The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (Vols I-VIII, Mayavati Memorial Edn)

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (Vols I-VIII, Mayavati Memorial Edn)

Addresses at The Parliament of Religions

Response to Welcome (11 September 1893)

Why we disagree (15 September 1893)

Paper on Hinduism (19 September 1893)

Religion not the Crying need of India (20 September 1893)

Buddhism, the Fulfillment of Hinduism (26 September 1893)

Address at the Final Session (27 September 1893)

Karma-Yoga

Karma in its Effect on Character

Each is great in his own place

The Secret of Work

What is Duty?

We help ourselves, not the world

Non-attachment is complete self-abnegation

Freedom

The Ideal of Karma-Yoga

Raja-Yoga

Preface

Introductory

The First Steps

Prana

The Psychic Prana

The Control Of The Psychic Prana

Pratyahara And Dharana

Dhyana And Samadhi

Raja-Yoga In Brief

Patanjali’s Yoga Aphorisms

Introduction

Concentration: Its Spiritual Uses

Concentration: Its Practice

Powers

Independence

Appendix - References To Yoga

Lectures And Discourses

Soul, God And Religion

The Hindu Religion

What Is Religion?

Vedic Religious Ideals

The Vedanta Philosophy

Reason And Religion

Vedanta As A Factor In Civilisation

The Spirit And Influence Of Vedanta

Steps Of Hindu Philosophic Thought

Steps To Realisation

Vedanta And Privilege

Privilege

Krishna

The Gita I

The Gita II

The Gita III

Mohammed

Vilvamangala

The Soul And God

Breathing

Practical Religion: Breathing And Meditation

THE POWERS OF THE MIND

( Delivered at Los Angeles, California, January 8, 1900 )

All over the world there has been the belief in the supernatural throughout the ages. All of us have heard of extraordinary happenings, and many of us have had some personal experience of them. I would rather introduce the subject by telling you certain facts which have come within my own experience. I once heard of a man who, if any one went to him with questions in his mind, would answer them immediately; and I was also informed that he foretold events. I was curious and went to see him with a few friends. We each had something in our minds to ask, and, to avoid mistakes, we wrote down our questions and put them in our pockets. As soon as the man saw one of us, he repeated our questions and gave the answers to them. Then he wrote something on paper, which he folded up, asked me to sign on the back, and said, “Don’t look at it; put it in your pocket and keep it there till I ask for it again.” And so on to each one of us. He next told us about some events that would happen to us in the future. Then he said, “Now, think of a word or a sentence, from any language you like.” I thought of a long sentence from Sanskrit, a language of which he was entirely ignorant. “Now, take out the paper from your pocket,” he said. The Sanskrit sentence was written there! He had written it an hour before with the remark, “In confirmation of what I have written, this man will think of this sentence.” It was correct. Another of us who had been given a similar paper which he had signed and placed in his pocket, was also asked to think of a sentence. He thought of a sentence in Arabic, which it was still less possible for the man to know; it was some passage from the Koran. And my friend found this written down on the paper.

Another of us was a physician. He thought of a sentence from a German medical book. It was written on his paper.

Several days later I went to this man again, thinking possibly I had been deluded somehow before. I took other friends, and on this occasion also he came out wonderfully triumphant.

Another time I was in the city of Hyderabad in India, and I was told of a Brâhmin there who could produce numbers of things from where, nobody knew. This man was in business there; he was a respectable gentleman. And I asked him to show me his tricks. It so happened that this man had a fever, and in India there is a general belief that if a holy man puts his hand on a sick man he would be well. This Brahmin came to me and said, “Sir, put your hand on my head, so that my fever may be cured.” I said, “Very good; but you show me your tricks.” He promised. I put my hand on his head as desired, and later he came to fulfil his promise. He had only a strip of cloth about his loins, we took off everything else from him. I had a blanket which I gave him to wrap round himself, because it was cold, and made him sit in a corner. Twenty-five pairs of eyes were looking at him. And he said, “Now, look, write down anything you want.” We all wrote down names of fruits that never grew in that country, bunches of grapes, oranges, and so on. And we gave him those bits of paper. And there came from under his blanket, bushels of grapes, oranges, and so forth, so much that if all that fruit was weighed, it would have been twice as heavy as the man. He asked us to eat the fruit. Some of us objected, thinking it was hypnotism; but the man began eating himself — so we all ate. It was all right.

He ended by producing a mass of roses. Each flower was perfect, with dew-drops on the petals, not one crushed, not one injured. And masses of them! When I asked the man for an explanation, he said, “It is all sleight of hand.”

Whatever it was, it seemed to be impossible that it could be sleight of hand merely. From whence could he have got such large quantities of things?

Well, I saw many things like that. Going about India you find hundreds of similar things in different places. These are in every country. Even in this country you will find some such wonderful things. Of course there is a great deal of fraud, no doubt; but then, whenever you see fraud, you have also to say that fraud is an imitation. There must be some truth somewhere, that is being imitated; you cannot imitate nothing. Imitation must be of something substantially true.

In very remote times in India, thousands of years ago, these facts used to happen even more than they do today. It seems to me that when a country becomes very thickly populated, psychical power deteriorates. Given a vast country thinly inhabited, there will, perhaps, be more of psychical power there. These facts, the Hindus, being analytically minded. Took up and investigated. And they came to certain remarkable conclusions; that is, they made a science of it. They found out that all these, though extraordinary, are also natural; there is nothing supernatural. They are under laws just the same as any other physical phenomenon. It is not a freak of nature that a man is born with such powers. They can be systematically studied, practiced, and acquired. This science they call the science of Râja-Yoga. There are thousands of people who cultivate the study of this science, and for the whole nation it has become a part of daily worship.

The conclusion they have reached is that all these extraordinary powers are in the mind of man. This mind is a part of the universal mind. Each mind is connected with every other mind. And each mind, wherever it is located, is in actual communication with the whole world.

Have you ever noticed the phenomenon that is called thought-transference? A man here is thinking something, and that thought is manifested in somebody else, in some other place. With preparations — not by chance — a man wants to send a thought to another mind at a distance, and this other mind knows that a thought is coming, and he receives it exactly as it is sent out. Distance makes no difference. The thought goes and reaches the other man, and he understands it. If your mind were an isolated something here, and my mind were an isolated something there, and there were no connection between the two, how would it be possible for my thought to reach you? In the ordinary cases, it is not my thought that is reaching you direct; but my thought has got to be dissolved into ethereal vibrations and those ethereal vibrations go into your brain, and they have to be resolved again into your own thoughts. Here is a dissolution of thought, and there is a resolution of thought. It is a roundabout process. But in telepathy, there is no such thing; it is direct.

This shows that there is a continuity of mind, as the Yogis call it. The mind is universal. Your mind, my mind, all these little minds, are fragments of that universal mind, little waves in the ocean; and on account of this continuity, we can convey our thoughts directly to one another.

You see what is happening all around us. The world is one of influence. Part of our energy is used up in the preservation of our own bodies. Beyond that, every particle of our energy is day and night being used in influencing others. Our bodies, our virtues, our intellect, and our spirituality, all these are continuously influencing others; and so, conversely, we are being influenced by them. This is going on all around us. Now, to take a concrete example. A man comes; you know he is very learned, his language is beautiful, and he speaks to you by the hour; but he does not make any impression. Another man comes, and he speaks a few words, not well arranged, ungrammatical perhaps; all the same, he makes an immense impression. Many of you have seen that. So it is evident that words alone cannot always produce an impression. Words, even thoughts contribute only one-third of the influence in making an impression, the man, two-thirds. What you call the personal magnetism of the man — that is what goes out and impresses you.

In our families there are the heads; some of them are successful, others are not. Why? We complain of others in our failures. The moment I am unsuccessful, I say, so-and-so is the cause of the failure. In failure, one does not like to confess one’s own faults and weaknesses. Each person tries to hold himself faultless and lay the blame upon somebody or something else, or even on bad luck. When heads of families fail, they should ask themselves, why it is that some persons manage a family so well and others do not. Then you will find that the difference is owing to the man — his presence, his personality.

Coming to great leaders of mankind, we always find that it was the personality of the man that counted. Now, take all the great authors of the past, the great thinkers. Really speaking, how many thoughts have they thought? Take all the writings that have been left to us by the past leaders of mankind; take each one of their books and appraise them. The real thoughts, new and genuine, that have been thought in this world up to this time, amount to only a handful. Read in their books the thoughts they have left to us. The authors do not appear to be giants to us, and yet we know that they were great giants in their days. What made them so? Not simply the thoughts they thought, neither the books they wrote, nor the speeches they made, it was something else that is now gone, that is their personality. As I have already remarked, the personality of the man is two-thirds, and his intellect, his words, are but one-third. 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. But, instead of that, we are always trying to polish up the outside. What use in polishing up the outside when there is no inside? 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.

Now, we see that though this is a fact, no physical laws that we know of will explain this. How can we explain it by chemical and physical knowledge? How much of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, how many molecules in different positions, and how many cells, etc., etc. can explain this mysterious personality? And we still see, it is a fact, and not only that, it is the real man; and it is that man that lives and moves and works, it is that man that influences, moves his fellow-beings, and passes out, and his intellect and books and works are but traces left behind. Think of this. Compare the great teachers of religion with the great philosophers. The philosophers scarcely influenced anybody’s inner man, and yet they wrote most marvellous books. The religious teachers, on the other hand, moved countries in their lifetime. The difference was made by personality. In the philosopher it is a faint personality that influences; in the great prophets it is tremendous. In the former we touch the intellect, in the latter we touch life. In the one case, it is simply a chemical process, putting certain chemical ingredients together which may gradually combine and under proper circumstances bring out a flash of light or may fail. In the other, it is like a torch that goes round quickly, lighting others.

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. This is one of the great practical things, and this is the secret of all education. This has a universal application. In the life of the householder, in the life of the poor, the rich, the man of business, the spiritual man, in every one’s life, it is a great thing, the strengthening of this personality. There are laws, very fine, which are behind the physical laws, as we know. That is to say, there are no such realities as a physical world, a mental world, a spiritual world. Whatever is, is one. Let us say, it is a sort of tapering existence; the thickest part is here, it tapers and becomes finer and finer. The finest is what we call spirit; the grossest, the body. And just as it is here in microcosm, it is exactly the same in the macrocosm. The universe of ours is exactly like that; it is the gross external thickness, and it tapers into something finer and finer until it becomes God.

We also know that the greatest power is lodged in the fine, not in the coarse. We see a man take up a huge weight, we see his muscles swell, and all over his body we see signs of exertion, and we think the muscles are powerful things. But it is the thin thread-like things, the nerves, which bring power to the muscles; the moment one of these threads is cut off from reaching the muscles, they are not able to work at all. These tiny nerves bring the power from something still finer, and that again in its turn brings it from something finer still — thought, and so on. So, it is the fine that is really the seat of power. Of course we can see the movements in the gross; but when fine movements take place, we cannot see them. When a gross thing moves, we catch it, and thus we naturally identify movement with things which are gross. But all the power is really in the fine. We do not see any movement in the fine, perhaps, because the movement is so intense that we cannot perceive it. But if by any science, any investigation, we are helped to get hold of these finer forces which are the cause of the expression, the expression itself will be under control. There is a little bubble coming from the bottom of a lake; we do not see it coming all the time, we see it only when it bursts on the surface; so, we can perceive thoughts only after they develop a great deal, or after they become actions. We constantly complain that we have no control over our actions, over our thoughts. But how can we have it? If we can get control over the fine movements, if we can get hold of thought at the root, before it has become thought, before it has become action, then it would be possible for us to control the whole. Now, if there is a method by which we can analyse, investigate, understand, and finally grapple with those finer powers, the finer causes, then alone is it possible to have control over ourselves, and the man who has control over his own mind assuredly will have control over every other mind. That is why purity and morality have been always the object of religion; a pure, moral man has control of himself. And all minds are the same, different parts of one Mind. He who knows one lump of clay has known all the clay in the universe. He who knows and controls his own mind knows the secret of every mind and has power over every mind.

Now, a good deal of our physical evil we can get rid of, if we have control over the fine parts; a good many worries we can throw off, if we have control over the fine movements; a good many failures can be averted, if we have control over these fine powers. So far, is utility. Yet beyond, there is something higher.

Now, I shall tell you a theory, which I will not argue now, but simply place before you the conclusion. Each man in his childhood runs through the stages through which his race has come up; only the race took thousands of years to do it, while the child takes a few years. The child is first the old savage man — and he crushes a butterfly under his feet. The child is at first like the primitive ancestors of his race. As he grows, he passes through different stages until he reaches the development of his race. Only he does it swiftly and quickly. Now, take the whole of humanity as a race, or take the whole of the animal creation, man and the lower animals, as one whole. There is an end towards which the whole is moving. Let us call it perfection. Some men and women are born who anticipate the whole progress of mankind. Instead of waiting and being reborn over and over again for ages until the whole human race has attained to that perfection, they, as it were, rush through them in a few short years of their life. And we know that we can hasten these processes, if we be true to ourselves. If a number of men, without any culture, be left to live upon an island, and are given barely enough food, clothing, and shelter, they will gradually go on and on, evolving higher and higher stages of civilization. We know also, that this growth can be hastened by additional means. We help the growth of trees, do we not? Left to nature they would have grown, only they would have taken a longer time; we help them to grow in a shorter time than they would otherwise have taken. We are doing all the time the same thing, hastening the growth of things by artificial means. Why cannot we hasten the growth of man? We can do that as a race. Why are teachers sent to other countries? Because by these means we can hasten the growth of races. Now, can we not hasten the growth of individuals? We can. Can we put a limit to the hastening? We cannot say how much a man can grow in one life. You have no reason to say that this much a man can do and no more. Circumstances can hasten him wonderfully. Can there be any limit then, till you come to perfection? So, what comes of it? — That a perfect man, that is to say, the type that is to come of this race, perhaps millions of years hence, that man can come today. And this is what the Yogis say, that all great incarnations and prophets are such men; that they reached perfection in this one life. We have had such men at all periods of the world’s history and at all times. Quite recently, there was such a man who lived the life of the whole human race and reached the end — even in this life. Even this hastening of the growth must be under laws. Suppose we can investigate these laws and understand their secrets and apply them to our own needs; it follows that we grow. We hasten our growth, we hasten our development, and we become perfect, even in this life. This is the higher part of our life, and the science of the study of mind and its powers has this perfection as its real end. Helping others with money and other material things and teaching them how to go on smoothly in their daily life are mere details.

The utility of this science 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.

Man is growing in knowledge, in power, in happiness. Continuously, we are growing as a race. We see that is true, perfectly true. Is it true of individuals? To a certain extent, yes. But yet, again comes the question: Where do you fix the limit? I can see only at a distance of so many feet. But I have seen a man close his eyes and see what is happening in another room. If you say you do not believe it, perhaps in three weeks that man can make you do the same. It can be taught to anybody. Some persons, in five minutes even, can be made to read what is happening in another man’s mind. These facts can be demonstrated.

Now, if these things are true, where can we put a limit? If a man can read what is happening in another’s mind in the corner of this room, why not in the next room? Why not anywhere? We cannot say, why not. We dare not say that it is not possible. We can only say, we do not know how it happens. Material scientists have no right to say that things like this are not possible; they can only say, “We do not know.” Science has to collect facts, generalise upon them, deduce principles, and state the truth — that is all. But if we begin by denying the facts, how can a science be?

There is no end to the power a man can obtain. This is the peculiarity of the Indian mind, that when anything interests it, it gets absorbed in it and other things are neglected. You know how many sciences had their origin in India. Mathematics began there. You are even today counting 1, 2, 3, etc. to zero, after Sanskrit figures, and you all know that algebra also originated in India, and that gravitation was known to the Indians thousands of years before Newton was born.

You see the peculiarity. At a certain period of Indian history, this one subject of man and his mind absorbed all their interest. And it was so enticing, because it seemed the easiest way to achieve their ends. Now, the Indian mind became so thoroughly persuaded that the mind could do anything and everything according to law, that its powers became the great object of study. Charms, magic, and other powers, and all that were nothing extraordinary, but a regularly taught science, just as the physical sciences they had taught before that. Such a conviction in these things came upon the race that physical sciences nearly died out. It was the one thing that came before them. Different sects of Yogis began to make all sorts of experiments. Some made experiments with light, trying to find out how lights of different colours produced changes in the body. They wore a certain coloured cloth, lived under a certain colour, and ate certain coloured foods. All sorts of experiments were made in this way. Others made experiments in sound by stopping and unstopping their ears. And still others experimented in the sense of smell, and so on.

The whole idea was to get at the basis, to reach the fine parts of the thing. And some of them really showed most marvellous powers. Many of them were trying to float in the air or pass through it. I shall tell you a story which I heard from a great scholar in the West. It was told him by a Governor of Ceylon who saw the performance. A girl was brought forward and seated cross-legged upon a stool made of sticks crossed. After she had been seated for a time, the show-man began to take out, one after another, these cross-bars; and when all were taken out, the girl was left floating in the air. The Governor thought there was some trick, so he drew his sword and violently passed it under the girl; nothing was there. Now, what was this? It was not magic or something extraordinary. That is the peculiarity. No one in India would tell you that things like this do not exist. To the Hindu it is a matter of course. You know what the Hindus would often say when they have to fight their enemies — “Oh, one of our Yogis will come and drive the whole lot out!” It is the extreme belief of the race. What power is there in the hand or the sword? The power is all in the spirit.

If this is true, it is temptation enough for the mind to exert its highest. But as with every other science 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. How many are the years you take to make a fortune? Think of that! First, how many years do you take to learn electrical science or engineering? And then you have to work all the rest of your life.

Again, most of the other sciences deal with things that do not move, that are fixed. You can analyse the chair, the chair does not fly from you. But this science deals with the mind, which moves all the time; the moment you want to study it, it slips. Now the mind is in one mood, the next moment, perhaps, it is different, changing, changing all the time. In the midst of all this change it has to be studied, understood, grasped, and controlled. How much more difficult, then, is this science! 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. I know very little of this science, but the little that I gained I worked for thirty years of my life, and for six years I have been telling people the little that I know. It took me thirty years to learn it; thirty years of hard struggle. Sometimes I worked at it twenty hours during the twenty-four; sometimes I slept only one hour in the night; sometimes I worked whole nights; sometimes I lived in places where there was hardly a sound, hardly a breath; sometimes I had to live in caves. Think of that. And yet I know little or nothing; I have barely touched the hem of the garment of this science. But I can understand that it is true and vast and wonderful.

Now, if there is any one amongst you who really wants to study this science, he will have to start with that sort of determination, the same as, nay even more than, that which he puts into any business of life.

And what an amount of attention does business require, and what a rigorous taskmaster it is! Even if the father, the mother, the wife, or the child dies, business cannot stop! Even if the heart is breaking, we still have to go to our place of business, when every hour of work is a pang. That is business, and we think that it is just, that it is right.

This science calls for more application than any business can ever require. Many men can succeed in business; very few in this. Because so much depends upon the particular constitution of the person studying it. As in business all may not make a fortune, but everyone can make something, so in the study of this science each one can get a glimpse which will convince him of its truth and of the fact that there have been men who realised it fully.

This is the outline of the science. It stands upon its own feet and in its own light, and challenges comparison with any other science. There have been charlatans, there have been magicians, there have been cheats, and more here than in any other field. Why? For the same reason, that the more profitable the business, the greater the number of charlatans and cheats. But that is no reason why the business should not be good. And one thing more; it may be good intellectual gymnastics to listen to all the arguments and an intellectual satisfaction to hear of wonderful things. But, if any one of you really wants to learn something beyond that, merely attending lectures will not do. That cannot 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.

Jnana-Yoga

The Necessity of Religion

The Real Nature of Man

Maya and Illusion

Maya and the Evolution of the Conception of God

Maya and Freedom

The Absolute and Manifestation

God in Everything

Realisation

Unity in Diversity

The Freedom of the Soul

The Cosmos: The Macrocosm

The Cosmos: The Microcosm

Immortality

The Atman

The Atman: Its Bondage and Freedom

The Real and the Apparent Man

Practical Vedanta and other lectures

Practical Vedanta: Part I

Practical Vedanta: Part II

Practical Vedanta: Part III

Practical Vedanta: Part IV

The Way to the Realisation of a Universal Religion

The Ideal of a Universal Religion

The Open Secret

The Way to Blessedness

Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi

Soul, Nature and God

Cosmology

A study of the Sankhya philosophy

Sankhya and Vedanta

The Goal

Reports in American Newspapers

Note

Divinity of Man

Swami Vivekananda on India

Religious Harmony

From far off India

An Evening with our Hindu Cousins

The Manners and Customs of India

The Religions of India

Sects and Doctrines in India

Less Doctrine and more Bread

The Religion of Buddha

All Religions are Good

The Hindu way of life

Ideals of Womanhood

True Buddhism

India’s Gift to the World

Child Widows of India

Some Customs of the Hindus

Lectures and Discourses

Unity, the Goal of Religion

The Free Soul

One Existence Appearing as Many

Bhakti-Yoga

Definition of Bhakti

The Philosophy of Ishvara

Spiritual Realisation, the aim of Bhakti-Yoga

The Need of Guru

Qualifications of the Aspirant and the Teacher

Incarnate Teachers and Incarnation

The Mantra: Om: Word and Wisdom

Worship of Substitutes and Images

The Chosen Ideal

The Method and the Means

Para-Bhakti or Supreme Devotion

The Preparatory Renunciation

The Bhakta’s Renunciation Results from Love

The Naturalness of Bhakti-Yoga and its Central Secret

The Forms of Love — Manifestation

Universal Love and How it Leads to Self Surrender

The Higher Knowledge and the Higher Love are One to the True Lover

The Triangle of Love

The God of Love is His Own Proof

Human Representations of the Divine Ideal of Love

Conclusion

Lectures from Colombo to Almora

First Public Lecture in the East (Colombo)

Vedantism

Reply to the Address of Welcome at Pamban

Address at the Rameswaram Temple on Real Worship

Reply to the Address of Welcome at Ramnad

Reply to the Address of Welcome at Paramakudi

Reply to the Address of Welcome at Shivaganga and Manamadura

Reply to the Address of Welcome at Madura

The Mission of the Vedanta

Reply to the Address of Welcome at Madras

My Plan of Campaign

Vedanta in its Application to Indian Life

The Sages of India

The Work before us

The Future of India

On Charity

Address of Welcome Presented at Calcutta and Reply

The Vedanta in all its phases

Address of Welcome at Almora and Reply

Vedic Teaching in Theory and Practice

Bhakti

The Common Bases of Hinduism

Bhakti

The Vedanta

Vedantism

The Influence of Indian Spiritual Thought in England

Sannyasa: Its Ideal and Practice

What have I learnt?

The Religion we are born in

Reports in American Newspapers

India: Her Religion and Customs

Hindus at the Fair

At the Parliament of Religions

Personal Traits

Reincarnation

Hindu Civilisation

An Interesting Lecture

The Hindoo Religion

The Hindoo Monk

Plea for Tolerance

Manners and Customs in India

Hindoo Philosophy

Miracles

The Divinity of Man

The Love of God

The Women of India

BUDDHISTIC INDIA

(Delivered at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California, on February 2, 1900)

Buddhistic India is our subject tonight. Almost all of you, perhaps, have read Edwin Arnold’s poem on the life of Buddha, and some of you, perhaps, have gone into the subject with more scholarly interest, as in English, French and German, there is quite a lot of Buddhistic literature. Buddhism itself is the most interesting of subjects, for it is the first historical outburst of a world religion. There have been great religions before Buddhism arose, in India and elsewhere, but, more or less, they are confined within their own races. The ancient Hindus or ancient Jews or ancient Persians, every one of them had a great religion, but these religions were more or less racial. With Buddhism first begins that peculiar phenomenon of religion boldly starting out to conquer the world. Apart from its doctrines and the truths it taught and the message it had to give, we stand face to face with one of the tremendous cataclysms of the world. Within a few centuries of its birth, the barefooted, shaven-headed missionaries of Buddha had spread over all the then known civilised world, and they penetrated even further — from Lapland on the one side to the Philippine Islands on the other. They had spread widely within a few centuries of Buddha’s birth; and in India itself, the religion of Buddha had at one time nearly swallowed up two-thirds of the population.

The whole of India was never Buddhistic. It stood outside. Buddhism had the same fate as Christianity had with the Jews; the majority of the Jews stood aloof. So the old Indian religion lived on. But the comparison stops here. Christianity, though it could not get within its fold all the Jewish race, itself took the country. Where the old religion existed — the religion of the Jews — that was conquered by Christianity in a very short time and the old religion was dispersed, and so the religion of the Jews lives a sporadic life in different parts of the world. But in India this gigantic child was absorbed, in the long run, by the mother that gave it birth, and today the very name of Buddha is almost unknown all over India. You know more about Buddhism than ninety-nine per cent of the Indians. At best, they of India only know the name — “Oh, he was a great prophet, a great Incarnation of God” — and there it ends. The island of Ceylon remains to Buddha, and in some parts of the Himalayan country, there are some Buddhists yet. Beyond that there are none. But [Buddhism] has spread over all the rest of Asia.

Still, it has the largest number of followers of any religion, and it has indirectly modified the teachings of all the other religions. A good deal of Buddhism entered into Asia Minor. It was a constant fight at one time whether the Buddhists would prevail or the later sects of Christians. The [Gnostics] and the other sects of early Christians were more or less Buddhistic in their tendencies, and all these got fused up in that wonderful city of Alexandria, and out of the fusion under Roman law came Christianity. Buddhism in its political and social aspect is even more interesting than its [doctrines] and dogmas; and as the first outburst of the tremendous world-conquering power of religion, it is very interesting also.

I am mostly interested in this lecture in India as it has been affected by Buddhism; and to understand Buddhism and its rise a bit, we have to get a few ideas about India as it existed when this great prophet was born.

There was already in India a vast religion with an organised scripture — the Vedas; and these Vedas existed as a mass of literature and not a book — just as you find the Old Testament, the Bible. Now, the Bible is a mass of literature of different ages; different persons are the writers, and so on. It is a collection. Now, the Vedas are a vast collection. I do not know whether, if the texts were all found — nobody has found all the texts, nobody even in India has seen all the books — if all the books were known, this room would contain them. It is a huge mass of literature, carried down from generation to generation from God, who gave the scriptures. And the idea about the scriptures in India became tremendously orthodox. You complain of your orthodoxies in book-worship. If you get the Hindus’ idea, where will you be? The Hindus think the Vedas are the direct knowledge of God, that God has created the whole universe in and through the Vedas, and that the whole universe exists because it is in the Vedas. The cow exists outside because the word “cow” is in the Vedas; man exists outside because of the word in the Vedas. Here you see the beginning of that theory which later on Christians developed and expressed in the text: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God ” It is the old, ancient theory of India. Upon that is based the whole idea of the scriptures. And mind, every word is the power of God. The word is only the external manifestation on the material plane. So, all this manifestation is just the manifestation on the material plane; and the Word is the Vedas, and Sanskrit is the language of God. God spoke once. He spoke in Sanskrit, and that is the divine language. Every other language, they consider, is no more than the braying of animals; and to denote that they call every other nation that does not speak Sanskrit [Mlechchhas], the same word as the barbarians of the Greeks. They are braying, not talking, and Sanskrit is the divine language.

Now, the Vedas were not written by anybody; they were eternally coexistent with God. God is infinite. So is knowledge, and through this knowledge is created the world. Their idea of ethics is [that a thing is good] because the law says so. Everything is bounded by that book — nothing [can go] beyond that, because the knowledge of God — you cannot get beyond that. That is Indian orthodoxy.

In the latter part of the Vedas, you see the highest, the spiritual. In the early portions, there is the crude part. You quote a passage from the Vedas — “That is not good”, you say. “Why?” “There is a positive evil injunction” — the same as you see in the Old Testament. There are numbers of things in all old books, curious ideas, which we would not like in our present day. You say: “This doctrine is not at all good; why, it shocks my ethics!” How did you get your idea? [Merely] by your own thought? Get out! If it is ordained by God, what right have you to question? When the Vedas say, “Do not do this; this is immoral”, and so on, no more have you the right to question at all. And that is the difficulty. If you tell a Hindu, “But our Bible does not say so”, [he will reply] “Oh, your Bible! it is a babe of history. What other Bible could there be except the Vedas? What other book could there be? All knowledge is in God. Do you mean to say that He teaches by two or more Bibles? His knowledge came out in the Vedas. Do you mean to say that He committed a mistake, then? Afterwards, He wanted to do something better and taught another Bible to another nation? You cannot bring another book that is as old as Vedas. Everything else — it was all copied after that.” They would not listen to you. And the Christian brings the Bible. They say: “That is fraud. God only speaks once, because He never makes mistakes.”

Now, just think of that. That orthodoxy is terrible. And if you ask a Hindu that he is to reform his society and do this and that, he says: “Is it in the books? If it is not, I do not care to change. You wait. In five [hundred] years more you will find this is good.” If you say to him, “This social institution that you have is not right”, he says, “How do you know that?” Then he says: “Our social institutions in this matter are the better. Wait five [hundred] years and your institutions will die. The test is the survival of the fittest. You live, but there is not one community in the world which lives five hundred years together. Look here! We have been standing all the time.” That is what they would say. Terrible orthodoxy! And thank God I have crossed that ocean.

This was the orthodoxy of India. What else was there? Everything was divided, the whole society, as it is today, though in a much more rigorous form then — divided into castes. There is another thing to learn. There is a tendency to make castes just [now] going on here in the West. And I myself — I am a renegade. I have broken everything. I do not believe in caste, individually. It has very good things in it. For myself, Lord help me! I would not have any caste, if He helps me. You understand what I mean by caste, and you are all trying to make it very fast. It is a hereditary trade [for] the Hindu. The Hindu said in olden times that life must be made easier and smoother. And what makes everything alive? Competition. Hereditary trade kills. You are a carpenter? Very good, your son can be only a carpenter. What are you? A blacksmith? Blacksmithing becomes a caste; your children will become blacksmiths. We do not allow anybody else to come into that trade, so you will be quiet and remain there. You are a military man, a fighter? Make a caste. You are a priest? Make a caste. The priesthood is hereditary. And so on. Rigid, high power! That has a great side, and that side is [that] it really rejects competition. It is that which has made the nation live while other nations have died — that caste. But there is a great evil: it checks individuality. I will have to be a carpenter because I am born a carpenter; but I do not like it. That is in the books, and that was before Buddha was born. I am talking to you of India as it was before Buddha. And you are trying today what you call socialism! Good things will come; but in the long run you will be a [blight] upon the race. Freedom is the watchword. Be free! A free body, a free mind, and a free soul! That is what I have felt all my life; I would rather be doing evil freely than be doing good under bondage.

Well, these things that they are crying for now in the West, they have done ages before there. Land has been nationalised … by thousands all these things. There is blame upon this hide-bound caste. The Indian people are intensely socialistic. But, beyond that, there is a wealth of individualism. They are as tremendously individualistic — that is to say, after laying down all these minute regulations. They have regulated how you should eat, drink, sleep, die! Everything is regulated there; from early morning to when you go to bed and sleep, you are following regulations and law. Law, law. Do you wonder that a nation should [live] under that? Law is death. The more of the law in a country, the worse for the country. [But to be an individual] we go to the mountains, where there is no law, no government. The more of law you make, the more of police and socialism, the more of blackguards there are. Now this tremendous regulation of law [is] there. As soon as a child is born, he knows that he is born a slave: slave to his caste, first; slave to his nation, next. Slave, slave, slave. Every action - his drinking and his eating. He must eat under a regular method; this prayer with the first morsel, this prayer with the second, that prayer with the third, and that prayer when he drinks water. Just think of that! Thus, from day to day, it goes on and on.

But they were thinkers. They knew that this would not lead to real greatness. So they left a way out for them all. After all, they found out that all these regulations are only for the world and the life of the world. As soon as you do not want money [and] you do not want children — no business for this world — you can go out entirely free. Those that go out thus were called Sannyasins — people who have given up. They never organised themselves, nor do they now; they are a free order of men and women who refuse to marry, who refuse to possess property, and they have no law — not even the Vedas bind them. They stand on [the] top of the Vedas. They are [at] the other pole [from] our social institutions. They are beyond caste. They have grown beyond. They are too big to be bound by these little regulations and things. Only two things [are] necessary for them: they must not possess property and must not marry. If you marry, settle down, or possess property, immediately the regulations will be upon you; but if you do not do either of these two, you are free. They were the living gods of the race, and ninety-nine per cent of our great men and women were to be found among them.

In every country, real greatness of the soul means extraordinary individuality, and that individuality you cannot get in society. It frets and fumes and wants to burst society. If society wants to keep it down, that soul wants to burst society into pieces. And they made an easy channel. They say: “Well, once you get out of society, then you may preach and teach everything that you like. We only worship you from a distance. So there were the tremendous, individualistic men and women, and they are the highest persons in all society. If one of those yellow-clad shaven-heads comes, the prince even dare not remain seated in his presence; he must stand. The next half hour, one of these Sannyasins might be at the door of one of the cottages of the poorest subjects, glad to get only a piece of bread. And he has to mix with all grades; now he sleeps with a poor man in his cottage; tomorrow [he] sleeps on the beautiful bed of a king. One day he dines on gold plates in kings’ palaces; the next day, he has not any food and sleeps under a tree. Society looks upon these men with great respect; and some of them, just to show their individuality, will try to shock the public ideas. But the people are never shocked so long as they keep to these principles: perfect purity and no property.

These men, being very individualistic, they are always trying new theories and plans — visiting in every country. They must think something new; they cannot run in the old groove. Others are all trying to make us run in the old groove, forcing us all to think alike. But human nature is greater than any human foolishness. Our greatness is greater than our weakness; the good things are stronger than the evil things. Supposing they succeeded in making us all think in the same groove, there we would be — no more thought to think; we would die.

Here was a society which had almost no vitality, its members pressed down by iron chains of law. They were forced to help each other. There, one was under regulations [that were] tremendous: regulations even how to breathe: how to wash face and hands; how to bathe; how to brush the teeth; and so on, to the moment of death. And beyond these regulations was the wonderful individualism of the Sannyasin. There he was. And every days new sect was rising amongst these strong, individualistic men and women. The ancient Sanskrit books tell about their standing out — of one woman who was very quaint, queer old woman of the ancient times; she always had some new thing; sometimes [she was] criticised, but always people were afraid of her, obeying her quietly. So, there were those great men and women of olden times.

And within this society, so oppressed by regulations, the power was in the hands of the priests. In the social scale, the highest caste is [that of] the priest, and that being a business — I do not know any other word, that is why I use the word “priest”. It is not in the same sense as in this country, because our priest is not a man that teaches religion or philosophy. The business of a priest is to perform all these minute details of regulations which have been laid down The priest is the man who helps in these regulations. He marries you; to your funeral he comes to pray. So at all the ceremonies performed upon a man or a woman, the priest must be there. In society the ideal is marriage. [Everyone] must marry. It is the rule. Without marriage, man is not able to perform any religious ceremony; he is only half a man; [he] is not competent to officiate — even the priest himself cannot officiate as a priest, except he marries. Half a man is unfit within society.

Now, the power of the priests increased tremendously… . The general policy of our national law-givers was to give the priests this honour. They also had the same socialistic plan [you are] just ready to [try] that checked them from getting money. What [was] the motive? Social honour. Mind you, the priest in all countries is the highest in the social scale, so much so in India that the poorest Brahmin is greater than the greatest king in the country, by birth. He is the nobleman in India. But the law does not allow him ever to become rich. The law grinds him down to poverty — only, it gives him this honour. He cannot do a thousand things; and the higher is the caste in the social scale, the more restricted are its enjoyments. The higher the caste, the less the number of kinds of food that man can eat, the less the amount of food that man may eat, the less the number of occupations [he may] engage in. To you, his life would be only a perpetual train of hardships — nothing more than that. It is a perpetual discipline in eating, drinking, and everything; and all [penalties] which are required from the lower caste are required from the higher ten times more. The lowest man tells a lie; his fine is one dollar. A Brahmin, he must pay, say, a hundred dollars — [for] he knows better.

But this was a grand organisation to start with. Later on, the time came when they, these priests, began to get all the power in their hands; and at last they forgot the secret of their power: poverty. They were men whom society fed and clad so that they might simply learn and teach and think. Instead of that, they began to spread out their hands to clutch at the riches of society. They became “money-grabbers” — to use your word — and forgot all these things.

Then there was the second caste, the kingly caste, the military. Actual power was in their hands. Not only so — they have produced all of our great thinkers, and not the Brahmins. It is curious. All our great prophets, almost without one exception, belong to the kingly caste. The great man Krishna was also of that caste; Rama, he also, and all our great philosophers, almost all [sat] on the throne; thence came all the great philosophers of renunciation. From the throne came the voice that always cried, “Renounce”. These military people were their kings; and they [also] were the philosophers; they were the speakers in the Upanishads. In their brains and their thought, they were greater than the priests they were more powerful, they were the kings - and yet the priests got all the power and: tried to tyrannise over them. And so that was going on: political competition between the two castes, the priests and the kings.

Another phenomenon is there. Those of you that have been to hear the first lecture already know that in India there are two great races: one is called the Aryan; the other, the non-Aryan. It is the Aryan race that has the three castes; but the whole of the rest are dubbed with one name, Shudras — no caste. They are not Aryans at all. (Many people came from outside of India, and they found the Shudras [there], the aborigines of the country). However it may be, these vast masses of non-Aryan people and the mixed people among them, they gradually became civilised and they began to scheme for the same rights as the Aryans. They wanted to enter their schools and their colleges; they wanted to take the sacred thread of the Aryans; they wanted to perform the same ceremonies as the Aryans, and wanted to have equal rights in religion and politics like the Aryans. And the Brahmin priest, he was the great antagonist of such claims. You see, it is the nature of priests in every country — they are the most conservative people, naturally. So long as it is a trade, it must be; it is to their interest to be conservative. So this tide of murmur outside the Aryan pale, the priests were trying to check with all their might. Within the Aryan pale, there was also a tremendous religious ferment, and [it was] mostly led by this military caste.

There was already the sect of Jains [who are a] conservative [force] in India [even] today. It is a very ancient sect. They declared against the validity of the scriptures of the Hindus, the Vedas. They wrote some books themselves, and they said: “Our books are the only original books, the only original Vedas, and the Vedas that now are going on under that name have been written by the Brahmins to dupe the people.” And they also laid the same plan. You see, it is difficult for you to meet the arguments of the Hindus about the scriptures. They also claimed [that] the world has been created through those books. And they were written in the popular language. The Sanskrit, even then, had ceased to be a spoken language — [it had] just the same relation [to the spoken language] as Latin has to modern Italian. Now, they wrote all their books in Pali; and when a Brahmin said, “Why, your books are in Pali! ”, they said, “Sanskrit is a language of the dead.”

In their methods and manners they were different. For, you see, these Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, are a vast mass of accumulation — some of them crude — until you come to where religion is taught, only the spiritual. Now, that was the portion of the Vedas which these sects all claimed to preach. Then, there are three steps in the ancient Vedas: first, work; second, worship; third, knowledge. When a man purifies himself by work and worship, then God is within that man. He has realised He is already there. He only can have seen Him because the mind has become pure. Now, the mind can become purified by work and worship. That is all. Salvation is already there. We don’t know it. Therefore, work, worship, and knowledge are the three steps. By work, they mean doing good to others. That has, of course, something in it, but mostly, as to the Brahmins, work means to perform these elaborate ceremonials: killing of cows and killing of bulls, killing of goats and all sorts of animals, that are taken fresh and thrown into the fire, and so on. “Now” declared the Jains, “that is no work at all, because injuring others can never be any good work”; and they said; “This is the proof that your Vedas are false Vedas, manufactured by the priests, because you do not mean to say that any good book will order us [to be] killing animals and doing these things. You do not believe it. So all this killing of animals and other things that you see in the Vedas, they have been written by the Brahmins, because they alone are benefited. It is the priest only [who] pockets the money and goes home. So, therefore, it is all priest-craft.”

It was one of their doctrines that there cannot be any God: “The priests have invented God, that the people may believe in God and pay them money. All nonsense! there is no God. There is nature and there are souls, and that is all. Souls have got entangled into this life and got round them the clothing of man you call a body. Now, do good work.” But from that naturally came the doctrine that everything that is matter is vile. They are the first teachers of asceticism. If the body is the result of impurity, why, therefore the body is vile. If a man stands on one leg for some time — “All right, it is a punishment”. If the head comes up bump against a wall — “Rejoice, it is a very good punishment”. Some of the great founders of the [Franciscan Order] — one of them St. Francis — were going to a certain place to meet somebody; and St. Francis had one of his companions with him, and he began to talk as to whether [the person] would receive them or not, and this man suggested that possibly he would reject them. Said St. Francis: “That is not enough, brother, but if, when we go and knock at the door, the man comes and drives us away, that is not enough. But if he orders us to be bound and gives us a thorough whipping, even that is not enough. And then, if he binds us hand and foot and whips us until we bleed at every pore and throws us outside in the snow, that would be enough.”

These [same] ascetic ideas prevailed at that time. These Jains were the first great ascetics; but they did some great work. “Don’t injure any and do good to all that you can, and that is all the morality and ethics, and that is all the work there is, and the rest is all nonsense — the Brahmins created that. Throw it all away.” And then they went to work and elaborated this one principle all through, and it is a most wonderful ideal: how all that we call ethics they simply bring out from that one great principle of non-injury and doing good.

This sect was at least five hundred years before Buddha, and he was five hundred and fifty years before Christ . Now the whole of the animal creation they divide into five sections: the lowest have only one organ, that of touch; the next one, touch and taste; the next, touch, taste, and hearing; the next, touch, taste, hearing, and sight. And the next, the five organs. The first two, the one-organ and the two-organ, are invisible to the naked eye, and they art everywhere in water. A terrible thing, killing these [low forms of life]. This bacteriology has come into existence in the modern world only in the last twenty years and therefore nobody knew anything about it. They said, the lowest animals are only one-organ, touch; nothing else. The next greater [were] also invisible. And they all knew that if you boiled water these animals were all killed. So these monks, if they died of thirst, they would never kill these animals by drinking water. But if [a monk] stands at your door and you give him a little boiled water, the sin is on you of killing the animals — and he will get the benefit. They carry these ideas to ludicrous extremes. For instance, in rubbing the body — if he bathes — he will have to kill numbers of animalcules; so he never bathes. He gets killed himself; he says that is all right. Life has no care for him; he will get killed and save life.

These Jains were there. There were various other sects of ascetics; and while this was going on, on the one hand, there was the political jealousy between the priests and the kings. And then these different dissatisfied sects [were] springing up everywhere. And there was the greater problem: the vast multitudes of people wanting the same rights as the Aryans, dying of thirst while the perennial stream of nature went flowing by them, and no right to drink a drop of water.

And that man was born — the great man Buddha. Most of you know about him, his life. And in spite of all the miracles and stories that generally get fastened upon any great man, in the first place, he is one of the most historical prophets of the world. Two are very historical: one, the most ancient, Buddha, and the other, Mohammed, because both friends and foes are agreed about them. So we are perfectly sure that there were such persons. As for the other persons, we have only to take for granted what the disciples say — nothing more. Our Krishna — you know, the Hindu prophet — he is very mythological. A good deal of his life, and everything about him, is written only by his disciples; and then there seem to be, sometimes, three or four men, who all loom into one. We do not know so clearly about many of the prophets; but as to this man, because both friends and foes write of him, we are sure that there was such a historical personage. And if we analyse through all the fables and reports of miracles and stories that generally are heaped upon a great man in this world, we will find an inside core; and all through the account of that man, he never did a thing for himself — never! How do you know that? Because, you see, when fables are fastened upon a man, the fables must be tinged with that man’s general character. Not one fable tried to impute any vice or any immorality to the man. Even his enemies have favourable accounts.

When Buddha was born, he was so pure that whosoever looked at his face from a distance immediately gave up the ceremonial religion and became a monk and became saved. So the gods held a meeting. They said, “We are undone”. Because most of the gods live upon the ceremonials. These sacrifices go to the gods and these sacrifices were all gone. The gods were dying of hunger and [the reason for] it was that their power was gone. So the gods said: “We must, anyhow, put this man down. He is too pure for our life.” And then the gods came and said: “Sir, we come to ask you something. We want to make a great sacrifice and we mean to make a huge fire, and we have been seeking all over the world for a pure spot to light the fire on and could not find it, and now we have found it. If you will lie down, on your breast we will make the huge fire.” “Granted,” he says, “go on.” And the gods built the fire high upon the breast of Buddha, and they thought he was dead, and he was not. And then they went about and said, “We are undone.” And all the gods began to strike him. No good. They could not kill him. From underneath, the voice comes: “Why [are you] making all these vain attempts?” “Whoever looks upon you becomes purified and is saved, and nobody is going to worship us.” “Then, your attempt is vain, because purity can never be killed.” This fable was written by his enemies, and yet throughout the fable the only blame that attaches to Buddha is that he was so great a teacher of purity.

About his doctrines, some of you know a little. It is his doctrines that appeal to many modern thinkers whom you call agnostics He was a great preacher of the brotherhood of mankind: “Aryan or non-Aryan, caste or no caste, and sects or no sects, every one has the same right to God and to religion and to freedom. Come in all of you.” But as to other things, he was very agnostic. “Be practical.” There came to him one day five young men, Brahmin born, quarrelling upon a question. They came to him to ask him the way to truth. And one said: “My people teach this, and this is the way to truth.” The other said: “I have been taught this, and this is the only way to truth.” “Which is the right way, sir?” “Well, you say your people taught this is truth and is the way to God?” “Yes.” “But did you see God?” “No, sir.” “Your father?” “No, sir.” “Your grandfather?” “No, sir.” “None of them saw God?” “No” “Well, and your teachers — neither [any] of them saw God?” “No.” And he asked the same to the others. They all declared that none had seen God. “Well,” said Buddha, “in a certain village came a young man weeping and howling and crying: ‘Oh, I love her so! oh my, I love her so!’ And then the villagers came; and the only thing he said was he loved her so. ‘Who is she that you love?’ ‘I do not know.’ ‘Where does she live?’ ‘I do not know’ — but he loved her so. ‘How does she look?’ ‘That I do not know; but oh, I love her so.’” Then asked Buddha: “Young man, what would you call this young man?” “Why, sir, he was a fool!” And they all declared: “Why, sir, that young man was certainly a fool, to be crying and all that about a woman, to say he loved her so much and he never saw her or knew that she existed or anything?” “Are you not the same? You say that this God your father or your grandfather never saw, and now you are quarrelling upon a thing which neither you nor your ancestors ever knew, and you are trying to cut each other’s throats about it.” Then the young men asked: “What are we to do?” “Now, tell me: did your father ever teach that God is ever angry?” “No, sir.” “Did your father ever teach that God is evil?” “No, sir, He is always pure.” “Well, now, if you are pure and good and all that, do you not think that you will have more chance to come near to that God than by discussing all this and trying to cut each other’s throats? Therefore, say I: be pure and be good; be pure and love everyone.” And that was [all].

You see that non-killing of animals and charity towards animals was an already existing doctrine when he was born; but it was new with him — the breaking down of caste, that tremendous movement. And the other thing that was new: he took forty of his disciples and sent them all over the world, saying, “Go ye; mix with all races and nations and preach the excellent gospel for the good of all, for the benefit of all.” And, of course, he was not molested by the Hindus. He died at a ripe old age. All his life he was a most stern man: he never yielded to weakness. I do not believe many of his doctrines; of course, I do not. I believe that the Vedantism of the old Hindus is much more thoughtful, is a grander philosophy of life. I like his method of work, but what I like [most] in that man is that, among all the prophets of mankind, here was a man who never had any cobwebs in his brain, and [who was] sane and strong. When kingdoms were at his feet, he was still the same man, maintaining “I am a man amongst men.”

Why, the Hindus, they are dying to worship somebody. You will find, if you live long enough, I will be worshipped by our people. If you go there to teach them something, before you die you will be worshipped. Always trying to worship somebody. And living in that race, the world-honoured Buddha, he died always declaring that he was but man. None of his adulators could draw from him one remark that he was anything different from any other man.

Those last dying words of his always thrilled through my heart. He was old, he was suffering, he was near his death, and then came the despised outcaste — he lives on carrion, dead animals; the Hindus would not allow them to come into cities — one of these invited him to a dinner and he came with his disciples, and the poor Chanda, he wanted to treat this great teacher according to what he thought would be best; so he had a lot of pig’s flesh and a lot of rice for him, and Buddha looked at that. The disciples were all [hesitating], and the Master said: “Well, do not eat, you will be hurt.” But he quietly sat down and ate. The teacher of equality must eat the [outcaste] Chanda’s dinner, even the pig’s flesh. He sat down and ate it.

He was already dying. He found death coming on, and he asked, “Spread for me something under this tree, for I think the end is near.” And he was there under the tree, and he laid himself down; he could not sit up any more. And the first thing he did, he said: “Go to that Chanda and tell him that he has been one of my greatest benefactors; for his meal, I am going to Nirvâna.” And then several men came to be instructed, and a disciple said, “Do not go near now, the Master is passing away”. And as soon as he heard it, the Lord said, “Let them come in”. And somebody else came and the disciples would not [let them enter]. Again they came, and then the dying Lord said: “And O, thou Ananda, I am passing away. 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… .”

These are the memorable words of Buddha: “Believe not because an old book is produced as an authority. Believe not because your father 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.” And with these words, the Master passed away.

See the sanity of the man. 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 its sanest teacher. And never that man bent before even the power of the tyrannical Brahmins. Never that man bent. Direct and everywhere the same: weeping with the miserable, helping the miserable, singing with the singing, strong with the strong, and everywhere the same sane and able man.

And, of course, with all this I can [not] understand his doctrine. You know he denied that there was any soul in man — that is, in the Hindu sense of the word. Now, we Hindus all believe that there is something permanent in man, which is unchangeable and which is living through all eternity. And that in man we call Atman, which is without beginning and without end. And [we believe] that there is something permanent in nature [and that we call Brahman, which is also without beginning and without end]. He denied both of these. He said there is no proof of anything permanent. It is all a mere mass of change; a mass of thought in a continuous change is what you call a mind. … The torch is leading the procession. The circle is a delusion. [Or take the example of a river.] It is a continuous river passing on; every moment a fresh mass of water passing on. So is this life; so is all body, so is all mind.

Well, I do not understand his doctrine — we Hindus never understood it. But I can understand the motive behind that. Oh, the gigantic motive! The Master says that selfishness is the great curse of the world; that we are selfish and that therein is the curse. There should be no motive for selfishness. You are [like a river] passing [on] — a continuous phenomenon. Have no God; 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! I do not sympathise with his metaphysics at all; but my mind is jealous when I think of the moral force. Just ask your minds which one of you can stand for one hour, able and daring like that man. I cannot for five minutes. I would become a coward and want a support. I am weak — a coward. And I warm to think of this tremendous giant. We cannot approach that strength. The world never saw [anything] compared to that strength. And I have not yet seen any other strength like that. We are all born cowards. If we can save ourselves [we care about nothing else]. Inside is the tremendous fear, the tremendous motive, all the time. Our own selfishness makes us the most arrant cowards; our own selfishness is the great cause of fear and cowardice. And there he stood: “Do good because it is good; ask no more questions; that is enough. A man made to do good by a fable, a story, a superstition — he will be doing evil as soon as the opportunity comes. That man alone is good who does good for good’s sake, and that is the character of the man.”

“And what remains of man?” was asked of the Master. “Everything — everything. But what is in the man? Not the body not the soul, but character. And that is left for all ages. All that have passed and died, they have left for us their characters, eternal possessions for the rest of humanity; and these characters are working — working all through.” What of Buddha? What of Jesus of Nazareth? The world is full of their characters. Tremendous doctrine!

Let us come down a little — we have not come to the subject at all. (Laughter.) I must add not a few words more this evening. …

And then, what he did. His method of work: organisation. The idea that you have today of church is his character. He left the church. He organised these monks and made them into a body. Even the voting by ballot is there five hundred and sixty years before Christ. Minute organization. The church was left and became a tremendous power, and did great missionary work in India and outside India. Then came, three hundred years after, two hundred years before Christ, the great emperor Asoka, as he has been called by your Western historians, the divinest of monarchs, and that man became entirely converted to the ideas of Buddha, and he was the greatest emperor of the world at that time. His grandfather was a contemporary of Alexander, and since Alexander’s time, India had become more intimately connected with Greece. … Every day in Central Asia some inscription or other is being found. India had forgotten all about Buddha and Asoka and everyone. But there were pillars, obelisks, columns, with ancient letters which nobody could read. Some of the old Mogul emperors declared they would give millions for anybody to read those; but nobody could. Within the last thirty years those have been read; they are all written in Pali.

The first inscription is: ”…”

And then he writes this inscription, describing the terror and the misery of war; and then he became converted to religion. Then said he: “Henceforth let none of my descendants think of acquiring glory by conquering other races. If they want glory, let them help other races; let them send teachers of sciences and teachers of religion. A glory won by the sword is no glory at all.” And next you find how he is sending missionaries even to Alexandria… You wonder that you find all over that part of the country sects rising immediately, called Theraputae, Essenes, and all those — extreme vegetarians, and so on. Now this great Emperor Asoka built hospitals for men and for animals. The inscriptions show they are ordering hospitals, building hospitals for men and for animals. That is to say, when an animal gets old, if I am poor and cannot keep it any longer, I do not shoot it down for mercy. These hospitals are maintained by public charity. The coasting traders pay so much upon every hundredweight they sell, and all that goes to the hospital; so nobody is touched. If you have a cow that is old — anything — and do not want to keep it, send it to the hospital; they keep it, even down to rats and mice and anything you send. Only, our ladies try to kill these animals sometimes, you know. They go in large numbers to see them and they bring all sorts of cakes; the animals are killed many times by this food. He claimed that the animals should be as much under the protection of the government as man. Why should animals be allowed to be killed? [There] is no reason. But he says, before prohibiting the killing of animals for food even, [people] must be provided with all sorts of vegetables. So he sent and collected all kinds of vegetables and planted them in India; and then, as soon as these were introduced, the order was: henceforth, whosoever kills an animal will be punished. A government is to be a government; the animals must be protected also. What business has a man to kill a cow, a goat, or any other animal for food?

Thus Buddhism was and did become a great political power in India. Gradually it also fell to pieces — after all, this tremendous missionary enterprise. But to their credit it must be said, they never took up the sword to preach religion. Excepting the Buddhistic religion, there is not one religion in the world which could make one step without bloodshed — not one which could get a hundred thousand converts just by brain power alone. No, no. All through. And this is just what you are going to do in the Philippines. That is your method. Make them religious by the sword. That is what your priests are preaching. Conquer and kill them that they may get religion. A wonderful way of preaching religion!

You know how this great emperor Asoka was converted. This great emperor in his youth was not so good. [He had a brother.] And the two brothers quarrelled and the other brother defeated this one, and the emperor in vengeance wanted to kill him. The emperor got the news that he had taken shelter with a Buddhistic monk. Now, I have told you how our monks are very holy; no one would come near them. The emperor himself came. He said, “Deliver the man to me” Then the monk preached to him: “Vengeance is bad. Disarm anger with love. Anger is not cured by anger, nor hatred by hatred. Dissolve anger by love. Cure hatred by love. Friend, if for one evil thou returnest another, thou curest not the first evil, but only add one evil more to the world.” The emperor said: “That is all right, fool that you are. Are you ready to give your life — to give your life for that man?” “Ready, sir.” And he came out. And the emperor drew his sword, and he said: “Get ready.” And just [as he] was going to strike, he looked at the face of the man. There was not a wink in those eyes. The emperor stopped, and he said: “Tell me, monk, where did you learn this strength, poor beggar, not to wink?” And then he preached again. “Go on, monk”, he said, “That is nice”, he said. Accordingly, he [fell under] the charm of the Master — Buddha’s charm.

There have been three things in Buddhism: the Buddha himself, his law, his church. At first it was so simple. When the Master died, before his death, they said: “What shall we do with you?” “Nothing.” “What monuments shall we make over you?” He said: “Just make a little heap if you want, or just do not do anything.” By and by, there arose huge temples and all the paraphernalia. The use of images was unknown before then. I say they were the first to use images. There are images of Buddha and all the saints, sitting about and praying. All this paraphernalia went on multiplying with this organisation. Then these monasteries became rich. The real cause of the downfall 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 vigour.

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 non-resistance, 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 [as to] how to attain it.

There is something in caste, so far as it means blood; such a thing as heredity there is, certainly. Now try to [understand] — why do you not mix your blood with the Negroes, the American Indians? Nature will not allow you. Nature does not allow you to mix your blood with them. There is the unconscious working that saves the race. That was the Aryan’s caste. Mind you, I do not say that they are not equal to us. They must have the same privileges and advantages, and everything; but we know that if certain races mix up, they become degraded. With all the strict caste of the Aryan and non-Aryan, that wall was thrown down to a certain extent, and hordes of these outlandish races came in with all their queer superstitions and manners and customs. Think of this: not decency enough to wear clothes, eating carrion, etc. But behind him came his fetish, his human sacrifice, his superstition, his diabolism. He kept it behind, [he remained] decent for a few years. After that he brought all [these] things out in front. And that was degrading to the whole race. And then the blood mixed; [intermarriages] took place with all sorts of unmixable races. The race fell down. But, in the long run it proved good. If you mix up with Negroes and American Indians, surely this civilisation will fall down. But hundreds and hundreds years after, out of this mixture will come a gigantic race once more, stronger than ever; but, for the time being, you have to suffer. The Hindus believe — that is a peculiar belief, I think; and I do not know, I have nothing to say to the contrary, I have not found anything to the contrary — they believe there was only one civilised race: the Aryan. Until he gives his blood, no other race can be civilised. No teaching will do. The Aryan gives his blood to a race, and then it becomes civilised. Teaching alone will not do. He would be an example in your country: would you give your blood to the Negro race? Then he would get higher culture.

The Hindu loves caste. I may have little taint of that superstition — I do not know. I love the Master’s ideal. Great! But, for me, I do not think that the working was very practical; and that was one of the great causes that led to the downfall of the Indian nation, in the long run. But then it brought about this tremendous fusion. Where so many different races are all fusing, mingling — one man white like you, or yellow, while another man as black as I am, and all grades between these two extremes, and each race keeping their customs, manners, and everything — in the long run a fusion is taking place, and out of this fusion surely will come a tremendous upheaval; but, for the time being, the giant must sleep. That is the effect of all such fusion.

When Buddhism went down that way, there came they inevitable reaction. There is but one entity in the wholes world. It is a unit world. The diversity is only eye-service. It is all one. The idea of unity and what we call monism — without duality — is the idea in India. This doctrine has: been always in India; [it was] brought forward whenever materialism and scepticism broke down everything. When Buddhism broke down everything by introducing all sorts of foreign barbarians into India — their manners and customs and things — there was a reaction, and that reaction was led by a young monk [Shankarâchârya]. And [instead] of preaching new doctrines and always thinking new thoughts and making sects, he brought back the Vedas to life: and modern Hinduism has thus an admixture of ancient Hinduism, over which the Vedantists predominate. But, you see, what once dies never comes back to life, and those ceremonials of [Hinduism] never came back to life. You will be astonished if I tell you that, according to the old ceremonials, he is not a good Hindu who does not eat beef. On certain occasions he must sacrifice a bull and eat it. That is disgusting now. However they may differ from each other in India, in that they are all one — they never eat beef. The ancient sacrifices and the ancient gods, they are all gone; modern India belongs to the spiritual part of the Vedas.

Buddhism was the first sect in India. They were the first to say: “Ours is the only path. Until you join our church, you cannot be saved.” That was what they said: “It is the correct path.” But, being of Hindu blood, they could not be such stony-hearted sectarians as in other countries. There will be salvation for you: nobody will go wrong for ever. No, no. [There was] too much of Hindu blood in them for that. The heart was not so stony as that. But you have to join them.

But the Hindu idea, you know, is not to join anybody. Wherever you are, that is a point from which you can start to the centre. All right. It — Hinduism — has this advantage: its secret is that doctrines and dogmas do not mean anything; what you are is what matters. If you talk all the best philosophies the world ever produced, [but] if you are a fool in your behaviour, they do not count; and if in your behaviour you are good, you have more chances. This being so, the Vedantist can wait for everybody. Vedantism teaches that there is but one existence and one thing real, and that is God. It is beyond all time and space and causation and everything. We can never define Him. We can never say what He is except [that] He is Absolute Existence, Absolute Knowledge, Absolute Blissfulness. He is the only reality. Of everything He is the reality; of you and me, of the wall and of [everything] everywhere. It is His knowledge upon which all our knowledge depends: it is His blissfulness upon which depends our pleasure; and He is the only reality. And when man realises this, he knows that “I am the only reality, because I am He — what is real in me is He also”. So that when a man is perfectly pure and good and beyond all grossness, he finds, as Jesus found: “I and my Father are one.” The Vedantist has patience to wait for everybody. Wherever you are, this is the highest: “I and my Father are one.” Realise it. If an image helps, images are welcome. If worshipping a great man helps you, worship him. If worshipping Mohammed helps you, go on. Only be sincere; and if you are sincere, says Vedantism, you are sure to be brought to the goal. None will be left. your heart, which contains all truth, will unfold itself chapter after chapter, till you know the last truth, that “I and my Father are one”. And what is salvation? To live with God. Where? Anywhere. Here this moment. One moment in infinite time is quite as good as any other moment. This is the old doctrine of the Vedas, you see. This was revived. Buddhism died out of India. It left its mark on their charity, its animals, etc. in India; and Vedantism is reconquering India from one end to the other.

Notes

Reproduced from the Swami Vivekananda Centenary Memorial Volume, published by the Swami Vivekananda Centenary, Calcutta, in 1963. The additions in square brackets have been made for purposes of clarification. Periods indicate probable omissions. — Publisher.

The dates of the Jaina and Buddha were not known accurately in those days.

Addresses on Bhakti-Yoga

The Preparation

The First Steps

The Teacher of Spirituality

The Need of Symbols

The Chief Symbols

The Ishta

Lectures and Discourses

The Ramayana

The Mahabharata

Thoughts on the Gita

The Story of Jada Bharata

The Story of Prahlada

The Great Teachers of the World

On Lord Buddha

Christ, the Messenger

My Master

Indian Religious Thought

The Basis for Psychic or Spiritual Research

On Art in India

Is India a Benighted Country?

The Claims of Religion

Concentration

Meditation

The Practice of Religion

Writings: Prose

Is the Soul Immortal?

Reincarnation

On Dr. Paul Deussen

On Professor Max Müller

Sketch of the Life of Pavhari Baba

Aryans and Tamilians

The Social Conference Address

India’s Message to the World

Stray Remarks on Theosophy

Reply to the Address of the Maharaja of Khetri

Reply to the Madras address

A Message of Sympathy to a Friend

What we Believe in

Our Duty to the Masses

Reply to the Calcutta Address

To my Brave Boys

A Plan of Work for India

Fundamentals of Religion

Writings: Poems

Kali the Mother

Angels Unawares I-III

To the Awakened India

Requiescat in Pace

Hold on Yet a While, Brave Heart

Nirvanashatkam, or Six Stanzas on Nirvana

The Song of The Sannyasin

Peace

Translation: Prose

The Problem of Modern India and its Solution

Ramakrishna, his Life and Sayings

The Paris Congress of the History of Religions

Knowledge: Its Source and Acquirement

Modern India

The Education that India needs

Our Present Social Problems

Translation: Poems

To a Friend

The Hymn of Creation

The Hymn of Samadhi

A Hymn to the Divine Mother

A Hymn to Shiva

A Hymn to the Divinity of Shri Ramakrishna

“And let Shyama Dance there”

A Song I Sing to Thee

Epistles - First Series

Note

I Fakir

II Panditji Maharaj

III Alasinga

IV Alasinga

V Alasinga

VI Haripada

VII Friends

VIII Alasinga

IX Sharat

X Alasinga

XI Alasinga

XII Sister

XIII Alasinga

XIV Alasinga

XV Kidi

XVI Sister

XVII Alasinga

XVIII Alasinga

XIX Vehemia

XX Sister

XXI Blessed and Beloved

XXII Alasinga

XXIII Kidi

XXIV Blessed and Beloved

XXV Alasinga

XXVI Dharmapala

XXVII Alasinga

XXVIII Mrs. Bull

XXIX G. G.

XXX Alasinga

XXXI Mrs. Ole Bull

XXXII Sister

XXXIII Alasinga

XXXIV Sister

XXXV Alasinga

XXXVI Sister

XXXVII Alasinga

XXXVIII S_

XXXIX Alasinga

XL Alasinga

XLI Friend

XLII Kidi

XLIII Alasinga

XLIV Mrs. William Sturges

XLV Mother

XLVI Friend

XLVII Maharaja of Khetri

XLVIII Friend

IL Alasinga

L Mrs. Bull

LI Friend

LII Alasinga

LIII Alasinga

LIV Alasinga

LV Alasinga

LVI Sister

LVII Blessed and Beloved

LVIII Alasinga

LIX Alasinga

LX Alasinga

LXI Dr. Nanjunda Rao

LXII Dr. Nanjunda Rao

LXIII Alasinga

LXIV Alasinga

LXV Blessed and Beloved

LXVI Nanjunda Rao

LXVII Alasinga

LXVIII Alasinga

LXIX Alasinga

LXX Indian Mirror

LXXI Alasinga

LXXII Alasinga

LXXIII Madam

LXXIV Honoured Madam

LXXV Doctor Shashi

LXXVI Mr.—

LXXVII Sarat Chandra

LXXVIII Sister

LXXIX Mother

LXXX Joe

LXXXI Jagmohanlal

LXXXII M.

LXXXIII Your Highness

LXXXIV Your Highness

LXXXV Your Highness

LXXXVI Your Highness

LXXXVII Your Highness

LXXXVIII Your Highness

LXXXIX Mother

XC Joe

XCI Friend

XCII —

XCIII Shashi

XCIV Mother

XCV Sturdy

XCVI Mother

XCVII Shashi

XCVIII Mother

IC Joe

C Joe

CI Mother

CII Swarup

CIII Mary

CIV Shashi

CV Joe

CVI Joe

CVII Joe

CVIII Mary

CIX Christine

CX Mary

CXI Blessed and Beloved

CXII Blessed and Beloved

CXIII Joe

CXIV Swarup

CXV Mrs. Ole Bull

CXVI Sister Nivedita

CXVII Rakhal

CXVIII Rakhal

CXIX Rakhal

CXX Brahmananda

CXXI Joe

CXXII Joe

CXXIII Dhira Mata

Interviews

Miracles

An Indian Yogi In London

India’s Mission

India And England

Indian Missionary’s Mission To England

With The Swami Vivekananda At Madura

The Abroad And The Problems At Home

The Missionary Work Of The First Hindu Sannyasin To The West And His Plan Of Regeneration Of India

Reawakening Of Hinduism On A National Basis

On Indian Women—Their Past, Present And Future

On The Bounds Of Hinduism

Notes from Lectures and Discourses

On Karma-Yoga

On Fanaticism

Work is Worship

Work Without Motive

Sadhanas or Preparations for Higher Life

The Cosmos and The Self

Who is A Real Guru?

On Art

On Language

The Sannyasin

The Sannyasin and The Householder

The Evils of Adhikarivada

On Bhakti-Yoga

Ishvara and Brahman

On Jnana-Yoga

The Cause of Illusion

Evolution

Buddhism and Vedanta

On The Vedanta Philosophy

Law and Freedom

The Goal and Methods of Realisation

World-Wide Unity

The aim of Raja-Yoga

Questions and Answers

I Discussion at The Graduate Philosophical Society of Harvard University

II At The Twentieth Century Club of Boston

III At The Brooklyn Ethical Society, Brooklyn

IV Selections from The Math Diary

V Yoga, Vairagya, Tapasya, Love

VI In Answer to Nivedita

VII Guru, Avatara, Yoga, Japa, Seva

• I Shri Surendra Nath Das Gupta

II - V Shri Surendra Nath Sen

VI - X Shri Priya Nath Sinha

XI - XV From the Diary of a Disciple, Shri Sarat Chandra Chakravarty

Writings: Prose and Poems

Reason, Faith and Love

Six Sanskrit Mottoes

The Message of Divine Wisdom

The Belur Math: An Appeal

The Advaita Ashrama, Himalayas

The Ramakrishna Home of Service, Varanasi: An appeal

Who Knows how Mother Plays!

To The Fourth of July

The East and The West

Lectures and Discourses

The Methods and Purpose of Religion

The Nature of the Soul and its Goal

The Importance of Psychology

Nature and Man

Concentration and Breathing

Introduction to Jnana-Yoga

The Vedanta Philosophy and Christianity

Worshipper and Worshipped

Formal Worship

Divine Love

Notes Of Class Talks And Lectures

Religion And Science

Religion Is Realisation

Religion Is Self-Abnegation

Unselfish Work Is True Renunciation

Freedom Of The Self

Notes On Vedanta

Hindu And Greek

Thoughts On The Vedas And Upanishads

On Raja-Yoga

On Bhakti-Yoga

On Jnana-Yoga

The Reality And Shadow

How To Become Free

Soul And God

The Goal

On Proof Of Religion

The Design Theory

Spirit And Nature

The Practice Of Religion

Fragmentary Notes On The Ramayana

Notes Taken Down In Madras, 1892-93

Concentration

The Power Of The Mind

Lessons On Raja-Yoga

Lessons On Bhakti-Yoga

Mother-Worship

Narada-Bhakti-Sutras

Writings: Prose and Poems(Original and Translated)

Historical Evolution of India

The Story of the Boy Gopala

My Play is Done

The Cup

A Benediction

The Hymn of Creation

On the Sea’s Bosom

Hinduism and Shri Ramakrishna

The Bengali Language

Matter for Serious Thought

Shiva’s Demon

Epistles - Second Series

I Sir

II Sir

III Sir

IV Sir

V M—

VI Sir

VII Sir

VIII Sir

IX Sir

X Sir

XI Sir

XII Sir

XIII Sir

XIV Sir

XV Sir

XVI Sir

XVII Sir

XVIII Sir

XIX Sir

XX Sir

XXI Sir

XXII Sir

XXIII Akhandananda

XXIV Sir

XXV Sir

XXVI Sir

XXVII Akhandananda

XXVIII Akhandananda

XXIX Sir

XXX Kali

XXXI Sir

XXXII Sir

XXXIII Sir

XXXIV Sharat

XXXV Govinda Sahay

XXXVI Govinda Sahay

XXXVII Govinda Sahay

XXXVIII Doctor

XXXIX Mother

XL Maharaja of Khetri

XLI Shashi

XLII Sir

XLIII Sisters

XLIV Sisters

XLV Brothers

XLVI Mother Sara

XLVII Brother disciples

XLVIII Mrs. Bull

IL Swami Ramakrisnananda

L Mrs. Bull

LI Dear and Beloved

LII Govinda Sahay

LIII Govinda Sahay

LIV Swami Ramakrishnanda

LV Akhandananda

LVI Dear and Beloved

LVII Mrs. Bull

LVIII Sarada

LIX Sanyal

LX Mrs. Bull

LXI Mrs. Bull

LXII Mrs. Bull

LXIII Shashi

LXIV Mrs. Bull

LXV Mrs. Bull

LXVI Mrs. Bull

LXVII Mrs. Bull

LXVIII Mrs. Bull

LXIX Shashi

LXX Alberta

LXXI Rakhal

LXXII Akhandananada

LXXIII Brother Disciples

LXXIV Rakhal

LXXV Shashi

LXXVI Rakhal

LXXVII Shashi

LXXVIII Rakhal

LXXIX Mrs. Bull

LXXX Mrs. Bull

LXXXI Mother

LXXXII Dear—

LXXXIII Rakhal

LXXXIV Mrs. Bull

LXXXV Akhandananda

LXXXVI Mrs. Bull

LXXXVII Alberta

LXXXVIII Mrs. Bull

LXXXIX Mrs. Bull

XC Sister

XCI Sarada

XCII Yogen

XCIII Mrs. Bull

XCIV Sarada

XCV Mrs. Bull

XCVI Mrs. Bull

XCVII Sarada

XCVIII Mrs. Bull

XCIX Mrs. Bull

C Shashi

CI Shashi

CII Frankincense

CIII Mrs. Bull

CIV Mrs. Bull

CV Sahji

CVI Shashi

CVII Mrs. Bull

CVIII Sister

CIX Joe Joe

CX Miss S. E. Waldo

CXI Mrs. Bull

CXII Mary

CXIII Mrs. Bull

CXIV Lalaji

CXV Dear—

CXVI Sisters

CXVII Alberta

CXVIII Mrs. Bull

CXIX Frankincense

CXX Alberta

CXXI Mary

CXXII Mrs. Bull

CXXIII Mary

CXXIV Sir

CXXV Shuddhananda

CXXVI Miss Noble

CXXVII Rakhal

CXXVIII Akhandananda

CXXIX Rakhal

CXXX Rakhal

CXXXI Akhandananda

CXXXII Akhandananda

CXXXIII Mrs. Bull

CXXXIV Mother

CXXXV Sarada

CXXXVI Akhandananda

CXXXVII Rakhal

CXXXVIII M—

CXXXIX Mother

CXL Mother

CXLI Margot

CXLII Friend

CXLIII Margot

CXLIV Dear

CXLV Dhira Mata

CXLVI Dear

CXLVII Mrs. Bull

CXLVIII Margot

CXLIX Margot

CL Mrs. Bull

CLI Margot

CLII Margot

CLIII Nivedita

CLIV Akhandananda

CLV Nivedita

CLVI Nivedita

CLVII Margot

CLVIII Joe

CLIX Nivedita

CLX Nivedita

CLXI Nivedita

CLXII Nivedita

CLXIII Mother

CLXIV Alberta

CLXV Joe

CLXVI Nivedita

CLXVII Joe

CLXVIII Nivedita

Conversations and Dialogues

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II

III

IV

V

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VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

Inspired Talks

Wednesday, June 19

Sunday, June 23

Monday, June 24

Tuesday, June 25

Wednesday, June 26

Thursday, June 27

Friday, June 28

Saturday, June 29

Sunday, June 30

Monday, July 1

Tuesday, July 2

Wednesday, July 3

Friday, July 5

Saturday, July 6

Sunday, July 7

Monday, July 8

Tuesday, July 9

Wednesday, July 10

Thursday, July 11

Friday, July 12

Saturday, July 13

Sunday, July 14

Monday, July 15

Tuesday, July 16

Wednesday, July 17

Thursday, July 18

Friday, July 19

Saturday, July 20

Sunday, July 21

Tuesday, July 23

Wednesday, July 24

Thursday, July 25

Friday, July 26

Saturday, July 27

Sunday, July 28

Monday, July 29

Tuesday, July 30

Wednesday, July 31

Thursday, August 1

Friday, August 2

Saturday, August 3

Sunday, August 4

Monday, August 5

Tuesday, August 6

Conversations And Dialogues

From the Diary of a Disciple (Shri Sharat Chandra Chakravarty, B.A.)

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II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

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XIV

XV

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XXI

XXII

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XXIV

XXV

XXVI

XXVII

XXVIII

XXIX

Shri Priya Nath Sinha

XXX

XXXI

Miscellaneous

Vengeance Of History (Mrs. Wright )

XXXII

Religion, Civilisation, And Miracles (The Appeal-Avalanche )

XXXIII

Religious Harmony (The Detroit Free Press, February 14, 1894)

XXXIV

Fallen Women (The Detroit Tribune, March 17, 1894)

XXXV

Translation of writings

Note

Memoirs of European Travel I

Memoirs of European Travel II

Addenda

Notes Of Class Talks And Lectures

On Art

On Music

On Mantra And Mantra-Chaitanya

On Conceptions Of Godhead

On Food

On Sannyasa And Family Life

On Questioning The Competency Of The Guru

Shri Ramakrishna: The Significance Of His Life And Teachings

On Shri Ramakrishna And His Views

Shri Ramakrishna: The Nation’s Ideal

Notes Of Lectures Mercenaries In Religion

The Destiny Of Man

Reincarnation

Comparative Theology

Buddhism, The Religion Of The Light Of Asia

The Science Of Yoga

Epistles - Third Series

Note

I Sir

II Sir

III Sir

IV Sir

V Gupta

VI Sir

VII Atul Babu

VIII Adhyapakji

IX Adhyapakji

X Adhyapakji

XI Mrs. Tannatt Woods

XII Adhyapakji

XIII Mrs. Woods

XIV Sister

XV Brother

XVI Professor

XVII Sister

XVIII Sister

XIX Adhyapakji

XX Adhyapakji

XXI Adhyapakji

XXII Adhyapakji

XXIII Mr. Bhattacharya

XXIV Kali

XXV Brother Shivananda

XXVI Brahmananda

XXVII Alasinga

XXVIII Brother

XXIX Dear—

XXX Rakhal

XXXI Alasinga

XXXII Dear

XXXIII Sister

XXXIV Shashi

XXXV Adhyapakji

XXXVI Miss Noble

XXXVII Friend and Brother

XXXVIII Sharat Chandra Chakravarti

XXXIX Mrs. Bull

XL Shuddhananda

XLI Miss Noble

XLII Miss Noble

XLIII Madam

XLIV Sturdy

XLV Mrs. Leggett

XLVI Mother

XLVII Margot

XLVIII Mother

IL Mother

L Mother

LI Mr. Leggett

LII Aunt Roxy

LIII Alberta

Lectures And Discourses

Discourses On Jnana-Yoga

Six Lessons On Raja-Yoga

Women Of India

My Life And Mission

Buddha’s Message To The World

Discipleship

Is Vedanta The Future Religion?

Writings: Prose And Poems

The Struggle For Expansion

The Birth Of Religion

Four Paths Of Yoga

Cyclic Rest And Change

A Preface To The Imitation Of Christ

An Interesting Correspondence

Thou Blessed Dream

Light

The Living God

To An Early VIolet

To My Own Soul

The Dance Of Shiva

Shiva In Ecstasy

To Shri Krishna

A Hymn To Shri Ramakrishna

A Hymn To Shri Ramakrishna

No One To Blame

Notes Of Class Talks And Lectures

Notes Of Class Talks

Man The Maker Of His Destiny

God: Personal And Impersonal

The Divine Incarnation Or Avatara

Pranayama

Women Of The East

Congress Of Religious Unity

The Love Of God—I

The Love Of God—II

India

Hindus And Christians

Christianity In India

The Religion Of Love

Jnana And Karma

The Claims Of Vedanta On The Modern World

The Laws Of Life And Death

The Reality And The Shadow

Way To Salvation

The People Of India

I Am That I Am

Unity

The Worship Of The Divine Mother

The Essence Of Religion

Sayings and Utterances

1. “Did Buddha teach that the many was real and the ego unreal, while orthodox Hinduism regards the One as the real, and the many as unreal?” the Swami was asked. “Yes”, answered the Swami. “And what Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and I have added to this is, that the Many and the One are the same Reality, perceived by the same mind at different times and in different attitudes.”

2. “Remember!” he said once to a disciple, “Remember! the message of India is always “Not the soul for nature, but nature for the soul !”

3. “What the world wants today is twenty men and women who can dare to stand in the street yonder, and say that they possess nothing but God. Who will go? Why should one fear? If this is true, what else could matter? If it is not true, what do our lives matter !”

4. “Oh, how calm would be the work of one who really understood the divinity of man! For such, there is nothing to do, save to open men’s eyes. All the rest does itself.”

5. “He (Shri Ramakrishna) was contented simply to live that great life and to leave it to others to find the explanation!”

6. “Plans! Plans!” Swami Vivekananda explained in indignation, when one of his disciples had offered him some piece of worldly wisdom. “That is why … Western people can never create a religion! If any of you ever did, it was only a few Catholic saints who had no plans. Religion was never preached by planners!”

7. “Social life in the West is like a peal of laughter; but underneath, it is a wail. It ends in a sob. The fun and frivolity are all on the surface: really it is full of tragic intensity. Now here, it is sad and gloomy on the outside, but underneath are carelessness and merriment. “We have a theory that the universe is God’s manifestation of Himself just for fun, that the Incarnations came and lived here ‘just for fun’. Play, it was all play. Why was Christ crucified? It was mere play. And so of life. Just play with the Lord. Say, “It is all play, it is all play”. Do you do anything?”

8. “I am persuaded that a leader is not made in one life. He has to be born for it. For the difficulty is not in organisation and making plans; the test, the real test, of the leader, lies in holding widely different people together along the line of their common sympathies. And this can only be done unconsciously, never by trying.”

9. In explanation of Plato’s doctrine of Ideas, Swamiji said, “And so you see, all this is but a feeble manifestation of the great ideas, which alone, are real and perfect. Somewhere is an ideal for you, and here is an attempt to manifest it! The attempt falls short still in many ways. Still, go on! You will interpret the ideal some day.”

10. Answering the remark of a disciple who felt that it would be better for her to come back to this life again and again and help the causes that were of interest to her instead of striving for personal salvation with a deep longing to get out of life, the Swami retorted quickly: “That’s because you cannot overcome the idea of progress. But things do not grow better. They remain as they are; and we grow better by the changes we make in them.”

11. It was in Almora that a certain elderly man, with a face full of amiable weakness, came and put him a question about Karma. What were they to do, he asked, whose Karma it was to see the strong oppress the weak? The Swami turned on him in surprised indignation. “Why, thrash the strong, of course!” he said, “You forget your own part in this Karma: Yours is always the right to rebel!”

12. “Ought one to seek an opportunity of death in defense of right, or ought one to take the lesson of the Gita and learn never to react?” the Swami was asked. “I am for no reaction”, said the Swami, speaking slowly and with a long pause. Then he added ”— for Sannyasins. Self - defense for the householder!”

13. “It is a mistake to hold that with all men pleasure is the motive. Quite as many are born to seek after pain. Let us worship the Terror for Its own sake.”

14. “Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was the only man who ever had the courage to say that we must speak to all men in their own language!”

15. “How I used to hate Kali!” he said, referring to his own days of doubts in accepting the Kali ideal, “And all Her ways! That was the ground of my six years’ fight — that I would not accept Her. But I had to accept Her at last! Ramakrishna Paramahamsa dedicated me to Her, and now I believe that She guides me in everything I do, and does with me what She will… . Yet I fought so long! I loved him, you see, and that was what held me. I saw his marvellous purity… . I felt his wonderful love… . His greatness had not dawned on me then. All that came afterwards when I had given in. At that time I thought him a brain - sick baby, always seeing visions and the rest. I hated it. And then I, too, had to accept Her! “No, the thing that made me do it is a secret that will die with me. I had great misfortunes at the time… . It was an opportunity… . She made a slave of me. Those were the very words: ‘a slave of you’. And Ramakrishna Paramahamsa made me over to Her… . Strange! He lived only two years after doing that, and most of the time he was suffering. Not more than six months did he keep his own health and brightness. “Guru Nanak was like that, you know, looking for the one disciple to whom he would give his power. And he passed over all his own family — his children were as nothing to him — till he came upon the boy to whom he gave it; and then he could die. “The future, you say, will call Ramakrishna Paramahamsa an Incarnation of Kali? Yes, I think there’s no doubt that She worked up the body of Ramakrishna for Her own ends. “You see, I cannot but believe that there is somewhere a great Power that thinks of Herself as feminine, and called Kali and Mother… . And I believe in Brahman too… . But is it not always like that? Is it not the multitude of cells in the body that make up the personality, the many brain - centres, not the one, that produce consciousness? … Unity in complexity! Just so! And why should it be different with Brahman? It is Brahman. It is the One. And yet — and yet — it is the gods too!”

16. “The older I grow, the more everything seems to me to lie in manliness. This is my new gospel.”

17. Referring to some European reference to cannibalism, as if it were a normal part of life in some societies, the Swami remarked, “That is not true! No nation ever ate human flesh, save as a religious sacrifice, or in war, out of revenge. Don’t you see? That’s not the way of gregarious animals! It would cut at the root of social life!”

18. “Sex - love and creation! These are at the root of most religions. And these in India are called Vaishnavism, and in the West Christianity. How few have dared to worship Death or Kali! Let us worship Death! Let us embrace the Terrible, because it is terrible, not asking that it be toned down. Let us take misery for misery’s own sake!”

19. “The three cycles of Buddhism were five hundred years of the Law, five hundred years of images, and five hundred years of Tantras. You must not imagine that there was ever a religion in India called Buddhism with temples and priests of its own order! Nothing of the sort. It was always within Hinduism. Only at one time the influence of Buddha was paramount, and this made the nation monastic.”

20. “The conservative’s whole ideal is submission . Your ideal is struggle. Consequently it is we who enjoy the life, and never you! You are always striving to change yours to something better; and before a millionth part of the change is carried out, you die. The Western ideal is to be doing; the Eastern to be suffering. The perfect life would be a wonderful harmony doing and suffering. But that can never be. “In our system it is accepted that a man cannot have all he desires. Life is subjected to many restraints. This is ugly, yet it brings out points of light and strength. Our liberals see only the ugliness and try to throw it off. But they substitute something quite as bad; and the new custom takes as long as the old for us to work to its centres of strength. “Will is not strengthened by change. It is weakened and enslaved by it. But we must be always absorbing. Will grows stronger by absorption. And consciously or unconsciously, will is the one thing in the world that we admire. Suttee is great in the eyes of the whole world, because of the will that it manifests. “It is selfishness that we must seek to eliminate. I find that whenever I have made a mistake in my life, it has always been because self entered into the calculation. Where self has not been involved, my judgment has gone straight to the mark. “Without self, there would have been no religious system. If man had not wanted anything for himself, do you think he would have had all this praying and worship? Why! he would never have thought of God at all, except perhaps for a little praise now and then, at the sight of a beautiful landscape or something. And that is the only attitude there ought to be. All praise and thanks. If only we were rid of self! “You are quite wrong when you think that fighting is a sign of growth. It is not so at all. Absorption is the sign. Hinduism is a very genius of absorption. We have never cared for fighting. Of course we could strike a blow now and then, in defense of our homes! That was right. But we never cared for fighting for its own sake. Every one had to learn that. So let these races of newcomers whirl on! They’ll all be taken into Hinduism in the end!”

21. “The totality of all souls, not the human alone, is the Personal God. The will of the Totality nothing can resist. It is what we know as law. And this is what we mean by Shiva and Kali and so on.”

22. “Worship the Terrible! Worship Death! All else is vain. All struggle is vain. That is the last lesson. Yet this is not the coward’s love of death, not the love of the weak or the suicide. It is the welcome of the strong man who has sounded everything to its depths and knows that there is no alternative.”

23. “I disagree with all those who are giving their superstitions back to my people. Like the Egyptologist’s interest in Egypt, it is easy to feel an interest in India that is purely selfish. One may desire to see again the India of one’s books, one’s studies, one’s dreams. My hope is to see again the strong points of that India, reinforced by the strong points of this age, only in a natural way. The new stage of things must be a growth from within. “So I preach only the Upanishads. If you look, you will find that I have never quoted anything but the Upanishads. And of the Upanishads, it is only that One idea, strength. The quintessence of the Vedas and Vedanta and all lies in that one word. Buddha’s teaching was non - resistance, or non - injury. But I think this is a better way of teaching the same thing. For behind that non - injury lay a dreadful weakness. It is weakness that conceives the idea of resistance. I do not think of punishing or escaping from a drop of sea - spray. It is nothing to me. Yet to the mosquito it would be serious. Now I would make all injury like that. Strength and fearlessness. My own ideal is that saint whom they killed in the Mutiny and who broke his silence, when stabbed to the heart, to say, “And thou also art He!” “But you may ask, ‘What is the place of Ramakrishna in this scheme?’ “He is the method, that wonderful unconscious method! He did not understand himself. He knew nothing of England or the English, save that they were queer folk from over the sea. But he lived that great life: and I read the meaning. Never a word of condemnation for any! Once I had been attacking one of our sects of diabolists. I had been raving on for three hours, and he had listened quietly. ‘Well, well!’ said the old man as I finished, ‘perhaps every house may have a backdoor. Who knows?’ “Hitherto the great fault of our Indian religion has lain in its knowing only two words: renunciation and Mukti. Only Mukti here! Nothing for the householder! “But these are the very people whom I want to help. For are not all souls of the same quality? Is not the goal of all the same? “And so strength must come to the nation through education.”

24. The Puranas, the Swami considered, to be the effort of Hinduism to bring lofty ideas to the door of the masses. There had been only one mind in India that had foreseen this need, that of Krishna, probably the greatest man who ever lived.

The Swami said, “Thus is created a religion that ends in the worship of Vishnu, as the preservation and enjoyment of life, leading to the realisation of God. Our last movement, Chaitanyaism, you remember, was for enjoyment. At the same time Jainism represents the other extreme, the slow destruction of the body by self - torture. Hence Buddhism, you see, is reformed Jainism; and this is the real meaning of Buddha’s leaving the company of the five ascetics. In India, in every age, there is a cycle of sects which represents every gradation of physical practice, from the extreme of self - torture to the extreme of excess. And during the same period will always be developed a metaphysical cycle, which represents the realisation of God as taking place by every gradation of means, from that of using the senses as an instrument to that of the annihilation of the senses. Thus Hinduism always consists, as it were, of two counter - spirals, completing each other, round a single axis. “‘Yes!’ Vaishnavism says, ‘it is all right — this tremendous love for father, for mother, for brother, husband, or child! It is all right, if only you will think that Krishna is the child, and when you give him food, that you are feeding Krishna!’ This was the cry of Chaitanya, ‘Worship God through the senses’, as against the Vedantic cry, ‘Control the senses! suppress the senses!’ “I see that India is a young and living organism. Europe is young and living. Neither has arrived at such a stage of development that we can safely criticise its institutions. They are two great experiments, neither of which is yet complete. In India we have social communism, with the light of Advaita — that is, spiritual individualism — playing on and around it; in Europe you are socially individualists, but your thought is dualistic, which is spiritual communism. Thus the one consists of socialist institutions hedged in by individualist thought, while the other is made up of individualist institutions within the hedge of communistic thought. “Now we must help the Indian experiment as it is. Movements which do not attempt to help things as they are, are, from that point of view, no good. In Europe, for instance, I respect marriage as highly as non - marriage. Never forget that a man is made great and perfect as much by his faults as by his virtues. So we must not seek to rob a nation of its character, even if it could be proved that the character was all faults.”

25. “You may always say that the image is God. The error you have to avoid is to think God is the image.”

26. The Swami was appealed to on one occasion to condemn the fetishism of the Hottentot. “I do not know”, he answered, “what fetishism is!” Then a lurid picture was hastily put before him of the object alternately worshipped, beaten, and thanked. “I do that!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you see,” he went on, a moment later, in hot resentment of injustice done to the lowly and absent, “don’t you see that there is no fetishism? Oh, your hearts are steeled, that you cannot see that the child is right! The child sees person everywhere. Knowledge robs us of the child’s vision. But at last, through higher knowledge, we win back to it. He connects a living power with rocks, sticks, trees and the rest. And is there not a living Power behind them? It is symbolism, not fetishism! Can you not see?”

27. One day he told the story of Satyabhama’s sacrifice and how the word “Krishna”, written on a piece of paper and thrown into the balance, made Krishna himself, on the other side, kick the beam. “Orthodox Hinduism”, he began, “makes Shruti, the sound, everything. The thing is but a feeble manifestation of the pre - existing and eternal idea. So the name of God is everything: God Himself is merely the objectification of that idea in the eternal mind. Your own name is infinitely more perfect than the person you! The name of God is greater than God. Guard your speech!”

28. “I would not worship even the Greek Gods, for they were separate from humanity! Only those should be worshipped who are like ourselves but greater. The difference between the gods and me must be a difference only of degree.”

29. “A stone falls and crushes a worm. Hence we infer that all stones, falling, crush worms. Why do we thus immediately reapply a perception? Experience, says one. But it happens, let us suppose, for the first time. Throw a baby into the air, and it cries. Experience from past lives? But why applied to the future? Because there is a real connection between certain things, a pervasiveness, only it lies with us to see that the quality neither overlaps, nor falls short of, the instance. On this discrimination depends all human knowledge. “With regard to fallacies, it must be remembered that direct perception itself can only be a proof, provided the instrument, the method, and the persistence of the perception are all maintained pure. Disease or emotion will have the effect of disturbing the observation. Therefore direct perception itself is but a mode of inference. Therefore all human knowledge is uncertain and may be erroneous. Who is a true witness? He is a true witness to whom the thing said is a direct perception. Therefore the Vedas are true, because they consist of the evidence of competent persons. But is this power of perception peculiar to any? No! The Rishi, the Aryan, and the Mlechchha all alike have it. “Modern Bengal holds that evidence is only a special case of direct perception, and that analogy and parity of reasoning are only bad inferences. Therefore, of actual proofs there are only two, direct perception and inference. “One set of persons, you see, gives priority to the external manifestation, the other to the internal idea. Which is prior, the bird to the egg, or the egg to the bird? Does the oil hold the cup or the cup the oil? This is a problem of which there is no solution. Give it up! Escape from Maya!”

30. “Why should I care if the world itself were to disappear? According to my philosophy, that, you know, would be a very good thing! But, in fact, all that is against me must be with me in the end. Am I not Her soldier?”

31. “Yes, my own life is guided by the enthusiasm of a certain great personality, but what of that? Inspiration was never filtered out to the world through one man! “It is true I believe Ramakrishna Paramahamsa to have been inspired. But then I am myself inspired also. And you are inspired. And your disciples will be; and theirs after them; and so on, to the end of time! “Don’t you see that the age for esoteric interpretation is over? For good or for ill, that day is vanished, never to return. Truth, in the future, is to be open to the world!”

32. “Buddha made the fatal mistake of thinking that the whole world could be lifted to the height of the Upanishads. And self - interest spoilt all. Krishna was wiser, because He was more politic. But Buddha would have no compromise. The world before now has seen even the Avatara ruined by compromise, tortured to death for want of recognition, and lost. But Buddha would have been worshipped as God in his own lifetime, all over Asia, for a moment’s compromise. And his reply was only: ‘Buddhahood is an achievement, not a person!’ Verily was He the only man is the world who was ever quite sane, the only sane man ever born!”

33. People had told the Swami in the West that the greatness of Buddha would have been more appealing, had he been crucified! This he stigmatised as “Roman brutality”, and pointed out, “The lowest and most animal liking is for action. Therefore the world will always love the epic. Fortunately for India, however, she has never produced a Milton, with his ‘hurled headlong down the steep abyss’! The whole of that were well exchanged for a couple of lines of Browning!” It had been this epic vigour of the story, in his opinion, that had appealed to the Roman. The crucifixion it was that carried Christianity over the Roman world. “Yes, Yes!” he reiterated. “You Western folk want action ! You cannot yet perceive the poetry of every common little incident in life! What beauty could be greater than that of the story of the young mother coming to Buddha with her dead boy? Or the incident of the goats? You see the Great Renunciation was not new in India! … But after Nirvana, look at the poetry! “It is a wet night, and he comes to the cowherd’s hut and gathers in to the wall under the dripping eaves. The rain is pouring down and the wind rising. “Within, the cowherd catches a glimpse of a face through the window and thinks, ‘Ha, ha! Yellow garb! stay there! It’s good enough for you!’ And then he begins to sing. “‘My cattle are housed, and the fire burns bright. My wife is safe, and my babes sleep sweet! Therefore ye may rain, if ye will, O clouds, tonight!’ “And the Buddha answers from without, “My mind is controlled: my senses are all gathered in; my heart firm. Therefore ye may rain, if ye will, O clouds, tonight!’ “Again the cowherd: ‘The fields are reaped, and the hay is fast in the barn. The stream is full, and the roads are firm. Therefore ye may rain, if ye will, O clouds, tonight.’ “And so it goes on, till at last the cowherd rises, in contrition and wonder, and becomes a disciple. “Or what would be more beautiful than the barber’s story?

“The Blessed One passed by my house,

my house — the Barber’s!

“I ran, but He turned and awaited me,

Awaited me — the Barber!

“I said, ‘May I speak, O Lord, with Thee?’

“And He said ‘Yes!’

‘Yes!’ to me — the Barber!

“And I said, ‘Is Nirvana for such as I?’

“And He said ‘Yes!’

Even for me — the Barber!

“And I said, ‘May I follow after Thee?’

“And He said, ‘Oh yes!’

Even I — the Barber!

“And I said, ‘May I stay, O Lord, near Thee?’

“And He said, ‘Thou mayest!’

Even to me — the poor Barber!”

34. “The great point of contrast between Buddhism and Hinduism lies in the fact that Buddhism said, ‘Realise all this as illusion’, while Hinduism said, ‘Realise that within the illusion is the Real.’ Of how this was to be done, Hinduism never presumed to enunciate any rigid law. The Buddhist command could only be carried out through monasticism; the Hindu might be fulfilled through any state of life. All alike were roads to the One Real. One of the highest and greatest expressions of the Faith is put into the mouth of a butcher, preaching by the orders of a married woman to a Sannyasin. Thus Buddhism became the religion of a monastic order, but Hinduism, in spite of its exaltation of monasticism, remains ever the religion of faithfulness to duty, whatever it be, as the path by which man may attain God.”

35. “Lay down the rules for your group and formulate your ideas,” the Swami said, dealing with the monastic ideal for women, “and put in a little universalism, if there is room for it. But remember that not more than half a dozen people in the whole world are ever at any time ready for this! There must be room for sects, as well as for rising above sects. You will have to manufacture your own tools. Frame laws, but frame them in such a fashion that when people are ready to do without them, they can burst them asunder. Our originality lies in combining perfect freedom with perfect authority. This can be done even in monasticism.”

36. “Two different races mix and fuse, and out of them rises one strong distinct type. This tries to save itself from admixture, and here you see the beginning of caste. Look at the apple. The best specimens have been produced by crossing; but once crossed, we try to preserve the variety intact.”

37. Referring to education of girls in India he said, “In worship of the gods, you must of course use images. But you can change these. Kali need not always be in one position. Encourage your girls to think of new ways of picturing Her. Have a hundred different conceptions of Saraswati. Let them draw and model and paint their own ideas. “In the chapel, the pitcher on the lowest step of the altar must be always full of water, and lights in great Tamil butter - lamps must be always burning. If, in addition, the maintenance of perpetual adoration could be organised, nothing could be more in accord with Hindu feeling. “But the ceremonies employed must themselves be Vedic. There must be a Vedic altar, on which at the hour of worship to light the Vedic fire. And the children must be present to share in the service of oblation. This is a rite which would claim the respect of the whole of India.

“Gather all sorts of animals about you. The cow makes a fine beginning. But you will also have dogs and cats and birds and others. Let the children have a time for going to feed and look after these. “Then there is the sacrifice of learning. That is the most beautiful of all. Do you know that every book is holy in India, not the Vedas alone, but the English and Mohammedan also? All are sacred. “Revive the old arts. Teach your girls fruit - modelling with hardened milk. Give them artistic cooking and sewing. Let them learn painting, photography, the cutting of designs in paper, and gold and silver filigree and embroidery. See that everyone knows something by which she can earn a living in case of need. “And never forget Humanity! The idea of a humanitarian man - worship exists in nucleus in India, but it has never been sufficiently specialised. Let your students develop it. Make poetry, make art, of it. Yes, a daily worship at the feet of beggars, after bathing and before the meal, would be a wonderful practical training of heart and hand together. On some days, again, the worship might be of children, of your own pupils. Or you might borrow babies and nurse and feed them. What was it that Mataji said to me? ‘Swamiji! I have no help. But these blessed ones I worship, and they will take me to salvation!’ She feels, you see, that she is serving Uma in the Kumari, and that is a wonderful thought, with which to begin a school.”

38. “Love is always a manifestation of bliss. The least shadow of pain falling upon it is always a sign of physicality and selfishness.”

39. “The West regards marriage as consisting in all that lies beyond the legal tie, while in India it is thought of as a bond thrown by society round two people to unite them together for all eternity. Those two must wed each other, whether they will or not, in life after life. Each acquires half of the merit of the other. And if one seems in this life to have fallen hopelessly behind, it is for the other only to wait and beat time, till he or she catches up again!”

40. “Consciousness is a mere film between two oceans, the subconscious and the superconscious.”

41. “I could not believe my own ears when I heard Western people talking so much of consciousness! Consciousness? What does consciousness matter! Why, it is nothing compared with the unfathomable depths of the subconscious and the heights of the superconscious! In this I could never be misled, for had I not seen Ramakrishna Paramahamsa gather in ten minutes, from a man’s subconscious mind, the whole of his past, and determine from that his future and his powers?”

42. “All these (visions etc.) are side issues. They are not true Yoga. They may have a certain usefulness in establishing indirectly the truth of our statements. Even a little glimpse gives faith that there is something behind gross matter. Yet those who spend time on such things run into grave dangers. “These (psychic developments) are frontier questions ! There can never be any certainty or stability of knowledge reached by their means. Did I not say they were ‘frontier questions’? The boundary line is always shifting!”

43. “Now on the Advaitic side it is held that the soul neither comes nor goes, and that all these spheres or layers of the universe are only so many varying products of Akasha and Prana. That is to say, 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 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 into 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 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 arise 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. “Now, as each individual can only see his own universe, that universe is created with his bondage and goes away with his liberation, although it remains for others who are in bondage. Now, name and form constitute the universe. A wave in the ocean is a wave only in so far as it is bound by name and form. If the wave subsides, it is the ocean, but that name - and - form has immediately vanished forever, so that the name and form of a wave could never be without the water that was fashioned into the wave by them. Yet the name and form themselves were not the wave; they die as soon as ever it returns to water, but other names and forms live on in relation to other waves. This name - and - form is called Maya and the water is Brahman. The wave was nothing but water all the time, yet as a wave it had the name and form. Again this name - and - form cannot remain for one moment separated from the wave, although the wave, as water, can remain eternally separate from name and form. But because the name and form can never be separated, they can never be said to exist. Yet they are not zero. This is called Maya.”

44. “I am the servant of the servants of the servants of Buddha. Who was there ever like him?— the Lord — who never performed one action for himself — with a heart that embraced the whole world! So full of pity that he — prince and monk — would give his life to save a little goat! So loving that he sacrificed himself to the hunger of a tigress!— to the hospitality of a pariah and blessed him! And he came into my room when I was a boy, and I fell at his feet! For I knew it was the Lord Himself!”

45. “He (Shuka) is the ideal Paramahamsa. To him alone amongst men was it given to drink a handful of the waters of that one undivided Ocean of Sat - chit - ananda — existence, Knowledge, and Bliss Absolute! Most saints die, having heard only the thunder of its waves upon the shore. A few gain the vision, and still fewer, taste of It. But he drank of the Sea of Bliss!”

46. “What is this idea of Bhakti without renunciation? It is most pernicious.”

47. “We worship neither pain nor pleasure. We seek through either to come at that which transcends them both.”

48. “Shankaracharya had caught the rhythm of the Vedas, the national cadence. Indeed I always imagine that he had some vision such as mine when he was young, and recovered the ancient music that way. Anyway, his whole life’s work is nothing but that, the throbbing of the beauty of the Vedas and the Upanishads.”

49. “Though the love of a mother is in some ways greater, yet the whole world takes the love of man and woman as the type (of the soul’s relation to God). No other has such tremendous idealising power. The beloved actually becomes what he is imagined to be. This love transforms its object.”

50. “Is it so easy to be Janaka — to sit on a throne absolutely unattached, caring nothing for wealth or fame, for wife or child? One after another in the West has told me that he has reached this. But I could only say, ‘Such great men are not born in India!’”.

51. “Never forget to say to yourself and to teach to your children, as the difference between a firefly and the blazing sun, between the infinite ocean and a little pond, between a mustard seed and the mountain Meru, such is the difference between the householder and the Sannyasin! “Everything is fraught with fear: Renunciation alone is fearless. “Blessed be even the fraudulent Sadhus and those who have failed to carry out their vows, inasmuch as they also have witnessed to their ideal and so are in some degree the cause of the success of others!

“Let us never, never, forget our ideal!”

52. “The river is pure that flows, the monk is pure that goes!”

53. “The Sannyasin who thinks of gold, to desire it, commits suicide.”

54. “What do I care if Mohammed was a good man, or Buddha? Does that altar my goodness or evil? Let us be good for our own sake on our own responsibility.”

55. “You people in this country are so afraid of

losing your in - di - vid - u - al - i - ty! Why, you are not individuals yet. When you realise your whole nature, you will attain your true individuality, not before. There is another thing I am constantly hearing in this country, and that is that we should live in harmony with nature. Don’t you know that all the progress ever made in the world was made by conquering nature? We are to resist nature at every point if we are to make any progress.”

56. “In India they tell me I ought not to teach Advaita Vedanta to the people at large; but I say, I can make even a child understand it. You cannot begin too early to teach the highest spiritual truths.”

57. “The less you read, the better. Read the Gita and other good works on Vedanta. That is all you need. 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.”

58. “If a bad time comes, what of that? The pendulum must swing back to the other side. But that is no better. The thing to do is to stop it.”

References

Tapaswini Mataji, foundress of the Mahakali Pathashala, Calcutta.

Epistles - Fourth Series

Note

I Sir

II Sir

III Sir

IV Sir

V Sir

VI Diwanji Saheb

VII Diwanji Saheb

VIII Diwanji Saheb

IX Diwanji Saheb

X Haripada

XI Alasinga

XII Diwanji Saheb

XIII Diwanji Saheb

XIV Diwanji Saheb

XV Diwanji Saheb

XVI Sisters

XVII Babies

XVIII Sister Mary

XIX Sister

XX Diwanji Saheb

XXI Dear—

XXII Mother

XXIII Sisters

XXIV Babies

XXV Sisters

XXVI Sister

XXVII Leon

XXVIII Sister

XXIX Diwanji Saheb

XXX Diwanji Saheb

XXXI Mother

XXXII Sister

XXXIII Diwanji Saheb

XXXIV Diwanji

XXXV Sister

XXXVI Sister

XXXVII Sister

XXXVIII Miss Bell

XXXIX Friend

XL Friend

XLI Friend

XLII Babies

XLIII Alasinga

XLIV Joe

XLV Sister

XLVI Sister

XLVII Sister

XLVIII Sister

IL Friend

L Friend

LI Friend

LII Joe Joe

LIII Kali

LIV Joe Joe

LV Joe Joe

LVI Joe Joe

LVII Friend

LVIII Friend

LIX Friend

LX Blessed and Beloved

LXI Friend

LXII Joe Joe

LXIII Sturdy

LXIV Blessed and Beloved

LXV Sharat

LXVI Friend

LXVII Sister

LXVIII Blessed and Beloved

LXIX Alasinga

LXX Blessed and Beloved

LXXI Blesed and Beloved

LXXII Sister

LXXIII Sisters

LXXIV Sturdy

LXXV Sisters

LXXVI Mary

LXXVII Babies

LXXVIII Blessed and Beloved

LXXIX Blessed and Beloved

LXXX Dear—

LXXXI Goodwin

LXXXII Blessesd and Beloved

LXXXIII Blessed and Beloved

LXXXIV Friend

LXXXV Sister

LXXXVI Joe

LXXXVII Rakhal

LXXXVIII Mary

LXXXIX Rakhal

XC Shashi

XCI Miss Noble

XCII Rakhal

XCIII Sudhir

XCIV Marie

XCV Miss Noble

XCVI Miss Noble

XCVII Joe Joe

XCVIII Rakhal

IC Marie

C Shashi

CI Shashi

CII Rakhal

CIII Rakhal

CIV Shuddhananda

CV Haripada

CVI Miss MacLeod

CVII Rakhal

CVIII Shashi

CIX Rakhal

CX Margo

CXI Rakhal

CXII Rakhal

CXIII Miss Noble

CXIV Rakhal

CXV Rakhal

CXVI Baburam

CXVII Rakhal

CXVIII Rakhal

CXIX Rakhal

CXX Shivananda

CXXI Rajaji

CXXII Shashi

CXXIII Mary

CXXIV Shashi

CXXV Joe Joe

CXXVI Rakhal

CXXVII Joe Joe

CXXVIII Rakhal

CXXIX Sturdy

CXXX Rakhal

CXXXI Rakhal

CXXXII Mary

CXXXIII Haripada

CXXXIV Haripada

CXXXV Joe

CXXXVI Mary

CXXXVII Sturdy

CXXXVIII Joe

CXXXIX Marie

CXL Rakhal

CXLI Mother

CXLII Sturdy

CXLIII Mary

CXLIV Mary

CXLV Optimist

CXLVI Sturdy

CXLVII Mrs. Bull

CXLVIII Rakhal

CXLIX Mary

CL Brahmananda

CLI Dhira Mata

CLII Dhira Mata

CLIII Mary

CLIV Dhira Mata

CLV Dhira Mata

CLVI Mary

CLVII Mary

CLVIII Dhira Mata

CLIX Dhira Mata

CLX Joe

CLXI Rakhal

CLXII Mary

CLXIII Dhira Mata

CLXIV Mary

CLXV Mary

CLXVI Haribhai

CLXVII Joe

CLXVIII Haribhai

CLXIX Joe

CLXX Dhira Mata

CLXXI Margot

CLXXII American Friend

CLXXIII Dhira Mata

CLXXIV Joe

CLXXV American Friend

CLXXVI Joe

CLXXVII Mary

CLXXVIII Mary

CLXXIX Nivedita

CLXXX Nivedita

CLXXXI Mary

CLXXXII Mary

CLXXXIII Sister

CLXXXIV Turiyananda

CLXXXV Joe

CLXXXVI Joe

CLXXXVII Turiyananda

CLXXXVIII Dear—

CLXXXIX Hari

CXC John Fox

CXCI Brother Hari

CXCII Hari

CXCIII Turiyananda

CXCIV Mademoiselle

CXCV Sister Christine

CXCVI Joe

CXCVII Mother

Letters - Fifth Series

I Sir

II Sir

III Sir

IV Balaram Babu

V Tulsiram

VI Sharat

VII Mother

VIII Mother

IX Mother

X Mother

XI Mother

XII Mother

XIII Mother

XIV Mother

XV Mother

XVI Mother

XVII Mother

XVIII Mother

XIX Mother

XX Mother

XXI Mother

XXII Mother

XXIII Mother

XXIV Mother

XXV Mother

XXVI Mother

XXVII Mother

XXVIII Mother

XXIX Mother

XXX Mother

XXXI Mother

XXXII Mother

XXXIII Mother

XXXIV Mother

XXXV Mother

XXXVI Mother

XXXVII Mother

XXXVIII Mother

XXXIX Mother

XL Mrs. Bull

XLI Miss Thursby

XLII Mother

XLIII Mother

XLIV Mother

XLV Mother

XLVI Mother

XLVII Miss Thursby

XLVIII Adhyapakji

XLIX Mother

L Mother

LI Mother

LII Mother

LIII Mother

LIV Mother

LV Friend

LVI Mother

LVII Mother

LVIII Sir

LIX Mother

LX Doctor

LXI Mother—

LXII Mother—

LXIII Mother

LXIV Mother—

LXV Mother

LXVI Mother—

LXVII Friend

LXVIII Mrs. G. W. Hale

LXIX Christina

LXX Mother—

LXXI Sister Christine

LXXII Isabelle McKindley

LXXIII Christina

LXXIV Christina

LXXV Christina

LXXVI Your Highness

LXXVII Sir—

LXXVIII Christina—

LXXIX Mrs. Ole Bull

LXXX Sir

LXXXI Mrs. Bull

LXXXII Mrs. Funkey

LXXXIII Mrs. Bull

LXXXIV Christina

LXXXV Mrs. Bull—

LXXXVI Miss Thursby

LXXXVII Friend

LXXXVIII Christina

LXXXIX Mrs. Funkey

XC Christina

XCI Christina

XCII Mrs. Bull—

XCIII Sir

XCIV Mrs. Bull—

XCV Mother—

XCVI Sir

XCVII Mrs. Bull

XCVIII Blessed and Beloved

XCIX Christina

C Miss Noble

CI Miss Noble—

CII Christina

CIII Madras Comittee

CIV Gentlemen

CV Christina

CVI Mrs. Bull—

CVII Ram Ram

CVIII Miss Noble

CIX Lalajee

CX Badri Sah

CXI Mother—

CXII Mrs. Bull—

CXIII Friend

CXIV Shivananda

CXV Christina

CXVI Sister Christine

CXVII Miss Noble

CXVIII Christina

CXIX Margaret

CXX Dhira Mata—

CXXI Jagmohan

CXXII Miss MacLeod

CXXIII Sir

CXXIV Miss Macleod / Mrs. Bull

CXXV Mr. J. J. Goodwin’s Mother

CXXVI Your Highness—

CXXVII Christina

CXXVIII Your Highness—

CXXIX Your Highness—

CXXX Margot

CXXXI Nivedita

CXXXII Christina

CXXXIII Raja

CXXXIV S

CXXXV Margot

CXXXVI Sir

CXXXVII Margot

CXXXVIII Christina

CXXXIX Miss Macleod

CXL Christina

CXLI Christina

CXLII Sister Christine

CXLIII Mother

CXLIV Isabel—

CXLV Christina

CXLVI Mother Church

CXLVII Mother

CXLVIII Christina

CXLIX Christina

CL Christina

CLI Christina

CLII Christina—

CLIII Mrs. Bull—

CLIV Christina

CLV Dhira Mata—

CLVI Mother

CLVII Margot

CLVIII Mother

CLIX Christina

CLX Brahmananda

CLXI Christina

CLXII Margo

CLXIII Joe—

CLXIV Christina

CLXV Sister Christine

CLXVI Margot

CLXVII Margot

CLXVIII Mother

CLXIX Christina

CLXX Abhedananda

CLXXI Christina

CLXXII Christina

CLXXIII Christina

CLXXIV Christina

CLXXV Mrs. Hansbrough—

CLXXVI Sister Christine

CLXXVII Mrs. Hansbrough—

CLXXVIII Abhedananda

CLXXIX Christina

CLXXX Mrs. Leggett

CLXXXI Christine

CLXXXII Nivedita

CLXXXIII Christine

CLXXXIV Christina

CLXXXV Mother

CLXXXVI Alberta

CLXXXVII Christina—

CLXXXVIII Margo

CLXXXIX Sister Christine

CXC Your Highness—

CXCI Mother—

CXCII Sir

CXCIII Margot

CXCIV Christine

CXCV Introduction

CXCVI Christine

CXCVII Mother

CXCVIII Mrs. Hansbrough—

CXCIX Friend—

CC Christina

CCI Christine

CCII Christine

CCIII Christine

CCIV Christine

CCV Christina

CCVI Christina

CCVII Margo

CCVIII Christina

CCIX Chrisitne

CCX Christine

CCXI Christine

CCXII Christine

CCXIII Sister Christine

CCXIV Christine

CCXV Joe—

CCXVI Joe—

CCXVII Mrs. Hansbrough

CCXVIII Margo

CCXIX Christine

CCXX Mother

CCXXI Joe—

CCXXII Christine

CCXXIII Mademoiselle

CCXIV Christine

CCXXV Christine

CCXXVI Christine

CCXXVII Christine

Lectures and Discourses

The Women of India

The First Step towards Jnana

Bhakti-Yoga

The Mundaka Upanishad

History of the Aryan Race

Notes of Lectures and Classes

Note

The Religion of India

Christ’s Message to the World

Mohammed’s Message to the World

Class Lessons in Meditation

The Gita

The Gita — I

The Gita — III

Gita Class

Remarks from Various Lectures

Writings: Prose and Poems(Original and Translated)

The Ether

Notes

Lecture Notes

Macrocosm and Microcosm

Footnotes to The Imitation of Christ

The Plague Manifesto

One Circle More

Facsimile of One Circle More

An Untitled Poem on Shri Ramakrishna

An Unfinished Poem

Bhartrihari’s Verses on Renunciation

FIRST MEETING WITH MADAME EMMA CALVE

(New Discoveries, Vol. 1, pp. 484-86.)

[The story of the first meeting of Swami Vivekananda and Madame Emma Calvé, as told in Calvé’s autobiography, My Life]

… [Swami Vivekananda] 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.

… 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.

FIRST MEETING WITH JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

(An excerpt from Madame Verdier’s journal quoted in the New Discoveries, Vol. 1, pp. 487-88.)

[As told by Madame Emma Calvé‚ to Madame Drinette Verdier]

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 Calvé, 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.

A DUSKY PHILOSOPHER FROM INDIA

(New Discoveries, Vol. 5, pp. 389-94.)

(To preserve the historical authenticity of the newspaper reports in this section, their original spelling has been largely retained; however, their punctuation has been made consistent with the style of the Complete Works. — Publisher.)

[An interview by Blanche Partington, San Francisco Chronicle, March 18, 1900]

… …

… 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 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 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 foreigner — unbeliever?” 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 — rising up before me.

“You see”, explained the Brahmin [Kshatriya], “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 Sanskrit and the consequent sin of taking any life.

… 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 a living lion?” persisted the defender of populations.

“Swâhâ, Swaha, 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 the widow for many years, and such we hold in 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”.

“Thatis 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.

“WE ARE HYPNOTIZED INTO WEAKNESS BY OUR SURROUNDINGS”

(New Discoveries, Vol. 5, pp. 396-98.)

[An interview by the San Francisco Examiner, March 18, 1900]

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.

… …

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. 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 intermixture 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 Sanskrit 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 Boers War?” was asked.

“Oh! Have you seen the morning paper? But I do not wish to discuss politics. English and Boers are both in the wrong. It is terrible — 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 Sanskrit 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.

MARRIAGE

(New Discoveries, Vol. 5, p. 138.)

From Miss Josephine MacLeod’s February 1908 letter to Mary Hale, in which she described Swami Vivekananda’s response to Alberta Sturges’s question:

ALBERTA STURGES: Is there no happiness in marriage?

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: Yes, Alberta, if marriage is entered into as a great austerity — and everything is given up — even principle!

LINE OF DEMARCATION

(New Discoveries, Vol. 5, p. 225.)

From Mrs. Alice Hansbrough’s reminiscences of a question-answer exchange following the class entitled “Hints on Practical Spirituality”:

Q: Swami, if all things are one, what is the difference between a cabbage and a man?

A: Stick a knife into your leg, and you will see the line of demarcation.

GOD IS!

(New Discoveries, Vol. 5, p. 276.)

Alice Hansbrough’s record of a question-answer session after a class lecture:

Q: Then, Swami, what you claim is that all is good?

A: By no means. My claim is that all is not — only God is! That makes all the difference.

RENUNCIATION

(New Discoveries, Vol. 6, p. 11-12.)

From Alice Hansbrough’s reminiscences of a question-answer session following one of Swami Vivekananda’s San Francisco classes pertaining to renunciation:

WOMAN STUDENT: Well, Swami, what would become of the world if everyone renounced?

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: 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!

SHRI RAMAKRISHNA’S DISCIPLE

(New Discoveries, Vol. 6, p. 12.)

Mrs. Edith Allan described a teacher-student exchange in one of Swami Vivekananda’s San Francisco classes:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: 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!

STUDENT: But, Swami, that is the part of you I like best.

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: That is because you are a fool, Madam — like I am.

THE MASTER’S DIVINE INCARNATION

(New Discoveries, Vol. 6, p. 17.)

From Mrs. Edith Allan’s reminiscences:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: I have to come back once more. The Master said I am to come back once more with him.

MRS. ALLAN: You have to come back because Shri Ramakrishna says so?

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: Souls like that have great power, Madam.

A PRIVATE ADMISSION

(New Discoveries, Vol. 6, p. 121.)

From Mrs. Edith Allan’s reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda’s stay in northern California, 1900:

WOMAN STUDENT: Oh, if I had only lived earlier, I could have seen Shri Ramakrishna!

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA (turning quietly to her): You say that, and you have seen me?

A GREETING

(New Discoveries, Vol. 6, p. 136.)

From Mr. Thomas Allan’s reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda’s visit to Alameda, California, 1900:

MR. ALLAN: Well, Swami, I see you are in Alameda!

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: No, Mr. Allan, I am not in Alameda; Alameda is in me.

“THIS WORLD IS A CIRCUS RING”

(New Discoveries, Vol. 6, p. 156.)

From Mrs. Alice Hansbrough’s reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda’s conversation with Miss Bell at Camp Taylor, California, in May 1900:

MISS BELL: This world is an old schoolhouse where we come to learn our lessons.

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: Who told you that? [Miss Bell could not remember.] Well, I don’t think so. I think this world is a circus ring in which we are the clowns tumbling.

MISS BELL: Why do we tumble, Swami?

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: Because we like to tumble. When we get tired, we will quit.

ON KALI

(The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita, Vol. I, p. 118.)

Sister Nivedita’s reminiscence of a conversation with Swami Vivekananda at the time she was learning the Kâli worship:

SISTER NIVEDITA: Perhaps, Swamiji, Kali is the vision of Shiva! Is She?

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: Well! Well! Express it in your own way. Express it in your own way!

TRAINING UNDER SHRI RAMAKRISHNA

(The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita, Vol. I, pp. 159-60.)

While on board a ship to England, Swami Vivekananda was touched by the childlike devotion of the ship’s servants:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: You see, I love our Mohammedans!

SISTER NIVEDITA: Yes, but what I want to understand is this habit of seeing every people from their strongest aspect. Where did it come from? Do you recognize it in any historical character? Or is it in some way derived from Shri Ramakrishna?

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA: It must have been the training under Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. We all went by his path to some extent. Of course it was not so difficult for us as he made it for himself. He would eat and dress like the people he wanted to understand, take their initiation, and use their language. “One must learn”, he said, “to put oneself into another man’s very soul”. And this method was his own! No one ever before in India became Christian and Mohammedan and Vaishnava, by turn!

Excerpts from Sister Nivedita’s Book

Note

Foreword

I The Home On The Ganges

II At Naini Tal And Almora

III Morning Talks At Almora

IV On The Way To Kathgodam

V On The Way To Baramulla

VI The Vale Of Kashmir

VII Life At Srinagar

VIII The Temple Of Pandrenthan

IX Walks And Talks Beside The Jhelum

X The Shrine Of Amarnath

XI At Srinagar On The Return Journey

XII The Camp Under The Chennaars

Concluding Words Of The Editor

SAYINGS AND UTTERANCES

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

In this section, only Swami Vivekananda’s direct words have been placed within quotation marks. References have been identified by the following abbreviations:

ND → Burke, Marie Louise. Swami Vivekananda in the West: New Discoveries. 6 vols. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1983-87.

CWSN → Nivedita, Sister. The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita. Vol. 1. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1982.

LSN → Nivedita, Sister. Letters of Sister Nivedita. 2 vols. Compiled and edited by Sankari Prasad Basu. Calcutta: Nababharat Publishers, 1982.

VIN → Basu, Sankari Prasad and Ghosh, Sunil Bihari, eds. Vivekananda in Indian Newspapers: 1893-1902. Calcutta: Dineshchandra Basu, Basu Bhattacharya and Co., 1969.

1. From Mrs. Prince Woods’s description of Swami Vivekananda’s departure from the Woods’s residence in Salem, Massachusetts, in August
2. Swami Vivekananda gave his staff, his most precious possession, to Dr. Woods, who was at that time a young medical student, and his trunk and his blanket to Mrs. Kate T. Woods, saying:

“Only my most precious possessions should I give to my friends who have made me at home in this great country.” (ND 1: 42)

2. On the back of Swami Vivekananda’s transcription from Louis Rousselet’s book India and Its Native Princes —Travels in Central India and in the Presidencies of Bombay and Bengal, dated February 11, 1894:

“I say there is but one remedy for one too anxious for the future — to go down on his knees.” (ND 1: 225)

3. An extract from a prayer Swami Vivekananda delivered at the Chicago World’s Parliament of Religions:

“Thou art He that beareth the burdens of the universe; help me to bear the little burden of this life.” (ND 2: 32)

4. An extract from another prayer offered by Swami Vivekananda at the Chicago World’s 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 the All Merciful. Thou art our Father. Thou art our beloved Friend.” (ND 2: 33)

5. From Mary T. Wright’s journal entry dated Saturday, May 12, 1894:

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… .

“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!” (ND 2: 58-59)

6. An 1894 extract from the Greenacre Voice, quoting one of the Swami’s teachings delivered at Greenacre, Maine:

“You and I and everything in the universe are that Absolute, not parts, but the whole. You are the whole of that Absolute.” (ND 2: 150)

7. In a March 5, 1899 letter from Sister Nivedita to Miss Josephine MacLeod:

“I am at heart a mystic, Margot, all this reasoning is only apparent — I am really always on the lookout for signs and things — and so I never bother about the fate of my initiations. If they want to be Sannyâsins 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 Paramahamsa actually was — free from lust — and desire of wealth, and thirst for fame. That thirst for fame is the worst of all filth.” (ND 3: 128-29)

8. From John Henry Wright’s March 27, 1896 letter to Mary Tappan Wright, in which Swami Vivekananda stated 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, Honourable This and Honourable That — I had classes in the morning; for the low caste people, who came pell-mell, I had classes in the evening.” (ND 4: 73)

9. While Swami Vivekananda was offering flowers at the feet of the Virgin Mary in a small chapel in Switzerland in the summer of 1896, he said:

“For she also is the Mother.” (ND 4: 276)

10. From Mr. J. J. Goodwin’s October 23, 1896 letter to Mrs. Ole Bull, quoting Swami Vivekananda’s conversation at Greycoat Gardens in London

“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.” (ND 4: 385)

11. A November 20, 1896 entry from Swami Abhedananda’s diary, quoting Swami Vivekananda’s observation of the English people:

“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.” (ND 4: 478)

12. In Mr. J. J. Goodwin’s November 11, 1896 letter to Mrs. Ole Bull, quoting Swami Vivekananda’s unpublished statement toward the end of “Practical Vedanta — IV”:

“A Jiva can never attain absolutely to Brahman until the whole of Mâyâ disappears. While there is still a Jiva left in Maya, there can be no soul absolutely free… . Vedantists are divided on this point.” (ND 4: 481)

13. From Swami Saradananda’s letter to a brother-disciple, concerning Swami Vivekananda’s last days:

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”. (ND 4: 521)

14. In an October 13, 1898 letter to Mrs. Ashton Jonson, written from Kashmir, Sister Nivedita described Swami Vivekananda’s spiritual mood:

To him at this moment “doing good” seems horrible. “Only the Mother does anything. Patriotism is a mistake. Everything is a mistake. 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 should teach anyone? … Swamiji is dead and gone.” (ND 5: 3-4)

15. From Mr. Sachindranath Basu’s letter recounting Swami Vivekananda’s closing remarks in his talk to swamis and novices assembled at Belur Math, June 19, 1899:

“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.” (ND 5: 17)

16. During an evening talk with Swami Saradananda in the spring of 1899:

“Men should be taught to be practical, physically strong. A dozen such lions will conquer the world, not millions of sheep. Men should not be taught to imitate a personal ideal, however great.” (ND 5: 17)

17. From Mrs. Mary C. Funke’s reminiscences of her August 1899 voyage to America with Swamis Vivekananda and Turiyananda:

“And if all this Maya is so beautiful, think of the wondrous beauty of the Reality behind it!” (ND 5: 76)

“Why recite poetry when there [pointing to sea and sky] is the very essence of poetry?” (Ibid.)

18. In Miss Josephine MacLeod’s September 3, 1899 letter to Mrs. Ole Bull:

“In one’s greatest hour of need one stands alone.” (ND 5: 122)

19. From Sister Nivedita’s October 27, 1899 diary entry at Ridgely Manor, in which Swami Vivekananda expressed his concern for Olea Bull Vaughn:

“Nightmares always begin pleasantly — only at the worst point [the] dream is broken — so death breaks [the] dream of life. Love death.” (ND 5: 138)

20. In a December 1899 letter from Miss Josephine MacLeod to Sister Nivedita:

“All the ideas the Californians have of me emanated from Chicago.” (ND 5: 179)

21. From Mrs. Alice Hansbrough’s reminiscences which quoted Swami Vivekananda as telling Mr. Baumgardt:

“I can talk on the same subject, but it will not be the same lecture.” (ND 5: 230)

22. Mrs. Alice Hansbrough’s reminiscences relating Swami Vivekananda’s response to her sight-seeing attempts:

“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!” (ND 5: 244)

23. From Mrs. Alice Hansbrough’s reminiscences relating Swami Vivekananda’s interest in the problem of child training:

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”. (ND 5: 253)

24. Mrs. Alice Hansbrough’s record of Swami Vivekananda’s explanation of God to seventeen-year-old Ralph Wyckoff:

“Can you see your own eyes? God is like that. He is as close as your own eyes. He is your own, even though you can’t see Him.” (ND 5: 254)

25. Mrs. Alice Hansbrough’s reminiscences regarding Swami Vivekananda’s opinion of the low-caste English soldiers who occupied India:

“If anyone should despoil the Englishman’s home, the Englishman would kill him, and rightly so. But the Hindu just sits and whines!

“Do you think 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!” (ND 5: 256)

26. Mrs. Alice Hansbrough’s reminiscences of a picnic in Pasadena, California when a Christian Science woman suggested to Swami Vivekananda that one should teach people to be good:

“Why should I desire to be ‘good’? All this is His handiwork [waving his hand to indicate the trees and the countryside]. 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.” (ND 5: 257)

27. From Mrs. Alice Hansbrough’s reminiscences:

“When once you consider an action, do not let anything dissuade you. Consult your heart, not others, and then follow its dictates.” (ND 5: 311)

28. From Mr. Frank Rhodehamel’s notes taken during a March 1900 lecture in Oakland, California:

“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. (Cf. Brihadâranyaka Upanishad II.4.5.) 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 is God, the Atman; all else is but dream, an illusion.” (ND 5: 362)

29. From Mr. Frank Rhodehamel’s notes taken during a March 1900 lecture in Oakland, California:

Oh, if you only knew yourselves! You are souls; you are gods. If ever I feel [that I am] blaspheming, it is when I call you man.” (ND 5: 362)

30. An excerpt from Mr. Thomas J. Allan’s reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda’s March 1900 San Francisco lecture series on India:

“Send us mechanics to teach us how to use our hands, and we will send you missionaries to teach you spirituality.” (ND 5: 365)

31. Mrs. Edith Allan’s reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda’s philosophical observations while cooking at the Turk Street flat:

“‘The Lord dwells in the hearts of all beings, O Arjuna, by His illusive power causing all beings to revolve as though mounted on a potter’s wheel.’ [Bhagavad-Gitâ XVIII.61] This has all happened before, like the throw of a 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.” (ND 6: 17)

32. From Mrs. Edith Allan’s reminiscences of an after-lunch conversation:

“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.” (ND 6: 17)

33. Mrs. Edith Allan’s reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda’s “kitchen” counsel while he was staying in San Francisco, California, in 1900:

“If I consider myself greater than the ant that crawls on the ground I am ignorant.” (ND 6: 19)

“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!’” (Ibid.)

“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.” (Ibid.)

34. From Mr. Thomas J. Allan’s reminiscences of a private talk with Swami Vivekananda in San Francisco, California, 1900:

“We do not progress from error to truth, but from truth to truth. Thus we must see 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.” (ND 6: 42)

35. From Mrs. Alice Hansbrough’s reminiscences of a walk home with Swami Vivekananda after one of his lectures in San Francisco in 1900:

“You have heard that Christ said, ‘My words are spirit and they are life’. So are my words spirit and life; they will burn their way into your brain and you will never get away from them!” (ND 6: 57-58)

36. From Mrs. Alice Hansbrough’s reminiscences in San Francisco, 1900 — referring to Swami Vivekananda’s great heart:

“I may have to be born again because I have fallen in love with man.” (ND 6: 79)

37. From Mrs. George Roorbach’s reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda at Camp Taylor, California, in May 1900:

“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.” (ND 6: 155)

38. In a conversation with Swami Turiyananda, which probably took place in New York:

“The call has come from Above: ‘Come away, just come away — no need of troubling your head to teach others’. It is now the will of the Grand Old Lady (The “Grand Old Lady” was a figure in a children’s game, whose touch put one outside the game.) that the play should be over.” (ND 6: 373)

39. In a July 1902 Prabuddha Bharata eulogy, “a Western disciple” wrote:

The Swami had but scant sympathy with iconoclasts, for as he wisely remarked, “The true philosopher strives to destroy nothing, but to help all”. (VIN: 638)

40. Sister Nivedita’s reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda in an October 9, 1899 letter to Miss Josephine MacLeod:

He has turned back on so much — “Let your life in the world be nothing but a thinking to yourself”. (LSN I: 213)

41. Swami Vivekananda’s luncheon remarks to Mrs. Ole Bull, recorded by Sister Nivedita in an October 18, 1899 letter to Miss Josephine MacLeod:

“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 Jnana; and this is why Jnana is greater than Bhakti.” (LSN I: 216)

42. Swami Vivekananda’s remarks on his spiritual ministry, recorded in Sister Nivedita’s October 15, 1904 letter to Miss Josephine MacLeod:

“Only when they go away will they know how much they have received.” (LSN

II: 686)

43. Sister Nivedita’s reminiscences in a November 5, 1904 letter to Alberta Sturges (Lady Sandwich) of Swami Vivekananda’s talk on renunciation while he was staying at Ridgely Manor:

“In India we never say that you should renounce a higher thing for a lower. It is better to be absorbed in music or in literature than in comfort or pleasure, and we never say otherwise.” (LSN II: 690)

44. In Sister Nivedita’s November 19, 1909 letter to Miss Josephine MacLeod:

“The fire burns if we plunge our hand in — whether we feel it or not — so it is with him who speaks the name of God.” (LSN II: 1030)

45. Swami Vivekananda’s reminiscences of Shri Ramakrishna, recorded in Sister Nivedita’s July 6, 1910 letter to Dr. T. K. Cheyne:

“He could not imagine himself the teacher of anyone. He was like a man playing with balls of many colours, and leaving it to others to select which they would for themselves.” (LSN II: 1110)

46. Sister Nivedita’s reminiscences of a conversation with Swami Vivekananda at Ridgely Manor, recorded in an 1899 letter written from Ridgely Manor to Miss Josephine MacLeod:

I have never heard the Prophet talk so much of Shri Ramakrishna. He told us what I had heard before of [his master’s] infallible judgement of men… .

“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 hypnotize anyone who came to him and in two minutes know all about him, and Swami said that from this he had learnt to count our consciousness as a very small thing. (LSN

II: 1263)

47. From Sister Nivedita’s January 27, 1900 letter to Sister Christine:

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”. (LSN II: 1264)

48. In a July 7, 1902 letter to Sister Christine, Sister Nivedita recorded one of Swami Vivekananda’s remarks made while giving a class to the monks at Belur Math on July 4, 1902:

“Do not copy me. Kick out the man who imitates.” (LSN II: 1270)

49. The Swami’s comment after he made a statement concerning the ideal of the freedom of the soul, which brought it into apparent conflict with the Western conception of the service of humanity as the goal of the individual:

“You will say that this does not benefit society. But before this objection can be admitted you will first have to prove that the maintenance of society is an object in itself.” (CWSN 1: 19)

50. Sister Nivedita wrote:

He touched on the question of his own position as a wandering teacher and expressed the Indian diffidence with regard to religious organization or, as someone expresses it, “with regard to a faith that ends in a church”. “We believe”, he said, “that organization always breeds new evils”.

He prophesied that certain religious developments then much in vogue in the West would speedily die, owing to love of money. And he declared that “Man proceeds from truth to truth, and not from error to truth”. (CWSN 1: 19-20)

51. “The universe is like a cobweb and minds are the spiders; for mind is one as well as many.” (CWSN 1: 21)

52. “Let none regret that they were difficult to convince! I fought my Master for six years with the result that I know every inch of the way! Every inch of the way!” (CWSN 1: 22)

53. Swami Vivekananda was elucidating to what heights of selflessness the path of love leads and how it draws out the very best faculties of the soul:

“Suppose there were a baby in the path of the tiger! Where would your place be then? At his mouth — any one of you — I am sure of it.” (CWSN 1: 24)

54. “That by which all this is pervaded, know That to be the Lord Himself!” (CWSN 1: 27)

55. Concerning Swami Vivekananda’s attitude toward religion:

Religion was a matter of the growth of the individual, “a question always of being and becoming”. (CWSN 1: 28)

56. “Forgive when you also can bring legions of angels to an easy victory.” While victory was still doubtful, however, only a coward to his thinking would turn the other cheek. (CWSN 1: 28-29)

57. “Of course I would commit a crime and go to hell forever if by that I could really help a human being!” (CWSN 1: 34)

58. To a small group, including Sister Nivedita, after a lecture:

“I have a superstition — it is nothing, you know, but a personal superstition! — that the same soul who came once as Buddha came afterwards as Christ.” (CWSN 1: 35)

59. After Swami Vivekananda was told of Sister Nivedita’s willingness to serve India:

“For my own part I will be incarnated two hundred times, if that is necessary, to do this work amongst my people that I have undertaken.” (CWSN 1: 36)

60. Sister Nivedita’s memory of an incident:

He was riding on one occasion with the Raja of Khetri, when he saw that his arm was bleeding profusely and found that the wound had been caused by a thorny branch which he had held aside for himself to pass. When the Swami expostulated, the Rajput laughed the matter aside. “Are we not always the defenders of the faith, Swamiji?” he said.

“And then”, said the Swami, telling the story, “I was just going to tell him that they ought not to show such honour to the Sannyasin, when suddenly I thought that perhaps they were right after all. Who knows? Maybe I too am caught in the glare of this flashlight of your modern civilization, which is only for a moment”.

” — I have become entangled”, he said simply to one who protested that to his mind the wandering Sâdhu of earlier years, who had scattered his knowledge and changed his name as he went, had been greater than the abbot of Belur, burdened with much work and many cares. “I have become entangled.” (CWSN 1: 43)

61. Sister Nivedita wrote:

One day he was talking in the West of Mirâ Bâi — that saint who once upon a time was Queen of Chitore — and of the freedom her husband had offered her if only she would remain within the royal seclusion. But she could not be bound. “But why should she not?” someone asked in astonishment. “Why should she?” he retorted. “Was she living down here in this mire?” (CWSN 1: 44)

62. As years went by, the Swami dared less and less to make determinate plans or dogmatize about the unknown:

“After all, what do we know? Mother uses it all. But we are only fumbling about.” (CWSN 1: 44)

63. Quoting Swami Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita remembered:

Love was not love, it was insisted, unless it was “without a reason” or without a “motive” … . (CWSN 1: 52)

64. About Swami Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita wrote:

When asked by some of his own people what he considered, after seeing them in their own country, to be the greatest achievement of the English, he answered “that they had known how to combine obedience with self-respect”. (CWSN 1: 54)

65. Swami Sadananda reported that early in the morning, while it was still dark, Swami Vivekananda would rise and call the others, singing:

“Awake! Awake! all ye who would drink of the divine nectar!” (CWSN 1: 56)

66. Sister Nivedita remembered:

At this time [during the Swami’s itinerant days, near Almora] he passed some months in a cave overhanging a mountain village. Only twice have I known him to allude to this experience. Once he said, “Nothing in my whole life ever so filled me with the sense of work to be done. It was as if I were thrown out from that life in caves to wander to and fro in the plains below”. And again he said to someone, “It is not the form of his life that makes a Sadhu. For it is possible to sit in a cave and have one’s whole mind filled with the question of how many pieces of bread will be brought to one for supper!” (CWSN 1: 61)

67. About his own poem “Kali the Mother”:

“Scattering plagues and sorrows”, he quoted from his own verses,

Dancing mad with joy,

Come, Mother, come!

For terror is Thy name!

Death — is in Thy breath.

And every shaking step

Destroys a world for e’er.

“It all came true, every word of it”, he interrupted himself to say.

Who dares misery love.

Dance in Destruction’s dance,

And hug the form of death, …

“To him the Mother does indeed come. I have proved it. For I have hugged the form of Death!” (CWSN 1: 98-99)

68. Sister Nivedita, referring to her plans for a girls’ school:

Only in one respect was he [Swami Vivekananda] inflexible. The work for the education of Indian women, to which he would give his name, might be as sectarian as I chose to make it. “You wish through a sect to rise beyond all sects.” (CWSN 1: 102)

69. Commenting on Sister Nivedita’s visit to Gopaler-Ma’s dwelling — a small cell:

“Ah! this is the old India that you have seen, the India of prayers and tears, of vigils and fasts, that is passing away, never to return!” (CWSN 1: 109)

70. About the aims of the Ramakrishna Order:

The same purpose spoke again in his definition of the aims of the Order of Ramakrishna — “to effect an exchange of the highest ideals of the East and the West and to realize these in practice” … . (CWSN 1: 113)

71. After teaching Sister Nivedita the worship of Shiva, Swami Vivekananda then culminated it in an offering of flowers at the feet of the Buddha. He said, as if addressing each soul that would ever come to him for guidance:

“Go thou and follow Him, who was born and gave His life for others five hundred times before He attained the vision of the Buddha!” (CWSN 1: 114)

72. Upon returning from a pilgrimage in Kashmir:

“These gods are not merely symbols! They are the forms that the Bhaktas have seen!” (CWSN 1: 120)

73. Sister Nivedita’s reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda’s words heard long before:

“The Impersonal God seen through the mists of sense is personal.” (CWSN 1: 120)

74. Swami Vivekananda’s comment when he was reminded of the rareness of criminality in India:

“Would God it were otherwise in my land, for this is verily the virtuousness of death!” (CWSN 1: 123)

75. Swami Vivekananda said:

“The whole of life is only a swan song! Never forget those lines:

The lion, when stricken to the heart,

gives out his mightiest roar.

When smitten on the head, the cobra lifts its hood. And the majesty of the soul comes forth,

only when a man is wounded to his depths.”

(CWSN 1: 124)

76. After hearing of the death of Shri Durga Charan Nag (Nag Mahashay):

“[He] was one of the greatest of the works of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.” (CWSN 1: 129)

77. About Shri Ramakrishna’s transformative power, Swami Vivekananda said:

“Was it a joke that Ramakrishna Paramahamsa should touch a life? Of course he made new men and new women of those who came to him, even in these fleeting contacts!” (CWSN 1: 130)

78. While speaking on the true spirit of a Sannyasin, Swami Vivekananda said:

“I saw many great men in Hrishikesh. One case that I remember was that of a man who seemed to be mad. He was coming nude down the street, with boys pursuing and throwing stones at him. The whole man was bubbling over with laughter while blood was streaming down his face and neck. I took him and bathed the wound, putting ashes on it to stop the bleeding. And all the time with peals of laughter he told me of the fun the boys and he had been having, throwing the stones. ‘So the Father plays’, he said.

“Many of these men hide, in order to guard themselves against intrusion. People are a trouble to them. One had human bones strewn about his cave and gave it out that he lived on corpses. Another threw stones. And so on… .

“Sometimes the thing comes upon them in a flash. There was a boy, for instance, who used to come to read the Upanishads with Abhedananda. One day he turned and said, ‘Sir, is all this really true?’

“‘Oh yes!’ said Abhedananda, ‘It may be difficult to realize, but it is certainly true’.

“And next day, that boy was a silent Sannyasin, nude, on his way to Kedarnath!

“What happened to him? you ask. He became silent!

“But the Sannyasin needs no longer to worship or to go on pilgrimage or perform austerities. What then is the motive of all this going from pilgrimage to pilgrimage, shrine to shrine, and austerity to austerity? He is acquiring merit and giving it to the world!” (CWSN 1: 133)

79. Referring to the story of Shibi Rana:

“Ah yes! These are the stories that are deep in our nation’s heart! Never forget that the Sannyasin takes two vows: one to realize the truth and one to help the world — and that the most stringent of stringent requirements is that he should renounce any thought of heaven!” (CWSN 1: 134)

80. To Sister Nivedita:

“The Gitâ says that there are three kinds of charity: the Tâmasic, the Râjasic and the Sâttvic. Tamasic charity is performed on an impulse. It is always making mistakes. The doer thinks of nothing but his own impulse to be kind. Rajasic charity is what a man does for his own glory. And Sattvic charity is that which is given to the right person, in the right way, and at the proper time… .

“When it comes to the Sattvic, I think more and more of a certain great Western woman in whom I have seen that quiet giving, always to the right person in the right way, at the right time, and never making a mistake.

“For my own part, I have been learning that even charity can go too far… .

“As I grow older I find that I look more and more for greatness in little things. I want to know what a great man eats and wears, and how he speaks to his servants. I want to find a Sir Philip Sidney (Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586): English poet, soldier and politician.) greatness! Few men would remember the thirst of others, even in the moment of death.

“But anyone will be great in a great position! Even the coward will grow brave in the glare of the footlights. The world looks on. Whose heart will not throb? Whose pulse will not quicken till he can do his best?

“More and more the true greatness seems to me that of the worm doing its duty silently, steadily, from moment to moment and from hour to hour.” (CWSN 1: 137)

81. Referring to the great individual — the divine incarnation, the Guru, and the Rishi:

“You do not yet understand India! We Indians are man — worshippers, after all! Our God is man!” (CWSN 1: 144)

82. On another occasion, Swami Vivekananda used the word “man-worshippers” in an entirely different sense:

“This idea of man—worship exists in nucleus in India, but it has never been expanded. You must develop it. Make poetry, make art, of it. Establish the worship of the feet of beggars as you had it in Mediaeval Europe. Make man-worshippers.” (CWSN 1: 144-45)

83. To Sister Nivedita:

“There is a peculiar sect of Mohammedans who are reported to be so fanatical that they take each newborn babe and expose it, saying, ‘If God made thee, perish! If Ali made thee, live!’ Now this, which they say to the child, I say, but in the opposite sense, to you tonight: ‘Go forth into the world and there, if I made you, be destroyed! If Mother made you, live’!” (CWSN 1: 151)

84. Long after Southern magnates in America had apologized to Vivekananda when they learned that he had been mistaken for a Negro and was thus refused admission into hotels, the Swami remarked to himself:

“What! rise at the expense of another! I didn’t come to earth for that! … If I am grateful to my white-skinned Aryan ancestor, I am far more so to my yellow-skinned Mongolian ancestor and, most so of all, to the black-skinned Negritoid!” (CWSN 1: 153)

85. Commenting on the dungeon-cages of mediaeval prisoners on Mont-Saint-Michel:

(CWSN 1: 154)

“Oh, I know I have wandered over the whole earth, but in India I have looked for nothing save the cave in which to meditate!” (Ibid.)

86. Though he considered offspring of the Roman Empire to be brutal and the Japanese notion of marriage a horror, Swami Vivekananda nevertheless summed up the constructive ideals, never the defects, of a community:

“For patriotism, the Japanese! For purity, the Hindu! And for manliness, the European! There is no other in the world who understands, as does the Englishman, what should be the glory of a man!” (CWSN 1: 160)

87. Swami Vivekananda said of himself before he left for America in 1893:

“I go forth to preach a religion of which Buddhism is nothing but a rebel child and Christianity, with all her pretensions, only a distant echo!” (CWSN 1: 161)

88. Describing the night Buddha left his wife to renounce the world, Swami Vivekananda said:

“What was the problem that vexed him? Why! It was she whom he was about to sacrifice for the world! That was the struggle! He cared nothing for himself!” (CWSN 1: 172)

89. After describing Buddha’s touching farewell to his wife, the Swami said:

“Have you never thought of the hearts of the heroes? How they were great, great, great — and soft as butter?” (CWSN 1: 172)

90. Swami Vivekananda’s description of Buddha’s death and its similarity with that of Shri Ramakrishna’s:

He told how the blanket had been spread for him beneath the tree and how the Blessed One had lain down, “resting on his right side like a lion” to die, when suddenly there came to him one who ran for instruction. The disciples would have treated the man as an intruder, maintaining peace at any cost about their Master’s death-bed, but the Blessed One overheard, and saying, “No, no! He who was sent (Lit., “the Tathâgata”. “A word”, explained Swami Vivekananda, “which is very like your ‘Messiah’”.) is ever ready”, he raised himself on his elbow and taught. This happened four times and then, and then only, Buddha held himself free to die. “But first he spoke to reprove Ananda for weeping. The Buddha was not a person but a realization, and to that any one of them might attain. And with his last breath he forbade them to worship any.”

The immortal story went on to its end. But to one who listened, the most significant moment had been that in which the teller paused — at his own words “raised himself on his elbow and taught” — and said, in brief parenthesis, “I saw this, you know, in the case of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa”. And there rose before the mind the story of one, destined to learn from that teacher, who had travelled a hundred miles, and arrived at Cossipore only when he lay dying. Here also the disciples would have refused admission, but Shri Ramakrishna intervened, insisting on receiving the new-comer, and teaching him. (CWSN 1: 175-176)

91. Commenting on the historic and philosophic significance of Buddhistic doctrine:

“Form, feeling, sensation, motion and knowledge are the five categories in perpetual flux and fusion. And in these lies Maya. Of any one wave nothing can be predicated, for it is not. It but was and is gone. Know, O Man, thou art the sea! Ah, this was Kapila’s philosophy, but his great disciple [Buddha] brought the heart to make it live!” (CWSN 1: 176)

92. Concerning the Buddhist First Council and the dispute as to its President:

“Can you imagine what their strength was? One said it should be Ananda, because he had loved Him most. But someone else stepped forward and said no! for Ananda had been guilty of weeping at the death-bed. And so he was passed over!” (CWSN 1: 177)

93. Considering reincarnation a “scientific speculation” rather than an article of faith:

“Why, one life in the body is like a million years of confinement, and they want to wake up the memory of many lives! Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof! … Yes! Buddhism must be right! Reincarnation is only a mirage! But this vision is to be reached by the path of Advaita alone!” (CWSN 1: 180-81)

94. “Had I lived in Palestine, in the days of Jesus of Nazareth, I would have washed his feet, not with my tears, but with my heart’s blood!” (CWSN 1: 189)

95. “For the Advaitin, therefore, the only motive is love… . It is the Saviour who should go on his way rejoicing, not the saved!” (CWSN 1: 197-98)

96. On the necessity of restraint in a disciple’s life:

“Struggle to realize yourself without a trace of emotion! … Watch the fall of the leaves, but gather the sentiment of the sight from within at some later time!” (CWSN 1: 207)

“Mind! No loaves and fishes! No glamour of the world! All this must be cut short. It must be rooted out. It is sentimentality—the overflow of the senses. It comes to you in colour, sight, sound, and associations. Cut it off. Learn to hate it. It is utter poison!” (Ibid., 207-208)

97. On the value of types:

“Two diffferent races mix and fuse, and out of them rises one strong distinct type. A strong and distinct type is always the physical basis of the horizon. It is all very well to talk of universalism, but the world will not be ready for that for millions of years!

“Remember! if you want to know what a ship is like, the ship has to be specified as it is — its length, breadth, shape, and material. And to understand a nation, we must do the same. India is idolatrous. You must help her as she is. Those who have left her can do nothing for her!” (CWSN 1: 209)

98. Describing the Indian ideal of Brahmacharya in the student’s life, Swami Vivekananda said:

“Brahmacharya should be like a burning fire within the veins!” (CWSN 1: 216)

99. Concerning marriage by arrangement instead of choice, Swami Vivekananda said:

“There is such pain in this country! Such pain! Some, of course, there must always have been. But now the sight of Europeans with their different customs has increased it. Society knows that there is another way!

[To a European] “We have exalted motherhood and you, wifehood; and I think both might gain by some interchange.

“In India the wife must not dream of loving even a son as she loves her husband. She must be Sati. But the husband ought not to love his wife as he does his mother. Hence a reciprocated affection is not thought so high as one unreturned. It is ‘shopkeeping’. The joy of the contact of husband and wife is not admitted in India. This we have to borrow from the West. Our ideal needs to be refreshed by yours. And you, in turn, need something of our devotion to motherhood.” (CWSN 1: 221-22)

100. Speaking to a disciple with great compassion:

“You need not mind if these shadows of home and marriage cross your mind sometimes. Even to me, they come now and again!” (CWSN 1: 222)

101. On hearing of the intense loneliness of a friend:

“Every worker feels like that at times!” (CWSN 1: 222)

102. Concerning the Hindu and Buddhist monastic and non-monastic ideals:

“The glory of Hinduism lies in the fact that while it has defined ideals, it has never dared to say that any one of these alone was the one true way. In this it differs from Buddhism, which exalts monasticism above all others as the path that must be taken by all souls to reach perfection. The story given in the Mahâbhârata of the young saint who was made to seek enlightenment, first from a married woman and then from a butcher, is sufficient to show this. ‘By doing my duty’, said each one of these when asked, ‘by doing my duty in my own station, have I attained this knowledge’. There is no career then which might not be the path to God. The question of attainment depends only, in the last resort, on the thirst of the soul.” (CWSN 1: 223)

103. With reference to the idea that the lover always sees the ideal in the beloved, Swami Vivekananda responded to a girl’s newly avowed love:

“Cling to this vision! As long as you can both see the ideal in one another, your worship and happiness will grow more instead of less.” (CWSN 1: 224)

104. “The highest truth is always the simplest.” (CWSN 1: 226)

105. Swami Vivekananda’s remarks on American séances:

“Always the greatest fraud by the simplest means.” (CWSN 1: 233)

106. On Western and Eastern views of a person as a body or a soul:

“Western languages declare that man is a body and has a soul; Eastern languages declare that he is a soul and has a body.” (CWSN 1: 236-37)

107. Concerning Swami Vivekananda’s reverence for his Guru:

“I can criticize even an Avatâra [divine incarnation] without the slightest diminution of my love for him! But I know quite well that most people are not so; and for them it is safest to protect their own Bhakti!” (CWSN 1: 252)

“Mine is the devotion of the dog! I don’t want to know why! I am contented simply to follow!” (Ibid., 252-53)

108. “Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used to begin every day by walking about in his room for a couple of hours, saying ‘Satchidânanda!’ or ‘Shivoham!’ or some other holy word.” (CWSN 1: 255)

109. A few months before his passing away, Swami Vivekananda said:

“How often does a man ruin his disciples by remaining always with them! When men are once trained, it is essential that their leader leaves them; for without his absence they cannot develop themselves!” (CWSN 1: 260)

110. A few days before his passing away, the Swami said:

“I am making ready for death. A great Tapasyâ and meditation has come upon me, and I am making ready for death.” (CWSN 1: 261-62)

111. In Kashmir after an illness, Swami Vivekananda said as he lifted a couple of pebbles:

“Whenever death approaches me, all weakness vanishes. I have neither fear, nor doubt, nor thought of the external. I simply busy myself making ready to die. I am as hard as that [the pebbles struck one another in his hand] — for I have touched the feet of God!” (CWSN 1: 262)

Newspaper Reports

Part I: American Newspaper Reports

Part II: European Newspaper Reports

Part IIi: Indian Newspaper Reports

MADRAS

the 15th February [1893]

YOUR HIGHNESS,

Two things I am telling your Highness. One - a very wonderful phenomenon I have seen in a village called Kumbakonam, and another about myself. In the said village lives a man of the Chetty caste, generally passing for an astrologer. I, with two other young men, went to see him. He was said to tell about anything a man thinks of. So, I wanted to put him to the test. Two months ago, I dreamt that my mother was dead and I was very anxious to know about her. My second was whether what my Guru had told me was right. The third was a test-question — a part of the Buddhistic mantra, in Tibetan tongue. These questions I determined upon, two days before going to this Govinda Chetty. Another young man had one of his sisters-in-law given poison to, by some unknown hand, from which she recovered. But he wanted to know the author of that delivery. When we first saw him, the fellow was almost ferocious. He said that some Europeans came to see [him] with the Dewan of Mysore and that since then through their ‘Dristee Dosham’ he had got fever and that he could not give us a seance then and only if we paid him 10 Rs., he would consent to tell us our ‘prasnas’. The young men with me of course were ready to pay down his fees. But he goes to his private room and immediately comes back and says to me that if I gave him some ashes to cure him of his fever he would consent to give us a seance. Of course I told him that I do not boast of any power of curing diseases but he said, ‘That does not matter, only I want [the ash]’. So, I consented and he took us to the private room and, taking a sheet of paper, wrote something upon it and gave it over to one of us and made me sign it and keep it into the pocket of one of my companions. Then he told me point blank, ‘Why you, a Sannyasi, are thinking upon your mother?’ I answered that even the great Shankaracharya would take care of his mother; and he said ‘She is all right and I have written her name in that paper in the possession of your friend’ and then went on saying, ‘Your Guru is dead. Whatever he has told you, you must believe, for he was a very very great man,’ and went on giving me a description of my Guru which was most wonderful and then he said ‘What more you want to know about your Guru?’ I told him ‘If you can give me his name I would be satisfied’, and he said, ‘Which name? A Sannyasi gets different sorts of names’. I answered, ‘The name by which he was known to the public’, and says, ‘The wonderful name, I have already written that. And you wanted to know about a mantra in Tibetan, that is also written in that paper.’ And, he then told me to think of anything in any language and tell him, I told him ‘Om Namo BhagavateVasudevaya’, and he said, ‘That is also written in the paper in possession of your friend. Now take it out and see’. And Lo! Wonder! They were all there as he said and even my mother’s name was there!! It began thus — your mother of such and such name is all right. She is very holy and good, but she is feeling your separation like death and within two years she shall die; so if you want to see her, it must be within two years. Next it was written — your Guru Ramakrishna Paramahamsa is dead but he lives in Sukshma, i.e., ethereal body, and is watching over you, etc. and then it was written ‘Lamala capsechua’, in Tibetan, and then at last was written ‘In conformation to what I have written, I give you also this mantra which you would give me after one hour after my writing; ‘Om Namo Bhagavate etc.’; and so he was equally successful with my friends. Then I saw people coming from distant villages and as soon as he sees them he says — ‘Your name is such and such and you come from such and such village for this purpose’. By the time he was reading me, he toned down very much and said — ‘I won’t take money from you. On the other hand, you must take some “seva” from me’. And I took some milk at his house and he brought over his whole family to bow down to me and I touched some ‘vibhutee’ brought by him and then I asked him the source of his wonderful powers. First he would not say, but after a while he came to me [and] said — ‘Maharaj, it is “siddhi of mantras” through the “sahaya” of “Devi”.’ Verily, there are more things on heaven and earth Horatio than your philosophy ever dreamt of — Shakespeare. The second is regarding me. Here is a zamindar of Ramnath, now staying in Madras. He is going to send me over to Europe and, as you are already aware of, I have a great mind to see those places. So I have determined to take this opportunity of making a tour in Europe and America. But I can’t do anything without asking your Highness, the only friend on Earth I have. So kindly give your opinion about it. I only want to make a short tour in those places. One thing I am certain of, that I am [an] instrument in the hands [of] a holy and superior power. Myself, I have no peace, am burning literally day and night, but somehow or other, wherever I go hundreds and, in some [places] as in Madras, thousands would come to me day and night and would be cured of their skepticism and unbelief but I —! I am always unhappy!! Thy will be done!! Therefore, I don’t know what this power requires of me, to be done in Europe. I cannot but obey. ‘Thy will be done’!! There is no escape. I congratulate your Highness on the birth of a son and heir. May the infant prince be quiet like his most noble father and may the Lord shower his blessings always on him and his parents. So I am going over in two or three weeks to Europe. I can’t say anything as to the future of the body. Only I pray to your Highness if it be proper to take some care of my mother that she does not starve. I would be highly obliged to get a reply soon, and pray your Highness to keep the latter part of this letter, i.e., my going over to England etc., confidential. May you be blessed all your life, you and yours, is the prayer that is day and night offered up by,

VIVEKANANDA

C/o. M. Bhattacharya Esq.

Assistant Accountant General

Mt. St. Thome, Madras

BOMBAY The 22nd May [18]93

YOUR HIGHNESS,

Leaving Khetri there happened nothing particular to relate except that I had every comfort on the way, broke journey at Kharari and then [went] to Nariad [Nadiad]. Haridas Bhai was as usual very kind to me and we had many and many a talk about your Highness, so much so that he was really very anxious to see you and intends paying his respects to your Highness in his coming winter tour to the north. And I dare say your Highness would also be very much pleased to see this old man of great experience who was for twenty-five years the mentor of Kathiawad. Withal he is the only remnant of the old school of very conservative politicians. He is a man who is thoroughly able to organize and put to perfect order an existing machinery; but he would be the last man to move a step further. At Bombay I went to see my friend Ramdas, Barrister-at-Law. He is rather a sentimental gentleman and was so much impressed with your Highness’ character that he told me that had it not been midsummer he would rather fly to see such a prince.

His father intends going to Chicago on the 31st; if so, we would go together for company. Today I go to buy some steel trunks etc., and am only waiting for the Madras money to come in. Although I wired to them from Jeypore, they were rather suspicious and waited for my further communications and I have again wired them and written too. On our way we had the company of Mr. Ramnath, the charan headmaster of the Jeypore noble’s school. He and I had a bout on my first coming out of Khetri years ago, about vegetarianism. He had in the meantime got hold of some American writers and pounced upon me with his arguments from them. His author, he said, has proved to his satisfaction that the human digestive organs including the teeth are exactly like those of the cow. Therefore, man is designed by nature to be a vegetarian animal. He is a very good and nice gentleman and I did not want to disturb his confidence in the American hobbyist but one thing was on the tip of my tongue — If our digestive apparatus is exactly like that of a cow — we ought and must be able to eat and digest grass. In that case poor Indians are fools to die of starvation in famine times while their natural food, grass, is so abundant, and your Highness’ servants are fools to serve you while they have only to get up the nearest hillock and get a bellyful of grass instead of undergoing all the trouble of serving others!!! Grand American discovery indeed!!! Only I hope the holy dungs of such human cows may become of great use to the wonderful American author and his Indian disciple. Amen. So much for the cow-human theory. Do not find anything more to advertise to your Highness, so, beg leave to stop here. May the giver of all good bestow his choicest blessings on you and yours, I remain,

Yours in the Lord, VIVEKANANDA

Members of V Club Hear About the Vegetarian Diet of the Far East

The second vegetarian dinner of the V Club was held at the St. Denis Hotel, Broadway and Eleventh Street, last night. About fifty members were present.

Only vegetables and fruits appeared on the menu, and sterilized water, chocolate, coffee, and tea made up the drinkables.

Between the toasts several original songs were rendered by J. Williams Macy.

S. C. T. Dodd replied to the toast “Vanity,” and Mary T. Burt, in the absence of Mrs. Ella Dietz Clymer, to that of “Virtue”.

Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu of high caste, said that vegetarianism had its beginning in India. “It is often stated,” he said, “that because Hindus believe in transmigration of souls they would not kill and eat animals because they feared that they would eat some of their ancestors. There is not a word of truth in this statement. Some of the greatest propagandists of vegetarianism do not believe in God nor in a soul. Therefore, the fear of eating one of their ancestors could not affect them.

“Nearly three-quarters of the people of India are vegetarians. They are so because they are too kind to kill animals for food.

“In this country, when animals are injured, it is the custom to kill them. In India it is the rule to send them to a hospital. In approaching Bombay, the first thing the traveler comes across is a very large hospital for animals. This has been the practice for 4,000 years.”

Mrs. J. De La M. Lozier, Vice President of Sorosis, told about the little vices of men. The first one was drunkenness. Men came home and hid themselves behind a newspaper. They never had anything pleasant to say. A woman who had been married forty years said to her husband: “I wish you would tell me that you love me. It is so long since you said it that I would like to hear how it sounds.” Another vice was loquaciousness or scolding. Perhaps this was not a common vice. But some husbands were very nice when they were away from home and very disagreeable when by the fireside. One woman called her husband “a street angel.” When he died she refused to wear mourning. Other little vices were smoking, the use of slang, and insincerity, or the trying to appear to be what they were not.

St. Clair McKerway replied to the arguments of some of the other speakers in a humorous vein.

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1931.

This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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