After the meetings of the Parliament of Religions
were concluded, Swami Vivekananda, as already noted,
under took a series of apostolic campaigns in order to sow
the seed of the Vedantic truths in the ready soil of
America. Soon he discovered that the lecture bureau was
exploiting him. Further, he did not like its method of
advertisement. He was treated as if he were the chief attraction of a
circus. The prospectus included his portrait, with the
inscription, proclaiming his cardinal virtues: 'An Orator by
Divine Right; a Model Representative of his Race; a Perfect
master of the English Language; the Sensation of the World's
Fair Parliament.' It also described his physical bearing,
his height, the colour of his skin, and his clothing. The
Swami felt disgusted at being treated like a patent medicine or
an elephant in a show. So he severed his relationship with
the bureau and arranged his own lectures himself. He
accepted invitation from churches, clubs, and private gatherings,
and travelled extensively through the Eastern and
Midwestern states of America, delivering twelve to fourteen or
more lectures a week.
People came in hundreds and in thousands. And
what an assorted audience he had to face! There came to
his meetings professors from universities, ladies of
fine breeding, seekers of truth, and devotees of God
with childlike faith. But mixed with these were charlatans,
curiosity-seekers, idlers, and vagabonds. It is not true
that he met everywhere with favourable conditions.
Leon Landsberg, one of the Swami's American disciples,
thus described Vivekananda's tribulations of those days:
The Americans are a receptive nation. That is why the country is a hotbed of all kinds of religious and irreligious monstrosities. There is no theory so absurd, no doctrine so irrational, no claim so extravagant, no fraud so transparent, but can find their numerous believers and a ready market. To satisfy this craving, to feed the credulity of the people, hundreds of societies and sects are born for the salvation of the world, and to enable the prophets to pocket $25 to $100 initiation fees. Hobgoblins, spooks, mahatmas, and new prophets were rising every day. In this bedlam of religious cranks, the Swami appeared to teach the lofty religion of the Vedas, the profound philosophy of Vedanta, the sublime wisdom of the ancient rishis. The most unfavourable environment for such a task!
The Swami met with all kinds of obstacles.
The opposition of fanatical Christian missionaries was,
of course, one of these. They promised him help if he
only would preach their brand of Christianity. When the
Swami refused, they circulated all sorts of filthy stories about
him, and even succeeded in persuading some of the
Americans who had previously invited him to be their guest, to
cancel the invitations. But Vivekananda continued to preach
the religion of love, renunciation, and truth as taught by
Christ, and so show him the highest veneration as a Saviour of
mankind. How significant were his words: 'It is well to
be born in a church, but it is terrible to die there!' Needless
to say, he meant by the word church all organized
religious institutions. How like a thunderbolt the words fell
upon the ears of his audience when one day he exclaimed:
'Christ, Buddha, and Krishna are but waves in the Ocean of
Infinite Consciousness that I am!'
Then there were the leaders of the cranky, selfish,
and fraudulent organizations, who tried to induce the
Swami to embrace their cause, first by promises of support,
and then by threats of injuring him if he refused to ally
himself with them. But he could be neither bought nor
frightened — 'the sickle had hit on a stone,' as the Polish proverb
says. To all these propositions his only answer was: 'I stand
for Truth. Truth will never ally itself with falsehood. Even
if all the world should be against me, Truth must prevail
in the end.'
But the more powerful enemies he had to face
were among the so-called free-thinkers, embracing the
atheists, materialists, agnostics, rationalists, and others of
similar breed who opposed anything associated with God
or religion. Thinking that they would easily crush his
ancient faith by arguments drawn from Western philosophy
and science, they organized a meeting in New York and
invited the Swami to present his views.
'I shall never forget that memorable evening'
wrote an American disciple, 'when the Swami appeared
single-handed to face the forces of materialism, arrayed in
the heaviest armour of law, and reason, and logic,
and common sense, of matter, and force, and heredity, and
all the stock phrases calculated to awe and terrify the
ignorant. Imagine their surprise when they found that
far from being intimidated by these big words, he
proved himself a master in wielding their own weapons, and
as familiar with the arguments of materialism as with
those of Advaita philosophy. He showed them that their
much vaunted Western science could not answer the most
vital questions of life and being, that their immutable laws,
so much talked of, had no outside existence apart from
the human mind, that the very idea of matter was a
metaphysical conception, and that it was much
despised metaphysics upon which ultimately rested the very
basis of their materialism. With an irresistible logic he
demonstrated that their knowledge proved itself incorrect,
not by comparison with that which was true, but by the
very laws upon which it depended for its basis; that
pure reason could not help admitting its own limitations
and pointed to something beyond reason; and that
rationalism, when carried to its last consequences, must
ultimately land us at something which is above matter, above
force, above sense, above thought, and even consciousness,
and of which all these are but manifestations.'
As a result of his explaining the limitations of
science, a number of people from the group of
free-thinkers attended the Swami's meeting the next day and listened
to his uplifting utterances on God and religion.
What an uphill work it was for Swami
Vivekananda to remove the ignorance, superstition, and perverted
ideas about religion in general and Hinduism in particular!
No wonder he sometimes felt depressed. In one of these
moods he wrote from Detroit, on March 15, 1894, to the Hale
sisters in Chicago:
But I do not know — I have become very sad in my heart since I am here. I do not know why. I am wearied of lecturing and all that nonsense. This mixing with hundreds of human animals, male and female, has disturbed me. I will tell you what is to my taste. I cannot write — cannot speak — but I can think deep, and when I am heated can speak fire. But it should be to a select few — a very select few. And let them carry and sow my ideas broadcast if they will — not I. It is only a just division of labour. The same man never succeeded in thinking and in casting his thoughts all around. Such thoughts are not worth a penny. ... I am really not 'cyclonic' at all — far from it. What I want is not here — nor can I longer bear this cyclonic atmosphere. Calm, cool, nice, deep, penetrating, independent, searching thought — a few noble pure mirrors which will reflect it back, catch it until all of them sound in unison. Let others throw it to the outside world if they will. This is the way to perfection — to be prefect, to make perfect a few men and women. My idea of doing good is this — to evolve a few giants, and not to strew pearls to the swine and lose time, breath, and energy. ... Well, I do not care for lecturing any more. It is too disgusting to bring me to suit anybody's or any audience's fad.
Swami Vivekananda became sick of what he
termed 'the nonsense of public life and newspaper blazoning.'
The Swami had sincere admirers and devotees
among the Americans, who looked after his comforts, gave
him money when he lacked it, and followed his instructions.
He was particularly grateful to American women,
and wrote many letters to his friends in India paying high
praise to their virtues.
In one letter he wrote:
'Nowhere in the world are women like those of this country. How pure, independent, self-relying, and kind-hearted! It is the women who are the life and soul of this country. All learning and culture are centred in them.'
In another letter:
'[Americans] look with veneration upon women, who play a most prominent part in their lives. Here this form of worship has attained its perfection — this is the long and short of it. I am almost at my wit's end to see the women of this country. They are Lakshmi, the Goddess of Fortune, in beauty, and Sarasvati, the Goddess of Learning, in virtues — they are the Divine Mother incarnate. If I can raise a thousand such Madonnas — incarnations of the Divine Mother — in our country before I die, I shall die in peace. Then only will our countrymen become worthy of their name.'
Perhaps his admiration reached its highest pitch in a letter to the Maharaja of Khetri, which he wrote in 1894:
American women! A hundred lives would not
be sufficient to pay my deep debt of gratitude to
you! Last year I came to this country in summer, a wandering
preacher of a far distant country,
without name, fame, wealth, or learning to recommend
me — friendless, helpless, almost in a state of
destitution; and American women befriended me, gave me
shelter and food, took me to their homes, and treated me
as their own son, their own brother. They stood as my
friends even when their own priests were trying
to persuade them to give up the 'dangerous
heathen' — even when, day after day, their best friends had
told them not to stand by this 'unknown foreigner,
maybe of dangerous character.' But they are better judges
of character and soul — for it is the pure mirror
that catches the reflection.
And how many beautiful homes I have seen,
how many mothers whose purity of character, whose unselfish
love for their children, are beyond
expression, how many daughters and pure maidens,
'pure as the icicle on Diana's temple' — and withal
much culture, education, and spirituality in the
highest sense! Is America, then, only full of wingless
angels in the shape of women? There are good and
bad everywhere, true — but a nation is not to be judged
by its weaklings, called the wicked, for they are only
the weeds which lag behind, but by the good, the
noble and the pure, who indicate the national life-current
to be flowing clear and vigorous.
And how bitter the Swami felt when he
remembered the sad plight of the women of India! He
particularly recalled the tragic circumstances under which one of
his own sisters had committed suicide. He often thought
that the misery of India was largely due to the ill-treatment
the Hindus meted out to their womenfolk. Part of the
money earned by his lectures was sent to a foundation for
Hindu widows at Baranagore. He also conceived the idea
of sending to India women teachers from the West for
the intellectual regeneration of Hindu women.
Swami Vivekananda showed great respect for
the fundamentals of American culture. He studied
the country's economic policy, industrial organizations,
public instruction, and its museums and art galleries, and
wrote to India enthusiastically about them. He praised highly
the progress of science, hygiene, institutions, and social
welfare work. He realized that such noble concepts as the
divinity of the soul and the brotherhood of men were mere
academic theories in present-day India, whereas America
showed how to apply them in life. He felt indignant when
he compared the generosity and liberality of the wealthy
men of America in the cause of social service, with the
apathy of the Indians as far as their own people were concerned.
'No religion on earth,' he wrote angrily, 'preaches
the dignity of humanity in such a lofty strain as
Hinduism, and no religion on earth treads upon the necks of the
poor and the low in such a fashion as Hinduism. Religion is
not at fault, but it is the Pharisees and Sadducees.'
How poignant must have been his feelings when
he remembered the iniquities of the caste-system!
'India's doom was sealed,' he wrote, 'the very day they
invented the word mlechcha1
and stopped from communion
with others.' When he saw in New York a millionaire
woman sitting side by side in a tram-car with a negress with a
wash-basket on her lap, he was impressed with the
democratic spirit of the Americans. He wanted in India 'an
organization that will teach the Hindus mutual help and
appreciation' after the pattern of Western democracies.
Incessantly he wrote to his Indian devotees about
the regeneration of the masses. In a letter dated 1894 he said:
Let each one of us pray, day and night, for the downtrodden millions in India, who are held fast by poverty, priestcraft, and tyranny — pray day and night for them. I care more to preach religion to them than to the high and the rich. I am no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor, I love the poor.... Who feels in India for the three hundred millions of men and women sunken for ever in poverty and ignorance? Where is the way out? Who feels for them? Let these people be your God — think of them, work for them, pray for them incessantly — the Lord will show you the way. Him I call a mahatma, a noble soul, whose heart bleeds for the poor; otherwise he is a duratma, a wicked soul.... So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them.... We are poor, my brothers we are nobodies, but such have always been the instruments of the Most High.
Never did he forget, in the midst of the comforts and luxuries of America, even when he was borne on the wings of triumph from one city to another, the cause of the Indian masses, whose miseries he had witnessed while wandering as an unknown monk from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. The prosperity of the new continent only stirred up in his soul deeper commiseration for his own people. He saw with his own eyes what human efforts, intelligence, and earnestness could accomplish to banish from society poverty, superstition, squalor, disease, and other handicaps of human well-being. On August 20, 1893, he wrote to instil courage into the depressed hearts of his devotees in India:
Gird up your loins, my boys! I am called by the Lord for this.... The hope lies in you — in the meek, the lowly, but the faithful. Feel for the miserable and look up for help — it shall come. I have travelled twelve years with this load in my heart and this idea in my head. I have gone from door to door of the so-called 'rich and great.' With a bleeding heart I have crossed half the world to this strange land, seeking help. The Lord is great. I know He will help me. I may perish of cold and hunger in this land, but I bequeath to you young men this sympathy, this struggle for the poor, the ignorant, the oppressed.... Go down on your faces before Him and make a great sacrifice, the sacrifice of the whole life for them, for whom He comes from time to time, whom He loves above all — the poor, the lowly, the oppressed. Vow, then, to devote your whole lives to the cause of these three hundred millions, going down and down every day. Glory unto the Lord! We will succeed. Hundreds will fall in the struggle — hundreds will be ready to take it up. Faith — sympathy, fiery faith and fiery sympathy! Life is nothing, death is nothing — hunger nothing, cold nothing. Glory unto the Lord! March on, the Lord is our General. Do not look back to see who falls — forward — onward!
Swami Vivekananda was thoroughly convinced by
his intimate knowledge of the Indian people that the
life-current of the nation, far from being extinct, was
only submerged under the dead weight of ignorance
and poverty. India still produced great saints whose
message of the Spirit was sorely needed by the Western world.
But the precious jewels of spirituality discovered by them
were hidden, in the absence of a jewel-box, in a heap of
filth. The West had created the jewel-box, in the form of a
healthy society, but it did not have the jewels. Further, it took
him no long time to understand that a materialistic
culture contained within it the seeds of its own destruction.
Again and again he warned the West of its impending
danger. The bright glow on the Western horizon might not be
the harbinger of a new dawn; it might very well be the
red flames of a huge funeral pyre. The Western world
was caught in the maze of its incessant
activity — interminable movement without any goal. The hankering for
material comforts, without a higher spiritual goal and a feeling
of universal sympathy, might flare up among the nations
of the West into jealousy and hatred, which in the end
would bring about their own destruction.
Swami Vivekananda was a lover of humanity. Man
is the highest manifestation of God, and this God was
being crucified in different ways in the East and the West.
Thus he had a double mission to perform in America. He
wanted to obtain from the Americans money, scientific
knowledge, and technical help for the regeneration of the Indian
masses, and, in turn, to give to the Americans the knowledge
of the Eternal Spirit to endow their material progress
with significance. No false pride could prevent him
from learning from America the many features of her
social superiority; he also exhorted the Americans not to allow
racial arrogance to prevent them from accepting the gift
of spirituality from India. Through this policy of
acceptance and mutual respect he dreamt of creating a healthy
human society for the ultimate welfare of man's body and soul.
The year following the Parliament of Religions
the Swami devoted to addressing meetings in the vast
area spreading from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. In
Detroit he spent six weeks, first as a guest of Mrs. John
Bagley, widow of the former Governor of Michigan, and then
of Thomas W. Palmer, President of the World's Fair
Commission, formerly a United States Senator and
American Minister to Spain. Mrs. Bagley spoke of the
Swami's presence at her house as a 'continual benediction.' It
was in Detroit that Miss Greenstidel first heard him speak.
She later became, under the name of Sister Christine, one
of the most devoted disciples of the Swami and a
collaborator of Sister Nivedita in her work in Calcutta for
the educational advancement of Indian women.
After Detroit, he divided his time between
Chicago, New York, and Boston, and during the summer of
1894 addressed, by invitation, several meetings of the
'Humane Conference' held at Greenacre, Massachusetts.
Christian Scientists, spiritualists, faith-healers, and groups
representing similar views participated in the Conference.
The Swami in the course of a letter to the Hale
sisters of Chicago, wrote on July 31, 1894, with his usual
humour about the people who attended the meetings:
They have a lively time and sometimes all of
them wear what you call your scientific dress the whole
day. They have lectures almost every day. One Mr. Colville
from Boston is here. He speaks every day, it is
said, under spirit control. The editor of the Universal
Truth from the top floor of Jimmy Mills has settled
herself down here. She is conducting religious services
and holding classes to heal all manner of diseases, and
very soon I expect them to be giving eyes to the blind,
etc., etc. After all, it is a queer gathering. They do not
care much about social laws and are quite free and happy....
There is a Mr. Wood of Boston here, who is one
of the great lights of your sect. But he objects to
belonging to the sect of Mrs. Whirlpool.2
So he calls himself a mental healer of metaphysical,
chemico, physical-religioso, what-not, etc.
Yesterday there was a tremendous cyclone
which gave a good 'treatment' to the tents. The big tent
under which they held the lectures developed so
much spirituality under the treatment that it
entirely disappeared from mortal gaze, and about
two hundred chairs were dancing about the grounds
under spiritual ecstasy. Mrs. Figs of Mills Company gives
a class every morning, and Mrs. Mills is jumping
all about the place. They are all in high spirits. I
am especially glad for Cora, for she suffered a good
deal last winter and a little hilarity would do her
good. You would be astounded with the liberty they
enjoy in the camps, but they are very good and
pure people — a little erratic, that is all.
Regarding his own work at Greenacre, the Swami wrote in the same letter:
The other night the camp people all went to
sleep under a pine tree under which I sit every morning
a la India and talk to them. Of course I went with
them and we had a nice night under the stars, sleeping
on the lap of Mother Earth, and I enjoyed every bit of
it. I cannot describe to you that night's glories — after
the year of brutal life that I have led, to sleep on
the ground, to mediate under the tree in the forest!
The inn people are more or less well-to-do, and the
camp people are healthy, young, sincere, and holy men
and women. I teach them all Sivoham,
Sivoham—'I am Siva, I am Siva' — and they all repeat
it, innocent and
pure as they are, and brave beyond all bounds, and I am
so happy and glorified.
Thank God for making me poor! Thank God
for making these children in the tents poor! The
dudes and dudines are in the hotel, but iron-bound
nerves, souls of triple steel, and spirits of fire are in the
camp. If you had seen them yesterday, when the rain
was falling in torrents and the cyclone was
overturning everything — hanging on to their tent-strings to
keep them from being blown off, and standing on
the majesty of their souls, these brave ones — it would
have done your hearts good. I would go a hundred
miles to see the like of them. Lord bless them!...
Never be anxious for me for a moment. I
will be taken care of, and if not, I shall know my
time
has come — and pass out.... Now good dreams, good
thoughts for you. You are good and noble. Instead
of materializing the spirit, i.e. dragging the spiritual
to the material plane as these fellers do, convert
matter into spirit — catch a glimpse at least, every day, of
that world of infinite beauty and peace and purity,
the spiritual, and try to live in it day and night. Seek
not, touch not with your toes, anything which is
uncanny. Let your souls ascend day and night like an
unbroken string unto the feet of the Beloved, whose throne is
in your own heart, and let the rest take care of
themselves, i.e. the body and everything else. Life is
an evanescent, floating dream; youth and beauty
fade. Say day and night: 'Thou art my father, my
mother, my husband, my love, my Lord, my God — I
want nothing but Thee, nothing but Thee, nothing but
Thee. Thou in me, I in Thee — I am Thee, Thou art me.'
Wealth goes, beauty vanishes, life flies, powers fly — but
the Lord abideth for ever, love abideth for ever. If there
is glory in keeping the machine in good trim, it is
more glorious to withhold the soul from suffering with
the body. That is the only demonstration of your
being 'not matter' — by letting matter alone.
Stick to God. Who cares what comes, in the
body or anywhere? Through the terrors of evil, say,
'My God, my Love!' Through the pangs of death, say,
'My God, my Love!' Through all the evils under the
sun, say: 'My God, my Love! Thou art here, I see Thee.
Thou art with me, I feel Thee. I am Thine, take me. I am
not the world's but Thine — leave Thou not me.' Do
not go for glass beads, leaving the mine of diamonds.
This life is a great chance. What! Seekest thou the pleasures
of this world? He is the fountain of all bliss. Seek
the highest, aim for the highest, and you
shall reach the highest.
At Greenacre the Swami became a friend of Dr.
Lewis G. Janes, Director of the School of Comparative
Religions organized by the Greenacre Conference, and President
of the Brooklyn Ethical Association. The following
autumn he lectured in Baltimore and Washington.
During the Swami's visit in New York he was the
guest of friends, mostly rich ladies of the metropolitan city.
He had not yet started any serious work there. Soon he
began to feel a sort of restraint put upon his movements.
Very few of his wealthy friends understood the true import
of his message; they were interested in him as a novelty
from India. Also to them he was the man of the hour.
They wanted him to mix with only the exclusive society of
'the right people.' He chafed under their domination and
one day cried: 'Siva! Siva! Has it ever come to pass that a
great work has been grown by the rich? It is brain and heart
that create, and not purse.' He wanted to break away from
their power and devote himself to the training of some
serious students in the spiritual life. He was fed up with
public lectures; now he became eager to mould silently
the characters of individuals. He could no longer bear the
yoke of money and all the botheration that came in its train.
He would live simply and give freely, like the holy men
of India. Soon an opportunity presented itself.
Dr. Lewis Janes invited the Swami to give a series
of lectures on the Hindu religion before the Brooklyn
Ethical Association. On the evening of December 31, 1894, he gave
his first lecture, and according to the report of the
Brooklyn Standard, the enthusiastic audience,
consisting of
doctors and lawyers and judges and teachers, remained
spellbound by his eloquent defence of the religion of India. They
all acknowledged that Vivekananda was even greater than
his fame. At the end of the meeting they made an
insistent demand for regular classes in Brooklyn, to which the
Swami agreed. A series of class meetings was held and
several public lectures were given at the Pouch Mansion,
where the Ethical Association held its meetings. These
lectures constituted the beginning of the permanent work
in America which the Swami secretly desired.
Soon after, several poor but earnest students
rented for the Swami some unfurnished rooms in a poor
section of New York City. He lived in one of them. An
ordinary room on the second floor of the lodging-house was
used for the lectures and classes. The Swami when
conducting the meetings sat on the floor, while the ever more
numerous auditors seated themselves as best they could, utilizing
the marble-topped dresser, the arms of the sofa, and even
the corner wash-stand. The door was left open and
the overflow filled the hall and sat on the stairs. The
Swami, like a typical religious teacher in India, felt himself in
his own element. The students, forgetting all the
inconveniences, hung upon every word uttered from the
teacher's deep personal experiences or his wide range of knowledge.
The lectures, given every morning and
several evenings a week, were free. The rent was paid by
the voluntary subscriptions of the students, and the deficit
was met by the Swami himself, through the money he
earned by giving secular lectures on India. Soon the meeting-place
had to be removed downstairs to occupy an entire
parlour floor.
He began to instruct several chosen disciples in
jnana-yoga in order to clarify their intellects regarding the
subtle truths of Vedanta, and also in raja-yoga to teach them
the science of self-control, concentration, and meditation.
He was immensely happy with the result of his
concentrated work. He enjoined upon these students to follow
strict disciplines regarding food, choosing only the simplest.
The necessity of chastity was emphasized, and they
were warned against psychic and occult power. At the same
time he broadened their intellectual horizon through
the teachings of Vedantic universality. Daily he meditated
with the serious students. Often he would lose all
bodily consciousness and, like Sri Ramakrishna, had to be
brought back to the knowledge of the world through the
repetition of certain holy words that he had taught his disciples.
It was sometime about June 1895 when
Swami Vivekananda finished writing his famous book
Raja-Yoga, which attracted the attention of the
Harvard
philosopher William James and was later to rouse the enthusiasm
of Tolstoy. The book is a translation of Patanjali's
Yoga aphorisms, the Swami adding his own explanations;
the introductory chapters written by him are
especially illuminating. Patanjali expounded, through these
aphorisms, the philosophy of Yoga, the main purpose of
which is to show the way of the soul's attaining freedom from
the bondage of matter. Various methods of concentrations
are discussed. The book well served two purposes. First,
the Swami demonstrated that religious experiences could
stand on the same footing as scientific truths, being based on
experimentation, observation, and verification.
Therefore genuine spiritual experiences must not be
dogmatically discarded as lacking rational evidence. Secondly, the
Swami explained lucidly various disciplines of concentration,
with the warning, however, that they should not be
pursued without the help of a qualified teacher.
Miss S. Ellen Waldo of Brooklyn, a disciple of
the Swami, was his amanuensis. She thus described the
manner in which he dictated the book:
'In delivering his commentaries on the aphorisms, he would leave me waiting while he entered into deep states of meditation or self-contemplation, to emerge therefrom with some luminous interpretation. I had always to keep the pen dipped in the ink. He might be absorbed for long periods of time, and then suddenly his silence would be broken by some eager expression or some long, deliberate teaching.'
By the middle of the year 1895 the Swami
was completely exhausted. The numerous classes and
lectures, the private instruction, the increasing correspondence,
and the writing of Raja-Yoga had tired him both
physically
and mentally. It was a herculean task to spread the message
of Hinduism in an alien land and at the same time to
mould the lives of individuals according to the highest ideal
of renunciation. Besides, there were annoyances from
zealous but well-meaning friends, especially women.
Some suggested that he should take elocution lessons,
some urged him to dress fashionably in order to influence
society people, other admonished him against mixing with all
sorts of people. At time he would be indignant and say:
'Why should I be bound down with all this nonsense? I am a
monk who has realized the vanity of all earthly
nonsense! I have no time to give my manners a finish. I cannot
find time enough to give my message. I will give it after
my own fashion. Shall I be dragged down into the narrow
limits of your conventional life? Never!' Again, he wrote to
a devotee: 'I long, oh, I long for my rags, my shaven
head, my sleep under the trees, and my food from begging.'
The Swami needed rest from his strenuous work,
and accepted the invitation of his devoted friend Francis
H. Leggett to come to his summer camp at Percy,
New Hampshire, and rest in the silence of the pine woods.
In the meantime Miss Elizabeth Dutcher, one of his
students in New York, cordially asked the Swami to take a
vacation in her summer cottage at Thousand Island Park on the
St. Lawrence River. The Swami gratefully accepted
both invitations.
About his life at the camp, he wrote to a friend
on June 7, 1895: 'It gives me a new lease of life to be here. I
go into the forest alone and read my Gita and am quite
happy.' After a short visit at Percy, he arrived in June at
Thousand Island Park, where he spent seven weeks. This proved
to be a momentous period in his life in the Western world.
When the students who had been attending
Swami Vivekananda's classes in New York heard of Miss
Dutcher's proposal, they were immensely pleased, because they
did not want any interruption of their lessons. The Swami,
too, after two years' extensive work in America, had
become eager to mould the spiritual life of individual students
and to train a group that would carry on his work in
America in the future. He wrote to one of his friends that he
intended to manufacture 'a few yogis' from the materials of the
classes. He wanted only those to follow him to
Thousand Island Park who were completely earnest in their
practice of spiritual disciplines, and he said that he would
gladly recognize these as his disciples.
By a singular coincidence just twelve disciples
were taught by him at the summer retreat, though all were
not there the full seven weeks; ten was the largest
number present at any one time. Two, Mme. Marie Louise and
Mr. Leon Landsberg, were initiated at Thousand Island
Park into the monastic life. The former, French by birth but
a naturalized American, a materialist and socialist, a
fearless, progressive woman worker known to the press
and platform, was given the name Abhayananda. The latter,
a Russian Jew and member of the staff of a prominent
New York newspaper, became known as Kripananda. Both
took the vows of poverty and chastity.
In many respects the sojourn in Miss Dutcher's
cottage was ideal for the Swami's purpose. Here, to this
intimate group, he revealed brilliant flashes of illumination,
lofty flights of eloquence, and outpourings of the most
profound wisdom. The whole experience was reminiscent of
the Dakshineswar days when the Swami, as the young Narendra, had
been initiated into the mysteries of
the spiritual life at the feet of his Master Ramakrishna.
Thousand Island Park, near the western tip
of Wellesley Island, the second largest of the
seventeen hundred islands in the St. Lawrence River, has for its
setting one of the scenic show-places of America. A
prosperous village during the last part of the nineteenth century, it
was, at the time of the Swami's visit, a stronghold of
orthodox Methodist Christianity. The local tabernacle, where
celebrated preachers were invited to conduct the
divine service on Sunday mornings, attracted people from
the neighbouring islands. Since secular activities were
not allowed on the Sabbath, the visitors would arrive
at Thousand Island Park the previous day and spend the
night camping out. No such profanities as public
drinking, gambling, or dancing were allowed in the summer
resort — a rule that is still enforced half a century later. Only
people of serious mind went there for their vacation.
Miss Dutcher's cottage3
was ideally located on a hill, which on the north and west sloped down
towards
the river. It commanded a grand view of many distant
islands, the town of Clayton on the American mainland and
the Canadian shores to the north. At night the houses and
hotels were brightly illuminated by Chinese lanterns.
Miss Dutcher, an artist, had built her cottage
literally 'on a rock,' with huge boulders lying all around. It
was surrounded by rock-gardens with bright-coloured
flowers. At that time the tress at the base of the hill had not
grown high; people from the village often visited the
upstairs porch to survey the magnificent sweep of the river.
After inviting the Swami, Miss Dutcher, added a
new wing to the cottage for his accommodation. This wing,
three storeys high, stood on a steep slope of rock, like a
great lantern-tower with windows on three sides. The room at
the top was set apart exclusively for the Swami's use;
the lowest room was occupied by a student; the room
between, with large windows, and several doors opening on the
main part of the house, was used as the Swami's classroom.
Miss Dutcher thoughtfully added an outside stairway to
the Swami's room so that he might go in and out without
being noticed by the others.
On the roofed-in porch upstairs, extending along
the west side of the cottage, the students met the Swami
for his evening talks. There, at one end, close to the door of
his room, he would take his seat and commune with his
pupils both in silence and through the spoken word. In the
evening the cottage was bathed in perfect stillness except for
the murmur of insects and the whisper of the wind
through the leaves. The house being situated, as it were, among
the tree-tops, a breeze always relieved the summer heat.
The centre of the village was only a five minutes' walk
from the cottage, and yet, on account of the woods around
it, not a single house could be seen. Many of the islands
that dotted the river were visible in the distance and,
especially in the evening, appeared like a picture. The glow of
the sunset on the St. Lawrence was breathtaking in its
beauty, and the moon at night was mirrored in the shining
waters beneath.
In this ideal retreat, 'the world forgetting, by the
world forgot,' the devoted students spent seven weeks with
their beloved teacher, listening to his words of wisdom
and receiving his silent benediction. Immediately after
the evening meal they would assemble on the upstairs
porch. Soon the Swami would come from his room and take
his seat. Two hours and often much longer would be spent
together. One night, when the moon was almost full,
he talked to them until it set below the western horizon,
both the teacher and the students being unaware of the
passage of time. During these seven weeks the Swami's whole
heart was in his work and he taught like one inspired.
Miss Dutcher, his hostess, was a conscientious
little woman and a staunch Methodist. When the Swami
arrived at the house, he saw on the walls of his living
quarters scrolls bearing the words 'Welcome to
Vivekananda' painted in bold letters. But as the teaching began,
Miss Dutcher often felt distressed by the Swami's
revolutionary ideas. All her ideals, her values of life, her concepts
of religion, were, it seemed to her, being destroyed.
Sometimes she did not appear for two or three days. 'Don't you
see?' the Swami said. 'This is not an ordinary illness. It is
the reaction of the body against the chaos that is going on
in her mind. She cannot bear it.'
The most violent attack came one day after a
timid protest on her part against something he had told them
in the class. 'The idea of duty is the midday sun of
misery, scorching the very soul,' he had said. 'Is it not our
duty — ' she had begun, but got no farther. For once the great
free soul broke all bounds in his rebellion against the idea
that anyone should dare bind with fetters the soul of man.
Miss Dutcher was not seen for some days.
Referring to the students who had gathered
around the Swami, a village shopkeeper said to a new arrival
who inquired for the cottage, 'Yes, there are some queer
people living up on the hill; among them there is a
foreign-looking gentleman.' A young girl of sixteen, living with her
family at the foot of the hill, one day expressed the desire to talk
to the Swami. 'Don't go near him,' her mother said
sternly. 'He is a heathen.' Mr. Tom Mitchell, a carpenter who
helped to restore the cottage for the
Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Centre in 1948, and had originally built the
Swami's quarters in 1895, told the present writer that he had
read the Swami's lectures in Chicago from the newspapers
long before his arrival at the island.
The students wanted, at first, to live as a
community without servants, each doing a share of the work.
Nearly all of them, however, were unaccustomed to
housework and found it uncongenial. The result was amusing; as
time went on it threatened to become disastrous. When
the tension became too great, the Swami would say with
utmost sweetness, 'Today, I shall cook for you.' At this
Landsberg would ejaculate, in an aside, 'Heaven save us!' By way
of explanation he declared that in New York, whenever
the Swami cooked, he, Landsberg, would tear his hair,
because it meant that afterwards every dish in the house
required washing. After a few days an outsider was engaged to
help with the housework.
Swami Vivekananda started his class at
Thousand Island Park on Wednesday, June 19. Not all the
students had arrived. But his heart was set on his work; so
he commenced at once with the three or four who were
with him. After a short meditation, he opened with the
Gospel according to Saint John, from the Bible, saying that
since the students were all Christians, it was proper that
he should begin with the Christian scriptures. As the
classes went on, he taught from the Bhagavad Gita, the
Upanishads, the Vedanta Sutras, the Bhakti
Sutras of Narada, and other Hindu scriptures. He discussed
Vedanta in its
three aspects: the non-dualism of Sankara, the
qualified non-dualism of Ramanuja, and the dualism of
Madhva. Since the subtleties of Sankara appeared difficult to
the students, Ramanuja remained the favourite among
them. The Swami also spoke at length about Sri Ramakrishna,
of his own daily life with the Master, and of his struggles
with the tendency to unbelief and agnosticism. He told
stories from the inexhaustible storehouse of Hindu mythology
to illustrate his abstruse thoughts.
The ever recurring theme of his teaching was
God-realization. He would always come back to the
one, fundamental, vital point: 'Find God. Nothing else
matters.' He emphasized morality as the basis of the spiritual
life. Without truth, non-injury, continence,
non-stealing, cleanliness, and austerity, he repeated, there could be
no spirituality. The subject of continence always stirred
him deeply. Walking up and down the room, getting more
and more excited, he would stop before someone as if
there were no one else present. 'Don't you see,' he would
say eagerly, 'there is a reason why chastity is insisted on in
all monastic orders? Spiritual giants are produced only
where the vow of chastity is observed. Don't you see there
must be a reason? There is a connexion between chastity
and spirituality. The explanation is that through prayer
and meditation the saints have transmuted the most vital
force in the body into spiritual energy. In India this is
well understood and yogis do it consciously. The force
so transmuted is called ojas, and it is stored up in the brain.
It has been lifted from the lowest centre to the highest.
"And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me."' He
would plead with the students as if to beg them to act upon this
teaching as something most precious. Further, they
could not be the disciples he required if they were not
established in chastity. He demanded a conscious transmutation.
'The man who has no temper has nothing to control,' he said.
'I want a few, five or six, who are in the flower of their youth.'
He would frequently exhort the students to
attain freedom. As the words came in torrents from the depths
of his soul, the atmosphere would be charged with
the yearning to break free from the bondage of the body,
a degrading humiliation. As he touched upon 'this
indecent clinging to life,' the students would feel as if the
curtain that hid the region beyond life and death were lifted
for them, and they would long for that glorious
freedom. 'Azad! Azad! the Free! the Free!' he would cry, pacing
back and forth like a caged lion; but for him the bars of the
cage were not of iron, but of bamboo. 'Let us not be caught
this time,' would be his refrain on other occasions.
Some of these precious talks were noted down by
his disciple Miss S. Ellen Waldo and later published as
Inspired Talks. Students of Swami Vivekananda will
for ever
remain indebted to her for faithfully preserving his
immortal words, and the title of this book was well chosen, for
they were indeed inspired. One day Miss Waldo was
reading her notes to some tardy arrivals in the cottage while
the Swami strode up and down the floor, apparently
unconscious of what was going on. After the travellers had
left the room, the Swami turned to Miss Waldo and said:
'How could you have caught my thought and words so
perfectly? It was as if I heard myself speaking.'
During these seven weeks of teaching the Swami
was most gentle and lovable. He taught his disciples as Sri
Ramakrishna had taught him at Dakshineswar:
the teaching was the outpouring of his own spirit in
communion with himself. The Swami said later that he was at
his best at Thousand Island Park. The ideas he cherished
and expressed there grew, during the years that followed,
into institutions, both in India and abroad.
The Swami's one consuming passion, during this
time, was to show his students the way to freedom. 'Ah,' he
said one day, with touching pathos, 'if I could only set you
free with a touch!' Two students, Mrs. Funke and
Miss Greenstidel, arrived at the Park one dark and rainy
night. One of them said, 'We have come to you as we would go
to Jesus if he were still on the earth and ask him to teach
us.' The Swami looked at them kindly and gently said, 'If I
only possessed the power of the Christ to set you free!' No
wonder that Miss Waldo one day exclaimed, 'What have we
ever done to deserve all this?' And so felt the others also.
One cannot but be amazed at the manifestation
of Swami Vivekananda's spiritual power at Thousand
Island Park. Outwardly he was a young man of thirty-two.
All his disciples at the cottage, except one, were older
than himself. Yet everyone looked upon him as a father
or mother. He had attained an unbelievable maturity.
Some marvelled at his purity, some at his power, some at
his intellectuality, some at his serenity, which was like
the depths of the ocean, unperturbed by the waves of
applause or contumely. When had he acquired all these virtues
which had made him at thirty, a teacher of men? From the
foregoing pages the reader will have formed an idea of him as
a stormy person, struggling, in early youth, against
poverty and spiritual unbelief. Afterwards he is seen wandering
from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, raging against
the grievances and sufferings of the Indian masses. During
his first two years in America he had had to fight tooth
and nail against malicious critics in order to establish his
reputation as a religious teacher. When had he, then,
tapped the secret spring of inner calmness and assurance
without which a teacher cannot transmit spirituality to his disciples?
One must not forget that Vivekananda, as
Ramakrishna has said, was not an ordinary man, but
a nityasiddha, perfect even before birth, an Isvarakoti,
or special messenger of God born on earth to fulfil a
divine mission. The silent but powerful influence of the
guru always guided his feet. The outer world saw only
the struggles and restlessness of his wandering days, but
not the inner transformation brought about through
the practice of purity, detachment, self-control, and
meditation. The veil of maya, without which no physical
embodiment is possible, and which in him was very thin, was
rent through the spiritual struggle of a few years. People
were astonished to see his blossoming forth at Thousand
Island Park.
At Dakshineswar, though Sri Ramakrishna had
offered young Naren various supernatural powers of Yoga as
a help for his future work, the disciple had refused to
accept them, as being possible impediments to spiritual
progress. But later these powers began to manifest themselves as
the natural fruit of his spiritual realizations. Thus one sees
him at Thousand Island Park reading the inmost soul of
his followers before giving them initiation, and foretelling
their future careers. He prophesied for Sister Christine
extensive travels in Oriental countries and work in India. He
explained that his method of foresight was simple, at
least in the telling. He first thought of space — vast, blue,
and extending everywhere. As he meditated on that
space intently, pictures appeared, and he then gave
interpretations of them which would indicate the future life of
the person concerned.
Even before his arrival at Thousand Island Park
the Swami had had other manifestations of such Yoga
powers. For instance, while busy with his lecture tour,
sometimes giving twelve or fourteen speeches a week, he would
feel great physical and mental strain and often wonder
what he would speak of the next day. Then he would hear,
at dead of night, a voice shouting at him the very
thoughts he was to present. Sometimes it would come from a
long distance and then draw nearer and nearer, or again,
it would be like someone delivering a lecture beside him
as he lay listening in bed. At other times two voices
would argue before him, discussing at great length ideas, some
of which he had never before consciously heard or
thought of, which he would find himself repeating the
following day from the pulpit or the platform.
Sometimes people sleeping in the adjoining
rooms would ask him in the morning: 'Swami, with whom
were you talking last night? We heard you talking loudly
and enthusiastically and we were wondering.' The Swami
often explained these manifestations as the powers
and potentialities of the soul generally called inspiration.
He denied that they were miracles.
At that time he experienced the power of changing
a person's life by a touch, or clearly seeing things
happening at a great distance. But he seldom used these and the other
powers he had acquired through Yoga. One day, much
later, Swami Turiyananda entered Swami Vivekananda's
room while the Swami was lying on his bed, and beheld, in
place of his physical body, a mass of radiance. It is no
wonder that today in America, half a century later, one meets
men and women who saw or heard Swami Vivekananda perhaps once, and
still remember him vividly.
But it must not be thought that the Swami did
not show his lighter mood at Thousand Island Park.
He unfailingly discovered the little idiosyncrasies of
the students and raised gales of laughter at the
dinner-table, with some quip or jest — but never in sarcasm or
malice. Dr. Wright of Cambridge, a very cultured man, was one
of the inmates of the Dutcher Cottage. He became so
absorbed in the class talks that at the end of every discourse the
tense professor would invariably ask the teacher: 'Well,
Swami, it all amounts to this in the end, doesn't it? — I
am Brahman, I am the Absolute.'
The Swami would
smile indulgently and answer gently, 'Yes, Dockie, you
are Brahman, you are the Absolute, in the real essence of
your being.' Later, when the learned doctor came to the table
a trifle late, the Swami, with the utmost gravity but with
a merry twinkle in his eyes, would say, 'Here
comes Brahman' or 'Here is the Absolute.'
Sometimes he would say, 'Now I am going to cook
for you, "brethren".' The food he cooked would be
delicious, but too hot for Western tastes. The students, however,
made up their minds to eat it even if it strangled them. After
the meal was cooked, the Swami would stand in the door
with a white napkin draped over his arm, in the fashion of
the negro waiters in a dining-car, and intone in perfect imitation
their call for dinner: 'Last call fo' the dining cah.
Dinner served.' And the students would rock with laughter.
One day he was telling the disciples the story of
Sita and of the pure womanhood of India. The question
flashed in the mind of one of the women as to how some of
the beautiful society queens would appear to him,
especially those versed in the art of allurement. Even before the
thought was expressed, the Swami said gravely, 'If the most
beautiful woman in the world were to look at me in an immodest
or unwomanly way, she would immediately turn into a
hideous green frog, and one does not, of course, admire frogs.'
At last the day of the Swami's departure
from Thousand Island Park arrived. It was Wednesday,
August 7, 1895. In the morning he, Mrs. Funke, and Sister
Christine went for a walk. They strolled about half a mile up the
hill, where all was forest and solitude, and sat under a
low-branched tree. The Swami suddenly said to them:
'Now we shall meditate. We shall be like Buddha under the
Bo-tree.' He became still as a bronze statue. A
thunderstorm came up and it poured; but the Swami did not
notice anything. Mrs. Funke raised her umbrella and
protected him as much as possible. When it was time to return,
the Swami opened his eyes and said, 'I feel once more I am
in Calcutta in the rains.' It is reported that one day,
at Thousand Island Park he experienced nirvikalpa samadhi.
At nine o'clock in the evening the Swami boarded
the steamer for Clayton, where he was to catch the train
for New York. While taking leave of the Island he said, 'I
bless these Thousand Islands.' As the steamer moved away,
he boyishly and joyously waved his hat to the disciples
still standing at the pier.
Some of his devotees thought that the Swami
had planned at Thousand Island Park to start an
organization. But they were mistaken. He wrote to a disciple:
We have no organization, nor want to build any. Each one is quite independent to teach, quite free to teach, whatever he or she likes. If you have the spirit within, you will never fail to attract others.... Individuality is my motto. I have no ambition beyond training individuals. I know very little; that little I teach without reserve; where I am ignorant I confess it.... I am a sannyasin. As such I hold myself as a servant, not as a master, in this world.
Vivekananda, the awakener of souls, was indeed
too great to be crammed within the confines of a
narrow organization. He had had a unique experience of
inner freedom at Thousand Island Park, which he
expressed eloquently in his poem 'The Song of the Sannyasin.'
He wrote from there to a friend: 'I am free, my bonds are
cut, what do I care whether this body goes or does not go?
I have a truth to teach — I, the child of God. And He
that gave me the truth will send me fellow workers from
earth's bravest and best.'
A month after his return from Thousand Island
Park, Swami Vivekananda sailed for Europe. Before we take
up that important chapter of his life, however, it will be
well to describe some of his interesting experiences in
America, especially his meeting with noted personalities.
Robert Ingersoll, the famous orator and agnostic,
and Swami Vivekananda had several conversations on
religion and philosophy. Ingersoll, with a fatherly solicitude, asked
the young enthusiast not to be too bold in the
expression of his views, on account of people's intolerance of all
alien religious ideas. 'Forty years ago,' he said, 'you would
have been hanged if you had come to preach in this country,
or you would have been burnt alive. You would have
been stoned out of the villages if you had come even much
later.' The Swami was surprised. But Ingersoll did not realize
that the Indian monk, unlike him, respected all religions
and prophets, and that he wanted to broaden the views of
the Christians about Christ's teachings.
One day, in the course of a discussion, Ingersoll
said to the Swami, 'I believe in making the most of this
world, in squeezing the orange dry, because this world is all
we are sure of.' He would have nothing to do with God,
soul, or hereafter, which he considered as meaningless jargon.
'I know a better way to squeeze the orange of this world
than you do,' the Swami replied, 'and I get more out of it. I
know I cannot die, so I am not in a hurry. I know that there is
no fear, so I enjoy the squeezing. I have no duty, no
bondage of wife and children and property, so I can love all
men and women. Everyone is God to me. Think of the joy
of loving man as God! Squeeze your orange my way, and
you will get every single drop!' Ingersoll, it is reported,
asked the Swami not to be impatient with his views, adding
that his own unrelenting fight against traditional religions
had shaken men's faith in theological dogmas and creeds,
and thus helped to pave the way for the Swami's success
in America.
Nikola Tesla, the great scientist who specialized in
the field of electricity, was much impressed to hear from
the Swami his explanation of the Samkhya cosmogony and the
theory of cycles given by the Hindus. He was
particularly struck by the resemblance between the Samkhya theory
of matter and energy and that of modern physics. The
Swami also met Sir William Thomson (afterwards Lord
Kelvin) and Professor Helmholtz, two leading representatives
of Western science. Sarah Bernhardt, the famous
French actress, had an interview with the Swami and
greatly admired his teachings.
Madame Emma Calve, the well-known prima
donna, described the Swami as one who 'truly walked with
God.' She came to see him in a state of physical and
mental depression. The Swami, who did not at that time
know even her name, talked to her about her worries and
various personal problems. It was clear that he was familiar
with them, even though she had never revealed them to him
or to anyone else. When Madame Calve expressed
surprise, the Swami assured her that no one had talked to him
about her. 'Do you think that is necessary?' he asked. 'I read
you as I would an open book.' He gave her this parting
advice: 'You must forget. Be gay and happy again. Do not dwell
in silence upon your sorrows. Transmute your emotions
into some form of eternal expression. Your spiritual
health requires it. Your art demands it.'
Madame Calve later said: 'I left him, deeply
impressed by his words and his personality. He seemed to
have emptied my brain of all its feverish complexities and
placed there instead his clean and calming thoughts. I became
once again vivacious and cheerful, thanks to the effect of
his powerful will. He used no hypnosis, no
mesmerism — nothing of that sort at all. It was the strength of his
character, the purity and intensity of his purpose, that carried
conviction. It seemed to me, when I came to know
him better, that he lulled one's chaotic thoughts into a state
of peaceful acquiesences, so that one could give complete
and undivided attention to his words.'
Like many people, Madame Calve could not
accept the Vedantic doctrine of the individual soul's
total absorption in the Godhead at the time of final liberation.
'I cannot bear the idea,' she said. 'I cling to my
individuality — unimportant though it may be. I don't want to be
absorbed into an eternal unity.' To this the Swami answered:
'One day a drop of water fell into the vast ocean. Finding
itself there, it began to weep and complain, just as you are
doing. The giant ocean laughed at the drop of water. "Why
do you weep?" it asked. "I do not understand. When you
join me, you join all your brothers and sisters, the other
drops of water of which I am made. You become the ocean
itself. If you wish to leave me you have only to rise up on
a sunbeam into the clouds. From there you can
descend again, little drop of water, a blessing and a benediction
to the thirsty earth."'
Did not the Swami thus explain his own
individuality? Before his present embodiment, he had remained
absorbed in communion with the Absolute. Then he accepted
the form of an individual to help humanity in its
spiritual struggle. A giant soul like his is not content to
remain eternally absorbed in the Absolute. Such also was
the thought of Buddha.
In the company of great men and women, the
Swami revealed his intellectual and spiritual power. But one
sees his human side especially in his contact with
humble people. In America he was often taken to be a negro. One
day, as he alighted from a train in a town where he was
to deliver a lecture, he was given a welcome by the
reception committee. The most prominent townspeople were
all there. A negro porter came up to him and said that he
had heard how one of his own people had become great
and asked the privilege of shaking hands with him.
Warmly the Swami shook his hand, saying 'Thank you! Thank
you, brother!' He never resented being mistaken for a negro.
It happened many times, especially in the South, that he
was refused admittance to a hotel, a barber shop, or a
restaurant, because of his dark skin. When the Swami related
these incidents to a Western disciple, he was promptly asked
why he did not tell people that he was not a negro but a
Hindu. 'What!' the Swami replied indignantly. 'Rise at the
expense of another? I did not come to earth for that.'
Swami Vivekananda was proud of his race and
his dark complexion. 'He was scornful,' wrote Sister
Nivedita, 'in his repudiation of the pseudo-ethnology of
privileged races. "If I am grateful to my white-skinned
Aryan ancestors," he said, "I am far more so to my
yellow-skinned Mongolian ancestors, and most of all to the
black-skinned negroids." He was immensely proud of his
physiognomy, especially of what he called his "Mongolian jaw,"
regarding it as a sign of "bulldog tenacity of purpose." Referring
to this particular racial characteristic, which is believed to
be behind every Aryan people, he one day exclaimed:
"Don't you see? The Tartar is the wine of the race! He gives
energy and power to every blood."'
The Swami had a strange experience in a
small American town, where he was confronted by a number
of college boys who had been living there on a ranch as
cowboys. They heard him describe the power of
concentration, through which a man could become
completely oblivious of the outside world. So they decided to put
him to test and invited him to lecture to them. A wooden
tub was placed, with bottom up, to serve as a platform.
The Swami commenced his address and soon appeared to
be lost in his subject. Suddenly shots were fired in his
direction, and bullets went whizzing past his ears. But the
Swami continued his lecture as though nothing was
happening. When he had finished, the young men flocked about
him and congratulated him as a good fellow.
In his lectures and conversations the Swami
showed a wonderful sense of humour. It was a saving feature
in his strenuous life, and without it he might have
broken down under the pressure of his intense thinking. Once,
in one of his classes in Minneapolis, the Swami was asked
by a student if Hindu mothers threw their children to
the crocodiles in the river. Immediately came the reply:
'Yes, Madam! They threw me in, but like your fabled Jonah,
I got out again!' Another time, a lady became rather
romantic about the Swami and said to him, 'Swami! You are
my Romeo and I am your Desdemona!' The Swami said quickly, 'Madam,
you'd better brush up your Shakespeare.'
As already stated, Swami Vivekananda was
particularly friendly with Mr. and Mrs. Hale, of Chicago, and
their two young daughters and two nieces. The daughters
were named Mary and Harriet, and the nieces, Isabel and
Harriet McKindley. He affectionately called Mr. Hale 'Father
Pope' and Mrs. Hale 'Mother Church.' The girls he addressed
as 'sisters' or 'babies.' A very sweet and warm
relationship grew up between them and the Swami. His relationship
with Mary was especially close. He wrote to her many
light-hearted letters. In a letter to the sisters, dated July 26,
1894, the Swami said:
Now, don't let my letters stray beyond the
circle, please — I had a beautiful letter from Sister
Mary — See how I am getting the dash — Sister Jeany
teaches me all that — She can jump and run and play and
swear like a devil and talk slang at the rate of five hundred
a minute — only she does not much care for
religion — only a little....Darn it, I forget everything — I
had duckings in the sea like a fish — I am enjoying
every bit of it — What nonsense was the song Harriet
taught me, 'Dans la Plaine' — the deuce take it! — I told it to
a French scholar and he laughed and laughed till
the fellow was wellnigh 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 — How you are gasping for breath like huge
fish stranded — I am glad that you are
sizzling
(Referring to the summer heat of Chicago.)
— Oh! how nice and cool it is here — and it
is increased a hundredfold when I think about the gasping,
sizzling, boiling, frying four old maids — and how cool and
nice I am here — Whoooooo!!!...
Well — dear old maids — you sometimes have
a glimpse of the lake and on very hot noons think
of going down to the bottom of the lake — down — down — down
— until it is cool and nice, and then
to lie down on the bottom, with just that coolness above
and around — and lie there still — silent — and
just doze — not sleep, but a dreamy, dozing, half
unconscious sort of bliss — very much like that which
opium brings — That is delicious — and drinking lots of
iced water — Lord bless my soul! — I had such
cramps several times as would have killed an elephant — So
I hope to keep myself away from the cold water —
May you all be happy, dear fin de
siecle young ladies, is the constant prayer of
Vivekananda.
One realizes how deeply Swami Vivekananda
had entered into the American spirit, when one sees how
facile he was in his use of American slang. Surely this letter is
an example. As we have stated before, the Swami also
needed diversions of this kind in order to obtain relief from
his intensely serious life and thinking in America. One
recalls that Sri Ramakrishna, too, would often indulge in light
talk in order to keep his mind on the level of
ordinary consciousness.
Shortly after his success at the Parliament of
Religions, the Swami began, as we have seen, to write to his
devotees in India, giving them his plans for India's
regeneration. He urged them to take up work that would lead to
better systems of education and hygiene throughout India.
He wanted a magazine to be started for disseminating
among his fellow-countrymen the broad truths of Vedanta,
which would create confidence in their minds regarding
their power and potentialities, and give them back their
lost individuality. He exhorted his devotees to work
especially for the uplift of women and the masses, without
whose help India would never be able to raise herself from her
present state of stagnation. He sent them money,
earned through his lectures, for religious, educational, and
other philanthropic activities. His enthusiastic letters
inspired them. But they wanted him to return and take up
the leadership. They were also distressed to see the
malicious propaganda against him by the Christian missionaries
in India. The Swami, however, repeatedly urged them
to depend upon themselves. 'Stand on your own feet!'
he wrote to them. 'If you are really my children, you will
fear nothing, stop at nothing. You will be like lions. You
must rouse India and the whole world.'
About the criticism from the Christian
missionaries, he wrote: 'The Christianity that is preached in India is
quite different from what one sees here. You will be
astonished to hear that I have friends in this country amongst the
clergy of the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches, who are
as broad-minded, as liberal, and as sincere as you are in
your own religion. The real spiritual
man — everywhere — is broad-minded. His love forces him
to be so. They to
whom religion is a trade are forced to become
narrow-minded and mischievous by their very introduction into
religion of the competitive, fighting, selfish methods of the
world.' He requested the Indian devotees not to pay any heed
to what the missionaries were saying either for or against
him. 'I shall work incessantly,' he wrote, 'until I die, and
even after death I shall work for the good of the world. Truth
is infinitely more weighty than untruth.... It is the force
of character, of purity, and of truth — of personality. So
long as I have these things, you can feel easy; no one will
be able to injure a hair of my head. If they try, they will
fail, saith the Lord.'