897—judging from a little book published by the Christian Literature Society of Madras—was a triumphal progress from beginning to end. It is evident that the religious preacher of the palm land is an uncrowned king.

Swamiji’s first lecture in Los Angeles was scheduled for December 8. From December 3 up until the morning of the event the Los Angeles newspapers ran daily announcements similar to the following, which appeared in the Los Angeles Record:

Lecture by Swami Vivekananda of Bombay, India, representative of the Hindu Religion at the World’s Parliament of Religions at Chicato, 1893. Subject: Vedanta Philosophy, or Hinduism as a Religion. Blanchard Hall, 233 South Broadway, Friday Evening, December 8, at 8 o’clock.

Admission, 50c. Tickets for sale at Fitzgeralds, 113 S. Spring Street.

On the morning of the lecture, the Los Angeles Herald printed, in addition to an announcement, a more formal introduction:

A Hindu Lecturer

Swami Vivekananda, a member of the most ancient order of Hindu monks, will lecture this evening at Blanchard hall on "The Vedanta Philosophy or Hinduism as a Religion." Swami Vivekananda represented the Hindus at the World’s Fair in 1893, since which time he has lectured on various phases of religion in this country and in Europe, drawing many most interested listeners to his expositions of the Hindu philosophy. He is [was to have been] one of the lecturers this winter on the program of the Cambridge conference, and has also lectured before the Graduate Philosophical society of Harvard university. The lecture this evening will present a general survey of the fundamental principles underlying eastern religions and philosophical thought.

The Blanchard Building was situated in the heart of town, opposite the City Hall, and like the Carnegie Building in New York, though on a considerably smaller scale, was "devoted to Music and Art." The auditorium held eight hundred people—a sizable hall for a philosophical lecture, considering the fifty cent admission. Yet from the account of one who was present we learn that the lecture was attended by more than six hundred people, all of whom were "enchanted: ‘ And when Swamiji spoke, another who was present tells us, one could hear a pin drop, so spellbound was the audience.

Happily, both the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Herald published fairly good reports of Swami Vivekananda’s first public lecture in California, and since they are, as far as we know, the only existing accounts of this talk and since neither has been heretofore reprinted in whole or in part, both are given below in their entirety. The Times article, the better of the two, read as follows:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
Lectures on Hindoo religion and philosophy

Toleration, brotherhood, and Nirvana his themes— difference between Eastern and Western civilization.

The latter desires the continuation of individuality.

Hindoo philosophy is a difficult subject, and that fact doubtless accounts for the moderate size of the audience that came together, last evening, to listen to Swami Vivekananda. R. B. [B. R.] Baumgardt introduced the speaker as the apostle of toleration and a representative of the oldest religion in the world. The well-known expositor of the Hindoo philosophy, dressed in the yellow robe of the Brahmin caste, spoke in part as follows:

"I come before you, ladies and gentlemen, to bring no new religion. I desire simply to tell you a few points that bind together all religions. I shall touch upon some things in the thought of eastern civilization that will appear strange to you and on others that I hope will appeal to you. All the religions of the world have a backbone of unity. This is the principle of philosophy and of toleration.

"Very few people in this country understand what India is. It is a country half as large as the United States and containing 300,000,000 people, speaking a number of different tongues, but all bound together by the ideas of a common religion. By these ideas, the Hindoos have made their influence felt through the ages, working gently, silently, patiently, while western civilization has been conquering by force of arms. The future will show which is the more powerful—physical force or the power of ideas. The arts and sciences of the Hindoos have found their way over all the earth—their numerals, their mathematical thought, their ethics. Was it not in India, there and there alone, that the doctrine of love was first preached, and not alone the doctrine of love of one’s fellow men, but of love of every living thing, yea, even of the meanest worm that crawls under our feet. When you begin to study the arts and institutions of India, you become magnetized, fascinated. You cannot get away.

"In India, as elsewhere, we find the earliest condition—one of division into little tribes. These different tribes had each its different god, its different ceremonial. But in coming in contact with one another, the tribes did not follow the course that western civilization has taken—they did not persecute each other because of these differences, but endeavored to find the germs of common ideas in all the religions. And from this endeavor arose the habit of toleration which is the keynote of the Indian religion. Truth is one, can be but one, though it may be expressed in different language.

"Another great difference between eastern and western religions lies in the reception of a philosophical and scientific view of the universe. In the West, agnosticism has been growing in late years, and with the loss of a hope in individual immortality, which the westerner is always desiring and seeking, a note of despair has crept into western thought. Ages ago, the Hindoo realized that the universe was one of law, and that, under law, all change. Therefore, an imperishable individuality is an impossibility. But this thought is not one of despair to the Hindoo. On the contrary—and this is what the westerner can least understand of eastern thought—he longs for freedom, for release from the thralldom [sic]of the senses, from the thralldom of pain and the thralldom of pleasure.

"Western civilization has sought a personal God and despaired at the loss of belief in such. The Hindoo, too, has sought. But God cannot be known to the external senses. The Infinite, the Absolute, cannot be grasped. Yet although it eludes us, we may not infer its no-existence. It exists. What is it that cannot be seen by the outward eye? The eye itself. It may behold all other things, but itself it cannot mirror. This, then, is the solution. If God may not be found by the outer senses, turn your eye inward and find, in yourself, the soul of all souls. Man himself is the All. I cannot know the fundamental reality, because I am that fundamental reality. There is no duality. This is the solution of all questions of metaphysics and ethics. Western civilization has in vain endeavored to find a reason for altruism. Here it is. I am my brother, and his pain is mine. I cannot injure him without injuring myself, or do ill to other beings without bringing that ill upon my own soul. When I have realized that I myself am the Absolute, for me there is no more death nor life nor pain nor pleasure, nor caste nor sex. How can that which is absolute die or be born? The pages of nature are turned before us like the pages of a book, and we think that we ourselves are turning, while in reality we remain ever the same."

The report of this lecture in the Los Angeles Herald was considerably more sketchy than the above; it contains, however, some additional impressions that one is glad to have, such as the comparison between Swamiji’s Sanskrit and the rippling Latin of Horace:

THE SWAMI ON THE VEDAS
A Brahmin Philosopher Delivers an 
Interesting Lecture

Swami Vivekananda, a member of the most ancient order of Hindoos, lectured last night in Blanchard  hall. before a most appreciative audience. The lecturer was introduced by B. R. Baumgardt, who said his introduction was in a double sense a pleasure in that first the Swami came to enlighten us on the Vedas, and second as an apostle of toleration and respect for other people’s religions and philosophic views, in which respect the West has much to learn from the East.

Swami Vivekananda wore the yellow robe of the highest cult of the Brahmins and presented a most picturesque figure.

In commencing his lecture he gave a brief description of the past and present conditions of his people, the political divisions of the country and their common tie in the Brahmin religion. He gave a graphic description of the wonderful civilization which has existed in that peninsula for more than 7000 years.

India, the Swami said, is the mother of all civilization and Hinduism the mother of all religions. In this country the lowest castes are perfectly familiar with metaphysical concepts which are only taken up by the cultured class in the West.

In the Hindu religion man is not only a part of God but he is God, and the reason that God cannot be seen or understood is because man cannot see himself. The eye can see objectively, but cannot see itself. The lecturer said in Sanscrit numerous passages from the Vedas which he subsequently translated into English. The rhythm and beauty of the language as it fell from his lips could only be compared to the ripple in the poetry of Horace. It was a revelation to many to hear [that] the transcendental ideas which have only recently become known in the western world have been taught in the Vedas for thousands of years.

The Hindu religion, as presented by the Swami is a religion of love for man, love for all men, love for all animals, love for everything that has life. This doctrine has had a wonderful effect upon the inhabitants of India. It has taught them that they cannot injure anything living without injuring themselves, without injuring the whole world. Perhaps the grandest conception which the speaker presented from the Vedas, may be summed up as follows: That change, constant change, is the rule of the universe, transformation following transformation without beginning, without end. If one could attain to a glimpse of the whole of nature, could gain a philosophical prospect of the whole cosmos as a whole, then he would know no change, for all change would be comprised within the whole.

The Swami will lecture before the academy of sciences Tuesday evening, the 12th instant, upon the subject of "Cosmos."

Sitting enthralled in the audience at Blanchard Hall were three women who were to play an important part in Swamiji’s life in California. They were the Mead sisters of South Pasadena: Mrs. Carrie Mead Wyckoff, Mrs. Alice Mead Hansbrough, and Miss Helen Mead. The closeness of the friendship that was to grow between these sisters and Swamiji is well known to everyone familiar with the history of his life; but the exact date of their first meeting has heretofore been obscure. The story is told in Mrs. Hansbrough’s unpublished "Reminiscences". It happened like this:

On the day of Swamiji’s first lecture, Helen Mead, the youngest of the sisters, had come upon its announcement in the Los Angeles papers. Returning home from work late that afternoon, she had excitedly relayed the news to Mrs. Hansbrough, well knowing that her sister would be electrified by it. And electrified she was; for the teachings of Swami Vivekananda had already captured Mrs. Hansbrough’s mind. For more than two years during an ocean voyage and a long sojourn in Alaska she had pored over two of his books, Raja yoga and Karma yoga, which, at her request, had been given to her in San Francisco as going away presents. Reading them again and again, she had pondered over the greatness of their message and the evident greatness of their author. "I used to read for a while," she related many years later, "and the thought would come to me, 'What marvelous thoughts these are!’ I would hold the place with my finger, close the book and shut my eyes and think, 'What a wonderful man he must be who wrote these words!’ And I would try to form a picture in my mind of what he looked like.... I had never expected to see him.'[9]Yet less than two weeks after Mrs. Hansbrough’s return from her travels Swami Vivekananda arrived in southern California.

On the memorable evening of December 8, when he was to speak at Blanchard Hall, the Mead sisters (she related) "rushed through dinner, made up a party and went in to Los Angeles." Needless to say, Mrs. Hansbrough was by no means disappointed in Swamiji. "I got the same impression I had previously had of him," she later said; "that is, he was a most impressive personality .... He wore a light orange robe and turban; his complexion [for a Hindu] was light. His hair was black—very black— with not a trace of gray. His voice was the moat musical I have ever heard. I should say he was a baritone—certainly nearer to bass than tenor. At the end of his lecture he closed with the chant: 'I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute.’ . . . Whenever he quoted from Sanskrit he would chant, and then he would translate. Once later on, he apologized for quoting first in Sanskrit and explained that he still thought in that language.'[10]

After the lecture was over a number of people gathered on the platform, among them the Mead sisters. It was not then, however, that Mrs. Hansbrough met Swamiji. Rather, she sought out her friend Mr. Baumgardt to ask him when and where the Swami was to speak again. He introduced her to Miss MacLeod, who, on learning of her interest in Swamiji’s teachings, asked her to call on him at the home of Mrs. Blodgett. A date for the meeting was set: December 13.

But before continuing with our narrative let me tell how Mrs. Hansbrough’s "Reminiscences" came into existence. In the spring of 1941 she was living in San Francisco with her daughter and son in law, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Cohn, and attending the lectures at the Vedanta Society of Northern California. Knowing of her close association with Swamiji in 1900, Swami Ashokananda, who was in charge of the Society, one day asked her if she would tell him her memories of those early days fully and in detail. Mrs. Hansbrough readily agreed, and a meeting was arranged at which a third person, equipped with pen and paper, was to be present. The first reminiscing interview took place at Mrs. Hansbrough’s home on a March evening in 1941, at which time it soon became clear that one session could not do justice to her richly stored memory. Thus four or five subsequent interviews took place, not at Mrs. Hansbrough’s home, but during long Sunday drives through Golden Gate Park and along San Francisco’s ocean front. At all of these sessions Alfred T. Clifton (now Swami Chidrupananda) was present, taking down everything that was said. Transcribed, his notes run to some seventy seven typed pages and constitute the "Reminiscences."

Although Mrs. Hansbrough was not young at the time of these meetings, her memory was extraordinarily accurate. Many of the dates, names, and events which she recalled after more than forty years coincide in almost every instance with those given in the Los Angeles newspapers and in other contemporary records. There was no confusion in her mind as to what happened when. Nor was she vague and self contradictory as to the way in which events occurred. Often, as a means of checking, Swami Ashokananda would ask questions pertaining to an event Mrs. Hansbrough had already related. Her answers would confirm in every case the story previously told: the same colorful details would be given, the same clear picture disclosed; thus we can, I think, feel assured of the reliability of her memory. These "Reminiscences" have been made available to me by the Vedanta Society of Northern California, and I shall draw upon them freely throughout this account of Swamiji’s life in California.

Swamiji delivered his second lecture in Los Angeles on the evening of Tuesday, December I2, at the regular monthly meeting of the Southern California Academy of Sciences. The Academy had wisely chosen a larger than usual meeting place for the occasion and, fittingly, had chosen a church—Unity Church, situated about a block west of Blanchard Hall. In the Los Angeles Herald of December 10 an announcement of the lecture read as follows:

Another lecture by the Swami.

The next regular monthly meeting of the Southern California Academy of Sciences will take place next Tuesday evening when a lecture will be delivered on "The Kosmos; or the Veda Conception of the Universe, by Swami Vivekananda, the representative of the Hindu religion at the world’s parliament of religions, Chicago, 1893. The usual meeting place of the academy being too small to accommodate the audience on this occasion it has been decided to hold the meeting at Unity church, corner of Third and Hill streets.

Members are advised to be present at 8 o’clock. All the lectures of the academy are open to the public and are free.

A somewhat different version of the above appeared in the same paper two days later:

The learned Hindoo, Swami Vivekananda, will deliver a lecture at Unity church this evening under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences. Subject: "The Kosmos from the standpoint of the Ancient Vedas." The distinguished lecturer has appeared before large audiences in eastern cities and has addressed the faculty of Harvard college on three occasions. Vivekananda represented the religions of 300,000,000 people in India at the world’s Congress of religions in 1893. The lecture at Unity church will be free.

Just as the newspaper reports are all we have of Swamiji’s first lecture in Los Angeles, so the following accounts from the Los Angeles Herald and the Times of December 13 are, as far as is known, all we have of his second lecture. They are reprinted here in full. First the Herald:

CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSE
Swami Vivekananda’s lecture before 
the Academy of Sciences

Unity church was filled last evening with a large audience to hear the Swami Vivekananda, a native of India, lecture on the kosmos, or the Veda conception of the universe under the auspices of the Southern California Academy of Sciences. Abbot Kinney [president of the Academy] presided and introduced the speaker. The Swami wore the yellow robe and turban of the Hindu monk, in which he appeared at a previous lecture, and, with his well-rounded physique, clear dark skin and finely chiseled features, was a perfect facsimile of a brown bisque figure.

In introducing his subject, the speaker reviewed the mythology of the flood, which among the Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians and other races is similar to the story of the Hebrew scriptures, showing that all held a similar belief concerning the creation of the universe.

"In the worship of the sun and the forces of nature," he said, "we see the attempts of ancient peoples to explain the mysteries surrounding them. Man’s first idea of force was himself: When a stone fell he saw no force in it but the will behind it, and he conceived the idea that the whole universe was moved by force of wills. Gradually these wills became one, and science begins to rise, Gods begin to vanish, and in their place comes oneness, and now God is in danger of being dethroned by modern science. Science wants to explain things by their own nature and make the universe self-sufficient.

"Wills gradually began to disappear, and in their place comes will. This was the process of development in all the nations of the world, and so it was in India. Their ideas and gods were pretty much the same as those of other lands, only in India they did not stop there, They learned that life alone can produce life, and that death can never produce life. In our speculations about God we have got to monotheism. Everywhere else speculation stops there; we make it the be all and end all of everything, but in India it does not stop there. A gigantic will can not explain all this phenomena we see around us. Even in man there is something back of the will. In so common sense a thing as the circulation of the blood, we find will is not the motive power.

"We have conceived God as a person like ourselves, only infinitely greater, and because there is goodness and mercy and happiness in the world there must be a being possessing these attributes, but there is also evil. The Hindu mind is too philosophical to admit the existence of two gods, one good and one bad. India remained true to the idea of unity. What is evil to me may be good to someone else; what is good to me may be evil to others. We are all links in a chain. Hence comes the speculation of the Upanishads, the religion of 300,000,000 of the human race. Nature is a unit; unity is in all existence, and God is the same as nature. This is one of the Indian speculations known to all the world outside of India.

"There is not a system of religion or philosophy in the world that does not show the influence of India’s speculation, even to the Catholic church. The conservation of energy, considered a new discovery, has been known there by the name of father [was not Swamiji’s word prana, "cosmic energy," rather than father?]. Whatever is comes from the father. Brahma [Prana?] must energize on something, and that they say is an invisible ether. Brahma vibrating on ether, the solid, the liquid, the luminous, it is all the same ether. The potentiality of everything is there. In the beginning of the next period Brahma will begin to vibrate more and more.

"Thus this speculation of India’s scriptures is very similar to modern science. The same idea is taken up by modern evolution. Even our bodies, different only in dignity, are links in the same chain. In one individual the possibilities of every other individual are there. The living entity contains the possibility of all life, but can only express that which environment demands. The most wonderful speculations are formed in modern science. The one that interests me as a preacher of religion is the oneness of all religions [life?]. When Herbert Spencer’s voice says that the same life welling up in the plant is the life welling up in the individual, the Indian religion has found a voice in the nineteenth century."

The Los Angeles Times was more brief:

HINDU PHILOSOPHY
CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSE
IN DISTANT INDIA.

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu philosopher, addressed the regular monthly meeting of the Southern California Academy of Sciences at Unity Church last evening. The audience was large and appreciative, and at the end of the lecture a number of questions were asked by members of the audience and answered by the lecturer.

B. R. Baumgardt introduced the speaker, whose subject was "The Kosmos; or the Veda Conception of the Universe."

The speaker began with a reference to the mythological tales of the Hindus in which they attempted to explain the origin of the universe, and he told also of the endeavors of the ancients to explain the mysteries which surrounded them.

According to their belief, he said, man’s first idea is of himself. His will moves all his members. A child’s idea of power is in its will. All movement of the universe has a will behind it. The Hindus believe, said the speaker, that there is but one God, and he a person like the rest of them, but infinitely greater. Their mind is philosophical enough not to admit the existence of two gods, one bad and one good. With them nature is a unit, unity in all existence is the universe, and God is the same as nature.

"There is not a system of philosophy, " said the speaker, "from that of the ancient Egyptians down to that of the Roman Catholic Church, which does not show traces of the same thought. All forces that exist in the mental and physical world have been resolved, in India, into the one word 'Father’ ['prana’?]. Whatever is, has been projected by Him."

In closing, the philosopher said that the ancient voice of India had found an echo in the 19th century in the writings of Herbert Spencer.

(Although the above reports are valuable inasmuch as they give a general idea of the nature of Swamiji’s lecture and of the points he emphasized, it is clear that they contain many gaps and much muddled reportage, and the reader who cares to know more of what he may have said would do well to turn to his lectures on "The Cosmos," delivered in New York in 1896 and published in Jnana Yoga. There, Swamiji gave a clear exposition of Vedantic cosmology, just as he no doubt did, though more briefly, before the Southern California Academy of Sciences.)

The lecture, which Mrs. Hansbrough recalled as having been as "enchanting as the first," was a great success. From one of Miss MacLeod’s unpublished letters, one learns that the audience at Unity Church numbered over a thousand and that at the close of the lecture a Mr. Lloyd came upon the platform to pay his tribute to the Swami’s valuable contribution to psychology and modern thought.[11]

"Swami spoke very quietly last night," Miss MacLeod recounted in another unpublished letter, written on December 13 to her sister,

in fact it seems to be his new way, but he was most scholarly &, clear in his lecture on the Kosmos, and one member of the Academy of Sciences, a Mr. Lloyd (graduate of Harvard, after which he took a degree in Germany)said he wanted to pay his personal tribute to the Swami Vivekananda, who had done so much for modern psychology, that he was a light among thinkers etc etc & then he asked him a pertinent question as to the Vedanta idea of Kosmos that Swami answered so brilliantly that applause came from everyone. Several questions were asked & answered and coming home Mr. Baumgardt was radiant. For it was he who had vouched for Swami. Someone in the audience asked: "What is the difference between Vedanta & Theosophy?” & Swami answered. "I do not know. I have never made a study of Theosophic literature." Which was a proof to everyone that he did not stand for Theosophy.[12]

Another listener had asked that evening if he would not hold classes, and Swamiji was indeed ready to do so. His health had by now noticeably improved; even the exertion of speaking before a large audience for the first time in well over a year had not been too great a strain. "Though he lectured last night before 1000 people," Miss MacLeod related in the same letter to her sister, "he drank a glass of hot milk [on returning home] and slept like a child all night."

Swamiji had not only lectured to a large audience that day, December 12, he had also written a letter to Mrs. Bull full of annoyance and, as well, of anguish. Mrs. Bull had evidently received from Swami Saradananda a letter that had been too much for her mother heart. We can be fairly sure that she had kept faith with Swami Saradananda, never disclosing his confidences, whatever they may have been; but she could no longer forbear to remonstrate with Swamiji, protesting, it would seem, his "harsh" treatment of his brothers and counseling a more tender approach. In reply she received, as she might have expected, a blast. "You are perfectly right," Swamiji wrote; "I am brutal, very indeed. But about the tenderness etc., that is my fault. I wish I had less, much less of that—that is my weakness— and alas! all my sufferings have come from that.... I am very sorry I use harsh language to my boys, but they also know I love them more than anybody else on earth. I may have had Divine help— true; but oh, the pound of blood every bit of Divine help has been to me !! I would be a gladder and a better man without that. The present looks very gloomy indeed; but I am a fighter and must die fighting, not give way—that is why I get crazy at the boys. I don’t ask them to fight, but not to hinder my fight. I don’t grudge my fate. But oh! now I want a man, one of my boys, to stand by me and fight against all odds! . . . My mistakes have been great; but every one of them was from too much love. How I hate love! Would I never had any Bhakti! Indeed, I wish I could be an Advaitist, calm and heartless. Well, this life is done. I will try in the next.... 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, be it then, since it is my fate, and the quicker it is over, the better. They say I am impulsive, but look at the circumstances!!!'[13]

(Mrs. Bull must have given way to a long sigh—not the first since she had met Swamiji and tried to counsel him. But her motherly plea for his brothers, late though it was—for his scoldings were over—did not go unheeded. The day after writing the above, Swamiji, like an anxious father, sent a cablegram to Swami Brahmananda and wrote a long letter to Swami Saradananda, telling them of his restored health and good spirits. And around December 21, Miss MacLeod told Sister Nivedita, he wrote "another long letter in Bengali to Saradananda.'[14] Nor did many days pass before he became concerned over the silence from the Math. On December 27, he wrote to Mrs. Bull, who, in accordance with his wish, had evidently forwarded him no letters from India: "I had a very bad dream this morning and had not any news of Saradananda for three weeks. Poor boys! How hard I am on them at times. Well, they know in spite of all that, I am their best friend.'[15] And in another letter to Mrs. Bull, which has been dated December 22 but which was almost certainly written after the above, he wrote, "Kindly send Saradananda’s letters that have come to your care.'[16]

2

By the time Swamiji delivered his second lecture, he had no doubt moved from Miss Spencer’s home to Mrs. Blodgett’a at 921 West Twenty first Street. Mrs. "Roxie" Blodgett, whom he described to Mary Hale as "fat, old, extremely witty . . . and very motherly," was, it so happened, one of those Californians to whom the name of Swami Vivekananda was well known. She had attended the Parliament of Religions in Chicago six years earlier and had there heard him give his first talk to the American people. "When that young man got up and said, 'Sisters and Brothers of America,’ " she told Miss MacLeod, "seven thousand [actually, Four thousand]  people rose to their feet as a tribute to something they knew not what; and when it was over and I saw scores of women walking over the benches to get near him, I said to myself, ‘Well, my lad, if you can resist that onslaught, you are indeed a god. "‘ Swamiji was indeed a god. In Chicago Mrs. Blodgett acquired a large colored poster of him, which she hung in her home in Los Angeles, never dreaming that he would one day be her guest. This poster, hanging incredibly over her dying brother’s bed, had greeted Miss MacLeod when she had arrived from Ridgely Manor. Astounded, she had asked Mrs. Blodgett, "What do you know about him?" and Mrs. Blodgett had told her story. "I know him," Miss MacLeod had said, and then, "Why don’t you ask him here?" "To my cottage?" "He will come. " And in her memoirs she relates: "In three weeks my brother was dead and in six weeks Swamiji was there:'[17](Later on, Miss MacLeod brought this poster, which showed Swamiji standing in his robe and turban, to Ridgely Manor, where she mounted it in a toweringly high backed Gothic chair. For years it remained thus in her bedroom. "One would hardly dare go into her room," Mrs. Frances Leggett told me, " this enormous thing appearing there!")

The neighborhood in which Mrs. Blodgett lived is today deep in the city and caught in a triangle between two intersecting overhead freeways. The nine hundred block of West Twenty first Street, where her cottage stood, is a run down stretch of small, worn out houses and two story apartment buildings. Foliage is not absent; but trees and flowers notwithstanding, there remains scarcely a hint of the peaceful rural scene that existed when Swamiji was there. In those early days the neighborhood was on the outskirts of the city; the streets were quiet, unpaved roads, and the houses, few and far between, ,were amply surrounded with trees—deep skirted palms, peppers, and blue flowering jacarandas—gardens, and open lots. To the west and south stretched citrus groves and grain fields, and one need not have walked far to be among the farms. "It is exactly like Northern Indian winter here, only some days a little warmer," Swamiji wrote in late December to Mary Hale; "the roses are here and the beautiful palms. Barley is in the fields, roses and many other flowers round about the cottage where I live.'[18]In her published reminiscences, Miss MacLeod describes Mrs. Blodgett’s house as "a small white cottage covered with roses" and as having "three bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, and a sitting room.'[19] And in a letter to her sister, dated October 25, I899, she drew a sketch of the cottage, which is here reproduced.


Swamiji’s life at Mrs. Blodgett’s was simple, relaxed, and filled with the peace that he himself brought to it. "What a breath of the Infinite he always brings with him!'[20]Miss MacLeod was to write to Mary Hale a month or two later. And indeed to the homeliest of everyday events he lent an indefinable brightness. No moment in his presence was an ordinary one, and this not because he covered whatever illness, sorrow, or worry he may have felt at the time with a veneer of cheerfulness, but because he transcended every distress of mind or body and entered freely into the state of divine joy that was natural to him. Again and again one finds Swamiji responding to adverse circumstances of his life and mission with a cry of anguish or despair, for his heart was intensely human; yet again and again one finds him at the same time filled with a transcendent bliss and imparting that bliss to others. "No harm in the world in my being happy, in being miserable, but others must not catch it," he had written in his letter of December 6, 1899, to Sister Nivedita, and the passage clearly sounds the basic theme of his life: "If you are really ready to take the world’s burden, take it by all means. But do not let us hear your groans and curses. Do not frighten us with your sufferings, so that we come to feel we were better off with our own burdens. The man who really takes the burden, blesses the world and goes his own way. He has not a word of condemnation, a word of criticism, not because there was no evil but that he has taken it on his own shoulders, willingly, voluntarily, It is the Saviour who should 'go his way rejoicing,’ and not the saved.... Come ye that are heavily laden and lay all your burden on me and then do whatever you like and be happy and forget that I ever existed.'[21]


In a letter written to Miss MacLeod by Mrs. Blodgett in July of 1902, the light Swamiji shed over those days in Los Angeles is almost visible. This letter, which serves as a memoir, was first published in Vedanta and the West of November—December 1953, and will bear requiting here in part:


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 but 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 depended on those near him in a way which brought him very near one’s heart. Possessing as he did an almost inexhaustible knowledge of things old as the world, a sage and philosopher, he yet appeared to me utterly to lack the commercial knowledge which so distinguish men of the Western world! You were constantly rendering him some apparently trifling service in the everyday homely happenings of life, he in some small way requiring to be set right. . One day busy with my work and Swamiji absorbed with his curries and chapatties, I spoke to him of you when he said: "Ah yes! Joe is the sweetest spirit of us all." . . . Ah, those pleasant "tea party" days, as you used to call them. How we used to laugh! Do you remember the time he was showing me how he wound his turban about his head and you were begging him to hasten as he was already due at a lecture. I said, "Swamiji, don’t hurry. Like the man on his way to be hung and the crowd jostling each other to reach the place of execution who called out, 'Don’t hurry, there will be nothing interesting till I get there!’ —I assure you, Swami, there will be nothing interesting till you get there!" This so pleased him that often afterwards he would say: "There will be nothing interesting till I get there"— laugh like a boy.


Just now I recall a morning when quite an audience had gathered at our house to listen to the learned Hindu who was sitting with downcast eyes and impenetrable face while his audience waited. His meditation over, he raised his eyes to Mrs. Leggett’s and asked like a simple child: "What shall I say?" This gifted man possessing the subtle power of delighting an intellectual audience of cultured men and women asking for a theme! And there appeared to me in the question an exquisite touch of confidence in her judgment. An interesting portion of the day you lost in the early mornings when you and your sister were sleeping. He would come in for his morning plunge in the bath and soon his deep voice would be heard in solemn chant. Though Sanskrit is an unknown tongue to me I caught the spirit of it all, and these morning devotions are among my sweetest recollections of the great Hindu. In the homely old fashioned kitchen you and I have seen Swamiji at his best.


I heard very few of Swamiji’s public lectures; my age and household duties gave me no choice but like Martha to sit in the house. Were you present at a lecture when one of those ladies who love to make themselves conspicuous by some ill-timed remark asked: "Swami, who is it that supports the monks in your country? There are so many of them, you know." Like a flash Swami replied: "The same who support the clergy in your country, Madam —the women!" The audience laughed and Swamiji proceeded with his lecture.[22]


There was a difference of opinion as to whether or not Josephine MacLeod and her sister, who was to come from New Work at the beginning of 1900, heard Swamiji chanting in his morning bath. Joe, who should have known, believed they did. "Every morning," she wrote in her reminiscences, "we would hear Swami chanting his Sanskrit from the bath, which was just off the kitchen. He would come out with tousled hair and get ready for breakfast," she continued. "Mrs. Blodgett made delicious pancakes, and these we would eat at the kitchen table, Swami sitting with us; and such discourses he would have with Mrs. Blodgett, such repartee and wit, she talking of the villainy of men and he talking of even the greater wickedness of women!'[23]


And there was one early morning, special for its date—December 21, the solar New Year—which Miss MacLeod does not mention in her memoirs, but of which she wrote to Mrs. Bull: "Swamiji and I greeted each other, dear S. S., this morning with 'a happy New Year’ after which we greeted the Sun, while he recited the Gayatri!'[24]


Every day, sometimes after breakfast, Swamiji and Miss MacLeod, accompanied very likely by Mrs. Blodgett’s dog Trix, would walk to the home of a magnetic healer named Mrs. Melton, whom, as Swamiji wrote, "Joe had unearthed" and who lived about a mile and a half away. There they would take turns undergoing what Swamiji described as "skin paring." Mrs. Melton, who could neither read nor write and who spoke, it was said, "in a negro dialect," had upon her a gift. She felt herself to be an instrument in the hands of a Higher Power, as Betty Leggett was to write to her husband [25] and she did nothing without its command. Her treatments were, to be sure, unusual, consisting in a sort of massage charged with excruciating "magnetism." Her patients winced with pain as she ran fingers like "streams of fire" over their bodies.[26] It was sheer agony, particularly, perhaps, for Betty Leggett, who was in pain to begin with, having been suffering for months from an injury to her leg that refused to heal. (It had been because of the healer’s abilities that Mrs. Leggett was to come to Los Angeles, arriving on January 5. From across the continent, Mrs. Melton had diagnosed the difficulty. Holding a handkerchief of Betty Leggett’s in her hands, she had divined that an imbedded needle or pin was causing the trouble.[27]And sure enough, she was later to draw out a needle or pin by her magnetic touch.)


Although Swamiji did not object to Mrs. Melton’s "skin-parings," he did not share Joe’s unqualified faith in them. "Joe thinks she [Mrs. Melton] is pulling me up splendidly," he wrote to Mrs. Bull on December 27. "On her has been worked a miracle, she claims. Whether it is magnetic healing, California ozone, or the end of the present spell of bad Karma, I am improving. It is a great thing to be able to walk three miles, even after a heavy dinner.'[28] But in March he was to write to Mrs. Bull from San Francisco, "With all Joe’s enthusiasm, I have not yet found any real benefit from the magnetic healer, except a few red patches on my chest from scratching!'[29] And in April, after Mrs. Melton had gone to New York, he wrote again to Mrs. Bull, "I am so happy to learn that all the New York friends are being cured by Mrs. Melton. She has been very unsuccessful, it seems, in Los Angeles, as all the people we introduced tell me. Some are in a worse state than before the skin paring.... I, of course, would not write this to Joe; she is happy in her dreams of having done so much good to poor sufferers." (Joe was indeed happy in these dreams. "I bless Mrs. Melton, the magnetic healer, daily," she wrote to Mary Hale in February of 1900; "& only hope those I love & hate? may have the benefit of her power.")[30]"But oh," Swamiji continued to Mrs. Bull, "if she could hear the Los Angeles folks . . . she would change her mind at once and learn wisdom from an old adage not to recommend medicine to anyone.'[31]In this same letter, however, Swamiji conceded that Mrs. Melton’s "rubbings" had done him good "at the time at least." And certainly something was doing him good. "Oh the peace and blessing of this life!" Miss MacLeod exclaimed in a letter of December I5 to Sister Nivedita. "And with each day comes the feeling that the reestablishment of Swami to health is more & more permanent.'[32]


Returning from Mrs. Melton’s or, as the case might have been, from a morning class, Swamiji would generally cook the noon dinner, which, as Miss MacLeod wrote in one of her letters, "we all enjoy hugely." According to a passage in Mrs. Blodgett’s letter from which a long excerpt has been quoted above, "He would come home from a lecture where he was 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 in his fine dress who was by thriftily watchful Joe admonished to change to his home garments.'[33]


After lunch, if nothing interfered, Swamiji would lie in the garden hammock, sometimes "lost," Miss MacLeod wrote to Mrs. Bull, "in reading Elisee Reclus [the French geographer and social philosopher] on The Earth and Its Inhabitants,'[34]a work of many large, illustrated volumes dealing with his favorite subject—Man. Sometimes Miss MacLeod would talk to him or read her correspondence to him, particularly her letters from Sister Nivedita. But "he talks very little," she wrote to Mrs. Bull on December 21 "scarcely at all." And to Nivedita the day before, she wrote that Swamiji was so much quieter than she had ever seen him that she watched for the least new mood that might be brewing in that silence—a mood that would bring about some sudden and swift change of plan[35]


Yet quiet as Swamiji was, one can well imagine that guests were often invited in the evenings to meet him. He must also have been entertained in other homes, and on one occasion that we know of he went to the theater. "On Saturday [December 23] we are going to see 'My friend from. India,’ the farce on Swamiji!" Miss MacLeod wrote to Sister Nivedita, and added, "It will be screaming fun! & good relaxation after all his lectures.'[36]


The play, which was making a three day stand at the Los Angeles Theater, had opened in New York in October of I896, had subsequently run in England and throughout America, and was billed in the local papers as the "Greatest Farce-Comedy Success of the Century." Not everyone agreed with this verdict. "Such farces as these," the Los Angeles Times critic wrote sourly, "play down to the lowest type of intelligence, and for that reason they come near to being an affront'[37]


To be sure, this three act play was not an intellectual experience. Nor, strictly speaking, was it "farce on Swamiji " Rather, it was a satire of sorts on New York Society’s lionizing of him and had been written, as Mrs. Hansbrough later recounted, "as a result of his first visit to the United States." The impression that New York’s Four Hundred had "taken up" Swamiji was so prevalent in America that shortly after his death an Iowan newspaper referred to him as "the Hindoo monk and philosopher, who preached himself into New York’s exclusive Society . . . [which] took him. up as a 'fad’ and lionized him.[38]Because "My Friend from India" was based on this "lionization" and because Swamiji was highly amused by the play, the reader may like to know what it was about.


The action, all of which takes place in a richly furnished library in a Madison Avenue residence, concerns a rough and tumble nouveau riche widower from Kansas City, his twice widowed sister, his son, and his two daughters. For years the father has tried, for the sake of his family, to break into New York High Society, without the slightest success. One morning, for reasons we need not go into, the son dresses a new acquaintance of his, who happens to be a barber, in a yellow silk bedspread and introduces him to the family as "my friend from India" —a Bostonian who "has been studying the mysticism of the East and has learned all there is to know of Theosophy and attained that most exalted state, Nirvana." The father at once hits upon a plan. "It’s one of those things," he exclaims, "a freak that society is craving for! It’s a brand new one, and it’s dropped right into my hand. I’ll nail him and work it for all it’s worth." The women of the family are enchanted to find a mystic in the house, and in no time the father gives the story to the newspapers, which blaze forth with headlines. "Aha!" cries the father. "We’ve got ‘em now, girls." "Who, papa?" "Who? Society, of course." And, to the son’s horror, invitations to a reception for the disguised barber are sent out to the cream of the Four Hundred. All the women in the family buy costly, and, as it happens, identical, yellow gowns. The barber is similarly outfitted; and a large part of the play’s hilarity depends upon the numerous mistakes in identity that ensue. A few Christian ministers, both genuine and spurious, are mixed into the muddle for good measure, and confusion piles upon confusion. But in the end, all is straightened out. By a happy fluke, the invitations to the reception had not been mailed; the young people, as well as the aunt, are betrothed to the choice of their hearts; social aspirations are forgotten, and the father goes back to Kansas City, where of course he has wanted to be all along. Clearly, none of these carryings on had anything to do with Swamiji, except and this is the point to be noted there was no question in anyone’s mind that if the invitations had gone out, New York’s Four Hundred would have accepted them with alacrity, drawn irresistibly by the lure of the yellow robe.


"The play was really very funny," Mrs. Hansbrough assures us, "and Swamiji enjoyed it hugely. Professor Baumgardt [who had been the party’s host] said he had never seen anyone laugh so hard or so much."


One might mention in passing that Swamiji went also to a vaudeville in Los Angeles. (For the benefit of youthful readers, I should perhaps say that at the turn of the century, and on through the twenties, vaudeville was the most popular form of entertainment in the United States—and often the best. The term vaudeville applied in America to a variety of short, unrelated’ performances by singers, dancers, acrobats, fancy bicyclists, trained dogs, jugglers, dramatic artists of all sorts, and, inevitably, magicians. The standard was generally high. Indeed, it was not considered at all demeaning or unusual for top notch theatrical talent to tour the vaudeville circuit.) The circumstances that brought about Swamiji’s attendance at the show were told by Betty Leggett in a letter of January 12 to her husband:


Yesterday a lady and daughter of sixteen called, both seemingly very cultivated Eastern women, one judged at once by the accent and by the voice, and told him they had attended his lectures in London three years before. The child was so impressed by his religion that she adopted his precepts and directed her life as nearly as possible by them and concluded to use her talents for dancing, make her living and express to the world the sublimity of art, religion etc. It seemed an original point of view. This young girl had never spoken to Swami before, but wanted him to go and see her dance. We all went last evening to a vaudeville where her grace was wonderful, but I was painfully impressed by the contortions part of her work. Her body seemed a bit of chiffon, she could do with it as if there were no bone, hold her foot at the back of her head, standing on the other toe. It made me ache with sympathy instead of giving enjoyment of grace and harmony. I think Vedanta seems to have affected many others with a sort of necessity for contortioning instead of giving them an easy balance of character.[40]


But the young contortionist had probably put her whole soul into that performance for Swamiji—a performance he had gone out of his way to see simply because she had asked him.


"I am cured, you will be glad to know," Swamiji wrote to Mary Hale on December 27. "It was only indigestion and no heart or kidney affection, quoth the healers; nothing more. And I am walking three miles a day—after a heavy dinner. Say the person healing me insisted on my smoking! So I am having my pipe nicely and am all the better for it. [Smoking had been denied him by Dr. Helmer.] In plain English, the nervousness etc. was all due to dyspepsia and nothing more." "He actually ran to catch the electric car today!" Miss MacLeod exclaimed in a letter to Mrs. Bull; and in a passage that appears in an unedited copy of Swamiji’s letter to Mary Hale, he wrote with the exuberance of regained health, "Well, six feet I am strong enough to take you in my arms like a feather and pitch you a few hundred yards. That is what I feel.'[41] And to Sister Christine on this same day, December 27 a day of much letter writing for Swamiji "A month more and I will be strong like a lion and hardy like a mule.'[42]


There is no doubt that life in Los Angeles benefited Swamiji’s health and thereby fulfilled at least one purpose of his visit; nor is there any doubt that he thoroughly enjoyed his weeks at Mrs. Blodgett’s. ("I remember, perfectly, the delight of Swamiji during his stay with [good old Mrs. Blodgett]," Mrs. Charlotte Sevier wrote years afterward to Miss MacLeod; "he often spoke of it.")[43]But cooking for his friends, joking and laughing his fill, walking three miles a day, submitting to Mrs. Melton’s magnetic treatments, and attending a farce did not by any means fulfill the primary purpose of his stay in California; nor had these relaxing pursuits been enough in themselves to bring him health. It was not until he had started holding classes in Los Angeles that he felt a sense of well-being and that the true meaning of his stay in California began to reveal itself. "I am very much more peaceful," he assured Mrs. Bull on December 27, "and find that the only way to keep my peace is to teach others. Work is my only safety valve.[44]


The fact is that from first to last Swamiji was a Teacher. Thus, while he had not come to California with the express purpose of teaching, it was not long before he plunged into work. So totally identified was he with his destiny that there was no need for him to make plans in advance or to consciously plot his course. "Religion was never preached by planners!" he had once exclaimed.[45] His way opened of itself; his mission unfolded as he went. "Swami just waits," Sister Nivedita remarked of him in January of 1900, "and drifts in on the wave.... I am just beginning to understand his bigness.'[46]


3

As we have seen, Swamiji delivered two public lectures shortly after his arrival in Los Angeles, both of which were in a sense introductions to India and to Vedantic thought. It was on the day following the second of these lectures that the way opened to holding classes. "Some ladies are desirous of getting up classes," Miss MacLeod wrote on December 14 to Mrs. Leggett. ‘These ladies were undoubtedly the Mead sisters, who had had their first meeting with Swamiji on Wednesday, December 13. In her memoirs, Miss MacLeod tells us that all three sisters came to call upon Swamiji. Mrs. Hansbrough’s "Reminiscences," however, differ a little in this regard, and since the day was an unforgettable one in her life, her memory of it is perhaps more accurate. "My sister Helen and I went to call on Swamiji," she said in telling of the occasion. "He was dressed to receive us in a knee length coat. He wore a kind of minister’s collar with what must have been a clerical vest, and his hair was covered by a black turban which rolled back.'[47]As she was later to learn, this was the costume Swamiji generally wore when he was not lecturing, and sometimes, except for his black turban, when he was.

Miss MacLeod, who was present with Swamiji to greet the two sisters, disappeared after a few minutes, as was her custom when visitors paid him their first call. The sisters’ talk with Swamiji, however, does not seem to have been particularly confidential: "The conversation," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "was only general. He said he was very glad we were interested in his lectures. We asked how long he expected to stay in Los Angeles, and he replied that he did not know, but that if we cared to arrange a class, he would be glad to address the group.[48] She remembered him as having been "rather shy and reserved" but "enchanting" —a word she often used when speaking of him. Swamiji’s offer to hold a class was jumped at as the opportunity it was, and no doubt preliminary arrangements were made then and there. Everyone was delighted. "Yesterday he fairly danced from glee—like the child that he is," Miss MacLeod wrote in her letter of December 14 to her sister.[49]


Swamiji’s glee seems to have been caused not only by the turn of events, but by an independent upsurge of his spirits. "On December 13th Swami wrote a long beautiful letter in Bengali to Saradananda telling him of his recovery—& full of courage! & the same day sent a cablegram to Brahmananda —Perfectly cured. Bless all. Vivekananda.’ " Thus Miss MacLeod informed Sister Nivedita on December I5, and added, "He really seems to feel, & act as if a new era were open to Him!" "[He] is talking and lecturing so quietly that it does not seem to fatigue him in the least," she wrote in the same letter, "& he says that he [would] just deliver lecture every day or have classes.'[50]As though in response to Swamiji’s readiness the way just then opened. The Mead sisters "eagerly went about getting a class together," Mrs. Hansbrough related, and indeed she and Helen seem to have wasted no time at all. A series of three classes was arranged for the following week, to be held in the Blanchard Building. A Mr. Thaddeus S. Fritz, a religious teacher and healer who regularly gave two Sunday lectures at Blanchard Hall and whom Miss MacLeod wrote of as "a fine young man, the head of 'the Forward Movement,’ a splendid broad thinker and worker," announced the series to his Sunday audience.[51] On the same Sunday (December I7) the following advertisement appeared in both the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Herald:


Swami Vivekananda will deliver 3 class lectures on "Applied Psychology" at .Blanchard Hall, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday [December 19, 2I, and 22] at 7:30. Everybody welcome.


The words, "Everybody welcome, " in the above announcement would indicate that the classes were free of charge; but according to Mrs. Hansbrough, "each person paid a dollar for every meeting,'[52] a memory that seems in keeping with Swamiji’s need at this time to earn money. His first class on "Applied Psychology" was held not in the main auditorium of the Blanchard Building but in three studio rooms that opened one into the other. "The arrangement was not very satisfactory," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "especially since the attendance was somewhere between one hundred and fifty and two hundred. So when a Mr. Bransby suggested moving to a nice chapel which he could arrange for at the Home of Truth, it was decided to follow his suggestion.'[53]


Mr. J. Ransome Bransby, who, together with his wife, was then directing the Los Angeles Home of Truth—a religious society of "New Thought" persuasion—had called on Swamiji twice, asking him to lecture at the Home. Many years later he recalled these meetings in a letter to Mr. Thomas J. Allan (of whom we shall hear more in a later chapter) in reply to the latter’s inquiry regarding Swamiji’s life in southern California. Mr. Bransby’s letter was dated January 17, 1936, and read:


Swami Vivekananda gave two lectures at the Home of Truth in Los Angeles over thirty five years ago. They were attended by large appreciative audiences. The Swami spoke with great charm and spirit. He spoke as one having authority; as one who had an inexhaustible reservoir of knowledge to draw from. Speaking in a language not native to him, he manifested a fluency seldom, if ever, attained by those whose natural speech is English.


I called on the Swami twice to make arrangements for his meetings. The first time at the Stimson mansion of Figueroa Street. I was introduced to a man who was the embodiment of poise and dignity. Handsomely dressed in black relieved by spotless linen the Swami overwhelmed me by his presence and personality. The next time I called on the Swami, the conditions were different. Instead of the home of luxury the setting was a small cottage in a poor part of town. The Swami seemed like another man. Gone was the broadcloth—gone the starched collar and cuffs replaced by an orange colored robe that looked jolly comfortable. And what do you suppose the great man was doing—he was engaged in the humble pastime of eating roasted peanuts. He avowed with a merry laugh that they would give him indigestion.[54]


Mr. Bransby’s memory seems to have failed him after so many years in regard to the number of lectures Swamiji at the Home of Truth; actually, he gave eight in all. But however that may be, he lost no time in moving his classes to the Home, holding there his second and third talks in the series on "Applied Psychology." A note to this effect appeared on December 20 in a column of the Los Angeles Times entitled “City Briefs":


Lectures by Swami Vivekananda on applied psychology will be held at 1327 Georgia street, December 21 and 22: This cancels former notice.


The above seems to have been the only announcement made to the Los Angeles public that Swamiji had moved location of his classes. However, "City Briefs," a daily column containing many items of local interest, was no doubt widely and regularly read, and word surely got around. His first class had been a success. "A line to tell you that Swami was most successful last night in 'applied psychology,’ " Miss MacLeod wrote on December 20 to Nivedita, "there being much enthusiasm, and the best is," she continued, "that he slept soundly afterwards! to his astonishment'[55] (Appreciation of Swamiji’s teaching was heard even in New York. "It is to be regretted that we were not brought up on this philosophy instead of having a foundation which is useless when we are of reasonable age," one of his Los Angeles listeners, whose words come down to us anonymously, wrote in December to the New York Vedanta Society.)[56]


Unhappily, the transcripts of Swamiji’s three classes on "Applied Psychology" are not available; yet transcripts there once were, for as Mrs. Hansbrough tells us, these classes were all taken down in shorthand. "At first," she said, "we had the nephew of Mrs. Bagley, with whom Swamiji had stayed in Detroit [in 1894], to take notes. I remember that he said Swamiji was 'very hard to follow.'[57] Later the Mead sister engaged a Miss McClary, who went everywhere that Swamiji lectured or held classes, her pencil busy. In addition, we read in the valuable article "Swami Vivekananda in Southern California" by Brahmacharini Usha (Vedanta and the West, No. I58)[58] that Helen Mead recorded a number of his talks. Thus almost from the beginning to the end of Swamiji’s work in southern California there was no dearth of transcripts, all of which at least all that are available today are particularly excellent and certainly of much value. According to Mrs. Hansbrough, Sister Nivedita sent for them all, and subsequently some were published in the Brahmavadin and Prabuddha Bharata and later in the complete Works. What became of the rest is a question one might well ponder.


On the day following Swamiji’s third and last class of the "Applied Psychology" series a morning reception was held for him by a Mrs. Caroline M. Severance, to which she invited, as Miss MacLeod informed Mrs. Bull, "a number of 'advanced’ women to meet him.'[59] (This reception, incidentally, was to have been held originally on Saturday, December 16, but because of rain— a rare occurrence that winter it had been postponed.) Mrs. Severance was not a stranger to Swamiji. One finds that this remarkable woman, who was known as "the Mother of Women’s Clubs," had attended one of his first lectures in America — talk delivered in Salem, Massachusetts, before the Thought and Work Club—during the days when he was not yet sure he would speak at the Parliament of Religions. One finds, also, that Swamiji and Mrs. Severance had several other associations in common. The famous New England Woman’s Club, before which he had spoken in May of 1894, when it was headed by Julia Ward Howe, had been organized in I868 as a result of Mrs. Severance’s efforts. Further, she had served in I867 as vice president of Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s Free Religious Association, before which Swamiji had spoken in August of 1894 and of which his good friend Dr. Lewis G. Janes had recently become president. Also, from Miss MacLeod’s letter it is clear that Mrs. Severance was acquainted with Mrs. Bull; and from other sources one learns that the author Kate Douglas Wiggin, who had attended Swamiji’s New York lectures, had in earlier years been her protegee.


Mrs. Severance, or Madam Severance, as she was sometimes called, was nearing her eightieth birthday when Swamiji met her again in Los Angeles. Behind her was a life devoted to various good causes, some of which must have been startling to her Victorian contemporaries. In addition to founding numerous women’s clubs both on the East Coast and in California, she was "active in the Unitarian Church . . . a pronounced woman suffragist [and] a zealous peace advocate"; she was, moreover "a believer in a single standard of morals and [far in advance of her time] in birth control and . . . numbered among her friends women 'who wore bloomers and rode astride.'[60]


Mrs. Severance’s reception was held in her home, which she called "EI Nido" and which stood in one of the most attractive, large gardened residential districts in Los Angeles, not far from Mrs. Blodgett’s cottage. Of the reception itself, we learn a little from the following item that appeared in the Los Angeles Herald of December 24:


An informal reception was given the Swami Vivekananda yesterday morning by Mrs. C. M. Severance at her home on West Adams street. The Swami answered many questions asked by the guests concerning the condition of women in India and the educational needs of his people. His object in visiting this country at present is to make preparations for the education of his people, who, while they have fine memories and are versed in occult philosophy, have few or no opportunities for an education. The Swami is preparing to inaugurate a system of itinerant teaching whereby the people may be reached in the fields and at their work wherever it may be. His talk was highly interesting to the guests.


It should perhaps be mentioned that among these guests was very probably Swamiji’s old friend Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods, president of the Thought and Work Club, at whose Salem home he had spent a week in August of 1893 From various records one learns that Mrs. Woods was in Los Angeles in 1899and 1900.[61]and although no details of this Los Angeles sojourn are available, it is unlikely that a friend of both Mrs. Severance and Swamiji would have stayed away from the reception. In any case, one likes to think that Swamiji and Mrs. Woods met once again. She would have found him changed in many respects, yet striving still and with as full a heart as ever, if with less hope, to raise money for the education of his countrymen.


Swamiji may have intended to hold no more than one series of three classes in Los Angeles. But his mission had, as it were, a will of its own, and this, combined with his love of teaching, of giving without limit to others, was like an incoming tide that cannot be stopped until it reaches its fullness. "[Mother] cannot let me go before Her work is done—and that is the secret,'[62] he wrote to Sister Nivedita on December23.And the following day a series of six classes to be held at the Home of Truth was announced in large type on the theater page of the Sunday Times:


SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

Lectures on Mind and Its Powers at the Home of Truth.1327 Georgia st., 10 a.m. each day —December 25th to 30th inclusive. Subject Monday [Christmas Day], Christ’s Message to the World. Course of six lectures $3, single lecture 50c. Tickets on sale at Bartlett Music Store.285S.Broadway.


It is possible that Swamiji now moved his living quarters to the Home of Truth, which could accommodate, with board, "students and patients" and surely teachers and healers as well. It is not certain, however, that he did so. In the Life one reads: "At the special request of an association known as the 'Home of Truth’ he spent nearly a month at its headquarters in Loss Angeles, and held many classes there, and gave several public lectures at which, every time, more than a thousand people attended.'[63] But as has been pointed out in Vedanta and the West (No. I58), our available sources of information provide no other reference to Swamiji’s having lived at the Los Angeles Home of Truth. There are, in fact, indications to the contrary. For instance, in a letter written on December 27 he still refers to Mrs. Blodgett as his hostess.[64] Further, in Mr. Bransby’s letter to Mr. Allan there is no mention that Swamiji had lived at the Home of Truth. Again, there is no apparent reason why he would have lived there. The Home was within easy walking distance of 921 West Twenty first Street; it was only a little over half a mile away, and by this time half a mile to Swamiji was a mere nothing. He could have walked to his morning class, and after it was over he could have walked back to rush into Mrs. Blodgett’s kitchen with a happy "Now we will cook!" However, the matter of whether Swamiji stayed or did not stay at the Home of Truth in Los Angeles cannot be settled with finality on the basis of our present knowledge. Only one thing is certain: he did not spend —he could not have spent "nearly a month at its headquarters."


Of Swamiji’s "Mind and Its Powers" series at the Home of Truth only two class titles have been known to us: "Christ’s Message to the World" and "Hints on Practical Spirituality." Recently, however, we have been fortunate enough to have discovered in the Time’s "City Briefs" three additional titles of this series. As we have seen, Swamiji spoke on Christ on Christmas Day; the title of his class of December 26 was not announced, but those held from December 27 to 30 were, respectively: "Theory of Concentration, " "Practice of Concentration," "Spiritual Breathing, " and "Reincarnation." In this list we find no such title as "Hints on Practical Spirituality," but to judge from the text of that class, as published in the Complete works, its original title may well have been "Spiritual Breathing." (Clearly, "Hints" was held toward the end of the series, and as clearly, spiritual breathing was its subject. "This morning," Swamiji said at the start, "I shall try to present to you some ideas about breathing and other exercises. We have been discussing theories so long that now it will be well to have a little of the practical.'[65]


In the Los Angeles papers one can discover no further notice of these Home of Truth class lectures, nor any reports of them. In Unity magazine for February of 1900, however, one finds a short but relevant article written by Mr. J. Ransome Bransby. One wishes that Mr. Bransby, who surely attended more than one of Swamiji’s lectures, had told more about them; but the following account, some portions of which have been quoted in the Life, will have to suffice. It is given here in full:


SWAMI VIVEKANANDA AT THE 
LOS ANGELES HOME

Of all the Vedantist missionaries who have visited this country, probably Vivekananda is the most widely known, because he has done the most public works here and was such a notable figure at the World’s Parliament of Religions at Chicago. The . other Swamis who are working in America were sent here by Vivekananda, but all of them are either directly or indirectly the disciples of one great teacher, Ramakrishna, who was an extreme Ascetic and at the same time an illumined soul, one might almost be tempted to say in spite of his Asceticism, for the Swami Vivekananda after twenty years’ experience as an Ascetic has come to the conclusion that it is a mistake and not the road that leads to freedom. The Swami himself looks anything but an Ascetic. He reminds one rather of the good hearty monks one reads about as having flourished at the time of the Crusades.


The Hindoo missionaries are not among us to convert us to a better religion than Christ gave us, but rather in the name of religion itself to show us that there is in reality but one religion, and that we can do no better than to put in practice what we profess to believe. We had eight lectures at the Home by the Swami and all were intensely interesting, though a few malcontents complained because he did not give some short cuts into the Kingdom [of Heaven] and show an easy way to the attainment of mental powers; instead he would say, "Go home and promise yourself that you will not worry for a whole month even though the maid breaks all your best china."


There is combined in the Swami Vivekananda the learning of a university president, the dignity of an archbishop, with the grace and winsomeness of a free natural child. Getting on 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 condition in Christian countries today who go and seek to reform Filipinos with the swords 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. To contrast this condition of things he described what took place during the last famine in India where men would die of starvation beside their cattle rather than stretch forth a hand to kill. (Will Unity readers remember the fifty million Hindoos who are starving today and send them a blessing?)


Instead of trying to give much of what we heard from the Swami direct, I will append a few of the sayings of his master, Ramakrishna, that will better indicate the nature of his teaching. His chief aim seems to be to encourage people in living simple, quiet wholesome lives —that the life shall be the religion, not something separate and apart.


To the true mother he gives the highest place, counting her as more to be esteemed than those who simply run around teaching. "Anyone can talk," he said, "but if I had to look after a baby, I could not endure existence for more than three days." Frequently he would speak of the "mother" as we speak of the "father," and would say "the mother will take care of us," or "the mother will look after things."


We had a lecture on Christmas day from the Swami entitled, "Christ’s Mission to the World," and a better one on this subject I never heard. No Christian minister could have presented Jesus as a character worthy (of) the greatest reverence more eloquently or more powerfully than did this learned Hindoo, who told us that in this country on account of his dark skin he has been refused admission to hotels, and even barbers have sometimes objected to shave him. Is it any wonder that our "heathen" brethren never fail to make mention of this fact that even "our" Master was an Oriental?[66]


[Here was appended a section entitled, "A Few of the Sayings of Ramakrishna." Eleven sayings were given.]


It could well have been Swamiji’s Christmas Day lecture, "Christ’s Message to the World"—rather than "Christ, the Messenger," delivered nearly two weeks later at Payne’s Hall —to which Miss MacLeod, impressed as much by his childlike simplicity as by his radiant and awesome power, refers in her reminiscences. "Swami lectured a great number of times at the Home of Truth and in various halls," she wrote, "but perhaps the most outstanding lecture I ever heard was his talk on 'Jesus of Nazareth,’ when he seemed to radiate a white light from head to foot, so lost was he in the wonder and the power of Christ. I was so impressed with this obvious halo that I did not speak to him on the way back for fear of interrupting, as I thought, the great thoughts that were still in his mind. Suddenly he said to me, 'I know how it is done.’ I said, 'How what is done?’ 'How they make mulligatawny soup! They put a bay leaf in it,’ he told me. That utter lack of self consciousness, of self importance, was perhaps one of his outstanding characteristics.'[67] Indeed, Swamiji, as he himself had once said of his Master, was not "holy"; he had become identified with holiness.


Once relating this story to a monk of the Ramakrishna Order—Swami Ashokananda— Miss MacLeod told more of Swamiji’s sudden insight into the mysteries of mulligatawny soup, a dish, incidentally, of Tamil origin, whose name means "black pepper water." "They put the bay leaf into it afterward, not before," Swamiji had exclaimed. "That is how they get, the special flavour!"


(Swami Ashokananda later spoke of how a person of Swamiji’s spiritual stature saw everything so permeated with the being and presence of divinity that the thought of such matters as mulligatawny soup could never interrupt or obstruct his thought of God. "Swamiji might go down deep in the thought of God and yet still think about the seasoning for this black pepper water; and, conversely, from the thought of black pepper water he could again plunge deep into the thought of God.")


Miss MacLeod also related the same story to Mme Paul Verdier, a fellow Vedantin, who very kindly gave me access to her notes. In this version, Miss MacLeod included the information that she and Swamiji had been walking back from the lecture on Christ to Mrs. Blodgett’s, a detail that lends support to the view that the lecture had been given at the nearby Home of Truth rather than at the far more distant Payne’s Hall.[68] (She would have been walking, one thinks, a little behind Swamiji, for, as she told Swami Ashokananda, this was her custom. Jovial and easy though he was, one instinctively, naturally, treated him with deep respect. One felt always the essential majesty and profundity of his being.)


Another incident, which Miss MacLeod did not relate in her published reminiscences, but which she told to Mme Verdier, may also have reference to this same lecture on Christ. It took place, in any case, after a lecture or class during which Swamiji had risen to "a very high spiritual state." At the close a young man rushed forward and prostrated at Swamiji’s feet, touching him. As though stung, Swamiji jumped back. "Don’t ever do that!" he admonished him with vehemence; "Don’t ever do that again!'[69] Miss MacLeod gave no explanation. But as is well known, in India at least, there is a state of spiritual exaltation, familiar to Avataras and saints, in which the touch of a hand even slightly soiled by the world can be painful in the extreme. Another explanation might be that the touch could communicate to the boy far more spiritual power than he would be able safely to contain.


Of Swamiji’s eight class lectures at the Home of Truth (including his two classes of December 21. and 22 on "Applied Psychology") the only transcript that has come down to us is "Hints on Practical Spirituality" —which, as we have seen, may have been originally titled "Spiritual Breathing. " Essentially, this class constituted a brief, succinct exposition of some aspects of Raja yoga, as did, no doubt, others of the "Mind and Its Powers" series, such as "Theory of Concentration" and  "Practice of Concentration." Swamiji seems to have laid a good deal of emphasis in Los Angeles on the theory and practice of Raja yoga, and Mr. Bransby was, in a sense, mistaken in saying that he did not give "short cuts into the Kingdom." The science of yoga was, precisely, a shortcut to perfection, a hastening by the individual of humanity’s long-drawn-out evolution. But, to be sure, it was not an easy shortcut. "The Yogi becomes conscious of what he really is, God Himself," Swamiji said in "Hints on Practical Spirituality," " , , . But it is a terrible task. If a person wants to attain to this truth, he will have to do something more than to listen to lectures and take a few breathing exercises.... Breathing, posturing, etc. are no doubt helps in Yoga; but they are merely physical. The great preparations are mental.... He who desires a comfortable and nice life and at the same time wants to realise the Self is like the fool who, wanting to cross the river, caught hold of a crocodile, mistaking it for a log of wood. 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and everything shall be added unto you.’ This is the one great duty, this is renunciation.'[70]


As usual, Swamiji gave his message straight. He never temporized. Reverencing man as he did, he taught him the highest of truths; he catered to no weakness, never lowered the ideal to please or comfort his listeners. He never belittled them, never deceived them, and when he saw fit he reproved them. Throughout "Hints on Practical Spirituality," he interspersed admonitions against smugness—a trait he had found prevalent in the Western world and evidently not absent in Los Angeles. "We are always making this mistake in judging others," he said; "we are always inclined to think that our little mental universe is all that is; our ethics, our morality, our sense of duty, our sense of utility, are the only things that are worth having.... Now, in judging others you must always define your terms of courage or greatness. The man whom I am criticising as not good may be wonderfully so in some points in which I am not.'[71] Toward the end of the class this interwoven secondary theme reached a climax in a concept  that he had touched on at Ridgely Manor but that one does not find stated so explicitly elsewhere in his published talks or writings: "We should look upon man in the most charitable light," he said, and continued with a passage as unexpected and as grand as a flash of lightning. "It is not so easy to be good. What are you but mere machines until you are free? Should you be proud because you are good? Certainly not. You are good because you cannot help it. Another is bad because he cannot help it. If you were in his position, who knows what you would have been? The woman in the street, or the thief in the jail, is the Christ that is being sacrificed that you may be a good man. Such is the law of balance. All the thieves and the murderers, all the unjust, the weakest, the wickedest, the devils, they all are my Christ! I owe a worship to the God Christ and to the demon Christ! That is my doctrine, I cannot help it. My salutation goes to the feet of the good, the saintly, and to the feet of the wicked and the devilish! They are all my teachers, all are my spiritual fathers, all are my Saviours. I may curse one and yet benefit by his failings; I may bless another and benefit by his good deeds. This is as true as that I stand here. I have to sneer at the woman walking in the street, because society wants it! She, my Saviour, she, whose street-walking is the cause of the chastity of other women! Think of that. Think, men and women, of this question in your mind. It is a truth—a bare, bold truth! As I see more of the world, see more of men and women, this conviction grows stronger. Whom shall I blame? Whom shall I praise? Both sides of the shield must be seen.'[72]


Many of Swamiji’s listeners must have been stunned. But to some, his emphasis on renunciation in this class and others came, perhaps, as a greater blow. Although there is no question that there were many seekers of spiritual truth among the followers of the various metaphysical schools that were proliferating in southern California at the close of the nineteenth century, there were also many unabashed seekers of worldly ends, who sought the kingdom of God so that everything else—health, wealth, and worldly success—would be added unto them. It was an attitude Swamiji repudiated with his every breath. "Live for an ideal," he exhorted, "and leave no place in the mind for anything else. Let us put forth all our energies to acquire that which never fails—our spiritual perfection.... The less thought of the body, the better. For it is the body that drags us down.'[73]


There was many a "metaphysician" who would have been none too pleased with this kind of advice, and indeed one finds a certain rancor growing in Mr. Bransby. It was perhaps after the class of "Hints on Practical Spirituality" that he asked (as we learn from Mrs. Hanabrough), "Swami, if all things are one, what is the difference between a cabbage and a man?" Swamiji’s answer was as sharp as the question had been taunting. "Stick a knife into your leg," he replied, "and you will see the line of demarcation.'[74]


"The missionaries were not the only ones who opposed Swamiji," Miss. Hansbrough recalled. "There were many teachers of metaphysics and many pseudo-teachers who resented him or maliciously condemned him either because he was so far superior to them, or because he exposed their shallowness and 'spoiled their business’ by teaching true metaphysics. Mr. Bransby was one of these, more or less. He was constantly finding fault with Swamiji. One of his criticisms was that Swamiji was breaking the rules of his Order by taking money. I later told this to Swamiji. He was chanting something at the time, and he stopped, smiled, and said, 'Yes, it is true; but when the rules don’t suit me, I change them.’'[75]


At the beginning of the year, Swamiji moved his classes to Payne’s Hall, a secular and uncommitted auditorium situated a block south of Blanchard Hall, above the Women’s Exchange. In Mrs. Hansbrough’s words, "We . . . moved from the chapel in the Home of Truth because Swamiji did not feel free to speak critically of metaphysical ideas from their platform.'[76]


By pondering over various confused and contradictory announcements in the Los Angeles papers, one is able to make out with a fair degree of certainty that Swamiji’s classes at Payne’s Hall were held on the mornings of January 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 at ten o’clock and that fifty cents admission was charged for each class. The titles of his talks of January 2, 3, and 6 were unannounced and are today unknown; but those of January 4 and 5 were, respectively, "What Brings Success" and "We Ourselves: ‘ The former of these two is, very probably, published in the Complete Works under the title "Work and Its Secret." The latter, a magnificent call to Self-realization, was the only class in the Payne’s Hall series reported in the newspapers. The report, a curiously truncated one in the Times of January 6, corresponds in its entirety with the first two paragraphs of "The Open Secret," as published in the Complete Works. Thus, as has been pointed out in Vedanta and the West (No. 158), "The Open Secret" can be established as being a transcript of "We Ourselves." A further comparison of an early typescript of "We Ourselves" (which is in the archives of the Vedanta Society of Northern California) with "The Open Secret" removes any possibility of doubt on this point: from beginning to end the two transcriptions are, with one or two exceptions, word for word the same. (The exceptions are small but not insignificant. For instance, where Swamiji is quoted in "The Open Secret" as saying "But let us repeat: 'I am. It; I am. It,’ " he is quoted in the typescript of "We Ourselves" as saying more ringingly and rousingly "Stand up and say, 'I am He. I am He.’ " This is perhaps too small a difference to mention; yet in those words "stand up" there resounds a vital note of Swamiji’s message, a note that rings, indeed peals, throughout his entire mission and perhaps nowhere so emphatically as in the lectures he was later to give in San Francisco.)


As its present title implies, "Work and Its Secret" was a class on Karma yoga, and it was the only such class, as far as is known, that Swamiji held in southern California. It contained the essence of what he had taught on this subject during his first visit to the West and more besides. Indeed, "Work and Its Secret" could be included in the book Karma Yoga without being redundant, for in this class Swamiji stressed a point that he had not dwelt on so explicitly in 1896. He spoke not so much of "non-attachment," a term liable to misconstruction in the West, as of "the power of detachment." "If only we had power to detach ourselves at will," he said, "there would not be any misery. That man alone will be able to get the best of nature who, having the power of attaching himself to a thing with all his energy, has also the power to detach himself when he should do so. The difficulty is that there must be as much power of attachment as that of detachment.... The wall never feels misery, the wall never loves, is never hurt; but it is the wall, after all. Surely it is better to be attached and caught, than to be a wall. Therefore the man who never loves, who is hard and stony, escaping most of the miseries of life, escapes also its joys. We do not want that. That is weakness, that is death.'[77]


The first week of 1900 was a full one for Swamiji. In addition to his five morning classes, he gave two evening lectures in the auditorium of the Blanchard Building. The first, delivered on Tuesday, January 2, was entitled "India and Its People" (or "The People o£ India"), and the second, delivered on Saturday, January 6, "The History of India." (Admission to each was twenty five cents.) We are fortunate enough to have an account, or summary, of the first of these lectures, which a Herald reporter, though fretful because Swamiji had chosen not to wear his colorful robe and turban, managed to write. His article appeared on January 3 and is reprinted here for the first time.

TOLD ABOUT INDIA
Lecture last night at Blanchard Hall by Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda, member of an ancient order of Hindu monks, who is giving a series of lessons and lectures in this city, addressed an audience last night at Blanchard hall upon the "History of India" ["The People of India"]. The Swami appeared before his audience in American dress, losing to a great degree the peculiar and characteristic personality given him by the aesthetic silken robes and the turban worn by his order.


The speaker said India was not a country, but a continent containing a huge mass of races united by religion. India was of ancient date. It was inhabited, when through a desire to reach it by a shorter passage, Columbus discovered America, and its production of cotton, sugar, indigo and spices have enriched the world. This country inhabited by 200,000,000 of people, is full of little villages that extend through all the valleys and up the mountains thousands of feet above the sea level. The immense fertility of the soil owes much to the tremendous rainfall, which is often 1, 800 inches [.sic] in a season, averaging perhaps 600 inches. Many of the people, however, in spite of the abundant productions, live wholly on millet, a kind of cereal; no animal food is eaten; no meat, eggs or fish.


The country from most ancient times has kept its own customs, its own languages and its castes. It has by its religion saved itself while it has seen other sections [nations] rise and decay. The Babylonian civilization was not new, but India dates long before its rise and fall. The most ancient language, Sanskrit, is spoken by the priests, and was spoken once by all the different races. The speaker gave examples of many of our common English words coming from Sanskrit roots, and traced the old religious ideas and even mythology to the ancient Aryan races.


Many of the customs of the country were sketched, and further it was shown how this country was the seat of civilization, the center of arts, the sciences, the philosophical thought of the world.


The people of India have saved themselves by making a wall around themselves by making the castes absolute. An emperor in India is glad to trace his descent from a priest, who is the highest caste. The castes do not exist as they did once, but they are divided into many divisions and sub divisions. There are hundreds of them. No people of different castes eat together, or cook together. Marriage is not legal if made outside of one’s caste. The intricacy of the laws of caste is very great and branches out into the minutest detail. The poorest beggar or the viceroy of India may belong to the same caste.


Shoes are not allowed to be worn, as they are made from the skin of an animal. The women pay even more attention to these details than the men. All these customs have their philosophy. This is the true democracy, it is the socialistic idea, the development of the masses, not the individual.


The speaker closed with comparing the position of women in India with that of this country. In India the whole idea of womanhood is the mother. The mother is reverenced. She is the giver of life, the founder of the race.


The Los Angeles Evening Express also reported on "The People of India." But inasmuch as its article was short and added nothing to the above, the heading alone is given here, and this only by way of helping the present reader see the news as Los Angeles newspaper readers saw it:

MANY CUSTOMS OF
INDIA ARE DESCRIBED
Swami Vivekananda Lectures About
the Ancient and Modern 
Practices in His Own Country

On the afternoon of Sunday, January 7, Swamiji delivered at Payne’s Hall what is today one of his best known lectures of that period: "Christ’s Message to the World" (published in the Complete Works as "Christ, the Messenger"). This lecture, which is unique in being Swamiji’s only published lecture on Christ, may have been given in response to requests that he repeat his Home of Truth lecture on the same subject; but it was not, we may be sure, a simple repetition. ("I can talk on the same subject," Mrs. Hansbrough quotes him as having once said to Mr. Baumgardt, "but it will not be the same lecture.")[78]"Christ’s Message to the World" was replete, however, with the same feeling of reverence that (according to Mr. Bransby) had marked the Home of Truth lecture. He repudiated strongly the modern concept of Jesus as having been merely a great man in the humanistic sense. "One gets sick at heart," he said, "at the different accounts of the life of the Christ that Western people give. I do not know what he was or what he was not! One would make him a great politician; another, perhaps, would make of him a great military general; another, a great patriotic Jew; and so on. Is there any warrant in the books for all such assumptions? The best commentary on the life of a great teacher is his own life.... Do you think that this mass of light, this God and not man, came down to earth to be the brother of animals? And yet, people make him preach all sorts of things. He had no sex ideas! He was a soul! Nothing but a soul just working a body for the good of humanity; and that was all his relation to the body . . . The ideal may be far away beyond us. But never mind, keep to the ideal. Let us confess that it is our ideal, but we cannot approach it yet." 


While Swamiji may at times have doubted the historicity of Jesus, he revered the highest Christian ideal as exemplified in the all renouncing, totally selfless Christ. "It does not matter at all," he said in the Payne’s Hall lecture, "whether the New Testament was written within five hundred years of his birth, nor does it matter even, how much of that life is true. But there is something behind it, something we want to imitate.... There must have been a nucleus, a tremendous power that came down, a marvellous manifestation of spiritual power—and of that we are speaking. It stands there.'[80]"My view of the great prophet of Nazareth [himself an Oriental of Orientals] would be from the standpoint of the Orient,'[81] he said in this same lecture. And it may have come as a surprise to his audience that from that standpoint he revered and loved Christ with as much intensity as the most ardent Christian devotee. "Had I lived in Palestine in the days of Jesus of Nazareth," Sister Nivedita quotes him as having once exclaimed, "I would have washed His feet, not with my tears, but with my heart’s blood!'[82]


The Los Angeles Times of January 8 printed a fairly long and, as far as it went, excellent report of this Payne’s Hall lecture. We need not, however, reproduce the article here, for it adds nothing to the published transcript. Indeed, in its odd manner of editing Swamiji’s lectures, the Times simply cut off the text when space ran out, and in this particular case, space ran out about one fourth of the way down. Fortunate we are to have what seems to be a full transcript in the Complete Works, for the last three fourths of this unique lecture is the most moving, significant, and exalted part. However, the heading of the Times article, from which the published version evidently derives its title, and the first paragraph of the text are of interest. They read as follows:


"CHRIST, THE MESSENGER."
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA’S VIEWS ON THE 
WORLD’S REDEEMER.


Hindu Preacher Speaks Before a Large Audience—Says the Poorest and the Meanest of Us Embody and Even Reflect God—Only Positive Worship That of the Man-God.


Swami Vivekananda, Hindu preacher and orator, and representative of Hinduism at the World’s Parliament of Religions, delivered a discourse on "Christ, the Messenger" yesterday at 2:30 p.m., at No. 330, 1/2 South Broadway, before an audience that packed the house to its capacity. In the course of his discourse the speaker said: (The first quarter of the lecture follows.]


According to Mrs. Hansbrough, the house was not only packed to capacity that Sunday afternoon, but over a hundred people were turned away. Swamiji could draw large crowds —and he drew as well the inevitable money minded impressario. In this latter connection, Mrs. Hansbrough tells of a crisis that took place on the platform of Payne’s Hall. "The Mr. Blanchard for whom Blanchard Hall was named, " she related, "was present at this lecture, and the size of the audience was not lost on him. When the lecture was over, he came up to me on the platform, where Swamiji was talking to some people. 'I would like to make some money out of this man for him as well as for myself,’ he said. 'Could I announce to the audience now that he will speak next Sunday at Blanchard Hall?’ I told him I could not give him such permission. He then went to Miss MacLeod, who did give him permission. So while Swamiji was still there, Mr. Blanchard announced from the platform that Swami Vivekananda would speak the following Sunday at Blanchard Hall and that the admission would be ten cents.


"When Swamiji heard this announcement, he turned and asked who gave the man permission to make it. Somehow Miss MacLeod crawled out of it, and Swamiji turned on me. He was thoroughly annoyed and looked quite angry. He said the man should not have been allowed to make such an announcement. He pointed out that he had had no end of trouble trying to get rid of people who wanted to make money out of him. And he could not be persuaded to give the lecture at Blanchard Hall.'[83] What Mr. Blanchard did by way of retracting his announcement, Mrs. Hansbrough did not say.


On January 7, the following brevity appeared in the Times’s "City Briefs":

Swami Vivekananda, on "Applied Psychology," Jan. 8, 10 and 11, at 8 p.m. 330, 1/2 S. Broadway (Payne’s Hall].


For reasons that are not entirely clear, Swamiji gave only the first lecture in this intended series of three on "Applied Psychology." It was entitled "The Powers of the Mind," and a dated transcript of it has been published in the Complete Works. In this class, of which we shall have more to say later on, he once again stressed the extreme difficulty of the science of yoga. He had no wish to start a fad or lend support to those already existing in the name of metaphysics. "As with every other science," he said, "it is very difficult to make any great achievement, so also with this, nay much more. Yet most people think that these powers can be easily gained.... It requires rigorous training. People ask me why I do not give them practical lessons. Why, it is no joke. I stand upon this platform talking to you and you go home and find no benefit; nor do I. Then you say, 'It is all bosh.’ It is because you wanted to make a bosh of it.... This science calls for more application than any business can ever require.... [Nor can it] be taught in lectures, for it is life; and life can only convey life. If there are any amongst you who are really determined to learn it, I shall be very glad to help them.'[84]


Perhaps a general lack of seriousness in the attitude of Swamiji’s Los Angeles audiences, a dilettantism that could have no place in the study and practice of Raja yoga, was partly responsible for the fact that he discontinued this series of classes. In the last two sentences of "The Powers of the Mind," which have been omitted from the Complete Works but published in the Brahmavadin of September of 1901, he said (immediately following the above), "Well, I am very sorry to announce that, for several reasons, it has been thought best to drop this course of lectures altogether; so of this course, this is the first and the last. I am very thankful to you for all your kindness, and am so sorry that it should have to be dropped, but it has to be and there is no way out '[85]


Searching through the Los Angeles newspapers, we find no announcements or reports to indicate that Swamiji again lectured in that city. This is not conclusive evidence, however that he did not do so. Indeed, the following short paragraph from the Los Angeles Times of January 14, 1900, may indicate that there were one or two more lectures than we know of. (It seems also to indicate that as early as mid January there was a definite plan for a visit to San Francisco; more than a month was to pass, however, before any such prospect materialized.)


Swami Vivekananda leaves shortly for San Francisco. He is without doubt one of the greatest oriental scholars to ever visit these shores, and has aroused the enthusiasm of the cultured people of the city. Those who have not been in attendance at his recent lectures will be interested in knowing that the Swami’s mission in this country is not alone to teach philosophy, but to arouse interest in the establishment of industrial schools for the uplifting of the masses of India, these schools being on the same plan as our Pratt Institute.


Some of these "recent lectures" may have been given in private homes; for generally it was to private gatherings, as at Mrs. Severance’s, that Swamiji spoke of his hopes and needs for India. In any event, we know from a letter written by Mrs. Leggett to her husband that on January 12 he held a class at Mrs. Blodgett’s. "We have had a morning class here, about 20 women," Betty Leggett wrote on that day, "and have been permeated with great associations through one of Swami’s best talks. He reaches his apogee always in small companies, as you once said, and although his addresses here have been fine, he seems inspired to wander into any depth or altitude when away from the restrictions of a stated subject.'[86](It was possibly at this class that "like a simple child" he had asked Mrs. Leggett at its start, "What shall I say?")[87]


Beyond verbal expressions of interest and sympathy, Swamiji seems to have received little outside help for the establishment of industrial schools in India. Indeed, even an organized effort by Betty Leggett to help his cause brought almost no financial response. Without his knowledge, Mrs. Leggett wrote from Los Angeles to a large number of his friends, asking them each to subscribe one hundred dollars a year for ten years for his Indian work. It was an earnestly conceived idea, but it was doomed from the start to failure. Indeed, it succeeded only in bringing disappointment to Betty Leggett herself[88]—and no little embarrassment to Swamiji. "[She] headed the list with her $100 for 1900," he wrote to Sister Nivedita on February 15, "and got 2 others here to do the same. Then she went on writing letters to all my friends asking each to join in it. When she went on writing to Miss Muller I was rather shy—but she did it before I knew.'{89]


In her eagerness to be of help to Swamiji, Mrs. Leggett seems to have overlooked the intensity of Swamiji’s friends in their relationship with him; they were never casual about it, and few could have welcomed the intervention of a third person in the matter of service to him. As for his acquaintances who had no deep interest in him or in his work, or cared with any fervor for India’s regeneration, they could not have been expected to pledge a hundred dollars a year for ten years— no trifling sum in those days at Miss. Leggett’s urging. All in all, her effort, as far as raising money was concerned, was wasted. The initial three hundred dollars was all that came or ever would come of the plan.*(1)


*(1) It is interesting to note that much as Betty Leggett loved Swamiji and wanted to help his Indian work, she cared almost nothing for his Western work. In a letter to her husband, dated January 29, 1900, she wrote, "I am writing to everyone who professes love for [Swami] to help a little towards the general fund I mentioned to you for work in India. The Vedanta Society knows nothing of it. I am not the least interested in it (the Vedanta Society) and want you to keep any small amount naturally destined for that work, for me and my help for him. A handful of second class workers in New York are not compared in my mind to the rehabilitation of a race" (Leggett Collection). And again on February 11, 1900, when trouble was brewing between Mr. Leggett and Swami Abhedananda, she wrote to Frank "You can resign from, the Vedanta when you choose. I care nothing for the work outside the personality of 'Vivekananda’ " (loc. cit.). And Mr. Leggett, being of like mind, would indeed resign.

Swamiji seems to have regretted particularly the letter to Mrs. Hale, whom he would not have asked for money through a third person, if at all. "A very polite but cold letter came [to Mrs. Leggett] in reply from Mrs. Hale, written by Mary, expressing their inability and assuring her of their love for me," he was to write to Nivedita in his letter of February 15. "I am afraid Mrs. Hale and Mary are displeased. But it was not my fault at all ! ! . . . Tell Mary when you see her next that I had nothing whatsoever to do with the proposal of $100 a year subscription to Mrs. Hale. I am so grateful to them.'[90] Yet Swamiji was touched by Betty Leggett’s well-meant efforts. "I am not at all sorry that more people did not respond to your call," he later consoled her in a letter of March 17. "I knew they would not. But I am eternally thankful to you for all your kindness. May all blessings follow you and yours forever.'[91]


As we have seen, Swamiji’s need for money during this period had been urgent. During his first week or so in Los Angeles so desperate, in fact, had appeared to him the financial needs of the Math that an immediate return to India had seemed, after all, the best solution. "If anything is to be done in India," he had written to Mrs. Bull on December 12, "my presence is necessary." And he went on to assure her, "I am much better in health; possibly the sea will make me better.... Possibly Joe will help me out with the passage, and I have some money with Mr. Leggett. I have hopes of collecting some money in India yet.... If I cannot

collect that it is better to struggle and die for it than vegetate here in America.... As Mother wants it, so let it be. I am going to beg of Joe a passage via San Francisco to India. If she gives it, I start immediately via Japan. It would take a month. In India, I think, I can raise some money to keep things straight or on a better footing.'[92]


But if Swamiji "begged of Joe a passage," she either could not give it, or, perhaps wisely, would not. He was only just beginning to show the benefits of "California ozone," to say nothing of Mrs. Melton’s magnetic powers. And perhaps Swamiji himself soon changed his mind; for it had been just at this time that Mrs. Hansbrough and Helen Mead came to call and that, subsequently, his classes in Los Angeles began.


By December 23 (after the "Applied’Psychology" classes) he could write to Sister Nivedita, "The wheel is turning up, Mother is working it up. She cannot let me go before Her work is doneand that is the secret'[93] And four days later, with a sudden air of relief, much as though a cloud had moved  away, he wrote to— Mrs. Bull, "I am much better in health—able enough to work once more. I have started work already, and have sent some money—Rs. 1,300 [about $420] already—as expenses for the law suit. I shall send more, if they need it.'[94]On this same day, December 27, he wrote with exuberance to Christine. "I am making money —fast—25$ a day now. Soon I will work more and get 50$ a day. In San Francisco I hope to do better, where I go in two or three weeks"[95]. And after many more lectures and classes, he wrote on January 17 to Mrs. Bull, " I have been able to remit Rs 2000[about $645] to Saradananda, with the help of Miss MacLeod and Mrs. Leggett. Of course they contributed the best part. The rest was got by lectures.... Well, I came here principally for health. I have got it in addition I got Rs. 2,000 to defray the law expenses. Good.'[96] (According to her own memory, Miss MacLeod had been able to contribute a good deal. Years later she told Swami Ashokananda that one day in Los Angeles Swamiji had received a letter from India and seemed very depressed. She asked him what was wrong, and he answered that the Math had no money, his brothers not enough to eat. At once she told him that she had saved $800 and would give it to him. This sum, coincidentally, was the same as that which she had earlier been able to give him in India for the Udbodhan.)[97]


Two of Swamiji’s original purposes in coming to Los Angeles—the restoration of his health and the collection of funds—had been accomplished. Now again he wanted to return to India. This time not to raise money or to expand his work, but to retire for good. In his letter of January 17 to Mrs. Bull, in whose counsel he had an almost childlike faith, he wrote: "It is becoming clearer to me—that I lay down all the concerns of the Math and for a time go back to my mother."


She has suffered much through me [he continued]. I must try to smooth her last days.... I have become practical at least compared to the visionary dreams of Joe and Margot [both of whom had prophesied a "change in destiny" for Swamiji and India]. Let them work their dreams out for me—they are not more than dreams. I want to make out a trust deed of the Math in the names of Saradananda, Brahmananda and yourself. I will do it as soon as I get the papers from Saradananda. Then I am quits. I want rest, a meal, a few books, and I want to do some scholarly work. Mother shows this light vividly now.... Joe and Margot are great souls, but to you Mother is now sending the light for my guidance. Do you see light? What do you advise? At least do not go out of this country without sending me home.[98]


(There seems a strangeness in Swamiji’s wish at this time to include Mrs. Bull, an American woman, as a trustee of the Belur Math. Perhaps one of the reasons for his choice was her combination of deep devotion and business acumen. In his letter of December 27, 1899, he had written to her: "I want only some clear business head to take care of the details as I push onwards and work on. I am afraid it will be a long time to find such in India, and if there are any, they ought to be educated by somebody from the West'[99] Among Swamiji’s friends in the West who possessed both a clear business head and devotion to Sri Ramakrishna seems to have been only Mrs. Bull. "You have been one friend with whom Shri Ramakrishna has become the goal of life;" he wrote to her in a letter of March 7, "that is the secret of my trust in you.'[100]However, as it turned out, by the time the terms of Swamiji’s trust deed had been given more or less final form, Mrs. Bull’s name had been dropped, perhaps at her own wish, from the list of trustees.)


As for his lecturing work in the West, Swamiji felt that, too, was done. "Now it occurs to me that my mission from the platform is finished, and I need not break my health again by that sort of work.... I cannot any more tell from the platform.... I am glad. I want rest; not that I am tired, but the next phase will be the miraculous touch and not the tangue like Ramakrishna’s.... I am resigned. Only get me out to India, won’t you? Mother will make you do it, I am sure.'[101]


But the Divine Mother did no such thing. Her work in California was not yet done. As for Mrs. Bull’s part, she, too, may have felt that from the standpoint of Swamiji’s health the time had not come for him to return to India. It is indeed most likely that she consulted Swami Saradananda on this point. On February 22 the Swami wrote to her from India in reply to a letter of hers dated January 23 (by which time she could have received Swamiji’s plea) : "I cannot feel that this [is] the moment for the Swamiji to come back here. He will be dragged down again by all these family discussions [the legal trouble with Swamiji’s aunt and her people], unless he is perfectly self adjusted.'[102]


In any event, Swamiji remained in southern California, reconciled to Mother’s will—and perhaps to his own will, as well. In his letter of December 27 to Sister Christine he had drawn, partly perhaps to please her, an idyllic picture of his retirement—"a little place in the Himalayas . . . a grand view of the eternal snows . . . springs and a tiny lake . . . the Himalayan cedar forests—and flowers flowers everywhere. I will have my little cottage in the middle, my vegetable gardens, which I will work myself—and—and —and —my books—and see the face of man only once in a great while. And the world may go to ruin round about my ears—I would not care. I will have done with all my work—secular or spiritual—and retire.'[103] But in another sentence this vision was wiped away by his knowledge, inescapable even in fantasy, of his meaning on earth. "Curiousall my dreams about my own happiness are as it were bound to come to nothing —but about others’ well-being—they as a rule prove true."


There can be little doubt that if so great and free a soul as Swami Vivekananda had strongly wanted to leave California, nothing could have prevented him. His mission held him; and his mission, his inmost will, and the divine will were one. Despite his longing for total peace, which was beginning to grow more and more insistent as he approached the end of his life, he resigned himself to this threefold power—the same that had brought him to earth. "I am afraid that the rest and peace I seek for will never come, " he wrote to Sister Christine on January 24*(2). "But Mother does good to others through me, at least some to my native land, and it is easier to be reconciled to one’s fate as a sacrifice.... The great worship is going on—no one can see its meaning except that it is a great sacrifice.... I am determined now to be a willing one.'[104]


*(2) This passage taken from Swamiji’s letter of January 24, 1900, to Sister Christine is given verbatim in the Complete Works as a letter of the same date to Nivedita. Did Swamiji write exactly the same passage to Nivedita on January 24 as he did to Christine? One is more inclined to think that there has been some mix-up of letters. In any event, Swamiji’s original letter to Sister Christine is available and indisputably addressed to her.



ⓘ
[1] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, November 26, 1899, SCB.
[2] Life (1981), 2:493.
[3] Complete Works, 6: 520.
[4] Swami Vivekananda to Mrs. George W. Hale, December 6, 1899, Sen Col.
[5] See ref. 1 above.
[6] Josephine MacLeod to Nivedita, November [?], 1899, fragment, SCB.
[7] Josephine MacLeod to Nivedita, December 15, 1899, SCB.
[8] Complete Works, 8 :484.
[9] Alice Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC.
[10] Alice Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC. 
[11] Josephine MacLeod to Nivedita, December 15, 1899, SCB.
[12] Josephine MacLeod to Besse Leggett, December 13, 1899, Leg. Col.
[13] Complete Works, 6 : 420 22.
[14] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, December 21, 1899, SCB.
[15] Complete Works, 8 :485.
[16] Complete Works., p. 483.
[17] Rem. (Josephine MacLeod), p. 247.
[18] Complete Works, 8 : 488.
[19] See ref. 17 above.
[20] Josephine MacLeod to Mary Hale, February 25,1900, SN Col.
[21] Complete Works, 6 : 520 21.
[22] “Vivekananda: Some New Findings,” comp, the Editors, V and W, 16 (November December 1953): 176- 77 
[23] See ref. 17 above, pp. 247 48.
[24] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, December 21, 1899, SCB.
[25] Frances Leggett, Late and Soon, p. 122.
[26] Frances Leggett, Late and Soon., p. 120.
[27] Frances Leggett, Late and Soon., p. 117.
[28] Complete Works, 8 : 486.
[29] Complete Works., p. 496.
[30] See ref. 20 above.
[31] Complete Works, 8 : 510.
[32] Josephine MacLeod to Nivedita, December 15, 1899, SCB.
[33] See ref. 22 above.
[34] See ref. 24 above.
[35] Josephine MacLeod to Nivedita, December 20, 1899, Leg. Col.
[36] See ref. 32 above.
[37] Los Angeles Times, Theater Section, 24 December 1899.
[38] Maquoketa {Iowa) Record, 13 August 1902.
[39] Alice Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC.
[40] Besse Leggett to Francis Leggett, January 12, 1900, Leg. Col.
[41] Complete Works, 8:487. For a virtually unedited version of this letter, see Vivekananda: The Togas and Other Works, ed. Swami Nikhilananda (New York: Rama krishna Vivekananda Center, 1953). P  945 
[42] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, December 27, 1899, Sen Col.
[43] Charlotte E. Sevier to Josephine MacLeod, April 12, 1914, VSNC.
[44] Complete Works, 8 : 485.
[45] Sister Nivedita, The Master, p. 114.
[46] Rem. (Sister Nivedita), p. 290.
[47] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC.
[48] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC.
[49] Josephine MacLeod to Besse Leggett, December 14, 1899, SCB.
[50] Josephine MacLeod to Nivedita, December 15, 1899, SCB.
[51] Josephine MacLeod to Nivedita, December 15, 1899, SCB.   
[52] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[53] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”    
[54] J. Ransome Bransby to Thomas J. Allan, January 17, 1936, VSNC.
[55] Josephine MacLeod to Nivedita, December 20, 1899, SCB.
[56] Brahmavadin, 5 (March 1900): 365 
[57] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[58] Brahmacharini Usha [Pravrajika Anandaprana], “Swamiji in Southern California,” V and W, 158 (November December 1962).
[59] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, December 21, 1899, SCB.
[60] Rockwell D. Hunt, California's Stately Hall of Fame, p. 538.
[61] Information from records in the Essex Institute Library, Salem, Mass., made available through the kindness of David R. Proper, Assoc. Lib.
[62] Complete Works, 6 : 422.
[63] Life (19 65), p. 6 64. This passage has been altered in a later edition of the Life.
[64] Complete Works, 8 : 488.
[65] Complete Works,., 2:24.
[66] J. Ransome Bransby, “Swami Vivekananda at the Los Angeles Home,” Unity, February 1900, pp  379 80.
[67] Rem. (Josephine MacLeod), p. 248.
[68] Mme Paul Verdier, Notes, copies VSNC.
[69] Mme Paul Verdier, Notes, copies VSNC.  
[70] Complete Works, 2 : 36.
[71] Complete Works, pp. 24 25.
[72] Complete Works., p. 34.
[73] Complete Works P  37 .
[74] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[75] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[76] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[77] Complete Works, 2:3.
[78] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[79] Complete Works, 4 : 145.
[80] Complete Works, 4 : 145.
[81] Complete Works p. 142.
[82] Sister Nivedita, op. cit., p. 283.
[83] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[84] Complete Works, 2 : 21 23 passim.
[85] Brahmavadin, 6 (September 1901): 720.
[86] Besse Leggett to Francis Leggett, January 12, 1900, Leg. Col.
[87] See ref. 22 above.
[88] Besse Leggett to Francis Leggett, February 12, 1900, Leg. Col.
[89] Complete Works, 6:423. In an early copy of this letter the name Miss Muller is given. This would seem more appropriate in the context than Mrs. Miller, as given in the Complete Works.
[90] Complete Works, 6 : 423 24.
[91] Complete Works., 7 : 519.
[92] Complete Works  6 : 421.
[93] Complete Works  6 : 422.
[94] Complete Works 8 : 485.
[95] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, December 27, 1899, Sen Col.
[96] Complete Works, 8 : 489.
[97] Rem. (Josephine MacLeod), P  245.
[98] Complete Woeks, 8 : 489 90.
[99] Complete Works., pp. 485 86.
[100] Complete Works    p. 497.
[101] Complete Workspp. 489, 491.
[102] Swami Saradananda to Sara Bull, February 22, 1900, SCB.
[103] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, December 27, 1899, Sen Col.
[104] Swami Vivekananda to Sister .Christine, January 24, 1900, Sen Col. (Cf. Complete Works, 6: 423 24 )

↑ Contents

5.6 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA A NEW MISSION BEGINS-II

Almost from her first sight of Swamiji, Mrs. Hansbrough had what might be called a hunch. "Even before we had called on him," she related, "I one day said to my sisters, 'Do you know, I think Swami Vivekananda wants to come to visit us.’ My sisters thought I was crazy. However, I defended my thought by pointing out that the Swami was not well and that he might find our home restful. We were then living in a rented house in Lincoln Park, which is now a part of South Pasadena'[1]. Mrs. Hansbrough was not to be dissuaded by her sisters; on her first meeting with Swamiji she invited him to live with them. She was politely refused. "He was very gracious," she recalled. "I had told him that our home was very unpretentious, but that we would be very happy to have him with us. He smiled and said, 'I do not need luxury,’ and explained that he was comfortably situated at Mrs. Blodgett’s. Later on", Mrs. Hansbrough continued, "I asked him to come for Sunday dinner. He readily accepted and asked me to invite Miss MacLeod also'[2].

By a process of reasoning with which I need not trouble the reader, one can be fairly sure that this Sunday dinner took place either on December 24 or 31 either, that is, on Christmas or New Year’s eve. And more likely than not, it was the clear, warm day of Christmas Eve; for according to Mrs. Hansbrough, the day of the dinner was sunny, and according to the Los Angeles papers, New Year’s Eve was cloudy with a trace of rain. Let us say, then, until new evidence shows us to be wrong, that Swamiji and Miss MacLeod first visited the Mead sisters on December 24.

"It was about an hour’s ride on the electric train for them to reach our house," Mrs. Hansbrough said. "The train stopped just at the corner, and then they had only a few steps to our door. I can see the picture of them now, standing at the front door, so I must have met them when they arrived. After speaking to each of us as he came in, Swamiji turned and walked into the living room. The tall windows looked out through the trees in our garden. He walked to one of them and stood for some minutes looking out, the white curtains framing him against the sunlight. Then he turned and spoke, answering again the question I had asked him at Mrs. Blodgett’s. 'Yes,’ he said, 'I will come to visit you!’ Then he wanted to come right away, and he soon did'[3].

What Mrs. Hansbrough meant by "soon" is not clear, but it is certain that Swamiji did not move to the Meads’ house until after January 24, for on that date he was still heading his letters with Mrs. Blodgett’s address and speaking of her as his hostess. Entangled in the problem of when he moved are a number of short visits with other people. For instance, we learn from Mrs. Hansbrough (and also from Mr. Bransby’s letter to Mr. Allan) that he stayed for a week or so with "a wealthy family called the Stimsons, to whom Mrs. Blodgett had introduced him"; he stayed also for a few days with Mrs. Emeline F. Bowler, the president in 1900 of the Shakespeare Club, and one finds an item in the Pasadena Section of the Los Angeles Times of January 14 (to be given in full later on) which states that he was then the "guest of Mrs. J. [Jacob] C. Newton of South Pasadena."

According to an incident related in "Swamiji in Southern California," Swamiji’s stay at the Meads’ followed directly upon one or another of these visits —one that he had not particularly enjoyed. "One morning," the story reads, " . . . a horse carriage drew up in front of the Meads’ house. To the surprise and delight of the sisters, Swamiji climbed out of it, dropped his bags and baggage at the door, and announced: 'I have come to stay with you. That’s too much of a lady![4]From whose home Swamiji was escaping and at what date this incident took place there is today no knowing. Indeed only one thing in regard to dates is certain: during some of January and most of February the Meads’ house in South Pasadena was Swamiji’s home—and with this fact, fuzzy at its outer edges, we must at present be content.

But before settling down with Swamiji’s long stay at the Meads’, we should make two excursions. The inhabitants of southern California, many of whom had come from the relatively flat and unscenic Midwest, were an excursion-loving people. They went by electric or steam train to the ocean, to the mountains, to the poppy fields, to the heartlands of the rich valleys, by boat to Catalina Island, and once a year, en masse, to Pasadena’s New Year’s Day Tournament of Roses. How many such excursions Swamiji undertook we do not know; perhaps not many, for according to Mrs. Hansbrough he did not particularly care for sightseeing. "Once when we were up on the range of hills not far from our house," she related, "my sister Helen was calling his attention to different views. 'Niece Helen,’ he said (he always called her 'Niece Helen’), 'do not show me sights. I have seen the Himalayas! I would not go ten steps to see sights; but I would go a thousand miles to see a [great] human being!’'[5] In that place and age, however, it was inevitable that Swamiji was taken on at least a few excursions, and of these, two have recently come to our knowledge.

"Tomorrow if it be fine," Miss MacLeod had written on December 15 to Sister Nivedita, "Mr & Mrs Baumgardt, Swami & I go to Mount Lowe where there is a fine observatory, and we shall have a rare sight looking through the telescope & do some fine excursions in the neighborhood, returning home here about 5 on Sunday afternoon'[6]. As it had happened, December 16 had not been fine, and the outing had been postponed. It was not until the second weekend in January that Swamiji made the trip up Mount Lowe, a high peak of the San Gabriel Range that rose just northeast of Pasadena.

In a photograph taken unquestionably at Mount Lowe (not, as has generally been supposed, in Switzerland), one sees Swamiji standing in the very center of a funicular-load of excursionists and looking, at the moment, none too happy. The people around him are unidentified, but just behind his right shoulder appears a man whose photograph resembles one of Mr. Baumgardt. The funicular is about to ascend the first steep slope of the mountain by way of the Great Cable Incline, a track that climbed straight up for a dizzy half mile to Echo Summit—a small plateau from which one could halloo once and be answered by the friendly mountains thirteen times.

On Echo Summit perched the Echo Mountain House, a small but elaborate hotel, built in 1894 Because of its lofty location and odd manner of access, this white structure with its imposing dome and giant searchlight, salvaged from the Chicago Fair, was famous the world over and one of the marvels of the countryside—"a glorious landmark by day, a brilliant, flashing electric jewel by night, visible for miles and even at sea." Here, as we learn from the following item that appeared in the Pasadena Star of January 16, Swamiji stayed overnight—Saturday, January 13—and no doubt (though this we are not told) he, Mr. and Mrs. Baumgardt, Miss MacLeod, and Mrs. Leggett looked at the stars through the telescope at the nearby Lowe Observatory:

The guests of Echo Mountain House indulged in a social dance Saturday evening. Sunday morning, Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo lecturer, gave a clever talk. In the evening the guests were entertained with songs by Mrs. Frances Lewis Hord.

Before being entertained with songs by Mrs. Frances Lewis Hord; Swamiji and his party completed the main part of the excursion. In the late morning or early afternoon of Sunday, January 14, they boarded a small trolley car, similar in appearance to the cable cars of San Francisco, and proceeded up the mountain. For three and a half miles the tracks of what was known as Mount Lowe Railroad snaked on a narrow roadbed around the mountain’s face "in a hundred curves," traversed deep canyons on spindly supports, spanned ravines, and once simply looped out over empty space. The view was glorious. At length the excursionists arrived at a rustic hotel called Alpine Tavern and then continued (optionally) by horse or mule for a more gentle mile or so to the summit of Mount Lowe, some 5,000 feet above the valley floor. Whether Swamiji made this last part of the journey is not known, but in the late afternoon he and his party returned from Alpine Tavern to Echo Mountain House, gliding by force of gravity down and around the mountain in the sunset glow, "the thousand electric lights of the City of the Angels, twenty miles away; increasing in brilliancy as the night came on."

It is regrettable that the Pasadena Star (from which that quotation comes) could say no more about Swamiji’s Sunday morning talk than it did. Yet for the Star, a homey paper given to daily repetitions of the same news, its small report was a masterly bit of journalism. Without it, moreover, we would not have known on what day Swamiji ascended the mountain, for no existing hotel register would have told us. Just three weeks after his stay at Echo Mountain House, that edifice, with all its seventy bedrooms, burned to the ground, sending up in the still morning air as flawless a pyramid of flame and smoke as the enthralled people of Pasadena had ever witnessed  —a fascinating scene," said the Star, "as viewed from this city'[7].

Swamiji’s excursion up Mount Lowe was followed almost immediately by a trip to Redlands, a small town some seventy miles east of Los Angeles. At the close of the nineteenth century Redlands, with a population of 4,800, was the showplace of southern California, outdoing in this respect even Pasadena. "For scenic beauty, both natural and artificial," one visitor wrote, "there is only one Redlands." Terraced citrus groves, landscaped gardens, and spacious Victorian mansions graced the hills; snow-clad mountains towered to the north and east; the fertile valley, to the south and west, produced the very best of oranges; the climate was ideal the year round, and a large percentage of the people were retired millionaires. To this crown of southern California, Swamiji, Miss MacLeod, and Mrs.  Leggett traveled by train on Tuesday, January 16. They had lunch at the grand and famous Casa Loma Hotel, and in the hotel register, preserved now in the vaults of the University of Redlands, one can find their names all three written in Mrs. Leggett’s hand. Nor did Swamiji’s presence in Redlands go unremarked. The Daily Facts of January i6 printed the following item:

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu, who is lecturing before the Shakespeare Club at Pasadena this week, visited this city today and drove to Canyon Crest Park.

Canyon Crest Park was the estate of the brothers A. H. and A. K. Smiley, who, in their generosity and to their regret, had opened it to the public. The Park was the crest jewel of the town, described as "transcendent in its uniqueness and beauty, and grand in its conception, affording a panorama that has few equals in any country." There were few superlatives not used in describing the horticulture, landscaping, and views of Canyon Crest Park, and fortunate it was that Swamiji visited it when he did, for crowds of tourists —"principally Eastern tourists," the Los Angeles papers said —were rapidly destroying it.

It is certain that Swamiji did not stay overnight at Redlands and most probable that he did not speak there, for on the evening of January 16 he had a lecture engagement at the Shakespeare Club in Pasadena. Thus we can assume that he, Miss MacLeod, and Mrs. Leggett left Redlands on the afternoon train. (Indeed, a mention of their trip in one of Betty Leggett’s letters to her husband indicates that it was almost certainly a nine hour sightseeing excursion on the then famous "Kite Shaped Track'[8]."See a new county every mile, a newspaper advertisement for this trip read. "Leave Los Angeles at 8:30 a.m. returning train arrives Los Angeles 5.47 p.m. Gives ample time at Redlands and Riverside for drives and sightseeing.")*(1) As far as we know, Swamiji went on no further excursions in southern California; rather, for the next three weeks he held classes and gave lectures in Pasadena almost daily, making the Meads’ home his own for much of that time.

*(1) I have found no records that tell us whether or not Swamiji and his party visited the beautifully laid out resort town of Riverside during this particular excursion. But the chances are that they did, that they drove along its spectacular avenue of pepper trees, saw its gardens, and gazed at the San Bernardino range across lush groves of navel oranges, which, they would have been proudly informed, had been introduced into the United States at this very spot.

2

The house stood at 309 Monterey Road in South Pasadena. It was a two story frame house with gable roofs and a roofed-over front porch. Up the east end of the porch and over the roof grew a bushy Gold of Ophir rose vine, full of reddish yellow bloom. In a photograph published in Vedanta and the West (No. 158) one sees Swamiji standing at a corner of the house, the rose vine at his back, while Mrs. Wyckoff, standing on the porch; peeps from behind a pillar. Only a portion of the house is visible in this particular photograph; but in the book Smami Turiyananda by Swami Ritajananda (Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madras, 1963) there is a full view of it. Clearly this latter photograph, which is reproduced here, was not taken during Swamiji’s visit: the garden is untended and the rose vine less profuse. According to Mrs. Hansbrough’s daughter, Mrs. Paul Cohn, who has told me her memories of the house, where she had spent many years of her childhood, there was a wide, well-kept lawn between the front porch and the road, in the middle of which grew a large pine tree. In later years, after the Mead family had moved away, the road was widened and the lawn thereby narrowed—and, as one sees in the photograph, let go to seed. "It was never so when we lived there!" Mrs. Cohn declared.

The house, today owned by the Vedanta Society of Southern California and carefully restored to its original state, is surprisingly small—a good deal smaller than it looks in its photographs, and a good deal more charming, as well. Though redecorated in the late Victorian style prevailing at the turn of the century, it has none of the clutter and stuffiness of that period; it is airy and gay and, despite its smallness, gives one a sense of space. Indeed, no visiting devotee would find it hard to think that Swamiji once walked through these rooms and filled this house through and through with his presence.


One enters a small but light filled hall, which leads straight back into the dining room. To the right of the hall, a recessed staircase rises to the second floor, and to the left, double sliding doors open wide into the living room. Here, in the living room, windows look out onto the front porch, and a windowed alcove at the far end looks to the east, where in Swamiji’s time was an orange grove. The dining room, which opens without doors off the living room and which one can enter either this way or by way of the entrance hall, runs the full width of the house and is the largest room of all. (To judge from Mrs. Hansbrough’s memories, it was also the most lived in room. Here the sisters’ father, Mr. Jesse Mead, had his screened off bedroom, and here also the family and their guests sat in the evenings enjoying the warmth from the little fireplace, with its low and narrow mantel, often talking, when Swamiji was there at any rate, until late at night.) Beyond the dining room and centred at the back of the house is the kitchen, its gable roof a story lower than the roof proper, its back door opening in Swamiji’s day onto a large back porch and adjoining washroom. These three rooms and hall, with their redwood doors and woodwork, their high ceilings and tall windows, were (together with the front and back porches) all there was of the first floor.


Leading from the entrance hall, the narrow little stairway, lighted by a mullioned window, makes two right angle turns to a diminutive hallway on the second floor. On the left are two bedrooms, the second twice as large as the first. On the right is the bathroom—a convenience that Mrs. Hansbrough once mentioned with special and pardonable pride. (In 1900, she pointed out, an upstairs bathroom was no ordinary matter, particularly in a small town house; and it was a boon to Swamiji.) At the end of the hall, catercornered on the right, is the door that led to Swamiji’s bedroom—today a shrine. Some nine or ten feet square, this room has two windows in the far corner, one facing east, the other south. In the photograph here reproduced, one can see the east window, outside of which (Mrs. Cohn remembered) a large apricot tree grew. The south window looks over the kitchen roof and the back garden to a steep and wooded ridge. Indeed, the little house nestles almost at the foot of this southern ridge, which in 1900 was an uncultivated and unpeopled wildness.


In those days South Pasadena, a town separate in government from Pasadena, was not closely built up, and the Meads’ house had ample space around it. At the back was the garden where Mr. Mead grew vegetables, berries, and fruit trees; to the east, the orange grove; to the west, a neighboring house, hidden by shrubs and a large oak tree (upon which Mrs. Hansbrough’s daughter had a swing) ; and across the unpaved road there were no houses at all. Although the electric train passed by at the corner now and then, Lincoln Park was a quiet section of the quiet little town, and as Swamiji told Mrs. Hansbrough, he found the atmosphere restful and not unlike that of India.


In America and England Swamiji had lived in many homes, sometimes making stays of several weeks; yet we have no really detailed accounts of his life at these places: we do not know the small, everyday things he did or the routine he generally followed. To a large extent, Mrs. Hansbrough’s "Reminiscences" make up for this lack, and in the following pages I have drawn from them as many small details as possible regarding Swamiji’s stay at the Meads’ what he ate; how he dressed, and so on. Some students of Swami Vivekananda may not care too much about such matters; but on the other hand, perhaps none of his present-day followers will find them insignificant.


The Mead household consisted of Mr. Mead, his three daughters, his two grandchildren Mrs. Hansbrough’s daughter, Dorothy, who was four years old, and Mrs. Wyckoff’s son, Ralph, who was seventeen and the housekeeper, Miss Fairbanks. How so many people could fit comfortably into so small a house is a marvel. But even with guests, they managed with apparent ease. (Mrs Hansbrough’s daughter, Mrs. Paul Cohn, has shown me two photographs taken one day possibly in the spring of 1901 when all the people who lived in the little house plus Swami Turiyananda, a Miss Minnie Boock, and a few others were on a picnic in the foothills of the nearby mountains. As far as I know, these two photographs are the only extant pictures of the Mead household as it was around the time of our story, and thus, with the kind permission of Mrs. Cohn, I am reproducing both photos here.)


During Swamiji’s stay, the three sisters (and for a time Miss MacLeod) all slept in the larger of the two front bedrooms ("hospital system," Mrs. Hansbrough put it), giving to Swamiji, as we have seen, a room to himself. Old Mr. Mead (he was eighty four) slept downstairs, Ralph in the smaller front bedroom, and Miss Fairbanks and Dorothy in the loft-like attic, which one reached, Mrs. Cohn remembered, by a narrow staircase between Swamiji’s room and the bathroom. Thus in this populous house Swamiji had privacy, and in its friendly and relaxed atmosphere he could live as he pleased, without the ceremony, bothersome to him, of a more formal m6nage. "Though he was very careful about his dress when he went out or met strangers," Mrs. Hansbrough said, "he was casual about it at home. He remarked one Sunday morning: 'Why should I be careful of my dress at home? I don’t want to get married!’ And once while my nephew Ralph was blacking his shoes, he said, 'You know, Ralph, this fine lady business is a nuisance!’ All the Western fussiness about there being a 'proper’ dress for different times and places he put down as show."


Every morning around seven Swamiji would come downstairs in a worn black and white herringbone tweed bathrobe, tied at the waist by a cord. His hair would be still tousled and damp from his bath —just as it had been in the mornings at Mrs. Blodgett’s —and as one can see from photographs taken of him at this period, it was fairly long. This was not by chance, but was, rather, a concession to popular demand. "His hair was beautifully wavy," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled. "In fact, it was so beautiful and it set off his features so well that we would not let him cut it. Swamiji himself," she continued, "did not object. He was wholly devoid of self consciousness."


Between the time Swamiji came down from his room and the start of breakfast he would walk alone in the secluded garden behind the house or along the almost equally secluded driveway at the side, sometimes singing or chanting, sometimes silent and absorbed. Breakfast was at seven thirty, for Ralph was due at school at eight thirty, and Helen, youngest of the sisters (she was in her twenties), was due as early in Los Angeles, where she was secretary in an insurance firm. Swamiji ate a good, though light, American meal, consisting mainly of fruit, two eggs (he liked them poached), two pieces of toast, and two cups of coffee with sugar and cream. Mrs. Hansbrough once pressed upon him a third cup, persisting, until at last he said, "All right. Woman’s business is to tempt man." But as a rule he was moderate in eating, drinking coffee, and smoking his pipe. (He no longer smoked cigars, as he had during his first visit to the West, and, like most men in those days, seldom smoked cigarettes.)


Although "Niece Helen" and Ralph had, perforce, to hurry away, Mrs. Hansbrough, Mrs. Wyckoff, and Swamiji made breakfast a leisurely meal. They never rushed. And afterward, on those rare days when Swamiji had no morning class, he would stroll again in the garden or browse through the library.


"Often he would play with the children in the yard," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled. "Dorothy had several friends who would come, and he would hold hands with them and play ring-around-the rosy and other games." No doubt Swamiji enjoyed these games for their own sake, as perfectly happy as his small companions; but he liked also to observe the ways of children and was interested in their early education. "He used to like to talk with them," Mrs. Hansbrough continued, "and would ask them many questions about their activities: why they played this game or that, and so on. He was much interested in the problem of child training, and we often discussed it. He did not believe in punishment. It had never helped him, he said, and added, 'I would never do anything to make a child afraid.’ " Sometimes Swamiji would sit with the children in a shed in the back garden and look at their picture books. "He particularly enjoyed Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. He said that their portrayal of the processes of the human mind was absolutely correct and that Lewis Carroll had some kind of intuition—that his was not an ordinary mind—to have written those books." (Indeed, Swamiji thought Alice in Wonderland "the most wonderful book for children that has been written in this [the nineteenth] century." "There is no such thing as law or connection in this world, but we are thinking that there is a great deal of connection," he had said in 1896 during a New York class. " . . . The world is the same unconnected thing [as in] Alice in Wonderland with no connection whatever.")[9]


One memorable morning— it must have been a weekend or a holiday, for Ralph had not rushed off to school —Swamiji suddenly laid aside his after—breakfast pipe and called Dorothy to him. Recalling this particular occasion, Mrs. Hansbrough related that her little girl went to him and stood between his knees with her hands on his thighs. "Swamiji put his hands at the back of her neck at the hairline and tapped up and over the top of her head to the eyebrows. Then he called Ralph and did the same thing. Ralph must have knelt, because I remember that Swamiji did not leave his seat." To Mrs. Hansbrough the moment was clearly a sacred one; it seemed that her daughter and nephew had received a special blessing, to which she gave the name "baptism." But Swamiji himself gave no name to his act, nor would he explain it. "It is just a custom we have in India," was all he would say when Mrs. Hansbrough questioned him. And there, in silence, the moment ended.


Ralph loved Swamiji and served him personally whenever and however he could. He would shine his shoes, fetch his tobacco from upstairs, and do other little things that Swamiji asked of him. Often they used to talk together, and Mrs. Hansbrough remembered that once Swamiji asked Ralph: "Can you see your own eyes?" Ralph answered that he could not, except in a mirror. "God is like that," Swamiji told him. "He is as close as your own eyes. He is your own, even though you can’t see Him." If one were able to talk with Ralph today, he could no doubt tell much else that Swamiji had said to him. But the time for searching out those memories passed long ago; for Ralph Wyckoff was accidentally killed when he was forty two.


But while there were mornings when Swamiji was able to stroll leisurely in the garden or to talk with Dorothy and her friends, more often than not he held a ten o’clock class in nearby Pasadena. On such occasions he would leave the house around nine or nine thirty, accompanied by Mrs. Hansbrough. He would wear his loose black coat and black hat and would carry in a suitcase his gerua robe and turban, into which he would later change. (As we have seen, he did not always wear his robe while lecturing, but apparently he sometimes did. Mrs. Hansbrough tells us that when Mrs. Bowler, the president of the Shakespeare Club, first invited him to speak, she specifically requested that he wear his turban. Swamiji obliged. "Don’t you understand?" he explained to Mrs. Hansbrough who had objected, "She wants the whole show!") To get to the Shakespeare Club, where Swamiji held most of his morning classes, was a simple matter. A few steps from the house he and  Mrs. Hansbrough (and perhaps also Mrs. Wyckoff) could board the electric train and travel to Pasadena and thence up Fair Oaks Avenue directly to the clubhouse, which in those days stood on the corner of Fair Oaks and Lincoln. It was a fairly short trip, and almost no walking was involved.


At other times, however, Swamiji may have taken walks for the sheer pleasure of it. He was feeling well, or at least much. improved. "I am decidedly better in health," he wrote to Mrs. Bull on January 17. "The healer [Mrs. Melton] thinks I am now at liberty to go anywhere I choose; the process will go on and I shall completely recover in a few months. She insists on this, that I am cured already; only nature will have to work out the rest.'[10] Mrs. Melton had her ideas and methods; but it was a fact that during his stay at the Meads’ Swamiji was not noticeably ill. "He always looked bright," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "especially when he was particularly interested in something.... Miss MacLeod said she had brought him West 'for his health,’ but he never complained of ill health while he was with us. He never missed a meal or showed in any other way at that time that he was unwell."


Not only did Swamiji come to all meals, but he ate almost every kind of food, apparently without ill effect. As we have seen, he had a good breakfast. For lunch there was usually lamb (never beef), and there were vegetables, all sorts of which he liked, particularly peas. "In place of dessert," Mrs. Hansbrough remembered, "we would have fruit. He was especially fond of grapes." But some kinds of fruit he disliked. "We always had a plate of spring fruit on the table," she continued, "and one evening there were some guavas among the others. Swamiji was walking up and down in the dining room while the table was being set for dinner, and we were speaking of Lent and the custom of giving up some favorite food or pleasure during the forty days. He said that a similar custom existed in India which was always observed by the monks. 'All but the wicked fellows like me renounce something they like,’ he said. 'Now I, for example, will renounce these guavas.’ 


We took the hint and did not have guavas any more after that."


Often Swamiji would invite one person or another from his morning class to lunch at the Meads’; and in addition, Miss MacLeod and Mrs. Leggett, who would come from Los Angeles to the classes, were frequent lunch guests. The conversations at these gatherings were lively and aglow with the wealth of insight he would bring to them. Sometimes, perhaps often, the talk would turn to India—to that land never far from his heart, to those people whose problems could at times plunge him into silent despair, at times wring from him some impassioned protest. "On one occasion when Mrs. Leggett was there," Mrs. Hansbrough related, "Swamiji, who was walking up and down, said that actually the English did not come to India to conquer the Hindus but to teach them. The great misfortune, however, was that the English soldiers—even the officers—were of such low caste. And he told of a time when he was sitting on the lawn in a park close to a footpath. Two soldiers passed by and one of them kicked him. Surprised, Swamiji said, 'Why did you do that?’ 'Because I like to, you dirty something or other!’ 'Oh, we go much further than that,’ Swamiji had retorted, 'we call you dirty mlechchhas!’ Then he spoke of the raping of lower caste Hindu women by the English soldiers. 'If anyone should despoil the Englishman’s home,’ he said, 'the Englishman would kill him, and rightly so. But the Hindu just sits and whines!’


"At this, Mrs. Leggett, who always agreed with everything Swamiji said, remarked in admiration of the gentle Hindu, 'How very nice!’ 'Do you think,’ Swamiji went on, 'that a handful of Englishmen could rule India if we had a militant spirit? I teach meat eating throughout the length and breadth of India in the hope that we can build a militant spirit!"‘


But the best lunches of all were the picnics that took place on the open top of the nearby hill. "We would make up a party of people who were attending Swamiji’s classes more or less regularly," Mrs. Hansbrough related, "or he would even hold some of his smaller class groups there. Naturally the talk was always on spiritual subjects. You have seen that photograph of Swamiji in a picnic group; it was taken on top of that hill." In this photograph, Swamiji is sitting cross legged at what might be called the head of the picnic cloth; on his left sits Mrs. Hansbrough (identified by her daughter) ; behind him stands Mrs. Wyckoff; and on his right, a Mrs. Bruce (also identified by Mrs. Cohn). On either side one can see two or three of the guests—ladies with the long skirts, tight bodices, leg-of-mutton sleeves, and overburdened hats of the period. The photograph was taken at a relaxed moment; two of the women talk together, and Swamiji appears to be reading with amusement a scrap of paper, about the size of a fortune from a Chinese cookie, while Mrs. Bruce reads over his shoulder. To judge from the absence of coats, shawls, or wraps, the weather was pleasant, as it was almost everyday that winter. "It was said to be the pleasantest winter in five years," Mrs. Hansbrough noted; and indeed, from the farmers’ point of view the weather was altogether too pleasant; a drought was under way, and the ministers of the various churches in Pasadena were banding together to pray for rain.


Unhappily, there are no known records of Swamiji’s talks and informal classes on this sunny hilltop. Yet from a snatch of conversation that Mrs. Hansbrough remembered, it is clear that he was seeing all the world—its good and its evil alike—as a divine play, all supremely Good. On one of the picnics a young woman, a Christian Scientist, put forth the belief that one should teach people to be good. Swamiji smiled and waved his hand to indicate the trees and the countryside. "Why should I desire to be 'good’?" he asked. "All this is His handiwork. Shall I apologize for His handiwork? If you want to reform John Doe, go and live with him; don’t try to reform him. If you have any of the Divine Fire, he will catch it."


In those still, warm days of January, seated where they could overlook the rich valley with its escarpment of snow-peaked mountains, the picnickers listened to his words and felt themselves lifted into another level of existence altogether —a level in which they surely caught the "Divine Fire" that blazed in their midst. "When he had talked for some time " , Mrs. Hansbrough said, "the air would become surcharged with a spiritual atmosphere." And she spoke of one occasion in particular when, absorbed in some subject he was discussing, "he talked for six hours without interruption—from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon.." "The air," she said, "was just vibrant with spirituality by the time it was over."


And what must the air have been like in the Meads’ house! The sisters felt, as one of them later said, "as if Christ himself were in their midst'[11]. Whatever he did, in his most relaxed or most active moments, his mind in its deep layers was plunged, consciously, in God; for such was his nature. And from those luminous depths he brought a power that not only charged the air with spirituality, but could transform the whole tenor of one’s thought, change the direction of one’s life, lift one’s burden—and this as though it were the most natural thing on earth. He did not seem a superhuman, remote being, but one’s very own. "Swamiji had marvelous patience with all of us," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled. "He took away any feeling on our part that he was superior to us. Though some people found him aloof, I never did. I felt as though he was someone to whom I was closely related, someone whom I had not seen for a long, long time, and who had been a long time coming. I had felt I carried a burden —not on my back, but on my chest. After I met Swamiji I felt the lifting of the burden that had been on my chest for so long I had ceased to be conscious of it."


Better known and more concrete is the story of how Mrs. Wyckoff once experienced relief from physical and mental suffering just through contact with an object that had belonged to Swamiji —his pipe. "Sometime before Swamiji left South Pasadena," Mrs. Hansbrough related, "he said one day, 'I always leave something behind wherever I go. I am going to leave this pipe when I go to San Francisco.’ He left it on the mantelpiece in the dining room, and we kept it there for a long time as an ornament. Then one day Mrs. Wyckoff picked it up. She had been suffering from some nervous ailment and had been having personal difficulties in her life. For some days the pain of her illness had been almost unbearable, and this, added to her other troubles, made her feel extremely depressed. She went to the mantelpiece and picked up Swamiji’s pipe. No sooner did she have it in her hand than she heard his voice saying, 'Is it so hard, madam?’ For some reason she rubbed the pipe across her forehead, and instantly the suffering left her and a feeling of wellbeing came over her. After that we felt that the pipe should belong to her; and she still has it." (Today the pipe is in the possession of the Vedanta Society of Southern California.)


But the most significant miracle lay in the constant light Swamiji shed over the world around him. Those who were close to him remembered the small, apparently casual things he said and did with as much reverence as they remembered those words and acts more obviously fraught with super-consciousness. In his every gesture there was the quality of grace. To Mrs. Hansbrough it was, indeed, the everyday things that meant the most. "My inclination," she said, "has always been to remember him as the real human being he was— to take off any paint of artificiality others tried to apply to him. For he was so great in himself that no paint was ever needed to make him so." It was this steady miracle of grace, as much as the sudden, brilliant, and often dazzling bursts of power, that made the Mead sisters feel, from moment to moment, that Christ himself was there. The events of those days were not continually remarkable; rather, the days, the hours, were themselves transfigured, as is a lamp when it is lighted.


The routine was simple. After lunch Swamiji would generally recline on the couch in the living room, and there he would read or talk, while Mrs. Wyckoff busily pursued her various household tasks. "Madam," he one day said to her, "you work so hard that it makes me tired. Well, there have to be some Marthas, and you are a Martha,'[12] and sometimes he would ask her to stop her work and stroll with him in the garden. Strolling, he would sing Bengali songs or chant Sanskrit verses and "explain them," Mrs. Hansbrough tells us, "in a much more personal way than from the platform." Or sometimes he would sing the Christian hymn: "The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone, " the words of which Mrs. Hansbrough had taught him and which amused him greatly. "I am that heathen," he would laugh.


Perhaps Swamiji also did some writing in the afternoons. In his letter of December 27 to Mrs. Bull, he said, "I am sorry I could not write any more of the stories [which he had been working on in New York]. I have written some other things and mean to write something almost every day'[13]. And in another letter to Mrs. Bull that was probably written from South Pasadena in January, he remarked, "I am doing some writing'[14]. But what Swamiji was writing at this time, we do not know; possibly he was jotting down Hindu legends for Sister Nivedita’s use. "You have the Gopala already —add the Savitri story to that," he advised her in a heretofore unpublished note, which though undated was most probably written from southern California.


I send you four more herewith [he continued]. They ought to make a nice volume. Work on them a bit, will you— if you get a publisher in Chicago all right, if not, Mr. Leggett promised to publish them some time ago[15].


Referring no doubt to the "four more" of the above, he wrote to Nivedita in a now published letter, dated February 15, "I am glad you got the stories; re write them if you think so—get them published if you find anybody to do it and take the proceeds, if any, for your work'[16].


Aside from writing stories, Swamiji wrote at least one poem during his stay in southern California. This, too, he sent to Nivedita. It was, almost certainly, the beautiful and now famous poem "Who Knows How Mother Plays," which opens: "Perchance a prophet thou—/Who knows? Who dares touch/ The depths where Mother hides/ Her silent fail less bolts!" and closes: "To child may glories ope/ Which father never dreamt;/ May thousandfold in daughter/ Her Powers Mother store.'[17] "Your birthday poem reached me here last night," Nivedita replied on January 13. (January 12 was Swamiji’s birthday, not hers.) "There is nothing I could say about it that would not seem commonplace: except that if your beautiful wish were possible it would break my heart.... I cannot conceive of perfect bliss without the assurance that [the guru’s] was greater....'[18].


Very likely, Swamiji would sometimes give private interviews in the afternoons or talk with visitors who came to see the Mead sisters. Yet he was by no means always in a mood for conversation. "A friend of the sisters came to visit one day," a story goes in "Swamiji in Southern California." "The ladies chatted for more than an hour while Swamiji sat in the parlor with them, smoking his pipe in perfect silence. Obviously the visitor had no idea who he was, because to the sisters’ and Swamiji’s vast amusement, she asked as she was leaving: 'Does this gentleman speak English?'[19]Nor did Swamiji care to just sit in silence with everyone and anyone. There was the woman who was determined to do a portrait of him. "She had approached him several times after the meetings," Mrs. Hansbrough related, "but Swamiji had always declined. One day the woman came to our home and asked me if I would help her by letting her sketch him unawares. Somehow Swamiji sensed her presence and called me to him. 'You get that woman out of here or I’ll leave!’ he told me. Needless to say, I saw her to the door."


In the late afternoons Swamiji would help Mrs. Wyckoff prepare dinner, and often he himself cooked the whole meal. "He liked to prepare one meal every day while he was at our home in Lincoln Park," Mrs. Hansbrough said. "He cooked curries and often chapaties, of which Ralph and Dorothy used to be very fond.... Several of the ingredients that he used had to be ground, and since he did not like to stand beside a table, he would sit cross legged on the kitchen floor with a wooden butter bowl in front of him." After Swamiji had finished grinding his spices, he would proceed to fry them in butter, during which ceremony, as one learns from Brahmacharini Usha’s article in Vedanta and the West, quantities of eye-smarting smoke would arise, distressing to the sisters. "Here comes grandpa!" Swamiji would cry out in warning. "Ladies are invited to leave'[20].


As a role, Mrs. Hansbrough said, Swamiji did not laugh and joke much. He was perhaps at his gayest when he had free run of the kitchen and was allowed to prepare for the family elaborate, and at times alarming, dishes. But to be with him even in his most merry of moments was to grow. He never sermonized; he simply opened one’s eyes, and one rarely forgot those offhand lessons. Once when he asked Mrs. Wyckoff whether she liked a spicy dish he had created she said, politely, yes, she did indeed. But one could not fool Swamiji. After a moment’s pause he inquired, "Was it true, or just for friendship’s sake?" "I am afraid," Mrs. Wyckoff confessed, "It was for friendship’s sake." "Another time," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "while Lalita [Mrs. Wyckoff] was preparing something in the kitchen for Swamiji, he was walking to and fro across the room. Suddenly he asked her, 'Were you happily married?’ For a moment she hesitated, then she answered, 'Yes, Swamiji.’ He left the kitchen for a moment and then came back. 'I am glad,’ he said drily, 'that there was one happy marriage!"‘ Had he not, at that moment, wished to take a burden away? The moment passed. But as those who knew her in later years have testified, Mrs. Wyckoff became "a stickler for telling the truth" even in matters of small import.


Dinner in the Mead household was generally at six thirty, and perhaps on those evenings when Swamiji was scheduled to lecture at eight o’clock, it was even earlier. The meal, as Mrs. Hansbrough remembered, was substantial. "We would usually have soup and either fish or meat, vegetables, and dessert—pie, perhaps, which Swamiji sometimes liked, or some other sweet. He did not, as a rule, take coffee in the evening." And often, of course, there were Swamiji’s curries and chapaties and other dishes. After dinner, the table would be cleared, a fire would be lighted in the open grate, and the family and their guests would linger in the warm room; "some would sit at the table, others in easy chairs. We had an easy chair for Swamiji that was large enough for him to sit cross-legged in. He usually wore either what you would call a dinner jacket or a smoking jacket." The room, people-filled, fire-heated, and gas-lit, would sometimes grow too warm for him, and once when the flames had been allowed to die unnoticed, he gave forth a sudden hallelujah: "Praise the Lord! That fire’s out!"


Among those who joined this family gathering was Miss MacLeod, who for a few days was a house guest of the Meads’, sleeping, as we have seen, in the already crowded front bedroom. In Mrs. Hansbrough’s "Reminiscences" one senses at times a certain impatience with Miss MacLeod. Yet when she was the Meads’ guest, all friction seems to have disappeared. "She set aside her superior airs when she was with us," Mrs. Hansbrough remarked. "It was principally with people who affected the same airs that she put them on. And she never made the mistake of putting on airs with Swamiji. He often told her 'where to get off when she had a tendency to be too high toned. But the only time I ever heard him speak sharply to her was before a class in the ballroom of the Green Hotel [in Pasadena]. She was expressing an opinion as to what should be done about some phases of his work, and he suddenly turned on her. 'Keep quiet about what should be done!’ he said. 'We will do whatever has to be done.’ But he also said of her, 'Joe has a very sweet nature.’ He always called her 'Joe.’ " (Mrs. Hansbrough he called "Madam," and sometimes "Madam Moses," because, she said, of her fondness for law.) As for Joe, she readily admitted that Swamiji did not take her advice or accept her opinion without reservation. To Mary Hale she wrote in February of 1900, "Swamiji recognized my limitations when he said to me in California, 'You have never been a worker, therefore your judgment is of little value in regard to workers'[21].


Any member of the intimate group who listened to Swamiji in the evenings after dinner could perhaps have written a book on those talks alone—but no one did. After forty years, however, Mrs. Hansbrough remembered a few details. "He would speak on a variety of subjects," she said, " on philosophy, science, the development of the United States, and so on. He was very much interested in all phases of our national life; but he did not like to see the great concentration on material affairs. In private conversation he said that our civilization would fall within fifty years if we did not spiritualize it. He said we were deifying material values and that we could never build anything on such a basis'[22]


Often during these evenings Swamiji would read aloud. He was, as Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, an excellent reader with a fine pronunciation of English. He read from various books, "and once when he was talking about Advaita, he asked for his 'Song of the Sannyasin,’ which he read to us. On another occasion late one evening as we sat by the fire, he asked for 'The Need of a Guru’ [from his book Bhakti yoga]. He had been talking to Helen, and then he began to read from this. For some reason, after he had read for some time, Helen got up, lit his bedroom candle and offered it to him. 'Does that mean I must go to bed?" Swamiji asked. 'Well, it is eleven o’clock,’ Helen replied. And so the conversation closed." "Niece Helen’s" precipitous act was long remembered by all three sisters. "Long afterward we were talking of the incident," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "and all three of us felt that indirectly Swamiji had been inviting Helen to ask for discipleship. She said that she didn’t know why she hadn’t taken it; she just hadn’t felt impelled to at the time'[23] —which would seem something of an understatement.


Curiously, none of the Mead sisters took formal initiation from Swamiji or considered themselves to be informally, his disciples. Mrs. Wyckoff and Helen later became disciples of Swami Turiyananda, who gave the former the Sanskrit name Lalita. As for Mrs. Hansbrough, Swamiji once put to her the question: "Why can’t you ,join our Order?" Her answer was that she had her own little world to take care of. Later, she was given the name Shanti by Swami Turiyananda but did not become his disciple.


Yet while the Mead sisters may not, strictly speaking, have been Swamiji’s disciples, they loved and served him devotedly, and they were indeed his own. "I have known all three of you before,'[24]he once said to them; and in a letter written to Mrs. Hansbrough from New York in the summer of I goo he declared, "You three sisters have become a part of my mind forevet'[25].


3

In 1900 the town of Pasadena, then barely twenty five years old, covered six square miles and was inhabited by 10,000  pleased people, most of whom had come from the Midwest and East. It contained in abundance citrus and olive groves, orchards, vineyards, and gardens, and boasted as well of many mansions set in landscaped grounds, nine excellent schools, several women’s clubs, twenty-eight churches, and no saloons. "The people of this city are not greatly given to pleasure and hilarity," the Pasadena Star commented; "they may dissipate mildly by going to the Orpheum (vaudeville] on Saturday afternoon." Some—the mansion dwellers—also dissipated mildly now and then by attending the cultural events in Los Angeles, making the ten mile trip in the electric railway’s "Poppy," a luxuriously appointed parlor car, equipped with a Brussels carpet, movable wicker armchairs, a kitchen, and, on request, a caterer. On the whole, however, Pasadenans stayed at home, for clearly there was no better place to be. Not only was their town sheltered by the motherly Sierra, cooled and aired by soft breezes from the Pacific, and nurtured by the fruitful valley, but it was "famed for its intellectual and artistic atmosphere and imaginativeness." The very name of the town, its inhabitants concluded, quite wrongly, meant " 'Gateway of Paradise’—Paso—de —Eden'[26].

As far as can be determined from the contemporary newspapers, Swamiji’s first lecture in this fair and happy city took place on the morning of Monday, January 15. It should be mentioned here, however, that in a letter published in the Complete Works and there dated December 22, he wrote to Mrs. Bull, "I am grinding on in Pasadena; hope some result will come out of my work here.'[27] From this it would seem not only that Swamiji was lecturing in Pasadena by December 22, but that he had been lecturing there for some time. Yet there is no other indication that this was the case; there is, in fact, many an indication that it was not the case, and one is inclined to think that Swamiji’s letter has been misdated. Indeed in the letter itself there is more than one hint that he wrote it in January of 1900. In any event, the newspapers of the day took the view that Swamiji’s Pasadena work started with a lecture at the Green Hotel on January 15. In the Pasadena Section of the Los Angeles Times the following announcement appeared on January 14:


SWAMI IS COMING

Swami Vivekananda the Hindu philosopher who made a world wide reputation during the Parliament of Religions at the time of the World’s Fair at Chicago, is now a guest of Mrs. J. C. Newton of South Pasadena. He will speak in the Hotel Green parlors Monday [January 15] at 10 a.m. on 'Bhakti yoga, or the religion of Love.’ The ladies of the Shakespeare Club will honor Vivekananda with a reception at their clubhouse next Saturday after noon (January 20] from 3 to 5 o’clock.


During this same week Swamiji was scheduled to give two additional morning lectures at the Hotel Green (familiarly known as "the Green") and two evening lectures at the Shakespeare Club. Announcing these events, the Pasadena Star, usually sparing with its headlines, let fly with the following:

THE SWAMI VIVE KANANDA.
An Illustrious Visitor in Pasadena

The most conspicuous figure in the World’s Congress of Religions at the World’s Fair in Chicago was probably the great Indian teacher, The Swami Vive Kananda, who represented the Hindoo religion and aroused the people of Chicago to great enthusiasm by his charming and unique personality and his presentation of his country’s religion.


The Swami Vive Kananda was a visitor in Pasadena today, lecturing to the guests of the Green this morning. He will give lectures here Wednesday and Friday at Hotel Green at ten a.m. and at the Shakespeare club tomorrow and Thursday at 8 p.m. A reception will be given him from three to five o’clock Saturday in the Shakespeare club rooms.[28]


Swamiji’s five lectures of the week were also announced, as to date and place, in the Los Angeles Times and Herald—a fact that shows they were open to the public and that the people of Los Angeles were as welcome as those of Pasadena.


In its heyday the Green was as elegant a hotel as one could find anywhere in that age of elegant hotels. According to a Pasadena historian, writing in 1895, the mammoth edifice was awe inspiring: "Its frontages are in Moorish and Roman architecture, but the dining mom [which sported marble pillars and a vaulted ceiling] is a typical specimen of classic Greek style, and the whole structure, both internal and external has own fame as a grand symposium of the most imposing, elegant, chaste and esthetic elements of architectural science, scarcely excelled in New York or London except by mere bulk.'[29] Even in bulk this grandeur was not negligible. Actually, the Green was two complete hotels, each, with its gardens, covering a whole block, and connected one to the other by an enclosed bridge, where every afternoon tea was served. At the date of this writing the Hotel Green still exists, but the East Wing, in whose theater Swamiji lectured, has been torn down, and the remaining wing, though enlarged shortly after 1900, is nothing at all in splendor compared to what it was.


Admission to Swamiji’s three morning lectures, or classes, at the Green was free. As one learns from a letter written on January 19 by Betty Leggett to her husband, Swamiji’s friends had suggested that he give a few talks in the theater of this most prominent hotel and that somehow a collection be taken for him at a later date.[30] This scheme does not strike one as having been particularly sound, but as far as I know, a record of its results is not at present available. Nor does one know a great deal about the lectures themselves; indeed we know at present only the title of the first —"Bhakti Yoga, or the Religion of Love." One glimpses, however, as through a lens momentarily unshuttered by Mrs. Hansbrough, a small incident that took place in the hotel, very possibly on the occasion of this first talk. "Professor Baumgardt was talking with some other gentlemen before the lecture began," she related. "One of them asked him, 'He is a Christianized Hindu, I suppose?’ With considerable pride in Swamiji, Professor Baumgardt replied, 'No, he is an unconverted Hindu. You are going to hear about Hinduism from a real Hindu.’ '[31] Later on in the week, it was to become more than apparent how very real a Hindu Swamiji was.


We know more about the two lectures given on the evenings of January 16 and 18 at the Shakespeare Club than of those at the Green. The first of these (at which Swamiji obligingly wore his robe and turban) was on the subject of the religious legends of India, and a reporter, who seems to have been both baffled and impressed by the occasion, wrote an account of it for the Los Angels Times. (This account, printed in the Times on January 17, has been reproduced in its entirety in Ve0oodanta and the West (No. 158) but will bear inclusion here, for it constitutes, to date, our most lengthy and comprehensive record of this particular talk.)


The Swami

Clad in his maroon robe, Swami Vivekananda addressed a small audience composed mostly of women, at the Shakespeare Club this evening [January 16]. He gave an account of the religious legends of Brahmanism, which are embodied in the daily lives of the Hindus, of the origin of Shiva and his surrender to the pure spirit of his wife, today the mother of all India, whose worship is carried to such an extent that no female animal can be killed. Vivekananda quoted freely from the Sanskrit, translating as he went along. Speaking in his soft, low voice, of the mysticism of subtile India to a little gathering of people listening with rapt attention to things of small significance to the uninitiated, the striking young Hindu scholar with the glow of the zealot on his swarthy face, was the center of an esoteric tableau.


At Swamiji’s second lecture (January 18) the tableau was not so esoteric. As told in the introduction to the published version of this lecture, "Women of India," Swamiji declared at the outset that his chief dificulty that evening was that he did not know what subject he was to lecture on. "If you, ladies and gentlemen, will suggest anything," he said, "I will be very glad." At this point, Mrs. Hansbrough related, she noticed several women and a man conferring together. The man finally stood up and asked Swamiji if he would speak on Hindu women. The request was put in a goading way: "We would like to know the result of your philosophy," the gentleman said. "Has your philosophy and religion lifted your women above our women?" This was a trap into which Swamiji was certainly not going to step. "You see," he replied, "that is a very invidious question: I like our women and your women too." The questioner was not to be put off. "Well," he said, "will you tell us about your women, their customs and education, and the position they hold in the family?" "Oh, yes," Swamiji replied; for the subject of Indian women, as such, was one he had often spoken on and in which he himself was deeply interested. "Those things I would be very glad to tell you. So you want to know about Indian women tonight and not philosophy and other things?'[32]


Thereupon Swamiji gave, extemporaneously as always, one of his most beautiful and comprehensive talks on Hindu women that we possess. He placed before his audience the age old ideal of Hindu womanhood—the ideal of motherhood "that marvellous, unselfish, all suffering, ever forgiving mother.'[33] It is only through the ideals of a people, he said at the outset, that those people could be correctly judged. "In each nation, man or woman represents an ideal consciously or unconsciously being worked out. The individual is the external expression of an ideal to be embodied. The collection of such individuals is the nation, which also represents a great ideal; toward that it is moving. And, therefore, it is rightly assumed that to understand a nation you must first understand its ideal, for each nation refuses to be judged by any other standard than its own.'[34] And at the close of the lecture, he spoke forcibly, eloquently of the great spiritual ideal underlying the life of his country: "The ideal of the Indian race is freedom of the soul. This world is nothing. It is a vision, a dream. This life is one of many millions like it. The whole of this nature is Maya, is phantasm, a pest house of phantasms.'[35]


Mindful that in the audience sat critics of India, Swamiji did not spare them. "Western people, " he thundered, "say what you have to say. This is your day. Onward, go on, babes; have your prattle out. This is the day of the babies, to prattle. We have learned our lesson, and are quiet. You have a little wealth today and you look down upon us. Well, this is your day. Prattle, babes, prattle—this is the Hindu’s attitude. The Lord of Lords is not to be attained by much frothy speech. . . Says the Hindu, 'Yes, we have buried all the old nations of the earth and stand here to bury all the new races also, because our ideal is not this world, but the other. Just as your ideal is, so shall you be. If your ideal is mortal, if your ideal is of this earth, so shalt thou be. If your ideal is matter, matter shalt thou be. Behold! Our ideal is the Spirit. That alone exists. Nothing else exists, and like Him, we live forever.[36]


Certain members of Swamiji’s audience were undoubtedly squirming in their seats. During the question period that followed, it became more than clear, Mrs. Hansbrough related "that the group who had asked for this subject had done so in an attempt to trap Swamiji into saying something that would discredit him. We learned later," she added, "that they belonged to some church that had missionaries in India.'[37]


The questions these people asked were the same old questions he had answered time and time again throughout his tour of the Middle West in 1894. They touched upon the alleged mistreatment of Hindu women, child marriages, early motherhood, infant eating crocodiles, and so on. "One of the women in particular set out to corner Swamiji," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled. "She started talking about how the English were trying to reform his country, and he simply said, 'Madam, I am a monk. What do I know about politics?’ He answered several of the questions relating to Hindu marriage directly; then finally he said that the relationship between the husband and wife in India, where the basis of marriage was not physical enjoyment, was so entirely different from that between a married couple in the West that he did not think Western people could understand it. As the questioner continued to press him, Swamiji became really angry. It was the only time I ever saw him angry on the platform. At one point, to emphasize a statement he hit his knuckles on the table so hard that I really feared he would break the skin. 'No, madam,’ he burst out, 'the relationship in which children creep into life amid lust at night and in darkness, does not exist in India!’ 


"Finally the woman openly called him a liar. 'Madam,’ Swamiji replied, 'you evidently know more about India than I do. I am leaving the platform; please take it yourself!’ He was thoroughly aroused. We had already gotten up, for we feared anything might happen now, and our only thought was to see him safely out of the building and home. He started up the middle aisle, but the woman blocked him and, with her friends, tried to continue the argument. Again he told her to take the platform herself. At last we got through, but as I passed her, the woman turned on me and exclaimed, 'You little fool! Don’t you know he hates you?’ I said no, I hadn’t found that out yet.'[38]


As far as we know, this unpleasant incident constituted Swamiji’s only direct encounter with missionary groups during his second visit to the West. It was a minor skirmish. The days of serious battle in which he had taken on the forces of bigotry in America were over. With every weapon at their command they had attacked him, and with the sheer majesty and purity of his person he had cut at the root of their power. The story of his achievement in this respect has been told elsewhere;[39] we need only say here that in 1900 the more bigoted element among Christian missionary groups no longer constituted a force to be reckoned with. Yet, as we shall see later, Swami did not altogether omit a public rejoinder to the Pasadena attack.


The Shakespeare Club, where this collision took place and where Swamiji was to speak at least twelve more times during the following two weeks, was the queen of the town’s women’s clubs. Although it had been formed in 1888 for the purpose of studying the works of Shakespeare, its women were not afraid, as a contemporary historian noted, "to undertake any problem, no matter how intricate or how difficult." These numerous problems, "affecting themselves personally, the city and the public at large," occupied much of the ladies’ time;[40] but Shakespeare was not thereby abandoned. Nor were other cultural pursuits: French and German Conversation Circles were held regularly, as were Art Study Classes, and now and then special days were celebrated, such as Ruskin Day, Newspaper Day, and William Morris Day.[41]


In 1900 the club, whose membership numbered around seventy five, occupied a building known as the Stickney Memorial Building—a one and a half storey, vine adorned, and many-gabled house, which looked, fittingly, much as though it had been transported from Stratford on Avon. The Assembly Hall, where Swamiji spoke, was an intimate, picture-hung room, with a dais for the speaker and rows of movable rattan chairs for the listeners. Although the Stickney Memorial Building has long since been demolished, the Shakespeare Club today still exists, and in 1965, through the kindness of its then secretary, I was able to obtain photographs of the old clubhouse as Swamiji knew it and of the hall where he so often spoke.


Whether the club engaged Swamiji to lecture or whether the hall was rented or donated to him for the purpose is not made clear by any existing records. Toward the end of the first week of lecture the Pasadena Star noted several times: "The Swami will be pleased to lecture further next week if people will organize classes and each contribute what he is able to the support of the Industrial English schools in India, which the Swami Vivekananda is working for.'[42] Classes, all free of admission and open to the public, were organized the following week and, again, the week after that, but by whom we do not know. In the Shakespeare Club’s 1900 Year Book, which briefly notes the programs for that year, Swamiji is not mentioned; nor were his classes announced in the club’s daily newspaper notices. It would seem, then, that his talks were not considered a part of the club’s activities. On the other hand, there is no doubt that many women of the club attended his classes, and it is certain that at least once Mrs. Bowler, the president, invited him to speak before the group. Further, the Shakespeare Club held for Swamiji a gala reception.


"Swami Vivekananda has been lionized by the club ladies of this city," read an item in the "Out of Town Society News" of the Los Angeles Times on January 21. "He was given receptions at the Shakespeare Club and at Hotel Green." Of the reception at the Green nothing further is known; but news of the Shakespeare Club reception was given in an item that appeared in the same paper on the same day:


The Shakespeareans.

The Shakespeare Club had the largest attendance of the year at its reception this afternoon [Saturday, January 20]. A recitation was given by Miss Lillian York, which was well received. Swami Vivekananda gave an exceedingly interesting lecture on Persian art, dwelling particularly on the architecture, the decorative art, the manufacture of shawls and carpets by the Persians, and also speaking of the philosophy of art. The ladies were delighted and at the close gave to the Swami a reception, serving refreshments. The Swami will give a series of lectures at the Shakespeare Clubhouse, beginning Monday at 10 a.m. and continuing every forenoon exceptTuesday during the week.


The Los Angeles Herald of January 21 also commented on the reception:

Shakespeare reception.


The grandest and best attended reception of the season was held today at the Shakespeare club-rooms, Memorial hall, on Linden [Lincoln] avenue. The reception was tendered to the Swami Vivekananda. There were music and recitations, and then the guest of the occasion delivered a lecture upon the Persian art of making rugs, carpets, shawls and in decorations of the kinds in which the natives of Persia excel. The lecture was highly instructive to those interested in these things and was received with many expressions of pleasure on the part of the ladies. The Persian was engaged (?) to deliver a series of lectures on kindred subjects during the week beginning on Monday and continuing at 10 o’ clock every morning through the week, with the exception of Tuesday.


It is interesting to note that Swamiji gave a lecture on Persian art. While it is true that he could talk fascinatingly and with scholarly knowledge on almost any subject one could name, this was one of his few known public or semipublic talks in the West not on the topics of the religion, philosophy, history, or culture of India. Unfortunately, we know no more of it than that he gave it —and gave it with such thorough and sympathetic knowledge that he was assumed by some to be a Persian. (In the same way, whenever Swamiji spoke on Buddhism, some listeners took it for granted that he was a Buddhist.)


The announcement in the above newspaper items that Swami Vivekananda was to speak almost every morning of that week, beginning on Monday, January 22, was repeated in the Times and Herald, with the additional information that the subject for Monday would be "The Ideal of a Universal Religion."


This was a topic to which Swamiji gave much importance during his mission in the West. He had spoken on it often during his first visit to America, and he was to speak on it twice in Pasadena: once at the Shakespeare Club and again on Sunday evening, January 28, in the city’s liberal pulpit, the Universalist Church. We have no transcript of the Shakespeare Club lecture, but the lecture given six days later at the Universalist Church has been published in volume two of the Complete Works under the title "The Way to the Realisation of a Universal Religion." It should again be noted that the few transcriptions we have of Swamiji’s lectures in Pasadena (and in Los Angeles, as well) are excellent ones. Whoever took them down—Helen Mead or the woman stenographer whom Mrs. Hansbrough mentioned —seems to have kept good pace with Swamiji, an ability not given to all.


In "The Way to the Realisation of a Universal Religion" (originally given under the more brief title "The Universal Religion") Swamiji carried one of the key messages of his Master to the West Coast of America: the innate harmony of religions and the need for variety in the many paths by which men find their way to God. "Our watchword," he said in conclusion, "will be acceptance, and not exclusion. Not only toleration, for so called toleration is often blasphemy, and I do not believe in it.... Toleration means that I think that you are wrong and I am just allowing you to live. Is it not a blasphemy to think that you and I are allowing others to live? . . . We [must] take in all that has been in the past, enjoy the light of the present, and open every window of the heart for all that will come in the future.'[43]


Although the titles of the week’s remaining classes at the Shakespeare Club were not announced in the newspapers, we learn from the following item that appeared in the Los Angeles Herald of January 26 that Thursday’s class was on the science of yoga:


Swami Vivekananda, the Oriental seer, lectured at the Shakespeare club this morning [Thursday, January 25] on "The Science of Yoga". He said that there is no difference in kind between anything in nature, but that all differences are of degree merely. The mind is the supreme power, the motor of the world.


Was it perhaps after this lecture that a man in the audience stood up and (as related by Mrs. Hansbrough) asked, "Then, Swami, what you claim is that all is good?" "By no means," Swamiji replied. "My claim is that all is not—only God is! That makes all the difference '[44]


From the Complete Works we learn that on Saturday, January 27, Swamiji closed his week’s series of classes with "My Life and Mission." Once again, though this time for amicable reasons, the ladies and gentlemen in the audience preferred to hear something less demanding of their attention than Vedanta philosophy. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, " Swamiji is quoted as having said, "the subject for this morning was to have been the Vedanta Philosophy. That subject itself is interesting, but rather dry and very vast. Meanwhile, I have been asked by your president and some of the ladies and gentlemen here to tell them something about my work and what I have been doing.'[45] The talk that followed was unlike any other that has come down to us. As Swamiji himself said, "this will have been the first time in my life that I have spoken on [this] subject." He told of the ancient tradition of monasticism in India, of Sri Ramakrishna and his teachings, of the years of hard austerity undergone by himself and his brother disciples for the sake of spreading the message of their Master. He told of the extreme, heartbreaking, undeserved, and unnecessary poverty of the Hindu people and of his plan to transform the tremendous prestige and power of the Indian monk into a force that would educate and raise the masses. And he spoke of what he and his brothers had already accomplished along this line.


In the course of this lecture, Swamiji made a surprising statement—one which gives us some insight into how he felt his work in India, and perhaps in America also, should proceed in the future: "I must tell you," he said, "that I am not a very great believer in monastic systems. They have great merits, and also great defects. There should be a perfect balance between the monastics and the householders. But monasticism has absorbed all the power in India. We represent the greatest power [and you can only work in the line of least resistance] .... But all the same so much power is not good there; better methods should be worked out.'[46]


It was also in this lecture that Swamiji struck a blow at the missionary groups, so voluble in their criticisms of his motherland. "We hear so much talk," he said, "about the sunken millions and the degraded women of India—but none come to our help. What do they say? They say, 'You can only be helped, you can only be good, by ceasing to be what you are. It is useless to help Hindus.’ These people do not know the history of races.... Take away a nation’s institutions, customs and manners, and what will be left? They hold the nation together. But here comes the very learned foreign man, and he says, 'Look here; you give up all those institutions and customs of thousands of years and take my tom fool tin pot and be happy.’ This is all nonsense.'[47]


this was one of the few times Mrs. Hansbrough had heard Swamiji use slang in his lectures, and the words, as she repeated them some forty years later "take my tom-fool tin pot and be happy! That is all you need" —had stuck indelibly in her mind, so effective, so telling had they been when he spoke them.


The impact of Swamiji’s words upon his audience is hard to measure from the printed page. A simple sentence, a turn of phrase, could carry an incalculably high charge of thought. His criticisms as well as his exhortations struck deep; and he hesitated not at all to criticize when he saw fit. "One evening as we were going home after a lecture he asked me how I liked it," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled. "He had been very outspoken that evening in criticisms of the West, and I said that I had enjoyed the lecture, but feared that he sometimes antagonised his audiences. He smiled as if that meant nothing to him. 'Madam,’ he said, 'I have cleared whole halls in New York.[48]


As far as we know, no one stalked out, indignant, from the halls of Los Angeles or Pasadena when Swamiji touched the quick of the Western ego. But inevitably he made enemies, for inevitably fraudulence and hypocrisy stood exposed in his light. Readers familiar with his first visit in America will recall that one of the weapons used against him by those who feared him was scandal mongering. In a small measure, it was the same in southern California. But Swamiji was as little disturbed by this in 1900 as he had been in 1894, perhaps even less so, for his work was now safely, unshakably established. "I think the finest gesture I ever saw him make," Mrs. Hansbrough said, "was in connection with a rumor of scandal which arose about him while he was in Los Angeles. Professor and Mrs. Baumgardt came to see him one morning, and the subject came up in conversation. They had heard of it but thought nothing of it. We were all seated in the dining room except Swamiji, who was walking slowly up and down the floor. Finally he said, 'Well, what I am is written on my brow. If you can read it, you are blessed. If you cannot, the loss is yours, not mine.[49]


Many were those who were blessed —who appreciated his greatness and who came to hear him— and his classes continued in full swing. On January 28, an item in the Los Angeles Times read: "The Swami Vivekananda lectures the past week in the rooms of the Shakespeare Club have attracted club people to a very large extent. They will be continued next week. These lectures are free and have created considerable interest in religious matters in the Orient." From an often repeated item in the Pasadena Star, as well as from lectures that have been published in the Complete Works, we can reconstruct the following schedule for this third week of Pasadena classes:


As we have seen, Swamiji lectured on Sunday, January 28, at the Universalist Church, taking as his subject "The Universal Religion." Apparently, he gave no lecture on Monday. On Tuesday evening he spoke at the Shakespeare Club on "The Aryan Race" ; on Wednesday his subject was "The Ramayana" ; on Thursday, "The Mahabharata"; on Friday, "Buddhistic India"; and on Saturday, "The Great Teachers of the World." With the exception of "The Aryan Race," transcripts of all these lectures have been published, "Buddhistic India" appearing for the first time in the Swami Vivekananda Centenary Memorial Volume (and later incorporated in the 1964 edition of the third volume of the Complete Works), and the rest in volume four of the Complete Works. In this same volume one also finds two short, undated religious legends, "Jada Bharata" and "Prahlada," both of which, as one learns from the Life, Swamiji delivered in Pasadena. There are, to be sure, four lecture mornings in Pasadena for which we have no titles and on any two of which Swamiji could have told these charming stories. (Or did he tell them during one of his informal hilltop classes, with someone taking notes?)


Swamiji was a master storyteller and often jeweled his lectures with Hindu legends, parables, and tales from the Puranas, not for the sake of adornment, but to highlight or illustrate some principle, to focus attention on some particular teaching. Rarely, however, did he devote an entire lecture to the telling of a story, and in this respect his "Mahabharata" and "Ramayana" are without parallel in the Complete Works. It should perhaps be mentioned here that they did not fall from Swamiji’s lips in the same polished style in which they appear today. Before finding their way into print they were heavily edited by Charlotte Sevier, who served for many years at Mayavati as an assistant editor of Prabuddha Bharata.


The same is not true of "Buddhistic India." As published today,[50] this lecture stands as it was taken down. All Swamiji’s fire and enthusiasm are there, immortalized, as it were, in his own informal yet powerful sentences that pour out as though a vast reservoir of ideas were pressing forward. He spoke of various socio religious problems, to which, as is clear from his then recent Bengali work, Prachya 0 Paschatya ("East and West"), he had been giving much thought. One reads, for instance, his denunciation of an excess of monasticism and, more particularly, of nonresistance as a national policy. Speaking of the spread of Buddhistic monasticism, he said: "The real cause of the downfall [of India] is here. Monasticism is all very good for a few; but when you preach it in such a fashion that every man or woman who has a mind immediately gives up social life, when you find over the whole of India monasteries, some containing a hundred thousand monks, sometimes twenty thousand monks in one building—huge, gigantic buildings, these monasteries, scattered all over India and, of course, centres of learning, and all that —who were left to procreate progeny, to continue the race? Only the weaklings. All the strong and vigorous minds went out. And then came national decay by the sheer loss of vigor. I will tell you of this marvellous brotherhood. It is great. But theory and idea is one thing and actual working is another thing. The idea is very great: practicing nonresistance and all that, but if all of us go out in the street and practice nonresistance, there would be very little left in this city. That is to say, the idea is all right, but nobody has yet found a practical solution how to attain it " 


As was the case with almost all the lectures Swamiji gave at the Shakespeare Club, "The Great Teachers of the World" was unique. While he had given, and was still to give, separate lectures on one or another of the world’s great Teachers— Krishna, Buddha, Christ, Mohammed— this lecture was, as far as is known, the only one in which he brought these Incarnations and Prophets together and pointed out the special contributions of each. He also pointed out, as he had done at other times, the divinity common to them all. "These great Teachers are the living Gods on this earth," he cried. "Whom else should we worship? : . . These divine men have been worshipped and will be worshipped so long as man is man. Therein is our faith, therein is our hope of a reality. Of what avail is a mere mystical principle! The purpose and intent of what I have to say to you is this, that I have found it possible in my life to worship all of them, and to be ready for all that are yet to come.[51]


One is tempted to go on quoting from Swamiji’s lectures, for each sentence seems to reveal some new facet of his thought, some fresh and vigorous flashing of truth. But his lectures and classes are published elsewhere for all to read, and, for the time being at least, I shall forgo further quotations.


As far as we know, Swamiji’s platform work in southern California came to an end with the close of his third week of lecturing in Pasadena. We now lose almost all knowledge of his activities for a period of nearly three weeks, at the end of which we find him (on February 22) in San Francisco. What he did during those weeks may some day come to light, but at present we can only guess. Did he remain at the Meads’ house? Did he continue his classes on the hill? Did he lecture in other small towns in southern California, making side trips here and there? His letters written during this period give us very little exact information; nor are Mrs. Hansbrough’s "Reminiscences" of much help in this respect. As for the memoirs of Josephine MacLeod, they are equally unsatisfactory, and understandably so; for on the evening of Friday, February 2, she had left Los Angeles for a short visit in San Francisco and thence, joined by Mrs. Leggett, had gone on to New York. We are, in fact, afforded only one glimpse of Swamiji’s life between February 3 and 22: it comes from the Pasadena Star of February 8. Midway down a column headed "Throop Notes" one finds the following paragraph:


The Swami Vivekananda visited the Institution Tuesday [February 6]. He was much pleased with the school, especially with the manual training department. He will probably visit the institute again soon and he may introduce sloyd into his schools in India.


The Star was referring to the Throop Polytechnic Institute and Manual Training School, founded in 1891 by Amos G. Throop. In 1900 this school, "where boys and girls might be taught to use their hands and their brains simultaneously'[52]and practice sloyd, a word that means woodworking—occupied a sturdy brownstone building across the street from the Universalist Church in Pasadena. According to its own notices in the Daily Star, the Throop Institute offered "full instruction in usual studies from fourth grade through the college. Also courses in mechanical & architectural drawing . . . wood carving, clay modeling, free hand drawing & water color, . . . sewing, cooking, wood work, forging, design and construction of machinery, [and was equipped with] Biological, Physical, Chemical and Electrical laboratories." This thoroughgoing institute, whose enrollment then numbered 308, was one of the few schools of its kind in the United States. Its influence was to spread rapidly, and it was to grow apace into what is now Pasadena’s famed California Institute of Technology, more familiarly known as "Cal Tech."


The Throop Institute represented one of the aspects of southern California that Swamiji no doubt liked—the spirit of enterprise and growth. But he liked also the area’s then prevailing atmosphere of peace, which he had more than once likened to that of India. All in all, he found Los Angeles and its vicinity a "great field" for the propagation of Vedanta. "I am going soon to work in California," he had written to Mrs. Bull on December 27 (somewhat mystifyingly, for he had already started his classes) ; "when I leave I shall send for Turiyananda and make him work on the Pacific coast. I am sure here is a great field.'[53](When Swamiji left San Francisco in June of 1900, he did indeed send for his brother monk, asking him to take charge of the new founded San Francisco Vedanta Society.)


Perhaps one of the factors that make a field great for the receipt of spiritual thought is repose of mind, and this the people of southern California had to a marked degree. Although they were up and doing, thinking of ways and means to improve both themselves and their young cities, they were not under pressure. The land stretched wide and bountiful around them; they could see far and breathe deep. They were not, on the whole, particularly beset with or concerned by the social and economic ferments that boiled and frothed in the eastern cities; nor, as individuals, were they caught up in a round of compulsive activities. The middle classes felt no inordinate, consuming desire to make money; the newly rich were not obsessed by a longing to break into an established, ironclad Society; the poor were not compelled to struggle for life itself, and few people of any class seemed driven to feed endlessly on ideas for sustenance or to attend, for this purpose, one lecture after another on any and every subject. There were, in fact, relatively few lectures to attend. But if southern California was lacking in the intellectual stimulus of, say, New York, it was rich in serenity. The slow tempo, the undemanding climate, the unfrenzied but unsluggish mood, the absence of the conflicts, tensions, and convoluted energies of a big city—and the absence, also, of a small town’s chronic self satisfaction and xenophobia—contributed to freeing the people’s minds and hearts: they could feel and dream, and they could discover, or at least suspect, that life had a dimension in depth. Many were receptive to spiritual ideals, and some had the will to pursue them. This auspicious milieu, so favorable to expansion of soul, was perhaps responsible, at least in part, for Swamiji’s assertion that California was "a great field."


He sowed it well. Some years after he had passed away, a Mrs. Annie Smith, whom he had known since the days of the Parliament of Religions, spent four years in Los Angeles and Pasadena and no doubt visited other sections of California as well. As is told in the Life, she later wrote that she had "found the spiritual seed of the Swami’s planting springing up all over the Pacific coast, for he vitalized American religions and sects, as well as Hinduism.'[54]


For many years the growth of Swamiji’s thought in southern California had no particular center of its own; it spread from mind to mind, from heart to heart, as disorganized as the spring season. This is not to say, however, that no attempt at organization had been made. As it happened, a Vedanta Society had been formed in Pasadena during Swamiji’s stay there. "It was in the rooms of the Shakespeare Club," Mrs. Hansbrough related, "that the Pasadena Society was formed. [She did not remember the date.] I had suggested it, but Swamiji had no interest in organizing. 'It won’t last,’ he said. Nevertheless, we went ahead with the project. He was present at the organization meeting, but, as I say, he was not interested in the proceedings." Those proceedings, however, had their interesting moments. "I had drawn up a set of by laws," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "which included a proposal that each member pledge to contribute to the Society for a period of ten years. Mrs. Bowler objected to this on the grounds that a member might die during the ten years. I said that that would be all right: the deceased member would then be excused from further contributions. Swamiji was greatly amused.'[55]


There is evidence that a Vedanta Society was also formed in Los Angeles,[56] and while Swamiji may have been equally lacking in enthusiasm in this regard, we can be sure that neither the society in Los Angeles nor that in Pasadena was formed without his consent. Further, although he judged that the Pasadena organization, at least, would not last, he knew that organization as such was essential to the furtherance of his Western work. "If you want to preach religion [in England or America]," he said in "My Life and Mission," "you will have to work through political methods —make organizations, societies, with voting, balloting, a president and so on, because that is the language, the method of the Western race.'[57] Nor was Swamiji altogether without hope for these Vedanta Societies, and, as always, his primary hope in this connection was for the establishment of a two way current of aid between India and America: spiritual help flowing from East to West, financial help from West to East. From New York he wrote on July 25, 1900, to his brother monk Swami Turiyananda, who had just spent two weeks in southern California before going on to San Francisco, "Revive the clubs a bit and ask Mrs. Hansbrough to collect the dues as they fall and send them to India:[58] And again from Paris he wrote, "Don’t be indifferent to the question of sending money to the Math. See that money goes certainly every month from Los Angeles and San Francisco.'[59](Swamiji’s use of the plural "clubs" in the first quotation indicates that a Vedanta Society had indeed been formed in Los Angeles as well as in Pasadena. The word Los Angeles in his second letter, however, did not necessarily refer to the city of Los Angeles. Then as now, the name was often used to designate a general area.)


For a number of years the "clubs" survived, and, as we learn from a short letter Swamiji was to write from India in June of 1901, the members made at least one contribution to the Math. Swamiji’s letter, which has not been heretofore published, read in full as follows:

The Math
3rd June, 1901
Howrah Dist., Bengal, India


Dear Mrs Hansbrough —the contribution of six pounds and three shillings to the Math by the Los Angeles club has duly reached. Swami Brahmananda will write to you a separate acknowledgement. But as I happen to be here just now and have not had long any direct communication with you— I feel like having a chat with you —like of yore even though it be through the post. Now how are you and the Baby and the holy Trinity and the oldest who brings up the rear? [Grandfather Mead?]


How are all our Los Angeles friends? Poor Mrs Bowler I hear has passed away —she was an angel. Where is Miss Strickny —please tender her my sincerest love, gratitude and prayers when you meet her next.


How are all the San Francisco friends? How is our Madame [Mrs. Benjamin Aspinall] —the noble, the unselfish? What is she doing now? Quietly gone back to her Home of Truth work?


Are you pleased with Turiyananda and his work— is the [Shanti] Asrama progressing?

With everlasting love and blessings

Ever yours in the Lord[60]
Vivekananda


(Of Mrs. Aspinall and Shanti Ashrama there will be more in later chapters.)

Just when the Los Angeles and Pasadena Vedanta societies died out is not certain; they seem, however, not to have lasted beyond 1918, if, indeed, they reached that year. But, as said above, the seeds of Vedanta that Swamiji had sown went on germinating, and eventually, when the time was ripe, a strong and permanent Vedanta Society, founded in 1930 by Swami Prabhavananda, a monk of the Ramakrishna Order, grew up in southern California and is today not only flourishing, but through the publication of a magazine, Vedanta and the West (at present suspended), as well as of many Vedantic books, has been circulating a knowledge of Vedanta throughout the United States.


4

Even if Swamiji had done no platform work in southern California but had simply moved among the people, simply lived and meditated in that land, his quickening influence would no doubt have spread, subtly but surely, for such was his spiritual power. Yet Swamiji did speak from the platforms of Los Angeles and Pasadena. He gave a message; and it will not do to close this chapter on his life and work in southern California without asking ourselves what, specifically, that message was. What was it he wanted to accomplish? Was he repeating on the Pacific Coast what he had taught during his first visit to the West, giving the same message in slightly different language to people who had not heard it before, and creating, as it were, a new center from which that message would spread? Yes, he was doing these things. But knowing Swamiji, one cannot rest satisfied with this interpretation alone.

He was anything but static. True, his basic purpose remained constant throughout his mission: "My ideal can indeed be put into a few words," he once wrote in reply to a question, "and that is to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life.'[61]But the concepts that flowed like a living force from that single ideal were as endless in variety as the people to whom he gave them and the circumstances to which he applied them: Further, as Swamiji saw more and more of the multi-leveled needs of this world, his ideas of how best to fill those needs changed in both emphasis and expression. In the responsibility of his mission, never did he cease to agonize over the sufferings of man, and never did he cease to examine and reexamine his own concepts. Only three years had elapsed since he had left London at the close of 1896; yet in the course of those years how much had he not felt and thought! Even excluding the profound spiritual states he had known, one can still say that a world of experience separated his first and second visits to the West, and unless we think of him as stone (and we cannot), we cannot think that he would be saying exactly the same things in exactly the same way after his Indian mission as before.

Moreover, in California Swamiji, aware of his approaching death, knew he was giving his last public message to the Western people. It would seem inevitable, therefore, that he would deliver what he considered to be his essential teachings, that he would emphasize what he had come to feel was most important and give from his heart the heart of his mission. Indeed, when he was in the Bay Area, he was heard to say that he gave his highest teachings in California. When we take this statement in conjunction with another that he also made in California— "I only preach what is good for universal humanity[62]"— we cannot think that by "highest teachings" Swami meant something that applied only to a few highly advanced souls. It would seem, then, that this period of his mission was an exceedingly significant one, representing, in a sense, the essence of his teaching to all men everywhere; and it would seem well worth our while to ask what it was, specifically, that he emphasized. This question, of course, cannot be fully answered without taking into consideration his work in northern California, which was to follow, as well as that in southern California, and thus the scope of this present chapter precludes even an attempt at a full discussion. But through an analysis of his work in Los Angeles and Pasadena we should be able to make a beginning and to discover at least the general trend of his last words to us.

No doubt if we possessed transcripts of all Swamiji’s talks in southern California, the distinguishing mark of his work there would at once be obvious. Unfortunately, however, we have relatively few published lectures, and while several of these take their place among his most inspired and most valuable, and while some contain ideas not to be found elsewhere in the Complete Works, they do not by themselves enable us to come to a conclusion regarding the special nature of his work. To arrive at such a conclusion, we must take into account not only Swamiji’s published lectures and classes but the titles (or the presumed subject matter) of those whose texts are lost to us. Thanks to the old Los Angeles newspapers, we are in a position to do this.

During his eight weeks of work in Las Angeles and Pasadena (December 8 to February 3) Swamiji gave, or intended to give, at least thirty-eight lectures and class talks. This number does’ not include his talk at Mrs. Severance’s reception or his lecture on Persian art at the Shakespeare Club; nor does it include private talks in the homes of his friends, such as that mentioned by Mrs. Leggett in her letter of January 12 to her husband, or the picnic classes on the hill in South Pasadena; nor does it, of course, include possible public lectures and classes of which we have no record at all. It does, however, include the two canceled lectures in his second series of "Applied Psychology," for we are interested here in Swamiji’s intent, the trend of his thought, rather than in the incidents of his life.

Of these thirty-eight talks we know the titles, or at least the intended subject matter, of thirty-two; and of these thirty-two we have fourteen published transcripts and three fairly long newspaper reports (given earlier in full). While this information is admittedly not complete, it is not scanty, and it should, I think, provide us with a representative view of Swamiji’s teachings during this period.

Breaking down our thirty-two titles according to subject, we find that he gave six lectures on the history, customs, and religion of India; five on religious legends (including "Jada Bharata" and "Prahlada"); three on the world’s great Teachers (including two on Christ) ; two on the ideal of a universal religion; one on Vedantic cosmology; one entitled "My Life and Mission"; one on "Reincarnation"; and an intended thirteen on practical spirituality, one of which was devoted to Karma yoga ("What Brings Success"), one to Jnana yoga ("We Ourselves"), one to Bhakti yoga, and ten (two of which were canceled) to Raja yoga.

It is interesting to note—although this does not relate to our major theme—that Swamiji gave six lectures on India (three in Los Angeles and three in Pasadena). Long had it been since he had dealt specifically with this subject in the West; indeed, roughly speaking, he had not done so since his mid-western and eastern lecture tours, which had ended at the beginning of 1895. In those days, as we have mentioned before, Swamiji’s purpose had been to destroy, root and branch, the misconceptions and misinterpretations of Hindu customs and religion then growing wild in America. This purpose had been served. Yet, one cannot forget that the people of southern California were, for the most part, children of the Midwest, over which religious prejudice hung like a heavy fog. Some had come trailing clouds of it, and the old fascination with heathen "idolatry" and the supposed ill-treatment of Hindu women was still upon them. In Pasadena, for instance, a missionary had returned from a reconnaissance trip to India full of gossip. Why, women had been seen prostrated before idols praying for the birth of a child! she was informing aghast church groups. Swamiji may have felt that a little correct information in regard to Indian customs and religion would not be out of place in southern California. One also finds him (in his lecture "Hints on Practical Spirituality") stressing the need for broadness and fairness of mind in the judgment of others. He was not talking, we can be sure, without purpose. On the other hand, there is no reason not to think that at least some of his lectures on India were given in response to a friendly interest in his country. Particularly would this seem true of "The Aryan Race" and "Buddhistic India," both delivered at the Shakespeare Club.

Yet, there was perhaps another and more important reason for these talks than the interest of his listeners. As any careful reader of the Life will have noticed, Swamiji’s thought came back again and again— whatever his other concerns and occupations— to that object of his love, India. He was a profound student of his country; not only had he read extensively about its history, he had wandered after the death of his Master over the vast subcontinent, from north to south, east to west. Nor had his been a superficial wandering: he had observed deeply, analyzed, pondered; he had studied his country thoroughly— its past, its present, its possible future. Although in various memoirs and letters of that period one finds some expressions of his views, one cannot say definitely what thoughts about India he had formed in those early days. It is from the long letters he wrote to his brother monks and friends during his first visit to the West that we learn the conclusions he arrived at. There he gave not only his conception of the problems of his country, but also his ideas of how she could solve those problems and rise to a glory more lustrous, more world-illumining than any she had known.

After Swamiji returned to India at the beginning of 1897, he set about putting his ideas into effect, organizing, as we have seen, the Ramakrishna Monastery on a firm basis and founding the Ramakrishna Mission— agencies through which his thought was to bear tangible and enduring fruit. But he had not yet finished studying India. Again he wandered here and there, giving lectures, visiting holy places, observing, pondering. He told many of his ideas of this period to Sister Nivedita, and it is through her books that one can learn his findings. There seems to have been scarcely a topic important to his country’s welfare that he did not dwell upon; indeed, by the time Swamiji was ready to leave his motherland in 1899 he appears to have once again studied her current problems thoroughly, both in breadth and in depth, and to have given his final conclusions.

One would not, I think, be wrong in saying that as he sailed west he now fondly turned his mind to the past, to various periods of India’s ancient history. To judge again from Nivedita’s writings, he seems to have revolved the religious, cultural, and social problems of early times around and around in his thoughts, as though to shine his insight on all aspects of them, bringing their significance for the past, the present, and the future into full view. Thus one cannot think that it was simply for the pleasure and edification of the people of Pasadena that Swamiji spoke on Aryan India, on Buddhistic India, and on the India of the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Puranas. Rather, one cannot but believe that he chose these subjects (and, later on in San Francisco, the India of the Bhagavad Gita) because they were clamoring in his mind for formal expression—for resolution. As I mentioned earlier, the transcripts of his lectures "The Ramayana" and "The Mahabharata" were among those that were heavily edited by Mrs. Sevier—written over in red ink in her hand. The results are smooth flowing, charmingly told tales; but it was all but impossible, as students of Swamiji’s lectures and conversations well know, for him to dwell on the ancient, heroic legends of his country without giving them a turn and significance of his own. One suspects that much flavour and many "digressions" in which lay a wealth of thought have been deleted from the published versions of these talks. But however that may be, Swamiji’s available and relatively unedited lectures on India’s history (notably "Buddhistic India" and "The Gita—I") suffice to show how strong and persistent was the historical trend of his thought in California. Later on, he seems to have dwelt no longer on India’s past. It was as though he had given voice to all that had stirred in his mind and heart in connection with his adored motherland and was then satisfied, at peace.

But to return to the main stream of Swamiji’s thought in southern California, one thing that is strikingly clear in the above classification of his lectures is that he devoted almost none to philosophy as such. He did not give, as he had on the East Coast and in London, any detailed, closely reasoned, and well organized philosophical discourses on Vedanta; he did not discuss at any length the three aspects, or stages, of Vedantic thought; he did not devote a lecture to a philosophical exposition of Advaita; he did not expound the theory of Maya; he did not attempt to reconcile science and religion; he did not discuss Sankhya psychology in any detail, nor did he dwell on Vedantic cosmology. (It is true that he gave one lecture on this last subject—his second lecture in Los Angeles, "The Cosmos," or "Kosmos." But this was delivered under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences and was the natural subject to choose for that assembly. As far as we know, he did not lecture on it again or mention it at any length.) In short, one finds that whatever Swamiji’s purpose in southern California may have been, it was not to present Vedanta as the rational solution to the sociological, psychological, moral, and theological dilemmas of the modern world. In 1895 and 1896 he had given in detail his exegesis of Vedanta. There was no need to repeat it. Nor, one thinks, was he in a mood to repeat it, for another theme was dominant in his mind.

When his ship, the Golconda, had left Calcutta he had exclaimed to Sister Nivedita as we have seen, "Yes! 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 great scale!'[63]This "gospel," this conviction that in manliness lay the key to all achievement, spiritual and secular alike, was actually not new with Swamiji. Often he had voiced it during his first visit to the West. Yet his experience in India, his heartbroken witnessing of the failure of the Hindu people, sunk in the "virtuousness of death," to bestir themselves, had no doubt brought this particular aspect of his thought to a sharp, compelling focus.


It did not fade in prominence or vigor as he reached America. As Miss MacLeod wrote to Mrs. Bull from Ridgely Manor: "Swamiji is blessed and has his new message ready that— all there is in life is character, that Buddhas and Christs do more harm than good— for mankind is trying to imitate them—instead of developing its own character!'[64]And to Nivedita from Los Angeles, "Swami said today that he is beginning to see the needs of humanity in quite a different light—that he is already sure of the principle that is to help but is spending hours every day in trying to solve the methods. That what he had known hitherto is for men living in a cave —alone —undisturbed but now he will give Humanity something that will make for strength in the stress of daily life.'[65]In these quotations from Sister Nivedita and Josphine MacLeod lies the clue, if one needs a clue, to the central theme running through Swamiji’s .mission in California. But his lectures, in fact, speak for themselves.


In Los Angeles, Swamiji held, or intended to hold, two series of three classes each on "Applied Psychology," which was, of course, Raja yoga, or some aspects of it. Another series, "The Mind and Its Powers," included at least three classes on Raja yoga: "Theory of Concentration," "Practice of Concentration," and "Spiritual Breathing." In addition, he held a class in Pasadena entitled "The Science of Yoga." In short, as we have noted before, he intended to devote ten talks to Raja yoga—many more than to any other subject and many more proportionately than during his first visit to the West. One is inclined to think that in laying so much stress on the theory and practice of yoga Swamiji had a definite purpose in mind and that this purpose was, in a word, "man making." In consonance with his "new gospel" he wanted to make man his own master, to teach him to be in full control of his body and mind, to give him self-confidence, to show him how to draw forth from within himself, by himself, all powers of earth and heaven and, step by step, to realize ultimately his identity with the infinite Spirit —Brahman. That this was the import of Swamiji’s emphasis on Raja yoga can be gathered from the two transcripts available to us: "Hints on Practical Spirituality" ("Spiritual Breathing"?) and "The Powers of the Mind." In both these classes his purpose is clearly stated; in fact, they serve as keys to the message uppermost in his mind.


In "Hints on Practical Spirituality" he explained briefly the methods of gaining control over one’s mind from top to bottom, conscious and unconscious. "The great task," he said, "is to revive the whole man, as it were, in order to make him the complete master of himself. " But control of the conscious and unconscious mind was only the first part of the study. The next part was to go beyond the conscious. "Just as unconscious work is beneath consciousness, so there is another work which is above consciousness. When this superconscious state is reached, man becomes free and divine; death becomes immortality, weakness becomes infinite power, and iron bondage becomes liberty. That is the goal, the infinite realm of the superconscious.'[66]


In "The Powers of the Mind," the last class that Swamiji held in the city of Los Angeles, he stated his purpose in teaching the science of yoga even more clearly: "What you call the personal magnetism of the man, that is what goes out and impresses you. . . . It is the real man, the personality of the man, that runs through us. Our actions are but effects. Actions must come when the man is there; the effect is bound to follow the cause. The ideal of all education, all training, should be this man making.... The end and aim of all training is to make the man grow. The man who influences, who throws his magic, as it were, upon his fellow beings, is a dynamo of power, and when that man is ready, he can do anything and everything he likes; that personality put upon anything will make it work.... The science of Yoga claims that it has discovered the laws which develop this personality, and by proper attention to those laws and methods, each one can grow and strengthen his personality.'[67] "The utility of this science, " he continued in a key passage, "is to bring out the perfect man, and not let him wait and wait for ages, just a plaything in the hands of the physical world, like a log of drift wood carried from wave to wave and tossing about in the ocean. This science wants you to be strong, to take the work in your own hand, instead of leaving it in the hands of nature, and get beyond this little life. That is the great idea.'[68]

To do justice to Swamiji’s theme in his two published classes on yoga, one would have to quote both almost in their entirety. But it is perhaps clear from the above that the development, or, rather, the drawing forth, of the perfect man was the goal he set before his listeners; and the development of self-control, self-confidence, and self-mastery was the basic means to that goal. From start to finish from simple breathing exercises, to deep meditation, to the attainment of super consciousness—man, where he stood at any given time, was the means, and man, infinite and eternal, was the end.


In Pasadena Swamiji held, as far as we know, only one class on the science of yoga, and of this we have no transcript. However, from its brief mention in the Los Angeles Herald (given in the previous section) it is clear that he again dealt with the mind and its powers, again laid emphasis on man’s potential sovereignty: "The mind," he said, "is the supreme power, the motor of the world."


While Swamiji seems clearly to have felt that the science of yoga was the quickest and surest way to the making of a man, he did not confine his "new message" to his Kaja yoga classes, Inevitably, it pervaded almost all his work in southern California. As far as we know, he gave one class each on karma yoga and Jnana yoga though he did not so label them. While these classes "What Brings Success" and "We Ourselves" (entitled, respectively, in the Complete Works "Work and Its Secret" and "The Open Secret") —cannot, strictly speaking, be classified under the science of man making, man making was their pervasive theme. In "What Brings Success" Swamiji’s emphasis lay on the means to perfection: on self effort, self-reliance, self-mastery, on the power of attachment and the power of detachment, and, above all, on selflessness. In short, his stress was on the strengthening of moral character. "Let us perfect the means," he cried at the close; "the end will take care of itself. For the world can be good and pure, only if our lives are good and pure. It is an effect, and we are the means. Therefore, let us purify ourselves. Let us make ourselves perfect.'[69]


Again, the path was not an easy one. "I know the difficulties," he said. "Tremendous they are, . . . we require super-divine power. Super human power is not strong enough. Super divine strength is the only way, the one way out." But super divine strength was not beyond man’s capacity. "It is very difficult," Swamiji continued, "but we can overcome the difficulty by constant practice. We must learn that nothing can happen to us, unless we make ourselves susceptible to it.... This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon any one outside, but be a man, stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true. Get hold of yourself.'[70]


In "We Ourselves," Swamiji stressed the goal and the certainty of its attainment. Here lay the crux of his message, and it rang out like an anthem. If the cause of man’s failures lies within himself and nowhere else, hope and victory lie there too and nowhere else. "The Infinite Being is also the same finite soul. The Infinite is caught, as it were, in the meshes of the intellect and apparently manifests as finite beings, but the reality remains unchanged. This is, therefore, true knowledge: that the Soul of our souls, the Reality that is within us, is That which is unchangeable, eternal, ever blessed, ever free.... Therefore, there is hope for all. None can die; none can be degraded forever. Life is but a playground, however gross the play may be. However we may receive blows, and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite.... Be not afraid. Think not how many times you fail. Never mind. Time is infinite. Go forward: assert yourself again and again, and light must come.... Get hold of the Self, then. Stand up. Don’t be afraid. In the midst of all miseries and all weakness, let the Self come out, faint and imperceptible though it be at first. You will gain courage, and at last like a lion you will roar out, 'I am He! I am He!'[71]


"Get hold of yourself!" Swamiji urged in "What Brings Success." In "We Ourselves" he cried, "Get hold of the Self!" These two exhortations, interlocked, constituted in essence his religion of man making.


(We have no transcript or report of Swamiji’s only known lecture in southern California on "Bhakti Yoga, or the Religion of Love," which he gave at the Hotel Green. This is regrettable, as a talk on the path of devotion might seem to be an anomaly in the midst of so much emphasis on self-reliance and self-discovery. Actually, however, there was no incompatibility between Swamiji’s teaching of Bhakti yoga and his call for self mastery. His effort, in fact, had always been to cleanse the path of love, or devotion, of all weakness, fatuity, and beggarliness. Weakness in any form or guise was his despair. In India, probably shortly before he left for the West, he had said in sorrow to a narrow hearted devotee, "Can anyone, my dear friend, have faith or resignation in the Lord, unless he himself is a hero?")[72]


Swamiji’s "new gospel" was not only explicit in his classes in southern California, but implicit in many of his lectures. (By "lectures" I mean all the talks that do not fall within the category of classes on spiritual practice even though some of these "lectures" may actually have been class talks.) As the reader will have noticed, a number of Swamiji’s lectures (in the sense explained) were not new in subject matter or treatment. With the exception, in fact, of his two talks on Christ, all of his known lectures in Los Angeles were, as far as can be judged from newspaper reports, similar to lectures he had given elsewhere. The opposite was true in Pasadena. There, with the exception of his two talks on the ideal of a universal religion, each of his known lectures was unique in one way or another: one finds nothing quite like them elsewhere in the Complete Works.


Swamiji’s selection of subjects in Pasadena may have been guided, to some extent, by the likes and dislikes of the members of the Shakespeare Club, who seem on the whole to have preferred stories to philosophy. But if his subjects and language were tuned to the ear of his listeners, the thought he conveyed was, of course, entirely a matter of his own choice. Indeed, he may have welcomed fresh and plastic forms upon which his "new message" could imprint itself more readily than upon forms conceived and developed to carry a different theme. In any event, it is in his new and unusual lectures that one finds the imprint of his man-making religion most sharply defined.


Perhaps the most striking examples of this are his lectures on Prophets and Divine Incarnations, namely, "Christ, the Messenger," "The Great Teachers of the World," and, in part, "Buddhistic India," which last we shall include in this category at present for the sake of convenience.


A question that may well have arisen in the minds of Swamiji’s listeners was what part the Saviors of the world played in man’s independent, self-propelled, and bold journey to Self realization. This question Swamiji answered by his very choice of words: he did not call them "Saviors"; he called them "Teachers" or "Messengers." He could also have used the word "Exemplars," for they stand as the ideal, as he had said in "The Powers of the Mind," "towards which the whole [human race] is moving.'[73] "We can grasp an idea only when it comes to us through a materialized ideal person," he now said in "The Great Teachers of the World." "We can understand the precept only through the example. Would to god that all of us were so developed that we would not require any example, would not require any person. But that we are not; and, naturally, the vast majority of mankind have put their souls at the feet of these extraordinary personalities, the Prophets, the Incarnations of God Incarnations worshipped by the Christians, by the Buddhists, and by the Hindus.'[74] Again, it is only through such Incarnations that man can form some conception of God. " 'No man hath seen God at any time, but through the Son.’ And that is true," Swamiji said in "Christ, the Messenger." "And where shall we see God but in the Son? It is true that you and I and the poorest of us, the meanest even, embody that God, even reflect that God. The vibration of light is everywhere, omnipresent; but we have to strike the light of the lamp before we can see the light. The Omnipresent God of the universe cannot be seen until He is reflected by these giant lamps of the earth— the Prophets, the man-Gods; the Incarnations, the embodiments of God.'[75]


Every Prophet and Incarnation the world has known was to be worshiped and loved as the highest ideal, "higher than all our conceptions of God"; but he was not to be abjectly followed, not superficially and mechanically imitated; for thereby the ideal, the great, shining life, was itself betrayed. Again one hears, through Miss MacLeod, his words at Ridgely Manor, "Buddhas and Christs do more harm than good—for mankind is trying to imitate them instead of developing its own character." "Think something!" he now cried in "The Great Teachers." "There is a tendency in us to revert to old ideas in religion. Let us think something new, even if it be wrong. It is better to do that. Why should you not try to hit the mark? . . . The cow never tells a lie, but she remains a cow, all the time. Do something! Think some thought; it doesn’t matter whether you are right or wrong. But think something! Because my forefathers did not think this way, shall I sit down quietly and gradually lose my sense of feeling and my own thinking faculties? I may as well be dead! . . . So think something! Struggle Godward! . . . Light must come.'[76]


As a teacher and exemplifier of the doctrine of man’s innate ability to save himself, Buddha was, to Swamiji, perhaps the greatest Incarnation of all. In the midst of his lecture on "Buddhistic India" he became suddenly caught up in the magnificence of the man—he who had personified manliness at its highest. "Those last dying words of his always thrilled through my heart," he said. And telling of Buddha’s last hours, he paraphrased his last message: " 'Weep not for me. Think not for me. I am gone. Work out diligently your own salvation. Each one of you is just what I am. I am nothing but one of you. What I am today is what I made myself. Do you struggle and make yourselves what I am.... Believe not because an old book is produced as an authority. Believe not because your fathers said [you should] believe the same. Believe not because other people like you believe it. Test everything, try everything, and then believe it, and if you find it for the good of many, give it to all.’ "


"See the sanity of the man, " Swamiji continued. "No gods, no angels, no demons—nobody. Nothing of the kind. Stern, sane, every brain cell perfect and complete, even at the moment of death. No delusion. I do not agree with many of his doctrines. You may not. But in my opinion— oh, if I had only one drop of that strength! The sanest philosopher the world ever saw. Its best and sanest teacher.... Have no God [Buddha said]; have no soul; stand on your feet and do good for good’s sake—neither for fear of punishment nor for [the sake of] going anywhere. Stand sane and motiveless. The motive is: I want to do good, it is good to do good. Tremendous! Tremendous!'[77]


There stood the ideal—except that to Swamiji the source and ground of such manliness, and its goal as well, lay in the very thing Buddha denied: the permanent Self, "the real man, the infinite, the beginningless, the endless, the ever-blessed, the eve -free.'[78]


But though Swamiji differed in philosophy from Buddha, he was as realistic and bold a thinker as Buddha ever was, and like Buddha, he was intensely practical, directing more attention to the means than to the end. This aspect of his teaching was indeed part and parcel of "man-making." In "What Brings Success," one hears him say with Bhddha like sanity, "Our great defect in life is that we are so much drawn to the ideal, the goal is so much more enchanting, so much more alluring, so much bigger in our mental horizon, that we lose sight of the details altogether. . . . We forget that it is the cause that produces the effect; the effect cannot come by itself; and unless the causes are exact, proper, and powerful, the effect will not be produced. Once the ideal is chosen and the means determined, we may almost let go the ideal, because we are sure it will be there when the means are perfected.'[79] Swamiji never played with ideals, nor allowed anyone else to do so. "Why should I pay so much attention to my body?" Mrs. Hansbrough once asked him in Los Angeles, objecting, perhaps, to the early steps of spiritual practice. "It is only an old coat" "All right," he replied, "let me see you throw it off like an old coat. Then I will listen to you. You do not know what you are talking about '[80]


"The Great Teachers of the World" was Swamiji’s last known lecture in southern California, and his closing words of that lecture were resounding ones, containing the very heart of his message: "Each one of these Teachers has been great; each one has left something for us; they have been our Gods. We salute them, we are their servants; and, all the same, we salute ourselves; for if they have been Prophets and children of God, we also are the same. They reached their perfection, and we are going to attain ours now. Remember the words of Jesus: 'The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!’ This very moment let every one of us make a staunch resolution: 'I will become a Prophet, I will become a messenger of Light, I will become a child of God, nay, I will become a God!’'[81]


With those stirring words, behind which lay who can guess what power, Swamiji said good bye to the people of southern California. At least, as far as we know, those were the last words he spoke from the platforms of that land.


One might say, correctly, that most of the things Swamiji said in southern California he had said before at one time or another. His teachings there were not brand new; nor was he some other person. He was still teaching the basic unity of religions and the need for a variety of sects; he was still teaching that God incarnates Himself on earth many times; he was still teaching that religion is the realization of God, nothing less, and that man is divine Spirit, nothing less. And certainly his teaching of self reliance was not new; it had sounded from many a platform during his first visit to the West. The newness of Swamiji’s message in southern California lay in his selection of certain ideas and ideals and in his concentrated emphasis upon them. His energies had gathered, as it were, behind those ideas, giving them the spearhead quality and immediacy of a "new gospel."


But as was mentioned at the outset, a full and clear picture of Swamiji’s work in California cannot be gained without taking into account his teachings in northern California. It was not until he began lecturing in San Francisco and the Bay Area that the line of thought we have been trying to trace grew in power and substance and that his last message to the West sounded forth with unmistakable clarity. But this is a subject belonging to a later chapter.


Just as Swamiji’s work in southern California marked the beginning of a new, and final, phase in his teaching mission, so his stay there marked a turning point, or rather the beginning of a transitional period, in his life. He began during those weeks to move from active leadership in the organizational aspect of his work toward retirement, from an intense, often impatient, and always powerful, expenditure of energy toward the profound serenity that was to characterize his last two years on earth. It is not that Swamiji was to change in any basic way. However active he may have been at any given time, the larger part of his mind had always been steeped in the consciousness of God. Indeed, throughout his life Swamiji was actually more contemplative than active. "Narendra is a great soul," Sri Ramakrishna had said of him not long after their first meeting, "perfect in meditation.'[82] And how often was not Swamiji lost in samadhi! Reading of how much he accomplished in so short a time, one sometimes thinks of him as the "cyclonic" monk, forgetting that he worked with his mind always in a state bordering on profound meditation. His was the power to act with hurricane intensity from a level of intense stillnes—a power (and an agony, as well) given only to World Teachers and World Movers. And such he was. But the hurricane was now over. One can perhaps liken Swamiji to a vast ocean, ever serene in its depths, yet lashed on its surface from time to time into towering waves. The force of his compassion had driven him to inundate the world with spirituality, and never had the waves of his mission been higher, more massive than during his two years of work in India—and never had their thunderous breaking against the cliffs of the world been more painful, physically and mentally, to Swamiji himself. He had accomplished his task. And now in Los Angeles, and particularly it would seem in Pasadena, the waters, to speak still in metaphor, were beginning to subside to their natural state of calm, leveling out into the expanse of a horizonless sea. As his health improved, as he earned money for the relief of the Math, as he found peace in teaching, and, above all, as he knew with an inner certainty that the main part of his work was done, his mind gravitated toward retirement; and retirement for Swamiji—what could it mean but a return to that absolute, unconditioned freedom whence he had come? In the months that were to follow, he was to move further and further toward that peace, "the eternal Silence." But even at the end of his stay in southern California the wounds, for they were indeed wounds, sustained during his mission were healing. "I have one other gain more than even health," he wrote to Sister Christine on January 24. "I am no more despondent. I am perfectly resigned.'[83] And to Sister Nivedita he could write, "I am strong now, Margo, stronger than ever I was mentally. I was mentally getting a sort of ironing over my heart. I am getting nearer a Sannyasin’s life now.'[84] And to Mrs. Bull he wrote on the same day (February 15), "I have not done much work, but my heart is growing stronger every day, physically and mentally. Some days I feel I can bear everything and suffer everything.... I can always work better alone, and am physically and mentally best when entirely alone! I scarcely had a day’s illness during my eight years of lone life away from my brethren. Now I am again getting up, being alone. Strange, but that is what Mother wants me to be. 'Wandering alone like the rhinoceros’.. .. I am so ashamed of myself of this display of weakness for the last two years! Glad it is ended.'[85]


Less than a week after writing the above, Swamiji left southern California for the city of San Francisco, some four hundred miles to the north.


ⓘ
[1] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC.
[2] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC
[3] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC
[4] Brahmacharini Usha [Pravrajika Anandaprana], “Swamiji in Southern California,” V and W, 158 (November December 1962): 55
[5] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[6] Josephine MacLeod to Nivedita, December 15, 1899, SCB.
[7] Pasadena Daily Star, 6 February 1900.
[8] Besse Leggett to Francis Leggett, January 11, 1899, Leg. Col.
[9] Complete Works, 3 : 23.
[10] Complete Work, 8 : 489.
[11] See ref. 4 above, p. 56.
[12] Complete Work., p. 57.
[13] Complete Works, 8 : 485.
[14] Complete Work p. 484. (This letter appears to be wrongly dated in the Complete Works.)
[15] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Nivedita, undated. Udbodhan Office, Calcutta.
[16] Complete Works, 6 : 425.
[17] Swami Vivekananda, In Search of God and Other Poems, enl. 2d ed. (1968), p. 26.
[18] Rem. (SisterNivedita), pp.287 88.
[19] See ref. 4 above, p. 57.
[20] See ref. 4 above, p. 57.    
[21] Josephine MacLeod to Mary Hale, February 25, 1900, SN Col.
[22] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[23] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”   
[24] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[25] Swami Vivekananda to Alice Hansbrough, month unknown, 1900, VSNC.
[26] Pasadena Daily Star, 2 January 1902. (Actually, Pasadena is an American Indian name meaning “Crown of the Valley.”)
[27] Complete Works, 8 : 484.
[28] Pasadena Daily Star, 15 January 1900.
[29] Quoted in “The Grand Resorts,” Fortnight, 18 (January 5,1955): 44.
[30] Besse Leggett to Francis Leggett, January 19, 1900, Leg. Col.
[31] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[32] Complete Works, 8 : 53 54.
[33] Complete Works., p. 58.
[34] Complete Works,P  55 .
[35] Complete Works, P.  70
[36]Complete Works, pp. 71 72.
[37] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[38] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”   
[39] Prophetic Mission—1, chaps. 4 through 8; Prophetic Mission—2, chaps. 10 and 13.
[40] John W. Wood, Pasadena—Historical and Personal, p. 479.
[41] Shakespeare Club Year Book, Pasadena, 1900.
[42] Pasadena Daily Star, 16 January 1900, et seqq.
[43] Complete Works, 2 : 374
[44] Quoted from Josephine MacLeod to Alberta Sturges (Countess of Sandwich), March 16,1914, courtesy of Lady Faith Culme Seymour through Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre, England.
[45] Complete Works, 8 : 73.
[46] Complete Works., 8 : 89.
[47] Complete Works,p. 87.
[48] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[49] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”   
[50] Swami Vivekananda Centenary Memorial Volume (Calcutta: Swami Vivekananda Centenary, 1963), pp. xxi xliii. Also Complete Works, 9th ed. (1964), 3 : 511 37.
[51] Complete Works, 4 : 124 25.
[52] J. W. Wood, op. cit., p. 299.
[53] Complete Works, 8 : 486.
[54] Life (1981), 2 : 536.
[55] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[56] See P.B., August 1903, p. 148; P.B., May 1917, pp. 94 96.
[57] Complete Works, 8 : 77.
[58] Complete Works, p. 529.
[59] Complete Works   P 531 .
[60] Swami Vivekananda to Alice Hansbrough, June 3,  1901,VSNC.
[61] Complete Works, 7 : 498.
[62] Complete Works,., 8 : 523.
[63] The Master, p. 175.
[64] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull,. September 3, 1899, SCB.
[65] Quoted in Sister Nivedita to Sister Christine, January 27, 1900, Sen Col.
[66] Complete Works, 2 : 35.
[67] Complete Works,., pp. 14 15.
[68] Complete Works, p. 19.
[69] Complete Works,    p. 9 .
[70] Complete Works,pp. 6 8 passim.
[71] Complete Works,pp. 401 4.
[72] Talks with Swami Vivekananda, p. 328.
[73] Complete Works, 2:18.
[74] Complete Works,., 4 : 121.
[75] Complete Works,P  139.
[76] Complete Works, pp. 126 27.
[77] See ref. 50 above; P.B., 69 (July 1964): 287.
[78] Complete Works, 2 : 32.
[79] Complete Works,., p. 1.
[80] As told to Edna C. Zulch by Alice Hansbrough, March 16, 1941.
[81] Complete Works, 4: 134.
[82] Swami Saradananda, Sri Ramakrishna the Great Master, trans. Swami Jagadananda, 2d ed. (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1952), p. 74
[83] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, January 24, 1900, Sen Col.
[84] Complete Works, 6 : 424 25.
[85] Complete Works,, 8 : 491 92.

↑ Contents

5.7 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: A NEW GOSPEL-I

In the twilight of Thursday, February 22, 1900, Swami Vivekananda, after traveling a night and a day from Los Angeles, alighted from a Southern Pacific train at the Oakland mole. Mrs. Hansbrough, who had come north a week earlier, was there to meet him, and together they boarded a waiting ferryboat for the twenty-minute trip across the Bay. As the boat neared the western shore, Swamiji, surely standing awhile in the salty wind of the deck, looked for the first time upon the massed hills of San Francisco that rose, sprinkled now with lights, behind the tall, gray stone tower of the new Ferry Building. Arriving at the wharf, the ferry, backing water, bumped and creaked against the piles of its slip, sea gulls rose protesting into the air, and with a rattle and clank of chains a wooden ramp was lowered onto the boat’s wide bow. Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough disembarked, passed with the tramping crowd through the Ferry Building, and emerged into bedlam. Streetcars, both cable- and horse-drawn, hotel buses, and hackney cabs jammed the Embarcadero at the foot of Market Street; and shouting newsboys, peddlers, agents, cabbies, and redcaps swarmed around the new arrivals, each demanding full attention. Mrs. Hansbrough no doubt fended off this clamorous assault, helped Swamiji claim his luggage, and chose a cab that would take them quickly, the horse clopping over cobbled streets, into the quiet depths of the darkening city. Their destination was the Home of Truth, housed on Pine Street between Hyde and Leavenworth, on the lower southwest slope of Nob Hill. There Mrs. Hansbrough had arranged for Swamiji to stay, and there dinner now awaited him.

The world to which Swamiji had come was a very different one from that of southern California. The city of San Francisco, unlike Los Angeles of the period, was a true city, cosmopolitan, urbane, full of vigorous life and variety. Not only was it the undisputed business, financial, and cultural center of the entire western part of the United States, but it was renowned the world over for its air of sophisticated, lighthearted gaiety. The city had grown fast. Scarcely more than half a century earlier it had contained about four hundred and fifty people—mostly men. In 1900 its population stood at almost 343,000, and its area had extended steadily, reclaiming the mud flats of the Bay, climbing the hills, spreading over the sand dunes. Architecturally, San Francisco was not lovely. The downtown district, lying between the Embarcadero and the hills, was gray and drab, crowded with three, four-, and five-storied buildings of wood or brick, mostly boxlike and flat-roofed. Only a few skyscrapers stood out here and there, all of them out-classed by the Call Building, whose domed tower rose a spectacular nineteen stories above Market and Kearny streets, Atop Nob Hill the pretentious and ornate mansions that had been built in the seventies by the newly rich silver and railroad kings were, with one or two exceptions, monstrous blunders. And if some of the smaller mansions, beyond Van Ness Avenue, with their cupolas and turrets, were more gracious, the rows of narrow bay-windowed houses and flats that each year stretched out farther to the west were singularly dreary.

Yet if San Francisco was on the whole architecturally drab, or, as some would have it, plain ugly, this defect was more than made up for by the beauty of its setting. To the north and east lay its wide Bay, jeweled by Alcatraz and Goat islands, surrounded by mauve mountains and golden hills that turned emerald in the spring, and guarded by cliff bound straits. To the west lay the Pacific Ocean, to the south, the gentle hills of the Peninsula. The panorama constantly changed its appearance in the varying light; indeed, it often disappeared altogether, lost in the gray fog that came sweeping over the city from the sea. But San Franciscans were as happy with the fog as with the view, for it, too, was exclusively their own. They were happy with many other things as well. They made excursions to the palatial Cliff House that literally overhung the ocean and from which one could watch the sea lions barking and lolling on Seal Rocks; they strolled in the nearby statue-laden gardens of Sutro Heights and swam in the immense, glass-roofed Sutro Baths. They were proud of their Golden Gate Park that had been lovingly coaxed to grow in the face of sand and wind, of their forested Presidio and their celebrity-filled Palace Hotel. They were enchanted by their foreign quarters: festive Little Italy, ramshackle Little Mexico, and Chinatown, sinister and mysterious. They were charmed with their flower stalls that graced almost every downtown street corner with a riot of color, with their jaunty little cable cars that fearlessly ascended and descended precipitous hills, with their sedate ferries, their flocks of lateen-rigged fishing boats, and their tall-masted ships and funneled steamboats lying at dock along the Embarcadero or sailing to or from far-distant shores through the Golden Gate.

The people, it was said, were noticeably jovial, as though attending a continuous festival. They loved music, drama, painting, sculpture, and literature of all sorts, and they warmly patronized the city’s artists, many of whom were famous or soon to become so. There were several art schools, the best known of which was housed in the Mark Hopkins mansion—a Nob Hill structure that, seen from some angles, more closely resembled a small, congested town than a house. There was the prestigious Bohemian Club on Post Street, which included in its membership an impressive number of artists, writers, actors, and musicians. Moreover, San Franciscans respected scholarship in all fields. Two nearby universities—Stanford down the Peninsula, which had opened in 1891, and the older and academically renowned University of California in Berkeley across the Bay, with a faculty in 1900 of 108—had brought learned professors and graduate students to the community. In San Francisco itself there had existed for decades many a scholarly institute and library; well-stocked book-stores were plentiful, and literary societies, some of them erudite, abounded.

If San Francisco was lighthearted, it was serious as well, and these two qualities did not preclude one another; rather they blended to create an atmosphere at once sparkling and serene and as peculiar to the city as was its setting. Like the majority of people everywhere, the majority of San Franciscans were perhaps not inclined to think very deeply; but on the other hand, they were blessed with the liberty to do so; nothing prevented. They were free from the tensions of the East Coast, from the oppressive narrowness of the Midwest, and they were free, too, from both the rural naivete and straining ambitions of southern California. Nothing in their environment pressed on their nerves, weighed on their hearts, or clouded their minds. They could expand their souls, and perhaps some did. The very fact that there were two well-supported Homes of Truth in this not-large city might indicate that many men and women were seeking beyond the orthodox, or even liberal, forms of Christianity for deeper answers to their deeper questions and needs. In any case, the founder of these organizations, Mrs. Annie Rix Militz, had been instrumental in introducing Mrs. Hansbrough and many others to Swami Vivekananda’s books, and it was the Pine Street Home of Truth, now under the supervision of a Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Aspinall, that welcomed Swamiji to the city, providing him, free of charge, with a room and board.

It has been generally assumed that Swamiji’s incentive to visit San Francisco stemmed from an invitation from the Reverend Benjamin Fay Mills to speak before a Congress of Religions at the First Unitarian Church in Oakland and that his work in northern California began with his lectures before that Congress. Actually, neither of these things was the case. The thought of working in San Francisco had been in Swamiji’s mind as early as December 27 and had perhaps become a definite plan shortly after he moved to Pasadena, at which time Mrs. Hansbrough had conceived the idea of becoming his advance agent. According to her "Reminiscences," it was after one of his lectures at the Shakespeare Club that she had said to him, "Swamiji, I think you would like me to go on to San Francisco." "His eyes lighted up," she related, "as they always did when he was particularly interested in something, and he answered, 'Yes, of course I would.’ "

Promptly, Mrs. Hansbrough’s sisters had discouraged her. "They did not feel," she said, "that I was a 'big’ enough person to do what was necessary. Further, they did not feel that I was 'socially inclined’ enough, and they never did think I was very bright'[1]

Deflated by this sisterly counsel, Mrs. Hansbrough abandoned the idea of preparing Swamiji’s way. It was he who without preamble brought the subject up again. "Well," he said to her one morning after breakfast while they were sitting alone together, "when are you going to San Francisco?"

Mrs. Hansbrough was taken aback. "Why," she replied, "I could go if you wanted me to."

Swamiji smiled. "When once you consider an action," he said, "do not let anything dissuade you. Consult your heart, not others, and then follow its dictates." "He seemed to have sensed," Mrs. Hansbrough mused, "that I had been discouraged from the plan. 

It had been shortly after this that a letter arrived from the Reverend B. Fay Mills, inviting Swamiji to speak before the Congress of Religions on Sunday, February 25. The invitation was, in sense, a last-minute one. As late as January 13 a Dr. Sonado, an eminent Buddhist, then recently arrived in San Francisco from the Orient, had been scheduled to speak at the Congress instead of Swamiji,[2] who, possibly, Mr. Mills had not known was in California. But however that may be, when for some reason Dr. Sonado cancelled his engagement, Mr. Mills wrote to Swami Vivekananda. He proposed either in his first letter or in a somewhat later one that Swamiji give his first northern California lecture in Oakland at the Congress of Religions, where he would be assured of a large and overflowing audience. This done, he (Mr. Mills) would manage any lectures Swamiji might subsequently wish to give in San Francisco, advertising them in the local papers with the truthful banner: MANY HUNDREDS TURNED AWAY! ! ! ("He was an astute man of business," Mrs. Hansbrough remarked.)

From a box-office point of view, the plan was, to be sure, an excellent one. On hearing of it and of Mr. Mills’s proposal that he be Swamiji’s manager, Mrs. Hansbrough had again withdrawn. "Then I needn’t go," she had said. But Swamiji was incapable of the box-office point of view, nor did he have any intention of allowing his work in San Francisco to be exploited. He accepted Mr. Mills’s invitation to speak at the Unitarian church in Oakland, together with the train fare to San Francisco, but that was all. "We shall support our own work," he had said to Mrs. Hansbrough. "I shall give my first lecture in San Francisco independently. I am willing to trust an American woman," he added; "I will trust an American man sometimes; but an American minister-never!"

Through many an unsavory experience during his first visit in the West, Swamiji well knew that the American minister, no matter how liberal, would never move far from the inbred beliefs of a congregation upon which his livelihood depended, would never dare to champion a Hindu monk to the end, would always, when pushed, back down and sometimes attack. That was in the nature of things, even as it was in Swamiji’s nature to say what he had to say in total freedom. And in San Francisco he was to have much to say. So around the middle of February, Mrs. Hansbrough traveled north in the role of advance agent.

More than two weeks before her departure she and Miss MacLeod had discussed whether or not Swamiji’s first lecture in northern California should be free. Miss MacLeod had thought that it should not be, and Mrs. Hansbrough, different in those days, had given in. "Swamiji usually let us decide these things," she related, "as he was unfamiliar with the country. I did not have the temerity and outspokenness I have now, or I would have ridiculed Miss MacLeod into agreeing that it should be a free first lecture.... If I were to have the work to do over again with my present perspective, I would do it much differently. I would get the California Academy of Sciences [in San Francisco] to sponsor the first lecture, and have it free. If we had done this, it would have given Swamiji at the start a group of intellectual people, and then he could have chosen from there on what he wanted to do."

This hind-sighted plan might or might not have been effective. As it was, Mrs. Hansbrough, lacking experience, connections, and promotional flair, proceeded as best she could. For a week she busied herself getting in touch with her old San Francisco friends and acquaintances, particularly those interested in "New Thought"; she arranged for Swamiji to stay at the Home of Truth on Pine Street; she rented a hall for his first lecture; she had tickets printed, and, on February 18, she inserted a running advertisement in the San Francisco Examiner, which appeared in—or, 

more accurately, disappeared into—the Classified Ad Section. In five lines of close and small type under the general heading "Meeting Notices" it read:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA will lecture Friday evening, February 23rd, at Golden Gate Hall, 625 Sutter Street; subject, "The Ideal of a Universal Religion"; admission 50c; tickets on sale at Sherman & Clay’s, cor. Sutter and Kearney.

Few people could have noticed this announcement or, noticing, have been impressed by it. On the day of Swamiji’s lecture, however, the same announcement appeared in the more widely read amusement column of the San Francisco Chronicle under the large, eye-catching, and misspelled heading: 

SWAMI VIVIKANAWANDA. Added was the information that Swami Vivikanawanda was the Hindoo monk and that his lecture would begin at eight o’clock.

Golden Gate Hall, the home of Golden Gate Commandery No. 16 of the Knights Templars, an order of Freemasonry, was a brick building that stood on the south side of Sutter Street between Taylor and Mason. As is the case with every San Francisco building in which Swamiji lectured, it was destroyed by the 1906 Earthquake and Fire; vanished, too, as far as can be ascertained, are photographs of anything but its hapless ruins. But to judge from pictures of a heap of bricks and a partly standing wall, the building had been a handsome one, with arched windows and doorway. Old accounts state that the Temple, built in 1891, had "a frontage of 72 feet, a depth of 138 feet, and an ample armory banquet hall and amphitheater which was used for lodge work and other functions.'[3] Although no records of the seating capacity of the amphitheater seem to exist, one may guess that it was medium-sized. One may also guess that the speaker’s platform was not equipped with a separate entrance; for Swamiji, waiting on Friday evening, February 23, to approach the lectern, sat in the front row of the hall.

Shortly before eight o’clock Mrs. Hansbrough joined him, and together they silently conversed. By a sign he asked her how many people she thought had come. "One hundred and fifty," she whispered. But in the palm of his hand he wrote, "100." "He did not say anything," Mrs. Hansbrough related, "but he seemed disappointed." Yet, a hundred people was not a small gathering for a lecture that had not been announced in large, conspicuous type until the day of its occurrence and for which there was a charge of fifty cents per seat.

If anyone introduced Swamiji to his first San Franciscan audience there is no available record of who it was. It is possible that when the time to lecture came he simply ascended the platform, stood for a while looking into the faces of those who had come to hear him, and then entered into his subject, carrying his audience with him, transporting them almost at once, as a listener at one of his San Francisco lectures was to write, "into a sea of being, of feelings of a higher existence.'[4]

Swamiji spoke for at least an hour and a half (one listener said "over two hours") on "The Ideal of a Universal Religion." During that time he must have given many of the ideas contained in his published lectures of a similar title; yet from the following write-ups which appeared the next morning in the local newspapers one would scarcely have guessed it. The San Fancisco Examiner’s report read as follows:

VIVEKANANDA, the Hindu Monk.

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu Monk, was a dazzling  figure last night as he stepped on the platform of Golden  Gate Hall gowned in crushed strawberry silk, with a turban of the same hue: He held his audience in rapt attention for  over two hours while he discoursed on "The Ideal of a Universal Religion."

Mr. Vivekananda said that the great contrasts in the nature of man were effected by peace and war. Peace aroused the angel in him; war the devil. Peace was the promoter of hospital and institutional work; war the demon that let loose the sword, smote the heart of the wife and made fatherless her infant children.

The San Francisco Chronicle did better:

HINDOO MONK LECTURES
Swami Vivekananda’s Topic Is "The Idea of 
Universal Religion".

At Golden Gate Hall last evening Swami Vivekananda, a Hindoo monk, entertained an audience for an hour and a half with his lecture on "The Idea of Universal Religion." Swami Vivekananda is an interesting speaker. He first visited America in 1893, and was afterward the representative of the Hindoo religion at the World’s Congress of Religions held in Chicago.

Tracing religion from the commencement of history he spoke of the existence of creeds. Sects were known from the earliest time, he said. As time rolled on there began various contests for a supremacy between the various sects. History, he declared, was a mere repetition of slaughter under the guise of religion. Superstition, he thought, was fast becoming a thing of the past through the expansion of the minds of men. They had more liberality of thought now. They were deeper students of philosophy and through the principles of true philosophy only could religion in its deepest form be found. Until men could accord to others the right of free belief on all subjects, and be willing to believe truth under whatever form it might appear, no universal religion would be manifest to the world, he declared. It would never be promulgated by any society, but would grow instinctively as the intellect of man developed.

Swamiji had begun his work in San Francisco as he had wanted: on his own, with a lecture of his own choosing and without obligation to anyone. Whether the admission to his first lecture had been fifty cents or free, whether his first audience had been large or small, was of little consequence compared to the establishment of his independence. He was now ready, and certainly willing, to speak before the Congress of Religions in Oakland.

2

In 1900, Oakland was a city of some 70,000 souls. Because of its sheltered location, it escaped much of the fog and wind that swept from the ocean over San Francisco, and because of the wide mud flats along its bay-front, it escaped, as well, much of the commerce and hurly-burly of the bigger city. Indeed, Oakland led a quiet, suburban life. It was full of trees and sunshine and boasted a landscaped lake, where large Victorian houses, surrounded by wide lawns and parterres, gazed placidly at one another across the water, or, as the case might be, across tree-shaded avenues. Smaller houses, neat, uncrowded, and substantial, lined its less fashionable streets, along some of which up-to-date electric trolley cars clattered to and fro. Among other necessities of civic life, such as a City Hall, elementary schools, a Masonic Lodge, and innumerable churches (in proportion to the population, there were three times as many churches as in San Francisco), Oakland contained a social club with artistic and intellectual leanings (named the Athenian), a theater, a handsome high-school building, and a Free Public Library that "kept well up in works of fiction, science and art." While the oldest part of the city, with its long-established residences and buildings, was perfectly flat, to the north and east were rolling hills, which had been annexed ten years or so earlier and whose abundant oaks were rapidly being replaced with large and generally affluent houses. From here one could enjoy a fine panoramic view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate—a view at its best at sunset when the distant mountains of Marin County darkened and the sky and water shone fiery red or gold.


The people of Oakland were, on the whole, not too different from those in San Francisco; many of them were, in fact, San Franciscans who preferred to make their residence in the warmer, quieter, and more easy-gong East Bay. But if they slept in Oakland and raised their children there, they visited the metropolis regularly for business, for shopping, for pleasure, for culture, for almost everything but church-going, commuting back and forth on commodious ferryboats, where, by gentlemen’s agreement, their individual seats, once chosen, were thereafter held inviolate. As a contemporary guidebook of the Bay Area admitted, Oakland and the smaller towns in its vicinity, such as Berkeley and Alameda, were "somewhat disrespectfully, though not inappropriately, called the 'bedroom, of San Francisco.’ " Oakland was also called a number of other names, less disrespectful but equally appropriate: the "City of Churches," the "City of Roses," the "City of Homes," and, because of its proximity to the University of California at Berkeley, the "Athens of the West." In later years the city became commercially ambitious and lost its residential character and charm, but in Swamiji’s time Oakland was content with churches, roses, homes, and a nearby temple of learning, which did indeed, as the guidebook said, give it "quite the air of a University town."


Compared to the great and renowned World’s Parliament of Religions, Oakland’s Congress was a lackluster affair, and, except for Swamiji’s participation, strictly local. Conceived by the Reverend B. Fay Mills and held under the auspices of the Young People’s Religious Union of the First Unitarian Church, it consisted of eight consecutive Sunday-evening lectures, each delivered by a representative of a different religious outlook. Apart from the word denoting the speaker’s faith, the titles of all eight lectures were ready-made and identical, namely, "The Claims of . . . on the Modern World. " On the evenings of January 21 and 28 and of February 4 and 11, the claims of Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Protestant Orthodoxy, and Liberal Religion had been respectively set forth. The last-mentioned claim, made by the Rev. Mr. Mills, had completed the first series. Undramatic as this Congress seems to have been, the interest it aroused in Oakland was intense. On the first two Sundays the church auditorium and the large hall adjoining it had been crowded to overflowing, and, to be sure, hundreds had been turned away. The two Protestant speakers had also drawn a crowd, particularly Mr. Mills, who was an orator of no small talent.


At the time of our story the Reverend Mr. Mills was occupying the pulpit of the First Unitarian Church only temporarily and was uncertain as to whether or not he would accept the position of permanent pastor. The congregation was imploring him to do so. "We all think a great deal of both he and Mrs. Mills," a leading member of the church was quoted in the San Francisco Examiner as having said, "and the church needs them badly.'[5]Indeed the church thought so much of Mr. Mills that a special meeting of the trustees was held to determine what arrangements in the way of salary and privileges could induce him to stay.


Mr. Mills, at the time in his early forties, was an intensely determined, extroverted man with an erect, slightly militant carriage, leonine blond hair, and piercing blue eyes. He had started out his ministerial career some twenty years earlier as a small-time Congregationalist pastor, going from village church to village church. In 1886, having discovered within himself an extraordinary talent for rousing people to religious fervor, he resigned a small pastorate in Rutland, Vermont, to devote himself to itinerant, interdenominational evangelism. He was phenomenally successful. For some ten years he energetically evangelized in town after town, including San Francisco and Oakland, delivering in the latter city fifty sermons in 1892. By 1893 he had become so well known that he was invited to speak before the august Parliament of Religions. By this time his religious views had somewhat changed. Because of a "social vision," as he was later to explain, he had conceived of Christ as the Savior of the social organization rather than of individuals, and accordingly he had begun to lose faith in the evangelical approach. During the Parliament his views were to undergo an even more radical change. The B. Fay Mills who orated at that assembly in typical orthodox fashion ("Christ stands or falls in connection with His claim to be the Savior of the entire world")[6] was shortly thereafter to undertake, as he said, "a study of the great books of all ages and nations, through which [study] the Bible ceased to be to me the exclusively inspired word of God.'[7]It would appear that Mr. Mills had not only orated at the Parliament but had listened—and he had listened in particular to a flaming young Hindu monk named Swami Vivekananda. "This man," he was later to say to Mrs. Hansbrough, "altered my life!"[8] He was also to say that after the Parliament of Religions he and his wife had kept track of Swamiji’s work and had read his books as they were published. Although many years later Mr. Mills was to return to the itinerant evangelism of his youth, he made a definite break with that career in 1897 and established a People’s Church in Boston. Indeed so liberal had Mr. Mills become that one finds him speaking in June of 1899 before the Free Religious Association, which represented liberal Christianity at its most erudite and best and before which Swamiji had spoken once or twice during his first visit in America. "The Bible of today," Mr. Mills had said during this talk, "is a hindrance to the full development of life. . .'[9]Shortly thereafter he came with his wife and three children to the Pacific Coast for a year’s vacation, and it was at this point that the First Unitarian Church of Oakland persuaded him to fill its then empty pulpit for a period of four months. With the close of February, 1900, the term would have run its course, but, as we have seen, the church could not bear to part with this handsome and dynamic preacher who packed the pews, wrung tears from the congregation, opened both its heart and its purse, and whose name was often in the newspapers as the target of an outraged orthodox ministry.


The second series of the Congress of Religions, which dealt, as Mr. Mills put it, "with the ancient and modern forms of religion and their claims on the world," consisted, in order of their presentation, of the claims of Spiritualism, of Vedantism (or Hindooism), of Theosophy, and of Christian Science. All this unorthodoxy created a rumbling among the Oakland clergy. "Run after a pretentious healer . . . and call it 'progress,’ " fumed one Reverend  R..F.Coyle, a Presbyterian minister of some prominence. "Put a Hindoo in the pulpit in the name of progress. Call a 'Congress of Religions’ and there will be a crowd at the church door an hour before the mockery begins. And through it all the novelty hunters flash and foam and the throne of God grows out of date.'[10] The Reverend B. Fay Mills was unperturbed. "I have always admired Dr. Coyle," said he, "because I believe he is an honest man and a good man.... When he says these Sunday night lectures are a farce, I refer him to our doors at 7:30 o’clock in the evening, when people are being turned away by the hundreds.'[11]


That people were being turned away by the hundreds from the second series of the Congress of Religions was true at least of Swamiji’s lecture on "The Claims of Vedantism ", which took place on the evening of February 25. As has been pointed out in the preceding chapter, Swami Vivekananda’s name was well known on the Pacific Coast. All that was required to draw crowds to his lecture were informative and conspicuous announcements, and in this regard the leading Oakland papers—the Enquirer and the Tribune—had not been remiss. The following two articles that heralded Swamiji’s lecture in the Enquirer were unearthed many years ago by a member of the Vedanta Society of Northern California and were subsequently reprinted in Prabaddha Bharata of March 1936. They have not, however, been reproduced elsewhere, and therefore should, I believe, be included here. The first appeared on February 23, the second the following day:


A DISTINGUISHED HINDOO.
Swami Vivekananda, Teacher of the Vedanta 
Philosophy, to Speak Here Sunday Night.

Swami Vivekananda, a distinguished Hindoo lecturer and teacher of the Vedanta philosophy, arrived in San Francisco last evening from Los Angeles. He expects to remain here several weeks teaching and lecturing, and will occupy the pulpit of the First Unitarian church next Sunday evening in the parliament of religions which is being held there. He represents the order of Sanyasinsebhgggggs, a traveling priesthood, which inculcates its philosophy, after the Hindoo fashion, to learners wherever found, whether at the plow; the bench or in pilgrimage. The Swami is a man of profound learning in the line of psychology and the philosophy of eastern religions.

----------------------------------

A MAN OF MARK
Swami Vivekananda, A Remarkable Oriental
An Eloquent Expounder of the Faith of Brahmanism

When the Congress of Religions was held in Chicago in connection with the World’s Fair in 1893 several remarkable men from the Orient appeared, including H. Dharmapala of Ceylon, Rev. Zitsuza Ashitzu, Narasima Charia, and Professor C. N. Chakravarti. But the most remarkable exemplar of orientalism was the Swami Vivekananda, a Hindoo who stands for the Brahmin religion, or Vedantism as he prefers to call it.


Those who heard Vivekananda at Chicago have been enthusiastic in praise of his power as an orator. He is a large, fine looking man who has an excellent command of English and is a master of elocutionary effects. After the Chicago parliament Vivekananda lectured to thronged houses in the large cities of this country and then returned to India, where he was received with extraordinary honours. It seems the simple-minded people of India had heard of Vivekananda’s success in America and had exaggerated it so much that they believed he had converted the whole American Continent and in particular had rescued the United States from the errors of Christianity, as they considered them.


So when he reappeared among his friends they hailed him as the deliverer of the Western world, and being wrought up with excess of enthusiasm they took Vivekananda in their arms and it is said that he was passed from village to village and city to city until he had been transported seventeen miles without his feet having once touched the ground.


Vivekananda is now in the United States a second time for a tour of some of the large cities. Swami means monk of the order of Sannyasins. Viveka means "discrimination" and ananda means "bliss". The Swami comes to Oakland tomorrow to deliver his address at the local congress of religions in the evening at the Unitarian Church but Rev. B. F. Mills hopes to arrange with him to deliver a course of lectures here.


The Swami claims to belong to "the most ancient order of monks in the world" and his faith he characterizes as "the mother of religion". Vedantism is the religion of the Vedas, or the ancient Hindoo books. In one of his Chicago addresses Vivekananda said: [There follow four paragraphs of quotations from Swamiji’s paper on Hinduism delivered before the Parliament of Religions.]


On February 24, the Oakland Tribune added its own heralding news of Swamiji, and on Sunday evening, February 25, a little late to be of service to the San Francisco public, the San Francisco Bulletin printed a short but well-headed notice in its Oakland Church News. These two announcements read respectively:


INDIAN IN OAKLAND PULPIT

The Serami Vive Kananda, who is to lecture on the ancient Brahman religion of India at the Unitarian church on Sunday evening, is one of the noted philosophers and orators of the world. He first came to America to represent Hindoostan in the World’s Parliament of Religions. It is not too much to say that he there produced the most powerful impression of any of the delegates. After the Parliament, he lectured to thronged houses in large cities, and then returned to India, where he was received with honors said to be greater than any paid to a religious teacher since the time of Buddha. He has now returned to America for a tour of some of our cities.


Swami means monk of the order of Sanyasin. Viveka means discrimination and ananda means bliss.


The Swrami comes to Oakland to deliver this address at the Congress of Religions, but Mr. Mills is in hopes that arrangements may be made for him to deliver a course of lectures in this city.


Swami Kananda to Speak to the Unitarians.
Will Discuss the Doctrines of the Modern
Brahmin Religion.

Oakland, Feb. 24.—At the First Unitarian Church tomorrow evening Swami Vive Kananda, the noted Hindoo monk, will speak on "The Claims of Hindooism on the Modern World." He is said to be a most eloquent speaker and is the most prominent divine in the Orient. The musical programme will consist of a soprano solo by Miss Eva Shorey, a violin solo by Mrs. Frank A. Wasley (the latter a Hindoo song) and the usual organ numbers by Mr. Frank Katzenbach.


At the turn of the century, the First Unitarian Church, established in 1877, was the church of Oakland’s many churches—the one, that is, to which the more intellectually inclined people of the upper and middle classes belonged and to which they went of a Sunday morning. The building itself, then ten years old, stood (and still stands) near the center of town on the corner of Fourteenth and Castro Streets. It was a graceful, gable-roofed, gray stone and red brick structure built around three sides of a courtyard, the fourth side of which opened on Fourteenth Street. The right wing, now ivy-grown, housed the bell tower and the main auditorium, the left wing the church office. Connecting the two wings was Wendte Hall, which was used primarily for Sunday School, social functions, dramas, and such lectures as were not, strictly speaking, sermons. It was used also on occasion to accommodate an overflow crowd. Wendte Hall and the church auditorium adjoined one another at right angles; thus when the wide folding doors between them were opened, the pulpit, which in those days stood squarely in the center of the chancel, served both halls.


On the evening of Sunday, February 25, the folding doors were opened wide. Both the main auditorium and Wendte Hall, whose combined capacity was 2,000, were jammed to overflowing, and a crowd of five hundred unfortunate men and women had been turned away for lack of room. The audience was restless in anticipation.


For one reason or another (perhaps he missed the proper ferry from San Francisco, which, after seven o’clock in the evening, ran on a half hour schedule) Swamiji did not arrive at the church when the newspapers had said he would. The musical program had run its course, and Mr. Mills had made his introductory remarks. Still no Swami Vivekananda.


It should be mentioned here that in the early editions of the Life it is said: "In a lecture before the gathering, the Rev. Dr. Mills speaking on 'The Hindu Way of Salvation,’ introduced the Swami in terms of highest praise, describing him as 'a man of gigantic intellect, indeed, one to whom our greatest university professors were as mere children.’ "[12]18 Actually, Mr. Mills gave this lecture in San Francisco more than two years later (on April 20, 1902) before the Unity Club, a society he had then just organized. His introduction of Swamiji at the Unitarian Church in 1900 is not, to my knowledge, on record. It was perhaps short; for in the absence of its subject, Mr. Mills resorted to telling stories.


Then at last there was a sudden stir, a sense of excitement. Swamiji in his robe and turban entered from the street and with superb, un-self-conscious majesty and grace strode down the right aisle and ascended the steps to the pulpit. But let us see him through the eyes of one who was present; for we are lucky enough to have in the archives of the Vedanta Society of Northern California a brief description of the occasion written many years afterward by Miss Sarah Fox as an introduction to her memoirs.


Miss Fox, who from 1900 forward was to enter heart and soul into the study and practice of Vedanta, visited India in 1922, where, together with her sister Rebecca, she remained for four years, keeping in close contact with the monks of the Ramakrishna Order. Returning to Oakland in 1926, she lived, while teaching school and attending to household duties, a deeply meditative, God-centered life. The Hindu swamis of the Vedanta Society who sometimes visited her small, humble home in Oakland found its atmosphere like that of an Indian monastery, and they found Miss Fox herself far along on the spiritual path. Her memories of Swamiji’s appearance at the Unitarian church are perhaps of special value, for not only was his impact upon her life manifestly profound, but through her eyes one somehow sees him as he was—not as a man possessed of tremendous power, but as a living power embodied in human form.


According to her memoirs, Miss Fox, then a resident of Berkeley, first heard of Swami from Mr. Paul Militz, who had married Annie Rix, the founder of the West Coast Homes of Truth, around 1893 and who was now the leader of a small religious group in Oakland to which Miss Fox and her sister belonged. Mr. Militz, who had seen Swamiji in New York and had no doubt attended some of his classes and lectures, spoke highly of him, and the Fox sisters were deeply impressed. "When the news was published shortly afterwards that the great Swami was going to lecture in Oakland," Miss Fox called, "we were bound and determined to hear him." Her memoirs continue:


The lecture was scheduled for eight o’clock on a Sunday night in the spring of 1900, at the First Unitarian Church in Oakland. Everyone was on time except the Swami, and the minister was entertaining the congregation with stories to keep them from going away. In the middle of these tales we all became aware that the Swami had arrived. He entered the Church auditorium from the street entrance and without any ado walked down the aisle nearest the wall to the front of the church in long, slow, measured steps. This wonderful man, clad in an ochre robe and wearing a turban, looked as if he feared nothing and cared for nothing. He seemed like an immense wave going along; his back was straight as a rod, yet his entire bearing was a perfect blending of dignity and grace. He reached the pulpit and stood there for a long time just looking out over the congregation. Then after what seemed like an hour, he said, "Ladies and gentlemen . . . " We were seated too far away to see his face closely, but how we enjoyed his discourse! He did not seem old, as indeed he was not, but tremendously wise and experienced.[13]


"After the lecture was over," Miss Fox went on, "the Swami invited questions, and the one which I remember was particularly foolish. An unlucky woman asked, 'Is it true, Swami? I have heard that you throw new-born babies into the Ganges.’ The Swami replied, 'Madam, we have heard that at Thanksgiving you serve new-born babies!"‘ .


(Swamiji seems never to have run out of answers to this question, which pursued him from one end of the United States to the other. In Los Angeles he had replied, "Yes, madam; but I was one who escaped." Or, when the question applied to girl babies only: "Yes, madam, and now-a-days all the babies are born of men.'[14] And in Detroit in 1894 when he was asked why only female children were given to the crocodiles, he had answered, "Probably because they are softer and more tender and can be more easily masticated.'[15] Or again in Detroit, "I was such a fat little baby the crocodiles refused to swallow me. Whenever I feel badly about being such a fat monk, I think of how I was saved from the crocodiles and am comforted.'[16] And in Minneapolis, "Yes, madam, they threw me in, but like your fabled Jonah, I got out again.'[17] Thus he ridiculed stupidity until it hid its head in shame—literally.


In Los Angeles, Mrs. Hansbrough related, he once made the question sound so inane that the friend who had asked it hid behind her chair. "I don’t blame you," Swamiji had said, "I would hide, too, if I had asked such a question!")*


All that is known of Swamiji’s Oakland lecture itself comes to us from three newspaper accounts, one of which appeared in the Oakland Times of February 26. It read in part:

AN APOSTLE OF VEDANTISM
HINDOO PRIEST ELOQUENTLY TELLS OF MAN 
AND SPIRIT

Immense Throng Gathered in Unitarian church 
to Listen to his Discourse

Before a large audience, such as the Unitarian church has never seen before, the doctrine of Vedantism was expounded last evening by the famous exponent of that religion, Swami Vivekananda. Many people went to the church before 6 o’clock and waited over an hour for the doors to open. It was estimated that at least 500 were turned away for want of standing room.


The Swami created a marked impression. Frequently he received applause during the lecture, and upon concluding held a levee of enthusiastic admirers. He said in part, under the subject of "The Claims of Vedantism on the Modern World:" . . .


The remainder of this article, which filled a column and a half, was the same as that in the Oakland Enquirer. The Enquires’s article was reprinted in Prabuddha Bharata of March 1936 and subsequently in volume eight of the Complete Works. In type big and black its headings read:


THE PHILOSOPHY OF VEDANTISM

As Expounded by Swami Vivekananda Last Evening.
A Vast Throng Attended His Address at the Unitarian Church.
Will Speak Again Wednesday Evening at Wendte Hall on
Vedantism and Christianity.

The article that followed was, like most newspaper reports of Swamiji’s lectures, an unsatisfactory and disjointed sort of thing. Yet, one can gather from it the gist of what he said. Its theme was that wonderful one which he had literally poured into the minds of whomever he had spoken to in the West, from the Parliament of Religions to these last days of his work, when he so strongly emphasized it: "The one great secret of religion is to know for yourself that you are Spirit. Do not cry out, 'I am a worm, I am nobody!’ As the poet says, 'I am Existence, Knowledge and Truth.’ No man can do any good in the world by crying out, 'I am one of its evils.’ The more perfect you are, the less imperfection you see.'[18]


There is no need to quote long passages from the Enquirer article, for the reader can find the full text in the Complete Works. The report published in the Oakland Tribune of February 26, however, has not been reprinted and can be quoted here in full, for though it is in part repetitious of the Enquirer, it adds somewhat to our knowledge. (The Tribune article was repeated in its entirety in the San Francisco Call of the same date, and the following headings, which varied from those of the Tribune, are taken from the Call.)

VEDANTISM, AND 

WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT

Lecture of Swami Vivekananda on the 
Religion of the Hindoos.

It is the Only Creed, He Says, that Can Be Taught
Without Lies and Without Compromise.


The claims of the Brahmin religion, or Vedantism, on the modern world were presented to-night at the Congress of Religions in the First Unitarian Church by Swami Vivekananda, a remarkably eloquent expounder of that faith. His lecture proved one of the most instructive of the series given before the Congress, and decidedly the most novel.


Vivekananda is a Hindoo, and after attending the Congress of Religions in Chicago during the World’s Fair, he lectured to thronged houses in many of our largest cities. When he returned to his people in India they hailed him as a deliverer of the Western world. They were wrought up with excessive enthusiasm, and fairly carried him in their arms from city to city. This is his second tour in this country.


To his auditors to-night he explained Vedantism as the religion of the Vedas, or ancient Hindoo books, which, he asserted, is "the mother of religion. "


"It may seem ridiculous how a book can be without beginning or end," he said, "but by the Vedas no books are meant. They signify the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. The Hindoo believes he is a spirit. Him the sword cannot pierce, him the fire cannot burn, him the water cannot melt, him the air cannot dry. He believes every soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose center is located in a body. Death means the change of this center from body to body. We are the children of God. Matter is our servant.


"Vedantism is a sort of rebellion against the mockery of the past. Some men are so practical that if they know that by chopping off their heads they could get salvation, there are many who would do so. That is all outward; you must turn your eyes inward to learn what is in your soul. Soul is spirit omnipresent. Where does the soul go after death? Where could the earth fall to? Where can the soul go? Where is it not already? The great cornerstone of Vedantism is the recognition of Self. Man, have faith in yourself. The soul is the same in everyone. It is all purity and perfection and the more pure and perfect we [you] are the more purity and perfection you will see.


"A man or preaching jack who cries, 'Oh Lord, I’m only a crawling worm!’ should be still and crawl into his hole. His cries only add more misery to the world. I was amused to read in one of your papers, 'How would Christ edit a paper?’ How foolish. How would Christ cook a meal? Yet you are the advanced people of the West. If Christ came here, you would shut up shop and go into the street with him to help the poor and downtrodden. Vedantism is the only religion that can be taught without lies, without stretching the texts, without compromise."


It should perhaps be mentioned that the fourth paragraph of the above article appears to be a condensation of the quotations in the Enquirer article of February 24, which quotations were, in turn, taken from Swamiji’s address at the Parliament of Religions. Whether the Tribune took a part of its copy from the Enquirer’s article, or whether Swamiji repeated almost word for word what he had said six and a half years earlier, it is hard to say. It is clear, however, that the Tribune’s somewhat sly reference to Swamiji’s reception in India as "a deliverer of the Western world" was taken from the Enquirer’s earlier remark regarding "the simple-minded people of India [who] believed he had converted the whole American Continent." Behind this allusion lay a tale.


3

As is well known, the whole of India had risen to welcome and honor its great sannyasin who, having vindicated Hinduism in the eyes of the West, had returned to his motherland at the beginning of 1897. One of the first tributes to Swamiji appeared in the form of an editorial published in the Calcutta Indian Mirror on January 21, six days after his arrival at Colombo, Ceylon. The editorial was, to be sure, enthusiastic. "Hundreds of men and women have enlisted themselves under the standard which [Swami Vivekananda] unfolded in America," it read, "and some of them have even taken to the bowl and the yellowr obes.... The tide of conversion seemed to have rolled back from the East to the West—the tables were completely turned—and the Hindu mission in the West was crowned with a greater and more glorious success than what has ever been vouchsafed to Christian missions in the East " These were fighting words; they sent a spasm of alarm and indignation through the Christian community. A Mr. Wilbur W. White, secretary of the Calcutta Young Men’s Christian Association grabbed up a pen and wrote to "a number of prominent men and women in my beloved land [America]."

In each letter (they were identical) he enclosed a copy of the editorial and requested his addressee to comment in reply upon "the likelihood of America abandoning Christianity and adopting either Hinduism or Mohammedanism in its stead." "I desire to secure for wide circulation in India," he concluded, "a symposium on Hinduism and Mohammedanism in America. Or if you please to be more particular, Swami Vivekananda in America.'[19]


The replies duly arrived, and forty-five of them were subsequently included in a highly defamatory and vindictive little book published in 1897 in Madras by the Christian Literature Society for India and entitled at some length Swami Vinekananda and His Guru with Letters From Prominent Americans on The Alleged Progress of Vedantism in The United States. All the letters printed in this book staunchly denied that the American people had abandoned Christianity for Hinduism or Mohammedanism and affirmed with some heat that Swami Vivekananda had not made the slightest impression in the United States. Most of the letters were from prominent divines; a few were from Swamiji’s acquaintances, such as Lyman Abbott and Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University; and one, it so happened, was from the Reverend B. Fay Mills.


Mr. Mills’s letter serves as a brief sample of the published replies: " . . . [Swami Vivekananda] did not produce a ripple in the stream of Christian thought and progress," he wrote. 


"Except for a mild curiosity to see how far Hindu dogmas might be strained to suggest Christian Ethics, I do not know that he produced any effect on American Christian thought or practice. The receiving him as a converter of American Christianity to Hinduism is too ridiculous to demand any contradiction. Most of us did not even know he had been here since the Parliament.'[20]


Mr. Mills appears to have been a man of varying words and memories. Was he not to say three years later that he and his wife had kept track of Swamiji after the Parliament of Religions and read all his works? And was he not also to say that Swami Vivekananda had altered his life? But then, few American ministers made such declarations publicly—particularly in 1897.


In addition to the little missionary book, and in part because of it, a number of articles derogatory to Swamiji—some of them exceedingly spiteful—appeared that year and the next in American and Indian newspapers and magazines. Swamiji had paid no attention. "What do I care about what they talk-—he babies, they do not know any better," he had written in July of 1897 to Mary Hale, who had expressed concern. "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?[21]


But though Swamiji had scorned to give a rejoinder to this prattle, Dr. Lewis G. Janes, his good friend who never wavered ("the most wholly stainless man I ever knew," Thomas Wentworth Higginson was to write of him),[22]had come to his defense. In two letters to the editor of the Outlook, a well-known weekly of the era, he replied to a malign editorial entitled "American Buddhists," writing in part:*


The first thing that strikes the impartial reader is the incongruity of the title with the subject-matter of the article, inasmuch as the latter relates wholly to certain statements alleged to have been made by the Swami Vivekananda in regard to the spread of Vedantism in Europe and America.... The Swami Vivekananda is not and never was a Buddhist, nor is he in anyway connected with the theosophical movement referred to in your article. ...


So far as I have had an opportunity of observing, and my opportunities have been considerable, in the Brooklyn Ethical Association, the Cambridge Conference and the Monsalvat School of Comparative Religion, at Greenacre, Eliot, Maine, where [Swami Vivekananda and Swami Saradananda] have lectured, the teachers of the Vedanta have made no efforts at proselyting or making "converts" in this country. The Vedanta has been presented as a system of philosophical thought which recognizes the truth of all religions, and which might constitute a philosophical basis of Christianity as well as of Hinduism.


This teaching has undoubtedly been welcomed and appreciated by hundreds, if not thousands, of intelligent people in this country, and permanent classes and associations have been formed in several cities for continued study.


. . . The eminent gentlemen whom you quote . . . testify that they know of no Americans who have forsaken Christianity for Hinduism. I testify that I know of no one who has attempted to bring about such a result. If the testimony of Drs. Eliot, Angell, Boardman, and others, should be interpreted as a denial that any serious interest in the Vedanta has been created in America, the situation would appear to be very much like that of the man who was accused of stealing a dog, and confronted by three witnesses who saw him do it. He met the assault upon his character by bringing thirty entirely credible witnesses who didn’t see him do it. I report certain things that my work and relations with the teaching of Vedanta have enabled me to know. These gentlemen, whose credibility I would not for an instant question, testify that they do not know certain other things.[23]


In time the uproar subsided. Indeed the ineffectiveness of the attempts to discredit Swamiji in the United States can best be judged by the subsequent action of Mr. Mills. When at the beginning of 1900 he had invited the great and famous Hindu monk to speak at the Unitarian church in Oakland he had done so with the certain knowledge that even in this staid and orthodox "City of Churches," throngs would flock to hear him—not once but as often as he would speak. Having no doubt of this, he now invited Swamiji to deliver a second free lecture at the church and, further, a series of three pay lectures in Wendte Hall.


There was, to be sure, one complaint, which the Enquirer of March 2 printed in conjunction with two firm replies:


THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
EXCITES SOME CONTROVERSY

A Christian Who Calls Him an Exponent of Paganism—

What President Elliot of the young people’s Union says. 


On Wednesday and Thursday evenings of next week and Monday night of the following week Swami Vivekananda, the famous Hindoo monk sojourning in California is to deliver a course of three lectures on the principles of Vedantism.On the subject of these lectures and those which have been delivered, the following communication has been received;


Editor Enquirer: Perhaps the following quotation that appeared a while ago in the "Indian Nation " an orthodox East Indian journal, may prove interesting to some just at this time, especially to those misguided individuals whom the press informs us applauded the lecture delivered last Sunday night at the Unitarian auditorium and constitute the "levee of enthusiastic admirers" who gushed over the "distinguished savant" at its close.


This journal declares that "the pure and undefiled Hindooism which Swami Vivekananda preached, has no existence to-day, in fact, has had no existence for centuries, but on the contrary, abomination worship is the main ingredient of modern Hindooism."


Another paper, The Hindu, also published at Madras, says of the endowed temples and shrines of India that "they are corrupt to the core. They are a festering mass of crime and vice and gigantic swindling." The same paper, speaking of the Brahman priesthood describes these priests as "ignorant, profoundly selfish, immoral." It mentions the popular dancing girls of India only to say that such a girl "insults the Deity by her very existence," and it declares of the "pining child widow" that "every hair of her head will rise up in judgment before the bar of God in witness against the system which tolerates it "


It is indeed to be regretted that a civilized Christian community should be subjected to the annoyance of having an exponent of this disgusting paganism forced upon it under the pseudonym, of 'religion’.


[This letter, which had also been sent to the editor of the Oakland Times, was signed simply with the initials C.J.P. The Enquirer submitted it to the officials of the Unitarian church for their comment, which was duly received. The article continued with the church’s staunch rejoinder:]

NEEDS NO APOLOGY

In speaking of the above communication Mr. A. H. Elliot, president of the First Unitarian church, under whose auspices the address referred to was given, says that the writer of the communication either did not attend the lecture or is a person who is not thoughtful and allows his prejudice to govern his religious opinions. "In the first place," says Mr. Elliot, "there was no levee of enthusiastic admirers; there was no gushing over the distinguished savant. At the close of his address there were a number of people who went forward to meet the speaker, as is usual at the close of all these lectures. Perhaps there were more on this occasion, which fact is accounted for by the speaker being a foreigner. We know nothing of either of the papers referred to by 'C.J.P.’ Neither do we care what they are, for we accept the speaker for what he said. All that the Swami said during the lecture is in thorough keeping with the teachings of modern science and the expression of this great thinker. If one would take up a course in the University with Kant he would find there the same things that the Swami told us, only that in the Swami’s discourse they were put before us in a more simple manner by a man of great culture. It is very evident that the person who wrote this communication did not attend the lecture, but rushed into print after having read the account in the newspapers." The fact that the Swami was given a most respectful hearing at the Parliament of Religions at the World’s Columbian Exposition, where the most distinguished representatives of all forms of faith were assembled ought to indicate to an intelligent person that no apology is necessary for permitting him to speak in the series of discourses which are being presented on Sunday evenings in the First Unitarian Church.

A BROAD PLATFORM

Judge John W. Stetson, who is one of the prominent members of the Unitarian Church and president of the Starr King Fraternity, spoke of "C.J.P.’s" protest against the Hindoo, Swami Vivekananda, having a hearing, as follows: "Such an argument is foolish. I challenge any one to go and listen to the Swami and then show where there is anything in his teachings that is not for the good of humanity. It may be true that there are things in the religion as taught in India that are not desirable, but any one who heard the Swami will admit that his teachings regarding morality are good. It is well understood that the Unitarians do not endorse all that is said from our platforms, but they have advanced ideas and are liberal enough to allow any one who has a good teaching and is honest in his belief to tell it from their platform."


As far as the Oakland papers were concerned, this ended the controversy. Even in the civilized Christian community of Oakland the days when diatribes against Swamiji and India made good reading had long since passed. Indeed, attacks against Swamiji were now so palpably absurd that the orthodox ministers of the city engaged in attacking the Reverend B. Fay Mills rather than his famous guest speaker. "COYLE ROASTS B. FAY MILLS," the headlines blared. "PRESBYTERIAN ROUNDLY SCORES METHODS OF UNITARIAN." "WOULDN’T TOLERATE REV. B. FAY MILLS: OBJECTED TO HIS SPEAKING   IN   CONGREGATIONAL   CHURCH."

"LIBERALISM OF B. FAY MILLS EXCORIATED." And so on—much to the entertainment of the Oakland laity. Mr. Mills, never averse to a headline, was undisturbed; on the contrary, he preached his Liberalism with greater zeal and flourish than ever and accepted, on his own terms, the invitation to the Unitarian pulpit.


After airing both sides of the short-lived controversy over Swamiji, the Enquirer of March 2 went on in the same article to a report of his second lecture at the Unitarian church, which had taken place on the evening of Wednesday, February 28, and which, predictably, had drawn as large and appreciative a crowd as had the first:


THE SWAMI’S LECTURE
"Some Points of Resemblance Between Vedantism  and Christianity”

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu monk sojourning in California, delivered a lecture at the First Unitarian Church Wednesday on "Some Points of Resemblance Between Vedantism and Christianity."


The speaker first discoursed upon comparative religions and showed that the semitic branch of the Caucasian family had contributed two great religions, Judaism and Mohammedanism, and that the Aryan branch had contributed several others. [He said] that all of these had resemblances in common and that all such resemblances were not due to the fact that they were derived from some religion which had preceded or because there had been communication between those holding the different faiths, but because the principles of true religion were the same, man being an essentially religious animal.


He then went into particulars to show that the first resemblance between Christianity and Vedantism was that each had an authoritative book—the Bible in the case of the Christian and the Vedas in the case of the Hindu.


After discussing this first resemblance at considerable length he took up the second, which he said was the belief in a trinity. .

‘ The next and a striking resemblance was that in each instance the second person of trinity descends to earth to redeem mankind. He then discussed . the question of reincarnation, stating that whereas the Christian believed in but one incarnation, the Hindu believed in many.


In volume six of the Complete Works, under the heading "The Vedanta Philosophy and Christianity," one can find notes of this lecture, taken down by Franklin Sprague ("Frank") Rhodehamel, a young married man of Oakland, who almost from the start was one of Swamiji’s ardent followers. In many respects, Mr. Rhodehamel was a better listener than the Enquirer reporter, and while the reader can verify this for himself in the Complete Works, let me quote a little from the former’s notebook:*


[The] act of imitation has been laid at the door of different religions [Swamiji said], but that it is a superficial charge is evident from the following facts:


Religion is fundamental in the very soul of humanity; and as all life is the evolution of that which is within, it, of necessity, expresses itself through various peoples and nations.


The language of the soul is one, the languages of nations are many; their customs and methods of life are widely different. Religion is of the soul and finds expression through various nations, languages, and customs. Hence it follows that the difference between the religions of the world is one of expression and not of substance; and their points of similarity and unity are of the soul, are intrinsic, as the language of the soul is one in whatever peoples and under whatever circumstances it manifests itself—[it is] the same sweet harmony vibrant on many and diverse instruments....


. . . All who have actually attained any real religious nature never wrangle over the form in which the different religions are expressed. They know that the life of all religions is the same, and, consequently, they have no quarrel with anybody because he does not speak the same tongue....


... I have travelled all over the world; I have been among the very worst kind of people—among cannibals —and I have never seen the man who is not at least my equal. I have done as they do—when I was a fool. Then I did not know any better; now I do. Now they do not know any better; after a while they will. Everyone acts according to his own nature. We are all in process of growth. From this standpoint one man is no better than another.[24]


The ideas contained in this lecture were clearly similar to those in "The Ideal of a Universal Religion." As we have said before, Swamiji rarely neglected to impress these ideas, which held the very essence of his Master’s teachings, upon the people of every city he visited. "We do not only tolerate but accept every religion," he had written to a friend in January of 1894 "and with the Lord’s help I am trying to preach it to the whole world.[25]Usually he gave these teachings at the outset of a lecture course. They were, in a sense, like the opening, annunciatory chords of some great orchestral work; they set the mood and the key, silenced the prejudices of the mind, brought its energies together and freed it, opened it, to receive the soaring themes that were to come. Or if, by chance, a receptive listener heard these ideas alone, he still would have heard enough to change his view of the religions of his fellowmen and of his own religion as well.


Swamiji was pleased with his reception in Oakland. "The people here have been prepared by my writings beforehand and they come in big crowds," he wrote to Mrs. Bull on March 4. " . . . Rev. Benjamin Fay Mills invited me to Oakland and gave me big crowds to preach to.... My health is about the same; don’t find much difference; it is improving, perhaps, but very imperceptibly. I can use my voice, however, to make 3,000 people hear me as I did twice in Oakland and get good sleep too after two hours of speaking.'[26]

4

Swamiji’s ringing, musical voice that filled both the auditorium of the Unitarian church and Wendte Hall deeply stirred those who heard it. While the available notes and reports of his two lectures give us some idea of what he had said, they leave much to the imagination. It is only through the reminiscences of those who actually heard his words rolling out with the living, concentrated force of his personality behind them that we can derive some idea of how they impressed his audience. One such reminiscence comes to us from Thomas Allan, a tall and stalwart young Scotsman who was among the listeners at the Unitarian church on Wednesday evening, February 28. Thirty-five years later, on the occasion of Swamiji’s birthday, which was being celebrated in the temple of the Vedanta Society of San Francisco, Mr. Allan, then president of the Society, recounted his memories of the great Swami. Happily, he did not speak extemporaneously but had prepared a manuscript of eight large pages, which is now preserved in the archives of the Society; thus his impressions come to us firsthand. After a short introduction Mr. Allan wrote:

Having heard of Swami Vivekananda and what a wonderful man he was and what a stir he made at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, also having read his book Raja Yoga, it was with great joy that I learned of his coming from Los Angeles to this section of the State. He came to San Francisco in February, 1900, and his first [actually his second] public lecture in Oakland was given on 28th February, 1900, in the Unitarian Church, Oakland, of which Church the Reverend Benjamin Fay Mills was the Pastor. The subject of this lecture was "Similarity between the Vedanta Philosophy and Christianity." He told us always to look for similarities, for common points of interest, and never to look for differences. I was at that lecture, and the impression he made on me was, "Here is a man who knows what he is talking about. He is not repeating what some other person told him. He is not relating what he thinks, he is telling what he knows." Going home from the lecture I was walking on air. When I got home I was still acting like a crazy man. When I was asked what sort of a man he was, I replied, "He is not a man, he is a god." I can never forget the impression he produced on me. To me, he was a wonder, and I followed him to any of the Bay cities where he spoke.[27]


In Ida Ansell’s memoirs of Swamiji as published in Reminiscences of Smami Vivekananda one finds an addition to the above: "Edith [Mr. Allan’s wife] asked him to tell her what he had said that impressed him so much, and the two most startling ideas were these: Good and evil are the obverse and reverse of the same coin; and you cannot have one without the other. We had been taught in the Home of Truth that all is good and there is no evil. The other idea that deeply impressed him was that a cow cannot tell a lie and a man can, but the cow will always be a cow, while a man can become divine.'[28]


Mr. Allan, of whom more later, became a dedicated Vedantin, remaining so until his death at the age of eighty-nine in 1953. It is true, of course, that not all who heard Swamiji embraced the Vedanta philosophy then and there; but it is safe to say that very few ever forgot him. There was, for instance, a young man by the name of George A. Applegarth, who in 1900 sang in the choir of the Unitarian church and heard a. number of Swamiji’s lectures. Nearly sixty years later, Mr. Applegarth’s son called upon the Vedanta Society in San Francisco, seeking information about the philosophy. His father, he said, had often mentioned having heard Swami Vivekananda in Oakland. A few years thereafter (1962), a member of the Vedanta Society sought out the senior Mr. Applegarth to ask for his memories. During the course of the interview Mr. Applegarth, then eighty-four, recalled the impression the Swami had made upon his listeners so many years before:


He was so outstanding in the portrayal of his religion that none of the other speakers could compare with him. They would have made a very poor showing if they had been called upon to speak after the Swami.... The other addresses had all been more or less complex and obscure. The Swami, on the other hand, presented a philosophy that was so simple and was presented from such a beautiful viewpoint that people were eager to hear more. He had a remarkable command of English and his lectures were full of colorful metaphors.... I was present after some of the lectures when others spoke to him. He was very approachable. He would be surrounded by many people who wanted to speak to him, so we younger people did not get very close to him.... But on one occasion he spoke in the Sunday School area [Wendte Hall] to the younger people.... I talked to many of the people who had attended his lectures. All were deeply impressed by the simplicity of his philosophy and by the richness and beauty of his English.... I remember that one of the subjects on which he lectured was "Concentration." He told us how the Hindus were trained in the practice of concentrating their minds.[29]


In addition to Swamiji’s two lectures from the pulpit of the Unitarian church, he was to deliver in Wendte Hall two series of three lectures each. The first series, which began on the evening of Wednesday, March 7, was announced in the Enquirer of the same date with an article whose concise heading attested clearly to his quick renown in the city:


THE SWAMI

He will begin this evening a course of three lectures. This evening at the First Unitarian Church the Swami Vivekananda of Calcutta, India, will deliver the first of a series of popular lectures, the general subject of which is The Most Ancient Religion. To-night the title of the lecture will be The Laws of Life and Death.


When the Swami first appeared in Oakland, in a free lecture, the church was crowded, and it was supposed that people’s curiosity would have been exhausted by this, but subsequently he delivered a second lecture and once more the church was crowded. The three lectures which he will deliver here to-night, tomorrow night and Monday will be pay lectures, but there is no doubt they will be very largely attended. The Swami is an unusually gifted man and considerable enthusiasm has been manifested at both of his previous appearances in Oakland.


The social column of the San Francisco Call informed its readers that "[Oakland] society is showing much interest in the coming series of popular lectures to be given by Swami Vivekananda,the philosopher and orator, who has lately arrived from Calcutta." And to be sure, Swamiji’s "pay lectures" in Oakland drew large crowds. But we shall speak of these lectures later, for they take us too far beyond our present story.

5

Swamiji was at first optimistic in regard to his work in San Francisco—or, as a heretofore unpublished letter of Friday, March 2, to Miss MacLeod shows, he was at least not discouraged. His letter, supplied by Mrs. Frances Leggett, was written from the Pine Street Home of Truth and read:

1231 Pine Street
San Francisco
Feb. [March] 2nd 1900


Dear Joe, Your note enclosing two from France and three from India just received. I have had general good news and am happy.


Financially—I have got 300$ at Los Angeles. About Mrs. Bowlers, she has about hundred. dollars in cash. Mrs. Hendrick & herself have not paid up as yet. That money 300 in all is with her. She will send it to me whenever I write.


Rev. Benjamin Fay Mills a very popular Unitarian preacher in Oakland, invited me from here and paid the fare to San Francisco. I have spoken twice in Oakland to 1500 people each time. Last time I got from collection 30$. I am going to have classes at 50 cents admission each. San Francisco had one lecture the other night [February 23] at 50c each. It paid its expenses. This Monday [Sunday?] I am going to speak free—after that a class. I went to see Mrs. Hurst [Mrs. Phoebe Apperson Hearst]. She was not at home. I left a card—so with Prof. Le-Conte [Joseph Le Conte, a well-known American geologist, then in his late seventies and a professor at the University of California].


Mary [Hale] writes that you wrote her of my coming any day to the east. I don’t know. Here I have a large following ready made by my books. Will get some money, not much. St. Francis [Francis Leggett] may put the money in the bank for me—but can that be done without my signature? and I am here? It is good if it can be done. Did not see any possibility of my books being sold for good to any publisher?


The French invitation is all right. [An invitation to speak in September at the Congress of the History of Religions at the Paris Exposition.] But it seems impossible to write any decent paper on the subject we chose. Because if I have to lecture & make money, very little time will be left for anything else. Again I cannot find any books (Sanskrit) here. So let me try to make a little money if I can and go to France all the same but send them no paper. No scholarly work can be done in this haphazard & hurried fashion. It means time and study.


Shall I write to Mr. [Gerald] Noble an acknowledgement and thanks? Write to me fully on these subjects if you can before you leave [for Europe]. My health is going in the same way. The gas is there more or less and this city is all climbing up. That tires me much.


With all love

Yours affly
Vivekananda

P.S. Did anybody else respond to Mrs. Lggett’s call?[30]


Two days later Swamiji wrote a letter to Sister Christine in which one finds an indication of his mood in those days—neither dark nor bright, but clearly emerging from the prolonged period of exhaustion and illness that he had suffered. He wrote in part:


I am getting more & more reconciled to surroundings. My health is better but not as before—I do not know whether I ever get back the former vigour. Well, I am glad as it is—as such it is possible to be happy in this world....I am as you see in San Francisco—working working; as soon as I get money enough to pay my passage to the east I leave this place....


The people here in California have been prepared for me by my writings.... So I find no difficulty in getting crowds. It remains to be seen whether they will retain their eagerness when it comes to pay 50c at the door!...


I don’t want to work. I want to be quiet & rest. I know the time & the place, but fate or Karma I think drives me on—work work. We are like cattle driven to the laughter house, hastily nibbling a bite of grass on the roadside as they are driven along under the whip. And all this is our work—our fear. Fear, the beginning of misery—of disease &c.


I am trying hard to become fearless to be daring as before and to be careless of everything. By being nervous—and fearful we injure others. By being so fearful to hurt, we hurt more. By trying so much to avoid evil we fall into its jaws.


What a mass of namby pamby nonsense we create round ourselves!! They do us no good—they lead us on to the very thing we try to avoid—misery. I have been very emotional all my life—and have always suffered myself—and caused suffering to others by my emotions. Now I am getting strong mentally and physically. No emotionalism. It is now doing, not thinking. Too much of thinking pros & cons leads us nowhere. I am done with that "treacle" as Goodwin used to say.


What do you do all day-—he same routine work. I wish I could have half your patience and perseverance & resignation. Blustering bustling emotional fool that I am.


This time I am determined to be at rest, within myself first and of course then with the surroundings.

No more work but peace is my quest. I have played my part in life of bustling, now I take my long holiday & rest and peace.[31] . . .

But first there was more work to be done, and in San Francisco that work was slow in getting started. Indeed, three days after writing the above letter Swamiji was markedly discouraged. He had by then given two lectures in the city to which a fifty-cent admission had been charged, and his guess had proved correct. "They come in crowds when there is a free lecture and very few when there is something to pay,'[32]he wrote to Mrs. Bull on March 7. And to Miss MacLeod on the same day, "No money. Hard work. No result. Worse than Los Angeles.'[33] Inadequate publicity for Swamiji’s early pay lectures in the busy, happy-go-lucky metropolis of San Francisco was very likely responsible for their relatively small attendance; and, to trace the cause back a step further, lack of publicity had resulted from a lack of money and help. There was no Miss MacLeod in San Francisco to interest a number of influential men in his work; nor at the beginning of his visit did he himself know anyone of note in the city. As for Mr. Mills, who had earlier wanted to take over the management of his San Francisco lectures, he now declined to assist in any way, perhaps piqued at Swamiji’s rejection of his initial proposal, perhaps afraid of losing his own following.


The pastor was at this time delivering a series of well-attended Sunday afternoon sermons at San Francisco’s large Metropolitan Temple. "I went there one evening to see him, "Mrs. Hansbrough related, "to ask if he would announce from his platform that Swami Vivekananda was to give a course of lectures [as Mr. Fritz had done in Los Angeles]. This was after Swamiji’s first lecture, and we felt if he could obtain some announcements of this type it would help increase the attendance. Mr. Mills refused. I did not have the temerity then that I have now,"‘ Mrs. Hansbrough added, "or I would have told him plainly what I thought of him!'[34](Gratifying as a few verbal jabs at the pastor might have been, it is not likely that they would have helped matters. Only big and bold type and a long, appreciative article or two in the San Francisco newspapers would have drawn crowds, and these were not forthcoming.)


More than a week had passed between Swamiji’s first public lecture in San Francisco and his second, which he delivered on Sunday, March 4, at Golden Gate Hall. In the Examiner of March 3, under the general heading, "Concerts, Lectures, Etc." one could read:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA, 
THE HINDU MONK,
Who represented the religion of India at the World’s Fair will lecture on
Sunday, March 4th at 3 p.m., 
At Golden Gate Hill, 625 Sutter Street,

SUBJECT,
THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION 
ADMISSION FREE

This, it is true, was displayed eye-catchingly, and was perhaps sufficient to draw people; but there was no report of "The Science of Religion" in the papers. (Nor do any notes of it exist.) Much less conspicuous were the advertisements for the series of three lectures that Swamiji delivered the following week on the subject of his motherland. Listed under SUNDAY MEETINGS in the Classified Ad sections of the Chronicle and the Examiner was the following information:


Lectures by Swami Vivekananda at Washington Hall, Red Men’s Building, 320 Post Street, Monday, March 5th; subject, "India and Its People"; Tuesday, March 6th, "Arts and Science of India"; Friday, March 9th, "Ideals of India." Single tickets; 50c; course tickets, $1.


That was all, and these advertisements, difficult to find even when one is looking for them, appeared only once. But if crowds failed to attend Swamiji’s series on India, those who did attend were enthralled. Among them was Mrs. Thomas Allan, whose husband had arrived home in a state of exaltation on the evening of February 28, declaring that he had heard "not a man but a god." Mrs. Allan’s first opportunity to hear Swamiji for herself had come on March 5, and in her reminiscences, first published in The Vedanta Kesari of September 1924 and later in the Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, she recalled the experience:


Early in March 1900 the Swami Vivekananda gave a series of three lectures on "Indian Ideals" in Redmen’s Hall, Union Square, San Francisco, and it was at the first lecture of this series that I had the blessed privilege of hearing him. Being in ill health, both mentally and physically, it was a great effort to go to the lecture; and as I sat in the hall waiting for the Swami to come, I began to wonder whether I had not made a mistake in coming to hear him; but all doubts vanished when the Swami’s majestic figure entered the hall. ["When he walked in, clad in his terra-cotta robe," Mrs. Allan said to a fellow Vedantin years later, "his face looked golden to me. He had long blue-black hair, wavy, but not curly. And his eyes, his wonderful eyes!"] He talked for about two hours telling us of India’s Ideals and taking us with him, as it were, to his own country so that we might understand him a little and be able to comprehend even in the least the great truths he taught. After the lecture, I was introduced to the Swami; but feeling over-awed by the wonderful presence, I did not speak, but sat down at a distance and watched him, while waiting for friends who were busy settling up the business connected with the lectures. After the second lecture, I was again waiting, sitting at a distance watching the Swami, when he looked across and beckoned to me to come to him. I went and stood before him as he sat in a chair. He said, "Madame, if you want to see me privately, you come to the flat on Turk Street, no charge there, none of this botheration about money:" I told him I should like very much to see him. He said, "Come tomorrow morning," and I thanked him.[35]


One does not like to quibble with those who shared their cherished memories of Swami Vivekananda, but for the sake of history one sometimes must, and Mrs. Allan will no doubt pardon us if we say that it could not have been after his second lecture in the series on India that she first spoke to Swamiji but after his third lecture; for it was not until then that he had moved into the flat on Turk Street. The date of this move is not unimportant in the story of his life in San Francisco. After Swamiji’s second poorly attended lecture in the Indian aeries he was on the verge of leaving California. There seemed little reason for staying. As pointed out in the last chapter, one of his motives for coming to the West Coast had been to obtain money for his Indian work. This same motive had surely also played a part in bringing him to San Francisco; for although he had filled the Math’s critical need to defray the expenses of its lawsuit against the municipality, there remained the ever present, overall need for funds. There remained also (albatroslike) Swamiji’s debt of five thousand rupees—the sum he had borrowed from the Math in order to buy a house for his aging mother. Appended Vo this was the expense of bringing a lawsuit against his aunt in order to take possession of the house. After nearly two weeks in San Francisco it seemed to Swamiji that his attempt to earn money there was not only hopeless but self-defeating. The only noticeable consequence of his work had been a decline in his health. "I have a relapse-for some daysVand am feeling very bad," he wrote to Miss MacLeod on March 7. "I think lecturing every night is the cause.'[36] And to Mrs. Bull on the same date, "Now I have entirely failed in California financially.... There is not the least use in breaking my health in San Francisco for nothing.... Platform work is nigh gone for me, and forcing it is only hastening the end. I leave here very soon. . . . I would start just now," he added, "if I could make money for a passage to India without touching the 1000 dollars in New York.'[37]


This thousand dollars, which Swamiji had deposited with Mr. Leggett and which had come partly from the sale of the English edition of Raja yoga and partly from money given to him for his personal use by the Maharaja of Khetri, he wanted to keep intact for help in the future support of his mother, his grandmother, his brother, and, he sometimes thought, himself. ("The thousand dollars I have in New York will bring Rs. 9 a month," he explained to Mrs. Bull, trying as he occasionally did, though rarely with consistency or success, to make financial plans; "then I bought for her [his mother] a bit of land which will bring about Rs. 6; and her old house—that will bring about Rs. 6. I leave the house under litigation out of consideration, as I have not got it. Myself, my mother, my grandmother and my brother will live on Rs. 20 a month easy.'[38] Twenty rupees was then equivalent to about six dollars and fifty cents; Swami evidently meant this to eke out the monthly stipend of Rs. 100—about thirty-two dollars and fifty cents—that the Maharaja of Khetri had been regularly contributing for the support of his mother and brothers.)


The only other money available to him was three hundred dollars that he had made in southern California. But three hundred dollars was not enough for a passage to India, and Swamiji’s plan on March 7, as one can gather from his letters of that date, was to work his way home in stages. He would leave San Francisco as soon as possible for New York; in New York he would make enough money for a passage to England, where he hoped to revive his London work; from England he would voyage to India. In India he would retire for good, living not at the expense of the Math but with his mother and other members of his family.


It might be mentioned here parenthetically that since the time Swamiji had renounced the world in order to fulfill his mission, he had been much concerned over the welfare of his mother, whom under ordinary circumstances he would have supported. As she grew older and as his mission drew to a close, his concern seems to have increased. It may appear strange that he felt so strong a love and obligation, and the question may arise, should not a sannyasin relinquish all such filial ties and duties? Yes, a sannyasin should; but Swamiji was far more than a sannyasin undertaking spiritual discipline and striving for enlightenment. He was enlightened, his goal had been attained years before; no rules bound him; no observance, no prohibition or practice could have meaning for him: he could not be pulled down; he had no need to be lifted up; nor was any act of his without some profound significance to be probed.


As for Bhuvaneswari Datta, she was a hero’s mother. Reading Swamiji’s letters in regard to her, one somehow gets the impression that she was at this time a frail, little old lady, grieving inconsolably over her son’s renunciation. She was not so. In the Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda one finds the following glimpse of her as given by a Manmatha Nath Ganguli. The year was 1901 or 1902 the place, Belur Math.


One morning [Mr. Ganguli wrote] Swamiji’s mother came to see him. Her very appearance commanded respect. She was a strongly built lady with large fine eyes with long eyelashes. She had a remarkably strong personality that made her obeyed without any questioning. No wonder that Swamiji had inherited these qualities from her. She went up to the verandah of the first storey and cried aloud "Viloo-oo," and her child came out of the room at once. The great Vivekananda was just like a teenaged son to his mother. He descended the stairs along with Bhuvaneswari Devi, and then they walked in the gardenpath together and conversed softly on personal matters.[39]


Swamiji’s mother, it would seem, could endure much. Yet he who was giving his life to relieve the suffering of all humanity could not bear to be the cause of pain to anyone. "All my life I have been a torture to my poor mother," he now wrote to Mrs. Bull on March 7 of 1900. "Her whole life has been one of continuous misery. If it be possible, my last attempt should be to make her a little happy. I have planned it all out. I have served the Mother all my life. it is done; I refuse now to grind Her axe. Let Her find other workeres—I strike.'[40]


But whatever Swamiji might may, he was not one to give up. If he rebelled against continuous work, he rebelled even more impatiently against obstacles in the path of his Indian mission, and he worked on. It was just at this time, moreover, that Mrs. Hanebrough and Mrs. Aspinall rented a flat on Turk Street.


6

Swamiji had not been comfortable at the Pine Street Home of Truth. "This was natural," Mrs. Hansbrough explained, "for quite a number of people were living there and he could not feel free. . . . After a week or so he said to me, 'I must get out of here.[41] She had taken him to the home of a friend, which stood, as the return address on his letters of March 4 and 7 tell us, at 1502 Jones Street, a location in more or less the same part of the city as the Home of Truth and easy of access from downtown via the Jackson-Washington Street cable car. But Swamiji had not felt at ease there either. It was at this point that Mrs. Aspioall of the Home of Truth took matters in hand. "See here," Mrs. Hansbrough quotes her as having said, "we must find a place where this man can be comfortable." A place where Swamiji could be comfortable meant a place where he could be independent, where he could hold classes, receive visitors, give individual instruction, where he could be assured of privacy, where he could dress, sing, and cook as he pleased. Mrs, Hansbrough and Mrs. Aapinall consulted the newspapers.

In the Examiner’s Classified Ad Section under "Flats" they found the following notice, which had been appearing since March 4.


Flats to Let: A furnished, handsome, sunny corner flat 
of 6 rooms; porcelain bath, tiled sink, fancy mantels; 
appreciated if seen; $40; Eddy-st. cars to Scott.
Apply till 4 pm I7I9 Turk Street.


"It was a poor sort of place, " Mrs. Hanabrough related, "but the beat we could do for the money we could afford to spend." When she had told this to Swamiji, he had replied with one of those offhand statements that, when looked at awhile, ate seen to contain spiraling depths of meaning: "That is because I am a sannyasin and cannot get anything good."


Mrs. Hansbrough and Mrs. Aspinall took the Turk Street flat for a month. In as much as the above advertisement disappeared from the Examiner after March 8, it was probably on that date that they took possession, and by March 9 the two women, together with Swamiji, had surely moved in—Mrs. Aspinall flying thereby in the face of opposition. "Mr. Aapinall did not like the idea of his wife’s leaving the Home of Truth [where they were teachers] to set up the Turk Street apartment with me so that Swamiji could have a quiet place to stay," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled. "At first he objected strongly to it." But Mrs. Aspinall was not to be dissuaded. "Benjamin," she had said in reply to her husband’s protest, "you know that we do not have any truth; we just talk." Mr. Aspinall’s response to this is not on record, but whatever it may have been-and what could it have been but silence? Mrs. Aspinall had packed her bag. Nothing, one thinks, could have detained her. Weeks later, toward the end of his visit in California, Swamiji was to say to her, "Even if you had lived on the highest mountain, you would have had to come down to take care of me." "I know it, Swami," she replied.[42]


The flat occupied the full top floor of a three-storied house that stood on the southwest corner of Turk and Seymour streets. (Strictly speaking, Seymour was not a street; rather, it was a wide alley intersecting the block, which was bounded on the west by the cross-town street of Divisadero and on the east by that of Scott.) In 1900 this section of San Francisco—a part of the Western Addition—was not what people had in mind when they described the city as sparkling, lighthearted, and vibrant with charm. The Western Addition itself has been called "an exhibition of architectural lunacy. " And indeed those of its frame houses that still stand today have an incredibility about their ornate towers and turrets, their vestibules and porches and abundant gimcrackery that gives them a certain manic enchantment. But the neighborhood in which Swamiji’s flat was located was largely devoid even of this lunacy. It was without distinction: it was neither unduly ornate nor unduly plain; neither rich nor poor, neither fashionable nor shoddy. It was a neighborhood of two-and three family dwellings, of small houses, and of few gardens. It was far from the waterfront and far, as well, from the southern hills; and while it is true that Turk Street sloped upward here almost steeply, from east to west, the hill it climbed failed to command the wide view of the Bay that made San Francisco famous. Constructed in 1877, the building itself was flat-roofed, bay-windowed, long, narrow, and ungainly; it was to any eye—one imagines—devoid of charm. Yet, it had redeeming points: being a corner building, it caught the morning sun full on its long eastern flank, and in front and partly along the side there was space for a small garden. A few shrubs and small but sturdy trees grew there in 1973, and though one cannot say for sure, perhaps such greenery grew there in 1900 too.


An impressive, pillared entrance on Seymour Street gave access to the ground floor, and on Turk Street, alongside the little garden plot, a long, precipitous flight of stairs ascended to the portico-ed, twin-door entry to the second and third stories. Swamiji’s door was on the right. Entering it, one was at once confronted by another stairway, long and very narrow, which ascended straight and steep to the third floor. At the top, one found oneself in a hallway not much wider than the stairs. To the right the wall was solid, without doors or windows (the west side of the building abutted on another); to the left were four stained-oak doors, three that opened into rooms and one into a closet; straight ahead some ten feet was a window that looked out upon an air shaft. To reach the parlor, where Swamiji was to hold his classes, one had to backtrack beside the railed stairwell to the front of the building, an arrangement peculiar to many upper storey flats of the period.


The front room itself was large enough for comfort—say, sixteen by fourteen feet—and its wide bay window, which faced north, overlooking Turk Street, gave it extra depth as well as extra light. A second window in the far corner faced east, allowing the morning sun to flood the room. Except for the "fancy mantels" promised in the Examiner, a divan and several chairs mentioned or implied in more than one reminiscence, and a register for heat that an interviewer noticed, one cannot say how the room was furnished. One can guess, however, that it was typical of the period and location—that the floor was laid with a patterned, perhaps flowered carpet, that the windows were draped and curtained, that the woodwork was dark and that the furniture, solid and ugly in the mode of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, was, like the neighborhood, neither elegant nor shabby. Again, one can guess—and one must guess, for records are not available—that the light fixtures had not yet been adapted to electricity and that at night the room, indeed the entire flat, was lit by gas.


The front parlor was separated from Swamiji’s bedroom (actually a second parlor) by sliding doors, which could be thrown open to accommodate a large class. (According to Mrs. Hansbrough, when the class overflowed into Swamiji’s room, a screen was placed around the couch he slept on, which information helps us to furnish this room with at least a screen, a couch and several chairs.) It was slightly smaller than the front parlor, but like it, had a bay window, which faced east.


In addition to the two parlors, another room opened off the front hall. This was a small (nine by six feet) bedroom at the Turk Street end of the house, in which Mrs. Hansbrough slept and which, she supposed, had originally been meant for a servant.


These three rooms—the two parlors and small bedroom together with the hallway and a hall closet comprised the front half of the flat. The back half began at the air well. Here a narrow passageway jogged off to the left, ran for a few feet, made a right-angled turn and proceeded to the back of the house, giving access to the remaining rooms. On the right was the bathroom, on the left the dining room, and at the rear were the kitchen and Mrs. Aspinall’s room. This last was cornered between the dining room and the kitchen, without direct entry from the hall, and was best suited, one would imagine, for a breakfast room or den.


In regard to the bathroom, it was not so up-to-date as the newspaper advertisement, which boasted of a "porcelain bath," had made out. While the other fixtures of the bathroom may have been porcelain, the bathtub was not. Mrs. Hansbrough’s memory on this point was particularly vivid: "There was one item about the Turk Street flat which was distinctly different from our home in Pasadena," she related, "and which as I look back on it, had its amusing side. This was the bathtub—one of those old-fashioned things built of zinc. Porcelain tubs were still not in use everywhere. I had to go over that tub carefully everyday with a stone called a bath brick. Swamiji would ask me regularly if I had washed the tub. He was most particular and exacting about it; and as I recall it now, I think the goings over I got about that tub were more for my benefit than the tub’s. Swamiji would go on at great length about it. One day I scrubbed it three times. After the third time, when he still complained that it was not clean, I said, 'Well, Swami, I have scrubbed that tub three times, and if you can’t bathe in it now, I guess you will have to go without a bath!’ So he let it go and took his bath."


Aside from the bathtub, the flat seems to have been ideal for Swamiji’s purpose. Not only did the two parlors open expansively one onto the other, but an inner door connected the second parlor with the dining room, where he could hold informal morning interviews without stepping into the front hall.


The flat, moreover, was easily accessible from other parts of the city, and transportation, though sometimes roundabout, was not a problem. On Turk Street a cable car ran down to Market Street, with cross-town transfer points along the way; and on Eddy Street, a block north, another cable traveled back. Furthermore, the neighborhood, unlike that in which Swamiji had lived during his first season in New York, was as respectable as a cable car itself and one to which ladies would proceed unescorted and without a qualm—would, indeed, live in.

7

It was not until Swamiji moved into the Turk Street flat, deciding after all to remain in San Francisco for at least a month, that his work in the city assumed a definite form of its own. Heretofore it had had, in substance at least, a preliminary or introductory quality. Although he had found, as he said, "ready listeners by hundreds, prepared beforehand by my books,'[43] his ideas were nonetheless new—even to the members of the Home of Truth. He had still to expound the basic principles of Vedanta, either to prepare the ground for future classes or, should he not stay, to leave behind ideas that would take root of themselves and grow. As we have seen, he had lectured in San Francisco on the fundamental unity of all religious thought and striving and had given a lecture entitled "The Science of Religion." While nothing of this last remains by which we can know what he said, its title would indicate that it, too, had been more or less of a preliminary nature.

(As far as is known, the only other lecture that Swamiji gave with this title was delivered in New York on May 13, 1895; and here again we know only the title, not the text. However, if one turns to a page or two of unidentified notes published in volume six of the Complete Works under the somewhat misleading heading "Religion and Science, " one can find a little of what Swamiji may have said in a lecture entitled "The Science of Religion." "Experience is the only source of knowledge," the notes read in part. "In the world, religion is the only science where there is no surety, because it is not taught as a science of experience. This should not be. There is always, however, a small group of men who teach religion from experience. They are called mystics, and these mystics in every religion speak the same tongue and teach the same truth. This is the real science of religion.... This science of religion is based on the analysis of the human soul. It has no creed. ")[44]


In addition, Swamiji had presented in San Francisco a picture of India’s culture and ideals, showing that little understood and much maligned country in its own light and, simultaneously, uprooting from his listeners’ minds the old attitudes that could choke the flow of spiritual thought.


And then, simply by his presence, Swamiji himself, whatever the subject of his lectures may have been, had been leading those who heard him during his first two weeks in northern California to a new level of mind from where the horizons of life, losing themselves in infinity, had an altogether different look than before. Inevitably, some of his listeners recoiled from so much vastness; but others gathered around him to hear and see more, forming the nucleus of his future classes.


Among the lectures that were preliminary in both time and nature to Swamiji’s main work in San Francisco, one can include his first series of three lectures at Wendte Hall in Oakland, given on the evenings of March 7, 8, and 12. As a short notice in the Alameda County Section of the San Francisco Examiner stated, the course was "intended to be a general exposition of Hindu Philosophy."


In volume eight of the Complete Works one can find newspaper reports of these three lectures, which were entitled "The Laws of Life and Death," "The Reality and the Shadow," and "Way to Salvation"; and in volume six one finds Frank Rhodehamel’s brief but beautiful and perhaps largely verbatim notes of the same lectures under the titles, respectively, "How to Become Free," "The Reality and Shadow," and "The Design Theory." While Mr. Rhodehamel’s notes seem to bring us closer to Swamiji, catching the cadence and power of his speech, the newspaper write-ups give us a more extensive idea of the lectures themselves. Of course, like most newspaper accounts of Swami’s lectures, these remind one of the ruins of what must once have been a mighty edifice: broken and scattered cornices and columns are all that remain to us. Yet these have a grandeur still, and from them one can guess to some extent the nature of what once had been. It is clear, for instance, that during the course of the series Swamiji indeed explained some of the basic principles of Vedanta philosophy. He discussed the laws of karma and reincarnation, the concepts of Hindu cosmology, the theory of cyclic evolution and involution, and the theory of Maya. "He told how the life of man, in the view of the Hindoo, is bound in the endless chain of the law of cause and effect, how freedom can never be found in this world, and how the mind of the Hindoo people turns forever to the thought of how man can rid himself of the burden and torment of existence.” Thus read the Enquirer’s report of “the Laws of life and death,” which is not to be found in the Complete works. The report continued with a direct quotation: “ ‘This sounds harsh to Western people,’ said the Swamiji; ‘to the people of the Anglo-Saxon race it is particularly repellent; but it the truth,and it must be told.'[45] But if Swamiji spoke of the beginningless, endless, and inexorable laws that govern relative existence, he spoke also, and above all, of the eternal freedom and purity of the Spirit, which stands untouched and unbound by any low. “Only by escaping from life can we escape from slavery to freedom’'[46] he said in this same lecture. And according to several heretofore unpublished lines in Mr. Rhodehamel’s notes, he paraphrased a famous passage from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: “Never loved a husband the wife for the wife’s sake , or the wife the husband for the husband’s sake. It is god in the wife the husband loves and god in the husband the wife loves.It is god in everyone that draws us to that one in love. [It is] God in everything, in everybody that makes us love. God is the only love.. ..In everyone the god is Atman; all else is but dream, an illusion.'[47]And again heretofore unpublished, is one of Swamiji’s most moving of exclamations, a cry escaped from his heart directly to the heart of his listeners: “Oh, if you only new yourself ! You are souls; you are gods. If ever I fear [that I am] blaspheming, it is when I call you man.'[48]


But the sentence that seems to have come across to his audience with the greatest bomb-like force was “Not how to go to heaven—this is the object of the search of the Hindu.'[49] The statement left Oakland gasping. “KEEP OUT OF HEAVEN , ” the Enquirer shouted the next day in large type ; and the San Francisco Bulletin introduced a report of Swamiji’s second lecture with the news : “ Swami Vivekananda . . Has set Oaklanders Thinking.[The Swami] said that man’s chiefest concern should be how not to get to heaven.” The idea seemed such a startler that some two weeks later when Mrs.B. Fay Mills occupied the Uniterian pulpit in her husband’s absence, she took as the subject of her sermon “Heaven and How to Escape It” and thereby drew a goodly crowd.[50]


At the completion of the well-attended Hall series the following item appeared in the Enquirer of March 14:


MORE LECTURES BY THE SWAMI

VIVEKANANDA

The great popularity of the course of lectures just finished by the Swami Vivekananda has been a matter of surprise to those who have been familiar with the most empty houses that have greeted some of the lectures that have appeared here.


At the earnest solicitations of those who have had the pleasure of listening to him , he has consented to give another course of three lectures. they will take place at Wendte Hall, Fourteenth and Castro streets, on successive Monday evenings, beginning with March 19.The Arts and Sciences in India ; and the Ideals of Quakers.


As no more tickets will be sold than enough to comfortably fill the hall, persons desiring to here these lectures will do well to apply to the sexton at the church during the mornings of this week.


While we are in Oakland, let us continue with Swamiji’s second series of lectures at Wendth Hall, for although it will take us beyond our story, it was somewhat extraneous to his main work in San Francisco; it wa ,in fact, a repetition, perhaps by request, of his earlier series on India at the Red Men’s Building.


According to an item in the Enquirer of March 17, the Oakland series was arranged by, and given for the benefit of, the Women’s Alliance of the first Unitarian Church-an organization which engaged in doing good.


(I Swamiji’s attempt to earn money for India, he seems never to have been able to resist giving lectures for the financial benefit of Americans. Yet he did realize a little money from his first series at Wendte Hall. "The Oakland lectures paid well,'[51] he wrote to Mrs. Leggett on March 17. What he meant by this we learn from a letter to Miss MacLeod, dated in the Complete Works April, 1900, but written, it would seem, a little earlier: "Oakland work has been successful. I hope to get about $100 from Oakland, that is all. After all, I am content," he added. "It is better that I tried.")[52]


As we have said, one purpose of Swamiji’s lectures on India was to destroy prejudice; and one suspects that during his first lecture in this second Oakland series (the Enquirer’s report of which is given in volume eight of the Complete Works under the title "The People of India") he delivered a few direct blows. "It is apparent," the Enquirer editorialized touchily, "that the Swami, educated and intellectual man that he is, is no admirer of Western civilization. He has evidently been a good deal embittered by the talk about child widow, the oppression of women and other barbarisms alleged against the people of India, and is somewhat inclined to resort to the tu quoque in reply.[53]


One looks to the old Oakland papers to see if anything in particular had called forth a sharp reply from Swamiji. Sure enough, the evening before, a missionary who had recently returned from Burma (there were several such in California) had spoken her mind about Vedantism. "VEDANTISM IN INDIA," the report of her talk was headed in the Enquirer of March 19. "An Interesting Lecture By a Returned Missionary. Tells How Many Buddhists Dedicate Themselves to Their God in Most Cruel Fashion." There was no attempt to disguise the fact that this interesting talk had been directed against Swamiji. The article began: "Apropos of the recent lecture delivered in this city by the profound Hindoo priest Swami Vivekananda, upon the power and theory of the old Vedant religion, Mrs. A. Haswell, a returned missionary from India (actually from Burma], told last evening at the 23d Avenue Baptist Church of the practical results of the religion as she has seen it.... She said in part: . . . " We need not reproduce what Mrs. Haswell said in part. It was the old story—the story of India’s religion as told by nineteenth-century Americans staring at the surface of a totally foreign culture, insensible to the living spirit that permeated and animated it, to its traditions and goals, to its subtleties and depths of meaning, insensible, indeed, to everything but the fact, glaring to be sure, that India was not the Protestant West.


Vitriolic condemnation of his country in the name of Christian service never failed to anger Swamiji; but his anger was not on behalf of his countrymen alone. Arrogance, prejudice, lack of sympathy for the beliefs, ways, and trials of others were, he well knew, the enemies of America as well as of India. Very likely he made somewhat the same observation in Oakland as he had made in Pasadena in his lecture "Women of India": "Nations in the vigour of their youth think that they can do anything and everything: 'We are the gods of the earth. We are the chosen people.’ They think that God Almighty has given them a charter to rule over all the world, to advance His plans, to do anything they like, to turn the world upside down. They have a charter to rob, murder, kill; God has given them this, and they do that because they are only babes. So empire after empire has arisen—glorious, resplendent—now vanished away—gone, nobody knows where; it may have been stupendous in its ruin.'[554] But imperial babes could have no place in the centuries ahead when mutual understanding and service between the peoples of the world would constitute their only hope of survival. One of Swamiji’s dreams of which he often spoke was of an exchange of ideas and achievements between East and West. He gave voice to this in San Francisco, as he had elsewhere in the United States: "Send us mechanics to teach us how to use our hands," he is quoted by Mr. Allan as having said during his lecture series on India, "and we will send you missionaries to teach you spirituality."[55] It was a dream that not only reached far into the future but was itself, perhaps, the seed of future fact.


One can find the Enquirer’s brief report of Swamiji’s second lecture of the series on India, "Arts and Sciences in India," in volume four of the Complete Works. The introductory paragraph of the report, however, has not been reprinted and is worth giving here:


"Arts and Sciences in India" was the topic under which the Swami Vivekananda was introduced before the audience in Wendte Hall last evening in the Unitarian Church. But as he acknowledged himself, he touched nearly every subject but the one upon which he was elected to speak. Nevertheless, the Swami held the attention of his audience, as was demonstrated by the many questions which were put to him after his address.


The lecture (also reported upon in an almost identical write-up by the Tribune) had been a provocative one in many respects, and once again a statement of Swamiji’s was blazoned in the Enquirer in bold type: "Declares the Anglo-Saxon People Have Always Been Badly Fitted for Art." Indeed, Swamiji did not pussyfoot. When one is able to compare the original versions of his extemporaneous lectures with those in the Complete Works, one now and then finds that in the normal course of editing (for in the nature of things all extemporaneous talks must be edited) his forthright and vivid sentences have undergone a little mellowing judicious in its day. Such was the case in this instance. Commenting upon English poetry, Swamiji had not said, "Merely the rhyming of words is not good. It is not the most civilized thing in the world'[56] What he had said, as reported by the Enquirer of March 27, was: "This rhyming business of words is not even fitted for the language of dogs. It is the most uncivilized thing in the world."*


The third lecture, "The Ideals of India" (not, after all, "The Ideals of Quakers," as the Enquirer had announced on March 14), was not reported upon by any of the newspapers, and thus we have no information about it—not even such as newspapers afford. It must be said that the brief reports of the first two lectures of the series give us very little indication of the charm and life that permeated them. Only by turning to the reminiscences of Mr. Frank Rhodehamel can one catch a glimpse of the sheer enchantment with which Swamiji filled his talks on India. He was the teacher par excellence, bringing the minds of his listeners into almost breathless concentration—one moment through the means of shock, the next through that of delight. Whether the art was conscious with him or not, he was as incapable of dullness or of dryness as the God he taught. "During his series of lectures on The Ideals of India," Mr. Rhodehamel wrote (and it seems clear that he was referring to the Oakland series), "the fact was disclosed that he was a wonderful storyteller. Here, perhaps, he was at his best. He gave life to the ancient tales by telling them in his inimitable fashion, the subject giving full play to his unsurpassed power of interpretation, and to that wealth of facial expression which was his greatest personal charm. 'I love to tell these stories,’ he said. 'They are the life of India. I have heard them since babyhood. I never get tired of telling them.[57]


Indeed Swamiji never tired of talking about anything connected with his beloved motherland. Just before ascending the platform to give a lecture on India in San Francisco (very probably his lecture of March 5 at the Red Men’s Building) he said to Mr. Allan, who was then acting as an usher, "When I get started on the subject of India, I never know when to stop. If I go on too long, attract my attention." "He began promptly at eight o’clock," Mr. Allan recalled, "and when it got to be ten o’clock we decided that I should attract his attention by swinging my watch from its chain. Standing at the back of the hall, I raised my hand and swung the watch. Swamiji quickly noticed. 'There they are,’ he said, 'swinging the watch for me to stop when I have hardly got started.’ " And then, as Mr. Allan often told the story in later years, "he went right on with the lecture.[58]


The second Wendte Hall series, which has taken us into April, completed Swamiji’s work in Oakland. He had given eight lectures in all at the Unitarian church, each time traveling to and fro, sometimes in bad weather, between San Francisco and Oakland by streetcar, ferry, train, and again streetcar, accompanied by Mr. Allan, Mrs. Hansbrough, Mrs. Aspinall, perhaps many others. He had lectured with vigor and after each lecture had answered many questions from the audience.


"On one occasion," Mr. Rhodehamel wrote, "after persistent queries by a number of persons, it occurred to someone that they were plying the Swami too insistently with questions, and he remarked to that effect. 'Ask all the questions you like—the more the better,’ was the Swami’s good-natured reply. 'That is what I am here for, and I won’t leave you till you understand.’ The applause was so prolonged that he was obliged to wait till it subsided before he could continue. At times he literally startled people into belief by his answers. To the question, after a lecture on Reincarnation [very probably "The Laws of Life and Death"], 'Swami, do you remember your past life?’ he answered quickly and seriously, 'Yes, clearly, even when I was a little boy.’ "


At other times he brought down the house—or, as Mr. Rhodehamel put it, "relieved the tenseness of embarrassing situations"-with his humor. "Observe his parry," Rhodehamel wrote in illustration, "to the question incredulously hurled at him at the close of a lecture which culminated in an impassioned outburst on the glory of God-Consciousness: 'Swami have you seen God?’ 'What!’ he returned, his face lighting up with a happy smile, 'Do I look like it;—a big fat man like me.?'[59]


It would seem probable that often Swamiji did not arrive home from Oakland until very late at night. But time was of small consequence. "One night," Mr. Allan related, "when the Reverend B. Fay Mills was walking with him to the train that would take him to the Oakland mole, Mr. Mills said, 'Swami, we must hurry to catch the train.’ Swamiji made no change in his pace. 'Is there not another train?’ he asked.'[60]


(Mr. Allan does not finish this dialogue; there must have been more. Mr. Mills would have, or should have, said, "Yes, Swami, there will be another train; but to miss the ferry at this hour of the night will mean a half hour’s wait for another." Whereupon Swamiji, still not changing his pace, would have answered, "What of that?" "You Indians," Mr. Mills would have observed, "have no idea of time." And Swamiji would have retorted, as he did at another time in a like circumstance, "Yes, you live in time; we live in Eternity.'[61]And thus, still at Swamiji’s unhurried pace, they would have proceeded to the train stop.)


In its early editions, its authors depending on the only information then available, the Life states that Swamiji formed a Vedanta center in Oakland. Recent research has disclosed no valid evidence that he did so. But the city was connected nevertheless with the future growth of the Vedanta movement in northern California. As we have seen, Swamiji’s lectures in Oakland were, in a sense, of a piece with his preliminary lectures in San Francisco. He reached out, as it were, across the Bay to gather students into the heart of his work, and many entered, becoming imbued forever with his spirit. Several years after Swamiji had passed away, a number of Vedanta students in Oakland, including Mr. and Mrs. Frank Rhodehamel and the Misses Sarah and Rebecca Fox, formed a study and discussion group under the leadership of the young man named Gurudasa who, as the reader may remember, had heard Swamiji lecture at the New York Vedanta Society in November of 1899. Gurudasa had been given his first monastic vows by Swami Abhedananda and had come to California in the winter of 1900 in order to live at Shanti Ashrama, of which more later. After spending several years at the Retreat, he traveled in 1906 to India, where he remained five years. Returning to California, he became the acknowledged, though unofficial, leader of the informal group of Vedanta students in Oakland. In 1922 he again went to India and at the Belur Math received the vows of sannyasa and the name Swami Atulananda. For the remainder of his long and spiritually fruitful life (he passed away in 1966 at the age of ninety-seven) he lived in India, becoming well known for his high degree of spiritual attainment.


The group that had gathered around Gurudasa kept Swamiji’s teachings alive in Oakland, and the city continued to play a part in the Vedanta movement. In 1931 Swami Ashokananda, who had just begun his ministry at the Vedanta Society in San Francisco, extended his lecturing activities to Oakland, mindful that Swamiji had worked there. From the start the Swami’s weekly lectures in Oakland were well attended and continued so until 1939. It was in that year, on the basis of the evident interest in Vedanta in the East Bay, that the Swami opened a branch center of the Vedanta Society of Northern California in Berkeley. A temple was built near the University campus, Miss Fox and her sister Fredrica (Rebecca had died) helping to finance it. The Berkeley center is today thriving; and thus one finds a continuity of Vedantic thought in the East Bay from the time of Swamiji’s first lecture at the Unitarian church to the present. The fires he kindled do not die; nor do they blaze only under the name of Vedanta. The First Unitarian Church in Oakland has not forgotten him. Its present minister, Dr. Arnold Crompton, once spoke to me of Swami Vivekananda as "the great saint of our time," and several years later, on November 12 of 1977, he commemorated Swamiji’s lectures in the church by installing with due ceremony a bronze plaque on the pulpit from which he had spoken and also by placing a large photograph of him in the church foyer.


8


Throughout the weeks that Swamiji lived at 1719 Turk Street he was lecturing almost every evening in either downtown San Francisco or the East Bay. Between March 4 and April 18, a period of forty-six days that overlapped his stay at Turk Street at both ends, he delivered at least forty-two public lectures; and when we extend this count to include the three lectures he gave in February (one in San Francisco and two at the Unitarian church in Oakland), the twelve or more classes that he held at the Turk Street flat, and four classes on the Gita held at the end of May, we find that he spoke in all, to large audiences and small, at least sixty-one times. "At least," because, as I mentioned earlier, one can never be sure that a list of Swamiji’s lectures or classes during any given period is exhaustive. Again and again a new discovery will show him to have burst the limits one had thought to set for him. But even sixty-one talks-each given in the full vigor of what he must have felt would be his last intensive public mission to the world-are a great many, and there is no denying that the tremendous wave of spiritual power that Sri Ramakrishna brought to earth swept over the Bay Area in full flood.


It was long thought that almost all of Swamiji’s lectures in San Francisco, and all of those he was to give later in Alameda, were lost to everyone but those who heard them. There had been no Mr. Goodwin to take them down; the San Francisco newspapers had, on the whole, been remiss in their reporting, and apparently no one in the audiences had thought to take notes. But with the same luck-if one may use so poor a word-that attended Swamiji’s mission throughout its course, it happened that Mr. Rhodehamel not only took notes at the Oakland Unitarian Church, but followed Swamiji across the’ Bay and took notes of a number of his San Francisco (and later his Alameda) lectures as well. Moreover, among those who heard Swamiji’s lectures in San Francisco and Alameda was a young woman who was taking this opportunity to exercise a rusty shorthand. Her name was Ida Ansell. Although Miss Ansell took notes at Swamiji’s lectures for the sake of her shorthand, she did not attend them solely for that reason. She was at the time an ardent student, a patient, and an admirer of a Miss Lydia Bell, leader of the California Street Home of Truth, and, through her, had become interested, somewhat mistily, in Eastern thought. In an unpublished letter written forty-six years later she told the story from the start:


I was an only child and very lonely. My mother came to California for her health when I was about eight years old, and I was boarded with a friend near Boston. Two years later I was sent to my mother, but had become lame in the meantime. That increased the loneliness, and instead of usual childhood doings, I developed too much imagination and too little discrimination. Continual trouble with the hip sent me first to doctors, then to Christian Science, then to the Home of Truth (Mrs. Militz), then to Miss Bell, also a Home of Truth leader [in San Francisco], but one who had been active in the beginning of the Theosophical Society in New York, and consequently her teaching was not exclusively Christian. It was at her Home of Truth [on California Street] that I was staying for a few weeks when Swamiji came to San Francisco. My favorite reading had been such books as "On the Heights of the Himalayas," "In the Sanctuary," Bulwer-Lytton’s "Zanoni," "Joseph Balsamo" by Alexandre Dumas, etc. [all works that dealt romantically with the occult and supernatural]. Now was added "Light on the Path" [a Theosophical work], and Miss Bell had just begun a daily class on the Gita. Consequently, Swamiji was, to my mind, an Adept, a Mahatma, and I went to every lecture that I could. That was the foundation for any understanding. [Miss Ansell attended Swamiji’s first lecture at the Unitarian church in Oakland, but did not take notes. She did not, in fact, take notes until almost three weeks later, on March 16. Swamiji had by then given at least thirteen lectures in the Bay Area.]


I was not a professional stenographer at that time; my one thought was to become a teacher of music. But an opportunity had come between grammar school and high school, to take a course in shorthand, which I accepted, thinking it would be fun to have it in high school. I had to leave high school after one year [because of a nervous breakdown], and never used the shorthand, except to substitute for a friend during her vacation, until I became a student and patient of Miss Bell. Then for practice I took all her Sunday lectures and later Swamiji’s lectures. She spoke very deliberately and I could get every word which was not possible with Swamiji. But the humiliating part is that while I transcribed her lectures regularly each week, I put his away, hoping to write them up later.[62]


Almost half a century passed before Miss Ansell looked again at her notes of Swamiji’s lectures and, at the request of Swami Ashokananda, began to transcribe them. By this time, the notes were not only "cold," but many of the squibbles had become archaic, outmoded by a new system which she had, years since, made her own. Added to this was the difficulty that she had often been unable to keep up with Swamiji’s torrential flow of words and the further difficulty that she had always become so charmed by his manner of telling a story that her pencil had been suspended as she watched him. Many were the gaps in her notes, and the transcription of them difficult, laborious, and often frustrating—took some six months of unremitting work to bring to completion.


Miss Ansell was living in Los Angeles when in 1945 she undertook this task. As she completed each transcription she mailed it, together with its duplicate copy, to Swami Ashokananda in San Francisco. I am fortunate enough to have read the many letters she addressed to the Swami both during the progress of her work and after its completion, when four of the transcripts, edited and made whole, were sent to her for her opinion. There is, one finds, an unfolding of a drama in her letters, for she began her task with misgivings and ended by rejoicing. A few excerpts will tell the story.[63]


On July 19, 1945, when Miss Ansell sent her first transcript to Swami Ashokananda, her accompanying letter was full of apology, if not despair:


Just now with many misgivings, I am sending you what I can read of the notes taken of a lecture given by Swamiji on March 16,  1900. The blank spaces indicate either that something was omitted or that I could not read what was written. I could have filled in some of the blanks, but you asked me not to try to "make them nice," and it seems best to send just what I can read, without making any additions or changes. Then you can know just what material there is, and can tell me whether or not to try to continue. I feel I have committed a sort of sacrilege. None of the other lectures are much better, and some of them even more scrappy.


The difficulty is age—of the typewriter, the notes and the writer. The machine is so old, the letter "o" so sharp, it punches holes in the paper. The notes were taken 45 years ago by an amateur stenographer unfamiliar with the subject matter.... They are being transcribed by a decrepit old woman, of whom the less said the better....


As time went on, Miss Ansell became more confident that her scraps of notes would somehow be made whole:


It is almost ten years [she wrote on September 15, 1945] since Mrs. Allan told you I had notes of Swamiji’s lectures and you asked me to transcribe them. I had never had any hope of having any complete lectures published, but kept them all these years hoping sometime to transcribe what I could and send them to Gurudas for Prabuddha Bharata as "Excerpts from Swamiji’s lectures in San Francisco and Alameda," giving typed copies to a few Vedanta friends.... If I had done that, or if I had given them to anyone else, I would have omitted all the disconnected portions. In sending them to you, I am including  everything that I can read, no matter how disjointed it seems, feeling sure that you will know what to eliminate and what to keep, and also sure that everybody will enjoy them much more after you have edited them. So, even if it takes longer . . . it seems the right thing to do.... I would rather give them to you than anyone else, not only because they were taken in San Francisco and I feel they belong there, but also because the few lectures that I have heard you give are more like Swamiji’s than any others that I have heard. He never thought of time and was always completely informal and spontaneous.


When Miss Ansell wrote the above passage, she had transcribed less than half the lecture notes. Except for a vacation that she allowed herself in December, she worked on through the remainder of the year, transcribing her notes at the rate of about one set a week. Her letters to Swami Ashokananda continued throughout the fall of 1945, until at the end of December and the beginning of January she completed the transcriptions of Swamiji’s three Gita talks and sent them off with their duplicates to San Francisco.


It so happened that on January 4 of 1946, the day she mailed the last of her transcripts to Swami Ashokananda, she received from him a typed copy of "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?"—the lecture he had chosen to edit first for inclusion in The Voice of India, the magazine then being published by the Vedanta Society of Northern California.


Last night [she wrote on January 6 of 1946] Haridas read the lecture to me, and I followed the shorthand notes and we were both happy. It is truly Swamiji’s spirit throughout. Almost every blank, even the big gaps, you have filled without any break in the continuity of the thought. It is the same person speaking. I am very glad I did not attempt any editing but gave you just the notes that I could read, crude and incomplete as they were. I was so unhappy over them, but you have restored all the power and beauty of Swamiji’s words. How could you do it? . . . It makes me feel sure that once in my life I made a right decision in sending you all the notes.


Four of Ida Ansell’s transcripts, as edited by Swami Ashoka-nanda, were published in the 1946 issues of The Voice of India. Reading the typed copies in advance of publication, Miss Ansell expressed increasing pleasure and on February 27, 1947, summed up her reactions: "Swami Turiyananda used to say, 'Mother can make the mouse a lion.’ She didn’t make the mouse a lion in this case, but she put the work of a mouse in the hands of a lion who could use it at the time it was most needed."


In the meanwhile, however, a worry had arisen in Miss Ansell’s mind. As early as January, 1946, Swami Ashokananda had informed her that The Voice of India would be discontinued at the end of that year for an indefinite period. Would he, then, she wondered, continue to edit the transcripts? "I would rather they be edited by you than anyone else," she wrote in January of 1946, "—and would not like to give them to anyone else as they are now." A few days later she gave Swami Ashokananda full rights to the sixteen remaining transcripts and requested again that no one else be allowed to edit them. She was assured that her trust would not be violated. Two years later, in February of 1948, she wrote, still worried:


I am very happy about your editing Swamiji’s lectures, but if you cannot do it, please don’t give them to anyone else in their present form. I did give them to the Vedanta Society there, not only because I felt they belong there, but because you will do the editing in a way no one else could.


Miss Ansell was again assured that her transcriptions would not be given to anyone else, and there the matter rested.


This, however, was not the last chapter of the story of her shorthand notes. Swami Ashokananda’s health, never good, became worse, other urgent matters were occupying his time, and the exacting work of editing Swamiji’s lectures had to be postponed. The publication of The Voice of India, moreover, remained suspended, and thus Miss Ansell’s transcripts, it would have seemed to her, suffered a stillbirth. Understandably, she was anxious to bring out the sixteen remaining lectures, and was easily persuaded to go about the laborious process of transcribing her shorthand notes once again—this time giving them to Vedanta and the West for publication. Unfortunately, she was to see only one of her second set of transcripts in print. The first lecture that was published appeared in January of 1955; she passed away on January 31 of that year at the age of seventy-eight.


But however that may be, readers now have the benefit of Miss Ansell’s second transcriptions of sixteen of Swamiji’s lectures. These transcripts, which are indeed precious and which one can today find in the latest editions of the Complete Works, consist of the consecutive sentences that had made her so happy to come upon in her notebooks. The "scrappy" parts—the disconnected words and phrases—that she had conscientiously typed out in 1945 she had as conscientiously omitted in later years, substituting for them three dots. "If I had given [the notes] to anyone else, I would have omitted all the disconnected portions," she had written to Swami Ashokananda in September of 1945. And to this word she was true.


(In Vedanta and the West, as also in the Complete Works, Miss Ansell’s second transcripts have been printed with interpolated words and phrases placed in brackets, and omissions have been indicated by ellipses. For the careful student of Swamiji’s lectures these dots and bracketed words are certainly of value. But in quoting from these lectures, as I shall do later on, I shall omit them for the sake of more fluent reading and also to avoid confusion with my own brackets and omission marks.)


9


Swamiji’s evening lectures, to which admission was charged, were, as we shall see, given in groups, or series, of three. In addition, he gave a free lecture in San Francisco every Sunday, generally in the afternoon. He delivered five such Sunday lectures, which in themselves formed a series that could have been entitled "The Great Teachers of the World"—or, more accurately, "The Great Teachings of the World"—and that was in part an illustration of his teachings on the harmony of religions.


Although this Sunday series almost spanned the main body of Swamiji’s work in San Francisco—beginning on March II with the first known lecture that he gave after his move to Turk Street, "Christ’s Message to the World," and closing on April 8 with his climactic and provocative lecture, "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?"—it will be more convenient to discuss these Sunday lectures (at least the first four) in a group rather than to take them up singly and in their chronological place. This is the method I shall follow throughout in writing of Swamiji’s lectures in the Bay Area, for his lecture-series were so interwoven one with the other that to discuss his single lectures in their chronological order rather than as groups of three (or five) would only lead to confusion. First, then, the Sunday series.


According to the information given in the city’s Sunday morning papers of March 11, Swami delivered "Christ’s Message to the World" at Golden Gate Hall that morning at eleven o’clock. Very probably Miss Ansell was not present at the lecture, for as she told Swami Ashokananda, she could find "no notes or mention of it anywhere.'[64] As for the San Francisco newspapers, they gave no report of it. But, as luck would have it, Frank Rhodehamel, who had come from Oakland, took at least a few notes. Brief as those notes were, it is clear from them that Swamiji’s San Francisco lecture on Christ was, in some respects at least, similar to that in southern California. As the reader will remember, he had pointed out in Los Angeles that in the cyclic rise and fall of nations and races "a huge wave comes, sometimes a tidal wave—and always on the topmost crest of the wave is a shining soul, the Messenger.'[65] Rhodehamel’s notes consist of a similar introduction:


Everything progresses in waves. The march of civilization, the progression of worlds is in waves. All human activities likewise progress in —art, literature, science, religion.


Great waves succeed each other, and between these great waves is a quiet, a calm, a period of rest, a period of recuperation.


All manifest life seems to require a period of sleep, of calm, in which to gain added strength, renewed vigor, for the next manifestation, or awakening to activity. Thus, is the march of all progress, of all manifest life—in waves, successive waves, [of] activity and repose. Waves succeed each other in an endless chain of progression.


Religion, like everything else, progresses in waves; and at the summit of each great wave stands an illumined soul, a mighty spiritual leader and teacher of men. Such a one was Jesus of Nazareth.[66]


The only other certain reference to Swamiji’s lecture on Christ is a passing mention of it in the unpublished memories of Mrs. George Roorbach, which were taken down fifty years later during the course of a conversation. In 1900 Mrs. Roorbach, of whom more later, was a leader of the Alameda Home of Truth. "I heard of Swami and went to his lectures, everyone I could get to," she recalled. "Of course, he blew the top out of our minds." When Mrs. Roorbach was asked if she remembered any outstanding lectures, she replied. "I don’t think one was better than another, but I remember he gave one on the life and teachings of Jesus. I thought it was wonderful that he could make it so understandable and inspiring—much more so than our own ministers can. He gave it a different turn; he explained that God came in many forms.'[67]


A portion of the brief reminiscences of Christina Albers may be pertinent to this same lecture. Miss Albers, a poet, was later to contribute often to Prabuddha Bharata and to write several books, such as The Ramayana in Verse, The Life of Buddha for Children, and Ancient Tales of Hindustan. Her memories of one of Swamiji’s San Francisco lectures were first published in Prabuddha Bharata of August 1938, and later in Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda; but of which lecture she was writing, she does not say. In many respects her article could apply to all; yet in one respect it could apply particularly to "Christ the Messenger," for Swamiji was not well on that day. The previous week he had had a relapse in health, and his trips to and from Oakland, his nightly lectures at Wendte Hall and in San Francisco could not have improved matters. In fact, on Sunday, March 11, he had a bad cold.


When he rose to go to the platform [Miss Albers wrote] it seemed an effort on his part. He walked with a heavy gait. I noticed that his eyelids were swollen, and he looked like one who suffers pain. He stood for a while in silence before he spoke, and I saw a change. His countenance brightened, and I thought his very features were different now. He began to speak, and there was a transformation. The soul-force of the great man became visible. I felt the tremendous force of his speech—words that were felt more than they were heard. I was drawn into a sea of being, of feelings of a higher existence, from which it seemed almost like pain to emerge when the lecture was finished. And then those eyes, how wonderful! They were like shooting stars—lights shooting forth from them in constant flashes.[68]


While a bad cold did not, could not, stand as a barrier to the radiant flow of Swamiji’s spiritual power, it was at least partly responsible for a change in his plans. He had intended to be present that Sunday afternoon at one of Mrs. Phoebe Hearst’s musicales in Berkeley (which is why, perhaps, he had given his lecture on Christ in the morning rather than in the afternoon as was generally his custom on Sundays). Mrs. Phoebe Apperson Hearst, widow of the mining magnate and United States senator George Hearst, and mother of the young but already powerful newspaper czar, William Randolph Hearst, was immensely wealthy, influential, and noted for her many philanthropies. She was, indeed, one of the Bay Area’s most prominent women. Her Sunday afternoon musicales, which had been taking place since the beginning of the year in "Hearst Hall"—a newly built "cathedral-like" structure adjoining her residence in Berkeley—were events, both social and cultural. Although they were intended primarily for the benefit of university students and professors, Mrs. Hearst extended invitations to her friends and to friends of friends, and she had invited Swamiji.


As Swamiji wrote to Miss MacLeod on March 2, he had called on Mrs. Hearst during his first few days in northern California and had found her not at home[69]It was Swamiji’s good friend Emma Thursby who had supplied him with a letter of introduction. (According to a newspaper note, Miss Thursby had been in southern California that winter.)[70]


A singer of international popularity and acclaim, she knew many influential people in many cities throughout the United States and Europe. She had given Swamiji other letters of introduction at other times, including an earlier one to Mrs. Hearst herself (which he had not used) when the latter was in Washington, D.C.


As it happened,. Swamiji did not go to Mrs. Hearst’s musicale. "I could not go," he wrote to Miss MacLeod. "I had a bad cold. So that was all.'[71] From Mrs. Allan, who was at the Turk Street flat that Sunday afternoon, one learns that there was an additional reason for his not attending the musicale. "When the time grew near for Swamiji to go," Mrs. Allan related during one of her many verbal recollections of those days, "someone said, 'It is time for you to get ready, Swami.’ He replied, 'I am not going.’ And he didn’t go. Several days later I asked him why he hadn’t gone. 'All Mrs. Hearst wants is to lionize me,’ he said. 'Why should I go?’ " Although Swamiji was often the despair of those of his friends who sought to introduce him to the "right people," it is probable that he met Mrs. Hearst later on; for according to Mrs. Hansbrough, she offered him one thousand dollars for his Indian work.[73]


Swamiji gave the second lecture of his Sunday series on the afternoon of March 18. Its title was "Buddha’s Message to the World," and, like the remaining three lectures of the series, it was delivered in Union Square Hall, on the south side of Post Street between Powell and Mason streets. Golden Gate Hall, where he had given his first two lectures in San Francisco, as well as his Sunday lecture on Christ, was now left behind. We do not know the reason for this; but one advantage of the halls on Post Street was that they were easy of access from Swamiji’s flat. He could take a cable car, travel down Turk (with a jog north at Mason) to the intersection of Eddy, Powell, and Market streets, and from there either transfer to another cable at the famous Powell Street turntable or walk the four blocks north to Post. Because Swamiji lost his way easily in American cities, this directness of route had its value. As to the relative sizes of Golden Gate Hall and Union Square Hall, we can only guess; both were destroyed in 1906, and no information has so far been found regarding the seating capacity of either. We can suppose, however, that the latter was fairly large, seating about six hundred. "His Sunday audience usually ran from five to six hundred people,"73 Mrs. Hansbrough recalled. And we learn from a recently discovered newspaper report (given below) that on Sunday, March 18, Union Square Hall was crowded.


In the audience, it is interesting to note, was a young man by the name of Ernest C. Brown. Mr. Brown, who was to become an ardent devotee and member (later, president) of the Vedanta Society of San Francisco, had come for the first time to hear Swamiji. Like Miss Sarah Fox, he had heard of the Swami through Mr. Paul Militz, the religious teacher in Oakland. "[Mr. Militz] was a German-Pole," Mr. Brown related in his reminiscences as published in the London magazine Vedanta for East and West (July-August, 1959), "a great patriot and lover of freedom. One Sunday he said: 'Now, you folks have been wanting me to show you a real renouncer such as I have been telling you about—one who has renounced everything for the Truth. Very well, a great teacher has recently come from India. His name is Swami Vivekananda. I advise you all to go and hear him. He is one of the greatest teachers and greatest ascetics India has ever produced.’ The hall was empty the next Sunday morning, much to his surprise and astonishment. The only people left in the hall were an elderly German lady and myself." In the afternoon of what must have been the following Sunday (March 18), Mr. Brown and the elderly German lady also went to hear Swamiji. His memoirs continue:


...He was not there when we arrived, so we took our seats and waited. Then someone in an orange-coloured robe walked from a little side-room out on the platform and I said to myself "Who is that? An emperor?" His walk was that of a god, a man accustomed to ruling. When he sat down the audience burst into tumultuous applause. But he sat there unmoved, his face reflecting the perfect calm within. Then he rose and just held up his hands with palms facing the audience, and at once there was a silence that you could feel, it was so tense, so palpable. I said to my companion, "Who is this person who can make a large audience like this yield and in a moment give silence? He is obviously accustomed to commanding others." Then he began his lecture. We listened, and at the close I went up to shake hands with him. Other people were lining up so I went along too. Then he said a few words which were not of significance to me then, because I did not know his greatness. I did not appreciate them until years afterwards {74][Mr. Brown did not say what those words were.]


"Buddha’s Message to the World" was the second lecture during which Miss Ansell practiced her shorthand (the first having been an evening lecture given in San Francisco two days before, entitled "Concentration"), and her transcript of it was among the four that were edited for The Voice of India and subsequently published in volume eight of the complete works Thus we have an excellent account of it. But as has already been pointed out, Miss Ansell did not by any means take down Swamiji’s every word, and in this particular instance, the San Francisco press has contributed to our knowledge. On March 19, 1900, the Chronicle printed a fairly long report of the lecture. Although this journalistic paraphrase (it is not a strictly verbatim report) is even more scanty and much less satisfactory than Miss Ansell’s notes, it contains two or three details that she missed, and for the sake of these I shall give it here in full. (As far as can be discovered to date, this article and the short accounts of "The Ideal of a Universal Religion," which I have reproduced earlier, constitute the only newspaper reports of Swamiji’s San Francisco lectures.)

VIVEKANANDI ON BUDDHISM.
THE HINDOO LEGTURES TO A CROWDED 
HOUSE. HIS VIEWS ON ONE OF THE RELIGIONS 
OF THE ORIENT.

A Warm Tribute to the Philosopher and His Teachings—

Some of the Principles Expounded.


The Swami Vivekanandi, apostle of the Vedanta Philosophy, spoke to a crowded house in Union-square Hall yesterday on "Buddha’s Message to the World," saying in part:


"Buddhism is the most important religion of history, representing the most tremendous religious movement the world ever saw, the most gigantic spiritual wave that ever swept human society. Indian society 700 years before Christ had reached one of its periods of decadence, characteristic of the history of Oriental races, and invariably followed by another uplifting. When a fighting race once slips its foot it never recovers. India was then, like the Jewish nation prior to Christ’s advent, in the hands of a priesthood which was crowding the people’s heads with hideous, degrading superstitions, a body of men standing between the people and God, or spirituality. This priesthood loved power, and took every possible means to secure and hold it, by means of secrecy and abracadabras, just as men are doing among you today with their secret societies and their occult messages which are intended only for them. And you are impressed by them. You do not care for plain truths and plain words, although all the great truths ever spoken, like the sermon on the mount, were in the simplest language. The less you understand, the better you feel, and the more you revere. The day is coming when you will be educated out of this, but it is not here yet.


There are those among you who say that people are not yet ready for truth. And you hide it, dilute it, water it! The world is no better for hidden truths. Can the world be worse than it is to-day here among you? You, who are like so many wolves, throwing yourselves upon each other’s throats, living and thriving at the expense of your fellows, under the competitive system! Buddha found awful practices in his day to keep people away from the truth. If a man of the lower caste uttered the name of a Brahman, his stomach was cut open.


If by some accident one overheard the priests reading from the sacred books, molten lead was poured into his ears. Yet many good people then, as to-day, were content to let these things go on, so long as they were safe and comfortable. Buddha had a heart to feel for the sufferings of others, a brain to think out the remedy, and a hand to do the work before him. The message that he brought was the essence of the truths in the Vedas. It was tremendously bold, even for India, where, whatever other oppression may exist, religious intolerance has never been known.


Buddha declared that all the misery in this life was due to selfishness. He thundered against priests and ceremonials and the sacrifice of animals and preached, above all, love for man. This is the Buddhist point of view. We, Hindoos claim that we understand Buddha better; that he meant that men were all one and that God exists, a principle and a spirit, nearer to you than you are to your own soul because he is your own soul. How dare you cast God away from you with a "thou"? Always hereafter say "I". Ceremonies are without meaning. Work is prayer and higher than all your talks. Buddha stood for human equality; he maintained that there should be no distinctions as to the highest attainments for men and women, and that women should go to the altar. He broke the bondage of the Indian races. Greater than his doctrines was Buddha’s fearless, loving self-denying life, and, although I am not a Buddhist, this has always appealed most to me, as well as has his noble death, when he protested with his last words that his followers should not worship him, but live for the principles for which he had lived. His doctrines were in a sense negative, fitted to the times. I can say the same thing that Buddha said when I declare "There is nothing but God in the universe. He pervades all, is in all, is all."


As will be clear from a comparison of "Buddha’s Message to the World" as given in the Complete Works with the above report, the latter is not a full or altogether clear exposition of what Swami said. The Chronicle reporter, to be sure, jotted down some things Miss Angel had obscured or let slide—notably, the wonderful sentence, so characteristic of this period of Swamiji’s mission: "How dare you cast God away from you with a 'thou’? Always hereafter say “I” But the reporter failed on the whole, as Miss Ansell did not, to catch Swamiji’s most salient points. Throughout this lecture there is an interplay of past and present, of Buddha’s message to the world and of Swamiji’s own message. Telling in one breath of the ancient prophet who spoke to ancient India, Swamiji, in the next breath, was the modern prophet speaking to the modern West. One moment, for instance, the audience heard of how Buddha had brushed aside the superstitions, the priest-craft, the rituals, the meta-physical and philosophical niceties and complexities of his time to declare the full, simple, and direct truth to all men; the next moment they heard Swamiji thundering to them: "Are you ashamed of God that you cannot confess His truth before the world? Do you call that religious and spiritual? The priests are the only people fit for the truth! The masses are not fit for it! . . . It must be diluted! Water it down a little! . . . But the people shall learn the truth.... Bring truth out! If it is real, it will do good. When people protest and propose other methods, they only make apologies for witchcraft."75 Many are such instances in which Buddha and Swamiji played, as it were, contrapuntal themes. But if they were alike in their direct, unequivocal approach to truth, alike in their boundless desire to free all men from delusion and slavery, alike in their insistence on self-reliance, the difference between their basic teachings was enormous—both philosophically and practically.


According to Miss Ansell’s transcript, Swamiji did not say in this lecture, as he is quoted in the Chronicle report, that the Hindus interpret Buddha to have meant something he did not teach. Rather, he opposed Buddha’s negative teaching of no God, no soul or self, with the positive teaching of monistic Vedanta. "There is another way of looking at the truth we have been discussing," he said: "the Hindu way. We claim that Buddha’s great doctrine of selflessness can be better understood if it is looked at in our way. In the Upanishads there are [is?] already the great doctrine of the Atman and the Brahman." And then Swamiji spoke of that grand Upanishadic teaching: "There is one Self, not many. That one Self shines in various forms. Man is man’s brother because all men are one. A man is not only my brother, say the Vedas, he is myself. Hurting any part of the universe, I only hurt myself. I am the universe. It is a delusion that I think I am Mr. So-and-so—that is the delusion....It is the delusion of separateness that is the root of misery.... When Buddha says there is no soul, I say, 'Man, thou art one with the universe; thou art all things.’ How positive !'[76]


It was this positive, monistic truth that Swamiji gave to all men. He gave it in full measure, because man (whom in this lecture he called in unforgettably incisive words "the other Godman") was himself that truth in full measure. Buddha asked all men, indiscriminately, to leave the world; Swamiji asked them to spiritualize the world, to know it and themselves as divine. But in each teaching man stood supreme in the universe, possessing the means of his own salvation, with no cause either to beg for help or to weep. In northern California, as we shall see, Swamiji was to lay greater and greater emphasis on the total self-sufficiency of man—the other God-—n whose service he himself, like Buddha, would willingly, and paradoxically, sacrifice his life a thousand times.

10

On the same Sunday that Swamiji delivered his lecture on Buddha, two interviews with him appeared in the San Francisco papers—one in the Chronicle, the other in the Examiner. It is possible that these were two different versions of the same morning session; yet this is not certain, and Swamiji may have received the reporters on separate days, giving a good deal of time to each.

The reporter from the Chronicle was an imaginative young woman named Blanche Partington. In August of this same year she was to visit Shanti Ashrama—the Vedanta retreat in the San Antonio Valley, of which Swami Turiyananda was then in charge—and was to write up her visit for her newspaper. Miss Partington was clearly impressed with Swamiji, and it is interesting to note that later on in her life she was to become a Christian Science practitioner (or healer), devoting herself, if not to Vedanta, to the belief that man is Spirit. The story of her morning visit to the Turk Street flat (which was published in the Chronicle of March 18 and first reprinted in Prabuddha Bharata of June 1929) read as follows:

A DUSKY PHILOSOPHER FROM INDIA

Had I been a little wiser or a little less wise—a little-knowledge is a dangerous thing—it is possible that my prevailing sensation on meeting the Hindoo monk, Swami Vivekananda, would have been other than an irresistible inclination to get behind something or somebody for fear of my aura telling unkind tales of me.


These Eastern seers are such strange folk, and our auras we have always with us. That mine was radiating curiosity and "nerves" and other undesirable original sins in every direction, I was painfully aware, but either the Swami, through knowledge, has come to charity, or else he is as comfortably unconscious of auras as the rest of us, for his greeting was gracious and kind as might be. Bowing very low, in Eastern fashion, on his entrance to the room, then holding out his hand in good American style, the dusky philosopher from the banks of the Ganges gave friendly greeting to the representative of that thoroughly Occidental institution, the daily press.


I couldn’t see much of him at first, for his eyes, which are very large and brilliant, and black, of course, but I found afterward that he was taller than common, of much dignified grace of movement, and of a color calculated to make artists of fish wives. It made me dream of "heathen idols, the temple bells a-ringing", of splendid mosques and bazaars, gold and ivory, bejeweled rajahs and elephants, and the whole gorgeous confusion of color which does duty for the foreigner’s conception of that ancient rich land of India. And the Swami himself—a Buddha come to judgment! It is exactly the type. When he is not smiling, and the Swami is a humorous soul, there is the same suggestion of eternal inscrutableness in his face, the same suggestion of immutable poise in his figure. The repose of the Vere de Vere is not in it. ["Her manners had not that repose," Tennyson wrote, "which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere."] One might, indeed, suggest that the quickest way of learning to be English would be to study manners in India! An undoubted addition to the Swami’s striking picturesqueness is the wonderful red robe he wears. One cannot accuse a Swami of studying his complexion, yet the effect is identically the same as if the question had been studied with the utmost nicety, and I can confidently recommend a certain "persimmonish" terra cotta to the advanced brunette—what price for the hint, ladies? Perhaps the Swami Vivekananda is not without the very smallest spice of the universal vanity. I asked for a picture to illustrate this article, and when someone handed me a certain "cut". which has been extensively used in lecture advertisements here he uttered a mild protest against its use.


"But that does not look like you," said I.


"No, it is as if I wished to kill someone, " he said smiling, "like-like-"


"Othello," I inserted rashly. But the little audience of friends only smiled as the Swami made laughing recognition of the absurd resemblance of the picture to the jealous Moor. But I do not use that picture.


"Is it true, Swami," I asked, "that, when you went home after lecturing in the Congress of Religions after the World’s Fair, princes knelt at your feet, a half dozen of the ruling sovereigns of India dragged your carriage through the streets, as the papers told us? We do not treat our priests so."


"That is not good to talk of," said the Swami. "But it is true that religion rules there, not dollars."


"What about caste?"


"What of your four Hundred?" he replied, smiling. "Caste in India is an institution hardly explicable or intelligible to the Occidental mind. It is acknowledged to be an imperfect institution, but we do not recognize a superior social result from your attempts at class distinction. India is the only country which has so far succeeded in imposing a permanent caste upon her people, and we doubt if an exchange for Western superstitions and evils would be for her advantage."


"But under such a regime—where a man may not eat this nor drink that, nor marry the other—the freedom you teach would be impossible," I ventured.


"It is impossible," assented the Swami; "but until India has outgrown the necessity for caste laws, caste laws will remain."


"Is it true that you may not eat food cooked by a foreigne—runbeliever?" I asked.


"In India the cook—who is not called a servant—must be of the same or higher caste than those for whom the food is cooked, as it is considered that whatever a man touches is impressed by his personality, and food, with which a man builds up the body through which he expresses himself, is regarded as being liable to such impression. As to the foods we eat, it is assumed that certain kinds of food nourish certain properties worthy of cultivation, and that others retard our spiritual growth. For instance, we do not kill to eat. Such food would be held to nourish the animal body, at the expense of the spiritual body, in which the soul is said to be clothed on its departure  from this physical envelope, besides laying the sin of blood guiltiness upon the butcher."


"Ugh!" I exclaimed involuntarily, an awful vision of reproachful little lambs, little chicken ghosts, hovering cow spirits—I was always afraid of cows anyway-—ising up before me.


"You see," explained the Brahmin, "the universe is all one, from the lowest insect to the highest Yogi. It is all one, we are all one, you and I are one—’ Here the Occidental audience smiled, the unconscious monk chanting the oneness of things in Sanscrit and the consequent sin of taking any life.


It is weird and beautiful, like far-off echoes of some ancient oracle, to hear the deep and musical chant of Sanscrit scriptures, in which to vary the intoning of one syllable is a deadly sin. It falls from the monk’s lips as dear and lovely poetry rises from a Western heart, and chant and translation, chant and translation, ring out their alternate music and truth through all his talk and teaching. He was pacing up and down the room most of the time during our talk, occasionally standing over the register—it was a chill morning for this child of the sun—and doing with grace and freedom whatever occurred to him, even, at length, smoking a little.


"You, yourself, have not yet attained supreme control over all desires," I ventured. The Swami’s frankness is infectious.


"No, madam," and he smiled the broad and brilliant smile of a child; "Do I look it?" But the Swami, from the land of hasheesh and dreams, doubtless did not connect my query with its smoky origin.


"Is it usual among the Hindoo priesthood to marry?" I ventured again.


"It is a matter of individual choice, " replied this member of the Hindoo priesthood. "One does not marry that he may not be in slavery to a woman and children, or permit the slavery of a woman to him."


"But what is to become of the population?" urged the Anti-Malthusian.


"Are you so glad to have been born?" retorted the Eastern thinker, his large eyes flashing scorn. "Can you conceive of nothing higher than this warring, hungry, ignorant world? Do not fear that the you may be lost, though the sordid, miserable consciousness of the now may go. What worth having [would be] gone?


"The child comes crying into the world. Well may he cry! Why should we weep to leave it? Have you thought " here the sunny smile came back—"of the different modes of East and West of expressing the passing away? We say of the dead man, 'He gave up his body’; you put it, 'he gave up the ghost’. How can that be? Is it the dead body that permits the ghost to depart? What curious inversion of thought!"


"But, on the whole, Swami, you think it better to be comfortably dead than to be a living lion?" persisted the defender of populations.


"Svaha, Svaha, so be it!" shouted the monk.


"But how is it that under such philosophy men consent to live at all?"


"Because a man’s own life is sacred as any other life, and one may not leave chapters unlearned," returned the philosopher. "Add power and diminish time, and the school days are shorter; as the learned professor can make the marble in twelve years which nature took centuries to form. It is all a question of time."


"India, which has had this teaching so long, has not yet learned her lesson?"


"No, though she is perhaps nearer than any other country, in that she has learned to love mercy."


"What of England in India?" I asked.


"But for English rule I could not be here now," said the monk, "though your lowest free-born American negro holds higher position in India politically than is mine. Brahmin and coolie, we are all 'natives’. But it is all right, in spite of the misunderstanding and oppression. England is the Tharma [karma?] of India, attracted inevitably by some inherent weakness, past mistakes, but from her blood and fibre will come the new national hope for my countrymen. I am a loyal subject of the Empress of India!" and here the Swami salaamed before an imaginary potentate, bowing very low, perhaps too low for reverence.


"But such an apostle of freedom—" I murmured.


"She is a widow for many years, and such we hold of high worth in India," said the philosopher seriously. "As to freedom, yes, I believe the goal of all development is freedom, law and order. There is more law and order in the grave than anywhere else—try it."


"I must go," I said, "I have to catch a train."


"That is like all Americans," smiled the Swami, and I had a glimpse of all eternity in his utter restfulness. "You must catch this car or that train always. Is there not another, later?"


But I did not attempt to explain the Occidental conception of the value of time to this child of the Orient, realizing its utter hopelessness and my own renegade sympathy. It must be delightful beyond measure to live in the land of "time enough": In the Orient there seems time to breathe, time to think, time to live; as the Swami says, what have we in exchange? We live in time; they in eternity.


One does not like to spoil Miss Partington’s joke, but it is not likely the Swamiji recommended the grave to her, or that he had said that the goal of all development was "freedom, law and order." More probably he had said it was "freedom, not law and order." However, the reader will judge this for himself.


As for the picture of Swamiji which Miss Partington likened to Othello, it may have been one of those taken during the Parliament of Religions in 1893, showing him standing with his arms folded and looking like the heroic warrior-monk that he was. The photograph which she chose to accompany her article was in another mood entirely. Here Swamiji is seated in his robe and turban, his right elbow rests on the arm of his settee, he leans slightly to the right, his head supported by his hand. This picture was one of several taken professionally in San Francisco, perhaps at Mrs. Hansbrough’s urging and certainly before March 17. Two sets of photographs had been taken at the same studio. In one set, Swamiji wears his robe and turban; in the other, which shows him seated in an ornately carved chair, his head is bare, he wears his clerical collar and loose black coat. In all these photographs, he seems piercingly beautiful, the embodiment—almost translucently so—of grace in every meaning of the word. The reader is perhaps familiar with these pictures, for they have been reproduced more than once (most recently, I believe, in Vivekananda: A Biography in Pictures); but reproductions made from reproductions become progressively undefined. Attempts, therefore, have been made in San Francisco to recover the original negatives; but this to no avail, and it would seem certain that they were destroyed by the Earthquake and Fire of 1906. Fortunately, however, the Vedanta Society of Northern California possesses some of the original prints and has given permission to reproduce them in the pages of this book. The two sets are the only pictures we have of Swamiji in San Francisco, and as Miss Partington has let us know, it is these photographs, not earlier ones, which show us how he was when he was here, how he looked when he lectured, when he talked to friends and interviewers, when he walked these streets.


The Examiner’s interview with Swamiji came out in the Magazine Section of that paper on the same Sunday as the Chronicle’s. It carried no by-line, but whoever wrote it seems to  have been as charmed by him as was Miss Partington. One wishes that he or she had been less sparing of words, but we have at least something of what Swamiji said as he paced for "a couple of hours" about the front parlor of his flat. The opening paragraph was taken from the preface of a pamphlet printed at Harvard in March of 1896. As for the headlines, they are justified, in part at least, by the material which directly followed the interview. There was no accompanying photograph; instead, an imaginative line drawing depicted Swamiji standing (in India) amid a circle of bearded disciples. The effect was meant to be, and no doubt struck many readers as being, exotic, weird, and strange. The text read:

"WE ARE HYPNOTIZED INTO WEAKNESS BY 
OUR SURROUNDINGS"


Hindoo Philosopher
Who Strikes at the Root of Some Occidental
Evils and Tells How
We must Worship God Simply and Not with 
Many Vain Prayers.

"The Swami Vivekananda has created a high degree of interest here in himself and his work," said C. C. Everett, D.D., LL.D., of Harvard University, in speaking of the work of the Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament of Religions held at the World’s Fair in Chicago. "There are, indeed, few departments of study more attractive than the Hindoo thought.... We Occidentals busy ourselves with the manifold. We can, however, have no understanding of the manifold if we have no sense of the One in Whom the manifold exists. The reality of the One is the truth which the East may well teach us, and we owe a debt of gratitude to Vivekananda that he has taught this lesson so effectively."


The Swami is among us now, and we, too, may hear this "truth" if we will. He must preach for his devotees, the strange, old gospels of the East.


A strikingly picturesque figure, the Swami Vivekananda is certain to attract sympathetic and unusual attention. Deeply learned in Sanscrit lore, familiar with all the phases of contemporary life, thoroughly versed in world-history, his friends are found in all classes and countries.


One American friend he may be assured of—the Swami is a charming person to interview.


Pacing about the little room where he is staying, he kept the small audience of interviewer and friend entertained for a couple of hours.


"Tell you about the English in India? But I do not wish to talk of politics," he said. "But from the higher standpoint, it is true that but for the English rule I could not be here. We natives know that it is through the inter-mixture of English blood and ideas that the salvation of India will come. Fifty years ago, all the literature and religion of the race were locked up in the Sanscrit language; today the drama and the novel are written in the vernacular, and the literature of religion is being translated. That is the work of the English, and it is unnecessary, in America, to descant upon the value of the education of the masses."


"What do you think of the Boer War?" was asked.


"Oh! Have you seen the morning paper?" the monk inquired. "But I do not wish to discuss politics. English and Boers are both in the wrong. It is terrible——the bloodshed! English will conquer, but at what fearful cost! She seems the nation of Fate."


And the Swami, with a smile, began chanting the Sanscrit for an unwillingness to discuss politics.


Then he talked long of ancient Russian history, and of the wandering tribes of Tartary, and of the Moorish rule in Spain, and displaying an astonishing memory and research. To this childlike interest in all things that touch him is doubtless due much of the curious and universal knowledge that he seems to possess.


The above was followed without explanation by a fairly long article headed simply "By Swami Vivekananda." This portion of the newspaper text has been reprinted in volume eight of the Complete Works under the title "The Essence of Religion" and with the notation "Report of a lecture delivered in America." Just what lecture this was, it is hard to say. It seems to contain excerpts from much earlier lectures and classes, and could have been compiled, in part at least, from Swamiji’s books and pamphlets. It does not, in any case, seem to be a report of any of his known San Francisco or Oakland lectures given prior to March 18. There is, of course, always the possibility, indeed the probability, that Swamiji gave lectures or talks in the Bay Area of which we know nothing, and “The Essence of Religion” could have been the notes taken at such a lecture. But since it is not at all certain that this is so, we must leave the matter here as an unsolved puzzle.


11

Swamiji’s lecture of Sunday, March 25, 1900, at Union Square Hall was to have been on "Sri Khrisna and His Message"—so it was advertised (with that spelling) in all the papers, together with the additional information that the lecture would start at 3.00 p.m. and that a Mr. Hugo Hertzer would sing the offertory. Mr. Hertzer may have sung the offertory, but otherwise little took place as announced.

"At 3 p.m.," Mr. Allan wrote in his memoirs, "Swami was not there. We waited and wondered what to do, and concluded that we must just wait." But Mr. Allan, who acted now as head usher at all of Swami’s lectures, did not just wait. He walked from the hall to the corner of Post and Power streets, looked up and down Power Street, waited awhile, saw no sign of Swami, and returned to the hall. This he did several times.


It was probably not until his fourth or fifth trip to the corner that he saw Swami walking slowly up Power Street in his own composed and majestic rhythm. The time was then three-thirty. But Mr. Allan’s difficulties were not over. "I met him at the corner of Post Street," he continued in his memoirs, "and walked with him towards the Hall." (According to Mr. Brown, who had often heard the story from Mr. Allan, the latter had said, "Swami, don’t you know you’re late? The audience has been waiting." To which Swamiji had replied, "Mr. Allan, I am never late. I have all the time in the world. All time is mine." "Well, Swami," Mr. Allan said, "the audience may not feel the same as you do: ‘ But Swamiji just went on at his same leisurely pace.)[77]"On the way we had to pass a shoe-shine stand," Mr. Allan’s memoirs continue, "and when Swami saw that, and saw that the shoe-shiner was idle, he decided to have his shoes shined. Did I not silently fidget, remembering the people who had come to hear the lecture! But all my fidgeting did no good. Well, at last, Swami got on the platform and was introduced to that audience, which had more or less patiently waited for him.'[78]


It is not likely that Mr. Allan, fidgeting at the shoe-shine stand, had had "a glimpse of all eternity" in the Swami’s "utter restfulness" as had Miss Partington; but in a few minutes he was to become almost overpoweringly aware of the vastness of Swamiji’s being. "It was when I introduced him at that lecture," he wrote, "that I felt like a pigmy and saw him as an immense giant. After this experience I could not bring myself to stand beside him again, but always thereafter made my introduction from the foot of the platform.'[79]


For one reason or another, Swamiji decided to speak that day not on Sri Krishna’s message to the world, as had been announced, but on Mohammed’s. Whether he was asked from the audience to make this change (as Mr. Allan indicated in his memoirs) or whether Swamiji himself felt that Mohammed’s message should be spoken of before that of Sri Krishna (as the first paragraph of Miss Ansell’s transcript implies) is not at all certain. But whatever the reason for the change of subject, Swamiji spoke of Mohammed without preparation, and, to Mr. Allan’s amazement, "proceeded to give the dates of all the main points referred to." "After it was over," Mr. Allan wrote, "I remarked to him about his good memory, to which he replied, 'No, Mr. Allan, in my country I do not have a good memory. You know Macaulay’s History of England? I had to read it through three times before I could repeat it word for word; my mother could memorize any sacred book in only one reading!’ I was silent; but I wondered how many times any of us would have to read The History of England through to be able to repeat it all word for word!'[80](One might note here that not only did Swamiji remember every word he read, he was, and had always been, a voracious reader on all subjects. His fund of knowledge seems to have been endless. We have found him, for instance, speaking at length to the interviewer from the Examiner "of ancient Russian history, and of the wandering tribes of Tartary, and of the Moorish rule in Spain." But there was an element in his knowledge of something more than a prodigious intellect. His mind was open, as it were, to the source of knowledge itself. "He once told us," Mr. Allan recounted, "that he had such faith in the Divine Mother that if he had to speak on a subject that he knew absolutely nothing about, he would get on his feet, for he knew that Mother would put the words into his mouth.")[81]


The published portion of Miss Ansell’s second transcript of "Mohammed’s Message to the World," or more simply, "Mohammed" (Complete Works, volume one), gives no idea of what had so amazed Mr. Allan, for it comprises only the latter half of the lecture. After his opening sentences, Swamiji had actually given a long historical background, setting the world scene upon which Mohammed had appeared. Miss Ansell’s notes of this portion, which she included in her first transcript of 1945, run to seventy-four typewritten lines. These are interspersed with many small and large gaps that represent unrecorded passages, and are interrupted three times by notations that indicate Swamiji told a story.


These notes are "scrappy" indeed. However, scattered throughout this first half of the transcript are a few complete sentences and paragraphs which are in themselves of much interest. Out of context, they give no conception of the broad panorama of history Swamiji was unfolding before his audience, but they should, one thinks, be rescued for themselves alone. Thus I shall present them here. Except for a bracketed guess here and there as to a word or a meaning, I give them as Miss Ansell took them down.


After stating that he would "take Mohammed and bring out the particular work of the great Arabian prophet, " Swamiji went on to say:


Each great messenger not only creates a new order of things, but is himself the creation of a certain order of things. There is no such thing as an independent, active cause. All causes are cause and effect in turn. Father is father and son in turn. Mother is mother and daughter in turn. It is necessary to understand the surroundings and circumstances into which they [the great messengers] come.[82]


He then launched into his lengthy historical discussion, from which the following disconnected excerpts have been rescued:


This is the peculiarity of civilization. One wave of a race will go from its birthplace to a distant land and make a wonderful civilization. The rest will be left in barbarism. The Hindus came into India and the tribes of Central Asia were left in barbarism. Others came to Asia Minor and Europe. Then, you remember the coming out of Egypt of the Israelites. Their home was the Arabian desert. Out of that springs a new work. ... All civilizations grow that way. A certain race becomes civilized. Then comes a nomad race. Nomads are always ready to fight. They come and conquer a race. They bring better blood, stronger physiques. They take up the mind of the conquered race and add that to their body and push civilization still further. One race becomes cultured and civilized until the body is worn out. Then, like a whirlwind comes a race strong in the physical, and they take up the arts and the sciences and the mind, and push civilization further. This must be. Otherwise the world would not be.

                            *        *        *

The moment a great man rises, they build a beautiful [mythology] around him. Science and truth is all the religion that exists. Truth is more beautiful than any mythology in the world. .


The old Greeks had disappeared already, the whole nation [lay] under the feet of the Romans who were learning their science and art. The Roman was a barbarian, a conquering man. He had no eye for poetry or art. He knew how to rule and how to get everything centralized into that system of Rome and to enjoy that. That was sweet. And that Roman Empire is gone, destroyed by all sorts of difficulties, luxury, a new foreign religion, and all that. Christianity had been already six hundred years in the Roman Empire....


Whenever a new religion tries to force itself upon another race, it succeeds if the race is uncultured. If it [the race] is cultured, it will destroy the (religion].... The Roman Empire was a case in point and the Persian people saw that. Christianity was another thing with the barbarians in the north. (But] the Christianity of the Roman Empire was a mixture of everything, something from Persia, from the Jews, from India, from Greece, everything.

                            

*         *        *


The race is always killed by [war]. War takes away the best men, gets them killed, and the cowards are left at home. Thus comes the degeneration of the race.... Men became small. Why? All the great men became [warriors]. That is how war kills races, takes their best into the battlefields. Then the monasteries. They all went to the desert, to the caves for meditation. The monasteries gradually became the centers of wealth and luxury. . . .The Anglo-Saxon race would not be Anglo-Saxon but for these monasteries. Every weak man was worse than a slave.... In that state of chaos these monasteries were centers of light and protection.

  •                    *                          *


Where [cultures] differ very much they do not quarrel. All these warring, jarring elements [were originally] all one [83]


"In the midst of all this chaos was born the prophet." Thus Swamiji concluded the first part of his lecture, of which the above extracts are mere bits and pieces. He then spoke of Mohammed’s preaching the simplest of religions in a confused and degenerate age: "God is God. There is no philosophy, no complicated code of ethics. 'Our God is one without a second, and Mohammed is the Prophet.’ . . . Mohammedanism deluged the world in the name of the Lord. The tremendous conquering power!" "[Mohammedanism]," he went on to say, "came as a message to the masses.'[84] In Miss Ansell’s first typed transcript an interesting sentence follows here (represented by dots in the Complete Works), which reads: "In all the great religions Buddhism, Christianity, Mohammedanism-their success depends not upon the philosophy they preach, not upon the ethics, not upon the religion, for the vast mass of mankind have no religion yet.'[85]Following this sentence there is an unfortunate gap in the transcript; but it is clear that Swamiji’s meaning was that Islam’s doctrine of equality, whereby all Mohammedans were in practice brothers, made for its great appeal and strength. "The first message," he said, "was equality.... There is one religion—love. No more question of race, color, [or] anything else. Join it! That practical [e]quality carried the day.'[86]Indeed to Swamiji, the practical (not merely theoretical) equality of Islam—constituted its essential and distinguishing message to the world.


But from the standpoint of Swami’s own message, the most important part of his lecture on Mohammed lay in the glowing and provocative words toward its close: "These old people," he said (I quote from the version in Vedanta and the West), "were all messengers of God. I fall down and worship them; I take the dust of their feet. But they are dead, dead as door-nails![87] And we are alive. We must go ahead! Religion is not following Jesus or Mohammed. Even if an imitation is good, it is never genuine. Be not an imitation of Jesus, but be Jesus! You are quite as great as Jesus, Buddha, or anybody else. If we are not, we must struggle and be.... The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature: Have faith in yourselves!'[88]

12

The next Sunday, at the same hall and, as far as is known, at the appointed hour of three o’clock, Swamiji spoke on "Krishna’s Message to the World." In many respects this was a much more important lecture than that on Mohammed, and we can be glad he postponed it for a week. By the time he gave it (the date was April 1), Ida Ansell seems to have become more adept at following him with her shorthand, and it has come down to us, it would appear, with much of its original beauty and power intact. The first typed transcript of "Krishna" has indeed so few gaps, "scrappy" parts, and obscure passages that the second transcript does not substantially differ from it. One short and clear passage, however, was omitted from the second transcript—one of Swamiji’s swift darts, thrown at his audience in his inimitable manner. In speaking of Sri Krishna’s great tolerance toward all forms of religious practice and expression—each a link in the chains that stretch out from the common center—he said, as if in quick and scathing reply to some unspoken judgment of the religious ways of others: "Every one of us has got the charter from God Almighty! He is dead and gone. We have buried Him. And He has given the world to you and me to look after! I am very busy about everybody else except myself!'[89]Another sentence that is missing from the second transcript is as typical in its way of Swamiji’s manner of lecturing as the above. It contained only three words. After saying, " . . . Krishna has no condemnation for anything. It is better to do something than to stand still. The man who begins to worship God [for material gain] will grow by degrees and begin to love God for love’s sake," Swamiji added, "Bless you all.'[90]

He spoke in this lecture not only of Sri Krishna’s harmonization of different religious ideas ("His was the first heart that was large enough to see truth in all, his the first that uttered beautiful words for each and all"),[91] he spoke also of Krishna’s doctrine of work without attachment, of karma yoga, and into this he wove his own teaching:


"It is blasphemy to think that you can help anyone. First root out this idea of helping, and then go to worship.... Serve the living God! God comes to you in the blind, in the halt, in the poor, in the weak, in the diabolical. What a glorious chance for you to worship! The moment you think you are 'helping’, you undo the whole thing and degrade yourself. Knowing this, work. . . . Then work is no more slavery. It becomes a play, and joy itself. Work! Be unattached! That is the whole secret. If you get attached, you become miserable.... We do a little work and break ourselves. Why? We become attached to that work. If we do not become attached, side by side with it we have infinite rest. ...


"How hard it is to arrive at this sort of non attachment!" Swamiji continued. "Therefore Krishna shows us the lower ways and methods. The easiest way for everyone is to do his or her work and not take the results. It is our desire that binds us.... If you are strong, take up the Vedanta philosophy and be independent. If you cannot do that, worship God; if not, worship some image. If you lack strength even to do that, do some good works without the idea of gain. Offer everything you have unto the service of the Lord. Fight on!'[92](But to do any justice to this lecture one would have to quote the full transcript, and this to no purpose, for the reader who has not read it will find it in volume one of the Complete Works.)

    

On April 8, Swamiji gave his concluding lecture in his Sunday series. Its title was "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?" But of this we shall speak in part two of this book, after we have said more of his other lectures in San Francisco, for "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?" was the culmination not only of his Sunday series but also of his many other series in the city. Moreover, it was not a lecture on a great Messenger of the past, as had been those of the four previous Sundays. It was, rather, a message given directly to this age by a living messenger-one who spoke with as intense a faith in his mission and in himself as had his predecessors, whose every word, like theirs, burst like a bombshell, and who, with the same indifference to fame as was theirs, cared not at all whether one man in the world remembered him for himself or not.


ⓘ
[1] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC. All subsequent quotations from Alice Hansbrough in section one of this chapter are taken from the same source.
[2] Oakland Enquirer, 13 January 1900.
[3] This information is from a letter written by William A. H. Fleischer to Edith B. Hayes, October 31, 1967, VSNC.
[4] Rem. (Christina Albers), p. 389; P-B., 43 (August 1938): 399.
[5] San Francisco Examiner,- 21 February 1900. (If the church member was being correctly quoted by the Examiner, his grammar should not be taken as typical of the parishioners of the First Unitarian Church, who were, on the whole, literate.)
[6] Walter R. Houghton, ed. History of the Parliament of Religions, 3d ed. (Chicago, 1893), p 465.
[7] Advance, June 24, 1915, p. 1251;' see also Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. “Mills, Benjamin Fay.”
[8] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[9] Brahmavadin, 5 (Januaiy 1900): 165 : 66.10.    San Francisco Examiner, 26 February 1900.
[11] Brahmavadin, 5 (Januaiy 1900): 165 : 66.10.    San Francisco Examiner, 26 February 1900.  
[12] Life, 5th ed. (1965), pp. 665-66.
[13] Sarah Fox, “Memoirs,” VSNC.
[14] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[15] Prophetic Mission-i, pp. 334-35.
[16] Prophetic Mission-i., p. 246.
[17] Life, 4th ed. (1965), p. 319.
[18] Complete Works, 8 : 234.
[19] Boston Congregationalist as quoted in Brooklyn Standard Union, 13 February 1898; see also Literary Digest, March 5, 1898.
[20] Swami Vivekananda and His Guru etc. (for full title see text or bibliography), p. 25.
[21] Complete Works, 5 : 136.
[22] Lewis G. Janes (Boston, 1902), p. 182.
[23] Outlook, 58, nos. 8 & 12 (February 19, March 19, 1898): 466, 740. Original letters, SCB.
[24] Rhodehamel Notebook, VSNC; cf. Complete Works, 6 :46-48 passim.
[25] Complete Works, 8 : 299.
[26] Complete Work ., 8 : 494-95.
[27] Thomas J. Allan, paper read before the Vedanta Society of Northern California, January 13, 1935, Allan Papers, VSNC.
[28] Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 383.
[29] George A. Applegarth, interview, March 21, 1962, VSNC.
[30] Swami Vivekananda to Josephine MacLeod, March 2, 1900, Leg. Col.
[31] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, March 4, 1900, Sen Col. This letter has been partially published in Complete Works, 6:428-29, where it is wrongly addressed to Sister Nivedita.
[32] Complete Works, 8 : 496.
[33] Complete Works, p. 498.
[34] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[35] Rem. (Viraja Devi), p. 394.
[36] Complete Works, 8 : 498.
[37] Complete Work., pp. 496-97.
[38] Complete Works p. 497.
[39] Rem. (M. N. Ganguli), p. 356.
[40] Complete Works, 8 : 497.
[41] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNG. All subsequent quotations from Alice Hansbrough in this section are taken from the same source.
[42] Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 380.
[43] Complete Works, 8 : 494.
[44] Complete Work , 6 : 81.
[45] “Swami Vivekananda in Oakland,” P.B., 41 (May 1936): 385.
[46] Complete Works, 8 : 236.
[47] Rhodehamel Notebook, VSNC. (Of. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad H. 4. 50)
[48] Rhodehamel Notebook, VSNC. (Of. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad H. 4. 50)  
[49] Complete Works, 8 : 235.
[50] Oakland Enquirer, 24, 25 March 1900.
[51] Complete Works, 7 : 520.
[52] Complete Works., 8 : 509.
[53] Complete Worksp. 241.
[54] Complete Works pp. 70-71.
[55] Thomas J. Allan, notes, Allan Papers, VSNC.
[56] Complete Works, 4: 196.
[57] Life (1981), 2:521.
[58] See ref. 27 above.
[59] Life (1981), 2 : 520.
[60] See ref. 55 above.
[61] P.B.,31 (June 1926): 243; see also P.B., 37 (May 1932): 244.
[62] Ida Ansell to Swami Ashok-ananda, November 22, 1946, Ansell Papers, VSNG.
[63] Excerpts from letter of Ida Ansell to Swami Ashokananda, 1945-48, from original letters, VSNG.
[64] Ida Ansell to Swami Ashokananda, October 6, 1945, VSNG.
[65] Complete Works, 4 : 120.
[66] Rhodehamel, loc. cit.
[67] Eloise Roorbach, recorded conversations, San Francisco and Camp Taylor, May 4, 1950, VSNG.
[68] Rem. (Christina Albers), p. 389.
[69] See ref. 30 above.
[70] Pasadena Daily Evening Star, 4 January 1900.
[71] Complete Works, 8 : 509.
[72] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[73] Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[74] Ernest C. Brown, “Vedanta in America: My Reminiscences,” Vedanta for East and West, 8 (July-August 1959): 186-87.
[75] Complete Works, 8 : 96.
[76] Complete Work, pp. 100-103 passim.
[77] See ref. 74 above.
[78] Thomas J. Allan, notes, VSNG.
[79] Thomas J. Allan, notes  ; see also Rem. (Ida Ansell), p.385.
[80] See ref. 78 above.
[81] See ref. 78 above.
[82] Excerpted from first transcript of “Mohammed,” VSNC.
[83] Excerpted from first transcript of “Mohammed,” VSNC.
[84] Complete Works, 1 : 482.
[85] See ref. 82 above.
[86] Complete Works, 1 : 482.
[87] Swami Vivekananda, “Mohammed,” V and W, 124 : 9.
[88] Complete Works, 1 : 483.
[89] First transcript of “Mohammed.”
[90] Loc. cit.
[91] Complete Works, 1 : 438.
[92] Complete Works., 441-43, passi

↑ Contents

APPENDIX

Two Stories Told By Swami Vivekananda at Ridgely Manor as Recorded by Maud Stumm.

In ancient times a king in India gave up his throne and title and retired with his wife and son to the forest. He was old and blind and hoped to end his days a holy man. The son, whose name was Truth, grew to manhood, though a prophecy had foretold that at twenty-one he would suddenly die. A year before the appointed time, a great prince bound on a journey through this forest paused to pay his respects to the aged yogi. With him was his daughter Purity, and she beheld the unknown youth and loved him, and her love was returned. So when the prince, her father, began his preparations to rejoin his company and continue through the forest, his daughter, declaring her choice, said she would stay and take Truth for her husband. At this the prince was very angry, but he could not change her will. So she stayed with the little family, and they were married.

Happy and beloved, these two cared for the old blind king and his wife, gathering the fruits, bringing the water, and preparing fresh garlands for their habitation in the dark forest. Purity accompanied Truth on all his expeditions of hunting and exploration, until one day he denied her this privilege, as he was going into the forest deeper than ever before and could not take her. But she pleaded and prevailed. All day they travelled together until they came to a vast and mysterious tree, which he said he would climb. So Purity waited for him at the foot of the tree till twilight came. Then looking up, she saw her lord, unearthly pale, slipping slowly down the branches, until finally, caught in her arms, she saw he was dying. The prophecy was coming true! In despair she raised her eyes and saw standing in an opening of the woods the grey-shrouded form of Death, who in Indian myth is also King of Truth, whose word can never fail. As he reached out his arms to take her beloved away, she begged in vain, and as the Shadowy One lifted and bore her treasure swiftly through the forest path, she followed in despair. And Death hearing her little footsteps paused. "He cannot come back to you, Purity, but ask a boon, and I will grant it" And she thought quickly, "Return the sight of our blind father to him."

"It is done," said Death, and turned away again, swiftly bearing his burden from her. Still he heard the little footsteps and turning gave her a second boon. "Restore the throne to our father."

"It is done," said Death, "but ask me no more." And again he sped away. Then far behind him, he heard the footsteps of faithful Purity still begging for her dear Truth, and the third and last time Death turned to her and said, "We are almost at my domain, hinder me no more, but ask one last favour, and it shall be granted." So she meekly asked for a hundred sons to be heirs to the throne. And Death saw that Purity had outwitted him and was forced to restore to her, her lord.

Then [Maud Stumm related] he told us the story of the old man who came to offer his services in the construction of an English cathedral. He wished to carve an ornament in the entrance porch, but the master carver thought him unworthy for such a prominent place and gave him the top of a pillar hidden far up in a dark corner of a side aisle. The old man came every day and labored high on his scaffolding, patiently carving, until one day he did not come down, and going up the dim place, they found him dead before his work—the exquisitely carved head of the love of his youth that he had longed to have in the entrance, but had been denied. So he had made it just as beautiful in that obscure nook, where only by chance it could be seen, dimly.

(These two stories from the reminiscences of Maud Stumm were made available to this book by the kindness of Swami Chetanananda.)

↑ Contents

Volume 6

6.1.1 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: A NEW GOSPEL-II

In none of the various reminiscences available to us did anyone mention the date on which Swamiji started holding classes in his flat at 1719 Turk Street in San Francisco; nor in his known letters, did he. We can guess, however, that shortly after he had a place of his own the requests for practical instruction became many and insistent. As we have noted earlier, he probably moved into the flat on March 8, 1900. Since this was a Thursday, it is not likely that classes were started that week. It is more than likely, however, that they were started the next, particularly since Swamiji was by then (as will be seen later) giving a series of three evening lectures, entitled collectively "Applied Psychology," in downtown San Francisco at the Red Men's Building. Although we have a record only of the last of these lectures, there can be very little doubt that all three dealt in general with the science of raja yoga, a subject that must have at once increased the "imperative demand for personal instruction," which demand, Mr. Frank Rhodehamel has told us "gave rise to class work.'[1] But however that may be, Swamiji's classes, once started, were held regularly through March and the first week of April.

According to Mrs. Hansbrough, the classes were held three times a week, but it is possible that she was referring only to the morning classes. That Swamiji held at least a few afternoon classes as well is almost certain. Many years later Miss Ansell, consulting her diary for 1900, told Mr. Allan that she began the morning class on March 26 and that on March 29 she "was invited to join the first class.'[2] One may gather from this that Swamiji held two sets of classes—one for beginners and one for more advanced students. As will be seen later on, there is evidence that the advanced class was held in the afternoon.

In regard to the morning class, Mrs. Hansbrough tells us that it began, or was scheduled to begin, at ten-thirty. (How long the class might last on any given day no one knew. "There was no set time for their close," Mrs. Allan once recalled. "They lasted from one hour to two and a half hours. But there was no time in his presence—the hours fled.")[3]Between thirty and forty people attended, climbing the stairs to the third floor, backtracking along the narrow passage, and crowding into the front parlor. There were, of course, not enough chairs to accommodate everyone, and several people—men and women alike—sat on the carpeted floor.[4] Swamiji would enter from his bedroom, sometimes at ten-thirty, sometimes later; for more often than not he had been giving a private interview in the dining room, oblivious of time.

Mr. Frank Rhodehamel, whose first interview took place one morning before a class, has given us a vivid picture of Swamiji's swift passage from dining room to front parlor. "His personal appearance on my first interview, " he wrote, "was a pleasurable shock from which I have never fully recovered. He had on a long grey dressing gown [perhaps the same worn black and white herringbone tweed of Pasadena days] and was sitting cross-legged on a chair, smoking a pipe, his long hair falling in wild disarray over his features.... This interview was continued fifteen minutes beyond the time set for a class on Raja Yoga to be held in the front room of the house. We were interrupted by the lady in charge of affairs [undoubtedly Mrs. Hansbrough] rushing into the room and exclaiming, 'Why, Swami! You have forgotten all about the Yoga class. It is fifteen minutes past time now, and the room is full of people.' The Swami arose hastily to his feet, exclaiming to me, 'Oh, excuse me! We will now go to the front room.' I walked through the hall to the front room. He went through his bedroom, which was between the room we had been sitting in and the front room. Before I was seated he emerged from his room with his hair . . . neatly combed, and attired in his Sannyasin robe! Not more than one minute had elapsed from the time he started from his room with dishevelled hair and in lounging attire, till he came leisurely out into the front room ready to lecture. Speed and precision of action were evidently at his command.'[5]

If the front parlor became too crowded, the sliding doors leading to Swamiji's bedroom would be opened and further adjustments made in the seating arrangements. Then Swamiji would take his place on the sofa, and the class would begin. And here again, we can turn to Frank Rhodehamel for a picture.

(Mr. Rhodehamel's memoirs are, incidentally, the longest and perhaps the most important among those that pertain to Swamiji's life and work in northern California. They first appeared anonymously in an appendix to the 1913 edition of the Life and in later editions were incorporated into the body of the text, where they form several pages of the chapter "Second Visit to America." Mr. Rhodehamel and his wife were living in Oakland at the time of Swamiji's visit and had first heard him lecture at the Unitarian Church. Thenceforth, like many others, they attended every talk of his they could, no matter on which side of the Bay it was given. Both husband and wife-and Mrs. Rhodehamel's sister, Charlotte Brown, as well—remained students of Vedanta throughout the remainder of their lives, studying under Swami Turiyananda during his stay in California and, as we have seen in chapter seven, becoming members of the small, informal group in Oakland of which Gurudasa was the leader. Later on, Mr. Rhodehamel added to his memoirs with two articles—"Vedanta in California: Memories" and "Shanti Ashrama Days",---published, again anonymously, in Prabuddha Bharata of, respectively, February-March 1916 and 1918. It is through the first of these that we see the half awe-inspiring, half informal beginning of one of Swamiji's classes.)

"Again we are seated in the class about him," Rhodehamel recalled, seeing the scene in his mind's eye as he wrote:

He is the orange-robed, the illuminated one, seated on the divan. His great dark eyes searching the faces about him reveal no clew as to his findings. A few words of instruction as to posture, breathing, relaxation, etc. follow, though without rigid conformity to the traditional teachings. His idea is apparently to make everyone feel at ease as if he would have the spirit of contemplation steal upon us unawares.

Two students, a man and a woman, squat on the floor in painful imitation of the Swami's posture. He looks at them a moment then looks at the rest and laughs. "You can't sit that way," he says. "Your legs are not trained to sit that way. In India we are trained to sit that way from babyhood, but you can't do it." Neither move. The woman replies, pressing her knees down, "Oh, this is easy for me. I am used to it. I always sit this way. " The man laughs and hangs his head. Swami looks from one to the other and laughs again. "Come, " he says, speaking to the man, "sit here beside me and let your feet rest on the floor." He is stubborn. "Come, come," he pleads, patting the divan beside him, "come sit here by me. You can't meditate that way." But it is useless. Both remain on the floor. Swami laughs and abandons his efforts. Everyone laughs. "All that is necessary," he continues, "is to sit comfortably with the body erect—that is all. Try to think of the body as luminous, full of light.'[6]

Concerning the Western difficulty with cross-legged sitting, Mrs. Hansbrough told a similar story, which could have been another version of the same incident or, more probably, an account of a different one. "There was a Mr. Wiseman who came to the classes," she related. "He was a devoted follower of Miss Lydia Bell. He came late once to the class, when all the seats were taken and he had to sit on the floor. In those days the style of men's trousers did not provide the generous legroom they do nowadays [1941], and Mr. Wiseman's trousers were so tight he could not sit cross-legged. Swamiji noticed him sitting with his knees up under his chin and suddenly exclaimed, 'Don't look like a fool; come and sit by me!' Mr. Wiseman was a quiet, unassuming sort of man or he would have felt it presumptuous to sit on the same couch with Swamiji. But he accepted the invitation and took a seat on the end of the couch.'[7]

According to Mrs. Hansbrough, the classes began (once everyone was settled) with a meditation period that lasted from fifteen minutes to half an hour. Miss Ansell, too, recalled that meditation came first and was followed by a period of instruction, which, in turn, was followed by "questions and answers and practical suggestions as to exercise, rest and diet."[8]Mr. Rhodehamel, on the other hand, tells us that the meditation period took place after the class for "such of the audience as remained for that purpose." But whether the meditation came at the beginning of the class or at its end, to meditate with Swamiji was an experience never forgotten. The period began with his chanting. "The rhythmic intonation of Sanskrit Mantras stirs responsive chords," Mr. Rhodehamel recalled, still reliving those wonderful days as he wrote:

The result is emotional rather than intellectual. An intangible sweetness steals upon the senses, quieting them, and the mind reflects somewhat of that placid depth which is the Swami's habitual state. Now he pauses to translate, weaving through the witchery of words an atmosphere of spiritual idealism. His personality becomes a magnet drawing one away from [oneself], and [one] feels as pleasurable those thought-flashes which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been resisted as inimical to personality. Something within leaps upward. Consciousness breaks through the incrustation of personal identity. One's life in the world fades into a mere tradition, unstable, unalluring. A transitional period of spiritual probation is covered in a flash. The present consciousness becomes contemporaneous with that wisdom which is ever unsullied by the succession of events.[9]

Perhaps not everyone responded to Swamiji's influence so sensitively or so consciously as did Frank Rhodehamel; yet few seated before Swamiji in that classroom could have failed to receive something of his peace, to taste something of the depths of true meditation that ever afterward would beckon. "I throw my mind into the state of bliss," he once said during the course of a lecture in San Francisco, "and the tendency is to raise the same bliss in your mind.'[10] Even one not seated near Swamiji could partake of his meditation. One morning Mrs. Hansbrough was too occupied in the kitchen to attend the class. "I used to prepare a lamb broth for Swamiji every day," she related. "I would cook it for three or four hours, and it was very nourishing because every bit of the food value would be cooked out of the meat. One day for some reason I had not been able to get the broth made by . . . ten-thirty. Swamiji looked into the kitchen before going to the class. 'Aren't you coming?' he asked. I told him that because I had neglected to plan my work properly, now I had to stay in the kitchen. 'Well, that's all right,' he said, 'I will meditate for you.' All through the class I felt he really was meditating for me. And do you know, I have always had the feeling that he still does meditate for me.'[11]

On another occasion, which can be told of here although it did not occur at Turk Street, Mrs. Hansbrough felt the strong effect of Swamiji's meditation. "In Alameda," she recalled, "I was upset or depressed about something and he said to me, 'Come, sit down and we will meditate.' 'Oh, I never meditate, Swamiji,' I told him. 'Well, come and sit by me, and I will meditate,' he replied. So I sat down and closed my eyes. In a moment I felt as though I were going to float away, and I quickly opened my eyes to look at Swamiji. He had the appearance of a statue, as though there were not a spark of life in his body. He must have meditated for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then opened his eyes again.'[12]The sight of Swamiji meditating was in itself a profoundly moving experience. "Seated cross-legged on the divan [at Turk Street], clothed in his Sannyasin garb, with hands held one within the other on his lap, and with his eyes apparently closed, he might have been a statue in bronze, so immovable was he," Rhodehamel wrote years later in his memoirs. "A Yogi, indeed! Awake only to transcendental thought, he was the ideal, compelling veneration, love and devotion.'[13]

Another account by one who attended a class of Swamiji's and who felt the power of his meditation is to be found in Prabuddha Bharata of March 1927. This reminiscence is in the form of a letter written by an unnamed member of the San Francisco Vedanta Society to the editor of the magazine and, as will be seen, gives evidence that Swamiji held at least one afternoon class for advanced students at his Turk Street flat. The letter reads:

It was my good fortune to be in Los Angeles at a time when Swami Vivekananda was giving lectures there. Although the subjects on which he spoke were new to me at that time, I was fascinated by them, and when I returned to Oakland and Swami came later and lectured in San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda, I was irresistibly attracted and was almost invariably one of his listeners.

On one occasion it was announced that on a certain afternoon the Swami would give a lecture to advanced students at his place of residence. As I was very desirous of attending, I applied to Swami's secretary [Mrs. Hansbrough] for permission to do so, at the same time telling her that I was not an advanced student. In answer I was given to understand that such being the case I would better not try to attend. Not satisfied, however, I applied to the Swami himself for permission to attend.

He said most heartily, "Come, and welcome, welcome, welcome!"

The Swami's lecture was an intellectual and spiritual feast; we seemed to be transported to higher regions of thought and feeling.

A part of the afternoon was given to answering questions some of which were somewhat trivial, but the Swami always answered with unfailing courtesy.

The subject of diet was being discussed when a student asked, "Swami, what about eating onions?" "Well," answered Swami, "onions are not the best diet for a spiritual student, but how fond I was of them when I was a boy! I used to eat them and then walk up and down in the open air to get them from my breath."

The last half hour of the afternoon was devoted to meditation and the Swami became completely lost to the external world. His presence seemed to radiate a divine influence which permeated our very being. We went home, our feet scarcely touching the ground. It seemed as if the Swami had given us to drink of the Divine Nectar.[14]

"After the period of meditation," Mrs. Hansbrough said, speaking of the morning classes, "Swamiji would discourse on some sacred book. Sometimes he would ask the class what they would like for a subject.'[15]Unfortunately, she did not remember what sacred books Swamiji discoursed upon, or what he said. We know, however, that many of his classes were devoted to instruction in raja yoga. It was, indeed, these that Mr. Rhodehamel remembered best and these alone of which he spoke in his memoirs.

"The conditions, physical and mental, necessary to efficient contemplation of the significance of spiritual teachings were patiently dwelt upon in detail," he wrote in his 1916 Prabuddha Bharata article, and continued: "The difference between mere intellectual appreciation of spiritual ideals and the desire to be spiritual was sharply drawn. He taught that in the attainment of the spiritual capacity, or the desire to be spiritual, nothing is arbitrary; that the whole process is one of natural development. There was nothing mystical about it. Practice, practice, practice, life-long practice, and if necessary many lives of practice, was the one and only method to acquire the all absorbing desire to be spiritual. And practice? Intensive contemplation of the significance of spiritual teachings and of the spiritual character. Hence the elimination of obstacles to deep contemplation and the employment of any accessories to that end was the scope of the Swami's efforts in his class-work.'[16]

While the above quotation summarizes the scope and purpose of Swamiji's classes, more concrete is the glimpse Mr. Rhodehamel gives in his earlier memoirs published in the Life. Here one is brought closer, as it were, to Swamiji himself. "His talk was on Raja Yoga," Rhodehamel recalled, "and the practical instruction simple breathing exercises. He said in part: You must learn to sit correctly; then to breathe correctly. This develops concentration; then comes meditation.... When practicing breathing, think of your body as luminous.... Try to look down the spinal cord from the base of the brain to the base of the spine. Imagine that you are looking through the hollow Sushumna to the Kundalini rising upward to the brain.... Have patience. Great patience is necessary.' Such as voiced doubts and fears he reassured by his, 'I am with you now. Try to have a little faith in me.' One was moved by his persuasive power when he said, 'We learn to meditate that we may be able to think of the Lord. Raja Yoga is only the means to that end. The great Patanjali, author of the Raja Yoga, never missed an opportunity to impress that idea upon his students. Now is the time for you who are young. Don't wait till you are old before you think of the Lord, for then you will not be able to think of Him. The power to think of the Lord is developed when you are young.'[17]

In Frank Rhodehamel's notebook, found not long ago in the archives of the Vedanta Society of Northern California, there is a brief note with the heading "Class lessons in meditation by Swami Vivekananda" and the date "Monday, March 26, 1900." Here one finds what one can assume to be Swamiji's verbatim instructions on that particular day:

The first point is the position. Sit with the spine perfectly free, with the weight resting on the hips. The next step is breathing. Breathe in the left nostril and out the right. Fill the lungs full and eject all the breath. Clear the lungs of all impure air. Breathe full and deep. The next thing is to think of the body as luminous, filled with light. The next thing is to concentrate on the base of the spine, not from the outside, but look down the spinal column inside to the base of the spine.[18]

It would seem that Swamiji held fairly detailed raja yoga classes at his Turk Street flat; nor is it surprising that he would do so. As Mr. Rhodehamel pointed out, he taught raja yoga as the best means of acquiring the disciplines of Advaita Vedanta, all of which presuppose great mastery of the mind and senses. Indeed, Swamiji taught raja yoga, particularly during his second visit to the West, as an auxiliary path to jnana yoga. As he was to explain during a lecture in Alameda, "the central idea of all this training [in raja yoga] is to attain to [the] power of concentration, the power of meditation.'[19]And this power of meditation was to be combined with the practice of discrimination between the Real and the unreal, with the continual affirmation of the Self. "By means of discrimination [jnana yoga] and meditation [raja yoga], the goal, of Brahman, has to be reached," he said in India shortly before coming to America the second time. "This, in my opinion, is the easy path ensuring quick success.'[20] We find him stressing this combined path above all others during the last days of his mission. To be sure, Swamiji presented raja yoga as a powerful vehicle that could speed one along any path one might choose, but he hitched it firmly to the star of Advaita Vedanta, and he let no one forget that ultimate goal.

But while Swamiji may have taught a good deal of practical raja yoga in San Francisco, he also taught far more than can be conveyed in words. One cannot forget that his essential teaching took place largely in silence. Indeed, the value of Swamiji's small classes lay more in his direct, living contact with each person who sat near him than in the details of his instruction. The power and radiance of his personality, his ability to awaken love for God, to impart a glimpse of transcendental reality, revealing the end even as he taught the means, was here manifest to a still greater degree than in his lectures. "At these Yoga classes one came closer to the man and teacher than was possible in the lecture hall," Mr. Rhodehamel wrote. "The contact was more personal and the influence more direct. The embodiment of holiness, simplicity and wisdom, he seemed speaking with incisive power, and drawing one's mind more to God and renunciation than to proficiency in Raja Yoga practices.'[21] And again, "Here the teacher of wisdom revealed himself as a power of love. The fiery aggressiveness of that mind more than able to cope with all opposition gave way to a gentle friendliness of demeanour which mirrored beneath his winsome, capricious temperament a depth of consciousness, remote and inaccessible. Here the undisguised admiration of audiences for the lecturer was transformed into devotion to the Guru. The second stage of spiritual culture was now under way,— the absorption of what had been heard into thought.... Like babies learning to talk, that difficult task made delightful by the loving attentions of the mother, the Swami's spiritual babies dallied with his every word and drank in the sweetness of his badinage as he tried to teach them how to think.'[22]

But lest Mr. Rhodehamel mislead one into forming too soft a picture of Swamiji in his classes, we should add here a memory of Mrs. Hansbrough's. "He sometimes," she said, "could be very sharp. Once when he was talking of renunciation, a woman asked him, 'Well Swami, what would become of the world if everyone renounced?' His answer was, 'Madam, why do you come to me with that lie on your lips? You have never considered anything in this world but your own pleasure!' '[23]Gentle, patient, and loving though he was, he seldom hesitated to deliver a pointed rebuke when it was called for. His purpose was always to open the mind to light, never to bring comfort to its darkness. Yet as a rule Swamiji softened his rebukes. On one occasion, recalled by Mrs. Allan, he had been talking to his class in "a very learned way, when suddenly he stopped and said with great feeling, 'I am the disciple of a man who could not write his own name, and I am not worthy to undo his shoes. How often have I wished I could take my intellect and throw it into the Ganges!' 'But, Swami,' a lady remarked, 'that is the part of you I like best.' To which Swamiji replied, 'That is because you are a fool, Madam—like I am:'[24] It was this "like I am" spoken in all sincerity that made his love so accessible, his friendship so secure.

When one considers Swamiji's classes at Turk Street, one marvels at the picture that rises to mind. Here was this world teacher whom one can place beside the greatest "Messengers" mankind has known, sitting in a poor flat half a world away from his homeland, training a small group of "spiritual babies" to take the first steps along the Himalayan climb to liberation! He taught them with infinite care and love, lavishing upon them the warmth of his heart, joking with them to ease tension, rebuking them when necessary, assuring them of his protection when they grew afraid, and in every mood, with every word and in every silence pouring upon them his grace. He held back nothing, except perhaps the full force of his power, lest it overwhelm them.

2

There is little doubt that Swamiji held many private interviews at his Turk Street flat, for many of the men and women who attended his classes would surely have wanted to discuss their personal problems and experiences with him and to learn more of how they could spiritualize their individual lives. But among those who availed of the opportunity to talk to him privately only two people wrote their memoirs. One, of course, was Frank Rhodehamel.


Mr. Rhodehamel evidently had several interviews with Swamiji and found him "the ideal host, entering into conversation, argument or story-telling, not only without restraint, but with apparent enjoyment." To judge from the fragments of conversation that Rhodehamel recalled in his memoirs (as published in the Life), he could ask questions that poked, as it were, at the honeycomb and that drew forth Swamiji's views on many subjects:


"Speaking of spiritual training for the mind," Rhodehamel wrote, "he said, 'The less you read the better. What are books but the vomitings of other men's minds? Why fill your mind with a load of stuff you will have to get rid of? Read the Gita and other good works on Vedanta. That is all you need.' Then again: 'The present system of education is all wrong. The mind is crammed with facts before it knows how to think. Control of the mind should be taught first. If I had my education to get over again, and had any voice in the matter, I would learn to master my mind first, and then gather facts, if I wanted them. It takes people a long time to learn things because they can't concentrate their minds at will.... People are always suffering because they can't control their minds. To give an illustration, though a rather crude one: A man has trouble with his wife. She leaves him and goes with other men. She's a terror! But, poor fellow, he can't take his mind away from her, and so he suffers.'


"I asked him to explain why the practice of begging, common among religious mendicants, was not opposed to renunciation. He replied, 'It is a question of the mind. If the mind anticipates, and is affected by the results—that is bad, no doubt. The giving and receiving of alms should be free; otherwise it is not renunciation. If you should put a hundred dollars on that table for me, and should expect me to thank you for it you could take it away again. I would not touch it. My living was provided for before I came here, before I was born. I have no concern about it. Whatever belongs to a man he will get. It was ready for him before he was born.'


"To the question, 'What do you think about the Immaculate Conception [Virgin Birth] of Jesus?' he replied: 'That is an old claim. There have been many in India who have claimed that. I don't know anything about it. But for my part, I am glad that I had a natural father and mother.' 'But isn't such a theory opposed to the law of nature?' I ventured. 'What is nature to the Lord? It is all His play,' he replied as he knocked the ash from his pipe against the heel of his slipper, regardless of the carpeted floor. Then blowing through the stem to clear it, he continued, 'We are slaves of nature. The Lord is the Master of nature. He can do as He pleases. He can take one or a dozen bodies at a time, if He chooses, and in any way He chooses. How can we limit Him?"'


But what made the most profound impression on Mr. Rhodehamel was not so much Swamiji's conversation during those interviews as Swamiji himself. "What remains vivid," he wrote more than ten years later, "is the contact with the great Sannyasin—the impressions and impetus received —which refuses to be less than the greatest experience in life.'[25]


Edith Allan, the wife of Thomas Allan, was the other person who we know talked privately with Swamiji. As the reader may remember, we left Mrs. Allan on the eve of her first interview. "Come tomorrow morning," he had said. "Much of the night was spent thinking of all the questions I should ask him," Mrs. Allan recalled in her memoirs, "as many questions had been troubling me for months and no one to whom I had gone was able to help me.'[26] She was then thirty-five years old, a slender, near beautiful woman, who looked younger than her years. A photograph taken of her about two years after she had met Swamiji shows her singing in the choir of the Home of Truth in Alameda and looking like a half wistful, half willful college girl with an untroubled oval face and a wealth of dark hair drawn back loosely and simply. Possibly she looked even younger and more immature when Swamiji first saw her, certainly more fragile and less serene. At that time she had been ill, physically and mentally, for a year or two and, as she said, had nowhere found relief. In the words of a rough draft of her memoirs, she "had played with fire and got into a psychic condition,'[27] or, as I have heard from a reliable source, she had dabbled in occultism and had suffered a nervous collapse. This was precisely the sort of trouble that Swamiji had often warned against during his first visit to the West, and there is no question that, as Mrs. Allan had sat in Washington Hall waiting for her husband to count the ticket money, he had recognized at a glance her difficulty and her need for help. Thus he had called her to him.


Mrs. Allan arrived at the Turk Street flat at the appointed time (nine o'clock, according to one account) on what must have been the morning of March 10. When the door was opened by its upstairs lever and she asked to see the Swami, she was told from the top of the stairs (by either Mrs. Hansbrough or Mrs. Aspinall) that he was on his way out and could see no one. A person less in need would have perhaps turned away, but Edith Allan stood her ground. "I know he will see me," she said, "because he told me to come." The logic of this being unassailable, she was asked to come upstairs, was shown into the front parlor, given a chair by the bay window, and told to wait. And to be sure, Swamiji soon entered. He was dressed for the street in his long overcoat and round black turban, and he was chanting softly. He sat on a chair on the opposite side of the room (or, as another account has it, on the other side of the bay window) . "He continued chanting softly," Mrs. Allan recalled, "in his incomparable way." Presently he said, "Well, madam!"


"I could not speak," she related, "but began to weep and kept on weeping as though the floodgates had been opened." He let her weep on and on—"for about half an hour," she  once recalled; and when the purging flood of tears had subsided a little, he said, "Come tomorrow about the same time." That was all. "As I went from his presence, " she recalled years later in her reminiscences, "my problems were solved and my questions were answered, though he had not asked me anything. ["When I went out onto the street, each cobblestone looked like an opal," she told a friend. "Somehow, I got home. "][28]It is now over twenty-four years since that interview with the Swami, yet it stands out in memory as the greatest blessing of my life.'[29]


She came the following morning and perhaps one or two mornings after that. At these subsequent interviews Swamiji gave her some spiritual instruction. "He told me how to meditate, " she once said, "and he also taught me some simple breathing exercises, although he warned me never to practice them except in his presence.'[30] But shortly, as we have seen, other people discovered the Turk Street flat (through her, Mrs. Allan used to say) ; others asked for interviews, the morning class was started, and, to her great regret, her private sessions with Swamiji came to an end.


Yet he continued to be extremely gracious to her. According to Mrs. Ansell's account of Mrs. Allan's memories, he invited her to stay to lunch only on the day of his last class, but according to Mrs. Allan's own written account, which is clearer on this point in its rough form than in the published version, she "had the advantage of being with Swamiji every day for a month while he was in San Francisco and after that in Alameda— another month.'[31] Perhaps on some of these days Swamiji spoke only briefly to her; but more than once he would invite her to stay for lunch after the class and would let her help him in the kitchen "peeling onions and potatoes" while he engaged in his favorite task of cooking some spicy dish. (Potatoes were not always an ingredient. "In the Turk Street apartment," Mrs. Hansbrough once said, "he often cooked palao, that rich dish made with rice and meat.")[32]To be in the kitchen with Swamiji was a privilege not afforded to everyone. The story  goes that one day Mrs. Aspinall entered with the information that Miss Lydia Bell, the heavyset, somewhat opinionated head of the California Street Home of Truth, wanted to stay for lunch. "All right," Swamiji said, "she can stay"—for he liked Miss Bell. "But keep her out of the kitchen!'[33]There was, actually, no reason for Miss Bell to be in the kitchen with Swamiji; but for Mrs. Allan those relaxed hours in his company were a deeply needed, deeply healing balm.


In one of the rough drafts of her memoirs, which are preserved in the archives of the Vedanta Society of Northern California and some portions, of which are not found elsewhere, one comes upon snatches of Swamiji's talk during these happy times: "In the kitchen at Turk Street while cooking," she wrote, "he talked Philosophy, chanted verse 61, Chapter 18, of the Gita, 'The Lord dwells in the hearts of all beings, O Arjuna, by His illusive power causing all beings to revolve at though mounted on a potter's wheel.' 'This has all happened before,' he said. 'Like the throw of dice, so it is in life; the wheel goes on and the same combination comes up; that pitcher and glass have stood there before, so, too, that onion and potato. What can we do, Madam, He has us on the wheel of Life.’


"He longed to be free of the body. 'I have to come back once ' more,' he said. 'The Master said I am to come back once more with him.' 'You have to come back because Sri Ramakrishna says so?' I asked. 'Souls like that have great power, Madam,' he replied." (In Pasadena, Swamiji had made a similar statement. "It was probably during an after-lunch conversation when he was walking up and down the living room, " Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "that Swamiji told us, 'The Master said he would come again in about two hundred years—and I will come with him. When a Master comes, he brings his own people’”)[34]


Once Mrs. Allan asked Swamiji about his triumphant reception when he returned to India in 1897, which she had no doubt read about in the newspapers. But he was always loath to speak of honor paid to himself. "Madam," he said, "I never felt such a fool." Possessions distressed him as much as fame. "He had a trunk with clothes, books, etc.," Mrs. Allan's draft continues. " 'I am ashamed to have a trunk,' he said. 'I am a Sannyasin.' And he quoted from his poem, The Song of the Sannyasin, 'Have thou no home. What home can hold thee, friend? The sky thy roof, the grass thy bed. . . .' " (He was perhaps more burdened than ashamed to have a trunk. "About his clothes," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "he used to say, 'In India I can exist on hips and haws and live in rags, but here I want to meet your demands.' ")[35]


When Swamiji moved in April to the Alameda Home of Truth, Mrs. Allan continued to see him every day—more easily now, as she was living in Alameda at the time—and again she could be with him in the kitchen when, on Sunday afternoons, he would cook for himself (not for the whole household, as Miss Ansell has it in her published memoirs). Here he set her again to various tasks and shared with her his Hindu dishes.


"He was so many-sided," Mrs. Allan's draft continued, "wonderful beyond description. All things to all men; he was all the four Yogas. Sometimes the Vedanta lion, sometimes like a child; to me he was always the patient and loving parent. Nothing was too small for his notice and interest—such love as cannot be comprehended; he always listened. He told me not to call him Swami, but to call him 'Babaji,' as the children did in India."


But there was a line between informality and familiarity that Swamiji never crossed. He was ever the patient father, but to behavior that carried overtones, however unconscious, of femininity he simply did not respond. One Sunday when he was happily preparing a dish in the Home of Truth kitchen, some butter splattered from a frying pan onto Mrs. Allan's dress—a new green dress that she was wearing proudly for the first time, its splendor uneclipsed by anything like an apron. "I carried on at a great rate over this tragedy," she recalled, "but Swamiji continued chanting, going about his work without taking the slightest notice. Later a friend sponged the spots with gasoline, and they completely disappeared. I felt like a fool.'[36]


Once Swamiji and Mrs. Allan walked to an Alameda store for pickles. These were kept in a big tub of brine and were ladled for customers into dishes of paper-thin wood. On the way back some brine spilled onto Swamiji's hand. Promptly and with delight he licked his fingers. "Oh Swami!" Mrs. Allan cried, shocked at conduct so undignified. "Madam, " he retorted quickly, "you always want this little outside to be so nice. That's the trouble with you here. It is not the outside that matters, it is the inside.'[37]


One could not be long with Swamiji without absorbing one lesson after another, but "he was fun all the time," Mrs. Allan said, and certainly he was never "long-faced." "Should you see anyone with a long, sad face," Mr. Allan quoted him, "you may know that he has not got religion, but he may have the stomachache." In the kitchen his counsel went on, vibrant with life. "If I consider myself greater than the ant that crawls on the ground I am ignorant," he once said.[38] And again, Madam, be broad-minded; always see two ways. When I am on the heights I say 'Shivoham, Shivoham; I am He, I am He!' And when I have the stomachache I say, 'Mother have mercy on me!' "[39] Or he told her, "Learn to be the witness. If two dogs are fighting on the street and I go out there, I get mixed up in the fight, but if I stay quietly in my room I witness the fight from the window. So learn to be the witness.'[40]


"I don't think that way," Mrs. Allan would sometimes say when Swamiji gave her such jewels. Whereupon he would laugh. "Don't you, madam? Well, that's fine.'[41] But many years later she was to remember and cherish his words. "How we understood Swamiji!" she wrote then. "We had no knowledge of what he really was—the mouthpiece of the Lord Himself!'[42]Yet even if Mrs. Allan's conscious mind did know who this was who at her first meeting with him had answered all her unspoken questions in silence, who had restored her to health, who told jokes in one breath and chanted the Gita in the next, who walked like a king and licked his fingers like a child, a deeper part of her mind knew. She who had barely been able to drag herself to hear him the first time, attended all his subsequent lectures, as well as his classes. There was no getting enough of him. "But it was the close contact with the Swami that I most deeply cherish,'[43]she wrote years later. And to a friend she once said, "He was kindness itself to me. Most people emphasize his great power, the side of him that was so awe-inspiring. But there was this other side to him —his great love. He was like the most tender and loving mother.'[44] "Before he left California," she said another time, "he told me that if I ever got into psychic difficulty again, or any other kind of trouble, to call on him and he would hear me wherever he was. I've had occasion to take advantage of his promise many times.'[45]

3

But we were speaking of the interviews Swamiji gave at his Turk Street flat. Although we know only of those he gave to Mr. Rhodehamel and Mrs. Allan, he must have seen other people privately and have given spiritual instruction to at least a few. Yet, to our knowledge, none of those who had known him and who continued to study and practice Vedanta after he left considered themselves to be his disciples. Many were to take initiation from either Swami Turiyananda or Swami Trigunatita: Mr. Rhodehamel, for instance, from the former; Mr. and Mrs. Allan from the latter. One wonders why this was so. The thing that concerns us here is not, of course, the spiritual lives of these people, but what constituted being a disciple of Swamiji.

That he made thousands of disciples in the West is certain; for he himself said so. "Well, Swamiji, how many disciples have you in the West?" a man once asked him in Calcutta. "Two or three thousand?" "Maybe more than that," Swamiji replied. "Are they all initiated by you with Mantras?" the questioner continued. "Yes," Swamiji replied. "Did you give them permission to utter Pranava (Om) ?" "Yes," Swamiji replied again.


(It is interesting to note in passing that the questioner, a high-caste Hindu by the name of Priya Nath Sinha, was much alarmed to learn this. "How did you, Maharaj?" he exclaimed. "They say that the Shudras have no right to Pranava, and none has except the Brahmanas. Moreover, the Westerners are Mlechchhas [barbarians], not even Shudras!" During the remainder of this conversation, an account of which is given in volume five of the Complete Works, Swamiji explained to Mr. Sinha's satisfaction that true Brahmanahood was not a matter of birth but of a sattvika, or spiritual, quality of mind. "My disciples are all Brahmanas!" he declared.)[46]


When we consider how many thousands of people Swamiji came in contact with throughout his tours in the Western world, the number of men and women he initiated does not seem large. But when we consider the number of Westerners known to have been his disciples, then it seems large indeed, for we know of only a handful. The fact seems to be that there was a certain distinction, which Swamiji himself made, between his disciples. In Sister Christine's memoirs one reads: "Unless the desire for discipleship was definitely expressed, and unless he was convinced that the aspirant was ready for the step, he left the personal life of those around him untouched. . . . When speaking of some of those whom we did not know, he was careful to explain, 'He is not a disciple; he is a friend.' It was an altogether different relation. Friends might have obvious faults and prejudices. Friends might have a narrow outlook, might be quite conventional, but it was not for him to interfere. It seemed as if even an opinion where it touched the lives of others, was an unpardonable intrusion upon their privacy. But once having accepted him as their guru, all that was changed. He felt responsible. He deliberately attacked foibles, prejudices, valuations-—n fact everything that went to make up the personal self.'[47]


It was clearly this kind of discipleship to which Swamiji was referring when he was to say to a group who had gathered around him one balmy moonlight evening in Alameda, "If you want to be my disciples, you must face the cannon without a murmur.[48] And one remembers that in 1897 when he was about to give initiation to the young man Saratchandra Chakravarty, he put to him a few pointed questions which bore upon discipleship of this type: "Well, are you ready to do my bidding to your utmost, whatever it be and whenever it may come? If I ask you to plunge into the Ganges or to jump from the roof of a house, meaning it all for your good, could you do even that without any hesitation? Just think of it even now, otherwise don't rush forward on the spur of the moment to accept me as your guru.'[49]


That was one kind of discipleship; and we know of only a few instances in which he bestowed it in the West. At Thousand Island Park he gave the final monastic vows to a man and a woman (who thereby became Swami Kripananda and Swami Abhayananda) and the vows of brahmacharya—the first vows—to five others, one of whom was Christina Greenstidel (Sister Christine). According to Miss Ellen Waldo's memoirs, the remaining five students at Thousand Island Park (there had been twelve in all) took initiation in New York City, "together with several others of the Swami's disciples there.'[50] It was in February of 1896 that he gave these further initiations. In a letter to the Brahmavadin, Swami Kripananda reported that on Thursday, February 13, Swamiji had given sannyasa to a Dr. Street "in the presence of the other sannyasins and a number of brahmacharins," and that the following Thursday he gave diksha, or initiation with a mantra, to several young men and women.[51] We know also that sometime during this same month he gave brahmacharya to Josiah J. Goodwin—"the shorthandist," as Swami Kripananda sometimes called him.[52] These are the only instances of formal initiation given in the West by Swamiji that we know of. They took place with a simple ceremony in the presence of others; they were not all monastic initiations, but they all seem to have been given to people whom he expected to become dedicated workers, even teachers.


How many other people in the various places Swamiji visited, such as Boston, Detroit, Chicago, London, received a formal initiation from him, we do not know, but it would seem likely that there were some. Captain and Mrs. Sevier, for instance, became his disciples in London and gave themselves to his work. Sister Nivedita was, of course, a disciple in the most rigorous sense of the word, though her initiation took place not in the West but in India.


But it was not only disciples of this kind to whom Swamiji was referring when he spoke of having initiated more than three thousand Westerners—Brahmins all. There was the far larger group, or multitude, of "friends," to some of whom he had surely given informal initiation and whom he did indeed count among his disciples. As examples, one could cite Miss MacLeod and her friend Dora Roethlesberger, who both, according to Miss MacLeod's reminiscences, received spiritual instruction from Swamiji. "Meditate on the word 'Om' for a week and come again and tell me," he instructed them when they had asked him how to meditate. In a week they returned to report. "I see a light," Mrs. Roethlesberger told him. "Good," Swamiji said; "keep on." Miss MacLeod said her own experience was "more like a glow at the heart." To this Swamiji also said, "Good, keep on." "That is all he ever taught me," she wrote.[53] But whether she knew it or not—and she did not know it, declaring always that she was not his disciple in any sense, but his friend—this from Swamiji was initiation.*(1)

*(1) There is highly relaiable evidance that Swamiji also gave Miss MacLeod a mantra. For information regarding this see notes to Chapter One of World Teacher-I .

To how many thousands of people Swamiji gave a similar informal, undeclared, and apparently casual initiation, we have no way of knowing. His "maybe more than [three thousand]" puts no ceiling on the number. And then, this kind of initiation was, one thinks, generally so lacking in any kind of ceremony or deliberation that often the recipient had not the faintest idea that he had received from Swamiji a blessing that was sufficient forever and that would eventually bear fruit as tangible as the amalaka in the hand.


It would seem that in giving informal initiation Swamiji seldom said anything about discipleship, its prerequisites and responsibilities. He gave his blessings, gave, perhaps, some spiritual instructions, took upon himself the burdens of those who had come to him, and went on his way, demanding nothing, neither obedience, acceptance of his teachings, nor loyalty. Not even an interview was necessary. With one penetrating look he could know all that was essential to know about any individual. Perhaps he did not even prescribe a mantra. Could he not, with a glance or a touch, transmit the spiritual impetus that would thenceforth work its miracle in the life of the recipient, carrying him quickly to liberation? "The human teacher," Sri Ramakrishna once said, "whispers the mantra in the ear of the disciple; the World Teacher puts it in his heart'[54]In speaking of initiation with a mantra, Swamiji himself once said, "With great teachers the use of words is not necessary—as with Jesus. But the 'small fry' transmit this current through words.'[55] Needless to say, Swamiji was a world teacher, a jagadguru; his was the power to transmit spiritual energy directly; this was, indeed, a vital part of his mission. "The touch of the guru, the transmittal of spiritual energy, will quicken your heart," he said during his lecture "Discipleship" in San Francisco. "Then will begin the growth. That is the real baptism by fire. No more stopping. You go on and go on.'[56] From Swamiji, the baptism by fire was sometimes as silent, as imperceptible, but as irreversible, as the first touch of spring.


One remembers those many people in the West whom he loved and who had served him, but to whom he does not seem to have given any formal initiation. To mention only a few, there were Professor John Henry Wright, the Hale and McKindley sisters, Mrs. John Bagley, the Guernseys, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Leggett, Dr. Lewis G. Janes, Mrs. Hansbrough, and her sisters. None of these people had become his disciples in the cannon-facing sense. But can we think that he did not take them into his protection once and for all, that he did not baptize them by fire, that he did not, in short, become their guru ?


There were, then, disciples and disciples—some who understood their spiritual relationship with him, many more who did not; but all were his own. Was there a greater blessing given to the one than to the other? Who could know the answer to this? "There is no condition in grace," Swamiji once said to his disciple Chakravarty. "It is as His play or sport. All this creation of the universe is like His play. 'It is the pure delight of sport, as in the case of men.' Is it not possible for Him who creates and destroys the universe as if in play to grant salvation by grace to the greatest sinner? But then it is just His pleasure, His play, to get somebody through the practice of spiritual discipline and somebody else without it." "Sir," the disciple said, "I can't understand this." "And you needn't," Swamiji replied.[57]


So if we ask if Swamiji made disciples in California, the answer I should think would be, in one sense, no; in another sense, yes. In the latter sense one might say that all the members of his Turk Street class—those with whom he meditated and to whom he gave a glimpse of superconsciousness that would ever after be pursued—were his disciples. That they may have been unaware of it made not the slightest difference.

4

According to Mrs. Hansbrough, Swamiji's daily routine in San Francisco was more or less the same as it had been in Pasadena. After lunch, on days when there had been a morning class and were to be no engagements in the early afternoon, he would take a nap for about two hours. (He always slept quietly, she said.) Later in the day he would perhaps hold an advanced class or give an interview or two. Or, if there were no  afternoon class and no visitors, he would read, or study French, or talk casually to Mrs. Hansbrough and Mrs. Aspinall. "He was a great one to think out loud when he was at home," Mrs. Hansbrough said. "At least, one had the feeling that this is what he was doing. He liked a listener, however. He would ask us many questions about our family lives, and then would tell us about family life in India.... He always talked in a low tone of voice. Even in private conversation he was always a calm man---except [as she well knew] when he was giving someone a dressing down.'[58]

Sometimes he spoke of Sri Ramakrishna. "He always spoke of his Master as 'Atmaram,' " she said. "Whenever there were difficulties he would say, 'Well, if things do not go well, we will wake up Atmaram."' Or sometimes he would speak intimately of himself and his mission. On a sheet of foolscap paper Mrs. Hansbrough later wrote out for the Allans the following deeply personal words, which surely Swamiji had spoken at a time when no strangers were present:


"The Mother dropped me in a strange world," he said, "among a strange people who do not understand me and whom I do not understand. But the longer I stay here I have come to feel that some of the people in the West whom I have met belong to me, and they also are here to serve with me in the work assigned to me.


"There is none with whom I can speak of the Beloved, not one. You do not know, you cannot imagine the loneliness of it. This is how I felt in Chicago.


"I am here to serve the Mother and to give the message which I came into the world to give."


"He talked a great deal of the Divine Mother," Mrs. Hansbrough wrote on the same sheet of paper. "He said that She was the receptacle of every germ of religion, and that She was here as a form, but was not tied to that form. She had Her desires, he said, but they were related to people. She would reach for people, though they did not know it, and gradually She would draw them to Her."


Again, " 'This world is a huge sore,' he said, 'and we are wounded with that deceitful soreness, that untrueness of the world's disease. We have that in ourselves and will not admit that we have it. We live to gloss it over and throw flowers over the wound to hide it from our eyes.'[59]


In a somewhat disconnected and enigmatic passage of her "Reminiscences," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled that Swamiji "said many seemingly contradictory things." "For example, he said of his lectures and work, 'I have been saying these things before, over and over again.' In the Turk Street flat one day he said, 'There is no Vivekananda,' and again, 'Do not ask these questions while you have this Maya mixed up with your understanding.' "


Swamiji's talks in the privacy of the flat were not all in the nature of thinking out loud, nor were they always calm. Mrs. Hansbrough, whom he still called Madam Moses, would sometimes argue with him, would persistently question something about the way he was handling the work, would perhaps handle it herself in a way not to his liking, or would fail to attend to some detail. His work was not an ordinary work to be done in an ordinary way; nor, to his mind, was any work an ordinary work. Even in so small a matter as cleaning a bathtub, he demanded a certain elegance, one might say a certain reverence, of action.

"He often scolded me," Mrs. Hansbrough related. "He was constantly finding fault and sometimes he could be very rough. 'Mother brings me fools to work with,' he would say; or, 'I have to associate with fools!' This was his favorite word in his vocabulary of scolding."


Swamiji; however, varied his choice of words to suit the circumstances. "Going up the steps of a hall in San Francisco before one of his lectures," Mrs. Hansbrough recounted, "he asked me about something I had told him I was going to do. I had neglected to take care of it, and told him I had intended to do it, but had not. 'Your intentions are good,' he remarked, 'but how like devils you act!' "


Mrs. Hansbrough stood up to Swamiji's vocabulary of scolding with a staunchness and lack of complexity that he must have liked. "You have no reverence!" he once said to her but this, in respect to himself, was as he wanted it. "Swamiji had such simplicity about him," she later told Miss Ansell, "he put one right on a level with himself.'[60]"Somehow," she recalled of his scoldings, "I never felt hurt. I would get angry and sometimes would walk out of the room, but usually I was able to hear him through.... Once in the Turk Street flat I was dusting after breakfast in the dining room. As I worked, Swamiji was talking about something. I don't remember now what it was or what answer I gave. But suddenly he exclaimed, 'You are a silly, brainless fool, that's what you are!' He continued to scold me heatedly until Mrs. Aspinall appeared, and he stopped. I said to him, 'Never mind Mrs. Aspinall, Swami; if you're not through, just keep right on!'


"There was the other side, however," she continued. "Though he himself said, 'I never apologize,' he would nevertheless come after the scolding was over to find me, and he would say in a voice so gentle and with a manner so cool that butter and honey wouldn't melt in his mouth, 'What are you doing?' It was clear that he was seeking to make amends for the scolding. He used to say, 'The people I love most, I scold most,' and I remember thinking he was making a poor kind of apology!


"And he could give credit, too, when he chose," she added. "On the evening we left the Turk Street flat to go to the Alameda Home of Truth, he was helping me on with my overcoat and remarked, 'Well, you have worked like a demon!' " And this, of course, Swamiji had appreciated all along. On March 17 he had written to Mrs. Leggett: "Mrs. Hansbrough, the second of the three [Mead] sisters is here, and she is working, working, working—to help me. Lord bless their hearts. The three sisters are three angels, are they not? Seeing such souls here and there repays for all the nonsense of this life.'[61]


Mrs. Hansbrough, in turn, knew that however hard Swamiji may have scolded, he was grace itself. "He would not have held onto me as he did if he had not been so gracious," she once said, recalling how she had often felt she must return to Pasadena to be with her small daughter Dorothy. "One day while we were in San Francisco," she related, "I finally decided that I was going back to Los Angeles. I chose the day and had all my bags packed, ready to leave for the train. All at once I heard a voice say, 'You can't go. You might just as well not try.' And for some reason I became completely exhausted—so exhausted that I had to lie down on the floor. I thought of getting some food, but I couldn't move. And I couldn't bear to look at the suitcases. So I had to make up my mind not to go. Swamiji had not said anything to me," she added. "I don't know whose was the voice I heard speaking to me."


In regard to Mrs. Hansbrough's attachment to her little daughter, however, Swamiji did indeed say something to her. Years later she wrote down his words for the Allans: "You think you love your child. That is not love at all! It is the same as a hen has for her chicken; she will scratch all day to get food for her chicks, but let a strange chick come in and what will she do?"


Aside from being Swamiji's secretary and, with Mrs. Aspinall, his housekeeper, Mrs. Hansbrough was his press agent, treasurer, bookkeeper, and banker. From flat to lecture hall and back, and also, it would seem, at various other times, she would carry a "black case"—possibly a small suitcase—which held "my notebooks, advertising matter, the collection or ticket money, and other things connected with the work." Mrs. Hansbrough and her black case became a familiar, and according to one report, not always a fond sight to the members of Swamiji's audiences. "One woman," she said, "told someone that she did not like Swami Vivekananda because of the thin little woman who was always running along behind him with the black case." That was a pity; but an even greater disaster once nearly occurred in connection with the black case. "One day Swamiji and I stopped in a market to do some shopping,"  Mrs. Hansbrough recounted, "and when we had gone out I discovered I had left the case. I said, 'Just a minute, I forgot something,' and rushed back. There was the case, sitting on the counter. It had three hundred dollars in it!"


That three hundred dollars, which Mrs. Hansbrough was perhaps taking to the bank to have changed, as was her wont, into twenty dollar gold pieces, would have represented more than the admission to one lecture-series plus the collection from a Sunday lecture—more than a long week's work possibly more than two weeks' work. Swamiji charged nothing for his Turk Street classes, for there he gave spiritual instruction directly. He put his pay lectures in a different category. "Once after we had moved to the Turk Street flat," Mrs. Hansbrough related, "a woman said something to Swamiji about his teaching religion. He looked at her and replied, 'Madam, I am not teaching religion. I am selling my brain for money to help my people. If you get some benefit from it, that is good; but I am not teaching religion!"' Another time at the flat, Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, Mrs. Aspinall told him that he really should not charge admission to his lectures. "God will provide," she said. "Madam," Swamiji answered, "God has made a mess of everything. I am trying to straighten it out."

5

Swamiji did not spend all his time in San Francisco in either his flat or a lecture hall. "When he had no class in the morning we would often go out during the day," Mrs. Hansbrough related. "He liked to go to market with me, and sometimes we would go out for lunch or go for a ride in Golden Gate Park, which he enjoyed." They went on other excursions as well, and generally would travel by cable car, by which one could reach almost any point in the city. "Swamiji would always sit very straight on the streetcar," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "with his hands one on top of the other on the walking stick he carried. He would often sing on the car in a low tone of voice.'[62]To visualize Swamiji on a San Fransisco streetcar, one should remember that more likely than not he would be wearing his black coat with its frog fastenings, a clerical collar, and a round black hat. One should also remember that in those days the streetcars had two long, varnished wood benches that, facing each other, ran the length of the enclosed part of the car. The cable cars were (and still are) also equipped with outside benches that faced the street, providing an unobstructed view of the passing scene. Sitting beside Swamiji would be Mrs. Hansbrough wearing in the fashion of the day a ground-sweeping skirt, fitted jacket, and a perky, perhaps feather adorned, hat. At times she would have firmly in hand the black case.

Because of the ease with which Swamiji could get lost in a city or lose all track of time, he seldom went out alone. Another reason he liked company was that his dark skin and unusual dress were apt to excite violent expressions of hostility. Swamiji's early experience in America had taught him that the American was likely to attack anyone different from himself, anyone obviously a stranger. Particularly was this true of European immigrants of the lower classes, those who not long before had themselves been strangers in the land. But he had also found that no matter how rough and tough an American might be in defending himself and his country against a man in strange garb, he would never show disrespect to a woman.


"Swamiji spoke more than once of the indignities to which he had been subjected in the West," Mrs. Hansbrough once recalled. "It was because of the constant possibility of some unpleasant occurrence that he always preferred to have a woman escort. He said that people would respect the women where they would not respect him. Once in San Francisco when I was taking him somewhere into a rather rough part of the city on a call which escapes my memory now, some rowdies made slighting remarks about him which he overheard. He said nothing, but after we had gone he remarked, 'If you had not been along, they would have thrown things at me.'


"He mentioned that well-known incident in Chicago when a man came up and pulled his robe and asked him why he wore his nightgown in public. He was deeply offended by such rudeness on the part of the American public. 'A man could walk the length of India in any kind of dress and such a thing would not happen to him,' he said."


One of the places to which Swamiji may have sometimes gone alone, however, was Chinatown. He particularly liked to visit this quarter of the city, which in 1900 occupied some twelve square blocks on the lower eastern slope of Nob Hill and which was in many respects more genuinely Chinese than it is today. Architecturally, it is true, Chinatown consisted for the most part of old two- and three-story brick buildings, dismal, unlovely, and as Western as the Boston traders who had built them earlier in the century. But the Chinese who had taken them over had managed to put their own colorful and graceful stamp on this basic drabness. They painted the window-frames and doorjambs bright yellow, orange, crimson, or blue. They filled the balconies and fire escapes with porcelain pots of China lilies; they hung huge, balloon-like lanterns everywhere, brightened the walls with bold red or black ideographs and made works of art out of their displays of goods. The streets were lively bazaars of sidewalk shops and stalls. There were markets with exotic vegetables, shark fins, ancient eggs encased in mud, birds' nests for soup, live, squawking fowl; there were sedately elegant shops where one could find exquisite works of art, and dignified chemist shops with tiered rows of red-lacquer boxes filled with medicinal herbs, dried sea horses, or powdered deer horn. Indoors or out, artisans— jewelers, lantern-makers, chaircaners, chandlers—plied their crafts in full view. There were many richly decorated temples or, as they were called, joss houses, where various minor gods and goddesses were worshipped and prayed to. There was a theater where stylized dramas went on interminably, and luxurious restaurants that served quantities of excellent and extraordinary food.


Despite the Exclusion Act of 1882, the district was still thickly populated, and this mostly by men from Canton who had come to America during the sixties and seventies, thinking to make their fortunes as laborers on the railroads. Men from a higher class had also come; but none, high or low, dreamed of adopting Western clothes or ways. Their blue denim or black alpaca trousers and jackets or their more elegant plum colored coats of quilted silk, their broad-brimmed black felt fedoras or round skull caps from which would hang a long queue (or under which one would be coiled), added as much distinctive charm to the district as did their composed pursuit of ancient customs. The women whom one saw in the streets were mostly sturdy Cantonese serving women, wearing trousers and jackets; but now and then, supported by an attendant, a delicately formed lady of the upper classes—the wife perhaps of some rich merchant-would teeter along on tiny, deformed feet, carrying a sandalwood fan and wearing a gown of pastel silk, richly embroidered with a garden of color.


To the Western ear, eye and mind, the district was a world apart, and it was a world predominantly sinister—a world of eerie heathen rites, opium dens, traffic in slave girls, tong wars and assassinations, and imminent bubonic plague. This image of Chinatown was pleasurably tingling to the late-nineteenth-century spine, and most pleasurably tingling of all was the firm belief in the existence of a labyrinthine underground city, said to extend seven or eight levels below the street and to contain in its shadowy dens and twisting tunnels corresponding depths of evil.


The aura of mystery and lurking peril that made Chinatown a place of fascination for the average San Franciscan would, of course, have had no meaning for Swamiji. The Chinatown he saw and liked to visit was undoubtedly the Chinatown of a cheerful and reserved people, whose age-old traditions, customs, and modes of life would have deeply interested him, as did everything connected with mankind's endlessly inventive cultures. The Chinese were, in turn, fascinated by Swamiji. The import of his majestic walk and luminous glance would not have been lost on this ancient people: they no doubt recognized him as a holy man from India—a land revered by the Chinese for well over a thousand years for its religion and its sages. "They would just flock after him," Mrs. Hansbrough recounted, " 'shaking themselves by the hand,' as the saying went, to express their pleasure at his presence."


Nothing remains of Chinatown as Swamiji saw it; it was totally destroyed by the disaster of 1906. Only the walls and granite steps of Old St. Mary's Church, which stood, as it stands today, at the south portal of the district, are substantially the same as they were—which is more than can be said of almost any other downtown San Francisco building that Swamiji might have passed by or entered.


According to Mrs. Hansbrough's account another place Swamiji liked to visit was Golden Gate Park—the great park of San Francisco whose thousand or so acres form a rectangle three-quarters of a mile wide and over four miles long, running from the shore of the Pacific to approximately the geographical center of the city. In 1900 the Park had by no means achieved its present forest-like luxury of growth. Its innumerable trees and bushes were still relatively short and slender, and from almost every point there were unobstructed views. But the Park's basic plan had long since been laid out, and many of its now famous features were in existence, such as the curving roads and bridle paths, the lakes, meadows, glades, and dells, the vast lawns and gardens where one was free to stroll, picnic, or nap. Also existing were the Japanese Tea Garden [not as large or ornamental as it is today], the great glass Conservatory (with its display of rare tropical plants and immense pond lilies), the sunken Music Concourse (still without its monumental bandstand), a museum (an Egyptian-style structure, since torn down), and a fairly large number of bronze statues of famous men. On the other hand, many landmarks that today seem primordial were not yet there: the big Dutch windmills near the ocean had not been built, the Aquarium did not exist, and the Academy of Sciences Museum was located far away on Market Street.


We have few details from Mrs. Hansbrough about Swamiji's drives and walks in Golden Gate Park and can only conjecture that he visited such places as the Japanese Tea Garden or the Conservatory; we know for certain, however, that he walked on the island of Strawberry Hill. One day when Mr. Aspinall had taken Swamiji, Mrs. Hansbrough, and Mrs. Aspinall for a carriage drive in the Park, they went to Stow Lake, where one could go boating or feed the swans and wild, quacking ducks. Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough strolled by the lake—which Mrs. Hansbrough mistook for "a rather swift stream"—and crossed a bridge to the island, where after a time they became lost "When we had left the bridge some distance behind," she related, "and tried to discover some means of recrossing the stream, Swamiji had realized we were on an island, and without thinking to use just that word he tried to indicate the fact to me as he looked about for a means of crossing. Finally when she saw that I had neither caught his meaning nor perceived that the land was an island he remarked, 'Well, ',Madam, I am glad I haven't your brain!' "


Swamiji also visited the Cliff House, going by means of a street car pulled along by a little steam engine through empty sand and dunes. The Cliff House, then a world-famous restaurant housed in a grandly spired, towered, and gabled seven story wooden chateau, sat on the very edge of a cliff at the farthermost end of the city. From here, as one ate lunch, one could have a wide view of the ocean and a close view of Seal Rocks, where the Sea Lions, then a populous and rambunctious herd, would bark, roar, and lumber about their spray-drenched domain.


Whether or not Swamiji liked the Cliff House, the Sea Lions, or the ocean with its long, open beach and charging, white-maned breakers, Mrs. Hansbrough does not say. No doubt he did; for he saw, certainly, exquisite and profound beauty in all nature. But, as he had remarked in Pasadena, man and his works interested him far more than "sights." Indeed, he seems to have cared little for places as such: no place was his home, and none was alien to him. "He seemed like a bird in flight," Mrs. Hansbrough later said. "He would stop here and there, with no great concern for liking or disliking the places where he stopped."


Because of Swamiji's general indifference to sightseeing as a pastime, it is probable that he did not go, if he could help it, on any of the then highly popular excursions around the Bay or down the Peninsula. But it was consistent with his interest in man that he did go to see a ship being launched at one of the city's shipyards.


Those who have read Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda will remember Ida Ansell's account of this occasion, which she, in turn, had heard from Mr. Allan. The story was, indeed, Mr. Allan's and one that he often repeated. Therefore I shall give it here as he himself gave it in the paper he read before the Vedanta Society in 1935. Mr. Allan, a marine engineer, was employed at the time as a draughtsman at the Risdon Iron and Locomotive Works in San Francisco, which had to do with the building of ships; thus he had entree to the shipyards of the Bay.


"One day," he related, "when the launching of a ship was mentioned during a conversation, Swami remarked that he had never seen a ship launched. There was to be a vessel launched in a few days from one of the big shipyards of San Francisco, and I was able to get passes for Swami and several others. When we got near the vessel, the Swami noticed the platform for the launching party, and realized that from there one could get the finest view of the proceedings. It was necessary, however, to have a special ticket in order to go on that platform, which was reserved for guests of the owners. There were two guards at the approach to the platform, whose duty was to prevent any unauthorized person from passing. Swamiji simply walked past these guards, who made no move to stop him.'[63]


In one of her many letters to Swami Ashokananda, Miss Ansell adds a charming and somehow poignant incident to this story of the ship launching. It would seem that before Swamiji strode like a king onto the platform, he and Mr. Allan had gone aboard the ship itself, leaving the women of the party sitting on the dock. But Ida Ansell, who was young and no doubt eager to see the insides of a ship, followed haltingly after the two men. "Swamiji was so kind," she related in her letter, "helping me over difficult places, till Mr. Allan said, 'This is no place for women,' and I returned to the dock where I belonged.'[64]


Swamiji was evidently impressed with the launching: "It is like the birth of a child,'[65] he said; and one wonders what ship it was that had so auspicious a birth, but there is no knowing for certain. The only report of a likely ship launching that can be found in the contemporary San Francisco newspapers, or elsewhere, is of a steam tug, said to be "sixty feet long and one of the finest craft that has been built for many a day." This splendid tug, whose name was not given in the newspapers, was launched at the Potrero docks (about two and a half miles south of the Ferry Building) on Wednesday, March 14, and, it was said, was to pass its days in ocean fishing.[66] This may not have been the ship whose birth Swamiji witnessed, but according to the available news reports, there was none other that could have been.


In addition to going out during the day when there was no morning or afternoon class, Swamiji went out for dinner on the rare evenings—generally Saturdays and Sundays—when there was no lecture. These dinings-out were not invariably successful. Once a Mr. Charles P. Neilson, a locally well-known artist who lived in Alameda, invited Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough (and perhaps the Aspinalls), to have dinner with him at one of the excellent restaurants in Chinatown. He had ordered the dinner in advance, and after his guests had been seated, the cook himself came from the kitchen to greet them. But no sooner did Swamiji see this cook than he knew he could not partake of any of the specially prepared delicacies. There was no help for it. "Of course we went home," Mrs. Hansbrough related. "Mr. Neilson was very disappointed because he knew the Chinese who owned the restaurant; but Swamiji later explained that it was because of the character of the cook that he was unable to eat the food.


"One other such occurrence took place when we had fried shrimps in a French restaurant," Mrs. Hansbrough continued. "When we got home Swamiji vomited his dinner. I said fried shrimps were always hard to digest and probably these were not good, but he insisted that it was the bad character of the cook that was responsible. 'I'm getting like the Old Man,' he said. 'I shall have to live in a glass cage.' " By "the Old Man" Swamiji meant, of course, Sri Ramakrishna, who, as is well known, could not eat or drink anything that had come in contact with an impure person. His body would simply reject it.


Happily, Mr. Neilson had other opportunities to entertain Swamiji; according to Mrs. Hansbrough, he was his host at dinner several times and once took him to an exhibition of his paintings at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art (then a branch of the University of California) that was housed in that mammoth, many-roofed mansion atop Nob Hill where the Mark Hopkins Hotel now stands. It was perhaps on this occasion that Swamiji, surveying a painting of some corpulent monks, remarked jokingly (as Mr. Rhodehamel tells it), "Spiritual men are fat. See how fat I am!'[67]


Although Swamiji had dinner on occasion with Mr. Neilson and very likely with others, he lived as quietly as possible in San Francisco. We do not hear of receptions or social gatherings of any sort being held in his honor. If he was entertained formally at dinner or supper, this, as far as is known, was always in connection with his lectures, and it would appear from our present knowledge that he entirely escaped public and social lionization.


This does not mean, however, that he was not urged to visit here and there. We find that at some point during his stay in San Francisco he spent at least two days with a Dr. Albert D. Hiller, a surgeon and homeopathic physician whose home and offices were at 1011 Sutter Street, in a residential block between Larkin and Hyde. The information that Swamiji was Dr. Hiller's guest comes to us from the unpublished, book-length memoirs of Mrs. Clinton French, and from one of Swamiji's letters we can infer the approximate date of his visit, as well as learn something of the doctor himself, of whom Swamiji writes with great humor. Upon the enthusiastic advice of Miss MacLeod this unfortunate man had taken his invalid wife to Los Angeles so that she could receive the magnetic treatments of Mrs. Melton. An earlier letter of Swamiji's supplies us with the information that on March 15 the Hillers had returned from Los Angeles full of cheer. "They declare themselves very much helped by Mrs. Melton," he wrote to Mrs. Leggett. "Mrs. Hiller expects to get completely cured in a short time.[68] But by the end of March Mrs. Hiller was considerably worse in health than before. "You ought to have seen [Dr. Hiller] the other morning and heard him too!" Swamiji wrote on April 1 to Mrs. Bull. "Mrs. Hiller, it appears, is many times worse for all the rubbings given; and she is only a few bones; and, above all, the doctor had to spend 500 dollars in Los Angeles. That makes him feel very bad.... He is a German; he dances about, slaps his pockets and says, 'You can'th have goth the five hundred, buth for this silly cure!' . . .


"The old doctor is now persuaded that some devils are mis-arranging his affairs of late," Swamiji continued. "He has counted on so much to have me as his guest, and his wife righted, but he had to run to Los Angeles and that upset the whole plan; and now, though he tries his best to get me in as his guest, I fight shy, not of him, but of his wife and sister-in-law. He is sure, 'Devils must be in it'; he has been a Theosophical student. I told him to write to Miss MacLeod to hunt up a devil-driver somewhere so that he might run with his wife and spend another five hundred! Doing good is not always smooth! . . . I sent in a Christian Science healer to Dr. Hiller as a makeup of Joe's misdemeanour, but his wife slammed the door in her face and would have nothing to do with queer healing.'[69]


From the above it is evident that up to and including April 1 Swamiji had succeeded in resisting Dr. Hiller's pleas that he be his guest. But sometime thereafter, probably during the first part of the month, his heart gave in to the old German and, as the following account from Mrs. French's memoirs shows, he went to stay at his home:


During one part of his sojourn in San Francisco [Mrs. French wrote], Vivekananda was guest in the home of Dr. Hiller, possessor of a very valuable library including many rare Oriental works. The Doctor's wife long an invalid, her sister (Mrs. N—) gave up her own home to assume management of this household. A third sister, living in Alameda, I knew very well.


Boston born, pride rankled as she related to me: Oh. yes, she had met Swami Vivekananda, had heard him speak; he was wonderful, etc.; but he did not have much respect for women! It seems she had crossed the Bay to visit her sisters and on entering discovered Swami Vivekananda squatting on the floor in front of a bookcase, poring over a book. She spoke to him; but he did not rise to greet her, or even answer her.


Undoubtedly she misapprehended the intense abstraction, which his hosts had recognized and safeguarded. It was Dr. Hiller's concern for Swami Vivekananda's health under the heavy strain of constant lectures and classes that prompted him to take Swamiji away to his cabin in the Mt. Shasta region for a few days of complete rest.


Not only did Dr. Hiller welcome Vivekananda to his home, but Mrs. N—professedly an atheist) afterward told me that she loved Swamiji as a son; she took care of his room, his clothing, rendered other little services with her own hands, unwilling to commit these humble tasks to a servant.


Burned out, following the earthquake in 1906, Dr. Hiller soon retired from medical practice and devoted himself to study. The last one of this family quartette, who thus familiarly met Swamiji in 1900, had passed on before the close of the second decade.[70]


The impression given here by Mrs. French is that Swamiji spent many days in the San Francisco home of Dr. Hiller. It is doubtful, however, that this was the case. Mrs. Hansbrough makes no mention of this episode, which would lead one to believe that it was of short duration; in fact, Mrs. French is the only memoirist to mention Dr. Hiller at all. One finds, however, that both Mrs. Hansbrough and Mr. Allan note very briefly that Swamiji spent two days and one night in San Francisco with a Dr. Miller. Since we encounter this Dr. Miller nowhere else and know neither his first name nor his address, it is impossible to determine at present whether he was a separate person existing in his own right or whether he was Dr. Hiller mispronounced.


Serving to further tangle up Swamiji's doctor friends, Mrs. Hansbrough mentioned that he visited the home of a doctor whose name she did not give at all. He may have been a third doctor; then again, he may have been Dr. Hiller or Dr. Miller or both. In any case, Swamiji's stay with him could not have lasted for more than twenty-four hours. Almost at once he sent out a call for help to Mrs. Hansbrough, as was his wont when caught in desperate straits.


"Invariably he either phoned or wrote me whenever he wanted to leave any place," she related. "For instance, in San Francisco he was the guest of some physician and had expected to stay for some time. But the very day he went to the doctor's home he either phoned or wrote me—I forget now which he did—to come for him. When I arrived, his hostess came in, introduced herself, and then withdrew again. Then Swamiji explained: 'The trouble is, she is not a lady: she doesn't know what to do with me!' "


In view of Swamiji's quiet, almost secluded life, one of the last people one would expect him to meet and come to know quite well was Mrs. Collis P. Huntington, the wife of one of the enormously wealthy "Big Four" of the Central Pacific Railroad, who reigned in a palatial Nob Hill mansion. "Someone introduced Mrs. Collis P. Huntington to him, " Mrs. Hansbrough remarked offhandedly during the course of her "Reminiscences," "and she gave him six thousand dollars for Sister Nivedita's Girls' School."


The last part of this statement is not altogether correct. At the beginning of May, Swamiji wrote to Sister Nivedita, who was then in Chicago, "Mrs. C. P. Huntington, a very, very wealthy lady, who has helped me, came; wants to see and help you. She will be in New York by the first of June. Do not go away without seeing her. If I cannot come early enough, I will send you an introduction to her."" Sister Nivedita did indeed meet Mrs. Huntington in New York—but of this more in a later chapter.


As was the case everywhere, Swamiji met people of all kinds in San Francisco, and, as was the case always, he was equally friendly to all. "He seemed to like all people, " Mrs. Hansbrough once said. "He was most compassionate; it seemed as if he never saw distinctions between people—almost as if he didn't see the difference between a duck and a man!" "He talked, acted and moved in such a way," she said at another time, "that it was clear he always saw everything imbued with God." Even from a lower point of view Swamiji taught compassion for all. How often did he not say: "We do not progress from error to truth, but from truth to truth"? "Thus we must see," he told Mr. Allan, "that none can be blamed for what they are doing, because they are, at this time, doing the best they can. If a child has an open razor don't try to take it from him, but give him a red apple or a brilliant toy, and he will drop the razor. But he who puts his hand in the fire will be burned; we learn only from experience.'[72]


One might go so far as to say that if Swamiji had any preference for one person over another, he preferred the sinner who was learning through experience to the self righteous man who never stepped beyond the bounds of convention. "As far as we could understand," the Allans once said, "if there was anything Swamiji did not like it was a 'goody-goody' person. He had no use for such people. He would say, 'Do something even if it is bad; but do something! Everyone says, "Be good, be good." Why should I be good?'[73]


During his stay at Turk Street—through most of March and the first week or so of April—Swamiji's health on the whole improved. "I work every day morning and evening," he wrote to Sister Nivedita around the end of March, "eat anything any hour—and go to bed at 12 p.m. in the night—but such fine sleep!! I never had such power of sleeping before!'[74] "—and trudge all over the town!" he added in a letter to Miss MacLeod. "And get better too!'[75] How many hours Swamiji actually slept he did not say; perhaps few, for throughout his life his habit was to sleep very little: deep in the night or in the early hours before dawn he would sit in meditation, his mind in those quiet, solitary times entering into the state most natural to it. One is justified in supposing that such was the case at Turk Street, for while Swamiji did not write or, as far as we know, speak directly of his spiritual practices and experiences, there is much to indicate that during this period he was living on the verge of samadhi. His San Francisco lectures give us some insight into his state of mind, as do some of the things he is quoted as having said in conversation; but nothing is as revealing in this respect as his letters to those few people to whom he confided his personal thoughts-Sister Nivedita, Mrs. Bull, Josephine MacLeod, and Mary Hale. Reading his letters to these friends in chronological order, one finds a gradual crescendo of mood, from depression and nervousness in Los Angeles to a growing peace in San Francisco and on to a sort of ecstasy of transcendence in Alameda in the East Bay. It seems to have been toward the end of March in San Francisco that Swamiji definitely stepped, as it were, across a line into the last phase of his life.


"I am the infinite blue sky; the clouds may gather over me, but I am the same infinite blue," he wrote on March 25 to Sister Christine. "I am trying to get a taste of that peace which I know is my nature and everyone's nature. These tin-pots of bodies and foolish dreams of happiness and misery-what are they? My dreams are breaking. Om Tat Sat!'[76]And to Mary Hale three days later, "I am attaining peace that passeth understanding, which is neither joy nor sorrow, but something above them both. Tell Mother [Mrs. Hale] that. My passing through the valley of death, physical, mental, 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 learned his lessons.' . . . '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 realising it now every day. Yes, I am. 'I am free.' 'Alone, alone, I am the one without a second.'[77]


The post-sctipt to this last letter is even more indicative of his high state of consciousness. "Now I am going to be truly Vivekananda," he declared—and I quote from an early copy of the original letter, retaining, among other things, his spellings of "all" and "good" which were clearly in mimicry of the pronouncements then current in New Thought circles. "Did you ever enjoy evil! Ha! Ha! you silly girl—Awl is goood! Nonsense. Some good, some evil. I enjoy the good and I enjoy the evil. I was Jesus and I was Judas Iscariot; both my play, my fun.... Ostrich method? Hide your heads in the sand and think there is nobody seeing you! Awl is goood! Be brave and face everything, come good, come evil, both welcome, both of you my play. I have no good to attain, no ideal to clinch up to, no ambition to fulfil; I, the diamond mine, am playing with pebbles, good and evil; good for you, evil, come; good for you, good, you come too. If the universe tumbles round my eats, what is that to me? I am Peace that passeth understanding; understanding only gives us good or evil. I am beyond, I am peace."


And again to Sister Nivedita on March 28, ". . . the seed must die underground to come up as the tree. The last two years were the underground rotting. I never had a struggle in the jaws of death, but it meant a tremendous upheaval of the whole life. One such brought me to Ramakrishna, another sent me to the U.S., this has been the greatest of all. It is gone—I am so calm that it astonishes me sometimes!!'[78]


It was in this mood, or rather, in this state of being which no mood could disturb—that Swamiji lectured, held classes, and gave interviews in San Francisco, delivering his final and, as he was heard to say, his highest teachings.[79]

6

In March and April all of Swamiji's evening lectures in San Francisco were given in the Red Men's Building at 320 Post Street, which like Union Square Hall was in the center of town. To get there from Turk Street, he would have taken exactly the same route as he did on Sundays, except that at the intersection of Powell and Post he would have crossed to the north side of post Street and walked half a block east instead of west. The Red Men's Building, which belonged to the Improved Order of Red Men, a secret society similar to Freemasonry, was a rather narrow, three-story building in the center of the block, facing Union Square. The street floor was given over to two or more shops; the third floor, as a large sign stretching across the top of the building proclaimed, was occupied by the Pacific Business College. Washington Hall was probably on the second floor, as, no doubt, was a smaller auditorium known as Social Hall, where Swamiji was to lecture once or twice and where the Vedanta Society of San Francisco, now named the Vedanta Society of Northern California; was to come into being.

Union Square, the famous park that fills a square block in the heart of downtown San Francisco, had the same dignified status in 1900 as it has today, but the surrounding scene was very different. The now venerable Saint Francis Hotel that faces the park on the west and that seems to have been there forever was in 1900 still non-existent. The southern part of the block on which it now stands was occupied by the Calvary Presbyterian Church, a handsome stone building with a columned facade. (One can find the same church today on the corner of Fillmore and Jackson streets, to which spot it was moved stone by stone in October of 1900.) The northern part of the block was occupied by several low, nondescript buildings. Early photographs of the three other boundaries of Union Square show a scene as unrecognizable. For the most part the buildings were from three to five stories high and, except for the Pacific Union Club, a mammoth five-story structure with an ornamental dormer roof that stood on the north-west corner of Post and Stockton, were unprepossessing. As for Union Square itself, it was adorned by lawns, small trees, low shrubs, and a flagpole, which last, said to be "menacing to life and limb " was removed during the period Swamiji was lecturing at the Red Men's Building. (The Dewey Monument, a tall granite shaft topped by an arabesquing figure of Victory, today a long familiar landmark, was not to replace the flagpole until two or three years later.) There were of course no automobiles on the streets; the sounds were of horses' hooves on cobble-stones, the hum and thwack of underground cables, and the joyful clankety-clink-clink of cable car bells. Except on Sundays, it was night time when Swamiji walked, or rode a cable, up the slope of Powell Street to Post. His lectures in Washington Hall (in the Red Men's Building) were scheduled to begin at eight o'clock, by which hour the March sun had long since set and the street lights been turned on.


The first series of three evening lectures that he gave after he had moved into the Turk Street flat and decided to remain awhile in San Francisco had the same title as the first series he had given in Los Angeles: "Applied Psychology." Individually, the lectures were entitled "The Mind: Its Powers and Possibilities," "Mind Culture," and "Concentration"—all clearly concerned with raja yoga. He delivered them on, respectively, the evenings of Tuesday, March 13, Thursday, March 15, and Friday, March 16.


The only lecture of this series at which Ida Ansell took notes is the last. But from Mr. Rhodehamel's memoirs as published in the Life one learns something about the first, which, in a sense, marked the opening of the most important period of Swamiji's work in the Bay Area. His previous lectures had been, as I have mentioned, more or less preliminary. His main work now began, and it began, so to speak, with a bang. He had promised that it would. "Tomorrow night," he had said at the conclusion of what must have been "The Way of Salvation" at Wendte Hall, "I shall lecture on 'The Mind: Its Powers and Possibilities.' Come to hear me. I have something to say to you. I shall do a little bomb-throwing." Here, according to Mr. Rhodehamel, he glanced smilingly over the audience, and then with a wave of his hand added, "Come on! It will do you good.'[80]


The following night there was barely standing room, and Swamiji kept his word. "Bombs were thrown, and he, of all people, knew how to throw them with telling effect," Mr. Rhodehamel reported. "In this lecture he devoted considerable time to the subject of chastity as a means of strengthening the mind. As a practice to develop purity, he expounded the theory of looking upon every woman as one's mother. When he had presented the idea, he paused and, as though in response to inarticulate questionings from the audience, said, 'Oh, yes, this is a theory. I stand up here to tell you about this beautiful theory; but when I think of my own mother I know that to me she is different to any other woman. There is a difference. We cannot deny it.. But we see this difference because we think of ourselves as bodies. This theory is to be fully realised in meditation. These truths are first to be heard, then to be meditated upon.'


"He held purity to be for the householder as well as for the monk, and laid great stress on that point. 'The other day a young Hindu came to see me,' he said. 'He has been living in this country for about two years, and suffering from ill-health for some time. In the course of our talk, he said that the theory of chastity must be all wrong, because the doctors in this country had advised him against it. They told him that it was against the law of nature. I told him to go back to India, where he belonged, and to listen to the teachings of his ancestors, who had practised chastity for thousands of years.' Then turning a face puckered into an expression of unutterable disgust, he thundered, 'You doctors in this country who hold that chastity is against the laws of nature, don't know what you are talking about. You don't know the meaning of the word purity. You are beasts! beasts! I say, with the morals of a tomcat, if that is the best you have to say on that subject!' Here he glanced defiantly over the audience, challenging opposition by his very glance. No voice was raised, though there were several physicians present'[81] (And one fancies that in that silence there was many a blush among the maidens and matrons of the audience, for this was 1900 when the words "sex" and, by association, "chastity" were still taboo. But Swamiji was in no way deceived by the hypocrisies of Victorian society. While he was well aware, as he was to say later on, that "public discussions of this subject were not to the taste of this country," as he said exactly what he wanted to say, when and where he wanted to say it).*(2)

*(2) In her published memoirs Ida Ansell has related that this particular bomb was thrown during a lecture Swamiji gave at the California Street Home of Truth. This recollection does not occur in her original, unpublished memoirs, written in 1946, and it is possible that her published account of Swamiji’s words was borrowed, along with much else, from Frank Rhodehamel;s memoirs. But be that as it may, there is no indubitable evidence to tell us exactly where and when this blast took place. I have taken Rhodehamel’s mention of “The Mind: Its Powers and Possibilities” to be a reference to Swamiji’s Washington Hall lecture of that tide, and while that seems to be a reasonable supposition, it is, to be sure, a supposition only.

Frank Rhodehamel's memoirs are not his only contribution to our knowledge of Swamiji's lectures in San Francisco. He had taken notes of the three lectures of the "Applied Psychology" series, which one can find (with only slight alterations) in volume six of the Complete Works under the titles "The Importance of Psychology" and "The Power of the Mind ", which latter consists of his combined notes of "Mind Culture" and "Concentration of the Mind," the seam between them occurring invisibly between paragraphs seven and eight.**(3) In these notes one finds only bare traces of the bombs that were thrown at the audience and that remained so vividly in Rhodehamel's memory. One can imagine that during Swamiji's most forceful, most stunning of utterances the young Frank sat breathless, his pen suspended, the words burning themselves into his mind, though making no impression on his notebook.

**(3) It may be of interest of students of Swamiji’s lectures to note that the last two paragraphs of “The Importance of Psychology” (Complete Works, 6:32) are actually the first two paragraphs of Rhodehamel’s original notes of “Mind Culture” (or, as published, “The Powers of the Mind, “Complete Works, 6:125).

But even when Swamiji was speaking more quietly and Frank Rhodehamel was taking notes, one finds statements that must have been startling to those who really heard them. In those pre-Freudian days Swamiji's discussion of the almost total power of the subconscious over one's conscious life was hair-raising. Here again, Christian and Western concepts were overturned like bowling pins—in this case, the concepts of sin, free will, and responsibility, to say nothing of the presumed tabula rasa of each newborn babe.


We are all slaves to our own and to everybody else's mind [he said]; whether we are good or bad, that makes no difference. We are led here and there because we cannot help ourselves. We say we think, we do, etc. It is not so. We think because we have to think. We act because we have to. We are slaves to ourselves and to others. Deep down in our subconscious mind are stored up all the thoughts and acts of the past, not only of this life, but of all other lives we have lived. This great boundless ocean of subjective mind is full of all the thoughts and actions of the past. Each one of these is striving to be recognised, pushing outward for expression, surging, wave after wave, out upon the objective mind, the conscious mind. These thoughts, the stored-up energy, we take for natural desires, talents, etc. It is because we do not realise their true origin. We obey them blindly, unquestioningly; and slavery, the most helpless kind of slavery, is the result; and we call ourselves free. Free! . . .


The mind uncontrolled and unguided will drag us down, for ever—rend us, kill us; and the mind controlled and guided will save us, free us. So it must be controlled, and psychology teaches us how to do this.[83]


(It is interesting to notice that Swamiji used the word psychology to mean the study of the mind in the deepest possible sense, compared to which the psychological theories and treatments that would prevail in the West in the first part of the twentieth century would be mere surface scraping. In a sentence of Frank Rhodehamel's original notes of "Mind Culture," Swamiji is quoted as having said, "Psychology takes in the study of the soul; metaphysics is employed more with the mere mind.")[84]


But to return to his berating of his audience, one learns a little more of his manner of doing this from Miss Sarah Fox, whose recollections of her attendance at the Unitarian church in Oakland we have quoted earlier. "My sister and I heard only one other lecture by Swamiji," she added in her memoirs; "this time in San Francisco. In the first half of it he flayed his listeners for their Licentiousness, and in the second half he poured out his affection upon them.'[85]Swamiji's profound, undeviating affection for man was always there. It was indeed this that made his insights so unerring, his chastisements so incisive. While truth was the dynamite of his bombs, it was his love that ignited them. Not everyone, however, could withstand them.


Mr. E. C. Brown, who was present at most of Swamiji's lectures in the Bay Area, later told of the astonished indignation with which some members of the audience became aware that his "bomb-throwing" was aimed at them. "Does he mean me?" was incredulously asked by more than one person. "Several people," Mr. Brown reported, "stopped coming to the lectures.'[86]


This would not have troubled Swamiji in the slightest. He well knew that those who were annoyed by his words today would feel blessed by them tomorrow. "I will compare truth to a corrosive substance of infinite power," he had written during his first visit to the West in an impassioned reply to some well-meant advice that he soften his approach. "It burns its way in wherever it falls—in soft substance sooner, hard granite later, but it must.... I have a message to give," he continued, "I have no time to be sweet to the world, and every attempt at sweetness makes one a hypocrite.'[87]In 1900 Swamiji was again receiving advice—notably from those who had not known him earlier. His answer was in essence no different, but it was the succinct answer now of a veteran warrior who had never compromised or turned his back, and whose truth had flooded the world—to burn its way in soon or late. Miss. Hansbrough, it will be remembered, once ventured in Los Angeles to suggest that he sometimes antagonized his audiences, only to meet with the reply, "Madam, I have cleared whole halls in New York.'[88]Perhaps she brought up the point again in San Francisco. "Once while we were in the Turk Street apartment," she related, "I questioned something about the way Swamiji was handling the work. He did not answer, but simply said, 'Within ten years of my death, I will be worshipped as a god'[89]


While some people, their pride badly damaged, may have stopped coming to Swamiji's lectures, his following as a whole was to remain constant throughout his stay in San Francisco. As has been said earlier, the attendance at his pay lectures had at first been so unsatisfactory that he had felt it not worth his while to remain in California. But soon this situation changed. "The attendance averaged from one hundred and fifty to two hundred," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "which was not bad, considering that there was a charge of fifty cents for each lecture and one dollar for a series of three.'[90]


By a stroke of good fortune, there was no lack of advertising for these later lectures. Among the people who were attracted to Swamiji from the beginning was Mrs. Clinton French, the wife of a printer. In the early part of 1900, Cara French, like Ida Ansell, had been attending a class on the Gita held by Miss Lydia Bell at the California Street Home of Truth. She had drifted there, she recounted in her unpublished memoirs, for lack of an anchor and because "of the keen interest of several relatives in Home of Truth teachings." "Then," she wrote, giving the sentence a paragraph of its own, "came VIVEKANANDA!" "A prolonged illness of Mr. French, with consequent financial strain, hampered me," she continued; "but so intense was my desire to attend Swami Vivekananda's lectures and classes, the way seemed to open. Mrs. Hansbrough and others in charge needed advertising matter: we had a printing shop. So through Mr. Wiseman, caretaker at the [California Street] Home of Truth, a mutually favorable arrangement was made. Copy with the cuts of Swamiji reached our desk; and presently they had dodgers (small handbills), quarter-cards (for window display), and tickets—and I the coveted admissions to his courses of lectures:[91]


This arrangement was a godsend for all concerned. Because of her husband's illness, Mrs. French did a good deal of the printing work herself and thereby not only received free admission to Swamiji's lectures (together, surely, with the cost of printing) but, as she often said in later years, derived much happiness from the work itself. As for Swamiji, the San Francisco newspapers did not often mention his lectures; advertising was expensive; and, as we have seen, the Reverend B. Fay Mills had declined to announce his lectures to his own San Francisco congregations. Dodgers and quarter-cards were just the thing. Evidently a great many of the latter were placed in strategic windows about the city to announce each lecture series; for one remembers Miss Partington's mention (in the Chronicle of March 18) of a photograph or "cut" which "has been extensively used in lecture advertisements here." But of the handbills, display cards, and tickets turned out by the Frenches' press (then located in the Phelan Building at Market and O'Farrell) only a few handbills have been recovered.


Mrs. French's memoirs, incidentally, are revealing of the awe inspiring effect Swamiji had upon some of his listeners. Although she attended all his lectures and his classes as well, although she was happy in serving his cause, she "had no personal conversation with him. " "With abundant opportunity, it was my own fault that I did not," she wrote. "Others crowded about him with questions or in greeting; I slipped out quietly, even from the small classes held at the Turk Street flat, where I was obliged to pass around him to reach the stairway in leaving. There were several reasons for my attitude," she continued; "young [then in her late twenties] and naturally shy, I felt utterly insignificant, and wondered what I was doing in being there. Captivated by the spiritual force and magnetism of his presence, yet in a degree resisting it—for was he not bowling over or knocking to pieces many a preconceived idea of spiritual teaching—my mind was dazed and in a turmoil. However, I do not now regard it as an altogether lost opportunity. No one squatting on the floor Oriental fashion (for lack of sufficient chairs) just a few feet from Swami Vivekananda, could possibly have escaped his observation; his mental, moral and spiritual appraisal:'[92] Indeed not, and in any event Mrs. French was captivated for good; she spent the rest of her life—she lived to be over eighty—in the study and service of Vedanta.


During the third lecture Ida Ansell took shorthand notes (for the first time), and we are fortunate enough to have her transcripts, the second of which has been published in volume four of the Complete Works. Miss Ansell's notes of this lecture "Concentration" were particularly scrappy; for when she took them Swamiji's ideas were still more or less new to her, as was the rich, cascading flow of his language. Yet her notes are much more full than Frank Rhodehamel's of this same lecture, and from her transcripts one can follow the gist of his talk. He outlined the essential steps of Raja yoga, stressing the central practice of concentration, without which no knowledge, either secular or spiritual, can be obtained. "The subject of the present lecture," he said near the beginning, "is how to concentrate the mind in order to study the mind itself. Yogis have laid down certain rules, and this night I am going to give you a sketch of some of these rules." He went on to speak of the prime necessity of perfect morality—inner morality, not the observance of outward forms. "External purity is very easy and all the world rushes toward it," he said, ". . . any fool can do that. When it is grappling with the mind itself, it is hard work.... It is culture of the heart that we want.'[93] He then spoke of some of the steps in the actual practice of Raja yoga—posture, breathing, concentration. He digressed to denounce Hatha yoga, whose goal was longevity and which, generally speaking, was the West's only idea of yoga—and a vague idea at that. Returning to the practice of Raja yoga—the practice of mental control—he concluded (and I quote here from the first transcript), "Then comes meditation. That is the highest state.... Meditation is practiced, and through meditation comes direct super consciousness. By proper concentration the soul becomes entirely free from the bonds of the gross body and knows itself as it is. Whatever one wants, that comes to him. Power and knowledge are already there. The soul identifies itself with that which is powerless—matter—and thus weeps: It identifies itself with the mortal and weeps because it is mortal.... He who has become God—there is nothing impossible to such a free soul. No more birth and death for him. He has become free forever.'[94]


It is evident from Ida Ansell's first transcript that during the course of this lecture Swamiji recounted the extraordinary and elaborate practices of the Hatha yogis in considerable detail. "He puts a long stick down his throat and pumps it up and down," he said in part. "Puts a thread through one nostril and brings it out through the other. Some of the hatha yogis try to arrive at a sort of trance. They turn the tip of the tongue back and [attain a trance -like state], and in that trance they remain for days. Days after he will come out, quite alive. What more immortality do you want!. . . These ideas, I have told you, have ruined races.'[95]

Swamiji also told more stories in this lecture than the second transcript indicates. Apart from the story of Pavhari Baba, there was, Miss Ansell noted parenthetically, a "Story of the Sage in the Forest" and a "Story of a Girl." One finds scattered throughout the first transcripts many such titles in parentheses. "Swamiji always told some story on the lecture platform," Mrs. Hanabrough once recounted. "He said he gathered his mind in this way.'[96] Certainly he gathered the mind of his audience in this way, or relaxed the minds too highly strung. Ida Ansell never took his stories down, and this for the very reason that his manner of telling them was so enthralling.


One misses not only Swamiji's stories in the transcripts but also the wonderful play that would go on between him and his listeners. No transcript, however complete, could capture the subtlety of his humor, his teasing, his pauses that held a wealth of meaning, his inflections, gestures, and facial expressions, all of which could bring about gasps, laughter, even delighted applause. All are lost to us in the written word. .


At one point in this lecture on "Concentration " for instance, Swamiji had his listeners in a state of suspense as he teased them in regard to his age. In the first transcript one finds this odd sentence: "I am only a few years"—a sentence meaningless if one does not know what was taking place: In his memoirs Mr. Rhodehamel recalled the incident: "Much conjecture was rife as to his age. He must have known this, for he availed himself of an opportunity to have a little fun on this point at the expense of the audience. Alluding to his own age, which was apropos of the subject, he said, 'I am only—' (breathless pause, anticipation) '—of a few years,' he added mischievously. A sigh of disappointment ran over the audience. The Swami looked on waiting for the applause, which he knew was ready to break out.'[97] And, no doubt, break out it did. To judge from various newspaper reports, applause was always breaking out during Swamiji's lectures; and, to judge from Mr. Rhodehamel's memoirs, so was laughter, including Swamiji's own: His lectures seem to have been, in fact, veritable festivals.


Indeed, Swamiji's wit, his vibrant life, his many-faceted attractiveness—all luminous with the quality Miss Albers referred to as "soul-force"—made as deep an impression upon his audience as his words. Even his physical appearance was arresting. After two years or more of unremitting illness, work, and anguish of heart, he was evidently as strikingly handsome as he had been during his first visit to the West. "The beauty of Swamiji nobody can imagine," Mrs. Allan once said. "His face, his hands, his feet, all were beautiful. Swami Trigunatita later said that Swamiji's hands were far more beautiful than any woman's. His color would seem to change, some days being darker and some days lighter, but usually there was about it what can best be described as a golden glow.'[98]On the platform, wearing his robe—its shade described once as "persimmonish terra-cotta," once as "crushed strawberry"—his appearance was godlike, and to some, as Miss Ansell recalled, it appealed more than did his doctrine. "I remember," she wrote with a touch of disapproval, "one very wealthy and aristocratic young lady, who was studying music with my teacher, saying ecstatically, 'Oh, he is like a lovely golden statue!' '[99] But one cannot blame the young woman for admiring this aspect of Swamiji. Most people did—men and women alike. "The Swamiji's personality impressed itself on the mind with visual intensity, " Mr. Rhodehamel was to write some ten years later. "The speaking eyes, the wealth of facial expression and gesticulation; the wondrous Sanskrit chanting, sonorous, melodious, impressing one with the sense of mystic potency; the translations following in smiling confidence; all these set off by the spectacular apparel of the Hindu Sannyasin; who can forget them?'[100]


During his first visit to the West Swamiji's voice was often described as sheer music. It was still thrilling to his listeners. "His voice was so magnificent!" Mrs. Roorbach once recalled. "It would roll out with those Sanskrit verses and everyone in the audience would sit up and take notice. They didn't know a word of Sanskrit; I didn't either. His voice was not tenor " she added, "but bass—low bass.'[101] As far as I know, no one else ever described Swamiji's voice as "low bass," but if even one person remembered it as such, it must have been in the lower ranges. Mrs. Hansbrough confirmed this. "His voice was the most musical I have ever heard,[102]she said of his lectures in Los Angeles, and she had judged his pitch to be closer to bass than to tenor. "It was not a powerful voice," she recalled at another time, "but it had great depth. The manager of Washington Hall in San Francisco once told me he had never heard so sweet a voice.'[103] If his voice was not powerful, it was clear and carrying. "There was never any doubt about hearing what Swamiji said," Mrs. Allan once told a fellow Vedantin. "He spoke out very decidedly and very loudly. He used quite long sentences,' [104] she added.


Everything about Swamiji was expressive of the greatness of his personality, and that personality was as startling a revelation to his listeners as were his teachings. One recalls here a passage from Sister Christine's reminiscences: "Our conception of spirituality was not only clarified [through knowing Swamiji]," she wrote, "but transcended. Spirituality brings life, power, joy, fire, glow, enthusiasm—all the beautiful and positive things, never inertia, dullness, weakness. Then why should one have been so surprised to find a man of God with a power in an unusual degree? Why have we in the West always associated emaciation and anaemic weakness with spirituality? Looking back upon it now one wonders how one could ever have been so illogical. Spirit is life, shakti, the divine energy.'[105] It was precisely this truth that Swamiji made apparent. The incomparable attractiveness of God as seen through him was ever a source of amazement in the West, and it was one of the moat important lessons he taught--simply by his presence. But the divine energy he manifested also made of his every word a thunderbolt, and perhaps no one knew this better than he.


"One evening after one of his lectures at Washington Hall several of us were walking home with him," Mrs. Hansbrough related. "I was in front with someone, and he behind with some others. Apropos of something he had been discussing, he said, 'You have heard that Christ said, "My words are spirit and they are life." ' He pointed his finger at me and declared, 'So are my words spirit and life; they will burn their way into your brain and you will never get away from them!'[106]


ⓘ
[1].Frank Rhodehamel, “Vedanta in California: Memories,” P.B. 21 (February-March 1916): 37.
[2].Ida Ansell to Thomas Allan, June 6, 1932, VSNC.
[3].Edith Allan, unpublished notes, VSNC.
[4].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC.
[5].Life (1981), 2 : 522-23.
[6].See ref. 1 above.
[7].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[8].Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 372.
[9].See ref. 1 above.
[10].Complete Works, 2 : 466.
[11].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[12].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”   
[13].Life (1981), 2:524.
[14].P.B. 32 (March 1927): 125.
[15].See ref. 4 above.
[16].See ref. 1 above.
[17]. See ref. 13 above.
[18].Rhodehamel Notebook, VSNC.
[19].Complete Works, 7 : 435.
[20].Complete Works, p. 198.
[21].Life (1981), 2 : 523-24.
[22].See ref. 1 above.
[23].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[24].Edith B. Allan, unpublished notes, VSNC; see also Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 384.
[25].Life (1981), 2 : 522.
[26].Rem. (Viraja Devi), p. 394.
[27].Allan Papers, VSNC.
[28].As told by Edith Allan to Miriam Kennedy (Pravrajika Nitya-prana), San Francisco, 1949.
[29].See ref. 26 above, pp. 394-95.
[30].From an interview of Mr. and Mrs. Allan by John Yale (Swami Vidyatmananda), San Francisco, September, 1952, Allan Papers, VSNC.
[31].See ref. 27 above.
[32].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[33].See ref. 30 above.
[34].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[35].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”    
[36].Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 384; see also ref. 30 above.
[37].Rem. (Ida Ansell).; see also Rem. (Viraja Devi), P- 397-
[38].See ref. 27 above.
[39].Rem. (Viraja Devi), p. 397; see also ref. 27 above.
[40].Rem. (Viraja Devi), p. 397; see also ref. 27 above.    
[41].Rem. (Viraja Devi), p. 397; see also ref. 27 above.   
[42].See ref. 27 above.
[43].See ref. 39 above.
[44].As told by Edith Allan to Edna C. Zulch, San Francisco, 1938.
[45].See ref. 30 above; see also Rem. (Viraja Devi), p. 398.
[46].Talks, pp. 368-69; see also Complete Works, 5; 376.
[47].Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 210.
[48].Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 385.
[49].See ref. 46 above, p. 33; sec also Complete Works, 6:471.
[50].Sarah E. Waldo, “Introductory Narrative” to Inspired Talks by Swami Vivekananda, d. 14.
[51].Brahmavadin, 1 (March 28, 1896): 182; ibid., 1 (April 25, 1896): 206.
[52].Letters of Swami Kripananda to Sara C. Bull, SCB.
[53].Rem, (Josephine MacLeod), PP- 235-36.
[54].Teachings of Sri Ramakrishna, new ed. (Mayavati: Advaita Ashrama, 934), P- 74, no- 180.
[55].Complete Works, 6 : 141.
[56].Complete Works, 8 : 114.
[57].See ref. 46 above, p. 46; Complete Works, 6 : 482.
[58].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.” All subsequent quotations from Alice Hansbrough in sec. 5 are taken from the same source.
[59].Allan Papers, VSNC.
[60].Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 378.
[61].Complete Works, 7 : 518
[62].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.” All subsequent quotations from Alice Hansbrough in sec. 6 are taken from the same source.
[63].Thomas J. Allan, Paper delivered before the Vedanta Society of Northern California, January 13, 1935, VSNC.
[64].Ida Ansell to Swami Ashok-ananda, February 27,  1947, VSNC.
[65].Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 386.
[66].San Francisco Examiner, 3 February, 1900.
[67].Life (1981), 2 : 520.
[68].Complete Works, 7 : 520.
[69].Complete Works., 8: 510-11.
[70].Cara M. French, “Memoirs,” VSNC.
[71].Complete Works, 8 : 521.
[72].See ref. 63 above.
[73].See ref. 63 above.
[74].Complete Works, 6 : 432.
[75].Complete Works, 8 : 506.
[76].Complete Works   6:430.
[77].Complete Works 8 : 504-5. The postscript of this letter is from a typed copy of the original, SN Col.
[78].Complete Works, 6 : 431-32.
[79].Brahmacharini Usha (Pravra- jika Anandaprana), “Swamiji in Southern California,” V and W, 158 (November-December 1962): 43.
[80].Life (1981), 2 : 517.
[81].Life 2 : 520-21.
[82].Complete Works, 1 : 520.
[83].Life., 6 : 29-30.
[84].Rhodehamel Notebook, VSNC.
[85].Sarah Fox, “Memoirs,” VSNC.
[86].As related by Ernest C. Brown to Swami Ashokananda in San Francisco, ca. 1940.
[87].Complete Works, 5: 71, 72. The passages as given here are taken from an early typescript (SN Col.) and differ slightly from the published version.
[88].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[89].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[90].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[91].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[92].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[93].Complete Works, 4 : 219-22 passim.
[94].First transcript of “Concentration,” March 16, 1900, VSNC.
[95].First transcript of “Concentration,” March 16, 1900, VSNC.
[96].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[97].Life (1981), 2:521.
[98].From an interview of Mr. and Mrs. Allan by John Yale (Swami Vidyatmananda), San Francisco, September, 1952, VSNC.
[99].Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 372.
[100].Life (1981), 2 : 516.
[101].Recorded conversations of Eloise Roorbach, San Francisco, May 4, 1950, VSNC.
[102].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[103].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[104].As told by Mrs. Allan to Miriam Kennedy (Pravrajika Nitya-prana), San Francisco, ca. 1949.
[105].Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 179.
[106].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”

7

From the rough drafts of Mrs. Allan's memoirs one learns that during the question and answer period following Swamiji's lecture on "Concentration" someone in the audience requested that he speak on philosophy in his next series: A murmur of agreement arose from the audience. "So you want philosophy," Swamiji replied. "Then you must be prepared for cannon balls." "We got them," Mrs. Allan remarked.[1]


Two days later, the San Francisco newspapers carried small advertisements that read:


SWAMI VIVEKANANDA . . . will give a course of three lectures on "The Vedanta Philosophy" ["Vedanta philosophy" in the Examiner; "Vedonta Philosophy" in the Chronicle], at Washington Hall, 320 Post st. Subjects; Tuesday, March 20th, 8 p.m., "Nature and Man" Friday, March 23rd, 8 p.m., "Soul and God"; Tuesday, March 27th, 8 p.m., "The Goal". Tickets, 50c; course, $ 1.00.


Of these three lectures the only one that the newspapers later commented upon was the first. On March 21 the San Francisco Call produced the following:

Vedantic Philosophy

Swami Vivekananda the Hindoo exponent of the Vedantic school of philosophy delivered last evening the first of a series of lectures upon the elements of the system he represents. It was an use treatise on the origin of the species and the development of the human mind....


It was, it so happens, no such thing. One cannot be grateful enough that by the time Swamiji gave his series on Vedanta Philosophy Ida Ansell was busy with her pencil. Her transcripts of the three lectures have been published in the Complete Works: "Nature and Man" in volume eight under the title "I Am that I Am"; "Soul and God" in volume one; and "The Goal" in volume two. (The first is among those edited from the first transcripts and published in The Voice of India.) True to his word, Swamiji bombarded the audience. His stress on monism, so pronounced during his second visit to the West, reached in this series a climax of explicit and impassioned expression; cannon balls flew to right and to left. "Audiences were jolted out of hereditary ruts, and New Thought students, so-called, were subjected to scathing, though constructive criticisms without mercy," Mr. Rhodehamel, whose notes of these three lectures have also been published,*(4) wrote in his memoirs. "Smilingly, [the Swami] would announce the most stupendous Vedantic conceptions so opposed to Christian theologic dogma; then pause an instant; how many, many times, and with such winsome effect!—with his teeth pressed over his lower lip as though with bated breath observing the result.'[2]To judge from the examples Mr. Rhodehamel proceeded to give of "the violence done to the traditional teachings of Christendom, " he had particularly in mind this series on Vedanta Philosophy; all the concepts he cited can be found here, and many more besides.

*(4) Frank Rhodehamel’s notes of “Natural and Man,” “Soul and God,” and “The Goal” have been published in volume six of the Complete Works under their original titles, approximately. From these brief published notes it is sometimes possible to understand Ida Ansell’s “scrappy” notes more clearly. For instance, in “The Soul and God” as taken down by Miss Ansell and transcribed by her for publication in Vedanta and the west a sentence reads (as edited), “Either the [soul permeates] space or space is in [it]” (Complete Works, I : 495). This same passage in Rhodehamel’s notes, “Soul and God,” reads: “Either you are in space, or space is in you” (Complete Works, 6:93). One is inclined to think that Mr.Rhodehamel’s version comes closer to the words Swamiji uttered.

The series started out quietly enough. In "Nature and Man" Swamiji gave a clear, concise explanation of the essential teachings of Advaita Vedanta by contrasting nature—both external and internal phenomena, both matter and mind, changing, mortal, and bound—with the substance or noumenon, the free, immortal, unchanging, and infinite Self. "That substance—the soul—as it were moulds itself," he said, "as it were throws itself into the cast of name and form, and immediately becomes bound, whereas it was free before. And yet its original nature is still there. That is why it says, 'I am free; in spite of all this bondage I am free.' And it never forgets this....


The awakening of the soul to its bondage and its effort to stand up and assert itself—this is called life. Success in this struggle is called evolution. The eventual triumph, when all the slavery is blown away, is called salvation, Nirvana, freedom. Everything in the universe is struggling for liberty. When I am bound by nature, by name and forms, by time, space, and causality, I do not know what I truly am. But even in this bondage my real Self is not completely lost. I strain against the bonds; one by one they break, and I become conscious of my innate grandeur. Then comes complete liberation. I attain to the clearest and fullest consciousness of myself—I know that I am the infinite spirit, the master of nature, not its slave. Beyond all differentiation and combination, beyond space, time, and causation, I am that I am.'[3] (The title given to this lecture in The Voice of India and subsequently in the Complete Works was, of course, taken from those resounding words, with which he concluded.)


In "Soul and God" and "The Goal" Swamiji left no question as to the implications of the philosophy he had expounded —what it demanded of those who could follow it; what it demanded, indeed, of all men worthy of the name Man. "Do not say God, do not say Thou, say I," he thundered toward the close of "Soul and God." (I quote from the first transcripts.) "The language of materialism says God, Thou, my Father. The language of the spirit says, dearer unto me than I am myself. I would have no name for Thee. The nearest I can use is I. God is true, the universe is a dream. Blessed am I that I know this moment that I shall be free all eternity, that I know that I am worshiping only myself, that no nature, no delusion has any hold on me. Vanish nature from me. Vanish these gods. Vanish worship. Vanish all creeds and ceremonies. Vanish superstitions. For I know myself. I am the Infinite.... How can there be death for me, or birth? Whom shall I fear? I am the One.... I am everything. I am God.'[4]


In "The Goal" Swamiji continued to blast concepts dear to Christian thought —new as well as old. "You are a slave," he cried. "You never do anything of your own will because you are forced to do everything. Your only motive for action is some force.... Throughout nature, everything is bound. Slavery, slavery! To be in harmony with nature is [slavery]. What is there in being the slave of nature and living in a golden cage?" He crumpled up and threw aside the idea that God had created the world for some purpose of His own. "[You say] God is free. Again you ask the question why God creates the world. You contradict yourself. The meaning of God is entirely free will. The question put in logical language is this: What forced Him, who can never be forced by anybody, to create the world? . . . The question is nonsense. He is infinite by His very nature; He is free. We shall answer questions when you can ask them in logical language. Reason will tell you that there is only one Reality, nothing else.'[5]


In Frank Rhodehamel's notes on "The Goal" one finds Swamiji speaking on this subject in somewhat different words: "Such questions as, 'Why did God create the universe?' 'Why did the All-perfect create the imperfect?' etc., can never be answered, because such questions are logical absurdities. Reason exists in nature; beyond nature it has no existence. God is omnipotent, hence to ask why He did so and so, is to limit Him; for it implies that there is a purpose in His creating the universe. If He has a purpose, it must be a means to an end, and this would mean that He could not have the end without the means. The questions, why and wherefore, can only be asked of something which depends upon something else.'[6]


Even as God has no purpose, neither in reality has man. "You are infinite; God is infinite. You are all infinite," Swamiji said. "There cannot be two existences, only one. The Infinite can never be made finite. You are never bound. That is all. You are free already. You have reached the goal—all there is to reach. Never allow the mind to think that you have not reached the goal.... It is all play. You may say, 'We have to do something; let us do good.' Who cares for good and evil? Play! God Almighty plays. That is all. You are the almighty God playing.... It is all fun. Know it and play: That is all there is to it. Then practise it. The whole universe is a vast play. All is good because all is fun. This star comes and crashes with our earth, and we are all dead. That too is fun. You only think fun the little things that delight your senses! . . . Who is born and who dies? You are having fun, playing with worlds and all that.... The Infinite is the real; the finite is the play. You are the infinite body and the finite body in one. Know it! . . . Know that you are always free. The fire of knowledge burns down all the impurities and limitations. I am that Infinite.'[7]


What will become of one's individuality? Swamiji answered this objection often, not only in his lectures themselves but after them as well. "In the questions which usually followed a talk on [Advaita Vedanta]," Mr. Rhodehamel recalled, "there was almost sure to be the question 'But, Swami, what will, become of one's individuality when one realises one's oneness with God?' He' would laugh at this question, and playfully ridicule it. He would say: 'You people in this country are so afraid of losing your in-di-vid-u-al-i-ties;' drawling out the word in laughing mockery. 'Why, you are not individuals yet. When you know God you will be. When you realise your whole nature, you will attain your true individualities, not before. In knowing God you cannot lose anything worth having.'[8]


Swamiji shooed his alarmed listeners out of the churches. "No church ever saved by itself," he cried at the close of "The Goal." "It is good to be born in a temple, but woe unto the person who dies in a temple or church. Out of it! It was a good beginning, but leave it! It was the childhood place but let it be! Go to God directly." And to those who indulged in bemoaning their sins he cried, "Don't repent!" "Do not be miserable! Do not repent! What is done is done.... Be sensible: We make mistakes; what of that? That is all in fun. They go so crazy over their past sins, moaning and weeping and all that. Do not repent! After having done work, do not think of it. Go on! Stop not! Don't look back! What will you gain by looking back? You lose nothing, gain nothing. You are not going to be melted like butter. Heavens and hells and incarnations—all nonsense!'[9]


This was a religion for heroes: no heaven, no hell, no incarnations, no worship, no doctrines, no churches, no external God, not even any beating of the chest. If Swamiji had thought none could follow it, he would not have preached it; yet he knew it demanded intense effort. "This is the religion of philosophy," he said toward the end of "Soul and God." "Difficult? Struggle on! Down with all superstitions! Neither teachers nor scriptures nor gods! Down with temples, with priests, with gods, with incarnations, with God Himself! I am all the God that ever existed. There, stand up, philosophers. No fear! Speak no more of God and superstitions of the world. Truth alone triumphs and this is true. I am the Infinite.'[10] He left man no quarter; he challenged him, as undoubtedly the coming centuries will themselves challenge him, to stand up alone to the full glory of his own infinitude.


The concepts Swamiji presented are startling today; in 1900 they were thunderclaps, and delivered by him, propelled by the incredible force of his personality, they could be profoundly unsettling. His words were not mere words; they were experiences, cutting new pathways in the mind. Many people, like Mrs. French, tried to resist, yet despite themselves were drawn deeper and deeper into the world of light Swamiji was opening to them. "[Their] powers of resistance," Mr. Rhodehamel observed, "were neutralised by the irresistible logic, acumen and childlike simplicity of the Great Teacher. Indeed, there were a few who arose to demur but who resumed their seats either in smiling acquiescence or in bewildered impotency.'[11] As far as is known, only one crusty soul had the courage, of sorts, to leave the hall. "On [one] occasion while he was expounding Advaita," Rhodehamel recounted, "an old man sitting in the front row, arose deliberately, and with a look which said as plainly as words, 'Let me get out of this place in a hurry,' hobbled down the aisle and out of the hall, pounding the floor with his cane at every step. The Swami apparently enjoyed the situation, for amusement overspread his features as he paused to watch him. The attention of the audience was divided between the Swami, smiling, fun loving, and the disgusted old man who had had enough of him.'[12]


But that old man, stomping and grumbling his way out, was a rarity; others sat spellbound. It is true that Swamiji had written to Mrs. Bull from southern California, "I cannot any more tell from the platform";[13]and toward the beginning of his stay in San Francisco, "Platform work is nigh gone for me.'[14] And, to be sure, the years of intensive, "cyclonic" public work were indeed gone for him, or, rather, he had withdrawn from them, their purpose served. But there is no indication that the power he could project from the platform had in any way diminished. With a single sentence he could electrify a hall. "Once before beginning his lecture," Mrs. Allan related, "he looked out at the audience for a moment and then said: 'Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached!' It was like an electric shock! Marvellous!'[15]


According to Mrs. Hansbrough, who had, of course, heard Swamiji lecture in both southern and northern California, he "showed greater power in San Francisco than in Los Angeles.'[16] Perhaps this was because his health, for a time at least, was better in northern California, his mind more free from anxiety; perhaps it was because his audiences in San Francisco were more sophisticated and more responsive than those in southern California (in Pasadena his listeners had not wanted to hear philosophy; in San Francisco they asked for it, and they asked for a class in practical instruction as well) ; perhaps it was for reasons too subtle to be so easily explained. Mrs. Hansbrough, in any event, told the facts as she saw them. "He seemed to get greater satisfaction from his work here," she said. "He thought that he got a better response here than he did in Los Angeles. And he was much more jolly in San Francisco. He could see the end of his work after he had come here.'[17]


After a spiritual feast, a worship, or religious discourse, it is, I have been told, the custom in Bengal (as it is the custom in the West after some cultural event—the opera or theater, for instance) to serve a delicious repast, "to sweeten the mouth," as the saying goes. After food for the spirit, comes food for the body. Perhaps thinking of this, perhaps also wanting to express his gratitude for those who had helped him, Swamiji would sometimes treat a few members of his audience; they, in turn, would sometimes treat him. But this was not only a matter of custom; there was practical necessity as well.


"Swamiji never ate dinner before a lecture," Mrs. Hansbrough related; "he said it slowed his thinking.'[18]Thus he was ready for supper when his lecture was over. "Usually, " Miss Ansell writes, " . . . some of the devotees would take him either to Mr. Louis Juhl's restaurant in the section of San Francisco known as Little Italy or to some uptown cafe, depending on whether his mood and the weather called for hot food or ice-cream.'[19] Mr. Louis Martin Juhl, an elderly German, whom we shall meet again later on, was a member of the California Street Home of Truth and a follower of Miss Lydia Bell. His restaurant stood at 533 Broadway (across the street from the County Jail, a notable landmark of the era), where Columbus Avenue (then Montgomery Avenue) diagonally intersects the block between Kearny Street and Grant Avenue (then Dupont Street). This location, on the south edge of North Beach (a district lying in the valley between Telegraph Hill and Russian Hill) and in the center of the Latin Quarter, was then a convivial meeting point of many nationalities--Indian, Spanish, Mexican, Basque, German, and some Chinese. When Swamiji and his friends went to Mr. Juhl's restaurant from the Red Men's Building they could take the little Powell Street cable car that rattled and changed over Nob Hill to land in the Latin Quarter not far from where they wanted to go; or, as an alternate and perhaps more sensible route, they could take a cable car at Stockton and Geary streets, and, after winding awhile through the dimly lit and silent business district, get off at Dupont and Broadway, just a few steps from the restaurant.


Since Swamiji sometimes preferred ice cream to a hot supper, one might think that the San Francisco nights were sometimes balmy in March or early April. It was not so; the evenings were never warm, and more often than not a chill, penetrating north wind would blow and the temperature would fall to the low fifties. Mr. Rhodehamel recounts that after a lecture during which Swamiji had spoken of the various types of hells in different religions (the Hindu hells far outclassing Dante's Inferno), he emerged from the overheated hall into the bitter wind and, gathering his coat tightly about him, said vehemently, "Well, if this isn't hell, I don't know what is!'[20] But Swamiji liked ice cream; thus, whatever the weather, he would sometimes choose to go to an ice cream parlor rather than to Mr. Juhl's. "One evening after a lecture," Miss Ansell relates in her memoirs (and I quote here from her first or original version), "a few of us, with Swami, stopped on the way home to have refreshments. It was very cold, but we ate ice cream. We had to wait for one of the party to attend to something, I have forgotten what, but I remember Swami's admonition, 'Don't be long, or you will find only a lump of chocolate ice cream when you return!'[21]


The Allans used to tell of an incident that took place at an ice cream parlor on Powell Street, which Mrs. Allan once described as "an old established store. " (This was the parlor, probably, that Swamiji most often went to after his evening lectures, for it would have been directly on his way home, but research has failed to turn up its name and exact location. The only "old established" ice cream parlor that stands today on Powell Street was not there until long after 1900.) Both Mrs. Allan and Ida Ansell have related the following story in their published reminiscences, but the most authentic, complete, and plausible version seems to be one found among the unpublished papers of Mr. Allan. Indeed, like the story of the ship-launching; this was his story, and I shall give it here as he told it:


"One evening after the lecture," he wrote, "Swamiji invited eight of us [not ten or twelve] to have ice cream with him, and we were a merry throng that walked with him down Powell Street. In that party there was—in addition to Swamiji—Mrs. Hansbrough, Mrs. Emily Aspinall, Mrs. Eloise Roorbach, George Roorbach, Eric F. A. Julihn, Miss Fanny Gould, Viraja [Mrs. Allan], Ajoy [Mr. Allan]. As we were walking along, Swamiji seemed to one lady [Mrs. Allan] to become very tall, while the rest of us appeared as pigmies. When we got to the parlor we all ordered "Ice Cream," but the waitress brought nine ice-cream sodas, which none of us liked, least of all Swamiji. When the error was pointed out the waitress said she would change the sodas for ice cream and was on her way to do so when the manager of the store, who had observed what had taken place, stopped her and began to speak crossly to her. Noticing this, Swamiji at once called out: 'Don't scold that poor girl! If you do I will eat all those ice-cream sodas myself!, '[22]


The story does not go on to show us Swamiji blissfully eating the ice cream he had ordered. But we know from Mrs. Allan that on one such occasion he turned to her and said, "Food for the gods, madam, food for the gods.'[23]

8

After delivering his series on "Vedanta Philosophy," Swamiji at once returned to the subject of raja yoga. Under "Church Notices" the San Francisco papers of March 25 announced:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA . . . will continue the lectures on "Mind Culture" at Washington Hall, 320 Post Street . . . : Thursday, March 29, "The Science of Breathing"; Tuesday, April 3, "Meditation"; Thursday, April 5, "The Practice of Religion, Breathing and Meditation"; tickets 50c; or the course $1.00 Ida Ansell's second transcripts of these three lectures have been published in volumes one, four, and one, respectively, of the Complete Works.*(5) (I should remind the reader that in quoting from the edited and published forms of Miss Ansell's second transcripts, I have omitted the ellipsis marks and brackets. The dots and brackets given here are my own.) As published, Swamiji's first lecture in this series on "Mind Culture" has been entitled simply "Breathing" and has been dated, in accordance with Miss Ansell's transcript, March 28, rather than March 29 as in the above announcement. The third lecture has been entitled "Practical Religion: Breathing and Meditation." More important to notice than dates and titles, however, was Swamiji's reason for giving this second series on raja yoga. He himself explained it.

*(5) If Frank Rhodehamel took notes of this series, the originals are today not available to us; if they have been published they have not been identified.

"In the last course," he said near the opening of "The Science of Breathing," "we have been studying the method of philosophy, trying to bring everything under control, once more asserting the freedom of the soul by customs of its own, conquering the body without [the body's] help." (The last part of this sentence following "freedom of the soul" has been omitted from the Complete Works.) "It is very difficult," he continued. "This way is not for everybody. The embodied mind tries it with great trouble.'[24]As pointed out in the Complete Works, these last three sentences were a free translation from the Bhagavad-Gita (I2:5). But while in this chapter, "The Way of Divine Love," the Gita recommends devotion to the Personal God as an easier path to the same goal, Swamiji recommended in this particular lecture the way of raja yoga—the impersonal, methodical means of strengthening, the mind and will, of drawing forth unlimited power from within oneself.

    

"A little physical help will make the mind comfortable, " he went on. "What would be more rational than to have the mind itself accomplish the thing? But it cannot. The physical help is necessary for most of us. The system of raja yoga is to utilize these physical helps, to make use of the powers and forces in the body to produce certain mental states, to make the mind stronger and stronger until it regains its lost empire. By sheer force of will if anyone can attain to that, so much the better. But most of us cannot, so we will use physical means, and help the will on its way.'[25]


Toward the end of this lecture Swamiji explained further the utility of the first stages of raja yoga. "Slowly and gradually you get into the chambers of the mind and gradually get control of the mind. It is a long, hard struggle. It must not be taken up as something curious. When one wants to do something, he has a plan. Raja yoga proposes no faith, no belief, no God. If you believe in two thousand gods, you can try that. Why not? But in raja yoga it is impersonal principles.'[26]


According to a brief report in the San Francisco Chronicle of March 30, "Vivekananda answered questions at the close of the lecture as he will after the next two which will be on 'Meditation' and 'Explanations in Regard to Breathing.' "


The very heart of raja yoga was, of course, meditation; and in his lecture of that title Swamiji explained why. "The world is a combination of you [that is, of one's mind] and something else.... These waves that rise in the mind have caused many things outside. We are not discussing the merits of idealism and realism. We take for granted that things exist outside, but what we see is different from things that exist outside, as we see what exists outside plus ourselves. Suppose I take my contribution out of the glass. What remains? Almost nothing. The glass will disappear. If I take my contribution from the table, what would remain of the table? Certainly not this table, because it was a mixture of the outside plus my contribution. . . . If I do not contribute my share, it has got to stop. You are creating this bondage all the time. How? By putting in your share. We are all making our own beds, forging our own chains.... Meditation means the mind is turned back upon itself The mind stops all the thought-waves and the world stops. Your consciousness expands. Every time you meditate you will keep your growth.'[27]


Swamiji kept the goal of meditation in clear view of his audience: "It is meditation that brings us nearer to truth than anything else.... This is what I mean by meditation—the soul trying to stand upon itself. That state must surely be the healthiest state of the soul, when it is thinking of itself, residing in its own glory.'[28]"Word worshippers!" he scoffed. " 'God is spirit.' God is spirit and should be worshipped in spirit and faith. Where does the spirit reside? On a tree? On a cloud? What do you mean by God being ours? You are the spirit. That is the first fundamental belief you must never give up. I am the spiritual being. It is there. All this skill of Yoga and this system of meditation and everything is just to find Him there.'[29]


"But is it practical?" was a question Swamiji was often asked in regard to Vedanta. The question had two meanings: first, was the ideal possible to attain, and second, would its attainment make for a better world. In the third lecture in the series on "Mind Culture" —Practical Religion: Breathing and Meditation" (as I shall call it)—he answered both questions.


"Can man attain to the power of mastery of the body? Yoga says it is practical. Supposing it is not—suppose there are doubts in your mind. You have got to try it. There is no other way out.'[30]That took care of the first question. As for the second, Swamiji devoted much more time to its answer.


"Why are people struggling?" he asked in "Practical Religion, " and answered, "To lessen the misery [of the world]. [But whence comes this misery?) All unhappiness is caused by our not having mastery over the body. We are all putting the cart before the horse. Take the system of work, for instance. We are trying to do good by comforting the poor. We do not get to the cause which created the misery. It is like taking a bucket to empty out the ocean, and more water comes all the time. The Yogi sees that this is nonsense.... The Yogi says, religion is practical if you know first why misery exists. All the misery in the world is in the senses.... You may do good works all the time. All the same, you will be the slave of your senses, you will be miserable and unhappy.... You call yourselves men! You stand up and build hospitals. You are fools! . . . The conquest of internal nature is the only way out, according to Yoga.... It is much easier to do anything upon the external plane, but the greatest conqueror in the world finds himself a mere child when he tries to control his own mind. This is the world he has to conquer—the greater and more difficult world to conquer.'[31]


Perhaps nothing could have more dumbfounded many of Swamiji's listeners, or have seemed more Orientally pessimistic and other-worldly to them, than his concepts of practical religion. Let us take a little time here to recall what was going on at the end of the last century and the beginning of the present one in regard to this subject.


After the Civil War ( 1861-65), a number of people, largely thinkers, writers, reformers, and clergymen of the well-to-do middle classes, had become aware, first in England, then in America, that the Industrial Revolution was not turning out to be an unmitigated blessing. "At the beginning of this marvelous era," Henry George wrote in 1877 in the introductory chapter of what was to become his famous and influential book Progress and Poverty, "it was natural to expect, and it was expected, that labor-saving inventions would lighten the toil and improve the conditions of the laborer; that the enormous increase in the power of producing wealth would make real poverty a thing of the past.... Now, however, we are coming into collision with facts which there can be no mistaking.'[32] These unmistakable facts were, among other things, the grinding, hopeless poverty and debilitating toil of millions of men, women, and children, the unspeakable urban slums, rampant vice, unchecked municipal corruption, frequent industrial depressions, and along with all this (in what many felt to be a causal relationship), the increasing splendor and power of the capitalistic rich.


Henry George was not alone in taking note of such facts. In the eighties and nineties many men—Edward Bellamy, Lester Ward, Richard Ely, Henry C. Adams, Jacob Riis, to mention only a few—wrote books and articles, gave lectures, and organized societies to protest the glaring and proliferating evils of the age and to propose various solutions that ranged from gradual reform to radical and immediate socialism. Simultaneously, the liberal churches entered the field with a solution called the Social Gospel or, as a movement, Socialized Christianity or Christian Socialism. This, too, varied widely in its degrees of radicalism; indeed, except for its frequent references to God, it was not on the whole different in its outlooks, methods, or goal from the secular movements. The general idea behind all these movements—both those within the churches and those outside them—was that man must take a hand in the natural laws of Progress by exerting political control over his social and economic environment. Few people questioned the inevitability of Progress itself; the question that agitated the late -ineteenth-century mind was how God and nature intended Progress to proceed.


Generally speaking, these various reform movements were in direct opposition to the theories of the social evolutionists. According to Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, and their popularizer, the personable, learned and highly persuasive John Fiske, the natural laws of evolution, such as competitive struggle and the survival of the fittest, through which God was unfolding His great Purpose, should not on any account be interfered with, harsh though they might sometimes seem, but be allowed to bring about the ultimate and glorious. Goal for which the Creator had set them in motion, namely, the perfect human society. "Enthusiastic social architects," William Graham Sumner wrote, only postpone all our chances of real improvement. "Society needs first of all to be freed from these meddlers—that is, to be let alone.'[33]


But the "meddlers"—the new Christian Socialists and the Social Gospelers—saw God's plan in a different light—a light which disclosed that the ethical teachings of Christianity were a necessary part of evolution. According to one of the more liberal papers read at the Parliament of Religions, Christianity was "the further evolution. It is an evolution re-enforced with all the moral and spiritual forces that have entered the world and cleaved to humanity through Jesus Christ.... Organic evolution is but the earlier chapter of Christianity.... Christianity is but the later evolution.'[34] The Reverend Francis G. Peabody, a Unitarian and a Harvard professor, spoke for Socialized Christianity when he assured the Parliament that "a completed social order was Christ's highest dream." The Kingdom of God on earth, he said, was the one thing to be desired—"that perfected world of humanity in which, as in a perfect body, each part should be sound and whole, and thus the body be complete.'[35]Properly understood, the Social Gospelers contended, Christ's teachings meant just one thing: the Kingdom of God on Earth must be brought about and could be brought about only through the moral regeneration, or the Christianization, of the political, economic, industrial, and social environment. To accomplish this wholesale regeneration was the essential, indeed the only, function and responsibility of religion. "Do you want to commence building a Heaven on earth?" Mrs. B. Fay Mills had cried in her Oakland sermon "Heaven and How to Escape from It." "You can begin at once. There is a work for you right at hand. You can find in the political, educational, social and industrial conditions that surround us a great field in which to begin.'[36]


During his first visit to the West Swamiji had had a first-hand acquaintance with the views of Socialized Christianity. Unitarian and Congregational ministers, at whose churches he sometimes spoke, were generally of Social Gospel persuasion. The Free Religious Association, to which a number of his friends belonged and before which he once spoke, was a staunch upholder of social reform. Many of the members of the Brooklyn Ethical Association, with whom he was well acquainted, were swinging toward the Social Gospel or its secular equivalent (though its former president, Swamiji's great friend Dr. Lewis G. Janes, was an ardent Spencerian). Again, the forward-looking Twentieth Century Club in Boston, where Swamiji spoke in 1896, was dedicated to Progress and Reform.


Although the Social Gospel had its beginnings largely on the East Coast among the liberals and intellectuals, its spirit soon spread throughout the country. Many preachers and reformers took up the theme of collective moral regeneration. The Reverend B. Fay Mills, for instance, switched from evangelism to liberalism, from saving individual souls to saving society. The ordinarily reserved and scholarly Reverend Charles H. Parkhurst, pastor of the staid Madison Square Presbyterian Church and a friend, or at least an acquaintance, of Swamiji's, suddenly sought to eliminate vice from New York and indeed managed, almost single-handedly, to dethrone for a time the powerful and infamous administration of Tammany Hall. On quite a different level, the young and rambunctious Vrooman Brothers, who were also acquaintances of Swamiji's, railed interminably against corrupt Baltimore politics, calling their campaign "Dynamic Religion."


Perhaps the most well-known and influential popularizer of the Social Gospel was the Reverend Charles M. Sheldon, a Congregational pastor of Topeka, Kansas, one of whose books, a novel entitled In His Steps: What Would Christ Do?, first published in 1896, is said to have sold more copies throughout the world (some twenty-two million by 1937) than any other book written in America. What would happen, Mr. Sheldon asked, if a whole congregation should follow "in His steps" for a year, each person conducting his business or profession as Christ would conduct it? The concept had tremendous appeal. In February of 1900, Mr. Sheldon conceived the idea of editing a newspaper "as Christ would edit it," and the following month he actually assumed for a week the editorship of the Topeka Capital, filling its columns with denunciations of, among other things, trusts and the liquor traffic.


Partly in consonance with this spirit of reform, a veritable flood of good works poured over the United States. "By the end of the century the voluntary gifts by both rich and poor totalled hundreds of millions of dollars annually.'[37] But by no means all of this humanitarianism stemmed from the liberal churches or was directly inspired by the Social Gospel. Much of it was the result of a sort of counter gospel, known as the Gospel of Wealth. As Andrew Carnegie had put it in his essay of that title: "Thus is the problem of rich and poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free, the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee of the poor.... Such, in my opinion, is the true gospel concerning wealth.'[38]To a great many Americans this true gospel concerning wealth seemed an excellent means of tempering the stern laws of evolution without recklessly tampering with them. And who, after all, could be better trustees of the poor than the rich? Americans had been brought up to believe firmly that it was the wise, virtuous, upright man who became the rich man. "In the long run, it is only to the man of morality that wealth comes " Bishop William Lawrence of Massachusetts could solemnly proclaim from the pulpit. "Godliness is in league with riches.'[39]And the extremely popular Reverend Henry Ward Beecher had earlier declared to his wealthy congregation in Brooklyn, "Generally the proposition is true that where you find the most religion there you find the most worldly prosperity.'[40]


One might say that there was a sort of undeclared, and to the majority of churchgoers unsuspected, war of good work going on in America at the end of the century. One side was good-working to maintain the status quo; the other, very much outnumbered, side was good-working to change it Both efforts (which overlapped here and there and reflected many shades of opinion, for nothing was clear-cut in that confused age) were dedicated to material Progress, or, as i was more generally spoken of, the realization of the Kingdom of God on Earth. Both were politically oriented and both were called practical religion. Indeed, by 1900 organized humanitarianism, in all its uses and motivations, constituted the very core of religion itself.


"What is the practical religion you are thinking of?" Swamiji cried. "Lord help us! 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' That means street-cleaning, hospital building, and all that? Good works, when you do them with a pure mind.... Serve as worship of the Lord Himself in the poor, the miserable, the weak. That done, the result is secondary. That sort of work, done without any thought of gain, benefits the soul. And even of such is the kingdom of heaven.'[41]


In that age of heady optimism when Americans stood, so they thought, on the threshold of the Millennium, Swamiji thundered, "Renounce! Renounce! Sacrifice! Give up! Not for zero. Not for nothing. But to get the higher.... This is practical religion. What else? Cleaning streets and building hospitals? Their value consists only in this renunciation. And there is no end to renunciation.... Where God is, there is no other. Where the world is, there is no God. These two will never unite.... This is what I have understood from Christianity and the life of the Teacher. Is not that Buddhism? Is not that Hinduism? Is not that Mohammedanism? Is not that the teaching of all the great sages and teachers?'[42]


From one point of view, one might say that the heart of Swamiji's message lay in his definition of practical religion, indeed of religion itself, and nowhere was that definition more clearly, more sharply enunciated than in "The Practice of Religion," which he delivered in Alameda on April 18 and from which the above quotations come. Although this lecture takes us some three weeks beyond our story, it was, in a sense, a continuation of his San Francisco lecture "Practical Religion: Breathing and Meditation," and is thus not out of place here. It was his answer, not to bigotry, not to narrowness, but to something equally ruinous to spirituality: the secularization of religion in the name of religion itself, which was rapidly stifling what little mysticism (to use that word in its true sense) Christianity then possessed. 


"We hear all around us about practical religion," Swamiji said in Alameda, "and analyzing all that, we find that it can be brought down to one conception—charity to our fellow beings. Is that all of religion? Every day we hear in this country about practical Christianity—that a man has done some good to his fellow beings. Is that all? What is the goal of life? Is this world the goal of life? Nothing more? Are we to be just what we are, nothing more? The highest dream of many religions is the world. The vast majority of people are dreaming of the time when there will be no more disease, sickness, poverty, or misery of any kind. They will have a good time all around. Practical religion, therefore, simply means: 'Clean the street! Make it nice!' We see how all enjoy it. Is enjoyment the goal of life?... What a mistake then to become a man! Vain have been my years—hundreds of years--of struggle only to become the man of sense enjoyments.


"Mark therefore," he continued, "the ordinary theory of practical religion, what it leads to. Charity is great, but the moment you say it is all, you run the risk of running into materialism. It is not religion. It is not better than atheism—a little less. You Christians, have you found nothing else in the Bible than working for fellow creatures, building hospitals? Here stands a shopkeeper and says how Jesus would have kept the shop! Jesus would neither have kept a saloon, nor a shop, nor have edited a newspaper. That sort of practical religion is good, not bad, but it is just kindergarten religion. It leads nowhere.'[43]


Nor was that sort of practical religion practical even for its own ends. "Look at the sum total of good and evil in this world," Swamiji pointed out. "Has it changed? Ages have passed, and practical religion has worked for ages. The world thought that each time the problem would be solved. It is always the same problem. At best it changes its form.... It is like old rheumatism: Drive it from one place, it goes to another.... This universe, nature, or whatever you call it, must be limited; it can never be unlimited. The Absolute, to become nature, must be limited by time, space, and causation. The energy at our disposal is limited. You can spend it in one place, losing it in another. The sum total is always the same. Wherever there is a wave in one place, there is a hollow in another. If one nation becomes rich, others become poor. Good balances evil.... Some weep and others laugh. The latter will weep in their turn and the others laugh. What can we do? We know we cannot do anything. Which of us do anything because we want to do good? How few! They can be counted on the fingers. The rest of us also do good, but because we are forced to do so. We cannot stop. Onward we go, knocked about from place to place. What can we do? The world will be the same world, the earth the same.'[44]


In those days when Progress was an almost sacred concept, as though it were some sort of divine attribute—the way in which God behaved—Swamiji's logical denial that good will steadily increase, evil as steadily decrease, must have seemed almost blasphemous. Even those closest to him were disturbed by his apparent pessimism. Did he not know, as one who walked with God should know, that all things were working together for good? " 'God's in His heaven, all's right with the world,' " Mary Hale had reminded him during his first visit to America and had reinforced this thought with another: " 'Through the ages one increasing purpose runs, and the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.' I cannot see that, holding that to be true," she had continued, "our efforts to ameliorate conditions would be paralyzed—I think they would be strengthened.'[45] In 1900 Tennyson's lines were no doubt still on the lips of many of Swamiji's friends. "Through the ages one purpose runs sure," he mocked in a letter to Mary Hale, written possibly in January*(6)"And that will be finished with the destruction of this earth and the sun! And worlds are always in progress indeed! And nobody as yet developed enough in any one of the infinite worlds to communicate with us! Bosh! They are born, show the same phenomena and die the same death! Increasing purpose! Babies! Live in the land of dreams, you babies!'[46]

*(6) This letter, written from Los Angeles, could not be dated June 17, 1900, as in the Complete Works, 8:524. January 17, 1900, seems a more likely date.

Should we not try to do good then? "Certainly," Swamiji would often reply. "Do good for good's sake!" In India he perhaps spoke more strongly on this point than elsewhere, for in India the futility of material progress as an end in itself was all too well understood. "What good will come of any kind of work in this evanescent world?" Swamiji's disciple Chakravarty had typically asked him. "My boy," Swamiji had answered, "when death is inevitable, is it not better to die like heroes than as stocks and stones? And what is the use of living a day or two more in this transitory world? It is better to wear out than to rust out—specially for the sake of doing the least good to others.'[47]Further—to the same disciple, who on another occasion had asked the same question: "[To do good to others] is necessary for one's own good. We become forgetful of the ego when we think of the body as dedicated to the service of others.... Thus it is that doing good to others constitutes a way, a means of revealing one's own Self or Atman.'[48]


Actually, there was no cry of the human heart that Swamiji did not hear and long to comfort; there was nothing about man he ignored, no aspect of his welfare that did not claim his concern. "You know," he once said to Mrs. Hansbrough in San Francisco, "I may have to be born again." The reason he gave was not that he would have to come back with Sri Ramakrishna, as he had said at other times; rather, the will to return would be his own as well as his Master's and of a piece with his own vastness of heart. "I may have to be born again," he said, "because I have fallen in love with man.'[49]But he knew, knew with a knowledge as profound as his compassion, that there was only one remedy for the anguish of man: until men become spiritual, until their acts and thoughts are impregnated with the spiritual ideal, and until this ideal is made real through spiritual experience there can be no heaven on earth in any sense of the term. Indeed, to Swamiji's mind the very last way to ameliorate conditions in the West was to socialize, secularize Christianity. Thus, where "doing good" was piously undertaken for material ends and where both these means and these ends were fast becoming the whole of religion, he pointed out again and again the basic fallacy, if not the hypocrisy, behind this particular "gospel."


What, then, was practical religion? "Practical religion," Swamiji replied, "is identifying myself with my Self. Stop this wrong identification [with matter]! How far are you advanced in that? You may have built two thousand hospitals, built fifty thousand roads, and yet what of that, if you have not realised that you are the spirit? . . . You must see God. The spirit must be realised, and that is practical religion. It is not what Christ preached that you call practical religion. . . . The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. He is there. He is the soul of all souls. See Him in your own soul. That is practical religion. That is freedom.... That is real worship. Realise yourself. That is all there is to do. Know yourself as you are—infinite spirit. That is practical religion. Everything else is impractical, for everything else will vanish. That alone will never vanish. It is eternal. Hospitals will tumble down. Railroad givers [builders?] will all die. This earth will be blown to pieces, suns wiped out. The soul endureth for ever.... Therefore to realise the spirit as spirit is practical religion. Everything else is good so far as it leads to this one grand idea. That realisation is to be attained by renunciation, by meditation—renunciation of all the senses, cutting the knots, the chains that bind us down to matter. 'I do not want to get material life, do not want the sense-life, but something higher.' That is renunciation. Then, by the power of meditation, undo the mischief that has been done.'[50]


Americans were quick to reply to Swamiji: Well, now, if this kind of practical religion leads to conditions as they are in India—the all-around degradation, the famines, the plagues (there were, in fact, severe plague and famine in India in February and March of 1900), the hopeless poverty, the inequalities and injustices of the caste system, the misery of child widows . . . (the list was long), then how can this kind of practical religion be practical? The question, with its implications of Western superiority, always annoyed Swamiji. He could have replied, and sometimes did, that the condition of India was due in part to British colonialism (as readers of Henry George would have known), in part to the complex and inevitable rises and falls of the historical process, in part to the fact that the pure Vedanta of the Upanishads had never been given to the Hindu masses. But more beneficial for Americans to hear from Swamiji's lips was a rebuke of their own bottomless conceit. In the lecture "Meditation" one finds a paragraph in which he strongly chided the people of the West for their assumption of superiority in all matters under the sun. In the published version the quotation marks within this paragraph would seem to be wrongly placed, thus robbing Swamiji's reproach of its sting:


"I am asked," he said, " 'Why do you Indian people not conquer these things [through yoga] ?'[51] Here the quotation marks should, one thinks, be closed. The remainder of this paragraph does not appear to be a continuation of the query, but Swamiji's scathing reply to it, not all of which, one suspects, Miss Ansell took down, or took down correctly. Her first, unedited, transcript reads at this point: "You all the time claim to be the superior people of everybody else. You practise it and do it quicker than anybody else. Indian people are not fit themselves for such great work! You are fitter. Carry it out. If you are the great people, you ought to have the great system. You will have to [dispense with] the gods. Let them go to sleep. You take up the great philosophy. You are mere babies, as superstitious as the rest of the world, and all your claims are failures. If you have the claims, stand up and be bold, and all the heaven that ever existed is yours. The musk deer has the fragrance inside and he does not know where the fragrance is. Then after days and days he finds it in him. All these gods [and] demons [are] within [you]. You must find out, by the powers of reason, education and culture, that it is all in your self. No more gods and superstitions. You want to be rational, to be Yogis, really spiritual. Everything [in the West] is material. What more material than God sitting on a throne? Yet you look down upon the poor man who is worshipping the image. You are not better. And you gold worshippers, what are you? The image worshipper worships his God, something he can see. But you do not even do that. You [neither] worship the spirit nor something that you can understand.'[52]


Thus (though more clearly, it is certain,) did Swamiji press home his point. Yet, needless to say, everything in the West (over eighty years later) is still material. In spite of all its disillusionment with progress (no longer spelled with a capital P), in spite of all its gropings for a religion profound enough, universal enough, and "man-making" enough to meet the unprecedented demands of the present age—a religion that would spring from and, in turn, serve to draw forth the enormous, indeed infinite, power and goodness of man—the Western world has yet to assimilate Swamiji's message. But, as we have said before, he spoke not for a day but for an age, an age that was then only in its infancy. "You may not like what I am saying," he told a San Francisco audience when speaking of the monistic concept of God and man. "You may curse me today, but tomorrow you will bless me.'[53]

9

To return to Swamiji's lectures at Washington Hall, we now come to one entitled "Discipleship," which, unlike most of his West Coast lectures, does not belong to a series. According to Ida Ansell's transcript, Swamiji gave it on March 29; but around this time Miss Ansell seems to have been a day behind. She gave the date March 28 to "The Science of Breathing," though Swamiji almost certainly delivered it on March 29. It would be in keeping, then, for her to give the date March 29 to a lecture delivered on March 30. But whenever Swamiji gave "Discipleship," one does not find a lecture similar to it in the Complete Works. It was in a class by itself, as were several others that he gave in California, such as "My Life and Mission" and "Women of India," both of which had been given in Pasadena on requests from the audience. In "Discipleship" Swamiji dealt with the four basic conditions of discipleship. In the order that Swamiji spoke of them, these were: renunciation, control of the senses and the mind, faith in the guru and an intense desire for freedom, and discrimination between the Real and the unreal*(7) "These are the four conditions which one who wants to be a disciple must fulfill," he concluded; "without fulfilling them he will not be able to come in contact with the true guru. And even if he is fortunate enough to find him, he will not be quickened by the power that the guru may transmit. There cannot be any compromising of these conditions. With the fulfillment of these conditions—with all these preparations—the lotus of the disciple's heart will open and the bee shall come. Then the disciple knows that the guru was within the body, within himself. He opens out. He realizes. He crosses the ocean of life, goes beyond. He crosses this terrible ocean, and in mercy, without a thought of gain or praise, he in his turn helps others to cross.'[54]

*(7) Shankaracharya lists the four indispensable qualifications for the attainment of liberation as follows: “The first is discrimination between what is eternal and what is not eternal. The second constituent is the lack of attachment for such of the objects of enjoyment as may be gained either here or hereafter. The six noble qualities, such as calmness of mind and the like [tranquility, control of senses, fortitude, renunciation, faith, concentration], when taken together, form the third constituent. According to the Sastras, the fourth and final constituent is the desire for liberation” (The quintessence of Vedanta, 14, 15 trans. Swami Tattwananda).

On April 8 Swamiji delivered the fifth and last lecture in his Sunday series on the Great Teachers of the World. On the previous Sunday afternoons, as the reader will remember, he bad spoken on the messages of Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, and Sri Krishna. One might have expected him to close this series with a talk on the great Teacher of the present age, his Master, Sri Ramakrishna, but, significantly, he chose instead the title "Is Vedanta Philosophy the Future Religion?" Throughout his mission Swamiji had preached his Master's message; seldom had he spoken publicly on his Master himself. Perhaps the primary reason for his reticence in this regard lay in his insistence upon placing principle above person, an insistence never so pronounced as during his second visit to the West, when even during his lectures on the Great Teachers he had urged man to "be not an imitation of Jesus, but be Jesus!" His great care always was not to start a cult. "I have never preached personalities, " he had said in 1898 during an interview in Calcutta. "My own life is guided by the enthusiasm of this great soul [Sri Ramakrishna] ; but others will decide for themselves how far they share in this attitude. Inspiration is not filtered out to the world through one channel, however great.  Each generation should be inspired afresh. Are we not all God?'[55]


On the other hand, there seems to have been little doubt in Swamiji's mind that Sri Ramakrishna would become universally known and worshipped, that the unprecedented greatness of that life would become a source of spiritual inspiration to the entire world for an untold number of generations. Indeed, the inevitability of the universal worship of Sri Ramakrishna was perhaps all the more reason that he dwelt almost exclusively on the essential principles of his Master's teachings, impressing upon the world-mind the eternal truths which had been exemplified to the full in his person. Before Sri Ramakrishna could be imprisoned within a cult, before he could be stereotyped and limited by one interpretation or another, or divided up into a number of divergent interpretations, Swamiji presented the universality of his life and teachings, equating them with the impersonal and timeless teachings of Vedanta.


"Is Vedanta the Future Religion?" (as it is entitled in the Complete Works) was fully in keeping with the dominant trend of Swamiji's teaching during this second visit to America when his emphasis on "man-making" was so strong, so pronounced. By Vedanta he here meant Advaita, or monistic, Vedanta, the religion that left behind scriptural authority, left behind dependence upon a Savior, left behind even the Personal God—the religion, in short, that outdistanced most of the things that the majority of people looked upon as the very foundation of religion itself. "These are what Vedanta has not to give," he said. "No book, no man to be singled out from the rest of mankind. . . , no Personal God. All these must go. Again, the senses must go.... What is the God of Vedanta? He is principle, not person. You and I are all Personal Gods. The absolute God of the universe, the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe, is impersonal principle. You and I, the cat, rat, devil, and ghost, all these are Its persons-—all are Personal Gods. You want to worship Personal Gods. It is the worship of your own self. If you take my advice, you will never enter any church. Come out and go and wash off. Wash your self again and again until you are cleansed of all the superstitions that have clung to you through the ages.'[56]


It was indeed a "man-making religion" that Swamiji preached in San Francisco, a religion to build heroes. "We want a Personal God, a saviour or a prophet to do everything for us," he said.... "All this running after help is foolishness.... Never does any help come from the outside. There is no help for man. None ever was, none is, and none will be. Why should there be? Are you not men and women? Are the lords of the earth to be helped by others? Are you not ashamed? You will be helped when you are reduced to dust. But you are spirit. Pull yourself out of difficulties by yourself! Save yourself by yourself! There is none to help you—never was. To think that there is, is sweet delusion. It comes to no good.'[57]


But could the world accept a religion such as this? Could man accept here and now the truth of his own spiritual sovereignty, or would he have to inch and wind toward that high summit along the old paths of lesser truths—and would he reach it even then? "Sometimes I agree," Swamiji said, "that there is some good in the dualistic method: it helps many who are weak.... All the various practices and trainings, Bibles and Gods, are but the rudiments of religion, the kindergartens of religion. But then," he went on, "I think of the other side. How long will the world have to wait to reach the truth if it follows this slow, gradual process? How long? And where is the surety that it will ever succeed to any appreciable degree? It has not so far. After all, gradual or not gradual, easy or not easy to the weak, is not the dualistic method based on falsehood? Are not all the prevalent religious practices often weakening and therefore wrong? They are based on a wrong idea, a wrong view of man. Would two wrongs make one right? Would the lie become truth? Would darkness become light?'[58]


Studying Swamiji's California lectures and classes as a whole, bearing in mind that he himself felt he had a new message to give, one cannot but conclude that this lecture was a deeply considered one. "Today I am preaching the thing I like," he said. But he was also preaching as a World Teacher who knew the time had come to give the highest truth to all. He asked whoever could to leap ahead in one courageous bound rather than to crawl along snail-paced and with dubious success from "lower truth to higher truth," Was it not to bring about this swift upward surge of the human soul that Sri Ramakrishna had come to earth? "I am the servant of a man who has passed away," Swamiji said. "I am only the messenger. I want to make the experiment. The teachings of Vedanta I have told you about were never really experimented with before: Although Vedanta is the oldest philosophy in the world, it has always become mixed up with superstitions and everything else.'[59]


Yet the question remained: Is Vedanta the future religion? Swamiji was regretfully aware that not everyone could, or would, accept it. "There is a chance," he said, "of Vedanta becoming the religion of your country because of democracy. But it can become so only if you can and do clearly understand it, if you become real men and women, not people with vague ideas and superstitions in your brains, and if you want to be truly spiritual, since Vedanta is concerned only with spirituality.'[60]But that was a big "if." "If Vedanta—this conscious knowledge that all is one spirit—spreads, the whole of humanity will become spiritual," he said later on in this same lecture. "But is it possible?" Realistic always, he answered: "I do not know. Not within thousands of years. The old superstitions must run out.... Religion has been religion to very few.... For thousands of years millions and millions all over the world have been taught to worship the Lord of the world, the Incarnations, the saviours, the prophets. They have been taught to consider themselves helpless, miserable creatures and to depend upon the mercy of some person or persons for salvation. There are no doubt many marvellous things in such beliefs. But even at their best, they are but kindergartens of religion, and they have helped but little. Men are still hypnotised into abject degradation. However," he concluded, "there are some strong souls who get over that illusion. The hour comes when great men shall arise and cast off these kindergartens of religion and shall make vivid and powerful the true religion, the worship of the spirit by the spirit.'[61]


It was for these great men who would leaven the whole that Swamiji taught. His conviction seems always to have been that a few such "lion-souls" in each country would be enough to shake the world. Further, he seemed more and more convinced that a much larger number of men and women than is ordinarily believed could rise to his call and to the greatness of their own divine nature. If Vedanta could not be at once practised by all, it surely could be practised by many, and it surely could serve as the ideal for millions more. Why else, if Swamiji was not certain of this, did he preach the divinity of man during these last years of his life so steadily, with such bold strokes and in such clear, undiluted colors? "How many of you take me seriously?" he asked in "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?" "But the truth is all here, and I must tell you the truth,'[62]

10

"Is Vedanta the Future Religion?" would have been Swamiji's last lecture in San Francisco. A day or two later he moved from the Turk Street flat to the town of Alameda in the East Bay, and if nothing untoward had in the meanwhile taken place, it is probable that his public work in San Francisco would have thus come to a close. After the first week in March things had gone well. "I am getting all the work I can do and more, " he had written to Mrs. Bull on April 1. "I will make my passage, anyhow. Though they cannot pay me much, yet they pay some, and by constant work I will make enough to pay my way and have a few hundred in the pocket anyhow.'[63]

Swamiji would have learned of his financial standing through consultation with Mrs. Hansbrough. Although he himself tried for a time to keep track of his earnings and expenses in San Francisco (there is a little notebook preserved at Belur Math which bears brief testimony to this effort), he rarely remembered to write down the figures. Mrs. Hansbrough was the acting accountant, which is not to say a great deal, for, as I have learned from her daughter, keeping accounts was not among her skills; yet her method was direct. As mentioned earlier, she used to change the admission or collection money into twenty-dollar gold pieces, which in those days circulated freely. These—each the size of a silver dollar—she stowed in a teapot. Later, when the teapot was half full, she appropriated other small pots around the flat, until at length she had "several pots half full of twenty-dollar gold pieces." From time to time, Swamiji would ask her to figure out how much he had earned to date. "So I would get my notebook and pencil," she related, "and would bring the pots and dump the coins out on the table. After counting the money Swamiji would find that there was not enough, so he would decide to open another series of lectures.'[64]


But after Swamiji had completed his San Francisco lecture series on raja yoga in the first week of April (he had given the last lecture of this series—“Practical Religion: Breathing and Meditation"--on April 5) he seems to have been satisfied with the number of gold coins he had earned. "My work here is done," he wrote to Sister Nivedita on April 6. "I will come in fifteen days to Chicago if Mary [Hale] is there.'[65]


As it happened, however, Swamiji's work in San Francisco was not yet done. The very next day (April 7) he wrote to Mrs. Bull, "You see, I will have to stay here more than I want and work." The explanation of his overnight change of plan is contained in an unpublished passage that preceded this sentence. "Today's letter from the Math," he had written, "tells me that the Raja of Khetri has stopped the stipend —well, Mother's will. The Raja has been very good for years. All blessings on him and his. I am calm and quiet more than ever," he continued. "I am on my own feet working-hard and with pleasure. To work I have the right—mother knows the rest. So you see I will have to stay here....'[66]


That the Raja of Khetri had "stopped the stipend" was not a matter of small importance, and since it has bearing on our present story, something of the relationship between Swamiji and his good friend and disciple Maharaja Ajit Singh of Khetri can be told here. In his book Swami Vivekananda—A Forgotten Chapter of His Life, Mr. Beni Shanker Sharma has pointed out the important role the Maharaja played in Swamiji's life, concluding that it was he who had paid his passage to America in 1893 (certainly he had borne a substantial share of the cost) ; it was he, also, who had helped in the support of his mother and two younger brothers, sending them one hundred rupees a month (then about $32.50) and thus lifting a great burden from Swamiji's mind. The Maharaja had also contributed to Swamiji's own living expenses, forwarding him money from time to time (more than half of which Swamiji would, in turn, regularly give to the Belur Math). Further, it was the Maharaja to whom Swamiji felt free to turn when matters connected with his personal finances became desperate.


Writing to Mrs. Bull in July or August of 1895, he had spoken of his esteem for and gratitude to the Maharaja:


In India Raja Ajit Singh of Khetri & in America Mrs. Ole Bull—these are the two persons upon whom I can depend at any time. Of all the friends I have in the world you two show such wonderful steadiness of purpose and both are so calm and silent. . . . The raja is taking very good care of my family. I have no fear on that account even if I die it will go on all the same. So you need not trouble yourself about them anymore.[67]


Along with other previously unpublished material, Mr. Sharma has included in his book two letters written by Swamiji toward the end of 1898, asking Maharaja Ajit Singh for help for both his family and himself. In the first of these letters, dated November 22, 1898, he wrote in part:


. . . I appeal to your Highness's word, generosity and friendship. I have one great sin rankling always in my breast and that is to do a service to the world I have sadly neglected my mother. Again since my second brother [Mahendranath] has gone away she has become awfully worn out with grief. Now my last desire is to make [seva] and serve my mother for some years at least. I want to live with my mother and get my younger brother married to prevent extinction of the family. This will certainly smoothen my last days as well as that of my mother. She lives now in a hovel. I want to build a little decent home for her and make some provision for the youngest as there is very little hope of his being a good earning man. Is it too much for a royal descendent of Ramchandra to do for one he loves and calls his friend? I do not know whom-else to appeal to. The money I got from Europe was for the 'work' and every penny almost has been given over to that work. Nor can I go beg of others for help for my own self. About my own family affairs I have exposed myself to your Highness and none else shall know of it. I am tired heart-sick and dying—do, I pray, this last great work of kindness to me.[68]


The Maharaja evidently agreed to help Swamiji in whatever way he could, and in his second letter, dated December 1, 1898, Swamiji went into greater detail:


The lowest possible estimate of building a little home in Calcutta is at least ten thousand rupees. With that it is barely possible to buy or build a house in some out-of-the-way quarter of the town a little house fit for 4 or 5 persons to live in.

As for the expenses of living, the 100 Rs. a month your generosity is supplying my mother is enough for her. If another 100 Rs. a month be added to it for my life-time for my expenses which unfortunately this illness has increased, and which I hope will not be for long a source of trouble to you, as I expect only to live a few years at best; I will be perfectly happy. One thing more will I beg of you—if possible the 100 Rs. a month for my mother be made permanent. So that even after my death it may regularly reach her, or even if your Highness ever gets reasons to stop your love and kindness for me, my poor old mother may be provided, remembering the love you once had for a poor Sadhu.[69]


On receipt of this letter the Maharaja at once sent Swamiji five hundred rupees (about $160), but whether or not he was able to give ten thousand rupees toward the purchase of a small house is not clear. All we know at present is that it was necessary for Swamiji to borrow five thousand rupees from the Belur Math in order to buy a house from his aunt and that later, when this house was not conveyed to him, he thought of building a cottage for his mother on the Ganges. This later plan, which one reads of in one or two of his letters written in March of 1900, was short-lived; in May, he wrote to Mrs. Bull in an unpublished letter, which I shall give in full later on, "I have long given up the idea of a little house on the Ganges—as I have not the money.... Kindly write to Saradananda from yourself to give up the little house plan.'[70] Thus, all in all, it would appear that the Maharaja of Khetri had not been able to help in regard to a house for Swamiji's mother. Very possibly, however, he began to send Swamiji a monthly stipend in 1899, and possibly he assured him that the monthly allowance to his mother would be permanent. If he gave his word to that effect, he would by all means have meant to keep it. "A Rajput would rather die than break his promise," Swamiji once wrote;[71] and Maharaja Ajit Singh was a Rajput. Unfortunately, however, in January of 1901 he died from a fall, and his only heir, a son born in 1893, died at the age of eleven in 1904. After that, the kingdom of Khetri passed into the hands of another family, whose members had no particular interest in Swamiji or his mother.[72]Thus it does not seem likely that the sum of Rs. 100 was paid to the latter from the treasury of the Khetri estate until her death in 1911. But neither is it likely that the allowance was cancelled during the lifetime of Ajit Singh.


Presumably, then, the stipend that he abruptly stopped in April (or March) of 1900 was not the monthly allowance to Swamiji's mother but the money he had been sending to Swamiji through the Belur Math for his personal expenses only a small part of which, as we have seen, Swamiji kept for himself. Why the Maharaja stopped sending this money is not known at the present time; perhaps he felt that Swamiji had many rich American friends who could look after him in their own country. But whatever the cause may have been, the result was that Swamiji had to give an extra series of evening lectures in San Francisco, coming from Alameda once or twice to do so. Yet he did not seem sorry to work longer and harder than he had intended. "Don't disturb yourself a bit," he wrote in his letter of April 7 to Mrs. Bull. "I will work all my problems out. I am on my own feet. I begin to see the light. My success would have led me astray, and I would have lost the reality that I am a Sannyasin—that is why Mother is giving me this experience.'[73] And he of course had nothing but blessings for his old friend and disciple, the Maharaja.


Although Swamiji again and again insisted that man break away from abject dependence upon a Personal God or upon a Savior and stand up free and fearless, he by no means repudiated the path of devotion. As though to underscore this fact, he chose the subject of Divine Love for his additional series at Washington Hall. According to the last-minute newspaper announcements of April 8, the lectures were entitled "Worshiped and Worshiper," "Formal Worship," and "Devotion and Love." They were given on the evenings of, respectively, Monday, April 9; Tuesday, April 10; and Thursday, April 12. All three were taken down by Ida Ansell, and her second transcripts of them have been published in volume six of the Complete Works—"Worshiped and Worshiper" under the title (with variant spelling) "Worshipper and Worshipped," and "Devotion and Love" under that of "Divine Love."


Swamiji's definition of the Personal God—a definition he had often given in effect during his first visit to the West—reconciled in a few words the philosophy of monism and the path of devotion. "You, as I see you," he explained in "Worshipper and Worshipped," "are as much of your absolute nature as has been limited and perceived by me. I have limited you in order to see you through the power of my eyes, my senses. As much of you as my eyes can see, I see. As much of you as my mind can grasp is what I know to be you, and nothing more. In the same way, I am reading the Absolute, the Impersonal, and see Him as Personal. As long as we have body and mind, we always see this triune being: God, nature and soul. There must always be the three in one, inseparable.... The universal soul has become embodied. My soul itself is a part of God. He is the eye of our eyes, the life of our life, the mind of our mind, the soul of our soul. This is the highest ideal of the Personal God we can have. If you are not a dualist, but a monist, you can still have the Personal God. There is the One without a second. That One wanted to love Himself. Therefore out of that One, He made many. It is the big Me, the real Me, that the little me is worshipping. Thus in all systems you can have the Personal God.'[74]


And thus Swamiji was by no means contradicting himself when on Sunday afternoon he cried, "What is the God of Vedanta? He is principle, not person. You and I are all Personal Gods!'[75] and on the following evening extolled the worship of the Personal God as a means to the spiritual goal. But this God was not the remote, magisterial monarch as conceived by most, if not all, dualistic religions. "He is the Infinite, the Ever-Pure, the Ever-Free. He is no judge. God cannot be a judge. He does not sit upon a throne and judge between the good and the wicked. He is no magistrate, no general, nor master. Infinitely merciful, infinitely loving is the Personal God." Again, the Personal God was a God for the strong, a God comprehensible, in fact, only from the standpoint of the spirit. He was the God of all that is apparently evil as well as all that is apparently good. "Face the terrible, " Swamiji cried in "Worshipper and Worshipped." "Tear aside the mask and find the same God.... There is none else.... He is the good; He is the evil; He is the beautiful; He is the terrible; He is life; and He is death.'[76]


There was a call here for as much manliness as in Swamiji's lectures on jnana yoga or raja yoga, for as much same-sightedness, as much selflessness, and as much freedom from the senses. Further, the way of love was as much a requirement of the present age as the way of reason. "A bird cannot fly with only one wing," he said at the outset of "Worshipper and Worshipped." "What we want is to see the man who is harmoniously developed—great in heart, great in mind, great in deed. We want the man whose heart feels intensely the miseries and sorrows of the world. And we want the man who not only can feel but can find the meaning of things, who delves deeply into the heart of nature and understanding. We want the man who will not even stop there, but who wants to work out the feeling and meaning by actual deeds. Such a combination of head, heart, and hand is what we want. There are many teachers in this world, but you will find that most of them are one-sided.... Why not have the giant who is equally active, equally knowing, and equally loving? Is it impossible? Certainly not. This is the man of the future, of whom there are only a few at present. The number of such will increase until the whole world is humanized.'[77]


In "Formal Worship," Swamiji explained the value of (but did not necessarily recommend) the various stages of worship, the "kindergartens of religion," through which man passes. "Working through the plane of the senses [through worship of forms and symbols], you get more and more entry into the other regions, and then this world falls away from you. You get one glimpse of that spirit, and then your senses and your sense enjoyments, your clinging to the flesh, will all melt away from you. Glimpse after glimpse will come from the realm of spirit. You will have finished yoga, and spirit will stand revealed as spirit. Then you will begin the worship of God as spirit. Then you will begin to understand that worship is not to gain something. At heart, our worship was that infinite-finite element, love, which is an eternal sacrifice at the feet of the Lord by the soul. 'Thou and not I. I am dead. Thou art, and I am not. I do not want wealth, nor beauty, no, nor even learning. I do not want salvation. If it be Thy will, let me go into twenty million hells. I only want one thing: Be Thou my love!'[78]


"To be completely turned into love of God," Swamiji said in "Divine Love," "—there is the real worship! You have a glimpse of that now and then in the Roman Catholic Church some of those wonderful monks and nuns going mad with marvellous love. Such love you ought to have! Such should be the love of God—without asking anything, without seeking anything.... At last, love, lover, and beloved become one. That is the goal.... All these ideas [such as] 'He is the creator,' are ideas fit for children. He is my love, my life itself—that must be the cry of my heart!'[79]


This combination of intense, boundless love for the Personal God who is everywhere, who is everyone and everything, with the recognition that in the final analysis—indeed the final realization—there is neither I nor Thou, but only Brahman, the One without a second, was perhaps one of Swamiji's most important contributions to religious thought. The practice of monism became in his teachings not the practice of world negation, but "the vivid and powerful worship," within the world, of the spirit by the spirit—the fearless, selfless worship of the Big Me by the little me. Devotion, at the same time, became the spontaneous expression of the underlying unity of God, soul, and nature; the monistic Reality was its very essence. "Love," Swamiji had said in an Oakland lecture ("The Reality and the Shadow"), "is simply an expression of this infinite unity. Upon what dualistic system can you explain love?'[80]


It was no doubt around the time that Swamiji was giving his series of lectures on divine love at the Red Men's Building that he told Mrs. Allan that he disliked platform work. For one thing, the lectures were titled in advance. "It is killing," he said. "At eight o'clock I am to speak on love. At eight o'clock I do not feel like love.'[81]But if Swamiji had not felt like love before giving any of the three lectures of this series, once he started, his words poured out as from the heart of love itself. It was, of course, always so. Whatever subject Swamiji found himself committed to speak on, his lecture was, literally, an act of worship, an act of divine love. "Just now I am worshipping you," he told his audience during the course of "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?" "This is the greatest prayer. Worship the whole world in this sense—by serving it. This standing on a high platform, I know, does not appear like worship. But if it is service, it is worship.'[82]This—the service of man as the actual worship of God himself—was the powerful religion Swamiji taught from so many different approaches and points of view, and it was the religion he made real by exemplifying it with his every breath.


In addition to giving lectures in downtown San Francisco, Swamiji spoke at least once during his stay in the city at the Pine Street Home of Truth and once at the California Street Home of Truth. Unfortunately, we have very little certain information regarding either of these talks, except that the second took place before April 8 and was preceded by a dinner at which Ida Ansell (and surely also Miss Bell, Mrs. Hansbrough, and Mrs. Aspinall) was present. In her early unpublished memoirs Miss Ansell recalled this occasion in a passage which I shall quote in full:


One night, Swamiji was to give a lecture in the Home of Truth and first he had dinner with us. Mrs. [C. W.] Steele [a resident member of the California Street Home] who prepared the dinner, had for dessert some very fine dates, which Swamiji much enjoyed. That night he delivered one of his most forceful lectures. He "threw many bombs" as he expressed it, and told us plainly and frankly just what he thought of us. It was startling, thought-provoking and uplifting. Later, when Mrs. Steele expressed appreciation of the lecture, he replied, "It was your dates, Madam." It was at this dinner also that he surprised us with the remark mentioned in "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?' —"I will say grace to you, Madam; you have done all the work.'[83]


("When I work, I say grace to myself, " Swamiji had continued in that lecture. "Praise be unto me that I worked hard and acquired what I have! All the time you work hard and bless somebody else because you are superstitious, you are afraid. No more of these superstitions bred through thousands of years! It takes a little work to be spiritual.")[84]


In her later memoirs, as published in the Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, Miss Ansell wrote that in his lecture at the California Street Home of Truth Swamiji rebuked American doctors for advising against the practice of chastity. But, as I mentioned earlier, I have taken as correct Mr. Rhodehamel's memory that this rebuke was contained in "Mind: Its Powers and Possibilities," which Swamiji gave in Washington Hall. It is possible, of course, that he spoke twice in exactly the same vein; but of this we cannot be certain.


In any case, the Home of Truth lecture was, as Miss Ansell recalled, a forceful one, and as we learn from Mrs. Allan, it was well attended. The Home occupied a house on the south side of California Street between Laguna and Buchanan—a fashionable block, graced in those days by more than one large stone mansion. Although the Home of Truth house, which is no longer standing, was considerably less than a mansion, it was spacious enough to accommodate, with some squeezing, an audience of well over a hundred people. According to Mrs. Allan, who was present that evening, two rooms on the lower floor had been thrown open for the occasion. "But so many people came," she related, "that they were crowded into the hallway and even up to the top of the stairs." Mrs. Allan was among those who sat on the topmost stair, and there, after the lecture, she was spied by Swamiji. "He came into the hall to greet the people," she said, "and seeing me, he called out, 'Madam! What are you doing up there among the gods?''[85]


Swamiji's work in San Francisco was virtually finished; he now had enough money, even without the Maharaja of Khetri's stipend, and was ready to rest. "Now, as you say," he wrote to Miss MacLeod on April 10, "I am going to send [to New York] all the money I have made here. I could do it today but I am waiting to make it a thousand. I expect to make a thousand in Frisco by the end of this week. I will buy a draft on New York and send it or ask the bank the best way to do it.... I think I should rest now, although I can have $100 a week average in this city all along.'[86]Two days later he attained his financial goal. "I have made over a thousand dollars in San Francisco which I am going to send to Mr. Leggett this week in a New York draft in his name," he wrote in an unpublished portion of a letter to Mrs. Bull dated April 12. "I will still have money left to travel—so you need not feel the least anxiety about me. As about my health, it is so so. Some days good, others bad.... The pressure of work and irregularity of food and sleep was tremendous in San Francisco-yet I love it well after all. It is my nature to be at my best when left alone.'[87]


Thus with the series "Divine Love, " Swamiji's public lectures in Washington Hall came to a close. It is known, however—primarily through a reference in Mr. Allan's notebooks—that he gave "a short series of lectures on Bhakti Yoga" in the smaller hall in the Red Men's Building known as Social Hall. What Mr. Allan meant by "short series" is hard to understand. Almost all of Swamiji's lecture series consisted of three lectures, and fewer than three could not, one thinks, be called a series. But however that may be, this "series" was not announced in the newspapers, nor mentioned later; it was no doubt semi-public and attended by a relatively small audience. The first, and possibly the only lecture of the "series, " certainly the only one of which we know the date, was given on the evening of Saturday, April 14, 1900—a memorable date in the history of the Vedanta movement in America, for it was immediately after the lecture that the Vedanta Society of San Francisco was founded.

11

According to Mrs. Hansbrough, it was she who had suggested to Swamiji that he found a Vedanta Society in San Francisco, even as she had suggested that he found one in Pasadena. He was not certain, she said, that either society would last; yet her suggestions would have come to nothing if they had not been in keeping with Swamiji's desire and had not received his consent and approval. It was, in fact, almost inevitable that he would himself want to found Vedanta societies in those places where he had poured out spiritual energy, giving day after day the highest and strongest of his teachings. He would naturally have wanted those teachings to take root and grow, not only in the hearts of the relatively few individuals to whom he taught them, but in a group of individuals, a society, where, undiluted and un-compromised, they would be permanently available to all. To leave behind living vessels of this sort, in which the seeds he had so liberally sown would take root and flourish and from which thousands could thenceforth find spiritual nourishment, was indeed a necessary part of Swamiji's mission.

There was also another reason why he wanted to found Vedanta societies. Never did he forget the needs of his Motherland. His hope was that students of Vedanta would recognize their debt to India and would send the financial help she so sorely needed. "He felt that he had come to the West for two purposes," Mrs. Hansbrough once said: "to deliver a message and to get help for India. But he was terribly disappointed in the amount of help he got." In California, however, Swamiji found a generosity of spirit that touched him. "He was often asked questions about going to India," Mrs. Hansbrough related, "especially by women students. He used to tell them, 'If you are going to India to see great yogis, don't go. You will see only poverty, filth and misery.'[88]But despite Swamiji's warning, some still wished to go, their ardor unquenched.


In a heretofore unpublished passage of a letter Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Bull on April 12, two days before the founding of the San Francisco Vedanta Society, he praised Californians for this warm heartedness. "My chief idea in all western work has been to help India," he said. "On New York I and mine have spent the greatest part of our energies, and Indian work never had any help from New York—and I do not believe will ever have.... Here in California people are poor—but they come out with their help the best they can and I have several applications every day from men and women to follow me to India!'[89]


In this same letter, again in a heretofore unpublished passage, Swamiji mentioned specifically (but did not name) two of the Californians who were set upon going to India. "By the by," he wrote, "there is a very clever Scotchman and his Swiss wife here. The man is an inventor, electrician, etc. Just now there is a good chance of his making money by one of his automobile inventions. He is sure to go to the Seviers with his wife if he can succeed in his scheme." (Captain and Mrs. J. H. Sevier, as has been mentioned earlier, were English disciples of Swamiji and were then in charge of his Himalayan retreat at Mayavati. Who the very clever Scotchman and his Swiss wife were one cannot say, for no one whom we know of today meets that description. Mr. Allan was a Scot, but he was not an inventor or an electrician; nor was Mrs. Allan Swiss, she was English to the bone. No married couple, in any event, ever went from San Francisco to Mayavati.)


But however that may be, one of Swamiji's reasons for wanting Vedanta societies in California was that they would keep alive not only his message but the fire of generosity and sympathy toward India that he had ignited in some hearts. He expected the societies in both southern and northern California to send regularly what money they could to Belur. "Don't be indifferent to the question of sending money to the Math," he was to write several months later to Swami Turiyananda, who was then working in California. "See that money goes certainly every month From Los Angeles and San Franciaco.'[90]


While Swamiji's desire to found a Vedanta Society in San Francisco was a condition essential to the event, there was another condition equally necessary: this was the existence of a group of people eager to band together under his leadership. One indication that such a group existed and had discussed the matter with him in advance is to be found in another unpublished portion of his letter of April 12 to Mrs. Bull. Referring to a dispute that was then taking place in the New York Vedanta Society between Swami Abhedananda on one side and Mrs. Bull and the Leggetts on the other, Swamiji wrote, "If you think Abhedananda's stay in New York will create disturbance, I can induce him to come over to San Francisco—he can have all the organization here he wants. I can try at least. I will write him by this mail.'[91] It would seem clear from this passage that a society was in the offing, that the inaugural meeting of April 14 was not a spur-of the-moment affair but had been under consideration by both Swamiji and a group of his followers for at least a few days.


There are three first-hand accounts of this historic meeting— historic, because the San Francisco Vedanta Society was the second of the two presently existing Vedanta societies established by Swami Vivekananda in the Western world, the first, of course, being the Vedanta Society of New York, which he founded in November of 1894. Perhaps the most important account of the San Francisco inaugural meeting is its Minutes, but in addition to these we have the eye-witness reports of Mrs. Hansbrough and Mr. Albert S. Wollberg. (Mr. and Mrs. Allan did not attend the meeting. They did not, in fact, become members of the Vedanta Society until after 1903.) Mr. and Mrs. Wollberg had been more or less regular attendants of Swamiji's downtown lectures and certainly enthusiastic and serious ones. Mr. Wollberg, a long-confirmed atheist from the East Coast, had found on hearing Swamiji that he could, after all, believe in God and had promptly become a theist. He and his wife were to be active members of the Vedanta Society for the remainder of their lives, and it is said that Mr. Wollberg moved from theism to monism before he died. His account of the inaugural meeting is a simple statement written in pen and ink on one and a half sheets of letter paper. But simple and brief as it is (and in part misleading), it forms one of the important documents of the early history of the Vedanta Society of Northern California:

The Origin of the Vedanta 
Society of San Francisco

After the last lecture given by Swami Vivekananda on Raja [Bhakti] Yoga at Social Hall, Red Men's Building on April 14th 1900 Swamiji was approached by me as to the advisability of forming a Vedanta Centre here in San Francisco.


He seemed to be very pleased & said "Why not?" Whereupon he advised it would be well to start it right away.


There was an anteroom adjoining the Hall & those that seemed to be interested attended this impromptu meeting.


Mrs. Hansbrough broached the idea of forming a permanent Centre here which met with a universal "Aye." Thereupon the meeting was called to order & Mrs. Dr. Plumb was elected the first President. Dr. Logan who was present thereupon offered the Class his offices at the Corner of Market and Geary Sts for the meetings. Later Swamiji gave several lectures there. As the Class grew in numbers Dr. Logan offered the finished basement of his home at Oak and Steiner Streets for the meetings. There Swamiji gave a number of discourses on the Gita—later on he left for Paris.[92]


Turning again to Mrs. Hansbrough's "Reminiscences," we find more details in connection with the Society's inaugural meeting:


[Dr. Logan] was present the night the San Francisco lectures closed. The Wollbergs were there, but I don't remember whether the Allans were or not. We had asked a Mr. Chambers to invite any to stay at the close of the lecture who would be interested in continuing the study of Swamiji's teachings. He did this, and when the others had left he asked me to tell about the organization of the Los Angeles and Pasadena centers. Then we discussed the organization of a center here, but did not complete the arrangements that night. Dr. Logan then suggested that we meet the next night in his office at 10 Geary Street, which we did, and it was on that night that the organization of the Society was completed. Swamiji held some classes before the Society and he also held some there after he returned from Camp Taylor.


At the first meeting, I suggested to Swamiji that he leave before the meeting opened. He asked me why, and I told him, because I wanted to say some things about him that I would rather he did not hear. So he agreed, and went home. [He was then living in Alameda.] It was not that his staying would have made any difference to Swamiji; my reason for asking this was that I myself would have been embarrassed to speak as I wanted to about him in his presence.[93]


The third and, as I said, perhaps the most important record of this first meeting of the Vedanta Society is its Minutes. These, together with the Minutes of the subsequent meetings, were neatly written in an ornate, feminine hand in a red leather-covered, wide-ruled copybook, which has been preserved in the archives of the Society. The Minutes for Saturday, April 14, 1900, read as follows:

Minutes of the Vedanta Class

About twenty-five persons met together at 8 o'clock on the evening of the 14th of April, 1900, in Social Hall, to discuss the advisability of forming an organization to assist Swami Vivekananda in his work in India and for the purpose of studying the Vedanta Philosophy.


Dr. Plumb was chosen Chairman.


After much discussion it was found that a majority of those present were in favor of forming a class, which they proceeded to do.


After some discussion upon the subject a motion was duly made, seconded and carried that the name of the organization be the Vedanta Class.


Upon motions duly made and seconded Dr. Plumb was chosen as President, Miss Mizener as Secretary and Treasurer, and Mrs. Moore as Reader of the Class.


A motion was duly made, seconded and carried that the dues of the members of the Vedanta Class be $1.00 per month, and that the amount collected the first month be kept in the treasury for incidental expenses.


A standing vote was taken as to the time for the meeting of the class and Thursday evening found to be suitable to a majority and was thereupon selected, a meeting to be held each week.


Dr. Logan very kindly offered the class the use of his offices until such time as it had a sufficient membership to warrant it in renting a hall, and the class very gladly accepted the offer.


A motion was duly made, seconded and carried that the Secretary be instructed to invite Mr. Nielson [Charles P. Neilson, Swamiji's artist friend] to speak to the class on the Vedanta Philosophy or the Gita.


The President was instructed to authorize the payment of the bill of $3—for printing, and the bill of $4—for rent of hall.


There being no further business for consideration the class then adjourned until Thursday evening, April 19th.[94]


Presumably, but not certainly, the "bill of $4-for rent of hall" was for the rent of the anteroom in which the meeting was held. As for the "bill of $3—for printing," there are no existing records to indicate what printing this might have been. Also unexplained in any account is the hour at which the inaugural meeting is said in its Minutes to have opened. Inasmuch as the meeting convened after an evening lecture on "Bhakti Yoga," eight o'clock seems improbably early. Miss Mizener, however, may have felt it a seemly hour for a meeting to be held and have written up the Minutes accordingly.


Miss Mizener may have further tidied up history. Mrs. Hansbrough has told us that the first meeting took place in two parts, the second part being held the following night, which would have been Easter Sunday, at Dr. Logan's offices. The above Minutes, however, seem to be as complete as one could wish, and one suspects that Miss Mizener combined the business of both meetings under the date April 14, this being the orderly way to handle the matter. On the other hand, Mrs. Hansbrough's memory may have telescoped the time intervening between the first and second meetings, and the launching of the Society may actually have been carried over to its second regular meeting, which was held five nights later on Thursday, April 19. At that meeting, however, nothing further appears to have been necessary in the way of inaugural business. Its Minutes read:


April 19th 1900.

The Vedanta Class and those interested in the work met together at Dr. Logan's offices at 8 p.m. at 10 Geary St. Dr. Plumb called the meeting to order.


There was a general discussion as to the advisability of forming classes in Oakland and Alameda, but no definite action taken.

The minutes of the preceding meeting were read and adopted.


Mr. Nielson then spoke to us upon the Gita, and read portions therefrom.


At the conclusion of such reading a motion was made, seconded and carried that Mr. Nielson be asked to continue the reading of the Gita at the future meetings of the Class.


Upon motion duly made and seconded it was decided that we have one open meeting each month.


There being no further business before the Class, the meeting adjourned until the 26th.[95]


Although the Society was at first called the "Vedanta Class," after about a year the term "Vedanta Society" began to be used off and on in the Minutes. No reason was given for this variation in name, but one finds that Swami Turiyananda (who came to California in the summer of 1900) consistently referred to the San Francisco organization as "the Vedanta Society" in his unpublished letters of this period to Mrs. Hansbrough and others, which I have had the good fortune to read. Further, on the cover of each issue of the Pacific Vedantin, a magazine produced by the Society in 1902, is printed "Issued by the Vedanta Society of San Francisco, California." (The Ramakrishna Mission seal also appears on every cover.) After Swami Trigunatita took charge of the Society in the beginning of 1903, the names "Vedanta Class" and "Vedanta Society" continued for a time to be used interchangeably. Gradually the term "Vedanta Society" took precedence and finally came to be used exclusively. As far as can be discovered, no motion was made, seconded, and passed that the name be permanently changed from "Class" to "Society"; the change simply came aboutas —was inevitable, for the type of organization had been from the start that of a society.


ⓘ
[1].Edith Allan, unpublished notes, VSNC.
[2].Life (1981), 2 : 518.
[3].Complete Works, 8 : 248-49.
[4].Complete Works 1 : 500-501. This quotation from “The Soul and God” is Uken from Ida Ansell’s first transcript, VSNC.
[5].Complete Works, 2 : 464-65.
[6].Complete Works., 6 : 94-95.
[7].Complete Works 2:470-71.
[8].Life (1981), 2 : 519.
[9].Complete Works, 2 : 471-74 passim.
[10].Complete Works, 1 : 502. See ref. 4 above; see also Complete Works, 2 :471-74 passim.
[11].Life (1981), 2 : 516.
[12].Life (1981., 2 : 520.
[13].Complete Works, 8 : 490-91.
[14].Complete Works., p. 496.
[15].See ref. 1 above.
[16].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC.
[17].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC.
[18].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC.
[19].Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 375.
[20].Life (1981), 2 : 520-21.
[21].Ida Ansell, original memoirs, 1947, VSNC.
[22].Thomas Allan, Paper of 1935 and other notes, VSNC.
[23].See ref. 1 above[24].Complete Works, 1 :504.
[25].Complete Works, 1 :504.
[26].Complete Works, . p. 511.
[27].Complete Works, 4228-29, 235.
[28].Complete Works,pp. 227-28.
[29].Complete Works,pp. 231-32.
[30].Complete Works,1 : 516.
[31].Complete Works,  pp. 514-20 passim.
[32].Henry George, Progress and Poverty, pp. 3> 5-
[33].William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, pp. 103-4.
[34].Henry Drummond, “Christianity and Evolution,” a paper read before the Parliament of Religions; see W. R. Houghton, cd., History of the Parliament of Religions (Chicago, 1893), pp. 831-32.
[35].Francis G. Peabody, “Christianity and the Social Question”; see Houghton, op. cit., pp. 528-29.
[36].Oakland Enquirer, 25 March, 1900.
[37].Kenneth S. Latourette, A History of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935), p. 1270.
[38].Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth and Other Timely Essays, pp. 28, 29.
[39].Quoted in The United States Since 1865, Foster Rhea Dulles, p. 64.
[40].Quoted in The Protestant Establishment, E. Digby Baltzell, p. 101.
[41].Complete Works, 4 : 246.
[42].Complete Works,, pp. 243-44.
[43].Complete Works,PP- 238-39.
[44].Complete Works,pp. 241-42.
[45].Mrs. George W. Hale to Swami Vivekananda, SN Col. (For the probable date of this letter see World Teacher-1, chap. 1, p. 38n.)
[46].Complete Works,8 : 524. (This letter appears to be wrongly dated in the Complete Works.)
[47].Talks, p. 210.
[48].Talks., p. 98.
[49].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[50].Complete Works, 4 : 244-47 passim.
[51].Complete Works., p. 231.
[52].First transcript of “Mediation,” April 3, 1900; see also Complete Works, 4:231.
[53].Complete Works, 8 : 135.
[54].Complete Works., 8 :120-21.
[55].Complete Works 5:227.
[56].Complete Works 8 :126, 133-34.
[57].Complete Works pp. 131-32.
[58].Complete Works pp. 140-41.
[59].Complete Works p. 141.
[60].Complete Works p. 126.
[61].Complete Works pp. 139, 141.
[62].Complete Works p. 140.
[63].Complete Works, 8:512.
[64].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[65].Complete Works, 8 : 512.
[66].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, April 7, 1900, SN Col.; for published portions see Complete Works, 8:513-
[67].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, July or August, 1895, Sen Col.
[68].Beni Shanker Sharma, Swami Vivekananda—A Forgotten Chapter of His Life, pp. 171-72.
[69].Beni Shanker Sharma, Swami Vivekananda—A Forgotten Chapter of His Life , pp. 173-74-
[70].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, May 18, 1900, SCB.
[71].Complete Works, 8 : 292.
[72].See Mahendranath Datta, Swami Vivekanander Balyajivani (Calcutta: Mahendra Publishing Committee) ,2:180-81.
[73].Complete Works, 8 : 513.
[74].Complete Works, 6 : 52.
[75].Complete Works  8 : 133.
[76].Complete Works 6:51-52, 55.
[77].Complete Works pp. 49-50.
[78].Complete Works pp. 68-69.
[79]. Complete Works PP- 73, 77-78.
[80].Complete Works 8 : 238.
[81].Rem. (Viraja Devi), p. 397.
[82].Complete Works, 8 : 135.
[83].Ida Ansell, original memoirs, VSNC.
[84].Complete Works, 8 : 133.
[85].Edith Allan, as related to Edna C. Zulch, San Francisco, 1938.
[86].Complete Works, 8 : 515-16.
[87].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, April 12, 1900, SN Col.; for published portions see Complete Works, 8:517
[88].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[89].See ref. 87 above.
[90].Complete Works, 8:531.
[91].See ref. 87 above.
[92].Wollberg Report, VSNC.
[93].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[94].Early Minutes of the Vedanta Society of San Francisco, VSNC.
[95].Early Minutes of the Vedanta Society of San Francisco, VSNC.

↑ Contents

6.2.1 A WORLD MISSION DRAWS TO A CLOSE-I

By the time Swamiji founded the Vedanta Society of San Francisco he had already moved from the Turk Street flat to the Home of Truth in Alameda, a small town just south of Oakland. Inasmuch as his last known letter from San Francisco was dated April 10, 1900, and his first known letter from Alameda April 12, it would seem fairly safe to assume that he moved to the East Bay on April 11, a Wednesday. According to Mrs. Hansbrough, she, Swamiji, and Mrs. Aspinall left the flat for the last time in the late afternoon, each carrying a small suitcase. (Mrs. Hansbrough had sent on Swamiji's trunk by express. "I may have packed it for him, too," she said, "as I often did.")[1] In the hall Swamiji helped the women on with their coats, and as he did so he spoke those words of appreciation to Mrs. Hansbrough that for all time made up for his many long and articulate scoldings: "Well, you have worked like a demon!'[2]

They took the Turk Street cable car to Market Street and there, at the foot of Powell, transferred to the larger Market Street car that rattled down to the Ferry Building. (This transfer point, incidentally, was a noisy, bustling spot in San Francisco where Swamiji must have often stood, waiting for a streetcar on his way to the East Bay. In a lecture some seven weeks later, he gave what one can, I think, take to be a picture of himself at that precise point. Speaking of the attainment of yoga, he said, "This is the question: With every sense and every organ active, have you that tremendous peace [in which] nothing can disturb you? Standing on Market Street, waiting for the car with all the rush going on around you, are you in meditation—calm and peaceful? In the cave, are you intensely active there with all quiet about you? If you are, you are a yogi, otherwise not.")[3]The ferry to Alameda (a half hour's ride) connected at the Alameda mole with a railway that made a nine-mile run to a station in the heart of town. From there the three passengers could easily walk to their destination-—he Alameda Home of Truth.

Swamiji had been invited to stay at the Home by Mr. and Mrs. George Roorbach and Miss Lucy Beckham, its directors. Although he had not found the Home of Truth in Los Angeles particularly congenial and had felt crowded at the Home on Pine Street, he was not averse to Homes of Truth in general. "He once told me," Mrs. Allan recalled, "that he thought the work of the Home of Truth was the best then available in the West, and he appreciated the fact that the workers there did not charge for spiritual assistance, as some others did.'[4]Swamiji seems to have particularly liked the Alameda Home. "He begged to come after we invited him," Mrs. Roorbach related in later years. "He said he 'smelled' over the house and saw that we were pure and said we were worthy of a little help.'[5]

The house, which stood uncrowded by neighbors at 2527 Central Avenue, was a large mid-Victorian dwelling with wide lawns and well-kept gardens—"a beautiful place," Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Bull on April 12, "surrounded by flowers and green orchards.'[6] A porch covered with wisteria vines serpentined around its front and sides, Mrs. Allan remembered; and in April this vine would have been in bloom, as would the near by orchards. The house, a photograph of which is here reproduced, had been loaned to the Home of Truth, in return for its care, by a wealthy family named Barton, who were away in Europe. It has long since been torn down, and except for a ' huge palm tree and a magnolia, under both of which Swamiji, it is said, liked to walk while smoking his pipe, no signs are left of its gardens. (Where the house had stood, the Alameda Hotel, a Spanish-California style structure, stands today.)

"When we arrived at the Home of Truth," Mrs. Hansbrough  continued in her account of Swamiji's move from San Francisco to Alameda, "we were met in the hall by the teachers, Mr. George Roorbach and his wife, Eloise (both of whom were artists), and Miss Lucy Beckham. George Roorbach took Swamiji up to his room on the second floor. It was a fine, big room.'[7] ("We gave him a corner room in the back of the house," Mrs. Roorbach later recalled.)[8] According to an item on the front page of the Alameda Daily Argus of Friday, April 13, Swamiji was entertained that evening at a dinner given in his honor at the Alameda home of a Mrs. George H. Perry. And directly after this dinner, he gave a lecture in Tucker's Hall, but of that, more later.

In a sense, Alameda was to San Francisco what Pasadena was to Los Angeles—a fashionable suburb. Although in those days it contained twice as many people as Pasadena (almost the reverse is true today), it was, like the latter, essentially residential, and its residents, though not as boastful as their southern counterparts, considered their town beyond compare as a place to live. They, too, moved amidst gardens and trees in the serene and leisurely fashion befitting dwellers in paradise.

Easily reached by the half hour ferry and short rail ride from San Francisco [a guide book of the period reads], is the little suburban town of Alameda; population, twenty thousand; one principal business street, and a number of wide, level, well-paved roads, lined on both sides with picturesque houses in all styles of architecture, and varying in size from the tiniest cottage to the most imposing mansion. A double line of rail traverses the town.... While the city does not make much claim to the possession of imposing public buildings, it has a number which are worthy of passing notice, chief among them being the City Hall, a handsome, roomy structure, in the Spanish style of architecture, on Santa Clara Avenue. The principal hotel is the Yosemite, at the corner of Park Street, facing directly  on the narrow-gauge railroad. Alameda boasts of an opera -house, the possession of its own electric-light plant, a good water supply, and a free public library. When the estuary shall have been completed, Alameda will be an island. [This did not come to pass until 1902.] On this estuary, to the north, there are splendid opportunities for boating and sailing with perfect safety, and along the mole some of the most important sculling matches which have taken place on this coast have been held. . . . Alameda is favored by horsemen, cyclists, and drivers [carriage, not automobile], on account of the splendid pavement of its roads and their unusual width. The streets of handsome homes are bordered by shade-trees. In fact, Alameda is a model suburban town, and revels in garden-like lawns and a floral wealth quite indescribable.[9]

Alameda was not new to Swamiji. Before April 11 he had lectured there at least three, and possibly five, times. His first series, which had been in the nature of "parlor lectures," had been announced on March 16, 19, 20, and 21 on the front page of the Daily Argus, one of Alameda's two newspapers, both of which generally gave him marked attention. The most complete announcement read:

THREE PARLOR LECTURES BY 
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

Three lectures will be given by Swami Vivekananda under the auspices of the Alameda Cheney Section at the residence of Mrs. George H. Perry, 1424 Oak Street, near Santa Clara Avenue. Subjects: Wednesday March 21, 8 p.m., Mind-its powers and possibilities; Thursday March 22, 8 p.m., Mind Culture; Wednesday March 28, 8 p.m., Concentration of Mind. Full course $3. Single tickets $1.

"The Alameda Cheney Section," the Daily Argus informed its readers in another connection, "is composed of twelve ladies who attended the lectures of Mrs. John Vance Cheney, delivered in the Adelphian Club rooms last year. The purpose of the section is to study the art of living and to apply it to the service of humanity."[10] In pursuing their study of the art of living, the ladies of the Cheney Section evidently invited various lecturers to speak to them, opening these meetings to the paying public as well. Mr. B. Fay Mills, for instance, had given a lecture under the auspices of the Cheney Section in March. Whether Swamiji actually lectured before the group three times, as announced, is problematic. Only one lecture was reported upon by the Alameda papers, and this not altogether clearly. The item, which appeared in the "Social and Personal" column of the Alameda Daily Encinal of March 23, read:

Swami Vivekananda delivered a lecture on "Mind, Its Powers and Possibilities," under the auspices of the Alameda Cheney Section at the residence of Mrs. George H. Perry, 1424 Oak Street, last evening.

"Last evening" would have been March 22, on which date Swamiji had been scheduled to speak on "Mind Culture," not on "Mind, Its Powers and Possibilities." The latter was to have been delivered on March 21. There is no way of knowing whether the above news item was incorrect or whether Swamiji's lecture engagement of March 21 was canceled and his subject transferred to the following evening.

In regard to the third lecture of the Cheney Section series, "Concentration of Mind," scheduled for March 28, we are equally in the dark. The Alameda papers say nothing about its having been given or its having been canceled. There would appear to be no reason, however, for thinking that Swamiji did not give it on the evening announced.

In any event, he had certainly intended to speak three times on the subject of Raja yoga before the Cheney Section, and he did without doubt give at least one of these talks at Mrs. Perry's house on either March 21 or 22. (This house, incidentally, was moved in later years from 1424 Oak Street to 2005 Alameda Avenue and after its change of location was remodeled, it is said, beyond all recognition.)

In addition to lecturing before the Cheney Section, Swamiji, as has not heretofore been known, gave a series of three lectures at Tucker Hall, delivering the first on April 4. The following announcement appeared often (and with variations) in both Alameda papers:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA,
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHER,
ALAMEDA LECTURES

Will be held in Tucker Hall, 1424 1/2 Park Street, near Santa Clara Avenue, the first being given on next Wednesday evening, April 4th. The subject, "The Influence of Surroundings on the Development of Religion." The second of the series will be on the evening of Friday, April 6th, and the third and last on Wednesday, April 11th. Tickets for full course $1. Single lecture, 50 cents.

The Daily Encinal wrote a short article to celebrate Swamiji's coming lecture course and accompanied it by a picture of him seated in his robe and turban—the same photograph Blanche Partington had used for her interview of March 18 in the San Francisco Chronicle. The article, if one may call it that, read as follows:

LEARNED HINDU
Vivekananda Tomorrow Evening

The Swami Vivekananda first came to this country as the representative of the Vedanta philosophy of India at the Congress of Religions at the World's Fair. He is an eloquent and forceful speaker, and seems as familiar with the literature and history of the Occident as he is learned in the philosophy of the Orient. In his teaching of Vedantism  he expresses the ideas that all systems of religion and philosophy are based on the love of goodness and truth and will lead to the same goal.

At the Congress of Religions he made a decided sensation, arousing intense interest. He is to deliver a lecture to-morrow night at Tucker's Hall on "The Influence of Surroundings in the Development of Religions."

On the day the above appeared in the Encinal (April 3), the Argus printed a longer article and accompanied it by one of the photographs taken in San Francisco which showed Swamiji standing in his robe and turban, his left hand on his sash. As had an interviewer in San Francisco, the Argus reporter quoted from the pamphlet of Swamiji's Harvard lecture of March 25, 1896; in fact, the entire Argus article was, admittedly, a quotation from the introduction by Dr. Charles Carroll Everett (dean of the Harvard Divinity School). Inasmuch as this has not been published in the Complete Works and only in part in the Life, it may be of interest here. It could have served as a salutary reply to the missionary questionnaire of 1897, which was mentioned in the last chapter.

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
Sketch of the Expounder of Hindu Philosophy.
Has Attracted Much Attention in This Country.

The following description of the Swami Vivekananda and his work was written by Charles Carroll Everett, D.D., LL.D., of Harvard University, as an introduction to an address by the Swami on "The Vedanta Philosophy of India" :

"The Swami Vivekananda was sent by his friends and co-religionists to present their belief at the Congress of Religions that was held in connection with the World's Fair in Chicago. This he did in a way to win general interest and admiration. Since then he has lectured on the same theme in different parts of our country. He has been in fact a missionary from India to America. Everywhere he has made warm personal friends, and his expositions of Hindu philosophy have been listened to with delight.

"It is very pleasant to observe the eager interest with which his own people in India follow his course, and the joy that they take in his success. I have seen a pamphlet filled with speeches made at a large and influential meeting in Calcutta, which was called together to express enthusiastic approval of the manner in which he has fulfilled his mission and satisfaction at this invasion of the West by Oriental thought. This satisfaction is well grounded. We may not be so near to actual conversion as some of these speakers seem to believe, but Vivekananda has created a high degree of interest in himself and his work.

"There are, indeed, .few departments of study more attractive than the Hindu thought. It is a rare pleasure to see a form of belief that to most seems so far away and unreal as the Vedanta system, represented by an actually living and extremely intelligent believer. This system is not to be regarded merely as a curiosity, as a speculative vagary. Hegel said that Spinozism is the necessary beginning of all philosophizing. This can be said even more emphatically of the Vedanta system. We occidentals busy ourselves with the manifold. We can, however, have no understanding of the manifold if we have no sense of the One in which the manifold exists. The reality of the One is the truth which the East may well teach us; and we owe a debt of gratitude to Vivekananda that he has taught us this lesson so effectively."

Tucker's Hall (or Tucker Hall), where Swamiji gave all his public lectures in Alameda, was located in the Tucker Building, a two-story structure built in 1879 on the southeast corner of Park Street and Santa Clara Avenue—the very heart of town. The hall itself, as Mr. Herman Kihn, vice-president of the Alameda Historical Society and an old-time resident of Alameda, has told us, was on the second story, to the right of the stairway as one ascended; offices and living quarters were on the left, that is, on the corner. The ground floor of the building was occupied by a real estate office, a candy store, and various other stores and offices. As for the hall itself, it was a plain, level-floored auditorium, equipped with a stage and about two hundred and fifty movable folding chairs. (Six years later the Tucker Building was so heavily damaged by the great earthquake that the entire second floor, auditorium and all, had to be removed. The ground story, however, was repaired and remodeled, and a portion of it, further remodeled, still stands on the corner, occupied by a drugstore.) The town's largest hotel, the Yosemite, stood across Park Street, and along Santa Clara Avenue the little narrow-gauge train periodically chugged and tooted.

On April 5 the Daily Encinal and the Daily Argus printed on their front pages fairly long and almost identical reports of Swamiji's lecture "The Influence of Surroundings on the Development of Religion"-—is only lecture in Alameda upon which the newspapers wrote at any length. The Daily Argus's article read as follows:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
An Interesting Address by Hindu Philosopher. 
He Talks on the Development of Religion.

Swami Vivekananda, the prominent Hindu scholar and philosopher, delivered an address before an attentive audience in Tucker's Hall last evening. His subject was "The Influence of Surroundings on the Development of Religion."

The speaker referred to the old idea held by orthodox believers in all countries that their religions were the direct inspirations from a deity who, as it were, regulated or influenced the affairs of this world from a distance.

The primitive man, when his mind was moved by the strange and beautiful phenomena of nature, attributed the wonders that he saw to the power and caprice of an outside God or gods.

The scientific mind, on the contrary, instead of seeking for outside causes for phenomena, endeavored to find the cause in the thing or condition itself. And while at first this method of investigation might seem to take from religion its vital elements, yet in reality it resulted in man finding that the spiritual attributes of God and the states of mind producing Heaven and Hell were here and now within himself.

While modern scientific investigation might seem to contradict the old religious scriptures, yet it was not really so, for the prophets and teachers of old had true perceptions, but were only mistaken in attributing their experiences to outside agencies, instead of realizing them to be the development and expression of element[s] in their own souls, before unknown and unrecognised.

In referring to the evolution of the soul, the speaker said that it was impossible for the mind or soul to begin as a blank and gradually acquire knowledge, for knowledge was simply the reaction and association of ideas and unless some ideas were already there, there could be no reaction.

Swami Vivekananda will deliver the second address of the series to-morrow evening in Tucker's Hall. His subject will be "Formation of God Ideals."

The Encinal's front-page report of the same lecture was largely repetitious of the above and need not detain us here; it is given, however, in the Appendix.

On April 7 the Daily Argus noted that Swamiji had lectured as scheduled on "The Formation of God Ideals" but did not report what he had said. The very title of this lecture, however, suggests that it was not unlike "The Soul and God, " in which, in San Francisco, he had traced the evolution of religious concepts.

As for the third lecture of the series, the Daily Encinal told its readers on April 12 that Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu philosopher, had "lectured to a good audience last night in Tucker's Hall on 'Man's Ultimate Destiny.' " That was all the Alameda press had to say. Mrs. Allan, however, tells us something more of this particular lecture. It was at its close, she related in her memoirs, that Swamiji made a statement that stunned the audience. "While in Alameda," she wrote, "Swamiji gave public lectures in Tucker Hall. He gave one wonderful lecture 'The Ultimate Destiny of Man' and [after taking us step by step up the heights of Advaita, he] finished by placing his hand on his chest and saying 'I am God.' A most awed silence fell upon the audience, and many people thought it blasphemy for Swamiji to say such a thing:[11]

Remembering that Swamiji always spoke, as Swami Saradananda once said "out of his own direct experience " one can only imagine how high his state of consciousness and how vibrant his power must have been when, deliberately and gravely, he spoke those three words. One can also only imagine their impact upon his listeners. It must have seemed to them at the time, for so awed a silence fell, that he was not speaking solely from an Advaitic point of view, that he was not saying, "I am Brahman," but, rather, "I am the Personal God!" A tremendous statement indeed. Had they misunderstood his meaning? One recalls that in his lecture "Meditation," delivered in San Francisco a week or so earlier, he had said (I quote from the first transcript), "Don't you make this mistake. When I say in English, I am God, it is because I have no better word. In Sanskrit, Satchidananda means absolute Existence, Knowledge, and Wisdom, infinite self-luminous Consciousness. No person. It is impersonal. I am never [Rama] but am [one with Brahman, the impersonal, all-pervading Existence]: '[12]

Yet Swamiji was a soul, so vast, so perfect, so filled with divine power—the power, as he himself said, to liberate with a touch[13]—that one must place him beside those great Messengers who, as he said in Los Angeles, are "higher than all our conceptions of God" and who can indeed be looked upon as God Himself. "When a man has reached that perfect state," he said in the lecture (or article) "The Essence of Religion" (published in the San Francisco Examiner on March 18, 1900), "he is of the same nature as the Personal God: 'I and my father are one.' He knows himself one with Brahman, the Absolute, and projects himself as does the Personal God.'[14]There are many indications that after he had begun his mission Swamiji was aware of his divine status. Mrs. Allan once related, for instance, that during his stay in northern California one of his women students was complaining, "Oh, if I had only lived earlier, I could have seen Sri Ramakrishna!" Swamiji turned quietly to her and said, "You say that, and you have seen me?'[15] Fully aware of himself as one with Brahman, and aware as well of his prophet-hood, could not Swamiji say with the ring of total authority, "I am God," and could he not mean it in the special, personal sense in which the audience, stunned into "a most awed silence," had understood it?

Swamiji intended to rest for a week in Alameda and then, as he wrote in an unpublished passage of a letter of April 12, 1900, to Mrs. Bull, "go to a place called Stockton.'[16]His earliest known mention of wanting to work for a few days in Stockton—a small but thriving city eighty miles east of San Francisco, where the College of the Pacific (today named the University of the Pacific) was located-—s contained in a letter of March 30 to Josephine MacLeod. On April 8 and 10 he again mentioned going to Stockton (his writing of the name appears in the Complete Works as "Star Klon"), but after April 12 we hear no more of the plan, and it would seem certain that he gave it up, perhaps because of ill health.

His stay in Alameda did not by any means give him the complete rest that he needed. Aside from lecturing at Tucker's Hall four times, he crossed the Bay at least twice to lecture in the evening in San Francisco: once on April 12 to deliver his final talk in the series on Divine Love, and again on April 14, to speak on "Bhakti Yoga" and to found the Vedanta Society. (It should be noted here that in their accounts of the inaugural meeting both Mrs. Hansbrough and Mr. Wollberg mention that Swamiji gave some classes or lectures for the benefit of the new Society at Dr. Logan's office. In both cases the inference is that this was before he went to Camp Taylor—that is, in the month of April. But one finds no other references to these talks, and so we can say nothing about them, except that they could not have been held on the evenings of the Society's regular weekly meetings, for as the Minutes attest, Mr. Charles Neilson read on those evenings from the Gita, which certainly would not have been the case had Swamiji given a talk before the group.)

In addition to his public lectures and possible Vedanta Society talks, Mrs. Hansbrough tells us, "Swamiji lectured at the Alameda Home of Truth at least twice'[17]but unfortunately, we know as little of these lectures as we do of those given before the Society, for Mrs. Hansbrough's statement, which I have quoted in its entirety, constitutes the whole of our present knowledge of them. Although the Alameda Home of Truth is itself still in existence, its old records are not. Indeed, the Home possesses no memento of any kind to commemorate Swamiji's long visit there.

Of Swamiji's lectures in Tucker's Hall the Daily Argus noted as early as April 11, "Another series of lectures by the Hindu philosopher has been arranged for to be given shortly." The three lectures of this second series were announced duly, and often, in both Alameda papers, the most comprehensive notices appearing, of course, at an early date. That in the Encinal of April 13 read as follows:

LECTURES BY SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

The Swami Vivekananda will lecture at Tucker Hall, 1424 1/2 Park street near Santa Clara avenue, Alameda, at 8 p.m., each evening. Subjects: Friday, April I3th, Raj Voga; Monday, April 16th, Concentration and Breathing; Wednesday, April 18th, the Practice of Religion. Admission 50 cents. Course tickets $1.

This bit of information was all the Alameda papers managed to say about Swamiji's second lecture series. However, Ida Ansell, who had apparently missed the lectures of the first series, was in Tucker's Hall taking notes during the first and third lectures of the second series, namely, "Raja Yoga" and "The Practice of Religion." Her second transcripts of these notes have been published in, respectively, volumes seven and four of the Complete Works. Nor was she the only person known to have taken notes of Swamiji's second series at Tucker's Hall. Frank Rhodehamel was present at all three lectures, and his notes, heretofore unidentified, have been published in volume six of the Complete Works under the titles, respectively, "On Proof of Religion," "Concentration and Breathing," and "The Practice of Religion."*(1)

*(1) In the Complete Works Frank Rhodehamel’s notes entitled “The Practice of Religion” are wrongly dated “Wednesday, March 18, 1900.” This mistake originated with Rhodehamel himself. The actual date was Wednesday, April 18, 1900.

The three lectures of this series were, clearly, concerned with Raja yoga, a theme to which Swamiji again and again returned. So much has been said earlier in regard to his teachings on this subject that little more need be added here. One need only note that in Alameda he again defined the purpose and utility of yoga. "The science of yoga," he said in his first lecture of the series, "proposes this, that the one way out is through ourselves. We have to individualize ourselves. If there is any truth, we can realize it as our very essence. We will cease being driven about by Nature from place to place.... Yoga is stopping the chitta, the mind-stuff, from getting into these changes. When all this. creation has been stopped, [and] if it is possible to stop it, then we shall see for ourselves what we are in reality.'[18](That if in the last sentence is perhaps a transcriber's error.)

According to Frank Rhodehamel's notes of "Concentration and Breathing," Swamiji spoke in that second lecture of the series on the means of "stopping creation" through the practice of deliberate concentration, which, in turn, has become possible through the preliminary practice of certain breathing exercises. 

In an earlier chapter we have discussed "The Practice of Religion," but since this was Swamiji's last lecture in California to be given in a public hall, a few more sentences from it will not be amiss—least of all its closing ones. "Excepting the infinite spirit," he said, "everything else is changing. There is the whirl of change. Permanence is nowhere except in yourself. There is the infinite joy, unchanging. Meditation is the gate that opens that to us. Prayers, ceremonials, and all the other forms of worship are simply kindergartens of meditation.... All knowledge you have—how did it come? From the power of meditation. The soul churned the knowledge out of its own depths. What knowledge was there ever outside of it? In the long run this power of meditation separates ourselves from the body, and then the soul knows itself as it is—the unborn, the deathless and birthless being. No more is there any misery, no more births upon this earth, no more evolution. The soul knows itself as having ever been perfect and free.'[19]

And with those words, spoken in Alameda on April 18, 1900, Swamiji's public lectures in California came to a close.

2

At the Home of Truth Swamiji spent a good deal of time in his room, Mrs. Roorbach recalled; but he also mingled with the people of the Home, most of whom he found congenial and many of whom became his followers. ("The people here are so good to me," he wrote to Mrs. Bull on his arrival.)[20] Other friends and students, such as Mr. and Mrs. Allan and Mr. Rhodehamel, came to visit him. Mrs. Hansbrough and Mrs. Aspinall were often at the Home, sometimes staying overnight.

But not everybody at the Alameda Home of Truth approved of Swamiji. His gaiety and total, childlike freedom, characteristic of the paramahamsa, were disconcerting to some of the members, specifically, Mrs. Hansbrough remembered, to two English housekeepers, one of whom was named Molly Rankin. Like some of Swamiji's English disciples, these two women were of the firm opinion that a spiritual person seldom ate--certainly never ate meat—never smoked, and never became ill. It was clear to them that Swamiji was not a spiritual person. "See here," he had said to the Roorbachs, "I must have meat. I cannot live on potatoes and asparagus with the work I am doing!" And so, Mrs. Hansbrough related, "they got meat for him, although they themselves were vegetarians.'[21] And on top of this there were his pipe and cigarettes!


"The inmates of the 'Home of Truth,’" Mr. Rhodehamel wrote in his Prabuddha Bharata memoirs, "had occasion to get used to the odour of tobacco while he lived with them. He would usually be up in the mornings before the rest of the family, and lighting his pipe would walk through the unoccupied rooms, filling them with smoke. One imagines their efforts to rid the rooms of the odour of tobacco before time for their usual morning class!'[22]


All Homes of Truth seem to have had difficulty with Swamiji's pipe. A story in this regard is told in Swami Nikhilananda's Vivekananda: A Biography:


The members of the Home of Truth [in Los Angeles] were not permitted to smoke [Swami Nikhilananda writes]. 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 pull: 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.[23]


While Swamiji would no doubt have respected the rule of the Home of Truth had he known about it, at least requesting permission to smoke, ordinarily he had a sometimes childlike, sometimes lordly indifference to rules. Mr. Rhodehamel tells a relevant tale in Prabuddha Bharata:


Once while crossing the bay between San Francisco and Oakland, he took the notion to smoke. He was seated with some ladies on the upper deck of the ferry where smoking was prohibited. Drawing a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, he lit one and blew the smoke in playful defiance at the prohibitive sign, "No Smoking." One of his companions quickly warned him, "Swami! Swami! You can't smoke here! . . . Here comes the officer! Quick-put it out!"


"Why should I put it out?" he drawled in exasperating coolness.


The officer in question caught sight of the offender, and started for him. Swami continued to puff until the officer came up to him. Then he laughingly threw the half smoked cigarette overboard. The officer looked at him a moment and slowly passed on.[24]


"Smoking was not his only offense in the [Alameda] ‘Home of Truth,' " Mr. Rhodehamel recounted in the same article. "The cream for breakfast was missing one morning. It was a mystery as they knew the milk-man had left it. The event was discussed at breakfast. The Swami quietly listened until all had exhausted their wits in their efforts to solve the mystery. Then he coolly informed them that he had drunk it! I imagine," Mr. Rhodehamel added, "that the more conservative Members of the 'Home of Truth' were shocked by his whimsical tendency.'[25]


They were, in fact, shocked by more than Swamiji's whimsical tendency. Not only was it clear to Molly Rankin and her friends that Swamiji did not act the way a spiritual person should act, it was clear that he did not think the way a spiritual person should think. There was, for instance, his attitude toward healing. In an article entitled "Swami Vivekananda's Mission to the West," Gurudasa wrote, referring to the Home of Truth, "There is a sect in America that teaches that because Jesus healed the sick, to use one's mental power for healing diseases is the true mission in life."


And then came Swamiji [he continued] and he told them the story of his own master, how during an illness one of his followers had suggested that he heal himself through his own mental efforts. The master had listened. But later he said: "How mean to take one's mind away from Mother to direct it towards this filthy body!" And Swamiji concluded with the startling remark: "Jesus would have been greater, had he not used his powers."


To some of his hearers, especially to hidebound church members, such remarks were shocking.... But those who were really sincere . . . to these there was food for thought. And the very startling effect of the words helped them to lift their minds out of the old rut of thinking.[26]


Mrs. Roorbach, who later said "He blew the top out of our minds, " was among those who had practised mental healing; yet she herself questioned its wisdom. "We used to heal a great deal in the Home of Truth," she related. "People came to us for healing, and I did it too. One time I healed someone of cancer. It was just before I went to Swami, and when I talked to him I told him of this and said, 'Swami, I have absolutely no idea how this was done, I only know I have been using a force which I don't understand and which is too big for me. I am a little afraid of it, and I am going to give it up.' Whereupon Swami smiled and said with a gesture of approval, 'Good. Good.' " (In telling it, Mrs. Roorbach made a broad gesture, such as Swamiji had made those many years before.)[27]


All in all, the Home of Truth, whose religious teachings reached and influenced many people, could not but have changed during his visit, and very possibly his disregard of the Home's regulations, such as his insistence on eating meat and his smoking, was, in some part at least, purposive. He would not have laid down laws for the Home of Truth, nor would he have repudiated any of its teachings; that was not his way. But in every gesture—by what he ate, how he walked, what he said —just by living, he showed these earnest people what spirituality was and what it was not—it was not, for instance, a diet of asparagus.


One finds Swamiji in many moods during his stay at the Alameda Home of Truth. We have seen him breaking rules with what must often have been a mischievous gleam in his eye; in the last chapter we have seen him meditating with, or, rather, for, Mrs. Hansbrough to relieve her mind of some oppressive burden; we have seen him in the kitchen with Mrs. Allan, on the two or three Sundays of his stay, acting the role of loving parent with an ill and distraught child, letting her help him prepare Hindu dishes and sharing the finished meal with her. In addition one catches here and there in memoirs and letters glimpses of other moods and other occasions.


We find him, for instance, walking alone in the garden in the early mornings before the others were up or in the late afternoons before dinner. Sometimes a Mr. William Pingree, one of the teachers, who also served the Home as head gardener, would walk with him. "Swamiji said Mr. Pingree had an intuition of the conversation of trees," Mrs. Hansbrough related. "He used to say the trees talked; he would put his hands on them and say he could understand what they were saying.'[28] In his book With the Swamis in America, Swami Atulananda (Gurudasa) tells a sad story of Mr. Pingree and a windmill. It would seem that at one time there had been no rain for weeks and the garden at the Home of Truth was sorely in need of water. To add to the difficulty, the windmill broke down. What to do? To Mr. Pingree the answer was clear:


The other members of the Home had all gathered for breakfast, when the gardener entered the room and in all earnestness requested that they all go into the silence for a few moments, that the windmill showed symptoms of disorder. "Let us treat the windmill," he said; "let us repeat silently: everything is Divine Mind, there is no disorder in Divine Mind, the windmill is in good working order and ready to give us water." The members acquiesced.


The windmill, however, just stood there. "And our simpleminded gardener," Swami Atulananda concluded, "had to undergo the humiliation of calling in a mechanic to put things aright.'[29]


Yet this new-thought Don Quixote was perhaps not altogether simple-minded. "He was the only member of the Home," Mrs. Hansbrough recounted, "who received pay for his services. He asked for and got his board and room and fifteen dollars a month:'[30]And then, Mr. Pingree also had the good sense to walk in the cool of the evening with Swamiji, and he was later among those who visited Shanti Ashrama when Swami Turiyananda was in charge.


Another glimpse of Swamiji in Alameda comes to us from Mr. Allan—that big and burly Scotsman, who in his youth had been an officer in the British Army. "When he was living in the Home of Truth," Mr. Allan related in his unpublished notes, "one day he was pacing the floor, while I stood silently in one corner of the room, watching: suddenly he stopped near me and putting his right hand on my left shoulder said, 'Mr. Allan, we are both of the same caste—we are both of the military caste.' Then he resumed his walk.'[31]


Such small events—a comradely touch, a word—cherished for years, for all of life! Mr. Rhodehamel, too, remembered Swamiji's touch. "Again [one] feels the pressure of a friendly arm about him," he wrote years later; "and he knows, for the time being at least, that his efforts are not in vain.'[32]


At other times, Swamiji would entertain a group of friends with jokes and stories, or, suddenly growing serious in response to a need or a question, would discourse on some aspect of spiritual reality or spiritual practice. Mrs. Allan, for instance, told of the moonlit evening of Easter Sunday, when a small group gathered on the wide, wisteria-curtained porch. Swamiji sat on the railing, smoking his after-dinner pipe. The air was cool, and someone thought he should have a hat. "All right," he said. "Bring the red one." (This was the hat with ear flaps, Mrs. Allan recalled, that one sees him wearing in the picnic photograph taken in South Pasadena.)[33]For a time he joked and told amusing stories. One of these was of how his feet had hurt from wearing shoes when he first came to Chicago in 1893 and of how he was taken to "a lady toe-doctor," who made matters worse. "Oh, my toe, my toe!" Swamiji cried in telling the tale. "Whenever I think of that lady toe-doctor my toe hurts!'[34](When Swamiji told it, the story was no doubt hilarious, for he was a master storyteller and a master actor as well. Yet, when one thinks about it, it only adds to the poignancy of his first week or so in America in the summer of 1893: he had been virtually alone, too late to register as a delegate to the Parliament of Religions, without visible prospects for the future, hooted at in the streets for his strange clothes. And as if this were not enough, we now learn that he had been tormented by unaccustomed and ill-fitting shoes and tortured by an inept lady toe-doctor!)


As Mrs. Allan remembered it, it was after the laughter had died down that one of the party asked Swamiji to talk on renunciation. "He smiled," the rough draft of her memoirs reads, "and said, 'Babies, what do you know of renunciation!' Someone said, 'Are we too young to hear of it?' He was silent for a time. Then he talked on renunciation and discipleship in a way that was most inspiring and illuminating. He spoke of discipleship and of entire resignation to the guru, which was quite a new teaching to the Western world. 'If you want to be my disciple,' he said, 'and I tell you to go to the mouth of the cannon, you must do it without question.''[35]


That was an evening to be long remembered, but another of Swamiji's conversations at the Alameda Home of Truth stands out as particularly extraordinary, for it was fraught with such power that those few who were present were literally transfixed.


"You asked whether I had ever seen Swamiji in any particularly exalted mood," Mrs. Hansbrough once said during her reminiscences of him, and went on: "One time was at the Alameda Home of Truth. I think this was the most inspiring instance except at Camp Taylor. We were seated at the breakfast table in the Home—Mrs. Aspinall, the two Roorbachs, Mr. Pingree, the two housekeepers, the two gardeners and myself. Swamiji began to talk as we all sat there at the breakfast table. Then someone suggested we go into the front room so that the housekeepers could clear the table. The two rooms were separated only by an archway with curtains hung in them. So five of us went into the front room and the rest went about their affairs: Swamiji, Mrs. Aspinall, the Roorbachs and I took our seats, Swamiji sitting on a chair facing the rest of us. He talked a great deal of his Master that day. Two stories which he said were his Master's I remember, because he directed them at me.


"The first was a story of an old water demon who lived in a pool. She had long hair, which was capable of infinite extension. When people would come to bathe in the pool, sometimes she would devour them if she were hungry. With others, however, she would twine a hair around one of their toes. When they went home, the hair, invisible, would just stretch and stretch; and when the old demon became hungry she would just start pulling on the hair until the victim came back to the pool once more, to be eaten up.*(2)

*(2) In the Himalayas near Dalhouise there is a lake where mountain spirits and other supernatural beings are said to dwell. Called Dain Kund, or the “Magic Pool,” it is set like a jewel in a wide stretch of velvety green turf, inviting the passerby. (See “Hill Resorts of India,” India News, 26 July 1968.) It may have been this lake that Swamiji had in mind, for it is a most likely habitat for the old water demon of his story.

" 'You have bathed in the pool where my Mother dwells,' Swamiji said to me at the end. 'Go back home if you wish; but Her hair is twined round your toe and you will have to come back to the pool in the end!'


"The other story," Mrs. Hansbrough continued, "was of a man who was wading down a stream. Suddenly he was bitten by a snake. He looked down, and thought the snake was a harmless water snake and that he was safe. Actually it was a cobra. Swamiji then said to me, 'You have been bitten by the cobra. Don't ever think you can escape!'


"Swamiji did not move from his seat once during the whole conversation. None of us moved from our seats. Yet when he finished, it was five o'clock in the afternoon. Later the two housekeepers told us they had tried twice to open the door from the kitchen into the dining room to clear the table, but could not get it open. They thought we had locked it so we would not be disturbed. Even when Swamiji had finished, Mrs. Aspinall was the only one who thought of taking any food. After talking with Swamiji for a few minutes in his room I put on my coat and came back to San Francisco. As we had gone up the stairs to his room, Swamiji had said, 'They think I have driven them crazy. Well, I shall drive them crazier yet!''[36]


And indeed this was not the only time he held the members of the Home of Truth absorbed and motionless for hours on end. One of those members, a young unmarried woman by the name of Fannie Gould, who became an ardent Vedantist and was to spend the autumn and winter of 1900 at Shanti Ashrama, told Gurudasa of Swamiji's stay in Alameda. "She often told me," he wrote, "how Swamiji would keep the members of the Home spellbound when he talked to them about Vedanta. For hours, Swamiji would go on and on and the listeners fearing to interrupt the flow of his spiritual outpouring dared not stir. With bated breath they would sit and listen. They were carried off their feet, as it were, by his eloquence, they felt as if they were soaring in a higher sphere, they were entranced. And only after the Swamiji was silent would they feel themselves tied again to this mundane existence.'[37]


Nor was Mrs. Hansbrough the only one who had been fatefully bitten. " 'You have been bitten by the cobra,' Swamiji said one morning [to Miss Gould and others as well], 'the poison will have its effect, you will never be your old selves again, the Master has accepted you.' '[38]And it is known that when Fannie Gould died, as she did when she was still a young woman, she died with the name of Sri Ramakrishna on her lips.


Swamiji had many friends in Alameda, some of whom he visited. There were, for instance, Mrs. George H. Perry and other members of the Cheney Section. Then there was a Mrs. Betts, whom he mentioned in a published letter of April 20, writing to Miss MacLeod that he had given Mrs. Betts her message. According to a brief notation made in later years by an East Bay member of the Vedanta Society of Northern California, Mrs. Betts's father was an admirer of Swamiji's and attended his San Francisco lectures. It was, in fact, he, rather than his daughter, whom Swamiji visited several times. Unfortunately, both his name and the exact location of his house have been lost; all we know today is that he lived "somewhere on Clinton Avenue on the Bay side of the street" (Clinton Avenue then bordered Alameda's south shore; but the tide-lands have since been filled and subdivided, and the avenue is today half a mile from the Bay.)


Charles Neilson was another Alameda friend whom Swamiji visited. It is indeed to him that we owe what many feel to be one of the most beautiful, "speaking" photographs of Swamiji that we possess. Among Mr. Allan's papers one finds an account of the circumstances under which it was taken.


"Swamiji with a party of friends," Mr. Allan wrote, "was invited to lunch at the home of Mr. Charles Neilson [1122 Lafayette Street, then also near the south shore]. After lunch they adjourned to the garden, and Swamiji stretched out on the lawn.


"Mr. Neilson, wishing to take a picture of Swamiji, asked him to pose. Swamiji being indifferent about having his picture taken was loath to get up.


"Mrs. Emily Aspinall, one of the party, said, 'Swami, Mr. Neilson wants to take your picture, why not let him?' Swamiji then stood up in front of the summer house and Mr. Neilson took the picture, and that is how Swamiji has the flowers [actually a vine-covered lattice] for a background....'[39]


It can be added to Mr. Allan's account that Mr. Neilson took two pictures of Swamiji, the first of which has not been generally known; it shows him looking not at all pleased. According to Mrs. Allan, someone then said, "Oh, Swami, please smile for us!" Whereupon, Swamiji smiled, and as he did so the second photograph, of which Mrs. Allan once said, "You will see everything in it," was taken.[40] Both pictures are reproduced here: the cross one and the all-inclusive one.


One does indeed find everything in Swamiji's smiling picture, and it is small wonder; for throughout his stay in Alameda he was in an exceedingly exalted state of mind. All anxiety in connection with his work had long since fallen from him. As we have seen, he had sent enough money from Los Angeles to defray the expenses of the Math's critical lawsuit; the muddled Math accounts, which had earlier been a source of despair, had been straightened out by Swami Brahmananda and Swami Saradananda, and Swamiji was pleased with the hard work of his brothers. "I had nice letters from Brahmananda and Saradananda," he had written to Mrs. Bull on March 4; "they are all doing well. They are trying to bring the municipality to its senses; I am glad.'[41] And again on March 7, "I am very much reassured by all the news I since received from India.'[42] In the letter to Miss MacLeod dated in the Complete Works "April, 1900," but more probably written in March he wrote, "I had nice notes from Saradananda; they are doing beautifully over there. The boys are working up well; scolding has both sides, you see; it makes them up and doing.... They have planned and are successfully working famine works by themselves without my help.... All this comes from the terrific scolding I have been giving, sure! They are standing on their own feet. I am so glad. See Joe, the Mother is working.'[43]


In regard to the trouble seething in the New York Vedanta Society, he was not greatly concerned. The difficulty, the details of which are not entirely clear, involved a dispute over the policy to be followed by the Society. Swami Abhedananda held one view, Mrs. Bull, Mr. Leggett, and Miss MacLeod another. ("You may not call me spiritual," Swami Abhedananda was writing around this time in an incensed letter to Mrs. Bull, who he felt was unfriendly toward him and "much against the Vedanta work in New York." "But I am not going to be guided by your or Mr. Leggett's standard of spirituality. You may keep your standard for yourself.")[44] Everyone but Swamiji was much upset. Nor did he feel he should intervene in the matter. "I keep quiet for fear of making further trouble," he wrote to Miss MacLeod on April 18 in a letter that I shall quote from at length a little later. "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 that his notions about Mrs. Bull are entirely wrong." Swamiji's faith in Mrs. Bull, whom he had earlier placed in charge of his work on the East Coast, was unwavering. "Mother will do Her work—I need not worry," he had written to her on April 12. (I quote from an early copy, which differs somewhat from that in the Complete Works.) "For me—alone and drifting about in the will current of the Mother, has been my life. The moment I had tried to a break it, that moment I was hurt. Her will be done. Her power is on you," he reassured her. "I am sure She will lead you to what is right. . .


"I am happy, at peace with myself," he continued, "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 vigils, with Sri Ramakrishna under the Dakshineswar Banyan 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 shall 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 automatons. She is the wire puller.'[45]


Just as this letter bespoke the great peace in which Swamiji was living on his arrival in Alameda, so a single sentence revealed his transcendental mode of consciousness, when in reply to Mr. Allan's jovial greeting—"Well, Swami, I see you are in Alameda!"—he had gravely said, "No, Mr. Allan, I am not in Alameda; Alameda is in me.'[46]But perhaps the most revealing utterance of all is the letter he wrote to Miss MacLeod on April 18, which expresses his mood, his state of being, in words that seem to have been formed just this side of Silence. "It is just like a voice out of Samadhi," Sister Nivedita wrote of it years later to Mary Hale.[47] And it has indeed become known as one of the most beautiful and sublime of all Swamiji's letters. It has often been quoted both in full and in part; nevertheless I shall quote it here almost in full, for only Swamiji's own words can express the state in which he stood, it seems, on the very threshold of the Absolute, steeped in divinity. (The original letter, incidentally, was in later years carried away by a gust of wind when on ship deck Miss MacLeod drew it from among her cherished mementoes of Swamiji to show to some new-met fellow passengers.)


. . . 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.


"Shiva, O Shiva, 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 of 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-—ike 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 picture—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![48]


Swamiji wrote this letter on the day of his final public lecture in California. Two days after he wrote again to Miss MacLeod. "I shall start for Chicago on Monday [April 23]. A kind lady [almost certainly Mrs. Collis P. Huntington] has given me a pass up to New York to be used within three months. The Mother will take care of me. She is not going to strand me now after guarding me all my life.'[49]


But as it happened, Swamiji did not use his railway pass until more than five weeks later.

3

It was on the eve of his scheduled departure for Chicago that Swamiji decided to go instead to a place called Camp Taylor in Marin County, north of San Francisco. In her "Reminiscences," Mrs. Hansbrough tells of this sudden change of plan.

"One Sunday evening [April 22] we were all sitting in the Home of Truth," she recalled, "and Mrs. Aspinall was conjecturing where each of us would be a week hence: Swamiji in Chicago (I had already made his train reservations for him), I in Los Angeles, they [the Aspinalls] at Camp Taylor in Marin County. Then, turning to Swamiji, she said, 'You had better change your mind and go with us.' And Swamiji replied, 'Very well; and Madam, (indicating me) will also go.''[50] And thus, without ado, one plan was cancelled, another made.


"I ought to have started [for Chicago] today," Swamiji wrote to Mary Hale the next morning, "but circumstances so happened that I cannot forgo the temptation to be in a camp under the huge redwood trees of California before I leave.... Again after the incessant work I require a breath of God's free air before I start on this bone-breaking journey of four days.... I start tomorrow to the woods. Woof! get my lungs full of ozone before getting into Chicago.... I have finished work. Only a few days' rest, my friends insist—three or four —before facing the railway.'[51]


In 1900 "Camp Taylor" was a misnomer for the camp at which Swamiji decided to spend "three or four" days. Actually, the spot was a small, private camp situated near Camp Taylor and rented by Mr. Louis M. Juhl, the German restaurateur, who, as we have seen, was a member of the California Street Home of Truth and was later to become a prominent member of the San Francisco Vedanta Society. (Today, Camp Irving, as the site was called, lies well within the large area known as Samuel P. Taylor State Park, which was established in 1946, but in 1900 the private camp site and the large resort hotel of Camp Taylor were two separate and distinct things. The former, however, was sometimes referred to by memoirists as "Camp Taylor," for the name "Camp Irving" had no public meaning.) When Mr. Juhl and his family were not using his camp, he frequently offered it to one or another of his friends. In the spring of 1900 he had given the use of it to Miss Lydia Bell, who in turn had invited Mrs. Aspinall, Mrs. Roorbach, Ida Ansell, and, without immediate success, Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough to be her guests. Miss Bell, Eloise Roorbach, and Ida Ansell had arrived at the camp on Sunday, April 22, carrying with them only the faintest of hopes that Swamiji would follow. It was thus with delighted surprise that they learned from Mrs. Aspinall, who arrived two days later, that he was indeed coming. "We spent the day preparing for him in great joy,'[52] Miss Ansell wrote in her original memoirs. As it turned out, however, the campers suffered a disappointment.


In her "Reminiscences, " Mrs. Hansbrough has told of the events, or mishaps, that prevented Swamiji from arriving when he had first intended. "We set out from the Alameda Home of Truth on Tuesday morning [April 24]," she recounted. "When I went into Swamiji's room he had on the English hunting suit which someone on the East Coast had given him. He was putting on the detachable cuffs which men wore in those days. I had not intended to go to Camp Taylor, but was planning to return then to Los Angeles. I told Swamiji that I would go with him on the ferry to Sausalito and say good-bye there.


"He took off his cuffs and dropped them in the bureau drawer. 'Then,' he said, 'I go to Chicago.' Of course I at once said that I would certainly go to Camp Taylor, and we started off shortly afterward."


There were four steps in the journey from Alameda to Camp Taylor. First, one took a train to the Alameda mole; second, one crossed the Bay to the San Francisco Ferry Building; third, from the Ferry Building one took a big, luxurious ferry for a half hour trip to Sausalito; fourth, at the Sausalito wharf one boarded the narrow gauge train to the camp. In the spring of 1900 only two trains a day carried passengers from Sausalito to Camp Taylor: the morning train that left on week days at 7:40 and an evening train that left around six. Further, there was only one ferry from San Francisco that connected with the morning train; this left at seven, and if one missed it, one missed the trip. To carry the matter back to Alameda, the ferries between that town and San Francisco ran, at best, only once every half hour, as did the trains that served them. Thus in traveling from Alameda to Camp Taylor it was of supreme importance to catch a proper train on the first step of the journey.


"The brief discussion I had had with Swamiji about leaving him at Sausalito," Mrs. Hansbrough continued, "had been just enough to make us miss the broad-gauge train; we arrived at the Park Street Station just in time to see it pull out. Mr. Roorbach, who was with us, said we could probably catch the narrow-gauge train, which was just a few blocks away. So we hurried to the proper street. This train was just getting under way as we arrived. I called to the conductor on the back platform, who called back, 'If you'll run, I'll wait for you.' The train was there within a few yards of us, and I looked at Swamiji. He simply said, 'I will not run.'


"Well, there was no further chance of getting to Camp Taylor that morning, so we went back to the Home of Truth. On the way back I remarked that we had missed the train because there was no engine hitched to our cars. Swamiji [upon whom this sly dig at his refusal to run was not lost] turned to me and said, 'We couldn't go because your heart was in Los Angeles. There is no engine that can pull against a heart. Put your heart into your work and nothing can stop you.' It was a tremendously significant statement, and it has been vivid in my memory all these years."


(In hearing this story from Mrs. Hansbrough, Miss Ansell evidently misunderstood it. In her published memoirs she relates that Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough literally sat for some time in a train that had no engine. Fortunately, we have the correct story in Mrs. Hansbrough's own words, taken down as she spoke them.)


"The Aspinalls had gone on ahead of us to Camp Taylor," Mrs. Hansbrough continued, "and I discovered when we missed the train that my baggage was missing. Later I found they had taken it up with them. After the missed trains and the loss of time, I had once more decided to go back to Los Angeles, but the next day I had to go up to Camp Taylor to recover my luggage. When I told Swamiji I would have to go up for my baggage, he remarked, ' Strange, Mother's dragging you up there, when you tried your best not to go.' When I was there Mrs. Aspinall tried to make me promise that I would not go to say goodbye to Swamiji when I got back to the city: she said I would surely prevent him from getting there a second time. But when I returned with the baggage, Swamiji said, 'Well, come with me to the Camp for a week; we won't stay longer.' When I finally had departed for the south [several weeks later], he told someone, 'She had to go back because the babe (Dorothy) wanted her.' "


A full week passed before Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough again set out for Mr. Juhl's camp. The only known hints of what detained them so long are contained in three published letters written by Swamiji during this interlude. "Sudden indisposition and fever prevent my starting for Chicago yet," he wrote to Mary Hale on April 30, 1900. "I will start as soon as I am strong for the journey.'[53] And to Sister Nivedita on May 2, "I have been very ill—one more relapse brought about by months of hard work.'[54]On the same day he wrote to Mrs. Blodgett of Los Angeles: "Dear Aunt Roxy, . . . I am down again with nerves and fever after six months of hard work. However, I found out that my kidneys and heart are as good as ever. I am going to take a few days rest in the country and then start for Chicago.'[55]As published, none of these letters have a return address, but almost certainly Swamiji spent this week of illness and fever at the Alameda Home of Truth—a much better place in which to be ill than a camp, and one can only think that his having missed the train on the morning of April 24 was, after all, a stroke of good fortune.


On Wednesday, May 2, Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough again set forth For Camp Taylor. Whether they started in the morning or afternoon is not made entirely clear in any memoir, but probably—even considering that Swamiji had already written at least two letters that day—they left in the early morning. Again, he wore his English hunting suit, which, according to Mrs. Allan, consisted in part of a Norfolk jacket. What kind of trousers and hat Swamiji wore, we are not told.


This time they caught the proper train and arrived duly at the Alameda wharf, where they boarded a ferry for San Francisco. "I had packed Swamiji's things, bedding, etc., in two big telescope baskets," Mrs. Hansbrough related, "and Mr. Roorbach undertook to handle them. When we got to the ferry, Mr. Roorbach walked on ahead with his bulky load. As I mentioned before, he and all the others in the Home of Truth were vegetarians; and as Swamiji saw him struggling with the big baskets he said, 'Boiled potatoes and asparagus can't stand up under that!' We had had asparagus tips and potatoes for dinner the night before." Mr. Roorbach, however, evidently stood up manfully, and the various connections between train and ferry, ferry and ferry, ferry and train were managed without a hitch.


In Sausalito, Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough, entering upon the last leg of the journey, boarded the narrow-gauge train of the North Pacific Coast Railroad. The distance between the rails of this particular narrow-gauge track was three feet, as opposed to the standard gauge of four feet, eight and a half inches; and the locomotive and cars were proportionately diminutive. In 1900, as I have learned from an authority on the subject, George H. Harlan, this railroad was in deplorable condition, and, although the company possessed some large and splendid locomotives, only the small ones could be safely (or less dangerously) used on the crumbling roadbed. These brave little engines, for which the term "choo-choo train" seems apt, sported a huge funnel-shaped stack, consumed quantities of cordwood, and tooted a shrill peanut-stand whistle at crossings and around the numerous bends of the road. Although the train generally proceeded at a cautious and tedious rate from Sausalito to the end of the line at Cazadero, some eighty-three miles north, derailments and overturns were frequent. The view from the car windows, however, was delightful.


"After the train left the little town of Sausalito," Mrs.Hansbrough recalled, "we were soon traveling through wooded country along the bank of a stream, and in the peaceful atmosphere Swamiji began to relax almost at once. He was sitting next to the window so that he could look out, and he began to sing softly to himself. 'Here in the country,' he said, 'I am beginning to feel like myself.' "


In the book Narrow Gauge to the Redwoods by A. Bray Dickinson there is a description of the route (which no longer exists) as it was at the turn of the century and as Swamiji saw it:


Kaleidoscopic scenes continued to charm and delight the traveller as trains pulled away from the pier below Sausalito's steep hillside. There were tide flats with their reeking odors and house boats tied up to rotten piling. Mount Tamalpais rose in the background, reflecting the morning sun rays above the lesser hills spotted with groves of oak and madrone.... Rails traversed the length of lovely Ross Valley, where little streams flowed through fields of golden poppies and sky-blue lupine. Scattered along the way were villages half hidden in woods: Corte Madera, Larkspur, Tamalpais, San Anselmo.... The train crossed ridges with slopes blanketed by thickets of manzanita, wild lilac and winter red toyon.


Little engines . . . puffed and snorted, stuttered, and spun driving wheels as they dragged loads up long grades and in and out of ravines. The trains would . . . roll over creaking trestles, through smoke-filled tunnels, and around hairpin curves where passengers saw their locomotive headed in an opposite direction from themselves....


A 1,300-foot tunnel at the top of White's Hill was constructed on a steep grade which made it difficult for a laboring engine completing the climb. To make matters worse, the water dropping from springs made the track wet and slippery. Many long trains became stalled inside the tunnel while a sweating fireman furiously stoked his fire to get up more steam. The passengers nearly suffocated from the smoke.


As cars glided down the hill into redwood filled Lagunitas Canyon passengers frantically raised their windows for fresh air. The train followed shadowy Paper Mill Creek and then rolled past the old paper mill all the way out to Tomales Bay.[56]


A mile or two before coming to the old paper mill, the train had stopped to let Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough alight at what was known as Irving Flag Station, a point in the sweet smelling woods by Paper Mill Creek, twenty miles (about an hour-and-a-half train ride) from Sausalito.


According to an old railroad map, the flag station was some two hundred feet beyond the entrance to Mr. Juhl's camp. The camp abutted on the railroad embankment and ran parallel to it, occupying a strip of level land about one hundred and fifty feet long and forty to sixty feet wide between the track on the north and the sloping bank of the creek on the south, Just here, the stream, whose overall course was north-west, flowed due west, and just, here also, the narrow, unpaved county road, which had been running along the south bank of the stream, turned due north and crossed it on a wooden bridge, forming the camp's western boundary. At the camp's eastern end the land dropped sharply from track to stream, and the trees and brush that grew in this sloping, uninhabitable wilderness formed a natural barrier. On the north the land continued to rise steeply behind the railroad, sheltering the area from wind and helping to seclude it.


The railroad, the camp, the stream, arid the county road, to name them in their north-to-south order, lay in a narrow valley (or broad canyon) between moderately high hills. This was not mountain country: the camp was only 135 feet above sea level, and the highest peak of the surrounding hills was a mere 1,466 feet. The canyon and the lower slopes were thickly wooded with broad-leafed trees—oak and bay, maple, alder, and willow—and, towering over all, were stands of lordly redwood, through which sunlight shafted as through high cathedral windows. Flowering bushes of many kinds grew in abundance, as did tall ferns and wild berry vines. White azaleas tinged with faint pink and yellow flourished luxuriantly along the banks of the stream, and in May, champagne-colored iris, red and yellow columbine, blue monkshood would have been everywhere in bloom. Indeed the whole canyon was a luxury of flowering woodland. But the hills that rose above it were bare, lifting themselves virtually free of foliage to lie grass-green and buttercup-gold in the springtime sun.


On entering the camp one found the kitchen immediately to one's right. It consisted of a small cast iron stove, backed by a forked tree which supported a box-cupboard and shelves and from which hung pots, pans, a kettle, and various cooking utensils. A large, domed-top steamer trunk held additional supplies and equipment. Somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen must have been a water tap, for, as Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, water was piped to the camp for cooking and bathing. Just beyond the kitchen was what Mrs. Roorbach described years later as the "dining-room set up"—a crude wooden table and two board benches. A trail led from the entrance to the far end of the camp, where, in Swamiji's time, a small grove of redwood trees served as a chapel for meditation and sometimes for a class. In the area between the kitchen and the rove stood the tents.


A few photographs taken at the camp in 1900 have been found among the papers of Mr. and Mrs. Allan. One of these, reproduced here, was taken by a Robert Notman Miller some three months after Swamiji had left. It shows the kitchen and dining room with Eloise Roorbach standing at the stove. (The young woman shown seated on one of the benches is the wife of the photographer, holding her infant son in her lap.) As shown here, both the kitchen and the dining room were shielded from the road and bridge by a canvas fence, and high above the table an awning was stretched like a hammock between the trees. But according to Ida Ansell's memory, this fence and awning must have been hung later in the year.'*(3)"The dining room," she recalled, "was right in the open. There weren't any canvas walls." [57]

*(3) Mr. Allan’s memory of the dining room at Camp Irving differs from Ida Ansell’s. In his unpublished notes (VSNC), Mr. Allan wrote of the “Improvised, canvas-walled dining room and kitchen” that existed during Swamiji’s stay at the camp. Miss Ansell’s memory may have been the clearer on this point.

Aside from its historical interest, this photograph has a special value, for with its help the spot on which Swamiji's tent stood has recently been pinpointed. The story of this discovery is perhaps worth telling. In September of 1948 a group of devotees from the Vedanta Society of Northern California took Miss Ansell to revisit the camp site in order to verify its location. (Earlier, they had taken Mrs. Roorbach to the same place for the same purpose.) Miss Ansell recognized the spot, though she found it less wooded than it had been in earlier years. "The shrubs and bushes were very thick then," she recalled, "and when one entered the camp from the road, one could see nothing of the tents.... The women's tents were just below the railroad tracks, at the foot of the embankment, and were set about eight or ten feet apart. There were three: Mrs. Hansbrough's [and Mrs. Aspinall's], mine and Miss Bell's, and Mrs. Roorbach's. Directly across from Miss Bell's tent and a little to the right, that is, a little toward the kitchen, stood Swamiji's tent'[58] (Mrs. Roorbach, who had also recognized the spot, had similarly described the placement of the tents: "Swamiji had a little tent to himself," she had said. "It was out further from the embankment than ours and down nearer the dining room and kitchen spots, because he wanted to be alone and we didn't feel like coming too close to him.")[59]


Equipped with this information and the photograph of the kitchen, a fellow member of the Vedanta Society of Northern California and I drove to Camp Irving one day in September of 1969. We carried with us maps, charts, all available memoirs, cameras, a tape measure, a shovel, and a box of heavy-duty plastic bags. We set out fairly early in the morning, thinking to avoid picnickers and Park Rangers, for our mission (the nature of which will become clear) might not have seemed altogether lawful, and would certainly have seemed odd. 


Irving picnic area, as the site is now called [no overnight camping is allowed], is very different than it was when Swamiji was there. Not only have many trees and shrubs been cleared away to make a large open space, but the old bridge, the old road, and the trestle are gone. From the new county road, a wide paved driveway leads into the camp site and runs its length to the old "meditation grove," where now (1969) sits a barbecue grill. A public rest room—a small green house —stands on the approach to the old bridge. (The new bridge crosses the stream a hundred feet or so to the west.) A few picnic tables, benches, and litter cans are scattered about. But despite these changes, the spot is lovely still: many trees grow tall along the bank of the stream, their branches meeting overhead; the air is fresh and redolent of the woods, the water is clear. When there are no automobiles parked about and when no picnickers turn up their transistor radios, one can feel oneself to be deep in the silent woods, and one can believe that Swamiji was once there, talking of God, meditating.


The first part of our mission was to locate as exactly as possible Swamiji's tent site. To do this we had first to find the old kitchen, which no one had done before us. The only possible tree seemed to be a forked bay tree growing near the old road and near the stream, its bark mossy with age and its base about fifteen feet in circumference. But this could not be the kitchen tree, we told each other, for, viewed from any angle, its right-hand fork did not curve in conformity with the tree in the photograph. Then suddenly my friend pointed out that the bay tree had a stump on its right side which had once been a third fork, and this fork could have curved to exactly match the right-hand fork of the kitchen tree. A close inspection of the photograph showed that the kitchen tree had indeed had three forks, not two, as it had seemed at first. So this, then, was the tree. This ground where we stood had been Swamiji's kitchen; just here had been the little stove just there, the dining room. We began pacing off yards, taking pictures, consulting maps and manuscripts, measuring. 


Our next step was to locate the exact spot of Miss Bell's tent. This we were able to do without much trouble. Almost directly opposite her tent (Miss Ansell had said) and "a little to the right toward the kitchen," had stood Swamiji's. And, to be sure, the site, thus located, was just where, measuring from the kitchen, we had thought it should be. (This spot was indeed almost inevitable; for his tent could not have been pitched much nearer the kitchen without being almost in the dining room, nor could it have stood farther from the kitchen without encroaching upon the stump of a huge and ancient redwood.) As we reckoned it, his tent would have stood a little to the right of this stump (possibly a towering tree in 1900) and would have been set back a little from the bank of the stream.


Now came the second part of our mission—the part requiring the shovel and the plastic bags. My friend scraped away the loose top soil from the approximate center of the place where Swamiji's tent had almost certainly stood and then shovelled clean earth into the bag that I held open to receive it. Then we smoothed over the hole, leaving no discernible dent in Samuel P. Taylor State Park. We repeated this procedure down by the stream, filling another bag, this time with creek. bed gravel. This done, we drove seven miles west to the Vedanta Retreat at Olema. There at the monastery we deposited our holy earth, treasure which was later to be imbedded in a monument to Swami Vivekananda.


But to go back to the days when that earth was made holy, there exist, aside from Miss Ansell's oral description of Camp Irving, three first-hand accounts of Swamiji's two weeks' stay there: one from Ida Ansell herself, one from Mrs. Hansbrough, and one from Mrs. Roorbach. In addition, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Allan, who visited now and then (and once sent Swamiji a case of bottled mineral water), jotted down a few notes. Of these several records, Miss Ansell's memoirs are the moat full, and the following story, much of which will be familiar to readers of Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, is  largely based on it. From the unpublished accounts, however, many new bits of information will help to illume this period of Swamiji's life, when, as he wrote on leaving Alameda, "I am going to throw off all worry, and glory unto Mother.'[60]


Through Mrs. Hansbrough's memory, as well as Miss Ansell's, we see him on his first night under the redwoods. "Swamiji built a fire on a spit of sand that ran out into the stream," the former recalled, "and we all sat around it in the quiet night and Swamiji sang for us and told stories, such as those about Suka Deva and Vyasa." "I close my eyes," Ida Ansell adds, "and see him standing there in the soft blackness with sparks from the blazing log fire flying through it and a day-old moon above.'[61](The moon was in fact three days old, and thus in the early evening was still high in the west.) In her original, unpublished, memoirs (written in 1947) Miss Ansell recalled in a passage that differs a little from the published version: "We had a glorious meditation around the campfire. He said to us, 'You may meditate on whatever you wish, but I shall meditate on the heart of a lion. That gives strength.' . : . It was a never-to-be-forgotten night. The profound stillness of the forest, the beauty of the fire, and most of all—Swami, serene and majestic, evidently very happy to be there, free from lectures and crowds of people. Though he was tired and needed a rest, how unutterably grand he was! 'We end life in the forest, as we begin it,' he declared. 'But what a world of experience lies between the two states!' I cannot remember the details of what he said, but I can still feel the great peace and power of our meditation that night whenever I think of it.'[62]


Someone remembered a few more details of what Swamiji had said that first night and later told them to Gurudasa, who in turn quoted them in his article, "Swami Vivekananda's Mission to the West": " 'Now,' [Swamiji] said, 'imagine that you are yogis, living in the Indian forest. Forget your cities, forget everything. Think only of God. See,' he said, pointing to the stream flowing nearby, 'here is Mother Ganges.' And they  lighted the Dhuni and sat around it and he taught them how to meditate and to make Japam. And facing the stream he would shout: Hara, Hara, Vyom, Vyom! Hara, Hara, Vyom, Vyom! until that sound vibrated in every mind and the world was forgotten and the soul soared into regions unknown before.'[63]


The next day there was a trace of rain; and the day following that, which was Friday, May 4, there was more than a trace. Indeed, according to Miss Ansell (who inadvertently skipped over May 3 in both her published and unpublished memoirs), it rained on Friday all day. Though Swamiji felt ill and had a fever that morning, he talked to the five women for hours, sitting on Miss Bell's cot in the tent she and Miss Ansell shared. That night the rain continued, and Swamiji's fever worsened. He became very ill, so ill that he made a will (neither his first nor his last), in which, Miss Ansell said, he left "everything to his brother monks." Mrs. Hansbrough and Mrs. Aspinall nursed him. "I can see Mrs. Hansbrough now," Miss Ansell wrote in her first memoirs, "heedless of the pouring rain, putting some extra protection over his tent, which was almost opposite ours.'[64]


Mrs. Hansbrough probably had as little sleep that night as Swamiji. The rain had driven her from a bed under the trees into Mrs. Aspinall's tent, which was not, it turned out, a watertight shelter. "Mrs. Aspinall," she related, "had some printed mottoes such as the Home of Truth people often put up. She had pinned some of these to the sloping roof of the tent. Of course wherever the pins were, the tent leaked, and that night I found water dripping steadily on my forehead from. 'Love Never Faileth.’"


That was perhaps the worst night the campers spent. Within a day or two Swamiji recovered, and we do not hear of his being again seriously ill at the camp. One cannot, however, say much for the weather. It was too early in the year for consistent sun and warmth. It rained once again (on Thursday, May 10) and was often cloudy; on the other hand, it was often clear, and during the day the temperature was almost always in the sixties. The moon, in its bright fortnight—a crescent when Swamiji arrived and full before he left—was a presence every night, sometimes known only by a veiled glow, sometimes threading through islands of clouds, but often sailing free in an open sky.


In 1900 the camp was not without neighbors. A number of wooden buildings associated with a tannin mill stood among apple trees and rose bushes on a stretch of level ground across the road. There was also a large general merchandise and grocery store for the convenience of the workmen, and a rose covered cottage rented to a Miss Ella McCarthy, who, it so happened, was a friend of Eloise Roorbach's. But these buildings were not visible from the camp, and whatever sounds may have come from them would have been absorbed by the intervening woods. The days were serene and still, and there was very little travel on the county road. Later in the summer, Sunday bicyclers would pedal past on their way to the picnic grounds at Camp Taylor, but in early May the traffic was sparse even on weekends and almost non-existent during the week.[65]As for the railroad, the little trains, it is true, would roar past practically on top of the campers, the railway embankment rising a mere ten feet or so above the level of the tents-- 'so close," Eloise Roorbach remembered, "that the train shook us. It made an awful racket.'[66] But as a rule, this fuming, snorting beast did not bear down upon the camp more than four times a day—twice from the south, twice from the north —and for all its uproar, it left behind only the fragrant smoke of burning fuel-wood.


Life at the camp settled into a simple routine. Swamiji, as we learn from Mrs. Roorbach, was generally up with the sun, which rose around five o'clock. "My tent was close enough to his," she said, "so that I could hear him chanting in the early morning. He would chant by the hour. Sometimes it was very low. I would sneak out and walk down toward the kitchen so I could hear him better. What he chanted was always again and again, 'Truth is one, sages call it by various names.' "[67] Perhaps this was indeed what Eloise Roorbach heard; but it would seem more likely that in the still, pristine day as the sun rose through the trees Swamiji chanted from various Sanskrit scriptures and hymns in that language of the gods, of which she understood, she said, not a word.


A little later the others rose and perhaps dipped into the stream. For the most part Paper Mill Creek was shallow—so gently flowing and clear that in a contemporary photograph every pebble on its bed is as sharply visible as though seen through air alone—but here and there were deep pools, one of which, Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, was near the camp. “There was a delightful pool in the stream for bathing," she said, "which all of us used except Swamiji, who found the water too cold." (But he would have braved that cold if necessary, and at least once he thought it might be. "I remember," Ida Ansell related, "that once Shanti [Mrs. Hansbrough] went walking in the creek—she was a daredevil. I was walking on one bank holding her hand; Swamiji was on the other side just ready to plunge in if anything happened to her. He was concerned about her and said to me, 'That's a very gingerly hold!' ")[68]


"We would usually have breakfast sometime between seven-thirty and eight," Mrs. Hansbrough said; and for this they gathered in the kitchen-dining area. The campers' meal taking was not always unobserved. Miss Ansell tells of an American Indian boy who was doing some work in the vicinity and who one morning stood watching as they ate. Later Swamiji talked to him, and the boy, who had not been offered any coffee, made the comment: "Black man like coffee, white man like coffee, red man like coffee." "This amused Swamiji very much, " Miss Ansell wrote. "He requested that the boy be given some coffee, and all the afternoon he kept repeating the boy's remark and laughing.'[69]


"About ten or ten-thirty," Mrs. Hansbrough recounted, "Swamiji would hold a meditation, which generally took place in Miss Bell's tent, as she had requested." Mrs. Hansbrough said very little more about these morning sessions, and we learn from Mrs. Allan, in whom she confided, that she disapproved of them. "Mrs. Hansbrough thought Swamiji should rest," Mrs. Allan wrote, "as he had done so much lecturing and should not be asked to talk or meditate with the students, but Miss Bell wanted him to do so, and he acquiesced. Mrs. Hansbrough did not attend these meetings. One morning when the other students had gathered in the tent Swamiji went into the open-air kitchen and asked if she was not coming to meditation. She replied, 'I can't come just yet; I'm busy cooking. I'll come later.' Swamiji said, 'That's all right, you do not need to meditate; I'll meditate for you.'[70] (One finds this not improbable repetition of an incident that occurred in the Turk Street flat also told in Miss Ansell's published memoirs in connection with Camp Taylor. There, however, one reads that Swamiji excused Mrs. Hansbrough with the words, "Well, never mind; our Master said you could leave meditation for service.")[71]


The morning meditation was not always held in Miss Bell's tent, but sometimes in the redwood-grove chapel at the far end of the camp. "I remember," Mrs. Roorbach later said, "that we each chose a different little spot within this grove to meditate in.'[72]

(Two other photographs that were taken at the camp after Swamiji had left were presumably, though not certainly, taken in this meditation grove. In both, Miss Lydia Bell is the central figure. Surrounding her in the first picture are, from left to right, Mrs. Emily Aspinall, a Mrs. Schultz, Ida Ansell, and Eloise Roorbach. The second photograph does more justice, one imagines, to Miss Bell, who does not seem to have come out too well in the first. Here Mrs. Carl F. Petersen sits on her right and Mrs. Schultz, one of her students, on her left. Neither of these two women visited the camp when Swamiji was there. Mrs. Schultz drops out of the history of the Vedanta movement in California altogether; Mrs. Petersen, however, was among those who were to play an active and important part in the early growth of the San Francisco Society.)

4

We learn a few details of Swamiji's morning talks from Miss Ansell's memoirs, both published and unpublished, both written and oral. "He had been invited to the camp to rest," she said, "but all morning he would sit on a cot in Miss Bell's tent, and we sat on the floor around him, and he talked all the morning. He would talk of philosophy and religion, telling many stories, comparing Indian and American customs and answering questions. He told of his hopes for a better understanding of the East and the West and their mutual benefit thereby. He told of his love for Thomas a  Kempis and how he had travelled all over India with two books, the Gita and The Imitation of Christ.'[73]

Of Swamiji's talks at Camp Taylor Mrs. Roorbach also told a little: "He often said everything is one; Divine Mother is in everything," she recalled; "and he insisted for one of his teachings that we look upon every relation, whether brother or husband, or father, or mother or sister, as Mother regardless of sex. We were to tell ourselves that everyone we saw was Mother.


"You know," she continued, "in India they are more frank than we are in the West and Swami was very open with us, almost childlike in some of the things he said, and one day he said this startling thing to us: 'In my first speech in this country, in Chicago, I addressed that audience as "Sisters and Brothers of America," and you know that they all rose to their feet. You may wonder what made them do this, you may wonder if I had some strange power. Let me tell you that I did have a power and this is it—never once in my life did I allow myself to have even one sexual thought. I trained my mind, my thinking, and the powers that man usually uses along that line I put into a higher channel, and it developed a force so strong that nothing could resist it.'


"At another time he spoke of the regard we must have for all approaches to worship, and he said this: 'The primitive man worships the idol (he said fetish), and he worships that for a long time, and he looks at it and looks at it. One day he will be looking at it when suddenly behind the idol will appear the spirit, and he will see that, and thus the worship of the idol leads him to the sight of God.' '[74]


In speaking of Swamiji's most exalted moods, Mrs. Hansbrough mentioned three occasions that stood out in her memory: There was the special day on the hilltop in South Pasadena when he had talked absorbedly for six hours until the air became "just vibrant with spirituality"; there was the even more special day at the Alameda Home of Truth when again he had talked for some six hours without interruption; and there were unspecified times at Camp Taylor which, according to her, surpassed the others. One indication of the special luminosity of Swamiji's mood during his days at the camp is contained in an answer he gave to a question or, rather, a statement of Miss Bell's. The incident is told by both Miss Ansell and Mrs. Hansbrough in almost identical language, and I give here the latter's version, simply because it has not been heretofore published:


"One day after the meditation in Miss Bell's tent, Miss Bell remarked, 'This world is an old schoolhouse where we come to learn our lessons.'


" 'Who told you that?' Swamiji demanded. She could not remember.


" 'Well, I don't think so,' he declared. 'I think this world is a circus ring in which we are the clowns tumbling.'


" 'Why do we tumble, Swami?' Miss Bell asked.


" 'Because we like to tumble,' was his answer. 'When we get tired, we will quit.''[75]


Throughout his San Francisco lectures, Swamiji had reiterated the theme that "the whole universe is a vast play." "Play! God Almighty plays. That is all," he had cried in "The Goal." " . . . You are having fun, playing with worlds and all that.... It is all fun. There is no other purpose.... I am the man that is going to be hanged. I am all the wicked. I am getting punished in hells. That also is fun.'[76] All this and more was contained in Swamiji's brief reply to Miss Bell: "We are clowns tumbling." Only from a high Advaitic viewpoint could such words be meaningful, and it seems clear that in California and perhaps particularly during the last two months of his stay, he was seeing men and women not as captives in Maya, inching painfully toward freedom, but, literally, as God Himself playing at joy and at misery for the sheer, wonderful fun of it. Swamiji was himself consciously playing. "I have no aims, no want, no purpose," he had said in "The Goal." "I come to your country, and lecture just for fun. No other meaning.'[77]And one is reminded of his description of the activity of an illumined soul: "After realization," he had said to an Indian disciple, "what is ordinarily called work does not persist. It changes its character. The work which the Jnani does only conduces to the well-being of the world.... About the motive of the actions of such personages only this can be said—'Everything they do like men, simply by way of sport.' '[78]But while Swamiji's hard work was by way of sport, he also played in ways recognizable to the ordinary onlooker as play—though of an uncommonly joyful kind. He did not spurn the little things; rather, he made them shine.


"After the morning meditation and talk, he would be interested in the preparations for dinner," Miss Ansell recounted. "Sometimes he helped. He made curry for us and showed us how they grind spices in India. He would sit on the floor in his tent with a hollow stone in his lap. With another smooth, round stone he would grind the spices much finer than we can do with a bowl and chopper. This would make the curry quite hot enough for us, but Swami would augment it by eating tiny red-hot peppers on the side. He would throw his head back and toss them into his mouth with a great circular movement of his arm. Once he handed me one of them, saying, 'Eat it. It will do you good.' One would eat poison if offered by Swamiji, so I obeyed, with agonizing result, to his great amusement. At intervals all the afternoon he kept asking, 'How is your oven?' '[79]


Swamiji no doubt had his reasons for introducing a fire inside Miss Ansell—it may have been his way of impressing her mind, which, as she later admitted, had been lost in devotion to Miss Bell—but he made it up to her by cooking rock candy especially for her, remarking as he stood by the stove stirring it, "The longer you boil the sugar, the whiter it becomes and all the impurities are removed.'[80]


According to Mrs. Roorbach, he also made candy flavored with sesame seeds, and Mrs. Hansbrough tells that often in the evenings or late afternoons he would make chapatis, mixing flour with the pure water of the stream and slapping the dough into big, flat, unleavened patties that he would cook over the coals of the camp fire. Generally, this would be a fire built on the tongue of sand that jutted into the stream, where all Swamiji had to do for water was dip a ladle into the crystal current. His fire would be small and efficient. "One day I built a big fire," Mrs. Roorbach recalled. "Swami didn't like it. He said, 'All that wood is enough for a funeral pyre!' He undid it and built a small one.'[81]


The women did most of the cooking most of the time, and now and then, they taught Swamiji a new trick. Mrs. Roorbach, who was a good cook, once prepared some asparagus (that favorite of the Home of Truth) and made some mayonnaise to go with it. This last, Swamiji liked. "Show me mayonnaise, " she quoted him as having asked her, and of course she showed him. "We were tickled almost to death to do anything for him," she said. "He was so like a child that we took complete care of him and made his full plans for the camp and cooked for him. He was sick there once, not the time he was very sick, but just slightly sick, and he said, 'I must have swallowed a fly.' We laughed a little at him, because we knew he didn't really know what was going on in his stomach any more than he knew the time or the value of money.'[82]


But to return to the meals at the camp, they were "jolly and informal, with no end of jokes and stories," Ida Ansell recalled. She went on to say that at breakfast one morning Swamiji, himself free from convention and pleased with Mrs. Hansbrough's carefree spirit, reached over and took a little food from her plate. "It is fitting that we should eat from the same plate," he said; "we are two vagabonds." And, according to Miss Ansell, it was during one of the meals at Camp Taylor that he remarked to Mrs. Aspinall that if she had lived on the highest mountain she would have had to come down to take care of him. With which she agreed.[83]


(One learns very little about Emily Aspinall from the memoirs of this period, and nothing at all has come down to us from her own pen. Yet she was by Swamiji's side during almost his entire stay in northern California: she had greeted him at the Pine Street Home of Truth when he had arrived in San Francisco from Los Angeles; she had helped keep house for him at the Turk Street flat; she had served him in any way she could at the Alameda Home of Truth, and now, under the rough and simple conditions of the camp, she was again taking care of him. Later, she was to see him in San Francisco at least once before he left for the East Coast. Quiet and serious, she was simply there to serve him, as though indeed destiny had so ordained.)


In the afternoons Swamiji and some of the women would go on long walks through the woods. "We would walk along the road," Mrs. Roorbach recalled, "and then we would take trails leading off from it and walk back into the hills. We didn't talk much on the walks; we just quietly went along here and there. There were wood choppers in that vicinity, and it was said that they were not a very good type of people, but I was so convinced that I was in the presence of the Lord that nothing bothered me. There were rattlesnakes—even that didn't bother me. Not far away was a small hotel; we would go there once in a while for supplies. But Swamiji didn't go with us often; he was very quiet. He wanted to be quiet. The railroad track crossed the road north of the camp and then crossed the stream over a high trestle. Sometimes on the way to the hotel we would walk over the trestle with Swamiji, but he didn't like to do that, so we generally walked underneath the trestle.'[84]


In 1900 this hotel, together with adjacent camping and picnic grounds, all of which were located about three-quarters of a mile downstream from Swamiji's camp, comprised Camp Taylor. Included in this book is a photograph taken of the hotel in August of 1900. It was possibly from the footbridge shown here that Swamiji, taking a gun from a group of young men who were unsuccessfully shooting at a number of eggshells strung together and bobbing about in the current of the stream, hit a dozen or so with as many shots. Returning the gun to the astonished young men, who had challenged him to try his hand at this difficult sport, he assured them that he had never before handled firearms. The secret of his unerring aim lay, he told them, in the concentration of his mind.[85]The locale of this incident, which is narrated in the Life, is not certain, but shooting at bobbing eggshells was just the sort of thing young men would be doing at Camp Taylor in 1900.


The guests at the resort could not have failed to note and ponder the occasional appearance of a majestic, dark-skinned Hindu in an English hunting suit. It is not surprising therefore that strangers sometimes wandered into Swamiji's camp, curious to see what manner of place it was. Eloise Roorbach tells of a woman who thus "turned up one day." "Swamiji," she said, "took one look at her, and was so horrified by what he saw that he backed into his tent and disappeared." Mrs. Roorbach told another story relating to a stranger at the camp: "We were all walking toward the meditation clump of trees," she said, "when Swamiji stooped and picked up a little comb, a woman's comb, and asked, 'Does this belong to any of you ladies?' We each examined it and said 'No not mine.' 'What!' he exclaimed, 'it doesn't belong to any of you?' Whereupon he dropped it like a hot coal.'[86]


(One might ask here, as I have asked, why it was that Swamiji, who saw only God in all beings, was so horrified by the woman and so repelled by a stranger's comb. I asked this question of a senior swami of the Ramakrishna Order, and he replied: "To one who lives on so high a plane as Swamiji, sometimes the vision is of God and sometimes it is a clear vision, through and through, of the superficial person. As for the comb, Swamiji would have picked up the comb as an act of service; but sannyasins never touch such things as a woman's comb. So when he found that it didn't belong to any of the women there, he just dropped it.")


Returning from their walks, the campers would soon prepare the evening meal, Swamiji often helping. After eating, they would sometimes stroll near the camp in the twilight. "I remember climbing up the little embankment," Eloise Roorbach said, "and we would walk up and down the track with him." But soon it would grow dark and chilly, and they would sit around a blazing campfire. "The wonderful things he talked to us in the evenings!" Mrs. Roorbach exclaimed. She did not, however, elaborate, and it is only from Ida Ansell that one learns a little, though very little, of those evenings by the fire.


"The grand climax of the day's activities was the evening fire-side talk and the following meditation," she wrote in her published memoirs. "After telling stories and answering questions [and, Mrs. Hansbrough adds, "insisting that each of us tell a story"],[87]Swamiji would give us a subject for meditation such as 'Firm, and Fearless' before beginning to chant. One morning he inspired us with a talk on 'Absolute Truth, Unity, Freedom' and the subject for the evening meditation was 'I am All Existence, Bliss and Knowledge.''[88] And thus, the campers meditating with Swamiji under the trees in the moonlight, the only sounds the stream singing to itself and owls solemnly conversing, the day would come to a close.


"At the weekends there were visitors," Mrs. Allan wrote in her notes on Camp Taylor. She was making a first hand observation, for she and Mr. Allan were present on both weekends (there were only two). Who the other visitors were, she does not say. But while, on the one hand, visitors came to the camp on weekends, on the other hand, two of the regular campers left. Early on Saturday mornings Miss Bell and Miss Ansell would board the train for San Francisco, where Miss Ansell would give a music lesson on Saturday afternoons and Miss Bell would deliver a lecture at the California Street Home of Truth on Sunday mornings, her young devotee happily taking shorthand notes. Sunday afternoons they would return to the camp. On the second and last weekend of Swamiji's stay Miss Bell entrained for the city on Friday, leaving Ida to follow the next day.


"When I was getting ready to take the train as usual, Miss Ansell recorded in her published memoirs, "Swamiji said to me, 'Why do you go?' 'I have to go, Swami,' I replied, 'I have to give a lesson.' I have always regretted the answer " she continued, "for the dollar I received for the lesson was not the motive for going. The real motive was Miss Bell's lecture: ' Characteristically, Swamiji did not press her to stay nor question the reason she gave for going. "Then go," he said, "and make half a million dollars and send it to me for my work in India."


"He took me up the steep steps to the railroad track and flagged the train for me," she recounted. "There was no station and the train stopped only on signal. Swamiji's carriage was magnificent. His eyes were always turned skyward, never down. Someone said of him that he never saw anything lower than a telegraph pole. When the engine passed us, as the train slowed down, I heard the fireman say to the engineer, 'Hellow! Who is this sky pilot?' I had never heard the expression and was puzzled at first as to its meaning. Then I realized that it must mean a religious leader, and that it was evident to any one who saw him that Swamiji was such a leader." Then saying goodbye to him, she boarded the train.[89]


That had been on May 12. Only a few more days remained to be with Swamiji in the deep quiet of the woods, to listen to his marvellous talk, to eat his curries and chapatis, to joke and laugh with him, to hear him chanting in the early morning, to sit near him when he meditated, to be carried as on a great wave into a realm of joy and peace that one could not otherwise have even imagined.


The exact date on which he left the camp is not known. We do know, however, through a letter to Nivedita that he was in San Francisco on May 17, thus he and Mrs. Hansbrough must have flagged down a southbound train on the sixteenth or seventeenth of May and, boarding it with the two cumbersome telescope baskets, have headed for Sausalito and the ferryboat that would take them back across the Bay to the city. Swamiji had lived under the redwoods by Paper Mill Creek for at least two weeks, and, as Mrs. Hansbrough said, "He really enjoyed his stay."


ⓘ
[1].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC.
[2].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences,” VSNC.
[3].Complete Works, 1 : 476.
[4].Interview with Edith (Mrs. Thomas J.) Allan by John Yale (Swami Vidyatmananda), San Francisco, September, 1952, VSNC.
[5].Eloise Roorbach, recorded conversations, San Francisco and Camp Taylor, May 4, 1950, VSNC.
[6].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, April 12, 1900, SN Col.
[7].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[8].See ref. 5 above.
[9].Doxey’s Guide to San Francisco, 1897.
[10].Alameda Argus, 17 March, 1900.
[11].Rem. (Viraja Devi), p. 397. The bracketed phrase in this quotation is from Edith Allan’s unpublished notes, VSNC.
[12].Ida Ansell’s first transcript of “Meditation,” April 3, 1900, VSNC.
[13].Complete Works, 8 : 491.
[14].Complete Works, ., p. 255.
[15].As related by Edith Allan to a member of the Vedanta Society of Northern California, San Francisco.
[16].See ref. 6 above.
[17].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[18].Complete Works, 8 : 434.
[19].Complete Works, 4 : 249.
[20].See ref. 6 above.
[21].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[22].Frank Rhodehamel, “Vedanta in California,” P.B. 21 (February-March 1916): 38-39.
[23].Swami Nikhilananda, Vivekananda: A Biography, p. 155.
[24].See ref. 22 above, p. 38.
[25].See ref. 22 above,., p. 39.
[26].Br. Gurudasa (later Swami Atulananda), P.B. 23 (April 1918): 85.
[27].See ref. 5 above.
[28].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[29].A Western Disciple (Br. Gurudasa, later Swami Atulananda), With the Swamis in America, p. 8.
[30].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[31].Thomas J. Allan, Allan Papers, VSNG.
[32].See ref. 22 above, p. 38.
[33].As related by Edith Allan to Edna G. Zulch, San Francisco, 1938.
[34].Edith Allan, unpublished notes, VSNG; see also Rem., p. 396.
[35].Edith Allan, unpublished notes, VSNG.
[36].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[37].See ref. 29 above, p. 119.
[38].See ref. 29 above, pp. 119-20.
[39].Thomas J. Allan, unpublished notes, VSNG.
[40].See ref. 33 above.
[41].Complete Works, 8 : 495.
[42].Complete Works., 8 : 495-96.
[43].Complete Works 8: pp. 508-9.
[44].Swami Abhedananda to Sara Bull, April 12, 1900, SCB.
[45].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, April 12, 1900, SN Col.; cf. Complete Works, 8:517.
[46].Thomas J. Allan, unpublished notes, VSNG.
[47].Letters of Sister Nivedita, 2 : 923.
[48].Complete Works, 6 : 432-34.
[49].Complete Works., 8 : 519.
[50].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.” (Subsequent quotations from Alice Hansbrough in this section are taken from the same source.)
[51].Complete Works, 8 : 520.
[52].Ida Ansell, original memoirs, 1947, VSNG.
[53].Complete Works, 8 : 520.
[54].Complete Works, 8:521.
[55].Complete Works7:522.
[56]. A. Bray Dickinson, Narrow Gauge to the Redwoods, pp. 61-62.
[57].Recorded conversations with Ida Ansell, Camp Taylor, September, 1948, VSNC.
[58].Recorded conversations with Ida Ansell, Camp Taylor, September, 1948, VSNC.
[59].Eloise Roorbach, recorded conversations, Camp Taylor, May 4, 1950
[60].Complete Works, 8 : 521.
[61].Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 379.
[62].See ref. 52 above.
[63].Br. Gurudasa (later Swami Atulananda), P.B. 23 (April 1918): 84.
[64].See ref. 52 above.
[65].Much of my information given in regard to the early days of Camp Taylor comes from the manuscript of Bertha Stedman Rothwell’s “Pioneering in Marin County,” San Francisco Public Library.
[66].See ref. 59 above.
[67].Ditto
[68].See ref. 57 above.
[69].Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 381.
[70].Edith Allan, unpublished notes, VSNC.
[71].Rem. (Ida Ansell), pp. 378-79.
[72].See ref. 59 above.
[73].Ida Ansell, original memoirs; see also Rem., pp. 379-80.
[74].See ref. 59 above.
[75].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[76].Complete Works, 2 : 472.
[77].Complete Works,., p. 471.
[78].Complete Works,7 :200.
[79].Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 380.
[80].Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 380.
[81].See ref. 74 above.
[82].Ditto
[83].Rem. (Ida Ansell), p. 380.
[84].See ref. 74 above.
[85].Life (1981), 2 : 529.
[86].See ref. 74 above.
[87].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[88].Rem (Ida Ansell), p. 381.
[89].Rem (Ida Ansell)., pp. 381-82.

5

But much as Swamiji had enjoyed camping under the redwoods, two weeks of rest were not enough to fully restore his health, which had suffered so bad a relapse at the end of April. Returning to San Francisco, he went at once to visit his friend Dr. Milburn H. Logan, who, with his family, lived at 770 Oak Street in a large, three-story frame house on the north-east corner of Oak and Steiner streets—a location in the same district of the city, broadly speaking, as that of the Turk Street flat. The house (today numbered 510 Steiner) still stands, but has been divided up into apartments, its exterior defaced in the process. Luckily, a snapshot, which is here reproduced, was taken before this remodelling took place; it shows the house as it had been when Swamiji stayed there and when, in 1901 and 1902, it was the meeting place of the Vedanta Society of San Francisco.

It was from this house that Swamiji wrote on May 17 to Nivedita, who was then in Chicago. His letter read in part:


Dear Margot

I am sorry I cannot come to Chicago yet for a few days. The Doctor (Dr Logan) says—I must not undertake a journey till completely strong. He is bent on making me strong. My stomach is very very good & nerves fine—I am getting on—a few days more & I will be all right....


I will write you soon an introduction to Mrs. Huntington. This affair should be private.[1]


The following day Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Bull, who was in London setting people's minds at rest regarding the disposition of their donations to his Indian work, which had, they were glad to learn, been strictly accounted for. His letter was in reply to a long one of hers, in which she had assured him of freedom from all financial burdens and obligations and had given him, as well, a good deal of grave, motherly counsel concerning the direction of his life. Always meaning so very well, she had written:

I would advise you now to have no further dealings with money expenditure either for buildings or gifts or for any purpose whatsoever. But to hold in strict economy what remains in addition to your earnings, spending only the income of these except for necessities. This seems to me beyond doubt the only right way for you now. We will hope that your lawsuits may soon be disposed of and your worried expenditure for these be determined.... Now I see the time has come for you indeed to be the free sannyasin, blessed by our Guru and the peace that comes of that blessing. If at this point you choose the permanent—the spiritual—making no attempt to build upon material foundations, but look like a child for the daily influx of love and joy that shall flood your own life and the lives of all those who love you, all will be well. I say this not from any abstract theorizing or fanciful notion,  but after a patient study of you, your gurubhais, and the environment of all. It seems to me a very critical time—where the choice is made possible to you now.... Now that you are standing with a clean record as regards your obligations for work undertaken and carried out, and have added your good efforts for which you have received a modest return in California, it would be a tragedy were you not to choose the freedom of the sannyasin and be done with organization and ambition.[2]


Swamiji let it pass. His reply, not heretofore published, read:

San Francisco 
18th May 1900

My dear Mother, Many thanks for Joe's and your letters. I have again a bad relapse—and struggling out of it this time I am perfectly certain that with me all diseases are nervous. I want rest for 2, 3 years—and not the least bit of work between. I will take rest with the Seviers in the Himalayas.


Mrs. Sevier gave me 6000 Rs. for family—this was distributed between my cousin, aunt &c. [8,000 Rs.? See Swamiji's letter of August 6, 1899, to Mrs. Bull, chapter two.] The 5000 Rs. for buying the house was borrowed from the Math funds. Do not stop the remittance you send to my cousin, whatever Saradananda may say to the contrary: Of course I do not know what he says.

I have long given up the idea of a little house on the Ganges—as I have not the money.


But I have got some in Cal [Calcutta] and some with the Leggetts and if you give a thousand more that will be a fund for my own personal expenses, as you know I never took Math money, as well as for my Mother. Kindly write to Saradananda from yourself to give up the little house plan. I am not going to write any more for weeks yet, till I completely recover. I hope to get over [to Europe] in a few weeks from now—it was a terrible relapse. I am with a Doctor friend and he is taking every care of me.


Tell Joe that going amongst different people with message also does not belong to the Sannyasin—for a Sannyasin is quiet & retirement scarcely seeing the face of man.


I am now ripe for that physically at least —if I can't go into retirement nature will force me to it. Many thanks that temporal things have been so well arranged by you.


With all love to Joe and yourself

Your Son[3]
Vivekananda

(In the Pacific Vedantin, and in the Life, it is said that a Dr. William Foster also took care of Swamiji at this time. The name has no meaning to us today, except as an indication that another physician was called in. According to the San Francisco Directory for 1900, Dr. Foster's offices were at 1510 Market Street. This tells us that he was not one of Dr. Logan's assistants; but beyond that negative bit of information, we know at present nothing about him.)


Swamiji's visit to California was drawing to a close. Yet, as he wrote in another heretofore unpublished letter from Dr. Logan's house, a number of things still detained him. Perhaps, in addition to his poor health, not the least of these was his desire to speak before the young Vedanta Society of San Francisco, which had been earnestly and faithfully holding its meetings. His letter, which was addressed to Swami Abhedananda and which I give in full below, bears no date, but there is a note on the original which reads: "Rep[lied] 23/5/1900." For the letter to have arrived in New York by May 23, Swamiji must have written it by May 19 at the latest. It reads:

770 Oak Street
San Francisco, 
Cal. c/o Dr. Logan, M.D.

My Dear Abhedananda

I am very very glad to hear about the new home of the Vedanta Society—As things stand I will have to come to New York direct from here—without stoppage—but it will be two or three weeks yet I am afraid. Things are coming up so fast that I can not but change my plans and stop a few more days.


I am trying my best to get one of you for a flying visit to this Coast—it is a great country for Vedanta


Get all my books and clothes etc. in your home—I am coming soon—My love to Mrs. Crane. Is she still living on beefsteak and hot water? Miss Waldo and Mrs. Coulston write about the publication of a new edition of Karma Yoga. I have written to Miss Waldo all about it—The money in hand from the sale of books ought to be spent of course.


Do you see my books and clothes all safe there. They were with Mrs. Bull in Boston.

With all love[4]
Vivekananda


Back in San Francisco, Mrs. Hansbrough again felt drawn to South Pasadena, where her small daughter awaited her. This time there was no counter-pull in her mind, for her service to Swamiji was now done. "After returning from Camp Taylor," she related, "I stayed with a brother-in-law of mine, Jack Hansbrough, for about three days and then went back to Los Angeles. I saw Swamiji every day before I left, and twice the last day. Then he was ill in bed. I stood at the foot of the bed and said good-bye to him. 'Come and shake hands,' he said. 'I never make a fuss over people even when I have known them many years.' I assured him that I had certainly not expected him to make any fuss over me. 'The Lord bless you and keep you,' he said. And I departed."

That should have been the end; but Mrs. Hansbrough spoiled the elegance of that farewell by characteristically leaving behind a suitcase. She did not, at least, go back for it. "After all the false starts for Camp Taylor, I was not going back for that; so I asked Mrs. Aspinall to get it when she had an opportunity and send it on to me. She told me later that when she went for it, Swamiji remarked, 'So she left that, did she? Take it out of here!' and he gave it a push with his foot.'[5]


"After I had left San Francisco," Mrs. Hansbrough continued, "Swamiji took another brief vacation trip somewhere outside the city with a Dr. Miller before he left for the East Coast." Here again the similarity of the names Miller and Hiller gives us trouble. One finds in the memoirs of Mrs. Clinton French (quoted from earlier) a mention that Dr. Albert Hiller, concerned over Swamiji's health, took him away to his cabin in the Mount Shasta region for a few days of complete rest. Most probably, this is the vacation trip that Mrs. Hansbrough, meaning Hiller by Miller, had in mind; for there seems to have been no other time during which Dr. Hiller could have taken Swamiji away from the Bay Area. Beyond these two scanty references, we know nothing about this trip to Mount Shasta, except that Swamiji must have taken it (if he took it at all) between May 18 and 24. He was, we know, in San Francisco on May 18 (writing to Mrs. Bull), and on May 24 he was also in the city, writing on that day a letter to Sister Nivedita (in which he answered a number of questions pertaining to Hindu mythology) and on that evening lecturing to the Vedanta Society. At the most, therefore, he could have spent five full days in the Mount Shasta region—a wild, extensive, and beautiful mountainous area in the northernmost part of California.


But whether or not Swamiji went to Mount Shasta for a few days' rest, he seems to have made Dr. Logan's home his headquarters during the last two weeks of May. "Dr. Logan was a man of middle age at that time," Mrs. Hansbrough once said," and was apparently devoted to Swamiji. He was very helpful to him:[6] Just when the doctor began attending Swamiji's San Francisco lectures we do not know. He first stepped into our view at the inaugural meeting of the Vedanta Society, already filled with enthusiasm for the ideals of Vedanta and happy to be able to provide the newborn society with a meeting place. He was at this time an energetic and vital man of forty-four who had made his way in the world with such admirable speed and diligence that eight years earlier he had been written up at unusual length in a book of biographical sketches of prominent, or at least outstanding, men of the Bay Area. "We have entered somewhat more fully into his biography than is customary," the editors of this book wrote in 1892, "for the reason that the history of Dr. Logan is of great value, especially to the young, as showing what may be accomplished, even at an early age, by energy and application, when combined with natural talent.'[7]A brief story of Dr. Logan's early life will not be out of place here, for Swamiji stayed many days in his home, under his medical care.


When he was eight years old, Milburn Hill Logan came with his parents, James and Unity Logan, from Centralia, Illinois, to California. There were at the time four children in the family: the eldest was a boy of thirteen, the youngest an infant. Arriving in California, they settled for a time in Oakland, where, in a manner not made clear by the biographers, Mr. Logan was robbed of nearly all he possessed. The family then moved to Napa County and with their remaining money bought a fifty-acre farm on the outskirts of the town of Saint Helena. Mr. Logan soon became a prominent citizen. By trade both a carpenter and an undertaker, he shortly built up, it was said, "one of the leading furniture and undertaking houses of the county." In the meanwhile young Milburn attended school at Saint Helena and in his eighteenth and nineteenth years took private instruction in physics, hygiene, physiology, and the principles and practice of homeopathy. While it seems clear that he leaned at an early age toward the study of medicine, his choice of career was not yet made. In 1875 he entered the University of California in Berkeley, then an institution of under three hundred students. After studying in the College of Chemistry for two years, he was temporarily blinded during a vacation by the untimely explosion of a large can of blasting powder. This adversity, which put a stop to his studies for nearly two years, filled him with determination rather than despair. Regaining his eyesight toward the end of 1879, he at once decided upon medicine as a career. In order to lose no more time, he abandoned the idea of completing his university course and forthwith entered the California Medical College in Oakland. In those days, one could become a licensed physician without a university degree and after only two years of medical study. Milburn Logan reduced the time to a year and a half, his previous courses in chemistry giving him a six months' advantage. In 1881 he graduated with honors, married and opened an office in San Francisco. The science of medicine being what it was in the 1880s, independence of mind, perseverance, flexibility, and imagination were a doctor's greatest assets, and all these Dr. Logan had to a degree. He did not follow the beaten and not particularly rewarding path; rather, he was "an eclectic physician conscientiously selecting or choosing from any or all schools the methods and treatment best adapted to particular cases." Rapidly he built up "a very large and lucrative practice," which within ten years "necessitated the employment of several assistants.'[8]


Dr. Logan's energy, zest, and ambition extended far beyond his medical practice. He somehow found time to return to the University of California and graduate in pharmacy. Shortly thereafter, he was elected Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology in the Medical College and two years later, in 1883, was promoted to the chair of that department. He also became a graduate of the Chautauqua Scientific and Literary Circle, a four-year home-reading course that covered a wide field of history and social culture. Further, he wrote two medical textbooks, studied archaeology, and was an ardent collector of coins, rocks, shells, and petrifactions. In addition, he had traveled widely in Europe and the British Isles, "visiting the famous hospitals and seats of learning, especially at Edinburgh, London, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Italy, as well as other parts.'[9]


Dr. Logan's only known biography—the short sketch in the Bay Area book—ends with 1892. Of the period between that year and 1900 we can only say that he continued to pursue his studies and to build up his medical practice. By the time we meet him, he was not only an M.D. and a Ph.D. (Graduate in Pharmacy), but an M.A. In the years between 1892 and 1900 he had also built his fine house at 770 Oak Street, where he, his wife, and their two young sons lived, together with one of his sisters and a Dr. Roscoe L. Logan, who may have been a nephew.


It is small wonder that Swamiji liked this man who was so full of life and so interested in a world of subjects, who was able to talk on many topics and apparently able to listen and to learn as well. Above all, Dr. Logan appreciated spiritual idealism; he was not merely an ambitious, energetic, and vigorous minded man of the world. Although there is nothing explicit in the sketch of his life to indicate a tendency toward spirituality, he may have leaned in that direction from an early age. In 1878, after his accident with the blasting powder, he became, for instance, an active and prominent member of the Knights of Pythias and thereafter joined at least seven other secret societies, such as the Scottish Rite and the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry, all of which had a mystical doctrine at their core. Whether his membership in these societies resulted from or created his interest in metaphysics one cannot say; but it is clear that his interest was genuine and his desire to ally himself with and to serve Swamiji's work was—as far as can be understood—sincere.


In 1900 Dr. Logan's downtown office suite was the best he could offer the Vedanta Society for a meeting place. According to Mrs. French's memoirs neither his wife nor his sister, shared his enthusiasm for Vedanta. "Both were openly opposed to his renovating and altering of the ground floor plan of his — formerly by his two children as playrooms—to meet the needs of the growing society," Mrs. French wrote. "No member of his family ever appeared at any class or other occasion, and in spite of the Doctor's cordial welcome, each of the Swamis in turn felt under restraint while guest in his home, due to this opposition.'[10] (It must have been Dr. Logan's sister who chilled the air during the stays of Swami Turiyananda, Swami Abhedananda, and Swami Trigunatita; for only after Mrs. Logan had died in January of 1901 did Dr. Logan feel free to offer the use of his house to the Vedanta Society. He then lost no time in doing so: from January 31, 1901, to January 22, 1903, the Society made 770 Oak Street its headquarters, and at various times during that period the Swamis—Swami Turiyananda, Swami Abhedananda, and Swami Trigunatita—made it their residence.)


One may wonder why Swamiji stayed for so many days in a household where he was not wholly welcome. The answer lies perhaps in the devotion of Dr. Logan himself and in Swamiji's fondness for him. A document attesting to the warm relation between Swamiji and Dr. Logan is an open letter the doctor wrote to Swami Abhedananta in 1902. The letter has been published in Vivekananda and His Work by Swami Abhedananda, and I quote it here, for although it was written at a date beyond our present story, it reflects Dr. Logan's attitude when Swamiji was a guest in his house:


Many are the moments of sadness since the Swamijee has gone away. It seems that all the gods had left us, for his Divine presence spread peace and tranquility wherever he went; the tumult of uncertainty departed from my soul at the sound of his magic voice. His very form and every mood were those of tender compassion and sympathy. None knew him but to love him; those of us who have had the royal good fortune to have met him in the flesh will some day realize that we have met the true Incarnation of the divine One.


To me he is "The Christ," than whom a greater one has never come; his great and liberal soul outshines all other things; his mighty spirit was as free and liberal as the great sun, or the air of heaven.


No being lived so mean or low, be it a man or a beast, that he would not salute. His was not only an appeal to the poor and lowly but to kings and princes and mighty rulers of the earth, to grand masters of learning, of finances, of art and of the sciences, to leaders of thought on all its higher lines. Great teachers bowed reverently at his feet, the humble followed reverently to kiss the hem of his garments; no other single human being was reverenced more during his life than was Vivekananda.


In the few short weeks that I was with him few could know him better than I. At first I attended him through a severe spell of sickness, then he sat with me partly through a paralytic stroke; he would charm me to sleep and enchant me awake. So passed the sublimest part of my life, and now that sweet memory lingers and sustains me ever and always.[11]


On Thursday, May 24, 1900, Swamiji was well enough to attend a regular meeting of the Vedanta Society at Dr. Logan's offices at 6-8-10 Geary Street, a building that stood on the north side of the street near the triangular intersection of Geary, Kearny, and Market. Since April 14, when Swamiji had founded the Society, its members had been meeting there regularly every Thursday evening. At these meetings, which, to judge from their Minutes, had not been particularly eventful, Mr. Charles Neilson, an honorary member of the Class, had read each time from the Gita and had answered questions. The only business of moment that had come before the membership involved the determination of the dues. After a lengthy discussion, during which "many expressed their views on the subject," it had been decided that "there be no limit placed upon the amount of dues to be required from the members or those wishing to join the class.'[12]Aside from this curious decision, the only event of note had taken place on May 17, when Miss Mizener had resigned as secretary and Mr. Albert S. Wollberg had been chosen for that office, which he was to hold for many years thereafter.


It was the next meeting of the Vedanta Society—the seventh since its founding—that Swamiji attended. The Minutes of this only known occasion when he addressed a regular meeting of the Society were as dry and skeletal as when Mr. Neilson gave his usual readings. Nonetheless, they are worth quoting in full:

May 24th 1900 Thursday

The Class met at Dr. Logan's offices, No. 10 Geary St at 8 P.M.


The Swami Vivekananda delivered an address on the Bhagavad Gita.


Thereupon a business meeting ensued at which Dr. Plumb notified the Class that the Swami would deliver a course of  three lectures at Dr. Logan's residence, 770 Oak Street.


The evenings determined on, after taking a vote, were Saturday, Monday and Tuesday, the lecture to be held at 8 P.M.


Tickets For the series to be $1 for the three and 50c for each separate lecture.


The meeting then adjourned.[13]


But that is not our only record of this historic occasion. It so happened that Frank Rhodehamel was among those present and that he took notes of Swamiji's talk, or, at least, of some of it, placing quotation marks around sentences that were entirely verbatim. Heretofore unpublished, his notes read as follows:


The Gita is the gist of the Vedas. It is not our Bible, the Upanishads are our Bible. It is the gist of the Upanishads, and harmonizes the many contradictory parts of the Upanishads. The Upanishads are divided into two portions—the work portion and the knowledge portion. The work portion contains ceremonials, rules as to eating, living, doing charitable work, etc. The knowledge came afterwards and was enunciated by kings. The work portion was exclusively in the hands of the priests, and pertained entirely to the sense life. It taught to do good works that one might go to heaven and enjoy eternal happiness. Anything, in fact, that one might want could be provided for him by the work or ceremonials. It provided for all classes of people good & bad. Nothing could be obtained through the ceremonials except by the intercession of the priests. So if one wanted anything, even if it was to have an enemy killed, all he had to do was to pay the priest and the priest through these ceremonials would procure the desired results. It was therefore in the interests of the priests that the ceremonial portion of the Vedas should be preserved. By it they had their living. They consequently did all in their power to preserve that portion intact. Many of these ceremonials were very complicated, and it took years to perform some of them.


The knowledge portion came afterwards and was promulgated exclusively by kings. It was called the Knowledge of Kings. The great kings had no use for the work portion with all its frauds and superstitions and did all in their power to destroy it. This knowledge consisted of a knowledge of God, the soul, the universe, etc. These kings had no use for the ceremonials of the priests, their magical works, etc. They pronounced it all humbug; and when the priests came to them for gifts, they questioned the priests about God, the soul, etc., and as the priests could not answer such questions they were sent away. The priests went back to their fathers to enquire about the things the kings asked them, but could learn nothing from them, so they came back again to the kings and became their disciples. Very little of the ceremonials are followed today. They have been mostly done away with, and only a few of the more simple ones are followed today. Then in the Upanishads there is the doctrine of Karma. Karma is the law of causation applied to conduct. According to this doctrine, we must work forever, and the only way to get rid of pain is to do good works and thus to enjoy the good effects, and after living a life of good works die and go to Heaven and live forever in happiness. Even in Heaven we could not be free from Karma, only it would be good Karma, not bad.


The philosophical portion denounces all work however good, and all pleasure as loving and kissing wife, husband or children, as useless. According to this doctrine all good works and pleasures are nothing but foolishness and in their very nature impermanent. "All this must come to an end sometimes, so end it now; it is vain." So says the philosophical portion of the Upanishads. It claims all the pain in the world is caused by ignorance, therefore the cure is knowledge. This idea of one being held down fast by past Karma, or work, is all nonsense. No matter how dense one may be, or how bad, one ray of light will dissipate it all. A bale of cotton, however large, will be utterly destroyed by a spark. If a room has been dark for untold ages a lamp will end it all. So with each soul, however benighted he may be, he is not absolutely bound down by his past Karma to work for ages to come. "One ray of Divine Light will free him, reveal to him his true nature."


Well, the Gita harmonizes all these conflicting doctrines. As to Krishna, whether or not He ever lived, I do not know. "A great many stories are told of Him but I do not believe them." "I doubt very much that He ever lived, and think it would be a good thing if He never did. There would have been one less god in the world.'[14]


Frank Rhodehamel had evidently fully appreciated that last scandalous observation, capturing it verbatim and marking it as such, hearing behind it, perhaps, the lion-roar of Advaita to which Swamiji had given voice again and again in California: "Stand on your own feet! Help yourself!"


This talk on the Gita before the Vedanta Society at Dr. Logan's office was in a sense introductory to the three formal lectures he was to give at the doctor's home, of which we have two sets of notes—Ida Ansell's and Frank Rhodehamel's. "I did not go home (from Camp Taylor) until June 16th," Miss Ansell was to write to Mr. Allan in 1932, "so missed (Swamiji's) Gita talks, which I think were given at Dr. Logan's.'[15]Happily, she was much mistaken: she had not only attended the Gita talks (very likely all the campers had returned to San Francisco for the purpose), but had taken excellent notes, which she later discovered and which, together with Frank Rhodehamel's notes which he took on May 26 and May 29, constitute a fairly complete record of Swamiji's farewell talks in California.


These notes of his three lectures on the Gita are particularly valuable, for while there are many references to the Gita scattered through the Complete Works, one finds few talks devoted exclusively to this subject. Swamiji no doubt held a number of Gita classes at the Math in India, both before going to the West the second time and after his return, but the only published record of such classes is of one held in 1897 when the Math was still located at Alambazar, near Calcutta. A summary of this class was entered into the Math Diary and subsequently translated for publication in the Complete Works (volume four) under the title "Thoughts on the Gita." In addition to this, one finds in volume five of the Complete Works the translated notes of a talk on the Gita entitled "Work without Motive," delivered by Swamiji in Calcutta before a meeting of the Ramakrishna Mission on March 20, 1898. If we add a portion of his lecture "The Sages of India," delivered in Madras in 1897, to his published Indian discourses on the Gita, then we find that the Complete Works contain three such discourses, which, considering Swamiji's lifelong regard for this book, is not a great many. Of his talks on the Gita in the West, Ida Ansell's notes, the second transcripts of which have been published in volume one of the Complete Works, and Frank Rhodehamel's heretofore unpublished notes, together with his invaluable memories, are the only records we possess.


As is well known, one of the great contributions Swamiji made to the religious culture of the world was to give the pure truths of the Upanishads to the people in a form that could be understood by everyone. "If you look," he once said to Sister Nivedita, "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 Vedas and Vedanta and all lies in that one word.'[16]But Swamiji did not thereby slight the Gita; indeed he looked upon the Gita as the best possible commentary on the Upanishads. The book was with him always, not only in the sense that he carried it with him everywhere, but in the less literal sense that its verses seem to have been ever on the tip of his tongue, ready to highlight some teaching or observation of his own.


As a prelude to Swamiji's classes at Dr. Logan's, it may be worthwhile to discuss here his other discourses, as well as his scattered comments, on the Gita, or at least to mention the primary points he made in regard to this great book which he held in such high esteem. I am aware, however, that such a discussion may not be of interest to every reader, and thus it is only fair to say at once that the following section can be skipped without doing violence to the story of Swamiji's life in California.

6

In discussing Swamiji's talks and comments on the Gita, it will be best, I believe, to use his class at the Alambazar Math as a sort of framework. This class, to judge from its summary in the Complete Works, seems to have been Swamiji's first Gita class at the Monastery. He gave it for the benefit of his young disciples, and he began by raising a number of scholarly questions.

"To understand the Gita properly," he is quoted in the Math Diary as having said, "several things are very important to know. First, whether it formed a part of the Mahabharata, i.e., whether the authorship attributed to Veda-Vyasa was true, or if it was merely interpolated within the great epic; secondly, whether there was any historical personality of the name of Krishna; thirdly, whether the great war of Kurukshetra as mentioned in the Gita actually took place; and fourthly, whether Arjuna and others were real historical persons.'[17]Swamiji went on to explain that there were valid grounds for asking such questions and for subjecting the historicity of the Gita to the researches and probings of higher criticism. We need not discuss those grounds for inquiry here, but need only give Swamiji's conclusions as found both in his Math class and elsewhere.


As for the date of the Gita, he was definite in not placing it later than that of the Mahabharata. "Many are of opinion," he said in his talk before the Ramakrishna Mission, "that the Gita was not written at the time of the Mahabharata. This is not correct. The special teachings of the Gita are to be found in every part of the Mahabhatata.'[18] In a somewhat more scholarly talk given in the late summer of 1900 before the Paris Congress of Religions, Swamiji again discussed the date of the Gita. "[He] said that the worship of Sri Krishna is much older than that of Buddha," the report of his talk reads, "and if the Gita be not of the same date as the Mahabharata, it is surely much earlier, and by no means later. The style of language of the Gita is the same as that of the Mahabharata.... Again, the line of thought in the Gita is the same as in the Mahabharata; and when the Gita notices the doctrines of all the religious sects of the time, why does it not ever mention the name of Buddhism?'[19]


It is quite probable, Swamiji said at Alambazar Math in connection with the historical position of the Gita, that it was the scripture of a sect that later ceased to exist but that "had embodied its high and noble ideas in this sacred book.'[20] Again, during the course of his talk before the Ramakrishna Mission, he expressed the view that the Gita represented the solution to, or synthesis of, two clashing views of religion. "When the Gita was first preached," he said, "there was then going on a great controversy between two sects. One party considered the Vedic Yajnas and animal sacrifices and such Karmas [rituals] to constitute the whole of religion. The other preached that the killing of numberless horses and cattle cannot be called religion. The people belonging to the latter party were mostly Sannyasins and followers of Jnana. They believed that the giving up of all work and the gaining of the knowledge of the Self was the only path to Moksha. By the preaching of His great doctrine of work without motive, the Author of the Gita set at rest the dispute of these two antagonistic sects."[21]


In his "Reply to the Maharaja of Khetri," written in the spring of 1895, Swamiji gave a more political interpretation of the struggle between the two clashing sects. "Ancient India," he wrote, "had for centuries been the battlefield for the ambitious projects of two of her foremost classes—the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas.


"On the one hand, the priesthood stood between the lawless social tyranny of the princes over the masses, whom the Kshatriyas declared to be their legal food. On the other hand, the Kshatriya power was the one potent force which struggled with any success against the spiritual tyranny of the priesthood and the ever-increasing chain of ceremonials, which they were forging to bind down the people with.


"The tug of war began in the earliest periods of the history of our race, and throughout the Shrutis it can be distinctly traced. A momentary lull came when Sri Krishna, leading the faction of Kshatriya power and of Jnana, showed the way to reconciliation. The result was the teachings of the Gita—the essence of philosophy, of liberality, of religion....'[22]


As for the historicity of Sri Krishna, Swamiji looked upon much of the mythology that centered around him as simply that—mythology. "It is human nature to build round the real character of a great man all sorts of imaginary superhuman attributes," he said at Alambazar Math. "As regards Krishna, the same must have happened, but it seems quite probable that he was a king. Quite probable I say, because it was chiefly the kings who exerted themselves most in the preaching of Brahma Jnana.'[23]


In his lecture "The Sages of India" Swamiji declared that there must indeed have lived a supremely great soul known by the name of Krishna—not alone because of the teachings of the Gita, but also because of that "great landmark in the history of religions"—the teaching of Divine Love contained in the Bhagavatam, the story of the Cowherd of Vrindavan. "Taking the life of any other sage or prophet," Swamiji said, "we find that that prophet is only the evolution of what had gone before him, we find that that prophet is only preaching the ideas that had been scattered about his own country even in his own times. Great doubts may exist even as to whether that prophet existed or not. But here, I challenge anyone to show whether these things, these ideals—work for work's sake, love for love's sake, duty for duty's sake, were not original ideas with Krishna, and as such, there must have been someone with whom these ideas originated. They could not have been borrowed from anybody else. They were not floating about in the atmosphere when Krishna was born. But the Lord Krishna was the first preacher of this; his disciple Vyasa took it up and preached it unto mankind.'[24]


In regard to the Kurukshetra War, Swamiji stated at Alambazar Math that there was no doubt that a war was fought between the Kurus and the Panchalas [Pandavas]. But did Sri Krishna actually deliver the whole of the Gita when the two great armies were facing each other, poised to fight? And if this improbable event did indeed take place, "was any shorthand writer present there to note down every word spoken between Krishna and Arjuna in the din and turmoil of the battlefield?" There was room here for doubt. "According to some," Swamiji said, "this Kurukshetra War is only an allegory. When we sum up its esoteric significance, it means the war which is constantly going on within man between the tendencies of good and evil.'[25]


On other occasions, also, Swamiji mentioned that the Gita could be taken as allegorical. Having come to class one morning at Thousand Island Park with a Gita in his hand, he thus interpreted the first discourse: "Krishna, the 'Lord of souls,' talks to Arjuna, or Gudakesha, 'Lord of sleep' (he who has conquered sleep). The 'field of virtue' (the battle-field) is this world; the five brothers (representing righteousness) fight the hundred other brothers (all that we love and have to contend against); the most heroic brother, Arjuna (the awakened soul), is the general. We have to fight all sense-delights, the things to which we are most attached, to kill them. We have to stand alone; we are Brahman, all other ideas must be merged in this one.'[26]


Yet Swamiji did not labour this allegorical interpretation of the Gita. To him the setting of the Kurukshetra War was more representative than allegorical. The battle Arjuna must fight represents the intense external activity that life demands from the average man. That each must perform the action allotted to him without flinching, with full vigour, and, above all, with perfect inner serenity was, to Swamiji's mind, the Gita's essential message, and no place could have been more appropriate than the battlefield for the deliverance of such a teaching. Historical or not, the setting served to heighten the central theme and was, in this respect, a consummate stroke of art. Indeed, when through Swamiji's eyes one sees the divine scene taking place, the setting becomes a teaching in itself.


In a conversation in Calcutta with a Hindu gentleman, Swamiji described his own conception of that immortal event, himself posing as the divine charioteer teaching the path of dharma to Arjuna. "The central idea of the Gita should radiate from His whole form," he said. " . . . Look here, thus does he hold the bridle of the horses—so tight that they are brought to their haunches, with their forelegs fighting the air and their mouths gaping. This will show a tremendous play of action in the figure of Sri Krishna. His friend, the world-renowned hero, casting aside his bow and arrows, has sunk down like a coward on the chariot, in the midst of the two armies. And Sri Krishna, whip in one hand and tightening the reins with the other, has turned himself towards Arjuna, with his childlike face beaming with unworldly love and sympathy, and a calm and serene look-and is delivering the message of the Gita to his beloved comrade. Now, tell me," Swamiji asked his friend, "what idea this picture of the Preacher of the Gita conveys, to you?"


"Activity combined with firmness and serenity," the friend replied.


"Aye," Swamiji exclaimed, "that's it!—Intense action in the whole body, and withal a face expressing the profound calmness and serenity of the blue sky! This is the central idea of the Gita—to be calm and steadfast in all circumstances, with one's body, mind, and soul centered at His hallowed Feet!'[27]


What need that this scene be historical? As for Arjuna and other heroes of the Mahabharata, Swamiji pointed out at Alambazar Math the scholarly grounds for doubting that such persons had actually lived. Thus, step by step and with his characteristic regard for truth, he blasted some irreparable holes in the historical foundations of the Gita. But having done so, he at once reminded his young disciples that "there is no connection between these historical researches and our real aim [of study], which is the knowledge that leads to the acquirement of Dharma.... Even if the historicity of the whole thing is proved to be absolutely false today, it will not in the least be any loss to us."


"Now," Swamiji continued at the Math, "it is for us to see what there is in the Gita." Here, with the help of one of those beautiful, clarifying analogies that seem to have been always at his service, he evaluated the Gita in relation to the Upanishads. "If we study the Upanishads," he said, "we notice, in wandering through the mazes of many irrelevant subjects, the sudden introduction of the discussion of a great truth, just as in the midst of a huge wilderness a traveller unexpectedly comes across here and there an exquisitely beautiful rose, with its leaves, thorns, roots, all entangled. [In the Gita, on the other hand, one finds] these truths beautifully arranged . . . in their proper places—like a fine garland or a bouquet of the choicest flowers.'[28]


In London in 1896 Swamiji had expressed somewhat the same idea when he compared the Gita to the older Upanishads. In the Chhandogya Upanishad, for instance, "one has to wade sometimes through quite a mass of unnecessary things to get at the essential doctrines"; whereas in the Gita, which he said could be looked upon as the last of the Upanishads, one finds "the beautiful flowers of spiritual truths'[29]collected and brought into one place. For this very reason, however, one cannot study in the Gita, as one can in the very old Upanishads, the development of spiritual ideas, nor can one trace those ideas to their source.


But while the Gita may not serve as an archive of India's millennia of spiritual thought, it has served as the greatest commentary on that thought. Again and again throughout the Complete Works one finds Swamiji praising the Gita as "the best authority on Vedanta," "the best commentary we have on the Vedanta philosophy;" or again, the best "commentary on the Vedas [that] has been written or can be written. " He also spoke of the Gita as "the divine commentary of the Vedanta," meaning that it was literally of divine origin. And in Madras in 1897 he said unequivocally, "The only commentary, the authoritative commentary on the Vedas, has been made once and for all by Him who inspired the Vedas— by Krishna in the Gita.'[30]


Swamiji recommended the study of the Gita to all: house-holder or monk, Indian or Westerner. "Please read the Gita every day to the best of your opportunity,'[31]he wrote in May of 1893 to Srimati Indumati Mitra, who, together with her husband, Haripada Mitra, had become his disciple in Belgaum in what was then the province of Bombay. We know that at Thousand Island Park he taught from the Gita, surely advising his students to read it. And again, in Pasadena during the course of his lecture on the Mahabharata, he advised those in his audience who had not already read the Gita to do so. "If you only knew how much it has influenced your own country even!" he exclaimed. "If you want to know the source of Emerson's inspiration, it is this book, the Gita. He went to see Carlyle, and Carlyle made him a present of the Gita; and that little book is responsible for the Concord movement. All the broad movements in America, in one way or other, are indebted to the Concord party.'[32]Swamiji must also have advised his San Francisco audiences to study the Gita, and perhaps it was because of his specific instructions that the newborn Vedanta Society read and discussed this work at its weekly meetings.


At the Math Swamiji insisted upon the study of the scriptures, among them the Gita. "Sir," his disciple Chakravarty once said (in November of 1898), "talking with you and listening to your realisations, I feel no necessity for the study of scriptures." "No!" Swamiji exploded. "Scriptures have to be studied also. For the attainment of Jnana, study of scriptures is essential. I shall soon open classes in the Math for them. The Vedas, Upanishads, the Gita and Bhagavata should be studied in the classes, and I shall teach the Panini Ashtadhyayi (Sanskrit grammar).'[33]


"Now," said Swamiji at Alambazar, having discussed the historicity of the Gita and its place among Hindu scriptures, "let us see some of the main points discussed in the Gita. Wherein lies the originality of the Gita which distinguishes it from all preceding scriptures? It is this: Though before its advent, Yoga, Jnana, Bhakti, etc. had each its strong adherents, they all quarrelled among themselves, each claiming superiority for his own chosen path; no one ever tried to seek for reconciliation among these different paths. It was the author of the Gita who for the first time tried to harmonise these. He took the best from what all the sects then existing had to offer and threaded them in the Gita.'[34]


Swamiji elaborated elsewhere upon the universality of the Gita, in which were reconciled the various clashing sects, all of which purported to be based upon the Upanishads. "The essence of the Srutis, or of the Upanishads, is hard to be understood, seeing that here are so many commentators, each one trying to interpret in his own way," he said in "The Sages of India." "Then the Lord Himself comes, He who is the inspirer of the Srutis, to show us the meaning of them, as the preacher of the Gita, and today India wants nothing better, the world wants nothing better than that method of interpretation."


In this particular passage, Swamiji went on to say that the modern commentator twists and tortures Upanishadic texts "to bring them all to a meaning of his own"—be it monistic, qualified monistic, or dualistic. "But you find in the Gita, there is no attempt at torturing any one of them. They are all right, says the Lord: for slowly and gradually the human soul rises up and up, step after step, from the gross to the fine, from the fine to the finer, until it reaches the Absolute, the goal. That is what is in the Gita. Even the Karma Kanda [the ritualistic portion of the Vedas] is taken up, and it is shown that although it cannot give salvation direct, but only indirectly, yet that is also valid; images are valid indirectly; ceremonies, forms, everything is valid—only with one condition, purity of the heart....'[35]


Nor did Sri Krishna bar the lower castes from a path to liberation. "In the Gita," Swamiji wrote in 1894 to his orthodox Madrasi disciple "Kidi," "the way is laid open to all men and women, to all caste and colour, but Vyasa tries to put meanings upon the Vedas to cheat the poor Shudras. Is God a nervous fool like you," he continued, "that the flow of His river of mercy would be dammed up by a piece of meat? If such be He, His value is not a pie!'[36]


In his catholicity and in his many-sidedness Sri Krishna, in Swamiji's opinion, stood greater than all other Incarnations of the past. "As a character Buddha was the greatest the world has ever seen; next to him Christ," he said at Thousand Island Park. "But the teachings of Krishna as taught by the Gita are the grandest the world has ever known. He who wrote that wonderful poem was one of those rare souls whose lives send a wave of regeneration through the world. The human race will never again see such a brain as his who wrote the Gita.'[37] It is not strange, he said in "The Sages of India," that Sri Krishna was called in the Bhagavatam not only an Incarnation of the Lord, but the Lord Himself. "He was the most wonderful Sannyasin, and the most wonderful householder in one; he had the most wonderful amount of Rajas, power, and was at the same time living in the midst of the most wonderful renunciation.... Krishna, the preacher of the Gita, was all his life the embodiment of that Song Celestial.'[38]


True, Lord Buddha, in his vastness of heart, also opened the doors of religion to all—and this with even greater effect. "As disciple of himself, as it were, the same Krishna came to show how to make his theories practical," Swamiji said in the same Madras lecture. "There comes once again the same voice that in the Gita preached, 'Even the least bit done of this religion saves from, great fear.' 'Women, or Vaishyas, or even Shudras, all reach the highest goal.' . . . As it were to give a living example of this preaching, as it were to make at least one part of it practical, the preacher himself came in another form, and this was Shakyamuni [Buddha], the preacher to the poor and the miserable, he who rejected even the language of the gods to speak in the language of the people, so that he might reach the hearts of the people; he who gave up a throne to live with beggars, and the poor, and the downcast, he who pressed the Pariah to his breast like a second Rama.'[39]


Yet, as Swamiji often pointed out, Buddha's work had one great defect for which India was still suffering. "Buddha made the fatal mistake," he once said, "of thinking that the whole world could be lifted to the height of the Upanishads. And self-interest spoiled all. Krishna was wiser, because He was more politic.'[40]"The good for him who desires Moksha [Liberation] is one, " he wrote in "The East and the West," "and the good for him who wants Dharma [here the word dharma is used to mean that which makes man seek for happiness in this world or the next] is another. This is the great truth which the Lord Sri Krishna, the revealer of the Gita, has tried therein to explain.'[41] "The Buddhist command ['Realise all this as illusion']," he said at another time, "could only be carried out through monasticism; the Hindu ['Realise that within the illusion is the Real'] might be fulfilled through any state of life.'[42]


"Why this attempt to compel the whole world to follow the same path to Moksha [Liberation] ?" he wrote in regard to Buddhism in "The East and the West." " 'Can beauty be manufactured by rubbing and scrubbing? Can anybody's love be won by threat or force?' What does Buddha or Christ prescribe for the man who neither wants Moksha nor is fit to receive it? Nothing! Either you must have Moksha or you are doomed to destruction—these are the only two ways held forth by them, and there is no middle course. You are tied hand and foot in the matter of trying for anything other than Moksha. There is no way shown how you may enjoy the world a little for a time; not only all openings to that are hermetically sealed to you, but, in addition, there are obstructions put at every step.... Buddha ruined us, and so did Christ ruin Greece and Rome!'[43]


(One here anticipates a class Swamiji was to give on the Gita in New York in the summer of 1900, which was attended by Sister Nivedita. "There was an implication throughout the talk," she wrote, "that Christ and Buddha were inferior to Krishna—in the grasp of problems—inasmuch as they preached the highest ethics as a world-path, whereas Krishna saw the right of the whole, in all its parts—to its own differing ideals. But perhaps no one not familiar with his thought would have realized that this lay behind his exclamation, 'The Sermon on the Mount has only become another bondage for the soul of man!' ")[44]


Yet the Western world was not so greatly hampered by the teaching of a path too idealistic and otherworldly for the generality of people as was India, for as Swamiji pointed out in "The East and the West," "the Europeans never took the words of Jesus Christ seriously." "Always of active habits," he wrote, "being possessed of a tremendous Rajasika nature, they are gathering with great enterprise and youthful ardour the comforts and luxuries of the different countries of the world, and enjoying them to their hearts' content." Conversely the, Hindus, to their long misery, had never taken the words of Sri Krishna seriously: "We are sitting in a corner, with our bag and baggage, pondering on death day and night, and singing, 'Very tremulous and unsteady is the water on the lotus-leaf; so is the life of man frail and transient.' . . . Who are following the teachings of the Gita?—the Europeans! And who are acting according to the will of Jesus Christ?—the descendants of Sri Krishna![45]


Even as India had not taken seriously the path of karma yoga as taught by Sri Krishna, neither had she grasped his attempted reconciliation of the various sects. Hindu commentators tortured the texts of the Gita, even as they did those of the Upanishads, cramming them into the philosophical pigeonholes of their choice. The task of reconciliation remained for Sri Ramakrishna and for Swamiji himself.


"Where Sri Krishna failed to show a complete reconciliation (Samanvaya) among these warring sects," Swamiji said at the Alambazar Math, "it was fully accomplished by Ramakrishna Paramahamsa in this nineteenth century.[46] "The time was ripe," he declared in "The Sages of India," "for one to be born who in one body would have the brilliant intellect of Shankara and the wonderfully expansive, infinite heart of  Chaitanya; one who would see in every sect the same spirit working, the same God; one who would see God in every being, one whose heart would weep for the poor, for the weak, for the outcast, for the downtrodden, for every one in this world, inside India or outside India; and at the same time whose grand brilliant intellect would conceive of such noble thoughts as would harmonise all conflicting sects, not only in India but outside of India, and bring a marvellous harmony, the universal religion of head and heart into existence. Such a man was born," Swamiji continued, "and I had the good fortune to sit at his feet for years.'[47]


It was for Swamiji not only to spread Sri Ramakrishna's message of harmony to the world at large but to give it philosophical form. "Hitherto," Sister Nivedita pointed out in her book The Master As I Saw Him, "the three philosophic systems . . . had been regarded as offering to the soul three different ideals of liberation. No attempt had ever before been made to reconcile these schools. On reaching Madras, however, in 1897, Vivekananda boldly claimed, that even the utmost realisations of Dualism and Modified Unism [Qualified Monism], were but stages on the way to Unism [Monism] itself; and the final bliss, for all alike, was the mergence in One without a second. It is said, " Sister Nivedita continued "that at one of his midday, question-classes [at Madras], a member of his audience asked him why, if this was the truth, it had never before been mentioned by any of the Masters.... The great gathering was startled, on this occasion, to hear the reply [given in both English and Sanskrit]: '—Because I was born for this and it was left for me to do.”[48]


Again, in Calcutta Swamiji said during the course of his lecture "The Vedanta in All Its Phases": "The time requires that a better interpretation should be given to this underlying harmony of the Upanishadic texts, whether they are dualistic, or non-dualistic, quasi-dualistic, or so forth. That has to be shown before the world at large; and this work is required as much in India as outside of India; and I, through the grace of God, had the great good fortune to sit at the feet of one whose whole life was such an interpretation, whose life, a thousandfold more than whose teaching, was a living commentary on the texts of the Upanishads, was in fact the spirit of the Upanishads living in a human form. Perhaps I have got a little of that harmony; I do not know whether I shall be able to express it or not. But this is my attempt, my mission in life, to show that the Vedantic schools are not contradictory, that they all necessitate each other, all fulfil each other, and one, as it were, is the stepping-stone to the others, until the goal, the Advaita, the Tat Tvam Asi, is reached.'[49]


It was for Swamiji also to revive and restate Sri Krishna's teaching of karma yoga, the path of action in which work was combined with and illumined by Advaita Vedanta. In a passage that has become famous, he spoke in one breath of the Upanishads, Sri Krishna's teaching, and his own message. "Let me tell you," he cried to the people of Madras in 1897, "strength, strength is what we want. And the first step in getting strength is to uphold the Upanishads and believe —I am the Soul.' . . .


". . . But the Upanishads," he continued, "were in the hands of the Sannyasin; he went into the forest! . . . [In the Gita these ideas are there] for everyone in every occupation of life. These conceptions of the Vedanta must come out, must remain not only in the forest, not only in the cave, but they must come out to work at the Bar and the Bench, in the Pulpit, and in the cottage of the poor man, with the fishermen that are catching fish, and with the students that are studying. They call to every man, woman and child whatever be their occupation, wherever they may be.... Even the least thing well done brings marvellous results; therefore let every one do what little he can. If the fisherman thinks that he is the Spirit, he will be a better fisherman; if the student thinks he is the Spirit, he will be a better student. If the lawyer thinks that he is the Spirit, he will be a better lawyer....'[50]


Thus, without asking anyone to renounce his hereditary or chosen way of life, Swamiji preached the divinity of the Self to all. He did ask, however, that everyone make his everyday activity a ladder to the highest goal.


How? What was the way for the fisherman, say, to avoid entangling himself in his own net of action? "My son," Swamiji once said to his disciple Chakravarty, "such are the intricacies of work, that even great saints are caught in them and become attached. Therefore work has to be done without any desire for results. This is the teaching of the Gita.'[51]


While the reconciliation of various paths and philosophies was the first special characteristic of the Gita that Swamiji discussed during the course of his class at the Alambazar Math, work without desire or attachment was the second. Nonattachment was also, of course, the primary subject of his discourse "Work without Motive" before the Ramakrishna Mission.


He found it necessary to uproot many false conceptions of the doctrine of nonattachment. "People nowadays understand what is meant by [Nishkama Karma, or work without desire or attachment] in various ways," he said at the Alambazar Math. "Some say what is implied by being unattached is to become purposeless. If that were its real meaning, then heartless brutes and the walls would be the best exponents of the performance of Nishkama. Karma.... No! The true Nishkama Karmi is neither to be like a brute, nor to be inert, nor heartless. He is not Tamasika but of pure Sattva. His heart is so full of love and sympathy that he can embrace the whole world with his love.'[52]


Again, at the meeting of the Ramakrishna Mission, Swamiji said, "Many understand [work without motive] in the sense that one is to work in such a way that neither pleasure nor pain touches his mind. If this be its real meaning, then the animals might be said to work without motive. Some animals devour their own offspring, and they do not feel any pangs at all in doing so....


"[The] Gita teaches Karma-Yoga," Swamiji continued. "We should work through Yoga (concentration). In such concentration in action, there is no consciousness of the lower ego present.... The Western people do not understand this. They say that if there be no consciousness of ego, if this ego is gone, how then can a man work? But when one works with concentration, losing all consciousness of oneself, the work that is done will be infinitely better; and this everyone may have experienced in his own life. [The artist, for instance, loses himself in his art.] . . . The Gita teaches that all works should be done thus.... Those who work without any consciousness of their lower ego are not affected with evil, for they work for the good of the world. To work without motive, to work unattached, brings the highest bliss and freedom. This secret of Karma-Yoga is taught by the Lord Sri Krishna in the Gita.'[53]


Work without motive was anything but work in cold blood. It is interesting in this connection to notice again (as we noticed in the chapter on Los Angeles) that during this second visit to the West Swamiji laid less stress on non-attachment, a word open to misinterpretation, than on the power of attachment combined with the power of detachment. Writing of the period following his return to India in 1897, Sister Nivedita commented in The Master As I Saw Him that Swamiji had once "told some of us that he had now realised that the power to attach oneself was quite as important as that of detachment.'[54] One cannot, of course, suppose from this that the realization had not been complete with Swamiji years before, but only that, for one reason or another, it had come to the forefront of his mind. The ability to love, to feel deeply and intensely, was always, in his view, one of the criteria of manliness and of successful service. Nor did devotion to the individual stand in contradiction to his teaching of monism. "You must be able to sympathise fully with each particular," he had said at Thousand Island Park, "then at once to jump back to the highest monism. After having perfected yourself, you limit yourself voluntarily. Take the whole power into each action.


Be able to become a dualist for the time being and forget Advaita, yet be able to take it up again at will.'[55]


We do not find, however, that Swamiji stressed the perfect balance between attachment and detachment as pointedly during his first visit to the West—in his classes on Karma Yoga, for instance—as he did during his second visit. There had been in the interim, perhaps, something to heighten in his mind the importance of this particular teaching to the modern world. Thus we found him in Los Angeles emphasizing the necessity for total involvement in service combined with complete serenity. "That soul has not been awakened that never feels weakness, never feels misery, " he said in his Los Angeles lecture "Work and Its Secret." "That is a callous state. We do not want that. At the same time, we not only want this mighty power of love, this mighty power of attachment, the power of throwing our whole soul upon a single object, losing ourselves and letting ourselves be annihilated, as it were, For other souls —which is the power of the gods—but we want to be higher even than the gods. The perfect man can put his whole soul upon that one point of love, yet he is unattached.'[56] In a small way—according to his capacity—each man must be like the World Teacher himself: he must be both intensely human and immovably divine.


In San Francisco Swamiji again pointed to the need for attachment as well as for detachment and stressed the element of power necessary to both. "It is the power of concentration and attachment as well as the power of detachment that we must develop," he said in his lecture on "The Science of Breathing." "If the man is equally powerful in both—that man has attained manhood.'[57]And in a letter from San Francisco dated March 28, he wrote, "Both attachment and detachment perfectly developed make a man great and happy.'[58]


Swamiji's emphasis on attachment, in the sense of dedication, is implicit in his interpretation of the Gita as a call to active, forthright resistance of evil. He saw nothing in the sacred scriptures of his motherland to sanction passive resistance as  a way of life for the householder or as a policy of action for a nation. Both before and since Swamiji's time interpreters of the Gita, including Mahatma Gandhi, have explained away Sri Krishna's exhortation to Arjuna as being in the nature of an allegory. While Swamiji did not, as we have seen, repudiate the allegorical interpretation, he did not thereby discard the literal interpretation, for therein he saw a message of greater import. During his class talk at the Alambazar Math, he read the first three verses from the second chapter of the Gita and devoted the remainder of his talk to the third of these verses: "Yield not to unmanliness, O son of Pritha! Ill doth it become thee. Cast off this mean faint-heartedness and arise, O scorcher of thine enemies!'[59]


Why, Swamiji asked, is Sri Krishna goading Arjuna to fight? Because, he replied, Arjuna's disinclination to fight did not arise out of the overwhelming predominance of pure sattva guna, but out of tamas. "It was all Tamas that brought on this unwillingness .... Arjuna was afraid, he was overwhelmed with pity. That he had the instinct and inclination to fight is proved by the simple fact that he came to the battlefield with no other purpose than that. Frequently in our lives also such things are seen to happen. Many people think they are Sattvika by nature, but they are really nothing but Tamasika.... The Tamoguna loves very much to array itself in the garb of the Sattva. Here, in Arjuna, the mighty warrior, it has come under the guise of Daya (pity).'[60]


In his motherland, Swamiji spoke again and again of the predominance of tamas (or inertia) that had settled over the country like a miasmal fog. He often spoke tauntingly to his countrymen, even as Sri Krishna had spoken to Arjuna, in order to stir up a blaze of activity in a basically heroic heart. "Mark you," he wrote in "The East and the West," "those things which you see in pusillanimous, effeminate folk who speak in a nasal tone chewing every syllable, whose voice is as thin as of one who has been starving for a week, who are like a tattered wet rag, who never protest or are moved even if kicked by anybody—those are the signs of the lowest Tamas, those are the signs of death, not of Sattva—all corruption and stench. It is because Arjuna was going to fall into the ranks of these men that the Lord is explaining matters to him so elaborately in the Gita.... Coming under the influence of the Jains, Buddhists, and others, we have joined the lines of those Tamasika people. During these last thousand years, the whole country is filling the air with the name of the Lord and is sending its prayers to Him; and the Lord is never lending His ears to them. And why should He? When even man never hears the cries of the fool, do you think God will? Now the only way out is to listen to the words of the Lord in the Gita, 'Yield not to unmanliness O Partha! . . . ' '[61]


There was a lesson here for Westerners, who were prone to mouth the highest of ideals, as well as for Indians. "In reading the Bhagavad Gita," Swamiji said in 1896 in a New York class on karma yoga, "many of you in Western countries may have felt astonished at the second chapter, wherein Sri Krishna calls Arjuna a hypocrite and a coward because of his refusal to fight or offer resistance on account of his adversaries being his friends and relatives, making the plea that non-resistance was the highest ideal of love. This is a great lesson for us all to learn, that in all matters the two extremes are alike. The extreme positive and the extreme negative are always similar. When the vibrations of light are too slow, we do not see them, nor do we see them when they are too rapid. So with sound, when very low in pitch, we do not hear it; when very high, we do not hear it either. Of like nature is the difference between resistance and non-resistance. One man does not resist because he is weak, lazy, and cannot, not because he will not; the other man knows that he can strike an irresistible blow if he likes; yet he not only does not strike, but blesses his enemies. The one who from weakness resists not commits a sin, and as such cannot receive any benefit from the non-resistance; while the other would commit a sin by offering resistance.... So we must always be careful about what we really mean when we speak of this non-resistance and ideal love....


"The Karma Yogi," Swamiji continued, "is the man who understands that the highest ideal is non-resistance, and who also knows that this non-resistance is the highest manifestation of power in actual possession, and also what is called the resisting of evil is but a step on the way towards the manifestation of this highest power, namely non-resistance. Before reaching this highest ideal, man's duty is to resist evil; let him work, let him fight, let him strike straight from the shoulder. Then only, when he has gained the power to resist, will non-resistance be a virtue.'[62]


(In a Gita class in New York, only a few words of which have come down to us through a letter of Sister Nivedita's, Swamiji was to speak in 1900 even more strongly and more graphically on the difference between resistance and non-resistance. "Non-resistance " he said, "is not for the man who thinks the replacing of the maggot in the wound by the leprous saint with, 'Eat, brother!' disgusting and horrible. Non-resistance is practised by a mother's love towards an angry child. It is a travesty in the mouth of a coward or in the face of a lion.")[63]


But whence does one derive the strength, first, to detect, and second, to overcome the cowardice that is disguised as love and rationalized as the highest idealism? In Sri Krishna's answer to this, Swamiji found the chief glory of the Gita. "In order to remove this delusion which had overtaken Arjuna, what did the Bhagavan say?" he asked at the Alambazar Math, and continued with his own as well as Sri Krishna's answer: "As I always preach that you should not decry a man by calling him a sinner but that you should draw his attention to the omnipotent power that is in him, in the same way does the Bhagavan speak to Arjuna. 'It doth not befit thee!' ' Thou art Atman imperishable, beyond all evil. Having forgotten thy real nature, thou hast, by thinking thyself a sinner, as one afflicted with bodily evils and mental grief, thou hast made thyself soth—is doth not befit thee!'—so says the Bhagavan; 'Yield not to unmanliness, O son of Pritha.' "  


"If you, my sons, can proclaim this message to the world," Swamiji said to the young monks gathered around him at the Math, "then all this disease, grief, sin, and sorrow will vanish from off the face of the earth in three days. All these ideas of weakness will be nowhere. Now it is everywhere—this current of the vibration of fear. Reverse the current; bring in the opposite vibration, and behold the magic transformation! . . . Proclaim to the whole world with trumpet voice, 'There is no sin in thee, there is no misery in thee; thou art the reservoir of omnipotent power. Arise, awake, and manifest the Divinity within!''[64]


In the call to the invincible glory of the Atman lay, to Swamiji's mind, the essential teaching of the Gita. "If one reads this one Shloka-—Yield not to unmanliness, O son of Pritha' etc. one gets all the merits of reading the entire Gita," he said at the conclusion of his class at the Math; "for in this one Shloka lies imbedded the whole Message of the Gita.'[65] Fundamentally, it was a teaching of jnana yoga. Although Swamiji found bhakti, or devotion, highly developed in the Gita (as it was not in the Upanishads), he did not consider, as have some commentators, that Sri Krishna stressed this path. "Sri Krishna spoke the Gita, establishing Himself in the Atman," he said to his disciple Chakravarty. "Those passages of the Gita where references to the word 'I' occur, invariably indicate the Atman: 'Take refuge in Me alone' means, 'Be established in the Atman.' This knowledge of the Atman is the highest aim of the Gita. The references to Yoga, etc. are but incidental to this realisation of the Atman. Those who have not this knowledge of the Atman are 'suicides.' 'They kill themselves by the clinging to the unreal'; they lose their life in the noose of sense-pleasures.... The human soul, represented by Arjuna, was touched with fear. Therefore Bhagavan Sri Krishna, established in the Atman, spoke to him the teachings of the Gita. Still his fear would not leave him. Later, when Arjuna saw the Universal Form of the Lord, and became established. in the Atman, then with all bondages of Karma burnt .by the fire of knowledge, he fought the battle.'[66]


On other occasions also, Swamiji declared that the essential teaching of the Gita was Advaita Vedanta. "Jnana is taught very clearly by Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita," he said in 1895 during a discourse in New York. " . . . Through chapter after chapter, Krishna teaches the higher truths of philosophy and religion to Arjuna. It is these teachings which make this poem so wonderful; practically the whole of the Vedanta philosophy is included in them. The Vedas teach that the soul is infinite and in no way affected by the death of the body.'[67]Again, during a lecture in south India he cried to his countrymen, "Teach yourselves, teach every one his real nature, call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes.... Ay, if there is anything in the Gita that I like, it is these two verses, coming out strong as the very gist, the very essence, of Krishna's teaching—'He who sees the Supreme Lord dwelling alike in all beings, the Imperishable in things that perish, he sees indeed. For seeing the Lord as the same, everywhere present, he does not destroy the Self by the self, and thus he goes to the highest goal.''[68]


It was always the Sri Krishna "roaring the Gita out with the voice of a lion" that Swamiji taught to the modern world, never the flute playing Sri Krishna of Vrindavan. Not that he found the Krishna of the Gita greater than the Krishna of the Bhagavatam. On the contrary, the madness of the love of the Gopis is "the very essence of the Krishna Incarnation," he said in "The Sages of India." "Even the Gita, the great philosophy itself, does not compare with that madness, for in the Gita the disciple is taught slowly how to walk towards the goal, but here is the madness of enjoyment, the drunkenness of love, where disciples and teachers and teachings and books and all these things have become one; even the ideas of fear, and God, and heaven—everything has been thrown away. What remains is the madness of love.... That was the great Krishna!'[69]


But this divine madness was not for the generality of people; nor was it for the modern age in which each man is to work for all and none is to be left behind in darkness. "Only contemplating the Krishna of Vrindaban with His flute won't do nowadays," Swamiji said to Chakravarty in 1897, "—that will not bring salvation to men. Now is needed the worship of Sri Krishna uttering forth the lion-roar of the Gita, of Rama with His bow and arrows, of Mahavira, of Mother Kali. Then only will the people grow strong by going to work with great energy and will.'[70]


Even as the path of Divine Love was not for the modern man, neither was the path of jnana yoga as it was generally taught. "The tidal wave of Western civilization is now rushing over the length and breadth of the country," Swamiji said at another time to Chakravarty. "It won't do now simply to sit in meditation on mountain tops without realising in the least its usefulness. Now is wanted—as said in the Gita by the Lord—intense Karma-Yoga, with unbounded courage and indomitable strength in the heart. 


Then only will the people of the country be roused, otherwise they will continue to be as much in the dark as you are.'[71]


(Chakravarty, it must be said, was at times as confused by Swamiji's teachings as was Arjuna by those of Sri Krishna, "Sir," he said at one point in his conversation with Swamiji, "now you are speaking of Jnana; but sometimes you proclaim the superiority of Bhakti, sometimes of Karma, and sometimes of Yoga. This confuses our understanding."


"Well," Swamiji replied, "the truth is this, the knowledge of Brahman is the ultimate goal—the highest destiny of man. But man cannot remain absorbed in Brahman all the time. When he comes out of It, he must have something to engage himself. At that time he should do such work as will contribute to the real well-being of people. Therefore do I urge you in the service of Jivas in a spirit of oneness.'[72]Indeed, the karma yoga Swamiji taught and which he found in the Gita was rooted in jnana yoga, or in Advaita Vedanta; it was essentially the "worship of the Spirit by the Spirit," and this in the marketplaces of the world.)


To Swamiji the Gita was as much a teaching for the West as for India, not only because of its doctrine of the Self—"The restless Western atheist or agnostic finds in the Gita or in the Dhammapada the only place where his soul can anchor '[73], he said in his 1894 "Reply to the Madras Address"—but also because of its spiritualization of activity. If India needed to move from tamas to rajas, the Western world needed to move from rajas to sattva. "Do you expect in view of the Rajas in the Westerners that they will gradually become sattvika?" Chakravarty asked Swamiji somewhat dubiously. "Certainly," Swamiji replied. "Possessed of a plenitude of Rajas, they have now reached the culmination of Bhoga, or enjoyment. Do you think that it is not they but you," he added scathingly, "who are going to achieve Yoga—you who hang about for the sake of your bellies?'[74]


One might be inclined to say that Swamiji was premature in thinking that the Western people had in 1897 reached a culmination of enjoyment. But one must remember that in his vast mind, from which flowed teachings profound and diverse enough to last all of humanity for the next fifteen hundred years (as he himself was heard to say), a century swung by like a decade, and his "now" could mean, and often meant, "this epoch." By the close of the nineteenth century the seeds of the modern age had been sown—including those sown by Swamiji himself—and as Prophets always do, he read the times in their latent form; he observed and taught on the causal plane from which history slowly emerges and unfolds itself bit by bit.


Whether or not Western man was on the whole ready in 1900 to turn from sense-enjoyment to renunciation, it was high time, in Swamiji's view of time, for the great rajasika energy and genius of Western civilization to move forward along a new and shining path. Failing this, it would inevitably destroy itself—perhaps totally and forever. "If your ideal is mortal, if your ideal is of this earth, so shalt thou be," he warned in Pasadena when contrasting the proud, self-congratulatory and eminently smug materialism of the Western world with the all-enduring spirituality of the East. "If your ideal is matter, matter shalt thou be.'[75] The secular "do-goodism" of the Social Gospel which, in its farthest vision, looked toward the goal of a materialistic (and impossible) heaven on earth, would not, as he pointed out in San Francisco, serve to spiritualize Western civilization. Wanted was the genuine sattvika activity as taught in the Gita and extended in this modern era by Swamiji himself—the concentrated, self-forgetful, wholehearted service of every man, woman, and child as a divine being, nay, as the Divine Lord. Let Western man draw from deep within himself the power to resist all weakness; let him assert and eventually realize himself as pure Spirit, lacking nothing, fearing nothing, loving all, serving all. This was in part the counsel Swamiji gave to the people of California, and it is not too surprising to find that in his lectures on the Gita at Dr. Logan's house the call for strength sounded forth like a grand finale that contained the essence of all that had gone before.

7

Before we discuss these San Francisco Gita lectures, it should be mentioned that Swamiji's earlier Sunday afternoon lecture "Sri Krishna's Message to the World" dealt almost wholly with the teachings of the Gita and can be counted among his talks on this subject. (Indeed, the small volume Thoughts on the Gita by Swami Vivekananda, compiled and published by Advaita Ashrama, includes "Sri Krishna's Message to the World.") Since we have already discussed this lecture in its chronological place, we need not dwell on it again. It is interesting to remember, however, that one of the themes that wove through Swamiji's second visit to the West here mingled with one of the Gita's primary teachings, giving it added luminosity. Even as Swamiji had freed the teaching of work-with-nonattachment from any imputation of callousness, so he divested it of the puritanical grimness with which, in England and America, the very word "duty" had been cloaked. (One remembers how at Thousand Island Park Swamiji's Methodist hostess, Miss Dutcher, took to her bed in shock after he had said in class, "The idea of duty is the midday sun of misery scorching the very soul!" As Sister Christine tells it, "his rebellion against the idea that anyone should dare bind with fetters the soul of man" gave Miss Dutcher such a turn that she was not seen again for some days.)[76]

"Work day and night . . . without any idea of duty," Swamiji cried in "Sri Krishna's Message." " . . . This world is a play. You are His playmates. Go on and work, without any sorrow, without any misery! . . . Serve the living God! . . . Then work is no more slavery. It becomes a play and joy itself!'[77]

As has been said, the three Gita lectures at Dr. Logan's house were given on the evenings of Saturday, May 26; Monday, May 28; and Tuesday, May 29. They were, in a sense, public lectures, for admission was charged and, presumably, whoever happened to learn that Swami Vivekananda was to deliver a lecture could, for fifty cents, come to hear him. On the other hand, the lectures were not advertised in the newspapers, and thus, except for members of the Vedanta Society and the Homes of Truth, few people were apt to learn of them. In this respect they were private, almost invitational. Yet the audiences were not small; indeed according to the Minutes of the Vedanta Society, they were "large," and whatever "large" may have meant in terms of numbers (we do not know the seating capacity of Dr. Logan's house), it surely indicated that the attendance matched and perhaps exceeded expectations. According to Mr. Rhodehamel, who wrote of Swamiji's Gita classes in his memoirs as published in Prabuddha Bharata, "these lectures were attended mainly by students who had followed the Swami through all or most of his discourses and classes in San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda, and were in character as well as in point of time the culmination of all his platform and class work. They were his final words of advice and admonition to his students and devotees.'[78]

In his first lecture, Swamiji dealt primarily with the historical background of the Gita. He did not, as he had in India, cast doubt on the historicity of the circumstances under which Sri Krishna delivered his teaching, for such scholarly considerations were of little concern to the Western layman. He did, however, speak of the ancient and long conflict between the priests and title kings, between the religion of the ritualistic portion of the Vedas and that of the philosophical portion, which "came from the brains of kings." He pointed out the economic basis of this fierce conflict. "There runs an economic struggle through every religious struggle," he said. "If there is an economical background," Miss Ansell's first transcript reads, "and you have the most hideous nonsense to preach, you can find the whole country [will follow you].'[79]"Whenever any religion succeeds it must have economic value. Thousands of similar sects will be struggling for power, but only those that meet the real economic problem will have it. Man is guided by his stomach. He walks and the stomach goes first and the head afterwards. Have you not seen that? It will take ages for the head to go first.'[80]It is not the priests, Swamiji pointed out, who are so much to blame for holding the minds of the people in a state of bondage; it is, rather, the people themselves who employ the priests to appease their hunger with promises.


There is evidence in Ida Ansell's first transcript that Swamiji discussed in this lecture the economic aspect of the struggle between the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas at considerable length, pointing out parallels in other great religions and dealing in some detail with the significance of the conflict to India. Unfortunately, however, this portion of the transcript is so shreddy that one cannot reconstruct Swamiji's train of thought. The second (published) transcript was evidently as deficient in this respect as the first, and thus we lack an important part of the lecture—a part evidently so interesting that Miss Ansell was too absorbed to take intelligible notes.


However, it is clear from fragmentary sentences in her first transcript that Swamiji analyzed one of India's recurrent problems—the conflict between an enslaving religion of superstition and priest-craft and a liberating religion of supreme spiritual knowledge. In resolving it, "the whole secret," he said, "is to find out the proper place for everything"; and this, Sri Krishna did. "He is the most rounded man I know of, wonderfully developed equally in brain and heart and hand. Every moment of his is alive with activity, either as a gentleman, warrior, minister, or something else. Great as a gentleman, as a scholar, as a poet.... Just think what an influence this man has over the whole world, whether you know it or not. My regard for him is for his perfect sanity. No cobwebs in that brain, no superstition. He knows the use of everything, and when it is necessary to assign a place to each, he is there.'[81]


Frank Rhodehamel's notes of this lecture are not nearly as full as Ida Ansell's, nor do they seem always to be verbatim or even unmixed with notes of other classes. Still, they are clear and in places supply a word or phrase that Miss Ansell missed or could not make out. They read in full:


The Gita is to the Hindus what the New Testament is to the Christians. It is about 5000 years old, and the day of religious celebration with the Hindus is the anniversary of the Battle of Kurukshetra about 5000 years ago. As I said, the Upanishads are divided into two great divisions the philosophical and the Karma Kanda, or work portions. Between the kings who promulgated the philosophic portion and the priests a great conflict arose. The priests had the people on their side because they had all the utility which appealed to the popular mind. The kings had all the spirituality and none of the economic element; but as they were powerful and the rulers of the nation, the struggle was a hard and bitter one. The kings gradually gained a little ground, but their ideas were too elevated for the masses, so the ceremonial or work portion, always had the mass of the people. Always remember this, that whenever a religious system gains ground with the people at large it has a strong economic side to it. It is the economic side of a religion that finds lodgement with the people at large and never its spiritual or philosophic side. If you should preach the grandest philosophy in the streets for a year you would not have a handful of followers. But you could preach the most arrant nonsense, and if it had an economic element, you would have the whole people with you.


None knows by whom the Vedas were written, they are so ancient. According to the orthodox Hindus, the Vedas are not the written words at all, but they consist of the words themselves orally spoken with the exact enunciation and intonation. This vast mass of religion has been written and consists of thousands upon thousands of volumes. Anyone who knows the precise pronunciation and intonation knows the Vedas and no one else. In ancient times certain royal families were the custodians of certain parts of the Vedas. The head of the family could repeat every word of every volume he had without missing a word or an intonation. These men had giant intellects, wonderful memories.


The strictly orthodox believers in the Vedas, the Karma Kanda, did not believe in God, the soul or anything of the sort, but that we as we are, were the only beings in the universe material or spiritual. When they were asked what the many allusions to God in the Vedas mean, they say that they mean nothing at all; that the words properly articulated have a magical power, a power to create certain results. Aside from that they have no meaning.


Whenever you suppress a thought you simply press it down out of sight in a coil like a spring only to spring out again at a moment's notice with all the pent up force as the result of the suppression, and do in a few moments what it would have done in a much longer period.


Every ounce of pleasure brings its pound of pain. It is the same energy that at one time manifests itself as pleasure and at another time as pain. As soon as one set of sensations stops, another begins. But in some cases, in more advanced persons, one may have two, yes, or even a hundred different thoughts enter into active operation at the same time. When one thought is suppressed, it is merely coiled up ready to spring forth with pent up fury at any time.


"Mind is of its own nature. Mind activity means creation. The thought is followed by the word, and the word by the form. All of this creating will have to stop, both mental and physical, before the mind can reflect the soul."


"My old master could not write his own name without making a mistake. He made three mistakes, in spelling, in writing his own name." "Yet that is the kind of man at whose feet I sat."


"You will break the law of nature but once, and it will be the last time. Nature will then be nothing to you: '[82]


In his next lecture Swamiji took up the whole of the second chapter of the Gita almost verse for verse, mingling his free translations and his commentaries in so smooth a flow of thought and language that one can scarcely tell where translation leaves off and commentary begins. Again, his commentary on one verse leads with perfect naturalness into his translation of the next. In Miss Ansell's first transcript one finds blended into the almost seamless flow of Swamiji's discourse, which he apparently did not often interrupt with Sanskrit, his free translation of forty-two verses, not all of which have been included, or noted, in the published version. But even the first transcript does not give us everything that Swamiji's lecture actually contained. Those who have read the published version in the Complete Works may have wondered why he skipped over some of the most beautiful and important verses of this second chapter of the Gita-verses 19 through 27, in which Sri Krishna describes the indestructibility and immutability of the Self or Atman.


The key to this mystery is to be found in Ida Ansell's first transcript. There, on the bottom of page 10 one finds a portion of what is clearly verse 19: "He who thinks that he can kill and that he . . . " Below this line of typing one detects that a notation had been written in pencil and erased. Held in the proper light, the following message in Miss Ansell's hand becomes legible: "A page of shorthand was lost at this point." Why this intelligence was erased is not clear, for the lost page of shorthand, which had undoubtedly contained Swamiji's translation of and commentary on some of the most well-known and well-loved verses of the Gita, was not found. At least, when Miss Ansell made her second set of transcripts, verses 19 through 27 were still missing. (There are no ellipsis points in the published transcript to indicate this sad loss. They should come between the paragraph ending "You are all the world. Who can help you?" and that beginning " 'Beings are unknown to our human senses before birth and after death.... ' ")[83]


Unfortunately Frank Rhodehamel's notes of this second Gita lecture no longer exist (if they ever did), and thus we cannot turn to them for help. But despite the irreparable hole in Miss Ansell's notes, Swamiji's lecture as she took it down is a masterpiece of fluidity and vitality. I need not here describe it paragraph for paragraph, for it is readily available in the Complete Works; nor does the second transcript differ in any appreciable or noteworthy degree from the first. I shall, however, quote those passages in which Swamiji seems to have become particularly eloquent and forceful, as though wishing to imbue his listeners and perhaps impregnate the very air with the heroic spirit of his subject. He no doubt saw that Western man was entering an age in which, on the one hand, he would require, for his very survival, to become more and more active, more and more altruistic, more and more rational, more and more idealistic, but in which, on the other hand, he would find that all his old values, traditions, and faiths, including a faith in his own fundamental goodness and rationality, would be, as it were, yanked from under his feet, leaving him sprawled in fear, moral uncertainty, spiritual aridity, and self doubt. To an age in which the individual must be strong but in which the old safeguards against moral erosion had themselves eroded, Swamiji emphasized the Gita's bracing philosophy of the Self, and, like Sri Krishna, he cried to the individual, "Stand up and fight!"


"One great theme," Mr. Rhodehamel wrote in recalling Swamiji's Gita lectures, "was carried through all the Swami's teaching, and that was the necessity for spiritual self reliance. 'Religion is for the strong,' he shouted again and again. So in conclusion he took up the Gita, dwelling on the error of Arjuna in confounding his spiritual welfare with the disinclination to tread the stern path of duty as it was laid out for him by the energies of his nature which had not yet been neutralized by spiritual culture. He made it clear, however, that Arjuna really did know his duty, but that his eyes were temporarily blinded by his moral weakness in facing the supreme crisis of his life because apparently it led into the jaws of death. He further brought out the point that Arjuna fortified his position by spiritual sophistry."[84]


Although Rhodehamel apparently took no notes of the second Gita class, one finds in his notebook a page or so of disconnected sentences headed "Remarks from Various Lectures." Most of these pertain clearly to chapter two of the Gita, and it would seem that they belong just here. They were written in the following order:


"Spirituality can never be attained until materiality is gone."


The first discourse in the Gita can be taken allegorically.


"The Vedas only teach of things in nature, only teach of nature."


We are always letting sentiment usurp the place of duty, and flattering ourselves that we are acting in response to true love.

We must get beyond emotionalism if we would be able to renounce. Emotion belongs to the animals. They are creatures of 
emotion entirely.


It is not sacrifice of a high order to die for one's young. The animals do that, and just as readily as any human mother ever did. It is no sign of real love to do that; merely blind emotion.


We are forever trying to make our weakness look like strength, our sentiment like love, our cowardice like courage, etc.


Say to your soul in regard to vanities, weaknesses, etc., "This does not befit thee. This does not befit thee.'[85]


Never before, as far as we know, had Swamiji brought out this particular message of Sri Krishna's with such intensity as in these classes: weakness by whatever name was death. "Not one step back, that is the idea," he thundered. (I quote this paragraph from Miss Ansell's first transcript.) "No bending the knee. Always stiffening the backbone. Fight it out, whatever comes. Let the stars move from the spheres, the whole world stand against us. Death means only a change of garment. What more? Thus fight thou. You gain nothing by becoming cowards, come what may. Either there is a God that wills everything, and in that case we cannot fight, or it is our own [karma]. Taking one step backward, we do not avoid any misfortune. We have cried to all the gods in the worlds. Has misery ceased? The masses of India cry to sixty million gods. Dying like dogs. Where are these gods? Gods come to help you when you have succeeded.... So what is the use of [crying]? Die game. Stand up and die game, come what may. There is a beautiful mythological story. There were two angels in God's Paradise. They did something wrong and were cursed that they should fall and become man. When falling, they cried, 'Lord, is there no mercy for us? How many births shall we have?' The Lord said, 'Seven births as worshippers, but only three as enemies.' They [chose to be enemies of] the gods and got out quick. The more you cling to superstitions and priests and [fear] you make the hell here. Hell is here. There is no other place. This impotence does not befit thee. Awake and rise. It does not befit thee, this weakness, this bending the knee to superstitions, this selling yourselves to your own minds. Because we are infinite spirits, it does not befit thee to be the slave in the battle of nerves, to be the slave to superstition.... No weakness in thee. Stand up and fight. Die if you must. Die game. There is none to help you. Thou art all the world. Who helps thee?'[86]


As he had done many times before in San Francisco, Swamiji stressed the teaching that "spirituality can never be attained unless all material ideas are given up." "We have identified ourselves with our bodies," he said in this second Gita lecture. " . . . All this chain of misery, imagination, animals, gods and demons, everything, the whole world-all this comes from the identification of our selves with the body. I am spirit. Why do I jump if you pinch me? . . , Look at the slavery of it. Are you not ashamed? We are religious! We are philosophies! We are sages! Lord bless us! What are we? Living hells, that is what we are. Lunatics, that is what we are!" And with one of his jolting metaphors, he cried, "Our ideas are burial grounds. When we leave the body we are bound by thousands of elements to those ideas." "The oceanlike heart of the sage knows no disturbance, knows no fear," he concluded. "Let miseries come in millions of rivers and happiness in hundreds! I am no slave to misery! I am no slave to happiness!'[87]


In his next lecture, delivered on May 29, Swamiji discussed the third chapter of the Gita and a part of the fourth, again translating many verses, commenting upon them, and giving his own teachings in one powerful, unbroken flow. Again he stressed the all-important goal of identification with the Spirit. "You may be the greatest philosopher," he said, "but as long as you have the idea that you are the body, you are no better than the little worm crawling under your foot! No excuse for you! So much the worse for you, that you know all the philosophies and at the same time think you are the body! Body-gods, that is what you are! Is that religion? Religion is the realisation of spirit as spirit '[88]


He explained the meaning behind the doctrine of nonattachment, bringing in here a good deal of Sankhya philosophy; and again he explained the rationale and wisdom behind Sri Krishna's teaching that it is "better to die in your own path than attempt the path of another." He related this directly to the necessity for religious independence. "We must not lose sight of this doctrine," he said. "It is all a matter of growth. Wait and grow, and you attain everything; otherwise there will be great spiritual danger. Here is the fundamental secret of teaching religion.... The true teacher will be able to find out for you what your own nature is.... He ought to know by a glance at your face and put you on your path.... Then die in that path rather than giving it up and taking hold of another. Instead, we start a religion and make a set of dogmas and betray the goal of mankind and treat everyone as having the same nature. No two persons have the same mind or the same body. No two persons have the same religion.'[89]


Here Swamiji cried, as he had done many times before in San Francisco, "Enter not the gate of any organized religions. They do a hundred times more evil than good, because they stop the growth of each one's individual development. Study everything, but keep your own seat firm. If you take my advice, do not put your neck into the  trap."[90]


His commentary upon verse II of chapter four is particularly Swamiji-like. " 'But know, Arjuna, none can ever swerve from My path.' '[91]Generally this is interpreted to mean that all ways of worship are acceptable to God and that He fulfills the desires of each man, whether it be for worldly gain or for Liberation. Swamiji went further: There is no way of being, no way of conduct, that is not within God's law and acceptable to Him. "None swerves from His path." Transgression is impossible. "If it is a law," he pointed out, "it cannot be broken.... The moment a law is broken, no more universe exists. There will come a time when you will break the law, and that moment your consciousness, mind, and body will melt away.'[92]You will, in other words, have attained moksha. But until then only imperfect, man-made rules are broken, not Divine Law. Following his own nature, the thief, for instance, is moving through one experience after another toward God. According to an even higher view, the thief is God Himself. He is perfectly playing a part in the infinitely diversified, endlessly burgeoning universe. "There is a man stealing there," Swamiji said. "Why does he steal? You punish him. Why can you not make room for him and put his energy to work? You say, 'You are a sinner,' and many will say he has broken the law. All this herd of mankind is forced into uniformity and hence all this trouble, sin, and weakness.... The world is not as bad as you think. It is we fools who have made it evil.... God made the heaven, and man made the hell for himself.'[93]


To judge from the arrangement of Frank Rhodehamel's notes of this lecture, he was so absorbed in Swamiji's words that he wrote down only key sentences, very likely verbatim, and later numbered them and enlarged upon them from his memory, which seems to have been excellent. I give his notes here exactly as they appear in his notebook:


1. "If you know everything, disturb not the childlike faith of the innocent."


2. "Religion is  the realization of Spirit as Spirit. Not spirit as matter."


3. "You are spirit. Realize yourselves as spirit. Do it anyway you can."


4. "Religion is a growth": each one must experience it himself.


5. "Everyone thinks 'my method is the best.' That is so, but it is the best for you."


6. "Spirit must stand revealed as spirit."


7. "There never was a time when spirit could be identified with matter."


8. "What is real in nature is the spirit."


9. "Action is in nature."


10. " 'In the beginning there was That Existence. He looked and everything was created."'


11. "Everyone works according to his own nature."


12. " You are not bound by law. That is in your nature. The mind is in nature and is bound by law."


13. "If you want to be religious, keep out of religious arguments."


14. "Governments, societies etc. are evils." 

    "All societies are based on bad generalizations." 
     "A law is that which cannot be broken. "


15. "Better never love, if that love makes us hate others."


16. "The sign of death is weakness; the sign of life is strength."


[The following numbered paragraphs are correlated with the above numbered sentences.]


The Christian believes that Jesus Christ died to save him. With you, it is belief in a doctrine and this belief constitutes your salvation. With us, doctrine has nothing whatever to do with salvation. Each one may believe in whatever doctrine he likes or in no doctrine. With us, realization is religion, not doctrine. What difference does it make to you whether Jesus Christ lived at a certain time? What has it to do with you that Moses saw God in a burning bush? The fact that Moses saw God in the burning bush does not constitute your seeing Him, does it? If it does, then the fact that Moses ate is enough for you; you ought to stop eating. One is just as sensible as the other. Records of great spiritual men of the past do us no good whatever except that they urge us onward to do the same, to experience religion ourselves. Whatever Christ, or Moses or anybody else did does not help us in the least except to urge us on.


Each one has a special nature peculiar to himself which he must follow and through which he will find his way to freedom. Your teacher should be able to tell you what your particular path in nature is and to put you in it. He should know by your face where you belong and should be able to indicate it to you. We should never try to follow another's path for that is his way, not yours. When that path is found you have nothing to do but fold your arms and the tide will carry you to freedom. Therefore when you find it, never swerve from it. Your way is the best for you, but that is no sign it is the best for another.


The truly spiritual see spirit as spirit not as matter. Spirit as such, can never become matter, though matter is spirit at a low rate of vibration. It is spirit that makes nature move; it is the Reality in nature, so action is in nature but not in the spirit. Spirit is always the same, changeless, eternal. Spirit and matter are in reality the same, but spirit, as such, never becomes matter, and matter, as such, never becomes spirit. Matter, as such, never becomes spirit as such, for it is simply a mode of spirit, or spirit at a low rate of vibration. You take food and it becomes mind, and mind in turn becomes the body. Thus mind and body, spirit and matter are distinct though either may give place to the other; but they are not to be identified.


"What is real in nature is the Spirit." The spirit is the life in all action in nature. It is the spirit that gives nature its reality and power of action.


"Action is in nature." "The spirit never acts. Why should it?" It merely is, and that is sufficient. It is pure existence absolute and has no need of action.


All nature is bound by law, the law of its own action; and this law can never be broken. If you could break a law of nature, all nature would come to an end in an instant. There would be no more nature. He who attains freedom breaks the law of nature and for him nature fades away and has no more power over him. Each one will break the law but once and forever and that will end his trouble with nature. "You are not bound by law. That is in your nature. The mind is in nature and is bound by law."


The moment you form yourselves into an organization, you begin to hate everybody outside of that organization. When you join an organization you are putting bonds upon yourself, you are limiting your own freedom. Why should you form yourselves into an order having rules and regulations thus limiting every one as to his independent action? If one breaks a law of an order or society he is hated by the rest. What right has anyone to lay down rules and laws governing others? Such laws are not laws at all. If it were a law it could not be broken. The fact that these so-called laws are broken shows clearly they are not laws.[94]


That is as far as Frank Rhodehamel got, and one can well imagine why. Swamiji concluded his last lecture on the Gita (and his last lecture in California) with a resounding call, which Ida Ansell caught with her shorthand, while Rhodehamel (who can doubt?) sat enthralled. Miss Ansell's notes will bear repeating here, at least in part:


Naked I came out of my mother's womb and naked I return. Helpless I came and helpless I go. Helpless I am now. And we do not know the goal. It is terrible for us to think about it. We get such odd ideas! We go to a medium and see if the ghost can help us. Think of the weakness! Ghosts, devils, gods, anybody—come on! And all the priests, all the charlatans! That is just the time they get hold of us, the moment we are weak. Then they bring in all the gods.... Help, anyone! But we are helpless. There is no help from anyone. That is the truth. There have been more gods than human beings; and yet no help. We die like dogs—no help. Everywhere beastliness, famine, disease, misery, evil! And all are crying for help. But no help. And yet, hoping against hope, we are still screaming for help. Oh, the miserable condition! Oh, the terror of it! Look into your own heart! One half of the trouble is not our fault, but the fault of our parents. Born with this weakness, more and more of it was put into our heads. Step by step we go beyond it.


It is a tremendous error to feel helpless. Do not seek help from anyone. We are our own help. If we cannot help ourselves, there is none to help us. "Thou thyself art thy only friend, thou thyself thy only enemy. There is no other enemy but this self of mine, no other friend but myself." This is the last and greatest lesson, and oh, what a time it takes to learn it! We seem to get hold of it, and the next moment the old wave comes. The backbone breaks. We weaken and again grasp for that superstition and help. Just think of that huge mass of misery, and all caused by this false idea of going to seek for help! . . .


There is only one sin. That is weakness. When I was a boy I read Milton's Paradise Lost. The only good man I had any respect for was Satan. The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game. Stand up and die game! Do not add one lunacy to another. Do not add your weakness to the evil that is going to come. That is all I have to say to the world. Be strong!


You believe in God. If you do, believe in the real God. "Thou art the man, thou the woman, thou the young man walking in the strength of youth, thou the old man tottering with his stick." Thou art weakness. Thou art fear. Thou art heaven, and thou art hell. Thou art the serpent that would sting. Come thou as fear! Come thou as death! Come thou as misery!


All weakness, all bondage is imagination. Speak one word to it, it must vanish. Do not weaken! There is no other way out. Stand up and be strong! No fear. No superstition. Face the truth as it is! If death comes—that is the worst of our miseries—let it come! We are determined to die game. That is all the religion I know. I have not attained to it, but I am struggling to do it. I may not, but you may. Go on.[95]


This was Swamiji's last word in San Francisco and its impact was tremendous. Eighteen years later Mr. Rhodehamel was to write of the Gita classes as though they had been held only the day before. "He stood before us arrayed in his Sannyasin garb," he recalled, "reading from the original Sanskrit, translating and expounding. With a few prefatory remarks on the first chapter he launched into the second chapter. The great point he brought out was the attitude of mind one should assume in meeting the real problems of life. The greatest obstacle to the right attitude of mind, he said, was fear of the difficult. So he said, 'Be brave! Be strong! Be fearless! Once you have taken up the spiritual life, fight as long as there is any life in you. Even though you know you are going to be killed, fight till you are killed. Don't die of fright. Die fighting. Don't go down till you are knocked down.' Then with his right arm extended he thundered, 'Die game! Die game! Die game!' That one sentence rang through those last lectures, 'Die game! Die game! Die game!' They were his farewell words to his disciples, his goodbye.'[96]

8

"The Swami Vivekananda delivered his 3rd and last lecture on the Bhagavad-Gita before a most interested audience at Dr. Logan's residence . . . ," the Minutes of the Vedanta Society for May 29 read, and continue:


After a most instructive and impressive lecture, he answered as usual many questions.


Dr. Logan then announced that Swami Vivekananda had received a call to lecture at the Paris Exposition, and that he was going to leave the following morning, Wednesday, May 30th, for Paris.


Dr. Plumb then presented the Swami with the money collected from his lectures, for which the Swami thanked most heartily.


The Swami then told the people present that he would send them a most spiritual Swami by name of Swami Turiyananda. He then bid them all good-bye.[97]


("He left us with these humble words," Mr. Rhodehamel wrote of Swamiji's farewell to the Vedanta Class: 'I will send you another, a greater than I, one who lives what I talk about. I will send you Swami Turiyananda.' ")[98]


The following morning Swamiji crossed the Bay for the last time and boarded the Southern Pacific's Overland Limited at the Oakland mole. Many of his friends must have seen him off, but none knew this was to be their final parting. Even Mrs. Hansbrough had not understood that at Dr. Logan's she had seen Swamiji for the last time. "He took the greatest interest in the people and in 'the movement' and in whom he would send to carry on after he left the Pacific Coast," she later said. "I am sure that if his health had permitted, he would have come to the West a third time.'[99] Mrs. Allan had also been certain he would return. "I shall come back,'[100] Swamiji had told her, and he had, of course, meant it. He liked California, finding it a "great field" for Vedanta. Californians, in turn, liked Swamiji. Those who knew him, who followed him and looked upon him as their spiritual teacher and master adored him. How deeply they did so is reflected in a tribute by the "San Francisco Class of Vedanta Philosophy" to its "Great Leader" when word of Swamiji's death in July of 1902 reached America. Addressed to his "Brother Sannyasins at the Math in India," it was published in the Pacific Vedantin of August 1902 and two months later in the Brahmavadin. It read in part as follows: 


. . . Our beloved has followed Him for whom his favorite theme was "My Master." Never has man written sweeter things of one he loved. As he loved and revered his Master, so we will love and cherish his sacred memory. He was one of the greatest souls that has visited the earth for many centuries. An incarnation of his Master, of Krishna, Buddha, Christ and all other great souls. He came fitted to fill the needs of the times as they are now. His was a twin soul to that of his Master, who represented the whole philosophy of all religions, be they ancient or modern. Vivekananda has shaken the whole world with his sublime thoughts, and they will echo down through the halls of time until time shall be no more. To him all people and all creeds were one. He had the patience of Christ and the generosity of the sun that shines and the air of heaven. To him a child could talk, a beggar, a prince, a slave or harlot. He said: "They are all of one family, I can see myself in all of them and they in me. The world is one family, and its parent an Infinite Ocean of Reality, Brahman. "


Nature had given him a physique beautiful to look upon, with features of an Apollo. But nature had not woven the warp and woof of his mortal frame so that it might withstand the wear and tear of a tremendous will within and the urgent calls from without. For he gave himself to a waiting world. Coming to this country as he did, a young man, a stranger in a foreign land, and meeting with the modern world's choicest divines, and holding those great and critical audiences of the World's Congress of Religions in reverential awe, with his high Spiritual Philosophy and sublime oratory, was an unusual strain for one so young. No other person stood out with such magnificent individuality; no creed or dogma could so stand. No other one had a message of such magnitude. Professors of our great universities listened with profound respect. "Compared to whose gigantic intellect these were as mere children," "This great Hindoo Cyclone has shaken the world;" this was said after he passed through Detroit, Mich. No tongue was foreign to him, no people and no clime were strange. The whole world was his field of labor....


. . . He is to us what Jesus Christ is to many devout Christians.... We consider that we were exceedingly fortunate to have known him in the flesh, to have communed with him in person and to have felt the sweet influence of his Divine presence....


. . . RESOLVE, That this expression of our love and affection for our dear departed Master be spread upon the records of the Class, and that copies thereof be forwarded to his fellow Sannyasins at the Math in India and elsewhere.[101]


The above was signed on behalf of the Vedanta Society by the president; Milburn H. Logan; the vice-president, Carl F. Petersen; and the secretary, Albert S. Wollberg.


Even those who knew Swamiji less well, those who attended his lectures but who did not become students of Vedanta or members of the Society--even they held him in profound esteem and affection. One such Californian—young woman from the San Francisco Chronicle who had interviewed him in March and who had evidently attended his lectures with more than journalistic interest, took the trouble to speak for her fellow citizens in appreciation of this extraordinary visitor from India. While Swamiji was resting at Camp Taylor, his public work finished, Blanche Partington wrote a heartfelt letter, dated May 9, 1900, to the editor of Prabuddha Bharata. It was published in the June issue and later, in part, in the first edition of the Life (to be subsequently dropped). I quote it here in full as it first appeared:


To the Editor, Prabuddha Bharata,
From the West, to you, greeting! 


If we may presume a comparative interest in California, in the land towards which our attention has recently been so forcefully turned, the land which has given us the master-thinker, and teacher, Swami Vivekananda, then will the following small account of the Vedanta work in California prove not uninteresting to your readers.


The Swami Vivekananda came to the "Golden State" some five months ago now, a stranger in a strange land, and, except to those fortunate few who heard him at the World's Fair, Chicago, entirely unknown. For some weeks he remained in Los Angeles, in the southern part of the state, teaching in the "City of Angels" amidst much quiet enthusiasm, and with happy results, and from thence he came to San Francisco, capital [principal] city of California. Here his success was immediate. The first audience which greeted him, on February 18th [25th], at the First Unitarian Church, Oakland, numbered over two thousand people, who listened to his words with keenest attention, and enthusiastic sympathy. Since that time, between forty and fifty lectures have been delivered by the Swami, in San Francisco, Oakland, and Alameda, on the various phases of the Vedanta Philosophy, and conditions and life in India. His teaching has aroused a widespread attention here, and will undoubtedly have a strong influence upon the religious thought of California. Three classes, for the further study of the Vedanta Philosophy, have been formed, in San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda, and it is possible that if the conditions are favourable, the Swami Vivekananda will send out to us another teacher. He himself regards California as a country peculiarly well-suited to the development of Oriental Philosophies, its climatic conditions especially kind, its strange inter-mixtures of races a fruitful soil wherein to plant this new-old thought, its youth a promise and potency of growth.


The impression made by the Swami's teaching has been most profound, the impress of his brilliant and distinguished personality; what he is, not less, but even deeper than his spoken word, strange and electrifying to us to see, the face of the warrior-thinker leap like a sword from its scabbard as the child-likeness of the master's countenance falls away under the power of the spirit! Dear and beautiful to see his absolute kindliness to all with whom he comes in contact, his admirable simplicity of manner, his charming humility, and strange and lovely to our unaccustomed ears the music of his words, his wonderful eloquence in a foreign tongue, for the Swami Vivekananda is more than teacher, master, philosopher, he is a poet from the land of poetry!


The Swami is still among us, though he is living in retirement with some good friends. The end of the lecture course found him much exhausted, but at last hearing, he was much better, and on the high road to recovery. From here he goes to New York, and from thence to Paris, remaining with us, however, for some few weeks longer.[102]


About the same time, Miss Partington wrote also to the Brahmavadin. Her letter to this magazine was published in its July 1900 issue and, like the above, was later printed in the first edition of the Life. As the Brahmavadin letter was somewhat repetitious of that in Prabudda Bharata, I shall give it here only in part:


All hail the Light of Asia! [she began]. Thus, poet, sage, and devotee in speaking of the advent of the Swami Vivekananda upon our Western shores! It were not difficult to you who know him, to understand the vivid and profound impression made by this brilliant and charming personality upon all those with whom he comes in contact, and the temptation to extravagance in speaking of him and his work. But we will attempt such sweet reasonableness as is possible to us, in this little appreciation of one of the deepest thinkers and finest spirits who has yet visited among us for our blessing and delight.


To some extent, California was prepared for the simple-subtle teaching of this Oriental sage. First came to us, some years ago, the white-robed Brahmacharin with his message [I do not know to whom Miss Partington refers], then Dharmapala of the imperial yellow garb, and there has been here for some time a Buddhist church, and much thought along theosophical lines, besides all the usual orthodox developments, each in its place, lower steps of the temple to which the latest and greatest of these, the Vedanta Philosophy, is leading....


The interest in [Swami Vivekananda's] doctrine has been steadily increasing,—even reaching the hopeful limit of a mild martyrdom of pulpit denunciation!—and, though it is yet early to prophesy results, it seems safe to say that the enthusiasm thus awakened is of a permanent character....


Had we been able to claim for our climate a perfect kindness to the Swami Vivekananda, our measure of content had been full, and it is perhaps rather owing to his lavish gift of his strength in our service, than to the climate, that the later days of his lectures here found him somewhat seriously indisposed. But the last word from him, he is now in retirement with some good friends in the country, tells of renewed strength and vigor, and we shall surely send him to his next stopping place, New York, in perfect health again.


Greeting to all our good friends in India, think sometimes of the new children of your thought in California.[103]


One may, I think, look upon Miss Partington as a spokesman for the generality of those who attended Swamiji's lectures in northern California. She was not a close student of religion; she was a member of the California public, one of those open-minded, generous, and appreciative people who had led Swamiji to believe that California was a great field. He had held that view in the early days of his visit; he still held it after he left. "Swami Vivekananda had at one time or another visited all parts of the United States," Swami Abhedananda told a member of the San Francisco Vedanta Society many years later. "But when he came back to New York from California, he asked me to go there. 'California' he told me, 'is the place where Vedanta will grow.' " And Swami Abhedananda had himself added, "The people there are sympathetic and open. "[104]


There is no doubt that during the six months Swamiji had lived and worked in California a close bond had grown up between him and the many people who knew him—the indissoluble bond between guru and disciple; and it is no wonder that when his train pulled out from the Oakland mole, no one could think that he would not return.


ⓘ
[1].Swami Vivekananda to Sister Nivedita, May 17, 1900, Sen Col.
[2].Sara Bull to Swami Vivekananda, May 1, 1900; for full letter see Sankari Prasad Basu, Nivedita Lokamata, pp. 553-55.
[3].Swami Vivekananda to Sara Bull, May 18, 1900, SCB.
[4].Swami Vivekananda to Swami Abhedananda, (May 19 ?), 1900, Ramakrishna Vedanta Math, Calcutta.
[5].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[6].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[7].The Bay of San Francisco; A History, pp. 89-90.
[8].The Bay of San Francisco; A History ., p. 90.
[9].The Bay of San Francisco; A History ., p. 90.
[10].Cara M. French, “Memoirs,” VSNC.
[11].Swami Abhedananda, Vivekananda and His Work, 3rd ed. (1950), PP- 51-53-
[12].Early Minutes, Vedanta Society of San Francisco, May 3, 1900, VSNC.
[13].Early Minutes, Vedanta Society of San Francisco., May 24, 1900.
[14].Rhodehamel Notebook, VSNC.
[15].Allan Papers, VSNC.
[16].Nivedita, The Master, p. 202.
[17].Complete Works, 4 : 102.
[18].Complete Works., 5 : 247.
[19].Complete Works 4 : 428.
[20].Complete Works  4: 104.
[21].Complete Works 5 : 246.
[22].Complete Works 4: 325.
[23].Complete Works 4: 104.
[24].Complete Works 3 : 259-60.
[25].Complete Works 4: 105.
[26].Complete Works 7 : 19.
[27].Complete Works 7 : 272-73.
[28].Complete Works 4: 105-6.
[29].Complete Works 2 : 189.
[30].Complete Works 7 : 57; 2 : 292; 3 : 261; 3 : 244-45.
[31].Complete Works 6 : 247.
[32].Complete Works 4: 95
[33].Complete Works 7 :137
[34].Complete Works 4: 106-7.
[35].Complete Works 3 : 261.
[36].Complete Works 4 : 359
[37].Complete Works 7 :22.
[38].Complete Works 3 : 256.
[39].Complete Works 3 : 263.
[40].Nivedita, The Master, pp. 263-64,
[41].Complete Works, 5 : 450.
[42].Nivedita, op. cit., p. 273.
[43].Complete Works, 5 : 454.
[44].Rem. (Sister Nivedita), pp. 292-93.
[45].Complete Works, 5 : 453-54.
[46].Complete Works., 4 : 107.
[47].Complete Works 3 : 267.
[48].Nivedita, op. cit., pp. 241-42.
[49].Complete Works, 3 : 323-24.
[50].Complete Works., 3 : 244-45.
[51].Complete Works7 : 197-98.
[52].Complete Works 4: 1O7
[53].Complete Works 5:247-49.
[54].Nivedita, op, cit., p. 328.
[55].Complete Works, 7 : 88.
[56].Complete Works., 2 : 3-4.
[57].Complete Works,1 : 510
[58].Complete Works, 6 : 431.
[59].Bhagavad Gita, 2.3; Complete Works, 4: 108.
[60].Complete Works, 4 : 108-9.
[61].Complete Works, 5 : 452-53.
[62].Complete Works,1 :38-39.
[63].Rem, (Sister Nivedita), p. 292.
[64].Complete Works, 4 : 109-10.
[65].Complete Works., 4 : no.
[66].Complete Works 7 : 199-200.
[67].Complete Works 8 : 8-9.
[68].Complete Works 3: 193-94.
[69].Complete Works 3 :259.
[70].Complete Works 6:458.
[71].Complete Works 7: 185.
[72].Complete Works7 : 197.
[73].Complete Works  4 : 349.
[74].Complete Works 6 : 459.
[75].Complete Works 8:72.
[76].Life (1981), 2 : 34.
[77].Complete Works 1 : 441-42.
[78].Frank Rhodehamel, “Shanti Ashrama Days,” P.B, 23 (May 1918): 107.
[79].Ida Ansell’s first transcript of Complete Works “Gita—I,” VSNG.
[80].Complete Works 1 : 454.
[81].Complete Works 1 :457.
[82].Rhodehamel Notebook, VSNG.
[83].Complete Works, 1 :461-62.
[84].See ref. 78 above.
[85].Rhodehamel Notebook, VSNC.
[86].See ref. 79 above; see also Complete Works, 1 : 461.
[87].Complete Works, 1 : 462-66 passim.
[88].Complete Works, 1 : 469.
[89].Complete Works,1 :473-74.
[90].Complete Works,1 :474.
[91].Complete Works,1 : 476.
[92].Complete Works,1 :475.
[93].Complete Works,1 :476.
[94].Rhodehamel Notebook, VSNC.
[95].Complete Works 1 :477-80.
[96].See ref. 78 above
[97].Early Minutes, Vedanta Society of San Francisco, VSNC.
[98].See ref. 78 above.
[99].Hansbrough, “Reminiscences.”
[100].Edith Allan, unpublished notes, VSNC.
[101] Pacific Vedanlin, August 1902; Brahmavadin, 7 (October 1902): 690-91.
[102] P.B. 5 (June 1900): 37; Life, 1st ed., 3 :390.
[103] Life, isted., 3:391.
[104] Alfred T. Clifton (Swami Chidrupananda), “One Hundred Days in India,” VSN


↑ Contents

6.3.1 A WORLD MISSION DRAWS TO A CLOSE-II

Swamiji did indeed intend to return to California; yet as things turned out, his departure on May 30, 1900, was his farewell. It also marked the close of his intensive and prolonged public platform work in the West. It is true, as we shall see a little later, that he was to deliver four Sunday lectures and hold several classes in New York, but these were all semi-public talks given at weekly intervals during the hot and slack summer-vacation month of June. Again as we shall see, he was to lecture twice before the Paris Congress of Religions—speaking on strictly technical and scholarly subjects. Valuable these post-California talks surely were, but his California lectures and classes, to which he gave so much of his concentrated energy for so long and steady a time, constituted, as I see it, the heart of his work during this period of his life.

A question that naturally arises at this point is whether there was any significant difference between the teachings of his second visit to the West, as judged by what we know of his many California talks, and the teachings of his first visit. I have tried to answer this question somewhat prematurely and thus only in half measure in an earlier chapter. I shall try to answer it here more fully, for I believe it is an important one.

First of all, we must review, in a very general way, what Swamiji taught and did during his first visit to the Western world—the visit that extended from the end of July, 1893, to the middle of December, 1896, in which he lectured and held classes in both America and England. One can divide this visit into two parts, each of which can be further divided in two. There was, first, the period between his arrival in Chicago and the end of 1894, and second, that between the beginning of 1895 and his departure for India at the close of 1896. The first period falls into two uneven parts: the days before the Parliament of Religions, which opened in Chicago on September 11 , 1893, and the days, or rather months, extending from his first address at the Parliament (which at once brought him into the widened eye of the American public) to the close of 1894. The second period can be divided (roughly) into 1895 and 1896.

During the six weeks or so prior to the Parliament of Religions, Swamiji's purpose, with which he had come to America and upon which he had set his mind and heart, was to explain to the people of the United States that the Hindus desperately required not religion, of which they had plenty and to spare, but bread and a technological education. Still full of faith in the generosity and idealism of the American people, he believed that a direct and simple explanation of India's real need would be enough and that rich Americans, learning the facts, would readily respond with help. With this purpose and this faith in mind, Swamiji lectured when possible before small New England audiences on the subject of his motherland, telling of his plan to start a technological college for monks, who would, in turn, give a practical education to villagers throughout the country. It was not long before he discovered the fruitlessness of this procedure. If not earlier than the Parliament of Religions, then certainly during it, it became unmistakably clear to him that America's ignorance of India had, on the whole, a positive quality about it: it was rock-hard, layers deep, and characterized by an obdurate distrust of and contempt for anything Hindu. It was, moreover, fortified continually through the sensational denigration of India by less-than-loving Christian missionaries and by the eagerness of the parishioners at home to listen and believe.

After the Parliament of Religions, Swamiji, now famous, determined to earn the money that he needed for his Indian work by lecturing throughout the United States and, by means of his lectures, to give Americans a true picture of Hindu culture and religion. This last was not a matter of merely supplying information; it was a matter also of first blasting away boulders of solidified ignorance, and this, by the very force of his personality, Swamiji accomplished to a great extent. He was, as he wrote to a disciple in India, "the one man who dared defend his country." "And I have given them such ideas," he added, "as they never expected from a Hindu.'[1] Swamiji's very appearance, his majesty of bearing combined with a childlike simplicity and friendliness, his perfect command of English, his brilliance of intellect, his apparently unending wealth of knowledge, his lofty idealism, which, as many admitted, towered over the highest reaches of Western thought, his manifest spiritual eminence and greatness of heart—all these, as well as his inspiring lectures on his motherland, gave the lie in undeniable terms to almost everything concerning India that the American people had been led to believe and that had theretofore gone uncontradicted and unchallenged.

Thousands of Americans heard this phenomenal Hindu monk and applauded him—and inevitably that applause brought down upon him the enmity of every zealous bigot in the country. The story of the hue and cry that arose around Swamiji's heels, of the viciousness with which he was attacked—and this not only by Americans but, incredibly, by some of his own countrymen as well—has been told in some detail in the first volume of this series—Prophetic Mission I —and need not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that partly by the information he gave, partly by simply standing as living testimony to the greatness of his parent culture, and partly by the tremendous spiritual power that radiated from him, Swamiji silenced his opponents and strengthened the forces of tolerance and understanding in America.

The battle he thus fought and won on behalf of his countrymen constituted one of the primary aspects of his work during the months following the Parliament of Religions. During this period, however, he did more than exonerate his country from the charge of benighted heathenism. He was quick to see, as he toured through the United States, the need of the American people for spiritual sustenance. If India required a technical education, America required with as much urgency a spiritual one. He began to give it. He pointed out the underlying unity of all religions, spreading his Master's teaching in this regard; he taught the essential meaning and purpose of religion itself and declared each religion and creed to represent a valid step in the soul's progress toward the highest spiritual attainment. We also find that during this period he lectured many times on Buddhism, possibly because there was in America a growing interest in and appreciation of Gautama Buddha, but more probably because he was keenly aware that the full development of self reliance, rationality, and compassion as taught and exemplified by this great Teacher would be essential to man's success in the world of the future. Swamiji also spoke many times throughout this period of the unselfish nature of true Divine Love. He scathingly berated average churchgoing Christians for their "shopkeeping" brand of devotion: "Christians are so selfish in their love," he said in Detroit, "that they are continually asking God to give them something, including all manner of selfish things. Modern religion is, therefore, nothing but a mere hobby and fashion and people flock to church like a lot of sheep.'[2] He thundered against the degrading concept that human beings are "miserable sinners," and spoke with electrifying eloquence and power of the eternal, unchanging divinity of the individual soul and the divine unity of all men.

Further, as he toured through the United States, meeting thousands of people, visiting uncounted towns and cities, Swamiji sowed the seeds of spirituality in another and deeper sense. On a level that defies the tools of research but that we nonetheless know exists, he played the role of World Teacher and Prophet, silently setting in motion a new current of thought in the collective mind of the nation—a current, the beneficent effects of which will become visible on the surface of human affairs only slowly, but the reality of which we cannot doubt, for the spiritual stature of Swami Vivekananda was such that he could not live among men without altering, enriching, and illumining the very texture of world thought. Indeed, to ignite men's minds not for a brief, passing moment but on deep, subliminal levels and, consequently, for long sweeps of time is surely the primary function and meaning of that marvelous phenomenon, divine prophethood, that miracle by which humanity has many times been set aglow in its long history and which has thereby many times lifted that history out of its otherwise violent, humdrum, and more or less predictable course.

There is a good deal of evidence, which we need not go into here (it has been set forth and discussed at some length in Prophetic Mission - 2), that in the latter part of 1894 Swamiji's thought was coming to grips with the immensely complex and multifarious problems of the modern age and formulating root-destroying solutions to them for the Western world. It was, indeed, on the last day but one of 1894 that he made the highly significant and startling statement: "I have a message to the West as Buddha had a message to the East.'[3] At the beginning of 1895 he settled down in one place to give that message in all its extraordinary comprehensiveness and diversity. Earlier he had scattered broadcast the seeds of Vedanta; he now delivered his teachings in concentrated, though infinitely varied, form, developing a permanent center from which they would spread outward like waves of force.

During the first five months of 1895, Swamiji lived in New York in unfashionably located rooms where he held free classes twice daily, supporting them (For most of his students were poor, and he wished to be independent of those who were rich and inclined to be bossy) by delivering from time to time pay public lectures. After a brief rest in June at the New Hampshire summer camp of his friend Mr. Francis Leggett (who was not yet married to Miss MacLeod's sister, Betty Sturges), he spent some six weeks at Thousand Island Park in the secluded home of one of his students. Here, surrounded by a few selected disciples (twelve in all), he taught Vedanta with even greater intensity than he had in New York, for his hope at this time was to "manufacture a few 'Yogis' out of the materials of the [New York] classes,'[4]or, as he also put it, to "make several Sannyasins, . . . leaving the work to them.'[5]

During the latter part of 1895, Swamiji spent a large part of his time in London, where, laying the foundation for future work, he held classes, gave talks in private houses, and delivered one public lecture. At the beginning of December he returned to New York for his second season of class work and lecturing in the United States.

Although Swamiji's activity in 1895 comprised an untold number of classes and unquestionably forms a part of his main teaching mission in the West, very little of what he taught during this year has come down to us in printed form. Indeed, with the notable exception of the slim but invaluable book Inspired Talks, which contains notes of his informal classes at Thousand Island Park, little effort seems to have been made to preserve Swamiji's classes and lectures of this period. A number of references scattered here and there (as well as an undated sheaf of jnana yoga notes), however, leave very little doubt that in his New York classes he dealt with the four yogas, or paths: jnana, raja, bhakti, and karma. That he taught these yogas in his London classes is also very likely. As for his New York lectures of this period, only the titles of five are known to us, but those five tell us much. They are: "The Vedanta Philosophy," "The Science of Religion," "The Rationale of Yoga," "What is Vedanta?" and "What is Yoga?" Clearly, Swamiji had started to give the great body of teachings on the philosophy and practice of Vedanta which acquired permanent form during the following season of his work. The title of his one public lecture in London-"Self Knowledge" —is as revealing.

The year of 1896 (or, to be exact, the period extending from December 9, 1895, to December 16, 1896) was the year of golden harvest. During this period Swamiji produced almost all the works that, together, form the primary message of his first visit to the West. The priceless heritage that has come down to us from this period includes the books Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Raja Yoga, and Jnana Yoga. In addition one finds in the Complete Works many important lectures and class talks delivered in 1896 in America and London. There are, for instance, some eight lectures on Sankhya and Vedanta, given as New York Jnana yoga classes and later published in book form under the title The Science and Philosophy of Religion; the important Harvard lecture "The Vedanta Philosophy"; a number of lectures delivered in London, such as "Vedanta and Privilege," which are not included in ,Jnana Yoga; and two lectures on Sri Ramakrishna (combined in the Complete Works into one, under the title "My Master").

This list does not exhaust our inherited treasure of 1896 but will serve to show the importance of that year. (One might take the view that the reason 1896 was so fruitful was not because Swamiji's message was more ripe by that time than it had been earlier, but because Josiah J. Goodwin was then by his side, faithfully taking shorthand notes and transcribing them. It is true that without Mr. Goodwin's labor we would know as little of Swamiji's lectures and classes of 1896 as we know about those of 1895. But one is inclined to believe that in the rhythmical nature of Swamiji's mission Mr. Goodwin appeared on the scene exactly when he began to give the lectures he wished to publish in permanent book form—and not before. However, this is a point we cannot settle here.)

Volumes three and four of this series—The World Teacher, parts one and two—deal with Swamiji's life during this period of 1895 and 1896, and an attempt is made there to explore his teachings in detail. But what concerns us at present is the message, in general, that he gave during this last part of his first visit to the West. Fortunately—for it is difficult and risky to try to condense into a few sentences the substance of his teachings during any period of his mission—he himself has done this for us. In the front of his book Raja Yoga one finds as a sort of summary of his teaching the well-known lines, taken from his commentary on aphorism 25 of chapter two of the Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali: "Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature: external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control or philosophy—by one, or more, or all of these—and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms are but secondary details.'[6]

Later in the year Swamiji put his teaching even more succinctly. In a letter to Sister Nivedita (then Margaret Noble) he wrote, "My ideal indeed can be put into a few words and that is: to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life.'[7]Throughout his mission this ideal—to preach unto mankind their divinity was central to Swamiji's mission. It was indeed more than central; it was the ground in which all else was rooted and the light toward which all else aspired. During his first visit he taught a wide variety of ways by which people of all temperaments and stages of spiritual advancement could move toward the realization of their own divine nature. He taught, further, that these ways, singly or combined, represented the different forms or expressions of the world's religious beliefs and practices. Each had the same goal, each was inspired by the same human yearning for and struggle toward divine infinitude.

He taught the four primary paths or yogas, giving them, it would appear, equal attention. He explained the three main philosophies of Vedanta: dualism, qualified monism, and monism, showing that the first two (which are more theologies than philosophies) were necessary steps in mankind's upward journey to the third, monism, beyond which no greater truth could be known or conceived. He taught the utmost tolerance for—or, rather, acceptance of—all religious forms, showing that each had its place in the soul's progress from "lower truth to higher truth," that none should be condemned.

In addition, he taught how monistic Vedanta could stand as the broad basis for lasting harmony between the rich and jostling variety of peoples, races, cultures, religions, and ideologies of which human society is, and must ever be, composed. He explained the cosmologies of Vedanta and Sankhya and the psychology of Yoga, and he showed how these, as well as the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, reconcile the apparently contradictory findings and attitudes of science and religion, reason and mysticism, everyday life and spiritual practice. He showed how Vedanta answers the big, ever-recurrent, and often anguished questions of whither, why, and whence, which Western philosophy, mired in an essentially materialistic outlook, was in a few years to pronounce unanswerable. He enlarged man's concept of God, of the world, and of himself, expanding them, indeed, to Infinity. He transformed human life itself, turning it into a grand concentrated worship in which every man's occupation and profession, however secular, could become as fulfilling, as direct, and as conscious a way to God realization as the cloistered path of an absorbed monk or nun. He showed that all religious paths were valid when sincerely followed, for they took a man gently toward God along the lines of his own natural bent. Indeed Swamiji's expansion of religion to embrace all of human life and his transformation of human life into a continual, joyful, and self rewarding means of realizing one's own divine nature and the divinity of all men—of all beings and things—was one of the primary teachings of this period of his mission.

Considering that the main body of his message (as we know it) was given over a period of barely a year (he did not teach continually in 1896, but spent some weeks traveling in Europe), it was incredibly full and comprehensive. Perhaps this was inevitably so; for during this period he was giving the Western world, for all its uses and needs, its first meaningful and complete knowledge of Vedanta. It is true that for centuries India's philosophy had had an unnamed, if not untraceable  influence in the West. In recent times, moreover, a knowledge of Vedanta had come to America and England through the often crackling-dry scholarship of nineteenth-century Orientalists as well as through the more popular, though esoteric, teachings of Theosophy. In addition, a good deal of Indian philosophy was mixed into the idealistic flights of Transcendentalism. But to the majority of Westerners at the close of the century, Vedanta was a new, very unaccustomed teaching, and since it was to the majority that Swamiji wished to speak, he gave much time to explaining it in detail. He held it up in full view, as it were, and revolved it again and again so that all its sides were clearly revealed and understood, so that its different lights could fall on the collective problems of contemporary man and its diverse aspects could fill diverse needs. In his inimitable way, he made this highly intricate, many faceted, and abstruse philosophy course through his lectures and classes like some life-giving elixir—not vital merely, but vitality itself. Never before had this been done in the Western world.

Before leaving Swamiji's first visit to the West we should mention one aspect of his activity which, in respect to his world mission, was of much importance. Absorbed as he may have become in formulating and delivering a message to the Western people, he never forgot his motherland or relegated her to the background of his thought. Not for a moment did his heartache over her misery or his longing to relieve the suffering of her people diminish in fervor; nor did he postpone his work of bringing about her regeneration. Throughout his first visit to the West his mind, as is clearly evidenced by his many letters to his brother monks and his householder disciples and friends, continually dwelt on India's problems and reviewed again and again the best means of solving them. As is well known, his idea, conceived at Cape Comorin at the end of 1892, was that India's hope lay in channeling "the tremendous power in the hands of the roving Sannyasins'[8] into the dedicated service and elevation of her downtrodden masses. Thenceforth, his mind dealt with the ways and means of building up and organizing the Ramakrishna Order into a body of monks whose spiritual practice would lie not only in meditation and other traditional methods but in the dedicated service of man as God, and whose goal would be not only their own liberation but also the welfare of the world. In the tradition of Hindu monasticism, the concept was revolutionary, and in practice, it involved changes and innovations that would have bearing on every aspect of the Order.

"In those early days we did not know the thoughts that were seething in Swamiji's mind, day and night," Sister Christine wrote in her memoirs. " 'The work! the work!' he cried. 'How to begin the work in India! The way, the means!' The form it would take was evolved gradually. Certainly before he left America, the way, the means, and the method were clear in every detail.'[9]

Indeed, Swamiji's letters written from America and England in which he set forth his ideas, his plans, and his hopes, in which he laid down rules, directed the beginnings of the work, exhorted, encouraged, scolded, and poured out so much energy that even the printed words seem vibrant, constitute almost as important a part of his Indian mission as do the lectures he gave in India upon his return to that country in 1897. They constitute, as well, an important part of his activity during his stay in the West. One cannot, in fact, form a true picture of Swamiji's first visit in America without recognizing that, in addition to all else, it was a germination period of his Indian mission—a period during which that mission took shape in the white heat of his thought and began to glow with an immense nation-moving vitality*(1).

Let us turn now to Swamiji's second visit to the West, which we have reviewed in much detail in the pages of this book. The reader who has come thus far, and who has read the transcripts of Swamiji's California lectures as published in the Complete Works as well as the lectures of his first visit, will be aware that there was a pronounced difference both in message and in mood between his first visit and his second. The mood of Swamiji's second visit has, I think, been so apparent throughout the present narrative that we need not dwell at length upon it here. Suffice it to say that fiery as his California lectures often were—particularly those given in northern California—he could not by any stretch of the imagination have been called "the cyclonic monk." While he spoke more than ever in the manner of a Prophet-uttering, one after the other, directly perceived truths, seldom pausing to provide philosophical reasons—he was, in some respects, less intent on delivering a message, less driven by the shortness of his days, less apt to cry in exasperation, as he had in 1895, "I have no time to give my manners a finish. I cannot find time enough to deliver my message.'[10]

His battle against the Western maligners of his country had long since been fought and won; he had held up to the world the spiritual depth and moral grandeur of India's culture, religion, and philosophy; his teaching of Vedanta in all its aspects and implications had been given. Further, his "machine" for the regeneration of his motherland had been set in motion, and his message to the Hindu people had been delivered. In short, by the time Swamiji left India in 1899, the substance of his mission on earth had been accomplished and the tremendous tension of his work had lessened.

It is true that for some months after leaving India Swamiji, physically and nervously exhausted, was filled with a sense of dissatisfaction and impatience with the progress of his Indian work. Yet as he rested at Ridgely Manor and, later, as he earned money in Los Angeles to defray the Math's expenses and, in San Francisco, received heartening letters from his brothers at Belur, his mind gradually lifted into the total peace that was so natural to it. Indeed, so complete and transcendental did Swamiji's serenity become toward the close of his California visit that those who loved him might have guessed that the gossamer-thin veil of Maya, without which work would have been impossible to him, had been rent and that his remaining days on earth were few.

We do not find, then, in California the same drive, the same sense of urgency that had characterized his earlier years. Instead, there prevails a relaxed mood, sometimes playful, sometimes lyric. This is not to say that he was not at times deeply withdrawn and grave in California, or that he did not, as always, give his utmost to his mission; nor is it to say that during his first visit he was not at times playful and relaxed. It is to say only that the dominant moods of the two visits can be contrasted one with the other: the first heroic, the second idyllic. But one should add that if Swamiji's life was more quiet in California than it had been at an earlier time, it was not thereby less powerful or effective. His power seems to have been more that of a wide, deep river flowing smoothly and freely to a waiting sea, rather than that of a rushing torrent; but there was always a radiance of presence, a continuous shining of God-consciousness, such as constitutes the very essence of prophet-hood. Further, if his mood in California was not that of the warrior, his message, paradoxically, was more heroic, more uncompromising, and more demanding of man's best effort than ever before.

As far as we can know, Swamiji had not set forth from India the second time with a definite idea of giving a message to the West. Yet this does not mean that no message stirred within his mind. World Teacher that he was and his mission still in the outward swing of its cycle, he inevitably had a wealth of teaching still to give. It was not surprising, therefore, that in June of 1899, as his ship was piloted down the Hooghly River toward the Bay of Bengal, he spoke to Sister Nivedita of a "new gospel." And, as the reader will remember, Miss MacLeod wrote from Ridgely Manor to Mrs. Bull, "Swamiji is blessed and has his new message ready—that all there is in life is character.... [He said that] in one's greatest hour of need one stands alone. Buddhas and Christs do more harm than good—for mankind is trying to imitate them instead of developing its own character!'[11]

One remembers also that as Miss MacLeod drove off from Ridgely Manor to hurry to California to the side of her brother, Swamiji called after her, "Get up some classes, and I will come.'[12]He who had been born to teach others, who had come to earth to help mankind could not rest for long, could not but grow weary of the drawn-out house party at Ridgely Manor. He had a message, and that message had a compelling life of its own; it was bound to find full expression.

One cannot but think that Swamiji's new message was born from, or at least intensified by, what had been, on the whole, his disheartening experience in India. Even those of his countrymen who did not oppose him but flocked about him in genuine reverence and who nodded enthusiastic assent to his every word failed to respond to his message in deed. Rather, they continued to live and to think as they had been living and thinking for centuries past, following the old ways and traditions which, manifestly, led only deeper into degradation. There was no sign, and Swamiji was a past master at detecting signs, that his countrymen had heard him with more than half an ear.

"You have talked of reforms, of ideals, and all these things for the past hundred years," he thundered in Madras; "but when it comes to practice, you are not to be found anywhere—till you have disgusted the whole world, and the very name of reform is a thing of ridicule! And what is the cause? . . . The only cause is that you are weak, weak, weak; your body is weak, your mind is weak, you have no faith in yourselves! Centuries and centuries, a thousand years of crushing tyranny of castes and kings and foreigners and your own people have taken out all your strength, my brethren. Your backbone is broken, you are like downtrodden worms. Who will give you strength? . . . The first step in getting strength is to uphold the Upanishads, and believe—I am the Soul.' . . . I wish that faith [of Nachiketa] would come to each of you; and every one of you would stand up a giant, a world-mover with a gigantic intellect—an infinite God in every respect. That is what I want you to become. This is the strength that you get from the Upanishads, this is the faith that you get from there.'[13]

And in Calcutta he had taunted the Brahmins, proud in their rigid, formal orthodoxy: "You are Vedantists, you are very orthodox, are you not? You are great Hindus, and very orthodox. Ay, what I want to do is to make you more orthodox. The more orthodox you are, the more sensible; and the more you think of modern orthodoxy, the more foolish you are. Go back to your old orthodoxy, for in those days every sound that came from these books, every pulsation, was out of a strong, steady, and sincere heart; every note was true.... Go back, go back to the old days, when there was strength and vitality. Be strong once more, drink deep of this fountain of yore, and that is the only condition of life in India.'[14]

But at the time nothing much came of Swamiji's fiery exhortations to his countrymen; as pointed out in an earlier chapter, there was not the nationwide response that he had hoped for; there were no inward stirrings of life in the heart of the country, no efforts toward self regeneration. He was like one who had brought a large and nourishing feast to a starving man and found him too weak, too debilitated to eat. There can be little doubt that as he attempted to rouse his all-but unrousable motherland he soon came to the conclusion—by the beginning, at least, of 1899—that only men and women who were strong in the first place could accept the undiluted, leonine religion of the Upanishads. One must first build up men and women of strength on every level of human activity and in every social stratum and condition of life. One must infuse India's oldest, highest, and broadest truths back into the very blood of the people.

"I am born to proclaim to them that fearless message--Arise! Awake!"' he declared, and urged his disciples: "Be you my helpers in this work. Go over from village to village, from one portion of the country to another, and preach this message of fearlessness to all, from the Brahmana to the Chandala. Tell each and all that infinite power resides within there, that they are sharers of immortal Bliss. Thus rouse up the Rajas within them—make them fit for the struggle for existence, and then speak to them about salvation. First make people of the country stand on their feet by rousing their inner power, first let them learn to have good food and clothes and plenty of enjoyment.... Laziness, meanness and hypocrisy have covered the whole length and breadth of the country. . . . Does it not bring tears to the eyes? Madras, Bombay, Punjab, Bengal—whichever way I look, I see no signs of life.'[15]

It did not appear that the dualistic teachings the Hindu people had been following for centuries had been producing men ready to live in accordance with the strong, bracing truths of Advaita Vedanta or that they had been of much benefit to the country as a whole. On the contrary: "You . . . are made lunatics by these evil teachings," Swamiji cried in Lahore. "I have seen, all the world over, the bad effects of these weak teachings of humility destroying the human race. Our children are brought up in this way, and is it a wonder that they become semi-lunatics?'[16] Everything associated with that which was weakening Swamiji repudiated. "In every district and village . . . you will find only the sound of the Khol and Kartal! . . . Hearing from boyhood the sound of these effeminate forms of music and listening to the Kirtan [devotional singing], the country is well-nigh converted into a country of women. What more degradation can you expect? . . . Through the thunder-roll of the dignified Vedic hymns, life is to be brought back into the country. In everything the austere spirit of heroic manhood is to be revived.'[17]

Everywhere the great thunderclap of Advaita should resound. The idea that each person should develop religiously along his or her "own line of least resistance" (generally the line of supplication and ritualism), moving gradually from "lower truth to higher truth"—an idea that Swamiji had long held and had expressed in a Prabuddha Bharata interview in December of 1898—was giving way to the idea, which he had also long held, that everyone should start with the highest of truths, "I am the Self, the Omniscient One," making this bedrock fact the foundation of his total mental outlook. Three short excerpts from Sister Nivedita's letters as first published in Prabuddha Bharata of 1935 and later and less fully in Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda stand as evidence of the change in emphasis that Swamiji's ideas had undergone in this respect during his stay in India. (In quoting these excerpts, I have taken them from Prabuddha Bharata and have added a heretofore unpublished sentence from Nivedita's original letters.)

On the evening of March 11 of 1899 Sister Nivedita had gone to the Belur Math to interview Swamiji for Prabuddha Bharata. "We got there at 8 o'clock," she wrote to Miss MacLeod the following day. "Swami had been sitting beside the fire under the tree, but I did not get off my rug on the boat's roof, and he came to me there, as I felt that it was a little late for a lady to visit monks." ("Time and place were alike delightful," she wrote in the published interview itself. "Overhead the stars, and around—the rolling Ganges; and on one aide stood the dimly lighted building, with its background of palms and lofty shade-trees.") "When I had interviewed him," she continued in her letter, "he said, 'I say—Margot, I have been thinking for days about that line of least resistance. And it is a base fallacy! It is a comparative thing. As for me, I am never going to think of it again. The history of the world is the history of a few earnest men, and when one man is in earnest the world must just come to his feet. I am not going to water down my ideals, I am going to dictate terms.' This gave me my freedom too," Nivedita continued apropos of her girls' school; "and it is really to be a monastic order and not a series of concessions to the feeble-hearted." "One [other] thing Swami said last night," Nivedita wrote in this same letter, "was 'We have not seen Humanity yet—and when that era dawns there will be no line of least resistance—for everyone will be free to do good.' . . . 'My mission is not Ramakrishna's nor Vedanta's—nor anything but simply to bring manhood to this people.' '[18]

But as Swamiji interpreted the life of Sri Ramakrishna, man-making was its greatest significance. In a letter of May 8, 1899, Sister Nivedita quoted him as saying, " 'It was not the words of Ramakrishna but the life they lived with Him that [is] wanted, and that [has] yet to be written.' After all (she went on, quoting indirectly), this world was a series of pictures and man-making was the great interest running through. We were all watching the making of men and that alone.... Sri R. K. was always weeding out and rejecting the old. He always chose the young for disciples.'[19]

A week earlier Nivedita had written to Miss MacLeod of Swamiji's mood as he had revealed it to her: "His days were drawing to an end; but even if they were not, he was going to give up compromise. He would go to Almora and live there in meditation. He would go out into the world and preach smashing truths. It had been good fun for a while to go amongst men and tell lies about their being in their right place and so on. But it was utterly untrue. Let them give up, give up, give up. Then he said very quietly-'You won't understand this now, Margot; but when you get further on you will.[20]

One might ask why Swamiji did not lecture in India more than he did, why he did not go about from place to place dictating terms, preaching the divinity of man, instilling within the people the basic faith in themselves which, he was convinced, could alone restore their lost manhood, strength, and identity. His disciple Saratchandra Chakravarty once asked a similar question: "How is it, Swamiji, that you do not lecture in this country? You have stirred Europe and America with your lectures, but coming back here you have kept silence."

"In this country," Swamiji replied, "the ground should be prepared first; and then if the seed is sown, the plant will come out best. The ground in the West, in Europe and America, is very fertile and fit for sowing seeds. There, they have reached the climax of Bhoga (enjoyment).... In this country you have  not either Bhoga or Yoga (renunciation). When one is satiated with Bhoga, then it is that one will listen to and understand the teachings on Yoga. What good will lectures do in a country like India which has become the birthplace of disease, sorrow and affliction, and where men are emaciated through starvation, and weak in mind? . . . First of all, make the soil ready, and thousands of Vivekanandas will in time be born into this world to deliver lectures on religion. You needn't worry yourself about that!'[21]

As I mentioned earlier, as far as we can know, Swamiji did not come to the West the second time with the intention of teaching; but for whatever reason he came, he came with a conviction in his mind and heart—a "new gospel," as he called it, dynamic with his sense of its universal urgency and ready for full and vigorous expression.

Swamiji's "new gospel" was, of course, not new in the sense that he had never taught it before. The Upanishadic mahavakya "Thou art That!" had rung like an insistent refrain through his New York and London lectures. "I do not believe at all that monistic ideas preached to the world would produce immorality and weakness," he had said in London. "On the contrary, I have reason to believe that it is the only remedy there is. If this be the truth, why let people drink ditch water when the stream of life is flowing by? If this be the truth, that they are all pure, why not at this moment teach it to the whole world? Why not teach it with the voice of thunder to every man that is born, to saints and sinners, men, women and children, to the man on the throne and to the man sweeping the streets? . . . We must teach them, we must help them to rouse up their infinite nature. This is what I feel to be absolutely necessary all over the world.... Let the world resound with this idea and let superstition vanish. Tell it to men who are weak and persist in telling it. You are the Pure One....'[22]

One could multiply such quotations. Indeed, one cannot easily turn the pages of Jnana Yoga without finding that during his first visit to the West Swamiji had laid great stress on Advaita Vedanta. Yet when one considers his teachings in New York and London as a whole, taking into account his classes as well as his many public lectures, one finds (and many have found) that his prevailing message was that there are diverse ways for man to realize and manifest his potential divinity, that life itself is the "struggle towards the great ideal, towards perfection," and that, as each works out his own vision of this universe, according to his own ideas, all in the long run will come to truth.

But the long run was long indeed, and in 1899 Swamiji was markedly impatient on behalf of his love—humanity. The slow, gradual, long-tried way had not been enough to set men free, nor had it been enough to make the kind of men and women, East or West, who could meet the unprecedented tumults and challenges of the coming age. In his storming of the citadel Swamiji was by no means going against the spirit of his Master. "I don't like the idea of ' banat banat ban jai --slowly and gradually it will come about,' " Sri Ramakrishna had said. "I want: 'Be up and doing now.' No ' banat banat,' but 'today! this very moment!'—a dacoit like attitude.'[23]

The slow, safe way was not for modern man; it was not his way in science and technology; it must not be his way in religion. During his second visit to the West Swamiji underscored with straight and bold strokes the "smashing truth" that man is the Pure One here and now; that he is this moment wholly divine, that he is replete, even now, with the qualities of divinity, and that wherever he stands, whatever he is doing, he can assert this truth. "Fill the mind with it day and night," he cried in "The Soul and God" : " 'I am It. I am the Lord of the universe. Never was there any delusion.' Meditate upon it with all the strength of the mind till you actually see these walls, houses, everything, melt away—until body, everything, vanishes. 'I will stand alone. I am the One.' Struggle on!'[24] There was no question here of the long run, of waiting to realize this ever-shining, self evident fact at some distant date. If one is Brahman, then one cannot at any time be less than Brahman, nor can this fact fail to manifest itself, just as eternal light cannot at any time fail to shine. It was no doubt to this teaching, which resounded throughout his California lectures, reaching a climax of expression and power in San Francisco, that Swamiji referred when he said he had given his "highest teaching" in California.

Inevitably, this "new gospel" was reflected in many aspects of his message and as inevitably altered their appearance, highlighting some, throwing others into shadow. One effect of its pervasive presence can be clearly seen in the kind of subjects he chose. In the back of this book the reader will find a complete list of his California lectures, a glance at which will show that in northern California, as in southern California, he gave a proportionately large number of lectures on the theory and practice of raja yoga. In addition, or, rather, in correlation, peals of monistic thunder rolled over his northern California audiences almost daily. Whereas in his first visit he had given equal attention to all four primary paths or yogas and had stressed the equal validity of each, he now emphasized that the one essential attitude for all people was the affirmation of their substantive divinity—not as a background philosophy or theory but as a living, immediately relevant fact. He taught, that is, the bold, positive assertions of jnana yoga. And in order that man could live up to them and verify them through experience, he taught the practice of raja yoga as the most effective method. The first (jnana yoga) gave significance and direction to the latter; the latter (raja yoga) gave power and speed to the first.

One should not conclude from this, however, that he neglected bhakti or karma yoga, the paths, respectively, of devotion and selfless action. In Los Angeles one of his most wonderful lectures, "Work and Its Secret," was on the subject of karma yoga, and his lectures in the series on "Divine Love" in San Francisco were among the most beautiful he ever gave on that subject. Yet in the single lecture that he devoted to karma yoga he emphasized the need for spiritual strength. "We require super-divine power," he cried.. "Super-human power is not strong enough. Super-divine strength is the only way, the one way out "as Even in his series on devotion Swamiji stressed the importance of asserting the self-luminous Atman. "My ambition," he said in "Formal Worship," "is to talk to men and women, not to sheep. By men and women, I mean individuals.... Remember this individualism at any cost? Think wrong if you will; no matter whether you get truth or not. The whole point is to discipline the mind.... All must struggle to be individuals—strong, standing on your own feet, thinking your own thoughts, realizing your own Self.'[26]

Another difference in Swamiji's choice of subjects lay in his many talks in California on the great Teachers (or Messengers) of the world—a subject to which he had not earlier devoted a full lecture. His bold effort to wean (or wrench) mankind from a false and weakening dependence on Saviors and Prophets was, of course, directly connected with his uncompromising demand that each individual assert his own divinity here and now. One cannot but think that this aspect of his new message motivated his Great Teacher talks. That he had been thinking of the debilitating effect of man's abject dependence upon World Saviors shortly before coming to the West is clear from his essay written in Bengali for the Udbodhan of February 1899, "Knowledge: Its Source and Acquirement"

"If it is finally settled, " he there wrote (I quote from the translation as given in the Complete Works), "that the path of human welfare is forever chalked out by these omniscient men, society naturally fears its own destruction if the least deviation be made from the boundary line of the path, and so it tries to compel all men through rigid laws and threats of punishment to follow that path with unconditional obedience. If society succeeds in imposing such obedience to itself by confining all men within the narrow groove of these paths, then the destiny of mankind becomes no better than that of a machine.... In course of time, for want of proper use, all activity is given up, all originality is lost, a sort of Tamasika dreamy lifelessness  hovers over the whole nation, and headlong it goes down and down. The death of such a nation is not far to seek.... Each [path pointed out by the great ones of the earth] has its place in the development of the sum total of knowledge; and we must learn to estimate them according to their respective merits. But, perhaps, being carried away by their over-zealous and blind devotion to their Masters, the successors and followers of these great ones sacrifice truth before the altar of devotion and worship to them, and misrepresent the true meaning of the purpose of those great lives by insisting on personal worship, that is, they kill the principle for the person.'[27]

In California this same theme wove through many of Swamiji's lectures: "These great Teachers are the living Gods on this earth," he said in Pasadena. "Whom else should we worship?'[28]But in the same lecture ("The Great Teachers of the World") he cried, "There is a tendency in us to revert to old ideas in religion. Let us think something new, even if it be wrong. It is better to do that.... Do something! Think some thought! .... Struggle Godward! Light must come!'[29]

Those had been among Swamiji's last words to the people of southern California. In San Francisco he urged man forward with words even more forceful: "I fall down and worship [the Messengers of God] ; I take the dust of their feet. But they are dead, dead as doornails! and we are alive. We must go ahead! . . . Be not an imitation of Jesus, but be Jesus! You are quite as great as Jesus, Buddha, or anybody else.'[30]

Shortly before Swamiji left southern California for San Francisco Miss MacLeod wrote to Nivedita (who relayed the News to Sister Christine), "Swamiji said today that he is beginning to see the needs of humanity in quite a different light that he is already sure of the principle that is to help but is spending hours every day in trying to solve the methods. That what he had known hitherto is for men living in a cave—alone—undisturbed—but now he will give Humanity something that will make for strength in the stress of daily life.'[31] And in his San Francisco lectures one again and again sees him giving his audiences a teaching and a practice by means of which they could face whatever life might hold. He taught a way for the uncloistered, a way to stand strong, self-assured, and serene in the midst of the external tumults of life—the victories and defeats, the loves and griefs. Did he not foresee the need for such strong, Self oriented men and women in the centuries to come—men and women who could take part, even a leading part, in the life of the world and yet remain free from it, uncorrupt and fearless, who might or might not believe in a Personal God, but who had unwavering faith in their own eternal union with the divine and unshakable love for the divinity of all mankind? This was not a teaching of comfort; there was no easy way for the modern man; but there was a strong way that made no compromise with truth, and such a way was needed for the active citizen of a new world, a world rich with promise and fraught with peril and in continual crisis. Over and over again he thundered, "Help thyself!" "It is a tremendous error to feel helpless. Do not seek help from anyone. We are our own help. If we cannot help ourselves, there is none to help us.'[32]Indeed, throughout Swamiji's lectures in California several themes relating to his call for spiritual self reliance resounded repeatedly and with increasing emphasis. It was as though he had chosen from the abundantly faceted message of his first visit the essential passages that he wished to impress deeply upon the mind of humanity, envisioning its needs, as he said, in a different light.

Goading the individual on to develop his own character, think his own thoughts, rise to the infinite heights of his own greatness, he repeatedly warned against the imprisoning and weakening doctrines, beliefs, and myths of authoritarian religions. He did not hesitate to cry: "Exit praying and laying flowers in the temples!" "If you take my advice, you will never enter any church. Come out and go and wash off. Wash yourself again and again until you are cleansed of all the superstitions that have clung to you through the ages.'[33]And in another San Francisco lecture: "There is only one sin. That is weakness. When I was a boy I read Milton's Paradise Lost. The only good man I had any respect for was Satan. The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game. Stand up and die game! . . . Do not add one lunacy to another. Do not add your weakness to the evil that is going to come. That is all I have to say to the world. Be strong!'[34]

Or expecting the best of man, looking upon him as God Himself, he spoke much more often and with much greater emphasis than he had in earlier years of the "divine play" of life. "Play!" he cried in his lectures. "God Almighty plays. That is all.... You are the almighty God playing.'[35]Seldom during this last period of his mission did he speak of life as a "moral gymnasium." Indeed at Camp Taylor he had categorically repudiated Miss Bell's idea of the world as "an old schoolhouse." We are "tumbling," he told her, for the sheer joy of it. This was anything but a doctrine of escape: it was precisely the opposite. The fearless worship of the Terrible was essential to the awareness of divine joy, and this theme, too, received from Swamiji corresponding emphasis. "Who creates all evil?" he asked, and answered, "God. There is no other way out.... How can such a God be worshipped? . . . Turn around first of all and face the terrible. Tear aside the mask and find the same God.... There is none else.'[36]And one remembers here his answer in Los Angeles to the question: "Then you claim, that all is good?"-- 'By no means; my claim, is that all is not—only God is! That makes all the difference.'[37]

These were some of the grand and bold themes to which Swamiji returned again and again in California. Never before had he placed them in such high relief or taught them with such unmistakable emphasis, and one can only suppose that these were the truths he wanted humanity to take most deeply to heart. "The people shall learn the truth," he said during his lecture on Buddha in San Francisco. "Some are afraid that if the full truth is given to all, it will hurt them. They should not be given the unqualified truth—so they say. But the world is not much better off by compromising truth. What worse can it be than it is already? Bring truth out! If it is real, it will do good.'[38] One remembers his talk to the monks at Belur Math a month or so before he set sail for the West: "Every man is capable of receiving knowledge if it is imparted in his own language.... You must speak out the truth without any fear that it will perturb the weak. Truth is always truth.... Know ye for certain that this attempt at compromise proceeds from arrant downright cowardice.... Therefore repeatedly I say to you, be bold to speak out your convictions." And Swamiji himself had no hesitation whatsoever in bringing out the "smashing truths" that in 1899 he had told Sister Nivedita he was going thenceforth to teach.

In considering the general differences between Swamiji's first and second visits to the West, it seems clear that not only had his message changed in its emphasis, but his conception of the Western Vedanta movement had in some respects changed as well. At no time, it is true, did he draw up a set of rules or write a detailed constitution for the continuance of his Western work; characteristically, he wanted it to take shape freely and in accordance with the customs and nature of its environment. Yet he did have some definite ideas in regard to the role Vedanta would play in the Western world and the general form it would take; and it was these ideas, I believe, that underwent a change.

As is well known, Swamiji often made it clear during his first visit to the West that he did not want to establish anything like a Vedantic religious organization or church. In the course of a newspaper interview in London in 1895, for instance, he was asked if he represented any sect or was connected with any sect or society, "None whatever!" he replied, and continued, .. . Whatever in my teaching may appeal to the highest intelligence and be accepted by thinking men, the adoption of that will be my reward. All religions have for their object the teaching either of devotion, knowledge or Yoga, in a concrete form. Now, the philosophy of Vedanta is the abstract science which embraces all these methods, and this it is that I teach, leaving each one to apply it to his own concrete form.... " "Then you do not propose to form any society, Swami?" the interviewer asked. "None," Swamiji replied; "no society whatever.'[39]

The following year, when he had completed his work in America and did not intend to return, he was interviewed in London by another newspaperman, who remarked, "I gather that you did not found anything like a church or new religion in America." "That is true," Swamiji replied. "It is contrary to our principles to multiply organisations, since in all conscience, there are enough of them.'[40]During the course of another interview he was asked if he had left disciples in each of the American cities he had visited. "Yes," he said, "disciples, but not organisations That is no part of my work.'[41]

As we know, Swamiji did, in fact, found a society in New York in November of 1894—the same society of which Swami Abhedananda was in charge in 1900. But in view of the above quotations, it would seem clear that in 1895 Swamiji did not consider this society to be anything like a church. And, to be sure, it was not. At its beginning, one of the purposes for its existence was to handle his financial affairs, which tended otherwise to get in a muddle. Another purpose was to manage the details of his work itself—his lectures and classes and so on. Later, in 1896, two overlapping committees were formed within the Society to take care of all practical matters, including the printing and distribution of his pamphlets and books. The Society was also designed to carry on his work in his absence. But the important thing to notice here is that in its early years this New York Vedanta Society had no members: it had a president, a vice-president, a secretary, a treasurer, and the workers on its two committees, but beyond these functionaries, there were no members at all. This was not because people did not want to join; it was simply because there was no membership roll. There was nothing to become a member of.

When Swamiji left America in 1896, this type of unorganized, memberless organization was in accord with the way he then felt his work should develop. "My idea is for autonomic, independent groups in different places," he had written to Mrs. Bull in December of 1895. "Let them work on their own account and do the best they can. As for myself, I do not want to entangle myself in any organisation.'[42]Originally, he had hoped that his American disciples would carry on his work in America, spreading his message. To this end (at least in part) he had trained a group of students at Thousand Island Park. "I have got a few hundred followers," he wrote from there, "I shall make several Sannyasins and then I go to India, leaving the work to them.'[43]And to his disciples he said, "This message must be preached by Indians in India, and by Americans in America.'[44] At Thousand Islands he gave as mentioned earlier, final monastic vows to a man and a woman, who thereby became, respectively, Swami Kripananda and Swami Abhayananda. He authorized them to teach, blessed them, and sent them forth. But in keeping with his impassioned respect for individual freedom, he laid down no rules as to what they should teach or how they should teach it. Indeed, in a letter that he wrote at the end of 1895 to Swami Abhayananda (not to Alasinga, as has been sometimes said), he made his wishes in regard to both the nature of the New York Vedanta Society and work of his disciples very clear. "We have no organization," he wrote, "nor want to build any: Each one is quite independent to teach, quite free to preach whatever he or she likes. If you have the spirit within you, you will never fail to attract others. The theosophists' methods can never be ours, for the very simple reason that they are an organized sect, we are not. Individuality is my motto," he continued, "I have no ambition beyond training individuals up.'[45] And in a letter to Swami Kripananda, Mrs. Bull wrote in July of 1896, "Vivekananda asks obedience of his students, only to those ideals they voluntarily assume, not to his teachings, if I understand him.'[46]

But as it happened, neither Swami Kripananda nor Swami Abhayananda was able to attract a substantial following, and it was not long before it became clear to Swamiji that his American work, as well as his Indian work, would have to be carried on by Indians. (There is small doubt that he was disappointed by this. One indication appears in a letter he wrote to his disciple Ellen Waldo in October of 1896, when the New York Vedanta Society was temporarily, but fretfully, without a lecturer and a young Hindu had been suggested. "Why do you not begin to teach?" he asked Miss Waldo. ". . . I will be thousand times more pleased to see one of you start than any number of Hindus securing success in America—even one of my brethren. 'Man wants Victory from, everywhere, but defeat from, his own children.' . . . Make a blaze! Make a blaze!")[47]But even though Swamiji never quite gave up hope that his American disciples would make a blaze, he had begun at the end of 1895 to send to the Math for swamis.

His overall plan for his work, however, remained the same. He still hoped, that is, to see it carried on with a minimum of organization. In the fall of 1896, after he had left America, a prospectus was printed by his American friends outlining a plan for work in accordance with "the wishes of the Swami Vivekananda for cooperative work without an organization." The idea behind this (and it met with Swamiji's approval) was that his friends in Boston (notably Mrs. Bull) and New York should join forces and work together. The plan involved renting a four-room flat in New York to serve "as a permanent centre for the presentation of the Vedanta Philosophy." Two of the rooms were to be devoted to the use of Swami Saradananda and an assistant (Goodwin) ; the other two rooms were to serve as a reading room and library. There were to be fortnightly meetings for reading and discussion and, on alternate weeks, lectures by "scholars of standing," including, of course, Swami Saradananda. It was expected that money for rent would come from sympathizers, from admissions to the lectures, and from the sale of Swamiji's book.[48] There would still be no membership roll.

Through the agency of a loosely organized center of this sort people could read and hear about the philosophy of Vedanta and could then apply it in their lives and adapt it to the religious forms of their choice. Although this plan never materialized, and the New York Vedanta Society continued as before, it represents the way Swamiji wanted his work to proceed. In addition, of course, he wanted his brother monks to make and train disciples, including monastic disciples. ("If it pleases the Lord," he wrote from America in March of 1896, "yellow-garbed Sannyasins will be common here and in England.")[49]Further, he would have liked ashramas or retreats to develop. "Here in America," he wrote regretfully in 1896, "there are no Ashramas. Would there was one! How would I like it and what an amount of good it would do to this country!'[50]But although Swamiji clearly recognized the practicality of having a center, even a "Temple Universal," where Vedanta would be taught and from which it would spread, he remained throughout his first visit to the West opposed both to organization and to the founding of anything like a self contained church. (It is true that in London, for a day or two at least, he considered that it was, as he said, "absolutely necessary to form some ritual and have a Church." "We must fix on some ritual as fast as we can," he wrote with much enthusiasm to Mr. .Sturdy. " . . . kindly bring the Upanishads. We will fix something grand, from birth to death of a man. A mere loose system of philosophy gets no hold on mankind.'[51] But within a day or two he thought better of this idea, and we hear no more about it.)

Many years later Swami Abhedananda commented upon Swamiji's dislike of organization. In March of 1915, during the course of a talk to the Vedanta Society of San Francisco, he said: "I know that when Swami Vivekananda started the work, he did not believe in organization. In fact, when he invited me to go to London and gave me the charge of his work, he did not organize. And where is the London Society today? It has gone to pieces. Then he started a Society in New York. He did not organize; in fact, he could not organize. He did not put his force in that line at all. He said that wherever there is organization, that is the seed of discord and inharmony.'[52]

Perhaps there were other reasons as well for Swamiji's early refusal to organize. For instance, he wanted Vedanta to remain fluid. It was not one religion among many, but was, as he so often said, "the philosophy which can serve as a basis to every possible religion in the world." It is the eternal thread on which all religions and all sects are strung. He did not want to identify it with any particular form, any particular person, any particular group of people. Further, the last thing he wanted was to see it slowly strangled in a web of beliefs, myths, rituals, traditions, and so on, such as seems invariably to be woven around enchurched ideals.

But although Swamiji had not wanted organization, organization had come. For financial and legal reasons, Swami Abhedananda, who had come to America in 1897, found it practical to incorporate the New York Vedanta Society under the laws of the State of New York. This he did in October of 1898 when Swamiji was in India. Then, in March of 1900, when Swamiji was in San Francisco, a membership roll was opened by the trustees. In April of 1900 Swami Abhedananda amended the bylaws, giving the Swami in charge of the Society a necessary control over its activities. Thus, even before Swamiji left California, the New York Vedanta Society had become a full-fledged religious organization; one might even say it had become a church.

By this time, however, Swamiji seems to have changed his views to an appreciable degree in regard to both organization as such and the establishment of a church. In connection with the former, one recalls a passage in one of the lectures he gave in southern California in January of 1900. "In England or America, if you want to preach religion," he said, "you will have to work through political method—-make organizations, societies, with voting, balloting, a president and so on, because that is the language, the method of the Western race.'[53] As we have seen, he started Vedanta societies in southern California and, in April of 1900, one in San Francisco. The southern California societies, as such, died out, but, as we of course know, the San Francisco Society thrived. Although the latter was not to be legally incorporated for many years, it began, as we have seen, with a body of members whom Swamiji himself called Vedantins. Nor did he object to the organizational developments in New York. "The only thing I see," he wrote to Miss MacLeod in this connection, "is that in every country we have to follow its own method.'[54]He suggested in this letter of April 10, 1900, that the members and sympathizers of the Society be asked what they wanted in respect to organization. Whatever they wanted, that should be done.

As for establishing a church, during his second visit to the West Swamiji was unquestionably preaching Vedanta not only as a philosophy "which can serve as a basis to every possible religion in the world" but also, and it would seem primarily, as a religion in itself which people could follow exclusively and with which they could become identified. Nor did Swamiji hesitate to consider publicly the possibility of Vedanta becoming the religion of the future. In his lecture "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?" he laid down the conditions under which it could become so.

While Swamiji had by no means discarded his former views regarding the dangers of organizations (in San Francisco he pointedly warned against them),[55] he now saw, it would seen, its advantages as well, indeed its inevitability. He saw too, perhaps, that if Vedanta were to become the "man-making religion" he so strongly desired, it not only must serve to unify and revivify other religions but must become a religion in itself, holding its own principles inviolate, protecting them from compromise, dilution, distortion, and offering them in their pure form to whoever would seek them. Indeed, as was said in an earlier chapter, it was necessary to his mission that he should establish a living vessel in which the spiritual seeds he had so liberally sown would take root and flourish. And such a living vessel is, precisely, a church.

But is not a church almost bound to develop its own ceremonies, temples, shrines, holy places and persons, sacred traditions, legends, myths, scriptures, art forms—all those enchanting accompaniments of religion that the human heart craves but which almost invariably encroach upon the central truth, choking it, swamping it, and eventually, displacing it, becoming themselves the all-important center? Swamiji was, of course, keenly aware of this danger. Was this not why he said in "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?" "There is a chance of Vedanta becoming the religion of your country because of democracy. But it can become so only if you can and do clearly understand it, if you become real men and women, not people with vague ideas and superstitions in your brains, and if you want to be truly spiritual, since Vedanta is concerned only with spirituality." In this same lecture he again and again pounded upon the conditions one must fill to be a Vedantin: "No book, no person, no personal God. All these must go.... Worship everything as God—every form is His temple. All else is delusion. Always look within, never without. Such is the God that Vedanta preaches, and such is His worship.'[56]

Did this mean that Swamiji wanted no temples, no altars, no rituals, no dualistic practices whatsoever in the Vedanta churches (or societies) in the West? That is a question that deserves, I believe, to be deeply considered by those who are carrying on Swamiji's work today, establishing its patterns, creating its ambience. One can venture to say here, however, that while Swamiji did not himself introduce any of these things in the West, he did not specifically ban them, as he did to his heart's delight at Mayavati. "Many people think the ceremonial etc. help them in realising religion. I have no objection," he wrote to Mary Hale in a letter dated June I7, 1900. "Religion is that which does not depend upon books or teachers or prophets or saviours, and that which does not make us dependent in this or in any other lives upon others. In this sense Advaitism of the Upanishads is the only religion. But saviours, books, prophets, ceremonials, etc., have their places. They may help many, as Kali worship helps me in my secular work. They are welcome.'[57]

Nevertheless, it would seem eminently clear that in the Vedanta societies that he founded in the West, Swamiji very much wanted all dualistic practices and beliefs to be kept to a minimum, subordinate to the grand truths of his ministry. Yes, he was well aware, and sometimes said, that the great majority of people could not immediately follow a monistic religion, making it real and effective in their lives; but he also was certain that many could and must. Nor, to his mind, was the possibility altogether remote that Vedanta in its dazzlingly pure form could become the future religion. To repeat his closing words in his great lecture "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?"—a lecture that can well serve as his manifesto to Western Vedantins: "The hour comes when great men shall arise and cast off these kindergartens of religion and shall make vivid and powerful the true religion, the worship of the spirit by the spirit.'[58]That was Swamiji's vision, and the vision of a Swami Vivekananda can surely become the reality of a future time.

2

The Southern Pacific's Overland Limited, made up largely of Pullman Palace Cars, elegant with red plush and walnut paneling and equipped with an opulent diner, was one of the most deluxe trains of the era. It was also one of the fastest. But even so, its run between San Francisco and Chicago—its double-headed laboring over the high Sierra, its clattering across the endless sage deserts of Nevada and Utah, through the wheat fields of south Wyoming and Nebraska and so on through Iowa and Illinois—took three full days and nights of what Swamiji, well experienced in American train travel of the 1890s, had known would be a "bone-breaking journey." One can be almost certain that when the Overland Limited arrived in Chicago on the morning of Saturday, June 2, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Almost nothing is known at present of Swamiji's stay in Chicago, except that it could not have lasted for more than four days. According to an account of his life in America by Sarah E. Waldo, he also made a visit to Detroit at this time'[59] but a recently published letter, which he wrote to Sister Christine from New York on June 9, 1900, gives clear evidence that he did not do so. Thus Swamiji had ample time in Chicago to see many of his old friends, and no doubt he once again spent quiet hours with the Hales and McKindleys. Since his visit to Chicago six months earlier there had been another change in the Hale family: Mr. George Hale had died in early February. Although Mrs. Hale kept her apartment at 10 Aster Street, at which address the Clarence Woolleys also lived, the family was now irrevocably scattered.

The only detail we have of Swamiji's Chicago visit is a brief episode, which is recounted in Vivekananda: A Biography by Swami Nikhilananda and which the Swami learned, he told me, from Miss MacLeod. "On the morning of his departure," Swami Nikhilananda writes, "Mary came to the Swami's room [in her mother's apartment] 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!' '[60] As he knew, this was the last time he was to see the family he loved above all others of his Western friends. "All blessings on you and sisters and Mother," he had written to Mary from San Francisco. "You have been always the sweetest notes in my jarring and clashing life.'[61]

Because of Swamiji's fondness for the Hales and because of the indispensable and loving part they played in his Western visits, one likes to know, perhaps, how they fared after he was no longer a visible part of their lives. At the present time I can relate only a few bits and pieces gathered from various sources—primarily from conversations with Louise Douglas Hyde, one of the daughters of a third McKindley sister, and such will have to do for now. Shortly after saying farewell to Swamiji, Mrs. Hale and Mary left their home in Chicago and moved to Italy, where they took up residence in the Anglo American Hotel in Florence. Soon Mary met a wealthy Italian, many years her senior. It would seem that it was to this gentleman that Swamiji referred when he wrote to her on July 5 of 1901, "So you are enjoying Venice. The old man must be delicious; only Venice was the home of old Shylock, was it not?" And a little further on in this same letter, after telling her of the Raja of Khetri's fatal fall "from a high tower at Secundra, the tomb of Emperor Akbar," he wrote, "Thus we sometimes come to grief on account of our zeal for antiquity. Take care, Mary, don't be too zealous for your piece of Italian antiquity.[62](Swamiji's meaning here is obscured in the Complete Works, where the word Italian is printed as Indian. In view of the context and the situation, Italian is surely what Swamiji wrote.) But Mary Hale failed to take the warning and in a year or so married either this or another aged and wealthy Italian—a widower, named Carlo Guiseppe Matteini. Commendatore Matteini owned a palatial villa on a huge estate outside of Pistoia, in the district of Santomato*(2). There Mary lived for many years, the charming mistress of Villa di Celle, about whose gardens and drives and vineyards she drove in a small landau drawn by a little pony. She had, it is said, a regal bearing, dressed beautifully, and wore floppy-brimmed hats against the Italian sun. It is also said that Matteini guarded his prize of a handsome young wife jealously, keeping her virtually confined within the boundaries of his property. When I asked Mrs. Hyde if this treatment would not have been difficult for Mary Hale to bear, she replied, "I don't know. Mary was so serene and so—well, gentle is the only way I can describe it—hat I think she would be very easily captured.'[63]Perhaps. And to be sure, Mary seemed happy enough in her married life, which was, after all, a life to which, as a late nineteenth-century young woman of the upper and moneyed classes, she had been reared. She had chosen an odd variation of the usual pattern, that was all. When she wrote to Nivedita in March of 1909 her only cause for uneasiness seemed to be the mortality of those she loved: "I sometimes feel as though I were living on the top of a volcano. Mr. Matteini, strong, robust tho' he is, is not a young man (he was then seventy-seven), and my dear little mother is delicate and seventy-two years old, & my dear sister Harriet is in such delicate health. But I try not to think of it and live and enjoy.'[64]Yet Swamiji had seen another side of Mary—the "mettlesome Arab," with a potential for great deeds. "Eating, drinking, dressing, and society nonsense are not things to throw (away) a life upon—especially you, Mary. You are rusting away a splendid brain and abilities, for which there is not the least excuse.'[65]So Swamiji wrote to Mary in 1896 and again with the same straight-from-the-shoulder tone in 1901. And perhaps the side of Mary to which those letters had been addressed was the true volcano upon which she lived. In 1916 she wrote a letter (now lost) to Miss MacLeod, which the latter shared with Alberta, with the comment: "This is rather a pathetic confession, isn't it, of Mary Hale. She sees her mistakes so profoundly and yet why shouldn't the last twenty years of her life be the fulfillment of all her desires and aspirations, making these years only the necessary preparation? And this I have written to her." Whether or not Mary was heartened by this counsel, one does not know. Six years later Miss McLeod wrote to Alberta: "Mary is at last a widow, her husband the last five of his eighty or ninety years (he died at eighty-nine) being quite senile, I hear. She is an angel, protecting, loving, honouring him always.'[66]

After the death of her husband in April of 1919, Mary sold the Villa di Celle and moved into the Anglo-American Hotel in Florence with her mother and sister, Harriet, who had long since divorced Clarence Woolley. There they lived for the remainder of their lives. In December of 1925 Miss MacLeod wrote to Alberta: "Mary Hale Matteini is living her own loving life, gentle, considerate, faithful to mother, sister, [late] husband. Deep down, there is the big note that Swamiji brought to them all, but no inclination to help his work. However she gave me £5 for the Math and £5 to buy his books. I fancy this is the first contribution she has given. They live in luxury. Beautiful rooms. Two maids, companion for Mrs. Hale, motor, and Mary feels herself to be Italian and gives and works in local charities in Italy. I love her, just as she is!'[67] But if Mary did not give bounteously to Swamiji's work during her lifetime (and there is no certainty that she did not), she remembered his work in her will. According to the available records, she bequeathed to Belur Math through Swami Shivananda approximately Rs. 48,500 (about $18,500), which in those days was not a small remembrance.

Mary Hale Matttini died in the spring of 1933 when she was sixty-eight, the last of the Hales to go. Harriet Hale Woolley had died in 1929 at the age of fifty-seven; Mrs. Hale followed a year later, an old lady of ninety-three. As for the McKindley sisters, Isabelle died at an early age in 1904, but Harriet (the oldest of the four "sisters") far outlived them all. For years, in the role of spinster aunt, she took care of Clarence Woolley's three children by his second wife (who, it so happened, was her niece, Isabelle Baker), and in her old age Clarence Woolley cared for her, paying for her room and board at the El Cortez Hotel in San Diego, where she lived for many years, attended by an old family servant, until her death in 1955 at the age of ninety-four.

That is the skeletal "follow-up" story of the four "sisters," whom Swamiji so dearly loved. But that is only the external story. What really happened to them; who they were in the first place to have been so much loved by him and of such service to him; what profound changes took place in the long history of their souls' journey; what goal they attained—that internal story, the story that would really interest us, is far beyond the ability of the present writer even to guess at, let alone relate.

Saying his last farewell to the Hales in Chicago, Swamiji went on to New York, where he arrived on the hot summer day of Thursday, June 7, 1900.

Changes had taken place in the New York Vedanta Society since Swamiji had last been on the East Coast. The opening of a membership roll had at once increased the Society's funds, thereby making possible the rental of an entire house for its headquarters. In April or early May the Society had accordingly moved from its rooms at 146 East Fifty-fifth Street to a modest, four-story house at 102 East Fifty-eighth Street, just off Park Avenue (a little more than two blocks east of Fifth Avenue). The neighborhood was very much more fashionable than those in which Swamiji had lived and worked during his first visit to America, and the house less dreary. As was usual in New York houses of that period, the ground floor was given over to a kitchen and a dining room; the second, or parlor, floor had ample space for reading room and library, classroom and reception room, or drawing room. "On the floor above the drawing room," to quote from a Bengali biography of Swami Abhedananda, "was the sitting room of the Swamis. There was only one bed in the Vedanta Society house, and they gave it to Swami Vivekananda. Swami Turiyananda and Swami Abhedananda slept on the floor.'[68] (Prior to the rental of the house, Swami Abhedananda had lived in a poor rooming house, and Swami Turiyananda, as mentioned earlier, had been the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler in Montclair, New Jersey, from which, when necessary, he had traveled the twenty miles to New York.) On the fourth floor of the Vedanta Society's house there was, no doubt, a sparsely furnished bedroom or two, where the housekeeper (a Mrs. Crane at this particular time) and hardy guests could sleep.

(It should be mentioned here, lest confusion arise, that one of Swamiji's first published letters from New York dated June 23, 1900—bears the return address "146E. 55th St."—the address of the rooms the Society had earlier occupied. I have not seen Swamiji's original letter, but would hazard the guess that it was written on leftover stationery printed with the old address. Other sources leave no doubt that the Society had moved into its new quarters well before June and that Swamiji, with the exception of a short visit to Detroit, lived in the Fifty-eighth Street house throughout his stay in New York.)

The furnishings and decor of the house were not, perhaps, on the ample or spruce side. Indeed, as one can infer from a report written in the fall of the following year, the interior was in a sorry state. "[Swami Abhedananda] returned to New York [from California] at the beginning of October [1901]," this report reads, "and had the pleasure of finding the Society house entirely renovated and made for the first time a really suitable home for the work. All the rented furniture had been removed, the walls rehung, the floors recarpeted, and the classroom where the daily meditation is held, converted into a sort of chapel.'[69]

But shabbily and meagerly furnished as the house may have been in 1900, the rental of it was a milepost in the Vedanta Society's history. Swamiji was delighted. At a reception the Society was to accord him a few days after his arrival he "expressed his satisfaction at being able to live in the Vedanta Society's own house. And he said joyfully, 'I have knocked at the door of New York three times: it never opened. But now I am very happy to see that the Society has a house of its own.' '[70](Actually, the Society did not have a house of its own; it had a rented house. Still, a rented house in a good neighborhood was a big step above a rented flat in a poor one.)

Other changes had taken place in the New York Society while Swamiji had been in California. The differences between Swami Abhedananda on the one hand and the Leggetts, Miss MacLeod, and Mrs. Bull on the other had been resolved or, at least, dissolved. "These things get complicated sometimes, in spite of ourselves," Swamiji had written soothingly to Miss MacLeod from Alameda, after receiving a number of agitated letters. "Let them take their shape.''[71] And, to be sure, things had of themselves taken shape. Mr. Leggett had resigned from the presidentship; one of Swami Abhedananda's disciples, Dr. Herschell C. Parker, a professor at Columbia University, had been unanimously elected president by the newly enrolled membership, the bylaws had been changed, giving the Swami in-charge some measure of control over the Society's activities, and Mr. and Mrs. Leggett, Miss MacLeod, and Mrs. Bull had all withdrawn from the field and gone off to Europe. The waves created by the recriminations that had flown back and forth had, to be sure, not yet fully subsided, for inevitably people had taken sides, and there was tension between the partisans, be they old guard or new. "Arriving here I found the Society nearly broken to pieces," Swamiji would write to Sister Christine on July 2; "they had all quarrelled [and] that had all to be patched up.'[72]

But both sides came to the reception. Many of Swamiji's friends and disciples who had been close to him in 1895 and 1896 were surely there—although some were sadly missing. Josiah J. Goodwin, whose passage through Swamiji's mission coincided almost exactly with the deliverance in New York, London, and India of his main message to the world, had died in 1898. Swami Kripananda (Leon Landsberg), to whom Swamiji had given sannyasa at Thousand Island Park in 1895, had, as we have seen, defected in 1898, if not earlier. Swami Abhayananda, to whom Swamiji had also given sannyasa, had, for reasons of her own, also turned against him. Others, however, had been faithful. Sarah Ellen Waldo, one of his brahmacharini disciples, who had been at Thousand Island Park and was his housekeeper and secretary in 1896, was still connected with the New York Society; Mr. and Mrs. Walter Goodyear, who had also been among the group at Thousand Island Park, were still devoted, as was Miss Mary Phillips, one of Swamiji's earliest supporters in New York and first secretary of the New York Vedanta Society. Others, certainly, had remained close to him. But the hot days of summer having descended upon the city, it is hard to say who among his many New York friends and disciples were in town. Miss Emma Thursby, Miss Sarah Farmer, Dr. and Mrs. Guernsey, for instance, may or may not have been. On the other hand, many new people who had been drawn to Vedanta during the years Swamiji had been away would have been present to greet him.

In any case, it must have been with joy that he met his friends, old and new, and with particular delight that he embraced his brother monks, Swami Turiyananda and Swami Abhedananda, after a six month separation. Then there was Sister Nivedita, whom he had left in Chicago in late November of 1899 to attempt on her own, in this foreign and not altogether friendly land, to arouse the kind of sympathy for India that would manifest itself in money—an enormous amount of sympathy indeed. Her path had been hard and, on the whole, unrewarding. It is impossible to suppose that during the past six months or so she had not suffered many an emotional crisis, not the least of which lay in now confronting her great guru, who must surely have looked deeply into her mind, questioning, knowing. But of Sister Nivedita I shall say more later on.

Swamiji's return to New York was noted in both the New York Daily Tribune and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The Eagle, whose editors knew him well from lectures and controversies of earlier years, published on June 9 the following item:


VIVEKANANDA RETURNS

The arrival in New York yesterday [?] of Swami Vivekananda, who was a delegate to the Congress of Religions in Chicago in 1893 and has since lectured in different parts of this country, will be of interest to many who heard him in Brooklyn under the auspices of the Ethical Society. The Swami has just come from California, where for the past six months he has lectured and taught the Vedanta philosophy. He is now on his way to the Paris Exposition and will remain a few weeks in this city at the home of the Vedanta Society, 102 East Fifty-eighth street, Manhattan. A reception will be given there in his honor on Tuesday evening.


The next day the Tribune printed the following item, which, though adding little to the above, would have been welcome news to many of Swamiji's New York friends and students:


VIVEKANANDA HERE

Swami Vivekananda, who after the close of the Congress of Religions in Chicago, to which he was a delegate, formed the Vedanta Society, arrived here yesterday on his way to the Paris Exposition. He has for six months been lecturing and teaching the Vedanta philosophy in California and the West. He will remain in this city for a few weeks at the home of the society, No. 102 East Fifty-eighth st., where a reception will be given for him on Tuesday evening.


Much of what is known of Swamiji's lectures and classes during this period is contained in the report of the assistant secretary of the Vedanta Society to the Brahmavadin, which has been republished in the Life and there reads as follows:


On June 7, Swami Vivekananda came to New York from California and stayed in the Vedanta Society Rooms, 102 E. 58th St., with Swami Turiyananda and Swami Abhedananda. At that time Sister Nivedita was also in the City and she was present at most of the meetings.


On the following Saturday, June 9, Swami Vivekananda conducted the morning class on the Bhagavad-Gita, relieving Swami Turiyananda, who usually taught the class. On Sunday morning, June 10, Swami Vivekananda lectured in the Vedanta Society Rooms on the subject of "Vedanta Philosophy." The rooms were filled to their utmost capacity with students and old friends of the Swami. A reception was given to him on the following Friday evening, thus giving an opportunity to old friends to meet him once more, and many students who had long wished to meet the renowned author of Raja Yoga, were made happy by a few kind words and a grasp of the Master's hand. He spoke on the object of the Vedanta Society and of the work in America.


[I interrupt the report at this point to note that the newspapers had stated that the reception for Swamiji was to be held not on Friday evening, June 15, but on Tuesday evening, June 12. On the strength of this erroneous information, a good many people must have come three days early to meet Swamiji. One cannot but remark also on how regrettable it is that, except for his expression of satisfaction that the Society could afford to rent a whole house, we have no notes of his talk at the reception—regrettable because as far as is known this was the only occasion on which he spoke on "the object of the Vedanta Society and of the work in America." But to continue with the assistant secretary's report:]


The next morning, Saturday, June 17 [actually, June 16], [Swami Vivekananda] also took charge of the class and [on Sunday, June 17] lectured on "What is Religion?" Sister Nivedita spoke in the evening on "The Ideals of Hindu Women," giving a most beautiful and sympathetic account of their simple life and purity of thought. The women students, who were always eager to hear of the every-day life and thought of their Hindu sisters, especially enjoyed this talk. The Sister Nivedita was pleased at this interest and answered many questions giving a clearer idea of life in India to most than they had ever known.


On June 23, Swami Vivekananda conducted the Gita class, and on Sunday, June 24, he lectured on "The Mother-Worship." In the evening Sister Nivedita spoke again on "The Ancient Arts of India." Her talk was most entertaining because of her familiarity with the subject. Her visit and conversation were very instructive....


Swami Vivekananda conducted the class on the morning of June 30, and the next morning, Sunday, July 1, lectured on the "Source of Religion." As on all previous occasions, the rooms were crowded, and all felt it a privilege to listen to him. On July 3, Swami Vivekananda and Swami Turiyananda left New York, the former going to Detroit to visit old friends, and the latter to California to establish a Santi Asrama.


On July 10, Swami Vivekananda returned from Detroit and stayed at the Society rooms here until the latter part of July. On the 20th [?] he sailed for Paris...[73]


Of Swamiji's first Sunday lecture and of her own moment of crisis, Sister Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod in a letter, a portion of which has been published in Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda*(3). After long, gruelling, and largely fruitless work in the United States—to which we shall return—Sister Nivedita had come to New York in early June. One sees Swamiji through her eyes in the Vedanta Society parlor—a being whose unimaginable grandeur memory could not contain, vast in superhuman serenity and power, and yet profoundly human. I shall quote here only her reaction to his presence, for of his lecture itself one finds her notes in an Appendix to The Master as I Saw Him as well as in the Complete Works, under the title "Unity." This was the first of Swamiji's Western lectures Nivedita had attended since, half awed, half skeptical, and more deeply stirred than she had known at the time, she had heard him speak in 1895 and 1896 to London audiences.


Swami has just lectured [she wrote]. I went early and took the seat at the left end of the second row—always my place in London, though I never thought of it at the time.


Then as we sat and waited for him to come in, a great trembling came over me, for I realized that this was, simple as it seemed, one of the test-moments of my life. Since last I had done this thing, how much had come and gone! My own life—where was it? Lost—thrown away like a cast-off garment that I might kneel at the feet of this man. Would it prove a mistake; an illusion; or was it a triumph of choice; a few minutes would tell.


And then he came; his very entrance and his silence as he stood and waited to begin were like some great hymn. A whole worship in themselves.


At last he spoke—his face broke into fun, and he asked what was to be his subject. Someone suggested the Vedanta philosophy and he began....


. . . The splendid sentences rolled on and on, and we, lifted into the Eternities, thought of our common selves as of babies stretching out their hands for the moon or the sun—thinking them a baby's toys. The wonderful voice went on . . .


At last—the whole dying down and away in the thought "I could not see you or speak to you for a moment—I who stand here seeing and talking—if this Infinite Unity were broken for a moment—if one little atom could be crushed and moved out of its place.... Hari Om Tat Sat!"


And for me—I had found the infinitely deep things that life holds for us. To sit there and listen was all that it had ever been. Yet there was no struggle of intellectual unrest now—no tremor of novelty.


This man who stood there held my life in the hollow of his hand—and as he once in a while looked my way, I read in his glance what I too felt in my own heart, complete faith and abiding comprehension of purpose—better than any feeling....[74]


Sister Nivedita's report of Swamiji's first lecture as published in volume eight of the Complete Works duplicates in essence her report to Miss MacLeod, but it is somewhat more full. "These distinctions which we so love," she quoted Swamiji as having said, "are all parts of one infinite fact, and only differ in the degree of expression. That one infinite fact is the attainment of freedom.... We seek neither misery nor happiness, but freedom. This one aim is the secret of the insatiable thirst of man.... One Infinite alone can satisfy him, and that Infinite is Himself. When he realizes this, then alone comes freedom...." And Sister Nivedita quoted Swamiji's cry of sorrow for all mankind: "Our lives are but a passing from dream to dream. Man the infinite dreamer, dreaming finite dreams!'[75]


There exist two sets of notes of Swamiji's second lecture (Sunday, June 17), "What is Religion?" One of these is published in the Appendices of The Master as I Saw Him; the other and much more full set can be found in volume one of the Complete Works. The former was, presumably, taken down by Sister Nivedita; but who took down the latter we do not know.


In the lecture "Unity" Swamiji had equated unity with freedom; now, in "What is Religion?" he equated the quest for freedom with religion. " 'Freedom, O Freedom!' is the song of the soul," he said. (I quote here from the briefer notes.) "All worship, all desire for miracles, is, at bottom, this thirst for Freedom. Science on her countless watch-towers signals back to the asking soul, 'No, not yet! Nature has no freedom. She is all law.' This is why the idea of God is essential to the Mind. There must be the concept of some being or beings with Freedom. Religion thus becomes only a question of the materialisation or personification of the idea. Even a plant could not be, without this notion of Freedom. Embodied Freedom, the Master of Nature, is what we call God.'[76]


In this same lecture Swamiji spoke, as he had in California, of God as the giver of "not only all that we call good, but evil also." "He who gave us life, He is pouring out of His vial the direst death.... So face nature. Face ignorance. Face illusion. Never fly.... A moment of terror and then—It is the Lord! The world has been ever preaching the God of virtue; I preach to you a God of virtue and of sin. No more looking up and down at each other! The less differentiation, the sooner God. This is the one sin, differentiation. This is the door to hell, differentiation. Only when this is broken, when it is pulverised to atoms, can we attain the goal.'[77]


"And so," as Sister Nivedita wrote to Josephine MacLeod, "the splendid sentences rolled on and on....'[78]


"Mother Worship" (Swamiji's lecture of Sunday, June 24) was a subject on which he seems never before to have lectured, but this reticence had not been out of distaste. "This morning at eleven," Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod on June 24 (not July 24, as in the Reminiscences), "he is to lecture on Mother Worship, and you shall have every word of that lecture, if I have to pay ten dollars to get it taken down. It is going to be the great event. Just think of it! It was mentioned by someone yesterday to me, before him. And he turned and said, smiling, 'Yes, Mother-Worship—that's what I am going to lecture on, and that is what I love.' Just like that, radiant and at ease and free.'[79]


If Nivedita obtained a full verbatim transcript of the lecture, it is not, as far as I know, available today. Yet in addition to "fragmentary notes, taken by Miss Waldo" (which are published both in The Master as I Saw Him and in volume eight of the Complete Works under the title "The Worship of the Divine Mother"), there are extensive notes of this lecture in volume six of the Complete Works, entitled "Mother-Worship." Here, again, Swamiji called for strength in the face of whatever might come, proclaiming that the evil of the world, as well as the good, is divine. He traced the attempts of various religions to solve the riddle of good and evil, he spoke of man's vain attempt through the ages to fly from evil, to deny it, to attribute it to anything but to God. "But we have to face it," he said. "Face the whole! Am I under contract to anyone to offer partial love to God only in happiness and good, not in misery and evil? . . . 'I am the Power that manifests everywhere,' says the Mother—She who is bringing out this universe, and She who is bringing forth the following destruction.... Be bold, face facts as facts. Do not be chased about the universe by evil. Evils are evils. What of that? After all, it is only Mother's play.... She it is whose shadow is life and death. She is the pleasure in all pleasure. She is the misery in all misery.'[80]"This world is all alike the play of Mother. But we forget this. Even misery can be enjoyed when there is no selfishness, when we have become the witness of our own lives.... See Her in all, good and bad alike. Then alone will come 'sameness,' the Bliss Eternal that is Mother Herself, when we realise Her thus. Until then, misery will pursue us. Only resting in Mother are we safe.'[81]


Of the Bhagavad-Gita classes that Swamiji took over from Swami Turiyananda, we know only what Sister Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod. But the passage in her letter, brief as it is, is a beautiful and revealing one, and although I have quoted a little from it in an earlier chapter, it is worth giving here in full. (In the Reminiscences this letter is dated July 15, 1900; the correct date is June 16.)


This morning the lesson on the Gita was grand. It began with a long talk on the fact that the highest ideals are not for all. Nonresistance is not for the man who thinks the replacing of the maggot in the wound, by the leprous saint, with "Eat, Brother!" disgusting and horrible. Non-resistance is practised by a mother's love towards an angry child. It is a travesty in the mouth of a coward, or in the face of a lion.


Let us be true. Nine-tenths of our life's energy is spent in trying to make people think us that which we are not.


That energy would be more rightly spent in becoming that which we would like to be. And so it went—beginning with the salutation to an incarnation:


Salutation to thee—the guru of the universe,
Whose footstool is worshipped by the gods.
Thou one unbroken Soul,
Physician of the world's diseases.
Guru of even the gods,
To thee our salutation.
Thee we salute. Thee we salute. Thee we salute.
In the Indian tones—by Swami himself.


There was an implication throughout the talk that Christ and Buddha were inferior to Krishna—in the grasp of problems—inasmuch as they preached the highest ethics as a world-path, whereas Krishna saw the right of the whole, in all its parts-to its own differing ideals. But perhaps no one not familiar with his thought would have realized that this lay behind his exclamation, "The Sermon on the Mount has only become another bondage for the soul of man!"


All through his lectures now, he shows this desire to understand life as it is, and to sympathize with it. He takes less of the "Not this, not this" attitude and more of the "Here comes and now follows" sort of tone. But I fear that people find him even more out of touch at a first hearing than ever used to be the case.[ 82]


But if some found Swamiji "out of touch" with the surface of life, it was because he stood at the incandescent center of things, and many in his audience found themselves drawn as by a powerful magnet into depths theretofore unguessed. "As he is now," Sister Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod, "nothing can resist him:'[83] Swamiji was not at all unaware of the effect of his lectures and classes. Some twenty years later Swami Turiyananda was to say to a group of devotees at Benares, "Swamiji used to tell us, 'Do you think I only lecture? I know I give them something solid, and they know they receive something solid.' In New York Swamiji was lecturing to a class," Swami Turiyananda continued. "Oh, the tremendous effect of it! K. [Swami Abhedananda] said that while listening to the lecture he felt as if some force was drawing the Kundalini up, as at the time of meditation. After the lecture was finished (it took an hour) K. announced that he would hold a question class. Most of the audience had gone after Swamiji's lecture. Swamiji rebuked—saying, 'A question-class after this! Do you want to spoil the effect of my lecture?' Just see! Oh, what a Power Shri Ramakrishna left for the world in Swamiji! Hasn't he changed the very thought-current of the world?'[84]


Even the questions that people asked Swamiji at the close of his lectures or classes seemed, at least to one listener, out of place—not breaking the spell, for Swamiji was still there, but introducing an irrelevant note. "I wish they hadn't asked any questions," this listener said many years later, "because to tell you the truth, I thought that all you had to do was to look at this person. Here was perfection.... Some [of the questions] were sincere, but I felt that there were many who were much more interested in what they were saying than in the answer Swami might give. One man got up, and his question was so long and complicated that by the time he got to the end, I had no idea what his question was about. But Swami answered it in three words, and those words just punctured the man's [monologue] like a balloon.'[85]


The listener was a Mrs. Lillian Montgomery, who had come one Sunday morning in June of 1900 to the Vedanta House to hear the "new" Swami and who had left "treading on air." Thereafter, she attended every lecture and class that Swamiji gave during that brief period—a period of her life that changed her world. The words with which she sought to describe Swamiji's indescribably immense and powerful personality are to be found in a letter she wrote more than half a century later (in 1954) at the request of the then head of the New York Vedanta Society, Swami Pavitrananda, and also in a taped talk that she gave the following year before a gathering of the members of the same Society. I shall quote here primarily from the tape of 1955, inserting passages from her letter of 1954 in brackets. She said in part:


Swami Vivekananda was so entirely different from anything that we had known in America. I had heard all my life, it seemed to me, of power and repose, and the first time I had seen it was in the presence of Swami Vivekananda. And it all came as such a surprise, because I wasn't prepared for it, really. Just a short time before that I was really searching for something, and someone said they had heard of a swami, . . . and that was Swami Abhedananda. I heard him several times and was very impressed because he was so different from us; he was very calm and poised and all that, and I was surprised that he knew so much about our literature and our sciences. I think I heard him only twice, when someone said another swami was coming. Abhedananda had been speaking in a hall, and they told us that this new swami would speak in a Vedanta House. I wasn't at all prepared, you see, for Swami's personality. But at that time I wanted to hear everybody and see everybody, and so I went to the Vedanta House, and I sat [in the front row] so that I wouldn't miss anything. [After an interval, a door at the left opened—Swami entered quietly—his air was unassuming, but] immediately I knew that there was something extraordinary about him. [He took his place in high-back chair on the rostrum just in front of me] ; and there was something about his presence that fascinated you; you couldn't take your eyes off of him. [His eyes closed. He sat in meditation.... He had the most perfect head I had ever seen. Perfectly poised.] Power seemed to emanate from him. I was fascinated; he looked like a living Buddha; he looked entirely different from any personality I had ever seen.


[Then came the voice in the chant of a Sanskrit invocation—but a voice of what exceptional quality! It was mellow, but full—resonant—in tone, bell-like—but, above all, it rang so true.]


And then he rose to speak; [phrases flowed forth without effort, but every word was molded round a light that brought new significance to its meaning—he was living the very thoughts he was expressing.] And as he spoke, veils just seemed to fall from your eyes; as he was speaking, he gave you an entirely different impression of personality, an entirely different impression of the relationship of the individual to the Divinity. In some way there was no limit to his personality.... As we see people we see them limited because their awareness is entirely connected to the body. It seemed to me that there was an ocean of consciousness back of Swami Vivekananda, and in some way it focused and flowed through his words.


I heard him say "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." I had heard those words all my life, but as Vivekananda was speaking, the purity of that personality was so great, it just seemed to me that Divinity was reflected in him, and [I had a new conception of the quotation]. It was as though his mind was a limpid lake that was reflecting divine light, and . . . every word he spoke was a revelation. Other people that I have heard from the pulpit—and I had heard about the best—speak from a standpoint of faith. But I began to realize that this man was speaking from something that he was living— that every word he uttered came from a state of realization, such a realization that the ordinary person cannot imagine. At one time, as I listened, I thought that he was so established in the realization that the soul was eternal that he could stand before a cannon without fear, and I seemed to sense that if his form vanished that the light that was shining through it would stay there forever, that it would never disappear. It was a strange sensation at the time. But there was a purity, and an intense power, such a power as I think we have never seen—that I had never seen, and I don't expect I will ever see it again. It seemed to pour from an infinite source, and it was perfectly calm, perfectly reposed.


One thing he said that fascinated me was "face it." He told the story of how he was walking along a broad wall, and an elderly monk was back of him, when suddenly a vicious ape appeared, and was about to attack him. Vivekananda was about to turn and run, when the monk said, "Face it!" And he turned immediately and faced it and he felt the power that conquers the beast. The idea that he gave us was that there was that within man which could face any situation that came to him, and those words have always stayed with me; I have never forgotten them.


One thing that impressed me very much was that there was an absence of the sense of ego. And I saw eventually what that was, because his whole awareness was turned to that inner vision. Where the ordinary person has the sense of a little ego, Swami Vivekananda's sense of 'I' had expanded to something that was vast and deep and very very pure and very very powerful. It just penetrated within you and aroused something that was never there before. Some place he has said that you never see anything outside that isn't within. And I think perhaps his great power was that he perceived the divinity in all forms, and he perceived it with such a degree that he awakened it in his listeners as he was speaking....


He was the only person I have ever seen in whom there seemed to be no limit to his personality. It was just as if this outer form was tuned to a realization that was all power and purity and beauty. There was a beauty that just flowed through every word that he spoke—every phrase, and as I say, every word that he spoke took on a different meaning, you had a different conception of the words, and as he spoke, just veil after veil fell from your eyes, because you sensed the vastness of his realization; it was a sort of tremendous joy. I don't think he could possibly have made an awkward movement, or have struck a false tone because he was tuned to something that was all harmony, all beauty. There is no one that has appeared at the Metropolitan or on any stage that has that wonderful voice, or that has that wonderful magnetism. He just seemed to be a center of spiritual thought (?) and that emanated from him, and still he was always calm. But every line of his body followed his thought; it was just as if his outer form were floating on a great light.... It was something that was very very perceptible and very very tangible that he brought into the whole room....


It was just as if his form was [carved?] out of an ocean of light as it were, and somehow that light concentrated and just poured through the words he was speaking. I find him in his poems; I find him in his poems much more than in his lectures, because as you read his lectures with your own conception I don't think that you can possibly get the tremendous beauty that flowed through Vivekananda. But in his poems, the more and more you sink into them, the more you get the intensity of his feeling, and you know that he was really living every word that he spoke.


[There was a brilliance of mind, clothed in the warmth of the heart, and an impressive calmness as he spoke words of wisdom that were leading you into a realm of higher truth unknown.] It was the intensity of the emotion of his heart that brought into manifestation the brilliance of his mind. But they weren't separated. We think of the intellect as something rather cold, but in Swami Vivekananda —you felt that all the energy of his body, all of his emotions had been concentrated and turned towards this one vision. That's why there was a complete whole, there was a complete fulfillment. I couldn't imagine that Swami Vivekananda had cast out anything; I don't think that any part of his body he thought was unholy or anything like that, but it seemed to me that he had transmuted all the elements of his body into a much finer element. It was almost transparent—but still it was full of power and force; there was no weakness there. And all the time he was speaking it was that warmth of heart that was clothing the brilliance of the mind; so that with his whole personality you felt that all his energy, all his emotions were directed by this vision of his mind; nothing could have gone astray....


He was filled with such ease, and all you saw was this tremendous beauty, and it was spoken with such childlike simplicity that it just seemed that that was the natural state—that's what we all ought to be doing, just the same as Swami Vivekananda....


I had the feeling that there was something that penetrated right through the very depth of my being. As I say, the whole world changed as Swami was speaking, because every word he spoke he spoke with his great realization. He lived every word that he spoke....


I'll tell you, you just sat there and your whole vision changed, and you saw such a wonderful world; you saw a world just palpitating with light, and you were part of it, and it was all harmony and beauty, and no false notes or anything like that. And as you left you just trod on air; you lived in the presence even after you left him.... It stays with you, that's it, you see. You feel that that power is always there, that you can never lose it.[86]


As Mrs. Montgomery remembered it, not many people attended Swamiji's lectures at the Vedanta House, for they were intimate, unpublicized talks, and the double parlor rooms were small. Still, as many people came as one could expect during the summer month of June. According to a number of entries in Swami Abhedananda's diary for this period, about thirty people regularly came to the Saturday morning class; and at the Sunday morning lectures the attendance was almost always over a hundred. In addition to recording the size of the audiences, Swami Abhedananda jotted down the amount of the Sunday collections. These seem to have been incredibly —one might say, disgracefully—small, averaging about fifteen dollars. (Yet fifteen dollars for a hundred people was, one might also say, a good deal more generous than the collection at the Unitarian church in Oakland of thirty dollars for fifteen hundred; and on one Sunday morning in New York two bounteous checks for twenty dollars each were added to the plate.) As for the class, Swami Abhedananda noted the collection on only one Saturday: "about $3.50."


However, Swamiji no longer cared about earning money; nor did he want to lecture before large crowds. "This time I want to let upon New York the charge of the Light Brigade,'[87] he had written to Miss MacLeod on April 10, just before moving from San Francisco to Alameda. But two months later his mood had changed. "I am working some though not hard," he wrote to Sister Christine on June 15, "—[in order] to get the old friends together and put the thing in shape.'[88]Telling of these days, Miss Waldo writes in her brief account of his life and work in America, "He gave a few public lectures, but he did not care to do much work of this kind. He was chiefly desirous to meet his old friends and disciples and as in the days at Thousand Island Park he spent most of his time in teaching them and in conversation with them. It was a happy time apparently for both Teacher and disciples. All too soon, it came to an end.'[89]Regrettably, Miss Waldo, who had taken down invaluable notes of Swamiji's talks at Thousand Island Park, of which he once said to her with delighted approval, "How could you have caught my thought and words so perfectly!'[90]did not (as far as we know) take notes of his informal classes and talks at 102 East Fifty-eighth Street, and thus much of that period, the very last he was to spend among his American disciples, a period in which he surely held back nothing of thought or of power, is lost to us.


Apart from knowing that he gave intimate talks, Gita classes, and Sunday lectures, we have very little information of Swamiji's activities in New York that sweltering summer. Here and there, however, one catches sight of him. We see him, for instance (through Swami Abhedananda's diary), spending the rainy afternoon of June 14 with Swami Turiyananda and a Dr. Kate Stanton at Coney Island. (Swami Abhedananda had escorted them there and had then returned home.) Again on June 19, we find him riding with Swami Abhedananda on the Third Avenue El to the Bronx Zoo. (They did not return home from that excursion until seven o'clock, at which time Walter Goodyear came to dine.) And on a Sunday afternoon, after lecturing in the morning on "Mother Worship," he and the two Swamis drove in an open hansom through Central Park accompanied—or perhaps trailed—by Miss Waldo, Mrs. Crane, the Society's housekeeper, Sister Nivedita, and a Mr. Thomson. Again, one sees Swamiji and Swami Abhedananda on the balmy, moonlit evening of June 10 walking home (perhaps across Central Park and down Fifth Avenue) from the house of Miss Mary Phillips (then at 208 West Seventy-second Street), where they had been guests at dinner. And we learn that on the evening of June 22, Swamiji again had dinner at Miss Phillips's and later stayed there for a few days, to Nivedita's great joy, for at the time she was also a guest at this quiet and congenial boardinghouse.


Once again near her guru, Nivedita again hung on his every word; she herself, however, had somewhat changed; she was no longer the ardent young crusader, fully confident of conquering the world with the power of her own enthusiasm. Behind her lay a season of arduous, frustrating work, of traveling from place to place in an unsuccessful attempt to raise money for her girls' school. By the end of April she had collected $1,046, the $1,000 of which had been contributed by Mrs. Leggett, a friend, so to speak, of her father's. Other friends of Swamiji's had done what they could. In March, for instance, she formed "The Ramakrishna Guild of Help in America," the purpose of which was to raise funds for her proposed Widows' and Girls' Home and School in India. Mrs. Leggett was president; Mrs. Bull was honorary national secretary; there were a number of vice-presidents, who represented the cities of New York, Chicago, Boston, Cambridge, and Detroit, and all of whom, with perhaps one exception, were close friends of Swamiji's. On her own, Nivedita had made no lasting mark on the American mind, had gained no substantial support. She had, in fact, received many a rebuff, perhaps the most crushing and least expected of which had come from Mary Hale, whom she had, all unwittingly, managed to offend.


It would be unrealistic to think that Nivedita's overall failure in America, coming as it had on the heels of the London debacle, had not disheartened her. Swamiji, who well knew the difficulty of pleading India's cause in America, was equally well aware of his disciple's hours of despondency. Throughout those trying months, he had written many bracing, consoling letters to her, assuring her that somehow money for her school would come; or, "if it does not come, who cares?" he said. "One road is quite as good as the other. Mother knows best." He assured her also that he would again take London by storm. "Things shall look up for us, never mind," he wrote from Los Angeles. "As soon as the [Boer] war is finished we go to England and try to do a big work there. What do you think? . . . Sturdies and 'Shakies' will all come round—hold on. You are learning your lessons—that is all I want.'[91] And later from San Francisco: "Finish your books, and in Paris we are going to conquer the Froggies.'[92]


It was in March, after months of talking before largely unresponsive women's circles, that Nivedita met Patrick Geddes, whom she had long admired from afar and who was then lecturing in America. On the strength of her enthusiasm (which she had relayed to Miss MacLeod in India), the Leggetts invited Geddes and his wife, sight unseen, to be their house guests in New York. Nivedita, also staying with the Leggetts for a time, came to know him fairly well. The eminent sociologist, who was then in his forty-sixth year and whose mind was shooting out ideas as a Roman candle shoots out stars, found an intelligent, eager listener in this intense young woman; she, for her part, was dazzled. Like one starving, she sat sown with avidity to the intellectual feast Professor Geddes spread before her, and on March 13 she wrote to Swamiji, telling him of her new friend:


Long years ago in England—in the year I first met you, Norman Wyld . . . told me that if I cd only know Prof. Geddes—to whom he was proud to be disciple—my soul wd be saved, & my attitude to Life determined for ever—This function however was played by some one else!—Yet all the time in Kashmir I used to tell S. Sara and Yum Yum of this man & of the claim Norman had made for him—that he was the first Sociologist since Spencer to produce a new &  living theory of Society with a future in it.


Hence the present facts.


He is not in the least disappointing. But I am glad that I found my own place in the world before I met him. He is a light—beautiful & lovable—. . . He is a biologist— professor of Botany & Biology—I forget which—at Edinburgh—has brought out various books—but is better known as an inspirer or stimulator of men in many activities than as anything very technical. His wife & he say that Biologists look askance upon him because he wanders off into Economics & Sociology & what he calls "Geotechnics," instead of keeping to his subject.


To look at . . . he is a wee bit like a kind, wise, horned owl—comparatively young, but with a sort of venerableness of thought—& the most loving & reverent aspect to ignorance & weakness that I have ever seen-a great tenderness, in fact.[93]


Nivedita went on at considerable length, telling Swamiji of Professor Geddes's many ideas, one flowering from the other, creating rich, fluvial "sequences."


"I enjoyed your account of Prof. Geddes," Swamiji replied, and added with perhaps unintentional irreverence, "and Joe has a funny account of a clairvoyant.'[94]


On March 21, Patrick Geddes and his wife left New York for Paris where he was to organize various sessions of the International Association for the Advancement of Science, Arts and Education at the Paris Exposition. Sister Nivedita, fascinated with many of his theories regarding the evolution of society in relation to environment, wanting to study them more deeply, and seeing in them an application to India's problems, committed herself to working for him, for a time, as secretary. She arranged to meet him in Paris in early July.


It was only a few days before Sister Nivedita left New York that a windfall came her way—again through Swamiji. As he had wished, she called upon Mrs. Collis Potter Huntington, whom, as the reader will remember, he had met in San Francisco and who, hearing from him of Nivedita's work, had wanted to help it. Mrs. Huntington has been written of by most chroniclers of the era as given to an ostentation second to none among the wives of the fabulously rich railroad and mining moguls. At the time of our story, when Arabella Huntington was in her late forties, she reigned not merely from one mansion, but from two, the vast edifice on Nob Hill having been something of an afterthought. Earlier, she had persuaded her husband, a man personally frugal in the extreme, to build a two-million-dollar house in New York at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street-a mansion which turned out to look, it is said, "a good deal like a fancy warehouse," and which bulged with large objets d'art. But however many huge and ornately furnished houses Mrs. Huntington may have presided over, she clearly appreciated Swamiji and wanted, quite sincerely and without fanfare, to donate to his cause. He, in turn, as one may judge from his acceptance of her help, must have recognized her sincerity.


Nivedita's few meetings with Mrs. Huntington (no doubt at the Fifth Avenue house) were more financially rewarding than her long months of hard work. On the morning of June 26, she wrote to Miss MacLeod: "Yesterday Mrs. C. P. Huntington gave me $5,000 & Swami says there is no longer any secret. He only did not want you all to know until the thing was done -as that sort of thing makes people ridiculous. When Mrs. Leggett comes back to New York Mrs. H. looks forward to knowing her & after consulting with her & securing her advice, to making a further yearly donation to the School.[95]


Whether or not Mrs. Huntington continued to make donations to Sister Nivedita's school, I do not know. Possibly not, for her attention soon turned elsewhere. In August of 1900, Collis P. Huntington, the most powerful of all the railroad tycoons of that era, and perhaps the most hated for his ruthless dealings and what was said to be his "scrupulous dishonesty," died of a heart attack in his summer camp in the Adirondacks. Shortly thereafter Mrs. Huntington became absorbed in the collection of art works. (Thirteen years later she married her late husband's nephew, Henry E. Huntington, a multimillionaire in his own right and himself a large-scale collector of paintings. Their combined fortune was enormous, and together the Huntingtons collected the rarest books and finest paintings available. The Huntington Library and Museum in San Marino, California-not far from Pasadena-is their enduring legacy to America.)


Sister Nivedita had now gathered, in all, $6,500, $1,000 of which sum was from Mrs. Leggett and $5,000 from Mrs. Huntington. It is reasonable to guess that at least some of the remainder had been contributed by the vice-presidents of the Ramakrishna Guild of Help. But in whatever way the money had come, it was, in terms of Indian currency, a sizable amount. "Swami says that the interest of the present sum will give me in Calcutta a monthly income of at least 50 Rs. [about $17]," Nivedita continued in her letter of June 26, "and that that, with what I may gain in the next few months, will be enough to begin upon. So he wants me to leave for Calcutta next January or February!!! Won't that be joyful?"


Two days after writing this letter, Sister Nivedita sailed from New York for Paris, where Patrick Geddes awaited her help. (It should be mentioned that in a letter of June 23, published in the Complete Works, Swamiji wrote, "Margot starts on the 26th." This is an error, perhaps typographical. The correct date was June 28.)


Nivedita's conception of her work in India had not yet changed, as it was to do later on. The day before her departure, a New York newspaper (today unidentified) printed an interview with her in which she outlined her future plans. The article read in part:

Sister Nivedita, of the Order of Ramakrishna, will leave New-York to-morrow for Paris, on her way to India, where she hopes to resume work in the autumn.


Sister Nivedita is in secular life Miss Margaret E. Noble, an English woman, whose interest in India led to her joining the Vedantic order in which she is enrolled. She came to the United States some months ago in the interest of the Ramakrishna School for Girls, about to be established in Calcutta. Miss Noble says:


It is wholly a mistake to suppose that I have renounced either my nationality or my religion in becoming a sister of the order. Christianity is the nursery in which my spiritual thought was trained. In acquiring the larger lessons of life that come when the world opens to us, we do not renounce the valuable teachings of the nursery....


I went to India through the influence of a friend in England who was a disciple of Swami Vivekananda and placed myself under his direction to a certain extent in my earlier work. The first thing I had to do was learn Bengali, as none of the women or girls could speak English.


In ten months I had acquired a working knowledge of the language, so that I opened my school. It was a day school, and in the time of its existence, which was nearly a year, I learned what was really needed in India, and it was decided to make the attempt to establish such a school under the auspices of the order and especially of the Swami Vivekananda.


My object is to educate the Hindoo girl as the English and American girl is being educated, without any impertinent interference with her religious beliefs or social customs. We make a serious mistake in such interference....


At present our efforts must be directed to the higher classes, but eventually I hope to reach all. The Hindoo girls who are trained in our schools will go home eager to specialize in various social directions. We shall teach the Bengali and the English language, literature, elementary mathematics and some one elementary science with extreme thoroughness, and manual training, beginning in the kindergarten and finally reviving old Indian industries and arts. I believe that manual training gives more effectiveness to character than anything else....


We intend, if we succeed in acquiring means, to buy a house and a piece of land on the banks of the Ganges near Calcutta, and there to take in some twenty widows and twenty orphan girls—the whole community to be under the guidance and authority of Sarada Devi.


I am sure that the plan will succeed. I have found much sympathy and encouragement in America. Two New-York women have given the bulk of the money I have received here, one contributing $5,000 and one $1,000, and a Ramakrishna Guild of Help has been formed, from which we expect much. Mrs. Francis H. Leggett is the president, Mrs. Ole Bull of Cambridge is National secretary, and there are branches in a number of the large cities.


Miss Noble is an earnest woman and wears the simple black gown of the order. Her only ornament is a Hindoo rosary, which differs from the Roman Catholic in having 108 beads, instead of 100. It is older than the Roman Catholic and is intended merely as an aid in concentration of thought.[96]

3

While Swamiji was in New York an event of great moment took place in connection with his work in California. As was bound to happen sooner or later, it had become apparent to some of the Vedanta students in New York that one could not enter deeply into the search for God without at the same time wanting to renounce the world externally as well as internally and devote oneself to intense spiritual practice. It was also apparent that in Western countries where the mendicant monk was not an acceptable part of the community, outward renunciation, unless one joined an established monastery or convent, was impossible or, at least, highly unpractical. Swamiji had long ago foreseen this difficulty and during his first visit to the West had often spoken of the need for a Vedantic ashrama or retreat. But it was not until early in 1899, when one of Swami Abhedananda's students, Cornelius Heijblom (sometimes spelled Heyblom), renounced the world and received the name by which we already know him—Gurudasa—that the problem became real. Another of Swami Abhedananda's students, Miss Minnie C. Boock, offered a solution. She possessed, it so happened, a homestead in California that had been issued to her some eight years earlier by President Harrison and that contained, according to the Official Plat of the Survey, "one hundred and fifty-nine acres and eighty-nine hundredths of an acre." This property could, she thought, fill the need for an ashrama. "It had its disadvantages," Gurudasa (then Swami Atulananda) later wrote, "it was fifty miles from the nearest railway station and market, but it would do to begin with. It would be solitaryanyhow. And she very generously offered this place to Swami Vivekananda.'[97]

This, incidentally, was not the first time Swamiji had been offered a piece of land in California. In April of 1896, just as he was leaving New York for London, a telegram arrived: "Gift to Swami from Richardson, valleyland California for retreat. Will write particulars. Bon voyage. Florence Adams.'[98] Who Richardson was and where in California the "valleyland" was located, we do not know at present. In any case, nothing seems to have come of the offer; it was wrongly cued, as though the idea of a retreat in California had somehow slipped from its place in the ordered course of things, appearing like a portent long before the time was ripe.

The time was ripe on June 25, 1900, on which date Miss Minnie Boock deeded her homestead to Swamiji, "to have and to hold," the record reads, " . . . in trust for the general use and benefit of the Vedanta School of Philosophy.'[99] Thus came into being Shanti Ashrama, the first Vedanta retreat in the Western world.

Swamiji accepted Miss Boock's gift with what must have been delight and toward the end of June sent off the following heretofore unpublished letter to Mrs. Hansbrough:

102 E. 58th
The Vedanta Society 
[New York, N.Y.]

Dear Mrs. Hansbrough—

I have not written you a line since you left San Francisco. I am well and things are going on well with me.

I am in New York once more, where they have got now a home for the Society and their headquarters. I and the other Swamis also live there.

A San Francisco lady now here—owns a plot of land near Mt Hamilton 12 miles east of Lick observatory 160 acres in all. She is going to make us a present of it. It would be nice for a Summer gathering for us in California if friends like to go there now I will send them the written authority. Will you write to Mrs. Espinol [Aspinall] and Miss Bell etc. about it. I am rather desirous it should be occupied this summer as soon as possible. There is only a log cabin on the land for the rest they must have tents.

I am sorry I can not spare a Swami yet.

With all love to you and Mrs. Wykoff and the baby of the family.

Ever yours in the Truth 
Vivekananda

P.S. Tell Helen—I thank her for her kind invitation but so sorry can not accept it now. After all you three sisters have become a part of my mind forever.

What about the [the word is illegible]?[100]

Swamiji himself wrote to Miss Bell (one learns from a letter of Ida Ansell's to Mr. Allan), asking her to go to the property and take possession. But Mrs. Aspinall, always practical and perhaps aware of the living conditions east of Lick Observatory, dissuaded her. In the meanwhile, Swamiji asked Swami Turiyananda, to whom he had already assigned the California work, to establish the Ashrama. "It is the will of the Divine Mother that you should take charge of the work there," Swamiji told him. Swami Turiyananda smiled. "Mother's will? Rather say it is your will. Certainly you have not heard the Mother communicate Her will to you in this matter." But Swamiji grew grave. "Yes, Brother," he said. "If your nerves become very fine, then you will be able to hear Mother's words directly." He spoke with such fervor that Swami Turiyananda's doubts were stilled.[101]Even as a year or so earlier he had agreed, out of love for Swamiji, to come to America, so he now agreed to try to establish a retreat in far-off California.

Accompanied by Miss Boock, the Swami traveled to southern California, arriving on Sunday, July 8, 1900. As has not been heretofore known, the two travelers went directly to the small town of Alhambra (near Los Angeles), where they became the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Lister, Miss Boock's sister and brother-in-law. How many days Swami Turiyananda remained at the home of the Listers is not certain, but he carried with him an introductory letter from Swamiji to Mrs. Hansbrough, which he evidently sent to her at once. It read as follows:

3rd July 1900
102 E. 58th Street
New York

My dear Mrs. Hansbrough--

This is to introduce Swami Turiyananda. The lady who gave the piece of land for Vedanta work belongs to Los Angeles. She has taken Turiyananda with her. He is a great spiritual teacher—but has no experience in platform work.

The best thing would be to help him to start a center for quiet and rest and meditation in the land near San Jose.

With all love to the holy Trinity.

Ever yours in the Lordl[102]
Vivekananda

In no time Swami Turiyananda found himself living in the Meads' house in South Pasadena, occupying, almost certainly, the room that Swamiji had lived in for many weeks and coming to know the people Swamiji had known so well.

He stayed with the Meads for two weeks or so. Then he traveled to San Francisco, where, on the evening of Thursday, July 26, he was greeted by the Vedanta Class at its regular meeting at Dr. Logan's office. A week later, on the afternoon of Thursday, August 2, the Swami and eight students, including Mrs. Aspinall, Ida Ansell, and Dr. Logan (Miss Bell and Miss Boock had gone on ahead) traveled by train to the town of San Jose, sixty miles south of San Francisco. The following day they made a hot and arduous trek, partly by stagecoach, partly by mule-drawn wagon, thirty-five miles east over the mountains to the isolated San Antone Valley.

The story of Swami Turiyananda's valiant attempt to establish a Vedanta retreat has been told in "Early Days at Shanti Ashrama," a history that appeared some ten years ago in Prabuddha Bharata and that includes much theretofore unpublished material.[103]It is enough to say here that it was a story of light and shadow both. Because of its remoteness, the San Antone Valley was an ideal place for a contemplative retreat; but it was a demanding place as well. There was very little water, the climate during most of the year was one of extremes—burning hot in summer, freezing cold in winter and the accommodations were, to say the least, primitive. Further, the valley was a day's journey, for the most part over rough, barely passable roads, from a market or any other kind of store. None of these inconveniences mattered to Swami Turiyananda, nor would they have mattered to students trained in spiritual discipline and ready for a life of austerity, renunciation, and meditation; but with the exception of Gurudasa, none of those who spent a long or a short time at Shanti Ashrama (some came from the young San Francisco Vedanta Society and some from the Home of Truth) were thus ready.

Most of them, however, were earnest, and those who lived at the Ashrama for any length of time plunged into the new and difficult way of life with a zest and vigor that in the presence of Swami Turiyananda they could not help but feel. They were carried, as it were, in the current of his great spirituality. The Swami, Gurudasa later wrote "never spared himself; he, did not think of his own health or comforts; he had only one object, namely to bring these eager students to the feet of his Divine Master.... He became a channel of the inflow and outflow of a great spiritual Power. He had no other thought but to do God's will.... The students had to respond; the Swami's ardour was infectious.'[104] And the Swami was constantly vigilant, watching carefully over his charges, teaching them, scolding them, correcting their shortcomings, helping them to break obstructive habits and attachments, striving to keep harmony; he looked after them, as he later said, "almost twenty-four hours a day." There was no respite for him.

Except for a period of three months in the early part of 1901, when he worked in San Francisco and Los Angeles, he lived continuously at the Ashrama. For the students, the experience was unforgettably beneficial; but the cost to Swami Turiyananda was high. Early in September of 1901, exhausted and badly in need of a change, he left the San Antone Valley for Donner Lake, a rustic resort area in the High Sierra. He stayed there for some five weeks and then went directly to San Francisco, where, almost at once, he became seriously ill. Recovering somewhat, he returned to Shanti Ashrama for the winter and spring. Only Gurudasa and two or three other students were with him during this period, and he remained much of the time in retirement.

Receiving news of his brother's illness, Swamiji, then in Benares, became concerned. He wrote anxiously to Mrs. Hansbrough in February. His letter, heretofore unpublished, read in full:

Benaras 
14. Feb. 1902

My dear Mrs. Hansbrough,

I am eternally indebted to you for what you did for me in the past and infinitely more now—for what you are doing to Turiyananda.

A gloom came over the Math when news reached Calcutta of his severe illness. Now—I hope—he has recovered completely—and I will be so glad to get the news from you.

It seems the American climate does not suit him—in that case it will be better for him to come over to India whenever he thinks fit.

In all probability I am going to Japan in a month or two. Ramakrishnananda accompanies me. Turiyananda may come over to Japan and I go to America— 'Mother" knows best however and we obey.

I am just now in Benaras for a few days. All letters should however be addressed to the Belur Math.

Kindly convey my best love to Turiyananda and to yourself, the holy family and the other friends.

Ever yours in the Lord
Vivekananda

P.S. Let Turiyananda take rest all the time now—he must not work at all till I reach Japan or America.[105]

V.

In March of 1902, Swamiji, increasingly anxious over his brother's health, wrote to Dr. Logan, asking that the Swami be sent back to India. Nor did he rest with this: he asked Swami Saradananda to write both to Dr. Logan and to Swami Turiyananda. Swamiji's letter no longer exists (if it was received); but that of Swami Saradananda to Dr. Logan, dated April. 3, 1902, was written into the Society's Minutes. Mr. Wollberg's presumably true copy of it reads in part as follows :

My dear Dr. Logan:

The Swami [Vivekananda] hopes that you have received his letter by this time, requesting you to make arrangements to send the Swami Turiyananda back to India, as he has not been keeping well there.

The Swami has become very anxious to know of Swami T.'s last illness. He himself has not been keeping very well and only a little month ago we were seriously alarmed to find him almost run down. He is much better however by a month's treatment & shows signs of perfect recovery ere long....

The Swami sends his love & blessings to you all and hopes that his letter to you intimating his wish to send Swami T. back has not been miscarried.

Most truly yours[106]
Saradananda

On June 6, 1902, Swami Turiyananda sailed from San Francisco for India. According to the Pacific Vedantin, he intended to return to California after a year's rest. But it is said that when his homeward-bound ship touched port in Rangoon and he learned the thunderbolt news of Swamiji's death a week earlier, he then and there, in an agony of grief, threw his Western clothes into the Bay of Bengal, knowing that he would never have the heart to return. And return he never did. There is evidence that this was as Swamiji would have wished. "Sarada [Swami Trigunatita] will soon be leaving for America to replace Brother Hari [Swami Turiyananda]," Swami Premananda wrote to Swami Abhedananda on August 20 of 1902. "Swamiji had arranged this before his death.'[107]

Although it is true that an ashrama was not established on a working basis during Swami Turiyananda's stay in California, the months that he spent in the San Antone Valley, meditating, practicing austerities, living continually in a high state of spiritual consciousness, teaching from Sanskrit scriptures, chanting, speaking of God—those months, about fifteen in all, did not by any means go in vain. Shanti Ashrama still holds, as in a chalice, all that the great Swami gave to it—an undying legacy of spirit. He made it a holy place; and a holy place, a place of pilgrimage, it is today. Nor is it unlikely that at some future time it will flourish as a livable retreat for those who wish, and are ready, to renounce the world permanently and live a secluded, contemplative life dedicated to the full realization of God. When that day comes—and surely it will come, though when, who can say? —the holy land that Swami Turiyananda created will be a source of spiritual inspiration and vitality to generations of people.

Further, one can, I think, surmise that when a Prophet of the stature of a Swami Vivekananda inaugurates a work on this visible level—no matter how small in measure it may be, or whether, as such, it succeeds or fails—a tremendous, creative current is set in motion on deeper, more subtle levels, which nothing can stop from eventually becoming a historical force. One might say, in short, that at Shanti Ashrama Swamiji's idea of Vedantic retreats in the Western world became a power, and their future establishment thus became assured.

4

But let us return to the summer of 1900 when Swamiji was still in New York and Swami Turiyananda was about to set out for California. It was in the late afternoon of July 3, two days after Swamiji's last Sunday lecture at the Vedanta Society, that the two Swamis, accompanied by Miss Minnie Boock, left New York. Swamiji was going as far as Detroit; Swami Turiyananda and Miss Boock were traveling on to Los Angeles.

Ever since his arrival in New York in early June, Swamiji had been assuring Sister Christine that he would not leave America without seeing her. She had been disappointed in November of 1899, when he had suddenly left New York for California, canceling his plans to be with her at Mrs. Bull's home in Cambridge; and she had again been disappointed when he returned from California to New York without visiting Detroit. There was also his difficulty with Sister Christine's address, which he seemed often to have trouble remembering, either losing his address book, or not being able to recall which of her various addresses therein listed was the current one. Some of his letters to her had thus gone astray or were late in being delivered. "I could not write more as the last few weeks of my stay in California was one more relapse and great suffering," he wrote to her from New York on June 9, 1900. "...I wrote you [a letter] however from 770 Oak Street, San Fran. to which I did not get any reply. Of course, I was bedridden there & my address book was not in the place I was in; there was a mistake in number. I cannot believe you did not reply willingly."

As you see, now I am in New York [he continued] and will be here a few days. I have an invitation from Mrs. Walton of Cleveland Ohio*(4). I have accepted it. She writes me you are also invited and have accepted her invitation. Well, we will meet in Cleveland then. I am sure to see you before I go to Europe. Either there or anywhere you wish. If you don't think it would be possible for you to come to Ohio—I will come to any other place you want me to come to say goodby....

. . . I would be very very glad to get a few weeks seclusion & rest before I start with friends who do not disturb me at all.... In Cleveland of course there will be a few friends always & much talkee talkee as a matter of course. So if you think I will have real peace and rest elsewhere just write all about. . .

How I wish I was in Detroit—or elsewhere just now among friends, who I know are good & true always. This is weakness-but when the physical vitality is lowered and the nerves all unstrung-I feel so so much to depend upon somebody. You will be glad to learn I made a little money in the west. So I will be quite able to pay my expenses.[108]

For one reason or another the Cleveland plan did not work out. On June 13 Swamiji wrote again to Christine:

I will be here [New York] a week or two and then I come to Detroit. If things so happen that I can not come, I will sure send for you. Anyway, I am not going to leave this country before seeing you. Sure, sure I must see you first, and then go to Europe.[109]

Two days later the very thought of going to Detroit seemed unbearable to Swamiji, tired as he was of constant talk. "Detroit--alas! will be no better than New York," he wrote on June 15. "With so many old friends! How can you avoid friends whom you really love?"

I will have perfect freedom at yours sure [he went on]--but how can I avoid seeing friends? and the eternal visiting & paying visits & much talkee talkee? Do you know any other place within eight or 10 hours (I want to avoid night rides) of ride from New York, where I can be quiet and free from the people (Lord bless them)? I am dead tired seeing people just now. Just think of that and everything else--if after all you think Detroit is the best place for me--I am ready to come.[110]

And on June 20:

Most possibly, I will be in Detroit next week. If anything happens to delay me, don't be anxious. I will not leave the country without seeing you. It is absolutely necessary.

Well, Mother seems to be kind again and the wheel is slowly rising up. Did you hear of my friend Miss Muller? Well, she left me in India--and they say tried to injure me in England. This morning I got a letter from her that she is coming to the states and wants to see me badly!

Her defection was a great blow to me--as I loved her so much and she was a great helper and worker. She has plenty of this world's goods and brains but like myself she now and then gets into violent nervous fits. Now, of course there is good excuse for her-age; none for me. She wants to come by the end of June. I of course want her to come earlier. So I wrote her just now. If possible I will wait--in some quiet country place. But I will come to Detroit anyhow.[111]

(Miss Muller could not come to New York in June, in July, or in August. It is not likely that she ever made her peace with Swamiji--if that is what she had wanted to do.)

A week later (on June 27), with three Sunday lectures and three Gita classes behind him, and only one lecture and one class to go, Swamiji received an invitation whereby he could escape from all the "talkee talkee" that so tired him. "This is my plan just now," he wrote to Christine:

I will have to remain in New York a few days yet to see my books through. I am going to publish another edition of Karma Yoga and the London lectures in a book form. Miss Waldo is *(5) editing them & Mr. Leggett will publish*(6).

Then I think if I am to remain in this country a few days more--it is better that you get a rest & change. Newport is a celebrated sea side place---our hours from New York. I am invited there. I will go there this week and as promised--I find quiet and retirement & freedom--I will try to find a place for you and wire you as soon as found.

I am sure in Detroit you can not have rest. A little change of place--and quiet from time to time is a great factor in regaining one's vigour.

Well, if you think that you would have better rest & quiet in Detroit--drop a line--and I come....I am free to go already--only, I really want you to take a good long rest for some weeks at least.

Don't be afraid of expenses. Mother has amply provided that and will provide so long I am unselfish....

I am going to Newport anyway—just to see what it looks like.

I will write you all about as soon as I am there.[112]

Newport, Rhode Island, was the fashionable resort of the very wealthy, who built huge and increasingly ostentatious "cottages" along its ocean cliffs. One wonders who among Swamiji's affluent friends had invited him there, but whoever it may have been, it would appear that he did not go, or if he went, it was only for a day or so, for it was just around then that the gift of Shanti Ashrama was made. Meanwhile, Sister Christine was growing impatient.

Your last letter had a note of vexation [Swamiji wrote to her on July 2]. It is quite natural--but on my part the delay has its excuses.... Then came a gift of land in California and suddenly as I was getting ready to start last week, it so happened that the way opened for Turiananda [sic] to go to Califor. He goes today or tomorrow. I am trying to go with them as far as Detroit but Mother knows, as I always say.

You pray to Mother. It is hard work to be a leader. One must crush all his own self under the feet of the community. Anyway I am coming as soon as I can. Do not worry. I am getting strong every day.[113]

And on the following day, July 9, Swamiji sent a telegram to Christine: started reach tomorrow wednesday 2 pm come station wabash.[114]

Of Swamiji's visit in Detroit we know few details. He stayed at the home of Mrs. Greenstidel, Christine's mother, whose address was then 528 East Congress Street. The house would not have been a rich one. Indeed, in writing of a visit to the Greenstidels in 1895, Leon Landsberg (Swami Kripananda) spoke of the household (then at another address) as "very poor." Christine's father, "a noble, freethinking German scholar," who had brought his family from Germany to Detroit in 1869 when Christine was three years old, had lacked business acumen and, "as a result, lost all his savings and inheritance.'[115]Mr. Greenstidel died when Christine was seventeen, and the burden of supporting her mother and four (some say six) younger sisters fell upon her shoulders, where it remained for many years. (It was not indeed until her mother died in early 1902 that Christine was free to answer Swamiji's call to serve his cause in India. She was to arrive there on April 7, 1902, and was to remain, totally dedicated to his work of educating Hindu women, until 1914, when she returned to Detroit.)

But poor though they were, the Greenstidels would have shared with Swamiji whatever they had, and it was perhaps in their parlor that, as the Life tells us, he "once or twice held conversaziones for the benefit of his immediate disciples and intimate friends.'[116] Of both disciples and friends Swamiji had many in Detroit, for, as is well known, he had spent several weeks in that city in 1894 and again in 1896, lecturing and holding classes. Except for Sister Christine and Mary Funke, however, we do not know the names of those who now (as he had anticipated) gathered around him. (One old and dear friend would have been missing. Mrs. John J. Bagley, who had introduced him to Detroit and had later stood by him when his enemies sought to discredit him, had died in 1898.)

It is from Mary Funke that we gain a glimpse of Swamiji at this particular period of his life. In London, in August of 1899, she had found him "very slim." Now, almost a year later, she found him slimmer still. "He had grown so thin, almost ethereal," she wrote, "—not long would that great spirit be imprisoned in clay. Once more we closed our eyes to the sad truth, hoping against hope.'[117]Swamiji had indeed grown slim— and this since he had left Los Angeles, for, as we shall find later, Miss MacLeod, on meeting him in Paris, was also to remark upon his loss of weight. Yet, Swamiji was not, one thinks, wasting away, and his health, though not good, was not at this time irreversibly poor. It was perhaps something else that Mrs. Funke saw: not a frailness of body but an expansion of spirit that made a stay of many more years on earth impossible to him.

"Well, Brother, my days are numbered, " he had said to Swami Abhedananda. "I shall live only for three or four years at the most." "You must not talk like that, Swamiji," Swami Abhedananda had remonstrated. "You are fast recovering your health...." But Swamiji had replied, "You do not understand me. I feel that I am growing very big. My self is expanding so much that at times I feel as if this body could not contain me any more. I am about to burst. Surely, this cage of flesh and blood cannot hold me for many days more.'[118] In the Life this conversation is placed in November of 1899; yet it seems far more in keeping with Swamiji's mood in June of 1900, when he had written not long before, "Bonds are breaking—love dying . . . I come, Lord, I come.... Everything is good and beautiful; for things are all losing their relative proportions to me—my body among the first '[119]

But in this withdrawal and this vastness of being, nothing seemed to slip from attention or be too small, too trivial, for his care. "The last time he was with us in Detroit," Mrs. Funke wrote, "he prepared for us the most delicious curries. What a lesson to his disciples; the brilliant, the great and learned Vivekananda ministering to their little wants! He was at those times so gentle, so benign. What a legacy of sacred tender memories has he left us!'[120]

According to the Life, Swamiji spent seven days in Detroit, but this reckoning does not account for the two days he would have traveled to and fro on the train. To Swami Turiyananda he wrote, "I stayed in Detroit for three days only.'[121] This, too, however, is misleading; for he no doubt meant that he had remained three more days in Detroit after his brother had gone on to the Pacific Coast. The truth very likely is that Swamiji stayed in Detroit for five and a half days (during which he wrote what actually turned out to be his last will and testament)[122]and then returned directly to New York, arriving there, as we know from a letter he wrote to Mary Hale, on July 10.[123]

From then on, until he sailed on July 26 for Europe, Swamiji lived alone at the Vedanta Society's house. "It is frightfully hot here in New York," he wrote on July 18 to Swami Turiyananda, who was then in California. ". . . I have not heard from Sister Nivedita yet.... Kali (Swami Abhedananda] went away about a week ago to the mountains [for a vacation in the Adirondacks with his disciple Dr. Herschell Parker]. He cannot come back till September. I am all alone, and roasting; I like it. Have you seen my friends? Give them my love.'[124]

In those steaming days of July, after his return from Detroit, Swamiji was not always alone at the Vedanta House. The housekeeper, Mrs. Crane, was there to take care of things, and Ellen Waldo, together with Sister Christine, who had come to New York with him, were paying guests. In addition there was another guest, one Mrs. Lowe, of whom Miss Waldo wrote years later to Devamata in a passage that gives us an interesting view of the household:

Your letter & Mrs. Lowe's duly reached me.... I know the kind of woman she is & feel sure she could never be of any use in India. She is lazy & never wants to soil her hands. When Mrs. Crane kindly gave her a home at 102 [Fifty-eighth Street], she would not in return help her one bit in the housework. She wd go & sit down after meals with Swamiji & leave Christine & me (who were paying liberally for our board) do all the helping of Mrs. Crane. Swamiji himself reproved her in severe terms for this behaviour and told her she ought to help in the work, but she never did. He paid her for her laziness, by never opening his lips to talk unless Christine and I were there to hear him. He always addressed himself to us & ignored her, not even answering her question. When I recall all these things, you can see how impossible it is for me to believe that he "loved her as Shiva loves Parvati" ! Neither do I for one moment believe he appears to her or that he has "made her a Swami.'[125]

Another memory shows us Swamiji at the breakfast table one July morning designing the emblem that was later to become the seal of the Ramakrishna Order and that is today so familiar to readers of the Order's literature. It was Sister Devamata who wrote of the incident in her Memories of India and Indians, first published serially in Prabuddha Bharata of 1932. (In 1896 Sister Devamata—then Laura Glenn—had regularly attended Swamiji's New York lectures and classes. She received her monastic name years later from Swami Paramananda.)

The design which has become the symbol of the Ramakrishna Mission everywhere [she wrote in her Memories] came into being in the same casual way as did the "Song of the Sannyasin." It took shape in 1900 during Swami Vivekananda's later visit to America. At that time the Vedanta Society of New York was definitely established and occupied a modest house in Fifty-eighth Street. Mrs. Crane, the housekeeper, told me that the Swami was sitting at the breakfast table one morning when the printer arrived. He said he was making a circular for the Society and wished to have an emblem to go on it, could the Swami suggest something? Swamiji took the envelope from a letter he had just received, tore it open and on the clean inner surface drew the waves, the swan, the lotus, and the sun circled by a serpent—the four Yogas wrapped about by eternity, it seemed. He threw the bit of paper with the design on it across the table and said, "Draw it to scale." Henry van Haagen, the printer, was an able draughtsman as well as printer. He converted the rough sketch into a finished drawing.[126]

(Mr. Van Haagen, incidentally, was among those who had become Swamiji's brahmacharin disciples in an earlier year. It was to him that Swamiji had once said in response to an expression of regret that the Swami's sublime teachings had no larger following: "I could have thousands more at my lectures if I wanted them. It is the sincere student who will help to make this work a success and not merely the large audiences. If I succeed in my whole life to help one man to reach freedom, I shall feet that my labours have not been in vain, but quite successful.")[127]

Sister Devamata's interpretation of Swamiji's design was not quite correct. "The sun = Knowledge," Swamiji explained to Miss MacLeod, shortly after creating the design. "The stormy water = Work. The lotus = Love. The serpent = Yoga. The swan = the Self. The Motto = May the Swan (the Supreme Self) send us that. It is the mind-lake.'[128]

Later on in India Swamiji again explained the significance of the design, this time to the artist Ranadaprasad Das Gupta. "The wavy waters in the picture are symbolic of Karma," he said; "the lotus, of Bhakti; and the rising-sun, of Jnana. The encircling serpent is indicative of Yoga and the awakened Kundalini Shakti, while the swan in the picture stands for the Paramatman (Supreme Self). Therefore, the idea of the picture is that by the union of Karma, Jnana, Bhakti, and Yoga, the vision of the Paramatman is obtained.'[129]

Or one sees Swamiji in New York through the memoirs of Sister Christine.

In New York [she wrote], once there was a pitiful little group that clung to him with pathetic tenacity. In the course of a walk he had gathered up first one and then another, This ragged retinue returned with him to the house of 58th Street which was the home of the Vedanta Society. Walking up the flight of steps leading to the front door the one beside him thought, "Why does he attract such queer abnormal people?" Quick as a flash he turned and answered the unspoken thought, "You see, they are Shiva's demons."

And from Sister Christine comes still another glimpse during this same summer of that endless compassion:

Walking along Fifth Avenue one day, with two elderly forlorn devoted creatures walking in front, he said, "Don't you see, life has conquered them!" The pity, the compassion for the defeated in his tone! Yes, and something else—for then and there, the one who heard, prayed and vowed that never should life conquer her, not even when age, illness, and poverty should come. And so it has been. His silent blessing was fraught with power.[130]

On July 24 Swamiji wrote from the Vedanta Society to Swami Abhedananda, explaining that he could not stay on in New York and assuring him that the work would in any event flourish. His letter read in part:

I would have gladly remained here but sastay kisti mat ["I have been lucky"]--got a fine berth, one room all to myself on a fine, vessel. As soon as August comes it will be [a] terrible vir ["crowd"] as the companies are reducing the price....

You need not feel the least anxiety about the N.Y. work, it will go as a marriage bull next season. Give my love to Mrs. Coulston and explain to her the circumstances.

With all love,[131]
Vivekananda

Why Swamiji remained in New York as long as he did —more than two weeks—after returning from Detroit is not clear. Perhaps it was to prolong his last days with his Western disciples; perhaps it was to attend to the publication of a new edition of Karma Yoga. ("I have straightened out my business here," he wrote to Miss MacLeod on July 20. "The works are at Mr. Whitmarsh's suggestion in the hands of Miss Waldo.'[132]And a few days later, "I am to start on Thursday next [July 26], by the French steamer La Champagne. The books are in the hands of Waldo and Whitmarsh. They are nearly ready.")[133] Or perhaps he was simply waiting, toward the end at least, for a ship on which to sail.


ⓘ
[1].Complete Works, 5 : 81.
[2].Complete Works, 3 : 505.
[3]. Complete Works, 5 : 304
[4].Complete Works, 6:306.
[5].Complete Works, 5:91
[6].Complete Works,  1 : 124, 257.
[7].Complete Works, 7:498.
[8].Complete Works,  8 :90.
[9].Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 218.
[10].Complete Works,  5 : 72.
[11].Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, September 3, 1899, SCB; see chap. 3, sec. 2 of this book.
[12].Rem. (Josephine MacLeod), P- 247.
[13].Complete Works , 3 : 244.
[14].Complete Works , pp. 346-47
[15].Talks, p. 217.
[16].Complete Works  3 : 427.
[17].Talks, p. 280.
[18].Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 80, 82. Nivedita’s interview with Swamiji is published under the title “On the Bounds of Hinduism,” P.B,, April 1899, and Complete Works, 5- 233.
[19].Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 142.
[20].Letters of Sister Nivedita., 1 : 129.
[21].Talks, pp. 172-73, 177.
[22].Complete Works 2 : 199, 304, 358.
[23].Cf. Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, trans. Swami Nikhilananda, p. 612.
[24].Complete Works, 1 : 501.
[25].Complete Works, 2 : 7.
[26].Complete Works, 6 : 64-65.
[27]Complete Works,4:434-36.
[28].Complete Works,4: 124.
[29]Complete Works,4: 126-27.
[30].Complete Works,1 :483 (taken also from first transcript, VSNC).
[31].Sister Nivedita to Sister Christine, January 27, 1900, Sen Col.
[32]Complete Works,1 1478; cf. 2 : 403; 1 : 461-62;8 : 131-32.
[33].Complete Works,8: 134.
[34].Complete Works,1 :479
[35].Complete Works,2 :470.
[36].Complete Works,6 : 54-55.
[37].Josephine MacLeod to Alberta Sturges (Countess of Sandwich), March 16, 1914, kindness of Lady Faith Culme-Seymour, through Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre, England.
[38].Complete Works,8 : 96.
[39].Complete Works,5 : 186-67.
[40].Complete Works,5 : 189.
[41]Complete Works,5 : 196.
[42].Complete Works,6 : 353.
[43].Complete Works,5:91
[44]. Rem. (Sister Christine), pp. 159-60.
[45].Complete Works,7 : 484-85.
[46].Sara C. Bull to Swami Kripananda, July, 1896, SCB.
[47].Complete Works,6 : 378.
[48].Greenacre Bulletin, “Season 1896-97, New York,” SCB.
[49]Complete Works,5 : 106.
[50].Complete Works, 8 : 382.
[51].Complete Works,8:356-57.
[52].Swami Abhedananda, discourse, March, 1915, San Francisco, VSNC.
[53].Complete Works s, 8 : 77.
[54].Complete Works, 8 : 516.
[55].See Rhodehamel’s Notes on “Gita—III,” VSNC, and Complete Works, 1 : 474.
[56].Complete Works,8 : 126-27, 136.
[57].Complete Works,8 : 523. The address and date of this letter as given in the Complete Works is “1921 [921] W 21 Street, Los Angeles, 17th June, 1900.” It is possible that both this address and date are incorrect, and it is certain that either one or the other is incorrect, for Swamiji was in New York on June 17, 1900.
[58].Complete Works, 8 : 141.[59].Life (1965), p. 671. This information was first published in “A Brief Sketch of Swami Vivekananda’s Stay in America” by Sarah E. Waldo, P.B. 9 (January 1906): 8.
[60].Swami Nikhilananda, "Vivekananda: A Biography", p. 155.
[61].Complete Works, 8 : 494.
[62].Complete Works, 5 : 165.
[63].This information comes largely from correspondence and conversations with Mrs. Louise Douglas Hyde, 1959-62.
[64].Mary Hale to Sister Nivedita, March, 1909, A.A.
[65].Complete Works, 8:390, 391; cf. 5 : 167
[66].Josephine MacLeod to Alberta Sturges (Countess of Sandwich), February 18, 1916, and April 24, 1922, see ref. 37 above.
[67].Josephine MacLeod to Alberta Sturges (Countess of Sandwich),, December 15, 1925.
[68].Swami Shankarananda, Swami Abhedanander Jivankatha, p. 263.
[69].Sister Shivani (Mary Le Page), Swami Abhedananda in America, 2d ed. (1958), p. 121; see also P.B. 7 (January 1902): 17.
[70].See ref. 68 above, p. 231.
[71].Complete Works, 8 : 518.
[72].Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, July 2, 1900, Sen Col.
[73].Life (1981), 2 : 532-33.
[74].Letters of Sister Nivedita, i : 356-57; Rem. (Sister Nivedita), pp. 290-92.
[75].Complete Works, 8 : 250-51.
[76].Nivedita, The Master, app. C., p. xv.
[77].Nivedita, The Master, app. C., p. xvi.
[78].Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 356.
[79].Letters of Sister Nivedita., 1 : 366.
[80].Complete Works, 6 : 148, 149.
[81].Complete Works, 8 : 252-53.
[82].Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 364-65.
[83].Letters of Sister Nivedita., 1 : 366.
[84].Spiritual Talks (Swami Turiyananda), pp. 200-201.
[85].Lillian Montgomery, talk at New York Vedanta Society, April 27, 1955 (courtesy New York Vedanta Society).
[86].Lillian Montgomery, talk at New York Vedanta Society,., and Lillian Montgomery to Swami Pavitrananda, June 22, 1954, New York Vedanta Society.
[87].Complete Works, 8:516.
[88].Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, June 15, 1900, Sen Col.
[89].Rem. (S. E. Waldo), p. 132.
[90].Sister Devamata, Preface to Inspired Talks by Swami Vivekananda (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1934), p. v.
[91].Complete Works, 6 : 425.
[92].Complete Works, 8 : 512.
[93].Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 322.
[94].Complete Works, 6 : 431.
[95].Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 367.
[96].Unidentified New York newspaper, June 27 (?), 1900, Ramakrishna Vedanta Math, Calcutta.
[97].A Western Disciple [Br. Gurudasa, later Swami Atulananda], With the Swamis in America, p. 85.
[98].Florence Adams to Swami Vivekananda, April, 1896, telegram, SOB.
[99].United States, California, Santa Clara County, San Jose, Book 232 of Deeds, p. 219.
[100].Swami Vivekananda to Alice Hansbrough, New York, no date, VSNC.
[101].Life (1981), 2:534; see also Swami Ritajanaiida, Swami Turiyananda, pp. 57-58.
[102].Swami Vivekananda to Alice Hansbrough, July 3,1900, VSNC.
[103] See Gargi, “Early Days at Shanti Ashrama,” P.B., August through November, 1977, January, February, May, and June 1978.
[104] See ref. 97 above, pp. 114-15.
[105] Swami Vivekananda to Alice Hansbrough, February 14, 1902, VSNC.
[106] Early Minutes, Vedanta Society of San Francisco, VSNC.
[107] “Letters of Swami Premananda,” V and W, 187 : 38.
[108] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, June 9, 1900, Sen Col.
[109] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine,., June 13.
[110] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine,., June 15.
[111] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine,., June 20.
[112] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine,., June 27.
[113] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine,., July 2.
[114] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine,., telegram, July 3.
[115] Boshi Sen, “Sister Christine,” P.B. 35 (September 1930): 419.
[116] Life (1965), p. 688.
[117] Mary C. Funke, “The Master,” in Inspired Talks (1939), p. 35
[119] Complete Works, 6 : 433, 434.
[118] Life (1980), 2 : 489.[120].See ref. 117 above, p. 27.
[121] Complete Works, 8 :527.
[122] See notes for chapter eleven.
[123] Complete Works, 8 : 526.
[124] Complete Works, 8 : 527.
[125] Sarah Ellen Waldo to Sister Devamata, March 2, 1912, Vedanta Centre, Cohasset, Mass.
[126] Sister Devamata, “Memories of India and Indians,” P.B. 37 (June 1932): 304.
[127] Rem. (H. J. Van Haagen), p. 149.
[128] Complete Works, 8 : 528.
[129] Complete Works, 7 : 204.
[130] Rem. (Sister Christine), p. 217.
[131] Swami Abhedananda, Complete Works, 10 : 101.
[132] Complete Works, 8 : 527.
[133] Complete Works., p. 528. The Mr. Whitmarsh of Swamiji’s letter was Theodore Whitmarsh, a nephew of Francis Leggett.

↑ Contents

6.4.1 HOMEWARD BOUND-I

On the afternoon of Friday, August 3, 1900, the S.S. Champagne, which Swamiji had boarded in New York on July 26, docked at Le Havre. Several hours later (at eight o'clock, according to his telegram to Mrs. Francis Leggett) he arrived at the Saint-Lazare station in Paris, that "capital of modern civilization," which, as he had written in his long Bengali article called in translation "The East and the West," was "the heaven of luxury, fashion and merriment on earth— the centre of arts and sciences.[1]

Swamiji's telegram to Betty Leggett (arrive a huit hres stlazare -- vivekananda) was first reproduced in Swami Vidyatmananda's valuable series of articles on Swamiji's life in France in the summer and fall of 1900,[2]which traces Swamiji's footsteps as closely as possible, supplying information and material that had not before been known. I shall not retell all those findings here, for as far as the present book is concerned, Swamiji's stay in France was in the nature of a denouement, and this in a quite literal, or at least special, sense, it being in Paris that his Western mission came to an end. Actually, it had come to an end when he had boarded the Champagne in New York, or, if one wants to be even more exact, when he had boarded the Overland Limited at the Oakland mole. All that followed was, one might say, an added gift to the West from the abundance of his grace. I shall therefore only briefly review Swamiji's life in France; but in so doing, I shall draw freely and gratefully upon Swami Vidyatmananda's findings, as well as upon other sources, and shall add, when possible, a heretofore unknown detail or two.

Since writing his article, Swami Vidyatmananda has concluded that the "huit hres" of Swamiji's telegram to Mrs. Leggett meant eight o'clock in the evening. Who met the train from Le Aavre is not, to my knowledge, recorded, but one can safely guess that among those present at the Gare Saint-Lazare was M. Gerald Nobel. M. Nobel was a friend of the Leggetts, always ready to lend a helping hand. In his large-scale, old world courtesy he met not only members of the Leggett family at railway stations in Paris but friends of the family as well,[3] taking care of their luggage, easing them into the city with a minimum of fuss, and finding them lodgings-his own, if need be. Tall, handsome, always immaculately dressed,[4] M. Nobel was, it would seem, the very embodiment of friendship. "It is worth having been born to have made one friend as Mr. Nobel,'[5] Swamiji once said of this kind and charming man.

Swamiji spent his first night in Paris at Gerald Nobel's apartment, but whether he did so because the Leggetts, for one reason or another, could not accommodate him or because Gerald Nobel asserted a prior claim, we do not know. In any case, M. Nobel was not a stranger to Swamiji in 1900. The two had met during Swamiji's first visit to the West—almost certainly in 1895 at the time of the Paris wedding of Besse (Betty) MacLeod Sturges and Francis Leggett. Swamiji had evidently expected to visit M. Nobel on his way from India to England in 1899, but the plan had been changed. "M. Nobel writes to me to defer my visit to him at Paris to some other date," Swamiji wrote to Mr. Sturdy from Port Said, "as he will have to be away for a long time.'[6] Later, it had been Gerald Nobel who made arrangements for Swamiji to speak at the Congress of the History of Religions in Paris. Indeed, in a sense, M. Nobel was one of Swamiji's Paris hosts and thus it was but fitting that he should welcome him at his apartment the first night.

To the known story of Swamiji's life in Paris one can add here a brief description of that apartment. This comes to us from the letters of Dr. Lewis G. Janes, who had sailed across the Atlantic at the end of June on the same ship as Sister Nivedita. Dr. Janes remained in France until September 8, writing regularly and at length to his wife, at home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His letters were often full of description and were illustrated here and there with small drawings of, for example, French priests with long cassocks and broad brimmed hats, or horse-drawn, double-decked omnibuses. Dr. Janes's daughters, Mrs. Charles Lytde and the late Mrs. Edward T. Steel, very kindly made a number of their father's letters available to me, together with pertinent passages from his diary and other material that has bearing on Swamiji's life and work. Although Dr. Janes says little about Swamiji in his letters from France, he was closely associated while he was there with Mrs. Bull and the Leggeits, and thus one catches a glimpse from time to time of the same France that Swamiji saw. One such glimpse is of M. Nobel's apartment, where Dr. Janes himself stayed. On July 6 he wrote home:

We were met by Miss MacLeod and her friend M. Nobel, who was most friendly and helpful in getting our baggage through and has kindly offered rooms at his lodgings for a week to Mr. Moore [Dr. Janes's traveling companion] and myself. We spent last night—a fraction of it—there. It is a typical French residence, opening into a court-yard, and with a pleasant garden wholly enclosed by the buildings. My room is on the garden, Mr. Moore's on the street. [The address, as given by Dr. Janes, was 66 rue Ampere.[7]

From Swami Vidyatmananda's article we learn that after spending his first night in Paris as the guest of M. Nobel, Swamiji went the next morning at nine o'clock to the Leggetts' house at 6 place des Etats-Unis. Of this joyful event Miss MacLeod wrote the same day to Mrs. Bull, who was then in Brittany, that Swamiji had arrived looking like a boy. He had lost thirty pounds, she reported, and was vigorous. She went on to say that the Geddeses were coming to the Leggetts' for lunch that day to meet him. To this letter, Swamiji added a postscript that seemed vigorous indeed and that breathed of well-being and good spirits: "Hello-Sacred Cow!" And he asked what she was doing off in the forest, so to speak—meditating or counting Mrs. Briggs's pulse?[8] (Mrs. Marian Briggs was a close friend of Mrs. Bull's, whom he had met in Cambridge.)

In 1967 Swami Vidyatmananda identified the Leggetts' house and supplied a photograph of it in Prabuddha Bharata (March 1967). For several years in the 1960s and '70s the house, then occupied by the art gallery Vision Nouvelle, was made available by its owner to the Centre Vedantique Ramakrichna in Gretz for biweekly classes. Thus the French devotees of Swamiji came to know well the place he lived in during at least a part of his stay in Paris.

It was not a large house; but it was elegant in the manner of the belle epoque.[9] It was fairly narrow, had four stories plus an attic, a porte cochere, a large salon on the first floor, and a garden in back. It was about five minutes' walk from the Bois de Boulogne and about the same distance from the entrance of the Exposition. Writing to her husband in connection with the proposed leasing of the house, Betty Leggett hoped that since the place was modern the house would have the comfort of modern plumbing.[10]

If Betty Leggett's assumption about the plumbing was correct, Swamiji would have been as pleased as she. Several years earlier he had been dismayed and astonished to find that Paris, "heaven of luxury" though it was, had few bathrooms—even in the "huge palatial hotel" (the Hotel Continental) where he had been Mr. Leggett's guest in September of 1895. "Such hot weather, and no facility for bathing," he had written; "if it continues like this, I shall be in imminent danger of turning mad like a rabid dog.'[11]

Very possibly, however, 6 place des Etats-Unis was no better equipped with bathrooms than most other "modern" houses in Paris. "[A] queer thing," Dr. Janes reported to his wife, "is that there are no bathrooms in the houses." And in this sweeping statement he did not exclude the Leggetts' house, where, by the time of that writing, he had been a dinner guest. Furthermore, to rely again upon Dr. Janes's observations, the Leggetts' house, like other Parisian houses, was backward in the matter of lighting. Yet another of "the queer things about this very modern city," he wrote in the same letter, "is that everybody burns candles. There is neither gas nor electricity in my room [at M. Nobel's], which is in a modern apartment house. Gas is usually burned in the streets instead of electricity. . .'[12]

But candlelight was all the more elegant, and the house was a perfect setting for the fashionable and scintillating gatherings that 1900 Paris so delighted in. In the second part of his "Memoirs of European Travel"—to which, as in chapter one, I shall refer as his Memoirs--Swamiji wrote (originally in Bengali) of "the daily reunion of numbers of distinguished men and women which Mr. Leggett brought about at an enormous expense in his Parisian mansion, by inviting them to at-homes.'[13]

"All types of distinguished personages—poets, philosophers, scientists, moralists, politicians, singers, professors, painters, artists, sculptors, musicians, and so on, of both sexes —used to be assembled in Mr. Leggett's residence, attracted by his hospitality and kindness," he related. "That incessant outflow of words, clear and limpid like a mountain-fall, that expression of sentiments emanating from all sides like sparks of fire, bewitching music, the magic current of thought from masterminds coming into conflict with one another . . . used to hold all spell-bound, making them forgetful of time and place.'[14]

Except for Swamiji's unexplained return address "boulevard Hans Swan" (which, as Swami Vidyatmananda points out, must be a misreading of "boulevard Haussmann") on a published letter of August 14, it would appear that he made the Leggetts' house his headquarters until the first week of September, occupying (for part of the time at least) "the nursery"—he bedroom that had been recently vacated by the Leggetts' little daughter and her governess (both of whom had gone to the seaside in England).[15]

Among his old and dear friends at 6 place des Etats-Unis Swamiji would have felt at home. There were Betty and Francis Leggett, Josephine MacLeod, and Alberta. With whom Sister Nivedita was staying at this time is not quite clear from the available records, but she would, in any case, have visited the Leggetts now and then (though, as we shall see, relations between Swamiji and his disciple at this period were somewhat strained). Indeed, the only close friend from Ridgely Manor days who was missing from the Paris group was Sara Bull, who, as mentioned above, was in Brittany.

To what extent Swamiji entered into the Leggetts' sparkling "at-homes" we do not know, but he could not have avoided them altogether; nor, one thinks, would he have wanted to, for talent and brilliance of all sorts was, as he said, represented at these gatherings, and he never failed to appreciate human greatness in whatever form it might appear. And he could, of course, be as sparkling a conversationalist as the most urbane of Parisians, match wits with the cleverest, and defeat in debate the most learned and most intellectual—some of this, perhaps, in the French language, which he had been studying off and on since his early wandering days in India, concentrating on it with some intensity during the past year or so. "Again I am going to learn French," he had written from Ridgely Manor to Mary Hale. "If I fail to do it this year, I cannot 'do' the Paris Exposition next year properly....'[16]He had continued his study in California. "I am sure to meet [Harriet in Paris] and parler francais!" he had written to Mary Hale from Turk Street. "I am getting by heart a French dictionnaire!'[17]

But not even Swamiji could have learned to speak fluent French out of a dictionary. Thus we find him in September moving to the Paris flat of a Frenchman named Jules Bois, who spoke no English. Of this move he was to write: "My French— well, it was something quite extraordinary! I had this in mind that the inability to live like a dumb man would naturally force me to talk French, and I would attain fluency in that language in no time.'[18]Yet even before settling into the lodging of Jules Bois Swamiji had, as he wrote to Swami Turiyananda on September 1, "somewhat mastered the French language,'[19]and his fluency must have been increasing day by day. One finds that on August 24 he gave a talk "dans les salons de M. leggett," the printed invitation to which is quoted by Swami Vidyatmananda in his Prabuddha Bharata article of March 1967. He has translated the invitation as follows:

You are invited, you and your friends, to hear a distinguished scholar, Swami Vivekananda, who plans to explain Hindu religion and philosophy, this coming Friday, August 24, at 4: 00 o'clock, at the house of Mr. Leggett, 6 Place des Etats-Unis, Paris[20]

This invitation does not say, it is true, that Swamiji would give his discourse on "Hindu Religion and Philosophy" in French, but it does not, on the other hand, say he wouldn't. Further research may settle the point.[21]

Apart from his intimate circle, many of Swamiji's old friends were in Paris that summer. There were, for instance, Sarah Bernhardt, the great actress, whom he had known in New York in 1896; Emma Thursby, the famous concert singer; Jane Addams, the Chicago social worker and settlement founder; Dr. Lewis G. Janes, the social evolutionist; Emma Calve, the operatic diva; Mrs. Potter Palmer, the social queen of Chicago; Mr. and Mrs. Milward Adams (Florence Adams), also of Chicago; Jagadis Chandra Bose, the great Bengali scientist of whom Swamiji was so proud; and, if nothing had prevented, Harriet Hale (Mrs. Clarence Woolley) and her husband. Miss Sarah Farmer, the founder of Greenacre, was somewhere in Europe at this time, visiting various health resorts, as was Professor William James, who dropped into Paris from time to time.

In the city that summer was also Hiram Maxim, the famous, delightful, and somewhat eccentric inventor, who was best known, to his regret, for his rapid-fire machine guns. "Have I done nothing else," he would protest, "except invent that engine of destruction!" He had indeed done more. He had, in fact, been a pioneer in the electric-lighting field in America and had invented, simultaneously with Edison, the incandescent light bulb. (Edison had managed to get to the patent office a few days ahead of Maxim, for which stroke of luck the latter never forgave him.) Maxim had also invented an improved mousetrap and, in 1894, a flying machine powered by a steam engine. (The last did not prove practical.) A vigorous sixty years old in 1900, he had heard Swamiji speak at the Parliament of Religions, had later met him in London, and held him in high esteem. "Maxim," Swamiji was to write in his Memoirs, "is an admirer of China and India, and is a good writer on religion and philosophy etc. Having read my works long since, he holds me in great—I should say, excessive—admiration.[22] His admiration for Swamiji was indeed great. In the foreword to his book Li Hung Chang's Scrap-Book (1913), a documented polemic against Christian missionaries in China, whom, as Swamiji remarked, "he cannot at all bear,'[23]Sir Hiram Maxim (he was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1901) wrote at some length of Swamiji's appearance at the Parliament of Religions. The reader will not mind a digression, I think, to learn with what delight and relief he, like thousands of other Americans, had heard the young Hindu monk in 1893. He wrote:

A few years ago there was a Congress of Religions at Chicago. Many said that such a thing would be impossible. How could any understanding be arrived at where each particular party was absolutely right and all the others were completely in the wrong? Still the Congress saved the American people more than a million dollars a year, not to mention many lives abroad. And this was all brought about by one brave and honest man. When it was announced in Calcutta that there was to be a Congress of religions at Chicago, some of the rich merchants took the Americans at their word, and sent them a Brahmin monk, Viva Kananda, from the oldest monastery in the world. This monk was of commanding presence and vast learning, speaking English like a Webster. The American Protestants, who vastly outnumbered all others, imagined that they would have an easy task, and commenced proceedings with the greatest confidence, and with the air of "Just see me wipe you out." However, what they had to say was the old commonplace twaddle that had been mouthed over and over again in every little hamlet from Nova Scotia to California. It interested no one, and no one noticed it.

When, however, Vive Kananda spoke, they saw that they had a Napoleon to deal with. His first speech was no less than a revelation. Every word was eagerly taken down by the reporters, and telegraphed all over the country, where it appeared in thousands of papers. Viva Kananda became the lion of the day. He soon had an immense following. No hall could hold the people who flocked to hear him lecture. They had been sending silly girls and half educated simpletons of men, and millions of dollars, to Asia for years to convert the poor benighted heathen and save his alleged soul; and here was a specimen of the unsaved who knew more of philosophy and religion than all the parsons and missionaries in the whole country. Religion was presented in an agreeable light for the first time to them. There was more in it than they had ever dreamed; argument was impossible. He played with the parsons as a cat plays with a mouse. They were in a state of consternation. What could they do? What did they do? What they always do—they denounced him as an agent of the devil. But the deed was done; he had sown the seed, and the Americans commenced to think. They said to themselves: "Shall we waste our money in sending missionaries who know nothing of religion, as compared with this man, to teach men as he? No!" And the missionary income fell off more than a million dollars a year in consequence.[24]

(One might mention in passing that Mr. Leggett appears to have been among those Americans who had stopped contributing to the missionaries after knowing Swamiji. According to Mrs. Hansbrough, Swamiji had once said, "When I exposed the missionaries, Mr. Leggett stopped giving his ten thousand dollars a year to them. But," he had added, laughing, "he did not then give it to me!")[25]

Among the old friends Swamiji met again in Paris was the amazing Mrs. Melton, the magnetic healer, whom the Leggetts had brought from California to New York and thence to Europe. Mrs. Melton, one finds, was now known as "Mrs. Walden. " Whether this change of name was due to a change of husband or of fancy, I do not know; but in any case, I shall henceforth refer to her by the name she now called herself rather than that which she bore when Swamiji was first flayed by her treatments in Los Angeles. In a sensational article, from which I shall have occasion to quote at some length in the following chapter, the New York World of November 11, 1900, mentions the Leggetts' household in Paris and includes in its irresponsible and unpleasantly facetious story an account of the magnetic healer. This portion of the article reads:

All last summer the Leggetts were in Paris. They hired Lady Cunard's house [The house did not belong to Lady Cunard, though she was a close friend of Betty Leggett's.) and spent a great deal of money in entertainments.

Mrs. Weldon [Walden] is a remarkable character. She is a Southern woman of refined appearance, but professes to be unable to read or write. Although she shows no trace of negro origin she speaks in a negro dialect. An American woman tells how, having sought to make an appointment with the "healer" by letter and having afterward spoken to her about it, Mrs. Weldon said:

"Lor' bless yo', honey, I caint read ner write. Yo' jess speak to Mrs' Leggett ef yo' wunter see me."

That was the cue at all times. Only through Mrs. Leggett could the "healer" be approached....

In Paris Swamiji surely met many other old friends whose names have not come down to us, for tens of millions of people from America, England, other parts of Europe, and even from India crowded into the French capital that summer of the International Exposition.[26]And he of course made many new friends of all types and classes, as he always did wherever he went. In Prophets of the New India Romain Rolland regrets that "only Father Hyacinthe and Jules Bois [of both of whom more later] should have been the guides of so penetrating a spectator of the moral life of the West in Paris in his researches into the mind of France.'[27]But certainly during his stay of almost three months in France so penetrating a spectator as Swamiji discovered much more of the French mind and morals than was represented by the young Jules Bois or the aged Pere Hyacinthe. Surely he talked with other Frenchmen, meeting them both at the Leggetts' "at-homes" and on his own. We know, for instance, that the young Duke of Richelieu became much attached to him and visited him frequently; and from a letter of Alberta Sturges to her aunt Miss MacLeod (written on September 11) we learn that Swamiji was meeting the artists and thinkers of Paris—the sculptor Auguste Rodin, among others. From Alberta we learn also that he intended on September 13 to visit in the country a noted painter, whom, regrettably, she did not name.[28] Indeed, one regrets Alberta's general reticence in regard to names: Paris was then ablaze with artists and thinkers. To name a very few, there were the authors Emile Zola, Anatole France, Joris Huysmans, Pierre Loti, Jules Lemaftre, the dramatist Edmond Rostand, the philosopher Henri Bergson. Among painters there were the academic Leon Bonnat and Adolphe Bouguereau; the more modern Impressionists Pissarro, Redon, and Claude Monet, the last of whom lived in the country some forty miles from Paris. There were the composers Saint-Saens and Massenet, and, about to become famous, Claude Debussy and the young Maurice Ravel. Then, effervescing in the studios and cafes of Montmartre were the exuberant group of young men who, still generally unknown, were changing the whole trend of art--seeking out new and presumably deeper meanings and creating subtler and more plastic forms; the old conventions and rigidities were being joyously shattered to bits. These were the young men—among them Matisse, Braque, Derain, Vlaminek, and the older but not less unconventional Henri Rousseau—who in five years would exhibit their work and be named by an incensed and jeering public Ies fauves, "the wild beasts." It is not impossible that Swamiji met such artists of the avant-garde through Jules Bois, who may have had entree to their studios, though he was not, it would seem, one of them.

Yet even if Swamiji did not step into the bohemia where twentieth-century art was being born, he was, as Alberta said, "meeting all the artists and thinkers," and thus he could not have avoided talking with many Frenchmen of distinguished minds—of brilliance, learning, wit, even of depth. Nor, whomever he knew or did not know, would he have failed to plumb the mind and mood of France. An expression in the eyes, a casual remark, a gesture could be to him more revealing of the qualities of a person's or of a people's thought and character than long and intimate association would be to an ordinary judge. That he did not find the fin-de-siecle French mind particularly profound was not, one thinks, due to a limited acquaintance with it. Beneath the delightful sparkle on the surface, which he much appreciated ("The countenance of French genius, even when frowning in anger, is beautiful," he wrote), beneath that limpid elegance and charm, the waters, he found, were on the whole not deep.[29] "The people of France," he wrote on September 1 to Swami Turiyananda, "are mere intellectualists, they run after worldly things and firmly believe God and souls to be superstitions; they are extremely loath to talk on such subjects. This is a truly materialistic country! Let me see what the Lord does. But this country is at the head of Western culture and Paris is the capital of that culture.'[30]

Just as Paris was (as Swamiji said) the "center of the civilized world,'[31]so the year 1900, which closed one century and opened another, was a peak in time. It was electric with the sense of change, a sense half of foreboding, half of optimism. The world stood poised for a plunge into the era for which Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda had come—an era vastly different in all respects from any that had gone before.

Even the difference between 1893 and 1900—the years, respectively, of the Chicago World's Fair and of the Paris Exposition— was startling. "In these seven years," Henry Adams observed, "man had translated himself into a new universe which had no common scale of measurement with the old." Adams, a visitor to the Paris Exposition, had been duly impressed by the dynamos, but he was awed by the exhibits centering around the recent discovery of X-rays, which, he rightly sensed, bespoke a new force commensurate in magnitude and effect only with some tremendous metaphysical energy.[32] Mankind, there is no question, was on the eve of a new universe, a new era, whose nature was foretold as distinctly perhaps by Vickers-Maxim's vast exhibit of modern guns as by the wonders of X-rays and radium—those first hints of the inconceivably immense power within a speck of dust.

The Exposition stretched over more than 275 acres (some historians say 550) in the heart of Paris. Its temporary buildings, sitting in the shadow of the eleven-year-old Eiffel Tower, were as rococo as lace valentines. Fashionably dressed men and women (the latter holding parasols) strolled along wide boulevards from one resplendent "palace" to another, marveling at their many displays of science and technology. "The grounds are more beautiful than I expected, " Dr. Janes allowed in a letter to his wife. "There is more vegetation than in Chicago, and though the arrangement of the buildings is not so imposing, the general effect is very beautiful.'[33]A day or two later he again conceded that "some of the buildings are very beautiful." "But," he went on, "the general effect is less imposing than in Chicago. There is more color, and trees and foliage on the grounds add to the beauty, but we miss the Lake and the noble architectural effect of the buildings. There is more 'gingerbread' work here—less simplicity and harmony. The two permanent art-palaces are very fine, however, and also the new Alexander III bridge across the Seine.'[34]

Every morning Swamiji went to the Exposition with Alberta, Mr. Leggett, and Professor Patrick Geddes, the last of whom explained the various exhibits.[35] It was Alberta who remembered those morning trips to the Fair, but, as far as I know, no one thought to wring from her memory every drop about Swamiji—how he looked, where he went, what he said. We can only guess that he did not pass through all those "palaces," pregnant as they were with the twentieth century, without comment. We can guess, too, what he must have done: he must have seen all the exhibits worth seeing; he must have circumambulated the grounds on the moving sidewalk; he must have often lunched at one or another of the national pavilions; and in the evenings he must, at least once, have viewed "the Illumination." This last, which was not to be missed, consisted of multicolored lights that magically played and shimmered on the soaring fountains and cascading waters in the front court of the Palace of Electricity, a building which opitomized progress and which, fittingly enough (for electric power was an infant still), looked a good deal more like an elaborately frilled bassinet than a dynamo. In short, Swamiji must have "done" the Paris Exposition—himself something to see as he walked through the "palaces" looking, it was remarked, like a prince. And if we do not know what he said of the Exposition at the time, we do know that he wrote of it (in his Bengali "Memoirs of European Travel") as "this accumulated mass of dazzling ideas, like lightning held steady as it were, this unique assemblage of celestial panorama on earth!'[36]

Of Swamiji's many tours through the Exposition, only one brief story has come down to us through the reminiscences of Swami Turiyananda, as published in the Udbodhan. The incident was originally told, of course, by Swamiji. One day when he was walking through the Exposition grounds, he saw a young woman whose face was arrestingly beautiful. He turned to look at her in admiration, but even as he did so, her exquisite features became in his eyes metamorphosed into those of a grimacing monkey, as repulsive as they had been attractive.'[37]

The "celestial panorama on earth" could hold no temptations for Swamiji; his eyes, the perfect servants of his renunciation, saw through beauty to the bone. And all the while, in the hubbub that swirled around him, he drifted still in "the will current of the Mother," awaiting Her command, not certain of his next move.[38] "[Mother] knows best what She wants to have done," he wrote to Swami Turiyananda on September 1, 1900. "She never speaks out, 'only keeps mum.' But this much I notice that for a month or so I have been having intense meditation and repetition of the Lord's name."[39]

Who can say what heights of experience Swamiji meant by the word intense! Yet he did not remain aloof from the activity surrounding him. He went, as we have seen, to the Exposition every morning; he attended at least some of the Leggetts' "at-homes"; to judge from his Memoirs, he went to the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt to see "the divine Sarah" in l'Aiglon; he perhaps went to the opera as well; he visited the galleries of the Louvre.

In Prabuddha Bharata of March 1927 one finds a brief but vivid glimpse of Swamiji during a sight-seeing excursion in Paris. "I see him now," the friend who had been with him wrote years later to the editor of the magazine, "leaning over and looking down upon Napoleon's tomb and saying, 'A great man, a great force! Siva! Siva!"' (This same correspondent recalled another sight-seeing incident that had taken place in Saint Peter's in Rome. But it could as well, one thinks, have occurred in Notre Dame, which almost unquestionably Swamiji visited. "At St. Peter's," his friend related, ". . . he said, 'This is splendid!' And when I said, amazed, 'You, Swamiji, like all this ceremony?' he replied, 'If you love a personal God, then give Him all your best incense, flowers, jewels and silk. There is nothing good enough.' A great wonder it was, knowing Swamiji.")[40]

He of course saw great people as well as great sights—indeed, as he once said, he far preferred the former, and one is glad to know that he walked through the Exposition with the brilliant (if at times incoherent) Patrick Geddes. Known today primarily as a sociologist, Geddes was also a savant and an expert in many other disciplines, weaving them all together into an elaborate synthesis. He was undoubtedly a rare genius with vision far ahead of his time, and, like all such, not widely appreciated in his own day—nor, for that matter, in ours. His one-time disciple, Lewis Mumford, who had something of the same trouble as Nivedita in an assigned attempt to systematize and clarify the brilliant, chaotic, and voluminous outpourings of Geddes's thought, wrote of him: "There are a few people, whose judgments have a right to be respected, who regard Patrick Geddes as one of the truly seminal minds the (nineteenth] century produced: a philosopher whose knowledge and wisdom put him on the level of an Aristotle or a Leibnitz.'[41] As they walked or sat together, Geddes and Swamiji must have exchanged many views about the past and present and many startling insights into the future, the scientist for once, perhaps, listening more than he talked. " Indeed, it has been said that his acquaintance with Swamiji helped to introduce Geddes to the heart of Hindu culture—an introduction that would lead years later to his sympathetic and fruitful work in India on town planning.

Another great man with whom Swamiji had many talks was Pere Hyacinthe. From a letter written in the last part of August by Emma Thursby to her sister Ina, one learns that Swamiji called upon the aged ex-monk earlier in that month. (To judge from recent findings made by Swami Vidyatmananda, the date was very likely August 10.) "I took Mrs. Jackson to Pere Hyacinthe's," Miss Thursby wrote, "where the Swami was to meet him there for the first [time]. It was very interesting and Mrs. Jackson was delighted with the Swami. He gave a talk at the Exposition.'[42] From those three simple sentences one learns quite a lot. But first about Pere Hyacinthe.

He and Swamiji got along famously and continued to see each other. Swamiji devoted many lines to him in his Memoirs, telling part of his history and describing him as "very affable in speech, modest, and of a distinctly devotional turn of mind." The "very aged" man (he was seventy-three in 1900) had been a monk "of a strict ascetic section of the Roman Catholic Church"—the Order of Discalced Carmelites. He had been extremely famous in France as a preacher, his eloquence, his erudition, and his manifest austerity and devotion drawing large crowds to his sermons in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. But his orthodoxy was not all that could be desired by the Church, and he was watched and rebuked by the authorities. Their worst suspicions were confirmed when in 1870 he associated himself with those who vehemently protested the doctrine of papal infallibility, which had been affirmed in July of that year at the First Vatican Council. He was excommunicated for this intransigence. A little later, he broke with the Roman Catholic church altogether and took to a lay life. He went to Geneva and then to London, where in 1872 he married an American woman. He then, with his wife, settled in Paris, where he founded an Old Catholic church. ("Old Catholic" was the designation assumed by those Roman Catholics who had refused to accept the dogma of papal infallibility. Their church was, in fact, a part of the Jansenist church in Holland, which had existed for 150 years independent of the Papacy.) Later still, he became a freelance and, in some quarters, a revered lecturer, preaching a religion that he held to be universal. "After having separated myself by slow and painful degrees from a decadent Catholicism, " he wrote, "I will even say from a Christianity which had become meanly and narrowly literal, I belong now to no sect, large or small, but to the Holy Church of God—to the Church Universal, which embraces all men and even worlds.'[43]

Although Pere Hyacinthe—now plain Monsieur Charles Loyson—had no longer been a monk when he had married, nor a Roman Catholic priest, his marriage had nonetheless created a sensation in France. In the eyes of thousands of the orthodox devout he had still been the great ascetic preacher who had taken vows of lifelong celibacy. He might defy the Pope; but never should he break his vows. As Swamiji wrote: "The Protestants received him with honour, but the Catholics began to hate him. . . They hate the very sight of a married priest; no Catholic would ever tolerate the preaching of religion by a man with family. " They blamed the woman behind the deed. "All French people, of both sexes," Swamiji reported, "lay the whole blame on the wife; they say, 'That woman has spoilt one of our great ascetic monks.' Madame Loyson is really in a sorry predicament—specially as they live in Paris, in a Catholic country.'[44]

Madame Loyson appears to have been an ambitious, somewhat overzealous woman, who saw in her husband a reformer of the Catholic church and in herself his prophetess. "[She] had perhaps seen many visions that Loyson might possibly turn out to be a second Martin Luther, and overthrow the Pope's throne—into the Mediterranean," Swamiji wrote. "But nothing of the kind took place; and the only result was, as the French say, that he was placed between two stools. But Madame Loyson still cherishes her curious daydreams."

She did not, perhaps, care much for Swamiji; he and her husband, whom Swamiji always called by his old, priestly name, Pere Hyacinthe, would engage in lengthy talks about "various religions and creeds. " "When I discuss with the old man such topics as renunciation and monasticism etc "., Swamiji wrote, "all those long-cherished sentiments wake up in his aged breast, and his wife most probably smarts all the while." Yet Swamiji had no censure for the old man or his marriage. "I hear all and keep silent," he wrote. " . . . old Pere Hyacinthe is a really sweet-natured and peaceful man, he is happy with his wife and family—and what can the whole French people have to say against this?'[45]

To return to Miss Thursby's letter to her sister Ina—she writes that Mrs. Jackson was delighted with Swamiji, whom she met at Pere Hyacinthe's. This was Mrs. James Jackson, an old friend of Miss Thursby's who had lived in Paris for many years at 15 avenue d'Antin—a house that has been described in The Life of Emma Thursby by Richard M. Gipson as palatial. There, in earlier years, she had held salons and musicales, to which had come people not only of fashion but of fame: artists, musicians, writers. Mrs. Jackson was, it would seem, something of an artist herself, now and then enclosing in her letters to Miss Thursby small colored drawings from her own hand. Her delight in Swamiji leads one to suppose that she extended her hospitality to him and introduced him to a number of her illustrious friends.

Miss Thursby's letter also discloses another facet of Swamiji's Paris life. "He gave a talk at the Exposition," she wrote![46] Since it seems certain that this letter was written in August, at least a week (possibly two weeks) before Swamiji spoke at the Congress of the History of Religions on September 7, it seems equally certain that his "talk at the Exposition" was a separate lecture. As for details regarding it, one can only guess, at the present writing, that he spoke under the auspices of the International Association for the Advancement of Science, Arts and Education, a section of the Paris Exposition, of which Professor Patrick Geddes was the Secretary of both the British Group and the American Group and Mr. Francis H. Leggett the Treasurer of the American Group. One must wait for further research to confirm or reject this guess and to bring to light further information. In the meanwhile, it can be said that Swamiji, as usual, filled his days with more activity than has been known.

Of the many and various parties and gatherings that he no doubt attended during his stay in France, we know at present (or at least we think we know) only of one, and this from a most wonderful letter he wrote to Betty Leggett. The party, clearly, was not an "at-home": rather, it was an informal gathering of intimate friends, among whom were Josephine MacLeod, "Dr. James" [Dr. Lewis G. Janes?), Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Geddes, Mrs. Ole Bull, and Sister Nivedita. In the absence of Mr. and Mrs. Leggett, who had gone to Kreuznach, a health resort in Germany, for a non-magnetic treatment of Betty Leggett's leg, Joe was hostess, and this was the kind of informal party that she, unlike her sister, was apt to give. Swamiji's letter to Betty Leggett was dated September 3 and written the day after the party. ("I hear you are having an easy time the last week or so," he wrote in a heretofore unpublished passage.[47]"We are not to be out-done—so we intended to have a better time yesterday. We had a congress of cranks here in this house.") He went on to parody, without the slightest malice but with the incisive selectivity of a master mimic or caricaturist, the foibles and idiosyncrasies of some of those present at the "congress." There was, for instance, Mrs. Bull earnestly explaining how the only panacea for all the difficulties in the world "was a right understanding of the proper persons, and then to find liberty in love and freedom in liberty and motherhood, brotherhood, fatherhood, Godhood, love in freedom and freedom in love, in the right holding up of the true ideal in sex'[48]—a passage which could almost have come from one of her own letters. (A serene round-aboutness seems to have been a marked characteristic of Mrs. Bull's. On his third day in Paris, Dr. Janes wrote with sly humor to his wife: "I think I can already find my way about better than Mrs. Bull, who took us by very round-about ways from her rooms to ours, and to the Exposition yesterday morning.")[49]

There was Sister Nivedita proclaiming, "It is chutney, chutney and Kali [Bengal chutney to be made and sold by her Hindu widows and girls; and Kali, the Divine Mother, of whom she was forever talking to startled Westerners], that will remove all difficulties of life, and make it easy for us to swallow all the evils, and relish what is good." Swamiji did not rest here in poking fun at his fervent disciple. "She stopped all of a sudden," he went on, "and vehemently asserted that she was not going to speak any further, as she had been obstructed by a certain male animal in the audience in her speech. She was sure one man in the audience had his head turned towards the window and was not paying the attention proper to a lady, and though as to herself she believed in the equality of the sexes, yet she wanted to know the reason of that disgusting man's want of due respect for women. Then one and all declared that they had been giving her the most undivided attention, and all above the equal right, her due, but to no purpose. Margot would have nothing to do with that horrible crowd and sat down."

Then there was Patrick Geddes, to whose sociological theories and writings Nivedita had earlier in the summer devoted her time and energy. Swamiji had him spinning out as his panacea for the world's ills one of his complicated and semi-mystical "sequences," as Geddes called them. "The Scotch delegate vehemently objected [to Mrs. Bull's solution]," Swamiji wrote, "and said that as the hunter chased the goatherd, the goatherd the shepherd, the shepherd the peasant and the peasant drove the fisher into the sea, now, we wanted to fish out of the deep that fisher and let him fall upon the peasant, the peasant upon the shepherd and so on; and the web of life will be completed and we will be all happy.'[50]

The "Dr. James" of this letter (as published) is, I venture to say, almost certainly Dr. Lewis G. Janes, and not Professor William James, as has been thought. There are several reasons for my belief. First, the gentleman in question was, Swamiji wrote, "entirely occupied with the evolution of Meltonian blisters.'[51]Dr. Lewis G. Janes, who was an ardent evolutionist, thus giving the point to Swamiji's turn of phrase, was currently a victim of the magnetic ministrations of she who was now Mrs. Walden, His diary for the preceding week reads:

Aug. 28 secured diagnosis and treatment from Mrs. Walden.
Aug. 29 second treatment. Very powerful and ought to be effective.
Aug. 30 Went for treatment after breakfast and received it good and strong.
Aug. 31 Walked to 6 Place des Etats Unis and took my treatment—a powerful one, leaving the skin smarting over the stomach.
Sept. 1 Went for treatment after breakfast—milder than yesterday:
Sept. 3 Went to Mrs. Walden for my last treatment, which was thorough and more than skin deep.[52]

Describing the "Dr. James" of the "cranks' congress" Swamiji continues: "Moreover, his great Master, Herbert Spencer, not having investigated the subject before him, he would stick to golden silence.'[53] As was well known, Dr. Lewis G. Janes was an ardent follower of Herbert Spencer, swinging like a satellite, some said, around the great Spencerian orb. Professor William James, on the other hand, particularly and explicitly disliked Herbert Spencer's ponderous and "wooden" system of thought.[54] Spencer, to say the least, was not his orb, and Swamiji would not have made such a mistake. Nor can the passage be taken as a piece of sarcasm, for such heavy-handedness would not have been in accord with Swamiji's keen and buoyant wit.

It is true that Professor William James (he was always addressed and referred to as "Professor James," never as "Dr. James") had at one time been a guest at the Leggetts' house. He had also suffered Mrs. Walden's cure, making him look like an American flag (he had written to Mrs. Bull) and begetting in him a slight feverishness.[55] But this he had written a month or so earlier from Ostend, Belgium, where, as one learns from a letter of Miss Thursby's, Mrs. Walden was staying "with some patients,'[56]and it does not seem likely that the Professor would twice undergo the harrowing experience of her treatments— even if he had been in Paris at the beginning of September.*

But however that may be, the "congress of cranks" ended, Swamiji reported, in "a confusion of voices" with everyone on his feet vehemently upholding his own panacea until practical Joe, who had been playing the role of spectator the while, threatened "to be the hunter for the time and chase them all out of the house if they did not stop their nonsense." "Then was peace and calm restored," Swamiji concluded, "and I hasten to write you about it.'[57]

In this conclusion one finds a revealing comment upon the absent Betty Leggett herself, for no one who had not a keen sense of humor could have called forth this gem of a letter. There was more to it than I have here mentioned, but, originally supplied by Mrs. Frances Leggett, it has been published first in Vedanta and the West (November-December 1953), later in volume six of the Complete Works (1956), and again, with commentary, in Swami Vidyatmananda's article in Prabuddha Bharata (March 1967). The reader can readily find the text.

But before leaving this much-published letter one thing more should here be said and a question asked. Its date, September 3, poses something of a problem, for there exist two other letters bearing this same date; one is from Mrs. Bull to Miss Emma Thursby,[58]and the other is from Sister Nivedita to Miss MacLeod.[59] Both are written from Brittany. Mrs. Bull's letter makes no mention of her having been in Paris the day before; on the contrary, she writes that she and Sister Nivedita had just returned to Perros-Guirec (on the evening of September 1) from a visit to Guingamp, an old sight-worthy Breton town. In Nivedita's letter to Miss MacLeod it is clear that the two had not seen each other for some time and did not plan to do so until the latter came to Brittany. Again, in a letter Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod from Guingamp on September 1 nothing is said of an imminent visit to Paris.[60] Could the date on Swamiji's letter have been incorrect? Possibly; but another date would not help us, for there seems to have been no day in August, September, or October of 1900 on which all the guests of the "cranks' congress" were in Paris. Mrs. Bull, for instance, had left Paris for Brittany on July 21. All available records tend to show that she did not return even for a day before Nivedita followed her in mid-August. And Nivedita did not return at all. Might we not think, then, that the entire gathering was invented by Swamiji from start to finish, that it was pure and wonderful parody, devised solely for the entertainment of Betty Leggett, who, exiled in a German health resort, was much in need of cheering and who would certainly have understood the fun?

2

Assuming the date of Swamiji's letter to Betty Leggett was correct, he was evidently still living at the Leggetts' house on September 3, but within a week—the exact day is not known—he moved to the lodgings of Jules Bois. (According to Miss MacLeod's memory, Swamiji "stayed some weeks [at 6 place des Etats-Unis] until he went to stay with Mr. Gerald Nobel, a bachelor.'[61] Perhaps Swamiji did indeed stay again with M. Nobel for a few days at the end of August or the beginning of September, but there is, to my knowledge, nothing to bear this out. From the material available to us at present it would appear, in fact, that he moved directly from the Leggetts' to the rooms of Jules Bois.)

"Yesterday," Swamiji wrote in a letter of September 1 to Swami Turiyananda, "I went to see the house of the gentleman with whom I shall stay. He is a poor scholar, has his room filled with books and lives in a flat on the fifth floor. And as there are no lifts in this country as in America, one has to climb up and down. But it is no longer trying to me." Swamiji's dream of "settling down somewhere and spending my time among books" was at last being realized—at least for the moment. And one can imagine that after the continual festivities at the Leggetts' he looked forward to the relative obscurity and quiet of a fifth-floor flat. "There is a beautiful public park round the house," he continued in his letter. "The gentleman cannot speak English; that is a further reason for my going. I shall have to speak French perforce. It is all Mother's will....'[62]

Jules Bois (whose name one is today hard put to find in histories or encyclopedias) was in 1900 enjoying a certain fame as a writer. His best known book, which had been first published in 1895 when he was twenty-four (a second edition had come out two years later), was a scholarly work of more than four hundred pages entitled Le Satanisme et la magie, avec une etude de J, K. Huysmans. (Joris Karl Huysmans, the famous French novelist, was a typical "decadent"—a term applied to a school of French writers for their leanings toward the hyper-esthetic.) Before 1900, M. Bois had also written, among other things, a dramatic sketch in verse entitled Les Noces dSatan; a novel, L'Eternelle Poupee; and a fairly large and well-selling work, L'Au-dela et les forces inconnues ("The next world and unknown forces").

Jules Bois's interests clearly ran to the occult, a not unusual preoccupation in late-nineteenth-century France, and his fascination with unknown forces extended to--or possibly was an extension of—an interest in metaphysics and religion. "Up to the time I met Swami Vivekananda] in Paris and London, not as a dilettante but as an earnest explorer of the unknown, I had associated with Brahmans, Buddhists, pundits, and deified sannyasins," M. Bois was to write in an article on the Hindu Cults, which appeared in March of 1927 in the then well-known American magazine, Forum. (The article was the fifth in a series Bois was writing on "The New Religions of America.") His early interest in religion had led him to follow the debates of the Parliament of Religions in Chicago through contemporary journals. "One declaration which arrested my attention," he wrote in the same article, "was that of the young Hindu prophet promulgating a 'universal religion'. Though profound, his address was beautifully incisive—a refreshing contrast to the usual pronouncements of that kind, which are apt to be gelatinous. These sentences bore the stamp of genius, and they dwelt in my mind until the day when I received an invitation to meet the swami himself at the home of a rich American friend in Paris.'[63]

This rich American friend was almost certainly either Francis or Betty Leggett, the latter of whom M. Bois may have met during one of her earlier trips abroad. The occasion to which Bois was invited may have been Swamiji's discourse on "Hindu Religion and Philosophy," which, as we have seen, took place on August 24. Recounting his first meeting with Swamiji, M. Bois continues:

After an informal conference Vivekananda approached me as though we had known each other for a long time. A brief conversation followed, at the end of which he startled me by proposing to come and live with me. Expressing my sense of the honor his suggestion implied, I reminded him of the luxury and attention he was enjoying and explained that I was only a young writer who could offer him very little in the way of comfort.

"I am a monk and a mendicant," was his reply. "I can sleep on the ground or on the floor. Our luxury will be the wisdom of the masters. I will bring my pipe with me, and upon its incense will rise the verses of the Vedas and Upanishads.'[64]

It is unlikely that Swamiji uttered that last sentence in any language, but it was true indeed that the comfort and luxury of a Parisian house such as the Leggetts' and the discomforts and inconveniences of a poor flat such as that of Jules Bois were to him equally welcome.

"The next day," M. Bois went on, slightly distorting the facts, "the swami arrived with a small valise. " According to Swamiji, he first went to Bois's flat on August 31 and this, as he wrote to Swami Turiyananda, only to see the place, not to stay there.[65]But however that may be, it was probably only a matter of a few days before he moved in with the young Frenchman. And there he lived for at least four weeks in all, surrounded by books, in an atmosphere of study, often left to himself for long hours of flawless quiet.

In his Forum article, Jules Bois gives a picture of Swamiji during those weeks, and although he casts a mist of poetry over his remembered friendship with the Hindu monk, one can, I believe, catch through that mist a glimpse of Swamiji himself, his presence solid, immense.

At that time [Bois wrote] I was living in the rue Gazan, facing the Parc Montsouris. There, far from the hum and drum of the city, the days flowed by in unbroken calm and a quasi-solitude. From the balcony one looked out over a miniature Switzerland of hills, valleys, and artificial lakes bathed in radiant sunlight. At the close of the day, after having attended to my own affairs, I would find Vivekananda there, scarcely having moved from the spot where I had left him, but having smoked and meditated much. This monk of Shiva had gone up and down the earth, preaching his alluring but terrible gospel, proclaiming the illusion of the external world and our personality, and the reality of one single Being behind the multiform appearance of things and creatures. Marvelous evenings in the pure intoxication of metaphysics and nature! The perfume of young flowers and the grave Hindu plain-song; a Parisian spring and a breeze from the Ganges; the semi-obscure glamour of the stars, while the messenger of the old Barattha [Bharata], with his dark nimbus of hair, his imposing carriage, his prominent eyes now widely open, now veiled by heavy lids, sat like a Buddha of the Himalayas transported to a suburb on the Seine. It was not the India of the fakirs and the cranks, but the magical land of beauty and wisdom. And the five yogas, transmitted from time immemorial by the guru (master) to the chela (disciple) revealed once more, this time to a young French poet, their methods for the experimental union of the individual with himself first and then with the divine.[66]

Swamiji was evidently fond of this young French poet. He stayed with him (as far as we know at present) through most of September and October, took him along to Brittany and later included him in the party that toured through southern Europe and the Near East. In his memoirs of that trip he wrote in praise of the young Frenchman. "Monsieur Jules Bois is a famous writer; he is particularly an adept in the discovery of historical truths in the different religions and superstitions. He has written a famous book putting into historical form the devil-worship, sorcery, necromancy, incantation, and such other rites that were in vogue in Mediaeval Europe and the traces of them that obtain to this day. He is a good poet, and is an advocate of the Indian Vedantic ideas that have crept into the great French poets, such as Victor Hugo and Lamartine, and others, and the great German poets, such as Goethe, Schiller, and the rest. The influence of Vedanta on European poetry and philosophy is very great.... M. Jules Bois is very modest and gentle, and though a man of ordinary means, he very cordially received me as a guest into his house in Paris.'[67]

To jump ahead of our present story, Swamiji was delighted  to have an opportunity to repay M. Bois's hospitality in February of 1901. "I am ever so glad to hear that Bois is coming to Calcutta. Send him immediately to the Math," he wrote to Josephine MacLeod, who was at the time in India. "I will be here. If possible I will keep him here for a few days and then let him go again to Nepal.'[68]Four months later Swamiji again mentions his friend. "Jules Bois went as far as Lahore, being prevented from entering Nepal," he wrote to Joe. "I learn from the papers that he could not bear the heat and fell ill; then he took ship et bon voyage. He did not write me a single line since we met in the Math.'[69]That is all. One does not hear again of Jules Bois in Swamiji's published letters.

M. Bois, however, wrote about his visit to Belur Math in a chapter ("L'Extase") of his book on India, Visions de l'inde, published in Paris in 1903. There is not much of interest in this chapter (which one can find in translation in Prabuddha Bharata of March 1918), particularly as one suspects that the author tended to sacrifice fact to fancy. For instance, he quotes a sannyasin (or brahmacharin) of the Math, who had offered him some betel leaf, as having said with a smile: "Narcotics are smoked or chewed all over India. For us, life is a dream and what you call dream among yourselves is for us the sole reality.... '[70]Such hazy notions of Indian philosophy are sprinkled throughout Jules Bois's chapter, giving it, to be sure, a dreamlike quality. Yet in those days Eastern philosophy as he had understood it was to him far superior in depth and wisdom to the "brutalising dream" of the West, and his admiration for Swamiji was genuine. "He incarnated for me —with his genius and his perilous frenzy—," he wrote in this same chapter, "that India which I cherish as the Fatherland of my dreams—the Eden where lives the Ideal.'[71]

One is thus surprised to read at the close of his 1927 Forum article a repudiation of Vedanta and an affirmation of the Christian religion he had learned at his mother's knee and which, as he declared elsewhere in this article, had "passed beyond [oriental creeds and forms]." His appreciation of Swamiji was now left-handed:

To Vivekananda I owe much in human enlightenment [he wrote], In his company for months I enjoyed the unique privilege of having met in one man something of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and perhaps of Buddha himself. To him I am indebted, by contrast, for a deeper adoration of the Christian truth. In the efforts we made together to tear away, by the mere force of mind, the unliftable veil, I became convinced of the futility and insufficiency of human reason confronting the absolute. Despair is at the end of Stoicism, however heroic it may be. The early teaching which my mother whispered to me stood out as holding more practical wisdom, in its impulses of simple faith and homely love, than all the dicta of the greatest /sages.[72]

So much for Jules Bois. We need not enter here into a discussion of the religious views he held in his middle age and aired in his Forum article. Those pronouncements were thoroughly examined in an editorial that appeared in Prabuddha Bharata of May 1927—an article the interested reader will find under the title "A French Critic on the Vedanta Movement." All that really concerns us at the present point in our story is that in the autumn of 1900 Jules Bois, then young and idealistic, filled Swamiji's need for a quiet, book-lined room and a restful atmosphere. Swamiji for his part satisfied the young man's long-held desire to know him.

Swamiji may have been already settled in M. Bois's fifth-floor flat when he spoke at the Congress of the History of Religions on the morning of Friday, September 7. This Congress was an affair of six days only (September 3 through September 8) and was not at all comparable to the momentous and renowned Parliament of Religious that had been held in Chicago seven years earlier. "The Chicago Parliament of Religions was a grand affair," Swamiji pointed out in a Bengali letter to the Udbodhan, "and the representatives of many religious sects from all parts of the world were present at it. This Congress, on the other hand, was attended only by such scholars as devote themselves to the study of the origin and the history of different religions.... At the Chicago Parliament . . . the Roman Catholics expected to establish their superiority over the Protestants without much opposition; . . . They hoped to make firm their own position. But the result proving otherwise, . . . the Roman Catholics are now particularly opposed to the repetition of any such gathering. France is a Roman Catholic country; hence, in spite of the earnest wish of the authorities, no religious congress was convened on account of the vehement opposition on the part of the Roman Catholic world.'[73] In his Prophets of the New India Romain Rolland echoes Swamiji's account. "This was no Parliament of Religions as at Chicago," he writes. "The Catholic power would not have allowed it. It was purely a historical and scientific Congress. At the point of liberation at which Vivekananda's life had arrived," he added, "his intellectual interest, but not his true passion or entire being, could find nourishment in it.'[74]

As Swami Vidyatmananda has brought to light in his informative article "Vivekananda at the Paris Congress, 1900" (Prabuddha Bharata, March, April 1969), Swamiji's talk at the Congress was given at a sectional meeting held in the Sorbonne at the School of Higher Studies in one or another of the four or five small rooms of the Department of Historical and Philological Sciences. He spoke twice that morning of September 7, both times in rebuttal of the misinformed pedantry of two of the Western speakers—professors both.

In his first talk, Swamiji explained the nonphallic, Vedic, and Buddhistic origins of the Shiva-Linga and the Shalagrama-Shila (symbols of Hindu worship into which Western scholars persistently read anatomical significance).

In his second talk, he dwelt "on the historic evolution of the religious ideas in India,'[75] spiritedly upholding the conclusions of Indian scholars over those of Western scholars in regard to things Indian.

Whether Swamiji spoke in French or in English is not known. A brief item that appeared in the Indian Minor of July 3, 1900, and was repeated in the Indian Spectator of July 8, read: "Swami Vivekananda has been invited to represent Hinduism and Vedanta in the Paris Exhibition, and the Swami will deliver an address in French.'[76]But in what language he actually spoke we have no knowledge; nor do we know to what extent he persuaded the learned gentlemen of the Congress. It is probable, however, that in whatever language he presented his views many of his listeners went on thinking much as they had always thought. In his letter to the Udbodhan he wryly remarked at its close:

"After the lecture, many present . . . assured the Swami that the old days of Sanskrit Antiquarianism were past and gone. The views of modern Sanskrit scholars were largely the same as those of the Swami's, they said. They believed also, that there was much true history in the Puranas and the traditions of India. Lastly, the learned President, admitting all other points of the Swami's lecture, disagreed on one point only, namely, on the contemporaneousness of the Gita with the Mahabharata. But the only reason he adduced was that the Western scholars were mostly of the opinion that the Gita was not a part of the Mahabharata.'[77] (In connection with this sort of thinking on the part of both Westerners and Hindus Swamiji had once remarked with the biting sarcasm of which he was past master, "Without the sanction of the European how can Krishna live? He cannot! . . . What [texts]the Europeans do not want must be thrown off. They are interpolations!")[78]

The Paris summer was drawing to an end; the American contingent was disappearing. Immediately after the Congress, Dr. Janes left France to visit Herbert Spencer in Brighton, England. (Almost exactly a year later, Dr. Janes was to die suddenly—and unseasonably, for he was not an elderly man—at Greenacre, Maine. His last words, it is said, were, "It is a beautiful world,'[79]and one did not know if this was a memory of a life well spent or a prevision of a life to come.) Mr. and Mrs. Leggett were still in Germany. On September 6 or 7 (Mrs. Bull wrote to Miss Thursby) Miss MacLeod was expected in Brittany— specifically, in the little fishing village of Perros-Guirec near Lannion, where Mrs. Bull had taken a house (or houses).

With the departure of her aunt, Alberta Sturges became hostess at 6 place des Etats-Unis. Twenty-one years old, she was attractive, blessed with a happy and open disposition, ready to see good in everyone, learning to see the bad with charity and love. "Life is full of inherent joy and sorrow—and each mail brings me some new story of the one or the other " she was to write to Mrs. Bull in December of 1900. "I think this world is so full of grief and happiness that there is only room for affection in it now. So I am trying to love everything—even what until now I haven't liked. Everything lies in the way one looks at things—doesn't it? So the quicker we put kindly spectacles on the better." Alberta's spectacles were sunny as well as kindly. "My life is such a happy one," she wrote to Mrs. Bull a month or so later, "that one plan and delight only gives precedence to a better one.'[80]

Now, joyously, all on her own, Alberta gave a small, candlelit dinner at her parents' house on September 10. The guests, as one learns from a letter she wrote to her mother, were Swamiji, the Duke of Newcastle, his sister Princess Doria, and a Lady Anglesey. This elegant little dinner was a great success. The next day Alberta wrote to her Aunt Joe ("Tante" she called her) that Swamiji had been in a splendid mood and as jolly as could be.[81]Swamiji's festive mood, with its unfailing magic, was, of course, the making of the evening. To her mother Alberta reported that everyone had had a lovely time, that the Duke of Newcastle had asked questions of Swamiji, responding to him with interest and sympathy, and that because of this the princess had been radiant.[82]

Under the impression that Swamiji was in a mood to enjoy the effervescent cultural and intellectual life of Paris, Alberta regretted a call that had come to him from Brittany. In her letter of September 11 to Miss MacLeod she reproached "Tante" for having asked him to the provinces. Swamiji, too, seemed loath to go. All in a breath, Alberta listed the reasons for his reluctance: he was nervous, and so, too, was Mrs. Bull; he enjoyed seeing Paris; he was meeting all the artists and thinkers; he had entered into the spirit of the French mind; he was learning the French language; he was well and happy and was doing good work. He would have refused to go to Brittany, she went on, if Jules Bois had not also been asked, but Bois, being poor, had jumped at the chance, and now Swamiji could not disappoint him. But, then, Alberta conceded, something good would doubtless come of this unfortunate invitation.

Miss MacLeod thought so, as did Mrs. Bull. Apart from wanting Swamiji's company, they had their reasons for asking him to Brittany. His young English disciple, whom they both looked upon as a daughter, whom they both loved, was suffering the torment of estrangement from her guru. Sister Nivedita, who had been in Paris to greet Swamiji when he arrived, had found him aloof, withdrawn, suddenly indifferent to her work and to herself. The day after his arrival she, together with Miss MacLeod and Gerald Nobel, had lunched with him at the famed Restaurant Russe on the first landing of the Eiffel Tower.[83]She had perhaps seen him on other occasions, but soon—in the second week of August—she had fled to Brittany, sick at heart, possibly bewildered.

It has been said by her biographers that Sister Nivedita misinterpreted Swamiji's general mood of withdrawal as personal indifference toward herself and her work. 'To quote Pravrajika Atmaprana: "At a time when Nivedita's life current was gradually taking the form of a rapid torrent, that of the Swami was mingling with the infinite ocean of peace, without a ripple, a breath. While Nivedita was rushing forward with full vigour, the Swami was drifting about in the will-current of Mother. So his changed attitude was beyond Nivedita's comprehension. It perplexed and irritated her.'[84]

Yes, but there would surely have been a vast difference in expression between Swamiji's general mood of withdrawal and his personal coolness—a difference which he himself could have made quite clear and which one as perceptive as Nivedita could not have failed to detect. She was not, I believe, mistaken in her interpretation of his attitude. It appears, in fact, that Swamiji had been explicit and that she herself had been distant. One finds clear indications of this in a passage of a letter Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod around this time:

I was not worthy or ready to accept the personal in him with the loving welcome that it should have had.... Swami has cut me off by a well-deserved stroke. . . , How strange! Who would have believed a week ago that today I should stand to Him in Miss Muller's position—only cut off by His act—not my own—and yet it has happened—and is well somehow. I have now nothing to live for but Him, and those Hindu women of the future who are to be His. And this is absolutely true today and never has been before—Is it not strange? Yet I do not feel that I can send Him a letter or a messenger or treat Him otherwise than as if He were literally dead.[85]

Nivedita's many weeks in Paris of "discipleship" (as she called it) to Fatrick Geddes had been weeks of frustration and anguish. Her effort to work for the sociologist had proved, all in all, a source of pain both to herself and to him. She had longed to help him. She had worked earnestly and steadily, living in a monkish garret of the Geddeses' Paris house.

Here is this soul [she wrote to Miss MacLeod in July], surely the sweetest that ever breathed, asking one to accept its gifts (for I cannot call his companionship and thought anything but a priceless gift), and only begging in return, like the humblest beggar too, not as one who had a right, that one should be the voice or the hand that his thought and heart require. And when I fail, as I do at each point---cataloguing and indexing, lecture-reporting, report-making, all alike—he only sighs and says, "Well, I am sure you could do it in three months"! I feel torn to pieces.... I am at bottom totally divergent and you know this appalling sincerity of mine. I cannot be a reporter: it is not that I will not; it is that I cannot. When I try I disappoint him so much, because I am not even a good stenographer. Think of it, Yum-Yum! . . . I believe our friend is asking the impossible of the world, and I am fool enough to feel that I would die to give it to him, with the utmost joy. As I cannot die, and could not help if I did, I shall go on struggling with my expression and adding to the disappointment in his, till the moment Swami's signal comes. But I wish he had not those exquisite hopes at the beginning of discipleship. Each one is a thorn now.[86]

Considering Nivedita's involvement with Professor Geddes's work, one cannot be reasonably surprised at her inability to accord Swamiji a wholehearted welcome, nor can one be surprised at a certain coolness on his part. Surely he would have seen in her preoccupation with Professor Geddes an indication that her mind was moving away from the work he had given her and had painstakingly trained her for. With the benefit of hindsight one can, I believe, clearly see this curious Geddes episode as a turning point in Nivedita's life and thought; how much more clearly would not Swamiji have at once seen the turn of his disciple's mind. And how keen must have been his disappointment, his hurt. He at once gave her the freedom to work in her own way, to find her own truth, her own mode of service. It was a freedom he knew she would, in any case, be bound to take, compelled by her own nature had, indeed, already taken.

Swamiji's act shocked Nivedita into a fervent rededication of herself to his will and to "those Hindu women of the future who are to be His." Yet it was too late, or so she thought, to tell him of this. The situation was unbearable. Soothingly, Mrs. Bull invited her to the Breton coast, and from there she finally wrote to her guru. It is said by Pravrajika Atmaprana that in this letter, which I have not seen, Nivedita "complained, she blamed, and she sought for guidance and solicitude.'[87]A measure of her suffering may also be gathered from Lizelle Raymond’s description of the letter in The Dedicated as "clumsily written." Sister Nivedita's letters were sometimes obscure, but seldom were they clumsy. Only great stress, one thinks, could make them so. Her words had come forth, perhaps, from both a contrite heart and a rebellious mind and had fallen all over themselves in confusion. It was perhaps this letter she was to write of to Miss MacLeod:

I wish I had not struck back at Swami in writing my last letter to him! Hours after—I knew that I could have said it all so very differently—for when I cried out hour after hour, "But why did you do it that way, Swami?" the answer came back, "Why did you hurt Him? The same law!" But now I do not attach undue importance to the one more than to the other. Some day all will be made right—in life or in death. It does not matter which.[88]

Swamiji's reply, dated August 25, can be found in volume six of the Complete Works. After explaining that he had resigned the presidentship of both the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission and had no more connection with the work—"I am done with everyone here and in India"—he went on to answer Nivedita directly, sternly:

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—whatever other vices I am 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 criticised 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. . .[89]

There could be no reply to this, no appeal. Whether or not Nivedita answered is not certain, and, in any case, except for a postcard, Swamiji did not, as far as we know, write to her again that year. (The letters in volume six of the Complete Works which are said to have been written to Nivedita on August 28 and December 19 of 1900, turn out to have been written, rather, to Sister Christine.)[90] Nivedita's "freedom" seemed stark and irreversible. It was at this point that Mrs. Bull, perhaps partly out of concern for her, invited Swamiji to Perros-Guirec for a few days. Miss MacLeod added her own plea that he come.

3

Almost two months earlier (on July 21) Sara Bull had given up her Paris apartment at 235 rue du Faubourg-Saint Honore and, along with her inseparable companion Marian Briggs, had taken the night train to Lannion, Brittany, some three hundred miles to the west. From there they had traveled the short distance to Tregastel-Plage, a small village in the department of Cote du Nord, where Mrs. Bull had rented a house from a Mlle de Wolska. (This Mlle de Wolska, whom Swamiji was undoubtedly to meet during his stay at Perros-Guirec, was a friend of Josephine MacLeod's and seems to have owned a number of houses in Brittany. Miss MacLeod had met her in New York in 1897 and, as she wrote to Mrs. Bull, had found her "our sort," by which she meant that she would appreciate Swamiji. "[She] is going to translate Raja Yoga," Miss MacLeod wrote. "She is all enthusiasm over our Vedanta and its prophet.... I like her more and more.'[91] Whether or not Mlle de Wolska translated Raja Yoga, I do not know; one does know, however, that she was a highly entertaining conversationalist. "I wish you could hear Mille de Wolska talk for a while," Dr. Janes wrote to his wife from Perros-Guirec. "She is a character. She serves up the local priests in good shape, and is thoroughly alive to the superstitions of the people though she is a Catholic herself. Her portraiture of the English on our walk to Tregastel was too funny for anything.")[92]

The Breton coast with its huge pink and grey boulders, its brisk salt air, and its country life suited Mrs. Bull so well that she decided to stay on. "It is the real peasant country," she wrote to Emma Thursby from Tregastel, "and one feels the druidic past as the great boulders with their massive bulk loom up against the sky between one and the mountain isles beyond.... It is so thoroughly sea air that I do not know if you would like it with the harvesting that is going on now.... [But] there are fresh eggs and good milk to be had & you & I can always get on with these when nature is so lovely.'[93] Mrs. Bull soon moved some nine miles east to the small fishing village of Perros-Guirec, which was then becoming popular as a resort town and was not devoid, as Miss Thursby was to write, of "all kinds of interesting people—poets, artists, etc.'[94] At Perros-Guirec Mlle de Wolska also owned a small house, named Ker Anna, into which Mrs. Bull, her entourage, and her guests moved in the early part of August. Toward the end of that month she rented another house in Perros-Guirec, known as "the House of the Sacristan," and about the first of September, as one learns from the letters of Dr. Janes and Miss Thursby, both of whom numbered among her August guests, she moved her household to yet another, and larger, villa.

"I slept last night for the first time in the house of the Sacristan," Dr. Janes wrote to his wife on August 22, "which Mrs. Bull will occupy until the first of September. Then she is going to the 'mysterious villa,' as Mrs. Briggs calls it—an old place with high walls, round towers, quaint gables and a beautiful garden.'[95]

One might suppose from this that it was in the "mysterious villa" that Swamiji lived during his stay in Brittany, but Mrs. Bull's arrangements were not so simple as Dr. Janes makes out. In an August letter to her sister Ina, Miss Thursby mentions that her hostess had taken two villas at Perros-Guirec for September; and on September 20 she wrote to Ina from the Pyrenees, "Mrs. Bull has taken a third villa to entertain Mr. [John] Lund [a long-time and close Norwegian friend of the Bull family] and his daughter, and the Swami and friend.'[96] In connection with this third villa, Mrs. Bull had written to Emma Thursby on Wednesday, September 17, "The adjoining cottage makes everything easy. I have room now for all until October 1st." And in this same letter she wrote, "I expect Swami and his friend M. Bois this evening.'[97]

Little is known of Swamiji's visit of almost two weeks in the little fishing village on the jagged and boulder-strewn coast of Brittany, but one may be almost certain that it was restful. In 1900 he saw, of course, a Brittany that no longer exists—a country where the people lived and worked and prayed much as they had done for generations past. The twentieth century had not yet made its inroads, for good or ill, into the old traditions, beliefs, and customs. In an earlier letter to his wife, Dr. Janes wrote of this part of France, through which he had passed on his way to Paris from Le Havre:'The grey stone houses looked as if they had stepped out of a picture-book, and so did the peasant women in their bright dresses and sabots, the peasant men in their blouses, and the priests in the square hats, long black coats, and white cassocks.'[98] (He was here describing Normandy; but neighboring Brittany was not different in its picture-book color and charm.)

The life in Perros-Guirec was simple, and good hostess that she was, Mrs. Bull would not have unnecessarily fussed over her guests nor have forced entertainment upon them. She would have allowed Swamiji to relax, to walk by the sea on the cliffs or beaches, to follow the country lanes and roads, to visit the old churches and shrines, to take treatments, if he wished, from the ever-present Mrs. Walden (who, it so happened, was just then living in a nearby chateau trying to work a miracle on the half mad son of an aged countess),[99] to remain silent or to talk, as he wished, to be alone or not, as the spirit moved him. On some warm night he may have taken the same walk that Nivedita had written of in August to Miss MacLeod: "Two or three of us came down the little lane a night or two ago, in the dark, and as we reached the threshold [of a religious community] we heard the clear tones of a chant, in a woman's voice. We stood still and listened and then came the response of a man's voice. And on and on it went, solemn and grand in the black night and the starlight.'[100]

Unhappily for us, almost everyone to whom Swamiji ordinarily wrote long and informative letters was there with him, and these people themselves—Sara Bull, Josephine MacLeod, and Sister Nivedita had no need to write confiding letters to one another. Nor does one find in either Miss MacLeod's or Sister Nivedita's published memoirs much that pertains to Brittany. It is stated in the Life, and repeated elsewhere, that Swamiji spoke of Lord Buddha a great deal in Perros-Guirec, but the source of this information is not given, and although the references and quotations in the Life have been taken from Nivedita's The Master as I Saw Him, she herself gives no hint where or when Swamiji had told these stories or expressed these views of Buddha. Indeed, as far as I know, there exists no direct information about his conversations and moods during this period at Brittany.

However, from a letter he wrote to Swami Turiyananda from "the seacoast of France" it is clear that he was not feeling well. "My body and mind are broken down," he confessed; "I need rest badly.[101] From this same letter, which was concerned with the trust deed of the Belur Math, it is also clear that one facet of his mind was thunderous. Even in the act of retiring, Swamiji had causes for annoyance; even as he rejoiced, he raged. Indeed, who could ever know Swamiji? At one and the same time Alberta found him "jolly as could be," taking an interest in everything, Jules Bois found him plunged immovably in meditation for hours on end, Nivedita found him withdrawn, indifferent, Swami Turiyananda found him in a fury of impatience. One can only describe the different aspects of his life and nature consecutively, but one should remember that they were somehow simultaneous, that each was as real as the others, and that all—even his storms—were lit by the steadily luminous and altogether indescribable depths of his being.

To refresh the reader's memory about the Belur Math trust deed: As early as July of 1899, perhaps earlier, Swamiji had considered making a trust of the Math. To judge from the letter he had written on December 12 of 1899 to Mrs. Bull, this was primarily a matter of legal necessity. As has been pointed out earlier, the property of the Math, being nominally owned by Swamiji (rather than by a religious organization), was subject to taxation, and those of his fellow countrymen who opposed his ideas planned to take full advantage of this technicality and thus bring the Math to ruin. Under these circumstances, it was essential that Swamiji deed the property to a number of trustees. Over and above such legal considerations, however, he knew, as so many of his letters make clear, that the time had come for him to cut his bonds, to turn over the government and responsibility of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission to his brother monks, and to stand free. But in laying down his leadership, Swamiji naturally wanted to do so in the best possible way for the future.

On January 17 of 1900 he had written to Mrs. Bull: "I want to make out a trust-deed of the Math in the names of Saradananda, Brahmananda and, yourself. I will do it as soon as I get the papers from Saradananda. Then I am quits.'[102]At this time he had evidently already sent his instructions to Swami Saradananda, and, as we have seen, he wrote his last will in early July during his visit to Detroit.* On July 19 Swami Saradananda mailed from India a draft of the trust deeds (which involved the Math funds as well as its real property), together with other pertinent papers, to Swamiji, in care of .Mr. Leggett. The trust deeds had been drawn up according to the Math's understanding of Swamiji's wishes, but when the papers reached him in Paris about a month later; he was much annoyed by the wording of the drafts. Nevertheless, he signed them and returned them.

"I gave Mrs. Bull a chance to draw her money [Rs. 35,000] out of the Math," he wrote to Sister Nivedita in his letter of August 25; "and she did not say anything about it, and [as] the trust-deeds were waiting here to be executed, I got them executed duly at the British consulate and they are on their way to India now.'[103]

"I have not reserved any right or ownership for myself," he wrote to Swami Turiyananda a few days later (September 1). "You now possess everything, and will manage all work by the Master's grace.'[104] In this particular letter to Swami Turiyananda Swamiji seemed agreeable enough; but evidence that he was not satisfied, to say the least, with the wording of the trust deed appears in the Bengali version of this same letter to Swami Turiyananda from "the seacoast of France." In the Bengali edition of the Complete Works, the letter (there dated, wrongly, "August, 1900") is given with fewer omissions than in the English edition. A translation of the passages that reveal Swamiji's displeasure reads as follows:

I have cut myself off by a will. Now I am writing to say that nobody will have sole power. All will be done in accordance with the view of the majority.... If a trust deed on similar lines can be executed, then I am free.... Now you people do what you please. I have finished my part of the work. I was indebted to Guru Maharaj[Sri Ramakrishna]. I have paid off this debt by working out my life. How can I tell you any of this? They have sent me a draft of a document in which they are the boss of everything. And I have signed [agreed to] everything of it except this their becoming the boss of everything. Gangadhar [Swami Akhandananda], you, Kali [Swami Abhedananda], Sashi [Swami Ramakrishnananda], the new boys, I have pushed them aside, and I have made Rakhal and Baburam [Swami Brahmananda and Swami Premananda] the boss of them all. My Master used to consider them great. This is his work, therefore I have held up my soul and signed this. I am now going to do my work. I have paid off my debt to Guru Maharaj by crushing out my life. He has no longer any claim on me. Whatever work you are doing is the work of Guru Maharaj. Go on doing it. What I had to do I have done. Finished. So therefore do not write to me anything about it. Nor tell me; I have no yes or no opinion about it. Henceforth that is how it will be.[105]

Later, on his return to India, Swamiji found he had misjudged the situation. On December 26 he wrote to Miss MacLeod—who, like Mrs. Bull, had all along disapproved of his harsh scoldings of his gurubhais, but who, also like Mrs. Bull, had small conception of the profundity and constancy of his love for them and of the immense importance of their future work—"They [his brother disciples] have worked all right as far as they could; I am glad, and feel myself quite a fool on account of my nervous chagrin. They are as good and as faithful as ever, and they are in good health. Write all this to Mrs. Bull and tell her she was always right and I was wrong, and I beg a hundred thousand pardons of her.'[106]As for the trust deed, a new draft was prepared in Calcutta to Swamiji's satisfaction. Later still, because of legal necessity, the deed was again redrafted and on January 30, 1901, was executed.[107]

But in September of 1900 when he came to Brittany, Swamiji was annoyed and impatient in some part of his mind. It is possible that Nivedita, distressed to start with, took his air of general displeasure as an intensification of his coolness toward herself; her own attitude, thus compounded, could have reached a low level of despair; indeed, some two years later she would refer to those days as "that anguish in Brittany.'[108]But for people like Nivedita days of anguish invariably brought with them needed lessons—in this instance, the meaning of true discipleship, of true single-pointed dedication: "I find," she wrote to Josephine MacLeod from Brittany, "that it is necessary not only to love [my beloved Father] better than oneself, but also to love no one else. And that is hard; I hope to achieve someday!'[109] It was a step; the agony of her estrangement with Swamiji had brought with it, also, the strength to face, without wavering, a future grief—a grief that would make her achievement of loyalty and love complete. But however that would be, during those days in Brittany Swamiji's deep, unalterable affection for his disciple, her own unhappiness over what she felt to be his indifference, and her emotional recommitment to his work brought about a reconciliation of sorts. Swamiji wrote a poem for his spiritual daughter:

The mother's heart, the hero's will,
The sweetness of the southern breeze,
The sacred charm and strength that dwell 
On Aryan altars, flaming, free;

All these be yours, and many more 
No ancient soul could dream before--
Be thou to India's future son
The mistress, servant, friend in one.[110]

Yet, his warmth of heart notwithstanding, it is clear from subsequent events that in Brittany Swamiji did not give Nivedita advice, did not discuss her work with her, was not even altogether certain that her mind and heart were fully committed, that they would not turn into other channels, become absorbed in other interests. He did not retract his words: "You are free, have your own choice, your own work...." On the eve of her departure from Perros-Guirec, Nivedita appears to have been broken-hearted still.

"Don't you remember the night in Brittany before I left for England," she was to write to Mrs. Bull at the end of 1906, "—when I told you how I was going out into the unknown—to Sri R.K. and Mother—away from the 'Father' who had become so beloved—and you were so kind and good?'[111]

The circumstances of Swamiji's farewell to his spiritual daughter, which took place on that same night, were, as were so many incidents in his life, lighted with the unstudied charm and grace that attend the spiritually great at every turn. In her penetrating and sensitive book The Master as I Saw Him, which she was to complete in 1910, Nivedita caught this element of poetry in her often-quoted account of the scene:

When I said good-bye to him in Brittany in September, 1900, I was on the eve of returning alone to England, there to find friends and means, if possible, for the Indian work. I knew nothing as yet of the length of my stay. I had no plans. And the thought may have crossed his [Swamiji's] mind that old ties were perilous to a foreign allegiance. He had seen so many betrayals of honour that he seemed always to be ready for a new desertion. In any case, the moment was critical to the fate of the disciple, and this he did not fail to realise. Suddenly, on my last evening in Brittany, when supper was some time over, and the darkness had fallen, I heard him at the door of my little arbour-study, calling me into the garden. I came out, and found him waiting to give me his blessing, before leaving, with a man-friend, for the cottage where they were both housed.

"There is a peculiar sect of Mohammedans," he said, when he saw me, "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, to-night— 'Go forth into the world, and there, if I made you, be destroyed! If Mother made you, live !' "

Yet he came again next morning, soon after dawn, to say farewell, and in my last memory of him in Europe, I look back once more from the peasant market-cart, and see his form against the morning sky, as he stands on the road outside our cottage at Lannion [actually Perros-Guirec], with hands uplifted, in that Eastern salutation which is also benediction.[112]

Swamiji would not see his spiritual daughter again until March of 1902.

According to a passage from a letter that Sister Nivedita was to write to Mrs. Bull in January of 1906, she was to look back upon Swamiji's words in the garden at Perros-Guirec as "his apostolic charge to me.'[113]It is true that his words had pointedly stressed the divine aspect of the task he had given her, but in what way they were an "apostolic charge" is not clear, nor does Nivedita herself seem to have thought them so at the time. As is well known, the path she was to choose, for a while at least, had very little to do with the education of Hindu women and, because of its involvement in Indian politics, was incompatible with the policies of the Ramakrishna Order. It was not until after Swamiji's death that his thought, welling up in her, became the truly dominant motive of her life and that she became a strong vessel for his ideas and a sensitive instrument of his will.

In London many distractions and influences entered Nivedita's life, many enthusiasms, attachments, and impassioned convictions, and precisely because these were centered around India and were not by any means less than noble, they were all the more diverting. Easily they could seem ordained and Right; and easily they could have led her away altogether from the great life and work for which Swamiji had meticulously trained her. Even a call to India in the early part of 1901 from Sri Sarada Devi through Yum Yum left her undecided, and in England there were, of course, friends who urged her to stay on. Both Mrs. Bull and Mr. Romesh Chandra Dutt, an eminent and highly respected Indian Civil Servant, then retired and living in London, with whom Nivedita had become well acquainted, wrote to Swamiji imploring him to allow Nivedita to continue her work in England. Swamiji may have earlier taken a dim but hands-off view of Nivedita's prolonged stay in London. (In February he had written to Mrs. Bull, "Glad to learn about Margo's success, but, says Joe, it is not financially paying; there is the rub. Mere continuance is of little value, and it is a far cry from London to Calcutta.")[114] But now, learning from Mr. Dutt of the substantial work she was doing, he wrote to her from Belur Math on April 4 of 1901:

Dear Margot:

A letter came just now from Mr. R. Dutt—praising you and your work in England very much and asking me to wish you to stop longer in England.

It requires no imagination to learn that I am overjoyed at all the news about you Mr. Dutt so kindly sends.

Of course you stay as long as you think you are working well. Yum had some talk about you with Mother [Sri Sarada Devi] and she desired you to come over---of course it was only her love and anxiety to see you—that was all, but poor Yum has been much too serious for once and hence all these letters. However I am glad it should happen, as I learnt so much about your work form Mr. Dutt, & he can't be accused of a relative's blind love.[115]

On the same day Swamiji wrote to Mr. Dutt himself:

Dear Sir—

I am so very glad to learn from a person of your authority of the good work Sister Nivedita is doing in England. I join in earnest prayer with the hopes you entertain of her future services to India by her pen.

I have not the least desire that she would leave her present field of utility and come over to India.

I am under a deep debt of gratitude to you Sir for your befriending my child—and hope you will never cease to advise her as to the length of her stay in England and the line of work she ought to undertake.

Her book on Kali has been very popular in India. The debt our Motherland already owes you is immense and we are anxiously waiting the new book of yours [on Indian economics].[116]

To Mrs. Bull he had written on March 29, "My advice to Margot would be to mature her plans in England and work them out [at] good length before she comes back. Good solid work must wait .[117]

And so Nivedita stayed on, writing articles, giving talks, working with not entirely impersonal ardor for Dr. J. C. Bose's extraordinary experiments in plant physiology, renewing her friendship with the Patrick Geddeses, visiting Mrs. Bull's home in Norway for a long vacation. "I don't know when Nivedita comes to India," Swamiji would write to Mary Hale in August of 1900, "or if she ever comes back.'[118] Meanwhile, her concept of her mission was changing. "To my great horror," she wrote to Josephine MacLeod from Norway,

Freedom has meant something to me, for my life has come to include many elements that Swamiji would probably not have put there. They are all for him, however, I trust, in the end—and he will not hold me less his child than before.... You must not think from all this that I cherish any idea of going out to tea with the Brahmos when I get back [to India]. Not at all. I belong to my work—to the women—and to the girls—even as you have said. And I belong to Hinduism more than I ever did. But I see the political need so clearly too! That is all I mean—and to that I must be true.[119]

And again,

About India, do you think it too much if I say that I feel as if I had something new that no one ever had before? When I read Swami on Hinduism again, I am staggered at the vastness of it—then I recover and think perhaps the very weight of his acquirements interferes with the short sharp view and the clear ringing word that India needs most at this moment. Perhaps my very ignorance and want of depth is my best weapon. Not that I do not think Swami's is the master word and for all time. I do think that—but I see with terrible distinctness that it is too big for any one generation. It needs a point....

How silly I think it now to do anything in England for India I cannot tell you! What utter waste of time! Do you think ravening wolves can be made gentle as babes? Can be made polite and sweet as little girls? That is what work in England for India means....

Oh Yum, in India now we want, what do we not want? We want the very dust of the earth to carry our message  for us.... When I think of our needs I am in despair but when I remember that the time is ripe, and the Mother works, not we, I take courage again....

My task is to see and to make others see. The rest does itself. The vision is the great crisis....

. . . I must work out the vision that is granted to me.[120]

And so at long last, at the very end of 1901, impelled by a driving sense of her mission for India, Nivedita left England on the Mombassa, together with Mrs. Ole Bull and Romesh Chandra Dutt. The ship docked in Madras on February 3. 'The following day, she and Mr. Dutt were accorded a large public reception, complete with an address of welcome. In reply, she gave a long and stirring talk.[121]She spoke primarily in praise of India's great son, Dr. Jagadis Chandra Bose, in whose work and personality she had become absorbed during her stay in England and in whose scientific genius she felt India might see proof of its intellectual superiority to the West. Her address was so fervently and so eloquently pro-Indian and nationalistic that the British police thenceforth kept a baleful and wary eye on her activities. From Madras the party sailed, still on the Mombassa, to Calcutta.

Swamiji, who was at the time in Benares, welcomed Nivedita by letter with deep affection and blessing;

Over-joyed to receive your letter, more so that you come with unimpaired will and recuperated health.

In a previous letter I have written you what little I had to suggest. I have no other instructions except in reply to your suggestion of having Sadananda to work with. I am very very sorry to state; he no longer belongs to me....

. . . I do not wish to ask him to do anything. It is a long long story.... The long and short of it is that I recommend you none—not one—except Brahmananda.... If you have to ask my advice or to get anybody to do your business—Brahmananda is the only one. I recommend none else, none else; with this my conscience is clear.

Do just as "Mother" directs. I would help you if I could—but I am only a bundle of rags and with only one eye at that—but you have all my blessings—all—and more if I had.

I do not complain. I must be a sacrifice and a willing one....

All my powers come unto you—may Mother Herself be your hands and mind. It is immense power—irresistible—that I pray for you and, if possible, along with it infinite peace.

You have been true as steel and faithful as one's image —you did not get ahead or become rebel the moment you got rich friends to back you. You have my last blessings. If there was any truth in Shri Ramakrishna, may He take you into His leading—even as He did me, nay a thousand times more.[122]

Later on, as Sister Christine was to tell a swami of the Ramakrishna Order, Swamiji was to scold Nivedita severely for her political involvements, until, unable to bear more, she begged him to stop. He made it clear that she could not be associated with both the Ramakrishna Math and the political movements of the time. She must decide to give up one or the other. She told him she would think about it; but before she could give him her answer, Swamiji died.

Shortly thereafter Swami Brahmananda gave Sister Nivedita the same choice, and on July 18 she resigned from the Order. "If Albert [Alberta Sturges] is writing to Mrs. Roethlesberger, would she send her a piece of paper or something from me and ask her to hold it and try to send me a message as to whether I am really on the right path or not?" she had written to Yum in an anguished passage two days earlier. "It is all so different from what it was meant to be—and Swami was so angry two months ago, and the men [Swami Brahmananda, Swami Saradananda, and other monks of the Order] are so sure I ought to do what He told me—and yet I cannot do differently from this. I have become the idea—and could die more easily than submit'[123] And a week or so later, "I think my task is to awake a nation, not to influence a few women.... I may not succeed. You do not realise as I do—you cannot—the hopelessness of the task—and my own utter inadequacy. But ought this to make any difference? I see—therefore ought I not to act? Must we not throw ourselves now into the great Ocean of Mother—and leave it to Her whether we come to land or not?'[124]

But the question as to whether she was on the right path or not was not easily answered. More than four years later Nivedita was still tormenting herself. On December 26, 1906, she wrote to Mrs. Bull:

When I think what Swamiji planned what my life should be, and how different I have made it, I feel utterly broken-hearted. If one could stand the hot weather all the year round, we could take women into our homes as He wished. But one can't, And I suppose it is really true that one can't—and not mere selfishness—for these illnesses have proved it. Don't be impatient with me, dear friend! . . . Sometimes I think this is only the first attempt—and I shall be allowed to try again and again—Christianity was 1100 years old, before it produced S. Francis—1500 before St. Teresa. Who knows how often they had tried and felt that they were failures? But again, I don't see any hint of such achievement—but rather a descent to lower levels. Well! Well! I'll hold on and try. But there seems no path for me here, except silence and submission—even in matters where I feel an overwhelming need to choose my own path and assert my own ideal. But oh! Am I betraying a trust? Am I? Am I? Who can answer that for me?'[125]

Time has answered. As the years passed after Swamiji's death all the many blessings he had bestowed upon his great souled spiritual daughter, the training he had given her, and the insights he had granted became deeply and harmoniously established within her and, as is well known, bore wonderful fruit. During her visit to the West in 1899 and 1900 Nivedita changed, there is no question; but she was not destroyed.

ⓘ
[1]Complete Works, 5 : 471-72.
[2]Swami Vidyatmananda, “Swami Vivekananda in France,” P.B. 72 (March 1967); “Swami Vivekananda in Brittany,” P.B. 73 (March 1968); “Swami Vivekananda at the Paris Congress,” P.B. 74. (March, April, 1969).
[3]Frances Leggett, Late and Soon, P-29.
[4] Frances Leggett, Late and Soon, P-29.
[5] Rem. (Josephine MacLeod), P-249.
[6] Complete Works, 8 : 464.
[7]Lewis G. Janes to Helen Janes, July 6, 1900, Janes Papers, Mrs. Charles Lyttle, Chicago.
[8] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, August 4, 1900, P.B. 72 (March 1967): 130. The respected widow of Ole Bull was naturally addressed by Swamiji as “Sacred Cow.”
[9] Frances Leggett, op. cit., p. 127.
[10] Frances Leggett, op. cit., p. 124.
[11] Complete Works, 5 : 472.
[12] See ref. 7 above.
[13] Complete Works, 7 : 380.
[14] Complete Works, 7 : 380.
[15] Frances Leggett, op. cit., p. 130.
[16] Complete Works, 8 : 472.
[17] Complete Works, 8:p. 504.
[18] Complete Works,7:373.
[19] Complete Works,8:533.
[20] P.B., March 1967, pp. 131-32; Frances Leggett, op. cit., p. 133.
[21] See ref. 2 above, P.B., March 1967, PP- 131-32.
[22] Complete Works, 7 : 378.
[23] Complete Works,7:p. 379.
[24] Hiram Maxim, Foreword. to Li Hung Chang's Scrap-Book, p. xxiii.
[25] Alice Hansbrough, “Reminis-cences,” VSNC.
[26] Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower, p. 269.
[27] Romain Rolland, Prophets of the New India, p. 438.
[28] Swami Vidyatmananda, P.B., March 1967, p. 134; for the Duke of Richelieu see Swami Nikhil-ananda, Vivekananda: A Biography, p. 160.
[29] Complete Works, 7 : 382.
[30] Complete Works,8 : 534.
[31] Complete Works,7:379.
[32] Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, pp. 381-83.
[33] Lewis G. Janes to Helen Janes, July 6, 1900, Janes Papers.
[34] Lewis G. Janes to Helen Janes,July 8, 1900.
[35] Frances Leggett, op. cit., p. 128.
[36] Complete Works, 7 : 380.
[37] Udbodhan, Jyaistha issue, 1334-1335 (Bengali year corresponding to 1928).
[38] Complete Works, 8 : 517.
[39] Complete Works, 8 : 534-35.
[40] P.B., March, 1927, Notes and Comments: “Reminiscences,” P- 125.
[41] Lewis Mumford, Introduction to Philip L. Boardman, Patrick Geddes: Maker of the Future (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1944).
[42] Emma Thursby to Ina Thursby, August, 1900, Emma Thursby Collection, New-York Historical Society, New York.
[43] Pre Hyacinthe, “Qui est le Christ?” The Christian Register, April 12, 1900. (Translated into English from the original manuscript.)
[44] Complete Works, 7 : 376-78 passim.
[45] Complete Works, 7 : pp. 377-78.
[46] See ref. 42 above.
[47] Unpublished passage is from the original letter, FHL.
[48] Complete Works, 6 : 439.
[49] Lewis G. Janes to Helen Janes, July 8, 1900, Janes Papers.
[50] Complete Works, 6: 438-40 passim.
[51] Complete Works, p. 439.
[52] Diary of Lewis G. Janes, August 28—September 3, 1900, Janes Papers.
[53] Complete Works, 6 : 439.
[54] William James, Pragmatism (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907), P-39.
[55] Quoted in Swami Vidyatma-nanda, “Swami Vivekananda in France,” P.B. 72 (March 1967): 133.
[56] Emma Thursby to Ina Thursby, August, 1900, Emma Thursby Collection.
[57] Complete Works, 6 : 440.
[58].Emma Thursby Collection.
[59].Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 387.
[60].Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 387.
[61].Rem, (J. MacLeod), p. 249.
[62].Complete Works, 8 : 533-34.
[63].Jules Bois, “The New Religions of America—Hindu Cults,” Forum II (March 1927): 414, 415.
[64].Jules Bois, “The New Religions of America—Hindu Cults,” Forum II (March 1927)., pp. 414-15.
[65].Complete Works, 8 : 534.
[66].See ref. 63 above.
[67].Complete Works, 7 : 375, 376.
[68].Complete Works, 5 : 155.
[69].Complete Works p. 162.
[70] Bois, “The Ecstasy,” trans. Gurudas Sarcar, P.B, 23 (March 1918): 59.
[71] Bois, “The Ecstasy,” trans. Gurudas Sarcar, P.B, 23 (March 1918., p. 422.
[72] See ref. 63 above, p. 422.
[73] Complete Works, 4:422-23; translation of Bengali letter, Udbodhan, vol. 2, no. 20.
[74] Romain Rolland, Prophets of the New India, pp. 436-37.
[75] Complete Works, 4 : 425.
[76] VIN, pp. 214, 415.
[77] Complete Works, 4: 429.
[78] Complete Works., 3 : 260.
[79] Lewis G. Janes (memorial volume), p. 182.
[80] Alberta Sturges to Sara Bull, December 28, 1900, and February 2, 1901, SCB.
[81] Swami Vidyatmananda, P.B. 72 (March 1967): 134.
[82] Swami Vidyatmananda, P.B. 72 (March 1967)., p. 133.
[83] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, August 4,1900, P.B., March 1967, p. 130.
[84] Pravrajika Atmaprana, Sister Nivedita, p. 113.
[85] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 385.
[86] Letters of Sister Nivedita,1 : 369-70.
[87] Pravrajika Atmaprana, op. cit., P-133.
[88] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 386.
[89] Complete Works, 6 : 435-36.
[90] Pravrajika Atmaprana, op. cit., p. 115.
[91] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, 1897 [no other date], SCB.
[92] Lewis G. Janes to Helen Janes, August 22, 1900, Janes Papers.
[93] Sara Bull to Emma Thursby, end of July, 1900, Thursby Col.
[94] Emma Thursby to Ina Thursby, August, 1900, Thursby Col.
[95] See ref. 92 above.
[96] See ref. 94 above.
[97] Sara Bull to Emma Thursby, September 17, 1900, Thursby Col.
[98] Lewis G. Janes to Helen Janes, July 6, 1900, Janes Papers.
[99] See ref. 94 above.
[100] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 384.
[101] Complete Works, 8 : 532.
[102] Complete Works,, 8 : 490.
[103] Complete Works,, 6:435.
[104] Complete Works, 8:533.
[105] Complete Works, Bengali edition, 8 : 151.
[106] Complete Works, 6 : 443.
[107] Swami Gambhirananda, History, 3d ed., p. 115.
[108] Letters of Sister Nivedita 1 : 496.
[109] Letters of Sister Nivedita,., 1 : 384.
[110] Complete Works, 6 : 178.
[111] Letters of Sister Nivedita2 : 834.
[112] The Master, pp. 221-22.
[113] Letters of Sister Nivedita 2 : 779.
[114] Complete Works, 5 : 155.
[115] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Nivedita, April 4, 1901, Sen Col.
[116] Swami Vivekananda to Romesh Chandra Dutt, April 4, 1901, Sen Col. (Mr. Dutt’s book is entitled The Economic History of India, vol. 1: Under British Rule.)
[117] Complete Works,5 : 157.
[118] Complete Works,5 : 167.
[119] Letters of Sister Nivedita1 2431-32.
[120] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 434-37 passim.
[121] The Hindu (Madras), 4 February, 1902.
[122] Complete Works, 5 : 174-75; the full letter is from A.A.
[123] Letters of Sister Nivedita1 : 481.
[124] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 482-83.
[125] Letters of Sister Nivedita 2 : 834-35.

↑ Contents

6.5.1 HOMEWARD BOUND-II

The exact date of the early morning when Swamiji stood, his hands "uplifted in that Eastern salutation which is also benediction," as the peasant market-cart carried his "daughter" down the road and out of sight, is not known. It is certain, however, that he left Perros-Guirec at the end of September. It is known that he visited Mont-Saint-Michel on September 29, the feast of the Archangel Michael, when pilgrims flock to this ancient and famous abbey built on a tiny island of granite off the coast of Normandy. Through the centuries the abbey and its church, the construction of which was commenced in the year 1708, have been enlarged, creating their little mountain and crowding over it, until the whole island looks as though it has been carved into a fortress-shrine, or, again, as though the shrine itself had risen from the sea or, when the tide is out, from the gleaming sand flats that stretch to the horizon.

Possibly Swamiji stayed overnight at an inn in the little village nestled at the foot of the abbey and then travelled on to Paris. Mrs. Bull very probably went on to Paris too, for this had been her plan. "I will join you [in Paris] the 1st day of October," she had written to Miss Thursby on September 13. , Further, one finds Nivedita addressing two letters to her, apartment at 235 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honore, one dated September 29 and the other October 3. It is, in fact, possible that Mrs. Bull gave up her various houses in Perros-Guirec at the end of September, planning shortly to join Nivedita in England. "I go to London direct from Paris," she had told Miss Thursby.[1]

But to know Mrs. Bull's plans is one thing and to know her actual whereabouts in October of 1900 is another, and until more information comes to light we cannot be certain of the latter. We do know, however, that Swamiji and M. Jules Bois intended to visit Brittany for four or five days in mid October; and almost certainly they did so. It is possible that Miss MacLeod, rather than Mrs. Bull, was their hostess at this time, and in any event, it is clear that the letter of invitation did not come from Mrs. Bull. In Prabuddha Bharata of July 1949 one finds a translation of M. Bois's reply to it, which has in part:

Mademoiselle, I have received your kind letter and thank you very much for your charming invitation. The Swami and I are thinking of leaving Paris on Monday, next week, to join you again in Lannion.... The Swami and I are too happy for words to meet you again in such good health and in such a beautiful country.[2]

Actually Miss MacLeod (assuming she was the "Mademoiselle" here addressed) was not in particularly good health. She was, in fact, in a state of malaise and fatigue, for her unusual. "I had a lovely letter from Yum last night," Sister Nivedita wrote in her letter of October 3 to Mrs. Bull. "It is so pathetic to hear her speak of want of rest.'[3] For the next year or two thereafter one reads again and again in Sister Nivedita's letters of "Yum's" poor health. What was wrong, specifically, is never said, but whatever the trouble may have been it would have been natural for Joe to stay on for a part of October in Brittany, where the fresh sea air was like a tonic and where there was nothing to do but rest. It would also have been natural for her to invite Swamiji and M. Bois to be her guests.

As far as I am aware, no details are known of Swamiji's October visit to Brittany, except that its dates, as Swami Vidyatmananda has deduced, were very probably October 15, a Monday, to October 19 or 20. One supposes that everyone concerned enjoyed those four or five days.

Swamiji added a postscript to M. Bois's letter to "Mademoiselle." It was his first attempt to write a note in French, and it was all his own. (M. Bois assured "Mademoiselle" that he did not even look at what Swamiji had written, let alone correct it.) One can find the note in its original French in Prabuddha Bharata of July 1949. The translation, which is in the Complete Works, reads in part: "... I am having the best of times after many years. I find life here with Mr. Bois very satisfactory—the books, the calm, and the absence of everything that usually troubles me. But I don't know what kind of destiny is waiting for me now....'[4]

Was this not an expression of the same serenity and peace that Swamiji had written of in his letter of September 1 to Swami Turiyananda? The "scholar's life" amidst books and calm that he had long wanted had come to him, and with it must have come the "intense meditation and repetition of the Lord's name" of which he had earlier written—perhaps becoming now even more intense, for calm surroundings always brought meditation to Swamiji. The very sight, for instance, of a replica of a dungeon-cage at Mont-Saint-Michel, an iron and wood cage about eight feet square and eight feet high, once suspended between  ceiling and floor and in which men had been confined in almost unrelieved solitude—a sight to chill the blood and send shivers down the ordinary spine—only reminded Swamiji of the hermit's cell. "What a wonderful place for meditation![5] he was heard to murmur.

Though perhaps not so desirable as a dungeon-cage, M. Bois's rooms, quiet and often solitary, were also a good place to meditate, and thus one finds Swamiji's mind bounding upward in these October days to its own serene level. On October 14, 1900, the day before he and M. Bois left for their second visit to Brittany, he wrote to Sister Christine in French. It was a long and beautiful letter, and Swamiji's French (I have seen an early copy of the original) seems quite an advance over the short, slightly stiff postscript to "Mademoiselle" of a week earlier. To Christine he also expressed his happiness, but wrote of a lingering shadow on its perfection: "Je suis heureux, oui, je le suis vraiment, mais le nuage ne m'a quitte tout it fait. It revient malheureusement quelquefois mais il n'a pas I'aspect de morbidite qu'il avait autrefois." "I am happy, yes, I really am, but the cloud has not completely left me. Unfortunately it returns at times but it has not the air of gloom it formerly had.'[6]

This was the cloud that had followed Swamiji from India and that he had spoken of so often as two years of "torture," physical and mental. Virtually it had passed. One tends to think of Swamiji's moods in terms of the sky or the sea, and one pictures now a vault of almost unbroken blue, only a tendril of white cloud crosses the sun now and then—the last remnants of a gigantic storm. But in speaking of Swamiji's moods, one again remembers how different was his psychology from ours. He had lived on both sides of that storm at once: in the untouched infinity of light and space above it, and in the heart of its lightning-rent, wind-torn darkness. It is perhaps impossible to say fully what the genesis of that turbulence was; but, as I wrote at the beginning of this book, it was obviously caused on one level by the frustration of trying to move and lift the massive, tamas-ridden thought of the world and of attempting to introduce a new path and to set in motion—in the short span of a year or two—the machinery by which his work and message would be carried forward for centuries and centuries to come. "I must," he had written in 1897, " . . put in a lever for the good of humanity, in India at least, which no power can drive back." This, actually, he had fully accomplished; the work he had done in so short a time was incredible, the victories he had achieved were tremendous and far-reaching. Yet, he was impatient of delay, of obstacles and opposition. He who saw so clearly that which needed to be done, and why and how, he who lived in eternity could not but feel torment at the slow unfolding in time of his great vision and achievement. And his impatience, as well, as his incessant work, told on nerves exquisitely tuned to receive and transmit the most subtle of spiritual impulses.

Sister Nivedita, closer to Swamiji, in some respects, than any of his other disciples or friends, more sensitive to his moods, and, in later years at least, more appreciative of the enormous scope of his ideal and the difficulty of his task, was to write in a letter of 1903 of "the bitter sense of failure" under which he had worked all the last years of his life.[7]She would have meant, one thinks, the years she knew him in India and the West until the fall of 1899 when she left him in Ridgely Manor, for after that she had seen him only briefly from time to time. True, there had been an impatient mood in Brittany, but on the whole the "cloud" had slowly begun to move away after the close of 1899. Sister Nivedita was herself to write in The Master as I Saw Him:

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. "Why should I care, if the world itself were to disappear?" he said once. "According to my philosophy, that, you know, would be a very good thing! But in fact," he added, in tones suddenly graver, "all that is against me must be with me in the end. Am I not her soldier?'[8]

The soaring peace and freedom that Swamiji had experienced and given expression to in Alameda was now, in Paris, mirrored in the world of events. His last teaching-lecture in the West had been given; his leadership of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission had been laid aside like the spear and shield of an indomitable warrior who knows that however bitter his failures may have seemed, his main, crucial battles had been won. Even his financial problems had been solved: he had earned enough for the Math's security and, in addition, had repaid the money he had borrowed to buy his mother a house. "I believe I have told you that Swami has paid back the money which he took from the Math fund," Swami Saradananda wrote to Mrs. Bull on November 15 of 1900, "and has also sent money for his Law suits. He told me to let you know this as soon as possible.'[9](The lawsuits were no doubt those he had brought against his aunt, who would not give his mother possession of the house. "He left everything in order," Sister Nivedita was to write to Miss MacLeod shortly after his death. "On Sunday [June 29, 1902] He told me that the lawsuit with the family that had been hanging over Him for 3 years was compromised by them voluntarily in His favor—and He was satisfied at last! It was the same with everything.")[10]

In Paris Swamiji's life was falling into order, smoothing itself into a sea that perfectly mirrored the sky. He felt no farther need to work—neither for the sake of teaching nor for the sake of earning money. "The call has come from Above," he had said to Swami Turiyananda (most likely in New York): "'Come away, just come away—no need of troubling your head to teach others.' It is now the will of the Grand Old Lady that the play should be over." (The "Grand Old Lady" was a figure in a children's game, to touch whom put one outside the play.)[11]

In his letter of August 25, after signing the first draft of the trust deed, he wrote to Nivedita: "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., etc., in turn. I am so glad a whole load is off me, now I am happy."

And in his letter of October 14 to Sister Christine, he wrote in French:

I am sending all the money I earned in America to India. Now I am free, the begging monk as before. I have also resigned from the presidentship of the Monastery. Thank God, I am free! It is no more for me to carry such a responsibility. I am so nervous and so weak.

"As the birds which have slept in the branches of a tree wake up, singing when the dawn comes, and soar up into the deep blue sky, so is the end of my life."

I have had many difficulties, and also some very great successes. But all my difficulties and suffering count for nothing, as I have succeeded. I have attained my aim. I have found the pearl for which I dived into the ocean of life. I have been rewarded. I am pleased.

Thus it seems to me that a new chapter of my life is opening. It seems to me that Mother will now lead me slowly and softly. No more effort on roads full of obstacles, now it is the bed prepared with birds' down. Do you understand that? Believe me, I feel quite sure.[12]

It was not, of course, Swamiji's position as leader of the Ramakrishna Order that had tied him, as it were, to the earth and a mission; it was his heart—his all-embracing love that expressed itself in his detailed concern for individuals as well as in his boundless compassion for the whole of mankind. This bond too—the bond by which the Divine Mother had "made a slave'[13] of him—was breaking. Since leaving California he had been struggling to rid himself of all emotion. "I am determined to get rid of all sentimentalism, and emotionalism," he had written in June of 1900 from New York to Mary Hale "and hang me if you ever find me emotional. I am the Advaitist; our goal is knowledge—no feelings, no love, as all that belongs to matter and superstition and bondage. I am only existence and knowledge.... Don't for a moment worry on my account. 'Mother' looks after me. She is bringing me fast out of the hell of emotionalism, and bringing me into the light of pure reason. . . '[14]

"Non-attachment has always been there," he added in a postscript. "It has come in a minute. Very soon I shall stand where no sentiment can touch me. No feeling.'[15]

"Swami is all against bhakti and emotion now," Sister Nivedita had written from New York in the same month to Miss MacLeod—"determined to banish it, he says.'[16]

One is inclined to doubt that Swamiji fully succeeded in this. "If in this hell of a world one can bring a little joy and peace even for a day into the heart of a single person, that much alone is true; this I have learnt after suffering all my life; all else is mere moonshine....'[17]Thus he was to write to Swami Brahmananda a few months before his death. There was no end, in any sense, to his love. Yet, at the same time, there was no bondage in it for anyone. He himself, however much he might deplore his "emotionalism," stood entirely, consciously free. One is here reminded of how he had turned on Sister Nivedita in New York in June of 1900 when she had "offered him advice that struck him as wrong." "I wish you could have seen him!" she wrote to Miss MacLeod. "It was worth the offense to catch such a glimpse! He said, 'Remember that I am free—free—born free!' And then he talked of the Mother and of how he wished the work and the world would break to pieces that he might go and sit down in the Himalayas and meditate.'[18]

Yet, leadership was implicit in Swamiji's very being. Whatever his legal position in the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission was to be during the last year or so of his life, he remained the leader; it could not have been otherwise. Nor could he lay down his concern for the work. "It was on the last Sunday before the end," Nivedita writes in The Master as I Saw Him, "that he said to one of his disciples, 'You know the Work is always my weak point! When I think that might come to an end, I am all undone!'[19]

Nonetheless, Swamiji's life was henceforth to be quiet—;ived for the most part at Belur Math and in the depth of God consciousness. He was to go on a pilgrimage with his mother in the spring of 1901, making up to her at last the pain that he had caused her--or thought he had caused her—by his renunciation of the world and that he had always felt so keenly; he was to become absorbed in caring for and playing with his pet animals at Belur Math—an antelope, a stork, ducks and geese, a dog—gazing upon them, Swami Akhandananda recalled, with an indescribable expression of love. ("Witnessing this sight," the Swami said, "one would be reminded of how Sri Krishna would play with his treasured cows.")[20]He was to hold scriptural classes for the monks and to insist upon strict discipline and hard austerity in the Math's routine; he was once, in 1901, to send several of his brothers into the depths of meditation—perhaps into samadhi or ecstasy—by his power-charged cry in the courtyard of the Math: "Here is the unveiled presence of the Brahman . . . Ah! here is the Brahman as palpable as a fruit in one's palm. Don't you see? Here!'[21]

"He became radiant looking," Sister Nivedita wrote of his last days to a friend, "just as he used to be in London.... And the wonderful divine light somehow never ceased to grow brighter and brighter, whatever might be the state of mind or nerves:'[22]

Thus he was to live the closing year or so of his life, drifting on the current of the Divine Mother, walking immersed in God, until his final, premeditated homecoming of Mahasamadhi.

That journey homeward began in France—not only in Swamiji's reiterated cry "Now I am free!" but in his actual journey back to his motherland. "I shall travel with Madame calve, Miss MacLeod, and M. Jules Bois," he wrote in his letter of October 14 to Sister Christine. "I shall be the guest of Madame Calve, the famous singer. We shall go to Constantinople, the Near East, Greece, and Egypt.'[23]At what time this trip was first planned is not certain. Mention of it is found in a letter to Swami Turiyananda, dated in the Complete Works "September." But this date, broad though it is, does not seem to be correct. To judge from internal evidence, the letter was written in the latter half of October, 1900. Thus "September" cannot, I believe, stand as evidence for anything at all. Nor does Miss MacLeod's reminiscence about the genesis of the plan enlighten us about its time. The place, however, is clear. "One day at luncheon in Paris," she writes, "Madame Emma Calve, the singer, said she was going to Egypt for the winter. So as I suggested accompanying her, she at once turned to Swami and said, 'Will you come to Egypt with us as my guest?' He accepted.'[24] Thus was the journey born.

Who planned the route is not known. But it is possible that Swamiji suggested the roundabout trip to Egypt, for, ever a lover of man, ever a fascinated student and observer of the ways of human life, he would have wanted to tour through as much of the Western world as possible. Earlier, he had seen Switzerland, Germany, and Italy (and, of course, the United States, England, and France) ; now he would see Austria, the Balkan countries, Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt. He intended to return to Paris by way of Italy, touching at cities he had not visited before.

“On our way back, we shall visit Venice, " he wrote in his letter of October 14 to Sister Christine. "It may be that I shall give a few lectures in Paris after my return, but they will be in English with an interpreter. I have no time any more, nor the power to study a new language at my age' I am an old man, isn't it?'[25]But Swamiji did not, as we know, return to Paris; nor did any of his later plans to leave India again—to go to England with Mrs. Sevier or to Japan with a Mr. Okakura—take shape. This trip was his leave-taking of the world at large.

During his last days in Paris Swamiji appears to have stayed at the home of his friend Gerald Nobel, where Mrs. Bull's companion Marian Briggs was also spending a few days. It is through Mrs. Briggs's eyes that we see Swamiji meeting, not for the first time, the brilliant and charming Hiram Maxim, with whom, as with Patrick Geddes, he had had many long and no doubt far-ranging talks. In a letter Mrs. Briggs wrote to Mrs. Bull on October 22 from 66 rue Ampere, we find Swamiji and Maxim going at it for hours on end and, surely, to their hearts' content.

Yesterday [she wrote] Mr. Maxim, who is wild over Swami—and who can be most useful to him—took us all to meet a Russian—Zarahoff [?] his name was—and he is giving Miss MacLeod many letters in Constantinople. From there we all went to Mr. Achingleus [?] to a lovely lunch. We sat down to the table about one o'clock and did not rise again till after four—Swami and Mr. Maxim talking all the time.[26]

Earlier in this same letter Mrs. Briggs mentioned that on the day following the lunch Swamiji was "sitting by the open fire reading Mr. Maxim's manuscript." What manuscript this was, one does not know, but it is very likely that the two friends met once again to discuss the ideas it contained and to take a final leave of each other.

There was very little time left. Swamiji made a last tour of the Paris Exposition, and one wonders if, as he did so, he thought of the World's Fair at Chicago and the Parliament of Religions, at which, seven years earlier, he had ignited the consciousness of the West. Did he remember how he had stood before a multitude of people and set them all cheering with his simple "Sisters and Brothers of America"? He and the West had met at the World's Fair at Chicago; at the International Exposition in Paris they said farewell. Both fairs had heralded the entry of Western civilization into an era that would bring changes in man's individual and collective life on earth far beyond anyone's most optimistic, most pessimistic, most fantastic dream. Swamiji had walked through both fairs: in the door of one, so to speak, and out the door of the other; people had turned to stare at so much majesty, at so much strangeness. Yet he was as much a part of the coming age as were the awesome scientific exhibits and displays that foreshadowed it and that demanded a new type of human being to match their power, to develop their potential good, to control their latent evil, and, in the end, to transcend them utterly. Swamiji was that new type. By his example he showed man what he must become, and by his precepts he taught him how to attain that unprecedented, theretofore undreamed, stature and dimension.

As he walked now for the last time through the grounds of the Paris Exposition did he think of such things? One does not know. Possibly his thoughts moved far beyond the world and his mission in it; or possibly he left an immense heartache not for mankind's agonies but for its pathetic prides and glories.

It was a dreary day, overcast and rainy. Many of the temporary buildings were being demolished. "Everything on earth has an end," he wrote in his Memoirs. "Once again I took a round over the Paris Exposition today.... The breaking up of the Exhibition is a big affair. The streets of this heaven on earth, the Eden-like Paris, will be filled with knee deep mud and mortar. With the exception of one or two main buildings, all the houses and their parts are but a display of wood and rags and whitewashing —just as the whole world is! And when they are demolished, the lime-dust flies about and is suffocating; rags and sand etc. make the streets exceedingly dirty; and, if it rains in addition, it is an awful mess.'[27]

2

On the overcast evening of October 24, Swamiji and his party boarded the famed Orient Express, one of the great trains of the era. Their trip was to be as unspectacular in event as it was undramatic in motive. But according to the New York World, and perhaps according to Mme Calve as well, it was to be the trip of the century. On November 11, a Sunday, the World printed a full-page story steeped in pathos, glamour, malice, falsehood, and the "mystery of the East," all of which were so dear to journalists of the day. The text surrounded a large line drawing of a prettified Calve seated daintily atop an ornately caparisoned camel, which haughty beast is being escorted across the desert by a Bedouin; the Pyramids and the Sphinx are seen in the background. In the bottom left-hand corner is a small photograph of Swamiji in a round frame with tassels, and in the upper right-hand corner is a similarly framed photograph of Mme Calve. The extraordinary banner headlines and text (some portions of which I have quoted earlier) read in part:

STRANGEST OF PILGRIMAGES-CALVE'S
FLIGHT FOR HEALTH TO THE MYSTIC EAST.

*             *                 *

Brilliant Singer Abandons Her Stage Career and Seeks the Shrines of Buddha with Mrs. Francis H. Leggett of ,New York, and Princess Demidoff, Under Charge of the Swami Vivekananda, Whose Occult Soirees at the Paris Home of the Leggetts Have Been a Social Sensation.

Smitten by Disease for Which the Surgeon's Knife Is the Only Cure, the Greatest of Operatic Carmens Rebelled with All the Ardor of Her Passionate Nature, and .Now Seeks in the Mystic Lore of the East Relief from the Terrible Death that Menaces Her. By Sailing yacht She Goes to Smyrna; She May Sing Before the Sultan; She Will Cross the Desert Upon Camel-Back and Will Reach the Snowy Himalayas Only After Long and Strange Wanderings, for Every Phase of Which She Has Appropriate Costumes.

(Special Correspondent of the Sunday World.)

Paris, Nov. 1

Mme. Calve, a fugitive from the surgeon's knife, has broken all her operatic contracts and turned her back on Christendom to immerse herself in the mystery of thc East.

Greatest of Carmens, incarnation of passion on the stage, swayed absolutely by the impulses of her warm Southern blood and artist's temperament, the terror of physical pain and possible death has driven her into thc remote places of the world, there to seek the aid of occult forces against the malady for which Western science can prescribe nothing better than the knife.

Her guide, philosopher and friend in this remarkable expedition is the Swami Vivekananda, the learned and handsome Hindoo monk who lectured and made converts in this country during the year of the World's Fair.

Doubtless as these lines are being read the self exiled prima donna and her swarthy tutor will be journeying on camels across the desert from Smyrna to Jerusalem, attended with all the pomp and magnificence of a modern Queen of Sheba, for that is part of the odd programme.

With her and the Swami are the Princess Demidoff of Russia, Mrs. Francis H. Leggett of New York and her sister, Miss MacLeod. It would not be easy to imagine a stranger assortment of human beings. The story of the Swami Vivekananda and his influence over the Leggetts and how the Leggetts came into association with such a mighty social power as Princess Demidoff and such a queen of music as Calve—this story of modern Paris, with its climax to the tune of camel bells, is worthy of Balzac.

First as to the Swami. He went to America with all the prestige of the highest Hindu caste and all the fascination of a polished man of the world.

The Swami lectured and talked in Chicago, and there was no more picturesque figure at the congress of religions, and none round which the ladies thronged so eagerly.

Picture a sturdy figure of majestic mien draped in an orange-red robe—the habit of his priestly order-and crowned with an elaborate turban and you have the Swami Vivekananda.

That one caught a glimpse of American trousers beneath the robe did not disillusionize his admirers of the susceptible sex. Indeed they seldom looked beyond his eyes....

His male converts were fewer, but some of them were almost as enthusiastic as the women. The most zealous was Francis H. Leggett, the rich grocer.

Not less ardent than Mr. Leggett in pursuit of the Vedanta Philosophy was his fiancee, Mrs. William Sturgis, of Chicago, a beautiful widow many years his junior, who was formerly Miss McLeod, of New York.

Mr. Leggett was anxious that the marriage ceremony between Mrs. Sturgis and himself should be performed by the Swami, but he waived this desire as a concession to American ideas of propriety.

At the earnest request of the bride and bridegroom the Swami accompanied them on their wedding tour, and from that day to this they had religiously refrained from eating red meat and other foods pronounced by the Swami unfavorable to the higher spiritual development....

[The correspondent here tells of Mrs. Walden, and then continues:]

Into this singular brew of humanity [at the Leggetts' Paris house] was projected Calve.

Calve, the creature of impulse, the daughter of earth, the passionate, heedless, gypsy-souled songstress, all temperament, all fierce emotion, greatest of Carmens because she is Carmen.

Heedless no longer. Poor, tortured, Frightened Calve, all her joys in life turned into terror of the surgeon's knife!

The fiat had gone forth. Fear pursued her night and day. Her very vitality, her very lack of self discipline were her enemies. Her fancy pictured an operation in colors of unimaginable horror....

The article goes on in this vein for another long column, telling how the party set sail from Paris on a chartered yacht bound for Naples, then Athens, then Smyrna—the whole thing the concoction of some fevered journalist, and believed word by word, one can be sure, by many a fevered reader.

But let us return to the real world and the real trip. The assortment of human beings who actually comprised Calve's party (or, as I shall call it, Swamiji's party) was stranger than dreamed of by even the correspondent of the New York World. In place of Princess Demidoff and Mrs. Francis Leggett were the far more odd (from a journalistic viewpoint at least) Jules Bois, the then famous delver into medieval satanism, necromancy, and the like, and Pure Hyacinthe (Charles Loyson) the renowned ex-Carmelite monk, and his wife. (M. and Mme Loyson were not, actually, members of the party; they were, rather, co-travelers. The "very aged" Pere Hyacinthe, as Swamiji writes in his Memoirs, was on his way to Jerusalem "to try to establish cordial relations among the Christians and Mussalmans.")[28]

As has been mentioned in an earlier chapter, Swamiji's "Memoirs of European Travel" (or, in the original Bengali, Parivrajak) was begun when he left India in June of 1899. In its first part, as we have seen, Swamiji takes his reader from the mouth of the Hooghly River, where his ship set sail, to London, where it finally docked, giving along the way a feast of information. The second half of the Memoirs was written for the most part in Constantinople and describes the trip through Europe. Again Swamiji fills the pages (some thirty-two of them, including an addenda) .with information and penetrating comment from the endlessly varied and voluminous library of his mind. As far as I know, these pages constitute our only source of detailed information about the journey, from its beginning in Paris up to the travelers' departure from Greece.

The Orient Express was a magnificently furnished and fitted train-de-Luxe, consisting from Paris to Vienna of five cars-—wo sleepers, a diner, and two baggage cars—and for the remainder of the journey of three, having dropped one sleeper and one baggage car in Vienna. Its two-berth compartments were paneled in inlaid mahogany and were luxuriously carpeted and appointed; its seats were upholstered in velvet, with antimacassars of fine Brussels lace; its windows were draped in red damask; its dining car gleamed with crystal and silver; its cuisine was epicurean. This embodiment of imperial elegance, its teakwood sides painted a royal blue and emblazoned with a coat of arms, swept at a stately forty miles an hour through France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, slowing to a more cautious thirty miles an hour through Serbia, Bulgaria, and the European part of Turkey to the Bosporus—a journey, all told, of 1750 miles, during the course of which the cars changed locomotives twenty-one times.

On the first night (October 24) the Orient Express passed through eastern France, and much of the next day through the southern part of Germany. In the summer of 1896, Swamiji had, as he writes, seen Germany thoroughly. He knew its tone and feel, so unlike that of France. "Germany, after France," he wrote, "produces quite a jarring effect.... On one side is the artistic workmanship of the dark-haired, comparatively short-statured, luxurious, highly civilized French people, to whom art means life; and on the other, the clumsy daubing, the unskillful manipulation, of tawny-haired, tall, gigantic German. . . . The German muscle can go on striking small blows untiringly, till death; the French have tender, feminine bodies, but when they do concentrate and strike, it is a sledgehammer blow, and is irresistible. "

But heavy-handed, plodding, and persistent, Germany was the dominant power in Europe. " 'On the one hand the moon is setting,' " Swamiji wrote (quoting from Kalidasa's Shakuntala), "—the world-encompassing France is slowly consuming herself in the fire of contemplated retribution—while on the other hand, centralised, young and mighty Germany has begun her upward march above the horizon with rapid strides.... Germany is fast multiplying her population, and is exceptionally hardy. Today Germany is the dictator to all Europe, her place is above all! . . . The German army is the foremost in reputation, and Germany has vowed to become foremost in her navy also. German manufacture of commodities has beaten even England!'[29]

The train reached the frontiers of Austria in the afternoon of October 25 and that evening, Vienna, where—after the splendid disembarkment of two archdukes, who were met by a guard of officers "in laced uniforms" and soldiers "with feathered caps"—Swamiji's party was allowed to alight. Their luggage was searched For tobacco (a procedure gone through at every border and, presumably, at any point of destination) ; they paid whatever duty was charged and took a waiting carriage to a hotel, where reservations had been made in advance.[30] (The Loysons did not stop over in Vienna but went straight through to Constantinople.)

In their memoirs, Swamiji and Miss MacLeod differ in regard to the length of time spent at various places. According to Miss MacLeod, they stayed in Vienna for two days; according to Swamiji, for three days, which, he wrote, "were sufficient to tire me." Two days or three, they were spent for the most part in sight-seeing—going through the Schonbrunn Palace, the Museum, the Art Gallery. Of such places, Swamiji enjoyed most the Scientific Museum, "an institution of great benefit to the student." But there was nothing, perhaps, that was not of interest to him and upon which he could not throw a good deal of light.

To travel with Swamiji must have been an education in itself. To him the past was a living part of the present, and in the present he clearly read the future. Indeed, he seemed to see man's history on earth as a vast, animated tapestry of interrelated figures, some dark, some bright, some seething with vitality, some lying for the time quiescent, others charging over the edge of destruction. His informed analysis of European politics and power struggles, of trends and undercurrents, was as lucid and detached as though he were viewing his age from some far future time. The Schonbrunn Palace, for instance, put him in mind of the whole pageant of Austrian history—its powerful, prestigious, and glamorous past, its declining present, and its probable eclipse in the future. The Palace put Swamiji in mind also of Napoleon, who, though asserting that he would originate a mighty dynasty of his own, was yet careful to marry the daughter of the Emperor of Austria. And thus, Swamiji writes, "that hero fell into this abyss of family prestige"—a Hapsburg abyss that swallowed his only son, the "Young Eagle," holding him virtually a prisoner in the Palace until, brokenhearted, he died. This was l'Aiglon, the hero of Edmond Rostand's play, over whose tragic fate Sarah Bernhardt was currently making all Paris weep.

Swamiji, whose eyes saw things precisely as they were, had no illusions in regard to the state of Western civilization. While many idealists of that period were happy in the thought that the rationality, moral uprightness, and general excellence of European culture precluded the very possibility of war, he saw that a large-scale war was not only possible but probable. Europe was, in fact, armed to the teeth with all manner of modern weapons, including Hiram Maxim's deadly machine gun; conscription (except in England) was universal. "Throughout Europe there is a craze for soldiers—soldiers everywhere," he wrote. "In the present times, a huge wave of nationalism is sweeping over Europe, where people speaking the same tongue, professing the same religion and belonging to the same race want to unite together. Wherever such union is being effectively accomplished, there is great power being manifested; and where this is impossible, death is inevitable. After the death of the present Austrian Emperor (Franz Josef I, who died in 1916], Germany will surely try to absorb the German-speaking portion of the Austrian Empire—and Russia and others are sure to oppose her; so there is the possibility of a dreadful war.'[31]It was a prophecy fulfilled in its essential points to the letter.

"Vienna," Swamiji wrote, "is a small city after the model of Paris." Yet Paris was Paris, and no other city could compare. "To visit Europe after Paris is like tasting an inferior preparation after a sumptuous feast—that dress, and style of eating, that same fashion everywhere; throughout the land you meet with that same black suit, and the same queer hat—disgusting! Besides, you have clouds above, and this swarm of people with black hats and black coats below—one feels suffocated, as it were.'[32]In the respectable uniformity of Europe he saw inevitable decay, a fate worse, perhaps, and more irreparable, than war. "It is a law of nature," he wrote, "that such [samenesses] are the symptoms of death." India, he pointed out, provided an example of people following the same customs for centuries and gradually becoming thereby mere automata. "The Europeans too will share the same fate! '... They will become like so many machines, will gradually tread the path their forefathers have trod,' and as an inevitable consequence of that-they will rot and die!'[33]

On the evening of October 28, the party again boarded the Orient Express and traveled for two nights and a day through the Balkan countries to Constantinople. The train stopped for a time, allowing the passengers to alight, in various cities along the way, such as Budapest, which Swamiji found "very neat and beautiful," and Belgrade. But for the most part, sightseeing was done from the train windows. The ragged, mud-hut poverty of the Balkan countryside reminded Swamiji of India-though in some respects he found it worse. "As they are Christians," he wrote, "they must have a number of hogs; and a single hog will make a place more dirty than two hundred barbarous men will be able to do.'[34]Yet this poverty was worth the freedom it was paying for. "Freedom with but one meal a day and tattered rags on, is a million times better than slavery in gold chains. A slave suffers the miseries of hell both here and hereafter.'[35]It was clear to Swamiji, however, that the precious, hard-won and costly freedom of the Balkan countries was to be short-lived. "After much bloodshed," he wrote of Serbia and Bulgaria, "they have thrown off the yoke of Turkey; but along with this they have got a serious disadvantage—they must construct their army after the European model, otherwise the existence of not one of them is safe for a day. Of course, sooner or later they will all one day be absorbed by Russia.'[36]

In the Hungarian peasant he saw the serpent-worshiping nomads of Turkestan, those ancient tribes of central Asia that had moved down into India centuries earlier, conquering the land and absorbing the religion of Buddhism, and whose homeland had in turn been permeated with Buddhism and Hinduism. Later, other tribes from the area north of Kashmir had moved west, one section going north of the Caspian Sea into Europe, where they had founded the kingdom of Hungary and had become Christians; another section wandering along the south shore of the Caspian into Persia and Asia Minor, where in time they had become Mohammedans. The latter were to invade India in hordes, destroying the ancient culture that they had once, in forgotten days, revered and made their own. Here was a tale of many strands, which Swamiji not only wrote of in his Memoirs but perhaps brought to life for his traveling companions as the Orient Express crossed Hungary, in whose Christianity, he said, "one may even now trace on research the strata of serpent worship and of Buddhism.'[37]

Swamiji's Memoirs, as published in the Udbodhan, end with him discovering in the Balkan countries—to his surprise and no doubt to his delight—chilies so hot as "to beat even your Madrasis.'[38]The remaining portion, as published in the Complete Works, consists, the editor tells us, in "jottings . . . found among Swamiji's papers." It is from these addenda that one can follow him in Constantinople and thence to Athens.

If I have calculated correctly, the Orient Express arrived in Constantinople (now Istanbul) on the morning of Tuesday, October 30. How many days Swamiji and his party remained here is not certain. According to the Memoirs, their stay seems to have lasted only two or three days; but according to Miss MacLeod, they stopped over for nine days—and this, I would think, is the more probable length of time.

That ancient center of two great empires—Byzantine and, later, Ottoman—with its layers of religious history and culture, could not but have been of interest to Swamiji, yet his notes tell very little of his stay there. On their arrival, the travelers had "great trouble" with the octroi, or local tax officers, who, searching for seditious literature as well as for tobacco, entered into a quarrel with Mme Calve and Jules Bois over their books. In the end, two books were confiscated. That matter settled, the party took a carriage and saw the town—old and new. "In the evening," Swamiji writes, "we went to visit Woods Pasha.'[39] (One has been tempted to identify this Woods Pasha with Jules Bois. It has been found, however, that a real person named Woods Pasha was living at the time in Constantinople. Although all we know of him is that he had at least a faint connection with India, this tends to establish him as the person Swamiji went to see.) Next, one finds Swamiji and Miss MacLeod hiring a boat on the extremely cold and windy second day of their visit and crossing the Bosporus in order to visit Pere Hyacinthe who, with his wife, had arrived in Constantinople ahead of the others and who was staying at the American College of Girls at Scutari (now Uskudar). Swamiji and the crusading ex-monk had a long talk (surely in French) about American colleges, which, in view of the setting, was a natural enough subject to have picked.

"The police," Swamiji wrote, "have prohibited Pere Hyacinthe's lectures; so I too cannot lecture.'[40]But one learns from A Bosporus Adventure by Mary Mills Patrick (which is quoted in "Swami Vivekananda and Pere Hyacinthe Loyson" by Swami Vidyatmananda) that the government did not prevent the renowned and immensely popular Pere Hyacinthe from lecturing at the college.[41]Nor, accordingly, did Swamiji feel reluctant to lecture on Hinduism in the college chapel on Friday, November 2. This last piece of information comes from an entry in Pere Hyacinthe's journal, portions of which are quoted for the first time in Swami Vidyatmananda's article.[42]

Additional information about Swamiji's lecture at Scutari comes from a small travel diary of Mme Calve's, in which (as Swami Vidyatmananda informs us in his article "Swami Vivekananda in the Near East, 1900")[43] she noted that Jules Bois also spoke that day, "[giving] his lecture after that of the Swami and of Loyson, on the same subject: three philosophers: Carlyle, Emmerson [sic] and Nietsche." According to a further notation by Calve, Swamiji spoke (very likely in French despite his protests) also of Descartes and Spinoza. She wrote in part:

He explains to us Descartes, Spinoza, Nietsche. The latter wants to aid the elite, the superman, to develop, [thereby] preventing the unenlightened from killing a Christ or a Galileo, creating thus an aristocracy of the intelligence. Spinoza—idealistic pantheism—God in everything. Philosophy deals with the romance of the soul of the universe.[44]

This was hardly Hinduism. But perhaps, in keeping with Loyson's "universal religion," the assigned theme for the lectures that day was the comparison of diverse lines of world thought. In any case, Swamiji's talk appears to have been philosophical and scholarly in tone and content, such that Mme CaIve could not (it would seem) entirely follow it. We learn even less from the memoirs of a Madame Halide Edib, who had been in the audience as a young student and devotee of Pere Hyacinthe. "I was captivated by [the Brahmanist's] artistic manner " she wrote, "but even at that age I could feel that he had a certain quality of make-up and that he appealed to one's senses rather than to one's head and heart-the opposite of all that was so evident in Pere Hyacinthe's addresses.'[45]Of what Swamiji said we are given not a hint. Unfortunately, Emma Calve's and Halide Edib's are the only known eyewitness accounts of what was very likely a unique lecture. Where else did Swamiji speak at any length on Western philosophers and philosophy?

According to the Life, Swamiji spoke also in Constantinople: "Several private conversaziones and drawing-room lectures were .arranged for him at which he spoke on the religion of Vedanta to select audiences." Some of these talks were perhaps arranged by the French charge d'affaires, whom, the Life tells us, Swamiji met, together with other notables, through the introductory letters of Hiram Maxim[46]—and those, perhaps, of Mr. Maxim's Russian friend Zarahoff.

Swamiji was evidently in good spirits in Constantinople. "Dear Alberta," he wrote from there on a picture postcard, "How are you? I am having a grand Turkish time, Yours, Vivekananda.'[47]He chose other postcards also and, like any traveler, wrote brief messages on them, letting his friends know he thought of them. Aside from the card for Alberta, we know of three others: two for Sister Christine and one for Sister Nivedita. Those to Christine (the first from Constantinople and the second, dated November 11, from Athens) read: "Dear Christine—I am having good time here so I hope you also are having in Detroit-yours t[rul]y Vivekananda'[48] and "Great fun I write without the possibility of being written to as I am changing place all the time. How do you do? Vivekananda'[49]For Nivedita he chose a card in Constantinople that pictured a group of dervishes. His message: "Dear Margot—the blessings of the howling dervishes go with you—yours in the Lord—Vivekananda. P.S. All love to Mrs. Bull. V'[50](These words, few though they were, filled Nivedita with joy. "Swami's dear 'blessings of the howling dervishes' were the first he ever sent me without [my] asking," she wrote from London on November 15 to Miss MacLeod, "and made me feel the happiness of indeed being a child.")[51]

As far as we know, those postcards—all, surely, bringing joy to those to whom he sent them—were Swamiji's only correspondence during the entire trip, except for a published letter written from Port Tewfick, to which I shall refer later. One could, of course, call his Memoirs a correspondence of sorts, and indeed the writing of this long travel-letter for the Udbodhan must have left him little time in Constantinople for anything else.

Yet he had time to talk (in French) with Pere Hyacinthe, as we learn from excerpts from the latter's diary, which, as noted earlier, have been made available to us by Swami Vidyatmananda in his article "Swami Vivekananda and Pere Hyacinthe Loyson." I quote here briefly from Loyson's diary, in which he either paraphrased or (as it would sometimes seem) directly and accurately quoted Swamiji's words:

October 31, 1900

[Swamiji:] . . . "In America the races are divided even in the church, which ought to unite them, whites and blacks. Islam brings them together. From this standpoint [i.e., the mixture of races], what one sees in the streets and mosques of Constantinople is beautiful. The Turks practice equality and the brotherhood of man. The four castes of India—priests, warriors, merchants, and workers—represent the sequence of history. Europe and America find themselves in the epoch of the basest of castes, that of merchants, who produce nothing but live by lying and stealing, and will be replaced by the reign, perhaps terrible, of the workers. Later, social harmony will be reborn, and there will prevail a superior fusion of the four castes."

November 1, 1900

. . . "It is the responsibility of men like you," the Swami said to me, "to hurry up these times [of social harmony]. Let them arrive by pacific ways and not as a result of catastrophes."

November 3, 1900

[Swamiji:] . . . According to the law of the superior castes, marriage consists in a rigorous monogamy: a single wife and the same for always, even after death. The marriage act is sublime, sacred; one prepares oneself for it by prayer and fasting. The great religious duties—pilgrimages, for example—can be carried out only by man and wife together, not by widowers or widows, or the unmarried. The king, at his investiture, may not take his place on the throne except in company with the queen, she like him having received the royal anointing. If he mounts alone, he is not king.[52]

As Swami Vidyatmananda has pointed out, Swamiji's remarks in that last entry must have been his indirect and compassionate way of reassuring the erstwhile monk about his marriage. Indeed, his words were more than a reassurance; coming as they did from the lips of one so close to God, they were a kind of absolution and blessing—or, if one prefers, a breaking of bondage—and one feels sure that the saintly old man (who up till then had been nagged by a sense of transgression) was at last set free.

According to a cautious notation in the Brahmavadin of December 1900, Swamiji "appears to have left Constantinople on the 10th November for Athens.'[53]And from the Addenda to his Memoirs one learns a few details about the trip to Greece. For, instance, the travelers, who still numbered four (Pere Hyacinthe and his wife remained in Constantinople), left the city at ten in the morning (Swamiji does not mention the date) and sailed on placid waters for a day and a night across the Sea of Marmara, putting in once at an island to visit a Greek Orthodox monastery. They sailed on through the Dardanelles and into the Aegean, where, on the shore of another island, they came upon the ruins of a temple, dedicated, Swamiji guessed, to the god of the sea. From 'there they sailed to Port Piraeus (near Athens), where the voyage ended.

The party stayed in Greece for three or four days (Swamiji says three, Miss MacLeod says four), seeing all that should be seen: the Acropolis, the Parthenon, the Temple of Zeus, the Theater of Dionysus. On a separate day, they visited the town of Eleusis, where in ancient times the sacred rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries had been celebrated. During his visits to the Louvre in Paris, Swamiji had learned a great deal about Greek art and its different periods—a knowledge which must have added to his and his companions' pleasure. The wonderful talks would have gone on; there was simply no end to what Swamiji knew, and all of it he could make fascinating.

In a brief unpublished passage of her unpublished papers Mme Calve relived. those unforgettable hours—"the best in her life." Quoting decades later from a 1900 diary, she wrote:

To live close to the Swami is a perpetual source of inspiration; we live in an intense spiritual atmosphere. For him every occasion inspires parables, quotations, ranging from Hindu mythology to the profoundest philosophy. Sometimes he is gay, full of fun, ready with rapid repartee, joking and laughing like a child. He is inexhaustible in telling us interesting stories. He possesses a voice like a cello, with low vibrations that one cannot forget, and which fills both lecture halls and hearts.[54]

Possibly it was on November 13 or 14 that the party left Athens, boarding the Russian ship the Czar and setting sail for Egypt. At this point the Memoirs come to an end; but it is just at this point that Emma Calve's published autobiography, My Life, takes up the story, giving us a glimpse (not as intimate as the above paragraph, but informing nonetheless) of Swamiji in Cairo. This portion of her book that tells something of the trip during which Swamiji was her guest can also be found in Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda,[55] but I have taken the following extract from the Saturday Evening Post of September 9, 1922, where it was first published, translated by Rosamond Gilder from the French:

With the swami and some of his friends and followers I went upon a most remarkable trip, through Turkey, Egypt and Greece. Our party included the swami; Father Hyacinthe Loyson; his wife, a Bostonian; Miss McL., of Chicago, ardent swamist and charming, enthusiastic woman; and myself, the song bird of the troupe. [Miss MacLeod was more of New York than of Chicago; and Mme Calve forgets that Jules Bois was also a member of the party. I mention these inaccuracies only that the record may be kept straight.]

What a pilgrimage it was! Science, philosophy and history had no secrets from the swami. I listened with all my ears to the wise and learned discourse that went on around me. I did not attempt to join in their arguments, but I sang on all occasions, as is my custom. [It is said that Swamiji liked her to sing for him the rousing "Marseillaise."] The swami would discuss all sorts of questions with Father Loyson, who was a scholar and a theologian of repute. It was interesting to see that the swami was able to give the exact text of a document, the date of a church council, when Father Loyson himself was not certain....

When we were in Greece we visited Eleusis. He explained its mysteries to us and led us from altar to altar, from temple to temple, describing the processions that were held in each place, intoning the ancient prayers, showing us the priestly rites.

Later, in Egypt, one unforgettable night, he led us again into the past, speaking to us in mystic, moving words, under the shadow of the silent Sphinx.

The swami was always absorbingly interesting, even under ordinary conditions. He fascinated his hearers with his magic tongue. Again and again we would miss our train, sitting calmly in a station waiting room, enthralled by his discourse and quite oblivious to the lapse of time. Even Miss McL., the most sensible among us, would forget the hour and we would in consequence find ourselves stranded far from our destination at the most inconvenient times and places.

One day we lost our way in Cairo. I suppose we had been talking too intently. At any rate, we found ourselves in a squalid, ill-smelling street, where half clad women lolled from windows and sprawled on doorsteps.

The swami noticed nothing until a particularly noisy group of women on a bench in the shadow of a dilapidated building began laughing and calling to him. One of the ladies of our party tried to hurry us along, but the swami detached himself gently from our group and approached the women on the bench.

"Poor children!" he said. "Poor creatures! They have put their divinity in their beauty. Look at them now!" [According to Mme Calve's account of this incident to her friend Mme Paul Verdier, Swamiji's words were: "Poor child, she has forgotten who she is and has put her divinity into her body."]

He began to weep, as Jesus might have done before the woman taken in adultery. The women were silenced and abashed. One of them leaned forward and kissed the hem of his robe, murmuring brokenly in Spanish, "Hombre de Dios, hombre de Dios!" (Man of God!) Another, with a sudden gesture of modesty and fear, threw her arm in front of her face as though she would screen her shrinking soul from those pure eyes.

This marvelous journey proved to be almost the last occasion on which I was to see the swami. Shortly afterward he announced that he was to return to his own country. He felt that his end was approaching and he wished to go back to the community of which he was director and where he had spent his youth. . . ,

It should be mentioned that Emma Calve and Josephine MacLeod each told Mme Paul Verdier, who knew them both well, more details in regard to Swamiji's departure for his motherland than are to be found in their respective memoirs. I quote directly from the late Mme Verdier's notes, which she generously supplied:

According to what both Josephine MacLeod and Calve told me, Calve met the party in Egypt where she had an engagement to sing. It is possible that she had left the party somewhere en route [probably in Greece], and joined it again in Egypt. When she arrived, Miss MacLeod told her that she would find Swamiji in a sad, depressed mood. Calve asked what the matter was, and Tantine said, "He wants to go back to India." So CaIve saw Swamiji and found him sad. Calve was very outspoken and free. She asked him why he felt sad, and he answered that he wanted to go back to India to be with his brother monks. At these words, Calve answered, "Why, Swamiji, if it is only that, I'll pay your fare; it is nothing! But why do you want to leave us?"

Then his eyes filled with tears, he was so moved by her spontaneous generosity. (She was very generous, like the great artist that she was.) And he told her then—these are her words to me—" 'I want to go back to India to die and want to be with my brothers.' " She was aghast and said something like—"But Swamiji you cannot die, we need you"—I forget her exact words. Then he said he would die the 4th of July....

Later Calve accepted a singing engagement which took her over the world. She told me that she particularly wanted to go to India, as she wanted to check herself on the date of Swamiji's death. She found that just as he had told her (so she said) he died on the 4th of July.[56]

Whatever reason Swamiji may have had for returning to India—and there appears to have been more than one reason—his decision had been an unexpected one. At Luxor and Karnak, up the Nile, lay the ruins of ancient Thebes, which Miss MacLeod wanted to visit. But Swamiji was not tempted. He longed suddenly for his motherland, and Joe, as she later told her niece Frances Leggett, who wrote of the incident in Late and Soon, made no effort to detain him.[57]Coming to Joe one morning in Cairo, Swamiji said to her, "I must leave immediately. I must go back to India." And, as she later told it, she had answered with a full, though regretful heart, "Yes, go." It was after this, of course, that Mme Calve, also with a full heart, made his return possible.

(That is the way Miss MacLeod looked back upon this occasion, and the way she wrote of it in her memoirs. But as she related it at the time, it was not so much a full heart as lack of energy that prevented her from detaining Swamiji. There is no doubt, however, that her heart was full, for such was her nature. Seeing his desire to return to India, she would not have tried to detain him, even if she could have—which possibility is indeed highly doubtful. Swamiji was suddenly certain of his next move; nothing would have kept him from making it.)

It is said that he had a strong intuition that Captain Sevier was dying and that this made him anxious to hurry home. More probably, for Captain Sevier had actually died almost a month earlier, belated news of his illness caught up with the travelers in Egypt, and Swamiji knew through ordinary channels that the time was short. Captain James Henry Sevier and his wife, Charlotte, were the English disciples of whom he had written to Sister Nivedita in July of 1897 (before her first journey to India) : "the Seviers are the only English people who do not hate the natives.... Mr. and Mrs. Sevier are the only persons who did not come to patronise us.'[58]They had gone to India with Swamiji at the end of 1896, and there they had remained, dedicating their lives to his work. In 1898 they had bought the land at Mayavati where the Advaita Ashrama was to be located and had lived there, improving the grounds and helping to establish the center. Captain Sevier (he was a retired army captain) had died on October 28, 1900, the day Swamiji had left Vienna. But there was no way for Swamiji to know that he was already too late.

There was perhaps another, more compelling reason for his longing to return to India—a reason to which he had given words months earlier when he had written to Joe from Alameda: "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.'[59]Had not that voice gone on calling? Now, so close to Asia—the air of the East surrounding him—Swamiji could care for nothing but to turn his steps homeward.

A heretofore unpublished letter from Miss MacLeod to Mrs. Bull speaks of his sudden decision and departure. The letter was dated "Thanksgiving," which fell that year on November 29. It read in part:

Thanksgiving on The Nile.

Dearest S. S—

Your postal card from Paris reached me just now, telling of Mrs. Alcock's illness. [Mrs. Alcock was a relative of Mrs. Bull's] . . . I am alone on the Nile. Swamiji returned to India on Sunday last—& is due there Dec. 6th the full-moon—

He was eager to go—& I was too poorly to urge him to stayeven Luxor & Karnac failed to induce him to remain overMlle. Calve is in Cairo-but joins me in a day or so-to go to Assouan, the first Cataract-

I may remain in Southern Egypt some time—I have no plans.I am somewhat better but feel it will take the entire winter in quiet to recoup—

The Nile service under Cook is delightful—we are only 14. passengers—taking 12 days to go up to the first Cataract —have some excursion on donkeys every day....

Mr. Bois is in Luxor, & goes to Palestine, before returning to Paris. We all had just one month together

I had a letter From Mr. Sturdy.

Do write me some news—gossip—anything.!! Isn't that a good sign [of returning health] ?

Swamiji was not very well—had another heart attack —& was radiant about going to India—bless him—I've had a sweet letter from Margot.

Lovingly as ever[60]Jojo

As far as I know, Miss MacLeod's information that Swamiji had had a heart attack—and this not the first—is the only word we have on the subject. But she mentions these attacks so casually that one can barely believe they were serious, if they were heart attacks at all. In any event, Swamiji does not appear to have been particularly ill at this point in his trip.

(It should be mentioned, however, that there is no known photograph of Swamiji at this period by which we might guess at his state of health. The two photographs sometimes said to have been taken in Constantinople and Cairo, perhaps because he wears in both a fezlike hat, were actually taken in England in the fall of 1895 and subsequently published in a London newspaper, with credit given to a local photographic studio.)

It would seem that Swamiji traveled overland from Cairo, or from nearby EI Giza, to Port Tewfick (or Tawfiq) near Suez at the south end of the Suez Canal. From there he was to board a steamer to Bombay (the Italian Rubattino, coming from Naples). The ship, as it happened, was late, but inasmuch as there was some confusion about his ticket, the delay was fortunate. "Mr. Gaze's agent gave me all the wrong directions," he wrote from Port Tewfick to Miss MacLeod. "In the first place, there was nobody here to tell me a thing, not to speak of receiving me. Secondly, I was not told that I had to change my Gaze's ticket for a steamer one at the agent's office, and that was at Suez, not here. It was good one way, therefore, that the steamer was late; so I went to see the agent of the steamer and he told me to exchange Gaze's pass for a regular ticket. I hope to board the steamer some time tonight. I am well and happy and am enjoying the fun immensely. How is Mademoiselle? Where is Bois? Give my everlasting gratitude and good wishes to Mme Calve. She is a good lady.'[61]

As far as we know, Swamiji did indeed board the ship that night and sail away down the Gulf of Suez into the Red Sea, headed for home at last. The date was November 26, 1900.

His departure astonished everyone. But the ripple of news spread over the world as slowly as a ship's passage; it would not reach India before Swamiji himself.

3

For Swamiji the voyage of eleven or twelve days to India was uneventful, but for at least one of his fellow passengers, a nonplussed American missionary by the name of Reeves Calkins, it was a voyage not soon to be forgotten. Mr. Calkins's memories of his talks with Swamiji and of Swamiji's easy squelching of an ill-advised conspiracy of passengers to get the better of him in debate can be found in Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, there reprinted from the March 1923 issue of Prabuddha Bharata, which magazine had taken the article from a Bombay journal. It is a valuable account, for Swamiji's gigantic personality bursts a11 the bounds of Mr. Calkins's prejudice. Despite himself, the missionary portrayed the great soul and vast heart of the Hindu monk. One sees brilliance flashing from him in debate; his answers to those who attempted to "draw" him "sparkled with epigram and apt quotation"; at the table "his conversation was like Ganga at high flood." But at other times —walking on the deck at night in friendship with the missionary—Swamiji seems to have been barely able to keep his mind on a level where talk of any kind was possible. "The mysticism of Vivekananda was a fascination and wonder," Mr. Calkins wrote. "For it was not affected. When our conversation touched, as it was bound to, on the hidden things of the spirit, his heavy eyelids would droop slowly and he wandered, even in my presence, into some mystic realm where I was not invited.'[62]

The Rubattino, late at Port Tewfick, was no doubt late at Bombay as well, docking perhaps on December 6 or 7. The connections with the train to Calcutta, the Bombay Howrah Express, were not good, and thus Swamiji had a wait of many hours at the railway station. Travelling incognito and in European dress, he was not recognized—except by one man, a professor from Madras. It was because of this chance encounter (which has not, I believe, been heretofore known of) that one learns of a view in connection with his work that he had perhaps arrived at during his visit to England. Many years later, in the early twenties, the professor told a young monk at the Ramakrishna Math in Madras of that meeting. He had never before spoken with Swamiji, but had heard his lectures in Madras in February of 1897 and had been much impressed by their fire and boldness of spirit. Astonished to find the Swami in a Bombay railway station, he approached him, saluted him, and told him how deeply stirred he had been by his heroic, vitalizing ideas. They fell to talking, and during the course of conversation the man asked Swamiji about his work in London. Swamiji's reply voiced a conviction that has not, as far as I know, been recorded elsewhere. He no doubt spoke with emphasis, for his words etched themselves indelibly upon the professor's mind. "Until India becomes politically free," Swamiji said, "there is not the slightest chance that our religion will be appreciated by the English people. Not the slightest chance.'[63]


The story of Swamiji's totally unexpected appearance at the Belur Math on the evening of Sunday, December 9, is well known to the readers of his biographies. I have had the good fortune, however, to see an unpublished eye-witness account of that memorable event, which differs in some details from the published versions. At the beginning of this book I mentioned the Indian journal kept by Swami Chidrupananda in 1934 and 1935. During the course of his stay at Belur Math, the Swami (then Alfred Clifion) often had long talks with Swami Shuddhananda, and these talks he promptly wrote down in his journal while memory was still fresh. It was on a moonlit night in January of 1935 that Swami Shuddhananda, walking back and forth across the court of the Math with the young American, told of Swamiji's home coming on that evening so many years before. The bell had been rung at the Math for supper, he related, and the sannyasins and brahmacharins had gathered in the dining hall, when a servant came running in to announce that a European gentleman, a sahib, had vaulted the low wall (as it was in those early days), had walked hurriedly across the field, and was even then approaching the building! What European would act in this informal, urgent fashion, and what could his business be? Some of the swamis went outside to inquire. And then suddenly, when they saw who the sahib was, an incredulous, joyful cry went up. It was at this point that Swami Shuddhananda also went outside. "He was standing right over there," he said, pointing out a spot just in front of the building where Sri Ramakrishna's relics were enshrined. "When I saw all the others saluting him, I came closer and discovered who it was. Then I, too, saluted him. He had come by carriage from the Howrah station and on the way had heard the dinner bell. He said he was afraid that if he did not jump the wall there would be no dinner left. We took him into the dining hall [to the vast surprise and joy of the monks still seated there]. A place was prepared for him, and he was served his supper [a heaping plate of his favorite khichuri], and he told us about his trip.'[64] Indeed it is said in other accounts that, surrounded once again by his beloved brother monks and his disciples, Swamiji talked late into the night, telling of his trip, telling of many things—a talk certainly full of treasure, but one which nobody, so overjoyed were they all, managed to record.


Thus Swami Vivekananda, the World Teacher who had given his light fully, unstintingly to man, who had given enough, he said, for fifteen hundred years, came home at last, his journey done.

ⓘ
[1] Sara Bull to Emma Thursby, September 13,1900, Thursby Col., NewYork Historical Society.
[2] P.B. 54 (July 1949): 259.
[3] Sister Nivedita to Sara Bull, October 3, 1900, SCB.
[4] Complete Works, 8 : 536.
[5] Sister Nivedita, The Master, p. 226.
[6] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, October 14, 1900. This quotation is taken from a copy of Swamiji’s letter in the original French, which was made available by the late Mrs. Boshi Sen. The translation is mine. See also Complete Works, 8 : 537.
[7] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 2 : 565.
[8] Sister Nivedita, op. cit., pp. 222-23
[9] Swami Saradananda to Sara Bull, November 15, 1900, SCB.
[10] Quoted in Sankari Prasad Basu, Nivedita Lokamata, inserts following p. 276.
[11] “Notes of Conversations with Swami Turiyananda,” P.B. 37 (April 1932): 158.
[12] Complete Works, 8 : 538.
[13] Sister Nivedita, op. cit., p. 169.
[14] Complete Works, 8 : 525-26.
[15] Swami Vivekananda to Mary Hale, June 23, 1900, SN Col.
[16] Rem, (Sister Nivedita), p. 294.
[17] Complete Works, 5 : 176.
[18] Rem, (Sister Nivedita), pp. 294- 95.
[19] Sister Nivedita, The Master, p. 402.
[20] Swami Annadananda, Swami Akhandananda, p. 185.
[21] Talks, p. 282.
[22] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 498.
[23] Complete Works, 8 : 537; see ref. 6 above.
[24] Rem, (J. MacLeod), p. 249.
[25] See ref. 23 above.
[26] Marian Briggs to Sara Bull, October 22, 1900, SCB.
[27] Complete Works, 7 : 380, 381.
[28] Complete Works, 7 : 377.
[29] Complete Works, 7 : PP.381-82.
[30] Complete Works, 7 :  PP. 383-84.
[31] Complete Works, 7 :  P. 389.
[32] Complete Works, 7 :  p. 390
[33] Complete Works, 7 :  P. 390.
[34] Complete Works, 7 : P. 391.
[35] Complete Works, 7 : P. 392.
[36] Complete Works, 7 : p. 391
[37] Complete Works, 7 :  P- 398.
[38] Complete Works, 7 :  p. 397
[39] Complete Works, 7 :  P. 398.
[40] Complete Works, 7 : P. 399.
[41] Mary Mills Patrick, A Bosporus Adventure, pp. 103-5.
[42] Swami Vidyatmananda, “Swami Vivekananda and Pere Hyacinthe Loyson,” P.B, 76 (March 1971): 122, 124.
[43] Swami Vidyatmananda, “Swami Vivekananda in the Near East, 1900,” P.B, 82 (March, April 1977), PP- 9°“1015 187-98.
[44] Quoted in above, p. 195.
[45] Memoirs of HalidiEdib (New York: The Century Co., 1926), p. 202, quoted in Sankari Prasad Basu, “Swami Vivekananda in Scutari,” P.B, 83 (April 1978), p. 495. Sec also Keshav Chandra Gupta, Madam Halida Ediber Jivan-smriti (Calcutta: Sri Lalit Mohan Sinha, Bengali year 1343).
[46] Life (1965), pp. 356-57.
[47] Swami Vivekananda to Alberta Sturges, November 1, 1900,RKM, Belur.
[48] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, no date, Sen Col.
[49] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Christine, November 11, 1900, Sen Col.
[50] Swami Vivekananda to Sister Nivedita, no date, Sen Col.
[51] Letters of Sister Nivedita, 1 : 399.
[52] See ref. 42 above, pp. 122-25 passim.
[53] “Vedanta Work,” Brahmavadin, 6 (December 1900): 141.
[54] See ref. 43 above, p. 195.
[55] Rem. (Mme Calvd), pp. 268-69.
[56] Mme Paul Verdier, Notes, copies VSNC.
[57] Prabuddha Bharata, March 1974. P. 95.
[58] Frances Leggett, Late and Soon, p. 134. See also Rem, (J. MacLeod), p. 249.
[59] Complete Works, 7 : 512.
[60] Complete Works., 6 : 433.
[61] Josephine MacLeod to Sara Bull, November 29, 1900, SCB.


↑ Contents

APPENDIX

Article from The Alameda Encinal, April 5, 1900 

(See chapter nine, section one.)

TRUE RELIGION

Hindu Philosopher Gives His Ideas.

Last evening the Swami Vivekananda gave the first of a series of three public lectures at Tucker Hall on "The Development of Religious Ideas."

The speaker dwelt briefly on the similarity of ideas in the minds of orthodox Christians, Mohammedans and Hindus with regard to the origin of their religions. Each believed his particular prophet or teacher to have been inspired in some mysterious way by a God or Gods, who as it were, regulated or influenced the affairs of this world from a distance. The modern scientific mind, on the contrary, instead of seeking for outside or supernatural causes for phenomena endeavored to find cause in the thing or condition itself.

While at first glance this method of investigation might seem to take from religion some of its vital elements, yet in reality it resulted in man finding that the spiritual attributes of deity and the states of mind producing heaven and hell were all within himself, and although the result of this rational modern inquiry might appear to contradict much that had been handed down in the old religious writings such as Bible, Koran and Vedas, yet the contradiction was more apparent than real, for the prophets and teachers of old had true perceptions, but were mistaken only in attributing their experiences to outside agencies, instead of realizing them to be the development and expression of elements in their own souls before unknown and unrecognized.

The lecturer traced some of the common beliefs regarding location of heavens and hells, of various burial rites and customs, and he spoke of the impressions made on the primitive mind that resulted in a personification of the active natural forces in the phenomena with which we are surrounded.

The next lecture will be given tomorrow . . .evening [Friday, April 6]. The subject will be "The Formation of God Ideals."

↑ Contents